Blott on the Landscape

  ‘Delighted you could make it,’ said Hoskins when Dundridge made his way through the crush to him. ‘What’s your poison?’

  Dundridge said he’d have a gin and tonic. He’d had enough beer for one day. Around him large men shouted about doglegs on the third and water hazards on the fifth. Dundridge felt out of it. Hoskins brought him his drink and introduced him to a Mr Snell. ‘Glad to meet you, squire,’ said Mr Snell heartily from behind a large moustache. ‘What’s your handicap?’ Suppressing his immediate reaction to tell him to mind his own damned business, Dundridge said that as far as he knew he didn’t have one. ‘A Beginner, eh? Well, never mind. Give it time. We’ve all got to start somewhere.’ He drifted away and Dundridge wandered in the opposite direction. Looking round the room at the veined faces of the men and the hennaed hair of the women Dundridge cursed himself for coming. If this was Hoskins’ idea of local influence he could keep it. Presently he went out on to the terrace and stared resentfully down the eighteenth. He’d finish his drink and then go home. He drained his glass and was about to go inside when a voice at his elbow said, ‘If you’re going to the bar, you could get me another one.’ It was a soft seductive voice. Dundridge turned and looked into a pair of almond eyes. Dundridge changed his mind about leaving. He went through to the bar and got two more drinks.

  ‘These affairs are such a bore,’ said the girl. ‘Are you a great golfer?’

  Dundridge said he wasn’t a golfer at all.

  ‘Nor am I. Such a boring game.’ She sat down and crossed her legs. They were really very nice legs. ‘And anyway I don’t like sporty types. I prefer intellectuals.’ She smiled at Dundridge. ‘My name is Sally Boles. What’s yours?’

  ‘Dundridge,’ said Dundridge and sat down where he could see more of her legs. Ten minutes later he got another two drinks. Twenty minutes later two more. He was enjoying himself at last.

  Miss Boles, he learnt, was visiting her uncle. She came from London too. She worked for a firm of beauty consultants. Dundridge said he could well believe it. She found the country so boring. Dundridge said he did too. He waxed lyrical about the joys of living in London and all the time Miss Boles’ almond eyes smiled seductively at him and her legs crossed and recrossed in the gathering dusk. When Dundridge suggested another drink Miss Boles insisted on getting it.

  ‘It’s my turn,’ she said, ‘and besides I want to powder my nose.’ She left Dundridge sitting alone on the terrace in a happy stupor. When she returned with the drinks she was looking thoughtful.

  ‘My uncle’s gone without me,’ she said, ‘I suppose he thought I had gone home already. Would it be too much for you to give me a lift?’

  ‘Of course not. I’d be delighted,’ said Dundridge and sipped his drink. It tasted extraordinarily bitter.

  ‘I’m so sorry, I got Campari,’ Miss Boles said by way of explanation. Dundridge said it was quite all right. He finished his drink and they wandered off the terrace towards the car park. ‘It’s been such a lovely evening,’ Miss Boles said as she climbed into Dundridge’s car. ‘You must look me up in London.’

  ‘I’d like to,’ said Dundridge. ‘I’d like to see a lot more of you.’

  ‘That’s a promise,’ said Miss Boles.

  ‘You really mean that?’

  ‘Call me Sally,’ said Miss Boles and leant against him.

  ‘Oh Sally …’ Dundridge began, and suddenly felt quite extraordinarily tired, ‘… I do want to see so much more of you.’

  ‘You will, my pet, you will,’ said Miss Boles and took the car keys out of his inert fingers. Dundridge had passed out.

  In London Sir Giles lay back supine on the bed while Mrs Forthby tightened the straps. Occasionally he struggled briefly for the look of the thing and whimpered hoarsely but Mrs Forthby was, at least superficially, implacable. The scenario of Sir Giles’ fantasy called for a brutal implacability and Mrs Forthby did her best. She wasn’t very good, being a kind-hearted soul and not given to tying people up and whipping them, and as a matter of fact she disapproved of corporal punishment on principle. It was largely because she was so progressive that she was prepared to indulge Sir Giles in the first place. ‘If it gives the poor man pleasure who am I to say him nay,’ she told herself. Certainly she had to say nay a great many times to Sir Giles in the throes of his ritual. But if Mrs Forthby wasn’t naturally brutal, with the lights down low it was possible to imagine that she was and she had the merit of being strong and wearing her costume – there were several – most convincingly. Tonight she was Cat Woman, Miss Dracula, the Cruel Mistress Experimenting On Her Helpless Victim.

  ‘No, no,’ whimpered Sir Giles.

  ‘Yes, yes,’ insisted Mrs Forthby.

  ‘No, no.’

  ‘Yes, yes.’

  Mrs Forthby’s fingers forced his mouth open and inserted the gag. ‘No …’ It was too late. Mrs Forthby inflated the gag and smiled maliciously down at him. Her breasts loomed above him, heavy with menace. Her gloved hands …

  Mrs Forthby went into the kitchen and made a pot of tea. While she waited for the kettle to boil she nibbled a digestive biscuit thoughtfully. There were times when she tired of Sir Giles’ desultory attachment and longed for a more permanent arrangement. She would have to speak to him about it. She warmed the teapot, put in two teabags and then a third for the pot and poured the boiling water in. After all she was getting on and she rather fancied the idea of being Lady Lynchwood. She looked round the kitchen. Now where had she put the lid of the teapot?

  On the bed Sir Giles struggled with his bonds and was still. He lay back happily exhausted and waited for his cruel mistress. He had to wait a long time. In between spasms of excitement his mind went back to Dundridge. He hoped Hoskins hadn’t made a bloody mess of things. That was the trouble with subordinates, you couldn’t trust them. Sir Giles preferred to attend to matters himself but he had too much to lose to be closely involved in the actual details of this particular operation. First the stick and then the carrot. He wondered how much the carrot would have to be. Two, three, four thousand pounds? Expensive. Add Hoskins’ five thousand. Still, it was worth it. A profit of £150,000 was worth it. So was the prospect of Maud’s fury when she realized that the motorway was coming through the Gorge. Teach the stupid bitch. But where was Mrs Forthby? Why didn’t she come back?

  Mrs Forthby finished her cup of tea and poured another. She was getting rather hot in her tight costume. Perhaps she would go and have a bath. She got up and went into the bathroom and turned on the tap before remembering that there was something she still had to do. ‘Silly old me; talk about forgetful,’ she said to herself and picked up the thin cane. The Cruel Mistress, Miss Dracula went through to the bedroom and closed the door.

  In his library in the Lodge Blott sat reading Sir Arthur Bryant, but his mind wasn’t on the Age of Elegance. It kept slipping away to Maud, Mrs Wynn, Dundridge, Sir Giles. Besides, he didn’t much care for the Prince Regent. Nasty piece of goods in Blott’s opinion. But then Blott had no time for any of the Georges. His sympathies were all with the Jacobites. The lost cause and Bonnie Prince Charlie. In his present mood of romantic devotion he felt a longing to kneel before Lady Maud and confess his love. It was an absurd notion. She would be furious with him. Worse still, she might laugh. The thought of her contemptuous laughter made him put the book down and go downstairs. It was a lovely evening. The sun had set over the hills to the west but the sky was still bright. Blott felt like a beer. He wasn’t going over to Guildstead Carbonell for one. Mrs Wynn would expect him to spend the night and Blott didn’t feel like another night with her. He had spent the previous evening wrestling with his conscience and trying to make up his mind to tell her it was all over between them. In the end his sense of realism had prevailed. Lady Maud wasn’t for the likes of Blott. He would just have to dream about her. He had done so while making love to Mrs Wynn, who had been amazed at his renewed fervour. ‘Just like the old days,’ she had said wistfully as Blott got dressed to cycle back to
the Lodge. No, he definitely didn’t feel like another night at the Royal George. He would go for a walk. There were some rabbits over by the pinetum. Blott fetched his shotgun and set off across the Park. Beside him the river murmured gently and there was a smell of summer in the air. A blackbird called from a bush. Blott ignored his surroundings. He was dreaming of changed circumstances, of Lady Maud in peril, an act of heroism on his part that would reveal his true feelings for her and bring them together in love and happiness. By the time he reached the pinetum it was too dark to see any rabbits. But Blott wasn’t interested in rabbits any more. A light had come on in Lady Maud’s bedroom. Blott crept across the lawn and stood looking up at it until it went out. Then he walked home and went to bed.

  12

  Dundridge woke in a lay-by on the London road. He had a splitting headache, he was extremely cold and the gear lever was sticking into his ribs. He sat up, untangled his legs from under the steering wheel and wondered where the hell he was, how he had got there and what the devil had happened. He had an extremely clear memory of the party at the Golf Club. He could remember talking to Miss Boles on the terrace. He could even recall walking back to his car with her. After that nothing.

  He got out of the car to try to get the circulation moving in his legs and discovered that his trousers were undone. He did them up hurriedly and reached up automatically to tighten the knot in his tie to hide his embarrassment only to find that he wasn’t wearing a tie. He felt his open shirt collar and the vest underneath. It was on back to front. He pulled the vest out a bit and looked down at the label. St Michael Combed Cotton it said. It was definitely on back to front. Now he came to think of it, his Y-fronts felt peculiar too. He took a step forward and tripped over a shoelace. His shoes were untied. Dundridge staggered against the car, seriously alarmed. He was in the middle of nowhere at … He looked at his watch. At six a.m. with his shoes untied, his vest and pants on back to front, and his trousers undone, and all he could remember was getting into the car with a girl with almond eyes and lovely legs.

  And suddenly Dundridge had a horrid picture of the night’s events. Perhaps he had raped the girl. A sudden brainstorm. That would explain the headache. The years of self-indulgence with his composite woman had come home to roost. He had gone mad and raped Miss Boles, possibly killed her. He looked down at his hands. At least there wasn’t any blood on them. He could have strangled her. There was always that possibility. There were any number of awful possibilities. Dundridge bent over painfully and did up his shoes and then, having looked in the ditch to make sure that there was no body there, he got back into the car and wondered what to do. There was obviously no point in sitting in the lay-by. Dundridge started the car and drove on until he came to a signpost which told him he was going towards London. He turned the car round and drove back to Worford, parked in the yard of the Handyman Arms and went quietly up to his room. He was in bed when the girl brought him his tea.

  ‘What time is it?’ he asked sleepily. The girl looked at him with a nasty smile.

  ‘You ought to know,’ she said, ‘you’ve only just come in. I saw you sneaking up the stairs. Been having a night on the tiles, have you?’

  She put the tray down and went out, leaving Dundridge cursing himself for a fool. He drank some tea and felt worse. There was no point in doing anything until he felt better. He turned on his side and went to sleep. When he awoke it was midday. He washed and shaved, studying his face in the mirror for some sign of the sexual mania he suspected. The face that stared back at him was a perfectly ordinary face but Dundridge was not reassured. Murderers tended to have perfectly ordinary faces. Perhaps he had simply had a blackout or amnesia. But that wouldn’t explain his vest being on back to front, nor his Y-fronts. At some time during the night he had undressed. Worse still, he had dressed in such a hurry that he hadn’t noticed what he was doing. That suggested panic or at least an extraordinary urgency. He went downstairs and had lunch. After lunch he would get hold of a telephone directory and look up Boles. Of course her uncle might not be called Boles but it was worth a try. If that didn’t work he would try Hoskins or the Golf Club. On second thoughts, that might not be such a good idea. There was no point in drawing attention to the fact that he had taken Miss Boles home. Or hadn’t.

  In the event there was no need to look in the telephone directory. As he passed the hotel desk, the clerk handed him a large envelope. It was addressed to Mr Dundridge and marked Private and Confidential. Dundridge took it up to his room before opening it and was extremely thankful that he hadn’t opened it in the foyer. Dundridge knew now how he had spent the night.

  He dropped the photographs on to the bed and slumped into a chair. A moment later he was up and locking the door. Then he turned back and stared at the pictures. They were 10 by 8 glossies and quite revolting. Taken with a flash, they were extremely clear and portrayed Dundridge with an unmistakable clarity, naked and all too evidently unashamed, engaged in a series of monstrous activities beyond his wildest imaginings with Miss Boles. At least he supposed it was Miss Boles. The fact that she seemed … Not seemed, was wearing a mask, a sort of hood, made identification impossible. He thumbed through the pictures and came to the hooded man. Dundridge hurriedly put them back in the envelope and sat sweating on the edge of the bed. He’d been framed. The word seemed wholly inappropriate. Nothing on God’s earth would get him to frame these pictures. Someone was trying to blackmail him.

  Trying? They had bloody well succeeded, but Dundridge had no money. He couldn’t pay anything. Dundridge opened the envelope again and stared at the evidence of his depravity. Miss Boles? Miss Boles? It obviously wasn’t her real name. Sally Boles. He had heard that name before somewhere. Of course, Sally Bowles in I am a Camera. Dundridge didn’t need telling. He’d been had in many more ways than one. In many more ways if the photos were anything to go by.

  He was just wondering what to do next when the telephone rang. Dundridge grabbed it. ‘Yes,’ he said.

  ‘Mr Dundridge?’ said a woman’s voice.

  ‘Speaking,’ said Dundridge shakily.

  ‘I hope you like the proofs.’

  ‘Proofs, you bitch?’ Dundridge snarled.

  ‘Call me Sally,’ said the voice. ‘There’s no need to be formal with me now.’

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘A thousand pounds … to be going on with.’

  ‘A thousand pounds? I haven’t got a thousand pounds.’

  ‘Then you had better get it, hadn’t you sweetie?’

  ‘I’ll tell you what I’m going to get,’ shouted Dundridge, ‘I’m going to get the police.’

  ‘You do that,’ said a man’s voice roughly, ‘and you’ll end up with your face cut to ribbons. You’re not playing with small fry, mate. We’re bigtime, understand.’

  Dundridge understood all too well. The woman’s voice came back on the line. ‘If you do go to the police remember we’ve had one or two customers there. We’ll know. You just start looking for your thousand pounds.’

  ‘I can’t—’

  ‘Don’t call us. We’ll call you,’ said Miss Boles, and put the phone down. Dundridge replaced his receiver more slowly. Then he leant forward and held his head in his hands.

  Sir Giles returned from London in excellent spirits. Mrs Forthby had excelled herself and he was still tingling with satisfaction. Best of all had been Hoskins’ cryptic message over the phone. ‘The fish is hooked,’ he had said. All that was required now was to provide a net in which Mr Dundridge could flounder. Sir Giles parked his car and went up to his constituency office and sent for Hoskins.

  ‘Here they are. As nice a set of prints as you could wish for,’ Hoskins said, laying the photographs out on the desk.

  Sir Giles studied them with an appreciative eye. ‘Very nice,’ he said finally. ‘Very nice indeed. And what does lover-boy have to say for himself now?’

  ‘They’ve asked him for a thousand pounds. He says he hasn’t got it.’

  ‘H
e’d have it, never fear,’ said Sir Giles. ‘He’ll have his thousand pounds and we’ll have him. There won’t be any more talk about tunnels in future. From now on it’s going to be Ottertown.’

  ‘Ottertown?’ said Hoskins, thoroughly puzzled. ‘But I thought you wanted it through the Gorge. I thought—’

  ‘The trouble with you, Hoskins,’ said Sir Giles, putting the photographs back into the envelope and the envelope into his briefcase, ‘is that you can’t see further than the end of your nose. You don’t really think I want to lose my lovely house and my beautiful wife, do you? You don’t think I haven’t got the interests of my constituents like General Burnett and Mr Bullett-Bloody-Finch at heart, do you? Of course I have. I’m honest Sir Giles, the poor man’s friend,’ and leaving Hoskins completely confused by this strange change of tack, he went downstairs.

  There was nothing like throwing people off the scent. Killing two birds with one stone, he thought as he got into the Bentley. The decision to go through Ottertown would kill Puckerington for sure. Sir Giles looked forward to his demise with relish. Puckerington was no friend of his. Snobby bastard. Well, he was bird number one. Then the by-election in Ottertown and they would have to change the route to the Gorge and Handyman Hall would go. Bird number two. By that time he would be able to claim even more compensation and no one, least of all Maud, could say he hadn’t done his damnedest. There was only one snag. That old fool Leakham might still insist on the Gorge route. It was hardly a snag. Maud would create a bit more. He might lose his seat in Parliament but he would be £150,000 richer and Mrs Forthby was waiting. Swings or roundabouts, Sir Giles couldn’t lose. The main thing was to see that the tunnel scheme was scotched. Sir Giles parked outside the Handyman Arms, went inside and sent a message up to Dundridge’s room to say that Sir Giles Lynchwood was looking forward to his company in the lounge.