As London got nearer, his confidence trickled back. "Do you think they got anything out of her?" he asked.
"Names? No; she wouldn't commit suicideafter talking. But we didn't get them either."
The thought damped George down for a few miles; then he asked: "How are the eyes?"
"Getting better."
"Chilli-a new weapon, for them."
Maxim just grunted. He was assuming that the spice had come from Miss Tuckey's kitchen, a makeshift to arm 'Praeger' while the others went to get a van or just new instructions, since they wouldn't have planned on removing a body. On leaving her dead, yes, but a whiff from a cyanide gun would have brought an automatic verdict of heart failure on a stout, elderly smoker.
The chilli also meant that Praeger had been just a wire man, with ordersnot to kill anybody who came at him, just blind them and run. That seemed obvious, now hehad had time to think. He hoped George wasn't thinking the same thought.
But George was looking further forward. "With her background, it'll be referred to Special Branch and Five… and that fiddled telephone… and Praeger without any background-we should have left his wallet, but they'll trace something about him anyway-and then we can admit we went to see her -once-and what we talked about, and there we are."
"It'll all blow wide open-in a very narrow, quiet way." Maxim was fairly familiar with Whitehall by now.
"Just so. Even the present Cabinet won't want to admit it's had right-wing desperadoes running around interrupting the even tenor of its betrayals. No, there are Ways and Means, and whether by way or by mean, those persons will be traced and told to cease and desist. Or be charged with Barling's murder. It must go that way-mustn't it?"
Only it didn't. The local police had had a busy evening, with an exceptional number of hoax calls that led them to non-existent road accidents, drunken brawls and even-a touch that showed a nice appreciation of British susceptibilities-a rabid dog on the loose. George's murder call had sounded the phoniest of the lot; it had certainly been the most amateurish. A single policeman finally arrived to try the doors-all locked-and ask if the neighbours had heard anything suspicious. They hadn't. Not until Miss Tuckey had missed next morning's service did a neighbour with a key go in to see if she was all right.
By then the house was tidy-and empty. Miss Tuckey's car was gone, and so were some of her clothes and suitcases. She did go away a lot, but normally told somebody first, so it was odd. Eventually the police were called back, but they found nothing. The telephone was in one piece, there were no bloodstains, no signs of what they still call 'foul play' as if somebody had been kicked behind the referee's back. There might have been a rug and a sheet missing from the bedroom, a picture gone from the wall, an incomplete rack of spice jars. But imperfection and incompleteness are normalcy; sheets get torn, rugs stained and sent for cleaning, pictures need reframing, spice jars break on stone floors. The police agreed that her disappearance was odd, even suspicious, but oddness and suspicion are on every breath a policeman takes-and meanwhile, their offices are stacked with files of unquestionably real and still unsolved crimes. So the vicar signed a missing person report to be added to the dozens of others filed that day all over the country and that, until something else happened, would be that.
16
"The Army ought to start asking questions when she doesn't turn up for the next course at the Fort," George said hopefully. "And she must have relatives and friends. With her special backgroundsomebody must get suspicious. And if not, I'll see if -I can think of an excuse to try and contact her myself."
"If the bodies never turn up," Maxim said, "and I assume they won't, I can't think what else there is to find."
It was like a Monday at a football club, with Saturday's umpteen-nil defeat to be analysed, and an injury list that promised worse to come. Knowing George despised soccer, Maxim didn't mention the thought, and in any case, George's feelings were more complex than his own. No evidence of two deaths meant no evidence of his involvement in them. In saving themselves, the Bravoes had saved George as well, although only from the consequences, not the horror. So perhaps God had turned the clock back, in a very God-like way. It wasn't, George felt, quite enough for him to renew any promises about alcohol.
Maxim just wanted to know where the battle lines now stood so that they could make new plans.
"I could try going back to the Steering Committee," he said, "and simply tell them what's happened. You needn't be mentioned; all my own work."
"I know you mean that, Harry," George sighed. "But as you say, what's to be found? Certainly nothing that proves a conspiracy. You'd simply be committing suicide: you're either a killer or some fruitcake who thinks he's a killer, and neither wanted in today's modern Army, thank you." He glanced to see how Maxim had taken the word 'killer', but saw only the usual polite smile.
Georgelifted a stack of the day's and Sunday's papers -none mentioned Miss Tuckey-and dropped them on the floor. "All right. Concentrate on the second man at the Abbey: call him Person Y. Where are we?"
Maxim opened his briefcase on the desk. "I got the photographs."
"Printed already? That's quick."
"Friends. They also looked at the bug from her phone. It's a new model, they were quite excited. And it was most likely picking us up in her room, as well as calls."
George was sifting through the snapshot-sized photographs Maxim had taken, identifying portraits of several people concerned with Resistance or Intelligence, and mostly now dead. Then he turned to the big original of the man Maxim remembered from the Abbey. It was actually of two men, smiling into the camera against a chunky city skyline. And now it was out of its glass frame, he could make out a faded signature at the bottom: Jay Keyserling, St Louis, 1968.
"Good God, we're home and dry."
Maxim shook his head. "Wrong man. We want the other one. "
"How d'you know?" George peered closer. Of the two men, one was, in indefinable but unmistakable details, American; the other, by seeming 'normal', was clearly British. The American was wearing a lapel badge, big enough for his own name and some other word. George, who didn't need glasses (as he kept telling people), reached for his magnifying glass.
"That's Keyserling,"Maxim said. "The other word's CCOAC."
"Never heard of it." George glared at the picture. The Briton would, presumably, have also been issued with a name-badge, but with a British horror of self-advertisement had taken it off the moment he could. Blast his idiot Britishness.
"Some sort of business convention, fairly respectable -if you can have such a thing," he ruminated. The well-fitting lightweight suits were too expensive for academicsyet too fashionable for government officials, and the ties were soberly striped. "In Saint Lewis, 1968."
"Is that how you pronounce it?" Maxim was surprised, having spent much of his life listening to various versions of what most people called 'The S'n Looey Blues'.
"Yes, and loud and clear on the Saint or they'll give you a ticket for Cincinnati, and it could be months before your next of kin were informed." He ruminated a while longer. "You're sure this man, the Brit -?"
"As sure as I can be. He's younger, there, but I'd think that man would be around fifty now. About right."
"So we've got an identification on the wrong man, but it's the only path through the mire. Can you follow it up? He's probably a prosperous American businessman, prosperous enough to go to international conventions: try all the American and international reference books in our library, then the London Library. You're not a member, are you? I'll give them a tinkle. But don't approach their embassy yet…