'The fair Delphi - " Delphi" , was it?' Audley's voice came from outside her range of vision, casually seeking confirmation on the surface, but evil with certainty underneath. 'They both worshipped at the same shrine, Elizabeth. So they both asked for an answer from the Delphic oracle: "Who loves me?" - Philadelphia Marsh, only and beloved daughter of Abe Marsh, ci-devant Abraham Marx, no relative of either Karl or Groucho or Spencer.'
Whatever it had been, it was pain now.
'But they each received an equivocal answer.' Audley only continued when it was evident that Sir Peter had nothing to say. 'Only… Haddock was a classicist, so he knew that when the oracle at Delphi said "No", that didn't necessarily mean the same thing. But poor old Peter Barrie wasn't a classicist, so he thought "Yes" meant "Yes".'
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' No!' Interrogation would never have wrung that pain from the man, not with the whole of Xenophon's green-and-gold tower beneath him, thought Elizabeth. And Audley hadn't tried to interrogate him.
'That was the way it was.' Audley knew when he was on a winner. 'They were both after the same girl. And Haddock won.' He paused, but not long enough to allow any objection.
'So his good friend shopped him.'
'That was not the way it was - and you know it.' Sir Peter registered his objection too late.
'You've already said as much yourself.'
'Oh - sure! The first tirne I twisted your arm you wouldn't talk. But when the Greek twisted your arm… then you gave me Haddock. So you'd sorted out your priorities by then - right?'
Sir Peter Barrie looked at her for a long moment, which she realized was the moment Audley had been working towards from the beginning.
'Miss Loftus… in a perverse way he's right - the truth, the whole truth… and everything but the truth… that's how he's right.'
She felt for him, recalling the same division of truth which Father's mourners had delivered and withheld at his funeral, as they had briefly held her hand, with the rain dripping from their caps, or their hats, or their umbrellas - those who knew him, some of them old shipmates, and those who only knew him from his medals and the naval annals and afterwards: all of them had possessed a piece of that truth, and pehaps she herself only knew a part of it, after all.
The truth was that the truth always had one more dimension than even the most complete profile imagined. 'Yes, Sir Peter?'
'I don't really know what you want. But if you want me to shop him now, I'm afraid I can't help you. Because I think I loved them both, Miss Loftus.'
Past tense - loved! But Haddock Thomas was still alive, so what did loved mean?
'Delphi was younger than I was - ten years younger.' He dismissed Audley with a half-glance. 'And Haddock was almost exactly eleven years older than I was… I know that, because he used to say that he was conceived after the Battle of Loos and born during the Battle of Somme - and that's 1916. So I was midway between them. And… it wasn't just
"Yes" and "No". I thought he was too old for her, as a matter of fact, Miss Loftus.'
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Elizabeth struggled with the mathematics of what he was trying to tell her, which somehow added up to the dreadful arithmetic of the whole blood-stained twentieth century: Haddock Thomas had been a pilot in Father's war - but Sir Peter had been just too young for that… and Delphi - Philadelphia Marsh - ?
'He introduced me to her. It was at a party in the American Embassy - Dr Marsh was one of their economic advisers, commuting between Bonn and London and Washington…
Haddock had worked with him, off and on, ever since he'd joined the service, after he'd come down from Oxford the second time, after the war.'
'Where - when did you meet… Haddock?'
'At Oxford, in '48. He was a post-graduate - a Farnsworth scholar. If you want to address him correctly he's Doctor Caradog Thomas. I was a mere undergraduate.'
'But you were friends.'
'Not then. I seconded a motion he proposed in a debate. "This house does not believe all cats are grey at night". After that we were friendly acquaintances. I didn't meet him again until… '53 - no, '54. He was Foreign Office, I was an economic dogsbody. It was in Paris.'
'And that was when you became friends? But he was older than you.'
'Oh yes. Eleven years and a war older, Miss Loftus. But he always maintained the war didn't count - those were his lost years, he said, so they were struck off. And that made the difference only five years.' He thought for a moment, then shrugged. 'I didn't think of him as being older, anyway. Not then.'
He stopped, and Elizabeth knew she would have to jog him again to make him go on. 'He introduced you - ?'
'Yes. To Delphi Marsh. He knew a lot of people - a lot of girls. I didn't.' He was slowing again. 'It was a long time ago.'
'Yes, Sir Peter. She was his girl?'
'No. She was no one's girl when he introduced her.' He took his memory by the throat suddenly. 'Then she was my girl - very much my girl, Miss Loftus. We had an understanding. We went on holiday to Italy together. Then she went on holiday again, but without me. And then she was Mrs Caradog Thomas.' He drew a single breath. 'And then she was pregnant, and then she was dead, Miss Loftus,' he expelled the words with the same breath, as though to clear them finally from his chest, once and for all.
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'Dead?' The sudden ending to an otherwise familiar story took Elizabeth by surprise. 'She died - ?'
'In childbirth?'
He shook his head. 'She was knocked down by a car.'
'A lorry, actually,' murmured Audley.
'A lorry, then.' He continued to look at her as he half-turned his head towards Audley. 'If you want to know all the details I'm sure he has them on file somewhere. But it was no one's fault. At least… at least that was what Haddock wrote in his letter.'
Elizabeth frowned from Sir Peter to Audley. It was as though they had assembled a jigsaw for her, carefully sorting the straight edges and the surrounding pieces, but leaving the centre blank. 'But how did - ? You said… he was "shopped" - how was he shopped?'
'Quite simply, Elizabeth dear. As simply as "B" comes before "T", to start with. Meaning that I came to "Barrie" on my little list before I came to "Thomas". Because they'd both been on holiday in foreign parts, but one tends to work alphabetically.'
'But - ' Elizabeth came within a tyro's breath of adding why, only just catching herself in time: for whatever original reason, Audley had only been doing then what she was doing now, all those years ago ' - but Sir Peter had left the service - the Board of Trade, or the Treasury, or whatever - by then, surely?' It was lame, but it was better than nothing.
'Very true,' agreed Sir Peter. 'But then, even if I had still been employed in Whitehall, it was still a great nonsense.'
Elizabeth looked at him. 'Why was it a great nonsense?'
'For three reasons, Miss Loftus. You yourself have supplied the first: I had quit the Queen's service - I had, as it were, privatized myself. And although the Greek had some fairly hot little secrets of his own, they were hardly the sort which should have interested British Intelligence. Besides which, I was never really privy to any of his secrets, I only suspected things here and there. But the second reason is more to the point, though actually not dissimilar. Because, when I was in the service, what I was doing was hardly top secret. It was sensitive, of course - some of it. But none of it was really in the least important. What I had in my head was of far more use to the Greek's oil deals than to any foreign power, actually. So if they were after a traitor, I was a very poor candidate.'
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Audley shook his head. 'I told you, Peter - I wasn't particularly after you.'