Wallis had been awake for hours, fitfully turning in her bed, but had not heard him push the note under her door. She never did. The discovery of these missives always gave her a somewhat creepy feeling. Swearing softly, she went to fetch the latest. Her impulse was to rip it up unread. But she opened it, tearing at the expensive paper and cutting her finger in the process. This time she swore more loudly.
“Good morning, my sweetheart,” it began.
A boy’s heart beats faster as we draw nearer to the wonderful country of a wonderful girl. In New York, a boy will be able to buy more of these little presents that a boy hopes will speak of his love far better than his eanum words. WE forever. Love, David.
The present, obviously, was outside the door. They were usually left there like bottles of milk or shoes polished by a hotel porter.
She opened the door and there was a neat package on the carpet, tied with a royal-blue bow. Wallis snatched it up, holding it a moment to feel its weight. The heft was most eloquent. The first blast of the ship’s foghorn caught her by surprise. She waited for it to end, as one might stand motionless for a national anthem to be concluded at some public event.
Stepping back inside her room, Wallis tore the package open. The velvet-covered box was from Van Cleef & Arpels in Paris. Catching her breath, she opened it slowly, almost gingerly. It was a ruby and diamond bracelet—a half-inch wide and made of large connected squares with a huge oblong ruby the centerpiece of each. She could only wonder at the cost. Had it come into her possession back in the 1920s, when she was married to Win Spencer, they surely would have seen it as worth enough to support them for the rest of their lives.
The thought of an entirety of life spent with her drunken naval aviator of a first husband sickened her, but she was almost equally disturbed by the import of these extravagant gifts. This was the third he had bestowed on her on this holiday, if such a horrible odyssey could be so described. He had bought them all up in advance, obviously. Indeed, he seemed to have had them designed to order. How many more of these priceless trinkets was he carting with him? Did he intend to dole them out to her like treats given a circus animal who performed well?
She had returned her other jewels to their proper place in the chest she carried. She took them out again, laying them upon her bed as if she might be arranging a museum display. At the center, she gently set down the new bracelet. It was the grandest piece of them all, though she much more favored the diamond charm bracelet with the sentimental little inscribed dangling crosses that did for charms.
If she left him, could she keep these? How much of a gentleman was the next King of England?
Wallis lowered her head to the bedspread, pressing her face into it. She began to cry again, though her sobs were weak and dry. It amazed her how much she yearned for her husband, Ernest. He was dull and stolid, more upper middle class than aristocrat, just another Englishman in striped blue suit and mustache. But he had been so warm and loving, so strong and safe and secure, so predictable and stable. She was nearly forty years old. What in hell was she doing with what remained of her life? To what ridiculous risk was she putting her middle years and old age?
Wallis sat up, taking a deep breath. She looked a long moment at the jewels, then rose and went to the mirror of her dresser. She did not look good. She never did in the morning. But she did look regal. Enormously regal. She had realized that very early on in her relationship with the prince. She could admit to herself that there was something of the aspect of Snow White’s wicked stepmother in the countenance that stared and often glared back at her, but it had a royal presence. She was ever so much more the queen than the dowdy, dumpy, frumpy Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, wife of Edward’s younger brother Bertie. If Edward did not become king, Lillibet, as the current king and queen so obnoxiously if adoringly called the woman, would be queen as consort of a stammering George VI. The absurdity of that possibility amused Wallis. She laughed in the gentle Southern way that had proved so engagingly charming at London dinner parties, but her melancholy remained near. She took another deep breath, then retrieved the new bracelet and put it on, holding it up in the mirror.
She would have to thank him. She would hang on at least until this holiday was over. The most important thing was to get off this awful ship. Her pursuit of social success—and certainly at that moment in history she was the most socially successful woman in the entire world—had almost gotten her killed. She had thought hard upon it. She had been closer to death than she had ever been even in China.
She left her bedchamber and crossed the hallway to his, hesitating after opening the door, for he was snoring in a very loud and ugly way, the consequence of another night of too much drink. She’d cure him soon enough of that. In China, with Win Spencer, she’d damn well had enough of that.
A sudden snapping sound caught her attention. The door to the sitting room was opening, without knock or announcement. It wasn’t Runcie or Fruity Metcalfe or Lord Brownlow. It was a woman.
The fog had absorbed Lord Mountbatten’s attention from the instant he’d awakened. It was about the thickest he had seen in his years at sea. Excited, he showered and shaved with even more efficiency than usual, then quickly dressed in his naval uniform, pausing only to flick off a few specks of lint. His place, as always, was on the bridge. He’d received a commendation from the admiral of the Mediterranean fleet for his ability at handling destroyers in foul weather. After all that the officers of the Wilhelmina had been through, they’d be appreciative of help, especially when it came with such expertise.
Squaring the visor of his gold-braided cap, Mountbatten started out of the suite, but then paused as he passed by the door to Edwina’s bedroom. To his amazement, she was in it, fast asleep.
Leaving the suite, Mountbatten started up toward the bridge, then recalled something and turned the other way, heading down the passageway for the exit to the deck. Even so high above the engine room, he could detect the odd vibrations of the propellor shafts. It was a dropped beat—a bar of waltz music missing a note. Something, he was sure, was wrong. Before reporting to the bridge, he would go out to the fantail and observe the propellor function at firsthand. Such a malfunction ought to be visually and audibly obvious.
He stepped outside onto the moist planking of the promenade. The fog was actually rather frightening. He wasn’t sure that, if he were master of this vessel, he wouldn’t order it to dead stop.
Olga crept toward her goal, bare feet now making no sound whatsoever, but halted abruptly, startled by the sound of a door opening. She pressed herself back against a wall. Far down the hall, she watched a man step forth and was furious to see it was her intended victim. Worse, he turned in her direction and started up the passageway. If she showed her pistol now, his first act would be to shout, alarming this entire section of first class.
Yet he seemed greatly distracted, so preoccupied by whatever thought that he scarcely noticed her shadowy figure. Suddenly he stopped, turned, and began retracing his steps, heading down toward the other end of the corridor. She waited until he had turned the corner, then hurried after, feet swift and silent.
He was going out on deck! Excited, happy, she paused before the exit door after it had closed behind him. Gently placing her hand against the cold metal, she eased it open, slowly extending her head afterward into the mist that filled the open air beyond.
He was striding briskly away from her along the promenade, heading toward the burned-out aft section that had comprised most of second class. Like a will o’ the wisp, Olga scampered after, ducking behind a stanchion or bulkhead whenever he seemed about to glance back, though he never did. He was serenely purposeful. He was wearing his naval uniform as if for some reason, though she had no idea what it could be.
Coming to the rope the crew had strung across the decking, its dangling DANGER, KEEP OUT sign swaying with the ship’s movement, he paused, then swung a long leg over the barrier, his other following nimbly. He was going back to where no one would now be.
He’d be all alone, and the fog was so dense she could barely make out the gold braid on his sleeve. She quickened her pace, feet pattering along on the cold, wet deck, but making no noise he could notice. He moved along as if she didn’t exist.
After ducking under the rope, she scurried on a few more yards, then paused to pull the long-barreled revolver from the deep pocket of her thick wool skirt. The automatic pistols now favored by the heirs to Felix Dzerzhinsky who ran the OGPU were malevolent looking enough, and easily hidden. But they were about as accurate as a rock thrown backhand. With its seven-inch barrel, this revolver could drop a man at fifty yards. Its huge bullet would strike wherever she aimed the sight.
She lifted the pistol, taking a deep breath and holding it steady. Though he was moving away, a squeeze of the trigger now would send the screaming piece of lead into his lower back, shattering his spine and cleaving out large chunks of intestine and abdominal muscle. She raised the barrel slightly, then lowered it altogether. She hurried on. She would have her brief speech.
When he reached the point where the rail began to curve toward the stern at the second-class grill and verandah, she shouted his name, in German:
“Prinz Battenburg!”
He stopped and turned slowly to face her. He showed no fear whatsoever. His eyes were dead calm.
“What do you want?” said Lord Mountbatten.
“You are the nephew of the bitch despot mistress of the devil Rasputin?”
“What?”
“You are the nephew of the Czarina Alexandra, executed by the people’s justice at Ekaterinburg?”
“I am the nephew of Her late Majesty. Yes. Who are you? What in bloody hell do you want?”
She raised the pistol higher, aiming at his head. “I want your death, Romanov pretender!”
“Olga!”
She whirled about, revolver pointing the way. There was Kees, running toward her, just a few feet away. He must have awakened and followed her. He must have seen her take her gun. She didn’t know what to do, but of course she did. A pull on the trigger and he’d be out of her way. Then another pull to put a bullet through Lord Mountbatten. Then she’d be done. A toss of the gun into the sea, or possibly still into the stateroom of Count von Kresse, and all her cares and worries would be over. Just a pull of the trigger.
Mountbatten’s kick was brutal. He swung his foot with all his might, striking Olga square in the rectum, an explosion of pain spreading up from the base of her spine. She went sprawling, sliding along the wet deck, but held tightly to the pistol. Another kick came, exactly in the same place, and even more painful. She cried out, the anguished voice of a child, fighting to remain conscious. Whether the revolver was still in her hand she did not know. Another blow struck, a foot coming down hard on her wrist. It went numb, possibly broken. If she had been holding the gun, she did no longer. And now both her arms were rudely pulled back and yanked upward behind her back.
“Damned Bolshevik assassin,” she heard Mountbatten say. “What else is going to happen on this cursed ship?”
“Olga,” Kees said sadly. She felt his hand on her head. Her cheek was pressed into the wet wood of the deck. Mountbatten was using some cloth to tie her hands. He tied them excessively tight, bringing a shot of pain to her wrist.
“Olga,” Kees said, his voice so sweet. “Olga.”
They had said at Dzerzhinsky Square that a woman would ultimately fail in this profession, that she would succumb to glands and passion and weakness and make some stupid emotional mistake. In response, Olga had killed with more viciousness than all of them to prove the foolishness of this arrogant male attitude. But now she had proved them right. Two quick pulls of the trigger and she would have killed Kees and her mission target, exactly what was expected of her. But she had hesitated. She had remembered love, or at least sex. It was the only love she had ever known.
The captain had viewed it all from the port bridge wing, where he had gone to listen for the sound of other ships between the blasts of the Wilhelmina’s horn. When he saw Olga take out the long black pistol from her clothing, he had rapped on the door to the bridge and called urgently for a crewman to bring one of the rifles from the gun case by the chart table. But now that she’d been so quickly subdued by Mountbatten and Kees, he bade the man lower the weapon.
As they brought the woman back along the promenade, each man gripping one of her arms, van der Heyden called to Kees. They moved her faster than her feet could manage, Mountbatten shoving her rudely at intervals. When they reached the bridge wing, they stopped, Kees looking up as the captain leaned over the railing, resting gingerly on his elbows. The woman glared at him defiantly, fury in her eyes, a beast caught in a trap.
“This woman was going to kill me,” Mountbatten said, almost as if complaining about some lawn pest. “Damned bolshevik!”
“I saw it all,” the captain said. “You owe your life to my young third officer here. And he owes me a substantial explanation.”
“Yes, sir,” Kees said.
“Later,” said the captain. “Put the woman in one of the third-class cabins. Strip it of all furniture. Draperies, everything. I want two, not one, but two armed guards posted at the door, around the clock.” He looked at Kees with deliberate scorn. “And if she offers them sexual favors, they are to shoot her.”
Olga cursed him, in several languages.
“Get her below!” said the captain.
When he returned inside, van Groot was on the bridge, looking displeased.
“Are you well, Captain?” van Groot asked.
Van der Heyden ignored him. He went to his chair and stared out the forward windows into the gray wall through which they were moving. He inhaled deeply, a sort of sigh. Van Groot watched the crewman take the rifle back to the case.
“What happened out there?” van Groot asked.
Van der Heyden took another deep breath, then exhaled slowly. The damp air was bothering his lungs. “We caught the woman who attacked Lord Mountbatten the other night. She tried again, this time with a pistol.” The captain paused. “This is my last voyage, van Groot, if I get to complete it. If you want command of this jinx ship when it’s repaired, you’re welcome to it.”
The door to the prince’s suite opened fully, revealing one of the first-class maids entering with a stack of freshly pressed sheets in her arms. She seemed startled to see Mrs. Simpson in her nightdress, but no less startled than Wallis.
“What are you doing here?” Mrs. Simpson demanded.
The girl was frightened. She almost dropped the sheets. “Ma’am. The sign.”
“Sign? What damn sign are you talking about?”
“The sign on all the doors in this part of first class, madam.” The maid retreated to the door. Opening it, she pulled forth a large printed card dangling from a golden cord. “Make Up Room Early,” it said.
“But it’s hardly morning!” Wallis said.
“These signs are all up and down the hall, madam,” said the maid. “We thought you all had some special early plans.”
Furious, Wallis strode to the doorway and peered out, frowning. There were indeed other signs like this one, hanging from doors in both directions. Farther along the passageway, through an opened door, she heard Duff Cooper swearing as a maid backed out of his room with a stack of sheets.
The commotion had awakened Edward, who came forth in bare feet and dressing gown.
“What deuced, damned trouble have we now, Wallis?” he asked sternly, as if it were somehow all her fault.
“This serving girl just waltzed into our suite,” she said, with even more severity than his. “Someone has been hanging ‘Make Up Early’ signs on the first-class doors, a stupid little joke.”
“Well, I won’t have it,” said the prince. “Where in hell is Runcie?”
They heard the sound of a toilet flushing behind them.
“Here I am, sir,” said the inspector, straightening his suit jacket. “I was just using the loo.”
Spencer,
restless, had been walking about Nora’s suite while she slept. Not wanting yet another drink—he was wearying of alcohol on this voyage the way he was wearying of the heavy, rich, and endless heaps of expensive food—he browsed among her possessions, particularly the handsome, silver-framed photographs. He wouldn’t have thought such totems of the upper class would have easily found their way into the life of a daughter of Toledo, Ohio. But then, she had acquired a number of attributes that would not have come naturally to her—from reading books, he supposed, but in larger part from her movie roles.
She was always being cast as the postdebutante or rich girl. When she wasn’t being likened to Constance Bennett or Mary Astor, it was to Katharine Hepburn. Nora hadn’t quite their acting skill, nor their wealthy accents, but was certainly more beautiful, and much funnier in comedies.
Most of the photos were of Nora and well-known Hollywood personalities with whom she had acted—Cary Grant and Gary Cooper, Nora standing arm in arm with Myrna Loy and William Powell on the afterdeck of someone’s immense yacht. One photograph was of Nora with the great British actor Leslie Howard, the two of them playing croquet. She certainly looked the part of an English lady, more so even than Edwina or Diana Cooper. The setting, complete with Tudor mansion in the background, was certainly English, except for the palm trees that so loudly proclaimed California.
But two of the pictures stood out from all the others. One was a black-and-white studio portrait of Nora in three-quarter view, infinitely more an artist’s effort than a mere publicity still. Employing the now-stylish dramatic highlights that had become de rigueur for Hollywood’s major personalities, it showed her with much longer hair than she now wore, a wave of it falling across her brow almost to her eye. Her slight smile was sophisticated and knowing, and her eyes had the same delicious, dreamy quality he had seen in them after they had made love. In fact, the photo made him wonder somewhat at the circumstance of its making.
Dance on a Sinking Ship Page 44
