He shuddered as he realised what it might have been used for. Surely she could never have used that knife on herself. She just could not have done that, he was sure of that. But suppose she had been murdered, who would have done it, and why?
Peter returned to the living-room. The thought of finding something which Black’s men had overlooked, something that would point towards murder instead of suicide, began to seem impossible. He furrowed his brow in concentration, and tried to direct his gaze systematically at every detail of the room, from one end to the other. After a few minutes he shook his head in despair; it all seemed just as he remembered it.
The antique bureau with its walnut veneer was a fine piece of furniture, he realised. He had never really studied it before, but now crossed the floor to inspect it closely. He ran his hand over the waxed surface which felt almost warm to the touch. He vaguely remembered Mary explaining it had been in her family for generations; it was her continuity with her past. How much had her family really been told of what had happened, he asked himself? Their framed photographs had stood on top of the bureau. There was now only one of her parents here, but surely there had been two before. He remembered the other picture distinctly; Mary with her arms round two children, her niece and nephew.
He turned his head to scan the bookshelf, in case the photograph had been moved there. Then he walked briskly round the room in search of it, before hurrying back to the bedroom. It was nowhere to be seen.
‘That’s odd.’ His voice sounded like an intrusion in the stillness of the flat.
That photograph had always stood on the bureau – from the day he first visited her, of that he was certain. Its position had never changed. Perhaps the police had taken it, but why should they? It was hardly evidence. He hurried back to the bureau and pulled open the lid.
The compartments inside were empty. All her papers were gone. That must have been the police, he assumed; they would have reason to look through her documents. Closing the lid, he opened the drawers below in case the photograph had been put away, but there was still no sign of it.
Suddenly he peered at his watch. He had almost forgotten his appointment with John Black. It was half-past ten, with just thirty minutes for him to get to MI5’s headquarters. He would have to leave immediately, and take the underground. It would be quicker than driving and trying to find somewhere to park in Mayfair.
In the hall he lingered for a moment, looking again towards the bathroom.
‘Goodbye,’ he whispered softly.
‘You were in there a long time,’ the old woman commented as he emerged. She held out her hand for the key.
‘Was I?’ Peter answered vaguely. She was staring expectantly at him through her crooked glasses, trying to assess how he was affected by what he had seen inside.
‘It’s like you said,’ Peter answered her unspoken question, ‘a horrible mess.’
‘Poor soul. Such a nice girl . . .’ She turned her head away.
‘Tell me,’ Peter asked impulsively. ‘The night before she was found . . . do you know if she had any visitors?’
‘Oh, I wouldn’t know. I never see or hear anything. I’m at the front and she’s at the back, see,’ she insisted hurriedly.
‘No, I’m sure you don’t,’ Peter reassured her gently. ‘But try to remember about the night before last, just in case there was something unusual. It could be important.’
The old woman turned away and made as if she was thinking deeply as she walked slowly back towards the front of the house. Just as they reached the front drive, she turned round with a gesture of sudden recollection.
‘Now you mention it, I do remember someone leaving her flat, sometime after midnight. I couldn’t sleep because of the indigestion. It’s been terrible lately, and the doctors are no use with that sort of thing, are they? Well, I heard some feet on the gravel here, and I looked out of the window. It was a man, quite large he was, with a raincoat. He must have had a car, because I heard him slam the door. Inconsiderate, I call it, making such a noise late at night . . .’
‘It’s dreadful how thoughtless some people can be,’ Peter agreed patiently. ‘But that was it? No other noises that night?’
‘Well, no. It went on, you see. I was just dropping off, after taking some Milk of Mag., when he came back. Or someone did. I heard feet on the gravel again.’
‘Same man again, was it? Did he look the same?’
‘Oh, I don’t know what he looked like. I was under the covers that time. Didn’t see him at all.’
‘So you didn’t hear anything more after that?’ Peter persisted earnestly.
‘No. No, I slept like a baby. Didn’t know any more about it until the police came yesterday evening.’
Thanking her for her help, Peter hurried away down the drive. As he turned on the pavement, he glanced back and noticed that she was still watching him.
He arrived five minutes late at the Curzon Street office of MI5, with its windowless ground floor. John Black looked aggravated by his lack of perfect punctuality as he pointed him to a chair in a sparsely furnished room used for interviews.
‘Make yourself comfortable. We’ve got a lot to talk about,’ he gestured impatiently.
‘Really? I thought the case was solved, as far as you were concerned,’ Peter replied with an edge to his voice.
‘There are a lot of details, Mr Joyce. If you knew the amount of paperwork I have to do . . .’
‘I suppose so.’
As if to make his point, the investigator slapped a fat folder down on the table and lowered his over-weight body on to a swivel-chair behind it. The impact with the seat expelled from the man’s lungs a blast of air which carried the smell of stale cigarette smoke across to Peter’s nostrils.
‘You know, Mr Joyce,’ Black continued in a voice that was tired and irritable, ‘it seems to me that the way you’ve been conducting your business during the past few years is totally at variance with the high standards of personal behaviour required in a man of your status, a man entrusted with some of the nation’s most sensitive secrets. You wouldn’t disagree with that, would you?’
Peter was stunned by the suddenness of the attack; he knew he was bound to face official criticism for what had happened, but did not feel ready to cope with it quite like this.
‘I think you had better explain what you mean,’ he answered defensively.
‘Oh, come now, for heaven’s sake! Then let me itemise it for you.’
Counting off his accusations on the fingers of his outstretched hand, Black held the scientist with a gaze that was cold and derisive.
‘First: your wife takes issue with your work, and joins a subversive organisation whose purpose is to undermine Britain’s nuclear capabilities. You knew about this but failed to report it to your security officer at your last positive vetting.
‘Second: you start up an adulterous relationship with Miss Maclean, a relationship which lays both you and her open to the possibility of blackmail – a very real possibility considering the secret material to which you both had access. This affair you also failed to report to your security officer.’
Peter made as if to interrupt, but Black gestured him to silence.
‘Third: you have flagrantly disregarded the Defence Ministry rules concerning the safe storage of classified documents. Three months ago you left them lying around in your briefcase at the home of the woman with whom you had been having the adulterous affair, at a time when your termination of that relationship might give Miss Maclean the motive to do something foolish and dangerous with those papers –’
‘Did Mary tell you about that? Did she admit to you that she had taken the plans?’ Peter burst in, seizing the opportunity to divert the criticism that Black so painfully and accurately aimed at him.
John Black’s eyelids seemed to blink for the first time since this conversation had started. He looked almost surprised that he himself should face a question.
‘She certainly told me that you had the
plans in your case that last night you spent in her flat.’
‘But did she actually tell you that she’d done anything with them?’
‘No, she didn’t admit that to me in person,’ Black shifted his position on the chair. ‘But we have the letter, don’t we?’
‘Yes. Well, I’m not happy about that,’ Peter answered firmly. ‘Let me get it quite clear. What you gave me last night was an exact photocopy of what you found in her flat?’
‘Yes, it was.’
‘And you’re convinced it was she who wrote it?’
‘Her fingerprints were all over the letter and the typewriter keys, so unless you –’
‘Yes, but she never typed letters to me,’ Peter insisted. ‘They were always hand-written. And some of the grammar – it just wasn’t her.’
The MI5 man permitted himself a wry smile.
‘People under sufficient stress to kill themselves don’t always behave according to previously established patterns, Mr Joyce,’ he countered firmly. ‘And what exactly are you suggesting by all this, anyway?’
‘I’m suggesting that she was murdered,’ Peter ventured.
Black heaved himself upright in the chair and sighed.
‘I wouldn’t want you to think we hadn’t thought of that. It was one of the first possibilities we considered. But we have to deal in evidence, and there simply isn’t any to suggest that someone else killed her. The knife she used had her prints on, and no one else’s. The pathologist’s report confirms that death was caused solely by loss of blood, and there’s no trace of any pacifying or tranquillising agent in her body. As I said before, her prints were all over the suicide note – and, let’s face it, she was sufficiently cut up over the way you dumped her to have the motive to do herself in. The business with the document in the rubbish bin fits too, since there’s still no sign from any intelligence source that the Russians have got hold of the secrets.’
At the end of his explanation, Black moistened his lips and there was a glint of triumph in his eyes. He extracted the packet from his pocket, wrenched back the flip-top, tugged out one of the cigarettes and placed it between his lips in one smooth movement. Then, as an afterthought, he extended the packet across the table and enquired with his eyebrows whether the scientist would like one too.
Peter shook his head. From Black’s slouching, untidy appearance and off-hand manner, he found it impossible to assess whether the man could be trusted. He was conscious of the persisting widespread suspicion about MI5 following its recent disastrous infiltration by Soviet agents, yet the Security Commission had scoured the organisation afterwards and pronounced it clean.
Peter thought back to his conversation with Mary’s elderly neighbour. Black was a large man, and could fit the description she gave of the figure who had visited Mary that fatal night.
‘Did you call to see Mary at her home the night she died?’ Peter asked.
Black looked up sharply. ‘Yes, I did. Why do you ask?’
‘I went to her flat this morning,’ Peter answered casually. ‘The woman next-door told me she had seen someone about your size.’
‘Oh? Been playing policeman, have you?’ he snapped sarcastically. ‘Yes, I interviewed Miss Maclean at her home that evening, but I hope you’re not insinuating my visit had any connection with her suicide . . .’
‘Did you . . . did you remove anything from her flat at any time?’ Peter asked cautiously. ‘Any documents or papers, for example?’
Black smiled. ‘If you mean the letters you wrote to her, then yes, I have them here. They’re quite safe.’
‘And what about photographs? She had family photographs in frames on her bureau. Have you taken one of those?’
John Black frowned.
‘Describe them to me,’ he answered evasively.
‘There were two. One showed her mother and father, and that’s still there; the missing one was of Mary herself, with her young niece and nephew. I wondered whether you’d taken it.’
‘No, I’ve not got any photographs.’
For a moment he looked uncomfortable, as if the question had caught him out.
‘But I think you may be a little out of date with your recollection,’ Black added hurriedly. ‘When I interviewed her two nights ago, there was only one picture on the bureau – one of her parents. I remember it distinctly because I asked her about it. There was only one, then, Mr Joyce.’
His eyes sparkled with innocence, but Peter felt certain he was lying.
‘That’s odd,’ he persisted. ‘Tell me one other thing: was it you the neighbour heard leaving after midnight?’
Black did not at all like being questioned. It was like reversing the natural order of things.
‘It probably would have been,’ he mumbled irritably.
‘And did you return to her flat after that? The neighbour heard footsteps coming back again later.’
‘She has been talkative,’ Black exclaimed angrily. ‘Now, if you don’t mind, I’ll have a turn at asking the questions!’ But he still looked thoughtful.
Peter realised he would achieve nothing further, so for the next half hour he submitted to a detailed probing of his work routines, his wife’s anti-nuclear involvements, and his own private life. By the time the questioning eventually ended, he felt emotionally and physically drained.
It was about three-quarters of a mile from Curzon Street to St James’s Square, and Joyce had a brisk walk to reach the East India Club by one o’clock. The exercise was a help in sorting out his thoughts before he met the Defence Chief.
Field-Marshal Buxton was waiting for him in the panelled bar, clutching a whisky and soda.
‘What would you like, Peter? Kind of you to join me today. Hope it wasn’t inconvenient.’
‘I’ll have the same as you,’ Peter replied. ‘It’s not inconvenient at all.’
Buxton was dressed in worn tweeds, and looked more like a country gentleman than the head of the nation’s armed forces.
‘I use this place when I want to get away from my military chums,’ he confided. ‘Unlike in the Army and Navy Club, hardly anyone here knows who I am, so it’s ideal for private chats.’
He studied Peter’s face thoughtfully, trying to assess his general reaction to the events of the past two days.
‘You must be jet-lagged!’ he exclaimed suddenly. ‘How extremely inconsiderate of me to summon you to lunch when you should be getting your head down.’
‘Don’t worry, I haven’t had time to get jet-lagged, and I’ve just spent the morning with John Black of MI5.’
‘Have you, now?’ said Buxton. Looking round at the handful of people in the bar, he took Peter by the arm. ‘Tell you what, why don’t we take ourselves and our drinks to the dining-room. Then we can sit comfortably and natter privately to our hearts’ content.’
Seated at a corner table in the palatial restaurant with its gilded ceiling, they were a comfortable distance from anyone else, and the CDS began to talk freely.
‘Bad business about that girl Mary Maclean,’ he growled. ‘Distressing for you, I imagine.’ His face expressed a combination of sympathy and disapproval.
Peter glanced at him uncomfortably. He had not yet accustomed himself to the idea that his affair with Mary had become such public knowledge.
‘But it’s disturbing, too,’ Peter replied carefully.
Just then the waiter came for their order. The field-marshal recommended the Dover sole, and Peter concurred with his suggestion.
‘Disturbing? In what way?’ Buxton probed, when the waiter was again out of earshot.
Peter then explained at length his doubts about the ‘suicide’, and described the conversation he had already had with Black.
‘Sure you’re not imagining things?’ Buxton remarked. ‘A woman scorned is pretty unpredictable, you know. Suicide is in itself an irrational act, so I feel you’re asking a bit much to expect her to behave in any normal way while carrying it out.’
Buxton could see that Peter w
as taken aback by this dismissive statement.
‘Look, I’m sorry. I don’t mean to doubt your word, but let’s face it, it sounds a little as if you’re trying to make excuses. All this has been a hell of a strain for you, and it’s obviously personally embarrassing. There’s bound to be a full internal inquiry at the end of it all, and inevitably you aren’t going to come out of it very well. There’s firstly your affair with that poor girl, and then, from what I’ve been told, you’ve been pretty lax about security procedures too.’
Peter looked startled.
‘Oh yes. I’ve heard about it, I’m afraid. The Prime Minister is horrified at what’s been going on, and is after your blood. The only thing that’s likely to save you from his wrath is his need to sweep the whole thing under the carpet in case it damages his tenuous hold on the reins of government. The press haven’t yet heard about Mary Maclean’s death, but the PM’s planning to feed them something this afternoon. He may make a statement to the House of Commons.’
‘Good God!’ Peter was aghast. ‘This is crazy. Don’t you see, blaming the whole thing on a woman’s revenge is too tidy – too convenient an end to the business.’
He pushed away his half-finished plate, and swallowed a mouthful of the white Burgundy Buxton had chosen.
‘Look, if you were in charge of the new anti-missile system protecting Moscow, and you learned by whatever sources that Britain had developed a new warhead enabling its nuclear bombs to penetrate those defences, wouldn’t you do everything you could to acquire the details of those new weapons?’
‘Probably,’ Buxton replied briefly.
‘Now, if you were the head of the KGB department responsible for getting hold of those plans, and your agent in the field made a colossal bungle of the operation, what would you do about it? You’d try desperately to cover your tracks. And if you were a KGB chief, wouldn’t you be ruthless enough to commit murder if it would succeed in throwing the poor old British off the scent?’
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