The Age of Treachery

by Gavin Scott

  And he walked out.

  * * *

  Forrester was still grinding his teeth in suppressed fury as he climbed the stairs to the laboratory where Alan Norton conducted his experiments. It was a long, low room with dark wooden floors and arrays of equipment, which vaguely reminded him of a darkroom. A young blonde woman was inserting a tiny square of glass into one of these objects. The fit was tight – in fact Forrester was tempted to wonder if the glass was supposed to go into that particular slot at all, but the young woman thrust it home with great determination and there was no audible crack.

  “Dr. Norton isn’t here,” she said in answer to his enquiry. “But he should be back shortly.” Her voice was high pitched and oddly grating. Forrester knew she wanted him to go away but felt a strange compulsion to stay there in order to irritate her. He felt as if there were great reserves of irritation beneath the surface of her personality, just waiting to be released. He watched her for a moment.

  “That looks interesting,” said Forrester. “What is it?” The young woman looked at him with piercing blue eyes as if deciding whether to attack him with whatever object came to hand, and then, with an effort of will, smiled icily.

  “X-ray crystallography.”

  “And what is that?”

  “The science of determining the arrangement of atoms within a crystal from the manner in which X-rays are deflected by the crystal,” she said. “It involves scattering X-rays from a single, very pure crystal to produce a pattern on a screen behind it.”

  “I see,” said Forrester. “And the object is…?”

  “Obviously to discover the architecture of proteins,” she said. “I’m supposed to be working with Professor Hodgkin on the structure of penicillin, but she’s assigned me to help Dr. Norton with Gramicidin C.”

  “Your supervisor is Dorothy Hodgkin?” said Forrester. He remembered Dorothy from his undergraduate years, a brilliant, voluble woman passionate about pacifism and correcting social injustice. She had married a charming, serially unfaithful communist named Thomas Hodgkin, but this had not prevented her becoming the lover of her scientific mentor, the brilliant J.D. Bernal, who was also married. And also a communist. Not surprisingly, the private lives of all three were complex and full of drama. “Working with Professor Hodgkin must be fascinating, Miss…”

  “Roberts,” said the young woman. “Margaret Roberts.” Now Forrester remembered her name too: she was a leading light in the Oxford Conservative Association, and had been active in trying to prevent Oxford electing a Labour MP in the 1945 election. He wondered how she felt about the bohemian left-wing enthusiasm that seemed to grip the Department of Chemistry, and could not resist asking her. “Listening to uncongenial opinions keeps me sharp,” she said, “and somebody has to defend Mr. Churchill.”

  “You don’t think his time has passed?” said Forrester. “You don’t think he’s ancient history now?”

  She met his gaze with shining eyes. “If Mr. Churchill were in charge of British foreign policy today instead of Mr. Ernest Bevin,” she said, “we wouldn’t have Stalin breathing down our necks.”

  “Have you tried to convince Alan Norton of this?” asked Forrester, imagining the encounter. Margaret Roberts looked at him with contempt.

  “I wouldn’t waste my time,” she replied. “Dr. Norton believes we would all be much better off if the Russians were in charge.” And she turned back to inserting a second glass plate into a second dangerously small-looking aperture.

  At which point the door opened and Norton came in, removing his shabby raincoat and hanging it on a hat stand. He checked the preparations the woman had made before guiding Forrester down to the far end of the lab.

  “I see you’re harbouring a rabid Conservative in your midst,” said Forrester. Norton’s mouth twitched.

  “Grocer’s daughter from Grantham,” he said. “Utterly provincial petit bourgeois.”

  “Well qualified for the firing squad come the revolution,” said Forrester.

  “If you’ve come here to be facetious,” said Norton, “you can go away again.”

  “Sorry,” said Forrester. “I came here to talk about what happened to Lyall.”

  “Clark should get a medal for doing away with the bastard,” remarked Norton, selecting a slide. “He’s rid the world of a very nasty piece of work.”

  “He says he didn’t do it. I believe him.”

  “He would say that, wouldn’t he? And as his friend you’d naturally believe him.”

  “And of course he wasn’t the only one to have a furious row with Lyall that night.”

  Norton met his gaze steadily.

  “No. Clark backed me up when Lyall tried to denounce me for my political beliefs. Lyall switched his attack to Clark, and Clark gave as good as he got.”

  “What I mean is,” persisted Forrester, “you were as angry with Lyall at High Table as Clark was.”

  “Not angry enough to stab him to death, though, Forrester. And the murder did happen in Clark’s rooms, not mine.”

  “Look, I’m not accusing you,” said Forrester. “I’m just trying to prevent them hanging an innocent man.”

  “Fair enough,” said Norton. “But I’m not offering to step up to the gallows instead.”

  “I’m assuming you’ve already given the police an alibi,” said Forrester.

  “I have,” said Norton. Forrester held his tongue, extending the silence just long enough for it to seem odd if Norton did not elaborate. At last Norton said, “I came straight here after High Table. The young lady from Grantham was putting in a few extra hours too, and we talked about what she was doing.”

  “Well,” said Forrester, “if a leading light of the Oxford Conservative Association is providing your alibi, you have nothing to worry about, do you?” He spoke lightly, but he resolved to check with Margaret Roberts that she had indeed seen Norton back at the lab that night.

  “If you want to look beyond Clark,” said Norton, “there were a number of dodgy characters at High Table that night, weren’t there?”

  “How do you mean, dodgy characters?”

  “Well, I know nothing about Dorfmann except that he got through the war in a prominent German university without ever offending the Nazis, which is quite a feat – but I do know Charles Calthrop is an untrustworthy bastard.”

  “The Foreign Office man? What do you mean?”

  “I had some run-ins with him during the war,” said Norton bitterly. “He had the cheek to question my loyalty; I sent him away with a flea in his ear. I’ve watched his career ever since. Pays to know your enemies.”

  Forrester thought of his brief glimpse of Calthrop and Dorfmann in conversation in Whitehall.

  “What’s he doing now, as far as you know?”

  “I’ve heard he’s building up an anti-Soviet spy network,” said Norton. “Typical, isn’t it? No sooner is one war over than these ex-public schoolboys want to start another.”

  “I share your concern,” said Forrester. “But I can’t see why Calthrop would have wanted to kill David Lyall, even if it had been physically possible, which I don’t think it was. Can you suggest a motive?”

  “No,” said Norton. “But you asked for information and I’m giving it to you.” Forrester thought about the information Norton had given him, trying to see how it might possibly be of use to his friend.

  “Did Lyall have anything to do with intelligence?” he said at last, clutching at straws.

  “Not as far as I know,” replied Norton. “He was in the commandos during the war. In Scandinavia, I believe. I gather it was a cock-up, but that doesn’t surprise me.”

  Margaret Roberts called from the far end of the lab.

  “We’re ready to begin, Dr. Norton,” she said. “Whenever you are.”

  “I’ll be there in a minute,” said Norton, and leant closer to Forrester. “What about jealous husbands?” Forrester froze. But Norton went on, “I’ve heard Lyall was a bit of a ladies’ man.” Inwardly, Forrester sighed wi
th relief.

  “Really? Do you have any names?”

  “No,” said Norton. “The only woman I associate with Lyall happens to be single.”

  “Who’s she?”

  “Alice Hayley. At Lady Margaret Hall.”

  “Were they still a couple? Or had he thrown her over?”

  “No idea. I just know they were going out together for a while. If you want to talk to her the easiest place to find her is the Borringer.”

  “Where?”

  “The experimental drama place. Where that peacock fellow is.”

  “I’m sorry, what peacock fellow?”

  “The one in the purple suit,” said Norton, and Forrester knew immediately who he was talking about.

  11

  DRAMA KING

  The man in the purple suit was in evidence the moment Forrester walked into the Borringer Theatre. He was more conventionally dressed today, but his early Oxford appearance in the purple suit, sporting a large ruby ring and wearing a gold shirt, had established an image on which Kenneth Tynan had capitalised ever since. His object, he’d told anybody who’d listen, was to become “the first post-war myth”. He was on the editorial board of the Cherwell, he was the star turn at the Oxford Union, and the plays he put on were guaranteed to be controversial whether or not they were any good.

  A London critic had described his performance in Hamlet as “quite dreadful”, and Tynan had immediately written back: “My performance in Hamlet was not ‘quite dreadful’ as you claimed – it was in fact slightly less than mediocre.” There were rumours that when he graduated the critic would be sacked and Tynan would be given his job. Now Forrester watched as, through clouds of cigarette smoke, Tynan addressed the cast of his latest production.

  “This morning my beloved tutor, the saintly C.S. Lewis, has helped me rediscover Milton and to celebrate I retired to my rooms and listened to Noël Coward’s blissful recording of ‘Sigh No More’ during which I wept copiously. But, Alice, I know your performance will move me more than either of those experiences. Your lines, please.”

  A dark-haired, full-bosomed young woman wearing a jute sack – which Forrester assumed was her costume – came centre-stage and began to speak.

  “I opened my heart to find which part of me demands your love,” she declaimed. “I found it, like a dark crystal at the core of my being. A fragile crystal, radiating the dark light of pain. A crystal that longs to be crushed under your heel even as you fall under its hypnotic spell. When I learned you had been with her I knew that on the day when you cease to love me, I will cease to exist.”

  Forrester saw Tynan mouthing the words as she spoke: it was clear the lines were his own. But Alice Hayley projected them with such passion that Forrester was prepared to believe they came from the heart. He waited until Tynan called a halt and drew the woman aside as the other actors helped themselves to tea and biscuits.

  “I gather you knew David Lyall,” he said.

  “Who told you that?”

  “Is it true?”

  “We were lovers for three months.” Without warning, tears began to run down her cheeks. Forrester, surprised at how quickly she had taken him into her confidence, took her by the arm and guided her to a chair at the far end of the hall.

  “Twelfth Night is a time of madness,” Tynan was announcing by the tea urn. “A pointless, idiot festival and a time for doing unreasonable and mysterious things.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Forrester. “This must be very painful.” She shook her head.

  “No, it’s alright,” she said, blowing her nose with touching determination. “Actually it’s a relief to be able to talk to somebody. I thought nobody knew about us, so there’s been no-one to—” and tears overcame her again. When she had them under control she said, “I hated him, actually. He was a bastard and he deserved to die.” And then she began sobbing again and Forrester found himself putting an arm around her, the jute sack prickly against his skin.

  “It’s alright,” he said meaninglessly. “It’s alright.”

  At last she was in control of herself again and looked him straight in the eyes. Despite the streaked make-up and her ridiculous costume, she was beautiful. Her jet-black hair was cut in stylish bangs, her lips full and red.

  “You think that I killed him, don’t you?” she said.

  Forrester was taken aback. “No, no,” he said. “It never occurred to me. I’m trying to find out more because the police think it was a friend of mine who did it and I don’t believe them.”

  “You’re a friend of Gordon Clark?”

  “Yes.”

  “It was his wife that David left me for,” she said.

  Forrester suppressed a gasp. Her gaze still held his.

  “If I’d had a knife when I found out I’d have stabbed him in the heart. Right through the heart.”

  “What in fact did you do?” asked Forrester.

  “Went to my rooms, stopped up the draughts, turned on the gas fire, and didn’t light it,” she said. “But there wasn’t enough money in the meter.” Forrester couldn’t help smiling, and she smiled back, though hers was a wry grimace. “Silly, isn’t it? If I’d had a shilling in my purse that night I wouldn’t be here. By the time I’d found somebody to borrow one off I decided to get drunk instead. And then Ken came and offered me a part in his play.”

  “Good for him,” said Forrester.

  “It’s a good part,” said Alice Hayley. “Though I don’t really understand half of what I’m saying.”

  “Well, you don’t give that impression,” said Forrester.

  “Thank you. Another good thing about it – it gives me an alibi. I was here with everybody the night David was killed.”

  “Ah.”

  “Sorry.”

  “No, no. I’m very glad it wasn’t you. But I’m wondering if you can tell me anything that might help me find out who did do it.”

  “Could it have been one of the Norwegians?”

  “Norwegians?” asked Forrester, surprised.

  “Well, Swedes, Finns, Danes, I’m not sure. But David used to go drinking with them; I sometimes met him at the Eagle and Child. He’d been there during the war, you know. Scandinavia, I mean, not the Eagle and Child.”

  “I gather the Scandinavian mission went badly. Did he talk about what happened there?”

  “Not much. I got the impression someone had betrayed him to the Germans.”

  “What? You mean he was captured?” Forrester knew what had happened to British commandos captured by the Germans: their deaths were either swift and brutal or agonisingly protracted.

  “No, I don’t think so. I think he escaped, got home through Sweden. People helped him.”

  “Interesting.”

  “Didn’t make him any less of a bastard, though.”

  Forrester looked at her, and wished he’d met her before Lyall had.

  “Was there any mention of anything he’d found there?” he said. “Like… a manuscript? Something valuable?”

  She shook her head. “Sorry. I think one of the people who’d helped him was some kind of aristocrat, though.”

  “He didn’t mention anything to do with… the occult, did he?”

  She looked at him, puzzled. “Never,” she said. “He always regarded that kind of thing as complete nonsense.”

  “Never mentioned some hidden knowledge he’d gathered during the war? Anything to do with Norse mythology?”

  “No, he didn’t,” she said.

  “Darlings,” called Tynan from the other end of the room. “Time to get back to work. But before we do I wish to recite a clerihew I have just invented. It is about Edward Gibbon. It goes like this:

  Edward Gibbon,

  Wrote ad lib on,

  The bloody mystery,

  Of later Roman history.

  There were catcalls and scattered applause. Tynan clapped his hands. “That’s it, my dears, on with the show.”

  12

  DARK WATER

  Forre
ster went for a walk when he left the theatre, crossing Folly Bridge and descending to the towpath by the Head of the River inn, with its balconies overlooking the water and the barges bobbing in the current below. Trees overhung the path here, cutting out what little sunlight was permeating through the leaden clouds; it looked as if it was going to snow again.

  A commando in Norway, betrayed to the Germans. An ambitious, philandering academic in Oxford. A body, lying in the snow beneath Gordon Clark’s window. All incarnations of David Lyall, who had tempted a hot-tempered Norwegian academic with a juicy morsel of ancient literature, which may or may not have included incantations for raising the Devil, who had tormented a prickly colleague as a fellow traveller, cuckolded at least one husband, seduced at least one wife, abandoned at least one lover. Did all or any of them hate him enough to kill him? Were all or any of them—

  Suddenly Forrester felt that he was not alone; experienced the prickling of that sixth sense that had served him so well and so often. He shrank back against the trunk of a tree, shutting off at least one avenue of attack, peering out into the gloom with eyes alert to any hint of movement, ears straining for any scrap of sound.

  Neither came. Forrester stood there, feeling the rough bark under his palms, letting his eyes become accustomed to the semi-darkness. He tuned out the distant rumble of the buses on the Abingdon Road, the shouts of the barge men and women by the moorings near the pub, the noise of dogs barking; he finally eliminated the noise of his own breath, poised to hear the breathing of the other.

  Because he was certain there was another presence, and a hostile one. It was absurd, in one way: he was just a few hundred yards away from a road busy with traffic, and a towpath used by dozens of people. And yet, a sudden rush, the swift downward trajectory of a blade, and his body could be sliding down the bank into the dark waters of the river, drifting away with the current.

  The bushes crackled suddenly to his right, and as he’d been taught he launched himself in that direction because any assailant would assume he’d dive away and the blow, if it was coming, would be ill-directed. And then he was slipping sideways in a patch of mud, all balance gone, and as he hit the ground an electric bolt of pain shot up his arm from the elbow and he knew that this was the moment when he would know who had killed David Lyall – immediately before he too met the same fate. Unless…