Masterstroke (The Simon Bognor Mysteries) Read online

  ‘Either he knows or he doesn’t know,’ said Crutwell to Edgware. ‘I’m damned if I see why we should make his job any easier, let alone incriminate ourselves unnecessarily.’

  Edgware paid no immediate attention. ‘Presumably you’ve read the files?’

  ‘What makes you say that?’

  ‘Well.’ Edgware shrugged. ‘It’s ridiculous to suggest otherwise.’

  ‘Suppose I were to tell you I hadn’t got the files?’

  ‘We wouldn’t believe you.’

  ‘I haven’t got the files.’

  ‘I don’t believe you,’ said Edgware angrily. ‘Stop playing around, please. You’re not making this easy.’

  ‘I don’t want to make it easy,’ snapped Bognor. ‘You didn’t think about that when you hit me at the Randolph. You could have bloody killed me.’

  ‘It was Peter,’ said Edgware. ‘He panicked.’

  ‘I’m having a Scotch,’ said Crutwell suddenly. ‘Anybody else?’

  Edgware asked for another gin, Bognor another pint.

  ‘Leaving aside the whereabouts of the files,’ said Bognor, as Crutwell disappeared towards the bar, ‘you went to my room because you assumed I’d got them.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Edgware. ‘We had a long talk about it. In the end it did at least seem worth a try. But I assume the police had them.’

  ‘No. As it happens, Vole had them.’

  ‘Vole?’

  ‘Presumably he took them to further his researches. We’ll never know. He made an awful mess of the Master’s study. I should have thought that would have told you that it wasn’t me. We would have been slightly more professional. You too, come to that. Don’t they teach breaking and entering at the FO?’

  Edgware smiled stiffly. ‘Yes, but not in the public schools. Peter’s admirable in most respects, but he’ll never make a burglar.’

  ‘Hmmm. Nor a headmaster, now.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Bognor raised his eyebrows. As he did, Crutwell emerged from the door of the pub carrying his round of drinks. He looked, in his gaudy cricket outfit, like the twelfth man carrying refreshment out to the players. Perhaps, thought Bognor, that’s exactly what he’s doing. Perhaps life is just a game of cricket. In which case both Edgware and Crutwell had thrown away their wickets at a crucial stage in their innings, just when they looked set for a century apiece. Silly. Careless.

  Bognor took a large mouthful, suppressed a belch and decided to come briskly to the point.

  ‘The files are in Moscow,’ he said, ‘with Aveline. Which means that your guilty secret can hardly be said to be safe. Now it’s perfectly plain that both of you are in grave trouble, but I’m not sure that you realize how grave. It’s not just a matter of your careers, your marriages, your reputations and all that. It’s a matter of murder.’ He paused to see if he was having the hoped-for effect. On balance, to judge from their chastened expressions, he was. ‘Would it make it easier for you if I said that although I have not yet, and I emphasize “yet”, had a chance to examine the files myself, I have been given an account of the business of you two and the College choir school? I don’t want to indulge in any gratuitous muck-raking. I just need to confirm that, broadly speaking, it’s true.’

  He looked from one to the other. Neither spoke. Both nodded.

  ‘OK,’ he said. ‘Ian was awaiting preferment at the FO, and Peter was hoping to get the headmastership of Fraffleigh. And you thought Beckenham would ruin your chances. Correct?’

  ‘No,’ said Edgware with vehemence, ‘it’s very much not it. The point is that as long as Beckenham was around we knew he wouldn’t shop us. It was a long time ago, it was deeply shocking and all that, but it’s over, it’s in the past. Beckenham accepted that. If he’d died naturally, with some sort of warning, he would presumably have destroyed any records that incriminated us. I would think he’d destroy the files when he finished being Master. But that’s just speculation. Peter and I had a shrewd idea that the files contained trouble as far as we were concerned, and we were desperately worried in case they fell into the wrong hands.’

  ‘I see.’ Bognor was suddenly depressed. Another failure loomed.

  ‘You admit,’ he said, ‘that you came back to Oxford, broke into the Master’s lodgings, and then into my room at the Randolph where you attacked me?’

  ‘I really am sorry about that, old man,’ said Crutwell. ‘Lost my nerve.’

  Bognor grimaced ruefully. ‘But you deny having killed the Master?’

  ‘I grant you,.’ said Edgware, ‘that from a circumstantial point of view we may have to be included on your list of suspects. But as I’ve tried to point out, we have no motive. Lord Beckenham always played straight with us. He’d given us references before and they’d always been glowing. There was no reason to think that they wouldn’t go on being glowing.’

  ‘Even,’ said Bognor, ‘when the jobs were as significant as the ones you’re up for? I mean, he may have been prepared to countenance the idea of having you in positions of middling power and influence, but to connive at someone with that sort of skeleton in their past getting the headmastership of Fraffleigh … well, surely he’d have drawn the line somewhere? I mean …’ He gulped beer. Words failed him. The sun was going down, in more ways than one.

  ‘I think,’ said Crutwell, seeming to regain a modicum of self-confidence, ‘that the Master had more, how shall I put it, vision … yes, I think that’s the word, more vision than you credit him with. If he believed, as I think he did, that I was suitable to be headmaster of one of our great English public schools, then I don’t think he’d dredge up some peccadillo from the past in order to prevent it. And the same applies to Ian. The Master clearly thought Ian should go to the very top, and that the country would frankly be damned lucky to be represented by a man of Ian’s outstanding intellect and character. Why should he suddenly throw all that into jeopardy? It simply doesn’t make sense. Beckenham was a great man in his way, and like a lot of great men he saw beyond detail. The little things of life didn’t mean anything. He was interested in big things, Simon. He had big ideas, big hopes. He wanted to transform the world, and we were to be his instruments. He was like Milner. He nurtured his protégés because he believed in them. He believed in us. He believed in our contribution to the future. We made a mistake, a bad mistake, but he forgave us and he set it aside, because he was a big man.’

  Bognor decided he was going mad. There was no alternative. ‘Forgive me,’ he said, incredulously, ‘but did you say “peccadillo”?’

  ‘We were very young, Simon.’ Edgware at least had the diplomat’s concern to appear reasonable at all times. ‘Of course what we did was reprehensible, but what Peter is really saying is that the Master made his own judgements about people, and once he’d made them he stuck with them. He was very consistent and very loyal, and we repaid that loyalty and that consistency.’

  Bognor could take no more. ‘I used to think,’ he said, voice trembling but still just controlled, ‘that I quite liked old Beckenham. I knew he didn’t rate me very highly, but he didn’t seem to dislike me actively and he was always polite. I knew he thought Rook and you two were the great white hopes of our generation, and because I was absurdly naive I suppose I went along with that. Now it turns out that Rook was a liar and a cheat and that you two were venal pederasts of the most revolting sort imaginable. And that he knew all along. You were all as bad as each other.’ He got to his feet. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘So you didn’t kill him. Frankly I begin to wish you had. But just because I can’t pin that on you, don’t think you’re going to get away with this. I’m not totally without influence and I promise you that I shall do everything – everything – in my power to ensure that the pair of you languish in the obscurity you so richly deserve.’

  Still quivering with rage and lost illusion, he lunged off into the twilight. Behind him he left the housemaster and the diplomat contemplating each other in amazement that such innocence and altruism coul
d still stalk the land, even though it was confined to the lower regions of the Board of Trade.

  8

  IT WAS A RELIEF to be home with Monica. Gadding about was all very well for a time and in its way, but Bognor was essentially a lethargic animal dedicated to creature comforts. His most besetting sin was sloth, and what he really liked was warmth, security, predictability and a quiet life. There were moments when he wished he were a gayer (in the true sense) blade, but he knew that he was not cut out for it. True, he lusted in a wistful way after leggy ladies like Dr Frinton, but when it came to the point he tended to find them more alarming than alluring and he would be disconcerted to wake up with a strange face beside him every morning. Monica was putting on weight. The line of her jaw was not as firm as it once was, but then no one could accuse him of being an oil painting. He had never been more than a watercolour, even in his prime, and he was now firmly in the lithograph class – in an unlimited edition, too. Still, for all his faults he was basically nice in the same sort of way that Rook, Crutwell and Edgware were deep down nasty. Monica was nice, too. Both had a considerable capacity for naughtiness but not, he liked to think, for evil. They were capable of infinite sorts of over-indulgence, but never of malice. They were well suited to each other and fitted each other like old gloves, though it did them good to get away from each other occasionally, if only because the reunions were so agreeable.

  It was with thoughts such as these racketing around his mind that he let himself into the flat after the upsetting trip to Ampleside. Monica was in bed reading Phineas Redux.

  ‘Hello, you,’ she said. ‘Have you eaten?’

  ‘Had a pork pie on the train,’ he said. He had eaten two Mars bars, too, but thought it better not to admit to them.

  They kissed. ‘Missed you,’ he said.

  ‘Me too.’

  They kissed again.

  ‘You don’t look too hot,’ she said, pushing him away to get a sense of perspective on him.

  ‘I’m not too hot,’ he said, ‘as a matter of fact. Tell you what, why don’t I make us both a mug of chocolate and tell you all about it?’

  ‘With marshmallow.’

  ‘All right.’

  In the end it was she, taking pity on his fragile and battered appearance, who made the chocolate while he changed into his striped pyjamas. Then they both clambered into bed and sat up drinking chocolate while Bognor told his story.

  ‘Aveline?’ asked Monica when he got to the Regius Professor. ‘Did you say Aveline?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Professor Max Aveline?’

  ‘Yes. Why?’

  ‘Because he just called. It was a terrible line. Sounded as if he was in Siberia.’

  ‘He probably was. Are you sure it was Aveline?’

  ‘Almost. It was a really rotten line, but I’m virtually certain he said his name was Professor Max Aveline.’

  Bognor stared at the frothy marshmallow on top of his drink. ‘I think I may be about to become lucky,’ he said, kissing the tip of his wife’s nose. ‘What did he say?’

  ‘Wanted to know when you’d be home, and said he’d ring back later. Sounded rather over-excited.’

  ‘I daresay he did,’ said Bognor. ‘It’s catching, too. I think I’m about to become over-excited myself.’

  ‘Explain,’ said Monica. ‘You haven’t finished.’

  Fifteen minutes later, having included everything except one or two details concerning Molly Mortimer and Hermione Frinton, he said, ‘So that’s it.’

  ‘Quite a story,’ she said, snuggling up to him. ‘Let me look.’ She peered into his hair like a mother monkey inspecting for fleas.

  ‘Ouch!’ she exclaimed. ‘Nasty.’

  ‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘Some people have been inclined to laugh at my wounds and make out that three stitches are a trivial matter.’

  ‘Not me. Looks horrid.’

  ‘For once I agree with Rook. They are a pair of extremely disagreeable Bertie Wooftahs and I intend sorting them out.’

  ‘You do just that.’ She giggled.

  ‘What time did Aveline say he’d phone again?’

  ‘He didn’t. I just told him you’d be in before midnight.’

  Bognor glanced at his watch, and even as he did the phone shrilled. He picked it up at once. ‘Bognor,’ he snapped in his most official manner. Static, crackling, clicks and alien tongues assaulted his ears. Bognor put his hand over the mouthpiece. ‘I think he’s lost his roubles,’ he said. He removed his hand and addressed himself to the phone. ‘Hello!’ he called. ‘Hello! Hello! Hello! Moscow, can you hear me?’

  Down the line a woman’s voice answered him back. ‘London! London! Hello, London, can you hear me? This is Moscow calling.’ The voice faded and was replaced by more breakfast cereal noises, then just as Bognor was about to put the machine down in despair the line became miraculously cleared and the donnishly English voice of the Regius Professor of Sociology was saying ‘Bognor … Bognor … is that you? God, the bloody phones in this bloody country are worse than the bloody phones in bloody England.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Bognor. ‘Hello. Yes, it’s me. Bognor here. Bognor speaking.’

  ‘Can you hear me? It’s three o’clock in the bloody morning here.’

  ‘It’s midnight here.’

  ‘I didn’t phone to discuss the time. What’s this about my having murdered Beckenham?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s a very bad line.’ Aveline was shouting. ‘I can’t hear you. What?’

  ‘I don’t know anything about your having murdered Beckenham,’ said Bognor. ‘I assume you had poor Sebastian Vole done away with, but I know nothing about your having killed Beckenham. Did you?’

  ‘That’s what I’m ringing to tell you. It’s unfortunate about Vole. We had no alternative. He’d been very conscientious and surprisingly astute, but that’s by the way. I wish to make it absolutely plain that I did not kill Beckenham. He was a valued colleague. To say that I killed him is the grossest calumny.’

  Bognor didn’t think it possible to calumnize a former Regius Professor who turned out to be a traitor and a murderer.

  ‘How do you know all this, anyway?’ asked Bognor.

  ‘I’m told by my friends that the Daily Globe is publishing a story tomorrow. I assumed it was a leak inspired by you and your friend Dr Frinton.’

  ‘Far from it.’

  There was a snort of disbelief from the Moscow end. ‘I do not propose to be a scapegoat for your incompetence.’

  ‘All right,’ Bognor bridled. ‘If you didn’t do it, then who the hell did?’

  ‘I wouldn’t expect you to believe me,’ said Aveline. ‘However, a colleague of mine will be in touch with you as soon as possible. I spoke to him earlier this evening. It was he who tipped me off. He’ll tell you who Beckenham’s murderer was. I can’t identify him beyond saying that he will call himself “Q”. He is a senior officer of British Intelligence, but you won’t know him. I think you’ll believe him, though. You’ll find he knows more about you than you yourself. That’s all. He’ll be in touch. Goodnight.’

  Bognor stared at the receiver with disbelief. ‘Would you believe it?’ he said eventually. ‘That bastard Aveline is trying to clear his name.’

  ‘How do you mean?’ asked Monica. ‘If he’s in Moscow he can hardly deny being one of theirs.’

  ‘No, not that,’ said Bognor. ‘He’s not the least bit ashamed of that. Nor of having old Vole killed. But he doesn’t want it to be thought he killed the Master.’

  ‘And did he?’

  ‘God knows.’ He finished the dregs of his now rather cold chocolate and put the mug on the bedside table. ‘Someone called “Q” is going to be in touch.’

  ‘“Q”?’ Monica giggled. ‘Who’s he?’

  ‘Something in Intelligence. Our Intelligence. Theirs too, I presume. A triple agent at least.’

  He turned out the light. ‘If you want my opinion,’ he said, ‘there’s no intelligent life
in Intelligence.’

  ‘Ha bloody ha,’ she scoffed.

  He silenced her with a kiss.

  ‘Ugh,’ she said, struggling free. ‘You reek of chocolate.’

  Next morning there was a note on the doormat along with a final demand from the Gas Board and a circular from a mail order firm offering life-size reproductions of sculpture by Moore, Hepworth and Elizabeth Frink made from reinforced papier mâché. The note, produced on a manual typewriter, read: ‘Round Pond. 11. Will be wearing A and B tie. Q.’

  ‘Can’t get more cryptic than that,’ said Bognor, showing it to Monica.

  She read it three times, held it up to the light, and finally said, ‘Oh, do be careful, Simon.’

  ‘Careful? How do you mean, careful?’

  ‘I mean don’t get shot or abducted.’

  ‘In Kensington Gardens? Be your age.’

  ‘I am. The Iranian Embassy’s only just down the road. If this man really is a triple agent there’s no telling what he may get up to. There are corpses all over the place in this case, Simon, so for heaven’s sake be careful.’

  ‘If anything awful happens I’ll scream blue murder and hordes of hirsute Norland nannies will attack the hapless “Q” with raised umbrellas. Led by Wendy Craig, no doubt.’

  ‘Now you’re being ridiculous.’

  ‘Not in the least. I feel in the mood for toast. If I’m going to be shot by this anonymous figure in Arkwright and Blennerhasset neckwear I might as well eat a hearty breakfast.’

  ‘I do wish you wouldn’t be frivolous.’ Monica sighed and went to percolate coffee and titivate.

  An hour or so later Bognor sauntered up Kensington High Street past the Royal Garden Hotel and through the gates of the gardens. It was hot. One or two au pairs, not all nubile, sunned themselves on the grass in bikinis. Men in abbreviated bathing trunks with oily olive skins and muscles disported themselves similarly. Waiters, thought Bognor, pulling his stomach in and trying to appear jaunty. He smiled cheekily at a big-busted blonde in an emerald-green job which reminded him of Hermione Frinton’s All Souls’ leotard, and was upset when she turned away contemptuously. He really must be getting old.