William Boyd - Waiting for Sunrise

“Terrible business, what?” Massinger said. “Where does that leave us? Shocking.”

Lysander agreed, sat down and ordered a pot of coffee — he didn’t feel like tea; tea was not a drink to share with someone like Massinger.

“What do you want to see me about?” he asked as Massinger crushed his cigarette dead — with conspicuous force — in the ashtray, smoke snorting from his nostrils.

“I don’t want to see you, Rief,” he said, looking up. He gestured. “She does.”

Florence Duchesne stepped up to the table, as if she had suddenly materialized.

Lysander felt a lurch of instinctive alarm judder through him and had the immediate conviction that she was about to pull a revolver from her handbag and shoot him again. He stared at her — it was Florence Duchesne but a different woman from the one he’d last seen on the steamer on Lac Léman. The black weeds and the veil were gone. She had powder and lip rouge on her face and was wearing a magenta ‘town suit’ with a cut-away jacket and a hobble skirt and a little fichu at the neck of her silk blouse. She had a velvet Tam o’ Shanter set on a slant on her head in a darker purple than the suit. It was as if Madame Duchesne’s fashionable twin sister had walked in, not the melancholy widow who lived with the postmaster of Geneva.

She slipped into the booth beside him and, despite himself, Lysander flinched.

“I had to see you, Monsieur Rief,” she said in French, “to explain and, of course, to apologize.”

Lysander looked at her, then Massinger, then back at her again, quite disorientated, unable to think what he could possibly say. Massinger stood up at this juncture and distracted them.

“I’ll leave you two to talk. I’ll see you later, Madame. Goodbye, Rief.”

Lysander watched him stride across the room to collect his top hat — he looked like a superior shop assistant, he thought. He turned back to Florence Duchesne.

“This is very, very strange for me,” he said, slowly. “To be sitting here with someone who’s shot me three times. Very strange…You were trying to kill me, I suppose.”

“Oh, yes. But you must understand that I was convinced you were working with Glockner. I was convinced you had killed Glockner also. And when you lied to me about the cipher-text — it seemed the final clue. And Massinger had ordered me not to take any risks — said you were possibly a traitor, even. Was I meant to let you step ashore at Evian and vanish? No. Especially with all the suspicions I had — it was my duty.”

“No, no. You were absolutely in the right.” The irony in his voice made it unusually harsh, like Massinger’s throaty rasp. He recalled Massinger’s schoolboy French blunder. She bowed her head.

“And yet…” She left the rest unspoken.

“I wonder if they serve alcohol in a place like this?” he asked, rhetorically. “Probably not, far too plebeian. I need a powerful drink, Madame. I’m sure you understand.”

“We can go to a hotel, if you like. I do want to talk to you about something important.”

They paid and left. At the door to the tearoom she collected a dyed black musquash coat with a single button at the hip. Lysander held it open for her as she slipped her arms into the sleeves and smelled the strong pungent scent she wore. He thought back to their supper on the terrace of the Brasserie des Bastions in Geneva and how he’d noticed it then — thinking it an anomaly — but now he realized it was a trace of the real woman. A little clue. He glanced at her as they walked along the road in silence, heading for the Connaught Hotel.

They found a seat in the public lounge and Lysander ordered a large whisky and soda for himself and a Dubonnet for her. The drink calmed him and he felt his jumpiness subside. It was always amazing how one so quickly accustomed oneself to the strangest circumstances, he thought — here I am having a drink with a woman who tried to assassinate me. He looked across the table at her and registered his absence of anger, of outrage. All he saw was a very attractive woman in fashionable clothes.

“What’re you doing in London?” he asked.

“Massinger has brought me out of Geneva. It was becoming too dangerous for me.”

She explained. Her contact in the German consulate — “the man with the embarrassing letters” — had been arrested and deported to Germany. It would only be a matter of time before he gave her name up. “So Massinger pulled me out, very fast.”

“I assume you’re not a widow.”

“No. But it’s a most effective disguise, I assure you. I’ve not been married, in fact.”

“What about your brother?”

“Yes, he’s really my brother — and he’s the postmaster in Geneva.” She smiled at him. “Not everything is a lie.”

The smile disarmed him and he found himself unreflectingly taking in her looks — her strong curved nose, her clear blue eyes, the shadowed hollow at her throat between her collar-bones. He could forgive her, he supposed. In fact it was very easy — how absurd.

“How are you?” she asked. “I mean, after the shooting.”

“I have seven scars to remember you by,” he said, showing her the stigma in his left palm. “And my leg stiffens up sometimes,” he tapped his left thigh. “But otherwise I’m pretty well. Amazingly.”

“Lucky I’m a bad shot,” she said, smiling ruefully. “I can only say sorry, again. Imagine that I’m saying sorry to you all the time. Sorry, sorry, sorry.”

Lysander shrugged. “It’s over. I’m alive. You’re here in London.” He raised his glass. “I’m not being facetious — despite everything, I’m very pleased to see you.”

She seemed to relax finally — expiation had occurred.

“And you remembered I liked Dubonnet,” she said.

They looked at each other candidly.

“You like Dubonnet and you don’t drink champagne.”

“And you used to be a famous actor.”

“An actor, certainly…You said you wanted to tell me something.”

She looked more serious now.

“My contact at the consulate told me an interesting detail — I obliged him to tell me an interesting detail — before he was arrested and taken away. They were paying funds to the person who sent the letters to Glockner. A lot of money, transferred through Switzerland.”

“I imagined money was the reason. Was there a name?”

“No.”

“You’re sure?”

“This is all he said. But the money they sent was a lot. Already over two thousand pounds. It seems a lot for one man. I thought — maybe there is a cell. Maybe there are two, or three…”

Lysander wasn’t surprised to have this confirmed but he feigned some perplexity — frowning, tapping his fingers.

“Have you told this to anyone else?”

“Not yet. I wanted to tell you first.”

“Not Massinger?”

“I think with Glockner dead he feels the matter is closed.”

“Could you keep this to yourself for a while? It would help me.”

“Of course.” She smiled at him again. “Very happy to oblige, as they say.”

He sat back and crossed his legs.

“Are you going to stay in London now?”

“No,” she said. “Massinger wants to put me into Luxembourg — to count troop trains. He wants me to become the special friend of a lonely old station master.”

“ La veuve Duchesne , once more.”

“It’s very effective — instant respect. People keep their distance. No one wants to trouble you in your terrible grief.”

“Why do you do it?”

“Why do you ?” She didn’t bother to let him reply. “Massinger pays me very well,” she said, simply. “I appreciate money because at one stage in my life I was without it. Completely. And life was not easy…” She put her glass down and turned it this way and that on its coaster. They were silent for a moment.