City of Secrets (29 page)

But even now, she did not hate him. She felt nothing toward Teddy beyond pity, certainly not any wish to hurt him by starting divorce proceedings without making one more effort to talk to him, to try to explain that they had not drifted apart—they had never really been together.

Now she loved Devin Grant, and that overshadowed everything else. And she knew that she would do anything in her power to keep him out of danger.

Baden-Baden was tucked into a corner of the Black Forest like an enchanted village in a Grimm Brothers fairy tale. The winding, cobblestoned streets and old timbered houses and steepled churches added to the charm of the setting, but it was the thermal baths, discovered by the Romans twenty centuries before, that had attracted royal, titled, or merely rich visitors to the town year in and year out.

Only Devin Grant had no eye for the beauties of Germany’s most popular spa, and no time to spare for its medicinal waters. He was blind to the lushness of the trees lining almost every street and to the magnificent views of the surrounding forest that appeared around every corner. All he wanted to do was sleep.

But not yet. He had been able to snatch a little sleep on the train from Paris, though he had spent most of the journey mulling over what he had learned from the French Pinkerton agent, Paul Bertaude, when he finally caught up with him. The plot against the prince was real. Devin believed that, however little sense he could make of the scattered information he had unearthed. He also had to believe that the attempt really would be made in Baden—for if it were not, he would be helpless to do anything to stop it. That consideration had almost kept him from leaving Paris. If he were not even on the scene to at least attempt to stop the assassin, he would never forgive himself.

Baden made sense of a sort. The assassin, or his controller, more than likely believed that the hostility, due to mutual distrust, between the prince and his nephew the German Kaiser would afford the plotters a better chance of escape than they might have had in France—or at least of leniency if they were captured.

Grant wouldn’t have been surprised to learn the Kaiser himself had a hand in the plot—if only in the sense Henry II was said to have had one in the murder of Thomas à Becket when he voiced a wish, within hearing of his knights, for someone to “rid me of this meddlesome priest.” The Kaiser, of course, would deny any involvement afterward—and he’d believe his own lie too. Grant held a low opinion of Wilhelm, who he thought ruled like a medieval baron, lording it over everyone but leaving the dirty work to others while he wandered around Europe on his private train visiting relatives who would rather he visited someone else.

“His notion of being a good administrator,” Ponsonby had once confided, “is to write notes in the margins of state papers—useful stuff like
Schwein!
and
unmöglich!”

But Ponsonby was able to stifle his feelings, smile graciously, and speak politely to the emperor on his visits to his uncle at Cowes or Windsor. Grant kept out of the way on those occasions and had succeeded in keeping out of Germany too, since his first visit with the prince several years before. He had to admire the prince’s continuous attempts to make peace with his nephew despite the differences in their temperaments and opinions, but he thought it a losing cause, if not exactly a waste of time. Ignoring the protocol-conscious emperor might be courting disaster some time in the future, he conceded, even if attempts to mollify him now might simply be pushing the inevitable only a little further into that uncertain future.

#

The prince would be staying at the Hotel Stephanie, as usual, and as usual nothing would persuade him to do otherwise. But that did not stop Devin from mentioning as loudly as possible to anyone within earshot that the prince would be staying at the Hotel D’Angleterre this time and persuading both grand hotels to go along with this deception and to suffer his peremptory installation of discreetly plainclothed police guards in the one and more obviously uniformed officers in the other. Why he imagined an assassin clever enough to elude identification would be deceived by such amateurish precautions, he did not know. But he had to do something.

He also familiarized himself as quickly as he could with the town, spending his first twenty-four hours there walking around it, from the railway station where the prince would arrive, to the Pump Room and the Friedrichs-Bad, the ruined castle just outside the town, and the nearby Black Forest resort of Freudenstadt. He was tempted to stop at one of the baths, if only to soak the tension out of his aching muscles, or at one of the wine cellars in the Gembacher-Strasse, to slow his racing mind. He compromised by doing his reconnaissance on foot instead of renting one of the cabs lined up in front of the railway station. At least the fresh air would keep him awake.

He stopped in at the local police station to identify himself and was offered one of the younger, brighter-looking members of the force to assist him in interpreting the local dialect and introducing him to those cafés and places of entertainment that stayed open late at night and to which the prince would doubtless find his way in his relentless pursuit of novel amusements.

Sergeant Guntar Brenner was an eager recruit, and even if his eagerness proved quickly exhausting—to Devin—his youth meant he had enough energy and sheer good health to add miles to Devin’s own resources. He also seemed to know every shopkeeper and café owner in town; he had grown up there, he told Devin, and his father had been a policeman before him. So Devin gave him Edward Malcolm’s photograph and sent him off to make that face known in all those shops and cafés, then finally persuaded himself that he could safely go to sleep for a few hours. But his exhaustion stretched his nap through the entire afternoon, and he woke to the muted glow of the forest-shrouded sunset gilding the windowpanes in his hotel room. Turning his head slightly, he saw a figure seated at his desk, a figure too small—and too quiet—to be Brenner’s.

“Drummond?”

Oliver turned around. “Good. I thought I’d have to wake you up.”

“What the devil time is it?”

“About half past seven.”

“Damn.”

Grant swung his legs over the side of the bed and reached for his shirt and jacket. He glared at Oliver as he put them on, waiting for him to say something, but when he did not, Devin had to ask, “Is she here?”

“Not yet.”

“I should have known it was too much to ask of her that she stay in Paris.” Oliver smiled at that but said nothing, so Devin went on. “Why didn’t you at least stay with her?”

“Why didn’t you tell me about Frank Hartwell?” Oliver countered.

If he was trying to catch him off-balance, Grant thought, he had done it. He sat down on the edge of a sofa to put on his boots. “What about him?”

“That he’s a dead ringer for Edward Malcolm, to start with. That would have explained a good deal ... if I’d known.”

“How did you find that out?”

“A friend—a colleague of mine—got a good description of Hartwell from one of his sources. It sounded familiar somehow, so I showed him a photograph of Malcolm. They were as alike as brothers.”

“This friendly colleague, I presume, is Paul Bertaude—to whom, may I remind you, you never saw fit to introduce me.”

Oliver smiled in what Grant chose to interpret as a patronizing way. He hadn’t moved from the desk where he had been making notes on the hotel’s stationery, except to turn the chair slightly toward Devin and cross his legs with a movement that was precise without being fussy. He was dressed even more carefully than usual, in a neat black wool suit with creased trousers and a watch chain and fob in his waistcoat. He looked like a haberdashery salesman, Devin thought; nevertheless he felt somewhat at a disadvantage, half-dressed as he was, so he buttoned his cuffs and waistcoat and brushed his hair. Even then, he felt rumpled by comparison.

“Mr. Grant,” Oliver began, as if he were going to sell him something after all. But then he surprised him. “I would prefer to drop this sparring between us, which is helping neither of us. Mr. Grant, I know that Edward Malcolm is dead.”

Devin raised his eyebrows. “Do you know how?”

“I don’t care. At least, not at the moment, and I’m sure you’ll tell me about it later, when you have less on your mind. Until such time”—
he’s beginning to sound like a schoolmaster now,
Grant thought—“I am willing to assist you.”

“With what?”

“Preserving your sovereign to gain his throne.”

That stopped Devin in his pacing of the carpet. Damn. Drummond was right. He no longer had the luxury of choosing his allies. He needed any help he could get.

“Shall we begin again?” Oliver asked, as if he could read Devin’s mind.

“Tell me what you’ve heard.”

So Oliver told him of his meetings with Paul Bertaude in Paris and their encounter with Aristide Dalou. Oliver had a good memory and could repeat everything he had heard, word by word. For once, Devin did not interrupt with questions but let the conversations Oliver resurrected for him flow through his mind, where the extraneous information was filtered out and the new details attached to the picture he had already formed. It was, thank God, actually beginning to look like something now.

Oliver consulted the notes he had been making to finish his story and explained Paul’s conviction that the assassination attempt would indeed take place in Baden.

“Here, in the town?” Devin asked, as a new notion came to him. “Or just in Germany?”

Oliver considered that for a moment. “I suppose we must consider that it could occur outside the city limits.”

“On a train, for instance?”

“Which one is your man on?”

Devin studied him for a moment and finally made the last concession, telling him the prince’s itinerary and when he was due to arrive in Baden.

“Not the train Mrs. Malcolm is on, then,” was all Oliver said, taking state secrets in his stride. The relief on his face was evident, and for a moment Devin felt a kind of kinship with this man, whose loyalty to his mistress was only another form of the love Devin had for her.

“How much have you told her?” he asked.

“The generalities about the plot. Nothing about Hartwell ... or about her husband.”

Devin frowned and stared out the window for a moment. Oliver waited in silence until he’d made up his mind. Devin turned around and said, “I’ll tell her about that.... I have to be the one.”

Oliver folded his notes and put them in his pocket, then picked up his hat and started for the door. On his way out, he paused, looked at his watch, and said with a slight smile, “Her train got in twenty minutes ago.”

#

Ten minutes later, Devin was halfway up the stairs to the second floor of the Hotel Stephanie; in another minute he was beating on Maddie’s door. Louise opened it, saw who it was, and planted herself firmly in the crack between the door and the wall.

“I’m sorry, sir.
Mrs. Malcolm is resting. She has only just arrived, and it was a tiring journey.”

“I won’t keep her long,” Devin said, gently but firmly pushing Louise aside and entering the room. Maddie was standing by the window, swathed in a dressing gown that he couldn’t help noticing let through the last golden light from the window, outlining those wonderful legs of hers. She looked as if she did not know how she ought to greet him but finally didn’t care and smiled anyway. She moved a step toward him, then remembered her maid.

“That will be all for now, Louise. Go and lie down for a while. I’ll ring when I’m ready to dress for dinner.”

Louise hesitated, but Maddie’s smiling yet determined look seemed to convince her that her dismissal was not negotiable. Louise went out the hall door, closing it reluctantly behind her.

“There wasn’t a large enough suite available for all of us,” Maddie explained, coming to Devin and reaching her arms up to circle his neck. “She and Oliver have to sleep in the servants’ wing upstairs.”

She looked up at him in open invitation to take advantage of this fortuitous arrangement, and he was tempted enough to bend his head to kiss her. Her lips opened to let him enter the warm chamber of her mouth, and for a moment he forgot why he had come in the welcome of her desire for him. Then he tore himself away.

“Why did you come? I asked you to stay in Paris. It isn’t safe here for you.”

He was surprised to see the smile fade not just from her lips, but from her eyes; her whole body seemed to change, from eager welcome to despairing rejection. She turned back to the window.

“What is it?” he asked, concerned, moving involuntarily toward her again.

Very softly, she said, “You didn’t ask me
not
to come. You didn’t come to see me at all.”

“I sent you a note asking you to stay to Paris, saying that I’d be back as soon as I could. When did you leave? It must not have been delivered in time.”

She turned back to him.
“Would
you have come back?”

“Of course. Maddie, I—”

Something about the look on her face then stopped him for a moment in wonder. He looked again, but it really was joy he saw—a joy as radiant as if she had just heard a report of a death refuted and could come alive again herself. Had she really still doubted him? He had been so sure of his love for her that he must have thought it needed no expressing. He took her in his arms again and kissed her again. She tasted like mountain air, like the Black Forest, like all the other natural wonders he hadn’t had time to look at in his hurried tour of the town, but that he now breathed in through her kiss.

She wanted more, leaning into him as if trying to come even closer. He responded by plunging even deeper into her mouth, as though he could reach her heart that way. She moaned in the back of her throat, and he felt it echo in every nerve and muscle.

When he finally pulled himself away, he had to gasp for breath to reassure her, to say, “I love you, Maddie. How can you think I wanted to leave you, that I wouldn’t have come back? I love you. I want you with me all the time, forever, to sleep with, to love ...”