“And then there was the notification of the burial?” coaxed Charlie.
There was another snorted, empty laugh. “Of the wrong man.”
“But you visited the grave?”
“Once, with my father. He was annoyed that we hadn’t been asked about the body: that it had been already buried. We’ve got our own chapel and vault here, in the grounds. But there was a dedicationservice in Berlin and afterwards we decided to leave Simon … we thought it was Simon … where he was.”
“How many times did you go?”
“Just the once with my father, for the service. It was an official affair, for a lot of families with relatives there.”
Charlie was immediately alert to the qualification. “Was there any sort of registration at the official ceremony?”
“Not then.”
“But?”
“I went again, by myself, on the first supposed anniversary. My father was ill by then, couldn’t travel. There was some form-filling nonsense that time.”
Charlie realized he’d drifted away from the directions in which he’d been heading but decided to finish this now. “How many other times did you go: need to fill in the visitor’s form?”
“That was the only occasion,” said Norrington. “Father had a commemorative plaque put into the chapel. We could mourn well enough here.”
Which almost brought him back on track, Charlie recognized. “Who else from the family, apart from you, visited the grave you thought was Simon’s?”
“No one.” The man frowned. “Why do you ask?”
“I’m trying to build up as complete a picture as I can,” Charlie avoided, not wanting to enter still-unexplored territory. Quickly he said, “You mourned here?”
“Yes.”
Charlie indicated the picture-crowded tables and desk again. “You kept a lot of photographs?”
“Yes?” There was a defensive sharpness in the questioning reply.
“What about other things? Did you keep the notification of Simon’s death-the personal things that were returned?”
“I told you my father was devastated. In the first two or three years it was almost a shrine. It worried me.”
Sometimes it worked to hope against hope, Charlie decided. “Do you still have it all?”
“Yes. Father kept everything. So I did, too.”
Don’t rush, Charlie warned himself. It still might be another blind alley; this was going far better than he’d expected and there stillmight be more Norrington could help with. And there were the names from Berlin. “Later, when we’ve talked some more, could I see it all?”
Norrington hesitated. “Could it help you find the people you’re looking for?”
“It’s my best chance so far,” replied Charlie, honestly.
“Some of the letters are personal.”
“Letters!”
“I told you, Father kept a lot of stuff. Letters that Simon wrote when he got posted abroad. And before.”
Now it was Charlie who hesitated, and when he spoke he did so slowly, not wanting to lose the chance. “Sir Matthew, I have what could be leads to whoever murdered your brother. But I don’t know how to follow them. How, in fact, to take this investigation very much further. What you have, of your brother’s, might show me.”
“Then you must see it all,” agreed Norrington, at once. “Now?”
“Let’s talk a little more,” said Charlie. There had to be something in what was promised: by the sheer law of averages and the way his luck was running, there had to be something that took him forward! Which made waiting a minute-a second! — close to impossibly difficult, but he kept to the determination not to hurry. Get it all, he reminded himself: an inch at a time, a step at a time.
“What else can I tell you?” questioned the baronet. He got up to go to the drinks tray.
Charlie shook his head against the gestured invitation. “It was big jump, wasn’t it, from Free French liaison at the War Office to a special art-looting unit?”
Norrington frowned on his way back to his chair. “You don’t know anything at all about Simon, do you?”
He didn’t and it made this encounter too long overdue, Charlie conceded, although refusing completely to blame his personal situation in Moscow. There had been reason enough to remain there as long as he had. “The Ministry of Defense can’t find any records about your brother.”
Norrington’s smile was slow, an expression of belated understanding. “He didn’t tell me that.”
It came close to Charlie’s breath being taken away by a deluge offittingly iced water. “Who didn’t tell you what, sir?”
Norrington got up again, went to his desk and took the small rectangle of pasteboard from a top drawer. “Burbage, Lionel Burbage. Defense Ministry. Said there was a confusion about the records, which was why he wanted what I had.”
The iced-water feeling stayed with Charlie. “Did he take them?”
“Asked to, but I wouldn’t let him, like I’m not going to let you. Allowed him to read them, as you can. That’s all.”
Charlie began to feel warm again, not just at the reassurance but at his determination not to hurry. “When was this?”
“Four days ago.”
He’d met Lieutenant Colonel Rupert Jackson, the military attache, in Berlin five days ago. It fit the urgency of the Ministry of Defense panic. “Did you make your brother’s letter available to him?”
“Didn’t come into the conversation. He asked specifically about the official War Office communications and that’s all he saw. That’s why I asked you when you got here if you were in charge of the investigation, although Sir Rupert had already told me you were when he telephoned.”
“What did Burbage tell you?”
“That he was.”
“I am,” insisted Charlie. “It’s been a problem from the beginning, too many departments, getting in each other’s way.”
Norrington nodded in further understanding. “Burbage asked me to tell him if anyone else approached me about Simon.”
“Did you tell him I was coming?”
Norrington shook his head. “I didn’t know you were, then. Decided to wait. See you first. Hear what you had to say.”
“I certainly don’t know of him. But it makes sense to stop this duplication. Which I will. Can I have Burbage’s number?”
Norrington carried the card back with the whiskey decanter, adding unasked to Charlie’s glass. All that was listed was the name and a telephone number. No ministry was identified. Neither was any department. Norrington said, “You haven’t told me what you’ve got to say, Mr. Muffin. Not properly. Not why, for instance, Sir Rupert asked me when we originally spoke to keep secret the discovery of my brother’s body in some place I’d never heard of, nor make anypublic announcement about finally burying him as he should be buried, after all these years. I think I’ve been remarkably patient, but now that patience has gone.”
Shit, thought Charlie. Shit! Shit! Shit! Family pride, he told himself desperately: family pride and honor. “Your brother was officially in Berlin; his death there was accepted. His being in Yakutsk is considered, even now, something that shouldn’t be made public. Until we find out why and how he came to be there-to be one of at least four victims in a planned killing-it’s still considered a potential national problem.”
“That’s very difficult for me to accept. Or understand.”
“It’s even more difficult for me to ask you to accept or understand,” pleaded Charlie. “Which is why I’m asking you for all the help I can get.”
“My brother would not, under any circumstances, have done anything wrong: illegal or unofficial! He was proud to be an officer. To serve his country.”
An opening, Charlie recognized. “He couldn’t have been where he was unofficially. He was obeying an order. Which was what I told you when we first began talking: what I’m trying to do is find out who gave that order. Which it would seem the Ministry of Defense is also trying to find out.” If Burbage was from the Ministry of Defense, which Charlie now doubted.