Deadline (The Simon Bognor Mysteries) Read online

‘What we’re all forgetting,’ he said placidly, ‘is that in order to commit a crime you need opportunity as well as motive. If it turns out that you were all safely tucked up in bed in the small hours of this morning then it doesn’t matter what sort of motive you might have had. If on the other hand you were rampaging about the city with no proper alibi then the absence of motive isn’t going to impress the police. Once you’ve proved a murder it’s surprising how easily a motive crops up just where no one was expecting it.’

  ‘That lets me out anyway,’ said Port. ‘I went home early, had a few jars at the club and so to bed.’

  ‘What time?’

  ‘What time what?’

  ‘Did you leave the club and go home?’

  ‘About eleven. May be a bit earlier.’

  ‘And got home when?’

  ‘About ten minutes later. It’s not far.’

  ‘By car?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did anyone hear you come in?’

  ‘My wife and I have separate rooms. I try not to wake her when I’m in late. She usually goes to bed early.’

  ‘So even if she did wake she would be unlikely to notice the time?’

  It was Milborn Port’s turn to bridle. ‘Look, exactly what are you getting at?’

  ‘I’m simply trying to demonstrate the flimsiness of the average cast-iron alibi. Would she have noticed the time?’

  ‘Probably not.’

  ‘And where do you live?’

  ‘Stoke Poges.’

  ‘And what sort of car do you drive?’

  ‘Jaguar. Second hand.’

  ‘Well there you are then.’

  ‘Where?’

  Molly Mortimer laughed a little too humourlessly. ‘In the dock in a second, Milborn darling. What Simon has just proved, rather adroitly if I may say so, is that it would have been perfectly possible for you to drive from your club golf club I take it straight to the Globe, carry out the dastardly deed and drive home to bed without your wife suspecting anything. In other words your alibi’s collapsed.’

  ‘That’s ridiculous. I was devoted to the old boy.’

  ‘That’s not the point,’ said Viscount Wimbledon, ‘nobody’s saying you did it. All Simon’s proved is that you had the opportunity to do it.’

  ‘Bloody silly if you ask me,’ said Milborn, pouring himself another glass and ostentatiously neglecting the others. At which disintegrating point in the meeting they were saved by the bell.

  ‘Telephone call for Mr Port,’ said the waitress breathlessly.

  ‘No need to ask what that’s about,’ he said. ‘Granny Gringe calling for her straying flock.’ He hurried to the telephone which was near the front door, while the others finished their drinks.

  ‘That was very naughty, Simon,’ said Molly. ‘He didn’t enjoy it.’

  3

  THE RECALL TO THE Globe was not prompted just by Eric Gringe’s understandable wish to get some work done. The law had arrived and was conducting formal questioning in an office on the third floor which had been kindly vacated by the leader writer in charge of Mediterranean affairs, the Liberal Party and cricket. This sort of random specialization was based on Lord Wharfedale’s famous maxim that ‘Half measures often make a whole truth’ and also on his no less celebrated aphorism that ‘Too much knowledge is as dangerous as too little.’ In consequence many of the Globe’s writers were encouraged not to specialize in one subject to the exclusion of all others as happened on some papers, nor to be ‘general reporters’ who could turn their hand to anything. Instead Globe men tended to be moderately well informed on a few subjects. The leader writer in question had been delighted for an excuse to leave the building and was even now heading towards a Mediterranean affair at the Italian Tourist Office.

  Mr Gringe, Bertie Harris and the secretary, Anthea Morrison, had already been questioned by the police and they now wanted a word with Milborn Port who dutifully shambled off downstairs. After he had done so Mr Gringe took Bognor on one side.

  ‘I’m afraid we’ve had trouble,’ he said, sotto voce.

  ‘Trouble?’

  ‘It’s the chapel. I was afraid we’d have trouble with the chapel the minute you said your experience was so limited. We had enough trouble with Lord Wimbledon and we only got him in because they promised it would be the last time it was allowed to happen.’

  ‘I’m sorry, I’m not with you. What has chapel got to do with anything?’

  Mr Gringe sighed. ‘You’re not a member of the Union, are you?’

  ‘No, but Lord Wharfedale …’

  ‘Oh dear,’ Mr Gringe looked painfully distressed. ‘I’m afraid you’re going to find this quite unlike the Winnipeg Eagle. The time when Lord Wharfedale had the absolute right of hire and fire has passed for ever. If the chapel doesn’t approve then you can’t work here.’

  ‘The chapel’s the Union branch?’

  Mr Gringe came as near withering Bognor as his essentially cowardly appearance allowed. ‘Where on earth have you been all this time?’

  ‘Winnipeg,’ said Bognor, ‘I told you. In Winnipeg it was called a branch not a chapel.’

  ‘And were you a member?’

  ‘No.’

  Mr Gringe sighed again. ‘I’m afraid,’ he said, ‘that this is going to turn out to be one of those days. We have to go and see the Father of the Chapel … the Branch secretary that is.’

  ‘I’d no idea the language of journalism was so archaic,’ said Bognor.

  Together they left the Pepys office and took the lift to the third floor, from which they passed through a set of swing doors narrowly avoiding a collision with a large man in carpet slippers who had a long-extinguished cigar end clenched between his teeth. Mr Gringe apologized effusively for the near miss and called him ‘Sir’ twice. The man appeared much mollified and said something which the cigar end rendered inaudible.

  The room in which they now found themselves was as vast as an aeroplane hangar and contained, Bognor guessed, about a hundred people. All of them were in shirtsleeves except for a very occasional female who seemed overdressed in such sweaty surroundings. Most of the men sat at long benches, some of them in front of huge primitive typewriters connected to the desks by heavy chains.

  Overhead strips of neon illuminated a variety of appropriate slogans painted on hoardings. Apart from the Wharfedale Truth adage Bognor noticed ‘Make it fast, make it accurate,’ ‘Don’t make it up, make it true,’ and ‘Late copy costs money.’ It was very noisy. Some men were pounding at the typewriters which looked as if they had been fashioned from wrought iron and made a correspondingly clanging din, others were reading bits of paper with woebegone expressions and cursing from time to time, one or two were haranguing telephone receivers with such enthusiasm that the phones seemed superfluous. Ticker tape machines coughed out news from the agencies, conferences were taking place in small glass booths and a stout lady was dispensing tea from a chipped enamel pot on a trolley. Bognor stopped briefly to read a brief notice headed ‘Bulletin’ and signed ‘Editor’. It said ‘Congratulations to all staff on the brilliant handling of the Welsh colliery disaster which completely floored the opposition. A pity this was marred by the poor treatment of the MacGregor Quins.’ Underneath another again signed by the Editor reminded him of his responsibilities. ‘It is with much regret that I announce the death of St John Derby, Editor of the Samuel Pepys column. There will be a private funeral. Details of a memorial service will be announced later.’

  ‘Come along, Mr Bognor, please, we haven’t got all day and there is a column to produce. You have to be at the Dorchester by twelve-thirty.’ It was the first Bognor had heard of this but he said nothing. Mr Gringe led the way across the room to a far corner where a thin, ginger-haired man in maroon braces was sucking a pipe and sticking pieces of paper on a spike.

  ‘Simon,’ said Mr Gringe, ‘this is Alastair Tweedie, the Chief Assistant to the Deputy Foreign Copytaster and Father of the Chapel. Father, this is Mr Bognor about whom yo
u were enquiring.’

  The Chief Assistant to the Deputy Foreign Copytaster removed the pipe for a moment and regarded Bognor with unconcealed malevolence.

  ‘Aye,’ he said in nasal Glaswegian, ‘this is a right how do you do and no mistake.’

  Bognor shuffled his feet.

  ‘In what sense?’

  The sour-faced Scot paid no attention.

  ‘You’re not a member of the National Union of Journalists.’

  ‘No, but …’

  ‘No “buts”, sonny. I don’t suppose you’ve earned the major proportion of your income from journalistic activities for the last three years either?’

  ‘Well …’

  ‘Well nothing. Yes or No. I don’t have all day.’

  Bognor guessed that that was precisely what he had.

  ‘Well I was hired personally by Lord Wharfedale and since this is his paper I rather imagined …’

  ‘Bugger Lord Wharfedale. As far as I’m concerned this newspaper is the property of those who work for it, and I’m not having anybody working for it who isn’t in the Union and that’s all there is to it.’

  He got to his feet. ‘If Lord Wharfedale doesn’t concede on this I’m calling a mandatory meeting this afternoon,’ he said to Gringe. ‘We’d better tell Bert Watson and you’d better come too. Both of you. That man will kill this paper if he goes on like this.’

  So saying he led the way through another pair of swing doors at the rear of the room, down a flight of stairs through another immense aeroplane hangar full of silent machines and along a passage to a door labelled, to Bognor’s incredulity, ‘Imperial Father’.

  Quite involuntarily he found himself singing softly, ‘Imperial Father, strong to save, whose hand hath stilled the restless wave.’ His companions looked at him, scandalized, and Mr Tweedie knocked twice on the Imperial Father’s door.

  Inside the two fathers greeted one another.

  ‘’Morning, Father.’

  ‘’Morning, Father.’

  Mr Watson was a heavily-jowled fifty-year-old with little piggy eyes and an air of enormous self-importance.

  Mr Gringe, who evidently cut no ice with either of these important men, was introduced formally and Bognor, grudgingly. Mr Watson spoke in the slight whine of south London.

  ‘You’ve ascertained that the essential facts are as you suspected,’ he said.

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘Well, Bognor, do you have any mitigating circumstance to suggest why you should take work from a professional trade union member who should by rights have the job you’ve been given?’

  ‘Yes.’ Bognor was put out, not by the trade unionism of which he approved in principle, but by the turgid bureaucracy of it all.

  ‘I’ve told him it’s no good taking Lord Wharfedale’s name,’ said Tweedie, waving his pipe, ‘if that’s what he’s going to do.’

  ‘As a matter of fact no,’ said Bognor. ‘Something quite different but I’m not prepared to discuss it in front of a third party. It’s a matter for the Imperial Father as senior Union official in the organization and for him alone.’ He watched the self-satisfied beginnings of a smile on Mr Watson’s face and realized that he had judged his man correctly.

  ‘If you have something to say you can say it to me,’ said Tweedie.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Bognor, ‘Imperial Father or no one.’

  ‘In that case,’ said Tweedie, ‘it’ll have to be no one and it’s the responsibility of you and Lord Wharfedale if there’s no paper tomorrow.’

  ‘I’m not so certain, Father,’ said Mr Watson ponderously, ‘but in the present parlous state of our industry one may be advised to behave sometimes in a manner which may seem unconstitutional. If you and Mr Gringe would leave this to me it shouldn’t take a moment. I’m aware that it’s strictly out of order but these are difficult times.’

  It was not a popular decision but the Imperial Father outranked the others. Mr Gringe left happily enough, Mr Tweedie made it clear that he did so under duress.

  ‘Now, Mr Bognor,’ said Mr Watson when they’d gone, ‘it had better be good. I’m a busy man.’

  ‘Like hell,’ he thought, producing the identity card which usually had such an immediate and dramatic effect. The Imperial Father read through it twice, then looked up.

  ‘I’m glad you told me about this,’ he said in a slow almost sepulchral voice clearly intended to demonstrate that he understood the momentousness of the confidence Bognor had imparted, ‘although it would have saved a great deal of embarrassment if his Lordship had confided in me at the very start. I take it you’ve been “planted” to investigate Mr Derby’s sad death.’

  Bognor thought of congratulating him on his quickwitted perspicacity and then thought better of it. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I think it would be best if as few people as possible knew about it.’

  ‘I quite understand, perfectly. I can guarantee to prevent any trouble for a week. After that I’m afraid I may have problems with some of my colleagues. Mr Tweedie, for instance, is a very conscientious member of the Trade Union Movement.’ He went to the door, opened it and readmitted Messrs Tweedie and Gringe. They came in and sat down on the stiff dining-room chairs which were all that the Imperial Father boasted apart from the upholstered high back chair he used himself.

  ‘Gentlemen,’ he said, ‘I’ve listened to what Mr Bognor has told me and after due deliberation and taking cognizance of all the available facts in a special situation I have decided to grant him a probationary week provided steps are put in motion to ensure that his application for Union membership goes forward forthwith.’

  Mr Tweedie was not amused. ‘With respect, Father,’ he remonstrated, making disgusting saliva based noises with his pipe, ‘he can’t be a member of the Union with his lack of experience. At the very least he has to go to Manchester.’ Bognor shuddered.

  ‘There are special circumstances, Father,’ said Mr Watson.

  ‘Then I have a right to know what they are.’

  ‘It is within my discretion to decide otherwise. In my view the circumstances are sufficiently special to warrant special behaviour. A probationary week gentlemen … er, Mr Bognor would you stay a moment?

  ‘Just two things, Mr Bognor.’ Bognor guessed there was never just one thing. Mr Watson was the sort of man who spoke in catalogues.

  ‘The Pepys column, Mr Bognor, I think I ought to warn you about it. It’s a peculiar place. You see they’re not really journalists and it’s not really journalism to my way of thinking. The only one of them who would ever hold down a job in the news room is that Gringe and there are those on the paper who still say he can’t tell his arse from his elbow. But the rest of them … I’m not a killjoy, Mr Bognor, and I’ll buy my round with the best of them and I’ll have a bet when it suits me. The drinking and the gambling and, they say drugs, not to mention the sexual behaviour that goes on in that office. It’s a scandal. Always has been. I’m surprised there’s been no murder there before. Each one of them at the other’s throats. You can hear them at it sometimes. Hysterical shouting, swearing, screaming. It’s been a job to get a secretary to stay there at all until Miss Morrison arrived and the young man who was there before Lord Wimbledon had to leave. They found him in the wastepaper basket covered in ink and treacle.’

  Bognor looked incredulous. ‘Ink and treacle?’

  ‘You may not credit it but it’s true. The matter wasn’t pursued. No one ever found out what really happened.’

  ‘Sounds like school.’

  ‘Well I’m warning you, it’s a peculiar place. The second thing is Miss Morrison. She’s a sensible lass is Miss Morrison. Not a member of the National Union of Journalists you understand, she belongs to SOGAT.’

  Bognor recognized the initials of one of the printers’ unions of which he guessed Mr Watson was a leading light.

  ‘We’ve found her a very reliable source of information in the past, Mr Bognor, I’ll say no more than that. The rest of them treat her as if she were a Hottentot.
Talk in front of her as if she wasn’t there. She knows more about that office than any of the so-called journalists in it. I’ll tip her the wink and then she’ll be invaluable to you.’

  ‘I’d rather you didn’t let on that I was, well, that I was here in an investigative capacity.’

  ‘I can be as discreet as the next man,’ said Mr Watson, ‘and I will be. I’ll wish you the best of luck.’ He held out a fat hairy hand and screwed up his piggy eyes. ‘The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help me God, eh?’ he said and laughed.

  Upstairs Mr Gringe was floundering among papers. No one else was there except Miss Morrison who was fighting a defensive battle on the telephone. ‘No, I’m sorry, Mr Pepys is in conference … certainly I’ll pass on your idea … yes I agree Northamptonshire butterflies are extremely important.’

  Mr Gringe looked at Bognor with grave suspicion. ‘What did you say to the Imperial Father? I don’t imagine you told him about your experiences on the Winnipeg Eagle. Tweedie is far from satisfied. Indeed I fear that if he has his way there will still be some form of industrial action before the week is out.’

  Bognor shrugged and smiled. ‘I thought the Imperial Father was very reasonable,’ he said. ‘He just thought I should be given a chance.’

  ‘Yes, well.’ Mr Gringe picked up a small pile of papers from a corner of the desk. ‘I wonder if you’d be good enough to have a go at these. You know the style. Not more than one hundred and fifty words at the very most, preferably a hundred. Six copies of each piece you write. Name of informant at the top where appropriate, plus of course your own name which is, ha, always appropriate, and not too many adjectives. The sentences can be as long as you like not like the Express but please try to make the paragraphs short. Lord Wharfedale hates long paragraphs. Oh and the policeman wants to see you in Room 312 on the third floor and before you go Anthea will give you the invitation to the British Food Manufacturers Federation at the Dorchester. That should make rather a good tale. The Minister’s speaking. See you after lunch.’

  Bognor felt battered. He stuffed the pieces of paper into his coat pocket and scrutinized the invitation which said, ‘The British Food Manufacturers requests the pleasure of the company of Mr S. Pepys at luncheon.’ It would be interesting to know how many British Food Manufacturers thought that Samuel Pepys was alive and well and living in Fleet Street. He was not looking forward to the interview with the policeman. The more he thought about it the more intolerable the interference became. St John Derby’s death was murder pure and if not simple at least not complicated by those considerations of industrial espionage which were the usual pretext for intervention by Bognor’s department. If he were the detective in charge of the investigation he would be harassed enough already without the added bother of what in this instance amounted to a private detective ferreting around in a feeble disguise.