‘Well, there will be a decline, I’m afraid. These headaches of yours will get worse. You may experience seizures. I can send you some literature, which will give you the general picture, and I’ll prescribe some strong painkillers. You might like to consider some sort of residential care. There’s a very good place in Hampstead I can recommend, run by the Marie Curie Memorial Foundation. In the later stages, you will require constant attention.’
The words faded into the distance. Dr Benson examined his patient with a certain amount of puzzlement. The name Atticus Pünd was familiar to him, of course. He was often mentioned in the newspapers – a German refugee who had managed to survive the war after spending a year in one of Hitler’s concentration camps. At the time of his arrest he had been a policeman working in Berlin – or perhaps it was Vienna – and after arriving in England, he had set himself up as a private detective, helping the police on numerous occasions. He did not look like a detective. He was a small man, very neat, his hands folded in front of him. He was wearing a dark suit, a white shirt and a narrow, black tie. His shoes were polished. If he had not known otherwise, the doctor might have mistaken him for an accountant, the sort who would work for a family firm and who would be utterly reliable. And yet there was something else. Even before he had heard the news, the first time he had entered the surgery, Pünd had exhibited a strange sense of nervousness. His eyes, behind the round, wire-framed glasses, were endlessly watchful and he seemed to hesitate, every time, before he spoke. The strange thing was that he was more relaxed, now, after being told the news. It was as if he had always been expecting it and was merely grateful that, at last, it had been delivered.
‘Two or three months,’ Dr Benson concluded. ‘It could be longer, but after that I’m afraid you will find that your faculties will begin to worsen.’
‘Thank you very much, doctor. The treatment I have received from you has been exemplary. May I ask that any further correspondence should be addressed to me personally and marked “Private & Confidential”? I have a personal assistant and would not wish him to know of this quite yet.’
‘Of course.’
‘The business between us is concluded?’
‘I would like to see you again in a couple of weeks. We will have to make arrangements. I really think you should go and look at Hampstead.’
‘I will do that.’ Pünd got to his feet. Curiously, the action did not add a great deal to his overall height. Standing up, he seemed to be overpowered by the room with its dark wooden panels and high ceiling. ‘Thank you again, Dr Benson.’
He picked up his walking stick, which was made of rosewood with a solid, bronze handle, eighteenth century. It came from Salzburg and had been a gift from the German ambassador in London. On more than one occasion, it had proved to be a useful weapon. He walked past the receptionist and the doorman, nodding politely at each of them, and went out into the street. Once there, he stood in the bright sunlight, taking in the scene around him. He was not surprised to discover that his every sense had been heightened. The edges of the buildings seemed almost mathematically precise. He could differentiate the sound of every car as it merged into the general noise of the traffic. He felt the warmth of the sun against his skin. It occurred to him that he might well be in shock. Sixty-five years old and it was unlikely that he was going to be sixty-six. It would take some getting used to.
And yet, as he walked up Harley Street towards Regents Park, he was already putting it all into context. It was just another throw of the dice and, after all, his entire life had been lived against the odds. He knew well, for example, that he owed his very existence to an accident of history. When Otto 1, a Bavarian prince, had become King of Greece in 1832, a number of Greek students had chosen to emigrate to Germany. His great-grandfather had been one of them and fifty-eight years later, Atticus himself had been born to a German mother, a secretary working at the Landespolizei where his father was a uniformed officer. Half Greek, half German? It was a minority if ever there was one. And then, of course, there had been the rise of Nazism. The Pünds were not only Greek. They were Jewish. As the great game had continued, their chances of survival had diminished until only the most reckless gambler would have taken a punt on their coming through. Sure enough he had lost: his mother, his father, his brothers, his friends. Finally he had found himself in Belsen and his own life had been spared only by a very rare administrative error, a chance in a thousand. After the liberation, it had given him another full decade of life so could he really complain that a final throw had now gone against him? Atticus Pünd was nothing if not generous of spirit and by the time he had reached the Euston Road he was at peace with himself. All was as it should be. He would not complain.
He took a taxi home. He never used the tube train, disliking the presence of so many people in close proximity; so many dreams, fears, resentments jumbled together in the darkness. He found it overpowering. Black cabs were so much more stolid, cocooning him from the real world. There was little traffic in the middle of the day and he soon found himself in Charterhouse Square in Farringdon. The taxi pulled up outside Tanner Court, the very elegant block of flats where he lived. He paid the driver, added a generous tip, and went in.
He had bought the flat with the profits he had made from the Ludendorff Diamond affair1: two bedrooms, a light and spacious living room looking out onto the square and, most importantly, a hallway and an office where he was able to meet clients. As he took the lift to the seventh floor, he reflected that he had no cases to investigate at the moment. All in all, that was just as well.
1 See Atticus Pünd Takes the Case
‘Hello, there!’ The voice came from the office before Pünd had even closed the front door and a moment later, James Fraser came bouncing out of the office, a bundle of letters in his hand. Blond-haired and in his late twenties, this was the assistant and private secretary that Pünd had mentioned to Dr Benson. A graduate out of Oxford University, a would-be actor, broke, and perennially unemployed, he had answered an advertisement in the Spectator thinking that he would stay in the job for a few months. Six years later, he was still there. ‘How did it go?’ he asked.
‘How did what go?’ Pünd asked in turn. Fraser of course had no idea where he’d been.
‘I don’t know. Whatever it was you went for.’ James smiled that school-boyish smile of his. ‘Anyway, Inspector Spence called from Scotland Yard. He wants you to give him a call. Someone from The Times wants you to do an interview. And don’t forget, you’ve got a client arriving here at half past twelve.’
‘A client?’
‘Yes.’ Fraser sifted through the letters he was holding. ‘Her name is Joy Sanderling. She rang yesterday.’
‘I do not recall speaking to a Joy Sanderling.’
‘You didn’t speak to her. I did. She was calling from Bath or somewhere. She sounded in a bit of a bad way.’
‘Why did you not ask me?’