Masterstroke E-Book

Tim Heald

• Herausgeber: Dean Street Press
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Beschreibung

After a boozy Oxford reunion, Bognor is distressed to learn one of his classmates is a killer. Nothing depresses Simon Bognor like a university reunion. Every pimply-faced boy he knew two decades prior has made something of himself, while Bognor languishes at the Board of Trade, muddling along in an investigatory position for which he is hideously unqualified. Although more often than not his job requires catching murderers, he lacks even the observational powers to notice when the head of his old college has been poisoned. Both quite drunk, they totter off to their respective beds. Bognor makes it, but the master doesn't - he collapses dead at the top of the stairs. Due to the dead man's ties to the government, Bognor is asked to sort out who did him in. At long last he has the opportunity to prove himself at his old college—but Bognor knows it is just as likely that he will end up in the dunce's cap. 'Dazzling and star-spangled [prose].' - Dorothy B. Hughes, author of In a Lonely Place'Crime with a P.G. Wodehouse flair.' - Chicago Tribune 'A constant pleasure.' - The Daily Telegraph

Leseprobe

Tim HealdMasterstrokeA SIMON BOGNOR MYSTERY

After a boozy Oxford reunion, Bognor is distressed to learn one of his classmates is a killer.

Nothing depresses Simon Bognor like a university reunion. Every pimply-faced boy he knew two decades prior has made something of himself, while Bognor languishes at the Board of Trade, muddling along in an investigatory position for which he is hideously unqualified. Although more often than not his job requires catching murderers, he lacks even the observational powers to notice when the head of his old college has been poisoned. Both quite drunk, they totter off to their respective beds. Bognor makes it, but the master doesn’t – he collapses dead at the top of the stairs.

Due to the dead man’s ties to the government, Bognor is asked to sort out who did him in. At long last he has the opportunity to prove himself at his old college – but Bognor knows it is just as likely that he will end up in the dunce’s cap.

‘Dazzling and star-spangled [prose].’DOROTHY B. HUGHES

‘Crime with a P.G. Wodehouse flair.’CHICAGO TRIBUNE

‘A constant pleasure.’DAILY TELEGRAPH

For Tristram

Prologue

It was first light in the garden quad of Apocrypha. Because this was an English summer no rosy fingers gave earnest of the dawn, which arrived instead grey and misty, creeping up on night like a mugger after an old lady’s handbag. Water dripped from the mulberries and splashed plangently from a broken drainpipe over the west door of Hawksmoor’s incomparable college chapel. At the foot of the steps leading up to Great Hall a puddle had formed. Through it walked the Master. He was oblivious to the wet for he was drunk, so drunk that he scarcely noticed the dampness which seeped through the splits in his patent leather shoes and ran in tiny rivulets down his neck and under the stiff white collar of his boiled white shirt.

He staggered slightly as he walked across his quad: Lord Beckenham of Penge, master of all he surveyed, a self-made man made good. He had come a long way from the council estate in Skelmersdale. If, at seventy-one, that mane of white hair, so envied by his older colleagues, was finally thinning, and if those once so regular teeth were now a little chipped and yellow, he could still claim them as his own. Own teeth, own hair, own everything. He was his own man. Always had been.

Thus he reflected as he slowly crossed the quad, and so immersed was he in these thoughts (and so fuddled with claret and liqueurs) that he did not notice another figure, similarly clad, similarly uncertain in its gait, emerge from the shadows at the bottom of staircase twelve. Halfway across the quad the two almost collided.

‘Ah, Aveline,’ exclaimed Lord Beckenham, recovering first and recognizing the gaunt features of the Regius Professor of Sociology, ‘agreeable gaudy.’

‘Very,’ said Aveline. ‘I’ve been up drinking with Badman and Scrimgeour-Harris.’

‘And I with Mitten’s men,’ said the Master. ‘Edgware, Vole, Rook, Crutwell and Bognor.’

‘Ah … Bognor,’ murmured Aveline, dreamily. ‘But otherwise a good year.’

‘A very good year,’ agreed Lord Beckenham, then paused. ‘Can I offer you a nightcap?’

‘That’s very kind, but no. I’ve a bicycle to catch.’ The professor laughed harshly, like a corncrake, the noise echoing over the grass. He moved on. ‘Cheerio, then,’ he called, unexpectedly.

The Master continued on his way, though without enthusiasm. The lodgings had been gloomy since Mabel’s death three years ago, and despite the hour he was not particularly keen to get to bed. There were three flights of stairs to negotiate, too, and they were steep. Recently he had found that they left him distressed and breathless and he was obliged to pause from time to time to gather strength. Time was when he would have taken them three at a time. More than fifty years ago he had come to Apocrypha as a soft-faced freshman on an open scholarship, the first boy from his school ever to win a place at Oxford. The three photographs were still on the wall of the drawing-room. In the last of them he sat in the middle of the team, holding the ball, hair parted in the middle, slicked down like Hitler’s. He had scored the winning goal the last time Apocrypha won cuppers. He unlocked the front door at the third attempt and began to climb. One more gaudy to go, he thought to himself … a farewell gaudy with his own contemporaries, those few who survived … he fumbled with his tie … it was too tight … it was empty vanity to persist with the old collar he had worn so long … far too tight … he stopped to rest and swayed slightly, then clung to the rail for support. …

The scout found him when he came with morning tea. He was, of course, extremely dead.

Chapter 1

Bognor was awoken by bells. He had forgotten what a bell-ridden city Oxford was. He had similar trouble with Venice. ‘Bloody bells,’ he muttered and, raising his head slightly, he removed the pillow and buried his head underneath it. The bells were now muffled but they were still disturbing. Bognor cursed them again and put out an arm, seeking the consolation of his wife Monica. She was not there. He sighed, sat up, letting the pillow fall to the floor, and, very tentatively, opened an eye, shutting it again immediately. He was not ready to have light thrown upon his situation which was, he was beginning to realize, hung-over in the extreme. The furry sensation in his mouth and throat told him that he had been over-indulging in drink and tobacco. This was confirmed by the ache behind the eyes. He scratched his scalp and attempted to coax the memory into some form of action. It stalled a couple of times but at the third try he was able to recall a little of the night before. Of course. The gaudy. He had adjourned with his old colleagues from Mitten’s tutorial group. The port had run out. They had gone to Mitten’s rooms in the Pantry Quad. The Master had been there too. And that extraordinarily attractive new English don. Hermione something. Clacton? Southend? Margate? No, none of that was right, but it was a place somewhere down there. Frinton, that was it. He remembered Mitten introducing them. ‘Bognor and Frinton,’ he had said in that affected aristocratic drawl of his. ‘Well, you two ought to have lots in common, eh? Ha! Ha!’ He was the only person Bognor had ever met who, when intending to convey the idea of laughter, actually said, ‘Ha! Ha!’ – two separate words, clearly articulated, rather as if he had been taught to laugh by some do-it-yourself manual for foreign students.

‘Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear!’ With a supreme effort Bognor forced both eyes open and let them slowly traverse the room. It was a newish bed-sitter, on the site of what had once been a damp, draughty, Victorian tower full of Bognor’s memories. There was the obligatory poster of Che in his beret and of Monroe with fluorescent lips and, he was depressed to see, even of ‘girl in tennis dress scratching bottom’. An Apocrypha undergraduate ought to be able to manage a little more originality than that. It was a bit like having flying ducks or that green woman painted by the Russian whose name he could never remember. The one you saw in Woolies. He looked at his watch: nine-fifteen. Better put in an appearance at breakfast. That insufferable Crutwell would have been out for his ghastly jog by now. Edgware too, in all probability. They’d both be looking pink and scrubbed and young for their age and generally disgusting. The trouble with this reunion was that it was making him feel a failure. He was a failure – he knew that – but this reminded him of the fact all too forcibly. Not only was he a failure, he looked like one alongside all these budding success stories.

He swung his legs out, touched the floor with his toes and tried standing. Not a good idea. He sat down again and passed a palm over his jowls. All his problems stemmed from university. It was that absurd interview with the Appointments Board which had got him into the Board of Trade in the first place, since when he had been stuck. Codes, ciphers, red tape and occasional excursions into what was euphemistically described as ‘the field’.

He had had his moments, he supposed. Parkinson had even mentioned the possibility of an MBE recently, though he had resisted all Bognor’s requests for a transfer to some other branch of Whitehall. Monica was urging him with increasing fervour to ‘get out while there’s still time’, but nothing happened. He made a few half-hearted inquiries and even went to one (very depressing) job interview at some multi-national. It came, of course, to nothing. Secretly Bognor knew that he had left it too late and that he was doomed to the Board of Trade for life. He could eventually take early retirement and live on his index-linked pension. A depressing future stretched ahead, a depressing past lay behind, and a depressing present enveloped him. It was all made much worse by the Apocrypha gaudy and renewed acquaintance with his contemporaries.

Outside, the bells ceased. He stood again and staggered over to the washbasin where he recoiled sharply from the reflection which leered back at him from the mirror. Thank the Lord it wasn’t a full-length one. He scratched his stomach and realized that it was sagging flabbily over the cord of his pyjamas. They were the same pyjamas he had had when he was at Oxford twenty years ago. They didn’t make them like that any more – stout, striped flannel pyjamas designed to last a lifetime. The manufacturers had not, however, bargained on Bognor’s increasing girth. It was rather sad to find oneself growing out of one’s pyjamas. He frowned into the mirror and told himself brusquely not to be so wet. Life was just beginning. Couple of aspirin, a shave and a brisk clean of the teeth and he’d be a new man. He remembered Crutwell and Edgware and their fitness mania. For a second he even contemplated the idea of a press-up, but the thought passed quickly. Too late to start that sort of thing now.

When he reached Hall he found that, as he had feared, his friends were already heavily involved with a hearty breakfast. Even Sebastian Vole, Associate Professor of Modern History at Prendergast in Vermont, was chomping cornflakes and he was reputed to come alive only at noon. There was a chorus of ‘Morning’, ‘Hello, Simon’ and ‘Sleep well, old boy?’ Bognor replied with an all-embracing grin and poured himself a cup of coffee. A scout offered him cereal and he declined.

‘Bacon and egg, sir?’

Bognor suppressed a keen desire to retch. ‘Thanks, no,’ he said. ‘I’m not really much of a one for breakfast.’

‘You never showed up for your run,’ called Ian Edgware. ‘It was fabulous out on Port Meadow. All river mist and lemon-coloured sun.’ Edgware had always had a penchant for second-rate imagery. Bognor recalled his excruciating verses in some long-defunct literary magazine of their generation.

‘Run?’ he asked. ‘What run?’

‘You said you were coming for a run, you lazy sod,’ said Peter Crutwell through a mouthful of toast and marmalade. ‘Quite definite about it, you were. Said you never missed your morning mile.’

‘I never.’ Bognor flushed.

‘You did, you know,’ insisted Crutwell. He was a schoolmaster these days. Highly successful. A ‘housebeak’, as he insisted on calling himself, at Ampleside but not expected to stay much longer. He had been short-listed for the headmastership of Sherborne and Cranlingham and was said to be a virtual certainty for Fraffleigh. Five years there and he would walk into the top job at Eton, Harrow or Winchester and from there to an Oxbridge mastership, director-generalship of the IBA or some other glamorous, high-profile public office. Bognor could see it all.

‘I’m afraid you did, actually,’ agreed Vole, glancing up from his cornflakes. ‘Port talking, but you did say you’d go running with them.’

‘Oh.’ Bognor frowned. He had not the slightest recollection of saying any such thing. He turned to Humphrey Rook for confirmation. Humphrey was at least losing his hair, which was some consolation. What remained was black and greasy and brushed straight back off the forehead. He also had a bit of a paunch, though his expensive banker’s suiting made a passable fist of disguising it.

‘My recollection,’ said Rook, ‘is that you were in two minds about whether to go running with Ian and Peter or come to Holy Communion with me. You were certainly going to do one or the other, conceivably both, but in the event it seems you did neither. You had a lie-in instead.’ Rook, who had been a student Trot before such things became fashionable, was now a born-again C of E communicant and a Conservative parliamentary candidate.

‘Nothing wrong with that,’ said Vole, finishing off his bacon. ‘I had a bit of a lie-in myself.’

‘Only a bit of one,’ said Edgware. ‘Besides, I hear you were up till five, playing poker with Badman and Scrimgeour-Harris.’

‘Five-fifteen, actually,’ said Vole, smiling smugly.

‘Well, there you are then,’ said Edgware with an air of triumph.

‘Where?’ asked Crutwell.

Bognor poured himself another cup of coffee and wished to God they would all shut up. He had forgotten the incessant chatter which went with Oxford. Yak yak yak. How they adored the sound of their own voices. How he hated it. How his head hurt. How sick he felt. How much worse the coffee was making him. He wished Monica had packed Alka-Seltzer as well as aspirin.

‘Do you mind if I join you?’

It was the Frinton woman. Bognor was in no condition to leap to his feet. Besides which, leaping to one’s feet while sitting at an Apocrypha bench with your legs under an Apocrypha table is never easy. Instead, like his friends, he made a half-hearted gesture, a sort of half knees-bend, which Miss Frinton (Ms Frinton? wondered Bognor, Mrs Frinton?) waved away with genial contempt.

‘Bad news, I’m afraid,’ she said, sliding her legs across the bench and under the table. They were very long and slim, encased in tight, tailored jeans and thigh-length boots.

‘Bad news?’ asked Vole, blearily. ‘Bad? Very bad? Or catastrophic?’

‘It’s the Master,’ said Miss Frinton, who was actually entitled to be called Dr Frinton but countenanced no such thing from anyone except her bank manager and the occasional Leavisite. ‘He’s dead.’

There was a dramatic silence. For a second no one even swallowed.

‘Did you say dead?’ asked Bognor, at the end of this eloquently unspoken tribute to the late Lord Beckenham.

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘dead.’ She poured herself coffee. ‘Scout found him when he went in with his morning tea. Sounds like heart. He’d had trouble with his ticker.’

‘Had he … I mean when exactly …?’ This from Crutwell.

‘Never even got to bed,’ said Hermione breezily. She had a strong-boned, equine quality which suggested she was not easily fazed, even by death. ‘Struggled up the stairs, four sheets to the wind, and keeled over on the landing.’

‘Not a bad way to go,’ said Rook, smiling weakly. ‘Funny, though, I thought he was on pretty good form last night.’

‘What happens when a Master dies in office?’ asked Edgware.

‘What do you mean – happens?’ Hermione Frinton put her head back slightly in order, so it seemed, to squint down her exaggeratedly long, though elegant, nose with an expression of some contempt.

Edgware shrugged. ‘I mean, who takes over?’

‘There’ll be some sort of caretaker,’ said Vole, who had gone rather white, ‘until there’s an election. It happened at Prendergast.’

‘That’s hardly a reliable precedent,’ said Rook.

‘Presumably the senior fellow caretakes,’ said Bognor, ‘or takes care.’

‘No,’ said Hermione Frinton. ‘Not since they started the Vice-Master scheme. Nowadays he automatically takes over in a situation like this.’

‘So who’s Vice-Master?’ Edgware seemed undiplomatically irritated.

‘Waldegrave,’ said Hermione. ‘The job rotates. He’s been Vice-Master for a week.’

‘The Hon. Waldegrave Mitten, Master of Apocrypha,’ said Rook. ‘He’ll like that.’

‘Poor old Beckenham,’ murmured Bognor, but no one paid any attention. …

Bognor disliked Mondays as much as the next man, and after a weekend out of town they always came as a more than usually bloody surprise. He had driven back to London after breakfast, arriving just before noon at the flat, where he found Monica in bed with the Sunday papers. He was at first displeased by this but after a brief and, he felt, necessary show of pique he threw aside the Sunday papers and took their place. An hour or so later the newspapers were retrieved and, what with one thing and another, they never did get properly dressed, only leaving bed for long enough to cook and eat a couple of steaks and drink a bottle of Banda Azul. They then retreated to the bedroom with two glasses, a bottle of Rémy Martin and the television, for which Monica had recently bought a remote control device. In the end it was as pleasant a day as Bognor could remember. It quite restored his faith in life, which had waned considerably at the Apocrypha gaudy, and even his quite genuine affection, indeed, on occasion, lust and, yes, love for his accommodating spouse, which had been temporarily eclipsed by Dr Frinton, the new English don. He had become aware of her doctorate when passing the bottom of her staircase and seeing her name writ large in white paint on black. Dr Frinton did have everlasting legs and also a certain supercilious hauteur which, frankly, he fancied. He enjoyed dominating females, but now that he was home again he had to confess that he was pleased to be back in the bosom of his wife where he belonged. She was a thoroughly good sort, Monica. Not just a pretty face. Not even a pretty face come to that, though perhaps that was being unduly ungallant. She had her failings, God knew, but they had been together so long now that these were almost attractive.

Monday morning therefore came as a more than usually unpleasant douche. It began before breakfast with a telephone call.

‘Only one man in the world makes a telephone ring like that.’ Bognor winced. ‘Can you answer it, darling?’

Monica entered the bedroom, brushing her teeth.

‘Why should I?’ she protested, foaming at the mouth. ‘I don’t want to talk to Parkinson and he doesn’t want to talk to me.’

‘Please.’ Bognor pressed fingers to his temple. The Rioja and the Rémy, to say nothing of his wife, had been wonderful at the time but it meant a hangover two days running.

‘I’ll tell him you’re in conference,’ she hissed.

‘Don’t be ridiculous. He’ll know I’m here and refusing to talk to him.’

Monica spat into her toothmug. ‘All right. I’ll tell him you’re here and you refuse to talk to him.’

‘Right,’ Bognor said viciously. ‘You say just that. I’m fed up with him pestering me at all hours of the day and night.’ He turned over and pulled the blankets over his head. Then, as Monica picked up the receiver and the ringing ceased, he hurriedly emerged again and grabbed the telephone from her before she could utter.

‘Yes,’ he answered thickly.

‘Bognor?’ He grimaced. Right as usual. The Scotch terrier yap of his immediate superior was what he had expected, and it was what he was now hearing. It whined aggressively at him from the earpiece, causing him to start and hold the receiver away from his head for a few moments until he judged it safe to bring it back to closer proximity.

‘There’s no need to shout,’ he said. ‘Yes. Bognor here. At your disposal. What can I do for you?’

‘Truly, Bognor, you are a remarkable phenomenon. Death dogs your footsteps, wouldn’t you say, in a manner of speaking?’

Bognor glanced up at his wife and made circling gestures with his unoccupied index finger, then followed these with further gestures intended to convey the notion of drinking. He was badly in need of some coffee. Monica made one of her ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake get it yourself faces, but retired in the direction of the kitchen, presumably to grind beans.

‘I’m sorry,’ Bognor said into the telephone, ‘I’m not sure I’ve got your drift.’

‘Am I not correct in thinking that you attended the gaudy of your old college on Saturday night?’

‘Yes.’

‘And, further, that the college in question is Apocrypha, Oxford?’

‘Yes.’

‘And that the Master of Apocrypha is … was … Lord Beckenham of Penge?’

‘Oh, I see. Yes. Lord Beckenham passed away after dinner. But he was seventy-one. And he’d had a dicky ticker. A heart condition. He could have gone any time. My presence was entirely coincidental.’

‘I wish I could agree, Bognor.’

Bognor frowned. In the middle distance he could hear the sound of beans being ground. ‘What are you driving at?’ he asked.

‘You tell me Lord Beckenham died from a heart attack?’

‘That’s what I was told.’

‘Well, I have news for you, Bognor. My information is that the post-mortem shows otherwise. Your old Master was murdered.’

‘Oh, really.’ Bognor was quite peeved. ‘Someone’s been having you on. They haven’t had time for a post-mortem yet.’

‘Arranged through the good offices of the Fellow in Clinical Pathology.’

‘I see.’ Bognor was inclined to say this when stalling for time. He did not see, and Parkinson knew that he did not see. It was a convention.

‘I’m delighted to hear it,’ said his boss, ‘because it’s more than I do. I’d be grateful if you would step round at your earliest convenience. I’m afraid someone calling himself Dr the Hon. Waldegrave Mitten is calling on us ere long.’

‘I don’t understand.’ Bognor was prepared for once to concede defeat. ‘Why is Mitten coming to see you? Lord Beckenham has nothing to do with the Board of Trade. It’s a police matter. Nothing to do with us.’

Monica reappeared with coffee which she handed to him, at the same time pressing a finger to his lips. He was beginning to sound tetchy. It was not good for him, nor for Parkinson. One of her roles in life as Mrs Bognor was to keep him calm.

‘As a matter of actual, historical fact, Bognor, Lord Beckenham was once, very briefly, secretary of state for this department. I’m bound to say it was not a happy experience for the department. Nor, I suppose, for Lord Beckenham. But that’s by the way. What I have to tell you, Bognor, is that the demise of Lord Beckenham of Penge, God rest his soul, does have something to do with the Board of Trade, and that something is you. Do I make myself clear? So enough of this shilly-shallying, and get round here PDQ.’

The phone went dead. Bognor stared at the receiver for a moment, vengefully, then returned it to its cradle and took a slug of coffee. His wife was now sitting on the end of the bed, painting her nails.

‘You never used to paint your nails before you married me,’ he said.

‘I have to employ all my feminine wiles to make sure you don’t stray.’ She smiled up at him. ‘Do you want to go back to bed?’

‘Yes, but it’s out of the question. That was Parkinson. He says the Master didn’t just die, he was killed.’

‘Gosh.’

‘You don’t sound very surprised.’

‘With you I’m never surprised. You ought to know that by now. I’d be much more surprised if you were able to go to an Oxford reunion and come back without leaving at least one corpse behind. I’m surprised you showed such moderation.’

‘You sound just like Parkinson. Besides, it’s not funny. Poor old chap’s dead, after all.’

‘Yes. Who do you think did it?’

‘Haven’t the foggiest.’

Monica put down her nail varnish bottle. ‘Darling,’ she said, ‘you’re going to have to have the foggiest before too long, because it seems to me that the murderer is almost certain to be someone you know – or knew – moderately well. A contemporary, in fact.’

‘And they’re going to ask me to help them find out who? Set a thief to catch a thief?’

‘Something like that.’

This, therefore, represented a particularly bad start to a traditionally bad day. Worse, if anything, was to come. Thanks partly to Parkinson’s telephone call and subsequent discussion with Monica, Bognor was late and had to take a taxi. This cost over three pounds, putting him in an even viler mood than the one in which he had started. Pounding through the subterranean corridors of the Board of Trade, he collided with the tea lady, upsetting hot water over himself. Arriving at his office, wiping at his trousers with a filthy handkerchief, swearing the while, he was astonished to find a smarmy individual in a pinstripe suit sitting at his desk. The interloper gazed up at him with an air of profoundly irritating self-confidence.

‘Yes?’ he said, cocking an eyebrow at him.

‘What do you mean “Yes”?’ Bognor did not normally shout, but this was an exception. ‘This is my office. This is my desk. That is my umbrella stand and that is my personal copy of Who’s Who, paid for with my own personal money. And that’s my tin of Earl Grey. Not to mention my Bitschwiller champagne poster and my Crufts’ poster. They are souvenirs.’

‘Sorry,’ said the intruder, languidly, ‘must be some mistake. I was told you were in Oxford on a case. That is, if you’re Bognor. Parkinson said you were likely to be in Oxford all week.’

‘Did he indeed?’ Bognor wondered whether to seize the man by the lapels and remove him by force, but decided against it. Not that he doubted his ability to do so, but he did not want to make a scene. Parkinson would not like it. ‘And who the hell are you anyway?’

‘My name’s Lingard.’

‘Lingard who?’

‘Lingard nobody. I’m Basil Lingard. How do you do?’

‘Not at all well. What’s your position? What are you doing here? Where are you from?’

‘Same as you, more or less. Special investigator. I’m from Teddington branch.’

‘Teddington branch?’ Bognor swallowed. Teddington, variously known as the Lilac Lubianka or Stalag Luft Thames, was a sort of SS to the Board of Trade’s Wehrmacht. They were crack troops, hard men, marked ‘for emergency use only’.

‘Yes,’ said Lingard, ‘Teddington.’ He smiled, evidently under the impression that his provenance gave him the advantage.

‘There’s obviously some mistake.’ Bognor wished he could inject a little more certainty into his voice. ‘I shall have to discuss it with Parkinson.’

‘You do that.’ Lingard grinned and brushed dust from his lapel in a gesture which was clearly intended to be symbolic.

Bognor did not smile back. ‘I most certainly will,’ he snapped, and swung on his heel.

For once he did not knock on the door of Parkinson’s office, but barged straight past his startled secretary and into the sanctum almost in one movement. He was very angry indeed. Once in Parkinson’s office, however, his nerve failed somewhat. The man did not even look up, and although Bognor recognized this as a hackneyed old Parkinson opening gambit he was still disconcerted by it.

‘Do sit down, Bognor,’ said Parkinson, continuing to write on a lined foolscap pad.

Bognor fixed the portrait of the Queen with an insolent stare. It was curiously foreign of Parkinson to keep a portrait of Her Majesty above his desk; not something that was generally done in Whitehall.

‘We leave that kind of chauvinism to the Bulgarians,’ Ian Edgware had told him at the weekend. ‘Understatement is all.’ Not for nothing was Edgware talked of as a coming man at the FO. He made the men of Munich look like ravaging Huns or those unpronounceable European émigrés who were always popping up in the White House to bolster lame duck presidents.

‘I prefer to stand,’ said Bognor, directing his remark at his Queen, who stared graciously but unblinkingly back.

‘As you wish,’ said Parkinson. ‘I’ll be with you in just one minute.’

The minute elapsed in a silence punctuated only by the scratch of Parkinson’s pen nib across the paper. At last he drew a thick, very straight line, cast the pen aside and looked up.

‘Ah,’ he said.

Bognor was not going to help by volunteering some pleasantry. He said nothing at all.

‘Something wrong, Bognor?’

‘You could say that, yes.’

‘Care to tell me what it is?’

‘I should hardly have thought that was necessary.’ Bognor thought his sarcasm sufficiently heavy for even Parkinson to catch.

‘I shouldn’t worry unduly,’ said Parkinson, spreading his mouth in what, had he been a humorous man, might have passed for a smile. ‘You may be under formal suspicion, but I scarcely think it’s a suspicion which is going to be very seriously entertained.’

Bognor frowned. He had no idea what Parkinson was talking about.

‘I’m alluding to that, that person at my desk.’

It was Parkinson’s turn to frown and look fuddled. ‘Are you sure you won’t sit?’ he inquired. And on receiving a negative answer he said that, in that case, he too would stand. When he heard this Bognor, wishing to be difficult, said that, in that case, he would sit. The standing was making him giddy.

The charade completed, Parkinson said, ‘You mean Lingard?’

‘Naturally.’

‘You’ve not met him before?’

‘No, never.’

‘Pity. He’s a good man. He may lack your, shall we say, individuality, Bognor, your unorthodox methodology, but he’s eminently sound.’

‘I’d prefer it if he went back to Teddington.’

‘But Bognor …’ Parkinson raised his eyes to the ceiling and pressed his palms together so tightly that his hands went white. ‘Don’t you understand?’

‘Perfectly.’ Bognor spoke crisply. ‘The second my back is turned you sneak some whippersnapper from Teddington into my office, plonk him down at my desk and don’t even have the courtesy to tell me about it.’

‘On a point of fact I sent you a memo about it last week. Foolish of me. I forgot that it’s not your policy to read internal memoranda.’

This was perfectly true. It was Bognor’s practice to consign them to the waste-paper basket, unperused, just like bank statements and parking summonses. If it was important, he argued with some justice, he would find out soon enough by word of mouth. If it was not important it was just bumf and should be treated as such.

‘What memo?’

For answer, Parkinson stood up and walked over to the iron-grey filing cabinet, opened a drawer, pulled out a file and extracted a carbon copy of one of the departmental memos which sprayed forth from his desk like confetti. He handed it to Bognor, who read it.

‘From HOO (SODBOT) to SI BOGNOR (SODBOT (CC & P)).’ This meant ‘From Head of Operations (Special Operations Department, Board of Trade) to Special Investigator Bognor (Special Operations Department, Board of Trade (Codes, Ciphers and Protocol)).’ The message was succinct, but clear. ‘Re your persistent requests for transfer I am pleased to tell you that subject to availability, medical, interview etc. etc. this has now gained approval. Your successor in this department will be SI Lingard of Teddington branch who will be joining us on 18th inst. and to whom you are to give every assistance during the necessary period of transition.’

‘Of course.’ Bognor bit back the smile. ‘I’d quite forgotten today was the 18th inst. Silly me. By the way, how long exactly is the “necessary period of transition”, would you say?’

Parkinson gave virtually no indication that he was either sceptical or credulous regarding his subordinate’s amnesia. His eyes suggested amusement, but the rest of his expression was frankly frigid. ‘Could be a matter of weeks … or years. It depends.’

‘Depends on what?’

‘Bognor, I have better things to do than discuss your dubious future, and there is the more immediate problem of the Master’s murder. This man Mitten will be here in a matter of minutes, and I should like to think that we are properly prepared. So may we proceed?’

‘Yes, of course.’ Bognor felt a little better now. He sat back in the regulation hard-backed, imitation leather chair and smiled up at the Queen. She was beginning to go a little sepia at the edges. Almost time for a replacement.

‘Now.’ Parkinson shuffled papers with the dexterity of the useful bridge player he was reputed to be. ‘This Mitten. We have nothing on file. What can you tell me?’

‘He was my tutor. Well, one of my tutors.’

‘Not an absolutely wonderful recommendation.’ This time Parkinson was being humorous. Marginally.

Bognor took only mild umbrage. ‘Sixteenth-century English history is his speciality. Rise and fall of the gentry. Pre-Elizabethan mainly. Knows more about Henry VIII than any man alive. He did the screenplay for that BBC series called The Other Cromwell.’

Parkinson scribbled. ‘Trustworthy?’ he inquired, not looking up. ‘Sound? Liked? Respected?’

‘Um,’ said Bognor, and hesitated. ‘Not entirely, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.’

‘Have a teeny try.’ Parkinson smiled encouragingly. He was used to dealing with Bognor. You had to treat him like a boy of about … twelve, he supposed … maybe thirteen. At least that was his experience. Occasionally he took you by surprise, but twelve or thirteen was usually about right. At least that was how Parkinson did treat him. It had never occurred to him to treat him like an adult. He doubted whether it would be very successful.

‘There’s something phoney about him,’ said Bognor, obviously trying hard. ‘For example, he is the Hon. Waldegrave Mitten, but he’s only the younger son of Ernest Mitten, the socialist food freak. Got a peerage from Attlee. Something to do with snoek.’

‘Well?’

‘Well it doesn’t, you know, make him the thirteenth son of the thirteenth earl or anything, but to see the way he dresses and the way he talks you’d think he was a Cecil or a Cavendish at the very least.’

‘Hmmm.’ Parkinson did some more scribbling.

‘Married?’

‘Divorced.’

‘Children?’

‘Not that I’ve ever heard of.’

Parkinson drummed on the desk with his fingers. ‘Popular sort of fellow, is he? With his colleagues? With his students?’

‘Quite,’ said Bognor, ‘but only quite. He works too hard at it. Too, you know, ingratiating. I suspect his pupils like him more than his colleagues.’

‘Does he have women?’

‘He takes women out. Wines and dines them. Invites them to Glyndebourne and Henley. But I’d be quite surprised if he beds them.’

‘What makes you say that?’ Parkinson asked sharply, genuine interest creeping into his voice for the first time during the interrogation.

‘Instinct.’ Bognor regretted uttering the word as soon as it had issued forth.

‘The trouble this department has had with that instinct of yours, Bognor.’ Parkinson was writing as he spoke. ‘Men have died for your instinct. You know that, don’t you?’

‘Up to a point.’

Parkinson sucked his teeth. ‘Bit of a Bertie Wooftah, is that what you’re trying to tell me? Eh? Is that it?’

‘I wouldn’t say that.’

‘Then what would you say?’

‘Bit of a nothing, sexually. But I think he’s very concerned to suggest otherwise.’

‘No reason why he should have killed off the Master himself?’

‘Not that I can think of. No, none.’

‘Ambitious, is he?’

‘Yes, pretty.’

‘He’d fancy being the Master of Apocrypha, would he?’