The Crocus List

 
16
"The Army ought to start asking questions when she doesn't turn up for the next course at the Fort," George said hopefully. "And she must have relatives and friends. With her special backgroundsomebody must get suspicious. And if not, I'll see if -I can think of an excuse to try and contact her myself."
"If the bodies never turn up," Maxim said, "and I assume they won't, I can't think what else there is to find."
It was like a Monday at a football club, with Saturday's umpteen-nil defeat to be analysed, and an injury list that promised worse to come. Knowing George despised soccer, Maxim didn't mention the thought, and in any case, George's feelings were more complex than his own. No evidence of two deaths meant no evidence of his involvement in them. In saving themselves, the Bravoes had saved George as well, although only from the consequences, not the horror. So perhaps God had turned the clock back, in a very God-like way. It wasn't, George felt, quite enough for him to renew any promises about alcohol.
Maxim just wanted to know where the battle lines now stood so that they could make new plans.
"I could try going back to the Steering Committee," he said, "and simply tell them what's happened. You needn't be mentioned; all my own work."
"I know you mean that, Harry," George sighed. "But as you say, what's to be found? Certainly nothing that proves a conspiracy. You'd simply be committing suicide: you're either a killer or some fruitcake who thinks he's a killer, and neither wanted in today's modern Army, thank you." He glanced to see how Maxim had taken the word 'killer', but saw only the usual polite smile.
Georgelifted a stack of the day's and Sunday's papers -none mentioned Miss Tuckey-and dropped them on the floor. "All right. Concentrate on the second man at the Abbey: call him Person Y. Where are we?"
Maxim opened his briefcase on the desk. "I got the photographs."
"Printed already? That's quick."
"Friends. They also looked at the bug from her phone. It's a new model, they were quite excited. And it was most likely picking us up in her room, as well as calls."
George was sifting through the snapshot-sized photographs Maxim had taken, identifying portraits of several people concerned with Resistance or Intelligence, and mostly now dead. Then he turned to the big original of the man Maxim remembered from the Abbey. It was actually of two men, smiling into the camera against a chunky city skyline. And now it was out of its glass frame, he could make out a faded signature at the bottom: Jay Keyserling, St Louis, 1968.
"Good God, we're home and dry."
Maxim shook his head. "Wrong man. We want the other one. "
"How d'you know?" George peered closer. Of the two men, one was, in indefinable but unmistakable details, American; the other, by seeming 'normal', was clearly British. The American was wearing a lapel badge, big enough for his own name and some other word. George, who didn't need glasses (as he kept telling people), reached for his magnifying glass.
"That's Keyserling,"Maxim said. "The other word's CCOAC."
"Never heard of it." George glared at the picture. The Briton would, presumably, have also been issued with a name-badge, but with a British horror of self-advertisement had taken it off the moment he could. Blast his idiot Britishness.
"Some sort of business convention, fairly respectable -if you can have such a thing," he ruminated. The well-fitting lightweight suits were too expensive for academicsyet too fashionable for government officials, and the ties were soberly striped. "In Saint Lewis, 1968."
"Is that how you pronounce it?" Maxim was surprised, having spent much of his life listening to various versions of what most people called 'The S'n Looey Blues'.
"Yes, and loud and clear on the Saint or they'll give you a ticket for Cincinnati, and it could be months before your next of kin were informed." He ruminated a while longer. "You're sure this man, the Brit -?"
"As sure as I can be. He's younger, there, but I'd think that man would be around fifty now. About right."
"So we've got an identification on the wrong man, but it's the only path through the mire. Can you follow it up? He's probably a prosperous American businessman, prosperous enough to go to international conventions: try all the American and international reference books in our library, then the London Library. You're not a member, are you? I'll give them a tinkle. But don't approach their embassy yet…
"Of course," he added, "our Brit may not have known Miss Tuckey at all, since Keyserlingsigned this photo to her."
"Why not just send a picture of himself? Keyserlinglooks as if he could afford it. I think the Brit belongs, somehow."
"Yes… and I suppose, if the picture wasn't printed until after he'd gone home, Keyserlingwould send it anyway. So, action this day."
"Mind you," Maxim said, "I could go back to her cottage and have a second snoop, taking my time. There might be-"
"Harry, you are not to go near that cottage, not eventhink of going near it-and I can read your thoughts by now. They are a hell-broth of ideas to provoke coronaries and hair loss in middle-aged civil servants. Why don't you take up a hobby with a purely personal risk, like parachuting… Ah, sorry." He had forgotten Maxim's Special Air Service background.
"I've done thirty-two jumps and never quite got over the feeling that it would be better to arrive by chauffeur-driven Rolls."
"I thought it was supposed to be very exhilarating, once the 'chute opened. "
"It is," Maxim agreed. "If you think of the only alternative."
Keyserling, Jay Pedersen, banker; b. Jefferson City Miss., Mar 1 1912; s. Frank Elmer and Ingrid… Maxim copied it all out, just in case, but without much hope because it ended: d. Jan 7 1979.
"So he was only sixty-six when God called in the loan," George commented, reading through it. "It's that Midwestern winter as does it; I was there in February once, I nearly turned up my toes then except they'd have snapped off… still, it's nice to have a banker dying early." George's brother-in-law banked. "Local bank, Navy commission in the war, Pacific, executive at First Chicago, back to home state at St Louis, rising to President of Merchants and Trappers (State) Bank, a pillar of the Bogie Club, the Board of Civic Progress and the Episcopalian Church… He seems about as straightforward a citizen as ever foreclosed on a widow and fifteen orphans, not a hint of creepy-crawliness, no European connections, not even any gaps." George was adept at reading entries in directories, official lists and Who's Whos from many countries which tried to skip the most interesting parts of a subject's life. "Good Lord, he wrote books, too: Foreign Debt: A Pauper's Promise, not exactly a snappy title, but it sounds as if he saw something the New York banks didn't, and The Credit of Faith."
"That one was published over here, Parados Press, 1965. They dug up an old catalogue reference to it: it seems to be that honest banking practice and churchgoing come to the same thing, ungodly Marxism leads to phoney exchange rates. "
"You're paraphrasing, I assume. Well, well-a banker who can read and write, yet. I suppose the Midwest would be where you might still find one. And it doesrieup: I uncovered CCOAC in your absence."
He had eventually decided to ask Security's registry and its computers for a trace, muddling the trail by getting a colleague to send the request for him and burying it in alist of acronyms, as if they had been collected over a period of time. The prompt reply showed just how little Security now had to do: CCOAC translated as Churchgoers Concerned About Communism, a one-off conference held in May 1968. Initial funding had come from local businessmen, and delegates-mostly businessmen themselves-from a dozen countries had paid their own air fares and hotel bills.