‘You have been very frank, Powerscourt. Thank you for that.’ The colonel took another furtive look up and down the road. Secrecy, Powerscourt thought, their own secrecy will be their undoing. ‘Let me try to give you such information as may be useful to you. The department, shall I say, has always had an interest in the Silkworkers. They are able to travel to and from Europe freely, ostensibly to meet with other guilds and similar ludicrous organizations. It’s bizarre, the extent to which the middle classes of Europe like dressing up in uniforms and livery from the distant past.’
‘You mean they are messengers? Picking up reports from agents? Dropping off requests for more information?’
‘You may think what you will,’ Arbuthnot smiled a glacial smile, ‘it is not for me to comment.’
‘Was Meredith a messenger for you? How long had be been working for you then?’
‘That is a difficult question to answer. I am now going to tell you the most sensitive part of our position, in return for your earlier and future help. If you agree to the future, that is?’
Powerscourt felt he had little choice. ‘I do,’ he said. Visions of endless future meetings, held like this one, on the nation’s side roads or in derelict buildings in the capital flashed across his mind.
‘Meredith was originally employed by us as a courier. We now suspect the Germans may have turned him, through bribery or brute force, to work for them. But we are not sure.’
‘Heavens above, man, are you saying he turned into a double agent? Do you think the Germans might have killed him? God in heaven.’
‘You may think what you will. I have told you the relevant points. It is not for me to comment any further. We shall meet again.’
Colonel Arbuthnot adjusted the rose in his buttonhole once again and set off towards the railway station. Powerscourt watched him go.
Lady Lucy was taking tea once again with David Lewis, her agent inside the schoolboy population of Allison’s. She was now in her second week as French conversation mistress, the permanent holder of the position ostensibly still down with flu. The boy was nervous, rocking slowly to and fro in his chair.
‘Look here, Mrs Hamilton, I’ve been thinking about things and there’s something I’ve just got to say…’
His words tailed off. Lady Lucy didn’t like the sound of this one little bit.
‘More tea, David? What do you think of this chocolate cake? The staff here recommend it highly.’
Reluctantly the boy tried out a large piece of cake.
‘Now then,’ Lady Lucy went on brightly, ‘have you anything further to report from the classrooms and the corridors of Allison’s? Your last piece of information was most useful. I was asking then if you could find out anything about the late bursar, Roderick Gill.’
David Lewis spoke indistinctly through a mouthful of cake. ‘Yes, I have, but you have to understand the rules about the Sixth Form.’
‘I see,’ said Lady Lucy.
‘Once you are over eighteen you are allowed to go and have a pint of beer in the evenings on Fridays and Saturdays, not on the other days. If you come back drunk or anything like that, the privilege is withdrawn from everybody in the school. It works pretty well on the whole.’
‘But you’re not eighteen yet, David, are you?’
‘No, I’m not. I’m seventeen and a half, actually. But the older chaps bring back some gossip about what they’ve seen in the town, if any of the masters are getting drunk, any new motor cars to be seen.’
The boy paused to brush some chocolate crumbs off his trousers.
‘There are three pubs in Fakenham itself, and one, the Farmers’ Arms, a little way out on the Cromer Road. It used to be a pub, now it’s been turned into a smart hotel but they still have a bar where people who wouldn’t be seen dead in an ordinary pub can go and have a drink. Here in the town, there’s the Crown where we are now. Some of the masters use it, so the boys don’t come here very much. It might be a touch embarrassing all round. There’s the Green Man which is a dump and the Royal Oak which is said to be haunted but has the cheapest beer. That’s the school favourite.’
‘More tea?’ said Lady Lucy.
‘Thank you,’ said David Lewis, and continued his story. ‘For some reason, two of the chaps got fed up with the Royal Oak and went to the Farmers’ Arms instead. Every time they went there the bursar was in the place with a woman.’
‘What sort of woman?’ asked Lady Lucy, trying to remember the details of the stonemason’s wife. ‘Was she young? Pretty?’
‘Well, Longford and Fairfax said she must have been very good looking when she was young.’
Male cruelty begins very young, thought Lady Lucy. ‘Age?’
‘Well, they thought she must have been fairly old, well over forty. The thing is they were behaving as if they were twenty-one, all over each other. Longford said it was rather vulgar, not the way proper people that age ought to behave. And she looked like she had plenty of money. They used to leave together and she had a car waiting outside with a chauffeur.’
Whatever else she might have had, Lady Lucy said to herself, the stonemason’s wife did not have a car and a driver.
‘I don’t suppose your friends managed to catch a name for the lady?’
‘Only a Christian name, I’m afraid. Maud, that’s what the bursar called her, Maud.’
Lady Lucy thought that with the name of the pub and the man and the Christian name of the woman, it should not be too difficult to find a name and an address. ‘Well done, David, that’s very useful. I’m so proud of you!’
‘Do you think she might have killed him?’ David Lewis was beginning to enjoy the many possibilities of detective work. ‘Now I think about it, mind you, she’s not likely to have dressed up as a man with a great black beard and walked up the school corridor first thing in the morning. Did she go to London to hire a killer to do it for her?’
‘I don’t think we should assume that just because she was seen having a drink with Mr Gill that she had anything to do with his death. It sounds from what your people said that they were friends, not enemies.’
‘Hmm,’ said the boy, in that tone of voice people adopt when they don’t believe a word of what they’ve just been told. ‘I must go to my piano lesson in a minute, Mrs Hamilton. Is there anything you’d like me to make inquiries about?’
Lady Lucy poured herself a final cup of tea. ‘Well, there is, but I don’t know how you’d set about finding the answer. We’d like to know what Mr Gill was doing before he came to the school. Maybe somebody at Allison’s who was already in post when he arrived would know.’
‘I’ll see what I can do,’ said David and rose to leave.
‘Do you like playing the piano? Are you good at it? Any favourite composers?’
The boy stopped by the door. ‘The piano? It’s the best thing for me at the school next to cricket. I just love Mozart, Mrs Hamilton. It makes me think I’m in some elegant building where all the rooms and everything are perfectly proportioned. The windows are open and there’s a garden outside, drenched in sunshine. Mind you, I like Tchaikovsky too.’
‘I shouldn’t think you’re in a Georgian jewel of a house then, David.’
The boy laughed. ‘No, it’s dark and there’s a storm outside. I’m striding out over the moors with that chap Heathcliff, tortured by unspeakable thoughts.’
Powerscourt and Johnny Fitzgerald were taking coffee with Inspector Fletcher and his sergeant in the garden room of the Elysian Fields Hotel. They were the only people in the room. A constable had been placed on watch near the front door to check the entrances and the exits. Powerscourt told his colleagues about his encounter with the secret service man earlier that day.
Inspector Fletcher was astonished. ‘I find it impossible to believe that intelligence work has been going on at the Jesus Hospital. It’s such an unlikely place for it.’