Now she'd never know what
thought Elizabeth, swearing silent words she'd never spoken aloud. Explain? Worry about? Pretend? Sleep in separate rooms? It wasn't fair to blame Aske, but the not-knowing was painful.
'Where the hell have you been?' snapped Paul, as though he too had left out some unspoken oaths.
'I'm not late—it isn't eleven yet,' protested Aske, looking from one to the other of them. 'And, anyway . . . apart from tucking the car out of sight . . . I've been looking around, just in case. Watching your back, in fact.'
'Hmmm . . .' Paul controlled the worst in himself. 'Well?'
'We seem to have slipped our followers, at least for the time being. And no one's going to steal our baggage, that's for sure.' Aske smiled at Elizabeth.
dummy3
'Why not?' asked Paul.
'Because it's parked behind a police car. Of which there are three in this vicinity. Perhaps they're expecting a smash-and-grab . . . Plain clothes, of course. But I can always smell a copper, they have an air of bored possession all of their own . . . But they'll serve to inhibit the opposition, if they do find the car.'
Paul regarded him with distaste. 'You still don't believe it could have been the French behind us?'
'More than ever, old boy.' Aske cocked an ear at faint sounds coming from behind the other door. 'If this stake-out is for us, then they already knew we were coming here, so there'd be no point in following us. Whereas those fellows who followed us so enthusiastically didn't know where—' this time it was the click of the door handle which cut him off finally.
The gaunt woman who had shown them into the ante-room reappeared, opened her mouth to address Paul, but then saw Aske.
'M'sieur—?' She looked from Aske to Paul.
'M'sieur is my . . .' Paul strangled on the admission '. . . my colleague.'
From the frigidity of their own welcome Elizabeth had already decided that the gaunt woman was the sort of secretary who regarded all strangers as intruders on her employer's privacy, and Humphrey Aske's standard nervous dummy3
smile had no melting effect on her suspicious expression. But she held the door open for them nevertheless.
Elizabeth led the way, only to find herself in another ante-room, identically book-lined, but with a table and chairs. On the far side of the table, framed in another doorway, stood a small plump man, almost a miniature man, whose high bald head rose out of puffs of white hair above his ears.
'Professor Belperron—it's very good of you to give us your time,' said Paul deferentially.
'Dr Mitchell?' The Professor glanced down at the card Paul had given to the secretary.
'Yes. And this is Miss Elizabeth Loftus, daughter of the late Commander Loftus VC . . . and . . . Mr Humphrey Aske, of London University.'
The little man acknowledged them one by one. 'Come this way, please.'
The study was twice the size of the ante-rooms, and had twice as many books, together with all the paraphernalia of learning overflowing an immense desk on to the floor: papers and periodicals and books full of marking slips and box-files
—Father's desk, in the high days of his writing, had been not unlike this, though on a much smaller scale. Behind the desk there was a high-backed chair, and in front of it were three ordinary chairs like those in the second ante-room, set precisely in a semi-circle as though waiting for them.
The little man walked round the desk, stepped on something dummy3
which increased his height by several inches, and climbed into his chair. Although she couldn't see them, Elizabeth imagined his little legs swinging in mid-air.
He indicated the three chairs. 'Please . . .'
They sat down.
'The King's College, Oxford.' He put Paul's card on his blotter. 'I knew the late Master.'
'Sir Geoffrey Hobson?'
'It was during the war, in Normandy in 1944.' The little man picked out one of several pairs of spectacles from a small tray on his desk. 'He was in command of an armoured regiment.'
He peered at Elizabeth through the spectacles, then selected another pair. 'Tilly-le-Bocage was the place, and he was
'Yes.' Paul leaned forward. 'Perhaps I should explain—'
'Please! The circumstances have been explained to me: there is a book almost completed, but now there is fresh material—
yes? And it is this material which has led you to Jean-Baptiste Suchet?'
'Yes.' Paul sat back. 'Or, to be more exact, our material concerns a party of British PoW escapers. Suchet interrogated them before they escaped, and he was still chasing them two months later, so it seems.'
Aske stirred. 'Which would make him either a superior dummy3
variety of policeman or an intelligence officer of some sort, we think.'
'No.' The Professor shook his head. 'At least, not in the Abwehr or Gestapo sense . . . He was a gallant
