Clubbed to Death (6 page)

‘ ’Ere we are,’ he said. ‘You’re in with young Sunil. Room seventeen on the fifth floor.’

‘So what do I do, Mr Ramsbum?’ asked Amiss respectfully. ‘Take the lift to the fifth and then…’

‘Lift!’ said Ramsbum. ‘Lift! You’re a servant. The committee don’t ’old with servants using the lift.’

‘But I’ve got a very heavy suitcase, Mr Ramsbum.’

‘Well, you’ll just have to hump it up the stairs as best you can, won’t you. The back stairs, that is. The gentlemen wouldn’t like to have the likes of you going up the front stairs out of uniform.’

A red haze swam in front of Amiss’s eyes, but he remembered the dead Trueman and waited until it had passed. ‘Very well, then, Mr Ramsbum. So it’s straight up the back stairs. Five flights?’

‘More like eight,’ said Ramsbum. ‘Anyway, you can’t miss it. But mind you go quietly and don’t wake any of the gentlemen. Colonel Fagg, he goes mad if anyone wakes him up. Comes out of his room like a rocket and you’re out on your ear.’

‘I’ll be careful, Mr Ramsbum. Thank you for the advice,’ said Amiss levelly. Picking up his suitcase he headed towards the back staircase.

He had reached the top of the fourth carpeted flight of stairs when he realised he was now in the members’ bedroom corridor. A wooden board entitled ‘Bedroom Orders’, with slots for names, was on the wall to his left. He recognised the names of Blenkinsop, Fagg and Glastonbury and was interested to learn that the three witnesses to Trueman’s last moments all appeared to live in the club. As he tiptoed to the next flight he was distracted by a dreadful howling sound, worse than Plutarch at her most aggrieved. It was immediately succeeded by snorting and choking, a silence, then a repetition of the howl. Amiss stood aghast. Suddenly the sequence was interrupted by a crash, an oath and an answering oath, under cover of which Amiss began to climb silently and wearily up the next staircase. He made a mental note to find out who was the snorer and who the complainant; certainly the latter would have a very sound motive for murder.

There was no longer any carpet underfoot – merely drugget, a material he recalled from nineteenth-century novels dealing with servants’ quarters. However, it ran out in its turn as he reached the next storey, occupied, Sunil had told him, by upper servants. The next lot of stairs were very narrow and sported bare boards. He climbed them sadly until finally he reached a low corridor, which many years ago had been decorated in dark brown: the paint had been flaking off for years. A dim light enabled him to find room seventeen. It was locked. Amiss tapped softly but there was no answer. He felt tempted to cry but that wasn’t going to solve his immediate problem. Instead, he sat down on his suitcase and fell asleep.

An hour later he was awakened by Sunil, who unlocked the door and ushered him in apologetically. ‘Sorry, I was in the library. Didn’t Ramsbum give you a key?’

‘No. Should he have?’

‘He really is such a miserable old bastard. Oh, well, you’ll just have to get it off him tomorrow. Meanwhile, welcome to our happy home.’

Amiss had by now become so accustomed to the horrors of ffeatherstonehaugh’s that the appearance of their bedroom came as no surprise. It contained two narrow iron bedsteads furnished with dingy bed-linen and grey army blankets. The tiny window had dusty, sagging black curtains which he guessed must be black-out curtains from the Second World War. There was one small woodworm-infested wardrobe, which could be reached only by squeezing with great difficulty past a huge, dirty-pink chest of drawers and a marble washstand with a big enamel jug and basin. The floor had mottled dark brown lino but sported an unexpectedly cheerful Afghan rug. Equally cheerful was the large, garish picture on the wall of a jovial elephant wearing orange pantaloons, an elaborately jewelled headdress and several necklaces: his four arms were festooned with bangles and bracelets. Attractive young women fanned him as he simultaneously read, wrote, waved an axe and held a flower aloft.

Sunil saw the direction of Amiss’s gaze. ‘This is Ganesh, ’ he said. ‘He’s my only friend here. He is a Hindu god of great
joie de vivre
.’

‘I presume that neither he nor the rug were provided by the management,’ said Amiss.

‘You presume rightly. Now to the division of space. That’s your bed on the left and you can have the two bottom drawers of the chest.’

Amiss heaved his suitcase on to his bed, unlocked it and began to unpack.

‘Why is Ganesh an elephant? Or do I mean, why is an elephant a god?’

‘Because Shiva, his father, who’d been away for a long time, found him in the wife’s bedroom on his return and assumed that he was her toyboy. Shiva is a bad-tempered chap – not for nothing is he known as “the Destroyer”. He chopped his son’s head off on the spot. Mother was furious and demanded the situation be put to rights. The only way that Father could do this was by giving his son the head of the first living creature he met, which happened to be an elephant. However, that handicap never held Ganesh back. He made the most of things.’

‘Are you religious, Sunil?’

‘Anything but. Don’t worry. You’ll be spared the flowers and the incense-burning and general carry-on. But some aspects of my family religion and culture appeal to me. Here, let me help. It’s very hard to get clothes into this wardrobe until you get the knack.’ Deftly he inserted Amiss’s suit and sports jacket into the minuscule space.

Amiss finished flinging the rest of his belongings into the allocated drawers and lay down on his bed. ‘So why are you in a dump like this?’

‘I was about to ask you the same question.’

‘I want to be a poet.’

‘I want to be a novelist, but first I want to get a degree and ffeatherstonehaugh’s makes that possible.’

‘Do you drink?’ Amiss took out of his pocket the hip-flask that Pooley had thrust upon him as he left. ‘Whisky, that is.’

‘Rarely and very little,’ said Sunil, ‘for pragmatic reasons. However, I’ll make an exception in this case,’ and he accepted the hip-flask, took a swig and returned it.

‘So are you actually at university?’

‘Yes, indeed.’ Sunil began to undress. ‘I’m taking a full-time degree at London University. I do nothing except work here, go to lectures and study.’

‘Couldn’t you get a grant?’

‘I didn’t qualify. My father earns too much money and he was not prepared to subsidise me to do what he thought was a ridiculous waste of time.’

‘But I thought Indians were always terribly keen on education for their children?’

‘My father would have paid for years and years to have me become a doctor, a lawyer or an engineer. He was appalled that I wanted to study English and history, both of which he thought not only pointless but a danger to my identity. He thinks I’m Indian because he is. I think I’m English because I was born here.’

‘Have you fallen out over it?’

‘Yes, for the moment I’ve been cut off. And that’s a relief to me really. It saves me getting involved in all that endless round of relatives. And when I get a first-class degree, which I hope to do, I’ll be forgiven because I’ll bring status to the family. There will then be an outbreak of peace until I refuse to get involved in an arranged marriage.’ He shrugged. ‘I don’t let it get me down. I regard the situation as part of the normal growing-pains of an immigrant Asian family.’

‘You’re very philosophical.’ Amiss took off his jacket.

‘Comes of being a Hindu. Even a lapsed one. What about you?’

‘Well, I have a degree, but I have no idea what career I want, if any, and for the moment I’m taking undemanding jobs and writing poetry.’

Amiss hated lying to this nice youth: he changed the subject rapidly.

‘Sunil, do I gather from that jug and bowl that we wash in our bedrooms with cold water?’

‘Not necessarily. We have a choice. On this floor there is one bathroom, but there are twenty of us. The good news is that there are two lavatories. So I wash in the morning here and bathe when the others have all gone out. You can have the cold water here in the bedroom tomorrow morning if you like. I’ll be getting up early anyway. I’ve got an essay to finish.’

‘But how can you get to your lectures? Surely they clash with work.’

‘Because Gooseneck is actually very decent to me.’

‘Well, if he’s so decent,’ said Amiss, as he donned the pyjamas he had specially bought for the purposes of room-sharing, ‘why does he allow us to be fed so badly?’

‘That’s nothing to do with Gooseneck. That’s the provender committee. They decide on all the menus for members, guests and staff alike. ’ He got into bed.

‘Well how can a whole committee be composed of shits?’

‘That’s not difficult in ffeatherstonehaugh’s. But this is a special case. The chairman is that old brute Fagg.’

‘What does he look like?’

‘He’s the one who’s always covered in snuff. You can tell where he’s been by the trail. And his pockets clank with snuffboxes. He carries about fourteen of them. Occupies most of his day really, pulling them all out, sniffing at what’s inside, choosing the one for the moment. That’s when he’s not stuffing himself with breakfast, lunch and dinner and occasionally calling a meeting of his cronies to think of more ways of misusing the club funds and treating the servants as he believes they should be treated.’

‘But doesn’t the chairman of the club object?’

‘Very tricky business politically. Would you mind turning the light out, Robert? I’m knackered. A new chairman came in a few months ago. By accident they chose someone who was half-way human. And he brought in a secretary who was at least three-quarters human. They were trying to introduce changes and then the secretary goes and kills himself and we’re back with the Commander, God help us.’

Amiss switched off the light and climbed into bed.

‘Do you have a copy of the constitution and rules of the club?’ he asked. ‘I’d like to see them – just out of curiosity.’

‘Sorry,’ said Sunil. ‘They wouldn’t be available to servants. Anyway, I use this place as a convenience. I haven’t got time to get curious about it. If you want to dig the dirt your best hope is old Gooseneck, especially if he finds you attractive. Goodnight.’

‘Goodnight,’ said Amiss. ‘And, of course, goodnight to Ganesh. He seems to be the sanest bloke in this place, next to us.’

‘You ain’t seen nothing yet,’ said Sunil.

7

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‘How did you sleep, Robert?’

Amiss opened his eyes to see Sunil standing over him looking solicitous.

‘Fitfully,’ said Amiss gloomily. ‘I think this is the hardest bed I ever slept on in my whole life.’

‘Ah! Then you obviously didn’t go to public school like I did. The great advantage of such institutions is that they fit you for prison conditions. I can sleep anywhere for just as long as I’ve got. Did I snore?’

‘Well, a bit.’

‘Oh, dear. I was afraid of that. Sorry. The remedy is quite straightforward.’ Sunil walked over to the far side of his bed, searched among the books that stood in piles in the corner and selected half a dozen paperbacks. ‘Here you are, Robert. Just toss one of those at me any time I snore and I’ll turn on my side and shut up. Something else I learned at school.’

‘You’re very kind, Sunil.’

‘We need to be kind to each other. Nobody else in this place will be. But now, come on. It’s time you got up. Breakfast in twenty minutes.’

‘Oh, shit! And I’m on duty immediately afterwards.’

‘Aha! You’re doing breakfast, are you?Well, I think you’re going to find that an interesting experience. I’ve got the morning off. I’m going to lectures.’

Amiss jumped out of bed. He queued miserably outside the nearer of the two occupied lavatories for five minutes until it was vacated by a depressed-looking oriental, washed and shaved unhappily in cold water, put on his ridiculous uniform and ran down to breakfast.

Gooseneck presided over a table of thirty, one-third of whom were female. All except Gooseneck, Amiss and one of the girls were in ordinary clothes, and having looked at what was available for breakfast Amiss wondered why they had bothered turning up at all. Then he realised that they were presumably so poor that even a choice of cornflakes or lumpy porridge, along with underdone toast and margarine, had the overwhelming attraction of being free. He sat down beside the uniformed girl who introduced herself as Elsa from Hamburg. Unlike most of their colleagues she had fluent English, and they chatted politely as they ate. At five to eight Gooseneck took Elsa and Amiss aside for a briefing.

‘I normally try to avoid having two new people on duty simultaneously,’ he said. ‘However, on this occasion I thought it not unreasonable to take a risk. You both need training and you both speak English. It is, I can assure you, a rare event in this establishment to have not one but two newcomers with such a qualification. As you will have noticed, most of your colleagues possess an English vocabulary of no more than a dozen words.’

Amiss wondered vaguely why ffeatherstonehaugh’s head waiter should speak like a prep-school master of the 1950s. Gooseneck noticed his look of preoccupation. ‘Pay attention, dear boy. Now here are the key instructions. You serve from the left, and you lose no opportunity to call the old bastards “sir”.’ He paused, bowed towards Elsa and said, ‘I do beg your pardon. You try to keep them happy, use your common sense and come to me if you have any problems. Elsa, you will deal with tables one to seven; Robert, you take the remainder. I will help each of you according to the pressure you are under. I will also relieve you, Robert, at eight-thirty, when you take Mr Glastonbury’s tray upstairs to his bedroom. Come to me then for instructions.’

As they moved towards the green baize door he added as an afterthought, ‘Oh, and Elsa, if anyone asks you what nationality you are, say you’re Swiss.’

‘Why? I don’t want to say I’m Swiss. I’m proud of being German.’

‘Be guided by me, my dear girl. If you wish to keep your job, Swiss is what you need to be. Oh, and one thing more, Elsa. I have given you the section of the room in which Mr Fishbane does not sit. Always try to avoid him.’