Eat, Drink and Be Buried (6 page)

The voice came from behind us. In this sylvan setting, I half expected to find a deer-hunting forester with bow and arrow. It was neither. It was Angela's brother, Norman.

“You must be lost,” he said, approaching us. “There's nothing but an old gazebo in that direction. I'm sure you weren't going there,” he added derisively.

Angela let go of my hand and her eyes had turned frosty.

“My fault,” I said. “I asked what was out this way and we got talking about the history of the castle. We just kept walking…”

Norman didn't look at me or acknowledge my words. To Angela, he said, “We have a meeting at two with the people from the County Commission. You hadn't forgotten, had you?”

“No. I hadn't forgotten.” Angela's answer was toneless.

“Right. Come on then,” he said briskly. He took her by the arm and said over his shoulder to me, “You can find your own way back, I'm sure.” It was a statement, not a question.

“Oh, I think so,” I said. Under the circumstances, I wouldn't have said anything else.

“Straight along that path, then keep to the left when you come to the hedge,” he said, pointing. They walked off, with not a glance from either of them.

I followed the path he had indicated, trying to read some meaning into this encounter. Angela was a flirt and maybe more, but she was surely old enough that she didn't need to have her brother watching over her. He acted strangely possessively for a brother, but maybe nobility and family responsibilities placed increased strain on them. Yet she had all the appearance of a strong-minded woman, even a willful one.

Surely she could have told him she could find her own way to this meeting. If she wanted to stay with me, that is, and I thought she did. Everything up until then suggested that she was enjoying my company, so why did she accede to her brother so readily?

The path went on, with the trees getting even thicker, but I came to the hedge as Norman had directed. It was dense and tall, taller than me, and looked as if it had been there for centuries. No doubt it had, just like the rest of the castle and its grounds. I turned left and reached a clump of undergrowth, ferns and vines matted so solidly as to be impenetrable. I turned right as there was nowhere else to go and found another path with a hedge along both sides. That in turn led to another path, although this one was little wider than a trail and the hedges loomed higher. I turned again and then again. The trail went on, turns and hedges, hedges and turns.

If I hadn't been so preoccupied with thoughts of the bewitching Angela and those dark eyes, which in turn led to bafflement about the relationship of Angela and her brother, I would have realized it sooner. As it was, the doubt dawned slowly and I must have been reluctant to accept it, preferring to return to speculation about Angela. It was when I came to yet another turn that reality hit me hard.

I was lost.

Lost in a maze.

I
WAS STILL PONDERING
over my escape from the maze as I sat in the 4:35 train to King's Cross. Escape was perhaps a pardonable exaggeration. At first, I began taking what were clearly wrong turns, but I was seething at Norman for sending me in here and myself for not thinking straight. I had eventually remembered the classic advice for escaping from a maze—take only right turns or only left turns. This is surprisingly hard to do as one is convinced of the correct turn and that conviction is often contrary to the classic advice.

The maze was a popular feature of country houses in the Georgian and Victorian eras. When houses were built, a maze was part of the planning. If a house did not have one, it had to be added. A house from those eras without a maze was like a modern home without an indoor toilet. Hampton Court has one of the great mazes of England. When the house and grounds were reopened after World War II, visitors would be found still trapped inside the maze when the gates were closed for the night. No one was permanently lost, but numerous small boys caused parental tears and anguish before eventual reconciliation.

It had taken me less than ten minutes to find the way out once I had steeled myself to ignore intuition and just follow the rule. True, they were ten minutes of fuming at Norman and thinking of things to do to him in revenge, but after my merciful release from that green captivity I had cooled off and was banishing the last of those base thoughts.

I had not seen anyone back in the castle, but after a shower and a change of clothes, I sought out Inspector Devlin and told her I was going to London on important business, would stay overnight, and be back here in the afternoon.

She was in a room that was probably once a bedroom, but a long time ago. It did not look like one that was used habitually, but there were charts on the wall and tables with piles of papers. Two constables were on phones, talking in subdued voices. Inspector Devlin was in a cubicle formed by Japanese screens. There was a small table, she had a chair, and I had a chair. That was it. The effect desired was probably intimidation. She fixed me with those gimlet eyes.

“I prefer that no one leaves until a few critical points are cleared up,” she said.

“I'll be back in twenty-four hours or so and I do have a business to run,” I said in my most reasonable voice.

“Is there anyone in London who'll vouch for you?” She made it sound as if anyone with less authority than the Prime Minister did not count. I was ready for the question, though I pretended I had to think for a moment.

“Inspector Ronald Hemingway at Scotland Yard?” I offered, tentatively, as if I were prepared to work my way up through the hierarchy at the Yard and to the Chief Commissioner if Hemingway's name should be insufficient.

It must have been a surprise blow, but she took it well. “Does he know you?”

“Of course. We worked together a while ago. There was a poisoning case, the Circle of Carème. Maybe you heard of it?” I tried not imply the addition of a phrase at the end like “even out here in the boondocks of Hertfordshire.”

She did not confirm or deny, but I had no doubt that every detective in the country must have read about the case, either in the daily press or in the detectives' weekly newsletter, or seen the reports on television. It consisted of two spectacular murders, and no sleuth could have been too occupied sleuthing not to know about it.

“What is his extension at the Yard?” she asked.

“Six oh double six,” I said as if I called him every day. In fact, I had looked it up before coming to see Inspector Devlin.

She made a pretence of scribbling it down. “Very well. Let me know when you get back tomorrow.”

I avoided saying, “Jawohl,” gave her a thank-you nod, and departed. So now, here I was, speeding toward London, where we arrived on time and I was back in the hurly-burly of the great city after the comparative tranquility of the Harlington Castle estate, despite all its visitors.

I took the Metropolitan Line to Hammersmith and walked across to King Street, where my local market was crowded with late shoppers. Len, the fishmonger, greeted me with his usual “What is it today then?”

I riposted with my usual “What's fresh today then?”

There was haddock, scallops, langoustines, prawns, monkfish, halibut…then Len pointed to a row of swordfish steaks. “Just came in—from the Caribbean. Lovely, they are.” I trust Len's advice, so I followed it and picked out a medium-sized steak.

Back in my flat, which is only a few minutes walk from the market and right in Hammersmith, I put on a CD of one of my favorite “cheer-up” pieces of music. An encounter with death can leave one needing that. This time, I picked Georges Enesco's
Romanian Rhapsody.
The surging throb of those massed violins never fails to lift my spirits. I looked at the mail, which was only bills, poured a mild scotch and soda, sat down and let those wild Gypsy fiddlers send their music flowing over me and soaring to the heavens. I made sure that a bottle of Pouilly Fuisse was in the cooler and went into the kitchen.

This was going to be a simple meal. I make polenta periodically, enough to last two or three weeks, so I had some prepared. I cut a few slices and put them in a baking pan with a little butter and some chopped basil, onions, and sun-dried tomato. I put the pan in the top of the oven, set it on grill, put salt and pepper on the swordfish steak, smeared a thin layer of olive oil on both sides, and put it about five inches from the elements. Mixing the sauce was the next step—melting some butter, adding soya sauce, lemon juice, and chopped capers. This does not need cooking, only warming up to temperature, so I let it sit until the fish was part cooked. I steamed some green beans, drained them and sautéed them a few minutes.

All came together at the same time, which was just after I had popped the cork on the Pouilly Fuisse and taken a few analytical sips. It was an excellent meal, even if I say it myself. After the madcap enthusiasm of those forty violins, I accompanied the meal with a selection of Mozart's piano concertos. These were wonderfully melodic and soothing and all thoughts of murder and violence were temporarily excluded.

The District Line Underground had me at Victoria within ten minutes. I don't have a car—the traffic and the parking make it absurd to have one, and though complaints about public transport in London are common, they still do a magnificent job of moving more than a hundred million people a week. From the station, I walked to Horseferry Road, where the twice monthly meeting of P. I. E. would begin in a few minutes.

Meetings have for some years been held in a building that used to belong to the Ministry of the Environment. One of our members worked there and was able to get it for us at a very modest fee. The ministry subsequently moved out to Haywards Heath, presumably because the environment was better out there, and by some bureaucratic omission we were no longer charged for the room. This new low price suited us fine and we continued to use it. Inevitably, some lynx-eyed official will one day discover this and we shall have to express amazement while declining to pay the arrears.

Meanwhile, we still meet in the room where I encountered Ben Beaumont, our genial president, for the first time. I know that presidents are always called genial, but in Ben's case, it was completely appropriate. Beaming, red-faced, and happy, outgoing and never at a loss for a word, he was the ideal man for the job.

The initials P. I. E. confuse a lot of people. Many think we have monthly bake-offs and exchange recipes. In fact, they stand for “Private Investigators Etc.” and the group was initially established as a sort of union for that profession. It was effective enough to survive, but eventually membership declined. This was not because there were fewer private investigators—there were more, but many belonged to large operations and didn't feel the need to be part of something. Still, sufficient lone operators remained, and when these began to decline numerically, someone had the bright idea of admitting as members people who were not necessarily detectives but had some connection. We carefully avoided defining “connection.”

It worked. We now had writers of private eye novels, editors at major publishers of mysteries, an engineer who made electronic devices for surveillance, and even a few former police detectives. We encouraged the last to let us believe that they intended to become private eyes, and they obliged. One of them even did so.

I chatted with Tom Davidson, who is a marine insurance investigator, and then with Miss Wellworthy. I believe that our secretary is the only person who knows her first name. Every club has to have a “character” and Miss Wellworthy is ours. She fancies herself as a Miss Marple who can spot a conspiracy at a thousand yards. The Hammersmith Town Council is one of the main hatcheries of plots, according to Miss Wellworthy, but their council members do a fine job of keeping her placated without ever a suggestion that they think her a crank.

“I'm not happy with the water supply,” she told me in her determined manner.

“It doesn't have a lot of taste,” I said.

“That's not what I mean. Do you know how much fluoride is in it?”

“Not precisely,” I admitted. “But it's good for the teeth, isn't it?”

“It may be,” she said darkly, “but the nervous system! What is it doing to that?”

We discussed this problem for a few minutes and our conversation ended with her assuring me that she was not going to tolerate local government tinkering with the health of the community. I had a couple of minutes to talk to a popular romantic novelist who drops in on us occasionally to ask about the finer points of being a private eye. She feared that the romantic novel had passed its peak and the future lay with romantic suspense, as she called it.

The man I was looking for did not seem to be present and it was time for Ben Beaumont to bring us to order, so we sat and listened to the minutes of the last meeting and a statement by the treasurer. Then followed a reminder that the group was organizing a trip to Edinburgh for a mystery conference, and finally our speaker stepped up. As he did so, I saw the man I had been looking for come in quietly and sit at the back.

Our speaker was Robert Levine, a criminal lawyer. He spoke first on the lawyer-detectives of fiction—Perry Mason, Matthew Hope, Mr. Tutt, Scott Jordan, John J. Malone, Jake Lassiter, Judge Dee, and others. Then he compared the reality where the opportunities for a lawyer to act as a detective were, he said, extremely limited and heavily frowned upon. Lots of questions ensued, and our speaker dealt with them admirably. When we rose afterwards, I was among the first as I wanted to be sure to catch the man I was after.

Edgar Sampson had retired after spending many years as security chief at Millward House in Yorkshire, one of the great country homes in England. A treasure trove of paintings and sculpture, it also possessed a fortune in jewels, gold, and silver. It was a natural target for thieves, and Edgar had a well-deserved reputation for his ingenuity in devising protective measures. After a first retirement from his position at Millward House, he had then become a consultant in security techniques, and he'd been in great demand. He had now retired again and was living a somewhat lonely life since the death of his wife. Clubs like this were a chance to see friendly faces and chat about old times. It was old times that I wanted to talk to him about—particularly at Harlington Castle.