A thought occurred to her. What if Fernando was being watched by a German agent? It was possible. What if – when they realized he was not going to do what he had promised – they decided to dispose of him? They could hardly risk him blurting out everything he knew to the British. What if they sent a replacement? One eagle had failed. Could they not send another? Well, one thing at a time. She must find David. She did not even know if he was still in the country. She decided to telephone George Castle. The Party had paid to have a telephone installed in his house and it was used by any Party member who needed help urgently. Mary answered the phone and listened in silence to what Verity had to say before telling her to stay where she was. She would find David Griffiths-Jones and ask him for instructions.
Verity looked across at Fernando and saw that he was almost asleep in his chair. The constant worry about the killing he had agreed to carry out, on top of several months of constant travel, the lectures he had given in so many towns, the knowledge that he was probably being watched by Special Branch and, perhaps, agents of OVRA and the Abwehr had taken their toll. He was exhausted. She managed to rouse him and half carry him into the bedroom where he slumped on the bed. She took off his shoes and jacket and immediately he fell into a deep sleep.
She felt her nervous energy evaporate and sat down in the armchair Fernando had vacated, staring without seeing through the window. She thought she would telephone Edward even though the effort of getting up and going over to the hall table was almost too much for her.
‘V, is that you? I’ve been so worried. I’ve been trying to ring you but you didn’t answer. Is everything all right?’ Edward’s anxiety made his voice high-pitched, almost strangulated.
‘Not really. Could you come over here? I’ve got Fernando. He arrived with a gun.’
‘A gun? Where is he now? Are you safe?’
‘Oh yes, I’m all right. He broke down and cried. Now he’s asleep on my bed.’
‘But what . . .?’
‘He admitted he’s Der Adler. He says I betrayed him.’
‘Did he say why he wanted to kill Churchill? I thought he was on our side.’
‘He was but they took his wife and child hostage.’
‘Who have?’
‘The Abwehr, OVRA – Mussolini’s thugs . . . I don’t know. Look, I can’t tell you any more on the telephone. Just come over here, will you?’
‘Stay where you are. I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.’
It was more like thirty minutes before there was a knock on the door. Verity woke with a start from a shallow doze.
‘Darling V, are you all right?’ Edward asked, clasping her in his arms.
‘I’m all right, though it takes it out of a girl having a friend hold a gun to her bosom and threaten to pull the trigger.’ She tried to speak lightly but Edward could see that she was suffering from delayed shock.
‘He didn’t do anything, that’s the main thing.’
‘No, but he’s desperately worried. The Italian secret police are holding his wife and baby hostage. What can we do? We can’t just hand him over to the police and forget about him.’
‘No, of course not. Where is he?’
‘In the bedroom, sleeping the sleep of the dead. We must help him, Edward. We can’t let him be carted off to prison.’
‘I know, but it might be safer for him if the Abwehr think he’s in prison after being caught trying to carry out the assassination. We may have to resort to a little blackmail ourselves.’ Edward thought for a moment. ‘If our people at the Rome embassy explain that, unless wife and baby are restored to their loving father, he will stand up in an English court and tell the world exactly what he was asked to do and by whom – naming names . . .’
‘You think that would work?’ Verity was doubtful. ‘They’ll just say it’s lies and point out that he’s a Communist.’
‘Mussolini hasn’t decided yet whether to go in with Hitler as a junior partner in a war which might end in disaster for Italy or stay out. He won’t want it to become common knowledge that the OVRA is just a cat’s-paw for the Germans.’
‘Well, it’s worth a try, I suppose. And what happens to Fernando in the meantime?’
At that moment there was another knock on the door.
‘Who could that be?’ Edward asked sharply.
‘David Griffiths-Jones, I expect. I telephoned the Castles and left a message for him. All this concerns the Party and Fernando is a member of the Party. I thought David might be able to smuggle him out of the country or something.’
There was another knock on the door and Verity went to open it.
‘David, I . . .’
‘Where is he?’ Griffiths-Jones strode into the flat as if he owned it. ‘Corinth – what are you doing here?’
The two men looked at each other with the intensity of schoolboys trying to outstare each other. Edward blinked first. ‘We were trying to decide what to do with Ruffino. Apparently – if we are to believe him – he was told that if he did not assassinate Churchill, his wife and baby would suffer. I thought the best thing might be to broadcast the news that he had tried but failed and was now behind bars.’
‘But he hasn’t done anything,’ Verity protested.
‘Apart from planning to assassinate a leading politician, no. But surely you agree, David, it must be better for Ruffino if OVRA think he tried and failed to kill Churchill rather than discover that he didn’t try at all.’
‘But there would have to be a trial and he might say stupid things about . . . the Party,’ David objected.
‘Not necessarily . . . I mean, for security reasons the trial could be held in camera so no one – not the Party, not the British intelligence service, not even Mussolini – would be embarrassed. The Foreign Office still believe Italy might remain neutral if Mussolini is not provoked.’
David barked his dissent. ‘No, the jackal will dog the heels of the wolf to get a share of the spoils. Your plan is all too complicated. I can get him out of the country tonight. That is unless you alert Mr Liddell and we’re stopped at Dover.’
‘Liddell? Who’s he?’ Verity asked.
She had been watching fascinated as the two men measured up to one another like boxers in the ring. Both were tall, good-looking and determined. She had slept with both of them but loved only Edward. She could not help feeling that they were tussling over her as much as Fernando and, if she were honest, though it made her uneasy, it also excited her.
‘Ask your precious fiancé to tell you who Liddell is,’ David told her roughly. ‘Though I don’t suppose he will. He’s been ordered to keep it secret, especially from you.’
‘Guy Liddell is the head of one section of the intelligence service and, for obvious reasons, it is important that as few people as possible know,’ Edward replied levelly, looking at David.
‘Well, I think Fernando should decide how he wants to play this,’ Verity said, putting to one side Edward’s admission that he kept secrets from her.
‘But before we talk to him,’ Edward said, ‘I’d like to ask David a few things about Tom Wintringham’s murder. Was that your doing, David? Did you kill him and dump his body in the Blenheim Pavilion?’
‘You’re barking up the wrong tree there, Sherlock,’ David sneered. ‘I wasn’t at Cliveden and, if I had been, why would I want to kill Wintringham? I hardly knew him.’
‘You tell me why. Perhaps it was part of your plan to smear Joe Kennedy. After all, it was you who set up Lulu to blackmail him. You won’t deny that, I presume?’
‘I don’t deny it. For good reasons, “for the sake of the country”,’ he replied with exaggerated emphasis, ‘Kennedy has to go. He’s doing everything possible to keep Roosevelt out of the war. Now, that’s something you’ll agree with, Corinth.’
‘Yes, I do agree but there’s no cause to stoop to blackmail. Roosevelt is no fool. He doesn’t take much stock of Kennedy. He has other sources of information about our determination to stand up to Hitler.’
‘So who did kill Tom and Lulu?’ Verity demanded.
‘Your friend Casey Bishop, of course. Why do you think he’s skipped the country?’ David answered her.
‘But why?’
‘I’m sorry, Verity, but I haven’t time to play Holmes and Watson. Work it out for yourself. I have to get going. By the way, I should warn you that you will be disciplined by the Party – as I told you you would – for insubordination. You can’t seem to understand that wiser heads than yours decide Party policy. It’s not for you to question Party directives. I shall decide what you should or should not do. You are too much under the influence of this absurd aristocrat you say you intend to marry. Marriage and family are bourgeois institutions, outworn and outmoded. I urge you to think again.’
For a moment or two Verity was unable to speak. She had always known that one day she would have to face up to her position. She had to choose and she could no longer postpone that moment. She saw that both men were looking at her expectantly.
‘I’m glad you raised the question of my marriage, David. I agree with you. I cannot be married to Edward and remain a member of the Party. In any case, I don’t want to. Here . . .’ She went to her handbag and took out her Party card. ‘The Party I joined has been destroyed by people like you and the men in Moscow whose every word you believe and whose every order you obey without question. I joined a party of like-minded fighters for freedom and social justice. Maybe we were naive. I’m sure we were. We thought we could build utopia but instead we helped build a prison camp. It took me years – much too long – to understand what had happened. How we had been duped. How good men like George Castle and Harold Knight are being fooled or, worse still, used. When I first knew you, David, I admired you and I thought your ruthlessness was necessary if we were ever to defeat Fascism, but you have turned into a monster and it makes me unbearably sad.’
David, to Edward’s surprise, did not try to interrupt her tirade. He listened as one might listen to a child stamp his foot and scream. He appeared not to have heard a word Verity said. Edward wondered if he would strike her but he remained icily calm, only saying in response, ‘We’ll talk about all this some other time. You are ill and don’t know what you are saying.’
He strode over to the bedroom door and shouted, ‘Ruffino, wake up! It’s time we got you out of here.’
Fernando emerged from the bedroom dishevelled, badly in need of a shave, with that hangdog look of the schoolboy caught in a prank which had just gone spectacularly wrong. As soon as Edward saw him gaze at David as though he were his father or dominating schoolmaster, he knew which option Fernando would choose. He would trust David to save him. He hardly listened to Edward as he suggested he might like to surrender to the police and spend a few weeks behind bars. When David said they could be in France in twenty-four hours, Fernando nodded happily. Verity sent him off to shower and shave with instructions to use the razor Edward kept in her bathroom.
When, after twenty minutes, he re-emerged looking much more his old self, Fernando embraced her warmly.
‘Forgive me, cara, for being such a fool. I shall always think of England with love and gratitude, and I think of you as England. Please look after Alice for me. I should have left her alone but I can never resist a woman. It is my weakness.’ He sounded almost proud to confess it. ‘And Lord Edward . . . you are an English gentleman and I shall never forget how you have treated me. You could have given me to your police and I would have suffered . . . maybe died in their hands. Grazie mille!’
To Edward’s embarrassment, Fernando proceeded to kiss him on both cheeks.
When at last David and Fernando had left, Verity turned to Edward. ‘You keep secrets from me, do you? You know I can’t marry you if you won’t tell me who you work for. I have sacrificed – as you see – my Party, my life you could say. I expect to be repaid in the same coin.’
‘I understand. You have my word. No more secrets. Come to bed and I’ll tell you all about Liddell even if I go to prison for it but first I must make a telephone call.’
‘A telephone call? Who are you going to telephone?’
‘Liddell, of course. I can’t allow David to spirit Ruffino out of the country. He has a few questions to answer before he goes anywhere,’ he added grimly.
Verity looked at him with dismay. ‘I . . . Is it necessary . . .?’
‘It’s necessary,’ Edward said and there was something in his face that stifled her protests before she could utter them.
14
Verity had insisted on the most low key wedding that could possibly be devised. She had a horror of a press photographer capturing the moment when, against every principle she had ever espoused, she married her aristocratic lover. That day had come and although she had reluctantly agreed to a small luncheon party in a private room above Gennaro’s in New Compton Street, where she and Edward had first dined à deux, she had insisted there should be only five witnesses at the actual wedding. They had finally agreed on her father – assuming he returned from Rome in time – their old friend, Tommie Fox, now a North London vicar, Edward’s sister-in-law, the Duchess of Mersham, and Adrian and Charlotte Hassel. Edward knew that his brother, Gerald, was hurt that he was not being allowed to sign the marriage certificate but Verity had been adamant.
‘He’s never pretended to like me. He certainly doesn’t approve of you marrying me and I’m simply not having him standing in a corner glowering at me. I am going to be nervous enough as it is.’
Edward had sighed but submitted. If he had to choose between offending Verity or his brother, there could be no question which of them had to take a back seat. Tommie, too, had been hurt because Verity had made him swear that he would not say a prayer or bless them or do anything that might imply she accepted a religious element to her commitment.
‘You’ll just have to draw on your reserve of Christian charity, Tommie,’ she had said. ‘I don’t mind sitting in a church or cathedral and seeing Frank marry Sunita. I shall probably cry in the approved manner, but I’ve had such a rocky journey to find a justification for marrying at all that I just daren’t make any other compromises without feeling the most awful hypocrite. You do understand, don’t you, dear?’
‘But I don’t, Verity.’ Tommie made one final protest. ‘If you can’t believe there is a God, then why does it bother you if I give you His blessing? I think Edward would like it.’
‘No, Tommie, that’s very underhand. “Get thee behind me, Satan.” Not even for Edward will I ask a non-existent God to bless our union. If He wants to do something useful, why doesn’t He do away with Hitler or Franco? If He does exist, He has so much to do that I don’t want him wasting time on me. In that respect at least, I’m a lost cause.’
‘Like so many of the battles you choose to fight,’ Tommie had replied meanly. Seeing her face, he realized he had gone too far. ‘I’m sorry, Verity. I shouldn’t have said that. The fight for truth and honesty is never a lost cause even in our corrupt world. I beg your pardon.’
Even though she had accepted his apology, he could see that he had damaged their relationship and kicked himself for not respecting the sincerity of her views, however much he disapproved of them.
The next problem was what to wear. It was easy for Edward. He just wore a smart pinstripe suit, tie – a dull red not associated with any school, university or similar organization – and a red carnation in his buttonhole.
Charlotte and Connie had taken Verity off to Chanel. When she heard how much a custom-made outfit would cost, Charlotte had almost physically to keep her from bolting out of the door. Connie had to use all her powers of persuasion. She announced that she and Gerald would like to give her a wedding outfit since, as she said, ‘You and Edward are quite impossible to give presents to but we all know that, if you have a weakness, it’s for clothes and we want you to look your best on this rather important day. I know you want to stop everything spiralling out of control but you must give your friends and relations some pleasure. D
on’t deny us that just to satisfy some abstract principle.’
‘And you want Edward to be proud of you,’ Charlotte added deviously. ‘I gather you aren’t even allowing him to put a wedding ring on your finger.’
Verity blushed. ‘Did he tell you that?’
‘He mentioned it in passing,’ Connie said.
‘Well, I know you think I’m an idiot but for me it’s a symbol not of commitment but of servitude and I really can’t do it.’
In the end she was measured for a pink wool suit trimmed in shiny black leather and with gold buttons. The tight-fitting skirt emphasized her slim figure. Pink shoes and a pert little hat crowned with a pink feather completed the creation.
‘Won’t I look like an exotic bird or something?’ she demanded, on the verge of tears. But when she went to try it on she could not but take pleasure in the way it fitted so perfectly and, examining herself in the mirror, she had to agree that she looked very much herself but different. It was, as Charlotte said, ‘an outfit difficult to be sad in’.
To her surprise and delight her father appeared the day before the wedding and presented her with an interesting black box from Cartier. She gasped as she examined the three rows of perfect pearls within. Then she laughed.
‘Daddy, they’re gorgeous but I always said I despised girls in pearls waiting for their husbands to come home from the office.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous, child,’ he said crossly. ‘No one could ever imagine that you would stay at home for anything or anybody. You’re my daughter, aren’t you? I only hope Edward understands what he’s taking on,’ he added grimly.
‘He does. He surely does,’ she said, kissing him. ‘Thank you, these are wonderful. Too good for me but, for this particular day, they are just what I need.’
However, Verity was given what she was pleased to call her best present on the morning of her wedding. Basil, her curly-coated retriever, had been brought up from Mersham for the big day. When he dropped a big juicy bone at her feet, wagging his tail frantically, she was hard put not to cry. She knelt while he nuzzled her affectionately, as if wanting her to know that he was her dog, however rarely she was able to be with him. Connie had tied a ribbon round his collar and Verity felt Basil understood that, for his mistress, this was a special day.
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