‘You must go and thank him, Kitty.’ With the cool edge towards Marcus back in her voice she added, ‘He probably still feels guilty. Go and forgive him.’
Kitty woke up at last. ‘Thank you, Thomas. I’ll come right away and see him.’ Still holding the flower basket, she fled the room.
Fifteen
He was waiting for her in the hall. He stepped forward, resisting the urge to take her in his arms, which would have shocked a girl as well brought up as she had been – or even to kiss her gently on the cheek, which would not have been comme il faut either – and instead took her hand quite correctly. He did, however, keep hold until she herself withdrew it.
She was still flushed. ‘Thank you so much for the flowers. They are beautiful.’
‘It’s my pleasure,’ he said, his face unsmiling. ‘Will you sit down and talk to me? And forgive me for not coming round before?’
‘Of course.’
She was in deep mourning, which only enhanced the translucency of her skin, and the soft blondeness of her hair. The gleam of amusement, and sometimes mischief, was sadly absent now from her eyes. Dark, well-defined brows lent emphasis and character to her face, adding up to something far more than mere prettiness, and all the more appealing because she wasn’t aware of it. He suspected she might always have felt herself eclipsed by Lydia’s vibrant looks, although she and her mother had been sufficiently different for there to have been no danger of that ever happening. No doubt her Aunt Ursula was exaggerating when she had lightly remarked one day that Kitty was all set to take London society by storm when she came out – but whether it was an exaggeration or not, she would not have been short of admirers, that was for sure. She had been deprived of all that by what had happened, pitched into a sort of limbo – but he knew instinctively that she had left being a girl behind that moment on Sunday when the police had entered this house. Still grave and contained today, she looked around now for somewhere to put the flowers she was holding. Having found a space on the window sill, she gently tucked a sprig of fern in the basket into place. He noticed her glance briefly out of the window as she raised her head, then stiffen and abruptly turn her back, fingering the only piece of jewellery she wore, the jet mourning brooch at the neck of her dress. Where did women get these things? Did they have them all ready for any such eventuality? Probably. Death, sudden or otherwise, was not after all such a rare occurrence, even in these enlightened times. But dear God, no one could have envisaged one such as this!
‘I noticed someone I took to be a member of the press hanging around as I came in. Is he still lurking? And do you want me to go out and deal with him?’ he asked, looking and feeling quite capable of it.
‘It would be a waste of time. They just come back. We’re news just now but they’ll get tired of us presently.’
An awkward silence fell. This was not going to be the kind of conversation they had ever had when he was waiting for Lydia to put in an appearance, nor could it be, ever again. Conventional murmurs of sympathy, the anodyne phrases used at such times need not be repeated; they had been said on Sunday, and in any case that wasn’t what he was here for today. There were other things that needed to be said. ‘Have the police been here again?’ he asked.
‘Yes. They spoke to all of us.’
‘And what did they tell you?’
‘Nothing! They told us nothing. All they wanted to do was to ask us questions about Mama and any connections she had with those Russian refugees who are causing so much trouble. The inspector – I think he suspects she sympathised with them. Which is absolute nonsense. Isn’t it?’ She searched his face with troubled eyes. ‘You do believe that, don’t you?’
Eventually he said, as carefully as if treading on eggshells, ‘I do believe, Kitty, that she might have got herself mixed up in something she didn’t fully understand.’
‘I’m sorry, I don’t see what you mean.’
‘Sit down. Please sit down.’ He waved her to a chair, sat down opposite and leaned forward, elbows on his knees. ‘I came to know your mother quite well over these last few months. I don’t for one moment believe there was anything – underhand – in what she was doing—’
‘In what she was doing? Underhand?’ she repeated. ‘What’s all this?’
Instead of answering, he sprang up and took a stance before the fireplace, its empty grate hidden behind a huge, colourful and lavishly embroidered fire screen, where he stood with his hands clasped – almost clenched – behind him. The silence extended, broken by the longcase clock in the corner striking the hour in an effortful sort of way, running down because Louis had neglected to give his clocks their usual weekly attention. He glanced at it impatiently then came back, sat down again. ‘I have things to tell you,’ he began. ‘Most of which you are not going to like, I’m afraid. But – they have to be said.’ Without waiting for her assent, he added, ‘It’s a long story.’
‘There’s no hurry, that I can see.’ She was not smiling.
He took a deep breath, afraid he might gabble once started, but although he felt a distinct chill in the air, she listened mainly in silence as he nerved himself to explain as best he could, without excusing himself in any way, knowing that when she’d heard everything, she would never look at him with the same eyes again.
Still he hesitated, then plunged. It seemed a crude way of beginning, but perhaps as good a way as any. ‘Three months ago, I didn’t even know your mother existed …’
After returning from a long and strenuous ride that February morning, he had found his father entertaining a visitor – none other than the Home Secretary, Mr Winston Churchill. Although he was now retired, Sir Aiden still had friends, colleagues and connections within the Foreign Office and as an experienced diplomat his advice and opinions were often sought. Marcus suspected that his father was still more of a power behind the scenes than he would ever admit. Urbane and affable, accustomed to social interaction, he often entertained people from his former life, but Churchill was not someone Marcus had met before.
The three of them had taken lunch together and afterwards, in his father’s study, in an atmosphere heavy with rich cigar smoke, it was made known that a proposition was to be put to Marcus. He assumed that Sir Aiden’s years of diplomacy would ensure a reasonable discussion of whatever was to come, but in fact his father had discreetly left Marcus alone with Mr Churchill, pleading a pressing need to consult the builders who were presently working on a section of the roof. The Home Secretary was a man full of charm and wit, not to say charisma, plus a bulldog determination to succeed, and a boyish enthusiasm for becoming personally involved in anything that was engaging him. He was at present locked in combat with the suffragettes over their demands for the right to vote, though that problem didn’t seem to be on his mind just then; in his official capacity his avowed intention was to get to the bottom of, and eradicate, the present trouble caused by the murderous gangs of foreign anarchists who were terrorising the East End of London. Despite his urbanity he was evidently rattled by the situation, though he avoided any mention of the strong criticism he was under for putting in a personal appearance at the now infamous siege in Sidney Street. That subject had been made very public and by now no one could have been unaware of the storm it had raised. Pertinent questions had been asked in the House as to why the Home Secretary had felt it necessary to join the soldiers and police already there at the scene, why he had endeavoured to take part in directing operations, and had even commandeered ordnance to be sent from the Tower of London.
However, Marcus now learnt from him, it was believed in certain quarters that that particular anarchist gang had not been working alone, that there were people of influence behind them, possibly British citizens who sympathised with their aims. The intelligence amassed over the business had thrown up several names and all were being followed up. Was it the disapproval of Churchill’s behaviour at the siege, considered inappropriate and interfering, Marcus asked himself later, that was causing him to justify h
imself by having even the most unlikely leads pursued?
The man himself had not seen his arrival at Sidney Street that snowy January day as anything untoward. In his younger days he had been a man of action, a brave soldier who had taken arms against Afghan tribes on the North West Frontier, fought Dervishes in the Sudan. He had been a newspaper correspondent in the war with the Boers, where he’d been captured as a prisoner of war while defending an armed train, had escaped and returned home a war hero, thereafter entering Parliament. He had written several books on his experiences. At the end of last year he’d been attacked, personally, by a militant suffragette wielding a whip. He was still only thirty-seven.
At first Marcus didn’t believe the man was in earnest about what he was asking him to do: the proposition made to him seemed not only simplistic but slightly bizarre, so preposterous it might have come out of the Boy’s Own Paper. Except that it wasn’t in the honourable tradition and moral principles of the Boy’s Own Paper stories. To put it bluntly, it was not playing a straight game. In fact, Marcus was damned if he would act as lapdog to a bored society woman (Lydia Challoner, a name unknown to him then) while at the same time keeping an eye on her and reporting on what she did and whom she met, simply on the off-chance that she might be up to something suspect – and only on the flimsy pretext of her origins, it seemed. If she had been acting suspiciously, Marcus thought cynically, it was more than likely there was a lover somewhere in the wings. Moreover, he was apparently expected to accept what had been put to him without question, which obscurely irritated him. After a while, it occurred to him to wonder if it was some sort of test: if he came through this well, he would be offered more in the same vein. ‘If I am not mistaken, you are asking me to spy on this woman, sir,’ he said outright.
Churchill had looked as pained as if Marcus had committed a social gaffe.
But you did not lightly refuse the Home Secretary, especially if he happened to be Mr Winston Churchill. Marcus began to feel himself no match for the combination of his eloquent, persuasive and forceful arguments and the intimation that it was his father’s desire he should comply with the suggestion. That was how it had been couched: a suggestion that he was at liberty to refuse if he wished; he was not under any obligation to agree. But of course, it was in the national interest that everyone should do what they could to root out all these troublemakers; it was one’s patriotic duty to do all one could to assist the authorities.
In the end, it was that which had clinched it. His conscience, his patriotism, his humanity, were stirred despite himself. That, and the impulsive streak in his nature that said what the hell? Persuaded that in any case, until he had made up his mind about his future, anything was better than kicking his heels at Loddhurst or wasting his time on pursuits in town that increasingly had no point.
‘It goes without saying that you will keep this under your hat.’ The faint smile masked a steely glint in the Home Secretary’s eyes.
He was told little more about the object of his potential attention, except that she had been deeply attached to her Russian father, a man named Nikolai Sergeivich Kasparov, who had lived for many years in this country, a disciple of the notorious Peter Kropotkin and one in the vanguard of the seemingly endless struggle for his own country’s freedom. Well, Marcus had shrugged, what had he to lose by making himself agreeable to an attractive woman, escorting her around, noting what she did and with whom she associated?
The weight of the argument had prevailed but although his heart was not altogether in it, he set himself out to do what was expected of him and acquaint himself with Lydia Challoner.
It was easy enough to contrive an introduction. Southfields, the house where Mrs Challoner’s sister-in-law, Lady Devenish, lived was not above twenty miles from Loddhurst, making them pretty near neighbours. Sir Aiden had been well acquainted with Ursula in their youth, and he threw a party to celebrate the recent improvements he’d made at Loddhurst, to which he invited all the local gentry. At the party Marcus had made himself agreeable to Lady Devenish, reminding her that as a young boy he had been invited to her children’s parties at Southfields on the rare occasions when Sir Aiden and he had made visits home to Loddhurst. She was charming to him (she had an unmarried daughter, Bridget, of course) and invited him to call on her when she went to stay with her brother and sister-in-law in London for the coming out of her niece.
When he eventually met Lydia, they got along famously, mainly due to their shared interest in all things Russian and his ability to converse with her in her father’s native language. Nikolai had always spoken to his daughter in Russian, with the result that she had grown up bilingual, and Marcus’s sojourn in St Petersburg had made him not only fairly fluent in the elegant French the aristocracy used but also, following his father’s example, in the native Russian they so despised. Their mutual interest in literature and the great Russian novelists also helped to form an immediate bond between them, and after that it was plain sailing.
Yet he had constantly wondered what he was doing, wasting his time escorting her to aimless social pursuits. And increasingly, he began to feel a downright hypocrite, though by then he would have found it difficult to extricate himself. He had been warmly accepted by the family as well as by Lydia – Louis no doubt because Marcus was willing to ride with his wife and occasionally escort her to occasions which he himself found tedious, and Ursula who had her own motives in fostering his interest in Bridget (though she must soon have seen that she need not trouble herself on that score).
The main reason Marcus didn’t extricate himself was because he did not want to. A complication he had never anticipated had arisen: he had met Kitty, Lydia’s daughter. And after that, there was no question of abandoning the Challoners.
Now, when he thought of how he might possibly, though entirely inadvertently, have contributed to her mother’s death, his heart misgave him. In the light of something he had recently witnessed, and then, incredibly, her murder, he unwillingly had to allow that he might just possibly have been mistaken in Lydia, that she really might have had connections with those fanatical Russian émigrés … In which case, had her association with Marcus himself caused them to assume she was betraying them, and they had therefore shot her? Worse than that was the thought that the shooting might have been done by one of those who were ranged against the anarchists and all those who were in league with them, that some sort of double deal had been set up … nothing was impossible, as he had been brought up to know, in the dark world of spying and intrigue that surrounded the seeking out of such people.
Realistically, he knew he could not have prevented the tragedy, yet still felt obscurely to blame. He couldn’t dismiss from his mind the feeling that he ought somehow to have protected Lydia. He could only take comfort in the fact that he’d given nothing away because he had found absolutely nothing whatever about her to give away.
Or nothing until recently, and nothing he would have revealed to anyone else.
There was a silence from Kitty when he had finished his story. Understandably. He knew it had been an abject confession which apologies could do nothing to lessen.
‘Who are they, these people who wanted you to spy on her …?’ she asked at last. ‘You are saying that they suspected her of … of …’ She could not find words to continue.
‘Of nothing, or not in any specific way. The Home Office don’t seem to need suspicions. They’re willing to grasp at straws in their war against the anarchists. I think they’re watching anyone at all likely to have the remotest connections with them. In the same way, I don’t think for a moment I was specially chosen. I just happened to be at a loose end when the Home Secretary came to see my father, and that was all. Spying – or reporting – on her. Where’s the difference? You’ve every right to despise me, Kitty.’
She looked at him steadily, silently, neither agreeing nor denying it. ‘You were following your conscience,’ she said at last.
‘If I was, look where it led! Oh, I haven
’t acquitted myself well over this, but I did it of my own free will – so enough of excuses. Is it too much to ask you to try and understand, if not forgive me?’
Her smile was strained. ‘Let’s say no more of it, Marcus.’
‘Except – let me say one thing – there was no reporting, you know. In the first place because there was nothing to tell – and … well, I found I couldn’t. She had become a friend. And besides – she was your mother, Kitty.’ His voice took on a deeper note and suddenly he reached out and took hold of both her hands, raised them to his lips – to the devil with propriety, it was too late for that!
She didn’t shrink from him.
‘You have a forgiving nature, but I …’ He pulled himself together. ‘No doubt I shall recover.’
Kitty walked over to the window and nudged the curtain to one side. ‘He seems to have gone, that reporter,’ she said absently. After a while she came back to where he still stood beside the fireplace and sat down on the sofa that was set at an angle to it. ‘I have something to say, too.’ She hesitated. ‘You said there was nothing to tell – about Mama – but that’s not quite true, is it? No, please don’t pretend, Marcus, I know there was. I saw it myself.’ Her hands twisted tightly together, she went on, ‘I know she was meeting – someone. She forgot that my bedroom window overlooks the square garden, and when the trees are bare … My window isn’t the only one on that side of the house, either. Anyone else might have seen.’ They had kissed. ‘It was not – very discreet of her, was it?’
Lydia had never been that. Not at all. Even as she spoke, it flashed once more through his mind, that day, a miserably wet and blustery morning, more reminiscent of autumn than spring, just before the present heatwave had set in.
He had arranged to meet her at Burlington House, at the Royal Academy, for a new, much-talked-of exhibition of Byzantine art. He was early and wandered through the various rooms, killing time, prepared for the usual wait before she arrived. Reaching the gallery where the exhibition was held he saw that Lydia, never before on time, was already there, sitting next to a man on one of the central seats provided. Hands clasped, they were talking, her eyes never leaving his face. After a while, something passed between them – a book, some sort of parcel, Marcus was too far away to see either shape or size – which she had taken from the large leather bag hanging over her wrist on a long strap. They sat for about ten minutes in earnest conversation while Marcus hovered out of sight near the entrance and then Lydia touched the man’s cheek gently with her fingertips, and he was gone. Marcus would not easily forget the glow, the unmistakable expression on her face of a woman in love. He turned and also left the exhibition room, to return by a roundabout route ten minutes later at the appointed time for their meeting, ready with a joke about her being there first for once.
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