The Ways of the World (11 page)

‘Looks pretty empty … to me, sir,’ Benson panted.

‘I’ll just make sure.’ Max embarked on a careful inspection of the desk, wardrobe, chest of drawers and bedside cabinet. It revealed nothing. He crouched down for a view under the bed and saw only dust and what might have been mouse droppings. He did not know what he was looking for, of course, nor if there was anything to be looked for. But he knew his father to be cautious, if not secretive, by nature, despite the ample evidence of his recent recklessness. It would not have surprised Max to discover that the old man had hidden something there. It was becoming clear he had hidden a great deal about his life of late.

Max was himself no stranger to hiding things. It had been a valuable skill in the camp. Rising to his feet, he remembered the
role of bunk-posts in concealing material from the guards. Surreptitiously sawing off the top of the posts supporting the prisoners’ bunks and hollowing out their interiors created a space in which all manner of articles could be stashed. Max recalled mentioning this when recounting some of his POW experiences to his father during their dinner at the Ritz.

The bed in Sir Henry’s room had stout brass posts topped with umbrella-shaped finials. Max was standing close to one of the posts at the head of the bed. He grasped the finial and gave it a speculative twist. There was brief resistance, then it began to unscrew.

‘You certainly do believe in making sure, sir,’ said Benson.

‘May as well, while I’m here.’ Max completed the unscrewing and lifted the finial off. He peered into the hollow post and saw nothing, though it was too dark to be sure. ‘You don’t have a torch, do you?’ he asked.

‘Not on me, sir. I’d have to go back downstairs to fetch one.’

‘Would it be too much trouble?’

Benson gave a put-upon sigh. ‘I suppose not. You’d better come with me.’

‘If you insist.’

Benson frowned. ‘Oh well, perhaps it’d be all right if you just waited here. I’ll be as quick as I can.’

‘Thanks.’

Benson set off and Max tossed the finial down on the bed. He lit a cigarette and wondered how long the sergeant would be. He strongly suspected he had sent him on a pointless journey. There was surely nothing to be found. He sat down on the bed.

The depression of the mattress caused the finial to roll off the coverlet and fall to the floor with a clunk. Max bent forward to pick it up. Then he stopped.

Lying next to the toppled finial was a small brass key. It had been dislodged from some crevice inside the finial by the impact. Max seized it at once and glanced guiltily round at the open doorway. But there was no one watching him.

The warding on the bit of the key suggested it fitted a Yale lock or similar. It was surprisingly heavy as it rested in Max’s hand. It did not rest there for long.

Benson found Max sitting on the bed, smoking a second cigarette, when he returned, his arrival announced from some way off by his heavy tread and heavier breathing. Max thanked him for putting himself out. Armed with the torch Benson had brought, he took a look inside all four bedposts. They were all empty.

Max added further thanks as they headed downstairs. He had no wish to linger now. He had got what he had come for. True, a key was of little use if you did not know where the lock was that it fitted. But Max backed himself to find that out, one way or another, sooner or later. If there was a key, there was a lock. If there was a lock, there was something worth locking away. And he was on the trail of it.

But leaving the Majestic was not to prove as straightforward as entering it. On the last half-landing before the lobby, they nearly collided with a bulky figure hurrying up the stairs. It was Appleby.

‘I gather you’ve been taking my name in vain, Mr Maxted.’ Appleby’s basilisk stare revealed a colder, harder side to the man than he had chosen to display the day before. ‘Did you find what you were looking for?’

‘I didn’t find anything.’

‘That’s right, sir,’ said Benson.

Appleby ignored the sergeant’s intervention and went on staring at Max. ‘I think you and I need to have a word.’

APPLEBY HAD A
small office in the basement of the hotel, guarded by a gorgonian secretary. He appeared to have bolted a breakfast in order to intercept Max: an egg-smeared plate and a half-drunk cup of tea stood beside two telephones on his desk. A large map of Paris, sporting a patchy forest of red-headed drawing-pins, dominated one wall. Sallow light seeped in through frosted windows set near the ceiling, along with blurred impressions of the feet and legs of passing pedestrians in the street outside.

Benson had been sent on his way with a flea in his ear, leaving Max to plead his case for himself. Appleby had left him to stew while he spoke to his secretary, then he had returned, closing the door of the office firmly behind him.

‘I’ll ask you again, Mr Maxted,’ Appleby began, slumping down in his chair. ‘Did you find what you were looking for?’

‘As I’ve already told you,’ Max replied, smiling casually at Appleby across his desk, ‘I didn’t find anything.’

‘Using my name to gain access to your father’s room suggests to me you had a compelling reason for going there.’

‘I wanted to establish nothing belonging to my father had been left behind.’

‘Did you have any reason to think it had?’

‘No.’

‘Then why the subterfuge?’

‘I didn’t want to bother you. I felt sure you’d have agreed to my request if I’d put it to you.’

‘You didn’t want to bother me? How very considerate. It won’t
do, Mr Maxted, it really won’t. You tricked Sergeant Benson into leaving you alone, presumably in order to remove whatever it was you knew to be hidden in the room without being observed.’

‘It was no trick. I asked him to fetch a torch so I could look inside the bedposts.’

‘And he, credulous idiot that he is, trotted off in search of one. Bedposts, my aunt Fanny. It was obviously a blind.’

How ironic, Max thought, that he should be credited with such deviousness, when the bedpost was indeed where the key had been concealed. ‘If you’re right, Appleby, I have this … hidden object … somewhere on my person. Do you want to search me?’ He felt secure in the bluff. He could reasonably claim personal ownership of the key. Appleby would know no better.

‘That won’t be necessary.’ Appleby took out his pipe and laboriously filled it, while looking at Max with fixed studiousness. ‘What’s this all about, Mr Maxted?’ he enquired at last.

‘Are you a police officer, Appleby? Nobody ever seems to mention your rank.’

‘I’m not a Scotland Yard man, if that’s what you mean. I have no official rank. Why do you ask?’

‘I’d just like to know who’s interrogating me.’

‘No one is,’ Appleby sighed. ‘This is a conversation. Believe me, if it were an interrogation, you’d notice the difference. Now, are you going to tell me why you came here this morning?’

‘Are you going to tell me why you’re making no effort to find my father’s murderer?’

Max had expected the question to ruffle Appleby. But it had no discernible effect. ‘What makes you think he was murdered, Mr Maxted?’

‘The same things that make you think it, I should imagine. It was the blood beneath his fingernails that first caught my attention.’

‘There was no blood.’

‘Yes, there was. Why else would the nails be so severely cut? Then I noticed the broken skylight at eight Rue du Verger. Broken from the inside. I’m not sure what that means, but it doesn’t fit Zamaron’s theory and I’m not surprised. A few words with Spataro convinced me he’s lying. As I’m sure you know, Madame
Dombreux was lured away the night my father died. That alone proves there was a plot of some kind.’

Appleby puffed thoughtfully at his pipe. ‘I believe we only have Madame Dombreux’s word for her visit to Nantes.’

‘And her sister’s, if you cared to ask.’

‘Blood’s thicker than water. You know how it is.’

‘I know how you seem determined to make it appear. It won’t wash. Not with me.’

‘But with your brother?’

‘Ashley wants no breath of scandal. To me the scandal is allowing our father’s murder to be written off as an accident.’

‘A laudable attitude. But consider the national interest for a moment, as I’m sure your father would have done. The peace conference is at a delicate stage. Progress towards a treaty is far too slow. And bad news keeps coming in. This revolution in Hungary, for instance. God knows what the implications are. The Prime Minister is trying to speed things along as best he can, but to do that he has to win over both the French and the Americans. No easy task. And it certainly won’t be helped by publicity being given to Sir Henry’s relationship with Madame Dombreux. You’re aware she’s viewed with suspicion by the French authorities?’

‘Because of her late husband’s activities in Russia? Yes. I’m aware of it.’

‘Ah. You two had a regular heart-to-heart, then. There’s nothing more deceptive than candour, of course. You should bear that in mind.’

‘I will.’

‘An attractive woman, Madame Dombreux. There’s no denying it. Eyes you could drown in. I imagine a good few men have besides your father and her late husband.’

‘Do you really know anything about her?’

‘I know my French colleagues believe she may have been a party to Dombreux’s dealings with the Bolsheviks.’

‘How could she have been? She was living here in Paris at the time. They’d separated.’

‘Ah, but how long had Dombreux been working for the Reds? That’s the question. And might the Dombreux’ marital problems
merely have been a ploy to garner the Cheka a spy in Paris to add to the one they already had in Petrograd?’

‘That’s absurd.’

‘Maybe, maybe not. Either way, it makes Madame Dombreux a spectacularly poor choice of mistress for a British diplomat. Some might go so far as to suggest it calls his own loyalties into question.’

Before Max could fashion a retort, there was a knock at the door. Appleby barked out a ‘Come in’ and Max turned to see a thin, grey-suited man of apologetic demeanour enter the room. Bespectacled, with centre-parted hair and a complexion matching his suit, he was so lacking in presence as to be almost absent.

‘Mr Norris,’ Appleby greeted him. ‘Meet Mr Maxted.’

‘My condolences in respect of your father,’ said Norris, offering Max a limp hand. ‘I, er, had the privilege of knowing him.’

‘Mr Norris oversaw Sir Henry’s work for the delegation,’ Appleby explained – unnecessarily, as it happened. ‘I thought his contribution to our discussion might be useful.’

Ye Gods, thought Max, how could his father have tolerated answering to this wet week of a man?

‘I’m not exactly sure what I can tell you,’ Norris said hesitantly.

‘Tell him what Sir Henry did, man,’ growled Appleby.

‘Of course, of course. Well, his role here was invaluable, I can assure you, although perhaps … by some yardsticks … peripheral. That’s by no means unusual. We’ve assembled a wealth of knowledge and expertise here for the Prime Minister and his senior advisers to call upon. Inevitably, some of that … knowledge and expertise … is required only rarely … though crucial when the need arises.’

‘You’re saying my father spent most of his time twiddling his thumbs?’

‘No, no, not at all.’ Norris appeared disconcerted by Max’s directness. ‘He was in regular contact with the Brazilian delegation.’

‘In particular a Senhor Ribeiro?’

‘Yes. Ribeiro. How did—’

‘My father mentioned him. They knew each another from Rio.’

‘Ah, yes. Sir Henry … spent some years in Brazil. Hence his selection … as a special adviser.’

‘What’s the Brazilians’ biggest bone of contention, Mr Norris?’ Appleby asked in a tone that suggested he knew the answer and found it paltry, but felt it needed spelling out nonetheless.

‘Well, the principal difficulty in which we have an interest revolves around settling the fate of forty-three German merchant ships detained in Brazilian ports when Brazil declared war on Germany in … October 1917. Actually, they were detained earlier than that, but … the timing isn’t strictly relevant.’

‘Indeed not,’ murmured Appleby.

‘Well,’ Norris bumbled on, ‘the Brazilians claim ownership of the vessels, thirty of which they’ve since leased to France, but we feel, as do the French, that they should ultimately be allocated amongst the allies in proportion to the amount of merchant shipping each ally lost during the war, a calculation which would leave Brazil with far fewer than forty-three. A complication is that by leasing some of the vessels France could be deemed to have acknowledged that they belong to Brazil, something we obviously don’t accept.’

‘And what was Sir Henry doing about this?’ Appleby asked wearily.

‘Essentially, his task was to monitor the strength of Brazilian feeling on the issue and the success or otherwise of their efforts to win support for their cause, while seeking to persuade them to accept a compromise that would prevent the problem becoming an obstacle to the conclusion of an overall peace treaty. Seeking to formulate such a compromise involved him in discussions with the French, obviously, as well as the Americans, who see themselves to some degree as champions of their continental neighbours. They’ve already sided with them, for instance, over the question of the exchange rate to be applied to payments owing to various Brazilian coffee producers for consignments of coffee trapped in German-controlled ports in August 1914. The German mark has depreciated drastically since then, of course, hence—’

‘Thank you, Mr Norris,’ Appleby cut in. ‘We’ll leave the coffee question for another day. I can’t stand the stuff, so I’ve no
sympathy for anyone involved in the trade. Would it be true to say, in conclusion, that Sir Henry’s work for the delegation, though important in the narrow context you’ve described, was routine, normal and uncontroversial?’

‘Why … yes. Of course.’

‘I trust that’s clear, Mr Maxted?’

Max nodded. ‘Yes.’ So it was. Which proved nothing as far as he was concerned.

‘The Brazilian delegation is based at the Plaza Athénée in Avenue Montaigne,’ said Norris. ‘I’m sure Senhor Ribeiro … as an old friend of your father’s … would be pleased to make your acquaintance, Mr Maxted.’