Pirate

Chapter Twenty-seven

Gloucestershire

“YOU HAVE HIDDEN TALENTS, AMBROSE CONGREVE,” DIANA Mars said. The other guests had departed, leaving the two of them alone for a moment. She had just unwrapped his gift and they had moved outside to the stone flag terrace overlooking the parterre. Beyond the formal garden, the dusky green countryside rolled in a gentle succession of rounded hills down to the silvery ribbon of the Thames.

“Well, it’s just a study,” Congreve said of the watercolor he’d fussed over endlessly.

“Don’t be ridiculous. It’s quite good. In fact, it’s perfectly lovely. What is prettier than a crabapple in bloom?”

It was dusk, and thin veiled fingers of fog slid over the distant river and into the black trees that crowded the banks. She had surprised him with the invitation to late tea at Brixden House. Called out of the blue, she did, as he was sitting by his solitary library window thinking abstract thoughts and staring at the phone. For some reason, just at that very moment, he realized he had been thinking of Diana Mars. Yes, he certainly had been, he thought as he picked up the telephone and heard her voice.

It was one of those odd little chip shots to the green that the universe is capable of making now and then.

Ambrose had accepted the invitation immediately, realizing just how badly he wanted to see Diana before he left for New York. All business, of course—he needed to apprise her of Scotland Yard’s latest thinking in the missing butler case. Sutherland had just given him a new report. But also, he wanted to give her the picture he’d painted of the crabapple that stood outside his kitchen. He’d asked Mrs. Purvis to wrap it in some old Christmas paper he kept folded for just such emergencies. She’d done it, but she hadn’t seemed too thrilled about it, for some reason. Women were such curious creatures.

Vexing.

“Ambrose Congreve,” Diana had said when they were still standing in her parlor by the window. She’d just opened the picture and she was tracing his signature at the bottom of the watercolor with her delicate white finger. “The name sounds like some sweet old soul in a floppy hat out tending his rosebushes on a rainy spring morning.”

“It does?”

“Yes.”

“I wonder, shall we step outside for some air?” asked Ambrose, who desperately needed some himself. This floppy-hatted cove she imagined was hardly the robust picture he wished her to have of him. He’d just have to throw more color into the next picture. Perhaps an action scene. A trout rising or a salmon leaping. That might do it.

They moved a bit farther out across the flagstones, near the ornately carved balustrade that overlooked the darkening woods below.

“I have a garden, you know, Diana. Oh, nothing like this, of course. A few dahlias. I’ll be at Chelsea this year. With a hybrid I’ve got high hopes for. If I could only think of a name for it.”

Damn it. He was only digging his hole deeper. What on earth was wrong with him?

“I’ve heard your house is charming, Ambrose.” She took his hand and squeezed it briefly before letting go. It sent such a shock rocketing through the system that numbness started traveling up his arm. He scrambled for a reply before the charge could fry his brain completely.

“Really?” he managed to croak out before his jaw could lock up. “From whom?”

“Oh, friends of friends. Friends who know you.”

“Really? Who—?”

Ambrose had started to ask which friends and then hesitated. He felt a strange wave, a heady mixture of flattery and confusion wash over him. She was asking around about him, was she? And she was bold enough to admit it. He plowed ahead, willing himself to stay on his feet. He would look ridiculous staggering over to the stone ledge and tumbling arse-over-teakettle into the boxwoods below.

“I say, Diana. You’ve been an awfully good sport about all this China Doll business. And now that Sutherland and I are off to New York for a week or so, I wonder—are you quite sure you don’t want my chaps from the Yard on the property any longer? Sutherland would be delighted with the assignment. I worry about you, to tell the truth. Out here in the country, all alone.”

Diana patted his arm in what was meant to be a reassuring gesture.

“All alone? Hardly. One of the blessings my dear husband left me with is hot and cold running servants. Besides, I think you’ve scared them off, whoever they were. At the window that night. I don’t think they were expecting anyone to shoot back.”

“Well, I’m not at all sure that is the case. There has been a subsequent incident, which I shall describe to you in some detail. I wonder, has any staff seen hide or hair of your former butler? Oakshott?”

“Not since Scotland Yard was here to question everyone. Poof. I never even had the pleasure of firing him. Why?”

“It seems that last night someone tried to kill my dear friend Alex Hawke.”

“Lord Hawke? I don’t know him, certainly, but…how?”

“A woman. Talked her way into his house. Some ruse or other about car trouble. Pulled a gun and shot him at point-blank range. She missed, but it was a close thing. He was wounded.”

“Do you have any idea who she was?”

“Yes. Chinese, actually. Perhaps the twin sister of a woman he met in the South of France. I think it was our friend Bianca Moon paid him a visit.”

“Not really?”

“It’s the only explanation that makes any sense,” Congreve said, tamping down some fresh Peterson’s blend into his bowl. “I believe our Bianca and her sister and Mr. Oakshott are somehow complicit in the attempts on my life and Hawke’s. All working in tandem, as it were.” He was on his own turf now, the solid platform of an investigation, and feeling much less dizzy. He fired up the meerschaum and tried to appear stern and reflective. Floppy hat, indeed.

“What do you really think, Chief Inspector?” Diana asked, after a few long moments had passed. “About all this nonsense?”

“I’ll tell you what I think. Would you like to stroll down to the river? There’s still enough light left in the sky to walk down and return before dark.”

“Lovely idea,” she said, looking up. Her eyes were dewy in the fading light.

He got yet another high-voltage shock when he lightly took her hand as they descended the slippery stone steps to the parterre. It was as if she had electrical currents surging through her veins instead of blood like any normal woman. He took a deep breath and hung on, trying to get both of them to the bottom of the mossy steps without breaking any bones. What on earth had gotten into him lately? Buying that yellow Morgan and racing around the glen like a lad on a bender. Not to mention these positively electrifying feelings where Diana Mars was concerned.

It was all most peculiar, he thought, strolling by her side.

Midlife crisis? He supposed he was old enough. Diet? Mrs. Purvis was trying to make him go organic. Lately, she’d been serving something called “free range chicken.” Here, he had drawn the line. “Mrs. Purvis,” he told her quite sternly, “if a man wishes to eat chicken, do you think he would wish to consume a chicken that has recently been, as you tell me, ‘ranging free’? Some wild capon, capering about over hill and dale, wholly unsupervised? No! I think not, Mrs. Purvis! If Ambrose Congreve is to eat chicken, he bloody well wants to know where his chicken has been! Every minute of every day!”

Eating contaminated chickens, then? Or had he simply lost his mind? Perhaps he should consult one of those top brain specialists while he was in New York. Yes. A wise move before he went completely off the rails. And another thing. He had to see to Diana’s protection whilst he was gone. He’d speak to Sutherland about it, put that worthy fellow in charge of looking after her.

The ornamental garden was laid out in a formal pattern marked with low evergreen hedges of razor-sharp boxwoods. Now, the loamy beds they bordered were empty, but freshly turned earth indicated the gardeners had been preparing to fill them with annuals. They strolled through the maze of hedges and emerged on the slope that led down to the Thames. The gauzy yellow disc of the sun hung in a banded purplish haze above the horizon.

The view was quite beautiful, and Ambrose stole a glance at Diana. She caught him looking and cut her eyes away. He noticed, however, that she did not remove her hand from his as they walked down toward the river. Miraculously, he found his vocal cords still reasonably operational and he continued his narrative in clear, bell-like tones.

“To continue, Diana. As you well know, I was running a spy at the French embassy. My cousin. He turns out to have been a double agent, working for the Chinese. He disappears without a trace. We learn that a Chinese woman of your acquaintance, assuredly involved in espionage, is responsible. Within that same approximate time frame, Alex Hawke snatches an American agent from a Chinese vessel moored in French territorial waters. And then—good lord, what’s the matter with that man?”

“What man?”

“Down there, on the path.”

A large man was making his way toward them, loping up the hillside pathway and calling out to them, his hands cupped around his mouth. His shouted words were lost in the wind. But Ambrose believed he had clearly made out the word “drowned.”

“It’s my head gardener, Pordage. Poor old soul, he’ll have a heart attack running up this hill.”

“Diana, listen,” Congreve said, wanting to shield her from the once seen, never forgotten sight and smell of a submerged corpse, “there’s some kind of trouble down there. I’ll run down and meet Pordage. Perhaps you should go back up and notify the—”

She’d kicked off her shoes and was flying down the hill toward the river ahead of him.

“He says they’ve found a body!” she cried over her shoulder.