Red Herrings (6 page)

‘But you don't know that.'

Guy grinned. ‘I've never been more certain of anything.'

Bognor frowned. ‘That's intuition. You aren't allowed intuition in our game, you know that. It's inadmissible. “How did you know that Professor Plum did it in the conservatory with the poker?” “Intuition, my lord.” It wouldn't wash. Case dismissed. We need a rational progression of facts leading inexorably to a logical conclusion.'

‘Quite,' said Guy. ‘Nevertheless intuition can play a part in directing you to asking the questions which elucidate the facts. In any event I intend proceeding on the basis that there was foul play. I think Wilmslow was interfered with. Whether he was alive or dead when he was abandoned in the wood is neither here nor there. The court can play around with that. Our job is to find out who put him there – dead
or
alive.'

‘I see,' said Bognor.

‘So the first thing I shall do,' continued Guy decisively, ‘is to have a chat to all the people on Wilmslow's list and get them to account for their movements between the end of the nine o'clock news and breakfast.'

‘What about motive?'

‘Sod motive!' said Guy, who had obviously been transformed by the Perrier. ‘Let's find out who did it. Once we've done that we'll get the reason soon enough.'

Bognor wondered whether he should order another gin and decided against. Not because he didn't want one but because he didn't want the police thinking he was some sort of lush.

‘In that case,' he said, ‘I think I'll concentrate on motive. We'll be approaching it from two different ends of the stick.'

‘One of the ends is bound to be the wrong one,' said Guy. He laughed with the rather gratified air of a man who has been surprised by a joke he had never intended.

‘Not necessarily,' said Bognor, managing to imply a depth of hidden meaning which he hoped he was not going to be called upon to reveal. He was happier with the shady ambiguities and semi-conscious neuroses implicit in dealing with people's reasons for wanting to kill other people. Guy's self-appointed role of investigator of times and places of alibis and whereabouts struck him as mundane and unintellectual. The difference, to his way of thinking, between philosophy and algebra. But then he was only a modest arts graduate. Also he was well aware that in the upper reaches of academe there were plenty of dons who would tell him that algebra and philosophy were one and the same. Perhaps that was what he meant about there being two right ends of this particular stick.

He was saved from these not entirely relevant musings by the entrance of Monica, Mrs Bognor. She did not enter Popinjay's in the prescribed Chandler manner, carrying a smoking gun, but she might almost have done for she was clearly the bearer of dramatic tidings. Her air of disarray and incompletely applied lipstick suggested, even to men like Bognor and Guy Rotherhithe, that she had been interrupted in mid toilette.

‘I was hoping I'd find you two boys in here,' she said. ‘Can I have a quick drink? Sir Nimrod's in the bedroom and I'm not going back without one of you.'

‘Good grief!' said Bognor. ‘You don't mean …'

‘Oh don't be so ridiculous,' said Monica, eyes flashing through the artificial gloaming. ‘And get me a large Scotch. I hate this dump. Give me the North End Road any day.'

Bognor thought of saying something crisp but went to the bar instead where he ordered his wife's whisky and surreptitiously procured another gin for himself. The Inspector was still only halfway through his Perrier.

When he returned to their table he found Guy grinning in a way that he knew Monica would resent. Condescending. It implied that Monica was a piece of fluff to be humoured but, in serious matters, ignored. This was a dangerous misapprehension.

‘It sounds as if you've got your man,' said Guy.' Squire Herring's come to confess.'

‘That is not what I said,' Monica said frigidly as she took a gulp of her drink. ‘Thank you darling,' she added in a tone which was not so much intended to thank her husband as to put the policeman in his place.

‘What then?' Bognor smiled at Guy in a half-hearted attempt to warn him to take Monica a touch more seriously.

‘He wants to talk to you,' said Monica. ‘He said it's very important. It's about Brian Wilmslow and he's extremely agitated.'

‘Why didn't he come down?'

‘He said he wanted to talk to you in private.'

‘Was it wise leaving him alone in your room?' Guy's manner was half mocking, half plodding. Like a Gilbert and Sullivan policeman; and not in a professional production either.

‘Oh, don't be so bloody ridiculous.' Monica's voice rasped down her nostrils like Maggie Smith's at moments like this.

‘I'm not being ridiculous.' Guy was stung. ‘He may be the murderer for all you know. And if he's in any way involved he'll be having a good look through those Board of Trade papers by now.'

‘Those Board of Trade papers,' said Monica slowly, emphasising each word, ‘are locked safely in Simon's briefcase. Besides which Sir Nimrod is safely locked in our room as well. It seemed a sensible precaution.' She took a second swig of Scotch and stared at the handsome policeman, challenging him to say something else stupid.

‘Sorry,' he said, then glanced self-importantly at his watch. Bognor half expected him to say that he had a train to catch, or, worse, that he had work to do. Instead he said quite flatly, ‘I have an appointment. No doubt you'll tell me all about Sir Nimrod in the morning.' And with his irritatingly even-toothed smile and an ingratiating genuflection in Monica's direction he was off and away.

‘Conceited ass,' said Monica. ‘I can't stand those sort of superficial good looks.'

Bognor knew this was not a good moment to gloat.

‘We'd better go and unlock the squire,' he said.

He had his back to them when they entered the room and seemed for a moment unaware of any intrusion. Only when Bognor coughed did he turn from the window with a surprised shake of the head, like a man emerging from a dream which, it immediately transpired, was just what he was doing.

‘We came here from Caen,' he said, blinking.

Mr and Mrs Bognor looked blank.

‘William d'herring. Knight. Namesake of the Conqueror. Came from Caen.' The incongruous tuft of ginger hair waggled curiously as he spoke. ‘We're nearly all in the vault. You realise I'm the twenty-third baronet and when I'm gone the title passes to my cousin Keith in Canterbury.'

‘That's not so far,' said Bognor, grasping at straws.

‘About twenty-four hours as the crow flies,' said the old man. ‘Six weeks by P and O.'

‘Canterbury, New Zealand, you idiot,' hissed Monica, spitting in his right ear. Bognor nodded. Keith was clearly a Kiwi.

Sir Nimrod was obviously not finished. He was nowhere near the point. Bognor was about to ask him to come to it a little more rapidly but stopped himself, realising that this was probably a case of ‘softly, softly'.

‘The whole of English history's in the Herring family tree,' continued the squire. ‘Forget all that clever stuff they teach you at Oxford and the London School of bloody Economics. You don't need a lot of damned Marxists banging on with their half-baked theorising – it's all here in Herring St George.' He rubbed a rheumy eye and repeated, ‘All here in Herring St George and when I'm gone it's finished.'

‘Perhaps your cousin Keith will come home and settle.'

Monica meant to be soothing but Sir Nimrod only glowered. ‘Whole damned country's gone to the dogs or New Zealand,' he said and sat down heavily in a high-backed porter's chair which Felix had picked up in a junk shop in Whelk. It was covered in nutmeg brown velvet. ‘Fact of life. God knows we might as well have let Hitler and his chums in. It couldn't have been worse than it is and at least the trains would run on time.' He paused and looked thoughtful. ‘Was it Hitler who made the trains run on time or Mussolini? There hasn't even been a station in Herring St George since that fat oaf Beeching axed it. And they've taken the dining car off the eight-thirty from Whelk to town. Would you believe the station's just been bought by some writer chap for over a hundred thousand? Writes tea commercials. Something to do with monkeys.'

Bognor felt it was time to impose a little order on these ramblings.

‘Monica said you had something to tell me,' he said, not unkindly but with officer-class authority. ‘About the death this morning.'

‘You wouldn't have such a thing as a drink would you?' The old man rummaged in his pocket and produced a packet of cheap thin Woodbine cigarettes. The Bognors always had a bottle of Scotch in their hotel room. Bognor poured a thimble into a tooth mug and added water. When this was done and the Woodbine was alight Sir Nimrod said: ‘Look at the Clout. The Clout was going even before we got here. Hundreds of years. Happy family occasion. Private affair. Now it's day trippers and cameras and even journalists.' He pronounced the last word ‘jawnalists' and he pronounced it with a dreadful contempt.

‘Oh, not really a journalist,' said Bognor, trying to maintain a light tone, ‘a gentleman from
The Times.
'

‘Gentleman from
The Times!
' Sir Nimrod spat the words out. ‘It's owned by some friend of cousin Keith. There hasn't been a gentleman on
The Times
since that rat Northcliffe took it over.'

Bognor swallowed and decided to restrict himself to business.

‘What exactly was it you wanted to tell me?' he asked, quite briskly this time.

This time there was a very long pause. Bognor realised that much of the squire's meandering so far, while heartfelt, was really a device to put off the difficult moment when he had to say what he had come to say. It was obviously a message he had qualms about delivering.

‘You're some sort of intelligence wallah?' he hazarded at last.

‘In a manner of speaking,' admitted Bognor. ‘I work for the Board of Trade in Special Investigations.'

‘Ah.' Sir Nimrod chewed this revelation for a while but obviously found it difficult to digest. He tried another tack.

‘You're investigating this morning's business. The body and all that?'

‘Up to a point,' said Bognor unhelpfully.

‘Up to what point?' asked Sir Nimrod, reasonably enough.

‘My husband is assisting the police with their enquiries,' said Monica. ‘The chief inspector is in charge but my husband has a sort of watching brief on behalf of the government.'

‘Much rather not talk to the police. Delicate matter.'

Neither Simon nor Monica knew quite what to make of this and after a while the squire continued. ‘The fact is,' he said, ‘that chap they found in the wood this morning was a bit of a skeleton in my cupboard if you follow my drift.'

‘I see,' said Bognor, now hopelessly adrift.

‘You do promise that this won't go beyond these four walls?' He looked searchingly at Bognor who started to reply cautiously but was over-ruled by his wife who said, bossily, ‘Anything you say will be treated in the utmost confidence.'

She gave her husband one of her celebrated ‘for heaven's sake shut up and be sensible' glances.

‘The fact of the matter,' said Sir Nimrod at last, ‘is that this creature Wilmslow who was done in during the Clout is the son of our old butler, Wilmslow.'

There was a long pause while the Bognors digested this unlikely revelation and wondered where it was going to lead.

‘Very difficult to explain this,' he continued, ‘but they were a bad lot those Wilmslows. Father came to us through an advertisement in the
Lady
and I never was sure about his references. My wife was alive then, God bless her, and she said I was imagining things.'

He lit another cigarette. ‘You see the fact is,' he said, ‘that Naomi's not her mother's daughter.'

‘I don't follow,' said Bognor.

‘She's Edith's girl.'

‘Edith?'

‘Mrs Macpherson. I … well, to put it bluntly, Edith and I were walking out together …'

‘You mean you and Edith Macpherson had an affair and Naomi was the result?' Monica did not mean to be gratuitously rough but she felt it was time to cut some cackle.

‘I suppose so,' said Sir Nimrod wretchedly.

‘I don't understand,' said Bognor. ‘Why didn't you all get divorced?'

‘Edith wanted to go back to Macpherson,' said Sir Nimrod staring at the floor. ‘But he wouldn't have her back with the child.'

‘So you took her on and pretended she was your wife's child. That must have been rather difficult.'

‘Very difficult time,' agreed Sir Nimrod still avoiding any eye contact. ‘Muriel never got over it.'

Bognor remembered Peregrine and Samantha telling him about Lady Herring's faintly mysterious demise in the moat.

‘But how … I mean surely people noticed …' Monica, for once, was groping, ‘I mean surely people would have realised that Mrs Macpherson was pregnant and that Lady Herring was not. It's not easy to conceal these things. I don't mean to seem indelicate but someone must have noticed. Especially in a tight little English village like this one.'

‘The ladies both went away for several months,' he said, so softly that he was barely audible. ‘I seem to recollect that we said something about going abroad. You must remember this was more than forty years ago. There was a war on. Strange things happen in war. I make no excuses but they were unusual times. Very unusual.'

‘And how exactly does the butler, Wilmslow, come into all this?' Bognor had a pretty good idea, of course. But he wanted to hear it from the horse's mouth.

Sir Nimrod swallowed hard. ‘Wilmslow found out,' he said. ‘He was a rat. I'd have had to sell up anyway. Damned socialists saw to that with their damn fool taxes. And I was never much of a farmer. But we could have hung on a lot longer if it hadn't been for Wilmslow.'