I Spy (5 page)

Stations were – by the very nature of their being full of trains, luggage and people attempting to get themselves somewhere or other in a hurry – very noisy, dirty and somewhat
chaotic places. This one was chaotic, dusty and
very
hot, but, Trey had to admit, it was also pretty grand, with what looked like a fancy restaurant and a lobby that was the size of a small
church.

But once they were finally on their way to the hotel – there had been something of a scene at the station when it looked like a piece of their luggage might have gone missing – it
became clear to father and son that
everywhere
in Constantinople was generally a heck of a lot noisier and hugely more chaotic than the station had been. And not as grand, it had to be
said.

The taxi which their porter had hired for them was a dusty old Studebaker “
Big Six
” that had, much like its unshaven, fly-blown driver, definitely seen better days. The canvas
of the landau top was ripped, crudely mended and full of holes which Trey thought looked like they’d been made by bullets; it would, his father commented, be about as useful as a colander if
the weather should decide to turn rainy.

And the rest of the car was not in much better shape: the leather seats were split, spilling out coarse stuffing; what wood veneer was left in the car had lost its varnish; and the yellowing
windscreen was sporting a couple of large cracks. Parts of the car were actually being held together by string and the whole contraption gave every impression that it would fall apart if the driver
attempted to go faster than a slow trot – luckily something the crowded streets were never going to allow to happen. But at least it was a car. Most of the traffic on the streets seemed to be
either horse-drawn or pulled by a mangy donkey.

The Hotel Pera Palas, which was where people who had travelled down to Constantinople on the Orient Express stayed, was some way from the station and getting there turned out to be more of an
adventure than a mere taxi ride. The driver, who shouted, swore and spat his way through the traffic, finally negotiated them onto the Galata Bridge, which Trey knew, from his cursory perusal of
his father’s guidebook, was going to take them across a stretch of water called the Golden Horn.

Because he knew this was a somewhat legendary and historic geographical feature Trey readied himself for yet another of his father’s lecturettes, but it failed to arrive, a fact Trey put
down to the disconcerted, not to say stunned expression on his father’s face; he really did not much like spitting, or shouting, for that matter. Left to his own devices Trey was free to
stare out at life in Constantinople.

This did
not
look like a place that was big on the kind of culture he’d recently been subjected to, which was fine by him, and the journey across the low, wide, slatted wooden
bridge, while unbelievably slow because of all the pedestrians, was fascinating. People were fishing off the sides, and everywhere he looked there were sail boats of all sizes, steamboats and tiny
skiffs zipping about like water bugs on a pond.

As out of control as the city appeared to be, the Hotel Pera Palas was the total opposite, an atmosphere of dignified calm descending on them as they made their way through its glass-canopied
double doors and up the marble staircase to the lobby, followed by their luggage. The aura of tranquillity lasted as long as it took for Trey’s father to discover that they
should
have
taken the hotel’s gratis limousine service from the station, and steered well clear of the cab rank the porter had been well tipped for taking them to.

Once in their suite, with staff bustling round unpacking, delivering messages, mail and refreshments and generally bringing a sense of order back into his life, T. Drummond II finally allowed
himself to relax. Sitting, his legs stretched out, in a large armchair, with a fresh whisky and soda in one hand and a cork-tipped Craven A cigarette in the other, he suddenly sat upright, as if
pulled by a string.

“Did I tell you, Trey?”

Trey, a pistachio-and-honey concoction in his mouth and something similar in his hand waiting to join it, shrugged in an “About what?” kind of way; his mind was completely elsewhere
as he had
never
tasted
any
thing like these pastries before and they knocked doughnuts and Danishes into a cocked hat, in his opinion.

“It’s all organized!”

Trey swallowed. “What is, Pop?”

“Remember I mentioned it, in London? About the Stanhope-Leighs?”

The second pastry stopped halfway to Trey’s open mouth. “The Stanhope-Leighs?”

“The Trade Secretary at the British embassy here in Constantinople? That cousin of my friend Templeton...you, my boy, have a head like a sieve,” he said, shaking his own. “He has
children about your age, Stanhope-Leigh, that is, and, while I am otherwise engaged, as I will have to be for more than a few hours most days, I asked him if you could spend some time with them.
There was a message waiting for me here to say that it’s all been organized...”

T
rey was lost for words as everything about the Stanhope-Leighs came back to him in all its dreadful detail...there was a boy, Arthur, and –
worse – a girl called Christina, and they had a tutor or a nanny or somesuch, and they would, according to his father, all be the best of friends!

As if.

Back in London Trey had not really paid too much attention to what his father had told him; Constantinople had seemed so very exotic and far away that in his mind it had not even ranked as a
faint possibility that he might eventually meet –
and have to spend time with!
– these kids. And now the chickens were coming home to roost, or whatever the saying was his gramps
liked to use, and it was about to happen.

“But...”

“No ‘buts’, Trey, we have already discussed this, I explained it all to you and you agreed that it would be fine.” A hotel flunkey knocked and came into the room carrying
a small silver tray with an envelope on it which he presented to Trey’s father, who fished a tip out of his waistcoat pocket, swapping it for the letter. “And like I said, once I finish
all the business I have to do here,” he waved the envelope as if to underline quite how busy he was, “it’ll be just you and me, I promise.”

Knowing there was absolutely no point in him arguing, Trey left his father slitting open the envelope with a letter opener, went to his room and unpacked his stash of magazines. At least when he
was between the covers of an issue of
Black Ace
or
Dime Detective
he could pretend none of this was happening – that he would never even so much as have to
bump into
this
kid called Arthur, or his sister.

Picking up an issue he let himself imagine what it would be like to be a real-life gumshoe with a baffling case to solve...like what exactly did his father do all day? He had to admit that he
didn’t have much of a clue what his father’s business actually involved, mainly because he wasn’t there to watch and his father didn’t really talk about it much. But then
again, was it really a subject worth investigating? Somehow, he doubted it.

That night they had dinner at the hotel; it was very grand, in a stuffed shirt kind of way: all balustrades, polished marble, gleaming brass, wood and silver. There were, it
seemed, pieces of cutlery for
every
dish that arrived (of which there were many). It took Trey a few minutes to realize that his father was in a mood and that it wasn’t, as far as he
could tell, anything to do with him. From experience he knew that there were two courses of action he could take: act as if there was nothing wrong, which would mean a meal spent mostly in silence,
or ask what the matter was and see what would happen. At home this might mean being frowned at for being nosey, but here in public, in the middle of a smart restaurant, Trey was willing to bet that
he had a chance of getting away with it.

“You okay, Pops?”

T. Drummond II glanced up from discreetly spooning soup (he was never one to slurp, even in private) and raised his eyebrows quizzically. “I think so, why?”

“I don’t know...you seem concerned.” Trey had heard his mother say this under similar circumstances to some effect, and figured it could work for him.

“No...no, I’m fine.”

“Oh, good...” Trey stared at the swirling patterns his spoon was making in the soup; this was not working quite the way he’d hoped and he didn’t have a Plan B.

“Although there is
one
thing I’ve been meaning to tell you...”

Trey looked up suddenly, his spoon hand jerking and sending a small, mainly green wave onto the pristine white of the starched cotton tablecloth.

“Trey!”

“Sorry, Pops...” Trey surreptitiously moved his side plate to cover as much of the spill as he could. “What were you going to tell me?”

“I was
going
to say that the plan has had to be changed slightly...just for tomorrow.”

“Oh?” Trey sat up even straighter than he had been.

“That letter, the one which was delivered soon after we arrived?”

“Yes?”

“It was from a Miss Jane Renyard, the tutor who looks after the Stanhope-Leigh children.” Trey’s father put his spoon down in the finished position and dabbed his mouth with
the corner of his napkin. “Apparently there has been a mix-up – I won’t bore you with the details – but suffice to say that she, Miss Renyard, cannot take you tomorrow. I
hope you won’t be too bored trailing around after me all day.”

“Me? No!”

“Best behaviour, Trey; at all times. I am going to have to leave you waiting in outer offices and such and I don’t want to come back and find you’ve been causing
trouble.”

“Who, me?”

“Yes, you, my boy.” Trey’s father did smile at this point. “You surely haven’t forgotten Fifth Avenue, have you? I know I haven’t.”

Trey checked the soup out again as the memory of a scene he’d tried hard to forget ran through his mind...how could he have known that tipping back a chair would lead to such chaos? That
when the chair fell backwards it would shoot him across the floor – in a kind of reverse somersault – and straight into a table with some fancy Chinese vase on it? There was no way! He
could still see the look on the secretary’s face as she stared at him, surrounded by shards of pottery, her mouth open like a fish in a bowl.

“It won’t happen again.”

“Promise?”

“Cross my heart and hope to die, Pop; this time I’ll take a magazine so I won’t get bored.”

For the rest of the meal Trey felt like a condemned man who had been given a reprieve, even if it was only for twenty-four hours; still and all, another day without having to deal with some
snotty English boy and his Dumb Dora of a sister was something to be celebrated, which he did by having two desserts and managing to persuade his father to go for a stroll around the streets near
the hotel before he went to bed.

The night was warm, and the air full of a heady perfume (gardenias, according to his father); he figured that this place was what the word “exotic” had been invented to
describe...the buildings, the people, the clothes they wore, the activity (boys rushing here and there with brass coffee trays that hung down from decorated handles, spilling nothing) and men
sitting outside cafés puffing away at complicated glass contraptions, three feet tall and with thin hosepipes attached to them. His father said they were called hubble-bubbles, but to Trey
they looked like science experiments.

It was as they were passing by a bustling café that he noticed something very odd. Three men, dressed in regular suits, not the flowing robes that most people seemed to wear, and all with
impressive mustaches, were sitting together at an outside table, smoking cigarettes and drinking tiny cups of coffee; when one of them caught sight of Trey and his father, he did a double-take and
then swiftly turned his back on them and whispered something to his neighbour.

Trey glanced up at his dad to see if he had noticed the event but saw that he was looking in the exact opposite direction; glancing back Trey saw all three men staring at them, and
simultaneously try to appear as if they were doing no such thing. It should have been a comic moment, like in a Buster Keaton movie, except there was definitely a sinister feel, especially when one
of the men got up and hurried inside the café. The last thing Trey saw the man do was pick up the earpiece of the telephone on the wall and jiggle the lever to get an operator.

Who, he wondered as he and his father turned a corner, was that man in such a hurry to tell about seeing them? It was like the guy had recognized them, or at least recognized his father, which
he supposed was possible, if he’d been to Chicago. But why all the whispers and secrecy? What was
that
all about?

T
rey had pondered long and hard about telling his father what he’d seen, but in the end thought better of it. If he did, all that would
happen was that his father would probably blame “all that rubbish” he read for “disturbing his imagination”, and then proceed to confiscate his magazines; it would not be
the first time.

So he kept quiet, but decided to keep his eyes peeled for any signs that they were being observed, followed, or in any other way spied upon; he would also take his notebook and pencil and record
everything he saw, just in case. Even though he thought his father should be happy, as this would give him something to do with his time, he hid the notebook inside one of his magazines so the fact
he was making observations would remain a secret.

It turned out his father had got the hotel to organize a car and driver for the length of their stay and they emerged from the hotel after breakfast the next morning to find a
gleaming, red car (and an equally smart chauffeur, who actually spoke a bit of English and, as it turned out, didn’t spit either) waiting for them outside. This was the first non-American
automobile that Trey had ever seen and when they arrived at his father’s first appointment, even though he knew he should go with his father and see if he could glean any information about
what he was doing in Constantinople, he instead elected to stay outside with the car and have a good look at it.