Charlie was more neatly arranged than Sir Rupert Dean’s but at the same time more obviously occupied. There were more framed oils, men in ermine and robes, bejeweled women and velvet-dressed children with ringlets and spaniel pets, but there was an obvious working desk dominating the window looking out over the rolling grounds. Charlie was immediately aware of a lot of photographs on its top and even more, practically overcrowding, on side tables at either end of the huge, inglenooked fireplace. He recognized a lot of Simon Norrington, two in the uniform the man hadbeen wearing in the Yakutsk ice tomb. Another had him in graduation gown with a man Charlie assumed to be his father, who’d looked remarkably similar to Sir Matthew Norrington now. There was a photograph of a teenage Matthew smiling up toward Simon in visible bigger brother admiration. The chairs, also by the fireplace, were leather, which creaked when they sat.
Norrington said, “Tell me what this is all about.” It was the voice of a man accustomed to being obeyed.
Charlie left out all his supposition and suspicions and anything about a second English officer, so it only took minutes.
“I’d expected more,” the dissatisfied baronet said, at once, with a frown.
“I wish there were more,” apologized Charlie, meaning it.
“They were planned killings? Of my brother and the man in his grave in Berlin?”
“Undoubtedly.”
“Why him?”
“I don’t yet know how or why, but I believe art is the most obvious factor: something to do with its looting. But not that by itself. There’s a lot more.”
“Simon despised the Nazis, Rosenberg’s lot, for what they did to art. And the Russians’ Trophy Brigades. Judged one as bad as the other. He knew it would be impossible to reassemble the European art heritage, no matter how hard he and others like him tried.” The man stopped, pointedly. “You imagine you’ll ever find out who killed him?”
Charlie hesitated. “Who committed the actual murders, probably not, not after fifty years. They would have been functionaries.” Which was true, he realized. It had been a Russian bullet that killed Simon Norrington.
“What about the people who ordered it?”
“That’s who I’m trying to find. If I do, we’ll know why.”
Norrington stirred in his chair, which creaked again. “What are your chances?”
A lie wouldn’t help and Charlie didn’t want to slip sideways into his theories and guesses, either. “I’d like them to be better. I’d appreciate a lot of your time.”
Norrington shrugged. “As much as you need.” He got up. “I drink gin.”
“Whiskey.”
The old man returned from a separate side table with their drinks, settled noisily and said, “So?”
“You were, what, sixteen when it happened?” Charlie spoke looking at the young Matthew gazing up at his elder brother.
“Just seventeen, at the war’s end. Felt cheated. Was an officer cadet at Eton, all ready to go. Wanted to go even more when Simon was killed; thought it had been in action then, of course. Imagined I’d find the actual person who did it.” The man snorted humorlessly. “Some irony about that now, isn’t there?”
“Let’s hope not,” said Charlie. “You can remember everything about the time? Not simply the death but immediately before? And afterwards?”
“All of it.”
Everything from the family, recalled Charlie, remembering the Berlin conversation with the military attache. Charlie indicated the photographs of Simon Norrington on the table closest to him and said, “He was-is-obviously deeply mourned?”
“My father was devastated. We all were, naturally. But my father took it dreadfully. The war was over, for God’s sake!”
Charlie thought it was too much to hope, but he hoped, just the same.
The older man frowned. “Letter. Official notification. June third.”
That was encouraging, thought Charlie. “There were some personal belongings returned?”
“Arrived much later, from his unit: cigarette lighter-it matched a case my father gave Simon when he graduated-his wallet. Family ring. There was a personal letter of regret, too, of course. From his commanding officer.”
“And then there was the notification of the burial?” coaxed Charlie.
There was another snorted, empty laugh. “Of the wrong man.”
“But you visited the grave?”
“Once, with my father. He was annoyed that we hadn’t been asked about the body: that it had been already buried. We’ve got our own chapel and vault here, in the grounds. But there was a dedicationservice in Berlin and afterwards we decided to leave Simon … we thought it was Simon … where he was.”
“How many times did you go?”
“Just the once with my father, for the service. It was an official affair, for a lot of families with relatives there.”
Charlie was immediately alert to the qualification. “Was there any sort of registration at the official ceremony?”
“Not then.”
“But?”
“I went again, by myself, on the first supposed anniversary. My father was ill by then, couldn’t travel. There was some form-filling nonsense that time.”
Charlie realized he’d drifted away from the directions in which he’d been heading but decided to finish this now. “How many other times did you go: need to fill in the visitor’s form?”
“That was the only occasion,” said Norrington. “Father had a commemorative plaque put into the chapel. We could mourn well enough here.”
Which almost brought him back on track, Charlie recognized. “Who else from the family, apart from you, visited the grave you thought was Simon’s?”
“No one.” The man frowned. “Why do you ask?”
“I’m trying to build up as complete a picture as I can,” Charlie avoided, not wanting to enter still-unexplored territory. Quickly he said, “You mourned here?”
“Yes.”
Charlie indicated the picture-crowded tables and desk again. “You kept a lot of photographs?”
“Yes?” There was a defensive sharpness in the questioning reply.
“What about other things? Did you keep the notification of Simon’s death-the personal things that were returned?”
“I told you my father was devastated. In the first two or three years it was almost a shrine. It worried me.”
Sometimes it worked to hope against hope, Charlie decided. “Do you still have it all?”
“Yes. Father kept everything. So I did, too.”
Don’t rush, Charlie warned himself. It still might be another blind alley; this was going far better than he’d expected and there stillmight be more Norrington could help with. And there were the names from Berlin. “Later, when we’ve talked some more, could I see it all?”
Norrington hesitated. “Could it help you find the people you’re looking for?”
“It’s my best chance so far,” replied Charlie, honestly.
“Some of the letters are personal.”
“Letters!”
“I told you, Father kept a lot of stuff. Letters that Simon wrote when he got posted abroad. And before.”
Now it was Charlie who hesitated, and when he spoke he did so slowly, not wanting to lose the chance. “Sir Matthew, I have what could be leads to whoever murdered your brother. But I don’t know how to follow them. How, in fact, to take this investigation very much further. What you have, of your brother’s, might show me.”
“Then you must see it all,” agreed Norrington, at once. “Now?”
“Let’s talk a little more,” said Charlie. There had to be something in what was promised: by the sheer law of
