‘It’s disgusting,’ Alice said.
‘Maybe it is, but Marylin’s legs opened as she mentioned the Two Cultures, and Blaskin said there was nothing like a bad novel to set you questioning the purpose of the novel, and then he got it in as he mentioned Flaubert’s syphilis and hoped Marylin’s husband Charles wasn’t looking at the telly that night. “No,” she said, “no, he’s shooting grouse, and do you write with pen and ink or on the typewriter?” and he said, “Yes, of course, because all art is the product of an obsessively robust selfishness.” Marylin unhooked her bra so that he could get at her delicious girlish tits, and told him that he should stick to the point and only answer questions that were put in good faith, at which some of the crew cheered while others nodded in agreement. With a hand under her arse and her hands around his, which were pitted with old shrapnel scars from an Italian fieldgun, she asked about the reviewers and at his devastating response she came, and moaned so that somebody put the mike closer as if she was about to phrase her final question. It was a useless gesture because Gilbert shouted that if God existed the novelist should be shot and, being as far into her as he could get, praised the Lord and passed the ammunition.
‘The producer realised he had something priceless in the can, and cut at that point, having decided to tack the end credits over stormy waves beating on the seashore. It really made good television and letters from Birmingham pleading for more such programmes ran into thousands. The switchboards were blocked for days. It was submitted for the Italia prize and they even thought it’d get a Ramrod from Hollywood.’
She was breathing heavily. ‘I didn’t see it.’
‘Neither did I, but with Blaskin, anything’s possible. It is with me, as well, and I only say so because I sincerely believe that everything’s possible with you. But I’m sorry if I stopped you reading your book. I’m sure it’s much better than my idle chatter.’
She pushed my hand from the top of her thigh, but still held two fingers. I didn’t know whether that was because she thought I might continue my attempt to get them into her, or because she was prudishly affectionate. ‘Perhaps it’s safer if I get back to my book.’
‘I wish you two lovebirds would stop billing and cooing,’ Moggerhanger called out, ‘so that I can get some sleep. We’ll be there in an hour.’
Fifteen
Spleen Manor was a house, Moggerhanger said, in which you could fart without the windows rattling, or without somebody down the lane on his way to church turning away in horror at the unmistakable sound.
From a B road I went down a paved lane to a narrow bridge over a stream, and halfway up a hill turned left into the grounds. The first glimpse, through bushes and across the garden, was of a longish dwelling of two storeys, with lights glowing from the downstairs windows.
I carried in five suitcases for Moggerhanger’s overnight needs, then mine and Alice’s. Three of the chief’s were so heavy they must have contained a thousand sovereigns apiece, or their equivalent in bullion, suggesting that he was to pay someone off for a very expensive job. The ceiling in the hallway looked low enough to bump your head on if you didn’t duck because the beams, quite ordinary in their arrangement, had a motif of grey arrowheads painted in between, which gave the impression that the beams were closer to your skull than they otherwise were. Even Moggerhanger ducked, and he was used to the place.
The rooms were fairly well proportioned, as Blaskin might have said, and the house was quite large. Moggerhanger sniffed at the smell of cooking from the hall and said he was ready for his dinner. He wasn’t the only one, but he told Matthew Coppice to show us to our rooms and said that we were to come down in half an hour.
A corridor along the second floor connected the five bedrooms. At one end, where the staircase came up from the ground floor, was Moggerhanger’s quarters, because I saw Coppice taking his luggage in. He was well placed to hear anyone who might be tempted (me, for instance) into going down in the middle of the night to look through the house and see what I could learn. No matter how light the footfall, the floorboards creaked so that even someone in bed across the valley would stir in his sleep. Moggerhanger might even hear my lecherous thoughts meandering into Alice Whipplegate’s room which, I was glad to see, was next to mine.
My own cell had no, lock to the door, and I hoped it was the same with hers. I should have known better than to have nothing in my mind but sex, because the reason I’d locked myself into the cogs of Moggerhanger’s big wheel was to find out as much as possible for Bill Straw so that he would be more able to protect himself when it was decided to round him up. An equally important reason was that such information might help me to get even with Moggerhanger for having put me behind bars ten years ago. My aim was a mixture of public duty and private revenge, which told me that I ought not to let lechery interfere with my actions. That kind of itch could well be left to Blaskin, who often only indulged in it to flesh out the characters in his books. Thinking rarely did me any good, especially the sort that put me off trying to go to bed with Alice Whipplegate, when to become intimate with her might be the only way of learning something about Moggerhanger which I couldn’t come across in any other way.
Putting on a clean shirt and a different tie in the bathroom, I noticed another of Moggerhanger’s framed quips on the wall saying: ‘Look before you speak.’ He must have had Polly working in a regular little sweatshop. I expect she posted one a week back from Switzerland when she was eighteen.
Matthew Coppice had laid a buffet-style meal on a round mahogany table in the middle of the dining room. There was a dish of boiled potatoes, a flank of roast meat, a bowl of salad, a basket of sliced bread, a board of cheeses and a cluster of plastic-looking grapes. Four bottles of Italian red stood on sentry-go at various points. Moggerhanger’s oval platter was already laden and he sat at a separate table with his own bottle of champagne, talking to someone who had not come up in the car with us.
Since reacquainting myself with Moggerhanger I decided that when I had enough evidence to get him sentenced to everything short of hanging I would go to the police station with my locked briefcase, to which only I had the combination, and spread the papers out on the large table in the interview room. ‘Would you do me the favour of looking these over? It’ll take a while, but I’ll just sit down and have a smoke, if you don’t mind.’ Every few moments I would hear exclamations of shock and indignation from the honest constables and their officers. Eventually the inspector would say: ‘We get the drift, Mr Cullen. Leave the stuff with us and think no more about it. There’s enough here to send even an archbishop down. We’ve been waiting for stuff like this for years.’
You can imagine my chagrin, which included a twinge of despair, when I realised that the man talking to Moggerhanger at their separate table was none other than Chief Inspector Jack Lanthorn, one of the cops who was so bent he could get through the maze at Hampton Court in one minute flat. I knew now that the police raid on Peppercorn Cottage hadn’t been carried out by a RADA acting class, but had been done by real coppers giving Moggerhanger a hand on instructions from Lanthorn. And the inspector had come up incognito to Spleen Manor to collect payment for services willingly given. I hoped he’d retire in a couple of years to Jersey, which might make it easier for me to sink the boots of retribution into Moggerhanger’s backbone. His long thin face and pinpoint grey eyes beamed at me. ‘Haven’t I seen you somewhere before, lad?’
I did not like his disrespectful way of addressing me, and looked stonily back saying: ‘You arrested me at London Airport for gold smuggling twelve years ago.’