Ben laughed. “An entire brigade of the Royal West Kent Regiment for one thing.”
Max Knight smiled, too. “We have army intelligence working on them. So far they’ve come up with no leads there at all. The entire West Kent Regiment was asleep and tucked up in their beds when our man dropped in from the sky. And according to their commander, they all seemed to lead remarkably simple and boring lives before the war. Salt of the earth. Backbone of the country. The butcher, the baker, and the candlestick maker. I meant the family.”
“There at the moment?” Ben paused, thinking. “Well, Lord and Lady Westerham. Their oldest daughter, Olivia, and two younger daughters, Diana and Phoebe. Olivia is married, but she returned to Farleigh with a baby while her husband is overseas in the army.”
“Lord Westerham has other children?”
“Two more daughters. Margot was in Paris, last time I heard. Stuck there for the duration because she wouldn’t leave a French boyfriend.”
“What was she doing in Paris? Finishing school?”
“Oh no. She was already out in society. She wanted to study fashion design and apprenticed herself to Gigi Armande. Doing quite well at it, so one heard.”
Max Knight scribbled something on a pad. “And the other daughter?”
“Pamela. She’s doing some kind of war work in London. Secretarial stuff, I believe.”
Ben was conscious that Max Knight was staring long and hard at him. The man had a powerful stare, almost as if he could read thoughts, and Ben found a flush was creeping up his cheeks. But then Max Knight looked away.
“All sounds admirable, doesn’t it? The quintessential English family and their servants. No new Continental maids or Swiss butlers, I take it?”
Ben grinned. “They are down to a skeleton staff, so my father tells me. All the footmen gone off to fight. And, of course, the family has been allowed to occupy only one wing, so they don’t need that many servants. The cook and Soames, the butler, have been with them for donkey’s years.”
“And what about the neighbours?”
“I take it you mean the upper-class neighbours, not local farmers.”
Max Knight gave the ghost of a smile. “Let’s say I am more interested in the upper-class neighbours.”
“The closest neighbour is my father,” Ben said. “His church borders the Farleigh estate. And I can assure you my father never had any interests outside of history and birds.”
“Birds?”
“Passionate bird-watcher. He’s a typical country vicar—dull as ditch-water, although he’s a good-hearted old cove. My mother died when I was a baby. She caught the Spanish flu in 1920, and so my father’s been on his own ever since.”
“And other neighbours?” Max Knight had clearly dismissed Ben’s father as not important.
“There are Colonel and Mrs. Huntley at the Grange. They returned from India in the mid- thirties. He’s as true blue as they come. There’s an elderly spinster, Miss Hamilton. And then there are the Prescotts. Sir William and his wife. They have an estate nearby. Nethercote. He’s a big noise in the city, as you probably know.”
“And they have a son.”
Ben nodded. “Jeremy. He and I were at Oxford together. He was RAF. Shot down over France and now in a German prisoner-of-war camp.”
“Rotten luck,” Max Knight said. There was something in his expression that Ben couldn’t read. Almost a private joke he was enjoying. He flushed as Knight asked suddenly, “You weren’t attracted to join the RAF yourself, then?”
“I would have liked to, sir. Unfortunately, I was in a plane crash before the war, and my left leg was badly damaged. Doesn’t bend enough to climb in or out of planes easily.”
“That’s bad luck.” Max Knight nodded in sympathy. “But at least you’re doing useful work here, aren’t you? Equally important work.”
“If you say so, sir.” Ben’s face was blank.
“Up till now it hasn’t seemed that important?” Max Knight asked, with the hint of a grin.
Ben wondered how that information got onto his files and what else they said about him. He looked up. “Will that be all, sir?”
“For the moment, yes. I’ll send a memo over to Mike Radison that I’m borrowing you for a while. From now on, you report only to me. Is that clear? And I don’t need to remind you that nothing said here goes any further than this room.”
“Of course not, sir.”
“And that it is of paramount importance that your neighbours down in Kent have no inkling of why you are there or what you do.”
“I’m sure they don’t, sir. They think I have a gammy leg and I’m stuck in a desk job in a ministry.”
“Then let’s keep them thinking that, shall we? You might even drop a hint that the work has become a bit much for you, and you’ve been advised to take a break.”
“You want me to appear mentally unstable as well as physically incapable?” Ben’s voice had a sudden sharp edge to it.
Max Knight grinned. “If it suits our purposes. You would be amazed at the cover some of those I recruit invent for themselves.”
Ben remembered then that there were rumours about a certain Captain King or Mr. K., the spymaster who lived in Dolphin Square, and a thrill of excitement shot through him that he had just been recruited to be a spy, albeit on the home front.
Ben stood up. Max Knight held out his hand. “Good to meet you, Cresswell. I think you’re just the man for the job.”
They shook hands. Ben remembered the snake in Knight’s pocket. “I say, sir. That snake. Is it some kind of pet? A good-luck charm?”
“I’m a nature lover, Cresswell. An animal lover. I found this poor blighter about to be dispatched by some village children, so I rescued him. He seems to have taken quite well to life in my office.”
“Don’t you ever worry that he might escape from your pocket?”
“If he does, good luck to him. But I rather think he knows on which side his bread is buttered. I suggest you do the same.”
Ben hesitated. “Excuse me, sir, but how do I contact you?”
“You come here, or you send me a telegram with a number where you can be reached. We never use the telephone system, for obvious reasons.”
As Ben walked to the door, Max Knight said after him, “That plane crash. Jeremy Prescott was the pilot, wasn’t he? Got away without a scratch. I hope there’s no bad feelings there.”
Ben turned back. “I’d rather be here than in a German stalag, sir. And who knows how banged up he is, after bailing out of a plane.” He paused. “It was an accident. Pure and simple. No bad feelings. We were always the best of pals.”
He went then. It was only when he was in the lift going down that he realised Maxwell Knight had known all the details of his friends and neighbours before the interview started. It was he who had been investigated and put to the test.
Back at Wormwood Scrubs prison, Ben had just resumed his usual place when Harcourt breezed in. “You’re back. Not dismissed on the spot with a curt ‘never darken our doors again.’”
“So it would seem,” Ben replied.
“Damn. So I can’t take over your chair? Mine has started squeaking in a most annoying manner, as well as rocking.”
“You can use it for the next week or so if you like. I’ve been told to take some time off.”
“Time off? What for?”
“Apparently I’ve been overdoing it.” Ben grimaced with distaste and found it hard to get the words out.
“Good God. I haven’t noticed any hint of someone about to crack up,” Harcourt said. He came around to perch on Ben’s desk and peered down at him. “Frightfully sorry, old fellow.”