Closed Circle (17 page)

Still, at least his company's collapse attracted little attention amidst the carnage of expiring national credit. Those who had lost their money complained less volubly than Diana had feared. Her father's business reputation was dented, but his moral character unassailed. A creditors' meeting was called, but I did not attend, dud cheque clutched importunately in hand. I bore my loss in silence.

Besides, I had larger sums on my mind. The Northamptonshire knight aspirant was on the brink of parting with ten thousand pounds in exchange for a New Year honour which Gregory seemed confident he could obtain for him. Social climbing must continue whatever the state of the economic cycle. And the sherpa is worthy of his hire.

"Mr. Horton?"

The man I found leaning on the railings outside the Eccleston when I returned to it early on Saturday evening spoke in a gruff but educated voice. He was short and flabby, with the pale sweaty skin of an alcoholic. His suit was old and dusty enough for its original colour to be uncertain. A mackintosh of similar vintage was draped over one arm and a battered trilby perched askew on his head. The bushy salt and pepper remnants of what had once been a fine crop of red hair to judge by the stubbornly ginger moustache framed a round care-worn face in which grey eyes blinked with nervous frequency.

"You are Mr. Guy Horton?"

"Yes. What of it?"

"Could we ... have a word?" He paused to draw on a roll-up cigarette. "It's about the Charnwood murder. I'm a journalist and '

"I don't want to talk about it, thank you. If you'll excuse '

As I stepped past him, he clasped my arm with greater force than I would have thought him capable of and hissed in my ear: "Don't you want to help your friend?"

I stopped, shook his hand off and stared at him. "Of course I want to help him. Do you have some suggestions?"

"Not exactly. It's just Charnwood's not the type to fall victim to a crime of passion. There's something wrong with the whole story. It doesn't fit."

"Fit what?"

"My knowledge of the man. My experience of Fabian Charnwood."

"You're not making any sense."

"Let's have a drink somewhere. Then I can explain properly."

"I don't think so." A curtain was twitching on the first floor of the hotel. It was the room belonging to Miss Frew, most ravenous of the Eccleston's resident gossips.

"What have you got to lose?"

"Nothing. I Was that Miss Frew's lorgnette I could see catching the light above us? "Oh, very well. If you insist."

I had been using the bar of the Grosvenor as my local watering-hole, but George Duggan as the fellow introduced himself was not the sort of person I wished to be seen with in civilized surroundings. I piloted him instead to a pub in Warwick Street,

where I selected a corner table screened by a pillar and a hat-stand. Duggan downed a rum in one swallow, then began making swift inroads into a pint of beer. He described himself as a free-lance journalist with Fleet Street credentials, which sounded like the sort of smoke-screen I would have put up if claiming to be a pressman. Refusing my offer of a cigarette, he insisted on rolling another of his own. The first inhalation sparked off a racking cough, which frequently interrupted what he went on to say.

"I read the report of the inquest, Mr. Horton. I'd been waiting for it ever since Charnwood's death. Thought it might reveal all. But I should have known better, shouldn't I? Not a whisper of the truth, was there?"

"I told the truth."

"As far as it went, perhaps. But you know more than you let slip in court, don't you? You must do."

"Why?"

"You refused to admit your friend murdered Charnwood. I reckon that's because you're sure he didn't. And how can you be sure? Because you've heard what really happened from his own lips. You know where he is, don't you?"

This had gone far enough. Slamming my glass down on the table, I rose from my chair. "I've better things to do than sit here being accused of '

"Don't fly off the handle, Mr. Horton." His wiry grip had once more closed around my arm. "Please." There was a hint of desperation in his voice. Against my better judgement, I gave way and sat down again.

Two minutes, Mr. Duggan. Two minutes for you to say something worth hearing."

"All right." He gulped some beer. "Your friend Wingate's hiding because he doesn't think anybody will believe he's innocent. And they won't so long as they think nobody but him could have had any reason to kill Charnwood. But Charnwood was a powerful man. He had enemies. Some with good cause to want him dead."

"Who?"

"I don't know their names. Nobody does. Not all of them. Charnwood knew, of course. He must have had them listed like a directory in his head. Who I Made Who. That's what he did. Made some. And broke others. Like me." He frowned, as if in painful recollection, then rubbed at his chin. "Maybe they found out about his financial problems and were afraid of what he might reveal -if he thought he needed to. Maybe they just grew tired of depending on his discretion."

"Are you talking about clients of his?"

"Clients? Yes, you could call them that. Clients and co-conspirators."

"Co-conspirators in what?"

He stared at me for a moment, flexing his lower lip abstractedly. Then he said: "I'm saying no more until I can be sure where you and Wingate stand. If you were working for them.. . But I don't think you were." His eyes narrowed. "Not quite their type. And too young to have been in from the beginning. They wouldn't have used outsiders." I was still puzzling over this remark when he leant across the table and said: "Wingate may have seen or heard something. A glimpse. A whisper. He might think it's insignificant. A word from Charnwood before he died. A sign he made or left behind. But it could be the connection we need."

His intensity was becoming disturbing. I shrugged and drew back. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"You don't have to. Just tell Wingate what I've told you. I may be able to help him. But only if he can help me."

"I can't tell him anything. I haven't seen him since the night of the murder."

"Pull the other one. Somebody's sheltering him. Stands to reason it has to be you."

"Well, it isn't."

He grunted, then drained his glass and sucked the last of the beer from his moustache. "Have it your way, Mr. Horton. Another drink?"

"No thanks. I'm leaving."

"But you don't know how to get in touch with me."

"Why should I want to?"

"Because I'm your friend's only chance. With my help, with what I know He tapped the side of his head. "With what's up here, he might be able to expose the whole pack of them. But, on his own, he'll do no better than I ever have. So, if you see him, if your paths just happen to cross, tell him what I said. Fair enough?"

"I suppose so."

"I can be found at this address." He pulled out a note-book, the covers of which were in danger of being parted from the spine by the pressure of folded scraps of paper wedged inside them.

Separating a nicotine-stained calling card from the chaos, he laid it on the table before me. "By letter or telephone."

I picked the card up and stared with some surprise at what was printed on it.

ALNWICK ADVERTISER BOND GATE WITHIN ALNWICK NORTHUMBERLAND

Telephone: 88 Telegrams: Advertiser, Alnwick

"Northumberland's a long way from Fleet Street, Mr. Duggan. I thought you claimed to be free-lance."

"So I am, when I'm not knocking out six hundred words for the Advertiser on the price of herrings. And I was in Fleet Street. Foreign correspondent with The Topical. So don't worry. I still have my foot in the door. If Wingate has something for me, I can ensure it gets splash treatment."

"And you came all the way from Alnwick to tell me so?"

"Yes. Because it's important. And not just to me. Fight in the war, did you?"

"As a matter of fact, I did."

"Lose many comrades?"

"A few."

"They're why it's important. Every Armistice Day, we promise to remember them. But what do we actually do for them?"

"What can we do? They're dead."

"Exactly. Millions of them. Dead." He stared at his empty glass. "I need another drink."

"I'll leave you to it."

"Do that. But pass the message on, Mr. Horton." The note of desperation had returned to his voice. They may have made a mistake when they killed Charnwood. If they did, we can make them regret it."

I nodded noncommittally slipped his card into my wallet and left. He was already at the bar when I glanced back from the door. I was inclined to attribute his wild talk to however much he had drunk before calling at the Eccleston and was most of the way back to the hotel before an odd coincidence in his remarks occurred to my mind. Both he and Charnwood had spoken about the war as if it had ended yesterday. "Always there is the war,"

Charnwood had said. And "What do we actually do for them?" Duggan had asked of the fallen. Why this shared preoccupation with a conflict buried thirteen years in the past?

I diverted to the Grosvenor to consider the point over a Manhattan. By the time I had finished it and ordered another, along with a gin sling for the sloe-eyed vamp whose gaze met mine in the mirror behind the bar, I had concluded that it meant nothing. Charnwood was dead. Duggan was just a mouthy old drunk. Max had disappeared. And for me ... there were always consolations.

But disentanglement from the posthumous affairs of Fabian Charnwood was not as easy as I had supposed. I had a meeting with Maundy Gregory fixed for Monday evening, when I hoped to be paid what I was due from our successful negotiations with the boot and shoe magnate. Nor was I disappointed. Gregory proved to be prompt as well as generous. But touting honours among the landed gentry was not, it transpired, the only task he had in mind for me.

He paid me two hundred pounds in hard cash without my needing to ask for it, dispensed some champagne chilled in expectation of my arrival and forced a couple of Havana cigars on me one to smoke, one to take away. Such a lavish reception put me in good spirits and I smiled tolerantly as he claimed long foreknowledge of the suspension of the gold standard announced that morning.

"It was Charnwood who first told me it was bound to happen. He predicted the event to the very day. "They'll have gone off gold by the autumn." Those were his actual words. And what is today?"

"Er ... the twenty-first of September."

"Which happens to be the first day of autumn." Gregory grinned. "Uncanny, eh? It's just a pity he's not here to see his prediction come true."

"Indeed."

"Yes, Fabian Charnwood was a clever man. Very clever. You could have learned a lot from him, dear boy."

Irked by the term dear boy with which he had recently been making free, I decided I could afford to be mildly provocative. "Doesn't the collapse of his company suggest he wasn't quite as clever as he needed to be?"

"It would, if one thought he truly had lost all his money and that of his investors in American stocks and Austrian banks. But I don't. And nor do many others who financed his speculations."

"You were one of them?"

"I freely admit I was. And I never had any cause to regret it -until now. On which subject .. ." He paused to puff at his cigar. "You may be able to assist me. And those who, for these purposes, I represent." Another puff was followed by a cocking of his head and a conspiratorial narrowing of his gaze. "You are on good terms with the younger Miss Charnwood, I'm told."

I sipped some champagne and tried to frame a casual response. "Really? Told by whom?"

"I have spies everywhere, dear boy. A day at the races. An evening at the ballet. Such things do not escape notice."

"Well, I certainly escorted her a couple of times. But '

"And now she and her aunt have fled to warmer climes. Will you be following them?"

"No. Of course not. I '

"But you should. That's the whole point. I'd like you to. We'd like you to."

"What?"

He leaned forward across the desk, his monocle swinging ahead of him on its cord, setting the lens winking in the lamplight. Lowering his voice as if afraid of being overheard, he said: "I have agreed to do all I can to recover the money entrusted to Fabian Charnwood. None of us believe it to be lost. He was too shrewd a financier for that to be credible. He may have suffered one or two reverses, but not the wholesale failure with which his clients have been presented. No, no. We may take it as certain that he salted away the greater part of his assets our assets in a safe place. More likely, many safe places. The question is: where?"

Gregory's reasoning sounded like the kind of straw-clutching which often follows bankruptcy. But I did not propose to tell him so. I merely shrugged and spread my hands.

The aunt and the daughter hold the key. One of them knows, possibly both. Hence their precipitate flight abroad, to avoid awkward questions. Charnwood will have let one of them in on his secret with just this contingency his sudden death in mind. His sister is, I suppose, the likelier of the two. But she will have confided in her niece by now, so it makes no odds. Besides, the elder Miss Charnwood has proved impervious to Faraday's charms."

There could be little doubt, then, that Faraday was also a victim of Charnwood's insolvency. This conclusion planted two disturbing thoughts in my mind. Firstly, it implied that a concerted attempt to glean information on behalf of Charnwood's clients had already begun when Max and I walked unwittingly into his tangled world. Secondly, it confirmed my suspicion that Faraday had not recommended me to Gregory for altruistic reasons. Despairing of Vita, they had decided to resort to Diana. And I was to be their instrument.

"Follow them to Venice, dear boy. Invent whatever motive or pretext you like. The abject lover or the platonic friend, it makes no difference. But win the daughter's confidence and find out what she knows. Where the money is. And how we can lay our hands on it."

My every instinct rebelled against such a notion. To deceive Diana would be to deceive Max all over again, even supposing Charnwood really had secreted his money in a Swiss bank vault or similar hiding-place. "I can't imagine any way in which she could be persuaded to part with such information assuming she possesses it."