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

by Ruth Dudley Edwards

  Silence.

  ‘Good. Mr Amiss, which book would Lady Wilcox have chosen?’

  ‘She was dithering between two, I think: Anorexia Phlegmata and Nomanis.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Rosa. ‘She thought Nomanis was wonderful.’

  The baroness scratched her head. ‘Nomanis. Nomanis. Nomanis. Oh, God, yes, I’ve got it: the homeless Afghan who lives in the middle of the Hogarth roundabout and describes in remorseless detail what he has in his black plastic bags and why he feels alienated. Somehow it failed to grip me.’

  ‘Wysteria didn’t think it was about gripping, Chairwoman,’ said Rosa. ‘She thought it was about caring.’

  The baroness clapped her hand to her head theatrically, and then turned to Ferriter.

  ‘I think that was her favourite. She saw in it a rare…’

  ‘Spare us, Professor Ferriter. Mr Amiss?’

  ‘She was certainly keen on it. You didn’t get past the plastic bag, Madam Chairman, to the bit about how he was really an Afghan toff fallen on hard times who was possessed with longing for a waif-like librarian who cycled past every day and avoided looking at him. Wysteria was big on unrequited love.’

  ‘You’ve completely missed the post-ironic…’ interrupted Ferriter.

  ‘On the other hand,’ said Amiss, who was beginning to enjoy himself, ‘she knew the author of Anorexia and not, I think, the author of Nomanis, and that would have weighed with her heavily when it came to the choice.’

  ‘I resent the implication that Wysteria would have been guided by anything but the highest motives,’ interjected Rosa.

  ‘Oh, please, let’s cut the crap,’ said the baroness. ‘Dr Griffiths, have you a view?’

  ‘As between an Afghan refugee and a neurotic shop assistant, I’ll go for the fuckin’…sorry, by George Afghan I suppose, bearing in mind that…’

  The baroness made an heroic attempt to be patient. ‘This isn’t about your opinion, Dr Griffiths. Which do you think Lady Wilcox would have chosen?’

  ‘Oh, for by George’s sake, Wysteria was completely by George unscrupulous so of course she’d have gone for the neurotic since she called it in though it wasn’t worth a by George toss so she’d have had some really good reason…’

  ‘Miss Dervla, what do you think?’

  ‘I agree with Robert and Geraint,’ she whispered. ‘Anorexia Phlegmata was, like, awful but…’

  ‘Anorexia Phlegmata it is, Mr Prothero. Now we know about Mr Smith, don’t we?’

  ‘We certainly do, by George,’ said Griffiths. ‘Once and Future Heroes—I’d have fought it to the death, by George, only that…’ He paused. ‘I couldn’t say “bloody” instead of “by George”, could I? It’s getting tiring.’

  ‘You’ll get used to it, Dr Griffiths. Or you might even learn to use it less.’

  He nodded resignedly. ‘OK. I’d have fought it to the death if Den hadn’t died.’

  ‘Add it to the list, Mr Prothero, unless there are any objections. Now, what about Sir Hugo Hurlingham?’

  The subsequent discussion was quite heated, for Rosa thought he had most favoured The Manor House of Rosemonde, the fictionalised story of Henri Duparc, a real French composer who wrote only thirteen songs, while Amiss thought he had particularly enjoyed La Condition Marseillaise and the Socratic Vaginal Dialogues, a minute-by-minute account by five existentialists of how they gang-raped two nuns in a Marseilles brothel. Ferriter, however, was convinced that Hurlingham had agreed with him about the marvels of This Hole My Centre, especially the part where the homophobic cardinal realised that the Albanian rent boy sang like an angel at the moment of orgasm. Asked for an opinion, Dervla whispered that she thought he liked the brothel best but would have pretended to prefer the one about the composer.

  Asked what he thought, Griffiths said he didn’t give a by George.

  ‘It’s up to me, then,’ said the baroness. ‘I tend to agree with Miss Dervla and Mr Amiss that he secretly liked the gang-banged nuns. Still, since he wouldn’t have admitted to that, it probably wouldn’t be his wish to have the choice attributed to him. So it’s between the other two. What do you think he’d have gone for, Mr Amiss? The queer-bashing bishop or the constipated frog?’

  ‘The Manor House of Rosemonde, I think. He did say he thought it a very fine book. And it was by a Hungarian, so it met his EU criterion.’

  The baroness raised her eyes towards the ceiling. ‘Well, there’s certainly nowt so queer as folk—if you’ll excuse the expression, Professor Ferriter. Stick Rosemonde on the list, Mr Prothero, and then we’ll repair to the kitchen and sort out our food and drink.’

  ***

  ‘It was a really good picnic,’ Amiss told Milton the following morning. ‘A sort of hastily-constructed Babette’s Feast, and Jack forced so much drink into everyone that they all relaxed a bit. Even Rosa. Mind you, Geraint Griffiths gets louder when drunk and Ferriter gets whingeier, but the rest of us got more tolerant so it didn’t matter. The parrot was in good voice and people found it more agreeable to listen to him than to argue, so we all went to bed around midnight in reasonably good form.’

  ‘Good for Jack. Now, I must rush, but first, I’ve news about Birkett.’

  ‘You took her seriously?’

  ‘No, but to shut her up I gave her a promise and I kept to it. Can I speak to her?’

  ‘She’s in the drawing room, cleaning out the parrot’s cage. I’ll take the phone to her.’

  Amiss walked next door into the middle of an altercation, for the baroness’ chore was not rendered easier by the parrot’s insistence on swinging from her hair crying ‘Who’s a pretty boy?’

  ‘Not you,’ the baroness was shouting. ‘That hurts. You’re Horrible Horace—got that?—Horrible Horace.’

  ‘Jim for you, Jack. News about Birkett.’

  ‘Hah. Give it here and you shut up, Horrible Horace. Just a sec, Jim.’ She yanked the parrot off her head, howled with pain as he pulled her hair and then jammed him into his cage. ‘Right. What have you found? Dismembered bodies under his patio?’

  ‘Do you want the bad news or the bad news?’

  ‘The bad news.’

  ‘It’s bad from your perspective: there’s absolutely nothing linking Birkett to the world of literature. The only new information we’ve got on him is that he has a model railway in his spare room.’

  ‘Harumph. I suppose the model railway, though culpable, is not a hanging offence.’

  ‘That was my feeling.’

  ‘Any family?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Hah, that’s suspicious.’

  ‘You haven’t got any family, Jack, have you?’

  ‘I’m different. Besides, I don’t have a model railway.’

  ‘Anyway, he’s a widower who moved to his maisonette when his wife died a few years ago. Neighbours say they’ve never seen any sign of children or heard any mention but obviously we’ll check on that. He keeps himself to himself apart from his weekly visit to the pub and gets on fine with everyone.’

  ‘OK, then. I’ll have the other bad news.’

  ‘This is really really bad news. Birkett’s disappeared.’

  ‘What do you mean, “disappeared”?’

  ‘I mean disappeared. He went into work on Friday and when told that as a mark of respect that day’s lunch had been cancelled, he sent the chef and the waiter home and left. There’s no sign of him at his home, the neighbours haven’t seen him since, his morning suit isn’t in his house and yesterday’s post is on the mat.’

  ‘Ooooer! That doesn’t look good. Unless, of course, he’s the murderer and has done a runner.’

  ‘His passport was at home too, along with his bank card.’

  ‘You think he’s been knocked off too?’

  ‘Looks likely.’

  ‘But the other killings were very public.’

  ‘Not Wilcox. She mightn’t have surfaced for days.’

  ‘
Are you telling the press?’

  ‘No option. It would be irresponsible not to.’

  ‘It’ll certainly get them worked up here.’

  ‘You’ll manage. Oh, and by the way, well done. We wouldn’t know this yet if you hadn’t made an issue of Birkett. Even if for the wrong reasons.’

  The baroness beamed as she went back to her labours.

  * Clubbed to Death

  18

  ‘Hysterics won’t get us anywhere, Rosa. Here, have some brandy.’

  ‘But we could be stuck here for ever.’ Rosa heaved with violent sobs. ‘Don’t you understand? If they’re even killing waiters, no one’s safe!’

  ‘Butlers, not waiters, if we’re being snobbish about it,’ said the baroness. ‘Now drink this and remember that, as Pollyanna would rightly point out, if Birkett has been murdered, the bright side is that none of us could have done it, so henceforward we can turn our backs on each other with impunity.’

  ‘Er, Georgie could theoretically have done it, Jack,’ said Amiss.

  Prothero looked hurt.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ she said carelessly. ‘I forgot about him.’

  Prothero looked even more hurt.

  ‘Well then, each of us can turn our backs on everyone except Porgie.’ To the baroness’ evident bewilderment, this observation caused Rosa to become even more upset. It took Mary Lou—drafted in by Amiss to administer first aid—ten minutes of patting and ‘there-there’-ing and sips of brandy to calm Rosa down. Everyone else, even Griffiths, looked on in silence.

  ‘Right,’ said the baroness. ‘That’s enough of that. The committee is reconvened. Pen at the ready, Mr Porgie. We have four titles on the short-list and the five old-timers now have to come up with at most another five, though fewer would be good. Dr Griffiths? Yes, I know about your endlessly pursued virgins, but what other offerings do you have for our delectation?’

  ***

  ‘So what did Jack choose?’ asked Rachel of Amiss.

  ‘She didn’t choose any. Rather surprisingly, she announced loftily that she had concluded that the chairman should not make suggestions of her own, but should be ready to vote at the final stage. Then she looked at the lists various people had come up with and said—rightly—that since there was no agreement on even one title we’d be there for the rest of our lives trying to reach a consensus. What about having a vote, she asked and then Griffiths announced that he thought it by George unfair that the dead judges were able to nominate a book each when the living weren’t. So Jack said she saw the merit of that argument and did anyone object if therefore each judge got to nominate just one title. So that’s what happened.’

  ‘It doesn’t sound like the old Jack to me, Robert. Surely there’s some book she likes more than the others.’

  ‘She’s been fantastically rude about all of them, good, bad and indifferent.’

  ‘So what’s on the short-list? What is poor Mary Lou racing through as we speak?’

  ‘She’s groaning through Rosa’s choice, Childe Rolandas, an awful book that would probably walk the Barbarossa Prize.’

  ‘I read a review of that. Eastern European ghosts or something?’

  ‘It’s the eponymous story of a Lithuanian psychic and his successful struggle to convince his fourteenth-century ancestor, Grand Duke Olgerd, that if alive today he would support the European Union. It’s almost nine hundred pages long.’

  ‘Doesn’t say much for the European Union if it takes that long to make its case.’

  ‘You said it, not me. Don’t tell me you’ve changed your view on that along with everything else?’

  ‘After my time with Eric, I’m an agnostic on almost everything until I can think straight again. The only thing I’ve a firm opinion about at present is that Plutarch has improved. That doesn’t say much since she was so appalling to begin with, but it does show that there are possibilities of redemption. True, she presented me this morning with the corpse of an unfortunate mouse, but her motivation did not seem to be malign. Unless I’m deluding myself.’

  ‘You must be feeding her well if she’s behaving as civilly as that.’

  ‘Oh, I certainly am. A bribe a day keeps the cat from your throat. What about the others?’

  ‘Geraint, of course, chose Pursuing the Virgins, which Mary Lou’s already read and discarded as having no literary merit. Ferriter had a real struggle between the cross-dressing bishop and the homophobic cardinal, but in the end, This Hole My Centre—or Vatican Ragout, as I prefer to call it—prevailed. Dervla went for Sharing the Scratcher, a tale of poverty and incest in inner-city Dublin.’

  ‘And you?’

  ‘I dithered mightily, as you might expect, torn between Nothing Springs to Mind—you know, the very funny one about Wittgenstein in the Wild West that had escaped Hermione’s cull—and The Manor House of Rosemonde which is really good.’

  ‘And opted for?’

  ‘Nothing Springs to Mind, which I feel a bit guilty about because it’s really very slight, but Rosa and Ferriter were so condescending about it and so failed to get the joke that in a childish moment I put two metaphorical fingers up to them.’

  ‘In the circumstances, Robert, I think you’re allowed to be childish. And to choose something that makes you laugh.’

  ‘Gosh, you really have mellowed. You’ll be urging frivolity next.’

  Rachel laughed. ‘I’m glad Eric was useful for something.’

  ***

  The newsreader was perched in front of a wall of book jackets. He looked gravely at the camera. ‘Although decimated by murder…’

  ‘Moron,’ shouted the baroness.

  ‘…in protective custody and in fear of their lives, the Knapper-Warburton judges have come up with a short-list.’

  ‘If we’d been decimated, only nought point nine per cent of one person would be dead, you ignoramus,’ she bellowed at the screen.

  ‘Sssssssssshhhhhhhhhh!’ said everyone.

  ‘The judges wish it known that the list is unusually long since they added to it without challenge the books they think their four admired, murdered colleagues may have chosen.’ The faces of the dead judges flashed up behind him.

  ‘Might, might, might, might have chosen, not may, you cretin.’

  ‘…Lady Hermione Babcock, Lady Wysteria Wilcox…’

  ‘Double ignoramus,’ roared the baroness. ‘Can’t even get the fucking titles right.’

  ‘By George titles,’ said Griffiths.

  ‘Sorry. By George titles.’

  ‘…Hugo Hurlingham. The nine books chosen are…’ After reading the list of authors and titles sonorously, the presenter swivelled right to greet a frowning woman. ‘Joining us now is Maureen Becker, editor of the magazine Reading Circle. So what do you think of the short-list, Maureen?’

  ‘I think they’ve all gone mad in protective custody,’ said Maureen. ‘It’s a dreadful, dreadful, dreadful short-list. Six of those books are a waste of trees and…’

  ‘Sorry, Maureen, we have to leave it there and go over now to Scotland Yard where a statement is being made about the missing butler, Francis Birkett.’

  With the exception of the baroness, everyone tensed. Milton’s solemn announcement that there was no news but everyone must hope did nothing to cheer them up. With respectively a wail, a whinge and a shout, Rosa, Ferriter and Griffiths all turned on the baroness over her performance during the news and Prothero rushed off to his bedroom to ring various friends and bemoan. Amiss jerked his head towards the door and, with Mary Lou and Dervla, slipped out.

  ‘I’m off to my book,’ said Mary Lou, sighing as she went.

  ‘I wish, like, she’d, you know, told us,’ said Dervla.

  ‘Who? What?’

  ‘The telly one.’

  ‘Ah, you mean Maureen Becker? You wish she’d told us which novels she approved of?’

  She nodded. ‘In case, y’know.’

  ‘In case people might gues
s which one you chose. Dervla, I mightn’t have been particularly keen on Sharing the Scratcher, but I can assure you it’s a million times better than the ones Rosa and Felix chose. And Geraint’s isn’t even what I’d call a novel. Don’t worry, you’ve nothing to be ashamed of. Now, if you’ll forgive me, I’ve a few phone calls to make.’

  ‘Robert.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Jack. She’s kind of funny.’

  ‘You can say that again.’

  ‘I mean was she, like, trying to get them mad?’

  ‘Maybe, but I can’t think why. Unless it’s revenge for how much they annoy her. She usually has good reasons for what she does but it’s often hard to guess them.’

  Dervla nodded and headed off towards her bedroom.

  ***

  The committee watched several news bulletins in the early evening. Though the short-list was variously described as ‘controversial’, ‘unexpected’ and ‘contentious’, there were no literary figures attacking the choices directly. ‘They’ve probably decided it’s bad form to be rude about us,’ observed the baroness over her champagne. ‘Pity. It might have livened us up a bit. It’s like a mausoleum here.’

  ‘Mausoleum is hardly the mot juste, Jack,’ said Amiss wearily.

  ‘Well it feels like a mausoleum. You can’t imagine having a knickers-over-the-chandelier event here, can you? At least not with the present dramatis personae.’ The parrot, who after a tussle had settled for her shoulder, seemed to share the prevailing gloom, contributing nothing to the conversation other than a hacking cough he had learned a week or two previously from Mary Lou.

  To Amiss’ relief, at that moment one of the police knocked and came in. ‘I’ve left the food you ordered in the kitchen, your ladyship.’

  ‘Good. Good. I’ll go and inspect it. Porgie, sort out the drinks. Come on, Horrie. Let’s find something to cheer us up.’

  ***

  At nine on Monday morning, as the inhabitants of the safe house were eating boiled eggs and trying to shake off their hangovers, Milton was having yet another strained meeting with the AC. He came grumpily back to his desk to face an enormous pile of reports and was sitting there in despairing mode when his secretary put an envelope on his desk which was marked ‘Second class’ as well as ‘Private and personal’. The letter inside was written in neat handwriting, the address was given as ‘No fixed abode’, it was dated ‘Friday’ and the postmark was Heathrow. Milton’s eyes flew to the signature.