by Ted Bell
“Maybe a little late, depending. Could you ask the kitchen to leave me a roast beef sandwich on the sideboard? Rare with Dijon mustard? With crisps and cornichons? Be a good chap, will you, and leave something out?”
“Oh, all right. Consider it done,” she said, following him upstairs and going up on her tiptoes to kiss his rosy cheeks.
TOO SOON, HE WAS AWAY. In a moment, his little yellow Morgan roadster had disappeared round a bend in the sweeping drive. He was lost within the fold of deep green woods surrounding Brixden House. Despite her heroic and stoic intentions, Lady Mars suddenly found herself bereft and in desperate need of the solace of flowers and the red and gold of fall foliage.
So there she remained, bathed in the golden light streaming down through the Gothic library windows. And, long after Ambrose’s lovely little lemony putt-putt was gone, she remained there; gazing out into the garden, thinking of a summer to come when the grounds would be dappled with O’Hara roses, Sweet Avalanche, Veronica, and Lisianthus showing the softest pale grey foliage . . .
Her dear old knight errant, off tilting at windmills once more, convinced he was saving the world once and for all. God, how she loved that man. She knew he played the fool for her sometimes, just to see her smile. But she also knew that the crystalline mind he’d inherited from his mother was his diamond.
Clear, hard, and brilliant.
And, really, who knew? Perhaps he was well and truly off to save the world and perhaps . . . She sighed, and then bent down to gather up her needlepoint and needles from the seat of her favorite chair. She then moved outside to her shady bench in the garden. Glancing at her busy hands in the warm sunlight, she found herself much heartened by the brief but brilliant flash of her precious engagement ring, nestled beside her wedding band.
A solitary diamond he’d given her long ago on the beach at Pink Sands in Bermuda, the one that had belonged to his dear mother, Charlotte. The precious stone suddenly caught fire in the sunlight, like a distant explosion, though it was only inches away from the tip of her nose.
A lone tear had escaped her eyes, and she brushed it away with a flick of her wrist.
Charlotte’s son, Ambrose, had, after all, been his mother’s solitary diamond, too.
CHAPTER 57
Cambridgeshire, England
It was, Ambrose thought, déjà vu all over again.
The former chief inspector had been behind the wheel of the Yellow Peril for hours now. And the Peril was no easy beast to rein in out on the open road. So it came as some relief to find himself finally nearing the little hamlet of Haversham, on the distant fringes of Cambridge proper. When Professor Halter had rung him up earlier that week, Stefan had told him he’d recently bought a country house somewhere around this quaint ville.
Why move? Ambrose had had to ask himself at that point. Leave Cambridge Town? Why should someone of sound mind leave all the charm, the mystery, the architectural splendor that was that brilliant lovely old market town of yore?
As Congreve drew near the crossroads at the town center, he knew Halter’s choice could not be for the charm of this garden spot, Haversham. A drear little map speck, with nothing but a couple of dingy pubs, a sad, ill-lit curry house, a forlorn fish and chips, and a decaying petrol station to recommend itself.
Ambrose stopped at the one and only traffic signal. With both man and machine forced to sit idle for a moment or two, Congreve found himself gazing up at the red light dangling overhead. It called to mind a snippet from a Sherlock Holmes adventure: A manually operated gas-lit traffic signal, the first ever to be installed in London, figured as an alibi in Conan Doyle’s brilliant mystery. The incandescent Holmes, the great hero of Congreve’s life, had determined that the newfangled traffic light had exploded moments before the crime and thus exonerated the innocent suspect!
The old Sherlockian now looked down at directions he’d scrawled on the back of an advert. Halter had said Ambrose would recognize the place when he saw it, but the famous criminalist had only been in this sad little ville once before. And that visit had been on a dark and moonless night in hot pursuit of a female murderer.
He read his scrawl aloud to himself: “Left at only traffic signal, continue on dirt farm road for one mile, go right at milepost sign just after wooden bridge . . . thick birch woods straight ahead . . . irongated entrance on left . . .”
The light went green and he quickly engaged first gear and “hung a looey,” as his good friend Sir Stokely Jones Jr. was so fond of saying, and proceeded merrily on his way.
By now it was midafternoon, and the sun fell softly on the fields and meadows in this quiet corner of rural England. Here, the aforementioned rutted cart path wound through white-fenced pastures where flocks of Leicester sheep grazed peacefully. Birds flitted about in the sprays of richly hued autumn leaves overhead. Congreve and his Morgan Plus 4 bounced along at a prudently slow speed until he braked just shy of the shaky-looking wooden bridge over a narrow stream or brook.
Mighty Caesar had crossed the Rubicon.
Here was the white mile-post marker peeking up from the grass verge. He turned right as directed. The road instantly went from dirt to some very welcome macadam and he sped up. Ahead loomed the great stand of white birch he’d been promised. It was under darkening skies, with a cooling breeze upon his cheeks that he entered the ancient wood.
It was all starting to look vaguely familiar as a distinct sense of déjà vu suddenly came over him.
And then he came upon a large gated entrance of blackest iron and—it could not be! Oh, yes! Mental flashbulbs popped, and the thing was suddenly crystal clear. He’d been here once before, all right. And it had been a night to remember, indelibly imprinted in the cortex. A most unpleasant evening was putting it mildly.
In trying to arrest the woman who had just murdered Lord Hawke’s nanny and nearly killed his son, the noted criminalist had been physically assaulted and nearly tortured to death on the vile grounds of this very estate. Yes, there was the sign—
Ravenswood Farm!
Rounding a bend, the imposing vine-draped edifice hove into view. If you didn’t know this relic from antiquity was back here, buried deep within a primeval forest, you would not believe your eyes should you stumble upon it. Almost Disneyesque. The soaring stone towers, the many chimneys, the crenellated stone walls covered in Hedera helix, a dense ivy, the mossy domes and flying buttresses, the countless mullioned windows lit by the fire of very old and bubbly glass . . .
This was the former palace of the Bishop of Ely, now known as Ravenswood Farm. Congreve shivered at the nightmare memories stirring in his suddenly fevered brain. He had nearly died here on that cold night last year. He had been beaten to within an inch of his life and nearly pecked to death by countless killer ravens. All the while locked inside the cage of a Victorian aviary he could see peeking above the stables.
Ravenswood had been home to a monster.
The Gothic pile had then belonged to a deranged female sadist known as Dr. Chyna Moon. Moon had been a well-respected professor of Chinese studies at Cambridge once. That was until she had been outed as a Chinese spy and colonel in the Te-Wu, or Chinese Secret Service. Her late father, General Moon, was an avowed enemy of Alex Hawke. And the general’s number one daughter, Chyna, and her student accomplice had been given the very challenging task of murdering both Hawke and his small child in an act of vengeance.
She had failed miserably, thank God.
One night, after breaking into the nursery at Hawkesmoor, Chyna’s surrogate’s botched attempt at the murder of Alexei had resulted in the death of his then nanny, Sabrina Churchill. Congreve had raced out here to Ravenswood to confront and arrest the evil woman’s live-in accomplice, a beauteous Cambridge graduate student named Lorelei Li. Miss Li, a conniving bitch of the very first order, had escaped from Ravenswood on her motorcycle minutes before Congreve had arrived.
But not Chyna Moon.
Congreve had seen to that. He had put her in a maximum-se
curity prison, and there she remained to this day. Rotting in hell, one hoped. But most likely using ancient Chinese torture methods to bedevil her fellow inmates for her amusement. The whereabouts of Miss Li, sadly, remained unknown to this day.
So what the hell, he wondered, advancing into the forecourt between two large stone ravens perched on matching pillars, was the good Professor Halter doing here? Receiving houseguests in this haunted manse? Congreve proceeded slowly into the bricked car park, finding a spot of late-afternoon shade and parking the Peril beneath a spreading elm.
He extricated himself from the bucket seat, adjusted his new blue twill tie, and made his way across the brick pavers to the formidable entrance to the joint. It was quite chilly now, the light was going gold here in the damp forest, and he would be glad of a lovely tumbler of Halter’s marvelous Talisker and tap by the fireside.
He rapped the bronze lion’s head on the oaken door. It creaked a bit, then swung open almost instantaneously. Congreve almost gasped at the towering apparition before him.
There in the doorway, where an aged butler might well appear, stood an enormous TV wrestler known by the name of Optimus Prime.
Prime had been Chyna Moon’s butler cum bodyguard during those dark days of the Moon Dynasty. The night Ambrose had come to arrest Chyna, the infamous “Mauler from the Midlands” had nearly snapped his neck in two on the faded Aubusson carpets of the library. Dr. Moon, who cheered Optimus on from a nearby sofa, had called for Prime to finish him off.
He’d felt himself a wee gladiator going up against the biggest lion in the Coliseum that night. It was an experience he’d rather not see repeated tonight.
“Yes?” said the wrestler, then coughed a sticky wet bark full of whiskey and cigarettes accented with phlegm.
“Hullo, there!” said the weary visitor with forced jollity, pretending not to recognize the brute guarding the portals. “Ambrose Congreve here to see Professor Halter. I’m expected, you see.”
“You will find him in the library, sir,” Optimus Prime said, nearly as full of as much pomp and circumstance as any butler on Downton Abbey worth his salt could muster. He seemed deliberate in not remembering that awful night of one year ago.
“Thank you,” Congreve said, squeezing past, “I know the way.” He barely refrained from adding the unspoken phrase, “My good man.”
HALTER, DRESSED IN A THREE-PIECE suit of navy worsted and a Brook Club tie, was seated in a comfortable red leather club chair by the fire. He rose immediately and went to embrace his friend and colleague as Ambrose entered the capacious room. It smelled of dust, of old leather books, cigarette smoke, beeswax, spilled liquor, and, faintly, the lingering scent of the Dragon Lady herself: Opium, by Yves St. Laurent.
Halter, a very large, robust, and enthusiastic man, said, “I see you made it down in one piece, you old specimen. My directions sufficed?”
“So it would appear. Listen, I am quite in need of a largish alcoholic beverage of some kind. I am a bit shaken up. Unless I’m very much mistaken, I was just greeted at your front door by a formerly famous TV wrestler!”
“Ah, Optimus Prime. Yes, yes, he came with the house.”
“You allowed him to stay?”
“So it would seem.”
“Is he ill? He seems ill.”
“Nothing but a cold. He was out all night in the freezing rain chopping wood for the fire.”
“Ah. A health nut.”
Halter laughed out loud as he made his way over to the drinks table, noisily dropping cubes of ice into a pair of crystal tumblers. “And, pray, why not? I could use a little celebrity glamour around here.”
“Celebrity glamour?”
“You disapprove?”
“Disapprove is a bit mild. The fiend is as tightly strung as Venus Williams’s tennis racket.”
“He’s a bit intense on first meeting, I’ll grant you that. You need to get to know him, that’s all.”
“Sadly, this is not our first meeting.”
“What?”
“I know him. He’s psychotic.”
“Has he offended you in some way? Was he rude?”
“Quite rude, I daresay. He tried to kill me on that settee over there.”
“What?”
“Oh, never mind. I’ll tell you later.”
“Come, come, let bygones be bygones. Do have a seat by the fire. I am delighted to see you, Ambrose. You look splendid, old fellow, marriage to someone far above your station clearly agrees with you. And I do love the headgear. Nothing screams Ambrose Congreve like a perky lemondrop driving cap. It has been an age, has it not?”
“Far too long. Look here, Stef,” Congreve said, lowering himself into the chair and looking around the room. “I’m a bit confused. You’re renting this monstrosity? Where evil lurks? I thought you were happy in your cozy apartments at the college, views of the lovely Cam Bridge, as I recall.”
Halter handed him a tumbler half full of whisky and water and joined him by the hearth.
“I was happy. Then I saw a four-color advert in Country Life and simply couldn’t resist. Bought the place at a fire sale.”
“You actually bought it? How interesting. Do go on.”
“Well, here’s the thing, you see. After you and Alex Hawke provided the evidence that put Dr. Moon in jail, Ravenswood Farm fell rapidly into disrepair. Weeds as high as the chimneys. Our favorite lady spy stopped paying the staff. Groomsmen in the stables, gardeners, butlers, cooks, the whole lot up a creek. Optimus was the last one standing when the realtor showed me the place. I begged him to stay on if I ended up buying it. And luckily he agreed.”
“Luckily?”
“Hmm.”
“Why him?”
“Simple, really. I desperately needed someone who knew how to maintain the house and grounds, and how to staff the place, et cetera. Whom to call when one was desperate for a good chimney sweep or plumbing specialist. You must know the drill, living as you do in a place as gargantuan as Brixden House. It takes a village, no?”
“The village of the damned, apparently. Does he still keep his killer ravens out in the aviary?”
“Ravens? What ravens?”
“Oh, never mind.”
“Oh, come on. He does come off as a bit of a brutish fellow, our Optimus Prime, I do agree. But you never know when someone with talents like his may come in handy, especially in our particular . . . line of work.”
“Stef. Listen. It all came out at the trial. The man tried to kill me in this very room, I tell you. Locked me in a cage where killer birds almost pecked me to death. He’s insane.”
“He’s filled with remorse. I told him you were coming, and he was horrified by the idea of facing you. Did he say anything at the door?”
“The monster was silent.”
“Well, I’m sure he’s only waiting for an opportunity to beg your forgiveness. At any rate. How are you, Ambrose? Missing Bermuda? Happy to be back in England?”
“Ecstatic,” Congreve said, casting a worried glance at the library doors and whoever might be lurking beyond. “But, I must say, it’s a little disconcerting to see you in this . . . this unique setting. However. It may well be of no particular consequence. Whatever made you decide to move out to the countryside?”
“Ah, but I’ve always wanted to be the country squire, you know. Devoured every issue of Country Life for decades now. When I saw their advert for Ravenswood some months ago, I jumped on it. I’d come into a little money and decided, you know, what the hell. We’re both running out of runway rather quickly, you know.”
Ambrose drew on his pipe and looked around the high-ceilinged room.
“I must say the old dump looks better without all the stuffed crows on the walls. Mangy bear heads. Good for you. I’m sure it was a bargain and now you’ve got some room to roam around.”
“Thirty of them.”
“Mmm. Pull down all these heavy velvet curtains soon, will you? They’re held together with the dust of centuries. And you need
more light in here, Stef. The whole house is a bit tomblike, if that’s the phrase I’m looking for. The word ‘macabre’ comes to mind.”
Halter nodded agreement and said, “How is our mutual friend, Lord Hawke? I’m so sorry about all the horror and sadness he suffered in Washington. Poor Nell Spooner. What a brave soul. I shall miss her.”
“As will I. You know, Stef, I’d say that, all things considered, he’s doing fairly well. He’s finally seen the light with his quasi-friend Putin, thank God. I was worried he was under some kind of evil Cossack spell.”
Congreve paused a moment, then knocked back the remains of the reviving potion and leaned forward.
“I had a meeting with C in London right after Alex got back from his visit to Washington and—I say, may I freshen your drink?”
“Please do. More whisky, less water this time, Stef. I’m suddenly in the whisky mood. Abject terror at one’s dire surroundings is oft mitigated by strong drink, I find.”
Halter got his large frame extricated from the chair and made his way once more over to the drinks table.
“Buckle your seat belts, we’re in for a bumpy night,” the rotund professor said, smiling as he poured a topper libation for his old friend. They were two kindred spirits, after all, each doing what he loved, donning the blackest cloaks and snatching up the longest daggers. And this was precisely what the two co-conspirators conspiring by the fireside happened to be very, very good at: spoiling other people’s fun.
CHAPTER 58
As I was saying,” Halter said, collapsing ever more deeply into his chair, “I went down to London to meet with Sir David immediately upon his return from the States. Behind closed doors in his office at MI6. Trulove said he’d been witness to a rather grueling White House session with President Rosow, but he had managed to come away with U.S. approval to forge ahead with Hawke’s Cuban operation.”
“Yes, I got the very same message. I was on with Alex in Miami early this morning. Preparations for the joint naval operation are nearing completion aboard Blackhawke. Switching gears for the moment, Stef, please tell me what the hell is going on in Moscow. That singular town of yours lies at the heart of danger, now, it does seem to me. All that’s dire. Save the murderous thugs establishing an unholy caliphate in Iraq, Syria, Libya, and Yemen, of course. Any chance of getting Putin to put more pressure on Assad and Syria to assist the Kurdish militia in efforts to stand up to the ISIS savages?”