“
And
paid alimony to his wife?”
“He wouldn’t have starved,” said Mr. Calder. “There was no need to blow his brains out.
That
didn’t help.”
“That cottage of his,” said Mr. Behrens. “He was very fond of it. He often talked about it. He was going to retire there.”
“So?”
“I wondered why he had to sell it.”
“You’re making my flesh creep,” said Mr. Calder, and from under the table Rasselas gave a rumbling snarl, just as if he had been following the whole conversation.
Her Majesty’s Secretary of State for Education, Dermot Nicholson, read the news in his elegant flat on Campden Hill.
He said to his sister Norah – who had retired from the vice-principalship of an Oxford college to keep house and write his speeches for him, “Colonel Geoffrey Bax. Do we know a Geoffrey Bax? The name seems familiar.”
“Wasn’t that the name of the man who was round here a few weeks ago, asking you a lot of questions?”
“Oh, was that the chap? I thought I’d seen the name somewhere.”
“What
did
he want? Did you ever find out?”
“It was some sort of routine check.”
“We’re getting so security-minded,” said Miss Nicholson, “that we might as well be living in a totalitarian state, under the control of the Gestapo.”
Miss Nicholson, who was an intellectual liberal, often said things like this in letters to the Press and at public meetings, possibly because she had never lived in a totalitarian state and had no experience of the Gestapo. . .
Professor Julius Gottlieb, a citizen of Czechoslovakia by birth, and of Great Britain by naturalisation, read the news in his service flat in Northumberland Court. He took eight different Sunday papers and he found the story, with minor differences and embellishments, in all of them. It was clearly based on an official handout.
As he finished reading, the telephone rang. He hesitated for a long moment before answering it, but when he did so, it was only his daughter Paula. She had gone down to Henley for the weekend.
“It’s lovely,” she said. “You ought to have come.”
“I wanted to,” said the professor. “But I had too much work.”
“You’d be better off bathing and lying in the sun, than worrying about that silly paper. Fritz is enjoying it like anything. He had a fight with another dog. And he fell into the river and was hissed at by a swan.”
“Good,” said the professor. “Good.” He spoke absently. When his daughter had rung off he seemed to be in no hurry to get on with the urgent work which was keeping him in London that fine June weekend. He sat in the window seat, watching the traffic swirl up Northumberland Avenue and turn down Whitehall Place. The telephone rang again.
On the Thursday afternoon, a coroner’s jury came, without difficulty, to the conclusion that Colonel Geoffrey Bax had taken his own life while the balance of his mind was disturbed. Sympathy was expressed for his widow.
On Sunday morning, the Prime Minister took breakfast at Chequers with the prime ministers of five of the newly-independent African States. He thought that they looked politely surprised at the modest bacon, eggs, toast and marmalade.
“What the devil did they expect me to eat?” he said to his private secretary when the last of his guests had gone. “Boar’s head and ambrosia?”
“I imagine Nwambe’s idea of a suitable breakfast would be the head of the leader of the opposition, seethed in milk,” said the private secretary. “Your next appointment’s in five minutes. They’ve all arrived. I’ve put them in the small library.”
The Prime Minister switched his mind to a problem which was worrying him a lot more than the growing pains of the new African States. He said, “I want those papers. Particularly that rather odd letter that Gottlieb wrote me.”
He found four men waiting for him. Ian Maver, the head of DI5; Air Vice-Marshal Pulleyne, the acting head of DI6 – his boss was in America, engaged on one of their interminable wrangles with the CIA – and Commander Elfe, of the Special Branch. All of these the Prime Minister knew personally. The face of the fourth man was unfamiliar, and even when Maver introduced Mr. Fortescue, it took him a moment to place him. Then he remembered that this sedate and respectable-looking man was ostensibly a bank manager, and in fact the controller and paymaster of a bunch of middle-aged cutthroats known as the ‘E’ (or External) Branch of the Joint Services Standing Intelligence Committee. When the Prime Minister, on taking office, had shouldered, among other unwanted burdens, the supreme responsibility for all Security matters, his predecessor had explained to him, “If there’s a job which is so disreputable that none of the departments will handle it, we give it to the ‘E’ Branch.”
The Prime Minister looked a second time at Mr. Fortescue, who looked back at him kindly but firmly, as if preparing to refuse him an overdraft. An interesting face, thought the Prime Minister! Not unlike Arthur Balfour, in middle age.
“You’re busy men,” he said, “and I apologise for disrupting Sunday for all four of you. If I’d had a more accurate idea of what this trouble was. I could probably have let three of you off.” He smiled the boyish smile which had won the hearts of so many of his constituents in the old days and was now collecting high TAM ratings on television. “But the fact of the matter is that, although I’m worried, I’m not at all sure which of you gentlemen is going to have to shoulder my worries for me. I’ll put the problem to you in a nutshell. Certain key men in my government are being got at. You’ve got to find out who’s doing it. And you’ve got to stop it.”
Mr. Fortescue, who was himself an adept in the handling of conferences, found himself admiring the Prime Minister’s technique. First the gentle introduction. Then the sharp slap.
“Got at, Prime Minister?” said Maver.
“That was the word I used. I can’t be more specific, until you gentlemen find out more about it. They are being got at. Not by the opposition, which would be natural, or by the press, which would be understandable, but by some private agency or group of persons who seem to be determined to get this government out of office.”
The Prime Minister saw the quick look which Maver shot Pulleyne, but gave no sign of having done so. He chalked it up as one more item on the debit account of the head of DI5. He had liked Maver’s predecessor – a garrulous, drunken, inefficient Irishman – a great deal more than the cold, self-contained, unquestionably efficient Scot.
“I think,” the Prime Minister continued, “that when you hear the facts you will agree that I have some grounds for disquiet. A few months ago, Sir William Hamson, one of the most senior Revenue officials, and the man who did most of the work on last year’s budget, came to me and told me that he wished to retire. He had eight years to go before his normal retirement. It was extremely inconvenient, though not, as it turned out, disastrous because he had a deputy who was capable of doing his job. But it might have upset the whole of our financial plans. Sir William gave me no reason, apart from saying that he was tired. I pointed out that he would lose a good slice of his pension. Since he had private means, that didn’t worry him. We had to let him go, of course. He’s now in the south of France, and seems to have recovered his health and spirits. By itself, such an incident meant nothing. Two months ago Dermot Nicholson who, as you know, is Minister of Education, and is therefore in charge of the most important measure of this session – a measure whose success might make the difference between defeat and victory – came to see me. I was at once reminded of Hamson. There was the same request – to be relieved of office. The same lack of any plausible reason. The same – I find it difficult to hit on the right word – it was something a great deal stronger than depression. There was an edge of fear to it. And a background of hopelessness.” The Prime Minister paused, and then added, “If his doctor had told him that morning that he was suffering from inoperable cancer, I should have expected much the same sort of reactions.”
The four men stirred uncomfortably in their chairs.
“I suppose,” said Elfe, “that he wasn’t—”
“I happen to know that there is nothing wrong with Nicholson’s health at all. Let me finish. A fortnight ago I had to send for Professor Julius Gottlieb. You all know roughly what his job is, I expect? He is the leading town-planning expert in the world. Even the Americans admit it. Some months ago, at my request, he completed the first rough draft of a White Paper on Planning. It wasn’t perfect, but believe me, it was two decades in advance of anything this country has yet seen. The departments concerned, particularly the Treasury and the Ministry of Agriculture, picked a few holes in it but they couldn’t shoot it down. When all the criticisms had been collected, Gottlieb was to draw up the final version. He now says—” the Prime Minister paused again, not for effect this time, Mr. Fortescue thought, but because he was really worried and angry “—he now says that he doesn’t feel up to the job. He is thinking of retiring. He has a holiday chalet in Switzerland, in the Upper Vaud. I believe it’s famous for its wild flowers. He has decided to retire and make it his permanent home.”
Commander Elfe said, “It’s disturbing, Prime Minister. But is it necessarily political?”
“When education and planning are the two cornerstones of this Session? What are people going to say – more to the point, what is the press going to say – if we have to tell them that the chief architect of the new Education Bill has thrown in the sponge – and the government’s principal advisor on planning has refused to finish his own White Paper, and is retiring to Switzerland to pick wild flowers?”
“It was six months ago,” said Pulleyne, in his precise voice, “when Hamson walked out. Two months ago when you first got worried about Nicholson. A fortnight ago when Gottlieb threatened to throw in his hand. Have no steps been taken?”
“Yes,” said Maver. “It looked like a Home Security matter, so it was handed to us. We put one of our most reliable men onto it. He talked to Nicholson and Gottlieb.”
“Did he come to any conclusion as a result of these talks?”
“We don’t know. He committed suicide a week ago.”
“Then you’re talking about Colonel Bax?”
“Yes.”
“And has he himself been investigated?”
Maver flushed and said, “Of course. And there
was
a background story, which could have accounted for it. We haven’t got very far with it yet. But it’s quite possible that he was being blackmailed, and had been driven too far.”
“Well, that’s the position, gentlemen,” said the Prime Minister. “It could be organised pressure from an unscrupulous group in this country. I don’t mean the official opposition. But there are plenty of extremist groups who wouldn’t stop short of it. It could be foreign-inspired. I can think of four countries at this moment which would give a great deal to have the present government discredited. Or it may be simple blackmail. I leave you, gentlemen, to sort out the departmental priorities amongst yourselves.
I just want it stopped,”
To his secretary when they had all gone away, he said, “Do you realise that all prime ministers have to live out the enthusiasms of their predecessors? Because of Lloyd George’s lower middle-class habits, I have to entertain official guests to breakfast. Because of Winston’s boyish enthusiasm for cops and robbers I have to pretend to be personally responsible for security. Do you remember that thing he wrote?”
The private secretary didn’t remember, but being a good private secretary, he was able to put his hand on the reference his employer required. He fetched down a battered olive green volume from the library shelf, found the place and read out: “‘. . . plot and counterplot, ruse and treachery, cross and double-cross, true agent, false agent, gold and steel, the bomb, the dagger and the firing-party, interwoven in a texture so intricate as to be incredible, yet true, the high officers of the Secret Service revelled in these subterranean labyrinths, and pursued their task with cold and silent passion.’”
“I didn’t notice them revelling,” said the Prime Minister. “Did you?”
Ian Maver and Mr. Fortescue travelled back in the official car together. Maver said nothing until they were approaching the outskirts of London. Then he closed the glass panel to shut off the driver and said, “The PM mentioned three possible explanations. There are at least two more that he omitted.”
“Yes,” said Mr. Fortescue.
“The whole thing could be a coincidence. People crack up pretty quickly in government service these days. And all three of the people he mentioned had private means. There was no reason for them to kill themselves by going on doing a job which had got beyond them.”
“No,” said Mr. Fortescue. “And your other explanation?”
“The other possible explanation is that the Prime Minister has greatly exaggerated the whole thing as an excuse for getting rid of me. I’m afraid he doesn’t like me very much.”
Mr. Fortescue did not make any comment on this.
On the following Monday, Dermont Nicholson got back to his flat at Campden Hill at just after midnight. A threatened all-night sitting of the House had failed to develop. He was looking forward to a nightcap and bed.
His key went into the lock but he was unable to turn it, and when he tried to get it out again he found it was stuck. He rang the bell. Nothing happened. His sister very rarely went to bed before midnight and was most unlikely to be asleep.
Someone, or something, moved in the flat.
There was an indeterminate shuffling noise and, as he bent his head to listen, he thought he heard a faint moan.
In a sudden panic he rattled the door, shouted, put his shoulder to it, then turned and raced downstairs. There was a night porter, who had a master key.
“If your key’s stuck in the lock, sir,” he said, “it’s no good trying to use my master key. We shall have to break the door down, and the police’ll do that quicker than we will.”
“Hurry,” said Nicholson. “Hurry. Something’s happened to my sister. She may have had a stroke.”
Detective Sergeant Hallows, who was night duty officer at Notting Hill Gate, arrived inside five minutes. He and the police driver went up, carrying between them an assortment of housebreaking implements. It took them a further three minutes to deal with the front door. Nicholson pushed past them, and went straight to his sister’s bedroom. She had been tied to the end of the bed with sheets, and gagged with a towel. The knots had been so savagely tightened that Nicholson was unable to do anything with them. He picked a pair of scissors from the dressing table, but his hands were shaking and he dropped them. The sergeant cut through the sheets with a knife; as soon as the gag was out of her mouth, Miss Nicholson started to scream.