A Prospect of Vengeance

wherever it was . . . Daddy says it should have been a VC, anyway.' She turned the nod into a shake, and then returned the shake to Ian. 'It was only because Jack didn't get himself killed there that they gave him a Military Cross, Daddy says.'

She came back to Mitchell. 'But, of course, you must know that, seeing as you work for him.'

She had the poor devil on her toasting fork now, thought Ian.

Sir Jack Butler might not have been quite as heroic as that, long ago, any more than he was 'charming' now, after having been so dull only yesterday (any more, too, than his three daughters might be 'enchanting' and — least likely of all —

that those legal advisers were 'adorable'). But, when all her calculated exaggerations had been stripped away, Mitchell remained spiked on the facts which he must know were accurate, and on the real possibility that her father knew Butler, even if she didn't.

'I do?' Mitchell had managed to get rid of the wreckage of his original smile. 'Do I?'

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'And, of course, that really answers our question, darling.'

Jenny gave Ian a brief nod. 'Jack wouldn't want anything nasty . . .' She trailed off as she turned back to Mitchell. 'But, then again, it doesn't quite . . . does it?'

In place of the smile, Mitchell's face was stamped with caution. 'It doesn't?'

'Mmmm . . .' Jenny eyed him thoughtfully. 'You are all rather elusive and mysterious, of course — in R & D . . . But, then, that's what you're paid to be, so one can't really quarrel with that, can one? Daddy said not, anyway.' She smiled at Mitchell as she turned the toasting fork, with one side of him nicely browned. 'I really wanted to talk to Oliver, you see —

Jack's No. 2 ... I told you, didn't I, Ian darling — Oliver St John Latimer?'

' Ahh — ' With his mouth already open, that was the only sound Ian could manage before she re-engaged Mitchell.

'But positively the only person connected with R & D I could track down was Willy Arkenshaw. And that was more by good luck than good management — in the chocolate shop at Harrods actually, buying a little birthday present for Oliver, would you believe it?' By the second she was becoming more and more her own most-despised self ('The Honourable Jennifer Fielding-ffulke, the well-known author, chatting with Mr Ian Robinson, and Mr Paul Mitchell' , as The Tatler might caption her). 'And Willy's only a camp-follower, really . . . You remember Tom Arkenshaw, Ian darling — who was such a sweetie in '85 — ?'

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'Yes.' This time he was ready for her: the very mention of

'Arkenshaw', which was a uniquely-memorable name, had already alerted him. And the occasion itself had been memorable too, when Sir Thomas Arkenshaw, baronet, had descended on the embattled embassy in Beirut like the wrath of God: it had been Sir Thomas who had first made contact with Major Asad . . . It had been Sir Thomas, thought the Major, who had been instrumental in saving Jenny, not so much from a fate worse than death, as from death itself, which was the only truly-worst fate of all! 'But — he was R

& D — ?' The answer seemed to beg the question.

'No, darling — not then.' She rounded on Mitchell, almost accusingly. 'Jack's only just recruited Tom, hasn't he, Paul

— ?'

'What?' Mitchell wasn't nearly as ready. 'Tom — ?'

'Oh, come on! Now it's my turn!' Jenny had dropped enough names (which were probably all she had; but which she thought ought to be enough, evidently). 'I'll bet you were at Willy's wedding — weren't you, Paul?'

'Yes?' Suddenly Mitchell was certain. 'But you weren't.'

'No. We were both out of the country at the time, as it happens.' The sharpness of the reply betrayed what was left unsaid; which was not so much pure Fielding-ffulke snobbishness as Jenny Fielding's stock-in-trade, which required her to be present, and seen-to-be-present, on such occasions, when useful old contacts could be renewed, and dummy2

future contacts established. 'But. . . never mind Tom.

Because Willy Arkenshaw — Willy Groot, as she was . . .

Willy and I go back ages, my dear man. We were finished together, by the celebrated Madame de la Bruyere, the dragon-lady of Geneva, more years ago than either of us would care to admit now.'

Mitchell wilted slightly under this further avalanche of name-dropping — to Jack and Oliver, add Tom and Willy and Madame de la Bruyere. But then he looked mutinously at Ian. 'Yes ... I suppose you would know Tom Arkenshaw, at that! In Lebanon, that would have been?'

That was another worrying straw-in-the-wind of British Intelligence inefficiency, thought Ian: Mitchell's homework had included Beirut, but it was homework only half-done if Tom Arkenshaw now worked for R & D but hadn't been consulted about his memories of Fielding-ffulke & Robinson.

And that deplorable omission intruded into his own attempts to put faces to names: Tom he could remember well-enough (although not as well as Major Asad); but Jack and Oliver —

and Willy (if he'd been invited to her wedding with Sir Thomas it was news to him!) — they were on the dark side of the Moon . . . unlike Mrs Simmonds, and Gary Redwood and Mrs Champeney-Smythe, and Father John —