Chapter 13 A Sickly Season #2
She took a long, elegant drag on her cigarette and then stretched her lovely pale throat and blew a perfect smoke ring towards the ceiling. “My brother taught me how to do that. You’re looking at my neck. Are you thinking of strangling me?”
“No.” He really wasn’t.
“You were wondering what it would be like though, weren’t you?”
“Only now that you’ve put the idea in my head.”
“Ha. Very funny.” She blew another perfect smoke ring. “I miss him.”
“Your brother?”
“Mm. Overdue and presumed lost.”
“My brother too,” Flynn said. “On the Tigris, south of Capri.”
“A submarine? How horrible.” She gave a little shiver. He was surprised that she knew the Tigris, but then, of course, she had worked at the Admiralty during the war. All the sailors like a nice girl.
“I used to imagine that my brother was still on board his ship,” she said.
“It’s that word ‘overdue,’ you know. And perhaps he was having trouble finding his way home.
Like Odysseus. I expect it was a little like that for you in the war—on the Railway—a terrible journey with no guarantee of reaching a destination.
” She made it sound as if he had been travelling on an actual train.
“It was a little less philosophical than that. A little less Odyssean,” he added facetiously.
“Well, yes, obviously,” she said, sounding only mildly chastened. “You must have had a dreadful time. Bad luck. Do you want to talk about it?”
“No. I’d rather talk about Archie Blinkhorn.”
She sighed at his persistence. “Well, he’s not a major, for a start.
He’s given himself a promotion. He never rose above captain before he was cashiered out in ’42.
Before the war, he was considered to be on the periphery of the British Union of Fascists, but I think he might have been in deeper than officialdom realized.
During the war he was accused of fraud, theft, impersonating a superior officer—pretty serious stuff, especially during wartime—but he was never court-martialled, just quietly given a dishonourable discharge.
Spent the rest of the war as a black-market racketeer.
Again, never prosecuted. Men like your Major have a knack for wriggling out of tight corners. ”
“Or for having friends in high places?”
“I don’t know about friends. I think he might be the sort who squirrels away people’s secrets and then digs them up when they’re useful to him. He’s been quiet since the war though, nothing on the grapevine about him. Why are you so interested in him?”
“Just curious. He seems to be friends with Giles Dangerfield.” Did one of her delicate eyelids give a little flutter? A tell. “You must have come across him.”
“I don’t know everyone in London, you know.”
“You don’t know him, then?” Outside the Royal Opera House, Dangerfield had kissed her wrist and made it look uncomfortably intimate. Why would she deny his acquaintance?
“What is this, Flynn—the Inquisition? And I’m not your personal private detective, you know.
” She drained her gin and considered the emptiness of the glass.
“Do you want another, or would you rather continue to bore me to death with this conversation?” I shall die of ennui, he thought.
Was Delphine Dubois dead? (But not of ennui, surely?
It seemed an unlikely weapon. Bored to death.) “Or shall we just go back to my flat and fuck?”
“Sorry?” The word, coming from her well-bred lips, startled him. He presumed that was her intention. “Not afraid I might murder you, then?” he said.
“It might be the other way round.”
“I’m afraid I’ve arranged to meet someone,” he said, genuinely regretful.
She shrugged—a gesture that he interpreted as irritation rather than indifference. He suspected that Lydia wasn’t rejected very often.
He escorted her to the front door of her building, where she gave him a chaste kiss, her lips barely brushing his cheek. “Well, another time,” she said. “Perhaps.”
Why had she wanted to meet him? He didn’t really think it was to bed him, that would have been incidental to her. It had been an interrogation of sorts. Both Lydia and Maud Ogilvie seemed overly keen to know what he remembered about the attack the other night.
He set off, and when he glanced back he saw that she was still standing there watching him, her expression as inscrutable as a sphinx’s. He had no idea what she was thinking.
—
The King’s Arms was on the corner of Roupell Street.
Although it was near to the Festival site on the South Bank, it was a place Flynn had never come across before.
Its Dickensian terraces of workers’ houses had somehow managed to evade being bombed during the Blitz, despite its proximity to Waterloo Station.
It seemed an obscure watering hole for Archie, although Flynn guessed that was why he had chosen it.
He would be safe from prying eyes here. Safe from Ritz-loving Mitzi as well.
He found Archie sitting at a table that was tucked into a shadowy corner. He was the only person in the place. “My office,” Archie laughed. “Nobody bothers me here.”
There was a fire in the grate making the place unseasonably warm, but Archie was still muffled in his camel-hair “car” coat.
He stood up when he saw Flynn and came over and shook his hand as if they really were in a business meeting.
“I held back before ordering,” he said. “Buy you a drink?” Without waiting for an answer he steered Flynn by the elbow towards the bar, where he was acknowledged as a regular by the landlady, who said, “The usual, Major?” already pouring a gin and ginger for him.
“Make it a double, kind lady,” Archie replied.
Flynn ordered a whisky and they ferried their drinks back to the table.
“Bottoms up,” Archie said, raising his glass.
When Flynn didn’t respond, Archie said, “All right, old bean? You look a bit peaky.” There was something rancid about Archie.
His bloodshot eyes narrowed as he regarded Flynn keenly.
Flynn didn’t bother with the niceties and said, “What’s the favour you want me to do for you, Archie?”