‘What mail?’
‘Everything. Classified or Unclassified, it didn’t make no difference. He’d be down here signing for it, taking it up to Arthur.’
Very still, Turner said, ‘Yes, I see that. And maybe he’d drop in here on the way, would he? Check on his own room; brew up a cup of tea.’
‘That’s it,’ said Gaunt, ‘always ready to oblige.’ He opened the door. ‘Well, I’ll be leaving you to it.’
‘You stay here,’ said Turner, still watching him. ‘You’ll be all right. You stay and talk to me, Gaunt. I like company. Tell me about his disadvantages.’
Returning the hair-dryers to their boxes, he pulled out a linen jacket, still on its hanger. A summer jacket; the kind that barmen wear. A dead rose hung from the buttonhole. ‘What disadvantages?’ he asked, throwing the rose into the wastebag. ‘You can tell me, Gaunt,’ and he noticed the smell again, the wardrobe smell he had caught but not defined, the sweet, familiar, continental smell of male unguents and cigar.
‘Only his childhood, that’s all. He had an uncle.’
‘Tell me about the uncle.’
‘Nothing; only how he was daft. Always changing politics. He had a lovely way of narrative, Leo did. Told us how he used to sit down in the cellar in Hampstead with his uncle while the bombs were falling, making pills in a machine. Dried fruit. Squashed them all up and rolled them in sugar, then put them in the tins, see. Used to spit on them, Leo did, just to spite his uncle. My wife was very shocked when she heard that – I said don’t be silly, that’s deprivation. He hasn’t had the love, see, not what you’ve had.’
Having felt the pockets, Turner cautiously detached the jacket from the hanger and held the shoulders against his own substantial frame.
‘Little bloke?’
‘He’s a keen dresser,’ said Gaunt, ‘Always well turned out, Leo is.’
‘Your size?’
Turner held the jacket towards him, but Gaunt drew back in distaste.
‘Smaller,’ he said, his eyes still on the jacket. ‘More the dancer type. Butterfly. You’d think he wore pumps all the time.’
‘Pansy?’
‘Certainly not,’ said Gaunt, very shocked again, and colouring at the notion.
‘How do you know?’
‘He’s a decent fellow, that’s why,’ said Gaunt, fiercely. ‘Even if he has done something wrong.’
‘Pious?’
‘Respectful, very. And about religion. Never cheeky or brash, although he was foreign.’
‘What else did he say about his uncle?’
‘Nothing.’
‘What else about his politics?’ He was looking at the desk, examining the locks on the drawers.
Tossing the jacket on to a chair, he held out his hand for the keys. Reluctantly Gaunt released them.
‘Nothing. I don’t know nothing about his politics.’
‘Who says anything about him doing something wrong?’
‘You. All this hunting him. Measuring him; I don’t fancy it.’
‘What would he have done, I wonder? To make me hunt him like this?’
‘God only knows.’
‘In his wisdom.’ He had opened the top drawers. ‘Have you got a diary like this?’
It was bound in blue rexine and stamped in gold with the royal crest.
‘No.’
‘Poor Gaunt. Too humble?’ He was turning the pages, working back. Once he stopped and frowned; once he wrote something in his black notebook.
‘It was Counsellors and above, that’s why,’ Gaunt retorted. ‘I wouldn’t accept it.’
‘He offered you one, did he? That was another ofhis fiddles, I suppose. What happened? He scrounged a bundle did he, from Registry, and handed them out to his old chums on the Ground Floor. “Here you are, boys: the streets are paved with gold up there. Here’s a keepsake from your old winger.” Is that the way of it, Gaunt? And Christian virtue held you back, did it?’ Closing the diary, he pulled open the lower drawers.
‘What if he did? You ‘ve no call to go rifling through his desk there, have you? Not for a little thing like that! Pinching a handful of diaries; well, that’s hardly all the world, is it?’ His Welsh accent had jumped all the hurdles and was running free.
‘You’re a Christian man, Gaunt. You know how the devil works better than I do. Little things lead to big things, don’t they? Pinch an apple one day, you’ll be hijacking a lorry the next. You know the way it goes, Gaunt. What else did he tell you about himself? Any more little childhood reminiscences!’ He had found a paper knife, a slim, silver affair with a broad, flat handle, and he was reading the engraving by the desk lamp.