Honourable Intentions (6 page)

“I do not know . . . No, it can’t have been.”

Quinton frowned and consulted the paper again. “You say it was on?”

“I think so.” Even at that distance, Ranklin could tell Guillet was sweating.

“Now you only think so?”

When Guillet didn’t answer, the magistrate said: “What authority do you have for suggesting that the street was no longer lit at that time, Mr Quinton?”

“None whatsoever, your worship,” Quinton said blithely. “I had hoped to get an official answer to my query to the relevant authorities by this time but, perhaps owing to the Easter holidays . . .”

The magistrate frowned down at his papers, thinking. Finally he said: “So far, I cannot say that this witness has made an entirely favourable impression . . . This seems to me to be one point of fact which we should have cleared up . . . Do you think you would have an answer by tomorrow?”

“I would hope so, your worship, but I am quite prepared—”

“No, I’d like to see this sorted out before we proceed any further. I’ll adjourn the hearing until ten tomorrow morning.”

Quinton bowed perfunctorily, but as he turned away from the bench, his face was a black scowl. He’d had Guillet on the run, and now the witness had time to get his second wind and some intensive coaching. Ranklin sympathised, but had no time to commiserate.

4

Outside the court, a Miss Teal from the Bureau’s outer office was waiting. She was a spinster of a certain age and impeccable background – indeed, the whole Bureau came of good backgrounds; it was the foregrounds of its agents which had become a little muddy.

Ranklin took her arm and whispered urgently: “I’m James Spencer and we’re hired by the American consulate to safeguard Langhorn’s interests. That’s the girl over there, her name’s Mademoiselle Collomb. Offer her a taxi-ride to her lodgings, a cup of tea, any help we can give.”

Miss Teal moved in, radiating respectable purpose – which was why Ranklin had telephoned for her. And once she had had time to establish their bona fides, he followed up.

“Mademoiselle Collomb? Je suis James Spencer
. . .” He took over the fabrication about the consulate and Berenice listened with a subdued, suspicious pout. But at least listened, and perhaps his reasonably colloquial French helped. He finished up: “And do you understand what will happen next?”

A shrug and a brief shake of her head.

“I have talked to M’sieu Langhorn’s lawyer. He—”

“Lawyers.” She spat the word.

Ranklin smiled deprecatingly. “But in matters of law, we are in their hands. Now—”

“Then why did he not let me tell the truth? Why did that meat porter tell those lies? You are all the same as the
flics:
bourgeois liars.”

Ranklin suddenly saw that their feigned respectability had been a mistake: if Berenice was an anarchist, too, then he and
Miss Teal were just more shepherds chivvying the toiling masses to the slaughter-yards – or whatever. Still, he now had to play the hand he had dealt himself.

“I have no concern with politics, only justice.” And he said it with a pained expression that constituted a third lie. “I can only try to explain what
Maître
Quinton explained to me. So would you like a cup of t-coffee?”

She shrugged sullenly but said, “If you want.”

As they turned towards the Strand, Ranklin saw Gorkin watching them from the court steps. But there was no reason why Mr Spencer shouldn’t be talking to the girl-friend of the accused; he could have been more secretive if need be.

They weaved through a blue tide of policemen spilling out from the station next door, Berenice scowling and muttering while Ranklin kept up a flow of small talk. “Are your lodgings comfortable?”

“I am staying with
camarades.”

“And do you know London well? A varied city. Not so beautiful as Paris, of course—”

“Do you know La Villette?”

“Ah . . . I have passed through it . . .”

“Beautiful, hah?”

“Er, no . . .”

They found one of the shiny new tea-shops and Ranklin ordered two coffees and a tea for Miss Teal. Berenice pouted at the hygienically genteel surroundings and the waitresses in their demure little aprons and frilled caps – badges of servitude, to her, no doubt – and demanded: “Do they have any absinthe?”

Miss Teal’s expression would have done credit to an elder of the Scottish kirk, and Ranklin took the opportunity to side with Berenice. “I fear not; the English do not understand these things. But may I offer you a cigarette? – it is probably just as forbidden, but . . .”

She puffed hungrily, which might have been affectation, but with fluency, which couldn’t be. Looking at her across the table, Ranklin saw that her coat wasn’t just the colour of
an Army blanket but worn to the same near-transparency the Army demanded before changing it. And she had probably dressed in her best clothes to travel to London. He guessed her age at about twenty but knew he could be wrong either way by several years. With such a patchy skin – which might be more the nineteenth
arrondissement
than adolescence – nothing would make her pretty, but more expression and less pout might dispel the expiring-fish look.

He lit his own cigarette. “So : may I try to explain?”

Another sullen nod.

“Maître
Quinton hopes the meat porter will not be believed and Grover set free. But also, if he can show that Grover has not been proved to be an anarchist, the arson may be seen as a political act – and again he will be freed.”

“But he did
not
set fire to the police barracks.”

“Yes, yes, but
Maître
Quinton will not be admitting that he did. The act itself, whoever did it, should be accepted as political as long as Grover has not been proved to be an anarchist.” Even as he was saying it, he realised that, logically, that was sheer balls. Surely whether an act is political or not must depend on the motive of whoever commits it, and thus on knowing who that person is. Oh well, probably a lawyer could talk his way out of that.

Berenice wasn’t impressed, either. “Then they will let him go if he is not an anarchist but send him back to Paris if he is? So being an anarchist is against the law?”

“No, you can be and say what you like here in England – er, within the law, of course.”

“But he must pretend not to be an anarchist to be set free?”

“It more-or-less seems that way,” Ranklin said, getting annoyed with himself, the law and anything else within reach.

She shrugged vigorously, almost toppling her hat. “The law, the law, the law. It is hypocrisy . . . And you ask why we do not believe in it?”

Ranklin
hadn’t
asked, but was tempted to lean over and clout her across the chops as a demonstration of what a world without law was like; however, he knew that was – mostly – just
his annoyance. He confined himself to saying: “You could have stayed in Paris. But tell me, if Grover is returned for trial in France, what does he fear?”

She pouted at his innocence. “The
flics
paid that meat porter to lie. Naturally, they will pay him again.” When he looked appropriately gloomy, she went on: “I know where he stays – at the
Dieudonné
at R-y-d—”

“Ryder Street, I know. French hotel.”

“Last night I tried to see him, to ask him why he has sold another worker to the police, but they would not let me.” A threadbare and probably angry female . . . even a French hotel would draw the line somewhere.

“Terrible.” Ranklin shook his head. “But something I don’t understand: the American Consul who saw M’sieu Langhorn said that he claimed to know of some royal scandal . . .”

Berenice suddenly smiled. It didn’t make her pretty, but for a moment she looked more
gamine
then
poisson. “
Oh, that stupidity. Him and his silly mother with her fairy tales.”

“Oh?”

“She told him he is the son of your English King and so he is the next king.”

*           *           *

“Well, that’s what she
said,”
Ranklin reported into a stunned silence. They had gathered in the Commander’s office: the Commander himself and Lieutenant Jay, who was there because Ranklin had insisted they needed another pair of hands, and particularly feet. Right now, however, Jay was coming out of his concussion into delighted but stifled laughter.

The Commander, not in the least delighted, said: “The boy must be barmy.”

To distract attention from young Jay, Ranklin said: “Of course, I suppose you can’t be sure who your father really is; by definition, you aren’t around at the time. It’s the mother’s word that matters, and this could tie up with the letter she sent to the consulate. And her being English originally, I suppose.”

“Any chance of getting hold of a birth certificate?” the Commander growled.

“What’s the betting that it doesn’t say the Ki – no, Prince George in those days – is the father?” Jay asked cheerfully.

Ignoring that, Ranklin said: “The boy must have been brought up in America, but I don’t know where he was born.”

There was another long silence. The Commander broke it again by growling: “But he’s such a bloody
dull
king.”

“But equipped with all the normal urges,” Lieutenant Jay smiled. He had a pleasant smile, along with slimness, dashing, clean-cut good looks, longish fair hair – all refined through a line of ancestors able to afford the most beautiful women of their day. He could no more pass for a coal-miner than a kingfisher could, but then, the secrets of Europe weren’t kept in coal-mines but in chancelleries and drawing-rooms. And in such settings, it was difficult to see where Jay ended and the Louis Quinze furniture began.

But that was only the half of Jay that you saw. The other half, which should include concepts of honour, scruples, honesty, was unseen because, Ranklin suspected, it didn’t exist. He would trust Jay with his life, but not much else.

The Commander added: “You didn’t get much out of this French floozie, did you?”

Ranklin wasn’t standing for that. “Damn it all, if I’d started cross-examining her, she’d have seen I was taking it seriously and then
she’d
take it seriously. And God knows what she’d do or say to get her lover out of jail.” He stared defiantly at the Commander.

“All right, all right,” the Commander soothed – but then another thought struck him. “If this girl told you, what’s to stop her babbling to anybody else?”

“Me,” Ranklin said, still belligerently, “telling her she was likely to make Grover more enemies than friends over here if she did.”

“Good. Excellent . . . Then I suppose we have to look into the chances of this being true.”

Jay stared. “That this lad’s the next
king?”

“Of course he’s not. He’s an American citizen.”

“Oh, that can’t be any bar. We took William and Mary off the shelf from Holland, and the Hanovers from Germany and the present House of Saxe-Coburg from . . . well, Saxe-Coburg, I suppose.” The long-established British families could regard the Royal Family as very much johnny-come-latelies.

“The first thing,” the Commander said firmly, “is to discover whether there
might
be anything in what the lad says about his father. What’s his age again?”

“Twenty-three,” Ranklin said. “And his birthday was given in court as November the twenty-first, so his date of conception must have been in February 1890.”

There was a pause while they checked his arithmetic.

Ranklin went on: “If the mother met and married an American merchant sailor in this country, that could be Southampton, American passenger ships come in there. And it’s just round the corner from Portsmouth, where quite likely Prince George was stationed in the Navy.”

The Commander made an expression of distaste; things were fitting together too well. He nodded at Jay. “Get down to Somerset House first thing tomorrow and look for a marriage certificate from Southampton or Portsmouth for Langhorn-Bowman . . . But that apart, it must be easier to trace the movements of the King – Prince George, as you say – than the woman.”

“Not all that easy,” Ranklin warned. “At the time he was doing mostly just normal naval things –” now the Commander’s expression turned sour; after all, he should know what “normal naval things” included, “– not worth reporting. But someone can try going through the Court pages of
The Times
for that spring—”

“Never mind that,” Jay said, “what we need is my old nanny.”

The Commander stared, then exploded. “Are you suggesting we include
HER
in this . . . this gathering?”

“No, of course not, sir. But she was – still is, I’m sure – a terrific monarchist. She followed the doings of the Little
Princes, as she called them, almost day-to-day. Used to fill dozens of scrapbooks with bits cut out of newspapers and magazines. My father thought she was potty and she thought he was bound for hell-fire.

“Both right, I dare say,” he added thoughtfully.

The Commander demanded: “Can you lay hold of the right scrapbook, d’you think?”

“Perhaps this evening. She’s with a family in Berkeley Square now.”

“Get round there as soon as we’re finished.” He shook his head mournfully. “The Secret Service Bureau borrowing some dotty old nanny’s royal scrapbook. God Almighty . . . What else?”

Ranklin said: “We’ll have the Paris view of the crime itself when O’Gilroy gets in tonight. And after that, he’ll be sitting around with nothing to do while we buzz about like bees.”

The Commander looked at him. “And you still want him to join our select throng, don’t you? I’d’ve thought the last thing we want in all this is an Irish renegade.”

“Odd, ain’t it?” Jay mused. “The Irish want a republic but the Englishman they hate most was our leading republican and regicide, Cromwell.”

“Don’t try to make sense of history,” the Commander warned, “particularly not in Ireland.”

Ranklin said: “And when we’re finished here, I want to try and get a word with the Paris meat porter who gave evidence today.”

“D’you think it’s worth the risk? I don’t want us getting sidetracked by the crime itself. It’s hardly relevant, now.”