Gavin Lyall - Flight From Honour

“Flying machines?”

“I think he’d regard that as a little passe, but sure, flying machines.”

“What is it about aeroplanes? – if that’s what I must call them. Men can break their necks far more respectably falling off horses.”

Corinna smiled politely. “According to Andrew, Britain’s the place for airplanes this year, where the real progress is. That’s the only reason he’s here.”

“I thought it was an American invention.”

“Sure it was – though I think the French dispute that; they would. But it seems you’ve taken to it like a duck to . . . well, flying, I guess. And unless you can promise him he’ll meet some famous aviator at your house, I don’t think you’ll get him to wash the oil off his hands.”

“I will say it: what a family. Not even if I asked you to bring him yourself?”

“Oh no, you don’t make me my brother’s keeper.” It suddenly occurred to Corinna that, by the rules of English society, Adelina shouldn’t be in London at all, but settling into her country home to enjoy its draughts at their winter best. “Anyhow, invite him to what?”

“The Wedding, my dear girl. Where have you been?”

“Off-hand, I’d say New York, Paris, Budapest, Kiel-”

“Well, in a month’s time, Prince Arthur’s marrying the Duchess of Fife. But if you didn’t know, you can’t have accepted any invitations for that time. So I can count on you.”

“Oh sure – provided I’m still in London. But you know how Pop is . . .” The half-truth that her father, long divorced, had called her to act as hostess in some far city had saved Corinna from many dull dinner parties.

“And I’ll be sure and invite some suitable husbands for you.”

“Suppose I want to marry my Gunner?” Corinna said provocatively.

“Not marry, dear; keep him for afterwards. No, with your looks and money you should get quite a tolerable house.”

“House? I thought I’d be marrying a man.”

“Go for the house, you’ll see far more of it. The town house can usually be changed, but hardly the family seat . . . And don’t get tempted by a castle. They’re all on the edge of nowhere and the plumbing . . .”

Corinna only half-listened. She had her own views on marriage, the main one being that it was a lousy alternative to life as Reynard Sherring’s daughter. When she had said that money and finance were different things, she had meant it. She had always had money and, like good health, valued it but seldom thought of it. But she was fascinated by finance – money you could neither touch nor see yet which could build and bring down empires.

It had begun when her father had tried to explain his world to her brother Andrew, who was expected to take up the rich man’s burden. But when Andrew had gone back to pulling Sherring’s new automobile to pieces (he was a practical, if spoiled, child) Corinna had kept asking questions, for the skittish dragons and dark forests of international finance enchanted her as no fairy story ever had. Sherring philosophically accepted that it was all his wife’s fault, told the chauffeur to put the automobile back together again, and began training his daughter instead of his son. After all, he figured, it would outrage his friends on Wall Street.

It did far more. Now, when people spoke to her, they knew they spoke to the House of Sherring and its power to move millions – a power which she had come to share. And knowing – or better still, deducing – where the dragons were heading next was something Corinna loved, really loved. As a woman, it was the best she could achieve, whereas marriage would be about the worst. It would define her. Legally, socially, in every way she would just be A Wife, living happily ever after. As a child she had watched, not understanding then, as her mother turned sour trying to do that, and no thank you.

Perhaps if Adelina had spent more time studying her own sex, she would have understood most of this, because they were both doing much the same thing. Men might have a near-monopoly of action, but nobody could stop women knowing .

All this, however, brought Corinna a problem with her private life. She had been still a girl at a Swiss finishing-school when she realised that, in Europe, misbehaviour was reserved for married women and widows. And since it would be a pity to reach death without trying out the fates worse than it, she sat down to some careful thinking.

She neither flouted nor tried to change society. She vaguely admired the women who tried, and paid the penalty, but for her life seemed too short. So she just made the minimum changes to herself to get what she wanted. The first was to marry Mr Finn, the second to have him die in the San Francisco fire of ’06 that also destroyed the public records of such things as marriages. This hurt nobody, not even Mr Finn, who was pure fiction, and actually benefited the Chicago forger who had done a near-perfect marriage certificate for her.

Hardly anybody knew her secret except her father, brother Andrew and now Matt Ranklin. She wasn’t quite sure why she’d told him, but not others before him. But if you can’t trust the Secret Service to keep a secret . . .

The Bureau’s rooms were right up under the eaves of the building, with sloping walls and odd little turret windows in comers, and even in September a sunny afternoon gave them the atmosphere of an Egyptian tomb. To make it worse, the Commander had forbidden the opening of windows. At first Ranklin had assumed this was an ineradicable naval fear of the sea getting in; he had been crisply informed that, here on the eighth floor, it was a more sensible fear of secret documents blowing out. Not that they were encouraged to put much in writing.

But with the Commander away, it was a treat to clarify his thoughts by getting them on paper, and the only alternative was hovering near the inner door for O’Gilroy to finish his interview with Dagner. But he put down his pen the moment O’Gilroy rambled out. And rambled was the word for his loose, long-legged movement that gave no hint of his Army years. Now he began rambling around the low-ceilinged room, glancing out of the window, picking up a newspaper and dropping it . . .

“For the Lord’s sake, sit down,” Ranklin said. He pushed his cigarette case across the table; he himself hadn’t felt settled enough to light a pipe. “How did it go?”

O’Gilroy collapsed onto an upright chair and reached for a cigarette. “Well enough.”

Ranklin waited. With his lean face and dark untidy hair, O’Gilroy was a schoolgirls vision of the thinking pirate, and whose thoughts were now rather sombre. “He was terrible polite, but I wouldn’t say he’d hire me if he hadn’t got me. Asked how I felt, working for you English.” He lit the cigarette.

“And you said?”

“’Twas a job, though I hadn’t heard of any pension to it.”

Ranklin winced. You might say O’Gilroy had fought for the Empire in South Africa, but O’Gilroy himself wouldn’t say it. He more likely saw it as fighting for his pals alongside him and because fighting was his chosen trade. Wisely, the Army skipped quickly over King and Country to preach loyalty to the regiment – your pals. It knew what it was doing; surely Dagner must remember that.

“What else did you talk about with Major Dag- X?”

“Falcone.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“The Italian feller from Brussels.”

“Ah. Did you gather what he’s up to, and why someone wants to kill him?”

O’Gilroy took a long drag on his cigarette and said, as if he were working it out: “He says he’s looking at armaments – and aeroplanes – for the Italian Army. The fellers wanting him dead . . . there was a note from some Serbian secret society-”