by Janice Law
That might still be the best plan, but if Goldfarber had any sense he’d be off somewhere without extradition before the commissioner could line up the London authorities. There was another serious complication: a lack of evidence. Thanks to Goldfarber’s sharp eyes, there was now nothing to prove that those two expensive “Picassos” had come from my brush. And what were the odds that either Richard or Harry would back up my claim? Infinitesimal.
Goldfarber might lack finesse, but between him and Richard, I’d been checkmated. At this dismal realization, I turned north toward Regents Park, away from my normal route home. It was an unexpectedly mild night and the city shine, reflecting off the low, cloudy gray sky, made walking pleasant. I have some happy memories of dark London parks during the early days of the blackout, and perhaps that is why I found myself heading toward those convenient groves and shrubberies. You never know whom you’ll meet in the shadows, and during the war, certain young fellows almost reconciled me to the ever-dubious delights of nature.
So I was not alarmed when I heard footsteps behind me. The crowd had been leaving the auction rooms, and the tap of high heels rang along the sidewalks. These, however, were male and solitary, and they followed me from the post auction bustle. I didn’t bother to look back until I entered the park, hung with mist and shadowed by its ancient trees. I remembered when the lawns had been dotted with bomb craters and heaped with bricks and rubble from destroyed buildings. Now with the walks and bridges repaired, the shattered trees removed, the ponds clean, the whole area was once again suitable for midnight encounters. I passed under a streetlight and turned to see a robust shape in a long coat and a bowler hat. Coming my way? I walked on but slower, for I was up for adventure.
Another look back told me that he was carrying a cane. Very Mayfair, indeed. I slowed down a little more, and when I reached the shadow of a convenient tree, I stepped off onto the grass. A moment later he was beside me, a large, powerful man whose face was shaded by the brim of his hat. I heard a click and realized that his walking stick was actually a long and gleaming sword cane. My heart jumped. There’s always the chance of a mistake with these excursions. That’s the point of the thing in a way, but there are moments when piquancy turns to terror.
A quick glance assured me that the park was deserted, and the traffic out on Baker and Marylebone sounded faint and sporadic. “Armed for all eventualities?” I asked. I’m happy to say that my voice seemed steady.
“For you, Herr Bacon,” he said, and he lifted his head just enough so that I recognized him.
“You hardly need cold steel for me, Herr Goldfarber.”
“Please. Hugo Kovar.”
“That could be arranged,” I said. “We could certainly agree on that.”
He gave me a look. “What were you doing at the auction?”
“Admiring the works of the Spanish master. Unfortunately, they were too rich for my purse. Or I would certainly have bought them.”
“Would you really? There’s no need to worry, you know. They’re as authentic as can be. We must be philosophical, Herr Bacon. There are many fine works by anonymous hands, including some that bear famous names. We have performed an artistic service, Herr Bacon, as certain lovely things that were destroyed are now resurrected.”
“For your very great profit.”
“Well, Herr Bacon, I could be generous, although you did owe me for the painting in Tangier, or I could kill you. Either presents problems.” He made a face to indicate the difficulties of his position and the weight of his decision. What’s in a name, asked Shakespeare; in Goldfarber’s case, plenty. With the proprietor of the unlamented Tangier gallery, I’d have been dead already. Hugo Kovar, with his cashmere coat, his bowler hat, his sword cane, and a big load of mitteleuropean angst, was a slightly different item with a little more restraint. Or maybe just disinclined to ruin his fine clothes.
He lit a cigarette and started to smoke with his weapon tucked under his arm. “You’re sort of a loose end,” he said after a minute.
“You’ve got more than one. Neither the KGB nor MI6 can be very happy with you.”
“Security services are forever. They are immortal enemies. You are—what is the phrase—a horse of a different color.”
“Yet you’ve known where I live for some time. You must have guessed I’d be in touch.”
“What do you mean?” There was a note of alarm in his voice that hadn’t been there before. “What do you mean I know where you live?”
“Why, from the fat man, your detective. He’s been snooping around, following me at night, turning up outside my flat like a lovelorn Romeo. He pretends to be on a divorce case, but I’m a damn unlikely divorce correspondent, don’t you think?”
Goldfarber stepped a little away from me. Something had put the wind up him for sure. “I hired no detective.” He threw away his cigarette and gripped the sword in a businesslike way. “Walk,” he said and nodded toward the furry darkness of a grove.
I didn’t move, gambling that he wouldn’t dare attack me so close to a main road. Once well into the trees, though, all bets would be off. He gestured again with the sword, but I heard a sound, and maybe he did, too, for he turned his head toward the road. It was the creak and whirr of a cyclist nearby.
“Schnell, schnell!” Goldfarber cried, forgetting his English in his agitation, and he hit me across the back with the flat of the sword.
I was protected by my leather jacket, but he and his long weapon were between me and the exit from the park. I dodged away as Goldfarber raised the sword. I assumed he knew how to use it—East Europeans of my acquaintance had been big on swords, sabers, and foils—and I was wondering how long I could evade a determined attack when I saw that luck was with me. There was a light bobbing along the road, the cyclist approaching. Goldfarber thought it well to sheathe his cane.
Run or wait, Francis? Wait, maybe, for there was an oncoming car, too, its lights spearing down the dark park road. The car passed the cyclist, before its headlamps swept over us both so that Goldfarber was momentarily blinded. That was my chance, and I started a mad, blundering dash, my heartbeat juddering in my throat, my lungs closing up. I’d not been as calm as I’d thought, for I was running not for the street but for cover and darkness.
I heard Goldfarber shout before the squeal of brakes and the sound of car doors opening. Trouble for someone. When I saw two men leap from the black car and charge toward him, I dived into the nearest shrubbery and lay flat under the wet, leathery leaves of a rhododendron.
Sounds of a struggle. I lifted my head to see that Goldfarber had his sword unsheathed again and was slashing it back and forth in a dangerous way. One of his attackers screamed as the weapon raked his face, then the three of them formed one dark churning shape in the glare of the headlights, before I heard a shot. Goldfarber, hit or startled by this serious turn of events, dropped the cane and broke away. They were on him in a minute, and their speed and strength made me shrink further down into the damp and mossy ground. Had they noticed me?
I really hoped not, because after a brief struggle, they got Goldfarber’s arms behind his back. He was kicking and shouting in three languages, before one person struck him across the back of the head and the other launched him toward the car. They were set to muscle him into the backseat, when a woman screamed, “No!”
Everyone, surprised, froze. Me, too; I’d forgotten the cyclist and not guessed that it was a woman. I had to crawl halfway out of the shrubs to see her. She had stopped, astride her bike, and she was aiming a pistol, which she held two handed. I hit the ground the instant before she pulled the trigger. Goldfarber was not so lucky. He straightened up convulsively, crumpled into one of his attacker’s arms, then slid onto the sidewalk.
The two men were shouting with anger and surprise, and one of them fired back once, twice. I flopped face-down to breathe up leaf mold and dust and spores and dirty water. The woman wou
ld be dead, and they’d want no witnesses. If they remembered seeing me, they’d surely come looking, and I crawled further into the shrubbery, backing noisily into gnarled stems and broken branches. I froze again, but now I could hear a third voice shouting and the angry blast of a car horn. I raised my head just enough to see two dark figures leap back into the car. It took off with a screech of rubber, leaving Goldfarber on the tarmac.
I waited until I could take a complete breath, then stood up. Goldfarber lay motionless, and the cyclist, not dead at all, was standing beside her fallen bike. She was gripping her right arm, which had turned dark from shoulder to elbow. As I watched, she began a half-stumbling, half-walking advance toward where he lay, and when she came farther into the cone of the street light, I recognized Edith Angleford.
“Mrs. Angleford,” I called, for I could see that she was, if not seriously hurt, losing blood.
She looked up. She was still gripping the pistol in her right hand, but the wound in her arm would not allow her to raise it easily. “Mrs. Angleford, you’ve been shot. We need to stop the bleeding.”
She staggered toward Goldfarber. “Is he dead?”
I went to check for a pulse in his neck. Then I saw the bullet hole in one temple and the mess of the exit wound on the other side. I nodded. “A lucky shot. How you missed all the others, I don’t know.”
“I’m the best shot in Morocco,” she said. The pistol rattled on the sidewalk, and she sat down heavily. I knelt beside her and eased her jacket from her wounded arm. The bullet had torn across her bicep but missed her chest.
“We need a bandage. Are you wearing a slip?”
When she nodded, I lifted up her skirt and grabbed the white garment underneath. Fortunately, it was a half slip and easy to remove, because the fabric proved strong and difficult to tear. I folded it into a bandage and wrapped it tightly around her wound. “Press on it. We need to stop the bleeding.”
She was chalk white and breathing quickly, but she said, “We need to get out of here.”
I helped her to her feet. “And you need a doctor, the hospital.”
She picked up the pistol and shook her head. “Help me to the bike.”
Well, that was lunacy, but I wasn’t going to argue with the best shot in Morocco if she had a weapon in hand. I picked up the bike and steadied it, but when she tried to grip the handlebars, she gave a little cry and nearly fainted. Nearly, but not quite, for she was able to keep a death grip on the pistol. Maybe Tony was right after all, and she really was a Medea.
“You’ll have to pedal,” she said.
“I haven’t been on a bicycle in thirty years.”
“Supposedly, you never forget.” Still clutching her wound, she struggled to raise the pistol. “Get on. I’ll sit behind.”
I didn’t stop to argue about this. Cars would be passing, and I was already up to my neck in a hanging offense. Public indecency or inebriation I could handle; homicide was a different matter. Before I could decide how likely we could cross the park unnoticed, I got onto the bike. Edith sat on the rack behind, and with a jolt and a wobble I stepped on the pedals.
You never forget, but you surely lose skill. We swayed one way and another, and twice I had to put a foot down on the tarmac to keep from tipping us both onto the ground. Edith Angleford revealed a surprisingly complex and unladylike vocabulary. The work was surprisingly heavy, too, and I had to put my whole body into each pedal stroke as we toiled across the park.
“Where are we going?” I asked, once I’d managed to get us rolling smoothly.
“I rent a flat in Camden Town. My landlady loaned me the bike, so I have to get it back.”
“Oh, right, all the way to Camden Town. You’ll have a mess of blood on the machine.”
She poked me in the back with the pistol. “Just pedal.”
Onward, Francis. We skidded off onto narrow walking paths whenever we saw car lights or spotted pedestrians, and I kept the bike’s headlamp off, but that brought some problems of its own. More than once, I had to hit the brakes or make a sharp, unexpected turn. It was after one of these that Edith slumped against my back with a groan. She’d been wobbling on the seat behind me, which didn’t make my job any easier, but now, though she straightened up again, I was afraid she was going to pass out. I didn’t fancy wheeling an unconscious woman around the park, especially not with a murder weapon in the bike basket.
“You need a doctor,” I said.
“A doctor will report to the police.”
“Maybe not,” I said, because I’d had an inspiration. At the first phone box I saw, I disregarded the pistol, braked, and pulled the bike over. “We need help,” I said. “Of an unofficial nature.”
Fortunately, she agreed with my diagnosis. She managed to get off the back, stood uncertainly for a moment, then sat down on the ground. I went into the phone box and tried every number I could think of for Freddy, a midlevel thug I’d met in the course of a wild night toward the end of the war. We’d stayed in touch. I was amused by his stories of criminal machinations, and he coveted one of my paintings. Whenever we met, we got along fine.
I’d run through most of my pocket change before I located him through a friend of a friend. Freddy was at a back-room poker game, and my call gave him a chance to take his winnings, so he was in a helpful mood.
“Francis! Long time!” For a man who spent his life in the shadows, literally and figuratively, Freddy had an emphatic speech pattern. “How’re things?”
“Never better, personally, but listen, Freddy, I need a doctor fast.”
“National health, now, old boy! You just go to the casualty ward and present your card.”
“No can do on this one, Freddy. I need a doctor who operates after-hours, so to speak.”
“I might know someone. Painful private ailment, is it? Or knocked-up lady friend—not that that’s apt to be your problem.” He laughed.
“Gunshot wound, Freddy, with blood loss.”
“Why didn’t you say?” And he gave me an address in Camden Town. “I’ll call him! Get there fast!”
“Fast as I can. I’m cycling with the patient.”
“Really, Francis!” he said in exasperation, as if I were the felon with a string of convictions as long as my arm, and he was the solid citizen. “You’ve got to learn to drive at some time!” And he hung up.
I helped Edith back onto the bike and resumed my labors. We came out of the park near the locks, and I said to Edith, “We need to lose that pistol. Can you think of a better place?”
“It was my father’s,” she said. “He carried it in the Great War.”
“It will carry you to the gallows if you’re found with it.”
For a moment there was only the squeak of the seat, the click of the pedals, and the whirr of the derailleur. “All right, stop.”
I did and she put the pistol in my hand. I pulled the bike close to the water, checked that there was no one around, and hurled the weapon into the canal. Then we resumed our journey, past the bridges with their dark abutments, past old stables and all the mysterious engineering of the locks, past tall warehouses, black with soot, and past the bomb ruins at their feet, overgrown with weeds and weedy shrubs, and under the railroad overpass with its rails and ties like a monster backbone.
To add to our joy, a drizzly rain came on, and we were both half-soaked before I reached Camden High Street. The doctor’s house was off this on a narrow lane. His was a respectable, well-kept place with a light on in one of the upper rooms. I stopped the bike and steadied it so that Edith could get off. She was nearly dropping with blood loss and fatigue, and she had to hang on to the banister to keep from falling. I went up the steps and rang the doorbell.
A moment later, a light went on downstairs and the doctor appeared, a large bald man with a little goatish beard. He was wearing a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up and dark tr
ousers and carpet slippers. His eyes were hidden behind lightly tinted glasses. “Don’t stand about on the step. Come in quickly.”
“The bicycle,” Edith said.
“Leave it and help me get her inside,” he told me.
She gave a little cry when he tried to help her along.
“Gunshot wound,” I said. “Upper arm.”
He led us down the hall and into his brightly lit surgery. “In here. Sit.” He motioned toward a stout, well-padded chair. While I helped Edith off with her blouse and got her wrapped in a clean blanket, the doctor washed his hands. Then he brought over a tray of scalpels and needles and gauze pads and sat down on the stool next to his patient.
The doctor was well equipped. He had an examination table complete with stirrups, and I guessed that his specialty was illegal operations, but he seemed competent for gunshots, as well. He cut away my improvised bandage, and dropped it, soaked with blood, in a kidney pan. In the bright light of the surgery, I saw that the bullet must have nicked one of the larger blood vessels.
Then he got to work cleaning the wound, preparatory to stitches and a proper bandage.
He hooked up a bottle of saline solution to Edith’s other arm, and he gave her a shot of morphine. With this, she leaned back on the headrest, her dark eyes enormous in her bloodless face, and stopped trembling.
Even in her drugged stillness, Edith had an extraordinary face, one I must paint, and I wished for a photograph of her just at that moment, when she’d accomplished exactly what she’d set out to do and nearly lost her life in the process. How many of us can say the same?
“The bicycle,” she said now, her voice just above a whisper. “Will you take it back? It goes in the shed at the end of the garden. The gate is never locked.”
I looked at the doctor.
“You’ve got plenty of time to do that. She must have fluids, and the drip will take some hours,” he said. “We’ll need to keep her warm, too. She can’t possibly leave in her present condition, and it will be safer for her to get a cab in the morning. Less noticeable.”