Red Herrings (2 page)

‘Just because they couldn't see the man,' said Bognor testily, ‘doesn't mean that they didn't know he was there.'

Samantha Contractor, who had been scouring the field in search of gossip, now rejoined them. You could tell she was some sort of model on account of her smock which she had designed herself and which was an exceedingly brief piece of linen only just held together by quantities of black leather thong. She did have an extraordinary body and depending on how she bent and moved it was practically all on public display.

‘Isn't it all too just perfectly ghastly?' she asked no one in particular, lisping through shiny purple lips, ‘What's going to happen?'

‘The Clout must go on,' said Peregrine gravely. He had recently been elected to the Clout committee, a sure sign that he had been accepted into the community. The ten thousand he had, not quite secretly, donated to the church belfry appeal fund, had helped quite a bit. It was a gratifying compensation for being blackballed by White's.

‘I've been talking to the man from the fuzz,' said Samantha. ‘He's rather dishy. I told him about you Simon, dear, and naturally he's dying to meet you. He's going to come over and have a glass of bubbly when he's done whatever you have to do with the corpse. He seemed to have heard of you.'

‘Heard of me?' Bognor bristled.

‘I said we had this tremendously super detective staying for the weekend and when I told him your name, he said, “Not
the
Simon Bognor?” So naturally I said “yes”.'

Monica snorted. ‘I expect they're using your past cases at the police training college,' she said. ‘What was his name?'

‘Guy,' said Samantha fluttering vast stuck-on eyelashes at an unimpressed Monica. Monica wore virtually no makeup and nothing false. ‘Take me as I am' was her attitude, ‘Like it or lump it.' She found Samantha preposterous.

‘Guy?' she said.' Is that a surname or a christian name?' Samantha said she didn't know. She said that she had introduced herself as ‘Sammy from the manor' and that when she had asked him who he was he had held out a very virile hand, looked her straight in the eyes and said, simply, ‘Call me Guy.' Samantha grinned. ‘He really is ever so dishy,' she said.

‘I do rather wish you hadn't brought me into it.' Bognor, though understandably susceptible to Samantha's body, was less than impressed by what passed for her mind. He spoke huffily. ‘Sudden death really isn't my pigeon. Codes and ciphers are about as exotic as I get. Mostly it's petty irregularities regarding South African oranges or smuggled mink.'

Samantha pouted. ‘But Simon darling,' she said, ‘we met you because you were showing a sudden interest in ladies' underwear. You can't say that isn't exotic.'

‘It really isn't a joking matter,' said Bognor. ‘As you know perfectly well, I am merely a common or garden investigator with the Board of Trade. It is not a job that has any particular glamour. In fact frankly it's not even interesting most of the time. I would much rather do practically anything else in the world, but like most people who are stuck in god awful jobs they don't enjoy, I need the money and I'm too old to change. I'm stuck. Just like most people are stuck. And the last thing I need is to have bloody policemen lumbering me with a lot of silliness just because some damn fool VAT inspector has got himself riddled with arrows while walking in the woods. This is supposed to be a weekend off.'

‘Well I'm very sorry I'm sure,' said Samantha.' I was only trying to help.'

The situation was partially restored by Peregrine. In the smouldering silence that followed this little exchange there sounded the discreet gasp of a champagne bottle blowing its top. Seconds later Samantha's husband emerged from behind the Rolls Royce carrying a tray with an open bottle of Veuve Clicquot and glasses. ‘Time for drinkies, boys and girls,' he said.

The champagne not only cooled tempers it also acted as a magnet for those villagers who were not averse to a glass but who would normally have had to stick to something less elegant and less pricey. Home brew even. The first free-loader was the Reverend Branwell Larch. ‘The padre's a fearful piss artist,' confided Peregrine to Simon and Monica, the night before. He had predicted that he would be the first to show, so there was no surprise when he arrived looking doleful.

‘“That which the palmerworm hath left hath the locust eaten,”' he said in a sort of conversational plainsong, nasal and thin. He wore a cassock with the air of a man who enjoyed dressing up and had a thin, pink veined face with thin, slicked, black hair. Late forties, Bognor judged.

‘And,' said Peregrine Contractor, rather surprisingly, ‘“that which the locust hath left hath the cankerworm eaten.”'

Monica compounded the surprise. ‘“And that which the cankerworm hath left hath the caterpillar eaten,”' she said, ‘“Joel, chapter one, verse four.”' She raised her glass and stared at it thoughtfully. ‘There's a wonderful verse just after which starts off, “Awake, ye drunkards and weep”. Very good stuff, Joel.'

‘Monica has “A” level scripture,' said Bognor by way of explanation. ‘Her convent insisted. She's still very hot on the Bible.'

‘It's an extremely good book,' said Monica defensively. ‘Full of good things, don't you agree, Vicar?'

The Reverend Larch, gaping somewhat, agreed, and accepted a proffered glass.

‘Yes,' he said. ‘And as relevant to our modern times as it ever was. The eternal verities remain, ah, how should one say, eternally, well, veritable.' He smiled and then realised rightly that something more was expected of him. ‘Very salutary to have death visited on us in such a violent fashion. And on such a lovely day. “In the midst of life we are in death” as the prayer book says. We could have hardly had a more dramatic demonstration of that. So at least some good has come from the wretched fellow's passing. Though one has to concede that God really does move in the most mysterious ways.' The vicar was groping desperately for the thread of his argument. Any thread, any argument. He sipped champagne as a delaying tactic and then said: ‘And death in whatever shape or form is uniquely mysterious, don't you agree, Mr Bognor?'

Bognor and Mr Larch had been introduced earlier in the morning. The vicar, who fancied himself as a judge of character, had decided that Bognor was a sympathetic and intelligent person even if not of the faith. Bognor had said something disparaging about monasticism. The line was prompted by the vicar's dress. Bognor had had an aversion to that sort of thing ever since some unnerving experiences in an Anglican friary early in his career, but the vicar knew nothing of this and was in any case not keen on monasticism himself. He believed in getting in among his flock, and was fond of describing himself as ‘a people's parson'.

‘I've always found death disturbingly straightforward once it happens,' said Bognor. ‘It's the events leading up to death which are mysterious.'

‘That may be your experience,' said Mr Larch. ‘But in my line of work life after death is the ultimate mystery.'

‘My husband takes a rather prosaic view of this sort of thing,' said Monica slipping a protective arm through Simon's. ‘In fact he takes a prosaic view of almost everything. Don't you, darling? But so would you if you worked for the Board of Trade.'

‘In any event,' said Peregrine Contractor, pouring more champagne, ‘I'm sure we all agree that it's absolutely tragic. A tragedy for the village, too.' Everyone looked suitably solemn but they were disturbed in this moment of reverent contemplation by the advent of Sir Nimrod Herring and his daughter Naomi. Sir Nimrod, last of the Herrings who had come to the village on the coat tails of the Conqueror, had once lived in the manor, now occupied by the Contractors. New money had, as it always did, driven out old; ancient lineage and immaculate breeding had proved no match for ladies' lingerie. Despite having fallen on hard times, however, the old squire had not moved from the village which had borne his family's name these nine hundred years and more. Forced to trim his cloth and turn an honest penny he had taken over the village post office and there he now presided with Naomi under the legend ‘Herring and Daughter'.

He was an amiable seeming person with a white tonsure and a tuft of hair in the middle of his chin. This, unaccountably, was rust coloured with only a few flecks of grey. His daughter, Naomi, was a round faced woman in her early forties, figure concealed in a smock which was as discreet as Samantha's was not.

‘What a perfectly bloody business!' he exclaimed, helping himself to champagne. ‘Thank God for something decent to drink after that bloody mead. It doesn't matter how much ice you put in the damned stuff it still tastes of bees' wax.'

‘Oh, Daddy!' said Naomi. Naomi was permanently embarrassed by her father and none too bright. After Lady Herring, her mother, died in faintly mysterious circumstances (drowned in the moat) Naomi had gone through a prolonged ‘difficult' spell. She had been a hippy among the flower people of Haight Ashbury in the sixties; then returned to ride pillion with a chapter of Hell's Angels from Ruislip before setting off on the road to Katmandu and spending a saucy two years in an ashram in Poona. Latterly she was alleged to have settled down though no one was entirely convinced. She was rumoured to have had a child by one of the Rolling Stones but, if so, no one knew what had happened to it. It was also said that she was devoted to Sir Nimrod and it was certainly true that she put in extremely long hours behind the counter. And she was very decent at coming out late at night to drive the old squire home when he was too tight to do it himself.

‘What a silly fellow, wandering into the field of fire during Clout,' said Sir Nimrod, ‘asking for trouble. Could have been killed.'

‘But he was, Daddy,' said Naomi, eyes very round, face very pale.

‘Just as I said, child.' He glanced at Bognor to whom he had not previously been introduced. ‘I don't think we've met,' he said, sticking out a hand which Bognor shook, ‘Herring.'

‘Bognor,' said Bognor, ‘and this is my wife Monica.'

‘Bognor!' Sir Nimrod's eyes flashed. ‘Any relation of old Theo Bognor?'

‘Not that I know of,' said Bognor truthfully.

‘Old Theo was in my company at Arnhem,' said Sir Nimrod. ‘Any friend of his is a friend of mine. So you're no relation. Ah well. Naomi and I were talking about this deuced corpse. He was from the Customs don't you know. A bumfwallah. Come down to sort out everyone's Value Added Tax. Damned waste of taxpayers' money if you ask me. They should be out catching criminals. You should see the pieces of paper we have to deal with in the post office. Licence to breathe is what you'll have to have before you can say knife. I say, Vicar, I thought you'd be over in the woods saying the last rites. Not quaffing the Widow with the nobs.'

Mr Larch, already on his second glass, stretched his mouth in a rheumy approximation of a smile and said, ‘“The Lord God giveth and the Lord God taketh away.”'

‘Rum lot, you sky pilots,' said Sir Nimrod. ‘The old Canon wouldn't have let the stiff out of his sight until it was safely packed in ice down at the morgue. But then the old Canon was a stickler for protocol.'

He glowered. In the old days before the final collapse of the Herring fortunes the living of Herring St George had been in the gift of the Herrings. Sir Nimrod, being High Church and conservative as well as Conservative, had always appointed Anglo-Catholics who spoke the Queen's English. Larch was a break with the tradition. He had been foisted on them by the progressive bishop of the diocese and Sir Nimrod regarded him as a closet Methodist. He had introduced a regular Family Mass, guitar music and a perfectly disgusting ritual called ‘making the sign of peace with your neighbour'. This, Sir Nimrod, fuming in the family pew (a feudal vestige he still resolutely refused to relinquish), would have nothing to do with. He had not kissed another human being since Lady Hillary had passed on twenty years and more ago.

Parson and Squire, Bognor thought to himself. Or, in a manner of speaking, Squire Mark One (Sir Nimrod) and Squire Mark Two (Perry Contractor). Even now all English villages were supposed to have one of each, although in practice the parson was called something like a team ministry and was a handful of curates based on the nearest town and cruising round the surrounding villages when it suited them. Even Larch, he had learned from Peregrine, was nominally responsible for the smaller villages of Herring St Andrew and Herring All Saints, but All Saints was effectively delegated to the district nurse who doubled up as a deaconess and St Andrew was practically derelict. What passed for the St Andrew's congregation worshipped at St George except for twice a month when Larch took his guitar over for a People's Choral Evensong.

Bognor was a city person who had lived nearly all his adult life in London. He had all the townee's wariness about the country, suspecting that rural prettiness was merely a cover for incest, bestiality and possibly even witchcraft. Most of what he knew about village life was gleaned from reading the newspapers and a certain sort of novel.

‘If this were fiction,' he muttered to his wife as they both helped themselves to another sausage roll from the hamper (Mrs Gotobed, the Contractors' cook had excelled herself) ‘then we'd have the local doctor here as well, wouldn't we?'

‘Him or the local bobby,' she agreed. ‘I imagine we're about to get a visitation from Samantha's scrumptious policeman. Or do you think he's something she dreamed up?'

‘Who knows?' asked Bognor more or less rhetorically. He really meant ‘Who cares?' but was nervous of being overheard by his host or hostess. ‘Frankly,' he went on, ‘I'm beginning to wish I'd stayed in bed. These people all seem a bit peculiar.'