Free A Grave Man by David Roberts

surrounded by black marble inlaid with a Greek key pattern. This was repeated on the ebonized doors to the room. On the walls hung three genuine Turner seascapes alongside a circular barometer and an electric clock.
    Verity was seated, rather to her embarrassment, next to Sir Simon who naturally sat at the head of the table. To her alarm, Graham Harvey was on her other side. She gulped as she felt her host place a hand, fleetingly, on her knee. She had a feeling this was going to be a meal she would remember. The dining-room chairs were upholstered in pink leather. It looked odd – almost comic – but it certainly set off her Schiaparelli dress and, of course, the designer loved pink.
    ‘Do you like it – the room?’
    ‘Oh, was I staring, Sir Simon? I’m so sorry but I have never seen anything like it.’
    ‘But do you like it?’ he repeated.
    ‘You have to give me time to absorb it all but, yes, I do. It’s very elegant. May I ask who designed it?’
    ‘Peter Malacrida – a friend of ours. Italian. Have you met him?’
    It so happened that she had, in the Ritz in Paris. He was one of Belasco’s drinking partners. An Italian playboy who also wrote for various newspapers and had written a couple of successful plays. She had not realized he was also an interior decorator.
    ‘Yes, I met him in Paris – the Marchese Malacrida?’
    ‘That’s right. He also designed our house in London.’
    Verity remembered how elegantly Malacrida had tried to detach her from Belasco and the difficulty she had had in convincing him that he would be unsuccessful. She was glad he was not here to tell stories.
    The sound of a Mozart piano concerto wafted through a panel in the walls. Music, as her host had promised, was laid on. It ought to have been horribly vulgar but somehow it was too eccentric for that. It was not to her taste and it was not ‘English’ but she was enjoying it as theatre.
    To change the subject she asked Sir Simon if he was planning any more expeditions. ‘It was so exciting when they almost reached the Pole.’
    ‘I’m too old myself to go on expeditions but my Foundation, which I set up to further scientific and social work, is financing – at least in part – an Anglo-German expedition to the roof of the world.’
    ‘The roof of the world?’
    ‘Tibet! To the sacred city of Lhasa, the Forbidden City. Tibet is the last truly secret place on earth. Not even Sven Hedin, the Swedish explorer, reached Lhasa. Have you read James Hilton’s Lost Horizon ?’
    ‘Shangri-La, whose people had the secret of eternal youth?’
    ‘Yes, an icy dream-like place in the high mountains with answers to questions man has always sought.’
    Castlewood was becoming very excited. His eyes shone and his soup was still untouched. She noticed that, at the other end of the table, Montillo was listening intently while nodding and smiling as Virginia told some story about Mah-Jongg.
    ‘What sort of answers?’
    ‘Miss Browne,’ he looked suddenly grave, ‘it is my belief – our belief – that Tibet is the cradle of our Aryan race.’
    ‘But the Tibetans aren’t blond and blue-eyed,’ Verity expostulated.
    ‘No, but my friend Bruno Berger has given me a copy of an extraordinary book, Die Nordische Rasse bei den Indogermanene Aliens . It proves that our Aryan ancestors went east from the Nordic heartland in northern Europe through Persia and deep into central Asia – to Tibet. Sometime I shall show you photographs of Tibetan noblemen – they do look Aryan . . .’
    ‘My dear, finish your soup. We are all waiting.’ Virginia was warning her husband that he was on his hobby horse and that not everyone was listening with sympathy.
    As if to prove his antisocial credentials, the young man beside her said, ‘That’s all tommy rot, Castlewood. It’s the sort of mad theory the Nazis like.’
    Sir Simon opened his mouth to respond but thought better of it and sank back into his chair.
    Verity looked at her neighbour with