“Hah!”
“- one of which is having people like me papering over any cracks in your past. Mind you,” he added thoughtfully, “there are diplomatic aspects as well. If the French press prints nasty things about our King, there could be an anti-French revulsion in this country. And what price the Anglo-French alliance then? – just when we need it to stop Germany doing something stupid.”
“But that just derives from having a king in the first place.”
Ranklin shrugged. “Suppose they started printing nasty things about your President? – wouldn’t that come to the same thing?”
“It would not,” she said with the firmness of someone who isn’t quite sure. “You English will think we think of the President as our king. We don’t: he’s just an elected politician, like your Prime Minister. He can be impeached, even, it’s all there in the Constitution. And that’s what our military people swear an oath of loyalty to, the Constitution. And when we want a bit of reverence and show, we’ve got the flag.”
“Yes, I must say I’ve never understood the fuss you-”
She cut him off sharply. “You want to know one big advantage of a flag? – it doesn’t go around fucking the wrong people.”
O’Gilroy came back with the maid bringing a tray of fresh coffee. The staff here, who didn’t know what the two men did (really didn’t know; Ranklin was sure Corinna hadn’t been that stupid) had the idea that O’Gilroy was a sort of valet to Ranklin but, since they’d met in the Army, which was true, it was all rather informal.
“Where’s Berenice?” Corinna asked.
“Went to the toilet. Thank ye, I’ll take another cup.” At least you never had to ask O’Gilroy if he’d eaten or drunk. An Irish childhood and his years in the Army had convinced him that the next meal was a matter of luck, so be sure of the one at hand.
Ranklin asked: “And did Berenice tell you any more?”
“Mostly I should get a proper job and ‘twas me own fault me being yer servant. I told her ye’d saved me life oncest, and I was beholden to ye. Don’t worry, she wasn’t impressed, not at all.”
“Haven’t I saved your life?”
“Not near so often as ye’ve made the need of it. One thing: she’s terrible taken with this feller Gorkin. D’ye know him?”
“He was at Bow Street this morning. You saw him: beard, foreign hat, check suit. How d’you mean, ‘taken with him’?”
“Thinks he’s God with a three-speed gearbox. As an anarchist. Big thoughts, has the answer to everything. She says everyone at the Bloomsbury house thinks so, too. Sounds to me he’s missing a great career peddling pills.”
“I thought he was a reporter for that Paris anarchist paper.”
O’Gilroy gave him a superior look. “Ye don’t have reporters on papers like that. It’s got no news, jest tells ye what to think about it. He writes pamphlets, books, lectures. Big man.” Ranklin realised he should have wondered more about that doctorate of Gorkin’s; not many reporters would have any sort of degree.
Then Berenice came in. Ranklin and O’Gilroy stood up; she looked at them in listless surprise. “Vous etes en depart?”
Corinna switched into French. “No, no. Sit down and have some coffee.”
Berenice dumped herself into a chair and took her coffee with a muttered “Merci.”
O’Gilroy stayed standing. “Fact, I’m going. Thank ye for the lunch, delicious. Et bonjour, ma’mselle.” He bowed formally to Berenice and went.
Berenice watched him go with perhaps a glimmer in her usually dead-fish eyes, then asked Ranklin: “Is that man your servant?”
It was debatable whether she would appreciate a spy more than a manservant, but it wasn’t up for debate anyway. “I think of him more as a friend.”
That brought leaden disbelief, but she let it drop.
Ranklin said: “I talked to Maitre Quinton again this morning.”
“Do you know now what will happen to Grover?”
“No. I’m sorry, but the death of Guillet has delayed matters.”
Corinna sat back in her chair, a slow but definite movement, withdrawing from the conversation.
In a gentle voice, Ranklin said: “May I ask a question? – do you believe we’re trying to help you?”
All he got was a sullen glower. She wore a shapeless dress of faded green over holed black stockings, and sprawled back with all the elegance of damp washing, smelling of absinthe and poverty.
“Then put it another way: would you rather be in the hands of the police?” He waited for a while, then said, still gently: “I do want an answer to this. You’re not in prison here, it is not possible to stop you walking out. It would be more convenient for Mrs Finn if you did. But if you do, the police will take you back.”
“The police are-”
“Possibly. But if they’re what you believe, do you think you can undergo hour after hour of questions without them tricking you into a confession?” Now Quinton was involved, that was pretty unlikely, but let her think of that for herself.
“I did not kill him!”
“I don’t think you did. But the police believe you went to try and see Guillet again at the Dieudonne that night. Did you?”
A nod.
“What time?”
A shrug and gesture: obviously, she had no watch.
Ranklin shook his head in patient refusal. “If you have no watch, you must be used to looking for clocks and London’s full of them. So, what time?”
“I quit the hotel at half-past nine.”
“And how long had you been there?”
A shrug, then reluctantly: “About an hour.”
“Did they let you sit in the hotel all that time?”
“They didn’t let me sit in the hotel a fucking minute. I waited outside.”
A girl just standing around in the street after dark . . . “Didn’t men-?”
“Naturally they did. I’m used to it.”
Ranklin sat back to think. Guillet’s bed hadn’t been slept i n. “Somebody could have been killing him while you were waiting.”
Despite herself, a shaft of interest lit her face. “Not at that time. The streets were too busy. And I have seen the river, there is too much light there.”
“The river moves. He didn’t have to be pushed in where he was pulled out. He could have gone in higher up. In fact, it’s more likely.” Mind, the Thames at London was tidaclass="underline" the natural flow might even reverse with a flooding tide. A body could be pushed back and forth, banging into moored barges . . . well, that had certainly happened.
But on balance, it should have travelled downstream – perhaps from the quieter, less lit areas of Chelsea or across the river in Battersea. “A long way to walk first,” he said to himself, then translated for her.
“An auto,” she said.
“He wouldn’t have got into an auto except with someone he knew.”
“And the only person he knew in London is Inspecteur Lacoste.” There was a little triumphant smile on her shabby face: ergo, Lacoste had killed him. Hadn’t she said it was the flics all along?
Ranklin thought that unlikely. Whatever one’s view of the Prefecture, being let down by a witness must happen fairly often to a detective, and he couldn’t kill them all; it might cause comment. But he didn’t fancy trying to argue that to Berenice.
So he said: “Did you know Guillet in La Villette?”
“I saw him a couple of times, when he came into the Deux Chevaliers. He did not belong there, he was not an anarchist. But he had some business with the patron.”