had decided to get Gilliatt out of the way quickly. Gilliatt and his own father seemed impossibly distant figures, unreal beside Kohl and Menschler and others that Goessler might unearth, given time. If he could arrange to see Gilliatt — hire a car and drive down and back in a day — listen to the old man, thank him and walk out of his life, so much to the good.
A soldier paused near him, looking with exaggerated suspicion at his bags. McBride smiled, edged them closer to him with his foot. The soldier — who appeared sixteen behind his straggly fair moustache, acne belying his manhood — nodded, and moved on, the 7.62 SLR over the crook of his arm looking modern and plastic and completely, unnervingly deadly. McBride watched him move on. The guns on the belts of German policemen had become familiar but this — because a rifle and carried by a soldier
Gilliatt's number was supplied by the enquiries operator. McBride scribbled it on the back of the folded letter from which he had supplied the address — outside Sturminster Newton in Dorset. His Michelin map had indicated on the plane that he could drive there and back in a day.
He dialled.
Emerald Necklace, he thought, grinning helplessly as if he had been given an expensive, long-desired present. It was in his hand now, in his hand. The phone went on ringing for a long time, and then it was picked up.
'Yes?' A woman's voice, and he was instantly aware that the voice was weary of answering the telephone; someone expecting the same wrong-number call for the tenth time.
'Is that Sturminster Newton 8826- Peter Gilliatt's home?'
He'd had better transatlantic calls. A long pause, then: 'It is.'
'My name is McBride—'
'Michael McBride?' the woman asked. 'No, I'm sorry — Thomas McBride, you're his son, aren't you?'
'Yes — to whom am I speaking?'
'Peter Gilliatt's daughter.' 'Hello — is your father available to talk to me?'
'I'm afraid he isn't—'
'I see. When will I be able—'
'You don't see at all, Mr McBride. My father is dead — he died last week of a heart attack.'
CHAPTER FOUR
Western Approaches
Gilliatt's cottage was on the northern outskirts of the village of Sturminster Newton, beside the road to Marnhull. It was white and pretty and very English to McBride's eyes as he approached it, checked its name against the sign on the three-barred gate, and crunched up the gravel drive. The last roses round the trellised porch to the door were puckered with a slight overnight frost, but more than that they carried an overtone of mockery to McBride. As if, in some medieval woodcut, a skull grinned out of the heart of each flower.
Thatch, leaded windows, brass door-knocker. McBride, as he shook off the ironies of the cottage's appearance, almost expected Mrs Miniver to appear in the doorway. Instead, Gilliatt's daughter was small and neat and dark, and her face was wan, strained, without make-up. She gestured him inside without a greeting, and he noticed the wedding-ring on her hand. She was aware of his glance, and rubbed one hand with the other.
'I'm staying here for the moment, though I don't like it — since the break-in. Through there, please—' Rugs covered the flagstones of the hall. He ducked under an exposed beam, and went into the lounge which overlooked the garden behind the cottage. Dark wood panels, bright prints on the old, substantial furniture, french windows out onto the terrace.
He said, shocked awake: 'What break-in? When?'
He turned on her, even as she was gesturing him to sit down, and she flinched as if struck. She sat down, brushing her pleated skirt smooth, then plucking at the collar of her blouse. She was in her late thirties, McBride estimated, and normally a self-composed, assured woman. Worn down by grief? Or something else?
'It was last week — just after the funeral. I came down at the weekend to find his papers and stuff everywhere—' Her hand swept vaguely across her skirt, indicating the carpet. 'It — seemed more terrible because he was dead, can you understand?' He nodded. 'And so ridiculous here — my father had lived here for years, it couldn't be anyone from the district—' He wondered whether she was reassuring herself. 'I've stayed here this week — my husband's coming from Bristol on Friday.'
'You're frightened,' he said bluntly. 'Why?'
'I don't know—' She frowned, the broad clear forehead running into furrows, her small mouth pursing. 'Perhaps — puzzled, and that's become fear. Nothing was taken, you see. My father had a small collection of jade, and a few items of silver. I'd packed them away — but that wouldn't have stopped a thief, would it?' Her hands were fidgeting now, stabbing in emphasis, or lying irresolutely, unrestfully, on her lap. 'Anyway, I decided to stay — there were things to do, his solicitor in Sherborne—' She smiled, nervously. He sensed she had been happy here as a child and a young woman, and she wanted to absorb something of it, for the sake of the years ahead — but what had once been a good, if maudlin, idea was now making her nervous, afraid, and vulnerable.
'Why are you afraid — they won't come back. Burglary isn't like that—'
'I suppose not. It's just that—' She seemed to scrutinize him, as if to check her impulse to spill the whole story into his hands, make him share its oppressive weight. 'My father, last time I was here, when he wrote to you — was certain he was being watched — he said,
'Why did he write me?'
'He explained — didn't he?' She seemed to have little patience to talk about his concerns.
'He wrote me like a novelist — full of mystery—' He consciously employed his most disarming smile, and she responded slowly. He noticed her nose had reddened with the restrained tears. 'He said he had a visitor — did he?'
'I wasn't here that week—' In the way she spoke, there was something that made him not envy her husband. He was vying with a worshipped father who would now be beatified by memory. He hoped her husband in Bristol had learned to cope. 'But I believe my father. Someone came — he said
'What did he want to say to me, Mrs—?'
'Forbes,' she said simply, announcing something of minor significance. She talked of her father much as his own mother had talked of Michael McBride, and he wondered about two men so easily, casually capable of inspiring love.
'Mrs Forbes, your father's letter intrigued me, I have to admit. But it didn't tell me anything — do
As he asked, he was aware again of the break-in, and the fact that the jade and silver wasn't missing. She looked thoughtful.
'It was the work he and your father were involved in — in 1940, I think. He didn't talk much about the war, funnily enough — not until this happened.'
McBride realized his mouth must be open, and his eyes furiously active. She seemed frightened, as she might have been of a harmless but retarded person in the street, suddenly encountered.
'Papers — what about his papers? Were any missing?'
'I can't say — there was a mess, and I tidied it all into cardboard boxes, but I didn't know what was there.
Nothing of any importance, I'm sure. My father didn't hoard things, never kept a scrapbook, or took a lot of pictures, even when my mother was alive. He was always clearing out cupboards and drawers, throwing things
