Touchstone (43 page)

There was really nothing to say.

Chapter Fifty-Six

S
TUYVESANT SPENT
T
HURSDAY HARING
to and fro across the face of London behind the wheel of Bunsen’s car, desperately racking his brain to recall the maps of this, one of the world’s least gridlike cities. Main streets possessed half a dozen names within a mile, roads that shrank and expanded with no rhyme nor reason either trailed into nothing, or gathered themselves and flew off rapidly for the hinter-lands.

After a while he discovered the knack of following taxis—when they dove off the straightaway, more often than not they were following convoluted short-cuts to the next artery. Twice the technique got him caught in the backwaters, when the taxi disgorged a passenger and turned around again, but on the whole, it saved him time.

While Bunsen was in meetings, Stuyvesant would study the maps and scribble down the route to their next stop.

He also phoned Carstairs’ office, to be told that the man was unavailable. Six times. And blowing up at the secretary didn’t get him anywhere.

The afternoon was enlivened by a nicely aimed chunk of wood bouncing off the side window six inches from Bunsen’s head. Stuyvesant allowed himself to react strongly, with a squeal of brakes and a cacophony of horns that traced his fast dodge to the side of the road and his even faster abandoning of the car. The man who’d thrown the missile went suddenly wide-eyed, not expecting pursuit from a large, apparently angry American, and whirled on his heels to sprint away. Stuyvesant gained until the man went around a corner, then he slowed and allowed Carstairs’ man to get away.

When he got back to the car, which had become the center of a clot of traffic and an angry constable, he apologized to his passenger for losing the man. Bunsen did, he was pleased to see, look just a bit shaken.

Lunch was three boiled eggs from a pub. Tea was carried out to him where he sat in the car, by a secretary, at Bunsen’s request. (Damn it, Stuyvesant thought, the man can’t go all thoughtful on me now. But he thanked the secretary, and drank his tea.)

Dinner was on a park bench with Sarah, out of a picnic hamper, while Bunsen and Laura Hurleigh ate five courses at a very posh-looking club with various Union heads. It had been decided that the two Union representatives for the Hurleigh week-end would be Herbert Smith, president of the Miners’ Union, and Matthew Ruddle, Labour M.P. and Bunsen mentor. Bunsen would be one of Ruddle’s three permitted assistants. The choice of mine owners was down to three, with the final decision due later that night.

Stuyvesant didn’t know about it, of course, since it was all highly secret. Except that Sarah told him when she brought him dinner.

“You mustn’t say anything to anyone,” she told him for the third time. “If the newspapers got wind of it, Richard would never speak to me again.”

The temptation of that alone was great, but he promised.

“However, it seems to me,” she went on, “that if he’s trusting you to guard his life, he can surely trust you to keep mum over a secret meeting.”

“Will you be going?”

“Oh no. Tell you the truth, I’m looking forward to catching up on my work while Richard is occupied up at Hurleigh.”

“And maybe if he doesn’t need me there, I can take you to dinner Friday.”

She pinked nicely, and said primly that she’d have to see what her calendar permitted. Stuyvesant came very near to kissing her.

Later, when she was long gone, when even Laura had left in a taxi an hour before, Bunsen came out from the club and found Stuyvesant reading a novel by the light of the back seat reading lamp.

“Have to make sure it doesn’t drain the battery,” he grumbled.

“Yes, sir,” Stuyvesant said, putting a salute in his voice.

“Sorry,” Bunsen said. “Sorry. It’s just that I simply can’t afford to get stuck somewhere, and it’s happened to me before, that the battery ran down.”

“I’ve been keeping an eye on the charge, and it’s only been on half an hour. Where to now?”

“Home, I think,” he said. The son of a bitch still looked fresh as a daisy—he seemed to thrive on a day like this. “Tomorrow I’ll need you to drive me to Hurleigh. Come at about ten. I’ll ring your hotel if there’s a change of timing.”

“Is this just a day trip?”

“I’ll be staying at Hurleigh until Sunday, but I shan’t be needing you. You’re welcome to come back to Town, or stay in Oxford if you’d rather.”

“Okay. If you don’t need me first thing, I’ll change the oil. Looks to me like it’s been a while. And the spare tire has a slow leak, I’ll have that looked at, too.”

“Good idea.”

Harris Stuyvesant, full-service garage-hand to a terrorist, he thought darkly.

He was glad to confirm that neither woman would be going to Hurleigh with Bunsen, not when twenty ounces of high explosive were floating around out there, somewhere. Bad enough to think they might be stashed behind him on the drive up. “Fine,” he said. “I’ll be there at ten.”

But at five minutes past three on Friday morning, the telephone beside his bed went off, shooting him from sound sleep to pure panic in a second flat. He snatched up the instrument. “What!”

“I’m terribly sorry, sir,” said a voice. “This is the night manager, and you have a telephone call from a lady who was most insistent. She said to tell you her name is Sarah.”

The name did nothing to calm his heart rate. “Put her through.”

“Harris?”

“Sarah. What’s wrong?”

“We’re fine, we’re all fine. But there’s been a little change of plans.”

Stuyvesant didn’t care at all for that word
little,
and he was right.

Shortly after midnight, Matthew Ruddle, M.P., had been seized by a terrible spasm of illness. When he recovered enough to phone to his assistant’s room and ask the man to bring him some bicarbonate of soda, he got no answer. It turned out the assistant was ill also. And Ruddle’s secretary, who was slated to be the second of his permitted three at Hurleigh. Also spending the night huddled around porcelain were half the members of the Union dinner.

Not Bunsen. Not Laura Hurleigh. Herbert Smith and two of his three designated assistants seemed to be unscathed, as of twenty minutes earlier.

The hotel doctor urged that the men be transferred to the hospital; Ruddle was holding out, declaring that he would be fine on the morrow.

“But Mr. Smith, the head of the Union delegation for the weekend, said that we can’t very well ask that it be delayed a week, and in case they haven’t recovered by tomorrow, we’d better be prepared to field a full team, as it were. Richard will take Mr. Ruddle’s place, and take along the one man of Mr. Ruddle’s who seems to be all right—he’s a vegetarian, which may have something to do with it. The other two places will be filled by Laura and”—Stuyvesant’s beleaguered heart clenched at the thought of Sarah going, but she finished the sentence—“oh, Harris, would you at all consider being the third? I know you’re an outsider to all this, but Richard’s permitted to choose anyone, and Laura has got it in her head that those men were all poisoned, and she says she wants someone there who can do something more than take shorthand.”

“She thinks Richard needs a bodyguard?”

“I don’t know what she thinks, she’s not entirely rational and it’s the middle of the night, and—”

“Whoa, honey, that’s fine, I’m happy to do it.”

“Really?”

“Well, I’ll be sorry to miss dinner with you tomorrow night—or tonight, I guess—but save me a slot next week, okay?”

“I could take the train up and see you at Hurleigh.”

“No! I mean, I’ll have to keep my mind on the job, won’t I? I’m sure to see you next week.”

“Okay. Well, I’ll tell Laura it’s set, then. You go back to sleep now.”

“I’ll try. Tell them I’ll be at Bunsen’s flat at ten in the morning, unless I hear otherwise.”

“Thank you, Harris. I…Thank you.”

Stuyvesant hung up, staring at the telephone, shaking his head at the deviousness—and ruthless efficiency—of Aldous Carstairs. How the hell had the son of a bitch managed it?

He could only hope it was nothing worse than food poisoning: Surely Carstairs would keep in mind Grey’s injunction against injuring the innocents? Although Stuyvesant wouldn’t have put it past Carstairs to burn down a couple of houses with the inhabitants inside, if it did the job.

Next morning, Stuyvesant got to Bunsen’s flat half an hour early. When he rang the bell, it was Sarah who came out.

“Oh, good,” she said. “You’re here early. I somehow thought you might be, I told Richard as much, but he left about six ’phone messages for you.”

“I left the hotel hours ago. What’s up?”

“It’s just that we need to dismantle his office from the back of the motor.”

“That’s why I’m here early. Where does he want me to put the things?”

She gazed at him with frank adoration. “Harris, when you compare how much of a tussle this would have been with his old driver, all I can say is, bless you.”

Don’t get used to it, Stuyvesant thought: I’m not Bunsen’s new driver. But he said nothing, just drove around the back of the building so she could show him where to stow the fittings. And it was still before ten when they returned to the flat’s entrance.

He helped carry and stow Bunsen’s cases, then Bunsen remembered a book he’d meant to bring and went back inside. Sarah waited with Stuyvesant at the car, standing there in her spring dress looking delicious.

“You haven’t heard from Bennett, have you?” she asked.

“No. Why?”

“I just thought he might drop a line to say he’d got back safely.”

“Even if he mailed it when he first reached Penzance, it wouldn’t be here yet.”

“That’s true.”

There was a pause.

“You should have nice weather,” she said. “For the drive.”

“Better than Sunday night, anyway,” he agreed.

“I hope next weekend is as nice,” she went on. “I was just thinking, if they manage to settle this strike business at Hurleigh, wouldn’t it be lovely to be able to show you London in April, without having to think about politics?”

“I’d like that a lot,” he said.

“Harris, I—oh, rats,” she said, and rose up on her toes to kiss him.

It started with lips, and progressed to a faint brush of teeth before it ended, far too soon, but it took his breath away. He looked down at her and grinned at the flush that rose through the freckles. He leaned down to give her a quick, soft kiss in return, little more than a promise. “A
whole
lot,” he said.

The small frown of uncertainty vanished, and she laughed, that irresistible sound.

Then the door opened and Bunsen came out. Stuyvesant held the door for his temporary boss, winked at Sarah, and drove off to get Laura.

The trip to Hurleigh took little more than two hours, through a sparkling spring day. Every mile along the way Harris Stuyvesant spent veering wildly between the champagne-bubble happiness of that kiss (she was a whole lot more experienced than she gave across, he’d bet on that) and the ice-in-the-gut memory of Helen’s yellow curls matted with blood.

If it’s Bunsen, he knows what he’s doing, the thing won’t go off while we’re driving across the countryside.

But if it’s Bunsen, it’s got to be in the car, how else would he move the stuff to Hurleigh?

This isn’t liquid nitro we’re talking about here, it’s as stable as can be.

And once we get there, what then?

Then we worry about it. But while Laura’s sitting in the back, this car is about the safest place in England.

Thank God Sarah’s staying in London, I don’t think I could be so free and easy with her here.

For any number of reasons! Yes siree, that girl knows how to wake a man right up.

She’s not a toy. You can’t play with her like you could Louise or Phoebe or, well, any woman other than Helen.

Yeah, that’s going to be a problem. Then again maybe I’ll be lucky and get blown up myself, not have to worry about things.

Let’s see if we can arrange to be standing next to Aldous Carstairs when that happens, eh?

Maybe Bunsen, as well.

If Bunsen’s responsible.

If it’s Bunsen—

And so on, across the green and open countryside. Between the threat and the promise, the hairs on the back of his neck stood up the whole way.

They drove through Hurleigh village, along the valley road and across the ford, and Stuyvesant had made the sharp left turn leading back to the house itself when he was forced to brake by the sight of a young tree lying across the road. It was accompanied by a fit, sharp-eyed man in his sixties who looked like no tenant farmer Stuyvesant had ever seen, and who indeed, moved forward to the car like a gate guard.

Laura put her head out of her window. “Hallo, Mr. Mackey, I didn’t know you’d be dragged in. How’ve you been?”

Mackey touched his hat and brought his heels together. “Good day, Lady Laura, nice to see you. I’m fine, and the wife sends her greetings. Always happy to lend a hand.” And so saying, he trotted over and moved the tree from the drive. Stuyvesant put the car back into gear; Laura waved as they went past.

“One of my father’s men,” she explained.

“Looked a match for any London newsman,” Stuyvesant commented.

Today, the servants who waited at the head of the drive would not be mistaken for family members: Gallagher looked like a butler from the movies, black and white, stiff-lipped, and efficient.

Their bags vanished in seconds, Bunsen’s and Laura’s at any rate, carried in the direction of the house.

Gallagher looked at Stuyvesant, and hesitated infinitesimally at the conundrum of a driver who, the previous week, had been a family guest. The professional challenge would have broken a lesser man, but Gallagher showed his mettle. Arranging a bland face, he said, “If you would be so good as to drive the motor into the pasture behind the stables, someone will show you to your room.”

Stuyvesant nodded, and pretended he did not see Gallagher’s relief. He parked the car and carried his own bag to the servants’ quarters, the long, two-story building at the base of the hill on which the chapel stood, all but hidden from the drive by the lodge-house and its attendant shrubs. The rooms he was given were the size of a broom closet but comfortable enough, and Alex—all business today—showed him the two downstairs rooms set aside for servants’ use, a sitting room with a wireless set and gramophone, next to what he called the buttery, where Stuyvesant could get a cup of coffee or a sandwich. Alex, too, seemed puzzled at the change in status, but Stuyvesant didn’t help him out, just listened and thanked him for his help.