"And that would mean that in effect he committed suicide ?" said Sir Geoffrey, staring at him.
"I seem to remember that you suggested as much in your letter. Does it surprise you now?"
Sir Geoffrey gestured peevishly. "So I did, so I did! But in retrospect I felt that it was not wholly in character. It was— how can I put it—an inexact way of approaching the problem. Not like Smith, at all."
"But perhaps like Zoshchenko, Master. You must remember that we're dealing with two men now, not one. And neither of them was quite himself." Butler paused. "Besides, if it was like that it wasn't truly dummy2.htm
suicide—at least not when he set out. It was more like daring fate to settle things for him— maybe he had his own people on his tail by then and he knew he was on his way to betraying everything he'd worked for."
"His own people? You mean the KGB or something like that?"
Butler shrugged. "Something like that."
"Could they have been responsible, Butler?"
"Honestly, Master—I think not. There's no evidence of it as yet. But to be sure of it I'd need to talk to someone much closer to him than you've been. Do you know of anyone who fills that bill ? He had friends, you say?"
"Hmm . . ." Sir Geoffrey frowned heavily into space. "I do indeed, Butler—I do indeed."
He raised his eyes to Butler's, still frowning, and then fell silent again.
Butler thought: the old devil started this business and now he doesn't like the way the wind's blowing—
the more so because it's blowing down his neck.
"I know this must be distasteful to you, sir," he said aloud, desperately trying to stop obsequiousness from seeping into his voice. "But we have to know, one way or another—"
"I don't need you to tell me my duty, Colonel Butler. Or to threaten me with your one way or another.
It's simply that the person who fills your bill exactly happens to be the daughter of a very old friend of mine. It seems—though I wasn't aware of it until after the man's death—that there was an engagement in the air."
"With Smith?"
"So it seems." The words came out with reluctance. "Is it possible that you can . . . speak to her without revealing the man's true identity?"
"I'd prefer to do it that way."
"I'm relieved to hear it." Sir Geoffrey relaxed. "I wouldn't like to see Polly Epton hurt again—and not like that."
Epton.
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They hadn't suspected Smith and they didn't know much about him—Audley had admitted as much, and that was nothing less than the truth, by God !
"Epton?" Butler repeated casually. "Would that be the Castleshields Eptons?"
"That's right. Charles Epton's daughter. She's an occupational therapist here—I suppose that's how she met Smith. And then she must have met him again up north."
That changed things, thought Butler. They had been convinced that something had tipped Smith over the edge, but it had never occurred to anyone that the thing might be a woman.
He hadn't bargained on a woman.
Damned women!
He was jerked back to reality by Sir Geoffrey's voice, its tone edged with bitter complaint.
"I beg your pardon?"
"I said 'what a waste', Colonel Butler."
"Of Miss Epton, Master?"
"No, man—of Smith. He had a good mind. What a waste!"
"I couldn't agree more." Damned women.
IX
HE RECOGNISED THE symptoms only too well.
To start with he had had trouble making up his mind, and then, when he had belatedly come to a decision, he had consciously made the wrong choice.
Although his usually healthy appetite had suddenly deserted him (and that was another symptom too) he knew very well that in the field it was always best to eat when the opportunity presented itself. So reason decreed that he ought to stoke up with the hot sausages the pub was serving, or some of the serviceable veal and ham pie, or even the bread and cheese and pickled onions.
Yet here he sat, staring sourly into his second whiskey and soda, knowing that it wasn't doing him the least good.
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It wasn't that he was a misogynist, he told himself for the thousandth time. It was patently irrational to hate them all because of the gross betrayal and infidelity of one.
It was simply that he knew he didn't understand them. Or rather, he knew that understanding women was a skill given to some and not others, like the ability to judge the flight of a cricket ball instinctively. Or maybe it was like tone deafness and colour blindness.
But whatever it was, he hadn't got it. And without it he feared and distrusted himself, and was ashamed.
He looked again at his watch. Sir Geoffrey had seemed confident that he could arrange a rendezvous for this place and time, and his duty to interview her was inescapable: if the rumour of that unofficial engagement were true she ought to know more about Smith's state of mind than anyone else, though he was hardly the best man to extract her information.
He snorted with self-contempt and reached out for his glass.
"Colonel Butler."
Whatever Polly Epton was, she was certainly no slip of a girl; she was a well-built, well-rounded young woman—the American term "well stacked" popped up in Butler's mind. Indeed, although not conventionally pretty she glowed with such health and wholesomeness that the Americanism was instantly driven out by women's magazine images of milkmaids, butter churns and thick cream.
It was ridiculous, but he felt himself praying enviously I hope my girls grow up like this.
"Colonel Butler?" she repeated breathlessly, and this time a shade doubtfully, as though a certain identification had let her down.
"Hah—hmm ! That's right!" he replied more loudly than he had intended, rising awkwardly, his knees tilting the low table in front of him. "Miss Epton, is it? I beg your pardon— I'm forgetting my manners."
"Thank heavens—I thought for a moment I'd made a mistake—please don't get up, Colonel Butler."
But they won't grow up like this, he thought sadly.
"Let me get you a drink, Miss Epton. And something to eat too."
"That's kind of you but golly—nothing to eat here. I'm much too much of a fattypuff to dare to eat stodge at lunch-time. But if I could maybe have a half of bitter—I shouldn't have that really—but just a half."
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From the bar he watched her fumbling with the buttons of her shiny raincoat as she sat down, shaking her thick mop of light brown hair. She was truly a little too plump for the mini-skirt she was wearing, even allowing for the fact that it was a fashion he'd never quite learnt to accept. But then he'd never quite learnt to accept any such fashionable extremes, and at least it was more becoming on her than the Bulgarian peasant outfits he had observed in London. Indeed, on her the mini looked surprisingly innocent, no denying that.
And no denying that it was nevertheless a long way from any sort of mourning. Yet he fancied that even this apparent cheerfulness was less than her natural high spirits; there was a restraint to it, a shadow almost.
"Uncle Geoff said on the phone that I couldn't mistake you—thanks awfully—but I thought I had, you know. You didn't look as though you were expecting me."
"I was—ah—thinking about something else I'm afraid, day-dreaming," he began lamely, unable to bring himself to ask her to reveal what had been so unmistakable about him. The red hair, no doubt, and the prizefighter's face!
She sipped her beer, watching him over the rim of the glass, and then set it down carefully on the table between them. "Uncle Geoff said you wanted to talk to me about Neil," she said with childlike directness. "Is that right?"
"That's quite right."
"He said that I must answer all your questions, but I mustn't ask any of mine—is that right too?"