‘Mrs. Artside was just explaining it to me when you came in,’ he said. ‘A photograph—’
‘Ha,’ said Florimond. ‘An indiscreet photograph, taken in your youth. Some cad who has it refuses to give it up. A horsewhip—’
‘No, no. Nothing like that. I’ll explain it again.’
When she had done so Bart said: ‘That should not present any insuperable difficulty. I have a certain influence with the firm of Ronald Dowbell. In fact, a controlling influence. His records will certainly be available. The question will be, can anything at all be found? You say fifteen years. His filing system, I know, lacks method.’
Liz could not but agree.
‘However, I have in this office a young man who worked there for some years. He shall go across and see what he can find. No thanks, please. If you would perhaps come back here after lunch—’
Liz had arranged to lunch with a friend who lived in Putney and having little idea of comparative distances between different parts of London had made up her mind to go by bus. (If she had been told that Putney was nearly three times as far from Oxford Street as Bramshott was from Brimberley she would not have believed it. Everything in London was naturally next to everything else.) It was therefore nearly four o’clock before she got back to Bart’s.
Bart had gone but the young man was waiting patiently for her. He had with him a number of photographs of men in military uniforms. They were a curious collection, ranging from a Colonel of Ruritanian Hussars to a gentleman in that easily recognisable Eastern European uniform which is made up of jackboots, baggy trousers, a blouse and a flat hat. Among them Liz had little difficulty in identifying Lieutenant MacMorris.
‘So that’s the chap, is he?’ said the young man. He peered at the photograph. ‘Don’t fancy I know him. He’s not a regular – not now, anyway. Here’s all the dope we’ve got about him.’
He handed Liz a sheet of paper, half covered with typescript, which she read with a growing sense of fantasy.
‘Is this—are you sure this is right?’
‘Oh, that’s gospel,’ said the young man. ‘Some of the dates may be a little out but the gist of it’s all right. We’re very careful about that sort of thing here. Have to be.’
‘Well, thank you very much,’ said Liz.
‘Not at all,’ said the young man. ‘Only too pleased to be of any help.’
Whist as played at village whist drives, as Tim had discovered, bore little resemblance to any other card game. The rules were comparatively simple. Suits were led out in turn, starting with the highest card in that suit that you happened to possess. Trumps were played last. (So much so that if, in error, you led a trump early on in the game it was etiquette for your opponents to indicate your mistake by some such observation as ‘Hearts are trumps this time,’ whereupon the lead could be withdrawn without penalty.) Scoring was at the flat rate of one point per trick, but an additional prestige point could be gained by leading your first card so quickly that no one else had had time to sort out their hand.
Once he had mastered these rules Tim found the Brimberley whist drive quite good fun. They were cheap. One and sixpence, including refreshments.
There was plenty of time to talk to one’s friends between games. And in the ordered coming and going that constituted the mobile element of the whist drive one could hardly help running into people one knew.
As, for instance, Sue.
Sue was two tables away, circulating anticlockwise. He was in the opposite planetary system. If they both won this hand they would find themselves momentarily in conjunction, though as opponents, at the same table,
Tim looked at his hand and calculated his chances.
Sue was now playing against Mrs. Ransome, who cheated and, therefore, won more often than not. He, on the other hand, was playing opposite Lucy Mallory, who was quite hopeless, against the Vicar and his wife, rather a hot partnership. On the other hand, the organiser had just announced that clubs would be trumps, and he saw that he had no fewer than six of them.
It was a close call, but he did it. He was almost thwarted at the last moment by Lucy, who first trumped his last (and winning) diamond and then failed to trump the Vicar’s winning spade; but he bludgeoned his way to seven tricks with his run of clubs and rose to his feet to see Mrs. Ransome looking slightly pink about her prominent ears, and Sue coming towards him.
Sue also appeared to be put out.
‘Really,’ she said, ‘that woman ought to be warned off. I don’t mind her revoking, but when it comes to putting her handbag down on two of our tricks and trying to claim them for her side – what are trumps?’
‘Hearts,’ said Jim Hedges, ‘and I hope you got plenty of ‘em. Miss Susan, because I haven’t got but two.’
That’s all right, Jim,’ said Sue. ‘I’ve got some nice hearts. It’s clubs I’m right out of. Oh, I didn’t really mean that as a hint, but I suppose I might as well trump it, since you’ve led it – well played again – eight – nine – ten – that’s eleven tricks to us. Thank you so much, partner.’
She moved on.
Mr. Sunley, the Bramshott solicitor, who had been partnering Tim, got up and moved into the opposition seat and observed, ‘I am not sure that cards bring out the best in the opposite sex.’
By ten o’clock the prizes had been distributed and the party was breaking up. Tim caught up with Sue as she was leaving.
‘May I walk home with you?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ said Sue shortly. ‘If you behave yourself.’
They walked in silence for some time. Tim said, ‘I’ve wanted a chance to apologise for the other night.’
‘There’s absolutely no need.’
‘Well, I think there is. Particularly now that—’
‘Now that the little man can no longer stand up for himself.’
‘All right,’ said Tim doggedly. ‘I told him I was sorry – and now I’ve said it to you.’
‘Short of an announcement in the press, that would seem to wrap it up,’ agreed Sue.
After a further hundred yards Tim chanced his arm again. ‘I only wish,’ he said, ‘that you wouldn’t be quite so beastly to me all the time.’
Sue stopped, and there was enough light for him to see the danger signals. However, when she spoke it was in a deceptively moderate voice.
‘Just exactly why should it matter to you how I behave?’
This was not a question to which there seemed to be any easy answer.
‘I—’ said Tim. ‘I can only say—well, it does matter to me. I’m—’ Under her young eyes he funked it. ‘I’m fond of you,’ he said at last.
‘I see.’ Sue looked him up and down carefully. ‘That’s rather one-sided, isn’t it? I mean, why should the fact that you are fond of me be supposed to affect
my
outlook? Or perhaps I’ve missed the point.’
‘I did think, at one time—’ said Tim, and stopped. He was being manoeuvred into an impossible position.
‘You thought at one time that I rather went for you,’ said Sue. ‘Right. So I did. When I was six I loved the gardener. He was a Scotsman, and he had the softest brownest sidewhiskers. Later on it was the geography mistress. Then it was you. I can’t explain it, but I expect it was something to do with your uniform and the medals and all the jolly hush-hush business of being behind enemy lines and killing people and spying.’
Tim remembered reading about a Red Indian who had been skinned alive. They started with his feet. He appreciated just how it had felt.
‘I see,’ he said at last.
‘You were only a phase,’ went on Sue, plying the knife kindly. ‘It didn’t last long. There are too many soldiers round these parts for the actual idea of a soldier to stay glamorous. And, when you look round you, there doesn’t seem to be all that future in being a soldier’s wife.’
‘But I’m not a soldier.’
‘No,’ admitted Sue. ‘I suppose not. But you’re not exactly a civilian either. What
do
you do for a living? Not,’ she added as Tim remained uncomfortably silent, ‘that I’m at all interested. Particularly if it’s security.’
‘Well, yes,’ said Tim. ‘In a way, it is.’
‘Then you
are
doing a Secret Service job?’
‘I—look here’—said Tim—’you know damned well that if I was I couldn’t say.’
‘Of course not,’ said Sue. ‘And, as I said, I’m not really interested. But whatever it is, it doesn’t sound like work to me.’
They moved on in silence. By the time they reached your thigh, Tim seemed to remember, the pain was so agonising that you became numbed by it.
‘Tell me,’ he said at last. ‘Is it that you don’t like me, or is it that you don’t like the idea that I’m not doing a proper job of work – living on my mother? Go on – say it if you think it.’
‘But I never said I didn’t like you,’ said Sue. ‘I’m afraid this is where we part – I’m calling on Mrs. Hitchcock. And what a warning
she
is against marrying a soldier. Good night.’
‘He was
what?’
‘An actor.’
‘Not a soldier?’
‘Only on the stage.’
‘Good God,’ said the General, adding, automatically, ‘Sorry, Liz.’
‘He wasn’t even really an actor. He did walking-on parts. His steadiest employment was in the Gilbert & Sullivan Chorus. Iolanthe.’
‘And which was he? A peer or a peri?’
‘Don’t be catty,’ said Liz, and added, ‘Te turn te tiddy turn. “A Lordly vengeance will pursue all kinds of common people who oppose our views or boldly choose to offer us offence.”’
‘Then what was the photograph? That wasn’t anything from Iolanthe.’
‘That was his big part. Lieutenant Harkness in the Ace of Clubs. Did you see it? Just before the war.’
‘Certainly not. Did you?’
‘Once – after a good dinner.’
‘Then you remember MacMorris?’
‘Not exactly. He hadn’t a very long part. He comes in at the end of the Court Martial scene and hands Major Rutland a revolver and says, “The Regiment is a bigger thing than you are, Major.’”
‘My God,’ said the General.
‘He was on the stage, in a sort of way, till the end of 1944. That’s about a year before he came here.’
‘Then he never fought in the war at all?’
‘No real reason he should,’ said Liz fairly. ‘According to this he was forty when it started.’
‘Impossible. That would make him well over fifty.’
‘Actors have their secrets—’ began Liz, and was interrupted by a bellow of laughter from the General. He rarely laughed, but when he did the effort was unstinted. He was unable to speak for a long time.
The Regiment,’ he gasped at last, ‘is a bigger thing than you. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.’
‘It does explain quite a lot. In fact, I should say it answers all the questions except the important ones. Such as, why did he come
here?
‘Sense of humour. Ha ha ha. Second Lieutenant Harkness. Ho ho ho.’
‘Improbable,’ said Liz calmly. ‘A joke’s a joke but it would wear thin after five years or so. But suppose you’re right. Suppose he retired here and called himself Major MacMorris from a misguided sense of humour. Or for no particular reason at all. People don’t
have
to have a reason for everything they do. Then tell me this. What did he live on?’
‘Live on?’
‘No one,’ said Liz, ‘could stand the life of an ageing third-class actor, a hanger-on of the West End stage, unless he had absolutely no other means or way of living. The only reason for persevering would be the hope of a lucky break – which would give you enough to retire on. Well, he didn’t get it.’ She looked again at the crumpled sheet of paper in her hand. ‘His parts got smaller and smaller. So small, they almost became invisible. Yet suddenly, he managed to retire. And to live down here. Not luxuriously, but well enough.’
‘Perhaps he did get that break. Not on the stage. Something else.’
‘That,’ said Liz, ‘is just what I was thinking.’
Costard:
‘
Thou pigeon-egg of discretion.’
“So you see,’ said Liz, ‘MacMorris wasn’t a Major. He wasn’t in the Army at all.’
‘Yes.’
‘What do you mean, “Yes”?’
‘I meant,’ said Inspector Luck patiently, ‘that we had already ascertained that fact.’ He added, with a smile that could have meant anything, ‘We, too, have our avenues of information, though not perhaps at the same level as General Palling.’
‘If you’ve found that out, then I expect you know who he
really
was.’
‘Well—’
‘Play the game. I’m not going to tell it all to you for the fun of hearing you say, “As a matter of fact we knew it all the time.” Either you have found out who MacMorris was or you haven’t.’
‘As a matter of fact,’ said the Inspector crossly, ‘no.’
‘All right, then. He was an out-of-work actor called Don Trefusis. At least, that was the name he used with the agencies and on the stage. I can’t believe it’s the name he received at the font.’
‘Don Trefusis.’ The Inspector made an inconspicuous note.
‘If you should experience any difficulty in tracing his antecedents, Bart’s Theatrical Agency in the Charing Cross Road will tell you all you want to know about him. Unless,’ she added with an ill-bred grin, ‘your union insists on you using your own avenues of information.’
‘Well,’ said the Inspector, ‘I’m very obliged to you, I’m sure.’
‘Chalk it up to me next time you catch me driving without a tail-lamp,’ said Liz. ‘The real point is, where do we go from here?’
‘I don’t quite—’
‘Lord love us. That’s only the beginning. It’s nothing at all by itself. Don’t you see the possibilities it opens up.’
‘Well –’ said the Inspector. He seemed to be choosing his words with more than usual care. ‘Since we know, now, that MacMorris wasn’t really a soldier, he had to have been something else. The fact that he was formerly an actor doesn’t seem, by itself, to prove anything very much.’
‘Mills of God,’ said Liz. ‘Of course it doesn’t. But ask yourself two questions. If he was going to play at soldiers, why come here? If you were going to pretend to be a policeman you wouldn’t go and live at Scotland Yard. Or, come to think of it, might you? Double bluff? No, I don’t think so. Too subtle, and out of character.’