Letters for a Spy Read Online Free PDF

Marines and, on top of that, had been so warmly endorsed by Lord Louis Mountbatten. And there was nothing like: ‘How is everything? I hope you’re well. This comes with lots of love.’ No best wishes, even. No mention of Sybella. To me, he sounded both pompous and imperious.
    Cold.
    And the enclosed copy of what he had written to the solicitor—although of course that was a business letter and couldn’t be so readily assessed—did little to soften this impression.
    “My dear Gwatkin,
    “I have considered your recent letter concerning the Settlement that I intend to make on the occasion of William’s marriage. The provisions which you outline appear to be reasonable except in one particular. Since in this case the wife’s family will not be contributing to the Settlement, I do not think it proper that they should necessarily preserve, after William’s death, a life interest in the funds which I am providing. I should agree to this course only were there children of the marriage. Will you therefore so redraft the Settlement as to provide that if there are children the income is paid to the wife only until such time as she remarries or the children come of age. After that date the children alone should benefit.
    “I intend to be in London for the two nights of the 20 th & 21 st of April. I should be glad if you could make it convenient to take luncheon with me at the Carlton Grill at a quarter to one on Wednesday 21 st . If you will bring the new draft with you we shall have leisure to examine it afterwards. I have written to William & hope that he will be able to join us.
    “Yrs. sincerely,
    “J.G. Martin.”
    Addressed to F.A.S. Gwatkin, Esq., McKenna & Co., 14 Waterloo Place, London, SW1. Written on the 10 th of April and clearly marked ‘Copy’.
    I could almost hear the man saying: “I should be glad if you could make it convenient…!”
    And what a fibber! It had occurred to me yesterday, on my second reading of these letters, that in fact he hadn’t written to William—and wouldn’t indeed be doing so for a further three days. But, again, this had appeared to me such a piffling point that I hadn’t even mentioned it to Mannheim. At twenty-five, I had no wish to sound as fussy as the old fellow I was finding fault with. (I assumed Mr Martin to be well into his sixties.)
    But now, come to think of it, wasn’t it perhaps slightly surprising that he had allowed himself this small inaccuracy? Small, yet so unnecessary. Didn’t it seem to go wholly against type?
    And I didn’t much like the way, either, that he referred to ‘the wife’ both times, rather than attempting to personalize things by using Sybella’s name—although maybe this was more or less standard practice between a client and his solicitor.
    But would it have been standard practice, I wondered, even when the client and the solicitor were on sufficiently friendly terms to be meeting each other for lunch?
    On the other hand, however, at least he had written William’s marriage, William’s death. (Which succinct phrase, ‘after William’s death’, repeatedly gave me pause. The sanguine expectation would have been of something approaching forty years. The cruel reality had turned out to be a mere fortnight. That made me feel—but only temporarily each time—almost as sorry for the father as I had felt for the son, and for Sybella too. I had the idea that Mr J.G. Martin was a widower, and that William must have been his only child. The old man became less cold and imperious, therefore, and more simply a suffering human being, whenever I paused for a moment to think about the full picture.)
    The hotel in which these letters had been written was Georgian. It stood in the High Street and had an ivy-covered portico. On coming out of the railway station, I had found myself in New Street, which was only a short distance from the Black Lion.
    There, I pressed the bell on Reception, put down my suitcase—a large blue leather one of my