The Human Factor (23 page)

‘What did you say?' C whispered.

‘QED,' Doctor Percival replied.

2

‘What exactly did you mean by QED?' Sir John Hargreaves asked when they managed to get outside.

‘It seemed a more suitable response to what the Rector was saying than Amen.'

They walked after that in a near silence towards the Travellers Club. By a mute consent the Travellers seemed a spot more suited for lunch that day than the Reform – Davis had become an honorary traveller by this voyage of his into unexplored regions and he certainly had lost his claim to one man one vote.

‘I don't remember when I last attended a funeral,' Doctor Percival said. ‘An old great-aunt, I think, more than fifteen years ago. A rather stiff ceremony, isn't it?'

‘1 used to enjoy funerals in Africa. Lots of music – even if the only instruments were pots and pans and empty sardine tins. They made one think that death after all might be a lot of fun. Who was the girl I saw crying?'

‘Davis's secretary. Her name is Cynthia. Apparently he was in love with her.'

‘A lot of that goes on, I suppose. It's inevitable in an outfit like ours. Daintry checked on her thoroughly, I suppose?'

‘Oh yes, yes. In fact – quite unconsciously – she gave us some useful information – you remember that business at the Zoo.'

‘The Zoo?'

‘When Davis . . .'

‘Oh yes, I remember now.'

As usual at the week-end, the club was almost empty. They would have begun lunch – it was an almost automatic reflex – with smoked trout, but it was not available. Doctor Percival reluctantly accepted as a substitute smoked salmon. He said, ‘I wish I had known Davis better. I think I might have come to like him quite a lot.'

‘And yet you still believe he was the leak?'

‘He played the role of a rather simple man very cleverly. I admire cleverness – and courage too. He must have needed a lot of courage.'

‘In a wrong cause.'

‘John, John! You and I are not really in a position to talk about causes. We aren't Crusaders – we are in the wrong century. Saladin was long ago driven out of Jerusalem. Not that Jerusalem has gained much by that.'

‘All the same, Emmanuel . . . I can't admire treachery.'

‘Thirty years ago when I was a student I rather fancied myself as a kind of Communist. Now . . .? Who is the traitor – me or Davis? I really believed in internationalism, and now I'm fighting an underground war for nationalism.'

‘You've grown up, Emmanuel, that's all. What do you want to drink – claret or burgundy?'

‘Claret, if it's all the same to you.'

Sir John Hargreaves crouched in his chair and buried himself deep in the wine list. He looked unhappy – perhaps only because he couldn't make up his mind between St Émilion and Médoc. At last he made his decision and his order. ‘I sometimes wonder why you are with us, Emmanuel.'

‘You've just said it, I grew up. I don't think Communism will work – in the long run – any better than Christianity has done, and I'm not the Crusader type. Capitalism or Communism? Perhaps God is a Capitalist. I want to be on the side most likely to win during my lifetime. Don't look shocked, John. You think I'm a cynic, but I just don't want to waste a lot of time. The side that wins will be able to build the better hospitals, and give more to cancer research – when all this atomic nonsense is abandoned. In the meanwhile I enjoy the game we're all playing. Enjoy. Only enjoy. I don't pretend to be an enthusiast for God or Marx. Beware of people who believe. They aren't reliable players. All the same one grows to like a good player on the other side of the board – it increases the fun.'

‘Even if he's a traitor?'

‘Oh, traitor – that's an old-fashioned word, John. The player is as important as the game. I wouldn't enjoy the game with a bad player across the table.'

‘And yet . . . you did kill Davis? Or didn't you?'

‘He died of his liver, John. Read the post mortem.'

‘A happy coincidence?'

‘The marked card – you suggested it – turned up, you see – the oldest trick of all. Only he and I knew of my little fantasy about Porton.'

‘You should have waited till I came home. Did you discuss it with Daintry?'

‘You had left me in charge, John. When you feel the fish on the line you don't stand waiting on the bank for someone else to advise you what to do.'

‘This Château Talbot – does it seem to you quite up to the mark?'

‘It's excellent.'

‘I think they must have ruined my palate in Washington. All those dry martinis.' He tried his wine again. ‘Or else it's your fault. Does nothing ever worry you, Emmanuel?'

‘Well, yes, I am a little worried about the funeral service – you noticed they even had an organ – and then there's the interment. All that must cost a lot, and I don't suppose Davis left many pennies behind. Do you suppose that poor devil of a dentist has paid for it all – or did our friends from the East? That doesn't seem quite proper to me.'

‘Don't worry about that, Emmanuel. The office will pay. We don't have to account for secret funds.' Hargreaves pushed his glass on one side. He said, ‘This Talbot doesn't taste to me like '71.'

‘I was taken aback myself, John, by Davis's quick reaction. I'd calculated his weight exactly and I gave him what I thought would be less than lethal. You see, aflatoxin had never been tested before on a human being, and I wanted to be sure in case of a sudden emergency that we gave the right dose. Perhaps his liver was in a bad way already.'

‘How did you give it to him?'

‘I dropped in for a drink and he gave me some hideous whisky which he called a White Walker. The flavour was quite enough to drown the aflatoxin.'

‘I can only pray you got the right fish,' Sir John Hargreaves said.

3

Daintry turned gloomily into St James's Street, and as he passed White's on the way to his flat a voice hailed him from the steps. He looked up from the gutter in which his thoughts had lain. He recognized the face, but he couldn't for the moment put a name to it, nor even remember in what circumstances he had seen it before. Boffin occurred to him. Buffer?

‘Got any Maltesers, old man?'

Then the scene of their encounter came back to him with a sense of embarrassment.

‘What about a spot of lunch, Colonel?'

Buffy was the absurd name. Of course, the fellow must certainly possess another, but Daintry had never learnt it. He said, ‘I'm sorry. I've got lunch waiting for me at home.' This was not exactly a lie. He had put out a tin of sardines before he went to Hanover Square, and there remained some bread and cheese from yesterday's lunch.

‘Come and have a drink then. Meals at home can always wait,' Buffy said, and Daintry could think of no excuse not to join him.

As it was still early only two people were in the bar. They seemed to know Buffy a thought too well, for they greeted him without enthusiasm. Buffy didn't seem to mind. He waved his hand in a wide gesture that included the barman. ‘This is the Colonel.' Both of them grunted at Daintry with weary politeness. ‘Never caught your name,' Buffy said, ‘at that shoot.'

‘I never caught yours.'

‘We met,' Buffy explained, ‘at Hargreaves' place. The Colonel is one of the hush-hush boys. James Bond and all that.'

One of the two said, ‘I never could read those books by Ian.'

‘Too sexy for me,' the other one said. ‘Exaggerated. I like a good screw as much as the next man, but it's not all that important, is it? Not the way you do it, I mean.'

‘What'll you have?' Buffy asked.

‘A dry martini,' Colonel Daintry said, and, remembering his meeting with Doctor Percival, he added, ‘very dry.'

‘One large very dry, Joe, and one large pink. Really large, old chap. Don't be stingy.'

A deep silence fell over the little bar as though each one was thinking of something different – of a novel by Ian Fleming, of a shooting party, or a funeral. Buffy said, ‘The Colonel and I have a taste in common – Maltesers.'

One of the men emerged from his private thoughts and said, ‘Maltesers? I prefer Smarties.'

‘What the hell are Smarties, Dicky?'

‘Little chocolate things all different colours. They taste much the same, but, I don't know why, I prefer the red and yellow ones. I don't like the mauve.'

Buffy said, ‘I saw you coming down the street, Colonel. You seemed to be having quite a talk with yourself, if you don't mind my saying so. State secrets? Where were you off to?'

‘Only home,' Daintry said. ‘I live near here.'

‘You looked properly browned off. I said to myself, the country must be in serious trouble. The hush-hush boys know more than we do.'

‘I've come from a funeral.'

‘No one close, I hope?'

‘No. Someone from the office.'

‘Oh well, a funeral's always better to my mind than a wedding. I can't bear weddings. A funeral's final. A wedding – well, it's only an unfortunate stage to something else. I'd rather celebrate a divorce – but then that's often a stage too, to just another wedding. People get into the habit.'

‘Come off it, Buffy,' said Dicky, the man who liked Smarties, ‘you thought of it once yourself. We know all about that marriage bureau of yours. You were damned lucky to escape. Joe, give the Colonel another martini.'

Daintry, with a feeling of being lost among strangers, drank the first down. He said, like a man picking a sentence from a phrase book in a language he doesn't know, ‘I was at a wedding too. Not long ago.'

‘Hush-hush again? I mean, one of your lot?'

‘No. It was my daughter. She got married.'

‘Good God,' Buffy said, ‘I never thought you were one of those – I mean one of those married fellows.'

‘It doesn't necessarily follow,' Dicky said.

The third man, who had hardly spoken up till then, said, ‘You needn't be so damned superior, Buffy. I was one of those too once, though it seems the hell of a long time ago. As a matter of fact it was my wife who introduced Dicky to Smarties. You remember that afternoon, Dicky? We'd had a pretty gloomy lunch, because we sort of knew we were breaking up the old home. Then she said, “Smarties”, just like that, “Smarties” . . . I don't know why. I suppose she thought we had to talk about something. She was a great one for appearances.'

‘I can't say I do remember, Willie. Smarties seem to me to date back a long time in my life. Thought I'd discovered them for myself. Give the Colonel another dry, Joe.'

‘No, if you don't mind . . . I've really got to get home.'

‘It's my turn,' the man called Dicky said. ‘Top up his glass, Joe. He's come from a funeral. He needs cheering up.'

‘I got used to funerals very early,' Daintry said to his own surprise after he had taken a swig of the third dry martini. He realized he was talking more freely than he usually did with strangers and most of the world to him were strangers. He would have liked to pay for a round himself, but of course it was their club. He felt very friendly towards them, but he remained – he was sure of it – in their eyes a stranger still. He wanted to interest them, but so many subjects were barred to him.

‘Why? Were there a lot of deaths in your family?' Dicky asked with alcoholic curiosity.

‘No, it wasn't exactly that,' Daintry said, his shyness drowning in the third martini. For some reason he remembered a country railway station where he had arrived with his platoon more than thirty years ago – the signs naming the place had all been removed after Dunkirk against a possible German invasion. It was as though once again he were delivering himself of a heavy pack, which he let drop resoundingly on the floor of White's. ‘You see,' he said, ‘my father was a clergyman, so I went to a lot of funerals when I was a child.'

‘I would never have guessed it,' Buffy said. ‘Thought you'd come from a military family – son of a general, the old regiment, and all that cock. Joe, my glass is crying to be refilled. But, of course, when you come to think of it, your father being a clergyman does explain quite a lot.'

‘What does it explain?' Dicky asked. For some reason he seemed to be annoyed and in the mood to question everything. ‘The Maltesers?'

‘No, no, the Maltesers are a different story. I can't tell you about them now. It would take too long. What I meant was the Colonel belongs to the hush-hush boys, and so in a way does a clergyman, when you come to think of it . . . You know, the secrets of the confessional and all that, they are in the hush-hush business too.'

‘My father wasn't a Roman Catholic. He wasn't even High Church. He was a naval chaplain. In the first war.'

‘The first war,' said the morose man called Willie who had once been married, ‘was the one between Cain and Abel.' He made his statement flatly as though he wanted to close an unnecessary conversation.

‘Willie's father was a clergyman too,' Buffy explained. ‘A big shot. A bishop against a naval chaplain. Trumps.'

‘My father was in the Battle of Jutland,' Daintry told them. He didn't mean to challenge anyone, to set up Jutland against a bishopric. It was just another memory which had returned.

‘As a non-combatant, though. That hardly counts, does it?' Buffy said. ‘Not against Cain and Abel.'

‘You don't look all that old,' Dicky said. He spoke with an air of suspicion, sucking at his glass.