Gavin Lyall - Flight From Honour

“Seems he’s writing something,” O’Gilroy went on. “A poem about the aeroplane, mebbe, and they’ll be doing a stunt dropping copies of it from the air. Mr Sherring took him up jest an hour gone, and he was scattering bits of paper to the divil and back.” He clearly disapproved of such snake-oil salesmanship in Serious Aeronautics.

Corinna grinned and relaxed. If they were merely concealing a sales stunt that might be spoiled by advance gossip, she’d been worrying unnecessarily. However, not about Ranklin in Trieste.

Andrew was busy yards away, overseeing as one of the wings was lifted on to the truck. She said: “Matt came across on the same boat, and he’s gone on to Trieste. And with Scotland Yard close behind.”

O’Gilroy frowned. “Was they now? I wasn’t wanting to get him into trouble with-”

“He’s not blaming you. Umm-” she wasn’t sure how to tackle this; “-do you know anything about Major Dagner’s marriage?”

“Never a thing.” It was very prompt, like a door closing.

She knew that expression, and this time it annoyed her. So she put on a superior smile and changed the subject to: “Were you thinking of taking a pistol to Italy?”

O’Gilroy looked at her but said nothing.

“Because it’s strictly against the law there. I suppose they have so many gang feuds. If you don’t believe me, I’ll show you in Baedeker’s.”

“And that law would mean yeself, too?” he growled, staring at her travelling bag.

“Don’t be silly.”

“So I’d best stick close to yeself for protection.”

“That’s right. Now, when you’re ready, I’ll ride you over to the freight yard.”

The Simplon Express couldn’t be called “Orient” because it terminated at Venice for political reasons. But it had the same carriages, staff, speed and luxury, so it was the train they took, although it meant a change at Milan to backtrack eighty miles to Turin. It also charged Orient Express prices, which was why Ranklin wasn’t travelling it on Bureau expenses.

In Corinna’s experience, taking maids to Italy was more trouble – in Rescuing their Honour – than it was worth in hairdressing. So with Kitty left behind, she had only Andrew and O’Gilroy to get to the Gare de Lyons on time and reasonably presentable. Andrew’s luggage had come with her own, and O’Gilroy could pass as an eccentric Irish squire with the minimal luggage he had crammed into the Oriole. And at least she had made sure neither of them smelled of castor oil.

Having dumped them in the salon end of the dining car with a batch of French aviation magazines, she waited on the platform, exchanging greetings with the senior staff who remembered her (and most made sure they did) until Signora Falcone and d’Annunzio arrived.

Men who were supposed to be irresistible to women and were careless with other people’s money were guaranteed Corinna’s mistrust, and d’Annunzio gave her almost every excuse. He must have been about fifty, shorter than she and stocky, with a long fleshy nose and small moustache and beard. He wore a very fresh white linen suit and wide hat, and moved in a cloud of lavender water and greyhounds. The greyhounds frisked around, all paws and wet noses, rushing up to check passers-by then rushing back to nuzzle their Master. The lavender water didn’t behave much better.

He bowed over her hand with perfect correctness. “I am delighted to meet you, Mrs Finn.” His English was good but with a strong accent. “May I compliment you on having a brother who is a superb aviator and most gifted designer of flying machines?”

Annoyed that she couldn’t argue with that, she forced a smile.

“The flight was-” he hunched shoulders and hands, then spread them in an opening gesture; “-a rebirth! I have been given a new life! Now forgive me, I must say my farewells.”

These were to a clutch of theatrical-looking hangers-on and, Corinna was relieved to see, the dogs. She left him to it and joined the men in the salon until Signora Falcone came through. They ordered coffee.

“I should have mentioned d’Annunzio,” Signora Falcone said briskly, “only I wasn’t sure we were going to meet him here. You can never tell with Gabri, he does tend to live on a different planet.”

“He’s – as it were – endorsing the airplane?”

“That sort of thing. He’s a big name in Italy – and he’s got a new opera opening at La Scala soon – he isn’t coming to Turin immediately, he’s stopping in Milan – so the publicity works both ways. He doesn’t live chat much on a different planet.”

“Is he an old friend?”

“Yes. Did I tell you I was on the stage once myself? I played in a thing of his ages ago now.” She smiled graciously. “I don’t think I had Sarah Bernhardt worried. Nor Eleonora Duse or Donatella.” There might have been a coded message there: those last two had certainly been d’Annunzio’s mistresses.

“In fact,” she went on, “we’re rather letting Gabri hog the limelight, as if the whole aeroplane scheme is his inspiration and we’re supporting him. The Senator has political enemies – every senator has, of course – and as long as he gets the manufacturing rights . . .”

Corinna nodded. Limelight didn’t show on balance sheets. “Is the Senator thinking of starting up his own manufacturing plant?” she asked, casual as a hungry tigress.

At dinner, d’Annunzio proved an easy conversationalist, slipping unselfconsciously from English to French to Italian, then apologising to Corinna for the self-indulgence of speaking his native language again. Her own Italian was exam standard and rusty with it. Andrew and O’Gilroy sat at a separate table and she doubted the conversation there ever fell below a thousand feet.

The stillness woke Corinna. The train had stopped, and from the lack of human babble, not at a station. The only sounds were distant clankings and chuffings and a brief hoot of a shunting engine. She waited a few minutes, trying to sense the mood of the train, before deciding it had become as immovable as a fat, sleepy cat. She put on slippers and a robe and stepped into the corridor.

From the view through the window, they were stranded in the middle of a marshalling yard, too big to see what lay beyond in the darkness: mountains or forest or a sleeping town. This was a world of its own, dim-lit with lines of both bluish electric lights and yellower gas ones. Neither brought any colour to the rows of freight cars, dark carriages and lines of dull-glinting rails. It looked as still and cold as a morgue.

“‘I am the way into the doleful city’,” a voice said quietly. It was d’Annunzio, wearing a royal blue gown that reached to the floor and a white silk scarf thrown around his neck. “I think we have reached the gates of Dis.”

“Does it inspire you?”

He shuddered. “I find it hateful. A graveyard, not even of men, but of their hopes. Machines built to rush about the world, now heaped in a common grave.”

She smiled. “I find it rather romantic.”

He turned to look – up – at her in the thin cold light. “Romantic? This is not an outpost on your great American prairies. Here was once forests and villages, perhaps even Hannibal’s camp-fires.”

“I still like it,” she said cheerfully, pressing her nose to the cold glass.

“Do you then see it as romantic that each carriage and truck out there has a value?” Probably Signora Falcone had talked about Corinna’s background.

Unruffled, she said: “In a way, maybe.”

“You see so many stacks of money?”

“No. You can’t see the sort of money that interests me. It’s the muscles under the skin: you see the movement, not the muscle.”

He shook his head firmly. “That, I do not understand. I like money you can-” He made a fingering gesture. “And you say movement? Here nothing is moving. It is all dead!”