Honourable Intentions (29 page)

They made a strange trio: Corinna, who didn’t own any clothes that were less than elegant, alongside Berenice doing her usual impersonation of a bag of washing. And Mrs Langhorn, who at least knew how to wear clothes, had Corinna’s motoring dustcoat over a skirt and blouse that hadn’t been improved by crawling through the copse. But she had done something to tidy her hair.

Corinna watched them approach with anxiety turning to relief. “You look all in one piece. Have the cops finally ridden to the rescue? I heard automobiles.”

“The
Garde Mobile.”
Ranklin and O’Gilroy sat down. “It could turn into a proper siege, army and all, if it lasts much longer.”

Corinna glanced cautiously at Mrs Langhorn, then asked: “And you had no trouble getting away?”

“No, the
Sûreté
—” but then the proprietor, fat and gloomy, arrived. He delicately picked a bit of twig off Ranklin’s shoulder with his pudgy fingers and dropped it into an ashtray. Ranklin
ordered cognac and beer for himself and O’Gilroy, and whatever the ladies were having again.

“That boy’s going to make his fortune tonight,” Corinna said. “When the journalists get here. He’s got a telephone.” Ranklin nodded: he hadn’t thought of journalists. Then he took the hint from the “boy” – probably twice Corinna’s age – and went off to the
toilette
to try and clean up.

When he got back, Corinna said: “You were telling us about the
Sûreté
.”

“They’re still getting organised up there, and hadn’t really got time for us. And my French wasn’t too good.” He glanced at O’Gilroy. “You seemed to have forgotten yours entirely.”

“No spikka da lingo.”

“Then,” Corinna asked, “d’you want to get away before they’ve got time for you?”

Ranklin shook his head slowly. “No, I’ll have to stay and give them some sort of explanation. But I’m hoping by then there’ll be a
commissaire
or even a
prefect
along: they’re more likely to settle for a nod and a wink. It’s the lower ranks who ask awkward questions.”

“And there’s still . . .” She had suddenly remembered Jay, lying in the cold lane.

Ranklin nodded.

“D’you want to tell me how—?”

“No. Later.” Then a tray of drinks arrived and he and O’Gilroy finished their beer in a few gulps. It was funny how action made your mouth dry. Then they sipped the cognac for their nerves. Corinna watched their duplicated actions solemnly.

Mrs Langhorn had been silent, looking from them to Corinna and quite ignoring Berenice. Now she asked: “Well, you’ve rescued me. What happens to me now?”

Ranklin felt he had already hauled himself up a vast mountain, only to find another false summit and an indefinite way yet to go. Had it been worth it? Why not stop now, before it cost him anything – anybody – more? Let the damned woman say what she liked to whoever she liked. But . . . but maybe he had to go on a few more steps.

He said: “You were on that barge, so the
Sûreté
will want to talk to you, too. What will you tell them?”

She was a bit taken aback; perhaps she thought she’d reached a safe peak, too, and now he was pushing her off.

“What do you want me to tell them?”

Ranklin shook his head. “Firstly, just tell me what you’ve been doing. From the start.”

“Just trying to do my best for Grover. Anything they told me to.”

“Such as?”

“Writing a letter to the American Consul, and moving into horrible lodgings where Kaminsky said I’d be safe from the police . . . And then going to Portsmouth with him. And meeting you. All that was his idea, he said it would be best for Grover.”

There was a distant crackle of firing, but it didn’t sound final, dying away in a series of individual pops.

“Go on.”

“Then . . . then he made me move on to the barge, and I was kept prisoner. I was really a prisoner there. He didn’t tell me what was going on in London, just said it would be all right. He’d taken my papers, too, and my passport. In France, if you haven’t got papers you’re
nobody,
you don’t exist. I felt he was . . . was just turning me into
nothing.
I was frantic, I was going
mad.”

Ranklin glanced at Corinna’s cool expression to help remind himself that this woman had once been an actress.

“And he said he’d give me some medicine to calm my nerves. I got some sleep then, and when I woke up he made me drink some more . . . I knew the barge was moving . . . And then you rescued me.” And she smiled, bright and thankful. And quite ready, he felt, to tell her story again with a different slant and new stage effects if that suited better.

“I went through it all for Grover,” she reminded him. Which was probably true, but to her mind, it also excused everything. Whatever happened, she and Grover were going to come out unscathed.

“Did you see Dr Gorkin at all?”

“He used to come down to the
Café des Deux Chevaliers
sometimes. And when Grover was arrested in London, he asked me if I’d swear to the King being Graver’s father.”

“And you said you would.”

“It was to save Grover! They told me it was the only way . . . Anyway, why shouldn’t we have a bit of proper living?”

“In Buckingham Palace?”

“And why not?”

“Mrs Langhorn, I told you – when I thought you were Mrs Simmons – that no power on earth could make Grover the next king. That’s still true.”

“But it’s still true he ought to be.”

“It’s also true that because you started saying that, four people are now dead, they tried to kill off Berenice –” at that, Mrs Langhorn really did look at the girl, in genuine, wide-eyed surprise “– and probably more by the time this siege is done.”

After a moment, she muttered: “That doesn’t change the truth.”

Ranklin sighed. “No, none of it does. But there’s been one other development: somebody . . . somebody close to the Palace is offering a pension if you abandon this story.”

“They admit it!”

Ranklin repeated patiently: “They’re offering a pension. But if the story comes out, the pension stops. I should think about it.” He turned to Corinna. “I think it would be best if you just got them back to Paris. Just where . . .”

“I can find somewhere.” In this situation, in front of this audience, Corinna wasn’t one to raise objections. “I’ll send our chauffeur back for you. Er . . . who will you be?”

“Tell him to look for Spencer. And thanks – as much for running away from that lane as anything.”

Her expression turned serious. “If I’d stayed, I might have helped that Jay to—”

“No, you wouldn’t!” Ranklin shook his head firmly. “There were three of them and you’d just have got yourself killed and
let them get away in the motor-car. You did
exactly
the right thing.” For once, he didn’t add.

He saw them to the hired tourer parked around the corner. As he closed the door on Mrs Langhorn, she said: “You said you were working for Mr Quinton.”

“And you said you were Mrs Simmons.”

They stood for a moment on the doorstep of the café, listening to the siege. By now the shooting was constant but low-key, just individual shots. O’Gilroy said: “If’n we’d jest shot that barge to hell, we’d be rid of that old bitch and young Jay’d be alive yet.”

“Nobody can be sure of things like that.”

“He’d be alive,” O’Gilroy insisted. “Only I stopped ye going for Mrs Langhorn and—”

“
I’m
in command,” Ranklin said sharply. “I decide things like that.” And will people just stop reminding me of “ifs”? The man is
dead.
Let him lie.

After a time, O’Gilroy muttered: “Stupid honourable bastard of an officer.” Ranklin chose not to hear.

Soon after that, the first journalists arrived. First came obvious “lines-of-communication” people, a couple of youngsters and an elderly chauffeur, setting up trays of drinks, establishing there was a telephone, interrogating the proprietor. His instinct was to be taciturn and surly, but as he saw Corinna’s predicted fortune coming true, he began to flower; Ranklin overheard several dramatic and imaginative details. Whether the young reporters believed him or not, they wrote it all down.

After maybe half an hour, a bunch of more seasoned reporters hurried in and, without seeming to try but rather as if it was their right, took the place over. They had clearly been up as near to the action as the
Sûreté
allowed, had got little but statements from police officers and some villagers’ rumours, and immediately, to Ranklin’s surprise, sat down to swap notes. Where was all this deadly rivalry and “scoops” he had heard so much about?

Mostly they ignored Ranklin and O’Gilroy, but eventually
a middle-aged man strolled over and said: “D’you mind if I join you?”

He had an American voice, and Ranklin said: “If you want,” but the man had already sat down.

“Wendell Lewis, Associated Press.” He stuck out a hand, and they both shook it. He hung on to O’Gilroy’s hand a moment too long, then asked: “What’s your connection with all this?”

“Just innocent bystanders.”

Lewis smiled quickly. He was in his thirties, with a narrow, sharp face and heavy glasses that gave him the look of a scholarly fox. “His hand’s all scratched up and you’ve got a fresh cut on your cheek.” Ranklin instinctively touched his face; it had just been some thorn, and he had washed the smear of blood off in the
toilette,
but it still stung. And showed, it seemed.

“Why aren’t you beavering away like your colleagues?” Ranklin asked.

“Time difference. Those boys are up against edition times, but I’ve got five hours’ leeway. I needn’t file for our East Coast papers until five in the morning French time. D’you think it’ll last out until then?”

“I’ve really no idea . . .” It hadn’t occurred to him that Kaminsky might time his Last Stand to suit newspaper schedules, and he doubted it had occurred to Kaminsky either. But this raised a thought . . . “But d’you mean that if it doesn’t end soon, they won’t have anything to write?”

“Hardly that. A shoot-out with dozens of police is quite a story; it’s just if you don’t have the ending it’s a bit like writing up a ball game without the box score. We’ll all be filling in with background and colour, who they are, how did it start.”

“Do you know most of the journalists here?”

“Most.” Lewis looked back over his shoulder. The room was full and busy, particularly for the proprietor and his wife. For the moment the telephone had been taken over by a uniformed
Sûreté
officer but there was a pack of young reporters behind him, ready to pounce.

Lewis peered through the wreathing tobacco smoke. “There’s Lebrun of
Figaro,
and Davidier from
he Matin,
and
he Gaulois, Echo de Paris,
and Jake Jacobs of our
Herald,
and a couple of stringers for your Sunday papers . . . pretty good turnout, for a Saturday night. It must be the rumour they’re anarchists – are they?”

“You shut your mouth, Connelly,” Ranklin suddenly told O’Gilroy. And since O’Gilroy hadn’t been about to say anything, and he’d never used the name Connelly, he looked briefly surprised. But then decided he’d better be abashed and sullen until he found out what the hell Ranklin had in mind.

“They may call themselves anarchists,” Ranklin told Lewis, “but for my money, they’re just trouble-makers and crooks. Pure rabble, no matter what Connelly says.”

Nothing had changed in Lewis’s face, but at the same time everything had. He was now twice as alive.

“Connelly” muttered: “Bloody English bastard,” a comment that was, in context, non –committal.

“Shut up, you damned Irish renegade.”

“I could tell ye a tale—” “Connelly” ventured.

Ranklin snatched his pistol from his pocket and thrust it in O’Gilroy’s face. “I said shut up!”

Lewis’s chair clattered backwards on to the floor, stopping the room in mid-gabble. A couple of dozen faces turned to the banquette in the corner, but saw no more than Ranklin’s back and a glimpse of his gun as he whispered fiercely at O’Gilroy.

Then Lewis, who’d backed away several steps and felt somehow responsible for this outburst, said: “Hey, I didn’t mean to start anything . . .”

Ranklin straightened up and turned to face the other journalists past him. “My name’s Spencer from the British War Office and that’s all you need know about me. This
gentleman
wants to say a few words to you gentlemen of the Press, and I’ve agreed he can do so on his promise that he’ll then accompany me – voluntarily and quietly – back to London. Now say your piece.”

The
Sûreté
officer, who’d felt he should have something to say about a flourished pistol, paused uncertainly.

O’Gilroy shambled to his feet. As the would-be-inconspicuous O’Gilroy, he would rather face the Inquisition than this group. But he was no longer O’Gilroy. As Ranklin watched and listened, he gradually became Connelly. It was like seeing a man become possessed, in this case by an Irish braggart who would far rather talk than do.

“Yer here because of some fellers I know holed up in a house by the canal ’n like to gettin’ theirselves killed. I don’t say Good Luck to ’em, I’d jest say God go wid ’em – whether they believes in Him or not. Meself, I’m no sort of anarchist, ’n niver was. I’m a good Irish republican that wants no truck wid kings ’n queens ’n all of the aristocrats that’s been bleedin’ Ireland white for centuries past. The only raison I’m not home in Ireland now is the traithors av the Irish poliss that hounded me out av family ’n home ’n if ye think yer gettin’ me rightful name, good luck wid it.

“So I’m livin’ in stinkin’ lodgin’s in La Villette wid a bunch that calls thimselves anarchists. ’N mebbe they are: seems ye can call yerself an anarchist long as ye believe the world’s an unfair place ’n better off wid no laws ’n nothin’. Meself I believe in Irish laws made by Irish folk for the runnin’ av a proper free Ireland.”

“Get on with it,” somebody called.

O’Gilroy looked sullenly truculent, paused, then hit them between the eyes. “All right. So it began wid this feller claims he’s the bastard son av King George ’n the next king av England by rights. Said his mother’d told him so.”