Maxim nodded and waited.

"We needed the water, and the time. After that, we could walk thirty kilometres a day. It took us only a few days more to Nefta."

"And Yorkie's real name was Etheridge?"

"Yes, but I did not know until after. So always I think of him just as Yorkie."

"Did you ever meet Gerald Jackaman?" Agnes asked.

"The young man from Algiers? He was visiting the Americans at Tebessa, and he came down to debrief us, when we contacted 1st Army."

"Who actually shot Lecat?" Maxim asked.

"Who would have done it if you had been in command, Major?"

For a long time, as they wound down the hillside road, Agnes said nothing. Then: "So that's why Etheridge wrote to Jackaman. He was the first one they'd told lies to. I wonder if he'd suspected something all these years since."

"He seems to have accepted Etheridge's letter without asking any questions."

"Yes… So, they shot somebody on their own side, a poor wounded French boy. It haunts them all their lives, and one of them even changes his name, emigrates and dies of drink. I don't know… I wouldn't have thought that by the fourth year of the war soldiers would be that sensitive." She sounded disappointed. "Do you believe him?"

"As far as he went."

"How much further was there?"

"They didn't just shoot him. They ate him."

28

"Are you quite sure?" George asked.

"It has to be. You have to forget all the Beau Geste stuff about water being the only thing that matters in the desert. Those three went for well over a week, mostly through soft sand, and that's like snow. It isn't much warmer, either, in January: the temperature can go below freezing. If you're moving in that sort of cold, you're really burning fuel. I'm not saying they'd have died of starvation; they'd have died of thirst because they were too starved to do anything but sit down and drink up their water."

George put his cup and saucer down with a clang and stared around the room, looking for comfort. There was little to find. He had moved into the family set of rooms in Albany when he got the Downing Street posting and it became impossible to commute from Hertfordshire. Annette had done what she could to brighten the tall gloomy rooms with fresh paint and new lampshades, but she daren't change the furniture any more than George's mother or grandmother had dared. Coming in off the chilly stone staircase, Maxim and Agnes had walked through a time gate, back seventy-five years to the days when the Empire was built of solid dark mahogany and pictures of dead animals.

"You are absolutely certain they couldn't have taken enough food?" Sir Anthony Sladen asked. They were seated around one end of a vast dining table, George and Sladen on opposite sides, Maxim and Agnes at the top, in the witness box.

Maxim shook his head. "There were three men marching for something like eleven days and a fourth who lasted five or six – de Carette wasn't precise about the dates. But that's nearly forty days' rations. George – you've been in the Army. You know what a day's rations looks like, what it weighs."

"It's a long time since my Army days."

"It's a long time," Agnes said, "since you helped Annette carry in the groceries from the car."

George scowled at her. Sladen gave a cool smirk.

"They must have grabbed up some food from the last jeep," Maxim said, "but nothing like enough."

"Oh Lord." George shook the heavy silver teapot and got a sludgy sound. "Does anybody want any more tea?"

Nobody did.

"Tell me, Major, " Sladen leant his forearms precisely on the table; "why nobody, in all these years, has spotted what must be something of a, ah, discrepancy in Tyler's own book?"

"He's vaguer about the time factor than de Carette. He makes the whole march through the sand a poetic affair, trudging on under the moon, days and nights blending into one-"

"The St.-Exupery touch. I'm sorry."

"He even hints they may have got to Nefta a few days early and rested before contacting 1st Army. The shorter he can make the march, the smaller the food problem. But the big worry that he writes about is whether he'd get a court of enquiry: he'd lost all his vehicles and weapons and nine British soldiers, never mind one Frenchman."

"It could have been a real worry," George reflected. "A court of enquiry wouldn't settle for the poetic approach."

"What actually happened to this town – Ghadames, was it?" Sladen asked. "I'm sure you know, Major."

"A Free French unit under Colonel Delange came up from the south-east and took it at the end of the month. I don't think there was any shooting, the officers really had deserted."

"Thank you." Sladen and George looked at each other across the table. The afternoon dimmed in the Ropewalk outside, as quietly as in a country churchyard. It was a jolt to remember that the Piccadilly traffic was only a hundred yards away.

"So we have one desert town liberated," George said ruminatively. "At least two German vehicles destroyed, plus one Stuka, half a dozen or more soldiers dead – all for the cost of one patrol. About the same as a heavy bomber getting shot down. Not too bad an exchange, for those days. But also one French soldier, cannabilised. And a third of a century later, in comes the bill for that"

Sladen nodded in sombre agreement.

"Thank you, Harry," George said, but his voice was still heavy. "You've done just what you were appointed for: saved us a nasty scandal. I'll have to advise the Headmaster to drop Tyler."

"I wouldn't have thought he can do that off his own bat," Sladen said quickly. "But I'll be recommending the same thing to the committee."

Maxim stared from one to the other, disbelieving. "But all this happened around the time I was born."

"It doesn't matter if it happened as part of the banquet before Waterloo."

"But if you really want an agreement with the French, and Tyler's the only one who can get it…"

"Major, " Sladen said, "if there is even a hint that our chief negotiator had, ah, eaten a part of one of their countrymen…" He had a lot of difficulty in saying that.

"Suppose he promised to sick him up again?" Maxim said coldly.

"Bon appйtit" Agnes murmured.

Sladen sat up straight as if somebody had pinched his bottom. George looked from Maxim to Agnes, honestly appalled. "Where do people like you two come from? I have never heard any two remarks in my life…"

"You're getting your colour back, duckie," Agnes said.

George sat throbbing and steaming a little.

"Wars are messy things," Maxim said.

"Thank you, Major." Sladen gazed at him as he would at a broken sewer. "If we put out a press release saying that wars are messy things, that should avert any slight agitation our cross-Channel friends might feel. I trust you'll let us quote you?" He stood up. "George, I'd better get back to the pit-head. We'll liaise very soon on this. Give my love to Annette. I can find my own way…" his voice faded into the glum twilight as he stalked through to the next room.

"No Cabinet Office Christmas card for you, this year," Agnes told Maxim.

George got up slowly, turned on three lights in big simple shades, and pulled the long drapes closed. In the golden light, the room looked a little younger, but not much.

"He's a pompous old fart," George said, "but in this instance…" He looked at his watch; it wasn't yet five o'clock. "Does anyone feel like a real drink?" he asked wistfully.

They shook their heads. George hesitated, then went across to a break-front chiffonier in the corner by the fireplace and took out a bottle of The Famous Grouse, a tumbler and a bottle of Malvern water.

"I don't know much about this," Maxim said, "but I don't see who would publish the letter. It can't be proveable unless de Carette admits it, and he's already lied to us about it. So wouldn't they just set a new record for libel damages?"