The House of Vandekar (45 page)

At the end of the trip he felt a deal was likely to be concluded. It would make him very, very rich, even by American standards. But he didn't fly home. Instead he took the shuttle down to Washington. A car was waiting and it drove him through the city and into the smart Georgetown residential area. There were embassies and fine private houses. It was reserved for the rich and the diplomatic. The car stopped before an elegant house set back off the road. It wasn't a big house, but it had age and charm.

‘I won't be more than an hour, I expect,' he told the driver. ‘Then back to the airport.'

‘It's very nice of you to see me, Mrs Wallace.'

She had a charming smile. She sat upright in her chair – she had once been very striking. Elegant still, with fashionable clothes and painted nails. She smoked a cigarette in a neat little holder. It gave her a quaint, old-fashioned air.

‘Not at all, Mr Renwick. You've come a long way. And I was intrigued by your letter. It's funny, people still want to know about him after all these years. I was approached only last year by someone researching for a book on SOE in France.'

‘I'm not writing a book,' David Renwick said.

‘So you said,' she answered. ‘Then why have you come to see me? Isn't it about Nick and the heroics?'

There was a bite in that last word. He was surprised. But then she might not appreciate the subtlety of a foreign language. She still had a strong French accent after forty years of living in the States.

‘In a way,' he said. ‘I know you married again. I'd like to talk to you about him, but I wouldn't want to upset you.'

‘My dear Mr Renwick, you're very kind. I wouldn't be in the least bit upset by talking about Nick. I have been very happily married to my husband since 1943. Sadly, he died eighteen months ago. My marriage to Nick lasted less than two years. Since you have taken the trouble to find me and come all the way from England, you must ask any questions you like. Cigarette?'

‘No, thank you. He spent time at a place called Ashton, convalescing after he escaped from France. People called Vandekar owned it.'

There was a change in her expression. Then she visibly chided herself. ‘I went down there. Mrs Vandekar invited me. She became very famous, didn't she? I used to read about her and her husband in the American papers. She was American, of course.'

‘Yes,' David said. ‘Did you know she had an affair with your husband?'

‘I suspected,' she replied. ‘I didn't care then and I don't now. I had left Nick and was living with Chuck. She was madly in love with him, that was obvious. I almost felt sorry for her.'

Almost, David thought, but not quite. They'd have squared up to each other on sight. Janine Wallace was quite a personality.

‘Why sorry?'

She shrugged slightly, stubbed out her cigarette and expelled the stub with a practised twist of the holder. ‘Because she would be hurt, as I'd been hurt. I didn't leave him for nothing, Mr Renwick. We had a lot to bind us together. We met in France where I was also working for the Resistance. Nick was nice-looking, dashing, very brave …' She shrugged again as if decrying her own stupidity. ‘Of course, we became lovers, and on leave in England we were married. I had lost my nerve, Mr Renwick. I wanted to stay in England and try to live a normal life. Relatives of mine had been taken by the Gestapo and killed. Friends too. I was twenty-three years old and I couldn't stand any more of it. Nick thought I was a coward.

‘He went back to France and I lived through hell for three months without word, wondering what had happened to him. And imagining the worst, of course. But he came back, full of stories, reproaching me for resigning from the Service. Not in those words, but everything he said, every reference to other people working under cover that we both knew – they were all reproaches. Even now I can remember feeling so unhappy, begging him to give it up, to go back to flying if he was so desperate for excitement and danger. I wanted to have a child.'

She looked at David and sighed. ‘Such a long time ago, and such a waste when you think about it. We were not suited and we were not happy. I left him, just before he went on the mission where he was captured. I had met Chuck at a party, and it was just like that between us.' She snapped her fingers. ‘I had been living with a man in love with heroics. I found a man who loved me instead. Nick was very bitter. I think he hated me at the end. He was very brave, I'm not denying that. And that's what Mrs Vandekar admired I expect. A real hero figure, and he ended up in the blaze of glory he always wanted.'

‘It sounds to me as if you hated him,' David said. And still do, he thought, in spite of telling yourself you don't mind any more. ‘Just as well you didn't have a child.'

‘There was no chance of that,' she said. ‘He told me after we were married. He made a joke of it. Can you imagine? He'd had this illness – mumps – when he was already grown up. He could never have children. He was sterile. I sometimes wondered whether it affected him. Whether he was trying to make up for it in some way.'

After a pause she said. ‘Mr Renwick? Is there anything else you want to know?'

‘Nothing else, thanks very much. You've been a great help, Mrs Wallace. You've cleared something up for me. Something I've been bothered about ever since I heard it.'

‘Can I ask what it was?'

He stood up. She was intelligent and poised but he didn't like her. He had a mental picture of the bomber going down in flames and her epitaph for Nick Armstrong. ‘The blaze of glory he always wanted.'

‘I'm sorry, but it's not connected with me. And it's nothing to do with you either now. Thank you for seeing me.'

He didn't shake hands before he left.

‘David,' Nancy said at last. ‘Why didn't you tell me? Why didn't you say anything?'

‘Because I didn't want to start the whole business up again. You were happy, you'd got rid of all the hang-ups. But I wasn't satisfied myself, darling. I wanted to know for sure. If I was wrong, then I wouldn't have said anything about it to you. But I had a gut feeling about this. From the minute I saw your father in those albums. When he was grown up. You wouldn't see it, and your grandmother wouldn't because she was convinced of something else. But he was the spitting image of Hugo. Everyone said he looked like Alice because he was fair. You said the same. But it was a blind. I looked at him and I looked at Hugo, and I said they're father and son. They must be.'

Nancy twisted the diamond engagement ring round her finger. ‘Poor Grandmother,' she said quietly. ‘She went through all that for nothing. She died believing that lie.'

‘You've got it wrong, darling,' he said. ‘She loved Armstrong and she loved your father. She wanted him to be Armstrong's son.

‘I said to you that day at Ashton that it didn't matter who or what you were. Vandekar or not, what the hell … I remember saying it, sitting in the garden with you. I'll never forget how upset you were. It made me bloody mad and you said afterwards, “I don't know who I am, I've no real identity.” That's the real reason I went to Washington to see her. In case I could find out something to clear it up for good. The past's the past. You can put it all behind you now. You're Nancy Vandekar, and in three days you'll be Nancy Renwick. I think it suits you better.'

She looked up at him. ‘I think so too.'

About the Author

Evelyn Anthony is the pen name of Evelyn Ward-Thomas, a female British author who began writing in 1949. She gained considerable success with her historical novels—two of which were selected for the American Literary Guild—before winning huge acclaim for her espionage thrillers. Her book,
The Occupying Power
, won the Yorkshire Post Fiction Prize, and her 1971 novel,
The Tamarind Seed
, was made into a film starring Julie Andrews and Omar Sharif. Anthony's books have been translated into nineteen languages. She lives in Essex, England.

All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 1988 by Evelyn Anthony

Cover design by Mimi Bark

ISBN: 978-1-5040-2427-3

This edition published in 2015 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

345 Hudson Street

New York, NY 10014

www.openroadmedia.com

EARLY BIRD BOOKS

FRESH EBOOK DEALS, DELIVERED DAILY

BE THE FIRST TO KNOW—

NEW DEALS HATCH EVERY DAY!

EBOOKS BY EVELYN ANTHONY

FROM OPEN ROAD MEDIA