Carnage on the Committee (27 page)

if we'd been decimated, only nought point nine per cent of one person would be dead, you ignoramus,' she bellowed at the screen.

'Sssssssssshhhhhhhhhh!' said everyone.

'The judges wish it known that the list is unusually long since they added to it without challenge the books they think their four admired, murdered colleagues may have chosen.' The faces of the dead judges flashed up behind him.

'Might, might, might, might have chosen, not may, you cretin.'

'.. . Lady Hermione Babcock, Lady Wysteria Wilcox . ..'

'Double ignoramus,' roared the baroness. 'Can't even get the fucking titles right.'

'By George titles,' said Griffiths.

'Sorry. By George titles.'

'.. . Hugo Hurlingham. The nine books chosen are . . .' After reading the list of authors and titles sonorously, the presenter swivelled right to greet a frowning woman. 'Joining us now is Maureen Becker, editor of the magazine
Reading Circle.
So what do you think of the short-list, Maureen?'

'I think they've all gone mad in protective custody,' said Maureen. 'It's a dreadful, dreadful, dreadful short-list. Six of those books are a waste of trees and ...'

'Sorry, Maureen, we have to leave it there and go over now to Scotland Yard where a statement is being made about the missing butler, Francis Birkett.'

With the exception of the baroness, everyone tensed. Milton's solemn announcement that there was no news but everyone must hope did nothing to cheer them up. With respectively a wail, a whinge and a shout, Rosa, Ferriter and Griffiths all turned on the baroness over her performance during the news and Prothero rushed off to his bedroom to ring various friends and bemoan. Amiss jerked his head towards the door and, with Mary Lou and Dervla, slipped out.

'I'm off to my book,' said Mary Lou, sighing as she went.

i wish, like, she'd, you know, told us,' said Dervla.

'Who? What?'

'The telly one.'

'Ah, you mean Maureen Becker? You wish she'd told us which novels she approved of?'

She nodded. 'In case, y'know.'

in case people might guess which one you chose. Dervla, I mightn't have been particularly keen on
Sharing the Scratcher,
but I can assure you it's a million times better than the ones Rosa and Felix chose. And Geraint's isn't even what I'd call a novel. Don't worry, you've nothing to be ashamed of. Now, if you'll forgive me, I've a few phone calls to make.'

'Robert.'

'Yes?'

'Jack. She's kind of funny.'

'You can say that again.'

'I mean was she, like, trying to get them mad?'

'Maybe, but I can't think why. Unless it's revenge for how much they annoy her. She usually has good reasons for what she does but it's often hard to guess them.'

Dervla nodded and headed off towards her bedroom.

The committee watched several news bulletins in the early evening. Though the short-list was variously described as 'controversial', 'unexpected' and 'contentious', there were no literary figures attacking the choices directly. 'They've probably decided it's bad form to be rude about us,' observed the baroness over her champagne. 'Pity. It might have livened us up a bit. It's like a mausoleum here.'

'Mausoleum is hardly the
mot juste,
Jack,' said Amiss wearily.

'Well it feels like a mausoleum. You can't imagine having a knickers-over-the-chandelier event here, can you? At least not with the present dramatis personae.' The parrot, who after a tussle had settled for her shoulder, seemed to share the prevailing gloom, contributing nothing to the conversation other than a hacking cough he had learned a week or two previously from Mary Lou.

To Amiss's relief, at that moment one of the police knocked and came in. 'I've left the food you ordered in the kitchen, your ladyship.'

'Good. Good. I'll go and inspect it. Porgie, sort out the drinks. Come on, Horrie. Let's find something to cheer us up.'

* * *

At nine on Monday morning, as the inhabitants of the safe house were eating boiled eggs and trying to shake off their hangovers, Milton was having yet another strained meeting with the AC. He came grumpily back to his desk to face an enormous pile of reports and was sitting there in despairing mode when his secretary put an envelope on his desk which was marked 'Second class' as well as 'Private and personal'. The letter inside was written in neat handwriting, the address was given as 'No fixed abode', it was dated 'Friday' and the postmark was Heathrow. Milton's eyes flew to the signature.

Dear Chief Superintendent Milton,

As a responsible citizen I've got nothing against the police, or indeed, against the remaining members of the Knapper-Warbunon committee, except Lady Karp and Professor Ferriter, so I don't want to inconvenience you any further. The attached short tape should make things clear.

Yours sincerely,

Frank S. Birkett

PS You should know that I've sent copies of this to several newspapers, so it can't be kept quiet. And if you try to ban them from printing it, I'll get it on the Net somehow.

Milton summoned Pooley and they listened together. Birkett began by introducing himself fully, helpfully including his date of birth, his mother's maiden name and his medical card number as proof of his identity. It was clear he was reading his statement, for there were no hesitations, no pauses to find the right words. As ever, he sounded calm and polite.

it's a simple story,' he began. 'My wife, Lizzie, and I

were able to have just one child, Mary, whom we adored. She was a clever but shy and intense little thing, who lived a lot of the time in her imagination and loved to read and write.

'From the time she was a child she scribbled and scribbled. At grammar school all her teachers praised her essays and we were proud as proud. Her big ambition was to get to university to study English Literature and we were all delighted when she got to Oxford. We didn't know if she just had bad luck with her lecturers or what, but she came home at the end of the first term and said she was leaving. "Dad and Mum," she said, "it's a waste of time. It's got nothing to do with enjoying books. It's all about politics and scoring points and rubbishy theories and attacking dead people because they didn't think like us."

'We argued with her, of course. Told her it was a great chance and it might get better. Even said maybe she should try another university. But she said she hated it all so much she couldn't go on. "I don't want to end up being put off literature," she said. "It's all right. I'll get a job and I'll still be able to read and I'll write my novel. That's what I really want to do." And so she worked in a bookshop and though she didn't get paid much she liked having books around her and she wrote away in the evenings. And then, when the novel was finished, she sent it off to what she thought was the likeliest publisher who sent it back with a rejection slip so fast she knew no one had read it. So she sent it to the next most likely and so on.

it was heartbreaking every time the post came and it was another rejection. Some of them said it was interesting or well-written but not for them. Lots of them didn't seem to have read it. Others didn't even reply. It's only since I started to learn about the publishing world that I discovered that in those days most publishers were already expecting agents to do the job of finding new authors.

Mary was too green to have known that. We were all green. We were a very close little family who probably kept ourselves to ourselves too much.

'For all that Mary believed in her talent, she was a modest girl and she thought maybe the book wasn't good enough so she rewrote it and rewrote it and rewrote it and when it got turned down again and again she put it in a drawer and wrote another one. And this time she struck lucky. She had an answer from Hugo Hurlingham, who was then a publisher. He took her out to lunch, he spoke warmly about the quality and originality of her book, he promised to help her improve it and he said he would publish it enthusiastically and that she had a bright future.

'You've never seen anyone so excited and happy. Then he took her out again and asked her to go to bed with him and she said no. After that he never answered her letters or returned her phone calls. Mary had been working for so long and so hard and had had so many disappointments that this further one put her into a terrible depression. The doctor put her on some pills and, in those days, people didn't know about the side effects. She became very manic, went on about how after all she had no talent and one night she just jumped into the Thames. It took several days for her body to surface and during that time we were half-mad with worry.

'I wrote to Hurlingham and told him she had killed herself and he didn't even answer the letter. And what with grief and work and trying to help Lizzie, revenge was way down the menu at that time. I always told myself that if I got a chance I'd do for Hugo Hurlingham, but not while Lizzie was alive, and she lived on, miserably, poor thing, for another twenty years. Fortunately - because I was going to need cash - I sold our house because it was too big for just me and moved to a little rented flat nearby. And then, last year, the Warburton Prize was chaired by Hugo

Hurlingham and all my old rage bubbled up again. I served him coffee and I served him lunch and I wondered about killing him.

'I had a conscience, though. He was a lot older and even though he had a big opinion of himself, he was civil enough. Maybe he had reformed, I thought. So I began reading about him and about the literary world in all sorts of newspapers and magazines, learned to use a computer and spent hours on the internet. With nothing much else to do, I got quite absorbed in it. And then by the time the prize was awarded to Hermione Babcock, who I realised by then was one of his closest friends, I realised properly how corrupt he really was. And how corrupt a lot of those people were and how little chance people like my Mary had. So I decided to do something that would do more than avenge her, but bring that squalid little world to the notice of everyone.

'I'm not a man who does things without thought, so by the time I had made up my mind what I was going to do, I heard that Babcock was going to chair the Knapper-Warburton and Hurlingham would be on the committee. Give the man another chance, I thought, just in case I'm being unfair. I've always been very proud of how fair the English are. So I went to one of those spy shops and got myselff two of those bugging devices that I could clamp under the tables in the boardroom and the dining room and that transmitted to my car in the car-park outside.

'After one of those Warburton meetings, I'd sit at home evening after evening listening to every word, and -putting it together with what I'd read - I was revolted by the corruption of it all. You could see with most of them it was all about their agendas and their networks and their prejudices. Hugo Hurlingham was on the make in Europe. Hermione Babcock was pushing a few people who would give her some job she was looking for. Den Smith lived only to do down people he didn't like. Wysteria Wilcox was cruel and vain. Felix Ferriter was an academic with no love or understanding of literature - just the sort of person that had driven Mary away from university. And Rosa Karp was a time-serving, dangerous fool.

'Geraint Griffiths was pushing an agenda too, but I didn't think it was a selfish one, and anyway I agreed with him. Robert Amiss and Dervla were continually walked over, but seemed perfectly nice and harmless. As for Lady Troutbeck, who came on the scene later. Well! If I was in the business of killing people for having bad manners, then she'd be top of the list. But I'm not and anyway she seemed very sensible to me and she dealt with all the people I hated in a way I very much approved of. Anyway, I had decided that for the sake of young people like Mary I would kill the six members of the committee that the world would be better off without. I'm sorry I only managed four. For now, that is. But I'll come back to that.

'I decided from the beginning that I wasn't the kind of person that's cut out to murder people myself. The thing was to get others to do it for you. So I read crime reports, found out about a few pubs where villains are easily found and tested the water by placing an order for ricin, which I duly tried out successfully in Hermione Babcock's vegetable curry. It didn't cost much, and was money very well spent.

i really wanted the Wilcox woman drowned like the kitten the nasty old bitch pretended to be. I knew all about her favourite walk and her favourite place and all that from the internet and because she never stopped blethering about it over lunch. My criminal contact found me someone suitable and we went together to the Chiswick Eyot to suss it out. All he needed, he told me, were a few hours' notice, and I was able to give him that immediately after I heard Wilcox tell Rosa Karp at lunch that she was in such a terrible state after the car ride with mad Ida Troutbeck that she would have to go home and lie down and then go to her place of rest. My man was already hiding there when she arrived.

'That murder was a lot more expensive, but I've been a frugal man all my life and none of the direct expenses made more than a little dent in my savings. Still, I spent a lot on the drive-by shootings, and was very disappointed that only two of them came to fruition. I already knew from the internet that Den Smith would be at the Cambridge Union that night, I had rung the offices of Hurlingham, Karp and Ferriter a few days earlier to ask if they'd be available to take part in a debate and had been told they were all otherwise engaged that night, so there were teams ready to wait near all their houses after ten. And then, to my big disappointment, the look-out men, who went to suss things out a few hours earlier, reported that both Ferriter and Karp had arrived home hours before they should have, so their assassins sadly had to be stood down. Still, they got Hugo Hurlingham, who mattered most, and Den Smith, who was a great bonus.

'So what now? I planned it all very carefully over the past year. Nearly all my money is abroad and I'm going after it. I won't be back and I'll be very surprised if you'll find me under my interesting new identity in an interesting place. However, I still have my contact among the criminal classes and I still have a great loathing for Felix Ferriter and Rosa Karp. But being, like I said, a fair man, I'll give them a sporting chance. If he retires from academic life and stops making fools of those poor students and if she never again opens her idiotic mouth in public, they'll be left alone. Professor Ferriter and Lady Karp, it's quite simple. I'll have access to the internet where I'm going and I'll be checking on you. My message is quite straightforward. Shut up or die!'