Blott On The Landscape (20 page)

“I’m sure we have,” said Lady Maud and drew up a chair beside the bed. “Now then we are going to have our little chat about your future, my dear.” She bent over and took out the comforter.

“Don’t touch me,” squealed Sir Giles.

“I have no intention of touching you,” said Lady Maud with evident disgust. “It has been one of the few compensations for our wholly unsatisfactory marriage that I don’t have to. I am simply here to arrange terms.”

“Terms? What terms?” squawked Sir Giles. Lady Maud rummaged in her handbag.

“The terms of our divorce,” she said and produced a document. “You will simply append your signature here.”

Sir Giles stared up at it blankly. “I need my reading-glasses,” he muttered.

Lady Maud perched them on his nose. Sir Giles read the document. “You expect me to sign that?” he yelled. “You really think I’m going to -“

Lady Maud replaced the dummy. “You unspeakable creature,” she snarled, “you’ll sign this document if it’s the last thing you do. And this.” She waved another piece of paper in front of him. “And this.” Another. “And this.”

On the bed Sir Giles struggled with the straps convulsively. Nothing on God’s earth would make him sign a document that was an open confession that he had made a habit of deceiving his lawful wife, had denied her her conjugal rights, had committed adultery on countless occasions and had subjected her for six years to mental and physical cruelty. Lady Maud read his thoughts.

“In return for your signature I will not distribute copies of the photographs we have just taken to the Prime Minister, the Chief Whip, the members of your constituency party or the press. You will sign that document, Giles, and you will see that the motorway is stopped within a month. A month, do you hear me? Those are my terms. What do you say to that?” She removed the dummy.

“You filthy bitch.”

“Quite,” said Lady Maud, “so you agree to sign?”

“I do not,” screamed Sir Giles and was promptly silenced.

“I don’t know if you know your Shakespeare,” she said, “but in Edward the Second …”

Sir Giles didn’t know his Marlowe either but he did know about Edward the Second.

“Blott,” said Lady Maud, “go into the kitchen and see if you can find -“

But already Sir Giles was nodding his head. He would sign anything now.

While Blott untied his right hand Lady Maud took a fountain pen out of her handbag. “Here,” she said pointing to a dotted line. Sir Giles signed. “Here,” and “Here.” Sir Giles signed and signed. When he had finished Blott witnessed his signatures. Then he was tied down again.

“Good,” said Lady Maud, “I will institute proceedings for divorce at once and you will stop the motorway or face the consequences. And don’t you dare to set foot on my property again. I will have your things sent down to you.” She took out the dummy. “Have you anything to say?”

“If I do manage to stop the motorway will you guarantee to let me have the photographs and negatives back?”

“Of course,” said Lady Maud, “we Handymans may have our faults, but breaking our promises isn’t one of them.” She stuffed the dummy back into his mouth and tied it behind his head. Then, having removed his glasses, she adjusted his bonnet and left the room.

On the staircase they met Mrs Forthby in a dither. “You didn’t do anything horrid, did you?” she asked.

“Of course not,” Lady Maud assured her, “just got him to sign a document consenting to divorce.”

“Oh dear, I do hope he isn’t too cross. He gets into such terrible tantrums.”

“Come, come, Nanny Whip, be your true self,” said Lady Maud. “You must be firm.”

“Yes, you’re quite right,” said Mrs Forthby. “But it’s very difficult. It’s not in my nature to be unkind.”

“And before I forget, here’s a little honorarium for your assistance.” Lady Maud produced a cheque from her bag but Mrs Forthby shook her head.

“I may be a silly woman and not very nice but I do have my standards,” she said. “And besides I’d probably forget to cash it.” She went upstairs a little wistfully.

“That woman,” said Lady Maud as they drove to Paddington to catch the train to Worford, “is far too good for Giles. She deserves something better.” On the way they stopped to post the share transfers to Messrs Schaeffer, Blodger and Vaizey.

By the time they reached Handyman Hall it was two o’clock in the morning but the park was well lit. Under the floodlights men were busily engaged in erecting the fencing posts and already one side of the park was fenced in. Lady Maud drove round to have a look and congratulated Mr Firkin, the manager, on the progress.

“I’m afraid you’re going to have to pay the bonus,” he told her. “At this rate we’ll be finished in ten days.”

“Make it a week,” said Lady Maud. “Money’s no problem.” She went into the house and up to bed well content. Money was no object now. In the morning she would withdraw every penny from their joint account at Westland Bank in Worford and deposit it in her own private account at the Northern. Sir Giles would scream blue murder but there was nothing he could do. He had signed the share transfer certificates if not of his own free will at least in circumstances which made it impossible for him to argue otherwise. And besides she still held one card up her sleeve, the photographs of Dundridge. She would call on the little goose and force him to admit that he had been blackmailed by Giles. Once she had proof of that there would be no question of the motorway continuing. She wouldn’t even have to bother with her own awful photographs. Giles would be in jail, his seat in Parliament empty, a bye-election, and the whole wretched business finished.

Whatever happened now she was safe and so was the Hall. “Fight fire with fire,” she thought and lay in bed considering the strange set of circumstances that had turned her from a plain, simple home-loving woman, a Justice of the Peace and a respectable member of the community, into a blackmailer dealing in obscene photographs and extorting signatures under threat of torture. Evidently the blood of her ancestors who had held the Gorge (by fair means and foul) against all comers still ran in her veins.

“You can’t make omelettes without breaking eggs,” she murmured, and fell asleep.

In Mrs Forthby’s flat one of the eggs in question lay in his frilly bonnet desperately trying to think of some way out of both his predicaments and promising himself that he would murder Nanny Fucking Whip as soon as he got free. Not that there seemed much chance of that before morning. Nanny Whip was snoring loudly on the sofa in the sitting-room. One look at Sir Giles’ suffused face had been enough to persuade her that Naughty Boy’s naughtiness had not diminished during her absence. A policy of continued restraint seemed called for. Nanny Whip went into the kitchen and hit the bottle of cooking brandy. “A drop will give me some Dutch courage,” she thought and poured herself a large glass. By the time she had finished it she had forgotten what she had been taking it for. “A little of what you fancy does you good,” she murmured, and collapsed on to the sofa.

A little of what Sir Giles fancied wasn’t doing him any good at all. Besides, eight hours wasn’t a little. As the clock on the mantelpiece chimed the hours Sir Giles’ thoughts turned from murder to the more lurid forms of slow torture and in between he tried to think what the hell to do about Maud. There didn’t seem anything he could do short of applying for the Chiltern Hundreds, resigning from all his clubs, realizing his assets and taking a quick trip to Brazil where the extradition laws didn’t apply. And even then he wasn’t sure he had any assets to realize. At about four in the morning it dawned on him that some of those pieces of paper he had signed had looked remarkably like share transfer certificates. At the time he hadn’t been in any shape to consider them at all carefully. Not that he was in any better shape now but at least the threat of following Edward the Second to an agonizing death had been removed. Finally exhausted by his ordeal he fell into a semi-coma, waking every now and then to consider new and more awful fates for that absent-minded old sot in the next room.

Mrs Forthby woke with a hangover. She staggered off the sofa and ran a bath and it was only when she was drying herself that she remembered Sir Giles.

“Oh dear, he will be cross,” she thought, and went through to the kitchen to make a pot of tea. She carried the tray through to the bedroom and put it down on the bedside table. “Wakey, wakey, rise and shine,” she said cheerfully and untied the straps. Sir Giles spat the dummy out of his mouth. This was the moment he had been waiting twelve hours for but there was no rising and shining for Sir Giles. He slithered sideways off the bed and crawled towards Mrs Forthby like a crab with rheumatoid arthritis.

“No, no, you naughty boy,” said Mrs Forthby horrified at his colour. She rushed out of the room and locked herself in the bathroom. There was no need to hurry. Behind her Sir Giles was stuck in the bedroom door and one of his legs had attached itself inextricably to a standard lamp.

In his office at the Regional Planning Board the Controller Motorways Midlands was having second thoughts about his plan for proving that Lady Maud was a blackmailer. The wretched woman had phoned the switchboard to say that she was coming in to Worford and wanted a word in private with him. Dundridge could well understand her desire for privacy but he did not share it. He had seen more than enough of Lady Maud in private and he had no intention of seeing any more. On the other hand she was hardly likely to threaten him with blackmail in front of a large audience. Dundridge paced up and down his office trying to find some way out of the quandary. In the end he decided to use Hoskins as a bodyguard. He sent for him.

“We’ve flushed the old cow out with that dynamiting,” he said.

“We’ve done what?” said Hoskins.

“She’s coming to see me this morning. I want you to be present.”

Hoskins had his doubts. “I don’t know about that,” he muttered. “And anyway, we haven’t started dynamiting yet.”

“But the task force has moved in, hasn’t it?”

“Yes, though I do wish you wouldn’t call it a task force. All this military jargon is getting on my nerves.”

“Never mind that,” said Dundridge. “The point is that she’s coming. I want you to conceal yourself somewhere where you can hear what she has to say and make an appearance if she turns nasty.”

“Turns nasty?” said Hoskins. “The bloody woman is nasty. She doesn’t have to turn it.”

“I mean if she becomes violent,” Dundridge explained. “Now then, we’ve got to find somewhere for you to hide.” He looked hopefully at a filing cabinet but Hoskins was adamant.

“Why can’t I just sit in the corner?” he asked.

“Because she wants to see me in private.”

“Well then see her in private for God’s sake,” said Hoskins. “She isn’t likely to assault you.”

“That’s what you think,” said Dundridge. “And in any case I want you as a witness. I have reason to believe that she is going to make an attempt to blackmail me.”

“Blackmail you?” said Hoskins turning pale. He didn’t like that “reason to believe”. It smacked of a policeman giving evidence.

“With photographs,” said Dundridge.

“With photographs?” echoed Hoskins, now thoroughly alarmed.

“Obscene photographs,” said Dundridge, with a deal more confidence than Hoskins happened to know was called for.

“What are you going to do?” he asked.

“I’m going to tell her to go jump in a lake,” said Dundridge.

Hoskins looked at him incredulously. To think that he had once described this extraordinary man as a nincompoop. The bastard was as tough as nails.

“I’ll tell you what I’ll do,” he said finally, “I’ll stand outside the door and listen to what she says. Will that do?”

Dundridge said it would have to and Hoskins hurried back to his office and phoned Mrs Williams.

“Sally,” he said, “this is you-know-who.”

“I don’t, you know,” said Mrs Williams, who had had a hard night.

“It’s me. Horsey, horsey catkins,” snarled Hoskins desperately searching for a pseudonym that would deceive anyone listening in on the switchboard.

“Horsey horsey catkins?”

“Hoskins, for God’s sake,” whispered Hoskins.

“Oh, Hoskins, why didn’t you say so in the first place?”

Hoskins controlled his frayed temper. “Listen carefully,” he said, “the gaff’s blown. The gaff. Gee for Gifuckingraffe. A for Animal. F for Freddie.”

“What’s it mean?” interrupted Mrs Williams.

“The fuzz,” said Hoskins. “It means the balloon’s going to go up. Burn the lot, you understand. Negatives, prints, the tootee. You’ve never heard of me and I’ve never heard of you. Get it. No names, no pack drill. And you’ve never been near the Golf Club.”

By the time he had put the phone down Mrs Williams had got the message. So had Hoskins. If Mrs Williams was going to be nabbed, he could be sure that he would be standing in the dock beside her. She had left him in no doubt about that.

He went back to Dundridge’s office and was there to open the door for Lady Maud when she arrived. Then he stationed himself outside and listened.

Inside Dundridge nerved himself for the ordeal. At least with Hoskins outside the door he could always call for help and in any case Lady Maud seemed to be rather better disposed towards him than he had expected.

“Mr Dundridge,” she said, taking a seat in front of his desk, “I would like to make it quite clear that I have come here this morning in no spirit of animosity. I know we’ve had our little contretemps in the past but as far as I am concerned all is forgiven and forgotten.”

Dundridge looked at her balefully and said nothing. As far as he was concerned nothing was ever likely to be forgotten and certainly he wasn’t in a forgiving mood.

“No, I have come here to ask for your co-operation,” she went on, “and I want to assure you that what I am about to say will go no further.”

Dundridge glanced at the door and said he was glad to hear it.

“Yes, I rather thought you might be,” said Lady Maud, “you see I have reason to believe that you have been the subject of a blackmail attempt.”

Dundridge stared at her. She knew damned well he had been subject to blackmail.