Unbecoming Habits (The Simon Bognor Mysteries Book 1) Page 16

  ‘Thank you very much,’ he wrote. ‘See you on the 17th.’ He reversed the card and addressed it to ‘Rt. Hon. the Earl of Camberley, All Souls College, Oxford’.

  There was no point in worrying about it. He must exercise patience. From now on he was in for two weeks of tedium which should come to a satisfactory climax. If not he would just have to start all over again. Or more likely Parkinson would give the job to someone else and he would spend the next forty years behind a desk. He wouldn’t mind that much.

  At one minute past nine he rang the office. As he’d feared, there had been some official anxiety. The Minister wanted a solution. Camberley’s visit had upset people. Bognor listened to the complaints and then said he’d try to be in later, in the afternoon. He had someone to see in the morning. Parkinson sounded very unimpressed.

  At twenty past he rang a number in Carshalton.

  ‘Doctor’s surgery.’

  ‘Could I speak to Mr. Jenkins?’

  ‘Mr. Jenkins?’ The voice paused. ‘This is Dr. Jenkins’ number.’

  ‘I know. I want to speak to his brother. He’s staying there. It is rather urgent.’

  ‘Hold on.’ The voice sounded worried and off-putting. ‘I think there must be some mistake. I’ll ask Dr. Jenkins.’ Bognor was prepared for this. They’d almost certainly been inundated with unsuitable calls from the national press. He waited, and after a couple of minutes another voice came on the line.

  ‘David Jenkins here,’ it said. ‘Can I help you?’

  ‘I’d like to talk to your brother, if I might, please, sir.’ There was another silence. Bognor thought for a moment that he’d rung off. ‘Who is that speaking?’

  ‘You won’t know me. My name’s Bognor. Board of Trade.’

  ‘Board of Trade? Are you from one of the papers? You’re not the Daily Express again, are you?’

  ‘No, sir, I assure you. I’m from the Board of Trade special investigations department and I’m making some routine inquiries about certain incidents at Beaubridge Friary.’ He sometimes feared being obsequious suited him.

  ‘Look, he’s not talking to anyone. He’s still very upset and under sedation. I’m afraid that speaking purely professionally I couldn’t allow anyone to see him. Goodbye.’

  Bognor thought for a moment, despondently, and then grimaced. ‘Action, Bognor,’ he said out loud, and dialled the nearest car-hire firm.

  Carshalton took an hour from Regent’s Park. It was a leafy prosperous middle-class district in what was described as Surrey but was really just part of South London. The doctor’s house and surgery was a large semi set back from the road. There were lilacs, roses and two tricycles in the front garden and it was called The Willows. Bognor could see no willows.

  He went in and rang the bell on the reception counter. A woman in her early twenties, wearing a blue overall, came out through a door marked private. He guessed it was the one who had answered the phone.

  ‘Yes?’ she said clinically. ‘Do you have an appointment?’

  ‘Yes. With Mr. Jenkins. Not Dr. Jenkins.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she bristled. ‘There’s no one of that name here.’

  Bognor put his hand in his pocket and pulled out a card which he handed to the receptionist. ‘Perhaps that will convince you that I am not from any of the papers.’ She looked at it, puzzled, then straightened.

  ‘You’re the one who rang earlier,’ she said. ‘Dr. Jenkins said you weren’t to be let in.’

  ‘He might let me in if you showed him the card,’ said Bognor. It worked. She turned and walked out with it, and a couple of minutes later two men arrived. The doctor and his brother, Bede, otherwise known as Michael Jenkins. Bognor was exasperated. There was no problem with Bede. He was obviously willing to talk and he recognised him. Almost certainly Xavier or one of the more astute friars had given him a clear idea of the sort of questions he was asking. The brother, however, was a bore. He clucked around like a mother hen, demanding to be present at any inquisition, talking about solicitors and sedatives and generally working himself up into a lather. Eventually he agreed to go, provided Bede was questioned on the premises. There was no problem in that, so the two of them were ushered into the drawing room, where they sat in the worn armchairs on either side of the redbrick fireplace festooned with horse brasses.

  ‘I’m sorry about your expulsion,’ said Bognor. The young man, he couldn’t have been more than thirty, looked strained and tired.

  ‘No need,’ he said. ‘It had to happen sooner or later. As you’ve seen for yourself, they’re not exactly committed at Beaubridge. Not in any very meaningful sense. Not to the extent of actually getting out and doing anything.’

  ‘I suppose not. What are you going to do?’

  ‘Apply for a place at a theological college, and then try for an overseas posting. I want to do something relevant.’

  ‘Yes, well, if you want to do something relevant now, perhaps you’d answer a few questions.’ This man didn’t look to Bognor like a double murderer, and the ambition to be ordained and become a missionary seemed quite genuine. If he was contemplating a quick flight to Bulgaria or Poland he gave absolutely no sign of it.

  Brother Bede nodded. ‘Sure. If it’ll help.’

  ‘It may. You know that I’ve been investigating Brother Luke’s death?’

  ‘Yes. I thought poor Thomas did it?’

  ‘I’m not sure about that. Maybe. Maybe not. If he didn’t, then there’s no reason for his suicide.’

  ‘Except that he was mental.’

  ‘Perhaps. Then there’s another thing. We have some suspicions about honey and the Expo-Brit.’

  ‘What sort of suspicions?’

  ‘Suspicions. It’s complicated. The point is that there is only one person who could have been involved in the honey business, and killed Luke, and killed Thomas. And that,’ he slowed his delivery for maximum effect, ‘is you.’

  ‘That’s just not true.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Well, I don’t understand about the honey, and I agree my alibi for Luke is no better than anyone else’s. But I couldn’t have killed Thomas.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I was in the kitchen all the time.’

  ‘You couldn’t prove it.’

  ‘There was someone else there all the time.’

  ‘I thought the helpers spent most of the time serving in the dining room? You must have been alone a lot of the time.’

  ‘Not me. No. The only one who was alone at all was Paul.’

  ‘Paul?’

  ‘He was late. Said he’d been having a kip ’cos he felt a bit poorly and he’d overslept.’

  ‘Nobody said anything about that before.’

  ‘Didn’t seem important. We were asked to give our own alibis, not other people’s.’

  ‘How late was Paul?’

  ‘Not long. Five minutes at the outside.’

  ‘I see.’ He got out a pencil and notebook and wrote Paul in large block capitals with a couple of question marks alongside it. He felt unhappy. ‘You’re certain you could produce witnesses who would say that you spent every second of that lunch in the kitchen?’

  ‘Certain.’

  ‘I’ll have it checked, if you’d let me have the names.’ He felt the clipped attempt at professional questioning had let him down.

  Brother Bede gave him the names of some non-suspect friars, and Bognor made a further note. Pinney could have a word with them on his next visit.

  ‘You’re very young to have been at the Friary for twelve years.’

  ‘Thirteen,’ he said. He did look young in his jeans and sandals and aertex shirt with his hair worn so close-cropped. ‘I just joined young, that’s all. I went on a week-end retreat and I felt a terrific sense of vocation and I joined soon after I took “O”-level.’

  ‘And how long have you been so politically aware?’

  ‘Always.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘I’ve always thought the Churc
h was a force for good. I mean, I don’t see the point of just worrying about life after death.’

  ‘What organisations do you belong to?’

  ‘You sound like McCarthy. I was a Communist member, but I left after Czechoslovakia. Amnesty International. C.N.D. Nothing else. I’m not really very keen on belonging and most of the radical groups are too atheist.’

  ‘You’re not very pro-Russian?’

  ‘I regard myself as a Marxist, so it’s hardly likely, is it?’

  Bognor shrugged. ‘I must go,’ he said. ‘Thanks for your help. Do you have a passport?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Good. I’d like you to let me know if you’re changing address at any time in the near future. And you might as well know that you’re under surveillance.’

  Surveillance was a good word. He decided to use it more often; and the passport admonition which had been quite spontaneous also had a pleasant air of melodrama.

  Bognor left and drove back to the office. South London was horrible, he thought, as they struggled back through the traffic and along the drab suburban roads. You never knew where you were because it all looked exactly the same: chain stores and lollipop men at school crossings. Collingdale had a neglected wife somewhere south of the Thames. He supposed he ought to call, but it would seem as hypocritical as he felt. His notes spread out on his knees, he tried yet again to make some sense of the case.

  It had to be one of those eight men. At least the spying had to be one of the eight. As no man went on the Expo-Brits two years running, either it had to involve more than one spy or the ‘spy’ got the Expo-Brit friar to act as an unwitting courier. The secret plans could be hidden either in the honey or on the Friar.

  Logically Luke’s murder should have been done by one of the eight as well, but it could have been any of them. The time had been well chosen. The only man with an absolute alibi was Paul. It was curious that Paul’s apparently foolproof alibi for the Luke murder should be balanced by his distinctly shaky one for Thomas’s killing. The time of Thomas’s murder had been less well chosen. Every single person in lunch had a cast-iron alibi. The only possible killers were those who had been in the kitchen, and now Bede had suggested that of those the only real possibility was Paul. Yet if Bede were the culprit himself it was predictable that he should try to implicate others.

  If it wasn’t Bede you had to accept a conspiracy theory. The most obvious conspiracy was the poker school. Vivian was undoubtedly a potential murderer. There was no reason why he shouldn’t have killed Luke. Moreover, both John and Simon were intelligent and complex enough to organise this sort of scheme and to export the secrets. But none of them could have murdered Thomas. It seemed more and more likely that Paul had done that. And yet the idea was ludicrous. There was no motive. He had been at the Friary only briefly. He could not conceivably have smuggled secrets or killed Luke. Bognor sighed.

  The ensuing days dragged. For Bognor there was other work to be done. Positive vetting had to be supervised. A minor irregularity in the Ministry of Pensions had to be sorted out. He had an embarrassing session with an influential M.P. (not Basil Strudwick) whose mistress was considered a security risk and another with an Air Vice-Marshal whose daughter had vanished in curious circumstances. Parkinson had remained unimpressed with his efforts but had agreed to give him until Expo-Brit. If nothing had happened by then he had said he would break him. Meanwhile his extramural activities regained their former vigour. He ate and drank slightly too well and saw a lot of Monica, went to the theatre and spent a week-end in Suffolk with friends. His head stopped hurting and the bruising subsided. Life, in short, resumed its usual pattern. Only one thing marred it and that was the dim realisation that he had failed, even if only temporarily, to solve the agricultural secrets case. Every time the phone rang he expected to hear the alcoholic cough of Sir Erris or the flat midland accents of Inspector Pinney or even the nasal prissiness of Father Anselm. He dreamt about Compline and the stations of the cross; woke once to find himself singing ‘All things bright and beautiful’ at two in the morning; and less ephemerally was plagued by a series of memoranda from increasingly superior superiors.

  The days dragged at Beaubridge too. For Brother Barnabas the coming of autumn was always depressing. His year and his work revolved around the guests who came to visit them and after the last big retreat of the summer the numbers inevitably slackened. He put in a request to Father Anselm for a new bed in Number 17 and he spent many hours scrubbing and washing and generally titivating. There was only Christmas to look forward to now when for the only time in the winter months guests arrived in quantities. Brother Barnabas was not a very contemplative person, certainly no original thinker, and it was one reason for his having chosen the Society of the Sacred Brotherhood. He had understood that it was designed for those who were not as clever as the rest and he had assumed that the friars were more jovial than they had actually turned out to be. In the end he had discovered that the guests were a great deal more cheerful than the friars. They laughed at his jokes. In a way he was a little like a seaside landlady, Brother Barnabas: homespun and simple.

  To Bognor, doodling away incessantly with his notebook in his basement office off Whitehall, Brother Barnabas was one of the more pleasant and uncomplicated memories. But he was still on the list of suspects.

  The nightly poker school continued as before. For a few nights there had been a slightly heightened sense of guilt; a tendency to jump at the slightest noise; and there had been near pandemonium on the Wednesday after Bognor had left. The lights had fused just as Father John was about to scoop the matchbox with a royal flush. All four players seemed to be drinking more heavily. Indeed Father John, who was responsible for the provision of the alcohol, began to have serious doubts about the quantities he’d made and even talked of rationing.

  He too seemed depressed as the nights drew in and the weather grew misty and damp. Whereas Barnabas missed his guests, John missed his bees. They slept in winter, and while Father John could busy himself in the preparation and refinement of honey and mead, it was no substitute for the daily contact with the living bees themselves. There were times when he believed himself to be the only true religious in the place. He would stand of an evening in his habit and sandals, the fine mesh mask over his face, and anyone who happened to be passing would hear a low humming coming from his mouth. Father John, though he would never have admitted it, believed that he could talk to his bees. But in winter there was no point, and he missed them. He busied himself by writing a paper for the American Bee Journal called ‘Some aspects of the social behaviour of the English honey bee’, but his heart was not in it and he became progressively worse-tempered as the days passed. One day he actually struck Xavier with his stick in response to some personal witticism and from then on many of the brothers began to treat him with circumspection.

  Bognor, in his notebook, remarked on his undoubted intelligence, his paradoxically waspish temperament, but made grave reservations about his physical strength. A spy maybe, but he was virtually certain that Father John was no murderer.

  Brother Vivian, who was morose at the best of times, seemed unchanged and unchanging. He spent more and more time under the bonnet of the van, and on one occasion actually admitted defeat and took it into the garage at Great Ogridge. The garage fitted a new rocker gasket and some sparking plugs, but failed to improve the van’s performance or Brother Vivian’s temper.

  Bognor, trying in vain, now that the wounds had faded, to find the spot where Brother Vivian hit him, marked him down as a man physically and temperamentally equipped to kill. But when he moved on to the questions of motive and opportunity he was less convinced.

  Father Simon, the fourth member of the Community’s drinking and gambling syndicate, was by no means as downcast as the others. He was greatly looking forward to his first visit to Bucharest and he had a great deal of work to do. The labels which Father Anselm had so curiously rejected had arrived as promised on Monday morning, and h
e and Vivian had gone in the van to collect them from the Abbey Bookshop in Woodstock. Father Anselm passed them as fit. Father Simon labelled furiously, making himself quite dry and parched in the process. Then he began, with a little help from his friends, to pack the jars neatly into sturdy cardboard boxes suitable for transporting to Rumania. He was a little unhappy about taking honey to Rumania. It smacked of coals to Newcastle, but he had little time to think of that. He spent much time on the telephone to Mr. Rosenbaum, an employee of Lord Wharfedale’s who worked in the publicity department. Mr. Rosenbaum wanted photographs of the entire Community with their bees. Father Simon tried desperately to arrange it. Other employees of Lord Wharfedale telephoned as well, telling him about tickets, cancelling tickets, reserving suites in hotels, cancelling them, and generally making life difficult. Father Simon, who if the truth be known was something of a masochist, enjoyed every minute of it.

  Bognor didn’t mark him down as a masochist but gave him an alpha beta for intelligence and therefore conceivably for motive. He could only give him gamma for physical ability and gamma minus for the emotional ability to commit murder. Father Simon, he reasoned, could no more have killed a man than set a mouse-trap.

  Brother Aldhelm continued to plough a lonely furrow. He was not a gregarious person and he had a strong streak of paranoia. His relations with the rest of the Community were cordial but distant and although few of the friars would have dared laugh at him to his face he suspected that they did it behind his back. His affair with Lena Strudwick moved indoors on account of the weather and the passion seemed to dim slightly with the seasons. However, he still made his regular appointment by the staddlestone and spent most of his afternoons lasciviously on a large brass bed at the Old Manor, Melbury.

  Bognor, who had been so enthusiastic in his pursuit of the red ‘E’-Type, still marked down the affair as significant, albeit reluctantly. Mrs. Strudwick would have done anything, particularly for sex and money. But if she were the contact it was difficult to see why it was necessary for Gaymer Burton to put in an appearance. Besides which, Brother Aldhelm was not over-blessed with brain.