Dreaming Spies (41 page)

“Should be a little—yes, here.”

“Just a mouthful. That’s good. Aah.” She sat in the chair closest to the fire, her face towards us. Tommy stood with his back to the fire, gazing down at her.

“Tired?” he asked.

“Long drive.”

“I know. But isn’t it nicer to be back here, rather than stay another night up in bloody Leicestershire?”

“It’s nice wherever you are, my dear.” Some faint shade of meaning in her voice caught my ear, although there was nothing untoward in her face: gentle smile on her full lips, eyes crinkled in a show of affection.

“I’m not sure about Baker, but I think we really ought to clear out the staff of the London house. They’re getting on my nerves, a little.”

“Couldn’t we retain the cook?” she asked.

“Clean sweep might be better.”

“Whatever you say.” There it was again: did she sound just the least bit … condescending? If so, it disappeared in the next sentence. “Your barrister friend seemed a bit more optimistic, tonight.”

“He did, didn’t he? We might not have to move to America, after all. Though it would be a pity not to have it in a church.”

“Damn the Church,” she said, and he laughed.

“The laws of consanguinity,” I breathed into my husband’s ear. English civil law might possibly be persuaded that Lady Darley had never been Tommy’s stepmother, since he was an adult before his father married her, thus raising no bar against their marriage—but the Church of England would never agree.

Again, I wondered at that faint dismissive edge to her voice. One did not generally patronise a man one was in love with.

They talked for a while: a show they’d seen in London; gossip he’d heard about the actress and the theatre’s owner; a statue that he wanted to buy and she did not. My hands went numb.

At last, he moved, setting his empty glass on the mantelpiece and walking around to the back of her chair. He bent to nuzzle his face in his lover’s neck. She tilted her head, encouraging his mouth to travel down. Several minutes passed, and matters were on the edge of becoming uncomfortable for a pair of onlookers when Tommy straightened and stood away, holding his hand out to the sitting woman. “Come to bed.”

She stretched out an arm to her glass, down to the last half-inch—then jerked at some motion behind the young man. He whirled around to the back of her chair, and the two of them stared towards the library door, the sides of both faces taut with alarm.

“Who the bloody hell are you?” he demanded.

“Tommy, that’s—it’s the Japanese girl. From the boat—and the party.”

Holmes’ iron grip stopped me from rising to crash through the doorway. “Wait,” he whispered.

Quivering with reaction, I obeyed.

Standing in the doorway, demure as a child and one arm in a sling, Haruki Sato looked like the most harmless thing in the world.

Baskō’s words, burning
.

The burn of a knife on flesh
.

A young man who burns …

“What the devil are
you
doing here?” Tommy demanded.

Lady Darley spoke at the same instant. “How did you get in?”

Haruki answered her first. “The front door was not locked.”

“Of course it was locked! We always lock it.” But her pretty hands gathered the neck of the silk she wore, as if in defence.

“Perhaps your servants always lock it for you.”

“Tommy did tonight.”

“Perhaps the lock is broken.”

In the face of Haruki’s calm insistence, one could see doubt creep onto the woman’s face. Still: “It was locked, but never mind. What are you doing here?”

“I wish to speak with you about my father,” she said.

Tommy intervened. “Your father? Why should we know him? I’m going to ring for—”

“My father died with yours.”

“He—” The young earl had been turning towards the bell-pull beside
the fireplace, but at her words, he jerked around, his face going from shock to rage as the implication hit. “Your father was that drunken bastard of a wine waiter? Why didn’t you say—Christ! You little bitch, I ought to—” He changed direction, hands clenched as he stalked around the chairs.

“Tommy!” Lady Darley’s sharp voice brought him to a halt, then immediately modulated into cajoling. “Maybe we should let her explain? We can always telephone the police afterwards.”

“Darling, this person’s father was that clumsy idiot who tripped and knocked my Papa …”

His words ran dry, as a son’s loss grappled with the lover’s gain.

“I know, dear, I heard the child. Perhaps she’s here to apologise for the man’s stupidity.”

Haruki betrayed no reaction to the Darley insults.
Get the job done
. Sato had lived by the motto. He had given his dignity for it, and his public honour. And ultimately, his life. “I am not here to apologise. My father, too, died that night.”

“If he hadn’t, I’d have seen him hanged for it, damn his eyes.”

“And now
you
are Lord Darley.”

This time he did hit her—one stride forward then an open-handed blow that sent her staggering against the bookshelves. She had not even tried to avoid it, this woman who could throw him across the room—snap his neck if she wished—merely cringed enough that his blow landed, not on her face, but against hard skull.

He cursed and shook his fingers, then seized the nape of her neck and propelled her towards the settee.

The countess’s expression had not changed at this eruption of violence. She sat back in her chair to study the uninvited guest. “Very well. You are not here to apologise. Why are you here?”

“As I said,” Haruki told her. “I wish to speak about my father. And also about a stolen book.”

Sudden electricity crackled through the room: I almost expected to see hair rising.

Lady Darley reacted first, snapping to her feet. “Tommy, where’s the gun?”

“Where it always is.”

Beside his bed: we’d seen it in the search.

She flung herself out of the room while Tommy loomed over the invader, ready to tackle her. Haruki merely studied the crackling fire. Her toes, I noticed, barely touched the floor.

Lady Darley came back, carrying both pistol and Bible. She laid the ornate volume on the low table, and resumed her chair. It was not the first time she’d handled a gun.

Tommy flipped back the cover. He stopped. “It’s still there.”

“No,” Lady Darley said. “That is one of Mr Bourke’s.”

Pages tore as he ripped the book from its nest. He frantically clawed the book out of its slip-case, flipping through it, then taking it to the lamp to look more closely. “Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

He threw it down and stared at Haruki. “Where is it? You bloody bitch, I’m going to—” Again, Holmes’ hand held me back. Tommy pounced on the gun, Lady Darley’s grip tightening for a moment before she let him take it.

“Tommy!” The crack of Charlotte Darley’s voice brought him to a halt. The weapon was three feet away from Haruki: I’d seen her in action on the dojo floor, but that distance made grabbing difficult. “Let me take a look at that sling she’s wearing.”

The knife the countess drew from the writing desk was designed to separate uncut book pages: plenty sharp enough to separate skin. She stepped between Tommy and Haruki, pausing with the blade against the small woman’s neck … then continued on, sliding it between the sling and the arm. She sawed. The sling fell away. She sawed again, and the sleeve parted, revealing the neat wrappings I had put there in Oxford. The third time, her motions against the gauze must have prompted a reaction, inaudible across the room.

“Hurts, does it?” The older woman pressed firmly against the arm, and this time, the gasp was clear.

The pain was unnecessary. The rich brown hair bent down over the
arm, so close I thought the woman was about to taste the blood—and, in one of those odd connexions the brain produces under stress, I suddenly knew that the toys in the bed-side table were used not on her, but by her.

However, she drew away without an open display of barbarism, tossing aside the knife before she reached into the body of the sling.

She slid the book from its cover to examine it, then slid it back into its case—and hauled off to hit Haruki across the face with it, snapping her head around. When she sat down again, there was a cruel smile on her lips—a smile that Tommy, standing behind her with the gun, did not see.

“Is that the copy?” he demanded.

“No, see how pretty it is? This is the original.”

The countess fitted the book into the Bible’s hidden compartment, closed the cover, and gave it an approving pat. Then she took the project that Bourke the Younger had laboured over so long, pulled it from its slip-case, and tossed both onto the flames. The pages unfurled, an accordion banner of ink and colour spreading over the logs. The fire paused, then began to lick at its edges. She picked up her near-empty glass, then, and turned back to the intruder. “So. Why did you want the book?”

“It belongs to the Emperor of Japan.”

“Prince Hirohito gave it to King George,” she pointed out.

“His Highness did not know what he was giving.”

“A book.”

“A document. But you did not look for that, did you?”

Lady Darley’s gloating look faltered. The Chartreuse splashed across the table as she lunged for the Bible. Its silver corners dug a long scratch in the polished wood, and she made a little cry of frustration as its latch defied her crimson nails.

But at last she had it. Tommy’s attention had lapsed, and now would be the time for Haruki—but she made no move, merely sat swinging her legs, watching Lady Darley pull out the book, yank it from its case, rip open the back edge of its cover …

And confirm that the document was inside.

The face she turned on Haruki made me wonder why I had ever thought the woman beautiful. “It’s still there. Tommy, keep your eye on her, for heaven’s sake. And do sit down. We may be here for a while.”

God, I hoped not. The servants were going to find us here, frozen onto the balcony like a pair of crouching gargoyles. But Tommy reluctantly decided his lover was right, and dropped into a chair with his back to us.

“Tell me why I shouldn’t let Tommy shoot you right now? It wouldn’t be difficult to explain. Tommy and I came home. Found you here. You threatened us. You had a knife—that knife.” She nodded at the abandoned page-cutter on the table.

“My corpse might be awkward to explain. Especially after cutting away my sleeve and bandages.”

“I am very good at explaining.”

“I believe it. On the other hand, I will quietly go away, if you only answer my question.”

“You expect us to—” Tommy bristled, but the countess spoke over him.

“What question is that?”

“Darling, you don’t—”

“Let her speak, sweetheart,” the countess said, then added, “Please?”

“We can’t let her go!”

“Why not? We have the book. We have the letter. Without those, what can she say? A young woman, consumed by grief over her father’s death, blames the English people she sees as responsible. She’ll either get a prison sentence for breaking in and threatening us, or be deported. Either way, she’s harmless.”

“What if she saw the … other things.”

“You think she got into
that
safe? Look at her, Tommy. She’s a child.”

We all looked at her. A tiny figure with a bleeding arm and the face of an adolescent: absurd, to picture her as a safe-cracker.

I began to see why Sato had dispatched his daughter to learn the ways of the West: a weapon that disarming could be formidable.

So make your move
, I urged silently,
before we freeze—or the sun comes up to turn us to stone
.

“What is your question?” Lady Darley asked Haruki.

“One question, my Lady. Was it your husband who came up with the rather complex plan that centred around the Emperor’s book? Or was it you?”

The answer to that would explain all the other cases in Tommy’s safe as well—although Haruki was not about to admit that she had seen those.

I thought the countess was not going to reply. So long a silence passed that Tommy shifted in his chair, although the two women merely gazed at each other, motionless.

“Tommy, would you please telephone to that nice friend of your father’s on the Oxford police force? Tell him we have caught an Oriental breaking into our house, and would like him to make a quiet arrest.”

“I’ll ring down to Baker first. Bloody servants, I can’t think why none of them have heard—”

“No, don’t wake them. Just the police. Please, Tommy dear. The number is in my book, in the top drawer, under ‘Gable.’ ”

He located the book, fumbled it open. He actually laid the gun on the desktop to make the call. The person who answered was not the pet policeman, but between Tommy’s name and the aristocracy in his voice, the man clearly agreed to wake the Inspector and send him out immediately.

Tommy took the gun back to his seat.

Lady Darley spoke. “You will be arrested, young lady, and I will see to it that you are deported. You will go home, and you will permit me to conclude my business with your Prince.
Our
business,” she amended, darting an artificial little smile across the table at her lover. “If you do not, if you attempt to raise a protest concerning the book, it will be your word against ours. The courts will treat you harshly. You will risk an international incident, which would carry its own consequences once you are back in Japan. An international incident that could well spill over onto the honour of your beloved Emperor.”