A Bedlam of Bones (5 page)

‘Oh yes, I’ve got his number all right.’

‘Well ring him up then! Tell him there are vital things to discuss and he must come up to Guildford straight away … No, wait a minute, not here at the Palace. That wouldn’t do at all, it will only set Gladys off – she couldn’t abide him in France. It’ll have to be your vicarage. That’s it: telephone him this afternoon and tell him it is imperative I see him. Now Francis, I know I can rely on you. See to it, there’s a good fellow.’

The good fellow returned to Molehill, poured a large gin, consumed three cream cakes, and then feeling suitably fortified, did as requested.

Emboldened by the gin, and brushing the crumbs of a meringue from my waistcoat, I seized the telephone and dialled the Brighton number. ‘Ah, hello Nicholas,’ I began cheerfully. ‘Are you busy in the next few days?’

‘What’s it to you?’ was the cordial reply.

‘I rather wondered if you would be free to come up here for lunch.’

‘Why?’

I told him that Horace Clinker was keen to discuss one or two things with him. ‘He’s a bit worried, you see.’

‘So he should be,’ he murmured.

‘I’ve, er, seen a letter that he received. And I think you may have been sent something similar. It’s not very pleasant.’

‘You can say that again. Frigging disgusting.’

‘So, would you like to come up and chew things over a bit? You know, try to work something out?’

‘Hmm – all right. Got any whisky?’ I assured him I had. ‘And what about treacle tart? One of the few things you do quite well.’ I told him I thought I could rise to that as well. Thus a provisional arrangement was made for three days’ hence, depending on the bishop’s convenience. Judging from Clinker’s mood when last seen, I suspected it would be more than convenient.

I finished the call a little surprised at Ingaza’s sombre responses. Accustomed to his provocative, often maddening banter, I found the subdued tone slightly deflating. Clearly the latest development had taken effect.

On the prescribed date he arrived twenty minutes early and was greeted warmly by the dog. Bouncer’s approval of Ingaza had started to emerge during our stay in France. It had not been apparent previously, but there was clearly something that stirred the creature’s respect. Perhaps it was their shared cussedness.

The slight tan Ingaza had acquired on the heights of the Massif had disappeared and his face had resumed its customary pallor. In a louche sort of way and in certain lights Ingaza can appear almost handsome, but on that day he looked gaunt and dishevelled. His hair, normally so carefully smarmed, was dry and unkempt, and I noticed the absence of the flash tie-pin and heavy signet ring. Set out in a hurry perhaps? Or did the sartorial indifference betray some nagging anxiety?

We settled in the sitting room and lit cigarettes. ‘Well, this is a bit rum,’ I began. ‘Hor’s in an awful stew.’

‘That would follow,’ he replied drily.

‘You’ve both had these letters. Have you brought yours with you?’

He nodded and took a piece of paper from his wallet. ‘Came about a week ago, stupid bloody thing. Here, read it.’ And with a scowl he passed it over.

‘Cocky little shit, isn’t he?’ Nicholas suddenly seethed. ‘I’ll give him Donald bleeding Duck if he ever comes near me!’

‘Yes, but he won’t, will he?’ I replied quietly. ‘The whole thing will be done from a safe distance. There will be messages, instructions, but he’s unlikely to get physically close. He’ll pull his wires by remote control.’

‘We’ll see about that,’ he snapped. ‘He’s not going to put one over on Old Nick. No fucking fear.’ He reached for the blended whisky. ‘Haven’t you got something better than this?’

‘Afraid not.’

‘Oh well, it’ll have to do.’ And so saying, he filled his glass almost to the brim.

‘Steady on! Clinker may want some.’

‘Should have got here earlier, shouldn’t he?’ was the brusque retort. He became silent and I reread the letter.

Given my own discomfort at the hands of Nicholas, I suppose that seeing him so exercised should have given me a sense of
schadenfreude
. And yet curiously I felt none. His own brand of blackmail had been distinctly oblique, amiable even, and I began to wonder if perhaps the manipulation had rested more on my own fears than his serious intent. Such was the gravity of my crime that I had been ready to believe the worst and dance to the slightest of tunes … Assumptions are of course dangerous, but increasingly I was beginning to feel that Nicholas’s capacity to shop me was entirely abstract, and his sly innuendos simply an amusing way of recruiting my services.

Well, whatever the case, he had exhibited no malice … Whereas the present operator certainly did. I found both letters distasteful in the extreme. Each held a note of gloating pleasure, almost as if the financial object were of less interest than the power to unsettle or humiliate. Nicholas was right – he was cocky enough. But dangerous with it, and I was concerned for them both.

There was the sound of a car pulling up; and a minute later the front gate creaked open and the bishop appeared. He was clad in the dark raincoat with turned-up collar that he habitually wore when going undercover to play tiddlywinks with Mrs Carruthers.
*
Mercifully he was without the black fedora – an addition which invariably gave him the air of a rather plump Chicago hoodlum.

I ushered him in and, rescuing the whisky bottle from Nicholas, offered him a glass.

‘Just a small one, Francis. A busy morning, and they’ve closed that shortcut to Molehill. Had to go the long way round – a tedious route.’ He took a sip, cleared his throat and nodded to Nicholas. ‘Glad you could come. Rather important. It’s not good this business, not good at all.’

‘You can say that again,’ was the acid reply.

There was an awkward pause, broken by myself saying brightly, ‘Well I suggest you swap letters and compare notes, and while you’re doing that I’ll go and get lunch on the table.’ I hurried into the kitchen, leaving them alone to sort things out.

There I hovered by the stove, stirring the ham and beans, watched intently by Maurice from the window sill. Of the dog there was now no sign. Presumably it was his day for the crypt or he had bounded off to the graveyard to bawl at the dead. I addressed a few polite words to the cat; and then judging that my guests would now be more settled and mutually attuned, dished up the greens and announced that lunch was ready.

It was not the easiest of meals – Clinker huffing and puffing, Ingaza casting dire imprecations. What was notable were the differing attitudes: brooding resentment from Nicholas, blue funk from the bishop. Given the latter’s position, Clinker certainly had more to lose and one could understand his apprehension. Nevertheless, Nicholas was deeply agitated – but less through fear than with indignation that anyone should try to browbeat him. I had seen some of this at Saint Bede’s, and more recently in France when he had been enraged that one of our opponents should presume to call the shots (and not only figuratively). Pride, not fear, drove Ingaza, and it soon became clear that what had really riled him was the allusion to himself in the bishop’s letter as ‘a bit of fluff’. This he would never forgive, and were vengeance ever to be wreaked that would surely be the spur.

At one point I suggested diffidently that perhaps it might be best to grasp the nettle and show the letters to the police after all, adding without much conviction, ‘One gathers they’re quite used to this sort of thing … Some actor had problems only recently and the Law was surprisingly …’

Clinker put down his knife and fork and gazed at me. ‘Look,’ he said coldly, ‘it may be all right for you, Oughterard, but I can tell you that Horace Clinker has no intention of being bracketed with some mincing, pansy-arsed thespian. So kindly come up with a better idea than that!’

Nicholas turned to me. ‘He’s on form, isn’t he?’ he observed.

Personally I was a trifle taken aback by the bishop’s linguistic choice, but in the circumstances felt that a tactful silence was the best response. Thus I smiled vaguely at the cat and went on eating.

Discussion continued. However, we reached the treacle tart stage with little being achieved other than their resolution not to burden the police, and Ingaza’s proposal that the blackmailer be booted to buggery. Neither idea got us very far. But the tart was a success.

Such had been my preoccupation with the unsettling events surrounding Clinker and Ingaza, that my sister’s arrangement to accompany Lavinia to the gallery launch had slipped from my mind. Some days later, however, a call from Primrose slipped it firmly back again.

‘Hello,’ she said cheerfully. ‘Thought I’d just let you know that Lavinia is all set to come down next Wednesday and stay the night. Looks as if it’s going to be quite a good do. Are you sure you don’t want to come?’

‘Quite sure,’ I replied firmly.

‘Oh well, suit yourself, but Nicholas might look in. I gather some of his cronies will be there.’

‘
They
may be, but I doubt if he will,’ I said absently.

‘What? Why shouldn’t he be – is he taking Aunt Lil to the dog track or something?’

I hesitated. ‘No – it’s, er, just that I think he’s got other things on his mind at present. He may be keeping a low profile.’

‘Huh,’ she said impatiently, ‘he’s always got something on his mind. Cooking up some scheme or other, I bet. And by the way, he’s been very quiet about my share from the last Canadian consignment. I put a lot of effort into getting those sheep pens just right – it’s no use painting twentieth-century gates on to eighteenth-century palings, somebody’s sure to object. So kindly tell him that Primrose Oughterard is awaiting settlement!’

‘Well if you must go in for this kind of artistic chicanery—’

‘It is
not
chicanery!’ came the indignant response. ‘If I’ve told you once I’ve told you a dozen times, I am merely supplying the Canadians with what they like and cannot obtain in the normal way. If it pleases them to think that a few classical embellishments here and there add up to the real thing, who am I to quibble?’

‘Hmm,’ I murmured. ‘Authenticity being in the eye of the beholder, presumably?’

‘Exactly, Francis, I knew you would grasp it in the end.’

I let it rest. We had gone down that path too many times. And besides, as she would occasionally point out, who was I to raise a moral eyebrow in such matters? That’s one of the problems with murder, it leaves one in such an awkward position.

I steered her back to Lavinia’s visit. ‘Listen, Primrose, for goodness’ sake be careful. If she really did connive at the disposal of Boris it could be highly dangerous if she thinks for one moment that you suspect. She’s bound to tell Turnbull. Personally I think you’re crazy to go near either of them. It only takes one thoughtless word or false move and things could turn very nasty indeed. No point in giving them a hostage to fortune, much better to play safe.’

‘Like you did in Foxford Wood?’

I sighed angrily. ‘It is precisely because of Foxford Wood that I know what I am talking about! You must stay clear!’

‘My dear, you really are getting things completely out of proportion. Now calm down or you’ll give yourself a hernia. When Lavinia told me at the hotel that she would be down here for this gallery event, one’s social grace stepped in (something you wouldn’t know about) and naturally I offered her a bed for the night. I think you can trust me to manage things discreetly. I shall be the perfect hostess, the essence of tact about matters in France and a most enlivening companion at the private view. You’ll see – she’ll think me wonderful, drop her defences and let slip all manner of things about the battering of Boris, without having a clue that I’ve twigged. It will be quite a challenge!’

‘Oh well,’ I said gloomily, ‘if you want to play Miss Marple … but just watch it, that’s all.’

‘Of course I will,’ she replied nonchalantly. ‘But I don’t care for the comparison – Christie’s old trout is
years
older than me!’

That afternoon I was due to give a pep talk to Saint Botolph’s Lay Ladies (a somewhat unfortunate title I had always felt) whose C-in-C, Miss Dalrymple, had been grumbling about falling numbers and a dearth of fresh volunteers. ‘People are so lazy,’ she had grumbled, ‘and when they’re not being lazy they are absurdly timid. They need galvanizing, that’s what! We need a recruitment campaign, a sort of holy
putsch
to get them off their beam-ends. Don’t you agree, Canon? You might compose an hortatory address, that should do it!’

I had hesitated, assailed by lurid pictures of Edith Hop-garden & Co. strutting down the side aisles in helmets and jackboots. But my silence was also caused by perplexity – for, to tell the truth, I had never been
entirely
clear as to what it was that the Lay Ladies actually did: anything and everything, I suspected, and doubtless in a most worthy manner. But I had always been reluctant to enquire too closely, having quite enough on my plate dealing with the frets and furies of the Vestry Circle. The Lay Ladies were, I gathered, a sort of all-female offshoot of that body, subordinate but vital: ecclesiastical scene shifters
sine qua non
.

Thus, armed with only a hazy concept of their function, I settled down to compose some sort of rallying call – a task not helped by the fact that my mind kept returning to the plight of Clinker and Ingaza. Who on earth had got hold of that Oxford business – some erstwhile crony of Ingaza’s turned sour and vindictive? One of the bishop’s rivals to the pending York appointment – the hand of Creep Percival perhaps? Surely not. Who in those circles would stoop so low? Then I recalled the bitter professional tensions between the wretched Castris and Boris Birtle-Figgins.
*
(Evidently, when the chips are down gentility is no guarantee of fair play …) Or was it some professional operator with no personal connection at all but who knew a good thing when he stumbled on it? But would a neutral professional have adopted quite such a malign tone? The letters had been penned with a sneering relish which seemed to go beyond the mere desire for monetary gain … although, as the bishop had surmised, perhaps that was all part of the softening-up device, a cynical means of destroying his victims’ defences before making the attack when they were at their lowest ebb. Perhaps, perhaps …

I sighed and returned to the rallying call. ‘Service,’ I wrote, ‘is one of the most worthy and honourable activities we are called upon to perform, and each task from the most complex to the most menial has a special point and value, which when offered with both zest and humility will …’ Here I paused, chewed my pen and went back to thoughts of Clinker. Supposing it
did
hit the press, would it really cause such a stir? Was the public not growing more tolerant of such indiscretions? Besides, it had all happened before the war, nearly two decades ago … another age! But to both questions the short answers were respectively a resounding ‘Yes’ and ‘No’, and I studied the blotter in dismay. Then, bending once more to my task, I picked up my pen and made desultory jottings about shoulders and wheels and hands and decks.

Just now and again, to my surprise, I can produce quite an effective address, and one which even the pernickety Colonel Dawlish will approve. But such was not the case that morning: the Muse was patently sulking or otherwise engaged, and there seemed little hope that the Lay Ladies’
putsch
would gain much animus from their vicar. Far better, I decided, for it to come from Miss Dalrymple herself. Of foghorn voice and gimlet gaze, she seemed eminently suited to stir the flagging cohorts. With her pennant flying in their faces, who but the brazen would resist the call to supervise sewing-fests, tea urns, biblical beanfeasts and the Young Wives’ gym displays? Yes, I would telephone immediately!

‘But I think at least you ought to be there, Canon,’ she told me. ‘It would lend gravitas.’

‘Really?’ I exclaimed, going pink with pleasure.

‘Well, sort of,’ she modified. ‘And I do feel you should say a few words as well. Reminds them who’s boss.’

‘Absolutely,’ I replied. ‘And naturally I’ll give full support – be right behind you.’

‘Yes, but don’t stand too close. We don’t want my thunder stolen, do we?’ I wondered who on earth would try a thing like that; but before I could say anything she barked a laugh, and, clearly satisfied, rang off.

Relief! I lit a Craven ‘A’, went to the piano, and, shooting my cuffs, embarked on Fats Waller’s ‘The Joint Is Jumping’. It’s a tricky piece but I hammered away merrily, blackmailers and Lay Ladies banished to limbo. I think the dog had hoped for something more sober, as with a disgruntled burp he sloped off to the kitchen. Hard cheese.

With the burden of address eased from my shoulders by the redoubtable Dalrymple, I was able to pass a moderately painless afternoon. Her exhortation (plus a few politely received words from myself) seemed to do the trick, and the Lay Ladies bubbled and chirruped with renewed and lively energy. I still wasn’t quite sure of all their many functions, but worked on the principle that as long as I kept on smiling and asked no leading questions, I could remain safely detached.

All went well, and when the time came for tea and biscuits it seemed that escape was nigh. Not so. The breathy voice of Mavis Briggs was suddenly heard announcing she wished to give a vote of thanks to their ‘quite
dazzling
’ speaker, and if we didn’t mind, she had a few things of her own to add as well. Dear God, I thought, she’s going to spout some poems! That we were spared. But she launched into a long and meandering reminiscence about the origin of the organization and the vital part played by its founding members – of which, naturally, she was one.

If looks could kill, Mavis would have been struck thrice dead by Edith Hopgarden. But for the most part the other ladies lapsed into a resigned torpor, with one or two of the less comatose taking out their knitting. Not having any knitting to hand, I allowed my thoughts to wander back to the blackmail.

Given the length of Mavis’s discourse I was able to brood at some leisure upon the identity of ‘Donald Duck’. What an absurd soubriquet – only an idiot or warped mind would dream that one up! Oddly enough it was this signature to the letters that annoyed me more than anything else. It was so insufferably insolent … I wondered when the next approach would be made and for how long he intended to make them sweat. And what about the method of payment – one large sum or relentless instalments? He? Yes, it was likely to be a man – improbable that a woman would have such a close knowledge of that particular topic or indeed enjoy exploiting it so fully. Still, one could never be entirely sure … I closed my eyes, lulled by the gnat-like droning from the platform.

And then, just as I was beginning to nod off, unaccountably the amiable face of Rupert Turnbull came into my mind, and with that face the memory of the lucrative little racket he had been running at his language school in France. Learning that a number of the foreign students were domiciled without the requisite papers, he had been blithely threatening to shop them to the authorities unless they produced suitably enhanced fees. Turnbull – as smooth a blackmailer as he was a murderer … I opened my eyes with a start. ‘Good Lord!’ I gasped. ‘Surely not!’

The droning stopped. ‘Oh dear! Is there something wrong, Canon?’ Mavis’s solicitous voice enquired.

‘I, er, well, not really … so sorry, I—’

I was cut short by Miss Dalrymple, who, seizing the opportunity, cried, ‘Fascinating, Mavis, most succinct! Now, I think it’s time we all went home.’ And grasping handbag, gloves and next-door neighbour, she made a beeline for the exit. Others were quick to follow. I rather suspect I may have gone up a notch in her estimation.

I wandered back to the vicarage, musing uneasily upon the possibility of Turnbull being the blackmailer of Clinker and Nicholas. There wasn’t a shred of evidence of course, but as with intractable crosswords, in this type of worrying mystery one grasps at the remotest straws to provide a lead. And it seemed to me that here were three straws: Turnbull had already previously engaged in blackmailing activities to supplement his commercial enterprise; although unproved, he was believed by three of us to be a double murderer, ruthless in pursuit of his own ends; and according to Maud Tubbly Pole he had an innately sadistic temperament – which would make him entirely capable of exerting relentless and teasing pressure on his victims. But why those particular victims? Because they were
known
to him: the French connection! As Lavinia’s cousin, he had been a frequent presence in the Birtle-Figgins’s house above Berceau, and would have become friendly with the Clinkers during their sojourn there. Nicholas too he had encountered at least a couple of times (indeed, I specifically recalled them chatting most amicably in the aftermath of Boris’s funeral). What might he have guessed, ascertained and subsequently rooted out about that past liaison? And now, returned to London with a fresh enterprise and seeking additional funds, what better pickings to swell the coffers than the noble bishop and his ‘bit of fluff’!

Far-flung conjecture? Possibly. But the thought had taken root in my mind and I was stuck with it for the rest of the evening, even in sleep that night it coloured and troubled my dreams.