Every Secret Thing

by Susanna Kearsley

  ‘You wouldn’t know to where?’

  Again I felt the sharp look; the assessment. ‘She was, perhaps, a relative of yours, the wife?’

  I suppose I could have told him yes; invented some relationship, but I wasn’t altogether sure a lie would make it past those eyes. I settled on a partial truth. ‘I’m looking her up on behalf of a friend of hers – someone she worked with. My grandfather, actually.’ That wasn’t bad. Deacon had been, however unofficially, my Grandma Murray’s ‘husband’.

  It seemed to satisfy Joaquim. He raised his eyebrows. ‘Ah. Because there is a person who might know, who might have kept in touch with them. I could ask him.’

  ‘Oh, would you?’ I hadn’t meant it to come out on such a note of neediness, but it did, and he reacted with a purposeful glance at his watch.

  ‘He won’t be at home until later this evening,’ he said, ‘but if you leave me your name and a number where you can be reached…’

  I was already scrambling for pen and paper. Tearing a page from the small notebook I’d brought, I pressed it smooth against the window ledge and wrote. ‘I’m here for a week, at the York House Hotel.’ As I passed him the details, I said, ‘If you can find out anything at all, I really would appreciate it.’

  He took the page and folded it in careful quarters. ‘Your grandfather, he worked for Ivan Reynolds, did you say? It is only that the company was small, and I knew many of the people there.’

  I gave myself a mental kick, embarrassed by the oversight. Here I was, supposedly a journalist, and I’d completely failed to realise that Joaquim, who had moved and worked among the British during the Second World War, might be a source of more than just the secretary’s address.

  ‘I would be curious,’ he said, ‘to know the name.’

  And so I told him. ‘Andrew Deacon.’

  ‘Deacon.’ Once again, he tried the name himself, and shook his head. ‘I’m afraid I don’t remember him.’ He gave a small shrug and half turned to look out at the weather; the rain coursing down from the leaves of a green and brown palm tree that grew just outside the arched door of the porch.

  But I had seen the fleeting light of recognition, and was not convinced. Watching his face carefully, I said, ‘He was in charge of Mr Reynolds’s art collection, for a time. Mrs Marinho was his secretary.’

  ‘Ah.’ He nodded. Looked at me again. ‘I don’t remember him.’

  ‘Oh, well, he was only here for a short time, a few months really, towards the end of the war. He doesn’t talk about it much,’ I ventured. ‘I gather there was some unpleasantness. A death.’

  ‘There were so many deaths, in those days,’ was his rather vague reply. But I hadn’t been mistaken about the intelligence – I sensed it again in the small silent moment before he closed our conversation with, ‘I will be sure to let you know if I learn anything of interest from my friend.’

  I knew dismissal when I heard it. ‘I’d appreciate that, really. Thank you.’

  Nodding an acknowledgement, he pulled the big door open to the church. It creaked protestingly. ‘Safe journey, menina,’ he said. Then he stepped inside, the door slammed shut, and that was that.

  I was thinking, with my head down, as I stepped out round the corner of the porch into the rain, and straight into the path of a man coming round in the other direction. We collided, and the impact knocked my glasses to the unforgiving asphalt.

  ‘Hey, I’m sorry,’ he said, bending to retrieve them. ‘Are you OK?’

  My first thought, when he straightened, was that he must be from Boston, by his accent. And my second was that, Patrick notwithstanding, he was one of the best-looking men I’d seen. He was fairly young – my side of thirty-five, probably – average height, average build, but with the kind of a face that was hard to forget. Not a pretty-boy face, but a harder one, masculine, strong, like the hand he held out to me now.

  He was holding my glasses. Both lenses were cracked.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said again. ‘Look, let me pay for these.’ Then, because I’d taken so long to answer, he asked, in a slower voice, ‘Do you speak English?’

  I actually blushed. ‘Yes. I…sorry, it’s just been a very long day.’ Taking the ruined glasses from his hand I said, ‘It’s all right, you don’t need to pay for anything. It was an accident, and anyway, I’ve got a spare pair back at my hotel.’

  ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘Very sure.’

  ‘Then at least let me buy you a coffee.’ His voice was persuasive, and in different circumstances I might well have given in to it. But not now. This was not why I had come to Lisbon.

  ‘Thanks, but no.’

  ‘I’m harmless.’ And he smiled. It was a great smile, but I held to my resolve.

  I flattered myself that I felt his eyes watching me as I walked all the way back down the rain-slicked path, between the dripping trees. But both times that I glanced behind he wasn’t watching me at all. The first time he was standing where I’d left him, on the path, head bent to read a leaning tombstone in the softly falling rain. And the second time he wasn’t there, he’d gone.

  My footsteps, so intrusive in the little English Cemetery’s garden-like tranquillity, were swallowed the minute I stepped through the heavy green door in the wall, by the purposeful swish of the traffic along the wet street.

  The light had flattened, here, and evening had begun to settle in. I couldn’t do much more today, I thought, in terms of searching, and for all the running round I’d done I wasn’t any closer to my goal.

  I’d had such high hopes for the Embassy, but I salved my disappointment with the hope that Anabela would have more to tell me when we met tonight.

  With that in mind, I started looking for a cab to take me back to my hotel. It wasn’t easy, with the rain. Most taxis passing me were full already, moving by so quickly that I doubted if their drivers would have noticed me at all. I’d walked some distance on my own before I saw an empty cab approaching.

  As I stepped out to wave down the driver, a gunmetal-grey hatchback slid to a stop at the kerb just in front of me, blocking my view, but the taxi had, luckily, seen me. The driver stopped, casting a clear arc of rainwater onto the roadway as, ducking round the rear of the hatchback, I pulled my collar up and made a run for it.

  The restaurant, like the rest of my hotel, was classy – quiet and exclusive, sectioned into separate rooms. I’d come down fifteen minutes early, so I’d have a chance to choose a table that would give some privacy for me to talk with Anabela. Nobody was sitting in the first small section I walked into, but the tables there were open to each other, and unshielded, so I turned my eye instead towards the section on my left, built long and narrow like a cloister, with a low, wood-beamed ceiling, the beautiful blue-and-white Portuguese tiles forming baseboard and wainscoting, expertly set in the rough-plastered white walls above floors of polished white marble.

  This, I thought, would be the better place to talk. Each little window alcove in the long row sheltered a small table so discreetly that I’d walked past two and noticed nothing till the woman spoke. ‘You’re Katherine.’ She said it with certainty; smiled when I turned. ‘Guy is good with descriptions.’

  He’d described her to me, too, of course, though he needn’t have bothered. He had a predictable taste in his women – I’d known she’d be striking, with dark hair, worn long and unbound past her shoulders. The cigarette was a bit of a surprise, because he didn’t ordinarily go for smokers, but maybe Anabela had had other charms to compensate.

  We shook hands, and I sat.

  The window alcove had been meant for two. She had a wall at her back, I had one at mine. Our knees were almost meeting underneath the table. In between us was a long white window tilted partly open to the courtyard, letting in a cool, pervasive breeze that stirred the curtains, patterned blue and white to match the tiles. The tablecloth was pure white linen, very fine, and set with ivory plates and sparkling wine and water glasses, silver cutlery, and one small glass of daint
y yellow flowers, just like daisies, with black centres. Black hearts, I thought, set at the centre of innocence.

  She said, ‘You got my message, did you, earlier?’

  ‘I did, yes, thanks.’

  ‘I thought you might have come in on a morning flight. Guy wouldn’t tell me when you were arriving.’

  ‘Probably,’ I said, ‘he was just being cautious.’

  She tapped ash from her cigarette and exhaled rather thoughtfully, her eyebrows raised a fraction. ‘So then it’s true…there’s something in this business that requires caution?’ Sitting back, she said, ‘I wasn’t sure. Guy can be so James Bond sometimes, you know?’

  I did know, but I didn’t really blame him, in this instance. Since the shooting in Toronto, I too had developed all the instincts of a secret service agent – always wary, always watching, lest the shadow of an enemy should cross my path. It wasn’t anything I could control. I had been changed. My senses were so heightened by the constant threat of danger that, just sitting here, I felt aware of everything – the sound of other voices conversing at tables in the next secluded section of the restaurant; the clink of glasses and cutlery; the quick steps of the waitress on the marble floor, approaching us; the furtive rush of the breeze over the window ledge, lifting the curtains at my shoulder; the slam of a door at the back.

  There was music playing quietly from somewhere – soft guitars behind a plaintive female voice singing songs that were almost like Renaissance airs, a fitting background for a menu that offered such uncommon delicacies as ‘stewed wild pigeon with ham’. I’d never had pigeon before, so I ordered it; then, settling back, said: ‘I really appreciate all of the time you’ve put into this.’

  Anabela shrugged. ‘It was nothing. I’m happy to do it.’ And not only for Guy’s sake, I decided. She impressed me as a woman who would go to any lengths to help a colleague.

  It was good to feel a part of my old world again, however briefly. The ground was familiar and firm – we were journalists, having a meal, talking shop, sharing research.

  Anabela told me, ‘I have copies of the records that you wanted, of the deaths. November 1943 to April 1944.’ She balanced her cigarette end on the ashtray and bent to her briefcase, retrieving a thick manila envelope that thumped between us on the little table. ‘There are many. And you wanted to know news of Ivan Reynolds also, yes? I had success there, too. The newspapers, I don’t think that they very much approved of Ivan Reynolds. Which is quite good for us, because, you know, they wrote about him constantly.’

  I had the envelope open, now, and was leafing through the pages as she pointed to them. ‘There, I found you many articles about the man, his company, the projects they were working on that year. Most I found in Portuguese, and so I made you my translations.’

  ‘Why didn’t they approve of him?’

  She paused to give the question some consideration. ‘I couldn’t tell you that. Perhaps his wealth, his attitudes – he was a most neurotic man – but no one ever comes right out and says that this is why they don’t like Ivan Reynolds. No, it’s more subtle. It’s a thing you sense, when reading all these articles – how often these reporters choose to write about him; what they write; their tone. I don’t know why he wasn’t liked,’ she said. ‘You maybe would have had to know the man himself, to answer that.’

  I’d come across a photograph, and studied it a moment. I’d seen dozens of such photographs, of course, in my own reading, but I hadn’t yet seen one like this, that showed him as he would have looked when Deacon first arrived in Lisbon. Reynolds would have been in his late fifties, then – a powerfully built man with a broad and slightly heavy face, and deeply set, distrustful eyes.

  The young girl beside him looked vaguely familiar.

  ‘Who’s this?’ I asked.

  Anabela took a look. ‘Oh, that’s his mistress. Jenny Saunders.’

  Jenny Saunders. I knew that name, too. Then I placed it. Recalling the book I had read in Toronto, with the picture of Reynolds’s office, I said, ‘She was one of his secretaries.’

  ‘Yes. You’ve been doing your homework as well, I see.’ Anabela smiled. ‘She was eighteen, I think, or seventeen. Too young for such a man. But when he died, he left her almost all his money. I have tried to find what happened to her, but it is quite difficult. She seems to simply disappear.’

  Our food came – first a starter of pâté on a tiny dry bread square, with a scattering of cut chives and a minuscule half-tomato, then a fresh tomato soup, scalding hot and delicately seasoned.

  ‘The other secretary, too,’ said Anabela, ‘you already have the clipping that I sent you, from the wedding, with translation, so you know her husband worked in Lisbon, for the British Embassy.’

  ‘Yes, thanks, I—’

  ‘But she doesn’t live in Lisbon now. I had some difficulty tracing her, but in the end I used a friend of mine, with the police. He owes me favours.’ Pushing back her empty plate, she smiled, and it occurred to me that most men likely didn’t mind much, being in her debt. ‘He gave me her address. She lives in Evora. You know where this town is?’

  ‘I’ll look it up.’

  ‘It is the finest of our walled towns, in the Alentejo, to the east, towards the Spanish border.’ She described it for me, while the waitress took my empty soup bowl and replaced it with the ‘stewed wild pigeon with ham’, which looked, uncomfortably, just like a pigeon that someone had stepped on by accident, wings stretched out flat on the plate. I covered a forkful of meat in ham, gravy and green beans, disguising it.

  Anabela wasn’t talking anymore. When I glanced up, I found her watching me and frowning slightly, but it wasn’t because of my meal. She was thinking. Then she said, ‘You need to know that you are not the only person who is looking for this woman.’

  I forgot about my fork, half raised. ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘My friend from the police, he telephoned me yesterday to say that he’d been asked to look the address up again, for someone else.’

  ‘I see.’ I felt a tingle in the region of my stomach. ‘Did he say for whom?’

  ‘Officially, for one of his superiors. But there was someone else’s name, as well, on the request. He told me what it was – I wrote it down. A Polish name,’ she said. ‘Jankowski. M Jankowski. Do you know this person?’

  ‘No.’ I frowned. ‘Is it a man, or a woman?’

  ‘I don’t know. I only thought,’ she said, ‘you’d want to be aware of it, especially since Guy…well, he did make this sound quite cloak and dagger, honestly.’

  I didn’t comment. I was thinking.

  This other person who, like me, was looking for Regina Marinho, could, of course, be unconnected to my own concerns; coincidental. There were any number of legal and personal reasons why someone might want to want to find somebody else, and M Jankowski’s motives might be innocent. But instinct told me otherwise.

  On a purely gut level, I knew what I’d suspected since the shooting in Toronto to be true – that whomever I was up against was also on the trail of Deacon’s past.

  But maybe I was not as far behind as I had feared. In fact, I might now have a chance to get a half a step ahead, because my adversary wasn’t faceless any more – I had a name. The fox, I thought, might finally have a chance to double back behind the hounds and do some hunting of her own.

  I looked at Anabela. ‘Could you find out any more for me about this M Jankowski?’

  ‘I can try.’ She reached a hand towards her cigarettes and lighter, then appeared to reconsider, glancing back towards the restrooms. ‘You’ll excuse me for a minute, I just have to… you know.’ Standing, with her purse in hand, she promised, ‘I will not be long.’

  My appetite had vanished, but I managed, in her absence, to get enough of my stewed pigeon put away so that I could pile the rest to one side of the plate, chasing the last tough bite down with a long drink of water that tasted unexpectedly of melon. I let the waitress take my plate, and ordered tea, for warmth.


  Not that the restaurant’s temperature had changed, but still, the night felt somehow chillier; the table more exposed. I hugged my arms and looked round at the other diners, those that I could see: Two children, sitting with their parents, looking tired; a couple, middle-aged, heads bent in conversation of a quieter kind; a younger woman, eating on her own, lost in a paperback romance that she was holding in her free hand, turning pages at a leisured speed. There wasn’t one face that appeared to be suspicious, out of place. But then, I told myself, there wouldn’t be.

  It wasn’t me I worried for, as much as Anabela. Information had a tendency to flow both ways, in my experience, and if she had been able to find out that someone else – this M Jankowski person – had been looking for the secretary, then it was a fair bet someone else knew Anabela had been asking questions, too. Which meant she wasn’t safe.

  I felt sure she’d already sensed that, somewhat, on her own, but she deserved to know the whole of it: the incidents in London, and the shooting of my grandmother. I owed her that, at least. I’d have to tell her.

  I was working out exactly what to say, where to start, when a man’s voice called, ‘Kate!’ and I glanced up from habit… then kicked myself for so soon forgetting Tony’s warnings about always thinking, always being on my guard. The man, of course, hadn’t been calling to me. It was the father at the nearby table, chastening his daughter who had stooped to pick up something from the floor. The little girl stopped short and climbed back to her seat while I looked down again, still frowning at my lapse of judgement.

  I heard footsteps on the marble floor and raised my head expectantly. It wasn’t Anabela. Just the waitress, with a message.

  ‘Your friend asked me to apologise, but she has had a call from work, and had to leave. She said to please forgive her. She has paid the bill.’ The waitress smiled, and warmed my tea, and left me sitting on my own.

  I thought it strange that Anabela would have sent someone to tell me she had left, instead of telling me herself. However urgent the call – and I realised, in our business, some calls could be pretty urgent – she should have been able to spare thirty seconds to tell me goodbye.