Chapter Twenty-Three
The bell of Sainte-Mérance began the long count of midday as Oliver got to his feet.
“Ready?” He collected the newspaper from the blotter and crossed to the connecting door, opening it onto the meeting room beyond.
“Aren’t you joining us?” Elizabeth turned to Jonathan.
“He’ll join us a little later.” Oliver stood aside for her to pass.
Elizabeth stepped past Oliver into a room longer than the office, and plainer – a dark oak table running towards the corridor door, chairs squared along its sides, a map of Europe the only thing on the walls. She chose a chair in the furthest corner and tilted her cloche forward.
Oliver took the chair at the head and laid the newspaper face-down before him.
A single knock sounded, and the door swung open before Oliver could answer.
“Sterling.” Arbuthnot closed the door behind him, a slim folder under one arm. “I’ve drawn up everything we’ll need for the handover: staff, correspondence, the registry. The sooner it’s settled who’s minding what until the new man arrives, the better for everyone.”
Arbuthnot took the chair across the table from Oliver, squared the folder in front of him, and perched the pince-nez on his nose, then frowned as his gaze settled on Elizabeth. “Where’s Miss Bembridge? If anyone should take the minutes, it’s her, not the new girl.”
Elizabeth shifted in her seat.
“Sorry?” Oliver’s gaze flicked to Elizabeth, his brow creasing.
“The new girl.” Arbuthnot pointed to Elizabeth. “I mean, what do we know about her? Can she be trusted with such things?”
So much for the cloche. One glance through the pince-nez and he’d known her face, but then, he’d given fair warning: I rarely forget a face.
“Miss Bembridge is engaged elsewhere this morning,” Oliver replied, his eyes narrowing in Elizabeth’s direction. “And I assure you the new girl has been thoroughly vetted.”
“All the same-”
“Shall we get on? I’m sure we both have busy mornings ahead.”
“Very well, but I want my objections to go on record.” He turned his attention to Elizabeth. “Well, aren’t you going to write it down?”
“Of course.” She headed off Oliver’s reply before reaching into her bag for a notebook and pen. “My apologies, sir.” The words delivered in the same rounded-flat accent she’d used during their previous encounter.
“Well, then, write it down … my objection to your presence. Honestly, Sterling. Are you sure Miss Bembridge can’t be spared from whatever it is she’s doing?”
“Positive. But I’m sure the new girl is more than capable of taking a few notes.”
“All the same–”
“Let’s just move on, shall we?”
Arbuthnot opened the folder and dealt the papers out across the table in ordered piles. “Staff first, I think. Then the registry.” He drew the top sheet from the nearest pile and held it out to Oliver.
The page quivered as it crossed the table.
Elizabeth kept her pencil moving, though her attention had left the notebook entirely.
It was the slightest of movements, no more than the flutter of paper caught in a draught, except that the windows were shut and the air in the room hung perfectly still.
She watched his hand travel back to the folder, and there it was again, the same small trembling on the return journey.
“Before we begin.” Oliver turned the newspaper over so the headline faced its reader.
Arbuthnot read the front page without touching it, only his eyes moving along the lines.
“Yes, I’ve seen it. L’Humanité stirring the pot again, and it’s a disgrace they’re permitted to print such nonsense.
De Massenet could close that rag down with a single telephone call if it suited him, though I don’t suppose it ever does…
” He turned back to his piles. “Now. Staff.”
“I drafted it.”
Arbuthnot’s head came up. “I beg your pardon?”
“The terms in that article. I wrote them myself. Every figure, every date.”
“You wrote…” The crease between his brows deepened as his gaze went from Oliver to the newspaper and back again. “Then what in heaven’s name are they doing on the front page of L’Humanité?”
“You tell me.”
“I’m sure I don’t follow, Sterling, and I have a registry hand-over to…” His hand moved towards the papers, then stopped.
“Do you remember our meeting last week, when I was called out of the room?” Oliver settled back in his chair.
“There was a paper lying on the corner of my desk. Fresh terms from London on the loan disbursement. Those terms were false, Mr Arbuthnot. They existed nowhere else, and I left you alone with them for precisely as long as it would take a man to read.”
Arbuthnot removed the pince-nez, took the linen handkerchief from his breast pocket, and polished the lenses in small, even circles.
“I hope you’re not implying what I think you are.”
“You know exactly what I’m implying. And it isn’t the first time, is it? Things have a habit of finding their way into L’Humanité, and that’s only what makes the papers. Tell me, how well do you know Raoul Lenoir?”
“Lenoir?” Arbuthnot’s hand faltered, the handkerchief resting against the lens a moment before it moved again. “The editor of L’Humanité. Of course I know who he is. It’s my business to know these people, every agitator and pamphleteer in Paris. That is what the Foreign Office pays me for.”
Elizabeth’s pencil stilled against the page. Oliver had asked how well he knew the man. Mr Arbuthnot had told them who he was instead, and that catch in the polishing had come and gone in the space between the two.
Her gaze flicked to the head of the table. Oliver had caught it too, holding Arbuthnot’s gaze a heartbeat longer than the answer deserved before he spoke again.
“What precisely is going on here, Sterling?” Arbuthnot returned the handkerchief to his pocket, the pince-nez still in his hand.
“First the girl, now this. I was given to understand this was a handover meeting, and instead I find myself questioned like a common…” He drew himself up. “I demand to know what this is about.”
“It’s about information leaving this chancery. Months of it. Dates, drafts, positions, all of it passed to third parties, and we believe you’ve been the one passing it.”
“That is…” The colour drained from his face. “That is an outrageous accusation, outrageous and unfounded, and I shall not sit here and dignify it.”
He rose and reached for his papers, gathering the piles back into the folder, but the pages would not square, his hands shuffling at them, both hands now, the sheets sliding against one another while the folder tapped its edge against the table.
The connecting door opened, and Arbuthnot turned towards it, the folder slipping from his grip and spilling its contents across the floor.
“It can’t be.” He dropped down onto the chair, his mouth working before the word finally came. “Ashby? But you’re dead.” Arbuthnot’s eyes tracked Jonathan as he pressed the door shut behind him and crossed the room. “The robbery … they told us … there was a memorial notice in the hall…”
“Mr Ashby is dead; that much is true.” Jonathan drew out the chair beside Oliver and sat down . “But I, as you can see, am very much alive.”
“Mr Ashby, as you’ll have gathered, is not his real name.
There is no Mr Ashby. There never was. We created him, the transfer, the office, the lodgings on the rue de la Fontaine, all of it, and we let it be known in certain quarters that he was a man who’d sell what crossed his desk if the price was right.
Then we sat back and waited to see who came to silence the competition. ”
Arbuthnot clasped his hands together on the table before him, his arms flat to the elbows, the scattered pages of his handover lying where they’d fallen about his feet.
“The ambassadorship.” His voice had dropped to little more than a whisper. “You mean to tell me that Ashby’s appointment … Sir Conrad’s replacement … none of it was ever…”
“Bait, nothing more.”
“Ten years.” The word came out cracked at its edges.
“Ten years I have run this embassy while lesser men took the credit, and when the post finally … I sat in that chair, Sterling, in your office, and congratulated him.” His hand lifted towards Jonathan, the tremor running through it in plain view now, from wrist to fingertips. “I shook that man’s hand.”
“You did.” Jonathan settled back in his chair. “Quite firmly, as I recall.”
“And the bridge?” Arbuthnot’s arm dropped back to his side. “The whole chancery turned upside down, and now you sit there telling me the man was never dead. Was the shooting staged as well?”
“The shooting was real enough,” Oliver said. “Real bullets, a real wound. The only invented thing on that bridge was the name of the man they were aimed at.”
“You think it’s me.” His eyes darted from one man to the other. “The leaks, the newspaper … and now you’d hang a shooting on me as well.”
“Let’s return to the night of the shooting.” Oliver drew a notebook from his inside pocket and flipped it open. “The Castellane. You left early, and in something of a temper.”
“Is it any wonder, the way I was excluded from the talks and then Sir Conrad dismissed me in front of half the delegation like a waiter who’d brought the wrong wine?” Arbuthnot’s chin tilted defiantly. “So, yes, I left.”
“Where did you go?”
“I walked. Along the river, then home. I find it settles me.”
“Can anyone confirm that?”
“Miss Bembridge saw me leave. She was waiting for a motorcar at the front and offered me a lift on her way home, but I declined. I wanted the air.”
“And after that?” Oliver asked. “Between the Castellane and your door. Did anyone see you? Speak to you?”
“It was late. I went straight home.” Arbuthnot’s clasped hands drew tighter. “No. No-one.”