Clubbed to Death

Clubbed To Death

Ruth Dudley Edwards

Amiss 04

A 3S digital back-up edition 1.0
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Contents

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Prologue
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Epilogue
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Robert Amiss, hero of
The School of English Murder
, is persuaded by his friend Detective Sergeant Pooley of the CID to take a job as a waiter in ffeatherstonehaugh’s (pronounced Fanshaw’s), a gentlemen’s club in St James’s. The club secretary has allegedly jumped to his death from the gallery of this imposing building: against most of the evidence, Pooley believes he was murdered.

Amiss finds himself in a bizarre caricature of a club, run by and for debauched geriatrics, with skeletons rattling in every cupboard. The portraits are of roués, the library houses erotic literature, and the servants are treated like Victorian pot-boys.

Why are there so few members? How are they financed? Will Amiss keep his job despite the enmity of the ferocious, snuff-covered Colonel Fagg?

Find out in
Clubbed to Death
, an ingenious crime novel which will keep the reader guessing – and laughing – to the very end.

By the same author

AN ATLAS OF IRISH HISTORY

PATRICK PEARSE: THE TRIUMPH OF FAILURE

JAMES CONNOLLY

HAROLD MACMILLAN: A LIFE IN PICTURES

VICTOR GOLLANCZ: A BIOGRAPHY

CORRIDORS OF DEATH

THE SAINT VALENTINE’S DAY MURDERS

THE SCHOOL OF ENGLISH MURDER

First published in Great Britain 1992

by Victor Gollancz Ltd

14 Henrietta Street, London WC2E 8QJ

Copyright © Ruth Dudley Edwards 1992

The right of Ruth Dudley Edwards to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright Designs and Patent Act 1988

A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 0 575 05346 1

Typeset at The Spartan Press Ltd,

Lymington, Hants

Printed and bound in Great Britain by Butler & Tanner Ltd, Frome, Somerset

To James and John – the most direct inspirations for this book

Disclaimer

The gentlemen’s club to which I belong resembles ffeatherstonehaugh’s in its architecture – emphatically not in its membership or staff.

Since Death on All

Since death on all lays his impartial hand

And all resign at his command,

The stoic too, as well as I,

With all his gravity must die;

Let’s wisely manage this last span,

The momentary life of man;

And still in pleasure’s circle move,

Giving our days to friends, and all our nights to love.

Then while we are here let’s thus perfectly live

And taste all the pleasures that nature can give;

Fresh heat when life’s fading our wine will inspire,

And fill all our veins with a nobler fire.

When we’re sapless, old and impotent,

Then we shall grieve for youth misspent;

Wine and women only can

Cherish the heavy heart of man.

Let’s drink on till our blood o’erflows

Its channels, and luxuriant grows,

Then when our whores have drained each vein

And the thin mass fresh spirits crave, let’s drink again.

Then while we are here let’s thus perfectly live

And taste all the pleasures that nature can give;

Fresh heat when life’s fading our wine will inspire,

And fill all our veins with a nobler fire.

John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester

Prologue

^
»

‘Are you still out of work, Robert?’

‘Yes I am,’ said Amiss blackly. ‘Things aren’t looking up.’

‘Oh good,’ said Ellis Pooley. And then, hastily recollecting himself, ‘Sorry, Robert. Of course I didn’t mean that. I just meant, oh good, that means you’re likely to be free for lunch today.’

‘Are you sure that’s all you mean? You wouldn’t by any chance be coming up with job suggestions for me again, would you?’

‘Don’t be so suspicious, Robert,’ said Pooley firmly. ‘A friend should be able to ask you to lunch without his motives being impugned.’

Amiss snorted. ‘Not when that friend is Sergeant Pooley of the CID. However, if you’re paying, yes, I am free for lunch today. When and where?’

‘One o’clock at the Repeal Club.’

‘The Repeal Club? Blimey! What’s a nice young policeperson doing in a place like that?’

‘There’s nothing wrong with the Repeal Club.’ Pooley sounded slightly offended. ‘My father put me up for it when I came down from Cambridge. It’s really terribly economical and convenient. Of course if you’d prefer me to invite you to the snack bar in the police canteen…?’

‘No, no,’ said Amiss hastily. ‘Incidentally, what’s it trying to repeal?’

‘The Corn Laws.’

‘Weren’t they repealed in the mid-nineteenth century?’

‘Indeed they were.’ Pooley’s patience seemed to be wearing thin. ‘However, we’re still celebrating. Now, Robert, I’ll see you at lunch-time. Oh, and please wear a jacket and tie.’

‘Where is this place anyway?’

‘At the Regent Street end of Pall Mall opposite the Travellers’ and the Reform. See you.’ Pooley put the phone down firmly.

Thankfully abandoning the application forms he had been filling in half-heartedly, Amiss wandered into his bedroom to begin the process of changing himself into something resembling a gentleman. He felt cheered by this break in his demoralising daily routine. A momentary fear struck him that Pooley might be in the austere mood that characterised so many people at lunch-times in these puritanical days. Would it be the cheerless litre of mineral water and grudging offer of a single glass of wine? He shook the notion off as unworthy. Gentlemen didn’t behave like that – especially when entertaining the indigent.

1

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^
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‘Once a toff always a toff, ’ observed Amiss as he settled back in his high-backed leather armchair and accepted graciously the glass of champagne Pooley had satisfyingly pressed on him.

‘Meaning what?’

‘Meaning only a toff would assume that I’d know the whereabouts of the Travellers’ and the Reform.’

‘Well you mixed with toffs when you were in the Civil Service,’ said Pooley.

‘You sound defensive, Ellis. Yes, I did indeed. But they didn’t take striplings to their clubs. They were places for the sere – the men of
gravitas
, those bowed from selflessly bearing the heat and burden of mismanaging the country. Nor can I remember any civil servants whose fathers were in a position to put them down for clubs when they were twenty-one. But then, the Department of Conservation was perhaps a touch plebeian.’

‘Stop talking nonsense,’ said Pooley good-humouredly. ‘Anyway you got here, and on time.’

‘Well yes, but I had to investigate swanky buildings randomly because none of them had their names on the door.’

‘I think,’ said Pooley, ‘that the principle is that if a chap doesn’t know where a club is, he shouldn’t be allowed into it.’

‘There’s no arguing with that logic. Anyway, since I was early I threw myself into the spirit of things and peered into several clubs along here. I’m sorry to have to tell you that this club is the least imposing of them. I think I’d go for that Grecian pile at the corner myself.’

‘Ah, the Athenaeum,’ said Pooley. ‘You’d hate it. It’s crammed full of bishops.’

‘Well, what about that Italian palace across the road?’

‘The Reform? Too many economists, civil servants and PR men.’

‘Well, the slightly smaller Italian palace to its left?’

‘The Travellers’? Wall-to-wall Foreign Office.‘

‘Very well then. You’ve made your point.’ Amiss sipped his champagne appreciatively. ‘So what’s this joint full of?’

‘I suppose mostly people who can’t stick consorting with civil servants, diplomats, bishops or economists. It’s an amiable outfit full of people from no particular walk of life with no particular principles.’

‘But surely if you’re founded in order to repeal the Corn Laws you must be anti-protectionist, internationalist and all that kind of thing?’

‘No, no, no. Certainly not. We were invented by a few people who couldn’t get on with the worthy people who had set up the Reform and wanted a reasonably respectable excuse to set up a club of their own. By adopting a faintly serious cause just when it was won, they were free not to have to care about anything ever afterwards. That’s why my father became a member. You don’t think he’d have anything to do with a high-minded, outward-looking or forward-looking organisation?’

Amiss reflected on what he’d heard from his friend about the politics of Lord Pooley, and nodded comprehendingly.

‘Does he come here much, your old man?’

‘Good Lord, no. I wouldn’t be here if he did. He’s an enthusiastic member of the Carlton, Boodle’s and the Cavalry Club, all of them jam-packed with people just like himself. He keeps up his membership here as a nostalgic gesture to his raffish, radical youth.’

Amiss grinned as he looked around at the busts and portraits of the early Victorians classified by Lord Pooley as dangerous radicals – the deadly serious Manchester traders who had fought for free-trade principles and the profits they believed would go along with them.

‘If this place ran on any kind of rational principles,’ he observed, ‘it would be sprinkled with new heroes all the time – fearless negotiators for free trade within the EC, leading lights of the GATT talks… smugglers.’

‘Fortunately, this place is not run on rational principles.’ Pooley suddenly leaned forward. ‘I’ve just realised what’s odd about you. You aren’t smoking. What’s happened? Have you given up again?’

‘I am not smoking at the moment. Note the cautious turn of phrase. I invested some of my overdraft in a course to help me stop and have learned all sorts of wheezes to assist the process. I could bore on about it for hours, but only a smoker or ex-smoker could find the subject interesting.’

‘Well done, Robert. I’m delighted. It wasn’t doing you any good.’

‘Ellis, I am extremely fond of you, but sometimes you try me sorely. There are two things that make me desperately want to reach for a cigarette. One is someone saying the kind of thing you’ve just said. The other is the persecution of smokers by sanctimonious fascist twats – among whom, I hasten to add, I don’t number you: you’ve always been tolerant – anxious, health-conscious, but tolerant. Whereas those buggers who ban smoking from their houses, bellyache about passive smoking at work and demand that smokers be excluded from the National Health Service drive me crazy.’ Amiss was sitting bolt upright, quivering with indignation. ‘I think it’s time for lunch,’ said Pooley.