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  She giggled again, thinking: I'm a disgrace. 20She took her drink

  to bed and picked up her book, but it was too much effort to focus on

  die print. Besides, she was bored with vicarious romance. Stories

  about dangerous love affairs were fine when you yourself had a

  perfectly safe love affair with your husband, but a woman needed more

  than Barbara Caitland. She sipped her gin, and wished Mr. Faber would

  turn the radio off. It was like trying to sleep at a tea-dance !

  She could, of course, ask him to turn it off. She looked at her

  bedside clock: it was past ten. She could put on her dressing-gown,

  which matched the nightdress, and just comb her hair a little, then

  step into her slippers quite dainty, with a pattern of roses and just

  pop up the stairs to the next landing, and just, well, tap on his door.

  He would open it, perhaps wearing his trousers and singlet, and then he

  would look at her the way he had looked when he saw her in her

  nightdress on the way to the bathroom... "Silly old fool," she said to

  herself aloud.

  "You're just making excuses to go up there."

  And then she wondered why she needed excuses. She was a mature adult,

  and it was her house, and in ten years she had not met another man who

  was just right for her, and what the hell, she needed to feel someone

  strong and hard and hairy on top of her, squeezing her breasts and

  panting in her ear and parting her thighs with his broad flat hands,

  for tomorrow the gas bombs might come over from Germany and they would

  all die choking and gasping and poisoned and she would have lost her

  last chance.

  So she drained her glass, and got out of bed, and put on her

  dressing-gown, and just combed her hair a little, and stepped into her

  slippers, and picked up her bunch of keys in case he had locked the

  door and couldn't hear her knock above the sound of the radio.

  There was nobody on the landing. She found the stairs in the darkness.

  She intended to step over the stair that creaked, but she stumbled on

  the loose carpet and trod on it heavily; but it seemed that nobody

  heard, so she went on up and tapped on the door at the top. She tried

  it gently. It was locked.

  The radio was turned down, and Mr. Faber called out: Yes?"

  He was well-spoken: not cockney, or foreign not anything, really, just

  a pleasantly neutral voice.

  She said: "Can I have a word with you?"

  He seemed to hesitate, then he said: "I'm undressed."

  "So am I," she giggled, and she opened the door with her duplicate key.

  He was standing in front of the radio with some kind of screwdriver in

  his hand. He wore his trousers and no singlet. His face was white and

  he looked scared to death.

  She stepped inside and closed the door behind her, not knowing what to

  say. Suddenly she remembered a line from an American film, and she

  said: Would you buy a lonely girl a drink?" It was silly, really,

  because she knew he had no drink in his room, and she certainly wasn't

  dressed to go out; but it sounded vampish.

  It seemed to have the desired effect. Without speaking, he came slowly

  toward her. He did have hair on his nipples. She took a step forward,

  and then his arms went around her, and she closed her eyes and turned

  up her face, and he kissed her, and she moved slightly in his arms, and

  then there was a terrible, awful, unbearable sharp pain in her back and

  she opened her mouth to scream.

  He had heard her stumble on the stairs. If she'd waited another minute

  he would have had the radio transmitter back in its case and the code

  books in the drawer and there would have been no need for her to die.

  But before he could conceal the evidence he had heard her key in the

  lock, and when she opened the door the stiletto had been in his hand.

  Because she moved slightly in his arms, Faber missed her heart with the

  first jab of the weapon, and he had to thrust his fingers down her

  throat to stop her crying out. He jabbed again, but she moved again

  and the blade struck a rib and merely slashed her superficially. Then

  the blood was spurting and he knew it would not be a clean kill, it

  never was when you missed with the first stroke.

  She was wriggling too much to be killed with a jab now. Keeping his

  fingers in her mouth, he gripped her jaw with his thumb and pushed her

  back against the door. Her head hit the woodwork with a loud bump, and

  he wished he had not turned the radio down, but how could he have

  expected this?

  He hesitated before killing her, because it would be much better if she

  died on the bed better for the cover-up which was already taking shape

  in his mind but he could not be sure of getting her that far in

  silence. He tightened his hold on her jaw, kept her head still by

  jamming it against the door, and brought the stiletto around in a wide

  slashing arc that ripped away most of her throat, for the stiletto was

  not a slashing knife and the throat was not Faber's favoured target.

  He jumped back to avoid the first horrible gush of blood, then stepped

  forward again to catch her before she hit the floor. He dragged her to

  the bed, trying not to look at her neck, and laid her down.

  He had killed before, so he expected the reaction: it always came as

  soon as he felt safe. He went over to the sink in the corner of the

  room and waited for it. He could see his face in the little shaving

  mirror. He was white, and his eyes were staring. He looked at himself

  and thought: Killer. Then he threw up.

  When that was over he felt better. He could go to work now. He knew

  what he had to do: the details had come to him even while he was

  killing her.

  He washed his face, brushed his teeth, and cleaned the washbasin. Then

  he sat down at the table beside his radio. He looked at his notebook,

  found his place, and began tapping the key. It was a long message,

  about the mustering of an army for Finland, and he had been half way

  through when he was interrupted. It was written down in cipher on the

  pad. When he had completed it he signed off with: "Regards to

  Willi."

  The transmitter packed away neatly into a specially designed suitcase.

  Faber put the rest of his possessions into a second case. He took off

  his trousers and sponged the bloodstains, then washed himself all

  over.

  At last he looked at the corpse.

  He was able to be cold about her now. It was wartime; they were

  enemies: if he had not killed her, she would have caused his death. She

  had been a threat, and all he felt now was relief that the threat had

  been nullified. She should not have frightened him.

  Nevertheless, his last task was distasteful. He opened her robe and

  lifted her nightdress, pulling it up around her waist. She was wearing

  knickers. He tore them, so that the hair of her pubis was visible.

  Poor woman: she had wanted only to seduce him. But he could not have

  got her out of the room without her seeing the transmitter; and the

  British progapanda had made these people alert for spies ridiculously

  so: if the Abwehr had as many a
gents as the newspapers made out then

  the British would have lost the war already.

  He stepped back and looked at her with his head on one side. There was

  something wrong. He tried to think like a sex maniac. If I were

  crazed with lust for a woman like Una Garden, and I killed her just so

  that I could have my way with her, what would I then do?

  Of course: that kind of lunatic would want to look at her breasts.

  Faber leaned over the body, gripped the neckline of the nightdress, and

  ripped it to the waist. Her large breasts sagged sideways.

  The police doctor would soon discover that she had not been raped, but

  Faber did not think that mattered. He had taken a criminology course

  at Heidelberg, and he knew that many sexual assaults were not

  consummated. Besides, he could not have carried the deception that

  far, not even for the Fatherland. He was not in the SS. Some of them

  would queue up to rape the corpse... He put the thought out of his

  mind.

  He washed his hands again and got dressed. It was almost midnight. He

  would wait an hour before leaving: it would be safer later.

  He sat down to think about how he had gone wrong.

  There was no question that he had made a mistake. If his cover were

  perfect, he would be totally secure. If he were totally secure no one

  could discover his secret. Mrs. Garden had discovered his secret or

  rather, she would have if she had lived a few seconds longer therefore

  he had not been totally secure, therefore his cover was not perfect,

  therefore he had made a mistake.

  He should have put a bolt on the door. Better to be thought

  chronically shy than to have landladies with duplicate keys sneaking in

  at night in their bed wear

  That was the surface error. The deep flaw was that he was too eligible

  to be a bachelor. He thought this with irritation, not conceit. He

  knew that he was a pleasant, attractive man, and that there was no

  apparent reason why he should be single. He turned his mind to

  thinking up a cover that would explain this without inviting advances

  from the Mrs. Gardens of this world.

  He ought io be able to find inspiration in his real personality. Why

  was he single? He stirred uneasily: he did not like mirrors. The

  answer was simple. He was single because of his profession. If there

  were deeper reasons, he did not want to know them.

  He would have to spend tonight in the open.-Highgate Wood would do. In

  the morning he would take his suitcases to a railway station

  left-luggage office, then tomorrow evening he would go to his room in

  Blackheath.

  He would shift to his second identity. He had little fear of being

  caught by the police. The commercial traveller who occupied the room

  at Blackheath on weekends looked rather different from the railway

  clerk who had killed his landlady. The Blackheath persona was

  expansive, vulgar and flashy. He wore loud ties, bought rounds of

  drinks, and combed his hair differently. The police would circulate a

  description of a shabby little pervert who would not say boo to a goose

  until he was inflamed with lust, and no one would look twice at the

  handsome salesman in the striped suit who was obviously the type that

  was more or less permanently inflamed with lust and did not have to

  kill women to get them to show him their breasts.

  He would have to set up another identity he always kept at least two.

  He needed a new job, fresh papers passport, identity card, ration book,

  birth certificate. It was all so risky. Damn Mrs. Garden. Why

  couldn't she have drunk herself to sleep as usual?

  It was one o'clock. Faber took a last look around the room. He was

  not concerned about leaving clues his fingerprints were obviously all

  over the house, and there would be no doubt in anyone's mind about who

  was the murderer. Nor did he feel any sentiment about leaving the

  place that had been his home for two years: he had never thought of it

  as home. He had never thought of anywhere as home.

  He would always think of this as the place where he had learned to put

  a bolt on a door.

  He turned out the light, picked up his cases, and crept down the stairs

  and out of the door into the night.

  TWO

  Henry II was a remarkable king. In an age when the term 'flying visit'

  had not yet been coined, he flitted between England and France with

  such rapidity that he was credited with magical powers; a rumour which,

  understandably, he did nothing to suppress. In 1173 either the June or

  the September, depending upon which secondary source one favours he

  arrived in England and left for France again so quickly that no

  contemporary writer ever found out about it. Later historians

  discovered the record of his expenditure in the Pipe Rolls. At the

  time his kingdom was under attack by his sons at its northern and

  southern extremes the Scottish border and the South of France. But

  what, precisely, was the purpose of his visit? Whom did he see? Why

  was it secret, when the myth of his magical speed was worth an army?

  What did he accomplish?

  This was the problem that taxed Percival Godliman in the summer of

  1940, when Hitler's armies swept across the French cornfields like a

  scythe, and the British poured out of the Dunkirk bottleneck in bloody

  disarray.

  Professor Godliman knew more about the Middle Ages than any man alive.

  His book on the Black Death had upended every convention of

  medievalism; it had also been a bestseller and published as a Penguin.

  With that behind him he had turned to a slightly earlier and ever more

  intractable period.

  At 12.30 on a splendid June day in London, a secretary found Godliman

  hunched over an illuminated manuscript, laboriously translating its

  medieval Latin, making notes in his own even less legible handwriting.

  The secretary, who was planning to eat her lunch in the garden of

  Gordon Square, did not like the manuscript room because it smelled

  dead. You needed so many keys to get in there, it might as well have

  been a tomb.

  Godliman stood at a lectern, perched on one leg like a bird, his face

  lit bleakly by a spotlight above: he might have been the ghost of the

  monk who wrote the book, standing a cold vigil over his precious

  chronicle. The girl cleared her throat and waited for him to notice

  her. She saw a short man in his fifties, with round shoulders and weak

  eyesight, wearing a tweed suit. She knew he could be perfectly

  sensible once you dragged him out of the Middle Ages. She coughed

  again and said: "Professor Godliman ?"

  He looked up, and when he saw her he smiled, and then he did not look

  like a ghost, more like someone's dotty father.

  "Hello!" he said, in an astonished tone, as if he had just met his

  next-door neighbour in the middle of the Sahara Desert.

  "You asked me to remind you that you have lunch at the Savoy with

  Colonel Terry."

  "Oh, yes." He took his watch out of his waistcoat pocket and peered at

  it.

  "If I'm going to walk it, I'd better leave now."

  She nod
ded.

  "I brought your gas mask."

  "You are thoughtful!" He smiled again, and she decided he looked quite

  nice. He took the mask from her and said : "Do I need my coat?"

  "You didn't wear one this morning. It's quite warm. Shall I lock up

  after you?"

  "Thank you, thank you." He jammed his notebook into his jacket pocket

  and went out.

  The secretary looked around, shivered, and followed him.

  Colonel Andrew Terry was a red-faced Scot, pauper-thin from a lifetime

  of heavy smoking, with sparse dark-blond hair thickly brilliantined.

  Godliman found him at a corner table in the Savoy Grill, wearing

  civilian clothes. There were three cigarette stubs in the ashtray. He

  stood up to shake hands.

  Godliman said: "Morning, Uncle Andrew," Terry was his mother's baby

  brother.

  "How are you, Percy?"

  "I'm writing a book about the Plantagenets." Godliman sat down.

  "Are your manuscripts still in London? I'm surprised."

  Why?"

  Terry lit another cigarette.

  "Move them to the country in case of bombing."

  "Should I?"

  "Half the National Gallery has been shoved into a bloody big hole in

  the ground somewhere up in Wales. Young Kenneth Clark is quicker off

  the mark than you. Might be sensible to take yourself off out of it

  too, while you're about it. I don't suppose you've many students

  left."

  "That's true." Godliman took a menu from a waiter and said: "I don't