The Ways of the World (12 page)

‘A kind thought,’ said Appleby, ‘but Mr Maxted isn’t staying in Paris long enough to act on it, I’m afraid.’

‘That isn’t necessarily true,’ said Max.

‘I understood you and your brother were catching the noon train to London.’

‘I’m staying here.
Pro tem
.’

‘You are?’

‘I can’t leave with so much unresolved, Appleby. Surely you can see that.’

Appleby ground the stem of his pipe between his teeth and stared hard at Max for a moment, then said, ‘Thank you for your time, Mr Norris. We need detain you no longer.’

He went on staring at Max while Norris took his leave, a procedure prolonged and complicated by a collision with the hat-stand and an apologetic retrieval of Appleby’s trilby from the floor. Eventually, he was gone.

‘Won’t you be attending your father’s funeral, Mr Maxted?’ Appleby asked, still chewing at his pipe.

‘The funeral won’t be for a couple of days at least.’

‘And what can you accomplish here in a couple of days?’

‘That remains to be seen.’

‘You’d be better advised to leave this kind of thing to the professionals, you really would.’

‘Meaning you and the local police?’

‘Precisely.’

‘Who propose to treat my father’s murder as a bizarre and undignified accident.’

‘I’ve explained to you why that’s in everyone’s best interests. You were assured Zamaron’s theory about what took Sir Henry on to the roof of that building will never figure in any official verdict, an assurance with which your brother seemed, I have to say, quite content. And he is now, I need hardly point out, the head of your family.’

‘He must follow the dictates of his conscience, as must I.’

‘So, this is an issue of conscience for you, is it?’

‘I intend to leave no stone unturned in my search for my father’s murderer. You may take that as a definitive statement of my position. And now …’

Max started from his chair, but was halted by Appleby raising his hand and by a slight but significant change in the man’s expression. He looked suddenly solicitous.

‘As a pilot, you were fortunate to survive the war, Mr Maxted. I’d urge you to make the most of your good fortune. You have a life to enjoy. Don’t waste it.’

‘What are you trying to say, Appleby?’

‘I can’t guarantee your safety if you stay here.’

‘I’m not asking you to.’

‘Paris is full of thieves, vagrants, beggars, con men, crooks and desperadoes. Go looking for trouble and you’ll be sure to find it.’

‘It’s the truth I’m after, not trouble.’

‘They’re often the same thing, in my experience. Let me give you some advice, as one who’s seen more of the world than you have. Give this up. Go home, bury your father and forget whatever folly led him to his death. It’s good advice, believe me.’ Appleby sighed. ‘But entirely futile, of course.’

‘Yes.’ Max smiled. ‘It is.’

MAX WAS IN
a hurry now, emboldened by the result of his visit to the Majestic. He took the Métro – which impressed him no more favourably than the London Underground – from Etoile to the Tuileries and walked up Rue des Pyramides to number 33.

The offices of Ireton Associates were on the first floor of a handsome building near the junction with Avenue de l’Opéra. Max hardly knew what to expect. What he found was a small and apparently lethargic operation in the charge of a polite but unsmiling American secretary. She was middle-aged and schoolmarmish, chestnut hair helmeted to her head, eyes gleaming behind alarmingly winged horn-rimmed glasses. Her posture hinted at tight corsetry beneath the thick layers of tweed.

‘Mr Ireton isn’t here at present, sir,’ she explained. ‘And he sees no one without an appointment.’

‘Perhaps I could make one.’

‘May I ask what this is in connection with?’

‘It concerns my late father, Sir Henry Maxted.’

‘You’re his son?’

‘I am. James Maxted.’

‘My condolences, Mr Maxted. I heard of your father’s death. Such a sad thing.’

‘Indeed. I—’

Max broke off and looked round. A flicker in the secretary’s gaze had alerted him to a movement behind him. A large, not to say enormous, man in a dark hat and overcoat was standing in the
corridor that led from neighbouring rooms to the main door. He might have moved on castors, given how noiselessly he had arrived there, which was all the more surprising considering the vastness of his build. He had craggy, weather-beaten features and a sorrowful expression. His nose looked as if it had been broken, possibly more than once. Max felt eerily certain it had not been broken in a sporting endeavour.

‘Is there anything you need, Mr Morahan?’ the secretary asked, sounding genuinely anxious on the point.

‘Nothing,’ came the softly growled reply. (Morahan was clearly also American.) ‘But you might like to call Travis.’ A faint nod in Max’s direction implied he was the reason for the suggestion.

‘Just what I was thinking.’

‘I’ll see you later.’ With that, and a touch of his hat, Morahan glided out.

‘Bear with me, Mr Maxted,’ the secretary said, returning her attention to Max. ‘I’ll see if I can reach Mr Ireton.’

She spoke to the operator in fluent French, too fluently for Max to follow. As she waited to be connected, he glanced out through the window beside her desk. He saw Morahan emerge from the building on to the pavement, towering over other pedestrians in his long black coat. He paused to light a cigarette, then strode across the road and vanished down the steps leading to the Pyramides Métro station.

The secretary began speaking, presumably to Ireton, though she did not use his name. ‘I have a Mr James Maxted here … That’s correct … Yes … Sure.’ She offered Max the phone without further explanation. He took it.

‘Travis Ireton?’

‘The same. You’re the son I met at the Ritz?’

‘I am.’

‘Terrible shame about your father.’

‘Yes. It is.’

‘You want to meet?’

‘I was hoping to. I—’

‘We should, I agree. But I’m spread thin today. Can you come to the office at … six thirty?’

‘I can, yes.’

‘We’ll talk then. Put Malory back on, would you?’

Whether Malory was the secretary’s Christian name or surname was unclear. Max handed the phone to her and she began taking notes on a pad, contributing little more than ‘Yes’ and ‘Uh-huh’ as the conversation proceeded.

It took Max a minute or so to realize that she regarded him as a matter satisfactorily dealt with. His farewell nod was barely acknowledged.

Appleby’s mood had not improved following Max’s departure from the Majestic. His conviction that the young man had stolen a march on him was only one reason. The other was the telegram he had received shortly afterwards. He had not anticipated a peremptory summons to the godhead in London and was annoyed with himself on that account alone. He should have foreseen such a development. The Maxted affair, he concluded over a contemplative pipe, was going to require a greater share of his attention than he had so far devoted to it.

A knock at his door heralded the arrival of Lamb, the most intelligent and reliable of his operatives. He was young and moon-faced, with the mild demeanour of a bank clerk. But a keen brain ticked away inside his head. He was perfect for this line of work, taking quiet pleasure from the invisibility of his achievements and requiring little in the way of overt praise.

‘Is there a flap on, sir?’ Lamb disingenuously enquired.

‘I have to go to London. A flying visit, I hope. I want some surveillance put in hand in my absence. This fellow.’ Appleby slid a photograph culled from RFC records across his desk. ‘James Maxted. Younger son of the late Sir Henry Maxted.’

‘Ah. The faller.’

‘As the mighty can sometimes become. We have to pick up the pieces. Maxted’s staying at the Mazarin in Rue Coligny. Tail him from there. Stick with him wherever he goes, but stay out of sight. I’ll want as much detail as possible.’

‘You’ll have it, sir.’

‘If he gets into any trouble …’

‘Yes, sir?’

Appleby deliberated for a moment, then replied. ‘Don’t intervene.’

With time on his hands, Max decided to see his father off at the Gare du Nord. He did so in his own way, having no wish for a further exchange of angry words with Ashley. There was a side-entrance to the station for goods and mail. And it was there that he witnessed the arrival of a hearse bearing the name
Prettre et fils, pompes funèbres
. It was discreetly managed, with a full half hour to spare before the departure of the noon train to London. Monsieur Prettre had been as good as his word.

After seeing the coffin unloaded and wheeled into the station, suitably draped, on a trolley, Max went round to the front of the building. He had spied out a café on the other side of the street, from where he could watch taxis come and go.

He did not have to wait long for one to discharge Ashley. He was accompanied by Fradgley, who looked flustered and fretful. Max amused himself by attributing Fradgley’s distracted appearance to the fact that only one of the Maxted brothers was with him. But he was aware that his amusement would rebound on him if he accomplished nothing by remaining in Paris.

He watched the station clock move slowly towards noon, calculating that Fradgley’s reappearance would tell him when the train had left.

Then, to his surprise, he recognized someone else clambering out of a taxi: Appleby. And the fellow was carrying a travelling bag, as if intent on taking the train to London himself.

Max could scarcely credit that such was Appleby’s intention. But noon passed and the train left. He knew that because Fradgley emerged on to the forecourt at five past the hour – alone. There was no sign of Appleby.

After Fradgley had boarded a cab and vanished, Max left the café and set off southwards on foot, turning over in his mind the mystery of Appleby’s sudden departure. It was far from reassuring to know that Ashley would have Appleby’s company for the next
seven hours. In his efforts to persuade Ashley that their father really had been murdered, Max had revealed more than he wanted Appleby to know. He could not rely on his brother to keep such information to himself. But there was absolutely nothing he could do about it now.

IRETON WAS WAITING
for Max when he arrived at 33 Rue des Pyramides that evening – waiting, indeed, at the head of the stairs, with a glass of whisky in his hand and a broad smile on his face. He breezily conferred first-name terms on their acquaintance while ushering Max into his offices.

‘Malory’s a wondrous manageress of my affairs,’ Ireton explained as he poured Max a Scotch and persuaded him to sample an American cigarette, ‘but she can be a little stern, especially in the a.m., if you know what I mean.’

‘It’s good of you to see me.’

‘Not at all. Your father’s death was a terrible waste. I want you to know most particularly how sorry I am.’

‘Thank you.’

‘We could have done this at the Ritz or the Crillon.’ Ireton led Max through to an inner office, where a fire was blazing. There were armchairs arranged around it. ‘But I thought you’d value some privacy.’

‘That was considerate of you.’

‘Do the police have a theory to account for what happened?’

‘Nothing I’d dignify with the word “theory”.’

‘That so?’ They sat down and Ireton went on smiling, but was frowning slightly now as well, as if unsure quite what to make of Max. ‘Well, it was a damn shame, however it came about. Do you have any ideas yourself?’

‘I believe my father was murdered, Travis.’

‘You do?’ The frown deepened.

‘Yes.’

‘I see. Well, that’s …’ Then the frown lifted. He spread a hand expressively. ‘That’s what I surmised, Max. Henry wasn’t an accident-prone man. I wouldn’t have mentioned it if you were set on buying the police’s cockamamie version of events, but since you’re not …’

‘You know what their version of events is?’

‘I do.’

‘You’re well-informed, I must say.’

‘I make it my business to be. Matter of fact, it
is
my business to be.’

‘“All your needs in post-war Paris”. It’s a broad remit.’

Ireton chuckled. ‘As broad as it’s long. What do you need, Max?’

‘Evidence of who murdered my father and why.’

‘Which you think I can supply?’

‘I don’t know. But then I don’t know what dealings you had with him.’

‘No. I guess not.’ Ireton took a long draw on his cigarette. ‘What I do is a little hard to define. You could say I trade in the commodity that most of the delegates and journalists and speculators and hangers-on who’ve gathered here spend most of their time trying to lay their hands on. Information.
Timely
information. By which I mean they hear it from me before it becomes common knowledge. For that advantage they’re willing to pay. That, simply put, is my business. Your prime minister took himself and his senior advisers off to Fontainebleau last weekend to thrash out a new policy on the peace treaty. A lot of people who weren’t there wanted to know what they’d settled on before it was made public. They turned to me. And suffice to say they weren’t disappointed.’

‘How did you pull that off?’

‘It’s what I do, Max. It’s my living. Has been for a good many years. I go wherever information is most in demand. Just now that’s Paris, luckily for me.’ He broke off to tong some coal on to the fire. ‘Though I’d be grateful for more springlike weather.
Paris au printemps
, hey? This isn’t what I had in mind, let me tell you.’

‘Isn’t there a shortage of coal in the city? My hotel’s cold as charity.’

‘Oh, yes, there’s a shortage.’ Ireton grinned blithely. ‘But I think better when I’m warm, so scrimping’s out of the question. So it should be for you. I bet you dreamt of creature comforts like a roaring fire when you were a POW. I bet you reckoned you were owed them for laying your life on the line for your country.’

Max did not deny it, though the truth was that he had volunteered less for patriotic reasons than for the chance it had given him of flying on a daily basis. He had missed that in the camp rather more keenly than a glowing hearth.