Here Be Monsters

Sir Peter nodded. 'He told me he'd see me right if I kept my mouth shut about his business.'

'And you could continue to date his daughter?' Audley cocked a knowing eye.

'That too,' agreed Sir Peter evenly. 'But if it didn't concern his business I'd better tell you what you wanted to know, or go and register at the nearest Labour Exchange.'

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'And not continue to date his daughter?' Audley matched agreements. 'I was rather depending on that to open you up.'

It was exactly as David Audley's wife always said - had said from their very first meeting: When David plays, if you want to play with him, you had better learn to play dirty. Because that's the way he plays!

Sir Peter looked as though he was beginning to remember how much he had once disliked Audley: the two men studied each other in silence, each estimating and re-estimating what they observed, each aware that the other had put on weight and muscle since 1958, but neither quite sure now who had the edge on the other if it came to trouble-making.

'Your new boss is that military fellow - Butler, is it?' Sir Peter changed the subject casually.

'Looks a bit stupid, but isn't, by all accounts?'

'That's right.' Audley accepted the change mildly. 'Right both times. Do you know him?'

'Not really. I knew old Sir Frederick much better.' Sir Peter smiled. 'And your economics fellow better still - Neville Macready… Do you see much of him?'

'As little as possible.' Audley returned the smile.

Elizabeth had been half-way to thinking the tortoise and the armadillo, but those two smiles amended the image. It was more like the elderly shark and the middle-aged tiger - and each was showing its teeth.

'A slightly surprising appointment, wasn't it?' The tiger tested the depth of the water with a provocative paw. 'Butler, I mean - ?'

'Very surprising, more like.' Audley nodded, but then looked away towards the unfinished line of books as though the subject was beginning to bore him. 'It should have been Oliver St John Latimer, if some bastard hadn't queered his pitch. He was the obvious choice.'

'Is that a fact?' Fascination got the better of Sir Peter. 'Was that Macready?'

'No-oo…' Audley pounced on a tattered paperback. ' Europe and the Czechs! That's a very early Penguin!' He handled the antique paperback reverently. 'Macready hates Latimer, but it certainly wasn't Mac.'

'No?' Sir Peter echoed the rejection of his first candidate doubtfully.

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'No.' Audley replaced the fragile heirloom. 'That was one of your '58 library. I remember now. And as you never throw books out there should be a copy of If Hitler Comes somewhere along here - ' Audley moved further along' - ah!'

Elizabeth began to understand the nature of the exchange. If Sir Peter Barrie knew so much about the byzantine internal politics of the department then he was not just name-dropping to warn Audley of his influence in high places. For, if he knew that much, he must also know that Audley himself had been the other front runner - indeed, the odds-on favourite, if Paul's assessment had been correct. So that 'slightly surprising appointment'

guess had been cruelly barbed.

Audley looked up. 'Come on, Peter!'

Sir Peter frowned. 'It can't have been that RAF fellow - the one who married the Ryle woman, after Ryle divorced her - ?'

'Hugh? Good God, no!' Audley grunted contemptuously. 'But I didn't mean that, my dear chap… it was me, of course, if you must know - I was the bastard - I can't abide the egregious Oliver, so I put in the boot much the same way as you did with old Haddock. Or maybe not in exactly the same way. But I did queer his pitch sufficiently. And Jack Butler is my daughter's godfather, you know - ' He gave the tiger a huge shark-grin ' - or perhaps you didn't know? But it doesn't matter anyway, because that isn't what I mean.' The shark-grin vanished. 'What I meant was for you to stop pissing around, Peter, and start telling our Miss Loftus about your eternal triangle - you and old Haddock and the fair Philadelphia, eh?'

Elizabeth just caught the dying glow of the flash of hate, beyond that old unforgotten dislike, which momentarily illuminated Sir Peter's face, as she turned towards him. Or was it pain - it was gone so quickly that she couldn't be sure.

'The fair Delphi - ' Delphi' , was it?' Audley's voice came from outside her range of vision, casually seeking confirmation on the surface, but evil with certainty underneath. 'They both worshipped at the same shrine, Elizabeth. So they both asked for an answer from the Delphic oracle: 'Who loves me?' - Philadelphia Marsh, only and beloved daughter of Abe Marsh, ci- devant Abraham Marx, no relative of either Karl or Groucho or Spencer.'

Whatever it had been, it was pain now.

'But they each received an equivocal answer.' Audley only continued when it was evident that Sir Peter had nothing to say. 'Only… Haddock was a classicist, so he knew that when the oracle at Delphi said 'No', that didn't necessarily mean the same thing. But poor old Peter Barrie wasn't a classicist, so he thought 'Yes' meant 'Yes'.'

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' No!' Interrogation would never have wrung that pain from the man, not with the whole of Xenophon's green-and-gold tower beneath him, thought Elizabeth. And Audley hadn't tried to interrogate him.

'That was the way it was.' Audley knew when he was on a winner. 'They were both after the same girl. And Haddock won.' He paused, but not long enough to allow any objection.