The Deadly Embrace (12 page)

“I understand,” she said, the secret unspoken between them.

Liza went back to Joss’s service folder.

She had joined the Wrens in June of 1940, shortly after France had surrendered to the Germans, and just before the Battle of Britain. After four months of training, she had been assigned to British Coastal Command in Scapa Flow, where she worked in the convoy-routing office for the Murmansk runs. In 1943, she was assigned to Admiral Jellico, and spent more than a year on his staff as he helped plan Operation Torch, the Allied invasion of North Africa. When the admiral was given his new post in Overlord, she had returned with him to London.

It was almost four that afternoon when Charlie trudged listlessly into the office. His eyes were red and puffy. After removing his greatcoat, he slumped down in his desk chair and stared at Joss’s desk. As she watched, his eyes overflowed, the tears streaming down his cheeks and dripping onto the desk. He didn’t physically react when Liza walked over and placed a reassuring hand on his shoulder.

“It’s the young men who are supposed to die in war,” he said, looking up at her. “Not Joss.”

“I need to talk to you about our investigation into her death, Charlie,” Liza said, gently.

“I’ll help in any way I can,” he said, slowly regaining control.

“Did you keep anything sensitive in your desk, Charlie?” she asked.

“Sensitive?”

“Matters of military intelligence … things like that,” she said.

“No. I never bring my work back here.”

“Was anything missing when you returned yesterday afternoon?”

He thought about her question for several moments.

“I know it probably sounds crazy,” he said, “but the only thing missing was the copy of
Mein Kampf
that I kept in the side drawer.”

“Is there any reason why someone might have taken it?”

He shook his head no.

“Did you ever make notes in it?”

Charlie shook his head again.

“How well did you know Joss?” she asked next.

“I’m not sure … now,” he said.

“Did you ever see her outside the office?” she asked.

“Recently, you mean?”

When she nodded, he shook his head no again. His swollen eyes sparked another female intuition.

“You knew her before the war, didn’t you, Charlie?” she said.

He slowly nodded his head.

“Her parents and mine were close friends…. I mean when the Dunbars lived in London—before the Viscount died and her mother moved back to Devonshire.”

“Were you two close?” she asked gently.

His eyes drifted over to the photograph of King George VI on the wall opposite his desk, and then came back to hers.

“I was in love with her,” he said. “I didn’t think I would ever get over it.”

Liza still had her hand on his shoulder.

“Did she have the same feelings for you?” she asked.

“No … but she was very kind about it. I made an ass out of myself, I guess. She just finally sat me down and said, ‘Charles… I don’t love you in that way.’”

“It’s pretty remarkable that the two of you ended up working in the same office,” said Liza.

“No, it isn’t,” said Charlie. “I asked if I could work out of here when I wasn’t needed in the lair.”

“The lair?”

“Oh … sorry… that’s hush-hush.”

“I understand.”

He happened to look up at the wall clock and immediately stood up.

“Could we possibly continue this at the Savoy?” he said. “I’m meeting my friend Nicholas there. You’re welcome to join us for dinner.”

Liza was surprised to see that it was already six o’clock. While they had been talking, a courier had delivered the notepaper that Sam had discovered in Joss’s apartment, which he had asked her to look at as soon as possible. At the same time, he had suggested keeping a closer eye on Charlie. The gnawing grumble in her stomach was a reminder that she hadn’t eaten anything besides a breakfast scone since the dinner in Sam’s apartment.

“All right, Charlie,” she said, finally, “but only for an hour or so. I have a lot more work to do.”

He stood up and began looking around for his greatcoat.

“It’s over here,” she said with a smile, carrying it to him from the chair where he had dumped it. Before she left, Liza took the envelope containing the handwritten note Sam had found down to the security detail at the end of the corridor, and asked them to put it in the document safe along with Joss’s service folder.

It was snowing when they came out onto the street and headed down Pall Mall toward Trafalgar Square. As they walked along the slushy sidewalk, Charlie kept trying to flag down a taxi. As usual, it was impossible to find an empty one in inclement weather.

At the Savoy, they were forced to wait outside the entrance as a wedding party of Grenadier Guardsmen emerged through the doors, the bride dressed in a canary-yellow taffeta gown. After throwing a bouquet back to her female consorts, she followed her new husband into a shiny black Rolls-Royce, and the crowd on the sidewalk erupted in loud applause. Liza and Charlie stood behind them in melancholy silence.

“Buck up there, you two,” came a voice through the throng of well-wishers. Liza glanced up to see Charlie’s friend Nicholas Ainsley limping toward them.

Covered with a thin coating of snow, he was wearing his RAF uniform under an unbuttoned navy topcoat and white silk scarf. Together, they pushed through into the lobby. Inside, Nicholas took off his flying cap and shook the snow off it, his corn-colored hair gleaming in the light of the wall sconce above his head. An orchestra was playing in the ballroom as he led them upstairs to the piano bar.

The room was small and intimate, with a wood fire roaring in one corner, and candle lamps on all the polished ebony tables. A grand piano sat in the center of the room. The walls were covered with cleverly drawn caricatures of famous people who had frequented the bar before the war. As in so many other public places in London, its once-exquisite trappings had clearly suffered from four unrelenting years of war and bombing raids.

The use of candles could not hide the fact that the plaster ceiling had fallen in several places and the remainder of it was being held in place with lengths of unpainted planking. The cream-colored walls displayed countless spider marks from past bomb concussions, and three of the big plate-glass windows overlooking the street were cracked and patched with tape.

Two elderly waiters were standing forlornly at the bar. The bartender behind them looked like a seventy-year-old Mr. Pickwick, with a fringe of silver hair around his shiny bald head. All of them visibly perked up as Liza and the others entered the empty room.

“Welcome, milord,” called out the bartender, greeting Nicholas with a friendly wave.

“Good to be back, Jameson,” said Nicholas.

One of the waiters escorted them to a table near the fireplace.

“So what shall it be?” said Nicholas to Charlie. “You look all in.”

“I don’t know…. I’m feeling a bit ragged,” he said.

“Gimlets, I think,” said Nicholas. “We need a tropical remedy to battle this blasted weather.”

“May I have some water?” asked Liza.

“Certainly,” said the waiter.

Returning immediately with a carafe and a glass on a silver tray, he set her glass down and poured it full. Even in the paucity of the candlelight, Liza could see that it was badly discolored.

“Some fresh water, I think, Barrett,” said Nicholas, eyeing it with distaste.

“Yes, sir; sorry, sir,” said the waiter, picking up the glass with a look of horror. Bowing to Liza, he said, sadly, “It’s the war, you see.”

“So—what is a gimlet?” she asked, watching the snowflakes melting against the plate-glass windows.

“She’s led a sheltered life,” said Nicholas. “The gimlet is the great unheralded secret of the British Empire, my dear girl. It is made with Rose’s Lime Juice, the elixir that has sustained our colonials in every distant and deadly corner of the globe—brewed in wooden vats from an ancient mixture of spices and juices from our conquered lands.”

Across the bar, Liza could see the aged bartender tossing a mixture of liquid and ice in a large silver cocktail shaker. As the snow continued its assault outside, it felt good to be there by the fire. Barrett brought the shaker over to their table and poured out three equal measures in stemmed champagne glasses.

Liza took her first sip.

“This is wonderful,” she said.

“Now you know why we’re called Limeys,” said Nicholas.

When he smiled at her, it transformed his terribly scarred face. For a moment, he looked young again, and Liza was surprised to find herself thinking that he was the most beautiful man she had ever seen.

At Barnard, she had been taught by one of her professors that character was often molded into a person’s features. Over time, she had learned that there was truth in his words.

With Nicholas, she was struck successively by the lingering pain in his war-crippled face, the irrepressible humor in his large blue eyes, the determination in his purposeful jaw, and the assurance in his full lips and mouth. What came as a surprise was that, for the first time in her life, Liza knew she wasn’t making these instinctive character judgments dispassionately.

Charlie finished his gimlet in two long swallows, and slowly put his glass down on the table. Within moments, the waiter reappeared with another frosted shaker to refill it.

“May I top you off, milord?” he asked.

“Of course,” said Nicholas. “We are here to celebrate the living.”

With a tortured grimace at the reference to the living, Charlie quaffed the second one as if it were only fruit juice. Not having had time even to move, the waiter refilled his glass again. Although she found the drink delicious, Liza had watched the bartender making the second round, and knew that each drink contained at least two fingers of gin.

“Any chance for some music, Barrett?” asked Nicholas of the waiter.

“Yes, milord,” he said. “Mrs. Soames will be playing in a few minutes.”

Nicholas nodded, and then turned to Liza. “What kind of name is ‘Marantz’?”

“German,” she said.

“Really… I’m part German, too.”

“On his mother’s side… the Windsor side,” added Charlie.

“The House of Windsor?” asked Liza.

“Afraid so,” he said, almost apologetically. “Of course, that name only came into being in 1917. My great-uncle, George the Fifth, changed it to ‘Windsor’ by royal decree. Our name used to be Saxe-Coburg-Gothe—that is, until another great-uncle, Kaiser Wilhelm, started the last war. That was when our German moniker became very unfashionable.”

“Do you speak it?” asked Liza, finishing her gimlet.

“German? Not a word… No—two, actually—Marlene Dietrich. You?”

“A little,” she said with a laugh. “Yiddish, in fact. The two are very similar in certain ways.”

A thought suddenly struck her as she felt the gimlet going straight to her head on an empty stomach.

“Have you ever visited the Royal Natatorium?” she asked before she could stop herself.

Smiling, he reached into the side pocket of his tunic and pulled out a small leather key ring. Separating out a polished silver key, he held it up and said, “In the mood for a swim?”

Liza felt the hair lift up on the back of her neck as she shook her head no.

“Another drink?” he asked, solicitously.

“I really need to eat something or I’ll soon be lying under the table.”

“Jameson,” Nicholas called out to the bartender, “may we have our supper served up here?”

“Of course, milord,” he said, dispatching the waiter to bring up menus from the dining room.

Charlie turned to Liza, his eyes already unfocused.

“You know that Nicky here is the holder of the Military Cross for shooting down seven Hun bastards,” he said.

“Judas Priest, Charlie,” said Nicholas, visibly embarrassed.

“Well, Nicky,” said Charlie, ignoring him, “I just wanted you to know that Liza has had her share of heroics, too.”

“What are you talking about?” asked Liza.

“Now, don’t ask me how I know it, but this young lady sitting beside you went through a ship torpedoing in the freezing wastes of the North Atlantic,” said Charlie. “Her transport was sunk halfway across the pond from Halifax, and she survived for three days on a piece of floating wreckage.”

“How did … how could you possibly know about that?” began Liza, but he was already moving on to her brief ordeal on the raft before she and the other survivor were picked up by the
Empress of Scotland.

In her muddled state, she couldn’t imagine how he had possibly learned of the story. She had talked about the sinking only once, and that was to an American naval officer right after her arrival in Southampton. How could Charlie have gotten hold of it? And why? Nicholas was looking at her with renewed curiosity and seeming admiration. Acutely embarrassed, she attempted to divert the subject.

“What was it like?” she asked him, taking a sip of her new gimlet.

“What was what like?” he replied.

“Fighting in the air… during the Battle of Britain,” she said.

“I bodged it,” said Nicholas with a shy grin.

“Bodged it?” she asked.

“Lost control for a few moments at the end. No second chances up there.”

“How did it happen?”

“You really want to know?” he said, as if it were the most boring and commonplace thing he had ever done.

“Yes,” she said, truthfully.

“One must be very quick about it all, you see,” he said, his eyes coming alive. “When it starts, there is no time for contemplation of your next decision. It must be instinctive and it must be right. The Germans usually came at us out of the sun, you see.”

As he continued to talk in vivid word pictures, she could see a blue sky full of fighter planes darting high and low with their guns spitting flame. Unconsciously, he raised his badly burned hands from the table and clasped them together, to sweep upward in concerted motion, simulating the flight of his Spitfire.

“The good ones feel the flow instinctively,” he said. “The rest of us, well...”

His words became more deliberate.