A Darker God (49 page)

“And who would benefit? George the Second! He’d be invited back from wherever he’s got to in Europe to take up the throne again! Disgraceful, shameful affair!” Gunning fumed.

“You express His Majesty’s own thoughts exactly!” Wentworth sat back smiling, waiting for their reaction.

“What are you saying? That King George was aware …?”

“Yes, he was. An officer from the German armed forces visited him in London with a proposal. Told him what was about to be done in his name. We run a line of remarkably effective
temporary valets … they say a man has no secrets from his valet. True. No surprise there. But we were astonished when the king himself strolled down Saint James’s and paid a call on one of our top men. The strength of his honour was being sorely tested, he proclaimed. He had personal dragons to fight. Time to do the right thing… (I think we have Wagner to thank for this rush of noble sentiment to the head.) He would derive no satisfaction from the assassination of an old man’s wife, however much his enemy. He scorned it for a dishonourable act! He—correctly—predicted the country would ascribe the deed to him and turn from him in revulsion. So George came clean. Confided all. Demanded absolute discretion, naturally. And here we are!” he concluded, beaming around the table and gathering his papers together. “Being absolutely discreet! Thank you all so much for dropping by—”

“No! Here we aren’t! Not yet!” Letty burst out. “Freddy! You’re keeping something from us! You knew him! Are you ever going to tell us who he was—the grizzled old goat who aimed a bullet, to say nothing of a ton of rock, at Helena? And Thetis?”

“Ah yes.” Wentworth’s expression became less unctuous. “Albanian bandit whose name escapes me? Would you believe?”

They glared at him in hostile silence.

“Won’t quite do, Wentworth,” said Gunning.

“No, I thought not. Well, that’s what you’ll read in the papers. May even prove to be one of your old sparring partners, Montacute! Busy boys! If these blokes exist—and we only have your word for it—they must be laughing their socks off when they read about their continuing exploits in the press. Oh, very well. Here, take a look at this. Top Secret, of course. Swinton has your signatures, I remind you.”

He passed a sheet of paper to Montacute. A sheet of typed
paper with a photograph paper-clipped to the front. They leaned over Montacute’s shoulder to inspect it.

“That’s the man!” said Letty. “The man who was dancing attendance on you last night. What a villain! He actually
looks
like someone who’d put a bullet in you as soon as look at you! Gunay, I begin to think, could never have killed anyone face-to-face. Not even a weed like me. So he hired this ruffian to do the dirty work. Who is he?”

Montacute pushed the photograph aside to reveal a sheet from a Home Office official file.

“Good Lord!” he said, stunned, and passed it to Gunning. “This is a bit hard to take! Did you have
any
idea, Wentworth? This is going to do you no credit when it gets out.”

“‘Rose to the rank of major in a very illustrious British regiment?’” Gunning read out. “‘Special Branch experience …’ Five years with those bully boys … Scottish father, German mother … Name of Grant. ‘Attached latterly to the British Embassy, special duties.’ Nothing out of the way there? Means nothing to me, I’m afraid. But why? Why on earth would such a man attempt political murder?”

“Money and danger? Those eternal incentives? Old soldier with a chip on his shoulder, you know how it is … Expected to go higher. Passed over … Strong fighting instinct. Aggressive, ruthless. No outlet for it these days … May have had some family connection through his mother with the Kaiser’s mob.” Wentworth paused to assess the level of disbelief in his audience. Then he sighed. “No? Well, we haven’t got to the bottom of that quite yet.” He grimaced and added, disarmingly: “We’re still working on a convincing story.” He stirred uncomfortably in his seat and leaned towards them. “Look, there’s an outside possibility that he may have been obeying orders from on high. I mean, higher than we have cognisance of …”

“‘On high’?” Montacute was scoffing when he cut him off.

“How high? You mean the top floor of the War Office? So damn secret they don’t even know who they’re meant to be themselves? There are always fanatics up there—Royalists by instinct, most of them, feudal-minded fossils who still tug forelocks and bend the knee. Men who despise the idea of democracy, let alone a Republic. And they’re always ready to meddle. Always ready to send a man over the top with a handshake and a patriotic tear in the eye. And the right phrase ringing in his ear … Scottish, wasn’t he, this Grant? One of the Bonnie Charlie brigade, no doubt! You’ll probably discover a white cockade next to his heart. Lord! I could have been one such myself if I hadn’t seen them coming! And this poor bugger, Grant, was their triggerman, the one who set up the killing scene at the theatre.”

“The maintenance man, according to the night guards, who have been interviewed afresh. They shared many a bottle with him after hours. They hadn’t thought to mention it because he was, after all, just a Briton like the rest of those lunatics … This one came in occasionally to check up on security. Had a full set of keys and all … They actually heaved on a rope to help him reinstate the statue when it toppled over.” Wentworth shook his head more in sorrow than in anger. “We asked questions your squad appear not to have thought of, Montacute.”

“Already on the inside, he could operate in total anonymity and security from a base right here in the Embassy under your nose, Wentworth,” Montacute countered.

Wentworth flinched.

Letty was unsatisfied. Freddy had coughed up this information too easily, she calculated. And he was diverting Percy, running him down safe channels of his own choosing. Enmeshing him in a private duel. A slippery customer, Wentworth, she guessed, who had one last wriggle left in him.

“All the people you’ve mentioned so far, Freddy, have been
pawns,” she commented, stepping between the drawn swords. “Essential perhaps at times, but expendable. There’s someone else … behind all this, just out of sight …” she speculated. “No! Listen! None of us in the company even recognised this Grant. He was never there when we were about. But someone knew
every
move we made in the theatre, rehearsal times, plans for the libation ceremony … Things he couldn’t have learned in a boozy after-hours exchange with the Greek watchman.”

Wentworth began to rise to his feet. “All surmise,” he said dismissively. “I think we can safely leave it there. You have the names you wanted. Now—if you wouldn’t mind …”

They sat firmly in their places.

“No, Wentworth. Letty has it right. Give her another minute and she’ll be along the trail like a hound,” advised Gunning pleasantly. “Listen to her—she’s usually worth hearing.”

“Lattimore!”
she exclaimed. “He really didn’t take part in the killing, but he did make a contribution! His big mouth! He was teaching English to the family of General Konstantinou—a wonderful way to get information from him! ‘Do tell the children all that you did today … so good for their English.’”

“And the General listened!” Montacute fixed Wentworth in his seat with his sharp words. “And used the information and passed it to Grant. Who planned accordingly; who experimented after hours on-site with wedges and angles and ropes until he had it right. And then he put his simple gear back in the storage shed where he’d found it. He brought down Dionysus as nothing more than a distraction. It was the
shot
that was meant to kill her. If a woman’s lying dead under a heap of stone, everyone in range is going to assume in the confusion that she’s been crushed to death. They’re going to crack their muscles and dig with their hands to release her body while the perpetrator slides away under cover of the chaos into the bushes unnoticed. And who comes out of all this smelling
of roses? The
General
, who, in his infinite wisdom, ensured that the Prime Minister was dissuaded from appearing. A distancing move. How we applauded his caution! He didn’t care—he was the only man who knew, apart from Gunay, that the Prime Minister was not a marked man anyway. Konstantinou, eh? Poor old Wentworth! You’ve got your work cut out smoothing this one over. Your Invisible Fixer still on the books, is he? Hang on to him, you might be needing him!”

“Oh, it’s the assassination in Macedon all over again,” Letty said quietly. “And Grant himself was doomed. The gunman was never going to be captured and questioned. The bold young major made absolutely certain of that. Carrying out his General’s orders. What’s the betting that
he
modestly accepts a rise in rank after a decent interval? Does this violence never end? Oh, I could weep! What has been achieved? What are we left with?”

“You need me to spell it out?” Wentworth was losing patience. “We’re left with a World Statesman and his wife unscathed. We’re left with the unmasking of a particularly nasty and dangerous element right here in Athens and a whole network which is, even as I speak, being rolled up throughout Europe!”

Letty was silenced by the truth of this but Montacute was flashing with anger. “No, Wentworth! What we have on our conscience—those of us who have one—is a young woman who may never walk again. Smashed to the ground and crippled by a distraction! A woman who was press-ganged into a damned dangerous job by a callous Home Office that can’t even live by its own rules. We’re left with a very angry policeman who was sent out here to do nothing more than stand by with the handcuffs. A cardboard cutout, an acceptable face of officialdom, providing a reassuring presence. After all, the
Embassy
can’t go about arresting anyone in a foreign country should they be left, by some lapse of judgement, with an undead villain
on their hands. Better have on tap a compliant bobby. Just in case.

“And what’s your bobby left with? The assurance that the royal families of two countries will be graciously thankful for his efforts! No crowned head need be embarrassed by a messy and uncalled-for killing. Well, I said it at the time and I say again: Sod the royal families!”

A self-destructive speech which would be followed within twenty-four hours by instant recall to London to hear of his dismissal from whatever government post he at present occupied, Letty reckoned, aghast at the inspector’s flourish.

Montacute got to his feet and stormed from the room.

Letty and Gunning stormed with him.

“The Grande Bretagne bar is that way, old man,” said Gunning, grasping him by the elbow. “It’s a bit early for a pink gin but I think we’ve all earned one!”

Chapter 45

A
re you ever going to tell me what your unholy bargain with Gunay consisted of?”

“William! I’d have thought an afternoon of dalliance at the Apollo, wallowing in scented French linen, befuddled by a bottle of the management’s best fizz, would have put such matters out of your head. I’m not going to talk about it. I’d rather think about what we’re going to have for supper.”

He sighed in irritation. “Thought as much. You’ve been very quiet lately. You’re planning something. And I don’t think I shall like it. Listen! Whatever ‘bargain’ you made was struck with a gun at your head, made with a villain who is, in fact, dead. So, on two counts, your ‘bargain’ is null and void. You owe the man nothing. Not even a backward glance.”

Letty considered for a moment, unwilling to spoil a magical afternoon with a mention of plans she knew would make him furious. “You’re right. Of course, you’re right. But Gunay was a bit of an enchanter, you know. He’s influencing me from beyond the grave.”

Gunning snorted in disapproval of her fanciful notion. “He—”

Letty put a hand over his mouth. “He asked me to do something he knew I would want to do anyway. Not
want
, particularly,
but feel I had to do. He was enticing me to take a path I had already travelled halfway along.”

Gunning thought for a bit and then said: “And I think I can guess what you’ll find at the end of the road …”

“What I’ll find, William?” she asked tentatively.

“What
we’ll
find. You’re not going up there without me trotting at your stirrup, miss!” And he intoned: “To Salonika!”

Letty shuddered. “You don’t think we could entice Montacute and his Browning to come along for the ride?”

Gunning laughed. “No chance of that! He hasn’t travelled further than a few yards from Thetis’s side since she was laid low! And I think never will. I say, Letty, you haven’t … I mean … you two are pretty thick … has she dropped any hint that
…?”

“The word you find impossible to mouth is ‘matrimony,’ William. Marriage. Has he? Did she? When will they? What will the World say? And I have to say, honestly, I’m not sure! I think so. It’s hard to tell. Thetis raves so! Last time I was by her bedside, she’d just spent two hours in his sole company. Well, she wasn’t paying much attention to
me
!”

“And, of course, one doesn’t like to ask outright.”

“No. But she did say some revealing things! ‘Just imagine, Letty,’ she said with a sigh, ‘I shall have him all for my own!’ And then: ‘I shall be able to nibble bits of him whenever I like!’”