Soldier No More

complete and almost recognisable pieces; then the breeze shivered them, and lifted them, and finally broke them up, drifting them away across the field.

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Willis put his pipe back in his pocket. 'Maybe I should be a little bit frightened, instead of merely obedient—and very grateful he didn't order me to chew it up and swallow it instead. It would have been most uncommonly indigestible.'

Whatever there had been between them, it was wind-blown ashes now, and all that could be recovered from it was whether or not it had served its purpose, decided Roche philosophically. It would have been nice to know more, but it didn't really matter apart from that.

Willis looked at him again. 'Very well, then—I think your last meaningful question was 'Did I know David Audley quite well?' And the answer to that is 'Yes, as well as anyone did, and probably better than most'—and certainly a lot better than Nigel Audley ever did, although that's not saying much, in all conscience—so, yes is the answer to that one, David Roche.'

So the paper had been the right key, and doubly the right key, if they were right about Audley—

'This time we must know what we are about, Roche,' said Clinton. 'Because some fool, whoever it was, went at it bald-headed last time, in '49—you're right. . .' He nodded at Sir Eustace.

'Yes ...' Sir Eustace accepted the nod and passed it on to Roche. 'Bad psychology . . . and probably bad timing too—

too soon after the war. Too many scars not properly healed, dummy5

most likely.'

'I don't know about that,' St. John Latimer demurred. 'He didn't have a bad war.'

Clinton looked at Latimer without speaking, and for a moment his eloquent silence monopolised the debate.

'What I mean is, by the time he got into it, we were winning

—' Latimer plunged forward again '—and in any case that's not quite the received wisdom, according to Forbes at Cambridge—the war-weary hero explanation. What Archie Forbes seems to think is that he had other fish to fry at the time, that's all.'

'His academic work, of course,' agreed Sir Eustace, whose attitude towards the Clinton-Latimer cold war appeared to be one of indifference, if not ignorance. 'He had a research fellowship of some sort, didn't he?'

'He did, yes—a minor one.' Latimer sniffed.

'And that was the fish, Oliver, was it?'

Latimer scowled. 'Forbes wasn't too sure about that. The truth is, so far as I can make out, they regarded Audley himself as a bit of a queer fish.'

'Queer?' Sir Eustace raised an eyebrow.

'I don't mean queer—' Latimer waved a pudgy hand irritably

'—the one thing you can't accuse the fellow of is being queer.

I mean odd—'

'Eccentric?'

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'Not that either. . .' Latimer's scowl deepened as he searched in vain for the word he wanted.

Sir Eustace examined the file in front of him. 'Well, there's nothing out of the ordinary here . . . certainly not down to

'49 ... nothing at all.'

Latimer nodded. 'That's right. There's nothing strange at all.

And maybe that's what's so strange, I don't know . . . But they didn't like him, anyway. Or they didn't trust him, might be more accurate. And no one seems to know why, not even Archie Forbes, who was his tutor and supervisor.'

'And our talent scout,' murmured Sir Eustace. 'Which is why they didn't elect him to a fellowship after the research grant ran out, I take it, Oliver?'

'That's the way it seems to have been.' Latimer's face wrinkled with distaste. 'But the precise reason why . . .

eludes me still, I'm afraid.'

Evidently, the fact that Audley was arrogant, selfish, indisciplined, bloody-minded, ruthless and cunning—not to mention generally tricky, in summation—did not count in St.

John Latimer's estimation of the reckoning of any collection of Cambridge dons, as debarring Audley from election to a college fellowship. There was some other bar, but he did not know what it was.

'You don't happen to have a nice fellowship in your gift by any chance, Eustace?' The distaste was still etched into Latimer's face, if anything even deeper.

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'For Audley?'

'Uh-huh.' And that of course was the reason for the Latimer expression—soliciting a plum for a man he detested. Or maybe envied would be more accurate? 'I suppose Oxford would do as well. He'd probably turn his nose up at a redbrick place.' Latimer flicked a glance at Roche.

'You think that might interest him?'

Latimer scratched his head. 'It might. But after having been turned down once ... I don't know, I just don't know . . . but with this fellow I can't believe it'll be as easy as that.' He looked directly at Roche. 'And I wish I