to be exact. The interesting thing is that the first attempt was obviously by a different man. Now he did sound like a pro. He was armed with either a long-bladed screwdriver or a chisel and he was just about to get to grips with Greenwood’s door, when a porter came round the corner and chased him off. See if this rings any bells. Farlow describes him as a thin, nondescript man of medium height with a small moustache and a scar on the side of his chin. Farlow got a good sideways view of him.’
Anthony sat up. ‘He sounds like my thief, Talbot. The one who pretended to be a club servant.’
Sir Charles nodded. ‘That’s what I thought. So we’ve got one attempted robbery by someone who sounds like a real crook, followed by the successful one by someone who isn’t so much a crook as a killer.’
‘The employee and the employer in fact,’ said Anthony. ‘That’s how I see it, anyway. The Weasel bungled the job, so the fair-haired chap took a hand.’ He paused. ‘The second chap – the well-spoken one – sounds like a gentleman, doesn’t he?’
Sir Charles gave an irritated sigh. ‘But we’d placed the gentleman at Starhanger, or thought we had. Talking of Starhanger, do you think there’s any chance Veronica O’Bryan did have a riding accident? I only ask because it seems odd, if she was planning an escape, that she left the letters.’
‘I wondered about that, said Anthony, reaching for the cigarette box. ‘I think she must have acted on impulse. Once she’d decided to run for it, she couldn’t risk coming back to the house. In any case, she probably thought the letters were safe in the jewellery box. It was a pretty good hiding place, Talbot. It took me some time to find it, and I’ve done that sort of thing before. She must have had some money on her because, somehow or other, she got up to London and told whoever about the diamonds.’
‘Couldn’t she have telephoned?’
‘I wouldn’t like to give a message like that over the phone, I must say. She could have phoned and arranged to be picked up in a car, I suppose. That’s something we could probably check. The trouble is, she vanished a long time before the alarm was raised. With a good horse she could’ve got a long way from Starhanger.’ Anthony tapped his cigarette on the ashtray. ‘Did you manage to get “Frankie’s Letter” read?’
‘I did. It was difficult to crack but simplicity itself once the code people had tumbled to it. The code changed with every “Letter”. D’you know what the key was? The bridge problems in a completely different part of the magazine. Once that was spotted, it was easy. The numbers on the bridge scores gave the relevant words in the “Letter”.’
Anthony nodded. ‘Bridge problems ties it to Veronica O’Bryan, all right. Tara O’Bryan told me that setting bridge problems was one of her mother’s skills. What was in the “Letters”?’
‘Dynamite.’ Sir Charles drew a deep breath. ‘My people went back over the whole run of the magazine. It started before the war. The first few issues are innocent enough, and then the information starts. There’s reports of armaments at Woolwich Arsenal and proposed troop movements by train. There’s notes of which ships are in the Chatham Dockyard and how the mouth of the Thames is guarded. It details which regiments are bound for active service and an unbelievable amount about who’s who in the government – and whose mistress is whose, as well. The private lives of the senior ranks of the army and navy are recorded in some detail, too.’
Anthony’s eyebrows shot up. ‘My God! Is the information accurate, Talbot?’
‘As far as we can tell, yes. Some of it even we don’t know. When we said that someone at the heart of society was the worse sort of spy, I must admit even I had little idea of how much they could pick up. Perhaps the “Letter” which is of most interest to you is the one concerning Cavanaugh. It says he’s in Kiel and asks for him to be taken care of.’
‘And so they took care of him,’ muttered Anthony.
‘If that wasn’t bad enough, it seems as if there’s something big planned. It’s hard to make a guess what it is, but it could be a bomb attack or even a full-scale shelling of the coast, as happened on the east coast in December.’
Anthony winced. The