Carnage on the Committee: A Robert Amiss/Baroness Jack Troutbeck Mystery

by Ruth Dudley Edwards

  Wysteria stood up, fussed around for a moment, said, ‘You’d better sit over here then,’ steered him to an uncomfortable stuffed, upright armchair and settled herself bolt upright on another. ‘Where’s the other man?’

  ‘He was detained.’

  ‘I find that most unreasonable. I was expecting two of you and now the other man rudely refuses to keep his appointment.’

  ‘He was urgently detained by another tragic murder, Lady Wilcox. London is a violent place.’

  ‘So what do you want to ask me? I’ve warned you about my nerves. And my heart.’

  ‘I want to ask you if you have any idea who might have killed Lady Babcock.’

  She clutched at her bony chest. ‘How can you put it so brutishly?’

  ‘Lady Wilcox, the last thing I want to do is to distress you…’

  Her large, soulful eyes filled with tears. ‘But how can this be anything other than distressing? When you are as sensitive as am I, anything to do with violence, sudden death or indeed hatred, damages the soul…’

  ‘Indeed, Lady Wilcox. But if I could just…’

  ‘No, no. You have to understand. I am an artist, yes, and artists, of course, have to deal with the terror and the horror as well as the beauty of existence. But I am a sensitive too, which means I understand more than ordinary people and feel more acutely. And as well as all that, I am deeply spiritual.’ She held her clasped hands out to Pooley in a gesture of supplication. ‘You must try to understand me. As an artist, I live for my writing. As a sensitive, I live to commune with the inner core of the universe. As a spiritual person, I live for love.’

  ‘And as a policeman, Lady Wilcox,’ said Pooley heavily, ‘I live for establishing the facts. In this case, the facts about who killed Hermione Babcock.’

  Wysteria buried her face in her hands and began to sob. Pooley passed the time by looking around the drawing room and trying to price the antiques. He had just guessed £20,000 for an ormolu clock featuring disporting cherubs when she looked up, took a tiny handkerchief from her sleeve and dabbed her eyes. ‘How you have upset me.’

  ‘Frankly, Lady Wilcox, I’m the least upsetting policeman you’re likely to get.’

  Tremulously, she said, ‘I can see that you have a white aura.’

  ‘Good,’ said Pooley briskly. ‘Now, let’s get started.’

  ***

  What Geraint Griffiths described as his London squat consisted of a small maisonette in Kilburn in which he competed with books for enough space to live. As Milton followed the rumpled figure with the wild white hair upstairs, he trod gingerly between the tall stacks, squeezed along the landing with his back pressed against the banisters, teetered slightly as he placed his feet carefully one in front of the other to navigate the narrow pathway into what Griffiths called his parlour and then, as instructed, sat down in the only armchair. Griffiths grabbed the upright wooden chair which sat at right angles to the crowded table, turned it to face Milton and sat down talking volubly of the hardship of having to leave Wales for London to attend committees and give talks. ‘Like it’s a real pain to have to split my fuckin’ books and never to have what I want where I need it if I didn’t have the British Library I wouldn’t be able to function though they won’t lend books even to scholars you wouldn’t believe…’

  ‘I’m sorry to interrupt, Mr Griffiths, but I know you’re busy…’

  ‘It’s Dr Griffiths boyo not that I’m keen on titles myself but you can’t move for fuckin’ titles in the literary world these days so I’m using what I’ve got which was conferred on me only last year in Aberystwyth in recognition mind you rather belatedly of what…’

  Milton, who was wishing he had chosen Wysteria Wilcox rather than this verbal incontinent, broke in again. ‘Dr Griffiths, can you please tell me if you’ve any idea why anyone might have wished to murder Lady Babcock?’

  Griffiths took a deep breath and began to emit words even faster than before. ‘Hermione? No I’ve no idea why anyone would fuckin’ want to do that though she was morally obtuse which is why I had to tell her so often she had bad authority and I’ve no time for people like that in the fuckin’ circumstances we face and she got up my nose not just because of that but because she was so fuckin’ grand like and we people from the valleys don’t like them grand especially when they’re not really fuckin’ grand…’ He drew a hasty breath. ‘You see boyo Hermione like she had no idea about struggle there was no fuckin’ passion in her or anger or any sense that she was in tune with the great dramas that try men’s fuckin’ souls like and tear our universe apart now as I said to Hermione it’s no good you giving us all this pc shit about how we’ve got to respect other people’s fuckin’ cultures when they’re hanging gays up by the testicles I mean that’s real bad authority and I’m not going to fuckin’ put up with it when…’

  Milton held up his hand. ‘I’m sorry to interrupt, Dr Griffiths. Am I right that you were very anxious that Pursuing the Virgins should win the Warburton and that Lady Babcock was unsympathetic?’

  ‘Unsympathetic’s not the word she was fuckin’ hostile though I told her and all of them over and over again that we’re all of us caught up in the Homeric struggle of Western fuckin’ civilisation against religious bigots from the thirteenth century bent on destroying every fuckin’ thing worth a fuck that we’ve ever done I told her “Hermione, this is no time to fuck about we must all stand up and be counted in the struggle of fuckin’ good against fuckin’ evil” and do you know what she said?’

  ‘No, Dr Griffiths.’

  ‘She said in that fuckin’ pseudo-grand-aren’t-I-superior way of hers that it had nothing to do with the Warburton which was about literature and not politics and I said “Hermione can’t you understand you high-flown desiccated piece of shit that literature is fuckin’ politics it’s about the highest of us and the lowest of us everything we do in every part of our life in our heart in our head in our balls in our cunt it’s our discourse our narrative it’s all about authority good fuckin’ authority or bad fuckin’ authority” but Hermione she didn’t have good authority all she could do was witter about mincy-wimpies like Virginia fuckin’ Woolf when we’re facing the ultimate clash between civilisation and the Islamofascist fuckin’ barbarians like have these people any idea what…’

  ‘You were obviously very angry with her…’

  ‘I might have punched Hermione but if you think I’d have gone off and boiled up castor oil or whatever you have to do you must be fuckin’ mad haven’t you grasped I’m in the business of fighting killer ideologues not killing moral cretins who think an ideology exists only to provide topics of conversation in Islington.’

  ‘So who might have wanted to murder Lady Babcock and why?’

  ‘How would I know. Husband? Lover?’

  ‘Did she have a lover?’

  ‘I don’t fuckin’ know anything about Hermione Babcock’s fuckin’ private life which as far as I’m concerned was probably as arid as her…’

  ‘Dr Griffiths, Lady Babcock was at a Warburton meeting during part of the period when the poison must have been administered. We must explore the possibility that one of the committee members killed her.’

  ‘Is that right like I’d never have thought any of them had the fuckin’ nerve to tell you the truth since they all seemed to be a shower of wimps and posturers who had the greatest difficulty seeing that basic fuckin’ point I kept hammering about how what we were faced with was the dialectical challenge of the…’

  ‘Dr Griffiths, from your observations, did Wysteria Wilcox have any reason to kill Lady Babcock?’

  ‘Well now if you’re to believe fuckin’ Wysteria she wouldn’t kill the meanest insect without having fuckin’ Buddhist prayer sessions about it for days afterwards and I have to say she seemed to get on fine with Hermione being as wimpy as she was about hard fuckin’ decisions so I can’t see why she’d want to kill her still I’ve always thought she was really as hard as frozen sh
it so nothing would surprise me.’

  As Griffiths drew breath, Milton put in hastily, ‘Den Smith?’

  ‘Oh now there’s a bad depraved article Den Smith there is nothing fuckin’ nothing I wouldn’t think he mightn’t do with that corrupt mind of his that couldn’t even grasp it when I point out that we were all fucked if we didn’t realise that the thesis was Bin Laden the antithesis was those fuckin’ fightin’ him and from that we’d find the synthesis that…’

  ***

  From his taxi on his way to the House of Lords, Pooley rang Mary Lou. ‘So what’s this about a tree falling on Jack? She shattered it, presumably.’

  Mary Lou giggled. ‘No, no. It shattered her—that is to say, drove her into a deep sulk that I’ve only just got her out of. It’s a book. A Tree Falling in the Forest. She was at the end of her tether as it was, having spent an incredulous half-hour with Baking Bread for Cats…’

  ‘Sorry? A cook book for cats?’

  ‘No, a navel-gazing analysis of the lesbian condition allegedly written by a cat who is also lesbian as a result of a bad experience with a tom…’

  ‘A lesbian cat?’

  ‘Sorry, I was kidding about that bit. But the cat is the narrator. And it’s pretty anti-tom. So then Jack got to A Tree Falling in the Forest which she hated from page one but because it’s on four long-lists she had to read a lot of it.’

  ‘And it’s about?’

  ‘A gay logger in the Yukon musing about the environmental damage he’s causing with every breath he takes and every tree he cuts down. It’s packed with statistics about acres of lost rain forest and apocalyptic moanings about global warming interpolated with angst-laden memories of life-denying sexual encounters…’

  ‘Aren’t there any straight novels any more?’

  ‘She just hit a queer patch because of having to read some of Ferriter’s and Rosa Karp’s favourites. Anyhow she went into a sulk because I made her read so much of it, then she plunged into Churchill’s speeches and wouldn’t open her mouth for about three hours. Refused even to speak to Horace. I felt like sending her to bed without her supper but in the end a large gin and tonic did the trick and she’s back at work. What about you?’

  ‘On my way from Wysteria to Rosa.’

  ‘How awful is Wysteria?’

  ‘Worse than awful. I’ll tell you later. Must make a call to the office.’

  ‘Bye, darling.’

  ‘Bye,’ said Pooley, making kissing noises, which were interrupted by the taxi driver. ‘What’s this about a lesbian cat, guv? I know us straights are in short supply these days, but I thought the animal kingdom was reliable enough. If you ask me, it’s something in the water. Or they’re making it compulsory in the schools. I had that Rosa Karp in the back of the cab once and when I told her what I thought of her equality she threatened to have me arrested…’

  ***

  ‘I doubt it,’ typed Amiss. ‘Corpses rarely laugh…’ The phone rang.

  ‘I thought these books were supposed to be in English,’ growled the baroness.

  ‘Which one isn’t?’

  ‘Crap.’

  ‘It’s not Crap. It’s C-rap.’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘It’s a rap novel.’

  ‘It’s gibberish. Can’t even understand the first line. What is “I so fragged after railing the skeeza I can’t walk my ass to my hoe” supposed to mean?’

  ‘I hesitate to explain this to a woman of your delicacy, but it’s roughly that the gentleman is so exhausted after enthusiastic sexual intercourse with a slut that he can’t summon up the energy to pay a visit to the lady on whose immoral earnings he lives.’

  After a brief silence the baroness said, ‘How do you know this?’

  ‘The internet offers translations.’

  ‘Did you discover why the author is called Not 1337?’

  ‘Yes. But it’s complicated. And, incidentally, 1337 is pronounced leet.’

  She emitted a piteous cry.

  ‘It’s all right, Jack. It was on Rosa’s and Ferriter’s short-lists—naturally—but the rest of us never got beyond the first page.’

  There was a sound of tearing paper.

  ‘You’re not desecrating this noble work, I trust?’

  ‘Just recycling it. The parrot’s cage needs lining.’

  ***

  ‘So I got to the House of Lords at the time agreed,’ Pooley told Amiss and Milton, as they sat surrounded by cartons of Chinese food, ‘and Rosa Karp kept me waiting for the best part of an hour on the excuse that she was at a crucial meeting. When she finally arrived in the lobby I accosted her immediately and the woman she was with promptly said, “Rhonda Skeffington of the Sketch” and pressed her card into my hand. “Had an interesting interview?” I asked and Rhonda said that indeed she had, thanked Rosa profusely for giving her so much of her time and departed, waving cheerily.’

  ‘What a cow!’ said Amiss. ‘Did Rosa look embarrassed?’

  ‘Not enough. Mumbled something unconvincing about long-standing engagements and unavoidable overrunning, so I got very heavy about wasting police time and by the time I had finished she was apologising profusely.’

  ‘Apologising to a WASP!’ said Amiss. ‘You must have roughed her up seriously.’

  ‘Anyway it was good that she started the interview unsettled and feeling in the wrong which makes a change for Rosa Karp.’

  ‘Is it my imagination,’ asked Amiss, ‘or are you becoming less nice as you get older, Ellis?’

  ‘In our game,’ said Milton, ‘everyone gets less nice as he gets older.’

  ‘As “she” gets older,’ said Pooley. ‘Rosa recovered enough to tell me that if I wasn’t prepared to say “he or she” I should say “she”, since it was a form of necessary positive discrimination to counteract the negative experienced by women over the millennia or something like that, to which I said that the only form of discrimination I was interested in was discrimination against criminals and that she’d already retarded the murder enquiry enough without going into irrelevancies.’

  ‘My, my,’ said Amiss. ‘At this rate you’ll be hanging suspects from the ceiling and applying electric shocks to their genitals.’

  ‘That’s what Den Smith thinks we do already.’

  ‘If we’d a lot of suspects like Den Smith, we just might,’ said Milton. He helped himself to the last sparerib. ‘I’m enjoying this,’ he said. ‘It feels a bit like one of those midnight feasts you’ll have had in boarding school, Ellis.’

  ‘It’s not midnight, is it?’ asked Pooley. ‘Good lord, it is. I’d better get on. Well, the nub is that she’s got no bright ideas either, though she thinks Griffiths is capable of anything.’ He consulted his notebook. ‘“Anti-feminist, reactionary, hectoring…”’

  ‘Among the very words he used about her,’ said Milton. ‘Though he was coming at it from a different angle.’

  ‘Wait’ll they meet Jack,’ said Amiss, pushing his plate away and picking up the wine bottle.

  ‘Not for me, thanks,’ said Milton. ‘I must go in a minute. What did Rosa say about the others, Ellis?’

  ‘Much the same likes and dislikes as the ghastly Wilcox, though with a subtly different angle. Seemed particularly upset that Hermione wouldn’t be around to speak on some equality bill next week, thinks Den’s crusading anti-imperialism makes him a great man, thinks Ferriter a true intellectual and admires Hugo Hurlingham because of the opposition to English insularity represented by his Europeanness.’ He put down his notebook. ‘Tell us what we need to know about Hurlingham.’

  Amiss yawned. ‘Our man in Europe. Our link with the Barbarossa Prize.’

  ‘Which is what, exactly?’

  ‘A new literary prize about to be funded by the European Commission with the aim of encouraging a European dimension in literature. Hugo’s a sharp operator in these areas. He’s apparently in love with the European ideal for all sorts of high-flown reasons, bu
t I think it’s because it gives him access to innumerable all-expenses-paid freebies abroad—meetings, conferences, lunches and dinners. And, of course, at home as well.’

  He yawned again. ‘Hugo’s already on the guest list of all the European embassies in London, since among literary editors he’s the great European drum-banger. He devotes half his literary pages in the Sunday Oracle to European literature.’

  ‘So he’s been involved in setting up the Barbarossa, has he?’ asked Milton.

  ‘More than that. It was he who persuaded Ron Knapper to change the rules to allow translations of novels from any country in the EU to be considered for the Knapper-Warburton. It’s one of the reasons we’ve so many entries. The quid pro quo was that the winner of the Warburton, rather than the winner of the Booker or the Whitbread or any of the other major literary prizes, gets put in the pot for the Barbarossa.’

  Pooley frowned. ‘That doesn’t make sense. Supposing the English translation of a French novel wins the Warburton, that means no English novel is going to be a contender for the Barbarossa.’

  ‘That’s right. But that shows your Anglo-centricity. As Hugo pointed out when I protested, anyone bothered by this would be betraying their narrow nationalism and parochialism. Anyway, a literary prize in each EU country is also being opened up to foreigners, so it’s all supposed to even out.’

  ‘Jack must have been thrilled when she heard about it.’

  ‘Thrilled is the word. She delivered herself of a tirade about how the British, being suicidally obsessed with le fair play, would be capable of giving prizes even to frogs, while the frogs are about as likely to allow an English novel to be awarded any of their prizes as they are to give up stuffing themselves with foie gras on the grounds that it’s nasty for geese.’

  ‘Can’t argue with that,’ said Milton.

  ‘Under Hermione we might well have ended up with a foreign novel. Hugo, Rosa, Wysteria and Hermione all believed in leading by example. “The British have been bad Europeans” was one of the mantras. “In our small way,” they would trill, “we have the chance to show ourselves to be good Europeans.”’