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mind worked. You see?’
    From the blank stares it was clear that they did not see. It took me a few moments to realise that, without thinking, I had at some point switched from French to English. I back-tracked and started to give them the last bit again in French, but the policeman stopped me.
    ‘Please, Monsieur. You are wasting time – your own, mine, and certainly the hospital’s. I believe that you were with the deceased continually from the time he arrived in Geneva until he was taken ill.’
    ‘I was.’
    ‘Then I would have thought that, in view of the allegations of poisoning that have been made, you would certainly not oppose an autopsy and might even welcome it.’
    I could have hit him. ‘Are you saying now that
I
am a suspect?’
    ‘Until the results of the autopsy are known, the question of suspicion does not arise.’ He smiled unpleasantly. ‘However, I note that your late employer was not alone in his eccentricity.’
    That got a short laugh from the doctor. I turned to go. By that time I no longer cared what they did with the General. I just wanted to get out of that place.
    ‘One moment, Monsieur.’ It was the policeman again. ‘Your papers, please.’
    I gave him my residence permit. He thumbed the pages slowly. He didn’t take notes, but he was obviously memorising. He handed it back reluctantly as if disappointed that there didn’t appear to be anything wrong with it. His nod of dismissal was reluctant too. He wouldn’t forget about me. In Monsieur Vauban’s book I was trouble.
    It was Dr Bruchner, the General’s lawyer in Bâle, who told me the result of the autopsy.
    The General had died of ‘congestive heart failure following acute myocardial infarction due to coronary occlusion’. A death certificate was issued by the hospital, and a few hours later the body was flown to America for burial. A man from the American consulate was there when Dr Bruchner and I saw the coffin off at the freight department of the airport.
    Before he returned to Bâle, Dr Bruchner told me that he was in touch with the General’s executors in America and that until he heard further from them I was to carry on. He knew, of course, that I had always written the
Intercom
newsletter practically singlehanded; but he also knew, as I did, that without the General’s name on the thing, it wouldn’t amount to much. We agreed on a formula to cover the new situation. In place of the General’s signature there would be the words:
From
INTERCOM
World Intelligence Network
, Novak Editorial Unit, Geneva. In the obituary I was to do on the General I would try to sell the idea that, although
he
might be dead, the network he had founded was still very much alive, and that
Intercom
would continue to bear aloft the torch of freedom. Dr Bruchner didn’t actually advise me in so many words to start looking for another job, but his kindly smile as he told me to use my own judgment and do the best I could had much the same effect.
    Two weeks Went by. Then I had a letter from Dr Bruchner saying that the American executors had decided to sell out. They had also stated that, as the General had thought so highly of me, an offer from me personally for the shares would receive specially sympathetic consideration.
    Dr Bruchner knew too much about
Intercom
’s financial position, and mine, to comment on that suggestion. He did, though, ask whether I had any ideas about possible buyers. From the way he phrased that part of the letter I gathered that he hadn’t any ideas at all. He also said that there wasn’t much time. I didn’t have to be told that.
Intercom
had always lived a hand-to-mouth existence on subscriptions, and, since the General’s death, all we’d had inwere a few renewals from people who had probably forgotten to tell their secretaries or business managers to cancel. I gave it two months before Dr Bruchner decided to write to the executors recommending that Intercom Publishing Enterprises A.G. be placed in