Which left the problem of Gorkin – and Mrs Langhorn.
21
The village cafe was along the high street and left, beside a village green that seemed more English than French. The evening was turning chilly – it was still only April, after all – and the pavement tables were unoccupied while the interior was warm and steamy. But the tables inside weren’t much occupied either; most of the regulars would be hanging around the fringes of the siege. There were just a couple of old men whose minds weren’t in the present day, and in a corner banquette, Corinna, Berenice and Mrs Langhorn.
They made a strange trio: Corinna, who didn’t own any clothes that were less than elegant, alongside Berenice doing her usual impersonation of a bag of washing. And Mrs Langhorn, who at least knew how to wear clothes, had Corinna’s motoring dustcoat over a skirt and blouse that hadn’t been improved by crawling through the copse. But she had done something to tidy her hair.
Corinna watched them approach with anxiety turning to relief. “You look all in one piece. Have the cops finally ridden to the rescue? I heard automobiles.”
“The Garde Mobile.” Ranklin and O’Gilroy sat down. “It could turn into a proper siege, army and all, if it lasts much longer.”
Corinna glanced cautiously at Mrs Langhorn, then asked: “And you had no trouble getting away?”
“No, the Surete-” but then the proprietor, fat and gloomy, arrived. He delicately picked a bit of twig off Ranklin’s shoulder with his pudgy fingers and dropped it into an ashtray. Ranklin ordered cognac and beer for himself and O’Gilroy, and whatever the ladies were having again.
“That boy’s going to make his fortune tonight,” Corinna said. “When the journalists get here. He’s got a telephone.” Ranklin nodded: he hadn’t thought of journalists. Then he took the hint from the “boy” – probably twice Corinna’s age – and went off to the toilette to try and clean up.
When he got back, Corinna said: “You were telling us about the Surete.”
“They’re still getting organised up there, and hadn’t really got time for us. And my French wasn’t too good.” He glanced at O’Gilroy. “You seemed to have forgotten yours entirely.”
“No spikka da lingo.”
“Then,” Corinna asked, “d’you want to get away before they’ve got time for you?”
Ranklin shook his head slowly. “No, I’ll have to stay and give them some sort of explanation. But I’m hoping by then there’ll be a commissaire or even a prefect along: they’re more likely to settle for a nod and a wink. It’s the lower ranks who ask awkward questions.”
“And there’s still . . .” She had suddenly remembered Jay, lying in the cold lane.
Ranklin nodded.
“D’you want to tell me how-?”
“No. Later.” Then a tray of drinks arrived and he and O’Gilroy finished their beer in a few gulps. It was funny how action made your mouth dry. Then they sipped the cognac for their nerves. Corinna watched their duplicated actions solemnly.
Mrs Langhorn had been silent, looking from them to Corinna and quite ignoring Berenice. Now she asked: “Well, you’ve rescued me. What happens to me now?”
Ranklin felt he had already hauled himself up a vast mountain, only to find another false summit and an indefinite way yet to go. Had it been worth it? Why not stop now, before it cost him anything – anybody – more? Let the damned woman say what she liked to whoever she liked. But . . . but maybe he had to go on a few more steps.
He said: “You were on that barge, so the Surete will want to talk to you, too. What will you tell them?”
She was a bit taken aback; perhaps she thought she’d reached a safe peak, too, and now he was pushing her off.
“What do you want me to tell them?”
Ranklin shook his head. “Firstly, just tell me what you’ve been doing. From the start.”
“Just trying to do my best for Grover. Anything they told me to.”
“Such as?”
“Writing a letter to the American Consul, and moving into horrible lodgings where Kaminsky said I’d be safe from the police . . . And then going to Portsmouth with him. And meeting you. All that was his idea, he said it would be best for Grover.”
There was a distant crackle of firing, but it didn’t sound final, dying away in a series of individual pops.
“Go on.”
“Then . . . then he made me move on to the barge, and I was kept prisoner. I was really a prisoner there. He didn’t tell me what was going on in London, just said it would be all right. He’d taken my papers, too, and my passport. In France, if you haven’t got papers you’re nobody, you don’t exist. I felt he was . . . was just turning me into nothing. I was frantic, I was going mad.”
Ranklin glanced at Corinna’s cool expression to help remind himself that this woman had once been an actress.
“And he said he’d give me some medicine to calm my nerves. I got some sleep then, and when I woke up he made me drink some more . . . I knew the barge was moving . . . And then you rescued me.” And she smiled, bright and thankful. And quite ready, he felt, to tell her story again with a different slant and new stage effects if that suited better.
“I went through it all for Grover,” she reminded him. Which was probably true, but to her mind, it also excused everything. Whatever happened, she and Grover were going to come out unscathed.
“Did you see Dr Gorkin at all?”
“He used to come down to the Cafe des Deux Chevaliers sometimes. And when Grover was arrested in London, he asked me if I’d swear to the King being Graver’s father.”
“And you said you would.”
“It was to save Grover! They told me it was the only way . . . Anyway, why shouldn’t we have a bit of proper living?”
“In Buckingham Palace?”
“And why not?”
“Mrs Langhorn, I told you – when I thought you were Mrs Simmons – that no power on earth could make Grover the next king. That’s still true.”
“But it’s still true he ought to be.”
“It’s also true that because you started saying that, four people are now dead, they tried to kill off Berenice -” at that, Mrs Langhorn really did look at the girl, in genuine, wide-eyed surprise “- and probably more by the time this siege is done.”
After a moment, she muttered: “That doesn’t change the truth.”
Ranklin sighed. “No, none of it does. But there’s been one other development: somebody . . . somebody close to the Palace is offering a pension if you abandon this story.”
“They admit it!”
Ranklin repeated patiently: “They’re offering a pension. But if the story comes out, the pension stops. I should think about it.” He turned to Corinna. “I think it would be best if you just got them back to Paris. Just where . . .”
“I can find somewhere.” In this situation, in front of this audience, Corinna wasn’t one to raise objections. “I’ll send our chauffeur back for you. Er . . . who will you be?”
“Tell him to look for Spencer. And thanks – as much for running away from that lane as anything.”
Her expression turned serious. “If I’d stayed, I might have helped that Jay to-”
“No, you wouldn’t!” Ranklin shook his head firmly. “There were three of them and you’d just have got yourself killed and let them get away in the motor-car. You did exactly the right thing.” For once, he didn’t add.
He saw them to the hired tourer parked around the corner. As he closed the door on Mrs Langhorn, she said: “You said you were working for Mr Quinton.”
“And you said you were Mrs Simmons.”
They stood for a moment on the doorstep of the cafe, listening to the siege. By now the shooting was constant but low-key, just individual shots. O’Gilroy said: “If’n we’d jest shot that barge to hell, we’d be rid of that old bitch and young Jay’d be alive yet.”