City of Secrets (31 page)

Something cleared from his face, as if he had felt some of the same storm that had ravished her all through the night. But he still had something left to say, to finish the past.

“May I tell you what happened now?”

She nodded. He put her arm in his, and they walked a little way up the path before he began. Louise trailed behind them, close enough to see them but not to overhear.

“It all started so simply,” he said. “There was an accident at one of the prince’s shooting parties: a servant of one of the guests was shot. There had to be an inquiry, of course, so the prince asked me to help. That’s when it began to get complicated.

“The man had been shot with a pistol, not a hunting rifle. A stranger had been seen in the woods at the same time. I came up against a blank wall when I tried to find out more about the servant. What I now believe happened is that the valet was paid to assassinate the prince, but that at the last minute he backed out ... and was shot for his treachery.”

“But by whom?” Maddie asked.

He smiled wryly. “That’s the one question that would have answered all the rest. I poked around in London for a long time, looking for some information about the stranger who’d been hanging about in the woods. I got tantalizing little clues, but few of them seemed to fit the same puzzle. I also got a vague picture of the man in the woods, but not enough to know what he looked like—until I went to Paris.”

“Looking for Teddy?”

“No, before that. I didn’t know Edward Malcolm existed before that. In Paris I traced the servant to an anarchist group, whose chief was—or was reported to be—a man named Frank Hartwell, who was an American or a Canadian. He spoke English, but not like an Englishman. Anyway, I pretended to be interested in joining the group, and my friend Claude Fournier acted as go-between with this Hartwell.

“But he didn’t believe my story about joining the group. He must have suspected some treachery, in fact, because he went into hiding for a while. Claude finally flushed him out, and although Hartwell wouldn’t see me, he agreed to meet Claude ... at midnight, on one of the Seine bridges.”

“Pont Sully.”

“Yes.”

“What I believe happened then is that your husband took Hartwell’s place, whether at Hartwell’s instigation or because Teddy thought it something of a lark, I don’t know.”

“Why should he think that?”

“They looked alike, he and Hartwell, enough at least to be mistaken for each other in the dark. And I think your husband had done that before—stood in for his boss.  It’s the only way some of those clues I picked up could have been planted, although I saw that only in retrospect and after I returned to Paris to find out where your husband had come into the story.”

They paused for a moment at a grove of the exotic trees Baden was famous for, trees that had been brought there from all over the world and that inexplicably thrived in the alien climate. But Maddie glanced only fleetingly at the little explanatory plaques attached to some of them, and Devin did not even trouble to look.

“That was why I was so convinced when we first met that you were hiding something,” he said. “It was too much of a coincidence that you should have come to me so soon after I had come back from Paris, where I first found out about your husband.”

“I suppose it would have been like Teddy—to skirt danger for a lark.”

The idea no longer surprised her, but her acceptance of it stopped him for a moment. He said, kindly, “I don’t think it was just that. I think Hartwell had some power over your husband, had caught him at some petty crime, perhaps, and threatened to turn him in.”

“Or to send him back to me.”

“Perhaps.”

They walked on a little farther, and he continued, “So Claude walked out into the middle of the bridge to talk to the man he believed was Hartwell. I’d come along too and hid in the shadows to watch. He—your husband—got a little carried away with his part and began to threaten Claude. I could hear them arguing.

“Hartwell must have heard it too, because just then I saw a movement at the other end of the bridge. It only registered on my mind that there were two Hartwells when the one at the end of the bridge raised a gun. I don’t know why exactly; he may have decided his surrogate was getting out of hand, or he may have been aiming for Claude. That’s what I thought, anyway, so I aimed at Hartwell. Just then, your—Malcolm—saw Hartwell too and ran toward him. He crossed my line of fire just as I pulled the trigger.”

When he had finished his story, they did not speak for a few minutes, walking on together in silence. The path wound into an evergreen wood, and the sunlit views were blotted out temporarily. It was cooler there, too.

“So the man I saw on the bridge was this Hartwell?”

“It must have been. I think he was following you, even in London, perhaps because he thought you knew about him, and he wanted to be sure you were not going to be a threat. Your secretary was a real threat, of course, nosing about the way he was, and that complicated things still more. Hartwell should have disappeared again, but by that time he may have been feeling as frustrated as I was.”

“Do you believe, then, that this man Hartwell is the assassin—the potential assassin?”

He raised an eyebrow at her but didn’t answer at once. She thought he was trying to gauge how much to reveal to her, or how much she already knew. She decided to tell him.

“Oliver told me that Florence’s young man—that is, the one at her salon who was brought by her Hungarian violinist—said there was a higher authority behind him. The leader’s dog, he called this man who looks like Teddy.”

He smiled at that but said only, “Oliver is far too confiding.”

“He isn’t really. As soon as he learned there was more to this case than my finding Teddy, he stopped telling me anything I didn’t drag out of him. He really did want to help you, Devin. He still does.”

“I know.”

When she looked at him quizzically, he explained about his meeting the day before with Oliver.

“I suppose I might have known. Where is Oliver now?”

“Scouring the lower depths with Sergeant Brenner, I expect. They will make a wonderful team.”

“Who’s Sergeant Brenner?”

He explained, and she laughed at the picture he conjured up of an overeager St. Bernard puppy. But then she stopped him again in their walk and said, “Devin, I know I’ve been a hindrance to you in your work—unintentionally, believe me—and I want to make it up to you.”

“Why do you always think you have to atone for your behavior?” he said, echoing the anger of the night before, and for an instant she was frightened again. But then his voice softened. “You don’t have to atone for your imagined sins, my darling. Haven’t I said that at least once already?”

“I put that badly, then. Old mistakes don’t die easily. What I meant was, I want to help you.”

“With what?” He was going to be deliberately unrevealing, she knew. She would have to convince him that she at least understood the urgency of his task, which he had been no more able than she to disguise by deliberately slowing his steps along the Allee, although she could barely keep up with him even then. His hands clenched into fists whenever they were not touching her, and he had to make an effort to erase the frown that kept reappearing on his forehead.

“You know what I’m talking about. I—
we
came here expressly to warn you about it.”

“You could have warned the subject of your concern directly, in Paris.”

“I don’t think so,” she said, challenging the statement with her eyes.

“No, you’re right. He wouldn’t have listened. Ponsonby would have, but you don’t know Fritz—or do you?”

He was weakening a little, she could see; she tried not to smile at her victory. “No,” she said simply. “I don’t know everything. But please, Devin”—she put her hand on his arm—“I
can
help. Between us—all three of us—we can stop these people.”

He looked at her as if he were weighing this, coldly in his detective’s mind, deciding if taking a chance on her was a greater risk than going on the way he had begun on his own. Or he may have been simply thinking ahead to what to do next.

“Devin, if you weren’t involved, I wouldn’t have come here. I
would
have stayed in Paris.”

He raised his eyebrows.

“I mean, I would have done my best to help, but I would have sent Oliver by himself, or telephoned. But because it was
you,
I wanted to be here, to help you.” She lowered her eyes and said, so softly she was not certain he heard, “And I missed you.”

“I was only gone two days.”

“I know.”

He looked down at her for a few minutes, and finally she saw in his dark eyes what she was looking for; they lost their sharpness and a welcome warmth came into them—a fire that she knew this time would not go out, would not even flicker.

He picked up her hand and kissed it, and his warm breath was unbelievably evocative; all the emotions she had felt when he made love to her seemed to be concentrated in that tiny little kiss. The unbidden thought that he had just put aside all that had happened between them before, and that the next time they would begin again, reaching for new heights, new fires, made her catch her breath at the depth of her desire for him.

He seemed to know what she was feeling, and his voice was low and husky when he said, “I wish this weren’t so public.”

She smiled. “That’s why I chose it. I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to be businesslike and impersonal somewhere else.”

He smiled. “There is a concert tonight. Would you like to go?”

“Are you attempting to divert me? Or do you expect there to be something more exciting than Wagner going on tonight?”

“My love, I sincerely hope there is nothing more exciting than Wagner to be had in Baden this evening. I am only going to eavesdrop, for as much as I would like to dally with you in the ruins of the
Schloss,
or stroll along some secluded river path, I must go out in public and keep my eyes and ears open. Your being with me will make me less conspicuous and certainly make the duty a pleasant one.”

“Well, I suppose that is some concession, however ungracious, to my offer to help.”

“I also do not want you out of my sight.”

“Are you afraid of what I might do? I promise to behave if you promise not to exclude me.”

He smiled faintly but said nothing, and after they had walked a little farther, he stopped her and said, “It isn’t a game, Maddie.”

“I hope you know me better than that.”

“I’m sorry, but I had to be sure you understood. This unknown mastermind behind the plot must keep a close watch on his minions. It is therefore very likely that he is in Baden as well. He could be anywhere. He could be anyone. He could hurt you, too.”

“I understand that.”

He looked into her eyes and seemed to make up his mind. He raised her hand to his lips and kissed it; she closed her eyes, feeling the fear that he held inside himself transmit itself it to her. She welcomed it, for it meant she was really a part of him now, sharing in whatever he was feeling. She turned her fingers a little to squeeze his hand, to tell him that way, too, that she understood.

“I’ll call for you at eight o’clock.”

The evening was warm and windless, and since the concert hall was not far from the hotel, Maddie suggested to Devin when he came to call for her that they walk there so they would have a few minutes to talk. But he was not very forthcoming—less, she suspected, from reluctance than from his simply having too much on his mind to spare any for small talk. Maddie wished just the same that he would confide in her, as he had begun to do in Paris, that afternoon when they went to see the Impressionists. Surely Paris was not so far away or so long ago as all that?

They were walking along the modest little river that was as unlike the Seine as this picturesque resort village was from Paris or London. The shallow water shimmered in the pale moonlight filtering through the lime trees, and the air was warm and moist, as if the steam from the hot baths had been let into the air. It wasn’t a night for hurrying or for jostling with crowds of other people in a small room, and Maddie walked slowly, prolonging the pleasantly languid sensation of the heated night and waiting for it to ease enough of Devin’s tension that he would tell her about it.

Finally, she took the initiative. “Louise and I went to the baths this afternoon,” she told him. “After I left you.”

He put his hand on her bare neck and stroked it gently, with a warm, circular motion of his palm that she found soothing and stimulating at the same time ... and much nicer than the baths. “Did it help?” he asked.

“It was Louise’s idea. I think she considered me a prime candidate for a restorative boiling. But it was more relaxing than I’d expected. A rather intimidating matron took me in charge, ordering me—not suggesting, mind you, ordering me—to be rinsed off under a shower of water, then to be dried not with a towel, but in a hot, dry room, where I turned pink all over.”

The suggestion of a smile around his mouth told her he was listening, so she went on. “Then she massaged me and put me in a steam bath. When I was properly pink again, she put me back in the shower ... and turned on the
cold
water! Well, I rebelled at that, you may be sure. She insisted that alternate hot and cold baths was the proper treatment, but I insisted just as vehemently that I wasn’t ill enough for that kind of treatment and held out for another hot bath. Well, she led me to it, but then left me in it for what seemed hours, and I nearly fell asleep. Fortunately, there are always several attendants on hand, expressly, I suspect, to keep people from falling asleep and drowning themselves!”

He laughed at that and gave her a suggestive look. “I should like to have seen you—all pink.”

“I don’t believe they have mixed baths ... men and women, I mean, not hot and cold!”

“Pity.”

He took his hand away from her neck then, but she caught it and put it back, then drew him to her by his other hand and raised her face to his. He took it between his large, rough hands, kissing her gently but firmly, not stopping until she moaned softly and pressed closer to him.