Our man in Camelot

Besides, David refuses to discuss him until you're present. It's just that if we don't get a move on he'll have eaten all the cucumber sandwiches. He was getting through them at a fearful rate when I heard your car the second time—'

It wasn't the moment to catch Shirley's eye, Mosby decided. Not because she might burst into hysterical laughter, but because she might see her own doubts reflected in his face. Dropped in a steaming Asian jungle full of communist insurgents he knew exactly what he ought to do, the Fort Dobson training had seen to that; and she was no doubt ready at a moment's notice to mingle unobtrusively with the Saturday Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

housewives of Novosibirsk. But the Fort Dobson familiarisation instructors had failed signally to prepare them for cucumber sandwiches in the Cotswolds with Sir Someone, in pursuit of the Once and Future King.

Which, to be fair to Fort Dobson, was hardly surprising.

They followed Handforth-Jones into the house. Nothing surprising there, anyway: well-heeled upper middle class English, still rubbing along in English-style comfort despite swingeing taxes, fast depreciating investments and the envious eyes of their new Trade Union masters. Rugs, maybe Persian, on the oak floorboards; pictures, maybe original, on the walls; delicate china on delicate furniture.

The only thing out of place here was Handforth-Jones himself, clumping along in his heavy boots with the dog at his heels, both equally oblivious of their surroundings.

But that only served to remind Mosby of what Audley had said of the man, half admiringly, half warningly, entirely without rancour: a sharp fellow, Handforth-Jones, a great raiser of funds for his archaeological projects; a sharp fellow who, wearying of raising money, had solved his problems permanently by marrying it ('David, that's a gross, slander! It was true love'—'I didn't say it wasn't my dear'—'I mean Margaret, not her money'—'And I mean Margaret and her money. The two are not mutually exclusive'); above all, a sharp fellow who could add two and two and therefore must not be supplied with enough facts now to make that addition.

They passed through an arched door, down an antique-timbered passage towards another door, with the tinkls of teacups beyond…

And Sir Somebody beyond, too.

Like the man said, the Fort Dobson man, the jungle, the desert, the sea, you fight 'em and they'll beat you every time. So Lesson One is— you don't fight 'em.

But the Fort Dobson man had never come down in the Cotswolds.

Handforth-Jones held the second door open for them, and over Shirley's shoulder Mosby caught sight of David Audley popping the last fragment of a sandwich into his mouth. There was something about the action—maybe it was the way Audley examined his fingers in search of stray crumbs— that suggested it was also the last sandwich. But then with the relative sizes of Audley and the genteel English sandwich that figured.

Faith Audley rose from the chair beside which her husband stood, relief at their arrival plain on her face.

'You made it!' she exclaimed.

'In the end we did,' Shirley admitted.

'Margaret—' Faith turned to a dark-haired replica of herself who had also risen at their entrance '—

Captain and Mrs Sheldon—Shirley and Mosby—'

Lesson One in Cotswold survival had to be Good Manners, but it took every last bit of his willpower to keep his eyes on his hostess and not on the mountainous figure standing behind her. It would have been easier if she'd been outstanding in some way, or at least different from his preconceived idea of what this setting ought to produce. But it was like she'd been designed to blend into the scenery.

Shake hands and murmur-murmur.

'I don't believe you've met Sir Thomas Gracey,' she said at last.

Blessed relief: he could look at the mountain at last.

Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

'No,' said Mosby. That was for sure, because once seen, never forgotten. 'I don't believe we have.'

'Thomas is the new Master-designate of the King's College at Oxford,' said Faith helpfully.

Of course he was: Mosby held on to reality with the convulsive grip of a drowning man. The ringers here were only Audley and Shirley and himself, the three who looked like what they said they were, but weren't. Or were something else very different first and last. Dr Anthony Handforth-Jones only looked like a migrant worker, and Sir Thomas Gracey only looked like he'd stepped out of the pages of Raymond Chandler.

'Hi,' said Shirley, smiling up at an angle of sixty degrees, offering her small hand to be engulfed by Sir Thomas's hairy paw.

It only made things worse: Velma was meeting Moose Mulloy for the first time.

Moose Mulloy shook him by the hand in turn.

'Captain—' the grip was firm and gentle '—or should it be 'doctor'? When I was over in the States at UCLA I had the misfortune to fall into the hands of some of your colleagues, and I recall that American protocol says 'doctor'.'

If there was a sting there, then the smile removed it. True, it was rather like being smiled at by a gorilla, and yet it was oddly attractive and as gentle as the handshake.

'Doctor or Captain or mister—but for choice Mosby will do… They took you for a bundle, eh?'

'They did very good work.' The large head moved in a curious circular motion which was neither positive nor negative, but which was somehow expressive of qualified gratitude.

'They would. They're the best, if you like their sort of thing.'