The Deadly Embrace (28 page)

Lieutenant General Toohey Spaatz, commanding all the U.S. bombing forces in Europe, was sitting in the front tier of platforms. As Taggart watched, he removed a foil-wrapped cigar from his breast pocket, carefully unwrapped it, snipped the end with a cigar cutter, and planted it in his mouth. Lighting the end of it with a kitchen match, he began puffing away contentedly as Montgomery glared at him from the stage like a headmaster dealing with an unruly boy.

“Jesus, we’ll be lucky to win this war,” whispered Manigault to the grinning Patton.

Taggart again scanned all the entrances to the assembly hall. Each was guarded by four MPs armed with Thompson submachine guns. A battalion of Royal marines was responsible for protecting the perimeter of the school grounds.

Taking a long pointer from one of his aides, Montgomery walked down to the mammoth three-dimensional model of the Normandy landing beaches. The floor behind him was painted blue to signify the English Channel. Arranged across it were hundreds of little toy ships representing the invasion fleet. Montgomery began tapping the tip of his pointer on one of the yellow landing beaches, which had been coated with real sand.

“Some of us here know the opposing commander, Field Marshal Wommel, very well,” he began with a condescending glance at General Patton. “His intention will be to deny us any penetwation.”

At that moment, a young WAC with a Signal Corps badge on her shoulder came up to Taggart and handed him a message. It was marked URGENT, and read, “Request response immediately at following telephone exchange. Drummond.”

Taggart left the assembly hall and walked back to the headmaster’s office. After securing a telephone, he dialed the number of the exchange. Inspector Drummond picked it up on the fourth ring.

“You called me,” said Taggart.

“I know we aren’t supposed to be in communication with one another, but there has been another murder. I thought you would want to know about it.”

“Was she young and beautiful?” asked Taggart.

“He was old and fat and a forty-five-year-old car mechanic.”

“How was he killed?”

“He was strangled with piano wire.”

“Did he work for Overlord?”

“No.”

“Why should I be interested, Inspector?” asked Taggart.

“Have you ever heard the word ULTRA used in conjunction with our secret code-breaking apparatus at Bletchley Park?”

Taggart took a deep breath.

“I’m at Saint Paul’s School, in West Kensington,” said Taggart. “How far are you from me?”

“Not far … near Bletchley Park. I can give you directions.”

Taggart wrote them down on a piece of Saint Paul’s School stationery.

“I’m leaving now,” he said.

When he went back into the hall to tell General Manigault that he was leaving, Field Marshal Montgomery was still at the front of the lecture hall, using his pointer to describe the anticipated British advance from Juno Beach. Taggart repeated what Drummond had said about the ULTRA connection.

“Did the murdered guy know anything about Overlord?” demanded Manigault.

“I don’t know,” said Taggart. “It could be just a random murder. But Bletchley Park is where they collect all the ULTRA intercepts.”

“Take my car again,” ordered the general as if bestowing a papal dispensation. “Find out.”

The address Drummond had given him turned out to be an automobile repair garage on a dingy commercial street full of boarded-up buildings. It had obviously been closed for some time. The windows were shuttered, and two old Esso gas pumps lay in the side yard, blanketed with leaves and dirt.

Taggart told the driver to stop at the head of the weed-strewn driveway. He got out of the Humber and started walking toward the side door of the garage. Inspector Drummond came out as he approached. The two men shook hands.

“I thought you would want to see this, Sam,” he said.

Before Taggart could reply, Drummond sneezed several times in quick succession and dragged a large soiled handkerchief out of the pocket of his topcoat. After blowing his nose, he briefly checked its contents.

“I’m fighting a bad cold,” he said.

It was obvious to Taggart that the old man’s drinking problem had gotten worse since the last time he had seen him. His angrily swollen nose resembled an overripe strawberry, and Taggart could smell the alcohol oozing out of his skin. Both of his lower eyelids hung loose, exposing the red linings and giving him the appearance of an old bloodhound.

“Sorry to hear it,” said Sam.

“The dead man’s name was Griffin,” said Drummond, opening his notebook. “Archibald Griffin. Before the war, he owned and operated this garage. According to his wife, he hasn’t been back to this place in at least a year. We’re not sure at this point how or why he ended up here.”

“What did he have to do with code-breaking at Bletchley Park?” asked Taggart.

“Officially, I’m not supposed to know that,” said Drummond. “The Official Secrets Act, you know. I’m not supposed to know that Bletchley even exists.”

“Yeah, well, you mentioned a certain word over the telephone,” said Taggart.

“Unofficially, I know all about it,” said Drummond. “At any rate, Griffin wasn’t a code-breaker. According to his wife, he was a master automobile mechanic before the war and a technical wizard when it came to gadgetry—the kind of uneducated fellow who could repair anything.”

Taggart saw that the latch on the side door of the garage had been jimmied with a pry bar. Two uniformed police officers were waiting inside for them. One of them was very young, his complexion almost lime-green.

“Please leave us alone for a few minutes, lads,” said Drummond.

The younger officer seemed relieved as he went out the door.

“How long did the man work at Bletchley?” asked Taggart, smelling the familiar odor of death.

“Griffin started there about two years ago. They were in the process of constructing all the new hush-hush Enigma machinery, and it apparently needed constant servicing. You would know more about it than I do. Anyway, Griffin was one of the men who helped work out the kinks.”

The garage had gray-painted brick walls and a cement floor. An old hydraulic lift that had once been used to elevate the chassis of motorcars sat in the middle of the space. The roof had obviously leaked for some time, and there was standing water in several places. The strong odor of mildew almost masked the smell of the corpse.

A tool bench ran along the far wall, next to a bank of metal shelves. In the corner sat a battered wooden desk and an old oak armchair. The dead man was strapped to the chair.

“He was found by an estate agent who came to look at the place as a possible sublet,” said Drummond. “Griffin’s wife had already reported him missing when he didn’t come home from work.”

Taggart approached the body.

“Jesus Christ,” he said softly.

The man was naked. His clothes were lying on the floor behind the desk. Piano wire had been used to bind his wrists and ankles to the chair. Someone had brutally extracted four of the fingernails on his left hand. A pair of pliers sat on the cement floor next to the chair leg. At some point, the man had lost control of his bodily functions. Taggart couldn’t blame him.

“Someone enjoyed doing this,” said Taggart.

“How do you know?” asked Drummond.

“Because he took his time,” said Taggart. “This took a good deal of time.”

The man’s head had been wrapped in several layers of three-inch-wide adhesive tape. It covered him like a hornet’s nest. The killer had left only two small openings in the mask, one at his left ear and another at the mouth. Another length of piano wire had been twisted around his neck, and finally tightened until the wire disappeared inside the skin.

“Obviously, the killer wanted information,” said Taggart. “A man is far more likely to talk if he is stripped naked first. It’s a standard Gestapo interrogation technique. We should probably assume this had something to do with the code work at Bletchley.”

“Do you think he got what he was looking for?”

“Hard to say,” said Taggart, leaning close to examine the man’s mutilated fingernails. “The killer would have finished him either way.”

“There are bruises on the knuckles of both hands,” said Drummond.

“Yeah,” agreed Taggart. “Mr. Griffin might have marked up our killer a bit before he lost the fight.”

“What now?” asked Drummond.

“Nothing that you wouldn’t otherwise do—immediate autopsy, pursue every lead you can,” said Taggart. “Find out who his friends were … whether he owed anyone money. It’s always possible the murder had nothing to do with ULTRA.”

“I’ll put a team on it right away,” said Drummond, “and I’ll call you if I find out anything important.”

“Thanks,” said Taggart.

“Archibald Griffin must have been a very brave man,” said Drummond as they both stared down at the bloated corpse. “I would have talked after the first fingernail.”

“Maybe,” replied Taggart. “Of course, Griffin might have talked right away, too, and the rest of it was for kicks.”

“My God,” said Drummond.

Taggart was walking back to his car along the driveway when his eyes were drawn to a small, brightly colored object lying on the ground. He knelt and carefully pulled back the weeds that almost covered it.

It was a tiny shard of camel-colored paper. Two more pieces were lying a few inches away. Using his pen, he flipped them over. The third one had the fragment of a gold-embossed figure on it. Picking up the pieces with his handkerchief, he turned to Drummond, who had a small evidence envelope open and ready.

“Who knows … these might have fallen out of the killer’s car,” said Taggart.

“Considering all the rain we’ve had, they can’t have been here long,” said Drummond.

“You might want to examine whatever is embossed on that one scrap,” said Taggart as he climbed back into Manigault’s Humber.

CHAPTER 26

L
iza awoke to the constant repetitive song of a cuckoo clock. A few moments later, it struck her that the song was coming from so many cuckoos that the timepiece had to be madly out of control. She sat up.

In the warm glow of the sunlight streaming through the open casement windows, she could see a myriad of tiny dust motes swirling across the room. Sunlight. There was actual sunlight in England again, she realized, almost leaping out of bed in her excited rush to the window.

She gazed down at a small section of the formal gardens. The flowers seemed to be erupting toward her in an incredible explosion of color: pink crocuses, snowdrops, daffodils, and red azaleas, stretching all the way down to the carefully trimmed lawns.

Hearing the familiar bird cry once more, she was enthralled to discover that real cuckoos were singing from perches in the garden. She looked toward the distant sea, now an indelible blue in the glare of the unfamiliar sun.

It’s heavenly, she decided.

There was utter silence in her wing of the castle as she walked down the hallway to bathe. Upon returning to her room, she found a small pot of aromatic tea waiting for her under a padded cozy. After finishing it by the window, she dressed hurriedly in the white blouse and twill slacks she had brought and headed downstairs.

A butler was waiting at the foot of the staircase.

“Breakfast is being served in the morning room, madam,” he said. “Please come this way.”

She could hear a radio crackling in the library as she went by, and stopped to listen for a moment as the BBC announcer described the damage from the previous night’s Luftwaffe raid on London. It was hard for her to believe that the ravaged city was only about seventy miles away. At that moment, it seemed as if she was on an entirely different planet.

The morning room faced the terrace where she and Nick had been together the night before. All the French doors now stood open to take in the fresh spring air. A group of young men and women in riding clothes were serving themselves breakfast at the two sideboards along the far wall.

“Do you hunt the little red creatures?” asked a young man in a crimson riding jacket who materialized at her side.

“No, I’m afraid I don’t,” she said.

“Pity, it’s the best hunt of the season,” he said, heading back to his table with a cheese omelet.

On the sideboards she found silver urns full of coffee and tea water, pitchers of fresh juices, and a line of chafing dishes and porringers with eggs, shad, bacon, ham, pancakes, kidneys, breakfast rolls, scones, toast, and hot cereals. On a table nearby were jams, preserves, butter, and bowls of fresh fruit.

Liza discovered that she was very hungry.

After filling her plate, she adjourned to a table near one of the open French doors. It was a good place to watch the comings and goings of the guests, most of whom appeared to be preparing for the fox hunt. Several others were dressed for golfing. Everyone was clearly thrilled at the turn in the weather.

As she was finishing her breakfast, Liza happened to glance up at the white plaster ceiling towering far above her. Her eyes were immediately drawn to two garish sets of black footprints running from one end of it to the other. She was still pondering how they had come to be there when Nicholas came in from the terrace. He headed straight for her table.

“I was hoping to find you here,” he said.

Before he could say any more, she pointed to the ceiling. He began to chuckle.

“One of the annual contests calls for the building of fifteen-foot-high stacks of tables and chairs. The contestants must blacken their feet in the fireplace and then compete to see who can cross the room first while lying upside down on top of the moving piles.”

Liza stared at him incredulously.

“How about that tour I promised you?” he asked with a cheerful grin.

“I take it you’re not going after the elusive fox this morning,” she said. He was dressed in baggy green corduroys, a checked flannel shirt, and navy cashmere sweater.

“I have a confession to make,” he said, sitting down next to her, his face becoming solemn. “Everyone in this corner of the realm knows how to hunt and shoot except me. I’m also afraid of horses.”

She laughed.

“How can you take such pleasure in another person’s inadequacies?” he asked with a hurt look on his face.

She laughed harder.

“What an insensitive creature you are,” he said loudly.

This time, her laughter attracted the attention of several other diners, including Nicholas’s mother, who was breakfasting with Lord Ismay. Lady Ainsley frowned in their direction. Liza immediately stopped laughing.

“Let’s go explore,” he said, taking her hand and standing up.

As they began walking toward the door, Liza heard Lady Ainsley call out, “Nicholas.”

His mother was standing at her table, waiting for him to come back. She was dressed in the same black tweeds as the previous afternoon.

“Yes, mother?” replied Nicholas without moving toward her.

“Where are you going?” she demanded in a peremptory tone.

“I’m going to show Lieutenant Marantz a bit of the estate.”

“But you have obligations to your other guests, dear,” she said in a suddenly conciliatory tone.

“Yes,” he replied, turning to leave. “I’m well aware of that.”

“Nicholas,” she cried out again.

He was grinning broadly as he led Liza out the door leading to the great hall.

“I’m sorry,” said Liza. “If you need to go back, don’t worry about me.”

“I’m not going back,” he replied evenly as they approached the foot of the staircase. “Please forget it. Do you need a coat?”

“My uniform jacket is upstairs,” she said.

“Won’t do,” said Nicholas. “We’re forgetting about the war today. Let me find you a windbreaker.”

As she waited, Liza slowly strolled along the hallway. Glancing into the library, she noticed Charlie Wainwright working at one of the desks.

“You’re up early,” she called out cheerfully. “I’m glad to see you survived the jousting contest.”

“No need to scream at me,” he said with a grimace, his face a sickly yellow.

He picked up a glass of what looked like puréed tomato juice from the desk and forced down an inch of it.

“What’s that?” she asked.

“Hair of the dog, my girl … It’s the only way I’m going to be able to plow through all this.”

An open notebook lay on the desktop in front of him. Scattered around his chair were various official-looking documents. One of them was a military cable written in German. It was stamped TOP SECRET in red block letters.

“Are you sure you should have brought this material with you, Charlie? It’s obviously classified.”

“Dear girl, I have to do a complete analysis of this traffic by tomorrow evening. I had to bring it along or I could not have come with you.”

“Then you should not have come,” she said, harshly.

He took another swallow of the red mixture and rolled his eyes.

“And who, pray tell, is going to steal it—Lord Ismay?”

“There are three hundred other people here, too.”

“Fine,” he said, grabbing up the loose papers and stuffing them in his briefcase.

“When are we heading back?” she asked.

“I’m staying until tomorrow afternoon,” he said. “There is a train at three-thirty from Sussex Downs.”

“I’ll go with you,” she said.

Nodding, he said, “Now, go off and enjoy yourself. Leave me to my misery.”

When she returned to the front hall, Nicholas was waiting for her with a black leather flying jacket. He helped her put it on.

“What would you like to see first?” he asked. “Perhaps the battlements from which my ancestors poured burning oil down on the Saracen invaders?”

“All of it,” she said with a bright smile.

“That could take a lifetime,” he said.

Once outside, they walked across a brick courtyard and down a dark moss-covered passageway, emerging into the sunlight again near another phalanx of gray stone structures that were dominated by a tall rectangular tower. Even to Liza’s untrained eye, the buildings were from a much more ancient epoch. The tower was surrounded by a shallow moat, and could only be entered by a planked drawbridge.

Approaching the drawbridge, they passed through another section of the formal gardens. Two old men were working in the beds, painstakingly snipping dead flowers from the individual stalks. She tried to imagine how long it would take them to snip their way through the countless stems, and quickly gave up.

Crossing the drawbridge, Nicholas pointed up at the tall rectangular structure and said, “Now, my dear Lieutenant Marantz, that tower you are gazing up at with such wonder is the most striking legacy of Norman castle building in the realm.”

His voice had taken on the supercilious tone of a crusty English historian.

“William the Conqueror ordered the construction of this tower in 1070. Its fortifications are twelve feet thick and mortar-faced, rising from a splayed plinth, each one strengthened by flat buttresses in the center. You will certainly recognize the many similarities in masonry to Hadrian’s Wall. As you probably also know, the corner buttresses set the denticular path of the battlements leading up to the turrets. Of course there are no windows, only arrow slits for the castle’s defenders.”

He slipped back into his own voice, said, “Am I hired?”

“Yes … yes, you are,” said Liza. “You are quite incredible, Nicholas Ainsley.”

“What a relief,” he said. “I have a future, then, after the war.”

As they continued the tour, the only sounds to be heard were chirping birds and the loudly buzzing bees hovering over the flower beds. He led her back across the drawbridge and across another open quadrangle, lined with sycamore trees. From beyond the high stone walls that girded the back of the castle, she suddenly heard the baying of dogs and the distant rumble of hoofbeats.

“Rather a fierce display of blood lust, I’ve always thought,” said Nicholas.

“Does the fox ever have a chance?” she asked.

“About the same odds I used to have in my Spitfire,” he said.

After going through another covered passageway, they came out on a rise of ground that led down to the bluffs overlooking the sea.

“Is that a golf course?” she asked, looking at a distant flag that was rooted to the ground.

“Yes; only three holes, though,” he replied, almost apologetically.

“How sad,” she said, grinning.

Beyond the last golf hole was a wide, flat pasture. A rustic stone barn stood at the far end of it. Liza could see parallel ruts bisecting the pasture, as if a horse cart had traversed the same path over and over.

“What made those peculiar tracks?” she asked.

“A Sopwith Camel,” he said.

“A what?” she said.

“An old Great War biplane,” said Nicholas. “My father bought it after the war. When I was thirteen, he taught me to fly it. I used to practice takeoffs and landings on that field.”

“You must miss him very much,” she said, remembering that Helen had told her Nicholas’s father committed suicide.

“I don’t, actually,” he said, starting to move off again. Then he turned to her with an awkward smile and said, “Would you like to see my favorite place? It’s where I loved to play as a boy.”

“Of course,” she said as he took her hand again.

With only a pronounced limp to remind her of his lost leg, they struck out across the open field, crossing another pasture, this one divided by low fences of piled stone. Heading back toward the sea, they went down a sloping meadow to a dense copse of woods that was thick with old maples and elms. She followed Nicholas along a narrow path that led into a dark forest lane. A hundred yards into the woods, she saw an opening in the trees up ahead.

Liza smelled them before she ever saw them. The sweet, intoxicating perfume hung in the air all around her. As they emerged from the woods, the entire tableau ahead was bathed in an aura of red, pink, and white blossoms from hundreds of wild roses that lined the crooked path to a small stone cottage overlooking the sea.

“For some reason, they’ve come early this year,” said Nicholas happily as they walked the fragrant gauntlet.

The sun was behind them as they came to the end of the path, and it lit up his corn-colored hair like a blazing aureole. Beyond the cliffs edge, the dark-blue water stretched to the horizon.

The cottage had been built on a promontory that faced up and down the coast for several miles in both directions. Its front door was unlocked. After Nicholas swung it open, he bowed with mock formality and waved her inside.

The ground floor consisted of only one room, its big multipaned windows covering the wall that faced the sea. A stone fireplace took up the rear. Shelves filled with books and sporting equipment occupied the others. Heavy beams crisscrossed the low ceiling.

A musty smell pervaded the room.

“This place needs a good airing out,” said Nicholas, opening several of the windows facing the water. “I haven’t used it for a long time.”

“It’s quite fabulous,” said Liza, gazing out across the cliff face to the sea beyond. “I feel like we’re standing on the bow of a magnificent ship.”

As Nicholas began rummaging through a rosewood bureau, Liza explored the rest of the cottage.

“I used to keep a good pair of binoculars in here,” he said, slamming home one drawer after another.

In the rear corner of the room, a narrow set of wooden stairs led up to a small sleeping loft. A big, comfortable double bed sat under several more windows. Coming back downstairs, she was drawn to a large oil painting that hung over the fireplace.

“Who are they?” she asked, gazing up at it. In the painting, a remarkably handsome young man sat on a red divan, holding the hand of an equally beautiful young woman.

“That is the immortal Lord Byron, Liza,” he said, limping over to join her. “He was my favorite Romantic poet. The woman in the painting was his mistress, Lady Caroline Lamb—a frequent guest when he lived at the estate. I gather they often met here for a secret rendezvous.”