◆ SpookStack

NOT. T was a smiling Mat evening in 1951 when this story that was to echo round the world began-in a large house at Tatsfield, near Westerham, in Kent. It was the home > of the Macleans, Donald Maclean, then’ aged 37 and & promising senior official in the Foreign Service, had for six months been head of the American De j partment of the Foreign Office. This appointment followed sick leave of six months while he was recovering from a “nervous breakdown” which developed while he was serving as Counsellor and Head of ; Chancery in the British Em- * bassy at Cairo. . He was Teing with Melinda ; and their two children, Fergus, aged seven, and Donald, five, at Beaconshaw, their rather \ isalated douse af Tatsfeld, CLUB LIFE Then no news | For a few months after he’ , bad resumed work at the } Foreign Office at the beginning of November, Donald Maccean had led a fairly regular life, . | catching an early train back ta i Tatsfleld .cach evening and * spending his spare time with Melinda and the children, In. April this placid, domes- icity came to an end. and he married life, 2 , te bars: and clubs in the West End instead of going home, j-] About this time, too, he | Weean spending nights in town © once or twice Melinda was yithout news of him for two ' er three days at a time. reverted graduafly to the Mac- , lean of ye og in Urermendf. Was to be June 14. ig trom office T his fs Important {n view a} the circumstances of his di: appearance, ‘The change in his behaviour coincided with the return to England of a sfiead who had visited him in RirO, . - DISGRACE For Burgess Guy Burgess had been sent back from Washington, where he bad been Second Secretary ai the British Embassy, in con- siderable disgrace. He was on the point of forestalling pos- sible. dismissat {rom the Foreign Service by resigning, and was considering an offer of a well-paid post on a Lendon newspaper, + Since his return to England on May 7 he had deen Hving in London, renewing 61 friendships in a succession of luncheon, dinner and drinking parties: There is no evidence, how- ever, that his meetings with Donald Maclean were more than casuel, even. accidental > they were not close friends, Mrs. Maclean was expecting her third baby and as the birth, like that of her twe pre- ~ vious children, was to be @ dificult Caesarean, the date: was known welt in advance: — Sa E BEGGED I GO W. “HAPPY » But not long Her mother, Mrs, Dunbar who arrived in Cairo on & reviousiy ,planned visit te elinda just after Maciean’s recipitate return to London ad left her in fingncial diff. catties and In a state of con. siderable anxiety—had gone back to the United States in November, Mrs. Dunbar had_ promised to come to England about @ fortnight before Melinda's baby was born, and then, while Melinda was recuperating, take the two small boys to France for a holiday. There they would > be foined by their parents in August, when Maclean's leave was due. Melinda .had passed an extremely busy and, in many ways, happy winter getting Beaconshaw Into some sort of shepe, Her furniture had artived from Washington ani trgm Cairo, and she was end leskly occupied in makin; curtains, doing odd painting jobs and making the neglected house into a home. From just before Christmas, 2950, until the following spring was one of the happiest times in her Hie, But this was not to last. By the middie of May, when Mrs, Dunbar arrived back in Paris to stay there with her young- est daughter Harriet, Maclean's ‘erratic behaviour was again casting shadows over eee