The Good Liar (19 page)

It was not until they had disembarked at Dover that Charles Stan-

brook uttered his first words since leaving the George V.

‘Where’s the bloody car, then?’ he asked.

‘I couldn’t ring ahead from the hotel. That manager would have

been listening to every word.’

‘So how do we get back?’

‘The train, like everyone else. Ticket office is over there.’

‘Fuck,’ said Charles, before melting back into a sullen silence. He allowed Roy to guide him by the elbow.

At Victoria they took a cab to the London residence. As they

crossed the threshold Roy made the usual transition from directing

Charles, his unruly charge, to being Lord Stanbrook’s faithful

employee.

2

He liked this job. He had fallen on his feet almost ten years before when the post came up. Opened up invitingly in front of him, more

like.

After the incident back in ’46 he’d been put on light duties for

some time. He hadn’t been sent back to his home unit, which in any

case was in the process of being disbanded. They hadn’t really

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known what to do with him. First he flew a desk in an office in Brussels, working on what would later be known as the Treaty of

Brussels. A very small cog in a very large machine, and floundering in the sea of words. Not his thing at all. Oh no. Then he was shipped off to Vienna to deal with transport dockets for the British occupying force.

It was there that he had met Major Stanbrook of the Intelligence

Corps. They took to each other instantly and Stanbrook had fina-

gled Roy on to his staff. When Stanbrook decided to take up his

place in the Lords, he asked Roy to become an unofficial aide. Roy

had jumped at the chance.

In the days after coming back from France Lord Stanbrook

regained his characteristic ebullience. Almost immediately, Roy set off once more for Paris to iron out the unfortunate misunderstandings that had occurred. Claude at the George V was more obliging,

no longer faced with the imminent end of his career. Claude had

successfully managed matters with the police, deploying an expres-

sion of wounded ignorance, and gave Roy the name of the inspector

who was dealing with the case.

At the police station Roy received a polite welcome. Monsieur

l’Inspecteur was intrigued to learn what had actually occurred. It

shook him to discover that the truth was somewhat different from

what he had heard from various of the club staff and the alleged

victim himself. Roy explained the unfortunate circumstances of the

skirmish and subsequent accident that had led to the man’s two

broken arms and insisted that any allegations regarding His Lord-

ship were both groundless and maliciously motivated. The man

himself had since admitted that he had misunderstood Lord Stan-

brook’s intentions towards the young woman he had been

accompanying. The inspector shook his head with a weary know-

ledge of the world.

‘My employer is a wealthy man,’ said Roy, ‘a pillar of British society, a government minister and, I have to say, of unimpeachable

integrity. He will not fail to go to law if these scurrilous and baseless accusations are pursued.’ He gave the inspector the business card of the expensive lawyers in rue de l’Échelle whom he had already

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engaged on the matter. Then he suggested that he buy the inspector

a coffee, or indeed something stronger.

They stood at the bar, smoking the American cigarettes Roy had

thought to pack before leaving London, each with a
café express
and a small glass of marc. Roy drained his glass and the detective followed suit. Roy signalled for refills.

‘The difficulty is,’ he said, ‘that there are just so many people

looking for an angle. Any angle. It seems there’s been something of a moral collapse since the war in which our nations fought so val-iantly side by side. Honesty is no longer valued; it’s all about what you can get away with.’

The inspector nodded. He was not expected to speak.

‘Lord Stanbrook is – well, he wouldn’t want to be described as a

war hero – a courageous man who continues to serve his country. It would be most unfortunate if his reputation was dragged down by

some scoundrel. I’m sure it’s not something your country would

want either.’

He paused. He did not know whether he had spoken enough and

they could quickly conclude their business. He had a train to catch.

Both knew implicitly that the conversation was a formality. The deal had been done when the police officer accepted the offer of a drink. As ever, though, the lie had to be maintained. For a little longer, evidently.

‘I’m certain that no officer of the Paris police would wish to be

complicit in allowing extortion to take place. Least of all you,

Jacques. May I call you Jacques?’

The other man inclined his head slightly. Roy detected the hint of

a smile.

‘In that case I’m reassured. My work is done. I’ve no need to pro-

test my employer’s innocence any further. I have complete

confidence in your judgement. But should anything unexpected

happen, you know how to contact me.’

With that, he put his hat on, placed a large- denomination bill on the zinc for the barman, shook hands with the police officer and

walked out of the cafe, leaving behind, placed below the evening

newspaper he had bought on the way in, a rather plump envelope.

He made his train with ten minutes to spare.

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3

The rules when they were at the London residence or the country

house were different from when they were, as Lord Stanbrook put

it, on the razzle.

Informality was out of the question. Roy’s employer was His

Lordship rather than Charles and appropriate deference was de

rigueur. Nor would Roy have wanted it any differently. It was less

complicated. There were moments of awkwardness, particularly

when Stanbrook required Roy’s presence at dinner with guests at

Burnsford, but these occasions were relatively infrequent. The

guests concerned would generally be aware of the reasons for Roy’s

presence and his standing with his employer. There was, for Roy,

little more than a need for care with words and actions, part of his professional repertoire. He found it relatively easy to circulate

among these people.

This was one of those more relaxed weekends. No political

guests. They were to gather for an informal dinner on the Friday,

the guests arriving according to the time they had been able to

escape the rigours of London. Burnsford House was located in the

anonymous Midlands, south of Birmingham and east of the twee

Tudor affectations of Stratford, but well away from the grimy industrial cities of the East Midlands. Unprepossessing Northampton was

the nearest town, but visitors by train were more generally collected at Daventry.

Having delivered a rather irritable viscount and his wife to the

house, shown them to their room and left them to unpack, Roy sat

smoking in the study, undisturbed. The party this weekend would

be small. They would be ten at table tonight: Lord Stanbrook and

his long- suffering wife, Lady Dorothy; their daughter Francesca:

Viscount Wexford and his wife, Margaret: Joachim von Hessenthal,

a German count of Stanbrook’s long acquaintance; Oliver Wright,

the Foreign Secretary’s private secretary: Roy himself: and Sir

Thomas and Lady Sylvia Banks. Sylvia. He sighed quietly.

Roy was there to make up the party, as Lady Dorothy did not like

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to dine with odd numbers at her table. This at least was the fiction.

To be sure, if one of the guests failed to materialize he would drop out. But his presence at the table had little to do with the numbers.

They would dress for dinner only on the Saturday. He had some

time, therefore. Wexford and his wife were already here, von Hes-

senthal was being conveyed by his own driver, and Roy would avoid

at all costs being present to greet the Bankses. This left Mr Wright.

Roy checked his watch and saw that he had a few minutes to savour

his cigarette and cup of tea before setting off for the station in the Humber.

‘I understand you’ll be joining us for dinner,’ said Wright as the

windscreen wipers marked time on their journey back to the house.

‘That’s right, sir,’ replied Roy. ‘Informal dinner tonight. Formal

tomorrow.’

‘ Righty- ho.’

Oliver Wright was a pensive young man, angular and gaunt to

the point of apparent malnutrition. In government circles he was

known as a policy genius and quite the eligible young man going

places. Wright sat beside Roy in the front of the car, his bony white hands turning restlessly in his lap as if he was made nervous by

Roy’s deft handling of the vehicle at speed through the puddles and around country corners. He frowned.

‘Where exactly do you fit in in the house?’ he asked. ‘I mean, if

it’s not too presumptuous a question.’

‘Not at all, sir,’ said Roy. ‘My role is as Lord Stanbrook’s aide on business matters. A factotum, you might say.’

‘You run the estate for him?’

‘Oh no, sir. I’ve very little to do with the estate itself. Beyond me, all that stuff. Lord Stanbrook has diverse business interests. I manage his portfolio inasmuch as I ensure that all necessary matters are attended to and nothing is forgotten. I accompany him on business

trips.’

‘A fixer, you mean.’

‘If you care to put it that way, sir. Though doubtless Lord Stan-

brook might express it slightly differently.’

‘Quite. Have you met this von Hessenthal chap?’

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‘No, I haven’t. I understand Lord Stanbrook knows him from

before the war. Both were army officers of course and knew each

other professionally in the 1930s. I doubt whether the Graf von Hessenthal would regard it as a happy coincidence, though, that Lord

Stanbrook was the major to whom the general surrendered his

weapon in 1945.’

‘And who else will be there?’

‘Lady Francesca, the Viscount Wexford and his wife, and Sir

Thomas and Lady Sylvia Banks. I believe you know Sir Thomas and

Lady Sylvia?’

Wright looked at Roy as if significance attached to the question.

Roy kept his eyes on the road and accelerated into the corner, just enough to slide the rear wheel out under control.

‘Yes,’ said Wright. ‘We’ve come across each other on government

business.’

‘That reminds me. His Lordship asked me to emphasize that this

is an informal weekend. Relaxed. Emphatically not a duty weekend.

He wants everyone to feel completely at ease. No discussion of pol-

itics or other matters of government. No, um, standing on

ceremony.’

‘Got it,’ said Wright.

Roy fancied that he might have smiled for the first time during

this journey.

4

Sylvia looked across the table at him with what she judged to be

suitably disguised desire. Her judgement on discretion and subter-

fuge, born of experience, was infallible.

He was beautiful, simply beautiful. It was the only way she could

describe him. Tall, effortless, languid, yet muscular and athletic, with foppish blond locks that periodically he swept away contemptuously from his brow. And those eyes: blue yet with depth and

apparent scornful omniscience, and frightening. From his looks he

might have been an Oxford blue, captain of the England rugby

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fifteen, or a captain in the Commandos. But he would never be con-

fused with one of her class: apart from his slightly unplaceable

accent, he possessed a greater steeliness. He excited her and scared her in equal measure.

The beard. It was not a sobriquet she sought but one that vile

Gertrude had flung at her. It was a word, in this sense, that Ger-

trude had evidently picked up on her recent trip to New York. To

Sylvia’s knowledge the vulgar term had not yet reached British society. This had not prevented Gertrude from using it during one of

their private teas.

Sylvia’s marriage had not so much been arranged as arrived at.

The delicate problem had been the subject of much discussion, in

hushed tones and in opaque terms, between the parents before her

mother commented that Tommy Banks would be a good catch. Syl-

via had acquiesced in the fashion expected of her and from there it had fallen into place on a predictably smooth path, seemingly without her involvement. But Sylvia had known precisely the kind of

marriage into which she was entering.

Roy glanced discreetly at Lady Sylvia. She seemed to be staring at

him, but possibly this was his own self- consciousness at work. This was a tacit agreement that suited all parties moderately well. And

moderately well was the English way. He doubted whether the

supercilious German count would be remotely aware of the deli-

cate balances in play.

She was indeed strikingly attractive, with the poise of her breed-

ing and upbringing, her thin oval face, large eyes and pert nose