Red Herrings (12 page)

‘Hello!' he said. ‘It's Damian, isn't it? Simon Bognor, Board of Trade. Is Miss Carlsbad at home?'

Damian fingered the stud in his left ear lobe nervously and grinned rather sheepishly. The two met at the back gate.

‘Yeah,' said Damian.

‘Been in for a spot of therapy then?' enquired Bognor, conversationally. He had not expected to find the doctor's teddy boy son up here, and was intrigued.

‘Wot?' said Damian.

‘Therapy,' repeated Bognor. ‘I understand Miss Carlsbad is by way of being a bit of a therapist.
Freudian Traumdeutung
and all that.'

Macpherson junior looked at Bognor as if he was simple.

‘'Scuse me guv,' he said in a bizarre pastiche of cockney muddled in with rural English and BBC/public school/Oxford, ‘I'm in a bit of an 'urry.' As he uttered these curious words in accents which Bognor had never previously encountered, he made to open the gate. This meant that he was holding his large and unwieldy folder under one arm only. He might well have negotiated this tricky manoeuvre were it not for the fact that at precisely the moment that he tried to open the gate Bognor did the same. For a moment there was a hopeless ‘After you Claud, no after you Rodney' as the gate swung this way and that, and then, inevitably, the folder slipped from Damian's grasp and fell to the ground.

‘Shit!' said Damian.

‘Don't worry,' said Bognor, stooping to retrieve the contents. Very few of the pictures actually fell out of their container but each one of the dozen or so which did were unquestionably of naked females in suggestive poses. And when Bognor picked one up he was transfixed. He could not swear to the rest of her, but the face, softly pouting with shiny lips half open to reveal pearly teeth and the tip of a coral tongue, was unquestionably that of his erstwhile hostess, Samantha Contractor, for once not even in lingerie. It took Damian only a few seconds to scoop the other pictures back into the folder. Then he turned to Bognor who was staring at Samantha's full colour, full frontal picture with amazement.

‘Gimme that!' said the Herring St George teddy boy, snatching it from Bognor's grasp. And he shot off out of the yard, clutching his photographs in both hands. Moments later Bognor heard a motorbike kick into action and roar throatily down the hill towards the village.

‘Well, well,' he said, ‘I wonder what I'm supposed to make of that?'

He stood briefly, scratching his head, and then became aware that a short stout woman with an Eton crop was regarding him from the back doorway with extreme disfavour. Three snuffling pug dogs grizzled at her feet and she held a garden fork in both hands across the body rather as a soldier holds a rifle preparatory to lungeing at a sack with his bayonet.

‘Yes?' she said.

‘I'm from the Board of Trade,' said Bognor.

‘I'm sorry,' said the woman, ‘but I never buy at the door. Can't you read?' She gestured to a sign at the side of the door which said, ‘No hawkers. No circulars. Beware of the dogs.'

‘No,' said Bognor, ‘I'm not selling anything. I'm from the Board of Trade.'

‘I shall call the police if you don't go away at this moment. And I warn you that these dogs may look small but they are extremely fierce.'

‘Miss Carlsbad, I …'

‘I suppose you bought my name from American Express,' she snapped. ‘Never a day goes by without one of those insulting personalised invitations but I never expected salesmen to arrive in person. What company do you represent young man? I shall be making a full report.'

Despite the compliment of being referred to as ‘young man' Bognor felt, in all conscience, that he was too old to be treated like this even by stout Freudian ladies in brogues and Eton crops. He produced his Board of Trade identity card, advanced on her and flourished it under her nose. The pugs growled liquidly, like canine garglers, but made no move to attack.

‘My name is Simon Bognor of the Board of Trade,' he said, ‘and I am investigating the death of Mr Brian Wilmslow.'

Miss Carlsbad read the card and then looked up at him, beaming. ‘But of course you are, dear boy.' Her mood seemed to have undergone a dramatic transformation. ‘Why ever didn't you say?'

Bognor did not know the correct response to this. It was certainly not in any of the training manuals. There seemed no point in arguing about it. So he merely smiled vapidly and asked if he might have a quiet word. It seemed, suddenly, that there was nothing the lady would like more. She prodded her dogs indoors with her fork, and seizing Bognor by the arm, propelled him in after them.

‘What a lot of fuss about a VAT inspector!' she exclaimed. ‘I've already had a very handsome policeman asking questions. Rather dull questions it has to be said, which was a pity when he was so good looking.' She kicked at one of the pugs. ‘Go away Randolph, sir!' she exclaimed. Then turned back to Bognor. ‘Would you like to sit outside by the pool or indoors?'

Bognor said he'd like to sit out by the pool as it was such a lovely day and she told him to take off his jacket and would he like a glass of something cold and he did say his name was Bognor didn't he and did that mean that everybody made the same boring old remark about George V's famous last words. Bognor took off his jacket and said ‘Yes please', ‘Yes' and ‘Yes'.

‘That's settled then,' said Miss Carlsbad enigmatically, when they were seated in slatted chaise longues by the side of a new kidney-shaped swimming pool by the conservatory. ‘Now how can I help you? I have to tell you I hardly knew Mr Wilmslow. He called only once and asked exceedingly silly questions about money.'

‘That was his job,' said Bognor, sipping a very welcome glass of iced lemonade which Miss Carlsbad claimed to have made herself.

Miss Carlsbad took the spectacles from the top of her pepper and salt Eton crop and moved them to the end of her slightly squashed almost pugilistic nose. They had thick lenses and were secured to her neck by thick black elastic.

‘I guessed it,' she said and chirruped with bird-like laughter. ‘Money, money, money. But you and I are not going to talk about money Mr Bognor, although I would prefer it if you changed your name. We are going to talk about death. Death.' She rolled the word around her lemon barley water as if by repeating it she might actually kill someone or something. She seemed peeved when no corpse materialised.

‘Yes,' said Bognor. ‘Do you have any idea at all why Mr Wilmslow should have been killed?'

Miss Carlsbad scrutinised him for a moment. Then she said, ‘I don't call that much of a question. Ask me another.'

Bognor grinned. ‘Do you know why anyone should want to kill Mr Wilmslow?' he tried.

‘Better,' she said. ‘I'd say that anyone who goes round asking impertinent questions about people's financial affairs was asking for trouble. That's reasonable enough wouldn't you say? Ask me another.'

‘Would you have killed him – given the opportunity?'

Miss Carlsbad laughed again. The same fluting birdsong. ‘That's a very bold question for so early in our interview. But more interesting than being asked what one was doing last night and having to answer that one was watching television with the dogs and then going to bed with a good book. Well, not such a good book I'm afraid. I was under the misapprehension that it was about a parrot but it isn't at all. Gerald Durrell is quite one of my favourite authors, and I'm fond of birds. I may build an aviary one day when my boat comes in.' She beamed.

‘You didn't answer the question.'

‘What was it?'

‘Would you have killed Mr Wilmslow given the opportunity.'

‘I think that question is both hypothetical and leading and so if you don't mind I prefer not to answer it. Pass.'

Bognor drank deep from his glass and frowned. This sort of interrogation was so difficult. In the books he would have taken Miss Carlsbad down to the basement of the Board of Trade, injected her with some truth serum and hit her about with an electric cattle prod. If you believed the books the British were no better than the KGB or even the Argies. In Bognor's experience this was not the case. He was barely allowed even to ask a trick question. As for hitting anybody about …

‘Miss Carlsbad, it may be that Mr Wilmslow's death was accidental. On the face of it, it looks as if it might have been. Nevertheless he was in the course of conducting some very delicate enquiries in Herring St George and therefore my colleagues and I do naturally have some suspicions.'

‘Just what your colleague said, Mr Bognor,' Miss Carlsbad looked sympathetic. ‘I quite understand.'

‘VAT inspectors have considerable powers,' said Bognor. ‘They can search your house and take away all your papers without so much as a “by your leave”. Prising out people's guilty secrets is their stock in trade.'

Miss Carlsbad nodded, a little primly this time.

‘In view of what happened to Mr Wilmslow,' he said, ‘I think perhaps we should stop beating about the bush.' He paused as a heavy vehicle which sounded like a tank transporter but was probably a mere combine harvester thundered up the hill drowning speech as effectively as Concorde on its Heathrow approach over his home in west London. ‘In other words,' he said, leaning forward and speaking with that slight air of melodrama which – it seemed to him – was part of Miss Carlsbad's stock in trade, ‘what exactly is
your
guilty secret?'

One of the pugs pushed at Bognor's trouser leg and he flinched as he felt the clammy little nose on his calf. ‘Get off, Winston!' said Miss Carlsbad kicking at the dog halfheartedly. ‘Now that, if I may say so Mr Bognor, is an exceedingly leading question. You don't really expect me to answer it do you?'

‘Listen, Miss Carlsbad,' said Bognor, in the frank, matter of fact, I'm only trying to help, tone which he often adopted with older women, ‘if you have a guilty secret and by “guilty” I only mean something which you personally feel embarrassed by then there are two ways in which I can discover it. One is by you telling me straight out and the other is by an exhaustive and exhausting series of enquiries which will involve searches and interviews with your bank manager and heaven knows what else besides. Now I draw my salary no matter which course we adopt so it's really no skin off my nose. But in your case …' He allowed the unpleasant prospects to hang in the air, all the more threatening for their lack of precision.

‘When you say “guilty secret”, Mr Bognor, I wonder if you could be a little more precise.' Miss Carlsbad smiled frostily. Bognor was glad, suddenly, that he was not a patient of hers. No fun at all to be lying on her couch with her beady Freudian eyes boring into you. He wondered what the Cook islanders had made of her.

‘That's rather a chicken and egg question. If I knew what the secret was I could be more specific. Since I don't – yet – I'm compelled to be vague. Sorry.'

‘Then I'm not sure I can help.'

Bognor sighed. ‘Listen,' he said again. ‘As far as we are able to determine at this moment in time …' Why was he speaking like a Wilmslow he asked himself irritably? It was not in character. It must be the effect of Miss Carlsbad. ‘As far as I can see,' he corrected himself, ‘you have two declared sources of income. One is from your books and one is from your therapy. Now I doubt very much that the income which appears in your VAT returns could possibly be accounted for by any therapy you do and I'm absolutely certain it can't be explained by the royalties from Freudian whatsit in the Cook Islands.'

‘Traumdeutung,'
said Miss Carlsbad.

‘
Traumdeutung,'
agreed Bognor. He waved his hand to encompass the pool, the conservatory, the gardens, Miss Carlsbad's rather beautiful house. ‘You can't tell me two volumes of South Pacific psychiatry …'

‘…ology,' said Miss Carlsbad.

‘…ology,' he said testily, ‘paid for all this.'

‘You want to know where the money comes from,' said Miss Carlsbad.

‘In a word, yes.'

‘Well,' Miss Carlsbad stared into the limpid waters of her kidney-shaped swimming pool, ‘it makes a change from being asked where I spent last night. You'd better come inside.'

They entered through french windows and passed through a long airy drawing room furnished in various shades of cream. He noticed a couple of signed Pipers, a Hockney and something that looked suspiciously like a blue period Picasso. In one corner caught perfectly by the morning sun was a bronze Boadicea which had a definite air of Frink and if he didn't know what it must have cost he could have sworn the small entwined couple on the coffee table surrounded by
Interiors
and
House and Garden
and
Country Life
was a Henry Moore. He was impressed, and even more curious.

After that there was a dining room with a suite which looked as if it was at least school of Sheraton decorated with Venetian scenes which were at least school of Guardi; then a Poggenpohl kitchen; a hall and, at last, their destination. This was in the original part of the house. It was a beamed room with bookcases all round the walls except for the fireplace (full of bright flowers dried the previous summer) and a bread oven in one corner. On the desk top was a very new IBM personal computer.

‘He's transformed my life that little fellow,' said Miss Carlsbad. ‘I used to dictate into a machine like Ba Cartland but I never really liked it. It was fast but it was soulless. I like to see the words on screen or paper. Somehow they're not real otherwise.'

Bognor was foxed. He looked up at the shelves. Freud, Jung, Adler – volume after volume in what looked like original editions – and then ranged alongside book after book of what critics and commentators had written about Freud, Jung and Adler.

‘Well,' said Miss Carlsbad, ‘this is it. You're very privileged. It's rare indeed for anyone else to penetrate my little word factory.'