Every Secret Thing

by Susanna Kearsley

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because Manuel Garcia is a Spanish agent!’

  ‘Yes, I knew that.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘He’s not a very good one,’ Deacon said. ‘I’d say he transmits once a week, from somewhere not far north of here, by radio. I doubt he’d be the person passing on high-level secrets – he’d have no way to access them, really – but from time to time I’ve seen him looking round in Spivey’s office, so perhaps he keeps Madrid informed of our oil shipments.’

  Regina heard a match strike, and Cayton-Wood’s next words were faintly muffled as though he were speaking while lighting his pipe. ‘Figured this out on your own, did you?’

  ‘It wasn’t difficult. I should imagine you saw it yourself, quite some time ago. How did you manage to turn him?’

  A pause, then again the imperious, ‘What?’

  ‘He does work for us, as well, doesn’t he?’

  The open annoyance in Cayton-Wood’s voice was tempered by a grudging admiration. ‘It appears, Mr Deacon, that I may have underestimated you.’

  Deacon said nothing.

  Cayton-Wood said, ‘He came to us, Garcia did. His wife’s health is poor, and he needed the money. He was already transmitting each week to Madrid, so we kept to that schedule, but under our own supervision. He sends them what we tell him to send – a little truth, a little fiction. Keeps the fish firmly on the hook, you might say.’ A longer pause, and then, almost carelessly, ‘How did you know he transmitted by radio?’

  ‘We’ve talked a few times about radios; it’s clear he knows his way around the equipment, but there was nothing at his house. I looked.’

  ‘And why did you assume that his transmission point was somewhere to the north?’

  ‘Something he said to me once.’

  ‘Ah.’ When no further explanation came, Cayton-Wood said simply, ‘Well, just see you keep away from him, in future. All agents can be dangerous, and a turned agent is the least trustworthy of all.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Deacon said. ‘I’ll watch my step.’

  Regina, standing on her side of the closed door, couldn’t see the look that passed between the two men, but she felt it. It was tangible, electric in the room.

  ‘You do that,’ Cayton-Wood said, almost as a challenge. Then the heavy rhythmic tapping of the walking stick recrossed the floor; the front door opened, closed, and he was gone.

  The next week, on the 28th of January, Britain and America cut off their oil supplies to Spain to punish Franco for his staunch refusal to stop selling wolfram to the Axis powers.

  The offices at Reynolds were in chaos. One of their tankers, en route to a Spanish port, had to be diverted to the docks at Lisbon. Letters and cables from Reynolds’s brother-in-law in Madrid came so thickly that Regina had a hard time keeping pace with them. The letters all sang the same song – was there not some way Reynolds could help lift the oil embargo? And Reynolds would always reply, in his various wordings, that no, he could not. But because Regina didn’t know if some more subtle message might be hiding in between those lines, she intercepted all the letters anyway, and the Embassy’s experts were forced to work full speed to open and reseal each one before it could be missed.

  She didn’t see much of Deacon. He kept busy, these days, cataloguing works of art that Reynolds bought at auction, searching out the works that Reynolds ought to buy, appraising others. He spent hours in the storage vaults upstairs, or on the telephone with dealers and restorers, and whatever time was left he seemed to spend with Ivan Reynolds. But he still made a point, every day on arriving, of saying good morning to her, and to Jenny, and of stopping by Manuel Garcia’s desk to say hello.

  Regina didn’t know, herself, how she should be now, with Garcia. She was not supposed to know he was a spy, and so she did her best to act the way she always had around him, but she found it very difficult, with what she knew, to not pay more attention to his actions. She’d never noticed him before, as Deacon had, in Spivey’s office, but a few times these past weeks she’d seen him just outside the door, while Spivey was at lunch. She mentioned this in her reports, and left the matter there.

  One morning, as she walked to work, a car drew up beside her. An expensive car – a long, black Humber limousine. She’d seen it several times before; she knew it would be Cayton-Wood in the back, before he’d cranked the window down. He wished her good morning, and smiled, and said, ‘Do let me give you a lift.’

  ‘That’s very kind, but I don’t mind the walk.’

  ‘My dear, I must insist. It’s only business, don’t be nervous.’

  She wasn’t nervous, getting in the car; but she was watchful. She knew he was high up in British Intelligence – that put them on the same side, but she still kept an eye on the streets they were driving through, wanting to be very sure they weren’t making a detour.

  He asked, ‘How’s your father this morning? All right?’

  The way he asked that brought a faint frown to her forehead. She had not seen her father for two days, which wasn’t that unusual, except, ‘Why would he not be?’

  ‘It’s only that I wondered, after last night…’

  She was worried, now. ‘What happened last night?’

  ‘You haven’t heard? The Vigilance Committee, they were raided at their meeting by the local police. I’m not certain what the charges were, but I believe things did get rather nasty.’ He glanced up from tamping fresh tobacco into his pipe. ‘It won’t happen again, though. I’ve told them they’ll be under my protection from now on.’ He struck a match into the silence between them, and puffed out the smoke without asking her whether she minded. ‘That’s not what I wanted to tell you, though. No, I’ve got good news, for you and your young man. You’re free to get married.’

  She stared at him. ‘Sorry, I’m…what?’

  ‘As of next week, we no longer need you at Reynolds. We appreciate your having stayed this long, of course, and the personal sacrifices that you’ve made on our behalf, but happily that’s finished now. You’re free to get on with your life.’

  She hadn’t expected that. For a few moments, she didn’t know how to react. ‘But,’ she argued slowly, ‘Mr Deacon… that is, surely he still needs me there.’

  ‘Don’t worry about Mr Deacon.’

  She did worry, though. All through the following week, as she made preparations to leave; made excuses to Reynolds, to Jenny, to everyone else, she was worrying, still, about Deacon. With her gone, he’d be on his own. He’d relied on her this far, for so many things, for so many small details, and errands, and now…it was almost as if they were wanting to take away all his support; leave him stranded. She’d said so to Alvaro. She’d said, ‘This doesn’t feel right. I shouldn’t be leaving him now, not like this.’

  Alvaro had simply shrugged and said, ‘You cannot fight a man like JL Cayton-Wood, Regina. You must do as he decides. And anyway,’ – he’d held her face in both his hands and smiled – ‘we can be married now.’

  Deacon himself had been decent about it. He’d given her a little silver brooch for a going-away gift, and he’d done his best to reassure her he’d be fine.

  ‘You’ll have to be careful,’ she’d said, ‘around Spivey.’

  ‘I will be.’

  And when she had looked at him, still unconvinced, he had told her, ‘It’s all right. To every thing there is a season, don’t forget. Your war is over now, Regina. You have earned your time of peace. Go and be happy.’

  She’d nodded, and her gaze had for the last time fallen on the coloured photograph of Deacon and his wife. She’d asked, ‘You will come to the wedding?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  And he had come. He’d stood at the back of the church, half in shadow, through the ceremony, and when she and Alvaro had turned to face their guests she’d seen him smiling. But later, when she’d looked for him outside, he wasn’t there. He’d slipped away, unnoticed in the crowd.

  ‘That was in March.’ She looke
d at me and smiled, a shade regretfully. ‘I didn’t see him after that. I didn’t make it to the funeral, Mr Reynolds’s funeral, sadly. I was ill.’

  I was thinking. ‘Ivan Reynolds’ death…you’re sure that it was natural? I mean, it wasn’t—’

  ‘Murder? No, my dear, that one I’m sure of. He had cancer of the pancreas. It took him rather swiftly, so he hadn’t long to suffer, poor man. No, he wasn’t murdered. I’ve been trying,’ she confessed, ‘to think whom Mr Deacon might have meant. It was wartime, of course, and Lisbon was a place of danger. There were many deaths.’ Her forehead creased a little, trying to recall. ‘Roger would know more than I would about things like that.’

  She had said that in the tones of someone speaking of a mutual acquaintance, as though she took it for granted I’d be speaking to this Roger. ‘Roger Selkirk?’ I asked, sorting through the names of all the people in her narrative.

  ‘That’s right. Did you ask him about murders when you met him?’

  I was confused now. ‘I’ve never met him.’

  ‘Oh, but, I assumed… I’m sorry, dear, but it was Roger who first rang to let me know that you were here, and that you’d like to come to see me, and could he please give you my address and number, so I naturally assumed you’d been to talk to him.’

  He must have been the source, I thought, to whom Joaquim, my English Cemetery man, had gone – the person whom Joaquim had thought might still know where to find Regina. Had I known, I might have met with him before I’d come to Evora. Frustration at the missed opportunity coloured my voice as I said, ‘No, I got your address from someone else. I never met Roger Selkirk. Does he still live in Lisbon?’

  ‘Oh, yes, and of course you must speak to him. Roger’s a character. And he’ll appreciate having a pretty young girl to tell stories to. Here, let me get his address for you.’ Standing, she crossed to a small roll-top writing desk in the far corner and opened a drawer to explore among the envelopes and papers.

  Journalism, I thought, was all about asking the right questions, at the right time. I asked carefully, ‘Is there anyone else I should speak to?’

  She tipped her head, thinking. ‘Well, Jenny, of course. Jenny Saunders that was, Jenny Augustine, now.’

  ‘Reynolds’s mistress?’

  ‘Oh, my dear,’ she said gently, as one who knows better, ‘she wasn’t his mistress. No, she was his daughter.’

  That floored me. ‘His daughter?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘But…the biographies, the articles…well, no one ever mentions he had children.’

  ‘No one knew, outside the company. Inside, there were a few of us, but Mr Reynolds was a careful man. He’d known the Lindberghs, you see, when their baby was kidnapped and killed, and it had quite a lasting effect on him. He was terribly paranoid; always concerned someone might try to do harm to Jenny, if they knew that she was his daughter. So he let her mother raise her, in America.’ She added, ‘She was kept a secret, too, the mother. Almost no one knew about her. An actress, I think she was. Quite independent. But Jenny herself was a bit of a handful; she had a strong mind of her own, and when she finished school she was bound and determined to live with her father, so he brought her over to Lisbon.’

  ‘But didn’t she mind…I mean, the rumours about them…’

  ‘Oh, Jenny didn’t care what people thought, and Mr Reynolds didn’t, either. They were exactly like each other, in that way, although at times I think that she was more than even he could handle. Still, she was great fun.’ She closed one drawer; opened another. ‘I’m sure she’ll be able to help you. There wasn’t much that went on in those days that she wasn’t aware of. She was quite a bit sharper than most people realised, you know…she still is.’ Finding the envelope she wanted, she reached for a notepad and started to write. ‘I don’t know if she’s still at this address, mind. We used to have a card at Christmas, but it’s been a few years. She was living in Washington. Georgetown. A lovely old house. She’s alone now, and doesn’t see visitors often.’ She gave me the address, and added, with certainty, ‘But she’ll see you. She had rather a thing for your grandfather, Jenny did. Thought he was wonderful.’ Looking back down, she said, ‘All of us did.’

  It was hard for me to reconcile her statement with the colourless old man I’d met in London, whose face I couldn’t even bring to mind. Ask the right question, I thought again, at the right moment: ‘You wouldn’t happen to have any photographs of him?’

  ‘Your grandfather? Yes, I should think so.’ Another desk drawer opened, protesting. ‘It would be here, if I had one. A bit of a jumble, I’m afraid. I never was much good at putting things in proper albums. My husband always said…ah, here we are. That’s your grandfather, third from the right.’

  I took the photo from her hand with great anticipation. It had been taken out of doors, against a high hedge – several people standing smiling in a row, the men in dapper suits and hats that made them look not unlike gangsters, and the women neatly packed into the slender hourglass dresses of the Forties, some with gloves. They would be very old now, all of them, I thought. Quite old, or dead. And yet their faces, frozen laughing in the snapshot, were as youthful as my own.

  I counted the heads from the right…one, two, three…

  He was average height, neither the tallest man there, nor the shortest; his build neither heavy nor slight. And he’d turned, at the moment the camera had snapped, to the woman beside him, to listen or speak, so his features had blurred from the motion. I couldn’t make anything out but the fact he was clean-shaven. Maybe, I thought, if you already knew what he looked like, it would have been easy to tell who he was. But for me, with no image to work from, he might have been faceless. Invisible.

  ‘He was very nice-looking,’ said Regina Marinho. ‘Not flashy, but nice-looking.’

  ‘Yes,’ I agreed. For, what else could I say?

  ‘I always distrusted the flashy ones. Cayton-Wood, he was a handsome man, terribly handsome, but not the same league as your grandfather. Not someone you could depend on. That’s him, on the left, with the moustache.’

  A tall man, and notably good-looking, as she’d said, with his dark hair and Douglas Fairbanks grin. I wouldn’t trust him either, I decided.

  ‘He’s dead, too,’ she said. ‘Though that’s no loss. He went back to England before the war’s end, and he died there. He drowned, I believe, while out sailing.’

  She was waiting for the photograph. I handed it back, not bothering to ask if I could keep it. I could tell from simply looking at her face she wasn’t one to part with memories. But she gave me, in its place, another tidy piece of notepaper with Roger Selkirk’s Lisbon address written on it. I copied both addresses – Roger’s and Jenny’s – with care in my notebook, and tucked the originals safely away.

  ‘You’ll enjoy Roger, I think,’ she said. ‘He’s a far better teller of stories than I am.’

  Which was her polite and gentle way, I knew, of saying she was growing tired; that it was time to end our interview. Not that I could blame her – even without looking at my watch, I could tell from the change in the light outside the window that the afternoon was giving way to evening. I had taken up enough of her time.

  Switching off my tape recorder, I pocketed the small machine and stood. ‘You did a wonderful job, really. Thank you so much.’

  ‘If it helped at all, my dear, then you’re quite welcome.’ Smiling, she shook my hand. Then, almost in the manner of an afterthought, she said, ‘You mentioned danger.’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘You said earlier my life might be in danger. Could you tell me how?’

  It surprised me to discover I’d forgotten, clean forgotten, in the course of actually meeting Regina Marinho and hearing her talk, that I’d come here not only to learn what she knew, but to warn her. I said, ‘I’m so sorry. I should have told you right at the beginning, you should know.’

  I didn’t tell her all of it. I didn’t mention Grandma Murray�
��s death, or what had happened in Toronto, because telling her all that would mean I’d have to blow my cover and reveal my true connection to the story. But I did tell her my theory that somebody else was on the same path I was, and I told her all about the grey car this morning, and the woman who had spoken to me in the street, and what I’d learnt from Anabela, last night over dinner.

  ‘I see.’ She took it all in, unperturbed. ‘And this Jankowski person, then, is…?’

  ‘I don’t know, exactly. But I know that he – or she – was also looking for your address. M Jankowski, was the name. It might be nothing…’ But I didn’t think, myself, that it was nothing. I remembered Anabela pointing out that M Jankowski was a Polish name. The woman here in Evora who’d faced me in the shuttered street had spoken with an Eastern European accent.

  ‘On the other hand,’ I said, ‘I’d feel much better if I knew that you’d be careful.’

  ‘My dear, you needn’t worry. I’ll take care. And I have others who’ll take care of me.’ She smiled, and raised her gaze again to mine, and then, ‘You have her eyes,’ she said, on a note of discovery. ‘Your grandmother’s eyes. Oh, that must have pleased Mr Deacon. He loved her so much.’

  My mind travelled back to a day in September, to an old grey man who’d looked into my face the way Regina Marinho was looking right this minute, and who’d said ‘You have her eyes,’ but in a different sort of voice, and who had walked off lost in thoughts – or maybe memories – so deep he’d failed to notice the approaching car, the danger…

  ‘Yes,’ I told her quietly, ‘I do believe he did.’

  * * *

  I stopped in the Cathedral square.

  My mind had been preoccupied, for several minutes now, with the unsettling thought that I had missed something this afternoon; had seen it and had let it pass without an understanding of its true importance. The feeling was so strong I nearly turned round to go back to Regina Marinho’s, then held myself in check with a reminder that I didn’t know if it was something I had seen or something I had heard, and either way the moment was now lost. I couldn’t get it back. The best that I could do now was to focus my subconscious in the hope that I’d eventually remember.