Red Herrings Read Online Free

air,’ said Monica knowingly. ‘Turns the head and ruins the complexion. Country folk always have addled brain cells and terminal skin cancer.’
    â€˜I’d forgotten how exhausting life was in the country.’ Bognor sighed.
    â€˜It’s not your surroundings that exhaust you, it’s your time of life.’
    There was some truth in this. Bognor would not see forty again. Come to that he felt he was unlikely to see fifty. In the days when the Clout first started a man of over forty was considered pretty antique, accorded much veneration and respect and not expected to live much longer. Bognor felt that he had been born into the wrong century. He felt like mediaeval man – course spent, sands of time run out – but was always being told that this was ridiculous. His contemporaries jogged, worked out with weights and ate nothing but nuts and sunflower seeds. Many of them persuaded themselves that they were in their prime of life. Worse still, many of them convinced very sexy women of half their age that they were in their prime of life. Bognor knew that, in his early forties, he had the body of a not very well preserved man in his late sixties. He just wished he lived at a time when this was regarded as normal. He did not particularly regret feeling so old; but he did object to being told he was peculiar. Never mind, the intellect was as sharp as ever.
    There was a Tannoy system at the Clout; not a very sophisticated one, it crackled and whined through loud speakers placed on the corner of the mead tent and another by the St John’s Ambulance post. The voice behind it belonged to Damian Macpherson, only son of ‘Doc’ and Mrs Macpherson. Damian was the village teddy boy. Although he was over thirty he seemed to be permanently unemployed and hung around in drainpipes, winklepickers and an old tail coat outside the pub. When anyone feminine passed by he would leer horribly and make various suggestions varying from a drink to a quick How’s Your Father behind the cricket pavilion. But there was no malice in the man and no one had objected to his being appointed to the loud-speaker system. It was accepted that he would stick to the script and say nothing unless authorised by a member of the committee.
    So far he had recited admirably, even injecting a note of sombre unflappability into the rather anodyne announcement about the body in the wood. Now, once more, he spoke:
    â€˜Would Mr Simon Bognor of East Sheen please report to Doctor Macpherson in the refreshment tent. Mr Simon Bognor to the refreshment tent.’
    Bognor swore. ‘I don’t believe it,’ he said. ‘That can only mean one thing.’
    Monica nodded, grim-faced. ‘Parkinson,’ she said.
    â€˜â€™Fraid so.’
    Just as she said it, Peregrine Contractor emerged from behind his Roller clutching a cordless telephone.
    â€˜Simon, old shoe,’ he said, ‘Dandiprat’s on the blower. Your boss has been on in a state of excitement. Says he’s been phoning everyone in sight. Wants you to check in p.d.q.’
    Dandiprat was the Contractors’ butler – very short, very obsequious and extremely sinister. He always gave Bognor the impression that he was in the possession of everyone’s guilty secret.
    â€˜Unless I’m much mistaken he’s been on to Damian Macpherson as well.’ He sighed. ‘Can I ring from the Rolls?’
    â€˜You’ll reverse the charges?’
    â€˜Naturally.’ Bognor knew perfectly well that a large part of Perry’s success was due to an obsessive though selective parsimony. At the same time as he dispensed magnums of champagne he grudged you the price of a phone call. Entirely in character.
    The phone was a push button cordless. Bognor, sitting in the back of the Rolls, punched 100 for the operator and waited. Not a lot of point, he reflected glumly, in a marvel of modern science like this car phone without visible