Deadline (The Simon Bognor Mysteries) Read online

  ‘Nothing really, except that in a way Wharfedale’s right. Ordinary police methods aren’t going to apply in this. “Where were you at 11.15 on the night of …?” isn’t going to solve it. It’s got to be decided on motive and the more we scratch the more we find.’ He scrawled motive alongside the word ‘Suspects’ and began at the top.

  ‘Flogging filth to Russian intelligence’, he wrote by Port’s name, ‘blackmailed by Derby. Fed up, unable to pay, etc. Confrontation.’ He drank some more and watched the rich brown liquid disappearing. ‘Milborn Port has the temper,’ he said, ‘even if it wasn’t premeditated.’

  He went and ordered two more pints and a couple of ploughman’s lunches. ‘Bertie Harris,’ he said, when he was back by the fire, ‘is a cool customer, but he may be a shade too cool. He said an odd thing to me and I think he was lying. He said that his father wanted to sack Derby but that the Union protected him. And the Imperial Father says that’s not true. He might have misunderstood. Or the Union might be lying but I doubt it. Now why tell a lie like that?’

  The lunches arrived and he chewed on a pickled onion. By Bertie Harris’s name he wrote: ‘Intends selling out to rival group when father dies. Derby found out. Blackmail. Confrontation as for Port.’

  ‘Is that likely?’ asked Monica. ‘Wouldn’t he be too cool to let something like that happen?’

  ‘He’s arrogant and self-satisfied. It’s plausible enough.’

  The two ramblers got up and left, shaking themselves down with an air of rugged superiority. They both smirked at Simon and Monica as they passed. ‘Smug pair,’ he said. ‘Little do they know that we’ve been striding seriously for two hours.’

  ‘Not seriously by their standards,’ said Monica. ‘You’re getting obese.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ he said as usual. ‘I’m just big boned. Now what about Molly Mortimer?’

  ‘She sounds just like a murderess,’ said Monica with an edge to her voice, ‘but then I expect most women journalists do.’

  ‘Aha,’ said Bognor. ‘Jealous?’

  ‘Not in the least,’ said Monica reddening. ‘She sounds like a poseur that’s all.’

  ‘You said she sounded like a murderess.’

  ‘She does.’

  ‘I don’t think so. She’s the only one of them who I don’t think is blackmailable. She’s appalling but she admits it. She doesn’t care who knows what she gets up to. I’m going to cross her off the list.’

  ‘Now I really am jealous.’

  ‘Silly,’ he squeezed Monica’s thigh, which looked chubby in the trouser suit and thought of Molly Mortimer in the housecoat with the cleavage. She was very desirable. He did hope he wasn’t allowing his emotions to interfere with his judgement.

  ‘I’ll leave her on,’ he said, ‘just for you. But I can’t think of a motive.’

  Monica let out a little yelp of triumph and spluttered Cheddar over the table. ‘I’ve got a smashing one,’ she said. ‘She rumbled Derby very early on, right?’

  ‘Yes, when he tried to blackmail her lover, who was an M.P.’

  ‘And then they made it up and he took her out to lunch and they became all buddy-buddy.’

  ‘What a vile expression.’

  She was unabashed. ‘Your friend Molly Mortimer tried to blackmail him back. That’s what she did. And then they compromised and decided to make it a partnership. Finally she got too greedy. Probably asked for more than her 50 per cent. And now that she’s in love with the little Viscount she’s decided to go into partnership with him. She got him to kill the Morrison girl because she knew too much.’

  ‘That’s ridiculous.’ Bognor spread some butter on the crusty home-made bread and frowned. ‘I’m sure it wasn’t a woman who killed him. A woman wouldn’t have the strength. Besides she was the one who first put me on to the idea of Derby’s blackmail game.’

  ‘There you are then,’ said Monica, excitedly, ‘game, set and match. What better way to divert attention. Classic ploy. And as for not being strong enough to stab him, first I don’t believe it, and secondly she probably didn’t do her own dirty work. She got the wretched Wimbledon to do it and provided him with an alibi at the same time. She’s Lady Macbeth I tell you. And for that,’ she said, draining her second pint and wiping her lips with the back of her hand, ‘I’ll have another pint.’

  ‘You’ll make yourself fat,’ he said grudgingly. ‘It’s quite clever I grant you that, but it’s pretty unlikely.’

  ‘Balls,’ she said, ‘and if you won’t get me one I’ll get one myself.’

  Bognor shrugged and watched her march to the bar and order two pints and more pickled onions. An old mongrel staggered in from behind the bar and lay down in front of the fire. Bognor Was reminded inconsequentially of the adage about teaching an old dog new tricks. It wasn’t a bad theory.

  ‘What about Granny Gringe?’ he said. ‘He’s next on the list.’

  ‘I thought I’d solved it for you,’ she said, ‘but if you insist we’ll finish your bloody list. From what you said I should suggest he’s far too wet. If you don’t think Molly Mortimer had the strength and the guts I can’t for the life of me understand how you think Gringe could have done it. And why anyway?’

  ‘Blackmail, like the others?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Perhaps he was the one who got Anthea Morrison pregnant. He looks like a man who needs an affair and he had a lot in common with her. They were the only two in the office who were constantly ignored or patronized.’

  ‘And if he was having an affair? That’s hardly blackmailable these days?’

  ‘I bet it is in Bromley,’ said Bognor, ‘but even if it isn’t Lord Wharfedale wouldn’t approve. He’s a puritan zealot and apart from that sleeping with secretaries is considered bad form. They’d have had him out for that.’

  ‘But you don’t even know that he was sleeping with the secretary,’ protested Monica.

  ‘Any more than you know that Molly Mortimer formed a blackmailing alliance with St John Derby.’

  ‘No but …’

  ‘No buts. There’s one left Willy Wimbledon.’

  ‘We’ve done him. He’s in league with Miss Mortimer.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because he’s infatuated with her. I told you it’s Macbeth. The poor lad doesn’t know what he’s doing.’

  Bognor sucked his teeth again, and realized he’d got a piece of pickled onion stuck in them. ‘Not convinced,’ he said, trying to extricate the bit of onion. ‘I’m not sure about his sexual preferences, despite his protestations, and I think he knows very well what he’s doing. There are fewer flies on Viscount Wimbledon than most people imagine.’

  They both stared into their beer and were interrupted by the barmaid. ‘I’m afraid it’s closing time,’ she said, ‘I don’t want to rush you, but we could lose our licence, so if you wouldn’t mind drinking up.’

  They drank up. Bognor felt replete and drowsy. Outside he made use of the evil-smelling gentlemen’s lavatory and stood by the car waiting for Monica to emerge from the ladies’.

  ‘Well,’ she said, giving him a neat peck on the cheek, ‘have we solved it?’

  ‘No,’ said Bognor, ‘we’ve just made it worse.’ And they turned their backs on the declining sun and drove east towards the scene of the crimes.

  It was grey and darkening when they reached home. Bognor still felt sleepy and he was irritated. He had wanted to look at Derby’s old flat while it was still light. It was too bad. He supposed that he could do it in the morning on the way to the Seven-a-side tournament at Rosslyn Park’s ground in the South West of London but something made him want to get it over with. The keys were waiting on the doormat in a brown manila envelope. Inside there was a brief note from Sanders: ‘Be careful. See you Monday.’

  ‘I think I’ll go and peer round now,’ he said to Monica, ‘do you want to come? I’d be less conspicuous on my own.’ Monica said she’d stay and have a bath, reminded him that they were due at the Kirkbrides for drinks
at seven and made him promise to be back soon. It wouldn’t be difficult. Twenty minutes to Kensington. Twenty minutes to snoop and then twenty minutes to get back again. He promised to be back by six at the very latest.

  The Derby residence was the top floor of a large early Victorian mansion close to the South Kensington underground station three minutes walk it had been at St John Derby’s ambling gait though it was no more than a hundred yards away. The front door was open and gave the appearance, unusual in this area, of being permanently so. Bognor took in the expensive carpet, the bell marked ‘Caretaker’ and decided to use the stairs rather than the lift. He went up them slowly, because he was unfit, and carefully because he had been warned. At the top he paused briefly in front of the cream door and noticed that there was a peep hole cut in the middle of it. A reasonable enough precaution.

  He put the key in the lock and was about to turn it when he saw some rough chip marks round it that looked almost as if they might have been made by a chisel. That was peculiar. The door had been forced. It must, he supposed, have been the police, though why they should have bothered to do that when they already had a set of keys he couldn’t imagine. He mentally echoed Lord Wharfedale’s opinion of them as clodhopping oafs and let himself in.

  The hall was long and gloomy with three gilt wall brackets, each one holding two electric lights in the shape of candles. They were to Bognor’s eyes cheap and inelegant but that was not what struck him as odd. They were on.

  He stiffened momentarily, just inside the door. The police or the caretaker must have left them burning. It was careless. Criminal indeed with the current state of the nation and the Energy Minister demanding economies in the home. He listened, still suspicious, but he could hear nothing. For a moment he thought of turning them off but then grinned and marched decisively up the carpet to the door at the end. There were others leading off the hall but the one at the end looked the most important and so indeed it was.

  It was dark inside but he could clearly see the view from the huge picture window at the far end of the room. It gave out onto the square which was half lit and like the house itself sturdy, sensible and very British. There was also a large garden, shared, he guessed, with the other residents. He stood for a moment staring down into it and then walked back to the door and turned on the switch, which operated an enormous cut glass chandelier hanging from a massive lavatory-like chain in the centre of the ceiling. It was an impressive room by any standards, very impressive indeed by the standards which, he judged, were maintained by most Fleet Street journalists. He couldn’t imagine that chez Gringe in Bromley was in quite the same league and even Molly Mortimer’s, which by his admittedly frugal standards could almost be labelled sumptuous was mean by comparison. One long wall was taken up entirely with books, many of which looked like collectors’ items. He picked one out at random and saw that it was a first edition of Mungo Park’s diaries.

  The stereo, which Molly had mentioned with some awe, and the colour television were both built into highly polished mahogany cabinets; the fireplace was huge and marble and over it hung the Augustus John, which had an unfinished air about it, and was of a young man with curiously fleshy lips. The carpet was almost as deep as Lord Wharfedale’s and on it were two rugs which Bognor, who knew nothing about it, judged to be Persian.

  He gazed round admiring the deep sofas upholstered in leather and velvet, deploring an eighteenth-century Chinoiserie backgammon table and a bad oil painting of a naked boy running through what looked like a field of giant buttercups. It was difficult to know quite what he was searching for but the place certainly conveyed atmosphere. He could almost imagine the old boy lurching in with his cloak billowing out behind him. He was just visualizing this unlikely apparition when he suddenly felt a twinge of apprehension in the pit of his stomach. It unnerved him because it was the unromantic queasy feeling he usually experienced when he was terrified out of his wits. And he usually only felt it when he had good reason to be scared. A second later he knew that his feeling hadn’t let him down. Someone was padding softly down the hall. Away from him. The thickly piled carpet almost obliterated the sound but then he heard the door squeak as it was opened. He had been rooted to the large Persian rug for a full five seconds but as he heard the door he suddenly became galvanized and ran out in the direction of the noise. The door was slamming shut just as he arrived in the hall. He raced up the carpet and reached the far end in time to hear the unmistakeable scrape of a key being turned against him. He felt quickly in his jacket pocket and then groaned with dismay. Idiot, he said to himself, out loud. He had been so preoccupied with the lights in the hall that he had forgotten to take his key out of the door. It was his key which was turning now on the outside. Locking him in. He froze in an agony of recrimination and fury, not unmixed with dread. As he stood he could hear footsteps walking slowly away towards the stairs, then they faded as, presumably, they reached them and finally became silent.

  ‘Oh God’ he said very loudly, and stamped petulantly three times. He could kill himself. For a few moments he stayed there swearing uncontrollably. Then he laughed. It was difficult to see the funny side of his predicament but he felt sure there was one. Optimistically he peered through the keyhole and saw light. The key had been removed. He walked back down the hall and wondered what to do next. In the drawing room he sprawled on the most comfortable sofa and gazed blankly at the gilt coffee table in front of him. It had a Victorian glass paperweight on it, also the latest copies of Playgirl, The Connoisseur and the Wine Society’s Report. By them was a silver ash tray on a swivel above a little bucket which he recognized as being designed by Arne Jacobson. To the right of that was a copy of Wisden in its distinctive yellow cloth binding. He picked it up and saw that it was the volume for 1938. That was the year, he remembered, that Hutton made 364 in the Oval Test Match out of a total of 903. He prided himself on his knowledge of cricketing statistics. England had been playing the Australians and the next most prolific batsman had been Maurice Leyland with a hundred and sixty something. He couldn’t remember the exact score and after a moment’s guessing settled on 164 before opening the book to discover if he was right.

  As he opened it he swore again. ‘Those bloody fool police,’ he said. ‘That idiot Sanders.’

  The Wisden was a fat volume and the first fifty and the last fifty pages were intact. The intervening hundreds, however, had been interfered with. The entire middle section of the book had been cut away, leaving a rectangular hole the size of a cigarette packet. ‘St John Derby’s safe,’ he said softly. ‘The clever old bastard.’ He glanced up at the bookshelves and saw that the Wisdens were at the very top, well away from the casually prying eye. Immediately underneath was a small step ladder, put there, he guessed, by the mysterious interloper. He climbed it himself and took out the 1937 copy. It was unspoilt, virgin, not a page nor a line missing. He replaced it and tried 1936 which was similarly intact, and continued to 1929 with equal lack of success. 1928 however was in the same state as 1938. There was, needless to say, nothing in the hiding place. He tried 1948, 1958 and 1968 and it was the same. Each one had its hole in the middle, and not one had anything in that hole. Whoever had been there that afternoon had got the lot. At least that was what Bognor assumed. One of St John Derby’s victims had forced his way in and stolen all the incriminating evidence the diarist had possessed. He guessed there was enough space in the almanacks to contain the ruin of dozens of reputations. Hundreds if he’d used microfilm. Bognor put each book back in its place and returned to the sofa. His problem now was to escape.

  The picture window was his first thought but another glimpse of the view quickly dissuaded him. He was about four floors up, he had no head for heights and the drainpipes looked precarious. A swift shufti round the flat showed that there were no other doors. By the time he’d established that he was genuinely trapped it was after six. Monica would soon start to worry. He sat down on the sofa again and supposed he’d better tell her what had happened. Ther
e was a vintage black telephone half hidden behind a yellowing fern in the hall and to Bognor’s irrational surprise it worked. He dialled her number.

  ‘Thank God,’ she said. ‘What’s happened? Where are you?’

  Briefly and shamefacedly Bognor explained.

  ‘You’d better get the fire brigade,’ she said brightly. Now that she realized he was relatively safe and the victim only of his own carelessness she sounded peeved.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ he said. ‘I’m not supposed to be here.’

  ‘I know,’ she sighed, ‘but you are there and you might as well get used to the idea. What am I supposed to do anyway? Go to the Kirkbrides on my own? Tell them you’re indisposed? Isn’t there a caretaker or someone you can telephone?’

  Bognor stifled an expletive and blushed. It must be the beer, he decided. Or the shock. There were some phone books on the shelves underneath the table. ‘I’ll be with you soon,’ he said, ‘I’ll think of something.’

  It was simple. He found the address of the block in the phone book, telephoned and the caretaker downstairs answered.

  ‘I’m terribly sorry to trouble you,’ he said, ‘I’m the nephew of the late St John Derby and I’ve just been going through one or two of his things and now I find I’ve very foolishly locked myself in. I wonder if you could be good enough to come up and let me out?’

  The caretaker didn’t sound any too bright. ‘Nephew, eh? Locked in, are you? I’ll be with you in a jiffy. I’m just having my tea.’

  Bognor sauntered back to the drawing room and sat down to wait. The minutes ticked by. Five. Ten. The bloody man, he thought and conjured up a vision of a surly servant in baggy trousers and a vest, malingering over baked beans and a mug of tea. Monica was going to be livid. Another five minutes passed. From down below in the street he heard a siren from a police car or ambulance. He wondered if he should telephone again and began to pace restlessly round the room. Then to his relief he heard voices beyond the door, the scrabbling of keys and,’ in an instant, heavy footsteps pounded down the hall. Several of them, in pairs. And when they came into the drawing room he saw to his consternation that he had some explaining to do. It was the police, in large quantities.