Diana's Altar Read online

  “Tell me, what is the feeling in general amongst your fellows—the community of scientists that you are a part of? There must be how many in Cambridge?”

  “Hundreds. Never occurred to me to count and we’re all so busy we don’t have time to do much politicking or even socialising. Give you an idea . . . There’s a new society just been formed in the university. The Cambridge Anti-War Group. Scientists uniting together against war. Lightly communist, I suppose. But nothing to scare the horses. Belinda calls us ‘The Pinks.’ We have a membership of about fifty already.” This last was delivered with a smile of pride.

  “Should the forces of law and order be concerned?”

  “Probably. Some of the members are planning to stage a demonstration at the war memorial on Remembrance Day next weekend. Some young hotheads, mainly Trinity men, are aiming to disrupt the service. Lob eggs at the wreath-laying old warriors who keep the flame of war alight.”

  “Shows some nerve!” Joe said. “I wouldn’t care to take on those old fire-eaters! They don’t care for egg on their epaulettes and they all carry a sword.” He wondered if Hunnyton was aware of this threat to the public peace. “This could all get out of hand. Will you be in attendance?”

  “Lord, no! I have infinite respect for those who died. I just don’t want their sons and grandsons to be called on to make the same sacrifice. You don’t achieve that by daubing paint on a stone cross and screaming abuse at old soldiers in wheelchairs.”

  “Is this anti-war group something the security services would like to know about?”

  “They know. I told them! Huh! They’d have been more alarmed to hear the Cambridge Tiddlywinks Club had re-formed.”

  Joe smiled a genuine smile. “Subversive bunch—tiddlywinkers! Give me honest-to-goodness, cut-throat croquet players any day. So—politically, where does the lab stand?”

  Joe listened patiently to Page’s assertion that scientists were generally uninterested in politics in the abstract. Practical—that was different. Handing out sandwiches and sympathy to hunger marchers and fighting poverty and injustice was right and human and not the sole preserve of left-wing radical idealists. They enjoyed a good debate as much as the next man, but the vast majority were too focussed on their work to care about who was running the country. So long as the cash support kept coming through, naturally.

  Joe decided to follow this line and asked Page to outline the sources of funding. Most came from government, but a certain amount, unknown to Page, came from private sources. Of course the greatest consumption of cash had been the new Mond Laboratory, opened this year in the courtyard of the Cavendish. The Royal Society of Science had donated £15,000 for the project. Kapitza was appointed its director.

  “Sounds like a bargain to me,” Joe murmured. “What is its purpose?”

  “To indulge the director in his enthusiasms,” Page said bitterly. “Magnetic research . . . Low temperature physics . . . Whatever he fancies. He’s engineered and installed a hydrogen liquefier—completely new design . . . You must come and see the Mond. Very latest in architecture and equipment. Best in the world. And the bloody thing cost more than the total budget for the rest of the Cavendish. We’re all hoping something world-shaking will come of it.”

  Joe picked up the unspoken concern in his muttered last sentence. “A hydrogen liquefier?” he asked, puzzled. “What does one of those look like?”

  “It looks like nothing so much as your granny’s new-fangled, wall-mounted water heater circa 1920,” Page said. “Large tank, wires everywhere and dials so that you can see when it’s about to explode.”

  “Any real danger?”

  “There’s always danger. We close our minds to it. Belinda doesn’t. She’d be happier if they were magnetising atoms to destruction in the middle of the Sahara. But some bright spark in the architecture department made a clever nod to safety! The liquefier room has a very light roof. It’s designed to just blow off and relieve the pressure from underneath in the event of an explosion.”

  “Splattering the rooftops of Cambridge with body parts?” Joe was aghast. “I should like to see this lab—preferably on a nonworking day.”

  “You’re probably too late to see that piece of equipment. They’re planning to install a newer model this week. The parts have been delivered. A helium liquefier. Onwards and upwards!” he finished cheerfully.

  Joe acknowledged his attempt at a joke with a grimace. “Tell me, Page, this helium gas . . . how . . . um . . . explosive is it? Should Cambridge folk be issued with tin hats?”

  Page smiled indulgently and launched into a very brief explanation in words that even a copper could understand. “The lab’s interested in passing huge amounts of electricity through a set of metal coils to produce a magnetic field hugely more powerful than any previously known. You need extremely low temperatures to stop the coils from overheating. Liquid helium has the lowest temperature achievable by man. It’s a coolant. It’s difficult to produce.”

  “Sounds an expensive business?” Joe speculated and pursued Page further on the funding, inviting him to hand him the identity of the contributors.

  A list of financiers and industrialists showing an interest followed. One name snagged at Joe’s attention and after a moment he remembered.

  “Metropolitan-Vickers?” he said. “The Manchester company, Metrovick? We had a problem with them back in January, do you recall? The nation was gripped!”

  “Of course. Six of their engineers, installing turbines in Moscow, were arrested by the Russkies and put in jug for spying, weren’t they? Cause célèbre . . . all over the press.”

  “Yes. The poor chaps were interrogated, tortured and threatened with execution. It was claimed in the confessions the secret police extracted along with the toenails that they’d attempted to sabotage the turbines they were installing. The Americans stepped up to the plate and joined in the condemnation. An embargo on trade with Russia was threatened. The Yanks must have shaken a big stick because, unbelievably, an apology came from Comrade Stalin: What was all the fuss about? he wanted to know. They must understand that he loved Americans and always welcomed them warmly to his country.”

  Page shuddered. “I’d sooner be kissed by a cobra.”

  Joe smiled. “I don’t think anyone was deceived. But—riding on the tide of Comrade Stalin’s good humour—or possibly the threat of being deprived of the connections essential to get his turbines to light up Moscow, the British engineers were let off. MI5 chalked up a success and attended a cocktail party in Grosvenor Square. What’s Metrovick’s interest in the Mond Laboratory?”

  “They’re a huge support. We put a lot of business their way. They supply the machinery. Often specially designed by Kapitza. Did I mention—he’s a brilliant engineer. If he weren’t billed as a pure scientist they’d probably offer him a job. They do electrical generators, steam turbines, trains, aeroplanes, anything connected with power supply. I’m guessing that they would have a very keen interest in the second generation of bomb-proof, fighter-proof, helium airships that they say are on the cards. A company like Metrovick would want to be at the forefront of any physics research, naturally.”

  “To the extent of paying for influence?”

  Page shrugged his shoulders and fished in his pocket for his pipe. “You’d need to get hold of the books. I won’t speculate.”

  “Is the expression ‘war work’ ever used in your hearing?”

  “Lord no! High science is what we do. Wouldn’t get our hands dirty.”

  Was the man being ironic? Or was he merely spelling out the laboratory management’s code of conduct? Joe had no doubt that at least some of the scientific staff were up to their armpits in mire.

  “Any more names come to mind? Perhaps local university interests?”

  “Yes. As a matter of fact there is.”

  Joe endured the irritating filling, tamping and puffing p
rocess that accompanied pipe smoking. It usually heralded a significant revelation or a confession. He’d learned long ago to value the nose-tingling blast of St. Bruno tobacco.

  “There’s a local aristocrat who seems to have a finger in every pie,” Page finally offered. “You’ll have seen his ugly mug in the papers. He’s not shy. Sir Gregory Pertinax. Much admired. Generous contributor to the lab. He supplies us with boxes and boxes of valuable equipment. All the same—I can’t stand the bloke.”

  “How well do you know him professionally and socially?” Joe probed.

  “I expect in your line of business, you know that better than I do myself,” Page said sharply. “Apart from his visits to the lab, he invited me to dinner. Once. Out of the blue. Oh, back in the summer I think it was.”

  “July the twentieth, at Madingley Court,” Joe supplied.

  “Er, yes. That sounds about right.” Page looked stricken. “Look here—I’d rather not talk about it.”

  “You don’t have the choice,” Joe said flatly. “If you clam up we must assume the worst—that he encouraged you to partake in some reprehensible behaviour involving sex and drugs and subjected you to blackmail. Threatened to reveal all to Belinda if you didn’t cooperate.”

  Page turned pale, swallowed smoke the wrong way and began to cough. “Oh, my God!” he wheezed. “That’s what it was all about? All that Hellfire Club stuff? Ama et fac quod vis and all that! Bunch of profligates! I was supposed to get drunk and indulge in . . . Well, they got the wrong bloke! Belinda would have given them a piece of her mind! ‘Publish-and-be-damned’ Wellington is her hero. I thought he’d asked me there to check up on me. I thought he suspected I was up to what your boss would call ‘clandestine surveillance’ . . . that someone at the lab had denounced me. I was expecting Rutherford to pop out of the woodwork and hand me my notice any moment but nothing happened.”

  “How did you get away?”

  “Played the innocent, unworldly scientist! Bored the pants off the assembled company by explaining gravity to them. Rolling oranges round a fruit bowl came into it, I remember. And walnuts on a table napkin.” He gave a mischievous grin and went on apologetically, “I, er, showed them a few magic tricks. You know . . . setting fire to macaroon wrappers and exploding eggs. I think I quite lowered the tone. I certainly wrecked the tablecloth. Fearing the worst, I’d arranged for Belinda to ring me at the hall halfway through dinner. She was to tell me our boy Timmy had been taken ill and needed to be driven to hospital. They seemed to swallow it. Glad to get rid of me by then, I think, before the house went up in flames. The butler put the mastiffs on a lead and escorted me to my car. I was never more grateful to hear my old Morris start up. I’d been having problems with the ignition. So—I had a lucky escape?”

  Joe decided the moment had come to bolster the man’s self-esteem and pin him more firmly into his place as agent. “No luck involved—good judgement and courage, I’d say. Well done, Hermes! Another one of our chaps was not so fortunate. He had to kill one of the dogs in single combat, climb the gate and run back to Cambridge in his patent-leather dancing shoes,” he confided.

  Page beamed. “Great heavens! What a hero! I say—give him my felicitations when you see him.”

  “Sadly not possible,” Joe said, staring into his beer.

  “Ah. Sorry. One of the three you mentioned?” Page said quietly.

  Joe nodded. Aidan wouldn’t have minded him using his example of derring-do in the cause of a bit of psychological skirmishing, he thought.

  Joe’s stab of sorrow did not go undetected by Page. “Did he have a divine nickname, this Slayer of Hounds? I think we should drink to him,” he said seriously.

  “No, he didn’t. But if he had, I’d have called him Loki. God of mischief. And fire.”

  “To Loki, then!”

  “To Loki!” Joe smiled into his beer. He was certain enough of Page now to make further use of him.

  Page had let his pipe go out. He put it back in his pocket, where the still-hot tobacco proceeded to make another hole in his baggy old suit. “Just tell me what I can do, sir,” he said with quiet resolve. Joe had a sudden glimpse of Belinda’s third boy: tousle-headed Humphrey.

  “Thank you, Doctor Page,” he said. “There is something. We’re going to play them at their own game! We’re going to blind them with truth, innocence of purpose and lashings of oily charm. I want you to arrange for me to visit the labs. An official visit under my own name and rank. The sooner the better—and certainly well before the eleventh of November. It’ll take quite a bit of scientific arrogance, fast footwork and conjuring skills on your part. Are you up to it? Ready to give those sandals another outing?”

  Chapter 21

  A hearty “Welcome back, sir! The master’s expecting you

  for sherry in his drawing room before dinner,” from the porter cheered Joe. He was beginning to find his way easily about the college and, he was slightly alarmed to acknowledge, to enjoy the feeling of inclusion and acceptance.

  Not the first of the High Table guests to arrive, nor yet the last, Joe was greeted with warmth by the master. He accepted a glass of dry sherry and turned his attention to meeting his fellow guests, very much relieved to find that Pertinax was not amongst them and that his new friend Professor Deerbolt the classicist was.

  When all were assembled, he looked around the company wondering which of these chattering, civilised men had so alarmed or intrigued Aidan that he’d jumped the security service rails and run amok. Who had so startled him that he’d broken all his own imposed rules and made a terse and impenetrable entry in his diary?

  I saw him. At dinner. There could be no doubt.

  He would only find out by talking, listening carefully and making himself agreeable.

  Joe had long ago stopped quarrelling with the notion that he had effectively taken a course in diplomacy from Sir George Jardine, a decade before in India. The old servant of Empire, spy extraordinaire and éminence grise behind the viceroy had, early in Joe’s career, taken him under his wing, trained him in sugar-coated skulduggery and attempted to seduce him into following a path identical to his own. In Joe he had seen his alter ego, an attractive young man with a silver tongue, a genuine rapport with his fellow men (women, too, and that was a serious advantage in India), physical and mental courage and—above all—an unrelenting patriotism.

  On occasions like this one, Sir George was always at Joe’s elbow in spirit, a wily and jovial presence. Joe had at first been wary of his position as outsider in this group, knowing the strength and exclusiveness of the academic world. Whatever cultural and social distance there was to be overcome, however, he thought he’d probably conjured up himself. If it had been real, he would never have survived the conversational onslaught of Professor Deerbolt. The elderly academic had greeted Joe with pleasure and had taken it upon himself to escort Joe around the groups, an indomitable icebreaker cutting through the floes of reserve and hauteur, announcing to everyone with pride and innocent excitement the part Joe played in the outside world.

  “Lord Trenchard’s right hand at Scotland Yard,” was his description.

  Joe did not attempt a pedantic correction, but smiled modestly, scooped up the ball and ran with it. The very words “Scotland Yard” would have sunk an iceberg. Witticisms, questions, experiences bad and good followed on. Almost all the company had an old uncle who’d once fallen foul of the “Roberts,” as policemen were apparently still called in this place. All were eager to establish the identity of Jack the Ripper and Joe duly revealed it, dramatically swearing them to silence. All rules governing the unacceptability of talking about one’s job were suddenly ignored. People wanted to hear more. Joe had a store of scandalous tales of the Yard which he constantly refreshed, polished and paraded on such occasions. Prompted by Deerbolt, he even dropped a few Latin phrases at an appropriate time and felt he was probably earning his place at table.
/>   Not one of the guests reacted in a significant way when Joe mentioned Aidan’s name. Several had expressed their sorrow at his death, none reddened with guilt and fled the room with an eldritch screech. His evening, it seemed, was not about to produce the result he’d hoped for. Ah, well. He had dinner to look forward to. A cheerful undergraduate had been put to sit on Joe’s left, and on his right (at Joe’s request) the domestic bursar, a fellow of the college whose role it was to know all the secrets of the establishment and its personnel. Accommodation, housekeeping, security, welfare of staff and academic members of the college were all within the remit of Dr. Calthrop.

  Joe hoped he’d make it through to the end of the evening without disgracing himself or annoying the redoubtable bursar with his questions. Thankful that he’d drunk little of his beer in the Anchor, he sipped his sherry slowly and refused a refill of his glass. He realised he was extremely hungry and lined up with relief behind the master when the gong sounded for dinner.

  An excellent game soup with a deep, dark flavour—Marsala?—was an appetising start to a series of dishes which promised a celebration of the autumn season. The highlights were to be haunch of venison and a blackberry syllabub, the undergraduate on his left confided, adding innocently that the quality of the dishes on High almost made up for the terror of being invited to appear. How had the commissioner enjoyed the food in India?

  The soup plates were being collected, and the wine stewards were gathering in readiness to pour out the hock that would accompany the fish, when Joe, in mid-sentence, looked up, scanned the crowded hall with its ranks of chattering and laughing students and saw him.