Shivering with disgust, Michael turned off the television, and President Bush disappeared from the screen. Then he switched on a nearby tablelamp, and looked for the first time at his visitor.
He was not a man of forbidding aspect: the austerity of his clothing and steadiness of his gaze made him more severe than sinister. He was, Michael surmised, very much on the wrong side of sixty; and he spoke flatly, with a Yorkshire accent, his voice deep, cold and expressionless.
‘You’ll forgive me for intruding, unannounced, upon your personal domesticity,’ he said. ‘But as your door had been left ajar …’
‘That’s quite all right,’ said Michael. ‘How can I help you?’
‘You are Mr Owen, I take it?’
‘Yes, I am.’
‘My name is Sloane. Everett Sloane, solicitor, of the firm of Sloane, Sloane, Quigley and Sloane. My card.’
Michael struggled into an upright position and took the proffered instrument, which he examined blinkingly.
‘I’m here under instructions from my client,’ the solicitor continued, ‘the late Mr Mortimer Winshaw, of Winshaw Towers.’
‘Late?’ said Michael. ‘You mean that he’s dead?’
‘That,’ said Mr Sloane, ‘is precisely my meaning. Mr Winshaw passed away yesterday. Quite peacefully, if reports are to be believed.’
Michael received this news in silence.
‘Won’t you sit down?’ he said at last, remembering his visitor.
‘Thank you, but my business can be kept very brief. I have only to inform you that your presence is requested at Winshaw Towers tomorrow evening, for the reading of the will.’
‘My presence …?’ Michael echoed. ‘But why? I only met him once. Surely he wouldn’t have left me anything?’
‘Naturally,’ said Mr Sloane, ‘I am not at liberty to discuss the contents of this document until all the concerned parties are gathered, at the appointed time and place.’
‘Yes,’ said Michael, ‘I can see that.’
‘I can count on your attendance, then?’
‘You can.’
‘Thank you.’ Mr Sloane turned and was about to leave, when he added: ‘You will, of course, be staying the night at Winshaw Towers. I would advise you to bring plenty of warm clothing. It is a cold and desolate spot; and the weather, at this time of year, can be uncommonly fierce.’
‘Thank you. I’ll bear that in mind.’
‘Until tomorrow, then, Mr Owen. And don’t worry: I can see myself out.’
There was a strange sense of expectancy in the air the following day, which had nothing to do with Michael’s impending journey to Yorkshire. It was January 16th, and at five o’clock that morning, the United Nations’ final deadline for Iraq’s withdrawal from Kuwait had expired. The allied attack on Saddam Hussein might be launched at any moment, and every time he turned on the radio or the television, Michael was half-expecting to hear that the war had begun.
Boarding a train at King’s Cross station late in the afternoon, he glimpsed some familiar faces among the other passengers: Henry Winshaw and his brother Thomas were both taking their seats in a first-class carriage, along with their young cousin Roderick Winshaw, the art dealer, and Mr Sloane himself. Michael, needless to say, was travelling second class. But the train was not busy, and he was able to spread his coat and suitcase over a pair of seats with a clear conscience, while he took out an exercise book and attempted to make notes on the most important passages from what was obviously a well-thumbed volume.
I Was ‘Celery’, published by the Peacock Press in late 1990, had turned out to be the memoir of a retired Air Intelligence Officer who had worked as a double agent for MI5 during the Second World War. Although it offered no direct information about Godfrey Winshaw’s disastrous mission, it did at least explain the meaning of Lawrence’s note: BISCUIT, CHEESE and CELERY, it appeared, had all been the codenames of double agents controlled and supervised by something called the Twenty Committee, established as a collaborative venture by the War Office, GHQ Home Forces, MI5, MI6 and others in January 1941. Might Lawrence have been a member of this committee? Very likely. Might he also have been in secret radio communication with the Germans, supplying them not only with the names and identities of these double agents, but with information about British military plans — such as the proposed bombing of munitions factories? This would be difficult to establish, fifty years after the event, but the evidence was beginning to suggest that Tabitha’s worst accusations about her brother and his wartime treachery were very close to the truth.
As the train sped on through the grey, mist-shrouded landscape, Michael found it harder and harder to concentrate on this puzzle. He laid the book down and stared vacantly out of the window. The weather had hardly changed in the last two weeks. It was on just such an afternoon, some ten days ago, that Fiona’s body had been cremated in the drab, cheerless setting of a suburban funeral parlour. The ceremony had been sparsely attended. There had been only Michael, a forgotten aunt and uncle from the South West of England, and a handful of her colleagues from work. The hymn singing was unbearably thin, and the attempt to convene at a pub afterwards had been miscalculated. Michael had only stayed a few minutes. He had gone back to his flat to pick up an overnight bag, then taken a train up to Birmingham.
His reconciliation with his mother, too, was less than he had expected it to be. They spent an awkward evening together at a local restaurant. Michael had presumed, rather naïvely, that his very reappearance would fill her with such delight as to compensate fully for all the pain he had inflicted by breaking off communications for so long. Instead, he found himself called upon to justify his conduct, which he attempted to do in a succession of halting and poorly argued speeches. In effect, he maintained, his father had died twice: the second, and more devastating death being when Michael learned the truth about his parentage. He now believed that his two or three years’ subsequent withdrawal from the world could be seen as a period of sustained mourning — a theory supported, if support were needed, by Freud’s essay on the subject, ‘Mourning and Melancholia’. His mother seemed less than convinced by this appeal to scientific authority, but as the evening wore on, and she saw the sincerity of her son’s contrition, the atmosphere nevertheless began to thaw. After they had arrived home and made two cups of Horlicks, Michael felt emboldened to ask a few questions about his lost parent.
‘And did you never see him again, after that one time — the day it happened?’
‘Michael, I told you. I saw him once again, about ten years later. And so did you. I told you that already.’
‘What do you mean, I saw him? I never saw him.’
His mother took another sip of her drink and embarked upon the story.
‘It was a weekday morning, and I was in town doing some shopping. I felt like a bit of a break, so I went to Rackham’s, to get a cup of tea in the café. It was quite full, I remember, and I stood there for a while with my tray, wondering where I was going to sit. There was this gentleman sitting by himself at a table, looking very gloomy, and I was wondering whether it would be all right to join him. And then suddenly I realized that it was him. He’d grown old, he’d grown dreadfully old, but I was sure that it was him. I would have known him anywhere. So I thought about it for a minute, and then I went over to the table, and I said, “Jim?”, and he looked up, but he didn’t recognize me; and so I said, “It’s Jim, isn’t it?”, but all he said was, “I’m sorry, I think you must be mistaken.” And then I said, “It’s me, Helen,” and I could see it beginning to dawn on him who I was. I said, “You do remember, don’t you?”, and he said yes, he did, and then I sat down and we got talking.