She stared again through the window at the rain-distorted figure of the young man waiting for her under the canopy above his petrol pumps. She was deluding herself again, of course: breaking a direct instruction, and using a foreign intelligence service to do it, wasn’t on a par with breaking school rules, as posted on the assembly hall notice-board for all to see. (Everyone must keep to the LEFT in corridors and on staircases, and Forms must move in single file.) It was big time stuff, like being caught with a boy in the shrubbery, deshabillee, which needed no written rules to indicate the likely punishment.
So, once they’d added two and two together it would be bread-and-water for some unspecified period, and then out on her shell-like ear, and back to her widow’s pension with a framed copy of the Official Secrets Act, the relevant passages heavily underlined in red.
Unless, of course, it was Colonel Butler himself who was by then in charge of hiring and firing.
Irony, irony … all she had to do was to give him a clean bill of health. And although she could argue—and it was true—that she was only making contact with David Audley because it was the truth she was after, it was also true that the truth she was very much predisposed to uncover would give Colonel Butler his promotion, his Ring of Power.
She snapped her bag shut and stepped out briskly into the rain.
* * *
The young man looked at her with undisguised curiosity now: he was bursting to ask her about the souped-up engine under the bonnet.
‘I’ve checked the oil, it’s okay.’ He rubbed his hands on his bit of rag. ‘And the tyres—they’re okay too…’
‘Thank you.’ Frances stared at him discouragingly. The final irony would be for the promoted Colonel Butler to decide—being the man he was—that however grateful he might be for her disobedience he couldn’t possibly overlook such unstable behaviour, such unreliability, in one of his agents. And a female agent too, by God!
‘I—I’ve filled her up, too.’ He was nerving himself to pop some sort of question.
‘Fourteen gallons—or just under fourteen and a quarter, actually.’
That was at least six gallons more than the normal tank of this make of small family car was designed to take, Frances computed. The only car they’d had spare when the Colonel had banished her from the university had been a tailing special, she’d known that the moment she put her foot down on the accelerator, though without any particular gratitude. But now it was certainly a convenient vehicle to possess.
‘Thank you.’ She looked through him as she felt in her purse for a tip. Twenty pence would be enough, but a Honda Four-hundred-four sounded expensive, and he’d remember her whatever she gave him, so … say, fifty, because he was so beautiful.
‘Could I have my receipt, please.’
‘Oh … yes, of course!’ He blushed becomingly too. ‘Thank you very much.’
‘There’s a Colonel Butler who lives just outside the village. Brookside House, I think the name is?’
‘Brookside House … ?’ Either the fifty-pence piece, or the engine, or the foxy lady Fitzgibbon seemed to have dried up his mouth.
‘Colonel Butler. Brookside House.’
‘Yes.’ He nodded quickly. ‘Runs a Rover—a yellow Rover. And … he’s got a daughter…’
His eyes glazed again, exactly as they had done for the Honda Four-hundred-four. If that was for Diana Butler, she must be quite a dish, thought Frances.
‘Three daughters.’
‘Yes. Three daughters—Brookside House.’ He focused on her briefly, and then pointed down the road towards the houses. ‘You go straight through the village, and then bear left at the junction, down the Sandford road, towards the motorway. It’s about half a mile on, all by itself, with a long drive to the house, on the edge of the woods—you can’t miss it.’
‘Thank you.’
She wanted to give him a smile, to leave him with something that was really hers, but her mouth wouldn’t obey orders, and there was no more time. The wipers swept the screen clear, but when she looked back in the mirror the first of the dead elms had blanked him out of sight, and she was alone again in her shadow country.
CHAPTER 9
TWENTY-FOUR hours earlier, before she had studied the edited highlights of the file on Colonel Butler, Brookside House would have ambushed Frances with surprise, even shock.
Now, of course, the opulent rhododendron tangles at its gateway and the manicured quarter-mile of gravel drive between trimly-fenced horse paddocks amounted to no more than a gloss on the file, computed at compound interest over the years since Captain Butler, sole beneficiary (no relative) of General Sir Henry Chesney, had capitalised on his inheritance.
The mathematics of the scene confirmed her previous estimate: Chesney and Rawle’s had been an old-established, deeply-entrenched and almost disgracefully prosperous business, which had been sold when the pound was still something to conjure with (which was when little Frances Warren had been not long out of her push-chair). Even allowing for the depredations of a quarter of a century’s taxation and inflation, and throwing in a full-time gardener and maybe a stableboy with nannie and the school fees of the last ten years, and adding them all to Brookside House, which had been purchased when the Colonel—then the Major—had finally quit his regiment… subtracting all this (and the running costs of Madeleine Francoise de Latour d’Auray Boucard) from the Chesney-Butler inheritance and there would hardly be a scratch in it, much less a dent.
The drive curved ahead, alongside a stable block. A horse poked its head out of a loose-box, returning her frown incuriously.
Add horses to the list … although of all people Colonel Butler was no horseman, surely … but add horses, nevertheless.
Still only a scratch, not a dent.
The daughters, then. Obviously the daughters. For girls the horse was as potent a symbol of power and glory as the motor-cycle was for boys—as the Honda Four-hundred-four was for that magnificent young man on the petrol pumps.
Quadruple garage ahead, beyond another great rhododendron jungle, and a collection of cars to be categorised: Nannie’s Allegro in one open garage, under cover; a Police panda, white and pale blue; a gleaming Marina and another gleaming Marina, with close registration marks—both smelling of the Fuzz too, CID and Special Branch, for a guess … by their cars shall ye know them!
In a way, it wasn’t just a disappointment, it was a surprise, all this. And it wasn’t simply that it was hard to adjust Colonel Butler to this state of wealth and comfort which had not come to him either by right of birth or as the spoils of success, but rather that the product of it all—this house, this property, that horse—was not Butler.
Simply, but inexplicably, they cast the wrong shadow from her sharp memory of the man.
Colonel Butler—her Colonel Butler—was not stockbroker mock-Tudor and horse-paddocks. He was solid Victorian red brick, gabled and respectable and rooted in all the lost certainties of the nineteenth century, when the sun never set on his flag. His house, his true house, would be a house with good bone structure and secrets of its own, not a thing like this, with no past and no future, but only an endless ephemeral present.
This wasn’t his house, it was her house—Madeleine Francoise’s house—out of which she had stepped, across this gravel, down that drive, on to that road, to nowhere, nine years ago, almost to the very day if not to the actual hour.
‘Mrs … Fisher?’
She had caught the footfall crunch on the gravel behind her. It had been more important to think that thought through than to turn towards the sound. Now she could come back to it later.
Fisher was careless of them. Here, where she could be remembered and described by Nannie, she could only be herself.
Nannie.
Mrs Elizabeth Mary Hooker, S.R.N., widow of Regimental Sergeant-Major Alfred Charles Hooker, Royal Mendip Borderers (killed in action, Korea 1951).
Nannie.
‘Yes.’ She felt inside her bag for the Fisher cre
dentials.
He studied them only briefly, because he had already stared his fill at her, taking in face and colouring, height and weight.
‘Geddes, Mrs Fisher. Detective-Sergeant, Special Branch.’
She took her details back from him, and his own. He was short for a copper, and long-haired, and swarthy enough to pass for a Pakistani. Which, all of it, might be not without its Special Branch uses, reasoned Frances.
Thank you, madam.’ The dark eyes were bright with intelligence, assessing her but not stripping her. Storing her away for future references, too.
‘But … for today’s purposes I shall be Mrs Fitzgibbon, Mr Geddes.’ Because she liked the look of him, and also because she needed him on her side, she smiled at him carefully, without opening her lips. ‘Colonel Butler already knows me as Mrs Fitzgibbon.’
‘Very good, Mrs Fitzgibbon.’
‘You’ve met Colonel Butler?’
‘Yes, madam. In the way of routine, that is. Not today, of course.’
Like her own cottage, this was a house on the list. Which meant that the Special Branch would have checked out its security and the Uniform Branch would keep an eye on it, regularly but unobtrusively, day by day. In the way of routine.
She nodded. ‘Tell me about the break-in.’
‘Nothing to worry you.’ He smiled white teeth at her. ‘That’s my guess, anyway … for what it’s worth.’
‘Yes?’
‘Small time job. No precise information—just looking for money and jewellery.’ He nodded over his shoulder towards the house. ‘This is the sort of place where it’s usually lying around for the taking … easy pickings nowadays. Except that the Colonel doesn’t leave it lying around, except on the walls.’
‘On the walls?’
‘Some nice water-colours. Samuel Atkins, Copley Fielding, Paul Sandby … a couple of William Callows … a Labruzzi, rather a striking one. And the Turner, of course…’
‘A Turner?’ She was torn between surprise at his appreciation of art—a rather striking Labruzzi—and this new insight into Colonel Butler, whom she could no more place in an art gallery, catalogue in hand, than she could on a horse, bridle in hand. ‘You mean, J. M.
W. Turner?’
‘Only a minor drawing.’ He bobbed his head. ‘But very nice of its kind—the only thing of substantial value in the house. The only thing I’d take. Only not to get rid of.
Probably too difficult to hock anyway … not rich enough for the hot market, but still easily traceable. Not worth the risk, in fact.’
Her surprise had adjusted itself. There was no reason why a copper shouldn’t know his art, and no reason why Colonel Butler shouldn’t collect, with his money. It was no more surprising—rather, much less surprising—than Robbie’s obsession with fairy stories.
Her nails dug into her palms. Why, just since yesterday, was she continually thinking of Robbie?
‘Was anything taken?’
‘So far as we can make out … three christening mugs—modern silver. One carriage clock, gilt. One transistor radio, plastic … Just small stuff, like the other places.’
‘The other places?’
‘Didn’t they tell you—no? This is one of three. The other two down the road, over Sandford way—‘ He pointed ‘—same sort of jobs: all done between eight and nine-thirty this morning, when the kids were being taken to school. Then the mothers went on to do a bit of shopping … here it was the housekeeper … and when they came home the back door had been forced. The other two places chummy found some cash—not much—and a bit of costume jewellery in one.9 He shook his head. ‘He didn’t do very well for himself at all.’
‘I see.’ Frances exhibited relief which was only partly feigned. In fact the department’s resident break-in artist, if there was such a person, seemed to have done quite nicely at short notice. ‘So it looks like a local job, then?’
He nodded. ‘That’s what the DI thinks, and I can see no reason to disagree.’
‘Nobody saw anything?’
‘Not a thing, so far. Each of the houses backs on to woods—he almost certainly came in that way, specially here, with the long drive. Plenty of cover at the back, and it’s only half a mile from the side road to Winslow. Most likely a local boy with local knowledge.
So … nothing to worry you, Mrs Fitzgibbon.’
She smiled at him. ‘I think you’re right, Mr Geddes.’ To one smile add a small sigh and a pinch of resignation. ‘But I shall have to go over the place all the same.’
He cocked his head interrogatively, not quite frowning. ‘Is that really necessary, in the circumstances?’
‘Probably not, in the circumstances. But Colonel Butler is engaged in extremely sensitive work and we haven’t been able to contact him yet. So … he’s entitled to the full treatment.’
There wasn’t much he could say to that, still less object to. Every service looked after its own vulnerable next-of-kin, and their service particularly, as a matter of security as well as routine commonsense enlightenment. And when something was actually amiss the job couldn’t be skimped, he should know that.
All the same, there was no percentage in seeming to teach him to suck eggs, a woman who did that in a man’s world only encouraged chauvinism. A little calculated femininity paid better dividends.
She spread the smile. ‘Besides, the Colonel’s by way of being my boss most of the time. When he sees my signature on the release he’ll talk to his housekeeper, and if I haven’t impressed her with my devotion to duty I shall be cast into the outer darkness.’
‘Ah! That does make a difference—I take your point, of course.’ The corner of his mouth twitched. ‘I didn’t know that you were … acquainted with the lady.’
Frances regarded him curiously. ‘I’m not.’
‘You’re not? Ah … well, then—‘ he gestured towards the house ‘—I’d better not keep you from your duty, Mrs Fitzgibbon.’
He hadn’t produced any of the reactions she’d expected, thought Frances as she walked beside him to the iron-studded mock-Tudor door in the mock-Tudor porch. In fact, except for the momentary twitch, he hadn’t produced any reactions at all, expected or unexpected.
The heavy door was ajar, opening for her at the touch of his fingers on it. Beyond it, the entrance hall was high and spacious, with a great carved oak staircase dominating it, and gloomy in the November overcast except for the high-gloss polish of the parquet floor and the stair treads, which reflected a daylight hardly apparent outside. Frances corrected her first impression: not so much mock Tudor as Hollywood Tudor, art imitating art.
All it needed for an echo of Rebecca was the beautiful Mrs Butler on the staircase. But the woman on the staircase certainly wasn’t the beautiful Mrs Butler.
Frances stood her ground as Nannie—it could only be Nannie—advanced toward her. It struck her as odd that she should feel she was holding her ground, but that was how she felt.
Then, as her eyes grew accustomed to the gloom, she knew that it wasn’t odd at all, her instinct had simply been ten paces ahead of her eyesight.
Nannie wasn’t much above average height, and she wasn’t fat either, but she was … solid. Her battleship-grey twin-set matched the colour of her hair, and her hair matched the colour of her eyes. A large nose dominated her face: she levelled the nose at Frances and stared down it with all the friendliness of a gamekeeper come upon a poacher in the covert.
Frances opened her mouth in the hope that the right words would come out of it.
‘I have absolutely nothing to say to you,’ said Nannie pre-emptively. The grey eyes flicked up and down Frances once, then nose and eyes swung towards Detective-Sergeant Geddes. ‘You gave me to understand, constable, that you would not tell the local newspaper anything about this.’
‘Yes, Mrs Hooker -‘
‘Indeed, you promised. You gave a positive undertaking -‘
‘I’m not a reporter,’ said Frances.
The nose came back to her. Nannie pee
red towards her, sighting her at point-blank range. ‘No? Well, you are exactly like the young woman who misreported me at the last parish council meeting.’ She scrutinised Frances’s face again, then her suit. ‘You still look like her … but you are better dressed, it’s true … Hmm! Then if you are not a reporter—what are you?’
‘My name is Fitzgibbon -‘
‘You are not a policewoman. You are far too little to be a policewoman.’
Detective-Sergeant Geddes cleared his throat. ‘Mrs Hooker -‘
‘You are not too young to be a policewoman—and you are not that girl who misreported me, I can see that now, she was much younger…’ Nannie conceded the point on the basis other own scrutiny, not on their denials. ‘You are older than you look too. It’s in the eyes, your age is. Old eyes in a young face, that’s what you’ve got. And also—‘ She stopped suddenly.
‘Mrs Hooker, this is Mrs Fitzgibbon, from London—from the Colonel’s department.’
Geddes seized his chance. ‘She’s the person we’ve been waiting for, that I told you about.’
‘What?’ Nannie frowned at him, then at Frances.
‘I’m a colleague of Colonel Butler’s,’ said Frances.
Disbelief supplanted the frown. ‘A colleague?’
‘A subordinate colleague,’ Frances softened the claim.
Nannie transferred the disbelieving look to Geddes. ‘You didn’t say it would be a woman,’ she accused him. ‘I expected a man.’
Like master, like housekeeper, concluded Frances grimly: Colonel Butler and Mrs Hooker had the same ideas about the natural order of things. Perhaps that coincidence of prejudice had been an essential qualification for the job nine years ago, when he had been casting around for someone to take charge of his motherless girls.
So now, although Nannie obviously disliked having policemen tramp over her highly-polished floors almost as much as she hated thieves, she might just have tolerated one of her employer’s colleagues—any of his colleagues except this one, who added insult to injury by being the wrong shape and size.
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