This was the first time the Count had acknowledged any “connection”, and it cheered Ranklin up. The Count knew things that he didn’t, and had no-one else to talk to. But this couldn’t be hurried, so he said: “That’s very thoughtful of you. But I certainly don’t want to incriminate you, so may we wait and see?”
The Count was silent for a while, then said in the same whisper: “I hear some employers now pay a man his wages when he is sick. Most extraordinary. Do they – I mean, I wonder if they pay spies when they are in jail?”
The train reached Mestre after dark. Corinna took her time, letting the joyously tearful reunions that were so much part of the Italian railway system erupt before she stepped down. Anyway, this was Signora Falcone’s territory; she was in charge. So she was startled when she came face to face on the platform with a figure as scruffy as any railway ganger and reeking of castor oiclass="underline" O’Gilroy, alone.
“What are you doing here? Is Andrew . . . ?” It flashed through her mind that O’Gilroy couldn’t have got there without Andrew, yet . . .
“He’s in hospital but all right. We ran into a bird and he got bits of glass in his face, near his eye, but seems he’ll be all right.”
“My God! Did you crash? Which hospital? – where ?”
“In Venice.” He consulted a bit of paper. “Called the . . . the . . . here.” He gave her the paper rather than try to pronounce Giudecca. “No, we didn’t crash.”
Corinna swung round to find Signora Falcone coming up behind her. “Did you hear?”
“Yes. Terrible – only Mr O’Gilroy seems to have saved the day.” She was reappraising him with a wary smile.
“Where’s the hospital? How do I get there?”
Signora Falcone hesitated, then realised it was pointless to do anything but smooth Corinna’s path. “I’ll see to it.”
Corinna may have gone as far as stamping her foot with impatience, but knew it was pointless to interfere. Then, frowning in thought, she tried to imagine the accident, and . . . “Did he manage to land here, then?”
“Had to do it meself. Went and burst a tyre. But they say-”
“Hold on: that airplane’s only got one set of controls. On his side. My God! – you must’ve . . . You saved his life!”
“Me own was there with him.”
Her face suddenly bloomed into a radiant grin. “You’re quite a guy, Mr O’Gilroy. Thank God you were there.”
“Ah, ’twas nothing special . . .” He lapsed into a mumble and was clearly going to stay there.
“All right, I won’t gush. And the airplane’s all right?”
“Like I said, I burst a tyre, only they reckon they’ll have one to fit or mebbe find two whole new wheels – if somebody’ll pay for them.”
“Heavens, don’t worry about that.”
Then Signora Falcone came back with a man who was probably one of her staff. “It’s best to catch the mail steamer from Fusina. Matteo will drive you and see that you get back. Do you want to go, too, Mr O’Gilroy?”
O’Gilroy hesitated and Corinna chipped in: “There’s no need. You must be done in, Conall. Get some sleep – and thanks again.”
The Falcone family seemed well endowed with motor-cars; whatever the Signora and O’Gilroy climbed into wasn’t a taxi-cab, and nor was the racier affair Corinna and Matteo had zoomed away in. This one went off at a pace consistent with the tasselled pelmets at the windows, but was soon beyond the lights of the town and rolling on through flat, dark countryside. Sinking back into deep leather, O’Gilroy found himself yawning; as always, it wasn’t life’s incidents that were wearing, but the long aftermath of explanation, clearing up – and waiting.
After a time, Signora Falcone said: “I hadn’t realised you were a proper pilot yourself, Mr O’Gilroy.”
“I’m new to it.”
“But you must have been very competent. Have you flown that particular machine much?”
“Not much at all.”
That kept her quiet for a while. Then: “When do you think Mr Sherring will be fit to fly again?”
“I’d guess a while yet. They’d bandaged over his eyes and was talking about keeping him quiet and dark.”
Another silence. “If you could practise tomorrow, would you feel up to a demonstration flight on the next day?”
The Oriole wasn’t built for Pegoud-style stunts: all it did was take off, fly and land. And after an hour or two’s practice . . . “Surely. Mind, I couldn’t be telling all the figures of its range and fuel consumption-”
“That won’t matter.”
“-and they’ll need to be fixing that wheel.”
“That will be done.” It was the positive statement of someone used to having her orders obeyed. “You’re quite happy about it, then?”
O’Gilroy was happy, all right, both at getting to fly the Oriole again and being in the middle of events. But he was also wary because he wasn’t sure what event was planned. Still, if they were relying on him as a pilot, they were handing him control.
“Surely,” he said confidently. “That’ll be jest fine.”
29
The distant bugle call that began the day came as a relief. Night in jail was not fun. When there was light, you could think of the reasons why you would soon be out, but the darkness crushed all reason and hope. They had won, had forgotten you, and were sleeping peacefully. And you were alone with dozing thoughts, not even the exotic terrors of nightmares, just coldly logical and gloomy. Ranklin loved that bugle call.
He sat up and realised he must at least have lain still a long time, since he was horribly stiff. The Count, a good twenty years older, must feel like a corpse.
Perhaps he was a corpse, Ranklin thought in a sudden panic. Died before I’ve found out what’s really going on. But when he leaned over to peer through the gloom, the old man was blinking and mumbling under the thin blankets. Only then did it occur to Ranklin that it had been a rather selfish thought. So he got all the way up, shook his shoes to make sure nothing had crawled into them, then went to piss in the enamel bucket and splatter his face with dusty water.
Pero sat up quickly, his smile as bright as ever, and made pantomime gestures of how the Count must feel. It was intended as sympathy, but the Count caught a glimpse and husked: “Please do me a favour and kill that damned Slovene.”
O’Gilroy was woken by a manservant with a tray of coffee. He lay for a minute or two wondering where he was before remembering he didn’t know. The ride in the dark last night had shown him very little, and the conversation had been either in Italian or about more important things.
At least he had no problems about what to wear: it was still the tweed suit he had left Brooklands in, the cleaner of two shirts and (he hoped) a fresh collar. He’d meant to buy more in Paris or Turin, but there hadn’t been time. He got shaved and dressed and found his way downstairs.
The house was grand but, he discovered, a simple square block. Bedrooms and bathrooms led off a wooden gallery that formed a hollow square, while below was a large living space surrounded by dining-rooms, drawing-rooms and God-knows-what rooms. Kitchens and staff quarters must be below that, half buried in a semi-basement.
Corinna didn’t wake for another hour, but had a better idea of where she was: in Senator Falcone’s villa. If it wasn’t by Palladio himself – and he couldn’t have designed every one of the hundreds of such villas in the Veneto region – it was in his style: symmetrical and classical. Her window, once she’d pushed open the shutters, looked out past a colonnaded portico to the formal garden, maybe a quarter of a mile of it before the River Brenta. A steam-launch was just chugging off from a landing-stage and heading downstream, probably to the lagoon and Venice, which she reckoned was a dozen miles away.
Downstairs, she was served coffee, toast (of leavened bread, thank goodness or Signora Falcone’s Irish background) and even offered a boiled egg. Then she began asking questions, and learnt that the Signora and O’Gilroy had already gone to the Lido in the launch, she to make sure the aeroplane was repaired, him to fly it, while Matteo would again get her to the hospital when she was ready. And – this from the major-domo, who had rather more power over the household than the grandest of English butlers – would she inform them if she wished to move to a hotel in Venice so as to be nearer her brother? She was, of course, welcome to stay, but the Signora would quite understand if . . .