by Peter Corris
'What was your subject, Professor?'
'Testing me? Classics, and if you don't believe me, take a look at the books.'
Bright leaned across from the bed and peered at the nearest bookshelves. Herodotus, Livy, Horace, Tacitus . . . old leather-bound editions and bright new paperbacks.
'Filled my life,' Devendish said, 'and just as well. I never married, no family to speak of and I'm not a sociable man. I didn't live in the twentieth century really, lived in the ancient world. The Greeks and Romans were my family, friends and lovers. Strike you as pathetic?'
Bright had read Homer in translation, the Odyssey or the Iliad, he couldn't remember which. He'd come across Herodotus in his geography studies and had heard of a couple of the other authors, but the world the professor referred to was as remote to him as Mars. Bright knew that he looked solid and slow but his mind was nimble and he often hit on the right thing to say. He did now. 'You taught, Professor. You passed your knowledge on to young people. That's not living in the past. That's almost living in the future.'
Devendish looked at his visitor with real interest for the first time. 'There's something in that. What did you say your name was?'
'Bright, Vic Bright. I'm . . .'
'And what's your subject?'
'I'm not an academic, Professor. I'm a journalist. I'm getting background on two students . . .'
'Yes, yes. I remember. How strangely people speak. Stress as a verb. Getting background . . . Modern poetry must be very interesting with all this flexibility in language. Is it?'
'I'm afraid I don't know, sir.'
'You're getting impatient.' The testiness was back in Devendish's voice and he was making nervous movements of his head. 'And I'm getting tired. Well, I was dean for a time before the war. I might know the chaps you want. Ask away.'
Bright cleared his throat. 'Basil and Richard Craft.'
'Craft did you say? Craft?'
'Yes.' Bright reached into his pocket and pulled out a copy of the sketch of Basil Craft. He passed it across to the old man who smoothed it out on the book still lying open in his lap. He was muttering and his breath was coming in short gasps. He gazed down at the drawing. 'Oh, God,' he moaned. 'Oh, God.'
'Professor Devendish, what's wrong?' Bright reached forward to touch the old man's shoulder but Devendish jerked away from his hand, pushed himself back in his chair, sat rigid.
Words spilled from Devendish's mouth and he tore the photostat as he clutched it. The words sounded incoherent, a babble, and Bright was about to push the button above the bed when he detected a pattern in the sound. The old man was speaking Latin and repeating a phrase over and over. Bright whipped the miniature tape-recorder from his pocket and switched it on. The soft whirr of the machine was inaudible; Devendish's firm clear voice repeated the phrase at least twice more before tears spilled from his eyes and fell onto the sketch. His narrow shoulders in the paisley dressing-gown shook violently and he began to sniffle, then weep openly. Bright prodded at the button and put the recorder away. He was tearing tissues from a box on the bedside table when the door opened.
Mabel Whitelaw took the tissues and mopped at the professor's streaming face. 'What happened?' she said.
'I've no idea. We were talking. He seemed a little nervy but otherwise oaky. I gave him the names of the people I was enquiring about, showed him that drawing. Then he broke down. He said things in Latin and began to cry. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to upset him.'
Mabel Whitelaw extricated the damp sheet of paper from Devendish's weak grasp and handed it to Vic. 'I think you'd better go, Mr Bright, and take this with you.'
6
'I'll swear he was frightened, Marty,' Bright said. 'Terrified, even.'
'Come on, Vic. He's an old, sick man. It might have had nothing to do with Craft or the drawing. The nurse said he was fragile, disturbed. Something could have just jumped into his mind.'
Bright shook his head. 'No, it was the sketch. D'you understand Latin?'
'No. Why?'
'I got some of what he was saying on tape. I'm sure I got what he was repeating. He said it maybe six or eight times. I got it twice. Listen.'
He put the tape-recorder on the table. They were in the Camden Park flat. Bright had cancelled the celebratory dinner and they'd eaten omelettes again. The sight of the refined old man, lonely and dependent but still brave and feisty until he'd seen the drawing, breaking down into a frail, mumbling wreck, had unnerved Bright and put him in no mood for celebration. Marsha had understood and waited while he drank several pre-omelette Scotches and washed the food down without tasting it.
He'd told her about the puzzling, off-centre results of his researches and she'd listened quietly, pouring wine and buttering bread. Bright's behaviour might have seemed erratic to anyone who didn't know him but not to Marsha. She saw that the story had gripped him and that he was already shaping and dramatising it. Producing the tape-recorder was the final touch. She listened to the voice with a professional ear. Old but strong, almost musical. Breaking down towards the end.
'It sounds like a quotation,' Marsha said. 'Is it poetry?'
'Don't know. He asked me about modern poetry. Said he thought it might be interesting. Is it?'
Marsha wound the tape back and prepared to play it again. 'Not since Larkin. I'm sure we can find someone to translate and identify it. This is great stuff, Vic.'
Se turned up the volume. Devendish's voice filled the small room. After the second playing, Bright's sombre mood infected Marsha. She ejected the tape and put it in an envelope which she labelled. 'You liked him, did you, love?'
'Sure.'
Marsha put the envelope in her briefcase and stood behind Bright's chair, unsure of whether or not to touch him. He reached back and she gripped his hand. 'There was something about his reaction . . . there's something about this Craft bloke that . . .'
'What?'
'Smells, stinks, reeks.'
'Isn't that a bit melodramatic? This isn't one of your spy stories.'
Bright had been in England when The Poppy Prank was published, partly to avoid unwelcome attention from the Australian Security Organisation. He'd been niggled by their British counterparts and remained wary of the breed. 'Yeah, have to watch that. How about Randolph, the giant boat-rowing Asian?'
'Probably not a relation.'
'I've got a feeling he is.'
Marsha laughed. 'I hope so. With your luck he will be. What's your next move?'
'To tell Andy McKinnon that Basil Craft MBE's not exactly hung-up on telling the truth.'
Andy McKinnon was six feet three with most of the length in his legs. As he strode along in the direction of Regent Street Bright almost had to jog to keep up with him. 'Slow down Andy,' he said, 'I'm not Kerry Saxby.'
'Who?'
'She's the world's champion walker. An Australian.'
'I always walk fast like this when I'm thinking, and you've given me a powerful lot to think about, laddie.'
'Me too. But it's interesting, isn't it?'
'Aye. Surely the whole thing's not an invention—the expeditions, the clinic and all?'
'No. Some parts of the story check out. He studied at Oxford, all right. And the brother looks to be kosher. The clinic should be checkable on. How're you doing on the travel arrangements?'
McKinnon shook his head. 'The Mongolian trip's the tricky one. You could get to Morocco in a couple of weeks and do the Sahara leg first. It's coming up to the right time of the year to do it they tell me, September.'
'Okay. Set it up. I'll concentrate on that. If it all falls apart there we might have to rethink the whole thing. But I'm sure there's still a story in it.'
'But what is the story? A great deception? One brother a scoundrel and the other . . . a what?'
'A hero maybe. A victim. Who knows? Basil Craft mentions his wife in the book, name of Pamela, but gives no details. I have to try to find out more about her and try to trace this Randolph character.'
'Aye. He co
uld be the key. What's the lovely and talented Marsha doing?'
'Looking for someone who speaks Latin. I'll put her onto learning Arabic. She'll probably pick it up in a week. Craft says he spent some time in Marrakech before and after the Sahara expedition. That should be our starting point.'
'I'll get the visas and line up transport and a crew,' McKinnon said. 'If the bloody thing dissolves into nothing I might be able to sell the footage for a TV commercial.'
'You're joking.'
'I don't joke about money, Vic. I'll talk to you in a week. Have some good news for me, eh?'
Bright spent the rest of the day looking for Randolph Craft. He drove to the address in Hendon Miss Cooper had given him, only to find that it was now occupied by a supermarket. Houses and blocks of flats over several acres had been demolished and there was no possibility of tracing a resident of twenty years before. He checked the London telephone directory and commercial directories without result. Enquiries to the Law Association revealed that Randolph Richard Craft had been admitted to the bar in 1971. There was, however, no indication that he had practised in Britain and no current address for him. Bright put down the telephone and consulted a scribbled list of names and numbers—law societies, international directories, legal periodicals with subscription lists. Legwork.
'Whatcha get?' Vic said as soon as Marsha had put down her bag and he'd kissed her.
'It's Horace,' Marsh said.
'What is?'
'What Professor Devendish was saying. It's from the satires of Horace. A guy at Channel 4 has a double first from Oxford in—'
'Greats,' Bright said.
'Right. You're learning. Anyway, here's the whole thing.' She took a Penguin paperback copy of the Satires from her bag and opened it. A verse was underlined:
Quinti progenies Arri, par nobile fratrum, nequitia et nugis pravorum et amore gemellum, luscinias solti impenso pradere coemptas, quorsum abeant? Sanin' creta, an carbone notandi?
A translation appeared on the opposite page:
The sons of Quintus Arrius, a notorious pair of brothers, twins in profligacy, trifling and base desires, used to breakfast on nightingales bought at an enormous price. In which group do they belong? In the white column as sane, or in the black as mad?
Marsha said, 'Apparently there's some dispute about "notorious". Some texts have it as "noble", but my guy says this is closest.'
Bright frowned. 'That's the bit Devendish was repeating—the par nobile fratrum line. It seems to be saying they're arseholes. Is that what it really means?'
'That's what my Latinist tells me. The professor was, what would you say? Having a go at the brothers.'
' " . . . breakfast on nightingales . . ." That'd be some kind of metaphor to the professor, wouldn't it?'
'Mmm. I don't know, Vic. You'll have to talk to him again or a scholar if you want to push it any further. Tell you what else I found out, Walking Across the World was withdrawn from circulation a day after its publication.'
'What? Why?'
Marsha sat down and pulled off her boots and socks. Her toenails were painted bright red; she wriggled her narrow, shapely feet. 'Get me a drink, love, and let's go out tonight. I couldn't look at another omelette.'
After sharing a couple of drinks and a shower, they went to an Italian restaurant and ate pasta. Marsha told Vic that she'd been interested to see how Craft's book was received by the reviewers. 'Didn't get any reviews,' she said. 'Bloody strange. Got a mate at the Guardian to look the book and the Crafts up in the cuts and he found nothing on the book. Presumably it was a limited edition, although there's nothing on your copy to say so. Anyway, a few review copies were usually sent out for limited-edition books, and you'd expect to find a copy in the BM. Not so. Curiouser and curiouser.'
Bright twirled spaghetti onto his fork. 'It is. What about the brothers themselves? Much on them?'
'Practically nothing. Little bits about the Sahara and American trips. Not much. A couple of reports on the disappearance in Australia. But surprisingly little, given what they accomplished. And it seems that Basil Craft wasn't an MBE. Know what I reckon?'
Bright sucked up a strand of spaghetti and wiped sauce from his mouth. 'Tell me.'
'It's obvious. Don't tell me you haven't thought of it. The Crafts were spies of some sort, not supposed to be famous at all. But little bits and pieces leaked out. Maybe Basil Craft wanted to be famous. So someone slammed the lid down.'
'Who's being melodramatic now? Who's this someone?'
'MI-whatever. We read the book as an adventure story. What if it's a record of operations . . . missions? When they went missing in Australia it was good riddance, and the spooks arranged a cover-up.'
'Why not go the whole hog and say the spooks bumped the Crafts off?'
Marsha shrugged. 'Why not?'
'I don't know,' Bright said. 'It occurred to me. I suppose I've resisted it. Andy hates spooks. He's had some nasty experiences with them, same as me. He won't like it.'
'Don't see why not. It's an added element.'
'A bloody trick one. What about the old prof? Where's he fit in?'
'Maybe he was in MI-thing as well. Maybe he had something to do with their deaths and the picture you showed him freaked him out.'
'I don't see him as a spy. I think something happened at Oxford in 1931, something nasty. But the spook idea covers some of the rest of the ground neatly. Would a Freedom of Information enquiry get us anywhere?'
'I doubt it. I'm trying to trace the publishers. See if they were bought out or taken over. Some records might survive that'll give us some clues on the book's suppression. Clever, eh?'
Bright drank some red wine. He loved the stuff even though more than two glasses gave him a headache. This was his second. 'Yup. Want to hear me being clever?'
'Not if you're going to be cleverer than me. But okay.'
'If the spooks had a hand in the suppression of the book and a cover-up we'll be hearing from them. You know how word gets around in the film business.'
'Vic, come on. It's thirty years since they disappeared.'
'Which is a long time to twenty-five-year-old film makers with blonde hair and great legs. It's not that long to bureaucrats.'
'So what do we do?'
'When I worked on security stories at home I'd make copies of things for the spooks to find, but have another file tucked away.'
'We've got a fair bit of stuff already. We'd better start copying. Did Andy tell you he's set up a production office?'
Bright looked at the rest of the wine in the bottle. 'Decision time. Do I drink the rest and have a brandy and forget about work for the night, or get stuck into copying and such?'
Marsha leaned back. 'Your decision.'
'Where's this office?'
'It's a hole in the wall in Hammersmith, but it's got phones and fax and a copier, couple of computers. I've got the key.' She fished a key from her purse and held it suspended over his wine glass.
Bright groaned. 'Let's go. We can have a drink after we finish work.'
'Puritans have more fun,' Marsha said. 'The guilt and delayed gratification. Terrific.'
They collected the research materials accumulated so far and drove to Hammersmith. The office was near the railway, one flight up in a building that was boxed in by other cream-brick nonentities. Marsha switched on the lights and the copying machine. Bright put a coffee pot on the gas ring. They made four copies of everything, including dubs of the tape of Professor Devendish's voice. Bright wandered across to the fax machine. 'What's this?' He held up several sheets of copied newsprint.
'Oh, I forgot. I asked the guy at the Guardian to fax us copies of the reports on the Craft expeditions. This must be them.'
'Lousy quality,' Bright grumbled. 'I think Andy's got us a cheapo fax here.' He scanned the sheets. 'Jesus Christ.'
'What?'
'Listen to this, "Dr Craft said that the Mongolians were a fine, pure race. A vigorous, untainted people with enormous genetic reserve
s".' Bright flipped over the sheets. 'This is what he said about the Arabs. Blah, blah, "The Arabs represent a vitally important part of the human gene pool. Arguably, the mainsprings of human achievement in science are to be found in the biochemistry of the Arab people".'
'There was none of that stuff in the book,' Marsha said. 'What does he say about the Indians?'
'Let's see. Adaptability, cultural experiment, theology. I suppose this is the guts of it: "The Indians are an Asiatic people who occupied two entire continents and spread out to populate the vast Pacific. Something in their genetic makeup predisposed them to geographical expansion and cultural adaptability greater than that of any other people on the planet." He's got that wrong, hasn't he? Don't they say the Polynesians came from South-East Asia or something?'
'You got me,' Marsha said. 'You're the boy from the Antipodes. But it's weird stuff, isn't it? What about the Europeans? He doesn't say anything about them.'
'He is one. Perhaps he thought he knew all about the magnificent European from personal experience.'
'What about blacks then?'
'Perhaps he didn't like them at all. I'm not getting any fonder of Dr Craft, I must say. Let's copy this stuff. We'll stash a file here and one at home and put the others somewhere safe. And then we'll go and have a drink.'
7
Forty-eight hours later when Bright returned home after a long day of library research he found the door to his flat standing half open. He experienced a familiar and unwelcome prickling of the hair on his head as he lowered his briefcase quietly to the floor and looked about for a weapon. A broom stood in a corner on the landing. He grabbed it and pushed the door open. He advanced down the short passage with the broomstick held like a quarterstaff, ready to swipe or jab. Twice in his reporting days in Sydney his flat had been turned over and documents taken. Once when investigating a medical malpractice stink, and again when working on The Poppy Prank.
He peered into the bathroom and kitchenette and checked the bedroom that doubled as his study. Nothing damaged but he saw signs of disturbance. The sitting room likewise; the bookcase had been discreetly searched and the books replaced almost, but not quite, as he had arranged them. He relaxed his grip on the broom, returned it to the landing and brought his briefcase into the flat before going down to his letterbox. The usual stuff—an American Express bill, an offer to clean his carpets, a magazine subscription renewal. There were scratches around the lock but he could have made them himself, fumbling with the small key in the dim recess.
