“Why didn’t you come to us with this?” the colonel asked.
Freddie shifted in his seat. “Maybe because I didn’t see a whole lot of progress the last time I came to you.”
Colonel Gifford flicked through a file in front of him. “I have your original statement here, along with a note suggesting that your suspicions be brought to the attention of the police.”
“And were they? No one came to speak to me.”
“The police were alerted.”
“And will you alert them this time? Or do you want me to do it on my way out?”
Police headquarters in Valetta had recently been relocated from the Sacra Infermeria in Valetta to the conservatory.
“What I would like you to do,” said Gifford starchly, “is give us a moment alone.”
A moment proved to be about fifteen minutes, during which time Max and Freddie sat in strained silence in the entrance room under the watchful glare of Hodges, who grudgingly permitted them to smoke a cigarette. Freddie was summoned back into the office alone. He reappeared a short while later with one of the nameless men—the small, dark one of the pair.
“You can go in now, Major Chadwick,” the man said, escorting Freddie toward the door. Freddie managed to slip Max a reassuring look that said:
And it was, but only just.
Colonel Gifford fired off his opening salvo as Max lowered himself into the chair.
“You’re a bloody fool, Chadwick. What in God’s name possessed you to turn detective? If I had my way, I’d sling you out on your ear—I would—but Major Pace here has argued convincingly in your defense.” Max glanced at Elliott. “The last thing we need right now is any disruption to the Information Office. But let me be quite clear: I was against your appointment in the first place, and I want you to think of this as a reprieve rather than a pardon.”
Max was to put the matter from his mind and talk to no one about it, on pain of court-martial. Gifford wound up his speech with a peculiar flourish.
“We can’t all do everything,” or something like that.
“I’m sorry, sir, my Italian’s a little rusty.”
Max saw a whisper of a smile appear on Elliott’s lips.
“It’s Latin. Virgil. From the Eclogues.”
“It means, just stick to your bloody job, Chadwick.” This from the fourth man in the room, the one with ginger hair and lobster-pink skin. They were the first words he’d spoken, and his accent screamed high birth, summoning up images of Henley Royal Regatta and riding to hounds and tea on the lawn at the family pile in the country. His pale blue eyes were the color of thick ice, and possibly just as hard.
“Tell me about Lilian Flint,” he drawled, with an air of cold command.
Max was momentarily thrown by the question. “What’s there to tell? She’s the deputy editor of
“Well, you would know, given the amount of time you spend liaising with her.”
Max ignored the thinly veiled insinuation. “Yes, I suppose I’m better placed than most to make that judgment.”
“Her mother is in Italy, if I’m not mistaken.”
“That’s right. She was in Padua when Italy declared war. She was unable to make it home.”
“Home? I would have thought home was at her husband’s side.”
It wasn’t just the cold blue eyes, it was their steady, piercing scrutiny that was so unsettling.
“She’s not married.”
“As good as, though, wouldn’t you say?”
“I have no idea.”
“I believe he’s a professor of archaeology at the University of Padua.”
“I believe so.”
“And do you also believe it’s possible for a man to hold such a post at an Italian university if he isn’t in some way sympathetic to the regime?”
“I wouldn’t know.”
“Hazard a guess.”
Max generally burned a long fuse, but was struggling now to hold himself in check. He could see what was being done to him. He had boxed at Oxford; he had been on the receiving end of the irritating jabs designed to make you drop your guard and risk it all on a roundhouse.
“For what it’s worth,” he said icily, “I would stake my job, my reputation—my life, even—on Lilian’s loyalty.”
The ginger one seemed almost amused. “There’s really no need for such grandiloquence. Do you think for a
