Clubbed to Death (22 page)

‘He talked about visiting such an establishment,’ said Milton.

‘Well, there you are. He presumably bought into it with his Foreign Office gratuity. Marvellous. Oh, yes. We mustn’t forget Mauleverer, the one who’s always demanding to know if the haddock is finnan, the salmon wild and the beef Aberdeen Angus. He was done for four years for fraud. Pity he’s not a suspect.’

‘He wasn’t even in the club on the days of the murders,’ said Pooley morosely.

Milton was already on the phone to the Yard issuing instructions. ‘Thanks, Robert,’ he said when he returned. ‘A very useful day you’ve had. You’d have earned your money if you were paid any.’

‘Well, come on, come on. What did the Admiral’s disk yield?’

‘Lists of auction houses with dates and receipts. We’ll have to check them out of course, but it looks as if Comrade Chatterton has sold over a hundred thousand pounds’ worth of wine in the last ten years.’

‘Wow!’

‘He seems also to have been given sixty thousand in travel grants. Fishbane appears to have had an entertainment allowance of around twenty thousand. Then there are notes and figures relating to the library with a lot of question marks. Meredith-Lee appears to have seen a discrepancy of twenty to forty thousand pounds. Look, here’s the print-out. Look at the list headed “Missing. First editions, question mark. Best drawings, question mark. Rochester manuscript, question mark. Toulouse-Lautrec”. And then it just says on the next page, “Fagg angle”.’

‘Anything else important? It looks pretty incomprehensible.’

‘There’s quite a lot. Summaries of the kitchen accounts for the last ten years, for instance.’

‘Grotesquely extravagant, presumably.’

‘Looks like it. Then there are summaries of income and expenditure in all departments. The subscription income is interesting. Look how it’s gone down spectacularly over twenty years.’

‘Where do you go from here?’

‘Tomorrow we’ll be putting on the pressure to gain access to bank records – club and personal. Then of course there’ll be a team checking with the auction rooms. And there’ll also be at the club tomorrow morning an antiquarian bookseller, a dealer in manuscripts, and an expert in drawings, to see if there’s been the hanky-panky suggested by those few notes about Fishbane.’

Milton returned the typescript to his briefcase. ‘I have to admit to being rather staggered by the number of jail-birds the club accommodates. Presumably most clubs frown on chaps with records, Ellis?’

‘Good Lord, yes. You normally get drummed out if you disgrace yourself. Or you resign first.’

‘Not so in ffeatherstonehaugh’s,’ said Amiss. ‘Our great founder laid down a rule in his will that anyone who went to prison would not have to pay his subscription during the time that he was unable to use the club premises, and that any unused portion of his subscription should be held over until his release.’

‘How d’you get thrown out of ffeatherstonehaugh’s anyway?’ asked Pooley.

‘Ah! He thought of that too. Ten members may present a petition claiming another to be either, (a), a bore, (b), a Roundhead, that’s with a capital ‘R’ you understand, or (c), an admirer of Mr Gladstone. A vote is then held on the last Friday of the following month and members drop white balls or black balls in a box bearing the member’s name. The decision is made on the basis of a simple majority.’

‘Well I don’t know about (b) and (c)’ said Milton. ‘But they appear to have got a bit lax on (a).’

‘Funnily enough, Gooseneck says that the only votes in his time were attempts to oust Fagg, but the majority of white balls was so immense that the opposition seems to have got discouraged and given up.’

‘Who counts the balls?’ asked Pooley.

‘The secretary,’ said Amiss. ‘And the late Pinkie Blenkinsop’s loyalty was, of course, to the purveyor of the flesh-pots.’

‘He didn’t seem too bad a man all the same,’ said Pooley. ‘I rather liked him in spite of myself.’

Amiss sat up angrily. ‘I’m supposed to be the one that makes excuses for people, Ellis. You’re the absolutist. Well, let me tell you that on this occasion I would welcome a little more intolerance from you. He might have put up a good show the other day, but that was because he was frightened. If you actually had to live belowstairs and see the obscene way people were treated, you might be a little less sympathetic towards a man who claimed just to be following orders because he was weak. Some things are inexcusable.’

Milton looked at them both. ‘Give him another drink, Ellis,’ he said, ‘and then let’s vote him out of our club for being sanctimonious.’

24

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Breakfast was particularly tiresome that morning. The strain seemed to have got to the aged suspects. Amiss suspected they had been hammering the port harder than ever the previous night. Waking Glastonbury had on this occasion required him to bellow his nanny impersonation four times, causing old Mauleverer to come staggering out of his nearby bedroom asking if the club was on fire. Mauleverer had then proceeded to snatch the cover off the dish on Amiss’s tray, sniff disparagingly and explain to him that the ham was underdone and the eggs too hard. By the time Amiss had sorted Glastonbury out and returned to the dining-room Mauleverer was well into his ‘Is-the-haddock-finnan’ routine with a bewildered Vietnamese whom Gooseneck had omitted to brief. Not to be outdone, Fagg had then plunged into his ‘What’s-your-name-then- and-where-do-you-come-from- you-bloody-foreigner?’ performance. On being told that the name was Ng and its owner Vietnamese, Fagg had started bellowing, ‘North or South? North or South? Are you a bloody red? And why is your hair so long? Are you queer as well?’ As the frightened boy bolted to Gooseneck’s side, there was a scream from Fishbane’s corner where an unwary Pole had reaped the consequences of turning her back to view the drama. In turn she fled to Gooseneck, who after uttering a few more words of comfort, strode over to Fagg’s table and said, ‘Shut up.’

‘How dare you shout at me! Don’t you know who I am?’

‘Of course I know who you are, you appalling oaf. You’ve been plaguing the life out of me and everybody else for as long as I’ve worked here. You have had your day. Now shut up and stop insulting my staff.’

Fagg emitted an interesting glugging sound, rather as if he were repeating the name of the insulted Vietnamese over and over again. Amiss wondered if apoplexy would ensue, but all that followed was silence. Fagg began to pretend to read his newspaper with great attention. The rest of the breakfasters, who had been gazing on with fascination, returned also to their newspapers, with the exception of Fishbane, on whom Gooseneck now turned.

‘If you ever again touch one of my staff,’ he said clearly and loudly, ‘I will instruct the largest and toughest of her colleagues to knock you down. Is that understood?’

‘Perfectly, my dear man.’ Fishbane spoke with commendable urbanity. ‘You’ve made yourself absolutely clear.’ He returned to his newspaper.

As Gooseneck strode masterfully back to his accustomed position, Amiss heard Mauleverer muttering mutinously: ‘That’s all very well, that’s all very well, but nobody’s told me if the haddock’s finnan.’

Gooseneck turned on his heel and stood over him. ‘Of course the haddock’s finnan, you old idiot. Has been probably since the foundation of the club. The kidneys are lambs’, and yes – they have been grilled with the fat still on them – the marmalade is thick-cut, the food is superb and the waiters are underpaid. Is there anything else you wish to know?’

Mauleverer avoided Gooseneck’s eyes. He looked covertly at the members to his left and right: they gave not a flicker of recognition. ‘That’s fine,’ he said. ‘Thank you very much. I’d be grateful if you could tell the waiter that I would like the haddock.’

Petrified, all the old men gazed at their food or their newspapers: the silence was palpable. After relaying the message to Ng, Gooseneck looked over at Amiss and gave him a long, slow wink. Amiss made him a deep bow followed by a noiseless, but enthusiastic clapping of hands.

‘It’s Robert. Have you a moment?’

‘Yes.’

‘Any news?’

‘Some. We’ve got Fagg’s career well and truly sorted out.’

‘Go on.’

‘Hang on a minute. I’m just looking for the biographical summary Ellis has given me. Albert Anthony Fagg, born nineteen fourteen, Sevenoaks, Kent. Father ran a butcher’s shop in which Fagg also worked until called up in nineteen thirty-nine. By then he was married to Ethel Midgley, whose father was a cobbler. She went off with a GI during the war and he divorced her in nineteen forty-six.’

‘Well, poor old sod. Maybe he was quite nice till then.’

‘Posted to the Army Catering Corps serving the Pioneer Corps. They weren’t glamorous enough for you to have known about them: they consisted of the people who weren’t medically Al. Fagg fitted in: his eyesight was very poor and he had flat feet. So his whole war was spent with them in England, or, much later on, in Italy. He emerged as sergeant-major. There’s a reprimand on his record for improper treatment of a prisoner of war.’

‘Any details?’

‘No. Can’t have been too serious. Probably just abuse. And one court martial on a charge of pilfering rations. The case was dismissed. No other details. Ellis managed to track down one contemporary who described him as, quote, a horrible little shit who thought he was Napoleon, unquote. The same chap also revealed that he was given the nickname Colonel because he was so self-important.’

Amiss exploded with laughter. ‘I feel a grudging respect for his brass neck,’ he said. ‘It takes real guts to carry off such a successful fraud. Go on. Go on.’

‘Back to father’s shop. Married Julia Short, the daughter of the fishmonger.’

‘He certainly had a clear view of his place,’ said Amiss. ‘But how the hell did he come to join ffeatherstonehaugh’s?’

‘It’s a long story, which Ellis extracted from Gooseneck this morning. Apparently, Fagg turned up as the protégé of one Captain Fanning of the Pioneer Corps, an Irish member of ffeatherstonehaugh’s whom Gooseneck remembers as an occasional visitor and noted practical joker. He apparently introduced Fagg as his colonel.’

‘And the wife?’

‘Had a bust-up in the late fifties when he beat her up so badly he was sent to jail.’

‘Well, wasn’t he unmasked?’

‘No, it doesn’t seem to have been reported in the national papers, just the local Kent newspaper. Gooseneck found out about it through a retired old retainer who lived in the area. After that Fagg was divorced. He sold the shop, of which he was the owner by then, and moved into ffeatherstonehaugh’s as a resident. The rest we know.’

‘So his private means?’

‘Can’t be much. Old-age pension and whatever remains of his modest capital.’

‘Unless he’s played the stock market with great brilliance.’

‘Unlikely, since… Come in. Yes. I’ll be up at once. Got to go, Robert. Bye.’

Amiss wandered disconsolately out of the phone-booth, full of unanswered questions and a desire to be part of the action. The blunt instrument obstinately refused to reveal itself and he doubted if there were any more revelations to be got out of anybody. He was aching to tell his friends about the Gooseneck episode, but since it was of human rather than police significance he didn’t feel entitled to waste their time during a busy day. He had enjoyed being able to tell Sunil all about it at lunch, though he had been a little worried by the way Sunil had then gazed at Gooseneck throughout the meal with evident hero-worship. They couldn’t really be, could they?

He walked slowly back to his gallery-duties, by this time in the afternoon virtually non-existent – and had just got to the top of the stairs when he saw Gooseneck advancing towards him carrying a large package.

‘1 was looking for you, Robert. Come into the library for a minute. There’s something I want to show you.’ They retired behind the erotic-drawings cabinet and Gooseneck tore open the cardboard to reveal a lap-top computer. ‘Look, I couldn’t resist getting this for Sunil. Won’t he be thrilled?’

‘Of course he will.’ Amiss’s unease persisted. He couldn’t warm to the notion of a Gooseneck-Sunil love affair: the potential for pain seemed too great.

Gooseneck had put the machine back in its box. He leaned against the wall and surveyed Amiss appraisingly. ‘You don’t seem very enthusiastic, Robert.’

‘Oh, I am. I am. It’ll be marvellous for Sunil. It’s terrifically generous of you.’

‘I know what’s wrong with you. You think I’m screwing him, don’t you?’

Amiss realised he respected Gooseneck too much to lie. He looked at him squarely and said, ‘Yes.’

‘I thought you did. Of course, you’re quite right. But as I think people always say at such a time as this, it isn’t the way you think it is.’

‘And how do I think it is?’

‘I suspect you believe me to be a corruptor of minors. And in that, of course, you are technically right, as the age of consent is twenty-one.’ He took out a packet of cigarettes and offered one to Amiss, who took it, accepted a light, drew deeply and then said, ‘Oh Christ, I’d forgotten. I’ve stopped.’ He stubbed it out and threw it in the fire.

‘Goodness! I must have unnerved you, dear boy. Well, in sum, I do not lay hands on my staff, however much they attract me. Much of my paltry income goes on rent boys – one of my few weekend leisure activities. They’re already corrupted. Sunil, however, fell in love with me and I with him through our discovery of a common taste in literature and a strong need for affection. Sunil is an unregenerate homosexual – you note I do not say “gay”, a word which has been infamously ghettoised – and he appears to find me, at this stage of his life, to his taste.’ He inhaled deeply, expelled the smoke and threw the cigarette in the fire. ‘Might I draw your attention to a poem by Rochester? Perhaps you know it? “A song of a young lady to her ancient lover”.’

‘I’ve read it.’

‘Ancient person,’
[began Gooseneck]
, ‘for whom I

All the flattering youth defy,