Closed Circle

by Robert Goddard

  But I dreamt of Max, more vividly than on any of the nights I had shared a bed with Diana at the Villa Primavera. I dreamt of him watching from the shadows as we writhed in a frenzy of lust surpassing anything we had experienced, then stepping forward, as I thrust ferociously into her, to scream even as I screamed. I woke, heart and lungs racing, my mind struggling to distinguish fear from desire. And then I knew. Even my conscience could not ignore this call. It had to be answered.

  I booked out of the hotel before breakfast, leaving a note for Quincy with the concierge. Then I collected the car from the garage near the Eccleston where I had left it before setting off for Venice and headed north. I was not going to Letchworth. Mine was a more distant destination – with a far stranger purpose.

  10

  I DROVE NORTH all that grey autumn day, through the supine fringes of the fen country and the sluggish heart of the Yorkshire coalfield, into a part of England I had always done my best to avoid: a raw and uncongenial realm of smoking chimneys and pinched faces, where hardship and the threat of it hung over the towns like an invisible layer of cloud. The light failed early and I abandoned the idea of completing my journey that evening, taking refuge at an hotel in Durham. It was late Saturday morning before I reached my destination, thirty bleak and empty miles beyond Newcastle: the rough-hewn market town of Alnwick, bolt-hole of former Fleet Street foreign correspondent George Duggan. I had waited a long time and come a long way to hear what he had to say. Although I expected – and half-hoped – it would amount to nothing, I felt curiously nervous now the moment of discovery was near.

  The streets were busy, but I had no difficulty finding the offices of the Alnwick Advertiser: cramped first-floor premises which, according to the sign on the door, were also the source of the Morpeth Mercury and the Coquetdale Clarion. It was easy to believe they represented the nadir of a journalist’s ambition. Certainly, the duty to inform did not appear to grip the two yawning and scratching members of staff I discovered behind an uneven barricade of piled back copies and paper-strewn desks. The name of George Duggan seemed to cause them considerable amusement.

  ‘He was here earlier, but something urgent cropped up about eleven o’clock.’

  ‘Yeh. The pubs opened.’

  ‘So,’ I said when their guffaws had subsided, ‘where might I find him?’

  ‘Well, you might find him in the Black Swan.’

  ‘Or the Dirty Bottles.’

  ‘But my money …’ He glanced up at the clock. ‘Would be on the Queen’s Head.’

  Their directions led me across the market place, clogged with bellowing stall-holders and their eager customers. All Northumberland and his wife seemed to have descended upon the town and the bar of the Queen’s Head was invisible through a haze of smoke and a phalanx of broad-backed drinkers. Insinuating myself slowly between them, I caught the sound of a familiar cough and followed it round a head-high partition to where George Duggan was propped on a stool, swallowing rum like linctus between sucks at a clumsily rolled cigarette.

  ‘Duggan!’ I had to shout to attract his attention. Even then, his rheumy eyes surveyed me for several blank seconds before recognition glimmered. ‘Guy Horton. Remember?’

  ‘Mr Horton,’ he replied. ‘Well, well, well. I never expected to see you in Alnwick.’

  ‘And I never expected to be here. Now I am, can we talk?’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘Fabian Charnwood.’

  ‘Not sure I want to.’ He tossed his head moodily.

  ‘Then why did you give me your card? Why did you urge me to contact you if I uncovered any new information?’

  ‘Because I thought you were helping Wingate. And because I thought Wingate could help me.’

  ‘Max Wingate is dead.’

  ‘I know. I read about it. He was killed by Charnwood’s daughter, wasn’t he? Some cock-and-bull story about him trying to strangle you and her happening to hit his head where an old war wound had weakened the skull. Do you expect me to believe that?’

  ‘It’s true.’

  ‘And I’m Lord Beaverbrook in disguise.’ He paused to cough out another lungful of smoke, then prodded me in the chest with an unsteady forefinger. ‘They’ve bought you, haven’t they, Mr Horton?’

  ‘Nobody’s bought me.’

  ‘I thought we were on the same side. That’s why I came down to London to see you. But I was wrong. You’re one of them.’

  ‘One of whom?’

  ‘One of the bastards who—’ He stopped and stared at me for a moment, then mumbled, ‘I’m saying nothing.’

  ‘You were eager enough to speak last time.’

  ‘That was before you helped the Charnwoods get rid of Wingate.’

  ‘Nobody got rid of him. His death was an accident.’

  ‘It was about as accidental as this.’ He tapped the Remembrance Day poppy pinned to his lapel. The war, once again, still fresh in his mind. Why? What did he mean?

  I was about to ask when the landlord appeared at our end of the bar, replenished Duggan’s beer and rum, then looked questioningly at me. I ordered a scotch and paid for all three drinks, but got no thanks from my companion. ‘I’m certain Max didn’t kill Charnwood,’ I said slowly. ‘I’d like to clear his name, even if it is too late to help him. I’m in nobody’s pay and nobody’s pocket. I’ve no idea what circles Charnwood moved in, but—’

  ‘Circles!’ Duggan choked on a mouthful of beer, then said between coughs: ‘If you … really don’t know … what it’s all about … count yourself lucky.’

  His reaction jogged my memory. I took out the anonymous letter Diana had given me for safe-keeping and showed Duggan the contents, then watched as his jaw dropped and his eyes widened. ‘Sent to Charnwood’s sister and daughter in Venice. A pair of concentric circles on a sheet of paper. Nothing else. No explanation. Just this … symbol. His sister seemed … alarmed by it.’

  ‘Well she might be.’

  ‘Why?’

  He glanced around, then lowered his voice. ‘Put it away, for God’s sake.’

  ‘Very well.’ I slid the letter back into my jacket. ‘But my question stands.’

  ‘It’ll have to. I shan’t answer it.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because the less you know the better. Ignorance is bliss.’

  ‘You didn’t sing that song six weeks ago. You were eager to recruit any ally you could, as I recall.’

  ‘Wingate might have been a witness. I was eager to find out what he knew. You could have led me to him. Instead, you let them shut his mouth for good.’

  ‘It wasn’t like that.’

  ‘So you say.’

  ‘I’m telling you the truth.’

  He nodded. ‘Maybe you are. But I can’t be sure, you see. I can’t be absolutely sure.’

  ‘Neither can I. We’ll just have to trust each other, won’t we?’

  ‘Trust?’ He gaped at me. ‘You must be joking.’

  ‘No. But, if you prefer to be persuaded some other way …’

  His gaze narrowed. ‘Are you threatening me, Mr Horton?’

  ‘Only with the consequences of your own past. Does the editor of the Advertiser know about your spot of bother on Clapham Common seventeen years ago? Does the landlord of this pub? Or the respectable widow you no doubt lodge with? Or anybody in this tight-knit gossipy little town?’

  ‘No,’ he murmured. ‘They don’t.’

  ‘Well, I’m sure you’d like to keep it that way.’

  ‘So I would.’

  ‘Then all you have to do is talk to me about Charnwood.’

  He drew on his cigarette, suppressed a cough with evident difficulty and said: ‘It’s blackmail, is it?’

  ‘Blackmailers want money, Duggan. I only want information.’

  ‘How did you find out about Clapham Common?’

  ‘You’re still remembered in Fleet Street.’

  ‘Am I? Well, trust my fellow-journalists to get the story wrong. It was a trumped-up c
harge. If anybody was buggered that night, it was me. I was fitted up good and proper.’ Seeing my sceptical look, he added: ‘You don’t believe me. But you would if you understood.’

  ‘Make me understand.’

  He ground his teeth and glared at me while smoke and drunken chatter swirled around us. Then he said: ‘All right. Have it your own way. I’ll talk. But not here. Not anywhere in Alnwick. Even the gutters have ears in this town.’

  ‘I have a car. We can drive out onto the moors.’

  ‘Make it the coast. I’ll feel safer there.’

  ‘Very well. Though I’m sure there’s no real need to—’

  ‘There’s need!’ He fixed me with an earnest stare. ‘You’ll realize that soon enough, take it from me.’ In one swallow, he finished his beer. Then he clambered unsteadily from the stool and peered suspiciously through the oblivious throng. ‘Let’s go,’ he muttered. ‘Before I change my mind.’

  We drove out through a narrow gate in the medieval town wall, Duggan instructing me to head east on the Alnmouth road. On a landscaped rise to our left stood a stone column, with a statue of a stiff-tailed lion glaring down from the top. Noticing me glance up at it, Duggan paused in his licking of a cigarette paper and said: ‘The lion’s the emblem of the Percy family – the Dukes of Northumberland. They’ve ruled Alnwick for six hundred years from the castle on the other side of the town. That column was paid for with subscriptions from their tenants. A token of the universal esteem in which they’re held.’

  ‘Except by you?’ I asked, catching the sarcastic undertone.

  ‘I’m not complaining. The Duke encouraged the editor of the Advertiser to take me on when I came out of prison after the war. No other paper would have touched me with a barge-pole.’

  ‘That was generous of him.’

  ‘He did it as a favour for Lord Grey.’

  ‘Viscount Grey, you mean? The former Foreign Secretary?’

  ‘He lives a few miles north of here, at Fallodon.’ Duggan looked round at me and frowned. ‘An Old Wykehamist, now I come to think of it. Like yourself.’

  ‘Before my time. Long before.’ Even so, the famous statesman’s reserved reputation was known to me. He hardly seemed a likely benefactor for George Duggan, as my expression must have implied.

  ‘Doubtful, are we, Mr Horton? Reckon I’m shooting a line?’

  ‘Why should Lord Grey want to help you?’

  ‘Because he realized I’d been hard done by.’

  ‘You’re saying he believed you were innocent?’

  ‘Suspected I was, yes. Feared I was. Feared what that meant, as well, I shouldn’t wonder.’

  ‘What did it mean?’

  But for answer Duggan only lit his cigarette, coughed through a few initial puffs, then said: ‘We’ll be in Alnmouth soon enough. There’s a turning that leads down to the beach. Watch out for it.’

  And so I was made to wait a little longer, till we had reached the village built on the long sandy spit at the mouth of the river Aln, driven down to the edge of the dunes and tramped out onto the beach, where a keen wind blew in from the North Sea to snatch the words from our lips and toss them up into the blue salt-scoured air, where we could be heard by no-one and where Duggan felt safe at last.

  ‘I was a different man twenty years ago, Mr Horton. I suppose we all were. But I’ve changed more than most. Those who worked with me on The Topical could tell you that. Blame prison. And the war. For me, it was the same thing. And for the same reason.’

  ‘What reason?’

  ‘Charnwood.’ He flicked the remnant of his cigarette out across the sand and thrust his hands deep into his pockets. ‘God, how I wish I’d never even heard the bloody man’s name.’

  ‘How did you first hear of him?’

  ‘In Vienna. On the twentieth of July, 1914. Oh yes, I remember the time and place. There’s no danger of me forgetting.’ He heaved a long sigh that dissolved into an expectorant cough, then pushed his shoulders back and resumed. ‘I’d been with The Topical eight years by then. Since before Lord Northcliffe bought the paper. He tried to turn it into another Daily Mail, but never quite succeeded. All newspaper proprietors have a touch of megalomania, but in Northcliffe’s case it was a full-blown Napoleon complex. Fortunately, I didn’t see much of him. I was forever off to one European capital or another, reporting on the latest international crisis. They were flaring up like fires in a drought-stricken forest. In the Balkans worst of all. But I never doubted they’d be beaten out. None of the diplomats and politicians I interviewed over the years really wanted a war. So, why should there be one?’

  ‘I’ve always understood the Germans were itching for a scrap.’

  He grunted. ‘Then you don’t understand much. Still, why should you? It’s a comforting enough thought to peddle if you’re trying to account for ten million dead. Blame it all on Kaiser Bill.’

  ‘Who would you blame it on, then?’

  As he glanced at me, a strange quiver halfway between a grin and a scowl crossed his lips. Then he looked straight ahead and said: ‘While you were bullying fags at Winchester, Mr Horton, Europe was arranging itself into two armed camps. Neither camp wanted to fight or lose face. It’s a difficult trick to pull off time after time, but it could have been done. It should have been done.’

  ‘But you’re going to tell me why it wasn’t?’

  ‘Yes. I am.’

  ‘And this has something to do with Charnwood?’

  ‘Something? Yes, I reckon you could say it does. I reckon—’ He shook his head irritably. ‘Just listen, will you? Close your mouth and open your ears.’

  It was as much as I could do not to respond in kind, but I knew insults would draw nothing from this man. He had agreed to speak. But he meant to speak on his terms, terms I was bound to accept. ‘Very well,’ I said softly.

  ‘Right. This is how it was. There were more Serbs in the Austro-Hungarian Empire than there were in Serbia itself. So, Emperor Franz Josef and his advisers feared revolution within their borders – especially in Bosnia – if Serbia grew more powerful. Maybe even if Serbia simply continued to exist. But what could they do? An attack on Serbia meant war with Russia. Germany would support Austria, but then France would support Russia. And if Germany attacked France, Britain would come to her aid. Result: world war. Besides, even if they thought they’d finish on the winning side in such a war, where was the pretext to start one? Where was the just and honourable cause?

  ‘Even you must know the answer. The assassination of Franz Josef’s heir, the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, in Sarajevo on the twenty-eighth of June, 1914. I was despatched to Vienna next day to report on the funeral and its diplomatic repercussions. They seemed pretty obvious. A Serb student had fired the fatal shot. If he’d been put up to it by the Serbian government, the Emperor would have to go to war to avenge his nephew. But nothing was ever obvious in Austro-Hungarian politics. That much I knew from several previous visits. Franz Ferdinand was a difficult and widely disliked man. A lot of people were secretly relieved he was dead. And if the Serbian government could be shown to have clean hands …’ He shrugged. ‘It was a fire no bigger than several before. Containable and extinguishable. The funeral was conspicuously short of weeping and wailing. One member of the Archduke’s body-guard committed suicide, ashamed, it was said, at not having died beside him in Sarajevo. But there were no other grand gestures or bloodthirsty speeches. Official reaction was calm and measured. A police investigation was underway in Sarajevo and the results were to be assessed. Meanwhile, no army units were recalled from harvest leave. The Chief of the General Staff and the Minister of War retired to their country estates for the summer. And we journalists lounged around in Viennese cafés, drinking coffee, reading anodyne hand-outs from the Foreign Ministry Press Bureau and wondering what all the fuss was about. Well, on Monday the twentieth of July, I found out.

  ‘I’d got back to my hotel the previous evening to find a note waiting for me. It was from Colonel Alexander B
rosch von Aarenau, the former head of Franz Ferdinand’s military chancellery. I’d first made his acquaintance during the Bosnian annexation crisis in 1908. He was the Archduke’s most loyal and perceptive adviser – even after leaving his chancellery. Together, they’d drawn up far-reaching plans to reform the Empire when Franz Josef died. Brosch had all the tact and subtlety Franz Ferdinand lacked. He was especially good at manipulating the press, at using hacks like me to fly kites for his master. But you couldn’t resent it. He was too much the gent for that. Besides, there was always the hope he’d drop some gem into your lap. So, a note from Brosch wasn’t to be ignored. This one was an urgent scrawl asking to meet me on one of the bridges over the Danube Canal at midnight. It was completely out of character. You might find Brosch smoking a cigar and strolling around the Belvedere Palace at three in the afternoon. But skulking on bridges at midnight? Never. Or so I’d have said. But the summons was there, in his own hand. So, puzzled as I was, I went.

  ‘He was waiting for me when I arrived, wearing mufti and looking, well, if not furtive, then certainly cautious. I’d not seen him since the funeral. He’d been more obviously upset than most of the other mourners, as you’d expect, but now … there was something more than grief troubling him. His manner was … strange, disturbing. But he wanted to talk, so, like a good reporter, I listened. He led me on a circuitous route towards St Stephen’s Cathedral, using narrow empty streets I hardly knew. Even so, he kept looking over his shoulder, as if he was afraid we were being followed. At first, I thought he was being ridiculously suspicious. But only at first. Soon, I was looking over my shoulder too.