“Is that end of discussion, or what?” asked the Prince hopefully.
Dree smiled and shook her head. “Just a clarification of the agenda,” she said. “Art, you must have thought about this a couple of times in the last nine months, even talked it over with people…?”
He shook his head vigorosly. “No,” he said. “I mean yes, I’ve thought about you, about us, day and night. But I haven’t talked about it, only with Chris. Frankly I didn’t know who I should talk about it with, not back home. The English have a strange sense of duty and I just didn’t want any more aggro from the family!”
“What did Chris say?”
“He sees no problem,” said Arthur. “He says I’m a cypher in an anachronism. Blow me away, and all that happens is nothing happens except everyone moves up a place. He has a quaint turn of phrase.”
“But that’s not how you see it?” queried Dree.
“Not quite,” answered the Prince slowly. “I wish I did. Then everything would be so easy. I don’t think I matter much, but I matter. Everything I do every working day tells me I matter, and to a hell of a lot of people.”
“Or to a system.”
“If you like,” he said. “But it’s a system I believe in. It would be easy if I didn’t, if I could see my departure from it as a blow for revolution! I don’t know, Dree. Am I being too self-important? If it was just a matter of fading quietly away, that would be fine. But I know a lot of people, my people, are going to feel themselves betrayed.”
“All the world loves a lover,” she said lightly. “Especially when there’s objection from up top. Look at Romeo and Juliet.”
“The world didn’t start loving them till they were dead,” he said somberly.
They sat in silence for a moment. Outside, unnoticed, grey clouds were beginning to roll across the sky from behind the mountains to the north and the bright day was snuggling down for an early evening. The logs burnt more brightly in the huge fireplace and the pair of them sat in the flickering light, heedless of the shadows which crowded into the corners of the long room.
“That sounds like a cue for thumbs-down,” said Dree. She felt like a drink, something she rarely did. Not that she didn’t drink, but it was only rarely that she actively felt in need of it.
“Not at all,” said Arthur. “But you wanted clarification. That’s the way my thoughts have been running. What I am, what I do, may seem daft to healthy democrats like Chris, maybe you too, but as long as my country thinks it worthwhile having special laws about people like me marrying, I’ve got to take it seriously.”
“Me too, Art,” she said. “I take it seriously. There’s no special laws touching me, but my church has its laws, and I take them pretty seriously. Also there’s the family.”
“Yes, I know. At least you’ve got all your objections concentrated in one package, your grandfather. Once the dear old chap is borne off to the Lake Isle of Innisfree or whatever, your problems are mainly over. Me, I don’t have a family, I have The Family.”
“It’s worse than that for me, Art,” she said.
Briefly she told him about Old Pat’s fury and the new terms of his will. He was aghast.
“But that’s monstrous! No court of law would uphold such an outrageous condition!” he exploded.
“Perhaps not. But there’s a strong belief over here that a man’s money is his to do with what he likes, living or dead,” said Dree.
“But to involve your brothers!”
“Yes. Well, the Granda thinks Con takes far too soft a line on the Irish question anyway, so this is a nice reminder to him of where his duty lies. I don’t know what it would do to him politically if he lost the inheritance. He has very little money of his own and the kind of races he will be running really cost. Also, there’s a hell of a lot of support might melt away with the Connolly millions and business influence. So it could be fatal. Christie I don’t think would give a damn, but his wife would scratch my eyes out!”
She managed a wry smile to lighten the moment and added, “So, if you were after my money, forget it! We’d have to make do on yours.”
“Which might not be as much as you think,” he answered. “I’d come off the Civil List, of course, right off it, I mean. However much public support I get, I’m determined I won’t take a penny of public money. I’m not setting myself up as a club for the lefties to beat my family with. But at least there’s no question of disinheriting anyone else.”
Another silence.
“Oh Art, what are we going to do?” she cried.
He came across to her then, kneeling beside her chair and taking her in his arms. She sobbed a few times, but desire has flames to dry up tears and soon their mutual comforting turned into caresses.
“We said we’d decide first,” she whispered.
“We were wrong,” he said.
“But Mr Dewhurst will come back.”
“He’s a good cop. He won’t come in without a warrant.” And picking her up in his arms he carried her through into the bedroom.
Outside the clouds rolled still more thickly out of the north, like whipped cream poured with unstinting hand by the generous aunt with whom Dewhurst had spent his boyhood holidays. But it was only their leading edge which had that rich whiteness against the rapidly diminishing blue sky. Behind, the white quickly modulated through a gamut of greys to the blackness of a horizon where land and air were indistinguishable.
Dewhurst wished he was back in England, back in boyhood, with plump, jolly Aunt Effie in her little terraced cottage in Gloucester. There was nothing out here but trees, trees and more bloody trees, all as tall as a couple of telegraph poles, but with never a wire in sight. He was following the track down to the road with frequent excursions up promising side-tracks in the hope that some form of human habitation lay just out of sight in the forest. Even a gingerbread house would have been welcome, he thought. But there was nothing but bloody trees.
So it would have to be the road. He glanced at his watch. He’d already been away for three-quarters of an hour, what with his diversions and all. Another fifteen minutes maximum to the road, he guessed. Then what? Back north the way they had come there had been nothing for at least ten miles. And south? Damn, he should have brought the map from the jeep. Not that it had done the Prince much good. He’d managed to get lost half-a-dozen times. But wasn’t there some kind of town or hamlet marked a little to the south? Dewhurst recollected. But how far? Once he hit the road, he might get a lift, of course. Except that other vehicles had been almost as rare as houses. Shit! He paused uncertainly. He didn’t want to be away from the Prince too long. In the circumstances, an hour was diplomatic; anything more might be dereliction of duty. He should have stolen the jeep keys. It would probably have been quite easy once the randy young devil had got his trousers off which hadn’t seemed likely to be long delayed.
Should have brought the map. Should have stolen the keys. All these should haves. He could hear them rolling out at the enquiry. And the shouldn’t haves too. Especially the one big one—shouldn’t have let it happen in the first place.
Still, sod ’em all. The problem was here and now. All at once the solution was quite clear. He had to get back. His place was close by the Prince, protecting him. What the hell was he doing, Robin Hooding around among the trees? Also it was getting very gloomy and if his vague memories of school natural history lessons were right, there could be bears in these forests. He loosened his Smith and Wesson uneasily in his shoulder holster and wondered how it rated against bears. They hadn’t done much work on bears at the police range.
Then he heard a car.
His first thought was that he was much nearer the road than he’d imagined. But as his directional ear readjusted from the alien natural sounds of the forest, he realized the car was in fact approaching along the track.
His first instinct was to step back into the trees and observe. But he couldn’t do that. Once past him, it would be up at the Lodge long before he could get back. He
had to know who was in it. He stepped into the middle of the track.
The two men in the car were not in a good temper. Their partnership was purely professional. They did not really care for each other very much and had spoken little on the long drive up from Boston. Each of them was nursing a sense of resentment. The driver who was called Goldmann reckoned his companion, whom he knew as Ember, was to blame. Ember made the deals. This one had been simple. A limey in a hotel room, a rich kid in a Porsche. Then south to sun-burnt tit land. Nothing about driving around in this fucking wilderness, for Chrissake.
Ember didn’t resent Goldmann. Goldmann was a tool, in every sense. Whenever he made a contract, he checked his list of possible partners and Goldmann had been in the top trio for a long time now. No, what Ember resented was the implication that getting the wrong girl in the car had been his fault. Nothing had been said and they were getting the full rate for this extra action, but the implication was there. And what had been undeniable was the police suspicion of the car. Ember had contracted to do an accident job and that meant it should have been undetectable. He’d never liked accident jobs. Blow away, fly away, that was his motto. Well, what lay ahead of them wasn’t blown away either. In fact, it was much more complicated than he liked, but he hadn’t complained. Professional pride made him want to get the details right. Also, while he knew nothing about these people he was working for, he knew enough to know that their kind of money could buy pretty strong disincentives for inefficency. He regarded the forest streaming past the window. To him as to Goldmann it was a fucking wilderness. But he didn’t object to it. Out here they could take their time, get the job right, without any fear of interruption.
The car bucked round a bend and there ahead of them in the middle of the rough track stood a man.
Oh shit! thought Ember wearily.
Goldmann brought the car to a halt.
The man came slowly round to the passenger door. His coat was open and his right hand was inside it.
Cop, thought Ember. Most likely a limey cop. The homebred variety would have been coming at them with a handful of metal in the same circumstances. Funny how reluctant the Brits were to believe the worst of people. No wonder these trusting bastards got themselves killed.
He pressed the button and the electric window slid noiselessly down.
“Excuse me, sir,” said Dewhurst.
Ember leaned enquiringly forward and looked up at the policeman.
“What is it, Officer?” he said.
For a moment his head and shoulders had blocked out Goldmann who had been sitting quite still with his hands on the wheel. Now Ember relaxed once more and sank back in his seat to give his companion a clear shot across his body through the open window into Dewhurst’s chest.
But the limey bastard wasn’t so trusting after all. It was the word “officer” that had alerted him. Anyone who recognizes a stranger dressed like a lumberjack in the middle of a forest as a cop is not there to watch birds.
He went sideways and backwards, not fast enough to make Goldmann miss, but far enough to take the bullet in the right shoulder instead of on the button. The pain promised to be excruciating but he postponed it till later and rolled and scrambled his way off the track and into the trees. Now the hit-men made another mistake. Instead of pursuing him instantly, they preferred to let their bullets do it from the comfort of the car, and this was no telescopic sight job, steadied on a tripod, but hand-held, heavy automatics wavering after a moving target in the dusk. A lucky shot burnt its way along his thigh but the others whistled away among the pine needles or crunched fleshily into tree-trunks. By the time he heard the car doors open he was thirty yards away, rolling down into a peatily damp ditch and burrowing his way under a lattice of arboreal debris which wind and storm had lain across it. After a little while, partly to avoid more noise but mainly because he felt what little strength remained to him being pumped out of his riven shoulder with each exertion, he lay still. He could hear his pursuers approaching, but they’d have to move fast to find him still conscious.
His last thought before blackness swept over him thick as the sky-eating clouds above was that the Prince’s best hope now was Captain Jopley’s sense of duty…God help us all…Captain bloody Jopley…
Below and above, the clouds won.
CHAPTER 6
The clouds which were bringing a premature gloom to the mountainous slopes of North Maine had an hour or so earlier done Edward Jopley a favor.
Chris Emerson’s intention had been to remain out in the forest all day, not returning till the evening, but the sky had made him change his plans.
“We had an early spring this year,” he explained to Jopley, “but it looks like winter’s coming back for a second bite. That’s the way it goes out here. And if we don’t get home before the snow, they’ll be looking for us, which is the last thing we want.”
So they had arrived back at Emerson’s “cabin” in the early afternoon. Flakes of snow were already smudging the air and to any outside observer the quick dash into the house with heads bent was completely natural.
There were telephones here, completely secure, so Emerson had assured the royal party, but Jopley was reluctant to take the risk. His voice talking to a Boston number on some bastard security snooper’s tape might rouse interest. Not that there would be any interest to arouse if the Preceptor’s word was kept. This was a discreet operation with, preferably, no direct involvement of the Prince. Still, he would have preferred a public phone, but they didn’t grow on trees, unfortunately.
His dilemma was solved when he got into the house. There was a message for him from a journalist called Mark Spier, an expatriate Englishman now working in Canada, and a mutual acquaintance of Jopley and the late James Morrison. Reminders of Morrison were the last thing Jopley wanted, but Spier had booked into the lakeside hotel some fifteen miles to the south, which was the nearest civilized point in this damned wilderness. He was suggesting a meeting for old times’ sake, obviously hoping for some kind of homely inside story on Arthur at leisure. Normally Jopley would have ignored it altogether. Spier was a third-rate chancer. But now he gave Emerson the impression that Spier was a top-liner as well as an old friend, and though Emerson was not too happy to lose Jopley’s support in the masquerade even for a couple of hours, he let himself be convinced that the equerry should go.
“Keep it short though, will you?” he said. “Aside from anything else, this weather’s pretty tricky for driving in.”
Jopley said, “I’ll be back in an hour,” and climbed into the borrowed jeep with the aplomb of a man who’d passed every test devised by the Institute of Advanced Motoring.
Things worked out well. As he walked through the snow, much more gentle at this level, from the jeep to the hotel, he saw through a window into the bar lounge where Spier was sitting talking earnestly to a busty middle-aged blonde.
Despite the earliness of the hour, they had drinks in their hands and a tableful of empties. Jopley guessed the woman’s husband was probably out on the lake or wandering through the forests with a gun in his hand. It was always open season on neglected wives for men like Spier, thought Jopley disapprovingly. But it gave him the chance to get into the hotel unobserved, and perhaps even out again.
He went through the main entrance, stepping immediately into a world of urban luxury and a temperature twenty-five degrees higher. They knew how to do things, these North Americans, he thought admiringly. The best British equivalent in terms of remoteness and height would be a YHA hut.
The reception desk was empty. There was a payphone in the corner of the small lobby and he ducked under the soundproofing visor and picked it up. He’d taken the precaution of having a pocketful of change and with commendable efficiency he was rapidly connected with the Hotel Mayflower in Boston. He gave a room number, heard it ringing. Then the receiver was picked up and to his immense relief he heard the Preceptor’s voice.
“Hello,” he said. “I thought I should ring.”
His voice was recognized in its turn.
“I’ve been expecting you. How’s everything at your end?”
He glanced round. No sign of Spier. A couple walking up the stairs. No one within hearing distance even without the soundproofing.
“Fine.”
“Good.” The voice changed, became businesslike. “So report.”
“He’s gone. Late this morning. There was a switch in the forest.”
“Yes. We thought so. The girl went too.”
“I thought perhaps she wouldn’t,” said Jopley neutrally, fearful of hinting a criticism.
The Preceptor gave a high-pitched laugh. “That was the plan, yes. But there was a hitch. There was an accident, but the wrong girl had it. This may amuse you. Her name was McHarg.”
“McHarg? Oh Christ! Not…I thought that Mr. Tyler…”
“That’s right,” interrupted the Preceptor. “That McHarg. And he was here in Boston too. But it’s all right. He and his daughter have been united. Permanently.”
“Thank God for that,” said Jopley. “He was a hard man. Does this mean that Mr Tyler…”
“No. I fear the worst there. No word. We have used local talent, recommended by some of our craft-brothers over here. They have been apprised of their error with regard to the girl and dispatched to remedy matters.”
“Won’t another accident so soon be hard to believe?” asked Jopley.
“That’s very true. Good thinking, Edward,” mocked the Preceptor gently. “No, no accident this time. An IRA attack, phone calls to the press claiming responsibility, it will all seem very credible.”
“But the old man will never accept that,” objected Jopley. “Why should the IRA murder his granddaughter?”
“Edward, you’ve done well.” There was a new sharpness in the voice now. “Just get back with your lumberjack friends and behave naturally. Whatever happens. Remember what you are.”
Who Guards a Prince? Page 21
