Roberta appeared in the doorway shrugging herself into the stripy coat. Derek stood up awkwardly and didn’t know where to put his hands. She smiled at him sweetly and unseeingly and said to me, ‘Is there anything else you want, Kelly?’
‘No. Thank you very much.’
‘Think nothing of it. I’ll see... I might come over again tomorrow.’
‘Fine,’ I said.
‘Right.’
She nodded, smiled temperately, and made her usual poised exit. Derek’s comment approached, ‘Cor.’
‘I suppose you didn’t see any likely pieces of tube in the wreckage?’ I asked.
‘Huh?’ He tore his eyes away with an effort from the direction Roberta had gone. ‘No, like, it was real bad. Lots of bits, you couldn’t have told what they were. I never seen anything like it. Sure, I seen crashes, stands to reason. Different, this was.’ He shivered.
‘Did you have any difficulty with being allowed to search?’
‘No, none. They didn’t seem all that interested in what I did. Just said to help myself. ’Course, I told them it was my car, like. I mean, that I looked after it. Mind you, they were right casual about it anyway, because when I came away they were letting this other chap have a good look too.’
‘Which other chap?’
‘Some fellow. Said he was an insurance man, but he didn’t have a notebook.’
I felt like saying Huh? too. I said, ‘Notebook?’
‘Yeah, sure, insurance men, they’re always crawling round our place looking at wrecks and never one without a notebook. Write down every blessed detail, they do. But this other chap, looking at your car, he didn’t have any notebook.’
‘What did he look like?’
He thought.
‘That’s difficult, see. He didn’t look like anything, really. Medium, sort of. Not young and not old really either. A nobody sort of person, really.’
‘Did he wear sun glasses?’
‘No. He had a hat on, but I don’t know if he had ordinary glasses. I can’t actually remember. I didn’t notice that much.’
‘Was he looking through the wreckage as if he knew what he wanted?’
‘Uh... don’t know, really. Strikes me he was a bit flummoxed, like, finding it was all in such small bits.’
‘He didn’t have a girl with him?’
‘Nope.’ He brightened. ‘He came in a Volkswagen, an oldish grey one.’
‘Thousands of those about,’ I said.
‘Oh yeah, sure. Er... was this chap important?’
‘Only if he was looking for what you found.’
He worked it out.
‘Cripes,’ he said.
Lord Ferth arrived twenty minutes after he’d said, which meant that I’d been hopping round the flat on my crutches for half an hour, unable to keep still.
He stood in the doorway into the sitting-room holding a briefcase and bowler hat in one hand and unbuttoning his short fawn overcoat with the other.
‘Well, Hughes,’ he said. ‘Good afternoon.’
‘Good afternoon, my Lord.’
He came right in, shut the door behind him, and put his hat and case on the oak chest beside him.
‘How’s the leg?’
‘Stagnating,’ I said. ‘Can I get you some tea... coffee... or a drink?’
‘Nothing just now...’ He laid his coat on the chest and picked up the briefcase again, looking around him with the air of surprise I was used to in visitors. I offered him the green armchair with a small table beside it. He asked where I was going to sit.
‘I’ll stand,’ I said. ‘Sitting’s difficult.’
‘But you don’t stand all day!’
‘No. Lie on my bed, mostly.’
‘Then we’ll talk in your bedroom.’
We went through the door at the end of the sitting-room and this time he murmured aloud.
‘Whose flat is this?’ he asked.
‘Mine.’
He glanced at my face, hearing the dryness in my voice. ‘You resent surprise?’
‘It amuses me.’
‘Hughes... it’s a pity you didn’t join the Civil Service. You’d have gone all the way.’
I laughed. ‘There’s still time... Do they take in warned off jockeys at the Administrative Grade?’
‘So you can joke about it?’
‘It’s taken nine days. But yes, just about.’
He gave me a long straight assessing look, and there was a subtle shift somewhere in both his manner to me and in basic approach, and when I shortly understood what it was I was shaken, because he was taking me on level terms, level in power and understanding and experience: and I wasn’t level.
Few men in his position would have thought that this course was viable, let alone chosen it. I understood the compliment. He saw, too, that I did, and I knew later that had there not been this fundamental change of ground, this cancellation of the Steward-jockey relationship, he would not have said to me all that he did. It wouldn’t have happened if he hadn’t been in my flat.
He sat down in the khaki velvet armchair, putting the briefcase carefully on the floor beside him. I took the weight off my crutches and let the bed springs have a go.
‘I went to see Lord Gowery,’ he said neutrally. ‘And I can see no reason not to tell you straight away that you and Dexter Cranfield will have your warning off rescinded within the next few days.’
‘Do you mean it?’ I exclaimed. I tried to sit up. The plaster intervened.
Lord Ferth smiled. ‘As I see it, there is no alternative. There will be a quiet notice to that effect in next week’s Calendar.’
‘That is, of course,’ I said, ‘All you need to tell me.’
He looked at me levelly. ‘True. But not all you want to know.’
‘No.’
‘No one has a better right... and yet you will have to use your discretion about whether you tell Dexter Cranfield.’
‘All right.’
He sighed, reached down to open the briefcase, and pulled out a neat little tape recorder.
‘I did try to ignore your suggestion. Succeeded, too, for a while. However...’ He paused, his fingers hovering over the controls. ‘This conversation took place late on Monday afternoon, in the sitting-room of Lord Gowery’s flat near Sloane Square. We were alone... you will see that we were alone. He knew, though, that I was making a recording.’ He still hesitated. ‘Compassion. That’s what you need. I believe you have it.’
‘Don’t con me,’ I said.
He grimaced. ‘Very well.’
The recording began with the selfconscious platitudes customary in front of microphones, especially when no one wants to take the first dive into the deep end. Lord Ferth had leapt, eventually.
‘Norman, I explained why we must take a good look at this Enquiry.’
‘Hughes is being ridiculous. Not only ridiculous, but downright slanderous. I don’t understand why you should take him seriously.’ Gowery sounded impatient.
‘We have to, even if only to shut him up.’ Lord Ferth looked across the room, his hot eyes gleaming ironically. The recording ploughed on, his voice like honey. ‘You know perfectly well, Norman, that it will be better all round if we can show there is nothing whatever in these allegations he is spreading around. Then we can emphatically confirm the suspension and squash all the rumours.’
Subtle stuff. Lord Gowery’s voice grew easier, assured now that Ferth was still an ally. As perhaps he was. ‘I do assure you Wykeham, that if I had not sincerely believed that Hughes and Dexter Cranfield were guilty, I would not have warned them off.’
There was something odd about that. Both Ferth and Gowery had thought so too, as there were several seconds of silence on the tape.