Lucid Intervals (Stone Barrington 18)

“I’m not entirely certain she knows,” Stone said. “If she does, she wouldn’t tell me.”

“Well, I don’t suppose it would do any harm to tell you. After all, you’ve shown me that you know how to keep a confidence.”

“I’m all ears,” Stone said.

“Felicity probably didn’t tell you that both the foreign secretary and the home secretary, earlier in their careers, had connections with MI6.”

“No, she didn’t.”

“The home secretary, whose name is Prior, had a more informal connection, but the foreign secretary, whose name is Palmer, was actually, for a time, an agent.”

“I’ve never heard that,” Stone said.

“And you didn’t hear it here,” Hackett replied.

“Did they know you-rather, Whitestone-on a professional basis?”

“They did, Palmer more closely, since he worked with Whitestone. They were such good friends that Palmer invited Whitestone down to his place in the country for a weekend on one occasion.”

“Sounds chummy.”

“Oh, it was. Prior was there, too. He was a parliamentary private secretary to a previous home secretary at that time.”

“Does their enmity for Whitestone date to that weekend in the country?”

“I suppose you could say that in that weekend lay the germ of their enmity.”

“What happened there?”

Hackett sighed. “All right, here goes. Pay attention. Palmer had a daughter, a beautiful and brilliant girl, who was a doctoral candidate at Cambridge. She was twenty-four.”

“How does she come into this?”

“In spite of the age difference, she and Whitestone were drawn to each other, and an affair ensued.”

“Are you telling me that this whole business hinges on a May-September affair?”

“It went further than that,” Hackett said. “The girl found herself pregnant, as the British like to say.”

“And Whitestone was the father?”

“He was the only candidate,” Hackett said. He was gazing out the window at Penobscot Bay now.

“Wouldn’t he marry her?”

“Alas, he was already married, and a divorce would have taken two years to achieve, assuming his wife was agreeable to the split.”

“So what happened?”

“Things became more complicated,” Hackett said.

52

They sat quietly for a moment while the housekeeper cleared away their lunch dishes. When she had finished, Stone asked, “Complicated? How?”

“Part of what I have to tell you was not directly known by Whitestone; he figured it out later.”

“Tell me.”