Publish and Be Murdered (18 page)

‘Lord Papworth, and all those who were going to dinner with him: you, Lambie Crump, Amaryllis Vercoe, Clement Webber, Phoebe Somerfield, Dwight Winterton, Wilfred Parry and Ben and Marcia, as well as a handful of others, including Piers Papworth, Sharon McGregor and Jack Troutbeck. There was also a poet who was so drunk that he had to be helped out of the building by two others and a Cabinet minister who had arrived very late and was talking intently to a journalist. Nobody can be certain that there weren’t some more odds and ends around but a few of them are pretty sure the drink had dried up ten or fifteen minutes earlier and almost everyone had stampeded off to dinners or pubs.’

‘And how many of those have alibis for each other?’

‘Only the non-
Wrangler
people. Most people had had a few drinks, and in the nature of things at the end of parties there’s a lot of rushing round to say goodbye to different people, most people are not exclusively with any one other person and only teetotallers – and I don’t think there were any there – have much sense of time. Piers Papworth thinks he was with Sharon McGregor at the crucial time but she’s not sure if he was there all the time until she left without him to go off to dinner with Jack Troutbeck. And neither of them is clear when or where they parted. Bill and Marcia are pretty sure they were together at that stage of the evening, but they probably would think or say that anyway, wouldn’t they?’

‘Maybe,’ said Amiss, ‘but remember their lives are devoted to getting things right, so they’re hardly natural liars.’

‘Lambie Crump apparently said he was with Lord Papworth all the time but Lord Papworth thinks it was only part of the time and so on and on. You and Amaryllis, in fact, seem to be the only pair that are definitely out of it, since several people observed you in an animated conversation in the corner, and several wondered if you were going to get off together.’

Amiss coloured slightly. ‘What a filthy-minded lot my colleagues are. If I remember correctly, we were talking about the government’s devolution plans. Enough of that. How easy would it have been to knock off poor Henry?’

‘Easyish, from what I can work out. I really wish I could do a reconstruction of all this, but you can’t do reconstructions at the end of parties where a lot of alcohol has been consumed – especially if you’re trying to do it several weeks later. It all comes down to whether a) somebody saw Potbury going into the store… sorry, playroom, and nobody admits to that, b) whether they were aware that the waitresses had all gone home and c) whether they had the opportunity to pop in and do the deed without anyone else observing them. But how could they have known he’d have placed himself obligingly in front of a punch bowl? More likely is that someone might have gone in to talk to Henry, or even just to look for more drink, and having seen his opportunity to kill him, took it. I have to say it all sounds very unlikely.’

‘But possible.’

‘Yes, certainly possible. You were all apparently by then crowded together around the corner from the main part of the room, so anybody leaving the group would have been thought to be going home, going to the loo or going in search of a drink. But in fact no one noticed anybody.’

‘So in theory someone could have killed Henry while the rest of us were around the corner.’

‘Yes, or done it later by hiding in the building until everyone left. It looks as though that may well be what happened, since you say when you came back the Chubb lock wasn’t on.’

‘That’s no guide to anything, Jim. Very few of the staff have keys to the building, so if whoever leaves last can’t lock up from the outside, that’s just too bad: we have to trust to the Yale. You can’t easily be tight on security with that kind of crew. We – that is, the few people who care – rely on the fact that what is valuable in the building is not very portable. Even the dumbest cop might become suspicious if he saw people removing furniture from a Mayfair house in the middle of the night.’

‘I hope you’re right, though I suspect you’re not.’

‘So how long would it have taken to murder poor old Henry?’

‘The estimate is a maximum of three minutes from start to finish. But the risk wasn’t very great. If the perpetrator had been caught in flagrante, he could have pulled Henry out and claimed to have saved his life; if he was seen coming out of the room he’d presumably have realized it and would have been able to call for help and rush back in and pull Henry out before anyone else arrived. Even if Henry had been resuscitated, he’d have been unlikely to have had a coherent view of what had happened.’

‘So we’re not much wiser.’

‘No.’

‘Any advance on the Lambie Crump conundrum?’

‘There’s only one lead and it’s so tenuous I doubt if it’s worth a damn.’

‘Which is?’

‘Lambie Crump seems to have phoned Papworth when he got home from that drinks party, yet Papworth said he hadn’t talked to him for days when he spoke to our people.’

‘Really, Jim, the notion of Charlie Papworth murdering Lambie Crump seems absolutely preposterous. He mightn’t have liked the business of the trust but you don’t really murder for reasons of
noblesse oblige
. Charlie’s sensible and he certainly knows that in the great scheme of things,
The Wrangler
is but a grain of sand on the beach.’

‘You’re probably right. I’ll find out. Failing that, it’s an open field. Pretty well any of you could have done it – as indeed could anyone who knew his habits.’

‘I didn’t really know Willie’s habits, but like a lot of other people I knew that he often used the fire escape: there are more taxis available near the back gate than there are near the front door.’

‘It was a taxi he was in search of the evening he fell down the steps. We know where he was going and when he was due so we can pinpoint the time of his death pretty accurately to around seven o’clock. However, wire could have been put there at any time from when he had last gone down those stairs.’

‘It’d be very difficult to do during the daytime, surely,’ said Amiss.

‘Not that difficult for an inhabitant of
The Wrangler
building. It was perfectly possible to go up to the fourth floor into the storeroom that overlooks the fire escape, climb out and do the business without anyone seeing. Though admittedly forensic can find no evidence that suggests that was what happened.’

‘No marks in the dust?’

‘No dust to speak of.’

‘Our cleaners are very thorough.’

‘But of course, as you know, it was also perfectly possible to do the job from the outside at night. Someone merely had to slip that childishly simple lock on the gate and do the business. Or even easier, someone Lambie Crump was entertaining could have gone down the fire escape and set the ambush then.’

‘Anything in the diary to indicate if anyone was at his place the night before he was killed?’

‘No. His only appointment was an early-evening cocktail party at the Ritz. Of course he might have gone to dinner with someone.’

‘Equally likely he stuffed himself on free food as well as free champagne and then went home by himself.’

‘Or took someone with him?’

‘Possibly. Or someone might have called on him. But if so, they haven’t owned up.’

‘All wonderfully vague, isn’t it? Nobody’s ruled out.’

‘Unless they were provably away, which none of the obvious suspects were. It’s hard to be ruled out for a period of twenty-four hours. Even Professor Webber could in theory have driven from Oxford, though his wife said he was at home that night. And while Ben and Marcia say they were never separated during that period, what’s that worth, even if one of them is telling the truth. Either of them could have crept out during the night. As, indeed, presumably could Webber.’

‘The thing is, Jim, that while I think it’s too much of a coincidence that Henry died like that, I can’t think of the faintest reason why anybody would knock off both him and then Lambie Crump except that they wanted promotion.’

‘Exactly.’

‘And that pretty well narrows it down to Dwight who is, anyway, bright enough to make it anywhere without having to resort to murder.’

‘Except at
The Wrangler
under Lambie Crump.’

‘But why should he not simply go and work for someone who would appreciate him?’

‘Why not indeed? So, since I’m buggered if I can find a sensible motive for knocking off Potbury and Lambie Crump, I’m going to focus on Lambie Crump.’

‘While not completely ignoring Henry.’

‘While not completely ignoring Henry.’

‘You’ve no idea who might have done this?’ Milton asked Lord Papworth, early next morning.

‘None. Willie had enemies, but I can’t imagine he had murderous enemies. Just people who didn’t like him.’

‘Because?’

‘Because he wasn’t very nice,’ said Papworth simply. ‘He was selfish and he didn’t think about other people unless it suited him. For instance, I think he did damn-all to find and encourage talent. Dwight Winterton fell into his lap. He didn’t treat his staff very well either. He was a shit, really, was Willie.

‘I’m sorry if I sound callous, Chief Superintendent. And what I’ll say in public is different. But I see no point in being less than frank with you.’

‘What was your relationship like?’

‘Perfectly civil. But then I had no stomach for a fight. I resented him for exploiting me and I’d have fired him if I could, but he had two out of the three trustees in his pocket so that was that: Willie expended most of his energy in guarding his own back. But I’ve put up with the situation and jogged along and it’s been more bearable recently since I’ve put into the journal a clever young man who has saved me a lot of money.’

‘But I gather there was a recent sharp difference of opinion between you and Mr Lambie Crump.’

‘Ah yes. You’re speaking of the Papworth wars, I suppose.’

‘Can you tell me about them, sir?’

‘Yes, yes. Certainly. Do you know about the role of the trustees?’

‘In general terms, yes. I know how they protect the editor.’

‘Right. Now in a nutshell, I have a difference of opinion with my heir Piers about our duties towards
The Wrangler
. I regard it as a duty to keep it going with its integrity intact. He thinks it to be an anachronistic burden that we should get rid of to the highest bidder. And under the present terms of the trust, no one would give tuppence for it unless they were looking for ways to lose money.

‘So Piers is trying to get the trustees effectively to put themselves out of business, so the journal can be sold unencumbered when I’m dead and he gets his hands on it. He seems to have found a prospective buyer who is prepared to give him a good price. So, having tried and failed to find a compromise, we’re having a legal tussle.’

He cackled. ‘It’s quite funny, really. I love my son but I take duty seriously, so I’m spending money he would otherwise inherit to try to stop him parting with something I don’t really want, which he certainly doesn’t want and which would make him financially secure instead of debt-ridden. A sense of duty is an expensive commodity, I can tell you.’

‘Do I gather Mr Papworth does not have such a sense, sir?’

‘Oh, he does, Chief Superintendent. It’s just that his doesn’t extend to the journal, only to Papworth Castle, which he loves even more than I do. He will explain it to you himself better than I can, I think. Although he won’t be able to do that in person until he gets back from Australia in a few weeks.’

‘And Mr Lambie Crump’s position on all this was…?’

‘Selfish and venal, of course. He was throwing all his weight behind Piers for reasons I don’t know. But what I do know is that his motives will not have been honourable. I suppose Piers promised him something or Miss Sharon McGregor, the potential buyer, promised him something. There will certainly have been a practical reason that benefited Willie. There always was.

‘I have to admit that whatever reward he had been offered, he deserved. He was certainly Piers’s most powerful ally. He’d managed to get those two old blockheads – Adderly and Hogwood – to take Piers’s side, and nothing I’ve said to them could move them, even though they were flying in the face of all their job was supposed to be.’

‘And the third trustee?’

‘Henry Potbury stood up to all the blandishments and by doing so was certainly slowing things up. We hoped that the delay would put Miss McGregor off. She did not seem a patient woman. And then he died, but fortunately the appointment of his successor was in my gift and I appointed somebody even tougher than him.

‘I’m still hoping Lady Troutbeck may be able to win over her new colleagues. She’s a persuasive woman.’

‘When did you last speak to Mr Lambie Crump?’

‘Can’t remember. Maybe a week or ten days before his death.’

‘Even on the telephone?’

‘Even on the telephone.’

‘Yet his telephone records, Lord Papworth, say that he phoned you the evening before he died.’

‘Really? How extraordinary. When?’

‘At ten-fifteen.’ Papworth wrinkled up his face in perplexity. ‘My goodness, you surprise me, though if you say so I suppose it must be so. Perhaps I am a more forgetful old man than I thought.’ He brooded. ‘Could it perhaps have been late on in the evening after I had dined well? Could it be that Alzheimer’s compounded by alcohol might be at the root of this mystery? Would the operator know if it was a long call?’

‘It was short.’

‘Then I expect it was something routine. I do apologize, Superintendent. I would not wish to mislead you, but at present such a call is ringing no bell in my addled old mind.’

Milton got up to go. ‘I’d be grateful if you’d think about it some more, Lord Papworth. Otherwise, thank you very much. I’ll be in touch.’

As they got into the car, he said, ‘Tewkesbury, I want you tomorrow extremely tactfully to have a word with the two old boys Papworth had dinner with that night and find out if he had much to drink. Their names were given in his statement.’

Papworth was on the phone an hour later. ‘The mystery is resolved, Chief Superintendent. Lambie Crump did indeed ring here the night before he died, but I had gone to bed and my wife took the call.’