Joe nodded again.
“I know you detectives look for links and, apart from the obvious ones like uniform, I’d say there’s just one.”
“Which is?”
“Age.”
“Age? They’re all prep-school boys. Between the ages of seven and thirteen. Colonial and foreign pupils a speciality. All dietary requirements catered for.…” Joe quoted from the brochure he’d been handed.
“I’d judge first year of prep school. Not much older. None post-pubertal. One of them, you see, is very young-he still has a gap where his second teeth should be. Late developer? Early entrant? And if you think about it, that would put Jack into a different space, wouldn’t it? Didn’t someone tell me he was a late arrival at St. Magnus?”
“Yes. That hadn’t occurred to me,” Joe said. “He was sent up a year or so after the normal entry. He tells me his mother hung on to him as long as she could. It was his father who insisted on sending him to his own old prep school. They came over and stayed with him in the neighbourhood and visited the school before the start of the school year last summer. It would seem to have passed muster as the boy stayed and they went back to India.”
“But they would have had no way of knowing that this establishment is the subject of an enquiry at the highest and most secret level of government,” Lydia said. “Go on! Tell him about Truelove’s interest, Joe!”
“Truelove? James Truelove?”
“Ah, yes, I believe you know the man, Marcus.…”
“Shall we say he’s known in this house?” He exchanged looks with his wife.
Marcus was fascinated to hear of Joe’s encounter with the Secretary of State but confessed himself nonplussed. Finally he gave his verdict: “Politicians! They’re a mystery to us all! Never trust ’em! Though if you had to take one seriously, you could do worse than pick this one. At least he’s consistent. He’s clever … wonderful orator-go and hear him in the House one day, Joe. He’s got the most solid of backgrounds and he’s charming. He’ll need all of those assets if he’s going to win round the crusty old buffers in his party. He’s a Tory, of course, but … um … rather of the left wing, it’s whispered. The words ‘socialist leanings’ have been mentioned.”
“Perhaps the day will come when we no longer have to whisper them,” Lydia commented sweetly. “Whatever his politics, I’m glad to hear there’s a man of strength and principle in this ragbag of assorted egotists you men call a government.”
“Is that quite fair, my love?” Marcus protested mildly.
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Joe. “How else do you describe a Tory majority run by a Labour prime minister with the fickle support of the Liberals? A coalition? That is to imply some sort of working together, perhaps even with a plan in mind to advance the general good. This mob is uncontrollable. Ever tried to herd mountain sheep without a good dog at your beck and call? You can’t. They scatter and run in all directions. Ramsay MacDonald will need to call on all his ancient farming skills if he’s to shepherd this bunch to a safe place. No-I prefer Lydia’s label.”
“They style themselves the ‘National Government,’ and who can argue with that? It will do for the moment. But there are those who’ve concluded that the head of our government is quite unqualified for the job: He’s self-educated, the illegitimate son of a Scottish farm-labourer and house-maid, he’s an advocate of Scottish home rule and seemingly over-indulgent towards our enemies, the Germans. That sort of thing doesn’t go down well in the Shires, you know.”
“It goes down well in the cities where he’s tackling unemployment, alleviating poverty and improving schooling,” Lydia said. “And besides, you’ve got to admire a man who dares to appoint a woman to a cabinet post.”
“A good move, Lydia, as all agree, but-he also appointed that scallywag young fascist Mosley to the Privy Seal’s office,” Marcus countered equably. “That alone makes the old man’s judgement questionable in my book. Tired? Ill? Too many lavish suppers chez Lady Londonderry? So-the jury’s out, I’d say, on his latest appointee-the holder of this new Office of State. Reform, eh? A broad canvas. I expect he’s treading on a lot of toes while he sets about marking out his territory.”
“And I’m thinking that perhaps the shepherd has found his dog,” Joe said. “In which case we should all be heaving a sigh of relief that it’s not Oswald Mosley he’s chosen to go haring about biting bums on his behalf! Do you think that could be so, Marcus? That what we’re looking at is no more than the tip of an iceberg? The visible bit of a political power struggle. How dull!”
“Dull for you and dull for me,” Marcus said thoughtfully. He began to rearrange the photographs to his further satisfaction. “Perhaps not for these poor little tiddlers. How do they come to be caught in the net? I’m thinking you’ll be needing all your nifty footwork to sort this lot out, Joe!”
“No nifty footwork expected. I find myself once again the tiniest cog in the affairs of state. I’m just required to do my job without snarling up the works. Insignificant.”
“Below the horizon isn’t a bad place to lurk in dangerous times,” Marcus commented. “It worked for Lord Nelson. Be insignificant but-make sure your cannon are primed and ready to go. Now tell me why young Truelove’s poaching on police preserves.”
He grinned and added: “And how you’re planning to confound him!”
CHAPTER 9
“With low cunning and a crunching right fist!” Dorcas answered for him. “His usual technique.”
She had entered unnoticed. She put down a glass of whisky in front of Joe, murmuring: “Glenmorangie with a teaspoon of chilled water,” and squeezed herself in beside him, smelling deliciously of something he thought he recognised. Roses and sandalwood. He’d left a bottle of expensive scent under Lydia’s tree for her Christmas present.
“Lydia-before we get on to plotting the downfall of the government, may I just report a small domestic detail? I’ve exceeded orders upstairs. Everyone is happily bedded down, though not necessarily in their own bed or their own room. The girls are completely besotted by Jackie-insisted on taking him in with them for the night. He was playing up to this no end-told them he’d never spent a night in a room on his own until last night at Uncle Joe’s.”
“True enough,” Joe supported the boy’s assertion. “In India he would have been in the constant company of his Ayah. And then twenty-nine other boys in the dormitory at school.”
He hardly knew what he was saying. He was dealing with a blinding flash of memory that took him back through the years to a château crowded with children and showed him again the skinny girl struggling to appear grown up, all eyes and elbows and determination. She’d always known what to say to children when he’d been left mumbling.
“And the girls took pity on him?” Lydia nodded.
“Who wouldn’t? With those innocent blue eyes and that golden hair, he’s a baby Apollo! And can he ever tell a story!”
“But where have they settled?”
“All three are in Vanessa’s room. There’s a good fire in there and a big bed which Juliet has agreed to share with her sister. We all dragged the guest bed in for Jackie and put it next to them. I left him telling them an Indian ghost story. He doesn’t seem at all sleepy. Now, I overheard that last bit. Why, Joe, would you be thinking of locking antlers with my hero? It was my Sir James you were talking about, wasn’t it?”
“Dorcas! You know him?”
“Of course. He’s a huge supporter of the sciences. He’s donated vast amounts to my own department at the university. He funded a project I was involved with myself last year and that’s how I met him. We’re all required to take a term out ‘in the field,’ doing research.”
“Into what?” Joe interrupted. “You must excuse my ignorance, Dorcas, but no one has thought fit to tell me exactly what you’ve been up to these past seven years.” A look from Lydia confirmed that his tone had been aggrieved, and he lapsed into an awkward silence.