Here Be Monsters by Anthony Price

heroes. And also the god of hanged men riding the gallows as his steed. ’
    But not this time, by God! He could look at her as grim-faced as Odin himself riding his gallows. But whatever his objection to her might be—whether it was professional, against women in this line of work, or Father’s simple old-fashioned misogynism—whatever it was, it would cut no ice with her this time. This time he was going to do the talking.
    Finally he looked at his watch. But then his hand returned to his lap, the fingers loosely clenched, alongside the other hand, which hadn’t moved. If he had a train to catch he was evidently prepared to miss it rather than forgo the satisfaction of making her speak.
    Elizabeth weakened. ‘Go on, Major.’ She forced herself to smile. ‘Yes?’
    ‘Very well, Miss Loftus.’ He didn’t bat an eyelid, but she could feel his satisfied prejudice like an aura, now that he had asserted his superiority. ‘What is it that you want to know?’
    That was a superficially reasonable question, thought Elizabeth. But, as David Audley always maintained, questions usually give you answers about the questioner. So in this instance, since he knew she hadn’t read his report, he was also fishing—and probably for anything the Deputy-Director had told her, for a start.
    Well, that other time she’d been easy meat. But this time she must simply remember that his brief had been Major Parker’s death.
    ‘Everything, Major.’ Another smile. ‘Why was your investigation unsatisfactory?’ He’d know a false smile when he saw one. ‘A tragic accident, the newspapers said?’
    ‘Yes.’ The eyelids still didn’t bat as he realized that she had learned her lesson. ‘The French were waiting for me, Miss Loftus.’
    ‘Waiting for you?’ Innocent and genuine surprise. ‘On the Pointe du Hoc?’
    ‘Nearby.’ There was perhaps the faintest suggestion of Lowland Scottish, perhaps from the hard land of the Border, in his voice. ‘The local paper suggested that he had come to Normandy for the D-Day gathering, on June 6th. But that was not so. He did not arrive until the afternoon of June 7th. The day of his tragic accident.’ He repeated her words without commitment to them.
    ‘Yes, Major?’ She must not jump to conclusions. But tragic accidents in this line of country were generally neither tragic nor accidental; and it was only on the very cliff-edge of possibility that this elderly American had come half-way across the world to do alternatively what he could have done much more easily at home, on his own account.
    ‘The newspaper reported him as staying at Bayeux. I traced him to a hotel there. I gave the clerk twenty francs, and he was on the phone before my back was properly turned. I went directly to the Pointe du Hoc. They took me as I was on my way back to Bayeux.’
    ‘Took you?’
    ‘With the utmost courtesy, Miss Loftus. But without argument.’
    She mustn’t waste time trying to imagine that scene. ‘What did they want?’
    ‘They wanted to know what I was doing.’
    Another silly question then. ‘And what were you doing?’ A hard man like Major Turnbull would have had a cover-story. ‘You were stringing for PA? Or Agence-News Angleterre?’
    ‘No, Miss Loftus. There was a DST man in attendance, so they already knew exactly who I was. A simple lie would only have invited trouble.’
    That was interesting, though logical—that the Major had a European reputation before Colonel Butler had recruited him, and long before Mr Latimer had sent him back to France. ‘So what was your complicated lie?’
    He gave her Odin’s stone face again, looking down on Grimeby from Baldersby Dale. ‘In any period before or after Her Majesty the Queen has been invited to a foreign celebration, if there is a suspicious death we investigate it as a matter of routine, Miss Loftus.’
    Phew ! ‘And what did they say to that?’
    ‘There was nothing they could say. They could not deny that Her Majesty was