Carnage on the Committee (24 page)

'I'm not pleased, Jack, but at least they haven't yet found out about me and Ellis.'

is there any sign of said Ellis?' enquired the baroness. 'Any news of what plans he might have for us? Not that I'm complaining, you understand.'

Mary Lou shook her head and continued perusing newsprint until her phone rang and she left. Besides papers, the kitchen table also held the debris of the scrambled eggs and bacon she had prepared earlier for the three of them as well as for two hungry policemen. The baroness fished around for a while among the broadsheets for items of interest and then got up and went into the living room, from which soon came sounds of loud whistling and ringing telephones. She returned with the parrot on her shoulder, but as soon as she sat down, ignoring her imprecations, he began to climb up her hair, until, crying 'Shiver me timbers', he reached his favourite spot, commenced the gentle cooing he had learned from the St Martha's pigeons and then tucked his head under his wing and fell asleep.

'I thought you were going to train him out of that,' said Amiss. 'You should pray that the tabloids don't get to hear that you wear a parrot on your head. They might infer that you're eccentric.'

She was not paying attention. 'Where's Mary Lou?'

'On the phone to Ellis, billing-and-cooing like Horace.'

'Hmmm. They don't spend enough time together. It's time they stopped pussyfooting around and got married. She's going to have to do something about that.'

'Like what?'

The baroness sighed. 'She'd better move to London.'

'How would you get on without her?'

She sighed again. 'Not the point. I've never been one to mess up Love's Young Dream and I'm not going to start now. She doesn't have to abandon St Martha's totally; she can be a Visiting Fellow. And I'll find something to distract me from my loss.'

'You're not really as selfish an old trout as you like to pretend, are you?'

'I'm more a self-centred old trout than a selfish one. Now, don't tell Mary Lou what I said just yet; this is not the right time for her to be contemplating major changes. Besides I want to give more thought to what she should do in London instead of being an academic. It's time she got out of that world. I don't want her youth and beauty worn down by bureaucrats and halfwits.'

Mary Lou came bounding in. 'Ellis says Dervla will be delivered here this afternoon. Knapper has prudently gone off on a business trip to New York where he intends to stay until this is resolved, but Georgie Prothero's on his way to replace Dervla in the House of Horrors. Higher authority has decided that there's absolutely no reason to believe that this is anything more than a grudge against the Knapper-Warburton, so we'll all be reunited tomorrow in a new location.'

'Are we sure we're sure our co-judges are in the clear?' asked Amiss.

Mary Lou looked at her watch. 'Let's get the one o'clock news and talk about the judges afterwards.' They moved into the living room and she switched on the television. The portentous music played against a backdrop of the deceased quartet of judges, in front of which sat a well-made-up blonde trying to look serious. Horace woke up with a start and began wolf-whistling.

'Iff any of the rest of us gets knocked off, there won't be room for our photographs on the screen,' shouted the baroness over the din.

'Horace, Jack. Please!' said Mary Lou. The baroness pushed the parrot back into his cage, as the blonde was explaining that the Home Secretary had promised to make available to the Metropolitan Police 'whatever resources they need to hunt down the killer of Lady Babcock, Den Smith, Sir Hugo Hurlingham and possibly also Lady Wilcox. In the meantime, the surviving judges of the Knapper-Warburton Prize are under armed police protection at an unknown location.' Behind her the images changed to photographs of the baroness. Amiss, Mary Lou, Dervla, Griffiths, Ferriter and Rosa Karp. 'There now,' said Mary Lou. 'They managed to fit us all in just fine.'

'And now we cross to Scotland Yard where Detective Superintendent James Milton is about to read a statement to the media.'

'God, he looks terrible,' said the baroness.

'He hasn't had any sleep since the night before last,' said Mary Lou, 'and Ellis says the AC is making his life hell by blaming him for not protecting the judges even though the AC was the one who insisted Wysteria had had an accident and there was no threat.'

'We deeply sympathise with the families, friends and many admirers of these four gifted people,' announced Milton. 'We know definitely that three of the four have been brutally murdered, and although we do not wish to pre-empt the coroner, we are working on the assumption that Lady Wilcox's death was no accident either. This is a time for action rather than words. The other Knapper-Warburton judges are well and safe and we are working day and night to find the murderer.' Shouted questions flew at him. 'I'm sorry, but I will not be answering questions. We have to get on.' And Milton turned and walked back into New Scotland Yard.

'Good statement,' said the baroness. 'Economical with the bullshit.'

'And here is our Home Affairs correspondent, Gavin Jenkins. Gavin, this is all terrible, isn't it? Do you think the police are doing enough?'

'Well, Fiona, there's a big question mark over the police performance to date. People are asking why, after the second death, that of Lady Wilcox, were the other judges not given police protection and why the investigation was led by a Detective Chieff Superintendent and not by someone of a higher rank. There will be some relieff that the investigation has been taken over by Assistant Commissioner Robinson, whose proffessionalism is beyond reproach.'

'Thank you, Gavin. Now, the literary world is in mourning today. The Secretary of State for Culture, Sports and Media had this to say this morning.' A worried, earnest woman in black read to camera a statement considerably longer than Milton's and almost devoid of any content other than general concerned clucking about tragedies and reiterations of the government's commitment to the arts. 'But not all writers are prepared to grieve in private. Here in the studio is Billy Jones, the radical performance poet, who has just formed "Artists against Violence against Artists".' She turned to a balding man wearing a T-shirt saying 'THE CLASH'. 'Mr Jones .. .'

Jones held up a chiding hand, 'Billy, please. We're at the cuttin' edge, us, not part of the bleedin' Establishment.'

'I was a toddler when The Clash were the cutting edge . . .' remarked Amiss.

'Never heard of them,' said the baroness.

'Punk band,' said Amiss. 'Political punk.'

'Sssssssssshhhhhhhhhh!' said Mary Lou.

'So, Mr Jones, the purpose of your march to Downing Street is ... ?'

'To demand that the government stop this pogrom against writers. We agree wif Den Smith, who always said it like it was. A beacon that guy, a guy what gave his life for his beliefs. Only yesterday he gave the world a last, great poem that's now electrifying the globe. "Stiff George Bush and his poodle Tony Blair," he intoned, "hired to sniff

The presenter waved at him agitatedly. 'I'm sorry, Billy, but we cannot allow you to recite that poem on prime-time television while there are children watching.'

'Typical,' said Billy Jones. 'He's been murdered, and he's still being censored. I'll tell you one thing, Fiona, that poem's going all round the world on the Net and by the time we've finished chanting it all the way down Whitehall and in front of Downing Street and handing it out to passers-by, there'll be a lot more people out there who know why Den Smith was killed.'

'What are you suggesting, Billy?'

'I'm suggesting what everyone knows. That like Den always said, there's a lot that's sinister going on in the West. We'll be demanding of the poodle that he set up a public inquiry to see why securocrats are murdering artists.'

'What possible evidence do you have for such an assertion, Billy?'

'We're artists. We don't need evidence, we've got our intuition.'

'Thank you, Billy Jones. Now Susie Briggs will take us through the careers of these four great English people of letters - now sadly lost to the nation.'

'Oh, God Almighty,' said the baroness, 'there's a paranoid lunatic born every minute. Can we not do something more useful than watch what our Irish cousins would rightly call shite?'

Amiss reached for the remote control and switched the television off. i was just thinking that,' he said. 'OK, guys, let's talk it through before Dervla arrives. I've scribbled a few thoughts down.' He pulled a chequebook from his inner pocket and looked at the back. 'Ah, yes. Now, only a few days ago, the prime suspects for Hermione's murder were those who could have slipped her the ricin: her husband, housekeeper, the committee, Georgie, the butler, the waiter and the mysterious Ed. Out, I think, go Sir William Rawlinson and Alina. I decline to believe either or both were prepared to hire gangs of hitmen to murder Den and Hugo so they could screw without fear of interruption. OK?'

'Fair enough,' said the baroness.

'Ditto Edward Cumming. Since Hermione was pushing his pseudy book it seems difficult to think of a motive for him to murder her. Nor indeed did he have to own up to seeing her that morning.'

'Can't rule him out,' said Mary Lou.

'I suppose not completely. He might secretly have hated his own book and have brought a flask of poisoned coffee on the off chance she'd want some. But for practical purposes, I think we forget about him for now.'

'I agree,' said the baroness. 'I'm getting bored.'

'Now,' said Amiss patiently, 'when Wysteria died, alibis were checked and some of the committee were in the clear. But that's no longer relevant. Each of the drive-by shootings was done by two people, which means the murderer had at least four employees. This looks to be a managerial rather than a hands-on murderer, so for all we know, he or she could have delegated the murders of Hermione and Wysteria as well.'

'Oh, don't start that "he or she" rubbish,' said the baroness. 'He embraces she or rather her or even me if I've got anything to do with it.'

Amiss ignored her.

'So those with alibis go back to being suspects,' said Mary Lou.

'Yes,' said the baroness. 'But since we now know all the murders could have been delegated, judges are no more likely suspects than anyone else.'

'Except that individual judges might have some plausible motive.'

'Like who?'

'Let's go through them systematically,' said Mary Lou. 'Robert's right. If we're to share a house with them, it'd be good to know they're in the clear.'

'There are only five survivors from the original nine,' said Amiss. 'I didn't do it, so that leaves four, and call me a sentimentalist, but I don't see Dervla as a homicidal maniac.'

'Not least,' pointed out the baroness, 'that from what you tell me, she's so well-known she'd be instantly spotted if she went scouring the East End for competent gangsters. And anyway, none of them would have understood what she was looking for. However, I don't think we should get hung up on homicidal maniacs; our murderer might be absolutely rational.'

'Accepted. Now we're down to three.'

'Geraint is all mouth and no trousers.'

'You say that,' said Mary Lou, 'but weren't the four dead judges all against
Pursuing the Virgins?'

'They were, but so are all the rest of us. It can't win the prize unless we're all dead, and I think someone just might smell a rat if Griffiths were the only survivor. They might even cancel the prize.'

'Still, the book has done brilliantly as a result of all the publicity,' said Mary Lou. 'Perhaps Griffiths is in cahoots with the author, or in his pay, or actually wrote it himself. Or perhaps it's the author who's doing the murdering.'

The baroness looked interested. 'A stimulating train of thought, Mary Lou. Have you considered the possibility that Griffiths may have been only pretending that he wanted
Pursuing the Virgins
to win because he's really concealing the fact that he's a Muslim extremist.'

'Thanks, Jack. Very helpful. OK, we'll put Geraint down as a possible. What do you think about Ferriter?'

'Can't think of a motive, unless it's a career move to homicidal mania,' said Mary Lou brightly. 'Next stop HomStud.'

'Rosa?'

'Maybe,' said the baroness. 'After all, the victims have been gender-balanced.'

'You two aren't taking this seriously,' said Amiss.

'How can we? Next you'll be suggesting the parrot did

it.'

'Georgie?' asked Amiss stubbornly.

'For God's sake, why?' asked the baroness. 'Porgie's a child. How could he have a grievance against any of those oldies? Besides which, he's frightened of his own shadow.'

'The cops have already arrived at this conclusion,' said Mary Lou, 'which is why they've decided the judges and Georgie Prothero can all shack up together.'

'Then there are Jungbert and Birkett.'

'Who?' asked the baroness.

'The waiter and the butler.'

'Ah, yes, I quite fancy the idea of Birkett the butler. He disappointed me over the lamb. Despite my instructions it was overdone: and a man who is unsound on how pink lamb should be is capable of anything.'

'That makes anyone who doesn't like bloody meat a potential mass murderer,' said Amiss. 'And it wasn't overdone. Plenty of it was pink.'

'Any ideas for a motive for Birkett?' asked Mary Lou.

'Maybe, like Griffiths, he has a secret life. Perhaps he

disapproves of the honours system and is making his protest.'

'Den Smith didn't have a title,' pointed out Mary Lou.

'Birkett was trying to put us off the scent.'

Amiss drummed his fingers on the table. 'I want to get through this before Dervla arrives, Jack. Will you please stop reducing everything to farce. The cops checked Birkett out and like the waiter and the chef, he was completely clean.'

'So no one thinks any of the suspects are serious possibilities,' said Mary Lou. 'So who did it?'

'Mad Muslims?' asked Amiss.

'I don't like being fair,' said the baroness, 'but I've never heard of Muslims who go around murdering people without claiming the credit for it. Disinclined to hide their lights under bushels, I think you'll find. And for all that they have a habit of being a bit random, to go out of their way to target Den Smith would seem a touch perverse.'