Blue Blood Will Out (The Simon Bognor Mysteries) Read online

  ‘Sold a Canaletto.’

  ‘Oh.’ It was a difficult remark to follow.

  The two of them were staring self-consciously into space, wondering what to say next when the door opened, and four strangers entered. It was immediately clear, both to Bognor and Basil Lydeard, that not only were they strangers in the sense that they had not been introduced but in the sense that they were aliens. Interlopers, no less. They comprised a family: a father of middle age with receding hair, heavy National Health spectacles, baggy grey flannel trousers, a windcheater and a pair of those heavy leather sandals which look surgical but aren’t; a wife in tight, bulging tartan slacks, and a cardigan over a loud check shirt; an adolescent son kitted out much like his father; and a slightly younger daughter in a cotton printed dress. Father carried a camera, the two adults also had guide books and all four were chewing. On entering the library they betrayed no sign of embarrassment or guilt, no awareness of trespass. Instead they closed the door behind them and stood alternately consulting the guide books and peering about the room in the general direction of Bognor and Lydeard.

  ‘’Ere, Mavis,’ said Father, tugging at his wife’s sleeve, ‘look at this. Must be worth a fortune.’ He pointed at a huge and particularly ugly plate salver which Bognor had noticed the previous night. It had been presented to the Abneys at their wedding by the tenants on the surviving Abney lands. (Most had almost immediately been dispossessed. Perhaps, thought Bognor, in retribution for so foul a wedding present.)

  ‘Solid silver, that is,’ said Father, ‘and over a hundred years old by the look of it.’

  Bognor, not wishing to cause any confrontation, slid a hand surreptitiously in the direction of the morning’s Daily Telegraph on a nearby table, intending to hide behind it. Even perhaps to derive some harmless entertainment from the family’s comments. However he was spotted.

  ‘Hey, Dad,’ said the boy, in a loud whisper, ‘look at that. One of them moved.’

  ‘Shhhh. Your mum and I are looking at something.’ The two continued to stare, misty-eyed, at the salver. They had evidently spotted the inscription, and were reading it to themselves. Their lips moved in unison and after a moment Mavis touched her husband’s elbow. ‘That’s lovely,’ she said. ‘That’s really lovely.’

  ‘’Ere. Mum, Dad.’ The daughter had also, apparently, discovered that the two men at the other end were alive. ‘Do you think we ought to be in here?’

  The two parents looked at her with irritation. ‘What you talking about, Else?’ asked her mother peevishly. ‘Just have a look at all those wonderful books.’ She moved over to a bookcase and screwed up her eyes to read the titles. ‘Power to Destroy,’ she enunciated carefully. ‘A Study of the British Tax System… Portnoy’s Complaint… Tropic of Cancer… The Female Eunuch… Mysteries of Orgasm.’ She paused. ‘Fred,’ she said, ‘look. I think these are dirty books.’

  ‘Don’t be soft,’ said Fred. ‘Look at that picture. That’s nice.’

  ‘Don’t care for that sort of thing myself,’ said Mavis sniffily. It was a Hockney. Bognor hadn’t cared for it either.

  ‘Mum, Dad, will you listen?’ The two children had woken to the true situation rather more quickly than their parents. Bognor, embattled behind the Telegraph, looked round the corner of the paper at Basil Lydeard and was alarmed to see that he had gone a dangerous shade of scarlet.

  At the other end of the room the family of interlopers were in conference. It was strained. Bognor heard:

  ‘You been nothing but a nuisance ever since we left Croydon.’

  ‘I tell you, it’s private. Where do you think everyone else is, if it’s not private.’

  ‘I paid my bloody money. Course it’s not private. Nothing’s private. It’s open to the public, innit? Open. O-P-E-N.’

  ‘Fred. Language. It’s not nice.’

  ‘Dad, we’re not supposed to be here. Look at that man, the way he’s watching us.’

  ‘Let him bleeding watch. Who is he anyway?’

  ‘It’s probably him.’

  ‘What, him?’

  ‘Yes, Sir Abney.’

  ‘So what if it bleeding is? It’s a free country.’

  ‘Dad!’

  ‘Fred!’

  Bognor heard a sudden movement from the armchair on his left. Lydeard could evidently stand it no longer. Expecting him to beat a dignified retreat and find another haven somewhere else in the house, Bognor settled down to the paper. He was surprised a second later to hear that the Marquess was not leaving. Instead he was joining battle.

  ‘Now just look here,’ he heard him say, with only a trace of his usual querulous diffidence. ‘This is a scandal. Now get out immediately, before I throw you out.’

  Not for the first time that morning, Bognor shut his eyes and counted to ten.

  ‘Now just you look here, mate,’ he heard Fred say. ‘I don’t know who you are, but we paid our money to come in here and look at some of these priceless pieces of heritage and we’re not leaving till we seen them.’

  Bognor peered round the Telegraph and saw, to his horror, that Lydeard was wielding a poker.

  ‘You’ll be out of here by the time I count ten, you horrid little oik, or you’ll be prosecuted for trespass. One, two…’

  ‘I paid my bloody money, you bloody old man, and I’ll bloody stay until I want.’

  ‘Three, four…’

  ‘Oh, come on, Fred, let’s get out, I don’t think he’s right in the head.’

  ‘I’m frightened, Mum.’

  ‘Five, six…’

  Bognor, who didn’t like the way Lydeard was waving the poker, decided that it was time to intervene, coughed loudly and stood up. ‘I say, er… Basil,’ he began, but was saved from more decisive action by the door, which opened, revealing Monica.

  ‘Good heavens,’ she said, taking in the scene, and then spotting Bognor, she smiled. ‘Oh, good. I thought I’d find you in here.’

  Bognor moved to the door. ‘Hello,’ he said, ‘Monica darling, this is the Marquess of Lydeard. Basil, this is my fiancée, Monica.’

  ‘Ah, how do you do.’ The Marquess put out a hand and then realizing that it contained a poker withdrew it again. Then he dropped the poker noisily and re-extended the hand. ‘How do you do.’

  ‘How do you do,’ said Monica. ‘I’m sorry, I hope I wasn’t interrupting anything.’

  ‘No, no, that’s quite all right.’ Lydeard’s complexion had reverted to its usual mottled purple and he seemed to have regained his composure. ‘No, I’m afraid I became a little over-excited by some trespassers.’

  ‘Well, they’ve gone now, anyway,’ said Bognor, going to the door and peering down the corridor. He could see the retreating rears of the interlopers at the far end, heading back into the public sector, muttering. He closed the door. ‘One of the inevitable hazards of being in this sort of business, I suppose,’ he said lightly.

  Lydeard glowered and then relaxed. ‘Shouldn’t happen in a well-run household. Never happened at Lydeard. Had to see off a couple of journalists once, but that’s rather different.’ He turned to Monica. ‘Have a gin?’

  Monica nodded and said yes, and the old man rang the bell. After a few minutes of relatively idle chatter the room started to fill in readiness for lunch. Lydeard had asked if Bognor would mind very much saying nothing about the incident. ‘No point in embarrassing Abney,’ he said. ‘He’s got a trying day ahead of him.’

  The only person who could be embarrassed, was, of course, Lydeard himself, but Bognor agreed. It was a trivial matter, best forgotten. Instead, the two men found common ground in a tribute to some giants of Somerset’s cricketing past, and Lydeard’s humour was much restored with a description of a cricket week he had once organized forty years earlier when a team, captained by him, had defeated the Somerset Stragglers, the Devon Dumplings and a strong I Zingari XI. In this welter of unlikely reminiscence, the interlopers were put out of mind. Bognor only hoped they wouldn’t make some formal complaint and ask for the
ir money back.

  In view of the afternoon’s excitement lunch was, by Abney standards, a hurried unceremonial affair. Conversation centred exclusively on the new steam exhibits and was of a flattering sort. Lydeard, suffering perhaps from guilt, even asked if he could have a private preview of the Lysander. A request which was greeted with approving acquiescence. Honeysuckle Johnson was conspicuously silent throughout, but all the others were, between mouthfuls of caviar and salmon trout, garrulously ingratiating. Sir Canning was particularly impressive, discoursing with equal eloquence on the significance of the voyage of the Charlotte Dundas, the possibility of planning permission for the inevitable new car park, loaded governors and double-beat lift valves, the China Mutual Steam Navigation Company, the possibility of acquiring a proper maritime site for bigger and more spectacular vessels and Gooch’s link motion.

  Afterwards Monica and Bognor went for a stroll.

  ‘You’ve never called me “your fiancée” before,’ she said. ‘Absolute cheek!’

  ‘It seemed appropriate. I don’t think Lydeard would approve of “girl friend”, not without a chaperone.’

  ‘You could be right. What exactly was he doing with that poker?’

  Bognor told her.

  ‘He’s a bit peppery, isn’t he?’ she said, when he’d finished.

  ‘Liver, I should think.’

  ‘But he wouldn’t have shot the Earl just because he was having trouble with his liver?’

  ‘Hardly. But anything’s possible here.’

  ‘Who do you really think did it?’

  ‘Could have been anyone, couldn’t it?’ They sat down on the lawn near the cedar, and Bognor took out a diary and started to make another list.

  ‘Ready?’ he said, pencil poised. ‘Right, Men first. Abney could have killed him because he wouldn’t merge the business. As Dora’s having an affair with Peter Williams, Abney might think she would be more malleable without a husband.’

  ‘If you ask me she’ll be having an affair with you next.’

  ‘That’s silly. I suppose he did leave the estate to her? I know there isn’t supposed to be a direct heir, but there could be some forgotten cousin in Australia.’

  ‘Doubt it.’

  ‘Williams next. Motive. He wanted Dora and he’d rather like the estate too.’

  ‘But he has an alibi.’

  ‘Almost. Of course he and Abney might have plotted it together. Next one, Grithbrice. He has the same business motive as Abney. He wanted the merger just as much. Then he has a political motive, at second-hand anyway.’

  ‘Through Miss Johnson? She looked a sulky bitch at lunch.’

  ‘But sexy?’

  ‘Not particularly. Just black and busty.’

  ‘That’s rather what I meant.’

  ‘Well, he’d hardly murder for her. Anyway I don’t see why, just because she is a leading Mangolan nationalist, she should want to murder the Earl of Maidenhead.’

  ‘He might have negotiated a settlement with the Rhodesians. That would be bad news for any African nationalist, so he’d be better dead.’

  Monica sniffed. ‘I think you’ll have to do better than that.’

  ‘That’s what Smith said. The trouble with people outside the department is they always think things are simple. They never are. They’re always incredibly complicated. I think we’ll find the whole thing is an elaborate plot with everyone implicated and with a number of interlocking motives. Lydeard’s liver, coupled with a general wish to expand the stately-home industry into Rhodesia under the Abney-Arborfield banner.’

  ‘That doesn’t take Mr. Green into account.’

  ‘No. He has two motives. I bet he was having an affair with Maidenhead. Perhaps they had a tiff. Then again, he owed him money, and I’ll bet it was more than just a few thousand.’

  ‘All right. Two motives for Mr. Green. That leaves the McCrum.’

  ‘Sexual again. Maidenhead was having it off with Lady McCrum.’

  ‘You surely don’t believe that?’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘She’s a podgy little suet pudding.’

  ‘Probably very good in bed.’

  ‘I should think the McCrum would be glad to have her off his hands. What’s her name, the McCrumba?’

  ‘Mabel.’

  ‘Well, there you are, then.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘The Earl of Maidenhead would never have an affair with someone called Mabel.’

  ‘He married someone called Dora.’

  ‘Oh, all right.’ She pouted. ‘What about the women?’

  ‘I don’t think it was a woman.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because I think the person who pushed me in the river was the same person who murdered Freddie Maidenhead, and I was pushed in the river by a man. I saw his legs when I was trying to climb out.’

  ‘That’s speculation.’

  ‘So’s everything,’ said Bognor gloomily. ‘Well, women then, if you insist. The Johnson girl we’ve discussed. We can mark her down in the book for political.’ He did so.

  ‘Dora Maidenhead because she wanted to be free to carry on with Williams. I think that’s unlikely. First of all she was very happy being Lady Maidenhead, I’m sure. Second she was at the Compleat Angler that night, and thirdly she’d never have shot him. She’d have put something in his tea or stabbed him with a pair of scissors.

  Monica sighed. ‘Why scissors? You’re so typical of a man. It would be very clever to shoot him because all men would automatically assume that it had been done by a man. Shooting is a male crime. Men shoot people. Women stab people with scissors. If I was a man and wanted to do the perfect murder I’d use scissors. Everyone would assume automatically that it has been done by a woman.’

  ‘I still think Dora’s unlikely.’

  ‘’Cos she kissed you.’

  ‘That leaves Mabel McCrum. She’d hardly shoot him if they were having an affair.’

  ‘Male chauvinist,’ said Monica. ‘You’re at it again. If Cosmo Green could kill him because they had a tiff then so could the McCrumba.’

  ‘I wish you wouldn’t call her the McCrumba.’

  ‘Well, couldn’t she?’

  ‘Yes, if you insist,’ he said testily. ‘So absolutely every single rotten person had a motive.’

  ‘You’ve left someone out.’

  ‘No. Who?’

  ‘Lady Abney.’

  ‘Gosh. So I have. I’d forgotten about her. Does she have a motive?’

  They thought. Monica was picking daisies. Bognor sucked the end of the pencil and watched the moorhens’ heads jerk. ‘You know,’ he said, at length, ‘I don’t think she has a motive.’

  ‘Just at the moment she may not,’ said Monica, ‘but she will.’

  Bognor was on the point of upbraiding her for this cynicism when, with much theatrical coughing, Grithbrice and Miss Johnson came marching towards them hand in hand.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Grithbrice. ‘We’re not interrupting are we?’

  ‘Not at all,’ said Bognor. The two newcomers sat down beside them.

  ‘What are you going to recommend about the Umdaka?’ asked Grithbrice, his semi-Afro haircut waving in the breeze. Bognor looked hard at the sensitive, aristocratic face, and wondered.

  ‘I think,’ he said, ‘I should be able to recommend that he come here and look at the boats. Subject to one or two conditions.’

  ‘Like, I suppose, that we’re not here,’ said Honeysuckle Johnson, coolly.

  ‘Well, yes, actually.’ Bognor tried to look at her evenly, but found her sexuality disturbing. ‘I mean, if, as I understand, you are a leading member of the Mangolan nationalist organization or whatever, I can hardly agree to let you within range of the Umdaka.’

  ‘Do you realize,’ asked Grithbrice, ‘that that tyrannical old bastard has actually had two members of Honey’s family burnt alive? Do you have any conception of what he’s done to that country?’

  ‘Look, I’m awfully sorry
,’ said Bognor, ‘I’m not a politician. I have to do as I’m told, that’s all.’

  ‘Huh,’ Miss Johnson smiled. ‘Look, all I want is to get to talk to him, that’s all. Just talk. I don’t even know if my father and mother are alive out there.’

  ‘They disappeared after the revolution,’ said Grithbrice, ‘or what our papers referred to as “the abortive coup”. Nobody knows if they were killed or if the Umdaka locked them up.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Bognor, ‘I really am, but you must see my position.’

  ‘Like hell,’ said Miss Johnson.

  ‘Oh, be fair, Honey,’ said Grithbrice, ‘he’s only doing a job.’

  ‘That’s what I object to. How in God’s name can you do a job without any conception of the moral issues involved?’

  ‘That’s not fair,’ said Monica, ‘Simon has a perfectly good idea of the moral issues involved; and you’re not making it any easier for him.’

  The two women glared at one another.

  ‘Why don’t you ask Sir Canning to intercede with the Umdaka?’ asked Bognor.

  ‘He never would. First he’s a sight too impressed with the Umdaka’s noble lineage and all that crap about the Umdakadom going back two thousand years; and second, despite his liberal mouthings he’s pretty near as fascist as Archie McCrum when it comes down to it.’

  ‘You don’t sound exactly well disposed towards your future business partner.’

  Grithbrice was startled. ‘You’re brighter than you look, aren’t you?’ he said, crossly. ‘I wonder who told you that. Can’t have been Lydeard this time, he doesn’t know. Anyway, nothing’s signed or agreed except in principle. I’m not at all sure it would work. It sounds great in theory, but it could just mean more paperwork.’

  ‘I understand you tried to get Lord Maidenhead in on the act.’

  ‘Not me, that was Canning’s idea. Freddie was too flash for my liking. But what exactly are you getting at?’

  ‘Nothing. It’s nothing to do with me.’

  ‘You’re right, I don’t think it is.’ He got up and brushed down his trousers. ‘Well, I just thought I ought to put you in the picture. There’s nothing secret about it though. We’re starting an Anglo-Mangolan Friendship Society soon, and it’ll be announced in the normal way. There’s nothing to hide. Come on, Honey, we’d better go and change for the great event.’