Publish and Be Murdered

by Ruth Dudley Edwards

  ‘The five were?’

  ‘Winterton, Phoebe Somerfield, Amaryllis Vercoe, me and probably Amiss.’

  Tewkesbury broke in excitedly. ‘Do you mean, Professor Webber, that you can see an ideological reason for Robert Amiss to have wanted Lambie Crump out of the way?’

  Webber looked at him in bewilderment. ‘Ideological? Pull yourself together, you stupid boy. What are you talking about? What’s ideology got to do with it?’

  Tewkesbury began to stammer slightly. ‘It’s j-j-just that I’ve noticed a discrepancy here. Now, you admit that it was ideology that was at the root of the disagreements you and your colleagues had with Lambie Crump. Yet Amiss has always denied feeling sufficiently angry about the change in The Wrangler’s political line for it to constitute a motive for murder.’

  Webber bounced angrily in his chair. ‘What a load of claptrap.’ He looked at Milton. ‘What sort of morons are you taking into the police force these days? I don’t know what world this person is living in. But what can you expect when he read English under that crowd of addle-pated, venal fools who jabber platitudes and think that to use obscure terminology and peddle tenth-rate ideas makes you an intellectual?’ He glared at Tewkesbury like an enraged lizard. ‘Ideology my arse. This is England, not fucking Cambodia. We don’t kill each other over ideology. At The Wrangler, ideological arguments are our intellectual bread and butter—our raison d’être. It’s called debate. Something you wouldn’t understand, coming from an environment where they all vie with each other to impose their own pet orthodoxy: mediocre minds hate dissent.’

  ‘Really, Professor Webber, you’re being very unfair. There are many fine minds in the English faculty.’

  ‘What would you know about fine minds, Sergeant Trendy?’

  A wave of compassion hit Milton. In a gentle voice, he addressed the heavily breathing philosopher. ‘Professor, I wonder could you kindly tell us more about why you and your colleagues so much disliked Lambie Crump?’

  Webber stopped glaring at Tewkesbury. As he looked at Milton, the mad look went out of his eyes. ‘Like Henry Potbury, we had all come to abominate Lambie Crump because he was such a self-seeking little shit. What made us feel murderous was knowing that he was a double-dyed hypocrite who had paid lip service to the The Wrangler’s historic position when it suited him and then shifted his position to support what passes for thinking in New Labour. That’s not to do with ideology, Sergeant Numbskull,’ he observed, turning to glare again at Tewkesbury. ‘It’s to do with principle. One had the urge to stand on him as one would on a poisonous toad.’

  ‘Whatever you call it,’ said Tewkesbury gamely, ‘it’s a motive for murder.’

  ‘Good God, have you not even a vestige of a brain? One thing you have to understand about the Right is that it has a sense of history. The English Right, that is—I’m not talking about European fascists or American fundamentalists and, of course, Celts are too obsessed by nationalism to have any real understanding of Left and Right. The English Right know that our time will come around again: our enemies will be routed in due course.’

  He turned to Milton. ‘I was contemplating resigning from The Wrangler because Lambie Crump was using me less and less. I would have hawked myself elsewhere. I would be surprised if my colleagues hadn’t been thinking the same way.’

  He turned on Tewkesbury again. ‘Dwight, Amaryllis, Phoebe and Robert are pragmatists. They would have stayed or gone as it suited them.’

  ‘So you cannot see any of them actually standing on the poisonous toad?’ asked Milton.

  ‘I could imagine any one of us having the impulse to assault Willie by breaking over his head the portrait of our founder, but I couldn’t see any of us acting against him in cold blood. And from what I understand, the method of murdering him was cold-blooded.’

  ‘How did you feel about Sharon McGregor’s interest in buying The Wrangler?’

  ‘Obviously, I hoped it wouldn’t happen, but if it had, I could have lived with it. As I was trying to get through to your absurd sergeant, people of my political persuasion are better at accepting that one can’t win all the time than are the sort of people he surely supports. The Wrangler was going to pot and that maddened me. If McGregor buys it and ruins it, I’ll be madder. But it won’t blight my life. And besides, McGregor won’t necessarily ruin it. Some colonials respect our traditions.’

  ‘But you know that there was some bad blood over the proposals to modify the terms to the trust, don’t you?’

  ‘All I knew was what Henry told me at the party and I’ve heard nothing new since then.’ The mad look came back into his eyes. ‘For Christ’s sake, whatever-your-name-is, can’t you understand that I’m busy. I teach, I write, I sit on stupid committees with stupid people. Journalism is an extra and I don’t give a fuck about office politics.’

  The door opened and a small, harassed-looking woman arrived carrying a tray with a pot of coffee, a milk jug and a mug. ‘Oh, I’m sorry, Clement,’ she said. ‘I hadn’t realized you had people with you.’

  She turned to the policemen. ‘Would you like some coffee?’

  ‘No, they wouldn’t,’ said Webber. ‘They’re just going.’

  Milton kept his temper and stood up. ‘Thank you, Mrs Webber, but we’re fine. Professor Webber, we will not go until we have checked out your alibi for the twenty-four hours before Lambie Crump died.’

  ‘I’ve already given it to one of your stupid people.’

  Milton looked him straight in his little lizard eyes. ‘Professor Webber. I suggest you cooperate.’

  Webber glared. Then his eyes dropped. ‘I went to a dinner, came home and didn’t leave Oxford that night or the following day.’

  ‘You gave my colleagues details of engagements during that day which proved that you were tied to Oxford, but in theory you have no alibi after eleven p.m.’ He bowed to Mrs Webber. ‘I know you told the police that your husband was at home all night, but were you not asleep for much of that time?’

  ‘Not for much of it,’ she said, in an unexpectedly tart tone.

  ‘You’re a bad sleeper?’

  ‘Only when I’m obliged to be. But on this occasion I can certainly give Clement an alibi.’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ said Webber. ‘Stop pussy-footing and give them the full story.’

  ‘Clement came home from the senior philosophers’ dinner assisted by two friends. At my request, they deposited him upstairs on our bed, where he remained until perhaps eight o’clock the following morning, snoring loudly. That’s why I didn’t sleep and he has an alibi. And in any case, he couldn’t have got down our stairs without falling, let alone have driven to London and climbed up Lambie Crump’s.’

  For the first time, Webber smiled. ‘And I can’t remember a thing. But I can give you the names of the people who took me home.’

  Milton saw the expression on Tewkesbury’s face and sympathized with his disappointment.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Dwight Winterton’s ‘The Triumph of Humbug’, which savagely attacked the new and cynical debasement of language on both sides of the Atlantic, amused Amiss greatly. Men had followed women in adopting meaningless rhetoric of the ‘outreaching’, ‘inclusive’, and ‘feeling-and-sharing-each-other’s-pain’ variety and using it shamelessly to cover shallowness, arrogance and vainglorious ambition. The major casualty was truth.

  Amiss had been rather perturbed to find that the male minister whom Winterton had singled out as—if anything—worse than the Prime Minister, was the junior Foreign Office minister for whom Rachel worked. ‘Does it absolutely have to be Eric Sinclair that you produce as the prime example of bullshit?’ he asked Winterton.

  ‘Why shouldn’t it be? He’s the worst.’

  ‘It’s just slightly difficult for personal reasons into which I cannot go.’

  ‘
But, Robert, you can’t ask me to find a stand-in for a man who talks of the importance of the peoples of all nations sharing in joy the tapestry of their multicultural experience, can you? Especially when he’s trying to cover up the fact that they’re carrying out the policy of the previous government when it comes to arms sales.’

  ‘Um,’ said Amiss.

  Winterton seized the typescript from him. ‘Come on, Robert. What about, “We offer a vision where all will give and none will take and Britain’s moral leadership as an ethical touchstone will be hailed as a star in a black sky?” You can’t ask me to leave that out, can you?’ His face crumpled suddenly into dejection. ‘But of course you can. You’re the editor.’

  ‘Oh, never mind,’ sighed Amiss. ‘OK, Dwight. I promise I won’t change a word. I’ll deal with my personal problem as best I can.’

  ***

  He evaded the issue all evening, pleased that Rachel was in good form, bubbling with excitement about her forthcoming trip to South-East Asia where her minister would be speaking at a conference on International Law about New Britain’s approach to human rights. Normally Amiss would have queried whether the best way to win over the representatives of ancient civilizations with problems and priorities different from our own was to send them political neophytes to lecture them on how to run their countries, but tonight he was treading carefully.

  ‘Just one thing, Rach,’ he said at the end of the conversation.

  ‘Yes?’

  He wriggled back into his chair. ‘There’s something I have to warn you about.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘There’s going to be an article in The Wrangler this week that I’m afraid you won’t like. I’m really sorry if it upsets you, but I’m afraid there was nothing I could do about it.’

  ‘I don’t like The Wrangler—period.’

  ‘Yes, I know that. But this is something specific that you might really hate.’

  She sat upright and looked at him suspiciously. ‘Stop procrastinating and tell me.’

  ‘It’s just that by sheer chance Dwight is making fun of your minister.’

  ‘What do you mean, “by sheer chance”?’

  ‘I mean he doesn’t like him, but he knows nothing of the link with me. He knows my girlfriend is in the Foreign Office, but he’s got no idea what you do.’

  ‘And you did nothing about it?’

  ‘I can’t censor him for personal reasons, Rachel. You know that. It just wouldn’t be—if you’ll excuse the word—ethical.’

  ‘Have you a copy?’

  He gave her a proof and watched lugubriously as she read through and her face darkened. ‘This is horrible. What’s happened to you? You seem to have come to hate decency and compassion since you went to work for that dreadful Tory rag.’

  ‘It’s not a dreadful Tory rag, Rachel. It’s a journal of ideas from a standpoint which happens not to be too popular at present.’

  ‘It’s a Tory rag and you’ve made it worse. This is cheap and cruel and abusive of a good minister whose only crime is to use language which old fogeys willfully misunderstand.’ She slammed it down on the table. ‘I don’t remember any such mockery of William Hague’s beastly baseball cap or his bonding sessions with colleagues in silly jumpers. Or the ghastly Portillo’s Pauline conversion to caring and sharing.’

  ‘We did run a few jokes about all that.’

  ‘Nothing on this scale.’

  Amiss looked at her pleadingly. ‘Don’t you think it’s just a bit funny?’

  ‘I don’t, Robert.’ She stood up. ‘Good night. I’m going to bed now. In the spare room.’

  ***

  ‘Jolly good issue,’ said Papworth. ‘Good and robust. I’ve had abuse and praise in equal shares today. Congratulations.’

  ‘I’m glad you liked it, Charlie. I feared it was rather over the top myself. I didn’t agree with much of it.’

  Papworth chortled. ‘It’s the ultimate irony for you, isn’t it? A person who thinks he’s a liberal but we think is a conservative is out of sheer fair-mindedness producing a journal that makes many conservatives wince at its right-wingery and rampant libertarianism. You see it as your duty to disagree with yourself, as it were.’

  ‘I was a civil servant, Charlie. I wrote many speeches and drafted many papers I didn’t agree with. It comes easier than you might think.’

  ‘Well, keep it coming. If you go on like this, we might even begin to sell some copies and make a profit.’

  ‘Steady on, Charlie. Let’s stick in the realms of the possible.’

  ***

  ‘Christ, Webber is some looney,’ observed Milton, when he dropped in on Amiss that Friday evening for a drink. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever come across someone so choleric. Still, it was worth it to see Tewkesbury so abused. And I think he was grateful to me for not rubbing it in. He has rallied since and suggested that that Jack Troutbeck was mad enough to murder for reasons of principle, but fortunately on the relevant night she had been up till one a.m. at a dinner in St Martha’s, where, incidentally, she gave a rousing rendition of “The Road to Mandalay”. And the following morning she was seen at seven-thirty setting off for London, where she spent the entire day chairing a conference.’

  ‘Doesn’t sound like Jack.’

  ‘Oh yes, it does. It was a sort of rally for those in favour of elitism in education. They call themselves the Anti-dilutions because they’re against dilution of standards…’

  ‘And are making a play on antediluvian. Yes. Very Jack. So where is Tewkesbury turning his attentions now?’

  ‘Still clinging on to you, I think. But afraid to say it at present, in case I bite him.’

  ‘Does he dislike me?’

  ‘Yes, probably because he’s jealous as well as disapproving because you’ve led the journal back from the path of righteousness down which Lambie Crump was leading it.’

  ‘He’s not alone. I think I’ve made more enemies in the last couple of weeks than I have in my whole life. Even the people who are most thrilled that I’m doing a serious job are shocked at the journal’s line. God help me, like Rachel, my parents think this government is wonderful and can’t understand why I’m being negative. They rang up this morning to tut-tut over several parts of this week’s and to ask me why I’m allowing these awful people to attack poor Mr Blair.’

  ‘Did you manage to calm them down?’

  ‘My dad’s always calm. And my mother will put up with it. Anyway, the good sign was they’d read nearly the whole thing—apart from the literary pages—and had opinions on several articles and even disagreed with each other about two. And Dwight’s attack on New Labour rhetoric was so controversial that he was on the BBC at lunchtime, which gives me hope that we might be able to flog the vastly increased number of copies I ordered this week.’

  ‘You’re enjoying yourself, aren’t you?’

  ‘Some of the time. Now, what about you?’

  Milton spread his hands wide. ‘Getting nowhere slowly. I still have no idea how Potbury died and not the faintest idea who did for Lambie Crump and why, unless it was in connection with selling The Wrangler. I agree with Webber that ideology had nothing to do with it.’

  ‘Me too,’ said Amiss.

  ‘But that would mean the most likely murderer has to be someone who desperately wanted to stop the trustees agreeing to alter the trust.’

  ‘Henry Potbury,’ said Amiss.

  ‘Thanks, Robert. That’s a big help. What do you think about Papworth?’

  ‘Piers Papworth was all for it.’

  ‘Yes, but his father wasn’t. And I’ve still got a question mark over him. He seems too good to be true.’

  He dug around in his briefcase and pulled out a plastic wallet. ‘I quote from Tewkesbury’s notes, where he records Papworth as saying: “I s
hould be sad to see the journal fall into the wrong hands, but it’s not something I’d fight Piers to the death over. I don’t know how long I’ll go on trying to block him. After all, at my age, what’s the point? As my heir, he’ll have the last laugh anyway.”’

  ‘That’s typical Charlie Papworth, Jim.’

  ‘It may be, but it makes him look a bit more resigned to losing than is suggested by a man who replaced Henry Potbury with Jack Troutbeck, the doughtiest of doughty fighters for the soul of The Wrangler. Piers can’t have been too thrilled with that.’

  ‘Have you asked him about it?’

  ‘I haven’t even interviewed him yet. He’s been out of the country for three weeks.’

  ‘Definitely out of the country.’

  ‘Yes. He’s attending to some family business in Australia. I’ve had it checked. He’s been there all the time.’

  ‘So whatever he did, he didn’t kill Lambie Crump.’

  ‘No. But why would he want to kill his main ally?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ sighed Amiss. ‘But in the middle of these shifting sands, doesn’t it help to be able to rule people out completely?’

  ‘I suppose so. Though when the field is as broad as this, it’s a small consolation. Incidentally, like most of the other obvious suspects, Papworth senior doesn’t have a complete alibi. He was at a drinks party that evening, followed by a light supper at his club with a couple of friends. He was back at his pied-à-terre around nine-thirty, he said, and straight to bed.’