And then he said, with perfect clarity: “Master, you think I’m Neil Smith, but I’m not—I’m Paul Zoshchenko. But if I’ve got to die I’m damn well going to die Neil Smith, not bloody Paul Zoshchenko. I don’t even like bloody Paul Zoschenko, even if I have to die for him.”
Now, having taught Smith I recognised his voice as soon as I heard his name—I had no doubt about that either, slurred though it was. So I naturally tried to dissuade him when he said that he was coming to see me that very night, for he was clearly in no position to be abroad. But he took not the slightest notice of me.
Then the pips went—he had put additional coins in twice before—and he said: “No more money, Master,no more time. If I don’t get wet on the way I’ll be with you for breakfast—“
“Wet!” whispered Butler. “God Almighty!” “Finish the letter,” Audley commanded.
“—but if I don’t make it, Master, pay the cock to Aesculapius for me.”
So there you have it, my dear Freisler: if this call was from Smith, then Smith was not what he seemed. And his references to death and wetness clearly suggest suicide, rather than accident.
As to paying the cock, I do not believe he intended me simply to deliver these facts to the coroner. Therefore I am taking the liberty once more of passing on this information to you to act on (as I know you will) in the interests of those to whom we owe our obligation.
“God Almighty!” repeated Butler. “Wet! Do you think that’s really what he said?”
Audley shrugged. “We’ve no reason to doubt it. Old Sir Geoffrey was pretty well oiled himself that night—that’s what he means by all that detail about his guests—they do themselves well at King’s and Sir Geoffrey enjoys his port and brandy. But there’s nothing wrong with his memory. He just didn’t know what he was remembering. But then you wouldn’t expect him to know KGB slang.”
Butler nodded. That was the whole thing in a nutshell. The Master of King’s College, Oxford, would know Ancient Greek and how the Court of the Star Chamber worked—but he wouldn’t know that the Russian slang for Spetsburo Thirteen was Mokryye Dela—“The department of wet affairs”. Only “wet” in their context meant “blood-sodden”, and to get wet was the feared, inevitable fate of traitors pursued by the special bureau.
The irony, if that had been Zoshchenko/Smith’s fate, was that he had got wet literally as well as metaphorically, and the Master had added two and two to get five.
“What was all that about paying a cock?” said Butler.
“Ah—that was another bit from the Phaeda, the last words of Socrates as he was being executed. You see, Aesculapius was the god of healing, and people who were sick used to sacrifice a cock to him before they went to sleep in the hope of waking up in good health again—or sometimes simply as a thank-offering for having recovered. As Socrates was dying he asked his friend Crito to make such an offering.”
“As he was dying? Wasn’t that a bit late?”
Audley smiled sadly, as though Socrates had been a friend of his too. “It was a sort of a joke—a typical Socratic joke. It’s rather complicated, but he thought the soul mattered more than the body, so maybe he meant that by killing his body they were curing his soul.”
Butler frowned. “Hmm! And that means maybe Zoshchenko rode into the lake deliberately after all!”
Audley pursed his lips thoughtfully, then shook his head.
“You’ll have to sort that one out. But I wouldn’t get in the habit of calling him Zoshchenko. As far as we’re concerned he lived Smith and he died Smith. That’s one wish of his we can grant.”
He paused, rubbing his chin. “We want to know how he died, Butler. But even more we want to find out what brought him to the boil.”
“And what he was doing here in the first place,” said Butler harshly. He held out the photocopied letter. And come to that, he thought, it would be interesting to know just what Audley had been doing too these last few months. But he’d have to fish for that.
“Let me get things straight,” he began innocently. “Hobson first spoke to Freisler some time ago. And did Freisler get in touch with you then?”
“Yes, as a matter of fact he did,” Audley replied a shade guardedly, as though he wasn’t quite sure that Butler had the right to ask the question, never mind be granted an answer.
“So what was this nightmare of his? Reds in the University?”
Audley blinked unhappily at him. “Not so much that, no.”
“What then?” Pinning Audley down gave Butler a perverse but undeniable pleasure.
“He rather thinks they’re framing his lads.”
Butler allowed his jaw to drop. “You’re joking!”
Audley regarded him malevolently.
“You’re not trying to tell me that the KGB has come down to organising student protest?” Butler gave a scornful half-laugh.
“I’m not trying to tell you anything, Colonel. I’m telling you what the Master of King’s thinks. Which is something you will have to check for yourself in due course, so I shouldn’t laugh too much. He may not be quite the man he once was, but he’s still a crafty old bastard, I can tell you.”
He eyed Butler coldly. “And just in case you feel disposed to forget that, Butler, you may care to remember instead when you meet him that he commanded the column that drove Panzer Lehr’s Tigers out of Tilly-le-Bocage in Normandy on D plus six.”
Butler kicked himself for letting Audley ambush him just as he seemed to be on top. He should have known that the man would defend the academics; that deep down inside he identified with them, especially with the Hobson-types who had proved themselves in the jungle beyond their ivory towers.
“He pretends to be a simple old man, with an old man’s fancies,” Audley went on. “But he isn’t simple.”
“Yet he has nightmares.”
Audley puffed his cheeks. “The trouble with the Master is that he’s always been a violent anti-Communist, so much so that he was tarred with the appeasement brush as a young don back in ‘38. Last summer wasn’t the first time he’d seemed to cry ‘Wolf! Wolf!’. He’s been spotting subversive influences for years.”
“Then what was different about last summer?”
“Ah, well, we had—something else to go on at the time, so it seemed. But I’d rather not go into that just now.” Audley smiled apologetically. “The fact was, they’d been having a fair bit of trouble at the universities as well, and the Master’s not without influence. It all added up.”
“To what?”
Audley laughed. “Why, to my going back to university to see if there really were any wolf-prints round the fold.”
“And were there ?”
The laugh faded quickly. “You decide that for yourself in due course, Butler.”
Butler stared at the big man speculatively. There were quite a number of things he hadn’t passed on. Or maybe couldn’t pass them on because he didn’t know them. But asking wouldn’t make him change his mind. In any case, however fanciful Sir Geoffrey Hobson’s nightmares might be, Eden Hall had been no fancy.
“Very well. But I can’t see how I can achieve anything that you can’t do better. You’re already accepted in the academic world.”
“That’s just it: I am accepted. And believe me that’s worth a great deal. My position is just too valuable to compromise just yet.”
He bobbed up and down as though agreeing unexpectedly with himself. “Didn’t Fred and Stocker warn you that we have to go very carefully?”
“They did—yes,” growled Butler. “Stocker mentioned Dutschke. And there seems to be a petition of some sort floating around.”
“Ha! You can say that again!” murmured Audley. “I’ve signed it myself. And I’m a member of the Cumbrian branch of the Council for Academic Freedom and Democracy too— a perfectly worthy institution. But unfortunately, there are a hell of a lot of clever friends of mine who can’t distinguish between wolves and sheepdogs when they set about protecting their flocks—and there are som
e who think there isn’t any difference anyway. They shoot on sight, and some of ‘em are pretty good marksmen, I warn you, Butler.”
He gazed at Butler quizzically. “Did Stocker ask you what you thought about the younger generation ?”
“Yes.”
Audley sniffed. “Load of nonsense! He talks about the younger generation as though it was a political party with lifelong membership. And I think he’s frightened of it.”
“Whereas you aren’t?” murmured Butler. There might be something in what Audley said, but it went against the grain to agree with him when he was laying down the law like this.
“They’re too inexperienced to be dangerous at the moment. And by the time they’ve picked up the know-how, then life has moved them on, poor devils. As a rule they’re no match for the terrible old men on the other side.”
“You’re sympathetic to them, then?”
“Sympathetic? My dear Butler—the girls are delicious, with their little tight bottoms, and the boys are splendid when they’re arrogant—and when they’ve washed their hair. But when they forget they’re individuals and try to be the Youth of Today I find them extraordinarily tedious and self-defeating.”
“I was under the impression that they were giving the university authorities a run for their money.”
“Oh—quite often they do. That is, when the authorities make mistakes. And it’s just like our business, my dear fellow: only the mistakes get the headlines. That’s part of the reason why Stocker and Fred are sweating—what happens in the universities is news. The other part is that there’s still a lot of influence in the universities as well as a lot of brains. And they know how to use it too. We’re an example of that.”
“We are?”
“My dear Butler, we’re here because the Master of King’s knows which string to pull. Take my advice and forget about the younger generation. Think about the older one instead: think about the Master of King’s.”
He gave a little admiring grunt. “The Hobsons have been a power in Oxford for a century—you can see them planted in rows in St Cross churchyard. It’ll be like a family reunion when the last trump sounds there. And our Sir Geoffrey’s the second Hobson to be Master of King’s. They say the first one had a niece who was Beerbohm’s model for Zuleika. They also say old Hobson was the model for the Warden of Judas. There’s also a story that Old Hob once made a guest at High Table take the college snuff, and when the poor chap fell dead of apoplexy (King’s snuff being fearful stuff) all the old villain said was ‘At least he took snuff once before he died!’.”
Audley chuckled, savouring the anecdote, and then checked himself as he caught Butler’s disapproving look. “Yes … well, Young Hob, as they call the present Master—he’s nearly 70, actually—he’s a man who likes to work indirectly. That’s why he approached me through Theodore Freisler.”
“He intended to get through to you?”
“No shadow of doubt about it. To me through Theodore and then to Sir Frederick through me. I tell you, he prefers the indirect approach.”
And also the approach that protected him best from any awkward questions if things went wrong, thought Butler. Except that that meant the Master was a worried man as well as a careful one, a man who truly believed his own warnings of doom. And as Stocker and Sir Frederick were disposed to take him seriously it might be that this business could suddenly turn into a very hot potato indeed.
The conclusions presented themselves to Butler one after another in quick succession, last of all the most daunting one: hot potatoes were objects to pass on as smartly as possible.
“Why hasn’t the Department handed over all this to the Special Branch?”
“The Special Branch is not involved,” Audley snapped. “And we damn well want it to stay that way—uninvolved.”
His prickliness took Butler aback. If there was one thing the Department prided itself on, it was those hard-won cooperative relations with the Branch.
But the reaction wasn’t lost on Audley. “I know it’s not how we usually go about things. But the Branch has its sticky fingers in student politics, and we don’t want any part of that. The young blighters can sit-in or sit down as much as they like. They can lie down for all we care, if that’s what turns them on. Provided it’s all their own idea, not something somebody else wants them to do to further some other idea.”
“Somebody being the Russians.”
“Russians, Martians—it doesn’t matter who. But in this case the Russians, yes.”
Butler scowled. “What the hell do they hope to get out of it?”
Audley maintained a poker face. “Perhaps the Master of King’s will be able to tell you. But I can tell you what we stand to lose.”
“What?”
“Just suppose the Press got hold of Comrade Zoshchenko. It’s bad enough the way the public feels about the students as it is. But what price the Council for Academic Freedom if someone came up with a genuine subversion story? Christ, man—it’d set higher education back years. And then we’d have a real student problem on our hands.”
Butler nodded slowly. There might or might not be a plot of some sort, though he found it hard to believe even now, after Eden Hall. But there was the makings of a spectacular scandal, that was certain. And from such a scandal one might expect a fierce anti-student backlash.
If that was the aim it was clever, but not new. Indeed, it was no more than another version of the technique being used at the very moment by the IRA gunmen in Northern Ireland: Make your enemy repressive. And if he isn’t so by nature, make him so by provocation.
“Then why haven’t they blown the gaff on Zoshchenko already?” he asked suddenly, as the thought struck him.
Audley shook his head. “That’s what really scares me, Butler. Because it means that scandal isn’t their objective, it’s just something extra we’ve got to worry about. I’ve a feeling that they must be playing for much higher stakes than that. And I can tell you—I don’t like the feeling one little bit.”
VII
IT WAS A very small gap through which Neil Smith had broken into Pett’s Pond, and thereby from Earth to Heaven— or to wherever would give houseroom to Paul Zoshchenko.
Indeed, it had hardly been a gap at all, more the sort of dog-eared hole small boys made at their natural break-in point where the hedge and the council’s road safety fence met. Even now, when it had been enlarged and trampled, it was insignificant: a very small gap.
Butler retraced his steps carefully along the soggy bank, ducking under the spindly alder branches, and heaved himself back to the roadside. As he steadied himself on the splintered end of the fence he felt the post move under his hand. Either it had been already loose, or maybe Smith had given it a passing clout on his way to the pond: it was impossible to say, because every mark of his passage had been overprinted with other people’s slide and slither.
But he had expected no less, and it had not been for any tangible clues that he had broken his journey at Pett’s Pool. If there was anything to be had here it lay in the trained memories of Charon’s assistants, the local constable and the police surgeon.
The first of these stood waiting for him beside the Rover, well-built, fresh-faced, stamping his boots on the gravel like a young carthorse impatient at having to stand still when the day’s work still lay ahead of him.
“Not much to see there,” Butler said gruffly, brushing down his overcoat ineffectually.
“Too much, sir. Half the village was there before me!”
No apologies, that was a good sign. When Smith’s body had been spotted by schoolchildren taking their short cut along the far margin of the pond the Constable had been measuring up an early morning collision two or three miles away. Now he was making no bones about it, trusting Butler to know that a man couldn’t be everywhere, and was therefore seldom at the right spot.
“They had him out and they tried to give him the kiss of life, sir. And they spotted his motor-cycle in the water—it’s not very deep an
ywhere and there was a big patch of oil on the surface—so they looked to see if there was anyone ridin’ pillion.”
Butler looked at the stagnant pond with distaste. One public-spirited soul had stripped off and groped among the weeds, while another, even braver, had set his mouth to those cold lips, an act as admirable as it had been useless.
With a shrug he turned his back on the pond and stared up and down the empty road. From this point on to the bend he had a clear view in both directions for two hundred yards or more. Ahead of him the road ran straight into the open countryside and to his left the first of the cottages of the village was tucked among the trees perhaps fifty yards beyond the further tip of the crescent-shaped stretch of water behind him.
“Nobody heard anything?”
“No, sir,” the Constable shook his head. “Old Mr Catchpole in the last house there—he’s half deaf anyway, so he has his television switched on full. He was watching Match of the Day until about 11 and then the midnight film until 12.55, so he wouldn’t have heard it.”
“That was when it happened?”
“Dr Fox said it might have been about then. If you want to have a word with him—“
“All in good time, constable.” Everything pointed to the young fellow’s efficiency—he had taken the trouble to talk to the occupant of the nearest house on the off-chance of evidence, even in an open-and-shut road accident. So perhaps an off-chance lay in him too—“What do you think happened?”
The constable looked at him doubtfully. Open-and-shut it might have seemed, but it wouldn’t seem like that to him now, with a mysterious Colonel Butler nosing about, armed with exalted Home Office credentials and authorisation from the Chief Constable himself. But an outsider nonetheless, and it would be dead against his training and inclination to hypothesise to such a person, colonel or not.
Butler assumed the interested expression of a seeker after wisdom. Evidently the marrow would have to be coaxed from this bone.
“Has there ever been an accident here before?”
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