“We could . . . talk,” he suggested.
“It’s very cold.”
“I wasn’t thinking of getting out of the car. We’d just park, and talk, for a few minutes.”
“What would we talk about?”
She hadn’t actually said no, so he eased the car to a halt and switched off the engine.
“About each other?”
“Why?”
He found, as he had done from the beginning, her habit of asking devastatingly straightforward questions completely disconcerting.
“I’d like to know all about you.”
“I don’t think you really would,” she said.
“Well, I can’t possibly know that until you’ve told me something.”
“What?”
“Anything you like.” He held her hands. “I have never been so instantly attracted to anyone as I was to you. I would like us to get to know each other as well as is possible. I would like to think we could perhaps grow to like each other, perhaps even to love each other.”
“Why is that important?”
“Because I think I would like to make you my wife.”
“We’ve only just met.”
“And I said—”
“That you were instantly attracted to me. Believe me, Harry, I am very flattered. But you must also believe me when I say there is no way we can ever be married.”
“You mean there is someone else.”
“There is no one else. It is just not possible. I think we should go home now.”
“I would like you to tell me why it is impossible.”
“You will have to accept my word for it.”
He got out and cranked the engine, and they drove the rest of the way in silence
“Thank you for a most enjoyable evening,” she said as he stopped the car at the foot of the front steps.
Harry hurried round the car to open the door for her.
“There is no need to come up,” she said. “Papa will be waiting for me.”
“You’re very close, you and your father,” he ventured.
“Yes,” she said. “We are very close.”
She held out her hand, and he gave it a gentle squeeze.
“Would you like to do this again, some time?”
“Yes,” she said. “I would, thank you.”
He kissed her glove.
*
Berkeley was in the drawing room.
“How did it go?”
Anna drew off her gloves and then took off her coat. “It was very pleasant.”
“Did he make advances?”
“I think he wanted to. But I put him off.”
“Why?”
She shrugged. “I didn’t want to give him any ideas.”
“I would say he already has ideas. Didn’t you like him?”
“He is very nice.”
Berkeley regarded her for some seconds, and she had the impression that he wanted to say something more, but then he changed his mind.
“You go to bed,” he said. “And have a pleasant dream.”
Anna kissed him and went upstairs. She was in her bedroom before she wondered where the Savoses were; it was quite unlike them to go to bed before eleven. On the other hand, she reflected, Papa had probably sent them up so that he could be alone when she came in, just in case there had been some kind of crisis.
She undressed, got into bed and lay on her back to look up at the canopy. Oh, Papa, she thought. He was the only man in the world to whom she could possibly give her whole heart. She had already done so. He had fought and killed for her, like any Lancelot. She had seen him at his most grimly terrible and she had seen him at his most loving. In her heart she was almost relieved that Lucy was dead, because with Lucy she had had to share him, even if Lucy had never known the truth.
But thinking about Papa to the exclusion of all else, to live in a dream world where only the two of them existed, taking on all comers, was a dead end. Papa more than anyone wished her to marry and create for herself a normal life. Harry Druce? He had hinted that he wanted to know a great deal more about her. That was impossible, although she could not escape the suspicion that he already knew too much. But she needed to know even more about him. The problem was that what she wanted to know was not what any properly brought-up young lady should wish to know.
Have you ever shot a man, Harry? Have you ever been shot at, and hit, and gone down in a welter of pain and blood. He was probably old enough to have fought in the war, if only at the very end. But that did not mean he had seen action. Have you ridden with the Black Hand, Harry? Did you ever see the body of the woman you loved, after she had been tortured to such an extent that she hanged herself? Not only could those questions never be asked, but they were questions to which she already knew the answer. They constituted the enormous gulf between a man like Harry and a man like Papa, and thus between a man like Harry and Papa’s daughter.
Anna sighed, and rolled on her side, to sleep.
*
When she awoke her father was in her room, standing by the bed looking down at her.
Anna sat up. “Papa?”
He sat beside her. “It seems that my family, and my friends, cannot escape misfortune,” he said.
“What has happened?”
“Savos died, last night.”
“But how?”
“I think he had a heart attack. We’ll know today, after the autopsy.”
“Oh, Papa.” She threw her arms round his neck to hug him. “Do you think . . .”
“No,” he said vehemently. “You had nothing to do with it.”
“Is Martina very upset? What will she do? She has no friends in England.”
“The answer to your first question is no. Martina’s marriage was very much a convenience, and Savos was quite old. She knew it was coming. As for the second question, I agree we have a bit of a problem. She has made no friends down in Hastings, so far as I know, and her habits really do not suit her to polite society. I would like to keep her here. She’s a superb housekeeper, and well . . .”
“You would like to go to bed with her.”
He raised his eyebrows.
“Oh, she would like to go to bed with you, too,” Anna said. “I can tell from the way she looks at you. Have you ever had her?”
“No,” Berkeley said. “I won’t say I haven’t been tempted and I won’t claim to be virtuous, but I do not make a habit of cuckolding old friends.”
“I’m glad,” she said. “And I would like her to stay. She is about the only woman in the world I can talk to, because she knows all about me. And if you’d like to fuck her, Papa, now she is a widow, that is really quite all right with me.”
It distressed Berkeley to hear words like that coming from such beautiful young lips, but presumably it had been an everyday word to her while she had been away.
He kissed her. “We’ll see.”
She caught his hand as he stood up. “Will you want to marry her?”
“I haven’t thought about it. Would that bother you?”
She gave one of her utterly charming smiles. “We’ll see.”
*
There was a Serbian cemetery in London, and Alexandros Savos’s body was taken there the day after the autopsy. Only Martina, Anna, Howard and Berkeley accompanied it; he did not bring the other children out of school as they had hardly known the Savoses, and only took the little boy because there was no one to leave him with. In the event, Howard enjoyed himself thoroughly, not understanding what was going on. A Serb priest conducted the brief graveside service, and the old policeman was lowered into the ground.
The four of them walked slowly back to the waiting taxi.
“I’ll arrange for a headstone,” Berkeley said.
“Thank you. You are very kind.”
“Then we must go down to Hastings and pack up your things, and arrange for the house to be sold. But that can wait till next week.”
“You are sending me back to Serbia?”
“Only if you wish to go.”
She shuddered.
“Then we’d like you to come and live with us, permanently. Would you like that?”
“Oh, Berkeley!” Her eyes filled with tears. “You are so kind to me. There is nothing I would rather do.”
She kissed him, and he looked above her head at Anna who waggled her eyebrows.
*
Whatever her true feelings, Martina had the sense to understand both that Berkeley was still in mourning for Lucy and his mother, and that she should be in mourning for Alexandros; so she returned to her job as housekeeper with as much enthusiasm as before, while continuing to share the duties of surrogate mother to Howard with Anna. As Anna had indicated, the two women – there was only ten years between them – got on very well, and there was no doubt that their shared secrets and the fact that they were both Balkan in birth and upbringing brought them together against the English world with which they were surrounded.
Berkeley had no objection although he kept a careful eye on the drug situation; but it was never in evidence. As soon as they got home, he took them into Wellingborough, to the address given him by Helen. They found the house locked and boarded up, with a FOR SALE sign in the front garden.
They went to the named estate agent, but he was no help.
“Mr and Mrs Green left over a month ago, sir. Seems Mr Green had an offer of a better job in the south.”
“What did he do?” Berkeley asked.
“You know, sir, I have no idea. But there it is.”
“I assume you have a forwarding address?”
“No, sir, I do not.”
“But you must have somewhere to send the money, when you sell the house?”
“There is a bank account in London.”
“In whose name?”
“I’m sorry, sir. I cannot tell you that. Client confidentiality, you understand.”
“Well, then, let me have the name of the bank.”
“No, sir, I cannot.”
Berkeley kept his temper with an effort. “Very good. We’d like to look at the house if we may?”
“You wish to buy?”
“We might.”
“I’ll just get the keys.”
He accompanied them himself, which meant it was impossible to search the place. To a casual inspection there was no evidence of any Nazi connection.
“We’ll let you know,” he told the agent and drove back to the farm. “A false lead,” he remarked. “Just bad luck.”
“He must have left the moment it came out that the murder attempt had failed,” Martina said.
“So what do we do now?” Anna asked.
“We wait,” Berkeley told her.
*
He continued to hope that something might develop between Anna and Harry Druce. Sadly, she refused Druce’s next invitation to have dinner, and he did not call again.
“Can you find out,” he asked Martina, “whether it is the man or the idea that puts her off?”
“I am sure it is the idea,” Martina said. “This Mr Druce seems to be a very nice young man.”
“Then what’s to be done?”
“You are too impatient, Berkeley. Anna is not yet twenty. That would be very young to be married in any event. You must give her time.”
He knew she was right and determined to take her advice, while the whole matter seemed less urgent when the other children came home for the Easter holidays. Including the two Lockwoods they made a boisterous addition to the family, but Berkeley felt it was time to have serious chats with all of them.
John was no problem, in the short term. He was due at Sandhurst in the autumn and was clearly looking forward to it. But Berkeley had a fairly good idea that his son was less interested in a military career as such than in somehow following in his father’s footsteps. Explaining to him that the romantic pre-war days of cloak and dagger were history was going to be difficult, and Berkeley decided to postpone it in the hope that a year at military college might redirect his ambitions.
Alicia was a problem. When Berkeley asked her what she would like to do with her life, she replied, “Be like Anna.”
“I think you need to tell me what you mean by that,” he suggested.
“Stay at home, with you.”
“Anna stays at home with me because, well, of everything that has happened. But she won’t be here for ever. In the course of time she’ll get married and have a home of her own. Don’t you want to do that?”
“If that’s what Anna wants,” Alicia said. “But I don’t believe she’ll ever leave you, or here.”
“We’ll talk about it later,” Berkeley said, admitting temporary defeat.
Caterina, he thought, who had created these children in her own image even if Alicia, at the least, could not possibly remember her mother, must be smiling in her grave.
The Lockwoods, although they were also half-Serbian, were easier to deal with; they were very conscious that they were the children of Berkeley’s servants, even if he and his own children had always treated them as equals, and were anxious to please. Harry junior also wished to go into the army, but had no aspirations beyond being a private soldier; Berkeley undertook to use his contacts to find a good regiment. “Not,” he pointed out, “that there is much prospect of your fighting in a war, except perhaps in India.”
Mary was content to look to a life of domestic service, not that, since the war, there were many such posts available. But they were easier to find in counties like Northamptonshire and again Berkeley undertook to see if he could obtain her a suitable position, although he had already determined to fail in that and offer her a permanent post at the farm when she left school.
He carefully avoided all contact with Walton, and therefore Harry Druce, as Helen Karlovy’s trial approached. He was visited by both Peter Watt and Douglas Jameson, who would be prosecuting, just to go through his evidence. They were not interested in the background of the feud, except in so far as it provided the Karlovys with a motive for murder; the evidence as it stood was quite sufficient to secure a conviction. To avoid the faintest hint of collusion, Berkeley pointed out that the defence knew all about the feud and would undoubtedly introduce it in cross-examination. Jameson gave a cold smile and left Berkeley in no doubt that he could take care of that.
Irritatingly, he was also subjected to periodic visits from the Horsfalls, worrying about Howard. He couldn’t object to these, especially as try as they might they could not fault the care Martina and Anna were taking of the little boy. However, Joan Horsfall could not help wondering, aloud, if her grandson was being brought up in “Balkan ways”, and heavy hints were dropped as to whether it might not be a good idea to remove the child to the safety, and propriety, of his grandparents’ home. However, as Berkeley refused to consider that, they had to accept defeat, at least in the short term.
Then it was a matter of waiting for the assizes, which would be in May. Annoyingly, he had still had no word from Julia Hudson, who had returned to Berlin to rejoin her husband. He did hear from the Cohns, but they had no information to give him about anyone named Himmler. They suggested he write to the Berlin police commissioner, a man named Schuler, who would undoubtedly know the names of most members of the Nazi Party in Berlin. Berkeley, however, had no desire to become involved with the Berlin police.
Especially at this moment, for the English press were becoming interested in the case. At first, the reports had merely been that the home of retired British army colonel Berkeley Townsend had been attacked by a homicidal maniac who had murdered Colonel Townsend’s wife and servant and caused the death of his mother, before being shot by the colonel himself. Almost everyone agreed that he had done the right, indeed the only, thing, and although he had been visited by several reporters, questions regarding whether he could think of a motive for the attack could be shrugged aside.
His brief appearance in court when answering the charge of manslaughter had changed that. Then he had been on oath, and whe
n the magistrate had asked him if he could suggest any reason for the attack, he had been bound to relate, very briefly, the facts of the case: how, while serving with the Serb forces during the Balkan wars, he had shot and killed the boy’s father, thus instigating the blood feud. This had satisfied the court and most of the journalists, even if they had found it a sinisterly romantic tale. But the London Globe had not been satisfied. This was partly because the editor, John Leighton, knew more about Berkeley’s background than most, having allowed Berkeley to use the paper as cover on one of his previous forays into Europe, an arrangement he had come bitterly to regret. Leighton had had the intelligence to realise that as many thousand men had died in the Balkan wars, killed by other men, if death in warfare was reason for a blood feud, the entire Balkans would still be at each other’s throats.
A reporter accompanied by a photographer duly arrived at the farm. They had been there before, with the rest of the pack, and been fobbed off. Now they had a whole clutch of questions.
“I’m sorry,” Berkeley said, meeting them on the front porch. “You must realise that I am a witness for the prosecution, and therefore the matter is sub judice.”
“What about the woman, Helen Karlovy? We understand that she is the sister of the assassin. What can you tell us about her?”
“Nothing at all,” Berkeley said blandly.
But Leighton had also briefed his man on another aspect of the case, one which had been entirely overlooked by his rivals. “Is it not true, Colonel Townsend, that one of your children was kidnapped some years ago?”
“That is correct.”
“Can you say whether this murder attempt had anything to do with that?”
“I cannot tell you anything.”
“But the young lady has been returned to you?”
“Yes.”
“Because you paid a ransom?”
“That is one way of putting it, yes.”
“May we speak with her?”
“Certainly not,” Berkeley said, well aware that Anna was standing just behind the door.
“We’d like to take a photograph of her.”
“And I would like you to clear off my property,” Berkeley said. “Or shall I throw you off?”
They left.
Be Not Afraid Page 9