“But we’ve had a lot to do, and Sunday isn’t the best day for doing it—please don’t get up—“ he motioned with his hand as she started to move “—not if you’re comfortable where you are.”
Elizabeth rose from the scatter of Sunday papers on the carpet around her. Mr Aske had said his boss was coming, it was almost the only thing he had said. And this gentle-voiced paint-spotted thug was that man, those words and that voice both told her—and therefore more to be feared than any of them.
“I’m afraid you’ve had a bad time—and I don’t suppose we’ve made it seem any better … Do please sit down—“ he indicated the one comfortable chair in the bedroom “—and then I shall be able to sit down too.”
Elizabeth pulled the stool from under the dressing table and sat on it. It seemed strange to her, with all she wanted to say, that no words came to her at all. But then, when she began to think about it, silence seemed quite sensible.
The big man sank into the armchair and stared at her for a few seconds.
“No questions, Miss Loftus?” He smiled suddenly. “But then my colleague, Dr Mitchell, did say that you were a brave young lady. And a resourceful one, too.”
That was so far from the truth as to be laughable, if she had felt like laughing. And praise from Dr Mitchell was something she could do without, anyway.
She cleared her throat. “I asked Dr Mitchell questions yesterday evening, and I protested to Mr Aske last night. But it didn’t do me any good on either occasion. Will I do any better now?”
“A fair question.” He nodded. “But I am neither Dr Mitchell nor Mr Aske. So why not try?”
He was testing her. “Very well. You could start by telling me who you are, I suppose.”
“That’s better!” He rolled slightly sideways in order to fish a small black wallet out of his hip pocket “—my name is Audley, and I work for the government… your government, Miss Loftus.” He displayed the contents of the wallet for her. “This is what you might call my credentials … my right to do what I do, as it were—do you see?”
Elizabeth studied the words and the names, but hardly saw them with her attention drawn towards the photograph, in which a pair of fragile metal-rimmed spectacles had been perched incongruously on his nose, just below the break.
“You’re a policeman.” She found her voice again. “A sort of policeman?”
The second sentence was better, less like an accusation, more like a question. But as she said it she thought of Paul Mitchell with a twinge of anger.
“You might say that, yes.” He watched her.
Elizabeth’s stomach churned. “A secret policeman—might I say that, Mr Audley?”
“You very well might, Miss Loftus.” To her disappointment, he smiled again. “And you might be right—a few hundred miles east of here you would be exactly right, in fact … But, of course, you wouldn’t say as much there, you’d be too frightened. So there could be a difference, don’t you think? Because you don’t need to be frightened of me, you see.”
Elizabeth steeled herself against his kindness. Paul Mitchell had been kind yesterday, but with men like this kindness was only one side of a coin which had a very different face on the other.
“You don’t believe me?” He spoke gently.
“I wasn’t thinking of you, Mr Audley,” she lied. “I was thinking of your colleague, Dr Mitchell.”
He frowned slightly. “With disapproval?”
She was committed now. “Violence frightens me. And he’s a violent man.”
For a moment he stared at her without speaking. Then he shook his head. “No, you’re quite wrong there … But if he were, you should be grateful for it, rather than disapproving, after what he did for you yesterday. For that was no small thing, Miss Loftus, believe me.”
His mildly chiding tone stung her. “I’m very grateful for that—of course.” She was conscious that she’d talked herself into an ungraceful position. “Though he did actually describe it himself as ‘self-defence’ … But it isn’t that, exactly …”
“What is it, then … exactly?”
She didn’t want to go any further, ungraceful or not. “It doesn’t matter.”
“It does matter. It matters a great deal, believe me.” He pinned her with a look from which all the mildness had vanished. “I need to know—exactly.”
The opportunity of revenging herself on Paul Mitchell had presented itself more quickly than she had expected. But now revenge seemed petty, as it always did.
“Come on, Miss Loftus.”
There wasn’t time to think of a lie. “He killed those men—but he didn’t seem to care. He said—“
“Those men?” He snapped up her mistake, then sank back into the armchair. “Ah … so he was right! You were resourceful enough to eavesdrop … On your hands and knees?”
Elizabeth stared at him.
“You left scuff-marks on the carpet—he noticed them.” Audley nodded. “Paul Mitchell’s not just a fine scholar, he’s got a sharp eye. For which you should be eternally grateful, Miss Loftus.”
“I said I was grateful.”
“So you did. But I don’t think you’re grateful enough, so I’m going to tell you exactly why you should be much more grateful.” He pinned her again with that fierce look of his. “You see, you’re wrong about Paul Mitchell, Miss Loftus … perhaps there are extenuating circumstances for that, I agree … but you are wrong about him, nevertheless—quite wrong.”
Elizabeth squirmed on the sharp point of his concentration. It was like being at school again, but not as one of the teachers.
“He killed those men for you, Miss Loftus—for your sake, not for self-defence—for you.”
“Yes—“
“No! You don’t understand because you can’t, not because you don’t want to—I’ll grant that. But I’m going to rectify that. So just listen.”
Elizabeth licked her lips.
“It was partly my fault. I told Mitchell this was just a routine job—no problems, no danger, just routine. So after he’d talked to you at the fête and arranged to visit you he could very well have gone off to the nearest pub to fortify himself for a boring evening.”
He was trying to wound her now, thought Elizabeth. And he was succeeding.
“But being Paul Mitchell … for which you should be thankful, Miss Loftus … he didn’t leave it at that—he decided to look around just to make sure everything was all right, even if it was just routine.”
She felt the knife turn.
“So then he saw … something … which made it not routine— something which frightened him, because he didn’t expect it.”
Something? There was too much that she couldn’t remember—
“So then he had a problem. Because the first thing he had to do was to phone for back-up—for help … which he did.” Audley nodded. “But help was at least thirty minutes away, and he got to thinking that maybe you didn’t have thirty minutes—maybe you didn’t have any minutes at all.” He paused, and as the pause lengthened she realised that he was letting it elongate deliberately, to give her time to remember what she had been trying to forget. “So what should he have done then, Miss Loftus?” Shorter pause. “Go and knock at the front door, like a Christian?” Pause. “If he was wrong—no harm done.” Pause. “But if he was right … then he was in trouble too.” Pause—unendurable pause. “Because he didn’t have a gun, Miss Loftus—he isn’t ‘licensed to kill’, because no one is, contrary to popular legend. Not even policemen—they’re not supposed to kill, except in very special and well-established extremities. And you certainly weren’t an extremity—you were just a guess, Miss Loftus.”
He was hammering Miss Loftus like a dentist drilling without any pain-killer—
“So he went round the back, and he was very lucky there—“
Don’t say “Miss Loftus” again, prayed Elizabeth—
“—because there was a look-out man at the back, but the man was careless.” Audley shook his head. “
He was very lucky—and the look-out man was very careless … So then he had one dead man on his hands—and having a dead man on one’s hands makes one sick … would you believe that, Miss Loftus? It makes you sick—sick to the stomach. Do you know what a dead man looks like? Do you know how his body reacts to being dead? Would you like the details?”
She couldn’t even shake her head—she didn’t want to, but she couldn’t anyway.
“So now he had a gun. But he also had another problem, because there are only two rules for that sort of situation: you either run like hell or you go on like hell, SAS-style, before the other side knows what’s happening.” This time he neither nodded nor shook his head, he just looked at her. “And you never really know what you’re going to do then until it happens—the question has to be asked each time, and you never know whether you were right until afterwards, which can be too late. So don’t ask me what I would have done—I’ve a sneaking suspicion that I might have run, and justified it by thinking of my wife and child after—but you know what he did—“
Yes, she knew—or she knew now, anyway—
“He went on. And he shot the big one in the kitchen—in the kitchen, and in the leg, and then in the lung … and finally in the spine, Miss Loftus.” He still just looked at her. “They think he’s going to die too … although Mitchell doesn’t know—he still thinks he only killed two men, not three … But when he asks me—as he surely will—I shall have to be as brutally frank with him as I am being with you, Miss Loftus.”
Brutally frank was what he was determined to be: she hated him for it, but she couldn’t stop him, any more than Paul Mitchell could have stopped in the kitchen—she understood that now.
“He had one bullet left then. But he probably wasn’t counting by then—he was probably too scared to count his shots by then, and the SAS rule is to keep moving—it’s like the old house-clearing discipline in the war: once you’re in the house you must go through it like a dose of salts, that was the rule—if you stop, you’re dead. So he didn’t stop.”
“Please, Mr Audley—“
“I haven’t finished. The last bit is the best: he killed your little man with a single shot, right through the heart—a professional couldn’t have done better than that, Miss Loftus—with a snap shot. But that’s the shot which may get him into most trouble, unfortunately.”
He let her think about it this time, until she could formulate the obvious question. “But—why?”
“Because the little man wasn’t armed. He had a scalpel in his pocket—an adjustable typographical scalpel. But that was all he had.” Audley shook his head sadly. “And that won’t look good on the report … apart from the fact that we’d have liked to have talked to him, and now we can’t.” His voice became gentler again. “It was an accident, of course. But it won’t look good.”
“But… but he couldn’t have known …”
“That’s what we’ll be arguing, certainly. And with your supporting statement—and the gun—we ought to be able to manage ‘Justifiable homicide’, with a bit of luck,” agreed Audley. “There’s a button on the wall there—by the bed … Would you press it please, Miss Loftus.”
Elizabeth rose shakily, and stepped over the Sunday papers, and pressed the button.
“Thank you,” said Audley politely.
She sat down again, and waited, and tried to think coherently.
He had done it deliberately, of course—all of it, intentionally and with deliberate brutality designed to shock her. But, deliberately or not, he had succeeded: he had shackled her to Paul Mitchell for ever, with unbreakable chains of obligation.
The door opened, and Paul was there in the doorway—and she didn’t know where to look, with the way she must look, sans the slightest advantage of make-up, and her hair every which-way, and the old dress which Humphrey Aske had offered her yesterday, when it hardly seemed to matter what she looked like.
“It is customary to knock, Mitchell,” snapped Audley testily. “Have you brought the box? And the form?”
Paul Mitchell hefted a suitcase on to the bed, snapping the catches but leaving the lid closed. Then he felt inside his breast-pocket and produced a folded document.
“This is an Official Secrets form, Miss Loftus.” Audley unfolded the document and handed it to Elizabeth. “Sign it at the bottom there—“
“But read it first, Elizabeth,” said Paul Mitchell.
“Shut up, Mitchell,” said Audley. “Just give her a pen.”
Elizabeth took the form from Audley and the pen from Paul Mitchell.
“Sign it, Miss Loftus,” said Audley.
“You’re signing away your rights,” said Paul. “Once you’ve signed, they can shut you up and throw away the key.”
“She’s not stupid.” Audley gestured towards the form. “After what you’ve done, she knows she hasn’t got any rights—except maybe the right to be shot by you, Mitchell. Sign it, Miss Loftus.” He paused. “And the copy underneath—sign that too.”
Elizabeth signed. In the silence of Paul’s failure to reply to Audley’s last remark she heard the scratch of the pen on the paper.
“Good.” Audley folded the forms and transferred them to his hip pocket, where the identification folder was stowed.
Elizabeth observed that Paul looked decidedly miserable, and not at all the confident young man she had first seen in the mirror. If she’d wanted to go on hating him it would have been difficult, but now it was impossible.
“Elizabeth Jane Varney Loftus” said Audley reflectively. “’Varney’ for the naval Varneys, on your mother’s side, from way back—from Boscawen and Hawke, and the Seven Years’ War, and all the other wars thereafter … There was a Varney who was Admiral of the Blue in the West Indies, I remember from my history books—and that must have perked up the family fortunes, with his admiral’s share of prize-money—how much was that in those days?”
“One eighth.” The mention of money made Elizabeth uneasy. “One eighth up to 1808, less after that.”
“This was back in the eighteenth century … one eighth? Plus head-money, and gun-money, and sundry other trifles—very nice!” Audley nodded. “So … an old and distinguished naval family, and you the very last of them, after the Dogger Bank in ‘ 14, and Sulva Bay in ‘15, and the Murmansk run in ‘43.”
He wasn’t reading—the suitcase was open on the bed now, but from where she knelt she couldn’t see its contents. But he hadn’t dipped into it, anyway; so this was what was already in his head, about grandfather and his uncles, and all her other Varney ancestors.
“Beside the Varneys, the Loftuses were pretty small beer—in trade in the West Country, was it? So your mother was a good catch, at least in naval terms, for Lieutenant-Commander Hugh Loftus, even with his VC? Would that be right?”
How much did he know? Did he also know that Mother had been beautiful, judging by those portraits which were all that she had inherited? Or that Grandmother Varney, judged from the same source, had been even more beautiful, in her diamonds and her dresses?
It occurred to Elizabeth that if Paul Mitchell had had the run of the house last night those might be exactly Audley’s sources, with much more beside—and that she had the right at least to disapprove of such an intrusion into her privacy.
“I can’t say I’ve really ever thought of it, Mr Audley.”
“No … of course, they were all gone before your time—and your mother too, when you were a baby—very sad!” Audley commiserated insincerely. “Which just left you and the Commander, and in somewhat straitened circumstances when he was invalided out, I take it?”
She had been right to feel uneasy: it was the money he was working towards. But how much could he know about that, beyond what she had blabbed yesterday to Paul. But how much more could old Mr Lovell add to that?
“Father had his writing, Mr Audley.” Her apprehension increased as she thought of Mr Lovell. If she was now a most valued client he was nonetheless a pillar of the Establishment, and if th
e Establishment leaned on him he might well bend his ear to it. Yet, at the same time, her own backbone stiffened: if they thought she was going to give in easily, they were very much mistaken. “He made a new career for himself with his books.”
“Yes. Just so!” He flicked a look at Paul Mitchell, who seemed to be busy studying the pattern on the carpet. “But Dr Mitchell and I have some small experience of the writer’s trade, Miss Loftus … and the fact is, your father didn’t write many books over the years—good ones, I’m sure, but not many … and not best-sellers.” Audley’s voice harshencd. “Or, to put it another way, I’ve spoken with his publishers, and I don’t think his royalties matched his tastes.”
Now Elizabeth knew where she was, and what she was: she was the USS President making a run for it off the Long Island shore in 1815, straight out of Father’s article for the British Naval Review … heavily laden, and damaged below the water-line while crossing the bar off Staten Island, and with half the British fleet in hot pursuit. But a run for it she was going to make, nevertheless!
“Mr Audley, I really don’t see what this is leading to—or what business of yours my father’s royalties are—or his tastes.” She had to get the mixture just right, with equal parts of incomprehension, irritation and innocence. “And I certainly don’t see what it’s got to do with that document I signed.”
Out of the corner of her eye she saw Paul Mitchell half-smiling at the carpet, as though he had noticed a joke in the pattern.
“Are we going to play games after all, Miss Loftus?” Audley gazed at her. “You disappoint me.”
“I’m not playing games—“
“Mitchell.” Audley ignored her. “The box!”
It was the Vengeful box, of course—and Audley made his point by emptying a cascade of five pound notes on the carpet in front of her.
Audley looked at her. “And if you’re about to tell me that your father was a gambling man …” he shook his head “… please don’t, because I’m not about to believe it.”
The Old Vengeful Page 7