Skylark

by Sheila Simonson

  "None of them serious, fortunately. The cook and butler, they're a married couple, were in their quarters in the family wing watching television. They were cut and bruised, and so was a Henning cousin who was down for the holiday from Oxford."

  "There had to be more people on the estate than that."

  "Most of the employees live in villages in the area and had gone home. The gamekeeper and groundsman have small apartments in another building. They'd just stepped out the door to look for McHale when the explosion went off. Neither of them was hurt. They let the dogs out of the kennel and ran to the house to see what they could do. I guess the stables were pandemonium. They keep five horses. The groom had his hands full."

  "What about the greenhouse?"

  "There's a greenhouse?"

  I described our tour of the grounds in terse detail. We were approaching Much Aston, and there was a big question that had to be asked. I had asked it several times already. I kept getting evasions.

  "What took you and Dad so long to get to Shropshire?"

  He didn't answer at once.

  "Jay..."

  "Daphne Worth was struck by a hit-and-run driver Sunday evening."

  I went cold. "But she was going to go hiking in Dorset over the holiday."

  He slowed as we entered the village. "She was struck as she walked back to her B and B from a pub in Dorchester. She wasn't identified until Monday, and when she was, Thorne tried to get in touch with us at the flat. I had already left for Heathrow. Thorne put out an APB. The police caught up with me as I was hiring the car. They took me in for questioning."

  I was shivering. "Surely they didn't believe you did it!"

  "No, and I don't think they believed you and Ann did it either, but they had to check with us for alibis. It's a damned good thing you called me when you did, or I wouldn't have been able to answer Thorne's questions. I'd still be in custody. George drove the car in and waited at the flat for me. When we got away it was past nine. I broke a lot of speed limits coming west."

  He found the entrance to the hotel car park, a cramped yard behind the building, and negotiated the narrow arch with extreme care.

  I was so cold I wanted to rub my arms, but I couldn't. "Is Daphne dead?"

  "She's unconscious, and they did surgery to stop the internal bleeding. They may have to remove her spleen. They think she'll live, but Thorne won't be able to interview her for some time."

  I was near tears. "Oh, poor Daphne. Poor Trevor. Did you see him?"

  "Only at the police station," Jay said dryly. "They were questioning him, too."

  He parked the car and made me wait while he went around to open the door for me. That gave me a few moments to compose myself. Getting me out of the Fiat was a sweaty ordeal for both of us. Dad and Ann had parked the Escort and were standing by well before I felt clear-headed enough to walk to the hotel's rear entrance. My legs were okay, though the soles of my feet were cut and bruised. Ann had brought me a dress to wear and a pair of low heeled pumps. The pumps were pure torture.

  We walked slowly and waited by the elevator while Jay went to get the room keys. When he returned he looked harried.

  "What's wrong?" Dad asked.

  "The lobby is jam-packed with reporters."

  Ann and I groaned.

  Chapter 17.

  We were under siege. Dad's room and Jay's and mine adjoined, with a connecting door, but Ann had to go out into the corridor when she wanted to visit us. The rooms had no telephones, fortunately, and the hotel was fielding our calls with a cheerfulness born of the post-holiday boom my notoriety had inspired.

  Reporters of all media had taken the remaining rooms vacated by holiday makers, and the representative of a London tabloid was heard to complain that he was staying in a B and B so small he had to share the bathroom with the family. The hotel bars--both the public and the private--were doing a land-office business, and the harassed chef had had to send out for more brussels sprouts.

  The evening of my release from the hospital I spent sleeping, waking to groan, eat, and take more painkillers, and sleeping some more. The worst injury was a fairly deep knife wound high on my left shoulder, and I had received another nasty slash in the bicep of my left arm. The rest were scratches, bruises, and cuts from the window glass I had stepped on as I dashed off after Smith. I felt rotten and very sorry for myself in my brief intervals of consciousness.

  Pain makes people selfish. I spared a thought now and then for Daphne, but Jay, who had spoken to Thorne on the manager's telephone, reported no change in her condition.

  I heal fast. By lunchtime Wednesday, I was almost ready to deal with the real world--and my father was ready to talk about Milos's papers.

  I had not forgotten them, of course, and I could tell from Dad's gray exhaustion that he was suffering from something worse than jet lag. He had had at least one chat about the papers' import with Jay and Ann the evening before, when they brought me back from the hospital, but they had talked in Dad's room while I slept off the ride from Ludlow. By the time I woke up Wednesday morning, Dad had run the gauntlet of reporters and driven off in the Fiat. He returned at eleven-thirty looking more cheerful.

  Ann ventured out at noon and bought picnic supplies in the village, a "photo opportunity" the resident journalists did not hesitate to take advantage of.

  "And there I stood," she said, exasperation turning her face pink, "my arms full of squidgy parcels while they shouted their damnfool questions at me. That nice boy behind the desk, you remember him, Lark, honey, just swept to my rescue. I came real close to kissing him in a public place."

  "I wish I'd seen that." Jay began unloading her as one might unload a pack camel. He set out beer, mineral water, a lump of paté, two cheese wedges, a long cucumber, two tomatoes, a jar of mustard, a stick of butter, and four blood oranges from Spain on the small table in our room.

  I watched, propped against the headboard, as Ann drew her Swiss army knife from the depths of her purse and set about turning the groceries into a meal. I could have sat at the table, but there were only three chairs including the one Dad brought in from his room, so I kept to the bed.

  My father was watching Ann, too, and listening to Ann and Jay banter as they prepared a selection of goodies for me. I was still definitely one-handed. We all ate our fill from the paper plates Ann had brought.

  "It's been years since I tasted one of these." Dad popped the last segment of blood orange into his mouth. "A treat, Ann. Thank you."

  She smiled at him and went to rinse off her sticky fingers at the hand basin with which all English hotel rooms are furnished. "Mamma had a cousin down in Florida who raised the sweetest blood-oranges? He lost the tree in a hurricane. Took the heart right out of him."

  Dad sighed. "That's my problem. This monograph of Milos Vlaçek's has taken the heart out of me."

  Ann went back to her chair. "What do you intend to do about the papers, Professor Dailey?"

  "What are they?" I interrupted. "Come on, guys, I've got a vested interest..."

  Jay shot me a warning glance. I bit my lip.

  Dad was rubbing the bridge of his nose. He does that when he's putting his thoughts in order. My father is not a blurter. We waited. Finally he sighed again. "They are documentation of evil, Lark. And your friend is a witness of unimpeachable integrity. His word will have weight."

  "Milos is a distinguished poet, Lark." Ann's eyes shone.

  "And one of the Czech intellectuals who signed Charter 77," my father added. "Have you heard of that?"

  I shook my head. I was busy digesting the fact that I had embroiled myself in the life of yet another poet. I am haunted by poets.

  "Charter 77 is a human rights declaration, and its signers pledged themselves, among other things, to monitor violations of human rights in Czechoslovakia. You may think of them as a network of witnesses. A good many of them, including your friend, Vlaçek, have been imprisoned by the Czech government."

  Jay retreated to the connecting door and
closed it. He didn't say anything, but he was watching Dad with frowning concentration.

  I forced myself to keep still.

  "When the parcel arrived Friday," Dad went on, "I took it to Erzibet Rosen. You remember her, Lark."

  "Yes, of course." Professor Rosen taught Slavic languages and literature for SUNY and had been a friend of my parents since she escaped from Czechoslovakia during the Soviet invasion of 1968. "She must have translated the document right away."

  "She brought me an English language print-out at noon Saturday, and we had..." He hesitated. "We had an impassioned discussion of what should be done about it. She wanted to take it directly to the press and the FBI." He glanced at Jay. "I was not confident that that was the wisest course. In the end, we compromised, and I decided to fly to England as soon as possible."

  There was another pause. He was rubbing his nose again. "When he was released from prison last year, Mr. Vlaçek found work as a janitor in a factory town. In December, Flight 103 crashed at Lockerbie. Almost at once Vlaçek began to hear rumors among clerical workers in the factory that the Czech government had supplied certain terrorist organizations with the explosive semtex."

  A plastique manufactured in Czechoslovakia. My mind was working slowly, but I drew the new connection.

  "Oh, no." Nausea rose in my throat. One of Dad's most promising students had been killed on Flight 103, and my father was devastated by the tragedy. "Oh, Dad, I'm sorry."

  He got up and walked to the window, staring out at the village green below. "Vlaçek began to gather testimony--and through the underground network of dissidents, to arrange interviews with key observers. He has documented the government's complicity in the bombing. The names in the papers are coded. When I called on Vlaçek at the hospital this morning, he assured me that he could supply the key. Indeed, he dictated it to me. He memorized it."

  I recalled Milos's facility with quotations from Shakespeare. He knew Macbeth by heart--in English. He had an excellent memory.

  Dad said, with deliberation, "I came to England to assure myself of your safety, Lark, and, if I could, to ask Milos Vlaçek what he wanted me to do with the information."

  "But the British government has a copy."

  "Yes. Even without the names of witnesses, the document is powerful. I trust the London police have given the information it contains to the commission investigating the crash."

  I shifted on the bed, easing my physical discomfort. My mind felt leaden. There had already been shocking suggestions that the CIA was warned of the impending crash, that the airline itself was warned, but that the warnings had not been passed on to the passengers. I did not have to be told that information could be suppressed.

  Dad sat down again, heavily, like an old man. "Vlaçek left Czechoslovakia in February, and friends in London found work for him. A young dissident, a musician, was able to smuggle the document out of Czechoslovakia the week you and Ann attended the booksellers' convention."

  "It was the kid in the bomber-jacket," Jay said. "The one who delivered the manuscript at the Barbican."

  "Milos says he's a rock musician," Ann added, eyes gleaming. "The Czech government persecutes rock musicians, Lark. Can you imagine?"

  Thinking of the forces of repression running rampant in the U.S., notably in Ann's neck of the woods, I could easily imagine the persecution of rock musicians. I nodded. "Go on, Dad."

  "Vlaçek's friends arranged with the Henning Institute to spirit him away from the hospital as soon as he could be transported. They do not trust the present British government to make the information public. They were also concerned lest Czech agents make another attempt on Vlaçek's life. Until the information is general knowledge, or at least too widely disseminated to be suppressed, his life is in danger."

  I levered myself up. "Take the document downstairs and hand it out to the press."

  Dad frowned. "That was Erzibet's first impulse. And I do understand her urgency. And the need to protect Vlaçek. However, there is a criminal investigation going on. I think the proper course is for me to give the document to the Scottish authorities at once."

  "People should know," I burst out.

  "People will know," Dad countered. "Apart from the photocopy you sent me and the transcription on Erzibet's hard disk, I sent copies of the translation to fifty leading historians in the U.S. and Europe. This morning I mailed them the key with a covering letter. I asked them to hold the information until the Scottish inquiry is officially ended. If the Czech government's involvement is not made public by that time, I will instruct my colleagues to release the information to the media."

  I reflected. "But an official investigation could take years. What about Milos's safety?"

  Jay said, "I suggested George tell the press the truth, that Vlaçek is being hounded by agents of the Czech secret police. He is a poet, after all."

  "Without mentioning Lockerbie?"

  Dad gave a small, almost mischievous smile. "Freedom of expression is a hot issue. There is this business of Salman Rushdie. I'll suggest that a similar attempt is being made to silence another creative voice."

  "Both of you have Byzantine minds." I eased back on the pillows. "Ma knows every publisher of poetry in the western world. Couldn't she arrange for one of them to bring out an edition of Milos's work in translation?" When they looked at me, Ann with sparkling eyes, I added, acidly, "A touch of verisimilitude for an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative."

  Dad's smile broadened. "An excellent idea. I'll call Mary from the manager's office. She's waiting for an update on your condition anyway, Lark, and contacting publishers will give her a salutary distraction from worrying about her daughter."

  I felt the deft sting of parentally-induced guilt and winced. "I suppose you're going north to Scotland."

  "Ann has agreed to accompany me as far as York," Dad said placidly. "We'll return the Escort to the car hire office and I'll take the train to Edinburgh from there. I have an appointment in Glasgow Friday afternoon with an officer of the Galloway and Dumfries constabulary." He sounded almost cheerful, and it occurred to me that being able to do something, even after the fact, might help ease his grief. I hoped so.

  Ann began to tidy away the remains of our picnic. "I'll hire a car with an automatic transmission in York, so I can visit Haworth. Then I'll come back to London."

  "Do we have to go back to London at all?" My question was disingenuous, mere griping. With Daphne in the hospital I knew Thorne would want us under his eye. And we would owe Trevor and Daphne another week's iniquitous rent.

  * * * *

  Lord Henning was sprung on me that afternoon without warning. By then I was feeling much better, but I took a nap after lunch on general principles. I was wakened by the rumble of voices in Dad's room.

  I levered myself to sitting position with my good arm and sat on the edge of the bed, contemplating the shadowy hotel room. The drapes were drawn, and all three chairs had vanished.

  When the worst twinges subsided I rose and picked my way over to the basin. The mirror above it assured me that bruises turn green. A nasty one had slid down my left cheek. My hair stood up in cranky curls. I took my hairbrush to it, dabbed on a bit of lipstick, and smoothed my blouse. The sling still pinioned my left arm. I was wearing jeans, and I didn't bother to put on slippers. My feet were bandaged anyway. I padded across the flat gray carpet.

  Dad's door stood ajar. I pushed it open and stood on the threshold, blinking.

  Two men--strangers--leapt to their feet. Dad rose more slowly. Jay, who had been leaning against the far wall, straightened, and so did Ann, who was perched on the edge of the bed. All five of them stared at me as if I had caught them talking about me. I probably had.

  I blinked again. "Don't let me interrupt." I recognized one of the strangers. "Hello, Mr. Williams. I thought you were the Hambly butler."

  "I performed that office, certainly." Williams's eyes smiled behind horn-rimmed glasses. He must have had a spare pair. "Your summons
was, er, peremptory."

  The other man took a step toward me and held out his hand. "How d'ye do, I'm Henning." He was older than Jay, dark, with a slight overbite.

  I bit back the impulse to say, "I'm Dodge," and murmured something vague as we touched hands. Lord Henning's was rather cold. Ann was watching me with shining eyes. I wondered if she expected me to curtsey.

  The three men fussed, settling me into one of the chairs. Jay and Ann held off. When I was seated, Dad said, "Mr. Williams believes you should hold a press conference, Lark."

  "Me?" I gaped at him.

  Jay ruffled his mustache, hiding a grin. "He thinks the press would back off if you made a statement."

  I turned to Williams, who was sitting on my left. "That's a wonderful idea. I can see the tabloids now. 'Yank Bird Bashes Dog-killer, Leaves Stately Home in Ruins.'"

  Lord Henning gave a small cough.

  I rounded on him. "I wish I were in the Canary Islands. You were crazy to fly back."

  "Er..."

  Williams said gravely, "I'll write the statement for you, Mrs. Dodge. Something brief and unsensational."

  "Dad!"

  My father looked guilty. "I think it's a good idea, my dear."

  "You didn't see the noxious tripe they printed when Miss Beale was murdered. Tell them, Ann."

  Ann said, "I'll be with you, honey."

  "Traitor." I shut my eyes and tried to think. They were bullying me. On the other hand, the press were keeping us penned in. "All right. I'll do it." I opened my eyes. "On my terms."

  Jay didn't bother to hide his smile. The others looked relieved. Williams said, "I've prepared a rough draft, Mrs. Dodge."

  "I'm sure it's eloquent. You haven't heard my terms, yet, though."

  "What do you suggest?"

  "A joint conference tomorrow morning when Dad has had a chance to talk to Milos and my mother. Dad and Ann and I can make brief statements, and Lord Henning, too, if he's willing. You can field their questions, Mr. Williams."

  Ann was making distressed noises. Served her right.

  I said, "I won't be exhibited all by myself like some kind of freak giraffe."