House of the Hanged, page 16
‘This is nothing. Wait till the wind picks up in the channel.’
‘Are you going to let me drive it?’
‘You drive a motor boat. This is a sailboat.’
‘Oh.’
‘I might,’ said Lucy. ‘If you promise not to crash it.’ Walter threw back his head and laughed.
There were any number of reasons why she loved sailing, but up there near the top of the list was the intimacy of the conversations which seemed to flow so effortlessly while out at sea. Maybe it was the abstraction from quotidian realities, or simply the cry of the elements, but people seemed inclined to a free exchange of confidences – like two strangers thrown together in a train compartment who end up baring their souls to each other.
She and Walter were, after all, little more than strangers. The fate of Lucy’s real father certainly hadn’t come up as a topic of discussion between them the previous evening, although it soon emerged that Walter knew the story.
‘Tom told me,’ he explained.
‘What exactly did he say?’
‘Only that he died in France towards the beginning of the war. And that your mother doesn’t like to talk about it.’
‘No, she doesn’t. She was very young. I think it almost destroyed her. I mean, it comes up, of course. It can’t be avoided. We still own the house where he grew up. Mother wanted to sell it, but Leonard persuaded her not to. We go there in the summer for weekends. It’s on the coast, just across from the Isle of Wight – Lymington. It’s where I learned to sail. He loved sailing.’
She was rambling now, as she often found herself doing when speaking about her father.
‘You didn’t know him, did you?’
‘No, he died just after I was born.’
‘That must be tough.’
‘I don’t know,’ shrugged Lucy. ‘Maybe not as tough as knowing him and then losing him.’
‘No, I guess not,’ replied Walter. He stared up at the mast before looking back at her. ‘I lost two uncles in France – later, of course, towards the end of the war – one to a firing squad, one to influenza. Not very heroic.’
‘A firing squad?’
‘Uncle Freddie turned out to be a coward. At least, that’s what they told us at the time. Others came home with a different story. Seems he suffered some kind of nervous collapse under fire. Whatever it was, it was enough to get him shot by his own people.’
‘That’s awful.’
‘That’s war,’ Walter shrugged. ‘An officer must set a shining example to the ranks at all times.’ There was a sardonic edge to his words.
Lucy was seized with a sudden urge to tell him how her father had died. She had never told anyone before, but she was even able to describe the field of battle to him, the lazy rise and fall of the land around the small village near the Belgian border, with its canal and its sturdy little church and its narrow high street fringed with old lime trees. She was able to render the place in such detail because Tom had paid a visit there a few years ago. It had been his gift to her – a secret pilgrimage on her behalf – knowing that the subject was strictly off-limits at home, and suspecting that she might be curious to hear more about the exact circumstances of her father’s end.
‘Only, I didn’t want to hear it, not at first. It was almost a year before I let him tell me.’
A sudden German advance had seen the Royal Fusiliers fighting a rear-guard action, and her father had been shot four times while firing a machine-gun near the swing-bridge over the canal. It was the fifth bullet that killed him.
‘Tom even found his grave. One day we’re going to visit it together.’
Walter shifted on the bench. ‘Your mother should be there too.’
‘That’s never going to happen. She’d murder Tom if she knew what he’d done.’
‘What he did for you,’ said Walter with quiet deliberation, ‘was a wonderful thing.’
‘He’s a wonderful man.’
‘He is. Even if he doesn’t like my paintings,’ he added with a wry grin.
‘He told you that?’
‘He didn’t have to.’
‘You were working this morning, weren’t you? The paint on your hands . . .’
Walter glanced down at his hands. ‘Up with the sun. Yevgeny’s a tough task master.’
But he didn’t want to talk about himself, or painting, or even Yevgeny; he nudged the conversation back to Tom. ‘There’s something mysterious about him.’
‘Mysterious?’
‘Don’t you find?’
‘It’s hard for me to judge. For as long as I’ve known him he’s always been coming and going, disappearing off to exotic places. The only difference now is that he does it for himself, his writing, instead of the government.’
‘Yevgeny says he used to work for Leonard.’
‘That’s right, but they’ve always been friends, right from the first. He even came to live with us once, when I was very young, soon after Leonard and Mother were married. He’s still about the only colleague of Leonard’s Mother will have in the house.’
‘Somehow I can’t see it – Tom in an official capacity. I mean, I’ve hardly ever seen the guy in shoes, let alone a tuxedo.’
Lucy smiled. ‘I don’t think embassy life abroad is all dinner parties.’
‘It is in the trashy novels I read.’
‘You’ll get over the disappointment.’
Walter kept up the conversation about Tom with a string of casual questions, which after a while began to feel more and more like an interrogation, as if he was casting about for some secret to which only she held the key. At a certain point, she’d had enough and batted one of his questions straight back at him.
‘You tell me,’ she insisted. ‘Why does a man suddenly up sticks and move to France?’
‘Because he’s running from something. Or searching for something. Probably a bit of both.’
She wasn’t sure if he was speaking of Tom or of himself, so she left him no choice.
‘And what are you searching for?’
Walter hesitated. ‘A better way of life.’
‘And have you found it?’
‘What day is it today? Thursday? Yes. By rights I should be sat at a desk in the family brokerage firm on Wall Street, wearing pressed trousers, a stiff collar and a suitable necktie. That office is where my life was headed for as long as I can remember. Instead, I’m here – skimming across the waves with a beautiful girl.’ He paused. ‘Yes, I think I’ve found it.’
She registered the compliment, but ignored it. ‘What happened?’
‘My father would say that I lost my marbles, or that I fell in with the wrong crowd at Harvard, or that he always knew I didn’t have the backbone for “real” work. But in the end, Mark Twain’s to blame.’
‘The author?’
‘He’s always been a hero of mine, ever since I was a kid. Then in my sophomore year I read something he wrote, an observation, just a few lines.’
‘Come on – out with it.’
‘He said: Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbour. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.’
‘A fitting metaphor, under the circumstances.’
He smiled. ‘It changed everything. Not immediately. But it got lodged in my head. I couldn’t shake it off. I saw the rest of my life laid out in front of me, mapped out for me by others. I mean, no one had even bothered to ask me. Not once. Then here was Twain, my hero, telling me that I didn’t have to do it, not any of it. And if I didn’t do it, I’d be happier for it. Well, he’s right – I am. The sun’s shining, the wind’s in my face, I’ve got paint on my hands. I’ll take those three simple things any day over stocks and shares and bonds.’
It was quite a speech, and she wasn’t sure how to follow it, so she said, rather inanely, ‘I can’t imagine Wall Street’s the place to be right now.’
‘Don’t you believe it. My father made a mint anticipating the Crash. And since the market bottomed out in ’32, it’s been business as usual for him and his kind. My cousin assures me there’s a fortune to be made in defaulted railroad bonds, which seems rather unnecessary as he already has several fortunes. New York Central’s the hot tip, by the way.’
‘I’ll be sure to cable my stockbroker the moment we make landfall.’
Walter laughed. ‘Here,’ she said, handing over the tiller and switching places with him. ‘In the spirit of Mark Twain – explore, dream, discover.’
He teased the tiller.
‘If you start heading over there,’ Lucy warned, ‘you’re going to have to come about on to a starboard tack.’
‘Ready about.’
‘Ready,’ she replied. ‘Just remember to release the jib sheet –’
She didn’t get a chance to finish as Walter pushed the tiller away from him with a call of ‘Hard alee!’
That’s odd, she thought, as the bow moved through the eye of the wind. The term she’d been using was ‘Helms alee’. They both ducked the boom, crossing to the other side of the boat. Walter was already trimming the jib by the time she was settled.
‘That’s good,’ she said encouragingly.
It was more than good; the trim was perfect, and when he nonchalantly sheeted in the mainsail she realized he’d been having her on all along.
‘Beginner’s luck.’
Walter grinned. ‘Must be.’
He looked so completely at home helming her boat that it was almost irritating. No – it was extremely irritating.
‘She handles like the Herreshoff S-Class I used to race when I was younger. That’s another sloop with acres of canvas.’ He stared admiringly up at the pregnant mainsheet.
‘Where did you learn to sail?’
‘Cape Cod. We have a summer place there. One of the privileges of being a Poor Little Rich Boy.’ He paused, thoughtful. ‘That house is one of the few things I’ll miss. You can’t begin to imagine how beautiful it is.’
‘I doubt it’s going anywhere.’
‘No. But I won’t be visiting.’ He hesitated. ‘My father cut me off without a cent and swore never to speak to me again.’
‘That seems a little . . . extreme.’
‘He thought it quite reasonable.’
‘I’m sure he’ll come round.’
‘You don’t know my father.’ He visibly brightened. ‘Enough of that. Tell me where to point this thing before I drown us both in self-pity.’
‘Have you ever been to Héliopolis?’
‘Sounds Greek.’
‘Put it this way, the people there wear about as many clothes as your average Greek statue.’
‘Nudists?’
‘A whole community of them. You can’t see it from here, it’s round the corner at the western end of the Île du Levant there.’ She pointed into the far distance. ‘They even have their own beach.’
‘Hang it,’ said Walter. ‘Let’s go join the other boats drifting slowly by just offshore.’
Chapter Twelve
It was the first time since their arrival that Ilse and Klaus had entertained, and they outdid themselves, laying on an impressive feast for lunch, which was served at a long table in the shade of a towering holm oak near the foot of the garden.
Tom made his excuses the moment the main course plates were cleared, claiming that Benoît had a batch of papers requiring his urgent signature, legal documents relating to the upcoming purchase of the ‘art nouveau eyesore’.
‘As long as you’re back in time to mix the potions before supper,’ said Venetia.
It was good to hear her make a jest. She’d spent much of the meal fretting about Lucy and Walter, convinced that they must have drowned. ‘It’s just not like her to go off like that.’
‘Well, it’s just like Walter,’ Fanya had reassured her.
The house in Le Canadel where Klaus and Ilse were staying, the house belonging to the mysterious Swiss publisher whom no one had ever met, was a bland, brick-built affair embowered in tall pine trees and set on the rising ground between the beach and the coast road. The property gave almost nothing away about the owner. It was sparsely yet adequately furnished, and there were even some competent watercolours of Mediterranean coastal views on the walls. However, there was none of the usual telling clutter: no books, no photographs, no restaurant menus, no knick-knacks from foreign travels sprinkled about the place.
Tom might have been more suspicious had he not been so fixated on Yevgeny. And Fanya. Yevgeny made all the noise, but Fanya was the power behind the throne, the one who steered and regulated their lives. It was inconceivable that she wasn’t also involved.
It had been a bluff; Tom hadn’t spoken to the photographer, Baptiste Daumier. The operator had done a grand job of tracking down the number in Paris, but the telephone had gone unanswered. It didn’t matter. He knew in his bones that the talented and painfully shy young man he had met back in May was not part of the conspiracy. Baptiste had snapped a photograph of him in St Tropez and passed it on in all innocence by way of thanks to his Russian hosts. The real question was how that photograph had then found its way into the hands of an Italian assassin.
On that score, Yevgeny had confirmed his own guilt, unable to mask the slight tremor of alarm in his eyes at the mention of Baptiste’s name. In trying to recover, he had then over-compensated, adopting an exaggerated air of indifference to their conversation. Tom’s impulse had been to swim over and throttle a confession out of him right there and then. Had they been alone, he might have done just that. Fortunately, his head had mastered his heart.
He didn’t mind alerting Yevgeny to his suspicions; that had been his intention. He wanted Yevgeny to know that he was on to him. He wanted to turn the heat up under him. He remembered enough of his training to know that the enemy was more likely to stumble if coerced into action. He would, of course, have to be more vigilant than ever, but at least the game was finally afoot. Anything was better than the maddening uncertainty of the past thirty-six hours.
These were the thoughts that had been swirling around his head over lunch. The need to keep up appearances around the table, to keep up with the babble of speech, meant that he wouldn’t be able to weigh the bigger questions until he was alone and heading for Le Lavandou.
Klaus had shown himself to be a gracious and attentive host, and he now insisted on seeing Tom to his car.
‘Thank you for what you said about my book . . . last night, at dinner.’
‘I meant every word,’ replied Tom.
‘It is nice to hear good things. I am not a confident writer.’
‘That could be why you’re such a fine one.’
Klaus gave a self-deprecating smile as he held open the garden gate for Tom to pass through. ‘In Germany we say a writer is only as good as their next book. And I don’t have one.’
‘No ideas, even?’
‘One. Forgiveness.’
‘Forgiveness?’
‘Did you fight in the last war?’ asked Klaus. ‘Yes. Briefly.’
‘France?’
Tom nodded. ‘Near Bouchavesnes.’
‘Our brother – Gustl – he was in France.’
‘Did he make it back?’
Klaus shook his head. ‘And yet here we all are . . . having lunch.’ He paused. ‘People amaze me.’
Maybe it was the memories of the futile carnage dressed up as military expediency, of the mud and the fleas and the foot-rot, or maybe it was simply the need to remain focused on his immediate predicament, but Tom found himself looking to terminate the conversation.
‘Well, as long as they do, you’ll always have something to say.’ He extended his hand. ‘Thank you, Klaus, and I’m sorry I have to rush off.’
At this hour of the day the sun was a furious ball and the hills seemed to tremble in the searing heat. Everyone was either at lunch or sleeping it off, and the twisting coast road was as deserted as the communities he passed through, although he still kept a wary eye on his rear-view mirror.
If, as the photograph suggested, Yevgeny and Fanya were involved in the plot to have him killed, then he had to discard all thoughts of the firm friendship which had sprung up between them in recent years. He couldn’t allow sentimentality to cloud his judgement. He also had to lay aside everything he thought he knew about them. Evidently, they weren’t all they purported to be. So who were they?
That Yevgeny was an art dealer of some considerable renown was beyond any doubt. That both were Russian could also be relied upon; he knew from Parisian friends that they were respected pillars of the large community of Russian émigrés in the French capital. But that’s where the verifiable certainties broke down. Who had they been before they showed up in Paris in 1918 – displaced victims, supposedly, of the Bolshevik revolution?
Was there any truth in Yevgeny’s story of wealthy parents slain by a rampaging mob, of stitching family jewels into the hem of his jacket before fleeing abroad? It was well known in intelligence circles that the Bolsheviks had attempted to infiltrate the White Russian exiles in Paris right from the off, fearing the influence they might bring to bear on foreign powers to intervene back home. Some of these Soviet agents had been exposed; others, presumably, had gone undetected. Did Yevgeny and Fanya fall into this last category? If so, had they been working for the Soviets all along, or had they been recruited at some later date?
Either way, Leonard’s misgivings still held: How could the Soviets possibly know for sure that it was Tom who had done for Zakharov in that darkened stairwell in Petrograd in 1919? And why had they waited sixteen years to exact revenge for his murder? He knew there was an explanation; he just couldn’t see it yet.
He turned his mind back four years to the moment when Yevgeny and Fanya had first appeared in his life, drifting into the cove below the villa on one of the Hôtel de la Réserve’s pedalos, coming ashore and spending the whole afternoon on the beach. There had been no reason at the time to doubt their story: that they were staying at La Réserve while searching for a house to buy.
A few days later, they had invited Tom, Leonard, Venetia, Lucy and the two boys to drinks and dinner at the hotel, repaying the hospitality that had been shown to them. And they had then gone on to buy La Quercia, high on the headland towards Le Canadel, a house which, though not officially on the market, Tom had tipped them off to, knowing that the owners were in tight financial straits. He had even accompanied them on their first visit to the property, delighting in their wild enthusiasm for the place, as well as his own good fortune that such an unusual and entertaining couple might soon become his near neighbours.
