Sam Bourne - Pantheon

‘This is Dorothy Lake, she’s helping me while I’m here at Yale.’ Perhaps he had spoken too gently, because Mrs Lund leaned forward. ‘I’m sorry, I missed the name.’

‘Dorothy Lake.’ She extended a hand, which Margaret Lund ignored, her brow furrowed. Lund’s widow reminded James of the men he had seen during the university battle in Madrid, stumbling around, dazed, after they had seen their friends drop to the ground. ‘Lake, you say?’

‘Yes.’ It was James who answered. ‘I wonder if we could come inside. Just for a moment or two.’

Mrs Lund turned around and walked back down the hallway. James chose to interpret that as an invitation to follow. Conscious of being watched by the older woman, he kept his eyes focused ahead, fighting the urge to look around, to guess where the dead man’s corpse had been found.

They were led into the kitchen, where Mrs Lund had already taken a seat. (Perhaps the living room was out of bounds; perhaps it had happened there.) She was looking down at her baby, stroking his bald head.

Without being asked, James found a chair. He did not know how or where to begin, so he just started talking. ‘Your husband performed a great act of kindness to me yesterday. He offered to help find my wife and child. They came here to New Haven from Oxford, you see, but there is no trace or record of them. Your husband said he could help. We met yesterday evening. He became agitated; I’m afraid we argued — and I didn’t see him again. But I believe he was trying to help a man in distress. A fellow father in distress.’ James could feel his eyes turning salty. He had not expected to become emotional. Maybe it was the sight of the baby. He rushed towards a conclusion. ‘And so I wanted to pay my respects.’

Through this, Margaret Lund kept her gaze on the infant, soothing him as he slept. She did not raise her eyes to James when he finished talking. He now saw the futility of this visit; it had been a mistake to come. What had he really expected her to say? ‘Oh yes, George mentioned you to me. He told me your wife is staying at number seventy-eight…’ What possible light could she shed on his problem, especially now, in this state?

He got up to leave, rising from his chair slowly, as if too sudden a movement would be disrespectful. He wanted to ask about Wolf’s Head, about the pin in the mouth, why George Lund had seemed so nervous and, if she had spoken at all, if she had given him even the slightest cue, he would have found a way to do so. But asking cold, like this, was impossible. He was not a detective; he could not start bombarding a widow on her very first day of mourning with questions. She was clearly catatonic with grief.

It was Dorothy who spoke next. ‘Mrs Lund? Might I use your bathroom?’

Now the widow looked up, an oddly serene expression on her face. ‘Upstairs, first door on your right.’

James wondered what Dorothy was up to. He hoped to God she wasn’t planning on snooping around up there; he would not have put it past her. He got to his feet. ‘Once again, Mrs Lund, I am so sorry for-’

‘Close the door.’

‘I’m sorry, I-’

‘Close the door.’

James did as he was told.

‘Listen to me. Don’t tell anyone else what I’m about to tell you, do you understand?’

‘Of course.’

‘No one. Not for my sake. For yours.’

‘I don’t-’

‘My husband did not kill himself, Dr Zennor. Whatever else anyone tells you, don’t believe it. He would never have done such a thing.’ She glanced down at the baby. ‘He did not kill himself.’

‘I thought not.’

‘There are some very powerful people around here, Dr Zennor. I think George had found out something he shouldn’t have. In the last few days, he had become very anxious.’ The eyes, rimmed with red, were afire.

‘Did he tell you what it was?’

‘No. But he wanted to tell someone. Maybe he was going to tell you.’

James gazed at her, his mouth dry. ‘Yes.’

‘It had something to do with his work.’

‘You’re certain of that?’

She nodded tightly, impatient to get on. She cocked an ear as a voice became audible on the other side of the door. ‘With you in a minute, Mother!’ she called out, to ward off any interruption. In an urgent whisper, she resumed: ‘Every night George brought home a briefcase full of papers. Every night. He worked so hard.’ Her voice sounded like a broken reed. ‘But when I found him… this morning.’ Her eyes were brimming now, the words cracked. ‘When I found him, his case was empty. Nothing there but a few pencils. No documents. Not a single sheet of paper.’ Her gaze pinned him: he could not look away.

‘Whoever killed him took those papers, Dr Zennor. That’s why they killed my husband. To keep their secret safe.’

‘We ought to stop and get something to eat,’ Dorothy said. When he hesitated, she added, ‘As a purely practical necessity.’

He was indeed exhausted and hungry too. Though sitting down for a meal seemed an indulgent act with Florence and Harry missing, he nodded his acceptance. ‘Good. I know a little place just a few blocks from here.’

She took him to a restaurant off Wall Street, where she gestured at a table outdoors. He had not eaten outside since Madrid three years earlier; he recoiled from the idea of doing so now, with someone other than Florence, particularly a young and, it had to be admitted, pretty woman. So he moved inside, where he instantly saw a set of newspapers spread out on a table, each one attached to a wooden pole, like those kept in a public library. He jostled aside a couple waiting to be seated and all but fell on the papers, scanning them for word from home.

They were from across the United States, almost all yesterday’s rather than today’s. He started with the Chicago Tribune and its headline: ‘Leading Congressman brands Roosevelt a “warmonger”.’ He read the first few paragraphs, which were plainly slanted in favour of the congressman and against the President. Was this what people here were thinking, that to come to Britain’s defence against the bloody Nazi menace amounted to ‘warmongery’? He could feel the bile rising in his throat. He shoved the paper aside, searching for some word on the war itself. He flicked through the Boston Globe, eventually finding, on page four, a story headlined ‘Stoic Britons gird themselves for invasion’. It was accompanied by a photograph of the ‘Home Guard’, the renamed Local Defence Volunteers that James had seen parading in the college quad, under the command of Bernard Grey. He wanted to weep for his country: weeks, if not days, away from Nazi conquest, with only a few feeble geriatrics to protect her. And America, her young, strong child, standing aside, refusing to help.

Dorothy ordered a bottle of wine and James didn’t bother to object. He drank more than he ate, listlessly turning over the steak that had been laid before him. As the sky outside turned a deep red, then indigo and finally fell into darkness, she tried to get him to discuss what they had learned, to speculate and theorize about George Lund and the secret fraternity of the Wolf’s Head Society, but he was sick at heart and could barely respond.

She tried a different tack. ‘So how long have you been married?’

‘It will be four years this winter.’

‘She as smart as you?’

‘Smarter.’

Dorothy whistled. ‘And what is she smart about?’

‘Her subject is biology.’

‘I bet it is.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘Scratch that. You fall in love right away or she play hard to get?’ She lit a cigarette. ‘Or maybe you played hard to get? I could see you doing that. You’re the type.’