Deadline (The Simon Bognor Mysteries)

by Tim Heald

  ‘Er …’ Bognor in the ritual reflex of the middle class Englishman invited to take alcohol outside pub hours, glanced at his watch.

  Harris noticed and laughed again. ‘Easy to see you’re not a journalist,’ he said. ‘Don’t worry it’s not long after three and there are plenty of places less inhibited than El Vino or the Coach and Horses.’ The car was a Cambridge blue Porsche and despite the heavy traffic and the ponderous and prolific pedestrians they were in Soho within ten minutes. Harris parked ostentatiously on a double yellow line and led the way down a dark passage, up a dark flight of stairs and into a dark room where half a dozen men and a single woman sat furtively, talking in low guilty voices. Harris ordered a whole bottle of Krug, paid with a ten-pound note and carried it to a table far away from the bar and at least ten yards from the nearest potential eavesdropper.

  ‘I thought,’ he said, offering Bognor a Turkish cigarette from a packet marked ‘Sullivan and Powell’, ‘that it might be a good idea to have a chat.’

  ‘By all means,’ said Bognor, thinking that if he had much more to drink he was going to start falling over.

  ‘Have you got anywhere?’

  ‘Not really, it’s always difficult when you’re suddenly moved into a completely strange organization. It takes time to adjust.’

  ‘I really meant, do you have any ideas about the murderer?’

  ‘Ah.’ Bognor had forgotten temporarily that this was Lord Wharfedale’s son. ‘You mean you know who I am?’

  Bertie Harris looked at him in a way which through the gloom and the alcohol Bognor judged to be quizzical.

  ‘Naturally,’ he said. ‘After all I am my father’s son.’

  ‘That doesn’t follow.’

  ‘I’m sorry, I’m not quite with you.’

  ‘I mean it doesn’t follow that because you’re your father’s son you know everything that he does.’

  ‘Well in this case, actually, it does’. Harris blew Turkish smoke elegantly through flared nostrils and tapped ash on to the carpet. ‘He’s not young and I shall take over in due course and it’s therefore essential that I should be kept in touch with the running of the organization.’

  ‘Then why are you employed on the Samuel Pepys column?’

  He sighed. ‘My father and I agreed that I should spend as much time as possible learning how the paper functions. So I’ve worked in the city office, I’ve been in Washington, Beirut and Paris, I’ve had a spell in management and I’ve even worked in the accounts department God help me. Now I’m having a look at the diary. After all some people think it’s the most important part of the paper. The fact that you and I, I suspect, think it’s utter drivel is neither here nor there. I am also on the board a fact which some people forget, stupidly I always think.’

  ‘I see.’ Bognor didn’t really see, but he was damned if he was going to say so.

  ‘Anyway,’ Bertie continued, pouring more Krug, ‘I can probably help you out with some background material which otherwise would be hard to come by. For starters, you know why my father is so particularly anxious to have the business cleared up.’

  ‘Not apart from the obvious reasons. I suppose there are some un-obvious reasons.’

  ‘Of a sort. You see, St John Derby, despite his glorious past, was a dreadful old lush and no use to man or beast for the past five years at least. My father wanted to pension him off, which was absolutely the right thing to do, but the Union wouldn’t have it.’

  ‘The Union seems to be very strong at the Globe.’

  ‘It’s the same everywhere. They’re killing the industry. My view is that one should stand up to them. Show them who’s boss. If you got rid of a few of the ringleaders the rest would come round pretty quickly. We treat our chaps extremely well. For instance I don’t know if you know but every single one of our employees’ families gets a Christmas box. Some people say that’s paternalism. I say it’s thoughtfulness. However we’re getting off the point. My father had had several chats with St John asking him to leave, but the old boy just dug his heels in. and refused to budge. So naturally you’ll understand that my father felt extremely shall we say peculiar when this happened.’

  ‘You’re not suggesting,’ alcohol had robbed Bognor of any tact he might ordinarily possess, ‘that your father arranged it?’

  Harris seemed genuinely surprised, though not particularly shocked.

  ‘Good Lord no,’ he said. ‘That’s most unlikely. Well, pretty unlikely. Or put it another way, if my father had arranged anything like that, and he suddenly seemed to become extremely serious, ‘then it would have been a thoroughly professional job. No messing around with paper knives in the dead of night. He’d probably have been, oh I don’t know, run over by one of the vans I should think. That’s always happening anyhow.’

  ‘It’s very interesting,’ said Bognor, ‘but I don’t think it’s quite relevant to finding the murderer. All you’re saying is that your father would have preferred Derby out of the way but that he didn’t actually get him out of the way himself. So you’ve given me a new suspect and then taken him away again all in the same sentence.’

  ‘That’s not all,’ said Harris. ‘You see I think just possibly there’s a tendency for everyone to go barking up the wrong tree. I mean I get the impression that because he was killed in our office and because he’d become an apparently rather lonely old man in later days then everyone assumes that the murderer must be one of us. I don’t think that’s necessarily true. It’s not even particularly likely.’

  ‘I’ve heard that once before today,’ said Bognor. ‘In fact I get a distinct idea that you’re all a bit worried.’

  ‘Ha,’ said Harris, ‘remember Hanratty. What about Timothy Evans? If we had a little more confidence in the ability of the police to get the right man then perhaps we wouldn’t be worried. As it is you’re absolutely right, we’re all terrified.’

  Bognor yawned. It had been an exhausting day and it was nothing like over. The bottle, of Krug was only half empty.

  ‘There’s no need to be terrified in this case,’ he said. ‘Sanders strikes me as being very able and sensible and despite any appearance to the contrary I’ve never yet got the wrong person in any of the cases I’ve been involved in.’

  ‘All right,’ said Harris, ‘then here are some ideas I think are worth pursuing. Have you for instance been to St John’s flat?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well I think you should. The furniture is very fine eighteenth century a lot of it, though he indulged a taste for Chinoiserie I don’t share. The Chestertons which everyone joked about are all first editions and he also has several bits of correspondence. The Munnings and the Stubbs and the Augustus John are all originals and they weren’t presents. Even the colour television and the record player suggest an affluence which isn’t exactly consistent with the salary we paid him.’

  ‘Which was?’

  ‘Under five.’

  Bognor raised his eyebrows. ‘What about the expenses? I thought all journalists lived on their expenses.’

  ‘Not on the Globe they don’t. It’s my father’s religious background of which you’re no doubt aware. And the perks of that job aren’t all that they’re cracked up to be either the odd free meal, the odd free drink, the odd trip. But St John spent every holiday in Florence or Venice and he always stayed at the Villa Medici or the Gritti Palace. His favourite drinks were Lafite, Latour and Jack Daniels. Do you see what I’m getting at?’

  ‘He must have had private means of some kind.’ Bertie shrugged. ‘It’s hardly likely,’ he said. ‘His father was a butcher in Leeds. Rather an unsuccessful butcher too, I believe.’

  ‘So how did he do it?’

  ‘That’s what I’m asking you. He hardly won it at bridge. All I’m suggesting is that he managed to convey the impression of living on an income of at the very least ten grand a year. Which is about three times what we know he earned. If you could find out how he filled the gap then I suggest further that you might be
nearer a solution. I say no more. I honestly don’t know any more except that there was something distinctly rat-like about Derby. Now drink up your Krug and let’s put the world to rights in the Samuel Pepys office.’

  4

  WHEN THEY RETURNED LORD Wharfedale’s paragraph had arrived.

  ‘St John Derby,’ it read, ‘who died yesterday was that rare character, a legend in his own time. In recent years he had edited this column with unequalled flair and panache but before that his oils were spread over a wider canvas. The obituary which appears on page 12 gives some indication of a career which took him from Carlisle to the Caucasus, from West Ham to West Africa and in which he conversed with the great names of our century from Hitler to Marilyn Monroe.

  ‘Nevertheless we who work for this column, while joining in the public tribute to one of the great professionals of Fleet Street, also remember him as a man.

  ‘Always ready with an apt quip, never wounding, always gay, he was generous to a fault, particularly where younger less experienced colleagues were concerned.

  ‘A favourite story he often told was how as a young war correspondent in Abyssinia he found himself battling for a scoop with Colonel Erskine Prothero, doyen of foreign correspondents and then at the peak of his powers as “The Man in the News”.

  ‘“Young man,” said Prothero, “be happy while y’er leevin’, for y’er a lang time deid.”’

  ‘It was an adage of which St John Derby never lost sight. He will be much missed.’

  ’Would you re-type this please, Simon?’ said Mr Gringe.

  ‘And cut out the adjectives?’ he said facetiously, but Mr Gringe did not smile.

  ‘We are not supposed to take more than two hours for lunch even if covering a function. It is now four fifteen and I must have your copy by six at the latest.’

  Bognor tried to look contrite and went to his desk. Luckily this was in a corner and he was able to conceal some of his confusion, ineptitude and simple drunkenness by turning his back to the room and talking very softly into the telephone when required to do so. There were no incoming calls but he managed to contact the man from Cheltenham and the press officer of the Regiment. By ten to six he had completed his paragraphs and handed them to Gringe. Five minutes later as he idled through the Evening Standard he was aware of a presence at his elbow.

  ‘Room for improvement, Mr Bognor, but in the circumstances not a bad try. What did Queen Charlotte’s say about the Countess of Cornwall?’

  ‘They didn’t. They said they couldn’t comment.’

  In fact Bognor had been too embarrassed to ring the hospital. He rather hoped to palm the story off on Molly Mortimer next morning.

  ‘Ah,’ said Mr Gringe, ‘better try the Countess herself tomorrow. I like the way you handled the Prince of Wales Midland Light Infantry.’

  ‘I only cut out a couple of adjectives. Otherwise I just typed it straight out. Their chap didn’t have anything to add.’

  ‘That’s not the point. It reads very well. It’s just as important to know when to leave well alone, don’t you think?’ Mr Gringe seemed to invest this last remark with gigantic significance. Bognor wondered why. ‘However there are one or two points. This headline you’ve put on the joke outside the church. I don’t quite understand it.’

  Bognor had captioned the story ‘Vicarious fun’ and was rather pleased with it. ‘It’s a pun,’ he said, ‘on vicar.’

  ‘I’m not an idiot. I can see it’s a pun on vicar, but why vicarious? There’s nothing vicarious about it. Vicarious means substitutive. A form of delegation. Vicarious fun is fun which doesn’t fully involve you. It doesn’t apply here.’

  ‘You’re quite right. It seemed a good idea at the time. What else was wrong?’

  ‘Nothing very vital. It’s just a question of tightening up generally, employing less discursiveness, getting to the point sooner. I think,’ again he seemed exaggeratedly portentous, ‘it would be a help if you were to come to the point more quickly.’

  ‘How do you mean?’ Bognor still couldn’t be certain if he was saying more than one thing at a time. ‘In my stories, or generally?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Mr Gringe, tight lipped, and even more Delphically. Then he smiled. ‘Never mind,’ he said. ‘I think that all in all we’ve made quite a promising start, although I must ask you to try to stick to reasonable office hours. It is a hazard of this sort of job to be, er waylaid, by all sorts of temptations. Please try to resist it. Now I don’t think you’ve met Horace Peckwater.’

  Horace Peckwater was the man who trimmed the stories into shape and prepared them for the printers, the man who stayed until late in the evening supervising the translation of the messy typewriting into clean legible print suitable for several million pairs of eyes. Mr Peckwater was laconic to a degree. In response to Bognor’s attempts to introduce and then ingratiate himself he replied with three words used at wide intervals: ‘’Evening,’ ‘Yes,’ and ‘No.’ Bognor decided to inquire about Mr Peckwater, but decided also that any enquiries would be better directed to a third party.

  At six-thirty Mr Gringe pronounced the column complete and ready to go. The staff were therefore dismissed.

  ‘Simon,’ said Molly Mortimer, as they put on their coats, ‘I’m looking in on this private view at the Western Fine Arts. Why don’t you come?’

  ’I’d like to but I’m expected home. Sorry.’

  ‘Oh darling. You’ll never make a journalist. I’m sure she can wait. It won’t take long.’

  For a moment Bognor wrestled with conflicting thoughts. Any more to drink could well prove fatal and there would certainly be drink at a private view. The best thing for him would be a hot bath and an early night. On the other hand Molly Mortimer was definitely fanciable. And stimulating company. Above all he had a job to work on and solve within a week.

  ‘Well,’ he said. ‘Provided it doesn’t take too long. OK. Just let me make one phone call.’

  He dialled the flat.

  ‘Monica?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m afraid I may be a bit late. Something’s cropped up.’

  ‘Have you been drinking?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You bloody have.’

  ‘Well. A bit. I mean a glass or two. You have to on this job.’

  ‘You sound paralytic. The sooner you’re home the safer you’ll be.’

  ‘Don’t want to be safe.’

  ‘Don’t be silly. Where are you going?’

  ‘An art gallery.’

  ‘Oh. Parkinson rang.’

  ‘What did he want? Why didn’t he ring here?’

  ‘He said he didn’t want to “blow your cover”. He seemed to think it was rather a joke actually. He laughed.’

  ‘Doesn’t sound like Parkinson. But what did he want?’

  ‘He said to ring him in the morning. And that he’d found they had a file on someone called Milborn Port.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes. Is he real?’

  ‘Only just. OK. I must rush. See you soon. Take care. ’Bye.’

  The art gallery was like the Northern Line Tube train in the rush hour, only better dressed. Most of the women were in little black dresses although the elderly wore big black dresses with a variety of animals draped round their shoulders. The men were in dark suits of a quite different cut and cloth to those on view at the Dorchester earlier. These were waisted and double vented with, here and there, a hint of velvet or braiding. Pocket handkerchiefs protruded from almost every breast pocket. Brut after shave ladelled on by the spoonful mingled with marginally more feminine Chanel and Balenciaga. Here and there a champagne navvy in faded denim, casually knotted scarf and perhaps a single gold earring lent a spurious Bohemianism to the gathering.

  Bognor signed the visitors’ book, took a glass of champagne from the man in the white jacket and barged through to a small oasis of empty parquet floor, closely followed by Molly.

  ‘Phew,’ he said, wiping sweat from his forehead
and smiling vacuously at a vicious fox, teeth bared, which dangled from a scrawny neck just in front of him. ‘Are they always like this?’

  ‘Always,’ said Molly. ‘This is emptier than most.’

  ‘How on earth are you supposed to view the pictures?’ Bognor noticed that nobody was even facing the pictures, let alone trying to examine them.

  ‘Silly. Private views are for viewing people not pictures. In any case most of these were in the colour mag on Sunday.’

  ‘Who are they by?’

  ‘Sanguinetti.’

  Bognor had a vague recollection of some incomprehensibly abstract objects hindered by a dense explanatory text.

  ‘Theme on a bicycle chain?’ he said, groping.

  ‘That’s right. Very successful.’

  ‘Too difficult for me,’ said Bognor. ‘I like my art traditional. Turner’s about as way out as I can get.’

  ‘I like my men traditional,’ said Molly, flashing her teeth. ‘Oh look there’s Dmitri. Let’s go and talk to Dmitri.’

  ‘Dmitri who?’

  ‘Dmitri Pugh. He does Parson Woodforde on the Sunday News.’

  ‘Oh God no. I sat next to Parson Woodforde at lunch. He’s unspeakable.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ said Molly briskly. ‘He’s divine.’

  By this time they had pushed through to Dmitri who Bognor realized to his great relief was not the Parson Woodforde with whom he had shared lunch.

  ‘Dmitri, darling,’ exclaimed Molly, allowing herself to be kissed noisily on the cheek. ‘You’ve met Simon Bognor. He sat next to you at lunch. He says you’re unspeakable.’

  ‘You had lunch at the Dorchester?’ said Dmitri, who was small, elegant and sported a natty grey rinse and a Guards tie. ‘That would have been Perkins, my leg man. I second your judgement. He is unspeakable but so are those food manufacturers. I should imagine you had an unspeakable lunch. I trust you didn’t go on to the Liberace party afterwards.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Just as well. Perkins returned from it at five-thirty unspeakable as usual and speechless too. Champagne cocktails at tea time, my dear, too too vulgar.’ He turned to Molly. ‘I was sad about St John. In fact désolé. I saw him at the Harbingers last night. Extraordinary, here today gone tomorrow. I shall write a note for Sunday of course.’