Let Sleeping Dogs Die (The Simon Bognor Mysteries) Read online

  ‘So were we,’ said Bognor.

  ‘Friend of yours?’ asked Pring.

  ‘Friend of Monica’s,’ said Bognor.

  ‘Oh.’ He seemed to lose interest again and stared morosely at the tablecloth. This was infectious. They all stared morosely at the tablecloth until Pring jerked himself back to the present.

  ‘So,’ he said with a jollity which seemed forced and unnatural, ‘as I said, “long time no see”. What happened to you? Someone told me you’d gone into the post office. You don’t look as if you went into the post office.’

  ‘No. Board of Trade actually,’ said Bognor.

  ‘Oh, well,’ Pring looked patronizing. ‘Not far out. What exactly do you do in the Board of Trade?’

  Bognor took a deep breath, another slug of champagne, and tried desperately to remember what Parkinson had suggested as a cover story. ‘Well, as a matter of fact, it’s funny you should mention that because I’m working on something to do with food at the moment,’ he said. ‘I do special investigations, you see.’

  ‘Can’t imagine it’s the sort of food we’re interested in,’ said Pring. ‘Investigating the precise digital component of the standard fish finger preparatory to a white paper produced under the auspices of the White Fish Authority, I suppose. Or how much soya you can legally put in a sausage. Or whether toast has to be made with bread.’

  ‘No, actually,’ said Bognor, stung by this all too accurate description of what habitually went on around him, ‘we’re looking at the top end of the market, trying to find how the government might help out there.’

  ‘Perhaps you’ll get the Queen’s Award for Industry, Aubrey,’ said Aubergine Bristol. ‘I’m awfully peckish, I wish they’d bring our food.’

  ‘And how,’ asked Aubrey, perceptibly sobering, ‘do you imagine the government might help? Nationalize the restaurant trade, I suppose? Or introduce a caviar subsidy? If there’s one thing calculated to destroy what little decent eating’s to be had in this country, it’s government interference. They’ve practically ruined the wine trade as it is.’

  ‘Oh that’s not entirely fair,’ said Bognor. ‘The Prime Minister’s very keen on his wine.’

  ‘Only if it’s British. He’s not a wino—he’s a reconstituted grape juice addict.’

  ‘That’s not really quite fair,’ said Bognor, loath to be caught defending a prime minister and a government of whom he strongly disapproved but nevertheless feeling that his position demanded it.

  ‘It is, and you know it,’ said Pring heatedly. At that moment, before genuine misunderstanding could interfere with Bognor’s intentions, the waiter arrived with pasta. It appeared hot and sufficient. ‘About bloody time,’ said Pring, ‘and get us a couple of bottles of the Santa Cristina.’ Both Bognor and Monica expostulated, but Pring flapped his hands about in limp gestures of dismissal. ‘Tell you what,’ he said, forking a great skein of noodles into his mouth. ‘Why don’t you join us on this jolly to Petheram tomorrow? You might pick up a few tips, and you’ll meet some people.’

  ‘What happens at Petheram?’ asked Bognor.

  ‘Pendennis Brothers,’ said Pring. ‘They do mainly Alsatian stuff, very good too. It’s their annual tasting for the trade. Well, I say the trade, but it’s not really the trade—it’s for one or two of the better-known wine and food writers and some top restaurateurs. I should come along. It will give you some valuable insights.’

  ‘But I haven’t been invited,’ said Bognor, lamely.

  ‘Well, I’m inviting you now,’ said Pring. ‘Freddie Pendennis is an old mucker of mine. He’ll be delighted to see you. I say, Ginny, this pasta’s perfectly passable.’

  Little gobs of ragu now spattered his chin, and he seemed incapable of getting any noodles inside him intact. Every time he closed his mouth, a few pathetic white strands were left dangling outside only to disappear slowly from view with a wet sucking noise. They looked alive, and Bognor, against his will, was reminded of the way older dog breeders docked puppies’ tails—by biting them off at birth. Both he and Monica were relieved when a decent interval had elapsed (during which an indecent quantity of chianti was consumed).

  ‘We really must be going,’ they said, and Pring at last seemed content to let them depart. ‘A demain,’ he said, waving. ‘The ten o’clock from Charing Cross. Platform six. We meet at the barrier. Don’t buy a ticket.’

  2

  BOGNOR ARRIVED EARLY AT the barrier. He had a nervousness about missing any form of scheduled transport which amounted almost to a neurosis and meant that he invariably arrived at termini with time and a half to spare. On this occasion he was also keen to observe his fellow travellers before being formally introduced. He felt, without much justification, that it gave him an advantage. Bearing this in mind, he made quite certain that he was the first of the party to arrive and then retreated to the station bookstall, where he bought a Daily Telegraph and stood, occasionally glancing over the top of it in a manner which he believed, erroneously, to be anonymous and unsuspicious. It was fifteen minutes before he saw anybody who could conceivably have been a Pendennis-bound gastronome, and when he did he was far from being absolutely sure. The first person to hover expectantly at the entrance to platform six was a rather attractive blonde in green trousers and a cardigan. She clutched a sheaf of papers and a clipboard and appeared, as yet, unmarked by the ravages of food and drink which he associated with the profession. Bognor, not unappreciative, retreated behind the paper. A few minutes later, he glanced out from his camouflage and saw that the young woman was now engrossed in animated conversation with an elderly lobsterlike gentleman who was crouched heavily over a serviceable walking stick. Bognor recognized him immediately. It was Erskine Blight-Purley, war hero, Francophile, bibliophile, oenomaniac and lecher of long-standing and renown. Despite the fact that he must now be over seventy, his elongated crustacean figure was dangerously close to the young woman, and from where he stood Bognor fancied that the unsteadily leery smile was one of concupiscence. The girl was laughing, slightly nervously. Blight-Purley had a reputation as an after-dinner speaker too. He was probably telling blue jokes.

  Just as Bognor decided that it was time for him to announce himself, he saw a half-familiar figure walk briskly up to the girl in the green trousers and kiss her, equally purposefully, on the cheek. It was the man from the American Embassy, Anthony J. Ebertson III, and he appeared to be wearing a golfing suit in a loud check material composed exclusively of Oxford and Cambridge blues. The girl introduced him to Blight-Purley who nodded sourly but did not remove his hands from his stick. A second later another figure of identical familiarity joined them. It was Petrov, the man from Soviet Synthetics, wearing a Soviet equivalent of Ebertson’s suit, an ill-cut affair in Lovat green. He too kissed the girl, though with an enthusiasm which had been missing from Ebertson’s more perfunctory effort. Bognor experienced a frisson of excitement. As he folded his paper and walked over to join them the group suddenly exploded into something which almost resembled a party. Everyone, which is to say Aubrey Pring, Aubergine Bristol and some dozen or so bonhomous colleagues, converged at once. There was an enthusiastic rhubarb of greeting; the green girl distributed tickets and pieces of paper; people kissed each other, shook hands, clapped each other on the back—all except for Blight-Purley who stood slightly apart, hands still clasping the stick, and nodded shortly at anyone who had the temerity to look in his direction.

  ‘Bognor, old Sausage!’ exclaimed Pring. ‘Glad you could make it. Mandy, have you got some bumf and a ticket for my old mucker Simon Bognor? Simon, this is Mandy Bullingdon of F and D Associates—they’re doing the PR.’

  ‘F and D?’ asked Bognor, smiling hello.

  ‘Food and Drink,’ said Miss Bullingdon, displaying slightly irregular teeth and half a dimple. Bognor observed that one of her eyes was slightly larger than the other. ‘Haven’t we met somewhere before?’ she was saying.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Bognor. ‘I’m afraid it’s just
one of those faces.’

  ‘I’m sure I’ve met you somewhere. Gstaad in seventy-four? Or last year in Cannes? Aren’t you a friend of Andrew Stevenson’s?’

  ‘No,’ said Bognor, ‘I’m awfully sorry, but I haven’t ever been to Gstaad or Cannes, and I don’t know anyone called Andrew Stevenson.’ Then, not wishing to seem gratuitously dismissive, he said, ‘We can’t possibly have met anyway. I’d be sure to remember.’

  ‘Simon,’ interposed Pring, who was bustling, ‘come and meet Erskine Blight-Purley. He’ll tell you about the top end of the market; the top end of anything you care to ask about actually. You’ll have to shout though. He’s very deaf these days. If you’re having real problems go for the left ear—it seems to be his best.’

  ‘Bognor,’ said Blight-Purley, after they’d been introduced and Pring had shot off to spread a little more goodwill, ‘there was a chap called Bognor in the Dieppe show. No relation, I suppose?’

  ‘No,’ said Bognor, ‘at least I don’t think so.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Blight-Purley, not seeming to care one way or the other, ‘and you’re an intelligence chappie from the Board of Trade. I wouldn’t have thought this was exactly your line of country.’

  Bognor explained about the top end of the market as Pring and the woman from F and D marshalled them and drove them, like garrulous sheep, along the platform to the reserved compartments. In the train Blight-Purley managed to sit next to Amanda Bullingdon in a window seat facing the engine. How he accomplished this Bognor wasn’t sure, but it was done with an easy effortlessness which he was forced to admire. Bognor sat with his back to the engine—and immediately opposite him. Aubrey Pring was on his left and the remaining two seats were taken by the Russian and the American. This, clearly, was the compartment to be in. It was an elderly British Rail effort, faded blue and cream upholstery fusty with the dust of ages. Above the heads of the passengers were pale pastels of South Coast watering places and mirrors chipped at the corners. It smelt of years of cigarette tobacco and armpits.

  Clattering over the Thames it was the American, Ebertson, who broke the silence which had surprisingly descended.

  ‘Anything more on Scoff?’ He spoke in the cultured almost-English accents which Bognor had associated with the American Rhodes scholars he had known in Oxford. The question was addressed principally at Pring but was also for more general consideration.

  ‘Funeral at Golders Green,’ said Pring. ‘Memorial service later some time.’

  ‘Oh.’ Ebertson shifted uneasily in his seat. It was obviously not the sort of response he had wanted. ‘Does one attend the funeral?’

  ‘I think not,’ said Pring, slipping easily into the role of social secretary and arbiter of etiquette. ‘Family and intimates only I should say. I shouldn’t have said you were an intimate of Scoff, Anthony.’

  ‘I should say not.’ He spoke nervously as if his relationship, while not apparently intimate, had not been without significance.

  ‘Killed himself though? No question of what we used to call foul play?’

  This was from Blight-Purley and was accompanied by a piercingly forensic stare which belied his geriatric appearance and suggested the intelligence which, coupled with more than ordinary courage, had made him such a formidable wartime reputation.

  Pring looked owlish. ‘That will be for the coroner to decide,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, come,’ said Blight-Purley, leaning forward and pressing on the stick which still rested between his legs. ‘We’re all friends. I hardly think our private speculation is going to prejudice the due process of law.’

  The train was passing through suburbia now. Neat rectangular lawns; small wooden sheds; blossom; vegetable patches tucked into corners.

  Bognor stared out at it and, before he could catch himself, said, ‘Your friend, Miss Bristol, seemed to think he’d been peculiar.’

  Pring shot him a cool look. ‘Ginny’s imagination is nothing if not fanciful,’ he said.

  ‘I wouldn’t say that,’ said Blight-Purley, smiling. He was not going to let it drop. ‘Ginny’s always seemed rather level-headed in her assessments, even if she does express them more colourfully than most. I thought Smith had been a bit strange recently.’

  ‘He was always strange,’ said Petrov. He had a slow, sulky, brown voice, but he spoke with virtually no accent. ‘He was a strange person. Perhaps he was a great person. I think many great men are also strange. Would you not agree?’ He cocked an eyebrow at Bognor, who grunted affirmatively. Petrov leant across the compartment, hand outstretched. ‘We have not been introduced. Petrov. Soviet Synthetics.’ They shook hands formally, Bognor gave his name and profession. They exchanged cards.

  Blight-Purley returned to worry the subject. ‘I agree with Comrade Petrov. He was strange. He had been getting stranger. But it takes more than increasing strangeness to explain suicide. And to what can we ascribe the increase in strangeness? I take it we can agree on the original strange state, the initial eccentricity, if you like, but how to explain its increase?’

  Pring was looking very uncomfortable. ‘I’m not sure I like this sort of talk,’ he said, ‘de mortuis nil nisi bonum and all that.’

  ‘I’ve never understood that particular tag,’ said Blight-Purley, ‘but even if I did it doesn’t apply here, surely. All we’re doing is discussing the cause of his untimely end. I think that’s reasonable. What do you think, Miss Bullingdon? You’ve been very silent.’

  Miss Bullingdon had been looking out at London which was getting greener by the minute, giving way to the neat quasi-countryside of the Home Counties. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I was miles away. What did you say?’

  ‘We were talking about Scoff Smith,’ he said, ‘wondering what could have happened. Whether it was suicide, and, if so, why. Aubrey is inclined to rule us out of court and accuse us of bad taste. What do you think my dear?’

  Amanda Bullingdon blushed a little. ‘I’m afraid I didn’t know him very well. And ethics aren’t my strong point. I’d hardly be in public relations if they were.’ She turned back to the view. There was no sound except for that of elderly rolling stock on elderly rails. Bognor wondered whether she had known Scoff; her denial had seemed unnecessarily swift.

  Conversation, when it resumed, turned to vintages and continued on that subject for forty minutes. Bognor, well aware of his amateur status, listened in silence to the distillation of drinking men’s experience. It was quite beyond him, and he was relieved when the train drew into Petheram and no one had asked him a direct question.

  Their group trooped out on to the platform blinking blearily in the bright sunlight. They were the only ones alighting at the station which was ramshackle and overgrown with bramble and dandelion. It seemed an obvious candidate for British Rail’s next economy drive. As he stood awaiting direction, Bognor felt a hand on his elbow. It was Aubrey Pring, who propelled him firmly but gently out of earshot.

  ‘I may have seemed unduly sensitive earlier,’ he said, ‘but Blight-Purley can go crashing in. I just think I ought to warn you off saying anything about Scoff when Amanda Bullingdon’s around. You see she and Scoff, well … I’ve probably said enough, but I thought I’d better warn you.’

  ‘You mean …’

  Pring nodded and winked. ‘Exactly. Not that she was the only one, by any manner of means, but, well, there it is.’

  ‘Does Blight-Purley realize?’

  ‘I should imagine so. He knows most things.’

  ‘Ah.’ The information was interesting but not necessarily relevant. Smith’s reputation as a ladies’ man was almost, though not quite, in the same league as Blight-Purley’s. Amanda Bullingdon was youngish, presentable, unattached and, as the idiom had it, ‘into food and drink’.

  ‘Come and meet Freddie Pendennis,’ said Pring, setting off towards the exit where their friends and colleagues were grouped around a short man in pepper-and-salt plus fours.

  ‘Aubrey!’ he called out, arms akimbo as Pring and Bognor approache
d. ‘How jolly! This is a pleasure. I’ve got some Krug, specially for Ginny and to cheer us all up, and a Framboise which I know you’re going to enjoy.’ Pring managed to introduce Bognor in mid-sentence. ‘How nice,’ said Pendennis, barely pausing, ‘so nice to see someone from the B of T. It’s usually those absolute fiends from the Inland Revenue or, worse still, the dreaded VATmen. Customs and Excise does seem to produce a quite amazingly tiresome sort of person, haven’t you found, Aubrey? I give them beer. And when they’re really grim I give them brown ale. They seem to enjoy it what’s more! Oh, well, there’s no accounting for taste. But come along. Time for a little soupçon of something from Wolxheim and Molsheim.’ He led the way out of the station and into a Volkswagen minibus standing in the forecourt. There were enough seats for all except Pendennis, who stood at the front with his back to the windscreen.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he said, ‘I’d just like to say, before we get down to the serious business of the day, what a joy it is to welcome you all to our annual summer tasting. Most of you have been before so you know more or less what to expect, and I hope those expectations are going to be fulfilled. For those few who are on their first visit, I should only like to say that this is an occasion on which you’re expected to enjoy yourselves. We’re not going to make you work. Obviously we’d like you to go away and tell everyone what superlative wine you’ve had, but apart from that nothing at all. So bon appetite!’

  There was a round of discreet, subdued applause as the little bus turned down a lane white with hawthorn and cow-parsley. Bognor was next to Amanda Bullingdon.

  ‘I’m sorry about that gaffe,’ she said.

  ‘What gaffe?’ he asked, thinking of her liaison with Scoff Smith and of Blight-Purley’s probing.

  ‘My saying we’d met before. It sounds so like one of those remarks. But it wasn’t. I really did think we’d met before.’

  ‘That’s OK,’ said Bognor, ‘it happens all the time. What exactly do you do at F and D?’