A Dark and Deadly Journey, page 10
“Yes, sir,” said Carter tightly.
“How did your investigation progress today, Mr. Slater?” asked Phillips. “You can imagine, I’m eager for an update.”
I did not miss that Phillips addressed my partner rather than me.
“Evelyne?” David prompted, deferring to me.
“Winn’s flat was rather spartan,” I said carefully. Phillips might be our contact, but he was not our handler. We had no obligation to provide him with anything more than the basic details to keep our investigation flowing. Still, he was the person who seemed to know Winn best, so I thought it prudent to answer.
“We found a newspaper that was nearly two weeks old and a matchbook from a Café Real, but very little else,” I said.
“Café Real was where Winn would leave word for me if he needed to meet. I suppose he picked up a matchbook on one of his visits,” said Phillips.
“What was your arrangement there?” I asked.
“There is a table in the corner by the window that has a gap between the tabletop and the metal that finishes the edge. He would hide a scrap of paper there, and I would go every morning for a cup of coffee as cover to check whether he’d left me anything or not,” said Phillips.
“Have you been going since he disappeared?” I asked.
“Yes. I had hoped he might reemerge, but so far nothing,” said Phillips.
“Well, that sends us nearly back to square one, except for the woman,” I said.
“Woman?” asked Phillips.
“Winn’s landlady mentioned that a woman had come around to pay his rent in his absence last week. Did he ever mention a girlfriend?” asked David.
Phillips frowned. “No, I don’t think so.”
“The landlady said this woman was Portuguese. Dark hair like mine, but shorter,” I said.
Phillips shook his head. “That doesn’t ring any bells.”
“Evelyne also found a shirt hanging in the cabinet with a lipstick stain on the collar,” said David.
“So now you are looking for the girl?” asked Phillips.
“The girlfriend and the engineer seem to be our best leads so far.” Which wasn’t saying very much.
“We’re here,” Carter announced, swinging the car around into the drive of a huge white building. Coming from London, where the blackout had plunged the city into darkness each night for more than a year, it was almost disorienting seeing the brilliant lights of the casino shining out like a beacon. Ahead of us, I could see a diminutive gentleman in evening clothes help a whip-thin woman slide out of the back seat of a car and arrange her long black skirts around her evening shoes. It seemed incredible, witnessing this scene, that elsewhere on the Continent, a war was raging.
Phillips glanced back at us. “Are you ready?”
“Lead on,” I said.
Carter parked the car and climbed out to open the door for me. Then he leaned down as though to hand me out of the car as David clambered out of the other side.
“I have some of the information for you,” he said in a low voice. “As soon as you can get away without raising Phillips’s and Slater’s suspicions, meet me at the coat check.”
“All right,” I said.
He straightened and, in a normal tone, said, “There you are, Miss Moore.”
“Thank you, Mr. Carter,” I said, looping my wrap around my shoulders as I looked up at the casino’s brilliant facade and prepared myself for whatever was inside.
SIXTEEN
If the illuminated brilliance of Estoril Casino’s exterior had stunned me with its contrast to darkened London, there was something more familiar inside. At first glance, the men in their somber evening dress and women in brilliant silks and satins in the main gambling hall could not have been further from those huddled in a London air raid shelter, but there was an underlying manic urgency to all of this drinking, gambling, and jocularity that I recognized immediately. It was the desperation of a group of people doing their very best to smother their worry and bury it under a layer of forced fun.
Phillips hugged the edge of the gambling hall’s floor, and the clatter of roulette wheels and laughter filled my ears. However, as David, Carter, and I followed him, we didn’t stop to observe who was winning and losing. Instead, we walked through an arched doorway to another room, almost as large, that was lined on one side by a long bar facing a sea of full tables.
“Welcome to the casino’s bar,” said Phillips.
“I can see why you said everyone comes here,” I said, looking around at the crowd. My eye was caught by a beautiful icy blond in her mid-fifties who sat at a wide table placed in an alcove on a sort of mezzanine level. She was dressed in scarlet, and even from my position across the room I could see the flash of a wide collar of huge rubies and brilliant white diamonds at her throat. Around her sat a semicircle of men and women all facing her as though she were the sun.
“That,” whispered Phillips, nodding in the woman’s direction, “is Princess Petrova.”
“She certainly looks as though she’s holding court,” I said.
Phillips graced me with a little laugh. “I suspect she would be delighted to hear you say as much.”
“You know her well?” I asked.
He lifted a shoulder. “I’m not certain anyone could claim to know the princess well. Her approach is to cast a wide net of what one would call the right sort of acquaintances rather than to confide deeply in a single person. It suits me to be pleasant to her and find myself invited to her parties because they make for excellent people-watching. Our side goes and their side goes, if you understand my meaning. Carter doesn’t entirely approve of the princess, but he’s surprisingly old-fashioned about things.”
I glanced back to see whether Carter had overheard but found he was no longer standing next to David.
“He excused himself as we were passing through the gambling hall,” said David by way of explanation.
“I suspect he has his own business to conduct tonight,” said Phillips. “Come along. I’ll introduce you to the princess.”
As we approached her table, the princess’s eyes flicked over from the man with the precisely waxed moustache she was speaking to and then in a flash dropped again. If I hadn’t been looking right at her, I wouldn’t have noticed the way she seemed to take the three of us in, assessing us in a split second.
“I beg your pardon for the interruption, Princess Petrova,” said Phillips with a slight bow of his head.
“Mr. Phillips,” she said, as though only just seeing him for the first time. “I am still cross with you. You said you would come to my dinner party last week, and on the very same day you sent your regrets. My entire seating arrangement was off. Do you know how difficult it is to find a spare man these days? Mrs. Farris almost had to see herself in to dinner, but fortunately I had just met a charming opera singer the night before who was able to stand in.”
Phillips affected a deeper bow. “I must apologize, Princess. I was called away on urgent business. The war…”
“The war.” She sniffed, sending her dangling earrings flashing like fire in the light of the chandeliers. “All anyone talks about these days is the war. I expect you wish me to forgive you?”
“If you would be so kind,” said Phillips as though he found the entire petulant display rather amusing. “You are, after all, the most generous hostess in Lisbon.”
The little bit of flattery seemed to do the trick because the princess cast another eye over him and then flicked open a painted silk fan. “See that it doesn’t happen again, or I shall have to seriously reconsider your standing invitation to my little soirees.” As she fanned herself, she nodded to David and me. “Who have you brought me?”
“May I present Miss Evelyne Moore and Mr. David Slater,” said Phillips, stepping back to bring David and me to the forefront. “They are both new arrivals in Lisbon who are keen to make your acquaintance.”
The princess smiled as though it was the most natural thing that we should want to know her and then raised a hand for David and me to shake in turn. “How do you do?” She paused. “Miss Moore, you look remarkably familiar.”
“Do I?” I asked.
“Have you ever lived in Paris?”
I could feel David tense next to me at the mention of the city of my birth. However, I simply gave a laugh. “Paris? I should be so lucky. I’ve always dreamed of going to Paris.”
“Perhaps one day,” said the princess. “Mr. Phillips, Miss Moore is without a drink, and you know how I disapprove of a lady being too long without liquid courage.”
“An oversight that I will soon have corrected,” said Phillips with a little bow. “What will you have, Miss Moore?”
“A gimlet, please,” I said.
“And I will take a martini, very dry, Mr. Slater,” said the princess.
David’s lips quirked as though he was trying to smother a laugh at the woman’s high-handedness. “As you wish.”
As soon as the men were gone, the princess turned to me and said, “I fancy a bit of fresh air. The casino can become so stifling at this time of night. Join me, Miss Moore.”
She rose, and I followed her down the steps from the mezzanine to the casino bar’s floor.
“What brings you to Lisbon?” asked Princess Petrova as together we wove around tables.
“I am Mr. Slater’s secretary. He is in the wine trade,” I said.
“Scouting out our Portuguese wines, I imagine. He’ll find they have very little to recommend them compared to the French. It is most inconvenient not being able to rely upon supplies from France these days, but I suppose all of us must make sacrifices.”
I fought to keep my expression neutral at the suggestion that the princess’s wine cellar was a worthy sacrifice in the face of what the French people living under German occupation must be living through.
I didn’t have to like the princess, but I did recognize the unique opportunity presented to me now that we were alone.
“You must meet a great many people in Lisbon,” I said. “I’ve noticed so many different languages being spoken.”
“Yes, everyone seems to rattle through here eventually,” she said with the wave of a hand.
“I had thought to look up a friend of my brother’s while I was here,” I said, concocting a fictional sibling on the spot. “His name is Michael Jessup. I don’t suppose you’ve met.”
“English?” she asked, without a flicker of recognition at the name of the murdered man.
“Yes. They were at school together. Harrow,” I said, borrowing David’s old school for my purposes.
The princess thought for a moment. “I don’t recall meeting a Mr. Jessup. You said he has been in Lisbon for some time?”
“I think so. I will admit I haven’t seen him in an age.”
She shot me a sly smile. “This isn’t an affaire de coeur, is it?”
I tried my best to look bashful. “I really couldn’t say.”
“Well, my dear Miss Moore, I shouldn’t be too worried. I know every Englishman who is worth knowing in Lisbon, but I don’t know this Mr. Jessup, ergo…”
I almost laughed at the snobbery of her statement but persisted. “Perhaps you’ve heard of another of my brother’s friends. James Winn?”
“Your brother does have rather a large number of friends from school, doesn’t he?” she asked as we reached a set of gilded French doors.
“Oh, Mr. Winn is not a friend from school. My brother did some business with him in London,” I said, hoping that wouldn’t hedge me in too much.
Rather than responding, the princess opened the door off of the casino bar and stepped out into the inky black night.
“Much better,” she said, breathing in deeply. Then she reached into a small beaded evening bag and produced a gold cigarette case and lighter and an ebony holder. I watched her fit the cigarette into the holder and then light it.
“I hope you won’t mind if I speak very frankly, Miss Redfern.”
I froze at the sound of my real name. “I beg your pardon?”
“Oh, yes, I forgot. You are calling yourself ‘Miss Moore’ while you are in Lisbon, aren’t you?” asked the princess, with a light laugh around a stream of smoke. “What a lark.”
“I’m not certain I understand your meaning, Princess. I am Miss Moore.”
“Come now, there’s no need for that. It’s all so tiresome, you pretending I don’t know your real name, me continuing to press you. Shall we simply agree that I know that you are really Evelyne Redfern, daughter of Sir Reginald and Lady Redfern?”
“Why do you believe my surname is Redfern?” I asked.
“Because, not very long ago, Sir Reginald sat in my sitting room and—whether you like it or not—you bear a striking resemblance to him. You have Geneviève’s coloring, I’ll grant you that, but if you swapped your brown hair for blond, the resemblance would be undeniable to even the most casual of your parents’ acquaintances.”
I swallowed. “I’ll have to take your word for it.”
“There we are,” said the princess, seeming all the more pleased for my admission that I was who she said I was. “Now we can speak more freely with one another.”
“What is it that you wish to speak to me about in my guise as Miss Redfern that you would not be able to ask Miss Moore?”
“Your father, naturally,” she said. “Do you know, I hadn’t seen him in nearly twenty years until last month when he strolled up to me in the casino bar as though no time had passed?”
“You don’t say.”
“I remember the parties your mother used to throw. Wild affairs that would start with dinner and end who knew where. They would go on until the small hours of the next morning, and I recall sometimes watching the sun rise in my taxi home. She spared no expense, Geneviève.”
“I remember only the beginnings of those parties,” I said.
“Yes, your mother would trot you out during cocktails before we sat down to supper,” said the princess with a smile I didn’t entirely enjoy. “You were such a dear little thing. Always so well-dressed. Precocious too. I remember you telling Joan Miró that you didn’t much like his latest painting your mother had taken you to see. The man went red as a tomato.”
I still didn’t like the man’s work, if truth be told.
“Which leads me to wonder, why the charade of being Miss Moore?” she asked.
“A pseudonym can be useful when one’s childhood has been written about in every international newspaper. No one wants a secretary who distracts from proceedings,” I said.
“I think you’ll find many men do, but that’s not your meaning, is it?”
When I didn’t respond, she gave a little laugh. “The poor little Parisian orphan, trying to make her own way in the world.”
“There’s nothing wrong with honest toil,” I said, ignoring her invocation of the nickname numerous journalists had bestowed upon me during the coverage of the custody battle that had stemmed from my parents’ divorce.
“You certainly didn’t learn that sentiment from your father. I don’t think Sir Reginald has done an honest day’s work in his life,” said the princess.
“It wouldn’t suit him.”
“No, I don’t think it would. He’s the kind of man made for sitting at the wheel of a shiny new sports car, not behind a desk in a dreary London office.”
“What did Sir Reginald want from you when he visited?” I asked.
Her lips twitched in amusement. “Help. Why do you want to know?”
“I am trying to find him,” I said honestly. “Lisbon is the last location my aunt Amelia knew him to have been, but she has lost touch with him. When Mr. Slater told me he would be making a trip to Lisbon, I thought I might try my luck.”
“Drawn by the pull of daughterly affection, no doubt,” said the princess with a raised brow.
“Something like that. What kind of help did Sir Reginald want?”
“Money. What else? That’s what everyone in this city ultimately wants. Money can solve so many problems,” she said.
“Like what?”
“It can smooth the way for exit visas. It can purchase tickets on ships and aeroplanes. It can make the PVDE look the other way.”
“And which of those did Sir Reginald need it for?” I asked.
“I would never be so crude as to ask directly,” the princess started, “but I had the impression that he may have found that he was becoming low on funds. It’s the story of so many people who come to Lisbon.”
I frowned. “But unlike those refugees, he entered the country not from occupied Europe but through French Morocco after arriving from South America.”
A slow smile slid across her face. “Now how did you learn that?”
“A friend.”
“Peter Phillips?”
“Just a friend,” I repeated firmly.
She looked at me as though she was reassessing me. “You have worked quickly if you already have friends in Lisbon.”
“Did you agree to help Sir Reginald?”
Princess Petrova took a drag on her cigarette. “I did, actually.”
“By lending him money?”
“I am not in the business of lending anyone money. If I did, I would find myself indebted to nearly everyone in that bar. However, since Sir Reginald is an old friend, I offered to make an introduction to someone who might be able to help him.”
“Who is that?”
“A man named James Winn,” she said. “Now, you told me that your brother had done business with Mr. Winn in London. Given that I know Sir Reginald and Lady Redfern never had a son, I wonder why you would go to such lengths to concoct such a story.”
“I am trying to find him too.”
“Why should a nice girl like you wish to be mixed up with a man like Mr. Winn?”
“What does ‘a man like Mr. Winn’ mean?” I asked.
“He is the sort of person who is good to know but is also unscrupulous.”
“In what way?” I asked.
“All of this”—she cast her hand in the direction of the wall of windows into the casino bar behind us—“is one side of Lisbon. The tip of an iceberg, if you will. But the rest of the city—the bit below the surface—is far darker than I should ever wish the daughter of an old friend to know about.”
