by Ruth Edwards
‘I don’t feel I’m being much use,’ said Amiss. ‘All I’ve given you so far is a little local colour.’
‘You’re looking for praise, aren’t you Robert?’ said Milton. ‘You know it helps to know what to expect, and who’s acting in character and who’s acting out of character, and all that sort of thing. Anyway, it’s early days. You may yet have the opportunity to find some incontrovertible evidence that will crack the case.’
‘Mmmm,’ said Amiss. He was relaxing over his whisky and enjoying himself. ‘I see it all,’ he said dreamily. ‘I’ll catch Chatterton red-handed tap-dancing on the gallery. Or will it be overhearing Glastonbury delivering crisp instructions to Fagg about what to do with the detonators left over from their last operation? Fishbane, perhaps, will have been wildly in love with the Admiral’s paramour, while Blenkinsop…What am I going to get on Blenkinsop?’ He took another sip of whisky and gazed thoughtfully at the ceiling.
There was a ringing sound from Milton’s suitcase. ‘I wish these bloody mobile phones had never been invented,’ he said as he fished it out. ‘One never has an excuse to be free. Yes,’ he said rather testily. His face changed as he listened. ‘Right, Sammy,’ he said, ‘I’ll be right there.’ He slammed the phone down and said, ‘Fuck.’
‘Fuck what?’ asked Amiss.
‘My own stupidity mostly. I didn’t think to put a guard on Blenkinsop.’
‘You don’t mean?’
‘I do. Sunil found him ten minutes ago. Dead in the corner of the library.’
‘How?’
‘Apparently all he said was that he didn’t know how he’d died, but it looked unpleasant. Come on, Ellis, we’ve got to get there. You’ll have to go separately, Robert. What are you thinking? You’ve got a very faraway look in your eye.’
‘I’m trying to decide if reducing it to four is a silver lining,’ said Amiss.
‘Only if he’s been murdered,’ said Milton. ‘Come on. Let’s go and find out.’
***
It was midnight before Amiss, back in uniform and trying to look official, was able to get any inside information. The police and their cohorts—photographers, finger-printers, pathologists and the rest—had drifted away; the corpse had been removed. Amiss had had his fill of the terrified squawking of foreign servants and the lamentations of old retainers.
‘One of the old school,’ Ramsbum kept intoning. ‘God knows what’ll happen to us now.’
If Ramsbum had been a human being Amiss might have suspected that he was seriously feeling grief. Blitherdick, usually a man of few words, had become lachrymose about Blenkinsop’s enjoyment of a good wine. Amiss had to restrain his impatience, knowing as he did that a distinguishing feature of Blenkinsop was that he had enjoyed any wine, as long as there was enough of it. Gooseneck had been unsentimental, but a little sad.
‘Every man’s death diminishes us, Robert,’ he observed, ‘and I’m sorry that he should die now when he seemed at last to be recovering his dignity.’
Both he and Amiss had spent a considerable time comforting Sunil, who had been throwing up on and off for over an hour. There had been no opportunity to get from him an on-the-spot report of what had happened. Chatterton, Fagg, Fishbane and Glastonbury were huddled together in the Smoking Room, from which each of them had been extracted for a brief conversation with Milton. They kept ordering more brandy and all seemed genuinely upset. Blenkinsop had after all, as Fagg remarked, ‘been one of us—not a damned outsider.’
A sense of mortality seemed to hang heavily on them. Their conversation was desultory. Amiss hovered in the gallery, hoping to waylay an informant. Eventually, he was rewarded by the sight of Inspector Sammy Pike heading out of the library and off towards the gentlemen’s cloakroom. He shot after him at high speed.
‘Psst…Sammy!’
Pike turned round and smiled warmly. He looked Amiss up and down appraisingly and said: ‘Nice to see you again, Robert, but I’m glad the Super tipped me off you were here. I’d have got a nasty shock otherwise. By the way, I don’t think much of your tailor.’
‘Oh, shut up, Sammy. Beggars can’t be choosers. Now come on, give.’
‘Pathologist says it’s murder, skillfully carried out, he thinks, with a sharp blow from a cylindrical object driven upwards from the base of the nose. Apparently that drives a couple of bones into the brain. It’s a professional killer’s trick, I gather. Haven’t come across it myself before. Quick, but brutal.’
‘So what instrument was used?’
‘Dunno. It wasn’t left there and I can’t think what the chances are of finding it in a place this size. Still, we’ll get dozens of men crawling all over this building again.’
Out of the corner of his eye Amiss saw the Smoking Room door open. ‘Quick, Sammy, what about the information he was writing down for Jim?’
‘There was nothing there, I’m afraid. Nor in his room, nor in his office. Either he hadn’t started or whoever killed him took it away. That’s the likeliest, isn’t it?’
‘Thanks, Sammy.’
Amiss hurried towards the Smoking Room, out of which was emerging a by now familiar though no less bizarre procession. The four old men were obviously on their way to bed. Fishbane and Fagg came first, Fishbane’s six foot three inches of scrawny frame making an interesting counterpart to the roly-poly little Fagg, whose progress was retarded by his gouty limp. Amiss had a moment of sympathy for the old beast. It wouldn’t do much for anyone’s temper to suffer simultaneously from gout and piles, not to speak of bearing the life-long burden of being an unattractive midget. Fishbane nodded courteously, Fagg curtly. Amiss wished them goodnight and received civil responses. At least murder seemed to be a great improver of manners, he reflected. Behind came Glastonbury and Chatterton, but here there was a new development that Amiss found absorbing, for Chatterton had, that afternoon, been allowed to abandon his zimmer in favour of crutches and Glastonbury was therefore in a state of twittering panic.
‘Oh, my dear Cully, pray take care, take care. Those things are treacherous, and you’re not used to them. Please go more slowly. You mustn’t be so reckless.’
‘Boy, I’ve told you before, I’m used to crutches. Remember I had them twice before.’ He stopped for a moment, deep in thought. ‘Ah, yes. The first occasion was the fifth of September, it must have been. Certainly the first week in September, nineteen fifty. Don’t you recall? It was when I had that skiing accident in Switzerland.’
The memory of that sent Glastonbury into deep distress. ‘Oh, yes. I remember you telling me about that, Cully. That was dreadful, dreadful.’
Chatterton cut in. ‘The second occasion, of course, was when I was hit by a car in Monte Carlo on my third visit there…let me see, yes, it would have been twenty-seven years ago, three days before Christmas. So I’m quite good with crutches. There is no need to worry. Goodnight, Robert.’
‘Oh, yes, yes, yes. Goodnight, Robert,’ said Glastonbury. ‘Oh, dear. So disturbing. Everything so disturbing. Poor Pinkie. It’s quite dreadful, terrible, terrible. Goodnight.’
‘Goodnight, sir. Goodnight, sir.’
Amiss observed with interest but without surprise that Chatterton was as good as his word. He swung along on his crutches like a veteran, his dapper form complemented by the fleshy majesty of Glastonbury’s. As they disappeared towards the lift a stampede of policemen emerged from the library and thundered towards the stairs. Milton and Pooley lagged behind. Sammy Pike reappeared and joined them and Amiss edged towards them, keeping an eye out for unwelcome observers.
‘We’re off, Robert,’ said Milton. ‘Nothing more to be done tonight. We’ll have to wait before we can be absolutely certain of the time and manner of death, but from what we know already, it looks, yet again, as if any of those old buggers could have done it.’
‘Nothing especially to look out for?’
‘Incriminating documents in Blenkinsop’s handwriting would be nice,’ said Milton.
‘And the murderer’s c
ylindrical object,’ said Pooley.
‘A crutch?’ suggested Amiss.
‘I thought of that,’ said Pooley. ‘The circumference is about right, but apparently the object itself is too long. You don’t get the thrust.’
‘You’d be looking for something shaped like a truncheon or a torch,’ said Pike.
‘We’ll have some better ideas when the preliminary pathology report comes in tomorrow,’ said Milton.
‘Will you be coming here?’
‘I doubt if Ellis or I will be along tomorrow. Sammy will be running things. Give Ellis a ring before lunch-time and he’ll bring you up to date. Goodnight, Robert. And please be careful.’
‘I will.’
‘I’ll order some provisions for you tomorrow, Robert,’ said Pooley.
‘You mean in case Blenkinsop’s successor puts us back on short rations? Well, that raises an interesting question. Who the hell is going to become the new secretary?’
‘If the murder rate speeds up,’ said Milton, ‘perhaps you might put in for the job yourself.’
‘I might be weary,’ said Amiss, ‘but I’m not suicidal.’
Chapter Twenty-two
It was a dreadful night. Sunil snored loudly and Amiss didn’t have the heart to wake him. It was bad enough, he felt, to be cast out by your family, be stuck working in ffeatherstonehaugh’s, and be spending all your spare time working for a degree, without additionally having the stress of falling over dead bodies: the boy needed his sleep. In any case, Amiss’s mind was racing, grappling with a situation devoid of any rational explanation. He desperately wanted to get up, make himself a cup of tea or get a drink and walk around and think; instead, he was trapped. Downstairs would be in darkness, so any light going on would attract the attention of the night porter. While the faded old creature who bore the main brunt of night duty would be too dozy to spot anything, Ramsbum was a different matter and Amiss was pretty sure that this was his night on duty. He could be absolutely guaranteed to report to Fagg in the morning that a servant had been out of bounds, and this was no time to get the sack.
The hours passed in fruitless speculation on one side of the room and loud snoring on the other. At around five, Amiss’s need for sleep triumphed over his good nature and he hurled a paperback in Sunil’s direction. Nothing happened. Four books later there was a grunt, a snort, a muttered ‘Oh, sorry,’ and the noise stopped. Amiss cursed himself for a soft-hearted fool. Just because Sunil had had a nasty experience didn’t mean that his sleeping pattern would have changed. After tossing and turning for another while, Amiss fell into a deep sleep from which he was woken less than an hour and a half later by his alarm clock. To his chagrin, Sunil had disappeared. He washed and dressed quickly and was downstairs ten minutes before breakfast began, hoping for a quiet word with Gooseneck about Sunil’s condition.
He found them both sitting there. Sunil seemed a little febrile and was talking animatedly.
‘Do join us, Robert,’ said Gooseneck. ‘We were just discussing attitudes towards death in our respective cultures.’
‘Good morning, Robert,’ said Sunil. ‘I was just saying that it’s easier for me than it would be for your average Englishman. I suppose you’ve never seen anyone dead, have you?’
Amiss decided not to mention the dead bodies he’d been coming across since he’d got chummy with Jim Milton. ‘You’re right. My family didn’t go in for that sort of thing. Dead grandparents were whipped straight into coffins and the lids firmly closed.’
‘Well, so far I have contemplated the dead bodies of one uncle, two great-aunts, a grandmother and a first cousin. As you’ll know, had we been in India, we would have built a pyre and set fire to them. Here we’re restricted to the crematorium. It’s a good training for unpleasantnesses like last night and another area where I think Indian culture triumphs over English.’
‘Don’t judge us too much by contemporary mores, dear boy,’ said Gooseneck. ‘You are an apprentice historian and therefore should know that it is only in this century that this attempt to sanitise death has stricken our race. It’s not something on which one could fault the Victorians, for instance.’
Various depressed minions started to trickle in and just after seven-thirty, a man in a chef’s hat arrived through the doors that led to the kitchens, carrying an enormous silver tray which he laid in the centre of the table. With a flourish he removed the cover and revealed to the incredulous eyes of the staff a feast of sausages and bacon. Most of the staff began to fall on this with cries of delight, but as he looked around, Amiss saw two sad brown faces at the other end of the table.
‘Mr. Gooseneck,’ he whispered, ‘what about the Muslims?’
‘Your kind instincts do you credit, my dear Robert, but have no fear, I have no desire to torture our Islamic friends.’ Through the swing doors came the same chef, this time carrying dishes of mushrooms, tomatoes and fried eggs. ‘What’s happened, Mr. Gooseneck?’ asked Amiss, when he had worked his way through the first stage of what was one of the best breakfasts he’d ever had in his life.
‘I think you could call it the metaphorical baked meats for our secretary. Fagg has put me temporarily in charge and, limited though my power may be, I intend to ensure that those under my care are for once treated like human beings.’ He smiled benignly around the table, a bit like Scrooge on Christmas Day, revelling in the joy of the Cratchits.
‘What are you doing today, Sunil?’ asked Amiss.
‘College in the morning and then I’ll be back to wait at lunch.’
‘You don’t have to, my boy.’
‘No, no, please. I’m not going to leave you in the lurch. Maybe we could have a word in the afternoon, Robert. I’ve got a new toy I want to show you.’ Gooseneck shot him a warning glance, but Sunil shook his head and said, ‘No, don’t worry. Robert’s reliable. He won’t split on us.’
***
‘How’s it going, Ellis?’
‘May I ring you back?’
‘If you do it quickly and say you’re my doctor. Even Ramsbum can’t object to that.’
‘Sorry,’ said Pooley when they connected a few minutes later. ‘Had to find a quiet corner. Bloody awful in fact. None of those wretches were distinguished enough to get into Who’s Who so one doesn’t have anywhere to start from. And of course, because Jim was relying on Blenkinsop to know basic facts, he didn’t grill any of them about their war records, their financial position, or career history. He wants us to try and get everything we can without their knowledge, in the hope that then we’ll have some ammunition.’
‘What have you got so far?’
‘Well, it’s a bit early, but I have dug up one piece of information that you’ll enjoy. It’s about Fagg’s army record.’
‘Oh good. I bet he turns out not to have been quite the hero he makes out.’
‘Better than that. He never fought in his life. His entire career was spent in the catering corps. He was called up in nineteen thirty-nine, became an army cook and worked his way up. Not, I may add, to colonel. He only got to sergeant-major.’
‘So he’s a fake colonel.’
‘So it would seem. The army is faxing me regimental lists, so we might be able to track down a contemporary or two.’
‘Well, well, well. Well, well. How extremely pleasing. I shall beam on him as I serve him lunch and if the old bastard is particularly unpleasant I’ll be able to reflect on how bad he’ll feel when he’s unmasked. I can’t wait for the next revelations. Fishbane, perhaps, will turn out to have been an army chaplain and a founder of the League of Decency.’
‘Shouldn’t think so. He seems to have been corrupt from an early age. I rang up my old man this morning and asked if he remembered Dickie Fishbane at school, and he exploded and started bellowing about degenerates and scoundrels. I tried to press him for some specifics, but he wasn’t saying much. I did elicit the information that Fishbane was five years ahead of him and that briefly they were together in the school choir.’
&n
bsp; ‘Nice-looking boy, your father?’
‘You really have no respect for people’s finer feelings. I don’t want to know what Fishbane did to my unfortunate father all those years ago. Let’s just say that my father talks a lot about queers and why they should be flung into prison and the key thrown away.’
‘Well, you can’t accuse Fishbane of being queer these days.’
‘No, but he didn’t have a lot of choice at Eton.’
‘Thank God I was under-privileged and had to make do with girls. Anything else?’
‘No. And on your side?’
‘No, except that I’m engaging in prurient speculation about Gooseneck and Sunil and whether they’re having an affair. Seems possible. Sunil went to public school and Gooseneck taught in a prep school. QED.’
Pooley clearly felt that this conversation was getting out of bounds. ‘It would be more helpful, Robert, if you concentrated on something relevant.’
‘You old prude, Ellis. I have to be allowed a bit of light relief. But yes, I’m off to serve lunch and find the blunt instrument and the missing notes. Oh, and you don’t have to send me any more food. We’re being fed even more royally than yesterday.’
‘I’ll just send you a little champagne to prove that though I may be a prude I’m not a puritan. Good day.’
‘Good day, Ellis.’
***
‘Are you free in half an hour?’ Sunil sounded excited.
‘Where will you be?’
‘In Charles the Second. On the third floor.’
Amiss recalled a discreet chamber tucked away at the back of the building which appeared from its decor and its furniture to have been designed for the entertainment of a compliant lady.
‘OK. See you.’
***
Sunil’s toy turned out to be a lap-top computer. He showed it off shining-eyed. ‘Isn’t it marvellous, Robert. I’ve desperately wanted one of these, but of course, between the fees and books and everything else, I haven’t been able to afford one.’
