Vintage Love (10 page)

“And this is what we are to try and prevent?” Eric said.

“Exactly,” the old man replied. “I need certain facts confirmed, such as the death and burial of LeFlenche. If the body of LaFlenche were found in that tomb, it would indicate that I have been in error. In this instance the rest of the operation would be halted. We would be reasonably sure that it was truly Napoleon who died on Saint Helena.”

Eric Walters said, “So our first port of call will be Marseilles?”

“Yes,” the spy master said. He asked Kingston, “How is your French?”

Kingston shook his head. “I fear I know just a word here and there!”

“It makes no difference,” Black said. “You three shall travel as a group, and both Major Walters and Miss Chapman are adept at French.”

“I’m certain I cannot match Miss Chapman in that respect,” the handsome Eric Walters said.

“You will do,” the master spy told him. “Kingston shall pose as your wealthy father, Walters, and the young lady will act as your fiancée. In that way you can travel without arousing any suspicion. When necessary you can break away and work alone.”

Kingston asked, “Are there others involved in this, sir?”

The thin man in the dark suit nodded. “Yes. In all I will have about ten operatives. But I prefer that the others be unknown to you three, and you to them.”

Eric Walters said, “That way if we are caught and tortured, we cannot reveal what we do not know.”

“You are more aware of such an unhappy possibility than the others,” the master spy agreed. He turned to Betsy and said, “I can excuse you and Kingston for a while. I wish to discuss the business of codes with Walters who is an expert in them.”

Kingston stood up. “When will I be needed again?”

“We shall meet morning and afternoon each day until you depart for Marseilles,” Felix Black said. “Tomorrow at ten.”

Betsy and the actor left the study and went down the hall to the front of the narrow, dark house. She turned to Kingston and asked him, “Well, what do you make of it?”

“I’m excited,” the middle-aged man said. “Perhaps I should have become a spy long ago. I had no idea it could be so close to playacting.”

She smiled. “Nor I. It seems that I’m to be expected to be able to disguise myself as well as you. I have been supplied with wigs and other items for the purpose.”

Kingston’s plain face showed enthusiasm. “And we are engaged in something big! Something important! I’ve been an actor in small companies all my life, playing in towns you’ve never heard about. Now I’m being a part of a real-life drama which may be recorded in the history books.”

She glanced back toward the study and said, “He makes it all sound plausible. But we mustn’t forget the War Office let him go into retirement because they disapprove of his theory.”

“Government!” Kingston said with disgust. “They’re always the last to get on to anything.”

“You might be right,” she said. “At least it means work to you. And it will get me out of England.”

He said, “What about having to be in the company of Major Walters?”

She sighed. “I do not look forward to it. I cannot forget he led my brother to his death, whether there was blame attached to his action or not. But I shall somehow manage.”

“He seems a nice sort,” the actor pointed out, “and certainly handsome.”

She blushed. “I happen to be aware of that,” she said. “But I cannot see that his good looks should be any key to his true character.”

The actor nodded. “Quite so!”

Changing the subject as quickly as she could, she told him, “Meanwhile I want you to do me a favor.”

“Anything that I can.”

“You remember where I met you in Whitechapel?”

“Yes.”

“Not far from there is a small cake shop. It is a front for a dog-fighting ring in the cellar under it. And it was in a tiny cellar room still further underground that I was kept prisoner.”

He nodded. “You told me about it. When you left, the dog was attacking your captor.”

“Yes,” she said. “And Hannah, the ex-parson’s wife, was running to try and rescue him. There was also a crippled boy, Gimpy, dead drunk in the back room. I want to know what happened after I escaped and if Gimpy is safe.”

“You wish me to investigate?” Kingston said.

“If you will,” she said. “Should the boy be alive and turned out by that woman, as I expect he must have been, I should like to help him.”

Kingston said, “Do not worry about it, Miss Chapman. I will go to Whitechapel at once. I’ll have some word for you tomorrow.”

“Thank you,” she said gratefully.

“Not at all,” the middle-aged actor said, adjusting his cape and donning his top hat. “It will give me something to do.”

She felt better once she’d arranged to learn about Gimpy. She was haunted by the memory of the pathetic lad and felt some guilt at having worked on his weakness and making him drunk. She wanted in some way to compensate him. She also was curious about what had happened to Parson Midland. It seemed all too likely that the ferocious Toby had finished him. As for Hannah, it was hard to say. She was a formidable woman who probably had somehow managed to save herself from the maddened animal tearing her husband’s throat.

Again she rested, still weary from all she had gone through. Now she thought more about Malworth Castle and her mother and stepfather. She could not help wondering about the fate of Lord Alfred Dakin who had been unconscious when she’d last heard news of him. One thing was clear in her mind: she could never return there.

It was odd that through her letter to the War Office she should have come to meet the master spy, Felix Black. It was her friendship with Napoleon long ago on St. Helena which interested him, not any desire on his part to investigate the circumstances of Richard’s death in battle.

And then it was through knowing Black that she had come face-to-face with the man she’d been blaming for her brother’s loss. She had not been prepared for this, and she was still filled with confused feelings. She knew that she had no choice but to accept Major Eric Walters on a day-to-day basis until they had completed this task to which they’d been assigned.

The somber old house was especially silent when she went down to dinner. Then one of the wooden doors leading to the drawing room opened, and the bent master spy came out into the hallway to greet her.

His sallow face held one of his rare smiles, and he said, “I have a surprise guest for dinner. Someone you should be glad to meet.”

“Really?” She wondered who it might be and felt unhappy that she had not received any of her new gowns.

“Do not be nervous,” he begged her. “This is an old friend.”

He led her into the drawing room, and there before the fireplace stood a familiar, robust figure. It was none other than Dr. Barry Edward O’Meara whom she had known on St. Helena when he’d been Napoleon’s physician appointed by the British. He had grown a little heavier and his curly brown hair was graying at the temples, but he still had a wonderful smile.

“Miss Chapman!” he exclaimed loudly and came to take her hands in his. “What a pleasure!”

She stood facing the good-looking Irish doctor, and memories flooded back to her of those happy long ago days when her father had been alive and all the future seemed bright.

“Dr. O’Meara,” she said with feeling. “I doubted that we would ever meet again.”

Ever the gallant he said, “And I have continually wished that we would. You have grown up. No longer a girl but a lovely woman.’

She blushed. “I felt quite grown up when I knew you.”

“You were enchanting,” O’Meara said. And then his manner changed. “I’m sorry about your father. I only recently heard of his death.”

“Thank you,” she said. “I miss him sorely.”

“You two were close,” the Irish doctor agreed. “And so were you and the emperor.”

“Yes,” she said.

“That infernal liver disease!” Dr. O’Meara said, taking Felix Black into this as well. “I would swear that anyone remaining on the island long enough would be bound to contract it.”

Black turned to her. “When Barry was on the island, he was acting for the British secret service under my direction.”

“Much thanks I was given!” O’Meara exclaimed. “I complained when it was decided to move Sir Neil Campbell and I was also removed from the island.”

“I acted on instructions from my superiors,” Felix Black told the angry man. “I was only head of the department, not head of the government!”

“It was the beginning of all the trouble when Sir Neil was replaced by Sir Hudson Lowe. Everyone knew Lowe was a silly troublemaker. He treated the former emperor as no officer or gentleman ought to have been treated.”

She said, “I had gone before all that.”

O’Meara gave her a sad smile. “And I can tell you that the emperor missed you. You and your friends Betsy and Jane Balcombe. He used to joke about his two Betsys and his Jane. But there was little of the good humor of the old days after Sir Hudson Lowe arrived.”

Betsy said, “I wrote him several letters, once when my father died and once before that. But there were no replies.”

O’Meara grimaced. “That does not surprise me. He never received the letters. Be certain of that. Lowe chose to censor everything beyond the point of good sense. I also wrote and received no reply.”

Felix Black said, “Sir Hudson Lowe took himself too seriously and also his role as Napoleon’s chief warder. If he had been less stupid, we might not be faced with the situation as we are now.”

Dr. O’Meara turned to her. “I hear you are to be part of Black’s private organization.”

“Yes,” she said. “Are you not anxious to find out if Napoleon is alive?”

“I’m of two minds,” O’Meara said. “I fear what this man Valmy may try and do with him if he is truly back in Europe and in his power. I would almost prefer that he be buried in his lonely grave on the island.”

Felix Black explained. “Dr. O’Meara has taken up journalism and written a number of books explaining Napoleon’s nature and quoting from his conversations with him on Saint Helena. He has done an interesting work of painting the former tyrant of Europe in sympathetic colors, making many of his actions understandable and even laudable.”

“And so they were!” the Irish doctor said vigorously.

Black smiled. “I vow that only in this free England would you be allowed to publish such controversial writings.”

O’Meara smiled bitterly. “Is it the freedom of England you’re so proud of? Should you not look about you. What sort of land is this today? Or take yourself to Ireland and see what suffering is! English landlords in absentia do not make for happy tenant farmers!”

“That’s bog talk!” Felix Black replied. “You are my good friend, O’Meara, but I cannot tolerate it. As for the state of England, I do not think it that bad.”

The curly haired Irish doctor sneered. “Now is that true? Take your London! A city in which a nobleman can lose thousands of pounds in a night at Watier’s! Yet little lads of five are forced to sweep chimneys, and girls of twelve parade the streets as prostitutes for little more than bread enough to keep them alive another day! His Majesty’s staging wild orgies with his stays undone and tossed to one side as he ravages the wife of some grand gentleman of his circle. And the same grand ladies greet their sons and daughters and puzzle who fathered them!”

Felix Black clapped his hands. “Excellent! You’ve become a Christian orator as well as a pamphleteer! I vow you could also be a danger if you wished, O’Meara. Many a crowd could be roused by that speech.”

Barry O’Meara turned to her, looking rather sheepish. “I’m sorry. I did rant on a bit. It must be my middle-class upbringing. I’m far too moral in my outlook. While on the other hand our friend Black has no morals at all. He surrendered them when he became chief of His Majesty’s espionage service.”

Black’s thin face showed amusement. “You were one of us, O’Meara.”

“So I was, to my everlasting shame,” Barry O’Meara said. “So now I atone by trying to tell the truth about Napoleon as I knew him.”

Betsy, impressed by his performance, said, “I must read some of your writings.”

“I’ll send you a copy of all of them,” the Irish doctor promised. “If history remembers me at all, and I doubt it will, it has to be as the man who tried to help make Napoleon understood.”

Felix Black raised an eyebrow and with a hint of sarcasm suggested, “Or more likely as the stubborn Irish doctor sent to spy on the emperor who ended up trying to serve two masters!”

“I was never the Judas you picture,” O’Meara told the old man.

Black said, “If you two will excuse me, I shall see if Mrs. Glenn is ready to serve us dinner.”

When they were alone, O’Meara came closer to her and said in a low voice, “I’m properly surprised to find you living here.”

“I have had troubles since my father’s death,” she told him. “Things came to such a peak I had no choice but to flee to London.”

“That is too bad. Your father would worry. He was a fine man,” the Irish doctor said. “So now you have agreed to act as an agent for Black?”

“Yes. I seem to have no other course open. And it may be a chance to meet Napoleon again and perhaps be of help to him.”

The burly emotional O’Meara glanced toward the door to be sure they were not being overheard, and in a low voice he said, “Do not count on seeing Napoleon or helping him.”

She stared up at him and in a near whisper asked, “Why do you say that?”

“Because I fear that Felix Black may be mad!”

BETSY’S LOVELY blue eyes opened wide with fear as she gazed up into the troubled face of the Irish doctor. In a hushed voice she asked, “Is that possible? That all this fine plan is madness?”

“I’m fearful of it,” Barry O’Meara said. “I cannot believe it was possible for Napoleon to escape from that island.”

“Then what does it mean?”

“A finely honed mind that has finally snapped,” he told her. “I cannot see the War Office asking him to retire if all was well.”

“He seems so sure,” she worried. “And his facts to back up the story appear to be genuine.”

The Irish doctor sighed. “Only time will tell. But I beg you to be careful. If you involve yourself with this and the facts are true, you are going to have to cross the path of one of the most dangerous men in all Europe.”