Spy’s Honour

12

American, Ranklin thought, then wondered why he thought it. It was the freshness about her – and the boldness. Not that European women couldn’t manage both, but it seemed more natural with Americans. She was taller than Ranklin, with black hair pinned up under a small straw hat, large dark eyes and a wide smile as she thrust out an ungloved hand. Whoever she is, Ranklin realised, she doesn’t intend to be underestimated.

She was Mrs Winslow Finn, daughter of Reynard Sherring – the General dragged that name in, though Ranklin already knew it. To him, and most people, it simply meant Money, subdivided into cartels, rings, railways – sorry, railroads – or coal or steel or oil or perhaps all of them. It was a world Ranklin had been brought up tacitly to despise and ignore – until about a year before. Now he had learnt that at least he couldn’t ignore it.

“Hi,” she said, “I’m Corinna. Happy to meet you. General – may I use your telephone?”

Ranklin suppressed his smile, but the General coped. “I am desolated, my dear Mrs Finn, but it is not functioning. Captain Ranklin also …”

“Oh bugger the silly thing.” The General didn’t flinch, but O’Gilroy’s eyeballs nearly exploded. He had met enough of the gentry to know that their ladies, particularly in the hunting field, could use language that would scald the fur off a fox, but he hadn’t expected it from this American enchantress. “I think I’ve found just the chateau for Pop,” Corinna went on. “I wanted to tell him.”

“I doubt,” the General said gravely, “there will be much competition with your father if he wishes to buy.”

“When Pop wants to buy there’s always competition,” she said crisply. Then to Gaston: “Cafe noir s’il vous plait, pas de sucre.” Her French accent, Ranklin noted, was far better than his own.

The General said: “Then perhaps your father will not mind the deprivation of one residence from – how many?”

“Don’t be an old meanie, General. Everybody likes a few roofs over their heads, don’t they, Captain?”

“They come in handy in the winter.”

She grinned at him. With a thin face, high cheekbones and wide mouth she was immediately attractive rather than stand-back-and-stare beautiful. That afternoon she was wearing a plain high-necked white silk blouse and simple purple-red wool skirt, but the single ruby at her throat would, Ranklin thought sourly, make a down payment on any chateau in the land.

“You’re staying here while you house-hunt, are you, Mrs Finn?” he asked politely.

“The General’s been kind enough to put up with me for a couple of nights, but I’m through now. I’m heading back to Rouen and Paris.”

“You drove down?”

“No-o. In fact, if you’re talking to Pop, I didn’t drive at all. But I got off the train at Rouen and hired an automobile there. It gives you more freedom, don’t you think?”

Ranklin tried to keep his agreement polite, but his mind was galloping. No, driving …

But she spoiled that thought immediately: “All they could let me have was a little Renault roadster with its radiator in the wrong place. Why do Renaults have their radiators behind the engine, General?”

“My dear, you must ask Sergeant Clement. Of automobiles I understand nothing.”

Corinna grinned again. “I should’ve known better than to ask a technical question of a man. Say, is Cort back yet? I’d like to say goodbye to him.”

The General was momentarily confused. “Ah … no. Pas encore, I went to Dieppe to meet him, but he was not on the boat. The boat you were on, Capitaine. Perhaps he tried to call with the telephone, but …” He shrugged.

“Cort?” Ranklin asked.

“Cort van der Brock, a jolly fat Dutch guy,” Corinna explained. “He deals in cigars.”

“He had to go to England,” the General said quickly. “For business.”

A fat Dutchman, not a fat Bavarian. Ranklin looked at O’Gilroy, who had come out of shock, and got the response he hoped for.

“There was a fat man with a big moustache and spectacles,” O’Gilroy said reflectively.

“That sounds like Cort,” Corinna said. The General screwed up his mouth nervously.

“We was talking to him at the dockside,” O’Gilroy went on. “Ye remember him, Matt? But ye must have seen him yeself, General.”

“He was much like Cort,” the General said huskily. “But he was not Cort.”

“Oh …” but Corinna had noted the effect her language could have on O’Gilroy and checked herself. “I did so want to see his photographs. He’s real keen, uses a big camera, not one of those little Kodaks, and he was doing some pictures of this Chateau.”

“I will make sure he sends you some pictures at Paris,” the General gabbled.

Corinna looked at her small gold wristwatch. “I’d best be getting on the road if we’re going to be at Rouen before dark.”

“Then we won’t have your company at – at the repas the General has promised us?” It was an impertinence to invite her to another man’s table, but his sadness wasn’t pretended. While the daughter of Reynard Sherring was around, nobody would do anything violent.

“’Fraid not. But I envy you, the General keeps a great table. Are you boys staying long?”

“Unfortunately no. We have to be in Paris tonight.”

“Maybe I’ll see you around there.” She turned to the General: “I took the liberty of asking your boys to load up my automobile.”

“But naturally. I will see you to your automobile which has no radiator – whatever that may be.”

“No, just in the wrong place.”

“But I am sure it would be better if it had none at all.”

Corinna gave an amused but despairing glance that happened to fall on O’Gilroy, who smiled nervously back. He could act the gentleman among other gentlemen, but hadn’t yet found the right pose and voice for ladies. In fact, he was giving a perfect imitation of a sex-shy Irish squire, and Ranklin was quite happy: who would dream of employing anyone so gauche as a spy?

The hallway became a brief flummox of departure as the manservant carried out Corinna’s cases and bags, Sergeant Clement strapped them onto the back of the Renault, and Corinna’s maid, a small, fair and bossy girl, told him he was getting it wrong. Ranklin joined in, carrying out the smaller bits of Corinna’s baggage train and putting them in the wrong places, too.

Little puffs of drizzle came scurrying round the corners of the house as Corinna wriggled into her long car coat and fitted herself into the driving seat. “I’ll see you around,” and she gestured to Clement. He cranked the engine, the General saluted from the doorway, and Ranklin muttered: “How many servants?”

Surprised, O’Gilroy muttered back: “Not enough for a place this size.”

“How many men?”

Realising that Ranklin was counting a potential enemy, O’Gilroy reconsidered. “What we’ve seen – three – and what’s in the kitchen. I’ve seen no outside staff at all.”

“And Gunther at least.” He waved as the little car clattered stiffly out onto the drive and round the corner. They followed the General back into the house, Ranklin pausing to give the Duke’s portrait a sour glance. This problem was a poor return for Britain having given the Duke a birthplace, a Sandhurst education and a commission in the 60th. Bloody Greenjacket.

They found that, for the moment, they had the drawing room to themselves.

“’Tis a shame she’s not staying on,” O’Gilroy said quietly. “Unless yer thinking she’s one of them.”

“It doesn’t seem too likely.”

“And did ye not think of suggesting the Sergeant could take them in the big car, warm and dry, and us take her little one?”

“I thought of it.” And he had, too. “But we don’t know they suspect we know who they are, yet. If they fall for that single code book they’ll be anxious to have us on our way happy and unharmed. And we’ll have succeeded better than anyone hoped. Planting a false code on an enemy – prospective enemy – that’s quite a coup. And if they do suspect … Can we involve her?”

“They’d never …” Then O’Gilroy paused to think, perhaps about Devil’s Island. “Mebbe, mebbe … It’s a mite more difficult than saying ‘Range one thousand, fire,’ I fancy.”

“It is,” Ranklin said shortly.

“And I suppose ye wasn’t lying when ye said ye didn’t have yer little gun with ye?”

“Unfortunately not. If it comes to it, and they don’t suddenly up and cut our throats – and I don’t think they will: they’d be better off making it seem an accident, and that might take time – try and play for more time. Spin it out.”

“I’ve no argument agin living another minute, Captain. Or for ever, anyone gives me the chance.”

Soon afterwards, the General came back, punting his way with the walking stick across to his unfinished drink. They watched him cautiously as he sipped and put the glass down with a shivery hand.

“Mon Capitaine, you spoke of these dark times. And you are correct. The government of France is a rabble. The Army – my Army – is led by opportunists. Anarchists are on the streets of Paris, bandits on the highways – where is the discipline?” He grunted angrily. “You are too young to recall General Boulanger.”

“The ‘Man on Horseback’?” Ranklin said. “He was elected a deputy for Paris, I believe.”

“That same man. And that night – it is more than twenty years – he could have rallied other deputies. The generals were with him. And they could have restored the King – the father of the Duke. It needed only for Boulanger to take the lead – and where was he that night, Captain?”

Ranklin suddenly remembered the story, but let the General tell it.

“On top of his mistress!” the General hissed.

They waited in polite silence. “His mistress,” the General repeated, staring fiercely into the might-have-been. “One night, one woman – and the destiny of France. That is how weak our government has become. Enfin, there will come another night, and no woman.”

There didn’t seem anything to say. The wind rattled tentatively at a window. Then Gaston coughed discreetly from the doorway and announced: “Le Comte est servi.”

Hanging back as the General led the way out, O’Gilroy whispered: “Was that the truth, then?”

“About Boulanger and his mistress? Oh yes. I think he was in love with her – you might say he’d better have been. Anyhow, he shot himself on her grave a few years later.”

“Yer fooling me.”

“No, all of that’s true. Mind, I’m not saying the coup would have worked, the King would have come back. But it gives you an idea of how fragile French politics can be. And still are.”