The Great Pursuit (27 page)

Frensic made his next move. He found a flower shop and went inside. Twenty minutes later two
dozen red roses were delivered to the Bogden Typing Service with a note which said simply, 'To
Miss Bogden from an Admirer.' Frensic had thought of adding 'ardent' but had decided against it.
Two dozen expensive red roses argued an ardency by themselves. Miss Bogden or more properly Mrs
Bogden, and the reversion indicated a romantic direction to that lady's thoughts, would supply
the adjective. Frensic wandered round Oxford, had coffee in the Ship and lunch back at the
Randolph. Then, gauging that enough time had elapsed for Miss Bogden to have digested the
implications of the roses, he went to Professor Facit's room and phoned the Agency. As before,
Miss Bogden answered. Frensic took a deep breath, swallowed and presently heard himself asking
with an agony of unaffected coyness if she would do him the honour and privilege of having dinner
with him at the Elizabeth. There was a sibilant pause before Miss Bogden replied.

'Do I know you?' she asked archly. Frensic squirmed.

'An admirer,' he murmured.

'Oo,' said Miss Bogden. There was another pause while she observed the proprieties of
hesitation.

'Roses,' said Frensic garrottedly.

'Are you quite sure? I mean it's rather unusual...'

Frensic silently agreed that it was. 'It's just that...' he began and then took the plunge, 'I
haven't had the nerve before and...' The garrotte tightened.

Miss Bogden on the other hand breathed sympathy. 'Better late than never,' she said
softly.

'That's what I thought,' said Frensic who didn't

'And you did say the Elizabeth?'

'Yes,' said Frensic, 'shall we say eight in the bar?'

'How will I know you?'

'I know you,' said Frensic and giggled involuntarily. Miss Bogden took it as a compliment.

'You haven't told me your name.'

Frensic hesitated. He couldn't use his own and Facit was in Pause. It had to be someone else.
'Corkadale,' he muttered finally, 'Geoffrey Corkadale.'

'Not the Geoffrey Corkadale?' said Miss Bogden.

'Yes,' stammered Frensic hoping to hell that Geoffrey's epicene reputation hadn't reached her
ears. It hadn't. Miss Bogden cooed.

'Well in that case...' She left the rest unsaid.

'Till eight,' said Frensic.

'Till eight,' echoed Miss Bogden. Frensic put the phone down and sat limply on the bed.

Then he lay down and had a long nap. He woke at four and went downstairs. There was one last
thing to do. He didn't know Miss Bogden and there must be no mistake. He made his way to Fenet
Street and stationed himself in the church. He was there at five thirty when the trail of awful
women came out of the office. Frensic sighed with relief. None of them was carrying a bunch of
red roses. Finally the large woman appeared and locked the door. She clutched roses to her ample
bosom and hurried off down the street. Frensic emerged from the church and watched her go. Miss
Bogden was definitely well-preserved. From her permed head to her pink shoes by way of a
turquoise costume there was a tastelessness about the woman that was almost inspired. Frensic
went back to the hotel and had a stiff gin. Then he had another, took a bath and rehearsed
various approaches that seemed likely to elicit from Miss Bogden the name of the author of
Pause.

On the other side of Oxford, Cynthia Bogden prepared herself for the evening with the same
thoroughness with which she did everything. It had been some years since her divorce and to be
asked to dine at the Elizabeth by a publisher augured well. So did the roses, carefully arranged
in a vase, and the nervousness of her admirer. There had been nothing brash about the voice on
the telephone. It had been an educated voice and Corkadales were most respectable publishers. And
in any case Cynthia Bogden was in need of admirers. She selected her most seductive costume,
sprayed herself in various places with various aerosols, fixed her face and set out prepared to
be wined, dined and, not to put too fine a point on it, fucked. She entered the foyer of the
Elizabeth exuding an uncertain hauteur and was somewhat startled when a short baggy man sidled up
to her and took her hand.

'Miss Bogden,' he murmured, 'your fond admirer.'

Miss Bogden looked down at her fond admirer dubiously. She was still looking down at him half
an hour and three pink gins later as they made their way to the table Frensic had reserved in the
farthest corner of the restaurant. He held her chair for her and then, conscious that perhaps he
hadn't come as far up to her expectations as he might have done, threw himself into the part of
fond admirer with a desperate gallantry and inventiveness that surprised them both.

'I first glimpsed you a year ago when I was up for a conference,' he told her having ordered
the wine waiter to bring them a bottle of not too dry champagne, 'I saw you in the street and
followed you to your office.'

'You should have introduced yourself,' said Miss Bogden.

Frensic blushed convincingly. 'I was too shy,' he murmured, 'and besides I thought you
were...'

'Married?' said Miss Bogden helpfully.

'Exactly,' said Frensic, 'or shall we say attached. A woman as...er...beautiful...er...'

It was Miss Bogden's turn to blush. Frensic plunged on. 'I was overcome. Your charm, your air
of quiet reserve, your...how shall I put it...' There was no need to put it. While Frensic
burrowed into an avocado pear, Cynthia Bogden savoured a shrimp. Baggy this little man might be
but he was clearly a gentleman and a man of the world. Champagne at twelve pounds a bottle was a
sufficient indication of his honourable intentions. When Frensic ordered a second, Miss Bogden
protested feebly.

'Special occasion,' said Frensic wondering if he wasn't overdoing things a bit, 'and besides
we have something to celebrate.'

'We do?'

'Our meeting for one thing,' said Frensic, 'and the success of a mutual venture.'

'Mutual venture?' said Miss Bogden, her thoughts veering sharply to the altar.

'Something we both had a hand in,' continued Frensic, 'I mean we don't usually publish that
sort of book but I must say it's been a great success.'

Miss Bogden's thoughts turned away from the altar. Frensic helped himself to more champagne.
'We're a very traditional publishing house,' he said, 'but Pause O Men for the Virgin is what the
public demands these days.'

'It was rather awful, wasn't it?' said Miss Bogden, 'I typed it myself you know.'

'Really?' said Frensic.

'Well I didn't like my girls having to do it and the author was so peculiar about it.'

'Was he?'

'I had to phone up ever so often,' said Miss Bogden. 'But you don't want to hear about
that.'

Frensic did but Miss Bogden was adamant. 'We mustn't spoil our first evening talking shop,'
she said and in spite of more champagne and a large Cointreau all Frensic's attempts to steer the
conversation back to the subject failed. Miss Bogden wanted to hear about Corkadales. The name
seemed to appeal to her.

'Why don't you come back to my place?' she asked as they walked beside the river after dinner.
'For a nightcap.'

'That's frightfully kind of you,' said Frensic prepared to pursue his quarry to the bitter
end. 'Are you sure I wouldn't be imposing on you?'

'I'd like that,' said Miss Bogden with a giggle and took his arm, 'to be imposed on by you.'
She steered him to the carpark and a light blue MG. Frensic gaped at the car. It did not accord
with his notion of what a forty-five-year-old head of a typing bureau should drive and besides he
was unused to bucket seats. Frensic squeezed in and was forced to allow Miss Bogden to fasten his
safety belt. Then they drove rather faster than he liked along the Banbury Road and into a
hinterland of semi-detached houses. Miss Bogden lived at 33 Viewpark Avenue, a mixture of
pebbledash and Tudor. She pulled up in front of the garage. Frensic fumbled for the catch of his
safety belt but Cynthia Bogden was there before him and leaning expectantly. Frensic nerved
himself for the inevitable and took her in his arms. It was a long kiss and a passionate one,
made even less enjoyable for Frensic by the presence of the gear lever in his right kidney. By
the time they had finished and climbed out of the car he was having third and fourth thoughts
about the whole enterprise. But there was too much at stake to falter now. Frensic followed her
into the house. Miss Bogden switched on the hall light.

'Would you like a drinkie?' she asked.

'No,' said Frensic with a fervour that came largely from the conviction that she would offer
him cooking sherry. Miss Bogden took his refusal as a compliment and once more they grappled,
this time in the company of a hat stand. Then taking his hand she led the way upstairs.

'The you-know-what's in there,' she said helpfully. Frensic staggered into the bathroom and
shut the door. He spent several minutes staring at his reflection in the mirror and wondering why
it was that only the most predatory women found him attractive and wishing to hell they didn't
and then, having promised himself that he would never again be rude about Geoffrey Corkadale's
preferences, he came out and went into the bedroom. Cynthia Bogden's bedroom was pink. The
curtains were pink, the carpet pink, the padded and quilted bedhead pink and the lampshade beside
it pink. And finally there was a pink Frensic wrestling with the intricacies of Cynthia Bogden's
pink underwear while muttering pinkish endearments in her pink ear.

An hour later Frensic was no longer pink. Against the pink sheets he was puce and having
palpitations to boot. His efforts to get into her good books among other less savoury things had
done something to his circulatory system and Miss Bogden's sexual skills, nurtured in a
justifiably broken marriage and gleaned, Frensic suspected, from some frightful manual on how to
make sex an adventure, had led him to contortions which would have defied the imaginations of his
most sexually obsessed authors. As he lay panting, alternately thanking God it was all over and
wondering if he was going to have a coronary, Cynthia bent her permed head over him.

'Satisfied?' she asked. Frensic stared at her and nodded frantically. Any other answer would
have invited suicide.

'And now we'll have a little drinkie,' she said and skipping to Frensic's amazement lightly
off the bed she went downstairs and returned with a bottle of whisky. She sat down on the edge of
the bed and poured two tots.

'To us,' she said. Frensic drank deeply and held out his glass for more. Cynthia smiled and
handed him the bottle.

In New York Hutchmeyer was having problems too. They were of a different sort to Frensic's but
since they involved three and a half million dollars the effect was much the same.

'What do you mean they aren't prepared to pay?' he yelled at MacMordie who had reported that
the insurance company were holding back on compensation. 'They got to pay. I mean why should I
insure my property if they aren't going to pay when it's arsonized?'

'I don't know,' said MacMordie, 'I'm just telling you what Mr Synstrom said.'

'Get me Synstrom,' yelled Hutchmeyer. MacMordie got Synstrom. He came up to Hutchmeyer's
office and sat blandly regarding the great publisher through steel-rimmed glasses.

'Now I don't know what you're trying to get at ' Hutchmeyer began.

'The truth,' said Mr Synstrom. 'Just the plain truth.'

'That's okay by me,' said Hutchmeyer, 'just so long as you pay up when you've got it.'

The thing is, Mr Hutchmeyer, we know how that fire started.'

'How?'

'Someone deliberately lit the house with a can of gasolene. And that someone was your
wife...'

'You know that?'

'Mr Hutchmeyer, we've got analysts who can figure out the nail varnish your wife was wearing
when she opened that safe and took out that quarter of a million dollars you had stashed
there.'

Hutchmeyer eyed him suspiciously. 'You can?' he said.

'Sure. And we know too she loaded that cruiser of yours with fifty gallons of gasolene. She
and that Piper. He carried the cans down and we've got their prints.'

'What the hell would she do that for?'

'We thought you might have the answer to that one,' said Mr Synstrom.

'Me? I was out in the middle of the goddam bay. How should I know what was going on back at my
house?'

'We wouldn't know that, Mr Hutchmeyer. Just seems a kind of coincidence you go sailing with
Miss Futtle in a storm and your wife is setting out to burn your house down and fake her own
death.'

Hutchmeyer paled. 'Fake her own death? Did you say...'

Mr Synstrom nodded. 'We call it the Stonehouse syndrome in the trade,' he said. 'It happens
every once in a while someone wants the world to think they're dead so they disappear and leave
their nearest and dearest to claim the insurance. Now you've put in a claim for three and a half
million dollars and we've got no proof your wife isn't alive some place.'

Hutchmeyer stared miserably at him. He was considering the awful possibility that Baby was
still around and with her she was carrying all that evidence of his tax evasions, bribes and
illegal dealings that could send him to prison. By comparison the forfeiture of three and a half
million dollars was peanuts.

'I just can't believe she'd do a thing like that,' he said finally. 'I mean we had a happy
marriage. No problems. I gave her everything she asked for...'

'Like young men?' said Mr Synstrom.

'No, not like young men,' shouted Hutchmeyer, and felt his pulse. 'Now this Piper writer was a
young man,' said Mr Synstrom, 'and from what we've heard Mrs Hutchmeyer had a taste for...'

'Are you accusing my wife of...My God, I'll...'

'We're not accusing anyone of anything, Mr Hutchmeyer. Like I've said we're trying to get at
the truth.'

'And are you telling me that my wife, my own dear little Baby, filled that cruiser with
gasolene and deliberately tried to murder me by aiming it at my yacht in the middle of '