Gavin Lyall - Honourable Intentions

The idea of herself hiding a Shocking National Secret from a Secret Service agent tickled Corinna. Still, for that reason alone, she’d do it.

Ranklin smiled ruefully. “I know: tomorrow the world, but until then . . .”

“Jay’s over at Scotland Yard,” the Commander said, “and he was on the telephone just now saying someone’s put advertisements in the Paris afternoon papers asking Enid Bowman to present herself to the British consulate, where she’ll hear something very much to her advantage.”

“The Palace again?”

“Who else could it be? We should never have told those stupid buggers.” Quite overlooking that it had been he who had insisted on it. He added grudgingly: “Though at least they had the sense to use her maiden name. Would’ve had French journalists swarming all over them at the mention of ‘Langhorn’.”

“Probably offering her a bribe to keep quiet,” Ranklin guessed.

“What they’re actually doing is getting the Paris police frothing at the mouth. The Prefecture cabled that French rozzer over here the moment they saw it, and he’s round at the Yard asking what the hell the perfidious English are up to. First killing their witness, now trying to bribe the mother of that anarchist fire-raiser. Naturally, he thinks it must be us – the Bureau – playing silly games. And he’s got the Yard, at least Special Branch, half believing it, too. And how can I tell them it was really those morons on the steps of the throne?”

“What d’you want me to do?”

But it seemed the Commander just wanted someone to complain to while he waited for things to get worse. So Ranklin went ahead and made it so: “Mrs Finn’s got the story out of Ma’mselle Collomb.”

“May as well shout the whole thing from the rooftops,” the Commander said bitterly. “Do you know what the devil is going on?”

Ranklin shook his head. “No idea at all, except that it’s more than we thought. You know about the watchers in Clarges Street? If this all adds up to some anarchist conspiracy, it’s something to get our teeth into.”

The Commander grunted something unintelligible. Ranklin took out his pipe, knocked out some encrusted old ash, reamed out some more with his penknife, then filled it carefully. After a while, the Commander started to do the same to the pipes in a little rack on his table.

About twenty minutes later, a telephone rang and the Commander gestured Ranklin to answer it. It was Jay at Scotland Yard. “It is respectfully requested that someone more senior than myself get himself over here and do some explaining.” His voice dropped. “Or bluffing.”

Ranklin relayed this to the Commander, who whispered raspingly: “If it’s to see Sir Basil, I’ll go. Anyone more junior and it’s your job. And I want you back by five: meeting of the Steam Submarine Committee, including Noah Quinton.”

Ranklin gave him a puzzled frown. The Commander had perked up a little, and was now smiling deviously. “How d’you get a man to keep a secret? – you tell him more. Take him into your confidence. Always works with the middle classes.”

Strictly interpreted, that should put Corinna on the Committee, too, but Ranklin chose not to suggest it. Anyway, the telephone was squawking plaintively: “Hello? Hello? Have we been disconnected?”

Ranklin answered: “No, still here. Who wants us?” And when he knew: “Tell him the deputy chief is on his way – oh, and what name are you using?”

Scotland Yard was barely five minutes’ walk to the Westminster Bridge end of Whitehall. There, Ranklin was shown up a long flight of stone steps and abruptly from high-ceilinged space into a small cubby-hole of a waiting-room with a uniformed constable sitting behind a table and the walls hung with photographs of uniformed policemen seated in stern moustachioed rows. And Lieutenant Jay, apparently known to the police as “Mr Hopkins”.

“Captain Ranklin, Deputy Chief of the Secret Service Bureau,” Ranklin reported briskly to the constable. It sounded odd, said out loud like that, a bit like releasing a bat in daylight. He turned aside and fell into muttered conversation with Jay.

“Tell me about this advertisement,” Ranklin demanded, and Jay did better: he’d copied it (presumably from Lacoste’s cable) into a notebook. But it was just as the Commander had said, except that it had been published in both French and English. That was a point that nobody had brought up: how long Mrs Langhorn had been in France and how good her French was.

Ranklin read it twice without learning any more, then murmured: “You know who probably placed this?”

Jay nodded. “Will they tell us if she appears?”

“Not they. They obviously think they can handle this by themselves, and if she turns up it’ll convince them they’re right.” He pondered this. “And maybe they are and we can go back to our proper job. But I somehow doubt it.”

“Could we find out through the consulate?”

“O’Gilroy might be able to.” He frowned at a thought. “The Palace must have sent their own man over, they wouldn’t trust this to consuls.”

“Fine, no skin off our nose.”

“There oughtn’t to be.” But if something went wrong, it was unlikely that the Palace would volunteer to take the blame.

Then a buzzer sounded and the constable said that Superintendent Mockford would see them now.

“Just like a dentist,” Jay said cheerily, and Ranklin gave him a warning look.

As his experience with Whitehall grew, Ranklin was developing a theory that went along the lines of: Rooms where the inhabitant and his furniture really belong are devoted solely to comfortable time-serving. The real work is done in rooms where everything is mismatched and looks temporary.

If there were anything to Ranklin’s Law, Mockford was a worker. His room was long but half of it had just a table and chairs and looked unused. At the far end, a big desk backed on to a window and a rolltop one stood against the opposite wall, with a dusty, cold fireplace in between. There were cases of law-books and piles of papers, and the walls were painted light green up to a hip-high dado rail and shiny cream above. Ghastly, but normal.

There were three people in the room: presumably Mockford himself behind the desk, Inspecteur Lacoste in a chair near the fireplace, and Inspector McDaniel swinging gently in the swivel chair by the rolltop.

Mockford stood up to shake hands. He was stout, stout all over, his eyes made lazy by pouches of flesh and with a full set of double chins. The only non-stout thing about him, appropriately for a detective, was his lean, sharp nose. Long strands of dark hair sprawled untidily across from his right ear without hiding the pink beneath. It looked as if he didn’t mind going bald but his wife had told him to do something, for Heaven’s sake.

“I think you know Inspectors McDaniel and Lacoste.” Ranklin got a friendly nod from McDaniel and a stony look from Lacoste, who was dressed as before only more rumpled. He must have brought just one suit, while the one-day hearing had already dragged on for three. “Pull up chairs. Now: can you tell us what’s going on?”

Mockford’s manner was polite but he didn’t waste time on pointless courtesy.

“Before we start,” Rankin said, hauling a stiff dining chair towards the grate, “I wonder if you can track down a motor-car for me. A dark red Simplex landau with a London number.” He sat down and read out the number.

Mockford said: “Naturally we want to help, but this sort of request usually comes from Major Kell’s Bureau and through Special Branch.”

It was a polite reminder that the Secret Service was supposed to ply its trade abroad. Ranklin took a decision. “It’s been parked in Clarges Street with two men in it, most likely watching the address where Ma’mselle Collomb is staying.”