Masterstroke (The Simon Bognor Mysteries) Read online

  ‘That’s what I thought,’ said Bognor. ‘If this were Cambridge it would be different, but I’ve always assumed that sort of thing couldn’t happen here.’

  ‘So you’re saying Aveline tied him up, blindfolded him, shot him and then drove out here and dumped him?’

  Bognor pondered. Aveline may have been amazingly virile for his age, but his age was considerable. It seemed unlikely that he could have dealt so effectively with even a drunken Vole.

  ‘He’d have needed help.’

  ‘And,’ Smith blew a cloud of Auld Reekie in Bognor’s direction, ‘you’re thinking what I’m thinking.’

  ‘Which is?’ Bognor was not going to be caught out like that.

  ‘That if he’s who Vole thought he was, then he’d know precisely where to go for that sort of help.’

  ‘Quite.’

  ‘Next question is, can we prove it?’ The inspector puffed away thoughtfully.

  ‘Don’t see why not,’ said Bognor. ‘If Vole left all his notes and working papers at Prendergast, that should give us enough evidence to smoke Aveline out. Besides, if he really was working for the Russians all these years, someone must have had some sort of an idea.’

  ‘I wouldn’t bet on it,’ said Smith. ‘Anyway, I think we should strike while the iron’s hot. Almost time for breakfast. Let’s take a coffee and some toast off the Regius Professor.’

  Smith slid into the back seat alongside Bognor who, on the point of vomiting, asked him to extinguish the pipe. He did, and the car moved away down the hill some five minutes behind the ambulance carrying Vole’s corpse to the mortuary. There was a phone box in the village and Smith decided they should stop there to find Aveline’s address in the directory. When they got there, however, they discovered that the phone book was missing.

  ‘I’ll try Directory Inquiries,’ said Smith, asking Bognor for a 10p coin. Bognor had no such thing, so walked to the car and borrowed one from Constable Atkinson. When he got back he said, ‘He’s bound to be ex-directory. No point trying. I’ll call Waldegrave Mitten. He’ll know.’ He glanced at his watch, which showed him it was not long after six. It would be satisfying to telephone Mitten at this ungodly hour. He was certain to be asleep, having no more love for the early morning than Bognor himself.

  It took him no little time to persuade the college porter of the importance of his request, but eventually he was put through to the acting Master’s rooms. The bell rang several times before an aggrieved, strangulated voice said, ‘Do you know what bloody time it is?’

  ‘About six-fifteen, actually,’ said Bognor. ‘But it is important. Very. I’m afraid we’ve had another death.’

  ‘Who is this?’

  ‘Bognor,’ said Bognor. ‘Bognor, Board of Trade. That is Waldegrave Mitten, isn’t it?’

  ‘Oh, it’s you,’ said Mitten with an air of resignation. ‘Could you ring back in an hour? It’s not, er, convenient.’

  ‘Convenience doesn’t come into it.’ Bognor spoke with asperity. ‘I need Aveline’s address. There’s been another death.’

  ‘If Aveline’s dead, you hardly need his address.’

  ‘Aveline’s not dead. It’s someone else. I can’t talk about it on the phone.’

  ‘You’re not making sense,’ protested Mitten. ‘In fact you sound like one of your essays. If someone else is dead, why do you need Aveline’s address?’

  ‘Listen,’ said Bognor, ‘this is not something I can talk about over the phone, but I do assure you it’s vital. Please may I have Aveline’s address?’

  ‘He has a flat in Norham Gardens,’ said Mitten, ‘but I happen to know he’s not there.’

  Bognor sighed. ‘I’ve only got one 10p piece,’ he said, ‘and we’re going to run out of time in a moment. I’m not at all well, a man is dead and I must know where Professor Aveline is.’

  ‘He’s at his cottage,’ said Mitten, ‘but I can’t give you the address. He’s most particular about it. It’s his hideaway. He’d kill me if I gave it to you.’

  ‘Since he’s killed at least one man already I should think that’s very much on the cards,’ said Bognor drily. ‘You don’t seem to realize we’re investigating a murder. Two murders in point of fact. You’re obstructing us in our inquiries. That’s an offence.’

  Mitten was manifestly exasperated, but after some ritual huffing, puffing and minatory muttering he said, ‘Oh, very well then, but I want you to know that I do this under protest. Also that under no circumstances are you to tell Max how you found out.’

  ‘No, no, of course not. … Just tell me where it is.’

  A pause. ‘The Old Bakehouse, Compton Courtenay. It’s about ten miles outside Oxford.’

  ‘Thanks very much,’ he said. ‘You can go back to sleep now.’ And he replaced the receiver noisily.

  ‘Compton Courtenay,’ he said to the inspector, squeezed up against him in the kiosk.

  ‘Ah,’ said the inspector, a glint coming into his eyes. ‘Now that is a piece of luck.’

  Bognor caught a heavy whiff of armpit, whisky and stale tobacco. Quickly he opened the door and tumbled out.

  ‘Luck?’ he inquired from the soggily bracing safety of the great outdoors.

  ‘Luck, laddie. Look!’ The inspector jabbed a finger at the code on the dial: ‘Compton Courtenay 2246 X,’ he said, triumphantly. ‘We’re in bloody Compton Courtenay already.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Bognor. ‘That is good news. All we have to do now is find the Old Bakehouse. Then we can sit down and have a jolly little breakfast with Mad Max the Murderous Marxist.’

  ‘Sorry,’ said the inspector. ‘Forgot you were feeling a degree or two under. You want to get stitched up and have a kip? Nothing much you can do at the moment, and I can get a car to drive you into Casualty at the Radcliffe.’

  ‘No, thanks,’ said Bognor. ‘Let’s go and collect the Professor first. Always assuming he’s still there. Are you armed?’

  Smith nodded. ‘Atkinson and the others, too.’ He jerked his head towards the second car which was stopped just outside the Belt and Braces public house.

  ‘Not that you need to worry about that,’ he went on. ‘If he did murder your friend Vole, the odds are that he’ll have scarpered. On the other hand, if he’s still in bed then he’s innocent.’

  ‘That sounds a bit simple,’ said Bognor. ‘How do you work that out?’

  ‘Common sense … experience … and a feel for the job,’ said Inspector Smith, managing to suggest that these essential qualifications were not shared by his colleague from the Board of Trade. ‘Come on! Let’s go. Aren’t more than about a dozen houses to choose from.’

  This was correct. A hundred years ago and more this would have been a small feudal village owned by the local lord and peopled by his tenants and workers. Now, however, the local lord was reduced to living in the west wing while the paying public had the run of the rest of the house. The workers were all in council estates on the edge of Oxford or Thames. The only people who lived in Compton Courtenay were regius professors of sociology and company directors. The Regius Professor’s abode was the third house they came to, a ducky little stone and thatched number with roses and honeysuckle round the porch, staddlestones by the front path, heavily leaded windows and a strong suspicion of House and Garden exposed beam and Aga. Very Volvo and Brie, as the Americans would have it.

  Bognor, unarmed as usual, lurked in the background, nursing his wounds, aches and self-recrimination while the constabulary fanned out to cover all possible entrances and exits. Smith, as befitted the man in charge, made purposefully for the front door and banged the heavy iron knocker loudly, three times. There being no answer, he tried again. After a third effort he took out a handgun, motioned two policemen to cover him, and turned the door handle. The door opened. Standing back, the inspector gave it a kick, and waited. Bognor, watching, decided that his colleague chappie was more nervous than he liked to admit.

  The early morning silence was broken by the church clock striking the qu
arter. The door, under the impact of the inspector’s kick, swung wide open and then, very slowly and with a slight creak, swung back. The inspector pushed it open with his hand this time and entered. Behind him followed the two policemen. Bognor, for reasons he preferred not to examine – they would have had too much to do with extreme caution, not to say fear – remained outside. About five minutes later the inspector emerged.

  ‘Done a bunk,’ he shouted. ‘Come on in. The other two are making coffee.’

  Bognor did as he was asked, feeling too like a trespasser for comfort. He wiped his feet fastidiously on the mat and found himself in a long, low living-room with stairs leading to the upper storey. Two rooms and a passage had obviously been knocked into one. By the surprisingly chintzy, high-backed armchairs there were empty glasses and two ashtrays with several butts in them. The grate contained ash. Yesterday’s Guardian lay open on a window seat, and on the dining-table at the far end of the room a cut-glass jug half full of water sat next to a bottle of Dimple Haig whisky with about an inch left in the bottom. The room smelt faintly pub-like, tobacco and alcohol mixing with more animal smells. Although it was messy, there were no signs of a struggle.

  The inspector rubbed his hands together, making a rasping sound with the palms. ‘Done a bunk,’ he said again. ‘Shaving things missing from the bathroom. Drawers opened. Left in a hurry. Didn’t even wash up or lock the door behind him.’

  ‘People don’t lock front doors in the country.’

  ‘Call this country?’ said the inspector sceptically. ‘Should be prints on the glasses. Neighbours may have noticed something.’

  Constable Atkinson appeared, bearing hot Nescafé in Portmeirion pottery mugs. Bognor shovelled three spoonfuls of sugar into his and drank it black. ‘Open and shut,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, yes?’ The inspector cocked an eyebrow. ‘Enlighten me.’

  ‘OK.’ Bognor took a deep breath. ‘Vole has all the evidence necessary to prove that Aveline was the Kremlin’s top Briton. “Made Philby look like an office boy” were his words, if I remember correctly. So he asks Aveline for an interview. Aveline naturally knows that Vole’s been on the trail for years, and he realizes that he’s finally caught up with him. He has to make sure, of course. He knows Vole didn’t really do his homework on the Mussolini book, so there’s a chance he’s been careless again. But Aveline is worried.’ Bognor sipped the sickly-sweet brew and mopped his forehead. He wondered if he should bother to get his wound stitched. ‘So rather than risk exposure in the twilight of his days,’ he continued, ‘he gets on to his friends and asks them to send up one of their high-powered heavies to help him out if things go wrong. Vole arrives, slightly pissed. Boris sits in on the interview. It very quickly becomes apparent that Vole knows chapter and verse, so Boris pulls a gun, trusses poor old Vole up like poultry and bundles him away to a quiet spot where he shoots him and dumps him. Meanwhile Aveline, as you put it, does a bunk and Boris goes back to Millionaires’ Row where he doubtless masquerades as a third secretary (cultural).’

  ‘Yes.’ Smith seemed weary. ‘I’ll buy that as far as it goes. In which case Aveline could be in Moscow by now, though I’ll put out a call just in case. He’s probably had twelve hours, and with the resources at his disposal any one of a number of passports. Trouble is, I don’t see that any of this gets us any further.’

  ‘What do you mean … “further”?’

  ‘I mean,’ said the inspector, ‘that this murder inquiry began with the death of Lord Beckenham of Penge. Am I right?’

  ‘You are right.’

  ‘And we still don’t know who did that.’

  ‘We don’t?’

  ‘I don’t.’

  Bognor pursed his lips. ‘Beckenham was a stooge of Aveline’s. One of what will no doubt turn out to have been a complex network of moles and agents and fifth columnists. As soon as Beckenham was approached by Vole he would have consulted Aveline. Aveline would have been worried that Beckenham would spill the beans, and so he knocks him off before Vole can get at him. QED.’

  ‘Several things wrong with that,’ said Smith. ‘One: lack of opportunity. How did he doctor the Master’s raspberry tipple? He was in his own rooms all that night until he bicycled back to his flat in north Oxford. Two: he’d have been out here with Vole when the Master’s riling cabinet was being done over. And three: he’d have been on his way to Moscow when you were being hit over the head at the Randolph. All of which adds up to quite conclusive evidence that, whatever else he may have done, Professor Aveline did not kill Lord Beckenham. Not QED at all.’

  ‘No, I suppose not. Except that he could have got someone else to do the dirty work. He got someone else to kill poor Vole.’

  ‘But he used a pro,’ said Smith. ‘Whoever knocked you about was an amateur. And so was the geezer who did the Master’s files. If Aveline is the kind of operator you say he is, then he’d have had more class than that.’

  ‘So where does that leave us?’ asked Bognor.

  ‘Nowhere much,’ said the inspector. ‘We’ll follow this one through, naturally, but all we’re going to find is that it was the Professor who did it, for reasons aforementioned, and that he’s got clean away. If he didn’t and if he hasn’t, I’m a virgin.’

  Bognor nodded. ‘I wish he had done it,’ he said. ‘But I agree – I don’t think he did. And now, if you don’t mind, I think I’d better get stitched up and have a quick kip.’

  It looked as if they were right. By the time Bognor surfaced, feeling weary but human, it transpired that Aveline, using his own name, had caught the night boat from Southampton to Le Havre. By the time the inspector and Hermione Frinton had managed to get Interpol and the French security people to treat the matter with anything approaching seriousness, Aveline had vanished. This was hotly disputed by the French and some other European officials, who denied that in the latter half of the twentieth century it was possible for individuals simply to disappear into thin air. It was also claimed that border security was amazingly rigorous and foolproof, that even if the fugitive professor was able to elude the enveloping tentacles of the French dragnet he would be snaffled the second he came within sight of the border. Bognor shrugged and sighed and wondered how long it would be before some watchful Western newspaper correspondent recorded a sighting of Aveline in the crush bar at the Bolshoi, or browsing in the Hermitage. Days rather than weeks, in his opinion.

  Vole’s death and his own battering did have one happy side-effect, which was a reconciliation of sorts with Dr Frinton. On waking in mid-afternoon, feeling revived and even marginally peckish, he sauntered down to the lounge in search of a pot of tea and a round or two of hot buttered toast. After ordering these he checked with reception for messages (he had left the strictest imaginable instructions that he was under no circumstances whatever to be disturbed) and found, along with half a dozen increasingly angry messages from Parkinson, a note from Hermione, handwritten and presumably hand-delivered. It said: ‘Sorry about last night. Your gin is still in the fridge. Potter round as soon as you recover use of your limbs. Love Hermione.’

  This perked him up no end, and after consuming tea and toast with surprising enthusiasm he did indeed potter round to Dr Frinton’s pad in Walton Street. He was disconcerted on arriving to find that the house appeared to be given over to something called the Vegan Brotherhood for International Peace and Harmony. In a scruffy ground-floor office a whey-faced man with long pigtails and an unkempt beard streaked with green told him that Dr Frinton lived in the attic. Bognor ascended the narrow staircase gingerly, for the carpet was threadbare and only loosely attached to terra firma. Some way up, further progress was barred by a door. On the left-hand side was a bell-push with the word ‘Frinton’ on it. Bognor pressed it and was rewarded by a metallic, disembodied, but recognizably Hermionian voice issuing from a grille above the bell-push.

  ‘Yes?’ was all she said.

  ‘It’s me,’ said Bognor to the grille. ‘Simon Bognor of the Board of Trade.’<
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  ‘Enter, Simon Bognor of the Board of Trade. And bring in the milk if there’s any there.’

  Bognor could see no milk. He pushed the door open and – climbed more narrow stairs, immaculately carpeted this time in chocolate haircord. Seconds later he emerged into an unexpectedly airy and almost enormous room in the middle of which Dr Frinton sat in the lotus position clad only in an emerald-green leotard with the legend ‘All Souls Yoga XV across the chest. There was a strong smell of joss stick and from the quadrophonic loudspeakers there issued the clipped, desiccated and crackling voice of T. S. Eliot reading ‘The Waste Land’.

  ‘Oh,’ said Bognor backing off. ‘Did I come at a bad time?’

  ‘Not in the least, darling,’ said Hermione, not moving anything except her lips, and these no more than absolutely necessary for the purpose of speech. ‘Just having a quick think.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Bognor. He wandered over to the plate glass windows which ran along the entire length of the room, giving onto an elegantly pot-planted terrace and affording inimitably Oxonian vistas of spires, dreaming.

  ‘The fridge is in the kitchen,’ she said. ‘You should be able to recognize the gin. It has an olive in it.’

  ‘Thanks, I’ll wait.’ Books did furnish the room. They did so somewhat ostentatiously, expensive coffee table numbers jostling battered volumes from the London Library, almost certainly long overdue for return. Bognor picked up a copy of Cobb’s Tour de France and tried to decipher the inscription which was effusive, not easily decipherable and evidently from the author himself. Bognor’s French was not up to it, so he discarded it and instead gazed out of the window across the Oxford landmarks to the great green dome of Apocrypha itself. Who would have thought, all those years ago, that he would return to this of all places, to investigate this of all crimes? No one that he could think of.

  ‘Right,’ called Hermione, lifting the needle from the turntable and cutting off the poet in full flight. ‘“Webster was much possessed by death/And saw the skull beneath the skin.” You too by the look of you, so it’s time for a gin.’