Restoration by Guy Adams Page B

them," said the major, leaning his gleaming rifle against the wall behind him. "We've forced our way into their country after all."
    Â Â "Don't fret over your sensibilities, Major," Helen replied, "and do try to remember whose side you're on."
    Â Â The major bristled. "You will never need to remind me of that madam."
    Â Â "Pleased to hear it."
    Â Â A ruckus from one of the adjoining rooms stopped their conversation descending further. A shamboliclooking man appeared in the doorway, his face as grey and pallid as a victim of drowning.
    Â Â "Ah, Haywood," said Walsingham, "how good of you to join us."
    Â Â "Most intolerable," the man whispered. "Never known sickness like it… forgive me."
    Â Â "I am inclined to do no such thing!" Walsingham shouted, relieved to have a source for his anger that was undeniable. "Your constant lack of coherence – or, for that matter, consciousness – is becoming a major liability to this party."
    Â Â Haywood held up his hands in a gesture of surrender, wincing at the volume of Walsingham's words. "I don't disagree," he replied. "Perhaps it would be better for me to leave."
    Â Â "We're in Tibet, man!" Walsingham replied. "You don't get to just 'leave' it's a three day trek to the next British encampment… given that you seem incapable of so much as staying upright for a few hours you'll forgive me if I assume the effort to be beyond you!"
    Â Â Haywood said nothing to that. He opened his mouth, tried to think of something constructive and then, with no thoughts forthcoming, closed it again. He sat down near the cooking stove – wanting some of its warmth for himself Ashe assumed, certainly he looked like he had need of it. Then he thought of something to say though the reluctance with which he said it weighed on Ashe; there was something in his tone that didn't gel with the impression he had been given of the man.
    Â Â "Perhaps it would be for the best were Rhodes to take over as physician," he said. "He has some of the training and none of the shortcomings."
    Â Â It wasn't the fact that Haywood was denying knowledge of Rhodes' death that stuck with Ashe – if Haywood had anything to do with that then it was a simple enough ruse to deflect blame – rather the reluctance he showed to offload his responsibility. That seemed wrong, Ashe couldn't say for sure why, but it did.
    Â Â "He has one distinct shortcoming," Helen replied. "He's dead."
    Â Â And now Ashe paid even closer attention to Haywood's response. He couldn't lay claim to sharp deductive skills. True, he had spent much of his life trying to solve the mystery of the box but that was different, that was research , and the two were really not alike. Research was cold, the sifting of minutiae, the retention of facts. Trying to deduce the identity of a murderer? That was something else again, that was about reading people and empathising with motive. Still, Ashe had lived long enough that he liked to think he could tell a liar when he saw one. He had been a college professor and if there was one body of people who knew how to lie it was students.
    Â Â "Dead?" Haywood said, his face drawing paler still. "How can he be?"
    Â Â And there Ashe settled upon his decision. Whatever the truth behind Haywood's frequent bouts of "illness" he was no murderer, Ashe was sure of it. "How can he be?" Haywood had asked, a question rooted in shock not logic. He hadn't asked "what happened?" just that single brain-fart: 'how can he be?' That was the sound of a man who couldn't process what he had just been told.
    Â Â "I can assure you he is," said Walsingham, some of his anger lifted, you could only stay angry at a rag doll for so long, they just didn't give you the responses needed to stoke the fires, "and in circumstances that jeopardise this expedition beyond even your unreliability."
    Â Â "He was murdered," said the major. "Icepick to the back of the head." He