The Shepherd File Read Free Page A

people came into it and the more difficult it was for the police.
    ‘Only Pendlebury,’ said Holmes. ‘You know him, don’t you?’
    ‘I know of him,’ said Morrison, alarmed. ‘So they’re all in it. Lamb, the Foreign Office, Defence. Isn’t Pendlebury the bugs man?’
    ‘Pendlebury is, officially, chief scientific adviser to the Department of Alternative Warfare.’
    ‘That’s what I mean,’ said Morrison. ‘Bugs. That place at Porton. Bacteriological warfare. How’s he come into this? Is it bugs?’
    ‘Alternative warfare is more than bugs.’
    ‘Mostly bugs so far as I know.’
    The word,’ said Holmes, ‘should be drugs.’
    ‘Bugs is drugs,’ said Morrison. His morale seemed to be returning. ‘The more the merrier. Let’em all come. So — ' he said ‘ — Shepherd was investigating bugs for the Foreign Office, which means on loan from MI5, which means an overseas job, which means Defence comes into it because of the bugs. Damn these complicated cases. They’re all the same. Only this sounds worse. Shepherd betrayed secrets?’
    ‘Shall we say,’ murmured Holmes, ‘there is a good deal of apprehension about his activities.’
    ‘Tactfully put,’ said Morrison. ‘You ought to have been in the Foreign Office yourself.’
    ‘I was once,’ said Holmes. It was true and Morrison had forgotten it. Holmes had been in Foreign Office intelligence for a brief while at the start of his career. It was where his talents had been first noted. But all that seemed a long time ago.
    ‘I don’t think we’ll have long to wait,’ said Holmes. He got out of his chair and went over to the windows, which overlooked the Privy Council lawn.
    In the centre of the lawn was a huge plane tree, very old and wrinkled. Yellow patches spotted its green bole like camouflage. The grass round it was withered and parched. A water sprinkler hissed gently in one comer, sending out a spray which sparkled in the sun.
    Holmes stared at the view without seeing it with any clarity and without absorbing any of the detail. He watched the sparrows on the gutters and the pigeons waddling on the lawn and a blackbird standing under the falling water, ruffling its feathers, opening its mouth to drink the drops as though they were rain.
    A tall elegant man with smooth grey hair was coming up the path from Downing Street. He was very tall and very thin. He had a supercilious expression, a touch of arrogance, an aloofness of manner, which were all emphasized by the long nose and thin mouth, but they were also expressed in the way he walked, the way he handled with a flick of the wrist his beautifully rolled umbrella.
    ‘Here’s Scott Elliot,’ said Holmes.
    They greeted the Foreign Office man politely but without enthusiasm. Scott Elliot was not easy to get on with. He disliked being called away from his office, even if the call was to Downing Street, and he was inclined to claim privileges for himself and his department which irritated people. One of the first things he said to Morrison was: ‘So you have found the body.’
    The implication was that the body should have been found much earlier and that the police had been slow. ‘Yes,’ growled Morrison, and found himself making an effort to be polite, which he disliked, because he liked being polite without any effort. Otherwise he preferred being what he called natural. With Scott Elliot, he felt, he would soon become very natural. Morrison tried to soothe his feelings by lighting a pipe; whereupon Scott Elliot asked for the window to be opened even more than it already was. ‘Just a little wider,’ he said. He was slightly mollified by Holmes producing a bottle of sherry.
    ‘Ah,’ said Scott Elliot. ‘The amontillado.’
    ‘In the amontillado bottle,’ corrected Holmes and Morrison nearly choked trying not to laugh.
    ‘Really?’ Scott Elliot sniffed at his glass. His finely cut and elongated nostrils opened in a desperate effort of discrimination. He spent a long time