Clubbed to Death by Ruth Dudley Edwards

you really are incredibly stuffy, Ellis,’ said Amiss. ‘I’m surprised you didn’t say Her Majesty’s navy. As far as I understand it, commanders were ten a penny and the whole cultural ethos of the navy was based on drink.’
    ‘You’re surely not defending him.’ Pooley looked shocked.
    ‘Oh, I’m sorry, Ellis. Of course I’m not. He’s obviously neglected his job and let the club go to pot and is generally a frightful old bugger and an excrescence. It’s just that sometimes you sound like someone straight out of a Second World War movie and it gets on my lower-middle-class nerves.’
    ‘Lower-middle-class, my ass,’ said Pooley.
    Amiss looked surprised.
    ‘You’re an Oxford graduate and a high flier. Well, a retired high flier in the Civil Service. Don’t give me that crap about being lower-middle-class: it really annoys me.’
    ‘Now chaps, now chaps,’ said Milton hastily. ‘Let’s drop the class warfare and get back to business. I know what you’re going to be like when you’re old, Robert.’
    ‘Provoking, I suppose,’ said Amiss.
    ‘Too damn right,’ said Pooley, grinning. ‘You’ll sit in the corner in your club making barbed comments to all who come within your ken.’
    ‘They’ll all avoid you, ’ said Milton. ‘They’ll be terrified of hearing you say something about them that they can’t bear.’
    ‘You’ll be a pariah,’ said Pooley.
    ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Amiss, ‘I think I might become a popular pet of the young. I’ll tell them malicious gossip about the rest of the club and I’ll become a kind of mascot. “Old Amiss, tongue like an asp, but not a bad fellow really and generous with the whisky.”’
    Pooley was looking again at his notes. ‘We haven’t talked about Chatterton.’
    ‘Well, what more is there to say?’ asked Amiss. ‘He’s pretty lively as they go. A fellow whose hip operation and general physical incapacity doesn’t stop him going off to gaming-houses gets my vote, even if he does have a tendency to gurn on endlessly about obscure dates in the past of no interest to anyone.’
    ‘Comes of having a mathematical mind I expect,’ observed Milton.
    ‘If you ask me, it comes of hanging around too long with Glastonbury, who regards his every word as wise or witty. I’ve never seen anyone so besotted.’
    ‘So which of them is the murderer?’ asked Pooley.
    ‘I think you are slightly jumping to conclusions, Ellis,’ observed Milton. ‘The Admiral wasn’t able to adduce anything new in evidence when he made that allegation. He was basing it only on a recent knowledge of Trueman and the belief that his committee colleagues are capable of doing whatever it takes to preserve their ill-gotten privileges.’
    ‘Anyway, why should they think that getting rid of Trueman was going to solve anything?’ asked Amiss. ‘The Admiral’s still in charge.’
    ‘Well,’ said Milton, ‘I have to admit that if you’re very old, short-term solutions must carry more weight than they would for the middle-aged. It might be just a matter of buying time and hoping the Admiral dropped dead of a stroke or something.’
    ‘Maybe they’ll kill him too, ’ said Pooley, ‘once he mounts his grand plan.’
    ‘That’s going to take time,’ said Milton. ‘He said he was going softly and that he was much hampered by having Trueman replaced by the Commander.’
    ‘Anyway,’ said Amiss, ‘from what you say, it’s not as if he could bring in the police and have the club cleansed of sin. Didn’t he say they weren’t technically fraudulent.’
    ‘Oh, exactly. That’s it.’ said Pooley. ‘That’s the brilliance of it all. Some of these guys had brains once, even if not that much sign remains. Lord ffeatherstonehaugh left the money in trust for the good of the club, but it is absolutely up to the committee to determine priorities. If Chatterton chooses to flog, with the agreement of the committee, priceless port from the cellar, so long as the