A Matter of Loyalty

by Anselm Audley

  ‘Of course, Sir Bernard.’

  Sir Bernard bore them over to the quiet corner where all the high-backed officers’ chairs had been stacked. ‘We shan’t be bothered. One advantage of everyone knowing what’s really going on up at Thorn Hall.’

  ‘What can I do for you, Sir Bernard?’ said Hugo.

  ‘Oh, don’t be so damn stiff about this business with Dr Bárándy, Hawksworth, just rather a messy business up at Headquarters. Can’t think what they were doing, but there you are, they propose and we dispose.’

  Sir Bernard was fond of that phrase, particularly when attempting to palm off responsibility for an unpopular decision on to his superiors in London. Everyone at the Hall knew he still cherished hopes of promotion to the Chief’s job. Thorn Hall might be the graveyard of the Service, but in Sir Bernard’s view, he’d demonstrated his credentials for running a considerable establishment.

  ‘Curious thing Dr Oldcastle said to me earlier, in light of this business with Saul Ingham. Thought you should hear it.’

  Oldcastle and Sir Bernard might be two peas in a pod in terms of character, but there was no denying that Oldcastle had rather more style. Away from the relentless presence of Jarrett, Hugo had no trouble imagining this man as guest of honour at a conference, or mingling with the great and the good. There was a certain patrician air to him which Sir Bernard, for all his efforts, had never managed to cultivate.

  ‘Sir Bernard has brought me up to date on the progress of your investigation,’ said Oldcastle, ‘and it jogged my memory. I’ve heard Ingham’s name before. Wasn’t he here over Christmas?’

  ‘He was,’ said Hugo.

  ‘That’s the curious thing. Foxley doesn’t do much over Christmas and the New Year, too many people want to take holidays at the same time. I can’t say I blame them, it’s a miserable place to be in the winter. Now when we came back, Bruno was in a good mood. As I said, he wasn’t always the easiest man to work with.’

  He rubbed the back of his neck with his hand.

  ‘It’s this stoop of mine, gets painful as you get older. Where was I?’

  ‘Rothesay’s good mood,’ Sir Bernard prompted.

  ‘Yes. He even had an amiable chat with my secretary Miss Fitzgibbon on the subject of Italian feuds and quarrels. It seems – and I’m afraid this won’t exactly cast Dr Rothesay in the best light – that he had encountered an old enemy in Selchester, and was pleased to find him desperate and down at heel.’

  Sir Bernard frowned. ‘Sounds more like a mafioso than a respectable British scientist.’

  Hugo had dealt with a number of mafiosi in Southern Italy during the war, and found most of them more congenial company than Sir Bernard. It was a fair comparison, although a bona fide mafioso would have made sure to riddle his enemy with bullets before going on his way. Just to make absolutely sure his fortunes didn’t change for the better.

  ‘And this was Saul Ingham?’ Hugo asked.

  ‘He mentioned the name to me later that day, when I suggested that this wasn’t exactly the scientific spirit. I didn’t pursue the matter, and there was no reason to remember the name.’

  ‘What did he say?’ Hugo asked out of curiosity. He wasn’t the only curious one, either. People were casting interested glances at the three of them from across the room, quite certain that Important Government Business was being discussed right before their eyes. At least no one was trying to edge closer. Good manners prevailed that far.

  ‘When?’

  ‘When you took him to task about the scientific spirit.’

  Oldcastle gave the faintest of smiles. ‘He said it was the human spirit, never mind the scientific spirit.’

  ‘And you never found out what had caused their enmity?’

  ‘No. Although I shouldn’t wonder if it were a woman. Quite the Lothario, Bruno was.’

  ‘I shall have Jarrett informed of all this in the morning,’ said Sir Bernard. ‘Of course, he’ll want to take statements, but it does look as if the two of you might be on to something with this Ingham fellow. Who knows, if he does turn out to be responsible, perhaps Jarrett was on the right track with Rothesay being a sleeper agent after all. We could have this settled by the end of the week.’

  Sir Bernard was positively beaming at the prospect, and Hugo couldn’t entirely blame him. Jarrett had been over at the Hall briefly, banging doors and leaving chaos in his wake.

  ‘I should very much like to know who tipped the police off about Ingham,’ said Hugo. ‘A quarrel between him and Dr Rothesay is one thing, but we’re left with a third party who doesn’t wish to reveal themselves, hardly above board.’

  Sir Bernard harrumphed. ‘Plenty of reasons for a source to remain anonymous, you should be used to that. Well, I’ve done my bit, and with luck so has Dr Oldcastle. Got to be off. My wife will be waiting to hear the latest on the play. Laid up with a twisted ankle, or else she’d be here herself.’

  Hugo watched them go, vaguely uneasy. Freya threaded her way through the gossiping throng to join him.

  ‘What did Sir Bernard have to offer?’

  ‘The easy answer,’ said Hugo.

  ‘My aunt says that’s why they parked him here.’

  ‘Which aunt? Lady Priscilla, I presume.’

  Lady Priscilla was married to a well-connected MP who sat on the relevant committees in the House. She’d know the low-down on Sir Bernard if anyone did, although she wasn’t above trying to sit on inconvenient secrets herself when it suited her. She’d done her utmost to block Freya’s investigation into Gus’s parentage.

  ‘Indeed. Priscilla only really pays attention to the country round here and her Catholic goings-on, but in those circles, there’s nothing she doesn’t know about. Aunt Hermione – Lady Selchester as was – never wanted anything to do with that world while she lived here, although I dare say she knew a few of Selchester’s secrets just the same. Self-preservation, you might call it, to have some cards up your sleeve when you’re married to a man like that. No wonder she took herself off to Canada.’

  The easy answer. Perhaps that was the malaise the Chief had sensed at Thorn Hall. A man who always took the path of least resistance, in charge of one of the Service’s most important – if least well-regarded – departments. A lot could slip through the cracks with someone like Sir Bernard in charge.

  Freya glanced across the room. ‘Heavens, we’d better rescue Gus. He’s been cornered by Mrs Baxter, wants to bend his ear about how an earl ought to behave. He’ll be eternally grateful if we can whisk him off.’

  Scene 9

  At the Castle, Polly and Georgia had taken Árpád on their very own tour. It was based on a mixture of recollections, things Freya had told them, things which had happened – including two murders – and pieces of a nineteenth-century book on the Castle Polly had found in the library.

  Georgia was little impressed. ‘Terrifically dull when he talks about the state rooms and so on, not too bad when he gets to the people. You can see why Freya wanted to write a history, if that’s what she’s really writing.’

  Polly, possessed of a more scientific mind, said, ‘Why hasn’t she got it with her in her tower?’

  ‘I suppose there are lots of copies. Maybe your ancestors bought up the whole print run, so no one would know all their dark deeds.’

  ‘If I were full of dark deeds, I’d want everybody to know, then they’d be afraid of me. Didn’t someone classical say it was better to be feared than loved?’

  Árpád had been more than game when they had suggested the tour, even though night had fallen long since, and some of the finer points would perhaps have been better appreciated in daylight. They had trekked all the way around the West Lawn, following the line of the old curtain walls above the valley.

  ‘There’s the Old Tower,’ said Polly, pointing at a dim shape in the darkness, visible mostly for the outline it made against the moon. A chill wind was whipping at their heels, blowing leaves around the old inner bailey, and their coats flapped around them.
Ben was keeping a discreet eye from a distance, at Mrs Partridge’s request.

  ‘Can’t say as I’d want to go outside on a night like this, but they’re bent on it, and who knows what foreigners like to do with their spare time. Just keep an eye on them, make sure they don’t go anywhere they shouldn’t.’

  She had managed to catch Árpád away from the two girls for a moment, and given him his instructions. ‘Now don’t let them get carried away. They’ll neither of them be the first to admit to being cold, so you make sure they come in when they ought. Heaven knows there are enough rooms to see inside without venturing out in such a chill.’

  Árpád promised to guard them with his life, and once again complimented Mrs Partridge on her cooking, which she took in very good form. She would never have admitted it even to Freya, but she was rather pleased to have so interesting and charming a foreigner to stay. Even if he didn’t have a ration book.

  ‘The Old Tower is where Miss Freya works?’

  ‘No, that’s the New Tower, over there,’ said Georgia, pointing at a closer and somewhat less tumbledown bulk. ‘That was built in Richard III’s time. The Old Tower is from sometime in the Middle Ages.’

  ‘Henry III,’ said Polly smugly.

  ‘Who wants to remember anything about Henry III?’ said Georgia airily. ‘Even Miss Ormskirk didn’t. She just went on about Simon de Montfort and Parliament until we were all glad to get to Edward Longshanks hammering the Scots. His own subjects probably forgot he existed, and that’s why they were building towers all the time and throwing peasants into dungeons. Might is Right and Heft is Beft.’

  ‘It’s best not beft. They just couldn’t draw ‘s’s properly in the olden days.’

  ‘It doesn’t rhyme if it’s an ‘s’. Hullo, what’s that?’

  They were far enough from the main Castle to be able to see over the rooftops, towards Pagan Hill.

  ‘What’s what?’

  ‘Those lights on Pagan Hill.’

  Polly peered through her thick glasses. ‘I can’t see anything.’

  Árpád, blessed with perfect eyesight, was quick to see it. ‘Yes, there is a flickering, behind trees perhaps? Not quite at the top.’

  ‘There’s a grove of trees at the top,’ said Georgia. ‘And a barrow.’

  Árpád was puzzled. ‘A barrow. Like a wheelbarrow?’

  ‘No, a tomb. A mound, with a pagan king inside and all his gold. Probably human sacrifices underneath, to haunt it for all eternity.’

  ‘There’s no gold there,’ said Polly. ‘It’s a Bronze Age chambered barrow. The book talks about it.’

  ‘It’s still haunted, there are all sorts of stories about it. Even Bobby Sackbut won’t go there at night.’ Bobby Sackbut was Selchester’s chief tearaway.

  They watched the lights flickering back and forth between the trees until Árpád noticed Georgia was beginning to shiver.

  ‘I think we have seen enough of the outside in the dark,’ he said. ‘I should like to see it in the daylight.’

  ‘You’ll have to wait till the weekend,’ said Polly practically. ‘Or Freya can show you. But she won’t tell you all the interesting bits.’

  As they came back past the gatehouse, a white shape swooped overhead.

  ‘See,’ said Georgia. ‘I told you there were owls in the Castle. Only you have to be outside when it’s dark, or you won’t see them.’

  Polly stared curiously after the owl. ‘Where do they live?’

  ‘Somewhere up on the rooftops above the Long Gallery, Ben says. There’re all sorts of closed attics and things up there, it’s a real hodgepodge. Magnus probably goes up there to pass the time of day with them, have a good moan about the quality of mice these days.’

  ‘Austerity mice,’ said Polly, who hadn’t quite forgiven her father for bringing her to a country still recovering from sugar rationing. She liked her creature comforts. ‘Thin starved creatures.’

  ‘They can’t be too thin and starved. Look at the size of Magnus.’

  They came back into the warmth and light of the Castle, where Mrs Partridge gave Árpád an approving look.

  ‘Twenty minutes, girls, then it’s bedtime. You can show Dr Bárándy the rest of the Castle another night, when you don’t have school in the morning.’

  ‘We always have school in the morning,’ Georgia muttered. ‘I bet they’d put school on Sunday if they could get away with it.’

  ‘What was that?’ Mrs Partridge asked.

  ‘Nothing,’ said Georgia. ‘Come on, let’s go up to the Long Gallery, that’s the best bit of the Castle. He hasn’t seen all the portraits yet.’

  The Long Gallery ran the whole width of the Castle, a great echoing Jacobean room with acres of leaded glass, five huge fireplaces, and an array of formidable Selchester ancestors. At night, uncurtained, it was full of stern faces and dim immensity.

  ‘For what did they use such a room?’ Árpád asked as he wandered along the row of portraits. ‘It was not surely for receiving the guests, up all those stairs?’

  ‘They used it for exercise on rainy days,’ said Polly knowledgeably. ‘Much better than taking a turn about the room like the people in Jane Austen. Up and down, up and down, you could walk a mile in here. Terrific views, too. There’s a priest hole somewhere, only we’ve never found it.’

  Árpád frowned, not understanding the word.

  ‘A tiny little cupboard,’ said Polly, ‘where priests hid when the Protestants were looking for them. With a secret entrance, all concealed in the panels or something. They had to spend days and days there, sometimes they couldn’t even stand up.’

  ‘We use the Long Gallery for skittles,’ said Georgia, anxious not to hear any more talk of small enclosed spaces. ‘Not much else it’s good for now. Only the floor isn’t level, so you have to practise. See what happens if you just let fly.’ She took one of the skittle balls and rolled it along the wide oak floorboards. It veered around in a curve before banging into a vast iron grate. ‘I bet Polly’s ancestors used to torment their visitors like that,’ she added with a sideways glance.

  ‘Only when they were young,’ said Polly smugly. ‘After that they were too busy enduring terrible things for the Faith. Look, there are the Headless Earls. Fourth, fifth, and seventh, all beheaded by the Tudors. And there’s the seventh Earl’s brother, who was a Jesuit.’

  ‘Full of casuistry,’ said Georgia, ‘and plots.’

  ‘I don’t believe you know what casuistry is,’ said Polly belligerently.

  ‘What about the sixth Earl?’ Árpád asked, to head off an argument.

  ‘He died in the Tower before they could top him,’ said Georgia. ‘Did away with himself, the inquiry said, but how can anyone suffocate themselves under their own pillow?’

  ‘Men do not change,’ said Árpád softly.

  Polly caught a distant look in his eyes and thought it best to change the subject. ‘Come on, let’s show him the Methuselah Earl.’

  They clattered along the floor, via the Stuart Earls and the missing ninth Countess – appropriated by Freya for her study – to a bewigged ancient who resembled nothing so much as a vulture, his eyes bright with avarice. Behind him was a glass cabinet full of skeletons, and below the portrait the legend Theophilus Fitzwarin, Eleventh Earl, 1689–1788.

  ‘Supposedly they’re there because he fancied himself an anatomist,’ Georgia said. ‘Actually, they’re all the people he outlived. Sons, grandsons, wives, enemies. There’s a chest full of gold, too, packed with his ill-gotten gains, but it’s too faded to see in the dark. He was the one who restored the family fortunes after his pa frittered everything away on horses and mistresses in Charles II’s time.’

  ‘You know a great deal of this history,’ said Árpád.

  ‘That’s because it’s far more interesting than anything at school,’ Georgia said. ‘Freya knows all the stories. I suppose she needs to for that history she claims to be writing.’

  Wednesday

  Scene 1

&nb
sp; Hugo was off to Thorn Hall as soon as it opened, but even then he found the insufferably efficient Jarrett had been a step ahead of him.

  ‘A file on Mr Ingham?’ said Mrs Clutton. ‘We do have one, but Inspector Jarrett has already requested it.’

  Damn the man. ‘Has it been taken over to him yet?’

  ‘No, Susie’s fishing it out.’

  ‘Could I perhaps have a few moments to look through it before it goes?’

  She gave him a shrewd look. Mrs Clutton was no fool. In fact, she could probably have run the whole operation far more competently than Sir Bernard. She also had no more love for Jarrett than anyone else at Thorn Hall.

  ‘I might be able to do that. But you’ll owe Dick a little something.’

  Dick was the Hall’s long-suffering messenger, who had made his opinion of the incomer quite plain after being reproved for a short delay in bringing over some other materials.

  ‘No gentleman, he is, for all his hoity-toity ways. Belongs in one of they Russki uniforms. They’re welcome to him.’

  ‘Look on the bright side,’ said Amos, who ran the post room. ‘Now he’s got a suspect, he’ll be out of here in the blink of an eye. His type doesn’t hang around.’

  ‘We’ll owe Dick a week’s convalescent leave, if this goes on much longer,’ Hugo said. ‘Do we have anything separate on Alice Rothesay, or is it all on her husband’s file?’

  ‘Nothing more, Mr Hawksworth. If we had separate files for everyone, we’d need the Castle to store it all, and you’d be out on your ear. Ah, here’s Susie with your file. Be quick, mind you.’

  Hugo retreated to his office with the precious folder.

  There wasn’t much in it. The Service only had a file on Saul because he’d been assigned to a special unit towards the end of the war, rounding up German scientists before the Russians could get their hands on them.

  As to why he’d been chosen for that, it was obvious at once. He’d worked behind enemy lines in Greece and North Africa, then with the partisans in Yugoslavia. Several citations and as many reprimands. Not a man who thrived in a strict hierarchy. Here was a note from a commanding officer early in the war. Prone to minor disciplinary infractions, some quarrels, an argument with a colonel. A personal observation: Lieutenant Ingham has decided opinions about the competence of some of his superiors, and has yet to learn to keep those opinions to himself. Ouch. He’d seemed destined for a military prison until a more sympathetic CO had seen him in his element during the evacuation of Crete, passed his name to a friend looking for oddballs and misfits.