City of Secrets (36 page)

“Thank you,
gnadige Fräulein,”
he said, tipping his hat and adding in a conspiratorial whisper, “Good luck!”

Maddie smiled and thanked him, then lowered her hat veil, picked up her valise, and went into the station. She looked around the small, white-painted waiting room, but it was empty. Outside she saw only the platform attendant, so she sat down on a bench, the valise on the ground next to her, to wait.

The distant rumble grew louder, and Maddie could feel the faint vibration of the platform as the train drew closer. She did not look toward the train but kept her eyes on the entrance to the station, where passengers and friends seeing them off were beginning to disembark from cabs and private carriages and to arrive on foot. Another cab pulled up outside, and an elderly gentleman with a shiny new malacca cane and an old, battered portmanteau came in and sat down on the bench at the other side of the doorway. A starchily erect woman in black holding the hand of a cowed-looking girl emerged from the waiting room, followed by two nuns with their hands hidden in their voluminous habits.

And then, just as the train came into view, a hired carriage pulled up outside and seemed to hesitate briefly before deciding to stop. Maddie stood up for a better look at it over the iron fence. At the same time, with a hiss of brakes, the train slowed for a stop. The engine went on by, past the station house. Out of the corner of her eye, Maddie saw a familiar figure swing off the still-moving step of one of the train carriages. Devin.

Then everything seemed to happen at once. The carriage with the unmarked maroon doors came to halt directly in front of Maddie. On her other side, another masculine figure, almost—teasingly—as familiar as Devin’s, caught her eye, entering the station not by the main doorway but by vaulting over a gate in the fence.

Devin caught himself as he touched the ground and turned around, seeing Maddie. Then, at the same instant that she did, he saw the other figure halt in the middle of the platform and raise his arm toward the half-opened window of the unmarked carriage.

But Maddie was one step ahead of him. She raised her own arm, with her pistol in her hand, and said not loudly, but distinctly, “Stop!”

Startled, the other man turned toward her, and for an instant Maddie looked into a face she knew.

Teddy!

The shock was just enough to make her hesitate, to lower her pistol a fraction before she realized,
It
isn’t Teddy. It can’t be. Teddy’s dead.

She raised her hand again, but by then Devin had acted. Running down the platform past her, he fired a shot. It missed. The woman in black screamed.

Another shot sounded, much louder.

Maddie dropped the hot pistol. The gunman fell to the platform, and a swarm of train attendants and private servants surrounded him. Next to her, so close that his calm voice made Maddie jump, the Prince of Wales leaned out of the window of his carriage and said to Devin, “What, is it over already?”

“Yes, sir, quite finished.”

“Good, good! Let’s get on to the baths, then, shall we?”

He withdrew his head, but then Ponsonby emerged, cast a comprehensive glance around, and said, “Well done again, Grant. Will you stay to attend the lady?”

“Yes, please, Fritz.”

“Right. See you at the Stephanie, then.”

Only then did Devin look at Maddie, and only then did she realize that she had not moved a muscle since she fired that shot. He came to her and put his arms gently around her. Then the reaction struck her.

“Oh, Devin!”

She clutched him fiercely and began to sob into his shoulder while he whispered soothing noises into her ear.  After a moment they began to penetrate and sorted themselves into “It’s all right, my brave darling.... We’re safe. You’ve done it. I love you.”

“What?”

She pulled back an inch to look at him. He laughed and impelled her gently toward the bench where her empty valise still waited. Maddie tried not to look in the other direction, where someone had thrown a blanket over the motionless figure on the platform. A policeman had been called and was questioning the platform attendant and taking notes when a man in a bowler hat came up to him and said something that made him put away his pencil and go into the waiting room with the stranger. The other onlookers drifted away, leaving the figure under the blanket alone there.

“Who was he?” Maddie asked, outwardly as composed again as the prince, although her heart still beat wildly inside her.

“His name was Frank Hartwell. I think he was Florence Wingate’s brother.”

“He looked like—”

“I know. That’s why I—how I made that mistake in Paris. At a distance, I couldn’t tell them apart, as you couldn’t, that night on the bridge.”

Maddie’s mind whirled. She could scarcely sort it all out, and for a few moments Teddy seemed to become Frank Hartwell, as Frank Hartwell had been Teddy in her mind for so long, and the last shred of love and loyalty to poor dead Teddy that she had clung to seemed to drop away, and he died truly at last.

Silent tears rolled down her cheeks, and Devin, misunderstanding what she mourned for, held her and said, “It’s over now, darling. There’s no more danger.”

The train started up again just then, and Devin stood, pulling Maddie up with him and drawing her into the shadow of the ticket office.

When she looked up at him questioningly, he explained, “There is a trainload of no doubt very perturbed passengers about to go past. Since they have been kept inside during all this I expect they are agog with curiosity—especially Daisy and her mother and Laurence Fox. I particularly have no desire to show myself to Laurie, who will never forgive me for denying him the opportunity to photograph all the excitement. Let’s get a cab back to Baden—if you’re ready?”

“Yes, I think so. Oh—I have a cab already, if he’s waited for me.”

They emerged from the street side of the station to find Maddie’s cab still parked on the other side, the driver fast asleep on his perch.

“I can’t believe he’s slept through all this!” Maddie said and laughed, beginning to feel normal again. Devin banged his fist against the side of the cab, waking the driver, who jumped in his seat, clutched at his hat, which had been resting over his eyes, and looked down.

“Gnadige Fräulein!”
He saw Devin’s arm then, resting on Maddie’s waist, and broke into a broad grin. “You have found your gentleman ...
schon, wunderschon!
So, we go back to Baden now, yes?”

“Yes, thank you,” Maddie said, smiling back. Devin opened the door for her, and they were on their way almost before he had closed it behind himself. Maddie suddenly remembered the valise she had left on the platform and laughed. Well, someone would find it and make use of it. She turned to Devin to tell him the joke, but the look in his eyes stopped her.

“I take it the driver is a friend of yours?”

“We have become well acquainted this morning, yes.”

“Then I hope we can rely on his discretion.” He took her in his arms then, and neither of them gave a thought to the driver or the rest of the world as their kiss deepened, sweeping them away to a world inhabited only by themselves. When they broke apart at last, Maddie sighed in contentment and, tucking her feet up under her on the seat, leaned contentedly against Devin’s shoulder.

“What will happen to the Wingates?” she said at last.

“Oliver will have had them apprehended by now. I don’t think Geoffrey had any part in all this—he was just a sort of convenience for Florence, who needed a traveling companion much as her brother needed what I believe you Americans call a ‘fall guy’.  But now that Frank is dead, I doubt we’ll ever hear from Florence again.”

Maddie shook her head. “It’s still so hard to comprehend.”

“I expect Frank Hartwell is going to turn out to be a fascinating case. That apparently is his real name—or at least, the American consulate has confirmed that Florence’s maiden name was Hartwell. He was certainly sure of himself, to use his own identity, yet still keep himself so well out of anyone’s reach. I doubt that even now I can pin the murder of Michel Lamont on him.”

“Do you know—Geoffrey even told me about Frank once, but I’d forgotten all about it until just this moment.”

“What did he say?”

“Only that he was the black sheep of the family. And that he went to the races.”

“Which is doubtless how he met your husband. I think we will find out that Hartwell saw the usefulness of having him around and made sure he stayed there. Your husband may have thought it would be a novel kind of amusement to join in Hartwell’s intrigues, changing places with him to confound everyone. I doubt he ever realized what a dangerous game he was playing.”

“But
why
did they play it? That’s what I’ll never understand.”

He smiled and drew her a little closer. “Your Oliver has an elaborate theory about that. I’m sure he will explain it in detail when we get back to Baden.”

“The sooner, the better.”

He looked at her questioningly, and she explained, “So that we can begin forgetting it. Devin, I had no idea until today how much I have been living in the past, and now I want nothing more than to put all that
in
the past.”

He considered that for a moment, while he removed her hat and stroked her hair gently. “And what, Mrs. Malcolm, do you plan to do about the future?”

“To start with, I shall go back to calling myself Miss Osborne.”

“Oh, no, don’t do that.”

She moved her head to look up at him. “And why not?”

She had moved just enough to make it easy for him to bend his head and kiss her again.

“Because I think Mrs. Grant would sound much better—that is, if I won’t be a continual reminder to you of all that you’d rather forget.”

She smiled. “I can’t remember anything about you that I’d ever want to forget—if the memories we are going to make after today don’t overwhelm all the others.”

He touched her lips again and whispered, “Let’s see that they do.”

Overhead the cabdriver began to whistle a little tune that his uncle, the cobbler, had taught him when he was a child, and that he always whistled on special occasions. But his passengers did not even hear it.

Copyright © 1988 by Linda Triegel/Elisabeth Kidd

Originally published by Warner (ISBN 978-0446346528)

Electronically published in 2015 by Belgrave House/Regency

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This is a work of fiction. All names in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to any person living or dead is coincidental.