Closed Circle (30 page)

Enough. The choice was simple. I could go straight to Amber Court, forget what I knew and revel in the physical pleasures and material advantages Diana would be willing to bestow on me, justifying my conduct on the grounds that it was too late to help Max and therefore only sensible to help myself. Or I could pursue a hazardous campaign to expose an old but monumental crime, whose principal perpetrator was dead and whose surviving accomplices had shown themselves to be ruthless as well as powerful. In the final analysis, it was not really much of a choice at all.

But at least it could be delayed. I stopped at the George in Stamford for tea, my hopes for something stronger being dashed by a Sabbatarian regulation I was too tired to dispute. There, among the potted palms and Sunday-best family gatherings, I made up my mind to head for Letchworth. My father and sister were owed an explanation of events in Venice, maybe also of my intentions towards Diana. Besides, an overnight stop in Letch-worth would leave me well placed to visit Felix next day. If I could face him and hold my tongue, then I could be sure my course was set. I could be sure I was going to take the easy way out.

It was nearly nine o'clock when I reached Gladsome Glade. My sister greeted me with surprise and a measure of delight, my father with grim-faced indifference. I had written to them from Venice shortly after Max's death, a letter at once hasty and un forthcoming But for my father at least that was enough. The less he knew of my doings the better he was pleased. And so, within minutes of my arrival, all thoughts of honesty and candour had drained from my mind.

"He doesn't understand you, Guy," said Maggie when he had taken himself off to bed. "He never has and he never will."

"No. I don't suppose he will."

"What are your plans for the immediate future?"

"I'm not sure." I should have told Maggie about Diana then. I might have won from her some form of sisterly approval for what I meant to do. But the creaking of the floorboards in my father's bedroom, the familiar pattern of the paper on the wall beside my chair and the reflections of the firelight in the photographs on the piano conspired to silence me. I belonged here and yet did not. I wanted to speak and yet could not. There, above me, where it had always hung, in a place of honour, was my mother's sampler, its words waiting to accost my gaze. Wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be that go in thereat. "I thought," I murmured, "I might visit Felix tomorrow."

"Good idea."

"How is he?"

"Much the same as ever."

"And who's to blame for that, eh?"

"Why nobody, of course." She frowned. "You surely don't think Dad holds you responsible. It was ... an accident of war."

"If war can be called an accident."

Her frown deepened. "I don't understand. What do you mean?"

"Nothing." I smiled dismissively and lit a cigarette. "How are things in the teaching world?"

"They could be worse. The government generously agreed to cut our pay by only ten per cent instead of fifteen. I suppose we should be grateful."

"What do you tell your young charges about the war?" Instantly, I regretted the question. My preoccupation with the subject was beginning to worry her. "I'm sorry. Forget it. Let's talk about something else."

But Maggie insisted on answering. "I tell them it must never happen again, Guy. I tell them it should never have happened. What else can I say? They're too young to understand the whys and wherefores. I'm not sure I understand them myself. Do you?" I stared into the fire for a moment, then tried to shape a carefree grin. "Of course not. But, then again, I never give them a moment's thought. And, anyway, what would be the point? There's not a single thing I or anyone else can do about it now. Is there?"

I was up early enough the following morning to breakfast with Maggie. Thinking a change of scene might do us both good, I suggested we meet for lunch at the Letchworth Hall Hotel. She agreed without hesitation. Clearly, her dedication to the cause of education had been reduced along with her salary.

After a few monosyllabic exchanges with my father, I headed for St. Albans. Felix's company promised to be a tonic by comparison. But a surprise awaited me at Napsbury Hospital. Contrary to what my sister believed, Felix was not much the same as ever.

"He had a funny turn over the week-end," a nurse explained. "Nothing to worry about. But it would be best if he stayed in the ward. You don't mind seeing him there, do you?"

I did mind, of course. The place stank of stale urine and stewed cabbage. And the patients were either comatose or manic ally excited, gibbering and gesticulating at the entrance of a stranger. Felix for his part looked pale and subdued, propped up in bed and staring vacantly at the ceiling. My immediate impression was that he had been drugged.

"Hello, Felix," I said, patting his hand. "How are you?"

He looked at me as if he could scarcely believe his eyes. "Gewgaw! How did you get here?"

"I drove."

"But... Where am I?"

"Where you've always been. Napsbury."

"No, no. That's not true. That's what they've been telling me. But it's a lie. I've been moved. It must have happened Saturday night. They must have slipped something into my cocoa so I wouldn't wake up during the journey."

"You haven't been on a journey."

"Oh yes I have. I know I have. The bath gave it away. They didn't think of that. I always have one on Sundays. I suppose they didn't want to change the routine. But they made a mistake. The water, Gewgaw. The water went down the plug-hole the wrong way." He lowered his voice to a whisper. "Anti-clockwise." Then he glanced suspiciously from side to side and leaned towards me.

"Where am I? Australia? Argentina? I know it must be somewhere in the southern hemisphere."

"You're in Hertfordshire." But there was such a stricken look of betrayal in his face that I instantly repented of my words. I smiled as reassuringly as I could. "Never mind, Felix. I know who did this to you."

"You do?" I nodded and his eyes widened. Then he raised a quivering finger to his lips. "Sssh! Don't tell, Gewgaw. Don't breathe a word. If you do, they'll be after you as well. And ... I wouldn't want anything to happen ... to my little brother, because .. ." He grinned crookedly. "He's too young to fight."

Poor Felix. There was no way back from the strange and troubled place the war had taken him to. And whose fault was that? Somebody whose name he had never heard. Somebody my father and sister would never have dreamt of suspecting, far less accusing. Somebody to whom fate had been altogether kinder.

I left Napsbury oppressed by the prickly proximity of madness. By the time I reached Letchworth, this sensation had transmuted itself into a pressing need for a stiff drink. With more than an hour to spare before my appointment with Maggie, I diverted to Willian, a village just south of the town, which had retained, despite absorption by the Garden City, two examples of that phenomenon most detested by the tee total ideologues of Letchworth: the fully licensed public house. I had regularly walked the mile and a half from the Goddess factory to slake my frustration in one or other of them before returning to Gladsome Glade. Indeed, my happiest or least unhappy memories of those barren years are associated with the bars of the Fox and the Three Horseshoes. I stopped at the latter, found it as agreeably warm and quiet as I remembered and retreated to a fireside table with a triple scotch.

There I turned over in my mind the harsh realities and consoling advantages of my position. If Max were still alive, I would do all I could to help him, even if it meant confronting the unnumbered forces of the Concentric Alliance. So, at least, I told myself. But Max was dead. And so was Charnwood. I had neither friend to save nor foe to seek. There was Faraday, of course. There were Vasaritch and the sinister guests aboard his yacht. There were all the nameless people who had profited from their involvement in Charnwood's alliance of the great and the greedy. But what were they to me? The best revenge I could devise for what they had done to Max was to take my share and Max's too of the fortune I no longer doubted Charnwood had hidden from them. Vita knew more than she would ever tell. Perhaps Diana did too, though clearly not as much as her aunt. Their conversation at the Villa Primavera, which I had eavesdropped on, convinced me that Diana was party to some vital secret. Since her reaction to the Concentric Alliance's symbol proved she was ignorant of its meaning, that secret could only be the whereabouts of Charnwood's money, a secret she was unlikely to disclose to anyone except her lover.

And I was her lover. Half-closing my eyes, I could imagine her turning to look at me as some silk garment slid from her shoulder. Reaching out, I could almost feel the tingling smoothness of her skin. Smiling to myself, I could recall every detail of ... I swallowed some scotch and called a halt to my deliberations. To Diana I would return. Of the Concentric Alliance I would say and pretend to know nothing. I took the letter containing their symbol from my pocket, tore it into four and threw the pieces onto the fire. If Diana ever asked for it, I would claim I had lost it. Then I remembered my contract with Max. Such an incriminating document would also have to be destroyed. I drew out my wallet, slid my copy from its pouch, unfolded it, screwed it into a ball and tossed it into the flames. Then I made to do the same with Max's copy.

But, as I unfolded it, a small piece of blue card fluttered out onto the table in front of me. Pausing, I picked it up to examine. It was a theatre ticket, the right-hand side torn, as if by an usherette. A serial number was printed along the left-hand side, with the middle occupied by the remnant of the theatre's name: Pier The on one line, Bourne on the next. Pier Theatre, Bournemouth, obviously. But why should Max have gone to Bournemouth?

Suddenly, a possible reason occurred to my mind. We had spent a forty-eight-hour leave there in August 1915, during initial training with the King's Royal Rifle Corps on Salisbury Plain. And a riotous time we had had, though whether it had included a visit to the Pier Theatre I could not recall. But it had been one last indulgence before a grim awakening in Macedonia, so perhaps Max had chosen it as a hide-out because of its links with our carefree past, just as he had chosen to abandon our car in Winchester because we had first met there in the long ago September of 1910.

Chief Inspector Hornby would have paid handsomely for this clue to Max's movements during the weeks following Charnwood's murder. But now, like so much else, it was irrelevant, a redundant echo of a sundered connection. I screwed up the contract and lobbed it into the fire, leaning forward to scatter the ashes with a poker, then picked up the torn ticket and decided, since it could convey nothing to anyone else, to keep it as a memento. I opened my wallet and was about to slide the ticket in when I noticed some writing on the back. I recognized the hand at once. It was Max's.

26/8/31. Where is H.L.? I stared at the words for several seconds, wondering what they meant. Charnwood had been murdered in the early hours of Saturday the twenty-second of August. The twenty-sixth was therefore the following Wednesday. Max had apparently been in Bournemouth that day, looking for somebody whose initials were H.L. But I knew no such person. Who was he? The Pier Theatre hardly struck me as a likely venue for Sir Harry Lauder. And among our ill-assorted friends and acquaintances I could not think of a single H.L. Where and who or what H.L. had been and might still be I had no way of knowing.

Yet the answer had clearly mattered to Max. Otherwise why would he have kept the ticket enfolded in his copy of our contract? It was surely more than an aide memoir e. The place, the date and the initials all meant something. They were bound together in his mind. Or had been. Until the day of his death. I thought of the garbled accusations he had flung at me in the last few minutes of his life. "How much do you know, Guy? How much has she told you?" I was guilty of an obvious breach of faith, but stood condemned for something worse than seducing Diana. "Not that it matters," Max had roared. "Ignorance is no excuse." But ignorance of what? Not the Concentric Alliance. He had learned nothing of that, I felt certain. Nor the whereabouts of Charnwood's money. He could have had no more inkling than me about its hiding-place.

Something else, then. Something defined by the answer to the question: Where is H.L.? Even as I dropped my wallet back into my pocket, with the ticket secreted inside, I knew I would have to find out. At all events, J would have to try. This loose end could not be left to dangle in my thoughts. Before I saw Diana again, I would have to trace it to its beginning. Or fail in the attempt. Either way, the attempt would have to be made.

"What do you mean?" demanded Maggie, when I greeted her at the Letchworth Hall Hotel with a glass of ginger-beer and a lame apology for being unable to lunch with her. "You said you were looking forward to it."

"So I was. But .. . something's cropped up. I have to leave, I'm afraid. Straightaway." I shrugged my shoulders and grinned sheepishly. "I'll pay for your meal."

She sighed. That's not the point."

"No. I know. I'm sorry. But there it is. I must go." I pecked her cheek and headed for the exit, only to be halted by her parting enquiry.

"How was Felix?"

"Not good. In fact.. . Not well at all."

She glared at me suspiciously. "Did you upset him?"

"No. Of course not. But' What was the use of trying to explain? My father would blame Felix's deterioration on me whatever I said. And in her present exasperated mood so would my sister. "I have to go, Maggie. Sorry."

Bournemouth Promenade five hours later extended a chill and mocking welcome. A steely rain was falling, a ghostly surf sighing on the dark deserted beach. All the worst features of an English seaside resort out of season were distilled in the bleak November night. And the pier was closed, its gates locked, its theatre absorbed within the black outline of buildings clustered at its end. Stooping in the relative shelter of a coin-in-the-slot telescope to light a cigarette, I wondered why I had been so stupid as to come to this God-forsaken spot, where the prospects of learning anything valuable were infinitessimal. I was wasting my time and energy on a fool's errand.