Closed Circle

by Robert Goddard

  ‘“A matter of desperate urgency, Mr Duggan?” he said. That was the phrase I’d used to get past the butler. “What can it be?”

  ‘I didn’t know what to say. If I was right, he wouldn’t admit it. If I was wrong, he’d think I was mad. All I’d succeeded in doing was putting my head in a noose. I babbled about being a journalist who was investigating the possibility that international arms dealers might be responsible for the Sarajevo assassination. I asked him, as something of an expert, what his view of the possibility was. He said they’d have had neither means nor motive. He suggested I was over-wrought. And I might have believed him. But for the look in his eyes. He was watching me, calmly and curiously. He was almost amused by me. But there was nothing to laugh at. Unless …’

  ‘Unless you were right and he knew you couldn’t prove it?’

  ‘Yes. That’s what I thought afterwards. He should have refused to see me. Or had me thrown out. Instead, he just toyed with me. Dangled me on a line for a few minutes. Then threw me back in the water. I left wishing I’d never gone there.’

  ‘What did you do next?’

  ‘Played my last card. I wasn’t going to achieve anything on my own. That was obvious. And The Topical wasn’t going to help me. So, I decided to try the Foreign Office.’

  ‘Lord Grey, you mean?’

  ‘Sir Edward Grey, as he was then. Foreign Secretary since Adam was a lad. A man of flexible mind but fixed habits. And those habits were well known in Fleet Street. The week-end wouldn’t find him pacing his office in Whitehall. Oh no. He’d be at his cottage beside the Itchen in Hampshire, fishing for trout and savouring the bird-song. More to the point, he’d be on his own. I’d have a chance to put my case to him without being interrupted. And if I could convince him …

  ‘The journey seemed to take for ever. Three slow trains across the Surrey and Hampshire countryside on a sweltering hot Saturday afternoon, with long waits in between at Guildford and Farnham. I finally reached Itchen Abbas at about half past four. The ticket collector at the station directed me to Grey’s cottage, buried in clematis and honeysuckle down by the water-meadows, at the end of a long tree-lined lane. It really was like a picture post-card. I found him in the garden, dozing in a camp-chair as if he hadn’t a care in the world. When I told him I was a journalist, he looked worried, but I assured him I wasn’t there for an exclusive interview. I reckon my manner must have made that obvious. He asked me inside, made some tea and listened to everything I had to say. What he made of it I couldn’t tell. He had the perfect diplomat’s demeanour – patient but impenetrable.

  ‘“You realize what this means?” I asked.

  ‘“I appreciate its potential significance, Mr Duggan,” he replied. “But you have nothing to worry about. I saw the German Ambassador, Prince Lichnowsky, before leaving London this morning and asked him to suggest to his government that Britain and Germany join in seeking an extension to the time-limit on Austria-Hungary’s ultimatum so that suitable arrangements for international mediation of the dispute can be made.”

  ‘“They’ll never agree.”

  ‘“Why should they not? It is a very reasonable proposal.”

  ‘“Because the Concentric Alliance has agents everywhere. They’ll make sure it comes to nothing.”

  ‘“Oh dear me, Mr Duggan. You really must not be so suspicious. Leave this to those trained in handling such matters. They will not let you down.”

  ‘I suppose I must have seemed deranged. At the very least, deluded. An organization he’d never heard of, with fingers in every pie. Well, it’s the stuff of paranoia, isn’t it? But he was kind and courteous to a fault. He suggested I stay at the village inn overnight and call on him again in the morning. He expected to have good news for me by then. He saw me off with a smile and a wave of his hat.

  ‘I did as he’d suggested. There was damn all else I could do. My best chance seemed to lie in staying close to him. But even then it wasn’t much of a chance. I realized that more and more during the evening as I stared into my beer at the Plough Inn, listening to the innocent country-folk gossiping and arguing and never once mentioning Sarajevo or the ultimatum Serbia had probably already rejected.

  ‘Early next morning, I went back to the cottage. Sir Edward looked different. More sombre. More pessimistic. “It seems my proposal was not accepted, Mr Duggan,” he said. “Nor was Serbia’s response to the ultimatum. Austria-Hungary has severed diplomatic relations and is believed to be mobilizing. But never fear. I have just been speaking to my permanent under-secretary on the telephone. He will be circulating a proposal to all the European powers for an ambassadors’ conference in London to address the problem.”

  ‘“Another proposal?” I said, unable to conceal my bitterness.

  ‘“It is the best we can do,” he replied. “I shall be returning to London this afternoon in order to devote all my efforts to forging an agreement.”

  ‘“And the Concentric Alliance?”

  ‘“Is not a concept I can afford to dwell upon. I am sorry, Mr Duggan, but there it is.”

  ‘I left in a daze and caught the earliest train back to London. Sir Edward wasn’t on it. He was sticking to a more leisurely pace. One I couldn’t see leading us out of the web Charnwood had woven. I went straight from Waterloo to Shoe Lane. It seemed the best way of finding out the latest developments. But nobody at The Topical knew much – beyond what Sir Edward had already told me. There was one thing, though. Somebody had telephoned several times, trying to speak to me. They hadn’t left their name or any kind of message. Just a number. On the Mansion House exchange. That meant the City, which should have been dead as a dodo on a Sunday afternoon. But, when I rang, there was an answer. An anonymous male voice, speaking hardly above a murmur.

  ‘“You’ve been asking about Fabian Charnwood, I understand,” he said. “And not getting many answers. But I can give you some. At a price.” I asked who he was. “No names. No pack-drill. But I have a lot of … circular knowledge. Take my meaning?” I said I did and asked if we could meet. “The bandstand on Clapham Common. Eleven o’clock tonight. If you’re interested, be there.”

  ‘So, I went. And you can guess what happened, can’t you? A shadowy figure, hat pulled well down over his eyes, was waiting at the bandstand. He told me to follow him to a quiet spot. We took a path that led into some bushes. Suddenly, I was grabbed from behind and held by two men. A third man pulled my trousers down. A grinning boy appeared in front of me, stripping off a naval uniform. When he was naked, he crouched down on all fours. I was pushed on top of him. Then there were flashing torches, whistles, shouts. And the police had hold of me. But the boy ran off. They let him go. They had what they wanted.

  ‘By the time I was brought before the magistrates next morning, Grey’s proposal for an ambassadors’ conference had collapsed. Nobody on the bench was interested in my protestations of innocence. I was remanded in custody and bundled off to Wandsworth Prison. And I knew better than to try and make anybody listen to me there. My case was heard the following Tuesday: the fourth of August. By then, the dominoes had begun to fall. Germany and Austria-Hungary were at war with Russia and France. And that night Britain joined in. Anybody who spoke out then wasn’t just mad, but guilty of treason. Or, in my case, something even worse. And far more sordid.

  ‘They gave me five years, Mr Horton. And I didn’t get any time off for good behaviour. Probably because I didn’t behave particularly well. Or perhaps because somebody had a word in a Home Office ear. Either way, I suppose I got off lightly compared with all those poor buggers mown down in Flanders. Don’t you reckon?’

  ‘I suppose you did,’ I said, thinking of Felix and his vacant blinking face.

  ‘What do you say to a drink? There’s a pub in the village with some quiet corners. Not that being overheard matters now. You’ve just about had the lot.’

  The parlour-bar of the Red Lion, Alnmouth, was a warm smoke-filled haven where none of the other customers seemed even slightly inte
rested in the doleful pair we made. Duggan looked weary beyond reviving, even after two brisk rums. I began to regret prising so much from him, began to wish I had left old wounds to heal – for my sake as well as for his. There was such a thing as too much knowledge. I understood that now. All the levity and egotism of my life had drained from my mind, leaving it clearer but bleaker than ever before. It was as if I might never laugh again.

  ‘I came up here in the summer of 1919,’ said Duggan. ‘Straight after being released. Sir Edward had become Lord Grey and retired from politics to live out his remaining years at Fallodon. I wanted to ask him whether he believed I mightn’t have been right after all. He didn’t, of course. Or said he didn’t. But he did tell me what I’d suspected at the time: that he’d thought I was out of my mind when I burst in on him at Itchen Abbas. He’d encouraged me to stay at the Plough only so he could telephone Lord Northcliffe and ask him what he should do. Northcliffe had said I was harmless but obsessed. He’d advised Grey to ignore me. And so he had. But on one point he couldn’t deny I’d subsequently been vindicated. It had come out after the war that his mediation proposal hadn’t been passed on by the German Foreign Ministry to Vienna until after the expiry of the dead-line. Somebody somewhere had been determined to ensure it came to nothing. It didn’t convince Grey of the existence of the Concentric Alliance, of course. Nor did my imprisonment, which as a matter of fact he hadn’t heard about. Nevertheless, there was something in it all he wasn’t happy about. I think that’s why he offered to help find me a job. To make amends in some way for not taking me seriously.’

  ‘And you took him up on the offer?’

  ‘Certainly I did. It was about the only one I was likely to get. Fleet Street wasn’t going to roll out the red carpet to welcome me back. The Alnwick Advertiser was the best I could do. So, I buried myself here, in rural obscurity, and tried to forget. What was the point of remembering? The war had happened. Nothing could change that.’

  ‘What about Brosch?’

  ‘It took a lot of letters to the Austrian Embassy to find out what had happened to him. But I succeeded in the end. He’d done what he’d said he would. At the outbreak of war, he’d taken command of a field regiment on the Galician front. He was killed in action during the Battle of Rava Russka on the sixth of September, 1914. A mercifully early exit, I suppose, although I can’t help wondering whether he was hit by enemy fire or …’

  ‘A bullet in the back?’

  ‘Something like that. I never named him, even to Grey, but if they had known … they’d have killed him for certain.’

  ‘They didn’t kill you.’

  ‘Dead journalists are more difficult to explain away. If they knew I’d got to Grey, they might have thought my sudden quietus would make him think twice. A liaison with a sailor-boy on Clapham Common discredited the message as well as the messenger. Altogether more effective.’

  ‘And they’ve left you alone ever since?’

  ‘I’ve left them alone. I’ve kept my head down for twelve years. I’ve been no trouble to anyone.’

  ‘Until now. Why take the risk of contacting me?’

  ‘Because Charnwood’s death meant I didn’t have so much to fear. And because the circumstances of his death gave me a glimmer of hope that I might still be able to nail the bastards.’ He stared at me defiantly, as if the rum were at last bolstering his confidence. ‘Well, why not? Since the war, I’ve rumbled them. Why they did it. What they got out of it. Money, Mr Horton. You’ve seen how it flowed into the pockets of arms dealers, munitions manufacturers, military and naval suppliers … You’ve seen the war make millionaires as well as widows. Here. And all over Europe. They reaped the profit. Just as they meant to.’

  ‘It doesn’t prove they had a hand in Franz Ferdinand’s assassination.’

  ‘No. No more than it proves they killed Charnwood. But I’m certain they did.’

  ‘Why? Why should they turn on one of their own?’

  ‘Who knows? Because he knew too much? Because he was putting pressure on them? Maybe his financial problems had forced him to try and call in some old debts. Whatever the reason, I think he was killed by the organization he’d created, leaving your friend to take the blame. In fact, I’m sure of it.’ So was I now. No other explanation made sense. But if the Concentric Alliance did exist, it was too powerful for either of us to defeat. Perhaps Charnwood’s death demonstrated its ability to crush any individual, however clever, however important. If so, Max was simply an incidental victim who could never be avenged or exonerated. Just as the truth of what Charnwood had done could never be exposed. ‘Got what you wanted, Mr Horton? Had all your questions answered?’

  ‘Yes,’ I murmured.

  ‘Good. And what are you going to do now you know it all?’ Duggan’s stare hardened. His eyes focused on me more closely. I gazed back helplessly, unable to disguise my inadequacy – that was merely a mirror of his own. ‘As I thought,’ he said. ‘Just like me. Not a damn thing.’

  11

  IT WAS ALMOST dark when I dropped Duggan near his lodgings in Alnwick. After all the revelations that had spilled from his lips, I think we were both eager to part. Neither of us relished the strange intimacy the sharing of such a secret gave rise to. It was too late to draw back, of course. We could not unlearn what we knew. But we could at least be rid of each other.

  I left Duggan with the impression that I was starting back for London straightaway. But I required one last confirmation of what he had said before I accepted it as wholly true and accepted also my powerlessness to clear Max’s name. I required the clinching word of an Old Wykehamist. So I drove north, not south. Seven miles north, through drab and ever darkening countryside to the village of Christon Bank. According to Duggan, Lord Grey lived nearby. And so he did. The postmistress told me Fallodon Hall lay half a mile further on.

  There was hardly any light left when I arrived and none at all beneath the thickly planted trees surrounding the house. It was a solid unpretentious country gentleman’s residence, with so few signs of life that I feared its master might be absent. But not so. The maid who answered the door said Lord Grey was at home and, when I asked if an Old Wykehamist might pay his respects, the message soon came back that he was more than welcome.

  Sir Edward, Viscount Grey of Fallodon, politician, statesman, ornithologist and fly-fisherman of repute, was a lean gaunt man of about seventy, who greeted me with quavering courtesy beside a roaring fire. The maid had forewarned me of his virtual blindness, which I might not otherwise have guessed at, for he hid it well. There was only a single missed button on his cardigan to give the game away.

  ‘I have few passing visitors in this remote spot, Mr Horton,’ he said after ordering tea and showing me to an armchair. ‘It was good of you to think of calling. I still manage to get down to Winchester at least once a year. Do you re-visit the old place often?’

  ‘Not as often as I should like, sir. When I was last there, I took a look at War Cloister. A most tasteful memorial. I believe you laid the foundation stone.’ (Not in vain had I perused the copies of The Wykehamist so stubbornly sent to Max and me over the years.)

  ‘I did, yes.’

  ‘All too many of my contemporaries are listed there.’

  ‘Are they? My condolences, Horton. Yours was an unfortunate generation.’

  ‘Indeed we were. As has become apparent to me only recently.’

  ‘Recently? I don’t quite …’

  ‘Following the death in August this year of the financier, Fabian Charnwood.’

  ‘Charnwood, you say? I don’t think I …’

  ‘You remember, sir. I’m sure you do. You see, I’ve been speaking to George Duggan. And he’s been telling me the most extraordinary story. I gather you lent him a helping hand some years ago.’

  ‘I may have. But as to any yarn he’s been spinning you, well, I’m sure you know how imaginative journalists can be.’

  ‘Yes, sir. But I believe this particular yarn. And so, I ra
ther think, do you.’

  Grey frowned. ‘If Duggan has told you what it seems he has, I confess myself surprised. I had understood his lips to be sealed on the subject.’

  ‘Only while Charnwood lived.’

  ‘And your interest in this matter is …?’

  ‘Personal. The man charged with Charnwood’s murder – who’s also since died – was a friend of mine. A Wykehamist too, by the name of Max Wingate. We fought together. In the war. As you said, ours was an unfortunate generation.’ Grey winced, as if pained by guilty remembrance. I knew then, as he passed a hand across his face and thought perhaps of how much harder he should have striven in 1914 to stem the tide, that he would tell me as much as he could. No secrets would be allowed to stand between one Wykehamist and another.

  Tea had long since come and gone by the time I finished explaining what had brought me to Lord Grey’s door. He listened patiently, nodding sympathetically at intervals, with his eyes closed more often than they were open. He did not once interrupt, but sat forward in his chair, hunched in concentration. And then, before I could put to him the questions I had in mind, he answered them.

  ‘You will want to know if Duggan’s account of our meeting is accurate. Well, it is. I used the cottage at Itchen Abbas as a week-end retreat from the cares of Whitehall. It meant I could fish the Itchen, as I had at Winchester. And the reach by the cottage was … quite sublime. But it was not much of a retreat that week-end in July 1914. Not with Nicolson on the telephone from the office every five minutes. And then Duggan appearing in the garden. Perhaps I should have stayed in London. He would not have been able to pour out his allegations to me then. Which might have saved him from a prison sentence and me … well, a deal of heart-searching, shall we say? And I might have discovered that my mediation proposal had not been passed on to Vienna until after the expiry of their dead-line. Duggan was quite right in one sense. There was treachery everywhere. I had no idea how much. If I had understood the full extent of it, I would have … But what use are regrets now? I did my best. I was not to know others were doing their worst. Nevertheless, in the long cold watches of the night, I do sometimes wonder what would have happened … whether it might all have turned out differently … if I had listened to Duggan.