by Gavin Lyall
“Anyway,” Jay said from the telephone, “he’s an intellectuel.”
“What d’you mean?” Ranklin demanded.
The Commander took over the explanation: “Jay got it from that French copper. You know how the French respect brains? – intelligence, education, that sort of thing? It seems the French police have an unwritten law about going easy on . . .” the word stuck in his throat but he finally coughed it out: “intellectuels.”
Jay added: “So we’ll need a doubly cast-iron case before we’ll get them to help us nail him down.”
Ranklin said: “Oh,” and left it at that because there didn’t seem anything more to say. Then Jay got his telephone connection and started being charming.
The Commander lowered his voice a trifle. “Well, what do we do now?”
“I’ve got O’Gilroy trying to find out if anybody’s turned up at the Paris consulate. But I don’t know what we’ll do even if anyone has. By now, it may not matter so much who did what; we may have a runaway train and be looking for ways of stopping that.”
They were both throwing quick glances at Jay, who was charming in top gear, but scribbling as well.
“All we want is information,” the Commander growled at him. “No need to seduce her as well.”
Finally Jay rang off and became instantly businesslike. “Mrs Simmons left yesterday evening, despite having to pay for last night anyway—”
“Right after I saw her,” Ranklin said.
Jay nodded and consulted his notes. “And it seems there was a man staying with her – but quite separately, nothing indecorous – name of Kaplan, supposedly French but didn’t sound like it. Solidly built, not tall, dark, moustache, smallpox scars – would you believe they remembered that last of all? He left at the same time.” He struck a match and lit the paper, as per the Commander’s standing orders. “They could easily have caught the overnight boat from Newhaven and been in Paris well before lunch today.”
“Everybody getting back to Paris,” the Commander said.
“In good time for the Royal Visit,” Jay said.
The Commander started to give him a nasty look, then realised this could be the simple truth, and rescinded the look.
O’Gilroy came in from the outer office and Ranklin swung round on him. “Did you get through?”
“He says Mrs Langhorn turned up at the consulate.”
“How’d they know it was her?”
O’Gilroy gave the ghost of a smile. “Had all the right papers, knew all the right things.”
Ranklin nodded. “What did they tell her?”
“Go and meet a feller at the Ritz tomorrow morning at ten, she’d learn more then.”
“Somebody from the Embassy or the Palace?”
“He didn’t know. Seems they’re being a bit hush-hush.”
“They didn’t think to have her followed when she left?”
“Be yer age, Captain, this is the consulate.”
“Hm. Ten to one it’s some floozy with Mrs Langhorn’s papers.”
“Ye was expecting that, wasn’t ye?”
But Ranklin had turned back to the Commander. “We’ve got a chance: they’ve left a door half open there. Whether it’s Mrs Langhorn or not, if we were there and followed her it should prove a link to Gorkin or whoever once and for all . . . And if I’ve already met Mrs Langhorn, I ought to know if I’m meeting her again.”
O’Gilroy said: “There’s nary a boat ’til around eight tomorrow, not now.”
The Commander stared at his feet. Then he erupted out of his chair and snatched the telephone away from Jay. “Get me through to the Admiralty. Duty Officer.”
13
One thing Ranklin knew about torpedo boat destroyers was that they looked incomplete. A simple hull with funnels, ventilators and guns sprouting directly from the deck as if the naval architect had forgotten the superstructure.
Presumably this was what they were heading for across Dover’s dark harbour, the wallowing of the steam pinnace squeezing from O’Gilroy the first of a monologue of moans that would last to Calais. Yet this same man had slept while being driven at 60 mph on dark roads by the Commander, who became deranged behind a steering wheel. Tired as he was, Ranklin hadn’t wanted God to catch him asleep.
Then the pinnace thumped against a throbbing steel hull and he scrambled up a few rungs of ladder. He was hauled aboard with a gesture that was half a handshake by a lieutenant ten years younger than himself, and passed to a mere schoolboy of an officer while the lieutenant greeted Jay and O’Gilroy, then strode off forward shouting orders. The boy led them aft along the cluttered deck to a hatchway that was round and steel and very final-looking, as if they were being battened down to be shot to the moon. Before they had all got below, the destroyer had shaken itself like a wet dog and started moving.
“Take up as much space as you like,” the schoolboy said, looking proudly around a ward-room that would have been about the size of a railway compartment but for the bunks on both sides. “We’ll have you in Calais in two shakes of a duck’s tail.”
“How long without the shakes?” O’Gilroy muttered.
“Get into a bunk,” Ranklin ordered, “and try and be quiet.”
“Can I get you mugs of cocoa?” the boy offered. And when that met dead silence, he added: “I’m sure the Captain wouldn’t mind me raiding his coffee if you’d prefer?”
“Two mugs of coffee would be splendid,” Ranklin accepted, then his voice turned firm. “My colleague will try to get some sleep.” He passed O’Gilroy a silver flask of brandy.
“Do we stay here the whole voyage?” Jay asked, fitting himself into a chair at the narrow table.
“Well, sir, there aren’t any passageways on these ships, so you have to go up on deck to get anywhere . . . And there really isn’t anywhere to go.”
“The Captain won’t expect a courtesy call on the bridge, then?” Ranklin asked.
“I’m afraid there isn’t a bridge, sir. He conns the ship from the forward gun platform.”
“How splendidly economical,” Jay murmured, and when the lad went off to clatter in the pantry next door, added softly: “Did you notice that everybody wears rubber boots? I regard that as a bad sign in ships and country houses both.”
Still, one had to admire how the Navy, once it had agreed to something, went full ahead without requiring a dozen documents signed in triplicate. Perhaps they had nothing better to do, there being no wars or pirates in the English Channel, but there was still something about having a private craft over twice as fast as any millionaire’s. Ranklin just hoped the lieutenant-Captain remembered to slow down when they neared France.
As they cleared the harbour mouth the thrumming of the engines increased, the water roared and slapped a few inches away and the destroyer shot forward across the calm sea. But the Channel is never truly calm, and this was no big, ponderous ship that took time to roll and pitch. At barely 400 tons, this vessel twitched suddenly and unpredictably, and Ranklin couldn’t help recalling that destroyers had only a short life before they shook themselves to bits.
On the bunk, O’Gilroy moaned. Jay, by contrast, seemed perfectly at ease, sprawled in his chair with one foot braced against an upright, cradling his swaying coffee in both hands. It seemed unlikely he had ever been in a destroyer before, but you never knew with Jay. It was best to assume he knew everyone and had done everything until proven wrong.
In fact, Jay was feeling both buoyant and overawed at being on his first mission abroad with a truly experienced team. And he positively relished that he didn’t understand either of them, let alone their bond. The dark, sardonic Irish ex-ranker and the mild, tubby English officer made an odd team, but their exploits together had become legendary (he didn’t yet realise that secret services, wary of records, are great breeding-grounds for legend). In his youthful cynicism, Jay had decided that while all life was a pretence, the Bureau and the two men he was with were worth pretending for.
The truth was that
Jay was a secret enthusiast. He had joined the Army an overt enthusiast but found that it, or at least his battalion, had no place for enthusiasm. Not merely was it bad form to show it, you weren’t supposed to have it at all. What mattered was correct form. Since Jay could be correct without even trying, he turned to things that needed some effort, like seducing senior officers’ wives and rigging horse races. On the brink of disgrace – which had become familiar ground – he had been snapped up by the Commander, who believed “the black sheep of the best families” was what the Bureau needed.
It wasn’t, Jay had found, that the Bureau particularly wanted rank and breeding; it valued them, but just as it valued being able to lie convincingly or pick a lock. They were tools, for which the Bureau would find a use.
So here he was, in what felt like a stuffy tin coffin running on square wheels, any thought of seasickness stifled by sheer excitement. Not, of course, that he showed it. He did, however, allow himself an admiring glance at Ranklin, who was sitting smoking and hunched in thought, not caring that most of his coffee had spilled or what his pipe might be doing to O’Gilroy. Not much really, Jay decided, not in an atmosphere that was already thick with the smells of stale food and hot oil.
“What do we do when we get to Paris?” he asked.
Ranklin roused himself. “Get to the Ritz ahead of the supposed Mrs Langhorn. Then you and O’Gilroy follow her to see if she leads us to Gorkin.” They had to speak loudly. The cabin seemed to be next to the engine room and a high-speed thudding pulsed steadily through the bulkhead.
“Is she part of this plot.?”
“The real her?” Ranklin chewed his pipe and shrugged. “Yes and no, probably. I’m assuming she’d do anything to save her boy and that others are trading on that. Getting her to write that letter, bringing her to England to pretend to be her own sister. Which fooled me completely, I admit. My only excuse is that we’d convinced ourselves she was hiding from us and we weren’t thinking of conspiracies at that stage.”
“And what about the beautiful Berenice Collomb – was she originally part of it?”
“Wild card,” O’Gilroy said.
Ranklin swung clumsily around. “I thought you were asleep.”
“Tried that. Didn’t work. Now I’m trying to die.”
Ranklin nodded. ‘“Wild card’ sounds about right. She just came trailing after her lover. Gorkin hid her away in Bloomsbury Gardens, but then when we got hold of her, he tried to have her done away with. Like Guillet.”
Mustering his courage, Jay asked: “You really didn’t kill him yourself?”
“Of course I didn’t,” Ranklin said with only a hint of impatience. “D’you think if I’d killed him I wouldn’t have got more out of him first? If he’d confessed to being bribed or blackmailed into his evidence we’d have been on to this conspiracy almost two days earlier.”
Jay nodded and set out to memorise it all. In his bunk, O’Gilroy moaned, except when he was medicating himself with the brandy flask. And the Captain did remember to slow down before running into the Calais quayside, where they were met by a lieutenant-commander posted in to make arrangements for meeting the Royal Yacht four days later. He scurried them through the empty streets in a hired motor to board a train that then crawled its way to Longueau, just past Amiens, where they changed to a faster train coming in from Lille. They arrived at the Gare du Nord just after eight o’clock, among a crowd that looked disgustingly bright, well dressed and, above all, well slept. After a long wait, they got a taxi to O’Gilroy’s pension to wash, shave and for O’Gilroy to change his clothes. Ranklin was at the reception desk at the Ritz hotel by half-past nine.
* * *
The less you knew what you were doing, the more assured you should seem–or so ran Ranklin’s experience. However, having the inspiration that Major St Claire himself might be the man upstairs was what did the trick at the desk.
At St Claire’s room – actually a suite with a drawing-room joining two bedrooms – he was greeted with surprise: “What on earth brings you across?”
“More or less the same as you, I think. We got word that you’d found Mrs Langhorn.”
St Claire wasn’t happy that words like that had got loose. “You’d better come in . . . Yes, actually we have. How did you find out?”
“Do you mind me saying that the Bureau has its sources? Best I can offer, I’m afraid. Are you going to appeal to her patriotism to get her to drop the claim, then?”
“Ah . . . no, not exactly. We’re actually going to offer her a pension, payable for just as long as she keeps mum about the whole thing.”
“Ah . . . You don’t think that might look like admitting her claim is true?”
At that moment, a tall, well-built man in his fifties hurried out of one of the bedrooms, just finishing the knot of a very dull necktie. He wore a dark grey suit, gold-rimmed glasses and what was left of his hair was very pale. He relaxed, but frowned when he saw Ranklin.
St Claire stumbled over the introductions. “Captain Ranklin of the . . . um, well, let’s say the War Office – does that suit you? Mr Harland, the solicitor who’s acting for His Majesty in this matter. Don’t worry,” he reassured Harland, “Ranklin knows as much about this as we do. More, I rather think. Shall we sit down?”
When they were seated, and Harland had started fiddling with his tie again, St Claire went on: “Mr Harland will actually be making the offer of a pension and it will be traceable only as far back as the bank. There will be no connection to be made, I assure you.”
Ranklin looked grave. “Hm. I can’t help feeling that if news of a pension seeps out, everyone will know it comes from the Palace, no matter what.”
Harland cocked his head. “I intend to make it clear to the woman that the pension will continue only so long as news of it does not seep out.”
“Fair enough – but could we consider the thought that it might not be the real Mrs Langhorn but someone who just wants to find out what you’re offering and then reveal it all?”
St Claire stiffened. “The consulate officials checked her papers and questioned her closely. They reported themselves as satisfied she was who she claimed to be . . . And misbehaviour of that sort sounds well beyond the capabilities of a woman of her class living in that part of Paris.”
“Quite. But if it isn’t Mrs Langhorn, that should suggest there are more devious minds involved, shouldn’t it?” And while they were considering this, Ranklin went on: “I may be able to identify Mrs Langhorn myself. So if I can sit in on the interview, and you would hold off on making the actual offer . . .”
Harland turned to St Claire. “It’s for you to decide, Major, but I understood you wanted the matter settled as quickly as possible.”
“We do, we do,” St Claire soothed. “But if the lady isn’t the right one . . .” He was still puzzling out the implications of this.
Harland turned back to Ranklin. “Are you planning to challenge the woman’s identity?”
It was Ranklin’s turn to soothe. “Oh no. Whether she’s genuine or not, I don’t want her to think we have any doubts.”
“Then am I to make this offer or not?”
“May we see how it goes and I’ll leave you in no doubt about what to do?”
St Claire nodded and Harland sighed.
“And one more thing,” Ranklin said. “I’d like to ask a Mr Jay –one of our people – up here and pop him in one of your bedrooms for a while. Then he’ll come out on some excuse, get a look at the lady, and go downstairs ready to follow her. If she isn’t Mrs Langhorn –” he thought for a moment, then added:“– and perhaps even if she is, she might lead us to the man behind this affair.”
Harland and St Claire exchanged looks, then Harland asked: “Do you really think there is such an affair and such a man?”
“There’s been some remarkable goings-on in London, probably orchestrated by a Dr Gorkin, who we think came back to Paris yesterday . . . Now I’ll just pop down and collect Mr Jay.”
&
nbsp; Harland said: “I fully appreciate the need for discretion and caution in this matter. I just question whether we need all this . . . this . . .” He waved a hand.
“Have you ever had occasion to hire private detectives, Mr Harland?”
“I have. And no,” he smiled rather bleakly, “I didn’t tell them how to go about their business, if that was your next question. I’m just concerned about the number of people getting involved.”
“We all are,” St Claire growled.
When he got back with Jay, leaving O’Gilroy sitting at the back of the lobby, there was a smartly-dressed, middle-aged lady seated in the corner of the room. This certainly was neither Mrs Langhorn nor someone trying to be, which left Ranklin puzzled until St Claire introduced him to Mrs Winthrop, wife of one of the Embassy staff. “I’ve invited Mrs Winthrop to sit in as chaperone, just for the look of things.”
Gracious, polite, interested but not too interested – a lot of the diplomatist had rubbed off on Mrs Winthrop. “I understand I’m not to ask what this is all about and not to guess, either,” she said, smiling. “You have my word.”
Nice to meet someone who doesn’t know, Ranklin thought sourly, given that Harland and St Claire do, and Corinna and Quinton and . . . there may be some hermit in the Hebrides who hasn’t heard the story yet, but who else? Oh yes, the King himself was supposed not to know. Ironic, that.
A tray of coffee arrived soon after that, and Jay posted himself beside the bedroom door. They drank coffee, discussed the programme of the Royal Visit, and waited.
At ten past ten “Mrs Langhorn” arrived and she certainly wasn’t the “Mrs Simmons” Ranklin had met at Portsmouth, although she looked about the came age. Instead of being fair and pert, this woman had a sharp, bony face under mousy-brown hair. She was dressed in a skirt and high-buttoned jacket, both in faded grey-blue. An old fur stole dyed a quite unnatural orange was wrapped around her neck. She certainly looked like La Villette in its Sunday best, and from Harland’s forced smile, she had him convinced.