Touchstone (31 page)

Chapter Thirty-Nine

“C
HRIST
J
ESUS
,” S
TUYVESANT BLURTED
. The black eyes watched him approach. “What the hell are you doing here? Grey heard you in the bushes, do you really want him to know you’re lurking around?”

“He will not know unless you tell him.”

“How the hell did you get here, anyway? I didn’t see any car but the Morris.”

“My car is waiting on a farm track a mile away behind the ridge. I came down the back way, thinking I might find you in the house, but I spotted you here with Captain Grey. A pleasant conversation, I trust?”

“You expect me to believe you drove all the way from London on the chance of finding me wandering around the grounds?”

“Oh no, I was in the area, and thought it worth an hour’s, hmm, gamble to try to see you rather than depend on the telephone. I wanted to tell you that your Mr. Bunsen will be here this evening.”

“I know that. He sent Laura Hurleigh a telegram.”

“When he comes, I suggest you try to get a look at the contents of his motorcar. He keeps much of his paperwork to hand as he travels. You might find some useful information there.”

“I know that, too. Trust me, Carstairs: I know my job.”

“So it would seem. May I further suggest, however, that you pay particular attention to any correspondence concerning a gentleman by the name of Lionel Waller.”

“Who is he?”

“No one, as yet. Merely a name that came to my attention, that I pass on to you. Also, this.”

Carstairs pulled an envelope out of his inner pocket and removed a photograph, handing it to Stuyvesant.

It showed a man and a woman standing on the street: She was dressed in a flowered dress, which blurred slightly with the motion of a breeze. The man wore a lounge suit and soft hat, and could have been her father. Stuyvesant shook his head.

“Never seen either of them.”

Without comment, Carstairs retrieved the picture and struggled to get it back into the envelope, not easy with the gloves on his hands. When it was enclosed again, he returned it to his pocket.

“Let me know if they appear.”

“You going to tell me who they are?”

“Not yet. They, too, may be of no importance.”

And to Stuyvesant’s astonishment, Carstairs settled his gloves and turned to walk into the trees, wading through the soft blue flowers until he vanished, as if he had never been.

What in hell was the man up to?

Chapter Forty

W
HEN
S
TUYVESANT GOT BACK
to the house, it was five o’clock and tea was set out in the long gallery. He loaded a plate with tiny crustless sandwiches and diminutive savory pies. He could have done with a nice cold beer—or even a tepid British one—but allowed Deedee to pour tea and milk into a small, frighteningly delicate cup, which he immediately drained and held out for a refill. She giggled, and poured again. He retreated to a pew-like bench washed in sun from the window, and addressed himself to the plate.

Despite his own tardiness, the others were still drifting in, one or two at a time. Some had clearly been out of doors, carrying with them pink cheeks and the robust smell of fresh air; others lounged through the door smelling of cigarettes and warmth; two of the band members showed evidence of a bottle. Once again Stuyvesant found himself between Patrick and Pamela Hurleigh, both of whom persisted in standing close to him and laughing loudly whenever he said anything that could be construed as humorous. He was relieved to see Sarah Grey come into the gallery.

“’Scuse me,” he said. “There is something I need to discuss with Miss Grey.”

He did not look to see if they were offended, just made straight across the room with his empty plate and cup, and inserted himself beside her. “You and I have something really important to talk about,” he told her in a low voice.

She paused in transferring a sandwich to a plate to look up at him. “I’m sorry?”

“Vitally important,” he said, helping himself to another plateful of insubstantial morsels. “Something that keeps us so engrossed, nobody will interrupt us.”

She gazed for a moment longer, puzzled, then she glanced at the direction from which he had come, and enlightenment dawned. “Ah. I understand.”

“Are they staying put?”

“Well, I’d say they show signs of restlessness.”

“Will it encourage them to find another victim if you and I were to head for a corner and turn our backs on the room?”

She stifled a laugh. “If we choose a place with only two chairs. Try the curry puffs, they’ve been a specialty of Hurleigh teas since the eighth Duke came back from India in 1832.”

He obediently shoveled a few yellow objects on top of the two-bite sandwiches and one-bite ham pies, received a third cup of tea, and followed her to a pair of spindly-legged chairs in the far corner of the room.

He risked a glance back as he turned to sit down: The two Hurleighs had snagged a couple of the band members. He let loose a relieved sigh.

“Much longer, and I’d have been afraid that one or the other of them would drag me off behind the sofa.”

“If not both of them.”

“Lord. I hadn’t thought of that.”

“I shouldn’t worry, they mostly do it to annoy, because they know it teases.”

“So it wasn’t one of them who tried my door-knob in the wee hours last night?”

“Ah, so the openings and closings of doors included your own?”

“Not quite, since it was locked. I shouted at whoever it was to go away, and they did.”

“Then it certainly wasn’t Pamela. And I shouldn’t have thought Patrick would make the cold dark trek to the barn unless it was a sure thing.”

“No, I think it was Dubuque.”

“Good thing you’d locked your door.”

“Your brother suggested it.”

Her sudden snort of laughter sent a dose of tea up her nose. When she had finished coughing, mopped her eyes and nose with his handkerchief, and finally retrieved her cup from Stuyvesant’s rescuing hand, she turned on him a pair of dazzling green eyes brimming with mischief. “My brother speaks from experience.”

“Oh, do tell.”

“My lips are sealed. No, no—I promised him, long ago. I will merely say that Bennett no longer sleeps in the altogether, as he has vivid memories of what happens when one scrambles out of the window into the shrubbery without a layer of protective flannel.”

“Worse than Cora Whatsis and the peonies?”

“Oh, far worse.”

“That’ll reform a person’s habits, all right. I once had a similar experience,” he said—then realized that not only had the experience been during one of his times undercover, but the details were hardly suitable for the present circumstances: He’d ended up in the snow wearing only the bottom half of his pajamas; he’d come out of a woman’s bed; and he’d had a revolver in his hand.

“I extend the same promise to you, if you’ll tell.”

It was tempting, but instead he constructed a less vivid version of it. “In my case I was not, er, completely without covering, but it was four in the morning and there was a foot of snow on the ground. Have you ever been barefoot in the snow?” She shook her head. “You’re hopping back and forth between one foot and the other like a
fakir
on a bed of coals—you hope to all get-out that somebody will come to the rescue and fast, but you’re also wishing that they sort of don’t see you when they arrive. However, the house whose window I had just jumped out of was burning down, so the snow melted pretty fast.”

Her deep-throated laugh at the brief story’s phlegmatic climax was both delighted and delightful.

A hand slid past Stuyvesant’s shoulder to pluck one of the curry puffs off his plate. “What kind of nonsense are you filling my sister’s ears with, Stuyvesant?”

“Tales of a misspent youth,” he replied. “Hey, get your own plate. Hello, Miss Hurleigh,” he added, rising politely as he noticed Laura Hurleigh at Bennett’s side. “Can I get you a cup of tea?”

“In the absence of something stronger, thank you.”

“Don’t forget the scones,” Grey said, around the mouthful of ducal curry puff.

When Stuyvesant came back with the cup and saucer in one hand and a plate piled high with jam-and cream-filled scones in the other, he found that Grey had carried over a small settee and settled in, holding Stuyvesant’s plate. Stuyvesant set Laura’s refreshments on the diminutive table, then reached for the empty plate on Grey’s lap. Grey looked down at it, startled. “Sorry, old chap.”

“Don’t worry about it, there’s plenty. You want something to wash it down?”

“No, I’m fine for tea.”

But when Stuyvesant arrived back at the grouping the second time, a number of others had moved in, and Bennett was on his feet talking to three young men. He seemed little troubled by their presence, and only flinched when one of them playfully slapped him on the back. He covered his reaction by introducing Stuyvesant.

Over the course of the next forty minutes, Stuyvesant was introduced to a famous novelist (or perhaps
infamous
was a better term), an equally renowned playwright, a minor English royal, a very minor French royal, the owner of a string of fashionable restaurants, the various sons of one general, two dukes, three knights, and a maharaja, and close personal friends of Krishnamurti, Oscar Wilde, and T. E. Lawrence. Talk veered from the place of the biography in modern literature to music on the wireless to a show of Paris fashion, and there seemed to be an unspoken agreement to avoid mention of any faintly political topic.

Stuyvesant found it difficult to keep track of the people, much less the conversation. After a while, he excused himself and retreated to his room, only to find that Aldous Carstairs was with him as he walked through the rose garden—not in person, although he did find himself watching the shrubs for sign of the man. Why had Carstairs come here? What did he want?

He stretched out on his bed and stared at the ceiling, but the answer did not appear there. He turned over and told his brain to shut off, and managed to sleep for an hour. Voices and movement woke him, and although he could have stayed there until morning, he dragged himself upright and found the bath free. He soaked in the hot water, scrubbing the last traces of motor grease from his nails, and back in his room, wanting to be presentable, laid out his shaving equipment for the second time that day. As he watched the safety razor travel through the foam on his cheeks, his thoughts circled yet again to Aldous Carstairs.

Had he been checking up on Stuyvesant? Or reminding him that he was being watched? Surely there would be an easier way than driving all the way from…

The razor slowed, then stilled.
I was in the area,
the snake had said. Which Stuyvesant discounted as an obvious lie, but what if it wasn’t? Sarah had said something about the sanitarium being nearby—and
sanitarium
could only mean the Truth Project.

If Aldous Carstairs was in the neighborhood, odds were fair to middling that he’d been at his so-called clinic. And if he was, did he have an ongoing reason to be there? Or could it be that he was readying the place for use once again?

The razor went back to work, although Stuyvesant’s mind was not on the task.

He’d better keep a close eye on Grey, until he could send him back to the safety of Cornwall.

He’d put him on a train tonight, were it not for his need to meet Richard Bunsen.

Speaking of whom, had The Bastard arrived yet? Stuyvesant hadn’t heard any new voices, but then, he had been asleep, and the two vacant bedrooms were downstairs. Would they give Bunsen the crypt room? He hoped so; he’d treasure that image, Bunsen sleeping among skulls.

And how would Bunsen be, face to face? The man was smart, there was no disguising that, but would he be clever with thinking on his feet, or was he just good at writing speeches? And his looks: Would he prove as handsome up close as he had seemed on a stage in Battersea?

(
Richard says,
Sarah had said dreamily—she might have been talking about Valentino.
He’s so eloquent, so passionate—
)

Stop it,
he told himself.
You can’t get involved.

But the next minute he found himself thinking of a story he could tell her, that she might laugh at, and at the same time wondering if she might like the smell of his Bay Rum after-shave lotion.

In disgust, he rinsed his razor and glared at himself in the mirror.
Stop it. Now.

Chapter Forty-One

F
OR THE SECOND TIME
in twenty-four hours, Harris Stuyvesant climbed into evening wear. His one formal shirt had been taken away that morning and returned, clean and starched; his suit had been brushed, his shoes shined. As he dressed, Stuyvesant listened for the sounds of a new arrival, but he did not hear it. And when he joined the cocktail party in progress, again in the long gallery, Bunsen was not with them.

The Duke and Duchess were there, holding court to a group of hearty individuals who looked as if they’d climbed off their mounts at the door. At the opposite end of the room, the younger generation had gathered, among them Laura, clutching a half-full glass of some faintly yellow stuff and looking relieved at the long-awaited infusion of liquor. When he had exchanged pleasantries with his hosts, Stuyvesant circled around to her and said in her ear, “I’m glad to see you finally got something stronger than tea. Afternoon, Lady Pamela, Lord Pontforth.”

Laura Hurleigh turned a dazzling smile on him—she was tall enough to look him nearly in the eye. “What is it about coming home that makes one crave strong drink?”

Personally, the idea of strong drink coupled with home made Stuyvesant a little queasy, as there’d been far too much of the combination when he was growing up, but he nodded in sympathy and said, “Probably to remind yourself that you can, if you want to, without your parents firmly inviting you to have a nice glass of lemonade.”

“Not that my mother isn’t capable of doing that even now,” she told him.

“A formidable lady, your mother. Did she buy her horse today, the one near Cheltenham?”

“I should think so. It has good lineage, which is generally enough for Mother. I believe she may have studied
Debrett’s
like a form book before she agreed to marry Father.”

He’d never heard a girl speak of a parent in quite such, well, biological terms, but he smiled gamely and changed the subject. “Has your friend Bunsen arrived yet?”

She responded with a deep swig from her glass. “Not yet, but since he hasn’t rung, he’s sure to be here. Richard had a meeting in Manchester today, which may have gone longer than he anticipated. He’s sure to arrive eventually.”

Her emphatic declaration was made through clenched teeth and rang as false as her gaiety: She was nowhere near certain that Bunsen would get here at all. Damn it, Stuyvesant thought: So much for the short-cut. Sounded like he was back to his original plan, working his way into Bunsen’s circle through Sarah.

Then a familiar alto laugh reached out across the room, reminding Stuyvesant that there would be benefits to being forced to linger in Sarah’s company.

“Can I get you another drink?” he asked Laura Hurleigh.

“Oh, you’d be a dear if you would—my mother will be counting the number of times I go to the bar, but if you went for me, she won’t notice.”

Stuyvesant wasn’t at all convinced of that, but he took her glass and went back to the bar, asked for a White Lady, and tried to hold the drink possessively as he returned to Laura’s side. The attempt at subterfuge was spoiled when she snatched the glass and took a hefty swallow, following it with a sigh of relief.

Her sister, with a thin attempt to cover the effect, asked, “However do you manage it in America, Mr. Stuyvesant, being dry from coast to coast? I think I’d just die.”

“Prohibition is more a theoretical fact than an actual one,” he said. “The price has gone up and the selection’s gone down, but there’s no problem in finding booze if you want it.”

“What a relief. I’d been putting off a trip to New York because I just couldn’t bear going there sober.”

“I wouldn’t worry about it. Although I’d avoid any alcohol served in a really low-end dive. You might wake up blind.”

She laughed, and Laura joined in, laughing much harder than the joke called for. He stepped back mentally and took a hard look at her. The regal figure of the night before, the friendly and passionate doer-of-good he’d seen over breakfast that morning, both had disappeared. In their place was a person who would have blended into any society party in New York or Chicago—or, no doubt, London: brittle, shallow, decorative, loud, and drunk.

Maybe
drunk
was the key here: Laura just couldn’t handle her alcohol. Then again, how many White Ladies had she had? And what had she swallowed beforehand?

He removed the half-full glass from her hand and set it onto a nearby table, then took her elbow.

“Pardon us, Lady Pamela, your sister and I are going out for a little fresh air,” he said, propelling her in the direction of the doorway.

“Mr. Stuyvesant!” Laura protested. “I—”

“Just a little turn in the garden, clear our heads a bit, watch the stairs, now—there you go. Can you get me a coat for my lady here, Patrick? Any coat—that’ll do nicely. Now, more stairs, take my arm, there. Isn’t that better?”

He kept an eye on her, concerned that the sudden cold air might make her faint—or vomit—but after some startled blinking and a gulping noise, she seemed braced rather than overcome. He settled her arm through his, finding her not quite as tall as he’d thought, although a glance at her feet explained why: She was wearing low heels tonight. In those, the drive should be safe enough, he decided, and led her in the direction of the gate.

They went down the gravel drive, Stuyvesant holding her arm firmly while maintaining an amiable patter of nothing at all: a dog he’d had as a boy (invented on the spot), a mildly amusing episode with a very tall horse that explained why he didn’t like to ride (not entirely invented, but adapted from a tale he’d heard once).

Her only reaction was a shiver, which suggested that Stuyvesant might do well to get her out of the cold. He led her to the converted stables where he’d worked on the Morris that morning, found the car in residence, and opened its back door for her. He turned on the garage light, then went around to the other side and let himself into the front seat, so she could see him but not feel pressed by a stranger’s familiarity. He lit two cigarettes, passed one back to her, and said, “Is there anything you want to talk about? I’m a pretty good listener.”

She stared ahead of her, out the car’s front window and into the night beyond, and then made a sudden choking noise. Stuyvesant jerked back with a curse, but it was not what he thought: Her hands went to her face, and as she slowly bent forward he hastily stretched over to pluck the burning cigarette away from her hair.

It was emotion coming out, not the contents of her stomach. She wept almost silently, without the wails of sorrow and regret that Stuyvesant was used to hearing from crying women. She wept as a release, with an air of something near to gratitude, her shoulders heaving with the great gulps of emotion unsuppressed. She wept whole-heartedly and without apology, as if he weren’t even there, and went on without pause for several minutes.

And then she stopped. She sat up, drew a shaky breath, and said in wonder, “Good Lord, where did that all come from?”

He held out his clean handkerchief; she took it, and gave a juicy blow of her nose.

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

She gave him a smile, bleary-eyed but true. “You Americans, you’re so polite.”

“Oh, I forgot, you Brits don’t say ‘You’re welcome,’ do you? Okay then: Don’t mention it.”

She sat back against the leather seat with a thump. He handed her the cigarette he had taken from her earlier, and she took a grateful draw, letting the smoke curl out between her lips on a sigh of appreciation. “Oh my,” she said. “I needed that.”

The words and attitude joined with the gesture of the cigarette brought a sharp memory of a similar declaration Stuyvesant had once made to a woman, following a long absence of female company. He narrowed his eyes, but she seemed unconscious of any salacious overtones.

“I’m sorry you had to witness that,” she said. “And I shouldn’t worry about it, if I were you; it doesn’t really mean anything. When I was a little girl, I used to launch into the most horrid screaming fits that left me hoarse for days. Crying is much better. Or sex,” she said frankly.

He was startled at the last remark, but she didn’t appear to be asking him for any service beyond that of the handkerchief. He cleared his throat. “I did mention that I was a good listener.”

Then he shut up.

She rolled the ash end of the cigarette into the car’s ash receptacle, a deliberate gesture somewhere between thoughtful and drunken. Then she began to talk.

“Do you know your grandparents, Mr. Stuyvesant?”

“They’re dead, except for one grandmother.”

“Your great-grandparents? Did you know who they were?”

“I know where they were from.”

“It must be marvelous, to be free and unburdened from the eyes of one’s ancestors. You saw the ancestral window, over the stairs? When I was a little girl, my father and I used to sit on the top step and study the names on the branches, and he’d tell me their stories: William the Ready, the second Duke, whose insomnia meant he heard the enemy coming one night and saved his men; Richard the Firm, who resisted the tortures of the Saracen when he was captured in the Second Crusade. Another William, who distracted Cromwell’s men from their hunt for the fleeing King by deliberately tripping his own horse at the full gallop. He broke half the bones in his body, but the King escaped.”

“A lot to live up to,” he commented. What this had to do with her spasm of tears, he couldn’t imagine.

“And I was only a girl. I could never figure how Thomas could bear to get up in the morning with all those family members waiting for him, until I realized he had no more imagination than one of Father’s dogs. I was the one they bothered. I used to have nightmares of being caught up in the arms of a tree, dangled off the ground.”

He grunted, not knowing how else to respond.

“I know,” she said, as if he had contributed something intelligent. “And I assure you, I did grow out of it, and came to be grateful that I had been born a woman, so no one expected heroism of me. Still, it is a considerable responsibility, being Richard’s right-hand person. And that’s what I am, no matter what the others think. People in the Movement look at me and see either a frivolous member of the governing classes who is playing games during her summer holidays and who is sure eventually to undermine the work of a great man, or else they see a member of the governing classes who has been brought down by her blood enemy, made to debase herself for his amusement and by way of proving the inadequacy of her class: All we’re good for is keeping the men entertained.”

When he said he was a good listener, he’d rather expected her to unload her love life onto him, the pressures of having Grey here and Bunsen on his way, or something of the sort. But no, this was a true child of the Movement: everything was politics: family was politics; love was politics; fear was love mixed with politics. God alone knew how the politics worked into her sex life.

It was disconcerting, but the all-pervasive presence of politics made the job of picking her mind that much easier. And it sure was sobering her up.

“Either way, they see me as a traitor to my class, and a traitor is never, ever trustworthy. But what they don’t see is that I regard my work with Richard not as a denial of my history, but as its culmination. I am the result of centuries of aristocracy; Richard is the result of the same years of working-class values and ideas; together we are the essence of this country. I learn from him, but he learns from me, as well. That is what these men don’t understand.”

Grey had said they would find that Bunsen treated Laura abominably, which had made Stuyvesant think of Bunsen as one of those radical leaders whose impressive speeches about equality turned into petty tyranny behind closed doors—he’d sure met enough of those over the years. And there was no doubt that Bunsen had reason to feel demeaned by Laura, both her birth and her person.

However, he reminded himself, just because Bunsen doesn’t show up for a party on time, that doesn’t necessarily mean he was in the habit of treating her like dirt.

“Still,” he said, “I suppose it’s understandable, that his fellow workers would mistrust you. Asking them to accept a woman, especially one of your background, would be like asking them to suddenly start speaking Chinese. They could do it, but a little at a time.”

To his gratification, she snapped at the bait. “Time is precisely what we don’t have. Since before the War, we have been working towards a huge change in the social structure of this country. One strike after another, building all the time—if we hadn’t been interrupted by the War and D.O.R.A., we’d have got there by now. You know about D.O.R.A.?” she asked, remembering his nationality.

He knew about D.O.R.A., but asked anyway, “Who is she?”

“Our so-called Defence of the Realm Act,” she spat. “The straight path to a police state. During the War, D.O.R.A. put control into the hands of a very few men, under the excuse of national security. Parliament went its way, but in the background, for six solid years, the King’s privy council moved this country around like pieces on a chess-board. And when D.O.R.A. expired in 1920, the same men came up with the Emergency Powers Act. That’s what we’re looking at now—all they need do is declare a state of emergency and the Act comes into play, so that again, two or three men and their pocket king become absolute rulers. Democratic rights are set aside, new classes of offence can be established without the approval of Parliament, harsher penalties set, wide-scale arrests and imprisonments easily justified. Just declare an emergency, and overnight, Britain becomes a police state.”

She glared at him owlishly, looking so gorgeous it was all he could do not to make a pass at her. But instead, he got out his silver cigarette case and fiddled with it thoughtfully. “And the upcoming General Strike…”

“—will be the very definition of a state of emergency, with nothing to keep the government from sweeping the boards and starting again, re-writing all the rules so many people have fought to establish. Nothing, except the words and actions of reason.”

Stuyvesant swallowed his response to the idea of Richard Bunsen as a paragon of reason. He said, “Well, I guess I can see why you need to have a crying jag from time to time. Sounds like quite a load on your shoulders.”