City of Secrets (33 page)

“What?” he said in a deeper, thicker voice than she remembered. She could not answer. “Tell me, darling.”

“Oh, Devin...” He lowered his mouth to the sensitive area between her breasts, and pleasure rippled through her, meeting the sensation that spread more slowly, more hotly, from between her legs, melting her with desire. “Please, Devin. Now...”

She was rewarded with yet another bolt of sheer sensation as he moved his weight more exactly over hers, and she moved her long legs to hold him there before his first sweet thrust made her rise instinctively to meet it. Then he thrust deeper, sweeter, and again and again until she cried out, unable to bear any more but wanting it to go on forever—as if that sudden burst of fire within her had not been so clearly the peak she had wanted to scale. And he had led her to it, only he. It was the one thing neither could do alone. But together they could do more than the whole world.

He drew a deep breath and lifted himself off her, leaving the cool, indifferent air to bring her back to reality. She sighed and turned a little to hug some of the warmth to her a little longer. Then she laid her head on his warm, moist chest and closed her eyes.

“I love you,” she said and fell asleep.

#

The light had scarcely changed outside the window when Maddie felt Devin wake up even before she did. Her body shifted slightly when he left the bed, and she reached for the still-warm covers. She did not want to wake up, but a few minutes later he brought her a dressing gown and held it out to her. “I want to talk to you.”

“Can’t we talk in bed?” she said, provocatively.

He laughed. “No. Too many distractions.” He turned so that he would not see her as she stood up and wrapped the gown around her. Then she followed him into the sitting room, where he had lighted a fire. She shivered a little as she sank down on the carpet in front of it, disregarding the chairs he had put out. He joined her, wrapping his arms around her from behind. That was better; soon she was warm again. “What do you want to talk about?”

“Where did you tell Florence I was last night?”

“I said you’d got a telegram that the prince would be arriving earlier than expected. I wanted to make her think that you had to go off and make some official arrangement or other.”

He turned her head toward him, and she saw admiration in his eyes. “Well, isn’t that my clever Maddie,” he said
.

“Why, what did I do?”

“It occurred to me after you left that we should have coordinated our stories, but I couldn’t have come up with a better one myself.”

“Thank you, I suppose.”

“What else did you talk about last night?” he said before she could puzzle out what was so clever about the first excuse that had come to her.

“Over supper? Florence’s shopping, mostly.”

“Can you remember exactly?”

To her own surprise, Maddie found that she did remember almost everything that was said, even her parting conversation with Geoffrey, and even though she had listened with only half her attention at the time. She repeated it all back to Devin, thinking at the same time that heightened physical sensitivity must also sharpen one’s other senses, a phenomenon she had never observed before. She wanted to ask Devin if he had noticed it, but when she finished her recital and looked at him, he was staring into the fire, almost unaware of her again. She waited patiently for him to come back to her, knowing he would. But before he did, she suddenly solved another puzzle.

“Devin!”

He looked at her, still only half aware of her.

“Do you suspect the Wingates of complicity in this affair?  What reason could they have?”

He shrugged, but his admiration for her intelligence was there in his eyes again. “I’m not sure, and I have no idea of a motive. I also have no proof of it, but then again, I know nothing that would disprove it. They always seem to be in the right place at the right time, and now Florence even has access to the prince. Not that I can see her shooting him with her own little pistol and making a public martyr of herself, when with a little forethought she could get away scot-free.”

Maddie clutched his arm, suddenly remembering other things. “But it makes sense! Florence knew, in Paris, when you left for Baden. How did she know so quickly if she—or someone in her employ—wasn’t watching you?”

He looked at her intently. “What else do you remember? When did the Wingates arrive in London?”

“They were there when I arrived. Florence said they had come over on the—the
Britannia
—yes, the week before I did. Oliver can find out the date, but why is that important?”

“To trace their movements ... and their contacts. Which port did they sail from?”

“New York.”

“And before that?”

Maddie frowned, trying to remember. “As I recall ... yes, they came from Pittsburgh. I remember thinking at the time that was odd, Florence being from South Carolina.” She saw that that meant something to him. “Why? What about Pittsburgh?”

“There was a meeting of American anarchists in Pittsburgh last spring. Didn’t you say your husband had been there ... and went to New York later?”

“Why, yes ... could they have met?”

“It doesn’t matter now, but they might have, yes.”

“Devin, there’s another thing”—memories and impressions flooded her mind faster than she could sort them out—“I wondered why they stayed at the Bristol in Paris instead of the Ritz even though it’s right across the square from the Ritz. I could wave to Florence when I was in that suite the prince took later.”

She remembered, too, the night he had burst in on that supposedly empty suite, and she turned away to hide her smile so it would not distract him.

“But why,” she asked, “if it is the Wingates, have they let so many opportunities go by?”

Devin shrugged. “Who knows? There may have been some unexpected hitch in plans. There may have been too many people around. The gunman may have forgotten to buy bullets. This plot has been too hard to pin down all along, a sure sign that the planning was careful, and the planners careful not to let any of it show on the surface. But if Florence is the famous missing head of the dog—and it’s too late now for me to look for anyone else—then she would have provided herself, if not with an unassailable alibi, then with a clear escape route. Germany is much safer than France, but she still needs time to get away from Baden.”

“So she was biding her time until she learned to predict the prince’s movements to the minute.” Maddie looked into the fire; it was low now, but she was no longer cold. “To think we were supposed to be friends, and here I am talking about her as if she—Devin!”

“Yes?”

“When Geoffrey brought me back here after supper, I said good-night to him—but he said good-bye. Oh, Devin ... could he have known? Could he be part of it? Somehow I can believe it of Florence, but not of Geoffrey.”

“I don’t know. He may be innocent; he may never have suspected anything. On the other hand, he may be the cleverest of the lot.”

He looked up at the clock over the fireplace and stood, pulling Maddie up with him. “I must go, darling. I’m meeting Oliver at six o’clock. Stay here, and I’ll send word as soon as I can.”

The sky was much lighter outside the window now, although it was still not much past dawn. She put her arms around his neck. “How can I help?”

“You already have—immensely. With luck, they’ll make a move sooner than they intended, thinking the prince will arrive earlier, and we’ll have them. Just stay here now, Maddie, where I won’t have to worry about you.” He bent his head to kiss her and added, “And so I’ll have something to look forward to when I get back.”

She returned his kiss eagerly—to give him something to look forward to—and said good-bye.

When he was gone, she picked up the telephone to summon Louise.

“Sergeant Brenner...”

“Sir!”

Brenner saluted smartly. Oliver sighed. The boy was either standing stiffly at attention or fawning all over Oliver like a large dog begging to go for a walk—or worse, looking for a way to prove his devotion to his master, for Brenner had conceived an admiration for Oliver that he expressed in a protective attitude that Oliver could neither discourage nor diminish without hurting poor Brenner’s feelings. It was obvious now why Grant had foisted the young policeman off on him, and Oliver had to remind himself at frequent intervals of his need of a translator, if not a watchdog.

“Sergeant Brenner, I assume there is a criminal element in this otherwise delightful town, or you and your colleagues would be out of a job. Where is one most likely to encounter it?”

“Well, sir—there was a pickpocket apprehended in the garden of the Schloss last week.”

“Surely he didn’t live there?”

“Why, no, sir. He lived in the Kufer-Strasse.”

“Fine. Let us go there and talk to his neighbors.”

Brenner looked dubious but, ever willing, he led Oliver through the narrow winding streets of the old town to boarding houses named for their owners rather than for the stepdaughter of Napoleon, as was the considerably more luxurious Stephanie, and to workingmen’s cafes, which reminded Oliver of the ones Paul had led him through in Paris. For that matter, they weren’t much different from the ones he’d frequented himself as a young man in Chicago, except that here the patrons were considerably less open to conversing with a stranger, either because they knew who Brenner was, even out of uniform, or because Teutonic reticence closed their mouths.

Brenner made up for his neighbors by keeping up a running commentary on the landmarks they passed. At least, they were landmarks to Brenner, who had grown up on that street and attended the
gymnasium
on that square. This building was where his father, long dead, was born, and that other the church where his sister, with whom he now lived in a more genteel part of town, had been married.

Despite Brenner’s efforts, however, they learned nothing useful from this pub crawl, and Oliver called a halt after two hours and too many beers downed in an effort to evoke a little
Gemutlichkeit.
He sat down in an outdoor café facing the now-deserted Markt-Platz, ordered another beer for Brenner and a glass of mineral water for himself, and fell to considering his next move.

But his mind began wandering in unexpected directions, and Oliver found himself thinking about Chicago again. It was the sign—in English, oddly enough—over a modest little shop across the square that did it. The place appeared to be a wholesale linen merchant’s, but it was the association of its name, in English, with what he was looking for, Oliver supposed, that made him think of Chicago. The shop was called Haymarket Hall.

There’d been a Haymarket Square in Chicago too, but its associations were different now than they’d been when he was a boy and the Haymarket had no blood on it. But in 1886, a workers’ meeting there had been broken up by the police; a bomb was thrown into the crowd and several policemen were killed. Eight alleged anarchists were convicted of the crime, seven of them sentenced to hang.

Maybe things didn’t change all that much, Oliver thought. Bombs. Anarchists. Policemen. Even hay markets. They’d always be there in some form or other.
Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

Maybe he had drunk too many beers, after all.

Four of the convicted men were actually hanged, despite the lack of evidence that any of them had actually thrown the bomb, and despite a petition campaign started by the friends and families of the convicted men. It was finally conceded that the jury had been packed, the judge biased, and the convictions unjust. There were still people in Chicago who hated the police and the courts—and the whole world, some of them—for what had happened in the Haymarket.

Oliver frowned. Why did that raise another association—not clearly enough to put a name to it, but enough to nag at the back of his mind?
It could be anyone,
Devin Grant had told Oliver when he asked who he was looking for, who was behind this Frank Hartwell, who seemed to come from nowhere and belong to no one. But everyone belonged somewhere, even if he didn’t admit to it. Oliver wondered if Frank Hartwell was even the man’s real name. He’d have to ask Grant when he saw him the next morning. He glanced at his watch. No, this morning. It was already past midnight, and even Brenner had fallen asleep over his
stein.

“Time to go home, Sergeant,” Oliver said, shaking the solid shoulder in its cheap corduroy jacket—his plain clothes, Brenner had called them, showing off his English vernacular. “Your sister will be wondering what’s become of you, Guntar,” he said, a little louder.

Brenner grunted and shook himself awake. He stood up but was too sleepy to salute as Oliver rose, dug some money out of his pocket to pay their bill, and went off across the square. Brenner shuffled along behind, yawning and rubbing his eyes—and collided with Oliver, who had suddenly come to a halt.

Could it be—?

Oliver scarcely felt the sergeant’s bulk hitting him, and he automatically adjusted his footing to keep from being knocked over.

Why not? It could be anyone, after all.

“Which way is the post office, Brenner?”

“
Ist geschlossen,”
the sergeant mumbled, forgetting his English.

“That’s why you’re a policeman, Brenner,” Oliver told him cheerily, “so you can wake up postmasters in the middle of the night. Come on. I have to send a telegram.”

Maybe this was it—the final piece in the puzzle he’d worried over for so long. He couldn’t wait to tell Grant.

#

Maddie had no intention of staying in her hotel room all day, biting her fingernails and pacing the carpet, but if Devin thought she was there he wouldn’t worry about her, which was the important thing. She had let him go away the night before thinking she would stay, but she allowed herself only a few hours’ sleep before getting up, bathing herself as best she could from the china jug and bowl set out on the washstand, then waking Louise to help her dress. She scarcely noticed her maid’s almost comically perplexed look on finding Maddie’s clothes strewn all over the bedroom floor, and half an hour later she was wolfing down a breakfast she scarcely tasted while Louise delivered a note to Florence’s maid, asking if Florence would join her for coffee.