An American Spy

by An American Spy (retail) (epub)

  ‘I saw the sign,’ Jane answered. There was a short silence. ‘About Strathmere?’ she prompted after a moment.

  ‘Aye,’ Blundel said. ‘Straight on down the road a mile and a bit. Biggish oak tree at the gate, can’t hardly miss it.’

  ‘Thanks.’ Jane smiled. She looked around the room. ‘Is it always this quiet?’

  Blundel let out a little snorting laugh. ‘If it was always this quiet I’d be out of business then, wouldn’t I?’ he said. He shook his head. ‘No, woman, it’s teatime, that’s all.’

  ‘I thought maybe that was it.’

  ‘Would you like some then?’

  ‘Tea you mean?’

  ‘Or summat else if you’d like. A pint perhaps?’

  ‘I’d love to,’ said Jane. ‘But I’m expected at Strathmere House.’

  ‘Oh, aye,’ Blundel said. ‘So you said.’

  ‘I’ll come back again,’ Jane offered. ‘Perhaps we can talk about the fishing around here.’

  ‘Why talk about it when you can do it then?’ Blundel responded.

  ‘Is that an offer?’

  Blundel thought about it for a moment, considering the question of fishing with a woman. ‘Could be that it is,’ he said finally. ‘I don’t suppose you brought your own tackle, did you?’

  ‘As a matter of fact I did.’ She’d packed two of her favourite reels and a pair of three-piece rods, carefully slipped into their own hard leather carrying tube.

  ‘What’s your fancy then?’ Blundel asked.

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘What do you fish for in America?’

  ‘Trout,’ Jane said. ‘Sometimes salmon in the spring.’

  ‘Trout in race stream by the mill,’ said Blundel. ‘Browns. Some chub.’ He smiled. ‘And then there’s Old Esox in the Tay just beyond.’

  ‘A pike?’ said Jane. Esox lucius was the Latin name for the European variety.

  ‘Right you are!’ Blundel said, pleased. ‘The vicar almost brought him in last year but his line broke. A yard long and forty pounds if he’s an ounce, the vicar says.’

  Apparently fish stories were the same in England as they were back home, even when it was a man of the cloth telling them. ‘Sounds like fun,’ Jane said with a grin. ‘But I really should be going.’

  ‘A mile and a bit straight on and turn in at the big oak by the gate,’ Blundel repeated and stood aside to let a fellow angler pass by. Jane thanked Blundel again, climbed back into the jeep and headed down the road to Strathmere.

  Chapter Three

  The entrance to Strathmere was like something out of Edgar Allan Poe. Massive wrought-iron gates sagged between two granite columns, gates and columns overgrown and choked with ivy and clinging pellitory, each column topped by the vine-covered stone forequarters of a rearing horse, legs kicking high, head lifted, eyes wild and mouth open in a screaming snarl. What could be seen of the columns beneath the foliage was stained and crumbling and the gates were covered with streaks of rust.

  Jane climbed out of the jeep, pushed open the gates then drove down a long lane lined with overhanging monkey puzzle trees. The lane itself was barely a rutted track, ditches on either side overgrown with chickweed and yarrow. A quarter mile on the monkey puzzles ended and Jane reached a circular driveway that ran around in front of the house. In the centre of the circle were the remains of a large marble fountain, nothing at all spurting from the penises of half a dozen cherubim or the mouths of an equal number of ornate stone dolphins.

  The house itself was a two-and-a-half storey slate-roofed, grey granite monster more than a hundred and fifty feet across. Slightly offset from the centre of the building a stone portico jutted and carved above it was a huge coat of arms, which included a pair of chained swans holding up a shield, topped by a crested helmet. The euphonious scrolled motto beneath the coat of arms read: Quaesita Marte Tuenda Arte. Digging up whatever remained of her high school Latin Jane roughly translated the motto as: ‘What is captured by strength is held by skill.’

  Jane climbed down out of the jeep and went up to the main door under the portico. She hammered at a brass knocker that repeated the forequarter horse motif from the gate columns, stepped back and waited. A long minute passed and she was about to use the knocker again when the door opened and Jane found herself staring at a portly, balding man in his fifties, dressed in a perfectly cut morning suit complete with bow tie, waistcoat with watch fob and a crisp, high-collared white shirt. The man’s black shoes had a gleaming, lapidary shine.

  ‘Yes, madam.’

  ‘Jane Todd.’

  ‘My name is Bunter, madam,’ said the fat man. ‘We’ve been expecting you.’ He looked over Jane’s shoulder. ‘The jeep is yours?’

  ‘Well, it actually belongs to the Judge Advocate General’s motor pool but for the moment it’s mine.’

  ‘I see.’ Bunter cleared his throat. ‘The bag in the back is your luggage?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘I’ll have one of the servants take it to your rooms.’

  ‘That won’t be necessary. I can do it myself.’

  The butler’s lips twitched briefly. ‘It would be best if you left that sort of thing in my hands, madam.’

  Jane hesitated, wondering if she’d crossed some arcane trench line of etiquette. One way or the other, Bunter didn’t look like someone you wanted to argue with; he had the kind of blank, unwavering stare most often seen on lions crouched in front of libraries and museums. Finally Jane nodded. ‘As you wish.’

  ‘I do, madam,’ the butler murmured. He stepped to one side. ‘Please come in.’

  Jane stepped into a small entrance foyer guarded by a half-scale carved oak figure of a Saracen with a scimitar in his hand. The dark wooden face bore a remarkable resemblance to the dangling heads portrayed on the sign of the Journey to Jerusalem. Behind Jane the butler shut the door, then stepped in front of her.

  ‘If you’ll follow me, madam, I’ll show you into the drawing room.’ Bunter led the way up a short flight of marble stairs into a larger vestibule fitted with fruitwood wainscoting and pale green watered silk. From there they headed across a large open area past an immense, curving stairway that led to the upper floor, finally reaching a pair of high double doors that opened into the long, high-ceilinged drawing room. ‘I’ll fetch the ladies now, shall I?’ Bunter asked rhetorically. He stepped out of the room and swung the doors closed, leaving Jane on her own.

  She crossed the room, going to the floor-to-ceiling French doors, which led out to a narrow balcony. She looked out. Directly in front of her there was a tangle of what might once have been an ornamental garden, long since gone to seed, and on the right there were several stone outbuildings, the largest being a coach house, the smallest appearing to be some kind of kennel. At the far end of the garden there was a small pond, beyond which was an extensive woodlot on rising ground.

  Jane turned back into the room, examining her surroundings. There were ornate rugs scattered willy-nilly across the slate floor, chairs, side tables and couches strewn about with equal abandon, although most were oriented towards a massive fireplace and overmantel carved with at least a dozen different coats of arms. The walls, wainscoted like the entrance foyer, were hung with an astounding array of ornately framed paintings, each one lit by its own little lamp and identified with a small brass nameplate. The paintings were mostly religious scenes or brooding seascapes with titles like An Angel Interceding for a Soul, The Entombment or A Scandinavian Wooded Landscape with a Waterfall. Most of the painters were Dutch, with names like van Ruisdael, Joris van Son and Jane’s favourite, Joos de Momper the Younger.

  ‘Bloody awful if you ask me,’ said a voice behind Jane. She turned, surprised, and found herself staring at a pretty young woman wearing a very unflattering brown uniform with a red ‘Provost’ shoulder flash on her jacket and a metal badge over the left breast pocket with the letters ATS picked out in bronze. The uniformed girl looked to be about twenty and even the shapeless below-the-knee ski
rt couldn’t completely hide the fact that she had beautiful legs. She also had light brown curly hair, blue eyes and a bright, wide smile. ‘You’ll be the correspondent then,’ she said. ‘I heard you drive up in the jeep and came looking for you.’ She took a few steps into the room and held out her hand. Jane took it in her own. It was small, smooth and warm. ‘I’m Lance Corporal Darling, ATS Provost Corps, assigned here.’

  ‘Corporal.’ Jane nodded.

  Her smile broadened. ‘Polly,’ she said. ‘Think of me as a general dogsbody. Coffee, sandwiches, anything on the tea cart. Odd bit of typing, some filing.’

  ‘Okay, Polly it is.’

  ‘I thought I’d pop in and say hello before Billy brought down their Ladyships.’

  ‘Billy?’

  ‘Bunter. Billy’s not his real name though. At least I don’t think it is. We just call him that.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘Bunter? The Fat Owl of the Remove? Greyfriars? The Famous Five?’

  ‘You lost me back at the Billy part.’

  ‘That’s right, you’re a Yank, so you wouldn’t know about Bunter, would you?’ She turned and looked back over her shoulder. ‘Crikey! Here come Billy and the Potties!’ She gave Jane another beaming smile. ‘I’ll give you a little time with the old girls and then I’ll come and rescue you. Must run!’ She turned and left the room at a trot, closing the door behind her. Half a minute later the butler reappeared, pulling the doors open wide before bowing ceremoniously and standing to one side, pulling himself up into full attention. ‘Lady Annabel and Lady Alice Pottinger.’

  Two elderly women stepped into the room, one slightly ahead of the other. Both appeared to be in their early eighties. They were not more than five feet, five inches tall, rail-thin, white-haired, both dressed in surprisingly fashionable tweed suits and sturdy brown Oxford walking shoes. They were obviously twins, although not identical.

  The first of the women stepped forward, frail hand extended. ‘Miss Todd, how good of you to come. I’m Annabel Pottinger and this is my sister, Alice Pottinger.’ Jane shook the old woman’s hand and then that of her sister.

  ‘Call me Jane, please.’

  Annabel Pottinger gestured in the direction of a red velvet upholstered chair. ‘Do sit down, Miss Todd. You must be quite tired after your journey.’

  Jane sat down in the offered chair and the two women arranged themselves on a small couchette across from her. ‘Bunter will bring us tea in a moment,’ said Annabel. She sat primly on the couch, tiny hands clutching her bony knees. ‘He informed me that you arrived in a jeep,’ the old woman added.

  ‘That’s right.’ Jane smiled.

  ‘Noisy things,’ said Alice Pottinger.

  ‘Alice doesn’t like jeeps.’ Annabel looked towards her sister. ‘She’s convinced Lawrence was killed in one.’

  ‘Murdered,’ Alice corrected. ‘He was murdered.’

  ‘Lawrence?’ asked Jane, bewildered.

  ‘Of Arabia,’ said Annabel.

  ‘I thought that was a motorcycle.’

  ‘Alice is convinced it was a jeep.’

  Jane wondered if the jeep had been invented then and if they’d had any in England when the famous man died. She didn’t think so. Potties indeed; at least Alice was.

  ‘Our husbands knew him from the Hittite dig at Carchemish.’

  ‘Carchemish?’

  ‘In Mesopotamia,’ said Alice.

  ‘Syria,’ Annabel corrected.

  ‘It was on the Euphrates,’ Alice said, insisting on the last word. ‘That was just before the war. They were very knowledgeable about the area.’ She paused, frowning. ‘It’s what got them killed actually, when you think about it.’

  ‘Our late husbands were in the foreign service then,’ said Annabel, as though that explained anything at all.

  ‘Your husbands,’ said Jane, completely lost now.

  Annabel smiled, lifting twenty years of time from her face. ‘You must think us quite mad, Miss Todd, prattling on like a pair of doddering old ladies.’

  ‘Not at all,’ said Jane gallantly, although it had been exactly what she was thinking.

  ‘We are a pair of doddering old ladies,’ said Alice firmly. ‘People expect us to prattle on. It’s what doddering old ladies do.’

  Jane wasn’t about to argue.

  Bunter appeared carrying a large silver tray loaded down with a tea service and a plate of sandwich triangles, crusts neatly shorn away. The bread was the colour of pale sawdust, neither white nor brown. The butler drifted across the sitting room, bent ponderously to set the tray down on the table between the women and Jane, then stood again. ‘Shall I pour?’ he asked.

  ‘No thank you,’ said Annabel.

  ‘As you wish.’ Bunter withdrew.

  Annabel did the honours, pouring out a cup for each of them, putting milk and sugar into Jane’s without asking if she wanted them or not. She handed over the delicate porcelain cup and saucer, which Jane took. Then Alice Pottinger suddenly darted forward, picked up the plate of sandwiches and offered it to her guest.

  ‘Sandwich?’ She smiled. ‘It’s only the national flour now, I’m afraid. I doubt we’ll see white again before the end of the war.’

  Jane took one of the dusty-looking little triangles just to be polite, then realised she was trapped, cup and saucer in one hand, sandwich in the other. There were no side plates so her only choice was to pop the wedge of bread into her mouth. The taste was faintly reminiscent of liver paste mixed with olives. She swallowed, trying not to think about what passed for liver paste in England after two and a half years at war.

  ‘Good?’ asked Alice.

  ‘Mmm,’ said Jane, gulping her tea.

  ‘Have another, by all means,’ said Alice.

  ‘Perhaps in a little while,’ Jane said, putting her cup down on the table between them. She was suddenly struck by an odd, and quite startling, thought. Annabel had twice mentioned that they had both been married; ‘Our late husbands,’ she’d said, but she had also introduced both herself and her sister as being Pottingers, which could only mean that the two sisters had married two brothers, both of whom were now dead.

  ‘You look very young to be a correspondent,’ said Annabel Pottinger, studying Jane over the rim of her cup.

  ‘They say it’s a young war,’ she answered.

  Alice gave a bitter little laugh. ‘It’s always a young man’s war,’ she said. ‘That’s because you don’t live long enough to get old.’

  ‘Do be quiet, Alice!’ chided Annabel but she was smiling. ‘I think my sister wants me to get to the point.’

  ‘And what point would that be?’ Jane asked, eager for some kind of enlightenment.

  ‘Rules,’ said Alice.

  Annabel nodded. ‘Quite so.’ She paused. ‘We offered Strathmere to the War Office because we wanted to do rather more during this war than we did during the last.’

  ‘We were a great deal younger then,’ said Alice, as if in explanation. She ate another sandwich. Jane did a quick calculation in her head. Even shaving twenty-eight years from their ages both women would have been in their middle to late fifties when the Great War began. Hardly innocent youth.

  ‘We did have one codicil to the arrangement,’ said Annabel. ‘Regardless of what the War Office decided to do with Strathmere, we insisted on being allowed to remain here for the duration.’

  ‘I see,’ said Jane, not seeing at all. If she was hearing them right, she was supposed to try to work with these two old bats flapping around in the belfry.

  ‘I hope you do,’ said Annabel. ‘This is our home and you are our guest for the duration of the war but, as I said before, there are rules for good house guests if you see my meaning.’

  ‘What would those rules be?’ Jane asked. ‘Although I hardly think I’ll be here for the duration.’

  ‘There are twenty-five rooms in Strathmere,’ said Annabel. ‘Thirteen rooms on the ground floor and an additional twelve rooms on the upper floor.�
��

  ‘Not counting the servants’ quarters in the attic,’ put in Alice.

  ‘And we don’t count them, do we?’

  ‘Well,’ said Alice, ‘they are empty.’ She turned to Jane, frowning. ‘Turned perfectly good housemaids into farm girls and lorry drivers. Appalling.’ She sighed. ‘All we have left is Bunter.’

  ‘As I was saying, Miss Todd, there are a total of twenty-five rooms in this house. Of those we have put twelve at your disposal, all of them on the ground floor. You will not, unless invited, come to the upper floor of the house for any reason whatsoever. Those rooms are now our private apartments and are thus sacrosanct. Is that understood?’

  ‘Perfectly,’ said Jane.

  ‘Good,’ said Annabel. She waved a hand. ‘This room shall be common to both you and the others here from the Judge Advocate General’s office and to my sister and I on the condition that the furniture and appointments be treated with respect. The kitchen in the basement will be shared. There are two large cold storage lockers. Bunter has clearly marked the one for the use of the Judge Advocate General’s staff.’

  ‘Sounds equitable enough,’ Jane said.

  ‘The jeep,’ said Alice, nudging her sister, her face dark.

  ‘Ah, yes,’ said Annabel. ‘The jeep.’ She paused. ‘I mentioned that my sister doesn’t like them.’

  ‘So you said.’

  ‘We have several motor cars in the carriage house,’ said Annabel. ‘You are welcome to use any of them except for the Alvis. Bunter uses that to do the shopping. You will of course have to provide your own petrol.’

  ‘Very kind of you to offer, Lady Pottinger, but I’m sure the Army will provide transportation.’

  Annabel Pottinger smiled knowingly. ‘Perhaps,’ she said. ‘But it is not a question of whether or not they will provide the transportation, Miss Todd; it is entirely a question of when. Until such time as it is, please feel free to use the vehicles in the carriage house.’

  ‘But not the jeep?’

  ‘But not the jeep,’ Annabel said, ‘if you can avoid it.’

  ‘Anything else?’ Jane asked.

  ‘Just one thing,’ said Annabel primly. ‘We have taken it upon ourselves to billet Lance Corporal Darling, a female member of the staff, in the chauffeur’s quarters above the carriage house. Our driver is now in the Signal Corps so the rooms are empty and we felt it would be more seemly that you be quartered there as well.’ She paused. ‘I hope you don’t feel that we have been presumptuous in this matter.’