Maxim, Tyler, and George clattered back to London in a helicopter; the night's excitement had startled the Army into realising that while they couldn't guarantee Tyler's life, they could at least make sure he didn't get killed while technically their guest. Maxim's wasn't the only gun on that helicopter.
Agnes drove back; she and George had come down in her car.
An MoD car rushed them from Battersea to Liverpool Street station for Tyler to catch the next Cambridge train. "All very British," George said. "Up until now you've been chairman of the review committee and thus in imminent danger of your life. But when you step on that train, you revert to being a mere academic whom nobody would wish to harm. Have you ever thought about changing clothes in a telephone box, like Superman?"
He was feeling better.
"George, I'm sure you never read those terrible American comics. And there are far more old students of mine who'd like to put a bullet in me than anybody connected with national defence." Tyler chuckled. "Anyway, thank you for your very present help, Major. I hope we'll meet again soon."
They shook hands, Tyler giving Maxim a nice open smile with his big, wide-spaced teeth. Neither of them had mentioned the lipsticked lady. Tyler climbed into a first-class carriage and George and Maxim walked away before the train left.
"Where away now?" George asked.
"Unless you want me, I'll drive out to Hayes."
"Where?"
"Army Records."
"Ah yes. Hadn't you better change first? You can't go running around dressed like a soldier or people will think you're part of a film and ask for your autograph. Shall I drop you off at your place?"
"Unless you know a good telephone box."
Maxim got home from Hayes at half past five, with the short night beginning to catch up on him. He rang George and found he needn't go into Number 10, put on a kettle and collapsed – carefully – into an old armchair.
He rented a first-floor flat in a gloomy Victorian terrace that was either in Camden Town or Primrose Hill, depending on whether you were buying or selling. He could have found a place just as cheap and far closer to Downing Street by going south, across the river. The idea had barely occurred to him. Born a north Londoner, he headed instinctively for the tribal lands between the Northern and Bakerloo lines. The house belonged to a musty arthritic widow who had taken to Maxim – as much as she took to anyone – because he was neither black nor Irish, and as an Army officer daren't bounce cheques.
"Structurally, it's about as insecure as you can get," Maxim had told George. "Somebody's just sealed off the first floor with composition board and frosted glass and a home-made door. I'll change the lock, but anyone could blow the whole thing down with a strong sneeze.
"But in practice, it might not be too bad. It's a quiet road and whenever you walk down it, there's about five old biddies sitting in their bay windows watching who goes past. I'd hate to try and mount a surveillance there. I don't know if that matters."
"It might," George had said. "Greyfriars has certainly opened a file on you by now – asssuming," he added politely, "that they didn't have one already."
The kettle boiled. He got up, made a mug of coffee and went to rout in the tea-chests in the corner. Mrs Talbot hadn't reckoned on her tenants needing much in the way of book-cases, and Maxim had only just begun to look for second-hand ones in Camden Town. Meanwhile, his books lived stacked against the wall or still in the chests. The one he wanted was, of course, at the bottom of the last chest he searched. The pages were yellowed and fragile, and the fly-leaf had the immature signature of Harold R. Maxim, but it was still this copy of The Gates of the Grave that perhaps had changed his life.
He put Duke Ellington's Tar East Suite' on the record player and went back to the armchair. Later, he'd go down the road for some cans of beer. If he drank coffee for the next three hours he'd end up dancing on the ceiling.
On most afternoons there is a small, almost ceremonial, tea-party in the Private Secretaries' room. Visitors from other offices drop in and a few quiet words can often bypass a lot of paperwork and save trouble – if bypassing paperwork and saving trouble is your objective. Two days later, Maxim, Agnes and Sir Anthony Sladen were informally invited.
"I hear strange tales about goings-on in wildest Wiltshire," Sladen said. "Are you going to find yourselves all over the front page of the Express? "
"I don't think so." George sounded confident. "All that happened was that somebody fired off a shotgun in front of a hotel at some Godawful hour of the night and has been charged with this and that. That's not exactly stop-the-presses, and they can't comment on a case that's sub judice anyway."
"But our Professor Tyler was inside at the time, was he not?"
George shrugged. "What's secret about that? We've asked all three services to publicise his visits wherever he goes. That way, we keep the spotlight on conventional warfare."
Sladen frowned warningly, and drew them away from the crowd with delicate gestures of his cup and saucer.
"And," Agnes chipped in, "we now know we've got the fastest gun in Whitehall." She and Maxim exchanged rather false smiles.
"Nobody got killed," George said. "And Harry can also look up records. Would you like to hear what he found, or would you prefer to go on criticising?"
Agnes made a little curtsy.
Maxim put his cup down on the edge of a desk and took out a notebook.
"Gerald Jackaman. He was at Oxford when the war started. He tried to join up then, but they had too many people trying to get in so they told him to go back and do his last year. Anyway, the whole thing was going to be over by Christmas."
"I'm quite sure," George said, "that Odysseus's last words to Penelope, as he went off to Troy were: 'Don't worry, old girl, I'll be home by Christmas'."
Sladen said: "Since it was to be approximately thirteen hundred years to the first Christmas, he was giving himself a fair margin of error. Ido apologise, Major."
Maxim was wearing a small patient smile. "He joined up in June 1940. He was commissioned into the Rifle Brigade in October. In December he smashed up a knee playing rugger."
"A bit bloody silly," Agnes suggested.
George said: "Good for morale, to let the troops tear an officer to pieces occasionally."
"Reading between the lines," Maxim went on, "I gather he wasn't seen as any ball of fire, so when his knee didn't look like repairing properly, they gave him a medical discharge. He took the civil service exam and was accepted by the Foreign Office. He spoke French very well, so he was doing liaison work with the Free French. Then, in January 1943 he went to Algiers with Harold Macmillan. Churchill sent out a small Foreign Office mission to look after our political interests in North Africa, and Jackaman was part of it-"
"You didn't get that from Army records, did you?" Sladen said.
George said: "No, the FO. I squared it. Good practice, for Harry to find his way around."
"So where could he have met Tyler?" Sladen asked.
"They were both in North Africa at that time, but Tyler was with 8th Army, down in Libya and Tunisia. He was evacuated home a month or so after Jackaman got to Algiers. After that, they were both in Britain in early '44, but Jackaman went to Washington in May and stayed until after the war."
Sladen grunted.
"And what about Bob Bruckshaw?" Agnes asked.
"There was no Robert Bruckshaw in the Army at that time."
Isolated in a corner, the four of them were getting curious glances from the rest of what was, after all, supposed to be a General Exchange of Views. A couple of teacups were rattled, but George ignored them.
"And now let's hear the news summary from Liza Doolittle."
Agnes smiled and recited from memory. "Robert Bruckshaw died in Montreal General Hospital, cirrhosis all right, in December two years ago. He gave his age as fifty-eight and birthplace as Yorkshire, no next of kin. The only visitors anybody can remember were a couple of workmates – he'd been driving a truck on a building site. And yes, Charles Farthing was also a patient there at the time."
Maxim said: "There's no Bruckshaw mentioned in The Gates of the Grave, either. Nor a Jackaman."
There was a pause. Then George said: "Bruckshaw must have changed his name. God knows, so would I if I had to go to Canada."
Agnes nodded. "I've asked the Mounties to check it. They're good when they get their snow-shoes on. But it seems that name changes are registered province by province, not nationally, so they could have to try right across the country and going back thirty years. And that's assuming he changed it legallyand in Canada. If not…"
"So where," Sladen asked, "does that leave us?"
"Just thankful that nobody's been killed," George said.
"Shall we re-join the Mad Hatters?"