'You have to! Look, I've given this a lot of thought. Whoever is running this show has closed all the doors against you. Good God, don't you realise that what happened in Helsinki means that someone knew what I'd been doing almost before I did it. I made a couple of telephone calls, I met you in Calais — and it's as if we carried placards announcing our intentions.' Shelley's voice was urgent and afraid. 'It's time to face the truth. There's nothing we can do. We can't keep anything hidden from them. Sooner or later, they're going to get tired of us, like buzzing flies, then — splat! You, me — families…' Shelley's voice tailed off.
Massinger patted the young man's knee roughly, and said in a low voice: 'Even if I did, how could I make them believe me?' He felt almost as if Aubrey could hear every word he spoke. Yet Margaret remained the light at the end of the tunnel. She would see him, come back to him, let him come back.
'It's easy!' Shelley said quickly. Massinger recognised that the conspiracy was agreed between them. 'You have to convince them that you're interested in the truth of this—' His finger tapped the newspaper. Aubrey's face stared at them. Shelley's damp fingertip became smudged with print from the picture and the headline — The meaning of treason? Shelley rubbed his finger on his denims. 'Don't remain in hiding — don't just skulk here. Go to Babbington, even, and ask him all about this. Ask to talk to this man living in Guernsey who's quoted here — what's his name, Murdoch? Convince them that all you're interested in, all you've ever wanted to discover, is whether or not Aubrey murdered Castleford. If you can do that, you can walk away from this mess.' Shelley's voice ended on a low, seductive note.
Massinger knew it would work. Babbington would accept it, and so would Margaret. The Sunday Times had opened a route to the border of the wild country in which he had found himself. He could be across that border by nightfall; safe.
'And the traitor?' Massinger murmured.
'Forget him.'
'But we know he exists!' Massinger began.
'And we can do nothing!' Shelley snapped at him. 'We have to stay alive. I want to stay alive, anyway. So do you, I suspect.'
'But—'
'You don't know where to begin. You have nothing to offer, no influence, no power, no knowledge, and no leverage. You can't even protect yourself. Give it up!'
He could be dining with his wife that evening. He could be holding her in his arms within a matter of hours.
Safe. The route to the border was open. Safe—
'And you?' he asked.
'I'll ring this man in Guernsey — on your behalf. A halfhearted final gesture, for form's sake. Then I can go back to the office with a clean sheet.' Two spots of shame had appeared on Shelley's cheeks, but it was evident that he was determined. He had abandoned Aubrey and was already learning to live with the amputation of a small part of his conscience. 'As for you,' he added, 'why not go and see one or two of these people I've dug up who were in Berlin in '46? It will make for conviction, mm?' Shelley picked up some sheets of paper from the coffee-table. 'Yes, why not? See one or two of them, and then you call Babbington. Ask to see him — seem to want to be convinced. Sound as if you want to believe everything you read in the papers.' Shelley's forced jocularity was evidently acted. He was assuming his new role, and Massinger desperately wanted to do the same. 'When you've spoken to Babbington, all you have to do is convince him that you're satisfied. Aubrey killed Castleford. They have to be made to believe that you beheve it. Who knows — perhaps the old man did, in a fit of passion—?'
'Don't be stupid!'
'Sorry.'
There was a very long, strained silence. Massinger suspended all thought, almost ceased to breathe. Cross the border, he told himself again and again.
'Very well,' he said eventually. 'It's the only way. I agree.'
As Shelley sighed with relief, Massinger encountered an image of Aubrey's old and shrunken form in silhouette at the end of a long, poorly-lit corridor, abandoned and alone. Massinger clenched his fists and turned his thoughts forcibly to his wife.
It is ludicrous, Aubrey told himself, that I should be providing my interrogator, just as he is at his most dangerous, with a roast pheasant Sunday lunch accompanied by a bottle of good claret. He watched Eldon squash a portion of peas onto his fork and raise them to his lips before he refilled the man's glass from the silver-necked ship's decanter. Aubrey watched his own hand intently as the wine mounted in Eldon's glass. It was steady. He had absorbed the shock of the Insight article long before Eldon had telephoned and been invited to lunch. Mrs Grey considered their dining together an act of madness or heresy, but had prepared one of her best lunches, with apple tart to follow. Aubrey had needed the normality of the occasion, false though it was, to assist the drama of casual indifference and easy denial that he knew he would have to perform for Eldon.
Within himself, controlled but evident, the turmoil of an approaching crisis brewed like a tropical storm. The subject of Clara Elsenreith had arisen, and Aubrey knew they would be looking for her. He also knew that he had to get to her first, at whatever risk.
'She seems to have quite disappeared,' Eldon was saying. 'Ah, thank you, Sir Kenneth. As I said, an excellent claret.'
'I'm sure you regard it as a great pity that I have not continued the liaison until the present day,' Aubrey remarked. He sliced neatly at the thigh of the pheasant, placing the meat delicately between his lips. He was well into the role, and was confident he could play it to the end of the interview; despite his increasing weariness, his growing desperation, and the new and sudden fear that he had to make a move. The journal that Clara had kept for him for thirty-five years must be destroyed. Now, it could well constitute the last link in the chain they would use to bind him. They felt they had a motive now menage a trois, he thought with disgust — and his confession to Castleford's murder was in the hands of the woman in the case. Find her and they would find his confession.
Eldon's eyes studied Aubrey. He smiled thinly. 'At least, Sir Kenneth, you admit the liaison itself.'
'Of course. Murdoch was not the only one to know of it.'
'And this woman was Castleford's mistress, too?'
Aubrey's face narrowed as he pursed his lips. 'She was not.'
'But—' Eldon's fork indicated the room, which somewhere contained the newspaper article and Murdoch's assertions.
'Murdoch assumed the fact.'
'As did others?'
'Naturally.'
Eldon's brow creased. 'I wonder why that should be,' he mused.
'Because Castleford's reputation in such matters was well-known. Because he — actively pursued Clara Elsenreith.'
'You had, then, no cause for sexual jealousy? You were, in fact, the victor, the possessor of the lady's favours and affection?' Eldon's tone was light, sarcastic, stinging. The slighting of the affair, of the woman in the case, was quite deliberate.
'I was,' Aubrey replied levelly.
'We shall have to ask the lady for corroboration.'
'When you find her,' Aubrey remarked incautiously.
'Is there any reason you should hope we do not?' Eldon asked sharply, laying down his knife and fork.
Aubrey shook his head, sipped his claret. 'None whatsoever.'
'You have no idea where she can be found?'
'As I indicated — the lady belongs very much to an earlier part of my life. An episode I thought long closed,' Aubrey added with unpretended bitterness. 'I have no idea where you might find her.' An elegant apartment opposite the Stephansdom, above a smart shoe shop, his memory confessed, almost as if he had spoken the words aloud. He sipped at the claret again. He could clearly envisage, without concentrating, the rooms of the apartment, much of the furniture and many of the ornaments, the decoration of the drawing-room and the guest bedroom where he had occasionally slept. Clara owned the lease of the shop below the apartment. It sold shoes produced by the small companies in which she had an interest in France and Italy.
