Peril in Paris (Taylor and Rose Secret Agents)

by Katherine Woodfine

  Her glass was empty and she waved a hand impatiently to attract a waiter’s attention. As a waiter moved forward to fill her glass, Sophie saw that at the next table, Herr Grün had been joined by a companion. As he turned his head, everything Miss Russell had been saying seemed to fall away, and to her horror she realised that sitting beside Grün, only a few feet away from her, was the grey man himself. He looked quite different now, smart in evening dress, but she knew him at once.

  Beside her, Miss Russell was watching her, a triumphant look on her face. ‘I’ve been trying to place you all evening but I’ve got it now,’ she announced. ‘I know who you are. You aren’t Miss Celia Blaxland. No debutante would go wandering off by themselves in a place like this, nor want to talk about aeroplanes spying between enemy lines. You’re one of those young lady detectives, aren’t you? Miss Sophie Taylor from Taylor & Rose – that’s it, isn’t it? Oh, how perfect! Do tell me, Miss Taylor, what are you investigating here in Paris?’ She burst into a sudden peal of laughter. Then her eyes widened: ‘I say – it’s Blaxland, isn’t it? You’re here to investigate his murder!’

  Sophie’s heart was pounding in her chest. ‘Very amusing!’ she said, forcing herself to give a light-hearted giggle. ‘Me, a lady detective. My goodness, what a funny idea!’

  Miss Russell smirked at her, but Sophie knew that it was already took late. Across from them, Captain Nakamura and Mr Charlton were having an involved discussion about flying while Dr Bernard sipped champagne and watched the dancers, all three of them quite oblivious, but at the next table, Herr Grün had stiffened.  He’d heard her, Sophie realised. He leaned forward and said something to the grey man in a low voice. The grey man turned to look, and she saw a look of furious recognition flash over the grey man’s face. In that moment, she knew he had recognised her as the girl from Victoria station.

  ‘Excuse me for a moment – so warm in here – I must get some air,’ she murmured to Miss Russell, and without waiting a moment, she darted away across the room.

  The orchestra had struck up a new tune: they seemed to be playing faster and faster, as she pushed her way as quickly as she could between the tables, dodging a crowd of gentlemen, then a waitress with a tray of glasses. She dared not stop to so much as glance over her shoulder to see if Grün and the grey man were following her. She felt intensely frustrated. The game was up: the grey man had recognised her and, thanks to Miss Russell, he now knew exactly who she was. As if he was whispering it in her ear, she heard the Chief say: You’ll have to be discreet … Stay on your guard … Whatever you do, don’t reveal who you really are. She had ruined everything, she realised, a sick feeling rising up in her stomach. Her assignment was a failure.

  Just the same, she was not going to give the grey man the chance to catch her. She speeded up, slipping between tables. Everything seemed to swirl around her, a hot blur of colour: crimson and gold and rich purple and silver. She went through another set of velvet curtains, and found herself emerging outside, on to a roof terrace where people sat beneath strings of coloured lights and paper lanterns. Behind her, she heard a yell: she ran faster, pushing past a young Englishman with a glass of wine who called out indignantly: ‘I say! Watch where you’re going!’ She dived through another door, darting along a high balcony. Down below her, the musicians played faster and faster; she caught the bright gleam of flutes and trumpets; she glimpsed the whirling skirts of the dancers on stage; and then she was racing through another door marked Privé and down a set of stairs. She was in a kind of backstage area now, though she could still hear the rapid thud of the music: the dizzy crescendo of the strings, the fanfare of the trumpets, the audience’s wild bursts of applause. She opened a door and found herself speeding through a dressing room, where can-can girls were powdering their noses and combing their hair; and a clown was carefully painting his face; then through a storeroom piled with exotic props; and then at last she emerged, breathless, out into the street, with the music still shrilling in her ears.

  Even then she dared not pause. She raced off as quickly as she could into the Montmartre night. It was a long time before she decided she’d gone far enough to risk stopping to flag down a cab. The cab driver looked a little uncertain as she climbed aboard, and she realised what a sight she must look: a girl alone, breathless from running, her elaborate hairstyle in disarray. She sat back against the seat of the cab, shivering and trying to catch her breath.

  She felt simply furious with herself. She’d thought she was being so clever, finding a way to go to La Lune Bleue, tracking down Madame Delacroix, working out that the grey man’s companion was the pilot, Herr Grün. Now, she saw that, instead, her investigation was in tatters. She’d done exactly what the Chief had told her not to – she’d allowed their enemies to discover her identity. She was supposed to be a secret agent, she thought bitterly. Yet Miss Russell had seen through her disguise almost at once.  Why had she gone babbling on about surveillance like that? Now she and Tilly would have to leave Paris, and quickly. After all, it wouldn’t be at all difficult for the grey man to discover where Miss Blaxland was staying. What if he came after her at the hotel?

  Worst of all, she still wasn’t even close to solving the investigation. Although she was almost certain now that the Germans were behind the Professor’s death, she still had no idea why. Even if they had discovered he was working for the Secret Service Bureau, then surely that wasn’t enough to justify his murder? And what were Ziegler’s spies doing mixed up in an air race? Could it be anything to do with what Miss Russell had said – about aeroplanes and surveillance and war?

  She felt self-conscious and flustered as she hurried into the Grand Hotel Continental, and through the lobby, which was alive with activity. Although it was almost midnight, guests were still drinking coffee in the lounge, the lady with the lorgnette was sitting in an armchair sipping cognac, and a station cab was pulling up at the door. She ran up the stairs, keen to get away from everyone and think.

  As the door of their suite closed behind her, she began to peel off her gloves and unhook her earrings, shaking down her hair as if to shake away her Celia Blaxland identity altogether. ‘Tilly –’ she began, half of her wanting to pour out everything that had happened, half of her dreading admitting to her failure.

  But Tilly’s voice, when it answered her, was tense and full of nervous excitement. ‘Come here and look at this,’ she called out from her bedroom. ‘I’ve done it – I’ve worked out how to read the invisible ink. Just wait until you see what the Professor’s letter says.’

  Sophie hurried through to the bedroom. Tilly had three sheets of paper spread across a wooden table: a flat-iron stood close by, and there was a hot, singed smell in the air. As Sophie leaned over the table, she saw that the pages, previously bare and white, now showed a message written in brownish handwriting.

  ‘He used lemon juice!’ Tilly explained, rubbing her forehead wearily. ‘The simplest thing – a solution of lemon juice. But the clever part was that he knew the smell would give it away, so he mixed in a perfume to mask it. I don’t know why it took me so long to work it out. But of course, once I realised it was lemon juice, I knew straight away how to read it.’ Seeing Sophie staring at her blankly, she explained as though to a small child: ‘You heat it, of course. Heat makes the sugar caramelise and turn brown. So I asked the hotel if I could use an iron – of course no one thought twice about a lady’s maid asking for one of those – and I ironed the pages, and now we can see – just look.’

  Sophie gazed at the paper Tilly was pushing towards her. Two words, written in bold capitals, immediately jumped out at her from the top of the paper. They were two words that she hadn’t seen for some time, and which she certainly hadn’t expected to see here in Paris. Two words that shocked and disturbed her more than anything else that had happened that evening:

  FRATERNITAS DRACONUM.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  The Grand Hotel Continental, Paris

  When Anna awoke the next
morning, she couldn’t think where she was. She seemed to be nestled amongst white linen sheets, fluffy pillows and a velvety-soft eiderdown. Warm golden light was filtering through white curtains.

  As she lay there, surfacing from sleep, the events of the previous evening began to trickle back. The hotel foyer, all crimson and gilt and sparkling. The music and the voices, the people like pictures come to life – gentlemen in tall silk hats, a lady with a lorgnette sitting in a high-backed armchair sipping a drink from a crystal glass, porters in rich red-and-gold uniforms, a young lady running up the stairs in a beautiful blue gown.

  It had been almost midnight when they’d finally arrived. Alex had been yawning and blinking and staring around them and, for a brief moment, Anna had thought how strange and out of place they must look here. She felt very small in her cotton frock, covered in smuts from the train. But they did not have long to linger: suddenly brisk and practical, Lil had bundled them both upstairs. ‘Well, here we are at last. Come on. There are rooms ready for us, and you’ll feel much better after a hot bath and a good long sleep.’

  It had felt like a very a long time since Anna had been in a real bedroom, in a proper bed. She’d wondered if she’d lie awake, thinking about everything that had happened since they left Wilderstein Castle; or whether she’d dream of being woken up suddenly in the middle of the night, a dark figure looming over her. But instead she’d fallen almost at once into a deep, dreamless sleep. Now it was morning and she realised with a sudden thrill that they were in Paris.

  Without even waiting to put on the dressing gown and slippers that had been carefully laid ready for her, she got out of bed and rushed over to push back the curtains and open the window. Down below her was the Paris street: broad and graceful, and already beginning to rumble with activity. There were motor cars and prim horse-drawn carriages, lumbering omnibuses and bicycles. There were people: doormen greeting newly arrived hotel guests; a waiter laying tables outside a restaurant across the way; a woman going by with a basket of flowers; a boy whistling, with a bundle of long, thin loaves of bread tucked under his arm. In the tall elegant building across from the hotel, she could see more people in the windows: a maid in a white cap shaking out a checked tablecloth; a lady reading a newspaper and drinking a cup of coffee; a gentleman watering a window-box of scarlet geraniums.

  She could have stood there watching for hours, feeling the sun against her face and breathing in gulps of warm, smoky Parisian air. But soon she began to hear voices in the sitting room and to smell a most delicious breakfast.

  Lil grinned at the look on Anna’s face as she stared, delighted, at the breakfast table. She’d told M. Martin that the children would be hungry and he’d certainly provided them with a jolly good spread. The snowy tablecloth was laden with heaps of delicious-looking pastries topped with apricots or apple slices, gleaming with sweet glaze. There were purple grapes and a bowl of sun-warmed peaches; sparkling glass dishes of jam; new bread and a yellow pat of butter; and a steaming silver pot of hot chocolate.

  Alex was already tucking in hungrily, all thoughts of proper royal behaviour long forgotten. ‘Morning!’ he said happily, his mouth stuffed full.

  ‘My word! You’d think they’d never seen food before,’ said Forsyth, chuckling. He’d only just reappeared, having muttered mysteriously about urgent business to attend to on their arrival in Paris, and then disappearing into the night.

  ‘I’m not sure they have – not food like this, anyway. They certainly didn’t get anything like it at Wilderstein Castle,’ said Lil, thinking without regret of the sausages and potatoes that they’d been served almost every day. Beyond the King’s boxes of chocolates, the most the children had ever had as a treat was an occasional spoonful of jam to go with their tea-time bread and butter. It had been nothing at all like what she’d imagined the life of a prince and princess to be.

  ‘Huh! I suppose that frightful old Countess was probably squirrelling away the money she ought to have been spending to give these kids a decent feed,’ Forsyth said. He yawned and stretched out in his chair. ‘I say, old girl, I’m just about ready to drop. Pour me some coffee would you?’

  Lil was about to inform him that she was not a waitress and he could jolly well fetch it himself, but Forsyth did look tired – his bronzed face was paler than usual, and his eyes were red-rimmed. If he had been working while she had been asleep at the hotel, then she supposed she could probably manage to pour some coffee. ‘Where’ve you been?’ she asked him, as she did so.

  ‘Oh, I had to telephone a report through to HQ. Got to keep the Chief up to date, of course. He said the Arnovian delegation will be with us by this evening, so all we have to do is sit tight here and keep our heads down. Unfortunately the kidnap plot is all over the papers and the kids’ pictures are on the front pages. But thanks to Martin, no one knows we’re here. He’s one of the Chief ’s contacts, you know – that’s why he sent us here. We can trust him to keep the press at bay.’

  ‘Any leads on the Countess?’ asked Lil as she poured them both a cup of coffee.

  ‘Nothing yet. She and the Count have left the castle, but no one seems to know where they are or what they’re up to. I’ll bet they’ve gone over the German border, though I don’t suppose they’ll be very popular in Berlin now that their little scheme has gone to the wall. Dashed embarrassing situation for the Kaiser. The Germans are distancing themselves from the whole thing. They say they’ve never worked with the Countess, and they’d never stoop to get involved in anything like kidnapping a child. The latest word is that they may pull back from the Arnovian border. They don’t want to be associated with the likes of this.

  ‘The Chief is no end bucked with us. Though of course with all my experience in the field, he knows he can count on me to deliver the goods. But he’s pretty pleased with you too, old thing. He said you’d really done quite well! You are something: really, you’ve almost proved me wrong, when I said that letting girls into the Bureau was an idiotic idea.’ He gave a merry laugh.

  ‘Do be careful, Forsyth,’ said Lil in her sweetest voice, as she stirred a heaped spoon of salt into his coffee. ‘Before you know it you’ll be suggesting that female agents can do as good a job as men.’

  Forsyth hooted as if she’d said something very amusing. ‘Ha! Good show!’ He took a great gulp of coffee and made a face. ‘Ugh! I thought the French were supposed to make good coffee? I’d take a good old British cup of tea any day. Well, I’m off for a bath and a shave and a proper feed. After I’d got my call through, I met up with an old pal of mine who took me to a rather amusing night-spot. A little place called La Lune Bleue. We had quite an evening, except that some fool of a girl managed to spill mine all over my shirt! I’d better go and smarten up before the big-wigs turn up later, what?’ He winked and added: ‘You’ll stay here and look after the kids, won’t you?’

  He strolled off without bothering to wait for a response, and Lil resisted the urge to throw her cup of coffee at his departing head. Although, really, she oughtn’t to have expected any better from Forsyth. She knew that he saw himself as an intrepid hero of the kind that you might read about in a sixpenny novel. He was convinced he was the backbone of the Secret Service Bureau and the Chief ’s right-hand man, whilst she was little more than a nursemaid, along to look after the children. That was in spite of the fact that she was the one who’d been working undercover at Wilderstein Castle for weeks, doing all the hard work and taking most of the risk, whilst Forsyth sunned himself on the mountains, enjoying the local beer and the company of pretty Arnovian maidens. And now, no doubt, he had claimed all the credit for her work.

  It was all terrifically frustrating, but the main thing was that Anna and Alex were safe, she told herself, as she munched an apricot pastry appreciatively. When she’d first been given this assignment by the Chief she’d feared the worst, imagining herself as the hopeless governess to two spoilt monsters. What she hadn’t expected was how much she’d like the prince and princess, nor
that she’d end up feeling sorry for them. Now she thought how jolly nice it was to see them enjoying themselves, wolfing down their breakfasts and chattering happily, hundreds of miles away from the Countess and the Count and awful old Wilderstein Castle.

  She’d be sad to say farewell to them, she realised. But with the Arnovian delegation arriving that evening, she knew that her assignment was almost at an end. She’d soon be back in London, in the cosy, familiar surroundings of Taylor & Rose. It would be awfully nice to be home again. She lingered over the thought of seeing her brother, and all her friends, and wearing her own clothes instead of these frightful governessy tweeds. And best of all, Sophie would be there, and she’d be able to tell her all about this strange adventure.

  She’d been thinking of Sophie even more than usual since they’d arrived in Paris. She knew Sophie had always wanted to come here: she’d told Lil about the diaries in which her mother had written all her impressions of visiting the city for the first time, when she was a young girl herself. Perhaps one day they could come back here together. Anyway, she’d describe it all for Sophie when she was back in London. They’d go to Lyons for tea and buns, and she’d tell Sophie about everything that had happened since she’d left London – about Arnovia, and Wilderstein Castle, and the horrid Countess, and what it had been like taking a train right across Europe, and how much Forsyth made her want to throw things at him – she knew Sophie would understand that. Most of all, she’d tell her what it had been like arriving in Paris at midnight, and how jolly peculiar it seemed to be here, in a grand hotel in the heart of Paris, giving a Crown Prince and Princess their breakfast.

  Anna and Alex had gone back to the windows. ‘Look – I think I can see the Eiffel Tower!’

  ‘And there’s the ferris wheel!’

  Lil came over to join them. The street was already busy: a parade of motor cars was passing by the hotel – some pulling up at the entrance to allow passengers to disembark, before driving away again. Ladies in the latest Paris fashions were taking a morning promenade under their parasols; and just along the street from the hotel were the gates to a park. Beyond, she could glimpse trees and fountains and a carousel: children in sailor hats were playing with hoops, and nursemaids were pushing babies in big perambulators, and a girl of about Anna’s age in a white frock was taking four tiny dogs for a walk. Above it all, a large red air-balloon was soaring slowly across the wide blue sky, printed with a message in tall white letters.