Murder in a Cathedral (10 page)

‘I said who’s that poncy bloke?’

‘Canon Fedden-Jones is kindly entertaining me to lunch.’

‘Why didn’t your phone answer? I had to track David down via his secretary to find out where you were.’

‘I switched it off.’

She chortled. ‘As you’ve now discovered, that doesn’t do you any good. Only causes David trouble. Look, I’ve had a thought. That female canon is the one you should be working on. New and insecure, probably, and aching for a lusty male. Get to it.’

When in a position to retaliate with abuse, Amiss endured the baroness’s presumption with reasonable equanimity. When – like now – hamstrung by social convention, he could do little but respond coldly – though he knew it was pointless, since she wouldn’t even notice. ‘Very well, Jack. I shall see what I can do. Goodbye.’

It was obvious from his host’s face that his rude caller had somewhat lowered his stock. ‘I’m so sorry,’ said Amiss. ‘I fear Lady Troutbeck can be a little abrupt. She’s a busy woman.’

Fedden-Jones wriggled with excitement. ‘Lady Troutbeck. Of course. How could I have been so dense. I’ve seen her on television. Should have recognized her voice.’ A faraway look came into his eye. ‘Do you think she and you would be free to come to the opera tonight?’

‘Sorry?’

‘I’ve been charged with finding a stand-in couple. The Thrupcott-Wintles have had to cancel at the last minute. And though I’ve left a few messages, no one’s come back to me yet.’

Amiss tried to keep the panic out of his voice. ‘It’s very kind of you, but I can’t imagine she’d be able to get up to London at such short notice. She’s mistress of a Cambridge college, you see.’

‘You must ask her.’

‘Hardly worth it.’

‘My dear boy, tickets for a box at Covent Garden are like diamond-studded gold bricks. Not to be had unless you’re a Greek shipping magnate. I’m sure Lady Troutbeck would recognize that.’

‘Oh, I’m sure she’d be thrilled to be invited. As, of course, I am.’

Fedden-Jones smiled. ‘I wish it were possible for you to come on your own. Unfortunately I’ve been charged with producing a couple, so I fear a couple it must be.’

You old hypocrite, thought Amiss. I am welcome only if accompanied by my titled friend. ‘Well, I could try her.’

‘Ring her up now. I insist. You know she’s there.’

Amiss tried and failed to think of a way of getting out of what he feared had the potential to be an exceptionally embarrassing evening. With a sinking heart he fished out his phone and called her direct line.

‘Troutbeck.’

‘Robert.’

‘Looking for further instructions?’

‘No.’ Gabbling to avert any more loud indiscretions – for Fedden-Jones had moved closer – he continued, ‘Canon Fedden-Jones has kindly asked if we’d care to accompany him to the opera tonight. Two of his friends have had to drop out. I’ve told him it would be impossibly short notice for you.’

‘What’s the opera? I don’t want any modern crap.’

Amiss turned to Fedden-Jones in embarrassment. ‘I’m sorry. What opera is it?’

‘La Bohème.’

The passing on of this intelligence earned a bellow of delight. ‘Bugger me, Myles has done everything bar breaking and entering to try and get tickets for that.’ There was a pause while she consulted her diary. ‘It’s a cinch. I can take the architect back to town with me and we can finish our meeting in the car, straight to Myles to change into gladrags, and back to Cambridge tomorrow early in time for the college council.’

‘Are you sure, Jack? It sounds very hectic.’

‘Balls. Don’t be such an amoeba. Seize the moment.’

Amiss knew when he was beaten. He essayed some damage limitation. ‘The rags should be very glad, Jack. We’ll be in a box, and I should think Canon Fedden-Jones’s friends are likely to be very formally dressed.’

‘Excellent. If you want me in fine fig, you will get me in fine fig. Time?’

‘I’ll pick you up at Myles’s at seven.’

‘That’s white of you. Saves me from being groped by the cab driver.’

‘More likely to be the other way about,’ he said truculently and put the phone down.

Fedden-Jones was looking surprised. ‘You seemed a little reluctant.’

‘No, no, just a little wary. Lady Troutbeck is a remarkable woman, but I have to warn you that she is socially somewhat unorthodox.’

‘That doesn’t worry me, Mr Amiss… May I call you Robert? Why I remember an evening with Lord Emmott when he took such exception to the food that he seized the bread basket, charged into the kitchen and threw all the rolls at the chefs…’ And Fedden-Jones moved smoothly into another tale of privileged people at play.

‘It’s not, you understand,’ confided Amiss to the bishop, ‘that I am ashamed of Jack. I am indeed devoted to her. It’s just she sometimes makes me nervous in strange company.’

With some difficulty the bishop addressed himself to a nontheological problem. ‘You mean that she can be a little unpredictable and boisterous?’ His attention wandered back to his lectern. ‘I expect,’ he said, as he returned to St Augustine, ‘that it will all be fine.’

Amiss raised his voice slightly. ‘I’ll have to be off now. I’ve only just got time to get back to my flat and change into a dinner jacket. Will you be all right with Plutarch?’

The bishop looked up. ‘Of course, of course. We will be company for each other.’

Plutarch – who was stretched proprietorially along the chaise longue – grunted when he patted her on the head, turned over onto her back and waved her paws in the air in the peremptory manner which indicated she wished to have her stomach rubbed; it was a task which – as ever – Amiss performed with little pleasure.

Neither bishop nor cat seemed to notice his farewell and departure.

In speculating on what Jack Troutbeck might think appropriate for the Royal Opera House, the one thing of which Amiss had been confident was that she would not go in for understatement. He was right. Admittedly her velvet trousers and satin jacket were black and well cut, but the latter was completely covered in sequins, and the baroness’s neck all but hidden by an enormous silver necklace with huge yellow and olive beads and matching dangling earrings.

Myles Cavendish looked proudly at his beloved. ‘I’m jealous that you’re taking this magnificent creature on your arm tonight in my place. What do you think?’

‘She certainly won’t be overlooked.’ Amiss laughed. ‘Sorry, that’s ungracious. Jack, as ever when you go completely over the top sartorially, you seem to get away with it. I haven’t seen you look so splendid since I saw you in your baroness’s robes.’ He waved at the jewellery. ‘Amber, I see. What are the rest?’

‘Peridot,’ said Cavendish. ‘It’s a favourite of mine. Can’t afford to deck the old girl out in diamonds of the size she would like, so I stick to the semiprecious and get her plenty.’

‘I like plenty.’

‘Come on, Jack. The carriage awaits.’

The baroness gave Cavendish a smacking kiss, flung a feather boa around herself and presented her arm to Amiss.

Amiss – who had attended the Royal Opera House only twice and then in humble seats – was looking forward to the evening with mingled pleasure and dread: pleasure at the thought of sampling the high life and dread at what the baroness might do to a gathering of the glitterati.

‘You will please behave,’ he entreated her in the taxi.

She looked at him innocently. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘You understand all too fucking well. You’re required this evening to indulge in polite social chitchat, not to offend anyone, and so to endear yourself to our host that my cachet will rise and I’ll be able to worm myself further into his confidence.’

‘I’m to suppress my personality, you mean?’

‘Yes, please.’

‘No good ever came of that.’ She sounded genial, but his heart sank.

Fedden-Jones awaited them in the lobby and swept them up to a corner of the crush bar, where champagne was being distributed. For the first few minutes with Fedden-Jones, his walkee (the Contessa di Milano, who was something big in perfume), Sir Elwyn Wainwood, the banker whose institution was footing the bill, and his wife (whose name Amiss didn’t catch), the baroness hardly opened her mouth. When introduced she bared her teeth insincerely; when spoken to she produced the minimum response. Lady Wainwood’s rhetorical enquiry as to whether she didn’t think the weather cold was met with, ‘No,’ which so disconcerted the woman that she couldn’t think of anything else to say.

The Wainwood party – confronted by what they must have concluded was a rude, monosyllabic dullard – made a tacit agreement to ignore her and proceeded without any apology to talk about common acquaintances, the latest crisis afflicting the Opera House, and their plans for visiting Glyndebourne.

The baroness stood apart, champagne glass in hand and bottom lip pushed out in the manner of a sullen toddler on the edge of a tantrum. Amiss looked at her imploringly. ‘I said behave,’ he hissed in her ear. ‘Not clam up.’ There was no response. His nerve broke. ‘Oh, all right. Sod you. Do it your way.’

The baroness smiled broadly, ceased sipping her champagne in a genteel fashion and took a mighty quaff. She moved closer to her host and bent an ear to the conversation. ‘How are things in the financial markets, Elwyn?’ asked the contessa. Wainwood smiled sleekly. ‘Not bad. Not bad. I think I might go so far as to say that prospects are rosy.’

‘I don’t like rosy prospects,’ interrupted the baroness. The group turned and gazed at her. Wainwood struggled to be polite. ‘Sorry?’

‘I don’t like rosy prospects.’

‘Why not?’

‘Me – I like rosy present.’ She looked at them solemnly. ‘The trouble with rosy prospects is that she promises a lot and usually lets you down. Bit of a prick teaser, young rosy prospects.’

As the baroness was complacently to remark later to Amiss, this remark certainly broke the ice. After a momentary stunned silence, Wainwood guffawed and the others followed suit with appreciative titters. ‘A wise word of caution there, Lady Troutbeck. The lady to whom you refer has certainly disappointed many of us in the past.’ He reached for a bottle. ‘Let me give you some more champagne.’

‘Are you an opera lover, Lady Troutbeck?’ asked the contessa.

‘What I like, I love. Puccini and Verdi. I only like Italian. Apart from Bizet, that is. Can’t stand the Krauts.’

‘Not a Wagnerian, then?’

‘Boring bastard. A few good tunes, I grant you. But take away the overtures and what have you got. Pure balls.’

Lady Wainwood looked at her gratefully. ‘My sentiments exactly. The worst evening of my life was at
Götterdämmerung
.’

‘Except for Harrison Birtwistle,’ pointed out her husband. The contessa and Fedden-Jones joined in with a few esoteric candidates and the baroness looked at Amiss and winked. At last at ease, he winked back.

‘Hope you’re not disappointed it’s not Pavarotti tonight.’

‘Not in the least. Pavarotti hasn’t been the same since he started screwing his secretary.’

The gathering found this equally arresting. ‘You feel,’ suggested Fedden-Jones, ‘that amorous engagements take a singer’s mind off his arias?’

The contessa protested. ‘Surely not. After all, Pavarotti has been a byword for liaisons.’

The baroness shook her head impatiently. ‘You’ve missed the point. Of course it’s only right and proper that an opera singer should have frequent affairs. How else can a twenty-stone millionaire manage to keep in touch with the feelings of passion and lust which he is paid large sums of money to express.’ She drained her glass. ‘No, what is alarming is that this time he appears to be trapped in an exclusive relationship. His wife had the sense not to accompany him on his travels and left him free for amorous escapades. This little bint is a clinger. He’ll be singing like a bank manager before we know where we are.’

Wainwood grinned. ‘That would certainly never do. We’re a boring bunch.’ Completely unabashed, the baroness proceeded to fly in the face of etiquette by grabbing the bottle from the ice bucket, filling her glass and shoving the bottle towards Wainwood, who smiled and attended to his guests. Not bad going, reflected Amiss. After only twenty minutes with total strangers, she had succeeded in dominating the conversation and changing normal social rules to her own satisfaction without incurring any resentment. Indeed the whole group was focused benignly upon her.

Wainwood replaced the empty bottle in the ice bucket. The baroness jerked her head towards Amiss. ‘Get us more champagne, Robert.’

Wainwood shook his head. ‘No, no, I insist,’ and he scurried away towards the bar.

The baroness nodded approvingly. ‘Good. Got to be well tanked up to appreciate opera.’ She turned to the contessa. ‘At least we English do. You lot are all right. Wops don’t have our regrettable inhibitions.’

‘I had not thought that you…’ The contessa stopped. ‘Please, what is your Christian name? I am Gloria.’

‘Jack.’

The contessa’s eyebrow rose only slightly. ‘I have not thought you inhibited, Jack.’

The baroness clapped her on the back. ‘Everything’s relative, Gloria, old girl.’ Although this was fortunately one of the baroness’s more restrained expressions of good fellowship, the contessa’s shoulders were bare and it caused her to jump. However, by now the baroness’s stock was so high, thought Amiss sourly, that she could get away with putting lighted matches between their toes.

English inhibitions were certainly in retreat. As Wainwood returned with another bottle, apologizing with, ‘Sorry, I found it hard to push my way in,’ the baroness’s genial, ‘As the bishop said to the actress,’ caused the whole gathering to collapse in giggles.

‘I do like your baroness,’ whispered Fedden-Jones to Amiss. ‘What a’ – he searched for the
mot juste
– ‘jolly lady.’ Once Amiss had fully relaxed, like everyone else in the group he played the evening by the baroness’s rules and enjoyed himself enormously. Her exuberant delight in the occasion communicated itself generally. Although it turned out she had seen
La Bohème
more than half a dozen times, she hung over the side of the box gazing raptly at the stage in the manner of an awe-struck neophyte. It was clearly only massive willpower that prevented her from singing along with the best-known arias.