"And he's dangerous?"
"He has no proof of anything," Roussillon offered, brushing a dark lock of hair from his forehead.
"Hardly thanks to you!"
The Frenchman's cheeks reddened with affront.
"I do not work for you, M'sieur Winterborne. I am not your paid man!"
"You would find it hard to persuade your service or your government that their interests differ from mine, Roussillon. Effectively, you take my instruction." The Frenchman's eyes were polished with hatred.
"If Gant has no proof, then he can do little harm. Especially as a convict. But meanwhile, Gant is in London, not Washington. Can he find Strickland, Fraser? How well does he know him?"
"Not well. I don't think he knows where to start."
"Not good enough. We do not know Gant well enough." He was suddenly tired of his anger. In his study and his secretary's office, his calls were being held, his business suspended. He should not have to be concerned with this menial and degrading litter-collection. Gant and Marian and Strickland, blowing like infuriating bits of paper in the breeze of the affair, eluding his pointed stick.
"What do you suggest Fraser?"
"Gant's still under surveillance even if he thinks he evaded us using the taxi-dodge in Piccadilly. There'll be plenty of opportunity to settle—" The ringing of a mobile phone interrupted Fraser.
Disconcerted, he removed it from his pocket.
"Fraser." He listened. Winterborne watched his features feign a retention of the easy confidence with which he had spoken. Then, his cheekbones slightly reddened, he looked up as he switched off the phone.
"Well?"
"Gant. He he's arrived at Aubrey's place."
"Aubrey? What does he want with that damned old man? Eh, Fraser what does he want with him?" Like the two men in the room, Aubrey came to him in the moment of his triumph to remind him of something that already seemed as distant and unimportant as a childhood misdemeanour.
"Aubrey can't do anything, sir—"
"You have that in writing?" he snapped.
"You have it from Aubrey himself?"
He turned away. Aubrey would learn of the sabotage… What could or would he attempt, armed with that knowledge? Surely the forces of inertia, euphoria, government would all weigh on him, rendering him silent. No one, no one at all, saving Gant and perhaps Marian, would act. And Marian was hobbled by the same pressures that would constrain Aubrey. She had to be… which left Gant. Only Gant. Looking for Strickland, just as they were. If the two found each other… "Don't lose Gant," he warned.
"Not for a moment. At the first chance, make certain you kill him."
Aubrey's mood was almost that of a diarist, comfortable amid the flickering quarrel between Marian and her father. He was no more than intrigued by Marian's drama once the initial shock at her appearance, her weariness, had diminished.
She herself had shaken off trauma by means of defiant anger.
"Do you realise what you're saying, Tig!" Giles growled.
"You're talking about David Winterborne, for heaven's sake! Why for what possible reason would David take such risks, go to such lengths?
Good God, you're practically accusing him of attempted murder with this story of some builder's daughter!"
"Daddy they are behaving like gangsters! Is that what you would tolerate?" Marian threw back, her cheeks flushed, her hands flinging her hair away from her face. Her forehead was pale, the skin beneath her eyes dark. To Aubrey, she looked like some wild prophetess.
Perhaps she was… And yet Giles must be correct, surely, despite his own suspicions and David's wariness of him and the clandestine meetings at Uffingham. Once one brought it all under Giles' honest, direct gaze, it did seem tinged with the fantastical.
"Well, Daddy?" Marian asked again, all but taunting her father. She had inherited all his moral sense and more; in her it had led to scepticism, rather than Giles' optimism.
"Children…" Aubrey murmured good-humouredly.
"I blame you, Kenneth, for much of this," Giles snapped at him.
"You've always encouraged Tig's capacity for suspicion, for lifting up stones. And I think you're doing it now!" His features broke into a smile and he waggled his hand to fend off any witty riposte.
"You know what I mean, Kenneth. And I'm right, however pompous I might sound."
"Is he?" Marian challenged.
"Are you about to dismiss Banks' daughter, the cheque in the post Michael Lloyd's murder?"
"And Fraser," Aubrey murmured soberly.
Giles, probably as an antidote to reflection, helped them to more coffee, then took his cup to the window, where he remained, looking out, statue like Marian's smile towards his back was warm, grateful.
"Well?" she queried.
"And Fraser, indeed. And me." At the window, Giles' shoulders flinched.
"Yes, Daddy," she could not help triumphing.
"Even you think I've stirred something up
"But not David," he protested without turning.
Aubrey waved her to silence, then said: "We can't go that far, I agree." Marian frowned, shaking her head. Giles visibly relaxed his posture.
"But there are all the signs of—" He broke off in irritation as the doorbell sounded.
"All the signs of a gigantic swindle for some purpose or other." His voice sharpened, quelling Marian's contemplated outburst. He heard
Mrs. Grey's voice answering the video entry phone A moment later, she entered the drawing room.
"I'm sorry to interrupt, Sir Kenneth." She glanced deferentially towards Giles Pyott, her attention slipping at once to the cafetiere which, against her better judgement, she had been requested to use. There's a gentleman, an American by his voice, who wishes to see you urgently. He's at the door now a Mr. Gant. Do you—?" She paused, ambushed by Aubrey's surprise and by the evidence that Giles' astonishment was as great.
"I — er, Mrs. Grey, you'd better show him up," Aubrey flustered.
"Yes, please let him in at once."
"Very well, Sir Kenneth." She was already suspicious of anyone who could ruffle the calm waters in which she habitually swam.
"Kenneth—?" Giles began apprehensively.
"None of my doing. A coincidence worthy of a Victorian novel, perhaps?"
"Kenneth, the man is in very great trouble. This isn't coincidence. If you had read your Times assiduously, you'd know there's an FBI warrant for his arrest on charges of—" '-being on the payroll," Gant murmured from the doorway.
"Hi, General Sir Kenneth." He shrugged childishly, self-deprecatingly, so that Aubrey saw him as a caricature of some prodigal son disclaiming any part in the wasting of the family fortune. He struggled to his feet with the aid of his stick. Marian's amusement was the equal of her curiosity, her glance studying Gant.
"Mitchell, my dear boy!" Aubrey's effusiveness was overdone. Gant's stare hardened.
"You look comfortable here, sir I'm interrupting…" There was an edge of sarcasm to the remark. Gant turned to Pyott.
"It's just bullshit, sir. I wasn't on the take."
"Just helping your former father-in-law?" He turned to Marian, whose arch expression disarmed.
"Yes, I was," he replied with studied, affected politeness.
"He was being screwed, begging your pardon, ma'am."
"I apologise, Major." Marian stood up.
"I don't think you need score any more baskets Marian Pyott," she added, holding out her hand. He shook it perfunctorily but warmly.
"My daughter," Giles murmured.
"Pleased to meet you, ma'am."
"I take it this is not a social call, Mitchell sit down. Mrs. Grey, more coffee, please. Sit down, sit down—" Aubrey showed Gant to an armchair, on which he perched like some quiescent but alert hunting bird. He looked out of place, yet somehow self possessed.