Red Herrings Read Online Free PDF Page A

modern mystics the swami was exceedingly rich, exceedingly hairy, and exceedingly attractive to nubile young women. All of this annoyed Bognor who was none of these. He could have grown a beard if he had wanted but the wealth and sex appeal were depressingly elusive. The swami drove around in a series of vintage motor cars, mainly Bugattis. He was almost always accompanied by a wife. He had an enormous number of wives, known formally as the Brides of the Chosen. The wives wore white. The swami, naturally, wore saffron and sandals as well as a leather strap about his neck from which there hung a leather pouch. This contained small pieces of blank coloured paper which he was accustomed to present to people with a wide smile and a mumbled blessing. The bits of paper were supposed to be very lucky. One purporting to be autographed by him had fetched several thousand guineas at auction.
    The villagers of Herring St George tolerated the swami and his followers with a long suffering scepticism. This was reasonable enough for generally speaking they kept themselves to themselves and paid the rates. They did not patronise the Pickled Herring nor did they attend church. When they first bought the hall from a property developer who was unable to obtain planning permission for an Olde English Theme Parke it was widely thought that they would try to take over the community rather like that other, not wholly dissimilar, sect in Oregon. But as the weeks passed the villagers realised that the swami was not going to stand for the parish council or try to convert them to whatever it was that he believed in. The swami’s people (the Blessed Followers of the Chosen Light, to give them their English title – there was another in Sanskrit) had a regular weekly order from the village shop and Sir Nimrod never conquered his disbelief about the amount of grapefruit juice they drank. When Naomi Herring called to sell poppies in aid of the Earl Haig fund just before Remembrance Day the swami personally wrote a cheque for a hundred pounds and kissed her on both cheeks. She said later that he smelt terribly of joss stick.
    â€˜I think he’s pretty harmless,’ said Bognor. He had a curious optimism even about proven villains. Had he been around in the thirties he would have been inclined to think Hitler and Mussolini ‘pretty harmless’.
    â€˜He’s no more a swami than you are,’ said Monica. ‘Underneath all that face fungus and filth he’s as white as us.’
    â€˜I didn’t say he was real,’ said Bognor. ‘Obviously he’s a fraud. I bet he’s a Balliol man. At least I bet he claims he was at Balliol.’ He paused. ‘Fraudulent, sticky fingered and over-sexed; but there are plenty of people like that. It doesn’t make them killers.’
    â€˜I don’t understand why it couldn’t have been an accident,’ said Monica. ‘Chap gets very drunk, goes to sleep in Gallows Wood and is riddled with arrows by the villagers before he wakes up. QED if you ask me.’
    â€˜According to Parkinson, Wilmslow hardly touched alcohol,’ said Bognor.
    Monica smiled. ‘All the more reason for him to go to sleep under the old oak tree. He obviously didn’t have a head for it.’
    â€˜But he wouldn’t have drunk it in the first place.’
    â€˜But he did, didn’t he?’
    Bognor pursed his lips and nodded a touch glumly, ‘They reckon so. We won’t know until the tests come through.’
    Monica sighed. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘You and Guy think he was murdered because he was drunk and being drunk wasn’t in character. That’s a bit flimsy. Anything else?’
    Bognor scratched the back of his head where the hair was thinnest. ‘I’ll know more when the files arrive. Parkinson’s having them sent down by courier. We don’t really know what exactly he was investigating but Parkinson implied that it was