“Earlier today, I was grabbed by two men, stuffed into the back of a car, driven to an unknown location, stripped, searched, and interrogated by three men. By one man, really; the other two just sat and listened.”
Hedger stared at him. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“Didn’t you hear anything I said? I want an explanation.”
“Why do you think I know anything about it?”
“I believe you are a member of a group who indulges in such activities; you were my first thought, even though they asked me about you.”
Hedger held up a hand. “What did they want to know about me?”
“Whatever I knew; your name, for instance.”
“Did you tell them?”
“No.”
“If they didn’t know my name, how did they ask about me?”
“They asked about John Bartholomew. Obviously, they didn’t get the joke. They wanted to know Bartholomew’s real name.”
“What did you tell them?”
“I told them about our initial meeting and told them I had left your employ.”
Hedger looked relieved. “All right, now I want you to take me through this incident, step by step, and tell me exactly what happened and exactly what they asked you.”
“It was a big car, black, with blackened windows; a limousine, I believe. Plenty of room for me to lie facedown on the floor with some palooka’s foot on my neck.”
“Describe the two men who took you.”
“Big, muscular.”
“What did they say to you?”
“Shut up.”
“What?”
“They told me to shut up. Oh, one of them told me to undress, once we reached their location.”
“Accent?”
“Pretty hard to determine from the words ‘shut up,’ but I’d say British.”
“Class?”
“I didn’t ask them where they went to school.”
“No, class; social class: upper or lower?”
“Jesus, I don’t know, but it’s hard for me to believe that members of the upper class indulge in broad-day-light kidnapping. Lower, I guess.”
“What about the other men, their accents?”
“Only one of them spoke. His voice was smooth, cultivated, definitely upper class, but there was some sort of accent underneath it.”
“You mean a foreign accent?”
“You know the actor Herbert Lom?”
“Yes.”
“An accent like that, sort of—foreign, but British upper class at the same time. It’s as if he were born elsewhere but educated here.”
“Do you know anyone else, an Englishman, with the same kind of upper-class accent?”
Stone thought about it. “James Cutler,” he said, “and his solicitor, Julian Wainwright.” Also Sarah and her parents, but he didn’t mention that.
“Do you know where Cutler and Wainwright went to school?”
“Eton, I believe.”
“Ah.”
“Ah, what?”
“Just ah. That would indicate someone fairly high up in the food chain.”
“What food chain?”
“The food chain in whatever country he’s from. They don’t ship out butchers’ sons to be educated at Eton.”
“Oh.”
“Tell me exactly what they asked you.”
“It was a list of names, nothing else.”
“What were the names?”
“Robert Graves was the first.”
“The poet?”
“They asked me if I knew the name in any other context.”
“Who else?”
“Two women’s names—an Irish first name, and the last name was odd—Klein something or other.”
“Maureen Kleinknect?”
“Yes, that’s it. Who is she?”
“It doesn’t matter; she’s dead. What was the other one?”
“Joanna with a double-barreled last name.”
“Scott-Meyers?”
“Yes.”
“Go on.”
“Then there was Erica and Monica Burroughs, Lance Cabot, Sarah Buckminster, and you.”
“And what did you tell them about each of these people?”
“The bare minimum.”
Hedger sat back in his chair and sipped his tea. “Once again, describe the two men who dragged you into the car. This time I want every detail.”
“I told you—big.”
“What else?”
“Come to think of it, they both had dark skin—not very dark, but a little, and black hair.”
“Describe the three men who interrogated you.”
“They were seated behind the lights in the room, in shadows, so I could only see silhouettes.”
“Tell me about the silhouettes.”
“The two on the ends were just shadows, lumps, but the one in the middle—the one doing the interrogating—was bald, with a bullet-shaped head. That was all I could see of him, really.”
“That’s interesting; you were very good to pick that up, in the circumstances.”