After he had hung up, he wondered if he shouldn’t have said something about the Senator being the target for some assassin. But that certainly wasn’t for the eavesdroppers. And the Senator was under Scotland Yard’s protection, wasn’t he?
12
Only, when he met Senator Falcone ten minutes before Corinna was due, it turned out that he wasn’t.
“In England,” the Senator said jovially, “I am sure there is no problem. After they were sure I get alive to the Foreign Office, they were not much interested, and though I am sure your policemen are as wonderful as everyone says, they are still policemen. It is being followed by a strange dog.”
Which told Ranklin little more than that Falcone’s English was at least adequate. That apart, he seemed a beefy, friendly man whose clothes were . . . well, a little natty. His suit was a shade too light, his necktie a bit too cheerful and the cloth cap didn’t belong until Ranklin realised the Senator was hoping to be offered a flight and would then wear the cap backwards, as aviators in photographs always seemed to. He was wearing a cap himself, but only because it went with his tweed suit and he reckoned that an aerodrome equated to a country race-course. He certainly didn’t plan to risk meeting his God with his headgear back to front.
Then Corinna appeared in the back of a chauffeur-driven Daimler. It was a sunny day, but the car had a very upright Pullman body and the most they could do was open all the windows. It was her father Reynard’s car, and he obviously didn’t think the English summer happened often enough to justify a folding hood. Ranklin sat on a pull-down seat opposite Corinna and Falcone, who was carrying a large sealed envelope he had picked up at the hotel desk but not bothered to open yet.
Corinna was talkative and smiley, as she instinctively was with strangers. “You know we’re going to the wrong place?” she said as they rolled down Park Lane. “They’re having a big aerial race up at Hendon so all the action’s going to be there.”
“That is why I wish to go to Brooklands, Falcone” answered, doing some toothy smiling of his own. “It will be more quiet there without all the peasants who wish only to see somebody killed. There is more time to talk with true aeronauts.”
“I’d guess most of them will be at Hendon, too, but at least you can meet my brother. I know he’ll be at Brooklands.”
“Yes, Captain Ranklin is telling me your brother – Andrew, I think? – is building his own aeroplane.”
“It’s finished and flying by now, but not built by himself. It was done by proper craftsmen, but to his own design. What else did Captain Ranklin tell you?”
The emphasis was to warn Ranklin that he’d forgotten to tell her what part he was playing that day, a basic mistake he should have grown out of.
This wasn’t the first time he had been to Brooklands, a banked motor-racing track built by a rich landowner to promote British motoring and please his motor-mad young wife. Ranklin had gone once to watch a motor-race, and then with a brother officer who wanted to test his new motor-car on the banking. But it was only in the last few years that aviators had begun to use the space enclosed by the track as a flying field, sharing it with a sewage farm into which they apparently crashed so regularly that a special hosing-down hut had been added.
They drove in through a tunnel under the banking on the north side and then down beside the finishing straight to the ‘aviation village’ at the south end. This was a collection of wooden buildings and a long terrace of identical sheds backing onto the banking of the motor track. Nobody seemed to be flying, but there were half a dozen aeroplanes of various shapes being tinkered with in front of the sheds. Ranklin later learnt that by mid-morning the day was already nearly half over, the windless hours around dawn and dusk being the safest time for novice pilots and unproven aeroplanes.
Corinna seemed to know her way around and, inevitably, to be known by almost everybody. She replied cheerily to several men in shirt-sleeves and oil smudges (whose names, Ranklin guessed, she couldn’t remember) as she led the way to the Blue Bird Restaurant, a glassed conservatory in front of one of the workshops. They sat down at an outside table and Ranklin ordered coffee.
Falcone sat itchily, obviously longing to get closer to the aeroplanes, but Corinna smiled reassuringly and said: “Andrew’ll show you around and introduce you to people.”
“He knows you are here?”
“He knows. He’ll just be scraping off the top layer of grease.” There was a firmness in her voice that suggested a past occasion when Andrew had turned up unfit for social consumption.
Ranklin held up his pipe. “D’you mind if I . . .?” She smiled approval and he lit it. In truth, she didn’t approve of smoking at all, but would have choked to death rather than give men yet another excuse to get away by themselves. In the same spirit, she looked grimly at two little groups of wives and girlfriends making the best of each other’s company while the men got on with their latest craze. Without being a tomboy, Corinna would happily have ruined her long white gloves rather than be left to gossip on the sidelines.
Coffee and Andrew Sherring arrived simultaneously. He was clearly his father’s son, towering over Ranklin and Falcone, but to anyone who had met Reynard this was a papier-mache version of the granite original. He carried his height and broad shoulders in a self-conscious stoop.
He shook hands, obviously having put on gloves for that purpose, since he was in shirt-sleeves and a half-buttoned waistcoat. Then he kissed Corinna. “Hi, little sister. I’m afraid we haven’t got much to show you today, most of the guys are-”
“At Hendon, we know. But Senator Falcone prefers a quiet word with the back-room boys. And did you get my telegram yesterday?”
“Oh sure. I got your pal O’Gilroy fixed up with the Bristol school here. He’ll probably be around at lunchtime.”
“Thank you. Now-” clearly handing out a reward; “-Senator Falcone was telling me he was one of the guys behind the volunteer flotilla that went to Africa a couple of years back.”
From that moment, she and Ranklin became part of the landscape. Andrew swung round on Falcone and his craggy-soft face cracked into a grin. “That’s really so, sir? Then you know Cagno and Manissero? And maybe Professor Panetti?”
“But of course, they are my friends.” Falcone’s smile was just as delighted.
Andrew gulped his coffee. “Let me introduce you to a couple of the boys before they get off for Hendon. Corrie, can you and . . . ?” He waved a hand at Ranklin, having forgotten his name already.
Corinna smiled indulgently. “You go right ahead, we’ll trail along in your dust. But you’d better find the Senator some overalls if-”
Falcone made a sweeping gesture across his jacket, which was pale enough to show a fly’s footprint, said: “Oh, poof,” and hurried to match Andrew’s lanky stride.
“Greater love of machinery hath no man than he who won’t take off a twenty-dollar coat to get a closer look at it.” She sipped her coffee. “You, my poor darling, are obviously an anachronism. I’ve never known you get excited by so much as a pencil sharpener.”
“I have a secret vice: leave me alone with an artillery piece and I can’t keep my hands to myself.”
“Is that so? Remind me not to share a room with one: I might be offended if I forced you to choose. I suppose I shouldn’t ask just why you and Conall are interested in the Senator.”
“O’Gilroy’s here quite genuinely-”
“But not you.”
Ranklin shrugged casually. “He’s interested in buying stuff for the Italian Army, like aeroplanes. We’re interested in his interest. By the way, d’you know anything about BSA? – Birmingham Small Arms?”
“Never heard of it, but I’ll listen now.” What they both heard was a sudden clattering roar from across the tarmac. “Shall we join the grease monkeys?”