Authors: Anthony Price
Audley stared at the blank wall of the lift. “My dear Paul … when you’re taken for a ride you usually never know that until it’s far too late. So probably it’s too late now … All I know is that someone has hatched a damn good scheme—and I know it’s damn good because it’s got a variable factor in it, which is the hallmark of excellence.”
“A variable factor?”
“That’s right.” Audley continued to study the false veneer of the lift wall. “No plan devised by man ever goes according to plan. Nothing ever goes exactly right, and you can’t foresee what is going to go wrong. So you have to build in variables—tolerances, if you like … But you can never build
on
variables, because after the first thing goes wrong there’s a sort of geometric progression—the first disaster multiplies the possibility of title second by twenty, and any of those multiply by fifty … So you have to be lucky as well as beautiful.”
The lift stopped, and Mitchell stared at Audley for a second. Then the doors quivered, and opened.
They stepped out into a tiny enclosed hall, with an elegant little table bearing a plant which could do without sunshine and a water-colour which looked genuine and was all the better for the lack of sunshine.
“Don’t ring the bell,” said Audley. “This chap had bad luck from the start: he got Oliver instead of me—and because of that he got you, and because of that he got all of us … ferreting around, to find out what the hell Oliver was up to … Although he was also lucky in a way, because Oliver didn’t do what he ought to have done. But that’s just good luck balancing out bad, the way it tends to do—although no bloody computer can ever work that out precisely.”
Mitchell waited without speaking, even though he had the feeling of a time-clock ticking against them.
“This chap was
good
, though. Because even though we got into the act far too quickly, we still only threshed around among ourselves, to get information … And even though it wasn’t
bad
information—like what you got from your Civil War contact, and what we both got from old Howard—even what came out of that bloody awful instrument of Jack’s … All good stuff … but where has it got us?” Audley examined the door. “Ring the bloody bell, Paul.”
There was a bell-button beside the door, with a little speaker above it. Mitchell pressed the button. “It’s got us here, David.” He looked at Audley. “Or … it got
me
here … for all the good it may do. But I’m still a bit hazy about your exact interest—?”
“No? Ring the bell again.” Audley pointed. “I thought we were digging into the antecedents of the Simon-pure and somewhat enigmatic Senator Thomas Cookridge?”
And that was an inadequate answer, thought Mitchell. “I hardly think Lady Alice Marshall-Pugh is going to add to the store of knowledge. At least, not knowledge of any use—if James’s dear mum has got her dates right, she may be an old friend of his, but she’s not an old flame. And she didn’t even get to see him on Friday either—he stood her up in preference for Oliver, and more pressing business.”
“Very true! This is a long shot. Ring the bell.”
“A very long shot.” Mitchell didn’t ring the bell. “And even if she has anything of the slightest interest … and always supposing that she’ll let it slip to a perfect stranger … I can signal you in Rome, David.” Mitchell shook his head. “It really is a rotten excuse for missing the plane—it isn’t really a long shot, it isn’t a shot at all.”
The speaker emitted an electric crackle. “Who’s there?” inquired a quavering voice.
Mitchell stared at Audley for a moment, then shook his head. “Dr Audley for Lady Alice Marshall-Pugh,” he said in his most reassuring voice in reply.
“Oh … Just a minute—thank you!” Faintly, through the thickness of the door, there came the rattle of a chain.
Audley nodded. “A very long shot—I agree! But that’s why I like it: it’s the first bloody thing we’ve done that’s crazy enough not to have been foreseen by whoever put this thing together.”
The door opened.
“Oh dear! I’m so sorry to have taken so long, Dr Mitchell—or is it Dr Audley?”
Mitchell found himself looking down. Lady Alice was tiny and bird-like—there was no such creature in imagination as an elderly London sparrow … sparrows neither lived to be old, nor did they wear pearls at their throat … But here was just such a little bird, nevertheless.
“It’s all these chains, you see.” She smiled at him. “We have a new one which the man said is made with some special new metal, and nothing can cut it … Dr Mitchell?”
“Yes.” At least she wasn’t scared of him. “Lady Alice?”
“Oh no! I am Miss Wall, Lady Alice’s companion. Please come in, Dr Mitchell—and Dr Audley, of course.” Miss Wall gestured to admit them both into the flat.
Mitchell looked around with a curious sense of recognition, almost dêjà-vu. It was a big flat, if the size of its entrance hall was a clue to the rest of it—much bigger than his mother’s new pad in Dorking. But it had the same atmosphere of widowhood, and the cramming of the best of accumulated possessions of a lifetime, which had once graced an entire house, into a much smaller space.
The difference was that these possessions were in an altogether different class from Mother’s. Where hers were middle-class memories, with a scatter of heirlooms, these were genuine treasures jammed together: pictures on the wall, hung three-deep so that there was precious little wall; opulent eastern rugs almost too big for their floor; and that table, on which there was a dangerous concentration of what looked like Meissen figures, would look well in a Sotheby’s catalogue.
Audley took a step past him and peered incautiously across the Meissen collection, at a water-colour behind.
“Samuel Atkins,” said Audley. “My wife tried to get me to buy one of those recently. It seemed rather expensive to me. But this one’s a little peach, I must say.” He nodded down at little Miss Wall, unsmiling, almost irritably. “The trouble with most amateur collectors is that they always see the light about ten years too late.”
Mitchell cleared his throat. “Miss Wall—Dr Audley.”
“Oh yes!” Miss Wall simpered at Audley. “I should have known
you
, Dr Audley!”
Audley frowned at her discouragingly. “Indeed, madam?”
“Oh yes—” Miss Wall looked quickly at Mitchell, and then back at Audley “—it was silly of me … it was that wretched chain, though—Lady Alice remembers
you
, naturally.” She indicated a door to her left. “Shall I lead the way?”
As they followed her Mitchell gave Audley a look of mingled hatred and suspicion.
Audley spread his hands and lifted his shoulders in feigned innocence. “Search me,” he murmured.
Shit!
thought Mitchell, as he followed Miss Wall.
The room beyond the entrance hall was the entrance hall writ large, because it was larger, and the treasures in it were larger and more numerous, the loot of a lifetime’s trade in fertilisers as yet undistributed by death duties.
But it was not the treasures which mattered—
“Ah, Dr Mitchell?”
Lady Alice Marshall-Pugh, tastefully arranged in the midst of her loot, was something more substantial than her companion, and perhaps older, but altogether ordinary otherwise, without the adornment of pearls and as plain as a pikestaff.
“And Dr Audley.” Lady Alice’s eye was not so ordinary: it was sharp and suspicious, where Miss Wall’s had been welcoming.
“Lady Alice,” agreed Mitchell quickly, before she could further recognize Audley. “I believe Lieutenant-Commander Cable has telephoned you—or was it Lady Cable—?”
The sharp and suspicious eye concentrated on Mitchell. “It was Edna Cable.” She nodded. “Who is an exceedingly stupid woman. But she did phone on behalf of that boy of hers, who has been three times blessed—he has his mother’s good looks, his father’s brains and his grandfather’s exquisite manners.” She gave Mitchell another nod. “If he had Edna’s brains I doubt very much whether he would have been working with you, Dr Mitchell—” She switched back to Audley “—and especially with
you
, Dr Audley.”
Audley had been unashamedly examining the contents of the room, casing it like a burglar. But now he gave Lady Alice his attention.
“We are as God makes us, Lady Alice.” His lips twisted unbeautifully. “And if I understand your companion correctly God has presently given you the advantage over me.”
She liked that, thought Mitchell. And, however annoying that might be, it was a useful thing to know—that she liked being given as good as she gave.
“Which is just as well for me, if what I hear about you is true.” She teased him. And, thought Mitchell, she was as plain and as irresistible as his darling Elizabeth, by God! “Sit down, gentlemen, please.”
“I don’t know what you’ve heard.” Audley acknowledged her game with a slight shrug. “But it’s probably all true. And more and worse besides.”
It had gone far enough, decided Mitchell. She had heard about David Audley from someone, somewhere. But the Audley-Marshall-Pugh bisecting social circles had no bearing on their business now.
“Lady Alice—” He demanded her attention. “—I’m sorry to disturb you like this, at this time, quite out of the blue. But we have pressing business.”
“You do not disturb me, Dr Mitchell.” She turned to him with obvious regret at having left Audley unanswered. “I am a bored and useless old woman—the thought of you coming to me with pressing business is quite enchanting, actually. I can hardly wait to be brutally interrogated under some obscure clause of the Official Secrets Act—” She cocked an eye at Audley. “—I can always complain to the Labour Party, or to the National Council for Civil Liberties—or to the Editor of the
Manchester Guardian
newspaper … I’m sure they would have what my late husband used to call ‘a field day’, whatever that means, with my case. And my expensive lawyers would also be overjoyed to visit me in Holloway Prison, too.”
“Allie!” exclaimed Miss Wall. “Do stop talking nonsense!”
“Nonsense, Sam?” Lady Alice mocked her companion’s concern. “Dr Audley only deals with very serious matters. You might very well be called on to pack an over-night bag before he’s finished with me—”
“No!” An old lady’s fun-and-games were one thing, thought Mitchell. But Winston Mulholland was something very different: Winston Mulholland wasn’t fun-and-games at all. “I believe you are acquainted with Senator Thomas Cookridge, Lady Alice—is that correct?”
“Paul—” began Audley.
“—Shut up, David.” Cosy games were not real life: he had played cosy games with Frances once upon a time, and Frances lay in a country churchyard because of it. “You know Senator Cookridge, Lady Alice.”
“Yes, I do, Dr Mitchell.” Quite suddenly Lady Alive gave him all her attention.
So now he had to get it right. “I’ll be frank with you, Lady Alice: we have a situation which worries us.” Instinct, as well as what James’s mother had said, inclined him to trust her. “We have a man out in the field, far away from here, in what may be an exposed position—he may be in great danger.”
She was thinking hard now. “How does this concern Tom—Senator Cookridge, Dr Mitchell?”
“We don’t know. But it does concern him somehow—that we do know.” The danger lay also in her friendship with the Senator, so he must involve the man more closely. “It could be dangerous for him too.”
The effort of thinking made her look older and more frail. “What is it that you want to know?”
It was the exact question which had been bugging Mitchell ever since he’d received James Cable’s message:
what did he want to know? What could Lady Alice tell him?
Audley seemed to pick up the vibration of his doubt. “You’ve known him for a long time, Lady Alice—the Senator?”
“Yes.” She shifted uneasily between them. “Tom and I are very old friends … When he’s in England—or I’m in America … we never miss each other.” She seemed to contract within herself. “We first met more than forty years ago now.”
“During the war?” Mitchell moved into the gap.
“Yes. He was with the American air force—he was a bomber pilot.” Her expression softened. “He was a fine young man …”
“B-17s?” Audley took the next gap.
“Flying Fortresses—would that be … B-17s?” She paused, but neither of them spoke. “He was on all those raids when they took those dreadful losses. But when he’d finished his tour of duty he wouldn’t go home … It was 1943—that was when I met him … My son had been killed by then, flying from Malta. And my husband was with the 14th Army, in India … And into 1944—when the doodlebugs and rockets came over … He used to come down to South London, where I was driving my ambulance, when he was on leave. He used to say that I kept him out of mischief—he had a girl waiting for him back home, he said, so he didn’t want to be put in the way of temptation—those were his exact words, ‘put into the way of temptation’. He was a dear boy!”
She chuckled, almost cackled, at the memory, and Mitchell tried to estimate her age more exactly. Lady Cable had described her as
ancient
(and Lady Cable must be the wrong side of sixty), to which James had added
but not senile
(and she was certainly a long way from that). But if she’d had a son killed in Malta … and that would most likely be between ’40 and ’42 … she must certainly be well into her eighties. So she must have been mid-fortyish when—
“Which was quite ridiculous, of course—he was a very
proper
young man, very serious … He was really rather more
proper
than I was … But that was his upbringing, which had been strict Protestant—or was it Presbyterian?” She fixed that sharp eye on Mitchell. “No matter—it was the sort of upbringing which caused him to fear being ‘put into the way of temptation’ anyway. He preferred to be put into the way of those wretched doodlebugs, you see.” She sat back suddenly. “In fact, I remember him spending a whole afternoon tinkering with my ambulance, to make the engine run more quietly—American boys were so
good
with engines … my poor Andrew never really knew one end of an engine from another, even though he did fly Spitfires …
No
, you see, it was those doodlebugs Tom was worried about, for my sake—what they called the ‘Flying Bombs’, you remember?” She paused for a moment. “But, of course, you won’t remember—you’re far too young! She switched to Audley. “But Dr Audley will recall them—that nasty little motor-cycle noise? And then it stopped, just as though it had been switched off—and then you had a minute to find somewhere safe … They used to say it was
four
minutes, but it never seemed like that to me … And then there was this enormous
bang
, when it exploded—and I always used to feel so
grateful
that it hadn’t come down on top of me … and then so
ashamed
, because it had come down on some other poor innocent person.” She cocked her head at Audley. “You remember the doodlebugs, Dr Audley?”