Murder at Moose Jaw (The Simon Bognor Mysteries) Page 15

  ‘Don’t mind me,’ instructed Cernik. ‘Just ask whatever it is you want to ask. Go ahead. Shoot.’

  Bognor decided to begin with the most difficult question. He was not sure whether he had the advantage of the other man, but it was unusual for him to conduct interviews in gymnasia and he felt the circumstances demanded an unorthodox approach.

  ‘I’m told that your father-in-law was going to cut your wife out of his will, if you persisted in fighting him over company policy.’

  Up, down, up, down. Cernik never faltered. ‘Affirmative,’ he said.

  ‘Ah.’ Bognor waited but his subject was evidently not going to amplify the answer.

  ‘Did this worry you?’ he tried.

  Cernik was faltering, but through bodily rather than mental fatigue.

  ‘Negative,’ he said, executing one final ‘up,’ springing to his feet and grabbing a rope which had been hanging from a wall-bar. He began skipping. Bounce, bounce, bounce. Flick, flick, flick. Bognor watched, mesmerized for a second.

  ‘So you were prepared to go on fighting Sir Roderick even though it meant you’d no longer stand to inherit the major shareholding in Mammoncorp?’

  ‘Affirmative,’ said Cernik, changing rhythm, from a jump to a hop. He was sweating rivers. Perspiration trickled down his face and stained under his arms, but he was not in the least breathless. His mouth, fleshy, arguably sadistic, certainly sensual, remained resolutely shut. He breathed through his nose with military precision. Bognor was finding the whole business unnerving. He did not like a moving target. Perhaps it would be better to adopt an even more aggressive posture.

  ‘Did you kill Sir Roderick?’ he tried, unable to think of anything more bald and hostile.

  Ainsley Cernik flung down the rope and started on squats. Slowly down to full knees bend, slowly up to attention. Down and up. Down and up. He executed the manoeuvre three times before answering. Indeed he took so long over the response that Bognor was on the point of repeating himself when Cernik said, from a crouching position, ‘Negative.’

  Obviously, reasoned Bognor, he would have to ask a question which could not be answered by ‘yes’, ‘no’ or equivalents thereof. It would have to be carefully phrased. After discarding a number of promising queries he tried: ‘Do you have any thoughts about who might have done it, and if so can you let me know what they are?’ In terms of conventional interrogation techniques this would have been dismissed by solid professionals like Pete Smith as a ‘no-no’. Cernik, however, gave a sharp snort of laughter.

  ‘You and I are going to get along just fine,’ he said, breaking off from the squats and wiping his brow on the back of his arm. ‘Come along to the squash court. We can be a little more private there.’ There were only two others in the gym, both middle-aged, and they were energetically minding their own business. Nevertheless it was as well to be sure.

  The squash court had a gallery, and Bognor, assisted by Gary, ascended its stairs and leaned against the parapet watching Cernik thump the ball relentlessly against the back wall. He had comparatively little style but he was strong and he had a good eye.

  ‘OK,’ he said, picking up the ball from a back corner, ‘Prideaux might have done it. The RCMP are convinced Prideaux did it because Prideaux is a Quebecois extremist.’ He hit the ball up, and started returning his own shot again and again, punctuating his spiel with litttle grunts every time he laid gut to rubber. ‘That doesn’t convince me. My reading of Prideaux, for whom by the way, I have no respect whatsoever, is that he is a weak man with only a marginal dedication to his cause. OK, he is what they call a “sleeper”; well my reading is that he’ll stay asleep. Besides, my father-in-law was too interested in number one to be as anti-French as people now say.’ He hit a cross-court drive into the back corner again, and went to retrieve it. ‘Amos could have done it. I guess he knew Farquhar was going to leave him the ranch and the horses. But I don’t believe Amos would have killed for that. He was happy to hang in. He got on all right with the boss. Any road, he knew how ill he was. He was probably the only one of us who knew how sick the old buzzard really was.’ He killed the ball again, and glanced up at the gallery. ‘You reading me?’ he enquired. ‘Can you hear me? Am I making sense?’

  ‘Yes, thanks.’ The acoustics were not that good, especially when Cernik’s voice was competing against the squash ball being hacked against the wall. Cernik glanced at his watch. ‘I’m going to knock it off,’ he said, suddenly, ‘I’ll see you downstairs. We’ll go on talking while I change.’

  Outside the court Cernik tapped his racket against Bognor’s plaster. ‘Howdya do that?’ he asked.

  ‘Skiing,’ said Bognor.

  ‘Not what I heard.’

  ‘Oh, and what did you hear?’

  Cernik led the way through the gymnasium, where the population had increased quite dramatically. Hordes of middle-aged men were working out on bicycling machines, rowing machines, chest-expanding machines, stomach-contracting machines. Bognor had never seen so much perspiring flesh.

  ‘I heard otherwise,’ said Cernik grinning. He eyed Bognor’s paunch. ‘You like a membership here?’ he enquired.

  Bognor pulled a face. ‘I haven’t played squash in years.’

  ‘You should. Do you good. I’ll give you a complimentary membership before you leave. Get some of that flab off. Soon as you’re off those crutches.’

  Bognor raised his eyebrows. ‘Can you do that? I mean, it’s a club isn’t it? Don’t you have to be proposed and seconded? Can’t you be blackballed?’

  ‘It’s only called a club.’ Cernik gazed round at the members. ‘Gives it a touch of class. It’s a business. Very good business too.’

  They passed out of the gym and into a corridor, where they stopped in front of the lifts. Cernik pressed the call button. ‘And I own it,’ he said, grinning broadly.

  The lift arrived. It was dark brown, leather-lined and empty. A machine played conveyor-belt, Bach-inspired Muzak. Cernik pressed the topmost button, marked ‘P’. ‘Penthouse,’ he said.

  ‘Yours too?’

  ‘Bright guy. Right in one.’

  They ascended. For a moment Bognor was reminded of yesterday’s excitement. This, however, was different, if only because you couldn’t see out. Seeing was not only believing. It was being scared witless too.

  ‘Nothing to do with Mammon?’ he asked.

  ‘Nope.’ Cernik grinned again. ‘Which is why, frankly, being cut out of daddy-in-law’s inheritance would have been no very big deal. We can survive without it.’

  They came to a halt, the door slid open and they emerged into a palatial reception area. A fountain played in the centre amid a rockery of fronds and ferns. The walls were hung with quite good oils on Canadian autumnal themes. A blonde, heavily tanned, in a very low-cut orange blouse sat behind a kidney-shaped desk with a computer keyboard in front of her and an impressively space-age telephone device.

  ‘Hi, Mr Cernik,’ she simpered. ‘Colonel Crombie called. Otherwise no one.’

  ‘That schmuck,’ said Cernik as they passed through electrically operated doors into a sixty-foot drawing room with a plate-glass window overlooking the city. They were at least half a mile farther inland than Bognor’s hotel, but the view, if less watery, was just as spectacular. The CN Tower dominated right of centre.

  ‘Do you think Colonel Crombie might have done it?’

  ‘He would if he could. But he doesn’t have the guts or the intelligence. I suppose he was the one who told you about Eleanor and the inheritance.’

  ‘I don’t think I should say,’ said Bognor primly.

  ‘Please yourself. He’d have got it from that old freak Dolores. Can you use a drink? I would hazard a guess that you’re into alcohol. Nothing personal.’

  ‘Er,’ said Bognor, feeling put out, ‘I …’

  ‘Scotch? Gin?’ Cernik was already putting ice into a tall glass. Bognor settled for a gin and tonic. Gary said he didn’t touch alcohol while on duty and Cernik poured him
a Perrier and another for himself with half a dozen ice cubes and a slice of lime.

  ‘OK. This way, gentlemen,’ he said, and led the way through more electric doors to a bathroom area complete with jacuzzi, sauna and all the other ablutionary extras favoured by the very rich. ‘Dolores could have done it,’ he said, stripping off to reveal a well-muscled body, hairy as a spider monkey’s. ‘She’s tough enough but I have a hunch she was still a little in love with the old boy, despite all that happened. And he was looking after her very well. She had cause to be grateful.’ He picked up a familiar bottle from a marble slab and waved it under Bognor’s nose. ‘The famous murder weapon, eh?’ he laughed. ‘Monsieur’s personal bath oil. Only time he ever smelled like roses.’ He chuckled, and sloshed a couple of shakes into the bubbling jacuzzi.

  ‘What the hell?’ he said, easing into the water. ‘You have one of these things? Kinda sexy, eh?’ Bognor confessed that he had no jacuzzi.

  ‘Pity. Would you mind passing my drink?’

  Gary handed Cernik his Perrier water, and the little tycoon stood in his whirlpool drinking it, sweat still beading his brow. ‘I’ll bet one thing, though,’ he said, when he had satisfied the most immediate demands of his thirst, ‘I’ll bet Crombie never mentioned his own motive.’

  ‘His own motive?’ Bognor would have liked Crombie to be a serious suspect.

  ‘I thought not,’ said Cernik, bending down so that only his head was not covered in water. ‘He didn’t tell you about the wedding plans. “La la la-la.”’ He hummed the opening bars of the Mendelssohn march and stared at Bognor enquiringly.

  ‘No,’ said Bognor. ‘You mean him and Dolores. Him and La Bandanna.’

  ‘Right again. Bright kid.’

  ‘But what has that got to do with it?’ Bognor’s gin was so frozen it almost stuck to his lips. They felt numb. His brain was proceeding in a similar direction.

  Cernik heaved himself out of the pool and began to dry himself vigorously on a dark-chocolate towel of enormous proportions. ‘I won’t ask you gentlemen to step into the sauna. Fact is, I’ll cut out the sauna today.’ He wrapped the towel toga-like about him and motioned them to follow. This time they found themselves in a dressing room. More brown leather. Cernik went to a long wall cupboard and selected one from a choice of about a dozen apparently identical blazers, one from a choice of about thirty pairs of light-grey flannel slacks, and then bent over to choose one from the file of snazzy Gucci-style black sneakers. To this he added a white shirt and a navy and magenta striped tie in the style of the Guards Brigade, only vulgar with it.

  ‘So maybe Crombie and Dolores did do the wicked deed, eh?’ Cernik abandoned the towel briefly and stood naked on the antique reproduction scales where he adjusted a weight or two before stepping off with a smug expression. ‘One fifty-three,’ he said. ‘Haven’t been over one fifty-six since I came here in sixty-eight.’

  ‘I still don’t understand,’ pleaded Bognor, despairingly. ‘Why should Colonel Crombie and Dolores Crump kill Sir Roderick Farquhar because they wanted to get married?’

  ‘Negative dowry situation.’ Cernik buttoned up his shirt and got to work on the tie, knotting it in fluid flamboyant gestures. He managed to ooze a treacle of self-confidence even when he was dressing. Bognor was impressed yet repelled. He was always nervous in the presence of power, still more in the presence of what some people called ‘animal magnetism’. Cernik, he decided, was an animal magnet.

  ‘What is a negative dowry situation?’ he asked.

  Cernik pulled on the slacks and tucked his shirt inside, pulled in his stomach and looked momentarily disappointed.

  ‘A dowry situation,’ he spoke slowly and patiently, as if to a backward child, ‘means that on marriage the bride’s father gives the groom some goats or cattle or maybe money. You know, like to soften the blow. I even had some shekels when I took Eleanor off the old man’s hands. Old established custom. Right?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘So a negative dowry situation is what Dolores was into. Farquhar made her a hefty allowance, the house in Saratoga, the Manhattan apartment. You know the deal. The condition was that she didn’t hitch herself to anyone else, least of all Crombie.’

  ‘So Dolores and the colonel wanted to get married and Farquhar told them he’d turn her out of the houses and cut off her pension?’

  Cernik preened himself in front of the mirror, found a handkerchief from a chest of drawers, stuffed it in his breast pocket, arranged it carefully, sprayed himself with aftershave or ‘splash-on’, and combed his hair, thus concealing the incipient bald spot at the back which Bognor was delighted to notice. Then he said, ‘Right on, dummy. If the old flapper spliced with the colonel she stood to lose a million dollars in property—maybe more—plus an annuity of a hundred thousand a year, inflation-linked. That ain’t chicken feed. Especially where Dolores is concerned. No way she’s going to make a living out of her one traditional asset. That’s gone. Crombie is her last chance. If she doesn’t drag the colonel to the altar it’s little-old-lady’s-ville for La Bandanna. She used to be some looker, I tell you. And she could turn it on. But not anymore. Comes a time when all of us have to hang up our ballet shoes, eh?’ He gave one final pat to the top of his head. ‘Let’s go eat,’ he said. Bognor wondered how long it would be before he was into hair transplants.

  The dining room was panelled in mahogany and hung with Krieghoffs. The table was mahogany, the silver was silver, the crystal, crystal. The water was water, the lettuce, cucumber, diced carrot, cottage cheese, crispbread and other wondrously healthy, calorie-free, nutritious comestibles were equally undeceptive.

  They were, to Bognor’s horror, no more and no less than what they seemed. Monica, who had had an appointment at the hairdresser’s, had evidently been chatting to Eleanor Cernik for some time. The Bognors exchanged surreptitious glances of mutual commiseration. Eleanor Cernik, dressed though she was in the most expensive little two-piece Dior could conjure up, adorned too with rings and a brooch of emerald and diamond, was still surprisingly mousey. Perhaps a life sandwiched between two aggressive animal magnets like Cernik and Farquhar had given her no alternative, but Bognor had met many wives and mistresses of rich and famous men who were formidable harridans in their own right. Eleanor, however, was not in this class. She was not given to self-assertion.

  ‘Ainsley and I used to eat meat,’ she said, a little timidly, ‘but we gave it up the same time I stopped smoking. I used to smoke twenty a day, would you believe?’

  ‘I expect you feel a lot better for it,’ said Bognor jocosely.

  ‘I guess so,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘I know I’d feel a whole lot worse if I was still smoking.’

  Inwardly Bognor sighed. Outwardly he smiled politely.

  After a while Cernik, who had been making small talk to Monica, drew the conversation back under his control.

  ‘Mr Bognor wanted to know whether we killed your father,’ he called across the mahogany. ‘Crombie told him about him threatening to cut you out.’

  ‘Oh, that!’ said Eleanor, crunching carrot.

  Bognor waited for amplification, but none was forthcoming.

  ‘I wonder if we’ll ever know for certain.’ Cernik cracked a piece of crispbread and flashed a wide smile at Monica. ‘Looks to me like the perfect crime. Whatever which way you attack, you have to concede that there are a hundred and one motives. Even we had a reason to kill him.’ There was the beginning of a protest from his wife, but he talked through it. ‘Now that is not the same as saying that we did it, but Eleanor and I can prove nothing. We had some of that damn bath oil. Still have, as I showed you. Like the others we have the money and the connections to arrange the chemical substitution necessary. That’s not a problem. We all of us had enough access to the old man’s million and one bathrooms around the place, to slip the deadly bottle into position. So I simply do not see how in hell you are going to hang this on anyone, without the murderer cracking up.’

  ‘Which is
perfectly possible.’ Bognor did not believe this, on present form, but he felt he should say it.

  Cernik demurred. ‘You’re dealing with some tough numbers here, Mr Bognor. I don’t see any of them cracking. But I sure as hell wish they would. The uncertainty is doing no good to anyone, least of all the Mammon Corporation.’

  ‘It all seems so … oh, so unnecessary.’ Eleanor spoke with a vehemence Bognor had not been expecting as she pushed her half-finished cheese and vegetables to one side. ‘If only they could have waited.’

  ‘I’m sorry …’ Bognor helped down some cottage cheese with a gulp of water, and waited for amplification.

  ‘He’d have been dead in two weeks. A month at most. There was no need. No need at all.’

  Bognor turned to their host, eyebrow cocked in a mute question mark.

  Cernik nodded. ‘Affirmative,’ he agreed, laconically. ‘We talked with the specialists in London. They’d tried everything. There was nothing left, so they stitched him up and sent him home to die. He was in a terminal cancer situation.’

  ‘Did he know?’

  ‘Oh, yeah.’ Cernik shoved the last of his lettuce into his mouth, chewed reflectively and put down his knife and fork. ‘Oh, yeah,’ he repeated. ‘He knew.’

  13

  THEY DID NOT ENJOY flying. The plane was too big. There were too many passengers. For some reason they were diverted through Montreal’s cavernous white elephant of an airport at Mirabelle, which put an extra hour on the flight. There was a blizzard and Bognor was convinced that it was unsafe to attempt take-off. The film was an adaptation of a Neil Simon play which Bognor had seen already. He would have preferred The Mousetrap. He had abandoned his crutches, but his leg was still stiff and emplastered. When he stuck it into the aisle people kept tripping over it on the way to the loo until a stewardess had to come and complain. The food was almost as bad as their lunch and though there was alleged to be meat in the main course he was certain it was spun protein. He bought a headset to listen to music but the rubber bits that fitted into his ears fell off and the plastic prongs gave him earache. He bought a Dick Francis at the airport and discovered after they were airborne that he had read it already. He tried sleep but it eluded him. By his side Monica, who always travelled with special flying slippers and a face mask, lay back, out cold, mouth open, snoring lightly. Bognor fumed.