Red Herrings (11 page)

He pecked her on both cheeks.

‘Try to sleep,' he said. ‘And if Parkinson calls again, hang up.'

She picked up
The Times
and the Portfolio card.

‘See you later,' she said. ‘Take care.'

The morning was hazily beautiful as only an English morning in an olde village knows how. Bognor had seen Anne Hathaway's cottage lovingly recreated in exact replica in a garden on Vancouver Island. He had seen an English hamlet with a water mill of genuine English stone in the middle of alligator-infested swamp in Orlando, Florida. He had seen the sunrise over a beach in Mauritius and the Sangre de Cristo mountains of northern New Mexico. But you couldn't beat the real McCoy: the mellow yellow stone, the flutter of butterflies, the skilfully posed roses, the hollyhocks chock-a-block in the little cottage gardens, the sweet peas and the bees, the hives half hidden in the trees, clumps of chives, and parsley and thyme in tubs by low front doors, and there by the wicket gate into the churchyard the scarlet of Victorian pillar box and the village telephone kiosk.

‘You can't beat England!' said Bognor, and hummed the first few bars of ‘Sussex-by-the-Sea', as he strode bouncily across the green, speckled with buttercup and daisy. No matter how it was traduced and bowdlerised by city interlopers there was something about an English village like Herring St George which could never be destroyed.

He opened the door of the phone box. Even the smell was ancient and traditional – that compound of old sock, manure, last year's cigarettes and ale. The phone had not even been vandalised, as it would have been in any of the country's great conurbations. The graffiti, especially the Swastikas and the ‘Pakis go home' suggested interloping Hell's Angels or National Frontiersmen from Whelk and the world outside, but there were still a few ‘Kilroy was here's and ‘Bill loves Mary's together with cupid's hearts which recalled an earlier, simpler era. For a moment Bognor stood breathing in the unventilated air of a forgotten England and assimilating the sights of a vanished world. Then he dialled the operator, contacting her at only the third attempt, and asked for a reverse charge call to the Board of Trade.

‘What the hell are you playing at?' asked Parkinson angrily, when they had made contact. ‘First of all we get cut off and then when I finally get through again your wife refuses to speak to me. Have you gone off your rocker?'

Bognor was very patient. ‘I'm afraid,' he said, when this display of Parkinsonian petulance was over, ‘that it's not safe to talk on the phones to the Pickled Herring. I've good reason to believe that the proprietors attempted to murder me last night and were only foiled because Monica insisted on eating my steak.'

Parkinson appeared to be experiencing some respiratory trouble.

‘Anyway,' continued Bognor, ‘I won't bother you with that except to say that in future, don't call me, I'll call you. Now you were in the middle of telling me something that the Americans had discovered about the Contractors.'

‘I told you that before we were cut off.'

Bognor winced. ‘I'm afraid not, sir. We were cut off before you got to the crucial passage.'

For the first time a shadow of doubt seemed to have crept into Parkinson's voice.

‘Odd,' he said. ‘I told you all about the company and this chap Herring being the president. I only heard the click and the dialling tone after I'd finished and you didn't reply.'

Bognor suddenly felt queasy.

‘What chap Herring being president of what company?'

‘Sir Nimrod Herring, Baronet, MC,' said Parkinson. ‘President of this Miami registered company called Dull Boy Productions. It seems to be a nominal position because the chief executive is your friend Peregrine Contractor and all the money obviously comes from them. Or I should say “originally came from”. Now it's a case of “goes to”. The papers are ambiguous to put it mildly; but there's evidently a lot of money in it.'

‘Well it's not going to Sir Nimrod,' said Bognor. ‘He's as poor as a church mouse. Runs the village shop. Scarcely got two pennies to his name.'

‘Don't bank on it, Bognor.' His chief had that knowing inflection in his voice which meant he was about to teach his subordinate how to suck eggs.

‘I don't know how many millionaires you've met in your life, Bognor,' he said, ‘but I've known one or two and they're not like you and me.' Bognor resented being thus bracketed with his superior. He felt no affinity with him whatever. But he kept quiet. ‘Some of the richest men in the world,' continued Parkinson, ‘make a fetish out of appearing not just ordinary but positively down and out. Your Sir Nimrod may well come into precisely that category. Eccentrics are seldom more eccentric than English eccentrics and things are seldom what they seem. I shouldn't have to tell you that, Bognor.'

‘Indeed not, sir. You're suggesting then, sir, that Sir Nimrod Herring is a sort of mute inglorious Robert Maxwell.'

‘I'm not suggesting anything, Bognor. I'm simply asking you to exercise rat-like cunning and extreme scepticism. Not to say caution.'

‘Very well sir.'

Bognor replaced the phone quite gently and then very deliberately kicked the metal wall of the box several times, hard enough to be painful. ‘Bloody, bloody, bloody man!' he said, and then repeated, ‘Bloody man!' Only then did he feel sufficiently calm to venture back into the world outside.

Herring and Daughter, Village Stores, was on the side of the green between the Pickled Herring and St George's church. It was not a very prepossessing edifice, having been erected in rather a hurry after its predecessor, a thatched sixteenth-century building, had been flattened by one of Hitler's bombs in 1942. The pilot had, it was assumed, jettisoned a surplus one while returning from a raid on the marshalling yards in Whelk. It was the only bomb to fall on Herring St George during the entire conflict.

Bognor pushed open the door and saw at once that his wife was right. The stores were virtually derelict save in the matter of gumboots. They must have acquired a job lot from army surplus. Hundreds hung from the ceiling, mostly but not all in pairs. And on closer inspection he could see that the pairs did not all match. There was a post office counter surrounded by very old admonitory posters and placards advising people to post early for Christmas and make sure they had dog licences but other than that there seemed to be little but a great many cases of Grape-Nuts and a side of bacon sitting on an antique slicer. This last, and the bacon too come to that, looked as if it had been salvaged from the war-time bombing.

A bell tinkled as Bognor entered and a moment later there was some scuffling off and Naomi Herring advanced wearily on the bacon counter. She did not look at all well and Bognor guessed that the unwonted excesses of yesterday's Clout had left her with a hangover. She was wearing a grubby smock similar to, but not identical with, the one she had worn yesterday. Bognor suspected that yesterday's had been her Sunday best.

‘Oh, Mr Bognor,' she said. ‘It is Mr Bognor isn't it?'

Bognor confirmed that it was.

‘What can I do for you?' she asked, smiling rather dourly. She was not a very attractive person with her suet face made whiter yet by an over-generous application of what looked like talcum powder which failed to obscure the unhealthy mauve bags under the eyes. Still, thought Bognor, she had obviously had a sad life; and if she lived on nothing but breakfast cereal it was scarcely surprising if she looked a little pasty. He wondered if he ought to order a pair of boots just to show willing but decided against.

‘As a matter of fact I was rather hoping to catch your father.' Bognor smiled feebly, hoping to soften the blow of not being a prospective customer. If only they had sold postcards he would have bought one. It was the mark of really dramatic incompetence to run a shop in such a picture postcard village as Herring St George and yet not actually sell them. He bet you could buy them in Whelk.

‘I'm awfully sorry but Daddy's gone off somewhere,' she said. ‘He said he'd be back later. Can I take a message?' It was curious to hear such Sloane Rangerish language emanating from such a Mummerset figure. She said ‘gawn' for ‘gone', just as her father had called journalists ‘jawnalists'. Odd.

‘You don't know where he went I suppose?'

‘Haven't the foggiest I'm afraid,' said Naomi flicking a fly off the bacon. ‘You're the umpteenth person who's asked this morning. There's nothing wrong is there?'

‘No,' said Bognor, wishing it were true.

‘It's not his London day,' she said. ‘That's not till next week. I checked. It's not like him to go charging off like that. He didn't finish his tea.'

‘London day?' Bognor tried to sound nonchalant. ‘Does he often go to London?'

‘As regular as clockwork,' said Sir Nimrod's daughter. ‘Every third Monday of the month. He has lunch with a couple of old army friends. At his club.'

She caught the scepticism on Bognor's face, and said, ‘He has a country membership, I think. It's terribly cheap.' She laughed bleakly, ‘Maybe it's means tested. I never dared ask. And I think the others pay for lunch. They should. They're both Lloyd's underwriters.'

‘I see.' Bognor's hand went instinctively to the crown of his scalp. ‘Any idea when he might be back?'

‘He just said he'd be back later. He's very vague about time these days.'

‘Did he seem all right? Not agitated in any way?'

Naomi considered for a moment. Bognor watched. It seemed to cost her a lot of effort. He searched for any family resemblance but could catch none. Perhaps she was her mother's child. He must call on the Macphersons and have a word with them both. Especially Edith.

‘To be absolutely honest,' she said, after a lot of screwing up her nose and rubbing her chin, ‘he hasn't really been himself since that odious little VAT inspector came smarming round. I mean I don't wish to speak ill of the dead but he really was an odious little man. And he was fearfully rude to Daddy. I mean I know my father's not the most methodical person and goodness knows nor am I but we do try and we're not dishonest. If there's anything wrong then it's an honest mistake. But the way he went on you'd think we'd stolen the crown jewels or smuggled in a lorry-load of heroin from Afghanistan. I can't think why he isn't out catching criminals.'

‘He isn't out catching anything at the moment,' said Bognor. ‘He's in the morgue.'

‘Oh, I know, it's rotten luck and all that.' She flicked another fly off the slab, which looked like marble and perhaps therefore much the same as Wilmslow's present resting place as he waited for the forensic surgeon to set about him. ‘But if anybody had it coming to him it was Wilmslow. I know it's an unpleasant job but he could have been polite. He really went out of his way to antagonise the whole village. Not just us. Everyone.'

‘In what way exactly?'

‘Oh his manner more than anything. He told Daddy that it was unpatriotic to be so slovenly over accounting. And when Daddy said he'd fought the Kaiser and Hitler to make life possible for little runts like Wilmslow, Wilmslow said he might have got a commission in the cavalry but he certainly wouldn't have got one in the pay corps. I ask you. The cheek of it.'

‘Mmmm.' Bognor conveyed sympathy though he could well imagine that Sir Nimrod would be an irritating customer for a VAT inspector to have to deal with. Having seen the pitiful attempts to complete a VAT return he could well understand that incompetence of that magnitude coupled with the truculence of which he knew the old squire to be capable would have made a nicer man than Wilmslow impatient. ‘I'm sorry to trouble you Miss Herring,' he said, ‘but when your father does get back I wonder if you could ask him to give me a call? I'm at the Pickled Herring. My room's Myrtle. My wife Monica will take a message.'

Naomi Herring nodded brightly. ‘I'll tell Daddy to ring Myrtle in Monica as soon as he gets back,' she said.

‘Oh, what the hell,' he thought to himself. There was no point in contradicting a girl like that. She was old enough to be his elder sister which, as he knew to his cost, was too old to change for the better.

Time, he decided, to go and see Emerald Carlsbad, authoress of
Freudian Traumdeutung in the Cook Islands
at her home, the New Maltings. The house, he had already established, was about half a mile past the church on the road to Herring All Saints. It being sunny he would walk, even though it was uphill. The high banked hedgerows were pink and white with dog rose and Queen Anne's lace and a whole lot of other pretty things he was ashamed not to be able to identify. He had done no botany at school. Once or twice he had to flatten himself against the side of the lane as a tractor or horsebox sped past. Country people seemed to drive more recklessly than townees but they did wave very cheerily. Just beyond the churchyard a stout black and white bitch which looked like a cross between a dalmatian and a cocker spaniel came and sniffed rudely at his flies. An acrid smell which he thought might be chicken dung overlay the grass and wild flowers. It was not silage or cow manure, both of which were richer, deeper, browner smells. This was more of an oboe smell where the others were bassoons.

He was sweating when he reached the New Maltings and was using a switch of cow parsley to beat off marauding insects attracted to the perspiration which ran down from his temples and stained his shirt under the arms. He hoped Miss Carlsbad might be prevailed upon for a glass of iced water. This walking about in the country was all very well but it did dry out the throat.

The main part of the house was of ochre stone and dated, he guessed, from around the end of the seventeenth century. Much more recently, however, someone had built on a new wing in white clapboard. Also a rather elegant conservatory which looked as if it had been built to a Victorian design only with modern materials. There was a rather imposing front door at the end of a short path behind a wrought-iron gate; and a more welcoming back door leading off a yard which contained garage and stabling. He was wondering which one to choose when the back door opened and a figure with skin-tight black trousers, a black shirt, and long very shiny black hair emerged clutching a bulky folder of the sort favoured by fashion models carrying round a portfolio of self-portraits. Bognor recognised Damian Macpherson.