Chapter Twenty-Two
Elizabeth stepped out of Madame Fournier’s, the pastries still warm from the oven.
Two pains aux raisins and a chausson aux pommes.
In Paris, smoking isn’t simply a bad habit, Cybil had said.
It’s practically de rigueur if one wishes to keep one’s figure.
Perhaps she had a point. But no cigarette on earth smelled nearly as good as Madame Fournier’s ovens mid-morning.
The story had broken first thing, just as Oliver had said it would. Sir Conrad Davenport, one of His Majesty’s most distinguished servants, dead at the ambassador’s residence in a tragic accident while cleaning his service revolver.
Le Figaro had edged its front page in a black mourning border. MORT TRAGIQUE DE L’AMBASSADEUR brITANNIQUE – the tragic death of the British Ambassador, a great friend of France.
L’Humanité buried him at the bottom of page four, beneath the Renault strike: UN GROS DE MOINS – one big man fewer.
While L’Action Francaise asked simply: QUE CACHENT LES ANGLAIS? – what are the British hiding?
Three newspapers, three verdicts, and not one word of murder.
Clemmi had read them over the breakfast table, one hand pressed to the base of her throat.
Le Figaro she had read twice; the other two she had folded away as if they might stain the tablecloth.
At least there’s no talk of suicide, she’d said at last. No inquest, no whispers over the luncheon tables.
Cecily Davenport could bury her husband with his name intact and her head held high.
Clemmi had left for the Ambassador’s residence directly afterwards.
Half of Paris would be calling to pay their respects, and the widow would need a friend at her side while she received them.
No doubt Miss Bembridge would already be on hand, marshalling the callers as smoothly as she had run Sir Conrad’s diary – death, it seemed, being no excuse for disorder.
“L’accord secret de l’Angleterre et de l’Amérique! Les conditions du prêt cachées à la France! Demandez L’Humanité!”
The newspaper boy stood on the corner with a fresh armful, swinging a folded copy at every hat that passed. And the hats were stopping.
England and America’s secret deal. The loan terms hidden from France.
It seemed the trap had been sprung, just as Oliver and Jonathan had predicted.
Elizabeth turned on her heel and quickened her pace towards the Faubourg, the paper bag swinging from her fingers.
The false report had surfaced in L’Humanité, precisely where and when Jonathan had said it would. But for all the case they had laid out last night, Elizabeth still couldn’t reconcile the mousy Mr Arbuthnot with a man capable of treason, let alone murder.
All it proved was that he could have done it. Not that he had.
Pressmen packed the pavement outside the embassy gates, two dozen at least, hats tipped back, notebooks flat against the railings, one perched on a shooting stick with a half-eaten sandwich in his hand.
An agent de police worked the kerb, hands clasped behind him, moving them along a yard at a time, only for them to close in again behind him the moment he passed.
“Une déclaration! Juste un mot sur l’Ambassadeur!” A shout went up near the gates, and the whole pavement surged towards it, notebooks rising.
Elizabeth pressed forward into the crush, shoulders angling through the gaps.
“…refuses to make any statement…”
“…cleaning his revolver, and you believe that, do you…”
A photographer stood in the gutter opposite, trouser cuffs grey with dust, and swung his camera off the forecourt and along the pavement, hunting through the crowd.
Elizabeth drew the brim of her cloche a fraction lower and stepped in behind a delivery boy and his handcart as the lens swept towards her, matching his pace.
She slipped beneath the arch, past the black mourning wreath wired to the railings. The commissionaire was out of his lodge the moment he spotted her, ledger in hand.
“Back again, Miss Winston?”
“I’m afraid so.” Elizabeth mustered a smile. “I read about the ambassador in this morning’s papers. Such dreadful news. I’m so sorry for your loss.”
“Very kind of you, madam.” His gaze dropped briefly to the ledger. “A sad business, indeed.”
“I’m sure he’ll be missed.”
“No doubt, madam, no doubt.” He straightened and reached for the receiver. “Now then, you’ll be here for Miss Howard?”
“Mr Sterling, actually. It’s rather urgent.”
“Mr Sterling?” His brow lifted. “I’ll try his floor for you, madam, but I can’t promise he’ll be reachable. They’ve been run off their feet up there since … well, since the news.”
“Of course. I quite understand.”
He lifted the receiver and asked for Mr Sterling’s floor, and Elizabeth signed the ledger in Eliza Winston’s hand.
He listened for a moment, then set the receiver back on its cradle. “You know the way, madam.”
“Thank you.”
Elizabeth crossed the courtyard and pushed through the west pavilion door into the narrow entrance hall.
The young clerk at the enquiry desk was on the telephone, a second receiver lying off its cradle at his elbow, and beyond him the corridor was thick with staff, clerks hurrying between the doorways with files and bundles of telegrams, a girl weaving through them with a tray of tea things balanced against her hip.
“Miss Winston.” Maggie made her way down the corridor towards her, her voice low. “Mr Sterling asked me to show you up.”
She turned back the way she’d come, Elizabeth falling into step beside her, and led her up the staircase at the far end. “How are you all bearing up?”
“Don’t ask. The telephone hasn’t stopped since first thing – half of Paris ringing to pay their respects and the other half wanting to know what really happened.
And the funeral’s already a battlefield upstairs.
Who walks ahead of whom behind the coffin, if you can believe it.
We’ve re-done the same list three times this morning. ”
“Only three? The morning’s still young.”
They climbed the last flight beneath the line of portraits, sombre men in high collars and orders watching their ascent, and came out onto the senior corridor. Every door stood closed, the same as before – all but one, halfway along, propped wide with a tea chest.
A junior clerk knelt beside it, wrapping something in tissue paper; a second chest already filled with books and the green shade of a desk lamp.
Beyond him, Miss Bembridge stood at the open drawers of a great mahogany desk, a list in one hand and her pencil in the other, a stack of folders squared at her elbow.
The small enamel plate on the door still carried its neat black lettering. Sir C. Davenport.
“Miss Bembridge.” Elizabeth paused at the doorway. “I understood from Mrs Sterling that you were to be at the residence today, with Lady Davenport.”
“Lady Elizabeth.” Miss Bembridge glanced up, her pencil resting against the list. “So I was, until Mr Sterling informed me that London had brought the new ambassador’s start date forward.
” She made a tick against her list. “And as if that weren’t enough, the venue for Lady Davenport’s luncheon has been double-booked, and heaven knows how we’re to find another at such short notice.
Fortunately, Mrs Sterling has offered her assistance, and there’s a spot at the Bois that might do – we’re driving out at half-past three to see it. ”
“It never rains, but it pours.” Elizabeth’s gaze travelled over the shelves behind the desk, already stripped to bare wood. “Though this seems a great deal of work for one pair of hands.”
“Better one pair that knew him than a dozen that didn’t.
” Miss Bembridge turned back to the desk, sliding the next drawer open.
“I want to make sure Sir Conrad’s papers are all left in proper order.
I know it’s silly, but I can’t bear to think of people speaking ill of him when he’s not here to defend himself.
Now, if you’ll forgive me, I have to get on. ”
“Of course. Good day, Miss Bembridge.”
Elizabeth followed Maggie along the corridor to the last door but one. Maggie knocked, and a key turned on the other side before the door opened partway, Oliver’s hand on its edge.
“Thank you, Miss Howard. That will be all.”
“Sir.” Maggie dipped her head, flashed Elizabeth the briefest of glances, and set off back the way they’d come.
Elizabeth waited, but Oliver made no move to admit her, his hand still on the door’s edge, his attention fixed on Maggie’s retreating back.
Whatever was he waiting for?
Only when Maggie’s footsteps had faded down the staircase did he step back and draw the door wide.
She stepped inside, and Oliver pressed the door shut behind her, turning the key in the lock.
“I told Oliver that the moment L’Humanité dropped, you’d be through those gates before the ink was dry.”
Elizabeth turned towards the voice. Jonathan stood in the corner behind the door, one shoulder against the bookcase, well clear of the window and beyond the reach of the corridor’s sightline.
Of course. The locked door, the gap held to a hand’s width. A dead man could hardly be seen in Mr Sterling’s office, least of all with half the pressmen in Paris camped at the gates.
“And here you are, with the morning barely half gone.” His mouth curved at the corners as he pushed away from the bookcase.
“Am I really so predictable?”
“You are many things, Lady Elizabeth, but predictable is not one of them.”
“Then neither of us need fear Emerson’s hobgoblin.” She drew off her gloves and set Madame Fournier’s bag on the corner of the desk.
“I’ve been called worse things than inconsistent.”
“I’m sure you have, Mr Ashcroft. Now, I take it you’ve both seen L’Humanité.”
“We have. It’s almost word for word.” Jonathan’s gaze had drifted to the paper bag on the corner of the desk. “May I?”
“Help yourself.”
He drew out one of the pains aux raisins and settled back against the bookcase.
“And now that you have the proof, what happens next?”
“Now comes the unpleasant part.” Oliver drew his watch from his pocket, glanced at it, and returned it. “Arbuthnot’s due here any minute to discuss the handover, since he’ll be in charge until the new chap officially starts. Well, at least that’s what he thinks the meeting is about.”
“You’re going to confront him here? I thought he’d be recalled to London?”
“He leaves this evening, where he’ll face formal charges, but Jonathan and I want to speak to him before word gets out and his connection scarpers.”
“And who do you think sold the report to L’Humanité?”
“Hard to say.” Jonathan brushed a flake of pastry from his lapel.
“It might have gone through the connection, or Arbuthnot may deal with the paper directly. For the connection, it’s politics – anything to derail the loan talks.
Arbuthnot’s in it for the money. Ten years of being passed over, and a grudge that finally found a paymaster. ”
“Do these leaks always find their way to L’Humanité?”
“A few have, but most of it is sold privately, to people who want these talks dead.” Oliver crossed to the window, his back to the room. “This loan is what stands between Europe and the next fire, Elizabeth, and someone means to see it fail. It’s about making sure there’s never another Great War.”
“Then Mr Arbuthnot seems rather a small fish for such deep waters.”
“Which is precisely the point.” Jonathan brushed the crumbs off his fingers. “Take the hands and leave the network standing, and they’ll find another pair soon enough.”
Oliver turned from the window, his gaze flicking to the wall clock. Elizabeth, would you like me to arrange for a car to be brought round to take you back to the apartment? “There’s no telling how long this will take.”
“Actually, I’d like to sit in on the interview.”
His gaze slid past her to Jonathan before they withdrew to the far side of the room, heads bent together, their voices dropping below her reach. She caught highly irregular from Oliver, and nothing at all of Jonathan’s answer.
“Very well.” Oliver turned back to her. “You can stay, but as an observer only. Not a word, no matter what’s said.”
“You won’t even know I’m here.”
Oliver and Jonathan had built their case from registry books and distribution lists, and she didn’t doubt a line of it. Every paper Arbuthnot had touched, every file signed out through his office, all of it proving he could have done it.
But could have and had were two very different things.