House Rules (19 page)

Richard had feared that Margaret would be angry, but she said nothing more. More importantly, she did not pick up the whip and work out her anger on either of them. Richard thought she might do so later. He would have to worry about that when it happened, and he didn’t find the prospect all that disturbing. He was developing a real taste for Margaret’s brand of discipline.

Margaret untied Helena and told her to get dressed. She unsnapped Richard’s lead from the ring and led him out into the hall. There she turned him over to Heidi, who took him to his room. Acting under Margaret’s orders, she told Richard, she fastened him by his chain to the ring bolt set into the floor of the room before she left him alone. He lay on the bed and wondered what Margaret and Helena were doing. He would know sooner or later, he guessed, and so drifted off to sleep.

In the morning, Margaret summoned him to the sitting room. The summons was terse, as usual, and delivered by Heidi: ‘Madame wants to see you now.’ She unlocked him and waited while he dressed. He put on the new tights and corselet Ingrid had sent, realising that the holes were intended for his newly attached chain to pass through. He threaded the chain through the holes and let it hang. It felt cool as it brushed his thighs under the skirt. The weight of it was always there to remind him of the stainless steel collar around his scrotum.

In the sitting room, Margaret was dressed in her business suit, apparently on the verge of going to the city. She was seated on the long sofa. Richard, in his maid’s uniform, was required to stand while she gave him his orders.

‘Show me the new underwear Ingrid sent,’ she commanded.

Richard raised his skirt so she could see the chain hanging between his thighs. Margaret beckoned him closer, and when he stood before the sofa she grasped the chain and gave it a tug. Richard jumped in surprise, but stood still again as Margaret examined the holes in his underwear through which the chain passed. Apparently satisfied, she let him drop his skirt and step back.

Margaret said, ‘This evening you will travel to Basle, carrying a sum of money to Frau Hannelore Bern of the Credit Hoffmann Bank there. You will deliver the consignment to her personally and then do whatever else she asks you to do. You will stay with her for at least a week. In that way you will be less conspicuous in your comings and goings.’

The suddenness of the trip took Richard by surprise. He had been expecting to be sent soon, but had counted on some warning.

‘I have provided a wardrobe suitable to a young female assistant, which will be your persona on this occasion. You have your passport, and will travel as Pamela Rhodes. Money for travelling expenses will be made available to you. You need not account for every penny, nor should you travel in the most economical style.’

Richard recalled Ingrid’s comment on her own travels as holidays, all expenses paid and no questions asked.

‘First-class travellers are less often questioned by customs and immigration officials,’ Margaret told him. ‘You will have to travel by rail, as you are now marked in a way that would cause an embarrassment if you set off an airport metal detector. I, personally, would not like to have to explain why I was wearing a locked ring and chain on my privates,’ she said with a smile.

‘Incidentally,’ she continued, ‘it might not be a good idea to sit with your legs open. Someone might ask why a young woman had a chain fastened just there.’ She rose and dismissed him.

The railway station was crowded when Richard arrived. It was the middle of the morning, but there were people everywhere: mostly housewives, Richard guessed, out for the day’s shopping. But among them he saw several women dressed as he was: dark skirt and jacket with light chalk pinstripe, black opaque tights and high-heeled shoes. He felt less conspicuous in the professional-looking dark suit Margaret had ordered him to wear when calling on her colleague at the Credit Hoffmann Bank. Like him, most of these women carried attaché cases, but theirs would be full of business papers, not stuffed with cash as his was. All that cash made him feel both conspicuous and vulnerable, as if he were carrying a sign which informed the world what was in his case. Margaret’s instructions as to wardrobe allowed him to blend in well with his surroundings. He was glad of that. Of course, she was concerned only that the case and its contents got to their destination, while his worry was twofold. Not only did he have to deliver the case: he did not want anyone to penetrate his disguise either.

He followed the crowd down the platform and out into the street. It was a clear, sunny day with just a slight chill, enough to make him glad of the jacket and more than ever aware of his legs as the cool air circulated under the skirt. He missed trousers, but Margaret would never have allowed him to have a trouser suit. ‘Unfeminine,’ she had said, when he brought up the subject. Richard walked to the taxi rank feeling as if every eye were on him, but no one spoke to him as he approached the first cab.

‘Credit Hoffmann Bank,
bitte
,’ he told the driver, trusting that he would know the address without having to be further instructed in German. Richard did not feel confident about his German, even though he had studied the language. He was also inhibited by his voice. It was too deep for a woman, and he was afraid that it would betray him, so he had spoken as little as possible on his journey to Basle. The driver, however, seemed to see nothing odd about his passenger. He drove through the crowded streets, and Richard could see many more women in the professional-looking uniform he wore. He relaxed slightly.

The bank was a small but solid-looking building with heavy wooden double doors, shut tightly and guarded by a uniformed guard.

‘
Wie viele
?’ he asked the driver.

The driver gestured to the meter, where the sum of thirty francs showed. Richard handed him a fifty-franc note with a muttered ‘
Halten Sie den Wechsel
,’ which produced a smile and a ‘
Guten Tag
’ from the driver.

Richard got out and approached the doorman. He bowed slightly to Richard and opened the doors for him. Inside, he looked around, expecting to see the counter layout common to English banks. Instead there were several desks scattered about the floor, at which the employees sat and carried out the mysterious activities that bank clerks busy themselves with when they are not actually dealing with a customer.

There was nothing to indicate who was the receptionist, and Richard was trying to decide whom to approach, when a door behind the desks opened to allow a young woman to step through. She was slim, blonde, attractive, and very efficient-looking in her own version of the suit Richard was wearing. She stood stiffly erect, almost as if she were at attention, her back straight and her head high. Something about her stance, and the preoccupied expression on her face, suggested to him that she might be worried about something. Perhaps, as she was coming from what appeared to be the managerial areas, she had just been given an unpleasant task. Or a reprimand for some error.

Richard was just about to approach the nearest clerk when the young woman saw him. She approached him, holding an armful of file folders, her steps precise as if she was trying very carefully to control her movements. She stopped, facing him, and bade him good morning in German. ‘
Womit kann ich dienen
?’ she continued.

Richard said that he had an appointment with Frau Bern, one of the directors, on business from Margaret Wagner. Could she please inform Frau Bern that he had arrived?

The young woman looked more closely at him, noticing for the first time the case he carried. Her expression underwent a change. The look of preoccupation gave way to one of understanding. She seemed to be on familiar ground. Still speaking in German, she asked his name.

‘Pamela Rhodes,’ he replied.

She nodded and asked if Fraulein Rhodes would be so good as to follow her. She led him back through the door she had just emerged from and into a long hallway lit only by overhead chandeliers and lined on both sides by rows of oak-panelled doors. Each door, Richard saw, bore a nameplate and a title.

The young woman led him all the way to the far end of the hall and stopped before a door bearing the name H. Bern. His guide knocked on the door and opened it without waiting for a reply. She said, ‘
Fraulein Rhodes ist hier
,’ and stood aside for Richard to enter.

The office was vast. The ceiling was at least twenty feet high, with plaster cornices and tall windows that let in the light of the sunny day outside. The carpet was green with an interwoven gold pattern, covering most of the floor but revealing polished wooden floorboards around the edges. Despite its old-fashioned furnishings and proportions, the room was fitted with the latest in computer terminals and fax machines. There was a conference table along the left side of the room, with ten chairs. Across the room, where visitors would have to make a long approach, was a large oak desk with a leather top. And seated behind the desk was a severely beautiful woman of about the same age as Margaret. She was dressed in the same way as Richard and the young woman who had conducted him here, but there was something in her manner of supreme self-assurance that told the world that here was the real power behind the Credit Hoffmann Bank.

As he approached, feeling like a courtier approaching a queen, Richard knew that he was in the presence of another woman who was accustomed to having her way in all things. She and Margaret might easily have been sisters, save that she was dark-haired where Margaret was blonde. The sign on her desk read: Fr. Hannelore Bern. No title. None was needed. This was the woman he had come to see.

She smiled briefly as she rose to shake his hand. Then she sat down again and indicated a chair across the desk for Richard. ‘I trust you had a pleasant journey,’ she said in accented English. ‘Would you like a cup of coffee, or perhaps tea? No? Then we can get right to the business at hand. That, I take it, is the case entrusted to you by Margaret Wagner. If you would be so good as to place it on the desk and open it?’

Richard did as she asked, opening the lid of the case he had carried from Margaret’s house to this city. The money was in large denominations, mostly Deutschmarks, but with a sizeable quantity of French francs and U. S. dollars. Richard had not looked at the contents, knowing that Margaret would be displeased if he had, but now he was startled by the sight of so much money. He looked up to see Frau Bern looking at him. There was a smile of dry amusement in her eyes.

‘I am pleased to see that Margaret has chosen an honest courier. So many are not, and the money is often too great a temptation to resist. Some even try to run with it. But they never get away. I am glad that you did not act so foolishly.’

Richard wondered how many had tried to abscond, and what had happened to them. It would not have been anything pleasant, he was sure. Crossing Hannelore Bern would be the same as crossing Margaret. But at the moment the claws were sheathed. She asked again if he would like some coffee or tea. Richard said yes, if she was having some herself.

Frau Bern rang a bell on her desk and a young girl appeared at once. She took the order and departed. There was an awkward silence, which Richard was reluctant to break. He had nothing to say to this formidable woman that wouldn’t sound trite. While they waited, Hannelore Bern reached into a pocket in the top of the case and extracted an envelope. She slit it open with a silver paperknife and read the contents, pausing to look at Richard from time to time. Her glance made him uncomfortable. She put the letter down and looked once more at him, steadily, examining his appearance.

Then she spoke. ‘Stand up and walk across the room, if you please.’

Puzzled, Richard nevertheless did as she asked, pausing at her command and turning around while she regarded him appraisingly from her desk. He felt awkward and embarrassed while Frau Bern continued to regard him. All his anxiety about being found out came back. What would this woman think, he wondered, if she knew that he was really a man in woman’s clothing?

Frau Bern spoke again. ‘Very good. If Margaret had not told me all about you, I would never have known for sure that you are not a woman. She has taught you well.’ Frau Bern paused, and then went on, ‘But she has been doing this for years. She has had a lot of practice.’

There seemed no fitting reply to that remark. Richard merely nodded. He was saved from further conversation by the return of the young girl with the tea things. Both of them waited in silence until she had withdrawn. Richard poured the tea for them both and sat down at a nod from Frau Bern.

‘Margaret says you are to stay here for some time before returning. This is our usual arrangement. It looks more natural than dashing back immediately. Someone might become suspicious. She also said that you might benefit from further training while you are here. So you will be staying at my chateau, and I shall try to make the time as interesting as possible.’

Richard nodded, but felt a stab of dismay. He had told Helena that he would be back in only a few days, and she would be expecting him. As soon as he had the duplicate keys, they were going to take the damning evidence and flee to England and a new life. But that would have to wait now. During his time with Margaret, he had become accustomed to taking orders, and this Swiss woman had the same air of expecting to be obeyed. If this was what Margaret wanted, he would do it. And not altogether unwillingly. Frau Bern would no doubt see that the time was interesting, in the sense in which he had come to interpret the word since his meeting with Helena and her domineering aunt.

Before the silence could become awkward again, it was broken by the entrance of the young woman who had escorted him to the office. She was carrying a handful of papers, and she went through the doorway of a small room opening off the main office. Richard saw that it was lined with filing cabinets. She knelt on the floor and began placing the papers in the drawers. Once again he noticed how she kept her back straight and refrained from bending as much as possible. Frau Bern watched him watching her, but she said nothing until the young woman stood up. Then she beckoned her over to the desk.