Stone's Fall (11 page)

“I may,” I said. “But not until I am sure that your warnings are correct. I do not want to place myself in danger, obviously. Nor do I wish to meddle in things which are not my concern. But I have taken on a commission, and so far I can see no real reason not to fulfil it.”

He sighed, and looked frustrated and disappointed.

“I am not saying I am determined to continue. Merely that I wish to.”

“I thought that might be your attitude. I am sorry for it. I think you are making a mistake.”

I sat and considered. What McEwen had just said had made a deep impression. And yet, an old stubbornness was beginning to stir. Why should I be frightened off with just a word whispered in my ear? Why shouldn’t I discover whatever I wanted to? I was breaking no law; in a way I was trying to discover if any had been broken. And I was being told that I should be afraid, and cautious. Englishmen should never be afraid or cautious; not of their own Government. I looked up defiantly.

“Who does Cort work for?”

“The Government.”

“I mean, which bit?”

“I have no idea. The Foreign Office, the War Office, the Home Office. All or none. It is in the nature of a task like this that it is ill-defined. You will not find any piece of paper saying what it is. I doubt he is even on the rolls of the Civil Service. We finally have a formal intelligence organisation, and he is not part of that, either.”

“Oh.”

“He will be paid, and his expenses met, out of miscellaneous funds, untraceable to any one department of state.”

“But one person cannot—”

“Oh, good heavens, there are more than Cort! All over Britain, throughout the Empire, all over Europe, there are his men, and his women, I gather, who watch our enemies and their doings. They watch troops, they watch politicians, they watch what sorts of weapons are being produced by factories. They watch ships in harbours, they watch the people watching us. I said we may eventually be at war; in truth it has already started. You’ve read the stories in the papers; about German spies in this country, about trained murderers waiting for the moment war breaks out to strike and cause havoc here, on the streets of London.”

“Hysterical nonsense.”

“Are you sure? Our enemies learn fast. They have watched the chaos a few anarchists with homemade bombs can cause. How easy it is to kill a king in Portugal, a president in France. To sow panic with a well-placed bomb in a restaurant. Do you think they do not realise what potent weapons are fear and confusion?”

Personally, I had always considered these mouthings in the newspapers to be simply a way of softening up the population so that repressive measures could be taken against the trade unions, and poor people who wished to strike in order to gain a living wage. It had never crossed my mind that someone like McEwen would actually take them seriously. Or that they might be true.

CHAPTER
13

The Russell Hotel in Bloomsbury was a fairly new building, having been completed only a few years previously. All terra-cotta, brick and marble, it presented a formidable appearance to the outside world, so much so that although I had walked past it on many occasions, I had never even thought of going inside. It was not for people like me, any more than the Ritz was, or drawing rooms in St. James’s Square. Nor yet was it for the very wealthy. In fact, it was difficult to work out who, exactly, was meant to use it: it was too far from the West End to be convenient for the people who congregated there, and not really properly sited for those who worked in the City. And most visitors to the British Museum were not the sort who could afford its lavish prices.

That was a problem for the management, not for me. When I arrived there I simply spent my time staring at the multicoloured marble columns, the carved ceilings, the glittering chandeliers. It must, I thought, be the sort of surroundings aristocrats were used to all the time. I confess I felt rather grand; I was beginning to get a taste for this sort of living, and after only a week or so. It was slightly worrying.

“Dreadful place,” Lady Ravenscliff remarked as she sat down opposite me, once she had announced herself and I had stood up to greet her. She was smiling, indeed she seemed energised by the outing. Her eyes were bright and larger than I had noticed before; she looked extraordinarily beautiful, as though she had made a special effort to intimidate the opposition. The idea of complimenting her never occurred to me.

“Don’t you like it?”

“I find it somewhat ostentatious. It is designed to impress the impressionable. I suppose it does that very well.”

She noticed the way I had blushed. “I’m sorry,” she said. “You will find I am prone at times to be opinionated and insensitive. Please never take anything I say on such matters to be of any value at all. I was brought up with older, shabbier buildings which did not force you to admire them all the time.”

“I suppose you might say I was as well,” I replied. “A little ostentation I find enjoyable.”

She smiled. “So it is. I stand corrected. Let us bathe in this exuberant vulgarity while we wait. Could you inform Signora Vincotti of our presence?”

I did so, while she sat immobile, a dreamy smile coming over her face. I did not know her very well, but I guessed she was calming herself before what could well be an unpleasant interview.

And, ten minutes later, Esther Vincotti descended. Let me be direct and say there was no competition possible between the two women. One alert, intelligent, beautiful, elegant; the other stout, almost square in shape, with a ruddy though amiable complexion over which she clearly took no pains at all. Never had I seen any woman less likely to be connected in some way to a vastly wealthy man. She was aged around fifty and while her clothes were not poor, she manifestly had little notion of how to dress for effect. Her hair was grey and no attempt had been made to make it look at all stylish or well groomed. Her face seemed good natured, although it bore an expression which made it clear that, if Lady Ravenscliff was anxious at the coming interview, she was thoroughly frightened.

She sat down nervously once the introductions had been made—with me acting as the go-between, as neither of the two women seemed willing to start the proceedings off and Lady Ravenscliff had (she told me) prohibited Mr. Henderson the solicitor from coming anywhere near the hotel until she had finished. Neither, however, had a look of hostility about them. Lady Ravenscliff had hardly moved a muscle, but I guessed was utterly perplexed by the idea that her husband might have dallied with such an utterly ordinary, maternal figure as this. As a result, she was hiding behind a mask of aristocratic grandeur which was both intimidating and (to me) exceptionally alluring.

“It is very good of you to come here, Your Ladyship. I am most honoured to meet you,” Signora Vincotti said after a while. “And I must thank you for arranging for me to stay in this splendid hotel. It is quite beyond what I am used to.”

“I do not think it is particularly good of me,” she replied. “And I am afraid I must wait before I know whether I am equally honoured by meeting you. How well did you know my husband?”

Nothing like getting down to business fast, I thought. I had anticipated an interminable round of politenesses before the real subject was broached.

“I do not know him at all,” replied the other woman. She spoke with something of an Italian accent, but her English was much too good for her to have been anything other than English in origin. “I am completely at a loss as to why I am here. All I know is that I received a telegram from a London solicitor telling me I had to come to London, that it was a matter of the utmost urgency. Then they sent me a railway ticket. First class. I am totally mystified and very worried. I am sure I have done nothing wrong.”

This was not the reply either of us had been expecting; Lady Ravenscliff registered something like incredulity, although she managed to keep her expression under control.

“You didn’t know my husband?”

“I met him when I was a child, I believe, though I do not remember it.”

“Where, exactly?”

“In Venice, which is where my father lived. And where he died.”

“And this was Signor Vincotti?”

“No. That is my married name, although I am a widow now. Luigi died several years ago, leaving me with four children. But my father provided for me, and I have had a good life. His name was Macintyre. He was a travelling engineer. He died in an accident when I was eight, and I was brought up by a family there.”

“You are even more well-provided for now, it seems,” said Lady Ravenscliff. “My husband has died, as you may know, and you are a beneficiary of his will.”

Signora Vincotti looked thoroughly surprised by this. “That was very kind of him,” she said. “Can you tell me why?”

I noticed she did not ask how much. I quite liked her for that.

“We were rather hoping that you might tell us.”

“I’m afraid I have no idea. None.”

“And you really never met him after your father died?”

“Never. Until that telegram arrived I had quite forgotten him. It was a great effort to recall him at all.”

“You speak very good English for someone brought up in a foreign country,” I commented.

“I was brought up by an English family. Mr. Longman was the British Consul in Venice and lived there for many years, but died when I was twenty. As I had no connections to England at all apart from him and his wife, I stayed and eventually married. My husband was a civil engineer. With his salary, and my inheritance, we lived very well. Two of my daughters are married already. And of my two sons, one will be a lawyer, while the other intends to follow his father into engineering.”

“I congratulate you,” said Lady Ravenscliff. Was there something in the account of steady, modest, family life, of seeing children growing, and growing well, that she envied? Did it make her sad that she could never boast about her own children to others—oh, he’s doing so well, we’re so proud of him…? Was she sad she could never look into the face of a child and see an echo of her husband reflected back at her?

“Do you not wish to know how much the bequest is?” I put in, as we seemed to be straying far from the point.

“I suppose I should; but I cannot see how it can be a great deal of money.”

“It depends on what you consider a great deal. It is
£50,000
.”

A total silence greeted this piece of information. Signora Vincotti grew deathly pale, almost as though she had just been told some devastating news. “There must be some mistake,” she said eventually in a voice which was so quiet and so trembling it was difficult to make out.

“It seems not. I hope you will excuse our curiosity, but we are naturally interested in the reason for it. Lord Ravenscliff was an immensely wealthy man, but even by his standards this is a large sum.”

I was aware I was talking like a member of the Ravenscliff entourage, like some retainer. It made me uncomfortable in some ways, but I also noted a certain smugness in my mind as I spoke.

“I cannot help you at all, I really cannot,” she said, looking as though she might burst into tears at any moment.

“Was your father a rich man? Might they have been in business together?”

“I doubt it. I was always told he was very poor; quite unworldly. But not so unworldly that he did not provide for me.”

“And this inheritance. It was an annuity? It comes from an insurance company? A Venetian one? Italian?”

“No, no. An English bank.”

“Please do not take offence, but could you tell me how much this is for? It would help to gauge what sort of relationship your father might have had with Lord Ravenscliff.”

You see—I was also beginning to think like a man of money. Never before in my life would I have considered that income flow might help determine a man’s relationships, but it was now beginning to come naturally, now I realised that, for some, it was the only thing which mattered.

“I receive a cheque four times a year from Barings Bank in London for £62.”

I calculated quickly, using my newfound financial sophistication. £62 a quarter was about £250 a year, which meant a capital sum of something around £6,000. Hardly in Ravenscliff ’s league. His bequest meant that her income had just multiplied by eight. A fortune by English standards, and I guessed a vast fortune by Venetian.

“Signora Vincotti,” said Lady Ravenscliff. “I would like to ask you an even more direct question. Please do not take offence, but it is essential that I know the answer.” She said it in a way which suggested she did not care one way or the other if the other woman did take offence. What was wrong with her? She really didn’t have to try quite so hard to be rude.

Vincotti looked at her enquiringly.

“My husband travelled frequently to Venice. Sometimes I accompanied him, most times not. I have never really cared for Venice.” She paused for a moment. “Let me put it bluntly. Was my husband the father of any of your children?”

Signora Vincotti stared in shock at the question, and I felt sure she was going to become angry, as she had every right to be. For a moment this was very nearly the case, but she was very much more intelligent than her thick-set, homely features suggested. She reached out and took Lady Ravenscliff ’s hand.

“Oh, I see,” she said gently. “I see.”

Lady Ravenscliff snatched her hand away.

“Don’t be annoyed with me, I mean no insult,” the Italian woman said softly. “No. There is no possibility, no possibility at all, that your husband was the father of any of my children. None. If you saw them, and saw pictures of my husband as well, you would not have to take my word for it.”

“In that case, we need trespass on your time no longer,” Lady Ravenscliff said, standing up immediately. “I am sure my lawyers will be in contact with you in due course. My thanks for your assistance.”

And with that she walked swiftly across the hotel lobby, leaving me—feeling thoroughly embarrassed by her appalling behaviour—to make amends as best as I could by saying goodbye in a more friendly fashion, and mutter about shock and grief. None of which was true.

Then I too hurried into the noise of Russell Square and found Lady Ravenscliff waiting for me, her face dark with anger.

“Appalling woman,” she said. “How dare she patronise me? If her father was as vulgar as she… certainly there must be a physical resemblance. She looks like a bulldog in frills.”

“She conducted herself with a good deal more dignity than you did, even though she must have found the encounter very trying…”

“And it wasn’t for me?” She turned around and confronted me for my mollifying remarks. “You think everything was calm and easy for me? That discovering your dead husband has a child, having to deal with people like that—”

“I didn’t mean—”

“You are not in my employ to see both sides of the argument, Braddock.”

“Mr. Braddock. And in fact I am in your employ to do precisely that. You want me to discover the truth. Not to be partisan.”

“It’s my money, and you are being paid. You will do as you are told.”

“I will do a good and proper job, or I will not do it at all. Please decide what you want of me.”

Dangerous, that. The desire, which comes upon me on occasion, to strike an attitude put me in a risky position. Of course I wanted to do a decent job; but I also wanted the money, although, after my editor’s sombre remarks, I would have been quite happy to have the project brought to an end. The perfect reply (in my opinion) would have been had she told me that she wanted to pay me a huge amount of money to go away. Unfortunately, my upright, manly remarks had the opposite effect. She crumpled in front of me and began sobbing quietly, so through pure instinct I responded in a supportive and consolatory fashion, which of course made things even worse. I handed her a handkerchief, which, fortunately, was clean. Then I completely wrecked things by taking her hand and holding it firmly. She did not snatch it away.

“Let us go into the square and find a seat,” I suggested. “It is a little public here on the pavement.”

I led her into the middle of Russell Square and the little stall near the centre that served office workers. There I bought two cups of tea and presented her with one. I thought it was probably one of the most exotic things she had done for years, she who never did anything in public, nor anything without servants. She looked a little doubtfully at the old cracked cup.

“Don’t worry,” I assured her. “It’s quite safe.”

She sipped in silence, initially more to please me, but then with greater enthusiasm.

“I apologise for my rudeness,” she said after a while. “And of course I behaved horribly to that poor woman. I will write and apologise. Please do not think badly of me. I am finding all of this so hard.”

I nodded in acknowledgement. “I understand. I really do. But while we are both amiably disposed to one another, might I renew my request that you begin to tell me the truth?”