Gunner Kelly

of the Rhine— we cracked a bottle of champagne over that, I do remember . . . In fact, that’s when we realised where he’d been at one stage, between campaigns— on one of the short war-time courses at the Staff College . . . Which shows that they’d got some sense— and that legged him up to Brigadier General Staff eventually, and finally Major-General as Second-in-Command, BAOR— missiles, and things, which he was quite bright enough to handle . . . But that would have been when Duntisbury Chase was pulling him away, with his retirement coming up— CBE, naturally . . . though we would have voted for a K— a knighthood . . . But then that never was Maxwell style: do your duty and keep a gentlemanly profile—’ fear God and honour the King‘— and make sure everyone below you is all right, that was his style . . . Also there was some family trouble— daughter and son-in-law killed in a smash somewhere. . . never met his wife, bit of an invalid— blissfully happy marriage though, they say . . . But there was this little granddaughter they were bringing up— something like that, anyway. . . . That’s all— I’m not going to pronounce on the manner of his passing, because that may conceivably become my business one day, and I shall reserve my views on that until then, just in case.

He handed back the full collection to the Special Branch man—or, dummy1

as he noticed when the man replaced them in the folder, perhaps not the full collection.

“Yes, there is more.” Colonel Butler had observed his glance at the folder. “There is the recollection from an aged general, whose GSO III he was, and a letter from a headmaster, on whose board of governors he served, who knew him well more recently, and a conversation in the Eight Bells which was taped ten days ago surreptitiously by a plain-clothes detective, not long after his death

—the local taxi-man talking to the local ne’er-do-well, with occasional mumblings from his retired groom, who could think back as far as his father and his uncle. But they all simply confirm what the judge said in their own different ways.”

Behedikt nodded. “He was a well-respected man.”

“More than that. Perhaps a glance at the first page of what the Vicar said at the funeral might help you. Andrew?” The Colonel paused. “Did you meet the Vicar on your tour, Captain?”

“No sir.”

“Aye . . . well, it’s too small to maintain a clergyman of its own now, the village. But it’s a Maxwell living, and the old General paid out of his own pocket for a retired priest to look after the parish.”

Most of you, who today fill this little church which he loved, in this place which he loved and shared with us, will have known our dear Squire too well for any words of mine to be necessary. Some of you grew up with him, and knew him as a boy and a young man; some dummy1

of you served with him in the war, and afterwards; some of you, the younger members of this congregation, were privileged to be his friends in his later years.

There are, however, a few who are here today in our midst in their official capacities, discharging their duties, to whom our Squire can only be a name, albeit an honoured one. It is to them that I say . . . that we who knew him are not here to mourn, but to give thanks for his life, which enriched ours, and to pray not only for him, but also— as he would have wished—for God’s mercy andforgiveness on those who must one day stand before the Judgement Seat to account for their actions—

“You don’t need any more. Except to know that he went on for another page about the perfection of God’s justice, and the imperfection of man’s, and the uselessness of bitterness and anger.

He’s a sharp old bird, is the Vicar, I rather suspect.”

Benedikt looked at him questioningly.

“He’s not in on it, but he might have sniffed trouble, is my guess,”

said Colonel Butler simply. “Because what they plan to do is to get the man who put the bomb in the old General’s car to Duntisbury Chase, and then deliver him to that Judgement Seat themselves.”

“You know this?” Benedikt felt a small twinge of anger. “You have known this all along—since the beginning?”

“I first heard about some of it a very short time ago. I learnt a bit more about it yesterday. Enough to go to your Major Herzner, who owes me a favour.” If the Colonel had noticed his anger, it didn’t dummy1

bother him. “But I haven’t been rock-hard certain until this evening, if that’s what you want to know, Captain.”

Suddenly there was no room for anger, there were too many questions in his head for that.

“Aye—” The Colonel forestalled him “—and now you’ll be asking why I didn’t go straight down to Duntisbury and ask Dr David Audley what the hell he’s playing at, eh?”

That—among other things—

“Instead of which I let you take your chance?” Butler shook his head. “I tell you one thing, Captain Schneider —whatever David Audley’s playing at, it won’t be murder. And it certainly won’t be acting as an accessory to a teenage slip of a girl and a bunch of farm labourers—least of all when he’s given someone his private promise that he’ll look after her. He’s a tricky blighter, if there ever was one, but that isn’t his style.” The grizzled head shook again. “You weren’t in any danger.”

Benedikt recalled the Wiesbaden Kommissar’s print-out on Audley: whatever his failings the man had an intuition for mischief like a bomb-sniffing dog for explosives.

“But someone is in danger, Colonel.” Obviously the Colonel trusted the man up to a point, but only up to a point. “Who was it who set the bomb under General Maxwell’s car?”