Masterstroke (The Simon Bognor Mysteries) Read online

  Instead he was bound for the incident room, alias the Shakespeare Room, where twenty years ago he had sung madrigals and rounds with the Apocrypha Glee Club, listened to interminable learned papers at the Lecky (Historical) Society and the Trollope (English Literature) Club, the latter named after another distinguished Apocrypha man. In lighter and more drunken vein there had been a frivolous debating society called the Arkwright and Blennerhasset, christened after two of the college’s most generous benefactors. This too had met in the Shakespeare Room, which was large enough to accommodate about a hundred people. It was on the ground floor, with French windows leading on to a new terrace – presented by a distinguished, now assassinated, African alumnus – which in turn led onto lawns which fell away towards the river by Folly Bridge. Bognor had played croquet on this lawn throughout his final summer. It had not helped with his final exams.

  ‘Come.’ The inspector’s voice was out of character. It did not sit well with his memories. Nor did the Shakespeare Room, which was now equipped with telephones, maps, charts and two policewomen.

  ‘Hello there,’ said the inspector, who was sitting in his shirt-sleeves, surrounded by paper. ‘You’ll have seen the evening paper?’

  Bognor nodded. ‘Rather a bore,’ he said. ‘Inevitable, I suppose.’

  ‘I suppose so, yes. Some of the press are here already. Woman from the Daily Globe came barging in here only a few minutes ago. Don’t know how she got here so quickly. Not a bad looker.’

  ‘No,’ agreed Bognor. ‘I passed her on my way in.’

  ‘Oh. Know her, do you?’ The inspector looked conspiratorial. Bognor did not care for the expression and its implications. He suspected that Monica was correct in her accusations. Chief-Inspector Smith was the sort of man who was heavily into dirty magazines. It was on the tip of Bognor’s tongue to ask if he had ever worked on the vice squad. But he did not.

  ‘We worked together, briefly, a few years ago. The St John Derby murder. You may remember.’

  ‘When Lord Wharfedale and his son …? Remember it? I should think I do. Went from bad to worse. Hope we’re not going to have anything like that here. One murder at a time is an ample sufficiency.’

  ‘I couldn’t agree more,’ said Bognor. ‘But if you’re dealing with a homicidal maniac you can never be too sure.’

  The inspector looked quizzically at his colleague from the Board of Trade. ‘Think this is a Master-killer, do you? Maybe we should put a twenty-four-hour guard on the heads of all Oxford colleges? Maybe we’re dealing with a candidate for admission who got turned down. Or someone with a grudge against authority.’

  ‘Sorry,’ said Bognor, puzzled. ‘I didn’t mean to seem frivolous, for once.’

  ‘No? Well, that’s all right. Long day.’ The inspector sighed. ‘And we’re nowhere near a solution. Haven’t even got the washing-up back from the labs. How was Vole?’

  ‘Oh,’ said Bognor, ‘no help, I’m afraid. He just wanted to talk about his research project.’ That was true as far as it went, he thought. He did not greatly care for Vole, but a confidence was a confidence and he was certainly not going to betray it to a dirty-minded policeman. In forty-eight hours he would tell the chappie. Not before.

  ‘What’s he like, this Vole?’ asked the inspector. ‘Any grounds for suspecting him?’

  ‘Not that I’m aware of. He’s an assistant professor at a small but smart university in the United States – Virginia Creeper league! Clever, able, reasonably successful. No visible axe to grind with the Master – nor anyone else, come to that.’

  ‘Hmmm.’ The policeman leaned back in his chair and pushed the end of a pencil into his mouth, rattling his teeth with it. Then he removed it, tilted the chair back to an upright position, and wrote on a piece of foolscap. ‘Mind if we just run through the characters of our main suspects?’ he asked. ‘I’ll be seeing them in person, but it would help to have some leads.’

  ‘All right. But I can’t be a lot of help. The gaudy was the first time I’d seen most of them for twenty years.’

  ‘Understood,’ said Smith. ‘Though twenty years ago may be exactly what we need. I have the impression our motives for this crime are embedded in the past. That’s when you and your friends knew Beckenham best. Take you, for instance. Don’t suppose you’d seen the old boy much since you left?’

  ‘No,’ agreed Bognor. ‘He’d hardly crossed my mind, let alone my threshold.’

  ‘No correspondence? No phone conversations about the good old days? No tea-time reminiscences at his London club?’

  ‘We didn’t have that sort of relationship. And I wasn’t exactly a favoured son.’

  ‘Not un-favoured?’ Smith screwed his eyes up in his suspicious expression.

  ‘No, not at all. Just a bit, well …’ Bognor flushed. ‘Run of the mill. Apocrypha was … is … a rather special place. Unless you were going to get a first, or edit Isis, or be President of the Union or win at least one blue, no one paid any real attention to you. Excellence was the only thing which really rated. Super-excellence. I was pretty solid beta with occasional spectacular descents to gamma.’

  ‘And the others? Edgware, Vole, Rook and Crutwell?’

  Bognor smiled wistfully. ‘Golden boys,’ he said, ‘all of them, in their different ways. Firsts, each one of them – though how Humphrey Rook did it I’ll never know. He wasn’t as clever as the others and he was bone-idle. It was his political theory that turned the scales, apparently. ‘Pure alpha. Purest alpha anyone had seen in years. Couldn’t understand it myself. We did political theory tutes together and I thought his essays were the most turgid imaginable. The Master thought so too, as far as I can remember.’

  ‘And you did not get a pure alpha, I suppose.’ Smith grinned condescendingly.

  ‘Beta query gamma,’ said Bognor. ‘Story of my life.’

  Smith’s smile seemed more sympathetic this time.

  ‘Tell me about Rook,’ he said.

  Bognor sighed involuntarily and thought back to his first encounter with Rook. It had been at the Apocrypha scholarship exam, when they had been billeted together on the same staircase. He remembered how precocious Rook had seemed – infinitely more adult than any of the other candidates. He had kept a bottle of Dubonnet in his room and smoked Abdulla Turkish cigarettes. Also he had been seen with a woman, or to be more accurate, a girl from Cranborne Chase. The girl wore fishnet stockings and great streaks of eye shadow, both of which rendered her even more inaccessible and intimidating to Bognor and his equally callow fellow-candidates. It had been the same when they came up at the beginning of their first term. Rook began by wearing a smoking jacket and affecting to be a disciple of first Bakunin and later Kropotkin. Bognor now doubted whether he had actually read either, but at the time, having barely heard of either of the two Russian anarchists, he was suitably impressed. It was noticeable that Rook was a creature of fad. He switched unceasingly from one guru to another, so that it was virtually impossible for anyone to keep either pace or track. Such was indeed his intention.

  ‘He’d got himself very well organized,’ said Bognor. ‘He decided to cut a figure and he did. His main aim in life was upstaging the rest of us. I think he knew he didn’t have the intellect to take the Voles and Crutwells on at their own game so he dictated the terms himself.’

  ‘And it worked?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Bognor, ‘I think it did.’

  ‘No discernible motive, though?’

  ‘None that I can see.’

  ‘And now …’ Smith was ruminative, ‘has he fulfilled that youthful promise? Is he still a poseur and a con man?’

  ‘He’s something in the City.’

  ‘Does that answer my question?’ Smith seemed uncertain.

  ‘I think so. He’s joined the Church of England and the Tory Party.’

  Smith raised his eyebrows. ‘Bit out of character, isn’t it?’

  ‘Not really. He’s always been a step or two ahead of the game. He joined the Conservatives ju
st before it became acceptable again, and he hit the religious bandwagon in the same way. I agree Roman Catholicism would have been smarter, but I think there’s a will he’s afraid of getting cut out of.’

  ‘Does he have a seat, or a prospective one?’

  ‘The buzz is,’ said Bognor, ‘that he’s the front runner for Sheen Central, which is about as safe as Cheltenham.’

  Smith made a neat note. ‘That’s Rook and Vole,’ he said. ‘What about Edgware and Crutwell?’

  ‘Heavenly twins,’ said Bognor, none too kindly. ‘Permanent haloes. Scarcely separable, either. They did everything together. They were joint presidents of the Arkwright and Blennerhasset; they played Algernon and Jack in the college production of The Importance, they shared the Newdigate poetry prize and in their final year they lived together in digs in Holywell.’

  ‘Lived together?’ Smith arched his eyebrows.

  ‘Not in that way.’ Bognor scratched his scalp absent-mindedly. ‘At least I don’t think so – although, now that you mention it, there was something spooky about their relationship.’

  ‘Did they have women?’

  Bognor thought. He had been rather incurious about other people’s sexual relationships. On the whole he was inclined to think that most of the sex was being carried on by a small minority. He, of course, had had Monica most of the time. Crutwell and Edgware had always been surrounded by women. Men, too. Safety in numbers? Innocence perhaps. ‘I honestly don’t know,’ he said finally. ‘I’d be quite surprised if they had anyone in particular. They dispensed charm evenly. No fear. No favour.’

  ‘Promiscuous, you mean,’ said Smith, a little too eagerly.

  ‘No, I don’t think so. I think they were too busy being elegant and witty and wonderful to have much time for sex.’

  ‘Homosexual?’

  ‘It honestly hadn’t occurred to me before,’ said Bognor, ‘but now that you mention it, well, yes, I suppose it is just possible. Crutwell used to be quite pretty. Still is. Edgware was more macho. And I think they shared a study at whatever school they were at. Stowe, I think. Or Uppingham. Somewhere up there.’

  ‘They didn’t consort with known homosexuals?’

  ‘There weren’t many known homosexuals,’ said Bognor, a shade peevishly. ‘One or two dons. A dreadful pouf in Magdalen who used to dress exclusively in lime-green.’

  ‘Not a profitable line of inquiry, then?’

  ‘Not particularly.’

  Smith scratched at his notes. ‘And what happened to them? They presumably became separable at last?’

  ‘Both married with children. Ultra-conventional and respectable. Edgware is a great whizz in the FO. Just back from Moscow. A year or so on the Soviet desk, and then who knows what? A key job, that’s certain.’

  ‘And Crutwell?’

  Bognor told him about Crutwell’s job at Ampleside and about his aspirations at Sherborne, Cranlingham and Fraffleigh.

  Smith scribbled and smiled. At last he seemed satisfied. ‘Good,’ he said. ‘Now we’re getting somewhere.’

  ‘Oh?’ Bognor could not see that they were getting anywhere at all, but he was certainly not going to admit it to chief-inspector chappie. ‘I must be getting back,’ he said. ‘I’m meeting someone.’

  ‘Not the delectable Dr Frinton, by any chance?’ asked the policeman, smiling greasily.

  ‘No,’ said Bognor, wishing it was.

  ‘Ah.’ Smith rubbed his hands. ‘Will Mrs Bognor be joining you in Oxford?’

  ‘Depends how long I’m here for,’ he said. ‘She’ll come at the weekend unless we’re finished by then.’

  ‘You must bring her out to meet the missus,’ said the inspector. ‘Come and sample the dandelion and burdock. Amazing what you can do with these home-made wine kits. The moselle-style elderberry takes your breath away, and as for the blackberry claret …’

  ‘Sounds wonderful.’ Bognor fingered his collar. He could just imagine Monica’s expression when she learned that she was going to a wine-tasting given by the would-be rapist of her youth. ‘Meanwhile, though, what are we going to do about the press?’ he asked.

  ‘As little as possible. Main thing is to stop your friend Mitten talking to them. I have the impression he quite fancies having his name and picture all over the papers.’

  ‘Won’t do him any good if he’s really after the mastership,’ said Bognor. ‘The one thing the Apocrypha High Table values is discretion. The only time any of them talk to the press is when they win a Nobel Prize. And that only happens every other year.’

  Bognor got up to go. Suddenly he felt exhausted – it had been a gruelling day. Quite apart from the intellectual effort involved in a day of heavy sleuthing, he was physically exhausted too. He hadn’t walked so far in years. His suede shoes were not made for it – nor, he reflected, wincing, were his feet, which had grown flat with age and neglect. He wasn’t at all sure he hadn’t got an ingrowing toenail. And a blister. If he had been at home Monica would have made him a mustard bath. As it was he had ordeal by Molly Mortimer to endure. And he was still rather hoping he might be able to take in the promised gin and tonic chez Frinton.

  It was chilly in the street. He turned up his collar and began to mooch lugubriously north towards the Randolph. Who would have thought, in those days of their gilded youth – their gilded youth, not his – that they would have ended up as murder suspects? And the Master’s murderers at that. What had they got in common, he asked himself as he tracked along the wall of Christ Church, past Trevor-Roper’s old house. MA Oxon, the shared experience of three years in the superior splendour of Apocrypha, but was there anything else? The others still saw the world from a vantage-point of success, but for himself very little had gone right since he had left the university. Getting a place at Apocrypha was, one might say, his last real achievement. What had he got to look forward to but more footling years investigating piffling misdeeds and infringements of the regulations on behalf of the perfectly bloody Board of Trade? Unless his request for transfer actually came through. Perhaps he would be posted to the FO. Who knows, he might find himself sent as third secretary to Ulan Bator, with Edgware as ambassador. That would be a turn up for the book. Not that they would send a Young Turk like Edgware to anywhere as God-forsaken as Mongolia. Not even as his country’s youngest ambassador.

  He paused at the traffic lights. Funny, that. He and Edgware both at a turning-point in their lives. Edgware waiting for his significant next job, the one that would mark him out as a high flier who was coming good, a bright white hope sustained. Himself hanging in desperately for a release from the quagmire of the Board of Trade. Very different rites of passage, yet both turning-points. At least they had that in common, he and Edgware. Youth now irrevocably behind them, they waited for the first assignment of middle years. He frowned. Was that a clue? He crossed the street and shuffled on, rapt in thought, muttering. Crutwell too. He was at a moment of choice, decision – destiny even. Headmastership loomed. He would get one. Naturally. But if he didn’t he would end his life as Mr Chips. Yes, that was the choice: Mr Chips or Dr Arnold.

  And what about Vole? Vole’s book was a vital part of his life. It had not only obsessed him for years, it was a necessary passport to the next rung on the ladder. A professional success would mean a full professorship, invitations to lecture, to contribute learned papers to learned journals. A failure would consign him permanently to the academic dustbin. ‘Vole?’ they would mutter in senior common rooms whenever his name came up for an Oxford fellowship. ‘Wasn’t he the man who wrote that rather dim book on traitors and fellow-travellers?’ And on receiving the answer ‘yes’ they would sniff into their port and pass onto the next candidate.

  Bognor had reached the Randolph. He walked into the foyer with a new lightness of step. A theory was emerging. A half-baked theory to be sure, in fact so flimsy a theory that it could hardly be dignified with the name. It was hardly ready for baking at all, and yet it was a beginning of sorts. There was Rook too –
front runner for Sheen Central. And Mitten, perhaps he really did covet the Mastership. Quite what all this had to do with the murder he couldn’t say. But suddenly he found that he was almost looking forward to dinner.

  There were two messages waiting in reception, one from Monica and one from Hermione Frinton. Neither contained anything except a request to telephone, but the porter who handed him the notes, together with the room keys, favoured him with a knowing look which Bognor did not enjoy. He did not return it, but merely accepted what was his and went upstairs to bathe. He frowned and whistled in the lift, mild elation and definite perplexity storming about in his brain like a cerebral Punch and Judy show. It was like getting the first word in a three-part crossword clue. Practically all the suspects had careers in the balance, but so what? Why should Peter Crutwell murder the Master because he wanted to be headmaster of Fraffleigh? Or Ian Edgware because he wanted a key job in Washington or Brussels and not a back number in Bogota?

  He turned on the bath and emptied a few drops of Balenciaga bath oil, a souvenir of an earlier misadventure, into the tub. Then he went to phone Monica. She would be able to throw a little light. She was good at that. Regular little spotlight. One thing, though – there was no way Vole could have done it. Not if Beckenham was the missing link in his masterpiece. He’d hardly have done the old boy in just as he was on the point of coughing up. Unless, of course, Vole had founded his theories on a complete mistake. If so, then Beckenham would have sent the whole edifice crumbling like the proverbial pack of cards. Vole’s book would have vanished. So maybe that’s it, he thought. Vole realized that the Master was the missing spoke rather than the missing link and so he murdered him. Once he was safely dead he could vilify him to his heart’s content. Common practice these days to speak ill of the dead. In fact the dead seemed to him to be getting an increasingly raw deal in this barbaric age. No one had a good word to say for them. His wife’s voice interrupted his ramblings.