"And that's it?" Massinger asked. "All of it?"
Aubrey shook his head softly, but Margaret caught the gesture.
"What else is there?" she challenged.
"My dear — there is no easy way to tell you this. The information that Elsenreith gave me — that he had promised me as a lure and supplied out of amusement because it was intended I should never be free to use it — was the name of the man in the Allied Sector into whose care and protection he consigned those kameraden who periodically embarrassed him by appearing with demands for help."
Hatred was clear on Margaret's face. "And—? And—?"
"My dear, it was your father…"
"No!" she wailed, and yet Massinger knew that, hearing it from Aubrey, she had immediately begun to believe it. Believing him to be her father's murderer, she had also in her own mind to believe all he confessed.
"How could he?" Margaret sobbed, but she wished only to hear of opportunity, not motive.
"It was easy for him, my dear. He was in command of so much valuable paperwork. New identities were easy."
"Then why?"
"Because he was a soul in torment," Aubrey announced. The words, the compassion with which they were said, stunned Massinger. "A soul in the most grievous torment."
"Oh God," Margaret sighed lifelessly.
"And?" Massinger pressed.
"I killed him."
The words hung in the still, warm air of the room, followed by a silence that seemed endless, inescapable. Massinger thought they would remain forever at this exact stage of emotion and knowledge. He could not see ahead, or see beyond.
Eventually, Margaret said in a stilted, dull voice: "You are his murderer, then?"
Aubrey nodded gravely. "In the struggle, it was the pressure of my finger that squeezed the trigger of his gun. Yes, my dear, I am guilty of your father's death."
Margaret seemed spent. She neither moved nor spoke in reply. Her face was turned into the armchair, her legs ungainly spread out, her feet turned awkwardly, as if she had been thrown into the chair. One shoe was half off her foot. She might have been a costume dummy rejected by a fashionable shop.
Massinger cleared his throat and said, "What hold could they have had over him, Kenneth? How could they make him do it?"
Aubrey spread his hands. "Quite easily," he said. "What he confessed to me, I believed. He had known many prominent German diplomats and soldiers and civil servants before the war. Many of them became his friends, as they did of many Englishmen of his class in the 'thirties — our age of innocence. At Cliveden, in London — parties, operas, shows, brothels, hunts, shoots… the same faces. Hopeful, confident, blond young men. Castleford admired, imitated, sympathised. Oh, I don't think he did much more than many others. Certainly, there is no suggestion that he was false once war was declared, even though he thought it lunacy on behalf of Poland, and further and greater madness when we allied ourselves with barbarian Russia in '41."
"But, before…?"
Aubrey waved his hand for Massinger to desist. "I think only indiscretions, loose talk — no secrets. No more than a friend at court, so to speak."
"So — what hook did they have in him in 1946?"
"A generous gesture. An old friend, one of the blond young men from Cliveden and all the other country houses and the brothels, appeared. He recognised Castleford in the street. He'd been skulking about the city for weeks, a hunted man… you can hear it pouring out, I imagine?" Massinger nodded. "Castleford helped him with a set of forged identity papers which described him as a Pole — a former POW, now a displaced person. The man got away. And sent his friends, one after the other. An endless queue, all wanting new papers, new identities. You see, we'd been catching a lot of the smaller fry whose papers were second-rate and poorly produced. They needed other outlets, fresh supplies. English papers, duly signed by Castleford and people he controlled who were not in the know. Elsenreith sent people, too. Probably, he sent people like himself, SS now working for the Russians. I had to plug the leak, close up the hole. I don't know whether or not the first young man who approached Castleford — he'd whored with him, shot with him, ridden with him, got drunk with him, I heard all this from Castleford — was genuine or a trap. He served the purpose of a trap, anyway."
"And so it went on?"
"For almost a year. Long before I got to Berlin. I didn't know why Castleford disliked me so much from the outset. I think now he was afraid of me. Clara — our involvement with her — was a blind-alley. She explains nothing, except perhaps the chance Castleford saw of winning her over and using her to keep a check on me. It never reached that stage."
"What happened — at the end?" Massinger breathed. He saw Margaret become immediately alert. The room was already becoming dark beneath the late afternoon's leaden sky. The windows rattled slightly in the gusts of wind. Yet he could quite clearly see her shoulders tense, her head become more upright.
"A struggle for the gun. I had listened to him for what seemed like hours. I had come to charge him, arrest him. Even when I saw the gun, I imagined his suicide, so desperate and tormented did he seem. Instead, he intended to kill me. We struggled, and he was killed. He died almost at once. It took me many hours, almost until daylight, to hide the body in a cellar and bring about the collapse of enough remaining masonry to effectively bury him. That is what happened. I have, if you wish to see it, a fuller written record which Clara has kept for me for almost forty years. I came here, desperate to destroy it." He looked directly at Margaret. She was watching him like a creature prepared to spring. "Now, you may have it, if you wish. It is yours by right, I almost think…"
Margaret lunged out of her chair, her loose shoe almost tripping her. She stood in front of Aubrey, fists clenched, her whole body quivering, shoulders hunched towards him. Her small frame threatened him. Aubrey sat very still, his face tired but still wearing the sadly-wise, apologetic expression it had worn during much of his narrative. It seemed to defeat any physical intention on her part. Instead, she scrabbled her missing shoe onto her foot and immediately plunged towards the doors as if escaping a fire.
Massinger stood up. "Margaret—!"
She slammed the doors violently behind her. Massinger made as if to follow her, limping suddenly from the renewed ache in his hip.
"Paul!" Aubrey warned. "Paul — not yet. Let her have a little time to herself."
Massinger was halfway to the doors, alert for the noises of Margaret's retreat, then his shoulders slumped and he turned towards Aubrey.
"You're right," he admitted. "I wouldn't know what to say to her. You're right…"
"The Elsenreith woman's gone out — there's only a maid in the place, apart from our friends."
"We can't involve the maid or her mistress, Wilkes — not at this stage. They're Austrian citizens. You're certain all three of them are there? Aubrey himself is there?"
"All three."
"Then you'd better get on with it. Take them to the house. Keep them there until I arrive."
"Very good."
"Be careful with the maid. And with your cover story. For the moment, the Massingers are only being detained in connection with their attempts to aid and abet Aubrey. Nothing more than that. Whatever they think or say to the contrary, that's your story."
"Understood. When will you be here?"
"Tomorrow — I have a number of important committees and appointments. Just hold them until I arrive."
"Very good."
She was dazed by her misery and by the betrayal she felt taking place within herself; parts of her mind — memory, thought, feeling, intuition, guilt — were already siding with Aubrey, accepting the terrible, haunted figure her father had become at the end. She had begun accepting the struggle with the gun, the intention to murder that Aubrey had recognised almost too late…