"More or less—yes, Miss Epton."
"It sounds a bit one-sided to me." She looked at him with frank curiosity. "He made me promise I wouldn't split on him—or on you. And he made you sound rather like the Lone Ranger."
"The Lone Ranger?"
"Your mask is on The Side of Good."
"My mask?"
"Well, he said if anyone asked about you I'm to say you're an old friend of the family. I didn't quite twig whose family. Mine I suppose—Neil didn't have much in the way of relatives, apart from a dotty aunt in New Zealand."
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He looked at her, trying to see through the veil of flippancy. Apolitical, Sir Geoffrey had said—not intellectual, but not stupid either. A nice, ordinary girl, even a little old-fashioned by modern standards—
it would be a mercy if that were true!
"I think we'd best leave it vague, Miss Epton. Say just a friend, never mind whose."
"But are you a friend?" She paused. "Except that's a question, isn't it. It is asking rather a lot, you know—
answers but no questions."
It was asking rather a lot, he could see that. And there was nothing so corrosive of discretion as unsatisfied curiosity— that applied to men and women equally. But how much to tell, and how much to leave untold?
"Suppose you wait and hear the questions. Then you can decide whether or not you can answer them."
He tried to speak gently, but as always it came out merely gruffly. It would have to be the usual mixture of truth and lies, after all. "But I tell you this, Miss Epton: I think Neil would have counted me a friend—
and I promise you he would have answered if he'd been here now."
"If he'd been here now . . ." She echoed him miserably, the shadow across her face suddenly pronounced. "If only he could be here! I still can't quite believe that he's never going to be here again, that he's never going to come in through the door—" She looked past him into nowhere, her flippancy altogether gone. "Did you ever meet him?"
Butler shook his head sympathetically. This way might be the wrong one, but it might get some of the answers without questions.
"He was a super person, more fun to be with than anyone. And everyone liked him because there was no pretence about him—" She looked at him again.
Butler felt his face turn to stone. This child would have married the fellow—it was true.
And where would it have ended then? In the maximum security wing? Or in a dacha outside Moscow?
And for sure across the pages of the News of the World and with hurt and bitterness. He longed suddenly to be able to tell her that of all the inevitable unhappy endings this was the happiest she could have hoped for.
"I'm sorry, Colonel—I'm not usually emotional like this." She looked at him sadly, misinterpreting his expression. "I can see that you are a friend after all now."
"Polly!"
A huge, mop-headed fair-haired young man in a patched and shabby sports jacket loomed at his shoulder.
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"Come on, Polly—have a beer and to hell with the calories!" exclaimed the young man cheerfully.
"Hullo, Dan," she replied with equal cheerfulness that was ruined by a single mascara-stained tear which rolled down her cheek. "Colonel Butler—meet the white hope of the black Rhodesians, Dan McLachlan."
"Joke over," the young man groaned. "Glad to meet you, sir—so, long as you don't believe anything Polly says." He glanced down at Butler's glass. "I don't rise to short drinks, but if you'd like a beer—?"
"Stingy," said Polly brightly. "I'll have that beer, Dan. But you must excuse me while I put my face back on. I'll only be a second."
The fair-haired man watched her disappear into the Ladies before turning back to Butler.
"I wondered when it was going to hit her."
Butler looked up at him. "It?"
"Poor old Boozy—Neil Smith running out of road." McLachlan shook his head. "She's been bottling it up."
Butler grunted neutrally.
"She should have got it off her chest." McLachlan nodded wisely. "Stiff upper lip doesn't become girls, anyway—did you know old Boozy?"
"Hah—hmm!" Butler cleared his throat. "Friend of yours?"
"Boozy? Hell, Boozy was a great guy, even if he was a bit of a lefty. He wasn't my year, actually—
haven't seen him since he was made a baas in Michaelmas Term. But I was at prep school with him years ago."
At school.
"Indeed?" Butler swallowed. "Where would that have been?"
"Little place down in Kent."
"Eden Hall?"
"That's it—do you know it?"
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Grunt. "And you were a friend of his there?"
"That would be stretching it a bit. Boozy was always a year ahead of me—I was a domkoppe in the Fifth Form when he was a prefect in the Sixth. I didn't even recognise him when we met again at Dick's a couple of years ago. Not until he told me who he was—then I knew him of course. Only one Boozy—
more's the pity!"
Of course—only one Boozy! And what a gift to be remembered by young McLachlan of the Fifth.
McLachlan looked at him seriously. "But if you're a friend of Polly's, sir, it'ud be a good thing if you could keep an eye on her—at least until the day after tomorrow. She's taken this thing harder than she's let on, and she drives like a maniac at the best of times."
"What happens the day after tomorrow?"
"Oh, I can handle it after that. We're both going up to her old man's place in the north. And she'll be OK
once she gets home."
Steady the East Lanes, Butler told himself. "You mean you're both going to Castleshields House?"
"Surely. Do you know that too ?"
"I rather think I'm supposed to be talking to you there, young man. If you're interested in Byzantine military organisation, that is."
"Well—" McLachlan grinned disarmingly "—I'm a PPE man myself, with the emphasis on the middle P.
But say, have you come down to collect Polly? Is that it?"
"Not exactly," replied Butler cautiously. "But tell me, Mr McLachlan—"
"Dan—"
"Hmm—Dan, then—what exactly takes you to Castleshields House? I thought it was attached to the University of Cumbria."
"So it is, sir. But Dick's is by way of being a shareholder in it. Young Hob and the high-powered Dr Gracey cooked it up between them, didn't you know?"
Butler made a great play of consuming the last of his whiskey. This was where Audley's cover plan began to look decidedly thin, when his institutional knowledge was shown to be deficient in such small dummy2.htm
matters as this. "Dick's" was evidently the King's College, and "Young Hob" was Sir Geoffrey, as distinguished from his long-dead grandfather and predecessor in the Master's chair at the college. But the relationship of the college with Castleshields House was still beyond him.
Yet it would be a pity, a great pity, not to take advantage of Daniel McLachlan's unexpected appearance.
Apart from what the young man might know about Neil Smith, his acquaintanceship would give substance to Butler's own false identity at Castleshields House in much the same way as the enemy had obviously intended it to do for Smith at the College.
Indeed, he might even be more useful than that if the scornful reference to Smith's left-wing politics meant anything. But he needed to know more about the lad before that could be considered seriously.
"Hell!" exclaimed McLachlan. "Here's Polly and I haven't got the ruddy drinks."
Butler followed his glance gratefully. She was smiling again now, but her face had a scrubbed, make-up free look.
"Made a fool of myself, haven't I!" she apologised breathlessly. "I've had a good weep in the loo, too—
and I promise not to do that again." She caught sight of McLachlan attempting to catch the barmaid's eye. "Hey, Dan—don't bother about those drinks. It's time I was going home for lunch, and if I have another beer I'll have had my calorie quota, darn it."