Rancid Pansies (7 page)

‘That was before I knew they were lethal. Also before I’d tasted the liver smoothie. God,
no
. I don’t even want to think about that.’

Here, Max shambles in with a couple of policemen and shambles out again to go to bed. The great maestro appears to have aged overnight. He complains of feeling too weak to go into a recording session, which he has had to cancel. That will cost somebody something. The policemen politely but firmly refuse my offer of coffee, no doubt thinking it will be laced with arsenic or strychnine, and things quickly become very
boring indeed. Their ponderous opening sally sets the tone. ‘Obviously, the death of Sir Douglas Monteith has made this a very tragic affair, sir. There is not the slightest suspicion of anything other than a terrible accident, but you will
understand
why we need to ask you a few questions, sir, as the
person
who prepared the food but who alone was unaffected by the poison.’ And much in the same vein, with undercurrents of forensic menace. Oh, what am I doing in this benighted land? Why am I not still up in the blissful seclusion of Le Roccie? And why is my house there not still standing? What malign fate has had all this in store for me?

So I go over it yet again and show the policemen the
outhouses
where I set the traps. I describe how I made all three starters, concealing only the exact quantities from them. One doesn’t give priceless recipes away to the police, especially not to men philistine enough to express incredulity when I describe the dishes. Suddenly, I’m very relieved that in the
general
excitement of my financial windfall I clean forgot to
mention
my inauspicious first meeting with the Baronet. I had intended to tell Adrian about my encounter in Monteith’s
jungle
, but by the time he arrived with Josh’s microscope there were more pressing things to think about. Now I realise how important it is that the police never find out that Sir Douglas and I exchanged tense words some days ago, even if the addled old buffer appeared not to recognise me last night. Certainly I don’t wish to give the police the least impression that as far as I’m concerned, the Bart.’s demise is one of those human tragedies that make one’s sides ache. Now, in the course of our explorations, we come across the potting shed where the Christs’ gardener – whom Jennifer describes as ‘a treasure’ – has his lair. Here the policemen poke about and become excited over an ancient bottle with a corroded cap on a shelf. The label reads ‘Squillo-Death’ and has a faded picture on it of a rat in terminal agony. Using plastic gloves they drop the bottle into an evidence bag.

‘And you say you’ve never seen this bottle before, sir?’

‘Absolutely not. In fact, I’ve never even been into this potting shed. The kitchen garden is not somewhere I visit frequently.’

At last they go away to interview the gardener, also taking with them all my new ‘Little Nipper’ mouse traps. And in due course it is confirmed that the bottle of red squill is indeed the culprit – or rather, the gardener is, the dear old Suffolk
treasure
who without telling anyone blithely put down bait laced with a banned rodenticide around a house with a six-year-old child in it. There remains the conundrum of how a poisoned mouse wound up in one of my traps. It is assumed that because squill doesn’t act instantly the luckless rodent was able to move on for a second course of excellent cheddar cheese before falling victim to an old-fashioned spring. Thus the amount of this highly emetic substance actually ingested by Crendlesham Hall’s luckless diners was very small, and fatal only to a very old man with a dicky heart. The police do not return, and things slowly revert to normal, at least on the surface. It is acknowledged that I am not directly to blame for the disaster, the gardener is fired, and in due course we all
dutifully
troop over to a draughty church to see Sir Douglas’s mortal remains buried beneath six feet of earth but with, we are implausibly assured by a robed comedian, the lively
expectation
of his eventual resurrection. The grieving Spud is plainly unreconciled to the idea that I am not guilty of his aged partner’s death. He is but distantly civil, while I do my best to express sincere regrets without implying the least degree of responsibility, like a Japanese politician when obliged to
comment
on the War in the Pacific. For me the most distressing part of the proceedings is being unable to wear my Zaccarelli suit. The jacket is saved but the trousers are ruined. In my urgent efforts to bring Crendlesham Hall back to normal on that fateful night I forgot I was wearing them as I knelt and scrubbed and disinfected. One cannot kneel on patches of wine-tinged vomit in linen and merino mixture without irreparable damage, as I later discovered.

For Jennifer and Max the whole episode has been something
of a social disaster in that news of a fatality at your dinner party inevitably gets around. For a while there is even some loose talk of the costermonger suing. This is mere rumour and, being friends, all the guests amiably agree to write it off as just one of those unfortunate things. Nevertheless I can’t help
feeling
a line of sorts has been drawn beneath my welcome at Crendlesham Hall. It simply makes still clearer a conclusion I myself have already reached: that it is high time for Samper to move on.

I do, however, have a valedictory conversation with Marta, with whom I haven’t otherwise had a chance to swap news. She is a little pale but otherwise seems undamaged. There is stout stuff in these Voynovians. I suppose after occupation by the Soviets everything else must seem minor by contrast. In my usual guarded fashion I’m genuinely pleased to see her, although apprehensive of what new indignity I am about to suffer at her hands. I am still touched by the memory of her bedraggled state last night, her Iron Curtain finery plastered by vomit to her ample body. It gave me no pleasure to see my old neighbour so miserably reduced, poor thing.

Yet as usual Marta manages to wither my sympathy with an artless piece of news. By one of those brutal little ironies I seem to attract, it turns out she is herself engaged in writing an opera! She is over in the UK to see her librettist, Sue Donimus, whose name makes me groan with vexation. She is a literary prizewinner who feels the world is clamouring to hear
coma-inducing
details of her private life, such as exactly how much she recently spent having her teeth straightened. A bullish creature in tartan trews, she was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature mainly because the panel was too
intimidated
by her to turn her down. She is most famously the author of an unusually disgusting flagellation novel,
Heavily Tanned Men
, a book widely seen as stylish and liberating. Overnight it made her the darling of the sort of people who have darlings, starting with herself. The only thing one can’t blame her for is writing under a pen name, since my agent
Frankie has assured me the name on her passport is Wendy Marsupial. I now dread to imagine what the attraction is between Marta and this ‘doyenne of transgressive literature’ (
London Review of Books
).

This news that Marta is writing an opera casts an
immediate
pall of doubt over my own nascent plans. Blast her! Why should her project have the least influence over mine?
Especially
as I assume any libretto by Sue Donimus will involve
distasteful
and even fashionably gross scenes onstage, whereas my own ideas are jelling fertilely around the timeless dramatic themes of love, heroism and grief. Yet at Marta’s casual announcement I feel enthusiasm for my own grand project beginning to wilt. Does this mean I have unconsciously been hoping that Marta might write the music to mine? Might I actually have wanted to lay myself open to an artistic
partnership
with this increasingly successful musical frump?

But now the frump breaks into my uneasy speculations with news from Le Roccie. It seems the Italian authorities are viewing the remains of my poor house – which they laughably claim they are guarding from looters – as a potential source of pollution. They cite cooking gas cylinders that will corrode, oil and fuel leaking from my half-buried Toyota Ass Vein and a ruptured septic tank as endangering the environment and the town’s
artesian
water supplies. Also, the
Corpo Forestale dello Stato
are considering taking out an action against me for fly-tipping, would you believe, on the grounds that my protracted absence indicates ‘the intention permanently to abandon, in a protected area of the rural patrimony, unsorted debris and refuse contrary to environmental statutes currently in force’. Marta is reading this from a note she took to make sure I get the full majesty of the phraseology. I particularly love ‘unsorted’. The implication that I might be prosecuted less rigorously had I taken the trouble to separate the ruins of my house into categories as for the correct rubbish bins – paper, glass, iron, non-ferrous metals, organic waste and the rest of it – is the final ludicrous straw, given Italy’s generally cavalier way with rubbish.

And here’s another strange thing. After my initial relief at being freed from the burdens of home ownership and
personal
possessions, these very things start to make a case for
themselves
at the back of my mind, like an exasperating lone councilman who at the last moment makes the trenchant objection that stops a motion going through on the nod. My recent experiences as a guest at Crendlesham Hall are no doubt contributing to the suddenly alluring prospect of once again having a space of my own
to
m
yself
: one in which
county
deadbeats and jokesters in fancy dress don’t come to dinner, disgrace themselves, and lead to my being interrogated by policemen as though I were Dr Crippen or Graham Young. And for the first time since the awful night of my fiftieth
birthday
party, I actively begin to miss certain items buried beneath the collapsed hardcore littering a far-off mountainside. One such item is my independence.

In short, it’s back to Italy for Gerald Samper just as soon as I can book a flight.