Red Herrings (3 page)

‘Country air,' said Monica knowingly. ‘Turns the head and ruins the complexion. Country folk always have addled brain cells and terminal skin cancer.'

‘I'd forgotten how exhausting life was in the country.' Bognor sighed.

‘It's not your surroundings that exhaust you, it's your time of life.'

There was some truth in this. Bognor would not see forty again. Come to that he felt he was unlikely to see fifty. In the days when the Clout first started a man of over forty was considered pretty antique, accorded much veneration and respect and not expected to live much longer. Bognor felt that he had been born into the wrong century. He felt like mediaeval man – course spent, sands of time run out – but was always being told that this was ridiculous. His contemporaries jogged, worked out with weights and ate nothing but nuts and sunflower seeds. Many of them persuaded themselves that they were in their prime of life. Worse still, many of them convinced very sexy women of half their age that they were in their prime of life. Bognor knew that, in his early forties, he had the body of a not very well preserved man in his late sixties. He just wished he lived at a time when this was regarded as normal. He did not particularly regret feeling so old; but he did object to being told he was peculiar. Never mind, the intellect was as sharp as ever.

There was a Tannoy system at the Clout; not a very sophisticated one, it crackled and whined through loud speakers placed on the corner of the mead tent and another by the St John's Ambulance post. The voice behind it belonged to Damian Macpherson, only son of ‘Doc' and Mrs Macpherson. Damian was the village teddy boy. Although he was over thirty he seemed to be permanently unemployed and hung around in drainpipes, winklepickers and an old tail coat outside the pub. When anyone feminine passed by he would leer horribly and make various suggestions varying from a drink to a quick How's Your Father behind the cricket pavilion. But there was no malice in the man and no one had objected to his being appointed to the loud-speaker system. It was accepted that he would stick to the script and say nothing unless authorised by a member of the committee.

So far he had recited admirably, even injecting a note of sombre unflappability into the rather anodyne announcement about the body in the wood. Now, once more, he spoke:

‘Would Mr Simon Bognor of East Sheen please report to Doctor Macpherson in the refreshment tent. Mr Simon Bognor to the refreshment tent.'

Bognor swore. ‘I don't believe it,' he said. ‘That can only mean one thing.'

Monica nodded, grim-faced. ‘Parkinson,' she said.

‘'Fraid so.'

Just as she said it, Peregrine Contractor emerged from behind his Roller clutching a cordless telephone.

‘Simon, old shoe,' he said, ‘Dandiprat's on the blower. Your boss has been on in a state of excitement. Says he's been phoning everyone in sight. Wants you to check in p.d.q.'

Dandiprat was the Contractors' butler – very short, very obsequious and extremely sinister. He always gave Bognor the impression that he was in the possession of everyone's guilty secret.

‘Unless I'm much mistaken he's been on to Damian Macpherson as well.' He sighed. ‘Can I ring from the Rolls?'

‘You'll reverse the charges?'

‘Naturally.' Bognor knew perfectly well that a large part of Perry's success was due to an obsessive though selective parsimony. At the same time as he dispensed magnums of champagne he grudged you the price of a phone call. Entirely in character.

The phone was a push button cordless. Bognor, sitting in the back of the Rolls, punched 100 for the operator and waited. Not a lot of point, he reflected glumly, in a marvel of modern science like this car phone without visible means of support, when communications were fouled up by some incompetent human in the telephone exchange. When the operator did come on the line she sounded frumpish and surly, peeved at being disturbed. Bognor snapped at her and she snapped back, taking an age to put the call through and doing it gracelessly. ‘I have a Mr Bognor calling from a Rolls Royce in Herring St George. Will you accept the charge?' he heard her say and was depressed to hear Parkinson saying, ‘Yes, yes,' just as testily. He did dislike low spirits, particularly when they reflected his own. He liked other people to cheer him up. What was the point in people who simply depressed you?

Like Parkinson. Bognor's relationship with his boss was long standing and long suffering. There were those outsiders who regarded his marriage with incredulity, but this was unfair; despite a robust reluctance to be hen-pecked and a permanently wandering eye he was fond of old Monica. He was not fond of old Parkinson. Not a bit. And yet he had suffered under him for so long that life without him was unthinkable.

‘Bognor?' That staccato almost derisive enquiry. He had endured it for so many years that now he accepted it and would have been uncomfortable if his superior began a telephone conversation in any other way.

‘Speaking,' he said, just as tartly. It was not a one-sided affair. He gave as good as he got. Well, almost. At least he answered back. And if he did not answer back he was never servile. He had a good line in lip chewing, dumb insolence, an entirely justifiable attitude in view of Parkinson's permanent truculence and condescension. The trouble was that Parkinson while undeniably good at his job was in every other respect a comparatively low form of life. Bognor, although professionally miscast, was in every other way a person of the utmost distinction. It was a difficult situation to live with, though not uncommon. Bognor's experience of life was that it was not the cream which floated to the top but the scum. He and Parkinson were a case in point.

‘I do apologise for disturbing your little holiday,' said Parkinson. As both of them knew full well, he did not mean what he said. Just the opposite. He liked nothing better than disrupting his subordinate's leisure time.

‘That's perfectly all right,' said Bognor. This was also a lie.

‘Not for the first time, Bognor, you seem to be bringing trouble where'er you go. You've conjured up a corpse from Customs and Excise.'

‘You're remarkably well informed,' said Bognor drily. ‘They only found him an hour or so ago.'

‘The CID man in charge of the case is extremely quick on the draw,' said Parkinson, managing to imply that this was not quite the case with Bognor. ‘Rather a ball of fire in fact. On checking him out I've discovered he's first rate. Absolutely first rate.' The inference was again quite plain.

‘He's not called Guy, by any chance?' enquired Bognor, glumly apprehensive about a whizz kid who was also, on Mrs Contractor's evidence, what suggestible women nowadays referred to as a ‘hunk'.

‘Not by you, Bognor. As far as you're concerned he is Detective Chief Inspector the Earl of Rotherhithe.'

For once Bognor was able to trump his superior. ‘In that case, sir,' he said, ‘he's Guy. I was up at Oxford with him when he was plain Lord Wapping. He was a judo blue. Took my sister out a couple of times. Not my favourite person in all the world and neither as good looking nor as clever as other people seem to think. No real bottom.'

Now that Bognor was no longer on holiday but on official business, watching over the interests of the Board of Trade and liaising with Guy Rotherhithe, he judged it proper to move his HQ from the manor to the village pub. The Pickled Herring, for years a dozy unreformed public house dealing almost exclusively in mild, bitter, dandelion and burdock, had recently been purchased by an enterprising pair of gay entrepreneurs, Felix Entwistle and Norman Bone. They were restaurateurs, Felix working front of house, Norman in the kitchen. Norman was an enthusiastic devotee of Nouvelle Cuisine, specialising in
magret de canard
and raspberry vinegar with almost everything. Last year the Good Food Guide had mortified them by removing their prized mortar and pestle though they still had the bottle for their wine list. The cellar was Felix's province.

The two men had refurbished the entire place with the exception of the public bar which in deference to local opinion, as articulated by Sir Nimrod, had been left untouched. It had flagstones, wooden pews and a dartboard. To the great irritation of Sir Nimrod an increasing number of the Herring's new upmarket clientele had taken to barging into the public on the grounds that they found it ‘real'. ‘Real' was the new vogue word and could certainly not be applied to the rest of the pub which was filled with ferns and outsize teddy bears, chandeliers from Christopher Wray and even (in the gents) posters of Humphrey Bogart and Gary Cooper. Bognor rather liked it. It reminded him of Toronto.

He and Monica had checked into a double room called Myrtle. (Other bedrooms were Colombine, Hyacinth, Elderflower, Jasmine and Ragwort. Bognor rather liked the idea of Ragwort but it had no bathroom. Myrtle had a bathroom en suite. With a bidet.)

When Felix Entwistle had enquired how long Mr and Mrs Bognor would be staying, Bognor replied, grimly and with a touch of bravado, ‘As long as it takes to solve the mystery.'

‘What mystery would that be, sir?' asked Felix, to which Bognor made no reply but merely looked inscrutable.

‘I think we're doing the right thing,' he said in the privacy of Myrtle. ‘We can't very well stay with Perry and Sam if they're under suspicion of having anything to do with it.' He sat on the edge of the bed and stared moodily at an indifferent print of a Tom Keating Samuel Palmer.

‘Who said anything about Perry and Sam being under suspicion?' Monica was snappish. She did not at all like the Pickled Herring and had been all for going home to the London suburbs. Bognor had seemed so miserable when she said this that she had melted and remained. She had married him for richer for poorer, for better or worse and she supposed she ought to stand by him, tiresome though it might be to be holed up indefinitely in the middle of nowhere.

‘Guy,' said Bognor. ‘Guy says that everyone must be regarded as under suspicion until proved otherwise. He says this is a very suspicious village. He says he's had his eye on it for some time, mainly on account of the swami's outfit. Not that I'm inclined to believe what Guy says. He really is a bit of an ass.'

Bognor had had a brief but relatively inconsequential encounter with the chief inspector earlier in the morning shortly after his conversation with Parkinson. The two men had agreed to meet for a drink around six in the lounge bar to discuss tactics. Bognor was not much looking forward to it.

‘I think Guy's right for once,' said Monica irritatingly. She had always rather fancied Guy in the old days and the hint of grey he now had at the temples rather enhanced his appeal. ‘Personally speaking it gives me the creeps. There's something spooky about the place. I know you think Phoney Fred is just a joke but I think he's positively dangerous. Some of his so-called acolytes can't be more than twelve. All junked out of their minds by the look of it.'

The swami, otherwise known to villagers as Phoney Fred, had taken over Herring Hall five years ago. Ever since, rumours of drugs, sex, drink and all round zombie-ism had abounded.

Like so many modern mystics the swami was exceedingly rich, exceedingly hairy, and exceedingly attractive to nubile young women. All of this annoyed Bognor who was none of these. He could have grown a beard if he had wanted but the wealth and sex appeal were depressingly elusive. The swami drove around in a series of vintage motor cars, mainly Bugattis. He was almost always accompanied by a wife. He had an enormous number of wives, known formally as the Brides of the Chosen. The wives wore white. The swami, naturally, wore saffron and sandals as well as a leather strap about his neck from which there hung a leather pouch. This contained small pieces of blank coloured paper which he was accustomed to present to people with a wide smile and a mumbled blessing. The bits of paper were supposed to be very lucky. One purporting to be autographed by him had fetched several thousand guineas at auction.

The villagers of Herring St George tolerated the swami and his followers with a long suffering scepticism. This was reasonable enough for generally speaking they kept themselves to themselves and paid the rates. They did not patronise the Pickled Herring nor did they attend church. When they first bought the hall from a property developer who was unable to obtain planning permission for an Olde English Theme Parke it was widely thought that they would try to take over the community rather like that other, not wholly dissimilar, sect in Oregon. But as the weeks passed the villagers realised that the swami was not going to stand for the parish council or try to convert them to whatever it was that he believed in. The swami's people (the Blessed Followers of the Chosen Light, to give them their English title – there was another in Sanskrit) had a regular weekly order from the village shop and Sir Nimrod never conquered his disbelief about the amount of grapefruit juice they drank. When Naomi Herring called to sell poppies in aid of the Earl Haig fund just before Remembrance Day the swami personally wrote a cheque for a hundred pounds and kissed her on both cheeks. She said later that he smelt terribly of joss stick.

‘I think he's pretty harmless,' said Bognor. He had a curious optimism even about proven villains. Had he been around in the thirties he would have been inclined to think Hitler and Mussolini ‘pretty harmless'.

‘He's no more a swami than you are,' said Monica. ‘Underneath all that face fungus and filth he's as white as us.'

‘I didn't say he was real,' said Bognor. ‘Obviously he's a fraud. I bet he's a Balliol man. At least I bet he claims he was at Balliol.' He paused. ‘Fraudulent, sticky fingered and over-sexed; but there are plenty of people like that. It doesn't make them killers.'

‘I don't understand why it couldn't have been an accident,' said Monica. ‘Chap gets very drunk, goes to sleep in Gallows Wood and is riddled with arrows by the villagers before he wakes up. QED if you ask me.'