‘Your best course of action is to surrender yourself to the police.’
‘Perhaps.’ Waterton backed away, still holding the gun.
Adam heard behind him the sound of the door to the flat beginning to splinter under the assault of Pulverbatch’s men. He turned his head briefly and, as he did so, Waterton ran into his bedroom and slammed shut the door. The key turned in the lock just before a thunderous crash came from the entrance hall. Two uniformed constables, one wielding a fireman’s axe, charged into the reception room.
‘He’s in there,’ Adam shouted, pointing at the bedroom door, ‘and he’s armed with a pistol.’
The policemen stopped in their tracks and looked over their shoulders, awaiting instructions. Pulverbatch strolled through the door with the ease of a pub regular approaching the bar of his local hostelry. He nodded amiably at Adam as if greeting a fellow drinker. ‘Ain’t seen you in a month of Sundays,’ he said. ‘I understand from your man you’ve caught us a murderer.’
‘He’s in there,’ Adam repeated, nodding in the direction Waterton had gone.
‘Well, what you waiting for?’ Pulverbatch addressed his constables. ‘Christmas? You’ve got that bloody axe, ain’t you? You made matchwood of the other bleeding door, didn’t you? Knock this one down so’s we can get the cuffs on this murderous toff and all go home.’
The constable with the axe, a large man almost bursting out of his overstretched uniform, took a step forward and struck the lock a sharp blow.
‘Hit it again, Garforth,’ Pulverbatch advised, ‘and this time put your back into it.’
Garforth raised the axe far above his head and brought it down on his target with tremendous force. The lock and the wood surrounding it broke into a dozen fragments and the door flew open.
There was a pause, and then Pulverbatch moved forward and stuck his head warily into the room.
‘Nobody in here,’ he said, taking several paces into the bedroom.
Adam followed the inspector inside. The policeman was correct. Waterton’s bedroom was almost spartan in its lack of furnishings and it was, indeed, empty. Looking around, Adam could see that there was nowhere to hide save under the bed. He was about to motion to Pulverbatch to indicate this when he felt a breath of air on his face. ‘The window,’ he cried.
The constable named Garforth had now also entered the room, still holding onto the axe, and he moved swiftly to the window, one sash of which had been pushed open. Garforth thrust his head through the gap. There was the sound of a pistol shot and the constable fell back into the room, blood streaming from his forehead.
Pulverbatch, galvanized by the injury to his officer, rushed forward to help him. ‘Ain’t nothing but a scratch,’ he said, relief in his voice, as Garforth looked at him with dazed eyes. ‘The bullet’s done no more than crease the skin. Stand back, for God’s sake. Ain’t you got the sense you was born with?’ This last remark was addressed to the second constable, who was approaching the open window. ‘Take care of your pal,’ Pulverbatch said, pushing Garforth, still confused and bleeding, into the other constable’s arms.
The inspector then picked up the axe, which the wounded constable had dropped as he fell backwards, and held it at arm’s length out of the window. There was the sound of another shot and the ricochet of bullet off iron axehead. Pulverbatch pulled the axe back into the room and stared at the dent in the metal. ‘This bugger’s as mad as a striped adder, ain’t he?’ he said, conversationally, to Adam.
‘He will escape,’ Adam said.
‘We’re two floors up,’ the inspector said. ‘How’s he going to do that, then? Come to that, where is he? A-hanging in mid-air?’
At first, Adam had no answer. He had heard strange stories from a gentleman of his acquaintance of an American spiritualist medium named Home who had, it was alleged, hovered in the air outside a third-storey window, but he doubted that Waterton possessed such supernatural powers. The solution to the mystery came suddenly to him. ‘The portico,’ he said. ‘There is a pillared portico at the main entrance to the building. He has dropped from the window onto the top of it. He will be endeavouring to make his way from there to the ground. We must stop him.’
He moved to the window and, very gingerly, peered through it. He was right. Waterton was crouched on top of the portico, looking down towards the cobbled courtyard below. The drop was more than twenty feet, and he was clearly seeking a means of scrambling safely down one of the white Doric pillars that framed the entrance. Indeed, he was now too involved in his search to pay attention to the window above him.
Adam leaned a little further out. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed that a new complication had been added to the drama. The courtyard had been empty save for a stray dog, but now a dishevelled figure ambled onto it from Piccadilly. It was Quint. Adam had been so intent on Waterton’s escape that he had not noticed his manservant’s earlier absence. Pulverbatch and his officers must have left Quint to follow them. Now, here he was, turning up, as so often in his life, at exactly the wrong moment.
The manservant stopped in the centre of the cobbles and, shading his eyes against the spring sunlight, looked up.
‘Take care, Quint,’ Adam shouted. ‘He has a gun.’
The scruffy figure below seemed bewildered. He looked up at the open window, as if awaiting further instructions. He had still not, it seemed, seen the man on the portico. Waterton, however, had seen him and he had heard Adam’s call from above. Caught in two minds, he fired his gun at Quint before twisting sharply around to point it upwards at Adam. As he did so, however, he lost his footing. He flailed his arms wildly in an attempt to recover his balance but was unable to do so. Adam could only watch as, with a shout of horror, Waterton toppled backwards and out of sight. There was a moment’s silence and then a howl of pain.
‘He has fallen,’ Adam said to Pulverbatch as he pulled his head back into the room. ‘We should go.’
Leaving his colleague to tend the still-bleeding Garforth, the inspector raced out of Waterton’s rooms with Adam and down the stairs. As they reached the main door, which was open, they could see Quint standing in the courtyard, staring down at a broken figure on the cobbles. They joined him.
A sheaf of papers had fallen from Waterton’s jacket pocket and was lying on the ground. Adam reached down and picked them up. He glanced briefly at one of them to confirm that they were the blueprints for the submarine, and then thrust them into his own pocket.
* * * * *
‘You took an enormous risk in bearding the lion in his den, Adam.’ Sunman was stretched out in a chair in his room at the Foreign Office. He looked more relaxed than he had done for weeks.
‘It was not so great,’ Adam said. ‘Waterton is no senseless man of violence. He committed his murders for a reason. I knew that there would be no advantage for him in killing me at the end. Indeed, it would be a positive disadvantage, with the police clamouring for entrance to his flat.’
‘It was a gamble none the less, and a brave one.’
Adam waved away the praise with an air of faint embarrassment. ‘Waterton should have stayed and tried to brazen it out,’ he said. ‘There was little real evidence against him other than the admissions he made to me. His mistake – nearly fatal as it proved – was to attempt that escape.’
‘How is the man? Do you know?’
‘He is still in the hands of the doctors. He has broken both his legs, but they believe he will survive.’
‘It is a terrible thing to say, but I rather wish he does not. He has caused us so much trouble already. If he lives to stand trial, he will cause even more.’ Sunman sighed and stared up at the stucco ceiling. ‘Ah well, we will cross that bridge when, or if, we come to it. Perhaps something can be arranged.’
Adam smiled to himself. It was so very like Sunman to believe
that something could always ‘be arranged’. In his world, perhaps it always could. They sat in silence.
‘You know, I’m still not sure exactly what really happened.’ Sunman said eventually. ‘Perhaps you could oblige me with some further explanation.’
Adam sat forward in his chair. ‘In a nutshell,’ he said, ‘Waterton persuaded Dolly to seduce Harry Vernon. Once Vernon was in a position to be blackmailed, he could be forced to acquiesce in the plan to sell the submarine plans to Germany.’
‘Yes, I understand that well enough.’ Sunman sounded exasperated, as if Adam were deliberately and maliciously casting aspersions on his intelligence. ‘But why, in heaven’s name, did they come to me and enlist my assistance in finding the girl when she disappeared?’
‘It was Harry who came to you, was it not? Waterton did not. I think Harry was struggling to escape the coils in which he found himself.’
‘He could not see any means of revealing the plot himself, but hoped that I would learn something of what was happening and put an end to it?’
‘Exactly. Waterton, I have no doubt, was furious when he discovered what Harry had done. But then he was arrogant enough to believe that he could turn the pair of us into pawns in his game.’ Adam sighed. ‘In one sense, he was right. I became his unwitting accomplice. I led him to York. I led him to the girl. And he killed her.’
‘And what of all Harry’s tearful remorse – the scenes we both witnessed in which he bewailed his fate. That was all an act?’
Adam nodded. ‘Although,’ he said, ‘in all likelihood, he was remorseful. But, other than by approaching you, he could see no means of extricating himself from the web Waterton had woven around him. And it was only in Berlin, at Pfaueninsel, that he would have realized the full extent of the treachery his supposed friend had planned. But by then it was too late. Ravelstein had him in his power.’
‘And the real Dolly Delaney? The one who called herself Hetty Gallant—?’
‘Dolly, I think, was motivated mostly by money. She wished for a life of ease and luxury. Who does not? She saw Waterton as a means to that end. I do not think she appreciated how dangerous a man he was. She was accustomed to controlling and manipulating the men in her life. She made the error of assuming that she could do the same with Waterton.’
Sunman reached for the square silver box on his desk and extracted two cigars from it. He offered one to Adam. Adam took it and leant forward as his friend struck a wax vesta. Both cigars were soon lit and plumes of smoke rose upwards.
‘By the by, Adam, I have heard from Etherege.’
‘About Dolly?’
Sunman nodded. ‘The girl is still in the hospital in Berlin, although the doctor is very happy with her progress. Young chap from the embassy called Bury pops in to see her regularly. Seems he’s quite smitten with her. Wants her to stay in the new German Reich, but she’s eager to get back to London.’
‘She’s a remarkable young woman.’
‘And you found her, Adam. I asked you to find Dolly Delaney and you did.’
‘But not the one you originally wanted.’
Sunman made a slight motion of his shoulders as if to suggest that it was all one to him. ‘It has worked out well enough in the end,’ he said.
Adam watched the smoke from his cigar drift towards the window. Not for everyone, he thought. Not for the girl who died so pointlessly in York. Not for poor Cyril Montague, no longer able to dream his opium dreams of new triumphs on the London stage. Not for Harry Vernon, dead and buried in a Berlin cemetery. Things had not worked out well enough in the end for them. Adam determined to shake off the melancholy and regret that such thoughts engendered. He remembered what Cosmo Jardine had said to him: ‘Ladies of the chorus. They provide the solution to our problems.’ His friend had not been entirely correct, he thought. One lady of the chorus had done as much to create new problems for him as solve old ones. But there was no denying that knowing Dolly Delaney had added excitement and intrigue to his life. Before he had heard her name, he had been directionless and dull. Now, he felt his spirits revived and his energy renewed. If she was returning to London, as Sunman said, Adam was impatient to see her again.
HISTORICAL NOTES
The Prince Albert Theatre in Drury Lane, the Royal Pantheon in Holborn and the Grand in Goodramgate, York, have never existed outside my imagination, but theatres a little bit like them certainly did. In Berlin, Pfaueninsel exists and is well worth visiting, although I have made a number of small changes in its geography to accommodate my story. The Lustschloss on the island can also be visited but its internal architecture is (for the most part) unlike the descriptions in the book. I have tried to make my specific references to facts about Victorian England as accurate as possible but, in a small number of cases, I have changed details very slightly to suit my fiction. For instance, in the opening scene, I have my characters musing on mortality at the grave of one James Dark. There was, indeed, a James Dark who was a cricketer and proprietor of Lord’s cricket ground. He is, indeed, buried at Kensal Green Cemetery where his grave can still be seen. However, I have placed him in that grave one year earlier than he died in reality in order to provide a topic of conversation for Adam Carver and his friend Sunman. I hope that readers (and, in this example, the shade of James Dark) will forgive me these minor changes.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Nick Rennison is a writer, editor and bookseller. His books include Sherlock Holmes: An Unauthorised Biography, Robin Hood: Myth, History, Culture, The Bloomsbury Good Reading Guide and 100 Must-Read Historical Novels. He is a regular reviewer of historical fiction for both The Sunday Times and BBC History Magazine.
COPYRIGHT
Published in paperback in Great Britain in 2016 by Atlantic Books Corvus, an imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd.
Copyright © Nick Rennison, 2016
The moral right of Nick Rennison to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities, is entirely coincidental.
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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Paperback ISBN: 978 1 84887 181 6
E-book ISBN: 978 1 78239 408 2
Printed in Great Britain
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An imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd
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www.corvus-books.co.uk
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
My first thanks go to my editor Angus MacKinnon who has contributed so much to both my novels. His encouragement, suggestions and advice have made an enormous difference to this second adventure of Carver and Quint. At Corvus, Sara O’Keeffe and Louise Cullen have been unfailingly friendly, helpful and efficient. Belinda Jones proved a meticulous and imaginative copy editor. Friends and family have offered support, reassurance and words of wisdom throughout the extended process of writing Carver’s Truth. I would like to thank particularly my sister Cindy Rennison, my brother-in-law Wolfgang Lüers, my nieces Lorna and Milena Lüers, my mother Eileen Rennison, John, Michael and Andrew Thewlis, Jenny Thewlis, John and Karen Magrath, Anita Diaz, Kevin Chappell, Hugh Pemberton and Susan Osborne, Andrew Holgate, Steve Andrews, Graham and Margaret Eagland, and Gordon Kerr.
As always my unending love and gratitude go to my wife Eve without whom nothing is possible.
‘
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