The Deadly Embrace (23 page)

Manigault looked pained about something.

“I have a confession of my own to make, Sam,” he said. “Baird told me about that note. He said it proved you were responsible for your wife’s death. He said you drove her to take her own life and Kilgore called you on it, which was why you were drunk when they picked you up.”

“Barbara didn’t blame me for what she decided to do that night,” said Taggart. “What she was trying to say was that it was my fault Johnny died.”

“But it wasn’t,” said Manigault. “Young men die in combat. He was old enough to make the choice for himself.”

“Thanks for saying that, General,” said Taggart. “But that’s not the reason I told you all this.”

Manigault waited for him to continue.

“When Kilgore and Baird set me up, they didn’t know one thing after they sprung the trap. I don’t drink, General. I haven’t had a drop of alcohol since Barbara died. The only reason I’m over here, General, is to make sure that her death and Johnny’s have at least some meaning in this goddamn war. They had to pour the booze into me … and that was after they sapped me twice back here,” he said, pointing at his head.

Manigault reached over and felt the two contusions behind Taggart’s left ear. He sank back in his chair, shaking his head.

“I’d like to tell you what I’ve learned,” said Taggart.

The general nodded, no longer bothering to check his watch, as Taggart outlined the things he had learned so far, including the revelations in J.P.’s diary.

“Jesus Christ,” Manigault said. “I can’t take on Kilgore right now. He’s wired all the way to the top.”

“I’m just asking you to let me stay here, General,” he said. “The murderer, whoever he is, is still in a position to compromise Overlord.”

“I can’t let you take over the investigation again,” said Manigault. “They’d put my tits in the ringer for that.”

“And you have such beautiful tits,” said Taggart.

Manigault gave him a sour grin.

“Put me on your personal security detail, then,” said Taggart. “I don’t care what the job is. Maybe something will turn up that will allow me to find out what we need to know.”

Manigault stared glumly into the fire.

“All right” he said finally. “I’ll tell Baird you’re off the investigation—that should cool him off for now. He knows that I’m loyal to my people. Besides, he and Kilgore would have to go directly to Ike to overrule me. They won’t want to open the can of worms involving Lieutenant Barnes.”

Manigault stood up and headed back to his desk.

“That prima donna Montgomery is setting up an Overlord planning conference in a few weeks, for all the senior commanders, at his old boyhood school…. I think it’s called Saint Paul’s,” he said. “As of now, you’re part of the security team for the conference—you’ll be working directly under me.”

CHAPTER 20

T
he German bombers still came almost every night, wreaking havoc in neighborhoods all over London. The first official day of spring arrived with a blustery snowstorm that temporarily coated the war scars of the bomb-ravaged city with a soft mantle of white.

Walking to work at five each morning, Liza could hear the great roar of the American Flying Fortresses massing in the sky over southern England as they took the war back to Germany in daylight, devastating their industrial centers with the same ferocity the Luftwaffe was visiting on London at night.

Her new life had settled into a dull, repetitive routine. At first, it had seemed truly miraculous that Sam Taggart was able to save himself from being sentenced to a military prison. And he had somehow managed to keep her from being shipped home as well.

But reality set in within twenty-four hours of his release. For one thing, she learned that she no longer reported to Sam. And she was no longer a member of the criminal-investigations unit of Military Security Command. Even though she remained at the building on Saint James Square, her new duties consisted of arranging the rotating duty schedules for the lowest-level security staff at the new SHAEF offices in Bushy Park.

General Eisenhower had moved most of the Overlord planning staff there after one of the buildings across Saint James Square had taken a direct hit. The new headquarters was outside central London and less vulnerable to the German bombers. It was also closer to General Eisenhower’s personal quarters in Telegraph Cottage, which he often shared with his driver, Kay Summersby.

Taggart had called Liza after his release to tell her they could no longer directly communicate with one another. Kilgore’s people were looking for any opportunity to get rid of him once and for all, and would almost certainly be watching both of them. He promised to get in touch with her again if he heard of any important break in the two murder investigations.

Taggart had not exaggerated. When she left Saint James Square at the end of each day, someone invariably followed her home. As the weeks passed, Liza came to recognize several of the young men in the surveillance detail. Occasionally, she would smile at them when they met accidentally in a crowded shop or riding home on a bus.

She still worked in the same office with Charlie Wainwright, but rarely saw him anymore. He spent most of his working hours in the code-breaking lair. When he did come back to their office, it was to relax with the
Times
or to nap in his chair. Gray lines of fatigue soon etched his big, homely face. The one time they went out to lunch together, he fell asleep in the middle of the meal.

Two Wren privates were assigned the desks that had once been occupied by Joss and J.P. Both had attended vocational school and were assigned to the secretarial pool. When they weren’t typing routine orders and paperwork, the two of them chattered endlessly about the American boys they met, giggling together at the slightest opportunity.

Liza continued to read and censor personal mail, but it was now limited to the correspondence of junior officers, none of whom had security clearance for Overlord. Nevertheless, she could discern from the tone of the letters that the invasion date was rapidly approaching. No one in southern England needed a letter to know that. Every road and train station was clogged with the men and equipment being moved to the staging areas south of London.

The murders of Joss and J.P. remained unsolved. In early April, Inspector Drummond had telephoned her to ask if she had retained a copy of J.P.’s autopsy report. He was still in charge of both investigations at Scotland Yard, but was no longer receiving cooperation from the Joint Security Command. After she informed him that all her records and files had been confiscated, he confided his doubt to her that either case would ever be resolved.

In late April, Liza’s hotel in Pimlico was badly damaged by a fire, and she was forced to move to a billet for female officers in North London. By then, she was certain that no one was bothering to follow her any longer.

To escape her boredom, she went out on dates several times with Dr. Cabot, the red-haired plastic surgeon. One night he took her to the Palace Theatre to see a revue hosted by Bob Hope and several other American entertainers. General Eisenhower was the guest of honor. Gazing up at the honorees, she saw General Kilgore sitting in one of the royal boxes with a young blonde woman. From a distance, she looked like a pudgy Shirley Temple.

Liza had retained only one small connection to the murder investigations, and she was careful not to share it with anyone at SHAEF The link involved the two pieces of evidence that had not been confiscated with the rest of her case files after Sam’s arrest. These were the two index cards on which she had written the lines that had been inscribed in blood on the stationery found in Joss’s apartment. Both cards had been in her purse.

Whenever she met someone outside SHAEF who seemed to possess a knowledge of English history or literature, she would ask the person to look at the two cards. So far, her queries had proved fruitless.

On a weekend trip to Oxford in late April, she visited several of the college libraries, asking each research librarian whether he recognized the passages. One librarian thought there might be something vaguely Shakespearean about them, and spent an hour with her thumbing through a Shakespeare concordance before declaring himself stumped.

One morning, she was having a cup of tea at her desk when an elderly gentleman wearing a formal black morning coat and a starched white neck-cloth appeared in the open doorway. The sight of him immediately generated a fit of giggling from the two young Wren secretaries.

“Lieutenant Elizabeth Marantz?” he asked solemnly.

“I am she,” said Liza.

“I was instructed to deliver this to you,” he said, placing a large buff envelope on her desk.

He was carrying at least a half-dozen more envelopes in his left hand. Her immediate reaction was to wonder how he had gotten past the security detail. Before she could ask him where he had come from, he was gone.

The envelope stock was actually heavy. Engraved in gold on the wax-sealed flap was the figure of a roaring lion, standing on its hind legs. The lion was holding a sword in one paw and a mace in the other.

She slit the envelope with a letter opener and removed the card from inside it. A matching gold lion was embossed on the front of the card. It contained an engraved invitation to visit Rawcliff Castle. Turning it over, she found a personal note written in royal-blue ink.

“Liza … Please forgive me for not getting in touch sooner, but I was in hospital for some touch-up work at the Beauty Shop. Would you consider joining us at Rawcliff for the weekend? There will be other guests. You won’t be lonely. With fond regards, Nick.”

“Other guests,” said Charlie with a laugh when he returned to the office and she had time to ask him about it. “Several hundred, more than likely,” he went on. “It’s a big show, Liza—the biggest and most luxurious house party of the year, for the elite of the realm. Always takes place in mid-May The Ainsleys have been famous for these affairs for two hundred years.”

“Does Nicholas host them?”

“Someday he will,” said Charlie. “But for now it’s still Lady Ainsley Nicky’s mother. She was a famous beauty in her day”

“And Nicholas’s father?”

“He is … dead,” said Charlie.

Liza thought he was about to add something, but he didn’t.

“Are you going?” she asked.

“Probably won’t be able to break away, but I would love to go down with you. I have a standing invitation,” he said, clearly proud of the privilege.

“Well, I’ll go if you go,” she said.

“Have you been out of this godforsaken city since you arrived?” asked Charlie.

“I went to Oxford once,” she said with a smile.

“That’s it?”

She nodded.

“Isn’t it about time, then? Might do you some good, considering everything that...”

He stopped in mid-sentence.

“Only if you go,” she repeated.

“Look … I’ll go if I can. Believe me, Liza, I want to,” he said, gazing at her longingly. She immediately felt guilty, knowing he still had a crush on her. It wasn’t fair to hold out any hopes there.

“I’ll give it some thought, too,” she said.

Lying in bed later that night, she decided to go. For one thing, there was nothing important to keep her in London any longer. It would finally serve to break the dull routine. And Nicholas would be there.

CHAPTER 21

S
am Taggart stood in front of the walk-in closet wearing only his white boxer shorts. He had just drawn the blackout curtains before turning on the lights in the bedroom.

“Do you mind if I try on one of these suits?” he asked.

“Go ahead,” said Helen Bellayne with a smile. She was lying naked on the bed gazing up contentedly at him. “Roddy was about your height. You’re a little fuller in the chest … and at least one other area.”

Taggart removed a double-breasted charcoal suit jacket from the closet pole and tried it on.

“Not bad,” she said. “Now come over here and let me take it off you.”

“I want to go out tonight,” said Taggart.

“Anywhere special, darling?”

“The Ritz Bar,” he said.

“Exclusive, aren’t we?” said Helen Bellayne, sitting up in bed and stretching like a contented cat.

“Can you get us a table?” he asked, pulling out a white shirt from one of the built-in drawers next to the closet racks.

“Certainly,” she said.

The tables at the Ritz Bar were no larger than a serving tray but they were almost impossible to come by unless one knew the management or wanted to pay the headwaiter. Taggart detested bars like this, places that pandered to Americans who needed to be able to go home and say “Yeah. I hung out at the bar Hemingway and Fitzgerald used to drink at in London.”

When they sat down, he discovered that there was almost no place to put his legs. At the long polished mahogany bar, they were standing three deep, cheek by jowl, officers in dress uniform intermingled with women in cocktail dresses. He recognized the English movie star Madeleine Carroll, talking to a young marine lieutenant.

“You prefer this to my bedroom?” asked Helen Bellayne.

“No. I hate it,” said Taggart.

“Then why are we here?” she demanded. “And why are you suddenly dressing like a Fleet Street banker?”

“I knew someone was going to be here tonight,” said Taggart, glancing over at a group of American officers who were sitting a few tables away. “I’ve been following him off and on for two weeks. Tonight I wanted to look like a civilian.”

“Are you going to tell me why?” asked Helen Bellayne.

“It’s personal,” said Taggart.

“I can see why the generals and admirals all love you, Major Taggart,” she said, leaning close and taking his gnarled hand in hers. “You’re such a sociable man.”

The American officers had been rewarded with a table near one of the windows looking out on Piccadilly. There were three of them, two colonels flanking a brigadier general. The general was already drunk, and brazenly eyeing a young woman in a beige dress who was sitting at the adjacent table. Taggart was close enough to hear the Americans’ loud conversation. The two colonels were talking about the fighting prowess of women.