Spy’s Honour

17

The next afternoon they took tea with Mrs Winslow Finn at the Ritz. Ranklin had expected O’Gilroy to be overawed, but he just strolled in, smiling appreciatively. Perhaps, Ranklin reflected, it was like telling a man you’re going to give him a bucketful of gin: he’s never seen such a thing before, but when he gets it, it’s exactly what he expected. O’Gilroy would simply have been disappointed if there had not been a high decorated ceiling, twinkling chandeliers, potted palms and soft music.

Obviously of her own choice, Corinna was tucked away at a quiet corner table talking to a young man in a dark suit who was taking notes. She wore a peg-top dress in ultramarine silk – most of the women around the room were in pastel shades – with a short white jacket and flowerpot hat. The young man got up and melted away as the Maitre brought them across.

“One of Pop’s assistants,” she introduced the retreating back view. “You boys have been shopping.”

Ranklin smiled painfully; she could only be referring to a rather erroneous tie O’Gilroy had insisted on buying in the Avenue de l’Opera.

“Yes, we had to replace quite a lot of kit that we’d left at the Chateau.”

“And did you deliver your precious code?”

Ranklin nodded. Last night he had handed over the W code to a professionally gloomy Colonel Huguet who was on the brink of giving it up as compromised – and still needed a lot of persuading that it had never left Ranklin’s person. But he had listened, puzzled, intrigued and finally outraged, then launched Ranklin into a long night of interviews with officers of the Service de Renseignments, who knew something of “van der Brock” already, and an artist who drew Clement’s face from Ranklin’s description.

Ultimately they had agreed that the War Office’s “little error” (about which Lieutenant Spiers and the other agent knew nothing, having delivered their parcels intact) just about balanced out the French carelessness about the General and the royalists in the Ministere, and that perhaps written reports would cause needless worry … Huguet had sealed the pact by giving him the X code-book as a souvenir. And Ranklin had drunk too much coffee and cognac and slept badly.

“And you had to tell them about the General?”

O’Gilroy looked up from his lemon tea. “Was ye thinking we owed him any better, then?”

“Fools on that scale are dangerous,” Ranklin said. “He was trying – unwittingly, perhaps – to commit a blatantly treacherous act. Next time …”

Corinna nodded and smiled sadly. “I suppose so. But he was kind of sweet, with his old-fashioned honour and duelling …”

“If you look carefully at any history of duelling,” Ranklin said, “you’ll find that, except where both parties were just drunk, most were legitimised murder forced by an expert swordsman or pistol shot.”

O’Gilroy stared, then chuckled to himself. Corinna said: “Bye-bye King Arthur. But what’ll happen to the old boy?”

“They daren’t have a trial, it would get the royalists up in arms. So, a few nods and winks behind closed doors, perhaps somebody of more certain loyalty taking over Clement’s job – and no, nothing heard of him.” Then, trying to change the subject: “Was your father taken with any of the chateaux you saw?”

“Was he -?” For a moment she looked blank, then remembered the reason she’d given for being at the Chateau. “Oh, yes, well … I don’t know that he’s very serious about it. What he might be serious about is knowing just how cosy the British and French armies are, and how close they think a war is.”

“Armies always think a war is close,” Ranklin said quickly. “It’s their job. And we’d rather yesterday’s doings weren’t shouted from the rooftops.”

“Just nods and winks behind closed doors? Well, that’s how Pop usually does business. And you press-ganged me, Captain, when you slipped me that code: I’d say you owe me pay for the voyage. I’d also say I’d got you boys over a barrel, knowing how you earn your daily bread.”

O’Gilroy stopped eating tea biscuits – just for a moment – to stare hard at her. Ranklin said amiably: “If I understand the expression aright, you may well have. But if you really wanted to help your father, why not suggest he tries to get involved in placing French Government bonds in America? – as Pierpoint Morgan would be doing if he hadn’t just died? They’ll need a new issue to pay for the third year of conscription they’re proposing. Mr Sherring would be delighted to know what an intelligent – sorry, smart – business-woman he’d got for a daughter.”

That lunchtime Ranklin had had a friendly chat with a man from the Paris branch of an English bank. They had touched on the career of Reynard Sherring, private banker: not in the class of a Rothschild or the late J. P. Morgan, perhaps, but well respected and with no worries about where his next steam yacht was coming from. And now his daughter sat and listened, a polite smile held on her usually mobile face.

“Because it struck me,” Ranklin went on, “that a smart businesswoman might have a smart business reason for wasting time in that crumbling old Chateau. Such as finding out whether the royalists really have any political future. Not directly from the old warhorse himself, but from the names he’d let drop when trying to impress a pretty young face. Stuff that your father would like to know but daren’t be seen trying to find out, not if he wanted any slice of the French bond pie or anything else from the government. Because if there was even a whisper of royalist sympathies, they’d rather dig up poor Mr Morgan than give any business to your father … you’re letting your tea go cold, Mrs Finn.”

She sat back and stared, apparently at nothing. Around them, the waiters glided as if on skates, the music soothed, the laughter twittered like the bird house at the zoo. Just another Ritz teatime.

“You know something?” she said finally. “I just clean forgot something Pop once told me: never try to skin a live wolf. Stupid of me.” She leant forward, smiling. “It’s Matthew – Matt – isn’t it? And Conall. I’m Corinna. We must take tea again, some time.”