They both looked at Mrs Pakenham.
‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘No bruises. Nothing.’
‘And,’ Troy went on, ‘if you fall down dead, you don’t. As simple as that really.’
‘He was dead, believe me, Troy, he was dead.’
‘And?’
‘I tell you what I tell Stilton. The killer was right-handed. Taller than this bloke, but not necessarily stronger. It’s more of a knack than brute force. Snap a neck in a single movement. Death was instantaneous. A pro job. You happy now?’
‘Happy?’ said Troy. ‘No, I’m not happy. I just have a feeling that this one will come back to me.’
‘Three hunches! I’ll have buttered scone and jam dollop too.’
§ 27
That afternoon Alex Troy was in his study. He would have liked to take a walk on the heath, but it was unseasonably cold for May. He would have liked to meet the world, if only for half an hour, but the telephone rang and the world came to him.
He picked up the phone.
‘Alex? It’s Max.’
A short syllable to introduce a short man with a long handle-Max Aitken, Lord Beaverbrook, proprietor of the Daily Express and Minister of State, until recently Minister of Aircraft Production, in Churchill’s government.
‘I held a lunchtime briefing for the Fleet Street editors at Claridge’s today. I half expected you’d be there.’
So, that’s what ministers of state did. They gave briefings.
‘Half? You are such an optimist, Max. Perhaps if you were to expect me a sixteenth or a thirty-second you would be less disappointed in me.’
‘I was wondering. Would you care for a drink at my club tonight?’
Beaverbrook usually asked him round for one or both of two reasons. He knew something you didn’t and wanted to lord it. What, after all, was the point in being a lord if you could not lord it?-as far as Alex was concerned this might as well be the Beaver’s motto in life. Or he had some crackpot theory he wanted to air, partly, as with the first reason, to remind you that he was close to the powers that be, and partly because it was not the sort of thing he could air in his newspapers without being guilty of the kind of rumour-mongering and defeatism the government deplored in the common people and would deplore the more in one of its own.
The last time they’d met had been May Day. Max had bored him silly with ‘The balloon’s up. We’re backs to the wall now, Alex. The war has turned ugly for us. I’d say two or three days at the most. Invasion is imminent.’-when it transparently wasn’t. It made Alex wonder how much the Prime Minister really told him. Bugger all, it would seem. That he could not see for himself was shocking. The RAF had won the battle for Britain. Won it with the planes the Beaver had churned out as Minister of Aircraft Production. A job that had enabled him to rally the nation’s housewives into giving up their pots and pans to be melted down into aeroplanes. Alex had never been certain whether this was anything more than a morale-building stunt-‘Women! You too can do your bit!’-but ever after he’d thought of Beaverbrook as Lord Saucepans. There probably was a Beaver Brook, somewhere in the wilds of Ontario, probably several, along with Moose Gulch and Wild Ass Pass-they none of them managed to sound real when appended to the word ‘Lord’.
Alex had no desire to go to the Beaver’s club-to any of his clubs, the Carlton or the Marlborough, the former political, the latter royal in basis.
‘How about my club?’ he said.
‘The Garrick? Fine,’ said Beaverbrook.
They fixed a time and rang off.
Alex was going by the counter-theory of that applied by single women: ‘Never invite him in. Go back to his place, then you can always leave. Far easier than throwing a man out.’ He was taking Beaverbrook to his club-watering hole of old hams and young pretenders, where a distraction could always be arranged without the necessity of walking out, and where they were unlikely in the extreme to meet any other ‘gentlemen’ of Fleet Street-but, then, that was precisely why he had joined, to escape the ‘gentlemen’ of Fleet Street.
§ 28
Stilton’s three hours had become half a day. It was close to three in the afternoon before he returned to Claridge’s. Cal had sat in the lobby, watched Lord Beaverbrook’s entourage breeze in and out like visiting pashas, read every newspaper he could get his hands on and drunk coffee till he felt he was floating on the stuff.
‘Jesus Christ, Walter. Do you know what time it is?’
‘Aye, aye. Couldn’t be helped. Might’ve known it would be a waste of time in daylight. But I had to look for my Czech-Hudge. The sooner we find him the better.’
‘But you didn’t find him? Is that what you’re saying?’
‘No-a bit of a night owl really. Still. There’s always tonight.’
Cal looked at his watch.
‘You’re not telling me we have to wait for darkness-in May, in double summertime? I’ve been stuck on my butt all day.’
‘Oh-there’s things to do, don’t you worry. Now, did Poppy-that is, Miss Payne-get done?’
Cal handed over the sketch that had cost three pots of coffee, a morning of his time, a stream of London gossip and much of his tolerance of flirtatious upper-crust English women with names like Poppy. Stilton looked at it.
‘Is it him?’
‘Oh, it’s very him.’
‘Good-let’s nip over to the Yard shall we?’
§ 29
Beaverbrook always reminded Alex of a monkey. He had a monkey’s round face, wide mouth. A monkey’s stature. A monkey’s sense of mischief. Most people bore passing resemblance to their own caricature-Beaverbrook was the spitting image of David Low’s cartoon-no caricature, no exaggeration seemed too grotesque. The big head on the little body, the grin that seemed to split it like a watermelon struck with a shovel.
He was in the foyer of the Garrick, being helped out of his overcoat when Alex arrived.
‘You missed a good lunch,’ said the Beaver.
‘No, I missed a free lunch. And I find I can never afford your free lunches.’
Beaverbrook laughed at this and let Alex, by much the older, slower man, set the pace as they went upstairs to the bar, a panelled room lined with portraits of long-dead hams, a patina of age and cracked glaze across most them-indeed, as Alex often thought, across most of the members too. He was not a club man. It was too English a notion. But since one had to belong somewhere, this was better than most, oblique as it was to his own calling. When he was seated, had got his breath and ordered a drink, he said, ‘What was the occasion?’
‘Hess. What else?’
‘I suppose you told Fleet Street to dampen it down?’
‘No, quite the opposite. Winston wanted to make a statement. I talked him out of it last night. I think we should all speculate, each paper with a different angle. Make as much of this as possible, throw out every possible reason Hess could have for what he did. Get the maximum possible propaganda value out of it.’
‘A licence to lie, Max?’
‘I wouldn’t put it that way. Shall we say a licence to gild the lily?’
‘Words, words, words. You were still asking them to lie. You’re asking me to lie now.’
‘Think about it, Alex. Why do you think he’s come? Don’t you think that’s an honest question? Don’t you think that’s an honest question to put before your readers?’
‘No. I do not. It’s no more honest than the German papers. On ‘Tuesday they all carried the same headline to the letter-Hess in Tragic Accident. The accident being the long-awaited onset of madness.’
‘Do you think he’s mad?’
‘I’ve no idea. I met him just the once and that was years ago. But it does seem that until he finally tells someone what he’s up to, then both sides will find equal cause to dismiss him as mad.’