“He’d still be their director.”
“I know, but it’d be a bit of step down for him, wouldn’t it, after working at the real theater?”
“But it’s not as if it’s his life, is it? Or even his real job. He’s a schoolteacher. The theater’s just a hobby for him.”
Try and tell that to Derek Wyman, Annie thought, remembering her talk with him that morning. “And who was going to finance this little venture?” she asked.
“Laurence Silbert, Mark’s partner, was going to help us get started, then the idea was that it would mostly pay for itself, maybe with a little help from the Arts Council lottery money every once in a while. We were sure the board would go for it. Laurence was on the board, anyway, and he thought he could convince them.”
Vernon Ross had never mentioned this, Annie thought. But he wouldn’t, would he, if it was something that angered him or made him look bad? “Interesting,” she said. “Just how far had all this got?”“Oh, it was still only in the planning stages,” Maria said. “That’s another reason this is all so tragic. It couldn’t have come at a worse time. Now nothing will change. If I want any sort of future in the theater, I’m going to have to look for another job. I don’t even think I have the heart to stay here without Mark being around.”
“You’re young,” said Annie. “I’m sure you’ll do fine. Is there anything else you can tell me?”
“Not really,” said Maria. “That was about all I had to say. I can offer you another cup of instant coffee, though, if you want?”
Annie looked at the cracked, stained mug with the gray-brown sludge in the bottom. “No, thanks,” she said, standing up. “I really have to be going. More reports to write. Thanks for your help, anyway.”
“Think nothing of it,” said Maria, seeing her to the door. “Just don’t tell Vernon what I said about him being homophobic and all that. I’m sure he thinks he’s the very model of tolerance.”
“Don’t worry,” said Annie. “I won’t.”
Edwina’s statement hung in the silence ready to burst like a piece of overripe fruit on a tree. Banks had had his suspicions that Silbert was up to something clandestine, but he would have guessed that it was sexual, or perhaps even criminal. Not this. Not espionage. He knew that it changed the whole balance and focus of the case, but it was too early to say exactly how. At least he could start by getting as much information out of Edwina as he could, though she seemed immediately to have regretted her little confidence.
“I shouldn’t have told you,” she said. “It’ll only muddy the waters.”
“On the contrary,” said Banks. “You should have told me the first time we talked to you. It could be important. How long had this been going on?”
“What do you mean?”
“The spying.”
“Oh, all his life. Well, ever since he graduated from university.” Edwina sighed, sipped her gin and tonic and lit another cigarette. Banks noticed the yellow stains ingrained in the wrinkles of her fingers. “His father, Cedric, worked for military intelligence during the Second World War. I don’t think he was very good at it, but at least he survived, and he still had the contacts, people he kept in touch with.” “Did he pursue it as a career?”
“Good Lord, no. Cedric was far too selfish to serve his country for any longer than he had to. He involved himself in a number of ill-advised business ventures. One after the other. I’m afraid, Mr. Banks, that charming rogue as he was, my late lamented husband wasn’t much good at anything. His main interests in life were fast cars and even faster women. We stayed together for appearances’ sake, as married couples did then, but God knows how long it would have lasted if it hadn’t been for his accident. The woman he was with walked away without a scratch.” Edwina gazed directly at Banks. “I always hated her for that, you know,” she said. “Not that I wished it had been the other way around. I just wished they had both died.”
She must have noticed Banks’s look of mingled curiosity and horror because she went on quickly. “Oh, I didn’t do it. Really. I didn’t fix the brakes or anything. I wouldn’t know how. Don’t think this is a murder confession. It was just the end of something for me, and it would have been an even more perfect end if his silly little whore had died with him. You can hardly imagine how miserable my existence was then. This was in late October 1956, well before Viva and the swinging sixties. In fact, it was right at the height of the Suez Crisis, and I think Cedric was involved in the oil business then. Suez was the main tanker route, of course. Typical of him to be putting his money in quite the wrong place at the wrong time. Anyway, things were very difficult all around. The only bright spot in my life was Laurence.”
Banks noticed the tears in her eyes, but with a supreme effort of will she seemed to absorb them back into the ducts. He could feel the sun warm on his cheek and his shirt was sticking to his back. “The spying,” he said gently. “How did that come about?”
“Oh, yes, that. Would you believe it but Dicky Hawkins—an old war colleague of Cedric’s—actually asked me for permission to recruit Laurence? This was in his last year at Cambridge, 1967. He’d shown a remarkable facility for modern languages—German and Russian in particular—and a keen grasp of contemporary politics. He was good at sports, too. Not for Laurence The Beatles, marijuana and revolution. He was about as dyed-in-the-wool blue as you could get. While others kids were out buying Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, Laurence was running around the hills playing soldiers with the army cadets and collecting military memorabilia. And he didn’t buy it to sell it to hippies on Carnaby Street later, either. Somehow all that just passed Laurence by.”
“They must have had a few reservations about taking him on, though,” Banks said. “Given your... well, your lifestyle at the time.”
Edwina laughed. “It was still early days for me, remember, but yes, I was starting to make a name for myself, and I was mixing with a rather heady crowd. Most people think the sixties didn’t start until the Summer of Love in 1967, but for those of us who were there at the beginning, in London, at any rate, it was all over by then. 1963, 1964, 1965. Those were the years. All the people I knew wanted to change the world—some from the inside, some through art or Eastern religion, some by violent revolution. But wasn’t that a wonderful bonus?”
“You mean Laurence spied on you and your friends?”
“I’m quite sure nothing slipped by him. But Dicky and his pals weren’t really interested in all that. They didn’t take that scene in the least bit seriously. Not here, at any rate. I mean, everyone sang and talked about revolution, but nobody actually did anything. Dicky’s lads knew who the real dangers were. And where. It was overseas they were interested in. Mainland Europe was the hotbed of terrorism back then, or starting to be. Germany. France. Italy. Cohn-Bendit, Baader-Meinhof and the Red Army Faction. We had our moments in little old Britain, mostly courtesy of the IRA or the Angry Brigade, but in comparison with the rest of the world we were still something of a sleepy backwater.”
“So you told this Dicky Hawkins that it was all right to recruit Laurence?”
“The question was a mere courtesy. It clearly didn’t matter what my answer was. Anyway, I can’t say I was happy about the idea, but I told him he was welcome to give it a try, that I wasn’t Laurence’s keeper and wouldn’t stand in his way. I wasn’t quite sure whether he would succeed or not, but he did. The next thing I knew Laurence was off on training courses for a couple of years, learning how to drive fast in city centers and God knows what else, and I didn’t see much of him. After that, he changed.”