Enigma

trajectory of the stars, yes, perhaps. But faith in a God, Christian or otherwise?
    Beside him, Wigram uttered a loud 'Amen'.
    Wigram's visits had been frequent and solicitous. He would shake Jericho's hand with the same peculiar and tenuous grip. He would plump his pillows, pour his water, fuss with his sheets. 'They treating you well? You want for nothing?' And Jericho would say yes, thank you, he was being well looked after, and Wigram would always smile and say super, how super everything was—how super he was looking, what a super help he had been, even, once, how super the view was from the sickroom window, as if Jericho had somehow created it. Oh yes, Wigram was charming. Wigram dispensed charm like soup to the poor.
    In the beginning it was Jericho who did most of the talking, answering Wigram's questions. Why hadn't he reported the cryptograms in Claire's room to the authorities? Why had he gone to Beaumanor? What had he taken? How? How had he broken the intercepts? What had Puck said to him as he leaped from the train?
    Wigram would then go away, and the next day, or the day after, come back and ask him some more. Jericho tried to mix in some questions of his own, but Wigram always brushed them away. Later, he would say. Later. All in good time.
    And then one afternoon he came in beaming even more broadly than usual to announce that he had completed his enquiries. A little web of wrinkles appeared at the edges of his blue eyes as he smiled down at Jericho. His lashes were thick and sandy, like a cow's.
    'So, my dear chap, if you're not too exhausted, I suppose I should tell you the story.'
    Once upon a time, said Wigram, settling himself at the bottom of the bed, there was a man called Adam Pukowski, whose mother was English and whose father was Polish, who lived in London until he was ten, and who, when his parents divorced, went away with his father to live in Cracow. The father was a professor of mathematics, the son showed a similar aptitude, and in due course found his way into the Polish Cipher Bureau at Pyry, south of Warsaw. War came. The father was called up with the rank of major to rejoin the Polish Army. Defeat came. Half the country was occupied by the Germans, the other half by the Soviet Union. The father disappeared. The son escaped to France to become one of the fifteen Polish cryptanalysts employed at the French cipher centre at Gretz-Armainvillers. Defeat came again. The son escaped via Vichy France to neutral Portugal, where he made the acquaintance of one Rogerio Raposo, a junior member of the Portuguese diplomatic service and an extremely dodgy character.
    'The man on the train,' murmured Jericho.
    'Indeed.' Wigram sounded irritated at being interrupted: this was his moment of glory, after all. 'The man on the train.'
    From Portugal, Pukowski made his way to England.
    Nineteen-forty passed with no news of Pukowski's father or, indeed, of any of the other ten thousand missing Polish officers. In 1941, after Germany invaded Russia, Stalin unexpectedly became our ally. Representations were duly made about the vanished Poles. Assurances were duly given: there were no such prisoners in Soviet hands; any there might have been had been released long ago.
    'Anyway,' said Wigram, 'to cut a long story a whole lot shorter, it appears that at the end of last year, rumours began to circulate among the Poles in exile in London that these officers had been shot and then buried in a forest near Smolensk. I say, is it hot in here or is it me?' He got up and tried to open the window, failed, and returned to his perch on the bed. He smiled. 'Tell me, was it you who introduced Pukowski to Claire?'
    Jericho shook his head.
    'Ah, well,' sighed Wigram, 'I don't suppose it matters. A lot of the story is lost to us. Inevitably. We don't know how they met, or when, or why she agreed to help him. Or even what she showed him exactly. But I think we can guess what must have happened. She'd make a copy of these signals from Smolensk, and sneak them out in her knickers or whatever. Hide them under her floorboards. Lover-boy would collect them. This may have gone on for a week or two. Until the day came when Pukowski saw that one of the dead men was his own father. And then the next day Claire had nothing to bring him but the undecoded intercepts, because someone—Wigram shook his head in wonder '—someone very, very senior indeed, I have since discovered, had decided they just didn't want to know.'
    He suddenly