Essex Poison

by Ian Sansom

  ‘You know, man is so often his own worst enemy, Sefton.’

  ‘Indeed, Mr Morley,’ I said.

  ‘We bring misfortune upon ourselves.’

  ‘Yes. That’s true.’

  ‘I’m beginning to think there’s more to the death of Arthur Marden than meets the eye.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said.

  ‘Well, of course there is, Father!’ said Miriam, banging the steering wheel. ‘I’ve been saying that all along!’

  ‘Yes. Which means it may be time for us to investigate further.’

  ‘Oh no!’ said Miriam, immediately slamming on the brakes. The Cadillac came to a screeching halt – excellent brakes, unfaultable – and all three of us were nearly thrown through the windscreen. Fortunately there were no cars behind us or Willett’s would have had their Cadillac most comprehensively crunched. ‘Oh no. No no no. Non-QED,’ said Miriam. ‘Non sequitur, Father. Not. Happening.’ The car had now come to a complete halt in the middle of the road.

  ‘What on earth are you doing, Miriam?’ asked Morley.

  ‘I’ll tell you what I am not doing, Father. I am not staying in bloody Essex a day longer.’

  ‘What? Why?’

  ‘Why?’ said Miriam. ‘Because we have a book to write.’

  ‘Of course. We always have a book to write.’

  ‘And we’re falling behind again.’

  ‘When you get to my age, my dear,’ said Morley, ‘you will come to realise there’s nothing but falling behind, and so fall behind we inevitably must, until we can fall behind no longer. And if there’s a mystery to solve I’m afraid we have no choice but to fall behind.’

  ‘Oh no, but we do,’ said Miriam. ‘That’s the point. Just because there’s a mystery to be solved it doesn’t mean we have to solve it, Father. The police have clearly got everything in hand.’

  ‘And there’s the problem I was talking about, Sefton.’

  ‘Where?’ I said.

  ‘What?’ said Miriam.

  ‘I’m afraid the police are barking up the wrong tree,’ said Morley.

  ‘No,’ said Miriam. ‘Not again.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Morley. ‘Again.’ He had that familiar twinkle in his moustache. ‘Barking up the wrong tree entirely.’

  CHAPTER 18

  A FEW DISCREET ENQUIRIES

  DRIVING INTO COLCHESTER, Morley explained to us the various trees that he thought were worth barking up, and which the police had somehow unaccountably neglected to bark up themselves: utterly convinced that Marden could not possibly have died of bad oysters, he was adamant that if the poor chap didn’t die of natural causes the only possible explanation was foul play. He was beginning to suspect police involvement. He was beginning to suspect council involvement. He was beginning to suspect – well, it would almost be easier to say who he was not beginning to suspect of being involved.

  Miriam, quite rightly, was having none of it.

  ‘Non-sense, Father. Non-sense! This is like your Jack the Ripper thing all over again.’ (Some years previously Morley had spent considerable time and money investigating the possibility that the Ripper murders were a Masonic conspiracy involving the police, Parliament, the judiciary and the royal family, a perennially popular theory so utterly appealing in fact to certain parts of the press – and indeed among Morley’s many readers – that its only possible disadvantage was its being entirely false.)

  Miriam suggested – insisted, indeed, and doubly- and triply-insisted – that rather than a county-wide conspiracy it seemed much more likely that Vince Ramsey had perhaps allowed some unfiltered oysters to slip through to the feast, thus inadvertently causing the death of Arthur Marden. I agreed, and pointed out that this obvious answer was certainly to be preferred to all other more complex explanations – or, in Miriam’s words, ‘Occam’s razor, Father! Occam’s bloody razor!’ Having experienced the frenzy of the kitchens during the feast at first hand, I explained that it was more than possible that Vince might have sought to supplement his oyster supply with whatever he could get hold of, filtered or unfiltered, or indeed that the Cowleys might have sought to undermine the Oyster Fishery’s reputation by slipping in some of their own. Joe Cowley, I reminded Morley, was serving on the night of the feast – which was where I’d first met him.

  But Morley merely scoffed at our suggestions. Vince Ramsey, he believed, was above suspicion, since he had everything to lose and absolutely nothing to gain by supplying unfiltered oysters to the feast. And even if the Cowleys had slipped in a few bad oysters of their own, they were guilty of mischief rather than murder: a bad oyster was merely a bad oyster and neither a necessary or sufficient cause of death. A more likely explanation, Morley suggested, was that Marden’s oysters had been deliberately poisoned.

  ‘Oh really, Father?’ said Miriam. ‘You think he was singled out and executed by poisoned oyster? Really?’

  ‘And why not?’

  ‘Because! This is not Black Mask magazine, Father, this is Colchester!’

  ‘A man is much more likely to die from a poisoned oyster than from a bad oyster, surely, Miriam?’

  ‘Oh yes, of course! Of course! In the same sense that a man is more likely to die from being shot by an assassin than being randomly shot by someone armed with a weapon – both possibilities being equally far-fetched and preposterous and not even worth thinking about! Logic, Father? Laws of average? Statistics? Proof? Have you entirely lost your mind? I mean really, who under any circumstances would want to kill the Mayor of Colchester?’

  ‘Which is indeed the question, Miriam. Which is indeed the question! Well done.’

  ‘Gggrrr,’ said Miriam. It was a very bad sign when she growled.

  When we arrived in Colchester proper, having reached stalemate, we found the streets once again to be in chaos.

  ‘Ah! City of endless excavations,’ pronounced Morley. ‘Renowned for it. The English Valley of the Kings! Take a note, Sefton. Might be a nice detail for the book. The topography underlying the Essex landscape – the world beneath! Subterranean topography! The city as a kind of palimpsest: layer upon layer, trace upon trace, like a parchment that has been used and reused and which we must learn to interpret.’

  ‘No, Father,’ said Miriam. ‘No. No. Sorry. Not having it.’

  ‘Having what?’ said Morley.

  ‘Your whole city-as-palimpsest and sub-topography thing.’ She spoke with a crisp, bone-dry calm, which was a sure sign of her having entirely lost her patience, and which was indeed far more threatening than her usual weapons of conversation, which included the crushing aside, the dismissal with contempt, and the flick and slash of sarcasm. ‘First,’ she pronounced slowly and carefully, ‘Colchester is not a city. Clearly. And second, I think you’ll find these are roadworks rather than archaeological excavations.’ I always thought she’d have made a wonderful Myrna Loy.

  There were indeed chalked and painted signs here and there which explained the digging going on all around us – and which was indeed, as Miriam suggested, for the purposes of gas main laying, sewage pipe repairs and electric cable laying, rather than as Morley seemed to think, for digging up Roman ruins. But Morley of course was capable of romanticising even the humble modern hole and so immediately rephrased his remark: the civic triumphs of modernity were no less subject to his approbation and enthusiasm than the imperial triumphs of the past.

  ‘Well,’ he said, without a moment’s hesitation, ‘in that case: Colchester! Town of the future! Take a note, Sefton. Ruins as the foundations of the future!’

  We enquired about the roadworks from various workmen along the way, who were more than happy to lay down their picks and shovels to admire the Cadillac, and its driver, and to explain to us what they were up to – until they were forced back to work by their foremen, of course. From what we could gather from these snatched snippets of information, Colchester was going through one of those periods of painful and often pointless spasm that will be familiar to anyone who has ever lived in any English
town before or after the war. It was being ‘developed’.

  Morley was in principle rather sceptical of ‘development’, just as he was in principle rather sceptical of ‘progress’ and ‘modernisation’, but in practice he was absolutely fascinated by all things new, from Becontree to the most up-to-date novelty and gadget, and in particular anything involving electrification – he had a Magnetophon, for example, imported from Germany, which took pride of place in the dining room back at St George’s – and he now insisted on leaping out of the car at every opportunity to ask about the various electrical and plumbing works being undertaken by the working men of Colchester. As a consequence the journey took some time longer than the some time longer it was already going to take.

  ‘If it’s good enough for the Soviets it’s good enough for us,’ he announced to a set of bemused workmen who were trying to do something tricky with a ladder and a lamppost by the side of the road. He then proceeded to explain to them Lenin’s vision of communism – ‘Soviet power plus electrification’ – which required the building of massive dams and hydroelectric plants across the whole of Russia and beyond. (For a more extensive summary of this impromptu roadside lecturette, see his essay, ‘The Great Electrificator’ in Morley’s Mighty Bear: A Children’s History of Russia, 1930.) In the time-honoured polite English tradition of dealing with madmen and eccentrics, the men listened, smiled, nodded and then completely ignored Morley and got on with their work, fitting whatever complicated new lamp it was that was required to develop Colchester. I hauled Morley back into the car, again. And again.

  When we arrived at the George Hotel, there was a telegram waiting for Morley, from an old friend of his, living in Colchester, and inviting us to dinner that evening.

  ‘Wonderful!’ said Morley.

  ‘No,’ said Miriam, ‘not wonderful,’ and proceeded to announce that she had had quite enough of Essex and of Essex people in general, and of Colchester and Colchester people in particular and that she was going to go and pack ready for our departure, which in her opinion could not be soon enough.

  ‘Gentlemen, as far as I’m concerned you two can enjoy barking up as many trees and dining with as many of Father’s old friends as you like. I, meanwhile, I am going to do the sensible thing and rest and relax here until it’s time to leave. Let me know, Father, when you’ve solved the so-called “mystery” of the death of Arthur Marden and then perhaps we can be on our way?’

  ‘Jolly good!’ said Morley, as relentlessly positive as ever. ‘Sounds like a plan!’ He then briefed me on what the plan might actually be: to combine work on The County Guides: Essex with ‘a few discreet enquiries’. (Among Morley’s papers there is an unfinished manuscript entitled ‘A Few Discreet Enquiries’, which appears to be notes towards some kind of account of our various adventures in the English counties, his memoir of our time together. Like so many of his projects it was begun but never finished.)

  ‘Do we really have time for discreet enquiries this afternoon, Mr Morley?’ I asked as we left the hotel, armed with fresh notebooks and my camera. ‘Might they not perhaps wait until tomorrow? Are there not some articles you need to begin or finish or … something? Do we really have enough time to—’

  In reply, Morley shook both wrists at me, displaying his two watches – the luminous and the non-luminous.

  ‘Never enough time, Sefton,’ he said. ‘Never enough time. Come on!’

  The plan was to take a walking tour of the town, beginning with the Town Hall and taking in Jumbo, the water tower, and some of the old Roman ruins, but on our arrival at the Town Hall, just before five, we were immediately waylaid. To Morley’s delight, and to my considerable consternation, we discovered that there was to be a meeting of the town council and all its committees – all sixteen of them, according to the meeting agenda, including the Watch Committee, the Finance Committee, the Housing Committee, the Highways Committee, the Town Development Committee, the Members’ Allowances Committee, and committees on committees on committees. The public were more than welcome to attend, though I could think of no good reason why they would want to. With the sleek and well-nourished councillors arriving to go about their relentless council business, and despite my protestations, Morley insisted that we too should attend, in the hope that this might be a good place to start with our discreet enquiries and also in the process that we could witness and write about – in his words – ‘the magnificent and majestic workings of English local democracy, renowned throughout the world from the time of Gladstone’. As it turned out, the meeting was neither majestic nor magnificent. What Gladstone might have made of it I can only imagine.

  Despite being continually shushed by other members of the public in the public gallery, and by the journalists who were taking notes, and indeed by the councillors themselves, Morley did his best to brief me on the complex procedures and pageantry of what I was witnessing, explaining the role of the Clerk to the Council, the councillors, the aldermen, the Lord Lieutenant and the High Sheriff. ‘Sort of a minor mayor, Sefton, the High Sheriff, minus the fancy trimmings. The traditional role is to attend executions, I believe, and to hob-nob with grandees.’ This last comment earned him a hard stare from the oafish-looking High Sheriff and a reprimand from the extremely unhappy Clerk to the Council.

  The first matter on the agenda was of course the death of the mayor and the announcement of procedures for the appointment of his successor. Morley’s sotto voce comments on this subject – ‘Ah, yes, the glamour of the English mayoralty, the lustre never dims, Sefton! Usually attracts entirely the wrong sort, of course’ – drew many disapproving glances from every corner of the room and I feared we were on the verge of being ejected from the chamber before the meeting proper had even begun, had it not been for the fact that someone else was ejected before us.

  The councillors were busy taking turns to stand and solemnly express their sympathies and condolences. ‘This’ll take a while,’ said Morley – and it did.

  After a quarter of an hour or more of condolences the man sitting next to me leaned across and nodded towards the next councillor preparing himself to stand and speak. ‘You and your friend’ll enjoy this!’ he whispered to me. I very much doubted it.

  ‘Councillor Basil Dunbar,’ announced the Clerk to the Council, with barely concealed contempt, and Councillor Dunbar raised himself stiffly from his seat.

  ‘Independent by name and independent by nature,’ whispered the man sitting next to me, presumably meaning Mr Dunbar, who indeed proved to be extremely independent by nature.

  Mr Dunbar, we learned later, was universally referred to as the ‘anti-council councillor’, though it might be more accurate to describe him as the anti-everything councillor. Wearing an ill-fitting houndstooth jacket that was at least a size too large and a bright purple poorly knotted tie that matched his purple and poorly knotted features, he began with the necessary few words of condolence before launching into the most extraordinary denunciations and condemnations. He was warned several times by the Clerk to the Council to mind his language and to respect the chair, but he did neither and indeed continued making all sorts of wild accusations, his little fists balled in anger as he spoke. According to the man sitting next to me, who was a regular at the council meetings – ‘Much better than what’s on in the variety halls, and it’s free’ – hardly a meeting of Colchester’s town council had gone by in living memory when Dunbar hadn’t been led out, carried out, escorted out or ordered out of the chamber. On one or two occasions he had even tried to sue the council officers for wrongful ejection.

  On this particular occasion Mr Dunbar took the opportunity to denounce both Arthur Marden personally and council policies generally. According to Dunbar, a handful of local worthies, including Marden, had been busy for years dividing up Colchester for their own advantage like a personal fiefdom, installing gas and electric cables that no one wanted and that no one would use. He also complained that the council plans to dredge the river would disproportionately affec
t the oyster layings of the West Mersea independent oystermen compared to the layings of the mighty Colne Fishery Company, who were in cahoots with the councillors. There was a lot of other stuff too, but the gist was in his conclusion: ‘Colchester,’ he pronounced, ‘is a rotten borough run by rotten people.’

  When the Clerk to the Council asked Mr Dunbar to withdraw his comments about the council in general and Arthur Marden in particular, Mr Dunbar refused.

  ‘As you know, I am not saying anything now that I would not say and did not say to the mayor when he was alive,’ he said. ‘The man was a—’

  But before he could carry on he was roughly seized by two of the Town Hall beadles and ejected from the council chamber.

  ‘Told you,’ said the man sitting next to me. ‘Excellent entertainment, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes,’ I agreed. It was certainly something.

  I turned to Morley.

  ‘What do you think, Mr Morley? A couple of ha’pennies short of a shilling?’

  ‘On the contrary, Sefton. On the contrary. I think we may have found the very person with whom to begin our discreet enquiries, have we not?’

  CHAPTER 19

  LOOSE SCREW

  IT WAS TOO LATE, however – and thank goodness – to proceed any further with our discreet enquiries that evening, since we were due to join Morley’s old friend, Edward Mountjoy, for supper. This was both a relief and a chore; meeting Morley’s old chums was one of the many dubious pleasures of my time working with him. Over the years we visited with, were visited by – and for my part was often absolutely bored stiff listening to – the great and the good of English society, and often of the Scots, the Welsh and the Irish also. Among the writers with whom we enjoyed sherry, seed cake, tea, coffee, bridge, brandy snaps and cigarettes, were John Galsworthy, Rebecca West, May Sinclair, Charles Scott Moncrieff, Somerset Maugham, Hugh Walpole, H.G. Wells, Compton Mackenzie, E.F. Benson, Rose Macaulay and Arnold Bennett. (And what was truly surprising was how closely these allegedly freethinking souls all seemed to conform quite happily and unselfconsciously to national stereotypes: the English were all terribly class-bound; the Irish predictably garrulous, and often drunk; the Scots dour and massively argumentative; and the Welsh of course anti-everything but wonderful singers. Maybe it was just because they were writers.)