Standing just within earshot, Flemyng was more startled than anyone noticed. The atmosphere in the room had not changed – the heat was high, the conversation loud and rising. Trays of drinks were being ferried from corner to corner at increasing speed, but Abel alone spotted the change in him. Perhaps he recognized the shiver of excitement that passed through his brother: Flemyng himself gave no outward sign, except that he took himself into a corner to gather his thoughts before the conversation that was now inevitable. Standing behind a pillar near an old revolving globe and a table piled high with nineteenth-century travelogues, he made cheerful conversation with a civil servant whom he knew and a couple of journalists. He was playing for time.
To almost everyone around him, nothing seemed to have changed, although Flemyng had just been visited by the first piece of luck to come his way since the affair began. For him, it might be the turning point. He became more talkative, brightened a little more, seemed to become a bigger figure in the crowd. His eyes were dancing. With Abel following every move, he detached himself after a few minutes from the conversation and set a course for the opposite corner of the library. Rounding a pillar, he approached his target and they faced each other.
The figure standing with Mungo turned his head. He was jovial, sported a loosely knotted purple bow tie at his neck and, although he was quite tall, seemed spherical. Points of light danced on the high planes of his cheeks, and his bald dome made him look older than he was. It was surrounded by a fringe of rich white hair. He put out his hand and lowered his head. It gleamed.
‘Mr Flemyng – the third of the evening! Delighted to meet you. Archie Chester’s my name.’ Abel could see no sign that they had met before. He did not catch the words, but noted the warmth of his brother’s greeting.
‘You wrote me a note,’ said Chester, dropping his voice and moving out of the crowd in an easy fashion, with one hand placed lightly in the small of Flemyng’s back. Abel could hear nothing from where he stood. They slipped easily away from the others, and Chester came close to Will. He spoke quietly, and his warm brown eyes were hypnotic. ‘In quite a hurry, if I may say so, or that’s how it looked to me, and with an accompanying letter. Would you like to talk?’
‘Shall we step outside for a moment?’
‘Good idea.’ Chester gestured to the door and followed him out.
They stood at the top of the grand staircase leading up from the lobby, and moved along the corridor to be alone. A copy of a classical statue looked down, offering to strew grapes on them. ‘Before we speak,’ said Chester, ‘let me give you my card.’
Archie Chester
Consultant Psychiatrist
6 Mansfield Mews
London W1A 2XL
‘I should explain my presence. I’ve been recruited to the advisory board of the magazine, as perhaps you heard over there, because it’s an enthusiasm of mine. A Catholic cabal, of course.’ He beamed. ‘I’ve read your brother’s piece this week and like it very much. He’s fascinating about your family, you know. Where you spring from, how you came to be what you are.’ His eyes were widening as he spoke.
‘I suppose I should be grateful for that,’ said Flemyng. ‘Happy chance.’ He smiled. ‘I suspect we are very fortunate to have met like this. To be honest, it gets me out of the awkwardness of ringing you up.’
There was a moment of silence. Chester was waiting.
‘Should I explain things?’ said Flemyng.
‘If you are happy to speak here, by all means go ahead.’
He began. ‘I sent you a copy of a letter, with my own note attached, because I got the chance. In that sense it wasn’t a plan – I just took advantage of an opportunity that presented itself. I used the good offices of a friend in government service who is familiar with your consulting rooms. I hope this doesn’t sound too convoluted.’ Chester said that, on the contrary, he found it admirably clear.
‘My purpose was simple. I wanted an opinion on this letter, because I had come to the conclusion that it was important, and dangerous. I went to Mansfield Mews to meet my friend whom I knew to have visited you before, and asked him to be my messenger because I’m afraid I didn’t want to deliver it personally. I take it you understand my nervousness.’ He was still smiling.
‘Very well indeed,’ Chester said. ‘Carry on.’
‘I am sorry I haven’t been in touch since. I’ve been held up by other matters. Much is going on.’ Chester acknowledged the explanation with a wave of his hand. Flemyng said that he had also been in Mansfield Mews the day before the delivery of the letter, and was deliberately precise, underlining the point. ‘That was on Thursday, just after mid-day.’ He stopped, apparently to invite a response.
Chester’s expression was hard to read. He spoke without changing expression. ‘You know something of my history, then?’
Flemyng said he knew from friends in government that Chester was trusted as a man of medicine whose discretion was absolute and who had proved useful in many delicate cases, with those needing help of the most discreet kind. ‘I’m told you have done the state some service, if I may put it like that.’
Chester said, ‘That’s true, I suppose. It doesn’t mean I’m any good, of course, just useful.’ His smile broadened, and he added, ‘I’m interested in your reference to the day before you had the letter delivered – the Thursday. Why do you stress that? And what brought you to my front door, so to speak, in the first place.’
Flemyng said, ‘I had a rendezvous with my friend there on Thursday’ – he’d keep Sam’s name out of the conversation – ‘and when we arranged another meeting the next day at the same spot, I realized that I could have the letter delivered by him. So I made a copy for you.’
‘What you mean is you planned it that way,’ said Chester. ‘Let’s go back to Thursday. That seems to be just as important to you, and I’m intrigued. Why?’
Flemyng didn’t pause before he answered. He was in his stride. ‘I left the street – after the first meeting with my friend – when I realized there was probably someone in your office whom I didn’t want to meet. A government car was waiting outside.’
‘I see. That’s not an uncommon experience. You’d be surprised.’ He spoke to Flemyng now as if they were old acquaintances. ‘I realized from your note that you were disturbed. Fearful, I would say.’
Then he added, ‘And has that feeling lessened?’
‘Quite the reverse.’
‘In that case, please come if you feel it would help. I’m always available.’ Chester turned side-on so that his next words could be whispered. ‘I should say, although this is neither the time nor the place, that you did the right thing in seeking advice – and rather ingeniously, if I may say so. I have no doubt about that. The letter is disturbing, and very curious. Revealing, to me. We must talk properly, and soon.’
Flemyng’s gaze encouraged him to say more. ‘You wouldn’t have sent this to me in the way that you did, leaving me to speculate on its origin, unless you felt that it was important to the life of one of your friends or colleagues in government. May I assume that?’
‘Of course,’ said Flemyng. ‘And there’s the question of time. Urgency.’
‘Quite,’ said Chester. ‘I remember a phrase – was it the penultimate line of the letter? – “We may not have long”. That did alarm me a good deal.’
Flemyng was expectant now, but Chester drew back, reasserting a professional distance. ‘Now let me go and say farewell to your brother. I look forward to our next meeting. You have a most interesting family, by the way. The historical piece makes that clear. Quite an inheritance. You have my card. We’ll talk, and soon, I hope, because I do think it’s really quite important. If it helps, remember I can come to you.’
Flemyng stayed outside the party for a few minutes more and composed himself, although he was used to the lightning speed of such exchanges. He was alone at the top of the stairs, having said goodbye to a couple of departing friends who were taking the evening at a placid
pace, when the hall porter approached from below. ‘Mr Flemyng, sir, a message for you. Please ring Mr Jenner in his office as soon as you can. Thank you, sir.’
He went to say goodbye to his hosts and his brothers and gave Archie Chester a wave. The priests were still in the corner, reddened with refreshment and their eyes flickering across the crowd. They gave him separate little bows as he passed.
He took the stairs quickly and rang Paul’s secretary from the porter’s lodge and then Lucy, still at her desk. ‘Do me a favour, please. There’s an envelope in my desk drawer with “Private” written on it. It’s the letter. Could you bring it down and meet me in the courtyard in ten minutes? I’m on my way to Paul’s. Thanks.’
As he turned the corner at the Athenaeum, he could still hear from the first-floor windows the party enlivening the night air, and could have sworn he heard Mungo laugh.
*
Flemyng knew as he walked alone across Downing Street, with the letter in his inside pocket, that it fitted with everything else that he had been discussing in Paul’s office since the first strained meeting on Thursday. Some connections still eluded him, but he was confident that he would find them by the time the evening was over. Paul’s summons was unusually abrupt: Flemyng suspected a development that couldn’t wait.
Paul’s office was still a place of shadows. Two standard lamps cast pools of light in opposite corners and his green desk light was dimmed. As Flemyng arrived Paul rose and, for almost the first time since the affair began, took his hand. ‘Thank you, Will. I think we’re nearly there.’
There was no Gwilym.
Paul began with his own feeling of frustration. Manson’s death was a drug-induced accident, it was clear, but no one could establish his movements in London, his reason for visiting parliament and whether or not he was successful in contacting anyone in government. And if he was, what conversations he then had.
‘But I have something for you,’ said Flemyng, interrupting and patting his pocket.
The effect on Paul seemed disturbing rather than consoling, as if he had been hoping that the last awkwardness was passing away. He raised his eyebrows, but didn’t smile. The unspoken instruction to Flemyng was to wait.
Back at his desk, he opened a red file and took out a single sheet of paper. ‘Friend Osterley has done us a good turn. You’ll remember that he found a desk clerk who’d spoken to Manson as he left the hotel on Wednesday evening. Well, Osterley’s people checked the lines from the public phone boxes nearby. We have access to certain information about such lines, as you well know. The basics, no more. One was out of order, and Osterley established that no calls had been made from it for more than a week. The other, however, was clear as a bell, relatively speaking. Special Branch have identified all the numbers that were called from that phone on Wednesday evening. There weren’t many.’
Flemyng waited as Paul’s gaze settled on the sheet of paper in his hand, as if to make sure for a second or third time that he was not making a mistake.
‘We have checked the numbers. Two of them are of interest. Only two.’ Then, a statement that he tried to deliver with lightness: ‘Yours is not one of them.’
Flemyng smiled, and his rush of relief was obvious.
‘One is Sorley’s. Dialled first, and the connection lasted for just about four minutes. So, time to talk.’ Paul paused and allowed his eyes to meet Flemyng’s.
‘The other, to which the public phone box was connected for barely a minute, was Jonathan Ruskin’s. Very short.’
Flemyng sensed a flow of adrenalin, a sharpening of his senses. ‘Four minutes with Sorley? A proper conversation.’
‘Yes,’ said Paul. ‘I haven’t spoken to Harry yet, nor to Jonathan. He’s coming back from Oxford after his speech about now, I gather. But it’s obvious that we have to talk to them both. They’re the only people we know who may have spoken to Manson, apart from his embassy friend. We assume he didn’t try to ring you, and as yet there’s no suggestion connecting him directly to Forbes. We’ll speak to him, of course, but I propose to ask Harry and Jonathan to come here tomorrow morning. Tom Brieve we’ll talk to again, though he’s now in France. I’d like to sleep on it, and I’m sure you would.’
Flemyng put his hand in his inside pocket. Strengthened by the events of the past hour, he spoke confidently and without any hint of hesitation.
‘Paul, I have something that you need to see. I’ve been keeping it back, but events have made it clear that it’s part of this story in some way. I had once thought it separate, one element in a random collision of events. I should have known better from the start.
‘I’ve never believed in coincidence in politics. And this is so disturbing that I can’t separate it from our crisis. I’ve learned, I think, that this whole affair is driven by the heart.’ Paul puckered his brow.
‘Think of it as an exercise in fragility.’
As Flemyng placed the envelope on the desk, he reached for something else in the pocket of his blue suit. He pulled out a handkerchief, shook it, and from it tumbled the small piece of marble that he had picked up in the room where Joe Manson’s body was discovered for the first time.
‘And this is intriguing. I suggest you keep it in your desk. I’ll explain tomorrow.’
He gestured to the envelope. ‘Read what’s inside.’
Like Lucy, Paul bent over the page, pressing it flat on his desk, and read slowly with concentration, seeming to cover each paragraph twice. After he’d finished, he stared at the letter without saying a word.
‘Any thoughts?’ said Flemyng.
‘God Almighty,’ Paul said. He looked up, then down again. ‘I wonder which of them is more in need of help.’
‘I agree.’ Flemyng’s face was a picture of relief.
‘Who is this?’ said Paul. ‘I can’t work anything out from the style and there’s not a mark on the thing. You know, don’t you?’
‘Not for certain, but maybe. Forgive me, but I’ll wait, because I must.’
Paul sat back in his chair and sighed, covering his eyes with his hands. ‘This place should be run by psychiatrists, not civil servants. What am I supposed to think? People give up half their lives trying to get into public life, fighting elections till they drop, then spend the rest of their time enjoying the destruction they’ve visited on themselves. I’m not sure I can take this.’
Flemyng shook his head. ‘We have to. I got a hint from Lucy that you’re wondering why I’ve been preoccupied. Well, here’s your answer. Madness is such a hateful word, but it haunts me. Because in these corridors – balanced and rational though we believe ourselves to be – there’s madness on the loose. I knew it the moment I saw this letter, waiting to be signed and delivered. My guess is that it’s one of many, probably sent to the same person, and they take us into the dark.
‘Paul, we have to face the fact that he speaks here about being killed by this. Killed.’
‘I share your alarm,’ said Paul quickly.
‘You asked me to think. I’ve come to one conclusion – that this is at the heart of things. How and why I don’t know, but I’ve decided it must be. I’ll be honest and say that this is instinctive rather than rational on my part, but I’m going with it.’ Flemyng asked Paul to put the letter in his desk, and said they should turn to the Manson calls. Paul said the morning conversations would take place in his office, Sorley first, at ten, then Ruskin an hour later.
‘We must realize that we could be dealing with a number of different stories here. A misunderstanding, an old friendship, an innocent request, a dead end. You name it. And let’s not forget that you are still Friend Flemyng in the notebook, the man who knows something. But what does it mean?’
Flemyng laughed. ‘We’re used to that, aren’t we? What’s politics for, if it doesn’t teach you to look both ways at once?’
They were more sombre as they shook hands, and parted. Flemyng watched Paul turn back to his desk, his shoulders dropping as if weighed down by an unseen burden. H
is last words were, ‘Leave Forbes and Brieve to me.’ His burdens alone.
*
Abel’s next message to Maria was, for him, unusually long. He didn’t send it until after midnight on the evening of the Travellers’ party, when Flemyng was already in bed beside Francesca and Paul’s office was dark, and the dispatch of the coded request and his account of the day’s business, received by Maria with Fat Zak Annan squatting in his chair by her side, was the first act of the last day.
Wherry had been helpful. Communication was his trade, he said cheerily, and he stayed while Abel made his calls and composed his message securely without fear of disturbance. He took his time. Maria told him in a phone call that Barney Eustace had gone to New York the previous evening, as Abel had requested, and after she had spent a nervy few hours, had reported success. She would be waiting for Abel’s full account of the London developments, but it was his show and he had as much time as he needed.
So he laid it out in careful paragraphs that said enough but not too much – his confidence that the proper connections were now being made, his brother’s place at the centre of the affair, and his belief that in a few hours all the pieces would be in place because of his private visit that morning. Before sending his message, he made two short phone calls, speaking to an old friend to postpone a dinner he’d arranged for the next evening. He then placed a brief call to Poughkeepsie, New York. He saw no reason to alter his careful text as a consequence, and off it went to Maria by the secure means provided by Wherry, leaving Abel tired but ready for the exertions of the day ahead.
‘Nightcap?’ said Wherry, with a beaker of scotch at the ready.
‘I will,’ said Abel. They toasted the morrow, knowing that the reckoning had come at last.
Tuesday
23
Flemyng slept, and dreamed of home. He was fishing on a boat tossed wildly on the loch, then running on the drove road so fast that he seemed to twist in a spiral across the eastern landscape. By contrast, at the same moment, he was watching the orrery move so slowly that it seemed as if the earth was refusing to spin. A kaleidoscope of colours from the woods and the hills sparkled and flashed in his eyes until he imagined himself blinking in pain. The house was bending to the wind, and the burn turned into a rushing river, spume rising from the rocks and water spreading across the land. Papers had been cast on the surface – files, letters, telegrams and torn pages – all swept along in a torrent until they disappeared in a whirlpool that seemed to draw him down. His eyes opened with a start, and he found himself in a sweat. He had been trembling, and took a few moments to find calm.
The Madness of July Page 29
