The Crocus List

33

"I didn't identify all of them," Annette told George before he had even had time to order a drink; inevitably, they had met in one of his clubs. "Four are dead anyway, and there's five others I'm not certain about. One of them could be either of two people with the same name, but I've got twenty-two who are alive now unless they've died in the last year or so. How's that?"

"Brilliant. What are you drinking?"

"Anything." Then, remembering that such a careless attitude to alcohol offended George: '.'Gin and tonic, lemon, no ice. Can I go on?"

"May I see?" George read the St Louis list through carefully, feeling guilty that it took such a neat and thorough piece of paperwork to remind him of how competent a woman he had married. And he could guess at the amount of work it represented: it had been no simple skimming of Who's Who, since few businessmen enter those pearly gates without the visa of a knighthood, or at very least, a CBE or CMC. Only four had achieved such distinctions.

Somewhere on that list is Person Y, he thought, glaring at it as if he could make the name shuffle its feet with guilt. But at least there was a pattern: a Church connection (where it showed), a tendency to independence and running their own businesses, although not all were businessmen: one was a university lecturer, another a solicitor. But no Person Y.

Blast.

"What did you say?" Annette was suddenly anxious.

"Nothing, you've done a marvellous job… perhaps I can narrow it a bit further." Taking the ages, he thinnedthe list down to twelve men who were now around the fifty-year mark.

Their drinks arrived and George gobbled more or less silently for a while. Then he said carefully: "I have an American banker from the Midwest sending a signed photograph to an Englishwoman who was involved in the French Resistance. A picture of himself and some Briton, just the two. It's the Brit I want, and he's somewhere on that list. Where's the connection?"

"The American had an affair with the Englishwoman in the war."

"Typically feminine; you've all got pornographic minds. No, he spent the war in the Pacific."

"Then they had an affair after the war. If he's a banker he could afford a European holiday, I should think."

"That still doesn't tell us who the Brit is-and before you start, he's too old to be their love-child. Cleanse your thoughts and start again."

"What else do you know about your American?"

"Nothing much… he wrote a couple of books."

"What sort of books?"

"One was a polemic on banking practice, by the title, and the other was about the Red Menace. "

"What does your Englishwoman do-since the war?"

With a shiver at talking of Miss Tuckey in the present tense, George said: "Oh… gives lectures, writes books-"

"Writes books."

' "Everybody writes books, these days… " George let his voice trail away. Keyserlinghad been anti-Communist: Dorothy Tuckey's work on Resistance techniques-seen as a future need-were anti-Communist. So perhaps the photograph was one writer paying homage to another whom he admired? "It still doesn't tell us who the Brit was."

"Another banker? Or another author-no, there isn't one on the list… Or a publisher? There's one of them. Could that be the missing link?"

"Most publishers look like missing links… But no jumping to conclusions. First we have to know who published Miss… Library."

One advantage of London clubs is that at least the older ones maintain good libraries that stay open after the public ones are closed. Miss Tuckey's works had been rather specialised, however, so it was only in the third of George's haunts that they found a couple of her books. The earlier had been published by the Parados Press and printed by Arthur Fluke amp; Son, Worcester.

"By God," George whispered-the particular library had that leather-bound and unread atmosphere-"I do think we've found him."

According to Annette's notes, Julian Fluke from the CCOAC list had spent a couple of years with a London publisher before joining the family printing firm in Worcester, where he had soon started a small imprint of his own. The books had been marketed through a bigger publisher: that, George knew already, was not rare and even today needed relatively little capital-particularly when you owned a printing works already.

"Isn't Parados some sort of fort?" Annette murmured.

"It's a bit of a fort, the wall you build to stop yourself getting shot in the back. Ha!" Such a name was no coincidence. Parados had specialised in Resistance memoirs and some crusading religious works. But it had published no books since 1970. Shortly afterwards, Julian Fluke had left the family firm and gone to. work for HMSO Press, the government printing works in Edinburgh. The latest Whitaker's Almanack showed that he was now Deputy Controller, Classified Printing.

George shook his head in slow admiration. After the CCOAC conference there had been two years spent winding down Parados Press-which could have made Fluke too overtly an activist figure-then the retreat to Edinburgh and the gradual penetration of the government institution he would understand best. Now, just about every secret government paper that needed printing would pass under his nose. A true position of trust-and in one way, Fluke's loyalty ran deeper than anybody had guessed.