The Old Vengeful

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THE OLD

VENGEFUL

ANTHONY PRICE

PROLOGUE:

Loftus of the Vengeful

"THERE'S NOTHING WRONG with funerals," said Audley.

"I met my wife at a funeral."

Mitchell studied the picture again. In the original newspaper it had been a good sharp reproduction, but the photo-copier hadn't improved it. "I hope the weather was better than it was for this one."

"It was bloody cold, as I recall—an east wind and an open churchyard." Audley peered over his shoulder. "Yes . . . they do seem a bit bedraggled, I must say. But that's because it's never been considered conducive to good order and military discipline to carry umbrellas into action—though I believe Sir Thomas Picton carried one at Waterloo, didn't he?"

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"Or naval discipline, in this case." Mitchell ran his eye down the line of officers. "Two captains, three admirals, and a flag-lieutenant—and the two-striper's the only dry one ... or half-dry, anyway."

Audley smiled evilly. "And that's only because he's holding an umbrella over the hero's daughter. Smart fellow! And the C-in-C looks rather unhappy, I do agree. But then he never did like Loftus— they were at Dartmouth together, and Loftus pipped him for the Sword-of-Honour, or something. . . although, to be fair, I don't think that was the whole reason."

Mitchell went down the line again, and on to the civilians.

They too were in the rain, and bare-headed as the bugler called them to attention, two bald as coots and three with their variously grey and white hair plastered to their scalps, but all wearing their medals proudly.

His eye was drawn to the other picture on the page, of the Vengeful burning furiously, with a list to port, but still spitting gunfire from her 4-inchers, and with a couple of mortally-wounded E-boats in foreground and background. It was a painting, and it had probably never been as dramatic as that, but the artist's untruth conveyed the truth of the battle, which was that the elderly ship had died well and not alone.

"Those old boys are the surviving Vengefuls, I take it?"

"'Vengefuls'?"

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"That's the term for the crew. Like 'Hampshires' and

'Norfolks'— and your 'Wessexes', David."

"Ah! We called our chaps 'Wesdragons' actually—because of our cap badge . . . but I take your point. And—yes, they are.

Plus two of the admirals, who were midshipmen at the time—

or one was a midshipman and the other a sublieutenant, to be exact."

That exactness cooled Mitchell's ardour somewhat: if there was anything the big man was, he was exact in his details; and if there was anything that he wasn't, he wasn't a fool.

All the same, facts were facts, so he had to gesture to the scatter of papers on the desk. "But I don't see that there's anything for us here—honestly, David."

Audley adjusted his spectacles to study the papers.

"THE LAST ROLL-CALL—

"The Royal Navy remembered one of its war-time heroes yesterday: Loftus of the 'Vengeful'—"

And the bald, prosaic, low-key Times obituary cutting:

' Commander Hugh Loftus, RN, VC, who died yesterday . . .'

There had been a gap between those two: the obituary washout of departmental records, filed and dated from three weeks ago; the pictures of the funeral and of the last fight of the Vengeful were from some other source—at a guess from the Daily Mirror, or some such. There was no clue on the photo-copy, so it must be something of Audley's own notoriously catholic culling, which ranged from The Sun to dummy3

Pravda, or the Buffalo Courier-Express to the Bicester Advertiser—the only clue here was that there was no clue, which was in itself a tell-tale indication.

"Why do you say that?" Audley challenged him.

"Well . . ." He had to get this right, even if it was wrong.

"Well, someone's done the routine search on Loftus—and he was living way above his pension . . . But there's nothing unusual about that, in this day and age—he was prematurely retired a long time ago, that's why he never got beyond commander . . . War wounds and ill-health— quite straightforward, no black marks, although he was never a well-loved man among his equals . . . His wife left him a bit of money: she came of a well-to-do naval family. But that was also a long time ago—she's been dead nearly thirty years.

They weren't married very long."

"He wrote books though. 'Naval historian' is how The Times described him."

"That's right. Naval histories. He probably made a bit from them. Not a lot, but some."

"What are they like?"

Mitchell shrugged. "Carefully researched ... he took his time over them. He liked travelling around, staying at good hotels

—he knew his food and drink. Drove a Daimler." He thought for a moment. "The books . . . they weren't bad. Maybe they weren't quite one thing or the other—detailed, but not quite scholarly, and not quite popular either."

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"You don't like them?"

"There's something about them ... a certain irritability ... a preference for blame above praise. I can't quite put my finger on it."

"Perhaps he was embittered by that premature retirement."

Audley tapped the picture. "Those two admirals were his junior officers, after all... But you don't know?"

"I don't think I'd like to have served under him, hero or not, that's all."

Audley pointed again. "But they turned up to see him buried.

'The last roll-call'."

"Yes. I may be doing him an injustice—I probably am."

Mitchell looked at Audley. "The point is, for whatever it's worth, he's—he was—absolutely clean. No contacts. No hint of anything."

"But he's dead."

Mitchell shook his head. "Nothing there, either. I had Bannen check that out. He'd had a dickey heart condition for years—his doctor had told him to go easy, but he took not the slightest bit of notice. When his Daimler was boxed in on that car park he tried to manhandle a Ford Escort out of the way. It was a hot day, and he was angry . . . There are plenty of witnesses, and Bannen talked to the owners of both the cars that had boxed him." He shook his head again. "Pure as driven snow, both of them."

"No one is as pure as that."

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"Then . . . pure enough for Bannen and me. David . . . the man was seventy-one years old—he had a heart attack. Short of digging him up again you're going to have to accept that.

He certainly spent a bit more money than we can readily account for—and he had a big car and a biggish house . . . But that doesn't make him a traitor, or a security risk—and for Christ's sake, the old boy's dead now, anyway! And if he was up to anything he'd have been much more careful about the money angle—"

"I didn't say he was a traitor—or anything else," said Audley mildly, bending over the picture again.

"Then what the hell have I been doing this past week?"

Mitchell let his cool slip. "Damn it—you had me pulled off the Czech link with Dublin just when it was beginning to look good!"

"Waste of time!" murmured Audley, without looking up.

"They'll never let you go back to Dublin now your cover's blown . . . Besides which, you were taking too many risks there latterly."

"I'm only doing research now. I like doing research."

"More waste of time ... Is this the daughter?"

"Yes." It was never worth arguing with Audley.

"Not a good likeness ... at least, I hope not for her sake!"

Mitchell fished among the documents on his left, and then slid the enlarged photograph in front of Audley.

Audley studied it for a moment. "Oh dear! A good likeness."

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He frowned at the daughter. "It looks like a prison picture ...

or maybe a 'Wanted' poster?"

"It's from a hockey group. We enlarged it."

"A hockey group . . . mmm ... the nose is a problem, and so are the teeth—an orthodontic problem, left too late ... I hope she plays hockey well, poor girl."

"She got a Blue at Oxford. And a First in History, at LMH."

For no reason, except perhaps his exasperation with Audley, Mitchell felt defensive on the woman's behalf.

"That's good to know." Audley nodded. "It's always comforting when nature indemnifies in other ways—even though Miss Loftus herself may not look at the mirror so philosophically."

"I think she's got an interesting face. Not beautiful, certainly, but. . ." Mitchell searched for a word ". . . but interesting."

"Plain? 'Homely', the Americans would say . . . Equine is a word that springs to my mind. But no matter!" Audley turned to Mitchell. "A good hockey player—'Take your girl', they used to shout at Cambridge, as I remember, when I once watched our Blues thrash theirs . . . and ours did seem to take the game much more seriously than they did—when they came off at the end ... I shall never forget it . . . one of them slapped her winger on the back and cried out 'Well played, Anthea, well played—good man, good man!' And I must confess that I did wonder for a moment, when I looked at Anthea, whether we might not have put an unfair one over dummy3

on the Dark Blues." He grinned at Mitchell. "But ... a good hockey player and a good historian ... So what does she do now?"

"She teaches history part-time at the local high school."

"Only part-time? What does she do with the rest of her time?"

"Nothing at the moment. She waited on her father hand and foot while he was alive, so they say—so Bannen says, anyway."

"She didn't share in the good life, then? The wine and the food and the good hotels?"

"Apparently not. But we didn't inquire too deeply into her."

Mitchell studied Audley's face. "That wasn't in the brief.

Should it have been?"

"Mmm . . . Maybe it should at that." Audley pursed his lips and held the picture up again. "Maybe it should . . ."

"For God's sake—why? She's a plain, thirtyish spinster schoolmistress who's never said 'boo' to a goose since she scored the winning goal in the Parks at Oxford ten years ago!" This time Mitchell's cool snapped unplanned. "What the hell are you up to, David?"

Audley set the picture down carefully. "I'm not up to anything, Paul. But Colonel Butler is ... and Oliver St John Latimer is too, I shouldn't wonder . . . and the Prime Minister and the President of the United States and the Central Office of Intelligence certainly are." He looked up. "Will they do for dummy3

a start?"

The cool came back together instantly, with the join hardly showing even though Mitchell was angry with himself for underrating both Audley and Audley's summoning him from the safe and rather boring job he'd been doing while he put the finishing touches to his own new book, which had been the cover for his tour of duty in Dublin, and its by-product.

"Yes, I'm sure they'll do very well, for someone. But not for me."

"Why not for you?"

"Because Jack Butler said this was a one-off, David."

"And so it is. But you haven't finished yet."

"But I have." Mitchell selected the green folder from among the papers on the table and pushed it towards Audley. "You wanted Loftus of the Vengeful, and there he is—investigated, signed, sealed and delivered. And cleared. And dead."

"But you still haven't finished, Paul."

"And I still think I have," said Mitchell obstinately. "You wanted a good quick job, and you've got it. I had Bannen doing the leg-work over here, and he's a first-rate man.

Smith in Paris covered his research trips there, and Frobisher handled his American jaunt—and they're good men too ... And I put the whole thing together."

"And you're smart too, of course." Audley smiled to take the offence out of the statement.

"I'm smart enough not to want to waste any more of my time dummy3

and the country's money." Mitchell decided not to take offence. "Look, David ... if we were Inland Revenue, or maybe Fraud Squad, I'd maybe recommend our digging into his apparent excess of spending over income . . . though until his affairs have been sorted out even that's a long shot. But for the rest, if there was the slightest smell I think we'd have picked up a whiff of it between us." He pushed at the folder again. "And my assessment of the man is that he was probably embittered—he was undoubtedly bad-tempered and quarrelsome and dogmatic ... he always made more enemies than friends . . . and he treated his daughter like a servant. But he was also brave as a lion and utterly devoted to Queen and Country and the Royal Navy. In fact, he was the archetypal old-style naval officer, pickled in aspic . . . or brandy, more like—like someone out of his own history books. And I'd stake my job on that."

Audley nodded approvingly. "That's good, Paul—I accept that

—all of it. But now we need more field work."

" More field work—?" That approval and acceptance, and then more field work could mean only one thing. "So you know something that I don't know—that I couldn't know—?"

"Of course! I've no wish to waste time and money either, Paul."

For a second Mitchell was tempted, but only for that one second. "Well . . . I'm not a field man now—you know that, David. The Dublin tour was my swan-song—you know that, too."

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"Yes." They both knew that, and Mitchell was pretty sure that Audley had always known why, after Frances Fitzgibbon's death, he had taken the job. And, when he thought about that, it was a strike to Audley, and an unpaid debt too, that the big man hadn't vetoed his private war with the KGB in Dublin. Vendettas were usually grounds for disqualification, not promotion.

"Yes." The fleeting look of remembrance, of that shared sadness, confirmed Mitchell's suspicion. "But this time you're the square peg for the square hole, Paul. I wouldn't have asked for you otherwise."

"Bannen would do as well—I like him, David." It was odd how liking a man could be a reason for endangering him.

"James Cable would be even better—he's Navy . . . and I can't even swim very well!" Mitchell grinned. "And I'd guess you need a naval man for this one."

"Cable's busy . . ." Audley cocked his head ". . . and aren't you into naval matters, in your next book?"

As always, Audley was disconcertingly well-informed. "First World War naval matters. I hardly think—"

"That will do very well! There was a Vengeful at Jutland—

sunk, of course . . . but then Vengeful s tended to have a submarine tradition— the last of them was actually a submarine, I believe. But fortunately it was transferred to the Greek navy before anyone could submerge it permanently . . .

But the First World War will do well enough, for a start."

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Mitchell sensed the job closing in on him, like the infantry subaltern who had volunteered for the safety of the RASC in 1915, because he knew how the internal combustion engine worked, and found himself commanding one of the first tanks on the Somme.

"What is it that you know, that I don't know, David?" That was the crucial question—the tank question!

"Some of it you do know: the PM went to Washington a fortnight ago."

Mitchell knew that: the Marine band had played on the lawn outside the White House, and the BBC had transmitted the sound of the music and the platitudes.

"They got on rather well—they exchanged gifts—the special relationship was renewed." Audley closed his eyes for a moment. "The PM gave him cruise missile promise, and the okay on Poland . . . And the President gave us a top secret—

an ultra-secret—from the CIA's inside man in the Kremlin, whom they've just pulled out one jump ahead of the chop—a Politburo-KGB liaison officer, no less."

That was more like it: now they were into the real business of the Research and Development Section, which had nothing to do with routine security checks on long-retired and palpably innocent naval heroes and everything to do with hot potatoes which no one else wanted to touch.

"It seems that some time back their man got a sight of a list of KGB projects to which the Kremlin was giving operational dummy3

approval."

"Projects?"

Audley nodded. "Just the names—no details. But of course project names are the real thing. And we know these are the real McCoy because there were six of them, and the Americans have confirmed their five as being in progress."

"And the sixth was British?"

"The sixth was British."

Mitchell thought for a moment. "How long ago is 'some time back'?"

"You can assume that ours is in progress too."

He thought again. "But if the Americans have identified theirs . . . and pulled their man out since . . . everything he ever handled will be compromised by now, I'll bet. In which case won't they abort?"

Audley shook his head slowly. "The received wisdom is that they won't. They always accept higher risks than we do ...

besides which they may not have twigged yet—the man hasn't been out long, and the Americans did try to cover his departure in confusion. So we may have a little time in hand."

More thought. It was certainly true that the Russians took greater risks, partly because their resources were so much greater and they could afford to squander them, and partly because of the dominance of military men among the planners, who subscribed to the Red Army's belief that no dummy3

defensive position could be held against attackers who were ready to pay the price for taking it.

"What was our project name?" The jackpot question was overdue.

"I'll come to that in a jiffy." Audley smiled at him, and the smile hinted at an odd mixture of satisfaction and apology.

"There are some complications to this one, Paul."

First the bad news, thought Mitchell. And then the worse news. "I can see that. If the President gave this to the Prime Minister as a gift, then she'll want results—she won't want egg on her face. No wonder no one else wanted it!" That last was a guess—but no guess really: this was what R & D was for, and Audley himself was notoriously attracted to eccentric and dirty jobs—they were what he got his kicks from.

"Oh—of course that. . ." Audley waved a hand vaguely ". . .

that goes without saying. But there's an internal political angle to this one. Which I ought to explain to you since it will affect you, Paul."

"Oh, yes?" The reason for that apologetic cast was on its way.

"Master Oliver St John Latimer wanted this job, you see—"

Audley's unlovely features became unlovelier ". . . he's consumed by this strange compulsion to shine for our masters ... or our mistress, in this instance ... to shine—and he has a strong competitive instinct."

What Oliver St John Latimer had was ambition: with the noble, honest and decent Colonel Butler as acting-Director of dummy3

Research and Development, the Director's job was up for grabs, and Oliver St John Latimer wanted it.

"And you don't want to shine, of course?" said Mitchell nastily. "You don't want to be the next Director?"

"I don't give a stuff, either way—no." Audley was impervious to nastiness. "I don't want to be the next Director, or the Duke of Plaza-Toro, or the Kabaka of Buganda, or the Akond of Swat—Jack Butler is a perfectly good Director—his overwhelming qualification for the title is that he doesn't want it, if you ask me."

The irony about that, thought Mitchell, was that it was probably true. And the other and greater irony was that Jack Butler favoured Audley for the very same reason, so rumour had it.

"But, as it happens, Latimer would have made a dog's breakfast of this one—Butler's quite right, as usual—

Latimer's a high IQ plodder: he can set up an operation much better than I can, but he's no good at this sort of thing—

this is something else, I suspect."

So Audley had won ... if this particular prize could be called winning. "So where are the complications, for God's sake, David?"

"Season your impatience for a moment—the complication is that you can't take this one single-handed, and Master Latimer is as artful as a cartload of monkeys—"

"I've not got a partner?" Mitchell's chest expanded: Frances dummy3

had been his partner, and Frances slept in a little country churchyard now—now and forever. "I don't want a bloody partner—"

"Not a partner. More ... a bodyguard—a driver . . . someone to watch your back and do the chores, Paul. And he'll be good at all those things, I assure you."

He—?

"No!"

"Yes. Do you know a man named Aske? Humphrey Aske?"

"Aske?" Mitchell ran the tapes. There was a new Special Branch man taking over from Cox—Andrews— Andrew . . .

and an Agnew, who was half-French and a Hull University Law graduate . . . Aske—Christ!— Aske!

"He's a—he's a—oh, shit—" Mitchell ran out of words, into outrage.

"Odd? Queer? Gay?" Audley raised an eyebrow. "A cupcake?

I heard that word recently, from one of our newer recruits—

you know of Humphrey Aske, then?"

"David—no, for God's sake—"

"I might have known you'd know him. You always know too much, Paul."

"I've only seen him a couple of times—I've talked to him once

—"

"But once was enough? Tchk, tchk!" Audley tutted at him.

"Prejudice is a terrible thing! And since it takes all sorts to dummy3

make a world—and particularly our world—has it never occurred to you how useful the Askes of this world can be, once we've stopped trying to sweep them under the carpet?"

He gazed at Mitchell. "What was he doing, when you encountered him?"

"He was poncing around in records." Mitchell recalled his incredulity from that encounter.

"In the Balkan Section? He has been covering one of their embassies—probably the Bulgarian . . . the old Bulgarian heresy?" Audley was at his most maddening. "That's one of Master Latimer's areas of activity, and he's one of Latimer's creatures. That's why we've got him now—or you have."

More incredulity. "Latimer isn't—?"

"No. Latimer isn't. Latimer is neither homo nor hetero, so far as I can observe. He is merely and unfortunately very smart, in this instance. So I'm afraid you have Aske as your back-up."

"Why not Bannen? I like him."

"Because Bannen doesn't have the right qualifications. Aske does—and Latimer has kindly made him available, because he wants to know what I'm up to ... and Jack Butler is being obstinately fair-minded, because Aske needs more field experience at the sharp end, to qualify for promotion."

Audley gave Mitchell a wicked look. "But you don't need to be nice to him, or to let him into your confidence. He's just there to hew wood and draw water for you, and to die for you dummy3

if he has to."

That was altogether too close to the bone: there was no answer to that, only another pang of remembrance.

"Now . . . the project." Audley dismissed the complication of Aske as though the truth had exorcised it. "It was Project Vengeful—and the Vengeful was in English, not Cyrillic, so there are no semantic or etymological arguments about

'avenger', or 'vengeance', or 'vindictive', even though they were all Royal Navy ships in their time too."

Loftus of the 'Vengeful' , thought Mitchell automatically. But that was two-thirds of a lifetime ago—

"There were twelve Vengefuls—the twelfth was a submarine in '44, but that's being attended to elsewhere, and you don't need to worry about it. You've drawn the other eleven, and I want you to eliminate them ... or not, as the case may be."

Ridiculous, thought Mitchell.

"And Loftus was the expert on all of them. So you will start with him," said Audley. "Or, seeing that he's dead, you must start with his daughter—even if it means playing mixed hockey!"

The hero's daughter

I

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ELIZABETH ONLY BECAME fully aware of the handsome young man after an intermediate sequence of more casual emotions.

There was a Victorian mirror on the bric-a-brac stall, opposite her own bookstall on the other side of the gangway—

a big, ugly old thing, mahogany-framed, solid as an old battleship and as unsaleable—it had been on the same stall in the previous sale, and hadn't sold that time either, and wasn't going to sell this time at half the price. But now he was looking into it, and he was looking at her.

The first time, she had put it down to accident—to the accidental adjustment of the mirror; then, when she noticed that he was still looking at her, she put it down to brief curiosity—to the discovery that he could stare into it without being noticed, without knowing that she had observed his curiosity. But the third time, after she had moved down her stall and had then come back to her original position beside the cash-box . . . then he was still there, and she began to wonder what it was that held his attention.

It couldn't be the cash-box, because his suit fitted too well for that—a nice summer suit that was never straight off the peg—

that suit was too good for what there was in her cash-box, and so was his haircut; even the three young tearaways from Leigh Park, whom she had observed casing the stalls earlier, had dismissed the box at a glance as containing too much silver and too few notes.

But then it couldn't be her, either—that was equally unlikely, dummy3

to the point of being ridiculous, even though she now represented a very great number of banknotes—because he couldn't know that. . .

Or could he?

She began to day-dream pleasurably along the lines which dear old Mr Lovell at the solicitors' had sketched obliquely, even though he was unaware of the half of her good fortune.

It still amused her, the new deference—not plain Elizabeth any more, now that she was an esteemed client and not Father's messenger; she was still plain Elizabeth herself, but in Lovell, Cole & Lovell she had become Miss Loftus; and dear old Mr Lovell, who had never been unkind to her, had tied himself into a Gordian Knot trying to warn her of the temptations and pitfalls waiting to ambuscade her, now that she was a woman of modest wealth and property, and all alone.

There were people, he said—

(He was still watching her: she was sure of that now!) There were people—old Mr Lovell couldn't bring himself to say men, just as he would not have dreamed of telling her that she was no oil painting even if she now had a golden frame—there were people who might come to her with . . .

ideas . . . She must be careful of the company she kept, careful of new friends who might not be friends at all, careful . . .

Some hope! thought Elizabeth: it was she herself who had all dummy3

the ideas—even silly ideas about impossibly good-looking young men who watched her surreptitiously in mirrors at church fetes—mysterious young men like the hero in that Mills and Boon romance she'd confiscated from Angela McManners last term, when Angela should have been deep in Lockyer's Habsburg and Bourbon Europe for her A-level.

And there, as a reminder of that episode, was huge Mrs McManners herself, just a few yards down the stall, browsing on the ckeapest and tattiest paperbacks—it would never do to let her catch Miss Loftus ogling young men!

"I'll take these two," said Mrs McManners. "Both from the 10p box, dear."

"Thank you, Mrs McManners," said Elizabeth sweetly.

" Purity's Passion and The Sultan's Concubine—shall I wrap them for you?"

"They're for my daughter—she's very fond of history." Mrs McManners hastily stuffed her purchases into her basket. "I must fly, dear."

The idea of fifteen stone flying diverted Elizabeth momentarily as she dropped the coins in the box. Then a hand came into the corner of her vision, its index finger running up the titles towards her.

"And I'm very fond of history too." The finger came to rest on one of Elizabeth's own contributions to her stall. " From Trafalgar to Navarino: The Lost Legacy—by Commander Hugh Loftus, VC, RN."

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But it didn't say all that on the dark blue spine, thought Elizabeth. There was only From Trafalgar to Navarino and Hugh Loftus picked out in gold there.

They looked at each other directly for the first time, eye to eye, but whatever she let slip in her expression she could see no sign of any acknowledgement in his that they had already scrutinised each other in the mirror.

"How much would that be, then?" he inquired.

In second thoughts, now that he was right here in front of her, he not only looked ten years older, but Elizabeth had the strangest feeling that she had seen him before somewhere; not before during this same afternoon, in some unregistered fleeting glance in the crowd, but before somewhere else . . .

On a television screen? In a newspaper?

He leaned forward slightly towards her. "How much?"

With an effort Elizabeth shook herself free of second thoughts. "I'm sorry—it's £1 .50," she said, fumbling the book out of the line.

"£1 .50?" He smiled at her.

"It's a mint copy." It was one of Father's author's copies in fact. "And it's in aid of the church tower restoration fund, so I don't think it's too expensive."

"I wasn't questioning the price, Miss Loftus." He took the book from her and opened it at the fly-leaf. "I was just hoping that it would be signed—I see that it isn't. . . but it's cheap at the price, anyway. Only ... it would have been even dummy3

cheaper with a signature—at the price—wouldn't it?" He smiled again.

Elizabeth swallowed. "I'm sorry. I haven't got a signed copy."

"No matter. Perhaps you could sign it instead?" He produced a pen, and held the book open for her.

"I don't see . . ." Elizabeth trailed off.

"The next best thing, Miss Loftus. If not the hero himself, then the hero's daughter. I would have preferred The Dover Patrol—more my period. But this will do very well."

He was an academic, she ought to have guessed that even though she hadn't started to try to guess what he was: the mixture of confidence and that slightly degage air, plus the Oxbridge voice, were clues enough. Yet, if he was an academic TV or newspaper personality, she still couldn't place him. But there was an easy way of getting round that now.

She accepted the pen and the book. "To whom shall I inscribe it?"

"Paul Mitchell—'Mitchell' with the usual 't'."

That didn't help matters, even though something still nagged at the back of her mind.

" 'To Paul Mitchell from Elizabeth Loftus'—there, for what it's worth." She smiled back at him. "That's the first time I've ever signed a book. But I don't think I've added to its value."

"On the contrary." He studied the inscription for a moment, then looked at her appraisingly. "For such a unique dummy3

collector's item . . . shall we say £5?"

Elizabeth's worst suspicions were pleasurably encouraged.

Fortuné hunters were out of date, and in any case the details of her official inheritance—let alone the rest of it all—couldn't possibly be common knowledge. But he was up to something, that was certain.

"The price is £1.50, Mr Mitchell. I couldn't possibly accept more." She took his £5 note.

"Mint condition?" He raised the book between them. "The going price in Blackwell's at Oxford for this is £9.95, you know."

So he had done his homework, but if he was trying to pick her up that was to be expected.

"It's still £1.50." That "Blackwell's at Oxford" was a nice touch, well-calculated to arouse her happiest memories, if that was what was intended. Yet, once identified for what it was, it armoured her against him. "Do you mind taking your change mostly in silver?"

"I don't want any change." Her intransigence was beginning to unsettle him. "Keep it for the church tower."

She began to count out the 10p pieces from her cash-box.

"You can give them all to the Vicar's wife, then—she's sitting just down the end there, and she'll give you raffle tickets in exchange. You might win a bottle of whisky or an LP. And even if you don't win anything, she'll give you a pamphlet on the history of the church for free . . . seeing as you're dummy3

interested in history, Mr Mitchell."

That, and £3.50 in 10p pieces, ought to damp down his ambitions, whatever they were. And besides, there was a customer waiting further up the table.

She pushed the piles of coins towards him. "Excuse me . . ."

But when she had completed the sale of One Hundred Great Lives and Civilisation on Trial, at 40p the pair, he was still there with his coins untouched, looking just a little forlorn.

"Yes, Mr Mitchell?" Elizabeth's conscience tweaked her slightly. It was after all a church sale, and she had not given him the benefit of any doubt whatsoever, in all Christian charity.

He spread his hands. "Miss Loftus, I confess ... I was also hoping to buy a little of your time."

So at least they had come to the crunch on her terms, thought Elizabeth smugly. "My time?"

"Just that. At least, to start with ... I want to put a proposition to you."

Elizabeth's hackles rose. She looked up the table for more customers, but there were none, so she could hardly set any price on her time, which patently had no value here and now.

"A proposition?" She could hear the harshness in her voice which was normally reserved for scholarship girls who allowed their precocious sex lives to intrude into the work which had to be done, and who then attempted to fob her off with transparent excuses. "What proposition?"

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At least he had picked up the danger signal: she could see that by the set of the jaw. "It's about your father, Miss Loftus.

It relates to him."

As it invariably did, the direct mention of her father froze Elizabeth, activating her public face to assume its sorrowing-daughter expression.

"I was very sorry to learn of his death."

There was no earthly reason why he should be very sorry, if he was a stranger. And if he wasn't a stranger—it occurred to Elizabeth that it was quite possible, if this young man was an academic of some sort, that he might have met Father somewhere, sometime. But then, if he had, it seemed to be unlikely that Father would have endeared himself sufficiently to make him "very sorry". So, either way, it was merely a conventional insincerity preparing the way for the proposition.

"I read the obituary in The Times."

Everyone had done that—

. . . after a long illness bravely borne . . . although badly wounded, refused medical attention. . . continued to direct the engagement. . . successful conclusion of a brilliantly-handled operation . . .

Well, The Times always did its duty by VCs, and, with the original citation to go on, the panegyrist's work had been largely done for him in advance, for all that it mattered now, which was no more than any other seawrack from those dummy3

sunken E-boats of his.

But everyone had read it anyway, even Mr Paul Mitchell.

"That's why I'm here, really . . . Perhaps . . . perhaps I'm rather rushing in—so soon after . . . But I'm hoping that you won't think so."

What Elizabeth was thinking was that her silence was getting to him. And that, if it had merely been a matter of small talk about her irreplaceable loss, would have been fine with her.

But with his proposition as yet unproposed it called for a bit of encouragement.

She indicated the stacks of 10p pieces. "You've purchased some of my time, Mr Mitchell—remember?"

He gave her a curious look, almost as though she had given him an inkling of the true face behind the mask.

"Yes, of course . . . Well, the obituary stated that at the time of his death he was engaged in writing a history of HMS

Vengeful, the destroyer he commanded in the Channel fight in '42. Is that what he was doing?"

The question was delivered with a slight frown, indicating doubt if not actual disbelief. And that was interesting because of all the facts recorded in the obituary, other than the long illness bravely borne, this was the one The Times had got wrong. And—not doubt, but certainty—Mr Paul Mitchell knew as much. But how?

"Why d'you want to know, Mr Mitchell? Does it matter what he was writing?"

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He shook his head vaguely. "I seem to remember . . . about two or three years ago ... he wrote a letter to The Times trying to get in touch with anyone who served on the previous HMS

Vengeful—the one which fought at Jutland in 1916, or any next-of-kin with letters and suchlike . . . And he also explained then that he was writing a book about all the ships of that name which had ever served with the navy—am I right?"

"Yes, Mr Mitchell." She had typed the letter herself, as always, from that scrawl which only she could read. And there was no point in denying it because there was nothing vague about his memory, it was exactly right.

"So The Times was wrong?"

Elizabeth nodded. But she had asked why and he had answered how, she realised.

"All the Vengefuls." He nodded back. "And there were twelve of them, I believe? Or nearly thirteen, but the Admiralty changed its mind about the last one, and finally called it something else— Shannon, it is now ... so that doesn't qualify.

And your father commanded the penultimate Vengeful, then."

Elizabeth nodded again. "You're very well informed, Mr Mitchell."

"Not really. I just read the newspapers, that's all."

"Then you have a good memory."

He grinned at her. "Especially for letters in The Times.

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Because that wasn't the only one your father wrote, was it!"

The grin started to broaden, then disappeared instantly as he remembered also that such levity was inappropriate to the occasion. "I'm sorry . . ."

"There's no need to be." It didn't suit Elizabeth for him to become inhibited by her bereavement, not now that she understood exactly how he had become so knowledgeable.

"You mean the Vengeful-Shannon correspondence, I take it?"

He nodded cautiously, still doubtful about her reaction to the memory of that long, acrimonious and ultimately hilarious battle of the letter-writers in the columns of The Times.

"You found it amusing?" Elizabeth fabricated the ghost of a smile to take the sting out of her question. She could well believe that outsiders might have considered it so, that passionate and useless controversy about the naming of a warship which the letters editor had headlined variously, tongue-in-cheek, as "The last fight of the Vengeful" and "A hard-fought engagement".

He took encouragement from the ghost-smile. "To be honest... I thought it was the jolliest Times correspondence since those dons got to arguing about how fast and how far the ancient Greeks could row their triremes."

Of course, he couldn't know how she had suffered through it all, with Father tearing into each morning's newspaper and his alternate bouts of rage and triumph as the argument swung this way and that.

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They had shamed her, those letters, for the contempt the recipients must have felt for him; and doubly shamed her, as he made it so very clear that in some twisted way he had come to regard his immortality as descending somehow through the renewed name of his beloved ship, rather than through his unloved daughter, who was plainly useless—very plainly—for such a purpose, and fit only to type his letters and his books, and cook his meals, and wash and fetch and carry and clean for him.

Well—so much for that! It was all flotsam now that time and events had revenged her on the last captain of the penultimate Vengeful— time and events and the Admiralty!

"My father didn't find it so funny." This time she didn't pretend to smile.

"No, I rather gathered that." He took his cue from her. "But to a landlubber like me ships' names really don't have much significance. In fact, they often seem to me to be rather idiotic

—like the names people give to racehorses."

"Oh, I wouldn't say that." Elizabeth found the mention of racehorses slightly unsettling, however accidental it might be, as a reminder of Father's weakness. Except that, judging by the contents of the safe deposit boxes and the cash-box under her bed, it could hardly be called a weakness.

"But didn't they call one of the Flower class corvettes in the last war 'Pansy'?" countered Paul Mitchell. "I can't imagine what the sailors made of that!" He lifted From Trafalgar to dummy3

Navarino. "And what was it Nelson's sailors turned the Bellerophon into . . . because they couldn't pronounce it, let alone spell it—'Billy Ruffian', eh?" The grin came back. "God knows what they made of the Euryalus!"

So the landlubber knew something about ships, Elizabeth noted. But if ships' names drew him out towards his proposition, then so be it.

"Ah, yet that merely illustrates the primacy of the classical education in those days, Mr Mitchell. It was just the same in the French navy—the French had an Hercule at the battle of the Saints in 1782, and a Hector, and a Cesar, and a Scipion . . . and then after the Revolution you have new names like Fraternité and Franklin, after Benjamin Franklin, creeping in—and the Droits de l'Homme, even."

Paul Mitchell nodded. "I see what you mean. Like the Reds renaming the Tsar's dreadnoughts October Revolution and Marat in 1919—Marat to them being like Franklin to the French revolutionaries, of course."

He nodded again. "Education, politics . . . and history too—

naming your ships after the battles you've won, and the men who won them . . . yes— Midway and Coral Sea, and Rodney and Nelson, and that weird dreadnought we had at Jutland, the Agincourt—"

Good heavens! thought Elizabeth. He even knew about Agincourt, which had started life as Rio de Janeiro, then had turned into Sultan Osman I, only to be taken over in the nick of time on Tyneside in 1914 by Churchill, to fire its ten dummy3

salvoes of 12-inch shells—at Jutland. The very mention of HMS Agincourt had always made Father quite dreamy, with a mixture of envy and pride oiling the waves of his bitterness.

But she had never heard anyone else speak of it—she had never met anyone who had ever heard of it—until now, with this strange young man—

"—and religion too . . . Santissima Trinidad, and all the other Spanish saints we blew apart at Trafalgar." Paul Mitchell waved his bargain again. "Yes, I can see that there's a lot more in ships' names than has met my ill-informed eye until now! So I'd better be careful, with an expert like you around, in case I say something stupid."

"I'm not an expert." Elizabeth was resolved not to be caught again.

"Not an expert?" He tried to make his disbelief sound polite.

"But a history degree at Lady Margaret Hall ..."

The contrast between the qualification and the unpaid secretarial work flicked her on the raw. "I mean, I'm not an expert on naval history," she said stiffly. "Just what was it that you wanted to talk to me about, Mr Mitchell?"

"Ah . . . well, about your father's book, Miss Loftus—" he gave her back a direct look "—am I right in thinking that he hadn't finished it?"

He knew the answer. But, although there were plenty of ways he might know it, he knew more than that, and it was still the why which plagued her.

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"No, Mr Mitchell. As a matter of fact he hadn't." To get more she still had to give more, she sensed that. "My father was a sick man—he'd been unwell for a long time ... he behaved as though he wasn't, but he was. And he had his good days, and his good weeks, and his bad ones, therefore. May I ask why you want to know this?"

"How far had he got?"

It was on the tip of her tongue to repeat her question, but she sensed that it might be easier to let him reach the answer in his own way. "He was revising a chapter on one of the earlier Vengefuls. He hadn't really got down to collating the material he had on the last three Vengefuls, if you must know."

He brightened. 'The twentieth century ones, those would be?"

"The ninth Vengeful. That's how far he'd got, Mr Mitchell."

He thought for a moment, and then nodded as though she had confirmed information he already possessed. "The Jutland Vengeful. Improved Admiralty M Class—975 tons, three 4-inch, four 21-inch torpedo tubes, 34.5 knots. Built by Hawthorne, Leslie and Company Limited on the Tyne at Hebburn, commissioned at Chatham—1913 -14 Estimates.

Right?"

"If you say so. There was one that fought at Jutland certainly." If she had not already been inclined towards caution his finger-tip facts would have made her so. "But you obviously know all about it already. You wouldn't be a naval dummy3

historian by any chance, would you?"

He shook his head. "No, Miss Loftus, not a naval historian—a military one. Actually the 1914-18 War is my field—the war of the tenth Vengeful. Only it's the Western Front that's my speciality. The trenches . . . if you can call them a field." The corner of his mouth twitched. "I don't suppose you can discern any connection?"

"Is there one?"

"It was the same war, Miss Loftus." He paused for a moment.

"You see ... a few years ago I was re-reading one of my favourite books, Charles Carrington's Soldier from the Wars Returning . . . Charles Carrington being the 'Charles Edmonds' who wrote the best and truest eye-witness memoir to come out of the trenches, Subaltern's War—do you know it?"

"No." But what she did know was that he was what he said he was, she could recognise the glint in his eye, and the dogmatic assertion of the obsessed specialist, from her own experience.

"A pity. But no matter ... At one point, just before he comes up to Third Ypres. . . Passchendaele . . . he lets slip that the British soldiers, in the line didn't know a thing about the French Army mutinies. But they did know about the troubles in Russia and the U-boat crisis. Now ... I'd never really thought of the other two crises going on at the same time as Third Ypres—do you see what I mean?"

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Elizabeth blinked. "I can't say that I do, Mr Mitchell."

Her obtuseness didn't seem to worry him. "Contemporaneity, Miss Loftus, contemporaneity. That's the point."

"Indeed?" What she could still see was that glint. And that was the way it took some men—the pursuit of an idea and the thirst for knowledge. It was related to avarice, but it wasn't the same thing; it was more about finding than keeping, like gold fever.

"The same applies to 1916—Verdun, Jutland, the Somme—to me they'd become isolated events because of my over-specialisation: I knew all about the first and the last, but virtually nothing about the middle one. Whereas in reality the good scholar must look at the whole spread of contemporaneous events, to find out how they interlock, if he's ever to understand the truth about his smaller detail."

He paused for breath. "Did you know that the first convoy system—which was the answer to the U-boat—was developed to get coal from South Wales to France . . . because the German army was sitting on most of the French coal supply?"

She had to humour him. "No, Mr Mitchell, I didn't know that."

"Yes—" He caught himself suddenly, as though he realised that he was about to lose his broad spread in detail "—well, the fact is ... I've been busy for some time familiarising myself with naval history. And when I read the obituary on your father, and I recalled his earlier letter . . . I'm used to dummy3

handling research material and pulling it together—I did as much for Professor Emerson's book on the Somme a few years back, when he died before he'd finished it... it occurred to me that I might be able to finish your father's book for you, Miss Loftus."

Good Lord! thought Elizabeth, frowning at him with a mixture of astonishment and irritation. He had indeed been after something—but it wasn't her money, let alone she herself—it was Father's research he wanted!

She opened her mouth, but he spoke again quickly before she could do so.

"Miss Loftus—let me make myself plain, I beg you!" He had clearly read the expression on her face. "I'm absolutely not interested in either making money or a name for myself—I don't need to do either. The book would have your father's name, and you can have the royalties—you can have your own solicitor draw up any agreement you like. You can even veto the whole thing at any time if you don't like it—or me . . .

providing I can do the same, of course. Because I'd have to see the work that's already been done, naturally . . . My own contribution, apart from any necessary editing, would be to put together the twentieth-century chapters only, because I'm not an expert on the earlier periods . . . But otherwise, you can call the tune absolutely. So don't say 'no' out of hand, without thinking."

That was exactly what Elizabeth was doing—she was thinking very hard indeed, trying to adjust her first reaction and her dummy3

instinct and her prejudices with the apparent generosity of his offer. Because there must be a catch in it somewhere.

"I don't quite see why you want to do this . . . under those conditions, Mr Mitchell," she said tentatively, shying away from the direct rudeness of "What's in it for you?"

He shrugged. "Let's say . . . I'm not a naval historian—I'm not ready to write a whole book of my own on naval matters.

But ... I admire your father's work—I think The Dover Patrol was a fine book . . . and I could do this." He paused. "Also . . .

I'm between books myself at the moment, so I have several spare months."

Well, there was an opening, even at the risk of emphasising her ignorance. "Forgive me for asking. . . but you must understand that I don't read books about the World Wars . . ." It was harder than she'd expected, and she felt the blood rising in her cheeks.

"What books have I written?" The laughter lines crinkled on his face as he came to her rescue, making it older again, where his recent embarrassment had made him seem younger. "Or were you going to ask whether I write under my own name?"

"Oh no—that's the coward's question!" She felt herself melting under such candour. "But honestly, I haven't seen any of your books—and I'm sure that's my fault for being unobservant—"

"I doubt it. But I did have a modest success with my book on dummy3

the Hindenburg Line a few years back. And then there was the one on the battle of the Ancre . . . after which I completed Professor Emerson's definitive work on the Somme, though I can take no credit for that, of course . . . And finally, I have a new one coming out in the spring, about the Irish Guards in the war— Watch by the Liffey, that is ... When the last survivors of the 1st Battalion were hanging on to the edge of Zillebeke Wood on the outskirts of Ypres in '14 they heard a German band playing 'Die Wacht am Rhein', and one of them said 'Well, we'll give the bastards "Watch by the Liffey" in reply'."

On the back of a book in Margaret's shop—was that where she had seen him, his face? thought Elizabeth.

"Plus the obligatory thesis, and the articles on this and that."

He fumbled in his top pocket. "Perhaps I should have given you my card to start with."

She read the card: Paul Mitchell . . . and on one side beneath, The King's College, Oxford, with a telephone number; and, on the other, 21B Namier Street, London WC2E 8QJ, with another number.

"And, if you'd like to check up further . . . I'm really a sort of civil servant, but I have this prolonged sabbatical, and the Hobson Research Fellowship at the King's College to make it economic—for me and the Civil Service both ... In a year's time Whitehall and Oxford and I must decide where my proper home should be." He smiled disarmingly at her. "But in the meantime you can call either the Master's secretary at dummy3

the King's or Sir Terence O'Shea at the Home Office, and they'll each give you the same dull answer. I'm perfectly respectable."

In spite of all her previous second thoughts about him Elizabeth was perversely disappointed. The respectability was all there, but the romance was lost in the safety of such references.

"The only thing is that I'd like to—" Paul Mitchell stopped abruptly, staring past her.

"Ah, Dr Mitchell!" The Vicar materialised at Elizabeth's shoulder. "I see that you have found our Miss Loftus . . .

Elizabeth, I confide that you have had a profitable afternoon?"

For the first time the "proposition" became real to her. Since Father's death she hadn't seriously thought about his unfinished book—indeed, she hadn't really thought about it at all. Yet now she realised that in its relatively advanced state and with this man's expertise—alleged expertise, anyway

—it could become a real book, making real money for her . . .

Except that money was now something she didn't need.

But then, she didn't need to keep it: she could easily solve that problem, and even assuage her conscience a little, by assigning the royalties to St Barnabas' tower.

That thought, and the discovery that having so much had not made her eager for more, raised her spirits. "Yes, Mr Bickersteth, I do believe that I have." She swept the piles of dummy3

10p pieces into her cash-box with a flourish so that each of them could take that how he liked.

"I'm glad to hear it." Dr Mitchell's cheerfulness clearly indicated his interpretation. "And I liked that 'confide' too, Vicar. Would that be ecclesiastical usage or something from your naval background? Didn't Nelson try for 'Nelson confides' first before Trafalgar, only his signal lieutenant edited to 'England expects' to save the extra flags?"

The Vicar chuckled, but Elizabeth found herself speculating about Dr Mitchell again. It was reasonable enough that he should have asked the Vicar to point her out, and Crockford's Directory would have supplied details of the Vicar's naval career. But why had he gone to such trouble?

"You've met before, then?" She spread the inquiry between them.

"Only this morning, Elizabeth, only this morning," said the Vicar. "But we have an admiral in common—eh, Dr Mitchell?"

"Hah—mmm . . ." Dr Mitchell appeared not to have heard. "I was just going to ask Miss Loftus, Vicar—but I can ask you just as well, or even better—how long her duties are going to detain her here? I'd very much like at least a sight of the manuscript before I go back to London, Miss Loftus . . .

Perhaps I might call on you early this evening—and then dinner afterwards?"

He was certainly taking her at her word in the way that word dummy3

suited him. But, what was more, he was carefully doing it in public in such a way that she could neither doubt his intentions nor refuse him without insult.

"Well. . ." she looked to the Vicar for help.

"Of course, Dr Mitchell!" The Vicar's help came in the form of disastrous approval. "It would do you good to get out, Elizabeth. Beatrice can easily clear up the stall—she can store the books in the Vicarage, and the Scouts will attend to the trestles ... As soon as I can find my daughter, Dr Mitchell, Miss Loftus shall have an honourable discharge from her duties."

It was all happening too quickly—and it was also so well organised to be inescapable that all Elizabeth's suspicions started to swirl again deep within her, not quite surfacing, but disturbing her calm.

"Well ..." She cast around for an excuse, but her wits seemed to have deserted her.

"I'll call at your home, then." Dr Mitchell looked at his watch.

"Shall we say 6.45?"

She could feel the trap closing on her. She could still be too tired, or have a headache, or plead her mourning state, or simply be rude.

Or was it that she didn't want to plead an excuse—didn't want to, even though everything right and respectable and explicable about Dr Paul Mitchell still added up to a sum total in which she instinctively disbelieved?

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"Very well—6.45," she said, snapping the trap herself.

II

IT WASN'T TRUE that there was one law for the rich and another for the poor, thought Elizabeth as she parked on the yellow line outside Margaret's bookshop: the law was the same, it was simply that the punishment no longer mattered.

Besides which, anyway, the restriction time had only another ten minutes to run, and the street was empty of cars not for fear of a questing traffic warden, but because all the shops had closed.

Margaret's was no exception, but Elizabeth hammered on the glass door, confident in the knowledge that if friendship wasn't enough to summon her, the thought of next term's sixth form reading list would do the trick.

Sure enough, one look over the "Closed" sign transformed the bookseller's grimace into a welcoming expression.

"Elizabeth dear—I shalln't say 'we're shut' to you, even though you have spent your afternoon ruining my business with unfair cut-price competition at that sale of yours."

Margaret re-bolted the door. "Have you come to apologise, or is this a social call?"

Elizabeth smiled at her warily. The social call Margaret was half expecting might well be for her answer to that tentative offer of partnership "if ever you found yourself free to dummy3

consider it", which Margaret had made over coffee last year.

But that "free" had also meant "and with sufficient capital to buy in", and now that she had both freedom and capital selling books didn't seem so enticing after all.

"My dear, you've no call to worry—" the thought of books recalled her to her intention "—you wouldn't have given house-room to the books I sold, and I didn't sell many of them either . . . Besides which I'm here as a potential customer, if you're open for business—and if you've got what I want. . . which you probably haven't."

"I never turn a customer away." Margaret swept a hand towards the shelves and the piled tables. "Take your pick—

the usual discount for the school, two-thirds to you, dear.

What's the title?"

"I don't know the title, but the author's name is Mitchell with a 't'.

"Mitchell . . ." Margaret thought for a moment. "Lots of Mitchells—but Gone with the Wind I haven't got, so cross off Margaret Mitchell. . . But there's Julian for novels, and Adrian for poetry, and Gladys for whodunits, and Paul for battles—"

"Paul?"

"Not your cup of tea, my dear—History, Military, twentieth century . . . I'm sure there's another Mitchell somewhere—"

she frowned at her shelves.

"Paul Mitchell," said Elizabeth. "Have you got his book?"

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"I've got two of his titles. But don't tell me you're changing your A-level syllabus next term, for heaven's sake! I've just stocked up for the Tudors and the Stuarts."

Elizabeth shook her head. "This is personal. Can I see them?"

"Of course." Margaret scanned her shelves again. " The Breaking of the Hindenburg Line is just out in paperback—

that'll save you a few pounds. But I'll show you the hardback first . . . Let's see now— Marder, Mattingly . . . Middlebrook—

Mitchell, Paul—here you are— The Breaking of the Hindenburg Line." She regarded Elizabeth curiously.

It was a substantial book, its dust-jacket festooned with barbed-wire, stark black on white, leading her to the blurb inside.

" On the morning of April 9th, 1917, the men of the British Fourth and Fifth armies had their first sight of a new German defensive position which was named by its builders the Siegfried Stellung, but which became known to the British as the Hindenburg Line.

" Sergeant Alfred Hannah, of the 2nd/4th Royal Mendips, saw the morning sunlight shimmering on what seemed like a river separating him from the village of Fontaine-du-Bois in the distance. Yet it was not water which had caught the light, but the sharpened points of a jungle of new barbed-wire 75 yards wide ..."

Elizabeth's flesh crawled as she remembered how she had torn her second-best skirt on a single strand of barbed-wire dummy3

on a ramble beyond the Trundles. Not your cup of tea was right!

She turned to the back flap, and Dr Paul Mitchell stared at her from it—a younger version, unlined and fuller-faced, and more arrogant too, but unmistakably the same man.

"Paul Mitchell was born in Gloucestershire on September 29th, 1945, twenty-seven years to the day after his grandfather was killed in action while commanding a battalion during the crossing of the St Quentin Canal. Dr Mitchell was educated at—"

So here, encapsulated, was all the research she had hoped to do, easily come by: school—grammar school or very minor public school, she couldn't recognise the name—Cambridge and a British Commonwealth Institute fellowship; then a research post with the Ministry of Defence (where did the Home Office come in?) and 'now researching the battle of the Ancre, the hard-won victory which led to the German withdrawal to the Hindenburg Line' , . . Definitely not her cup of tea, any of it; and yet the obsession with the 1914-18

War was here made explicable, even if she couldn't quite grasp the Theory of Contemporaneity which had drawn him from the Hindenburg Line to Jutland and HMS Vengeful.

"And here's the other one," said Margaret. "And the paperback of the one you've got there."

The Battle of the Ancre was slimmer, but although Elizabeth had already had her fill of carnage it offered her critical assessments of the first book.

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"Is this the Mitchell you want?" said Margaret doubtfully.

The critics appeared to have approved of Dr Mitchell's work; though of course the publishers would naturally have picked their quotations with care, for effect.

She looked at Margaret. "Do many people buy this sort of thing?"

Margaret shrugged. "About the same as for your father's books, allowing for the fact that Portsmouth's just down the road from here, so I expect to sell more naval books. It's surprising how well all the war books go—astonishing, even."

Margaret was CND—anti-Polaris, anti-Trident, anti-Cruise, anti-practically everything . . . Elizabeth had to make allowance for that, just as Margaret did her best to make allowance for Elizabeth being her father's daughter.

"And he's got another coming out in the autumn—I think I read about it in The Bookseller." Astonished or not, Margaret never let her principles get in the way of her bookselling. "I can't remember the title, but it has something to do with the Irish."

" Watch by the Liffey," said Elizabeth.

"That's it. But how—"

"I'll take the two hardcovers. Put them on my account, dear."

Margaret was still registering surprise at her unsuspected specialist knowledge, and the temptation to increase the score was irresistible.

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"It comes from what the Irish soldiers did in France in 1914—

the Germans were singing their 'Wacht am Rhein' in the trenches, so the Irish gave them back 'Watch by the Liflfey', Dr Mitchell says." She smiled sweetly at her friend. "And I need the books, you see, because he's taking me out to dinner tonight—"

There was no ticket on the car and no traffic warden in sight, and the street was still empty except for a car parked even more blatantly further down, where the yellow lines were doubled, no doubt encouraged by her example.

She sat for a moment, reading more of the dust-jacket blurb:

" Seventeen months later, when he next laid eyes on that same piece of the Hindenburg Line, Lieutenant Alfred Hannah of the West Hampshires failed to recognise it at first: the village of Fontaine-du-Bois had vanished off the face of the earth, and rust had dulled the barbs of the wire.

But the wire was still there, unbroken ..."

What was it, she wondered, which drew men like Dr Mitchell

—he wasn't much older than she was—to the contemplation of such horrors? With Father it had been different—it had all been part of re-living glory for him, as well as pain. But Dr Mitchell . . .

She drove homewards abstractedly, her mind hardly on the road but ranging more on that conundrum, and then on her own recklessness in allowing herself to be propositioned so dummy3

easily by a stranger. And such a strange stranger . . .

Then, suddenly and out of nowhere, a brace of leather-suited teenage motor-cyclists from Leigh Park roared past her, waking her up to the discovery that she was out of town already and on the edge of Father's woods— her woods, now.

Shocked by her own inattention, she checked her driving mirror carefully for further motor-cyclists before she turned into the concealed drive. But there was only a car way behind her, and that was pulling into the verge ... It looked not unlike the same car she had observed in the street below Margaret's, and she wondered for a moment if it might not be Dr Mitchell at the wheel solving the problem of locating her home simply by following her, since she had clean forgotten to give him any directions. But then she dismissed the thought as pure imagination: the Vicar could supply those directions just as well, and she couldn't see a man like Dr Mitchell worrying about such a small matter anyway.

She sighed as she searched in her bag for her key. It was no good dreaming dreams about Dr Mitchell merely because he was going to take her out to dinner. In another second or two she would step into the hall, and put her bag on the table under the mirror as she always did, and would look into the mirror to check her appearance, as she also always did out of pure habit. And the mirror would then tell her all she needed to know, as it too always did—and this time it would also remind her that it was Father's research in which Dr Mitchell was interested, not her . . . not her . . .

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She sighed again, and turned the key. Perhaps it would be better to vary the habit this time, and not bother to look in the mirror.

She put the bag down on the table—

There was a sudden flurry of movement in the mirror—she glimpsed something—and then darkness descended on her and arms crushed her—

"Don't scream, girl—an' don't struggle neither." The voice was as rough as the hands, but unhurried. "If yer do then I'll give yer somethin' to scream about—I'll break yer bleedin'

arm. Got it?"

Elizabeth wasn't aware that she had made any sound since the bag—or whatever it was—had descended on her head, surrounding her with impenetrable dark. Nor, for that matter, had she attempted to struggle, for the hands and the rock-like bulk of their owner left no scope for resistance: it was like being grabbed by a gorilla.

But perhaps she had cried out in surprise and pain, and the gorilla had misinterpreted both the sound and the weakness in her knees.

"Got it?" The voice grated in her ear and the pressure on her shoulder-blades increased agonisingly.

This time she heard herself cry out—almost as much in astonishment as in pain as her brain started to sort out the unbelievable signals it was receiving: nobody had ever done anything like this before to her— no one had ever held her dummy3

like this, hurt her like this!

"You're-hurting-me!" she gasped.

The pressure relaxed to its original implacable grip. "Just so you know this ain't nothin' to what I can do, eh?"

She was being robbed—freed from pain she fought against rising panic—she was being robbed, and she must keep her head ... or he would beat her into a pulp ... or ... she felt the fear of what he might also do to her spreading inside her—

the fear founded and fed on a hundred newspaper headlines

—

She must keep her head—she must remember what to do, even though the fear was choking her!

But she couldn't think straight any more. Was it better to fight, and risk injury—or did submission encourage them to do what they might not have intended to do in the first place?

But trying to fight this sort of strength would be sheer insanity—

"I've got 'er—an' she's got the message I reckon."

The voice outside the darkness wasn't directed at her: Oh, God help me! thought Elizabeth, despairingly—not him, but them!

"Bring her in here, then." The new voice wasn't rough, like that of her captor: it was educated, but at the same time unidentifiably classless.

Before she could deduce anything more about it—before even she could decide whether to derive hope or greater fear from dummy3

it—Elizabeth was man-handled round in a new direction and propelled forwards.

"Sit her down there," commanded the educated voice.

Again she was manoeuvred, until the back of her legs came up against something hard—the edge of a chair—and then forced down into it... on to it—a hard chair, with arms.

Inside the hood she hadn't known where she was, but this chair reduced the choice to the dining room or the study, though without sense of smell it was impossible to tell which.

"Well, Miss Loftus, we weren't expecting you back so soon.

But, now that you're here, we can turn that to advantage I think." The voice paused for an instant. "Indeed, I don't think

—I know that you will help uss."

Half of Elizabeth was irrationally terrified by the confidence in the voice, and by its smoothness, in which the sibilants hissed and slithered snake-like. But the other half whispered robbery to her, discounting rape and unnecessary violence.

Even, it was easy to imagine what had brought them, for it must be common knowledge now that she was alone, and a lone woman in a large secluded house would be an open invitation to men like this. She should have thought of that before, but now it was too late.

So ... better to get it over with. Because even if she could spin out the agony until Dr Mitchell came knocking on the door, she didn't fancy his chances against the gorilla who had grabbed her.

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"There's . . . there's money in a box upstairs—a wooden box under my bed." There was no point in directing them to the silver in the dining room and the sitting room, they would have seen that at once and would have got it already.

"Under the bed? Tut-tut! How very bourgeois and careless!"

The voice hissed the double-s at her contemptuously.

"A lot of money—more than two thousand pounds." The contempt stung her. "Just take it and go, can't you? There's nothing else worth taking—except the silver."

"Nothing else?" No sound penetrated the hood except the voice. "You're sure of that?"

Fear returned, instantly dissolving the contempt. "I—I promise you that there isn't—you can see for yourself... I haven't got any jewellery." It was hot inside the hood, she could feel her cheeks burning.

"Nothing else?" That hateful hiss again.

She shook the hood. "I swear it. Honestly— please!"

For a moment she thought he had accepted the plain truth.

Then, without warning, her hands were seized from her lap and held on the arms of the chair. Something sharp bit into each wrist in turn, and then into each ankle.

Nightmare! She couldn't see and she couldn't move! She couldn't even rock the chair—something, or someone, was holding it steady, and the very effort of trying to rock it stung her wrists.

"Don't struggle, Miss Loftus. You'll only hurt yourself."

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Elizabeth sat rigid. "Please—I've told you—"

"Shut up—and listen! I don't intend to waste a lot of time, Miss Loftus, so just listen . . . We don't want your silver, and we don't want your money—we'll take it, but we don't want it

—do you understand? You know what we want. So just tell us what we want to know, and then we'll go."

Elizabeth heard herself sob.

"Don't be silly, Miss Loftus. Crying won't help you—and saying 'please' won't help you either. Because there's only you and me, and I'm not a kind-hearted man—quite the opposite, in fact. Do you understand?"

With an enormous effort Elizabeth brought herself under control. "W-what do you w-want to know?"

"That's better." He sounded curiously disappointed. "But just remember now . . . two things: I never give anyone a second chance . . . and I'm very good at hurting people. Do you understand?"

Elizabeth nodded dumbly. Whatever it was that he wanted to know, she would tell him.

"Good. Then tell me all about the Vengeful, and those trips your father made to France."

The Vengeful? Those trips—? The questions simultaneously took her by surprise and also horrified her.

"Come on, Miss Loftus. I have his notes, and there's nothing in them. What I want is inside your head."

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It wasn't the safe deposits at all— it wasn't the safe deposits at all! And there was nothing inside her head except blind panic now.

"But I don't know what you mean—"

"Ah! Now there—I told you, didn't I?" Suddenly he sounded brisker, almost happier. "You can't sssay I didn't tell you!"

"But I don't!" wailed Elizabeth. "He did research—he did research—I didn't go with him—I don't understand—"

"Of course you don't! You don't remember anything—of course you don't!" The snake-voice paused. "Your memory has suddenly deserted you entirely. Hold her!"

Hands clamped down on Elizabeth's shoulders from behind, pressing her back against the chair.

"W-what are you doing?" She began to struggle instinctively, but the pressure on her shoulders merely increased. "Please!"

"Please!" The snake-voice mocked her. "Thi ss is a little problem I often encounter, you know. But I'm very good at ssolving it ... I'm going to help you get your memory back, Misss Loftu sss. That's all!"

Something hooked into the neckline of Elizabeth's dress, pulling her forward against the pressure from behind. The thin summer dress strained for an instant, then tore apart as the material ripped and the buttons gave way.

Elizabeth tried to struggle again, more wildly but just as uselessly, the wires cutting into her wrists. Then she went rigid as she felt something hook into her brassiere between dummy3

her breasts: the brassiere stretched for a second, then seemed to fall apart as though it had been cut—

Oh God! Oh God.'

But then nothing happened. The hands released her shoulders— and she was sobbing again. But nothing happened.

" Sss o . . . very nice, Miss Loftus! So . . . just listen, then."

Still nothing—nothing but the pounding of her heart, which hammered the blood in her ears in the darkness, and the sweat on her face.

"Did you hear that? No? Well... I was striking a match to light my cigarette. . .which is strange, because I don't smoke, you know." The voice was animated by pure pleasure. "Smoking is bad for you—and particularly bad for you, Miss Loftus."

Still nothing.

"Evidently you don't understand—or you're very brave—

brave and foolish." More pleasure. "Nowadays they have lots of equipment—microchips too, I shouldn't wonder—but I'm old-fashioned. In fact, although they say the Gestapo got it down to a fine art, I believe it was the Okrana and the Cheka who pioneered it... Apart from which it's highly cost-effective

—even now, with cigarettes the price they are. One packet and a box of matches, and you're in business."

Just as the unbelievable dawned on her, and she opened her mouth to scream, something soft pressed through the material of the hood between her lips—something soft which dummy3

was then pulled tight as the gag was fastened, so that she could only make incoherent sounds of hysteria, doubly muted.

"Ye sss ... I know you want to tell me everything now—of course you do! But you didn't take me at my word the first time, and I don't want you to have second thoughts again, so I propose to demonstrate the technique just a little in order to concentrate your mind absolutely on my requirements."

A hand gently parted the wreckage of her clothing.

"There now!" The voice and the hand both caressed her.

"And I see that you don't much indulge in sun-bathing. . .

which is really just as well, because you won't feel like wearing your bikini for quite a long time to come, if at all, you know."

Elizabeth wanted to faint, but her senses refused to leave her.

If anything they seemed to have become sharper, even to the gossamer touch on her skin.

"Wait a mo'—'old on." The rough voice came suddenly from above, just behind her.

"What is it?" Irritation harshened the snake-voice.

"I thought I 'eard somethin'."

"Heard something? Where?"

"Out back. Just 'old on a mo', like I said."

They were listening, and Elizabeth listened with them, yearning for any sound, but above all for Dr Mitchell's knock on the front door. It didn't matter to her now what might dummy3

happen to him if he fell foul of the gorilla-man—nothing mattered but her own deliverance from those other hands, which had crawled over her with such sickening gentleness.

"I can't hear anything," hissed the snake-voice.

"No, nor I can't neither—not now," the gorilla-man admitted grudgingly. "But I could swear I 'eard somethin', an' that's a fact." The pressure on Elizabeth's shoulders slackened.

"Better 'ave a look-see, I reckon—just to be on the safe side, okay?"

The snake-man sighed. "Very well—if you must. But make it snappy. We don't have all the time in the world at our disposal."

Time, thought Elizabeth desperately. Like them, she had heard nothing. But just as the hood disorientated her sense of place, so the dark tide of fear within her had swamped her sense of time, and what had seemed like only a few minutes of nightmare might in reality have taken much longer.

The pressure lifted altogether, and she could move again within the painful constraints of the bonds which held her wrists and ankles.

Time was what she had to hold on to—she had to think of ways to spin it out: she had to hold on to it, and get control of herself.

Then, out of the darkness, he touched her again, and the control she was striving for slipped from her mind in a wave of sick revulsion and instantly-revived panic. The chair dummy3

rocked and the bonds cut into her flesh agonisingly.

Whatever it was that she had been on the point of thinking vanished from her mind, and all she wanted to scream was Please don't— please don't!

But she couldn't scream, and even the incoherent sounds she started to make were stilled as it came to her with a flash of bitter clarity that all pleading was useless, and worse than useless: please don't had been the ultimate encouragement he wanted from her, adding spice to what he was going to do, and had always wanted to do . . . and nothing she could say or do—there was nothing she could say or do—would change that. She didn't even know any of the answers to his insane questions, but resistance or submission was all the same to him now.

So ... there was nothing left to her but helplessness and terrible numbing fear in the dark—and the quiet of his silent enjoyment of her terror, which joined him to her.

The crash of noise which broke the bond between them was so unexpected and so shattering that for a fraction of time she thought it was inside her, as though her brain and her heart had exploded simultaneously.

Then the noise was outside her, repeated and so loud that it convulsed her into movement, regardless of the pain which tore at her again and as the chair toppled turning black into screaming red into nothing as her head hit something hard—

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III

THERE WERE COLOURS, bright as flowers, but crowned with stars—

"Come on, Miss Loftus—Miss Loftus, come on now—wake up, Miss Loftus ..." The voice surrounded her, hectoring and encouraging her at the same time.

The colours revolved, and then became flowers in reality: the flowers in the curtains of the study, with the evening sun shining through them and starring the gaps in the folds of the pelmet with light. Elizabeth blinked the tears out of her eyes and fought her way upwards into consciousness.

She could see again!

More, she could see and her hands moved—hands, wrists and arms ... all of them moved, freely though painfully, falling where gravity took them.

"Come on, Miss Loftus—damn it!" The voice became peremptory and irritable. "Wake up!"

First, she felt aggrieved—then she became aware of hands holding her, lifting and dragging at her, which roused her into a flurry of fresh resistance against them.

The hands became arms, imprisoning her again. "No! Come on, now—it's me— stop it.'"

The hands weren't those hands—they crushed her, but they didn't touch her ... it was as though, even though ungentle, dummy3

they were unwilling to hold her, never mind to touch her—

Elizabeth relaxed, suddenly boneless.

"That's better! Now then . . . I'm putting you down—it's all right, but I'm putting you down—do you understand? Don't move—it's all right. . . I'll come back . . . right?"

There was no way she could answer any of that. But she accepted the soft-hard feel of the carpet against her cheek, and the movement of the bright flowers of the curtains and the stars twisting at impossible angles—and the desk and table legs horizontal when they should have been vertical.

She wrinkled her nose against the smell of burning carpet . . .

Burning carpet! The smell registered in her brain, triggering consciousness and a proper focus on her surroundings at the same time.

The desk blocked half her view of the room from ground level, but there at the end of it, a yard from her face and sending up a spiralling blue-grey smoke signal to her, a cigarette smouldered on Father's best-quality Wilton carpet!

Elizabeth hauled herself on to one elbow and reached out towards the cigarette. But it was too far away after all, and she had to go on hands and knees in order to extend her reach. To her annoyance she saw, as she picked it up, that it had already gouged an ugly brown mark into the thick pile of the Wilton, and—

God! There was someone lying behind the desk!

She froze on two knees and one hand, the cigarette pinched dummy3

between thumb and forefinger of the other hand, hypnotised by the dark suede shoes, and the grey trousers rucked up to reveal socks and an inch of hairy white leg.

"Don't look," said a voice from behind her.

Elizabeth hadn't wanted to look, there was no danger of that: not only the legs themselves, but also their stillness terrified her. But she found it impossible to take her eyes off them.

"Look at me instead," commanded the voice. "Come on, Miss Loftus—look at me."

She didn't want to turn round either, but in the end it was the lesser of two evils.

"There now . . . it's all right, Miss Loftus—Elizabeth—can I call you 'Elizabeth'? And you can call me 'Paul'—right?"

Elizabeth stared at Dr Mitchell uncomprehendingly.

"There's nothing to be afraid of. It's all over, and there's nothing to be afraid of—do you understand?"

She didn't understand . . . except that she knew he was trying to reassure her about . . . about things for which there could never be reassurance.

"It's all right, Elizabeth." He was speaking to her as though to a child, in exactly the same way that she had spoken to little Helen Powell when she'd come offher bike outside the school and broken her wrist.

"Dr Mitchell . . ." she heard her own voice from far away, half-strangled.

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"Paul." He advanced towards her. "Here—you put this on, Elizabeth."

She frowned at what he was offering her: it was her old raincoat from the peg by the kitchen door. What could he possibly have in mind—that she should wear her old raincoat?

Then she looked down at herself, and saw with horror how her dress gaped open, and fumbled instantly in a panic of embarrassment with her free hand to draw the torn edges of her dress across her breasts.

"Here—" He held the raincoat out with one hand and took the cigarette from her with the other "—put it on ... and then we'll get out of here."

Elizabeth rose to her feet and tried to take the coat from him, but her knees were so weak that she found herself holding to his hand through the coat to keep her balance.

"Are you all right?" He took the cigarette from her.

"I'm all right." Belatedly she realised that one edge of the torn dress had escaped her, and one breast with it; and the sight of it somehow put strength back into her knees and allowed her to get the coat round her, for modesty's sake.

He was trying to propel her out of the study, but she saw the legs protruding from behind the desk and the sight of them immobilised her again.

"He can't hurt you." Dr Mitchell's voice suddenly became harsher. "Come on!"

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She had known that already in her heart, or at least half-known it, from the stillness of those suede shoes; but although she believed him she could not take in her own belief with understanding, so that she turned to him in horror at his confirmation of what she had known.

And then she stared at the open doorway.

"And the other one won't bother you either." Dr Mitchell read her mind, but this time he had control of his voice. "He's got two bullets in his chest, so he's not going anywhere.

Come on!"

Elizabeth allowed herself to be half-led, half-pushed, and half-supported out of the study, and across the hall, and into the sitting room.

Bullets—

There had been those noises—they still rang in her head, she could still hear them—before her head had hit the desk—

noises— two bullets in the chest—and the suede shoes protruding from behind the desk—

He pushed her against an armchair—it pressed against the back of her legs, and she collapsed into it, letting it engulf her.

She hugged the old raincoat against her. "I'm cold."

He knelt down obediently in the fireplace, to switch on the electric fire which stood in it during the summer. She heard the switches click—one, two, three.

"Where do you keep your drinks?"

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"In the cabinet—in the corner," she answered automatically.

There was a thing in the back of her mind, just beyond her reach—like the cigarette on the carpet.

He tried to put a glass in her hand, and she could smell brandy.

"I don't drink—not this."

"You're drinking it now. And so am I." He paused to drink.

"Go on."

She drank, and the fiery stuff burnt her throat, squeezing tears from her eyes.

"Here you are."

He was offering her something else. Incredulously, she saw the same blue-grey smoke curl from a cigarette.

"Take it—go on."

"I don't smoke." The cigarette brought back an obscene memory, making her shiver involuntarily.

"But you were—" he bit off the end of the sentence. "Christ!

Was that. . . Christ!"

She drank again. This time it didn't burn so much— burn!

She shivered again, her teeth rattling against the cut-glass, and focussed on him.

He was staring at the little golden packet in his hand, as though he was seeing it for the first time, and she was seeing him for the first time too—not as he had stared at her from the dust-jacket of The Breaking of the Hindenburg Line—not dummy3

the Paul Mitchell born in Gloucestershire and educated at Lord Mansfield's Grammar School and Cambridge University

—

"Who are you?" Suddenly she knew what it was that she had been reaching out for, beyond the smouldering cigarette.

"Have you phoned the police?

He took another drink. "You know who I am."

"Have you phoned—?" The question died inside her as she repeated it, and a terrible fear invaded her across the gap it left in its fall—a fear which took her back to the question he had left unanswered. "Who are you?"

Who are you? What are you? She shrank away from him into the softness of the armchair, graduating from fear again into greater and uncomprehending panic.

"It's all right, Elizabeth—" he put his hand out towards her, but she tried to shrink farther into the chair, away from him.

He pulled back his hand quickly, and she watched it turn into a fist and almost thought for a moment that he was going to hit her. But instead he dropped it to his side and looked down at the cigarette he was still holding in the other one.

"All right, Miss Loftus. I can understand how you feel." He flicked the cigarette into the empty fireplace, behind the electric fire.

He couldn't possibly know how she felt, thought Elizabeth.

But there was no point in telling him so. There was only one thing worth saying, though perhaps that was pointless too.

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But she had to say it.

"I'd like you to call the police, Dr Mitchell—the phone's in the study." She licked her lips. "Or . . . if you won't. . . then I intend to call them."

"No." His eyes left her, switching first to the French windows behind her, then to those on either side of the fireplace. "No phoning. It isn't necessary."

"It isn't—?" She stopped as he moved past her, watching him draw the curtains on each of the windows in turn. They had drawn the curtains in the study too, she remembered.

But he was already between her and the door. "But that was necessary—a necessary precaution." He switched on the light.

She tried to lick her lips again, but her mouth was dry. "What do you mean? Why can't I phone the police?"

"Because I am the police, Miss Loftus."

Elizabeth could feel the heat from the electric fire on her face, but under the raincoat she was shaking now. "I—I don't believe you."

He shrugged. "There are different sorts of policemen. I'm one of the different sorts, that's all."

His lack of concern angered her—it surprised her that she could be so frightened and yet still also be angry. "The sort that shoots people, you mean?"

"Or gets shot by them—yes." He watched her. "But this time the sort that shoots people—yes again. Fortunately for you dummy3

this time . . . yes?"

Suddenly Elizabeth was half-way to believing him. But she knew that was because she wanted to do so, against all the evidence of what had happened from the moment she had first set eyes on him at the fete. "But why . . . why . . ." she trailed off.

"Why did I shoot them? It's called 'self-defence', Miss Loftus." He looked at his watch. "But if you want me to regret it then I will."

He was waiting for someone, thought Elizabeth. That was why he was merely talking to her, and not doing anything else.

But what was that "anything else"? The thought queue-jumped all the other questions which were jostling each other in her head.

"Please—"

He held up his hand to silence her while he concentrated on some other sound. In the distance she heard a car on the road outside, but the sound diminished. "Yes, Miss Loftus?"

He still had only one ear for her. "What are you listening for?"

He considered her for a second. "It's possible that your . . .

visitors were not alone." He pointed to the curtains. "Hence the precaution . . . though fortunately your windows are burglar-locked, and I've wedged the back door ... so I don't think we'll be disturbed."

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"But. . . they got in. "She heard her voice tremble at the thought of the snake-man having other animals with him.

"But they had all the time in the world—and an unattended house." He shook his head. "Don't worry."

Don't worry? Don't worry! Elizabeth hugged herself even more tightly as the awfulness of her situation possessed her: it wasn't a nightmare—he was here, she wasn't dreaming him, and he was waiting for someone—it was a daymare, and it was real: there was a dead man lying behind the desk in the study— and she dared not imagine what he might have been doing if he hadn't been killed . . . and there was another man desperately wounded, lying somewhere else—

"What about the man you shot—the other man?" She clutched at the only straw she could find. "Shouldn't you phone for an ambulance?"

"He'll keep for a while," said Dr Mitchell brutally. "He's not bleeding to death, and he's a big strong fellow. Have another drink, Miss Loftus—your teeth are chattering."

Elizabeth watched him pour. "I'm cold—I'm hot outside, and cold inside ... I don't know that I should—" she looked up at him "—I don't know anything any more, Dr Mitchell... I don't even know if you are Dr Mitchell—who are you?"

"Why not have another try at calling me 'Paul'?"

She drank, and this time it didn't burn her throat.

"Well?"

She wanted to be reassured—to stop fighting, to stop dummy3

thinking . . . just to let go. "Paul."

"There! That didn't hurt at all—did it! Everything is going to be all right—don't be afraid, and don't worry."

She knew that none of that could come true just by wanting it to be so. Nothing was all right, and she was still afraid.

But his voice was soothing. "Paul . . ."

"Yes, Elizabeth? May I call you 'Elizabeth'?" He pulled a stool across the floor and sat on it, coming down to her eye-level.

"What do you want to know, Elizabeth?"

Although he was close to her it wasn't easy to focus on him in the feeble yellow light. Yet she felt absurdly grateful to him now, just for coming down to her level—for being human just for a moment.

"P-please . . . can you t-tell me . . ." she had to concentrate hard to hold her glass steady and to keep the coat wrapped round her at the same time ". . . why all this is happening?"

"Well... I should have thought you knew the answer to that much better than I do, Elizabeth," he chided her gently.

"But I don't—I don't!"

"Well. . . somebody thinks you do. In fact, somebody is very sure that you do ... so perhaps you do."

"But I don't—honestly." She shook her head. "I really don't . . . Paul."

"I believe you, Elizabeth." He nodded encouragingly. "But, you know . . . sometimes we know things without knowing dummy3

that we know them. That's happened to me—oh, lots of times."

Elizabeth grappled with the possibility. But it took her back hideously to the study.

"It's all right—they can't touch you now—" he started to put out his hand, and then draw it back quickly as though he knew not only what she was thinking of, but even sensed how her flesh crawled at the mention of the word "touch" "—I'm here now, and you're safe."

"Yes." She rocked backwards and forwards, and then steadied herself, and took another warming gulp of brandy.

"Tell me what happened." He leaned forward and poured her some more brandy. "Telling helps, while it's fresh in your mind—it gets it off your chest."

She tightened the old raincoat around her. "They grabbed me as I came in—they just grabbed me ..."

"Uh-huh. And tied you up. But what did they want?"

"They said . . . he said ... he asked me questions."

"About what?"

She frowned. "It didn't make sense. They wanted to know about the Vengeful. . . and Father's trips to France."

"So what did you tell them?"

"There wasn't anything I could tell them. He said he'd got Father's notes, but that they weren't any use. But I don't know anything that isn't in the typescript—and I didn't even dummy3

go to France with Father. . . I tried to tell him that. But he wouldn't listen." She shivered.

"Yes?"

"Then he tore . . . my dress." She drank again.

"Okay—forget that, Elizabeth." He shook his head sympathetically. "It didn't make sense because you couldn't tell him his answers—is that it?"

"It wouldn't have made sense even if I could have answered him." Elizabeth tried to concentrate. "Father was only researching for a chapter he was re-writing—that was why he went to France. I do know that much."

"A chapter about the Vengeful?"

"Yes. But. . ." Concentration still didn't make for any better sense.

"If the man wanted to know about your father's ship—" Paul Mitchell stopped suddenly. "What is the connection between his ship and France? I wouldn't have thought there was much

—1941 and 1942?" He frowned.

"That's the point. It wasn't his ship—it was for the chapter on Number Seven."

"Number Seven?"

"The seventh Vengeful." She nodded. "We used to call them by their numbers. Father's was Number Eleven."

"Which was Number Seven?"

"She was a frigate—a 36-gun ship in the Napoleonic War. She dummy3

was wrecked off the French coast after she'd been damaged in a fight with a French frigate named the Fortuné. They both went down, actually— the Vengeful captured the Fortuné, but the French ship herself was lost off Portsmouth when the prize crew were bringing her in." She gestured helplessly.

"But that was all back in 1812."

"You never went to France with your father?"

"No." She could never remember going anywhere with Father, let alone France. "No."

He thought for a moment. "Did the Vengeful—Number Seven

— have anything interesting on board?"

"Interesting?" It was a stupid question. "She was just an ordinary frigate coming home for a refit. Or maybe to be broken up—she was in a rotten state even before the fight with the Fortuné . . . What do you mean 'interesting'?"

Elizabeth heard herself slur the word, and shook her head.

"Interesting?" she repeated.

"I mean treasure, or something like that, Elizabeth."

"Treasure?" Another stupid question. "Good heavens, no!

She'd been on convoy duty for months and months, escorting supply ships for Wellington backwards and forwards, and backwards and forwards . . . Nothing at all interesting happened to her until she was coming home that last time, and met the Fortuné—the French ship. She was so dull before that, that Father had to put in pages and pages about frigates, and how they were built, and so on, and so forth . . ."

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She nodded. "I typed out his books—and cooked his bloody meals, and cleaned his bloody house, and washed—" What was she saying!— "I mean ... I know all that because I did his typing for him."

He was staring at her, maybe with surprise, maybe with embarrassment, maybe with pity. But it didn't really matter much now, because she was obviously useless to him as a source of information if that was what he wanted.

"So, you see, it really doesn't make any sense at all—twice over, it doesn't." She wanted to go on talking now that she'd started, even though she had nothing to give him. "A man ...

a man like that, wanting to know about Number Seven—the seventh Vengeful, I mean ... or any of the other ones, come to that. . . It's just naval history, you see, that's all... And if it wasn't... I mean, if it was something to do with Father in France . . . then I'd be the last person to ask."

"But your burglar didn't know that," said Paul.

"No, I suppose not." Elizabeth conceded the point miserably.

"So you don't know what he was after?" He sounded disappointed too.

"I know he wasn't after my money—the money in the house—

because he said so." The misery deepened; in another moment her eyes would be swimming. "I've got rather a lot of it, Father left a whole box full of it. It's in Father's Vengeful box."

"His what?"

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"His Vengeful box. It was the surgeon's box, for his instruments, with his name on the top picked out on a brass plate—he kept his money in it... they gave it to him."

"Gave it to whom?" He frowned at her. "Whose name?"

"The surgeon's name—the ship's surgeon—Williard—no, William Willard Pike—" Elizabeth corrected herself"—he kept his scalpels, and his forceps, and saws and things in it—

at least, that's what Father thought." Something seemed to be confusing him. "They gave it to him."

"Who gave it to whom?"

Now she was confused too. "What?"

"The surgeon kept his instruments in it." He scratched his head. "But your father also kept his money in it. Did the surgeon give it to your father? Not that it matters—"

"Of course not!" How could he be so obtuse? "The surgeon's patients gave it to him—it says so on the inside of the lid.

Father kept his money in it—my money now." She caught herself slurring her words again. "I mean, it's just an old box

—an old mahogany box with brass hinges and the inscription plates on it, that's all."

"I see." He nodded. "And the surgeon gave it to him."

"No! I told you—"

He lifted his hand. "It really doesn't matter—"

"No! Father's crew gave it to him—the survivors in 1942.

They found it in an antique shop in Portsmouth, somewhere . . . not with the instruments in it, of course—it dummy3

was empty, but it just had room for a few bottles of very old wine—or port, or brandy, or something. It was their present to him—a sort of keepsake, the box was, after they'd drunk the brandy—you see?" she looked at him hopefully.

"Yes . . ." He listened as another car went by. "And that was why he called it his Vengeful box—I see."

"Yes— no—no . . . that was because of Dr Pike."

He frowned again. "What? Dr Pike?"

"The surgeon—I told you!" Elizabeth was consumed by a desire to get the facts straight, if that was possible. "Dr Pike was the surgeon on Number Seven—the old Vengeful. . . only he must have drowned with the prize crew when the Fortuné went down on the Horse Sands off Portsmouth—" She hiccupped suddenly. "Pardon! It's all in the Number Seven chapter in Father's book—he thought the box must have drifted ashore from the wreck ... It was really the box that gave him the idea of writing the Vengeful book, I think. Do you want to hear about it? Because Father thought—"

"That's all right—I can read about it, Elizabeth," said Paul Mitchell quickly. "And he kept his money in it—that's very interesting."

He didn't look as though he was very interested, thought Elizabeth. He looked as if he was listening to something else.

Suddenly she wanted to interest him. "Father was a gambler, you know— he gambled. . . And I never knew it—would you believe that?" It was almost a relief to tell someone at last.

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"He left me a letter—and he left me lots of money. Lots and lots and lots of money—would you believe that?"

Now he was interested. "Oh, yes?"

"Oh, yes—" After a brief moment of gratification, caution set in abruptly "—it's all ... quite safe. Apart from what's upstairs in the Vengeful box."

"That's good." He stared at her. "What was it—the horses? Or the football pools?"

"He didn't like football." Come to that, thought Elizabeth, he hadn't liked horses either. "But ... I don't really know—" she was about to add "Would you believe that?" when she remembered having said it several times before, and decided against a further repetition "—he didn't say, actually."

He stood up suddenly. "You stay here—just stay where you are, and don't move. Okay?"

She blinked at him, unaware that she had shown any sign of wanting to move. She didn't even think that she could move, even.

The front-door bell pealed out before he was half-way across the room.

In the doorway he turned back towards her. "It's all right.

Just you stay put, Elizabeth," he said soothingly.

She watched the door close. For a few seconds his words reassured her, then her brain began to work again, and she was no longer reassured.

He had heard something which she had missed—that was dummy3

why he had moved before the bell rang: she had been listening to her own voice—she had been talking too much—

God!

And— God! She couldn't just sit here like a dummy!

This was the reinforcement he'd been waiting for—it had to be that, because burglars' friends would surely never ring the bell. But even so, when she heard the safety-chain rattle before the clatter of the latch it was evident that he was still taking his precautions.

There came a faint murmur of voices, and then the chain rattled again as he released it. Elizabeth almost sank back into the chair with relief, but the spark of her curiosity refused to let itself be extinguished: she still couldn't be sure that it was relief she ought to be feeling, and this might be her only chance of confirming it on her own account.

Levering herself out of the chair was more difficult than she had expected, and her knees wanted to fold under her so that she had to support herself from one piece of furniture to the next for the first few steps, until she could stumble the last yard to reach the wall beside the door.

Leaning against it, she put her ear to the crack—

"I wish to God that I did!" That was Paul Mitchell's voice, but it was no longer soothing. "Only that's the least of our problems at the moment. You'd better send Bannen to the nearest phone—that's the one I phoned you from, about a mile down the road, just where the houses start ... I don't dummy3

fancy using the one here. We need an ambulance—gunshot wounds, two in the chest, one in the lung by the look of him . . . and one in the leg ... and Bannen must get on to the local Special Branch to get him put under wraps, wherever they take him—no, wait!"

"What?"

"We need a meat waggon too. And we'd better have that first."

"Christ!"

"For two. One's in the room there . . . the other's in the garden at the back, in the bushes by the back-gate—"

" Christ!" The second voice graduated from surprise to consternation. "What the hell's happened?"

"Sssh! I've got the woman in there. I don't want her to hear all this."

"You haven't shot her too, by any chance?"

"Don't be funny, Aske. Just tell Bannen to get moving."

Two?

Two! Elizabeth's knees weakened, and only the wall supported her. She wanted to get back to the safety of the armchair in case he came to check up on her, but her legs had mutinied.

She heard the car start up, and then the front door closed again. Relief flooded over her as she heard the second voice again.

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"What the devil have you been doing, Mitchell? You said this was just routine, damn it!"

Paul Mitchell half-grunted, half-groaned. "So it was! If I hadn't spotted Novikov . . . my God, man—I'd have walked in here like a lamb to the slaughter!"

There was a moment of silence. Then she heard the study door open with its characteristic squeak.

Again she wanted to move, but couldn't.

In the garden at the back, in the bushes—

Lamb to the slaughter— meat waggon—

The door squeaked shut. "Who the hell's that?"

"Don't ask me—I don't know any of them, they're not in any files I've ever seen." Paul Mitchell sounded as though he disbelieved himself. "They're all new to me."

"What about her?"

"You may well ask!" Pause.

"What d'you mean?"

Elizabeth held her breath.

"They were just about to do something very nasty to her when I crashed their party." Pause. "I tell you, Aske . . .

whatever they want here, they want it badly, and that's the truth."

"What sort of state is she in?"

"Not bad, considering what she's been through—and considering what I've done to her, filling her up with brandy dummy3

while she's still in shock. I wanted her to talk—and now I can't stop her."

"Charming! What are you going to do to her next?"

A tear ran down Elizabeth's cheek. He had been so kind and sympathetic, she had thought. And she had confided in him.

"I'm not going to do anything to her—you are." Pause. "I'm going to take this house apart."

"And just what exactly am I going to do to her?"

"Take her to the safe house. David Audley will have to decide what to do with her after that."

"And if she doesn't want to go?"

Elizabeth's knees weakened, and she slid down the wall to the floor.

"She's in no condition to argue," said Paul Mitchell harshly.

"Tell her it's for her own good—tell her anything you bloody-well like, Aske. But just get her out of here."

"Mmm . . . well, if this massacre is anything to go by, it probably is for her own good. Because, I must say ... it does rather look as though the Russians mean business this time, old boy."

The Russians? She must have misheard—the Russians didn't make sense . . . But then nothing made sense.

"For God's sake don't mention the Russians—I didn't mean that. She's frightened enough as it is, I don't want her to have hysterics," Paul Mitchell whispered angrily.

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She hadn't misheard. It still made no sense, but she hadn't misheard.

"She's the hysterical type is she? Just my luck! And Bannen tells me she's plain as a pikestaff, too," groaned Aske. "All right—let's get it over."

Elizabeth closed her eyes for an instant. Then, because she didn't trust her legs, she began to crawl back towards her chair.

She wasn't going to have hysterics—she wasn't going to give them that satisfaction: that was what anger did for her.

On the other hand, the way she felt, she was about to be unpleasantly sick to her stomach.

IV

ONE THING SHE had learnt in nearly 24 hours, thought Elizabeth, was that none of them looked like any sort of policeman—not hateful Dr Mitchell, not polite Mr Aske and monosyllabic Mr Bannen, and certainly not the man in the doorway.

"Good afternoon, Miss Loftus." He closed the door behind him. "I'm so sorry to have kept you waiting so long."

The voice was wrong. He was a big ugly broken-nosed boxer running to seed, in an old shirt with a frayed collar and a pair of clean but paint-spotted khaki slacks. But for that tell-tale Oxbridge voice he could have been the gorilla-man of dummy3

hideous memory from yesterday.

"But we've had a lot to do, and Sunday isn't the best day for doing it—please don't get up—" he motioned with his hand as she started to move "—not if you're comfortable where you are."

Elizabeth rose from the scatter of Sunday papers on the carpet around her. Mr Aske had said his boss was coming, it was almost the only thing he had said. And this gentle-voiced paint-spotted thug was that man, those words and that voice both told her—and therefore more to be feared than any of them.

"I'm afraid you've had a bad time—and I don't suppose we've made it seem any better . . . Do please sit down—" he indicated the one comfortable chair in the bedroom "—and then I shall be able to sit down too."

Elizabeth pulled the stool from under the dressing table and sat on it. It seemed strange to her, with all she wanted to say, that no words came to her at all. But then, when she began to think about it, silence seemed quite sensible.

The big man sank into the armchair and stared at her for a few seconds.

"No questions, Miss Loftus?" He smiled suddenly. "But then my colleague, Dr Mitchell, did say that you were a brave young lady. And a resourceful one, too."

That was so far from the truth as to be laughable, if she had felt like laughing. And praise from Dr Mitchell was dummy3

something she could do without, anyway.

She cleared her throat. "I asked Dr Mitchell questions yesterday evening, and I protested to Mr Aske last night. But it didn't do me any good on either occasion. Will I do any better now?"

"A fair question." He nodded. "But I am neither Dr Mitchell nor Mr Aske. So why not try?"

He was testing her. "Very well. You could start by telling me who you are, I suppose."

"That's better!" He rolled slightly sideways in order to fish a small black wallet out of his hip pocket "—my name is Audley, and I work for the government. . . your government, Miss Loftus." He displayed the contents of the wallet for her.

"This is what you might call my credentials . . . my right to do what I do, as it were—do you see?"

Elizabeth studied the words and the names, but hardly saw them with her attention drawn towards the photograph, in which a pair of fragile metal-rimmed spectacles had been perched incongruously on his nose, just below the break.

"You're a policeman." She found her voice again. "A sort of policeman?"

The second sentence was better, less like an accusation, more like a question. But as she said it she thought of Paul Mitchell with a twinge of anger.

"You might say that, yes." He watched her.

Elizabeth's stomach churned. "A secret policeman—might I dummy3

say that, Mr Audley?"

"You very well might, Miss Loftus." To her disappointment, he smiled again. "And you might be right—a few hundred miles east of here you would be exactly right, in fact . . . But, of course, you wouldn't say as much there, you'd be too frightened. So there could be a difference, don't you think?

Because you don't need to be frightened of me, you see."

Elizabeth steeled herself against his kindness. Paul Mitchell had been kind yesterday, but with men like this kindness was only one side of a coin which had a very different face on the other.

"You don't believe me?" He spoke gently.

"I wasn't thinking of you, Mr Audley," she lied. "I was thinking of your colleague, Dr Mitchell."

He frowned slightly. "With disapproval?"

She was committed now. "Violence frightens me. And he's a violent man."

For a moment he stared at her without speaking. Then he shook his head. "No, you're quite wrong there . . . But if he were, you should be grateful for it, rather than disapproving, after what he did for you yesterday. For that was no small thing, Miss Loftus, believe me."

His mildly chiding tone stung her. "I'm very grateful for that

—of course." She was conscious that she'd talked herself into an ungraceful position. "Though he did actually describe it himself as 'self-defence' . . . But it isn't that, exactly . . ."

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"What is it, then . . . exactly?"

She didn't want to go any further, ungraceful or not. "It doesn't matter."

"It does matter. It matters a great deal, believe me." He pinned her with a look from which all the mildness had vanished. "I need to know—exactly."

The opportunity of revenging herself on Paul Mitchell had presented itself more quickly than she had expected. But now revenge seemed petty, as it always did.

"Come on, Miss Loftus."

There wasn't time to think of a lie. "He killed those men—but he didn't seem to care. He said—"

"Those men?" He snapped up her mistake, then sank back into the armchair. "Ah ... so he was right! You were resourceful enough to eavesdrop . . . On your hands and knees?"

Elizabeth stared at him.

"You left scuff-marks on the carpet—he noticed them."

Audley nodded. "Paul Mitchell's not just a fine scholar, he's got a sharp eye. For which you should be eternally grateful, Miss Loftus."

"I said I was grateful."

"So you did. But I don't think you're grateful enough, so I'm going to tell you exactly why you should be much more grateful." He pinned her again with that fierce look of his.

"You see, you're wrong about Paul Mitchell, Miss Loftus . . .

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perhaps there are extenuating circumstances for that, I agree . . . but you are wrong about him, nevertheless—quite wrong."

Elizabeth squirmed on the sharp point of his concentration.

It was like being at school again, but not as one of the teachers.

"He killed those men for you, Miss Loftus—for your sake, not for self-defence— for you."

"Yes—"

"No! You don't understand because you can't, not because you don't want to—I'll grant that. But I'm going to rectify that. So just listen."

Elizabeth licked her lips.

"It was partly my fault. I told Mitchell this was just a routine job—no problems, no danger, just routine. So after he'd talked to you at the fête and arranged to visit you he could very well have gone off to the nearest pub to fortify himself for a boring evening."

He was trying to wound her now, thought Elizabeth. And he was succeeding.

"But being Paul Mitchell ... for which you should be thankful, Miss Loftus ... he didn't leave it at that—he decided to look around just to make sure everything was all right, even if it was just routine."

She felt the knife turn.

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"So then he saw . . . something . . . which made it not routine

— something which frightened him, because he didn't expect it."

Something? There was too much that she couldn't remember

—

"So then he had a problem. Because the first thing he had to do was to phone for back-up—for help . . . which he did."

Audley nodded. "But help was at least thirty minutes away, and he got to thinking that maybe you didn't have thirty minutes—maybe you didn't have any minutes at all." He paused, and as the pause lengthened she realised that he was letting it elongate deliberately, to give her time to remember what she had been trying to forget. "So what should he have done then, Miss Loftus?" Shorter pause. "Go and knock at the front door, like a Christian?" Pause. "If he was wrong—no harm done." Pause. "But if he was right . . . then he was in trouble too." Pause—unendurable pause. "Because he didn't have a gun, Miss Loftus—he isn't 'licensed to kill', because no one is, contrary to popular legend. Not even policemen—

they're not supposed to kill, except in very special and well-established extremities. And you certainly weren't an extremity—you were just a guess, Miss Loftus."

He was hammering Miss Loftus like a dentist drilling without any pain-killer—

"So he went round the back, and he was very lucky there—"

Don't say "Miss Loftus" again, prayed Elizabeth—

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"—because there was a look-out man at the back, but the man was careless." Audley shook his head. "He was very lucky

—and the look-out man was very careless ... So then he had one dead man on his hands—and having a dead man on one's hands makes one sick . . . would you believe that, Miss Loftus? It makes you sick—sick to the stomach. Do you know what a dead man looks like? Do you know how his body reacts to being dead? Would you like the details?"

She couldn't even shake her head—she didn't want to, but she couldn't anyway.

"So now he had a gun. But he also had another problem, because there are only two rules for that sort of situation: you either run like hell or you go on like hell, SAS-style, before the other side knows what's happening." This time he neither nodded nor shook his head, he just looked at her. "And you never really know what you're going to do then until it happens—the question has to be asked each time, and you never know whether you were right until afterwards, which can be too late. So don't ask me what I would have done—I've a sneaking suspicion that I might have run, and justified it by thinking of my wife and child after—but you know what he did—"

Yes, she knew—or she knew now, anyway—

"He went on. And he shot the big one in the kitchen—in the kitchen, and in the leg, and then in the lung . . . and finally in the spine, Miss Loftus." He still just looked at her. "They think he's going to die too ... although Mitchell doesn't know dummy3

—he still thinks he only killed two men, not three . . . But when he asks me—as he surely will—I shall have to be as brutally frank with him as I am being with you, Miss Loftus."

Brutally frank was what he was determined to be: she hated him for it, but she couldn't stop him, any more than Paul Mitchell could have stopped in the kitchen—she understood that now.

"He had one bullet left then. But he probably wasn't counting by then—he was probably too scared to count his shots by then, and the SAS rule is to keep moving—it's like the old house-clearing discipline in the war: once you're in the house you must go through it like a dose of salts, that was the rule—

if you stop, you're dead. So he didn't stop."

"Please, Mr Audley—"

"I haven't finished. The last bit is the best: he killed your little man with a single shot, right through the heart—a professional couldn't have done better than that, Miss Loftus

—with a snap shot. But that's the shot which may get him into most trouble, unfortunately."

He let her think about it this time, until she could formulate the obvious question. "But—why?"

"Because the little man wasn't armed. He had a scalpel in his pocket—an adjustable typographical scalpel. But that was all he had." Audley shook his head sadly. "And that won't look good on the report . . . apart from the fact that we'd have liked to have talked to him, and now we can't." His voice dummy3

became gentler again. "It was an accident, of course. But it won't look good."

"But. . . but he couldn't have known . . ."

"That's what we'll be arguing, certainly. And with your supporting statement—and the gun—we ought to be able to manage 'Justifiable homicide', with a bit of luck," agreed Audley. "There's a button on the wall there—by the bed . . .

Would you press it please, Miss Loftus."

Elizabeth rose shakily, and stepped over the Sunday papers, and pressed the button.

"Thank you," said Audley politely.

She sat down again, and waited, and tried to think coherently.

He had done it deliberately, of course—all of it, intentionally and with deliberate brutality designed to shock her. But, deliberately or not, he had succeeded: he had shackled her to Paul Mitchell for ever, with unbreakable chains of obligation.

The door opened, and Paul was there in the doorway—and she didn't know where to look, with the way she must look, sans the slightest advantage of make-up, and her hair every which-way, and the old dress which Humphrey Aske had offered her yesterday, when it hardly seemed to matter what she looked like.

"It is customary to knock, Mitchell," snapped Audley testily.

"Have you brought the box? And the form?"

Paul Mitchell hefted a suitcase on to the bed, snapping the dummy3

catches but leaving the lid closed. Then he felt inside his breast-pocket and produced a folded document.

"This is an Official Secrets form, Miss Loftus." Audley unfolded the document and handed it to Elizabeth. "Sign it at the bottom there—"

"But read it first, Elizabeth," said Paul Mitchell.

"Shut up, Mitchell," said Audley. "Just give her a pen."

Elizabeth took the form from Audley and the pen from Paul Mitchell.

"Sign it, Miss Loftus," said Audley.

"You're signing away your rights," said Paul. "Once you've signed, they can shut you up and throw away the key."

"She's not stupid." Audley gestured towards the form. "After what you've done, she knows she hasn't got any rights—

except maybe the right to be shot by you, Mitchell. Sign it, Miss Loftus." He paused. "And the copy underneath—sign that too."

Elizabeth signed. In the silence of Paul's failure to reply to Audley's last remark she heard the scratch of the pen on the paper.

"Good." Audley folded the forms and transferred them to his hip pocket, where the identification folder was stowed.

Elizabeth observed that Paul looked decidedly miserable, and not at all the confident young man she had first seen in the mirror. If she'd wanted to go on hating him it would have been difficult, but now it was impossible.

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" Elizabeth Jane Varney Loftus" said Audley reflectively.

"'Varney' for the naval Varneys, on your mother's side, from way back—from Boscawen and Hawke, and the Seven Years'

War, and all the other wars thereafter . . . There was a Varney who was Admiral of the Blue in the West Indies, I remember from my history books—and that must have perked up the family fortunes, with his admiral's share of prize-money—

how much was that in those days?"

"One eighth." The mention of money made Elizabeth uneasy.

"One eighth up to 1808, less after that."

"This was back in the eighteenth century . . . one eighth? Plus head-money, and gun-money, and sundry other trifles—very nice!" Audley nodded. "So ... an old and distinguished naval family, and you the very last of them, after the Dogger Bank in ' 14, and Sulva Bay in '15, and the Murmansk run in '43."

He wasn't reading—the suitcase was open on the bed now, but from where she knelt she couldn't see its contents. But he hadn't dipped into it, anyway; so this was what was already in his head, about grandfather and his uncles, and all her other Varney ancestors.

"Beside the Varneys, the Loftuses were pretty small beer—in trade in the West Country, was it? So your mother was a good catch, at least in naval terms, for Lieutenant-Commander Hugh Loftus, even with his VC? Would that be right?"

How much did he know? Did he also know that Mother had dummy3

been beautiful, judging by those portraits which were all that she had inherited? Or that Grandmother Varney, judged from the same source, had been even more beautiful, in her diamonds and her dresses?

It occurred to Elizabeth that if Paul Mitchell had had the run of the house last night those might be exactly Audley's sources, with much more beside—and that she had the right at least to disapprove of such an intrusion into her privacy.

"I can't say I've really ever thought of it, Mr Audley."

"No ... of course, they were all gone before your time—and your mother too, when you were a baby—very sad!" Audley commiserated insincerely. "Which just left you and the Commander, and in somewhat straitened circumstances when he was invalided out, I take it?"

She had been right to feel uneasy: it was the money he was working towards. But how much could he know about that, beyond what she had blabbed yesterday to Paul. But how much more could old Mr Lovell add to that?

"Father had his writing, Mr Audley." Her apprehension increased as she thought of Mr Lovell. If she was now a most valued client he was nonetheless a pillar of the Establishment, and if the Establishment leaned on him he might well bend his ear to it. Yet, at the same time, her own backbone stiffened: if they thought she was going to give in easily, they were very much mistaken. "He made a new career for himself with his books."

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"Yes. Just so!" He flicked a look at Paul Mitchell, who seemed to be busy studying the pattern on the carpet. "But Dr Mitchell and I have some small experience of the writer's trade, Miss Loftus . . . and the fact is, your father didn't write many books over the years—good ones, I'm sure, but not many . . . and not best-sellers." Audley's voice harshencd.

"Or, to put it another way, I've spoken with his publishers, and I don't think his royalties matched his tastes."

Now Elizabeth knew where she was, and what she was: she was the USS President making a run for it off the Long Island shore in 1815, straight out of Father's article for the British Naval Review . . . heavily laden, and damaged below the water-line while crossing the bar off Staten Island, and with half the British fleet in hot pursuit. But a run for it she was going to make, nevertheless!

"Mr Audley, I really don't see what this is leading to—or what business of yours my father's royalties are—or his tastes."

She had to get the mixture just right, with equal parts of incomprehension, irritation and innocence. "And I certainly don't see what it's got to do with that document I signed."

Out of the corner of her eye she saw Paul Mitchell half-smiling at the carpet, as though he had noticed a joke in the pattern.

"Are we going to play games after all, Miss Loftus?" Audley gazed at her. "You disappoint me."

" I'm not playing games—"

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"Mitchell." Audley ignored her. "The box!"

It was the Vengeful box, of course—and Audley made his point by emptying a cascade of five pound notes on the carpet in front of her.

Audley looked at her. "And if you're about to tell me that your father was a gambling man . . ." he shook his head ". . .

please don't, because I'm not about to believe it."

It wasn't going to be a 36-hour stern chase after all, thought Elizabeth desolately—she was going to strike her colours long before Decatur had done. But it wasn't really Audley who had beaten her.

"I know you told Mitchell that—and when he might have believed you . . . that was resourceful, Miss Loftus—I grant you that." They both knew she was going to surrender, she saw that in his face, as he looked down at the money, and then back at her. "There's more than this, isn't there? You've got safe deposit keys lodged with your solicitor—oh yes, your safe deposits, I don't doubt that . . . the Commander was resourceful too—like daughter, like father, I don't doubt that either."

Mr Lovell had talked. But, what was worse, Mr Lovell had been much more observant than was good for her.

"Your safe deposits—but his loot." He had her in range now.

"And this is just the tip of the iceberg."

She felt cold enough for it to be just that. And she couldn't fight him any more because she had never in her heart really dummy3

believed the gambling story, but had simply chosen never to question it.

A token resistance, for form's sake if not for honour's, was all she could make. "What makes you ... so sure . . . that he didn't win it?"

"My dear—practically everything." He gazed at her with a suggestion of sympathy which she found humiliating. "Like, for instance, retired naval officers of an academic persuasion aren't often given to gambling ... or, if they are it's usually common knowledge. And the house would have been full of bits of evidence, from bookies' phone numbers in his address book to old race-cards shoved behind the cushions . . . And if it wasn't horses, then he'd be known around the clubs—

especially if he was a big winner, believe me." He paused.

"Which, of course, he wouldn't have been—he'd have been a loser. And that's almost the clincher by itself. He just didn't have the right form."

Of course, they would be experts on this sort of thing, reflected Elizabeth, because gamblers would always be security hazards. And, anyway, if Father's story had never really convinced her, it would be no match for them, just as she was no match for them.

"Apart from which there's your statement—Mitchell!" Audley passed the stapled sheets to her—not the original, she noted, but a photo-copied copy. "This is your account of what happened yesterday, between the time you left the village fête and . . . Mitchell's second coming, if I may call it that—as dummy3

witnessed by Aske and written and signed of your own free will?"

He was closing in on her now. But however disastrous the revelation of the safe deposits might be, that wasn't her real worry, not now.

"Yes." Being the only daughter of a new-deceased hero and an unworldly schoolmistress ought to count for something; and she might as well start rehearsing that role as of this moment. "Actually, Mr Aske said I couldn't have the Sunday papers until I'd written it."

If Father hadn't won it, where on earth had it come from?

"Very well. Page two, towards the bottom of it." Audley had his own copy of the statement. "You offered him what was in the box, and he said 'I don't want your money'."

She saw that he had produced the spectacles he had worn for his photograph, and had perched them in the same ridiculous place. "Yes. That's what he said."

"Uh-huh. And that's also what you said to Mitchell—'he didn't want my money'. So what was he after, Miss Loftus?"

"I don't know." Elizabeth blinked at him. "I said that to Dr Mitchell too."

"But it had something to do with France, and your father . . .

and HMS Vengeful—you told him that also."

"Yes . . ." What had been rather vague and disjointed in her memory came back to her suddenly with disconcerting clarity. In the state in which she'd been, and with both the dummy3

brandy and Paul Mitchell egging her on, she'd said much more than she needed to have done. "But it didn't make any sense—I told Dr Mitchell that too."

"Why not?"

She gestured helplessly. "How could anyone possibly be interested in the Vengeful?"

"Your safe deposits aren't in France, by any chance?"

"No—no, of course not. They're in London."

"All of them?"

"Yes—there are only four . . ." Elizabeth faltered as she realised that this was the line of questioning the snake-man should have pursued yesterday, instead of fruitlessly pursuing Father's Vengeful research trips.

Audley nodded. "So we come to the big question, Miss Loftus: what have you got in those precious boxes of yours?"

"I'm sorry?" She looked at him in surprise, then at Paul Mitchell.

"Come on, Elizabeth," said Paul Mitchell. "Get it over with.

We're bound to find out, one way or another."

She frowned at him. "Well—money, of course. I told you!"

"Money?" Audley returned the frown.

"What did you expect?" Now they were frowning at each other, as though she'd given an unexpected answer.

"Just money?" Audley persisted. "In all four deposits?"

"Yes." She shared her own bewilderment with them.

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"Look, Elizabeth . . ." Paul Mitchell abandoned his position by the suitcase, coming round the bed to squat on his heels in front of her, among the bank notes ". . .we don't want your money—okay?"

"Well—what do you want?" It ought to have been an angry question, but the way it came out there was a pleading note in it.

Paul Mitchell's encouragement slowly changed to doubt.

Then he swivelled towards Audley. "What the hell do we want, David? That's a good question!"

Audley was watching her over his spectacles. "Tell me about the safe deposits, Miss Loftus."

"There isn't much to tell." All the stuffing had gone out of her. "Father gave me a parcel one day, and told me how to open a deposit—what to do . . ."

"In your own name?"

"That's the only way you can do it. And then he gave me other parcels . . . and there were other accounts . . . And I gave him the keys each time, of course."

"Of course!" He thought for a second. "And you always do what you're told—you didn't ask what was in them?"

Put like that it hurt, and she couldn't bring herself to answer it directly. But somehow it had to be answered.

"David—" began Paul Mitchell.

"No. Let her answer." Audley waved him off. "Weren't you at dummy3

least curious?"

There was no way of answering that without humiliation.

"You never met my father, Mr Audley?"

"No. That pleasure was denied me, Miss Loftus."

The funeral came back to her: the rain gusting across the churchyard in sheets and falling through the saturated summer leaves of the trees on to the mourners—the smell of the wet earth and damp uniforms.

"He should have commanded a battle-squadron, Mr Audley

— that's what they said. But all he had was me." She managed to look him in the eye. "After he died there was a letter in his deed-box at the solicitor's, with the keys. It's still there, so you can see it for yourself. And the keys, too."

Paul Mitchell stirred. "But he didn't say where he'd got it?"

"He said he'd taken a gamble. And he said that it was now all rightly mine, and no one else's. That's all."

Audley nodded slowly. "How much?"

It was the inevitable question. "I don't know—not exactly.

There are gold coins as well as bank notes . . . sovereigns, and also those South African coins."

"Krugerrand," murmured Paul. "Nice!"

"Roughly—how much?" Audley wasn't letting her go.

"In bank notes . . . about £100,000. I don't know what the coins are worth. But there are a lot of them."

"And the tax-man doesn't know about any of it!" Paul dummy3

grinned like a schoolboy. " Very nice!"

"I don't know whether I should have reported it. . ." When it came to the crunch, pretending to be an unworldly schoolmistress lacked credibility, decided Elizabeth. But if she was to salvage something from the wreck she had to do her best. "But if you think I ought to, then I will, Mr Audley."

"Good Lord—I wouldn't!" exclaimed Paul. "She doesn't have to, does she, David? I mean . . . can't we declare her prize-money between ourselves, as it were?"

Elizabeth's heart warmed to him. But also, at the same time, she had the impression that Audley was reading her like an open book.

"What you do with it isn't our business, Miss Loftus—as Mitchell said, we don't want it." Audley closed the open book.

"But where it came from is our business."

They were back to the unanswerable question.

"The notes will have numbers," said Mitchell. "Are they new ones, Elizabeth?"

The look on her face answered him even before she shook her head.

"Pity." Almost unwillingly, he turned to Audley. "That amount of money in used notes . . . means it's been professionally laundered, David."

"It's not the money that matters." Audley studied her. "Tell me, Miss Loftus . . . did the parcels come to you after the trips to France?"

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"I don't know . . . no, I don't think so . . ." Her memory sharpened as she realised the point of the question. "No . . .

there were more of them—he didn't go nearly that often . . .

and . . . and they started before he went the first time—" she stopped suddenly as the absurdity of the connection became apparent.

"Yes?"

"He went to France to research the book, Mr Audley."

"So?"

"It's absurd—it makes no sense."

"It makes sense to someone, Miss Loftus." He echoed Mitchell's words from the previous evening. "That's why we need your help, you see."

"My help?" Elizabeth was so grateful he'd dropped the subject of money that she didn't frown.

"You're the expert on his book—you did all his typing, Mitchell tells me."

"Yes—no . . ." Caution re-asserted itself. "I only typed the chapters when they were complete, he never discussed them with me or told me what he was doing. And he kept most of his notes in his head, it seemed to me."

Audley nodded. "But he was re-writing one particular chapter, I gather?"

They were back to the absurdity. "Yes, but that was to do with Number Seven—the old Vengeful—" She didn't want to dummy3

discourage him, but it was no good pretending to knowledge she didn't possess "—and I really don't know why, or what."

Another nod. "Perhaps not. But if we do come up with anything new, then you'll be able to advise Mitchell here. You can be his technical adviser, in effect."

She looked at Paul Mitchell. She could hardly refuse to help him now, Audley himself had made sure of that. And even apart from that moral obligation there was her money to be considered—they had made that her prize-money, and prize-money had to be earned in battle.

And that left her no choice at all.

"Very well, Mr Audley." As she came to her no-choice decision it occurred to her that she'd been manoeuvred into this surrender by Paul Mitchell and Mr Aske and Mr Bannen just as surely as Endymion and the Pomone and the Tenedos had brought Decatur's President within range of the Majestic's seventy-four guns. But Decatur had struck his flag then without loss of honour, so she could do the same.

Paul Mitchell smiled at her. "It'll take you out of circulation too, Elizabeth. And that's probably just as well at the moment."

She didn't know quite what to make of that, because she knew she couldn't trust him. But it sounded well-meant, and she wanted to believe that it was.

"I don't see how I can help you, Mr Audley. But if it really is Number Seven . . ."

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"Ah . . .how we've been lucky there." Audley had brightened with her surrender. "Owing to Mitchell's . . . exuberance ...

we cannot put any questions to your burglars. But before your arrival on the scene they had collected all they wanted to steal, it seems. So at least we know what they wanted."

Paul Mitchell nodded at her. "Number Seven, Elizabeth."

"The old Vengeful, Miss Loftus," said Audley.

V

"PUT ON YOUR seat-belt," said Paul. "Aske keeps telling me that I must wear it at all times. It's getting to be a habit."

The belt clicked, and she had better keep her wits about her, snapped the sound of it. "And now?"

"And now. . ." his foot went down on the accelerator ". . .and now . . . tell me about Number Seven, Elizabeth."

"Where are we going?"

"Ah . . . you must have made quite an impression on David, because he's doing you a great honour—you should be pleased . . . and reassured—you're going to Steeple Horley."

"Steeple Horley?"

"The old house— his house . . . You'll like his wife—Faith is a great lady in her way—" he snorted as he changed gear "—to be married to David Audley she has to be a great lady."

Great lady? " His wife?" Elizabeth looked down at her creased dummy3

and shapeless dress. It wasn't even very clean, either: there was something suspiciously like a stain right in the middle of it—she had last worn this dress when she'd helped the Vicar's wife with her meals-on-wheels for the old people of the parish. It was certainly not what she would have chosen to wear for a great lady. "Oh lord!"

"Don't worry!" He observed her consternation. "I don't mean

'grande dame', I mean she's sympathetic. And she's not a lot older than me—than you too, Elizabeth. Like they say, he married a much younger woman . . . and they live in this marvellous rambling old house under the downs—we haven't got far to go."

Elizabeth was still appalled. Apart from the dress there was her face and hair, which were irreparable. There was probably a mirror on the other side of the car's sun-visor, but she couldn't bring herself to look in it. Everything was bad enough as it was, but to have to meet another woman was downright unfair. She hunched herself up at the thought of it.

"Don't worry, Elizabeth!" He exerted himself to reassure her.

"It's a good sign—his inviting you to his home . . . you'll meet his daughter too—a skinny little blonde creature, the image of her mother, and very sharp like both of them ... it means he's not about to peach about those safe deposit boxes of yours to all and sundry, I'd guess—for a start."

"I thought that remained to be seen," said Elizabeth guardedly.

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"So it does. But although David's a damned tricky bastard, he's not mean with it. Putting one over on other people is what he enjoys, too—putting one over the Inland Revenue, or whoever deals with death duties . . . that'll appeal to him." He gave her another quick glance, but this time a fellow-conspiratorial one, which told her that under the skin, and in spite of their publicly abrasive relationship, Paul Mitchell returned the loyalty and regard which David Audley felt for his subordinate—the same thing which had made the survivors of Father's old crew stand in the rain for him in their best suits so recently, in that secret society to which she had never been admitted.

"What's the matter?" Her silence bothered him.

"I have the feeling that I'm being press-ganged, that's all."

"Hardly that. It's your knowledge we want, you won't be expected to fire the cannon and shin up the mast. And there can't be anything dangerous involved, not this time."

" 'Can't'? How do you know that? After what's happened already?"

Paul shook his head. "David wouldn't invite you to his home if he was worried about anything. He's pretty careful that way

—that's why the invitation is reassuring." He drove in silence for a second or two. "Surprising maybe ... I admit I find it a little surprising . . . but damn reassuring nevertheless, Elizabeth. So tell me about Number Seven."

Press-ganged or not—and shanghai'd might be a more dummy3

accurate description for all that had happened to her during the last 24 hours—but press-ganged or shanghai'd or whatever . . . and reassured or not about her own fate and the fate of her inheritance, she had to trust to Paul Mitchell's judgement and David Audley's good faith, even though they were both men outside her experience.

"Where do you want me to begin?"

"Twelve Vengefuls," said Paul, nodding at the road ahead, on which the homeward-bound Sunday traffic was thickening to slow him up. "The Armada Vengeful, hanging on to Medina-Sidonia's shirt-tail up the Channel—King Charles's Vengeful, betraying him at Bristol in 1642, and Cromwell's 50-gunner in the First Dutch War, wrecked on the Goodwins . . .—then Pepys' Vengeful, scuppered by the Dutch in the Medway in

'67—then Rooke's Vengeful fighting alongside the Dutch at Gibraltar in 1704—"

Was that his own research, or had he read Father's earlier chapters?

"Then Number Six, protecting our loyal American colonists from the French in '59, but eventually getting wrecked off Cape Hattcras in '81 trying to stop the French helping those revolting Yankee rebels— historical irony, you could call that, I suppose." He drove in silence for a time. "Number Eight—

muzzle-loaders versus breech-loaders— I enjoyed Number Eight . . . He had a nice line in scorn, did your father—'the mechanics of incorrect decision-making, brought to a fine art in the mid-Victorian navy'—" he gave her a quick half-look, dummy3

half-nod "—and so to Number Nine—"

But he had missed out Number Seven altogether, thought Elizabeth, staring at the handsome profile.

"The armoured cruiser—'the ugliest Vengeful of them all, and in her day arguably the worst sailer and gun platform in the whole Channel Fleet' . . . But she was also the one that obstinately refused to sink when they used her as a target ship in 1897, wasn't she—'to the surprise and embarrassment of all concerned'—right, Elizabeth?"

Not just a handsome face; though: somehow, between last evening and the moment he'd bounced back into her life, and apart from whatever else he'd done, he'd read those carefully-typed pages closely enough to memorise passages from them accurately.

"Plus my Number Ten, from Jutland, and his Number Eleven, full-fathom-five off Finisterre, or wherever . . . and we don't need to worry about that submarine we gave to the Greeks after the war—we know all about that apparently, and it doesn't signify. So that makes the full Vengeful tally—

right?" Another look, and then the profile again. And with that face and the self-assurance which went with it there would be equally good-looking and assured girl-friends in tow, if not an elegant wife close-grappled, so it was no use making silly pictures just because he was being gentle with her. She was merely business, and his gentleness was common-sense.

"Not quite." To stifle that foolish ache she tried to dummy3

concentrate on that business. "You left out Number Seven, of course."

"But you are going to tell me about her, Elizabeth—don't you remember?"

Elizabeth stared at the road ahead, on which the home-going traffic from the coast was thickening. She wished she was going home with them, even to another lonely evening.

"I remember that we started this conversation yesterday."

"So we did. But yesterday you weren't exactly brimming with ideas. Quite understandably, in the circumstances, of course."

"Yes . . . quite understandably . . . since I was brimming with alcohol—administered to loosen my tongue, presumably, rather than my brains?"

That earned her a longer look, a little rueful, mostly apologetic, but with a suggestion of respect which she found gratifying.

"Yes . . . I'm sorry about that. But it seemed a good idea at the time." He smiled disarmingly. "Anyway, I'm hoping you can do better on reflection."

Respect was better than nothing, thought Elizabeth as she hardened her heart against the smile: if she couldn't have anything else from him, at least she could win that.

"But now that you've read Father's chapter you really know as much as I do. And you are the trained historian, not me."

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"But you are the expert on this, Elizabeth—not me."

"No. I was only the typist. I keep telling you."

For a minute or two he drove in silence. Then he shook his head slowly at the two small children who were waving at him out of the rear window of the car in front. "No ... I don't think 'only the typist' could ever be a description of you, Elizabeth. You're always going to be a lot more than 'only the typist'. And that's not just my opinion . . . although it is my opinion."

Elizabeth was half surprised, half shocked. "You've canvassed other . . . opinions?"

"Of course! We don't go entirely blind into something like this, we know a lot about you. But it's Number Seven we want to know about now."

Elizabeth was still grappling with the news that she had been . . . "investigated" was the only word for it... by—by whom? "Who are you, Paul? What are you?"

"But you know who I am, Elizabeth. You checked up on me—

and quite efficiently, too—the moment you left the fête yesterday."

She stared at him. "You were in that car—in St Helen's Street

— when I visited Margaret's bookshop?"

"No. I wasn't in that car." Suddenly his expression was intent. "You spotted that car?"

"I didn't exactly 'spot' it—I mean, I just saw it ... I didn't really take any notice of it until I saw it again behind me, dummy3

when I reached home." His interest made her uneasy.

"But it could have been any car. Why did you notice it?"

"Well . . ." she floundered under his intensity "... I thought it might be you, as a matter of fact."

"Why should I follow you?"

This was becoming awkward. "Well—I don't know—I didn't know ... I suppose I was a bit suspicious of you, that's all."

"Christ!" He drew a deep breath, and then relaxed slowly.

"Phew!"

"It wasn't you?" She shied away from the proper question.

"No. I was round the corner, in another car." He shook his head, but more to himself than at her.

The proper question wouldn't go away, it had to be asked.

"Who was in the car I saw, Paul?"

For a moment she thought he hadn't heard, as he raised his hand to wave back at the children. Then she thought it was more likely that he simply wasn't going to answer the question.

"It was a man who goes by the name of Fergusson." He waved again. "A freelance journalist from Canada."

"A journalist?" Elizabeth was deeply suspicious of all journalists, both on principle and for their obstinate refusal to spell her name correctly in hockey reports and prize-lists.

"Actually, he isn't a journalist, and he wasn't born in Canada in 1942—it was 1942, but it was in a makeshift hospital dummy3

alongside the Krasnyi Oktiabr tank factory in a place they called Stalingrad in those days. And he certainly wasn't christened Winston Fergusson. His real name is Novikov."

Novikov! The name came back to her clearly once she heard it pronounced for the second time, even though it had first come to her only indistinctly through the babel of her own thoughts beside the sitting room door— Novikov—

If I hadn't spotted Novikov—

"Josef Ivanovitch Novikov."

The Russians, remembered Elizabeth—and this seemed the moment for them at last. "A Russian?"

"A Russian." He nodded. "You know what the KGB is, do you, Elizabeth?"

That made it all fit, thought Elizabeth numbly, not so much without surprise as with an absence of feelings which was beyond surprise: it didn't make sense—the people . . . not just the terrible snake-man, but Paul himself, and little Humphrey Aske, and David Audley, with his kind-brutal face . . . and the violence, which was beyond experience. It didn't make sense, but it didn't have to make sense, it merely had to fit into its own ugly pattern, like some do-it-yourself kit for a science-fiction monster.

"Novikov is a KGB professional." He took it for granted that her silence was a complete answer. "Like, you might say, PhD, Dzershinsky Street University, Moscow. First Class Honours in Intelligence, Counter-intelligence, Subversion, dummy3

Manipulation, Disinformation, Corruption and Violence, cum laude and so on."

That PhD identified him as a Cambridge man—the very irrelevance of the thought steadied her. "Are you trying to frighten me?"

"No. But if I am succeeding, that's fine. Because the bastard certainly puts the fear of God up me, I tell you!"

He spoke lightly, but Elizabeth stole another look, and saw the fighter-pilot's grin—the sub-lieutenant's deliberate false confidence which Father had written of, when the German Z-class destroyers had heavier armament and their E-boats were faster.

Just as deliberately, she turned herself against her own feelings. "And what's your . . . PhD in, Dr Mitchell?"

"Ah! Good question!" He snuffled at the thought, as though it amused him. "History, for a start— The Breaking of the Hindenburg Line was a thesis before it was a book, to be exact . . . But after that, you could say that I'm a Secret Policeman—with the emphasis on policeman . . . Or, as David would say, I'm a submarine, and Josef Ivanovitch Novikov is a U-boat—would that be an acceptable distinction for Commander Loftus's daughter?"

"Father hated all submarines, indiscriminately."

"Hmm . . . destroyer captain's prejudice . . . Then you'd better think of me as an anti-submarine frigate."

He was mocking her. And, at the same time, he was steering dummy3

her back towards the seventh Vengeful. But that wouldn't do any more, not after Josef Ivanovitch Novikov.

"Those men, at the house . . . were they—?"

"KGB? I wish to hell that I knew! They certainly didn't behave like KGB—they were too bloody careless by half, thank God! Ugh!" He shivered at the memory. "But then Josef Ivanovitch was careless, too—he wasn't lucky like me!"

"What?" She almost bit her tongue on the question: if he was ready to be indiscreet then she mustn't interrupt him.

"Oh—he was careless! He let me get a sight of him, when he was just slipping into his car to follow you, round the back of the church at the fête ... I was thinking of going for a quick drink, actually."

"In preparation for a boring evening?"

Instead of replying he put his foot down on the accelerator and overtook the children's car, and the next one, and the next one too, into the flashing lights of an approaching lorry which couldn't quite work up enough speed for a head-on collision.

Then he cleared his throat. " I was going for a drink, but he was going after you. It was careless of him to let me spot him . . . But if he took the risk that meant he couldn't afford to lose you—and you weren't routine after that—d'you see, Elizabeth?"

She saw—half-saw, didn't see at all, but saw enough to imagine his moment of truth, when this terrible Russian had dummy3

surfaced in the wake of the dull Miss Loftus at the parish church tower restoration fund sale and fête: it was one of those enlivening occurrences which might have been amusing if she hadn't been at the other end of it.

"And we still don't know why—I suppose your burglars may have been contract labour, and he was keeping his eye on his investment . . . but I don't go very much on that—it doesn't have the right feel about it... But we're checking them out, by God! In fact, Elizabeth, after our mutual acquaintance Joseflvanovitch we're checking everyone out—"

"Including me?" She tried to match his tone, even though now she was out of her depth.

"Including you, naturally! And for the second time ... In fact, I did you this morning, Elizabeth—you've been double-washed, and wrung-out and dried on the line . . . and you're what we call 'clean'—"

" 'Clean'?" It was a reflex, not a question: she knew it was true, but the thought of being 'double-washed, and wrung-out and dried' stung her. "Are you sure?"

"We're never sure." The joke was lost on him—if it was a joke.

"But we have to draw the line somewhere. Your closest known security-risk is two removes away, and that passes for white in our book. Which . . . presumably ... is why you are privileged to meet Mrs David Audley in the very near future, as I've already said."

Meeting Mrs David Audley, clean or dirty, wasn't something dummy3

she wished to think about. "You make me sound very dull."

"Dull..." He tripped the indicator, swinging the car out of the line on to a side-road. Just in time, as the road sign flashed by, Elizabeth caught the legend Upper Horley—5 and Steeple Horley— 5½. "Dull . . ."

Horley? She screwed up her memory, from the Book of Wessex Villages and The Parish Churches of Sussex and Hampshire in the bookcase in her bedroom, on the shelf dating from her childhood voyages of exploration in Margaret's company during the holidays, by bus or bicycle.

"Yes, I guess you could say 'dull'," reflected Paul.

The Horleys, Upper and Steeple, had been just outside their range, tucked under the Downs away to the east, or east-nor'-

east, unserved even then by any traceable public transport.

"Or maybe 'wasted'," murmured Paul.

But they had been on the list; or Steeple Horley had, for its gem of a church, complete with recumbent stone crusader and the re-used Roman bricks it shared with the much-decayed manor house built on the site of a Saxon hall mentioned in the Domesday Book—

Paul's last murmur registered suddenly, breaking her concentration. " 'Wasted'? What d'you mean—'wasted'?"

"Ah . . . well, you haven't exactly spread your wings for long flights since you came down from Oxford, have you, Elizabeth?" He raised one hand off the wheel defensively before she could reply. "Just an observation, that's all."

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"I don't see that it's any of your business." She felt herself bristling, but then the bleak truth submerged her anger as another signpost pointed them to the Horleys, in preference for a No Through Road to some unnamed farm.

"Someone had to look after my father."

"Sure. And a house-keeper did that perfectly well when you were at school and at Oxford . . . Mrs Carver, No. 3, Church Row. And she's still hale and hearty—don't tell me he couldn't have afforded her, because we both know bloody well that he could have done."

"I didn't know that. I thought we were . . . not exactly poor, but not rich."

"Doesn't matter—forget it—" he shook his head "— he wasn't an invalid, your esteemed father, that's what I mean. He may have had a heart condition, but he didn't need a First-Class honours graduate to . . . to—how did you put it so graphically?

—to 'type his bloody books, and cook his bloody meals, and wash his bloody laundry'—eh?"

He knew too much—too bloody much—about Father, and Mrs Carver, as well as about the foolish Miss Loftus, who had let slip far too much under the combined pressures of fear and self-pity and brandy.

"But I suppose you thought it was your duty—right?" He slashed the word at her, almost contemptuously. "You had to do your duty by him?"

Another signpost: Upper Horley left, Steeple Horley right—

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and it would have to be left here, because there was only the church and the "much-decayed" manor the other way, the book had said.

Pride came to her aid. "So what if it was—my duty?"

"Then do your duty now!" He fed the wheel to the right, to Steeple Horley and another No Through Road which had to end in half-a-mile under the steeple and the shoulder of the high downs curving above them. "Stretch yourself for us, Elizabeth."

It wasn't the thought of duty which stretched her—she had never even thought of duty in relation to Father: he had been there, sitting at his chair in the study, when she had come down from Oxford for the last time, and Mrs Carver had already been given her notice, and everything had been taken for granted, herself included . . . but perhaps that was what duty was—the thing that happened, and the state of mind which made it happen, without any conscious thought on either side, the giving and the taking being equally automatic.

But it wasn't that which stretched her now, it was the certainty that Mrs Audley was waiting for her half-a-mile ahead, or less—and that she needed Paul to help her—

God! What a mess I am— hair, clothes, face— !

The Vengeful—Father had gone back to France, to re-write the chapter—

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But not back to France . . . that first writing had been just routine— just as she had been just routine when she'd first glimpsed Paul in the mirror, and he had seen her—

The car was slowing down—it was turning past a little cottage, into a gravel drive—past the cottage garden, with its apple trees already heavy with fruit, and the runner-beans, bright with their harvest to come, festooned over their bean-poles—and banks of blackberry bushes now, on either side—

but Father had gone to France to re-write the chapter—

"It has to do with the survivors. The Fortuné sank somewhere off the Horse Sands, but that was at night, and no one knows where exactly, and there were only four survivors. But there were also survivors from the Vengeful—

they came ashore on the Normandy coast—he had a footnote about them . . . But . . ."

"Good girl!" He braked, slowing from his snail's-pace to stop altogether between the blackberry bushes, with the curve of the drive still ahead. "But what?"

"They all died. Or the French shot them when they were trying to escape—there was a scandal, anyway . . . But—I don't know . . ."

"Don't know what?"

"Just. . . don't know. But that's the only reason he could have had for going to France—the survivors who died in France—

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or how they died."

"That's my good girl!" The car began to crawl forward again.

"That's what I needed to put you finally in the clear."

"What—what you needed?" She caught a glimpse of a house ahead. "What?"

"Because they didn't all die. At least one of them lived to tell the tale—and a very curious tale too, so David says." The car crunched and slithered on the thick gravel as he braked finally. "And here's Faith waiting to welcome you."

VI

THE SOUND AT the bedroom door disconcerted Elizabeth twice over: first because she was hardly ten minutes out of her bath, and was wondering what to do with her hair, never mind her face and her clothes; and then because it didn't sound like the sort of business-like knock she would have expected from Faith Audley—it was more like the tentative tap of a scholarship pupil who hadn't finished her essay-on the Eleven Years' Tyranny of Charles I and hoped against hope that Miss Loftus wasn't in, or wouldn't hear if she was.

Only this time it was Miss Loftus who wished she wasn't in, or hadn't heard. But she was, and she had, and once again there was no escape.

"Come in!" She saw the lips of her bedraggled reflection in the dressing-table mirror pronounce the invitation.

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The door opened slowly . . . too slowly, and not far enough before it stopped opening.

Oh God! thought Elizabeth. Not Paul Mitchell—?

But neither Paul's face nor Faith Audley's ash-blonde head came through the gap—though an ash-blonde head was coming through, but at a level she had not anticipated.

A child—a child's face, like and yet unlike— like for its thinness and pale colouring, but unlike, with the gold-framed spectacles magnifying the eyes and the metal brace disfiguring the mouth which opened to speak.

"Mummy says—I'm sorry to disturb you, she says—but I heard your bath go down the plug at the back—she says, would you like the hair-dryer? And . . . and, she says—we can do your things . . . Clarkie can wash them, and tumble dry them, and iron them, and all that. . . Clarkie—that's Mrs Clarke—and . . . and . . . Mummy says there's this—"

This, and the hair-dryer, and more of the miniature Faith Audley— like and unlike—slid unwillingly into the bedroom.

"It's a caftan." The child juggled with her burdens the better to display the garment, allowing its material to ooze silkily over the hair-dryer. "Daddy brought it back from the East somewhere years ago, long before he even met Mummy, and she's never worn it ... Only, she says it'll fit, and she hasn't got anything else that will . . . But she says it's very beautiful."

Elizabeth guessed that Mummy hadn't quite said all of that, dummy3

or at least not for passing on. But Mummy was certainly right about the caftan.

"Come in, dear." She remembered belatedly that she ought to be smiling, not staring the poor little thing out of countenance. "You must be Cathy, of course."

The child hesitated. "I'm supposed not to bother you, Miss—

Miss—" her composure began to desert her as she searched for the right name.

"Elizabeth," said Elizabeth quickly, searching in her own experience for the right approach. She had never taught children of primary school age, and was doubly nervous of one whose IQ went off the scale, if Paul Mitchell's judgement was to be relied on. "Elizabeth Loftus."

Cathy stared at her for a moment, wide-eyed, as though the name itself was a revelation. Then she advanced into the bedroom, dumped her burdens on the nearest chair, and presented her hand to Elizabeth gravely.

"How do you do, Miss Loftus."

Elizabeth recognised the hall-marks. "How do you do, Miss Audley. But if you will call me 'Elizabeth' then I can call you

'Cathy'—all right?" She smiled again as she took the little hand, but a cold memory came back to her as she did so, of just such another offer which Paul Mitchell had made to her—

an exchange of names designed to lull her into indiscretion when she was most vulnerable.

But the way Cathy Audley was looking at her suggested that dummy3

David Audley's daughter could not be so easily deceived.

She released the hand. "Is that all right?"

Cathy frowned. "Daddy says . . . the names we use to each other are important. They all mean something—like, when he wants to be nasty to someone, he always says 'Mister'—or

'Colonel'. But I don't believe I understand the rules yet."

Elizabeth thought hard. "You mean, like Treebeard not wanting to give his full name in The Lord of the Rings?" That wasn't at all what Audley had meant, but it was a carefully-fired long shot nevertheless, because this was the sort of child who would have read Tolkien.

The frown cleared, and Elizabeth watched the bridge build itself between them, half ashamed, but also half pleased with herself.

"Well. . . no, I don't think Daddy did mean that, actually—

and he doesn't like Tolkien—it's Mummy who likes Tolkien.

Daddy's favourite is Kipling."

"And which do you like?" The shame faded and the pleasure increased. If this was the sort of game Paul enjoyed, it was dangerously addictive.

"Oh ... I like both of them," said Cathy loyally. And then looked around quickly. "But I ought to go now, Miss—Miss—

Elizabeth. Mummy said—"

"Don't go! You can show me where to plug in the hair-dryer."

The game played itself, almost. "And you can help me dry my hair—I'd like that, Cathy."

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"Oh—yes . . . The point's just down there—by the little table

—" Cathy scurried obediently to obey orders dressed up in the uniform of appeals for help.

"Is Dr Mitchell still here?" She applied the Audley-Treebeard rule hastily.

"Paul? Yes. He's phoning Daddy at the moment—with the scrambler on, so it must be jolly important," said Cathy over her shoulder, from under the table. "He's staying for dinner—

I don't know when Daddy will be back, but Mummy's laying for five— there, it's ready now—just in case, she says . . . and that doesn't include me, because she says dinner will be late—

ready!"

Elizabeth smiled as she lifted the dryer. Five counting everyone she could think of meant one more from somewhere . . . maybe Humphrey Aske, whom Paul clearly didn't like?

"You switch on there—the little button . . . I'll hold it—I do it for Mummy," said Cathy helpfully.

"'Scrambler'?" Mercifully, it was a very expensive hair-dryer, which made shouting unnecessary. "What's that?"

"Oh . . . it's a thing that scrambles up words in the telephone, so no one else can hear them, except at the other end. Daddy doesn't know how it works, because he's not scientific—

Mummy will tell you, if you're interested." Cathy held the hair-dryer away for a moment. "But don't you work for Daddy? I thought you did—?"

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That had been a mistake. But then perhaps this was all a mistake— to assume that the child knew more than was good for her, like all her pupils.

"What made you think that?" The sharpness of the question belied the false smile that went with it, warning her that she was still a beginner at Paul's game. "Of course . . . I'm helping your father— naturally . . . but..." She pretended to be more interested in her hair, which was frizzing out abominably, as it always did. "What made you think that?"

"Mummy said you'd had a bad time—that's why I'm not supposed to bother you—but you don't need to worry—not with all those men of Daddy's, I mean—"

"What men?"

"At the back—on the hill . . . and there are another two down the drive, by Clarkie's cottage—I saw them when I came back from Lucy's. And Uncle Jack phoned—my godfather, he is—I know, because I took the call—"

"Uncle Jack?"

"Colonel Butler—don't you know him? He's awfully nice, and frightfully important—and, d'you know, he's got three daughters— but they're all much older than me, of course—

do you have any sisters ... or brothers?"

The mixture of prosaic family detail with the casual revelation of the guards Audley had set around his home for its protection— her protection—was somehow all the more frightening. "No, I'm an only daughter—no sisters, no dummy3

brothers, Cathy."

"Me too. Rotten luck!" Sisterly sympathy loosened the child's inhibitions further. "And Mummy too—although she was meant to be one of three, all named after Gloster Gladiators, you know—"

"What?" Confusion enveloped Elizabeth.

"Gloster Gladiators. 'Faith, Hope and Charity'—they were three aeroplanes at Malta during the war. But Mummy's father—my grandfather—was killed before Hope and Charity could be born—he was an RAF pilot, you see ... And Daddy's father was killed too—that's why I've got no grandparents, like everyone else . . . And that's why Daddy does what he does—and Uncle Jack too—like the Rangers in The Lord of the Rings—you remember, Miss Loftus, Elizabeth, I mean—

Aragorn's people, who fought 'the dark things from the houseless hills' in secret." Cathy plied the hair-dryer expertly.

" 'The last remnant of a great people ... the Men of the West'—

I always think that's a sad bit of the story, about them."

So that was what they'd told the child, thought Elizabeth.

And it was a clever way of handling an inquisitive child, too—

not to cut her off from the secret, but instead to make her part of it so that she could take it for granted.

" Cathy!" Faith Audley's voice came from somewhere outside the room. " Are you bothering Miss Loftus?"

Cathy switched off the hair-dryer and went to the long, low window. "No, Mummy—I'm drying her hair. She asked me dummy3

to."

"Hmmm! Very well. . . Would you tell her, when she's ready, that Dr Mitchell is on the terrace, and he'd like a word with her?"

Cathy turned back into the room. "You mustn't mind Mummy

— she used to be a school-teacher, you know. She says that Dr Mitchell—did you hear?"

"Yes." Any chance of pumping the child was gone now, and it hadn't been such a good idea in the first place.

"I think it's almost dry now, anyway." Cathy surveyed her handiwork critically. "It's going to be like those paintings Daddy likes— sort of Lady of Shalott-ish."

Frizzy was the word. Elizabeth scowled at her reflection, waiting for the mirror to crack from side to side. "Yes ... it looks fine, dear."

Then I'd better go." Cathy turned at the door. "Good luck with Daddy, and all that, Elizabeth. And long live the Paul—

and Dunedin!"

The Dunedin? Elizabeth stared at the door. The Dunedin were . . . they were Aragorn's people, of course—the Rangers who hunted those "dark things" . . .

Her eyes came back to herself, to her own eyes watching her in the mirror, dark-shadowed. It was obvious, what the child meant—so obvious, and also oddly flattering, to be type-cast not as just another school-teacher, like Mummy, but as one of the select band of the Dunedin, the SAS of Middle dummy3

Earth . . . obvious and flattering—and quite wrong.

And, anyway, she must not keep one of the genuine Dunedin waiting on the terrace, thought Elizabeth as she reached for the caftan.

"Ah—Elizabeth!" The genuine Dunadan rose at her approach, looking at her strangely, from out of a welter of scattered type-script.

Strangely, as well he might with the way she looked, she thought, grasping the voluminous silken folds in an effort not to trip as she negotiated the stone steps. And then the whole scene around him took her mind right off her own bizarre appearance.

The suitcase from her interrogation—the pink files were the completed chapters from Father's book, the green ones his vestigial notes and rough drafts—and other things she couldn't place . . . but they were of no consequence compared with Father's Vengeful box, also gaping open—but empty!

Her eyes met Paul's and her mouth opened stupidly, and worried avarice progressed instantly to shame as he grinned at her.

"Don't fret—we haven't made away with your prize-money.

Faith just doesn't like piles of loose cash lying around her house, that's all, so she's locked it all up safely somewhere."

He reached towards the empty box. " ' William Willard Pike—

Surgeon, HM Ship Vengefull' —I hope Dr Pike's medical skill dummy3

was more reliable than his spelling . . . But who are these others, inscribed on the inside of the lid? Amos Ratsey, Jas.

O'Byrne, Octavius Phelan and the rest? Would they be the ship's officers?"

"No." It was a relief to cover her embarrassment with even half-baked information. "Father thought they might be his grateful patients—the ones who presented him with the box of instruments when he joined the ship. But that doesn't really fit."

"Why not?" He flipped the lid closed. "Wasn't he a good surgeon?"

"Nobody knows . . . Father couldn't trace him on shore. But ships' doctors certainly weren't the cream of the profession in those days—a lot of them were failures and drunkards who couldn't make a go of it ashore ... In fact, they weren't even rated as officers until the 1840s—they were warrant officers—

or, technically, they were just civilians, on the same level as the purser and the chaplain, you see."

"I don't really see. But it doesn't matter." He picked up the pages he'd been holding when she'd hobbled out of the French windows. "This is what's fascinating—what a rotten old tub the Vengeful was!"

"She wasn't old. She was launched in 1805."

"The year of Trafalgar! Okay—not old, but just rotten. Did we always build so badly?" He gestured towards one of the chairs on the terrace. "I'm sorry, Elizabeth—my manners are dummy3

appalling . . . Do sit down—would you like a drink? Sherry or beer ... or something stronger?"

"Nothing, thank you." He seemed to have forgotten yesterday completely. "Does it surprise you that we built inferior ships?"

He shook his head. "No, not at all, actually . . . We built the first dreadnought in 1905-1906. . . But we didn't build a good capital ship until the 1912 estimates—the Queen Elizabeth class—up to then everyone else seems to have made a better job of it. . . But your father says we actually copied the Vengeful design—from the French?"

"That's right. It was based on a French frigate that was captured in 1797, and measured at Chatham—the French and the Spaniards always built better ships than we did . . . better sailers, with more guns. But it was the Americans who built the best frigates—Father called them 'pocket-battleships'—he thought the President was the finest frigate ever built, but we didn't capture her until 1814 . . . By then we were actually cutting down ships-of-the-line—battleships— to take on their frigates, after what had happened to the Guerriere and the Java and the Macedonian."

"But HMS Shannon took USS Chesapeake, I seem to remember?"

"Yes—but the Shannon was our best frigate—Broke was gunnery-mad—and the Chesapeake was their worst one—"

Elizabeth halted her enthusiasm in mid-flow, aware that it was Father who was speaking out of her mouth, and that dummy3

none of it had anything to do with the Vengeful anyway.

"I once wrote a very bad essay on the War of 1812, you know." He seemed to catch her incomprehension. "Or, it was about Anglo-American relations in the early nineteenth century actually, only it got bogged down with the war of 1812 . . . But, of course, the Vengeful was at the bottom of the sea a month before the Yankees stabbed us in the back, wasn't she?"

He was putting her at ease again, decided Elizabeth. And that was something she no longer needed. "You wanted to have a word with me, Mrs Audley said—?"

He focussed on her. "Yes—that's right, Elizabeth. Now . . .

this was the chapter your father was re-writing—the one about the seventh Vengeful—you made a guess about it, but you don't actually know?" He held up the original chapter, all her beautiful typing, without a single erasure.

"No. But there ought to be something in his notes." She looked quickly at the suitcase.

"Yes . . . maybe. But I'd like to get the original details clear first." He smiled. "So . . . Number Seven was coming back from Gibraltar, via Lisbon, for a major refit—or maybe to be condemned as unfit— when she met the Fortuné off Ushant ... in the early summer of 1812?"

"May 5th." Her eyes were drawn to the typed pages. "It's all down there."

"Uh-huh. That was the usual route home, was it?"

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"What d'you mean—usual?"

"Well, if they were going to run into trouble, it would be most likely close to the French coast, wouldn't it?"

"Trouble?" Now she could smile back—at his innocence. "I expect that's what Captain Williams was hoping for. Frigate captains were always on the look-out for trouble—and prize-money. One good capture could make him rich . . . like a French Indiaman. There were still one or two of them around, even as late as 1812."

"Instead of which he met the Fortuné, though—"

"That would have done almost as well. Prize-money and glory!"

"But the Fortuné was much bigger—44 guns and 1200 tons to his 36 guns and 975 tons . . . and the French crew was substantially bigger too, and the Vengeful was desperately under-strength—" he started to riffle through the pages "—

it's here somewhere, the figures—"

"It doesn't matter—he wouldn't have thought twice about any of that."

He frowned. "Why not?"

"It isn't in there, but Father had me draw up an appendix about frigate losses during the whole war, from 1793 to 1815—

he liked appendices." Elizabeth switched on her memory, and the neat columns of figures came to her photographically. "We lost eighty-two of them altogether, but only nine of those were by enemy action—and that includes dummy3

wars against practically every country in Europe, plus the United States . . . the rest were wreck or accident, and mostly wreck, like the Vengeful. But in the same period we sank or captured . . . oh, I think it was nearly 250 enemy frigates—

238, it was." The way he was looking at her, she had to shrug modestly. "I remember the numbers because Father made me total them all for him."

"I see . . ." He grinned lop-sidedly. "Now I understand what Rule Britannia meant! So Captain Williams thought he was on a statistical winner, in fact?"

"He'd have expected to win." Elizabeth shrugged. "He'd have been court-martiallcd if he hadn't fought, anyway."

"But the Frenchman fought better than he expected, apparently?"

She had to shrug again. "They probably did more damage to the Vengeful than he expected. But that was because she was in such a rotten condition, Father thought—and that came from the testimony of the survivors from the prize-crew on the Fortuné, after she sank . . . The French always fought bravely, though." She looked at him curiously. "What's the object of all this?"

"Nothing really . . . The Fortuné couldn't have been waiting for the Vengeful, could it—she, I mean?"

"No." She shook her head decisively. "That's quite out of the question. With sailing ships in those days ... no way. It's quite out of the question."

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"I see ... So they met by accident, and they beat each other to a pulp . . . And after the surviving officer in the Vengeful had sent across his prize-crew to take over the Fortuné—

including the good Dr Pike—" he pointed to the surgeon's box

"—the worst storm of the year started to blow up ... Is that the size of it?" He bent over the type-script again. "Where is it, now? Ah . . . ' leaving the victor in a more desperate case than the vanquished, partially dismasted, and her remaining sails, spars and rigging much cut about' —that was because the French aimed for the masts, on the up-roll, and the British aimed for the hull, on the down-roll ... I'm getting the picture, you see . . . and that also accounted for the disproportionate casualties the French usually suffered, I suppose. Although your father is a bit imprecise on them—in fact, he's a bit vague about Number Seven's last voyage in general, wouldn't you say? Compared with the other chapters" He cocked a critical eyebrow at her.

"Oh, I wouldn't say that." And yet there was a germ of truth in it, thought Elizabeth. "It was maybe . . . more conjectural than the others—"

"Conjectural? All right, I'll settle for that: conjectural, then?"

"There was a reason for that." He was smart, but not quite smart enough. "Everything about that last voyage came from the Court of Inquiry, after the Fortuné' was lost on the way home, on the Horse Sands off Portsmouth—in the same storm that drove the Vengeful ashore on the French coast ...

So it all comes from those four survivors' testimony, Paul."

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"Oh . . ." His face changed, almost comically. "Yes, of course

— I'm a bit slow, aren't I!" He hid his confusion in a further study of the type-script. "Four survivors . . . one carpenter's mate . . . and three illiterate able seamen—yes . . . and it was the carpenter's mate who let slip about how rotten the Vengeful's timbers were—how one of the French 24-lb cannon balls went right through her, from side to side, just about the water-line—"

"You don't need to look—I remember it all." She fired on the down-roll.

"You do?" He looked up, making no pretence of hiding his defeat. "Tell me then, Elizabeth dear—?"

It was impossible to resist that look. "I had to type that chapter out again because Father wasn't satisfied with the carbon copies, that's why I remember. . . When the French surrendered Captain Williams was dead, and his first and second lieutenants were both dying—the French captain was dead too ... and they had to put the prize crew on the Fortuné

—and they didn't really have enough men left for that—"

"They should have abandoned the Vengeful—that would be the third lieutenant who was in command—?"

"He couldn't do that. He'd never have got his wounded off, not in that weather and with darkness so close." Elizabeth shook her head. She could recall even now, from the typing and re-typing of that passage, how she had felt for poor young Lieutenant Chipperfield in the nightmare of his first command as Father had imagined it: the two battered dummy3

frigates, both holed below the water-line, the screaming wounded . . . nearly a third of his own crew and more than half the Frenchman's dead and injured . . . and the dismounted cannon rolling around the decks as the gale rose, and with night falling. "All he had time to do was to get the prize-crew across, Paul. It was the only thing he could do."

"It was still the wrong decision. He should have concentrated on saving one of them—instead of which he lost both." He stared at her for a moment, and then through her as his own imagination began to work. "But maybe you're right... It's all too bloody easy to sit here in quiet and comfort, sipping our sherry, and making all the right decisions—same with my war, the '14-'18 . . . all too bloody easy . . ."

It was very quiet on the terrace. Elizabeth felt the tranquillity of the evening all around her, not only in the silence itself but also in the peaceful protcctiveness of the old stone house and the great comforting curve of the downland ridge above them, in which the house nestled; and she could smell the evening smells, of honeysuckle and thyme and lavender.

But it was a false tranquillity—false both because their thoughts were concentrated on battle and sudden death, and pain and fear long ago . . . and because there were men on that hill, the child had said, and they recalled her mind to sudden death and fear and pain in the present.

She shivered, and found that he was looking at her again.

"Sorry—I was . . . thinking." He straightened up. "And for dummy3

thoughts there is drink! I'll have another—and will you change your mind?"

"I'll have a small sherry, Paul."

"Good! So ... next morning the Vengeful had disappeared, and the prize-crew reckoned she'd gone down in the night, and it was all they could do to stay afloat anyway . . . there—

one small sherry! So they beat it as best they could for Portsmouth, only to come to grief themselves on the Horse Sands, which would have been in sight of home if it hadn't been midnight in another howling gale, poor devils . . . poor brave devils! Hence . . . one carpenter's mate and three seamen left to tell the tale." He raised his glass in a silent toast. "But the Vengeful didn't go down that night, did she!

She lasted three whole days, before she piled up on—where was it?"

"Somewhere among the rocks of Les Echoux, Father thought.

From where the survivors finally came ashore on the coast near Coutances, he thought they might have been making for one of the Channel Islands."

"They had the damnedest luck too. If it hadn't been for the weather they might have made it. Instead of which . . . just another couple of forgotten epics. And two more for your statistics, Elizabeth—one French battle casualty and one English shipwreck. But two epics, nevertheless."

She was glad that he'd got the point, which Father himself had been at pains to make, that the saga of the Vengeful and the Fortuné deserved to be told for its own sake and not just dummy3

as the sad history of Number Seven.

"So that leaves us with another thirteen survivors to account for—the very last of the Vengefuls—right?"

"Yes. The crew of the jolly-boat," Elizabeth nodded.

"The jolly-boat—'a hack-boat for small work', the OED

says . . . which was presumably the only undamaged boat to get away from the wreck . . . and not a very jolly voyage, because two of them died soon after they came ashore, from injuries or exposure, or both. . . and they were all in a bad way, more or less." He nodded back, and then his eyes shifted to the Vengeful box. "And that came ashore off the Fortuné—the ship's doctor's box of tricks . . . presumably?"

She noticed that he was watching her intently. "Father thought so. It was rather surprising that Dr Pike left the Vengeful, but maybe the French ship didn't have a surgeon.

But that's the only way it could have been washed up on the English coast. And the carpenter's mate remembers him being on board the Fortuné."

"But he wasn't one of the survivors."

"I'm sorry?" Elizabeth's attention had strayed back to the box, with its inscription plates which it had been her duty to keep brightly polished, but which were sadly tarnished now.

"I said, he wasn't one of the survivors from the Fortuné. . .

And from the Vengeful there was the third lieutenant, Chipperfield, and the little midshipman, Paget . . . and the Gunner's Mate, Chard, and the Quartermaster's Mate, Timms dummy3

—"

" What?" exclaimed Elizabeth in astonishment.

"Timms. And the six seamen—eight originally—"

" But . . . but, Paul—" She was forced to curb her astonishment by the appearance of her hostess on the terrace.

Paul stood up, clasping the chapter to his chest. "Mrs Audley