Putting on a clean shirt and a different tie in the bathroom, I noticed another of Moggerhanger’s framed quips on the wall saying: ‘Look before you speak.’ He must have had Polly working in a regular little sweatshop. I expect she posted one a week back from Switzerland when she was eighteen.
Matthew Coppice had laid a buffet-style meal on a round mahogany table in the middle of the dining room. There was a dish of boiled potatoes, a flank of roast meat, a bowl of salad, a basket of sliced bread, a board of cheeses and a cluster of plastic-looking grapes. Four bottles of Italian red stood on sentry-go at various points. Moggerhanger’s oval platter was already laden and he sat at a separate table with his own bottle of champagne, talking to someone who had not come up in the car with us.
Since reacquainting myself with Moggerhanger I decided that when I had enough evidence to get him sentenced to everything short of hanging I would go to the police station with my locked briefcase, to which only I had the combination, and spread the papers out on the large table in the interview room. ‘Would you do me the favour of looking these over? It’ll take a while, but I’ll just sit down and have a smoke, if you don’t mind.’ Every few moments I would hear exclamations of shock and indignation from the honest constables and their officers. Eventually the inspector would say: ‘We get the drift, Mr Cullen. Leave the stuff with us and think no more about it. There’s enough here to send even an archbishop down. We’ve been waiting for stuff like this for years.’
You can imagine my chagrin, which included a twinge of despair, when I realised that the man talking to Moggerhanger at their separate table was none other than Chief Inspector Jack Lanthorn, one of the cops who was so bent he could get through the maze at Hampton Court in one minute flat. I knew now that the police raid on Peppercorn Cottage hadn’t been carried out by a RADA acting class, but had been done by real coppers giving Moggerhanger a hand on instructions from Lanthorn. And the inspector had come up incognito to Spleen Manor to collect payment for services willingly given. I hoped he’d retire in a couple of years to Jersey, which might make it easier for me to sink the boots of retribution into Moggerhanger’s backbone. His long thin face and pinpoint grey eyes beamed at me. ‘Haven’t I seen you somewhere before, lad?’
I did not like his disrespectful way of addressing me, and looked stonily back saying: ‘You arrested me at London Airport for gold smuggling twelve years ago.’
He turned to Moggerhanger. ‘I thought you had enough old lags on your staff, without having to take on a young one.’
‘Here’s somebody who doesn’t intend to be an old one.’ I resolved from then on to bring that bastard crashing down as well if I could. ‘I don’t live at Number One Kangaroo Court anymore, not in the Garden Flat, anyway.’
Moggerhanger laughed. ‘Steady on, Michael. None of us do – or will.’
Lanthorn thought me too small to worry about. Perhaps I shouldn’t have spoken. I was usually able to uphold my standard of being the quiet sort, except where women were concerned, but here I had slipped up, because I should have denied being who I was when Lanthorn recognised me. That was the expected response, so that he could have chuckled inwardly, both at having spotted me and made me lie. Maybe there were some lies I was getting too old to tell. He forked red meat into his cavernous gob, then slopped half a glass of red Polly after it. ‘None of us knows what the future holds.’
‘That’s why we’re here tonight,’ Moggerhanger said. They were two crocodiles in the pool together.
‘Among other things, Claud.’
I loaded my plate. The radiators along the walls gave off a faint warmth, but Moggerhanger called: ‘I expected to see a fire in the grate, Matthew.’
Coppice stood by the door looking into space, a man in his late forties, with a pink face that would have seemed well fed if it hadn’t had an expression of worry stamped indelibly on it. The lines must have been there from birth, or from when he first went to prep school at six. Wavy grey hair was spread thinly over his skull. He wore flannels and sports jacket and heavy, highly polished shoes. A cravat decorated the spread of his Viyella shirt instead of a tie. He stank of whisky, and shook himself out of his vacant stare, saying with no tone of apology: ‘I thought the place was warm enough.’
‘I know what you thought,’ said Moggerhanger. ‘I can usually tell a mile off what somebody like you is thinking. You didn’t want to get your hands dirty, right?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Well, we all know that you can’t make a fire without getting your hands dirty, but that shouldn’t put you off when you know very well I like to see a bit of fire in the grate. It might not matter down south, but in Yorkshire it cheers me up. If you can’t do better than that you’ll find yourself back in Peppercorn Cottage. It’s a good dinner, though, I will say that.’
Lanthorn walked to the window and pulled a corner of the curtain to look out. ‘Throwing it down with rain. What a goddamn fucking hole Yorkshire is.’
‘Steady on,’ Moggerhanger said. ‘It’s no worse than any other, Jack.’
‘I was born not twenty miles away. Thank God I got out of it at fourteen.’
‘Stop worrying. He’ll be here in the morning. Come and get some more of this lovely grub.’
Lanthorn took his advice and advanced on it, and plied with his knife and fork as if the meat was helping him with his enquiries.
‘And I also noticed,’ Moggerhanger said to Coppice, ‘that my bed was made. Quite an advance on last time. Do you remember, when you served half-cooked pizza and a bucket of Algerian jollop?’
Several expressions passed over Matthew Coppice’s phizzog which our self-opinionated boss didn’t catch. If he had, he would have been careful from then on with his apparently humble servant. All the same, I felt sorry for Coppice and wondered why he didn’t walk out. Instead, he took a cigarette from his case and lit up with trembling fingers, then came to the table and poured a glass of wine.
Moggerhanger pulled a bundle of papers from his pocket and passed them to Lanthorn. ‘The only thing to do is do it, Jack.’
‘I’m not so sure whether I dare,’ Lanthorn said. ‘Or care to, if it comes to that.’
‘It’s a matter of options.’ Moggerhanger filled their glasses. ‘And how many of those do we have, these days?’
Lanthorn said something I couldn’t hear, so I sat closer to Alice. ‘I hope you realise I was serious about what I said to you in the car.’
She had changed into a skirt and blouse and freshened herself with new perfume. ‘I only remember the amusing parts.’
‘Maybe you already have a boyfriend. Or a girlfriend. I’m not old fashioned. Or maybe you have a husband, though as soon as I saw you I thought you looked too happy for that.’
‘I do like my commons, Claud,’ I heard Lanthorn boom out. ‘I smoke all I want, and eat red meat, and drink what I can hold. I don’t put weight on, either. I think it’s those vegetarians, non-smokers and mad dieters who are responsible for the country being in a decline. They’ve got no bloody drive or energy. If you can’t consume, what incentive have you got to produce?’
Moggerhanger laughed. ‘You should know, Jack.’
Alice smiled. ‘I’m divorced. I was married at twenty-two, and split up three years later. My husband was a smooth-talking con-man who wanted me to support him.’
‘You walked out?’
‘No. He found somebody who would. I was devastated, for a while. His burning ambition was to be idle. He saw idleness as the greatest virtue.’
‘You make my blood run cold.’
‘I haven’t had anything to do with any man since. I even stopped seeing my father. My mother was dead, so it wasn’t too difficult. He wanted me to go and live with him, because he’d retired from the bank. But I had my own flat: my husband was so idle he hadn’t even signed the lease.’
We sat with plates on our knees. ‘I’m really interested in what you’re saying. Your fine and subtle face has an expression which shows you’r
e at peace with yourself. To someone like me, who has a passion for work, to the extent that I’ve not had much to do with women in my life – nor men either, come to that – you’re the most attractive and fascinating person I’ve met. I’d like to get to know you.’
‘You may not find as much as you expect.’
I held a piece of meat close to her mouth.
‘No thank you.’
‘Let me be the judge of that,’ I said earnestly.
‘I’m up here to work.’ She sipped her wine. ‘And I’m dead tired.’
‘I think you misjudge me.’ I clinked her glass, and took a long swallow. ‘I’ve been sexually impotent since I was fifteen. All I do, when I can, and I don’t very often, is sleep with women, just for love and comfort. None of them have yet been able to induce me to have proper sexual intercourse.’
I’d used that ruse a couple of times before, yet I regretted trying it with Alice because it should have been possible to get her into bed by normal diplomatic methods. I was inveigled into such a statement because her claim not to have made love with a man for what must have been at least ten years struck me as an even bigger lie. The fact that I fell for it was my second mistake that night. Maybe I was tired as well. Or perhaps I hadn’t gone far enough and should cap it with a third lie by telling her I was queer.
‘We’ll be here for a few days,’ she said, ‘but I don’t think I’ll have time to take you on.’
Matthew Coppice gazed as if he envied me being so close to her. Well, I couldn’t share her with him and that was a fact. I’d have to call off my campaign and make a real effort the following day. There was a time for everything, and in this case it wasn’t now, but she didn’t know how right she was when she gave me a lovely goodnight smile and said: ‘See you at breakfast!’
Moggerhanger looked from his hugger-mugger game of cards with Lanthorn. ‘Being difficult, is she? The thing is, Michael, you don’t have the art of courtship. Nobody does, these days. But it’ll cost you a pony or two in flowers with her. And why not? It feels all the better when you get there.’
‘In my opinion,’ I said, ‘it always feels good.’
‘That’s no way for a young swain to talk.’ He bellowed with healthy laughter and returned to his double dealing, a man of the world but not completely in it, which made him too cunning by half. I helped myself to Matthew Coppice’s trifle of sponge, tinned fruit and custard, into which he must have poured several bottles of strong sherry because at the first spoonful my eyes watered. Lanthorn said it was the best dessert he’d had at Spleen Manor. When Matthew brought in coffee I asked where he’d learned to cook. ‘I worked at an old folks’ home.’ He had only a faint Yorkshire accent. ‘I’ll tell you about it some time, if you’re interested.’
Facing me, and away from present company, I saw him wink, a signal that mystified me, because there was no business I could possibly have with a broken-down old caretaker like him. I swallowed his weak brew and wondered how much he was making on the housekeeping bills. ‘Any time. I like stories.’
He looked grateful and relieved, and I almost thanked him for allowing me to make him happy. He shook my hand so furtively that I wondered whether he’d done it.
I heard Alice Whipplegate humming and splashing around in the bathroom, and was tempted to look through a keyhole in passing, or get out my Swiss army knife to widen a crack in the door. Such actions were below even me, but when I came to her room I opened the door and walked in. It was bigger than mine. The wardrobe had a few dresses already hung, and a table was cluttered with various combs and cosmetic pots. I pressed the mattress of the single bed, then noticed that her diary was open, with the ink barely dry:
‘I’m quite enjoying my trip,’ she’d written, ‘though I must say I was dog tired on the way up. I managed to get some reading in, at least, even though it was only a trashy novel by Gilbert Blaskin. The only trouble was that I had this chauffeur practising heavy breathing down my neck. He’s a real bore, forcing attentions on me that I definitely do not want. He actually told me he was impotent. The oldest gag in the book. He’ll be telling me he’s gay next.
‘Hell, I suppose I’ll have to put him off somehow. It’s so tedious. There’s always some pest hanging around. I’m sure it won’t be easy to get rid of him, though. He’s so cocksure. He’s not really bad looking, but I just don’t fancy him. If I did, he’d be the one to complain after a while.
‘Must take a bath. Dead beat after my time with Parkhurst last night. Now, there’s a man, though I don’t suppose anybody would think so. An ENGINE! He just fucks and fucks as if he’s in a ballet on stage at Covent Garden, saying nothing because he’s thinking of the money he’s going to win at gambling after the show’s over. He got THREE jackpots out of me, the brute. Lord Moggerhanger wanted him to come with us, but I’m glad he didn’t. I’d never be in a fit state to get anything done.’
I walked out and slammed the door. You can’t win ’em all. I got into my flowered dressing gown and waited outside the bathroom for her to finish so that I could go in for my evening ablutions. Clutching my toilet bag, I tapped on the wood. ‘Can I share the sink?’
She opened the door, and walked by. ‘Good night, Mr Cullen!’
‘Good night,’ I called cheerily.
I couldn’t sleep. A moon lit up the room because there were no curtains. I tried one side, then the other, thinking of my encounter with Ettie in the broom cupboard. I recalled making love in the toilet at 30,000 feet to Polly Moggerhanger on our way back from Geneva. I even longed for Bridgitte. What I wanted most was a drink, preferably a pint of Jack Daniel’s. Sounds of shouting from downstairs told me that Moggerhanger and Lanthorn were cheating at cards. I regretted having had only two glasses of wine at supper. I regretted not having scrawled ‘Fuck You’ across Mrs Whipplegate’s diary. In fact I regretted not having torn the page out and posted it to Blaskin for use in one of his novels. Bollocks, I said to myself. Die, I told whoever had got me into this boiling stew.
Insanity was coming on fast. Alice wasn’t having an affair with Parkhurst after all. The cunning little vixen had only written that stuff in her diary knowing I would sneak in and read it. She was testing me to see whether or not I would be discouraged. She loved me passionately. Maybe it was the first of a series of many tests that I was expected to pass. She carried the diary with her and filled in a page so as to scare off any bloke she was with, and left her door unlocked so that he could go in and read it. How can I think such things? I thought, falling asleep.
I was chasing her along an avenue of piled woodplanks. There was a tug at my arm and I woke up. A blue Yorkshire dawn spread across the window and showed Matthew Coppice sitting by my head. ‘What the fucking hell do you want?’ I asked, as humanely as I could.
‘Sorry if I woke you, Mr Cullen.’
‘I am, as well.’
‘It’s the only time I can talk to you. In secret, that is. These people here would kill me if they knew.’
‘I’m sure they would,’ I said, just to comfort him.
‘Do you think so?’
‘Well, you said so.’
‘Did I?’
‘You certainly did. But I suppose you’re right.’ He was dressed as he had been at supper and still reeked of whisky. Ash from his fag fell on my bed. His chin was smooth and he also smelled of aftershave, being the sort who shaved twice a day but had a bath only once a month. Why did I keep meeting people I felt sorry for?
What I needed was Moggerhanger’s rock-hard reality – though the thought made me want to puke. Poor old Matthew Coppice, he hadn’t even been to sleep. ‘Make it short,’ I said. ‘I’m still hoping for a night’s rest.’
‘I’ve fixed you something to drink.’ He fetched a tray from the door and set it on my knees: a big pot of coffee, a jug of steaming milk and a plate of hot toast and buttered teacakes. The coffee was ten times better than the slop we’d had after supper, I told him.
‘When I meet someone like you, Mr Cu
llen, my impulse is to be absolutely frank.’
While tucking into the excellent breakfast, I congratulated him on his skill in reading character.
‘In my early days,’ he said, ‘I was a steward on a British Railways restaurant car. The best job I ever had. I don’t mind telling you that we made a packet. One of the others was a young woman called Elsie Carnack, and we used to think up ways of making money on the side. Of course, we had to share it with the rest of them at the end of the day, but every week it amounted to quite a bit. We diluted the orange juice, put water in the soup and thickened it with flour, doctored the coffee, took in our own cheeses (some of which fell off the back of a lorry, if you take my meaning, Mr Cullen), sold our own bread, gave half portions where we thought it wouldn’t be noticed, short changed, fawned so that we would get good tips, and dispensed our own wines and liqueurs – oh, I can’t remember all that we did.’
He seemed quite excited.
‘Elsie and me saved what we could and left our jobs in the restaurant car when we got married. We sold the concession, as a matter of fact, though not long afterwards there was a crackdown and the syndicate got fined, or lost their jobs. The ringleader was sent to jail and Elsie had a good laugh over that. I never liked her laugh, mind you, and should have been warned by it. But love is blind, isn’t it, Mr Cullen?’
I could only nod at his wisdom. ‘Even National Health specs don’t help.’
‘Me and Elsie bought a big house in the country very cheap and called it Forget-me-not Farm, which we ran as an old people’s home for seven years. As you can imagine, we had quite a rapid turnover. I loved the work. Some of the old folks were wonderful people. I was at it twenty hours a day. I would even read to them if they were blind. And some of the stories they told me! They’d lived long and had been all over the world. Some had been famous in their time, but they were forgotten now. A few were ga-ga, of course, but I did my best for them. Elsie took the business side of it too much to heart. She found a way of keeping the bodies fresh for three or four weeks after they had died, so that we could go on claiming maintenance. The relatives didn’t bother to visit them, so there was no risk. And it wasn’t doing the old folks any harm if they were already dead, was it, Mr Cullen? Not that I liked the idea, though it made a big difference to our profits by the end of the year. Mind you, we had one or two narrow escapes, though I was working so hard that much of the time I didn’t know what was going on. That was my downfall. I should have done. One day Elsie vanished. She took the money, and anything valuable that the residents owned. It was terrible. She’d robbed them blind. She robbed me, as well as leaving me with all the debts. She even took my best Rolex watch which one of the nice old chaps had given me. The result was that the police came and found two bodies in the deep freeze, underneath all the vegetables. I took the blame on my shoulders. Elsie was let off, but I got seven years. Seven years! When I think of what the judge said about me my blood runs cold. “The worst case of vampirism on the elderly that I’ve ever had to deal with,” he said, and it got in all the papers. Did you read it, Mr Cullen?’