‘My, my,’ said the baroness when Amiss reported the news. ‘Serious money, indeed: I’d better mount a charm offensive. What are you doing for dinner after this?’
‘Going out with Papworth.’
‘Can I come?’
‘No. It’s an annual event sacrosanct to editorial and Monday meeting attendees.’
‘Monday, then. Seven o’clock, Lords lobby and we’ll go on somewhere.’ Without waiting to hear his answer, she took off and cut a merciless swathe through the crowd, pushing human obstacles to left and right. Interrupting the conversation without a by-your-leave she whispered in Sharon McGregor’s ear and was rewarded with a large beam and a slap on the back. Without a backward glance, they headed towards the fire escape, leaving the elderly sage gazing after them pop-eyed and incredulous.
As befitted a host, Amiss hastened to his side and introduced himself. ‘Lovely to meet you,’ said the sage as his eyes swivelled to peer over Amiss’s shoulder. Within five seconds, with a, ‘Must be off, I’m afraid,’ he had walked away to talk to someone more important.
Chapter Eleven
As Clement Webber came to the end of an ill-tempered diatribe about cushy prisons, Amiss cut in.
‘Where’s Henry?’
‘I’ve no idea,’ said Lambie Crump.
‘Nor have I,’ said Amiss. Dwight Winterton and Wilfred Parry shook their heads, Amaryllis Vercoe and Clement Webber looked blank, Bill and Marcia continued their private argument and Phoebe Somerfield studied the menu.
‘We can’t start without Henry, can we?’ asked Papworth. ‘I don’t think he’s missed one of these dinners in thirty years.’
‘Might he not have gone home?’ suggested a bored Parry.
‘Henry gone home, when there is conviviality at hand?’ interjected Winterton. ‘Impossible.’
‘Could he have forgotten where we were going?’ asked Amiss.
‘Hardly,’ said Papworth. ‘We’ve been here every year for the past five years.’
‘It’s just that he can be a little forgetful when he’s been drinking,’ said Amiss hesitantly.
‘Not that forgetful,’ said Lambie Crump sourly. ‘He always knows where the next drink is to be found. He has probably taken a better offer.’
‘I suppose,’ offered Amiss, ‘it’s just conceivable that he might have nodded off in Percy Square.’
‘Passed out, you mean?’ said Lambie Crump. ‘Better leave him.’
Amiss rose. ‘I’ll ring his office just in case.’ He was back in three minutes to report an unanswered telephone.
Lambie Crump shrugged.
‘We’d better start without him,’ said Papworth.
‘Do,’ said Amiss. ‘But just to relieve my mind I’ll pop back to the office. It’ll only take ten minutes. It’d be a shame for Henry to miss this because he’d fallen asleep.’
‘He’ll be a bore,’ said Lambie Crump.
‘Never mind that,’ said Papworth. ‘Thanks, Robert.’
***
The extent of the mess in the dining room momentarily took Amiss aback, but then he remembered that part of his cost-cutting deal with Lady Amanda had been that her staff would be removed at nine o’clock to help with another function so the clearing-up would be left until early morning.
Seeing no Potbury, he ran downstairs to check his office. Just in case Potbury had been too drunk to find it, Amiss looked into all the other rooms. As he closed Ricketts’s door he remembered their first encounter and headed back upstairs to the playroom. There was Potbury, slumped amid a sea of glasses, with his head in a silver punch bowl.
Frantically, Amiss pulled his head out of the liquid, laid him on the floor on his face and thumped him on the back. Some liquid came up, but Potbury stayed supine and made no sound. When eventually Amiss rolled him over on his front he was left in no doubt that Henry Potbury had died as he had lived—drowned in alcohol. His face was bloated and purple and his eyes were staring.
Having tried and failed to feel Potbury’s pulse, Amiss realized there was nothing left to do except ring for an ambulance, the police and Lord Papworth.
***
The press loved Henry Potbury’s death. Never tiring of writing about their own kind, journalists were thrilled to have the excuse of sudden death to promote Potbury beyond the confines of the obituary page and on to the front pages. Even the tabloids splashed it, for it was on a poor day for news and since the death of Princess Diana their staple fodder was no longer available to fill empty spaces. Their coverage was unkind: Potbury was self-evidently a nob writing for a nob’s journal, so they went as close as they dared to making his death sound funny, with various puns about Potbury, pot and potty.
It was another twenty-four hours before the broadsheets could really go to town on Potbury as a great columnist of his time and produce acres of reminiscences from every old and middle-aged British columnist about wonderful days in El Vino’s and memorable toots abroad. It was quite clear that the press in general—perhaps with the exception of Potbury’s friends—were hoping that he had been murdered or at the very least had committed suicide so that the story could run and run.
The autopsy was inconclusive. And after a few cursory enquiries, the police inspector in charge rang Amiss to tell him that foul play was not suspected.
***
‘It’s definite, Willie. They’re treating it as an accident. Apparently he was drunk enough to have slid in there and simply drowned.’
Lambie Crump passed his hand over his forehead in one of his more affected fin-de-siècle gestures. ‘What a relief! What a huge relief! It would really have been intolerable to have those…those…buffoons trampling all over the psyche of The Wrangler. Now perhaps we can return to some semblance of normality. It is a major achievement that the journal came out this week: the strain has been so intense.’
Amiss forebore to mention that there was precious little thanks due to Lambie Crump himself that the journal had appeared at all: most credit was due to Dwight Winterton and Phoebe Somerfield. Lambie Crump’s only contribution had been an admittedly elegant but ultimately shallow appreciation of Henry.
***
Winterton, however, was disappointed. ‘How dreary,’ he drawled. ‘A murder investigation would have been rather fun, don’t you think? It would really have put the wind up New Willie and there’s nowhere I’d prefer the wind than up Willie. Besides, they seem to have been rather indolent in deciding so quickly on an accident. What do you think?’
‘I don’t know, Dwight. There was no obvious motive—none of the normal ones anyway. Nobody wanted his job, he’d almost no money, and presumably sex wasn’t an angle.’
‘I don’t know about that, Robert. I quite want his job as Willie’s deputy. Though of course I won’t get it, so there wouldn’t have been a lot of point in knocking off Henry.’
‘Still, you’ll have a higher profile.’
‘True. But I would need a little more reason to kill someone I rather liked. Have you thought about sexual jealousy as a motive?’
‘Sexual jealousy?’
‘Yes. There’s the matter of Henry and Marcia to be considered.’
‘Henry and Marcia?’
‘Robert, are you going to stop repeating everything I say. Yes. Henry and Marcia.’
‘They were having an affair?’
‘Indeed they were. I caught them in a clinch in his room. He was a bit embarrassed and asked me to keep my mouth shut. Which I did until now.’
Amiss shook his head. ‘I shouldn’t have thought Henry could do the necessary. However, there’s no doubt that sex is a department that is always full of surprises. The most unlikely people are at it, at the most unlikely ages, in the most unlikely condition…’
‘And in the most unlikely manner.’
‘T
rue. Yet Henry and Marcia as an item is a trifle hard to come to terms with.’
***
The truth of Winterton’s story was confirmed by the surprisingly youthful and good-looking Mrs Henry Potbury. Over a drink with Amiss, who had come to talk about practicalities, she burst into outraged denunciation of her husband and his infidelities—particularly with those she persisted in calling his ‘Wrangler totties’. ‘Henry was an unspeakable old lush,’ she said. ‘But at least he was my old lush. I could tolerate his drunkenness. I could tolerate him coming home frequently in an absolute stupor, falling into bed and snoring all night. I could stand the fact that he made a public exhibition of himself on many occasions and I had to drag him out of parties and make him ring up the next day to grovel.’
She laughed ruefully. ‘Sometimes he involved me in scenes that would make most wives unable to show their faces in public for months, but I had got to a stage when I was beyond embarrassment. What I found very hard to bear was the combination of drunkenness and rampant philandering. It’s one thing to be a philanderer if you know how to cover it up. One of my tenets is that the least a philanderer owes his wife is discretion, but clever as Henry was, he was no exception to the rule that drunkenness and discretion do not go together, so I had no option but to know about several of his inamoratas, and that I resented. Which is why I’m keeping the funeral private and am not contemplating a memorial service for a few months: I might get angry if I saw any of them.’
‘I understand.’
‘The hardest—or to be precise—the second hardest to bear was Marcia. Not that I have anything against her personally, but she should have had more sense. Thou shouldst not philander with a colleague, especially when you know his wife, more especially when you know he’s a drunk and above all when you know that he makes a habit of this sort of thing. What’s more, it is particularly stupid when someone as jealous as Ben is liable to find out.’
‘Ben?’
‘Surely you know about Marcia and Ben?’
‘What?’
‘They’ve been living together for about thirty years, and when it comes to jealousy, from what I’ve heard, Ben makes Othello look like a proponent of open marriage.’
‘I don’t know why I didn’t know that, but I didn’t.’ Amiss rubbed his eyes. ‘Next thing you’ll be telling me that Lambie Crump and Josiah Ricketts are lovers.’
‘No. But Henry and Amaryllis were.’
This caused Amiss to sit bolt upright. ‘That’s too much. You’re having me on.’
‘That’s no way to talk to a widow,’ said Amelia Potbury—to Amiss’s relief breaking into laughter. ‘I assure you when you’re married to somebody like Henry you don’t need to make up stories.’
‘But Amaryllis!’
‘Meaning she’s young and beautiful, and bright and well born and all the rest of that sickening mixture. So she is. Clearly you hadn’t realized that Henry was actually very attractive to women. Don’t ask me why. I never found a rational explanation for it, even though I was myself one of his victims.’
‘I’ll take your word for it,’ said Amiss. He struggled to repress a feeling of deep resentment at his friend Henry. Having admired Amaryllis from afar, Amiss had never thought that he himself would have had a chance with her, even had he been in the market. It did not make it any easier that Henry had scored.
‘You don’t think, do you, Amelia, that Ben might have done anything violent?’
‘To Henry, you mean? Oh, if he’d found out about Marcia, yes, quite possibly. Though I’d expect him to beat Henry up in those circumstances. I can’t see Ben doing anything sneaky. But then it’s always possible that he was presented with an irresistible target when he saw Henry plastered beside a full punch bowl.’
She looked at him seriously over her big glasses.
‘I wouldn’t want it pursued, Robert. If Henry got rubbed out for being a philanderer, frankly he had it coming. Much as I loved the old goat, I wouldn’t want revenge.’
‘Umm,’ said Amiss.
Chapter Twelve
Despite Amelia’s relaxed view of murder, Amiss arranged to meet his friend Detective Chief Superintendent Jim Milton the following evening. The first hour was spent on catching up on news, for Milton was just back from America, where he had spent three months unpaid leave visiting his wife, and he knew nothing of The Wrangler, beyond having heard of Henry Potbury’s mishap.
‘I think he might have been murdered, Jim.’
‘My colleagues don’t.’
‘Yes, but they show little sign of having thought much about it. Seem to want to get Henry out of the in-tray and into the out-tray.’
‘We’re all bureaucrats now. However, if you think differently, I’ll pay attention. Not that I’ve any chance of persuading them to reconsider unless you’ve got a very strong argument.’
‘I haven’t really. I’m just uneasy. And I liked Henry so much I feel I owe it to him to make sure his death is taken seriously.’
‘Tell me about him.’
‘Brilliant journalist, who was less and less productive because of the booze. He’d been associated with The Wrangler from his time at Oxford in the nineteen fifties when he wrote such witty and penetrating stuff in student magazines that the then editor invited him to write a series of “Letters from an Undergraduate”. He was an immediate success and when he came down he was offered a job straightaway. Although he was tempted away a couple of times to highly paid jobs elsewhere, he always kept relations friendly and would do the odd think-piece or book review. Really, The Wrangler was where his heart was.’
‘So when he got fed up with elsewhere, he’d let himself be persuaded to come back?’
‘Persuaded and bribed. But he was worth it. Until the last few years, apparently, you could rely on him every week for, say, one of the anonymous leaders, a signed article and maybe an important book review. And he was utterly brilliant at the Monday meetings.’
‘The what?’
‘The meeting of editorial staff and some outside contributors every Monday to discuss the line to be taken on the week. He was the intellectual driving force, full of ideas and with a brilliant way of twisting the news to provide a focus for an onslaught on ill-considered reform.’
‘Why wasn’t he made editor?’
‘The proprietor wanted him, but the trustees wanted Willie Lambie Crump and overruled him. Lord Papworth then made Henry the staff trustee as a kind of consolation prize. But disappointment contributed towards Henry taking to the bottle and he started to go slowly downhill.’
‘Why wasn’t he fired?’
‘Lifetime contract. Couldn’t be fired until he was sixty at the earliest.’
‘Sounds as though Papworth had a good motive for killing him. Or you, come to think of it, if it’s cost-cutting you’re at.’
‘I loved Henry,’ said Amiss. ‘He was the person I most enjoyed at The Wrangler. We had some great bibulous lunches and even more bibulous dinners: he was riotous company until he fell asleep. Great iconoclast and a magical anecdotalist, awash with wonderful mad stories of the wild days of Fleet Street before it was destroyed by the move of newspapers to Docklands and what he denounced as the long march towards the puritan dawn.
‘I don’t believe that anywhere throughout the present newspaper world nowadays there’s a room into which you could go at four o’clock in the afternoon and sit down and drink and talk ideas.’
‘So who do you think might have killed him?’
‘In his professional life, I can only think that it could have been to do with his performance as a trustee. First, he bitterly opposed Lambie Crump’s recent lurch towards New Labour and away from the journal’s core belief in the evolution of institutions. And second, he would have virulently opposed any attempt to change the terms of the trust in such a way as to make the journ
al vulnerable to the whims of a proprietor.’
‘So you think the editor or the proprietor had a vested interest in getting rid of him?’
‘Lambie Crump, yes. Though I doubt if he’d have the balls. Charlie Papworth, no. It was his son who wanted the trust altered. Not him.’
‘Not very strong reasons for suspecting murder, then.’
‘I grant you that. I’m just not happy. And I wish the police had given the idea more house-room.’
‘I’ll talk to someone.’
‘Thanks, Jim. Now tell me about America.’
‘Interesting. And it provided the opportunity for Ann and me at last to make our decision.’
Amiss waited.
‘We’re going to get a divorce.’
‘Oh, Jim. I’m very sorry. I like Ann so much.’
‘So do I. And she seems to like me too. But it’s no use.’
‘Was it just geography in the end?’
‘More than that. I couldn’t do what she wanted. I don’t just mean that she wanted me to move to America. That was really an excuse. What she really wanted was for me to give up a career that she had come to despise. And to show I had the balls to make a go of a new line of work in a totally new environment.’
‘And don’t you?’
‘I don’t want to. Maybe I’m opting for safety. Or maybe the truth is simply that with all my grumblings and resentments about the way the Met has gone I’m doing something I think I do well and don’t want to leave the field clear for the bastards. So I won’t and I don’t and I think it’s unreasonable of Ann to force me to choose between her and my profession and my country.
‘America and I wouldn’t suit. Ann loves it because it throbs with energy and it’s given her a completely new career. I’m too English in my bones to adapt, as well as being too much of a policeman to walk away. We were happy together for a long time and we’re both grateful for that but the time apart revealed the differences we never faced. Ann is idealistic and emotional: I suppose I’m pragmatic and skeptical.’
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