Publish and Be Murdered (23 page)

‘Yes, I know that. But this is something specific that you might really hate.’

She sat upright and looked at him suspiciously. ‘Stop procrastinating and tell me.’

‘It’s just that by sheer chance Dwight is making fun of your minister.’

‘What do you mean, “by sheer chance”?’

‘I mean he doesn’t like him, but he knows nothing of the link with me. He knows my girlfriend is in the Foreign Office, but he’s got no idea what you do.’

‘And you did nothing about it?’

‘I can’t censor him for personal reasons, Rachel. You know that. It just wouldn’t be – if you’ll excuse the word – ethical.’

‘Have you a copy?’

He gave her a proof and watched lugubriously as she read through and her face darkened. ‘This is horrible. What’s happened to you? You seem to have come to hate decency and compassion since you went to work for that dreadful Tory rag.’

‘It’s not a dreadful Tory rag, Rachel. It’s a journal of ideas from a standpoint which happens not to be too popular at present.’

‘It’s a Tory rag and you’ve made it worse. This is cheap and cruel and abusive of a good minister whose only crime is to use language which old fogeys wilfully misunderstand.’ She slammed it down on the table. ‘I don’t remember any such mockery of William Hague’s beastly baseball cap or his bonding sessions with colleagues in silly jumpers. Or the ghastly Portillo’s Pauline conversion to caring and sharing.’

‘We did run a few jokes about all that.’

‘Nothing on this scale.’

Amiss looked at her pleadingly. ‘Don’t you think it’s just a bit funny?’

‘I don’t, Robert.’ She stood up. ‘Good night. I’m going to bed now. In the spare room.’

‘Jolly good issue,’ said Papworth. ‘Good and robust. I’ve had abuse and praise in equal shares today. Congratulations.’

‘I’m glad you liked it, Charlie. I feared it was rather over the top myself. I didn’t agree with much of it.’

Papworth chortled. ‘It’s the ultimate irony for you, isn’t it? A person who thinks he’s a liberal but we think is a conservative is out of sheer fair-mindedness producing a journal that makes many conservatives wince at its right-wingery and rampant libertarianism. You see it as your duty to disagree with yourself, as it were.’

‘I was a civil servant, Charlie. I wrote many speeches and drafted many papers I didn’t agree with. It comes easier than you might think.’

‘Well, keep it coming. If you go on like this, we might even begin to sell some copies and make a profit.’

‘Steady on, Charlie. Let’s stick in the realms of the possible.’

‘Christ, Webber is some looney,’ observed Milton, when he dropped in on Amiss that Friday evening for a drink. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever come across someone so choleric. Still, it was worth it to see Tewkesbury so abused. And I think he was grateful to me for not rubbing it in. He has rallied since and suggested that that Jack Troutbeck was mad enough to murder for reasons of principle, but fortunately on the relevant night she had been up till one a.m. at a dinner in St Martha’s, where, incidentally, she gave a rousing rendition of “The Road to Mandalay”. And the following morning she was seen at seven-thirty setting off for London, where she spent the entire day chairing a conference.’

‘Doesn’t sound like Jack.’

‘Oh yes, it does. It was a sort of rally for those in favour of elitism in education. They call themselves the Anti-dilutions because they’re against dilution of standards…’

‘And are making a play on antediluvian. Yes. Very Jack. So where is Tewkesbury turning his attentions now?’

‘Still clinging on to you, I think. But afraid to say it at present, in case I bite him.’

‘Does he dislike me?’

‘Yes, probably because he’s jealous as well as disapproving because you’ve led the journal back from the path of righteousness down which Lambie Crump was leading it.’

‘He’s not alone. I think I’ve made more enemies in the last couple of weeks than I have in my whole life. Even the people who are most thrilled that I’m doing a serious job are shocked at the journal’s line. God help me, like Rachel, my parents think this government is wonderful and can’t understand why I’m being negative. They rang up this morning to tut-tut over several parts of this week’s and to ask me why I’m allowing these awful people to attack poor Mr Blair.’

‘Did you manage to calm them down?’

‘My dad’s always calm. And my mother will put up with it. Anyway, the good sign was they’d read nearly the whole thing – apart from the literary pages – and had opinions on several articles and even disagreed with each other about two. And Dwight’s attack on New Labour rhetoric was so controversial that he was on the BBC at lunchtime, which gives me hope that we might be able to flog the vastly increased number of copies I ordered this week.’

‘You’re enjoying yourself, aren’t you?’

‘Some of the time. Now, what about you?’

Milton spread his hands wide. ‘Getting nowhere slowly. I still have no idea how Potbury died and not the faintest idea who did for Lambie Crump and why, unless it was in connection with selling
The Wrangler
. I agree with Webber that ideology had nothing to do with it.’

‘Me too,’ said Amiss.

‘But that would mean the most likely murderer has to be someone who desperately wanted to stop the trustees agreeing to alter the trust.’

‘Henry Potbury,’ said Amiss.

‘Thanks, Robert. That’s a big help. What do you think about Papworth?’

‘Piers Papworth was all for it.’

‘Yes, but his father wasn’t. And I’ve still got a question mark over him. He seems too good to be true.’

He dug around in his briefcase and pulled out a plastic wallet. ‘I quote from Tewkesbury’s notes, where he records Papworth as saying: “I should be sad to see the journal fall into the wrong hands, but it’s not something I’d fight Piers to the death over. I don’t know how long I’ll go on trying to block him. After all, at my age, what’s the point? As my heir, he’ll have the last laugh anyway.” ’

‘That’s typical Charlie Papworth, Jim.’

‘It may be, but it makes him look a bit more resigned to losing than is suggested by a man who replaced Henry Potbury with Jack Troutbeck, the doughtiest of doughty fighters for the soul of
The Wrangler
. Piers can’t have been too thrilled with that.’

‘Have you asked him about it?’

‘I haven’t even interviewed him yet. He’s been out of the country for three weeks.’

‘Definitely out of the country.’

‘Yes. He’s attending to some family business in Australia. I’ve had it checked. He’s been there all the time.’

‘So whatever he did, he didn’t kill Lambie Crump.’

‘No. But why would he want to kill his main ally?’

‘I don’t know,’ sighed Amiss. ‘But in the middle of these shifting sands, doesn’t it help to be able to rule people out completely?’

‘I suppose so. Though when the field is as broad as this, it’s a small consolation. Incidentally, like most of the other obvious suspects, Papworth senior doesn’t have a complete alibi. He was at a drinks party that evening, followed by a light supper at his club with a couple of friends. He was back at his pied-à-terre around nine-thirty, he said, and straight to bed.’

‘No corroboration?’

‘The friends at the club and his wife. But since he went to bed immediately and they occupy separate bedrooms, her usefulness is limited.’

‘If I understand it all correctly,’ said Amiss, ‘we’re in the interesting position that Lambie Crump was definitely murdered but there was no apparent motive for anyone doing so, while Piers Papworth or even Sharon McGregor had excellent reasons to get rid of Henry Potbury, who probably died accidentally.’

‘That’s about it.’

‘So what will you do next?’

‘What can I do except go on burrowing? I’m focusing at the moment on the trust-busting business and the money involved.’

‘Have you met the trustees yet?’

‘I had an entirely useless conversation with Lord Hogwood and Sir Augustus Adderly, both of whom are next to gaga and both of whom were busily bewailing the loss of Saint Willie. But I’m glad to report that they think you’re doing well.’

‘I should hope they do. I’ve been assiduously following in Willie’s footsteps by buttering them up at every opportunity. What did they say about the possible reduction in the powers of trustees?’

‘Just that they’re there but to serve, that they had always been guided by Crump and that when he had said it was necessary to move with the times they had been happy to go along with him since one must always be on the side of progress.’

‘Did they mention Henry?’

‘Just said he was a nice fellow who got rather hot under the collar about things and they had hoped he’d come round.’

‘Anything about the change in
The Wrangler
’s politics?’

‘Adderly said that Potbury had exaggerated the scale of it and it didn’t matter anyway since “we are all Blairites now”. And Hogwood kept bleating on about the necessity to bend to the call of modernity.’

‘God, they really are an awful pair of old idiots. Absolutely classic examples of gutless Great and Good Tories – the kind that would have wanted to make friends with Hitler because he couldn’t really be such a bad chap and might be cross if you argued with him. Anyway, whatever they are, they’re a fat lot of use to me or to
The Wrangler
and I wait impatiently to hear how Jack gets on on Monday at her first formal trustees’ meeting.’

‘See if she can do dinner afterwards,’ said Milton, as he got up to leave. ‘By then I should have talked to the solicitor in charge who’s just back from his holidays. It’ll be on me. Just agree a restaurant with Jack and let me know.’

As he opened the door, he turned back. ‘Will Rachel come?’

‘I’ll ask, but I should think she’d rather stay late at work. She’s pretty pissed off with
The Wrangler
.’

‘But she’s pleased about you being editor, isn’t she?’

‘She was, and in a way she still is. But she is, as she put it recently, “disappointed that I’ve taken it backwards”. And enraged that I allowed Dwight to attack one of her ministers.’

‘That’s not reasonable.’

‘It is from her perspective. I hate to admit it, Jim, and I can’t understand it, because Rachel always disliked bullshit, but she seems to have bought the rhetoric of this fucking government. She talks about vision and leadership and people power and all the rest of those awful words they use to cover up their complete absence of any genuine philosophy, principle or policy. “Compassion with a hard edge,” for Christ’s sake. All that means is that you do Tory things but claim you’re doing it because you’re good, while they did it because they were bad.’ He sighed. ‘I’m afraid the abandonment of intellectual rigour and scepticism is now afflicting even the public service.’

‘Not me so far,’ said Milton. ‘But perhaps Tewkesbury will yet convert me.’

22

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‘It was doubly unfortunate,’ wailed Amiss. “Vexed is not exactly the word. Try incandescent. We could have done without all this outside provocation to make things worse than they already are. I didn’t realize that taking this job was liable to require such sacrifices.’

The baroness leant across the table and patted his hand. ‘I’m proud of you, my boy. You have put principle before comfort. Under you,
The Wrangler
is, as the Prime Minister no doubt would put it if he weren’t on the other side, “a beacon of hope in a world of darkness”.’

‘That’s not the way Rachel’s looking at it. She thinks I’ve put Dwight Winterton before Rachel Simon because I’m thoughtless, uncaring, cowardly, bigoted and a lot of other adjectives I’d rather not repeat.’

‘She’s a silly-billy,’ said the baroness.

‘I always thought she was very easy-going,’ said Milton.

‘So did I,’ said Amiss.

‘It’s New Labour,’ said the baroness. ‘She’s been infected. It’s like a cult. She needs to be kidnapped and taken to one of those places where they re-educate the brainwashed. Would you like me to seize her and incarcerate her in St Martha’s? I could always put her in a padded cell with Plutarch. Speaking of whom…’

‘Not tonight, Jack, please. I’m worn down by personal problems.’

‘I’ll let you off tonight, but we’ll have to talk about it tomorrow. The anti-Plutarch camp is mutinying, and what she did yesterday didn’t help.’

‘Oh God, what did she do?’

‘You’re not up to hearing tonight.’ She turned to Milton. ‘Right, Jim. Get on with it. What gives from the solicitors?’

‘The trust would be very expensive – though conceivably possible – to break if all three trustees stood resolute. If one trustee backed change, the case would be slightly strengthened; two make a big difference. Three and it’s a piece of cake.’

‘Well, they’re not going to get three,’ said the baroness grimly. ‘That’s for sure.’

‘So the solicitor said. In fact, he allowed a wintry smile to crease his wintry face and said that the recalcitrant trustee was even more recalcitrant than her predecessor. “I thought her,” he said, “a rather odd choice of Lord Papworth’s. But that was before I discovered he and his son did not see eye-to-eye on the matter.” ’

‘Any figures put on the price of recalcitrance?’

‘He thinks your very existence could add two hundred thousand to the costs and two years to the timescale.’

‘How interesting,’ said the baroness. ‘So that’s why Sharon McGregor offered me a hundred-thousand-pound bribe.’

‘A real bribe?’

‘Not in so many words. Sharon is a direct woman, but even she is not that brash.’

‘So how did she put it?’

‘She said she would like to make a hundred-thousand-pound donation to St Martha’s, but might not have the readies because of legal expenses. A likely tale.

‘I asked artlessly what expenses were these, and she said she was funding Piers Papworth’s assault on the trust. Then she smiled at me and said that not being a dumb Sheila I would understand her position. It seemed, she went on sweetly, a pity to waste money because some fuddy-duddies opposed making changes to a mag that could only benefit from modernization.’ The baroness took a thoughtful swig of Chablis. ‘I’ve rather gone off Sharon McGregor.’