A Matter of Loyalty

by Anselm Audley

  Sonia, rather at a loss for words, waited for the click of the lock. ‘I don’t know that I like him after all,’ she said.

  ‘Nonsense,’ said Freya, rather pleased to have discovered a chink in her cousin’s armour. ‘You get your own way far too much.’

  ‘That’s the point of life.’

  ‘Thus speaks your father.’

  Silence again, then Sonia’s voice, languid once again. ‘This is turning into a distinctly disagreeable day.’

  ‘You’ll get over it.’

  ‘I hear Valerie is coming down,’ said Sonia, not at all liking to be at a disadvantage. ‘She bears an offer for Hugo Hawksworth, one he’ll be a fool to refuse. Cheerio!’

  Scene 4

  ‘I think half of Selchester must be here,’ said Georgia, looking around at the packed Masonic Hall. ‘We should have been earlier.’

  ‘Mr Dillon promised he’d save us some seats,’ said Gus, scanning the room. ‘I must say, I can’t imagine you’d fill a hall in rural New England for a lecture like this.’

  ‘Pure nosiness,’ said Freya, who had been summarily bundled into Gus’s car by Polly and Georgia. They were planning a hike up to Pagan Hill over the weekend, and wanted to know what stories there were about it. ‘Everyone wants to know what this pair have been up to.’

  ‘We do indeed,’ said Richard, the other Daff. ‘Jamie says they had another terrible fight this afternoon.’

  ‘Look, there’s Mr Dillon,’ said Polly. ‘Right at the front. With a whole lot of seats reserved. There’s Daisy.’

  ‘I don’t want to be right at the front,’ said Georgia. ‘People can see you. They notice when you whisper.’

  ‘Guilty conscience,’ said Polly. ‘I’m on the end.’

  ‘No, you’re not.’

  They dived off into the throng.

  ‘Was it a good idea to bring them?’ Gus said.

  ‘Oh, they’ll love it,’ said Richard. ‘They’re just curious. We all are. Not on your level, of course. I imagine you could floor them with learned questions about Greek poets if you wanted, but we’re all dying to see whether they believed a word of those ridiculous stories.’

  ‘Are they scholars?’ Hugo asked, catching the end of the conversation as he came in with Leo and Árpád.

  ‘I hear he taught at one of the newer universities in the thirties – anthropology, I believe. Didn’t like the rigidity of conventional academic study, he says. I dare say he’s a Swedenborgian or some such, full of strange notions about the deep psychic wisdom of mankind. He’s over there, by the stage.’

  Interested, Árpád craned over the sea of heads. ‘But he is the man I saw yesterday, when I was riding.’

  ‘Tramping about the countryside?’

  ‘He was walking, I was lost. I asked directions. He was curious about Hungary and the East, I think perhaps he was a fellow traveller once. There were many such in America when I was there, in the universities.’

  ‘Fewer now,’ said Gus. ‘They’ve seen too much and lost their illusions, or else they’re afraid of Senator McCarthy and his mob.’

  ‘Such a terrible man,’ said Richard. ‘It quite makes me shudder to hear what he’s up to, like something out of the Inquisition. Although by all accounts this Special Branch man is no better. It must be so hard for you, Mr Hawksworth.’

  Hugo said nothing, which Richard quite rightly took for assent.

  ‘I shan’t pry,’ he said. ‘I only hope he takes his disagreeable self back to London post-haste.’

  Mr Fortescue called them to their seats, the loud hubbub dying to a subdued mutter. He was a beanpole of a man in a pin-striped suit, a Mason and pillar of the local history society.

  ‘I’m pleased to see such a turnout for tonight’s Historical Society meeting,’ he began.

  ‘Do you think he knows we’re all just here for the gossip?’ Georgia whispered to Polly.

  Mr Fortescue shot her a quelling look. Georgia folded her arms defiantly.

  ‘Good evening to you all. I’m very pleased to be able to welcome recent Selcastrian Mr Jeremy Pearson, who’s been doing some research on local folklore and stories with the help of his wife. Mr Pearson was formerly a lecturer at the University of Reading, where he taught in the anthropology department.’

  ‘“With the help of his wife”,’ Daisy whispered to Georgia. ‘Bet Mr Fortescue thinks she’s just part of the furniture.’

  ‘Mr Pearson has travelled extensively in Britain and on the Continent, gathering stories from a number of different traditions. Tonight, he will talk to us about his researches in the Selchester area, and compare his findings with those from other places. At the end, both he and his wife will answer any questions you may have about the content of his talk. Ladies and gentlemen, Mr Jeremy Pearson.’

  ‘Stuffy old stick,’ said Georgia, under cover of the applause. ‘Never uses one word where five will do.’

  ‘Ssh,’ said Freya.

  Scene 5

  Those who had come for the entertainment, she thought, would be sadly disappointed. If Mr Fortescue was wordy, Jeremy Pearson was verbose, meandering, and barely to the point. He did at least give his wife more credit than Mr Fortescue had allowed: everything was ‘we’. As far as Freya could judge, the Pearsons weren’t actually interested in the stories as stories, only as exemplars of types or evidence in support of their pet theory. As to exactly what that theory might be, she was still in the dark at the end, but it seemed to have something to do with the Stone Age.

  She hoped for more from the questions, perhaps Miranda would be more forthcoming. Gus was one of the first to put his hand up.

  ‘As a newcomer to Selchester myself, I’d like to hear more about the stories you’ve collected from around here. Are there any you haven’t encountered elsewhere on your travels? What were your favourites?’

  This question was met with a murmur of approval.

  It was Miranda who answered. ‘We were struck by the number of stories relating to Pagan Hill, it seems to have quite a reputation. Of course, we’ve encountered a great many places with barrows or chamber tombs, and frequently they’re the sort of places you’re advised not to go at night. But there aren’t usually so many stories about them.’

  Then they were straight off into types again, until – rather unwisely – Mr Fortescue allowed Georgia’s question. Perhaps he was keen to engage the younger audience.

  ‘Why is it all about types?’ she asked. ‘You’ve got all these stories about witches and the Hunt and fallen kings who walk at the dark of the moon. Why do you have to fit them into boxes? It makes them much less interesting.’

  ‘Ahem,’ Mr Fortescue said. Jeremy Pearson looked resigned.

  ‘You may be right,’ said Miranda. ‘Universities like us to think this way, it’s how scholarship is. Perhaps we don’t enjoy the stories enough.’

  ‘I shan’t go to university, if that’s what they teach,’ Georgia announced. There was a ripple of laughter. ‘I shall listen to the stories instead.’

  ‘Good for you,’ said Miranda. ‘Come and find me sometime, I’ll tell you some.’

  Scene 6

  It was a somewhat crestfallen audience who made their way down the stairs and out into the cold winter night.

  ‘Still feel the local farmers oughtn’t to be telling them tall tales?’ Freya asked Gus.

  ‘I had hoped they’d be paying more attention to the actual stories,’ he said. ‘It’s fascinating how epics like the Iliad and the Odyssey come to be passed down through the generations, but they didn’t touch on that. I suppose it’s not their focus.’

  Árpád was amused. ‘You have these people in England also. I thought they were only to be found in Communist universities, where the facts must fit the Party line, but no, also it seems anyone with a strange notion can take interesting things and make them wrong.’

  ‘It was bunk’ was Georgia’s take. ‘He was, anyway. Not sure about her.’

  ‘Universities aren’t at all like that re
ally,’ said Gus, perhaps worried that a future classicist might be lost to her calling. ‘When I was a student, I had to read Homer, Suetonius, Tacitus, all sorts of interesting things.’

  ‘In Latin and Greek?’

  ‘Of course.’

  Georgia looked doubtful.

  ‘There’s always Ovid and Catullus,’ Freya said.

  ‘I like Ovid. They won’t let us do Catullus, they say he’s immoral.’

  ‘I took a course on Latin lyric, too,’ said Gus. ‘Ovid, Catullus, Propertius.’

  ‘I won’t go to Mr Pearson’s university,’ Georgia decided. ‘Maybe to yours. Where did you go?’

  ‘I went to Boston College, it’s a Jesuit university.’

  ‘Hmm,’ Georgia said.

  ‘What did you think?’ Gus asked Leo. ‘I know it’s not your field, but you’ve been to plenty of lectures yourself.’

  ‘I think Georgia made the point as well as anyone could,’ said Leo. ‘They’ve lost touch with the real things. Rather sad, I think.’

  ‘Where’s Hugo?’ Freya said.

  Scene 7

  Hugo had taken the opportunity to catch Miranda Pearson alone. Her husband had been cornered by a retired RAF wing commander, who seemed to have a pet theory of his own and had sensed a golden opportunity to hold forth on it.

  ‘Mrs Pearson, could I have a moment?’

  ‘Of course, Mr Hawksworth.’

  ‘I hope your time in London was fruitful.’

  ‘Indeed, thank you for asking. What can I do for the Statistics Office? Do you have a mathematical query? I’m very much afraid I was never good with numbers.’ A glint in her eye told him she knew as well as anyone else what his real job was.

  ‘I wanted to ask you about Dr Rothesay.’

  ‘A nasty business, that. To think we let a murderer into our house over Christmas, it makes the blood run cold.’

  ‘That’s why I need to talk to you.’ Hugo drew her away from the throng a little. ‘According to Mr Ingham, Dr Rothesay came to Nightingale Cottage on December the twenty-eighth. He expected to find you.’

  ‘Are you asking in your official capacity as a statistician, or should I take this as a purely private conversation?’

  ‘You may take it in whatever light you wish, but you may have evidence crucial to the investigation, in which case I shall ask you to make a statement to the police.’

  ‘I’ve never had crucial evidence before. What would you like to know?’

  ‘Well, to begin with, what was the nature of your relationship with Dr Rothesay?’

  ‘I think you know the answer to that already, Mr Hawksworth. We were having an affair.’

  ‘Thank you for your candour, Mrs Pearson.’

  ‘It doesn’t shock you?’

  ‘Statisticians aren’t easily shocked.’

  ‘No. You must see data on the most dreadful things every day. So many murders, so many accidents, so many cases of this disease or that. Well, I tell you because you ask, and because I don’t hold with the stuffy English way of keeping up appearances. Perhaps that was good for the past, but we’re in a new age now. An age in which women should be equal to men, not required to conduct their affairs in shabby secrecy while their husbands are allowed to boast. My marriage to Jeremy broke down a long time ago, our relationship now is purely professional.’

  ‘Why do you stay together, if you don’t mind me asking?’

  ‘Because the work we do is more important than how either of us feel. We couldn’t do it alone. And’ – the bold manner dropping for a moment – ‘because Jeremy was raised a Catholic. Even now he’s given all that up, he can’t free himself from the notion that divorce is wrong.’

  The public reason, and the private.

  ‘Does Jeremy have affairs, too?’

  ‘Now and then. They don’t last long, the self-loathing gets to him after a while. A pity: it would do him some good. Sex is a natural instinct, after all, like drinking a glass of water.’

  That was a quote, although Hugo couldn’t remember who had said it, or even where he’d heard it before. Some freethinker of the twenties, he rather thought, whose disciple was amusing herself by baiting a representative of the Establishment.

  He continued his questioning, well aware she was still trying to shock him. ‘How long had you and Dr Rothesay been having this affair?’

  ‘About a year. I met him soon after Jeremy and I moved here. He was rather a breath of fresh air at first, Selchester can be such a stodgy place. Then I discovered how much he grumbled, and it rather palled. I still liked to see him from time to time, when it suited me.’

  How much of this, Hugo wondered, was actually true, and how much of it was she simply making up to needle him? Perhaps he should have Jarrett question her, he’d have an apoplectic fit. Good riddance.

  ‘When did you last see him?’

  ‘Soon after the New Year. His wife was away, so I went to his house.’

  ‘Did he mention Mr Ingham at all?’

  Miranda raised her eyes to the ceiling. ‘I should say. He was full of indignation. Why had I let a man like that into my house, what was I thinking of? I told him that was my business and Jeremy’s. He said, did I know what kind of man Mr Ingham was?’

  ‘A scoundrel, I imagine.’

  ‘He used far ruder words than that. I know some Italian, but let me say, even I don’t know that sort of Italian.’

  ‘Would you say he was gloating or grumbling?’

  ‘Grumbling, definitely. It seems Ingham had been downright rude when he called, more or less slammed the door in his face.’

  ‘Might he have tried to teach Mr Ingham a lesson?’

  ‘I don’t think he’d have set out to, but if offered the chance, very much. By his own account, he’d been a champion brawler growing up in Edinburgh. It seems his Scottish relations looked down on him for being half-Italian, and his Italian family didn’t think much of him because his mother hadn’t married a good Italian boy. He learned to argue with his fists, so he said. He liked to be different from his colleagues.’

  ‘So I gather.’

  ‘Do I make the grade for a police interview, Mr Hawksworth? I hear this Inspector Jarrett is quite the prude, thinks a woman’s place is in the home.’

  She was baiting him again. Hugo had another question of his own.

  ‘Was that the last time you saw Dr Rothesay?’

  ‘Indeed. A little of him went a long way by then. The next I heard of him was the radio report on his disappearance.’

  ‘Did you believe he might have defected to Russia?’

  ‘That’s quite a question to ask. But since you have, yes, I thought he might have done, in a fit of pique.’

  ‘So he talked about his work to you.’

  ‘He grumbled about his work. If you’re asking, could I have learned all sorts of dangerous nuclear secrets and slipped them to a man in St James’s Park carrying a rolled-up copy of The Times, no. He griped about his boss, his lack of promotion, how dull his colleagues were, and so on. He wanted to be appreciated, you see, for the first-class mind he thought he had. Personally, I couldn’t testify to the quality of his mind, only of his personality, and that was distinctly second-class.’

  ‘So he might have believed the Soviets would appreciate him properly if he passed them secrets.’

  ‘Absolutely. I think he’d have loved it, at least for a while. Feeling he was doing something none of his colleagues knew about, making a difference.’

  ‘What about Communist sympathies? Did he have any political views?’

  ‘Only as regarded the incompetence of the Government. He thought the Soviets were much more efficient, wouldn’t do everything in a muddle. And he liked to say how timid Britain had become, unwilling to commit properly to grand projects like the Bomb.’

  ‘He actually mentioned the Bomb to you?’ Out of the corner of his eye, Hugo saw Jeremy glance in Miranda’s direction as he tried to edge away from the wing commander. The room was mostly empty
now, aside from a knot of Masonic types around Fortescue, and a few stragglers by the door.

  ‘Oh, you surely can’t believe there’s a man, woman or child in Selchester who doesn’t know what goes on at Foxley? It’s quite as transparent as that statistics department of yours. The Soviets could send their rawest conscript here, it would be a gold mine for him. All he’d need to do would be to take a table in the Daffodils and keep his ears open. I look at the way your outfit handles things, and I think perhaps Bruno was right. Not that it bothers me, I think the Bomb a wicked thing.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Hugo, who was distinctly unhappy with the way the Service handled things himself. ‘I expect I shall need a statement, are you here for the next few days?’

  ‘I shall be up in your abode tomorrow. I’m transporting chairs for the rehearsal.’

  ‘Keen to have a look inside the Castle?’ Hugo asked, unable to resist a barb of his own.

  ‘I can’t say castles hold the slightest allure for me.’

  ‘Each to her own, I suppose. Thank you for your answers, Mrs Pearson.’

  ‘Call me Miranda, please. I’m not an extension of Jeremy.’

  Hugo turned to go, took a limping step away.

  ‘Should I ask what you did to your leg?’ she said.

  ‘A bicycle accident.’

  ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘How could I think otherwise? Good evening, Mr Hawksworth.’

  Scene 8

  ‘There you are,’ said Georgia, bouncing into him in the doorway. ‘Where did you slip off to?’

  ‘Work,’ said Hugo.

  She gave him a dirty look. ‘You wanted to talk to someone about that scientist, I know. Shall I guess who it was? It can’t be anyone who’s gone past us already, or you wouldn’t be hours behind them. It’s not any of the gossips, they went past us, so either it was that dull Mason – can’t think what you’d want to ask him – or it’s one of the speakers. Hah! See. I knew it was.’

  ‘Enough, Georgia,’ he said wearily. ‘It’s a professional matter, none of your business.’ He’d had enough of Miranda Pearson’s wit, he didn’t need Georgia’s pertness.