Read sample Bones of the Buried

Prologue

‘Boy!’ The call echoed round the house and a scurry of small black-garbed figures raced to answer it, slithering to a halt outside the library. Eight senior boys in the house constituted ‘the library’ and it was also the name given to the room they used as a common-room. It had almost no books in it – just a broken-backed sofa, several armchairs, all of which had seen better days, and a table with one leg amputated at the knee, supported uncertainly by a pile of textbooks. There was also a dartboard, a wind-up gramophone with a spectacular horn, a few records in brown-paper sleeves and an ancient kettle. Next to the grate, beside a couple of toasting forks, a bunch of canes rested negligently against the wall, assuming an air of innocence which belied the very real threat that lay behind their willowy form.

The last in line was, as always, Featherstone, a small boy dressed in bum-freezers. This was the uniform reserved for first­year Etonians below a certain height. The short coat, cut off just above the posterior, contrasted with the tail coats worn by all the other boys and marked him out as the lowest form of school life. Oliver Featherstone was very miserable. He badly missed his father who, out of love, had inflicted upon him this particular torture. His father was the owner of several oil wells in Persia but, to Oliver’s great grief, was also the proprietor of a famous department store on Oxford Street in London. His mother, whom he rarely saw, was a film actress whose photograph appeared in picture-papers on both sides of the Atlantic.

Unfortunately, he had discovered that neither his father’s wealth nor his mother’s celebrity was anything to be proud of at Eton. What was worse, his father’s name was not really Featherstone but Federstein. There were several Jews at Eton, one of whom was a member of Pop, the select society of popular boys which ran the school, but the Jews whom Eton welcomed, as Oliver painfully discovered, were the sons of merchant bankers who had bankrolled the government and the monarchy for almost a century. None of these held out to him the hand of friendship. Despite his wealth, his father had himself been ostracised from polite society and, in a clumsy attempt to ease his son’s passage through the school and protect him from bullying, had tried to conceal his origins by changing the spelling of his surname. It took only three weeks for it to become known that Featherstone was really Federstein and that his father was ‘a grocer’. Oliver at once became the innocent victim of his father’s subterfuge.

‘Federstein!’ All the other small boys ran away chirruping gratefully like a swoop of starlings.

‘Yes, Hoden?’ said Oliver, wearily.

Hoden scribbled on a piece of paper, folded it several times and thrust it at him. ‘Take this to Stephen Thayer at Chandler’s, and hurry.’

‘But Hoden, please! I’ve got an essay for tomorrow and I’ve already had three rips. My tutor said it would be PS next time.’

‘Well, you’d better run then,’ said Hoden unsympathetically. When a boy’s work was not up to scratch the master – or beak as he was called at Eton – would tear it at the top and the errant pupil would have to take it to show his housemaster. Too many rips would result in Penal Servitude – PS for short – which involved sacrificing already scarce free time on ‘extra work’.

Highly disgruntled, Oliver set off at a run down Judy’s Passage, the narrow pedestrian way which threaded the red­brick buildings, the last of which was Stephen Thayer’s house. Half-way, he got a stitch in his side and slowed to a walk. There was a large stone, big enough for a small boy to sit on, where the path made a dog-leg and there, strictly against the rules, Oliver perched and unfolded the note Hoden had given him. It read,: ‘Stevie, can you meet me underneath the arches tomorrow after six. Send word by the oily Jewboy, love, M. PS But he is rather pretty isn’t he?’

Oliver’s eyes began to water. How dare this horrible man call him an oily Jewboy, and pretty. Neither his father nor his mother had told him anything about sex before he went to school. Had he but known it, his mother was an expert on the subject but, in his eyes, she was as pure as a garden rose – and it would have embarrassed him horribly if she had said anything with a view to preparing him for life in an English public school. As for his father, he assumed that in some magical way his son was to be transformed into an English gentleman, in his view a creature second only to the gods themselves. He visualised Eton as holy water in which his son would be purified. It was odd that a man so generally shrewd in the affairs of the world should be so naive when it came to baptism.

Oliver looked at his hand with horror. In his anguish, and without being aware of what he was doing, he had scrumpled up Hoden’s note. He couldn’t deliver it now without Thayer knowing that he had opened it but he dared not go back without an answer. The tears began to trickle down his cheeks. Half­blinded by the savage grief of childhood, he did not notice that someone was walking down the passage towards him. It was the very boy to whom he was to deliver the note.

‘What’s up, Featherstone – that is your name, isn’t it? Come now, why are you blubbing?’

He spoke not unkindly and Oliver was persuaded to hold up the crumpled piece of paper for his inspection. ‘I’m … I’m truly sorry, Thayer. I didn’t mean to open it. It just sort of came undone.’ Thayer took the note, read it and blushed deeply. He bit his lip and tried to decide what to say. He knew he could get into bad trouble if the substance of the message came to the attention of his housemaster, and Hoden would certainly be sacked. Homosexual feelings, though common enough in a single sex school, or indeed because they were so common, were anathema to the authorities and no housemaster would hesitate to have a boy removed from the school if anything of the kind was proved against him.

Damn Hoden, Thayer thought. He really would have to drop him. ‘Stop all that noise, Featherstone. No one’s going to punish you but really, you know, it was very wrong of you to open a private note:’

‘Ye … s,’ Oliver agreed. ‘Should I say anything to Hoden? He may want to whack me.’

‘No,’ said Thayer hurriedly. ‘Don’t do that. I got the message and no one else saw it. We’ll leave it at that. No harm done.’

‘No … ? Thank you, sir.’

‘Don’t call me “sir”, you little idiot. You only call beaks “sir”.’

‘Yes, Thayer.’

‘Oh, and don’t get upset about people calling you … names. You can’t help being … whatever it is he said you were … not oily I mean but the other. It’s nothing to be ashamed of. Now off you go, and remember: say nothing of this to anyone or you will get into trouble.’

‘Yes, Thayer. And thank you,’ said the small boy, managing a smile. Could it be that this god figure, a member of Pop and therefore one of Eton’s elect, was going to forgive him, to be compassionate? It never occurred to him for a moment that he, the most miserable of worms, had through an accident, through his own clumsiness, gained a measure of power over one so mighty. He looked at Thayer, noticing him for the first time as a person – his expensively cut hair, his coloured waistcoat, which only members of Pop could wear, gleaming like armour, his buttonhole freshly cut that morning in his tutor’s garden. From his white ‘stick-up’ collar to his shoes shiny enough to reflect his face, Thayer was perfect and Oliver felt an overwhelming desire to fall on his knees and worship.

In his second ‘half’ at Eton, Oliver began to enjoy himself. In the way of small boys, he quickly forgot the misery of his first half, though he kept out of Hoden’s way as much as possible. He even made a few friends and almost anything is bearable with a friend to commiserate with you. And Eton had a lot to offer. He took to the pleasures of the river and would take a ‘whiff’ upriver to Queen’s Eyot, a little island where he could eat sausage and mash, drink the weakest of beer and read. Reading was his chief pleasure. With books he could escape to … to wherever he desired and he did still want to escape. He found too that he was musical and would spend hours in the music school trying to master the piano, with some success.

In fact, sex was the only thing which spoiled Oliver’s life – not his own feelings, which had not yet begun to trouble him, but he was bewildered and distressed by the attention of some older boys. Hoden, in particular, would summon him to the library and maul him about until he wept, when he would be contemptuously dismissed. One afternoon – this was in the summer half and the days were long and hot – he happened to be in the house instead of on the river. He had strained a muscle in his leg and had been told not to take out his whiff for a couple of days. The dreaded cry of ‘boy’ sounded round the virtually empty building and, with a groan, Oliver left his book and ran to answer it. It did not cross his mind that he might safely ignore the summons. When he arrived, he found he was the only boy to have answered the call and resigned himself to carrying some stupid message to another house or making some lazy senior a cup of tea.

He knocked on the door and opened it when a hoarse voice shouted, ‘Come!’

He recognised the voice immediately as belonging to Hoden and his heart missed a beat. But, when he was in the room, he saw that Hoden’s friend, Tilney, was also there and his spirits rose a little. Surely Hoden would not try anything on in this other boy’s presence. But he was wrong.

‘Ah, Federstein.’ Hoden took pleasure in making the name sound as foreign as possible. ‘You’ve come at last. My friend Tilney here doesn’t believe that you can act but I heard you had a part in the school play – Shakespeare?’

‘Love’s Labour’s Lost, but I’ve only a very small part, Hoden.’

‘So I’ve always imagined,’ Hoden sniggered. ‘As a girl, I understand?’

‘Yes,’ said Oliver miserably.

‘Well, Tilney and I want to “hear your lines”. Isn’t that what thespians say?’

‘Oh, I … I don’t know them yet.’

‘Well, we’ll assist you.’

‘No, I can’t remember …’

‘I think it might help,’ Hoden said, ‘if you took off some of your clothes.’ He pretended to appeal to Tilney who was smirking uneasily at his friend’s teasing. ‘He can’t pretend to be a girl dressed in trousers, now can he, Tilney old man?’

‘I should say not,’ said the other boy as heartily as he could manage.

‘Take off your clothes, Federstein. We want to see if you’re a girl.’

‘No, please, Hoden, let me go, won’t you.’

Oliver was now very frightened. He was not physically brave and he was almost excessively modest. He hated undressing in the bathroom with other boys and one of the things he most appreciated about Eton was that even ‘new boys’ had separate rooms and did not sleep in dormitories.

‘I won’t, Hoden. Tilney, tell him to leave me alone.’

‘Oh, let the little sod go,’ Tilney said lazily, but Hoden now had the taste of blood.

‘No, Tilney, this little Jewboy has to be taught a lesson. Here, help me take his trousers off so I can whack him.’

Reluctantly, Tilney got up from the sofa and seized hold of the wriggling boy as Hoden removed first his ‘bum-freezer’ jacket, and then his shirt. By this time Oliver was in tears and, as Hoden began to tug frantically at the boy’s trousers, Tilney said, ‘I say, I think we ought to let the little tyke go.’

‘No fear,’ said Hoden, picking up a cane from the pile in the corner and striking at Oliver’s back. ‘Stand still, you malodorous animal, if you don’t want to get badly hurt,’ he ordered, waving the cane over his head as if he were trying to swat a fly. Then he screamed. A lucky kick from Oliver’s flying heels had caught him on the shin. ‘That does it, Tilney, I’m going to show the little Jew what for.’

He raised the cane above his shoulder but, before he could strike, the library door opened and Stephen Thayer entered. He took in the scene at a glance. He strode over to Hoden and tore the cane from his grasp. Without a word he swung it hard against Hoden’s cheek, raising a red weal as thick as the bamboo. Hoden screamed again and let go of Oliver who gathered up his clothes and fled.

Oliver’s awe of Thayer was transformed in a moment to love. When several days later he met him as they were both taking boats off the racks, he tried to say something of what he felt.

‘Oh, Thayer, I wanted to thank you … but why are you going on the river? I thought you were a drybob.’

‘I am, but I like to scull when I have the time. And please – don’t thank me. I’ve told Hoden and Tilney if they ever come near you again I will have them sacked. I don’t think they will try anything like that again but if they do – tell me.’

‘Oh, Thayer, thank you. I suppose there’s nothing I can do for you, is there?’

‘No, certainly not … though wait a minute.’ He pretended an idea had just struck him. ‘Isn’t your mater the film star, Dora Pale?’

Oliver blushed. ‘Oh yes, I’m sorry, Thayer. I keep it as quiet as I can.’

‘No, you silly beggar, you misunderstand me. I would like to meet her if that were possible. Does she ever come down to see you?’

‘No, I told her not to.’

‘Well then, ask her … to please me.’

‘Oh gosh … yes, Thayer, I will, but are you sure? You won’t … you won’t laugh?’

‘Oh no,’ Stephen said, ‘I won’t laugh.’

Her skin was almost translucent. ‘Pale, pale Dora, adorable Dora Pale,’ he murmured, turning over in bed to stroke her cheek. ‘You ‘re not asleep so why pretend you are? Do you know you have freckles? Would you like me to lick them off for you?’

‘I do not have freckles,’ Dora said, her eyes still shut.

‘You do,’ he said stroking her stomach in the way he knew she liked.

‘You know, Stephen, you ‘re almost as good-looking as you think you are, but you ‘ve got a pimple coming just here,’ she pinched him quite hard on the cheek, ‘and what does that tell us?’

‘Ouch, that hurt. So what does it tell us, mistress mine?’

‘It tells us, Master Thayer, that you are still a child and I don’t sleep with children.’

‘Oh but you do … frightfully well.’ He turned his handsome head to look at her and she met his stare unblinkingly. His eyes were black and lustrous and his eyebrows met above his nose in a dramatic slash of black.

‘I do it “frightfully well”,’ she mocked. ‘Well, perhaps I do occasionally make exceptions. I like to think of myself as a teacher. Do you like me to teach you?’

‘Extra-curricular coaching.’ He mouthed each syllable lovingly. ‘We call it extra work, you know.’

‘Huh! Extra work, you young … ah!’ He had touched her and she had responded as he knew she would. ‘Again, touch me there again. That’s … right. You’re a good student and one day your wife will have cause to thank me. Wait!’ There was a knock on the door. ‘Be a good boy and open the door, Stephen. I ordered more champagne.’

He rolled out of bed, slung on a white bathrobe and went to the door and opened it.

‘Over there by the window …’ he began to say, and then stopped and wrapped the robe round him more tightly. ‘Oh, it’s you. What are you doing here? I thought you were on the river.’

Oliver looked past his friend and mentor to the rumpled bed.

‘Who is it, darling?’ Dora said, raising her head a little off the pillow. Her eyes met those of her son which opened wider than might have been thought possible.

‘Oh Christ! Oliver, darling, it’s not what you think. We were just … we were just talking.’

The boy had still not said a word but his mouth hung open and the pupils of his eyes were dilated. He looked from his mother to his friend and back again. Then he turned and ran down the corridor sobbing. Stephen, white-faced, turned to the woman in the bed who now seemed not the desirable sex siren he had just made love to so violently but a middle-aged woman with lines under her eyes and bleached hair showing dark at the roots. ‘I’d better get dressed and go after him,’ he mumbled.

‘Oh Christ,’ she said again. ‘Oh Christ!’ Wearily, she let her head fall back upon the lipstick-stained pillow.

1

It was good to be home. Lord Edward Corinth lay in his bath splashing himself contentedly with an enormous yellow sponge. Now and again he put it on his head and let the water dribble over his eyes and ears to lubricate his brain, which felt arid and infertile after the transatlantic crossing. He had disembarked from the Normandie at Southampton, along with the other English passengers, at seven o’clock the previous morning, and reached his rooms in Albany six hours later. His man, Fenton, had grilled him a chop, which he washed down with half a bottle of Perrier-Jouet and then, overcome with lassitude, he had strolled round to the hammam in Jermyn Street. Steamed, scrubbed and massaged within an inch of his life, he had slept in his cubicle for an hour. Then, feeling a little restored but as weak as a newborn lamb, he had tottered round to his club in St James’s. There, he hid himself away in a corner unable to face social intercourse and had Barney, the smoking-room waiter, bring him potted shrimps, scrambled eggs, angels on horseback, along with a weak whisky and soda. After which he had snoozed in his chair for half an hour and then crawled back home. He toyed with a pile of letters which lay on his desk but could not face opening any of them and was in bed not much after nine.

This morning he had awoken refreshed but still curiously reluctant to face the world, despite having looked forward for so long to seeing his old friends and revisiting old haunts. In the six months he had been away, an era had ended with the death of the King on January 20th. The new King, Edward VIII, with his film-star good looks and easy charm, was hugely popular, to judge from what he read in the papers, but he was mistrusted by the ‘old guard’ who suspected he lacked his father’s sense of duty. They did not like his friends either. In New York, Edward had heard disquieting rumours concerning his lady friend, Mrs Simpson, a divorcee of dubious morals. It looked as though 1936 would prove to be an interesting year.

He submerged himself in the rapidly cooling water until only his aquiline nose showed above the surface like the periscope of a submarine. He suspected that Dr Freud, whose works he had been perusing on the boat coming over, might mutter something to the effect that his bath provided a womb into which he could retreat when in need of comfort and reassurance, and it was true that just the sight of this huge, ornate iron bath, standing four-square in the centre of the room on massive gilt claws, had always aroused in him a most profound sense of well-being. The United States – well, New York – seemed to assume its denizens preferred showering to lying in a soup of bath salts and soap, and the Normandie – beyond criticism in every other respect – boasted baths which, to be enjoyed, demanded amputation at the knees. Luxurious though that great ship was, the next time he crossed the Atlantic he promised himself a berth on the Queen Mary, which was about to set out on her maiden voyage. All the talk on the Normandie had been of this new Cunard liner whose launch demonstrated that the economic depression was at last raising its dead hand from British industry. Among the passengers wagers were given and taken on whether or not it would wrest the Blue Riband from the Normandie which, ever since it had made its first transatlantic crossing the previous year, had been hailed as a miracle of engineering and the acme of luxury.

Edward supposed the first-class passengers were, for the most part, good enough people but, to his jaundiced eye, they appeared a seedy set – American millionaires, their women decorated like Christmas trees, and every kind of mountebank and charlatan. He recognised one South American card-sharp he had punched in the face on a railway train out of Valparaiso three years before. Edward watched him playing poker with a Hollywood producer and his girlfriend and, as he was pondering whether or not to warn them that they were about to be fleeced, the man caught his eye and had the gall to give him a wink. Edward supposed he ought to advise the company that there were sharks on board even if there were none in the ocean, but how to distinguish the predators from their victims? He decided he did not care enough to work it out. One evening, at dinner in the art deco glory of the first-class Café Grill, a little actress, her hair unnaturally blonde and her lips coated in vermilion – attached, he thought, to a German businessman of quite staggering corpulence – offered herself to him for dessert and he had suddenly felt disgusted with himself and the company he was keeping.

Yes, it was good to be home. He loved New York. It invigorated him; the skyscrapers, the noise, the bustle, even the sight of the policemen, dressed up to look like postmen, gave him an electrical charge. Each evening, as he walked down Fifth Avenue in the direction of Broadway, he found himself whistling. He had made a host of friends there. He had been elected an honorary member of the Knickerbocker, the city’s most exclusive club, which he privately thought was even duller and more hidebound than the Athenaeum, but it was in the night-clubs, long after working New Yorkers had taken to their beds, that he and Amy dined and danced till there was light in the sky. Amy Pageant, the girl on his arm, was Broadway’s newest, brightest star, and the couple had been feted in a manner which would have turned him into a conceited ass if he had not realised that their popularity, pleasant though it was, was so much hooey.

The dream could not last. Six months after Amy had flung herself into his arms in her dressing-room at the Alvin Theatre, they had regretfully come to the conclusion that they were not, after all, in love with one another. There had been nothing so tacky as his finding her in flagrante delicto with her leading man, but he was wise enough to see that she was indeed on the point of falling for a wealthy sprig of New York society. Better to bow out gracefully than be ejected from her apartment after some slanging match in which both parties said things they did not mean but which left genuine hurt. No, Edward had kissed her, told her she would always have a place in his heart – that they would share some very special memories. She, for her part, had wept, whispered tender regrets in his ear but, in the end, had not tried to shake him in his resolve to return to England and find something to do which might stretch him.

‘I’m not cut out to be a lotus-eater, darling,’ he had told Amy. I’m getting lazy and that turns me into a dull dog. You are already a great star, but you still have a world to conquer and it wouldn’t be right for me to hang on your coat-tails like some stage-door johnny until we hated the sight of each other.’

‘Never that!’ she exclaimed. ‘You and I discovered each other before any of this …’ She waved her arms vaguely at the bed with its pink silk sheets, the champagne bobbing in the silver ice bucket, the vases of flowers that bedecked every available surface – the evidence of a glorious ‘first night’ when she had glittered in a Gershwin musical which looked set to run as long as she was prepared to star in it. ‘You and I will always be … a part of one another.’

But she had not begged him to stay and so they had parted, still a little in love with one another, basking in a relationship from which both had drawn strength. Though Amy would not have said it or even thought it out with cold, deliberate logic, it had helped her career to be seen with the wealthy, good-looking brother of an English duke. It had given her glamour and status – made her invulnerable to the sneers of society matrons and eased her passage into the centre of what Edward called ‘Vanderbilt City’. She acknowledged in her heart that he gave her much more than status: he was older than she, for one thing – almost thirty-five – and absolutely at ease with his own place in society. She had been brought up by two elderly aunts on Canada’s new frontier and seen nothing of the world until she had come to London to meet the father who had abandoned her almost at birth. A few months later, she had been whisked off to New York by a theatrical agent who had been taken to see her singing in a Soho night-club and had recognised star quality when he saw it.

It could be lonely on the Great White Way, even frightening. So much was expected of her and, when she delivered, they expected more and, inevitably, success brought enemies. The society gossip columnists had interspersed adulation with little spiteful dagger-thrusts of speculation and rumour. She was the daughter of the Canadian press lord, Joseph Weaver, but there was something mysterious there. She had appeared from nowhere. Was she his illegitimate child by a mistress he had turned away when he was quite a young man? There was certainly no word of any mother. Amy was able to brush off the innuendoes and the spite but there were evenings when she would read some lie about herself and run and bury her face in Edward’s shoulder and sob as if she were still a lonely, abandoned child.

Now, back in London, lying in his bath in his spacious if rather spartan rooms, Edward hummed contentedly to himself one of his favourite songs from Girl Crazy: ‘Boy! What Love Has Done To Me!’ Amy had sung it in the show and it still sent·shivers down his spine. He could hear Fenton in the little kitchen preparing his breakfast. Unexpectedly, Fenton had adored New York and had been reluctant to leave it. Edward had heard that he had been offered a position as butler to one of the city’s ‘royal families’ and had been touched that he had in the end decided to stay as his gentleman’s personal gentleman. Nothing was ever said between the two of them about the temptation which had been resisted but Edward noticed that Fenton would on occasion drop American phrases into his conversation and his breakfast eggs might be offered him ‘easy over’ or ‘sunny-side up’.

Edward resurfaced and made a determined effort not to think of Amy. He was content to be back in London. Or rather he was not content yet, but he was determined to find a cure for his restlessness. While he had been in New York, he had received a letter from an old Eton and Cambridge friend with a high, if ill­defined, position in the Foreign Office, offering him what sounded very much like a job. Basil Thoroughgood was too canny to commit to paper a form of words which might be construed as anything quite as definite but there was certainly the offer of lunch and ‘a chat’. Edward had cabled that he expected to be in London on February 18th and had been surprised to receive a ‘wireless’ half-way across the Atlantic which set one o’clock at Brooks’s – the club of which they were both members – on the 19th, only his second day back in the metropolis. It hinted at urgency on Thoroughgood’s part but Edward could scarcely believe it. Unless Thoroughgood was a different young man from the slouching, half-asleep character he remembered from the university, he would have laid odds on ‘urgent’ not being a word in his vocabulary.

His musings were interrupted by the muffled sound of knocking and then the noise of Fenton opening the door to the apartment and exchanging some sort of greeting. Edward stopped soaping himself and tried to make out who this unreasonably early visitor could possibly be. Confound it all, he thought irritably, couldn’t he even get dressed and have his breakfast in peace? In any case, as far as he was aware, no one, except Thoroughgood, knew he was back in London, and none of his friends – if they had, in some magical way, discovered he was back in town – would have dreamed of calling on him before ten o’clock at the earliest and he knew for a fact that it was only a little after nine.

After a few more moments of puzzlement, he heard Fenton’s respectful knock on the bathroom door.

‘What is it? Did I hear someone at the door, Fenton?’

‘Yes, my lord, there is a lady who wishes to speak with you.’

‘A lady? But I am in my bath. Did you tell her I was in my bath, Fenton?’

‘I did, my lord, and she said she would wait.’

Edward splashed angrily and yanked at the chain with the plug attached to it. All the pleasure of the bath leaked away with the water and, as he towelled himself, he called, ‘You haven’t told me who it is, Fenton, who breaks in upon my ablutions at this ridiculously early hour.’

There was something cold and wet in the pit of his stomach – not the sponge lying abandoned on the wooden bath mat – which warned that he knew perfectly well the identity·of his unexpected guest. There was only one among his many female friends and acquaintances who would have the nerve to visit a young man in his rooms without prior appointment and before that young man had got outside eggs and bacon, and that was a girl who ought to be in Spain.

‘It is Miss Browne, my lord.’

‘Verity! I knew it!’

‘Yes, my lord.’

Edward was almost sure he heard Fenton add under his breath, ‘I am afraid to say.’ Fenton did not approve of Verity. It wasn’t just that she exhibited a contempt for the tried and tested conventions of good society which he held to be sacred. It wasn’t even because she had a job – she was a journalist, a foreign correspondent no less, for Lord Weaver’s New Gazette – when she should have been content with a husband, babies and a string of pearls. What shocked Fenton to the core of his being was that Verity Browne was an avowed communist, communism being a political philosophy of which Fenton had the greatest suspicion. What right had girls – that is to say nicely brought-up young ladies and Verity Browne was certainly one of these – to have political opinions at all? In short, in Fenton’s view, Verity Browne, though in many ways a charming young lady, was not someone whom he could ever esteem. She was pretty – he could admit that. She was plucky – he had direct evidence of her fighting spirit. She had money; she dressed and spoke like a lady, so it made it all the more inexcusable that she did not behave like one.

‘Tell her I will be out in a jiffy,’ Edward called as he stropped his razor and stirred up a storm in his soap tin with his badger­hair shaving brush.

‘Very good, my lord,’ said Fenton gloomily.

‘Oh, and ply her with coffee and kippers, will you.’

When Edward burst into the dining-room ten minutes later – partially clothed, his tow-coloured hair not yet laid low by his ivory-backed hairbrushes – he was full of questions and complaints but these died on his lips unuttered. He was brought up short by Verity’s appearance. The merry, plump-faced child he had sparred with six months earlier had become a woman. She had cut her hair short as a boy’s. Her face, if not actually gaunt, was thin and spoke of poor food and too little of it. Her skin was pale and the smudges under her eyes indicated that she was under considerable strain and not sleeping properly. He hesitated – for only a moment – before going over and kissing her on the cheek but she had seen his surprise – no doubt had anticipated it – and said, with a wry smile, ‘As bad as that?’

‘No! I mean, of course not, Verity. It is splendid to see you after so long. I just thought … I just thought you looked too thin. How long are you going to be in London? Have I got time and permission to fatten you up?’

Verity smiled and put her head on one side and was once again the light-hearted bird of a girl he had … he had almost … no, damn it! the girl he had loved the previous summer when they had joined forces to discover the killer of one of the Duke of Mersham’s guests – the Duke being Edward’s elder brother.

‘No, I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘At least, not here. I have to be back in Madrid the day after tomorrow.’

‘So I won’t see you again?’

‘Well, that was why I came here. I was hoping you would come with me.’

‘To Spain!’ he said in amazement. ‘Why? What has happened?’

Verity laughed – a little guiltily, he thought. ‘Maybe I just wanted your company … but no,’ she said, her face clouding over. ‘You’re right. Something has happened.’

‘To David?’ inquired Edward with a flash of understanding.

‘How did you guess?’ said Verity rather bitterly. ‘Yes, something has happened to David.’

Edward drew Verity down into a chair and watched her closely as Fenton provided her with black coffee. She waved away his offer of eggs . and bacon but asked for a cigarette. Edward proffered his gold cigarette case and was concerned to see her hand was shaking so much that she had some difficulty in extracting one. He lit it for her and she inhaled gratefully. ‘That’s good. It’s hard to get American cigarettes in Madrid.’

‘I didn’t even know you smoked.’

‘I do now,’ she said shortly.

‘Tell me what has happened and how I can help,’ he said calmly, studiously avoiding any hint of ‘lean-on-my-shoulder­little-woman’, which he knew she would detest.

‘You’ve not seen anything in the papers then?’

‘The English papers? No, what have I missed? You see, I only returned from New York yesterday and …’

‘Oh, of course,’ said Verity drily. ‘And how is Amy? I gather she is quite a star now.’

There was something so sour about the way Verity said this that Edward gazed at her with surprise and hurt.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Verity, seeing the look on his face. She put out a hand and timidly laid it on his. ‘I mean, I am delighted … really pleased … for you both.’

‘Oh, as for that, there’s no “both” about it. We’re just chums, don’t you know.’ Edward got up and went over to the coffee tray on the table and refilled his cup, anxious that Verity should not see his face and guess at his real feelings. He felt something on his cheek and rubbed at it with his fingers. He was surprised to see it was a fleck of blood. He must have nicked himself shaving. He turned to Verity and showed her his hand. ‘Love lies bleeding.’ If it was a joke, neither of them laughed. ‘Tell me about David,’ he said more firmly. ‘Is he in danger or what?’

David Griffiths-Jones was the man Verity respected most in the world. He had been her lover – Edward knew that for a fact – and still was as far as he was aware, but he was a cold fish and Verity certainly did not have the look of a woman in the middle of a love affair. He and Griffiths-Jones were natural enemies; they had been at Cambridge together but while Griffiths-Jones had become a committed Communist Party worker, Edward had come to hate everything the Party stood for and not just because ‘social justice’ seemed to involve hanging people like him from lamp-posts or at least curtailing their personal liberty ‘in the interests of the proletariat’.

Edward believed passionately in personal liberty, although he accepted it did not mean much if one were a slave to poverty. He regarded with suspicion any political party – on the right or the left – which claimed to be acting in the interests of the working class. Everything he had seen of Fascism disgusted him but he was convinced that one did not have to espouse communism to be anti-Fascist. He had listened to David Griffiths-Jones and Verity go on about ‘the proletariat’ and ‘the working classes’ as though working people were little better than sheep needing a shepherd. If the shepherds were going to be of Griffiths-Jones’ persuasion, he foresaw they would ‘fold’ their charges into the abattoir.

He distinguished, however, between genuinely good-hearted idealists such as Verity, misguided though they might be, and cold, calculating ideologues, such as Griffiths-Jones, obsessed with ‘the masses’, a meaningless class definition in his view. But, if Edward were honest with himself, his political differences with David Griffiths-Jones were exacerbated by their locking of horns over Verity. No word of love had ever been spoken between Verity and himself, but there was some sort of understanding between them which probably neither of them would have been able or indeed willing to define. As far as Edward could see, Verity was completely in the other man’s thrall. He had commanded her to go to Spain with him and she had obeyed. She was to promote the communist cause by writing for Lord Weaver’s New Gazette, and for the Daily Worker, the official organ of the Communist Party, describing the political struggle in Spain in terms of communism – good – against Fascism – evil – when even Edward knew it was something much more complicated. To be fair to Verity, the three or four reports of hers he had read in the New Gazette had seemed honest attempts to report the truth of the situation, so maybe she had too much integrity to toe the Party line as closely as Griffiths-Jones would like.

‘He’s in gaol,’ she said bluntly.

Edward took a breath and said coolly, ‘What is he supposed to have done?’

‘He’s done nothing!’ She looked at him accusingly, as if he would automatically disbelieve her.

‘Yes, I expect not, but what do they say he’s done?’ he said, rubbing his forehead, which he always did when he was surprised.

Verity stuck out her chin. ‘Oh, it’s all nonsense. He hasn’t done anything, I tell you.’

‘Yes,’ said Edward patiently, ‘but what’s he accused of?’

‘They say he killed a man,’ she said reluctantly. ‘They say he’s a murderer.’

Verity blurted out the word ‘murderer’ as if she could still hardly credit it. Edward was not quite as shocked as perhaps he ought to have been. He had always considered David Griffiths­Jones to be one of the most dangerous men he knew and was reasonably certain that, if the Party required it of him, he could kill – might already have done so. Edward had the faintest suspicion that, deep down, Verity thought so too but this was clearly not a good moment to explore the idea.

‘So tell me about it,’ he said, leaning back in his chair. ‘Who is he supposed to have killed, and when did it happen?’

‘Over a month ago. He was arrested on January 10th.’

‘And when is his trial?’ He spoke with studied neutrality. He could sense that. she wanted to hit out at someone and, if he gave any sign of pitying her, her carefully prepared defences might crumble. She would hate herself and him if she burst into tears. It must have taken some courage, or maybe sheer desperation, for her to come to him. She knew how he felt about David, the Party, and her rushing off to Spain, but she had trusted him enough to come to him at this moment of crisis. He tried not to feel pleased. At all costs he must not seem to be taking advantage of her.

‘Oh, he has been tried,’ she said airily. ‘He’s going to be shot next week unless you can think of something to make them change their mind.’

‘Shot?’

‘Or garrotted – no, shot. Spain has joined the twentieth century.’

Edward gulped. If what Verity said was true, there was absolutely nothing he or anyone else could do to save the man. If Griffiths-Jones had been tried by a Spanish court and convicted of murder, how could Verity possibly think he might be able to do anything about it? It was absurd.

‘Oh gosh, Verity, that’s awful but … but what can I do? I mean, I don’t suppose even the Prime Minister could do anything,’ he said weakly.

‘“Oh gosh”!’ Verity mimicked him scathingly. ‘Is that all you can say? Has your brain been softened by champagne and canapés? Of course we can do something about it. We can find out who really did kill Tilney, for one thing.’

Edward’s ears pricked. ‘He was an Englishman – the man who … who got himself killed?’ he said, leaving Griffiths-Jones out of it.

‘Yes, didn’t I say so? That’s why I have come to you.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘For God’s sake, Edward: wake up! Godfrey Tilney – he was at school with you, wasn’t he? That’s what he always said.’

‘Godfrey Tilney!’ Edward exclaimed. ‘Well, I’m damned. Tilney dead? What happened, Verity?’

‘No one really knows,’ she said more calmly. ‘He and David were out together – on some Party work I think, but that was never gone into at the trial and David’s not saying anything. They were out the whole day – in the mountains – and David came back alone. He said that Tilney had left him to go back on his own. Apparently, he said to David that he wanted to go and see a friend on the way home.’

‘Who was the friend?’

‘No one knows and naturally the police thought David had invented it. I told them that if he had wanted to make up a story about why he had parted from Tilney when he did, he would have come up with something much better, but they weren’t interested.’

‘And Tilney? When … when was his body … ?’

‘Tilney’s body was discovered the next morning by a shepherd,’ Verity said. ‘He – Tilney – had a knife in his stomach.’

Edward, bewildered by what he was being told, could only come out with: ‘But surely, someone else could have stabbed him?’

‘That’s right, they could have, and what’s more they did,’ said Verity animatedly. ‘It is a wild area in the mountains. Lots of brigands and God knows what.’

‘So why were they so certain David had killed Tilney?’

‘Oh well, mainly because it was David’s knife.’

‘What! You mean whoever it was who found the body discovered David’s knife in him?’

‘Yes, in him or beside him, I’m not sure which, but there are many ways the knife could have …’ Before Edward could say, name three, Verity changed tack. ‘He would hardly have left his knife in Tilney if he really had done the killing.’

‘That’s true,’ said Edward grudgingly. ‘How does David say the knife got … there? Did he lose it?’

‘He says he either lost it or it was stolen.’

‘What sort of knife was it?’

‘It was a Swiss Army knife. He always carried it.’

‘Not such an easy thing to kill someone with,’ said Edward, thinking aloud. ‘How long before the killing had he missed the knife?’

‘He can’t remember. Look, Edward, you’ve just got to take it from me: he didn’t kill Tilney or anyone else. You’ve got to come over and find out who did do it.’

Edward heard the desperation in her voice. ‘But how much time do we have, Verity?’ he said, feeling panic rising inside him. ‘I thought you said he was being executed next week.’

‘That’s right, but I thought if you could get hold of Tilney’s parents and ask them to plead for a stay of execution …’

Edward’s eyes goggled. ‘You what?’

‘Well, you do know his parents, don’t you?’

‘I met them,’ he admitted, ‘but that was a long time ago. But look here, even if I did get to see them and, even more unlikely, if they were persuaded to plead for a stay of execution, I can’t imagine for one moment the authorities would take any notice …’

‘Oh really,’ said Verity in exasperation, ‘I don’t understand you, Edward. Last year you were a different man. Your will seems to have been sapped by good living or something. Didn’t your nanny ever tell you there’s no such word as “can’t”? I haven’t got time to argue with you; David needs me. Are you coming with me or not?’

There was such pain behind her appeal, there was no way in which he could refuse. ‘Of course I’ll come but I can’t work miracles. Don’t think I can.’

Verity’s face lit up. ‘There, I knew you had it in you. Weaver has put an aeroplane at our disposal,’ she added importantly. ‘I must say, Joe has come up absolute trumps over this. Although he has no sympathy with the Party, he has campaigned for. David from the moment he was accused. He’s been a real duck, but …’ she added meditatively, ‘I’m not sure David likes it.’

‘Being beholden to the capitalist press?’

‘Yes, still, it can’t be helped. I will use anything or anyone to save him.’ She spoke with all the grim determination which had made him admire her the year before.

‘Even me?’ he said nastily.

She grinned. ‘Even you.’

‘What are you going to do now?’ said Edward feebly.

‘I’m going in to the New Gazette. As I say, Joe – Lord Weaver – is running a campaign in the paper – Free Griffiths-Jones – that sort of thing, but I have to say, it hasn’t worked yet.’

Edward paused. If Verity really had persuaded Weaver – who was not a communist and was opposed to everything David Griffiths-Jones represented – to campaign for his release, either there must be something she was not telling him or Weaver had some ulterior motive of which she was unaware. What that could be he had no idea but it crossed his mind that the press lord was a notorious womaniser.

‘I have seen some of your reports from Spain – jolly good. I mean, very powerful …’

‘Oh, shut up, Edward. You don’t know what you are talking about. There seems to be no one in this bloody country who knows or cares what is happening in Spain. They don’t seem to understand that it’s not just domestic politics – it’s the beginning of a war. Oh God, why do I bother …’

Edward was hurt. Verity seemed to have come to him with the idea he might help her and was now going away in the belief that he was a spineless fish. Also, he did not approve of her language. He was about to say something to the effect that there was really nothing he could do to help her or Griffiths­Jones, and if a Spanish court had found him guilty of murder, then he probably was, when he saw that tears were streaming down her face. He rescued the coffee cup which she was holding so limply the black liquid was running on to the carpet and then went down on his knees and put his arms around her.

‘I’m sorry, Verity. I’m not being much help, am I? Look, I’ll get going straight away. Do you know where the Tilneys live?’

‘Yes, the New Gazette interviewed them. They live in Bedford Square. I’ve got the address and telephone number here.’ She thrust a scrap of paper at him.

‘Excellent!’ he said, taking it. ‘When I’ve spoken to them I’ll talk to a few people I know at the Foreign Office and see if there is anything to be done from that angle. As it happens, I am having lunch with a man who might be able to do something.’

Verity looked at him, her strained white face thin enough to make her eyes, filled with tears, seem unnaturally large and luminous. ‘Oh, will you, Edward? I know I’m being a …’ She choked back a sob. ‘You see, I’m so tired and I don’t think I can manage any more on my own.’ She smiled blearily. ‘And don’t you ever dare quote that back at me!’

A few minutes later, calmer and much more the old Verity, she got ready to leave. She reappeared from a visit to the bathroom, her face washed and a touch of rouge on her cheeks. ‘You do yourself well,’ she said.

‘Oh, you mean the bath? Yes, it’s where I go when I need to think.’

‘Hmff,’ was all she could find to say to that. She was staying with a girlfriend in Holland Park and it was agreed that she would ring him about six to find out what he had achieved, if anything. ‘We have to be at Croydon more or less at dawn tomorrow,’ she warned him. ‘It’s a long flight and, if we don’t want to be benighted somewhere in France, we have to start at first light.’

‘I still can’t understand,’ said Edward, ‘how they could convict David of murdering Tilney solely because his knife was used to kill him.’

‘Oh, didn’t I say,’ said Verity blithely, going out of the door, ‘they also found a jersey covered in blood in David’s room. They sort of proved it was Tilney’s blood but I expect it was planted on David. That seems to be the most likely thing, don’t you agree?’ And before Edward had got his breath, she had kissed him lightly on the lips and disappeared down the hallway.

2

At Brooks’s, Eric, the porter, seemed pleased to see him and, as he took his coat and hat, inquired after the health of his brother. It always irritated Edward that Eric invariably asked after the Duke despite his not having visited the club for the last five years to his certain knowledge.

‘As well as can be expected,’ Edward responded airily, hoping to suggest to Eric that the Duke had barely survived a life-threatening illness. The porter would be mortified to feel that he had missed some vital gossip concerning one of the club’s most distinguished members. ‘Is Mr Thoroughgood in the club yet, Eric? I’m supposed to be lunching with him.’

‘Yes, my lord. He is in the morning-room.’

Edward glanced at the teleprinter chattering away in the corner but there was no news from Spain: the country was, as might be expected, absorbed by accounts of the King’s funeral. The only foreign news was of Italian ‘victories’ in Abyssinia. To Edward, Mussolini’s efforts to join the imperialists and have his own colonies seemed to be further evidence – if further evidence was needed – of how the world his eldest brother had, in 1914, died to preserve was being torn apart without, it seemed, anyone much caring. He was more than ever convinced that he ought to be doing something to help those who were trying to resist Fascism but what had he to offer? He was still young, rich, healthy and not a complete ass, but would Thoroughgood consider him to be employable? He glanced at the noticeboard. Among the pieces of paper pinned to it, charting the progress of the dub backgammon tournament and recommending members purchase cases of the club’s own champagne, were cards ‘noting with regret’ the recent decease of members. Godfrey Tilney’s death seemed not yet to have come to the Secretary’s attention but one card caught his eye: another near contemporary of his at Eton, Makepeace Hoden, had given up the ghost. Damn it, he thought to himself, was the life expectancy of his generation going to be as short as that of the last? Hoden could not have been more than thirty-seven, surely.

‘I see Mr Hoden has died,’ he said to Eric. ‘Do you know how that happened?’

‘Yes, my lord. It was very sad. I understand the poor young gentleman was eaten by a lion.’

‘Good heavens, Eric!’ said Edward impressed. ‘I thought that only happened in music-hall songs.’

‘No, my lord!’ Eric said, suggesting some disapproval of Edward’s levity. ‘Mr Hoden was hunting big game in Africa, my lord, and …’

‘I see,’ said Edward hurriedly. He felt it was not quite the thing to gossip with the porter in the hall of the club about a member’s demise even though he had not liked Hoden and had seen little of him since he had left Eton, under some sort of a cloud he seemed to recall …

He pushed open the door of the morning-room and surveyed the dozen or so members asleep or reading newspapers in green leather chairs. A coal fire burned in the hearth and he went over to it and warmed his hands. It had turned very cold and he rather hoped Spain – if he did actually decide to go – would be considerably warmer. Several members nodded to him. The Earl of Carlisle, who all but lived in the club, said, ‘Ah, Corinth – not seen much of you lately – been away?’ and a very ancient member called Truefitt opened one eye and said, ‘Rough weather, eh, Cornford?’ Truefitt had an encyclopedic memory for first-class cricket scores but seldom remembered accurately the names of his club acquaintances. It amounted to a rapturous welcome and Edward compared it favourably with the democratic informality of his American friends which had rather shocked him at first. Even a casual acquaintance in New York would think nothing of addressing him by his first name before any formal introduction had taken place. Edward would have been outraged if anyone had called him a snob but he liked the reserve with which the English gentleman protected his privacy. His closest friends would call him ‘Corinth’ and only a few intimates would address him as Edward. His brother and sister-in-law called him ‘Ned’ but the rituals of family life among the English aristocracy were worth a book in themselves.

A face, up to now hidden behind the Sporting Times, revealed itself. ‘Ah, there you are, my boy.’

‘Oh, Thoroughgood,’ said Edward without enthusiasm. He remembered now that he did not like the man and certainly objected to being ‘my-boy-ed’ by a fellow who had been his contemporary at school. Thoroughgood uncurled himself from his armchair. He was tall, skeletally thin with a beaky nose, receding hair and a dusting of dandruff over his shoulders. He wore a perfectly pressed dark blue pinstripe suit, an Old Etonian tie and – this Edward found unexpected – a rather showy gold tie-pin.

It was not done to talk too long or too loudly in the morning­room so they walked through to the bar. ‘Gin and it?’ Thoroughgood inquired.

‘Champagne, please,’ said Edward, glancing round to see who else was lunching in the club. Two or three acquaintances waved at him and one of these was on the point of coming over when Thoroughgood came back from the bar with the drinks. He was obviously not popular because the acquaintance made a face at Edward indicating that he would wait and talk to him later.

‘I see Hoden’s dead,’ Edward said, sipping his champagne.

‘Yes, bad business that. You know how he loved hunting big game. He’d been all over the world: Tanganyika, Kenya, India, the Malay States. You name it, he’d been there.’

‘So what happened? Eric said he had been eaten by a lion.’

Thoroughgood snuffled. ‘Oh really, did he say that? I’m afraid it was altogether more prosaic. He shot himself.’

‘Suicide?’

‘Who knows? Probably just an accident but Eric is right in one way: the body was so badly mauled by the time the bearers or whatnot got to him, he was pretty well unrecognisable.’

‘But it’s rather odd for an experienced hunter, like Hoden, to allow himself to be separated from the others? Maybe he did want to shoot himself but didn’t want to sully the family name by being called a suicide?’

‘Maybe,’ said Thoroughgood, already bored with the subject. ‘We’ll never know. I don’t like huntin’ of any sort – not animals anyway.’ He gave his snuffling laugh, which Edward found rather disgusting. ‘I mean, these big-game hunters, they like to pretend how brave they are but, as I understand it, they are never put in any danger. Some poor native fella is sent to chase some lion or whatnot into the great white hunter’s field of fire and, if he misses, there is a professional there to finish it off.’

‘But not in Hoden’s case.’

‘No, but he was an arrogant … Oh well, de mortuis nihil loquitur nisi bonum and all that. I remember that he was an awful bully at school, though. Perhaps that was where he learned the fun of chasing animals.’ He snuffled again and Edward wondered, if Thoroughgood did offer him·a job, whether he could bear to be associated with him.

Over lunch – ‘the potted shrimps and then the kidneys, please, George. Same for you, old boy?’ – they talked generalities: Abyssinia, the old King’s funeral, the new King’s raffish companions – ‘all cocks and cocktails’ as Thoroughgood put it vulgarly – and the inferiority of the club claret of which, nevertheless, Thoroughgood managed to dispose of two bottles. He seemed interested in what Edward had to say about New York’s smart set. ‘They are Anglophile on the whole, are they? Or is it just that they “love a lord;’ like everyone else?’

Edward was rather put out. It was as if Thoroughgood enjoyed taunting him and he was half-tempted to get up there and then and leave him to it, but something stopped him. Thoroughgood, whatever else he was, was no fool and it occurred to him that he might be being tested in some way. He held his peace and explained that, though the English certainly had some snob appeal in New York, the Americans he had met could not be considered Anglophile if that meant sharing the British view of world affairs.

Thoroughgood was on to this like a hawk on a rabbit. ‘You mean they envy us our empire?’

‘I don’t know about that,’ Edward said. ‘I never discussed it with them, but if you mean would they fight alongside us if, God forbid, it ever came to war with Germany, I would say they wouldn’t.’ Thoroughgood seemed to be considering this because he said nothing but heaped Stilton on to a Bath Oliver biscuit.

‘Mind you,’ Edward went on, ‘I was only in New York and its environs, and even there I was meeting a highly unrepresentative slice of the population. I have no idea what they think about England in Washington, or anywhere else. I don’t suppose they consider us much at all. I was struck by how little news of Europe there was in the newspapers over there.’

‘Shall we have coffee in the library?’ said Thoroughgood. ‘We can be quiet there and there are one or two things I want to talk to you about in private.’

So I was right! Edward said to himself and he was curious to hear what his host thought wise to keep from long ears.

Thoroughgood seated himself by the fire in one of the huge, dilapidated brown armchairs and rang the bell. He ordered port for himself. Edward declined, wanting to keep a reasonably clear head. As it was, the hot room was making him sleepy.

‘You were in the States for six months and never went out of New York?’ said Thoroughgood, looking past Edward at the leather-bound volumes on the shelf behind him. ‘I thought you were a bit of a traveller. But then I forgot; you had your hands full, didn’t you? What’s the gel’s name? They say she’s Weaver’s illegitimate daughter, don’t they?’

Edward was taken aback by this sudden stab of malice even though he knew it was Thoroughgood’s way of trying to put him off balance.

‘You mean Miss Pageant?’ he inquired mildly. ‘She is a friend of mine, yes. Why do you ask?’

‘Oh, we thought it was more than that,’ said Thoroughgood nastily.

‘Who is the “we” you talk about, who have been kind enough to interest themselves in my affairs?’ Edward was trying hard to keep his temper.

‘Oh, did I say “we”?’ said Thoroughgood vaguely. ‘It was just an expression.’

‘Look, Thoroughgood, if you’ve got something to say to me for God’s sake say it. I don’t think the women in my life have anything to do with you.’

‘But that’s just where you’re wrong, dear boy!’ said Thoroughgood delightedly. ‘Still it’s not Miss Pageant who interests us – delightful though she is. It’s your little commie friend; D.F. Browne’s daughter – Verity, isn’t that her name? I believe you met her last year when you were looking into that business of poor General Craig’s death. She visited you this morning … rather early?’

Edward coloured. ‘My God, Thoroughgood, don’t tell me I am being watched. Surely England is not yet a police state?’

‘No, Corinth, no suspicion is attached to you, I assure you.’ He avoided admitting or denying that he and Verity were being watched, Edward noticed.

‘Meaning that suspicion is attached to Miss Browne. Is that it?’ said Edward acidly.

‘Well, of course. We like to keep an eye on political extremists of whatever· persuasion and your friend Miss Browne is a member of the Communist Party.’

‘“We”? You keep mentioning “we”,’ Edward said coldly, wondering why he did not simply get up and leave.

‘Did I say “we” again? I am so sorry. I meant the FO, you understand,’ knowing Edward would take it to be the lie that it was. ‘The FO is interested in the activities of your friend Miss Browne and that chap of hers – most unpleasant fella – what’s his name? They are living in Madrid, are they not?’

‘I imagine you know perfectly well that that is where Verity – Miss Browne – is. There is no secret about it; she is a foreign correspondent for the New Gazette.’

‘Ah yes, back to Lord Weaver, eh Corinth? He has a finger in so many pies.’

‘And you doubtless also know,’ Edward went on, ‘that Mr Griffiths-Jones is in prison accused of the murder of a colleague. As it happens, we both knew him: Godfrey Tilney.’

‘Yes, as you say, I did know. Tilney! What an odd lot there were at Eton with us, don’t you think? And that was why Miss Browne visited you this morning? She was soliciting your help in staying Griffiths-Jones’ execution? I hope you told her there was nothing you could do – because of course there is nothing you or anyone else can do. David Griffiths-Jones,’ he repeated the name as though he were holding it up for inspection. ‘Oh yes, we know a good deal about that young man. He’s a bad hat, take my word for it.’

‘As a matter of fact, Thoroughgood, that is more or less what I did tell her – that I couldn’t do anything, I mean. However, I did say I would try and get in touch with Tilney’s parents and see if they might appeal for clemency. Miss Browne is convinced of Griffiths-Jones’ innocence.’

‘Well, yes, of course she would be.’ There was a sneer in Thoroughgood’s tone of voice which finally achieved what he had presumably been aiming at for the past hour: Edward lost his temper.

‘By God, Thoroughgood,’ he said rising. ‘I thought you were a nasty piece of work when we were at school but now I see you have become a complete cad. If you think insulting Miss Browne is a way of persuading me to do something for you …’

‘Sit down, Corinth,’ said Thoroughgood, not moving from his chair, ‘and don’t be a fool. You’re drawing attention to yourself. I’m not insulting anyone. In fact, it is just possible we might be able to help her … her friend.’

Edward sat down slowly. ‘How and why?’ he said shortly.

Two good questions, dear boy.’ Thoroughgood, who was only Edward’s senior by two or three years, seemed to enjoy patronising him. ‘The fact is, we need someone inside the British Communist Party to be our eyes and ears.’

‘Let me be clear,’ said Edward after taking a deep breath, ‘you want me, as your representative, to save Griffiths-Jones’ life in return for him working for you – spying in other words – betraying everything he believes in?’

‘Oh, come on, Corinth. Don’t be so naive. Your schoolboy honour is not appropriate in the dirty, dishonest world we all inhabit nowadays.’

‘I have no illusions, I assure you, about the ruthlessness of extremists on whatever side of the political spectrum but I have to say I had hoped …’

‘What a pompous fellow you are, Corinth. Look …’ Thoroughgood leaned forward so close to Edward’s face that he could smell the wine on his breath. ‘You don’t seem to understand. This isn’t cricket. This is not gentlemen against gentlemen, nor even gentlemen against players – this is a fight to the death. Griffiths-Jones and his friends will do everything they can to drag this country into a war. The political situation in Spain is so unstable. The elections, which as far as we can tell were reasonably fair, have brought this hotch-potch of trades unions and left-wing political groupings to power – the so-called Popular Front – but the odds are the army won’t stand for it.’

‘The new government isn’t communist.’

‘No and that’s the devil of it.’

‘Why? Surely we don’t want to see a communist government?’

‘Listen, the name “Popular Front” was coined in Moscow at the 7th World Congress of the Third International, or Comintern, last year. Stalin was getting panicky about the rise of Nazi Germany – wanted to get on better terms with the democracies – so he decreed that in elections communists should support any party or group of parties however “bourgeois” who are against Fascism.

‘The Communist Party comprises the smallest group in the alliance but the Party will do what it always does: destabilise the main parties – which in all conscience are weak enough as it is – and foment civil war. You see, Corinth, the communists are frightened of the ballot box. They know they can never win that way. They want revolution, on the back of which they can seize power. Even more dangerous for us is their intention to lure us into a general European war. They hope a civil war in Spain will be the hook with which they will tow us into the mire. But, by God, some of us will do everything we can to prevent such a catastrophe. The British government will never allow itself to be drawn into a conflict which would destroy us and our empire.’

Edward was silent. Then he said, ‘But even if I agreed to help you, can you guarantee to save Griffiths-Jones? I thought you said nothing could help him now.’

‘I did. No, we cannot guarantee anything but it’s his only chance. We can pull some strings if it’s in our interests but you would have to make him understand what is expected of him.’

‘And why do you think I might succeed?’

‘We can’t be sure,’ Thoroughgood admitted, ‘but you’re a persuasive fellow and – shall I be frank?’

‘By all means.’

‘You are just the chivalrous idiot who feels you owe it to the girl you love to rescue her lover. Griffiths-Jones thinks he knows all about you, so in a sort of way he trusts you. I mean, he probably hates your guts, but he doesn’t rate you as an enemy.’ Thoroughgood smiled sweetly.

‘You’re not very complimentary.’

‘I don’t mean to be. If you are going to do anything in Spain, you must face facts.’ He changed the subject. ‘I understand Weaver has arranged a plane tomorrow morning at Croydon?’

‘Yes, so Miss Browne says.’

‘Good! Thank heavens for the very rich. I expect Harry Bragg will be the pilot.’

‘The air ace?’

‘Oh yes, but he’s a modest man so don’t call him that to his face.’

‘That’s all right, I know him a little. In fact, he more or less taught me to fly a year or two back when I was in Kenya. But won’t I be rather noticeable when I turn up in Madrid in an aeroplane hired by a newspaper magnate and piloted by Harry Bragg?’

‘Certainly! But that’s what you’ve got to do – make a fuss. You’re a rich young English milord – a knight on a charger come to rescue … well, you know the rest.’

‘I seem to recall that lopped heads often end up on chargers,’ said Edward wryly.

‘Different sort of charger, dear boy. In any case, your head is much too high profile to end up on a plate decorated with limp lettuce. Well, you’d better go now.’

‘How do I get in touch with you?’

‘In Madrid, through the embassy. Not the ambassador – he’s a bit of an ass. In fact, we have brought him back to London for the moment … “consultations”, you know the sort of thing. You’ll liaise with Tom Sutton. He’s head of what we call the “political section” at the embassy. Do you know him?’

‘No.’

‘Well, never mind, you’ll like him. Not quite out of the top drawer but very clever.’

‘The Tilneys? It’s worth my going to see them if there’s time?’

‘Definitely. It’s what you would do in any case if you were thrashing around looking for ways of helping Griffiths-Jones. It’s a pity he doesn’t have any parents alive.’

Godfrey Tilney’s parents – once they understood who he was – were pathetically pleased to see Edward. Clearly, the only thing they lived for was perpetuating the memory of their son and here was an old school friend ready, even eager, to talk about him.

The maid had ushered Edward into a drawing-room which he imagined had remained largely unaltered since the reign of Queen Victoria. The room was dominated by a ‘baby grand’ piano covered by some sort of lace-edged tablecloth which, in turn, was covered with photographs in silver frames and knick­knacks. It looked as though it had never been played. Antimacassars lay primly – like lace bonnets – on stuffed armchairs and a peculiarly offensive silver stag sat on the mantelpiece eternally fending off two hunting dogs.

Before Edward had time to examine the photographs on the piano, the door opened and he saw a large, unhealthy-looking woman with a pale face and eyes reddened from lack of sleep or excessive weeping.

‘Lord Edward Corinth?’ she said nervously, holding his card in vague puzzlement.

‘Yes, Mrs Tilney. I do apologise for calling unexpectedly but I am only in London for a day and I wanted to express my sympathies for your dreadful loss.’

‘I remember now. You were a friend of Godfrey’s,’ she said, brightening.

‘Yes, a school friend. I had not seen him for years, don’t y’know, but it was a terrible shock …’

Edward had thought it might be better to play the amiable ass which, as Verity would say, did not require much acting ability.

‘How very good of you to call. Please do sit down, Lord Edward. I … we miss him …’

‘Yes, of course you must,’ said Edward gently, seeing that tears had filled the woman’s eyes and raw emotion was preventing her from speaking. To give her time to recover he stuttered, ‘I’ve been in America so I missed … I’ve only just heard. Frightful business. How did it … ? Or am I … do you not want to talk about it?’ He wanted desperately to comfort the distraught woman but, even more, he needed to know if she had any information which might help him understand what had happened to her son in the hills outside Madrid.

‘No! To be frank with you, Lord Edward, it’s still all we can think of. Until this man is executed …’

‘But why did it happen? Who would want to … to hurt Godfrey?’

‘Well, that’s exactly what we can’t understand. We – my husband and I – attended the trial in Madrid. A horrible place,’ she added, actually shuddering. ‘We don’t speak Spanish of course and the interpreter’s English was not very good so I dare say we missed much of what was said. The evidence seemed quite clear, you know: a knife which belonged to this man’ – she could not bear to say Griffiths-Jones’ name – ‘and some bloodstained clothes were discovered in his rooms but I never did understand why he had done such a dreadful thing … to my poor innocent boy. They were supposed to be friends.’ To Edward’s discomfort tears poured down her cheeks – tears of which she seemed quite unaware, perhaps because they were as natural to her now as smiling had been before her son’s death.

Edward persevered: ‘The bloodstained clothes – were they Godfrey’s?’

‘No, they belonged … to that man, but they thought the blood was his. He must have … got it on himself when he … when he stabbed … Oh! How can people be so wicked, Lord Edward?’

‘Were the embassy people helpful?’

‘Oh yes, the ambassador was very sympathetic and he gave us a nice young man to look after us while we were in Madrid.’

‘Would that have been Tom Sutton by any chance?’

‘Why yes! Do you know him?’

At that moment the door of the drawing-room opened and an elderly, straight-backed man with a military moustache entered the room. He put out his hand to the grieving mother and looked at Edward reproachfully.

‘What is it, Rosemary, my dear?’

‘Oh, Henry, this is an old school friend of Godfrey’s, Lord Edward Corinth. He has been abroad – in America, did you say, Lord Edward? – and has only just heard.’

‘Lord Edward,’ said Henry Tilney, ‘it is very kind of you to call but you can see we are not in the way of being … sociable. You were a friend of my son at Eton?’

‘He was a little older than me – two or three years and of course that sort of age difference means quite a lot to schoolboys, but I think I can say we were friends. We weren’t in the same house but we played squash together – that sort of thing. I was very surprised and saddened to hear about your loss.’

‘Yes,’ said the man miserably. ‘He was our only son and we had such high hopes … but there we are. We should not build …’ His words tailed off as if the effort of speaking was too great.

‘If I remember, Mr Tilney, you were a Member of Parliament – a Conservative – but Godfrey … from what I understand he was … he was on the left?’

‘Yes,’ said Tilney, smiling wanly. ‘I was MP for Marylebone – retired at the last election, but yes, I’m afraid we did not see eye to eye politically. Godfrey was a lawyer, you know. He was very concerned with issues of social justice. Got mixed up with that chap D.F. Browne, do you know who I mean? Can’t stand the fellow myself. Anyway, he – Godfrey – suddenly got the idea that he was needed to help … what do they call it now – you know the alliance of left-wing parties … ?’

‘The Popular Front.’

‘Yes, that’s right. Though why he wanted to go to Spain when there was more than enough for him to do here, or so I should suppose, I don’t know.’

‘Might I ask, sir, was Godfrey a member of the Communist Party?’

‘Of course not!’ broke in Rosemary Tilney angrily as though Edward was accusing her son of being a criminal. ‘He was just devoted to … he wanted justice … and this was his reward. Is that justice, Lord Edward? Is it justice that he was murdered for no reason at all?’

As Edward left the gloomy house permeated by grief, he could not but feel that their mourning was tinged with guilt. Perhaps all parents feel guilt if their child dies before they do; it is against the law of nature. Or was it that they were blaming themselves for not having understood what their only son was trying to do with his life? The father must have thought his son had spat in his face by rejecting his own political values so comprehensively and it was no good trying to tell him that most children rebelled against their fathers.

The anguish of loss: Edward knew something of the pain felt by parents when their children predeceased them. His eldest brother, Franklyn, had died in the first week of the war and his father had never come to terms with the tragedy. He had been in a very real sense a prisoner of war. Gerald, Edward’s other brother, who had succeeded as Duke of Mersham, had never been forgiven by his father for surviving while the favourite son had not. It had caused a fracturing of relationships in the family from which everyone had suffered. Edward, very much the youngest of the three brothers, had, in effect, grown up fatherless because the old Duke had gone into a depression from which nothing could stir him except death itself.

One thing was certain: it would have been worse than useless to ask the Tilneys to plead for Griffiths-Jones’ life. If he had suggested it, he would have been thrown out of the house. It was better to keep their goodwill so he could go back to them at some future time if he needed their help. Mr Tilney had obviously been puzzled at the absence of any apparent motive for his son’s murder and it puzzled Edward too. What reason had Griffiths-Jones, or anyone else for that matter, to murder Godfrey Tilney? Griffiths-Jones was one of the most determined and committed political animals he had ever met and to be behind bars now, just when the new government was taking control of the country, must be, to put it mildly, frustrating. He suspected Griffiths-Jones of being utterly ruthless in pursuit of his ambitions and he was quite ready to believe that he would kill without remorse if he needed to, but to muck up a murder so as to end up in front of a firing squad seemed out of character. He was too efficient to leave evidence all over the place, as he was alleged to have done. No, no, no! Edward was quite ready to believe David Griffiths­Jones capable of murder – capable of murdering him even – but not of making a hash of it.

It was an odd way of proving someone innocent but the more Edward considered the matter, the more he felt Verity was right, if for all the wrong reasons. For Verity, her lover was a saint – if the Communist Party had saints – battling tyranny and incapable of anything shoddy or underhand. Edward believed he knew that was nonsense. He had just a few days to try and prove to an indifferent world that the man condemned to death for murdering Godfrey Tilney was guilty of much but not this. He doubted he could do it but, for Verity’s sake, he was determined to try. As for blackmailing Griffiths-Jones into becoming a police spy for Basil Thoroughgood, it was just as likely he could turn water into wine but he had to pretend it was a possibility if he was to have Foreign Office help in getting a stay of execution. There would be no point in finding out who really had killed Godfrey Tilney if Griffiths-Jones had already been tied to a stake, blindfolded and shot.