The Madness of July (36 page)

‘The information I have just received fits all that. We know that Manson rang Tom Brieve, though he didn’t manage to speak to him directly. At least on that occasion. He may have made calls to others, too. He had a purpose, after all, and didn’t come here by accident.’ Realizing what he had said, he stopped, as if making a silent apology to Joe’s shade.

‘Will, this may be the most awkward question I have ever had to ask anyone in your position. You see my difficulty. We have been given a glimpse of Manson’s mission, and names. One of them is yours.’

Flemyng said that he quite understood, but he could be clear. There was nothing in his past that would fit the story. Nothing. ‘I realize you know how often I’ve travelled across the pond over the years’ – he remembered Manson’s records, carefully annotated – ‘and I don’t know about the others on that list. You’ll just have to take my word. It isn’t me.’

He looked at them both, smiling for the first time since Paul began speaking. ‘You do believe me?’

Paul said that he had already come to that conclusion, although he had been obliged to think it through in the course of the preceding hour after the departure of his visitor. ‘I do think I know you well enough, but I’ve been surprised so often in this office.’

Flemyng’s behaviour when he’d seen the travel logs in the file, Paul had decided, simply didn’t match the reaction of someone carrying that kind of burden. A guilty man would have cracked.

‘But there is something in those lists, and we have to find it.’ Paul was on his feet again, trying to follow a story that was moving too fast. His hands clutched at the air, trying to grasp the invisible.

‘I suspect the reason Manson leaped on a plane wasn’t because somebody here was going to be embarrassed. That happens all the time, as we know, and Washington wouldn’t care at all. It was because of something we had decided to do – the way we’re playing the game. That must have been the reason for the hurry. There are complicating matters of another kind as well.’ He glanced at Flemyng.

‘Let’s start with them. It was planned – until this morning – that this week a new ambassador was going to be named for Washington. It hasn’t been finalized – won’t be until the big chiefs get back from Paris – but I can tell you that in all probability it is one of the names on that list. Well, let’s forget probably. A final choice, I should say, has not – I repeat not – been made.’

He caught Flemyng’s eye, and even Gwilym noticed the depth of the glance.

‘That’s obviously on hold now, but remember this. The embassy was not mentioned to me by my unexpected visitor this morning. He made no connection with the appointment of an ambassador. Didn’t suggest the link.’

Flemyng muttered, ‘Very clever,’ and Paul heard him.

The problem was, said Paul, that if they were connected in some way, disaster beckoned.

‘Well,’ said Flemyng, ‘you have to talk to everyone. I’m spoken for, I hope. Brieve’s not far away, unless he’s left for Paris. Forbes, I assume, is over the road in his office. Sorley? Is Jonathan in the building?’

Paul shook his head. ‘He’s just left for Oxford to make a speech. The reason I’m smiling is that I’ve read the advance text. It’s all about the calm that’s descended on the government.’

He couldn’t help a nervous laugh. ‘He’s promoting a new phrase, ahead of Paris. He calls it “The Politics of Optimism”.’

Gwilym had found himself in recent hours retreating to his schooldays, his natural escapist trick at moments of crisis, and had slipped easily out of the moment. ‘I’ve got a better title,’ he said. ‘
Sunt Lacrimae Rerum
.’

‘
The Aeneid
,’ he continued, into the silence that followed. Paul and Flemyng waited for more. ‘Aeneas is crying, it’s quite a moment. I’m a great one for loose translations, and there’s an especially good one –
the tears of all the world
.’

Flemyng, one hand stroking his cheek, said that Gwilym probably remembered the rest of the line, and smiled at him as he gave it.

‘
Our mortality cuts to the heart
.’

22

The brothers would meet in the afternoon. Mungo had sent word around that he might be something of a minor star at the
Tablet
summer party, which happily coincided with the weekly’s publication of his account of the eighteenth-century Flemyngs, their bloody travails and the adventures of their first descendants. At the party the brothers would arrange their dinner plans for the next night. So in the little clusters of guests that came both ways along Pall Mall and up the steep steps of the Travellers’ Club, Flemyng and Abel made separate appearances, one having walked through the teatime crowds in the park and the other dropped off by cab. They climbed the stairs to the library, about ten minutes apart, and found Mungo in his element, framed by bookshelves and warm leather chairs, a few shafts of evening sunshine illuminating a cheerful tableau.

Abel watched his brothers together – tossed into uncertainty, imagining that they might be loosened by an accident of birth from the family they’d thought was theirs, but beaming, and feeding happily on the energy generated by their crisis. Abel was still able to picture himself as an observer of the scene, and smiled at the eldest brother, in his element: it proved Mungo was one of them, after all. At the centre of the crowd, and glowing.

For Flemyng, order was being restored for a moment. He moved and spoke easily, comfortable with the choreography of party talk. There was a mixture of Catholic grandees, a good sprinkling of pick-and-mix hangers-on who were limbering up for the French embassy garden soirée a little later, and a couple of wizened and talkative priests, stooped and smiling, one of them wearing, to Flemyng’s amusement, a soup-plate hat of the kind he thought the Vatican had long since banned. They held court in a corner like two presiding aunts at a family funeral, sizing up the crowd, watching for an exciting social
faux pas
, and willing the tide of gossip to lap around them.

Abel hugged Mungo with a warmth that was evident to everyone. He whispered in his brother’s ear, ‘Can’t wait to talk some more.’

Mungo’s article in the latest issue was passed around and admired for its story-telling. Abel scanned it. ‘There are parts I still can’t get. You’ll have to explain – at greater length.’ He waved the magazine. Mungo roared with laughter. ‘And keep the family story going,’ said Abel. ‘Will you put sex in the next one?’ And raised his eyes.

At that Mungo heaved another laugh and, to Abel’s astonishment, winked.

They were interrupted. A figure emerged from the crowd that had swarmed to the high open windows to catch the air, and took Mungo’s hand. ‘May I introduce myself? I admire your piece very much, and I’m also new on the
Tablet
advisory board so I’ll be seeing a bit of you. They pull us in, from wherever they can. I’m Archie Chester.’ They began to talk.

Standing just within earshot, Flemyng was more startled than anyone noticed. The atmosphere in the room had not changed – the heat was high, the conversation loud and rising. Trays of drinks were being ferried from corner to corner at increasing speed, but Abel alone spotted the change in him. Perhaps he recognized the shiver of excitement that passed through his brother: Flemyng himself gave no outward sign, except that he took himself into a corner to gather his thoughts before the conversation that was now inevitable. Standing behind a pillar near an old revolving globe and a table piled high with nineteenth-century travelogues, he made cheerful conversation with a civil servant whom he knew and a couple of journalists. He was playing for time.

To almost everyone around him, nothing seemed to have changed, although Flemyng had just been visited by the first piece of luck to come his way since the affair began. For him, it might be the turning point. He became more talkative, brightened a little more, seemed to become a bigger figure in the crowd. His eyes were dancing. With Abel following every move, he detached himself after a few minutes from the conversation and set a course for the opposite corner of the library. Rounding a pillar, he approached his target and they faced each other.

The figure standing with Mungo turned his head. He was jovial, sported a loosely knotted purple bow tie at his neck and, although he was quite tall, seemed spherical. Points of light danced on the high planes of his cheeks, and his bald dome made him look older than he was. It was surrounded by a fringe of rich white hair. He put out his hand and lowered his head. It gleamed.

‘Mr Flemyng – the third of the evening! Delighted to meet you. Archie Chester’s my name.’ Abel could see no sign that they had met before. He did not catch the words, but noted the warmth of his brother’s greeting.

‘You wrote me a note,’ said Chester, dropping his voice and moving out of the crowd in an easy fashion, with one hand placed lightly in the small of Flemyng’s back. Abel could hear nothing from where he stood. They slipped easily away from the others, and Chester came close to Will. He spoke quietly, and his warm brown eyes were hypnotic. ‘In quite a hurry, if I may say so, or that’s how it looked to me, and with an accompanying letter. Would you like to talk?’

‘Shall we step outside for a moment?’

‘Good idea.’ Chester gestured to the door and followed him out.

They stood at the top of the grand staircase leading up from the lobby, and moved along the corridor to be alone. A copy of a classical statue looked down, offering to strew grapes on them. ‘Before we speak,’ said Chester, ‘let me give you my card.’

Archie Chester

Consultant Psychiatrist

6 Mansfield Mews

London W1A 2XL

‘I should explain my presence. I’ve been recruited to the advisory board of the magazine, as perhaps you heard over there, because it’s an enthusiasm of mine. A Catholic cabal, of course.’ He beamed. ‘I’ve read your brother’s piece this week and like it very much. He’s fascinating about your family, you know. Where you spring from, how you came to be what you are.’ His eyes were widening as he spoke.

‘I suppose I should be grateful for that,’ said Flemyng. ‘Happy chance.’ He smiled. ‘I suspect we are very fortunate to have met like this. To be honest, it gets me out of the awkwardness of ringing you up.’

There was a moment of silence. Chester was waiting.

‘Should I explain things?’ said Flemyng.

‘If you are happy to speak here, by all means go ahead.’

He began. ‘I sent you a copy of a letter, with my own note attached, because I got the chance. In that sense it wasn’t a plan – I just took advantage of an opportunity that presented itself. I used the good offices of a friend in government service who is familiar with your consulting rooms. I hope this doesn’t sound too convoluted.’ Chester said that, on the contrary, he found it admirably clear.

‘My purpose was simple. I wanted an opinion on this letter, because I had come to the conclusion that it was important, and dangerous. I went to Mansfield Mews to meet my friend whom I knew to have visited you before, and asked him to be my messenger because I’m afraid I didn’t want to deliver it personally. I take it you understand my nervousness.’ He was still smiling.

‘Very well indeed,’ Chester said. ‘Carry on.’

‘I am sorry I haven’t been in touch since. I’ve been held up by other matters. Much is going on.’ Chester acknowledged the explanation with a wave of his hand. Flemyng said that he had also been in Mansfield Mews the day before the delivery of the letter, and was deliberately precise, underlining the point. ‘That was on Thursday, just after mid-day.’ He stopped, apparently to invite a response.

Chester’s expression was hard to read. He spoke without changing expression. ‘You know something of my history, then?’

Flemyng said he knew from friends in government that Chester was trusted as a man of medicine whose discretion was absolute and who had proved useful in many delicate cases, with those needing help of the most discreet kind. ‘I’m told you have done the state some service, if I may put it like that.’

Chester said, ‘That’s true, I suppose. It doesn’t mean I’m any good, of course, just useful.’ His smile broadened, and he added, ‘I’m interested in your reference to the day before you had the letter delivered – the Thursday. Why do you stress that? And what brought you to my front door, so to speak, in the first place.’

Flemyng said, ‘I had a rendezvous with my friend there on Thursday’ – he’d keep Sam’s name out of the conversation – ‘and when we arranged another meeting the next day at the same spot, I realized that I could have the letter delivered by him. So I made a copy for you.’

‘What you mean is you planned it that way,’ said Chester. ‘Let’s go back to Thursday. That seems to be just as important to you, and I’m intrigued. Why?’

Flemyng didn’t pause before he answered. He was in his stride. ‘I left the street – after the first meeting with my friend – when I realized there was probably someone in your office whom I didn’t want to meet. A government car was waiting outside.’

‘I see. That’s not an uncommon experience. You’d be surprised.’ He spoke to Flemyng now as if they were old acquaintances. ‘I realized from your note that you were disturbed. Fearful, I would say.’

Then he added, ‘And has that feeling lessened?’

‘Quite the reverse.’

‘In that case, please come if you feel it would help. I’m always available.’ Chester turned side-on so that his next words could be whispered. ‘I should say, although this is neither the time nor the place, that you did the right thing in seeking advice – and rather ingeniously, if I may say so. I have no doubt about that. The letter is disturbing, and very curious. Revealing, to me. We must talk properly, and soon.’

Flemyng’s gaze encouraged him to say more. ‘You wouldn’t have sent this to me in the way that you did, leaving me to speculate on its origin, unless you felt that it was important to the life of one of your friends or colleagues in government. May I assume that?’

‘Of course,’ said Flemyng. ‘And there’s the question of time. Urgency.’

‘Quite,’ said Chester. ‘I remember a phrase – was it the penultimate line of the letter? – “
We may not have long”
. That did alarm me a good deal.’