‘It might be a very short-lived interest indeed. Does Mrs Wotherspoon share your short-lived interests?’
‘”Angelina”, please. We had to entertain a very prim and proper Swiss lady the other day and she insisted on addressing me as Madame Professor Wotherspoon. Ghastly. ‘No, I can’t say I share all of my husband’s more extravagant enthusiasms. But, alas, he does have one professorial failing. He’s horribly absent-minded. Someone has to look after him.’
Talbot smiled. ‘A fearful thing for so young and attractive a lady to be trapped for life. Again, thank you both very, very much. I should like it if you would join us for lunch. Meantime, I’ll leave Lieutenant Denholm to explain the full horrors of the situation to you — especially the ones you’ll encounter across the lunch table.’
‘Gloom and despondency,’ Van Gelder said. ‘It ill becomes one so young and beautiful to be gloomy and despondent. What is the matter, Irene?’
In so far as one so young and beautiful could look morose, Irene Charial gazed out morosely over the taffrail of the Ariadne.
‘I am not, Lieutenant-Commander Van Gelder, in the mood for flattery.’
‘Vincent. Flattery is an insincere compliment. How can the truth be flattery? But you’re right about the word “mood”. You are in a mood. You’re worried, upset. What’s troubling you?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Being beautiful doesn’t mean you’re above telling fibs. You could hardly call that flattery, could you?’
‘No.’ A fleeting smile touched the green eyes. ‘Not really.’
‘I know this is a very unpleasant situation you find yourself in. But we’re all trying to make the best of it. Or did something your parents say upset you?’
‘You know perfectly well that that’s not true.’ Van Gelder also knew it, Denholm had reassured him on that point.
‘Yes, that’s so. You were hardly in a cheerful frame of mind when I first met you this morning. Something worries you. Is it so dreadful a secret that you can’t tell me?’
‘You’ve come here to pry, haven’t you?’
‘Yes. To pry and probe. Crafty, cunning, devious questions to extract information from you that you don’t know you’re giving away.’ It was Van Gelder’s turn to look morose. ‘I don’t think I’m very good at it.’
‘I don’t think you are, either. That man sent you, didn’t he?’
‘What man?’
‘Now you’re being dishonest. Commander Talbot. Your captain. A cold man. Distant. Humourless.’
‘He’s neither cold nor distant. And he’s got a very considerable sense of humour.’
‘Humour. I don’t see any signs of it.’
‘I’m beginning not to be surprised.’ Van Gelder had stopped smiling. ‘Maybe he thought it would be wasted on you.’
‘Maybe he’s right.’ She appeared not to have taken offence. ‘Or maybe I just don’t see too much to laugh about at the moment. But I’m right about the other thing. He’s remote, distant. I’ve met people like him before.’
‘I doubt it very much. In the same way that I doubt your power of judgement You don’t seem to be very well equipped in that line.’
‘Oh.’ She made a moue. ‘Flattery and charm have flown out the window, is that it?’
‘I don’t flatter. I’ve never claimed to have charm.’
‘I meant no harm. Please. I see nothing wrong with being a career officer. But he lives for only two things – the Royal Navy and the Ariadne.’
‘You poor deluded creature.’ Van Gelder spoke without heat. ‘But how were you to know? John Talbot lives for only two things — his daughter and his son. Fiona, aged six, and Jimmy, aged three. He dotes on them. So do I. I’m their Uncle Vincent.’
‘Oh.’ She was silent for some moments. ‘And his wife?’
‘Dead.’
‘I am sorry.’ She caught his arm. ‘To say I didn’t know is no excuse. Go ahead. Call me a clown.’
‘I don’t flatter, I don’t charm – and I don’t tell lies.’
‘But you do turn a pretty compliment.’ She took her hand away, leaned on the rail and looked out over the sea. After some time, she said, without looking around: ‘It’s my Uncle Adam, isn’t it?’
‘Yes. We don’t know him, we don’t trust him and we think he’s a highly suspicious character. You will forgive me talking about your nearest and dearest in this fashion.’
‘He is not my nearest and dearest.’ She had turned to face him. There was neither vehemence in her voice nor marked expression in her face: at most, a slight degree of bewilderment in both. 7 don’t know him, / don’t trust him and / think he’s a highly suspicious character.’
‘If you don’t know him, what on earth are – were – you doing aboard his yacht?’
‘I suppose that, too, seems suspicious. Not really. Three reasons, I would think. He’s a very persuasive man He seems to be genuinely fond of our family — my younger brother and sister and myself – for he is forever giving us presents, very expensive presents, too, and it seemed churlish to refuse his invitation. Then there was the element of fascination. I know practically nothing about him, nor what his business activities are or why he spends so much time in foreign countries. And, of course, perhaps both Eugenia and I are snobs at heart and were flattered by the invitation to go cruising on a very expensive yacht.’
‘Well, good enough reasons. But still not good enough to explain why you went with him if you dislike him.’
‘I didn’t say I disliked him. I said I distrusted him. Not the same thing. And I didn’t begin distrusting him until this trip.’
‘Why start now?’
‘Alexander is why.’ She gave a mock shudder. ‘Would you
trust Alexander?’
‘Candidly, no.’
‘And Aristotle is almost as bad. The three of them spent hours talking together, usually in the radio-room. Whenever Eugenia or I went near them, they stopped talking. Why?’
‘Obvious, isn’t it? They didn’t want you to hear what they were talking about. Ever been with him abroad on his business trips?’
‘Good heavens, no.’ She was genuinely startled at the idea.
‘Not even on the Delos!’
‘I’ve only been on the Delos once before. With my brother and sister. A short trip to Istanbul.’
He was going to have less than a sensational report to make to his captain, Van Gelder reflected. She didn’t know her uncle. She didn’t know what his businesses were. She never travelled with him. And her only reason for distrusting him was that she distrusted Alexander, a feeling almost certainly shared by the majority of people who had ever met him. Van Gelder made one last try.
‘Your mother’s brother, of course?’ She nodded. ‘What does she think of him?’
‘She never speaks ill of him. But she never speaks ill of anyone. She’s a wonderful lady, a wonderful mother, not simple or anything like that, just a very trusting person who could never bring herself to speak ill of anyone.’
‘She’s obviously never met Alexander. Your father?’
‘He never speaks of Uncle Adam either, but he doesn’t speak in a very different way, if you follow me. My father is a very straight, very honest man, very clever, head of a big construction company, highly respected by everyone. But he doesn’t speak of my uncle. I’m not as trusting as my mother. I believe my father strongly disapproves of Uncle Adam or whatever businesses he runs. Or both. I don’t believe they’ve talked in years.’ She shrugged and gave a faint smile. ‘Sorry I can’t be of more help. You haven’t learnt anything, have you?’
‘Yes, I have. I’ve learnt I can trust you.’
This time the smile was warm and genuine and friendly. ‘You don’t flatter, you don’t charm and you don’t tell lies. But you are gallant.’
‘Yes,’ Van Gelder said. ‘I believe I am.’
‘Sir John,’ the President said, ‘you have put me in a most damnably awkward position. I speak, you understand, more in sorrow than in anger.’
‘Yes, Mr President. I am aware of that and I’m sorry for it. It is, of course, no consolation for you to know that I am in an equally awkward situation.’ If Sir John Travers, the British Ambassador to the United States, did indeed find himself in such a situation, he showed no signs of it. But then Sir John was renowned throughout the diplomatic world for his savoir-faire, his monolithic calm and his ability to remain wholly unruffled in the most trying and difficult situations. ‘I’m only the messenger boy. Grade one, of course.’
‘Who the hell is this fellow Hawkins, anyway?’ Richard Hollison, deputy head of the FBI, couldn’t quite match Sir John’s tranquil serenity but he had his obvious anger under tight control. ‘I don’t think I care very much for having a foreigner telling the White House, the Pentagon and the FBI how to run their business.’
‘Hawkins is a Vice-Admiral in the British Navy.’ The General was the fourth and only other person in the office. ‘An exceptionally able man. I cannot think of any United States naval officer whom I would sooner have in his place in those near-impossible circumstances. And I don’t think I need point out that I am in the most awkward situation of all. I don’t want to sound overly possessive but, bloody hell, the Pentagon is my concern.’