Colonel Butler's Wolf (12 page)

“Hah—hmm ! That’s right!” he replied more loudly than he had intended, rising awkwardly, his knees tilting the low table in front of him. “Miss Epton, is it? I beg your pardon— I’m forgetting my manners.”

“Thank heavens—I thought for a moment I’d made a mistake—please don’t get up, Colonel Butler.”

But they won’t grow up like this, he thought sadly.

“Let me get you a drink, Miss Epton. And something to eat too.”

“That’s kind of you but golly—nothing to eat here. I’m much too much of a fattypuff to dare to eat stodge at lunch-time. But if I could maybe have a half of bitter—I shouldn’t have that really—but just a half.”

From the bar he watched her fumbling with the buttons of her shiny raincoat as she sat down, shaking her thick mop of light brown hair. She was truly a little too plump for the mini-skirt she was wearing, even allowing for the fact that it was a fashion he’d never quite learnt to accept. But then he’d never quite learnt to accept any such fashionable extremes, and at least it was more becoming on her than the Bulgarian peasant outfits he had observed in London. Indeed, on her the mini looked surprisingly innocent, no denying that.

And no denying that it was nevertheless a long way from any sort of mourning. Yet he fancied that even this apparent cheerfulness was less than her natural high spirits; there was a restraint to it, a shadow almost.

“Uncle Geoff said on the phone that I couldn’t mistake you—thanks awfully—but I thought I had, you know. You didn’t look as though you were expecting me.”

“I was—ah—thinking about something else I’m afraid, day-dreaming,” he began lamely, unable to bring himself to ask her to reveal what had been so unmistakable about him. The red hair, no doubt, and the prizefighter’s face!

She sipped her beer, watching him over the rim of the glass, and then set it down carefully on the table between them. “Uncle Geoff said you wanted to talk to me about Neil,” she said with childlike directness. “Is that right?”

“That’s quite right.”

“He said that I must answer all your questions, but I mustn’t ask any of mine—is that right too?”

“More or less—yes, Miss Epton.”

“It sounds a bit one-sided to me.” She looked at him with frank curiosity. “He made me promise I wouldn’t split on him—or on you. And he made you sound rather like the Lone Ranger.”

“The Lone Ranger?”

“Your mask is on The Side of Good.”

“My mask?”

“Well, he said if anyone asked about you I’m to say you’re an old friend of the family. I didn’t quite twig whose family. Mine I suppose—Neil didn’t have much in the way of relatives, apart from a dotty aunt in New Zealand.”

He looked at her, trying to see through the veil of flippancy. Apolitical, Sir Geoffrey had said—not intellectual, but not stupid either. A nice, ordinary girl, even a little old-fashioned by modern standards—it would be a mercy if that were true!

“I think we’d best leave it vague, Miss Epton. Say just a friend, never mind whose.”

“But are you a friend?” She paused. “Except that’s a question, isn’t it. It is asking rather a lot, you know—answers but no questions.”

It was asking rather a lot, he could see that. And there was nothing so corrosive of discretion as unsatisfied curiosity— that applied to men and women equally. But how much to tell, and how much to leave untold?

“Suppose you wait and hear the questions. Then you can decide whether or not you can answer them.” He tried to speak gently, but as always it came out merely gruffly. It would have to be the usual mixture of truth and lies, after all. “But I tell you this, Miss Epton: I think Neil would have counted me a friend—and I promise you he would have answered if he’d been here now.”

“If he’d been here now … “ She echoed him miserably, the shadow across her face suddenly pronounced. “If only he could be here! I still can’t quite believe that he’s never going to be here again, that he’s never going to come in through the door—“ She looked past him into nowhere, her flippancy altogether gone. “Did you ever meet him?”

Butler shook his head sympathetically. This way might be the wrong one, but it might get some of the answers without questions.

“He was a super person, more fun to be with than anyone. And everyone liked him because there was no pretence about him—“ She looked at him again.

Butler felt his face turn to stone. This child would have married the fellow—it was true.

And where would it have ended then? In the maximum security wing? Or in a dacha outside Moscow? And for sure across the pages of the
News of the World
and with hurt and bitterness. He longed suddenly to be able to tell her that of all the inevitable unhappy endings this was the happiest she could have hoped for.

“I’m sorry, Colonel—I’m not usually emotional like this.” She looked at him sadly, misinterpreting his expression. “I can see that you are a friend after all now.”

“
Polly!
”

A huge, mop-headed fair-haired young man in a patched and shabby sports jacket loomed at his shoulder.

“Come on, Polly—have a beer and to hell with the calories!” exclaimed the young man cheerfully.

“Hullo, Dan,” she replied with equal cheerfulness that was ruined by a single mascara-stained tear which rolled down her cheek. “Colonel Butler—meet the white hope of the black Rhodesians, Dan McLachlan.”

“Joke over,” the young man groaned. “Glad to meet you, sir—so, long as you don’t believe anything Polly says.” He glanced down at Butler’s glass. “I don’t rise to short drinks, but if you’d like a beer—?”

“Stingy,” said Polly brightly. “I’ll have that beer, Dan. But you must excuse me while I put my face back on. I’ll only be a second.”

The fair-haired man watched her disappear into the Ladies before turning back to Butler.

“I wondered when it was going to hit her.”

Butler looked up at him. “It?”

“Poor old Boozy—Neil Smith running out of road.” McLachlan shook his head. “She’s been bottling it up.”

Butler grunted neutrally.

“She should have got it off her chest.” McLachlan nodded wisely. “Stiff upper lip doesn’t become girls, anyway—did you know old Boozy?”

“Hah—hmm!” Butler cleared his throat. “Friend of yours?”

“Boozy? Hell, Boozy was a great guy, even if he was a bit of a lefty. He wasn’t my year, actually—haven’t seen him since he was made a
baas
in Michaelmas Term. But I was at prep school with him years ago.”

At school.

“Indeed?” Butler swallowed. “Where would that have been?”

“Little place down in Kent.”

“Eden Hall?”

“That’s it—do you know it?”

Grunt. “And you were a friend of his there?”

“That would be stretching it a bit. Boozy was always a year ahead of me—I was a
domkoppe
in the Fifth Form when he was a prefect in the Sixth. I didn’t even recognise him when we met again at Dick’s a couple of years ago. Not until he told me who he was—then I knew him of course. Only one Boozy—more’s the pity!”

Of course—only one Boozy! And what a gift to be remembered by young McLachlan of the Fifth.

McLachlan looked at him seriously. “But if you’re a friend of Polly’s, sir, it’ud be a good thing if you could keep an eye on her—at least until the day after tomorrow. She’s taken this thing harder than she’s let on, and she drives like a maniac at the best of times.”

“What happens the day after tomorrow?”

“Oh, I can handle it after that. We’re both going up to her old man’s place in the north. And she’ll be OK once she gets home.”

Steady the East Lanes, Butler told himself. “You mean you’re both going to Castleshields House?”

“Surely. Do you know that too ?”

“I rather think I’m supposed to be talking to you there, young man. If you’re interested in Byzantine military organisation, that is.”

“Well—“ McLachlan grinned disarmingly “—I’m a PPE man myself, with the emphasis on the middle P. But say, have you come down to collect Polly? Is that it?”

“Not exactly,” replied Butler cautiously. “But tell me, Mr McLachlan—“

“Dan—“

“Hmm—Dan, then—what exactly takes you to Castleshields House? I thought it was attached to the University of Cumbria.”

“So it is, sir. But Dick’s is by way of being a shareholder in it. Young Hob and the high-powered Dr Gracey cooked it up between them, didn’t you know?”

Butler made a great play of consuming the last of his whiskey. This was where Audley’s cover plan began to look decidedly thin, when his institutional knowledge was shown to be deficient in such small matters as this. “Dick’s” was evidently the King’s College, and “Young Hob” was Sir Geoffrey, as distinguished from his long-dead grandfather and predecessor in the Master’s chair at the college. But the relationship of the college with Castleshields House was still beyond him.

Yet it would be a pity, a great pity, not to take advantage of Daniel McLachlan’s unexpected appearance. Apart from what the young man might know about Neil Smith, his acquaintanceship would give substance to Butler’s own false identity at Castleshields House in much the same way as the enemy had obviously intended it to do for Smith at the College.

Indeed, he might even be more useful than that if the scornful reference to Smith’s left-wing politics meant anything. But he needed to know more about the lad before that could be considered seriously.

“Hell!” exclaimed McLachlan. “Here’s Polly and I haven’t got the ruddy drinks.”

Butler followed his glance gratefully. She was smiling again now, but her face had a scrubbed, make-up free look.

“Made a fool of myself, haven’t I!” she apologised breathlessly. “I’ve had a good weep in the loo, too—and I promise not to do that again.” She caught sight of McLachlan attempting to catch the barmaid’s eye. “Hey, Dan—don’t bother about those drinks. It’s time I was going home for lunch, and if I have another beer I’ll have had my calorie quota, darn it.”

McLachlan detached himself from the bar. “I’ll stand you lunch, Polly. Just this once.”

“Or you can lunch with me, Miss Epton,” said Butler quickly. “We’ve—hmm—still quite a lot to discuss, remember.”

“You can’t afford it, Dan. And thanks, Colonel Butler, but I’d rather eat at home—I’ve got the rest of the afternoon off.”

“In fact you can both come back with me and eat pounds of rabbit food. And I’ll make you both omelettes—it’ll do you good.”

McLachlan looked uncertainly at Butler. Then he shrugged. “I suppose we could do worse,” he said ungallantly.

Butler drummed impatiently on the top of the coin box and watched McLachlan through the grimy glass of the phone box. It had been a stroke of luck to find an unvandalised telephone complete with directory, but then the switchboard at King’s had at first obstinately refused to concede that anything could be more important than the Master’s untroubled enjoyment of his lunch, and in the end had moved only after the direst threats Butler could summon from his imagination.

“Colonel Butler?”

The prim voice did not appear to have room in it for irritation.

“I’m sorry to have to disturb you again so soon, Sir Geoffrey.”

“Once more, not at all, Colonel. You are on duty and I don’t doubt it is necessary—salus populi suprema est lex— and I am becoming accustomed to disturbance, anyway. I trust Miss Epton kept her appointment?”

“She did. But we met another of your—ah—students. A fair-haired young fellow named McLachlan. Do you know him?”

“Yes, I do.” There was no hesitation in the reply. “Daniel McLachlan. A scholar of the college in his third year—he takes schools this summer. A mere formality in his case, though.”

“A formality?”

“Short of some unforeseen abberration, yes—he’s very bright indeed. One of the three best brains we have in college at this moment. The other two are chemists.”

The primness was momentarily accentuated, as though chemistry was some form of physical handicap.

“He was a friend of Neil Smith’s.”

“Indeed?”

“You didn’t know?”

“They weren’t in the same year.” The Master shrugged at him down the line. “Smith was a gregarious fellow, of course. But their politics were poles apart.”

“McLachlan’s a Tory, you mean? I had the impression he was a Rhodesian liberal.”

“He doesn’t love apartheid, that’s true. But he’s a politically cautious young man. I think that is because he has been provisionally accepted by the Civil Service, and he’s very ambitious. Very ambitious. In fact he should go far, unless … “ Sir Geoffrey trailed off.

It was easy to see in which direction that “unless” pointed.

“Unless he found something in his pocket that he hadn’t put there himself?” Butler completed the sentence.

“Y—es. That’s about the size of it. A prime target, McLachlan might be. I had my doubts about letting him go to Castleshields this vacation.”

“What’s wrong with Castleshields?”

“Nothing I can put my finger on. Except that Smith was there, of course. But I’m uneasy about it. And young McLachlan doesn’t need any polishing, in any case.”

“But you’re letting him go.”

“He has no home in England, and no relatives over here. Castleshields is probably safer than London, in any case.”

“He doesn’t sound the sort of man to get involved in trouble.”

“He isn’t. He’s ambitious, as I’ve said—he has a remarkably pragmatic mind for one so young. He knows what he wants and he’s not inclined to make artificial difficulties for himself. But then in some ways he’s more experienced than the usual run of undergraduates—and I fancy he may not be so conservative when he reaches a position of power.”

“In what respect is he more experienced?”

“As you’ve discovered—he lived in Rhodesia for some years. Left shortly after UDI, with which he very decidedly doesn’t agree, so I gather. His father is still there and there’s no great love lost between them, which is to young McLachlan’s credit.”

“You know the father?”

“I was instrumental in having him sent down from the college just after the war—for invincible idleness, among other things. Fortunately the son doesn’t in the least take after the father. In fact I’d esteem it a favour if you could keep an eye on him, just in case. He’s very much worth protecting.”