A Perfect Spy

“Yes, well now, whatever did happen to Magnus?” Mrs. Membury demanded. “Harrison was so upset he never wrote. Well so was I. He never even told us whether he converted. He was awfully close, we felt. All he needed was one more shove. Harrison was exactly like that for years. It took a jolly good talking to from Father D’Arcy before Harrison saw the light, didn’t it, darling?”

Membury’s pipe had gone out and he was peering disappointedly into the bowl.

“I never liked the chap,” he explained with a kind of embarrassed regret. “Never thought much of him.”

“Darling, don’t be silly. You adored Magnus. You practically adopted him. You know you did.”

“Oh Magnus was a splendid chap. The other chap. The source. The Greensleeves chap. I thought he was a bit of a fraud, to be honest. I didn’t say anything — it didn’t seem useful. With Div. Int. and London waving their caps in the air, why should we complain?”

“Nonsense,” said Mrs. Membury, very firmly indeed. “Marlow, don’t listen. Darling, you’re being far too modest, as usual. You were the linchpin of the operation, you know you were. Marlow’s writing a history, darling. He’s going to write about you. You mustn’t spoil it for him, must he, Marlow? That’s the fashion these days. Put down, put down. I get absolutely sick of it. Look at what they did to poor Captain Scott on the television. Daddy knew Scott. He was a marvellous man.”

Membury continued as if she hadn’t spoken. “All the brigadiers from Vienna beaming away like sand boys. Roars of applause from the War Office. No point in me killing the golden goose if they were all happy, was there? Young Magnus cocka-hoop. Well I didn’t want to spoil his fun.”

“And he was taking instruction,” said Mrs. Membury pointedly. “Harrison had arranged for him to go to Father Moynihan twice a week. And he was running garrison cricket. And he was learning Czech. You can’t do that in a day.”

“A h now, that’s interesting. About the learning Czech, I mean. Was this because he had a Czech source then?”

“It’s because Sabina set her cap at him, the little minx,” said Mrs. Membury, but this time her husband actually spoke through her.

“His stuff was all so flashy, somehow,” he was saying, undeterred. “Always looked good on the plate, but when you came to chew it over, nothing really there. That’s how it seemed to me.” He gave a puzzled giggle. “Same as trying to eat a pike. All bones. You’d get a report in, look it over. I say, that’s jolly good, you’d think. But when you took a closer look it was boring. Yes, that’s true because we already know it…. Yes, that’s possible but we can’t verify it because we’ve nothing on that region. I didn’t like to say anything, but I think the Czechs could have been batting and bowling at the same time. I always thought that was why Greensleeves didn’t show up after Magnus went back to England. He wasn’t so sure he could hoodwink an older chap. Mean of me, I expect. I’m just a failed fish freak, aren’t I, Hannah? That’s what she calls me. Failed fish freak.”

The description pleased them both so much that they broke out laughing for some while, so that Brotherhood had to laugh with them and keep back his question until Membury was able to hear him clearly.

“You mean you never met Greensleeves? He never came to the rendezvous? I’m sorry, sir,” he said, returning to his notebook, “but didn’t you say just now you yourself took over source Greensleeves when Pym left Graz?”

“I did.”

“And now you say you never met him.”

“Perfectly true. I didn’t. Stood me up at the altar, didn’t he, Hannah? She got me into my best suit, packed together all these stupid special foods he was supposed to like — how that started, God knows — he never turned up.”

“Harrison probably got the wrong night,” said Mrs. Membury, with a fresh gust of laughter. “Harrison’s frightful about time, aren’t you, darling? He was never trained for Intelligence, you know. He was librarian in Nairobi. A jolly good one too. Then he met someone on the ship and got roped in.”