Mortal Radiance, page 6
Spud reached out and gave her shoulder a squeeze.
As they were walking up to the main house to fetch her suitcase, a delivery van with a picture of a large bright flower on its side drove through the gates.
‘Powell’s Petals!’ Spud exclaimed. ‘All the way from Albuquerque. Now, what is that all about?’
‘Somebody must have sent flowers for the memorial service,’ Georgia said.
They were quickly disabused of that idea as a young fellow stepped out of the van.
‘Got a delivery for a Miss Wallis Simpson. She here?’
‘She’s staying here,’ Spud answered, ‘but I doubt she’s up yet.’
The young man reached into the back of the truck, took out a long white box and handed it to Spud. ‘Cut two inches off the stems and put them in a vase of cold water and some ice cubes and they’ll do OK. Keep them in a shady corner.’
‘Thank you, young man,’ Spud said, digging into his pocket and coming out with a fifty-cent piece. He tossed it to the driver.
‘Well, thank you, sir. Thank you. That’s mighty fine of you.’
‘Long drive,’ Spud said and took the flowers. Georgia followed him into the kitchen.
Tony Luhan was up already, helping the cook with breakfast.
‘My, look at those!’ he exclaimed as Spud removed the lid of the box to reveal at least a dozen red carnations.
Red carnations in the desert, Georgia thought, stick out like a sore thumb.
‘Yep,’ Spud said. ‘For Mrs Simpson.’
‘I don’t think Maudie is up yet. Poor girl. Mrs Simpson works her to death,’ Tony said.
‘Who’s Maudie, Tony?’ Georgia asked.
‘Mrs Simpson’s lady’s maid. Treats her like ch’.’ It was the Navajo word for ‘shit’. ‘Who do you think sent them?’
‘The prince, most likely,’ Spud said.
‘Oh, the guy who’s supposed to be the next king but can’t marry her because she’s been married already?’ Tony asked.
‘That’s the guy,’ Georgia said. ‘He must have sent them.’
‘There’s a card,’ Tony said. ‘Should we read it?’
‘No, Tony!’ both Georgia and Spud said at once.
‘Not polite,’ Spud said.
‘She’s not polite,’ said Tony. ‘I can tell you that for certain – the way she treats Maudie, and she was flirting around with Doctor Ellington. Mabel thinks Mrs Simpson is beautiful. I don’t see it.’
‘Why in heaven does Mabel think she’s beautiful?’ Georgia said.
‘Because she’s skinny and Mabel’s fat. She envies any woman who weighs less than she does. I told Mabel, climbing into bed with that bag of bones would be like sleeping with rocks.’
‘Watch your step there, Tony. I’m skinny.’
‘Not like that! You’ve got some padding on you.’
‘Well, let me tend to those flowers.’ Georgia took the bouquet to the sink and began cutting the stems. A small white envelope drifted to the floor.
‘Ah-ha!’ Tony exclaimed. ‘It fell right at my feet.’ He stooped down.
‘Tony, no!’ Georgia exclaimed.
‘Hey, I can’t even read it. It’s not in English.’ He went over to Georgia at the sink.
Georgia’s brow wrinkled as she glanced at the card. ‘How strange.’
‘What is it?’ Spud asked.
‘Let me look closer,’ Georgia said and peered over Spud’s shoulder. ‘I think it’s German, and I think the prince speaks German fluently. So maybe that’s their language for love notes?’
Spud offered. ‘Not sure, but put it back, Tony. Last thing I want to do is be the object of that woman’s wrath.’
But Georgia thought she might ask Alfred about this. She had planned to call him today. Now would be good. With the time difference, it was close to noon back east.
Fifteen minutes later, she was in Spud’s office with the phone to her ear. Thank God Stieglitz was still in New York and not at Lake George, where there would have been a dozen relatives and one never knew who would answer the phone.
There were just two rings. ‘Alfred here.’
‘We have a Miss O’Keeffe on the line for you, sir,’ she heard the operator in Albuquerque say.
‘My darling girl!’ he exclaimed. ‘My Fluffy.’ Oh dear, she thought. Well, that meant Dorothy wasn’t around. ‘Little Man misses Fluffy.’ Oh God, if she were given to blushing, she would have been fire-engine red by now.
‘Well, I miss you, too. Did I tell you who’s staying here?’
‘Ansel?’
‘No, Virginia just had a baby.’
‘Who, then?’
‘Wallis, as in Wallis Simpson.’
‘Oh God, that idiot prince’s girlfriend. What a whore!’
‘That’s not nice to say, Alfred.’
‘Well, I think she is. I heard she learned all her sexual tricks in a Shanghai brothel.’
‘You heard that, did you?’ Georgia couldn’t help but wonder what kind of tricks Dorothy had shown him. Was she perhaps wearing feathers now? Prancing around Stieglitz’s studio in the altogether. No, more like swimming naked in Lake George with him. Georgia did that with Stieglitz, too. Of course, it was April now, so the lake might still be frozen.
This made her think about Ryan – how she would love to swim nude with Ryan. Of course, not many places out here in the desert. But how comfy his body would be against hers compared to Stieglitz’s.
‘Yep, so what’s up?’
‘Well, a lavish bouquet of carnations arrived for Mrs Simpson this morning.’
‘Now you want carnations?’ Stieglitz laughed.
‘Does that sound like me? Come on, Alfred.’
‘OK, so what about the carnations?’
‘There was a note enclosed.’
‘And you read it?’
‘It fell out, so it was hard to avoid, or not to notice that it was written in German.’
‘The plot thickens.’ Stieglitz laughed softly.
‘I need you to translate. There are just two words that stump me. The note reads ‘Für meine ewige Liebe und Königin.’ What does ewige mean and Königin?’
‘Eternal is ewige – my eternal love. Like you and me. My queen. I guess he’s already looking forward to becoming king and she’ll be the queen.’
‘Of course.’ Georgia tried to tamp down the sarcasm in her voice. ‘Why would the Prince of Wales write to her in German?’
‘He’s got a pile of German relatives and is said to be fluent in German himself. He’s cozy with a lot of Hitler’s crowd. Especially Axel Wenner-Gren.’
‘Who’s that?’
‘Actually, not a German at all, but a Swedish millionaire who owns a luxurious yacht that they have been said to travel on. Wenner-Gren is not just close to Hitler but also Hermann Goering. Nice crowd. Was he the one who sent the flowers?’
‘There was no name on the card. It wasn’t signed.’
‘Well, I wouldn’t sign either, if I were German these days or close with Hitler. Which I am not. Born in Hoboken and proud of it!’
He was constantly reminding people of that, even though his parents were German and had moved back to Germany for Alfred’s high school years, as they felt the education was superior there. Now, however, there were rumors that his photographs were on Hitler’s list of degenerate art.
‘When are you heading back to Santa Fe?’ he asked.
‘Another week, maybe. I want to be here for Good Friday. I want to see the pilgrimage.’
‘What pilgrimage?’
‘It’s a thing they do out here – an exercise in penitence, I guess one would describe it. People walk for miles with crosses strapped to their backs.’
‘Sounds like fun.’ He paused. ‘Don’t throw your back out, Fluffy.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous. I am only there as an observer, not a walker.’
‘Are these the folks that flagellate themselves as they walk?’
‘Some do.’
‘Crazy!’ He sighed. ‘Sounds like you’re having a wonderful time.’
Georgia laughed softly, and to think I haven’t even told him about the murder. She then remembered Dorcas and the chakras.
‘I have to tell you the craziest thing, dear.’ She briefly relayed the naked feather dance she had witnessed.
Stieglitz gasped. ‘She was what – clearing her tchotchkes?’
‘No! Her chakras, not tchotchkes. Oh, you are a scream, Stieglitz.’
‘Well, I’m glad you still find me entertaining.’
Not always, she was tempted to say, but she wouldn’t go there.
EIGHT
Maudie McPhee stood with her back to Wallis Simpson as she arranged the flowers. Her mistress had just returned from the lavatory, where she had burned the card. The ashes couldn’t tell a story, but Maudie could. Without reading the note, she knew who sent them. But it was a dangerous game the stupid woman was playing, and there was no telling what she might do to her if Maudie breathed a word.
But she was desperate. She had to get out. Service was a tradition in her family. Her mother was in service to the prince’s mother, Queen Mary, and her cousin was in the scullery at Balmoral and might wind up a parlor maid like her sister. Maudie would have given anything to serve in Buck House – or Balmoral or Windsor, for that matter. But working for the prince’s forbidden girlfriend was all she was good for, apparently. And face it, she thought, even if he did become king and was allowed to marry this vile woman, what could she, Maudie McPhee, aspire to?
But this foreign place was so strange. Blistering sun, a vastness that made her feel like a speck in the universe. No nice English flowers, just prickly cactus sharper than any needle she’d ever been stuck by, and the snakes. Once she caught sight of three – three rattlers in one day. The clatter of those rattles was like a strange death knell. Jessie, the boy who sometimes worked in the kitchen, had told her that the only thing to do if bitten was to cut a cross in the wound and suck out the poison. Lovely country here, indeed!
She had never been lonelier in her life, and now, to top it all off, she might be ‘in the way’, as her mum would say. She shouldn’t have let Rodney have his way the last night they were together, but she had. He promised her he would not let it happen. But now she realized that didn’t mean it couldn’t happen. And had she maybe subconsciously wanted it to happen, because if it had, maybe, well, maybe he would stay with her forever?
But what was she to do? She had tried drinking Epsom salts, as some girls had once talked about. It did no good except to make her throw up, narrowly missing a gown she was ironing for Mrs Simpson. Imagine that – vomiting on a Christian Dior gown.
Every night, she had bad dreams about the baby she was carrying, dreams of snakes slithering into the crib and piercing that tender skin with their fangs. If she could get out of here, could she somehow get back to England, to Rodney?
Rodney was in service at the most splendid manor house in England, Great Field Hall. He’d started when he was ten as a pantry boy, but then went into livery and proved that he had a way with horses and running a fine stable, which meant keeping the tack in order and the stables immaculate. Mrs Simpson and the prince had come over often in the course of the previous autumn. And, of course, that was where it happened. Maudie had been an assistant to the upstairs maid. And she made the fatal mistake of exquisitely mending a gown of Mrs Simpson’s.
‘Oh, to have such a skillful lady’s maid, Leonora!’ Wallis had exclaimed to Lady Bonsby, the lady of Great Field. And just like that, Leonora Bonsby gave Maudie to Wallis Simpson. Well, of course, who wouldn’t? They expected that tramp, the Prince of Wales’s lover, to become queen. What mid-level aristocrat – for that was what the Bonsbys were – mid-level – would not go to great extremes to curry favor with the future king’s mistress? That’s what it was like in service. One could get passed around. Maudie’s parents were thrilled. Did anyone ask her if she wanted to go? No, of course not. She was handed over like a parcel to Wallis Simpson.
‘Oi, me girl, you’re on your way now!’ her father boomed. But that’s what bothered Maudie. On her way where, exactly? Her parents had such small hopes, such small dreams for her – small dreams that they considered quite grand. And now she was preggers, trapped in a foreign country with a vain, stupid woman.
Then she began to play the old game she had played as a child. She called it ‘Would you rather?’ Would you rather be in the desert with Wallis Simpson or, like her own pa, wind up in a foxhole in Verdun with poisonous gas filling your lungs? Would you rather be in an ocean chased by a shark or have a rattlesnake crawling into your bed at night? Oh, she could think of endless ‘Would you rather?’ questions, but it never eased her desperation, never resolved her predicament.
Then her mind spun off in another direction. Was her current situation a predicament or a dilemma? Not really a dilemma, she thought, because a dilemma implied that there was a choice, a solution, and that was not the same as a predicament, when one was simply stuck.
‘I’m stuck,’ she muttered. Back in England, she had tried some herbal remedies that girls used when they were ‘delayed’. But they only made her miserably sick. She vomited for two days after ingesting the ground roots of black hellebore and pennyroyal.
She continued arranging the flowers. Carnations! Cheap. Or so said her sister Molly. And Molly would know. She worked for the Duchess of Glendower, who was considered the most elegant woman in London. Every season people raved about her taste, her clothing, her stunning mansions. Molly had told her she wouldn’t have a carnation in her house. ‘She’d make a bouquet of dandelions before having carnations.’ Those were Molly’s exact words.
‘So shove these up your ass, Wallis Simpson,’ Maudie murmured.
NINE
Cedric Barkley leaned in closer to the crypto machine. A cipher was coming through. There was a scattering of messages that covered everything from the crisis in Ethiopia with Mussolini to the health of King George. Room Forty of the cryptanalysis center at Century House at 100 Westminster Bridge Road, London, had served through the Great War as the very heart of the Secret Intelligence Service. Barkley looked at the coded message that had just come in.
‘What the devil?’ he muttered. He looked at his secretary. ‘Marnie, get Fritz Freihoff on the line in DC.’ He walked out of the crypto room down the hall to his own office.
Five minutes later, he was sitting at his desk and looking at the picture of his lovely wife, Melody. A light blinked on the phone, signaling that his call had gone through.
‘Fritzy, my boy, what’s going on?’
‘Not much, a few gangsters on the loose. What else is new? How about you?’
‘Not any gangsters. Just Pickles and the Lynx and a lot of shagging. Just got a notification that Pickles is in the desert. And the Lynx sent her a bouquet of carnations. Not the Lad.’
‘Pickles?’ Fritzy repeated. ‘Ah, yes – her.’ He had temporarily forgotten the code name for Wallis Simpson. And Lynx was Ribbentropp, who they’d had their eye on for years now. And ‘the Lad’ was the Prince of Wales.
‘What desert?’ Fritzy asked.
‘Not Saudi Arabia. Your desert out in the Southwest. New Mexico. She received the customary bouquet of carnations with a note in which he addressed her as queen.’ Barkley replied.
‘Jumping the gun, wouldn’t you say?’
‘Just a bit.’ He sighed wearily. ‘But this supports the rumor that the Lad has made some sort of deal.’
‘Indeed.’
‘We’re keeping an eye on it, but I just wanted to alert you.’
‘There’s apparently a lot of action going on out there. But we have a good team. You recall Wolf Boy?’ Fritzy asked.
‘The wire rat.’ Wire rat was the name given to the team that installed the Hartley transmitter receivers in the Southwest. There was one ‘Wolf Boy’ who was particularly excellent and worked on the Ghost Ranch.
‘We’re moving him in closer. He’s invaluable. Speaks German fluently now.’
TEN
‘Oh dear,’ muttered Wallis as she spied the letter on the bureau. Guy, she thought. Guy Trundle. How did he ever find out that she was here? He was utterly irresistible, especially in bed. What was resistible was that he was a salaried employee of the Ford Motor Company, the branch in London. He was ‘well endowed’, but not quite in the right way.
The prince was well endowed in the other way, but not quite enough – at least, not until he actually became king. She set the letter aside, then went through her drawer and found the letter that had reached her in New York before she came to Taos. She read it again. The prince seemed somewhat agitated about his finances. ‘There could be, my darling, some financial uncertainties if worse came to worst.’
What did he mean, if worse came to worst? It left a range of possibilities. If, indeed, his father, King George, died – and according to the Prince of Wales, his father was on oxygen almost every day – that might not be long. But she gasped now when she reread it. How had she missed this P.S.? It was on the reverse side of the stationery. ‘Mummy has been in constant talks with Lord Baldwin almost every day. And Lord Mountbatten.’
Lord Baldwin, the prime minister! Mountbatten! A dangerous configuration was assembling in Wallis’s mind. Lord Baldwin, Queen Mary – who knew except for the prince and Joachim von Ribbentrop that she was here in this godforsaken land? And what are they talking about? Her, undoubtedly. What business was it of theirs? But even as the thought was forming in her head, she knew that was facile of her. It was their business because her lover was not just any lover but the heir to the crown.
Before she left, the prince had made some noises about MI5. He felt that his mail was being ‘perused’, as he put it. And his bills – or her bills, which he paid, from Dior and Schiaparelli. Well, everyone knew they were having an affair. Were all women associated with the royal family supposed to dress like Queen Mary, that pudgy drab woman encrusted with ugly jewels. She reminded Wallis of a cross between a Pug and a Schnauzer.
