William Boyd - Waiting for Sunrise

“Ineed a motor car, Tremlett,” Lysander said. “I have to do a tour of the south-east. Does the Directorate have transport?”

“There is Colonel Osborne-Way’s motor, sir. A Daimler. Sits in the garage for weeks at a time.”

“That’ll do nicely.”

“I think we’ll have need of your magic letter, however, sir.”

It turned out to be a big, new, maroon-and-black, 1914-model, seven-seater Daimler that had been ordered and paid for straight from the Daimler works in Coventry by the director of a chemical firm in Leipzig. It had been seized by the authorities at the outbreak of war before it could be shipped to Germany, but how it had ended up as Osborne-Way’s personal vehicle was something of a mystery. It was ideal for Lysander’s purposes, however, and Tremlett quickly and enthusiastically volunteered to act as chauffeur. Armed with copies of the relevant claims, the two of them headed off the next day — Lysander reclining grandly in the rear on mustard-yellow kid-leather seats — on a circuit of all the hotels on the Kent and Sussex coast that Christian Vandenbrook chose to frequent.

One night in Ramsgate drew a blank, but Sandwich, Deal and Hythe confirmed the pattern. They were all small, relatively expensive hotels with ardent recommendations from the better guidebooks. The hotel registers revealed that whenever Captain Vandenbrook was booked in so too was Lady Faulkner. She didn’t stay with him in Rye, nor in Hastings, however — perhaps a little too close to home, Lysander thought. All in all, over a period from September 1914 to this latest October encounter, they had spent the night in the same hotel nine times. He would not have been surprised to find similar evidence in London — they were bound to have met there also, she went up to town two or three times a month — but Vandenbrook could hardly present a claim for a night in a London hotel to the Directorate’s accounts department.

An affair of over a year, then, Lysander considered, and one that had begun while Crickmay Faulkner was still very much alive. The thought of his mother with Vandenbrook, carnally, made him uneasy and disturbed — made him instantly think of her differently, as if she had suddenly become someone entirely separate from the woman he knew and loved. But of course she wasn’t old, he told himself, she had other roles in life beyond that of his ‘mother’. She was an extremely attractive mature woman, cultured, vivacious, confident. Vandenbrook himself — sophisticated, charming, handsome, amusing, rich — was exactly the sort of man she would be attracted to. He could see that, understand that, all too clearly. He tried not to condemn her for it.

In Hastings, at the Pelham Hotel, the last hotel on their itinerary, the staff had been particularly helpful and concerned. Vandenbrook had stayed there four times and must have been a heavy tipper, Lysander thought. The young receptionist was full of anxious enquiries.

“I do hope everything was to Captain Vandenbrook’s satisfaction. We’d be most upset if he was in any way displeased.”

“Not at all. Routine enquiry.”

“Has something gone wrong, sir?”

“Well,” Lysander improvised, “something’s gone missing — we’re just retracing the captain’s movements over the last few weeks and months.”

“Are you a colleague?” the receptionist asked. She was young, eighteen or nineteen, and had arranged her hair in a curious low swipe over her forehead that was not particularly flattering, Lysander thought, it made her look a bit simple, though she evidently wasn’t. He suspected she had been subjected to the full Vandenbrook charm on many occasions.

“Yes, I am. We work together in London.”

“Please do tell him that his envelopes were all collected as specified. Never more than two days later.”

“I will, thank you.”

He said goodbye, promised to pass on the affectionate good wishes of the staff of the Pelham Hotel, Hastings, to the captain and tried to walk casually back out to the street. Tremlett was smoking by the Daimler, cap pushed to the back of his head. With his eye patch he looked unusually slovenly. He threw away his cigarette as Lysander strode up to him and readjusted his cap.

“Back to London, sir?”

“Back to Hythe.”

“Thought we were done for the day, sir.”

“The devil’s work is never done, Tremlett. Quick as you like, please.”

They drove back up the coast to Hythe and returned to the Dene Hotel. Lysander walked into reception, experiencing the curious sensation of his life repeating itself. This was his third visit to the Dene Hotel in forty-eight hours.

“Good evening, sir. Welcome back.”

“I was just wondering…Did Captain Vandenbrook leave anything — in his room, perhaps?”

“Oh, you mean the envelope. I should have said this morning. Usually a porter from the station collects it.”

The receptionist reached under his counter and drew out a large buff manila envelope. On the front was written, “Capt. C. Vandenbrook — to be collected.”

Lysander thanked the clerk and went into the saloon bar. It was quiet — one old man smoking a pipe in a corner and reading a newspaper. Lysander felt a coldness fall from the nape of his neck over his shoulders and back, as if he were standing in an icy draught. Mysteriously, the wound in his thigh began to ache, suddenly, a kind of burning. He knew what the envelope would contain. He ripped it open with his thumb and began to read.

“145 thou six inch howitz shells to Béthune. 65 wagons-under-load at Le Mans. Repair of telegraph lines Hazebrouk, Lille, Orchies, Valenciennes. New standard gauge line Gezaincourt-Albert. Gun spur engineer store depots Dernancourt. 12 permanent ambulance trains Third Army Second Army.”

He turned to the next page. It went on and on. He carefully placed the three sheets of paper back into the envelope, folded it longways and slipped it in his jacket pocket. He ordered a large brandy and tried to empty his mind. He concentrated on one fact alone, it was enough — for the moment further speculation was a waste of time. He had found his Andromeda.

Idecided, for the moment, to tell no one and do nothing. Something was violently and differently wrong here — not least the presence of my mother. I had opened the envelope expecting to see the usual columns of figures as in the previous six Glockner letters, but instead saw pages of close-written factual prose — all the raw intelligence that Vandenbrook’s role in the Directorate could provide. Not for the first time in this whole affair I felt myself wantonly adrift — seeing a few details but making no connection — and also consumed with the feeling that invisible strings were being pulled by a person or persons unknown and that I was attached to their ends. I needed time to take this new information in, time to deliberate, and I realized I had to be very careful over what my own future movements and decisions were. Perhaps it was the moment for me to go on the offensive, myself. Certain facts needed to be established before I could return to Munro and Massinger with my astounding discoveries. The first course of action was to confront Vandenbrook and see what explanation he would fabricate about the contents of his envelope. Then there was the urgent need to have a conversation with my mother.

♦

John Bensimon’s beard has turned quite grey since I last saw him in Vienna. He’s put on some weight also, yet there’s something strangely diminished about him, I feel, though on reflection it was perhaps the fact that it was England where we eventually met again that was responsible. To be a psychoanalyst practising in Vienna, with your smart consulting rooms just a few blocks away from Dr Freud’s, was a more dramatic and self-enhancing state of affairs than showing your patient into a converted bedroom at the back of a terraced house in Highgate.