A Prospect of Vengeance

the time.'

'Isn't it?' Ian didn't look at Audley: he watched Mitchell apply his thumbs to the two catches on the case, still concentrating on him. 'What was she like?'

'She was quite a girl — quite a woman.' Audley annexed the question gently, but firmly. 'But we didn't kill Philip Masson, Mr Robinson. I didn't give the order — and Dr Mitchell didn't carry out the order I didn't give.'

All the same, Audley was frowning: Audley was frowning, and Mitchell was working on the contents of the case — the bits of dull metal, which clicked and screwed and snapped together, as they had been carefully turned and crafted to do

— the bits (which were worse than useless by themselves: just bits of metal) became the usual things, custom-built and delicate and ugly: a long-barrelled rifle, slender and deadly.

'But you're quite right: she was something special.'

Audley saw that he was losing, and raised the stakes accordingly. 'But how the devil do you know that? You never met her — did you?' He shook his head. 'No! You couldn't have done.'

Mitchell had completed his work. It was designed to be completed quickly, and he knew his job.

'No.' He lifted the completed thing up, and squinted through dummy2

the telescopic-sight which had been its last attachment, staring first up into the sky, and then away across the valley, towards the railway station. 'I'll never hit anything with this

— not at any sort of range, with the first shot.' He took another squint, and then selected a little screwdriver from the case and made an adjustment. 'I ought to have a couple of sighting-shots, at five-hundred, and a thousand.' He looked up suddenly, and smiled at Jenny. 'But you can't have everything, can you?' He lowered the rifle, resting it carefully on his thigh, and picked out a long steel-nosed, brass-jacketed bullet from a compartment in the case, and opened the breach and snapped the bullet home. Then he set the rifle down and stood up.

'I was the one who was to blame, actually,' said Audley. 'At Thornervaulx.'

'But I was the one who should have got the bullet.' Mitchell examined the valley carefully, from the far-off white blue of the village, round the deceptive roll of the cornland between to where the track curved towards them. 'So it all adds up to the same thing, really.' He looked at Reg Buller suddenly.

'You were quite right, Mr Buller: if I'd thought of it ... then I might just have done it, at that!'

'No, you wouldn't have done: you're not that stupid,' snapped Audley.

'Aren't I?' Mitchell's mouth twisted.

'Yes.' Audley looked from Mitchell to Jenny, and then at Ian.

And then back to Jenny. 'We were working for Fred Clinton dummy2

then, Miss Fielding. And he had a rule — a very strict rule.

And Sir Jack has the same rule. It's what you might call our

'Rule of Engagement', from the Falklands War — ? Although it goes back much further: it goes back to Lord Mansfield giving judgement in the case of Eurdett v. Abbot, in 1812.'

'Uh-huh . . . Burdett v. Abbot — ' Mitchell swung towards Audley ' — you know, David, I never have been able to trace that exact case — not even though Jack Butler's so fond of quoting it at us, at regular intervals ... I asked a clever girl I know who works for the Law Society to trace it for me . . .

and she couldn't. So, maybe Fred just made it up — to annoy us?'

Ian stirred. 'What did — what was Lord Mansfield supposed to have said — ? In the case of 'Burdett versus Abbot', Dr Audley?'

'Oh, it's quite simple, my dear fellow!' Mitchell annexed the question quickly. 'It's all to do with what you can do — and what you can't do — if you've taken the Queen's Shilling, as David and I have . . . Which puts us in quite impossible situations, of course — '

'But 'if you don't like the heat in the kitchen' — then you add that, Mr Robinson, eh?' Audley relaxed. 'No one ordered you to visit the battlefield of Salamanca, did they? You came here of your own free will, I take it?'

What were they both driving at? 'But we haven't taken the . . . the 'Queen's Shilling', Dr Audley.' Their own old rule dummy2

drove Jenny to defend Ian. 'We're just . . . journalists.'

'Doesn't make any difference, Miss Fielding.' A similar rule brought Paul Mitchell back. 'Not to you — not to Peter Wright, or Clive Ponting — or even to Kim Philby: whatever we are, or whatever we do, the same rule applies, according to Chief Justice Mansfield: ' It is therefore highly important that the mistake should be corrected which supposes that an Englishman, by taking on the additional character of a soldier — ' (but it doesn't matter what additional character you put on: soldier, or journalist, rat-catcher) ' — puts off any of the rights and duties of an Englishman' . So how about that, then?'

Jenny thought, suddenly . . . 1812! Because now they were here, on the top of the Greater Arapile, where the Duke of Wellington had also ruled, on a military truth, in 1812, while Chief Justice Mansfield had ruled on this other legal truth.

'That's the second 'hard-saying',' murmured Audley. 'Fred Clinton and Jack Butler, and St Matthew and Lord Mansfield . . . they all put us on our mettle.'

'Yes.' Mitchell was staring past him. 'And now Paddy MacManus is about to put us on our mettle, I rather think —

what can you see through those field-glasses of yours, Ian?'

He pointed into the great open sweep of the valley. 'What car is that — ?'