Essex Poison Read online

  ‘Absolutely certain. Lot of nonsense. Poor Marden died, goodness knows why, but of natural causes I have no doubt. And not poisoned oysters, for sure. Not that it stops people jumping to all sorts of ludicrous conclusions. Do you know, one of the women serving breakfast claimed that the Oyster Feast was the target of the communists, for goodness sake, trying to kill off the great and the good! Total stuff and nonsense, the whole thing. I’m going to write an article today about crowd hysteria. Interesting case study. If only Mr Fort were here to view it for himself. But. All a distraction from the book, Sefton. We must focus on the book.’

  He took me by the elbow, in his usual irresistible fashion, as though leading a horse to water, or a lamb to the slaughter.

  ‘Now, Miriam has arranged for us to visit the Colchester Oyster Fishery, I believe. Few miles away, West Mersea. But she’s just mentioned that there was some problem with the car yesterday, is that right?’ He nodded again towards the hotel breakfast room, where I spotted Miriam busy looking languid over coffee – at which she was most definitely succeeding. ‘I’m rather concerned, Sefton, to be frank. You didn’t mention it before.’

  Miriam winked at me through the window.

  ‘Didn’t mention what, sorry, Mr Morley?’

  ‘The Lagonda, man! The problem with the Lagonda? You didn’t see fit to mention it?’

  ‘No, well, with everything that’s happened.’

  ‘No excuse, Sefton! A workman always looks after his tools, first and foremost. Doesn’t matter what chaos may surround us. What do we do in a storm? What do we do in a crisis? Blame others, or take responsibility ourselves? Without the Lagonda, where would we be?’

  ‘In Norfolk, Mr Morley?’

  ‘Very funny, Sefton. I take it that’s supposed to be a joke?’ Morley could never quite tell. ‘You know we rely on that car. The County Guides rely on that car. Our whole project. A modern Domesday Book doesn’t write itself, you know.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘We can hardly cycle the length and breadth of the country, can we?’

  ‘No, Mr Morley.’

  ‘Unless we could find a bicycle that could fold and we could take it with us on trains and on buses … Hmm. Something worth thinking about, eh?’

  ‘Yes, Mr Morley.’ A folding bicycle? He often had these lunatic ideas. It was always best to ignore them.

  ‘So what’s wrong with her?’ he said.

  Miriam was now making faces at me through the window. It was rather distracting.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The car, man! What was wrong with the car? Poor fuel consumption?’

  ‘I’m not sure about the fuel consumption.’

  ‘Losing power?’

  ‘It may have been losing power, yes …’

  ‘Is that it?’

  ‘Well, yes. Although it was also making a rather funny sound.’

  ‘Funny? Funny in what way, Sefton?’

  ‘Just … funny.’

  ‘Oh come on, Sefton. Describe, please. Knocking? Clunking? Clicking?’

  ‘Erm …’

  ‘Clanging? Rumbling? Roaring? What?’

  ‘I’d describe it as … more of a knocking, Mr Morley.’

  ‘Knocking, eh? Loud knocking? Quiet knocking? A rat-a-tat-tat? Or a tum-ti-ti-tum? Pounding? The sound of an actual door knocker knocking? A knocker-upper knocking? A—’

  ‘A kind of metallic knocking, I’d say, Mr Morley. The sort of knocking you’d hear in a car.’

  ‘Hmm. Doesn’t sound good, Sefton, does it? Not good at all.’

  ‘That’s what I thought.’

  ‘Where is it then?’

  ‘The knocking sound?’ I said.

  ‘The car, man! The car.’

  ‘We had to park a way away.’

  ‘Come on then, chop chop, let’s tend to the poor beast.’

  We found the Lagonda parked where Miriam and I had left it the night before. I was always half-expecting the car to be stolen – it wasn’t exactly an unnoticeable sort of a vehicle. (Indeed, on one very memorable occasion it was stolen, but that’s another story.) On that fine Essex morning it was, thank goodness, quite simply there, in all its glory.

  ‘The old white charger,’ said Morley. ‘Keys?’

  The car had been fitted with a special key ignition at Morley’s request: in many ways he had the mind of a thief, and could always foresee opportunities for crimes and misdemeanours; the Lagonda was clearly an invitation to sin.

  ‘I don’t have the keys, I’m afraid, Mr Morley. I think Miriam has them.’

  ‘Ah, well, fortunately I think I have a spare set.’ He dug into the many pockets of his tweeds; he had his tailors, Davies & Co. – ‘Oldest on the Row, and still the best,’ according to Morley – make extra pockets everywhere in his suits, so that they became his home from home, equipped with every household item bar the kitchen sink. In fact, one wouldn’t have been surprised if one of the pockets did indeed contain the kitchen sink, or at least a small folding version, of the kind that one used to find in the cabins of continental sleeper trains. Sure enough, in a key pocket there was an extra set of keys for the Lagonda – and the house, St George’s, and all the rooms in the house, and its various outbuildings, and his other cars. If he’d produced a starting handle from his pockets I wouldn’t have been shocked. ‘Start her up, then.’ He tossed the keys to me and then hoisted up the bonnet and started fiddling around inside.

  The car was certainly making a very unhappy sound, and the longer Morley fiddled in there the unhappier it became. After a few minutes he slammed down the bonnet.

  ‘That’ll do, Sefton.’

  I turned off the engine.

  ‘Well?’ I said.

  ‘Did you say she started playing up in Ongar?’

  ‘I think so, yes.’

  ‘Something wrong with the place?’

  ‘Not as far as I recall, Mr Morley, no, it seemed perfectly—’

  ‘Dirty sort of place?’

  ‘Dirty?’

  ‘Lot of grit or anything lying around? Mud?’

  ‘No, I don’t think so, although there was a big delivery of sand and gravel while we were down in Becontree, and the car was sort of dusted with—’

  ‘Dusted? What do you mean dusted?’

  ‘Well, sort of dusted—’

  ‘With sand and gravel? Good grief, man! Great Jerusalem save us! Why didn’t you say so before? Sand and gravel, for goodness sake! Sand’ll destroy an engine as quick and as sure as the Royal Navy setting its sights on Zanzibar, Sefton! Have you no idea whatsoever about the workings of the internal combustion engine?’

  I did not.

  ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t think, Mr Morley.’

  ‘Clearly. Sometimes I do wonder, Sefton, if it’s a good idea to leave you and Miriam unattended with the Lagonda.’ Sometimes I wondered myself if it was a good idea for me and Miriam to be left unattended, with or without the Lagonda. ‘She is not a toy,’ he continued – meaning the Lagonda. ‘She is a valued member of our team.’ He did have a terrible tendency to anthropomorphise, metaphorise, exaggerate and otherwise make things up. ‘We need to get the old girl to a garage quick and have her looked at. Didn’t we pass a place up on the High Street, by the Town Hall?’

  ‘I don’t know, Mr Morley, did we?’

  ‘What are our rules, Sefton!’

  ‘No funking, no shirking, no shilly-shallying? Or no shirking, no shilly—’

  ‘Not those rules!’

  ‘Always look on the bright side of life?’

  ‘Nor that!’

  I tried ‘Interdum vulgus rectum videt’, one of Morley’s favourite Latin phrases.

  ‘In plain English, man! Common sense and observation, Sefton! Are they not our bywords?’

  We had so many bywords it was difficult to know which words were bywords and which were just by-the-way words.

  ‘What was it called?’ asked Morley, consulting his mental file-card index for recent additions under ‘Mechanics, Esse
x, Signs, Observed’. ‘Harold J. Willett?’

  ‘I’m not sure, Mr Morley.’

  ‘Well, fortunately I’m sure. Come on.’

  CHAPTER 14

  A MECHANICAL APHRODISIAC

  HIS MENTAL FILING SYSTEM WAS ACCURATE, as always. It was indeed Harold J. Willett and it was indeed on the High Street near the Town Hall.

  Willett’s is a pretty impressive outfit, comprising a large car showroom, garages and workshops. We managed to get the car there in one piece and were attended to by Mr Willett himself – or at least by a Mr Willett. There may have been several; Willett’s was not a one-man enterprise. It was a little empire.

  ‘Now,’ said Morley, after a long conversation with Mr Willett about carburettors and air filters, and having made complex arrangements for the car to be thoroughly examined and fixed. ‘I wonder if it might be possible for us to borrow something from you, transportation-wise, while the Lagonda is repaired?’

  ‘Of course we can do that. No problem at all,’ said Mr Willett, who looked and dressed and spoke like all car salesmen, then, now and for ever: just a little too sleek, the tie just too thick, the suit too sharp and too shiny, the speech both too eager and aggressive, and wheedling. ‘If you follow me, I can show you—’

  ‘In fact I did wonder …’ Morley swivelled around on his heels and began to make his way in the opposite direction towards what was undoubtedly the finest car in the showroom – a big black and cream convertible over by the window. ‘A car showroom is the museum of the future, don’t you think?’

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Mr Willett. I suspect that he – like me – had no idea in what sense a car showroom might be the museum of the future, though we were doubtless about to find out.

  ‘A site of display and investigation, Mr Willett. In years to come, the car will be understood to be the most important cultural artefact of our time, never mind the most important mechanical device in history – with the possible exception of the button, the clock and the printing press, of course.’

  ‘I’m sure,’ said Mr Willett, who was beginning to look rather bemused.

  We were approaching the big car by the window.

  ‘Do you know Marinetti at all, Mr Willett?’

  Mr Willett admitted that he did not know any Marinettis, although he did know the Morettis, who ran an accident repair service in Chelmsford – lovely bunch of chaps.

  ‘Odd fellow, met him in Rome,’ continued Morley. ‘Many years ago. Grotty little café. San Calisto? Hangout of writers and artists, you know the sort of thing. Claimed that a sports car was more beautiful than a Greek statue. Absolutely correct of course. I mean, don’t we all want to caress the hot breasts of a speeding vehicle?’

  ‘Erm …’

  We had arrived beside the big car by the window. And Morley was beginning to stroke it.

  ‘Not my words, I hasten to add!’ he said. ‘I’m quoting Marinetti, of course. Italian. And quite an oddbod to boot, as I say. But you can see what he’s getting at, can’t you?’

  ‘Erm …’

  ‘The sensuous surfaces of the thing.’ Morley, standing now at the bonnet of the car, leaned forward and embraced it. He really was a great car man. ‘Look at this! The sheer girth! A car, Mr Willett, a great car, is a kind of mechanical aphrodisiac, wouldn’t you agree?’

  ‘I couldn’t really say, sir,’ said Mr Willett, with admirable calm, given that like me he had doubtless never seen a man embrace a car before, nor for a moment considered that a car was a kind of mechanical aphrodisiac, or indeed a mechanical anything, except a car; and even if he had thought it he would have been unlikely to express it with quite Morley’s uninhibited enthusiasm.

  (For Morley’s always enthusiastic writing about cars, of which there is alas rather a lot, like the great vehicular torrent itself, which has swept through our age, and which like Morley’s work is quite exhilarating at best and quite deadly at worst, see his monthly column in Motor magazine, which ran from 1934 to 1939, and which was often reprinted in motoring magazines around the world, including Motoring, Motor Car, Motor World and indeed – as I know, having had to conduct the negotiations myself with the editor, by telephone, with the aid of a Brazilian Portuguese dictionary – Automobilismo in Brazil. In one particularly popular article, entitled ‘Unholy Union’ (June 1936) Morley claims that ‘When driving, there is a connection between man and machine that goes beyond the merely physical and takes us into the realms of the metaphysical. In driving, there is a transference between man and machine, just as there is between man and horse, or man and bicycle. This act of exchange amounts to an act of love, a love between man and machine that is the spirit of our age.’)

  ‘Is it not a relationship of love, our relationship with the car?’ continued Morley, who had by now straightened up and was pacing round the vehicle, surveying it with pleasure.

  ‘I suppose it is, sir, yes. A relationship of – ahem – love. Yes.’

  ‘Do you remember your first car, Mr Willett?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘What was she?’

  ‘A Morris Minor, 1931.’

  ‘Ah, yes. Fine car,’ said Morley. ‘Fine car. The hundred pound car.’

  This reminded me of my outstanding debt of one hundred pounds. Perhaps I should try to steal a Morris Minor. I smiled benignly.

  ‘And then an Austin 7 Tourer,’ said Mr Willett, becoming quite caught up in his automotive memories.

  ‘Ah, yes, the Tourer, the Tourer. We have an Austin saloon at home. The old gin palace.’

  ‘Super car,’ said Mr Willett. ‘Super super car.’

  Listening to Morley and Mr Willett becoming slowly intoxicated with their car talk was like listening to anyone becoming slowly intoxicated with car talk, and indeed like Morley talking to anyone about anything: it became very tiresome very quickly.

  ‘Couldn’t agree more,’ I said, with no idea what I was agreeing to or about, but simply trying to bring the conversation to a conclusion. ‘Couldn’t agree more.’

  ‘Cadillac V16, if I’m not mistaken?’ said Morley, returning to stroking the bonnet of the car.

  ‘V12 actually, sir. Convertible sedan. Very few made.’

  ‘She is certainly a fine-looking creature,’ said Morley. And it was. Red leather interior. Twin side-mounted tyres. The car had a kind of swagger about it that was difficult to define. Similar to the Lagonda, but slightly more aggressive, with more …

  ‘American muscle,’ said Morley admiringly, putting his finger on it exactly. ‘That’s what she’s got, isn’t it, Mr Willett?’

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Mr Willett. ‘Similar to the V16, but on a much sportier chassis, so—’

  ‘She really shifts, I’ll bet?’

  ‘She certainly does.’

  Morley patted the flanks of the car as though he were patting the flanks of a thoroughbred racehorse. He was in a kind of trance. I’d seen it before when he was inspecting vehicles of any kind: tractors, bicycles, gypsy wagons. He loved anything and everything to do with speed and travel; he was a regular Mr Toad. He had even planned at one point to release a ’78 of traffic noise, a sound that he genuinely believed was ‘soothing’.

  ‘We’ll take her!’ said Morley.

  ‘I’m afraid this car is not one of those we offer to customers for loan while their own vehicles are—’

  ‘Not for loan?’ said Morley. ‘Not for loan? Oh dear. Oh dear oh dear. Oh dear oh dear oh dear.’ This was perhaps Morley’s strongest expression of disappointment: the once, twice, thrice repeated ‘Oh dear’. ‘Oh dear.’ Plus another! Catastrophe! ‘What do you think, Sefton?’

  ‘It’s a nice car,’ I said, not quite sure what I should have said. I certainly shouldn’t have said ‘nice’. Morley had a thing about ‘nice’. ‘Nice’, according to Morley, was not a nice word. Fortunately he didn’t notice – he was transfixed. I clarified. ‘It would certainly do, Mr Morley.’

  ‘Do?’ said Morley. ‘Do? This is a work of art, Sefton.’

&nb
sp; ‘Not an actual work of art, of course,’ I said.

  ‘What? This car? She most certainly is a work of art, Sefton, if we judge a work of art – as we should – as something that has been designed for aesthetic appeal as well as mere functional purpose.’

  ‘I suppose so, Mr Morley,’ I agreed.

  ‘A car serves all the purposes of art in our modern age, Mr Willett, does she not? She excites us. She intrigues us. And a car like this is surely the perfect advertisement for the fine taste and forward thinking of an establishment such as Willett’s? This is presumably why you have her here so prominently displayed? She puts you in the avant-garde, does she not, Mr Willett? At the very forefront of the Essex motor trade?’

  ‘Well, I suppose—’ Mr Willett began modestly.

  ‘And yet … and yet … And yet … she is also perhaps a four-wheeled memento mori, is she not?’ Morley’s conversation often changed tack unexpectedly in just this way – I always half suspected it was a tactic, to discombobulate the listener. It almost always worked.

  Mr Willett gave a polite cough and glanced at me with a nervous expression: clearly none of this was the usual sort of talk in the showroom. But Morley was off and away again and there was no stopping him.

  ‘The speed of the car reminds us surely that there is only motion in this life, and that we are all bound for the same ultimate destination, gentlemen. Speed is of the essence! Though not if that old bore Hore-Belisha has his way.’ I had heard Morley’s anti-Hore-Belisha speech before. ‘In the future there will be traffic-control robots everywhere, Mr Willett, will there not, if we’re not careful?’

  ‘Possibly, sir.’ Mr Willett glanced at me again, with signs of panic in his eyes. It was always difficult to tell where Morley’s conversation might go next.

  ‘With those blasted amber globes on their ridiculous striped barber poles! What do you think, Mr Willett?’ Poor Mr Willett no longer knew what to think. ‘A disgrace, frankly!’ said Morley. ‘Mark my words, gentlemen, if Mr Hore-Belisha has his way we’ll all be riding horses again. Do you ride, Mr Willett?’

  ‘I can’t say I do, sir, no.’

  ‘Pity. You may need to learn. Did you know that during the entire Napoleonic Wars with France—’