Lilies, Lies and Love

by Jackie French

  She could see in his face that the driver accepted the story. She could also see him wonder if she might be an amusement tonight, for himself and whoever else was in that house.

  The count was harder to read. He emerged from the back seat and stood, staring at her too closely. She was fairly sure he had not seen her before, for she had seen him only in the photographs.

  ‘Lock her in the front room,’ the count said at last in German. ‘You can take her back and dump her somewhere in London when this is over.’

  ‘But she will —’

  ‘She will have seen nothing,’ the count said, still in German. ‘Nor heard anything either, if you have the sense to keep your mouth shut.’

  ‘She has seen enough to tell the police this location.’

  ‘So?’ The count shrugged. ‘The worst she can say is that she was locked up here. A reasonable action for anyone to take with a potential thief. There will be nothing to connect the countess with this house.’

  Violette managed to keep her face expressionless, as if she did not understand their speech. The countess! So Aunt Sophie was here and, presumably, alive.

  ‘It would be safer —’

  The count silenced him with a look. ‘I am not accustomed to being argued with, Heinrich. If you think a body would attract no attention, you do not know English police — especially the body of a young girl.’ He shrugged. ‘And if she does manage somehow to convince the police to investigate the strange foreigners in the country house, they will soon reach their own assumptions about why she came here. Just keep her out of the way, and make sure she sees nothing.’

  ‘Jawohl, mein Herr.’ The driver gave the Nazi salute. The count returned it more casually, then turned to the house.

  Violette moaned just a little to show pain and fright as the driver followed him, forcing her up the front stairs then half throwing her into a room opening straight onto the outside of the house near the big main doors. It was not much larger than a cupboard, and entirely empty. She thought perhaps it was where a servant would wait out of the rain and wind with umbrellas or coats to open the doors to visitors.

  For this house was the kind that had visitors. The gardens she had glimpsed were tended. This room was clean and, she discovered when she felt the wall, had electric light. It was comforting to be in a lit room, not a dark one. In her experience dark rooms too often had rats, though she did not let her parents know that this was why she kept a shaded lamp on all night in her bedroom. And yet there had been no lights visible in the house when they arrived, so the family must be away, though servants — or guards — might easily have a few lights on in the rooms at the back, if they had drawn the curtains.

  This room was windowless, the door solid. And the lock was very old and very simple, and they had not even searched her for her knife, much less bothered to confiscate her hairpins. It took her only two minutes to unlock the door and one minute to lock it again so they would think her safe inside. She reached for the main door and found it bolted from the inside.

  Even she could not unbolt a door from the other side. But there were other ways. Violette smiled.

  Suddenly she thought of George Carryman. Would he enjoy an adventure like this? Maybe the sky was adventure enough for him.

  And now to rescue Aunt Sophie. She examined the house’s walls. The bricks were too smooth for footholds, but the ivy that clad them was very old, its knots and twists easily able to support a small woman, and the third window she tried on the second floor opened easily and silently. She heaved herself inside.

  A drawing room, and recently used, for the fireplace did not smell musty. But the vases had been carefully emptied, and dust covers placed on the chairs and sofa nearest the windows to prevent them fading in the sun. Of a certainty then, the inhabitants were away, in the warmth of the south of France perhaps.

  She moved softly to the door and opened it cautiously in case it squeaked — but the hinges had been properly oiled. Voices, all of them men’s and all speaking German, floated up from the floor below. Loud voices, which meant they saw no reason to be discreet.

  Yes, that was the count’s voice, almost amused. ‘So you let a woman do that to you?’

  ‘She is a monster. A vixen.’

  Violette breathed out in relief. That sounded like Aunt Sophie. She had thought this must be the right place, so secret and secluded, when they mentioned a countess before, but there were other countesses. Although not like Aunt Sophie.

  ‘And you are a fool.’ It was said with the easy arrogance of a man who had lived with the right to speak as he wished to inferiors. ‘I wish it were not necessary to keep her constantly drugged but, yes, if the two of you can’t control a single woman she must stay asleep for most of the time.’ Violette could almost see the shrug as he added, ‘But the countess must drink, at least.’

  Ah, definitely Aunt Sophie, thought Violette triumphantly.

  ‘You need to secure her so she can’t struggle, then wake her a half-hour perhaps before the next dose is due. She should be docile enough then to swallow. Beef tea is best, I think.’

  ‘We have no beef tea, excellency.’

  ‘Then you must get some.’ Once again the count spoke as if all his life he had had to be patient with inferiors. ‘But tonight it can be water. It will be better if she is haggard when she reappears.’

  Violette shut her eyes briefly in relief. They did not intend to kill Aunt Sophie then. It would have been bad to have found her, only to have her killed before she could be rescued.

  ‘Do not use ropes,’ the count was saying. ‘There must be no bruises that make it look as if she has been restrained. Use one of your shirts, put it on her backwards while she is unconscious, then tie the ends of the sleeves behind her. Use wide strips of blanket to tie her to the bed.’

  ‘Yes, excellency.’

  ‘And do it now, so that I can see you have done it properly.’

  Silence below except for the most vague noises. She waited. The next sounds were more muffled, as if from further down, almost too faint to hear. She took the risk of running down the stairs, lit only by a narrow sliver of moonlight from the windows. Ah, yes, they had been in that room, almost certainly a butler’s pantry, which meant now they might be in the wine cellar. But the door was shut, and she did not dare open it, in case someone remained —

  ‘Stoppen sie gleich dort!’

  She turned swiftly and assessed the gun in the guard’s hand. She ran towards him, not away, which shocked him so much that he stopped speaking and raised the gun to shoot. But by then she was on him, leaping so her legs were around his waist. He fell backwards as she reached for her knife. Four seconds later the blood flowed — briefly — from his neck to the floor.

  Her arms were bloody now. A nuisance. She sat back panting, listening. But if the sounds from the cellar were too muffled for her to hear properly, even from the doorway, the noise from this end of the hall must not have reached the men below either.

  There was no way she could enter the cellar without them seeing her, outlined on the stairs above. Or rather, there might well be an entrance through a coal cellar perhaps, though she suspected that would have been blocked up before Aunt Sophie was brought here, definitely if they knew anything of Aunt Sophie.

  So she must wait. Wait until they had left the cellar — wait, if possible, until the count and his driver had left, unless they were going to take Aunt Sophie with them, but that did not seem likely tonight.

  She must have bruised her knees. They would be stiff tomorrow, but for now she could ignore the pain.

  It was harder to ignore that she had killed so swiftly, and almost without thought. She had, in fact, killed once before, a fact she had not shared with her parents, nor Miss Lily. That had been in the brothel to which the nuns at the orphanage had mistakenly sent her in the chaotic aftermath of war. She had not killed so neatly then.

  But for seven years her father had been giving her lessons in self-defence. Self-defence, it
seemed, was most useful as offence too. And so deeply satisfying.

  This was not an adventure to tell George Carryman. She was glad that the circumstances meant that he would never hear of it. For this is who I am, she thought. Daughter of the Resistance, child of the war against the Boche. Her earliest years had been spent with those who killed these demons. The years between then and now seemed to have vanished.

  The man below her, on the other hand, had not vanished and would be seen as soon as anyone went to the butler’s pantry. She grabbed his hands and dragged him to the door of what she hoped was a drawing room or study.

  Ah, a drawing room, most excellent. She pulled then shoved him under a sofa, then moved the carpets to cover the bloodstains. The puddle in the corridor was too difficult to cover, for it was on a long runner that went the length of the hall. A rug there would look most odd.

  She quickly rolled the bloodied hall runner up and shoved it into the cupboard under the stairs, then found another rug in the room opposite — yes, a study, and thankfully with small rugs, not a single large one — to place over the stain. She could only hope that the men had not noticed the furnishings as they came in.

  That left herself — her arms, and yes, her dress too, were soaked in blood. Why must men have so much blood in them? she thought, with irritation. She made her way upstairs again, hoping this house had a mistress with a wardrobe that might be plundered. If not, it must be a maid’s dress, one that covered her arms, for even if this house had water connected upstairs she could not risk the pipes gurgling to give away her presence and the fact that she was no longer in the room in which they’d locked her.

  She looked at her knife with affection, gleaming softly as if it gave out light rather than reflected the dimness of the moon. It had done no wrong, just as she had done no wrong, for the man below had helped kidnap Aunt Sophie, besides being a Boche. And the man in the brothel? Pah!

  She ran along the hallway quickly, wiping off as much of the blood on her hands onto the back of her dress as she could before it dried.

  Chapter 44

  A sleepless night always seems longer than the same hours of daylight. So forget they are night, and make them day.

  Miss Lily, 1898

  SOMEWHERE IN ENGLAND

  Sophie dreamt: a nightmare where she could not move, where her body cried for water, where colours swam and became figures, men running into the pools of green that were the gas, where they melted, so the pools were red and screaming, and she was screaming too, for at least her mouth was free . . .

  ‘Sophie . . .’ A man’s voice. She knew that voice, but reality was swimming too far away for her to grasp it.

  She blinked, found darkness, did not know if her eyes were open or shut, for she could still hear the screams as well as silence for, yes, silence had a sound.

  The hands were gentle as they held her head up slightly. She felt the brim of a cup at her lips and water: water with no bitter taste of any drugs.

  Why should she think of drugs? She could not think, did not need to think, for she was sleep. You did not have to think when you were asleep, only survive the nightmare till the morning.

  ‘Daniel?’ she muttered, over the cup, for he had touched her with gentleness like this when she had nightmares. But the person who supported her now did not speak again.

  But she had known the voice. She was sure of it as she swallowed more water. And it was not the voice of Daniel or Nigel or James, yet there had perhaps been love in the voice and sadness too. She tried to wake, to open her eyes as well as her lips, but her eyelids were too heavy and it made her feel sick to try to move . . .

  Yet she must drink. Her body demanded water and water was here, clean water with no aftertaste. Perhaps after she had drunk she would be stronger, would be able to see as well as hear . . .

  ‘Sophie, I am sorry.’ The voice spoke in German. Why would Daniel speak in German? She felt a gentle hand push the hair from her forehead. ‘I cannot tell you how sorry I am that it has come to this. What is to come will not be easy for you. But we cannot choose the figures in our chess games, we who play with empires. I would have spared you, if I could.’

  ‘What is to come . . .’ She tried to think. That seemed to mean there would be worse even than this — the darkness, the drugs, the nausea . . .

  She felt the sting in her arm again. She fell back into the darkness, the blessed emptiness that now had no men screaming. They had not been screams, anyway. They were cicadas and this was summer, riding along the river at Thuringa, riding forever with the wind in her face, and Dolphie was with her, for that had been his voice . . .

  But Dolphie had never been to Thuringa. Even in a dream she knew he must not be there and so it was Daniel who rode with her; they would visit Midge where the children would play cricket. Daniel would sit with her and they would watch them play, for it was Daniel who had shown her how to turn nightmares into happy things.

  Hard work, sometimes, and so she worked at it now, as she slept, only vaguely conscious that someone held her hand, kissed it lightly then laid it down. And then there was the sound of footsteps going up the stairs.

  Chapter 45

  People rarely look closely at other people, except to examine their dress in certain social situations, or if they need to assess who they are and how they should be treated. Which leaves almost everyone they see ignored. Use this, if you need to disguise yourself. A very few changes are all that will be needed.

  Miss Lily, 1916

  SOMEWHERE IN ENGLAND

  The house did indeed have a mistress, Violette discovered, and with a dressing room most fine, and clothes that were only a little long, a little loose, nothing that two excellent scarves tied below the hips could not make into a perfectly fitting piece of fashion. She gathered a coat too, gloves and two more scarves, rolling them into a ball she could carry easily, for there might be blood again, indeed, would almost certainly be more blood and perhaps not the time to remove it.

  She stilled herself as she heard the door to the butler’s pantry open, then moved silently to the doorway and looked down. The count walked along the hall, followed by the driver. Neither even glanced at the mat placed over the pool of blood. The driver unbolted the front door. They left it open as they went down the outside stairs, not stopping at the door behind which she was supposed to be locked.

  Had the count changed his mind about releasing her? But he had not said when she should be released. Not that it mattered, for she was not there or, rather, it was good for now they did not suspect that she was free.

  The engine coughed, then caught. She hesitated but the car had only reached the gates when the driver came back inside, bolting the door once more behind him.

  Ah, so the count knew how to drive, a rare skill for an aristocrat, unless he liked fast cars, which many of the young men did. But the count must be forty, which was not young . . . She watched the driver go back into the butler’s pantry.

  ‘Where is Geisler?’

  ‘Lazy hound. Probably asleep.’

  ‘Well, wake him up . . .’

  It was easier still this time. She caught the man as he came out the door. He dropped, without a sound, except for the thud of his body.

  ‘Gunther?’

  Doors could have been designed to catch your prey even when, like this one, they opened inwards. You flattened yourself against the wall and when the prey looked down you sliced him from behind.

  She had now disposed of both guards and the driver, Heinrich. She was fairly sure there were no more. But she must make it look as if there had been no other killer here, which meant rearranging the two bodies and sacrificing her knife. It would be hard to find one as thin and sharp again unless Mr Lorrimer would help her. She thought perhaps he would.

  So: one man had killed the other. And the body under the sofa? She shrugged. Let the police work out what the quarrel had been. One of the men was already cut about the face, his scars evidence for the police that these men had q
uarrelled violently before. And perhaps no one would find the third body till the family came back and wondered at the smell. She smiled, then ran to find Aunt Sophie.

  The door to the cellar stairs was still open and once she had clicked on the electric light she found the cellar door below was not locked either. The cellar light switch was outside the door. She switched it on too. There was Aunt Sophie bound to the bed, her arms strapped, a pair of silk knickers on the floor. The men in the rooms above must have been planning to rape her at once, now the count had gone.

  Violette ran to her, felt her pulse, listened to her breathing. Steady, but so deeply asleep she doubted she could wake her. And that was good, for she must be found here bound in a way she could not have managed herself, and so innocent of the deaths above.

  She picked up the knickers. If the police found her before Mr Lorrimer could Aunt Sophie would not want them to consider the possibility of rape, much less the indignity of an inspection by a doctor — then she realised the knicker elastic was gone. She looked around and saw a gleam of glass, a smudge of blood and, over by the shelf on the far wall, the stain from what was almost certainly a broken bottle of wine.

  Wine bottles did break, of course, and knickers lose their elastic, but Violette felt a growing admiration for Aunt Sophie, who had the spirit most excellent, even if she needed more training in how to kill a man swiftly and quietly. But then, thought Violette charitably, Aunt Sophie had been drugged. She would undoubtedly have escaped had that not been so.

  But for now Aunt Sophie must stay there, till Violette could reach the phone box she had glimpsed perhaps twenty minutes from here, if she ran swiftly. It was true she did not know exactly where she was, but the telephone exchange would give Mr Lorrimer enough information to find her, when she told him in French, which hopefully the operator would not speak, what the house and its lane and gates looked like.