Carnage on the Committee
Carnage on the Committee
Ruth Dudley Edwards
www.ruthdudleyedwards.com
Poisoned Pen Press
Copyright © 2004 by Ruth Dudley Edwards
First U.S. Edition 2004
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2004108171
ISBN-10 Print: 1-59058-133-4
ISBN-13 eBook: 978-1-61595-056-0
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in, or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.
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Dedication
To Kathryn and John, both of whom frequently persuade me that the seemingly impossible is easily achieved.
Contents
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Epilogue
More from this Author
Contact Us
Acknowledgments
Among those to whom I am grateful for inspiration and/or help are Presiley Baxendale (who got her way), Nina Clarke, Joid and Bobbie Cudlipp, my brother Owen, Mariella Frostrup, Eamonn Hughes, James McGuire, Robert Salisbury, and the great Frederick Crews, whose Postmodern Pooh should be force-fed to all aspiring literary critics. Iarlaith and Máirín Carter deserve special honours for their stunning inventiveness on the imaginary-fiction front. My thanks too to Julia Wisdom, who held her nerve, to Charlotte Webb, a first-rate copy editor, and to Georgina Burns, Debbie Collins, and Anne O’Brien for many kindnesses.
In this, the US edition, I’d like to thank Barbara Peters and Rob Rosenwald for years of encouragement to me and the mystery-writing fraternity/sorority.
Prologue
‘She’s dead. Dead. Dead. It’s a disaster! What are we going to do, Robert? What the fuck are we going to do?’
‘Who’s dead?’
‘La grande fromage, that’s who.’
‘Hermione? Are you serious?’
‘Deadly.’
‘But she looked fine the other day. What did she die of?’
‘How do I know? Something serious, obviously. Anyway I don’t care. She’s dead. Oh, God! How could she die?’ Prothero emitted a great sob.
‘I’m sorry to be pedantic, Georgie, but it was only yesterday that you said you wished she’d never been born.’
‘That was just because she was being her usual toffee-nosed pain-in-the-arse. Saying you wished she’d never been born’s not the same as wishing she was dead. How can we get another chairperson at this notice? What are we going to do?’ Prothero’s voice rose to a shriek. ‘There’s a meeting of the committee next Thursday. Have you forgotten? The crucial meeting. The long-list meeting. What will we do without Hermione?’
‘Calm down, Georgie. Calm down.’
‘How can I calm down? Stop being so macho about this. It’s my crisis and I’ll thweam if I want to. Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaa-ghhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!’
Amiss held the receiver away from him until the sounds diminished. He put it cautiously to his ear again and seized his moment as Prothero paused for breath. ‘Georgie, if you go on like that I’ll put the phone down. Let’s begin at the beginning. Is it definite that Hermione’s dead?’
‘Yep. Stark, staring dead.’
‘What did she die of?’
‘They don’t seem to know.’
‘She seemed fine on Tuesday.’
‘It was Tuesday afternoon she sickened, according to hubby. He very thoughtfully rang me this evening after he heard the news. Have you met him? Lovely, lovely man, William. Wasted on her. Those eyes…that…’
‘Georgie!’
‘Sorry.’
‘So you need a new chair.’
‘Immediately.’
‘So whom have you in mind?’
‘That’s what I’m thweaming about. You know who’ll insist on being it.’
‘Geraint Griffiths. And probably Den Smith.’
‘And you know what’ll happen if the Gee Gee becomes chairperson.’
‘Den will walk out.’
‘And you know what’ll happen if the Gee Gee’s told he can’t be chairperson.’
‘He’ll walk out. That is, he’ll threaten to walk out. I wouldn’t be certain he would.’
‘He’ll certainly make a huge fuss. Especially if Dirty Den gets the job. And whichever of them walks or fusses, it’ll be all over the press in five minutes, the committee and the prize will be a laughing stock, the Big Knapparoonie will fire me and I’ll never work in this town again.’
‘I’m sure you’re exaggerating, Georgie. You’ll work something out, I’m sure.’ Amiss’ eyes strayed back to his computer screen. No, he thought. A blunt instrument. There wouldn’t have been a sharp enough knife in such a seedy flat…
‘Robert, for God’s sake, help me.’
Amiss wrenched his mind away from his putative, to Prothero’s real, corpse. ‘Oh, sorry, Georgie, I got distracted.’
Prothero was aggrieved. ‘How can you, Robert? I’m relying on you. I got you on this committee in the first place to hold my hand. And because I knew you were diplomatic. And if ever the Warburton needed a diplomat, it’s now.’
‘Don’t try to make it sound as if you did me a favour,’ said Amiss crossly. ‘I wish I’d never agreed. Two months reading crap and then all those ghastly rows I don’t want you to pretend for even one minute you haven’t been using to titivate the press. Hermione’s well out of it.’
There was a muffled sob. ‘Don’t be so cruel. I did think I was doing you a favour. I thought you’d meet some interesting people who loved books. So help me, I thought literary prizes were about book-lovers rewarding book-lovers. How could I know what the literati were like?’ His voice began to rise again. ‘How could I? I’m just a poor bastard who sucks up to people for a living. Robert, how can I stop the Gee Gee and Dirty Den in their tracks?’
‘I don’t suppose you should just let the best man win?’
As the scream began, Amiss interrupted. ‘OK, OK, I have it. Gender. That’s how you stop them. Tell Knapper that it’s got to be a woman or the sisterhood will go mad.’
‘But then Rosa Krap will think she’s entitled to it. And you know what’ll happen then.’
‘Geraint and Den will both walk out.’
‘Exactly.’
‘So you can’t have Rosa Karp.’
‘And how am I supposed to get out of that?’
Amiss brooded. ‘Find a chairwoman fast and then tell Rosa you had to get a new broom as it was impossible to choose between her and Wysteria.’
‘Hysteria!!!!!!!!? You couldn’t have Lady Bloody Hysteria Fucking Wilcox as the chair
of a choirboys’ knitting competition. I’ve already had her on the phone in tears four times this week complaining about the Gee Gee’s abusive phone calls.’
‘Not the point, Georgie. You can mutter about having had to act in haste so fait accompli and all that. But it does require you to get someone fast.’
‘It requires you to get someone fast. I wouldn’t know where to start. I’m only a poor bloody PR man. I don’t know which trees grow the kind of bird who can deal with the Gee Gee and Dirty Den. And the rest. And read hundreds of books in ten minutes.’
An image floated into Amiss’ mind. He blenched, but stifled his doubts. ‘I don’t want to get your hopes up too much, Georgie, but I do know a possible.’
‘Oh, you are wonderful, Robert darling. Who is this superwoman?’
‘Does the name Jack Troutbeck mean anything to you?’
‘Troutbeck? Troutbeck? Troutbeck? Don’t think so. Is he a woman? Are we transgendering here? Rosa Krap will be pleased.’
‘Baroness Troutbeck. More composite than trans.’
‘Would that be that beefy broad who duffed up the art establishment on TV last week? I read something about how someone or other said he’d never ever been so insulted.’
‘Sounds like her.’
‘What are her credentials?’
‘Mistress of St Martha’s, Cambridge.’
‘Loved by the literati, is she?’
‘I expect any that know her hate her. But she’d know how to deal with Geraint. And Den. And Rosa. And I can’t think of anyone else who fits that bill.’
‘Is she interested in modern literature?’
Amiss had a sudden memory of the baroness over dinner denouncing as rubbish every novel written since Graham Greene was in his prime. ‘Yes. Very. English is her subject.’
‘Will she like the idea?’
‘I don’t know, Georgie. Probably not. But if you want her, I’ll try to persuade her. In the meantime, you’d better break the news to Knapper and sell him the idea.’
‘It’ll be OK, I expect,’ said Prothero, suddenly sounding more cheerful. ‘Her being a baroness will probably be good enough for him. He can’t get too many of them. And Cambridge will help. He loves hobnobbing with people from what he calls “the ancient universities.” Will you need to know he’s keen before you sound her out? I mean you wouldn’t want to get her on board and then hurt her feelings if he vetoes her.’
‘Jack’s feelings don’t get hurt, Georgie. That’s why the Warburton needs her.’
1
Before leaving home to meet the baroness, Amiss switched on the television news. It being August, journalists were starved for stories, so Hermione made the second item. Lady Babcock, it was reported with great gravity, who was better known as the literary luminary and high-profile New Labour peer Hermione Babcock, had died after a short illness. Her photograph flooded the screen, her handsome features dominated by the prominent nose and supercilious upper lip so many members of the House of Lords had come to hate. ‘Lady Babcock, who was sixty, was, perhaps, the most famous face of English literature of her generation. Here is Susie Briggs, our Arts Correspondent.’
Susie Briggs seemed grief-stricken at the loss of someone whom she deemed the grande dame of English letters and canonised as a warrior for peace and a towering cosmopolitan spirit, who was, inter alia, a fervent enthusiast for European political, economic and cultural unity. An acclaimed authority on the Bloomsbury set, her admirers and friends were legion, invitations to her salon were much sought-after and she was also this year the chairperson of the prestigious Knapper-Warburton Literary Prize, which she herself had won the previous year with Virginia Falling, the beautifully observed, tender yet haunting and ground-breaking novel about Virginia Woolf’s last day.
A small forty-something in a tight denim shirt appeared on camera. Amiss groaned.
‘Professor Ferriter, what is your reaction to the loss to letters of Hermione Babcock?’
‘I’m, like, gutted. Just gutted.’ With his familiar feeling of distaste, Amiss observed the flash of the diamond tongue-stud. ‘Hermione was like the first truly postmodern Bloomsburyite. Bloomsbury was, like, cool till it became history, but Hermione, she made it relevant again by embracing its provisionality, its fragmentation, its ambiguity, its simultaneity.’ As he warmed to his theme, Ferriter’s little forehead wrinkled and he waved his fists around like a didactic baby. ‘And then, like, she moved on. I mean what she said to me only the other day about how Queer Studies has screwed the deconstructionist prism and reversed the whole Bloomsbury experiment, it was sooooooooo…’
Susie had moved from sadness to desperation. ‘But her work, Professor Ferriter. What about her work as a novelist?’
‘Pretty dated term, that, Suz, if you don’t mind me saying so. These days we don’t…’
‘She won the Warburton for a novel, Professor,’ cried Susie, who by now sounded cross. ‘Can you tell us about it?’
‘Wow! It was like…wow! That moment when as she dies Virginia has this anti-marginalising vision of a Palestinian woman who is setting off a bomb in Jerusalem to blow up the forces of fascist colonialism while herself seeing Virginia the oppressed feminist throwing herself into the water…is…is…is…’ He seemed overcome.
‘Yes, very moving. Thank you, Professor Ferriter.’ With evident relief, Susie turned back to face the camera. ‘But what will this mean for the controversial Knapper-Warburton Prize, the focus for anger and rumour in the arts world and just reaching a crucial stage in the judges’ deliberations? And in such a crucial year too, with the winner being eligible for the million-euro Barbarossa Prize?’ Georgie Prothero’s face and Prada ensemble loomed into view, the horn-rimmed glasses and the somber expression adding gravity to his very youthful features. ‘Who can possibly take over at this short notice, Mr Prothero? Especially when the committee is so split.’
Prothero looked affronted. ‘I don’t know where you got such a false picture of the committee, Miss Briggs. And I’m afraid that—like all those connected with the Knapper-Warburton Prize will be—I’m still too stunned by this tragic news to think of anything else but our profound sense of loss.’
‘It’s common knowledge that the judges have been at each other’s throats, Mr Prothero,’ said Susie impatiently. ‘But in any case, you’ll have to find another chairperson, won’t you? The rumour is it’ll be Geraint Griffiths. Or perhaps you might be thinking of Professor Felix Ferriter, who I’ve just talked to?’
Prothero shook a minatory finger. ‘Such speculation is most inappropriate, Miss Briggs. This is no time for rumour. The Warburton—now the Knapper-Warburton—is a great institution, and whatever you say, the committee is dedicated and united and we will get on with the job in hand. In the meantime, let us mourn the heart-wrenching loss of a great lady.’
‘And that’s all from me,’ said Susie Briggs.
‘Thank you, Susie,’ said the newscaster. ‘Now, to sport, where England has scored a surprise victory in the one-day…’
Amiss pushed his cat off his lap, dodged the indignant swipe of her claw and went to fetch his coat. His phone rang, he looked at the screen, saw Geraint Griffiths’ number and, shuddering, headed for the door.
***
Interrupted only by a frantic phone call from Prothero about Griffiths’ success in getting his name trailed in the media, Amiss spent an agreeable half-an-hour in the Dorchester bar slowly sipping a glass of their cheapest red wine and listening to Cole Porter being played on a piano Liberace would have died for. He held in front of him a magazine he had been reading until he discovered he could see, reflected in the mirrored ceiling, the cleavages of two women sitting behind him. Amiss was no more a voyeur than the next man, but the breasts were large, the necklines plunging and the women—one black, one Chinese—were fantasy fodder. Just before eleven o’clock his reverie was broken into by calls of ‘Robert! Robert! Where are you?’ and he leaped up and waved.
‘There you are! Why were you hiding behind a tree?’ The baroness advanced in front of him, cried, ‘Look at me’ and twirled flirtatiously; a swathe of purple velvet swept a silver bowl off the table. She gestured impatiently at Amiss as he began to pick up the nuts. ‘They’ll do it. What do you think?’
Amiss abandoned the task to two waiters and sat down while the baroness plumped herself into the chair beside him and ordered from the dinner-jacketed major-domo a large (‘Now mind, I mean large, a large double, and water in a separate jug and no ice, have you got that?’) whisky. ‘What are you having?’ she demanded of Amiss.
‘Another glass of red?’
‘But what is it?’
‘Another of the same,’ said Amiss firmly. As she leaned forward he snatched his glass away before she could sniff it disparagingly. ‘I don’t want one of those wine conversations, Jack. You said you didn’t have long. Oh, and you’re looking very nice.’
She forgot about the wine. ‘Nice? Nice? What do you mean nice?’
‘I mean splendid. Magnificent. Superb. You look wonderful. Is that enough flattery?’
‘Nearly. But the earrings? What about the earrings?’
‘They almost brained me, but now they’re static, I can see they’re very impressive. If hardly subtle.’
She beamed. ‘I don’t do subtle. Green topaz and diamonds.’
‘Sounds expensive. Myles?’
‘No. My grannie. She didn’t do subtle either. Right, that’s enough preening. Get on with it, whatever it is. You’d better make it snappy. Myles will be along within half-an-hour to pick me up.’
‘Where were you, anyway? Your office was extremely coy about your whereabouts.’
‘I don’t employ blabbermouths. I like secrets.’
‘Jack!’
‘I was at an old boys’ dinner for Myles’ army pals. Don’t usually have women, but I was the speaker.’
‘What does one speak to the SAS about?’
‘I did a bit of warmongering. Now we’ve done for Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein, sort out Kim Jong-il, ayatollahs, imams, Brussels and anyone else who gets in our way. That kind of thing. They seemed to like it. Where’s my whisky?’
Carnage on the Committee: A Robert Amiss/Baroness Jack Troutbeck Mystery Page 1
