“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.
He looked at his wrist-watch. Two hours to tea-time, when the assembled enemies would come together and begin their prickly machinations, wary as lovemaking porcupines. He would begin out of doors, and see just how many old friends of the Duke there were, standing guard over Hurleigh House.
In the end he met five more elderly soldiers with sharp eyes, although he knew there would be more, up at the Peak and down near the river. Their perimeter followed the ridge-line, with all the Hurleigh buildings inside, and he took care to introduce himself as Mr. Bunsen’s driver and bodyguard.
He trotted down the steep path from the chapel, moving quickly because his reconnaissance had taken longer than he’d planned. When he came off the hill he was moving at a fast trot, aimed at the shaded garden to the side of the house itself.
His pace and the slope made it hard to stop when a man stepped out and pointed a gun at him.
Chapter Fifty-Seven
IT COULD HAVE BEEN AN AWKWARD MOMENT, with Stuyvesant trying to dig in his heels even as he threw up both hands in a declaration of innocence. But he’d managed to skid to a halt before his momentum had him plowing into the man, and fortunately, the fellow wasn’t trigger-happy.
“Here I was just thinking,” Stuyvesant said, over the barrel of the man’s gun, “at the top of the hill, that the place seems well guarded.”
The guy was clearly not interested in conversation, but Stuyvesant could forgive tactiturnity in a man who’d passed up the chance to shoot him, so he said, “Name’s Stuyvesant. I’m with Mr. Bunsen.”
The man with the gun finally spoke. “What were you doing up there?”
“Wanted some fresh air. And wanted to see the set-up.”
After a minute, the gun lowered a fraction. “You’re the Yank.”
“I guess.”
“You armed?”
“Do I need to be?”
“Reason I ask is, there’s no guns allowed inside the garden walls. They got a lock-box you can leave it in, when you need to come in.”
“Makes sense,” Stuyvesant said, and it did, he supposed. “But I didn’t bring it with me. Thought I’d see what’s what, before I go pulling guns on strangers.”
The man looked at his weapon, and tucked it away inside his coat. “Sorry about that, mate, I heard you running and it took me by surprise, like.”
“No harm done.” He hesitated, then offered his hand. “Harris Stuyvesant, New York.”
“Gwilhem Jones, Cardiff.”
“Are you a friend of the Duke as well?”
“We go back a ways,” Jones admitted.
The Duke of Hurleigh’s own private army, gray of hair but sharp of eye. “Any idea where I might find Mr. Bunsen?”
“Through that door, past the kitchen and to the right, you’ll find someone to ask.”
“Thank you, Mr. Jones, and I’ll be seeing you around.”
The house was warm to a man in outdoor clothing coming in from a hike through the cold woods, and he took off his overcoat. Past the kitchen, he found a man seated at a desk. This one was not a retired soldier, or at least, not one of the Duke’s retired soldiers. He was about forty, with a dark suit so non-descript that it might have been a uniform; the expectant look on his face was equally professional: mid-level civil servant.
“I’m looking for Mr. Bunsen.”
“Mr. Stuyvesant?” the man asked, rising and putting out his hand. “I’m Julian Exeter. Come, right this way.”
On the other side of the next door there was another man, a slightly less polished version of the first. He got up from his chair and slipped into the room that had just gone vacant.
Exeter led him through the house, using a route Stuyvesant hadn’t known was there, along the northern side and up some narrow and poorly lit stairs. Eventually they went through a door into the family’s realm. Here the walls were wood, the air was warm, and the floorboards underfoot were polished.
One more jog of a hallway and Stuyvesant’s guide rapped on a closed door, opened it a few inches, and said, “Mr. Stuyvesant is here.”
“Bring him in,” said a woman: Laura Hurleigh.
Laura and Richard Bunsen were alone in the room, a small office or study with a desk and a fireplace. She had a note-pad in her hand and was sitting near the fire; Bunsen was on his feet near the window.
“Stuyvesant, good,” he said, sounding distracted. “Look, Laura, I must run—Baldwin wants a word before we meet the others.”
“Fine, there’s nothing that can’t wait.”
“See you for tea, then.”
The room seemed smaller and slightly shabby when he had left. Stuyvesant went over to glance out of the window, which looked out on the ga
rden, then went to sit on the other side of the fire from Laura Hurleigh.
“Do you want something to drink?” she asked. “Coffee?”
“I’m fine. Your father has men in the woods all around.”
“The Retirees’ Brigade,” she told him, sounding indulgent. “They love it.”
“Look,” he said, “do you honestly think you need a bodyguard here?”
“Here? No. But the others have them, so Richard should.”
Stuyvesant had to laugh. “So you’re just keeping up with the Baldwins?”
“More or less. I hope you’re not offended?”
“That my presence is strictly cosmetic? Why should I be? He’s paying me, isn’t he?”
“Of course.”
“Okay. But you don’t mind if I actually do my job?”
“I expect no less of you, Mr. Stuyvesant.”
“Maybe we should begin with your telling me exactly what’s going on here.” Since he was only supposed to have the sketchiest idea about the week-end, from Sarah.
“It is a meeting, Mr. Stuyvesant. Private, kept out of the press at all costs, and among men who were asked because they may actually listen to each other’s words.”
“It’s an attempt to defuse the Strike?”
“It may be an attempt to defuse a revolution,” she said, sounding remarkably sanguine about it.
“I see. How many will be here?”
“Two mine owners—Mr. Branning and Lord Stalfield, with three assistants each. Richard’s colleague, Herbert Smith, the president of the Miners’ Union, with his three, and of course, Mr. Baldwin.”
“Why here? Why not meet in a back room of Downing Street, or Buckingham Palace? Or the Prime Minister’s country home, what do they call it, Chequers?”
“Hurleigh is neutral ground, far from the eyes of the press. It provides an opportunity for the five individuals to meet as men rather than as figureheads. Take them out of their familiar settings, put a drink in their hands, let them loosen their collars and come together over the billiards table, and they can begin to look at each other as reasonable men with reasonable grievances.”
“I’d have thought they’d be just as likely to break their billiards cues over each other’s heads,” he said, his back still giving him the occasional twinge from just that.
Touchstone Page 44
