“You’re not saying a lot,” complained Irena. The man she believed to be mafia was in the restaurant again and if the evening didn’t pick up soon, she was considering changing partners.
“Sorry. Things on my mind. Seen Natalia lately?”
Irena shrugged. “We had a row.”
“So you didn’t know Charlie was back in London?”
“Permanently?”
“Just a discussion recall, as far as I know.”
“Probably banking his profits,” suggested Irena. “Not a bank I’d trust in this city.”
Cartright regretted most of all telling Williams of Charlie Muffin boasting of currency speculation. “I can’t think you’re right about that.”
“You imagine he could afford that apartment any other way?”
It was difficult, acknowledged Cartright, although if Charlie Muffin was doing something as bloody silly as that, it did justify his cooperation with the man’s finance controller. It was a total mess and he desperately wanted to be out of it.
28
After driving parallel to it for what seemed forever, Charlie decided that the redbricked perimeter of Sir Matthew Norrington’s Kingsclere estate must have been modeled on the Great Wall of China although probably went on for much longer. The gate he finally located opened noiselessly to his identifying himself at the security voice box and closed just as quickly behind him. The wall was lined inside by trees and there were more meticulously cultivated on either side of the paved drive that ribboned away ahead of him. He could not see the house. Through the trees to his left there was a herd of disinterested, unafraid deer. He thought there were some white ones but wasn’t sure. To his right, sheep grazed. Far beyond them, too far away to distinguish man from machine, a figure rode a disappearing tractor over the brow of a hill tufted with more trees. Would this have been the scene of perfect, safe tranquillity that Simon Norrington thought about kneeling in front of a grenade-made grave on the outskirts of Yakutsk, waiting for a pistol shot?
Not suspecting its length, Charlie had not timed how long it took to circumnavigate the outer wall. It was a full five minutes before the house came into view, a huge square pile-Georgian, Charlie guessed-with creeper-clad walls and a flagpole on the central turret for the proudly flying red cross on white pennant, the whole thing a monument to the permanence of the English landed class.
Sir Matthew Norrington waited by one of three parked Range Rovers, white-haired, tweed-suited and brogued. The spectacles were horn-rimmed. As he got out of the rented car, Charlie decided it was impossible to decide between his or the other man’s whose suit was the more comfortably shapeless.
Norrington said at once, “Glad to see you. I want to understand what this is all about.” The voice was firm, like the handshake.
“I don’t fully understand myself, but I’ll do my best,” promised Charlie.
“But you are definitely in charge of the investigation? That’s what Sir Rupert said on the phone.” There was an impatience in the question.
“Yes,” said Charlie. I wish, he thought.
The house into which the elderly man led him was as comfortably lived in as the suit and Charlie decided that perhaps it wasn’t a monument to anything after all. The cavernous flagstoned entrance hall was lined with oil paintings, which continued along a paneled corridor. Aware of Charlie’s interest, Norrington said, “The Holbein and the Reynolds are ancestral, but a lot of the more modern collection was Simon’s choice. It’s thought to be quite remarkable.”
The door at which Norrington stopped was halfway along the hall, from the far end of which-or maybe from another room-there was the sound of people. A dog barked, very briefly. The library into which Norrington took Charlie was more neatly arranged than Sir Rupert Dean’s but at the same time more obviously occupied. There were more framed oils, men in ermine and robes, bejeweled women and velvet-dressed children with ringlets and spaniel pets, but there was an obvious working desk dominating the window looking out over the rolling grounds. Charlie was immediately aware of a lot of photographs on its top and even more, practically overcrowding, on side tables at either end of the huge, inglenooked fireplace. He recognized a lot of Simon Norrington, two in the uniform the man hadbeen wearing in the Yakutsk ice tomb. Another had him in graduation gown with a man Charlie assumed to be his father, who’d looked remarkably similar to Sir Matthew Norrington now. There was a photograph of a teenage Matthew smiling up toward Simon in visible bigger brother admiration. The chairs, also by the fireplace, were leather, which creaked when they sat.
Norrington said, “Tell me what this is all about.” It was the voice of a man accustomed to being obeyed.
Charlie left out all his supposition and suspicions and anything about a second English officer, so it only took minutes.
“I’d expected more,” the dissatisfied baronet said, at once, with a frown.
“I wish there were more,” apologized Charlie, meaning it.
“They were planned killings? Of my brother and the man in his grave in Berlin?”
“Undoubtedly.”
“Why him?”
“I don’t yet know how or why, but I believe art is the most obvious factor: something to do with its looting. But not that by itself. There’s a lot more.”
“Simon despised the Nazis, Rosenberg’s lot, for what they did to art. And the Russians’ Trophy Brigades. Judged one as bad as the other. He knew it would be impossible to reassemble the European art heritage, no matter how hard he and others like him tried.” The man stopped, pointedly. “You imagine you’ll ever find out who killed him?”
Charlie hesitated. “Who committed the actual murders, probably not, not after fifty years. They would have been functionaries.” Which was true, he realized. It had been a Russian bullet that killed Simon Norrington.
“What about the people who ordered it?”
“That’s who I’m trying to find. If I do, we’ll know why.”
Norrington stirred in his chair, which creaked again. “What are your chances?”
A lie wouldn’t help and Charlie didn’t want to slip sideways into his theories and guesses, either. “I’d like them to be better. I’d appreciate a lot of your time.”
Norrington shrugged. “As much as you need.” He got up. “I drink gin.”
“Whiskey.”
The old man returned from a separate side table with their drinks, settled noisily and said, “So?”
“You were, what, sixteen when it happened?” Charlie spoke looking at the young Matthew gazing up at his elder brother.
“Just seventeen, at the war’s end. Felt cheated. Was an officer cadet at Eton, all ready to go. Wanted to go even more when Simon was killed; thought it had been in action then, of course. Imagined I’d find the actual person who did it.” The man snorted humorlessly. “Some irony about that now, isn’t there?”
“Let’s hope not,” said Charlie. “You can remember everything about the time? Not simply the death but immediately before? And afterwards?”
“All of it.”
Everything from the family, recalled Charlie, remembering the Berlin conversation with the military attache. Charlie indicated the photographs of Simon Norrington on the table closest to him and said, “He was-is-obviously deeply mourned?”
“My father was devastated. We all were, naturally. But my father took it dreadfully. The war was over, for God’s sake!”
Charlie thought it was too much to hope, but he hoped, just the same. “How did you learn?”
The older man frowned. “Letter. Official notification. June third.”
That was encouraging, thought Charlie. “There were some personal belongings returned?”
“Arrived much later, from his unit: cigarette lighter-it matched a case my father gave Simon when he graduated-his wallet. Family ring. There was a personal letter of regret, too, of course. From his commanding officer.”