***
The baroness grabbed Amiss’s hand. ‘Come on. Let’s clear out and make a run for El Vino’s. I couldn’t bear to talk to any of this mob after what I’ve just been through.’
They slid away from the congregation and walked briskly up Fleet Street. ‘We did a bloody good job there, didn’t we?’ she said. ‘Even if it was sickening. It was a stroke of luck that that little prat, Father Fogey, or whatever he calls himself, was able to do the honours. As pretentious as even Willie could have wished.’
‘It was splendid,’ said Amiss. ‘A real one hundred-carat pseud’s extravaganza. What did you think of Papworth’s encomium?’
‘Well, you’ve got to go a bit over the top at times like that. He produced a prime example of great English hypocrisy with all that bullshit about selfless devotion to a great intellectual tradition.’
‘At least he didn’t say anything about integrity. I’d have thrown up if he had.’
The baroness sniggered. ‘I saw at least six people in that church who were at a dinner with me last week where we traded stories of the awful posing and dishonesty of Willie Crump. Still, hypocrisy is the cement that glues us all together.’
She stopped and looked at Amiss. ‘Incidentally, don’t let this go to your head, but this week’s Wrangler is the best for months.’
‘Really? What was it that…?’ But they had arrived at El Vino’s and she had already disappeared inside.
‘Come on, come on.’ She pushed her way through the crowd, Amiss in her train. A triumphant hoot signalled the capturing of a table and two chairs. ‘Now, order a bottle of champagne and make it a decent one. We’ll drink a sympathetic glass to Crump because even he didn’t quite deserve to be murdered and then we’ll drink the rest to celebrate the interest that his passing has added to our lives.’
When they had completed the formalities and drunk their toasts, the baroness enquired about Jim Milton. ‘Sleuthing well, is he?’
‘He’s dug thoroughly around Willie’s private life in the hope that a demented lover would emerge from the woodwork. But it looks as if the assessment given him by Mrs Lambie Crump—to wit that Willie wasn’t interested in sex—may be the correct one. Our Willie wasn’t at it with anyone, it would seem, or if he was no one knew about it. And nor does there seem to be any family motive. The parents are dead and the brother a decent bloke.’
‘What about money in the case of the brother?’
‘You mean does he inherit any?’
‘Yep.’
‘He certainly didn’t expect to. Nor does he need it. He’s a successful chiropodist who owns his house and whose kids are independent. In fact, he seemed genuinely surprised when he discovered Willie had left him ten thousand quid.’
‘Who got the rest?’
Amiss grinned. ‘The Society for Distressed Gentlefolk.’
‘You’re kidding.’
‘I’m not kidding.’
The baroness raised her glass. ‘Here’s to Willie Crump. He even managed a fogey’s will. That’s what I call thorough. Nothing else interesting on the private life?’
‘No. Willie doesn’t seem to have had a private life in the sense of intimate friendships. He knew a lot of people, but they all seemed to be acquaintances. He was the sort of fellow one invited to dinner to make up the numbers, secure that he’d know which forks to use and would have a flow of entertaining gossip: he could be very amusing when he was being bitchy about other people. Or you’d invite him because he expended Papworth’s money on entertaining lavishly in his apartment or in smart restaurants: his expense account was huge. Otherwise his social life consisted mainly of attending pretty well every shindig to which he was invited on the literary and political front. One of nature’s spongers, was our Willie.’
The baroness had lost interest. ‘To business, my lad. You haven’t asked about Plutarch.’
‘Well, what is there to ask? No doubt you’d tell me if there was anything wrong with her.’
‘You’re very unfeeling. You haven’t seen that magnificent cat for months. Don’t you miss her?’
‘I don’t think “miss” is quite the word,’ said Amiss cautiously. ‘I notice she’s not with me, as it were.’
‘I take your point. I notice she’s with me.’
‘Is she all right, then?’
‘In the pink. But we are, perhaps, nearing the time when she should be returning to you.’
‘Christ, Jack, you don’t mean that, do you? Rachel would go mad.’
‘I didn’t offer to take her for life. Merely for convalescence after her nasty experience in Westonbury. And that was a long time ago. She’s been recovered for months. Some of my colleagues are becoming a little testy.’
Amiss felt a familiar sense of dread enveloping him. ‘She’s been behaving badly, hasn’t she?’
‘Nothing that would trouble me, you understand. But there have been, let us say, a few incidents. And the one that caused some distress to a royal personage got her into most people’s black books.’
‘What happened?’
‘She decided to assist in the laying of the foundation stone of the new wing by jumping on the back of the Duchess just as she was turning the sod.’
‘Oh dear.’
‘Oh dear is right. Her claws were unsheathed at the time.’
‘Oh God, oh God.’
‘Did nothing for the elegant yellow silk ensemble. It might have proved possible to cleanse the fabric of the blood, but I doubt if the rip could have been invisibly mended. I offered compensation as tactfully as I could, but got a pretty chilly response. I’m sorry to have to say that there were those among my colleagues who suggested that it was time that Plutarch was stiffed.’
‘In the heat of the moment, surely? They wouldn’t actually do it, would they?’
‘I’m not so sure. She’s all right while I’m there. And you know I would if necessary lay down my life—and knock off some of my colleagues, for that matter—for that splendid beast. But I have few allies on this one—especially since Mary Lou buggered off to the West Indies—and I’m beginning to fear that one or two of my rougher colleagues just might take the law into their own hands when I next go away for any length of time.’
Amiss gazed at her in horror. ‘You mean you’re going to send her back to me?’
‘Talk it over with Rachel. I’ll pass the word round at St Martha’s that I’m negotiating Plutarch’s release back into the community. That might hold them off for a short time.’
***
‘I couldn’t bear it,’ said Rachel. ‘I really couldn’t. I loathe that bloody cat. She’s fat, greedy, aggressive, destructive and dangerous. And ugly.’
‘Oh, come now, Rach. That’s not all quite fair. She’s much better than she used to be. She only causes trouble when she’s upset or excited.’
‘You forget that I was present when she assaulted that red-haired waitress at St Martha’s.’
‘It was an honest misunderstanding over the leftovers.’
‘I don’t care what her motivation was, Robert. The result was hysterics. Call me unreasonable, but I really don’t want to share my home with an enormous and savage creature who beats up acquaintances and strangers alike. And what’s more, it isn’t even as if you liked her.’
‘I do have moments of being fond of her. We’ve been through a lot together and she has guts. In any case, what choice have I if Jack can’t keep her any longer?’
‘I’m not hardhearted enough to suggest you put her down. But surely you can find an alternative?’
‘Rachel, if you won’t take her for my sake, why would anybody else?’
‘I don’t know, Robert. I don’t know. But you’d better try to find someone.’
Chapter Seventeen
Milton rang Amiss on Sun
day evening to report progress. ‘I’m keeping an open mind on Henry Potbury, but since it’s easier in his case to determine who had the opportunity to kill him, I’ve had that checked out assiduously.’
‘And…?’
‘No one admits to having seen him after eight-fifty, when he was noticed by two waitresses who were collecting their coats from the storeroom off the dining room. You know—the one with the photographs and portraits.’
‘The playroom.’
‘If you say so. Potbury had apparently tottered in there to take the weight off his feet.’
‘Was he conscious?’
‘They said he looked sleepy but hadn’t actually passed out, and yes, he was sitting in front of a full punch bowl. One of the waitresses suggested that they should take the bowl outside and give people one last round, but the other one reminded her that they had to be at their next venue within twenty minutes, so they let it be.’
‘How many people were still there around that time?’
‘Lord Papworth, and all those who were going to dinner with him: you, Lambie Crump, Amaryllis Vercoe, Clement Webber, Phoebe Somerfield, Dwight Winterton, Wilfred Parry and Ben and Marcia, as well as a handful of others, including Piers Papworth, Sharon McGregor and Jack Troutbeck. There was also a poet who was so drunk that he had to be helped out of the building by two others and a Cabinet minister who had arrived very late and was talking intently to a journalist. Nobody can be certain that there weren’t some more odds and ends around but a few of them are pretty sure the drink had dried up ten or fifteen minutes earlier and almost everyone had stampeded off to dinners or pubs.’
‘And how many of those have alibis for each other?’
‘Only the non-Wrangler people. Most people had had a few drinks, and in the nature of things at the end of parties there’s a lot of rushing round to say goodbye to different people, most people are not exclusively with any one other person and only teetotalers—and I don’t think there were any there—have much sense of time.
‘Piers Papworth thinks he was with Sharon McGregor at the crucial time but she’s not sure if he was there all the time until she left without him to go off to dinner with Jack Troutbeck. And neither of them is clear when or where they parted. Bill and Marcia are pretty sure they were together at that stage of the evening, but they probably would think or say that anyway, wouldn’t they?’
‘Maybe,’ said Amiss, ‘but remember their lives are devoted to getting things right, so they’re hardly natural liars.’
‘Lambie Crump apparently said he was with Lord Papworth all the time but Lord Papworth thinks it was only part of the time and so on and on. You and Amaryllis, in fact, seem to be the only pair that are definitely out of it, since several people observed you in an animated conversation in the corner, and several wondered if you were going to get off together.’
Amiss coloured slightly. ‘What a filthy-minded lot my colleagues are. If I remember correctly, we were talking about the government’s devolution plans. Enough of that. How easy would it have been to knock off poor Henry?’
‘Easyish, from what I can work out. I really wish I could do a reconstruction of all this, but you can’t do reconstructions at the end of parties where a lot of alcohol has been consumed—especially if you’re trying to do it several weeks later. It all comes down to whether a) somebody saw Potbury going into the store…sorry, playroom, and nobody admits to that, b) whether they were aware that the waitresses had all gone home and c) whether they had the opportunity to pop in and do the deed without anyone else observing them. But how could they have known he’d have placed himself obligingly in front of a punch bowl? More likely is that someone might have gone in to talk to Henry, or even just to look for more drink, and having seen his opportunity to kill him, took it. I have to say it all sounds very unlikely.’
‘But possible.’
‘Yes, certainly possible. You were all apparently by then crowded together around the corner from the main part of the room, so anybody leaving the group would have been thought to be going home, going to the loo or going in search of a drink. But in fact no one noticed anybody.’
‘So in theory someone could have killed Henry while the rest of us were around the corner.’
‘Yes, or done it later by hiding in the building until everyone left. It looks as though that may well be what happened, since you say when you came back the Chubb lock wasn’t on.’
‘That’s no guide to anything, Jim. Very few of the staff have keys to the building, so if whoever leaves last can’t lock up from the outside, that’s just too bad: we have to trust to the Yale. You can’t easily be tight on security with that kind of crew. We—that is, the few people who care—rely on the fact that what is valuable in the building is not very portable. Even the dumbest cop might become suspicious if he saw people removing furniture from a Mayfair house in the middle of the night.’
‘I hope you’re right, though I suspect you’re not.’
‘So how long would it have taken to murder poor old Henry?’
‘The estimate is a maximum of three minutes from start to finish. But the risk wasn’t very great. If the perpetrator had been caught in flagrante, he could have pulled Henry out and claimed to have saved his life; if he was seen coming out of the room he’d presumably have realized it and would have been able to call for help and rush back in and pull Henry out before anyone else arrived. Even if Henry had been resuscitated, he’d have been unlikely to have had a coherent view of what had happened.’
‘So we’re not much wiser.’
‘No.’
‘Any advance on the Lambie Crump conundrum?’
‘There’s only one lead and it’s so tenuous I doubt if it’s worth a damn.’
‘Which is?’
‘Lambie Crump seems to have phoned Papworth when he got home from that drinks party, yet Papworth said he hadn’t talked to him for days when he spoke to our people.’
‘Really, Jim, the notion of Charlie Papworth murdering Lambie Crump seems absolutely preposterous. He mightn’t have liked the business of the trust but you don’t really murder for reasons of noblesse oblige. Charlie’s sensible and he certainly knows that in the great scheme of things, The Wrangler is but a grain of sand on the beach.’
‘You’re probably right. I’ll find out. Failing that, it’s an open field. Pretty well any of you could have done it—as indeed could anyone who knew his habits.’
‘I didn’t really know Willie’s habits, but like a lot of other people I knew that he often used the fire escape: there are more taxis available near the back gate than there are near the front door.’
‘It was a taxi he was in search of the evening he fell down the steps. We know where he was going and when he was due so we can pinpoint the time of his death pretty accurately to around seven o’clock. However, wire could have been put there at any time from when he had last gone down those stairs.’
‘It’d be very difficult to do during the daytime, surely,’ said Amiss.
‘Not that difficult for an inhabitant of The Wrangler building. It was perfectly possible to go up to the fourth floor into the storeroom that overlooks the fire escape, climb out and do the business without anyone seeing. Though admittedly forensic can find no evidence that suggests that was what happened.’
‘No marks in the dust?’
‘No dust to speak of.’
‘Our cleaners are very thorough.’
‘But of course, as you know, it was also perfectly possible to do the job from the outside at night. Someone merely had to slip that childishly simple lock on the gate and do the business. Or even easier, someone Lambie Crump was entertaining could have gone down the fire escape and set the ambush then.’
‘Anything in the diary to indicate if anyone was at his place the night before he was killed?’
‘No. His only appointment was an early-evening cocktail party at the Ritz. Of course he might have gone to dinner with someone.’
‘Equally likely he stuffed himself on free food as well as free champagne and then went home by himself.’
‘Or took someone with him?’
‘Possibly. Or someone might have called on him. But if so, they haven’t owned up.’
‘All wonderfully vague, isn’t it? Nobody’s ruled out.’
‘Unless they were provably away, which none of the obvious suspects were. It’s hard to be ruled out for a period of twenty-four hours. Even Professor Webber could in theory have driven from Oxford, though his wife said he was at home that night. And while Ben and Marcia say they were never separated during that period, what’s that worth, even if one of them is telling the truth. Either of them could have crept out during the night. As, indeed, presumably could Webber.’
‘The thing is, Jim, that while I think it’s too much of a coincidence that Henry died like that, I can’t think of the faintest reason why anybody would knock off both him and then Lambie Crump except that they wanted promotion.’
‘Exactly.’
‘And that pretty well narrows it down to Dwight who is, anyway, bright enough to make it anywhere without having to resort to murder.’
‘Except at The Wrangler under Lambie Crump.’
‘But why should he not simply go and work for someone who would appreciate him?’
‘Why not indeed? So, since I’m buggered if I can find a sensible motive for knocking off Potbury and Lambie Crump, I’m going to focus on Lambie Crump.’
‘While not completely ignoring Henry.’
‘While not completely ignoring Henry.’
***
‘You’ve no idea who might have done this?’ Milton asked Lord Papworth, early next morning.
‘None. Willie had enemies, but I can’t imagine he had murderous enemies. Just people who didn’t like him.’
‘Because?’
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