Carnage on the Committee (16 page)

'But no one has any idea about Ed?'

'Not yet. Could be a person. Could be a place. Could be a product. I've a good girl working on it.'

'Slapped wrist, Ellis,' observed Milton.

'Huh?' said Amiss.

Pooley groaned. 'To say girl is technically discriminatory and could earn an official rebuke. Anyway, the only possible suspects for now are Warburton committee members and Rawlinson?'

'And Alina.'

'Really? Did Hermione leave her money or something?'

'No,' said Pooley, 'but I doubt if Alina was a fan of Madam's.'

'I don't want to be prim about this,' said Amiss, 'but if you don't like your employer, isn't the done thing to get another job?'

Milton shook his head. 'More to it than that. We had a tip-off that she might be involved with Sir William.'

'A tip-off from whom?'

'Can't tell you.'

'Oh, don't be ridiculous, of course you can.'

'Of course we can,' said Milton. 'The spectre of disciplinary action for breathing is beginning to get to me. Tell him, Ellis.'

'It was Wysteria. Just before I left, she suddenly burst into tears, talked of how she hadn't slept a wink since Hermione's death, made a terrific fuss about how she had wrestled with her conscience all day about breaking a confidence and was also terrified that if she told me what she was going to tell me, her life would be in danger. I made reassuring noises, but she put up her hand to silence me and explained that she had communed with Hermione's spirit and had been told to go ahead and report that Hermione had told her that a couple of weeks ago she'd come in earlier than expected from an evening engagement and had caught her husband coming down the stairs from Alina's quarters.'

'Did he admit anything?'

'Apparently not. Said he'd just remembered something he had to tell her, but Hermione had begun to put some twos and twos together.'

'You can't believe anything that noxious old bitch says/ said Amiss crossly. 'She'd character-assassinate her sick grannie.'

'That may be so, but we can't ignore her testimony. That's why Jim's interviewing Sir William again tomorrow morning.'

'You, not me, Ellis, I'm afraid. That call I took as we arrived here was to tell me about another meeting with the AC tomorrow. More nit-picking and recommendations from the Department of the Bleeding Obvious. I'll have to swap with you and see Ferriter instead since Rawlinson asked me to come to his City office and Soho's much better for me. Sorry.'

'Rawlinson must be better than Ferriter, Ellis. Honestly.' Amiss spooned some more chicken in lemon sauce onto his plate. 'Oh, no. I'm being insensitive. You do hate asking people whom they're sleeping with, don't you?'

Pooley straightened his shoulders. 'I'm a policeman. I have to take the rough with the rough.'

Milton shook off his annoyance with the AC as he sat in the bar of the Groucho drinking coffee. He had become mesmerised by Felix Ferriter's tongue stud, for the professor had a big mouth and the stud was very visible.
What a little squirt,
thought Milton.
And a cross-looking little squirt at that.
Being sartorially conservative, Milton did not think Ferriter well-served by his dyed, gelled red hair, his designer stubble, his black eyeliner or the leather shirt open to the waist which revealed a scrawny chest with two pierced nipples. 'So what is your opinion of your colleagues on the Knapper-Warburton, Professor Ferriter?'

'Their taste is so retro,' said Ferriter querulously.

'Sorry?'

'Retro. Y'know.'

'I don't know.'

'So yesterday.'

'You mean old-fashioned?'

'Yeah. I mean Hermione was the only one who'd embraced Queer Studies, and even she was only just beginning to get a grip on post-postmodernism and avant-pop.'

Milton tried hard to conceal his irritation. 'Professor, I am a policeman, not a literary critic. Would you please be good enough to use words I can understand?'

Ferriter bridled. 'OK, OK. What d'you want?'

'I want to know if you've any idea why anyone would want to kill Lady Babcock.'

'No.'

'You didn't notice any particular tensions on the committee?'

'No.'

'Do you mean everyone got on well together?'

'D'you mean psycho-dynamically?'

'I mean, did everyone get on well together?' asked Milton levelly.

Ferriter looked mutinous for a moment, then shrugged. 'No. There were a lot of arguments. Griffiths and Den Smith were always shouting.'

'How did you and your colleagues get on with Lady Babcock?'

'Hey, dude, I can't deconstruct the whole fuckin' committee for you. I hardly knew any of them and I was thinking off the books, not the hidden narratives.' Seeing Milton's glare, he hastily added, 'She was OK as chair. Well, OK for me. Maybe not for the retro crowd.'

'Did you know her well?'

'Sort of. Lectures. Conferences. Committees. Professional discourse. But we didn't hang out. Didn't do much facemailing.'

'You didn't do much what?'

'Oh, didn't meet and talk much. Anyway, I've been moving on. Queering up.'

Milton's phone rang. It was with great relief that he heard that he was urgently needed at the office to deal with a crisis in the Ealing axe-murder case.

The phone rang just as Amiss had despatched his least favourite character over the edge of a cliff and, as a result of several yowls from Plutarch, was thinking about breaking for lunch. 'Hello . . . Ah, Ellis. How did you get on with the grieving widower?'

'Very straightforward. He admitted to it immediately. He and Hermione had had an open marriage, he said - not in the sense that they told each other about their affairs, but in that neither of them asked the other awkward questions. He had, however, denied the relationship with Alina as he could see Hermione was not pleased about it. He saw her point of view. It is always bad manners to stray so close to home. And, of course, Hermione was a snob who was appalled he was sleeping with a servant. Still, he was unapologetic about Alina. It was an arrangement that suited everyone perfectly well. Hermione and he had long had a celibate marriage, Alina was a widow whose emotions were focused on her children in the Philippines and they were a comfort to each other.'

'Did he pay her?'

'He volunteered that he didn't. Said firmly that she was a good and nice woman and not a prostitute. He gave her presents from time to time but that was it.'

'Doesn't mean that she didn't think there was more to

it.'

'He's said not. And she confirmed it.'

'Oh, my poor Ellis. You had to ask her about sex too.'

it wasn't so bad since he'd rung her after I left his office and told her to come clean. She said she liked William, he and Madam did not sleep together and what was the harm? Life could be lonely and male company was nice sometimes. Asked if she had ambitions to marry Sir William she looked at me as if I was mad. Pointed out she'd never dream of marrying a non-Catholic. In fact, she said she thought it likely he'd soon want to move into a service flat and she had saved enough money to retire back to the Philippines.'

'Your conclusions?'

'They're probably both telling the truth.'

'How disappointing. What are you doing this afternoon?'

'Stocktaking. But there's a change of plan this evening.' Pooley sounded excited. 'Mary Lou's coming up. Says she's fed up with baby-sitting Moaning Jack Troutbeck. And even more fed up with reading freshers' bad essays.'

'Oh good. At least, oh, good if we're still meeting.'

'Of course, Robert. But my place rather than yours. And take-away pizza rather than Chinese. She's hungering for her American roots and wants some fast and indifferent food as an antidote to what Jack stuffs her with at St Martha's. Even demanded Pepsi rather than wine and bad chocolate cake for afters.'

'You can take the girl out of Minneapolis . ..'

'But you can't take Minneapolis out of the girl. I know. Bye.'

'Why aren't you wearing glasses today?' asked Amiss of Georgie Prothero.

'Because this isn't a professional meeting.'

'Don't follow you.'

'I don't need glasses. I only wear those because they make me look serious and I can hide behind them. You don't count.'

Amiss surveyed Prothero critically. 'I see what you

mean. You're a bit too pretty for your own professional good, aren't you?'

'I look like arm-candy, Robert. That's
bad
in my game. Good PR people have to look duller than the people or products they're pushing.' He reached for a sandwich. 'I'm
dreading
tomorrow's meeting.'

'Why particularly?' asked Amiss, pouring them both more tea.

'Because everyone's even crosser than usual. Because they've
all
been complaining to me
all
hours of the day every day. Because I hate everyone on the committee. I had to talk to that rather dishy inspector about them this morning and I realised how much I
hate
d them. He
is,
isn't he?'

'Who's what?'

inspector Pooley.
Dishy.'

'Didn't notice it myself. But he's clever.'

'He certainly is. He seemed almost to know what I was thinking before I said it.'

'Were you frank with him?'

'Of
course
I was. You know me. When I spill, I spill. And when someone with a bod like that asks me to
spill,
I really
spill.
He knows how I hate every single horrid judge.'

'Except me.'

'Except you.'

'And Dervla.'

'Well, all right. I don't hate Dervla, but trying to get any sense out of her gives me a headache. I hate
all
the others.'

'You can't hate Jack Troutbeck yet.'

'I don't know her well enough to
hate
her, but she told me this morning to stop being such an old woman.'

'What were you being an old woman about?'

'I was just being
thoughtful.
Doing my
job.
Checking she knew how and when to get to Warburton House tomorrow and advising her about where she should park.'

'Ah, yes. She has a slightly unorthodox approach to parking so your instructions would have seemed irrelevant.'

'And she was
so
troublesome about food.'

'In what context?'

'She hadn't realised that we're given lunch after the meetings and she dewwMded to know what was on the menu.'

Amiss worked hard at keeping his face straight. 'And you said?'

'I told her it was wonderful food and cited the salmon
en cronte
we had last time.'

'And she, no doubt, asked if the salmon was wild?'

'You really know her, don't you. Yes, she did. So I said I didn't know and she snorted and started going on about the evils of fish farming with a digression on how few people knew how to make decent pastry.'

'You'd better get used to it, Georgie. Jack likes her grub. And she likes her grub good.'

Prothero's voice rose. 'As if I hadn't
enough
to worry about. Look at the long-lists! I would defy the
entire
Foreign Office to find a way of reaching a decision that doesn't involve
half
the judges walking out.'

'That's Jack's problem. Not yours.'

'The Big Knapperoonie will blame
me.
I'll be back to doing PR for incontinence pads.'

His phone rang. He looked at the screen and cast his eyes up to heaven. 'Oh, God, it's Hysteria. I don't feel strong enough to take the call. She was on for an
hour
this morning being poisonous about you, Dervla and the Gee Gee. And even her unfortunate
maid,
who'd shattered her nerves by giving her the wrong cup and saucer at breakfast or something like that. I put the phone down for fifteen minutes in the middle and she didn't even notice I'd gone.'

'What did she say about me?'

'Same as she said about them. No soul. Black aura. That sort of thing. Oh, yes. And she said she was sure the two of you were having an affair.'

'Me having an affair with Dervla? I'm no paedophile.'

'No. With the Gee Gee.'

'With Geraint? Is she off her head? I mean more than usually so?'

'She can't see any other explanation as to why you agree with him about her favourite book.'

'Anorexia Phlegmata!
Too damn right I do. Do you know what it's about?'

'Well I assumed it was about some babe who was starving herself and being brave about it. But Hysteria said it was deeply perceptive and fastidiously spiritual. Or did she say spiritually fastidious?'

it's pretentious, unreadable crap about a day in the life of Julia who works in Harrods' Food Hall and feels sick in a hundred different ways depending on whether she's being confronted by a carrot or an aubergine - interspersed with encounters with customers being brutally insensitive by actually asking her to pass them some vegetables. Along the way she nurtures a hopeless passion for the Indian on the cheese counter who never speaks to her. That enables her to meditate in a pseudy fashion among the potatoes on bits of the Bhagavadgita ...'

'Huh?'

'Sacred Hindu stuff. Anyway, I had to read the whole fucking book because Wysteria was so keen and all I wanted was for the manager to transfer Julia to the meat section so she'd have to deal with the problem of selling beef.'

Prothero shivered. 'At least I haven't had to read these books.' His phone rang again. He peered at it. 'Oh, I think she's left a message.' He nibbled a cucumber sandwich. 'I feel strong enough now,' he said and dialled the answering scrvice. As he listened he began to look more angry than depressed. 'How
can
she be so awful?' he said when the call ended. 'Who
does
she think I am?'

Amiss raised an enquiring eyebrow.

'She's in Cambridge tonight reading in a bookshop and it's going to go on later than expected and she'll be too tired to go back to London tonight because of the
gruelling
day ahead of her. Can't bear the thought of coming up by train tomorrow, though, as it's likely to be
so
full it'll bring on her claustrophobia and the people will be
so
noisy and terrible it'll bring on a migraine too. Can I arrange for a car, would you please? It's the least that can be done for her considering how much she's suffering.' He grabbed another sandwich. 'Old bitch! Besides, if I hire a car for her and some of the others find out they'll be demanding cars
everywhere.'