Honourable Intentions (13 page)

He sighed and shook his head. “It’s a nice idea – in theory. But whoever said that thought the skies were pretty firmly nailed in place, at least in his own vicinity. The King’s a special case. He’s not a real man; he stopped being one the moment he put on the crown, and it goes on until he dies. If he starts acting like a real man, pretty soon we’ll be a republic like you and France and Switzerland – and this time it’ll stick. Meantime, I dare say there are compensations –”

“Hah!”

“– one of which is having people like me papering over any cracks in your past. Mind you,” he added thoughtfully, “there are diplomatic aspects as well. If the French press prints nasty things about our King, there could be an anti-French revulsion in this country. And what price the Anglo–French alliance then? – just when we need it to stop Germany doing something stupid.”

“But that just derives from having a king in the first place.”

Ranklin shrugged. “Suppose they started printing nasty things about your President? – wouldn’t that come to the same thing?”

“It would not,” she said with the firmness of someone who isn’t quite sure. “You English will think we think of the President as our king. We don’t: he’s just an elected politician, like your Prime Minister. He can be impeached, even, it’s all there in the Constitution. And that’s what our military people swear an oath of loyalty to, the Constitution. And when we want a bit of reverence and show, we’ve got the flag.”

“Yes, I must say I’ve never understood the fuss you–”

She cut him off sharply. “You want to know one big advantage of a flag? – it doesn’t go around fucking the wrong people.”

O’Gilroy came back with the maid bringing a tray of fresh coffee. The staff here, who didn’t know what the two men did (really didn’t know; Ranklin was sure Corinna hadn’t been that stupid) had the idea that O’Gilroy was a sort of valet to Ranklin but,
since they’d met in the Army, which was true, it was all rather informal.

“Where’s Berenice?” Corinna asked.

“Went to the toilet. Thank ye, I’ll take another cup.” At least you never had to ask O’Gilroy if he’d eaten or drunk. An Irish childhood and his years in the Army had convinced him that the next meal was a matter of luck, so be sure of the one at hand.

Ranklin asked: “And did Berenice tell you any more?”

“Mostly I should get a proper job and ‘twas me own fault me being yer servant. I told her ye’d saved me life oncest, and I was beholden to ye. Don’t worry, she wasn’t impressed, not at all.”

“Haven’t I saved your life?”

“Not near so often as ye’ve made the need of it. One thing: she’s terrible taken with this feller Gorkin. D’ye know him?”

“He was at Bow Street this morning. You saw him: beard, foreign hat, check suit. How d’you mean, ‘taken with him’?”

“Thinks he’s God with a three-speed gearbox. As an anarchist. Big thoughts, has the answer to everything. She says everyone at the Bloomsbury house thinks so, too. Sounds to me he’s missing a great career peddling pills.”

“I thought he was a reporter for that Paris anarchist paper.”

O’Gilroy gave him a superior look. “Ye don’t have reporters on papers like that. It’s got no news, jest tells ye what to think about it. He writes pamphlets, books, lectures. Big man.” Ranklin realised he should have wondered more about that doctorate of Gorkin’s; not many reporters would have any sort of degree.

Then Berenice came in. Ranklin and O’Gilroy stood up; she looked at them in listless surprise. “
Vous êtes en départ?”

Corinna switched into French. “No, no. Sit down and have some coffee.”

Berenice dumped herself into a chair and took her coffee with a muttered “
Merci
.”

O’Gilroy stayed standing. “Fact, I’m going. Thank ye for the lunch, delicious.
Et bonjour, ma’mselle.”
He bowed formally to Berenice and went.

Berenice watched him go with perhaps a glimmer in her usually dead-fish eyes, then asked Ranklin: “Is that man your servant?”

It was debatable whether she would appreciate a spy more than a manservant, but it wasn’t up for debate anyway. “I think of him more as a friend.”

That brought leaden disbelief, but she let it drop.

Ranklin said: “I talked to
Maître
Quinton again this morning.”

“Do you know now what will happen to Grover?”

“No. I’m sorry, but the death of Guillet has delayed matters.”

Corinna sat back in her chair, a slow but definite movement, withdrawing from the conversation.

In a gentle voice, Ranklin said: “May I ask a question? – do you believe we’re trying to help you?”

All he got was a sullen glower. She wore a shapeless dress of faded green over holed black stockings, and sprawled back with all the elegance of damp washing, smelling of absinthe and poverty.

“Then put it another way: would you rather be in the hands of the police?” He waited for a while, then said, still gently: “I do want an answer to this. You’re not in prison here, it is not possible to stop you walking out. It would be more convenient for Mrs Finn if you did. But if you do, the police will take you back.”

“The police are—”

“Possibly. But if they’re what you believe, do you think you can undergo hour after hour of questions without them tricking you into a confession?” Now Quinton was involved, that was pretty unlikely, but let her think of that for herself.

“I did not kill him!”

“I don’t think you did. But the police believe you went to try and see Guillet again at the
Dieudonné
that night. Did you?”

A nod.

“What time?”

A shrug and gesture: obviously, she had no watch.

Ranklin shook his head in patient refusal. “If you have no
watch, you must be used to looking for clocks and London’s full of them. So, what time?”

“I quit the hotel at half-past nine.”

“And how long had you been there?”

A shrug, then reluctantly: “About an hour.”

“Did they let you sit in the hotel all that time?”

“They didn’t let me sit in the hotel a fucking
minute.
I waited outside.”

A girl just standing around in the street after dark . . . “Didn’t men—?”

“Naturally they did. I’m used to it.”

Ranklin sat back to think. Guillet’s bed hadn’t been slept i n. “Somebody could have been killing him while you were waiting.”

Despite herself, a shaft of interest lit her face. “Not at that time. The streets were too busy. And I have seen the river, there is too much light there.”

“The river moves. He didn’t have to be pushed in where he was pulled out. He could have gone in higher up. In fact, it’s more likely.” Mind, the Thames at London was tidal: the natural flow might even reverse with a flooding tide. A body could be pushed back and forth, banging into moored barges . . . well, that had certainly happened.

But on balance, it should have travelled downstream – perhaps from the quieter, less lit areas of Chelsea or across the river in Battersea. “A long way to walk first,” he said to himself, then translated for her.

“An auto,” she said.

“He wouldn’t have got into an auto except with someone he knew.”

“And the only person he knew in London is
Inspecteur
Lacoste.” There was a little triumphant smile on her shabby face:
ergo,
Lacoste had killed him. Hadn’t she said it was the
flics
all along?

Ranklin thought that unlikely. Whatever one’s view of the
Préfecture,
being let down by a witness must happen fairly often to a detective, and he couldn’t kill them all; it might
cause comment. But he didn’t fancy trying to argue that to Berenice.

So he said: “Did you know Guillet in La Villette?”

“I saw him a couple of times, when he came into the
Deux Chevaliers.
He did not belong there,
he
was not an anarchist. But he had some business with the
patron.”

“The
patron?”

She regretted having mentioned him, but it could hardly be a secret. “M’sieu Kaminsky.”

Ranklin would have liked to learn more about the man running the
Café des Deux Chevaliers,
but he didn’t see how it was relevant to the shenanigans in London. He swung the conversation back towards home. “The lady in Bloomsbury – Venetia Sackfield – she agrees that you came home at about ten o’clock. Were there others there?”

Shrug. “Some women, men – they’re just a bunch of children. But also Dr Gorkin.”

Tempting her, Ranklin was dismissive. “Oh,
him.”

It was too easy. “He is a great man! A true champion of the workers, a real thinker. Did you read what he wrote about the Dreyfus case? No, of course you didn’t. And he is also a healer, not a fashionable two-hundred-franc doctor but a man who
cares.
He treats the poor who have the pox, when the nuns would just say it was the wrath of God for their
wickedness!”

Corinna couldn’t help butting i n. “But does he know anything about medicine?”

“Of course he does. He studied for years, but he also worked for the Cause and the Russians drove him out.”

“Fine, fine. I just asked.”

Berenice stood up. “I am going back to the workers.”

“She means –” Corinna reverted to English as the door banged “– the kitchen and the absinthe. Have you met this great thinker and healer?”

“Had a drink with him, the first day at Bow Street. We talked about anarchism – he’s quite a good debater.”

She considered, then smiled. “You really couldn’t be further
apart. In the red corner, the prophet of anarchism, in the blue corner the devoted officer battling to save the King from his youthful Dark Secret. I’m sorry:
alleged
Dark Secret.”

Ranklin scowled. But it always amused her, seeing his face attempt that expression.

She went on: “But you must admit a few minutes of royal romping more than twenty years ago is causing you and a lot of people a whole heap of trouble today, however honourable your intentions are.” She began moving about the room, tidying in a purposeless way.

Ranklin said: “You’d better not meet Dr Gorkin: it sounds as if you’re ripe for the plucking.”

“I doubt it, and I’ve had young Berenice softening me up all morning. But anarchism, communism, socialism, they all seem much the same as Christianity: fair shares, feeding the poor, loving your neighbours –”

“It also seems to be about upping the pace on such matters.”

“– but without Christianity’s saving grace, which is seeing that mankind is fallible. Very practical, that. I hate as much as anybody listening to a preacher telling me we’re all poor sinners – what does that bastard know? But in the end he’s right. We
aren’t
trustworthy, we do need laws and leaders – preferably elected leaders, so we can throw them out when they get too fallible. You try telling that to an anarchist: they don’t even believe in democracy, just
agreement.
They say you’ve got no faith in your fellow men, you’ve been corrupted. They’ve done away with God and they’re stuck with believing mankind’s perfectable – practically perfect already. All it needs is a revolution and you and me under the guillotine.”

“Well, you, anyway.
I’m
not rich.”

“See what I mean about the fallibility of man?” She stood above him, running a finger through his silky fair hair. “Are you let off the hook this evening?”

“With Berenice around?”

“She isn’t sharing my
room.
And it would be rather nice to have a man around. Then if someone rings up in the middle of
the night with some smart-ass scheme,
you
can handle it.”

But then the telephone rang. Corinna answered it, smiled, and said: “Hello, Conall. You want the great man himself. He’s here.”

She tactfully faded away as Ranklin took the earpiece. O’Gilroy said: “Ye’d best be getting back. Things has happened in Paris. And did ye see a dark red Simplex landau parked outside there?”

“No.”

“Ye should’ve done. Coupla fellers in it. Anyways, I’m sending young P over to take yer place. He’ll keep the cab.”

Ranklin hung up and Corinna came across, her expression querying his worried look. This time, she had a right to know. “O’Gilroy says there’s a couple of men watching from a motorcar outside.”

She took it well – if a resigned sigh is well. “He’s usually right about these things.”

Ranklin peered through the lace curtains without disturbing them. He thought he could identify the car, but it was just a closed car like several others in the street. “Anyway, he’s sending over Lieutenant P – youngish chap, you haven’t met him – to stand guard. I’ve got to get back. Oh, and P doesn’t know about all this – yet – so I’d be grateful if you didn’t—”

The idea of herself hiding a Shocking National Secret from a Secret Service agent tickled Corinna. Still, for that reason alone, she’d do it.

Ranklin smiled ruefully. “I know: tomorrow the world, but until then . . .”

9

“Jay’s over at Scotland Yard,” the Commander said, “and he was on the telephone just now saying someone’s put advertisements in the Paris afternoon papers asking Enid Bowman to present herself to the British consulate, where she’ll hear something very much to her advantage.”

“The Palace again?”

“Who else could it be? We should never have told those stupid buggers.” Quite overlooking that it had been he who had insisted on it. He added grudgingly: “Though at least they had the sense to use her maiden name. Would’ve had French journalists swarming all over them at the mention of ‘Langhorn’.”

“Probably offering her a bribe to keep quiet,” Ranklin guessed.

“What they’re actually doing is getting the Paris police frothing at the mouth. The
Préfecture
cabled that French rozzer over here the moment they saw it, and he’s round at the Yard asking what the hell the perfidious English are up to. First killing their witness, now trying to bribe the mother of that anarchist fire-raiser. Naturally,
he
thinks it must be us – the Bureau – playing silly games. And he’s got the Yard, at least Special Branch, half believing it, too. And how can I tell them it was really those morons on the steps of the throne?”