Pirate (17 page)

“Listen. Here’s what Jeremy was able to gather. Henry Bulling was some kind of spy inside the French embassy. He was in fact working for the Chinese government. Passing along information. Something to do with oil. New French refineries being built. Capacity of oil tankers, et cetera. Does this make any sense?”

“Indeed, it fits perfectly. One wonders why the Chinese are so interested in French oil, since the French have virtually none of their own. They import all of it from the Gulf States, most notably, until the war, Iraq.”

“I’ve no idea. But the Chinese secret police, who were running Henry, discovered that he was having secret meetings with British Intelligence. In St. James’ Park. That Henry Bulling was a double agent. They abducted him from his flat and somehow got the truth out of him. Henry gave them your name.”

“Ah, it all starts to make sense. The Te-Wu may well have issued a death warrant with my name on it,” Ambrose said. “Sending a signal to MI6 to mind its own business. That wouldn’t be unusual.”

“Ambrose, how can you be so damned cool about this information? She, the woman, was apparently the one who orchestrated the kidnapping and did the interrogating. She gave Bulling a choice. She could kill him. Or he could kill you.”

“He missed, didn’t he?” Ambrose said, feeling a sudden pang for Mrs. Purvis. After all, the bullet that had nearly nicked her heart had been meant for his.

“Yes, and thank God he did miss, Ambrose. But I fear the next attempt will not be quite so catch-as-catch-can.”

“You were very kind to call, Diana,” Ambrose said. “And, wise. Now, let me pour you a brandy. I think we could both use one.”

“I need to be clear in my mind. That man, the one with orange hair, Ambrose,” she began, “is your cousin.”

“Yes. Caught spying on the French by the Chinese. Who clearly have something to hide.”

“Yes. And if he’s dead, the woman is planning to kill you herself. Jeremy managed to sneak a peek at her when they left. She was Chinese, Ambrose. She was the woman in the photograph. That dreadful Chinese spy.”

“Yes, I guessed as much. Hawke and I had a small run-in with the Chinese some years ago. Nasty affair. A lot of people ended up dead. We, Hawke and I, ended up on some kind of list in Beijing, according to MI6. Since I’ve been rattling their cage recently, I suppose it’s possible the Mandarins have worked their way round to me again.”

“Again?”

“Their previous attempts were unsuccessful. I thought they’d forgotten about me. It is not beyond the realm of possibility that my dear cousin Henry would sic this woman on me out of pure spite and malice. Or that he is himself very much alive and the true villain of the piece. He does have motive, after all. He is of the opinion that I stole his inheritance.”

“Your lovely cottage.”

“Yes. Heart’s Ease. We shall see whether or not that shoe fits. Diana, you used the phrase ‘running him’ a few moments ago. Spy lingo. Do you enjoy such light entertainments? Spy thrillers and the like?”

“Well, I—”

There was a sound beyond the window. A dull thud, as if something heavy had fallen in the rose bed. Lady Mars leaped to her feet, her hand at her throat.

“Ambrose! Someone has been listening at that window!”

“Get down, Lady Mars!” Ambrose said, moving to the window and pulling his gun. “Get on the floor, now!”

The glass in the window exploded inward and a bullet tore into the plasterwork inches away from Congreve’s head. He saw a dark blur of shadow moving quickly away from the window. He raised his pistol and fired once, twice, three times.

“GOOD MORNING, YOUNG PELHAM!” AMBROSE CRIED, STORMING
into the kitchen, the bright yellow scarf wound round his neck fluttering behind him like a cricket pennant on opening day. “Come out, come out, wherever you are!”

“He’s in the butler’s pantry, Chief Inspector,” said a pretty young woman in a toque blanche who was sitting at a counter sorting Brussels sprouts. A beam of pure sunlight was streaming down on her white bowl of green vegetables and it looked like the kind of scene that would have sent Vermeer or his like rushing madly for his brushes.

“You’ll find me back here, sir,” Pelham’s distinctive and fluty voice floated from the pantry.

“A-ha!” Ambrose said, and headed in that direction, nodding and smiling at all and sundry. “Good morning, all! Lovely day, isn’t it?”

Congreve had awoken in a splendid humor. He wasn’t sure what was behind it. Still alive, for one thing. His marvelous new car, perhaps, or, chasing murderers in the moonlight across the grounds at Brixden House. Or the kiss Diana had planted on his cheek when he’d said goodnight. Whatever it was, life seemed full of sunshine and bursting with promise.

“Good morning, sir!” the kitchen staff replied as one, their voices hale and full of good cheer. This unbridled enthusiasm for the day at hand was one of the reasons Ambrose so enjoyed these early morning surprise visits to Hawkesmoor. The house was always a bustle of happy activity on a clear, sunny summer morning like this one. In the kitchens, in the gardens, in the stables, and throughout the house itself. Everywhere one went, someone was polishing something, dusting books, plumping pillows, making acres of glass sparkle in the sun.

It had become, Ambrose reflected as he passed through the bustling kitchen, a happy house once more. Vicky’s untimely death had cast a pall over Hawkesmoor. Alex Hawke’s doomed bride had been a great favorite in this house. Everyone was keenly anticipating the arrival of Lady Hawke, the new mistress of Hawkesmoor and the first woman to lay claim to that title since the death of Alex’s mother, tortured and killed at the hands of pirates in the Caribbean in the seventies.

When you thought about it, as Ambrose did at that moment, Alex Hawke’s entire life was just one long pirate story.

Victoria Sweet’s horrific murder on the steps of St. John’s Church had shocked and saddened everyone under this roof. And, indeed, many people throughout England still spoke of her loss with great sorrow. They had been a beautiful, popular couple. An aura of permanence and glamor seemed to surround them. It all vanished in an instant. After Hawke returned from Vicky’s funeral in Louisiana, this house, once so full of youth and promise, had gone dark once more.

Alex left Hawkesmoor for good after weeks of grieving, vowing never to return to the scene of so much sorrow. But now, on this fine June morning, it seemed as if the very sun itself had once more come from behind the clouds. And, perhaps it had.

“Ah, there you are, young Pelham!” Ambrose said, and sailed his straw boater into the pantry, causing the aged retainer to duck his head.

“Morning, Mr. Congreve,” the octogenarian said, giving the chief inspector a decidedly narrow look. In Pelham’s personal view, the man sometimes bordered on the overly boisterous.

Pelham said, “I’m just on my way up to his lordship with the morning tray. Follow along, if you’d like.”

“Having breakfast in bed, is he?” Congreve frowned.

“Hardly. His lordship was down for his breakfast at six, sir. Had it out there on the lawn with his papers, joined by a gentleman from the CIA, a houseguest who has since departed via helicopter. A helo, I believe he called it.”

“Ah, what’s this, then?” Ambrose asked, looking at the silver tray Pelham was preparing.

“A lemon, sir,” the butler sniffed. He was long accustomed to Congreve snooping about the kitchen, lifting pot lids and sampling soups. The two men had joined forces to raise the child Hawke after the loss of his parents and, finally, his grandfather when the boy was not yet twelve. Theirs was a long-simmering rivalry over the care and feeding of Alex Hawke.

“I can see that, Pelham, but what’s it for?”

“He’s going to eat it, sir. It’s become his daily midmorning pick-me-up, as it were.”

“Eat a whole lemon? Good lord. Why?”

“Some kind of new diet, sir. He is attempting to purge his body. I believe the word for his new regimen is ‘holistic.’ You’ll have to ask his lordship, I’m afraid. I don’t go there, as they say these days.”

“Well, let’s have it, then. Save your knees, my dear Pelham. I’ll carry this noble feast up to him.”

“You’ll find him in the armory, Chief Inspector. He’s been up there all morning long since his American friend Mr. Kelly departed.”

“Really? What on earth is he doing up there?”

“Cleaning his guns, sir. He says we’re going to war.”

“War? With whom?”

“I believe he mentioned France, sir.”

“France?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Ye gods.”

Ambrose mounted the smooth worn stone of the curving back staircase leading to the upper floors. Gaining the third floor, he paused at a door of carved oak to catch his breath. The design incorporated two animals locked in combat—the Scottish unicorn and the English lion. The door was slightly ajar and he pushed inside, using the tray. He saw Hawke at the far end of the room with his back to the door, standing beside a sunny window, burnishing an ancient pistol barrel to gleaming perfection. His beloved parrot, Sniper, was on his shoulder.

The walls of the great room were decorated floor to ceiling with spiral arrangements of antique arms. Just below the crown moldings were long ranks of stag antlers. And below that, a profusion of every kind of armament: swords, pikes, pistols, and long rifles. Perhaps a thousand weapons, from the fifteenth to the nineteenth centuries, lined the walls.

Other than the library, Congreve knew this was Alex’s favorite room in the entire house. The heavy velvet draperies had all been tied back away from the tall leaded windows and sunlight flooded the room. On the far wall hung a collection of eighteenth-century pirate flags, including the grim Jolly Roger flown by Hawke’s ancestor, Blackhawke himself.

“Morning, Alex,” Congreve said upon entering the room with the tray. “I saw your personal black standard fluttering from the ramparts and assumed you were in residence.
‘Fortune favors the fast.’
Blackhawke’s noble sentiment.”

Alex turned toward him and smiled. “And, so
true,
Ambrose! A fast ship and a star to sail her by, that’s the winning ticket. How else do you think I came to sit atop this pile of ill-gotten lucre? Piracy, of course! Give no quarter, lads!”

“Am I interrupting some sort of…private ritual?”

“No, no, by all means, come in, do come in!”

“Where’ve you been hiding yourself, Alex?”

“I just returned from
la belle France
yesterday morning. I haven’t rung you up because I’ve had Brick Kelly here, you see, and—what’s that?”

“Your lemon.”

“Right. Put it over there, if you don’t mind. I seem to have lost my bottle for it this morning.”

“One wonders why lemon, of all fruits,” Ambrose said, putting the tray down amidst an array of partially disassembled sixteenth-century rifles and flintlock pistols.

Hawke ignored the question and picked up a rifle.

“You see this gun, Ambrose? Bloody marvelous, isn’t it?”

“Stunning. What is it?”

“Wheellock rifle with breech-loader system, manufactured in Augsburg or Nuremberg in 1540. Belonged to some Prussian colonel named Andreas Teuffel von Gundersdorf. Glorious piece, I must say.”

“Alex, speak to me of war. And the dreaded French. But first, speak to me of lemons.”

“Ah. The latest thing,” Hawke said, plucking it from the tray and dipping it in a bowl of white powder. “Plenty of bioflavonoids in lemons, not to mention Vitamin C. Especially good for you if you dip them in this stuff. Natural sweetener the Japanese have been using for centuries. Called
Stevia rebaudiana.
Produces a blood-sugar-lowering effect on normal nondiabetics. Give it a whirl.”

“I’m trying to quit lemons, thanks very much, but don’t let me stop you.” Bioflavonoids? Japanese sweeteners? What on earth had the world come to?

Alex took a bite out of the thing and made an awful face. “I may give this up. Step closer to the window, Constable,” he said. “I must show you something before we conspire to save the world from the Red Menace.”

“What is it?”

“Look down there, in the courtyard,” Hawke said, feeding the lemon to Sniper, a bird who would eat red-hot plutonium if offered the stuff. “I’ve just noticed something odd. See it, old thing?” He was pointing directly at the Yellow Peril, as Ambrose had privately named his new iron steed.

“Why, yes, I do.”

“It’s a Morgan, you know,” Hawke explained. “A fairly old one, I think. The Plus Four. Wooden chassis. An absolute stunner, I must say. Brilliant paint scheme. I wonder what lucky fellow it belongs to. Pelham hasn’t announced anyone.”

“It’s mine, actually,” Congreve said, desperately trying to avoid looking smug.

“Yours? Don’t be silly, Ambrose! You don’t even know how to drive. You loathe any form of powered conveyance. You’ve not the least interest in—”

Congreve withdrew the keys from his trousers. They caught the light as he dangled them in front of Hawke’s eyes. “Let’s take her for a spin, shall we?”

“That machine actually belongs to you?”

“It does. I drove it here just minutes ago.”

“Good lord, he’s serious.”

“Any interest in a high-speed run over to the Cock & Cork for a bevvy to celebrate? A midmorning eye-opener?”

“We will indeed, but for now we have to talk of more serious matters, Constable. Let’s sit over there by the fire.”

When they were comfortable, Hawke said, “Brick Kelly was singing your praises last night at supper. He gave me something for you; it’s on my desk down in the library. A cold case file. A bizarre murder that occurred in Paris thirty-five years ago. Should you crack it, we could save the whole bloody world a lot of trouble.”

“I should be happy to put this affair on my docket, Alex. However, there’s another murder I’m bashing away at at the moment. My own.”

“Don’t tell me there’s been a second attempt? This is serious.”

“Very serious. This happened last night, in fact. I shot the bastard through a window. Down at Lady Mars’s Spring Cottage. Only winged him, unfortunately. Scene-of-Crime officers are all over the place now. There was a bit of blood on the roses below the window. They’ve promised a report before day’s end. The culprit escaped through the woods to a waiting car. I heard it start, ran to my own vehicle, and gave pursuit. Tried to catch it, you see, and very nearly succeeded. The Morgan is race-tuned. Something to do with the camshaft.”

“Someone is making a concerted effort to kill you, Ambrose. We must put a stop to this. Any idea who it is?”

“I thought it was my cousin, Bulling. And it might well be. But there’s also a Chinese agent involved, Alex, a woman. This might be an old wound reopened, I’m afraid. In which case, they’re after you, as well.”

“Ah. Last year’s tour up the Yangtze River to the Three Gorges Dam. Lucky to get out of there alive, weren’t we?”

“Possibly that unfortunate incident has come back to haunt us. On it’s simply that this woman, Bianca, has it in for me.”

“What’s her beef with you?”

“Her beef? You sound like some kind of film noir gumshoe, Alex. Well. You no doubt remember my dear cousin, Henry Bulling? Formerly employed in a secretarial position at the French embassy in London.”

“Chap whose chin was always trying to reach up to his mouth and finally gave up?”

“Exactly.”

“Peeved about your aunt’s will, was he not?”

“Hmm. My inheritance of Heart’s Ease. At the beginning of this affair, I thought Henry was perhaps sufficiently peeved about the house to commit murder. Upon further investigation, Sutherland and I have learned that it’s a bit more complicated. A woman named Bianca Moon is intimately involved. ‘Intimately’ is not a word chosen lightly. Bianca, a Chinese agent, is sexually involved, God help us, with my cousin. She discovered that Henry and I were meeting for quiet lunches in the park. The Yard, as you well know, was running Henry. So, we now learn, were the Chinese.”

“So Henry’s a double. The Chinese are trying to warn us off.”

“Henry
was
a double. Henry may be dead. Our Miss Moon was not at all pleased when Henry sent my new housekeeper, Mrs. Purvis, to hospital instead of me.”

“Mrs. Purvis was shot? I’d no idea. Was she seriously wounded?”

“She’s recovering nicely, thank heaven.”

“Good news. I was thinking it was our Henry hiding in the rosebushes at Spring Cottage. It sounds like his style.”

“I thought about that, too. The only one on earth who knew I was leaving my house in the middle of the night was Mrs. Purvis. Henry could have been parked on the street and followed me, I suppose, but it’s unlikely. I drove at high speed and watched the mirror the whole time. Nothing.”