The More Deceived

by David Roberts

  ‘Indeed.’ Lyall stubbed out a half-smoked cigarette as if he wished he was stubbing out Edward. ‘If there is nothing else I can do for you . . . ? I have an inter-departmental meeting in ten minutes. Miss Hawkins will take you round the section.’

  ‘Thank you. One final thing – did Westmacott take out of the office the night he disappeared any files or letters he ought not to have done?’

  ‘He took two files, as I informed Major Ferguson, both on foreign arms dealers. You will have the details in his report.’

  Edward felt rebuked. He nodded his head. ‘Neither very important, I gather?’

  ‘The press might have made a story out of them but, from the point of view of national security, the files contain nothing of great interest.’

  ‘You are sure those were the only files he took with him?’

  Lyall looked irritated. ‘Miss Hawkins keeps a meticulous record of who has what file and nothing marked Secret may be taken out of the building without my express permission in writing.’

  ‘What about these cabinets? If Miss Hawkins has all the files in the cabinets in her office, what is in these?’

  ‘These contain certain top secret files. Only I have keys to them.’

  ‘And you have checked them? There are no files missing?’

  ‘No. How could there be?’

  ‘You tell me. May I see the keys?’

  Reluctantly, Lyall took his key ring out of his jacket pocket and pointed out to Edward the key to the filing cabinets.

  ‘And what if you lose your key? How would you get into the cabinets?’

  ‘I would not lose it but, if I did, there is a duplicate in Sir Robert’s safe.’

  ‘Tell me, are the files in your cabinets stamped on the outside in red Most Secret?’

  ‘Yes, Most Secret or Top Secret. Why?’

  ‘The files in Miss Hawkins’s office are just marked Secret? She doesn’t have any Top or Most Secret files?’

  ‘That’s correct, but why do you ask?’

  ‘Because Mrs Westmacott remembers her husband reading a file marked Most Secret a few days before he disappeared. Can you explain it?’

  ‘No, I can’t. If it were one of my files I would know about it and, as I told you, they are never taken out of this room.’

  ‘So he must have got the file somewhere else?’

  ‘I really don’t know, Lord Edward.’

  ‘As a priority I must ask you to check again that you are not missing any files.’

  ‘I will but I checked when Westmacott disappeared. I am sure there is nothing missing.’

  Edward got up and, as he did so, noticed two photographs on the desk. One was of a young man in school uniform and the other of a fashionably dressed woman photographed by Lenaire who, Edward considered, made all his women look alike: beautiful but devoid of character. The young man looked vaguely familiar but Edward could not say why, unless it was because of his natural resemblance to his father.

  ‘Forgive me if I am being impertinent but this must be your son? He looks so like you.’

  Lyall’s whole manner changed and his face, which up till that moment had been artificially amiable and then frankly hostile, was transformed. He looked at Edward with the eyes of any father: proud, anxious but loving.

  ‘Do you think so, Lord Edward? I always think he looks more like his mother.’

  Edward looked at the other photograph. ‘She is very beautiful.’

  ‘To my great loss, she died six months ago . . . cancer.’

  ‘I am very sorry to hear it, Lyall. And your son?’

  ‘James? He’s in Spain. The wretched boy insisted on joining the International Brigade.’ Lyall’s voice trembled with pride and fear. ‘If I were to lose him . . .’ he said, almost in a whisper.

  ‘I have a great friend in Spain: the journalist, Verity Browne. I don’t know whether you have heard of her? If there is anything I can do . . .? Should I ask her to keep an eye out for him?’

  ‘I would be most grateful, Lord Edward. I have heard nothing from him for over a month and, consequently, I imagine the most terrible things. But your friend must not let on that . . . that . . .’ He hesitated. ‘If James thought I was spying on him he would never forgive me.’

  Edward walked through the department taking particular note of the filing system. For the next couple of hours – using Westmacott’s office – he interviewed the members of Lyall’s department without gaining much in the way of new information except the general feeling that Westmacott might have stumbled on something which upset him. He had not confided in his colleagues, or no one was prepared to admit that he had. Miss Hawkins, a severe-looking woman in her forties with grey hair held in a tight bun on her head, confirmed that Westmacott had taken only the two files Lyall had mentioned.

  ‘Miss Hawkins,’ Edward said, attempting to ingratiate himself with her, ‘you are an intelligent woman and thorough, too. There must be something you noticed which would give us a clue as to why Mr Westmacott has disappeared?’

  ‘I am afraid there is nothing else I can tell you,’ she said stiffly, refusing to melt before Edward’s charm.

  ‘What do you think of him? Do you like him? Is he good at his job?’

  This last question was a mistake. Miss Hawkins who, no doubt, could have done any job in the department, including Lyall’s, better than the incumbent, was not about to criticize her colleagues.

  ‘Mr Westmacott is a valued member of the department.’ Edward could see her drawing herself up in the face of his impertinence.

  In exasperation, he continued, ‘Miss Hawkins, my questions are not an expression of idle curiosity, you know. Mr Westmacott may be ill or in danger. I am sure you want his safe return as much as Mr Lyall does.’

  Miss Hawkins looked at him oddly but softened a little. ‘I am concerned about Mr Westmacott – of course I am. It is just, as I keep on repeating, I have no idea of his whereabouts or why he has gone missing. Have you asked his wife?’

  ‘Do you know the family?’

  ‘I have met his wife at the Christmas party. She seemed a very nice woman.’

  ‘And there is a little girl,’ Edward said, piling on the emotion.

  ‘Please, Lord Edward,’ Miss Hawkins said, her frigid reserve visibly shaken, ‘believe me when I say that if I could help you I would, but I cannot.’

  Edward repressed a sigh. ‘Did you feel something was worrying Mr Westmacott? Did he look tired or . . . different from usual?’

  ‘Mr Westmacott kept himself to himself. I suppose I did think he looked a little worried but he was working hard. We all are and . . . and he was worried about the international situation.’

  ‘He talked to you about it?’

  ‘Once, when he came in for a file, he did, yes.’

  ‘About these files – your system of recording files going in and out seems very good. Were the filing cabinets kept locked all the time?’

  ‘Yes. There are three keys to the cabinets. I have one, of course – here on my chain.’ She passed her key chain over to Edward.

  ‘And Mr Lyall and Mr Westmacott hold the other two?’

  ‘Yes. The files are secret and Mr Lyall is very conscious of the need for security.’

  ‘There’s a cabinet in Mr Lyall’s office where the Most Secret files are kept. You don’t have keys to that?’

  ‘Only Mr Lyall has a key to that cabinet.’

  ‘I do understand you must think I have a bee in my bonnet, Miss Hawkins, but will you look through your files once again? His wife remembers him reading a file marked Most Secret some days before he disappeared. I don’t know how he got it, or why, and no doubt it was returned from whence it came but I am almost certain that Mr Westmacott left this building with something he ought not to have had the day he disappeared.’

  Miss Hawkins looked at him with fear in her eyes. ‘I shall, of course, Lord Edward, if you so wish it but I hope you don’t think I was . . .’

  ‘No one is accusing you of an
ything but there is a puzzle to be solved and maybe you can help me solve it. Here is my card. Feel free to telephone me at any time of the day or night if you find anything that strikes you as not quite right. Now, may I speak to Mr McCloud?’

  Miss Hawkins took the proffered pasteboard and seemed about to say something but in the end merely nodded before leaving the room.

  ‘Statistics are my field, old boy, and analysing figures. You know the sort of thing? We get information and estimates in from all sorts of sources and I have to make sense of them. If one source indicates the Germans are building six fighter aircraft a month and another source seems to suggest the figure is nearer sixty, I have to put both through the wringer – that’s what I call it – and see which retains its “shape”. It’s interesting work but, if anyone had told me when I was at the Slade that I would end up here, I would have laughed in their face.’

  Angus McCloud was a bearded, ill-kempt young man – in his early thirties, Edward guessed – with a strong body odour. He smoked a pipe and there was a gap in his teeth where the pipe-stem lodged on an almost permanent basis. He obviously wanted to be taken for an artist rather than a civil servant and he did everything he could to impress upon Edward that he was different from other Foreign Office staff. He had to be a bachelor, Edward thought. No woman would have let him go to the office dressed in a check flannel shirt, dirty tie, corduroy trousers and brogues.

  ‘Do you still paint?’

  ‘At weekends – nothing serious.’

  ‘But you still move in that world?’

  ‘Not really. I bump into Rothy – Sir William Rothenstein – now and again and he asks me how the painting is going and I say not bad. Of course, I can’t say what I’m really doing, not even to Rothy. I occasionally go to one of Lady Ottoline’s “Thursday afternoons”, and I see Tonks sometimes and Mark Gertler, of course.’

  Edward thought he might ask his friend, the painter Adrian Hassel, what he knew about him. Adrian had been at the Slade and was about the same age as McCloud.

  ‘What do you think has happened to Westmacott? Is he a friend of yours?’

  ‘I get on with him well enough but he’s a cold sort of blighter – keeps himself to himself. Harry and I . . .’

  ‘Mr Younger?’

  ‘Yes. We go out for a pint after work once in a while. He’s a good kid, smart as paint, wasted here. He speaks quite good German, after a pint or two anyway.’

  ‘But Westmacott did not join you?’

  ‘No. Westmacott has to rush home to wifey.’

  There was a rather unpleasant sneer in McCloud’s voice and Edward wondered if the two men had quarrelled.

  ‘He’s got a girlfriend – Younger, I mean?’

  ‘You’ll have to ask him that. I think Jane – Miss Williams – is sweet on him but I’ve never heard he returned the favour.’

  ‘And you?’

  ‘Me? No such luck. I’ve had my chances but they take up too much time – women – not to mention money. There was a girl at the Slade I was keen on – a model actually – but . . . What’s this to do with anything?’

  ‘Sorry. I didn’t mean to pry. I was just trying to get a feel for the department. You all get on together?’

  ‘I suppose so,’ McCloud said dubiously.

  ‘Do you socialize out of the office?’

  ‘Not at all.’

  ‘You never see Mr Younger out of hours – apart from the odd pint in the pub?’

  ‘No. We get on all right, as I said, but we have different interests. He wouldn’t know his Picasso from his Matisse, if you take my meaning. He’s sporty and I’m the opposite.’

  ‘So you have no idea what might have happened to Westmacott?’

  ‘None at all, old man. He’s not the sort of cove that anything ever happens to, if you follow me. Dull as ditch water, I would have said.’

  Edward immediately took to Harry Younger. He was a clean-shaven, clean-limbed, dark-haired young man who confessed to being twenty-three years of age. He was the most junior member of the department apart from Miss Williams. He said how much he hated being stuck in an office all day.

  ‘But you are very young to have such an important job.’

  ‘Is it important? It certainly ought to be but really, you know, it’s all guesswork. Anyway, we know the score. Germany is building a huge air force and we have a very small one. You’ve got to admire what they have achieved. While we have to put up with idiots like Baldwin and Chamberlain, they have . . . I mean, I’m not saying I like what Hitler is doing but, well, he does lead.’

  Edward looked at him quizzically. ‘You admire Hitler?’

  ‘No, of course not. What he’s doing to the Jews . . . well, that’s not right. I’m just saying . . . I’m just saying the Luftwaffe’s going to be a worthy enemy. I know as much about the German air force as anyone, damn it. It’s what I’m here to study and evaluate, so I know what I’m talking about. Look, I’ve been reading this book – as part of my job, you know. It’s by a chap called Guido Mattioli – an Eyetie. It’s called Mussolini Aviator, and his Work for Aviation. Rotten title but it’s true Musso was always hot about war in the air. I wrote down a couple of sentences which made sense to me.’ He rifled through his pockets and produced a crumpled piece of paper from which he proceeded to read. ‘“No machine requires so much human concentration of soul and will power as a flying machine to make it work properly. The pilot understands the fullest meaning of the word ‘control’. Thus it seems that there is an intimate spiritual link between Fascism and Flying. Every airman is a born Fascist.”’

  ‘You don’t really believe that?’ Edward asked, startled.

  Younger looked at him and said hurriedly, ‘No, of course not. Don’t get the wrong idea. I’m a patriot. As soon as war breaks out, I’ll join the RAF and get myself killed doing something, if you understand me. I sometimes feel I’ll go mad here, helping compile reports on our weaknesses and the enemy’s strengths and then watching as they are either ignored or made to prove the opposite of what they mean. Oh, sorry, I didn’t intend to sound off like that. Hey, I say, didn’t I watch you make a century at Lords during the Eton and Harrow match . . . when was it? 1922? I was just a kid but it stuck in my mind.’

  Edward was embarrassed but agreed it might have been him. ‘Were you at . . .?’

  ‘No! I was at some tinpot place you would never have heard of but I play cricket whenever I can get away.’

  ‘I must get you down to play for the Cherrypickers. It’s a team made up of all us old men who can’t quite believe we’re not still young. We need some young blood.’

  ‘I’d like that, sir,’ he said, his face lighting up. The automatic ‘sir’ made Edward feel his age. To this young man he was ancient.

  ‘What do you think of Westmacott and have you any idea where he might be?’ Edward asked hurriedly.

  ‘I have no idea where he is. Perhaps he’s had a breakdown or something. He was looking a bit peaky. I know I often feel like running away and not telling a soul where I’m going.’

  ‘You thought he looked ill?’

  ‘Or worried. He works too hard or maybe he has other problems. I wouldn’t know.’

  ‘He isn’t a friend? He doesn’t talk to you?’

  ‘No. Nor to anyone as far as I know. We get on all right but he’s very reserved. He goes straight home after work and he doesn’t . . . you know . . . fraternize. No reason why he should.’

  ‘McCloud – you like him?’

  ‘Angus? Yes, he’s all right. We have a pint together now and again.’

  ‘But you’re not friends?’

  ‘As I said, we get on but he’s one of those arty types. Not me at all.’

  ‘What’s your idea of a perfect day?’

  Younger’s eyes brightened. ‘Cricket in the summer but, just recently, I’ve been going down to Brooklands most Saturdays.’

  ‘You race cars?’

  ‘I drive a bit but it’s the aeroclub there I’m interest
ed in. I’m learning to fly so that, when the war breaks out, I can join the RAF – no questions asked. I think it’s the nearest I get to being happy when I’m flying. The glorious thing about it is that one feels a perfectly free man and one’s own master as soon as one is up in the air.’

  ‘I know what you mean. I did a bit of flying in Africa.’

  ‘Did you really, sir?’ The boy looked at him with eager eyes.

  ‘Isn’t that expensive – learning to fly?’

  ‘Yes, but the RAF helps a bit. They seem to have woken up to the idea that they are going to need chaps like me when the balloon goes up.’

  The junior secretary, Miss Williams, was the antithesis of Miss Hawkins. She wore as much make-up as she dared and her little blue dress was not designed to hide her charms. She was twenty and it was borne in on Edward that there must be many girls like her for whom the war might prove a welcome adventure. He wondered how she had got the job in Lyall’s department.

  ‘You wanted to see me, my lord?’

  Edward groaned inwardly. It was obvious she intended to flirt with him so he must be as dull as possible.

  ‘Yes, thank you, Miss Williams. I’m just trying to discover if anyone in the department noticed anything which might explain Mr Westmacott’s absence.’

  Jane looked at her inquisitor regretfully. ‘I can’t think of anything, my lord.’

  ‘You share an office with Miss Hawkins, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes. Or rather – perhaps you recall, my lord, – my office is separated from Miss Hawkins’s by a screen.’

  ‘Yes, I remember. Forgive me, Miss Williams, if I sound impertinent but it strikes me that you must find life in the department quite dull. Why did you apply for this particular post?’

  ‘I’m good at my job,’ she said defensively.

  ‘I’m sure you are but don’t you find it a bit boring here? There are no other young people – except Mr Younger, of course.’

  ‘He’s a dear,’ the girl said, going pink, ‘but I’m not his girlfriend or anything if that’s what you’re suggesting. He says he doesn’t have time for girls – what with there being a war coming. Do you think there will be a war, my lord?’

  ‘I hope not,’ he prevaricated. ‘So you don’t find it dull here? What about Mr McCloud?’