Business Unusual (The Simon Bognor Mysteries) Read online

  This somewhat old-fashioned, not to say pedestrian, interpretation was more prevalent in Scarpington than in London. Of course there was some daytime drinking. On the days of Scarpington Thursday’s home games when the visiting fans were escorted down the High Street by a handful of Scarpington’s finest, mounted on horses which looked suspiciously as if they should be hauling milk floats, an element of lager-louring could be found. This did not, however, penetrate the Talbot or Freddie’s bar. On Market Day — Thursday, which was, incidentally, the reason for the football team’s curious name — farmers from the outlying countryside had been known to take a drop or two, but only the richest and grandest hung out in Freddie’s. A few, a very few, Artisans occasionally dropped in for a snifter before lunch, especially if they were having the meal in the Talbot’s stately, over-priced dining-room which was still serving a style of cooking that was little more than an appalling folk memory for people who lived elsewhere in Britain.

  But, generally speaking, Freddie’s bar was pretty quiet until evening.

  It followed from this that during the day Freddie himself was pretty quiet too. In the evening he could be seen to be doing a fair amount of what one might call work, occasionally even shaking the odd cocktail. But before sixish he left practically everything to one or other of his assistants. These were invariably pretty if acne’d young men who were always called Gavin or Terry and left after not more than six months. This was the result of long hours, low wages and, it was sometimes alleged, sexual harassment by Freddie. Indeed Wartnaby suggested that on one occasion Freddie had actually been caught ‘cottaging’ by the Scarpington vice squad which spent much time hanging around public lavatories hoping to trap an invariably pathetic queen or two by acting as agents provocateurs. Wartnaby was of the opinion that Puce had somehow caused the charges to be dropped, thus giving the MP an unshakeable hold over the barman.

  Freddie’s routine was to arrive shortly before the bar opened at 11.30. He would then fix a Virgin Mary or, if the mood took him, a Bloody, mixed to an ancient recipe which went very heavy on the tabasco. He would then sit on a high stool in one corner of his bar and read grimly through the racing pages of the Daily Express and the Sporting Life before telephoning Sparks, the bookmaker, to place his day’s bets. Sparks, incidentally, was not an Artisan —bookmaking being essentially a non-Artisan activity.

  With an hour or so to kill before the shutters would be pulled aside at the St Moritz, Bognor and his spouse took a rather lethargic constitutional along the banks of the not tremendously picturesque River Sludgelode — Anglo-Saxon for sludgy ditch or small water course, Monica explained helpfully. The towpath ran alongside Moulton and Bragg’s brewery and Sinclair’s invalid carriage works and out to Sludgelode Fen where the King’s School Playing Fields were. The path was littered with the traditional mess of fag ends, dog turds and used condoms and as the day was dank the Bognors returned to the hotel damp and dispirited.

  ‘I’m going to take a peek at the Cathedral,’ said Monica, ‘to see if it’ll cheer me up. If it doesn’t I think I’m going back to London.’

  Bognor paled.

  ‘For God’s sake don’t do that,’ he said, genuinely alarmed. ‘You can’t leave me here all alone.’

  ‘You wouldn’t be alone,’ said Monica. ‘You’d have nice Inspector Wartnaby and all those perfectly charming Artisans.’

  ‘That’s what I mean,’ said Bognor.

  When he finally entered the St Moritz it was just noon and Freddie was just where Wartnaby had said he would be, doing just as had been predicted. The Sporting Life was folded in front of him and the barman, much-chewed yellow pencil poised above the card for this afternoon’s racing at Chepstow, was studying form.

  ‘Morning!’ said Bognor with a cheeriness he was far from feeling.

  One of the Gavins said ‘Morning, sir’ with tolerable brightness and Bognor toyed with joining Freddie in a Virgin Mary before deciding on a half pint of Old Parsnip. He felt there was something hypocritical about soft drinking in licensed premises. And a half pint wouldn’t do a lot of harm. Besides, a half of Old Parsnip was good cover. It was what Freddie would expect from a Board of Trade special investigator engaged in ordinary, routine run-of-the-mill Board of Trade special investigations. If he had been asking serious questions about a murder he would have had a Perrier with ice and lemon. No question.

  ‘First rate stuff, this Parsnip,’ he said, in an effort to break the ice and lead into serious questioning with some genial banter. Bognor reckoned his line in genial banter was almost of professional standard. Indeed when it came to genial banter he thought of himself as international class. Give him a microphone and a clutch of celebrities and he could match Terry Wogan or Johnny Carson any day of the week. He sat down on the high-backed bar stool nearest Freddie and gave a hitch to his brown corduroy trousers, newly purchased because he thought they would be just the thing for Scarpington. He was also wearing his vivid pink and purple Arkwright and Blennerhasset Society tie. The A and B had been his college debating society. That and a check shirt with a Harris tweed jacket completed a picture which, in his humble opinion, was just the ticket for middle England. It wouldn’t do to seem too smart or to have tried too hard, but one’s clothing should be tolerably well made and neutral in tone. Beige, he felt, was the colour most appropriate to middle England. Beige with a loud, striped, meaningful tie. He liked to think that he would have passed without comment in the masters’ Common Room at the King’s School.

  However, in response to his ‘First rate stuff, this Parsnip’, the barman said not a word.

  Bognor sipped the beer, which was indeed excellent, and gazed at the stuffed ferret which reposed on the shelf behind Freddie among the bottles of esoteric whiskies.

  ‘That a ferret?’ he bantered.

  Gavin, polishing a glass, seemed not to hear. Freddie, engrossed in his horses, did not react either.

  Bognor sighed. Perhaps, after all, the full frontal approach would be best. This subtle conversational opening was going nowhere. There was no one else in the bar. The only sound came from the traditional St Moritz cuckoo clock. Why faff around discussing beer and ferrets when they might be getting down to brass tacks?

  He tried again.

  ‘Freddie,’ he said, regretting as he did that he did not know Freddie’s surname. A touch of formality would not, he felt, have come amiss.

  ‘Mr Bognor.’ Freddie raised his eyes to engage Bognor’s. They were pink and rheumy and they twitched. His hand, the one with the pencil in it, twitched too. He did not seem to be in good order. It occurred to Bognor to wonder if, apart from a look of alcoholic dereliction, he also had an appearance of criminal guilt. After all, if Brackett had been murdered, Freddie was in a good position to administer a lethal dose of something liquid.

  ‘I wonder if I might have a word?’ Bognor grinned with an affability he did not feel.

  Freddie looked inscrutable and not encouraging. Eventually he said, ‘Feel free.’

  ‘I’m here to do a survey for my employers, the Board of Trade,’ said Bognor.

  ‘I know,’ said Freddie. He took a translucent cocktail onion from an ash tray, peered at it and then popped it into his mouth. His teeth had the wondrous regularity and sheen which only the National Health can give.

  ‘A sort of general view of what makes the town tick. From a commercial and business point of view.’

  Freddie looked at him in much the same way as he had looked at the onion. This time he said nothing, but nodded.

  Bognor ploughed on regardless. ‘I’m told you’ve been here for more than thirty years. You must have been able to form a pretty authoritative view after all that time.’

  Freddie seemed to be cogitating. Bognor could almost hear the wheels and cogs crunching grey matter about inside that pink, twitching, decayed apology for a head. Bognor wasn’t liking Freddie. He decided to show Freddie his visiting card which would also give him a good view of the inside of his wallet, which happe
ned to be well stuffed with paper money. Freddie perked up at this.

  ‘What’s it worth?’

  ‘Twenty quid.’

  ‘What do you want to know?’ Freddie took the two ten-pound notes. Gavin watched surreptitiously. ‘I’m not giving away any secrets,’ continued the bartender. ‘More than my job’s worth.’ Bognor guessed this was probably true. With Sir Seymour Puce as the top banana he could imagine a word out of turn leading to a no-questions-asked instant dismissal. Even after thirty years’ service.

  ‘Well, for a start,’ said Bognor, ‘who do you think I should talk to if I really want to find out how the town works?’

  ‘Works?’ Freddie swirled a Jolly Trencherman swizzle stick round his drink. ‘Depends what you mean by works.’

  Oh God, Bognor thought to himself. It was going to be one of those interviews. But the barman was beginning to slip into gear. ‘I’ll be honest with you, Mr Bognor,’ he said, with a leer which invalidated the suggestion immediately. ‘My experience is that there are two sorts of situation in life. One is when everything is exactly what it seems. The other is when it’s not.’

  Bognor blasphemed inwardly again. He supposed this sort of philosophy was a hazard of talking to barmen, but it didn’t make it any the less tiresome. He nodded agreement, catching, as he did, a waft of fetid breath stale with pickle and alcohol and cheap cigarette.

  ‘Now, take Scarpington.’

  Bognor nodded again, eyes beginning to glaze. Dammit, he must concentrate. This was supposed to be the most knowledgeable man in Scarpington.

  ‘When I first came here,’ said Freddie, ‘the d’eath-Stranglefields owned the whole of the city and much else besides.’

  The d’eath-Stranglefields being the Earl’s family?’ Bognor had done a little homework.

  ‘Only that was the old Earl, the present Earl’s father. He was a real gentleman.’

  Bognor had a dim recollection of an unreconstructed backwoodsman in an I Zingari tie who descended on the House of Lords once a year to make a choleric intervention on behalf of the blood sport lobby. People like Freddie always thought people like that were ‘real gentlemen’.

  ‘Then,’ continued Freddie, ‘when the old Earl died there were the death duties.’

  He smacked his lips.

  ‘That was a bad time for the family. There was talk of them selling up and moving to South Africa. The Dowager Countess, that’s the present Earl’s mother, gone now, poor soul, was in a dreadful rage, I recall. Blamed it all on the socialists and Mr Butler who she said was a socialist in disguise. They had to sell off a lot of the property. They say some of the diamonds went too and that what the Countess wears now are just paste.’

  ‘Who did they sell to?’ Bognor had a hunch he knew the answer already.

  ‘A lot of it went to old man Puce. Ivan his name was. Worked his way up from nothing. Don’t ask me how he did it, but he was a clever lad. They say he was a racketeer during the war but I don’t set too much store by that. He wouldn’t have been the only one.’

  ‘Not a gentleman?’ Bognor could not resist the dig but the barman was not into sarcasm.

  ‘Not even one of nature’s,’ he said. ‘Not like Sir Seymour. But then if you want to get on in the world you have to cut a few corners. No use playing to the Queensberry rules when the other fellow’s headbutting and punching you in the kidneys. Like the man says, “you’ve got to get your retaliation in first”. Munitions, nylons, booze, all the black market stuff. Nobody knows the whole truth but by the time the old Earl pegged out the Puces were worth a lot of money. Property, car parks, some of it down in London, they say.’

  ‘Who’s “they”?’ Bognor wanted to know.

  Freddie smiled his flashing dentures in a contemptuous grimace. ‘You won’t catch me revealing my sources, Mr Bognor,’ he said. ‘In any event, when I came on the scene in the fifties Ivan Puce was a big man in Scarpington. Rolls-Royce, big Havanas, a string of blondes with strings of pearls, strings of racehorses, an estate on the banks of the Sludgelode. You get the picture?’

  Bognor got the picture.

  ‘Gresham’s Law,’ he said.

  Freddie frowned.

  ‘Bad money drives out good.’

  ‘There was nothing bad about the Puce money. It was real. It was the Earl’s cheques that bounced; the Earl’s creditors who had to wait to get paid.’

  ‘Well, then,’ Bognor wanted to seem conciliatory, ‘new money drives out old. Not quite the same thing.’

  ‘Not at all the same thing, with respect.’

  This was obviously a Thatcherite barman. But the story he told was a story of the times. The Rise and Fall of the Gentry. Each century had its nouveaux riches and its decaying aristocracy. But it was Bognor’s view that the newest generation of parvenus were spivvier than most while the aristocrats they displaced were more than usually dilapidated. But maybe every generation thought like that.

  ‘And now?’ asked Bognor. ‘What’s the state of play now?’

  Freddie seemed to hesitate, then took a plunge. ‘Sir Seymour is the MP; he’s Chairman of Puce Investments; and Puce Developments; and Puce Properties; and the Jolly Trencherman chain of hotels; and Scarpington Thursday. I’m not giving anything away when I tell you that.’ This last was defensive. He really did not want to be accused of telling tales. ‘And Lord Scarpington resides in Scarpington Castle, plays a bit of golf, sits on some boards and some benches. He’s not the man his father was. And as for the Countess …’

  Bognor had noticed Diana, Countess of Scarpington, at the dinner last night. She was the second Countess and was the modern equivalent of a chorus girl. In other words, she had been in some sort of public relations. Upmarket PR as they called it. She was thirty-fiveish, stylish and, last night at least, more than a little tipsy. High cheekbones, eyes like feline soup-bowls and an over-generous mouth and cleavage. Trouble.

  ‘And as for the Countess …?’

  Freddie wasn’t saying. The sub-text was there for the most illiterate to decipher, but Freddie wasn’t spelling it out. Not for twenty quid. Bognor thought about it for a while and then decided not to press the point. It was almost certainly not relevant.

  ‘So where do the Artisans fit into all this?’

  The barman smirked.

  ‘If I were to mix us both a Scarpington Special,’ he said, ‘would you imbibe with me?’

  ‘A Scarpington Special?’ Bognor did not know this drink.

  ‘Same as a Saigon Special, only with a squirt of peach bitters and half a jigger of Old Parsnip to give it a little local colour. Not unlike a Jerusalem Between-the-Sheets.’

  Bognor had to admit that he was not familiar with a Jerusalem Between-the-Sheets either.

  Suddenly the barman’s eyes sparkled and he slid off the stool and seemed to shed twenty or more years. ‘Two Scarpington Specials coming up,’ he said with a flick of the hips and wrist which caused Gavin to pause from his washing-up and suck his teeth.

  ‘Cognac. Only the best. VSOP. Hine for Her Majesty’s sake. One pony. Dry gin. Gordon’s, one half a pony. Cointreau, the same. Lemon juice, one half teaspoon. Two teaspoons of egg white. And the merest soupçon of peach bitters. With the half jigger of Parsnip to finish. Crushed ice.’ He reached for a battered cocktail shaker which sat alongside the stuffed ferret. He poured and sieved and crushed and shook and was galvanised into something quite unrecognisable. It all took longer to perform than recite but before too terribly long two tall-stemmed cocktail glasses were on the bar full of frothing icy Special. Bognor sipped and felt the back of his head take a pace backwards.

  ‘Wow,’ he said. ‘Where did you learn that?’

  ‘It dates,’ said Freddie, ‘back to the SS Resolute in the year 1925 somewhere between Saigon and Pak Nam. Oh Christ, I forgot the cherry.’ Whereupon he found two, stuck them on sticks and plonked them into the drinks.

  ‘Yes, but …’ Bognor had not had a proper answer.

  ‘I worked for Roy Aciatore at An
toine’s in New Orleans after I was demobbed,’ answered Freddie. ‘He taught me the Sazarac. I could do you a September Morn like they shook at the Ingleterre in Havana before Castro was conceived. Or a Kelly Shamrock Special or a Shanghai Buck or an Anejo Candido or a Wilson’s South Camp Road or a Rangoon Star Ruby or a Sunday Vespers or a Vladivostock Virgin or a White Rat which has a jigger of absinthe and a half pony of anis del mono. Or Farewell to Hemingway which is a kirsch collins with a spiral of green lime. Ye Gods, but doesn’t it make you weep.’

  Bognor sort of agreed. In fact he was transfixed. The little barman was transformed. In fact, briefly, he was poetry in potion.

  Bognor took another short draught of the exotic drink and began to worry about the remainder of his day.

  ‘Amazing!’ he said, and then a cloud of doubt and apprehension no larger than a man’s fist passed briefly before his eyes. He saw Freddie squirt the remainder of his peach bitters into the little barman’s sink and he watched him put a small, water-pistol-like object back into his trouser pocket.

  ‘I say,’ he said, ‘now what’s that?’

  And just as suddenly the mood was changed and they were back from Havana and Saigon and New Orleans and the ghosts of Papa Hemingway and Roy Aciatore and they were home where they both belonged in the tarted-up bar of a three-star hotel in middle England where a man had died not far away the night before telling one of the oldest jokes in Britain. And Bognor said again, ‘What’s that?’

  And the barman coughed and drank and said, ‘It was a present from Hubert on the old Queen Mary. A barman’s friend. Your old quill-top bottle stopper which none of us would have been without in the good old days before Real Ale and Wine Bars when cocktails were cocktails.’