‘I can’t say as Mr Hawksworth looked pleased to hear from her. Looked as if he’d lost a pound and found sixpence. Didn’t get a word in edgeways, neither. I wonder whether she’s a high-society girl?’
‘I wonder nothing of the sort,’ said Mrs Partridge. ‘London ways may not be our ways, but there’s no call to let your imagination run away with you. I imagine she’s very much the same sort of person as Lady Sonia.’
‘I don’t like Lady Sonia,’ said Pam, ‘and nor do you, it’s no use pretending. I heard you talking to Pa back when we all thought she’d get the Castle.’
‘There you go eavesdropping again. Those as listens in will hear no good of themselves,’ said Mrs Partridge. ‘Now, help me with this sponge cake.’
In the dining room, Hugo took his place again.
‘You look glum. What did she want?’ Georgia asked.
‘Since you ask, she’s going to a christening nearby on Saturday, and wants me to go along.’
‘Do we get to meet her?’ Polly asked.
‘I doubt it,’ said Hugo.
‘She doesn’t like me,’ said Georgia. ‘And she’s only coming to the christening to keep an eye on Hugo. You have to pry her out of London with a crowbar normally. Catch her coming down here without an ulterior motive.’
‘Georgia!’ said Hugo, needled too far. ‘Enough of this! Be quiet or go to your room.’
Georgia’s face took on a mulish expression, one both Leo and Freya knew all too well. ‘Since I’m not welcome here, I shall. You know perfectly well I’m right, but you don’t want to admit it.’ She stalked from the room, still making sure to push her chair in before she did. They heard her voice in Grace Hall. ‘Come on, Magnus, you can keep me company.’
‘I’m sorry about that,’ said Hugo, after a moment’s silence. ‘Dr Bárándy, how did you get on with Lady Priscilla?’
Scene 6
‘I didn’t handle that well,’ Hugo said to Gus and Leo later, when Polly had gone off to bed. Freya and Árpád had taken torches and ventured out to the stables with Ben, making things ready for Pompey’s arrival in the morning. Freya had mentioned moving Last Hurrah to a different stall, where he wouldn’t even be able to see the other horse.
Gus gave him a sympathetic look. ‘It’s a hard thing, bringing up a girl on your own. When Anne died, I was quite out of my depth. You expect to have someone with you the whole way, and then suddenly you don’t. You have to learn to do everything the other person did without even thinking, and you know you’ll never be as good. It must be even harder for you, coming fresh to it, and with a sister instead of a daughter.’
‘Does that make such a difference?’ Hugo asked, wondering what he should have done instead.
‘You don’t have quite the same authority,’ Leo said. ‘Until last year, you were a distant presence to her. Now you’re her guardian. She’s not used to thinking of you in that way. And, rightly or wrongly, she sees Valerie as a threat to her.’
There was no mistaking his uncle’s message in those last few words, but it wasn’t a conversation to have now.
Gus, sensing as much, pushed his chair back. ‘The fire is burning down, and there seems little point in stoking it. Shall we decamp to the Drawing Room?’
‘You gentlemen go ahead,’ said Leo. ‘I shall venture up to see Georgia first.’
Gus said, ‘I think Freya was going there after she’d seen to the stables.’
‘Then I shall wait for her to return. Three would be a crowd in a situation like this.’
Scene 7
Freya had indeed gone to see Georgia, knocking softly on her door.
‘Who is it?’ a suspicious voice demanded.
‘Just me,’ said Freya.
‘Oh, it’s you,’ she said. ‘You can come in.’
Georgia was curled up in the chair in her room with Magnus on her lap, rather disconsolately flicking through a book of science-fiction stories.
‘I was afraid it would be Hugo, come to lecture me on how I shouldn’t be nasty about Valerie, as if he weren’t avoiding her himself. He knows if he actually sees her, she’ll just turn on the charm and he’ll remember why he likes her.’
Freya sat down on the end of the bed, there being only the one chair.
Georgia gave her a sideways look. ‘Are you going to lecture me too?’
‘It’s not my place,’ said Freya.
‘Good. Why does she have to pop up again? Everything’s all right now. Horrible Sonia can’t sell the Castle to the developers, and Gus isn’t going to turn us out because he and Polly would rather live in Lady Matilda’s wing, and it’s all settled for once. I like it here. She’s up to something, I know she is. She wants Hugo, and she’ll vamp him until he agrees to leave the Service and move to London and become something dull, and then she’ll send me off to some ghastly school where the windows always have to be open three inches and the games mistresses look at you in the showers, and it’ll all be vile again, just like Yorkshire Ladies’.’
Freya had endured a full course at Yorkshire Ladies’ College in the thirties, and was inclined to agree. She’d been bitterly envious of Perdita Richardson when her grandfather pulled her out to go to a London music school. How blissful to be able to leave it all behind at the end of the day.
‘You know exactly what I mean,’ Georgia added. She was working herself up into a right old state. ‘She was pleased when he was shot, it meant he wouldn’t want to stay in the Service.’
‘I very much doubt she was pleased.’
‘She was,’ said Georgia, scowling. ‘People in the Service have to pretend to be minor diplomats and shipping agents and suchlike . . .’
‘Statisticians.’
Georgia’s scowl softened ever so slightly. She ran a finger along Magnus’s head, and he opened a yellow eye as if to say, Why are you disturbing me?
‘And statisticians. They get sent off to odd places to do odd things, they’re not really respectable. Valerie can never say he works at such-and-such a place, get everyone nodding approvingly. She’d have to pretend he’s nobody very important, and she doesn’t like that sort of pretending. Which is odd, because she’s so good at pretending to have his best interests at heart. Don’t try to say nice things about her. You haven’t met her, so I shall know they’re all lies.’
‘I don’t have anything to say.’
Georgia stared broodingly out of the window. She hadn’t troubled to close the curtains before she sat down, perhaps preferring to gaze out into black night. Freya got up and pulled them to. No point letting all the heat out.
‘I wish he’d marry you,’ Georgia said. ‘There, I’ve said it.’
Freya was glad she’d been closing the curtains at the precise moment Georgia said that. She moved on to pull the other set closed. ‘Things aren’t so neat.’
‘Well, they ought to be!’
‘Would you have Hugo order the whole of the rest of his life to make the next few years easier for you? In five years, you’ll be off to make your fortune, university or a job or some such. The world will be your oyster.’
‘The world won’t be Hugo’s oyster if he’s married to Valerie. Or mine while I’m immured in some hideous boarding school. I like it here. I like the Castle, and Selchester, and you, and Daisy, and Mrs Partridge, and Polly. Even if she’s full of peculiar Popish notions.’
‘You didn’t like Polly when she came.’
‘Perhaps I didn’t,’ said Georgia grudgingly, ‘but that was when she was here to throw us out of house and home. Don’t tell me you wanted to leave the Castle.’
‘I didn’t,’ Freya admitted. ‘But I’ve had seven years here, more than I ever expected.’
‘Exactly. Seven years. You like it here. You don’t even want to go off to London where it’s exciting, let alone be pushed from pillar to post all the time. If Valerie tries to make me go anywhere, I shall claim sanctuary in the Cathedral. Cling to the altar.’
‘I don’t believe you can still do that,’
said Freya.
‘Pity. Maybe I shall be like Luther, nail my petition to the Cathedral door. Here I stand, I can do no other. Miss Ormskirk told us all about him.’
Georgia was beginning to relax, although her face was still full of wary tension. Too much imagination, that was the trouble, spinning a few casual words into a catastrophe. That, and a childhood torn apart by German bombs. She wanted permanence and security, and what was wrong with that?
Freya squinted at Georgia’s book with its lurid cover. She could hardly talk, look at all those buxom wenches on the covers of her Rosina Wyndham novels. Isaac Asimov, Foundation and Empire. ‘I haven’t seen that one before. Where did it come from?’
‘Árpád bácsi lent it to me. He likes science fiction. Hugo’s people bought some for him while he was in his safe house. I bet that annoys the bean counters back in London. A semi-detached house in Metroland, check. Agents around the clock, check. A dozen listening devices, check. Two works of speculative fiction – oh dear, we can’t have that. Did you know he’s met Asimov? It must be strange to meet a famous author.’ A distinctly sidelong glance. What was Georgia implying?
‘Really, Georgia, you do have the oddest notions.’
Georgia looked down at her book again. ‘Mmmm,’ she said.
Scene 8
It was much later. Hugo and Freya took Leo up to the sitting room which had been the late Lord Selchester’s, well away from listening ears of any kind. Árpád showed them in, rather lost in the vastness of the room. Thick crimson drapes covered the tall windows, and a fire kept the cold at bay.
Freya carefully closed the door behind them.
‘I thought, as Father Leo is a colleague of sorts, you might like some time when you could be a physicist again,’ said Hugo, who knew too well the sort of strain which built up from day after day of pretending to be something or someone you weren’t.
‘Ah, this is thoughtful of you. But would your charming Miss Godwin not think amiss of this? She is quite a character, no – a breath of fresh air in your musty Hall? She thinks highly of you.’
‘Both Freya and Leo have signed the Official Secrets Act,’ said Hugo, ‘which is to say that, should you let anything slip, neither of them will breathe a word about it to anyone else.’
‘Quite the family business, I see,’ said Árpád to Leo. ‘You will not remember me, but I once went to a talk you gave. There are not so many priests in our profession that I could forget you.’
‘I thought I’d seen you before,’ said Leo. ‘Where would it have been? I’ve only been to the United States once, for a colloquium at Yale in 1938, and then to see some colleagues at Princeton.’
‘Yes, it would have been there,’ said Árpád. ‘I was visiting von Neumann . . .’
‘We’ll leave you to it,’ said Hugo, sensing a torrent of physics on the tip of Árpád’s tongue.
Leo raised a hand. ‘A moment, Dr Bárándy, before we lose ourselves in shop talk. Hugo has a dilemma. A man has been murdered, a scientist at the Atomic, and the police have arrested a man who may be innocent.’
‘And, of course, this is something you can change.’
‘I should like to,’ said Hugo.
‘I do not need to tell you how lucky you are. Miss Godwin tells me you have been in Eastern Europe yourself recently. You have seen with your own eyes what passes for justice under Soviet rule.’
This Harriet Godwin seemed to talk about Hugo a great deal.
‘Did you know Dr Rothesay?’ Hugo asked. ‘He was the victim.’
‘I did not know Dr Rothesay,’ said Árpád. ‘Yes, I knew what happened. I have heard his name on the radio.’
‘Dr Wood, Dr Vane or Dr Oldcastle?’ Hugo asked.
‘Ah, now perhaps I can help you. I do not know a Dr Wood. Dr Vane I have met perhaps twice, he is a very colourless man. Dr Oldcastle I know, but surely he is, how would you say it, a grand pooh-bah by now, with a knighthood and an important post in Government?’
‘You knew him?’ said Hugo.
‘Yes, in America, and also here. I knew his type at once. In every country they are the same. They are the men who like to run things, who become provosts and presidents and heads of institutes, who always know the proper way of doing things. Perhaps they are not the best scientists, but they are the best at talking to ministers, at playing the games of committees, at getting funds. They help those of their colleagues who are, perhaps, not so good at all these things.’ He looked at Leo. ‘Such as Paul Dirac. You perhaps have met him?’
Leo gave a faint smile. ‘I have indeed. So, Oldcastle is the sort of man who becomes master of his college and leaves the lab behind.’
‘A courtier,’ said Freya. ‘An accumulator of offices and patronage.’
Freya had put her finger on it. Oldcastle was a courtier, smooth and assured, quite out of place in the spartan surroundings of Foxley. One might have said the same thing about Philip Sidney or Walter Raleigh, though, meeting them on a Flemish redoubt or a remote South American shore.
‘He is here in Selchester?’ Árpád asked.
‘He oversees part of the operations at the Foxley facility,’ said Hugo.
‘Foxley is near Selchester?’ Árpád said, surprised. ‘Ah, perhaps this is why they have brought me here. I told them, even in Siberia we had heard of Foxley: this is where the British nearly came to grief. We must be careful not to repeat their mistake.’
‘I shan’t ask,’ said Leo. ‘If you think of anything more about any of these men, let Hugo know.’
‘To help an innocent man, I shall do nothing less.’
Hugo and Freya took their leave, closing the door behind them. The passageway beyond was dark, only a dim light shining through from the passage to Grace Hall.
‘Was Leo chivvying us out just then?’ Freya asked.
‘Yes. Árpád mustn’t realise that no one here knows about the incident. He’s a clever man, used to surviving in a brutal regime: he’ll put two and two together.’
Freya thought for a moment. ‘That’s how you know there’s a leak. Something happened at Foxley. The Soviets knew, and because of Árpád we know they knew.’
She was disconcertingly quick, and he was on dangerous ground even having let her know about it. At least Árpád was confused, thought the accident had happened at Foxley rather than Ulfsgill. Hugo had to keep Freya thinking that, a necessary deception but not a pleasant one.
Freya noticed his discomfort though not its cause, drew him to a stop inside the archway. ‘As you said yourself, I shan’t breathe a word. But I don’t like the thought of Saul being blamed for something he hasn’t done.’
She had herself been accused of complicity in a murder, although for her there would have been no consequences except to her reputation. The man she was supposed to have abetted was dead, there was minimal evidence and no prospect of a trial. For Saul, accused of a cold-blooded murder in the full glare of publicity, a conviction would mean the gallows. She didn’t know him that well, but a life was a life.
‘I don’t intend to let him,’ said Hugo. ‘But it may be that I shall need your help and Leo’s. Talking to people from outside the Service is a murky business in a case like this.’
‘Not as murky as you might think,’ she said. ‘Saul has nothing to do with the Atomic, aside from this past connection with Bruno. Leo and I can’t go delving around in classified material, but there’s nothing classified about Saul. Is there?’
Hugo shook his head. ‘Nothing we haven’t learned through acquaintance. Certainly no Communist connections, if that’s what you’re wondering.’
‘The oddest people can have Communist connections,’ said Freya, thinking of someone they’d both known, the last person she’d have expected to be involved in such things.
‘A good point.’
‘So there’s no reason Leo and I can’t see what we can unearth about Saul while you carry on with whatever you’re doing.’
‘I should also like to know,’ Hugo added, ‘a
little more about the private lives of these various Foxley types I’ve been interviewing. It’s hard to build a rounded picture of someone’s character while Jarrett is giving them the once-over. I must say, I had a certain admiration for the way Alice Rothesay stood up to him, but I’m no closer to fathoming her character than I was before.’
‘Leave it to us,’ Freya said. ‘And if I were you, I’d take another look at that accident of yours. If it eluded the Selchester gossip machine, it must be quite something.’
Thursday
Scene 1
It was an angry, defiant Saul Ingham who sat across the table in the police station. Hugo had brought Leo in to hand over Thomas Marston’s evidence – damning, true, but evidence was evidence. Jarrett, thankfully, was out at Foxley, so Hugo was joined only by MacLeod. The room was as bare and depressing as such places always were, the busy chatter of the station a distant hum on the other side of the door.
Leo’s notes on his conversation with Thomas Marston lay open on the table.
‘“Didn’t have much to do with him”, Mr Ingham,’ said MacLeod. ‘Those were your exact words.’
‘He was a pest,’ said Saul. ‘No, I didn’t have much to do with him.’
‘What about the duel you fought with him in Wytham Woods, Mr Ingham? Does that count as “not much to do with him” too?’
Saul began to speak, then bit the words off.
‘If you wanted us to believe you, Mr Ingham, you should have told us this on Tuesday.’
‘What was I supposed to say? You’d have damned me the moment the words left my mouth.’
‘May I take it this account is true?’
‘If you mean, did I fight with him, yes I did. He thought his degrees made him better than the likes of me. Supercilious, that’s what he was.’
‘Did you mean to kill him?’
‘Good God, no. Just thrash him in a fair fight. Teach him he was flesh and blood, same as the rest of us. If you think I’d kill a man over something like that, you need your heads examining, both of you.’
A Matter of Loyalty Page 13