The Liar

by Stephen Fry

  Adrian settled himself on the edge of the sofa and stared into the empty fireplace. He could hear a faint hiss from Uncle David’s earpiece. A clock ticked slowly on the mantelpiece. Adrian felt the same molten surge of guilt in his stomach he had felt so often in the past. He could not for anything imagine the outcome of the next twenty-four hours, but he knew that it would be dreadful. Simply dreadful.

  Finally Uncle David let out a great roar.

  ‘That’s it, that’s it! Willis has taken eight for forty-three! England have won! Ha, ha! Come on, my boy, cheer up! Let’s get Dickon to bring us in some champagne, what do you say?’

  ‘I think you should read this first.’

  ‘What is it?’ Uncle David took the envelope. ‘A demand for more money, Ade?’

  Adrian watched Uncle David’s face, as he read the letter through, change from benign indifference to irritation, anxiety and anger.

  ‘Damn him! Damn him to Spitzburg in a cork-bottomed raft. Where is he now?’

  ‘Österreichischer Hof.’

  ‘With Pollux?’

  ‘No,’ said Adrian. ‘The thing is Pollux was dead when we got there. His throat had been … you know … like Moltaj.’

  ‘Shitty damn. Police?’

  ‘Not yet. There was a waiter though, so I suppose …’

  ‘Doublefuck, hell and arse-tits. Lister! Where the hell is that man when you need him? Lister!!’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Get on to Dunwoody at Vienna. Tell him to fix the Salzburg Polizei soon, sooner, soonest. Pollux has been bollocksed in the Österreichischer Hof. Suite?’ He clicked his fingers at Adrian. ‘Come on boy! Suite? Room number!’

  ‘Franz-Josef it was called, I think,’ said Adrian. And don’t call me sweet, he added to himself.

  ‘You think? Was it or wasn’t it?’ Uncle David shook him by the shoulders.

  ‘Yes!’ shouted Adrian. ‘The Franz-Josef.’

  ‘Got that Lister? Full diplo tarpaulin over the whole farting mess. And a car for me and laughing boy here to be at the Goldener Hirsch by six o’clock this pip emma. You’d better come along as well.’

  ‘Armed?’

  ‘No,’ said Adrian.

  Uncle David’s right hand slammed lazily into the side of Adrian’s face.

  ‘Don’t give orders to my men, Ade, there’s a dear.’

  ‘Right,’ said Adrian, sitting down on the edge of the sofa. ‘I’m sorry.’ Uncle David’s signet-ring had caught the flesh above his left eyebrow and he blinked as a drop of blood oozed into his eye. The blinking only caused the blood to sting his eyes more, so tears sprang up to wash it away.

  Uncle David nodded to Lister.

  ‘Armed,’ he said,’ and ever so slightly dangerous.’

  12

  AT ONE END of the Schubert Banqueting Room at the Goldener Hirsch Hotel a small platform had been arranged on which stood a chair and a table. On the table were set a gavel, a medicine bottle of purple liquid, a metal waste-paper bin, a box of matches, two small radio sets and a pair of headphones. The chair was set to one side, facing out into the rest of the room. Behind the stage a grey curtain obscured the back wall, trimly pleated like a schoolgirl’s skirt. The impression given might have been that of a village hall in Kent preparing to host a Women’s Institute lecture. Only the tondo portrait of Franz Schubert who gazed down at the room over round spectacles with an affable, academic and Pickwickian air and the collection of antlers distributed on the walls betrayed the Austrian bloodlines of the setting.

  A cluster of people stood against the tall window at one side and twittered quietly to each other like shy early arrivals at a suburban orgy. Humphrey Biffen, white-haired and awkwardly tall, stooped like an attentive stork to hear his son-in-law Simon Hesketh-Harvey relate the details of the extraordinary cricket match that had taken place earlier that day in Yorkshire. Lady Helen Biffen was clucking sympathetically at a pale young man with red-rimmed eyes. Amidst them bustled Trefusis with a bottle of Eiswein.

  At precisely the moment a gilt and porcelain clock on a plaster corbel by the window chimed six o’clock with dainty Austrian insistence, Sir David Pearce strode in, followed by a smiling Dickon Lister and an ovine Adrian.

  Pearce looked about him, failing quite to conceal his satisfaction at the silence his arrival had caused to descend on the room. His manufactured angry glance flashed across at Biffen and his son-in-law, then back to Trefusis who was hurrying forward with three glasses and a bottle.

  ‘Donald, you old barrel of piss!’ barked Sir David. ‘What are you doing with my man Hesketh-Harvey?’

  ‘Ah, David. Prompt almost to the second! So grateful, so grateful.’

  Trefusis proffered Lister a glass, blinking up at him.

  ‘Have we …?’

  ‘Lister, Professor. How do you do?’

  ‘If you take hold of these two glasses, Adrian, then I can pour.’

  Trefusis looked enquiringly at the swelling over Adrian’s eye. Adrian inclined his head minimally towards Pearce and twisted his own ring-finger to indicate the cause of the cut. Trefusis bobbed with comprehension and began gingerly to pour the wine.

  ‘I think you’ll like this, Mr Lister … oh dear. “Mr Lister”! How inelegant of me. That’s worse than “Lord Claude” isn’t it? Or “Professor Lesser”, come to that. This is called Eiswein, by the way. Are you familiar with it?’

  ‘Ice vine?’

  ‘Eiswein, yes.’ Adrian watched with amusement the light of lecture come into Trefusis’s eyes as he backed Lister into a corner and began to preach. ‘They allow, you know, the full effects of the pourriture noble, or Edelfäule as they call it here, to take effect on the grape, such that the fruit simply glistens with rot and sugar. They then take the most audacious risk. They leave the grape on the vine and await the first frost. Sometimes, of course, the frost comes too late and the fruit has withered; sometimes too early – before it is yet fully purulent with botrytis. But when, as in this vintage, the conditions concatenate ideally, the result is – I’m sure you’ll agree – vivid and appealing. One’s sweet tooth returns with age, you know.’

  Lister sipped his wine with every evidence of appreciation. Trefusis poured a glass for Sir David and one for Adrian. The overpowering bouquet of thick, honeyed grape almost made Adrian, his head still buzzing from the blow he had received from Uncle David, his mind still dizzy with apprehension, swoon. As he blinked and steadied himself, his focusing eyes met the sad, solemn gaze of Humphrey Biffen who smiled sweetly from the corner and looked away.

  ‘Hum ho,’ said Trefusis. ‘I am supposing that we had better proceed. Adrian, I wonder if you wouldn’t mind accompanying me to the dais?’

  Adrian drained his wine-glass, handed it with what he hoped was a flourish to Dickon Lister and followed Trefusis to the platform. He could not rid himself of the suspicion that this whole charade had been rigged to expose him. But exposure as what, to whom or to what end, he could not for the life of him figure out.

  ‘If you would sit here,’ said Trefusis indicating the single chair. ‘I think we might be ready to bully off.’

  Facing his audience like a conjuror’s stooge, with Trefusis behind him at his prop-table, Adrian looked down at his shoes to avoid the stare of expectant faces that were turned towards him. Enticing sounds floated up through the window from the central courtyard bar below; the prattle of drinkers; tinkles of ice and glasses and laughter; a horn concerto by that same Mozart who was born three and half centuries after this hotel had been built and almost exactly two centuries before Adrian had gulped his first lungful of air. The funeral march of Siegfried would have suited his mood better than this foolishly exuberant gallop.

  Behind him Trefusis cleared his throat. ‘If I might have everyone’s attention …?’

  An unnecessary request, thought Adrian. Every eye in the room was already fixed firmly on the stage.

  ‘Do sit down, everyone, I beg. There are chairs for all. So! That is much better.’ Lister
had ignored Trefusis’s invitation to be seated and stood in the doorway with his legs apart. Whether he imagined he was deterring entrance or egress, Adrian could not decide.

  ‘Perhaps I can prevail upon you to lock the door, Mr Lister … ah, I see that you have already done so. Excellent! Now then, I think we all know Adrian Healey. He is Sir David Pearce’s nephew, on the distaff. Sir David, of course, is a well-known servant of the government, by which I mean he is not well known at all, for his department is a clandestine one. His assistant Dickon Lister you see guarding the doorway like Cerberus. They, on behalf of their government, are most interested in a system devised by my friend Bela Szabó. Sir David as an old tutee of mine from university has long known of my association with Szabó, whose distinguished grandson, Grandmaster Stefan Szabó, is with us today.’

  Adrian looked at the young man with eyes fresh from weeping who sat between Biffen and Lady Helen. Nothing in the shape of his head or the set of his expression indicated anything of the abstract or logical genius that marked out the chess champion. A rather ordinary, innocent looking fellow. But sad: very, very sad.

  ‘I had hoped that Bela’s other grandson, Martin, would be with us too. As I think you all know, he was killed today.’

  Five sets of eyes bored into Adrian, who coloured and looked down again.

  ‘Also with us are Humphrey Biffen and his wife Lady Helen, old friends and colleagues of Bela and myself. Their son-in-law, Simon Hesketh-Harvey, is here too. As it falls out Simon works in the same department as Sir David.’

  ‘Or at least did until six o’clock this evening,’ growled Sir David. ‘I’ll have your arse for a plate-rack, Hesketh-Harvey.’

  ‘But then of course Simon and Mr Lister are not the only people to have been in your employ, are they, Sir David? I believe I am right in saying that young Master Healey here has been drawing a stipend from you for the last two years at least.’

  Adrian closed his eyes and tried to concentrate on Mozart.

  ‘But let us get things in order. Two years ago, Szabó, when still an obedient Hungarian scientist, had been to Salzburg for a conference. There he had hidden papers relating to his Mendax machine. And not a moment too soon. Six months following his return to Budapest, the Hungarian authorities had found out about his work and were demanding to be shown the fruits of it. Your department, David, had heard of Mendax too and became determined that Britain must certainly do its best to gain possession of so intriguing a device – if only as a means of impressing your American confrères. The world had just learnt about poor dear Anthony Blunt, we must remember, and I am sure there must have been an overwhelming desire within your Service to win gorgeous trophies to lay before the feet of your betters. You supposed that were Szabó to try to dispose of Mendax then I, as his oldest friend outside Hungary, would in some manner be involved.’

  ‘And so you were, old love.’

  ‘It is true that Szabó sent me a letter last year. He wrote of his wish for me to collect the documents he had hidden in Salzburg. I was requested to be at Mozart’s Geburtshaus at two p.m. on the seventh of July where a contact would be awaiting me by a diorama of the supper scene from Don Giovanni. I have no doubt you intercepted this letter to me, Sir David. Quite right too, I don’t complain of that.’

  ‘Too bloody bad if you did, Professor.’

  ‘Neatly put. So, what happened next? Well, Adrian, the eyes and ears of Sir David Pearce, accompanied me to the rendezvous. My contact at the Geburtshaus was to be a friend of Szabó’s named Istvan Moltaj, a violinist officially present in Salzburg for the Festival. So far so splendid.’

  ‘So far so obvious.’

  ‘Well, now to something rather less obvious perhaps.’

  Adrian wondered why this meeting seemed to be developing into a public dialogue between Donald and Uncle David.

  ‘I wonder if you have ever heard, Sir David, of Walton’s Third Law?’

  ‘No matter how much you shake it, the last drop always runs down your leg?’

  ‘Not quite. It was a wartime SIS convention. If a meeting is set up and a time for it given in the twelve-hour clock – using an a.m. or p.m. suffix – then the meeting is understood to be called for a time thirty-three minutes earlier than that designated. What Adrian would call tradecraft, I believe. Accordingly Moltaj met me not at two p.m. on the appointed day, but at one twenty-seven p.m. At this meeting he told me where to find the Mendax papers. They were to be collected by me from the reception desk here at the Goldener Hirsch. Moments after imparting this information, Moltaj’s throat was cut by someone, I must assume, who was blessedly unfamiliar with Walton’s Third Law. A few days later, your man Lister, acting, I have no doubt, on information received from Adrian, made a rather vulgar attempt to relieve me of the papers in an Autobahn lay-by in West Germany.’

  Sir David leant back in his chair and looked round at Lister, still standing in the doorway. ‘Were you vulgar, Lister? I’m sorry to hear that. See me afterwards.’

  ‘Vulgar and unsuccessful. I had left the papers here. I knew perfectly well that Adrian was not to be trusted. That is why I ensured that he was always by my side. Was it not Don Corleone who kept his friends close, but his enemies closer? How could Don Trefusis do less?’

  Adrian opened his mouth to speak, but decided against it.

  ‘The technical data on Mendax were securely locked in the safe here at the hotel. But Szabó had also built a working Mendax machine, which he had split into two and entrusted to his grandsons, Stefan and poor Martin. Stefan smuggled out his half in a radio set belonging to another member of his chess delegation and presented it to me in a Cambridge public lavatory a fortnight ago. Martin was to have given me the other half this afternoon in the Hotel Österreichischer Hof, but his throat was cut before he was able to do so. It seems that by this time the killer had worked out how Walton’s Third Law operated. That, my dears, is the brief history of Szabó’s attempt to get Mendax to me. Does anyone have any questions?’

  ‘If you had left the entire business to us, Tre-blasted-fusis, this whole sordid shambles would have been avoided,’ said Sir David.

  ‘I wonder. A problem that has been exercising me mightily is the killing of Moltaj. He was an innocent musician delivering a message for a friend. We have no reason to imagine that he knew about Mendax, no grounds for supposing that he presented a threat to anyone. The Hungarians are not nowadays noted for their savagery in these matters – unlike the East Germans or the British. What conceivable ends could the death of Moltaj serve? It seems to me that this is far from being a trivial issue.’

  Trefusis lit a cigarette and allowed the import of his question to sink in. Adrian had done with his inspection of the floor and had now started on the ceiling. He tried to believe that he was a thousand miles and years away.

  ‘Well, we will return to the “Why” later,’ said Trefusis. ‘The “Who” is interesting also. I saw the killer, as it happens. A very fat man with lank hair and a small head.’

  ‘Who cares?’ said Pearce. ‘Some bloody Hungo knife artist. Probably halfway across Czecho by now.’

  ‘I think not-o, David-o.’

  Sir David put his hands behind his head. ‘Donald, give me listen. If you press that wonderful mind of yours into service you will find, after due stock-taking, adding up, taking away, knitting, purling and tacking, that the score is one and a half to half in your favour. You are in possession of the technical bumf and the one half of the machine that your chess-playing friend Castor here gave you in your bog in Cambridge. That’s the major haul, old darling. The other half, which the Hungoes got ahold of this afternoon, is n.f.g. without the book of words that you have so cunningly kept clasped to your sagging bosom. You’re ahead of the game. Give your winnings to us like a good boy and expect a knighthood by return of post. Failing that, shove it on the open market and make yourself a millionaire. But don’t fucking horse around with us. We’re busy men. You follow me?’

  ‘Now why should you t
hink that I have only the one half of Mendax?’

  ‘Donny dear, you just said, did you not, that the knife artist got to Pollux before you? I take it he didn’t kill him just for the fun of it – saving your grief, young Stefan.’

  ‘No, as it happens you are right.’ Trefusis picked up the medicine bottle from the table and unscrewed the lid. ‘The lining of Martin’s coat had been ripped open. I am forced to assume that something was taken.’

  ‘There you are then, so why don’t you … what the Nigel Christ?’

  Trefusis was pouring the purple contents of the bottle into the waste-paper bin on the table in front of him.

  ‘A little prestidigitation to entertain you,’ said Trefusis. He struck a match and dropped it into the bin. A great ball of blue and green flame blossomed upwards up for an instant and then shrank away into thick smoke.

  ‘And so we say farewell to Bela’s Mendax papers,’ said Trefusis.

  ‘You great flapping clitoris,’ said Sir David. ‘You pointless, fatuous, drivelling old man. What the hell do you think you’re playing at?’

  ‘I know what’s worrying you, David, but you may rest easy. The smoke alarm has been disconnected. I saw to it earlier this evening.’

  ‘Of course you realise now that you can kiss goodbye to any chance you ever had of getting onto the BBC Board of Governors, don’t you?’

  ‘I had no idea I was in the running.’

  ‘All you’re in the running for now, matey, is ten years of tax inspectors waking you up at dawn twice a week and policemen stopping your car four times for every two miles you drive.’

  ‘Don’t be dismal, David,’ said Trefusis. ‘I have merely eliminated the vigorish. The game is now even. I have one half of Mendax, while the killer would appear to have the other.’

  ‘Damn you to Hull and all points north.’

  ‘Well, possibly. For the meantime, however, perhaps young Simon can help us out with the identity of this knife artist, if that really is the current jargon. Who is the Hungarians’ best assassin, Simon? Not your desk I know, but you’ve worked there.’