Troy’s father had thrown nothing away. The man had been an habitual hoarder. His study at Mimram, the country house in Hertfordshire where Troy’s mother had lived permanently since the death of her husband, was a Chinese box of a room—strip away one layer of junk and you will find another. Rod could not abide such disorder, and Troy had taken over the study at Mimram. In London, the old man’s study had become Rod’s domain. Troy expected to find it somewhat more organized. Somewhere in his past, and he had lived well into his eighties, Alex Troy had been a cigar smoker, and when nagged by wife and doctors to give it up he had done so—and when most men might have put the Fabergé cigar tools up for auction or presented them to a son who smoked (none of his did), Alex had simply left them where they had stood since 1910 on his desktop. Troy hoped they were still there.
Rod had entirely forgotten his mood of only hours ago. The blob was still out front. Rod didn’t so much as glance at it and Troy did not mention it.
“Back so soon? Ah, well, the sun is over the yardarm, come and have a drink.”
“I need a few minutes in the old man’s study.”
“Fine, you know where to find me.”
The study was at the back at garden level. Alex was often to be found, rain or shine, summer or winter, simply standing by the French windows staring out, or at his desk leafing through Quiller-Couch’s Oxford Book of English Verse to find something that matched the mood of the day. If he’d still been alive, doubtless Troy would only have had to mention the quotation from Pushkin for the old man to have found it in his capacious memory of Russian verse.
The Fabergé set was still there, next to the green-bound edition of Quiller-Couch. Troy had no idea of the technical names for these devices. There was a thing that lopped one end off a cigar—as a boy Troy had thought it could as easily lop off offending fingers—a thing that pricked the other end, and a penknife—with which the ten-year-old Troy had once attempted to whittle a bow and arrow. But their function was as nothing to their form.
There were no diamonds or rubies but the golden swirls, flower-like, fern-like, tapering into infinity were all but identical to those that decorated the gun. It was, as Churchill had insisted, a delicate work of art. The eggs had always struck him as overblown and indulgent.
The gun was Russian. Wally would have it that Skolnik was Russian. Quite soon now he’d have to ask.
He found Rod in the small sitting room on the floor above—ground level at the front, one flight above the garden at the back. Shoes off, one black sock one green, tie at half-mast, a red ministerial box open on the carpet.
“Do we have a complete Pushkin?”
“Did you look downstairs?”
“It’s not there.”
“Must be up here, then.”
Rod gestured to a column of bookshelves in the alcove of the fireplace. It was mostly texts in Russian and French, and someone, undoubtedly Rod, had alphabetized them. Troy, like his father before him, had always thought the alphabet overrated.
He found a copy of Boris Godunov and flicked through it. A few scenes from the end, he found the passage that Skolnik had painted beneath his Venus. “A dark and constant secrecy.” Skolnik had quoted accurately and it meant what Troy had thought it meant—but what it meant in the context Skolnik had newly ascribed to it remained a mystery.
“I’m glad you dropped in. I wanted a chat about this Northern Line thing,” Rod said.
“Am I talking to a politician or a brother? Are you talking to a brother or a copper?”
“Could we not just talk without the labels? I’ve got some responsibility for the games—the Olympics . . .”
“Why? It’s hardly an RAF matter.”
“Use your imagination, Freddie. It’s the biggest thing . . . since . . . since . . . well, since the war . . .”
“Part of the healing process?”
“Exactly, part of the . . .”
“Then why aren’t the Japs and the Jerries invited? Why aren’t the Russians coming?”
“You’re nitpicking. It might be a bit soon to have the German flag flying in London even if the new one doesn’t have a swastika on it . . . and I’ve no idea why the Russians aren’t coming. Ask Stalin, not me. But it is an international effort, and every minister has extra responsibilities.”
“And yours just happens to include the Northern Line?”
“You’re taking the piss. Stop it. Mine include public relations.”
“And how does that involve the killing on the Northern Line?”
“Simple. We may not have a flood of visitors, God knows most of Europe can’t afford the bus fare to the next town, but we will have visitors and the PM’s worried about anything scaring them off. Foreign currency, balance of payments . . . blah blah blahdey blah. Every country is pitching in to stop this event looking any shabbier than it is. Between you and me it’s a threadbare business, cobbled together, and I dearly wish the Mongolians or the Mexicans were staging the games not us. We cannot afford it. Half the countries are bringing their own food with them!”
“Decent of them.”
“Decent, helpful, and bloody embarrassing. The Swedes, or is it the Norwegians? . . . Anyway, they’re shipping in their own peas! Can you imagine it—shipping in their own peas?”
“Is this why bread has suddenly come off the ration? To make us all seem better off than we are, in the eyes of other countries?”
“Sort of.”
“How sort of ?”
“Sort of . . . yes.”
“And will it go back on ration when the rest of the world departs?”
“My God, you’re so cynical. No, it won’t.”
“I still don’t see where you come in.”
“Public relations . . . the PM wants to know there isn’t a nutter loose on the Underground.”
“What . . . Béla Lugosi? Lon Chaney? The phantom of the Northern Line?”
“Freddie, please take this seriously. Tomorrow I have to call the Yard and seek reassurance from the copper in charge.”
“Then why not ask me now?”
“It’s you? You total bastard! You could have told me that at lunch-time.”
“You didn’t ask. And no, Rod, there are no more nutters loose on the London Underground than there used to be. Your problem is that London is a city full of nutters anyway. Let’s see you smooth that one over with publicity. I can tell you this much: it’s an odd case, but it’s not the work of a nutter or of anyone who intends to go on killing.”
“Why so sure?”
“I have the gun. If you mean to make a hobby of killing it would make sense to hang onto the weapon.”
Rod cooled rapidly. Anger, outrage were never his modi operandi for long.
Troy said, “If you’re in the know, tell me: what are our chances of a few gold medals?”
“Don’t Freddie, don’t ask. We’re going to get our national arse kicked.”