Authors: Fiona McIntosh
‘Your point?’
‘My point is that I am more than simply familiar with Basil Peach, and I am just as capable of contacting one of his associates to organise my children’s tutor.’
‘I don’t see what you’re getting at, Bee,’ he baited, and Stella wished he wouldn’t.
‘Normally you wouldn’t go near any domestic arrangements but where Stella is concerned you seem almost mother-hennish in your protection for her.’
‘I think I should leave,’ Stella said. She was suddenly standing between the snipers and it was about to get painful for her.
‘Stay right where you are, Miss Myles,’ Beatrice said in a tone so commanding that Stella felt she had no choice but to remain rigidly where she stood.
‘So what’s your point?’ Rafe continued. Stella silently begged that he stop baiting his wife.
‘My point is this,’ she returned fast and stinging like a whip crack. ‘From the moment Stella walked into our lives, you’ve changed.’
He actually laughed. ‘You speak as though Stella has been with us for months and yet she’s been in our midst for about forty-eight hours.’
‘And we’ve had problems for all of them.’
‘None of Stella’s making.’
Beatrice nodded slowly but biting her lip as though sensing she was onto something. ‘She’s upset Georgie, which in turn upsets me. Now we have Grace injured, Mrs Boyd is put out – none of the staff knows how to be around her.’
He gave a soft snort. ‘What does that mean?’
‘Well, either she’s staff or not. If she’s staff, then she should act accordingly, not appear for dinner with the family.’
‘That was a personal invitation from me.’
‘Which brings me to my point.’
‘Well, ring the bells for that!’
‘Doug! Whatever’s got into you? You’re behaving so strangely I hardly know you.’ Stella could tell Beatrice was genuinely thrown off her normally impeccable balance by his new tone. ‘Shall I put your behaviour down to having Stella around as well? Georgie seems to think you have an unnatural interest in our tutor.’
‘Why am I not surprised, Bee? Georgie stirs trouble wherever she goes. If she can see a pathway to causing other people discomfort, she will almost certainly walk down it. You realise she does this for sport, mostly.’
Beatrice straightened, looking fearsome. ‘I cannot believe you speak about your own daughter like that.’
‘Oh, Bee, let’s not dance around the truth and play this charade any longer. Georgina is not my daughter, never has been, not even when you’ve pretended that a stepfather is allowed to advise his child or raise her in a way that he considers appropriate. Georgina is learning none of life’s lessons other than how to manipulate every situation to suit her agenda. Congratulations, Bee, she’s turning into you and presumably whomever her real father is. And frankly, I’m glad no Ainsworth blood runs through her veins – my family would be ashamed, as you should be.’
Beatrice appeared so thunderstruck for a couple of heartbeats that Stella was sure they could hear her own heartbeat drumming loudly and echoing around the room. She turned to Stella with a look of poisonous intent. ‘Leave us!’ she commanded.
Stella fled, not daring to cast a glance his way. She closed the door silently, leaning back against it on the other side and shutting her eyes with dismay as she had just hours ago in the nursery. She moved to the stairwell but still could hear their muffled voices.
‘I cannot believe you’ve just openly spoken of a secret that was ours, Doug.’ Beatrice sounded genuinely shocked.
‘We can’t go on like this, Bee. We’re ships in the night.’
‘What are you talking about, Doug? I love you.’ It sounded so clinical to Stella.
‘Love?’ The gust of amusement sounded full of pain. ‘Your idea of love is ownership by any means.’
‘You’ve not complained before. You’ve been quite happy to take my family’s money.’
‘And this is your typical position, Bee. It’s all about threat, it always has been. I’m beginning to care less and less, though.’
‘I can see that. You’re different. What’s happened, Doug? Last night you were normal.’
‘Was I? Perhaps last night I feared discovery . . .’ Stella heard him stop abruptly and she swallowed hard.
‘Discovery? What are you talking about?’
‘I don’t know any more,’ he murmured and Stella had to strain to hear him. ‘I want to be honest, but . . .’
‘Doug, you’re not making sense. I know you love Grace, I know you’re worried, I also know you seem distracted about something. Is it work?’
He sighed. ‘I suppose so.’
‘Where are your glasses?’
‘They’re . . . they’re here, Bee,’ he said, and Stella looked down in disappointment. Rafe was gone; Douglas was back.
His wife leveraged that return. ‘Darling, I trust Hawkin. He’s not worried; neither should you be. Grace will be fine – she’s such a rough and tumble child, nothing hurts her.’
‘That’s where you’re wrong, Bee,’ he countered but he had fallen back into his alter ego; Stella could hear the return of his mild tone . . . all the fight had left him. He had been on the brink of saying something that he knew he couldn’t retract or step away from. What else was he hiding?
‘Grace has a gentle soul,’ he continued, ‘a perceptive one. She can be hurt by the least slight. She . . . she seeks your approval.’ He sighed.
‘I’ll try harder with Grace, darling, I promise. And with you. Let’s get some time together – just us. We can go up to the Lakes – I know you’d enjoy that.’
‘But you wouldn’t.’
‘No . . . Or how about the Isle of Wight, then, or the Isle of Skye, if you really must, darling?’
She heard him laugh hopelessly again. ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Bee. The first gust of wind that blew your hairdo askew would make you furious.’
‘Well, I’m begging you, Dougie, not to do anything rash, all right? We’ve been a good team all these years.’ She gave a rueful titter. ‘Heavens, all our friends envy us our closeness. And they envy me my handsome husband,’ she added in a slightly more provocative voice. ‘Don’t ruin it now. Surely you don’t want Georgina to spend her Deb Season knowing everyone is whispering about her parents? That won’t do, and Dougie, I don’t want to lose you. You may think I don’t care, but nothing is ever more immediate in my mind than our remaining together. Sometimes I feel like I don’t know you – like a few minutes ago when you felt like such a stranger to me – but I need you, Doug. I don’t make it hard for you to go about your mainly absent life, do I?’
‘No,’ he murmured.
‘I wish I knew more —’
‘Don’t, Bee.’
‘All right, darling. I shan’t press you. I don’t know what came over me. I know there’s no one else. I’ve even agreed to go on this ridiculous cruise to the Levant just to please you.’
Stella heard his sigh. ‘Leave Stella alone. She’s innocent.’
‘I will, Dougie. I was just being a silly, jealous wife but I won’t lose you to anyone. You need to know that. I can’t.’ There was an awkward silence as though a familiar old threat hung around them; Stella realised she was holding her breath, waiting for it to be spoken aloud. It obviously didn’t need to be. Beatrice’s voice was conciliatory when it came. ‘Come on, my love, I’ll take the first watch. I’ll sit with our daughter and you have a rest for a while.’
Stella heard the creaks of their movement and scampered away, moving as fast as she dared while still being careful to tread lightly in the stairwell when she heard the door open down the hallway from Grace’s room. It was Rafe, she was sure, but she couldn’t face him. Stella hurried up a floor to her room and closed the door gently, turning the lock, which she’d not done previously.
She backed away and waited, watching the door. Soon enough the soft knock came.
‘Stella?’
She held her breath.
‘Stella?’
He tapped more insistently. She expected the handle to twist but it remained doggedly still and there were no further taps at the door. Instead she heard his retreat and a minute or so later the soft complaint of floorboards above her as he moved around.
Later, when the house felt still, she tiptoed down to the parlour feeling the grind of hunger. Normally she could ignore it but she realised that in her distraction she hadn’t chewed a morsel since her light lunch with Grace more than ten hours earlier. Even a cup of tea would be enough. In the silence of the parlour, still warm from the embers in the range, she pottered around quietly and found bread and cheese to make a small sandwich, which she devoured hungrily. Instead of risking making noise with boiling water and brewing tea, she settled for another cup of Daphne’s famous milk and began tiptoeing up the stairs.
She reached the landing that accessed the lobby and was startled by a sudden jangling of the telephone. Stella remembered Suzanne Farnsworth’s promise to try and call again late this evening. She quickly put down the milk and hurried to the phone on the sideboard, feeling suddenly responsible for the insistent noise and determined not to be blamed for another headache of Beatrice’s. She yanked it up to her ear, about to say ‘Ainsworth residence, good evening,’ when she heard the mellow voice of Rafe speak first.
‘Ainsworth,’ he said, crisply.
‘It’s Basil,’ a man replied and she instantly remembered the jovial ‘Fruity’ from the Berkeley dance hall and Stella felt immediately trapped. Having wrongly assumed the call would be for her, she now felt disinclined to put the phone down and risk a click on the line to signal her presence.
‘This is a surprise,’ Rafe remarked.
She frowned. It seemed an odd comment for him to make to a friend.
‘I know, old chap, but I have no choice but to phone you at home.’
‘All right. You’d better tell me what is so pressing that can’t wait until our usual rendezvous.’
‘Well . . . a canary is leaving the cage.’
Stella’s forehead developed a stitch of consternation at the odd turn of conversation. She tightened her grip on the receiver and she still dared not breathe before Rafe spoke again. ‘I see. From where?’
‘Berlin.’
Her astonishment deepened.
Berlin?
Rafe sighed. ‘Who?’
‘Someone we know as Owl.’
Canaries, Owl
. . . What was this secret language they were using and why? If it didn’t sound so genuinely serious with the mention of Berlin, she might have smiled.
‘What has this to do with me?’ Rafe demanded.
‘Owl will only talk to you.’ Basil’s voice sounded far less jolly than she recalled.
She heard Rafe’s sharp intake of breath. ‘I can’t imagine why. I’ve never had anything to do with any connection called Owl. How can he ask for me if he doesn’t know me?’
‘Oh, he knows the Falcon, all right.’
‘Can you be more specific, Fruity?’ Rafe growled, surprising Stella with his intensity.
‘Let’s just say he’s an old childhood friend from the East.’
‘Joseph?’ she heard Rafe reply in a whisper of incredulity.
Stella blinked.
Joseph
. Was that the boy from the photographs who was never far from Rafe?
‘He has something for us.’
‘You’re running my stepbrother?’ Rafe continued, now sounding suddenly appalled to her.
‘Not really running him, old chap. He’s more of a sleeper, really. He’s been passed to me in this instance because of the connection to you. I’m just keeping an eye on things.’
‘Listen to me now, Fruity. Joseph is a pen-pusher. A mild, gentle desk man the last time I checked. He is no spy. You can’t —’
Spy!
She stopped herself gasping just in time.
‘Nevertheless,’ Basil Peach continued, sounding exasperated, ‘he insists he has something he needs us to know. The thing is, Monty, we need you to meet with him because he’s too far up the line for us to ignore anything he may wish to share.’
‘You’ll endanger him.’
‘He came to us.’ She pictured Basil Peach shrugging on his stocky frame.
‘How long has this been going on?’
‘Two years.’
Stella could feel his shock from two floors above coming down the line of the phone. ‘And only now you —’
‘Listen, old chap, you know how it is. It’s on a need-to-know basis and all that. It wasn’t necessary to tell you.’
‘But suddenly it is!’ he snapped. Stella had never heard him angry and the emotion seemed to bridge the gap in the part of his personality he kept so deeply hidden. As confronting as it was, the passion he spoke with aroused hers. She was sure she was blushing.
Basil was doing his best to soothe. ‘I’ve said we’ll arrange the meet.’
She sensed Rafe forcing his wrath down. ‘Where?’ he asked, his tone as wintry as a February morning. ‘Surely not Germany?’
‘No, no, although he is playing his cards close to his chest. Refuses to clue us. Said to say “peacock” to you. Means nothing to us – we’ve checked into it. There’s no restaurant or café called that, no hotel linked to it either. Said you’ll know.’
‘When?’ Rafe demanded and Stella suspected he understood from the cryptic message precisely where the meet would take place.
‘A fortnight from today.’
‘Can’t do it.’
‘Why ever not?’
‘Because he’s talking about Africa!’
‘Good grief, man.’ Basil blew out his breath audibly. ‘Well, then, Africa is where you have to go. He wouldn’t request this if it wasn’t something important.’
‘I’m impressed with your ability to understate.’
‘Aren’t we Brits meant to be the masters of it?’ Basil replied, seemingly unoffended.
‘This is not an easy time.’
‘Never is, Monty. But you’ve got your lepidopterist and Kew Gardens cover and I’ll have the paperwork drawn up. Africa, you say. Where exactly?’
‘I was planning on taking my family on a cruise to Egypt,’ Rafe replied, clearly refusing to take his own advice and be specific, plus it sounded like he’d ground his words through gritted teeth. ‘Although I’m —’
‘Oh, heavens, that’s perfect!’
‘I was going to say that this other business has to wait. The girls are on holiday, I’ve been away rather a lot recently as you well know, Beatrice is —’
‘Wait?’ Basil echoed sarcastically. ‘We need this, Monty. You know how it is over there right now. Any information is an aid. I’m sure you’ve taken a measure even within your own circles that a lot of our people all but openly sympathise with Germany’s harsh reparations – in fact, I’d go so far as to suggest that many rather admire Adolf Hitler.’