Private Games (Private 3)

‘Clonk him back,’ Knight said.

He glanced at the clock. It was past eight. None of the nanny services he’d used in the past would be open. He punched in his mother’s number.

She answered on the third ring, sounding wrung-out, ‘Peter, tell me it’s just a nightmare and that I’ll wake up soon.’

‘I’m so sorry, Amanda.’

She broke down in muffled sobs for several moments, and then said, ‘I’m feeling worse than I did when your father died. I think I’m feeling as you must have with Kate.’

Knight felt stinging tears well in his eyes, and a dreadful hollowness in his chest. ‘And still often do, Mother.’

He heard her blow her nose, and then say: ‘Tell me what you know, what you’ve found out.’

Knight knew his mother would not rest until he’d told her, so he did, rapidly and in broad strokes. She’d gasped and protested violently when he’d described Cronus’s letter and the accusations regarding Marshall, and now she wept when he told her of Guilder’s confession and his exoneration of her late fiancé.

‘I knew it couldn’t be true,’ Knight said. ‘Denton was an honest man, a great man with an even greater heart.’

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‘He was,’ his mother said, choking.

‘Everywhere I went today, people talked about his generosity and spirit.’

‘Tell me,’ Amanda said. ‘Please, Peter, I need to hear these things.’

Knight told her about Michael Lancer’s despair over Marshall’s death and how he’d called the financier a mentor, a friend, and one of the guiding visionaries behind the London Olympics.

‘Even James Daring, that guy at the British Museum with the television show,’ Knight said. ‘He said that without Denton’s support, the show and his new exhibit about the ancient Olympics would never have got off the ground. He said he was going to thank Denton publicly tonight at the opening reception.’

There was a pause on the line. ‘James Daring said that?’

‘He did,’ Knight said, hoping that his mother would take comfort from it.

Instead, she snapped, ‘Then he’s a bald-faced liar!’

Knight startled. ‘What?’

‘Denton did give Daring some of the seed money to start his television show,’ Amanda allowed. ‘But he most certainly did not support his new exhibit. In fact, they had a big fight over the tenor of the display, which Denton told me was slanted heavily against the modern Olympics.’

‘It’s true,’ Knight said. ‘I saw the same thing.’

‘Denton was furious,’ his mother told him. ‘He refused to give Daring any more money, and they parted badly.’

Definitely not what Daring told me, Knight thought, and then asked, ‘When was this?’

‘Two, maybe three months ago,’ Amanda replied. ‘We’d just got back from Crete and …’

She began to choke again. ‘We didn’t know it, but Crete was our honeymoon, Peter. I’ll always think of it that way,’ she said, and broke down.

Knight listened for several agonising moments, and then said, ‘Mother, is anyone there with you?’

‘No,’ she said in a very small voice. ‘Can you come, Peter?’

Knight felt horrible. ‘Mother, I desperately want to, but I’ve lost another nanny and …’

She snorted in disbelief. ‘Another one?’

‘She just up and quit on me half an hour ago,’ Knight complained. ‘I’ve got to work every day of the Olympics, and I don’t know what to do. I’ve used every nanny agency in the city, and now I’m afraid that none of them will send anyone over.’