‘The princess! Do I have to? Honestly, sir, I’ve seen enough of that double-dealing old fiend for a lifetime. The acting! I still can’t believe how she pulled the wool over my eyes. She knew what was going on right from the beginning. She’d always known who Anna was. She sat there and listened to the guff you made me spout without cracking a smile. She actually twisted a lock of dear dead Tatiana’s hair around her finger, sighing with emotion.’
Joe grinned. ‘And the dear, un-dead girl was hiding in the woodwork at the time. She’s awfully good, isn’t she, the Princess Rat? I sometimes wonder what she’d get up to if we didn’t have Foxton keeping a close eye on her. Oh, yes, she’s well aware,’ he added in response to a lifted eyebrow. ‘We both pretend his presence in the house is for her own safety … as indeed it is, of course. Damn dangerous place, London. And she was right to conceal Tatiana’s identity. The girl wouldn’t have lasted five minutes if it had become known.’
‘But wait a minute, sir. What was that you said about lovebirds? They, sir? Are you saying Bacchus is watching two people?’
‘Yes. What did the princess tell you? About countering a great force of hatred?’
‘She spoke of an equally great love, sir.’
‘Well there you are, then. A great love. She performed in accordance … provided same.’
‘But where do you come by such a thing at a moment’s notice? They don’t have that on the shelves at the Co-op. What’s she been up to? Are you saying she’s got a bloke lined up and given him marching orders to get aboard ship with that killer? Sir! This can’t be right!’
‘Oh, I don’t know … seems to be working. Get your hat on, Wentworth. We’ll go together to put the screws on the old girl. Find out what she’s stirring up and who it is she’s cajoled or bribed to cosy up to our Anna. I shall go on referring to her as Anna. And I want you to do the same. Remember I’ve got your signature where it counts!’
Foxton was expecting them. ‘Her Highness is up in the drawing room where she hopes you will join her in a glass of champagne,’ he said, smiling a conspirator’s smile.
The champagne was chilling in an ice bucket and a manservant was on hand to uncork, pour and offer dry French biscuits to accompany it. The princess, Joe noted, was looking very chipper. She’d chattered non-stop since they entered the room and seemed to have had a load lifted from her shoulders.
When they were all equipped with flutes of Dom Perignon she dismissed the manservant and waited for a moment, examining the bubbles. ‘A toast, Commander?’
‘Certainly. Let’s drink to Stout Cortez! And may our absent friend be struck with the same paralysing wonder when she claps eyes on the Pacific.’
‘Ah! Cortez! Now tell me — wasn’t he the Spanish gentleman who set the fashion for burning one’s boats?’ The princess dimpled and twinkled and sipped her champagne in a high good humour.
‘Indeed. I understand he set fire to his whole fleet to prevent any retreat from the New World to Europe,’ Joe confirmed with relish. ‘And a further toast to the equally stout-hearted gentleman who is at present accompanying our adventurer. I’m thinking he too deserves our good wishes. Are you ever going to tell us, Your Highness, who it was who drew the short straw?’
‘Villain!’ The princess smiled flirtatiously. If she’d had a fan she would have tapped him with it, Joe thought. ‘I’m only surprised you haven’t worked it out, Commander. He’s the best of men and now has what he’s long wanted. He would expect our congratulations. It was difficult to decide and I cannot be certain even now that I made the right choice. If I’ve got it wrong, you’re not to tell me!’
Sandilands poured out more champagne and waited.
‘Choice?’ Lily filled the silence. ‘You mean there was more than one candidate for this position?’
‘You are surprised? She is rich (I have seen to it that her affairs are in order) and lovely. There are many men in her past who would have died for her. But there was one special man, an officer in the White Army, with whom she fell in love when she was nursing. He is alive. I have kept him in focus all these years, never quite knowing whether I might need to call on him. He lives in France now … something of a wastrel it has to be said, but free. I do not enjoy playing God and I might well have done the wrong thing. I shall try to think of myself as God’s instrument,’ she said with a slight smile. ‘But I rejected him. A gambler I’m told. I take no risks with the Romanov fortune.’
Sandilands and Wentworth exchanged anxious glances and waited.
‘When Tatiana fetched up on that doorstep in Murmansk, your consul identified her correctly — indeed she made no secret of her identity to him. She declared herself and demanded protection. He knew there was a price on all Romanov heads — they were being purged all over Europe. A discreet man who had the good sense to trust no one, not even the secret services available to him, he gave her an alternative identity that she could fit into easily. That of her own dearest friend Anna Petrovna. She had heard of Anna’s death with that of her family. It was the consul who whispered in the right ears the story that the body had never been recovered — indeed, it hasn’t, but in the chaos that reigns over there, who will ever know? The consul’s wife had a bottle of black hair dye and used it to good effect to turn out a convincing Anna. The three of us — the consul, his wife and I — were the only ones who were aware of her identity. From that moment she had become in all our minds, and in her own, Anna Petrovna. And, of course, when she arrived, she slipped easily enough into English life since she spoke English as her first language, albeit with a strong Scottish accent.’
‘I think I might have noticed that,’ said Lily, drily. ‘The last words you hear before you die tend to make an impression.’
‘The children all spoke thus. When young they conversed solely with their nannies and the upper servants — all of whom were brought in by the Empress from Edinburgh where, she’d been told, the best English was spoken.’ The princess smiled. ‘Elocution lessons in later years failed to eradicate it.’
‘There was more to her disguise than hair dye and a Scottish accent,’ said Lily. ‘The appalling story about the baby and the sufferings in the Siberian village — was that also a deceit?’
The princess shook her head sadly. ‘No. That was her own experience. She merely told the truth, but as if it had happened to Anna. She related her hideous tale bit by bit to the captain of the frigate that brought her back to England. Told him everything. She trusted this officer, grew very close to him, I believe. He is the one man who knows the depths of her degradation, is aware of the violence and anger she clutches to her and understands it. The one man who can love her.’
‘Except that he can’t,’ Sandilands objected, remembering. ‘Swinburne. Navy man. Married, I understand.’
‘Was. No longer, Commander. His wife died of the influenza last year. He immediately took advantage of the reduction in the naval service to resign his commission, to everyone’s surprise, and set off into Europe. To travel about and lose himself, no doubt. As men of a certain age with certain concerns do. I didn’t let him go. I have always taken an interest in the good captain, though he was becoming ever more difficult to track. Luckily he was in France latterly, where they know how to keep a record of visiting foreigners. And if you know the right man at the top of the right department — and I do — you can find someone without much difficulty.’
‘And he came when you whistled? He’s there with her now, out on the Atlantic? Swinburne?’ Sandilands could not disguise his concern.
‘Ah! You do not like to think that a fellow English officer has been sacrificed in this way?’ The princess’s good humour was wearing thin. ‘No sacrifice involved, believe me. I say again: he loves her. Now, let’s finish the champagne and congratulate ourselves on lives saved and a love affair rekindled.’
* * *
‘Just as well we put off that trip to the Riviera, sir. She’d have us tracked every inch of the way,’ Lily grumbled as they left.
>
‘Probably. Formidable organization she’s running, right in my bailiwick. I sometimes think she regards me as a not entirely to be trusted Steward to the Household. Useful in his way but better kept under close supervision. Not the sort of policing I was offered.’
‘Not the kind of policing I’m used to either. And not the kind the Chief Constable exposes his girls to in Lancashire, I bet,’ was Lily Wentworth’s summary as they entered Sandilands’ office.
‘I quite agree,’ was his easy response. ‘You’ve every right to feel tetchy. Life-threatening situations experienced twice in a week … consorting with murderers, spies, fornicators and bogus clergymen — enough to try any girl’s nerve. I quite understand. Well, just write up your notes, will you, sign your forms and you can be off. It is the weekend after all. So good of you to agree to stay on. Remember to charge your hours at the overtime rate. Look — I’ve had a campaign desk put over there for you to use.’ He pointed to a small, spindly piece of furniture. ‘It’s very much in your style, Wentworth. Light and manoeuvrable. And it folds, you see. When you’ve done with it, you can just leave it out of sight behind the door.’
He whisked off to the ops room without saying goodbye, leaving her alone.
She’d been busy for an hour, recording the last of her comings and goings and filling in claim forms. She lingered for a while, checking her work, expecting him to dash back in at any moment. But he didn’t appear.
When she could find nothing further to do, she folded up her desk and propped it against the wall behind the door. Lightly manoeuvred out of sight. Out of mind. She took her papers to his desk and left them in a neat pile. As an afterthought, she found her unopened resignation envelope still under its paperweight and placed it on top of the pile. She waited a little longer, hands shaking, eyes staring but seeing nothing, recognizing this paralysis for what her father had described as the bleak emptiness that follows the high tumult of action. He’d tried once to express it in a painting and at last she understood the emotion behind the leaden greys of his canvas. And this numbness was the forerunner of the moment when feeling returned — the moment when you realized you’d taken a hit. And it hurt like hell.
She went off back down the deserted stairs.
The duty sergeant in the vestibule saw her and called her back just as she reached the door.
‘Constable Wentworth? Is that you? Hard to tell when you’re not in uniform. Cor! Nearly missed you, sneaking off like that. Got something ’ere for you. Left at the desk.’
He reached under the counter, clanged a foot on a bucket and produced with an amused flourish a lavish and violently coloured bunch of flowers, their dripping wet stalks wrapped in brown paper.
‘Lovely, i’n’t they? Hope you like orange, miss? Not to everybody’s taste, p’raps. My grandfather grows these on his allotment. ’E were pleased to spare them for a lovely lady. Oh, an’ the guv said as I was to draw your attention to the card what’s in there.’
Lily hurried down to the Embankment before she took the card from its small envelope. In runic script, the words were very clear: These are called Tiger Lilies, I believe, on account of their striped boldness. I have a good deal of respect for tigers, miss. The most formidable ones I encountered in India hunted as a pair.
The words ran over on to the back: Sharpen your claws and present yourself here at 9 on Monday. There’s something else you can help me with. JS.
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The Blood Royal djs-9 Page 38
