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“Yes!” He brought his attention back to the present. “I’ll talk to him. Perhaps we can have a cup of tea?”
She rolled her eyes. “For heaven’s sake, do you think I set him down at teatime to talk about his anxieties without tea? And cake? Do you want some?” She looked at Toby, now sitting at Lucas’s heels and sweeping his tail back and forth across the carpet to signal that he was being obedient and it was dinnertime.
“After I’ve seen Stoney…it sounds odd.” He smiled. “But Toby’s hungry.”
“I’m sure he’d like a piece of cake,” Josephine said drily. “But he’s not getting any. Come on, Toby, dinner. Dog dinner.”
He followed after her, happily. Anything she gave him was always good.
Lucas opened the sitting-room door and went in. Stoney Canning was leaning back on the sofa, but still managed to look uncomfortable. He was large, over six foot, broad-shouldered, and untidy. Even the best tailor in London could not make a suit that looked as if it fitted him. Not that any tailor could be blamed for the way he looked today. His tie was crooked, his shirt was clean but crumpled, and his jacket appeared to be mismatched with everything.
“Ah, Lucas.” He made as if to stand up.
“Good to see you, Stoney.” Lucas held out his hand and gestured for Stoney to stay seated. He himself sat in the chair opposite and leaned back. “How are you?”
Stoney pushed his hand through his long white hair. “Lucas, I’ve…I’ve got a bit of a problem.” He trailed off into silence, but his eyes searched Lucas’s face, as if he might help him somehow.
It was a typical Stoney understatement, as when, speaking to a German friend, he had referred, with a rueful smile, to the war as “the recent slight unpleasantness.” It was a typical way of dealing with horror. His strength was mathematics; numbers were like music to him. He could see both form and beauty in the most complex calculations, and could not understand why they were not apparent to everyone, if only they would allow themselves to see them. Lucas recalled countless conversations that had begun like this one.
“What is it about, Stoney?”
“That’s it,” Stoney admitted. “I’m not sure. It seems to be figures, but it’s what they represent that matters. It could be anything. Weapons, men, something we already possess, or that we will buy. Anything.”
Lucas bit back his temptation to interrupt. Stoney was intensely serious.
“I think it’s money,” Stoney went on. “Very large amounts of it indeed.” He stared at Lucas with wide, troubled eyes. “And what is unforgivable is that they are doing it through MI6!”
Lucas struggled to keep up. “Who is doing it? The government? What makes you think so? Go back to the beginning, Stoney.”
“Money in the wrong place,” Stoney said succinctly. “Money that moves around inexplicably, at least not by any ordinary cause that I can see. And I’ve been keeping books since Victoria was queen. It doesn’t fit, Lucas. I know the pattern.”
Lucas believed him about that, but there could be several explanations. “Theft?” he asked. “Embezzlement?”
“No,” Stoney said without hesitation. “More like funneling money from one place to another. It’s very cleverly hidden.” His eyes showed reluctant respect for a skill he understood. “Not a few hundred here and there—that could be covered up—I’m talking about millions.”
Lucas was troubled. It sounded exaggerated, even absurd. And yet there was fear in Stoney’s face, and beneath it a steady, burning anger.
“What do you think it is?” he asked. “Your best ideas. Doesn’t matter how ridiculous they sound, we’ve got to start with something.”
Stoney hesitated.
It occurred to Lucas that he was afraid of being laughed at, of having the ideas that distressed him so clearly dismissed by a man whose opinion mattered to him, perhaps more than Lucas had previously appreciated. “Tell me,” he urged again. “If it’s impossible, we can dismiss it.”
“I wish we could,” Stoney said earnestly. “I wish more than anything else I could think of. Please tell me I’m a fool, that I’ve lost my grip, and this isn’t happening…”
At that moment there was a knock on the door. As soon as Lucas answered, Josephine came in with a tray of fresh tea and cake, Toby on her heels.
Lucas stood up to take the tray from her, and Toby rushed over to Stoney, who leaned forward and put both his hands out to shake his paw, then stroke his head. Toby was delighted. He sat on Stoney’s feet and wagged his tail so hard his whole body swayed with it. He even ignored the cake when the tray was put on the side table, barely out of his reach. He ignored Josephine when she told him to come back with her into the kitchen.
Lucas looked at Stoney’s face and his large hand resting gently on the dog’s head. “Let him stay,” he said to his wife. Their eyes met and she understood.
“Don’t give him any cake,” she instructed. “It really isn’t good for him.”
Stoney looked up at her, his hand still on Toby’s head. “Is there something he could have instead?”
“Of course,” she answered. “I’ll get him a rusk. It’s really the attention he wants.”
There was a look of rueful understanding in Stoney’s face.
