The Empire of Night

8

The salon orchestra began to play. “Songe d’Automne,” a sad little waltz.

Did Stockman arrange this song deliberately, having his covert joke on us all?

Surely not. Only those of us in first class knew what had been on the musical program in the grand dining room on the Lusitania’s last voyage. I’d heard the song myself. I’d heard it again in Istanbul. This time I froze at the library window. It was a popular tune for these little strings-and-piano salon orchestras. But the song had found me twice since the torpedo, and that felt a little excessive, as if it were a Siren singing from the bottom of the North Atlantic, wanting to take another crack at me.

I stepped away from the window.

The Stockman House event was starting. I needed to be visible. I hoped to catch Isabel Cobb for some reportage. And perhaps some private words in a cloaking crowd of constituents.

I crossed the library and entered the Great Hall. The Brits by the fireplace had vanished. At the far end I passed through an arched doorway beneath a music gallery and into the courtyard entrance hall. The yard itself lay before me, shadowed from the reemergent sunlight, and I recognized Martin, even from the rear, even wearing a gray trilby. He was standing just outside. I’d get a better reading on my status shortly.

I straightened in a reflex of stage nerves. I wanted to feel the reassurance of the Mauser lying solidly against the small of my back. It was there. I certainly did not want to use it tonight.

I stepped through the door.

Beyond Martin was another tough guy, watching the far end of the courtyard. He was also in a gray suit and trilby. A serge suit just like Martin’s. They were in uniform, these two. Stockman’s little army. Martin heard me, turned to me.

He nodded again.

I figured a guy like Martin wouldn’t make the show of another nod to a guy he was supposed to be keeping a suspicious eye on. He’d be playing it close.

“It’s clearing up,” I said.

Martin grunted. But it was a grunt of agreement.

I moved on by him and across the fieldstone courtyard and onto the verge of the castle’s wide, western green. It held three of the big, blue-and-white, open-sided canvas tents that the Brits called marquees. The nearest was off to the right, next to the service wing of the castle, and it bustled with bodies setting up the high-tea food service for the public. The marquee directly ahead of me, due west, about a hundred yards away, was the source of the waltz, the salon musicians dimly visible at the far end, on an elevated platform. To the left was the third tent, set with folding chairs, and flowing past it was the vanguard of the public, now unleashed upon the grounds, some peeling off to sit, some moving on toward the music, others veering away to prime places on the grass and beginning to spread blankets.

I was glad for the hubbub. Martin and all the other Gray Suits would be the watchers tonight, stationed out here, keeping an eye on the unsorted public wandering the grounds. They’d have their hands full. Stockman would be working his constituents, with Isabel Cobb on his arm. I needed to be patient. And careful. But I figured I’d have a chance to look around inside. For only a limited amount of time, however. I needed to think this out. To make a plan.

Something moved at the right periphery of my sight.

I looked.

The other Gray Suit had stepped up even with me, a few yards away. He had a boxer’s battered-and-mended nose and close-cropped dark hair.

He did not look my way. He was watching the flow of townspeople.

I strolled into the green.

I tried to reason things through. If Sir Albert spent much time at Stockman House — and it seemed that he did — the confirmation of his connection to the Germans was somewhere in the castle. The most likely place was wherever he did his personal work. An office. I kept moving toward the music marquee.

But I was mostly thinking about the house behind me.

“Songe d’Automne” dipped and rose and dipped again, to a finish.

I was nearing the tent. The elevated musicians were silhouetted against the now sunlit distant tree line.

Men in seersucker and women in percale were flowing into the chairs set before the music.

The ensemble struck up “Maple Leaf Rag,” the song’s brothel-born syncopations sounding odd with all the inappropriate strings. But the smattering of gathering crowd applauded in recognition.

I stopped and turned to look back at the house.

My eyes instantly were drawn to the flapping of the British flag up its high pole on the Gothic tower. The wind was brisk. The sun was shining.

All of this registered on me as stage whiskers and greasepaint, this elaborately fortified flag and the high-society orchestra putting on music hall airs. Stockman was trying hard to be English, and a man of the people, no less.

Where was his office? Not on the kitchen and bachelor side of the castle, surely. Perhaps over the library. But more likely in the south wing, the family quarters. It was formalized as private. Visitors knew never to wander there. And he no longer had any family residing with him. I’d go there first, when I had the chance.

I turned away from the house but wished, as well, to distance myself from the music. I walked north, toward the cliff edge along the gate, passing the marquee next to the service wing. The black-and-white-liveried kitchen staff was laying out food on a long row of folding tables. At the end of it, three men in blue serge were setting up another row at a right angle. Two of these boys were heading toward a stack of collapsed tables a few yards outside the tent while the third was unfolding the legs of the next table in the new line.

I realized these guys were dressed not only like each other but also like the baggage handler who met us at the station. These were indeed de facto uniforms. The blue suits were the privates in Stockman’s army. I thought all this and slowed a step or two as I did and it all happened quickly: as I was about to turn my attention again toward the cliff, the man in the tent popped the last leg of the table into place and looked up.

I stopped.

He turned his face to me.

It was the stage-door lug from the Duke of York’s.