by Iain Pears
“I quite understand,” I said gallantly. “And what is a little bullet wound in comparison to a European war?”
“And I owe my freedom to you as well. Mr. Cort told me what you had said.”
“Yes,” I replied. “That’s the bit that’s puzzling me.”
“Why?”
“I am normally a truthful person,” I said evenly. “I’ve only started telling lies since I met you.”
She frowned in slight dismay and confusion; just a little enough to make the bridge of her nose wrinkle attractively before she smiled again.
“I was looking at you when you shot me, you see. The expression in your eyes. I really don’t think you were trying to miss me.”
“Of course I was,” she said a little petulantly. “I was petrified, that’s all. You read far too much into my eyes.”
“They are the most beautiful eyes I have ever seen. I have tried often to get you to look at me, just to have that feeling of excitement that it causes in my stomach. When I close mine, I can see them. I dream of them. I know them well.”
“But why would I want to shoot you? I mean, really shoot you. You know.”
“How often do you take the waters at Baden-Baden?”
She looked momentarily confused, then replied. “Every year. I go in the autumn. I have done so for many years now. Why do you ask that?”
“And Mr. Xanthos? He is an enthusiastic water-taker as well?”
“No,” she said, “I’m sure he is not.”
“But you were both there last autumn?”
“Yes.”
“Strange that an arms salesman should go to a place like that. Unless he was visiting someone. Like you.”
She raised an eyebrow. Her face, so very expressive it was, was turning cold.
“And when you were both there you came to the attention of Madame Boninska, otherwise known as the witch-woman. A nasty bit of work, who made a tidy living out of blackmail. She knew a gold mine when she saw one. She followed you back to England, and decided to try a little blackmail. How long did you pay up before you refused?”
“Matthew, you are talking such nonsense. Have these nurses been putting something into your tea?”
“Morphine, maybe?” I said, with a quite nasty tone. “Drink some. You know more about that sort of thing than I do.”
That stopped her attempt at good humour, so I continued. “She wrote to your husband, who went to see her. There she gave him the details. That his beloved wife was having an affair with another man. His own employee was betraying him. Not only planning to take his company away from him, but to take his wife as well.
“Lord Ravenscliff was not a man to go down without a fight. He had already amended his will so that everything would fall into the hands of an administrator should he die. I am fairly certain that, if he had had his meeting with Xanthos the next day, Xanthos would have been dismissed. And then he would have thrown you out as well. I have heard enough to know that he was thorough and ruthless. When he acted, he moved fast and decisively. And he hated disloyalty above all.
“But you were his equal, so Xanthos told me, and he was right. You moved fast. One swift move, and he was out the window. Did you put your arms around him and tell him how much you loved him before you gave him a little push? Or was it some melodrama, opening the window and threatening to throw yourself out, until he came to stop you and made the mistake of turning his back on you?
“Before that, you had offered—what a loving gesture!—to find out what Xanthos was up to. Persuaded your husband he could trust no one else. That put you in the perfect position to relay Xanthos’s instructions to Jan the Builder. You weren’t doing this nonsense to find out what he was planning. The Tsar would be murdered, war would break out and Ravenscliff would get the blame—but quietly, no publicity. Xanthos would take over his companies. Then you and he would marry…”
She hit me, so hard that I was dizzy with the pain and my nose began to bleed profusely. And when I say hit, I don’t mean some dainty slap about the face, such as an irate female might deliver. I mean punched, with her fist. And, having hit me, she hit me again, even harder. Then stood over me, eyes blazing with cold fury, teeth clenched. She stood over me, breathing hard. I really thought I was about to die.
Instead, she marched to the door, pulled it open and turned round.
“How dare you talk to me like that?” she spat. “Who do you think you are?”
I couldn’t talk. I gasped through the bedsheet, which I was having to use as an impromptu bandage. The pain was so great it even overwhelmed the pain of my wound. It occurred to me that saying what I had, all alone in a room with her, had not been the cleverest thing to do. Being punched on the nose was getting off quite lightly, really. Others had not been so lucky.
“You have come to your conclusions. I will not argue against them. I told you I loved my husband. You disregard all of that. And now you are going to run to Henry Cort?”
I shook my head.
“Why not? Why not? That is what a good Englishman should do, isn’t it?”
I shook my head again.
“Why not?”
“Because you’re all as bad as each other. I don’t want anything to do with any of you. I’ve had enough.”
I half-expected a cold, sneering contempt, icy disdain. It wasn’t there. She gave me one last look, one of those dark hypnotic glances she did so well, and I almost failed to notice the way she turned away swiftly so I could not see her face, almost as if to hide tears. She was always a good actor.
I never saw Elizabeth again, in any of her guises. She left Cowes that day, I was told, and soon enough closed down her house in St. James’s Square and crossed to the Continent, where she lived for the rest of her life. Ravenscliff ’s will was settled and, as he had calculated, by the time his ships were nearing completion, the Government was persuaded that they were needed. He had been right all along; the battleships were in place in August 1914, and joined the Grand Fleet at Scapa Flow, guarding the North Sea against the German threat across the water. I am sure I was not alone in thinking that the cause of the war had a certain familiar style to it.
If so, then no responsibility for events in Sarajevo attached to Theodore Xanthos. Ravenscliff ’s companies prospered during the war, but did so without the salesman’s assistance, as he met a tragic end, falling under the wheels of an Underground train at Oxford Circus late one Friday evening a month or so after I got back from Cowes. It was, as his only obituary mentioned, singularly unfortunate, as it was probably the only time Xanthos had ever even been in an Underground station. The other managers continued in their jobs, so I assumed they had been given a clean bill of health.
When I was well enough—my landlady loved my invalid status and fed me little but beef tea and seed cake for a month—I decided to go travelling at long last. The bank in Sloane Square wrote me an almost reverential letter to say that the sum of £2,380 had been deposited in my account, and that they would be pleased—in fact they were positively salivating—to hear my instructions. They also cashed the cheque from Mr. Xanthos.
I felt I had earned every penny, so I kept it all. I travelled the world for a few years, visiting the marvels of the Empire I had read about but never dreamed I would see with my own eyes. I wrote a book of travel memoirs which was politely enough received, and was turned down for military service in 1914 on the grounds of my injury. I was briefly hurt to my patriotic heart by this, but as the news of the war rolled in, I was hard put to suppress the feeling that being shot by Lady Ravenscliff was in fact the luckiest thing that had ever happened to me. Then I went back to work as a journalist, covering campaigns in Africa and later in the Near East. Later, after my marriage and the birth of my first son, and as I had a pleasant-enough voice, I became a pioneer of radio news, a job which brought me a small measure of fame, and which was the reason I was accosted at her funeral nearly half a century later.
Thus my story; even then, at the moment I last cas
t eyes on that captivating woman, I knew I had only grasped part of what had transpired. I did not feel inclined to revisit the matter, though. People like Cort and the Ravenscliffs had taken up enough of my energies and nearly killed me, although I was not so foolish as to forget that the encounter had transformed my life, and for the better. I was a free man afterwards, my horizons lifted, my ambitions transformed. But the more I travelled, the more able I was to forget about them all. And I succeeded for very many years, until I was accosted at a funeral, and a large package, meticulously wrapped in brown paper, with the address of Henderson, Lansbury, Fenton, 58 The Strand, was delivered to my door.
PART TWO
Woodside Cottage,
Wick Rissington
Gloucestershire
June 1943
Dear Braddock,
You may be surprised to get this package—if you ever do. I apologise for the melodrama; however, having been the custodian of these documents for many years, I now have to consider what to do with them. My doctors inform me that this is now a matter of some urgency. I considered that a bonfire might be best, but could not bring myself to such an act of immolation. Thus, I pass on the responsibility to you.
I am dying, whereas our mutual acquaintance is, I understand, in rude health and has found happiness in her latter years. I do not wish to disturb that, and not merely because I continue to act faithfully on the instructions of John Stone. Accordingly, I have instructed my solicitor, Mr. Henderson (whom you may recall), not to pass this on to you until she also has died. I leave it to him to determine what course to take should she outlive you as well—as she may well do; she is, as you recall, a tough woman.
There are two bundles: one is an account of my early life—you would be astonished if you knew how many spies are authors manqué—in which she figures somewhat. I wrote it in 1900 when I returned to England after living abroad, and I could never bring myself to amend it in the light of later information.
The other contains those papers by John Stone which you so earnestly sought when you were in his wife’s employ. I apologise for not having enlightened you about them, but I hope you will fully understand my reasoning when you have read them. Mine will shed light on a woman I consider to have been the most remarkable I have ever known. I hope your reading will at least go some way to modifying your opinion of her, which, I was sorry to learn, was ultimately quite unfavourable. I fully accept that your opinion of me will be even less so if you read this; I do not pretend it shows me in anything other than an unpleasant light.
Your account of the events you took part in was impeccable, except that you failed to understand how intense was the love between John Stone and his wife; this one element, however, changes everything. I fear that your prejudices then may have prevented you from taking it sufficiently seriously.
I have followed your career with great interest in recent years and taken much pleasure in hearing your reports on the radio. Only the belief that you would not have been overjoyed to hear from me has prevented me from renewing our brief acquaintance.
Yours very sincerely,
Henry Cort
Paris, 1890
CHAPTER 1
My father is the gentlest of men, but has always been subject to periodic outbursts of insanity which render him incapable of work. He did not come from a rich family, and was brought up by his aunt and uncle, but inherited somewhere along the line enough money to ensure a modest life. He trained as an architect, the idea being that he would inherit my great-uncle’s business, but illness prevented consistent application to any project. Instead, he lived quietly in Dorset, where he would occasionally build an extension to a house, or oversee the rebuilding of a church roof. For much of the time he would read, or work in the garden. As I was used to his long silences and sudden refusals to answer questions, I did not think anything of behaviour which others considered decidedly queer.
My mother died when I was very young, and apart from that I never knew much about her. Only that she was beautiful, that my father had loved her. I think her death broke his heart; certainly it was about the same time that he became ill. He recovered somewhat, but my young life was periodically interrupted by sudden disappearances which (I was told) were due to Father being called away for a project. Only later did I learn that he spent these periods in a special hospital where he was slowly coaxed back to health.
I left home at eight to go to school and never really returned. My best friend—he was as miserable as I was—invited me to his home for the holidays, which was where I realised how difficult, in contrast, was my own family life. He had a father who was cheerful and playful and a mother who became the first love of my life: warm, graceful and utterly devoted to her family. They lived in a big house in Holland Park during the winter months and in a lovely Adam house in the Borders in the summer. They became my family, for Mrs. Campbell all but kidnapped me, telling my father she was quite happy to have me indefinitely. He thought it was for the best and surrendered me. He was a good man, but the responsibilities of parenthood were too much for his frail constitution. I visited him every summer, but each time he was more vague, and eventually I think he stopped recognising me altogether; certainly he stopped caring whether I came or not.
Money is not something which concerns the young; that my father’s hospital bills were paid, that my school fees were settled did not excite any curiosity in my juvenile mind. It did not occur to me to wonder how this was happening. I assumed that the Campbells had taken on this responsibility as well. I loved them all the more for it, and I do believe no boy was ever more devoted to his real parents than I was to these delightful people.
Nonetheless, I repaid them poorly and was constantly in trouble. I was ill-disciplined, forever fighting, indulging in escapades which were often dangerous, and frequently illegal. I would break into the head master’s study at night, simply for the pleasure of escaping undetected; would leave the boy’s dormitory to go wandering illegally through the local town; would destroy the clothes and possessions of older boys who had bullied my friends. My schoolwork ranged from indifferent to poor and, although considered intelligent, it was clear I lacked the application ever to be a serious student.
A boy of small years must necessarily be a poor criminal; the ability to judge chances is insufficiently developed. I was finally run to ground in a housemaster’s lodging—not my own housemaster, who was a decent enough man, but another who was universally disliked—apparently looting his small store of wine. In fact I was not, as I have never been a drinker. Rather I was busy trying to spike the bottles with vinegar, using a syringe of my own devising that could, I believed, introduce the contaminant without having to remove the cork. This was to be his punishment for the merciless beating which he had inflicted on a boy in my house, a somewhat diffident, frightened lad who naturally attracted the bullies to him like flies around a horse’s head. I could not protect him—and felt more the injustice of the master than the suffering of the boy—but I did what I could to ensure that his misery did not go without some reply.
I should have been expelled; certainly the offence more than merited it, especially as there was some suspicion that the discovery also solved the mystery of who had locked the chapel doors and concealed the key so that the salvation of three hundred pupils was at risk until it was found four days later, punctured all the rugger balls the night before a tournament with five other schools, and committed a series of other offences against the corporate well-being. I admitted nothing, but since when did headmasters follow strictly the dictates of legal procedure?
But I was let off lightly. A thorough thrashing, detention for a term, and nothing more. A few bruises and cuts to add to the burn mark I had on my arm, received as a baby when I rashly put my hand into a fire. That was all. I did not understand it; and as the Campbells never referred to the matter, nor did I. Someone, though, was looking after me.
William Campbell’s sudden death, when I was sixteen, was as great a shock
as I had ever endured, and the atmosphere of despair and gloom in the house affected everyone. We—that is I and my adopted brother, Freddie—were kept completely in the dark; it was our comrades at school, as kind as young boys are, who told us that he had blown his brains out because he could not face the disgrace of ruin. With great consideration they provided the details when we did not believe them.
And it was true; Mr. Campbell was caught up in the Dunbury scandal and his fortune was destroyed. That, however, was not the worst of it; it was whispered that he had been part of a fraud to deprive other investors of massive amounts. The precise circumstances were never very clear to me; the matter was hushed up—he and others involved had been in the governing party at the time—and, in any case, I was not really old enough to understand. Young men of my type are prone to be impatient of details, and give their loyalties without regard to evidence. I remembered him as the kindest man in the world. Nothing else was of any importance to me.
It was clear that my schooldays were coming to an end, though. Mrs. Campbell assured me that the funds were there to continue to pay the fees, but I felt I could no longer impose myself on their goodness. I must begin to make my own way in the world, and so I began to consider how that way might be made. I was not denied assistance. It is one of the curiosities of the English that they are often excessively judgemental in the abstract yet match that with private kindness. The name of Campbell was hardly mentioned anymore; amongst his friends and old political comrades it was as though he had never existed. Yet for those whose lives he had ruined, there was constant sympathy and discreet help.
