A Multitude of Sins

by Margaret Pemberton

  ‘There wasn’t a problem at all,’ Elizabeth said easily. ‘You simply made an error of judgement.’

  ‘Meaning that you’re not remotely interested in helping me to while away the long hot days of a Hong Kong summer?’ he asked and, though his voice was teasing, there was unmistakable heat in the electric-blue depths of his eyes.

  ‘None at all,’ she said lightly.

  He sighed an exaggerated sigh of disappointment and then said curiously: ‘You didn’t tell Adam about my…er… error of judgement, did you?’

  ‘I didn’t tell him how you lured me to the Peninsula, but I did tell him that you had made a pass at me. It came out in the course of a conversation about someone else entirely.’

  ‘I see.’ He rolled over on to his stomach, squinting at the small figure that had nearly reached the top of the gulley. ‘I thought he’d been a bit cool towards me lately. That’s a pity. I like old Adam.’ He turned back to look at her. ‘I don’t suppose you will tell me who the person was you were discussing when my name was mentioned?’

  She grinned. ‘No,’ she said, drawing the champagne out of its makeshift ice-bucket and feeling it speculatively.

  ‘Is that cold enough?’

  ‘Nearly.’ She plunged the bottle back into the water, and he said: ‘I hadn’t realized till our lunch at the Pen just how very friendly you were with Raefe Elliot.’

  ‘I’m no more friendly with him than I am with you or Tom or Alastair. In fact, not nearly so much.’

  He grinned. ‘You’re a damned sight more friendly with him than anyone realizes. I imagine Julienne would be very intrigued if I told her that the last time I saw you Raefe Elliot was leading you in an iron-strong grasp from the Playpen Restaurant!’

  ‘But you can’t tell her any such thing,’ Elizabeth said, laughing, ‘not without revealing what you were doing there and why Raefe was escorting me away.’

  He thumped the sand in mock anger. ‘Damn me, if you’re not right again. However, take a word of warning from one who knows.’ His eyes were suddenly grave, his voice no longer bantering. ‘Raefe Elliot isn’t a man to tangle with lightly, Elizabeth. I’d steer far clear of him if I were you. Even for a woman like Julienne, Raefe Elliot would mean trouble, and for you and for Adam.…’ He shrugged expressively.

  ‘Don’t worry about me and Adam,’ Elizabeth said with sudden fierceness, hugging her knees close to her chest ‘I would never let anything hurt Adam, not ever!’

  ‘I’m glad to hear it,’ Ronnie said with sincerity. ‘Now, pass me one of those bottles of champers and let’s have a decent drink.’

  It was eight in the evening before they left the beach for home, Ronnie and Julienne in Julienne’s little Morris, the rest of them squeezed tight in Alastair’s larger car. By the time they reached Kowloon the shadows were lengthening beneath the banyan trees that lined Nathan Road and Elizabeth was on the verge of sleep.

  Suddenly her eyes flew open. There was no mistaking the pale blue Lagonda in front of them, or the virile broad-shouldered figure at the wheel. She looked quickly across at Adam, but he was talking to Alastair and no one else seemed to have realized that the car in front of them was being driven by Raefe Elliot.

  She looked again, and this time she sucked in her breath sharply. He wasn’t alone. A small, sleek, dark head was resting lovingly against his shoulder. She could see the gleam of earrings, the rich brocade of a cheong-sam. As she watched, he turned his head, laughing down at the delicately featured, pale-gold face at his side, and then Alastair turned right towards Helena’s flat and the Lagonda continued on down Nathan Road.

  There was a pain in her chest as if a dagger had been driven between her shoulderblades. She wondered where they were going. To the Peninsula perhaps, to a dinner-dance? To the Parisian Grill? Wherever it was, it was none of her business. She hadn’t, surely, expected him to sever all romantic ties merely because he had once taken her out for lunch? Her nails dug deep into her palms. Dear heaven! He hadn’t even made a pass at her! She hadn’t allowed him on the telephone to say why he wanted to see her again. It was probably only to give one of his girlfriends cut-price piano lessons!

  ‘Here we are, home again,’ Helena said to her as they slid to a halt. ‘Hasn’t it been a glorious day?’

  But Elizabeth didn’t answer her. She was sick and tired, appalled at the ferocity of her jealousy, confounded by the depth of her physical longing.

  ‘Let’s go straight home,’ she said to Adam as Julienne’s little Morris swerved to a halt behind them.

  He looked down into her face, shocked at how tired and drawn she suddenly looked. ‘OK, sweetheart,’ he said, his arm tightening around her shoulders. ‘We’ll go home and have an early night. It’s been a long day.’

  Chapter Ten

  Raefe rolled over in bed, feeling for his wristwatch on the bedside table. He looked at it and groaned. Five-thirty. He had thirty minutes to reach Kai Tak and the Northrop waiting to fly him to his meeting with Colonel Landor in Singapore.

  By his side Alute began to stir, moving towards him, her hands lightly caressing his chest, beginning to move enticingly lower. Regretfully he swung his legs from the bed, striding towards the shower.

  ‘Oh!’ At his abrupt departure Alute’s eyes shot open in disappointment ‘You are going so soon?’

  Steaming-hot water gushed down over his head and shoulders. ‘It’s five-thirty,’ he shouted. ‘Go back to sleep.’

  ‘Sleeping alone is no fun,’ she protested sulkily. She hated his business trips to Singapore. There were so many girls there, and she lived in fear that he would find one he preferred to her and bring her back with him. Perhaps-horror of horrors – he would even install her in his house on Victoria Peak.

  Alute had never been inside the house that Raefe had shared with his wife. He no longer lived there, preferring his luxury apartment in Central; and, although Alute had often stayed the night in the apartment as she had last night, she had still not managed to fill the wardrobes and drawers with her dresses and lingerie. To her chagrin, she was still not his number one girl and there were times when she wondered if she ever would be.

  He strode back into the bedroom, magnificently naked, rifling through a drawer for underpants and socks, water glistening in his hair and gleaming on his strong shoulders.

  She wound the sheet seductively tight around her slim body and kneeled up on the bed. ‘Can’t you spare just ten minutes?’ she wheedled, letting the sheet slip down to expose a small, tip-tilted breast and dark-gold nipple.

  He grinned, dressing with practised speed. ‘No,’ he said, and there was no regret in his voice. He had more important things to think about than sex.

  For the past two years, unknown to anyone, even Melissa, whenever he had visited Singapore on a necessary business trip, he had also visited military headquarters at Fort Canning, reporting to British Army Intelligence on any suspicious Japanese activity.

  He strode into the sitting-room, unlocking his wall safe and removing two thin files. There were times when he wished that the British had never approached him. They asked for information, they received information, and, in Raefe’s eyes, they did bugger-all with it. He slammed the wall safe shut, grabbed a small overnight bag from a chair and was out of the apartment before his sleepy houseboy could even ask if he wanted coffee.

  Colonel Landor finished reading Raefe’s report and then laid the file back on his desk, his mouth tight-lipped. ‘Do you really believe in the accuracy of this report, Mr Elliot?’

  Raefe met his eyes unflinchingly, his face grim. ‘Yes, I do.’

  Landor drummed his fingers on the file and then pushed it away abruptly. ‘Even if you are right, and these men are Japanese intelligence officers, we can’t expect the Foreign Office to expel them, as you suggest. We’re not at war with Japan. It’s the Chinese who are at war with them. Such an action on our part would cause no end of a diplomatic row!’

  Raefe’s nostrils flared. ‘Sooner or later Japan is
going to attack Hong Kong and Singapore,’ he said, keeping control of his fury with difficulty. ‘When she does, we don’t want her having access to every detail of our defence strength! At the moment, there are five Japanese army personnel in Hong Kong, seconded from the Japanese army for the alleged purpose of learning English. All five are intelligence officers, their sole reason for secondment being to build up a finely detailed picture of our present defences and our proposed defences. They must be expelled immediately! To allow them to remain, knowing what we do, is insanity!’

  Two angry spots of colour touched Colonel Landor’s cheeks. ‘Your task is to ferret out facts and report on them, Mr Elliot. It doesn’t extend to commenting on action that is or isn’t taken!’

  Raefe suppressed his fury with difficulty, hoping he would have the pleasure of seeing Landor’s face when the Japanese poured south, battle-maps of the island’s defences in each and every pocket.

  ‘The other Japanese you’ve named – are you convinced of your facts?’

  ‘Positive,’ Raefe said through clenched teeth. ‘The Japanese barber at the Hong Kong Hotel holds the rank of lieutenant-commander in the Japanese navy. At the moment he cuts the hair of the Governor, the Commissioner of Police, the officer in charge of the Special Branch, and the chairman of Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank!’

  Colonel Landor’s face was pale. It was one thing to be told that the barmen and masseurs of Wanchai were listening assiduously to the gossip of British troops and reporting anything of interest back to Tokyo. It was quite another thing to think of men like the Governor and the Commissioner of Police being lured into unsuspecting gossip by their barber. A shiver ran down his spine as he remembered his own trim and shave earlier in the day. He had been bowed from the chair by his Japanese barber, feeling as if he were a million dollars. Under those relaxing conditions it was very easy for even the most careful of men to talk carelessly.

  ‘What about the Italian waiter at the Peninsula Hotel? Are you sure of him as well?’ he asked tersely.

  ‘As sure as I can be. And the jeweller in the Queen’s Arcade.’

  Landor grunted. The prospect of Japanese spies in the hotels, bars and shops of Hong Kong was not a cheering one. Even less cheering was Elliot’s second report.

  ‘How long do you think this Chinese fifth column, as you style them, have been infiltrating into Hong Kong?’

  ‘Probably ever since the Japanese installed a Chinese as puppet leader over the parts of China they have conquered. It’s Wong Chang Wai’s followers who will be helping the Japs if and when they attack. They are being recruited by the Japanese in Formosa and then brought over to the China – Hong Kong border. Entry is easy. All they have to do is mingle with the refugees entering the island every day.’

  ‘And you think that the Japanese have armed them?’

  ‘I’m sure they will have partially armed them,’ Raefe said grimly, ‘and I’m also sure that they will be well primed as to what acts of sabotage would most damage us.’

  Colonel Landor passed his hand over his eyes. He could imagine the damage they could do all too well. Sniping at isolated and vulnerable posts, acting as despatch riders, spreading false rumours and signalling to their Japanese masters the positions of guns and pillboxes. Dear God, it would be mayhem. It was hard enough for British troops to differentiate between Japanese and Chinese, without expecting them to be able to differentiate between Chinese sympathetic to them and Chinese prepared to stab them in the back.

  He hoped devoutly that Elliot’s assessment of the situation was wrong and had a sickening feeling that it wouldn’t be. When it came to the Chinese and Japanese, Raefe Elliot’s instinct was unerring. He picked up the files. It was up to the Foreign Office to deal with the Japanese seconded from their army on the pretext of learning English. They, at least, should be easy to get rid of. As for weeding out Wong Chang Wai’s followers.… He doubted if even Elliot himself could accomplish that task.

  Raefe slammed out of military headquarters, small white lines etching his mouth. Both the reports he had submitted were damning, and he doubted if action would be taken on either of them. There would be those amongst the high command who would regard Japanese spies in Hong Kong as a joke. ‘What harm can they cause?’ he could imagine them saying. ‘The Japs will never have the nerve to attack. Another gin and tonic, old boy?’

  He stormed out into the blistering heat of early afternoon. The British didn’t want the bald truth. They wanted innocuous reports they could write memos about, shuffling them from department to department, theorizing and temporizing over them. His car was waiting at the gates, and he yanked open the rear door.

  ‘Raffles,’ he said curtly to his Malay driver, sinking back against the cracked leather upholstery. He had other business to conduct whilst in Singapore, but first he needed a long cold drink.

  As the car sped down wide avenues flanked by trim grass verges and frangipani trees, he wondered why it was Hong Kong that he, his father and his grandfather had preferred. Their business interests had always had firm roots in Singapore. It was Singapore godowns, as well as Hong Kong godowns, that bore the name ‘Elliot & Sons’ in large black lettering. A mirthless smile touched the corners of his mouth. The ‘& Sons’no longer had any meaning. He had no son and, as long as he remained married to Melissa, there wouldn’t be one. Not one he could acknowledge.

  The car sped past the slim spire of St Andrew’s Cathedral and down to the waterfront. Perhaps he had never settled here because such large parts of the city were so very English. There was something gentlemanly about Singapore that was lacking in the hurly-burly of Hong Kong. The Malay driver slowed down reluctantly for a traffic policeman, basketwork wings strapped to his back so that he did not need to wave his arms in the heat, but merely had to turn his feet in order to direct the cars. The heat was stifling, and a trickle of sweat ran down Raefe’s neck as they picked up speed, cruising past the green padang of the Cricket Club, with its football and cricket pitches, tennis-courts and bowling-greens. He had no time for a game of tennis on this trip.

  Two years ago the International Rubber Regulation Committee had raised the output quota to 90 per cent of what Elliots were capable of producing. The reason had been the increased demand by America for rubber, and it had meant vast profits. Extra labour had been employed, and very few people, apart from Raefe, had stopped to wonder why the Americans were suddenly stockpiling rubber. He had seen it as an indication that the American government was increasingly apprehensive about a war in the East that would cut off their supplies. When he had suggested this in an official report, it had been politely discounted.

  A year ago the boom had come to an abrupt end. Rubber stocks were so high that the price had slid to rock bottom, and now Elliots were handling more rubber than ever, and losing money at the same time. New markets had to be found, and Raefe was on the verge of closing a deal with an Australian company. But first he needed to know if he had the shipping available to deliver. And that meant a detailed discussion with his general manager at his head office in Robinson Road.

  The car sped up the palm-flanked drive to the rambling ornate Victorian splendour of Raffles Hotel, and he felt his fury at Colonel Landor’s negative attitude begin to dissipate. With luck his report would reach Whitehall and, with even greater luck, someone, somewhere would take note of it.

  The tables beneath the vast roofed-over veranda were full but, as he entered, a waiter scurried over to him, a table was cleared, and as he crossed to it, acknowledging people he knew, he stopped short, his heart hammering violently.

  She was sitting near a tall fan-like fern, her head averted, her wheat-gold hair knotted high at the back of her head. He felt his mouth dry and then he moved towards her and she turned to her companion, laughing at a remark that had been made, and he saw that it wasn’t Elizabeth at all. Just an exceptionally pretty woman who had none of Elizabeth’s grace, or sensuousness, or sexually arousing fragility.

  He continued to his tab
le, ordering a double Scotch and soda, thunderstruck at the depth of his disappointment. At this moment in time the last thing he needed was an emotional involvement with a married woman. Despite his very strong physical attraction to her, he had felt an element of relief when she had adamantly refused to have any further contact with him. But he hadn’t, for one moment, forgotten her. She was impossible to forget.

  The waiter was at his elbow, and he ordered a curry tiffin. Had he really believed he was going to accept her refusal to speak to him on the telephone, to meet him again? The woman who was a pale caricature of her rose to her feet and left the room. He knew that if it had been Elizabeth who had left the room, no matter how crowded, it would have been as if a light had gone out or the sun had gone in. There was a luminous radiance about her, a gentleness that he had never encountered in any woman before. And yet she was tough. He remembered the way she had spoken to him about her music, the passion that had entered her soft smoky voice. A smile crooked the corners of his mouth. He doubted that her passion had ever been unleashed on her dull and steady husband.

  When his plane touched down at Kai Tak two days later, Derry Langdon was waiting for him, sitting at the wheel of a jeep, a battered sun-hat on the back of his head, a cigarette between his fingers.

  Raefe ignored his own car and walked across to his brother-in-law. He liked the easygoing and affable Derry and found it hard to believe that he had been spawned by the same genes that had spawned Melissa.

  ‘How was Singapore?’ Derry asked as Raefe swung himself into the jeep beside him.

  ‘Hot and colonial,’ Raefe said briefly. ‘What’s the matter, Derry? Fresh trouble?’

  Derry took a last puff at his cigarette and then dropped it to the floor of the jeep, crushing it out beneath his sandalled foot. ‘Pa insists that Melissa returns to Victoria. He’s going to take a court order out claiming that you’re holding her against her will.’