Masterstroke (The Simon Bognor Mysteries) Read online

  ‘Monica?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Me.’

  ‘So I hear.’

  ‘Yes. Well. You OK?’

  ‘Fine, thank you very much. And you?’

  Bognor wondered why she was being so polite. Sloping off for a rhogan jhosht with some old lover as soon as his back was turned, he shouldn’t wonder. Guilt. That was it.

  ‘I need some help,’ he said.

  ‘Surprise me.’

  ‘Don’t be unpleasant. You were being so nice a moment or two ago.’

  She laughed. Not unpleasantly, but with the relaxed condescension of a woman who has lived with a man for years and knows his faults. As a matter of fact Monica preferred Bognor’s faults to his virtues and she enjoyed being leaned on. ‘I’m not being unpleasant,’ she said. ‘I just know what’s coming. You’ve got some bits of jigsaw but you can’t fit them together.’

  ‘Something like that,’ conceded Bognor. ‘I don’t want to say too much on the phone.’ He lowered his voice. ‘There are one or two of the staff here I’m not too keen on. The point is that all our suspects were at a crossroads.’

  ‘Crossroads?’

  ‘Metaphorically speaking, if you follow. They were all in for jobs, promotions, advancements, things like that.’

  ‘And you think that may make a motive?’

  ‘It had crossed my mind.’

  ‘Darling, I hate to remind you but I’ve already suggested the motive, only you don’t want them all to have motives.’ She sighed. ‘I mean, you’re not going to make out that they all did it. Like Murder on the Orient Express.’

  ‘No,’ said Bognor unhappily, ‘I suppose not. Only it did seem a funny coincidence.’

  ‘Not that I can see,’ said Monica briskly. ‘You’re all, what, in your late thirties to early forties? That’s a very significant stage in a man’s life. It would be surprising if you weren’t all set for change.’

  ‘I suppose so.’ Bognor felt let down. ‘I thought I was getting somewhere,’ he ventured.

  ‘Well.’ She paused to take a drink of something. Bognor heard her swallowing. Next door his bathwater was still running. ‘All I can see is references. But if they were all little heroes why should that worry them? You have to find skeletons in their cupboards.’

  Bognor thought about this. Before long his bathwater would start to overflow. And he still had to call Hermione. Besides which, he didn’t have long in which to change for Molly. Suddenly life seemed fraught with complications. ‘Are you saying that they’d have named the Master as a referee?’

  ‘Seems likely.’

  Bognor rubbed his paunch absent-mindedly and contemplated his youth as if down a reversed telescope.

  ‘But it’s such a long time ago.’

  ‘What’s twenty years in a man approaching the menopause?’

  ‘But an evening gone,’ admitted Bognor. ‘Nevertheless …’

  ‘Don’t you “nevertheless” me, Simon Bognor,’ said Monica sharply. ‘Who better to cite in one’s defence than the Master of Apocrypha?’

  ‘And who more damaging to have as a witness for the prosecution?’ Bognor spoke ruefully. ‘I must go,’ he said, and put the phone down hurriedly, wishing his wife a quite perfunctory goodnight. Then, until he heard ominous sounds from the bathroom, he sat on the bed picking abstractedly at his toenails. Something was not quite right, but he still couldn’t put his finger on it. Nor did the bath, disgracefully over-full, help him much. Normally he found hot water conducive to incisive thought, but not tonight.

  He lay back and watched his toes, a line of amphibious pink piglets, as they traced patterns in the soapy water. ‘Which little pig dunnit?’ he murmured to himself. Then, raising his voice, he said, ‘Let us suppose that Piglet A is on the short list for a vital new appointment. Let us suppose that his potential employers approach the Master of Apocrypha for a reference. Let us further suppose that the Master is disposed to give a good reference. Then Piglet A has no motive for murdering the Master. QED. Let us, however, suppose that the Master is inclined to give our little piglet an absolute stinker of a reference, thus effectively screwing up his chances of advancement. That’s a murder motive all right. Let us suppose, on the other trotter as it were, that the Master of Apocrypha is going to give Piglet A an award-winning reference and that this is known to Piglet B who is an enemy of Piglet A and therefore wishes to do him down. In this case the murderer would turn out to be Piglet B.’ He sighed, hooked the plug chain round the big toe of his right foot, and yanked it out with a flourish. If he was on the right track, then chief-inspector chappie was right about twenty years ago being the place to look. No use delving about in the present. He climbed out, wrapped a towel round his middle and padded into the bedroom, dripping. He picked up the phone and dialled.

  ‘I am terribly sorry,’ he said when Hermione answered. ‘It’s been one of those days.’

  ‘Your gin’s still in the fridge,’ she said. ‘Are you going to be able to collect?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Bognor. ‘I’m still hoping. But I’m afraid someone’s cropped up unexpectedly.’

  ‘Aha.’

  ‘But perhaps we could do it after dinner.’

  ‘Do what after dinner?’ Dr Frinton managed to sound both shocked and suggestive.

  ‘Have that drink,’ said Bognor, ‘and a talk. There are one or two things I want to discuss.’

  ‘Like what?’ She sounded a little put out by the prosaic quality of his responses.

  ‘Well,’ he began, ‘I’ve got an idea. Or the beginnings of an idea.’

  She said nothing.

  ‘The thing is,’ he tried again, ‘I just wondered if you knew whether or not any of our suspects asked old Beckenham for a reference recently.’

  ‘I don’t, but it’s easily discovered.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Even the Masters of Oxford colleges have filing systems,’ she said, ‘so it won’t be difficult to find out.’

  ‘Oh.’ Bognor frowned again. He seemed to remember that the question of ‘files’ had been crucial in the revolting later sixties. On one occasion a group of student stormtroopers had invaded the Dean’s rooms and demanded to have his ‘files’ in order that they could be burned. The Dean had denied the existence of files but admitted, with a suitably menacing smile of triumph, that he had an exceedingly efficient memory which he would not hesitate to use when necessary. Bognor could not remember whether that had been Ashburner, the rather unsatisfactory Dean of Apocrypha, or Willis-Bund, his more impressive counterpart at Balliol. He rather fancied it was Willis-Bund. Ashburner did not have a memory worthy of the name.

  ‘Would that sort of thing be filed, then?’ he asked.

  ‘Natch,’ said Hermione. ‘Beckenham had everyone filed by year. Very efficient.’

  ‘You’ve seen them, then?’

  ‘Not to read. Nobody read them except Beckenham. But I made it my business to know where they were and how they were organized. I’ll go and dig them out now, if you like. We can discuss them after dinner if you can’t think of anything more stimulating.’

  ‘You won’t be able to take them away,’ said Bognor.

  ‘Don’t you believe it!’ Her voice suggested, with some conviction, that she could do exactly what she liked, when and where she liked, and how she liked.

  ‘Wouldn’t look good, though. Our chief-inspector friend wouldn’t be pleased. Nor Mitten. I’ll come with you. We’ll look at them in situ.’

  ‘After dinner?’

  ‘After dinner,’ he agreed. ‘I’ll call when I’m through.’

  ‘I’ll pick you up,’ she said. ‘I have wheels.’

  ‘Right.’ Bognor replaced the receiver and dried very carefully between his toes. He had an unreasonable terror of athlete’s foot. Then he dressed slowly and methodically. In a spirit of wistful nostalgia he had packed an Arkwright and Blennerhasset tie. He seldom wore it, if only because pink and purple stripes drew attention to his worsening c
omplexion, but tonight, he decided, was exceptional. It was, quite apart from anything else, the sort of tie Molly Mortimer would enjoy.

  4

  BOGNOR WAS RIGHT ABOUT the tie. The first thing Molly said as he walked into the bar where she was stirring the olive round her dry martini with a gloomy concentration was, ‘I say, that’s an Arkwright and Blennerhasset.’

  ‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘How did you know?’

  Molly scrutinized the olive yet more closely and then put it in her mouth and grimaced. ‘One, because in this job you have to be good at ties. I can tell a Grid from an Ampleforth at forty paces. There’s not much you can’t deduce from a man’s neckwear. And two, because my cousin Humphrey was an A and B member. Not that he’s worn his for bloody ages, but he used to. Once seen, never forgotten. What’s your poison?’

  Bognor said he’d like a Scotch, then inquired, ‘Your cousin?’

  ‘Yes.’ She raised her glass to him. ‘Chin-chin,’ she said. ‘Long time. You look well.’

  Bognor grinned ruefully. He did not look well. Never did. She didn’t look particularly well either, which was not really surprising since she lived most of her life indoors and in semi-darkness. She also smoked and drank. Nevertheless she had undeniable glamour. It was certainly not the glamour of first youth, and it had to be admitted that she looked her age and more. Fortyish, he supposed. What made her so alluring was the sense of harmless corruption about her. You felt she must have tried everything at least once. ‘A cousin called Humphrey in the Arkwright and Blennerhasset?’ he asked. ‘Not Humphrey Rook, by any chance?’

  ‘The same,’ she smiled. ‘He said he knew you. In fact he said he’d seen you the other night at the Apocrypha gaudy.’

  ‘Goodness. I never knew.’

  ‘No reason why you should.’

  ‘I suppose not.’ He sipped and pondered. ‘Where shall we eat?’ he asked.

  ‘I booked a table at a new Italian place round the corner. I hope that’s all right. The Globe will pay.’

  ‘And how will you justify that?’

  She shrugged disdainfully. ‘You know perfectly well that the only justifying we have to do is profoundly perfunctory. I shall put down “Dinner with contact from Board of Trade”.’

  ‘And they’ll wear that?’

  ‘I should bloody well hope so. I’m here to do a piece about the Master’s murder. They’re hardly going to quibble over my entertaining the chap in charge of the case.’

  ‘I’m not in charge of the case.’

  ‘So you said.’ She raised her glass and gazed at him knowingly from under fluttering and very false eyelashes.

  ‘Is Gringe still running the Diary?’ he asked, in an obvious attempt to deflect her questioning, which she acknowledged by looking still more knowing than before. She clearly decided to accept his decision, however, so that until they had gone round the corner and eaten halfway through a quite passable Italian meal they gossiped about old times and old friends.

  Eventually she said, ‘And how did cousin Humphrey seem at your gaudy?’

  ‘Oh, you know Humphrey,’ said Bognor, swallowing the last of his saltimbocca. ‘Comme ci, comme ça.’

  Molly digested this remark together with her bocconcini and said, ‘I wouldn’t describe Humphrey as being in the least bit “comme ci, comme ça”.’

  ‘And how would you describe him?’

  ‘Absolutely ruthless and single-minded and prepared to resort to anything to achieve his ambitions.’ She pushed her plate away and took a cigarette from her bag. ‘Including murder.’

  ‘He never struck me as being like that.’

  ‘Liar.’

  ‘White liar, maybe. I admit he has always seemed a little bit unscrupulous.’

  ‘Little bit. Ha! That’s a laugh. I mean it. He’d do anything. Anything at all, if it was for the good of Humphrey Rook.’

  ‘But he’s a born-again Christian. Or something.’

  ‘Well, there you are then.’ She blew smoke down her nose with a little bray of triumph. ‘You don’t think he believes it? He just thinks it goes down well at Tory Party selection meetings. And how right he is. He’d do anything.’

  ‘Do you mean that? Anything? Literally?’

  She appeared to consider this for a moment, eyes creased in concentration. ‘Yes,’ she said at last, ‘literally.’

  ‘You’re not …’ Bognor toyed with his glass, ‘trying to imply anything?’

  ‘Like what?’ she inquired.

  ‘Like that he murdered the Master.’

  ‘Naughty, naughty,’ said Molly. ‘You’re not supposed to be here on business. You’re just passing through, remember?’

  ‘Yes.’ Bognor flushed and ordered coffee and a couple of cognacs from a passing waiter. ‘Well,’ he continued, ‘that’s perfectly correct, but one does have one’s professional curiosity. And now that it transpires that poor Lord Beckenham didn’t have a heart attack but was done to death by person or persons unknown … well, as I say, one does have one’s professional curiosity.’

  ‘I suppose one does.’ Molly smiled. ‘Would your professional curiosity extend to wanting to hear that cousin Humphrey had a motive? No …’ She shook her head. ‘I don’t suppose it would. Not as you’re just passing through. Oh well, just a thought.’

  Bognor sulked. He knew she knew. She knew he knew she knew. And so on. Impasse. Boring.

  ‘Tell you what.’ Molly held her brandy balloon in the palm of her hand and swilled it around slowly, smiling. Her face was lined and the candle was so ineptly positioned that it managed to accentuate the grooves in her skin, picking out the crowsfeet and the laughter lines when it should, if the restaurateur had known his business better, have softened them, taken some years off. Bognor didn’t mind. He preferred her like that. He liked mutton to be dressed as mutton – dressed to kill perhaps, but never dressed as lamb.

  ‘What?’ he asked, quite gently.

  ‘I’ll trade you,’ she replied. ‘Make you a swap.’

  ‘I don’t have anything you’d be interested in.’

  ‘Don’t kid yourself.’ She fluttered the false eyelashes again. Not without reason. There had been moments in the past. Or almost.

  ‘I’ll give you cousin Humphrey’s motive. And in return you admit that you’re here on business and promise me an exclusive as soon as you know who done the dirty deed.’

  ‘Um.’ Bognor chewed on his brandy. It seemed to him that merely by agreeing to this rather absurd swap he was admitting his interest. But suppose her information was good. A motive for Rook? That would be useful.

  ‘Don’t you like your cousin?’

  ‘Not in the least, since you ask. But that’s not what I’m asking. Do you agree? Is it a deal?’

  ‘Um,’ Bognor repeated. And then, with a singularly unconvincing display of indifference, ‘If you like.’

  ‘I do,’ she said.

  ‘OK.’ He smiled. ‘Go ahead. Surprise me.’

  ‘You remember that Humphrey got a first?’

  ‘Of course. It’s not the sort of thing he’d let you forget, even if you wanted to.’

  ‘And you must admit it was surprising.’

  ‘Certainly. He and I were natural thirds.’

  ‘So what was your theory?’

  ‘Human error,’ said Bognor. ‘Happens all the time. The Oxford class system’s notorious for it. All the first-class men get thirds – well, not all, but an awful lot. Half the examiners are jealous. That’s got a lot to do with it. They got brilliant un-viva’d firsts hundreds of years ago in the dim and distant, and here they are exactly where they’ve always been, marking the very same exam papers that got them here in the first place. They are chronically embittered.’

  ‘Sounds like special pleading.’ Molly fingered one of her gaudy drop ear-rings.

  ‘Not really,’ Bognor spoke without regret. ‘I was a natural third, just like Edgware and Crutwell and Vole were natural firsts, for what that’s worth. I’m not sure it has much
to do with the great battle of life. I’m not convinced it has any real importance at all, though it seemed to at the time. Especially for Rook.’

  ‘Yes, Humphrey was always very anxious to succeed.’

  ‘Do tell,’ said Bognor, mock impatiently. ‘The suspense is killing.’

  ‘You may or may not know,’ she said, ‘that Humphrey’s first was based mainly on one paper.’

  ‘Political theory. I was talking about it just now to Chief-Inspector … er … that is, I …’ He blushed crimson. ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Blown it.’

  She smiled triumphantly, but nevertheless with kindness. ‘You are a funny little man,’ she said, ‘a very funny little man. And there are times when I could eat you up.’ She gazed at him fondly, as if he were some peculiarly appealing pudding.

  ‘Does this mean you aren’t going to tell me Humphrey’s motive?’ He asked, cross with himself, maddened at committing such a ridiculous gaffe.

  She considered. ‘No, no,’ she announced at last. ‘I think it would be unfair to tantalize. Besides, I’m not one to withhold evidence from the police, even when the police come in such a bizarre form as yourself.’

  Bognor did not comment.

  ‘Humphrey was taught political theory by the Master?’

  ‘Correct. We did it together. The old boy spent most of his time banging on about his impressions of Attlee and what it was like being in Gaitskell’s shadow cabinet. He knew practically nothing about political theory, but he was quite good on political practice. So you’d take in an essay on Hobbes or Hegel and end up talking about the nationalization of the railways or the partition of India.’

  ‘And the Master liked Humphrey?’

  This Bognor was forced to concede. Beckenham had, in fact, liked Humphrey Rook very much indeed, and had even been in some awe of him. It was something to do with the attraction of opposites. The Master, devious though he could be, was, in essence, a high-grade plodder. Rook was a terrible chancer. There was no way in which the Master could or would have played fast and loose with the cards life had dealt him in the way that Rook did. In a way he was appalled, but in another he was mesmerized. He also had the self-made man’s exaggerated respect for what he considered the natural or aristocratic advantages of others, and Rook had been to Harrow. Bognor nodded. ‘Lord Beckenham was very keen on your cousin Humphrey.’