The Alamut Ambush

They had united, too, to overcome its one disadvantage, labouring through one long, hot summer to build a miniature lift from the first floor to the ground floor. Not that there had been any shortage of volunteers; relays of guests and neighbours had willingly lent muscle-power and technical assistance – fifteen courses of the dummy2

brickwork were Roskill's own: for everyone who knew Mary it had been a sad labour of love.

So the room had become her base rather than her prison, catching the sun the whole day to warm her and giving her a great sweep of landscape as well as the curve of the downland on which to focus the German naval telescope her father had brought back from the Zeebrugge raid.

If she had seen anything on that...

'It's Hugh!' She was awaiting him, already facing the door; she would have heard the distant murmur of voices and no visitor to the Old Vicarage ever left without visiting the end room.

He had forgotten how beautiful she was. There had been some old general – he had read a book about him way back – of whom it was said 'he made old age beautiful', and the same was true of Mary.

Except that sixty years was not old and it was the crippling arthritis and the pain which had aged her, though without tarnishing that beauty. Isobel would age like that, exactly.

She held out her hands to him. 'It's been such a long time, Hugh –

far too long. We've missed you.'

It wasn't a complaint; somehow it implied that the fault was hers, not his, and that she wanted to make it up.

'Mary...' He took the cold, twisted binds.

'It is good to see you, Hugh!'

Her unashamed pleasure cut deep into him. This was the darkest treachery: dearest Mary, I haven't come here to see your eyes light dummy2

up. I've come to ask you what they saw up there on the hill. Did you see anything, Mary? Did you? And did Alan tell you anything?

'It's good to see you too, Mary darling.'

The truth, but what an empty, guilty truth it was!

'I hadn't the heart to come after Harry was killed,' he heard his voice say in the distance. 'I think – I somehow felt I was to blame.

It ought to have been me that time.'

'What a very silly thing to think!' She underlined the word 'silly'; for Mary silliness was the venial sin and only wickedness carried a heavy penance. 'And Harry would be the first to tell you so. You were each promoted, and you weren't to blame for that.'

'It wasn't quite as simple as that, Mary.' He could hear himself still, as though he was listening to a tape. 'I didn't take that promotion because I really wanted it – I took it because I was losing my nerve. I could feel it running out of my boots every time I flew.'

It sounded strange, blurted out just like that, unmasked, the thing he'd kept hidden from everyone but Isobel. And he'd never intended to share it with anyone else, either. Yet telling it to Mary now seemed perfectly natural – it was the curious effect Mary's charisma had on everyone, from the milkman to the vicar. She had never sought confidences, they simply tumbled out in her presence.

Perhaps that was really why he had never returned to East Firle: it was too easy to talk to Mary.

'Hugh! Now that's the silliest thing of all! If you felt like that, then you were right to do what you did, not wicked. If you hadn't you might have killed someone else as well as yourself. But you dummy2

certainly didn't harm Harry.'

The plain facts in black and white, sensible and honest. But that wasn't how the scales of guilt were balanced: guilt was always the might-have-been that could never be outweighed by good sense and honesty.

'Perhaps you're right, Mary.'

'Of course I'm right. And it's all past and done with now – there's no sense in remembering bad things in the past unless they help to make the present better. And I'm sure your present doesn't need any helping.' She patted his hand. 'Are you happy, Hugh? And are you doing a useful job?'

Roskill smiled at her. Happiness and usefulness had always been Mary's criteria for the good life.

'I sometimes wonder whether what I do is useful, Mary. But it's certainly interesting enough.'

She nodded, smiling at him. 'And are you married yet?'

It was on the edge of his tongue to tell her: no, Mary, not married.

But I love a married woman seven years older than I am, with two sons at boarding school and a rich busy husband who doesn't give a damn provided she doesn't rock the boat. And. what the hell am I to do about that, Mary? Just tell me what...

But one slipped confidence was enough for one day.

'No, Mary – not yet, anyway.' He smiled back at her. 'And you –

have you still got your finger on East Firle's pulse?'

'Shame on you, Hugh! You make me sound like a nosey old woman, and I hope I'm not that.'

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'Not at all. It's a sympathetic ear you have, not a nosey nose,' He looked at her affectionately. No elaborate lies now, for she would see through them. And no excuses either, for she deserved better than that; if he couldn't trust Mary's good sense, there was no sense left in the world. 'And I need your ear now, Mary.'

For a moment she regarded him in silence, searching his face. And there was sadness in her own face now as she identified his purpose: he was no longer her special visitor, redeeming a long absence, but a duty caller like the meter reader and the postman, just doing his job.

'It's Alan, isn't it?'

'Yes.'

She held his gaze steadily. 'What is it you want to know about him?'

'He spent his last leave here.' Roskill felt a muscle twitch in his cheek. If he'd ever wondered why one was never normally assigned to a job involving one's own friends and relatives, he had the answer in full now. 'I want – we want to know what he did and where he went. And who he met, and anything he said or saw out of the ordinary.'

He could see from the stricken look on her face that he'd bungled it ridiculously: he'd made Alan sound like Philby and Burgess and Maclean rolled into one, and the report of his accidental death transparently the officifd lie that it was. How could he have been so clumsy?

'Alan hadn't done anything wrong, Mary. But we think he may have had some information for us – something important. And we dummy2

don't know what it was. What I'm doing now, asking you these questions, is really just routine.'

'But it was important?'

'It might be very important.'

'Well, I'm surprised he didn't tell you.'

It was an oddly stupid thing for someone as sharp as Mary to say.

Unless the years really were beginning to tell.

'We never saw him, Mary. The accident was on Tuesday night. He wasn't due back on duty until the next day.'

'I mean in his letter to you.'

Letter?

'His letter?'

'Haven't you had it? He wrote it on Tuesday morning – he borrowed a five-penny stamp off me for it. It had to be a five-penny because he wanted it to go first class.'

'To me?'

'He said it was to you. Because in return for the stamp he said he'd send my love. I thought that was why you were here – because of his letter. The Ice Maiden posted it from Lewes, to make sure of the London post.'

'The Ice Maiden?'

'Sorry – it's the family name for Penny. And you haven't had it?

That's really too bad of them, even though it is usually reliable.'

A letter from Alan. So he had seen something, and knew he had seen it. Or at least wanted a second opinion on what he had seen –

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that made sense. For Alan had never sent him a letter before, but he was the most obvious contact for advice inside the department.