‘Come in,’ I said with surprise: he rarely visited the flat, and was seldom in London at week-ends. ‘Like some lunch? The restaurant downstairs is quite good.’
‘Perhaps. In a minute.’ He took off his overcoat and gloves and accepted some whisky. There was something unsettled in his manner, a ruffling of the smooth urbane exterior, a suggestion of a troubled frown in the high domed forehead.
‘O.K.,’ I said. ‘Whit’s the matter?’
‘Er… I’ve just driven up from Aynsford. No traffic at all, for once. Such a lovely morning, I thought the drive would be… oh damn it,’ he finished explosively, putting down his glass with a bang. ‘To get it over quickly… Jenny telephoned from Athens last night. She’s met some man there. She asked me to tell you she wants a divorce.’
‘Oh,’ I said. How like her, I thought, to get Charles to wield the axe. Practical Jenny, eager for a new fire, hacking away the dead wood. And if some of the wood was still alive, too bad.
‘I must say,’ said Charles, relaxing, ‘you make a thorough job of it.’
‘Of what?’
‘Of not caring what happens to you.’
‘I do care.’
‘No one would suspect it,’ he sighed. ‘When I tell you your wife wants to divorce you, you just say, “Oh.” When that happened,’ he nodded to my arm, ‘the first thing you said to me afterwards when I arrived full of sorrow and sympathy was, if I remember correctly, and I do, “Cheer up, Charles. I had a good run for my money.” ’
‘Well, so I did.’ Always, from my earliest childhood, I had instinctively shied away from too much sympathy. I didn’t want it. I distrusted it. It made you soft inside, and an illegitimate child couldn’t afford to be soft. One might weep at school, and one’s spirit would never recover from so dire a disgrace. So the poverty and the sniggers, and later the lost wife and the smashed career had to be passed off with a shrug, and what one really felt about it had to be locked up tightly inside, out of view. Silly, really, but there it was.
We lunched companionably together downstairs, discussing in civilised tones the mechanics of divorce. Jenny, it appeared, did not want me to use the justified grounds of desertion: I, she said, should ‘arrange things’ instead. I must know how to do it, working for the agency. Charles was apologetic: Jenny’s prospective husband was in the Diplomatic Service like Tony, and would prefer her not to be the guilty party.
Had I, Charles enquired delicately, already been… er… unfaithful to Jenny? No, I replied, watching him light his cigar, I was afraid I hadn’t. For much of the time, owing to one thing and another, I hadn’t felt well enough. That, he agreed with amusement, was a reasonable excuse.
I indicated that I would fix things as Jenny wanted, because it didn’t affect my future like it did hers. She would be grateful, Charles said. I thought she would very likely take it for granted, knowing her.
When there was little else to say on that subject, we switched to Kraye. I asked Charles if he had seen him again during the week.
‘Yes, I was going to tell you. I had lunch with him in the Club on Thursday. Quite accidentally. We both just happened to be there alone.’
‘That’s where you met him first, in your club?’
‘That’s right. Of course he thanked me for the week-end, and so on. Talked about the quartz. Very interesting collection, he said. But not a murmur about the St Luke’s Stone. I would have liked to have asked him straight out, just to see his reaction.’ He tapped off the ash, smiling. ‘I did mention you, though, in passing, and he switched on all the charm and said you had been extremely insulting to him and his wife, but that of course you hadn’t spoiled his enjoyment. Very nasty, I thought it. He was causing bad trouble for you. Or at least, he intended to.’
‘Yes,’ I said cheerfully. ‘But I did insult him, and I also spied on him. Anything he says of me is fully merited.’ I told Charles how I had taken the photographs, and all that I had discovered or guessed during the past week. His cigar went out. He looked stunned.
‘Well, you wanted me to, didn’t you?’ I said. ‘You started it. What did you expect?’
‘It’s only that I had almost forgotten… this is what you used to be like, always. Determined. Ruthless, even.’ He smiled. ‘My game for convalescence has turned out better than I expected.’
‘God help your other patients,’ I said, ‘if Kraye is standard medicine.’
We walked along the road towards where Charles had left his car. He was going straight home again.
I said, ‘I hope that in spite of the divorce I shall see something of you? I should be sorry not to. As your ex- son-in-law, I can hardly come to Aynsford any more.’
He looked startled. ‘I’ll be annoyed if you don’t, Sid. Jenny will be living all round the world, like Jill. Come to Aynsford whenever you want.’
‘Thank you,’ I said. I meant it, and it sounded like it.
He stood beside his car, looking down at me from his straight six feet.
‘Jenny,’ he said casually, ‘is a fool.’
I shook my head. Jenny was no fool. Jenny knew what she needed, and it wasn’t me.
When I went into the office (on time) the following morning, the girl on the switchboard caught me and said Radnor wanted me straight away.
‘Good morning,’ he said. ‘I’ve just had Lord Hagbourne on the telephone telling me it’s time we got results and that he can’t go to Seabury today because his car is being serviced. Before you explode, Sid… I told him that you would take him down there now, at once, in your own car. So get a move on.’
I grinned. ‘I bet he didn’t like that.’
‘He couldn’t think of an excuse fast enough. Get round and collect him before he comes up with one.’
‘Right.’
I made a quick detour up to the Racing Section where Dolly was adjusting her lipstick. No cross-over blouse today. A disappointment.
I told her where I was going, and asked if I could use Chico.
‘Help yourself,’ she said resignedly. ‘If you can get a word in edgeways. He’s along in Accounts arguing with Jones-boy.’
Chico, however, listened attentively and repeated what I had asked him. ‘I’m to find out exactly what mistakes the Clerk of the Course at Dunstable made, and make sure that they and nothing else were the cause of the course losing money.’
‘That’s right. And dig out the file on Andrews and the case you were working on when I got shot.’
‘But that’s all dead,’ he protested, ‘the file’s down in records in the basement.’
‘Send Jones-boy down for it,’ I suggested, grinning. ‘It’s probably only a coincidence, but there is something I want to check. I’ll do it tomorrow morning. O.K.?’
‘If you say so, chum.’
Back at my flat, I filled up with Extra and made all speed round to Beauchamp Place. Lord Hagbourne, with a civil but cool good morning, lowered himself into the passenger seat, and we set off for Seabury. It took him about a quarter of an hour to get over having been manoeuvred into something he didn’t want to do, but at the end of that time he sighed and moved in his seat, and offered me a cigarette.
‘No, thank you, sir. I don’t smoke.’
‘You don’t mind if I do?’ He took one out.
‘Of course not.’
‘This is a nice car,’ he remarked, looking round.
‘It’s nearly three years old now. I bought it the last season I was riding. It’s the best I’ve ever had, I think.’
‘I must say,’ he said inoffensively, ‘that you manage extremely well. I wouldn’t have thought that you could drive a car like this with only one effective hand.’
‘Its power makes it easier, actually. I took it across Europe last Spring… good roads, there.’
We talked on about cars and holidays, then about theatres and books, and he seemed for once quite human. The subject of Seabury we carefully by-passed. I wanted to get him down there in a good mood; the arguments, if any, could take place on the way back; and it seemed as if he was of the same mind.
The state of Seabury’s track reduced him to silent gloom. We walked down to the burnt piece with Captain Oxon, who was bearing himself stiffly and being pointedly polite. I thought he was a fool: he should have fallen on the Senior Steward and begged for instant help.
