“Good call to your constable?” Rudy had come into the hall and was in the process of pulling his jacket off the hook. “The night is young. Why don’t we go off to the local for a pint? Sandra has some sappy radio drama she wants to listen to in peace and quiet.”
Darling shrugged. “Sure, why not.”
THE MINUTE THEY were out the door, Sandra took up the phone and, peering at the number Lane had given her for the rooming house, put in a call.
“Mrs. Macdonald. Good evening. I know Miss Winslow is away just now, but did she tell you when she is coming back? This is her friend Mrs. Donaldson.”
“No, not exactly, lovie. I think she said a few days. It’s been two. I’d expect her back maybe tomorrow or the next day.”
It wasn’t much to cheer up Darling, but it was something, anyway. “Okay, thanks, Mrs. Macdonald. Bye now!”
Later, when Lane had come home unexpectedly, Mrs. Macdonald remembered to tell her about the phone call when she’d come down for her hot cocoa at ten. “Oh, by the way, someone called Mrs. Donaldson called to ask me when you were due back. I said in the next day or so. I wouldn’t telephone her now, it’s late, but I’m sure she’ll be very pleased to hear from you in the morning.”
LANE STILL COULD not reach Higgins in the morning and set out instead to the War Office in the hopes of tracking down Dunn. She managed to find Captain Hogarth and asked for her help in finding Angus Dunn. As it happened, the director himself was there, railing at someone for letting Darling go before he’d been authorized to. Dunn had been called away from this meeting by news that a Miss Winslow wished to speak to him.
Puzzled, and feeling as though things were becoming unravelled, Dunn stormed into the room where Lane had been told to wait. She sat with self-contained stillness, her legs crossed, her hat on her lap. She looked at him expressionlessly when he came in. The dressing on her chin and the angry bruise that reached up into her cheek startled him.
“I didn’t expect you back so soon. But I understand some Soviet agent was able to see you in Berlin,” Dunn said trying to match her mood. “What happened to you?”
“Oh, this? Your man Jones. And I did see the agent. A fellow quite high up. I was surprised,” she said coolly. “I have one or two items of interest for you. Have you released Darling?” She tried to say this neutrally, as if it were merely part of a business transaction they’d made.
High up? But of course, his contact had said “a” Soviet agent happened to be in Berlin anyway. Perhaps they were getting desperate . . . why would someone that high up in the organization want to interview a potential defector? “What items?”
“Although it irks you, no doubt, to have anyone having any cards at all, I believe I’ll keep mine until you answer my question about Darling.”
“Yes, then. He’s out.” May as well retain the illusion that it was his doing.
Lane looked down, trying to hide the rush of relief that was threatening to bring on tears. Composed again, she looked up. “Good.” Why had she not called the Donaldsons? He would have gone there! She scarcely had the patience for the end of this interview. “I can tell you that you’ve backed the wrong man in Jones. He’s working for them, not you. He tried to kill me, actually. It was very unpleasant.”
“That’s preposterous. All of it. Why would you think Jones is working for them?”
“Why indeed? And further to that, though you probably know this, he was the one who pushed Salford off the platform into an oncoming train. The Soviets are finding him a liability. They are taking him out of circulation. I’d like to think it was because he tried to kill me in Berlin, but they were already feeling uneasy about him. They feel, and one can hardly blame them, that with a murder charge hanging over his head here, you could probably pump a good deal of information out of him if he decided to try to take refuge in England. They want to avoid that.”
Dunn turned away from her and walked to the window, his hands behind his back.
“I know. It must be very disappointing to find you’ve been systematically fed misinformation. I wonder if you are as a good judge of character as you think you are? However, I’m satisfied I’ve done my job. I should mention that the Soviets are making plans to do something about Berlin. They don’t like it sitting there in the middle of their sphere of influence. There now, was there anything else?” Lane got up, took up her handbag, and started toward the door. “Oh, yes. If you play your cards right, you could get a major Soviet asset over here. He’d like to retire here, I expect.”
At this Dunn turned, his face hard. “That’s it then?”
“I’m afraid so,” she said lightly, going out the door. Darling was out and her heart had wings.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
LANE STOOD ON THE DONALDSONS’ doorstep, her heart beating, and with a moment’s fearful hesitation, she knocked on the door. The door opened and he was there, his white shirt open at the collar, hair falling over his eyes, and one hand in his pocket.
“I heard you were out,” she said, and was enveloped in a fierce embrace.
KENSINGTON PARK WAS at its dramatic best. The sun shone down, making great pools of shade under the trees, and in the distance heavy blue-black clouds were gathering for an afternoon rain, creating the effect of making every colour more intense: the grass greener, the sky a deep cerulean. The air had the thick, uneasy heat that only a good storm could abate.
“I’d better go back. Amesy claims to need my help. He doesn’t, of course.”
“Ames can wait, surely? I want you to meet my grandparents. They will spoil you unmercifully and fatten you up.”
“Maybe I should. Look at the mess you get into when I’m not around to save you.” He reached over and touched her cheek softly above the bruise. “I should thank you. I’d still be in prison reading bad detective fiction if it were not for you. Bit of a turn-up really. A change from me trying to rescue you, only to find you’d done it yourself,” Darling said.
“No change at all, as it turns out. My quixotic offer to sacrifice myself to some project for that ass Dunn was completely unnecessary. Your colleague, Sims, whom you won over completely with your manly forthrightness, is the one who apparently secured the rescue. He discovered that Anthony was being blackmailed and was able to get the truth out of him. But Sims made it very clear that he was convinced of your innocence the minute he met you.”
“You could have fooled me,” said Darling. “When we met he treated me like someone who still held the smoking revolver in my hand. He said he was astonished that I would not tell him why I’d done it. No. I’m afraid you must take credit. I know it was you who tracked down those men and got the truth. And, sitting here in the sun with you, my liberty ensured, I cannot say I am particularly unhappy about being rescued.”
Lane looked down. “Now you are saying I am small-minded to dislike being rescued by you?”
Darling looked distressed. “Certainly not! Never. I accept that we are troubled by different things. I, for example, don’t mind being rescued, but I have had real difficulty with feeling the very foundations of my life shaken. My sense of security about the future is in tatters. I never felt like this during the war. I mean, I knew I could die, but we all did. It was a kind of universal condition. But finding myself suddenly alone, in a cell, put away unjustly by forces far beyond my control . . . I don’t know. I just can’t seem to get my equilibrium back.”
Lane took his hand and kissed it and then sat looking across the sweep of lawn. The clouds, though darker, did not seem to have advanced.
“At least tell me,” Darling said, turning to look at her, “that you put that idiot Dunn in his place.”
She smiled and shrugged. “You have asked me the one thing I cannot tell you.”
“You did. I knew it. You’ve done it to me often enough with far less provocation. By the way, I told him he had completely underestimated you. I told him that it was a mistake I was unlikely to ever make. There. That is the same as saying I love you, only le
ss mushy.”
She smiled. “I too will never underestimate you. Are you sure about Scotland? I hate to turn up empty-handed.”
“You can bring them some chocolate. Why don’t you invite them out to Canada?”
“It’s a long trip. I don’t know if they’ll be up to it.”
“If they are your grandparents, they are like twin oaks, I am sure, hardened by being pushed around in their own home by Bolshie officers.”
“It seems easy being here because we are here now, but when we go back to Canada, a trip to England will seem far away and impossible and something undertaken once a decade. They may be oaks, but even they will have to die sometime. Please say you’ll come. Ames can wait another couple of days.”
Darling sighed and looked into the eyes of this impossibly beautiful woman. How had he deserved her? “Will they demand to know if my intentions are honourable?”
“We’ll see. Before we go I’d like to take everyone out. The Donaldsons, Higgins, your crew. I have money left over because I didn’t have to get you out of hock. I’m thinking of Claridge’s or the Ritz. We could do it tomorrow if I can get a table. And then I’ll leave the next morning. I don’t think I can stand around saying goodbye to you again.”
“Is Claridge’s as expensive as it used to be? I could never afford it during the war.”
“Absolutely. And I can afford it. Perhaps there are some things I can tell you that I learned about my father.”
He stood up and pulled her to her feet. “Then let me take you to dinner tonight, and you can tell me. A little Italian place somewhere so we can compare it with Lorenzo’s. It’ll give Sandra Donaldson a night off from fussing about me. And I might go to the pub with Sims before I leave. He may have one or two tips.”
THE PLATFORM WAS wet at the station in Peebles, as though it had just suffered a deluge, but the rain had stopped, and people waiting for the train were looking skyward and folding up their umbrellas. Lane felt like a small child, looking eagerly out the windows to catch sight of her grandparents as she made her way through the car.
“There!” she said, pointing. Darling ducked to look and saw an elderly couple, comfortably upholstered, looking anxiously toward the compartment doors.
“He has a fine moustache, your grandfather,” he commented. “If anything, it makes him more frightening than I imagined.”
“Laneke!” It was her grandfather. He reached up to help her down, taking her suitcase and then putting his arm around her. “Look, Mother, isn’t she lovely? But what has happened here?” He touched his own chin so as not to hurt hers.
“It is nothing, Grandpapa. A little cut when I tripped.”
Lane’s grandmother swept her into her arms and then stood her at arm’s length to look her up and down.
“Thin. Too thin. Did you have a good journey, little one?”
Darling watched these proceedings from a few feet away. It was so extraordinary to see Lane in the context of a family. He had become used to seeing her as a creature unto herself who had suddenly materialized in his life fully formed and ferociously independent, like that mythical goddess on a shell . . . what was her name? And now she was someone’s “little one.”
“Frederick,” Lane said, “come and meet my lovely grandparents. Grandpapa, try not to frighten him. He can only stay for two days, and then he has to go back to Canada. I would like him to have happy memories.”
They took the trap, which travelled along a winding road through the village, over a stone bridge, and up a sweeping hill. They arrived at a cottage with a stone fence around a spacious garden overlooking the countryside, which seemed to fall below them in waves.
“What do you think?” her grandmother asked.
“It’s lovely. To think of you living here will make me so happy ever after!”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Darling, about the rattling ride. We don’t keep a motor car,” her grandfather said. “No one to drive the thing, you see.”
“On the contrary, Mr. Johnson, I have never ridden in a trap. I found it relaxing after all the train changes and the smell of coal. It’s very beautiful here.”
LATER, IN THE kitchen, Lane sat at the table watching her grandmother chopping potatoes. “Why don’t you let me help?”
“No. I enjoy it. Judith comes in during the week and does all this sort of thing and won’t allow me into the kitchen at all. Your Mr. Darling is exceedingly good-looking.”
Lane put her head down to hide the blush she felt rise up her face. No one else on the planet could make her blush, she thought. I am a sixteen-year-old again. “You know, Gran, I don’t even think about that.”
“I’m absolutely certain that is rubbish for a start. If I had that around the house, I’d never take my eyes off him. Do you think I picked your grandfather solely because my parents hated him?”
“Gran, I don’t have him around the house. And anyway, how do you know he is not just my friend? He is just my friend. He had to come to England on business, and I was coming to see you. I thought I’d bring him along. That’s all.” Best not to say he’d been in the clink and charged with murder.
Putting down the knife and potato, her grandmother looked at her. “All that matters, my Laneke, is that he is worthy of you. That he is kind, that he appreciates and understands this heart he has captured. Does he?”
Lane shook her head, suddenly unsure. “When you love someone, that is sometimes sufficient to make them seem worthy. I know this. He loves me without wanting me to change. We live thirty miles apart, and he knows I cannot leave my house, and he has never asked me to. I once thought I loved a man, and he ordered every part of my life, and I thought that meant he loved me, but it only meant he controlled me. This man only wishes I were not so, I don’t know, reckless, I suppose.”
“Then I must take his side on that, at least. Don’t worry. I’ll find out. It won’t even take me the two days.”
“Oh God,” Lane muttered. “Poor Darling.”
WHAT A LOT of things we can feel at once, Lane thought. She was sitting in the garden drinking tea and eating shortbread the next afternoon. Darling had gone upstairs with her grandmother to fetch a box of photos. She dreaded the grilling he must be getting. Her grandfather sat beside her, his black cane resting against his leg. She ached to be home, but her gran’s lavish hugs and endearments warmed and repaired her in ways she never imagined. That first night under her grandmother’s roof she had nestled into the bed in the spare room looking out the open window into the dark, her whole body in the embrace of a deep sense of home.
“Do you miss Bilderingshof, Grandfather? I’ve been a little afraid to ask you. You lived there since you were a child, did you not?”
“I was born there. The only time I left was when we were sent to school in England. I suppose I miss it. It got a bit crowded with all those Russians. Had to wait in line to pee. It’s better here. I have the garden. And now I have you, my Laneke. Your gran was so happy when we got your letter. You know how she likes to make a fuss.” He looked at her conspiratorially. “Do you think he’s all right up there with her alone?”
“He’s a big boy. He’s a policeman. I’m sure he’s faced worse.”
“A policeman! Well, I never,” he said, glancing back toward the door.
“Not your local bobby with a helmet under his arm. He’s what you’d call a detective inspector here. He’s very good at his job. He’ll be able to handle her.”
“I don’t know. I’ve seen her disarm generals. The Russian officers were extremely glad to be rid of us. She didn’t care for them acting as though our house was theirs, and she told them so very often. Of course, in the revolution, the aristos are out and the people are in. I’ll tell you something, no ‘people’ will ever see the inside of our old house.”
Darling came out carrying a box, looking, Lane was relieved to see, no worse for wear, followed by her grandmother who caught her eye and gave her a broad wink behind Darling’s back.
They cleared the tea
things onto a silver tray, and her grandmother began to take the photos out. Lane picked them up one by one. Can you go back? she asked herself, or was the past just this vast sepia space that lay where it had been captured, on horseback, having tea with great uncles she scarcely remembered, holding a balalaika she could remember playing very badly, on the leaf-covered verandah of a house she would never see again. You could look there, but you could not reach in, pull it out, see it again as it had been.
“Look, Inspector Darling, here is a picture of our Laneke as a girl. Is she not beautiful?” her grandfather said, handing him a picture of her at seventeen, posed on the porch in a white summer dress and bare feet. Darling looked up inquiringly at Lane at being so addressed.
“I had to tell him, otherwise he might think you were a moocher,” she said.
“Tell him what?” asked her grandmother.
“Our guest is nothing less than an inspector in the police force in Canada.” Her grandfather gave him a pat on the back. “Now then, what do you think of that?”
“Frederick knows exactly what I think,” her grandmother replied, smiling. She took up another photo. “Look, here’s your father, God bless him, when he first met your mother. So handsome. She was quite taken up by him.”
“I don’t understand. Why would she have fallen for such a hard man, when all she knew at home was love?”
Her grandmother smiled sadly and stroked the photo. “He was not as bad, perhaps, before she died. She was a stubborn girl, your mother. Intelligent and independent. But full of laughter and kindness. I think once she committed in her heart to him, she felt she had done a good thing, could fill in what he lacked. She had a romantic view that people of opposite characters attract one another. It is not a view I subscribe to. He had excellent manners and gave her everything. But he was secretive and away a great deal. His work in the diplomatic corps. I believe that she began to sink under him. When she died in that awful epidemic, it was perhaps a merciful escape. And he had the good sense to bring you and your sister to us. He was not a bad man, Laneke. You mustn’t think that. But . . .”
It Begins in Betrayal Page 27