by Kay Kenyon
“Since Jane Babington,” Elsa said, “they’ve seconded officers from six regional crime squads to work on it, and they’re coordinating with local forces. The task force doesn’t know about Nachteule, so they aren’t pursuing the ties to Dorothea Coslett.” She looked at E. “The Security Service is sniffing about.”
“I’ll have a chat with them,” E said. “They had their chance.” With the first two murders, the Security Service had deferred to Scotland Yard since they didn’t know the counterespionage connection. It was a crime spree, as far as they knew. By the time SIS came in on it through Gustaw Bajek, it seemed best to run the operation from the intelligence side. The Security Service was weak, still building its organization after cutbacks following the war. It was hard to take them seriously.
E looked around the table. “So, how does the killer identify those with Talents?”
Elsa ventured, “Sleeper cells is one theory. People in towns and villages, activated to see who’s known to have meta-abilities, or who’s bragging about them. Someone in the Adder clubs may also be blabbing. With all these sources, the Germans could have put together a list.”
She wrote Adder clubs on the board and circled it. “These are secret Talent clubs in some of the secondary schools. With their cult of secrecy, members of the clubs don’t like to expose each other, but so far we believe that only Jane Babington and Rupert Bristow were Adders. They often self-identify by drawing a snake symbol on themselves, on the wrist or neck, so other Adders can recognize them.” She drew a wavy line with a swelling at one end and three crosshatches across the tail.
Julian nodded at Fin. “Better tell them the piece about Martin Lister.”
All eyes turned to Fin, as he related the morning’s events, including Martin’s background and charade of having a Talent. E gave Julian a skeptical look as though Kim were in trouble again. Her reputation should still be golden after the Prestwich Affair, but even Julian had to admit that this wrinkle was pure Kim Tavistock: take in a stray; make a mess of it.
E affected a look of long-suffering patience and waved Elsa to continue.
“We’re interviewing about a hundred kids involved with the Adders, but nothing of interest so far.” She paused with a cynical smile. “Maybe we should interview Martin.”
Got to find him first, Julian thought. “Adders aside, I’d like to know why our Dutchman isn’t going after bigger fish. Why would the Germans care about a fifteen-year-old girl with a Talent of attraction?”
“Maybe to make people afraid to register by striking at a vulnerable population,” Elsa said. “Or terrorize the British people into keeping their noses out of Hitler’s territorial ambitions.”
Fin snorted a laugh. “When it gets out that the Germans are behind this, we’ll have a hundred thousand blokes lining up to join the army.”
“You say our Continental partners aren’t sharing the Nachteule threat with us,” E began.
Julian interjected: “Except for my contact in Poland.”
“Yes, well then, what do you hear from him?”
“We’ve got a courier packet out to him,” Elsa said. “Nothing there yet.” She nodded at Fin to pick up the thread.
“We’re looking at Ancient Light finances and the Coslett fortune. The organization has cash assets of three quarters of a million. The Sulcliffe estate is in arrears on taxes and has no income to speak of. Dorothea Coslett has given most of her fortune away.”
“To the Germans?” E asked.
“Nachteule, for one, but we’re still tracking her Aryan charities.”
Julian added, “All of which puts Powell Coslett in a world of hurt.”
“Right enough,” Fin said. “He’s popular with the Ancient Light crowd, though, and a shoo-in to lead it when the old woman pops off.”
Elsa said, “It’s hard to see what he’d get out of murdering students.”
E turned to Julian. “You’re big on the Coslett connection. When did you say our people are going back in?”
“They’re in place now.”
Fin went on. “We’re also digging for any information on a piece of intel that Sparrow picked up from Idelle Coslett, the dowager’s sister-in-law. Flory Soames. The name was delivered in a manner that led her to the conclusion that it was important. We haven’t got a handle on the name yet.”
“His Majesty’s Government has three hundred agents and police officers working this,” E grumbled, “and after four weeks, we’ve got damn little to show for it.”
“There’s one more thing,” Julian said. He handed Owen a roll of plastic and nodded for him to go to the display board. “Ley lines.”
He’d gotten the ley line idea from Lloyd Nichol’s article on the Earth Mysteries movement that had been published by the East End Express on Wednesday. The piece was a lurid account of supernatural claims for stone rings, long barrow sites and the like in the British Isles, but the ley line idea had caught Julian’s attention.
Owen smoothed the plastic over the map of Great Britain and taped it into place. It showed an elaborate crosshatch design of straight lines. “This is a reproduction from a recent newspaper article, showing a possible network of ‘archaic tracks’ that may have been used by ancient British cultures to travel to places they considered powerful. Powerful in a spiritual sense.”
“Good God,” E muttered.
Owen hesitated at this remark, and Julian nodded for him to go on.
“The concept of ley lines cropped up in the early twenties as an archaeological term for major Neolithic routes. It seems that a mystical interpretation has attached itself, entirely discredited. Various spiritualist groups have latched on to it. They ascribe spiritual meaning to certain landscape alignments, imaginary lines connecting natural and prehistoric structures. Taking this belief into consideration, the murders may have been planned to occur on these alignments.”
He took a marker out of his breast pocket and drew a triangle in southwest England. “If you’re looking for important alignments, you can find them. For example, we have a notable geometric shape between Stonehenge, Grovely Castle, and Old Sarum, the site where the first Salisbury cathedral was built. The three lines form an equilateral triangle. Now, that’s just an example of one striking geometric shape. It’s doubtful that Neolithic cultures put stock in straight lines between widely separated landscape features, but the ley line idea has been co-opted by fringe groups.”
“Are we going somewhere with this?” E asked with elaborate politeness.
Owen pointed to the map, drawing the pointer counterclockwise. “Avebury, Portsmouth, London, Cambridgeshire, and Stourbridge in the West Midlands. We can also make two triangles with London sharing a point of each. That makes it London, Cambridgeshire, Stourbridge, and London, Portsmouth, Avebury. Or we can create a starburst pattern, setting the center point here.” He pointed to Oxfordshire.
“There’s a bit of a problem, though,” Owen said.
“A bit of one?” E said.
Owen pushed on. “The statistical probability of finding patterns of lines between geographical sites is no different than connecting the dots between, say, all the phone boxes in England. In other words, everything can be connected to everything, and can even provide rather interesting designs.”
“Then why bring it up?” E asked.
“I asked Owen to look into it,” Julian said. “If our Dutchman has a design in mind, it might be discovered by connecting our murder sites. If someone in Ancient Light has a plan for alignment, and the alignments connect our murder sites, it means that the movement can be implicated in the killings. And the motive is spiritual power.”
“So, the pattern of connecting lines might mean something to our dowager or her son,” Fin said.
“Or someone else,” Elsa chimed in.
“Or someone else,” Julian admitted. “But it brings back to the table the idea that the killer may attach mystical significance to the murder sites.”
“But why would the victims be Talents
?” E asked. “Wouldn’t any human sacrifice do?”
Julian shrugged. “Talents might seem more important. Or it could be related to German goals with the Nachteule killings.”
E shook his head, pushing back his chair. “I’m afraid you’ve got nothing. This goes nowhere, do you understand? It gets out, we’re a laughingstock.” He looked with distaste at the shapes drawn on the map. “We are not pursuing triangles and human sacrifice. We need answers. The PM wants this wrapped up before the school terms start.”
He turned to Julian. “I’ll give the Sulcliffe inquiry three more days to produce evidence. Without it, we can’t pursue the Cosletts, given that the King likes to drop in now and then on the dowager’s pagan events.” He shook his head, glancing at Owen’s map. “We need something more than wild conjecture and spiritual geometry.”
He rose from the table. “One more look at Ancient Light. Then we move on.”
“Meet me at the bridge?” Olivia had found a moment alone with Julian in the hallway outside the conference room. “I’m taking a late lunch.”
Fifteen minutes later, Julian stood on the Blue Bridge looking over the lake in St. James’s Park toward one of the most beautiful views in London: Buckingham Palace, the Horse Guards and the stacked spires and roofs of London.
He watched for Olivia on the footpath. A week before, they’d been in each other’s arms for a few hours’ reprieve from their difficulties. He hoped it had signaled an accommodation to each other’s lives, because sometimes there weren’t solutions. One had to make do. And wasn’t it a good thing that they had found each other at their stage in life?
He looked down the path toward Broadway, watching for her. Where in London, he wondered, would Martin Lister be right now? He had seemed happy at Wrenfell, after stumbling at first. Walter Babbage liked him, and certainly the womenfolk were keen on him, even Rose, with whom Martin had an easy way, as of equals, since he was a greenhorn at most practical matters, and Rose had lived on the estate all her life. He thought of E’s looming deadline. Three days to implicate the Cosletts or decamp. If it were a less prominent family, they would have by now hauled Lord Ellesmere in and interrogated him and, for the sake of the murdered students, perhaps applied a bit of pressure.
Olivia approached at last, wearing her gray-and-black plaid suit that hugged her small waist. She had that smart and focused look of a woman who got things done. His equal. It was an enormously attractive thought.
Smiling at him, she stepped to the railing and looked out on the view. The obligatory pelicans of St. James’s, four of them, hove into view from under the bridge.
“I’m sorry to hear about Martin Lister. I’m sure he’ll turn up.”
“The young idiot.” He turned to look at her. “Let’s go to lunch if you like.”
“Oh, I’ll grab something at the canteen.” The basement watering hole at Broadway.
A shadow passed across Julian’s mind. They stared at the pelicans swimming in a row as though forming up at the Horse Guards, and the silence turned leaden. He looked down to where Olivia’s hands rested on the bridge rail. A diamond ring on her left hand.
He swallowed, beating back his dismay. It was Guy Ascher. He tried to think of a gracious response when what was going to be said was said.
The pelicans sailed on, but the day had lost its color. What was there to say? How did one respond to a woman who had chosen someone else? “It’s Guy Ascher, then.”
She closed her eyes for a moment, then opened them, looking serenely at the view. “Yes.”
Surely he had steps at his disposal, something he could do. At the least, he would not disgrace himself with some bitter remark. But the more sanguine you were about it, the less you would seem to care, and only a craven man would want a woman to think she had never been wanted.
“We’re to be married,” she said.
The waiting was over; the triangle was over. The war was settled and he hadn’t even been in battle.
She gave a little laugh. “Seems silly, at my age, doesn’t it.”
“No, not silly at all.” There were little lines around her eyes, that was true, and her face could not be mistaken for a schoolgirl’s. But he thought her beautiful.
“Do you want to be married, Olivia?” It was a miserable remark, suggesting that marriage had never been a subject between them. True, they had never said “marriage,” that word.
“Yes, I suppose I do.” She went on with dreadful equanimity. “I think it’s more that I want to plan for the future and do it with someone.” She looked at him for the first time. He looked for tears or doubt. Found none.
He hated it. Hated Guy Ascher. Hated his own life, his pig-headed insistence that things were good enough as they were. They were no longer young, less so every day. He almost proposed to her at that moment, to put his hat in the ring, but of course he was not going to do that. It would be unseemly now that she was engaged and all the barriers between them remained. Guy Ascher would be her husband, and it wouldn’t matter that she still worked, for of course she would have made that a condition of the marriage.
“Julian,” she said. “Don’t be cast down. I’ve decided for both of us, because we couldn’t decide together, could we? And it doesn’t mean that I didn’t love you, because I did.” She turned back to look at the skyline of the city. “I do, even now, I will admit it. But it doesn’t matter. People live all the time with things like that. In time I’ll get over it, and so will you.”
Well then, all settled. He would get over it, thank God. He felt anger rising. He would so much rather have had a row than this bloody awful, dispassionate execution.
“You must try to be happy, Olivia” was the best he could say. But good Christ, who could stand to live with the likes of Guy Ascher?
She smiled ironically. “I will be happy. It’s a decision you make.”
“Is it?”
Her expression, he noted with satisfaction, faltered a bit. “Yes. I hope so.” She made that little laugh again. “My father said he’d like me to be married before he dies.”
“Well then, good for your old man.” He winced at himself. “That was unforgiveable, Olivia. Please pardon me.”
“Oh, Julian.” She bit her lip. “I’m just glad one of us has the honesty to be angry.” She took his hand and pressed hers into it, the one without the ring. Then she walked away, dragging his gaze with her.
26
BESELARE, BELGIUM
FRIDAY, AUGUST 28. A large orange cat pressed up against Gustaw’s pants leg, meowing with great strength.
“You must pardon Flaubert,” Auberte Cloutier said, “he thinks you have a little something for him.” She was offering lemonade, but at her advanced age of what Gustaw guessed was over ninety, it was a process of many minutes to bring glasses and the jug from the icebox.
“I am sorry, Flaubert,” Gustaw said. “I am a man without presents.”
Auberte Cloutier was thin, a birdlike woman, and short as well. She smiled coquettishly. “Ah. He likes a man who is not afraid of talking to cats.”
While the old woman fussed at the sink, Gustaw looked around the tiny flat. Framed pictures of days gone by, crocheted doilies, and leaning against the back door, an axe. Pressing against the kitchen window, a fully laden lemon tree, the fruit like molten sunlight. On the pillows, floor, and overstuffed chairs he counted four cats, three of them warmly curled upon themselves.
“How did you know that I was looking for Monsieur Verhoeven?” He had already offered to help her bring glasses, but she had pretended not to hear him.
“Everyone knows,” she said in heavily accented English. She set down two mismatched little glasses, then turned away for the pitcher. It would be another five minutes. “At the market, they said, ‘An important man is here for Dries and must speak to you, Auberte.’ ”
She made her way to the table with a pitcher and poured out his portion, golden-green with fresh lemons, but when he sipped, almost no sugar. He managed to smile.
“Thank you. Delicious.”
“People say a lemon tree, it is impossible here. Pfft. It survived the Great War.”
As she poured for herself, he drew out the brown-wrapped package and untied the string. “My daughter has this favorite . . .”
Auberte began to sit at the table, and he waited while she completed the maneuver. She sipped at her drink, her mouth the locus of a hundred tiny lines running in all directions. “It is sour, but it is good for the digestion, n’est-ce pas?”
“Oui, madame.” He took another sip for the digestion.
She pressed a hand upon the doll, which now lay unwrapped on the table, as though comforting it for its lost arm. Her eyes, watery and sharp, looked suddenly to be a stormy gray. “Dries has been on holiday this past month, so he does no work.”
That put the conversation on an awkward path. What reason could he now conjure for pursuing a repairman on holiday?
But he asked anyway. “Do you know where on holiday?”
“Non, I am sorry. You are disappointed?”
“No, madame. But the doll . . .”
She waved a hand in which the bones lay in ridges under a thin draping of skin. “The doll, missing the arm, yes. But you wish to know about Dries in any case. This is what I think. Having come all the way from . . . Poland, is it?” Gustaw shrugged, admitting it.
Flaubert was now sitting at attention and staring at him, as was Auberte.
“Does Monsieur Verhoeven have an interesting story? Since we have our lemonade, and I am not in a hurry.” He sat back, beginning to think that she saw straight through him. Some people have an instinct for the police. You are born with it, or have suffered beatings enough to spot them.
“Interesting? No, it is not interesting. Why would it be? You have driven through our country, and seen the stories all around you. Thousands of stories: how this one died, and that one, and a thousand more, ten thousand more. Some stories, they are very bad. Do you know how many ways there are to die?”
“Who can count?”
