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—
The trip toLondon’s Paddington Station took twenty-one minutes; Paddington itself was a chaotic human anthill, but Hawkins guided them through, bought two first-class tickets to Oxford—“On expenses, of course, you were too jet-lagged to travel with the hoi polloi.”
“Naturally. Are you always this cheap?”
“Not cheap. I prefer to think of myself as savvy,” Hawkins said. “Also, should there be any old Balliol acquaintances about, I’d prefer that they see me in first class, or getting off first class.”
“Mmm.”
“What?”
“I’m looking for an English phrase that you would understand,” Letty said. “You’re being very charming; are you chatting me up?”
“A bit. And making a Washington acquaintance for when I take up my assignment there. If today’s chatting-up is unsuccessful, perhaps you have girlfriends.”
“When will you go to Washington?”
“If nobody fucks things up, which is usually a vain hope, next January.”
An approaching train was announced with, first, a wind-like sound, a distant tornado, then a nearly cataclysmic rattling, which ended with a train parked in front of them. Hawkins had positioned them so they’d be next to the first-class cars when the train stopped, and they got on board.
—
The trip toOxford was quick, an hour long, with one stop at Reading, pronounced Redding. The land around them was a brilliant emerald green, farm fields and woods, with water here and there, not unlike Iowa, with some large differences. The farm fields, as an example, were like jigsaw pieces, rather than rectangles. Beef cattle and hogs seemed to be absent, though there were sheep; no tree stands for deer hunters.
Letty and Hawkins exchanged a few personal notes: he’d been divorced, three years earlier, but had survived financially: his ex-wife was a partner in her father’s London real estate firm, and well off, so spousal support had been unnecessary.
“After university, I spent four years in the army, then moved to MI5. In the army, I was gone quite a bit with one thing or another, Afghanistan mostly, which helped keep the marriage together. When I was at home, we weren’t nearly so happy.”
Letty told him that she did, in fact, have a boyfriend, but that theywere “on hiatus,” and had been for four months, and the longer the hiatus continued, the less likely they were to get back together. “I like him well enough, but we’ve discovered that both of us are going to do what we’re going to do, despite what the other one thinks. So, that’s difficult.”
Hawkins also told her that he’d read her MI5 biography. “I have to say, having read your history and seen the photos, you very much take after your father. The dark hair, the blue eyes; the resemblance is striking.”
“I’m adopted,” Letty said.
“Yes, I know. Still.”
—
And they talkedabout the assignment. The three persons on her list were all at home—none were traveling, and MI5 had made sure that all three were available for interviews.
“Two are quite straightforward,” Hawkins said. “One of Scott’s tutors in biochemistry, Ann Sloam, became quite close to him; a fellow medical student, another close friend, Donald Carr, later took up a position with John Radcliffe Hospital and remains there. We will meet him today at lunch, in a café at the Ashmolean Museum; the hospital itself is a couple of miles from there. The third, Madga Rice, is apparently an on-and-off lover who may have had some…mmm…effect on Scott’s personal philosophy. She has a shop in Oxford.”
“Very efficient,” Letty said. “Maybe we can talk to all three of them today.”
“I doubt it, given the fact that you’re jet-lagged,” Hawkins said. “I thought we’d stop first at the hotel, which is expecting us. We have an early check-in. Then we’ll walk to the Ashmolean.”
2
Hawkins carried their bags through the warm muggy crowds of Oxford to the General Elphinstone Inn, a red-brick and thatch building that lost part of its charm when Hawkins told her the thatch was synthetic PVC. They had rooms on the second floor, which was also the top floor, up a wide wooden stairway; each room had a bronze door knocker shaped like a rearing horse, whose hooves would hammer on a bronze plate.
Letty dropped her bag at the end of the double bed, used the bathroom, rinsed off her face. She looked tired, she decided, peering into a mirror. Eyes tighter than they usually seemed, nape-of-neck hair a little stickier than it should be.
The shower looked inviting. She’d taken Hawkins’s phone number and called him: “How much time do I have?”
“Half an hour?”
“Call me when it’s time.”
