The Paper Chase (5 page)

At half past four that day he was walking down the weedy drive to catch the bus into Murdstone when Hedda ground to a stop beside him. “Off to the village? Give you a lift.”

“Thanks. I’m going to Murdstone really. You aren’t going there?”

“No, just shopping. Some of us have to work for a living. Tired of country life already? Or have you got a piece of skirt in Murdstone?”

“I’ve got to see somebody, but I wouldn’t mind having a pair of jeans there. What about it? Meet me for dinner at seven-thirty?”

“Never been known to refuse an invitation. I’ll see you in the American Bar of the Grand Marine. You can’t miss it, pretty well the only hotel in the place.” In a different voice she added: “You know, this is a hell of a thing to happen to Jeremy. I shouldn’t be surprised if it broke him up. You don’t care about that?”

“After all, he hasn’t saved me from juvenile delinquency.”

She stopped so abruptly that he bumped his head against the windscreen. Her face looked straight forward. “Here you are. Bus stop.”

“What’s the matter?”

“You don’t take me seriously, do you? You think I was making it up last night. You can make all the smart cracks you like about Uncle Jeremy, but the fact is he’s got more humanity in his little finger than you have in your whole body.” The car shot away down Bramley Village Street, belching smoke. Applegate was left reflecting that under the stress of emotion people almost always talk in clichés.

Five minutes later a green bus came along. In it he drove along curling country lanes. As they approached the sea the fields grew meaner, barer, slightly shaly. Wind whipped the small trees.

“Lovely country,” said the conductor without apparent irony. Applegate weakly agreed. “Nothing to touch the Marsh sheep. Send ’em all over the world. Hardy they are, real hardy.”

In the middle distance a square tower appeared, faintly reminiscent of the campanile of Westminster Cathedral. “What’s that?”

“Murdstone water tower. Ain’t been used as that for years. Someone living there now. Queer sort of home, but they say you can see for miles from the top. Here’s Murdstone.”

They went down a long avenue of pines which ended abruptly in a narrow street full of glossy-fronted, neon-lighted shops. “High Street,” said the conductor. From the High Street they emerged into a decaying square. Through a gap slate-grey sea could be glimpsed. “Town Hall Square. Far as we go. You staying here?”

“Only an hour or two.”

“One of the loveliest little places on the Kent coast. Ideal sands for children, golf walks –”

“And all the Marsh scenery.”

“That’s right. ’Course it’s a bit nippy now, but healthy, mind you.”

“Where’s the Grand Marine?”

“Hundred yards along the front. Big grey place, you can’t miss it. One of the best hotels in Kent.”

“I’m sure.” On the sea front he was met by a wind off the sea that stung his cheeks and seemed to cut right through him. His raincoat clung tightly to his body. He crossed over to the sea wall and watched grey-crested waves surge angrily up the beach. How intolerably untidy, how nearly vacuous, he thought, the operations of nature appear to the unbeliever.

The thought distressed him. “Really,” he said aloud, “I must stop thinking like a character in
Where Dons Delight.
Eleventh rate Huxley just won’t do. Pull yourself together, Applegate.” He marched with a brisk, soldierly step, hampered a little by the fact that the wind blew him sideways, along to the Grand Marine Hotel, crossed the road, marched up its wide front steps and pushed open the swing doors.

His immediate impression was of emptiness. Nobody sat at the reception desk, there was nobody in the door to the left marked “Office,” in the door to the right marked “Lounge” burned a feeble glimmer of fire like that of a deserted camp in a Western film. But where were the white men, in what quarter of this great Victorian grey elephant of a hotel prairie were they defending themselves against the assaults of Sioux chambermaids? Returning to the reception hall Applegate struck two imperious blows on the desk bell. The sound rang round the hall resultlessly. This cannot be a hotel, he said to himself, there is no smell of cooking.

He pushed determinedly on. Behind a door marked “Residents’ Lounge” a stiff, dark figure sat in a large leather chair before an electric fire. At the sound of his entry the figure turned, revealing the long nose, blue chin and neat, dark clothes of Mr Jenks. At sight of him this figure expanded suddenly on scissor-like legs, became sinuous instead of stiff, extended a paper-thin hand.

“Mr Applegate. I am delighted to see you. Most kind of you to look me up.”

“Nobody seems to answer bells here.”

“They are understaffed. But then what can you expect? There are only three other people staying here. Do sit down.” Jenks crouched in front of the fire and rubbed his hands together, making a sound like crackling paper. “Should I be right in thinking that you have decided after all that we have something in common?”

“I’m not sure about that.” Deliberately he said: “Montague is dead.”

“Dead. Is he dead? Poor Frankie. I loved him like a brother.” Behind the unction of the words there seemed some genuine feeling. As Jenks picked at the red pimple on his cheek Applegate realised that it was fear. “How did he die?”

“He was stabbed.”

“There was no need for that. Frankie was foolish in many ways but there was never any real harm in him.” Applegate thought wonderingly:
He thinks I killed him,
and dimly he grasped that this thought was for Jenks a natural one. There was a note of reproach in the thin man’s voice. “Frankie would have co-operated. I hate violence. It is never necessary.”

“I thought we should have a talk. You suggested it in the train.”

“Yes, that’s the sensible thing. It would have been a good thing if we had talked before–”

“I had nothing to do with Montague’s death.”

“I never suggested it,” the other said hastily. “I suppose the police have been called? That was inevitable, but still it is to be regretted. It should be a lesson to us all that nothing is gained by hasty action. That was something I often said to Johnny. Shall we talk here, then? We are in no danger of interruption.”

Looking at the figure crouched before the electric fire Applegate wondered how to begin. “In Montague’s wallet I found a piece of paper with your initials and this telephone number, and a typed note about me.”

“You removed them, naturally.”

“I removed them. I should say I haven’t the faintest idea what the note means.”

Jenks shook his narrow head. “I hope you will not persist in that attitude. But tell me first, what do the police think?”

“A boy named Winterbottom has run away from the school. They seem to suspect him.”

“Well arranged, as I should have expected.”

“If you mean that I arranged it you’re wrong.” He struck his hand gently on the cold arm of his leather chair. “I had nothing to do with Montague’s death, I’m not an agent of any sort, and I’ve no idea who you mean by ED or by Johnny.”

“Come now, Mr Applegate, we shan’t get anywhere at all if we talk like this. You don’t seriously want me to believe that you’ve never heard of Johnny Bogue.”

Bogue, Bogue. The name woke an echo. “There does seem to be something–”

“Or that Johnny lived at Bramley Hall?”

Applegate snapped his fingers. “That’s what the JB over the door stands for. But why should you think I’m there on Johnny’s business? What stops Johnny attending to his own business?”

“What stops Johnny attending to his own business is that his plane was shot down during the war and he was killed. You’re trying to tell me you didn’t know that?”

“I’m telling you that I’d never heard of Johnny Bogue before this afternoon. Well, that’s not quite right. I do seem to have heard the name, but I’ve no idea who he was.” Applegate said this with a firm and, he hoped, convincing stare at the thin man.

Jenks did not meet this would-be compelling gaze, a mixture of Honest John and Medusa. He murmured apologetically: “Perhaps we’d better go upstairs then. I have something to show you.”

They went out of the Residents’ Lounge and up the stairs. In a passage on the first floor an old lady tottered along. She quavered a good afternoon at them. Otherwise there was no sign of habitation. Jenks stopped in front of a door, pushed a key in the lock, turned the handle and waved Applegate inside. He pulled a suitcase from a rack. “There’s something in here I should have shown you before. Are you cold? Turn on the electric fire.”

There was a subtle change in his manner, but Applegate did not bother himself to try and trace it to a cause. He turned round and switched on the inset electric fire. From behind him Jenks’ voice was quaveringly determined: “Please put your hands above your head, Mr Applegate. Do not turn round.”

He began to turn round. The voice repeated, with the quaver in it now ominously increased: “Do
not
turn round. I have a gun in my hand. I am nervous of firearms and if I have to use it I might hurt you seriously.”

Could a threat of murder be more hesitantly put? Yet the very hesitancy called for respect. Applegate stepped away from the fire and put his hands slowly above his head.

“Stand against the wall please.” He stood against the wall. Something hard was pressed into his back. He suffered the ticklish feeling of a hand moving over him, withdrawing wallet and papers. The pressure was withdrawn. He turned round. Jenks stood at the dressing table, rapidly turning over with one hand the things taken from his pockets. His other hand held a small revolver with a mother-of-pearl handle. Applegate took a step towards the dressing table. The revolver was immediately raised. “Please, Mr Applegate, do not compel me to fire. Believe me, I regret this as much as you do. It is most distasteful. Here are your things. I have taken only those that belong to me.”

He walked quickly away from the dressing table and Applegate looked through his papers. The only things missing were the documents he had taken from Montague’s body.

“I wish I could have spared you the humiliation of a search, but it was really essential that I should find out whether you were the innocent bystander you pretend to be. I hope you will accept my apologies.”

“What about those papers of Montague’s?”

“Poor Frankie was my business partner. I feel I have a moral right to them. Now, I propose to put away this hateful weapon and I hope we can have a talk. I have a great deal to tell you.” Jenks’ manner as he slipped the revolver into his hip pocket was almost skittish. “Let me begin by asking why you are at Bramley. Please be frank. It may be important to us both.”

“I’m a detective story writer. You know that. I came to Bramley to get local colour.”

“I don’t understand you.”

“Have you read
Where Dons Delight
?”

“I must regretfully say no.”

“That was my first book. It is set in a University. I hope to use the setting of a progressive school for another book. That’s why I came to Bramley.”

Jenks took a few delicate, almost mincing steps up and down the room. “Unconvincing, Mr Applegate. But just for that reason I am inclined to think it may be true. I am going to trust you. I have a trusting nature. It has caused me a great deal of trouble in the past. I have been sadly deceived, betrayed you might say, through trusting others. Yet, isn’t it better to be the deceived than the deceiver?” The question was rhetorical, Jenks’ look almost lachrymose. “I’m going to suppose that your story is true. You know nothing about Johnny Bogue. Then I will tell you about him. You don’t know who ED is. It’s Eileen Delaney.” Jenks’ small anxious eyes looked shrewdly at Applegate. “Her name is also meaningless to you, no doubt. Eileen and I are – how shall I put it? – on opposite sides in a business matter. Frankie was my agent at Bramley. I have reason to believe that Eileen had also sent an agent there. I assumed you were that agent. I told Frankie to get in touch with you.”

“Yes. I didn’t know what he was talking about.”

“I believe you. But Frankie was killed. He was killed, obviously, by Eileen’s agent. Now, you can help me and help yourself. The agent is somebody at the school. Who is it?”

“I’ve no idea.” Applegate felt a growing irritation. “And I’m bound to say that I still don’t know what you’re talking about. Why should you or Eileen Delaney, whoever she is, send agents to Bramley Hall?”

“Because of Johnny Bogue.”

“But you said he died during the war.”

“Yes. You say you’ve never heard of Johnny Bogue, but you’ve seen him.” The thin man passed over a snapshot and Applegate looked again at the thickset curly-haired figure whose picture he had seen in the train. “That was dropped deliberately as you will have guessed, a little device to – ah, declare my own interest. That was Johnny Bogue in, let me see, nineteen twenty-nine, when I first knew him. At that time he was still an MP. Two years later, of course, he went to prison.”

Something stirred deep in Applegate’s mind, knowledge that he had never known he possessed. “Bogue was a politician, then. I seem to remember – no, I don’t remember it, I was too young – I’ve read somewhere that he was mixed up with the Fascists.”

“Socialists, Fascists, drink, dope, business deals – Johnny Bogue was mixed up with everything. And everything he did was crooked. Bogue was a rogue. I trusted him, to my misfortune.” Jenks’ hand moved furtively to the red spot on his cheek, and then quickly away again. “Would you care for a drink, Charles? May I call you Charles? My own friends call me Henry. I must tell you about Bogue.”

Applegate said that he would like a drink. From the drawer of a wardrobe Jenks produced a bottle of whisky and examined carefully a pencil mark on it. His trustfulness evidently did not extend to whisky. Two metal cups appeared, and were wiped with a clean white handkerchief. Whisky was poured, water added, cups raised.

“To our fruitful co-operation.” Applegate drank with a feeling of discomfort. There was something ladylike about the way Jenks sipped his whisky. “I first met Johnny Bogue sometime in the autumn of nineteen twenty-nine, in a night club called the Hundreds and Thousands. I never cared much for such places, but I was married then, and Nora liked to go out. Night clubs were fashionable. You are so very young that it is all much before your time, but all sorts of people from royalty downwards used to go to Mrs Merrick’s clubs, the 43 and the Silver Slipper, so that they could break the licensing laws. It thrilled them, can you believe it, to sit and drink after hours, and the fines were nothing compared with the profits. Mrs Merrick was called the Night Club Queen, but in the late twenties Eileen Delaney started up at the Hundreds and Thousands and one or two other places, and became almost as well known. There were always rumours that Mrs Merrick was backed by some financial group. Eileen was Bogue’s mistress, and it was no secret that she was backed by Bogue. Or, of course, by people behind Bogue.