He remembered Smiley that morning; in retrospect he was just a little frightened of Smiley. And he remembered the child at the door. A man must steel himself against sentiment.
“Your husband did a very good job,” Leclerc was saying. “I cannot tell you the details. I am sure that he died very gallantly.”
Her mouth was stained and ugly. Leclerc had never seen anyone cry so much; it was like a wound that would not close.
“What do you mean, gallantly?” She blinked. “We’re not fighting a war. That’s finished, all that fancy talk. He’s dead,” she said stupidly, and buried her face in her crooked arm, slouching across the dining room table like a puppet abandoned. The child was staring from a corner.
“I trust,” Leclerc said, “that I have your permission to apply for a pension. You must leave all that to us. The sooner we take care of it the better. A pension,” he declared, as if it were the maxim of his house, “can make a lot of difference.”
The Consul was waiting beside the Immigration Officer; he came forward without a smile as if he were doing his duty. “Are you Avery?” he asked. Avery had the impression of a tall man in a trilby and a dark overcoat, red-faced and severe. They shook hands.
“You’re the British Consul. Mr. Sutherland.”
“H. M. Consul, actually,” he replied a little tartly. “There’s a difference, you know.” He spoke with a Scottish accent. “How did you know my name?”
They walked together toward the main entrance. It was all very simple. Avery noticed the girl at the desk; fair and rather pretty.
“It’s kind of you to come all this way,” Avery said.
“It’s only three miles from the town.” They got into the car.
“He was killed just up the road,” said Sutherland. “Do you want to see the spot?”
“I might as well. To tell my mother.” He was wearing a black tie.
“Your name is Avery, isn’t it?”
“Of course it is; you saw my passport at the desk.” Sutherland didn’t like that, and Avery rather wished he hadn’t said it. He started the engine. They were about to pull into the center of the road when a Citroen swung out and overtook them.
“Damn fool,” Sutherland snapped. “Roads are like ice. One of these pilots, I suppose. No idea of speed.” They could see a peaked cap silhouetted against the windshield as the car hurried down the long road across the dunes, throwing up a small cloud of snow behind it.
“Where do you come from?” he asked.
“London.”
Sutherland pointed straight ahead: “That’s where your brother died. Up there on the brow. The police reckon the driver must have been tight. They’re very hot on drunken driving here, you know.” It sounded like a warning. Avery stared at the flat reaches of snowbound country on either side and thought of lonely, English Taylor struggling along the road, his weak eyes streaming from the cold.
“We’ll go to the police afterward,” said Sutherland. “They’re expecting us. They’ll tell you all the details. Have you booked yourself a room here?”
“No.”
As they reached the top of the rise Sutherland said with grudging deference, “It was just here if you want to get out.”
“It’s all right.”
Sutherland accelerated a little as if he wanted to get away from the place.
“Your brother was walking to the hotel. The Regina, just here. There was no taxi.” They descended the slope on the other side; Avery caught sight of the long lights of a hotel across the valley.
“No distance at all, really,” Sutherland commented. “He’d have done it in fifteen minutes. Less. Where does your mother live?”
The question took Avery by surprise.
“Woodbridge, in Suffolk.” There was a by-election going on there; it was the first town that came into his head, though he had no interest in politics.
“Why didn’t he put her down?”
“I’m sorry, I don’t understand.”
“As next of kin. Why didn’t Malherbe put his mother down instead of you?”
Perhaps it was not meant as a serious question; perhaps he just wanted to keep Avery talking because he was upset; nevertheless, it was unnerving. He was still strung up from the journey, he wanted to be taken for granted, not subjected to this interrogation. He realized, too, that he had not sufficiently worked out the supposed relationship between Taylor and himself. What had Leclerc written in the teleprint; half brother or stepbrother? Hastily he tried to visualize a train of family events, death, remarriage or estrangement, which would lead him to the answer to Sutherland’s question.