‘I am not sure,’ came the reply, ‘whether I should contact the
police after all. I have the reputation of the hotel to consider.’
He did not have time to count to ten, so he counted to three.
‘That’s what I’m thinking about too, Claude,’ he said, his voice
laden with sympathy and regret. ‘It’s the very reason we need to
manage this together.’
‘But if the police later discovered that I have assisted the escape of a felon . . .’
‘Lord Stanbrook is not a felon,’ said Roy with irritated emphasis.
‘I’ve explained it to you. It was a misunderstanding. A situation that got out of hand. I’m trying to handle this with delicacy.’
‘Hmm. But it is I who am left to deal with the consequences if
the police begin to ask difficult questions.’
‘There are no consequences for you. There are no difficult ques-
tions. You simply say you’ve no idea where the noble lord is.’
‘That is easy for you to say. But it is I who am taking the risk with the name of this hotel. On my own.’
‘Not at all, not at all. Oh no. We’re both attempting to preserve
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the reputation of the George V. What could be worse than the arrest of a member of the British aristocracy in its halls? What would your clientele think? I see your point, though. I’m asking a lot of you.
You’ve a lot to take on trust. On reflection, I think the consideration I mentioned may be a little too modest.’
With this, the conversation was easy to complete. Roy counted
out a few more notes on to the largest pile on the desk. His employer was sitting in the bedroom on the edge of the bed. Through the
open door Roy could see he had his head in his hands.
He walked through and touched him gently on the shoulder.
‘All right, Charles. We’re just about ready to go. Five minutes?’
‘Problems?’ asked Stanbrook.
‘Not really. The manager wanted more, that’s all. Par for the
course. There’ll be no problems.’
He gave the manservant careful instructions. He must wait two
hours before travelling to Orly in the car that had been ordered. He must take His Lordship’s luggage with him.
The manservant remained in the room. Roy led Stanbrook down
the corridor to the waiting lift. They each carried a suitcase, for show. The manager was inside with the attendant.
‘You are leaving very early,’ said the manager, addressing Roy.
Stanbrook stood at the back of the lift, looking dazedly into the
mirror.
‘I want to complete the formalities at Orly well before time. I’d
like to avoid any misunderstandings.’
The lift took them to the sub- basement and the shabby underpin-
nings beneath the shiny carapace. The shattering of glamorous
illusions did not matter in the circumstances. The manager led them though long corridors lit by bare light bulbs strung along the centre of the roughly plastered ceiling.
Roy took a brief, anxious glance from side to side outside the
trade entrance before ushering Charles quickly into the car. He did not trust the manager.
There were a couple of moments to take stock once the driver
had clanked the vehicle into gear and pulled away, the transmission whining like a reluctant child.
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Thank goodness last night he’d seen what was happening before
it really got out of hand and been able to drag Charles away. Thank goodness they’d told everyone they were staying at the Crillon.
Thank goodness he’d had the foresight to pack Charles’s civvy
passport. He checked again that it was safely in his inside pocket, together with his own. He had his small attaché case on his lap with the rest of their documents and the all- important cash. Charles
seemed to be holding up. He was looking distantly through the side
window of the car, but at least the tearfulness had dried up.
They sped towards Orly and sunlight skidded off the windows.
Through the corroded transmission tunnel of the old Citroën Roy
could see the tarmacadam flash by beneath their feet.
Now was the moment. In his passable French Roy told the driver
that they had changed their minds and required a different destin-
ation. He waved a wad of notes in the old man’s face and directed
him to drive to Calais, telling him that if he arrived there in time for the three o’clock sailing the fare would be doubled. Absurd: that
amount of money would have been sufficient to buy the old crate
outright, and a tankful of petrol into the bargain. The driver grunted with a sour expression that Roy took to be acquiescence. For good
measure, he reminded the driver that he knew these streets and
would detect immediately if he took an unusual route. Pure bluff,
of course. The driver grunted once more. A sidelong glare was all it took to elicit an acceptable if not enthusiastic apology from the
driver.
Roy turned to look in the back. Charles had fallen asleep, lost and vulnerable. The poor sod must be exhausted. Roy, however, needed
to remain alert as the car raced through the northern French coun-
tryside, the smell of hot leather and male sweat rising. He looked
impatiently left and right at the unremitting flatness as they made their way up the route nationale. Three hundred kilometres or there-abouts. The driver would have to go some if he was to make it.
At Calais they alighted at the port. The driver had earned his
bonus and sped away. Roy smelt salt and thought of England, and
safety. They smoked a cigarette by the harbour wall while Roy
watched for unusual activity that might suggest their imminent
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detention. Satisfied, he strolled to the office, engaged his winning smile and bought a pair of foot passenger tickets from the pretty
girl there. Foot passengers who turned up at the port without tick-
ets would, he guessed, be relatively rare. They would be noticed,
but this was a risk that had to be taken. It should not matter given the genial mien he deployed.
They delayed until the final moment before running for the boat,
sprinting through concrete concourses and submitting briefly to a
passport check. Roy half feared an officious check here, just to spite perfidious Albion, but all that was required was more charm, a
ready smile and the use of rather more fluent French than had been
deployed with the railway official to compliment France’s wonder-
ful capital city, its efficient rail network and its friendly natives.
It was not until they had disembarked at Dover that Charles Stan-
brook uttered his first words since leaving the George V.
‘Where’s the bloody car, then?’ he asked.
‘I couldn’t ring ahead from the hotel. That manager would have
been listening to every word.’
‘So how do we get back?’
‘The train, like everyone else. Ticket office is over there.’
‘Fuck,’ said Charles, before melting back into a sullen silence. He allowed Roy to guide him by the elbow.
At Victoria they took a cab to the London residence. As they
crossed the threshold Roy made the usual transition from directing
Charles, his unruly charge, to being Lord Stanbrook’s
faithful
employee.
2
He liked this job. He had fallen on his feet almost ten years before when the post came up. Opened up invitingly in front of him, more
like.
After the incident back in ’46 he’d been put on light duties for
some time. He hadn’t been sent back to his home unit, which in any
case was in the process of being disbanded. They hadn’t really
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known what to do with him. First he flew a desk in an office in Brussels, working on what would later be known as the Treaty of
Brussels. A very small cog in a very large machine, and floundering in the sea of words. Not his thing at all. Oh no. Then he was shipped off to Vienna to deal with transport dockets for the British occupying force.
It was there that he had met Major Stanbrook of the Intelligence
Corps. They took to each other instantly and Stanbrook had fina-
gled Roy on to his staff. When Stanbrook decided to take up his
place in the Lords, he asked Roy to become an unofficial aide. Roy
had jumped at the chance.
In the days after coming back from France Lord Stanbrook
regained his characteristic ebullience. Almost immediately, Roy set off once more for Paris to iron out the unfortunate misunderstandings that had occurred. Claude at the George V was more obliging,
no longer faced with the imminent end of his career. Claude had
successfully managed matters with the police, deploying an expres-
sion of wounded ignorance, and gave Roy the name of the inspector
who was dealing with the case.
At the police station Roy received a polite welcome. Monsieur
l’Inspecteur was intrigued to learn what had actually occurred. It
shook him to discover that the truth was somewhat different from
what he had heard from various of the club staff and the alleged
victim himself. Roy explained the unfortunate circumstances of the
skirmish and subsequent accident that had led to the man’s two
broken arms and insisted that any allegations regarding His Lord-
ship were both groundless and maliciously motivated. The man
himself had since admitted that he had misunderstood Lord Stan-
brook’s intentions towards the young woman he had been
accompanying. The inspector shook his head with a weary know-
ledge of the world.
‘My employer is a wealthy man,’ said Roy, ‘a pillar of British society, a government minister and, I have to say, of unimpeachable
integrity. He will not fail to go to law if these scurrilous and baseless accusations are pursued.’ He gave the inspector the business card of the expensive lawyers in rue de l’Échelle whom he had already
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engaged on the matter. Then he suggested that he buy the inspector
a coffee, or indeed something stronger.
They stood at the bar, smoking the American cigarettes Roy had
thought to pack before leaving London, each with a café express and a small glass of marc. Roy drained his glass and the detective followed suit. Roy signalled for refills.
‘The difficulty is,’ he said, ‘that there are just so many people
looking for an angle. Any angle. It seems there’s been something of a moral collapse since the war in which our nations fought so val-iantly side by side. Honesty is no longer valued; it’s all about what you can get away with.’
The inspector nodded. He was not expected to speak.
‘Lord Stanbrook is – well, he wouldn’t want to be described as a
war hero – a courageous man who continues to serve his country. It would be most unfortunate if his reputation was dragged down by
some scoundrel. I’m sure it’s not something your country would
want either.’
He paused. He did not know whether he had spoken enough and
they could quickly conclude their business. He had a train to catch.
Both knew implicitly that the conversation was a formality. The deal had been done when the police officer accepted the offer of a drink. As ever, though, the lie had to be maintained. For a little longer, evidently.
‘I’m certain that no officer of the Paris police would wish to be
complicit in allowing extortion to take place. Least of all you,
Jacques. May I call you Jacques?’
The other man inclined his head slightly. Roy detected the hint of
a smile.
‘In that case I’m reassured. My work is done. I’ve no need to pro-
test my employer’s innocence any further. I have complete
confidence in your judgement. But should anything unexpected
happen, you know how to contact me.’
With that, he put his hat on, placed a large- denomination bill on the zinc for the barman, shook hands with the police officer and
walked out of the cafe, leaving behind, placed below the evening
newspaper he had bought on the way in, a rather plump envelope.
He made his train with ten minutes to spare.
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3
The rules when they were at the London residence or the country
house were different from when they were, as Lord Stanbrook put
it, on the razzle.
Informality was out of the question. Roy’s employer was His
Lordship rather than Charles and appropriate deference was de
rigueur. Nor would Roy have wanted it any differently. It was less
complicated. There were moments of awkwardness, particularly
when Stanbrook required Roy’s presence at dinner with guests at
Burnsford, but these occasions were relatively infrequent. The
guests concerned would generally be aware of the reasons for Roy’s
presence and his standing with his employer. There was, for Roy,
little more than a need for care with words and actions, part of his professional repertoire. He found it relatively easy to circulate
among these people.
This was one of those more relaxed weekends. No political
guests. They were to gather for an informal dinner on the Friday,
the guests arriving according to the time they had been able to
escape the rigours of London. Burnsford House was located in the
anonymous Midlands, south of Birmingham and east of the twee
Tudor affectations of Stratford, but well away from the grimy industrial cities of the East Midlands. Unprepossessing Northampton was
the nearest town, but visitors by train were more generally collected at Daventry.
Having delivered a rather irritable viscount and his wife to the
house, shown them to their room and left them to unpack, Roy sat
smoking in the study, undisturbed. The party this weekend would
be small. They would be ten at table tonight: Lord Stanbrook and
his long- suffering wife, Lady Dorothy; their daughter Francesca:
Viscount Wexford and his wife, Margaret: Joachim von Hessenthal,
a German count of Stanbrook’s long acquaintance; Oliver Wright,
the Foreign Secretary’s private secretary: Roy himself: and Sir
Thomas and Lady Sylvia Banks. Sylvia. He sighed quietly.
Roy was there to make up the party, as Lady Dorothy did not like
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to dine with odd numbers at her table. This at least was the fiction.
To be sure
, if one of the guests failed to materialize he would drop out. But his presence at the table had little to do with the numbers.
They would dress for dinner only on the Saturday. He had some
time, therefore. Wexford and his wife were already here, von Hes-
senthal was being conveyed by his own driver, and Roy would avoid
at all costs being present to greet the Bankses. This left Mr Wright.
Roy checked his watch and saw that he had a few minutes to savour
his cigarette and cup of tea before setting off for the station in the Humber.
‘I understand you’ll be joining us for dinner,’ said Wright as the
windscreen wipers marked time on their journey back to the house.
‘That’s right, sir,’ replied Roy. ‘Informal dinner tonight. Formal
tomorrow.’
‘ Righty- ho.’
Oliver Wright was a pensive young man, angular and gaunt to
the point of apparent malnutrition. In government circles he was
known as a policy genius and quite the eligible young man going
places. Wright sat beside Roy in the front of the car, his bony white hands turning restlessly in his lap as if he was made nervous by
Roy’s deft handling of the vehicle at speed through the puddles and around country corners. He frowned.
‘Where exactly do you fit in in the house?’ he asked. ‘I mean, if
it’s not too presumptuous a question.’
‘Not at all, sir,’ said Roy. ‘My role is as Lord Stanbrook’s aide on business matters. A factotum, you might say.’
‘You run the estate for him?’
‘Oh no, sir. I’ve very little to do with the estate itself. Beyond me, all that stuff. Lord Stanbrook has diverse business interests. I manage his portfolio inasmuch as I ensure that all necessary matters are attended to and nothing is forgotten. I accompany him on business
trips.’
‘A fixer, you mean.’
‘If you care to put it that way, sir. Though doubtless Lord Stan-
brook might express it slightly differently.’
‘Quite. Have you met this von Hessenthal chap?’
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‘No, I haven’t. I understand Lord Stanbrook knows him from
before the war. Both were army officers of course and knew each
other professionally in the 1930s. I doubt whether the Graf von Hessenthal would regard it as a happy coincidence, though, that Lord
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