Free A Victim of the Aurora by Thomas Keneally

said. A sweet narcotic fug of blubber-heat was already growing in the room. ‘Go ahead,’ I said, pointing to the pipe at his feet.
    â€˜No,’ he said. ‘No. What if you get us both a nip of brandy.’
    â€˜Very well.’
    â€˜But first, Anthony, could I ask you not to speculate? About Victor, I mean.’
    â€˜Do I look like a gossip?’
    â€˜Of course not.’
    I went into our quarters and poured us a half-tumbler each from the brandy bottle. In the doorway near the darkroom and the porch beyond the naturalists’ room, returning searchers were arriving and questioning and talking of the blizzard. Paul was sitting silent but thoughtful at the table, which Stigworth was serenely preparing for supper.
    When I took the brandy back to the workshop, Alec raised his glass towards me. ‘To reticence,’ he said solemnly.
    At the dinner table later, Stewart had announced Victor’s death and had even proposed aloud that it might have followed a heart seizure. Yet the obvious signs, he had said, were of head injury and exposure. God rest his soul, said Sir Eugene in conclusion.
    With such guidance, I could now only be what Alec had suggested – reticent. I felt I risked bringing on a final chaos if I said, ‘The Owner – the Chief – Sir Eugene is lying into his soup.’
    So as Barry pestered, I gave my colourless answers.
    At last he kept silent, knowing he’d pressed me too much.
    â€˜You said you had a reason to ask,’ I suggested.
    â€˜Yes.’
    â€˜Well?’
    â€˜It’s that Henneker was a thorough man. In his field he was a damn sight more thorough than I am in mine. I can’t – in fact, I don’t believe – he’d let himself die that silly way.’
    I thought that was a stupid reason, but didn’t say so. I said what Alec had already said. ‘That sort of speculation is very dangerous.’
    â€˜Lives have a unity,’ he said. People then did believe death was man’s last work and bore the mark of the man.
    He patted my wrist. ‘You ought to have a hot drink and fall asleep early,’ he said. ‘And I’m sorry. For nagging you, I mean.’
    He went and found a novel and sat by the stove reading it. I sat alone and the longer I sat the better I came to like Barry’s thesis. There is a Graham Greene short story about a man who is killed by a pig that falls from a balcony in Naples. Why? Because he is the kind of man of whom falling pigs take advantage. The story is actually about the son of the man, who is exactly the sort of person to be ridiculously orphaned. But Victor wasn’t the sort of man on whom pigs fall. I knew that. Victor’s death had the stature of an assassination.
    I raised my head. Alec stood beside me. His pipe was unashamedly fuming between his lips. ‘Have you got a moment for the Leader, Tony?’
    I stood up and followed him. We went into Sir Eugene’s little alcove, and Alec rearranged the curtain so that we were unseen from outside. Sir Eugene sat side on to his table. He wore his stained white sweater and was frowning at some papers. When he saw me he put his head to one side as if I could immediately give him crucial information.
    â€˜Sit on the bed,’ he told me. I did so, arranging my legs either side of the scarred leather suitcase which protruded from under the bed-frame. Peter Sullivan at one time or another took a photograph of Sir Eugene working as he was now, frowning over papers against the background of books, bed and tattered luggage. Lady Stewart loved the photograph so much that that one – not the heroic, open-air shots of Sir Eugene be-furred, be-skied, visionary in the polar glare – was the one she hung in her living-room from 1913 till her death in 1952.
    â€˜I’m not going,’ Sir Eugene announced, ‘to make you take an oath or anything ridiculous. But we are concerned about rumours being