by Gavin Lyall
Ranklin shook his head. “Firstly, just tell me what you’ve been doing. From the start.”
“Just trying to do my best for Grover. Anything they told me to.”
“Such as?”
“Writing a letter to the American Consul, and moving into horrible lodgings where Kaminsky said I’d be safe from the police . . . And then going to Portsmouth with him. And meeting you. All that was his idea, he said it would be best for Grover.”
There was a distant crackle of firing, but it didn’t sound final, dying away in a series of individual pops.
“Go on.”
“Then . . . then he made me move on to the barge, and I was kept prisoner. I was really a prisoner there. He didn’t tell me what was going on in London, just said it would be all right. He’d taken my papers, too, and my passport. In France, if you haven’t got papers you’re nobody, you don’t exist. I felt he was . . . was just turning me into nothing. I was frantic, I was going mad.”
Ranklin glanced at Corinna’s cool expression to help remind himself that this woman had once been an actress.
“And he said he’d give me some medicine to calm my nerves. I got some sleep then, and when I woke up he made me drink some more . . . I knew the barge was moving . . . And then you rescued me.” And she smiled, bright and thankful. And quite ready, he felt, to tell her story again with a different slant and new stage effects if that suited better.
“I went through it all for Grover,” she reminded him. Which was probably true, but to her mind, it also excused everything. Whatever happened, she and Grover were going to come out unscathed.
“Did you see Dr Gorkin at all?”
“He used to come down to the Café des Deux Chevaliers sometimes. And when Grover was arrested in London, he asked me if I’d swear to the King being Graver’s father.”
“And you said you would.”
“It was to save Grover! They told me it was the only way . . . Anyway, why shouldn’t we have a bit of proper living?”
“In Buckingham Palace?”
“And why not?”
“Mrs Langhorn, I told you – when I thought you were Mrs Simmons – that no power on earth could make Grover the next king. That’s still true.”
“But it’s still true he ought to be.”
“It’s also true that because you started saying that, four people are now dead, they tried to kill off Berenice –” at that, Mrs Langhorn really did look at the girl, in genuine, wide-eyed surprise “– and probably more by the time this siege is done.”
After a moment, she muttered: “That doesn’t change the truth.”
Ranklin sighed. “No, none of it does. But there’s been one other development: somebody . . . somebody close to the Palace is offering a pension if you abandon this story.”
“They admit it!”
Ranklin repeated patiently: “They’re offering a pension. But if the story comes out, the pension stops. I should think about it.” He turned to Corinna. “I think it would be best if you just got them back to Paris. Just where . . .”
“I can find somewhere.” In this situation, in front of this audience, Corinna wasn’t one to raise objections. “I’ll send our chauffeur back for you. Er . . . who will you be?”
“Tell him to look for Spencer. And thanks – as much for running away from that lane as anything.”
Her expression turned serious. “If I’d stayed, I might have helped that Jay to—”
“No, you wouldn’t!” Ranklin shook his head firmly. “There were three of them and you’d just have got yourself killed and let them get away in the motor-car. You did exactly the right thing.” For once, he didn’t add.
He saw them to the hired tourer parked around the corner. As he closed the door on Mrs Langhorn, she said: “You said you were working for Mr Quinton.”
“And you said you were Mrs Simmons.”
They stood for a moment on the doorstep of the café, listening to the siege. By now the shooting was constant but low-key, just individual shots. O’Gilroy said: “If’n we’d jest shot that barge to hell, we’d be rid of that old bitch and young Jay’d be alive yet.”
“Nobody can be sure of things like that.”
“He’d be alive,” O’Gilroy insisted. “Only I stopped ye going for Mrs Langhorn and—”
“I’m in command,” Ranklin said sharply. “I decide things like that.” And will people just stop reminding me of “ifs”? The man is dead. Let him lie.
After a time, O’Gilroy muttered: “Stupid honourable bastard of an officer.” Ranklin chose not to hear.
Soon after that, the first journalists arrived. First came obvious “lines-of-communication” people, a couple of youngsters and an elderly chauffeur, setting up trays of drinks, establishing there was a telephone, interrogating the proprietor. His instinct was to be taciturn and surly, but as he saw Corinna’s predicted fortune coming true, he began to flower; Ranklin overheard several dramatic and imaginative details. Whether the young reporters believed him or not, they wrote it all down.
After maybe half an hour, a bunch of more seasoned reporters hurried in and, without seeming to try but rather as if it was their right, took the place over. They had clearly been up as near to the action as the Sûreté allowed, had got little but statements from police officers and some villagers’ rumours, and immediately, to Ranklin’s surprise, sat down to swap notes. Where was all this deadly rivalry and “scoops” he had heard so much about?
Mostly they ignored Ranklin and O’Gilroy, but eventually a middle-aged man strolled over and said: “D’you mind if I join you?”
He had an American voice, and Ranklin said: “If you want,” but the man had already sat down.
“Wendell Lewis, Associated Press.” He stuck out a hand, and they both shook it. He hung on to O’Gilroy’s hand a moment too long, then asked: “What’s your connection with all this?”
“Just innocent bystanders.”
Lewis smiled quickly. He was in his thirties, with a narrow, sharp face and heavy glasses that gave him the look of a scholarly fox. “His hand’s all scratched up and you’ve got a fresh cut on your cheek.” Ranklin instinctively touched his face; it had just been some thorn, and he had washed the smear of blood off in the toilette, but it still stung. And showed, it seemed.
“Why aren’t you beavering away like your colleagues?” Ranklin asked.
“Time difference. Those boys are up against edition times, but I’ve got five hours’ leeway. I needn’t file for our East Coast papers until five in the morning French time. D’you think it’ll last out until then?”
“I’ve really no idea . . .” It hadn’t occurred to him that Kaminsky might time his Last Stand to suit newspaper schedules, and he doubted it had occurred to Kaminsky either. But this raised a thought . . . “But d’you mean that if it doesn’t end soon, they won’t have anything to write?”
“Hardly that. A shoot-out with dozens of police is quite a story; it’s just if you don’t have the ending it’s a bit like writing up a ball game without the box score. We’ll all be filling in with background and colour, who they are, how did it start.”
“Do you know most of the journalists here?”
“Most.” Lewis looked back over his shoulder. The room was full and busy, particularly for the proprietor and his wife. For the moment the telephone had been taken over by a uniformed Sûreté officer but there was a pack of young reporters behind him, ready to pounce.
Lewis peered through the wreathing tobacco smoke. “There’s Lebrun of Figaro, and Davidier from he Matin, and he Gaulois, Echo de Paris, and Jake Jacobs of our Herald, and a couple of stringers for your Sunday papers . . . pretty good turnout, for a Saturday night. It must be the rumour they’re anarchists – are they?”
“You shut your mouth, Connelly,” Ranklin suddenly told O’Gilroy. And since O’Gilroy hadn’t been about to say anything, and he’d never used the name Connelly, he looked briefly surprised. But then decided he’d better be abashed and su
llen until he found out what the hell Ranklin had in mind.
“They may call themselves anarchists,” Ranklin told Lewis, “but for my money, they’re just trouble-makers and crooks. Pure rabble, no matter what Connelly says.”
Nothing had changed in Lewis’s face, but at the same time everything had. He was now twice as alive.
“Connelly” muttered: “Bloody English bastard,” a comment that was, in context, non –committal.
“Shut up, you damned Irish renegade.”
“I could tell ye a tale—” “Connelly” ventured.
Ranklin snatched his pistol from his pocket and thrust it in O’Gilroy’s face. “I said shut up!”
Lewis’s chair clattered backwards on to the floor, stopping the room in mid-gabble. A couple of dozen faces turned to the banquette in the corner, but saw no more than Ranklin’s back and a glimpse of his gun as he whispered fiercely at O’Gilroy.
Then Lewis, who’d backed away several steps and felt somehow responsible for this outburst, said: “Hey, I didn’t mean to start anything . . .”
Ranklin straightened up and turned to face the other journalists past him. “My name’s Spencer from the British War Office and that’s all you need know about me. This gentleman wants to say a few words to you gentlemen of the Press, and I’ve agreed he can do so on his promise that he’ll then accompany me – voluntarily and quietly – back to London. Now say your piece.”
The Sûreté officer, who’d felt he should have something to say about a flourished pistol, paused uncertainly.
O’Gilroy shambled to his feet. As the would-be-inconspicuous O’Gilroy, he would rather face the Inquisition than this group. But he was no longer O’Gilroy. As Ranklin watched and listened, he gradually became Connelly. It was like seeing a man become possessed, in this case by an Irish braggart who would far rather talk than do.
“Yer here because of some fellers I know holed up in a house by the canal ’n like to gettin’ theirselves killed. I don’t say Good Luck to ’em, I’d jest say God go wid ’em – whether they believes in Him or not. Meself, I’m no sort of anarchist, ’n niver was. I’m a good Irish republican that wants no truck wid kings ’n queens ’n all of the aristocrats that’s been bleedin’ Ireland white for centuries past. The only raison I’m not home in Ireland now is the traithors av the Irish poliss that hounded me out av family ’n home ’n if ye think yer gettin’ me rightful name, good luck wid it.
“So I’m livin’ in stinkin’ lodgin’s in La Villette wid a bunch that calls thimselves anarchists. ’N mebbe they are: seems ye can call yerself an anarchist long as ye believe the world’s an unfair place ’n better off wid no laws ’n nothin’. Meself I believe in Irish laws made by Irish folk for the runnin’ av a proper free Ireland.”
“Get on with it,” somebody called.
O’Gilroy looked sullenly truculent, paused, then hit them between the eyes. “All right. So it began wid this feller claims he’s the bastard son av King George ’n the next king av England by rights. Said his mother’d told him so.”
That hushed them. It was a hush of disbelief, but most of the audience scribbled a note or two. Some of the French journalists who couldn’t follow his “English” demanded what he’d said and were themselves hushed. Ranklin saw the Sûreté officer slip out into the street.
“So ye let loonies like this,” O’Gilroy continued, “in ivry pub in the world. But the feller Kaminsky gits to hear av ut – he’s one av the fellers shootin’ at the poliss right now, runs the Café des Deux Chevaliers in La Villette. ’N he told Feodor Gorkin, the intellec’chul feller that came down slummin’ at the place. So they got the idea they’d use this to show what a rotten place England was. Have ut all come out when the King was visitin’ Paris.
“ ’N sure, I wint along wid that. But I didn’t know what I was gittin’ meself into. Anyways, this young feller was the waiter in Kaminsky’s café ’n he’d bin workin’ on Kaminsky’s barge, puttin’ an injin in ut—”
“What ‘fellow’?” an English reporter demanded. “Who’re you talking about?”
“Did I not say ut?” It was a nice touch, making them drag bits of the story out of him. It involved them. “ ’Twas a feller Grover Langhorn, ’n American, ’n his mother Mrs Langhorn who’d bin English. ’N he’d bin workin’ on the barge, like I said, so they sent him to buy petrol, then one night when they know he’s off duty at the café ’n safe alone in his room, a couple av the boyos set fire to the poliss station up the road.”
By now he was Connelly, sitting in on the betrayal of (Grover to the French police, his flight to London and second betrayal to Scotland Yard. And going with Gorkin to London for the extradition hearing, learning of Guillet’s failings in court and the decision to kill him off. He even had himself – Connelly – asked to do the killing but getting cold feet, “unconsciously” showing himself fonder of words rather than deeds.
“Anyways, he borries a motor-car off’n the fancy people he was stayin’ wid, while I gets a coupla fellers from the Anarchists’ Club. ’N he sends ’em to pick Guillet up ’n bash him on the head ’n roll him into the river. Mind ye,” he added quickly, “I din’t see nor know of this, I jest heard tell of it later.”
They didn’t believe that. It was too like a snake wriggling out of its old skin and claiming he’d left his sins behind, too. But paradoxically, they had to have something to disbelieve so that they’d believe the important parts. And “Connelly” was giving answers to questions everyone else had shied off, answers that strung together into a logical story. They were all scribbling flat out by now.
Of course, there was no mention of the Bureau, and not much of Mrs Langhorn. Her trip across to Portsmouth was ignored (but why, come to that, should “Connelly” know anything of it anyway?).
And standing at the door were two new Sûreté men and another in plain clothes.
“Ony then things really did start goin’ wrong. Seems Berenice Collomb’d gone round to find Guillet ’n ast why he’s tellin’ such lies ’bout her boy, ’n the London poliss grabbed her for the murther ’n whin they lets her go, it’s in the keepin’ av an American lady runnin’ the fund that’s defendin’ Grover. ’N Gorkin, he’s bad worried she’s mebbe goin’ to talk too much ’n he sez I should kidnap her ’n give her the treatment same as Guillet. ’N I sez I told ye I’m niver doing things like that, I come across to help banjax the English government ’n now yer killin’ poor Frenchies, the same people yer say yer doin’ all this for, and I’m off back to Paris. ’N I am.
“ ’N seems I did right, ’cos what I hear, Scotland Yard caught these fellers ’n rescued Berenice ’fore they could do her in. ’N seems Gorkin agrees wid me, ’cos he comes on the next boat ’n to hell wid those poor fellers from the Anarchists’ Club.
“ ’N then, I heard of some English fellers in Paris tryin’ to find out ’bout Kaminsky and the boyos from the café, ’n I kinda fell in wid ’em, becos killin’ people’s not what I signed up for, nobody told me ’bout that, ’n when the poliss from the Sûreté raided the café ’I Kaminsky gets away in the barge, I only went along ’cos they made me. Needed a feller to fix the injin. ’N first chancst I got, I’m away.”
One of O’Gilroy’s great talents was believing in his own lies, at least while he was telling them.
An English reporter who was quicker on the uptake than the rest asked: “You mean you’d changed sides and were working for the British War Office all the time you were on the barge?”
“Ye think what ye like,” O’Gilroy mumbled.
“Did you stop the barge here and tip off the Sûreté ?”
Ranklin stepped forward. “I think that’s enough. Now—”
An American voice called: “This story about Grover Langhorn’s parentage – d’you think there’s any truth in that at all?”
This was the heart-stopping moment, when the reporters could decide that anarchist plots ran a poor second to royal bastards. And typically, Ranklin’s mind flew off a
t an absurd tangent, reckoning that that fatherhood wasn’t a matter of “any truth” but plain true or false. But O’Gilroy was hardly likely to take up such a quibble, yet everything hung on his answer. And he surprised them all.
“Sure ’n it’s true. Isn’t ivry English king pokin’ ivry woman in the land ’n ’nough bastards to fill a rij’ment?”
There was a deathly hush. Then Ranklin recovered and called sternly: “Will you stop these filthy, irresponsible accusations against our monarch?” Everyone looked at him. “I’ll ask you to disregard those last remarks of Connelly’s.”
“Where’s this Mrs Langhorn”
O’Gilroy hesitated, and Ranklin held his breath again. Of course they’d want to know that – but where, for the sake of this story, should she be? He should have thought of it. Oh God . . .
“Last I saw, she was on the barge wid Kaminsky.” When all else fails, try (almost) the truth.
Anyway, it brought a pause while they thought about the implications of this, but then: “Is she one of the people being besieged, then?”
O’Gilroy shrugged, and Ranklin stood firmly forward to rescue him. “Connelly wanted to tell you his story. He’s now done so, and I take no responsibility for it. I’m sure that Scotland Yard and their French counterparts are investigating and you’ll hear the truth of it in due course.” Ranklin wasn’t so obtuse as to think any journalist cared about “due course”; they were interested in now. But he too was playing a part. “Now I ask Mr Connelly to honour his promise and return quietly to London with me.”
“What will happen to him?”
“We do not regard Mr Connelly as particularly important –”
“Me ’n ivry other Irishman!” O’Gilroy shouted.
“– we regard him as a useful – if not entirely trustworthy – informant.”
Playing the part to the last, O’Gilroy yelled: “ ’N mebbe ye’ve royal blood in yeself!”
“English is quite good enough for me,” Ranklin said with dignity. He took O’Gilroy by the elbow and pushed him, protesting sullenly, towards the little group of Sûreté men by the door. He couldn’t say they looked pleased but they were, in their way, welcoming.