Herring in the Smoke Read online

‘Aren’t you? You look as if you are. Well, you can afford the bus fare, I dare say. Just because you dress like that doesn’t mean you’re a complete pauper. Plenty of places to meet and chat. There are one or two bars I know, though they might not be to your taste. Still, we could have tea at the cathedral. That’s nice, though it tends to be full of Christians, I find. Or anywhere in the centre of town – I get around quite well with my stick.’

  ‘That would be very pleasant,’ I said. The invitation seemed sufficiently insincere that I could accept it without risk. ‘My mobile number is on my card.’

  ‘Did you give me a card?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Really? Well, I’m sure I’ll find it. I do have a portable phone myself. Don’t use it a lot, but one day it may come in handy. You have to keep charging them up or they go flat or something. Did you know that?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. I handed him another card. He looked at it suspiciously, then stuffed it in his top pocket, joining the one I’d already given him. Hopefully he wouldn’t demand a third.

  ‘More tea?’ he asked.

  I shook my head and reached for a biscuit, then thought better of it.

  ‘So, you were Roger Norton Vane’s housemaster?’ I asked.

  ‘I thought that’s why you wanted to see me. If it isn’t, I can’t think why you’re here. I didn’t know him in any other capacity and you don’t seem to know a great deal about rowing.’

  ‘Yes, of course. I’m just … just checking I’ve got that right. He never mentioned Cordwainers himself. In some ways it’s been quite difficult to get any real facts about his early life.’

  ‘Has it? I would have thought you would just have to ask him – now he’s back.’

  ‘He is not always as forthcoming as a biographer would like. Perhaps he’s forgotten some things.’

  ‘Really? Well, I remember him, anyway. Nasty little boy. Some boys get into trouble through high spirits – do well enough afterwards. A few – not many – are just plain nasty. Born nasty. Are nasty. Stay nasty. They often do quite well too, of course. Cordwainers opened all sorts of doors for everyone. We could take the son of some utterly undistinguished father – a writer, say, like yourself – and turn him into a gentleman. Fit for the Foreign Office or the Navy or Shell or the Bar or any firm in the City. Once a recruiter knew a fellow was from Cordwainers, there was no need to interview the rest. I remember a professor at Guy’s Hospital saying to me: “We’ve never regretted taking a Cordwainers boy. Some of them weren’t too bright, but they were all gentlemen through and through. I’d rather lose the occasional patient and have the port passed to me from the right direction.” That was how it was then – at Guy’s, anyway. A sense of proportion. Now it’s all targets for this and targets for that … Are you sure you won’t have a biscuit? Sometimes they’re all right if you heat them up in the oven. They go hard again. The first time, anyway. Would you like me to do that for you? It would be no trouble.’

  ‘I’m good,’ I said.

  ‘Are you?’ he said, looking at me. He took off his spectacles and polished them on his tie. ‘Well, unlike you, Vane was out and out bad. Came from a perfectly decent family, I believe. Professional people. But that’s no guarantee of anything. Not any more.’

  ‘You think it really is Vane?’

  ‘I saw him on television. Still being snide and unpleasant. Never liked him. Never will. I’d love to throttle him with my bare hands. That’s between you and me, of course. Not for publication.’

  ‘He clearly didn’t like you …’

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘I mean – the characters in his books with your name.’

  ‘So I’m told. It was only my surname. I don’t read that sort of trash anyway – crime novels. You are at least a biographer. Decent trade. Almost respectable. You haven’t fallen quite that low yourself.’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Did you resent it? The use of your name?’

  ‘It didn’t surprise me, if that’s what you mean. If he hadn’t done that he’d have done something else. Nasty child.’

  ‘Lord Davies said he didn’t know Vane well – that he was in another house …’

  ‘No, they were both very much in my house. Can’t understand why Davies would have said that. You must have misunderstood. Same house, same year, same dorm. So was that boy who became a lawyer. Liked those circular biscuits with lurid icing on them. He was still eating one when I last saw him – went there to get my will changed. Not that I’ve got a lot to leave anyone, but I don’t want it going to the government and being used to help refugees or feminists or something awful like that. What was he called? Oh dear, my memory isn’t what it was …’

  ‘Ogilvie?’

  ‘That’s him. Ogilvie. How on earth did you know that? Yes, Vane, Davies and Ogilvie were quite thick with each other. I was afraid that Vane would lead the other two astray, but they turned out all right. Davies has made a lot of money, I’m told. Thousands.’

  ‘Ogilvie’s planning to stand for Parliament,’ I said.

  ‘Conservative?’

  ‘I think so. He’s in favour of money and hanging, anyway.’

  Slide nodded, slightly reassured. ‘I believe I took Ogilvie to Selsey once. I did that sometimes – take a few of the boys down to Sussex with me. Fun and games on the beach. Nothing illegal. Very jolly.’

  ‘Is it true that Vane stole a car?’ I asked.

  ‘At school or later? I haven’t followed his subsequent career very much, as you will have gathered.’

  ‘At school. The deputy head’s.’

  ‘Oh, that … Borrowed, rather than stole, I’d have said. It was the Head Man’s – no, you’re right, the deputy head’s. I think he had a bit of a thing for Vane, because he could have got him expelled. Vane wasn’t at all bad-looking then. Not that I fancied him myself. Not really my type.’

  ‘So there were no actual criminal charges?’

  ‘No. Not for Vane or his companion in crime.’

  ‘Who was …?’

  ‘Let me think … let me think … I’m sure it will come back to me. Possibly the same boy who was his editor and salesman when he published that poem of his.’

  ‘I didn’t know he wrote much poetry.’

  ‘He didn’t. He wrote only one when he was at Cordwainers – five pages stapled together and sold for a shilling.’

  ‘That’s more than most poetry makes.’

  ‘It was gay porn, really, with a few rhymes thrown in.’

  ‘Good grief. What did the school make of that?’

  ‘I think it sold out quite quickly. I’ve probably still got my copy somewhere.’

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Elsie

  ‘Biscuit?’

  ‘Correct,’ I said, swallowing the last of it. ‘What I eat while I’m on the phone to you, Ethelred, is my own affair. How did you get on with the Hieronymus Slide?’

  ‘He’s called Jonathan Slide. I got on fine. I spent the whole meeting wondering who he reminded me of.’

  ‘And it was …’

  ‘Roger Vane. In some ways they’re very different people, but the same capacity for sweeping generalisations. The same underlying arrogance. The same unpleasantness.’

  ‘He hadn’t heard of you either, then?’

  ‘That isn’t relevant. My point is that Roger Vane seems to have been far more influenced by his housemaster than either would care to admit. Or maybe it’s just a Cordwainers thing. Maybe that’s how they turn them out. They seem to have a very high opinion of themselves.’

  ‘Of course they do. And, having been starved for five years, a lifelong obsession with food. So did you discover anything new?’

  ‘Davies, Ogilvie and Vane were apparently all good friends at school, which neither Ogilvie nor Davies were anxious to own up to. Slide also gave me an interesting account of an erotic poem that Vane produced at school and that one of his chums marketed for him.’

  ‘Nothing worse than that? I’d been hoping for
much more. Slide must hate Vane’s guts for making him a character in his books. If he didn’t know anything bad about Vane, you’d have thought he might have been arsed to make something up.’

  ‘I don’t think Slide likes Vane but he bears him no ill will over the character names business. He says that he’s never read the books and doesn’t much care.’

  ‘He really said that?’

  ‘Yes, that’s what I’ve just said to you. He said that. That was what I meant.’

  ‘Ethelred, I happen to know, because Tim told me, that Slide famously went out and bought each of the books the moment they hit the shops. Day of publication. Hardback. Full price. No Amazon Prime in those days. The one thing you can’t afford to be as a teacher is a laughing stock. But that’s what Slide became. He would spend the weeks preceding each publication date sweating over what Vane was going to do to him this time. The moment he got the book he would leaf through it until he came to the relevant text, then he would read with growing horror what his namesake had done. At or around book four he had a complete nervous breakdown. He was off work for a year. He had to give up being housemaster. He largely gave up teaching. The school found him some admin role – careers advice, I think. Not too difficult in that most of the boys had jobs lined up for them from birth. But his own career as a teacher was a total write-off.’

  ‘He didn’t tell me that.’

  ‘Which is interesting in itself. Did he think the man claiming to be Vane is genuine?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I rather think he did – on balance.’

  ‘Tim still doesn’t,’ I said.

  ‘Well, I do,’ said Ethelred. ‘There are one or two things that he’s clearly misremembered, but he has been away a long time. And in the last resort a DNA test should prove it. Roger thought Cynthia wouldn’t play ball – the inheritance and all that – and that there was no point in asking her to do it. But there must be some way of persuading her. In the end she must want to know too.’

  ‘He said that? She wouldn’t play ball?’

  ‘I don’t remember the exact words, but that was more or less what he told me.’

  ‘That’s why there’d be no point in even asking?’

  ‘Yes. I’m not sure why you’re labouring this point,’ said Ethelred in his most patronising voice. ‘She wouldn’t cooperate and there would therefore be no point in raising the matter. As I say, I think that he may be wrong. But he was very clear about his reason.’

  ‘He didn’t mention in passing that Cynthia was no blood relation of his?’ I asked.

  ‘She’s his niece.’

  ‘Cynthia’s adopted. His brother and his wife couldn’t have children of their own.’

  ‘Maybe he doesn’t know …’

  ‘How likely is that? Your brother adopts a child and you don’t know about it? A baby miraculously appears in the household without the necessity for pregnancy?’

  ‘Well, he certainly didn’t tell me that and it would, as you say, have been an obvious objection. Perhaps he was just being funny at my expense?’

  ‘Well, that’s happened before. But in this case, maybe, because he’s an imposter, he has no way of knowing she’s adopted? It’s exactly the sort of thing that might trip somebody up, no matter how well they’ve researched their target. Look, Ethelred, first he doesn’t know his dog’s name …’

  ‘The dog’s sex.’

  ‘Name. Sex. Whatever. Then he falls for an invented cousin.’

  ‘Wilbert. A genuine cousin whose nickname Cynthia was unaware of, but who was really called Graham.’

  ‘Cynthia’s mother was also unaware of the nickname.’

  ‘True. But she said there really was a cousin called Graham. A distant cousin of her husband’s, it would seem. It’s not surprising she didn’t know.’

  ‘And, when coming up with a fake cousin, Cynthia just happened to hit accidentally on that one name, out of the thousands of other nicknames he might have had? Wilbert’s not the most common name, except possibly in the part of the country you and Thomas Hardy come from.’

  ‘Maybe she’d heard his nickname mentioned years ago and so, when she was thinking of what to call this invented cousin, she came up with something she dimly remembered …’

  ‘Though her mother had never heard the name?’

  ‘Or had also forgotten it.’

  ‘Again, let me enquire: how likely is that?’

  ‘Actually it’s perfectly possible,’ said Ethelred. There are times when you might as well try to reason with a traffic warden. Still, it was worth one more go.

  ‘Look, Ethelred, here’s how it is: Cynthia, Vane’s closest living relation, and Tim his (admittedly very ex) partner both think he’s a fake. You, who never spoke to him before this week, have decided, however, that he’s the genuine article. Which of you would a rational being decide to believe? Count to ten before you reply.’

  ‘I’d want to see the evidence,’ said Ethelred huffily, after a count of eight.

  ‘Then, my sweet, I shall get it for you,’ I said.

  Because I had already set the wheels in motion – wheels that I knew would grind on and crush the so-called Roger Vane into the dirt, in much the same way that financier Sir Jasper Slide was ground into the dirt by a combine harvester in The Killing on Two Tree Farm.

  ‘When’s Cynthia arriving?’ Tim asked, as I terminated my call to Ethelred.

  ‘In a few minutes,’ I said. ‘You put the coffee on. What else will we need? … Yes, of course, biscuits.’

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Elsie

  ‘Coffee?’

  ‘Black. No sugar,’ said Cynthia, setting back into the armchair.

  Tim was in the other armchair, because my modestly sized flat possesses precisely two of them. Shortly, I would sit on the dining chair that I had pulled up facing them, but for the moment I was being the epitome of a domestic goddess, pouring actual genuine coffee from a proper coffee pot. It was a while since I’d made the real thing, and I could no longer remember the correct ratios of coffee and water. Ten parts one to one part of the other one? But ten parts of which? What I was pouring might be hot water carrying the distant memory of coffee or (after they’d chewed their way through it) might keep them on the ceiling for the next three days. We’d soon see.

  ‘Mmmm … coffee,’ said Cynthia, taking a sip.

  I waited for her to tell me what sort of coffee, but she didn’t.

  ‘I’ve probably got some biscuits somewhere,’ I said.

  ‘No thanks, I’m on a diet,’ said Cynthia.

  ‘My assistant’s always trying to get me to cut down on biscuits,’ I said. ‘And chocolate. And crisps. And whipped cream. And mayonnaise. And chips. Not all together, of course. And absolutely not mayonnaise with chocolate – you’d think it would work but it really doesn’t. Anyway, you certainly don’t need to diet, Cynthia.’

  I waited for her to say ‘well, nor do you, Elsie’ but she didn’t. I decided I liked her slightly less. And frankly she did need to diet. Losing four or five pounds would have done her no harm at all.

  ‘So, why are we here?’ she asked.

  ‘To discuss the man calling himself Roger Norton Vane,’ I said. ‘Between us we have the knowledge, skill and cunning to bring him down.’

  ‘You seem very sure of that.’

  ‘You’ve caught him out twice already – Bramble and Wilbert,’ I reminded her.

  ‘Uncle Graham was apparently called Wilbert,’ she said. ‘At least according to the man claiming to be Uncle Roger. Graham died a couple of years ago so I’ve no way of checking. I did wonder if maybe I had some distant memory of that. It might even have been mentioned at the funeral …’

  ‘Your mother didn’t remember Graham having a nickname.’

  ‘You’ve spoken to my mother?’

  ‘Ethelred did. In the line of biographical research.’

  ‘Oh yes, I think she mentioned he was going to call round. I’m afraid her memory isn’t what it was. Th
at she doesn’t remember somebody called Wilbert honestly doesn’t prove anything.’

  ‘This isn’t the time to start changing your mind,’ I said.

  ‘I’m not really. It was just a brief and uncharacteristic moment of self-doubt. It has passed. My normal arrogance is restored. The man’s a charlatan. Everything points to it. What is your plan, Elsie? Torture? Blackmail? Seduction?’

  ‘Not seduction, unless you fancy it yourself – and it would have to feel slightly weird seducing a man claiming to be your uncle. No, I was thinking more in terms of my natural cleverness – augmented of course by your own. It’s very simple. Between us we come up with ten questions, say, that only the real Roger Vane could answer.’

  ‘And then one of us gets to go and ask him?’ said Cynthia.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘He knows we all have doubts about him – especially you. He’ll be cautious and evasive. We’ll give the questions to Ethelred, whom he trusts, and then get Ethelred to report back.’

  ‘Will Ethelred be happy doing that?’ asked Cynthia.

  ‘He doesn’t need to be happy,’ I said. ‘He just needs to ask the questions.’

  ‘So, where do we begin?’ asked Tim.

  ‘With you. Tell us what actually happened the day Roger Vane vanished. And it will have to be the truth for this to work. No evasions. No holding back merely to save your own feelings.’

  ‘Hang on a minute …’ he said.

  ‘Is there any problem with telling us the truth?’ I enquired. ‘I mean, you have nothing you would wish to hide behind your Shield of Cunning, do you?’

  We both looked at him. If Tim was about to confess he killed Vane and buried him in a hole in the ground, then that in itself would be conclusive. It was very, very unlikely Vane would have been able to show up at a memorial service. We could probably shelve the whole question-setting thing.

  ‘It’s just I’m not sure about this,’ said Tim. ‘I mean, I don’t come out of it well.’

  ‘I honestly never thought you would,’ I said.

  ‘Nor me,’ said Cynthia. ‘Our expectations of you are not high. You’re good to go.’