Paradise Postponed

by John Mortimer

When they were saying their goodbyes Henry asked to be pointed in the direction of the loo, went down a passage and, hearing the whirl of a washing-up machine, pushed open the kitchen door. Agnes was sitting at the wiped-over table, smoking a cigarette and finishing the Beaujolais.

  ‘Did Fred send you here to spy on me?’

  ‘You didn’t like the wine, did you?’ Agnes didn’t seem to think his question worth answering. ‘I mean talk about thin…’

  ‘Fred’s taken to playing detectives. How else did you get here?’

  ‘I was rung up by Mrs Rose. She found me in the Yellow Pages. I didn’t know they were part of your legal Mafia.’

  ‘How much did you hear?’

  ‘Not a lot. I was busy doshing out Lonnie’s seconds.’ Henry came and sat on the edge of the table then, swinging his legs, took a swig from her glass and tried to sound friendly. ‘You ought to be on our side.’

  ‘Ought I?’

  ‘For Francesca. She’ll benefit eventually if we end up with the Simcox shares.’

  ‘You mean if you end up with them.’

  ‘Money never did much harm to anyone, even Francesca.’

  ‘How much should she take for having her grandfather found insane?’

  Henry got up from the table. Before he left her he looked round the kitchen and sniffed. ‘All those herbs!’ he said. ‘They smell of our old quarrels.’

  *

  The next day, Fred decided what to do about young Mallard-Greene. He drove to Tom Nowt’s old cottage, outside which a window-cleaning van, with a ladder fastened to the top, was parked. Simon was at home resting between windows, drinking a cup of coffee and listening to Radio One. He switched off Wham! and looked reassured when Fred told him that he was prepared to give evidence before the Magistrates at Simon’s trial.

  ‘You’ll tell them I’m sick?’

  ‘Oh yes, of course. You’re suffering from a fairly well-known condition.’

  ‘What’s that, Doctor?’

  ‘Greed. You were injected by a strong desire to make a quick wodge of folding money for some bits and pieces of hi-fi equipment you and your precious friend, Gary, nicked when you went cleaning windows. It’s a condition which may lead to a term of close confinement, in serious cases.’ For a moment Simon thought he was getting helpful medical advice. When he understood that he wasn’t his colourless face set in a look of hatred.

  ‘You want me to go in there and say what Gary knows about you Simcoxes?’

  ‘What does he know?’

  ‘I’ll have to ask him, won’t I?’

  ‘You may find that hard. Mr Kitson seems to have deprived Rapstone of his company. Perhaps he didn’t want to share the limelight with you in the Magistrates’ Court.’

  ‘His friends know where to find him.’ Simon smiled in a way that wasn’t in the least engaging. ‘So why don’t you go and get your act together? Court’s in two weeks’ time, Dr Simcox.’

  About fifteen minutes after Fred had left the cottage, Simon Mallard-Greene went out to his van and looked up and down the road. He saw no one so he got in the driver’s seat and started towards Hartscombe. Waiting in a side road, Fred saw the ladders moving above a hedge and set off to follow at a discreet distance. When he got to the town he took a route away from the main street and emerged to see the window-cleaner’s van crossing the bridge to the London road. He waited for a couple of cars and a lorry to get between him and Simon and then went after him.

  Up the long hill through the wood, past soggy autumn fields and in and out of villages, Fred followed the van to the motorway entrance. Simon, bucketing along in the fast lane, looked in his mirror and saw only the lorry behind which Fred was concealed. So they travelled towards London and at last Fred saw the van dive away down the Paddington exit. He followed, and, for a long minute, was stuck at a traffic light, which Simon had driven through. He was lost in Bayswater, and then he looked down a side road and saw the van turning into a mews. He went after it, parked in the main road, and saw Simon walking into the office of O’Leary’s Mini Cabs, ‘24-hour service’. Fred waited and after ten minutes, Simon came out and drove out of the other end of the mews.

  A pair of legs was sticking out from under a wounded Consul. A face peered out as Fred asked the man if Gary Kitson worked there.

  ‘There isn’t no Kitson, my friend.’

  ‘Who owns this place?’

  ‘O’Leary. Desmond O’Leary.’

  ‘Where’s he?’

  ‘Ask her in the office.’

  The office was small and dark, littered with spare parts; a plump girl sat clattering on an upright typewriter with her back towards the door. Above her a brown and naked calendar beauty stood on some faraway beach, sand on her buttocks, advertising brake-linings.

  ‘Mr O’Leary’s not here today. I’m sick of telling everybody.’ Then Tina Kitson turned round. ‘Dr Simcox!’

  ‘Everybody? You mean Simon Mallard-Greene or the police?’

  ‘I mean everybody.’ Her eyes were red and puffy. ‘He doesn’t tell me anything.’

  ‘I’m sure he doesn’t.’

  ‘I’ll let him know you want him. If he happens to call.’

  ‘I think he’s got something I might be interested in.’

  ‘They all say that. I’m sick and tired of it. Honestly I am.’

  Fred moved to a cluttered mantelpiece over a broken gas fire. He saw a business card, clean and white, among the crumpled bills and notes for drivers. He picked it up and read the name of the Neverest Detective Agency and an address in Fetter Lane.

  ‘You’re trying to have him traced?’ He showed Tina the card.

  ‘ ’Course not! I’m not as worried as all that. That’s a guy who called. Gary was here then.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘I don’t know, do I? How could I know?’

  ‘Try and remember.’

  Tina looked at him, and decided to do her best. ‘I think Gary sold the man something. Did some sort of a deal anyway. He seemed pleased. Anyway I haven’t seen much of Gary since then.’

  ‘Sold him what?’

  ‘I don’t know, do I?’ Tina was becoming angry and near to tears again. ‘Could have been an old banger for all I know. Could have been anything.’

  ‘Yes.’ Fred put the card carefully back on the dusty mantelpiece. ‘Yes. I suppose it could.’

  As he left, Tina went back to pounding the old typewriter, writing letters for a business her husband had apparently deserted.

  Fred couldn’t find a parking meter, so he squeezed his car into a space between two vans in Fetter Lane. He pushed his way into a dim hallway, went up three floors in a groaning lift, and found himself in the outer office of the Neverest Detective Agency: ‘All Inquiries Undertaken. Complete Confidentiality Guaranteed’. ‘I’m after a detective,’ Fred explained to the depressed secretary who was knitting at her desk, clearly short of work. ‘I think a client’s gone in.’ ‘Yes,’ Fred told her, ‘me.’ He opened the door into the inner office. ‘Of course,’ he said when he got inside. ‘I should have guessed.’

  It was a small room. On the wall a group photograph of the boys at Knuckleberries, taken in the Summer Term of 1948, hung beside a certificate of affiliation to the Private Inquiry Agents Association. Arthur Nubble was sitting behind the desk, eating a sandwich, drinking a packet of milk through a straw and reading the Tatler.

  ‘Oh, hullo Simcox Minor. I thought you might be turning up.’

  ‘The last time I saw you, you were a journalist.’

  ‘Bit of a cover that, actually.’ Nubble smiled modestly. ‘Of course, I do manage to pick up a little gossip from time to time. Some of it finds its way into the papers.’

  ‘And some of it you keep for your clients?’

  ‘Well, that’s the name of the game nowadays, isn’t it?’

  ‘What is?’

  ‘Information.’

  Fred sat on a rickety office chair and wondered how many games Arthur Nubble had known the na
me of since he ran a delicatessen in an old double-bass case at school. Now, he supposed, it was divorce cases, the following of errant husbands, industrial secrets and, perhaps, wills.

  ‘Who’s your client in the estate of the late Simeon Simcox?’

  ‘Titmuss v. Simcox and Others?’ Nubble seemed to enjoy the formality of the title.

  ‘Words to that effect. I suppose you’re acting for Leslie Titmuss. Didn’t we meet at his home?’

  ‘I say, steady on.’ Nubble looked hurt. ‘You’re doing me an injustice. Anyway, I understand Titmuss is a bit of a shit.’

  ‘They speak of him as a future prime minister.’

  ‘That’s probably why. No, I wouldn’t act for Titmuss. One has a certain loyalty. After all, we were all at Knuckleberries together.’

  ‘All three of us.’

  ‘You and I. And your brother, of course.’

  ‘Henry!’ Fred stood up. ‘He hired you to check up on Leslie Titmuss?’

  ‘And to collect evidence for his case. Yes.’

  ‘And to stop me collecting evidence which might make his case impossible. Is that what Henry asked you to do?’

  ‘I really don’t know what you’re suggesting, Simcox Mi.’

  ‘There is a bit of evidence. I’m not at all sure what it is, except that it throws a good deal of light on our family circumstances. An appalling youth called Gary Kitson got hold of it by some means or other, probably theft, and you’ve just bought it from Gary. I don’t imagine it’s anything that my big brother thinks I ought to know about.’

  ‘Your brother hasn’t said anything about it.’ The Neverest detective appeared to be enjoying a joke.

  ‘Hasn’t he?’

  ‘In fact, we haven’t had time to discuss it.’

  ‘Have you not? So it’s a piece of virgin evidence untouched by the interested parties.’

  ‘If it exists.’

  ‘And if it exists I’d like to see it.’ He held out his hand. ‘Please.’

  Nubble didn’t answer at once. Then he said, ‘You never got on with Simcox Major, did you?’

  ‘Not especially.’

  ‘I took to you at school, you know. I wanted you to be my friend. None of the others had much time for me.’

  ‘I remember.’

  ‘You told me you were treacherous. Was that true?’

  ‘Possibly,’ Fred admitted. ‘Treacherous to Henry.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘My father may have had his failings, plenty of them. But he wasn’t insane. I’m never going to let that be said. Never!’

  Nubble looked at him and then stood up. Panting slightly he went to a battered safe in a dark corner. After searching for his keys he unlocked it and modestly produced a couple of sheets of blue note-paper, a letter that Grace kept at the bottom of her box of cheaper jewellery among other objects of sentimental value only.

  ‘What are you offering me for this?’ He held it to show the address printed on the first sheet.

  ‘Money?’ Fred supposed. ‘Isn’t that the name of the game nowadays?’

  32

  Faith Unfaithful

  The Miners’ Strike, the prolonged war over dying pits and dying towns and villages, struck only a small echo in Hartscombe. There was a little posse of pickets outside Simcox’s Brewery and placards which read ‘Hands Off Our Beer’, ‘Save 300 Jobs’, ‘We Demand the Right to Work’, and even ‘Drink to the Workers!’ From time to time a number of police and pickets enjoyed a brief push as some anxious secretary tried to get in or out. It had been Christopher Kempenflatt’s scheme: unlike Magnus Strove he had recovered his fortunes since Leslie dropped a dying Hartscombe Enterprises on them and his eye finally lighted on the large Brewery site by the river in Hartscombe. What a waste of space it was, and how much more profitable might the area be if it were turned into a shopping precinct. Kempenflatt saw a pedestrian walk-way, a fine selection of shoe shops, music centres, and boutiques, all paying high rents and employing far fewer people than were needed to brew a beer which, in any event, was losing ground to cans of imported lager in the self-service winery.

  Trafford Simcox, a thin, anxious and good-natured cousin to Fred and Henry, had been brought up to be Chairman of the Brewery. He sat in the office which had seen generations of Simcoxes, men who no doubt thought that their ales would last as long as the river which flowed past the windows, and worried a great deal. He worried about the loss of jobs, the destruction of the old buildings and the departure from the world of Simcox Best Bitter. Yet the offer was one his shareholders could hardly refuse, and, in the absence of Best Bitter, it might keep him and his family in champagne for the rest of their natural lives.

  ‘There’s only one slight complication,’ he finally had to admit to Christopher Kempenflatt. ‘The law-suit going on about the old Rector’s shares.’

  ‘Who do we have to buy them from?’

  ‘I suppose that will depend on the result of the case.’

  ‘I may have to deal with Leslie Titmuss,’ Kempenflatt supposed gloomily. He was looking down into the yard, where a disturbance of a minor sort was going on. Leslie’s father had arrived at the gate, apparently suffering from the delusion he still worked there. ‘You’ve got to let me in,’ he told the pickets. ‘There’s things I’ve got to do in Accounts.’ Some of the younger men told him to get lost, and one, who had no idea who George was, called him a scab. Den Kitson, bored on the picket line, was relieved to see Elsie arrive in her car and take the retired pillar of Accounts home to tea. ‘He’s been retired,’ Den explained to the others. ‘For donkeys’ years.’ ‘Yes,’ Elsie said, as she shepherded her husband away, ‘and sometimes he forgets all about it.’ ‘All right, Dad,’ they shouted as he left, ‘call again, when the dispute’s over.’

  When they had finished tea and George had called it tasty, he went to the mantelpiece in ‘The Spruces’ and picked up that lady from Cleethorpes his boy had once given to the Rector. ‘It’s a while since we went on that holiday.’ Elsie was clearing away.

  ‘Leslie shouldn’t have done it. He was all take was the old Rector.’

  ‘The boy meant no harm. Leslie was always made welcome up at the Rectory.’

  ‘I had to go and speak to the Rector about it.’

  ‘You did, George. We all remember it clearly. It was the only time in his life Leslie took anything to which he wasn’t strictly entitled. We all remember when you went up to speak your mind to Mr Simcox.’ Elsie took the ornament from George and put it carefully back on the mantelpiece. ‘You came home with our ornament in your pocket and there it’s been, safe and sound, ever since.’

  ‘The Rector always got that much more than what he was entitled to.’ The old man yawned, thinking that it was time for Bedfordshire. ‘It’s been a worry to me.’

  ‘If you win this wretched case, I’m going to have to buy the old Rector’s shares from you.’

  ‘And if I lose, you’ll do a better deal with Henry Simcox?’

  ‘At least he’s a human being. He doesn’t live entirely for money.’

  ‘If I win, I shall charge you top price. It’s the least I can do for Nicky.’ Leslie looked at his watch. He saw no point in continuing the interview with Kempenflatt, who had called, without warning, one weekend at Picton House.

  ‘Which leads me to wonder…’ Kempenflatt showed no sign of leaving.

  ‘To wonder what?’

  ‘If you should be fighting this case at all, a sordid sort of legal scrap about the will of a well-known constituent. There are those in the local Party who think…’

  ‘That it doesn’t look good?’ Leslie smiled at the simplicity of the Kempenflatt approach.

  ‘Exactly!’

  ‘Like rented dinner-jackets’ – Leslie’s smile turned to anger – ‘and made up bow-ties and meat teas and string vests on summer holidays. I don’t give a damn how it looks.’

  ‘Perhaps I ought to warn you, you’re a little more vulnerable these days.’

  ‘You m
ean since I became a Minister?’

  ‘I mean since you married one of the Worsfield peace women.’

  ‘Charlotte was never one of them,’ Leslie answered quickly. ‘You read my statement to the Press.’

  ‘Oh, everyone read that.’ Kempenflatt got up to leave. ‘The trouble is not everyone believed it. Underneath their sensible hats and blue rinses, some of our dear Conservative ladies have got remarkably suspicious minds.’

  *

  When Fred left the Neverest Agency, he experienced a feeling of great elation. It was the end of a quest, a task he had set himself. Something had been achieved, finished with, done. The past was no longer a mystery and its solution was far from the warring contentions of Henry and Leslie Titmuss. When he walked out into Fetter Lane, his face was hit by rain. Peeling the wet parking ticket off his windscreen, he was prey to a sudden temptation. He might crumple it and the letter he had bought, throw them into the gutter and keep the secret he had discovered to be shared only by himself and the other two who must surely know it. Henry and Leslie could keep on battering each other in blind ignorance, and he would go quietly about his practice, knowing what they would never learn, and might, in any event, never clearly understand.

  He drove into Fleet Street, crawled with the traffic down the Strand, peering out between his windscreen wipers, and, when he reached the park, found, almost to his surprise, that instead of turning north towards Paddington, the motorway and Hartscombe, he went on towards the Fulham Road. When he got to Agnes’s flat, he sat for a long while in the car before he decided to ring the bell. Even then he decided she wasn’t in, and was turning away when the buzzer went and her disembodied voice invited him up.

  ‘I knew I couldn’t escape cooking Lonnie’s dinner for ever.’ He had come to tell her of a revelation, but she had immediately started on her own story, half in outrage, half in amusement. It seemed she owed him an explanation for waiting on Henry. ‘Do you think it’s funny?’

  ‘I suppose it is.’

  ‘Your brother wasn’t at all amused. He came into the kitchen to accuse me of spying on him.’

  ‘Spying? Whatever for?’