by Tim Heald
When he returned to their table he found Guy grinning in a way that he knew Monica would resent. Condescending. It implied that Monica was a piece of fluff to be humoured but, in serious matters, ignored. This was a dangerous misapprehension.
‘It sounds as if you’ve got your man,’ said Guy.’ Squire Herring’s come to confess.’
‘That is not what I said,’ Monica said frigidly as she took a gulp of her drink. ‘Thank you darling,’ she added in a tone which was not so much intended to thank her husband as to put the policeman in his place.
‘What then?’ Bognor smiled at Guy in a half-hearted attempt to warn him to take Monica a touch more seriously.
‘He wants to talk to you,’ said Monica. ‘He said it’s very important. It’s about Brian Wilmslow and he’s extremely agitated.’
‘Why didn’t he come down?’
‘He said he wanted to talk to you in private.’
‘Was it wise leaving him alone in your room?’ Guy’s manner was half mocking, half plodding. Like a Gilbert and Sullivan policeman; and not in a professional production either.
‘Oh, don’t be so bloody ridiculous.’ Monica’s voice rasped down her nostrils like Maggie Smith’s at moments like this.
‘I’m not being ridiculous.’ Guy was stung. ‘He may be the murderer for all you know. And if he’s in any way involved he’ll be having a good look through those Board of Trade papers by now.’
‘Those Board of Trade papers,’ said Monica slowly, emphasising each word, ‘are locked safely in Simon’s briefcase. Besides which Sir Nimrod is safely locked in our room as well. It seemed a sensible precaution.’ She took a second swig of Scotch and stared at the handsome policeman, challenging him to say something else stupid.
‘Sorry,’ he said, then glanced self-importantly at his watch. Bognor half expected him to say that he had a train to catch, or, worse, that he had work to do. Instead he said quite flatly, ‘I have an appointment. No doubt you’ll tell me all about Sir Nimrod in the morning.’ And with his irritatingly even-toothed smile and an ingratiating genuflection in Monica’s direction he was off and away.
‘Conceited ass,’ said Monica. ‘I can’t stand those sort of superficial good looks.’
Bognor knew this was not a good moment to gloat.
‘We’d better go and unlock the squire,’ he said.
He had his back to them when they entered the room and seemed for a moment unaware of any intrusion. Only when Bognor coughed did he turn from the window with a surprised shake of the head, like a man emerging from a dream which, it immediately transpired, was just what he was doing.
‘We came here from Caen,’ he said, blinking.
Mr and Mrs Bognor looked blank.
‘William d’herring. Knight. Namesake of the Conqueror. Came from Caen.’ The incongruous tuft of ginger hair waggled curiously as he spoke. ‘We’re nearly all in the vault. You realise I’m the twenty-third baronet and when I’m gone the title passes to my cousin Keith in Canterbury.’
‘That’s not so far,’ said Bognor, grasping at straws.
‘About twenty-four hours as the crow flies,’ said the old man. ‘Six weeks by P and O.’
‘Canterbury, New Zealand, you idiot,’ hissed Monica, spitting in his right ear. Bognor nodded. Keith was clearly a Kiwi.
Sir Nimrod was obviously not finished. He was nowhere near the point. Bognor was about to ask him to come to it a little more rapidly but stopped himself, realising that this was probably a case of ‘softly, softly’.
‘The whole of English history’s in the Herring family tree,’ continued the squire. ‘Forget all that clever stuff they teach you at Oxford and the London School of bloody Economics. You don’t need a lot of damned Marxists banging on with their half-baked theorising – it’s all here in Herring St George.’ He rubbed a rheumy eye and repeated, ‘All here in Herring St George and when I’m gone it’s finished.’
‘Perhaps your cousin Keith will come home and settle.’
Monica meant to be soothing but Sir Nimrod only glowered. ‘Whole damned country’s gone to the dogs or New Zealand,’ he said and sat down heavily in a high-backed porter’s chair which Felix had picked up in a junk shop in Whelk. It was covered in nutmeg brown velvet. ‘Fact of life. God knows we might as well have let Hitler and his chums in. It couldn’t have been worse than it is and at least the trains would run on time.’ He paused and looked thoughtful. ‘Was it Hitler who made the trains run on time or Mussolini? There hasn’t even been a station in Herring St George since that fat oaf Beeching axed it. And they’ve taken the dining car off the eight-thirty from Whelk to town. Would you believe the station’s just been bought by some writer chap for over a hundred thousand? Writes tea commercials. Something to do with monkeys.’
Bognor felt it was time to impose a little order on these ramblings.
‘Monica said you had something to tell me,’ he said, not unkindly but with officer-class authority. ‘About the death this morning.’
‘You wouldn’t have such a thing as a drink would you?’ The old man rummaged in his pocket and produced a packet of cheap thin Woodbine cigarettes. The Bognors always had a bottle of Scotch in their hotel room. Bognor poured a thimble into a tooth mug and added water. When this was done and the Woodbine was alight Sir Nimrod said: ‘Look at the Clout. The Clout was going even before we got here. Hundreds of years. Happy family occasion. Private affair. Now it’s day trippers and cameras and even journalists.’ He pronounced the last word ‘jawnalists’ and he pronounced it with a dreadful contempt.
‘Oh, not really a journalist,’ said Bognor, trying to maintain a light tone, ‘a gentleman from The Times.’
‘Gentleman from The Times!’ Sir Nimrod spat the words out. ‘It’s owned by some friend of cousin Keith. There hasn’t been a gentleman on The Times since that rat Northcliffe took it over.’
Bognor swallowed and decided to restrict himself to business.
‘What exactly was it you wanted to tell me?’ he asked, quite briskly this time.
This time there was a very long pause. Bognor realised that much of the squire’s meandering so far, while heartfelt, was really a device to put off the difficult moment when he had to say what he had come to say. It was obviously a message he had qualms about delivering.
‘You’re some sort of intelligence wallah?’ he hazarded at last.
‘In a manner of speaking,’ admitted Bognor. ‘I work for the Board of Trade in Special Investigations.’
‘Ah.’ Sir Nimrod chewed this revelation for a while but obviously found it difficult to digest. He tried another tack.
‘You’re investigating this morning’s business. The body and all that?’
‘Up to a point,’ said Bognor unhelpfully.
‘Up to what point?’ asked Sir Nimrod, reasonably enough.
‘My husband is assisting the police with their enquiries,’ said Monica. ‘The chief inspector is in charge but my husband has a sort of watching brief on behalf of the government.’
‘Much rather not talk to the police. Delicate matter.’
Neither Simon nor Monica knew quite what to make of this and after a while the squire continued. ‘The fact is,’ he said, ‘that chap they found in the wood this morning was a bit of a skeleton in my cupboard if you follow my drift.’
‘I see,’ said Bognor, now hopelessly adrift.
‘You do promise that this won’t go beyond these four walls?’ He looked searchingly at Bognor who started to reply cautiously but was over-ruled by his wife who said, bossily, ‘Anything you say will be treated in the utmost confidence.’
She gave her husband one of her celebrated ‘for heaven’s sake shut up and be sensible’ glances.
‘The fact of the matter,’ said Sir Nimrod at last, ‘is that this creature Wilmslow who was done in during the Clout is the son of our old butler, Wilmslow.’
There was a long pause while the Bognors digested this unlikely revelation and wondered where it was going to lead
.
‘Very difficult to explain this,’ he continued, ‘but they were a bad lot those Wilmslows. Father came to us through an advertisement in the Lady and I never was sure about his references. My wife was alive then, God bless her, and she said I was imagining things.’
He lit another cigarette. ‘You see the fact is,’ he said, ‘that Naomi’s not her mother’s daughter.’
‘I don’t follow,’ said Bognor.
‘She’s Edith’s girl.’
‘Edith?’
‘Mrs Macpherson. I … well, to put it bluntly, Edith and I were walking out together …’
‘You mean you and Edith Macpherson had an affair and Naomi was the result?’ Monica did not mean to be gratuitously rough but she felt it was time to cut some cackle.
‘I suppose so,’ said Sir Nimrod wretchedly.
‘I don’t understand,’ said Bognor. ‘Why didn’t you all get divorced?’
‘Edith wanted to go back to Macpherson,’ said Sir Nimrod staring at the floor. ‘But he wouldn’t have her back with the child.’
‘So you took her on and pretended she was your wife’s child. That must have been rather difficult.’
‘Very difficult time,’ agreed Sir Nimrod still avoiding any eye contact. ‘Muriel never got over it.’
Bognor remembered Peregrine and Samantha telling him about Lady Herring’s faintly mysterious demise in the moat.
‘But how … I mean surely people noticed …’ Monica, for once, was groping, ‘I mean surely people would have realised that Mrs Macpherson was pregnant and that Lady Herring was not. It’s not easy to conceal these things. I don’t mean to seem indelicate but someone must have noticed. Especially in a tight little English village like this one.’
‘The ladies both went away for several months,’ he said, so softly that he was barely audible. ‘I seem to recollect that we said something about going abroad. You must remember this was more than forty years ago. There was a war on. Strange things happen in war. I make no excuses but they were unusual times. Very unusual.’
‘And how exactly does the butler, Wilmslow, come into all this?’ Bognor had a pretty good idea, of course. But he wanted to hear it from the horse’s mouth.
Sir Nimrod swallowed hard. ‘Wilmslow found out,’ he said. ‘He was a rat. I’d have had to sell up anyway. Damned socialists saw to that with their damn fool taxes. And I was never much of a farmer. But we could have hung on a lot longer if it hadn’t been for Wilmslow.’
‘Blackmail?’ asked Bognor, dropping his voice in sympathy with the man in the confessional.
Sir Nimrod nodded.
‘I’m sorry to be brutal,’ said Bognor. ‘But I want to be absolutely sure I’ve got this right. You’re telling me that Naomi is the illegitimate daughter of you and Edith Macpherson; that your butler, Wilmslow, discovered this and blackmailed you over it.’
‘Yes,’ said Sir Nimrod miserably.
‘And then what?’
‘He bled us white, and when there was nothing more to take he took off. To Spain. He sent a card at Christmas.’
‘And did the blackmail continue?’
‘Off and on. He wasn’t stupid. He could see I was cleaned out. I sent him one or two … Tokens really. I think he only asked so that I wouldn’t forget he had a hold over me. He was that sort of person. Utter shit.’
‘Had you heard from him recently?’
‘Christmas cards stopped about ten years ago. I assumed he’d dropped dead or found fatter fish to fry. And then the son turned up.’
‘Just like that?’
‘What do you mean, “just like that”?’ Sir Nimrod looked suspicious.
‘No warnings. No letters. No telephone calls.’
‘Just came into the shop three days ago, said he was Mr Wilmslow from Customs and Excise and he wanted to inspect the books.’
‘And did he?’
The village postmaster looked sheepish. ‘The books … well, the books weren’t altogether in order. I told him so and he said he’d call back after the weekend.’
‘He didn’t try to blackmail you?’ asked Monica.
‘He’s not stupid. No point in trying to bleed a corpse.’
‘Did he say anything about his father? About old times?’ Bognor scratched his scalp. What the old man said was true enough. He was virtually destitute. There was scarcely any visible means of support, let alone any sign of a blackmailable fortune.
‘Not a word.’
‘And you didn’t say anything? You didn’t ask him if his father was still alive?’
Sir Nimrod shook his head. ‘I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction,’ he said grimly.
‘You are sure it was him?’ asked Monica. ‘It must have been a long time since you last saw him?’
‘Over twenty years, but it was him all right. There’s a Wilmslow look you can’t mistake. Spitting image of his father, he was. A nasty chip off an extremely unpleasant block.’ Sir Nimrod drained his glass. ‘I couldn’t have the other half?’ he enquired plaintively. ‘No fun baring the soul like this.’
‘I can see that,’ said Bognor, while his wife replenished the glass, ‘which makes me ask why you’re doing it?’
‘Thought it best if you heard it from me,’ said the old man. He rubbed at his ginger whiskers. ‘It wouldn’t have looked too good coming from someone else.’
‘You’re right,’ said Bognor. ‘On the face of it you had an extremely plausible motive for wishing Mr Wilmslow dead.’
‘No bones about it, old boy.’ The squire was either very relieved at having got the confession off his chest or the whisky was relaxing him. ‘I’m glad he’s gone and, given the chance, I’d have done him in myself.’
‘But with respect,’ said Monica, ‘he seems to have behaved just as any ordinary VAT inspector would have done. Do you think he remembered who you were? I mean how old was he when he left the village?’
‘Late teens,’ said Sir Nimrod. ‘He was a teddy boy. Drainpipe trousers and winklepickers. Ludicrous figure. He remembered all right. You could see it in his eyes.’
‘So,’ persisted Monica, ‘if he didn’t come here to blackmail you, then what did he come here for?’
Sir Nimrod shook his head. ‘Can’t imagine. To gloat perhaps. And the little sewer obviously was a VAT inspector, too.’
‘Well you’re quite right in one respect,’ said Bognor. ‘If someone else had told me this then I’m afraid I’d have marked you down as a suspect straight away. No mistaking the fact it’s one of the strongest motives a chap could have.’
‘That’s what I felt.’ He seemed almost jaunty compared to his earlier despair.
‘Well thank you for coming.’ Bognor smiled gratefully at the scruffy figure with his stained Eton tie and creased tweed jacket, leather-patched at the elbows. Life had dealt harshly with this last of the Herrings. ‘Just for form’s sake,’ he added pleasantly, ‘we might as well establish your alibi. It’s by no means certain that foul play was involved; but if there was foul play it seems likely to have taken place between about nine-thirty at night and breakfast next day. Where were you then?’
Sir Nimrod pursed his lips. ‘There was a Clout committee meeting at the Macphersons,’ he said. ‘That was over by about half past eight. I walked back, had supper and then stayed up with Naomi till two a.m. wrestling with the wretched accounts.’
‘And up pretty early in the morning to get ready for the Clout.’
‘Always up at five-thirty,’ he said, smiling wistfully. ‘Always used to have an early reveille for milking. Incurable habit I’m afraid. I’d break it if I could.’
He drained the remains of his second drink.
‘Glad I’ve got that off my chest,’ he said. ‘Can’t tell you how much it’s been bothering me. You promise it won’t go any further? It would break my heart if Naomi were to find out.’
‘Naomi doesn’t know?’
‘Good grief, no.’ He stood up and slapped invisible crumbs from the knees of his sadly
decayed corduroy trousers. ‘Perish the thought.’
The Bognors also stood.
‘It was good of you to come,’ said Bognor. ‘I’m most grateful.’
‘It’s a weight off my mind I don’t mind telling you.’
‘You haven’t discussed it with the Macphersons?’ Monica smiled sweetly but for a moment Sir Nimrod seemed to hesitate almost as if, for the first time, there had been a deviation from the script. ‘We don’t talk about it,’ he said. ‘Water under the bridge if you know what I mean. Water under the bridge.’
‘So the Macphersons never knew that Wilmslow was blackmailing you?’ If Sir Nimrod Herring had known Monica Bognor a little better he would have been very wary of that smile which was not very enthusiastically reflected in her deep brown, restlessly perceptive eyes.
‘Absolutely not!’ he said. ‘My own secret. A cross I suffered in silence. I make no excuses. My behaviour was unforgivable even allowing for there being a war on. But it’s been a hard row to hoe. A very hard row indeed.’
He made for the door. ‘Naomi’s stewing rabbit,’ he said, ‘rabbit with forcemeat balls. She’s a stickler for punctuality, so I’d better totter back p.d.q. Awfully good of you to listen so patiently. You know where to find me if you need me.’ He paused with his hand on the door and looked Bognor up and down appraisingly, ‘You quite sure you’re no relation of old Theo Bognor? You’ve got the same nose, there’s no question about it. That’s a Bognor nose all right.’
‘It’s possible,’ said Bognor. ‘It’s not a very usual name. But not as far as I know.’
‘Ah well!’ He turned the handle, ‘Must rush. Toodle pip!’
Chapter 4
The dining room of the Pickled Herring was as determinedly serious as Popinjay’s bar was not. It was so plainly discreet that you screamed for some sign of excess – gilt, for instance, on chandeliers, or one of those colossal Franglais menus with fulsome descriptions of every dish’s provenance. Instead it was all sensible modern chairs, school of Conran; spotlights shining on to pine and plain white napery and plain, heavy glasses. There were four starters, three main courses, four desserts and a small number of dishes of the day recited by Felix. Felix was so unobtrusively, beautifully dressed that you scarcely realised he was there: very very light grey flannels, an American-style blazer, a creamy silk shirt and a very very pale plain beige tie with matching pocket handkerchief. Smoking was not allowed and you felt that it would be grossest sacrilege to ask for a salt cellar or any spirits other than (perhaps) a very rare single malt whisky to drink after the frangipani sorbet with kiwi fruit.
