Authors: Anthony Price
Now the convenient path she’d been following obstinately refused to take her any closer, dividing to sweep round on each side of it. But that no longer mattered—
But it did matter.
As she stepped off the path on to the carpet of leaves her high heels sank through into the soggy ground beneath. The fall of the slope made the going even more treacherous, and she teetered wildly as first one foot and then the other became trapped, unbalanced equally by the weight of the briefcase and the fear of what might happen if she dropped it.
The cruising ducks on the pond caught sight of her and instantly changed course, quacking loudly in anticipation of food. Their cries awakened other ducks ashore on the far bank, which at once threw themselves into the water, hydroplaning towards her across it on beating wings and feet. The whole pond exploded into a frenzy of greed.
Frances lost contact with one of her shoes.
The English Novel
slipped out of her grasp and slithered down the slope, followed by the rest of Dr Penrose’s possessions.
The ducks hurled themselves towards the scattered papers.
With a convulsive effort Frances freed her other shoe. But as she did so her foot came out of it and her already shoeless foot slid out from under her. She sat down heavily on her bottom, just managing to clasp the briefcase to her breast before she hit the ground.
Both her stockinged feet rose in the air as the weight of the case pushed her on to her back and she instantly started to toboggan down the slope towards the chaos of squabbling ducks and mud-stained papers.
She cried out in terror, but the sound was lost in a crescendo of panic-stricken quacking and wing-beating as she crashed into the ducks.
For a moment there were ducks everywhere: ducks running over her legs, ducks clumsily trying to climb the slope beside her, ducks attempting impossible vertical take-offs, ducks colliding and snapping and splashing in the shallows.
Their panic infected her. She thrust the case away from her, down between her legs into the filthy duck feathered water in which her own feet were immersed ankle-deep.
Then she was scrabbling feverishly back up the slope on her hands and knees—
Her shoes—she must have her shoes—even if there was no time to put them on.
She was running in her stockinged feet—free from the briefcase at last—sobbing and running as lightly as a deer—
Paul Mitchell appeared from behind a beech tree in her path.
‘Hold on there, Frances!’
She swerved to avoid him, but he caught the flying edge of her gown and swung her round.
‘No—damn you—‘ she struggled instinctively, gasping for breath, but he caught her wrist.
‘Hold on there!’ Now the other wrist was caught. ‘It’s all right. Princess—it’s all right.
We’re far enough away if it goes bang … and it probably won’t go bang anyway. But we don’t want to create a disturbance, so just calm down—okay?’
Far enough away?
Frances looked back.
She hadn’t run away in the same direction by which she had reached the pond; somehow she had veered to the right, away from the main buildings.
And she had also run much further than she had imagined: she couldn’t even see the pond now, and the unspeakable quacking was muted.
Paul released her wrists. ‘Better put your shoes on. Princess. The ball’s not over yet.’
Frances looked down at her feet. Her tights were soaking and muddy. There was a duck-feather—several duck-feathers—stuck to her ankle. Her knees were muddy too.
And her hands.
She caught her breath. ‘Sod it!’ she said feelingly.
‘That’s better,’ murmured Paul.
By the grace of God she still had her handbag—somehow its strap had never left the crook of her arm. She extracted a handful of tissues from it and tried to wipe her hands.
‘Here—‘ Paul knelt down and wiped the worst of the mud from her feet with a large handkerchief. ‘Now give me the shoes.’
Her relief began to evaporate. She still had her handbag, but she had left her self-respect behind her by the duck-pond, together with the briefcase.
‘Foot, please,’ said Paul.
Humiliation choked her. She had panicked, and what was worse, she had panicked in front of Paul Mitchell.
‘It fits! It fits!’ He grinned up at her. ‘You are the true princess, and I claim your hand in marriage—‘
There was a rustle of leaves beside them. Balancing on one stockinged foot, Frances turned towards the sound.
‘Hullo, Frances,’ said James Cable.
And in front of James Cable, she thought desolately. And there was someone else with him too; and beyond them both lay the prospect of reporting to Colonel Butler in the control centre.
‘Too late, old man,’ said Paul from ground level. ‘Cinderella is mine.’
‘Sorry you had to carry my can, Frances.’ Cable ignored him. ‘But the library was supposed to be clean.’
‘Clean!’ Paul grunted contemptuously. ‘Fighting Jack is going to have your guts for garters, James—to use his own inimitable phrase .. . Give us the other shoe. Princess.’
Frances looked down at him. She was never going to be able to outlive that nickname now, not in a thousand years. Even when the exact details of her disgrace had been forgotten she would still be ‘princess’, Paul would see to that.
‘I can do it, thank you.’ She slipped her cold, wet foot into the other shoe.
‘Suit yourself. One glass slipper is enough.’ Paul returned the ruined handkerchief to his pocket and rose to his feet. He looked at the man who had accompanied Cable.
‘You’ve got your chaps out round the pond, Jock?’
Frances put a name to the face.
Maitland.
‘Aye.’ Maitland considered Frances shrewdly. ‘A black briefcase, Mrs Fitzgibbon.
Approximate weight?’
Maitland, Technical Section. Late Royal Engineers.
Weight?
A million tons, the ache in her shoulder advised her. Or was the pain in her imagination?
‘About ten pounds—I don’t know exactly. Maybe more.’ She looked at him helplessly. ‘It was heavy.’
‘Not the way you were throwing it around,’ said Paul. ‘I thought you were going to heave it in, the way you were swinging it about … I tell you, Jock—whatever there is in the case, it’s certainly shockproof.’
‘Oh, aye?’ The shrewd eyes settled on Paul momentarily. ‘Well, that’s something then. And you just be glad it wasn’t you that found it out the hard way, laddie.’
‘Oh, I am, believe me.’ Paul was unabashed by the jibe; it would take a lot more than anything Maitland could say to dampen him, thought Frances enviously. He wore his self-confidence like a wet-suit.
He winked at her. ‘I’ve much too much imagination for a nasty job like that. In your shoes—or out of them—I’d have been running long before you. Princess.’
‘Aye,’ agreed Maitland. ‘You might have been at that.’
‘But that still wouldn’t make it the real thing.’
‘No, it would not.’ Maitland eyed Paul thoughtfully for a couple of seconds before turning back to Frances. ‘Ten pounds, you say. And the case would be three … maybe three and a half pounds.’
‘It could have been more.’
‘It would be enough. And you left it by the water’s edge as instructed?’
Frances’s toes squelched inside her shoes. ‘Half in the water, actually.’
‘No matter.’ He came close to smiling. ‘It’ll do no harm where it is for the time being, thanks to you. It will bide its time, and so shall we.’ He nodded to her. ‘Thank you, Mrs Fitzgibbon, for your help.’
‘Aye,’ murmured Paul as Maitland moved away. ‘But Fighting Jack will no’ bide his time for us—and especially for you, Frances. You remember where to find him?’ He glanced at Cable. ‘Or are you here on escort duties, James?’
‘Me? No—I’m carrying the glad tidings to the library.’ Cable gave Frances a lop-sided grin. ‘I just came this way round to apologise to you, Frances.’
‘It wasn’t your fault.’ She frowned suddenly. ‘What glad tidings?’
‘Ask Paul. I’ve got to go—ask him—‘ he pointed at Paul as he started to turn away ‘—he’s been in with the Colonel.’
Frances transferred the frown to Paul. ‘What glad tidings?’
He shrugged. ‘Oh … owing to unforseen circumstances there will be no Sarajevo this afternoon. All assassinations have been postponed indefinitely, by order of Colonel Butler.’
‘What d’you mean?’
He pulled his don’t-blame-me face. ‘I mean, dear Princess, that if James has overlooked any more infernal devices in the privies there, only innocent bystanders are now available to act as casualties.’
‘Don’t be—‘ she bit off the word as she saw his face change.
‘Flippant? I’m not being flippant. The Chancellor and the Lord-Lieutenant are already off the premises—in different directions. And I—I am on my way to the playing fields to check in the RAF chopper Fighting Jack has summoned for the Minister. “Called away on urgent state business”—that’s the official word.’
‘You mean … there’s no opening ceremony?’
‘Correct. No opening—no ceremony. No VIPs—no big bangs. No O’Leary. Operation aborted, and that makes two for you in one day. If I didn’t know better I’d think you were jinxed, Fitzgibbon.’
He’d been listening in to her dialogue with Butler, Frances realised. But then Cable had said as much with his parting words. So the powers above were evidently breaking in Paul early to the control of the latest surveillance technology. There were to be no psychological RPV hang-ups allowed to develop in him.
‘But … you know better?’ At the last moment she converted the opening words of an angry jibe into a respectful question. Of course, he habitually cloaked his true feelings under flippancy and irreverent chatter about his superiors. But this time it was a thermal covering for anger, and the temptation to throw
We
’
re not expecting anything to happen in
the library
at him was outweighed by her curiosity about that anger.
‘Oh, I do—yes.’ He glanced at his watch.
‘Tell me.’ It was no good turning on the charm, he’d never fall for that from her. But just the faintest suggestion of professional admiration might serve. ‘Tell me, Paul.’
He looked down at her. Quite deliberately she rubbed the end of her nose with a muddy finger.
He grinned at her. ‘Now you’ve got mud on your nose … Hell! I guess you’re owed it, at that.’
‘Oh…’ She removed the mud with her handkerchief. ‘Yes?’
‘Well, I told you he didn’t like things—‘
‘Colonel Butler?’
‘Fighting Jack, so-called—yes. Only it seems I made a mistake about his methods of fighting.’
‘What methods?’
‘That’s right … He hated the whole operation, but he didn’t turn it over to anyone else—‘
‘So you said on the way up.’ She nodded.. ‘A matter of duty.’
‘So I had the wrong answer.’
It was anger which was making him talk. Being wrong didn’t sit well with his ambition. All she needed to do was to keep him burning.
‘And what is the right answer?’
‘Huh! The right answer … is that he had to stay in charge of it so he could screw it up at the one time when nobody could stop him—when it was actually in progress.’
If he was right that was shrewd thinking on Butler’s part, thought Frances. An operation like this was like an old bombing mission in World War Two: up to the moment of take-off the pilot could always be replaced, but not when he was half-way to the target.
Only it also entailed the same risk too: he had to come home with his bombs wasted or still on board, and with an explanation.
‘All he needed was an opportunity. And you gave it to him with your briefcase.
Princess—“The Princess and the Wicked Briefcase”, by Jack Butler. The ultimate fairy story!’
‘But -‘
‘He had this chopper on stand-by at Driffield, and nobody even knew about it! He was just waiting for one thing to go wrong—that’s all he wanted, just one deviation.’
Behavioural deviation? Even now, after everything that had happened to her, she couldn’t trust herself to echo the jargon out loud.
‘The briefcase -?’
‘The Library was a designated safe area.’ Suddenly the shape of his mouth changed, both corners drawn down. ‘”If a designated safe area isn’t safe, Mitchell, then the basic assumptions of this operation are equally unsafe. And that changes our parameters.”’
Parameters? One thing was for sure: Colonel Butler knew how to fight technology with its own jargon.
‘What does that mean?’ She watched him consult the time on his wrist. ‘Or what did it mean?’
‘”I don’t mind risking Fitzgibbon, that’s what she’s paid for—“ That’s you dealt with, Frances. “But a Minister of the Crown is entitled to adequate protection”—it meant he didn’t even phone London. He aborted on his own authority, that’s what it meant.’
Frances found herself on Colonel Butler’s side. Or at least partially so: he had done her the compliment of treating her like anyone else, uncomfortable though the treatment had been. She owed him something for that.
‘Well, it wasn’t a safe area, Paul.’
And I
’
ve got the wet feet, ruined tights, muddy suit and
damaged self
-
respect to prove it,
she thought miserably.
In the distance the ducks quacked their agreement.
‘It wasn’t?’ For a second he looked through her. Then he focused on her. ‘You know, you were never in any danger. Princess. He just let you sweat to prove a point.’
‘He—
what?
‘
‘That’s right. Just to prove a point. You were his grandstand play.’
Frances clenched her teeth. ‘You mean—there was no bomb? How d’you know that?’
‘For sure, we don’t know. But I’ll give you ten to one against. Or twenty to one, if you like.’
She remembered the look Maitland had given him when he implied almost as explicitly that the bomb was imaginary. ‘You know something that I don’t know.’
Her anger was defusing his.
‘I know we picked up those two chaps of yours—Brunton and Penrose.
Brunton was all set to score with a Moral Philosophy student in his rooms—a female student, nothing queer about Brunton … And Dr Penrose was on his way back to the Library. He’d been posting a letter. He didn’t need his briefcase for that.’