Ten Lords A-Leaping (21 page)

‘So who’s the hot favourite for perpetrator?’

‘Well, quite apart from the matter of Dolamore, the anti-terrorist boys are still going hell for leather after the animal activists; they’re working steadily through the shortlist of particularly dangerous groups. We’re still plodding through the list of individuals murdered to see if by any chance all these people were murdered as a cosmetic device to cover up an attempt on the life of one of them.’

‘Surely in the light of the second lot of murders, that’s outrageously far-fetched?’

‘Come on. Don’t you remember the guy in America years ago who blew up a whole passenger plane so he could collect the life insurance on his mother? These things happen. Still, I admit it’s not likely, and Jim – although because he’s thorough he’s going through the motions – thinks it’s hardly worth entertaining. Having gone through last week’s victims, we haven’t found a soul whom anyone would have wished to murder except for poor old Poulteney. And since we talked to the ghastly Vanessa, we really don’t rate her as a prospect. And of course if any of those killed the first time round were specifically targeted, why were those others murdered yesterday?’

‘Well, exactly. If we’re to believe in the notion of murdering many to dispose of one, yesterday’s bombs would mean that they were aiming, a couple of weeks ago, for someone they missed, so all the ones they got then were irrelevant. So you should really only be investigating those they didn’t kill.’ He took a meditative sip. ‘It’s making my head swim.’

‘We haven’t quite reached that stage. At present we’re now focusing on who might have wanted to kill any of the unfortunates blown up yesterday as well as everyone in your group who would have been expected to turn up in committee room 4.’

‘So you must be talking about perhaps twenty-five individuals.’

‘Yes. But talk about needles in haystacks! We’ve got a team of CID people investigating everyone but it’s an enormous job and God knows what the chances are of turning up motives unless they’re absolutely staring one in the face. And what’s more, as you can imagine, the security implications are an absolute nightmare. We’re going to have to bring in the SAS. We’re under ferocious criticism for having let yesterday happen. And since the media are screaming for his resignation, the Home Secretary’s hopping mad and is taking it out on the police. Yet how could we have stopped it? You could have fitted twenty of those bombs into a small briefcase and hidden them anywhere. We did as thorough a search as we could but inevitably it just wasn’t good enough.’

‘Calm down, Ellis. You’re sounding very defensive. Now, I’m not attacking you and your stout colleagues, but – if I may be just a touch self-centred for a moment – how likely do you think I am to get knocked off in the service of the humble fox?’

‘Less than before, I think. You won’t be allowed to meet all together again without security clearance and high-grade protection. Even the mighty Duke of Stormerod got a flea in his ear this morning for having organized that meeting with all of you without telling us first.’

‘Where can we meet that’s safe?’

‘Well, not in the duke’s pad for a start. Jim and I have been there to see him and I observed – as no doubt you did – that it’s a five-storey house crammed with thousands of
objets
which would probably take us three days to search.’

‘I suppose the duke could ask the PM for his bunker.’

Pooley rubbed his eyes. ‘Finish up your whisky and go home, Robert. We both badly need sleep. And if you see a dark form behind you when you’re waiting for a taxi, don’t worry. It’ll be one of ours. At least, it should be one of ours.’

‘Thanks, Ellis. You make me feel so safe.’

‘Why didn’t you ring? I was frantic with worry.’

‘I did! I left a message last night with Ravi that I was OK and gave a number where I could be reached. And I tried your office phone several times but it just rang and rang.’

‘It’s out of order,’ she said wearily. ‘And remind me to kill Ravi.’

‘Don’t kill him. Just sack him.’

‘Killing him would be a lot simpler. The dependants would get his life-insurance policy and you could come out and replace him. That would keep you out of harm’s way and also console me in my exile. Now, what the hell’s going on?’

Ten minutes later he said, ‘That’s it. I don’t think there are any more salient details.’ There was a silence. ‘Rachel, are you there?’

‘Oh, yes. I’m here.’

‘What’s the matter?’

‘With me? Nothing. With you it seems to me rather a lot.’

‘You don’t like what I’m doing because it’s dangerous?’

‘Parachuting is dangerous. Bareback riding cross-country is dangerous. Walking across a motorway is dangerous. What you’re doing is suicidal.’

‘Don’t exaggerate.’

‘Exaggerate!’ she exploded. ‘Exaggerate! Nineteen corpses, half of them in smithereens, and you tell me I’m exaggerating? And now you and that lunatic Jack Troutbeck are proffering yourselves for target practice next time round.’

‘Oh, now…’

‘Don’t “Oh, now” me. What are you doing this for? To enable people you don’t even like to have the right to continue pursuing foxes around the countryside? Yes, that’s clearly a wonderful cause to die for. I’m sure your parents, like me, will see that the sacrifice was not in vain. We can club together to provide a fitting memorial. A stuffed fox, perhaps? Placed tastefully in a glass cabinet with a silver plaque engraved with “Robert Amiss 1964-1995. He died for this”.’

‘It would be more accurate, wouldn’t it,’ said Amiss tentatively, ‘to make it a stuffed hunter?’

‘It depends on how you interpret the word “stuffed”.’ Her tone was icy. ‘Why are you going on with this?’

‘On the fox-hunting front, because I hate leaving anything half finished. And on the murder investigatory front, just curiosity, I suppose.’

‘Wouldn’t your curiosity be satisfied if you let the police sort things out and you were left alive to read about it in the newspapers?’

‘It’s not the same as being involved. And maybe even helping. Come on, Rachel. We’ve had this conversation several times before.’

‘Normally when we do there are no more than a couple of bodies on the scene and nobody seems much interested in rubbing you out. This time is different.’

‘The curiosity isn’t different.’

‘You know what you remind me of? Hunters. In fact, everyone involved in this crazy business is a hunter. The pro-hunting ones are the simplest kind. All they want is to career around in pursuit of their foxes. The anti-hunting lot want, metaphorically, to hunt down the hunters. And you now want to hunt down whichever of them is the murderer even if, in the process, you break your neck or have it broken for you.’

Amiss couldn’t think of anything to say.

‘Do you know what?’ she said. ‘I admire your tenacity. I admire your intelligence. God help me, I admire your courage. But I would really rather see it employed in making a living and, as your father would put it, bettering yourself, rather than playing Sancho Panza to Jack Troutbeck’s Don Quixote.’

‘I would prefer Ellis’s view that I’m Archie Goodwin to her Nero Wolfe.’ He heard an impatient intake of breath and added hastily, ‘I’ll be careful. Honestly. And cross my heart and hope to die, I’ll get a real job when this is over, even if that means going back to the civil service. Is it a deal?’

‘There isn’t really another one on offer, is there?’

‘No.’

‘One of the fascinating things about you, Robert, is that you are obliging at times to a point of wimpishness and yet completely stubborn at others. Anyone with a grain of sense would accept the advice to quit now.’

‘That’s the package, I’m afraid. I can’t defend it, but it’s how I am.’

‘I know. And since I love you as you are I suppose I don’t want you to change. But you know that periodically I’ll shout at you in the hope that you will.’

‘And I wouldn’t really want you to stop being a shrew. It would remove some of the spice from the mixture.’

‘What a romantic pair we are.’ She laughed. ‘Right. Now let me read you the letter I’ve just sent to Personnel. I hope it will prove shrewish enough to shake them up a bit.’

‘Have the cops been round?’

‘I had a Detective Constable Caudwell waiting for me when I got home last night striving to determine if someone so much wants to murder me that they are prepared to go to all this trouble and expense.’

‘What did you tell him? Something inventive, I hope.’ The baroness laughed merrily.

‘I don’t want to add to my troubles by being arrested for wasting police time. So I explained that I had no money except for perhaps ten thousand pounds of capital in the flat, and that neither my parents nor my girlfriend was likely to murder me for such a small sum. I did, however, suggest that you might conceivably murder me in order to gain possession of my cat.’

‘Did that interest him?’

‘He wrote it down so earnestly that I hastily explained that it was a joke and that if he saw the cat he would understand why. I explained as best I could the nature of the business relationship between you and me and he left, I hope, satisfied. Anyway, since I don’t have a pacemaker I’m pretty well ruled out of the reckoning.’

‘Ah, good. That should confuse them.’

‘What? How?’

There was silence on the line. Clearly her attention had wandered.

‘Jack! What were you talking about?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Have they been to see you?’

‘Certainly. Late last night also.’

‘What did you say?’

‘Oh, nothing important,’ she said impatiently. ‘Don’t fuss. Now, about Plutarch. I’m going to have to return her to you for a while.’

‘What’s she done?’

‘Nothing reprehensible in my book, but what one might call a couple of incidents yesterday in my absence. You remember Greasy Joan?’

‘How could I forget? But I thought she’d left you long ago.’

‘She came back. We couldn’t refuse her a job, poor old thing. Got her cleaned up a bit and gave her a decent uniform, so she’s a bit less greasy these days. But still a bit prone to hysteria.’

‘What brought it on?’

‘Since Plutarch refuses to give her side of the story, I can’t be sure, but the gist is – as I followed it through the sobs – that Plutarch’s insistence on wresting from Greasy Joan a capon which she was bearing to High Table caused said Grease to proclaim her possessed by satanic forces. So, since I don’t want a posse of mad incestuous Fen-dwellers arriving to burn her at the stake, with reluctance I’ve decided it’s at present unsafe to leave her at St Martha’s when I’m away so much. Myles, I’m sorry to say, has put his foot down and refuses to give her B & B at his place.’

‘What a man! You mean he says no to you?’

‘On certain matters, Myles is proof even against the most feminine of my wiles and one such is any question putting his rather fine collection of eighteenth-century glass at the mercy of what I am forced to admit is a tendency to clumsiness on Plutarch’s part.’

‘Put her back in the cattery.’

‘No, no, we can’t have that. It would upset her. I’ll hand her over tomorrow after lunch. See you in the Peers’ Guest Room at twelve-thirty. Round up Bertie and Sid.’

‘You’re not coming up today?’

‘Can’t. I’ve a few dragons to slay at the College Council and Jennifer Poulteney’s coming over to lunch. I must cheer the poor child up. She’s very upset about Reggie.’

‘You’re not…?’ He couldn’t bring himself to ask the question.

‘No, I’m not. You have a dirty mind, Robert.’

‘Which is frequently proved to be right.’

‘Not this time. My motives are entirely honourable. Besides, she’s an unregenerate heterosexual.’

‘How do you know?’

‘I asked her. Life is too short for shilly-shallying round these topics. You need to know where you stand from the outset. It’s amazing how many people give straight answers if you ask straight questions. Bye.’

Amiss sank back on to his pillows wondering how he would summon up the energy to get up. What with Caudwell not leaving till midnight, the row with Rachel at three a.m. and the baroness’s breezy wake-up call at seven, he felt exhausted. He fell into a sound and blessedly dreamless sleep and could have cried with frustration when after only a few minutes the telephone rang again.

‘Sorry to wake you up so early, son, but I was afraid I might miss you if you had an early interview or anything.’

‘That’s all right, Dad. Good to hear you. How are things?’

‘Fine, fine. In fact, Mum and I were thinking we might come down to London for a day or two to see you. It’s been a couple of months now.’

Amiss tried to keep his voice level. ‘That would be lovely, Dad. When were you thinking of?’

‘How would this weekend be?’

‘Terribly sorry.’ He summoned his scattered wits. ‘Unfortunately I’ve agreed to visit an old university friend in… Devon.’

‘What about the weekend after?’

‘Not quite sure. Could we make it the one after? I think that’d be safer.’

‘Fair enough, son.’ Amiss felt the familiar rush of affection for a father who never stooped to emotional blackmail. ‘We’ll settle on that. Now, how’s the job-hunting going?’

Chapter 21

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Amiss spent the whole morning in the Lords Library working ferociously hard on briefing notes for the Committee. He had lost all track of time when a hand on his shoulder extracted him from the compilation of a comparative table of hunting legislation throughout the European Union to the reality of the Duke of Stormerod enquiring gently if he could possibly spare the time for a quick pre-prandial drink.

‘So sorry to trouble you, my dear fellow, but I couldn’t raise Jack.’ He settled Amiss in a window seat overlooking the Thames and – after the usual courtly badinage – dispatched Violet to get their order.

‘Anything I can help with?’

‘Perhaps you’d be so kind as to have a word with her. I’m tied up most of the day with a couple of crisis meetings. As you might imagine, a lot of people have got the wind up in no uncertain way.’