What made it more odd was that he really knew nothing about this girl, who was in some sense part of his work. He had been much better informed about other girls who had been permitted to slice ham and cucumber on his kitchen table, and who had certainly not been connected with important matters. And that had been due more to personal inclination than professional precaution. Not that it had helped much, he reflected. Perhaps his passion for information had ended by inhibiting other varieties of passion.
At least such considerations did not complicate this relationship.
Audley stopped with his hand halfway into the cutlery drawer as an idea welled up in his mind. He observed her out of the corner of his eye. That Steerforth face of hers was not so apparent now, but it was there all the same, undeniably there. To use her was against the rules, but in certain circumstances that face might have its uses.
Jones wouldn't like it, but Jones didn't have to know: this was between father, real father, and daughter. And if Stocker and the others didn't like it either, they would still be mightily impressed with his unexpected expertise with young women. So to hell with all of them!
The only drawback was that he would have to tell her at least some of his hypothesis. But then it was only a hypothesis, as yet little more than a hunch without real evidence and totally without any key information.
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He dismissed the possibility that she was not what she seemed. The time factor, the logic of her presence and his own instinct ruled it out. But he interrogated her gently throughout their kitchen table supper nevertheless–three glasses of wine had just sufficiently loosened her tongue and restored her confidence.
At least she was satisfactorily ordinary–the very blueprint of an educated middle-class female. High school, Young Farmers' Club forsaken as she moved leftwards to Bristol University and CND.
Then gently rightwards again as she worked for a diploma in education, and so to teaching at a custom-built comprehensive.
Except that she taught physics and chemistry–he was careful not to show unemancipated surprise–and had no steady male admirers.
'Shouldn't you be teaching now?'
But of course they had a huge half-term at state schools, and she had compassionate leave into the bargain.
'What were you doing at Blackwell's?'
'Blackwell's?'
'You bought a book on Dakotas there.'
'I went to a commem ball there–at Oxford, I mean.'
The ball had not been a success. 'I don't mind men making passes.
But he took it for granted.'
Audley nodded sagely. 'Wouldn't have happened at Cambridge. I mean, it wouldn't have been taken for granted.'
She smiled at that, and Audley judged the ice to be sufficiently melted. It was time to get her interested.
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'Miss Jones, you want to know about your father–you want to know what he did, in fact. And the answer is that we really don't know. All I can do is to tell you what we think he did. Perhaps you'll be able to help us a little in return. Would you be willing to do that?'
She looked at him uncertainly. 'I don't see how I can help you. I don't remember him–I only know what Grandmother told me.'
'No matter. Anyway, I take it she told you what was supposed to have happened–lost at sea, and all that?'
She nodded. That story would have lost nothing in Grandmother's retelling.
'Well, there were certain people who were very interested in the whereabouts of your father's plane at the time. Presumably because of what it was thought to be carrying.'
'The crew—' she began. 'The two who pestered my mother—'
'Forget about the crew for the moment. These people weren't crew members. One of them was a Belgian and the others were Russians.'
'Russians?'
'Your father was flying regularly to Berlin, twice a week often.
That was when we were just setting up the four-power allied control commission there. His squadron was on a freight run. But there was also a great deal of what you might call private enterprise on that run too. You could get just about anything in Germany in those days if you had cigarettes to trade with, and there were a lot of valuable things about with temporary owners.
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Your father was very well-placed to transport the merchandise.'
'You mean he was in the–what did they call it?–the black market?'
She spoke coldly, almost contemptuously.
Audley sipped his coffee. 'You shouldn't think too badly of him for it, actually. It's a rather modern idea, not letting the winners plunder the losers blind. There were a lot of chaps doing it.'
'My step-father didn't do it.'
Jones was evidently on a pedestal.
'No, I don't believe he did. But your father was in it up to the neck, and one day he seems to have picked up
