Publish and Be Murdered (17 page)

‘What are you suggesting? That a bunch of outraged readers got together and murdered Lambie Crump in the name of Edmund Burke.’

‘That’s a bit far-fetched, sir, if you forgive my saying so. But I shouldn’t put it past Clement Webber. He is, after all, fanatically Thatcherite.’

‘So, in many respects, is New Labour,’ said Milton. ‘Now can we please get on with checking alibis.’

‘My God, how I miss Ellis.’ Milton threw himself on the sofa in Amiss’s room and closed his eyes. ‘What they’ve given me in his place…’

‘Well, what have they given you in his place? Somebody thick?’

‘Thick’d be a damn sight better than what I’ve been given. “He’s just the man for you, sir,” I was told brightly. “We know you like the clever ones and there’s one of the cleverest ones available right now. DS Tewkesbury is a real intellectual.” ’

Milton covered his face in his hands. ‘Drink?’ asked Amiss sympathetically. ‘Gin and tonic?’

‘And plenty of it,’ said Milton, with feeling. Amiss went over to the corner cupboard, poured Milton’s drink and took it to him.

‘Aren’t you having one, Robert?’

‘Got to meet someone in the pub shortly. Can’t afford to get pissed during the week any more now I’m doing a job for which I’m completely unqualified. I’ve got about ten minutes or so. Tell me what’s the matter with him,’ asked Amiss.

‘Self-satisfied, smartarse git patronizing the poor old copper who hasn’t even been to university.’

‘You’re not just being sensitive about that, Jim, are you?’

‘Don’t be ridiculous, Robert. When was I ever sensitive about Ellis having been to Cambridge?’ He took a large swallow. ‘But I can’t stand superior prigs.’

‘But Ellis is a bit of a prig.’

‘Oh, come off it, Robert. He has priggish tendencies, but plenty of imagination and compassion and knows about dark nights of the soul. But this little creep is thoroughly pleased with himself and convinced that the world will be a better place if everyone does what he says. He’s the worst kind of arrogant little prat.’

‘New Labour?’ asked Amiss.

‘I’ve met self-important little Tory prats as well.’

‘The only way of dividing the sheep from the goats that makes any sense to me is to classify them as Cavaliers and Roundheads. And New Labour measure up worse than the Tories here. They don’t understand that real enjoyment is a good in itself: they partake of the good things of life, but they do so austerely. There’s never any suggestion that they’re capable of having a riotous time. Everything has to be so fucking moderate. They’re so bloody austere they make you almost warm to Bill Clinton. At least he got into trouble through dropping his trousers.’

‘So did our foreign secretary.’

‘Ah yes. But he showed no signs of enjoyment. Anyway, enough of this. Are you going to slap Sergeant Tewkesbury down?’

‘No, I’m not, or not yet anyway. At the risk of sounding as sanctimonious as he is, I do try to get the best out of my staff even if they’re personally objectionable. And I suppose he’s got brains. I just have to hope that his colleagues knock some of the more objectionable characteristics out of him. Anyway, he’s what I’m lumbered with and I’d better make the most of him.’

‘So how are you going about this? Will you be interviewing us here? Do you want a room?’

‘Not yet. We’ve got the preliminary statements, and over the next few days we’ll be sorting out alibis and all that sort of thing. I want to do some nosing round Lambie Crump’s private life. Tewkesbury obviously thinks I’m wasting his valuable time, since he’s made up his mind already that the motive is ideological: Crump was slain for going over to New Labour.’

‘What do you think?’

‘I’m keeping an open mind. Phoebe Somerfield, for instance, from what you’ve told me, might have had good reason to want to murder him for ripping her off all those years. Or of course like Winterton she might have wanted the editorship.’

‘Or Ben or Marcia might have taken vengeance over his wayward way with semicolons.’

‘Or Miss Mercatroid might have brought in an Islamic hit squad.’

‘And we haven’t even considered who had any reason to do for Henry.’

‘All in good time, Robert. All in good time. I’ll be off now. I’ll be in touch, but my guess is we’ll be along on Monday.’

Amiss quickly gathered that Joe Crump was not one of his brother’s greatest fans. ‘I couldn’t stomach the Lambie bit, to tell you the truth,’ he said to Amiss over pints of beer in the pub around the corner from
The Wrangler
. ‘First it was demanding we call him Willie instead of Bill, and then he took my mother’s maiden name and tacked it on when he went up to Oxford. Right load of pretentious twaddle, if you ask me. Double-barrelled names with hyphens are bad enough: those without are the last straw.

‘Still, I suppose we’ll have to respect his wishes and do his service the way he’d want, which no doubt means some fashionable clergyman and lots of poncy High-Church carry-on.’ He winced. ‘Maybe even incense. And to think the Crumps have always been Presbyterians.’

He swallowed some more beer. ‘To be honest,’ he said lugubriously. ‘I hate the very thought and don’t know where to start. I don’t even know what hymns he liked. We only ever met every couple of years or so.’

‘Can I help?’

‘Can you help? What I’d really like you to do is settle the whole business with that vicar.’

‘I have a friend who’ll sort it all out,’ said Amiss. ‘She has tame clergy at her beck and call. Now, let me get you another pint.’

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.’

17

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Milton rang Amiss on Sunday 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?’