He read the report over his second cup. It told him nothing he did not know and confirmed his rash assertion to Kolankiewicz that there were two distinct modi operandi for the deaths of Smulders and Stilton. There was precedent in Kolankiewicz’s argument, and logic, but everything about this case told him to look for two killers, not one. There was definitely a third man.
When he got to Claridge’s he found Cormack alone. The bed had already been made up. He’d no idea whether Kitty had spent the night there. He didn’t much care-what he didn’t want was to have to talk to both of them at once. If he was to do this, he never wanted to find himself in the same room as Kitty and Cormack.
Cormack said, ‘Do you still have that sketch I gave you?’
Troy took it out of his pocket. Cormack took a pencil and drew on it. Shaded the hair and sketched in a moustache.
‘He looks more like this now. Walter and I would never have found him with what we had.’
‘Older?’ said Troy.
‘Yep. Makes him look fortyish. All this time we were chasing a younger man with blond hair.’
‘The German you shot?’ said Troy.
‘Yep.’
‘My turn,’ Troy said. He took Stilton’s letter from his pocket. ‘Take a good look.’
Cormack glanced at it. ‘I know what it says. I know it by heart.’
‘Wot larx,’ said Troy.
‘I know. You’re going to have to explain it to me. You know what Walter meant by it, and so does Kitty. Only I didn’t feel I could ask Kitty, the state she was in. I feel like I’m on the outside of an in-joke.’
‘Not quite. It’s the catch phrase of a minor character in Walter’s favourite novel.’
‘Oh-I get it, this Great Expectations you were asking Kitty about. I never got past David Copperfield myself.’
‘It’s what a simple, good man by the name of Joe Gargery seems to say at every opportunity, to his innocent, ambitious apprentice, Pip.’
‘Innocent apprentice. That’s me in this equation, eh?’
‘If you like. But the clue is in two parts. Walter says “Hope this reaches you one way or another.”’
‘Walter left me clues?’
‘Not in the sense you mean, no. I mean simply that his choice of words reflects the way his mind was working. There’s nothing idle or throwaway about the phrasing he used. “One way or another”-it simply means he left you more than one note. He left one here and one at the embassy.’
‘How can you be so sure? Or is this where I tell you I think English policemen are wonderful?’
‘Deduction. And a little inside knowledge. There is another character in Great Expectations called Wemmick. He’s a solicitor’s clerk, he’s the man who knows everything and fixes everything. He moves through the book almost like a secret agent. One of the most curious characters Dickens ever created, and that’s saying something. At one point in the book, when Pip is in danger, Wemmick leaves the same note at all four entrances to Barnard’s Inn. And when he knows Pip has received one he goes round and collects the rest. I think Walter was having difficulty finding you. I think he left a note at both places you were likely to be.’
‘I was in the embassy at five p.m. There was no note.’
‘Then he left it later. In the meantime someone, the same someone Stahl saw, was able to read it and realised what it meant.’
‘Jesus, Troy. That’s a hell of a lot from two lines.’
‘If I’m right, the note will still be there. After all, Walter never went back for it.’
‘Why? Why wouldn’t the killer just destroy it?’
‘Because he doesn’t know what’s in the note you have. You might be expecting to find the copy. And if you didn’t it might give you a lead. After all, it’s easy enough to read it and put it back unmarked.’
‘It is?’
‘Calvin-you’re a spy. How do you open letters?’ a paperknife.’
§ 78
Cal left Troy sitting in his car in Grosvenor Square while he went into the embassy. Ten minutes later he came back, sat in the passenger seat and handed Troy an envelope addressed to Captain Cormack.
‘Where was it?’
‘Would you believe I have an in-tray?’
‘What did your colleagues have to say to you?’
‘Nothing. The place was almost deserted. If I’d run into Major Shaeffer, well, things might have been said. He’s the guy who dumped me into the tender care of Chief Inspector Nailer. I’d have a bone worth picking with him.’
Troy held the envelope up to the windscreen.
‘Well-it hasn’t been steamed.’
He examined the edges, sniffed the paper, then he tore it open and let the letter sit on the palm of his hand. It looked to Cal like a comic-book impression of a private eye. More Hercule Poirot than Nick Charles.
‘Observe the way it curls.’
‘That mean something?’
‘Yes-whoever our man is, he extracted the letter without breaking the seal by inserting two small knitting needles into the top seam and rolling the letter around them until it was small enough to pass through the gap at the top where the gum has failed. When he’d read it he put it back the same way. It’s as old a trick as they come. I’m surprised you didn’t learn it in spy school. Alas for you spooks, the tension thus exerted remains in the paper rather as it would in a watch spring. Hence it curls. Would you care to read it?’
Cal read it. It was exactly the same as the other one.
‘Does this really get us anywhere?’ he asked.
‘Yes-of course it does. For one thing, it backs up what Stahl said. We’ve moved from odds-on that it was someone from the embassy to it being a dead cert, wouldn’t you say?’
‘I guess I would. But-what now?’
‘Now, a short list of probable suspects would help.’
‘Why not start with Shaeffer?’
‘Why not start without obvious prejudice? How many people work in that section of the embassy?’
‘A lot. Twenty, maybe thirty. A lot more than did before the war. I don’t even know some of their names.’
They sat an hour or more. Hardly anyone entered the embassy.
Cal said, ‘I hate to slow us down, but we’d have better luck if we came back and sat here from six until seven. Catch ‘em as they leave.’
§ 79
Cormack had run off so many names. Troy was writing them down and trying to find a mnemonic in two or three words that ‘would fix a face in his mind. It struck him that the United States of America might have a little difficulty entering into a European war. It was too partisan a notion. Cormack had so far pointed out Lieutenant D’Amici-Troy had written down, short and ugly-Lieutenant Corsaro-short and handsome-Major Shaeffer-tall and broad, a bit like Johnny Weissmuller in Tarzan-two Sergeants Schulz-both as stout as Eugene Pallette-a Corporal Pulaski and a Captain Pulaski-they could have been twins-a Colonel Reininger-tall and thin, a bit Raymond Massey-a Captain Berg-utterly nondescript, his own mother couldn’t pick him out in a line-up, Troy thought-a Sergeant O’Connor and a Corporal Schickelgruber.
‘You’re kidding?’ said Troy.
‘Nope. Used to work with me in Zurich up to the new year. Absolutely won’t consider changing his name. Born Adolf Schickelgruber, he says, and he’ll die Adolf Schickelgruber.’
‘Adolf? His parents christened him Adolf?’
‘He’s in his twenties. Probably born in the last war. The only person who’d heard of the other Corporal Adolf Schickelgruber then was the paymaster in the Austrian infantry.’
‘Couldn’t you promote him? Anything but a corporal.’
‘Sure. If we live through this I’ll see to it personally. Hold on, here come another two.’
Troy peered out. A tall soldier and a short soldier were approaching, side by side. The tall one looked up at the sky and said something Troy could not hear or read. He’d bet they’d picked up the English habit of filling silence by talking inanely about the weather.