Publish and Be Murdered (19 page)

‘And didn’t tell you?’

‘She said he said not to bother, it was nothing urgent and he’d catch me on another occasion. So she didn’t. I must say this comes as a relief to me. I really was beginning to fear that I was going gaga.’

‘Thank you,’ said Milton rather dispiritedly. ‘If you don’t mind, I’ll send my sergeant round just to take a formal statement from your wife for the records.’

‘Of course, my dear chap.’ Milton heard him call: ‘Imogen, Imogen, my dear. Can you come to the phone?’

A moment later a crisp voice said: ‘Good morning. Will two-thirty this afternoon suit you?’

‘Thank you, Lady Papworth. That’ll be fine.’

‘Good,’ she said. ‘Goodbye.’

Amiss was reading at his deak when the phone rang.

‘I’ve had a postcard from Mary Lou and Ellis.’

‘Good morning, Jack. Saying what?’

‘ “Scenery magnificent: have spent most of our time studying architectural and archaeological artifacts with the rest of our time devoted to improving books. Love Ellis.” Mary Lou’s PS reads, “Got him dancing in the market square last night with a clutch of dusky beauties. I’m proud to say he’s degenerating by the hour.” ’

‘Excellent,’ said Amiss. ‘She seems to be doing her stuff. Do you think he’ll come back changed?’

‘As you well know, people don’t change much, just adjust a bit. When he’s finished his hol and his hair’s fully let down, he’ll wash it, set it and pin it up again primly ready for his first day back at work. All one can hope is that Mary Lou frequently gets the opportunity to pull it down again. Anyway, that’s not what I’m ringing about. Where have you got to on the Plutarch front?’

‘Oh, God.’

‘Rachel not thrilled?’

‘Rachel not thrilled.’

‘College council not thrilled either. Had to nip a rebellion in the bud by saying the matter was being addressed with urgency. That was enough to win her a stay of execution, but only a short stay. If she’s found in the library with a dagger in her back I won’t be in the least surprised.’

‘I’m investigating long-term fostering. But my guess is that the kind of people that like cats don’t like Plutarch.’

‘Perhaps you need to market her as something else.’

‘Like what?’

‘A werewolf.’

‘Not many people like werewolves.’

‘I do.’

‘You’re unusual.’

‘If you say so. I always think I’m Baroness Ordinary myself, but I admit not everyone agrees. But keep at it. I can’t guarantee her safety for more than another couple of weeks, so stop wanking. Get fucking.’

The phone went dead. Amiss groaned and went back to reading Dwight Winterton’s assault on what he termed New Labour’s deracination of Britain. It was harsh, cruel in parts and was bound to bring the Number 10 press secretary down upon Amiss in a rage. Amiss thought he agreed with only a quarter of it, but he passed it to the printers unchanged. He was less kind to a lead review of Wilfred Parry’s, out of which he took every pretentious or obfuscatory word.

When the participants in the Monday morning meeting had all arrived, Amiss addressed them. ‘The police will be turning up again today to interview some of us.’

‘What? Again?’ said Phoebe Somerfield.

‘You have a better class of cop this time. Detective Chief Superintendent Milton is intelligent and civilized.’

Parry looked down his nose. ‘I doubt if that is possible. Anyway, surely there’s nothing left for us to say to these people. We don’t want plods hanging round
The Wrangler
.’

‘Like it or not, Wilfred, we have to cooperate on a murder investigation. Mr Milton needs our help in finding possible motives for Willie’s murder. And then, of course, there’s the matter of Henry’s death, and whether it is possible that he also was killed.’

‘What fun,’ said Winterton. ‘I can’t wait. Are we all suspects?’

‘Have to be, Dwight. They’ve found nothing promising in Willie’s private life, I gather. So obviously they have to focus on us for a while. They’re only…’

‘…doing their job,’ chimed in Winterton.

‘Exactly. And the easier we make it for them the sooner they’ll be out of here.’

‘Well, that’s blown that,’ reported Milton to Amiss. ‘Tewkesbury said she was
compos mentis
and very clear about the conversation, which seems to have consisted of no more than two or three minutes of pleasantries.’ He sighed. ‘Of course, they might be lying. But why should he simply not have admitted to the call in the first instance? It wouldn’t have implicated him.’

‘Are there any leads at all, Jim?’

‘Just forlorn ones. Like will some cab driver respond to the appeal to anyone who picked up or deposited anyone at the end of that alleyway the evening or night before Crump died? All I can do is press on with interviews and hope for the best.’

‘I’ll take you to your quarters. Jason’ll have taken your sergeant there already.’

Amiss led Milton to his old office – now equipped with an extra Sheraton side table for Sergeant Tewkesbury.

‘Jason will keep an eye on you, provide you with coffee and anything else you want, and search for people you can’t raise on the telephone. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve an appointment.’ Remembering the different workplaces and the different jobs in which he had seen Amiss over the previous few years, Milton grinned at his new suavity. Even Tewkesbury seemed impressed. ‘He’s young and quite bright,’ he said grudgingly when Amiss had left to have his argument with Parry about reviewers. ‘Even looks normal. I can’t imagine why someone like that is prepared to work somewhere like this.’

‘The world is full of such mysteries, Tewkesbury. Now, pass me the list and I’ll decide in which order to summon our interviewees.’

18

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If Miss Mercatroid was to be believed, Lambie Crump had been murdered as a result of some kind of anti-Islamic conspiracy similar to that which she was convinced had caused the deaths of Princess Diana and Dodi Fayed.

‘I’m not with you, Miss Mercatroid.’

‘Fatima.’

‘Fatima. Why should anybody murder Mr Lambie Crump because you’re a Muslim?’

‘It isn’t just that,’ she said darkly. ‘A couple of weeks ago an Islamic scholar had a letter in
The Wrangler
saying that Islam would triumph in Britain because Christians lacked conviction. This could be the backlash. Why, they may be trying to exterminate everyone on this paper.’

‘Who is they? The Archbishop of Canterbury?’

‘Not necessarily. But he might be part of it.’

‘She continued in this vein for the best part of an hour,’ reported Milton wearily to Amiss later on. ‘It was almost – but not quite – worth it to have Tewkesbury forced to take notes throughout.’

‘And who does she think are the actual perpetrators?’

‘She talks darkly of security services serving the evil designs of the royal family and the British government. I think Freemasons were mentioned, and, of course, an international Jewish conspiracy featured somewhere.’

‘Do you mean she’s fingering Dwight?’

‘Don’t think so. I don’t even know if she knows he’s Jewish. She certainly never mentioned him. Anyway, I don’t propose to waste any more time on her. She’s bonkers. The Muslims have my sympathy.’

‘Now don’t worry, Mr Ricketts. Don’t worry. There’s nothing to be afraid of.’

Ricketts’s squeaks diminished somewhat in volume and intensity.

‘I hear, Mr Ricketts, that you are the longest-serving member of
The Wrangler
’s staff, so you’ll have known Mr Lambie Crump for many years. Can you tell us what you thought of him?’

The squeaking started again, accompanied this time by the wringing of hands. Milton waited patiently.

‘Sir, he was the editor. And there is no greater honour than to be editor of this great journal. And, like the other three editors whom I had the privilege and honour to work for, he was a great gentleman.’

‘Yes, yes. I quite understand, Mr Ricketts. But perhaps you might be able to tell me how he got on with the rest of the staff? Would you say that the atmosphere was harmonious and friendly, between, for instance, Mr Lambie Crump and Mr Winterton?’

Ricketts looked shocked. ‘I’m sorry, sir. I’m only the clerk. I wouldn’t presume to know how editorial does its job. I count my pencils and I write in my ledgers, and all I know is that all the ladies and gentlemen are very nice to me. Very affable. Sometimes they even have a joke with me. Why, poor Mr Potbury used to say to me, “Mr Ricketts, Mr Ricketts, I suppose you’ve come to confiscate my extra pencil.” ’

Milton looked at him dully. ‘So you’ve no ideas or information about the circumstances of Mr Lambie Crump’s death? You didn’t see anything, or hear anything, that might be relevant.’

‘Oh, no, sir. Nothing.’

‘Very well,’ said Milton flatly. ‘Thank you very much, Mr Ricketts. That’s all for now.’

Tewkesbury looked after the departing little figure with scorn. ‘Really, sir,’ he said when the door had closed, ‘it seems to me absolutely extraordinary that anywhere could tolerate a person like that these days. He’s not just anachronistic, he’s a throwback to the Victorian period and utterly valueless.’

‘I can see Ricketts’s deficiencies as well as you can, Tewkesbury. But you should not overlook his virtues too. Honesty, loyalty, industry and – dare I say it – humility, have their place. Now I’m going to call Miss Somerfield.’

‘Can you give me one sensible reason why I might have wanted to kill Lambie Crump?’ asked Phoebe Somerfield impatiently.

‘No. But it would be helpful if you’d answer my questions anyway, Miss Somerfield. That’s why I’m here and I’ve got to start somewhere.’

‘Oh, very well.’ She began ticking off her fingers. ‘Sex, greed, ambition, revenge: they’re the usual motives, aren’t they? Well, neither Willie nor I ever had the faintest interest in each other in any area at all – let alone sex. Greed’s out as well. I don’t make any money as a result of Willie’s death; indeed it’s worth mentioning that he recently gave me a massive pay increase. Ambition is a non-starter. I can’t see anything changing under a new editor. Revenge? For what? Now, does that satisfy you? I’m busy.’

Milton leaned forward. ‘Miss Somerfield, this is a murder enquiry. Murder enquiries inevitably are inconvenient for those involved. I must ask you, please, to take my questions with a good grace. In turn, I promise you that I will try not to waste your time.’

She put her head on one side and stared at him appraisingly. ‘OK. That seems fair enough.’

‘Can you tell me, please, about your relationship with Mr Lambie Crump, when you came to know him and how you got on together?’

‘I came to work here thirty years ago straight from university. Willie arrived a decade later from a newspaper where I gather he hadn’t done particularly well and spent the next five years scheming to get the editor’s job.’

‘How did he scheme?’

‘Snuggling up to the trustees mostly: consulting them, taking them to dinner and discovering and pandering to their prejudices in what he said and wrote.’

‘You have three trustees?’

‘Yes, but it was the two GGs he was smarming up to.’

‘GGs?’

‘Great-and-Goods. We have one staff trustee and two well-known outsiders who are essentially self-perpetuating because they choose their successors, who seem inevitably to be from the most spineless representatives of the British Establishment: vain and wimpish old men who are suckers for types like Willie Lambie Crump.’

‘Are those two still alive?’

‘No, though looking at their heirs you’d hardly be able to tell the difference. M’Lord Hogwood and Sir Augustus Adderly haven’t any backbone or judgement either.’

‘Who was then the other trustee?’

‘The literary editor, who lived, breathed and wrote in a waft of Victorian letters. I can only suppose he was made a trustee because he was not a blind bit of use.’

‘So what happened?’

‘Gavin Wells, our then editor, was losing his grip slightly. Tended to turn up in the office drunk sometimes after lunch. Now, he still did the job reasonably well, the journal came out on time and there was no reason for the trustees even to have known unless Willie told them. And in the normal course of events they probably wouldn’t have minded much. In those days, journalists were allowed to be a bit raffish and badly behaved.

‘However, there was the matter of Gavin’s savage attacks on aspects of Establishment behaviour. The trustees saw him as the severest critic of the Right and failed to grasp that he was also its best friend. So with Willie dropping poison in their ears they geared themselves up to the “a-word-in-your-ear -my-dear-chap-don’t-you-think-perhaps -it’s-time-to-make-way-for-someone-else?” version of the bum’s rush. So exit Gavin and enter Willie. It wasn’t a nice way to treat someone who had given him a second chance and always been encouraging and kind, but then Willie wasn’t a nice person.’

‘How would you describe your relationship with him?’

‘Distant. He dished out the work and I did it.’

‘Would you describe him as a considerate employer?’

Phoebe Somerfield let out a yelp of laughter. ‘What a hilarious idea. Willie had a very simple view of employees. They were there to do his work as well as their own, while he got the credit. It was one of the reasons he was so keen to keep all the leaders anonymous. It enabled him to take the credit for any that attracted praise, and to cover up how little work he actually did.’

‘But was he considerate in terms of pay and benefits and so on?’

‘For some reason that is quite beyond my understanding, having paid me very little for years, Willie doubled my salary a few weeks ago. I know Robert Amiss had something to do with it, but I can’t imagine how he persuaded Willie. But double it he did, so I suppose you could say he was treating me twice as well as usual.’

‘Are you likely to succeed him as editor?’

She laughed again – this time scornfully. ‘
The Wrangler
is not the sort of place that would choose somebody like me.’