by Ted Bell
“My pleasure, Your Majesty.”
The Queen had rung off without waiting for Trulove’s reply. SOP, as far as such matters went with Her Majesty. When on the phone with the Queen, a final farewell was always just a click away.
* * *
—
A man of a certain age, a fringe of silver hair and a bit rotund round about the middle and wearing heavy tweed plus fours in an unnerving shade of yellow, paused in the arched doorway of the clubhouse. He withdrew a leather tobacco pouch, lit his meerschaum pipe, then emerged from the looming shadows of the old clubhouse and onto the sun-splashed golf terrace.
“Aha! There you are, Congreve! Good God, man. What were you doing in the loo for so long? I must say, no one of my acquaintance spends longer in the loo than you! Of course, with the sole exception of my late wife, Claire. What the devil were you up to for so long?”
Congreve regarded Trulove carefully, took a quick pull on the meerschaum, and blew a big smoke ring and then a little one straight through it.
“I cannot tell you how that rankles,” a plainly rattled Trulove barked at the world-famous detective. As Stokely Jones Jr., Alex Hawke’s boon companion, had once said to him under similar circumstances, “Queen ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy.”
“Really? Do tell us why? A simple enough trick, really.”
“Because I can’t bloody well master it, can I? No matter how I try. You do it merely to taunt me when I’m in a state.”
“High dudgeon, if I take your meaning?”
“What of it? You mock me, sir.”
“Not at all, Sir David. I do the feat in honor of my great hero and mentor, Sherlock Holmes. Similarly, when Holmes demonstrated the smoky trick to Dr. Watson, the man was, likewise, never quite able to master it.”
“So, what were you doing in the bloody locker room? Your hair? I was afraid we’d miss our tee time.”
“On the blower, Sir David. Alex Hawke rang me from hospital in Bermuda.”
“He’s out of the coma? Thank you, dear God! In His heaven this morning after all and taking care of all God’s children!”
“Well out of his coma, so it would seem. He’s being released from hospital in a week or ten days to continue his rehab therapy with a physical trainer at the cottage.”
“Oh, saints above. That’s the best news I’ve heard all day! Tell me more, my good fellow. Hors de combat no longer then, is he?”
“Save the death of Miss Kissl, it would appear that there is much to be thankful for.”
“Sigrid Kissl is dead? How awful. Accident? Illness?”
“Murder. Perpetrator used a knife with a razor-sharp serrated blade. Victim was chopped practically to pieces.”
“Terrible. Any idea who?”
“An idea, but no proof as of yet.”
“She was a lovely girl, and I know you and Lady Mars were terribly fond of her. I always thought she had the makings of a fine detective, and I know she was well respected at Scotland Yard.”
“Yes, she was. Over the years, whilst she was living in our gardener’s cottage, we became rather close. So it was that I arranged with her grandfather to have her body returned to the family in the Swiss Alps. The funeral is next Monday on the family farm at the mountain town of Tiefenthaler. My wife, Diana, and I are attending.”
“Poor dear. So. Tell me about Hawke. The timing of his reawakening is most fortuitous, believe you me. Beyond fortuitous, as I was in a bit of a pickle!”
Congreve said, “Bloody lucky to be alive, he is, and he knows it. As you’ll recall, when they found him, he had a gaping abdominal wound eighteen inches across. For Alex, there’s been no sign of infection as yet, and the wound is on the mend. Not sure how long that process will take. He says he can’t wait to get back to his daily open-ocean swims.”
“All right, I’ll speak with his physician this afternoon for an update. I got a dawn wake-up call from Buckingham Palace. The Queen. Terribly agitated about your lack of progress in this case, this business of locating her missing grandson, Prince Henry. You, my dear fellow, have become redundant. You, meaning Scotland Yard, she believes, have failed her miserably. Her words, not mine. She’s firing you and hiring me. To be more specific, your chum Hawke. There is an urgent need for his services at the moment. She wants him out to the Bahamas posthaste. And I intend to see that he abides by her wishes.”
“Oh, good Lord. You really do ask the impossible. The man was cruelly mutilated, for all love! Horrific injuries. Have you no sympathy?”
“While I’m sure you’re aware of the fact, I will remind you that Prince Henry is also Hawke’s godson? The child of his closest friend throughout his career as a Royal Navy combat pilot?”
“Lord Peter Windsor, who, in Afghanistan, when he died in Hawke’s arms before they could be rescued, begged Hawke to protect and support his only child.”
“Indeed. Hawke’s godson and the Queen’s grandson are one and the same. I want you to inform his decision in this grave matter by providing him with that information.”
“Sir David, with all due respect, I will, of course, inform the Yard that Six will be taking over the case. However, I must beg you to find someone else to join the fray. If Hawke asks my opinion in the matter, I will insist that he remain at his Bermuda cottage, swim and work out, rest and read until he is fully healed and recovered.”
“Really? You will insist, will you? And why on the good green earth would you wish to endanger, nay, to destroy my at long last relatively good relationship with the sovereign? Have you gone completely mad?”
“Three reasons. One, Putin has a price on Hawke’s head. Ten million pounds sterling. He’s a marked man wherever he goes. Two, he’s recently suffered grievous bodily wounds, as you well know. He needs time to recover! And three, he’s in mourning. Sigrid was a lovely woman but very complicated.”
“Whatever do you mean by that, old boy? All women are complicated.”
“Well, I learned only recently that she suffered from depression. Alcoholism. That she lied on her application to the training program at Scotland Yard. She was a convicted felon at age twenty-two. Incarcerated. There was also an ex-husband from Zurich who was blackmailing her. He died in a rather bizarre motor accident somewhere in Morocco. Sigrid was in the car with him just before it ran off a cliff. Hawke confided to me that he thought perhaps she had murdered the man. . . . Apparently, he was threatening to kidnap Lord Hawke’s son, Alexei.”
“My Lord. I had no idea.”
“No one did. Hawke was in semi-love-hate with her. He protected her. His son adored her.”
Sir David turned away and surveyed the scene on the distant first tee. One foursome was teeing off, and a twosome was waiting on one of the benches.
“All right, then, Constable,” he said. “Our tee time is fast approaching. Let’s get a buggy and head out to the course.”
“You wait here. I’ll go fetch the buggy,” Congreve said, and strode off in the direction of the caddy master’s shack.
In a shake of a lamb’s tail, Congreve came barreling around the side of the buggy barn and squealed to a halt right in front of Trulove.
“Jump in!” he said, and Trulove did just that.
Trulove, hanging on for dear life as Congreve raced up the twisting cart path leading up the hill, said, “Damnably rotten luck, you know, the Queen insisting on Hawke traveling to the Bahamas just now. . . .”
“Bad luck? There’s understatement for you. The man’s in hospital after a near-death experience of the first order! But it’s your bad luck?”
“I didn’t mean to infer that—”
“Sir David, grow a pair. Don’t let the Crown push you around like this. Why don’t you bloody well man up, as our American cousins would have it? Tell Lizzie you can’t produce your glamour boy until he’s fully recovered from this little episode of hors de combat.
His doctor told me he was amazed that, due to the severity of his gut wounds, Alex had not died in the ambulance en route to the hospital.”
“Her Royal Majesty wants him now,” Sir David said, somewhat irked, “and the young man, Prince Henry, a young man whose life Hawke has sworn to protect, may well be in grave danger. Hawke alone will serve, so says the Queen. And that, as they say, is that.”
* * *
—
“All ashore that’s going ashore,” Ambrose said as they pulled up near the steps to the elevated tee box. He hefted his girth out of the golf buggy, grabbed his bag, and started huffing and puffing up the wooden staircase.
“I say, is that a new driver?” Trulove asked, reaching the top as Ambrose withdrew the magnificent weapon from his bag. “American, isn’t it? That clubhead looks rather like a giant white egg.”
“An egg, you say? Hardly,” the chief inspector said with evident pride of ownership, taking a few inelegant practice swings. “Behold the new M-Three by TaylorMade. The very club Tiger Woods used throughout his comeback year. If eggs are good enough for Tiger, they’re bloody well good enough for me.”
“Good enough for what?”
“My comeback, of course.”
“Comeback? Comeback, did you say?”
“Age before beauty,” Congreve said, motioning Trulove to take his tee shot.
Trulove bent to tee up his ball for the short par four, then straightened and said, “Are you actually planning to stage some kind of a comeback? What on earth are you going on about?”
“Indeed, I am, sir. And it starts here and it starts now. Not tomorrow, but right now.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Constable,” Trulove said, using the affectionate nickname Alex Hawke had given to the brainy detective. “You can’t possibly stage a comeback.”
“And pray tell why not?”
“Because one has to go somewhere else before one can stage a comeback. Your great hero Woods went into hiding for years before his comeback.”
“I beg your pardon? In my case, it was my game that went away from me, not me from it,” Congreve said, mildly miffed. He backed away from his ball and began his practice-swing routine.
But Trulove was not to be denied. He said:
“Look here, Ambrose. We’ve played golf together for going on two decades now. The game you have now is exactly the same game you had twenty years ago when you first came striding out of the men’s locker room, wearing those tatty bright yellow plus fours of yours and causing a few raised eyebrows among the membership. Since I was the one who had proposed you for membership, it was my duty to inform you that some among us—and I include myself in their number—found your livery . . . a bit vivid for dear old Sunningdale, shall we say? Yes, we did. And then there was . . .”
“And then there was what?”
“Then there was . . . well, your golf game.”
“What about my golf game?” Congreve huffed, a grey cloud suddenly shading his sunny mood.
“What about it? You appeared on the first tee that very first day, acting like the very reincarnation of Tommy Jones and then—”
“Bobby. Bobby Jones.”
“Fine. Bobby Jones you were not. You teed up your ball, took what may be politely called an exorbitant backswing, and whiffed it. Then you took two illegal mulligans before you finally hit a ball a few feet beyond the confines of the tee box.”
“Thank you for reminding me of that, Sir David. I agree. It was not my finest hour. But may I remind you that I was leading in the men’s four ball that year when the match was canceled due to the heavy rain? Leading the bloody match! Surely you remember that!”
“Yes, you were leading. We were on the second hole. On the first, through some bizarre miracle on the part of the golf gods, you appear to have gotten an ace. The cherished hole in one.”
“Correct. My finest hour.”
“And your last hole in one. Look here. You have no long game. You have no short game. You’re hopeless hitting out of the sand hazards, and you cannot read a putt for love nor money. In short, Ambrose, you have no game. You had no game then, and you have no game now. I don’t mean to appear so harsh, but you simply cannot make a comeback to a game you never had in the first place!”
“May I take my shot now?” Congreve said, plainly irritated.
“Have at it, Constable. By all means, have bloody at it.”
Congreve took a mighty swing and snap-hooked the ball into the water hazard.
“Practice swing,” Ambrose said. “Didn’t mean to hit it. Mulligan?”
“Bad luck,” Sir David said. “If you wish to take an illegal mulligan, do so by all means. I shan’t breathe a word to the rules committee. I’m afraid I was a bit harsh on you. I suppose I’m a bit upset by my pressing dilemma with the Crown. Do forgive me.”
“Can you please stop chatting away during my practice swings? May I hit?”
“Now. Surely while we’re young, Constable. Fire at will. With the understanding, of course, that mulligans are not permitted.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Congreve said, and whiffed it.
CHAPTER 11
Washington, D.C.
December 1941
The Chinese ambassador was keenly aware, within the first couple of weeks or so, that, due to his hectic new life in D.C., he would need some kind of an escape hatch from the Chinese Embassy. From dawn to dusk, his life was not his own. He belonged to everyone but himself. FDR had him constantly running in circles. Persistent demands that China could and should do far more than they were currently doing for the Americans. Asking him to intervene for the White House in every messy matter dealing with Chang Kai-shek’s government in Beijing, now that the communist Mao was nipping at everyone’s heels.
In the evenings, Tang made the rounds of various high-society black-tie dinner parties in Georgetown and at the beautiful old grande dame Chevy Chase Club beneath the spreading oaks in Maryland. An avalanche of invitations to meet the daughters of the social biddies came flowing his way, all courtesy of his burgeoning friendship with the extraordinarily popular Commander Hawke. They made a good team. They would kid each mercilessly and make all the pretty girls giggle in an admittedly attractive fashion.
One society girl had caught his eye at a Hunt Club dinner in Maryland. A tall and statuesque young blonde, a student at Georgetown Law School. He’d gone out onto the terrace for a quick cigarette to escape all the hubbub, and she’d magically appeared right on his heels.
“So, who are you and what do you want?” he said, turning to her, his white grin freighted with charm.
“What did you say?”
“What’s your name?”
“Winfield Woolworth.”
“Winfield. Lovely.”
“A few of my friends all call me Winnie, actually. My enemies, whose numbers are legion, call me Five ’n’ Dime.”
“Winnie suits. Not sure about the other one, actually.”
“Woolworth? My greatgrampy F. W. Woolworth? Frank Winfield Woolworth? Five-and-dime stores?”
“Of course! That Woolworth. The name did stir a memory, but I was so preoccupied with the face that I—”
“Oh, piffle. Just call me Winnie, please. So. However did you end up at this damn thing?” she asked him, joining him at the stone balustrade overlooking the paddocks and the rolling snow-covered hills in the distance beyond the river. She extracted a cigarette from her clutch and waited for him to fish out his lighter. “Yummy!” she exclaimed. “So, Mystery Man, what brings you to this dismal affair?”
“Just lucky, I guess. I’ve a friend of a friend who pulled massive amounts of strings to get me on the invitation list.”
“Lucky you. I abhor this crap. You believe this band? Have they never heard of swing? Dorsey and Sinatra? Am I the only girl here because her mother made her come? Hardly
. So. Who’s your friend?”
“He prefers to remain anonymous.”
“Ah. One of those. I wonder. Do you have any notion at all of kissing me?”
“Oh, I have many notions at all of kissing you.”
“Well, Mr. Whosis, or whatever your name is, the lady is ready, willing, and able.”
And so he kissed her. It lasted a long time. She pressed her considerable bosom against his chest, and he felt like clinging to her as a drowning man might cling to a buoy in a storm. The kiss seemed forever. American women apparently could extend a kiss like nobody’s business.
“Here. Take this,” she said, pushing something into his left hand as she pushed away from him.
“What is it?”
“Besides a ransom note? My name and telephone number, you idiot.”
“Ah.”
“‘Ah,’ the man says. This mysterious Oriental gentleman who, with his faithful companion, Lord Hawke, has taken Washington society by storm. See you around the campus at the next soiree, big boy. If you get lucky. If not? See you in the funny papers.”
And, with that, like Scarlett, Winnie was gone with the wind.
Upon returning to the ballroom, he saw her dancing with Commander Hawke. Close. Closer than she’d been to him. Much closer. And she was nipping at his ear between sweet nothings whispered into it.
Tiger tore his eyes away from them and opened up the stiff squib of paper she’d given him. The clouds of gin parted.
Winnie Woolworth. 421-6843.
“Damn it to hell,” he said to himself. Remembering Hawke’s last words to him that very afternoon.