Closed Circle

by Robert Goddard

  ‘You will also want to know if I think there really was a Concentric Alliance. Well, I do not know. Obviously, I did not think so at the time. But, since the war ended, so much that is ambiguous and contradictory about the events in Sarajevo has emerged that I am no longer certain of anything. I looked into the matter in some detail when I composed my memoirs a few years ago. And I came across some very disturbing facts. For instance, one of Princip’s accomplices, a boy called Cabrinovitch, was known to the Sarajevo police. He had been expelled from the country in 1912. Two days before the assassination, he was seen and recognized. But the Chief of Police ordered that he be left alone. One cannot help wondering why. Then there is the question of the prussic acid. Why would the Black Hand have wanted its agents to live long enough to confess, given that Serbia could not possibly hope to win a war against Austria-Hungary – or even survive it intact? It is incomprehensible. Certainly they paid a heavy price, whatever the reason. The officer who trained Princip and Cabrinovitch and gave them their phials of unreliable poison, Major Tankositch, was killed in action in 1915. And the leader of the Black Hand, Colonel Dimitrievitch, was executed in 1917 for plotting to assassinate the Serbian Prince Regent. The evidence against him was flimsy to say the very least. Oddly enough, one of his co-defendants was a youth named Mehmedbasitch, the only one of the Sarajevo assassins who escaped. Although sentenced to twenty years’ imprisonment, he was released before he had served much more than one. Treachery everywhere, Horton. Do you see what I mean? But to what end? At whose behest? I do not know. And I do not see how it would be possible to know. The most I can say is what I wrote in my memoirs. Have you by any chance read them?’

  ‘I’m afraid not, sir.’

  ‘No matter. I remember the exact words I used. They still seem apposite. “The world will presumably never be told all that was behind the murder of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand. Probably there is not, and never was, any one person who knew all there was to know.”’

  ‘Unless it was Fabian Charnwood.’

  ‘As you say. Unless it was Fabian Charnwood. But, if so, he too has since paid the price.’

  ‘Do you think he really was responsible for all of it?’

  ‘To be frank, no. Not because I doubt Duggan’s word. He is a well-meaning fellow and believes what he was told. Nor because the facts rule out such a possibility. Clearly, they do not.’

  ‘Why, then?’

  ‘Because any man clever and far-sighted enough to calculate the consequences of Franz Ferdinand’s assassination could also have anticipated the horrific and destructive course the war was to take. And surely no man would have deliberately set such mayhem in motion. It would have been …’ Words seemed to fail him for the moment. Then he composed himself and said: ‘Monstrous. Diabolical. Quite simply inconceivable.’

  We had talked well into the evening, and when Grey invited me to dine with him and stay the night I did not resist. He was a charming and lonely relic of a bygone age, eager to forget the painful subject I had raised and dwell instead on Winchester as he remembered it more than fifty years ago, serene and reassuring beneath the cloudless skies of his youth. And I was happy to indulge his nostalgic mood, not because he was my host, but because I too felt weighed down by my discoveries. For once, the recondite recesses of Wykehamical recollection were preferable to anything else.

  I slept more soundly than I had expected and woke refreshed, the unanswerable questions and impenetrable complexities surrounding Fabian Charnwood’s past refined in my mind to an extent that almost rendered them manageable. Breakfast was waiting for me downstairs, but his lordship, the maid informed me, was already out and about; he was not one to lie abed.

  I found him by a pond in the grounds, seated on a bench in threadbare tweeds and a Norfolk hat, tossing bread to a quacking retinue of ducks. For all their noise, however, he heard me approach and bade me a courteous good morning.

  ‘I must be getting off, sir,’ I explained. ‘It’s a long way back to London.’

  ‘Of course, of course, it’s been a pleasure meeting you, Horton.’ He rose and we shook hands; his was as cold as marble. ‘I hope you didn’t find my company last night too boring.’

  ‘Not at all.’

  ‘As to that other matter we discussed … Loyalty to one’s friends is an admirable quality. But sometimes it is necessary to let go of the past. And to let those who are gone rest in peace. I think, if you will permit me to say so, that you have done all you can – and all you prudently should – to clear your friend’s name.’

  ‘But it hasn’t been cleared, has it?’

  ‘No. Except in your own estimation. Which is really all that matters. Take an old man’s word for it.’ He smiled. ‘You have done enough.’

  Grey’s parting benison lingered in my thoughts as I drove south through the fleeting daylight of a November Sunday. Charnwood was dead. And so was Max. To condemn one was as futile as to exonerate the other. I believed every word Duggan had told me, especially when it came to the circumstances of Charnwood’s death. I could not construct an adequate account of them, but that the Concentric Alliance – whatever it was, whoever its members were – had played some part in bringing him down I did not doubt. Poor Max had been their fall guy.

  But to prove it was impossible. My faith in his innocence, as Grey had implied, would have to be enough. Even Diana would have to go on believing him guilty. She knew nothing of the Concentric Alliance. Her reaction to their secret symbol demonstrated that, just as Vita’s reaction betrayed at least awareness of her brother’s activities, if not complicity in them. But Diana was different. To vindicate Max in her eyes would be to brand her father a mass murderer. With her mother among his victims. The sinking of the Lusitania was one consequence of Franz Ferdinand’s assassination Charnwood could not have anticipated, for if he had …

  Enough. The choice was simple. I could go straight to Amber Court, forget what I knew and revel in the physical pleasures and material advantages Diana would be willing to bestow on me, justifying my conduct on the grounds that it was too late to help Max and therefore only sensible to help myself. Or I could pursue a hazardous campaign to expose an old but monumental crime, whose principal perpetrator was dead and whose surviving accomplices had shown themselves to be ruthless as well as powerful. In the final analysis, it was not really much of a choice at all.

  But at least it could be delayed. I stopped at the George in Stamford for tea, my hopes for something stronger being dashed by a sabbatarian regulation I was too tired to dispute. There, among the potted palms and Sunday-best family gatherings, I made up my mind to head for Letchworth. My father and sister were owed an explanation of events in Venice, maybe also of my intentions towards Diana. Besides, an overnight stop in Letchworth would leave me well placed to visit Felix next day. If I could face him and hold my tongue, then I could be sure my course was set. I could be sure I was going to take the easy way out.

  It was nearly nine o’clock when I reached Gladsome Glade. My sister greeted me with surprise and a measure of delight, my father with grim-faced indifference. I had written to them from Venice shortly after Max’s death, a letter at once hasty and unforthcoming. But for my father at least that was enough. The less he knew of my doings the better he was pleased. And so, within minutes of my arrival, all thoughts of honesty and candour had drained from my mind.

  ‘He doesn’t understand you, Guy,’ said Maggie when he had taken himself off to bed. ‘He never has and he never will.’

  ‘No. I don’t suppose he will.’

  ‘What are your plans – for the immediate future?’

  ‘I’m not sure.’ I should have told Maggie about Diana then. I might have won from her some form of sisterly approval for what I meant to do. But the creaking of the floorboards in my father’s bedroom, the familiar pattern of the paper on the wall beside my chair and the reflections of the firelight in the photographs on the piano conspired to silence me. I belonged here and yet did not. I wanted to sp
eak and yet could not. There, above me, where it had always hung, in a place of honour, was my mother’s sampler, its words waiting to accost my gaze. Wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be that go in thereat. ‘I thought,’ I murmured, ‘I might visit Felix tomorrow.’

  ‘Good idea.’

  ‘How is he?’

  ‘Much the same as ever.’

  ‘And who’s to blame for that, eh?’

  ‘Why nobody, of course.’ She frowned. ‘You surely don’t think Dad holds you responsible. It was … an accident of war.’

  ‘If war can be called an accident.’

  Her frown deepened. ‘I don’t understand. What do you mean?’

  ‘Nothing.’ I smiled dismissively and lit a cigarette. ‘How are things in the teaching world?’

  ‘They could be worse. The government generously agreed to cut our pay by only ten per cent instead of fifteen. I suppose we should be grateful.’

  ‘What do you tell your young charges about the war?’ Instantly, I regretted the question. My preoccupation with the subject was beginning to worry her. ‘I’m sorry. Forget it. Let’s talk about something else.’

  But Maggie insisted on answering. ‘I tell them it must never happen again, Guy. I tell them it should never have happened. What else can I say? They’re too young to understand the whys and wherefores. I’m not sure I understand them myself. Do you?’

  I stared into the fire for a moment, then tried to shape a carefree grin. ‘Of course not. But, then again, I never give them a moment’s thought. And, anyway, what would be the point? There’s not a single thing I – or anyone else – can do about it now. Is there?’

  I was up early enough the following morning to breakfast with Maggie. Thinking a change of scene might do us both good, I suggested we meet for lunch at the Letchworth Hall Hotel. She agreed without hesitation. Clearly, her dedication to the cause of education had been reduced along with her salary.

  After a few monosyllabic exchanges with my father, I headed for St Albans. Felix’s company promised to be a tonic by comparison. But a surprise awaited me at Napsbury Hospital. Contrary to what my sister believed, Felix was not much the same as ever.

  ‘He had a funny turn over the week-end,’ a nurse explained. ‘Nothing to worry about. But it would be best if he stayed in the ward. You don’t mind seeing him there, do you?’

  I did mind, of course. The place stank of stale urine and stewed cabbage. And the patients were either comatose or manically excited, gibbering and gesticulating at the entrance of a stranger. Felix for his part looked pale and subdued, propped up in bed and staring vacantly at the ceiling. My immediate impression was that he had been drugged.

  ‘Hello, Felix,’ I said, patting his hand. ‘How are you?’

  He looked at me as if he could scarcely believe his eyes. ‘Gewgaw! How did you get here?’

  ‘I drove.’

  ‘But … Where am I?’

  ‘Where you’ve always been. Napsbury.’

  ‘No, no. That’s not true. That’s what they’ve been telling me. But it’s a lie. I’ve been moved. It must have happened Saturday night. They must have slipped something into my cocoa so I wouldn’t wake up during the journey.’

  ‘You haven’t been on a journey.’

  ‘Oh yes I have. I know I have. The bath gave it away. They didn’t think of that. I always have one on Sundays. I suppose they didn’t want to change the routine. But they made a mistake. The water, Gewgaw. The water went down the plug-hole the wrong way.’ He lowered his voice to a whisper. ‘Anti-clockwise.’ Then he glanced suspiciously from side to side and leaned towards me. ‘Where am I? Australia? Argentina? I know it must be somewhere in the southern hemisphere.’

  ‘You’re in Hertfordshire.’ But there was such a stricken look of betrayal in his face that I instantly repented of my words. I smiled as reassuringly as I could. ‘Never mind, Felix. I know who did this to you.’

  ‘You do?’ I nodded and his eyes widened. Then he raised a quivering finger to his lips. ‘Sssh! Don’t tell, Gewgaw. Don’t breathe a word. If you do, they’ll be after you as well. And … I wouldn’t want anything to happen … to my little brother, because …’ He grinned crookedly. ‘He’s too young to fight.’

  Poor Felix. There was no way back from the strange and troubled place the war had taken him to. And whose fault was that? Somebody whose name he had never heard. Somebody my father and sister would never have dreamt of suspecting, far less accusing. Somebody to whom fate had been altogether kinder.

  I left Napsbury oppressed by the prickly proximity of madness. By the time I reached Letchworth, this sensation had transmuted itself into a pressing need for a stiff drink. With more than an hour to spare before my appointment with Maggie, I diverted to Willian, a village just south of the town, which had retained, despite absorption by the Garden City, two examples of that phenomenon most detested by the teetotal ideologues of Letchworth: the fully licensed public house. I had regularly walked the mile and a half from the Goddess factory to slake my frustration in one or other of them before returning to Gladsome Glade. Indeed, my happiest – or least unhappy – memories of those barren years are associated with the bars of the Fox and the Three Horseshoes. I stopped at the latter, found it as agreeably warm and quiet as I remembered and retreated to a fireside table with a triple scotch.

  There I turned over in my mind the harsh realities and consoling advantages of my position. If Max were still alive, I would do all I could to help him, even if it meant confronting the unnumbered forces of the Concentric Alliance. So, at least, I told myself. But Max was dead. And so was Charnwood. I had neither friend to save nor foe to seek. There was Faraday, of course. There were Vasaritch and the sinister guests aboard his yacht. There were all the nameless people who had profited from their involvement in Charnwood’s alliance of the great and the greedy. But what were they to me? The best revenge I could devise for what they had done to Max was to take my share – and Max’s too – of the fortune I no longer doubted Charnwood had hidden from them. Vita knew more than she would ever tell. Perhaps Diana did too, though clearly not as much as her aunt. Their conversation at the Villa Primavera, which I had eavesdropped on, convinced me that Diana was party to some vital secret. Since her reaction to the Concentric Alliance’s symbol proved she was ignorant of its meaning, that secret could only be the whereabouts of Charnwood’s money, a secret she was unlikely to disclose to anyone – except her lover.

  And I was her lover. Half-closing my eyes, I could imagine her turning to look at me as some silk garment slid from her shoulder. Reaching out, I could almost feel the tingling smoothness of her skin. Smiling to myself, I could recall every detail of …

  I swallowed some scotch and called a halt to my deliberations. To Diana I would return. Of the Concentric Alliance I would say and pretend to know nothing. I took the letter containing their symbol from my pocket, tore it into four and threw the pieces onto the fire. If Diana ever asked for it, I would claim I had lost it. Then I remembered my contract with Max. Such an incriminating document would also have to be destroyed. I drew out my wallet, slid my copy from its pouch, unfolded it, screwed it into a ball and tossed it into the flames. Then I made to do the same with Max’s copy.

  But, as I unfolded it, a small piece of blue card fluttered out onto the table in front of me. Pausing, I picked it up to examine. It was a theatre ticket, the right-hand side torn, as if by an usherette. A serial number was printed along the left-hand side, with the middle occupied by the remnant of the theatre’s name: Pier The – on one line, Bourne – on the next. Pier Theatre, Bournemouth, obviously. But why should Max have gone to Bournemouth?

  Suddenly, a possible reason occurred to my mind. We had spent a forty-eight-hour leave there in August 1915, during initial training with the King’s Royal Rifle Corps on Salisbury Plain. And a riotous time we had had, though whether it had included a visit to the Pier Theatre I could not recall. But it had bee
n one last indulgence before a grim awakening in Macedonia, so perhaps Max had chosen it as a hide-out because of its links with our carefree past, just as he had chosen to abandon our car in Winchester because we had first met there in the long-ago September of 1910.

  Chief Inspector Hornby would have paid handsomely for this clue to Max’s movements during the weeks following Charnwood’s murder. But now, like so much else, it was irrelevant, a redundant echo of a sundered connection. I screwed up the contract and lobbed it into the fire, leaning forward to scatter the ashes with a poker, then picked up the torn ticket and decided, since it could convey nothing to anyone else, to keep it as a memento. I opened my wallet and was about to slide the ticket in when I noticed some writing on the back. I recognized the hand at once. It was Max’s.

  26/8/31. Where is H.L.? I stared at the words for several seconds, wondering what they meant. Charnwood had been murdered in the early hours of Saturday the twenty-second of August. The twenty-sixth was therefore the following Wednesday. Max had apparently been in Bournemouth that day, looking for somebody whose initials were H.L. But I knew no such person. Who was he? The Pier Theatre hardly struck me as a likely venue for Sir Harry Lauder. And among our ill-assorted friends and acquaintances I could not think of a single H.L. Where and who or what H.L. had been and might still be I had no way of knowing.

  Yet the answer had clearly mattered to Max. Otherwise why would he have kept the ticket enfolded in his copy of our contract? It was surely more than an aide memoire. The place, the date and the initials all meant something. They were bound together in his mind. Or had been. Until the day of his death. I thought of the garbled accusations he had flung at me in the last few minutes of his life. ‘How much do you know, Guy? How much has she told you?’ I was guilty of an obvious breach of faith, but stood condemned for something worse than seducing Diana. ‘Not that it matters,’ Max had roared. ‘Ignorance is no excuse.’ But ignorance of what? Not the Concentric Alliance. He had learned nothing of that, I felt certain. Nor the whereabouts of Charnwood’s money. He could have had no more inkling than me about its hiding-place.