Death at Rottingdean (35 page)

“Captain Smith?” Hauptmann replied scornfully. “He was killed because he was insubordinate, of course. He was ordered to leave the handling of George Radford to his superiors. Not only did he disobey that order, but after he had killed the man, he botched the disposal of the body. Given certain remarks that Radford was making, it was virtually certain that complaints would be heard by those in authority and that Smith would be accused. His rash act jeopardized the entire operation—hence, I took it upon myself to discipline him.” There was a loud peal of thunder. “Now, if you will excuse me, I shall fetch my traveling case and be on my way. My ship is expecting me.”

“Your case?” Charles asked. He lifted it up onto the wall. “I believe, sir, that we have anticipated you. We have it here.”

“Ah.” The count was silent for the space of several breaths. Then: “Have you opened it?”

“Not yet,” Charles said. “Whatever is in it is undisturbed. You may have it—in return for the boy.”

“Throw in an hour's head start, and you have a bargain,” the count replied.

“Don't trust him, Sheridan,” Kipling whispered urgently.

“On my word as a gentleman,” the count said. “And I have yours, I assume.”

“Of course,” Charles said. He picked up the case.

Kipling pulled at his arm. “We can't give it to him, Charles. The case may be full of valuable strategic information. We still don't know whether the man is working for the Kaiser or for himself, and we know nothing about the extent of his espionage activity. If he gets back to Germany with those documents, they could be used to—”

Charles shook his head. “The game is up, Rud. We understand enough about his operation to scuttle it entirely, and he knows it. Whatever is in that case is probably more of an embarrassment to the Kaiser and to Hauptmann than a threat to the Queen's realm. And it certainly isn't worth a gun battle that would cost Patrick's life, and quite possibly ours.”

“My compliments, my lord,” the count said in an admiring tone. “You have stated my own conclusions quite competently. In any event, I have grown very fond of this young man in the hours we have spent together. He is a bright chap, very courageous. It would be sad indeed for him to die at so tender an age.”

“Then you should be glad to let him go,” Charles said. “I'm coming down with the case.”

“Excellent. You will leave your gun on the wall, however.”

Charles hesitated.

“Come, come, Sheridan,” the count snapped. “We are gentlemen, are we not? A bargain is a bargain.”

“Keep your gun on the man,” Charles said sotto voce to Kipling, and picked up the case. A moment later, he was on the beach.

“Very good,” the count said. “Put it in the skiff.”

Charles shook his head. “The boy first.”

“Lord Sheridan,” the count said, in a tone of rebuke, “I gave my word as a gentleman.”

Charles walked to the skiff, put the case in the bow, and turned. “Now the lad.”

“When I am ready,” the count said. “Step away from the boat.”

“You gave your word as a gentleman,” Charles said angrily.

“What makes you think I am a gentleman?” The count's laugh grated harshly. “A man is a fool who trusts the word of a spy. I have a use for the boy. He is going with me.” Pushing the gun into Patrick's neck and keeping the boy between himself and Kipling, he walked sideways toward the skiff.

Charles clenched his hands, angry and helpless. If he leapt for the boy, Hauptmann would kill him, he was certain of that. But Patrick was dead already, for he knew too much to be set free. The moment Hauptmann stepped into the boat, he would jump for it, throw the man off balance, give Patrick an instant to flee. He tensed. But before he could move, the entire beach was suddenly and eerily lit, as if by a lightning bolt or a blue-white flare of enormous power.

The count cried something in German as he instinctively threw up his hand to shield his eyes. Charles, in a darting run, snatched the boy and dove for the cover of the nearest bathing machine.

The impression of the flash lingered long after it went out. There was a silence, and then a clear, melodic voice spoke from the rock fall. “A picture, they say, is worth a thousand words.”

“Kate!” Charles exclaimed. “What the devil—”

“Lady Sheridan?” the count cried, in a strangled voice. “You have taken a
photograph?”

On the headland above, Kipling unshuttered the lantern and held it up. Stunned, Charles saw Kate, dressed in trousers and a heavy sweater, her hair pinned up under his tweed golf cap, advancing onto the beach, a cricket bat in her hand. Lawrence, with a box camera in one hand and Charles's magnesium lamp in the other, was a step behind her.

“Surely you know something of
Lear,
Your Excellency,” Kate said sweetly, and with as much self-assurance as if they were in a ballroom. “Perhaps you remember Gloucester's lines from the second act. ‘All ports I'll bar; the villain shall not 'scape ... besides, his picture I will send far and near, that all the kingdom may have due note of him.' ” She paused and added, regretfully: “Helpful to us, but not so to you, I fear, sir. A spy's photograph in the hands of his enemy rather spoils his game, I should think.”

The count sputtered something in indistinguishable German.

Charles stepped out from the bathing machine. “I believe our bargain is concluded, Hauptmann. We have the boy. You have the case. Now, take the skiff and go, before the storm makes it impossible for you to reach the ship.”

There was a silence. “Very well, then,” the count said at last. “Perhaps we shall meet again, in happier circumstances.” He chuckled dryly. “Although next time, I should rather you left your wife at home.”

He turned his back on them, shoved the skiff into the waves, and leapt into it. He seized the oars, set them in the locks, and with powerful strokes began to pull out into the angry sea.

No man can calculate the effect on our delicate economic fabric of a well-timed, well-planned blow at the industrial heart of the kingdom, the great ... towns, with their teeming populations of peaceful wage-earners ... It is imperative that the invaders should seize and promptly intrench a prearranged line of country, to serve as an initial base. This once done, they can use other resources; they can bring up transports, land cavalry and heavy guns, pour in stores, and advance. But unless this is done, they are impotent....

—ERSKINE CHILDERS
The Riddle of the Sands,
1903

 

 

 

 

 

“
A
nd this is the spot where they found it?” Kate asked curiously. stepping from the front seat of the tandem bicycle she and Charles had borrowed from the Kiplings. “Down there on the rocks?”

The brisk morning breeze whipped her auburn hair into an unruly mass, but it was nothing like the fury of the storm several days before, which had left piles of debris all up and down the south coast. Although the wind made pedaling difficult and the tandem made uphill riding a challenge, it was a beautiful day for bicycling. The sparkling blue-green waters of the Channel stretched out to the horizon, and the sky was a complementing blue, punctuated here and there with wheeling flocks of white gulls. Directly below them was a small cove cut in the white chalk cliffs, and a narrow crescent of wet shingle. The tide was just beginning to ebb.

Charles laid the bicycle on the turf and joined her at the edge of the cliff, where they sat down together. “Hauptmann's traveling case? Yes, just down there, to the left, on those rocks.”

Kate followed Charles's pointing finger to a pile of jagged rocks against which a gentle surf was breaking. “What about the skiff?”

“It washed up farther to the east, what was left of it.”

She tucked her skirt under her knees and was silent for a moment, thinking of how it must have been, alone in a terrifying storm in a small wooden boat. “Do you suppose they will ever find the count's body?” she asked at last.

“It doesn't seem likely,” Charles replied. “Of course, Hautpmann may have gotten clean away. Finding the wrecked skiff was hardly a surprise, after all. Once he made the ship, he would simply have abandoned the boat to the mercy of-the storm. Finding the case—that's what makes me think he was drowned.”

Kate turned to look at Charles, loving his grave, thoughtful face, the strength of his shoulders. “It is over, then.”

“Over?” He chuckled wryly. “I think not, my dear. How did Kipling put it the other evening? ‘The great game is over when we are all dead.' ”

“But if Hauptmann himself has perished and the plan is known, the danger is past, isn't it?”

“But Hauptmann is only a single player, Kate. And this scheme of his may have been a serious plan for invasion—or it may have been merely a diversion or a contingency plan. When they learn what happened, the Kaiser's agents will no doubt consider themselves fortunate that this particular intrigue did not create an international incident. But they will try again at another place, at another time, with another strategy. That is how the game is played.”

Kate turned her gaze back to the ocean, thinking about the past few days. After Hauptmann had rowed out to sea on that stormy night, Charles sent a coded message to the Brighton chief constable, who had set up a command post at the telegraph office in Newhaven. Sir Robert had directed his forces to surround and seize the villagers and confiscate the smuggled goods. The next morning, a fresh contingent of coast guards undertook an aggressive patrolling of the beach. In the flotsam of the storm, one of them had found the count's traveling case.

What Kate knew of the contents of the case, she owed to Charles's narration. In a heavily secured room of the Rottingdean coast guard station, in the presence of Charles and Kipling, the chief constable had forced the clasps of Hauptmann's case. The items they found sealed in a waterproof oilskin pouch told a story of methodical, meticulous planning for an invasion of the south coast. Photos and glass negative plates covered virtually every foot of shoreline from Newhaven to Brighton, carefully detailing each usable landing area at which troops could disembark, every avenue of advance by which the invading force could move swiftly inland, every commanding high ground upon which artillery batteries and observation posts could be established. Elaborate notes, compass bearings, and triangulations pinpointed the location of each photo. There was a collection of onionskin map overlays, a selection of railway timetables, and a manuscript composed of columns of six-digit numbers, clearly an encrypted report.

After examining the contents, Sir Robert closed the case and locked it in a mail sack. The sack was taken under guard to Brighton, where Arthur Sassoon secured it in his bank vault until the Prince had conferred with the War Office and an appropriate course of action was decided upon. Charles and Sir Robert had, of course, sent their offical report to HRH that very night, by royal courier. His response was what they had expected: all involved were sworn to absolute silence and the matter was declared a State secret. In particular, the Prince insisted that the Queen not be told, for fear that she could not restrain her wrath against her grandson the Kaiser and would reveal all in an unguarded moment. A nice bit of irony, Kate thought, for Her Royal Majesty had complained for years that the Prince could not be trusted with important matters.

As for Rottingdean, the Smugglers' Village, it had been ordered that all contraband was forfeit to the Crown and that all tunnel entrances were to be sealed, including the one on the beach, which was to be hidden by a carefully contrived avalanche of rocks. To Harry Tudwell's enormous relief, no other action was to be taken against the village and its inhabitants. There was no doubt that they could be trusted to hold their tongues for all eternity. After all, none of them wanted to confess to being naive, gullible fools, easily taken in by a Trojan Horse scheme that had deceived them with its promise of glittering wealth.

And Patrick? If it had not been for him, of course, Hauptmann might have succeeded in his scheme. When the boy had seen the photographer standing by the barn in the downs, he recognized him as the antiquarian, a recognition that was confirmed when he found a compass the man had left on the wall. Realizing that the boy had seen and could identify him in all three of his disguises—the count who attended Sassoon's party in Hove, the photographer who took pictures in the downs, and the antiquarian who wandered up and down the coast—Hauptmann had seized Patrick and hidden him in the tunnel. For his courageous service in helping to foil the spy's plot, the lad was to receive a handsome royal stipend sufficient to guarantee him an education appropriate to his talents. Kipling had managed to locate the boy's father and obtain his permission to act on Patrick's behalf. Now, he and Charles were debating whether to send the lad to Westward Ho!, Kipling's school, or—

“Patrick,” Kate said now, thinking aloud. “You know, Charles, there are other alternatives for the boy.”

Charles turned, startled by what must have seemed to be a change of subject. “I suppose there are,” he said. His eyes lingered on hers. “I have wondered,” he said after a moment, “whether you should like to bring him to live with us.”

“I have thought of it,” Kate said. “Since we cannot...” She stopped and made herself say it: “Since
I
cannot have children, perhaps you would like to have him with us. He is a fine boy, and very brave, and he admires you enormously. Of course, he is not your son and cannot inherit from you, but—” She stopped and swallowed and then said, in a sudden burst of feeling, what had been in her heart for too many weeks. “Oh, Charles, my dear, I am so sorry! I have failed you. Because of me, your family name will not—”