CHAPTER EIGHT:
The Capture
Miss Catherine Dawson bobbed and fussed about the bird table in her garden much like one of the tiny creatures she was attempting to preserve with bacon fat, bread and bags of peanuts. She wore gumboots, an old fawn coat, and her grey hair was wispy as it escaped from her headscarf. The snow drifted down gently from a uniformly grey morning sky. Miss Dawson seemed well able to contain her impatience, if she possessed any, with regard to her visitor.
Massinger guessed she was almost seventy, which would have made her a woman in her late twenties, perhaps as much as thirty, when she was posted to Berlin as a Control Commission translator and interpreter immediately the war in Europe ended. She had been a member of Castleford's staff for more than a year before the man disappeared.
Massinger had first telephoned the previous afternoon. There had been no reply. He had rung repeatedly, obtaining an answer from Miss Dawson only late in the evening. She had been visiting friends for the day. Yes, he might certainly call the following morning. At ten? Certainly. Thus, Massinger had remained at Hyde's flat overnight. He realised that, while he possessed a safe route across the border, it was crucial to his continuing safety that he appear both convincing and convinced when he surrendered his quest for the truth. He needed to talk to this woman, perhaps to other survivors, before he could lay down his self-imposed task and declare himself satisfied with his discoveries and the fact of Aubrey's murderous guilt.
He had slept little. He was ashamed that impatience to be with Margaret had troubled him more than guilt at abandoning his friend. Now, at a little after ten in the morning — Terry Wogan had been making his farewells on the transistor radio as he had passed through the kitchen behind Miss Dawson — he was at the rear of a modernised cottage in an Oxfordshire village, pursuing the charade that might save his marriage and his life. Despite his lack of sleep, he felt fresh; impatient, too, and increasingly optimistic. A lighter, shallower person, perhaps, than he had felt himself to be for some considerable time. He could, however, sense himself putting clocks back, reordering pleasure and happiness like additional supplies for a hopeful expedition. The soft, large flakes of snow fell on his uncovered head, melted on the shoulders of his raincoat. They were chilly, pleasurably so, against his clean-shaven cheeks. He almost wanted to put out his tongue to taste the snowflakes like a child.
"It's very good of you to take the time to see me," he offered again to Miss Dawson's bobbing back. "I realise I must be intruding."
"Must you?" Miss Dawson replied, turning to face him. "What could you imagine so occupies me that a visitor would be unwelcome?" Her blue eyes twinkled. Her dentures were falsely white, but displayed in a genuine, almost mischievous smile. He wondered whether it would be wrong, even patronising, to feel regret for her that she had never married.
"I'm sorry," he murmured.
She completed her ministrations at the bird table and came towards him. Almost at once, a robin appeared on the table. Two yellow-breasted tits followed it, dangling at once from the slightly swinging bag of nuts. A red plastic mesh. Sparrows landed. Miss Dawson turned and contemplated the scene for a moment like a satisfied Saviour, then ushered him indoors as if she had only that moment realised it was snowing and he was bareheaded.
"Coffee — cocoa?" she asked, gesturing him to one of the upright kitchen chairs. He lowered himself onto it, aware of his hip. Its aching, its stabs of pain had returned with renewed vigour, it seemed, since his decision to rehabilitate himself with his wife and Babbington; as if he wore his conscience in a holster on that hip.
"Coffee would be fine," he said. Miss Dawson had studied his awkward movements.
"You should have the operation," she murmured, fussing with a non-stick saucepan at the stove. "I did — both hips."
"Yes, I should," he replied. The conversation aged him — something did, at least. "Maybe after the summer…"
She poured milk into the saucepan. The gas plopped alight. She removed her gumboots and coat and headscarf, patting her grey hair into shape. Her eyes were bright and sharp.
"You want to talk about dear Robert Castleford — presumably because of the newspapers yesterday?" He nodded. He was wary of the incisive tone in her voice. "I feel so sorry for your wife," she added like a warning. "How can I help you?"
He was silent for a moment, then spread his hands on the surface of the kitchen table. A check cloth which matched the curtains. Then he blurted, only partly acting: "I–I have to know the truth. You see, I have been a friend of — of Kenneth Aubrey for some time — married to Castleford's daughter, you can imagine my dilemma…?" He looked up into her face, which was pursed and narrow and studious.
"I see. You're an American, Mr Massinger?" she asked with what seemed like keen relevance.
"Yes."
"A dilemma?" She seemed contemptuous. "I don't see why. What does your wife say?"
"She — doesn't know what to think."
"You can tell her from me, then, that your friend Kenneth Aubrey probably — almost certainly — did murder her father!"
Massinger was startled by the wizened, malevolent look on Miss Dawson's face. It was as if she had thrown off some harmless disguise with her scarf and boots. Now she was the wicked queen with the poisoned apple, not the old woman with the sweet voice. Massinger guessed she had carried some kind of torch for Castleford; one evidently still burning.
"How — how can you be certain of that?" he asked. "So certain after all this time?" Miss Dawson had her back to him, lifting the milk from the stove, pouring it into two round, daubed mugs.
"Sugar?" she asked brightly, disconcertingly.
"Please — one."
She returned with the mugs and sat down.
"How can I be certain?" she repeated immediately. "How can I be certain? Because the two of them quarrelled all the time, whenever they met. Because Aubrey hated Mr Castleford — hated his success, hated his importance, his charm, everything about him, in fact." Massinger sipped his hot coffee after stirring the sugar. There was something pat and even rehearsed about the woman's outburst. Nevertheless, he could not ignore it. He could not even regard it as part of the play in which he was acting for Babbington's benefit; for the traitor's benefit, too. The man in Guernsey had believed it — Miss Dawson did, too. Why? "Aubrey had no respect for the rules, Mr Massinger — but I expect you know that. From past experience, if you're a friend." Massinger merely shrugged. "He was ambitious. He stood in Mr Castleford's shadow. In fact, Mr Castleford referred to him as someone too late to fight who wished the war was still going on. Do you understand that?"
Massinger nodded, studying his coffee. "Yes," he said. Margaret's father — had he been like her? The thought had never occurred to him before, and yet it now seemed crucial to the whole business. If he had been—? "Was he a gentle man?" he asked suddenly, unable to contain the question.
"Mr Castleford? Yes — considerate, kind, appreciative. Charming, of course, ambitious, full of energy… but he would never ride roughshod over anyone… a real gentleman, of the old school. Class, of course — breeding will out, as they say."
The woman seemed to have changed once more, to have revealed unexpected origins and prejudices. She looked up to Castleford, always had done. She was a snob on his behalf, even now. Yet, she made the man seem like Margaret.
What if he had been? How could he have been the kind of man Aubrey could have ignored, or accepted? He would have been the kind of man to awaken jealousies, to have created in Aubrey, perhaps, the dark side of a triangle? Massinger felt breathless with the quick thoughts as they crowded in on him, lay on his chest like weights. He sipped more coffee.