Lord Templeman had opened a silver cigar box. He offered it to Wilde and Eaton, who both declined.
‘Let me tell you a bit about Miss Harriet Hartwell,’ Templeman said when he had lit his cigar. ‘She worked for the Duke of Kent as secretary, in its rather more commonplace meaning – very different to the role of his private secretary, John Crowther, who was also aboard the Sunderland but sadly died. Her tasks were a great deal more menial – taking a full shorthand note and keeping his diary, that sort of thing. Although she was less senior than Crowther, she was held in esteem by the Duke and he enjoyed her company.’
‘You mean she shared his bed?’
‘Good God, no – well, at least I don’t think so,’ Templeman said. He turned to Eaton. ‘Philip?’
‘Who knows?’
‘But there was more to her than simply being a shorthand typist,’ Templeman continued. ‘What you may or may not have deduced, Wilde, is that she is also a secret agent, working for MI5. Now she’s gone rogue and we are extremely worried, because we have no idea what she is going to do with the information she has. Why has she not reported in? Is she working for someone else? We have no idea – and nor do we know what she is planning. Most of all, we don’t know where she is and so we have to find her, to debrief her and ensure all is in order.’
Wilde said nothing.
‘Let’s go back a bit,’ Templeman continued, a cloud of aromatic smoke enveloping him. ‘The official story about the Sunderland flight is not quite the whole truth, but you were already moving in that direction, I believe. In fact, it wasn’t leaving for Iceland, but returning from Stockholm at the time of the crash. In Stockholm, the Duke of Kent had a secret meeting with his German cousin Prince Philipp von Hessen. Have you heard of him?’
‘No.’
‘He’s closely related to the former kaiser and is one of the very senior members of what remains of the old German aristocracy. He also happens to be a rabid Nazi and one of Hitler’s closest friends. This is not something that is generally known outside high-ranking Nazi circles.’
‘I imagine they were talking peace then,’ Wilde said. ‘Some sort of shabby face-saving deal. Does Churchill know about it?’
‘Yes, Churchill knew about the meeting, but you’re getting ahead of yourself. And your instant conclusion is what worries me – for if word of the meeting got out we could expect exactly the same reaction from both the Kremlin and the White House, not to mention our allies throughout the empire. They would immediately think we were doing what you suggest – looking for a shabby deal. And they would then assume, wrongly, that we were unreliable allies. Hitler would be delighted, of course, because he would love to drive a wedge between us.’
‘Then if you’re not looking for a deal, why meet this Nazi aristocrat?’
‘To listen, Professor Wilde. Simply to listen.’
‘You’ll have to explain.’
‘We believe the German advance in the East may be stalling and that they have underestimated Stalin’s reserves. We also believe that hostility is rising in the occupied lands to the West. While some in France and the Low Countries welcomed the Wehrmacht with open arms back in 1940, that goodwill has been squandered by the killing of hostages and reprisal executions on a huge scale. Secret reports tell us that hundreds of innocent people were massacred in a village called Lidice in revenge for the assassination of the monstrous Heydrich earlier this summer. But that is just the tip of the iceberg. Hostages are being slaughtered in towns and villages across France in retaliation for acts of sabotage by the resistance movement.’ He paused for a pull on his Havana cigar.
‘Barbaric, utterly barbaric,’ Wilde said. ‘But I still don’t understand the Duke of Kent’s role.’
‘To listen. To find out whether the Germans are keen on a deal, which might indicate that they are becoming severely stretched,’ Templeman continued his flow unabated. ‘If they are stretched in the West, it means that they have to keep more divisions back – divisions that they would like to throw into the fray in Stalingrad, Moscow and Leningrad. The Duke’s mission was to try to find out just how desperate Hitler is becoming. He never had any intention of negotiating a peace deal with von Hessen. We had to assume the meeting place had been bugged, so the Duke was coached to say nothing that could sound remotely like an interest in any truce or pact. Nothing that could be used against him or us. The damnable thing is that, with his death, we don’t know what he learnt, for he was supposed to report back directly. The only other person in the room during the talks was Harriet Hartwell, taking a note in her head. She has an actor’s ability to learn lines.’
Wilde finished off the whisky and grimaced. ‘What is this?’
‘Bit peaty for you?’ Templeman said. ‘Sixteen-year-old single malt from my estates north of the border.’
Something in the recesses of Wilde’s brain dredged up a recollection of Templeman’s sporting lands – what was it, 30,000 acres of shooting and fishing? But there were more pressing matters, and in truth he was beginning to see a certain logic to all of this, but there were holes, too, in Templeman’s version of events. ‘Why not just come clean with FDR and Stalin? If the British motive was explained to them, they’d go along with it.’
‘Good God, Wilde – there’s already enough paranoia in the Kremlin about Britain’s role. Stalin would explode at the very suggestion of Anglo-German talks.’
‘But FDR would understand.’
‘Indeed he might. But secrets shared have a tendency to get out, especially on Pennsylvania Avenue. There are still Nazis and Soviet spies in Washington DC, professor – you must know that.’
‘OK, I accept what you say – but there’s more, isn’t there? You don’t believe the crash of the Sunderland was accidental, do you?’
‘No,’ Templeman said. ‘Not for a moment.’
Eaton took up the story. ‘There is another element to this – the curious behaviour of Miss Hartwell in Sweden. She had been instructed to stay with the Duke every inch of the way, but we received word during the mission that Miss Hartwell had disappeared. They were all staying at Drottningholm Palace, but she had simply vanished from her room. The initial worry was that she might have been abducted, but then she reappeared just before the flight home.’
‘At Bromma airport?’
‘No, of course not. They had used a flying boat so that the Duke could land on one of the lakes near Drottningholm, to the west of Stockholm, and avoid the airport, where his presence would most certainly have been noted. There are many agents of all hues in Sweden, all watching our movements.’
‘So did the wayward Miss Hartwell say where she had been?’
‘All we got was a message to say she had arrived and was aboard the Sunderland. After that there had to be radio silence.’
‘And the crash?’
‘There must be many possibilities but one is uppermost in our minds,’ Templeman said. ‘They would have flown as high as possible – perhaps 17,000 feet, ceiling height for a Sunderland. At that height, all on board would have needed oxygen to avoid hypoxia. It is not impossible that the oxygen tanks had been tampered with before taking off or that they were somehow sabotaged during the flight. If the pilots were drowsy it might explain why the plane seemed to come in on a gradually decreasing course and why they did not take action to avoid crashing, either by landing on the sea or gaining altitude.’
‘How do you think she managed to survive?’
‘I suppose she was just damn lucky, like Sergeant Jack . . .’ Templeman had paused as if considering some other option.
‘Or?’ Wilde said.
‘Well, the obvious – she parachuted out.’
‘You mean she sabotaged the plane?’
‘Well, someone did – and we have to consider all possibilities.’
‘The shepherd boy didn’t mention a parachute. Have the men up in Caithness found one?’
‘Mr Quayle has told me that the boy is a simpleton. Anyway,’ Templeman said, not quite answering the question, ‘survive she did. But why didn’t she come straight to us? Why has she gone AWOL – and what did she do during the lost hours in Sweden?’
‘You mentioned some link to Cazerove.’
‘Well, how could we not see a connection after what you told us of the conversation in the railway carriage? In fact, I believe you said as much to Mr Eaton at the time. Anyway, Wilde, we have now laid our cards on the table. State secrets have been entrusted to you. I think it’s time for a little payback. Where in the name of God is the girl?’
‘I really don’t know,’ he said. And yes, everything they told him made sense. Yet he knew they were hiding something. Tell a little truth to conceal a bigger lie.
‘But you’ve met her?’
For a moment, Wilde came close to admitting that he had indeed met her. But something stopped him. The attack on Mimi’s house, perhaps, or the murder of Harriet’s father. Perhaps those deeds were the work of someone other than the British secret intelligence service, but until he was certain, he would maintain his silence. Not that he had much to offer anyway – details of the car, chapter and verse on their conversation, that was about it. He looked at his watch. It was late, a quarter past twelve, and he was weary. He wasn’t sure how much more of this he could put up with.
‘I think I need my bed.’
‘Tired are we, professor? I’m with you on that. We’ve all had rather a long day, what with one thing and another.’ Templeman spoke softly for such a tall man, but there was nothing gentle in his intent. He meant to get more information out of his prisoner, whatever it required.
‘Well, yes,’ Wilde said. ‘It has been a long day.’
‘Perhaps you’d care to tell us your version of events at Old Cottage in Clade by way of starters.’
‘Oh, that’s fair enough. I have made no secret of the fact that I was there, calling in on the Reverend Hartwell.’
‘Why exactly?’
‘Because I wanted to find Harriet. I had her passport, you see.’ Had he really just said that? He smiled foolishly. ‘The shepherd boy had it. I think he liked her picture.’
‘So he did find her?’
‘Well, you know that already.’
‘Then where is the passport?’
‘I gave it back to her, of course.’
‘Then you have met her?’
‘No, you’re twisting my words.’
‘Why didn’t you think to hand the passport over to Mr Quayle or, indeed, one of the officers at the scene of the crash?’
‘I was curious. I wanted to know what had happened.’ His tongue was loose and he wondered whether he had had too much whisky, but he couldn’t stop now. This all needed to come out in the open. ‘But then, with help from a newspaper friend, I found out a little bit about Harriet Hartwell and from there it was relatively easy to find her father in Clade. The poor man had had his throat cut, you know. But I can tell you who did it – a young man who calls himself Mortimer. Small, thin, rather malnourished by the look of him.’
‘You saw him killing the reverend?’
‘I saw him riding away on a motorbike.’
‘And then?’
‘I made my way to Cambridge and avoided the police as best as I could. That was when Harriet found me. I think she must have been waiting for me in her car outside college. I’d met her aunt, Mimi Lalique, the night before, so she must have told Miss Hartwell about me.’
He wanted to bite his tongue. He had just confirmed that he had met Harriet. This was what came of tiredness . . .
‘The car . . . perhaps you could describe it for me.’
‘Oh, it was one of those little Austin Sevens. Cream-coloured, I’d call it. Open-topped. Bit of a death trap actually.’ Had he said this? Had he really given these details to Templeman and Eaton? Why did his brain want to stop but his tongue and lips keep chattering away?
‘Did you get a registration number?’
‘Funnily enough, I did take a note of that – AYT 827. Why do you want to know?’
Templeman scribbled a note of the number on his desk pad. ‘You’re sure about that?’
‘Absolutely certain. Horrible little car, barely crawled up to fifty.’
‘And then she took you where?’
‘To Mimi’s in Westminster.’
‘What did you talk about?’
‘This and that, why she was running. Why I was running. I told her about her father’s death – not the worst of the details, of course – and she told me about the Athels.’
Wilde’s head seemed to be swimming from the whisky and exhaustion. Was it only this morning that he had woken up in a hotel on the Strand in London?
‘What about the Athels?’
‘She’s scared of them. Peter Cazerove was one. They were lovers, you know, after a fashion. Have I said that already? I’m losing track. Anyway, he was an Athel. You must know all about them. Eaton – you’d have come across one or two at Trinity, I’m sure. Harriet Hartwell says they’re everywhere – she thinks they want to kill her. That’s why she’s gone missing.’ He couldn’t stop talking. What was the matter with him? He was never like this.
‘Tell us more, Wilde. Tell us more about Miss Hartwell and the Athels.’
‘Nothing to tell. I need my bed, I’m talking too much.’
‘As soon as you’ve told us where she is, you’ll have your bed.’
‘I don’t know. She mentioned a name – Coburg – but then she was interrupted, so I know no more about him. Rudi Coburg, that was it.’
‘And where is he?’
Wilde shrugged helplessly and laughed. This was all ridiculous; he just wanted his bed. Not like him to get sloshed on a couple of whiskies.
Eaton touched Lord Templeman’s arm. ‘I don’t think he knows, Dagger. But we’ve got details of her car. I’ll get things moving on that.’
‘OK. And go back with the team to the Lalique house. Do another search of Harriet’s own flat in Kensington. There must be clues to other mutual acquaintances. Someone will be sheltering her.’
‘What about Wilde?’
‘Leave him with me.’