Armistice (25 page)

Jonathan wasn't there. Jones, she could tell, wanted to ask questions—he had already heard something of what had
happened in the court. She implored him to telephone to Jonathan's apartment. There was no answer. But that didn't mean that Jonathan wasn't at home; he might have just been refusing to answer.

“Oh Jones …”

“What is it, miss? What's happened?”

“I've got to find him.”

For a moment she thought of sharing with Jones her fear that Jonathan might kill himself.

“Miss?”

“Nothing.”

“Go to his home,” suggested Jones. “I'll send word if he turns up. Telephone to me here.”

“But I haven't any more money for the taxi cab!”

“Money? Why didn't you say? Money we can do.”

She “borrowed” some cash from Jones and told the waiting taxi to take her to Jonathan's address. Once there, she leaned on the doorbell for what seemed like an age until a different concierge appeared and asked, through the glass entrance doors, for her to stop and proceed to the tradesman's entrance.

“I am not a tradesman!” she yelled, and demanded to know if Jonathan was at home. The concierge reluctantly rang up and got no reply. If Mr. Priest was in, he wasn't answering.

“I think he's in trouble,” she wailed through the glass, but the concierge only looked dubious and wouldn't admit her.

She had a vision of Jonathan in his apartment; a chair, a noose.

“Will you go and see if he's all right? Please. Please?” she
begged, again and again through the glass, until the concierge relented and went up to Jonathan's floor. He soon returned with the news that there was no answer so he'd taken the liberty of letting himself in. Mr. Priest wasn't at home.

“Where to now, miss?” asked the taxi driver, who had left his vehicle and stood a few feet off.

Philomena didn't know. She sat in the back of the cab, for a few moments completely at a loss. Then she told the driver to do a tour of all the places she knew Jonathan frequented. But the driver was sure that The Gates of Heaven would be shut at that time. She didn't know the name of the underground club. There were several piano bars, the indulgent taxi cab driver imagined, that had a dooshom on the wall. Determined to do something, anything, Philomena ordered him to drive back to Jonathan's chambers, but Jones still had heard nothing. Back in the taxi, she slumped in her seat. The cabbie asked her if she wanted to look anywhere else, adding, sympathetically, that you could look for someone forever in London and never find them. Philomena despaired. The cabbie smiled ruefully.

But there was one place left. She gave the cabbie the address and he drove off at speed, both of them grateful that there was something to do. When she looked in through the window of The Conduit Philomena gave a big sigh of relief because Jonathan was sitting there, calm as you please, tucking into lunch. She looked to the cabbie and they exchanged a thumbs-up.

Inside the cafe she cautiously approached Jonathan's table.
He seemed normal—no, not normal. When she neared him she could see it was an effort for him to look her in the eye and his appearance was terrible: pale, gaunt, agitated. Was he mad after all? Before she could sit he stuttered, “The th-thing is, Philomena, I'm no good.”

“What are you talking about?”

Their waitress came over. Philomena waved her away, then gestured to apologize that she hadn't meant to be rude.

“Me, that's what I'm talking about. I'm no good. I haven't played fair with you, or come clean. I've landed you in it. I've landed everyone in it.”

“Jonathan, what are you—”

“If you'd let me finish, I'll tell you,” said Jonathan. “There's two things. The first is that when the lights went in the club the other night it was me. I threw the switch. I saw you with him and I threw the switch to break you two up and I didn't care if anyone got hurt or worse. That's to show you how impetuous, wrong and selfish I can be. The second thing is this.”

She looked down to where Jonathan indicated. The pack of cards had appeared in his trembling hand as if by magic. One-handed he shuffled and cut them, spilling some. He remade the pack and attempted the maneuver again, this time succeeding. He did it again. And again.

“See that?” he said.

She was unsure where this was leading, but a lump of pain had appeared in her guts.

Taking the pack in both hands Jonathan performed another
impressive shuffle then dealt two hands onto the table. Two hands of three cards, face down.

“Turn the first card of each hand over.”

Philomena hesitated. She felt herself swaying on her feet.

“Go on,” said Jonathan, impatiently.

She reached down and turned the first card of the first hand. It was the king of hearts. Jonathan closely watched her.

“Turn the other first card,” he commanded.

It was the two of clubs.

“Now the second cards.”

She turned them, feeling a dizzying sense of impending catastrophe. The cards were the jack of hearts and the five of spades.

“Ring any bells?” asked Jonathan. “Go on, the last two. Or shall I tell you what they are? The ace of spades and the two of diamonds.”

Her mind raced. That's how the hands were in the card game.

“Correct,” said Jonathan, reading her face, “that's
exactly
how I dealt them.”

“
You
dealt the cards?”

“Somebody had to,” said Jonathan. He retrieved the hands and shuffled them into the pack, dealt the same hands again, this time face up.

“
You
dealt the cards?”

“I rigged the game,” said Jonathan. “I rigged it so that Dan would win. And I didn't tell him. And I should have. And look what happened. That's why I'm really no good. Perhaps
I
should be tried for Dan's death. I
should
be punished. I should receive my just deserts, shouldn't I?”

“
Shut
up,
shut
up,” said Philomena, through clenched teeth.

Jonathan obeyed. His head went down, as if awaiting the executioner's ax. Then Philomena was raining blows down on his head and shoulders, her fists as hard as she could possibly make them. He made no attempt to defend himself; she wished she held hammers. Blow after blow: “Hah! Hah! Hah! Hah!” Finally, “Aaaaaarrrrghhhh!” to the ceiling.

Deep breaths. Gulps. Cold fury.

“You idiot. You stupid idiot. You idiot, you idiot!”

Philomena stood over Jonathan, panting, glaring down. She turned on her heel and left him.

In a private room in his club Perceval Dore was studying the face of his son, Anthony, opposite him, waiting for the answer to the question he'd just asked.

“I couldn't tell you before because I didn't want to put a question mark over Priest. I didn't want to harm him. I deferred until it became impossible to ignore that he was slandering me, until I couldn't protect him any longer without harming myself.”

“What do you mean, protect him?”

“I thought the episode was concluded; it belonged only to that time and place. Until I discovered he'd repeated it, and it became clear that he's permanently unstable in his mind and in his emotions.” Anthony tried to confine all his twitches to those parts of his body beneath the table.

The elder Dore nodded in agreement. “And why didn't you tell me yourself? Why send James?”

“Major James investigated and dismissed the allegation, so I thought it best for him to inform you.”

Dore Senior didn't think that was a completely satisfactory answer. He was tempted to follow it up but in his mind he
knew the fuller answer and he was ashamed of it. His only surviving son knew that when he'd had two brothers, he was the least favorite. Thus he was disinclined, out of habit, to come to his father for help.

“So the girl is the dead man's fiancée, and Priest is his best friend, and now they're in cahoots,” said Perceval, summing up.

“That's how it seems,” agreed Anthony.

There was an interregnum caused by a waiter entering the room to fuss around the table, open a bottle of white wine, pour a taster, accepted; two glasses, the bottle in the ice bucket. He went out and as the door clicked softly Dore Senior asked his next question.

“You know Priest, obviously.”

Anthony sipped and swallowed, thankful to have something to occupy his hands.

“I'd met him briefly in the field, and we'd shared my hamper together the night before the battle. Suddenly he turned on me. I didn't know that you had any connection with him.”

“Any idea why he turned on you?”

“None. Whatever led him to make the allegation is all in his mind, poor fellow.”

“It's an extraordinary tale.”

“I can only agree,” said Anthony. “And it's been pretty difficult to live with.”

His father nodded, showing he understood the strain his son must have been under. Anthony grew overconfident and careless.

“I've sometimes wondered whether I received a knock on the head that I was unaware of and that it has given me amnesia and that there was a card game as Priest alleges.”

Wrong thing to say. His father's eyes had narrowed.

“Is that scenario possible?”

“No.” Anthony looked wounded. “You see,” he went on, “this is the real reason that I asked Major James to inform you of the situation. I feared that you'd be suspicious of me.”

“I'm not,” assured his father. “I don't believe you could have done what is alleged. I don't believe any civilized man could have. It's simply too fantastic.”

To confirm his belief in his son, Dore Senior offered his hand across the table, and Anthony made a show of accepting it. There, bond sealed, thought both. Man to man. Dore Senior replenished their glasses.

“I've previously thought that Priest was talented,” he said, “mercurial. Now I think that he must be unhinged. Mercurial men can fly too close to the sun. Priest had some sort of breakdown in court. He accused you out loud of murder.”

“In court?” gasped Anthony.

“Yes.”

“In
your
court?”

“Yes.”

“While it was
sitting
?” Anthony asked, imagining all the men who must have heard it.

“Yes. I declared it sub judice,” Perceval assured his son. “If anyone puts it about I'll put them away.”

“There will still be gossip,” said Anthony, his guilt suddenly
there, like a third guest at the table. So clear his father couldn't fail to see.

“Don't worry, Anthony. The law is with you. And a girl was in the gallery—I'm presuming she was the fiancée. Have you met her?”

“Yes, I have,” said Anthony. His ridiculous father couldn't see his obvious guilt. He suddenly despised him for being so gullible. “Another young woman approached me and it was from her that I learned about Philomena Bligh's activities,” he said, being clever with the truth.

“Who is the other young woman?” asked Perceval.

“She said she was called Felicity.”

“Could she be called as a witness?”

Suddenly Anthony didn't feel so clever.

“Do you think it will come to that?”

“I wish you'd told me earlier, as soon as it all happened. We could have quashed it once and for all.”

“As I said, I was concerned for Priest, rightly, as it turns out. He'll be in trouble now, won't he?” Anthony tried not to look pleased.

“Major James is coming to the house tonight,” said Perceval. “Can you join us? We can draw up a battle plan. He couldn't possibly tell me everything during recess. I need to question him properly. If we're going to deal with Priest I need to hear the whole story.”

“If he'll shut up, I'll still let him alone,” said Anthony, really not wanting the “whole story” to be given the chance to emerge.

“Priest's thrown down a gauntlet and you must pick it up in some way.”

“I'm prepared to be magnanimous,” Anthony said, trying to make that the final word.

“That's all very well,” replied his father, “but you must teach chaps like him a lesson.”

“I'd prefer not to have to
sue
him.”

“God, no. Everyone would hear of it. ‘Son of famous judge sues father's ex protégé over accusation of murder in war.' I don't think so, do you? And by the way, you must never repeat that idea that you may have amnesia over a card game.”

“I didn't mean it seriously!”

“Seriously or in jest, never mention it again, especially to a third party. Never,” warned Dore Senior, poking his finger at Anthony's chin.

In those last utterances and gesture Anthony heard the old tone. His father was utterly dissatisfied with him. Anthony tipped his wine and while he drank looked at the older man through the glass. This was one of those moments he hated his father with such intensity he felt he was liable to initiate a frenzied attack upon him. In this instance he could envisage leaning across the table, grasping his head, biting his face—he'd seize it between his teeth and tear chunks off it. He imagined his father blindly stumbling about the room, crashing into furniture, bleeding profusely from his wounds.

“You must never embellish or embroider in any way. You must stick to the briefest facts,” ordered his father.

“There are only brief facts,” said Anthony, making his voice
sound normal. “I took part in no such card game. I only wish Major Chiltern had survived to corroborate that Priest is making it all up.”

“If Chiltern were alive Priest wouldn't have made his allegation, would he? That would be stupid. His fabrication would be immediately obvious; we'd never have arrived where we are now. But he's got so much to lose; that's what I don't understand.”