The English Assassin (17 page)

Draped in a light pink silk Chanel pyjama suit, Una leaned against a grand piano and confronted her leading man, Douglas Crawford, as he said:

“I never guessed you kept a diary, darling.”

Una held the book insouciantly in one long hand and said lightly: “Oh, darling, it’s hardly a
real
diary.”

The line had become a catchphrase everywhere now. Comedians imitated it on the wireless. It might have been written especially for her rich ‘R’s.

“But it
is
secret, I suppose,” Douglas continued. “Is it awfully secret?”

“It is rather.”

“I thought we weren’t to have secrets, you and I. I thought we had agreed it wouldn’t be that kind of marriage.” He was offended.

She was eager to reassure him. “Darling, it
isn’t
—it’s just that—”

Icily remote, he said: “Yes?”

“Oh, darling, don’t be a
bear
!” She turned away from him, looking down at the keys of the piano.

“A prig, you mean, don’t you?” He folded his arms and stalked to the cocktail cabinet at the far end of the stage. “Well, what if I am a prig? What if I love you so horribly I can’t stand to think of you keeping secrets from me? You know, people who keep diaries are usually afraid of something. Isn’t that what they say? What are
you
frightened of, Susan? What have you written about that man you saw last night—you know—that man? What’s his name?” He pretended he didn’t care, but it was obvious to the audience that he was barely in control of his passions.

Una replied in a high, offended tone, speaking rapidly: “You know perfectly
well
what his name is. It’s Vivian Gantry.” She paused, becoming reminiscent. “We were lovers—years ago…”

“And you still love him? Is that what you’re frightened to tell me? Is that what you’ve written in your damned diary?” Douglas wheeled round, his face tortured with emotion.

Una dropped the diary and swept towards him. “Oh, you fool, you fool, you sweet, precious fool! How could I love anybody but
you
?”

“Tell me.”

She stopped suddenly, lowering her head. Then she turned to point at the fallen diary. “Very well, read it if you like.”

He hesitated. He started to mix himself a drink at the cabinet. “What does it say?”

“That I love you in so many ways I can’t even say it to your face.”

“Oh?” It was possible to see now that he wanted to believe her but was still cautious.

Her voice was almost a whisper and yet it reached the back of the theatre. “Yes, Charles. I suppose I’m too much in love with you, really…”

He put the drink down and seized her shoulders. Her face remained averted. “Swear it?” he said, almost savagely. “Do you swear it, Sue?”

She recovered her composure and stared him directly in the eyes. Mockingly, spreading her fingers over her heart, she said lightly, but with something of an edge to her voice. “Very well, if you think it necessary. There! I swear it.” Her tone softened. She took his hand. “Now stop all this—this
silly
jealousy.”

By now he was completely miserable for having doubted her. “Oh, darling, I’m sorry.” He folded her in his arms. Softly the orchestra started the introduction to the most popular song of the show. “I
am
a bear! An utterly boorish bear! And a prig! How could I possibly, possibly doubt you. Forgive me?”

Her voice was warm and soft when she breathed:

“Forgive you.”

“Oh, darling!”

He began to sing:

“You know I’d be blue, dear
,

With someone new, dear.

I’ll never weary—of you.

Heartbreak and sorrow
,

Will never spoil tomorrow
,

And I’ll never be blue, dear, again…”

As the curtain fell on the act, Sebastian Auchinek, his eyes full of tears, clapped and clapped until a hand fell on his shoulder and he looked into the grave, polite faces of two plain-clothes policemen. “Sorry to interrupt your evening out, sir. But we wonder if you wouldn’t mind coming with us to answer one or two questions.”

It was like a bad detective story compared with the fantasy he had just been watching. He said almost pathetically and with an attempt at levity:

“Can’t I answer them here?”

“I’m afraid not, sir. We’ve a warrant, you see.”

“What are you arresting me for?”

“Wouldn’t it be less embarrassing if we answered that when we’re in the street, sir?”

“I suppose so. Can I get my coat?”

“That’s waiting for you in the lobby, sir.” The policeman scratched his little moustache. “We took the liberty.”

Sebastian Auchinek looked around at the other people in the stalls, but they were all involved in getting to the bar, studying their programmes or chatting amongst themselves.

“I see,” he said. “Well…” He got up, shrugging. “I am Miss Persson’s manager, you know. The papers will know you’ve arrested me.”

“Not an arrest, as such, sir. A request for help. That’s all.”

“Then surely I can see the play through?”

“It’s urgent, sir.”

Auchinek sighed. He darted one last look at the curtain, drew one last breath of the atmosphere, and then left by a side exit.

The great grey flying boat manoeuvred on her two outer forward-facing propellers, slewing round in the shallows until she faced the main expanse of the blue lake. Save for the ripples which spread from the flying boat’s massive angular floats, the lake was flat, shining and still. In the early-morning air the growling Curtiss Conqueror engines drowned every other sound. The boat was a Dornier DoX with twelve 600hp liquid-cooled back-to-back engines mounted on her 160ft wing.

There was space on the ship for a hundred and fifty, but, with the exception of Captain Nye who was piloting the plane, there were only four people aboard.

Even the snow-capped grandeur of the Swiss Alps failed to dwarf the monoplane as she coursed over tranquil Lake Geneva, all twelve props twirling when Captain Nye flicked the toggle-switches which brought them to life.

“We’re flying light. We’ll make time, everything else being equal.” He chatted casually to Frank Cornelius who lounged seedily in the roomy co-pilot’s chair and stared through the glass at the glare from the rising sun, a ball of pulsing brass whose rays pierced the morning mist.

The boat surged across the deserted lake and headed towards the ruins of the city on the far shore. Captain Nye waited until the very last minute before taking her up, flying playfully low over the collection of shanties near the lakeside. A few children scattered in fright; then the Dornier was climbing steeply, banking into the sun, going East.

“She’s an ugly bitch, but she’s fast.” Captain Nye levelled out. They were doing at least 130 mph. “Go and check if the ladies are all right, would you, old man?” They were now well clear of all but the highest mountains.

Frank unstrapped himself and slid the cabin door open. He crossed Joubert and Petit’s 60ft Art Deco ballroom and descended the angular staircase to the first-class deck where Miss Brunner and his sister Catherine were already seated on high bar-stools having Pimms Number Ones prepared for them by Professor Hira. The physicist was to be their guide on this expedition.

“Everything okay?” said Frank. “Isn’t it smooth?”

“Beautiful,” said Miss Brunner, dabbing at her Eton crop and winking. Catherine looked away. Through the observation ports she could see the clean, shimmering peaks. “It’s a lovely day,” she said.

“We’ll make Rowe Island by Monday easily,” said Frank. “Six thousand miles, just like that. It’s incredible!”

“Aren’t you flinging yourself rather too hard into the part, Frankie, dear?” Miss Brunner fingered her lip-rouge.

“Dear Miss B. You’ve no enthusiasm left at all. I think I’ll stroll back to the pilot’s cabin.” Frank blew a kiss to his sister and another to Professor Hira. Pointedly he ignored Miss Brunner. They were always quarrelling; even the Indian physicist paid no attention, placing the tall slab-side Vuitton glasses with a click on the zigzag black-and-white inlay of the Kroll bar. He didn’t drink himself, but he was a wizard at mixing things up.

“It’ll be nice to visit the island again,” said Catherine. “So warm. People go there for their health, I hear.”

“Just as we are, dear, really.” Miss Brunner adjusted her white cardigan over the blue-and-black silk day dress, offering Catherine a Gold Flake from her thin silver cigarette case. Catherine accepted. Professor Hira leaned over the bar and lit the cigarettes with the big table lighter which had been built to resemble a heavy Egyptian sarcophagus, but which was really made of aluminium and, like so much of the flying boat’s equipment, a spin-off from the airship industry. Miss Brunner found airships not sufficiently chic for her taste; indeed, even Catherine thought them a trifle gross. Still, they did enable ordinary members of the public to travel from country to country for comparatively little money, if that was a good idea. She was disturbed, however, by the prediction that they would one day take the place of the flying boat. Progress was progress, but she was sure that people of taste would always prefer the elegance of an aircraft like the Dornier, with her lovely Joubert and Petit and Josef Hoffman interiors. Catherine leaned her elbow on the bar, her hand curving back at the wrist, the jade cigarette holder gripped loosely between her forefinger and middle finger perfectly matching the plain jade bangle on her slim arm. She wore the minimum of make-up, the minimum of clothing on her torso. Miss Brunner gave her an admiring once-over. “Frank is vulgar, but you, dear, are more than perfect.”

Catherine smiled a private smile, her foot tapping to the rhythm of the Ipana Troubadours record Professor Hira had just placed on the Victorphone. The muffled sound of the Curtiss Conquerors seemed to be beating to the same time. “I’ll get by—as long as I have you,” sang Catherine with the record.

“But Frank, I think, is more in tune, eh?” said Professor Hira, breaking both their moods.

Miss Brunner was frosty. “Should that be a compliment, I wonder?” She slid from her stool. “I’m going to the powder room. I feel a mess.”

Catherine watched her go through the door marked
Damen
. Sometimes Miss Brunner could be a real stickler for form.

Left alone with Catherine, Professor Hira was ill at ease. He cleared his throat, he beamed, he played with the cocktail shakers, he looked vaguely up at the roof. Once, when they struck some mild disturbance, he made a move to help her steady herself, then became embarrassed, changing his mind halfway through the motion.

Catherine decided to check the cargo. With a pleasant nod to the professor, she gathered up her Worth skirts and walked aft. The companionway led down to the second-class lower deck, which Hoffman had redesigned as a galley and dining cabin. She went through the galley and into the cool forward cargo hold. Aside from their yellow-and-black pigskin luggage, there was only one piece of cargo, a cream-coloured box about five feet long, three feet wide and three feet deep. The lid of the box was padlocked. Catherine took a key from the side pocket of the little gold Delaunay bag and inserted it into the lock, turning it twice. Then she opened the lid. Inside was the shiny white skeleton of a child, aged between ten and twelve. The skull was damaged. In the bone of the forehead, just above and between the eye-sockets, was a large, regularly shaped hole.

As a mother might move a sleeping child before drawing the covers over it for the night, Catherine rearranged the skeleton on its red and white leather cushions. She leaned with a fond smile into the box, kissing the skull just above its injury; then tenderly she closed the lid and padlocked it up, murmuring: “Don’t worry.”

She sighed, pressing her palms together in front of her lips. “The Indian Ocean is the friendliest in the world, Professor Hira says. And Rowe Island is the friendliest island in the Indian Ocean. We’ll all be able to rest there.” She staggered as the plane hit more turbulence, banking steeply. She managed to grasp the yellow-and-green silk safety rope secured to the bulkhead. The Dornier righted herself almost immediately. Catherine checked that the box hadn’t shifted in its moorings and then carefully she began to make her way back to the bar.

“It’s the ’ottest summer in years,” Mrs Cornelius was saying as she waded back to the shore, her jazzy print dress hitched above her red, dumpy knees. She was sweating like a sow, but she was happy, out of breath, having a high old time at Brighton. She’d been to the races, been on the seafront miniature railway, had two sticks of rock, some winkles, five pints of Guinness, a bit of skate and chips and a singsong in the pub just before she’d been sick. Being sick had cleared her system and now she felt like a million dollars. It did you good. Colonel Pyat, in perfect civilian summer dress, a white linen suit, a panama hat, two-tone shoes and a malacca cane over his arm, stood on the pebbles holding Tiddles, Mrs Cornelius’s small black-and-white cat, which, of late, she had taken to carrying everywhere she went, even to the shops, the pictures or, like today, on their honeymoon day excursion to the seaside.

“Wot abart th’ pier?” Mrs Cornelius panted. She cocked her thumb over her damp shoulder at the East Pier, an affair of rusty scaffolding holding a dance hall, a theatre, a penny arcade and a funfair. From where she stood on the bank she could hear the dodgems clattering and crashing. Every so often, there came a high-pitched giggle, an excited yell.

Colonel Pyat shrugged his acquiescence. It was his duty. He would do it.

“’Ere, give us th’ cat. Looks daft, a man carrying a cat. They’ll reckon yore a fairy or somefink if you ain’t careful!” She laughed raucously, nudging him playfully in the ribs. “Not that there aren’t a few o’
them
darn ’ere. Brighton! I should think so!” She cast an eye over the jolly crowd which covered the beach, as if vetting them for signs of sexual deviation. Deckchairs, newspapers, raincoats, fairisle pullovers, jackets, towels, were scattered everywhere and on them lay or squatted mums and dads and adolescent boys and girls, the sun shining on their Brylcreemed crops and their permanent waves. The younger kids wandered around eating ice-cream bricks from the Wall’s Stop-me-and-buy-one man who pedalled his refrigerated bin up and down the front. Other children, clutching their scratched metal buckets and chipped wooden spades, sought wistfully for some sand. The noise of a barrel organ came closer. Far away, on the promenade overlooking the beach, open-top double-decker buses sailed slowly along, crammed with men in white Oxford bags and open-neck shirts, or girls in snazzy summer frocks, their hair tightly curled or waved, their lips blossoming with scarlet and cerise. The smell of brine, of grease, of chips and jellied eels drifted languidly on the still air.