Last Act (36 page)

“Children,” Josef kissed first Anne and then Michael warmly on both cheeks. “I am so very happy for you.”

“Thank you. We're quite happy for ourselves.” Michael turned to shake hands with the next Diet member, while the crowd burst spontaneously into the Lissenberg national anthem.

“What happened to Gertrud?” asked Anne, when the handshaking was over but the singing still continued.

“She ran for it,” said Michael. “Best thing she could do for all of us. I hope Winkler has the sense to let her across the border. If you don't mind, love? She did try to kill you. And—I don't like to think what lies she was going to tell when you interrupted her, God bless you.”

“No.” But in fact Anne thought she did know. Had Gertrud perhaps talked to Fritz, heard his mad, slanderous suggestion that she had been involved in the deaths of Robin and his mistress? She shivered. That was the past, to be forgotten. “I'm glad I got here,” she said.

“I should say! Talk about the nick of time! I was scared rigid she would come out with the name of szilenite and then we really would have been in trouble. As it is”—he turned to Josef—“we must get the motion about the opera house through. Too many people know there's something under there by now. We've got to get it sealed up tight, and quickly. Do you know”—he turned back to Anne as Josef moved to the front of the dais to ask for silence—“James Frensham made a kind of boasting confession last night. He's dead proud of himself. Thinks he's going to get a medal or something. That bomb was really intended for mid-day Monday at the conference centre. It was organised by a gang of high-powered international crooks who prefer expensive swords to ploughshares. I don't know which great power would have been blamed for the outrage, but you can imagine what it would have been like, with all those front-rank diplomats killed and everyone blaming each other.”

“And Lissenberg in the middle of it.”

“Yes. We really do owe a debt of thanks to James Frensham. A very able man. He infiltrated the gang and quietly arranged for the bomb to be used when and where it suited him. Then he had most of the other conspirators rounded up in that car check that caught poor Fritz and nearly did for us the other night, but he's a pretty frightened man now the story is out. I've promised him we'll keep him safe in gaol here, just as long as he likes.”

“The rest of his life, I should think. We'll have to build him a special one.”

“That's my Princess! Your first royal we. Dear God, Anne, but I love you.”

That was the moment at which Josef finally got silence, and Michael's last three words echoed out across the hall.

“What a lot of conspiracies,” said Anne, under cover of a new outburst of friendly laughter.

“All over now, my darling. Let's just get this vote done with, and I'll buy you a hunter's breakfast.”

Jane Aiken Hodge
was born in Massachusetts to Pulitzer prize-winning poet, Conrad Aiken, and his first wife, writer Jessie McDonald. Hodge was 3 years old when her family moved to Great Britain, settling in Rye, East Sussex, where her younger sister, Joan, who would become a novelist and a children's writer, was born.

From 1935, Jane Hodge read English at Somerville College, Oxford University, and in 1938 she took a second degree in English at Radcliffe College in Massachusetts. She was a civil servant, and also worked for
Time
magazine, before returning to the UK in 1947. Her works of fiction include historical novels and contemporary detective novels. In 1972 she renounced her United States citizenship and became a British subject.

Discover books by Jane Aiken Hodge published by Bloomsbury Reader at
www.bloomsbury.com/JaneAikenHodge

A Death in Two Parts
Leading Lady
Polonaise
Rebel Heiress
Strangers in Company
Wide Is the Water
Last Act

For copyright reasons, any images not belonging to the original author have been
removed from this book. The text has not been changed, and may still contain
references to missing images.

This electronic edition published in 2013 by Bloomsbury Reader

Bloomsbury Reader is a division of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 50 Bedford Square,
London WC1B 3DP

First published in 1979 by Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, Inc. New York

Copyright © 1979 Jane Aiken Hodge

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eISBN: 9781448213108

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