The Liar [calibre]

Behind him Trefusis cleared his throat. 'If I might have everyone's attention . . .?'

An unnecessary request, thought Adrian. Every eye in the room was already fixed firmly on the stage.

'Do sit down, everyone, I beg. There are chairs for all. So!

That is much better.' Lister had ignored Trefusis's invitation to be seated and stood in the doorway with his legs apart. Whether he imagined he was deterring entrance or egress, Adrian could not decide.

'Perhaps I can prevail upon you to lock the door, Mr Lister . . . ah, I see that you have already done so. Excellent! Now then, I think we all know Adrian Healey. He is Sir David Pearce's nephew, on the distaff. Sir David, of course, is a well-known servant of the government, by which I mean he is not well-known at all, for his department is a clandestine one. His assistant Dickon Lister you see guarding the doorway like Cerberus. They, on behalf of their government, are most interested in a system devised by my friend Bela Szabo. Sir David as an old tutee of mine from university has long known of my association with Szabo, whose distinguished grandson, Grandmaster Stefan Szabo, is with us today.'

Adrian looked at the young man with eyes fresh from weeping who sat between Biffen and Lady Helen. Nothing in the shape of his head or the set of his expression indicated anything of the abstract or logical genius that marked out the chess champion.

A rather ordinary, innocent looking fellow. But sad: very, very sad.

'I had hoped that Bela's other grandson, Martin, would be with us too. As I think you all know he was killed today.'

Five sets of eyes bored into Adrian, who coloured and looked down again.

'Also with us are Humphrey Biffen and his wife Lady Helen, old friends and colleagues of Bela and myself. Their son-in-law, Simon Hesketh-Harvey, is here too. As it falls out Simon works in the same department as Sir David.'

'Or at least did until six o'clock this evening,' growled Sir David. 'I'll have your arse for a plate-rack, Hesketh-Harvey.'

'But then of course Simon and Mr Lister are not the only people to have been in your employ, are they, Sir David? I believe I am right in saying that young Master Healey here has been drawing a stipend from you for the last two years at least.'

Adrian closed his eyes and tried to concentrate on Mozart.

'But let us get things in order. Two years ago, Szabo, when still an obedient Hungarian scientist, had been to Salzburg for a conference. There he had hidden papers relating to his Mendax machine. And not a moment too soon. Six months following his return to Budapest, the Hungarian authorities had found out about his work and were demanding to be shown the fruits of it. Your department, David, had heard of Mendax too and became determined that Britain must certainly do its best to gain possession of so intriguing a device - if only as a means of impressing your American confreres. The world had just learnt about poor dear Anthony Blunt, we must remember, and I am sure there must have been an overwhelming desire within your Service to win gorgeous trophies to lay before the feet of your betters. You supposed that were Szabo to try to dispose of Mendax then I, as his oldest friend outside Hungary, would in some manner be involved.'

'And so you were, old love.'

'It is true that Szabo sent me a letter last year. He wrote of his wish for me to collect the documents he had hidden in Salzburg. I was requested to be at Mozart's Geburtshaus at two p.m. on the seventh of July where a contact would be awaiting me by a diorama of the supper scene from Don Giovanni. I have no doubt you intercepted this letter to me, Sir David. Quite right too, I don't complain of that.'

'Too bloody bad if you did, Professor.'

'Neatly put. So, what happened next? Well, Adrian, the eyes and ears of Sir David Pearce, accompanied me to the rendezvous. My contact at the Geburtshaus was to be a friend of Szabo's named Istvan Moltaj, a violinist officially present in Salzburg for the Festival. So far so splendid.'

'So far so obvious.'

'Well, now to something rather less obvious perhaps.'

Adrian wondered why this meeting seemed to be developing into a public dialogue between Donald and Uncle David.

'I wonder if you have ever heard, Sir David, of Walton's Third Law?'

'No matter how much you shake it, the last drop always runs down your leg?'

'Not quite. It was a wartime SIS convention. If a meeting is set up and a time for it given in the twelve-hour clock - using an a.m. or p.m. suffix - then the meeting is understood to be called for a time thirty-three minutes earlier than that designated. What Adrian would call tradecraft, I believe. Accordingly Moltaj met me not at two p.m. on the appointed day, but at one twenty-seven p.m. At this meeting he told me where to find the Mendax papers. They were to be collected by me from the reception desk here at the Goldener Hirsch. Moments after imparting this information, Moltaj's throat was cut by someone, I must assume, who was blessedly unfamiliar with Walton's Third Law. A few days later, your man Lister, acting, I have no doubt, on information received from Adrian, made a rather vulgar attempt to relieve me of the papers in an Autobahn lay-by in West Germany.'

Sir David leant back in his chair and looked round at Lister, still standing in the doorway. 'Were you vulgar, Lister? I'm sorry to hear that. See me afterwards.'

'Vulgar and unsuccessful. I had left the papers here. I knew perfectly well that Adrian was not to be trusted. That is why I ensured that he was always by my side. Was it not Don Corleone who kept his friends close, but his enemies closer?

How could Don Trefusis do less?'

Adrian opened his mouth to speak, but decided against it.

'The technical data on Mendax were securely locked in the safe here at the hotel. But Szabo had also built a working Mendax machine, which he had split into two and entrusted to his grandsons, Stefan and poor Martin. Stefan smuggled out his half in a radio set belonging to another member of his chess delegation and presented it to me in a Cambridge public lavatory a fortnight ago. Martin was to have given me the other half this afternoon in the Hotel Osterreichischer Hof, but his throat was cut before he was able to do so. It seems that by this time the killer had worked out how Walton's Third Law operated. That, my dears, is the brief history of Szabo's attempt to get Mendax to me. Does anyone have any questions?'

'If you had left the entire business to us, Tre-blasted-fusis, this whole sordid shambles would have been avoided,' said Sir David.

'I wonder. A problem that has been exercising me mightily is the killing of Moltaj. He was an innocent musician delivering a message for a friend. We have no reason to imagine that he knew about Mendax, no grounds for supposing that he presented a threat to anyone. The Hungarians are not nowadays noted for their savagery in these matters - unlike the East Germans or the British. What conceivable ends could the death of Moltaj serve? It seems to me that this is far from being a trivial issue.'

Trefusis lit a cigarette and allowed the import of his question to sink in. Adrian had done with his inspection of the floor and had now started on the ceiling. He tried to believe that he was a thousand miles and years away.

'Well, we will return to the "Why" later,' said Trefusis. 'The "Who" is interesting also. I saw the killer, as it happens. A very fat man with lank hair and a small head.'

'Who cares?' said Pearce. 'Some bloody Hungo knife artist.

Probably halfway across Czecho by now.'

'I think not-o, David-o.'

Sir David put his hands behind his head. 'Donald, give me listen. If you press that wonderful mind of yours into service you will find, after due stock-taking, adding up, taking away, knitting, purling and tacking, that the score is one and a half to half in your favour. You are in possession of the technical bumf and the one half of the machine that your chess-playing friend Castor here gave you in your bog in Cambridge. That's the major haul, old darling. The other half, which the Hungoes got ahold of this afternoon, is n.f.g. without the book of words that you have so cunningly kept clasped to your sagging bosom.