He sipped his whisky and lit a cigarette, his mind turning inevitably towards Hettie and the night they’d spent together. She could only stay until morning, she had said, as she had to meet Lasry in Brighton, where they were going to look for somewhere to live – Cornwall was beginning to pall, so far away, and Bonham Johnson was urging them to be closer to London. She promised Lysander that she would come back to London for several days as soon as she could think up an excuse that would appease her suspicious husband. Lysander thought he might rent a small service apartment in a mansion block somewhere central where they could safely spend time together – he was growing tired of hotel life, anyway, and god knew how long he’d be stuck in the Directorate of Movements, searching for Andromeda. He wasn’t anticipating his investigation of Osborne-Way with any great pleasure. He’d have to be exceptionally cautious, take real pains not to be –
His mother walked into the hotel.
His first instinct was to rush out into the lobby and surprise her, but something made him shrink back in his seat. She was wearing a fur coat and one of the new, fashionably smaller hats. She spoke to the receptionist and a porter was called and sent away. Luggage? Was she staying the night? The mâitre d’ emerged from the dining room and shook her hand, obsequiously. She must be known here . . . She was led away towards the dining room and out of his line of sight.
Lysander would have liked to put this encounter down as one of life’s many coincidences. Coincidences – the most extraordinary coincidences – happened all the time, he knew, and in a manner that would make the laziest farceur blush. But life’s strange congruences were not applicable here – every suddenly aching bone in his body was telling him that this was no accidental coming-together of the respective orbits of Vandenbrook, Rief and Anna, Lady Faulkner. Then he saw Vandenbrook come down the stairs, cigarette in hand, and turn into the dining room. He knew instantly that he was going to his mother’s table, that this rendezvous had been planned, but decided to wait five minutes before he sought his ‘ocular proof’. He strolled out of the bar and pretended to consult a map of Hythe conveniently hung to one side of the dining-room door. It was ajar and he could see at an angle into the salon. There was a fireplace and a dozen tables, half of them occupied. And there in the corner was his mother, accepting a glass of wine poured by the sommelier, and there across the table from her was Christian Vandenbrook. They toasted each other – they seemed familiar and relaxed – clearly this was not their first introduction. As they talked and consulted the menu, Lysander saw that they were displaying all the timeworn and conventional feints and poor disguises of lovers meeting in a public place and hoping the real nature of their relationship would be invisible.
8. The Colonel’s Daimler
‘I need a motor car, Tremlett,’ Lysander said. ‘I have to do a tour of the south-east. Does the Directorate have transport?’
‘There is Colonel Osborne-Way’s motor, sir. A Daimler. Sits in the garage for weeks at a time.’
‘That’ll do nicely.’
‘I think we’ll have need of your magic letter, however, sir.’
It turned out to be a big, new, maroon-and-black, 1914-model, seven-seater Daimler that had been ordered and paid for straight from the Daimler works in Coventry by the director of a chemical firm in Leipzig. It had been seized by the authorities at the outbreak of war before it could be shipped to Germany, but how it had ended up as Osborne-Way’s personal vehicle was something of a mystery. It was ideal for Lysander’s purposes, however, and Tremlett quickly and enthusiastically volunteered to act as chauffeur. Armed with copies of the relevant claims, the two of them headed off the next day – Lysander reclining grandly in the rear on mustard-yellow kid-leather seats – on a circuit of all the hotels on the Kent and Sussex coast that Christian Vandenbrook chose to frequent.
One night in Ramsgate drew a blank, but Sandwich, Deal and Hythe confirmed the pattern. They were all small, relatively expensive hotels with ardent recommendations from the better guidebooks. The hotel registers revealed that whenever Captain Vandenbrook was booked in so too was Lady Faulkner. She didn’t stay with him in Rye, nor in Hastings, however – perhaps a little too close to home, Lysander thought. All in all, over a period from September 1914 to this latest October encounter, they had spent the night in the same hotel nine times. He would not have been surprised to find similar evidence in London – they were bound to have met there also, she went up to town two or three times a month – but Vandenbrook could hardly present a claim for a night in a London hotel to the Directorate’s accounts department.
An affair of over a year, then, Lysander considered, and one that had begun while Crickmay Faulkner was still very much alive. The thought of his mother with Vandenbrook, carnally, made him uneasy and disturbed – made him instantly think of her differently, as if she had suddenly become someone entirely separate from the woman he knew and loved. But of course she wasn’t old, he told himself, she had other roles in life beyond that of his ‘mother’. She was an extremely attractive mature woman, cultured, vivacious, confident. Vandenbrook himself – sophisticated, charming, handsome, amusing, rich – was exactly the sort of man she would be attracted to. He could see that, understand that, all too clearly. He tried not to condemn her for it.
In Hastings, at the Pelham Hotel, the last hotel on their itinerary, the staff had been particularly helpful and concerned. Vandenbrook had stayed there four times and must have been a heavy tipper, Lysander thought. The young receptionist was full of anxious enquiries.
‘I do hope everything was to Captain Vandenbrook’s satisfaction. We’d be most upset if he was in any way displeased.’
‘Not at all. Routine enquiry.’
‘Has something gone wrong, sir?’
‘Well,’ Lysander improvised, ‘something’s gone missing – we’re just retracing the captain’s movements over the last few weeks and months.’
‘Are you a colleague?’ the receptionist asked. She was young, eighteen or nineteen, and had arranged her hair in a curious low swipe over her forehead that was not particularly flattering, Lysander thought, it made her look a bit simple, though she evidently wasn’t. He suspected she had been subjected to the full Vandenbrook charm on many occasions.
‘Yes, I am. We work together in London.’
‘Please do tell him that his envelopes were all collected as specified. Never more than two days later.’
‘I will, thank you.’
He said goodbye, promised to pass on the affectionate good wishes of the staff of the Pelham Hotel, Hastings, to the captain and tried to walk casually back out to the street. Tremlett was smoking by the Daimler, cap pushed to the back of his head. With his eye patch he looked unusually slovenly. He threw away his cigarette as Lysander strode up to him and readjusted his cap.
‘Back to London, sir?’
‘Back to Hythe.’
‘Thought we were done for the day, sir.’
‘The devil’s work is never done, Tremlett. Quick as you like, please.’
They drove back up the coast to Hythe and returned to the Dene Hotel. Lysander walked into reception, experiencing the curious sensation of his life repeating itself. This was his third visit to the Dene Hotel in forty-eight hours.
‘Good evening, sir. Welcome back.’
‘I was just wondering . . . Did Captain Vandenbrook leave anything – in his room, perhaps?’
‘Oh, you mean the envelope. I should have said this morning. Usually a porter from the station collects it.’
The receptionist reached under his counter and drew out a large buff manila envelope. On the front was written, ‘Capt. C. Vandenbrook – to be collected.’
Lysander thanked the clerk and went into the saloon bar. It was quiet – one old man smoking a pipe in a corner and reading a newspaper. Lysander felt a coldness fall from the nape of his neck over his shoulders and back, as if he were standing in an icy draught. Mysteriously, the wound in his thigh began to ache, suddenly, a kind of burning. He knew what the envelope would contain. He ripped it open with his thumb and began to read.