The Blue Ice Read Free

sententiously: And so another of Britain’s sons has found glory in the hour of his country’s greatest need.
    I handed the story back to Sir Clinton. ‘That happened a month ago?’ I asked.
    He nodded. ‘Yes. That’s been checked. The body was found on March 10th. The grave is at Fjaerland, which is at the head of the fjord running right up under the Jostedal. Have you read the lines above the signature on that piece of paper?’
    I looked at the bloodied scrap again. The lines were too blurred.
    â€˜I’ve had it deciphered by experts,’ Sir Clinton went on. ‘It reads: If I should die, think only this of me …’
    â€˜ This presumably being the sample of thorite?’ I said. ‘How does it go? If I should die, think only this of me – That there’s some corner of a foreign field that is for ever England. ’ An open invitation? But the fool hadn’t said which corner. ‘Who was this addressed to?’ I asked.
    â€˜That’s the trouble,’ Sir Clinton replied. ‘The fishmonger destroyed the wrapping. He said it was sodden with blood and quite unreadable ‘anyway.’
    â€˜Pity,’ I said. ‘If we’d known that …’ I was thinking of all the people who’d like to get their hands on deposits of thorite. B.M. & I. wasn’t the only concern that had produced new alloys based on thorite.
    â€˜It’s almost as though he had some premonition,’ Sir Clinton murmured. ‘Why else should he quote those lines of Rupert Brooke?’
    â€˜Why, indeed?’ I said. ‘And why go and die on the Jostedal?’ That was what really puzzled me. Most of his life Farnell had spent in the mountains of Norway. He’d gone there as a boy on walking tours. By the time he was twenty he knew the mountains better than most Norwegians. All through that hot summer in Southern Rhodesia he’d talked of little else. Norway was his El Dorado. He lived for nothing else but the discovery of minerals in the ice-capped fastnesses of Scandinavia. It was to finance prospecting expeditions to Norway that he had swindled his partner. That had come out at the trial. I turned to Sir Clinton. ‘Isn’t there something strange,’ I said, ‘about a man who survives a jump from an express train, goes through the Malöy raid, does resistance work – all things he’s never done before – and then gets himself killed in the one place in which he’s really at home?’
    Sir Clinton smiled and got to his feet. ‘He’s dead,’ he said. ‘And that’s all there is to it. But before he died he discovered something. When he went to the Jostedal he knew his life was in danger – hence the thorite sample and the note. Somewhere in England there’s somebody who’s expecting that sample.’ He folded the newspaper cutting and thrust the wooden box with the thorite sample back into the pocket of his coat. ‘What we need to know is what he had discovered before he died.’ He paused. ‘See – today’s Monday. I’ll have Ulvik – that’s our Norwegian representative – up at Fjaerland from Friday onwards. Find out all you can about how Farnell died – why he was on the Jostedal – and above all where that thorite sample came from. Needless to say, you’ll find our representative has authority to meet all expenses you may incur in Norway. And we shan’t forget that you’ll be acting for the company as a freelance in this matter.’
    He seemed to take it for granted that I’d switch my plans. That got me angry. ‘Look, Sir Clinton,’ I said. ‘I’m not in need of money, and you seem to have forgotten that I’m leaving for the Mediterranean tomorrow.’
    He turned in the doorway of the cabin. ‘The Mediterranean or Norway – what’s it matter to you, Gansert?’ He gripped my