Ultimately they had agreed that the War Office’s “little error” (about which Lieutenant Spiers and the other agent knew nothing, having delivered their parcels intact) just about balanced out the French carelessness about the General and the royalists in the Ministere, and that perhaps written reports would cause needless worry … Huguet had sealed the pact by giving him the X code-book as a souvenir. And Ranklin had drunk too much coffee and cognac and slept badly.
“And you had to tell them about the General?”
O’Gilroy looked up from his lemon tea. “Was ye thinking we owed him any better, then?”
“Fools on that scale are dangerous,” Ranklin said. “He was trying – unwittingly, perhaps – to commit a blatantly treacherous act. Next time …”
Corinna nodded and smiled sadly. “I suppose so. But he was kind of sweet, with his old-fashioned honour and duelling …”
“If you look carefully at any history of duelling,” Ranklin said, “you’ll find that, except where both parties were just drunk, most were legitimised murder forced by an expert swordsman or pistol shot.”
O’Gilroy stared, then chuckled to himself. Corinna said: “Bye-bye King Arthur. But what’ll happen to the old boy?”
“They daren’t have a trial, it would get the royalists up in arms. So, a few nods and winks behind closed doors, perhaps somebody of more certain loyalty taking over Clement’s job – and no, nothing heard of him.” Then, trying to change the subject: “Was your father taken with any of the chateaux you saw?”
“Was he -?” For a moment she looked blank, then remembered the reason she’d given for being at the Chateau. “Oh, yes, well … I don’t know that he’s very serious about it. What he might be serious about is knowing just how cosy the British and French armies are, and how close they think a war is.”
“Armies always think a war is close,” Ranklin said quickly. “It’s their job. And we’d rather yesterday’s doings weren’t shouted from the rooftops.”
“Just nods and winks behind closed doors? Well, that’s how Pop usually does business. And you press-ganged me, Captain, when you slipped me that code: I’d say you owe me pay for the voyage. I’d also say I’d got you boys over a barrel, knowing how you earn your daily bread.”
O’Gilroy stopped eating tea biscuits – just for a moment – to stare hard at her. Ranklin said amiably: “If I understand the expression aright, you may well have. But if you really wanted to help your father, why not suggest he tries to get involved in placing French Government bonds in America? – as Pierpoint Morgan would be doing if he hadn’t just died? They’ll need a new issue to pay for the third year of conscription they’re proposing. Mr Sherring would be delighted to know what an intelligent – sorry, smart – business-woman he’d got for a daughter.”
That lunchtime Ranklin had had a friendly chat with a man from the Paris branch of an English bank. They had touched on the career of Reynard Sherring, private banker: not in the class of a Rothschild or the late J. P. Morgan, perhaps, but well respected and with no worries about where his next steam yacht was coming from. And now his daughter sat and listened, a polite smile held on her usually mobile face.
“Because it struck me,” Ranklin went on, “that a smart businesswoman might have a smart business reason for wasting time in that crumbling old Chateau. Such as finding out whether the royalists really have any political future. Not directly from the old warhorse himself, but from the names he’d let drop when trying to impress a pretty young face. Stuff that your father would like to know but daren’t be seen trying to find out, not if he wanted any slice of the French bond pie or anything else from the government. Because if there was even a whisper of royalist sympathies, they’d rather dig up poor Mr Morgan than give any business to your father … you’re letting your tea go cold, Mrs Finn.”
She sat back and stared, apparently at nothing. Around them, the waiters glided as if on skates, the music soothed, the laughter twittered like the bird house at the zoo. Just another Ritz teatime.
“You know something?” she said finally. “I just clean forgot something Pop once told me: never try to skin a live wolf. Stupid of me.” She leant forward, smiling. “It’s Matthew – Matt – isn’t it? And Conall. I’m Corinna. We must take tea again, some time.”
WHITEHALL COURT
18
“It is very good of you to see me,” Lord Erith said, smiling gently as he looked around for a place to put his silk hat. In fact, it was very good of him to say that, because the Commander had had no choice but to see him. He could fend off politicians and diplomats by threatening to tell them secrets, but Lord Erith came – at least on this occasion – from the Palace, and saying No to him would be saying No to the King.
“I suppose,” Erith went on, “that since your Bureau does not exist, neither does this room. A most remarkable illusion of reality.”
The Commander found a space for Erith’s hat and gloves between a model of a futuristic warship and an experimental chronometer on the work-table. The whole attic room was cluttered with such things, together with a shelf of technical books, a row of telephones, and a flock of maps, charts and seascape pictures roosting on the walls.
It looked, as the Commander had intended, like the office of the Chief of the Secret Service Bureau.
Erith seemed about to flick invisible dust off the padded dining chair kept for visitors, but then just sat, draping the skirts of his frock coat away from his thighs. He had a face that was very fashionable at the time, virtually just a profile with a thin beaked nose, high forehead and sharp chin. Senior diplomats, generals and some admirals all wore it, although not so many politicians; perhaps the voters needed some way of telling them apart. Erith’s version was balder than most, but with a fuller moustache.
“Are you to be involved in Monsieur Poincare’s visit?” he asked politely, but rather hoping not, if the Commander would be wearing what appeared to be a mechanic’s uniform. Whoever had designed the Naval officer’s working dress had held a bitter grudge against sailors.
“No, My Lord, no reason for me to be embroiled in pomp and circumstance.” The Commander pulled his own chair out to sit beside rather than behind his desk. He didn’t mind looking like a mechanic, but never like a blasted banker.
“And I trust that none of your, ah, agents will be doing anything interesting in France at the time of the visit?”
The Commander lowered his brows and reached for his briar pipe, rather like a man instinctively resting his hand on his sword hilt. “None of that got into the newspapers, not even the French ones.”
“So we were pleased not to see. But your profession seems to be rather in the public eye at the moment, with the Colonel Redl affair in Vienna, and now the release of … dear me, I forget the names – ”
“Brandon and Trench.” Three years ago these two, one a Marine, the other a Naval officer, had been imprisoned for snooping round the forts of North Germany. Last month they had been released as a gesture when the King went to Berlin for the wedding of the Kaiser’s daughter. The British press had made quite a fuss of the two men; the Admiralty had not.
“I know they were none of your responsibility, but still …”
The Commander growled: “Damned Naval Intelligence sending out total amateurs who think it’ll be a jolly jape to spend their leave doing a bit of spying. Mind, the Army can be just as bad.”
“My dear Commander, I do so agree with you (please light that pipe if you want to). For years I’ve been arguing for a secretariat that wasn’t dominated by generals and admirals to handle cooperative planning and intelligence.”