Pix (Volume Book 24) (Harpur & Iles Mysteries)

by Bill James

  Although Beatrice, her older sister, wearing denim skirt and jacket, might not know the games Ralph had thought of, she could add her own insights: ‘There are some famous sex routines involving sauce or gravy, aren’t there, Jane? But they get everywhere. It takes two or three goes in the washing machine to remove, and you can’t send sheets streaked like that to the laundry, because of talk. Wasn’t it the state of the bedding that helped them nobble Oscar Wilde?’

  ‘I hate all these kinks,’ Empathic’s mother said. ‘Nature should be nature, and no additives.’ Many of the young male Monty members seemed to have very assertive older female relatives – mothers, aunts, even great aunts. Ralph thought of Dependable Jasper, bank robber – dead now – whose aunt and grandmother inherited all the loot.

  ‘Why the locks, Empathic?’ Ralph said.

  ‘Some kind of break-in?’ he said. ‘Manse asked my mate to repaint one of the window frames where there’d been forcing. Who’d have the neck to break in at Manse’s? Yes, odd. But maybe people from away who didn’t realize the rectory was his.’ Ralph knew club members felt mightily flattered when he spent time with them and they would talk all their secrets, trying to interest and hold him. Oh, yes, they’d launch a bit of cheek, also – such as asking if Ralph had ever annihilated anyone on stairs, but this happened only so they wouldn’t seem too creepily grateful for Ralph’s presence, which they were. Ember felt more or less sure he never had killed anyone on stairs, and certainly not on ex-rectory stairs, though stairs did offer grand chances, agreed.

  ‘As long as it’s OK for both I think anything’s all right,’ Beatrice said. ‘Sometimes love can do with pepping up. Kinks and creativity – they’ll overlap.’

  ‘And then Manse is giving his actual wife one in the drawing room, door locked with a new lock, sort of testing it out on the job, you could say,’ Empathic replied. ‘She lives away but came back.’

  ‘Was sauce or gravy involved in this?’ his aunt said.

  ‘My mate thinks on a rug from abroad and very special-looking. There’s a lot of art in that room.’

  ‘A rug might be ruined,’ Beatrice said.

  ‘Setting can be important,’ Jane Tullane said.

  ‘And in the middle of it all, who turns up?’ Empathic replied. ‘Guess who turns up?’

  ‘Is this one of the in-fill girls, unexpectedly?’ the aunt asked. ‘Out of phase? There’s screamed abuse and clawing between her and the wife? More blood, not sauce?’

  ‘Iles and Harpur,’ Empathic said, ‘really working the door bell, then barging in. This is a famed building with a holy past, but they barge in just the same. My mate thinks Manse had to do coitus interruptus, not on account of birth control as in the old days, but because of Iles and Harpur with questions and conversation. They’re not going to care about what point on his trajectory Manse had reached, are they? This is senior police. They think they have the right. So they’re rapping on the gallery door, like a raid.’

  ‘He’d get a pain in the testicles if he was close and had to cancel,’ Empathic’s aunt said. ‘Semen all tensed up to shoot and then stoppered can turn baleful. Compare hounds trained for foxhunting but now prevented by law.’

  ‘Iles and Harpur? What did they want?’ Ralph replied.

  ‘Just to get a look around. Nosing. That’s how it seemed to my friend,’ Empathic said.

  ‘They’d had a tip of some sort?’ Ralph said.

  ‘About what?’ Empathic said.

  ‘The redecoration and so on,’ Ralph said.

  ‘Why would anybody tip them off about someone getting his house decorated?’ Emphatic said.

  ‘True,’ Ralph said.

  ‘Unless someone said it was blood not sauce,’ Empathic said. ‘That could be a police matter, couldn’t it? Sauce would not be, no. You don’t get an Assistant Chief and Detective Chief Superintendent out regarding a sauce spill, even on stairs. But blood. This could be of concern to higher ranks.’

  ‘True,’ Ralph said.

  ‘Not all art would be helpful in an amour situation,’ Empathic’s mother said. ‘There’s a painting called The Scream that would put anyone off their oats, this terrible, staring face and the grimace, like a bayonet up his backside. Or no man’s land pictures from the Great War. Paul Somebody. Anti-erotic entirely.’

  ‘Mostly girls with long, auburn hair in clingy dresses,’ Empathic said. ‘My mate could see inside from the drawing-room door. As a matter of fact, he thought it was called a drawing room because of the art. He’s useful but dim.’

  ‘Oh, now, pictures like that would be very positive in a rug collaboration,’ Jane Tullane said.

  ‘The wife’s really going at it, asking Harpur and Iles what they want,’ Empathic replied.

  ‘And no answer?’ Ralph said. ‘Obviously, not from those two. They know how to ask, not the other way around.’

  ‘My mate had to go back to work up the stairs,’ Empathic said. ‘But he thinks a photograph. He thinks Harpur had a photograph for them to look at.’

  ‘Of what? Who?’ Ember said.

  ‘He’s too far off by now, and moving towards the wall-scraping, anyway. But Manse stares at it and shakes his head,’ Empathic said.

  ‘Failure to recognize?’ Ralph said. ‘Or acting failure to recognize. Is that what your contact thought?’

  ‘And then the children come in,’ Empathic replied. ‘My pal’s looking down into the hall from where he’s working but he said the girl seemed to stare at Iles as if . . . well, “as if she thought he’d been into her life before but didn’t know how.” That’s the way he put it – “as if she thought he’d been into her life before but didn’t know how.” Those words fixed themselves on me, so weird, and maybe not dim at all.’

  ‘There’s a flavour to Iles that scares people,’ Ember said. ‘You don’t get made Assistant Chief without a vatful of it. The ability to start terror spasms in the populace is known as a “leadership quality”. Mostly, people are born with leadership qualities, or not, but Police Staff College also puts on seminars where they’re developed and plumped up. Folk will imagine they’ve met Iles before because of something evil glimpsed in a nightmare or horror movie and stored in the subconscious.’ Of course, what really shook Ralph was the amount Manse Shale had not mentioned to him – the blood, the locks, the break-in, the Harpur and Iles reconnaissance, the photograph. All this Manse had known about when Ralph visited him for their usual companies’ meeting at the rectory, but no word. It meant something elaborate and wilfully obscured from Ralph was taking place and might ultimately encompass him, as well as Shale. Although no partnership existed between Ember and Manse, their working arrangement kept them close, or ought to.

  Ember recalled Harpur’s visit to the club, a visit unusually – maybe significantly – solo, and the questions about Manse – about Manse’s ‘problems’. What were they? Where would they lead? Ember felt left behind, excluded. He wondered whether if he let Shale fully into Low Pastures Manse would recognize the humaneness in this gesture and decide he must not soil such a happy friendship with miserable, scheming secrecy, the shady, mouth-shut sod. Ralph had always known that excluding Shale from Low Pastures must seem hurtful, even insulting. Until tonight at the Monty, Ralph never worried about that. After all, it was only Manse Shale. Now, though, Ember came to think this might be harsh and not sensible. Low Pastures had stood for hundreds of years and could hardly be damaged by the visit of Manse and a companion. She probably would not go on and on about Ralph’s astonishing similarity to the young Charlton Heston, in, say, Ben Hur, for fear of making Mansel jealous. Nobody ever spoke of Manse as resembling a film idol. But if he did want to get in on references to Ben Hur, you could say he had a face like a chariot horse’s arse.

  Ralph moved on from Empathic’s group. Chandor was in the club again with a few of his people. Tonight, they had a table over near the framed, splendidly cheerful, enlarged photograph of a Monty excursion setting out for Paris from Shield Terrace in a coach
one summer, Bespoke Vincent and Caspar Nottage still unmarked and smiling joyfully at the camera before boarding. In Montmartre, Bespoke and Caspar kidnapped a tart for thirty-six hours and fractured at least one arm of the pimp who came searching for her. Caspar’s neck and face were very badly torn by the tart’s nails and Bespoke had his nose broken in the fight with the pimp. Ralph discouraged these trips since. A club like the Athenaeum probably did not have coach excursions abroad at all, and definitely not with repercussions. Ember took the picture down every couple of days to check for bugs behind, and could regard this table as one of the most secure in the club. Did Chandor somehow know that? ‘We’ve been admiring the illustrations on the baffle board up there, Ralph,’ he said. ‘Sort of mythical.’

  ‘Yes, a baffle board – to do with the mysteries of air currents, thermals and so on,’ Ember said.

  ‘I was explaining that to the boys here,’ Chandor said. ‘They thought a bullet-proof steel shield.’ He had a chuckle at this, and Ralph joined in. Chandor said: ‘What use a shield that gives protection only from one very restricted point? It makes me think of the Maginot Line in the Second World War – supposed to protect France but Jerry just nipped around the end of it.’

  ‘Right,’ Ember replied.

  ‘Maurice says the illustrations are probably from a book by some poet,’ Chandor said. ‘He’s a reader.’

  ‘William Blake,’ Maurice said.

  ‘Right,’ Ember replied.

  ‘This club has a real ambience, and I don’t mean only the baffle board illustrations,’ Chandor said. ‘It’s an achievement, Ralph.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘I don’t think there can be many clubs outside London of this quality,’ Chandor said.

  ‘Kind. Which clubs do you belong to in London?’ Ember said.

  ‘A relaxed, civilized atmosphere and then the grand mahogany panelling and wonderful brass fittings,’ Chandor replied. ‘These speak quality.’

  ‘A club is its membership, that’s my belief.’

  ‘But a membership takes its tone from somewhere. This has to be worked for. Yes, a notable achievement, Ralph, if I may say.’

  ‘I regard it as reciprocal,’ Ember replied. ‘One does try to establish what you call a tone – rightly call a tone – but it is a tone that suits the membership, and is in fact part created by the membership as much as by me.’ This fucker and his mates and his grease would be at the top of the Goodbye For Keeps list once Ralph began his transformation programme.

  ‘And a club able to attract a Detective Chief Super,’ Chandor said. ‘Didn’t I see Harpur talking to you the other night?’

  ‘He drops in now and then.’

  ‘Is he trouble?’

  ‘Trouble? What trouble would that be?’

  ‘He looks trouble,’ Chandor said.

  ‘Give him a glass of gin and cider mixed and everything’s lovely.’

  ‘And Iles?’ Chandor said.

  ‘Port and lemon for him,’ Ralph said.

  ‘And amenable anyway I hear,’ Chandor said.

  ‘He calls it “the old whore’s drink”,’ Ember replied.

  ‘At some stage, you and I must organize a general chat, Ralph,’ Chandor said.

  ‘In which respect?’ Ember said. He knew in which respect. Chandor wanted to get in on the core trade. Hadn’t Ralph mentioned him to Shale as a coming problem? It seemed like every week he and Manse had to destroy somehow or another attempts by new boys to get entry.

  ‘Yes, general,’ Chandor said. ‘Maurice, here, he’s not just a nose in a book. He advises me on business prospects. He thinks a general chat, you and I, would be constructive, Ralph.’

  This infuriated Ember. Fuck off, Maurice. Maurice! Fuck off, Hilaire Chandor. Hilaire! It was not just the indelicacy of mentioning business concerns in the club, but the way they were mentioned – the offhandedness of it, the tacked-on nature of it. Chandor wanted a discussion, yet he had not approached Ember with a respectfully offered request, which might be acceptable. He had waited for Ralph to approach him, as if Chandor possessed the status and Ralph should seek a hearing, like an audience with the Pope. Obviously, Chandor could not have known Ralph would come out into the bar and agree to talk to him tonight, but, because Ralph did, Chandor thought he’d take advantage by slipping in that proposal – a proposal which began, apparently, with this hanger-on, this all-rounder baggageman, this lover-of-literature, Maurice. Maurice! ‘I’ve reached a consolidation point just now,’ Ember said, ‘am not in the market for new ventures. I’m like that, you know – cyclic. I aim to lie fallow for a while every few years, Hilaire.’

  Chandor said: ‘What Maurice and I have in mind is –’

  ‘Yes, a consolidation point just now,’ Ralph replied.

  Chandor said: ‘In our estimate, Mansel Shale isn’t any longer up to running a –’

  ‘Perhaps I’ll be able to think of new ventures in eighteen months,’ Ember said, ‘but for the present I’m –’

  ‘Pressures get to Manse, get to him badly. This can be proved by recent small incidents. We don’t consider he’ll be able to go on maximizing,’ Chandor said. ‘Look, I know he’s a long-time friend of yours but isn’t it time you –’

  ‘A sabbatical. I feel due a sabbatical. That high-falutin? But industry, commerce and academe have come to recognize the value of the kind of break I award myself periodically,’ Ember said. ‘A refresher.’

  ‘And such pressures on Shale are liable to mount,’ Chandor said. ‘He’ll break.’

  ‘Enabling one to come back and perhaps see things in a quite different and perhaps more fruitful way,’ Ember replied.

  ‘Director of Strategic Planning,’ Chandor said. ‘That’s how I would describe Maurice’s role.’

  ‘Not that I can ever be totally idle,’ Ember said, giving this a couple of wry grimaces. ‘The Monty prevents it.’

  ‘Manse running three women,’ Chandor said. ‘Not clever. One of them, two of them, might get jealous and angry and start blabbing to the tabloids for cash. Sex, drugs, big earnings – it’s a story made for the News of the World or the Mirror.’

  So fucking right. Ember said: ‘I’ve noticed before that this table, near the excursion photo, feels maximum benefit from the baffle board. A pleasant current of air, Hilaire – gentle, invigorating, temperate.’ It fucking rhymed – air Hilaire.

  ‘After all, these women are not just pieces on the side with no claims,’ Chandor said. ‘They’re installed – and then abruptly de-installed. This is bound to cause them –’

  ‘Ah, there’s Caspar,’ Ember replied. He spotted Nottage in a crowd at the snooker table and walked over to have a word with him. That skilled, unrestrained neck- and face-gouging on the Paris excursion caused a blood infection and for a time his right eye had been threatened. Even now, years later, Caspar still suffered occasional aftereffects with his sight. Ralph went and checked how he was, not only because Ember worried about rips in the table baize if Caspar couldn’t focus, but also to ditch Chandor and his damn overbearing truths. Personally, Ralph would be very watchful of nails if unpleasantness with a woman developed and she went for his face, tart or otherwise. He could not see that what might be under a tart’s nails would be more poisonous than was under any woman’s nails, unless tarts deliberately packed harmful stuff there to deter attackers. A French thing? Paris had a relaxed attitude to sex, yes, but did it also turn vindictive occasionally? Caspar would have to leave when the Monty began its change of character, but Ralph must be careful in case Nottage went to a tribunal and alleged discrimination because of his eye disability. Ralph could not defend himself against that kind of case by saying it was nothing to do with Caspar’s eye, just his all-round slobbishness.

  Ember considered Manse had dressed very nearly right for dinner at Low Pastures, even though Shale did not ask Ralph for advice. This was one of the things about Shale – he sometimes surprised by proving how sensitively he could measure a situation and react to it,
despite the inveterate underclass looks. Obviously, no clothes existed that would ever make Manse appear radiant, but you could see he’d done what he could with himself and you felt moved by it, not tickled or contemptuous. Although Ember had seen Shale in excellent, very modish Paul Mixtor-Hythe oufits, he’d obviously decided he must choose something with a pedigree tonight, so as to tone with Low Pastures. He had on an old-style, dark, three-piece, pinstripe suit made of terrific wool and most likely bought from Oxfam or an Antiques Market barrow. You probably would never get this particular kind of tailoring these days – the beautifully gentle and rounded slope of the shoulders, and lapels doing grand honour to his chest in their width and sweep. Ember would calculate Manse had no holster under these lapels, or only something for a small, ladylike pistol.

  Ralph could imagine suits like this at the funeral service of King George V in 1936, when values were still values and before everything went askew through Edward VIII and Mrs Simpson. Naturally, the suit showed some wear at the cuffs and elbows, but that only added to its aristocratic impact. People who wore outfits like this would despise an appearance of glossy newness. They wanted their garments to tie in with history and tradition. Ember felt sure there would be many suits of the type around major London clubs. And this one, plus the brilliantly polished black lace-ups, chimed perfectly with the historic materials and evident distinction of Low Pastures.

  As if to moderate a little the formality of his main garb, Manse wore an open-necked mauve shirt, clearly silk, though, and with no necklace or medallion on show. A medallion glinting between lapels of that calibre would have been a sick let-down, like tinsel among diamonds. In Ralph’s opinion, the only mistake Manse had made was in the mauveness of the mauve shirt. Although a less aggressive mauveness might have worked, his complexion seemed even worse when seen above and against this flashy colour. The suit jacket had enough length easily to cover weaponry in a waist holster, but on the whole Ralph considered Manse would regard it as poor behaviour to come tooled up to a place like Low Pastures on a social evening.