A manservant in worn but well-kept livery whisked away their bags – Ranklin should have foreseen that – and the General led the way inside. After a few paces, he halted and Took Off His Hat in a gesture that made Ranklin do the same and glare at O’Gilroy to copy.
“Gentlemen,” the General said, “His Most Christian Majesty King Philippe of the French.”
The portrait, hung to dominate the hallway, was of a middle-aged man with a long, full-lipped face and square fringe beard, wearing ducal robes. It was a recent picture but done in the style of the old court painters, with a stylised background showing, in defiance of geography, the Palace of Versailles on one side and Orleans cathedral on the other. Ranklin’s memory fixed on that clue: the current pretender to the throne had taken the title of Duc d’Orleans, not his father’s one of Comte de Paris.
Please God, don’t let O’Gilroy say one word, but let me say the right ones.
“We are most honoured to be received in the house of a truly loyal soldier of France,” he intoned hopefully. A sideways glance showed it had been well received.
An older and stouter servant took their hats and coats, and they followed the General into a drawing room overlooking the terrace and the unmown lawn sloping down to the road. Itching with anger at O’Gilroy, Ranklin took in only a vague impression of the room: strongly masculine and military – a small brass cannon as a paperweight – the walls hung with African trophies, group photographs and decorative but useless maps. If there was, or had been, a comtesse, she had had no influence on this room.
“Would you care for some refreshment?” the General offered, as the stout servant came in with a tray. “Of coffee, tea, or some wine?”
Ranklin was about to choose tea, then recalled his mistrust of the French version and took coffee. O’Gilroy, he was relieved to see, did the same. The General sat down with a glass of lemon tea and the servant – the butler, Ranklin assumed – arranged a Moroccan shawl around his shoulders.
For want of anything better to say, Ranklin harked back to the portrait in the hallway. “Are you acquainted with the Duc d’Orleans, sir?”
“His Majesty is gracious enough to correspond with me. I have not been fortunate enough to wait upon him.”
O’Gilroy was looking baffled. Let him stew, Ranklin’s anger said.
“Do you know if he plans any further travels, sir?” And as the General’s thin eyebrows closed at this impertinence, Ranklin added quickly: “I thought his book on Spitzbergen was quite excellent. Most informative.” And for all he knew, it might have been, along with being a daft place to write a book about.
The General was mollified. “I understand he plans no further travels. He knows his destiny lies in Europe at this time.”
There was something, but not quite everything, unreal about talking of France accepting a king once more. Ranklin went along with it, partly to explore the General, but just as much to bewilder O’Gilroy. “I am reassured that His Majesty’s leadership will be available in these dark times.”
There was a tap at the door and the butler trundled over to bring the message up the chain of command: from housemaid to butler to General, who announced: “Mon Capitaine, M’sieu, your baths have been prepared. A small repas will be waiting on your return.”
“That is most kind, but we do need to get to Paris …” They might already have failed in their task, except in distracting Gunther away from Spiers and the true codes, but there was an interview in London to think about (“And what did you do then, Captain?” “Well, sir, we wallowed in hot baths, had a bite to eat and toddled on our way …”)
“I quite understand, mon Capitaine. By then Sergeant Clement will have prepared the car to join the express at Rouen.”
Resigned, Ranklin let the butler lead the way upstairs.
In a first-floor bedroom, with the same view over the lawn, their small travelling bags had already been half-unpacked. Ranklin waited until the door was closed behind them, then let fly: “What the devil were you up to getting us stuck out here? Didn’t you realise that fat German was just the man we were supposed to watch out for, get caught by? So now we’ve lost …”
“Ah, calm down, Captain, dear.” O’Gilroy was quite unruffled. “Could ye not see they’re all in it together?”
Ranklin gaped.
“Sure, the fat German was to spot ye on the boat – and did – pretending to be drunk on beer before noon. And him the size of a garrison sergeant that could drink beer the day round without it touching him. And getting word of yer name ahead … Now, that I can’t tell how he did at all …”
“Wireless,” Ranklin said reluctantly.
“Ah, sure, I was too bothered with me stomach to see the boat had an aerial on it. And using yer name in a message so we miss the train, then him coming round being pushy on the dockside so when a nice general turns up with a nice motorcar, if ye’d been the officer with the real code, wouldn’t ye think him, another army man, was an angel sent from Heaven?”
Ranklin wasn’t about to agree that O’Gilroy was right. Lucky, perhaps, but … but at least he seemed to have guessed how a real courier might think. Or, perhaps more importantly, how their opponents assumed a real courier would think. He shivered to recall how instinctively he had been drawn to the General.
And if they were still in the trap they had sprung, he could relax and look around as he undressed. It was a high-windowed room with white-painted panelling edged with gold, a pink and green oriental carpet and a couple of elegant pre-Empire chairs beside the beds. But the whole had the dullness of old varnish on a painting, at the brink of becoming shabby and grimy.
Putting on his dressing gown and picking up a bath towel, he peeked at the parcel in his bag. “They surely can’t be planning to copy the code while we’re in the bath?”
“Not even while I’m in me bath.” Constant hot baths were the high point of O’Gilroy’s new life, and no nonsense about leaving them half-finished.
Ranklin’s natural pessimism caught up with him and he was back in the bedroom sooner than he’d intended, leaving O’Gilroy sluicing in suds and folk song. The bathrooms had all been built in a clump around the recently installed main drainage, which made sense but gave a rather barracks-block effect.
He dressed slowly, putting on a fresh collar, puzzling over the odd combination of French general and German spy and very conscious of his own failure to think imaginatively earlier that afternoon. At last O’Gilroy drifted in, shining pink around a small, private smile.
“Captain, did ye notice a funny smell about the bathrooms?”
Ranklin might have done, but expected foreign bathrooms to smell funny.
“Chemicals,” O’Gilroy said, watching him.
“Well, that’s a step in the right direction. What bothers me – ”
“So I took a shufti around the other bedrooms …”
“You didn’t!”
“Is that not in our code of conduct, then? And I found one being used, with them big brown bottles of chemicals a fella I worked for in Ireland had for his photography, and a wooden case with a big camera in it …”
“They’re going to photograph the code!”
“I thought ye might be interested,” O’Gilroy said dryly.
That made the whole thing more feasible. They could photograph two pages of the book at a time just as fast as they could change plates. It also meant that O’Gilroy was right yet again. By way of congratulation and apology, Ranklin said: “Um.”