The Skeffington Tearooms in Mount Street were unabashed about their striving for gentility, Lysander saw as he approached. Elaborately worked lace curtains screened the tea-drinkers from the curious gaze of passers-by; the name of the establishment was written in black glass in a very flourished white copperplate, tightly coiled curlicues ending in gilt flowerlets or four-leafed clovers. A serving maid in a tiny bonnet and a long white pinny was sweeping the pavement outside. It didn’t seem a Massinger type of place at all.
Inside was a single large long room lit by crystal chandeliers and lined on three walls by semi-circular maroon velour Chesterfield booths. Two rows of highly polished tables with neat doilies and a centrally placed flower arrangement filled the rest of the area. The hushed tinkle of silverware on crockery and a low murmur of discreet conversation greeted him. It was like entering a library, Lysander felt, with a library’s implicit prohibitions against unnecessary noise – quiet footsteps, please, coughs and sneezes to be muffled, no laughter at all.
An unsmiling woman with a pince-nez checked that Massinger’s name had been entered in the ledger and a summoned waitress led him across the room to a booth in the far corner. Massinger sat there, smoking, wearing a morning suit, of all things, and reading a newspaper. He looked up to see Lysander and did not smile, merely holding up the newspaper and pointing to a headline. ‘English County Cricket to be abandoned in 1916.’
‘Terrible business, what?’ Massinger said. ‘Where does that leave us? Shocking.’
Lysander agreed, sat down and ordered a pot of coffee – he didn’t feel like tea; tea was not a drink to share with someone like Massinger.
‘What do you want to see me about?’ he asked as Massinger crushed his cigarette dead – with conspicuous force – in the ashtray, smoke snorting from his nostrils.
‘I don’t want to see you, Rief,’ he said, looking up. He gestured. ‘She does.’
Florence Duchesne stepped up to the table, as if she had suddenly materialized.
Lysander felt a lurch of instinctive alarm judder through him and had the immediate conviction that she was about to pull a revolver from her handbag and shoot him again. He stared at her – it was Florence Duchesne but a different woman from the one he’d last seen on the steamer on Lac Léman. The black weeds and the veil were gone. She had powder and lip rouge on her face and was wearing a magenta ‘town suit’ with a cut-away jacket and a hobble skirt and a little fichu at the neck of her silk blouse. She had a velvet Tam o’ Shanter set on a slant on her head in a darker purple than the suit. It was as if Madame Duchesne’s fashionable twin sister had walked in, not the melancholy widow who lived with the postmaster of Geneva.
She slipped into the booth beside him and, despite himself, Lysander flinched.
‘I had to see you, Monsieur Rief,’ she said in French, ‘to explain and, of course, to apologize.’
Lysander looked at her, then Massinger, then back at her again, quite disorientated, unable to think what he could possibly say. Massinger stood up at this juncture and distracted them.
‘I’ll leave you two to talk. I’ll see you later, Madame. Goodbye, Rief.’
Lysander watched him stride across the room to collect his top hat – he looked like a superior shop assistant, he thought. He turned back to Florence Duchesne.
‘This is very, very strange for me,’ he said, slowly. ‘To be sitting here with someone who’s shot me three times. Very strange . . . You were trying to kill me, I suppose.’
‘Oh, yes. But you must understand that I was convinced you were working with Glockner. I was convinced you had killed Glockner also. And when you lied to me about the cipher-text – it seemed the final clue. And Massinger had ordered me not to take any risks – said you were possibly a traitor, even. Was I meant to let you step ashore at Evian and vanish? No. Especially with all the suspicions I had – it was my duty.’
‘No, no. You were absolutely in the right.’ The irony in his voice made it unusually harsh, like Massinger’s throaty rasp. He recalled Massinger’s schoolboy French blunder. She bowed her head.
‘And yet . . .’ She left the rest unspoken.
‘I wonder if they serve alcohol in a place like this?’ he asked, rhetorically. ‘Probably not, far too plebeian. I need a powerful drink, Madame. I’m sure you understand.’
‘We can go to a hotel, if you like. I do want to talk to you about something important.’
They paid and left. At the door to the tearoom she collected a dyed black musquash coat with a single button at the hip. Lysander held it open for her as she slipped her arms into the sleeves and smelled the strong pungent scent she wore. He thought back to their supper on the terrace of the Brasserie des Bastions in Geneva and how he’d noticed it then – thinking it an anomaly – but now he realized it was a trace of the real woman. A little clue. He glanced at her as they walked along the road in silence, heading for the Connaught Hotel.
They found a seat in the public lounge and Lysander ordered a large whisky and soda for himself and a Dubonnet for her. The drink calmed him and he felt his jumpiness subside. It was always amazing how one so quickly accustomed oneself to the strangest circumstances, he thought – here I am having a drink with a woman who tried to assassinate me. He looked across the table at her and registered his absence of anger, of outrage. All he saw was a very attractive woman in fashionable clothes.
‘What’re you doing in London?’ he asked.
‘Massinger has brought me out of Geneva. It was becoming too dangerous for me.’
She explained. Her contact in the German consulate – ‘the man with the embarrassing letters’ – had been arrested and deported to Germany. It would only be a matter of time before he gave her name up. ‘So Massinger pulled me out, very fast.’
‘I assume you’re not a widow.’
‘No. But it’s a most effective disguise, I assure you. I’ve not been married, in fact.’
‘What about your brother?’
‘Yes, he’s really my brother – and he’s the postmaster in Geneva.’ She smiled at him. ‘Not everything is a lie.’
The smile disarmed him and he found himself unreflectingly taking in her looks – her strong curved nose, her clear blue eyes, the shadowed hollow at her throat between her collar-bones. He could forgive her, he supposed. In fact it was very easy – how absurd.
‘How are you?’ she asked. ‘I mean, after the shooting.’
‘I have seven scars to remember you by,’ he said, showing her the stigma in his left palm. ‘And my leg stiffens up sometimes,’ he tapped his left thigh. ‘But otherwise I’m pretty well. Amazingly.’
‘Lucky I’m a bad shot,’ she said, smiling ruefully. ‘I can only say sorry, again. Imagine that I’m saying sorry to you all the time. Sorry, sorry, sorry.’
Lysander shrugged. ‘It’s over. I’m alive. You’re here in London.’ He raised his glass. ‘I’m not being facetious – despite everything, I’m very pleased to see you.’
She seemed to relax finally – expiation had occurred.
‘And you remembered I liked Dubonnet,’ she said.
They looked at each other candidly.
‘You like Dubonnet and you don’t drink champagne.’