Touchstone (30 page)

She was not the least bit undecided: She believed Bunsen was wrong, completely wrong, wrong to the edge of treachery.

His hand came up to rub at his forehead, but he kept his voice mild. “It seems to me we’ve had this argument before, over compromise being a necessary evil.”

“Haven’t we just?” she said, her voice gone suddenly fond. “And it will no doubt please you to know that I have learned the art of concession. But it’s so seductive, isn’t it? So easy a habit to fall into. Look what happened to Labour, two years ago. They took the election—the Labour Party! Out of the blue, an opportunity to push forward some real, substantial
changes
! The Liberals would have gone with them, I know they would. But when the time came, they were afraid of being labeled extremists and so they ignored their conscience, and would not use the authority they’d been given. MacDonald and the rest of them took one small, compromising step back, and then another, and in no time at all they had nothing left.”

Politics were safe; politics brought her to life and took the lies from her voice. For Laura, politics were life, and it was a comfort to Bennett, just to relax and enjoy her passion. He commented, “The Zinoviev letter didn’t help matters any.”

“Oh, even without it, Labour would have lost the election. The letter was just a dirty trick that toppled a doomed structure. It’s happened a thousand times in history, that a revolutionary group becomes mainstream, led astray by the illusion of power.”

“So what’s the other option? Systematically chopping off every branch of political and economic organization?”

“A generation ago, that might have been seen as the only choice, but Richard believes that the power of the collective voice could be immense, if only the proper means of uniting the people could be found. Look at the Paris Commune—don’t you wonder what France would look like now if the army had stayed away long enough to give it a chance? For two brief months, ordinary workers ran the city, with remarkable efficiency and fairness. For that short time, government was based on an equality of voice, authority came with experience—did you know, there were billions of francs right there in the national bank, and they didn’t touch a
sou
? Children were fed and educated, women walked without their traditional chains—God, Bennett, you have to wonder, if they’d been given time…

“And now we’re being given our own chance, to let righteousness flow down like water, and give true freedom a chance. Piecemeal change just doesn’t seem to work—it’s like patching a leaky dam.”

“So Bunsen would blow the dam up and build a new one.” Washing away the poor buggers downstream.

“More like blowing it up and let the river run without it. Any time there’s a formal structure, it opens the door to corruption and inequality.
Any
hierarchy is unequal. Which wouldn’t be so bad if everyone occupied positions with only slight variations of superiority, but, Bennett, we live in a country where children starve within two miles of Buckingham Palace. British children, so thin they look like wizened old men. Children starve, and they die of minor ailments, and their worn-out mothers die in child-birth, and their unemployed fathers drink themselves to death. Have you ever been down a mine?” she asked, in an abrupt change of subject.

“I live in Cornwall, remember?”

“Tin mines,” she said dismissively. “Positively civilized compared to the coal pits. Day after day, men, some of them little more than children, drop themselves down a mile-long tube into the darkness to grovel away in the earth. Their skin turns black and their spines bend, and they die, either quickly in preventable accidents or slowly of lung diseases. They die doing filthy work, in terrible circumstances, all the while knowing their sons are condemned to the same deaths. And up in the sunshine, the men who build their houses over the bones of the dead now expect them to work a longer day, and for less than they live on now. I don’t believe in God, Bennett, but I do believe in sin, and that is sin.”

He allowed the silence to hold for a while, overcome by the intensity of her vision. Oh, he could hear the rehearsal in her words, phrases honed and arranged and used in one speech after another, but he had no doubt of the passion behind them. Lady Laura Hurleigh had come a long way since she had signed on as a twenty-two-year-old V.A.D. nurse, eleven years ago.

“So what would you have us do, you and your friend the Great Man?”

She turned and gave him a radiant look. “Tonight? Meet Richard and listen to him. But right now? Right now I’d have you race me to the Snag.”

So saying, she drove her heels into the horse and took off, Bennett following a length behind.

Laura won.

Chapter Thirty-Eight

S
ARAH LED
Stuyvesant back to Hurleigh House by another route, across the fields and then down a gated path through the woods. They passed the Hurleigh chapel without stopping in, but paused for a few minutes at a hillside clearing designed to offer a panoramic view of the estate: servants’ hall roof directly below, the lodge and drive beyond it, then the house itself, with the river valley framed by the ancient rose at the bottom and the top of the opposite hill above.

“So, so beautiful,” Sarah said. She sounded oddly sad about it, and Stuyvesant thought she had the beginnings of tears in her eyes.

They completed their four-hour circle at Hurleigh House at half past three. Somewhere nearby rose playful shouts, and as they went past the kitchen they heard the clatter of pans.

“See you in the house later, for tea?” she asked.

“Wouldn’t miss it.”

“Thank you, Harris. I had a lovely afternoon.”

“The pleasure was all mine.”

She stepped forward to give his cheek a quick peck, then disappeared into the wave room.

Stuyvesant’s feet took him up the stairs, without much contribution from his brain. He was, he reflected, having about as much luck at not getting involved with Sarah Grey as he’d had at keeping himself aloof from her brother.

Upstairs, he used the toilet, gave his dusty shoes and trouser legs a brush, then went down the hall to knock on Grey’s door. There was no answer, and the knob turned. Stuyvesant stepped inside and found the room empty. The riding boots Grey had been wearing were standing upright in the corner.

He walked over to the house, and found the energy level building. Strange faces popped in and out of doors, a collection of freshly scrubbed tennis players talked in loud voices in the gallery, and a delegation of boatmen were straggling up through the garden, half of them drenched and weed-draped but laughing nonetheless.

Richard Bunsen had not arrived.

Bennett Grey was not in the house.

Back outside, Stuyvesant walked a circuit of the garden, wishing he could borrow a shotgun and blaze away at a bunch of cans—waiting periods were the parts of cases he hated most.

The Morris sped down the road opposite, crossed the ford, and came up the drive without a trace of smoke or hesitation. Gallagher stepped forward to open the door to the noisy crowd of passengers—but Bunsen would not be in the Morris; he had his own motor.

Stuyvesant turned away, strode through the garden and past the barn to the path that led uphill. Ten minutes later he spotted Grey sitting on the Peak, chin on knees and silver flask between his feet.

Stuyvesant sat down and took out his cigarettes. He held out the case to Grey, who gave a small shake of his head but didn’t take his eyes off the roof-tops below. Stuyvesant glanced at the flask, wondering if it was empty, wondering how full it had been when Grey had come up here.

“If you ask me how drunk I am, I’ll hit you,” Grey snarled.

“You’re a big boy. You don’t need me to nag.”

“Damned right.”

“Besides, now I don’t need to ask. You’re drunk enough to be obstreperous but not far enough gone to pass out.”

“It takes more than one flask of the stuff to knock me out.”

“Even of that Cornish vodka?”

Grey looked at him then, an eyebrow raised. “‘Vodka’?”

“Isn’t that what it is? You said it was made out of potatoes.”

“You’re right. I just never thought of it that way. Makes it sound far too exotic.”

“You going to be able to handle tonight?”

“I don’t know. Depends on how drunk everyone gets. It’s easier then, oddly enough. Drunks are more honest.”

“I’ll make sure Gallagher spikes the punch.”

“If I disappear early, it’ll mean I found the going too hard and have gone to bed.”

“Grey, look,” Stuyvesant began, but couldn’t decide how to go on. What can you say to a man who is eviscerating himself on your behalf? “If there’s anything you want me to do, give me the high sign.” After a minute, Grey picked up the flask and unscrewed the cap, taking a swallow: nearly empty, Stuyvesant saw.

“She loves him, doesn’t she?” the American said.

Grey considered the object in his hand, took another gulp, and screwed down the top, dropping it to the ground. “Laura is completely and utterly committed to Look Forward and its founder. We’ll find that Bunsen treats her abominably, but then he probably treats everyone the same way, unless there is something he wants from them. As for your own needs, yes, I managed to work you into our conversation as we rode back, and planted in her mind the possibility that you might be sympathetic to her beliefs, with an eye to your ingratiating yourself into her beloved Movement.”

The bitterness of his speech grated on Stuyvesant, who was already feeling quite bitter enough about this particular operation. He stifled a sharp retort, which wouldn’t help either of them, and instead remarked, “Your sister seems to be equally committed to the Movement.”

The instant he said it, he realized that he had played into Grey’s hands. Grey shot him a grin. “I told you she was the kind of girl you’d fall in love with.”

“I don’t know about that,” Stuyvesant protested. “But yeah, she’s a great girl. And I’ve let her see how much I like her ideas, too.”

The smile faded; Grey shook his head. “It’s a low thing to do, Stuyvesant, taking advantage of two women like this.”

“I’ve spent most of my life worming my way into people’s affections. I can’t say you get used to it, but you can see that it’s necessary.”

“So why are you so tempted to throw it all in?”

“I never said…” He stopped. Jesus, no wonder the poor bastard had no friends: Being with him was like parading down a street in the nude. “Yeah, you’re right. I’ve been doing this half my life. Partly it’s a game, you see. You find a way inside an organization. You talk right, act right, day and night, never letting your act down. You spend months handing out pamphlets on the street to prove your sincerity, you make yourself useful, you work your way up.” And sometimes instead of handing out pamphlets you were delivering guns or beating up one of the opposition, but you did it because that was the only way to get to the end, and afterwards you didn’t talk about it. “It’s a young man’s game, and I’m forty years old. Maybe I’m just tired.”

Grey picked up the flask and held it out; Stuyvesant took a swallow, feeling the burn all the way to his diaphragm. In exchange, he offered the silver case again; this time Grey took one.

“Where were you?” Grey asked.

From his tone, Stuyvesant knew instantly what he meant. “In France? Mostly Belleau Wood and with the French near Reims. You?”

“Here and there. Spent a long time near Ypres.”

“Bad.”

“Very.”

“Did you ever take R and R in Paris?”

“Of course,” Grey said.

“Ever get to a place called the Dutch Wife?”

“God, yes. Most gorgeous woman in the world ran the place, fifty years old if she was a day.”

“My great-aunt Mathilde. She’ll be pleased to know you thought she was fifty—she was sixty-three when the War started.”

“Is she still alive?”

“Going strong.”

“Send her my greetings. Tell her—tell her I was the officer who gave her the Belgian lace collar for Christmas in ’17.”

“Oh yeah? She was wearing it last time I saw her.”

“Really?” Grey said in surprise, then his eyes narrowed. “You’re lying.”

“Yeah, but I had you there for a second, didn’t I?”

Grey stared at him, then laughed. Stuyvesant let a smile play on his lips as he watched the laden Morris scuttle down the road opposite, yet again.

Grey reached out and gave him a light touch on the shoulder, the first time he had willingly made contact. “You’re a good man, Harris Stuyvesant.”

“Not very, but I try.”

“That’s all one can ask. Ah—you smell that?”

Grey’s head was raised, his nostrils flared. Stuyvesant sniffed, but all he got was tobacco and booze. “What?”

“Mrs. Bleaks has made scones for tea.”

“You can smell scones, all the way from the house?”

“This time of day, the breeze rises up from the stream,” Grey explained mildly. He got to his feet. “Anyway, I haven’t eaten since breakfast so I’d probably smell her cooking a mile off. You coming?”

“You go ahead, I’ll be there in a while.”

Stuyvesant watched the small man work his way across the uneven rocks to the path, and start downhill. Then, just before the path ducked under the branches, Grey’s head jerked up. He stopped, moving to one side to peer among the trees. There were a lot of blue flowers growing among them, but that did not seem to be what interested him. After a moment, he shrugged, as if to settle his shoulders inside his coat, and continued down the hill.

Stuyvesant wondered what he had seen. The Duke’s dog-fox? He could feel the place on his shoulder where Grey’s hand had rested. Poor bloody bastard, he thought. Ypres explained a lot—it was a minor miracle he was on his feet.

He picked up the cigarette case, tracing the elaborate initials with his finger before his thumb-nail sought out the hidden latch. He unfolded Helen’s photograph, touching the lock of hair pinned to its corner. Yes: blonde, not red. Why had that been the sticking point, where he simply had to deny Grey his omniscience?

Too close to home, that color; too close to everything that mattered.

He’d gone into the Bureau’s political wing because of Helen. This meant that with each and every job, he felt her looking over his shoulder, reminding him of the bigger issues. It wasn’t enough to throw a villain in jail; he also had to set aright the lives the man had smashed on his way. It was sometimes hard to finish a case and move on, with this attitude riding him. Like how, for the last three years, Stuyvesant had sent money to the kids of a man he hadn’t been fast enough to save. And how twice, he’d felt obligated to find jobs for the widows of other innocent victims.

Now, it looked like he’d been saddled with another damned collateral responsibility: keeping Bennett Grey out of the hands of Aldous Carstairs.

Oh, and while he was at it, unhitching Sarah’s wagon from that of Richard Bunsen.

Wouldn’t it simplify matters just to ask Bunsen point blank—in Bennett Grey’s presence—if he was the man who’d set the bombs?

Well, no, it wouldn’t. For one thing, as evidence it would be laughable, as well as guaranteeing that Bunsen would never venture into the States again. But the real problem was, he wasn’t all that sure he could trust Grey on the matter. Could Grey objectively judge guilt or innocence in the man Laura had replaced him with? And if he could, would he then tell Stuyvesant the truth, or would the temptation of using Stuyvesant to remove his rival be too great?

Nope. Carstairs might find the man’s talents useful, but here? It would only confuse matters.

He folded Helen’s picture and put it back into the case, slid it into his inner pocket, and stood up. Time for scones, tea, and Richard Bunsen.

The rocks of the Peak required some attention, to preserve both neck and the leather of one’s shoes, so that Stuyvesant was nearly clear of the hazardous portion when he lifted his gaze to the path itself.

In front of the trees, as if conjured from the flowers by dark magic, stood Aldous Carstairs.