Confessor

by John Gardner

  All this was to no avail. So perished the Fenley line of succession. The entire estate was sold off in the 1920s and acquired by the Office in the late 1930s, just in time to be used in the training of heroes who fought secretly for King, Country and Empire in the dark days between 1940 and 1944. At Warminster, and many other places, men and women were trained, then sent off to work inside Fortress Europe, as Hitler and his Evil Empire called the bulk of the imprisoned continent. Many did not return to Warminster; a large number were blown, but escaped back to England, home and, in some cases, beauty. The majority were not so lucky.

  The Dower House, while of Victorian origin, had been built in Georgian style—and very successfully at that. Next to the big house it was a cottage, but put it out into the world and the Dower House would have comfortably served a family of eight, with room left over.

  It stood close to where the original gates to Fenley Hall had welcomed callers into the long drive, which twisted and turned through high greenery, at last rounding a spectacular bend to reveal the main house in all its splendor. Those gates had long gone, replaced by red brick to match the remainder of the high, and effective, wall that surrounded the estate. The main entrance now lay a quarter of a mile back down the road towards Knook Camp, and while the gates looked like the original wrought iron, they were, in fact, steel—which could be electrified when necessary. They were also, since 1991, the only way you could get into the grounds.

  This was a trick in itself, for the main gates were monitored by security staff, hand-picked these days and mostly from former military backgrounds. When a car arrived at the main gates, the vehicle was scrutinized via closed-circuit TV and the gates were opened from a secure room within the main house. You could never arrive unexpectedly at Warminster, for there was a code word, changed daily, and the authorization for a visit had to come in directly from the Office HQ in London.

  Big Herbie Kruger had bad memories of the Dower House. As they approached it on that July afternoon, he even experienced old dreads. On visits to Warminster over the past few years, he had made certain never to go near the place. The memories still had claws and teeth.

  In the days before the luxury “guest suites” had been built as an underground complex away from the main house, the Dower House had been a kind of detention barracks, used almost exclusively for the interrogation of defectors and those who had possibly strayed.

  Herbie’s only true sin against the Office had been that time when, through folly and risk-taking, he had been trapped for too long behind the then sinister and flourishing Berlin Wall. On his return he had spent over a year as a guest of the office in the Dower House, undergoing a long, weary and unsettling interrogation conducted mainly by his friend Gus Keene and the young Carole Coles, as she was then. Even Herb, wise to the ways of fleshly lusts, had not suspected that Gus was two-timing his wife, Angela, with the delightful, and very young, Ms. Coles.

  Eventually, Kruger had been exonerated, but his time in the Dower House still haunted his dreams. Frankly, at this moment, he was more on edge because of the enforced visit to the place than because of having to talk to the grieving widow Keene. Yet, he considered, Gus’s own study would be alive with memories.

  Some of his fear subsided as the car swept around the wall of rhododendron bushes and azaleas to reveal the glowing redbrick house with its large sash windows flanking an oak front door, the five windows above that, plus the two dormers in the roof. The Dower House had not been spruced up with just a paint job and work on the bricks and slates. Now a small garden had been built to surround it, the border marked by what appeared to be genuine old iron railings behind which lupin vied with rose and delphinium. It was a far cry from the colorless, stark exterior Herb had known in his day.

  Ginger was three paces behind him as he walked to the door, and his finger was still poised over the bell push when the door swung open and Carole Keene almost catapulted out, her fists bunched and swinging.

  “Who, Herbie? What bastards did this to him? They said you’d find out. Bloody Worboys and the Fat Boy say you might already know, and C’s convinced you’re close to the truth. So, who, Herb? Who’d do this to my lovely Gus?” It all came tumbling out, eyes red with anger, not tears, small fists pummeling against Herbie’s barrel of a chest. C is how members of the SIS refer to the Chief, and it is said the initial comes from the first Chief of what was then the foreign section of the Secret Service Bureau, a man whose lengthy string of names was usually abbreviated to Cumming. That his real name was Mansfield George Smith is neither here nor there.

  “Who, Herb? What idiots? Gus was the only man I ever looked at twice and they’ve pulped him. For Christ’s sake, Herb, who?”

  Herbie had never seen Carole in hysterics before. Serious, yes; moved to tears on two or three occasions; but never this uncontrolled fury of anger, loosed on him. He caught her wrists and barked sharply, “Carole! Hold it! Calm down!” But Carole swept her arms down, in classic break hold, pressuring his thumbs and banging him in the chest.

  “Not another bloody airy-fairy-Lillian!” She all but screamed, turning on her heel and marching back into the cool hallway of the house. “If you can’t tell me now, don’t bother me with platitudes, Herb. Not me”—thumping her own chest—“not me, not Carole Cool, mistress of this place and beloved widow of darling Gus. Out, Herbie! Out and find the sods!” She slammed across the hallway and through a door before Herbie could catch her again. He ended up in the tiled hall, looking at the slender figure of Bitsy Williams, who moved in front of the door through which Carole had disappeared, as though barring his entrance.

  “She’s been like this since it happened.” Bitsy had an almost breathless voice, throaty, low. Like a cello, Herb thought, but then reflected that he often thought women had voices like cellos, only to find that, on closer listening, they were flutes. “Not a tear,” Bitsy continued. “No real grief. Just this terrible anger against everyone and everything. She used ‘language’ at C on the telephone. Told him that he should be able to protect his f-ing stars, even if they were retired. Never seen anything like it. I’m Bitsy, by the way. Bitsy Williams.”

  “Ja! Yes. Yes, I know.” Herb stared at her, considering whether the chauvinist pig gossip from inside the Office was true. Bitsy was just on the wrong side of forty, he thought. Not quite desperate yet, but fairly close to the border. Her legs did, indeed, seem to reach up to her armpits. As she moved, so her skirt floated over her thighs, which appeared to be very high. In motion she was like a beautiful race horse, though there was certainly nothing horsey about her face.

  “And you’re Mr. Kruger.” She came close to him. For a second, long fingers untroubled by rings touched his sleeve. “I was Pucky’s friend. I was so sorry when …”

  That was like a blade of ice piercing the big man’s heart. Pucky Curtiss had been the second great female event in his life, an event that finally toppled into grief. He knew that emotion showed in his eyes, but he blinked it away, and from behind the door came music. Falla: El amor brujo—Love, the Magician—the “Ritual Fire Dance.”

  “She’s played that a hundred times since I arrived,” Bitsy told him.

  Herb nodded. “Could have been their song.” He tried a little smile in an attempt to lighten the load. “The anger has to turn to the weeping. It’ll come. I know what she’s going through.” Then, as though breaking from some enchantment of his own making, he asked if Bitsy knew what was to happen.

  “No?” Tentative, even a little frightened. “No, what’s to happen?”

  “I’m here to evict her. …”

  “Oh, Jesus …”

  “For her own good, and for our good also in finding whoever did this. She could be in danger. We could all be in danger. It has the distinct scent of Middle East terrorism, Ms. Williams …”

  “Bitsy. Please, Bitsy.”

  He nodded his big head. “Sure. They’re sending down a pair of nurses and she’s to be moved into the Guest Quarters. You, Ms. Bitsy, a
re to be my gofer, and Ginger here is to lie across the door and make sure we don’t get spooked. Okay?”

  “If those are the orders, yes. Yes, of course it’s okay. I’ll do whatever you ask. It’s an honor to—”

  “Don’ say it, Bitsy. Honor, schmonor. I’m just a burned-out case who wants to find out the whys and whos. In many ways I loved old Gus. Unnerstand? I’ll talk to Carole now, okay?”

  She stepped aside and he softly opened the door.

  “Hey, Carole. It’s me. Herbie. Remember?” Softly not to alarm her, quietly closing the door behind him.

  Her back was to him as she sat on a settee covered in a rich blue silklike material. She said nothing and did not move. Around them the luscious strings and throbbing rhythms of Manuel de Falla’s dazzling ballet score worked their own magic ritual.

  Herbie took a step forward. He felt like a child stalking a small bird, afraid it would up and fly away before he got close enough to touch it, and a thousand images passed through his mind.

  When he was first brought to England, having proved his skills as a young teenager in postwar Berlin, someone had recommended that he read poetry to help him with his English. Poetry and English history, he recalled, and he had found great solace in both. Not as great a comfort as he later discovered in music, but enough, so that he continued to read poems almost indiscriminately. The first time he had set eyes on Carole, he thought of her as a schoolgirl. She had that fresh lithe kind of compact body which would keep her looking young until probably early middle age, and her complexion was that of a girl: clear, pink, peaches and cream, skin without a blemish. She was short and slim, and she moved with the unconscious charm of a fifteen- or sixteen-year old. That first time, he remembered a poem by John Betjeman—Poet Laureate, now gone—about a young girl called Myfanwy.

  After that, he thought of Myfanwy whenever he saw Carole, even after she and Gus came out of the closet, went through the wormwood and gall of Gus’s divorce—and the sweetness of their marriage. He heard it now:

  Were you a prefect and head of your dormit’ry?

  Were you a hockey girl, tennis or gym?

  Who was your favorite? Who had a crush on you?

  Which were the baths where they taught you to swim?

  “Carole. Come on. Is Herb, come to talk. Let’s talk this horror through, Carole. I loved him as well.”

  Another step forward.

  Then what sardines in the half-lighted passages!

  Locking of fingers in long hide and seek.

  You will protect me, my silken Myfanwy,

  Ringleader, tom-boy, and chum to the weak.

  “Carole. I’m your friend. No need to explain to me. Let’s talk, yes?”

  Her shoulders moved first—a little rising and falling—then her arm went up and a hand felt in the air behind her, as though trying to cling to something. Herb took another pace, grasped the hand, heard her choke and, with the daintiness given only to big men, swung around the side of the settee and held her sobbing body in his arms.

  Old Herb; Herb the comforter; Herb, always there when you needed him; Herb the hero, blubbing away with her. Friend and wife, weeping together over the death of friend and husband, appalled at the knowledge that life was not fair. He enfolded her small body in his bearlike arms and waited for the storm of tears to pass.

  He did not know how long it lasted, but it felt like an hour before Carole was all wept out, with her body just twitching occasionally, like the corpse of an animal in spasm long after death.

  “Carole, I’ll find them. You know that. My job now. Find the buggers who did it to him.”

  She slowly disentangled herself from him and looked up, her face a wreck with tears and the horror of it all; the disbelief still there deep in her eyes.

  “Why, Herb?”

  “Why not, my dear? Is how I always tried to reconcile these things. Why me? Why not? Is the answer to all life’s riddles.”

  “Gus was …” she began, then took the handkerchief he offered, plunging her face into it as though it were a towel. Then: “Gus was everything. You know that, Herb? For me, everything. Gus was my father, my brother, friend, lover, the whole thing rolled into one. God knows I’m liberated enough. Fought for women’s bloody rights like a tiger. You know that, but this is something I can’t deny to myself or anyone else. Gus was a reason for me. He was safety. Peace.”

  “I know, like I know what this is like. I had my share.”

  “But who in hell, Herb? Who’d want …?”

  “Possibly terrorists, love. Gus had his moments with terrorists, yes?”

  She nodded. Silent. Not really believing it.

  “That’s the Office line, and there’s truth in it.” He sought, almost frantically, for words. “Look, Carole, I got to ask you a couple of things, and time … time … well, is important.”

  “Yes.” Not looking at him. The sound dead on her lips.

  “Gus,” he said. “Gus, did he use a Zippo?”

  “A Zippo?”

  “A Zippo. Lighter for his cigarettes or pipe.”

  “He only smoked a pipe, and he always said you should light a pipe with matches. Pipes and cigars, he said. Matches always. Used those Swan Vesta things.”

  “Ah. Then did he carry a Zippo?”

  She looked up at him, sly. “Yes. A joke. I gave it to him a couple of Christmases ago. In his stocking. Zippo with the KGB crest on it.”

  “And he carried that?”

  “Said it was his lucky Zippo.” Her voice cracked.

  Herb swung in before she could start crying again. “And a little pin, like a badge? Did he wear a little badge in his lapel? I never saw him wear one.”

  “Yes, sometimes. Yes, he wore a little badge.”

  “What was it?”

  The pause was a shade too long and the answer a mite too fast. “British Legion, I think. I never looked properly.”

  He did not believe it and, for a fraction, wondered if Carole was simply a very good actress. He dismissed the idea, nodding and repeating, “British Legion. Okay.”

  “Why?”

  “You know why, Carole.”

  Again the silent nod.

  “I got news for you,” he started again. “We’re all in some danger. Could be anyway, if it was terrorists. Particularly Middle East.”

  “Danger?” she repeated, still flat, the voice dead like her eyes.

  “The Office says you got to move out. Go down to the Guest Quarters. Stay there for a while. They’re sending people to keep you company.”

  “I have to leave here?”

  “You’ll only be a ten-minute walk away. It’s just for the time being. They’ll let you come back and stay.”

  “I have to leave my …It has everything here. All of Gus is …Oh, yes, sorry, Herb. They want you to go through the place. Toss it? Isn’t that the word they use?”

  “I’ll only be going through the notes and manuscript. His book. Not going to toss the place. But you need to be out. There is serious danger, Carole.”

  “Truth. Cross your heart and hope to …”

  His hand clamped around her wrist. Just a squeeze of comfort again and she began to cry once more, burying her head in his shoulder. Christ, Herbie thought, I need time, a lot of time, with this one. I need a couple of days minimum. Maybe more.

  Presently she said that she really did understand. Saw the wisdom of it. “Can I get some things together? Is there time for that?”

  “Sure. Also I’d like to see where Gus was working. Where he kept his manuscript and research notes. This is very important, the manuscript.”

  She nodded. “He wanted to call it Ask No Questions and You’ll Get No Lies, but the publishers didn’t like it. Then he tried A Question of Fact. They didn’t like that either.” She rose and he had to steady her with his hand, but she pushed him away.

  “Bitsy’ll help you get your things together.”

  “I’ll show you where Gus worked.” She started towards the door.
/>   “Oh, one small thing, Carole.”

  She turned, eyebrows raised in query.

  “Why was he in Salisbury that night?”

  “Gus?”

  “Of course Gus.”

  She gave a little shake of the head. “Had a meeting. I don’t know who it was. Except for the times we worked together on interrogations, I never asked details. He still behaved as though he were working for the Office. You know? He took all the right precautions. Said he had to see someone in Salisbury, so I didn’t ask.”

  “What did you suspect?”

  “I …” she began, then stopped short. Jamming on the brakes, Herbie thought. “I had a feeling that it was an old client.” She completed the sentence as if it had just come into her head.

  “An old client?”

  “Someone who had been through his personal wringer, yes.”

  “Like me? I been through both your personal wringers.”

  “No, not like you, Herb. It was just an impression. You know how it is when you live with someone a long time. You get a kind of ESP. I thought he was meeting someone he caught out along the road.”

  “What gave you that idea?”

  “Just the way he was so casual about going to Salisbury. I didn’t think it was altogether kosher.”

  “Could’ve been another woman?”

  “No.” Firm and uncompromising. “There were never any other women. I promise you that.”

  Bitsy awaited them in the hall. She stood by the front door, well back from the room in which they had talked. Above them they could hear Ginger roaming around, getting the geography, which was his job.

  The hall was large, with doors to the left and right and a passage that ran along the right side of the staircase to a very big room that occupied almost the whole of the rear of the house. Short passages lay to the left and right of this rather bare room. On the left the kitchen; on the right Gus’s study.