Vintage Love (9 page)

Dinner had ended long before, and still the two men were engrossed in their talk. At last Felix Black glanced her way and apologized, “Upon my word, I declare we forgot you were here! A thousand pardons! You look weary!”

She managed a tiny smile. “I am exhausted. May I be excused?”

Both men were on their feet at once, and Felix Black came and offered his thin arm for her to be escorted from the room. The handsome Eric Walters bowed good night, his expression sad.

Black saw her to the stairs and said, “You know the way. Try and get a good rest.”

“It will be easy after where I’ve spent the nights prior to this,” she said.

“The cell behind the dog ring,” the master spy said. “Yes, I think we may call this an improvement.” He paused and his keen eyes met hers. “Please attempt to overcome your hatred of Major Eric Walters.”

Embarrassed, she held her head. “I have hated him so long without actually identifying him with a real person. It is deeply ingrained, it will take awhile.”

“I expect that,” he said. “But do try. You will face many dangers, and whatever happened at Waterloo, he is a good man.”

“I’ll try to keep that in mind,” she promised. Then she bade the old spy master good night and went upstairs.

She slept the moment her head touched the pillow. It was not a good sleep, for she was tormented by horrible nightmares of her imprisonment in that Whitechapel cellar. It would take time to erase the terrors she had experienced there from her subconscious. So she twisted and turned in this clean, comfortable bed so far from that dread place!

She wakened to dawn and the shouting of a fishmonger peddling his wares in the street outside. The cries of “Fresh Fish! Cod and Haddock!” came again and again like a kind of morning mass being sung out there.

She quickly washed and dressed, realized how much a single night’s rest had done to restore her. When she went below, she found the old master spy already having breakfast, and she joined him.

He helped her sit and then sat down again himself. He said, “Did you rest well?”

“Except for the nightmares.”

“Yes,” he said. “No doubt you’ll have some bothersome ones for a little while.”

“But I am rested.”

Mrs. Glenn came and began to serve her an ample breakfast of cereal, smoked fish, and muffins. The tea was stronger than it had been the night before.

Betsy said, “Major Walters has not come down.”

“He does not live here,” Felix Black said. “You are the only one of my agents who will share my residence.”

“I was not aware of that,” she said.

The thin man in black nodded. “Your stay will be of short duration. I have sent out messages to the seamstress and a milliner. They should both be here to give you attention this morning. The seamstress is a marvel. I guarantee she’ll have your wardrobe ready within a matter of days.”

“You are being very kind,” she said.

“Not at all. You are a valuable agent. I want you to be satisfied.”

They parted after breakfast, and she did not see him for the balance of the morning. But before he went to his study, he told her the name and location of his bank and explained how she could draw on her account there. She realized how thorough he was as he went over every detail.

Then the stout Mrs. Higgins arrived with two giggling young women helpers. Mrs. Higgins was of ample girth with a ruddy pleasant face. She had a shop on a prominent street which was looked after by her help.

She proudly told Betsy, “I reserve my own services for ladies of the gentry. I have my pick of them. And I’m pleased to be doing for you as the daughter of Sir John Cort.”

“Stepdaughter,” she said. “My father was also titled and my family name is Chapman.”

“It does not matter,” the stout woman said. “I shall fix you up with a wardrobe of which you’ll be proud. Is that not right, girls?”

“Yes, Mrs. Higgins,” the two young maids said in unison, bobbing and giggling.

“Off with your dress!” the big woman ordered in her authoritative way, and she went after Betsy with tape measure and pins as she fitted some material around her.

“I love the green silk!” Betsy said of one roll of material.

“And so you ought!” Mrs. Higgins said. And in a loud stage whisper she demanded, “Do you know who has a dress made of that very same cloth?”

“I can’t imagine,” she said.

“Mrs. Fitzherbert, that’s who,” the woman said. “Though I must say she took a good deal more material than you will. You have a pretty figure, my dear. And a pretty face!” She turned to her little helpers. “Don’t you agree, girls?”

“Oh, yes, Mrs. Higgins, yes indeed,” they chanted in unison once again.

Their business was to run fetch a roll of material, then fold it up neatly and put it aside. They sought out piping and ribbons and buttons to be tried. Mrs. Higgins barked out orders and kept them in a state of perpetual motion.

Midmorning she left Betsy standing in her shift while she slumped into an easy chair and enjoyed a cup of tea brought her by Mrs. Glenn. The two assistants sat silently by.

“Must have my tea,” the stout woman said. “Backbone of the empire, I say. Take away an Englishman’s tea and you’ve taken away his character!”

The ordeal went on with Betsy suffering more than one pin prick, but by the time Mrs. Higgins and her helpers had packed and were ready to leave, her entire wardrobe had been planned.

“Don’t worry about the underthings,” Mrs. Higgins assured her. “I shall pick out the best for you from my store. It’s stocked with the finest.”

“I’m sure I can depend on you,” Betsy told her.

“Back the day after tomorrow for fittings,” the woman said as she left with the two young girls trailing after her.

Betsy slumped down in the easy chair in a state of exhaustion. She could not help but wonder at the kind of place London was. It contained everything — more than its share of squalor, poverty, and misery! More than it should have of crime and cruelty! And in contrast there was this other city of wealth and power in which anything could be bought by merely seeking the proper person. A world as different from that other one as day from night.

She had barely revived from the odeal with Mrs. Higgins when the French milliner arrived. She was a tiny woman, and she had a single helper, a wizened old lady who carried a collection of striped round boxes in which were all sorts of bonnets, hats, and hairpieces.

The vivacious Frenchwoman fitted her out with hats and bonnets and then with an arch smile informed her, “It is the order of Monsieur Black that you must have wigs. One that is much darker than your own hair and one of some other color, I think perhaps red!”

“But why?” she protested. “My own hair is in perfect condition. Or at least it will be when I manage to get it washed.”

“Ah, it ees not zat,” the mademoiselle laughed.

“What then?”

“For the disguise!”

“The disguise!” she echoed in wonder, and then she understood. So there began another session before the big dresser mirror as the woman sought to select a wig which would enhance her and make her look different.

As Betsy stared at herself in a wig of jet-black hair with a different coiffure, she exclaimed, “This is not me! I wouldn’t know myself!”

“That is exactly the point,” said Felix Black who had come unnoticed into the room. “I find that one most useful.”

“So I will often be required to change my personality,” she told the thin man, turning to him.

He smiled bleakly. “There may come moments when it is necessary. Perhaps a moment when escape is only possible by taking on another identity. Then a wig is invaluable.”

“I’m to have two,” she said with a smile. “The other one a light auburn.”

He bowed. “I have every faith in Mademoiselle. She will also fit you with several corsets and bustles. They will be for suggesting changes in your figure, and some of them will have built-in compartments for hiding secret papers and the like.”

Betsy smiled. “I’m discovering that this espionage business is not as simple as I thought.”

“I fear it is rather complex,” Felix Black said, and he left them.

She was exhausted from her busy morning and welcomed a chance to rest before the afternoon session which the master spy had called. When she entered the office at the appointed time, she found the dedicated Felix Black seated at his desk and Major Eric Walters and George Frederick Kingston standing talking together. They all gave their attention to her as she joined them.

Felix Black told them, “Please sit down. This will take awhile.”

She sat close by the desk, and Kingston, with a friendly nod for her, took the chair next to her. The handsome Walters seated himself at the other side of the room. He still seemed inclined to be aloof because of knowing her feeling toward him.

The old master spy began speaking to them in his rasping voice. “I cannot too strongly advise you of the magnitude of this undertaking. The War Office has dismissed me as a madman for my belief that Napoleon was rescued from Saint Helena and is now in Europe somewhere waiting the moment to start a fresh revolution in France.”

Eric Walters spoke up. “It is well known there were such plans. The most ambitious of them of which I’m aware concerned a group here in London who was developing a submarine which could approach the shore and pick up the emperor from a small fishing boat. But they were spied upon, and all the principals arrested.”

Felix Black’s lined face showed amused reaction to this. He said, “That is no news, since I was in charge of the spy operation which apprehended this group. Unhappily the War Office decided this was the end of the rescue plan. And it wasn’t.”

“What actually makes you believe the man who died on Saint Helena wasn’t Napoleon?” Betsy found the nerve to ask. “I had a letter from a young woman living in the house next to Sir Hudson Lowe. She said she had glimpsed the emperor, and he had failed terribly. But he was still plainly recognizable.”

The master spy said, “The plan budded in Marseilles. A wealthy shipping merchant living there, whose name was Jean LaFlenche, enjoyed a notoriety for being almost a double for Napoleon. He was also a stalwart admirer of the former emperor and believed that his hero had been cruelly duped into exile.”

“Which is partly true,” Eric Walters said. “He was in sight of Plymouth when he was first persuaded to step on board the
Bellerophon.
He in no way expected to be sent to that distant island.”

Kingston nodded. “I was playing in a company at Plymouth at the time. I remember the natives were full of curiosity about the fallen emperor. A number rowed out to pass near the ship and saw him standing at the rail. He waved to them, and they waved back and some actually cheered him! I did not make the journey myself.”

“A pity,” Felix Black said in his dry way. “You would at least have caught a glimpse of him. To return to Marseilles. In late 1819 our man LaFlenche became ill. It was not long before his doctors advised him he was suffering from a terminal illness of the liver.”

“Which is what Napoleon is supposed to have died from,” Betsy said.

“That and certain other complications caused by the climate,” the master spy said. “About the time of this diagnosis he was called on by two of the men most loyal to the exiled emperor, one a military man, General Vidal, and the other an Admiral Leblanc. I believe it was at this meeting that the scheme was concocted. LeFlenche, knowing he would soon die and that he resembled Napoleon enough to deceive even at close range, offered to take his hero’s place. A last great adventure for him and an opportunity to give the man he devoutly believed in freedom.”

“What then?” Eric Walters asked.

“Word was secretly sent to Saint Helena. Napoleon was not well, but he was not seriously ill. But he at once began to take measured doses of arsenic to simulate a grave gastric problem. The poison made him truly ill and confused the doctors attending him.”

She asked, “Does Dr. O’Meara think this possible?”

“Yes,” Black said. “He agrees this would be the ideal way of simulating the effects of illness. At this point LaFlenche is supposed to have died. No one aside from his only close relative, a spinster daughter, was at his bedside along with the doctor who had been his friend for years. The undertaker was a former employee at the shipyards owned by the LaFlenche family. No one was allowed to view the body, and it was placed almost immediately in the family cemetery outside the city. A gigantic marble stone marks the tomb today.”

As the old man paused, Betsy said, “You are suggesting that LaFlenche was not buried but taken to one of his ships on which he journeyed to Saint Helena?”

Felix Black nodded, “We have a record that a four master, the
Juliette
, left for distant waters on the very day of the supposed burial. The captain was also a close friend of Jean LaFlenche. And most interesting of all, during a time when he’d been attached to the French navy, he had tried to invent a safe underwater warship.

“The submarine business again!” Eric Walters said, showing great interest.

“Exactly,” Felix Black continued. “We know the ship sailed close to Saint Helena. And I believe that a small underwater craft took the dying LaFlenche to the shore where Napoleon was waiting in a rowboat. The men exchanged places, and Napoleon was taken back to the
Juliette
while LaFlenche took his place on Saint Helena for the great impersonation. The
Juliette
returned to Italy, and the supposedly ailing LaFlenche was put ashore in Naples. The story circulated among the crew, who had been kept in the dark about the exchange, that LaFlenche was about to die and wanted to die on land.”

“So it is possible Napoleon may be alive in Europe,” Walters said.

“With plenty of time to get over the effects of his taking the arsenic,” the master spy said. “He may have kept in hiding as he awaited the coming of Valmy.”

“Who is Valmy?” the actor, George Frederick Kingston, wanted to know.

“A man who will play a powerful role in all our futures,” the old spy leader warned him. “Valmy is the leader of a small group of political misfits that has been gradually gaining much strength in the disillusionment accompanying the wretched reign of Louis The Eighteenth. By combining his group with the scattered supporters of Napoleon, he is sure he can march on Paris and take the city and the French nation by storm.”