Amiss’ relationship with his Indian newsagent was warm and mutually supportive. He wrote references when Sanjeev Patel applied for citizenship or needed a permit to sell alcohol; in turn, Patel kept Amiss’ spare keys and took in his parcels, and they enjoyed chatting over the day’s news.
‘This dreadful business in the House of Lords is really most extraordinary,’ he said, as Amiss leafed through the tabloids, which were in a state of ecstatic hysteria. ‘Do you think it’s something in the heating or air-conditioning that kills eight people out of several hundred? Picks off the weakest, perhaps. Like legionnaire’s disease.’
‘Interesting notion, Sanjeev. But according to the papers they all seem to have died at about the same time.’
‘What I don’t understand…’ Patel pulled out a paper at random. ‘Look here. It says the police think they died at about nine o’clock but nobody noticed them until more than an hour later. How could that be?’
‘I suppose they thought they were asleep.’
‘There’s a difference, Robert, in being asleep and being dead. Mark my words, there’s something very sinister going on. If your neighbour looks suspiciously quiet beside you, you investigate.’
Amiss shook his head. ‘Sanjeev, I fear you don’t understand the British upper classes. If anything untoward happens beside you the etiquette is to pretend not to notice.’
‘What? Even if you fear something serious has happened?’
‘Let me tell you two stories. Several years ago an enormous lump fell out of the House of Lords ceiling onto a seat in the chamber and just missed one of the lords. Now what would be the reaction if that happened in Delhi in the Lok Sabha?’
‘All hell would break loose.’ Patel laughed. ‘I expect we would have a stampede.’
‘Well, in the Lords everyone sat in his place and pretended not to notice. And don’t you remember that a couple of years ago some lesbians abseiled down from the gallery in the Lords and everyone ignored them. So you see why I have no difficulty in understanding what could have happened last night. To investigate your neighbour’s condition, unless he directly asks you for help, would be seen as impolite and intrusive.’
Patel shook his head. ‘Intrusive is not a word we understand much in our culture, and that is bad, for we are much too inquisitive and meddling. But from what you tell me, your aversion to it is worse, for it may be lethal.’ And sighing at the irrationality of man, he left Amiss to peruse the papers while he attended to another customer.
***
‘Are you the chap in charge?’
‘One of them.’
‘I’ve told them over and over that I’ll only talk to the c-in-c.’
Milton assumed his most soothing tone. ‘I am a detective chief superintendent on the Murder Squad, Lord Beesley. There is no one more senior here at present who understands as much about last night’s atrocity at the Lords.’
‘That’s not what I want to talk about. Well, only in a way.’
Milton summoned up all his patience and shifted the phone to his other ear. ‘I’m here to listen to whatever you have to talk about, sir. Just fire away.’
Beesley sounded dubious. ‘It’s about Reggie Poulteney. You know someone tried to kill him before.’
‘By damaging his saddle. Indeed, yes, sir.’
Beesley was cheered by this evidence of intelligence. ‘Oh, good. Now this is very delicate. I don’t want it talked about.’
‘Why don’t you just tell me, sir, and then we can discuss what to do with your information. As I’m sure you’ll appreciate, the most important consideration is to bring to justice whoever killed or tried to kill Lord Poulteney.’
‘Well, I know. But we don’t want any scandal unless it’s absolutely necessary.’
‘No, sir. And there won’t be an unnecessary scandal. Trust me.’
Amazingly, that request worked. ‘It’s Hawkins, you see. He rang me up and told me what he’d seen the night before Reggie took his toss.’
There was a silence. ‘And what was that, sir?’
‘He saw Vanessa Bovington-Petty…do you know who that is?’
‘Lord Poulteney’s daughter-in-law. And who is Hawkins?’
‘Poor Reggie’s head groom. Well, he saw Vanessa coming out of the tack room in the middle of the night. Didn’t tell anyone, but now he’s worried in case she tried to kill Reggie then and had something to do with last night. Asked my advice and I told him I’d have a word with someone and then he must make a clean breast of it.’
‘Excellent advice, sir. Now if you tell me what you know, you can then ask Mr Hawkins to ring me as soon as he can do so discreetly. And you can reassure him that I will go to all reasonable lengths to conceal his identity.’
***
‘Lady Poulteney is on her way up.’
‘Thanks, Jane. Ask Sergeant Pooley if he’ll come in now, please.’
Pooley entered, notebook in hand, looking expectant.
‘Ellis, I forgot to ask you if you’d ever met this woman. I mean, you haven’t come across her at society weddings or hunt balls or Henley or wherever your sort of person hangs out, have you?’ He was pleased to note that Pooley was toughening. A year ago he would have blushed, but now he smiled and said, ‘No, sir, not even at Ascot.’
‘Good, then you can stay.’
‘Before she comes in, sir. Have you heard about her and the Rutland police?’
Milton looked puzzled. ‘All I’ve seen are the not very helpful interview notes faxed to me this morning. Why?’
‘Gossip from a friend there is that she was very respectfully treated by Inspector Hill, who’s notorious as a pushover for the gentry. Apparently there was a hideously embarrassing moment when, after she left the drawing room after the interview, her fluting voice was heard saying to someone: “What a sweet deferential little man!”’
‘Good. With luck she’ll still have a false sense of security.’ He picked up the phone. ‘Send her in, Jane.’
As Vanessa swept into the room, Milton stood up.
‘How nice to see you, Superintendent. Oh sorry, have I mucked that up? Aren’t you a chief or something?’ Her manner reminded Milton irresistibly of the attempts of some of his superiors to be gracious to junior staff at the Christmas party.
‘Please sit down, Lady Poulteney. And superintendent will do fine. This is my colleague, Detective Sergeant Pooley.’
‘Not one of the Worcestershire…? No, sorry. Of course you wouldn’t be.’
She sat down, oblivious to Pooley’s look of relief and Milton’s twitch of the lower lip. ‘Thank you for coming to see me, Lady Poulteney. And may I first offer my condolences on the loss of your father-in-law.’
‘Oh, yah. Poor old Daddy-in-law. It’s so tragic. We’re absolutely devastated. Now, what do you want? I haven’t got very long, actually, what with a lunch date and absolutely heaps to do now with the funeral and all that and the move to Shapely Bottom. Can’t see how I can help.’
‘I want to know your movements on the night before the late Lord Poulteney’s hunting accident.’
‘Oh, really—not again. I gave all that to some frightful flatfoot simply ages ago. You know, the village bobby, or whoever they sent me.’
Milton’s voice was even. ‘I have seen the statement you gave to Detective Inspector Hill. However, you appear to have omitted to tell him about your visit to the tack room in the middle of the night.’
‘How dare you!’ She flushed a violent red. ‘It’s absolutely not true.’
‘You were seen.’
‘You’re making it up.’
‘Lady Poulteney, calling me a liar is not the best way of convincing me that you speak the truth.’
This non sequitur was delivered so crisply and authoritatively that she backed down instantly. ‘Oh, sorry. Didn’t mean that. I was just upset.’
‘I have first-hand evidence that a woman answering to your description came out of the tack room at about four a.m.’
‘Oh, so it wasn’t anyone who knew me. So they must have been mistaken.’
While Amiss had described Vanessa as ‘medium-thick’, this piece of stupidity was more than Milton could have hoped for. ‘Thank you for as good as admitting you were there. And even if you hadn’t, I think you would have found it difficult to convince a jury that two women with straight blonde hair, of medium height and wearing an overcoat identical to yours were likely to have been on the premises of Shapely Bottom Hall that night.’
‘But whoever said I was is just a wicked liar trying to blame me for whatever they did themselves.’
‘Won’t wash, I’m afraid. They couldn’t have known about your coat.’
She fiddled with her engagement ring for a minute. ‘Well, all right then. I was there. I went to look for a brooch I thought I’d lost earlier that day.’
‘You went out in the middle of a January night to look for a brooch?’
‘Yes. It might have got trodden on in the morning by the grooms and it’s my favourite brooch, and it was only at around half past three in the morning that I remembered I’d had it on when I was in the tack room and hadn’t seen it afterwards.’
‘Did you find the brooch?’
‘No. I mean yes.’
‘And did you mention to your husband the following morning your relief at having found it?’
She looked as hunted as a fox in a cul-de-sac with the hounds coming round the corner. ‘Er, I don’t remember.’
‘Please stop insulting my intelligence, Lady Poulteney. Considering what later emerged about your father-in-law’s saddle, it is inconceivable that if you’d been in the tack room innocently you wouldn’t remember whether or not your husband knew you’d been there. And it would be very hard to convince a jury that you wouldn’t have mentioned your uncomfortable expedition.’
‘Jamesie and I weren’t speaking that morning.’
Milton sighed. ‘It will be very easy to check, ma’am. I can send a police officer round to see your husband now to get his story and hold you here, incommunicado, until he’s given it.’
She began to cry. Neither Milton nor Pooley was hard-hearted, but they were completely unmoved. After a few minutes she got tired of snuffling and blew her nose.
‘Now, Lady Poulteney, why don’t you simply tell me what happened?’
‘You’ll accuse me of trying to murder Daddy-in-law.’
‘The case looks pretty straightforward, I’m afraid.’
‘No, it’s only those horrid sabs trying to blame me for what they did.’
‘Look, Lady Poulteney, it’s perfectly simple. Either you tell me what happened—what actually happened—or I charge you now with the attempted murder of your late father-in-law. That will give us plenty of time to discuss at leisure if, having failed on this occasion, you hired a hitman or perhaps even yourself killed Lord Poulteney and in the process murdered seven others.’
This provoked hysterics.
Milton sighed. ‘Detective Sergeant Pooley, please open the door so that witnesses can see that we are not actually assaulting Lady Poulteney, apologize to them for the noise and tell them we hope it won’t last long.’
It didn’t. When she realized that the screaming and wailing were having no effect, she ceased them abruptly, sat up straight and said, ‘Very well. I’ve been making an idiot of myself, but I was frightened. But please promise you won’t tell my husband if I tell you the truth.’
‘I can’t make promises, but I won’t tell him anything unless it is necessary.’
She gazed intently at her gold-buckled, patent-leather clad feet. ‘I went to meet a man.’
‘Who?’
‘Oh, dear, this is so embarrassing.’
‘Less so than being arrested, I imagine.’
‘There’s no need to be horrid. If you must know, it was one of those awful sabs. We had a date.’
‘Just tell us the story.’
She attacked it with a rush. ‘I was out riding the afternoon before and I got off near Wreckett’s Brook because I thought Betty might have picked up a stone. When I was looking at her hoof this fellow came up and we sort of started to talk. Anyway, he asked me if I’d like to meet him that night, and it didn’t seem any harm to say yes. I didn’t mean to turn up.’
‘But you did.’
‘Well, I was upset that night. Really furious that Daddy-in-law was getting ready to propose to Lady Flexingham and really fed up with Jamesie, who wouldn’t talk about it. He just lay there snoring away—he’s an absolutely ghastly snorer—and I love Shapely Bottom so much, and I know just what I want to do with it and I was really cross. So I thought it was all too beastly and I thought the hell with them, I’d go and meet this fellow just to spite them.’
‘What time was this?’
‘About two-thirty. We’d said we’d meet at three. So I got the key from the nail beside the side door and when I went into the tack room he followed me.’
‘Who was he?’
‘He said his name was Stu and that he was a sab.’ She saw Milton’s face. ‘Yes, yes. I know. You’ll think I’m awful and I hate those people, but he was exciting in a sort of sultry way and…’ She hung her head again. ‘You can’t imagine how boring Jamesie is. I mean, he’s awfully nice, but he’s really boring.’
‘So then?’
‘Well, I don’t have to spell it out, do I?’
‘I’m afraid you do, ma’am.’
‘Oh, well, if you must know we had sex a couple of times, and then I went back to the Hall.’
‘Leaving him in the tack room?’
‘Yes. But he promised to lock up afterwards.’
‘After what?’
She wriggled. ‘He said he’d paint a few slogans. What could I do? I couldn’t tell anyone, and I made him promise he wouldn’t do any real damage. And I was really relieved when it looked as if he hadn’t done anything. But I suppose it must have been him who did that to Daddy-in-law’s saddle.’
‘But you didn’t report that afterwards.’
She spread out her hands in dumb entreaty.
‘Lady Poulteney. You may have been leaving a would-be murderer on the loose.’
‘Well, I wouldn’t have known where to find him anyway.’
‘You didn’t see him again?’
‘Absolutely not. I mean, it’s not as if he’s the sort of person you have an affair with. He was very common.’
The telephone rang. ‘Yes, sir. OK. Now.’
He stood up. ‘I’ve got to go to a meeting now, Lady Poulteney. I would like you to tell Sergeant Pooley everything you remember about this gentleman. He will then type your statement and give it to you to sign and you may then go for the time being. We will have to check out aspects of your account.’
Relief overcame her. ‘Oh, gosh, thank you.’ And almost humbly, ‘Will it take very long?’
‘Perhaps half an hour,’ said Pooley.
She looked apologetically at Milton. ‘Would it be awful to ask you if I can make a phone call to the restaurant to say I’ll be a bit late?’
‘Not at all, Lady Poulteney. Ellis, when you’ve finished taking details, show her ladyship to a telephone.’
As he left the room she said to Milton, ‘I’m sorry for being such a silly-billy, telling lies and all that, but I was terrified. I mean, what would Jamesie think if he knew what I’d been doing? I’d never hear the last of it.’
‘Well, let us hope, Lady Poulteney, that there will be no need for him to know. But I can make no promises. However, I would like to make one thing clear. The only way you can be proved innocent is if this gentleman can be located and will corroborate your story. If that doesn’t happen, you will remain high on the list of suspects for attempted murder at least. So for your own sake I recommend you to be as helpful as possible to Sergeant Pooley. Now, if you’ll forgive me…’ He nodded dismissively and left the room.
***
By its sheer preposterousness, the Cavalry Club lifted Amiss out of his gloom. As he climbed the staircase to the bar, past the vast canvases of heroes riding boldly into battle with sabres flashing, horses perspiring and officers urging their men forward in dozens of forgotten encounters of imperial days, he felt his troubles to be minor by comparison.
To his regret, the room overlooking Piccadilly to which Beesley took them to lunch bore no resemblance to an officers’ mess, for—as a member of the gentler sex—Jack Troutbeck was barred from the main dining room.
‘One has to accept casualties in time of war,’ announced Beesley. ‘I agree that the thing to do is to just get on with it. Just like Reggie would have wanted.’
‘And turn our reverse to our advantage,’ said the baroness. ‘How many of ours have we lost?’
Beesley’s forehead puckered as he looked down the list. ‘I make it five: Reggie, Connie, Robbie, St John Fostock, and Tuffy Dreamer. Joe Taylor was an anti and Campden and Wilson were don’t knows.’
‘Hmmm. Not good. Still, it could have been much worse. Bertie has a pacemaker.’
‘Good God, I didn’t know that.’ Beesley’s jaw went slack. ‘How did he escape?’
‘He tells me it must have happened when he went out to have what he described as “a quiet word with a bishop”.’
‘What a blow to the tabloids,’ said Amiss. ‘A dead duke would have had their cup of joy running over.’ He saw Beesley looking at him with incomprehension and continued hastily: ‘Funny thing. One of the papers said this morning that six of them were life peers. Isn’t that odd?’
‘You’re not thinking,’ said the baroness. ‘There’s nothing funny about that. We tend to be older than the hereditary lot. That’s why the media are so daft when they go on about new blood. Life peers are usually pretty old blood. Not, of course, that we’re necessarily any the worse for that.’
Amiss noticed that she seemed in curiously high spirits, brought on by that combination of adversity and adrenaline on which she always flourished.
‘So what next?’ asked Beesley. ‘What should we do?’
‘Propaganda war. Robert will draft a letter of the are-we-men-or-mice variety.’
‘If you were mice, there wouldn’t be a problem,’ said Amiss sourly. ‘They’d be making you a protected species instead of murdering you. Look, before you go on—and I see where you’re heading—may I just remind you that these people aren’t just murderers. They’re crazy. Do you really want to put your heads above the parapet so they can more easily be blown off?’
‘Not heads above the parapet. More leading the men over the top.’ Tragedy seemed to be a great rejuvenator for Beesley. ‘Can’t risk a collapse in morale. Got to show fighting spirit, leadership. Just like all the chaps who inspire us in this club. Swords out, break into a gallop, and up and at ’em.’
‘What we want to avoid is the Charge of the Light Brigade.’
‘Don’t like this defeatist talk. Surprised at you, young man. That’s what comes of ending military service. Encourages cowardice.’
The baroness responded to Amiss’ mutinous glare. ‘Lay off, Tommy,’ she declared briskly. ‘Nothing cowardly about young Robert here. We’ve seen action together before, and I can tell you he played the white man. And he has a point. Even people in the front line should take sensible precautions.’
‘Like checking under your car before you get into it,’ said Amiss. ‘Some nutter tried to blow up a research scientist that way a few years ago.’
But the baroness’ attention had wandered. ‘Good. So you’ll draft a letter to be signed by…what do you think, Tommy? Us, Bertie, Sid, and a few more of the boys?’
‘Well, keeping the numbers down will certainly make it easier for the assassins,’ said Amiss.
‘All right, all right. We’ll make it harder for them and increase the number of targets to a few dozen. You and I can get down to rounding them up, Tommy, starting this afternoon. Now, what about some brandy? And I hope there’s no nonsense about barring pipes from the dining room.’