Brought to Book (The Simon Bognor Mysteries) Read online

  Cynthia seemed to the Bognors to lose the thread and her audience more or less simultaneously. She sat down, clanking, to insipid applause. Outside, the wind shrieked. There were draughts in the Winter Gardens.

  ‘Thank you, Miranda Howard,’ said La Flange. She seemed extremely composed, especially as she must have needed a broomstick to get here in time to take the chair. It was only half an hour ago that she was alleged to have been going through classified files at Hemlock Towers.

  ‘One of the privileges of working at Big Books is that there is always someone of the calibre of Charles Borage to fall back on in a crisis,’ she said. She beamed at the front row with all the warmth and affection of a frozen stoat and said, ‘Thank you, Charles.’ She rustled some papers. ‘As you will already have heard, this company has been faced with a double tragedy, which is partly why I was delayed getting here for this afternoon’s session.’ A slight catch crept into her voice, and she paused to dab at her face. She could have been wiping away a tear or removing a piece of dandruff. You believe what you want to believe.

  ‘As I said, I’m deeply grateful to Charles Borage for standing in for me and to Wilfred and Cynthia for carrying on so nobly when in their heart of hearts…’ she paused again ‘…when in their heart of hearts they would probably rather have gone home and had a damned good cry…Ladies and gentlemen, you know that to Vernon and Audrey Hemlock this company was one big happy family, united by a bond which meant much more than books or business.’ She now reached in her handbag and pulled out a yellowing piece of newsprint. ‘Ever since he wrote them,’ she went on, ‘I have carried these words wherever I go. They appeared in the Daily Telegraph and they are by a writer called Paul Johnson. You may not have heard of him since he is not a Big Book writer like Miranda Howard or Milton Capstick or Danvers Warrington, but what he says sums up a vital part of the Hemlock philosophy for he says that in Japan it is those firms which “embody the family image” which “have been at the heart of its economic miracle” because they give “the same sense of belonging”.

  ‘As I look around this great hall I feel, as Vernon and Audrey always did, that I am among family. That I belong. And as happens when any family suffers a bereavement, it mourns, it grieves, it remembers, but…’ and here she gave a little half-smile ‘…it carries on.’

  Publishing representatives are not universally or even widely remarked upon for their qualities of enthusiasm but this provoked an extraordinary round of applause which, apparently spontaneously, turned into a standing ovation. It was not just the words. It was the image. The newly orphaned reps suddenly saw a chance of salvation in the figure that stood before them. Nanny. Bognor clocked the ovation at a full ninety seconds.

  ‘I had my suspicions about her from the first,’ he hissed at Monica. He had been uneasy about the woman before this speech. Doubly so now.

  ‘She must have been coached by Saatchis,’ Monica hissed back. ‘It’s not exactly Meryl Streep but it’s not bad for the Winter Gardens, Byfleet.’

  The applause died and the reps resumed their seats. Romany Flange called for questions.

  The first came from a source that Bognor recognised but for which he was totally unprepared. When he had last known her some years before she had been of what might have been called a ‘certain age’. Any doubts on this score were now resolved but she still had more presence – elegance, even – than anyone in the room except for Romany Flange herself. She was wearing a green tweed cape thrown about her in a series of twirls. Her complexion seemed whiter than Bognor remembered, heightened by the dangerous darkness under the eyes. On her head she wore a black velvet cap with a massive Victorian brooch where a General’s badge would have been. Her eyes had the sort of mad lustre which Bognor associated with the drunk, the angry and the Irish.

  ‘I should like to know’, she said, ‘if either of these two authors have ever met a single member of the Royal Family or exchanged a word with one?’

  ‘It’s Molly Mortimer,’ said Bognor.

  ‘Good question!’ said Monica, ‘but she doesn’t look like a Big Books rep.’

  ‘She’s not. She’s from the Globe. Shhh. This could be fun.’

  Romany Flange obviously didn’t like the question or the questioner.

  ‘Who the hell are you?’ she enquired, lip curling in a fair imitation of Royal at bay, run to ground by paparazzi. Even so did Prince Philip snarl at the World’s Press every morning, driving his carriage out of the Sandringham gates before another day of bird slaughtering.

  Molly Mortimer, however, was not one to quail.

  ‘The question was,’ she repeated, enunciating very deliberately as if speaking to a very backward child, ‘“Have either of the two authors on the platform ever met a member of the Royal Family?” And in case you think the question is a flippant or mischievous one I would like to say that over the years I have met all the members of the Royal Family and I’m sorry to say that I don’t recognise any of them in the books written by Miranda Howard.’

  There was a sharp, audible collective intake of breath. Someone – not one of the Bognors – tittered.

  Wilfred Midgely spoke. ‘It depends’, he said, tentatively, ‘what you mean by “met”.’

  The two women on stage ignored this feebleness and yet there was something about it which made Bognor give him the second glance which the little man normally never earned. He was the quintessential little man, especially when contrasted with the obvious Gorgon Medusas now flanking him. Yet as he sat, blinking out diffidently from behind his round, gold-rimmed spectacles, Bognor was suddenly struck by the sinister-ness of the second rate. Crippen would have looked like that, he thought, and made a mental note to include Wilfred Midgely on his list of suspects if only for appearing so blandly unobvious.

  ‘Are you an employee of this company?’ Romany Flange rasped like a Black and Decker with a masonry bit between its teeth.

  ‘I asked a perfectly good question,’ said Molly, ‘and I’d like an answer.’

  Cynthia Midgely clanked into action like some superannuated battle-tank firing indiscriminately from every conceivable aperture. ‘Any fool knows that writing about the Royal Family is an incredibly delicate and sensitive task,’ she wittered. ‘It would be sheer madness to reveal one’s sources. Besides which, one has given one’s word. One’s whole credibility depends on absolute discretion.’

  ‘Every word of yours that I’ve ever read is second rate and second hand,’ said Molly, flinging a stray bit of cloak over her shoulder. ‘The whole thing is just a monstrous hype.’

  Bognor wondered why she was quite so cross. Everyone knew that she was telling the truth but it was a fairly stale bit of truth. Chris Yardley had appeared now and was trying to steer Molly in the direction of the exit. For a moment Bognor wondered if his old friend might not give the little Avon lady from the PR department a resounding biff with her shoulder bag. She was perfectly capable of doing it but apparently decided she had made enough of a scene for one day. The massed reps were oddly silent, never, presumably, having seen the emperor’s clothes called in question quite so publicly. Certainly not during one of their own sales conferences. One didn’t ask that sort of question at a sales conference. She whole object was to get everyone psyched up so that they could go and dump all over the opposition, not question the ‘product’. The quality of the product was unquestionable. That had been one of Vernon Hemlock’s first rules. ‘Blind belief,’ he sometimes told his sales force; ‘blind belief is what sells Big Books. It’s like Christianity. Think of yourself as a missionary. If you don’t get the message across you end up in the pot. Your object is to make sure it’s the guy from Penguin that ends up as stew.’ Sales conferences were supposed to be like US presidential conventions or pre-match team talks in the dressing room. Molly Mortimer’s interpolation had never been witnessed on such an occasion and the reps were therefore fazed into silence.

  ‘Stay here,’ said Bognor to his spouse. ‘I’ll be back in a jiffy.’
/>
  In the foyer he found Chris Yardley, composure fractured.

  ‘She’s press,’ she snapped; ‘so-called Literary Editor of the Globe. I gave her lunch at the White Tower last month. Pretty funny way of saying thank you.’ She rubbed an imaginary speck from the lapel of her Jaegerish blazer.

  ‘How did she get in?’

  ‘Heaven knows. The goon on the gate must have been looking the other way.’

  Bognor guessed the goon on the gate had probably nipped out to the Goose and Goblet for an illicit pint or two in the snug.

  ‘Where is she now?’

  Chris jerked her head in the direction of the front.

  ‘Out there somewhere,’ she sighed. ‘I suppose the rest of the pack will be here in no time. God, I hate the press.’

  ‘They’ve got a job to do,’ said Bognor sententiously. He rather liked journalists even though he disapproved enormously. ‘Just smile and say “no comment”,’ he advised.

  ‘You can do that with the provincials,’ she said. ‘They print the press releases without any silly questions. It’s the Fleet Street people who are so ghastly. They never believe anything you tell them.’

  ‘Tough,’ he said. ‘Must rush.’ And he pushed out of the swing doors into the gathering, salt-licked gloom.

  She was standing by the rail looking out to sea. On the horizon, south, south-east, the pale lemon gleam of the Toothpick light flashed spasmodically.

  ‘Long time no see,’ he said, conversationally.

  ‘I saw you when you came in,’ said Molly. ‘Late as usual. You’ve put on weight.’

  ‘It’s age. Maturity,’ he said. ‘I didn’t know you were the Literary Editor.’

  ‘The Globe’s equivalent of the Sunset Home for distressed journos,’ she said. ‘You can say what you like about the Globe but you couldn’t accuse it of being literary. It’s hardly even literate.’ She puffed on her extra-thin cheroot and blew blue smoke at the German coast. ‘“Big Book Tycoon Slain in Porn Basement Fire” – that’s my paper’s idea of a bookish story. “Dead Publishing Magnate’s Wife in Overdose Riddle”. Better still.’ She shivered and pulled the cloak round her shoulders. ‘A femme fatale like Flange doesn’t come amiss. Pity Jeffrey Archer isn’t a Big Book author but there are plenty of other household words. And the unmistakable niff of cooked books to give it real gourmet appeal. It’s what my masters still call “a bloody good story”, bless their little hearts.’

  ‘What’s wrong with the books?’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t understand accounts. Apparently our City boys had got wind of something. Hemlock had burned his fingers in some American enterprise. Also the sales of some of the alleged Big Books weren’t all they were cracked up to be. Anyway, what are you doing here? Don’t tell me you’re one of Hemlock’s authors?’

  ‘In a manner of speaking,’ said Bognor, huffily. ‘Also the Board are doing a report on publishing qua business.’

  ‘Seems to me our City people were right. If you’re sleuthing around then there is something wrong with the books.’

  ‘That’s not necessarily a sequitur.’ Bognor’s eyes were watering in the wind. ‘But now I am here I’m investigating. Naturally.’

  ‘Got anything yet?’ Molly grinned. All crow’s feet and laugh lines. She was getting to be seriously wrinkly.

  ‘If I had I wouldn’t tell you.’

  ‘We could trade. We’ve done it before.’ Miss Mortimer winked. ‘You know how discreet I can be about sources.’

  ‘Like the Midgelys.’

  ‘Those bloody Midgelys! The reason I flipped over them was that I sent Hemlock an outline for a Royal Family Bedside Book years ago when I was on the diary doing all those royal stories.’

  ‘And what happened?’

  ‘Sweet FA. A flannelly rejection letter from Romany Flange saying that Hemlock had passed on my suggestion and she was afraid it wasn’t “for us”. Silly cow. The implication was that I was an impertinent half-wit and how could any sane person imagine that people would hand over real money for a book like that. I think she said it would make a perfectly acceptable series for the Globe but that there was more to a book than just rehashing a lot of newspaper articles. Then a year later out came this Miranda Howard book based on my ideas.’

  ‘Did you sue?’

  Molly laughed and shrugged. ‘God, it’s cold,’ she said. ‘I’m going to phone the office. No, of course I didn’t sue. All the barristers I know are rich enough already.’

  Back in the Winter Gardens equilibrium had been restored. The Midgelys and Romany Flange were showing slides of members of the Royal Family in different sorts of funny hats. Reps laughed dutifully.

  ‘Anything happen?’ Bognor asked.

  Monica wrinkled her nose. ‘It’s all rather yukky actually,’ she said. ‘I feel rather sorry for the poor Royals for the first time in my life. Imagine being written about by two complete strangers – especially those two.’

  Bognor told her about Molly Mortimer’s experience of being ripped off.

  ‘Can’t say it surprises me,’ said Monica. ‘No copyright in an idea. Isn’t that what they say?’

  ‘It still makes the Midgelys a pair of perfect shysters,’ said Bognor.

  ‘Not necessarily,’ said Monica. ‘They need never have known. All that happens is that Vernon Hemlock calls them up and says “Guys, I’ve got this great idea for your next bestseller.” That way they’re indebted to him. Bet you it’s reflected in the deal they did, too. “The Royal Bedside Book by Miranda Howard, from an original idea by Vernon Hemlock.”’

  ‘Ha!’ said Bognor. ‘Is there a murder motive lurking in there?’

  ‘Not that I can see,’ said Monica.

  It was teatime. The last of the funny-hatted royal pictures faded from the screen and Romany Flange announced that they would break for half an hour before Arthur Green talked to them about his new book, The First Lady. She must emphasise – especially in view of the earlier incursion by the press – that what he was going to say was highly confidential. So would people please be extra-specially careful to report anyone they didn’t recognise and also not to talk about what Mr Green had to say outside the hall.

  The Bognors mingled but made a point of mingling in the direction of Romany Flange. Both the Midgelys and Arthur Green were under siege, surrounded by swarms of reps. Romany Flange hovered on the fringe ready to pounce on any impropriety or rocking of the boat. The atmosphere was subdued.

  ‘I understand you and Arthur Green drove down early this morning,’ said Simon, conversationally.

  ‘Yes,’ she said; ‘there was so much to do and then, of course, poor Audrey.’

  ‘Poor Audrey. Yes.’

  They all sipped tea. It was very strong and Indian and served from old chipped caterers’ urns. There were paste sandwiches, too. And buns, chocolate, heavy on the flour.

  ‘You and Audrey…’ said Bognor. He was toying with a bun. ‘Did you…that is…’

  ‘What Simon means’, said Monica, ‘is that there was no very obvious reason for any love being lost between you and Audrey.’

  ‘Your husband would be absolutely correct,’ said Romany Flange, ‘though I should have thought this was hardly the time or place to point it out.’

  ‘You mean’, Bognor had taken a substantial bite from the bun so that his voice was thick and indistinct, ‘there was no reason for you to like Mrs Hemlock? Or do you mean that you didn’t like Mrs Hemlock?’

  ‘What exactly are you suggesting?’

  Bognor smiled and swallowed hard. ‘Just that you didn’t care for her. And that there were good reasons for it.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘That you were sleeping with Mrs Hemlock’s husband and doing your level best to get control of the company she had helped him start.’

  ‘With respect,’ said Ms Flange coolly, ‘that’s more of a reason for her to dislike me than for me to dislike her.’

  ‘You mean you did like her?’

 
‘I had no strong feelings one way or the other.’ She watched Bognor gagging himself with another mouthful. ‘And now if you’ll excuse me I must circulate before the next session. I have work to do.’

  The Bognors watched her smoulder off.

  ‘I’m impressed,’ said Monica. ‘Not someone I’d have in the house, but if you’re talking about survival of the fittest she’s my man.’

  ‘Not a lady in the accepted sense?’

  ‘Correct. She and Merlin Glatt are supposed to be having a bit of a ding-dong. What are we supposed to make of that?’

  ‘You tell me,’ said Bognor.

  Monica raised an eyebrow. ‘I think we’ll ask Merlin Glatt to tell us what to make of that. Working for Special Branch is all very well but there is a limit.’

  The bells were ringing. It was time for Arthur Green.

  Whereas the Midgely performance had been so much well-oiled flannel this was as near to the Real McCoy as Bognor guessed a Big Book presentation ever came. If anything it was enhanced by the fact that whatever Mr Green’s virtues, self-promotion was not one of them. Arthur Green was one of the least noticeable people you could meet. In fact his run-of-the-mill, humdrum ordinariness was so unremarkable that it almost became bizarre. There was nothing memorable about him at all. His features, his clothing, his speech, his manner were all so determinedly neutral that even if you spent months locked up with him in a padded cell you would remember nothing whatever about him the moment you were released. He was an unperson – a living blancmange.

  But he had a good story.

  The fact that the story was told by this anonymous figure in this anonymous voice meant that nothing distracted you from it. True, Cynthia Midgely had nothing to say but, even if she had, that clanking jewellery and over-elaborate coiffeur would have got in its way. Arthur Green was a throw-back to the pre-McLuhan era. In his case the message was the message and the message was riveting.