Business Unusual (The Simon Bognor Mysteries) Read online

  ‘Mixing the drinks,’ said Bognor brightly. ‘Busman’s holiday. Moonlighting. I can’t imagine the Jolly Trencherman pays its barman a great deal. He probably needed the cash.’

  ‘I hadn’t thought of that,’ confessed Wartnaby. ‘Good theory. Perfectly plausible. But I have another.’

  ‘Which is?’ Bognor was rather peeved at having his first inspired guess dismissed apparently out of hand.

  ‘Notice,’ said Wartnaby, ‘that “bridge” has inverted commas round it.’

  ‘So what?’ said Bognor. ‘Lots of things have inverted commas round them. I don’t imagine punctuation was Freddie’s strong suit.’

  ‘Sometimes people use inverted commas because whatever is in the inverted commas is code for something else. If you wanted to say soi-disant bridge, then you’d put inverted commas round “bridge”! See what I mean?’

  ‘Up to a point,’ said Bognor, using the phrase in its Evelyn Waugh/Lord Copper sense. In other words, ‘no’.

  ‘Would it be possible that Freddie was there to keep the score?’

  ‘Surely you don’t need a scorer for bridge?’

  ‘That,’ Wartnaby was clearly nearing the end of his tether, ‘is what I’m trying to suggest.’

  Bognor shook his head as if trying to rearrange the brain cells. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I’m not at my absolute Einstein best this morning.’

  ‘I see that. All I’m suggesting is that this might just be the clue to who killed Freddie.’

  ‘Might it?’

  ‘It might. The 17th of November is only two days ago. The afternoon of the Artisan Dinner and the day before Freddie was killed. It could well be germane. Anyway, it would be useful to find out.’

  ‘I think it would be suspicious if I went back to Fothergill all of a sudden,’ said Bognor. ‘And much the same goes for the women. I’ll go and see Moulton.’

  ‘Mouldy Moulton,’ said Wartnaby. ‘I think that’s a first-class idea.’

  ‘I suppose I shall have to see him at the brewery.’ Bognor shook his head ruefully this time. ‘I’m not sure I’m up to the smell of hops and malt or whatever breweries smell of.’

  ‘I’m sure you’ll manage.’ Wartnaby smiled. ‘The other thing is Puce. I’m not necessarily suggesting that Puce is our killer, but, as I’ve told you, there is very little in Scarpington that doesn’t have a Puce finger in it. And that is particularly true of anything to do with the Artisans. So the sooner you fix an interview with him the better.’

  ‘OK,’ said Bognor.

  Wartnaby looked at his watch. ‘I must be off. Don’t tell anyone you’ve seen me. Especially any of my colleagues or there’ll be hell to pay. I’m going to lie doggo till breakfast tomorrow. See you then. Toodle pip.’

  And with a cheery wave he was gone.

  Bognor drank another cup of Wartnaby’s Kibo Chagga in a bath which smelt of soapy tangerines. The well-deserved hangover had still not arrived. He missed his wife. On the other hand he couldn’t help thinking about the Countess of Scarpington. A pity he had been too drunk to properly appreciate her charms, though he had been alive to the hot and cold sauna and plunge treatment. He winced at the memory. How complicated life was! This wretched business of sudden death dogging his footsteps wherever he went. It was too boring. What was it Monica had quoted at him, oh, yes, ‘Do not fear death so much, but rather the inadequate life.’ Bertolt Brecht and damn silly if you asked him. Most lives were inadequate. How many people in Scarpington had adequate lives? Not many. You could even argue that it wasn’t possible to have an adequate life in Scarpington. What was it those self-satisfied people had said on that irritating radio programme at the end of the week, the one with the very old boring Canadian and the bossy woman who was on TV with Sir Robin Day? The one with the fingernails. Oh yes, was there life after Basingstoke? Or words to that effect. He personally had always had a very good time in Basingstoke, but Scarpington, Scarpington was another ball game altogether.

  And what was the significance of the bridge score card? Did Wartnaby know more than he was saying? Was he, Bognor, being really obtuse? Should he ring Parkinson for guidance? Dammit, no. He must use his initiative. It was what he was paid for. Oh why, oh why had he not taken an easy way out when he was a young man? If only he had gone to teach in a prep school and married a matron he could have lived happily ever after. Instead of which here he was banging about the country causing people to drop dead wherever he went. He was beginning to think he was the Angel of Death. After all, there was nothing in the Bible to say what form the Angel of Death should manifest itself in. Wings and a halo? Hardly. Nobody believed that sort of Victorian Enid Blyton mumbo-jumbo any longer. If the Angel of Death were to suddenly manifest himself in England in the late twentieth century, why on earth shouldn’t he wear an A and B tie and a tweed jacket? It would be too bloody obvious to have him in chains and a punk haircut with a safety pin through his nose. Or pretending to be a lager lout. Oh God, and now he had to go and see round a brewery where he was going to be as much use as a eunuch in a harem and poor Mouldy Moulton would probably drop stone dead before you could say hop or barley. He sighed out loud and turned the hot tap on with his toe, then couldn’t get it off again and had to sit up and turn it with his hand because otherwise he’d be scalded to death and he had no wish to be a down-page paragraph in Harold Fothergill’s paper headed ‘Board of Trade Investigator boiled to death in bath’.

  He sighed again. This wouldn’t do. It really wouldn’t. He must get on and phone Moulton. One last long wallow. He wished he’d packed the loofah. He must lose some weight, although if he breathed in a couple of times you could almost see ribs. Then like an elderly whale breaking through to the surface he stood, very reluctantly, wrapped a towel round his thickening middle, and went to the bedside phone.

  Moulton’s secretary was that rare phenomenon — the efficient, polite, on-the-ball personal assistant.

  ‘He’s got Mr Batwas Singh from Biotechnology with him,’ she said. ‘But if it’s Board of Trade I’m sure he can be interrupted.’

  Seconds later he was through to Moulton. ‘Bognor, Moulton here. Heard you were in town. Sorry to miss you at the Artisan dinner. Tragic about poor Brackett. Absolutely tragic. Funeral tomorrow. Said I’d read a lesson and then drinks on the house afterwards. Least I could do. You lunching today? I’ve nothing on. Pop over about twelvish. We’ll arrange a quick spin round the works, then grab a jar and a spot of something in the boardroom. Nothing special, soup and a steak — that sort of thing. Suit you? Good. Terrific. See you at twelve. Look forward to it.’

  And that was it. He sounded like a typical King’s Scarpingtonian or whatever the school called their alumni. Old Sludgelodes, perhaps.

  Bognor dressed. Clean shirt, clean underpants, A and B tie, cavalry twill trousers and the same tweed jacket as yesterday, over which he was relieved, and somewhat surprised, to find he had not been sick.

  Then he set about tracking down Puce. This was not as easy. First he rang the local Conservative Association.

  ‘No, I believe Sir Seymour is in London today. You could try his secretary at the House of Commons.’

  ‘No, we’re not expecting Sir Seymour today, he’s got a pair. He’s probably at Puce Investments.’

  ‘I believe Sir Seymour is in Scarpington today. Have you tried Puce International? I’ll give you the number.’

  ‘No, he’s working from home today. No, I’m afraid I can’t give you the number. No, I can’t pass on a message. No, not even for the Board of Trade. And the same to you.’

  Bloody woman, said Bognor, crashing the receiver back into its cradle. He picked up the papers that Wartnaby had brought with breakfast. One was the Scarpington Times. On the back page it said: ‘Botham “no” to Thursday. All-ticket game at the Bog. “Game of two halves” predicts Smith.’

  Bognor wondered if Harold Fothergill wrote the headlines. He was not a footy fan and found the ranting purple semi-literacy of most newspaper football repo
rting no more comprehensible than a computer manual. It appeared that Scarpington Thursday had, for reasons that had something to do with the intervention of Sir Seymour Puce, contrived a friendly match with a team called Lokomotiv Frankfurt. This was not the West but the East German Frankfurt, although Bognor guessed that this had only been realised rather late in the day. He suspected that it had originally been passed off as a considerable coup to get a smart West German team to play what sports reporters always referred to as ‘lowly’ Scarpington. Now that the Germans turned out to be a ragtag and bobtail collection of part-time Communist lathe operators and tram drivers it was proving difficult to drum up a crowd.

  Nevertheless Puce was obviously going to be there. There was a quote from him saying that a man called Gunter Boschmann, the Lokomotiv striker, would walk into the English side if he was English. Bognor sighed and telephoned the Scarpington Thursday ground. At first he got a recorded message advising him of seat availability for tonight’s game and for the impending visit of Accrington Stanley next week. He checked the phone book and found another number under ‘Administration’. This time, at last, he felt he was getting warmer.

  ‘Sir Seymour is in conference.’

  He left his name and said he would be at the Talbot for the next hour or so. Perhaps Sir Seymour would phone back at his convenience. He was keen to make an appointment.

  The girl sounded as if she might have scraped a GCSE in Home Economics. Bognor supposed there was an approximately fifty-fifty chance of the message getting through in an intelligible form.

  Bognor sat on the end of the bed and flipped in a desultory fashion at Fothergill’s paper. ‘Uproar over street sign plan’; ‘New Man at the Mosque’; ‘Labour lose key ward’; ‘Puce unveils expansion plans’; and at the bottom of the front page: ‘Top Artisan Dies — “a true son of Scarpington” — Sir Seymour’. Reg did not get a lot of space. ‘Mr Reginald Bracket, MBE, Chairman of Bracketts Laundry and Dry Cleaning Services, collapsed and died this week. 56-year-old Mr Brackett was President of the Ancient and Worshipful Scarpington Artisans’ Lodge.’ Underneath in bold type it said, ‘See obituary, page 17.’

  Bognor turned to page 17 and saw that Fothergill and Sir Seymour had done poor Brackett proud. There was a picture of him in full Artisan Presidential fig and the headline, ‘Scarpington mourns a son’ followed by another line which said, ‘Reginald Brackett, Laundryman Extraordinary’. Oh, well. There was a very bald summary of what even Brecht would have been pushed to describe as an adequate life and then ‘Sir Seymour Puce writes’. Bognor winced. It was clichéd, florid stuff: ‘Pillar of the community … generous to a fault … tireless work for local charities … inimitable sense of humour … staunchly supported by devoted wife … expansive vision of dry cleaning industry … keen golfer … little-known passion for English folk dances … funeral in Artisan Chapel of Scarpington Cathedral’. Alas, poor Brackett, thought Bognor, dust to dust, ashes to ashes and a life reduced to a few column inches of purple and grey by Sir Seymour Puce. Into the archive, into the scrapbook. He supposed he had better try to make the funeral. There was nothing in the piece about ‘cause of death’. Natural or induced. Bognor wished he felt nearer a solution. He was learning about Scarpington, all right. Hanky-panky certainly, skulduggery possibly, murder … mmmm, not proven, not yet, anyway.

  He was about to turn the page when his attention was caught by another smaller, unillustrated obit. Mr ‘Freddie’ Grimaldi. Goodness, he thought, ‘Grimaldi’. Could the poor barman have been a member of the Monaco Royal House? Why not? A cadet branch, conceived on the wrong side of some half-forgotten historic blanket? ‘Mr “Freddie” Grimaldi, who died in a fire at his home in Bloemfontein Gardens, Scarpington, was chief barman at the Talbot Hotel for more than thirty years. He combined a knowledgeable enthusiasm for horse racing with a wide circle of friends. Long one of the city’s “characters”, he will be much missed. He was unmarried.’

  Oh, thought Bognor. Even in death there were relative degrees of adequacy and poor Freddie measured up even less well than Brackett. And what would they say about him when he was dead and gone? ‘Simon Bognor who died yesterday led a life unfulfilled … witty, handsome, gregarious, his early promise was blighted by a seminal misunderstanding at the Oxford University Appointments Board which led to his appointment as a Special Investigator at the Board of Trade, a position in which he continued throughout his adult life. Stoic and uncomplaining, he nevertheless …’

  This self-indulgent reverie was interrupted by a summons by telephone bells.

  ‘Bognor,’ he said.

  ‘This is Sir Seymour Puce. I’m so glad I caught you.’ Bognor stiffened. Not what he had expected. For some reason, the Member for Scarpington was in unctuous mode. Bognor’s experience was that most MPs had only two ways of behaving. The creepy treacle which oozed down the line towards him represented one. The other was abrasive mode — spade-calling, unafraid, honest to goodness, man of the people, man of the moment. Bognor found both equally repulsive but was well able to respond in kind.

  ‘Thank you so much for calling back,’ he said. ‘I know how busy you must be. I wonder if there is the slightest chance I might find a hole in your crowded schedule to have a talk about the place of Scarpington in the, er, British economy with particular relevance to trade, industry and, well, um, life.’

  Fifteen all. Sir Seymour slimed back with, ‘Perhaps you’d like to join a small party of us at the Lokomotiv Frankfurt game tonight. We’d dine at the ground. I dare say we could find time for a word about Scarpington and the economy. If not we can arrange another meeting. So if you care to present yourself at the Bog around seven o’clock, just ask for me and we’ll set you up with a glass of bubbly. Or Old Parsnip, if you prefer. Ha Ha! Is Mrs Bognor still with you? If so, we’d be delighted to see her as well.’

  He sounded as if he was reading from autocue.

  ‘I’m afraid,’ Bognor couldn’t help a little ice creeping into his delivery this time, ‘that Monica had to hurry back to London unexpectedly. I’m so sorry. She would have enjoyed it.’

  ‘Never mind,’ smoothed the Member. ‘I shall look forward to this evening. There’ll be a number of Artisans there so you should pick up some useful information quite apart from what I’m able to tell you. So I’ll see you at the Bog around seven.’

  ‘I look forward to it,’ said Bognor.

  ‘And I also,’ concluded Puce in an unusually archaic final smoothness.

  What a prat, thought Bognor. He looked at his watch. Time for him to stroll down to Moulton and Bragg. He wondered what he would be able to worm out of Mouldy ‘Gus’. He thought back to the piece of paper Wartnaby had salvaged from Freddie Grimaldi’s flat: ‘Moulton A. 2’. Whatever game the foursome had been playing, Moulton hadn’t been much good at it. But then there really wasn’t a lot of mileage in being good at bridge. Not in Bognor’s book.

  CHAPTER SIX

  ‘Beer drinking don’t do half the harm of lovemaking’

  (Eden Phillpotts)

  MOULDY MOULTON LOOKED LIKE a brewer was supposed to look — a protruding gut, high complexion and mutton-chop whiskers. He would have cut a fine figure in lederhosen at the Münchner Oktoberfest with a stein and a sausage.

  ‘Simon Bognor,’ he said, rising from behind his desk. ‘Jolly d.’ He scuttled round and shook hands. From the window they could see the mud-brown Sludgelode rolling turbid towards the sea. Two shaggy shires were plodding in through the gate with a green and grey Moulton and Bragg dray behind them.

  ‘We do things in the old-fashioned way here,’ said Moulton. ‘Just as we’ve always done. Water from the Sludgelode or the wells by Sludgelode Fen; our own barley from the family farm at Crankover; cask staves from the Baltic. Moultons have done it like that for hundreds of years.’

  ‘What about biotechnology?’ asked Bognor. ‘That doesn’t sound like a very traditional way of going about things.’

  ‘Ah,’ Moulton grinned. ‘Batwas Singh, the boffi
n from Bangladesh. Remarkable chappie, Batwas. Genetic manipulation of yeast is his baby. Don’t ask me what it’s all about, but it’s very much the coming thing. All the big boys are at it. Not necessarily anything to do with beer. He’s working on something called, hang on,’ he shuffled some papers, ‘ah, yes, recombinant serum albumin. It’s a burn and shock treatment. You have to diversify to stay alive. Of course the current fad is taking the bloody alcohol out of everything. In the old days we’d have been done under trade description for selling gnat’s pee, but now it’s all the vogue. Between you and me, I have a plot to market a completely non-alcoholic beer called ‘Alte Tästlessche Gnatspee’ and pretend it’s imported from Dortmund.’ He whinnied with mirth, setting his stomach and chins wobbling.

  ‘Now,’ he became serious, ‘what would you like to do? Quick tour round and then some scoff?’

  ‘Perfect,’ said Bognor. ‘I just want to get the feel of the place. Nothing too technical.’

  Moulton winked. ‘Couldn’t agree more, old boy. Don’t want to get bogged down in a lot of irrelevant detail. It’s the broad thrust that counts. We’re pretty good on the broad thrust at Moulton and Bragg, I can tell you!’

  Bognor agreed that he was a broad thrust person himself.

  ‘I’d show you round moi-même,’ said Moulton, ‘but one or two teensy problems have cropped up, so if you don’t mind I’ll get our Miss Mimms to whizz you through. She’s our head guide and extremely efficient.’

  She was, too. It was the full whistlestop, jampacked, twenty-seven new facts a minute number. Miss Mimms was steely grey outside and steely grey within.

  ‘In 1600 there were 46 licensed victuallers in Scarpington, supplying only 1,500 people, but it was not until the Sludgelode Navigation Act that Josiah Moulton and Ephraim Bragg joined forces to brew Parsnip Ale to a recipe daringly stolen from William Bass of Burton-on-Trent.’ Pause two three, smile two three, unspoken ‘are you paying proper attention’ two three. ‘And this is the bottling line all controlled from the computer here which is one of the most sophisticated in the country and has been specially adapted for the new EEC regulation three litre take-home bottle which …’