Blame The Dead

David came up with a tray of drinks and I reloaded.

'Can I have a talk with you, sir? '

'Sure. I'll hang around until you're clear."

He pushed off; I collected a couple of classy canapés off a housekeeper-shaped woman and went on wandering gently. So far, I hadn't seen Mockby, and since he was difficult to miss I assumed he'd headed back to London to weed his money patch.

Then I came on a collision course with Willie, wandering lonely as an upper-class cloud with a fixed half-smile on his face.

He looked at me. 'I say – you've had an accident.'

It was only the third time we'd met that day. I tell you, you could bleed to death in this country until somebody decides he knows you well enough to call an ambulance.

'Nothing too bad.' I reckoned he'd had enough horror stories for one day. 'Tell me – was Fenwick a good underwriter?'

'Oh, marvellous, old boy – quite the best. We're clear up the creek and grounded on a falling tide without him. He actually knew something about shipping, you see. Most of them don't know a bosun from a binnacle.'

'The underwriters? How the hell do they insure them, then?'

'Oh, experience, statistics, averages, you know. I mean, you don't have to know anything about life to write life insurance, do you, old boy?' He grinned in his mild way; you couldn't quite imagine Willie giving a real rollicking grin. Might frighten the horses; even the tanks. 'But Martin was really interested, particularly in the Norwegian companies. Made us a leader, far as Norway went.'

'Leader?'

'Yes. You know what I mean? Well, it means the syndicates that traditionally set the rates with the brokers, they're the leaders – what? Another underwriter sees a broker hawking around a slip for a Norwegian ship and he looks to see if Fen-wick's taken a line on it and if they have, well, he knows the premium's right – you know? Other syndicates are leaders in tankers or oil rigs or towing risks… but most just follow the lead of the leaders, what?'

I nodded. 'You sound as if you know something about shipping yourself,'

'The family used to be in it, old boy. But we got taken over in the fifties, so I just have to play with it at one remove instead of going for nice long cruises in the owner's cabin, what?'

He smiled and I smiled back. The politely vacant expression might be genuine, but I had a feeling there was something behind it. A man who knew himself, perhaps.

'How did the syndicate do, then?'

'I say, you're asking rather a lot of questions, aren't you, old boy?' But he was still perfectly pleasant with it.

'Guilt feeling, maybe. Wanting to know something about Fenwick, after what happened…' I dangled the bait.

'Oh, mustn't be hard on yourself, old boy. Sure you did everything…' He let his voice drift away.

'It just bothers me.'

'Well, it's no secret we were doing all right. At least Martin kept us afloat in the bad years – and some syndicates broke up then, you know – and we were just about to get going again… and well, you know?'

'How did Fenwick himself manage in the bad years -without profits?'

His eyes went cool and distant, but a fragment of smile remained. 'Just haven't the foggiest notion, old boy. Know I had to sell a few hunters, though. Do you hunt?'

It was a bloody silly question, but it made it politely clear he wanted a quick change of topic.

'Only fleas on cats."

'I… don't think I got that?'

'Fleas on cats. Great sport when I was in Cyprus. Get a light-coloured, short-haired cat – white or ginger's the best. And a pair of eyebrow tweezers, and track them through the undergrowth and – click!'

'Sounds rather sporting. But by rights there should be an element of risk in a blood sport.'

I shrugged. 'You could always try it on an unfriendly cat.'

He put on his vague smile and his eyes focused somewhere else. 'Just so, just so,' he murmured, then sort of faded away.

The party had thinned out a bit, but the remainder were settling in for the duration. David wandered past me, made a conspiratorial face, and led the way upstairs. He had a big room – well, I suppose there weren't any small rooms in that house, except for the servants' – nicely cluttered with the fallout of childhood. A worn old teddy-bear sat on the deep window-sill, a fancy electric train set was collecting dust in one corner, a battered control-line model Spitfire hung on the wall. And books; he had books the way Cyprus cats have fleas.

I picked up a fat volume from beside the bed: Barbara Tuchman's The Guns of August. 'Have you read this?'

'Only once so far, sir. Do you know it? '

'Marvellous book. I think she treads a bit gentle on the original Schließen Plan, though.'

He concentrated. 'I thought it only went wrong because… von Kluck came down east of Paris instead of west – and exposed his flank.'

'Maybe. But nobody seems to have asked what would have happened if he'd followed the Plan and gone west. He'd've been out of touch with the Second Army – or stretched pretty thin – and he'd still have been marching for a month and moving farther than anybody else. Either way, he'd got a damned tired Army. And that was the Plan's fault.'

'I suppose so.' He smiled. 'Can I quote you in my essay, sir? -as an ex-Major of Intelligence?'

'If you like. Now – d'you want to hear how I've been getting on?'

'I'd like to know why you were attacked like that.'

'They were after whatever Bertie Bear was supposed to be. They found the new copy in my flat, and I babbled about him when they hit me with the truth-drug technique, and they didn't want to know. So we know he was a blind, and there's something that size and shape around.'

'Not in Daddy's flat?'

'No. Somebody searched there before me, mind-' his eyes opened wide; '-but I got jumpedafter that, so if it was the same mob they didn't find it at the flat, either. And it can't be at Lloyd's or Mockby would have nicked it. He knows what it is, by the way.'

He thought about this. 'It might be in this house, then.'

'Yes. Can you go through his stuff here?'

He looked doubtful, but nodded slowly and fumbled at his inside pocket. 'I don't know if I should have done this, but – it's a letter my mother threw away.'

I suppose the code of the greater public schools doesn't encourage snooping through parents' wastebaskets, so I un-crumpled it – it had been screwed into a ball – and said quickly, 'Oh, yes, you were right,' long before I'd found out he certainly•was right.

It was on the office notepaper of Jonas Steen, Marine Surveyor (it actually said that in English), of Bergen, Norway. Handwritten, in the mature but slightly inaccurate style of a man who usually gets his thoughts typed out for him.

And it said:

Dear Madam,

May I express my great sorrow at the terrible death of your husband, whom I also knew? It must be a very great shock.

I would not trouble you more at this dreadful time but there was a certain book I think he was carrying to France when he died. If it was not taken by Mr Card who was with him, do you please know where it is?

Yours with great sorrow,

Jonas Steen

I read it twice, then said, 'A book. Just "a book". He's playing it pretty canny. Isn't he? Not much help to your mother in finding it. You don't happen to know if she wrote back?" He made a rueful face. 'I can't very well ask her.'

'No, I see that. Well, at least I can talk to this bloke Steen.'

'I'm not sure you really ought to go on, sir. I didn't know it would get as rough as… well, as beating you up.'

'Didn't know myself. But I can't stop as long as anybody thinks I've got this book.'

'You could say it was just a colouring book.'

'Yes? And you think they'd believe me?'

'I see, sir. I suppose they couldn'trisk believing you.'

'Anyway, as long as they think I've got it they'll keep coming to me – and they won't be looking too hard in other places. It's made Mockby commit himself. And the party of the third part.'