Clubbed to Death (2 page)

Amiss was both grateful and suspicious when Pooley ordered a fine bottle of claret.

‘Have you taken a half day, Ellis?’

‘Yes, I have, Robert. You know I don’t drink when I’m on duty. Now try this. Our wine cellar really is one of the best things about us.’

‘Yum, yum,’ said Amiss. ‘The same, however, cannot be said for your chef, if you’ll forgive my saying so. Clearly a man of simple traditional values, unsullied by nasty foreign notions.’

‘If you think our chef is bad, you should experience some of the others. In some clubs our menu would be considered positively
outré
. Anyway, come on, that’s a perfectly decent pâté. The vegetables – although they will be frozen – will not be tinned, and if you look at the puddings you will see that in addition to apple tart and bread and butter pudding there are such delicacies as crème caramel and fresh fruit salad. You don’t know when you’re well off.’

‘Sorry, Ellis. All those visits to Paris to see Rachel have spoilt me. In fact, latterly I’ve been eating far too well for an unemployed chap with no capital and few prospects.’

‘What’s going on?’ Pooley looked concerned. ‘Isn’t the plan still as it was when we last met, i.e., Rachel comes back any day now, you set up home together and you maybe go back into the Civil Service?’

Amiss emitted a loud snort, snatched up his wine-glass, took an unmannerly large mouthful, swallowed it with a little difficulty and said, ‘Hah. What’s gone wrong? The fucking Foreign Office, that’s what’s gone wrong. In fact, now that you’ve tipped me off that the Travellers’ Club is awash with the buggers, I might go and set fire to it after lunch.’

‘Well, go on. What’s happened?’

‘Well, as you rightly remember, Rachel, after quite a long time in Paris, was due to come back to London for a home posting of two to three years. We would live together, I would go into a relatively serious job, and we would be ready at the end of her term here to make decisions about whether she stayed in the Foreign Office and I travelled with her, or she took a job here – that sort of thing. But three weeks before she’s due back she’s informed that the second secretary at the High Commission in India has cracked up and it’s her duty as a loyal and single person to step into his shoes immediately. If she resists she’ll get labelled “insufficiently dedicated to the Service and to the nation as a whole” or some such crap. So she’s going. She doesn’t really think she’s got much choice, it will help the promotion prospects and it’s a fascinating job. Therefore, on many scores, it’s an offer she can’t refuse.’

‘How long will she have to stay there?’

‘Probably only about six months if she’s there as a stopgap. Maybe a whole two years. Nobody’s clear at the moment. Depends on whether this chap recovers.’

‘What’s wrong with him anyway?’

‘A lot. Delhi belly, malaria, dysentery, the whole shagging lot – everything short of the bubonic plague as far as I can gather. He’s going to be spending quite some time in the Hospital for Tropical Diseases.’

‘I thought no one got those sort of things any more, what with vaccinations and all the other wonders of modern medicine.’

‘Well, so did I, but whether he forgot to take his pills or drank the water or what happened to him I don’t know and I care less. What I do know is that it’s screwed up everything good and proper as far as our short-term future is concerned.’

He shoved his plate away as the waiter arrived bearing the Steaks Repeal – the club speciality that Pooley had urged him to try. Amiss looked incredulously at his, which was smothered in a sauce in which sweetcorn featured prominently.

‘Repeal – Corn Laws – geddit?’ Pooley was pleased with his joke.

‘I don’t think a sense of humour is any advantage whatsoever in a chef,’ said Amiss sourly, after he had tasted the dish and scraped all the sauce off the meat. ‘Nor, on this occasion, in a host. However, the claret is so good that I can forgive practical jokes.’

‘So why don’t you go with her?’ asked Pooley.

‘Well, I might in a few weeks – maybe,’ said Amiss. ‘But I don’t know, and I don’t know whether it’s wise to give up the chance of getting a sensible job, and I don’t know what it will be like out there, and I don’t know what the accommodation is like, and I don’t know if local sensibilities would require us to get married, and I don’t know anything. So it’s impossible for us to make up our minds until she’s been there for a few weeks and finds out how the land lies. At the moment I don’t even have the bloody air fare, and I’ve no idea whether I could get any kind of work out there.’

‘So a temporary job would fit the bill really, wouldn’t it?’ said Pooley thoughtfully.

‘Oh yes. In fact I’ve been back doing some bartending. It’s better than being on the dole, even if not much better paid.’

‘I have something in mind that might suit you, Robert. ’ Pooley saw Amiss looking at him with an expression of the deepest distrust. ‘Let’s not talk about it now. Let’s just finish our lunch and catch up on other news and afterwards, over coffee, I’ll try my idea out on you.’

‘Before I listen to another one of your ideas, Ellis, I’m going to require you to buy me the best brandy this club can offer.’

‘Gladly.’

‘You’re only saying that because you expect to make me so drunk that I’ll agree to go down the salt-mines, infiltrate the Pentagon, become a Beefeater, or go wherever you are minded to install me as a copper’s nark. That’s what you’re up to, isn’t it?’

‘Broadly,’ said Pooley. ‘Now how about some cheese? And do let me refill your glass. There’s still some claret left.’

2

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‘The great thing about those huge, lumpy English meals is that they soak up the booze effectively,’ said Amiss. ‘My mind is as clear as a bell, as sharp as a razor and – it goes without saying – as cool as a cucumber. I will have no difficulty in turning down this latest daftness of yours as soon as its full horrors have been explained to me.’

He leaned back contentedly, swallowing as he did so the last of the claret he had carried from the dining-room. Pooley, who had drunk about a third as much as his friend, tried to conceal his grin and rang for a waiter. A few minutes later the brandy was in front of them and they were left in peace in the small salon. It had a plaster ceiling with an intricate pattern of gilded fleurs-de-lis, a polished floor strewn with Chinese silk rugs, comfortable Victorian furniture and book-lined walls. It boasted one other inhabitant, who lay prostrate in a vast armchair at the far end of the room, snoring diligently.

‘Now be careful,’ said Amiss. ‘That old buffer down there might be in the pay of… well, of whom, now that I come to think of it? Dammit, ten years ago one was safe in saying he’d be an agent of the KGB, then attention switched to the CIA and now there aren’t any predictable baddies at all. It’s very tiresome.’ He yawned.

‘Surely the new enemy is a representative of international business of the environmentally unsound variety?’

‘And you’ve come here today to ask me to help you save the Amazonian rain forests.’ Amiss sounded a little sleepy.

‘I haven’t,’ said Pooley. ‘And I wouldn’t worry about old Watson down there. He’s about ninety-three and has been sleeping away the afternoons in that corner for, I believe, the last twenty years. I can’t think he’s doing it just on the off-chance that one day he’ll pick up something useful to the enemy. Now come on, concentrate.’

‘Oh, all right. What do you want me to do?’

‘I want you to become a waiter.’

‘Silver service, I hope,’ said Amiss, with a hint of hauteur. ‘My mother would be most upset if I sank any lower than that.’

‘Certainly silver service – club waiters always are.’

‘You want me to become a club waiter?’

‘Yes.’

‘This club.’

‘No. Fanshaw’s.’

‘Fanshaw’s. Where’s that?’

‘Just off St James’s Street. Very close to the centre of clubland there.’

‘I can’t remember ever reading anything about Fanshaw’s.’

‘No. But that’s probably because it isn’t spelt Fanshaw’s. That’s how it’s pronounced. It’s actually spelt Featherstonehaugh’s. You understand that, don’t you? It’s the same as Cholmondley being pronounced Chumley and Marjoribanks Marchbanks. Oh, yes. And it begins with two small “ff’s.”

‘Nothing begins with small “ff’s outside fiction.’

‘Oh, yes they do. Just hang on a minute.’ Pooley jumped up, walked over to a free-standing bookcase and returned within moments flourishing a large volume. ‘Can’t find
Who’s Who
. One of the old buffers out there probably has it: some of them like reading their own entries over and over again. We’ll have to make do with
Debrett’s Distinguished People of Today
. They won’t have so many aristocrats, unfortunately. Some tomfool notion of merit applies. Let’s see… Ah, yes. Here we are, the double “ff’s. Ffolkes, Ffooks, Fforde and Ffolkes don’t use a double small “f”, I grant you. But let’s look at the ffrenches.’ He frowned. ‘Good Lord!’

‘You look shocked.’

‘I am shocked. The country’s going to the dogs. What would my father say? The ffrenches have ratted. Look.’ He thrust the book at Amiss and pointed.

Amiss perused the offending entries. ‘Dear, dear. Not only are a clutch of ffrench-born now styling themselves Ffrench, but even ffytche has turned Ffytche.’

‘Still, at least they’re keeping on the two “ff”s.’ Pooley removed
Debrett
and went off to put it back. When he returned, Amiss’s eyes had closed. ‘Wake up, Robert.’

‘Sometimes I don’t believe England,’ said Amiss dreamily. ‘I think the whole country has been invented by a deranged Hollywood impresario with intellectual pretensions and we’re all living in a theme park.’

‘Well, he certainly deserves full marks for inventing ffeatherstonehaugh’s. D’you know anything about the history of clubs?’

‘Oh, just the usual stuff.’ Amiss sat upright, stretched, and picked up his glass. ‘Some of them were gaming-houses, weren’t they, and some of them are descendants of coffee-houses? Yes? Others, like this one, were founded quite late on to bring like-minded people together. Roughly it?’

‘Yes, that’s roughly it.’

‘Well, I hope that ffeatherstonehaugh’s is going to be one of the more interesting ones. If you’ve got to tell me a story, let it be a story about a club which descended from mad Regency bucks – a place that embodies the spirit of the chap I remember reading about who threw a waiter out of the window and told the club steward to put him on his bill.’

‘Ffeatherstonehaugh’s is much closer to that
beau ideal
than here, I can promise you. Unusually enough, it was founded largely on the proceeds of a legacy from Lord ffeatherstonehaugh, who even by the standards of his time was pretty
louche
. He fell out with the proprietors of the clubs he belonged to because of what he regarded as their unreasonable restrictions on the importation of wenches, their timidness about the anti-duelling laws, their killjoy objections to three-day parties and so on and so on. Fearless ffeatherstonehaugh, he was called about town.’

‘Fearless with two small “ff’s, no doubt. Jesus, the aristocratic sense of humour is almost enough to make one send for the tumbrils.’

‘Anyway, after a particularly ferocious row he swore that he would have a club set up in his honour to perpetuate the principles of a full-blooded aristocrat. And sure enough, much to the rage of his family, the unentailed part of his very considerable estate was found to have been left for the foundation of a club.’

‘Well, if it was set up in the spirit in which he apparently wanted it set up, I’m surprised it’s still in existence.’

‘Ah, yes. But those to whom he had left this delicate task were slightly less reckless than he had been. Indeed a couple of them seem, from all one hears about ffeatherstonehaugh’s, to have been uncommonly keen on rules and regulations, even by the standards of gentlemen’s clubs, all of which, you probably know, are absolutely hide-bound by daft conventions, rules and nomenclatures. You know the sort of thing: it’s true of most of them. The dining-room is called the Coffee Room, but it’s the place where you can’t have coffee. The place you sit in after lunch is likely to be called the Morning Room. The cold food restaurant is called the Strangers’ Room because a hundred years ago you couldn’t take strangers into the Coffee Room. The room with all the books in it isn’t called the library, it’s called the Smoking Room. And so on and so on.’

‘Yes, what’s the point of all that? Hangover from boarding-school presumably.’

‘Quite a lot of it is. I mean, it’s not just that it’s a matter of keeping up traditions. This is a way of confusing the new boys as well as the outsiders and making members feel superior and part of a private conspiracy. Anyway, ffeatherstonehaugh’s has more than its share of that sort of carry-on. Whatever ffeatherstonehaugh’s decided to do they did with more enthusiasm than any of the other clubs.’

‘How long am I going to have to wait to find out why you’re telling me all about this place?’ asked Amiss.

‘There’s been what I think is murder, but it can’t be proved. Shall I go on?’

‘Situation normal. Go on.’

‘So of course I said yes, ’ reported Amiss to Rachel on the telephone that night.

‘What do you mean, “of course”?’

‘Because the place is preposterous and what he wants me to do is equally preposterous. I need stimulation. I’m bored, I’m fed up and you’re going to India tomorrow.’

‘So it’s my fault that you’re going into a haunt of thieves and vagabonds?’

‘Of course it isn’t, you silly bitch,’ said Amiss affectionately. ‘I’m not placing on your shoulders or even on those of Her Majesty’s Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs the responsibility for my electing to become, or rather, to try to become, a snooping waiter in a lunatic asylum. However, you have made it possible for me to do this and I can’t resist it. Don’t be cross.’

‘I won’t be cross. What’s the point? Clearly there’s some old
Boy’s Own
adventure urge rampant in you at the moment. I suppose you might as well get rid of this inclination while you’re an unemployed bachelor rather than finding yourself in ten years’ time – a senior civil servant or a captain of industry – stripping off to your red underpants in telephone kiosks.’