Flight From Honour (25 page)

Dagner acknowledged that with a nod, then, staring straight at Ranklin but keeping his voice gentle, said: “But do remember one thing, Captain, if it should ever come to it: you’re working for Britain, not for peace.” He bent over the billiard table again.

Mostly to change the conversation but perhaps also because it nagged him, Ranklin asked casually: “Has your wife got home yet?”

Dagner abandoned his shot and straightened up to chalk his cue. “No. No, I’m afraid she hasn’t yet.”

“I was sorry to hear about your first wife—”

“What d’you mean?” Dagner spoke quite sharply. “I’ve only got one wife.”

Confused, Ranklin stumbled over his own words. “I’m most frightfully sorry . . . chap I met . . . he said your wife had died in India . . .”

“She got ill, everybody gets ill in India. She recovered. Thank God.”

“I’m sorry, I must have . . .”

With unconscious tact, J drifted back from the balcony, winced politely at Dagner’s shot, and said: “There seems to be quite a gathering of policemen on the platform. And, I may be wrong, but I thought I saw Mrs Finn holding court down there.”

Ranklin blinked. He hadn’t thought J knew Corinna, but J seemed to know everybody. Perhaps she’d come to see Signora Falcone off. He went to the balcony.

It was dark now, the electric lights glowing coldly through drifts of steam, and although the train wouldn’t leave for nearly an hour, the controlled panic of departure had already begun. Couples and families, wearing too many clothes because they were going Abroad, stood in islands of luggage, waving for porters or swapping papers with railway officials and Cook’s agents. And right in the middle, more sensibly dressed but unquestionably for travelling, was Corinna.

‘Holding court’ was right, too. Jaded by travel, she usually tried to make an occasion of it with last-moment meetings and farewells on the platform. She was doing just that to a small crowd of flunkies – but around it moved pairs of uniformed policemen and men in dark suits without any luggage.

Ranklin stepped back, took out a James Spencer calling card and scribbled on the back:
Are you going to Paris? So am I . But prefer not be seen by Signora. Meet on boat
? He gave it to Lieutenant J. “D’you mind acting as messenger?”

“Delighted.” J slipped on his jacket and vanished.

“Is
Mrs Finn going, too?” Dagner asked.

“It looks like it.” Then, seeing Dagner’s expression, he added: “A House of Sherring connection isn’t just a good alias, it helps open doors. She may be able to put me in touch with well-placed people over there.”

“But at the cost of telling her where you’re going.”

“Banking is also a secretive profession.” Ranklin made that as polite as he could.

“Very well, I’ll leave you to handle it your own way. I’d better get off to meet the Signora. Good luck, Captain.” They didn’t shake hands.

J came back with one of Corinna’s cards, her slanting handwriting sprawling over both sides:
Thought I’d better become Andrew’s manager or agent or whatnot. They arrived Paris safe, I got a cable. Are you going on to Italy? Never mind, tell me later. I’ll be in steeping compartment
7
on the Calais-Paris train. Help yourself.

Ranklin goggled. She’d given this to Lieutenant J? Was he too much of a gentleman to have read it, or too much of a spy not to have? His bland smile could belong to either. Ranklin put a match to the card and let it burn in an ashtray.

J coughed politely. “I hate to say it, but given the police infestation, it might be time for
this.
We found it in the Chief’s safe.”

This
was a large blond false moustache. The Commander loved disguises.

“It’s from Clarkson’s,” J said apologetically, “so the best quality. I’ve got the glue and I can make a reasonable job of it.”

Ranklin handled the thing distastefully, then put off a decision by saying: “You know everybody, don’t you?”

“Oh Lord, no. I just—”

“What d’you know about Major X’s wife?”

“She died in India.”

“Yes,” Ranklin said, then more firmly: “Yes.” But Army habit stopped him sharing his puzzlement with a junior.

He ignored J’s polite curiosity and got his mind back to the more immediate problem. Perhaps Corinna . . . he scribbled on another card:
May I borrow your maid?

Half an hour later a short, slightly tubby man with a large moustache strolled on to the platform arm in arm with a younger woman. She wore the self-conscious, giggly look of one heading for a naughty weekend in Paris and was such a familiar sight to the officials and station police that they ignored them both. As Dagner himself had said, the best disguise is always other people.

*        *        *

Feeling uncomfortably like a man who prowls the corridor of sleeper trains in search of an unchaperoned young lady, because that was just what he was doing, Ranklin tried reassuring himself by listing the crimes he was already wanted for in London. He had released Corinna’s maid once they were on the boat – the Dover police hadn’t given them a glance – and hidden himself in the saloon for the crossing.

Compartment 7 – she
had
said 7, hadn’t she? He offered up a prayer and knocked tentatively. But he had misjudged the sway of the train and it became a thundering wallop. “Most masterful,” Corinna said, wearing a Japanese robe, a wide smile and perhaps nothing else. “Thank the Lord you got rid of that moustache. I saw you on the platform and nearly had hysterics. And Kitty said you behaved like a perfect gentleman; I think she was a bit disappointed. Would you like a cognac?”

She poured him one out of a silver flask from what she insisted on calling a ‘purse’ and Ranklin would have called a travelling bag, and he sat at the foot of the bed and sipped. She sat with her arms wrapped round her knees and asked: “So where are you off to, one jump ahead of the police? And what’s that all about?”

“Trieste. And the fuss is just Scotland Yard trying to balance its books. Why did you suddenly decide to go . . . well, where
are
you going?”

“Wherever Andrew does.” She because serious. “I don’t know what’s going on and unless you tell me, I’m sticking to that boy like a leech.”

He nodded. “I can’t blame you. But I still don’t think he’s likely to get mixed up in anything, I think Falcone had several irons in the fire and we’re only interested in one of them, but . . .”

“Is Trieste part of that? Like it’s part of Austria that Italy covets?”

Ranklin studied his tiny cup of cognac. And with her lantern-slide change of expression to a broad grin, she said: “You poor darling, you really don’t know what the hell’s going on, do you? Come up this end and let Mama cuddle you and you tell her all your troubles.”

Ranklin accepted half her invitation. “Is this how private banking conducts business?”

“Invariably. But at least take your damned overcoat off.”

“Sorry.” He laid his head tentatively on her breasts; she certainly had nothing supportive on beneath the kimono. After a while, he said in a rather muffled voice: “Something I don’t understand . . . Do you remember Major Dagner talking about his wife?”

“His second wife, you said.”

“I did, but just hours ago he told me his wife got ill but recovered. So the chap who told me she’d died must have got it wrong.” But damn it, the Scots Guards major had been specific enough about Dagner’s grief.

“I know,” she said calmly. “Adelina was talking about him—”

“Who?”

“Lady Hovedene. She said, with his medal and that Tibet stuff, he was the most eligible widower in London. And believe me, she doesn’t get those things wrong.”

Ranklin raised his head, puzzled. “But he says his wife’s on the way home.”

“Sure. But I figured that was just his act – and you seemed to be backing him. Spy stuff. Or maybe he doesn’t want people like Adelina trying to marry him off, so he pretends she’s still alive. Like me being Mrs Finn only the other way around. You don’t
have
to be a spy to be an out-and-out liar,” she added. “But I guess it helps.”

“But why put on the act with
me?”

She went cross-eyed looking down at him. Then smiled as she stroked his silky hair. Men got so outraged at each other not being Pukka Sahibs.

“Maybe he pretends to himself,” she said evenly. “He just can’t bring himself to face it, so he believes she’s forever on the next boat home. I find that rather romantic.”

Ranklin obviously didn’t find it so. She felt she was cuddling a plank. “Or maybe you could say he’s a bit
eccentric.
Don’t you have to be, to be a top spy? Anyhow, what can you do about it right now? Just relax.”

And gradually, soothed by her and the rocking of the train, he did. Most of him.

24

They met again at ten that morning in the Sherring office on the Boulevard des Capucines. After – probably – a couple of hours’ sleep in her own bed, a bath and a change of clothing, Corinna looked crisp and fresh. Ranklin didn’t. On what was obviously going to be another hot day, he had spent three hours taxi-cabbing from café to café in his overcoat and burdened with his luggage.

She had a Baedeker
Austria-Hungary
open at the Trieste pages. “The Excelsior Palace sounds good enough for a Sherring representative. Shall I cable them to book a room? – I suppose there’s no hope that you
aren’t
going to pose as one of us?”

“Er, well, it . . . that is . . .”

“I thought not. But please try not to shoot anybody in our name, will you?” She scribbled on a form and gave it to a clerk.

“And since you mention it,” Ranklin said hopefully, “can you give me any names in Trieste? – business acquaintances?”

She pulled a sour face. “Give an inch and . . . Oh well.” She rummaged in her bag once more and found a small but bulky notebook. “Trieste . . . I’ve never been there myself, but . . . Here we are: there’s Signor Pauluzzo on the Exchange there. He thinks he knows more than he does but he does know about shipping. He breeds orchids and has a son in Boston.” The book obviously held more than just names and addresses and Ranklin longed to add it to the Bureau’s “registry”.

“I could,” he suggested helpfully, “look them up myself, see who seems likely—”

“No you don’t. This sort of stuff is our real family jewels. Your Bureau can buy its own notebook.” She gave him a couple more names, complete with character sketches, then said hesitantly: “There’s also a Conte di Chioggia listed. Apparently no good on business affairs, but knows everyone socially and is involved in pro-Italian politics at a dilettante level. Spends every morning in the Café San Marco. Sounds good for a gossip, anyway. What time’s your train?”

“One o’clock at the Gare de Lyons. Gets me into Trieste tomorrow night. What about you?”

“I’ll get out to Issy to see about getting the airplane onto a train for Turin.” She saw his surprise. “Andrew doesn’t want to fly it all the way down, thank God, what with the Alps and saving wear and tear on the engine. Did you know those engines only last fifteen hours or so between overhauls? Crazy. The Signora’s already there, some Italian she wants should see it . . .”

They chattered on, the gulf of parting gradually widening between them, until a cable came back from the Excelsior in Trieste confirming that Ranklin – James Spencer, that is – was booked in from Sunday night.

But as he was about to leave, she suddenly hugged him fiercely. “Take care of yourself,” she whispered. “And I really mean that. I’ll be at the Grand de Turin, cable me if there’s any problem.
Any
problem.”

“And you know where I am. It’s not too far. And stick close to O’Gilroy: he’s got a good sense of self-preservation.”

She nodded. “Yes. That’s why I wish he were going with you.”

As Ranklin looked for yet another taxi, he reminded himself: I’m working for the
Bureau.
I think.

The Paris aerodrome, on an old drill-field in the suburb of Issy-les-Moulineaux, was surprisingly deserted for a fine Saturday afternoon until Corinna recalled Andrew talking of the Gordon Bennett air races at Rheims that weekend. They (she and the Sherring chauffeur) finally tracked down the Oriole behind the two vast airship sheds and found it already in pieces. Andrew and O’Gilroy, shirt-sleeved and oil-smudged, were directing a handful of French mechanics as they lashed the body onto a flat motor-truck. Much as she trusted her brother (she told herself) she was always cheered to see his aeroplanes in unflyable condition.

She greeted them, was assured that an unfledged sparrow could have made yesterday’s Channel crossing safely, and asked: “What happened to Signora Falcone?”

“Went off with the wop poet,” Andrew said, turning back to the loading.

“The who?” she asked O’Gilroy.

“Dannun-something. Seems he’s a famous poet. Italian.”

“D’Annunzio?”

“Ye know him, then?”

“I know
of
him, of course – is he the Italian she was talking about?”

O’Gilroy shrugged. “Best ask the Signora. But seems he’s in it with Falcone, buying the Oriole for the Italian Army.”

Corinna frowned. From what she’d read of Gabriele d’Annunzio, what he spent money on was himself – which included actresses – and the money wasn’t usually his own. Indeed, wasn’t he exiled in France by bankruptcy? But he was still popular in influential Italian circles, and while getting a poet-playwright to endorse an airplane would be pointless in America, in Italy things were different.

“Seems he’s writing something,” O’Gilroy went on. “A poem about the aeroplane, mebbe, and they’ll be doing a stunt dropping copies of it from the air. Mr Sherring took him up jest an hour gone, and he was scattering bits of paper to the divil and back.” He clearly disapproved of such snake-oil salesmanship in Serious Aeronautics.

Corinna grinned and relaxed. If they were merely concealing a sales stunt that might be spoiled by advance gossip, she’d been worrying unnecessarily. However, not about Ranklin in Trieste.

Andrew was busy yards away, overseeing as one of the wings was lifted on to the truck. She said: “Matt came across on the same boat, and he’s gone on to Trieste. And with Scotland Yard close behind.”