Carnage on the Committee (6 page)

'So why didn't you tell me about him before now?' asked Amiss, slightly offended.

'Wanted to imprint myself on him first so he'd make a good impression.'

'Did he arrive talking?'

'"Who's a pretty boy?" was about the extent of his vocabulary. But we're working on it and he learns fast. Between what we teach him and what he picks up he's doing well.'

'Sometimes too darn well,' said Mary Lou. 'And a word of warning, Robert. Don't get fresh with him. He biles everyone.' She held out her left hand. 'Look.'

Amiss grimaced. 'Nasty.'

'Doesn't bite me,' said the baroness, beaming.

'Everyone except Jack. Parrots, it turns out, are monogamous, and Jack's his mate.'

'He's mine rather than me being his,' said the baroness. 'Have to maintain a sense of hierarchy. When the chips are down, he's only a parrot and I'm me.'

Amiss put his coffee cup down with a bang. 'Was it Horace that you wanted Plutarch to meet?'

'Yes.'

'Jack, are you out of your mind? She'd eat him.'

'Rubbish. One nip from Horace and Plutarch would learn her lesson. It might make her treat other birds with a bit more respect as well. Anyway, it was just a whim of the moment. Now eat up, eat up and let's get on with matters Warburtonian. What was Geraint Griffiths's reaction to me?'

Amiss looked enquiringly at Mary Lou. 'She's given me the headlines and all the dramatis personae she could remember,' she assured him. 'I'll tell you if I'm lost.'

'Geraint was fine - by his standards. He's not stupid, so he must have known he wasn't really a runner, but he was pressing his case as a bargaining counter to make sure neither Den nor Rosa had a chance. By the time I'd told him a few stories about Jack's views on political correctness he began to think he'd suggested her himself. "The crucial point is that the forces of conservatism should be mustered in defence of the values of Western fuckin' civilisation", he told me. "Whatever they say about Jack Troutbeck, I know we can rely on her to defend the citadel against the fuckin' barbarians."'

'Decent of him. He'd better be sure I don't mistake him for one. Now where are we on the fuzz front? Any news of young Inspector Pooley?'

'I haven't heard anything since we spoke last night.'

'Shall I?' asked Mary Lou. She took a phone from her bag and pressed a couple of keys. 'Ellis? Me, darling. I'm here with Jack and Robert and they're thirsting for news about the late Lady Babcock. Right. Right. My, that's interesting .. . Hold on.' She turned to Amiss and the baroness. 'They're sure it's poison and think it might have been ricin.'

'Dear old Hermione,' grunted the baroness. 'Fashionable to the last. Nothing old-fashioned like arsenic. Ask him if he's on the case yet.'

'Jack wants to know if you're on the case, Ellis ... Brilliant ... I will . .. Me too. Bye.'

She beamed. 'He's trying, and it's possible. He'll keep us posted. More coffee?'

Amiss held out his cup. 'Yes, please. Now, Jack, it's time we got a grip.'

'That's my line. You've signally failed to give me a coherent briefing.'

'That's completely your fault. We got distracted onto your reminiscences of you and Den in the sack.'

Mary Lou sat bolt upright. 'You're not serious. Not Jack and Den Smith. You couldn't have, Jack. He's awful. I know you've got about a lot, but I thought even you were fussier than that.'

'Don't be so intolerant. It was a long time ago, I was young, I succumbed only once and he came off worst.'

'Still, you did succumb.'

Amiss grinned maliciously. 'Don't be unkind to her, Mary Lou. All the girls do at one time or another. Including, I understand, Hermione, Rosa and Wysteria Wilcox. It'll be quite an old girls' reunion.'

'I know I'm a simple-minded American,' said Mary Lou, suppressing a grin at the outraged expression on the baroness's face, 'but leaving sex out off it, would someone explain to me why anyone listens to that creature? On that programme he was on with Jack, he said America was the most evil empire in the history of the universe and all its citizens were legitimate targets for the oppressed. I know we're a young and naive country and we over-consume, but we're kinda well-meaning and I can't understand why anyone could hate us that much.'

'Inverted snobbery,' snorted the baroness. 'You Yanks are rich and successful and fundamentally decent: of course they hate you. And you elected George Bush, who is not literary London's American politician of choice.

which means you deserve annihilation purely on aesthetic grounds.'

'His stuff on America's only part of it. From what I've heard he seems to hate England even more,' said Mary Lou.

'How often do I have to tell you that our so-called intellectuals are self-loathing, Mary Lou, and that the best way to their hearts is to knock everything British. Correction. English. You remember all that Bloomsbury wankery about betraying my country rather than my friend? This crowd of neo-Bloomsberries just take it further and see betraying their country and its allies as an end in itself. They wrap up their treachery in highbrow piffle and egalitarian rhetoric.'

'Are they as bad as she says, Robert?'

'Well, I don't know if I'd label it "treachery" . . .'

'What would you call it then?' demanded the baroness.

'Virtual treachery. In practice, I doubt if they'd actually sell the country out to al-Qaida.'

'Only because neo-Bloomsbury women don't want to be stuffed into burkas,' snarled the baroness. 'They'd sell us out to Brussels soon enough.'

'Can't argue with that. I've been at a couple of dinners where Den raved away drunkenly over the
petit fours
about the awfulness of England, its blood-sucking monarchy, its corrupt and effete establishment, its ignorant plebs and its bloodstained history, and Hermione, Rosa and Wysteria and a couple of the others squealed about the only hope being to subsume ourselves in the European ideal.'

The baroness snorted venomously. 'Of course the likes of Hermione Babcock are never happier than when engaging in a spot of intellectual S & M with rough trade like Den. With the added frisson, no doubt, in the case of those three harridans, that Den would flail them for having titles and living high on the hog.'

'I grasp it in theory,' said Mary Lou. 'I'm just always staggered in practice. I read an issue of
Rage
last week and it was unbelievable. Feeble poems and a couple of angry short stories along with some third-rate polemic about the evils of everything British from the Empire to Oxbridge elitism. Hermione Babcock had a piece explaining why she refused to call herselff either English or British and demanding the government instruct everyone to call themselves European.'

Amiss sighed. 'Ladies, we need to get a move on. It's after nine and I have to tell Jack what she needs to know about the other judges. Jack, will you please sit down, shut up and listen?'

'Iff I must,' she said, plonking herselff down in her favourite armchair.

'First, Professor Felix Ferriter. He's a ghastly little literary critic.'

'Bit off a tautology, that, isn't it?'

'I'm a literary critic. Jack,' said Mary Lou mildly.

'Nonsense. You're a person who appreciates and writes intelligently about literature. That's different.'

'He's obsessed with Queer Studies, of which he is a visiting professor at Yale.'

Amiss suddenly had the baroness's full attention. 'You're pulling my leg.'

'I wish I were, but the truth is that Queer Studies is all the rage in fashionable Eng. Lit. circles.' He raised his hand as she began to expostulate. 'Not now. Jack. There isn't time. Mary Lou will explain it to you later, no doubt. Just for now, take my word for it that Ferriter is a luminary in the world of Queer Studies and that this colours his attitude to the Warburton.'

The baroness opened her mouth and then shut it again.

'And he's such a little shit that Georgie, who goes in for nicknames, calls him Ferriquat.'

'After the weedkiller?'

'Exactly.'

'Who's Georgie?' asked Mary Lou.

'Georgie Perkins,' said the baroness.

'Jack, for God's sake, it's Georgie Prothero, who, Mary Lou, looks after the Warburton. Jack, will you stop messing about. And at this rate we'll be at this all day.'

'Why not?' said the baroness. 'I'm enjoying myself.'

'You haven't got time to enjoy yourself. Might I remind you that today is Friday and your long-list is due in on Tuesday.'

'And that you still have some duties as Mistress,' added Mary Lou. 'I can't stand in for you on everything.'

'Right,' said Amiss sternly. 'Now next there's Rosa Karp, whom, I regret to say, Georgie Prothero, Prothero, Prothero refers to as Rosa Krap.'

'Well, he's got that right anyway,' observed the baroness.

'What do you know of Rosa?'

'Patron saint of equality gibberish. Turns up all over the place mouthing platitudes about our failure sufficiently to love our gay, lesbian, disabled, ethnic fellow-persons. If she had her way all the able-bodied, white, male Anglo-Saxons would be run out of the country.' She looked at him enquiringly. 'Fair assessment?'

'She's good-looking and articulate,' said Mary Lou. 'I've seen her on television.'

'That, my dear Mary Lou, is why she's come so far despite having no discernible brain and understanding nothing about the human condition,' said the baroness. 'What's the name of that idiotic book of hers, Robert?'

"We Can Be Equal if We Try.
That's what got her the peerage and the Ministry for Equality.'

'She didn't last long in that job, as I remember,' said Mary Lou. 'What went wrong?'

'She was put in charge of developing equality strategies for business, and according to Georgie Prothero, Prothero, Prothero, she developed elaborate strategies to deal with discrimination that didn't just take in women, gays, lesbians, ethnic minorities, the young, the old and the disabled but also cross-dressing, sex changes and a whole host of other categories like ..." He clicked his fingers. 'Like . . .'

'Bad breath?' offered the baroness helpfully.

'Criminal convictions and I can't remember what else. Anyway her idea was that every business, institution or organisation in the country would be required by law to draw up anti-discrimination plans with quotas agreed by an equality inspectorate, with heavy penalties for noncompliance. After the prime minister read her paper he chucked her out in the next re-shuffle and put equality in the hands of someone who wasn't actually barking.'

'What's she like on the committee?'

'Still a demented social engineer. Hermione outlawed books that she thought beneath her; Rosa wanted us to have what she calls "equality-proofing".'

'I.e.?'

'She was insistent that we commit ourselves to a shortlist that would be gender-balanced and ethnically diverse.'

'Regardless of the quality of the books?'

'Of course.'

'And, what was more, she wanted any offensive books ruled out of consideration.'

'Offensive to whom?'

'Offensive to her, in her capacity as watchdog.'

The baroness looked dreamy. 'Takes me back to when Mary Lou came here first.'

'And I was an innocent ethnic pawn in your epic struggle against the thought-police.'
¹

'We won that one. We'll win this one.' There was a loud knocking. 'Come in,' roared the baroness, and the door opened to reveal the agitated college secretary. 'What is it. Petunia?'

'It's no good, Mistress,' said Miss Stamp, her little head quivering under her embroidered pink Alice band. 'I can't hold them off any longer. The phone's been ringing constantly for the last hour and Mr Prothero, who seems awfully nice but ever so upset, says he'll never speak to Mr Amiss again if he doesn't ring him now and put you on. He says the press are behaving like ravening monsters and you must throw them a bone.'

Amiss looked at the baroness.

'Oh, all right. If I must, I must. Put him on and I'll sort him out.'

5

'What a fusspot! But I've set him straight, don't you think?'

The baroness handed Amiss's phone back to him. He looked at her with grudging admiration. 'You certainly know about chutzpah. Jack. Anyone would have thought you were completely on top of things.'

'I am. Didn't you dragoon me into this because you knew I would be?'

'I forget that you can be tactful when you want to be. Your paean to the Warburton was as eloquent as it was insincere.'

She gave a bark of laughter. 'It was certainly as insincere as it was eloquent. Get me Knapper.' She shoved over a piece of paper. 'Or Knapperoonie, as your little chum quaintly calls him. Here's the number of his direct line.'

'Before you talk to him, you need to know about Dervla and Hugo.'

'Why?'

'In case Knapper expects you to have heard of all the committee.'

'I'm not sitting a bloody exam.'

'All right, all right. But just in case, Dervla's a singer-stroke-actress who's our voice of yoof, and Hugo - or Sir Hugo, as he's keen to be referred to - is a literary editor who's red-hot on the European perspective.'

'There's no hope you're making them up?'

"Fraid not.'

She gestured impatiently. 'Knapper!' He shrugged and dialled.

'Hello. Mr Knapper? Robert Amiss from the Knapper-Warburton committee... Yes indeed, it's quite a shock... Yes, it's really excellent, isn't it? Georgie did brilliantly to find someone of the calibre of Lady Troutbeck at such short notice . . . Because of her devotion to scholarship, I should think . . . You'd better ask her yourself. She's just here. I'll pass you over. Goodbye.' He pressed the mute button. 'Wanted to know why you took it on and wonders if you'll be frightened if it turns out Hermione was murdered. Remember he liked her.' He pressed the button again and handed her the phone.

'Jack Troutbeck here, Mr Knapper. . . Not at all. . . Yes, obviously a resourceful chap ... No, no. Glad to help, though I'll be expecting a substantial five-figure donation to St Martha's ... That'll do. Now you realise that with this kind of time-scale I need a free hand? . . . Good . . . They're too old to get fidgety about murder surely? . . . Oh, I don't know. Young people are tougher than you'd think. I'll steady her nerves if necessary . .. Yes, I find the trouble with murder is it gets the press all excited .. . Fine. Must fly. Goodbye.'