SIX
A PHONE CALL TO THE FOREIGN OFFICE
Having reached agreement on the important principle of how to proceed, Wimsey and Bunter put their heads together and decided upon a two-pronged research strategy. Bunter took himself off to wander the bowels of the University Library in pursuit of publications by Alan Turing, in the hope that this might cast some light on the contents of the looked-for files, and Lord Peter sought out a telephone, whence he placed a number of calls to friends in various government offices. It took altogether longer than he would have preferred in his current uneasy state of mind, but eventually he struck gold in the shape of an old school chum at MI5. Alas, the seam contained only tiny nuggets, as Bertie Brackenbury made clear when he rang Peter back.
"We've got very little on either of your chaps," he told him. "Black was briefly under investigation in 1951 for his association with Burgess and Maclean. He was a member of the Apostles debating club in the early '30s, which rang alarm bells, of course. More significantly, he continued to have occasional contact with both Burgess and Maclean right up to 1951, when they defected. There's no evidence of actual pro-Soviet activity, but those are rather questionable acquaintances. Are you saying we should roll out the investigation again?"
"No point," said Wimsey pithily. "Black's dead. Shot last week, supposedly by self and violent hand."
"Oho," said Bertie, with evident satisfaction. "I should have realised there'd be a body lurking somewhere if it's got your interest, Flim. Who's the other chap? The one who dunnit?"
"You tell me, Bertie. Does it seem likely? Is his file full of funerals?"
"Sorry to disappoint you, old bean, but I've got even less on your suspect than on Black. The only thing that might interest you is a recent query on his file suggesting a possible KGB connection, but the source is anonymous, and it doesn't seem to have been followed up. Doesn't say what the connection is, either, which is probably why it was dropped."
"That doesn't sound very confidence-inspiring. When was it lodged?"
"A couple of weeks ago. Second of June, to be precise."
The coincidence gave Lord Peter pause for thought. The second of June was only two days before the poison pen letter had been sent to Duffield. "Do you normally give credence to anonymous allegations?" he asked, something of his distaste for those who hide their accusations behind a veil of anonymity bleeding into his voice. "Sounds a bit Big Brother-ish, if you ask me."
"Oh, the source won't have been anonymous originally," said Bertie, rather offended. "We don't have the time, let alone the inclination, to follow up every disgruntled housewife slinging mud at her neighbour. But sometimes it's necessary to protect an informant's identity."
"Hmmm," said Peter. "So your source is someone deserving of protection, but without sufficient clout to get his tip followed up?"
"That would seem to be a reasonable deduction. At all events, there's been no action taken. Probably because there's bugger all else in the file to suggest there'd be any point. Chap checks out, end of story."
It was a poor and shrivelled harvest, but Wimsey revised his opinion of who had drawn the short straw from the research haystack when he set eyes on Bunter. His manservant had the glazed eyes and drooping shoulders of a man who has grappled with Scholarship and lost, an impression confirmed by the paucity of the notes he had taken.
"Up until 1947 Dr Turing was at the National Physical Laboratory working on something called an Automatic Computing Engine," he recited, in the tones of a schoolboy who expects to be sent to the bottom of the class for persistent under-achievement. "In 1948 he moved to Manchester University, where he continued this work, publishing papers on computing machinery and intelligence. As far as I was able to ascertain, the results of his research in this period are all in the public domain. However, after his conviction, he was banned from working on computing engines, switched his attention to botany, and wrote a paper applying a mathematical sequence called Fibonacci numbers to plant morphology. I fear I was not qualified to understand even the most basic principles of any of this, my lord. Nor do I believe that even your lordship would make significant progress. I respectfully suggest that we call in an expert, if one can be found."
Wimsey beamed at him. "By a happy coincidence I am having lunch at Trinity with an old acquaintance of mine, Sir Edward Fawsley, who is the Chair in Theoretical Physics. He should be able to help us, if anyone can. I have a vague recollection that he worked with Turing during the war, so if he kept in touch, he might even be able to take an educated guess at what Kuryakin was hoping to find in those files. But before I toddle off to Trinity, I'll see if I can't have a look at that other pistol of Milton's, in case it should happen to be simply packed with prints."