Masterstroke (The Simon Bognor Mysteries) Read online

  ‘Ian Edgware and Peter Crutwell,’ said Smith, eyes gleaming.

  ‘What do you mean, “missing”?’ asked Bognor. ‘I saw them yesterday in a red Range Rover in the High. We were talking about it just before you arrived.’

  The inspector let this blatant piece of delusion pass without comment. Instead he said, ‘I called the FO and they said Edgware was on leave. When I called home his wife said he was on a special Foreign Office course.’

  ‘Learning Urdu and unarmed combat, no doubt,’ said Bognor flippantly.

  ‘And,’ continued Smith, ‘when I got on to Ampleside I was told that Crutwell was away on a recce in the Western Highlands of Scotland. Something to do with the school commando camp next winter. Or the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award Scheme.’

  ‘The Duke of Edinburgh has a lot to answer for,’ said Bognor with feeling. ‘I suppose Crutwell is sleeping rough and living off the land miles from the nearest telephone. That would be in character.’

  ‘That’s what they told me.’

  ‘And when’s he due back?’

  ‘They don’t seem to know.’

  ‘Honestly,’ said Bognor. ‘It costs £4000 a year to send a boy to Ampleside and they haven’t the foggiest idea where their staff are. If I were an Ampleside parent I’d be hopping. Absolutely hopping!’

  ‘Oh, God.’ Hermione stifled a mock yawn. ‘This is getting us nowhere. In fact,’ and she shot both men meaningful glances, ‘I’ve been getting nowhere all day.’

  Bognor was about to expostulate, but Smith spoke first.

  ‘I’m not at all happy with the way our investigations are proceeding,’ he said. ‘We started off with what could perfectly well have been passed off as a heart attack, and now we’ve got two murders and a major political scandal. We’ve got a handful of suspects who are turning out to have some surprisingly dubious sides to their characters, but we’re no further on than when we started.’

  ‘Less,’ said Bognor, unnecessarily. ‘Minus two, plus nothing.’

  ‘So what do you suggest, super-sleuths?’ asked Hermione.

  ‘Wish I knew.’ The inspector looked at the end of his tether. He might not have been hit on the head, but he had been up all night and he was making a negative impression on the case. He was becoming depressed and he was exhausted.

  ‘Do we have anything more on the stuff in the bottle? The stuff that actually killed him.’

  Smith shook his head. ‘Not difficult to find if you know a chemist. Our suspects would have been able to get hold of it. No problem.’

  ‘What about finding traces of it anywhere else? Have we searched?’ Hermione looked almost as depressed as her guests.’

  ‘No sight nor sound,’ said Smith. ‘But I wouldn’t expect it. We’re dealing with educated murderers here, not your common or garden rapist or bank robber. This is intellectual stuff, and if my hunch is right, intellectuals make different sorts of mistakes to your ordinary villain.’

  ‘But we’re dealing with amateurs,’ said Bognor.

  ‘The inspector’s right,’ said Hermione. ‘Amateurs perhaps, but educated amateurs. Apocrypha men with all the arrogance which that implies. Arrogant amateurs, my darlings, will make mistakes, given time.

  ‘Aveline wasn’t an amateur,’ said Smith, with respect. ‘Proper pro, that one.’

  Bognor yawned. ‘I don’t know about you lot, but I’m just about ready for bed,’ he announced plaintively.

  Hermione Frinton gave him a poisonous glare which made it abundantly clear that she had been ready for bed about an hour ago.

  Bognor flushed. The inspector inspected the highly polished toes of his functional black shoes.

  ‘And so where, precisely,’ inquired Hermione in glacial tones, ‘do we go from here?’

  Bognor was on the point of saying ‘back to the Randolph’, but quailed and thought better of it. ‘Seems to me,’ he said, ‘that you two should go over all the Oxford evidence, such as it is. I’d better check in with Parkinson, who’s been trying to get hold of me all day. And then I shall submit Master Rook to a rigorous interrogation on the subject of his political theory paper, and allied matters.’

  A certain glumness greeted this less than sensational proposal.

  ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Anyone got any better ideas?’

  The silence implied that no one had. Smith said he had better be getting home. He would do his best to track down Edgware and Crutwell. Hermione would go over the events of the evening with Mitten once more. All three knew that they had little better to offer than a collective Micawber. At present, and until something turned up – which, they might say, they were hourly expecting – they had nothing to do but go through motions. In the case of anything turning up (of which they were far from confident) they would go about their duties with renewed enthusiasm. But for the moment they were grave, not to say miserable.

  Smith offered Bognor a lift, and he accepted. Lingering on the threshold as the inspector descended the stairs, Bognor kissed Dr Frinton chastely.

  ‘Are you sure you won’t stay?’ she asked, running a finger down his stubbly cheek.

  ‘I’d love to,’ he said very quietly. ‘But I’d be quite useless. I’m absolutely knackered. Simply couldn’t cope.’

  She shrugged, uncharacteristically subdued. ‘Story of my life,’ she said. ‘Luck of the Frintons.’

  ‘Anyway, I’m a happily married man. You shouldn’t make passes at married men.’

  ‘Don’t be absurd,’ she purred, a little humour coming back into her voice. ‘I only make passes at happily married men. Single men are deathly dull and I’m incorrigible. I shan’t give up, you know.’

  From down below, in the area of the house reserved for the Vegan Brotherhood for International Peace and Harmony, the voice of the chief-inspector chappie came echoing up, sepulchral yet sardonic. ‘Knock it off, you two,’ it said. ‘Remember I’m an old friend of Mrs Bognor. You’ve had enough trouble for one day, Bognor.’

  With heavy heart and head, Bognor had to acknowledge that this was true. Slowly, he turned and went down the stairs, virtue intact, joie de vivre diminished’, mission unfulfilled.

  7

  BOGNOR WAS ALLERGIC TO banks. They made his palms sweat. Even when he presented a cheque for a fiver he expected the cashier to refuse it. He regarded his bank manager, a perfectly amiable Rotarian and scratch golfer, with the same apprehension as his dentist. He didn’t understand money. He never had any. Yet it controlled his life and therefore, by logical extension, bankers were to be feared. They controlled his money supply which, in a materialist society, was the staff of life. Try as he might, he could not like anyone who wielded such authority over him, any more than he could bring himself, really, to like Parkinson.

  These thoughts passed through his mind as he sat, sweating and twitching, in the antiseptic grandeur of the reception area at Helston’s. It was a merchant bank. There was a difference, Bognor realized, between the merchant bank and the high street bank, but as far as he was concerned it was all money and therefore to be treated with caution and distrust. Helston’s was a grand old bank in the Rothschild mould. The original Helston had financed the Cabots’ trips to Newfoundland almost five hundred years ago, and Helston’s had been juggling money ever since. Helston’s, he had been told, had at least a dozen African and South American governments in their pockets. Not nice ones, either. Helston’s had never been strong on scruple. A few years ago they had sold their old Victorian premises in Leadenhall Street, very close to their deadly rivals, Baring’s, and moved into this glass and concrete monster in London Wall.

  Bognor, arriving on time for his hastily arranged meeting with Humphrey Rook, had been given a cup of coffee and told to wait, in the nicest possible way by the nicest possible twinset-and-pearls receptionist. Nicest possible coffee too, out of the nicest possible china. He sighed, and stopped pretending to read the pink pages of the Financial Times. The reproduction panelling of the reception area was lined with Helstons. T
he artists who had painted them were no more than passing competent, but they had captured the defining family characteristic which seemed to Bognor to be greed.

  It had not been a good morning. Bognor was not at his best, and he had had to catch an early train. Parkinson, he was bound to say, had been less than cordial.

  ‘Having a crack at starting World War III single-handed, I hear,’ had been his opening words. Bognor had not had the energy or even the inclination to defend himself from his superior’s attacks. Instead he sat sullenly waiting for Parkinson to finish and let him get on with his job. Parkinson, he reflected as he gazed down the line of portraits opposite him, had Helston eyes: small and mean. There was no generosity in those eyes, no love, no compassion. They were not life-enhancing eyes. Bognor’s eyes, though increasingly bloodshot and never especially wide open, had, he liked to think, a warmth about them. They were indicators of an open personality. Women responded to them. Parkinson’s eyes were like animated marbles. His mouth wasn’t up to much, either. He completely failed to understand the complexities and difficulties with which Bognor was constantly assailed. It was all very well warming a revolving civil service chair under that institutional portrait of the Queen. Naturally life looked pretty straightforward from that side of the desk, with membership of the Reform Club claimed on expenses. All Bognor got was luncheon vouchers. No doubt about it, he was simply not appreciated. It was men like him who made Britain great, while the bosses – people like Parkinson and the Helstons – got all the credit and all the loot.

  ‘Mr Rook will see you now, Mr Bognor.’ The receptionist spoke loudly and frostily, causing Bognor to suppose that she was saying the sentence for the second time.

  ‘Good,’ said Bognor, getting to his feet and dusting his trousers which had become flecked with biscuit crumbs.

  ‘Take the lift to the seventeenth, and Mr Rook’s secretary will meet you.’

  ‘Thanks.’ Bognor gave what was intended to be a haughty – smile. He wanted to convey the impression that he was here to negotiate the multi-million pound financing of some ritzy petro-chemical plant and was not accustomed to being kept waiting. Alas, it was all too obvious that he was perfectly used to being kept waiting. Never mind, murder was more interesting than petro-chemicals. If the girl behind the desk knew that he was interviewing Rook about murder surely she would have been impressed. No. Bognor pursed his lips glumly. Probably not.

  Alighting at the seventeenth he was greeted by another aloofly polite and immaculate secretary of the type that, on first and all subsequent impressions, confers status on the boss. It was quite clear from this girl’s elegance, grooming and demeanour that Rook was earning comfortably in excess of £25,000 a year, and had the key to whatever washroom or other part of the building was at the top of the executive tree at Helston’s. Hardly surprising. Apart from being such a smooth operator, Rook had married a Helston. At least Bognor thought he’d married a Helston. He’d lay long odds he had at least one steady mistress by now. Such was life.

  ‘Simon!’ exclaimed Rook unctuously, oiling out from behind a behemoth of a desk and advancing on his old Apocrypha friend with a disingenuous beam and an outstretched hand. ‘I am sorry to have kept you. Something cropped up at the last moment. In fact between you and me Mangolo was going bankrupt and we’ve just had to bail her out.’

  They shook hands and Rook returned to the safety of his revolving armchair.

  ‘Mangolo?’ said Bognor. ‘I knew the Umdaka once.’

  ‘George,’ said Rook. ‘Charming fellow. Not an enormous amount between the ears and given to extravagance. Hence his country’s bankruptcy. Never mind, what’s a few billion between friends? Coffee?’

  ‘Thanks. I’ve just had some.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Rook. ‘Good. Good. Well now …’ He placed the tips of his fingers together and smiled. ‘What can I do for you?’

  Behind him loomed St Paul’s Cathedral, miraculously close. Bognor pondered the proximity of God and Mammon and wondered if Rook was given to ostentatious little excursions to mid-week communions. He wouldn’t put it past him.

  ‘This murder business,’ said Bognor. ‘It’s about that.’

  Rook made a long, lugubrious face indicating concern and gravitas. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I imagined it was about that. Wretched business. Naturally anything I can do to help. Anything at all.’

  ‘There’s been another, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Another?’

  ‘Yes. Vole.’

  Rook seemed genuinely surprised. ‘Vole!’ he exclaimed. ‘You mean Seb Vole? Murdered? Whatever for? I mean, who in their right mind would want to do in a chap like Seb Vole?’

  ‘We’re almost certain it was Aveline,’ said Bognor, ‘but until we are absolutely certain I’d rather you didn’t say anything about all this. It is rather confidential, so I’d be obliged if you’d keep it under your hat.’

  ‘Rather,’ said Rook, eyes wide. ‘But why Aveline? You do mean Aveline. Macho Max? The Regius?’

  ‘Absolutely,’ said Bognor, lowering his voice, the greater to impress the banker. He was disagreeably aware that impressing Rook was important to him. Silly, but there it was.

  ‘But why?’

  Bognor’s voice dropped another few decibels so that it was only just the loud side of audible.

  ‘This really is extremely hush-hush,’ he whispered. ‘It turns out that Aveline was some sort of Blunt figure, only dangerous. Really significant. The difference between being able to tell the Russians about Poussin and being able to tell them about … well, you know Aveline.’

  ‘I thought I did,’ said Rook. He smoothed back his already smooth sparse hair. ‘But I never …’

  ‘No,’ conceded Bognor, ‘nor me. Anyway, to cut a long story short, poor old Vole rumbled him. He was researching a magnum opus on moles, fifth columnists, quislings and their ilk. When he confronted Aveline with this, Aveline had him shot.’

  ‘Good grief!’ Rook was impressed. ‘And where does Beckenham’s murder fit in with this? You mean to say Aveline had him killed, too?’

  ‘I’m afraid I can’t divulge that,’ said Bognor. ‘Our inquiries are still at a somewhat delicate stage.’

  ‘But good heavens, man, it’s obvious. If Aveline was going round bumping people off, then he obviously did in the Master.’

  Bognor smiled tolerantly. ‘I’m afraid detection’s a rather more complicated and sophisticated business than that,’ he said. ‘No use flying by the seat of your pants in our line of country.’ He was sure this was the sort of language Rook used when dealing with clients. ‘The fact is,’ he continued, ‘we have to be alive to the possibility that the two killings were entirely, I emphasize entirely, unconnected.’

  ‘Oh really!’ said Rook. ‘That’s simply not on. College rumbles along for hundreds of years with nothing more dramatic than the occasional rustication or some idiot hurting himself climbing in late at night, then, all of a sudden there’s a double murder and you say it’s pure coincidence?’

  ‘It may look peculiar, but life often does.’

  Rook looked utterly incredulous.

  ‘The fact is that we have reason to suppose that the Master may have been killed for his files.’

  ‘For his files?’

  ‘Or more accurately for the suppression of what was in those files.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Rook slowly. ‘Such as?’

  Bognor chose to ignore the question, and went on, ‘We recently discovered that the Master’s study had been broken into and our year’s files stolen.’

  ‘Nothing to do with me,’ said Rook evenly. ‘I was here all the time.’

  ‘How do you know what time I’m talking about?’

  ‘Because I had a frankly rather impertinent call from someone called Smith. A policeman.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Bognor, ‘of course. Nevertheless, I put it to you that there was material in those files which you would very much prefer to be suppressed. Particularly,’ and here he injected
a definite note of menace into his voice, ‘in view of your involvement with the vacancy at Sheen Central.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘I think you know very well what I’m talking about.’ Bognor felt he should be enjoying himself more. By rights he should have the upper hand. Rook should be squirming by now, putty in his hands, ready to confess to anything. Instead he seemed surprisingly chipper, and it was Bognor who was becoming unnerved.

  ‘Haven’t a clue, old man,’ said Rook. He sat back, waiting, evidently, for enlightenment.

  ‘A little matter of your final examination papers. Political theory, to be precise. The fact that you owed your first to the pure alpha you got in political theory, and that you would never have done it if you hadn’t snaffled a look at the draft paper in the Master’s study weeks before the exam took place.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Rook. He smiled indulgently. ‘That!’

  ‘Yes,’ said Bognor. ‘That.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘What do you mean “well”?’ Bognor was becoming distinctly panicky now. This was not at all how he had imagined the meeting. ‘That’s cheating,’ he blustered. ‘I can’t think the electors of Sheen Central would be any too happy to think they were being represented by a cheat and a liar.’

  ‘I don’t see why not,’ said Rook. He smiled. ‘No, seriously old man, tell me exactly what it is that you’re getting at. Are you implying that I killed Beckenham?’

  ‘Um,’ said Bognor. ‘Well, in a manner of speaking. That is to say, yes.’

  ‘But you don’t really believe it, do you?’

  ‘Shouldn’t I?’

  ‘I know you’re not exactly alpha material,’ said Rook, ‘but you’re not a complete fool.’

  Bognor said nothing.

  ‘I suppose Molly told you,’ continued Rook. ‘You knew her on the Globe when you were dealing with that St John Derby scandal, didn’t you? It’s true it’s not something I choose to broadcast to all and sundry, but it’s a long time ago and even if old Beckenham had chosen to blurt it out to the selection committee at Sheen, which I very much doubt, I can’t see it would do me any harm.’