Herring in the Smoke

by L. C. Tyler

  ‘We know it was Roy Johnston, if that helps at all,’ said Ethelred.

  ‘Thank you. It does,’ said Cynthia. ‘Though it took me a while to work it out who it was. At first all I could have said was that there was something wrong about him. He was brusque and unpleasant, but Uncle Roger was like that much of the time. He could be charming when he wanted to be, but usually he couldn’t be bothered. Roy was somehow … less nuanced? The more I got to study Roy’s performance, the more it was like somebody acting the part – the same phrases and gestures kept coming up, a bit like the villain in a melodrama having to twirl his moustache from time to time, so that people would understand he was still evil. And he got things wrong – Cousin Wilbert, for example. I knew there was no such person. And not knowing what sex his dog had been.’

  Ethelred nodded sagely, though I seemed to remember that he had been the leading exponent of the school of thought that accepted the fake Vane as the real deal.

  ‘I tried to convince you,’ said Cynthia, ‘but I could see you all drifting slowly and helplessly to the dark side – you were starting to believe that Uncle Roger really had come back. So, I went to see Mr Ogilvie. As Uncle Roger’s schoolfriend and lawyer he’d known him for as long as anyone alive, pretty much, and kept in touch with him right up to the moment he disappeared. He was my last hope of finding another sane person.’

  ‘And Ogilvie agreed with you?’ I asked.

  ‘No, he agreed with you lot. He had had doubts but on balance he was going to tell people that he thought the man was Uncle Roger and that he should be given access to his cash. But he also told me one other thing …’

  ‘Which was?’ asked Ethelred.

  ‘That Uncle Roger had asked him to change his will just before going to Thailand. The money and the flat were going to Tim. I was to get nothing at all. It seemed a bit rich that Tim, whom he’d clearly split up with, got the lot, while I, who was still very much his niece albeit adopted, got zilch. If I proved the man was a phoney, it just handed the cash to Tim. So I hatched a plan to rectify things.’

  ‘Thanks a bunch,’ said Tim.

  ‘Always pleased to help,’ said Cynthia.

  ‘I’d have done as much for you,’ said Tim.

  ‘How sweet,’ said Cynthia. ‘Anyway, I went to my so-called “uncle” and told him I was onto his game. He’d clearly researched things quite well on the Internet – he’d checked me out on Facebook, for example, so he knew what I looked like and what I did. But he’d already made several mistakes, as I’ve said. So far, I told him, I was the only one who’d picked them up, but his luck couldn’t possibly hold. There was a plan afoot to test him on his knowledge of Roger Norton Vane and he was going to fail it miserably. Gamma minus. Unless …’ She looked round the room meaningfully.

  ‘And he accepted your kind offer of cooperation?’ I asked.

  ‘“Cooperation”’s such a nasty word, isn’t it? I prefer to think of it as blackmail. But I did indeed suggest that I fed him the information he needed in exchange for fifty per cent of the net takings. I also by chance had Uncle Roger’s old driving licence, which he’d accidentally left behind on a visit to my parents shortly before he vanished – the old paper sort, no photo. Johnston – and he freely confessed that was who he was – could see that would be useful too, especially in proving his identity at the bank and elsewhere, where an item of ID is either on their list or it isn’t. The driving licence probably swung it, actually. It was a bit like being slipped the ace of spades in a slightly bent bridge tournament. We haggled, of course. He ended up with the Canonbury Square flat plus fifty per cent of the cash and as much of the outstanding royalties as he could call in. He pointed out he was taking most of the risk, if the fraud ever came to light, and was moreover having to be Roger Norton Vane full-time – not the most pleasant of experiences. I conversely had merely to act as a consultant. So, a million in my hand, payable as soon as he had access to the account, wasn’t bad. We shook hands on it and opened a bottle of Sainsbury’s own-brand Prosecco. Happy days.’

  ‘And that’s why he knew exactly what had happened in Thailand?’

  ‘You’ve got it. I told him what Tim told us. We added a few interesting details of our own – Roy had actually once stumbled across an illicit distillery in the Thai jungle and did speak a bit of Lao, having gone there on holiday a couple of times. I made up a nickname for myself.’

  ‘So you didn’t really call yourself Pobble?’ I asked.

  ‘As if! I had some self-respect, even as a three-year-old. The hideous shoulder scar was entirely his idea, though. I said whatever damage Tim had inflicted would have healed by now, but he said that, as an actor, he was an old hand at prosthetic wounds and could make it look really convincing. Whoever saw it would be putty in his hands, if they didn’t pass out first. Well, he was paying me a million, so I thought I wouldn’t spoil his fun. In my defence I have to point out that all the good ideas were mine and all the crap ones were his – including taking a shortcut down the alleyway. I think somehow it was all a bit of a game to him.’

  ‘Men!’ I said sympathetically. ‘They never grow up, do they?’

  She nodded. ‘Temperamentally he wasn’t as well suited to deceit as I was. The male sex just lacks the nerve for it. No sooner had we got access to the bank account, than he started to worry that he couldn’t keep up the deception much longer. I think he’d originally planned to be Uncle Roger indefinitely, but his agent kept asking when he’d deliver another book and festival organisers were inviting him to speak on The Golden Age of Crime Fiction, or whatever. Every newspaper or blog interview, if the interviewer had any knowledge of the genre, was fraught with the terrible risk that he’d say something inexplicably stupid. Then Oaklawn Studios wanted him to do some PR for them – Roy said there was a mad woman there who’d recognise him straight away – he couldn’t possibly have anything to do with them. I said it would look suspicious if he didn’t. To cut a long story short, he sort of freaked. He asked his agent to call in everything he could, with the intention of grabbing what was available, disappearing again and resuming life as Roy Johnston – much the same as before only richer and on a beach in the West Indies.’

  ‘What stopped him?’ asked Ethelred.

  ‘Well, forgive me for stating the obvious, but what stopped him was being murdered in an alleyway in Chichester. He’d been jumpy for some days. Then somebody jostled him at Oxford Circus Station – the Central Line, I think – just as a train was coming in. He didn’t think much of it. Until he received the phone call.’

  ‘Phone call?’ said Ethelred, on cue. They were developing into a bit of a double act, but not one you’d want to book for the O2 Arena.

  ‘Yes, the phone call,’ said Cynthia. ‘A man called Slide phoned him.’

  ‘Jonathan Slide,’ said her straight man.

  ‘That’s right. Doctor Jonathan Slide. Uncle Roger’s former driving instructor or something. It was a bit of a ramble, really. He said that, so long as it was uncertain that Uncle Roger was who he said he was, he’d held back. But now he – Slide – knew for certain he intended to give him – Uncle Roger, as he imagined – a piece of his mind. He said Uncle Roger had always been an unpleasant child and had grown into an unpleasant adult. Slide said Uncle Roger had wrecked his career as a driving instructor and he’d had to go and teach Latin at Cordwainers School. Something like that. Slide, taking his argument to its logical conclusion, stated that Uncle Roger therefore deserved to die. Johnston, though he was aware he was not actually Uncle Roger in real life, was quite worried about this and asked Slide whether the incident at Oxford Circus was in any way pertinent to their discussion. Slide said it most certainly was. He had, he implied, agents all over London and next time they’d do the job properly. He laughed in an evil manner and hung up.

  ‘I tried to reassure Roy that Slide was just senile and vindictive, that the army of assassins was a figment of his imagination and that an evil laugh usually proved nothing one way o
r the other. Roy said that I hadn’t heard the laugh. He wasn’t planning to take any chances. He’d already got most of Uncle Roger’s money together and, frankly, if there was another few thousand out there, it could go to Oxfam. It was time to cut and run. I pointed out that he had nowhere to go but he said that there was an idiot living down in Sussex who could be bullied into taking him for as long as he wished.’

  ‘You knew who he meant at once?’ I asked.

  ‘Of course. But when he phoned Ethelred, he was told to get lost – well done for that, by the way, Ethelred – respect. Still, it did leave Roy in a bit of a mess. He thought Slide’s friends were on his heels and that he’d better get down to Sussex ASAP. So, he packed a suitcase and took a train. But first he phoned his lawyer and one or two other people to tidy things up. He mentioned in passing he’d be in Sussex. Bad move if he really wanted it to stay a secret for long. He was so worked up, I felt sure he’d blow the whole thing, the police would become involved in a high-profile fraud case and the small matter of my acquiring a million by extortion might come up in court. So, I said I’d follow him down after work and we could meet up and talk it through properly.’

  ‘Which you did,’ said Ethelred.

  ‘Which I did. I needed to get him onto a plane and back to Australia or wherever he wanted to go. I met him at the hotel. In my absence Slide had phoned him again. It turned out Slide had been in Sussex all the time – and only a few miles from Chichester. Slide had proposed they should have a drink or two and talk it through, man to man. I said there was no need at all to go. Roy said it was better to find out exactly what Slide knew – it might be that we’d need to pay him a few thousand to keep quiet. He sounded bribable. I offered to go with him, but he reckoned that that would wreck everything – Slide would be more cautious and would also know we were in it together. This last point convinced me. I had no wish for anyone to know that. We agreed he should go alone, see Slide, say as little as possible and report back. But he never returned. I didn’t want to call him in case he was still in the middle of the meeting with Slide. Then I didn’t want to call him because, if he had been killed by Slide, the police would be checking his mobile phone records and the less my name came up, from a fraud point of view, the better. Sometime after midnight I went looking for him. I found blue police tape sealing off East Street. I asked a couple of questions. I never doubted that it was Roy who’d been killed. I never doubted that Slide had killed him …’

  Ethelred looked at his watch. ‘Unless you phone people quickly, Elsie, they’ll all be here in ten minutes,’ he said.

  ‘Plenty of time,’ I said.

  There was a knock at the door. Tuesday’s head appeared round it.

  ‘There’s a Mrs Vane outside. She said she came as soon as she could. She had to see the builder about the roof.’

  ‘You invited my mother?’ asked Cynthia.

  ‘Only as the person nobody suspected,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, good – she’ll like being that,’ said Cynthia.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  Elsie

  ‘Anyway,’ said Margery Vane, ‘in the end I just got the two quotes and went for Mr Hepplewhite, partly because he had done the thatch on the Old Rectory, and partly because I liked the name. I suppose I’ll have to tell him I can’t afford it now – not if the blackmail money has to be paid back, as I assume it will. What a shame. But you now say you didn’t really need me to come? I was of course very close to Chichester that evening, but only because I always am. I didn’t kill anyone. Obviously I knew who had been killed because Cynthia explained it all to me. But sadly I was never a suspect – too old, I suppose. The police called round, though mainly to ask if I knew where Cynthia was – she’s much younger. Cynthia was up in her room, but they could scarcely expect me to tell them that. It was rather fun concealing her – a bit like the games of hide-and-seek we used to play, but for slightly higher stakes. Anyway, I suppose she’ll be able to go back to her flat now – or prison, depending on what we’re all charged with.’

  ‘Well, there’s certainly no reason for charging you with murder, Mummy,’ said Cynthia. ‘You had nothing to do with it.’

  ‘Might I remind you I was in on the blackmail from day one? I was the one who suggested that we should settle for a million if we could get it.’

  ‘I wasn’t planning to tell anyone that.’

  ‘That’s very sweet of you, but I’d hardly expect my own daughter to take the rap alone. Anyway, we’re amongst friends here, aren’t we?’

  ‘Probably,’ said Cynthia. ‘But more to the point, you had no motive to kill anyone.’

  ‘I might have done,’ said Margery. ‘I always rather fancied him. We might have had an affair for all you know.’

  ‘You and Roy Johnston?’

  ‘No, me and Uncle Roger. I never met Roy Johnston. Roger was really dishy. Much more so than your father. I knew he was gay, but I thought it was worth suggesting it to him. So I did. Anyway, it was Boxing Day and your father was drunk—’

  ‘I’m quite happy if you stop there,’ said Cynthia.

  ‘I’d been meaning to tell you, but the right moment never really arose.’

  ‘It was fine not knowing,’ said Cynthia. ‘If there’s any more like that, it can wait.’

  Margery nodded sympathetically. ‘Yes, of course, darling.’

  ‘And it couldn’t have been a motive for killing Roy Johnston – whatever it was. I’m sorry, you’re not a proper suspect and that’s all there is to it.’

  There was another knock at the door.

  ‘There’s a very odd-looking gentleman outside,’ said Tuesday. ‘I’m not sure if that’s who you were expecting next.’

  ‘Stains on his trousers? Slightly disconcerting smell?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Excellent. A real suspect at last. You can show him in now,’ I said. ‘Oh, and another chair would be good.’

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  Elsie

  ‘What a lot of people!’ said Jonathan Slide. ‘This looks very jolly. When you invited me, I’d assumed it would just be the two of us, Miss Thirkettle. But good to meet you all the same.’

  ‘That’s Miss Thirkettle,’ said Cynthia, pointing in my direction. ‘I’m Roger’s niece, Cynthia.’

  ‘Is that right?’ he said, turning to me. ‘I was expecting somebody younger. And not so fat. Anyway, Miss Thirkettle, you said you knew my guilty secret, so I thought I’d better come along.’

  ‘To deny it?’ I asked.

  ‘No, to check which guilty secret you were talking about. You didn’t say.’

  ‘I mean the murder of Roy Johnston, posing as Roger Norton Vane.’

  ‘Oh, so it was him, then. I did wonder. You see, right from the start there was something not quite right about him. He looked like Vane, and he behaved like Vane, but there was – how can I put this without seeming like a snob? – a lack of class. However unpleasant a Cordwainers boy can be, and they can be very unpleasant indeed, there is always evidence of breeding in their unpleasantness. There is nothing accidental about it. An insult would be pitched perfectly to wound precisely as much as was intended. Never more than that. Never less. No wasted effort. A Cordwainers boy can be obnoxious with grace. It takes many generations to develop that sort of skill – you can’t teach it. And Johnston, frankly, didn’t have it at all. The real Vane didn’t have much of it, of course, but you could still tell the difference. Anyway, that’s what I thought. Fake. Then it was announced in the press that the man really was Roger Norton Vane. You could have knocked me over with a feather. But even Ogilvie, who is an Old Cordwainer himself, credited it. So, naturally, I phoned the man up straight away to tell him what a little shit he was.’

  ‘Naturally?’ said Ethelred.

  ‘Well, I suppose it could have waited a week or two. But I’d had twenty years to think about what I would say to Roger Norton Vane if I ever saw him again. I wasn’t doing much that morning, so I reasoned that now was
as good a time as any. I rather enjoyed it in the end. No, I’m glad I took the opportunity to do it when I could, especially as he’s dead now. Of course, I do realise that it was Roy Johnston that I was speaking to, so perhaps what I said was a little harsh, but if he insisted on impersonating Vane, then I don’t know what else he expected.’

  ‘Did you tell him you could have him killed?’ asked Ethelred.

  Slide thought for a moment. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I did. He told me some story about having been pushed on the underground and asked if that had been one of my people. It seemed more amusing to tell him that it had been, and I asked if he’d caught sight of who it was so that I could write and thank them – we’ve always valued manners at Cordwainers. Then I added for good measure that there were simply dozens of Old Cordwainers who had volunteered to murder him on my behalf. That last bit was almost true, incidentally – two or three had said they would. They might have had second thoughts when it actually came to it, I suppose. I’ve been let down so often like that – promises that have come to nothing. When Vane – sorry Johnston – finally hung up on me, I could tell he was shitting himself. Real brown trousers job. As I say, great fun at the time … But then later …’

  ‘You regretted showing your hand so early?’ I asked.

  ‘No, I just felt I’d been a little unkind. I remembered that I’d been quite fond of him once – Vane, not Johnston. I still thought it was Vane, you see. And I hadn’t really given him a chance to put his side of the case. I hadn’t taken into account the fact that the last twenty years had probably been a bit tough for him. He could be a changed character. I ruminated on that a lot during the afternoon. I didn’t feel guilty, exactly – just that I could have handled it better. So I went into town to a place I know and had a few drinks – maybe a few more than I should. A dozen or so gin and tonics. I phoned Vane – sorry Johnston, I keep forgetting – and said I’d like to meet up with him. I said I knew all about him and what he’d been doing and wanted to meet up and talk things through. At first he said nothing, then, when he worked out what I was trying to say, he agreed to meet me.’