Just Desserts (The Simon Bognor Mysteries) Page 3

  ‘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 approached. ‘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 f
orecourt. 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?’

  She pulled a face. ‘Things like this mostly. Organizing jollies for the trade.’

  ‘How long have you been with them?’

  ‘Too long really. Five years.’

  ‘Oh,’ Bognor smiled politely. ‘And before that?’

  ‘I worked in a restaurant. At the Dour Dragoon actually.’

  ‘Oh.’ He felt nonplussed. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘That’s all right.’ It obviously wasn’t all right, he thought. The girl must be suffering. On the other hand her suffering was far from obvious. Indeed she seemed remarkably cheerful in the circumstances despite her abrupt dismissal of Blight-Purley’s earlier question.

  ‘Did you know him well?’ he asked, chancing his arm.

  She looked hard at him, then smiled. ‘Let’s just say that if I did know him well the last person on earth I’d tell would be a gossipy old lecher like Erskine Blight-Purley.’

  ‘Fair enough.’ The bus had turned through a pair of heavy wrought-iron gates and was climbing a steep gravel drive. On either side were rows of gnarled knee-high plants trained to wire trellising.

  ‘Vines?’ asked Bognor.

  ‘Looks like it,’ said Amanda Bullingdon, shading her eyes with a well manicured hand. ‘I didn’t know they were producing their own. It’s become a bit of a trend recently.’

  ‘Appellation Sussex Contrôlée,’ he said.

  ‘That sort of thing.’

  The bus rumbled over a cattle grid and came to a halt. The house was substantial, heavy, Victorian, its air of red-brick barracks softened with ivy and wistaria and complicated by some recent appendages in plate glass and reinforced concrete. ‘Welcome to Château Petheram,’ said Pendennis as they disgorged on to the gravel. ‘Actually,’ he confided to Bognor, giving him an unnecessary helping hand down from the vehicle, ‘it’s really called “The New House, Petheram”, but I rather like the sound of Château Petheram.’

  When they were all out Pendennis led the way into a high-ceilinged hall and straight down a winding stone stairway to the cellar where the serious business of the day was to take place. It had, indeed, a serious look to it. A series of trestle tables had been set up along the centre of the room and covered with plain white cloth and row upon row of bottles. Spaced around on the flagged floor were small tubs full of sawdust. Bognor knew enough about wine to realize that they were for spitting into.

  ‘Now,’ said Pendennis, clapping his hands for attention. ‘Once more, old hands will recognize the formula, but for the benefit of our newcomers, we always make this a blind tasting. No labels on any bottles, as you can see. Just numbers. Everyone has a card and a pencil, so make your notes as you go round, and then we’ll tell you what you’ve been drinking after lunch. Don’t worry though, we won’t embarrass anyone by asking them to read out their guesses—it’s purely for amusement, though naturally we’re interested in your comments. So. Off we go!’

  Bognor had gone very white at the announcement of the blind tasting. Party games were a particular phobia of his, and he had absolutely no confidence in his ability to make intelligent remarks about the wines, let alone identify them. He sincerely hoped Pendennis would keep his word about embarrassment.

  ‘You any good at this sort of thing?’ It was Lady Aubergine. He had quite forgotten her, though she was not, he conceded, an obviously forgettable person. As last night, she was threatening to spill out of her outfit which today was white—an expensive brushed denim trouser suit with a dangerously low neckline.

  ‘Not much,’ he said.

  ‘That makes two of us,’ she said, flashing long, horsy teeth. ‘And with a hangover like mine I haven’t an earthly of identifying a thing. Why don’t we go round the course together? Blind leading the blind.’

  ‘Why not?’ The others had already fallen on the drink as if it was a Saharan oasis. ‘That is if there’s any left.’

  ‘I’ve never known Pendennis to run out of hooch,’ said her ladyship putting her hand to her head. ‘You haven’t got any Alka-Seltzer have you?’ she asked. ‘I’ve got an ache like a monkey’s whatsit.’

  ‘Oh,’ Bognor picked up the last two cards and pencils, ‘no, I’m afraid not.’

  ‘Pity,’ she said, ‘hair of the dog it will have to be. I had a Fernet Branca at home but it doesn’t seem to have done the trick. Never mind.’

  The first wine had, he thought, a slightly fruity flavour. He sucked his pencil and wondered whether ‘Slightly fruity’ was an adequate comment.

  ‘Not spitting?’ asked Lady Aubergine, who had been going through an impressive ritual of gargling and hawking into the sawdust.

  ‘I’m not very good at it I’m afraid,’ said Bognor. ‘I’m always petrified in case I miss.’

  ‘I know what you mean. I think I’ll join you.’ She poured another generous slug of the first wine and swallowed in one go, a performance which made her eyes water. ‘Slightly fruity, I should say,’ she said, beaming.

  ‘Rather what I thought,’ said Bognor.

  ‘Moselle?’

  ‘Well, yes, I suppose …’

  Lady Aubergine scribbled. Bognor, not afraid to cheat, looked over her shoulder. ‘Slightly fruity,’ she wrote. ‘Moselle?’

  He sucked on his pencil again and after some hesitation wrote. ‘Definitely fruityish flavour. Arguably Moselle.’

  They went on to the second group of bottles.

  ‘Tell me,’ demanded Bognor as he watched Lady Aubergine gargle. Her eyes squinted at the glass, her nostrils dilated and her throat twitched. The noise suggested drains—or more precisely bath water being forced fast through a well rifled plug-hole. ‘Tell me,’ said Bognor again, as she swallowed, ‘what exactly is your connection with food and drink?’

  She seemed to consider for a moment. ‘I like them,’ she said, finally. ‘But I don’t have any commercial connection. I’m what you might call a gastronomic groupie.’ She brayed lightly. ‘I can’t afford to work for a living on account of what’s called a private income. What do you think of this?’ she asked, indicating the second wine.

  ‘Too sweet for me.’

  ‘It’s meant to be sweet. That’s a Château de Fargues, or I’m a virgin.’ The words were Blight-Purley’s. ‘Sixty-seven I should say or …’ he held the glass to his nose and moved his nostrils in a suggestive manner which reminded Bognor of a belly dancer he had once seen in Beirut, ‘or possibly, just possibly, a sixty-six.’

  ‘It couldn’t be Yquem?’ enquired Lady Aubergine. She was nibbling a water biscuit, thoughtfully provided by their hosts as a palate cleanser.

  ‘Absolutely not,’ he said. ‘Much as they love us I don’t see Pendennis doling out Château d’Yquem for a blind tasting. Even their generosity has its limits. That’s a de Fargues.
Not cheap either.’

  They moved on down the table tasting as they went. Before long Bognor had become quite confused. The wine was wine all right but beyond that he was unable to decide. How fruity was fruity? How dry dry? No sooner had he noted ‘Very dry indeed’ of a wine which took the skin off his palate than he found another with even greater acidity. It was the same with the sweet ones. Just as he discovered a liquid as sugary as honey, it would be capped with one as cloying as treacle. Too late he realized he should have started with a points system or a sweet-meter.

  ‘I should just drink the stuff,’ said Lady Aubergine observing his difficulty with amusement. ‘After a couple of glasses it all tastes exactly the same. If I were blindfolded I couldn’t tell the difference between hock and claret.’

  At the end of the trestles the white stopped and red began. Ahead of them the procession showed signs of inebriation. There was less spitting and more imbibing. Voices, which had never been subdued, were becoming raised, even raucous. One or two had returned to the whites ‘just to make absolutely sure of that really rather remarkable bouquet’.

  ‘I think I may be drunk again,’ said Lady Aubergine. She was looking pinkish. ‘How funny running into you at that ghastly dump last night. Did you know Aubrey well at Oxford?’

  ‘Not very. He was one of those people everyone knew by sight and reputation. I don’t think he really knew me.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. He seemed awfully pleased to see you.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Of course, he hasn’t really been happy since he came down, so he’s always pleased to meet some old mucker to remind him of his mis-spent youth.’

  Bognor felt suitably put down.

  ‘Try some of this.’ She poured him a glass of purplish red and misjudged it so that it overflowed on to Bognor’s grey worsted. ‘Oops,’ she said. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Doesn’t matter,’ said Bognor. ‘It’s very old.’ It was, in fact, just back from the cleaners.