The Lost Empress (16 page)

Chapter Nineteen

Tayte and DI Bishop were met on the drive of the Ashcroft residence by a cheerful young member of staff in a smart navy suit. He informally introduced himself as John, and then he escorted them to the rear of the house, where the thump of tennis balls could be heard. John ushered them to a table on the partially shaded terrace behind the house, which overlooked the tennis court and gardens, with an expanse of hazy countryside beyond.

‘They should be finished soon,’ John said as they sat down. ‘Can I get you something to drink?’

‘Black coffee, thanks,’ Tayte and Bishop said in harmony, and John left them to watch the tennis, which Tayte thought was all very British.

He settled back on the upholstered rattan chair he’d been invited to sit on, and while they waited for their hosts to finish their game, he asked Bishop, ‘Are you from Kent?’

Bishop raised his eyebrows and nodded. ‘Born and bred.’

‘So, are you a Kentish man or a man of Kent? I see there’s a distinction, depending on where you were born.’

‘I was born near Canterbury, east of the River Medway, so according to folk lore that makes me a man of Kent.’

‘And any man born in Kent to the west of the Medway is a Kentish man?’

‘Or maid if it’s a woman. It harks back to the days of William the Conqueror. The East resisted the invasion, while the West surrendered without putting up much of a fight, so the East came to regard the West as Kent-ish, or so I read.’

Tayte became aware then that the near constant sound of a tennis ball being thumped back and forth since their arrival had stopped. He looked back towards the court to see three people—two men and a woman in their tennis whites—walking slowly up the garden path towards them. They were dabbing at their perspiration with towels as they talked, and judging from his animated arm movements, Tayte supposed the taller, younger of the two men was the tennis coach, finishing off the lesson. The coach broke away before reaching the terrace steps, and Tayte and Bishop stood up as their hosts came to meet them.

‘Good morning,’ the man said in bright tones, still trying to catch his breath. ‘It’s another fine one, isn’t it? Although I could use a breeze to help cool me down.’

Tayte and Bishop returned his smile. Tayte put him in his fifties. He had short brown hair of a slightly unnatural shade, which was glistening with sweat in the sunlight. Beside him was a woman who appeared a few years his junior, her blonde hair tied up in a ponytail behind her tennis cap.

‘Thank you for agreeing to see us, Lord Ashcroft,’ Bishop said. Then, as he made to continue, their host stopped him.

‘Do call me Brendan,’ he said. ‘I don’t go in for all that peerage puffery. This is my wife, Rachel.’

Everyone sat down, and John arrived with a tray bearing a large cafetière of coffee with all the usual accoutrements, two tall glasses, and a jug containing what appeared to be Pimm’s.

‘The sun’s just about over the yardarm,’ Brendan said as he poured his and his wife’s drinks. ‘At least, it is in the North Atlantic this time of year, which is where the phrase was first coined, and Pimm’s is just the tonic after a gruelling hour on the court. Help yourselves to the coffee, or shall I have John bring some more glasses?’

‘Thank you,’ Bishop said, ‘but not while I’m on duty.’

‘Coffee’s good for me,’ Tayte added as he picked up the cafetière and poured, thinking that a caffeine shot was all the tonic he needed.

‘Will there be anything else?’ John asked, addressing Brendan.

Brendan began to answer, but his wife beat him to it. ‘There’s a cardboard box on the landing at the top of the back staircase,’ she said. ‘Could you bring it out to us?’

‘Of course,’ John said, and then he retreated back into the house via the terrace doors he’d previously arrived by.

The idea of a box being brought out to them greatly intrigued Tayte. He was already imagining what it might contain, hoping there would be something to help unlock another piece of the puzzle that was Alice Stilwell’s life.

‘So . . .’ Brendan said as they all settled back with their drinks. ‘How can we be of service?’

Bishop answered. ‘I’m investigating a recent murder that could be connected to events that occurred a hundred years ago.’

Tayte saw that as his cue to join in. ‘And I’m trying to put those past events together,’ he said. ‘Events that appear to centre around a young woman called Alice Stilwell née Metcalfe. Are you still in touch with the Metcalfe family? By all accounts your ancestors were close family friends.’

‘Not so much these days, I’m afraid,’ Brendan said. ‘We cross paths at one function or another from time to time, but that’s about it. Associative friendships tend to drift once the root has gone, don’t you think?’

‘Yes, I suppose they do,’ Tayte said, thinking that he hadn’t been in touch with Marcus Brown’s wife, Emmy, so much since his old friend had died. He made a mental note to correct that, and then he moved the conversation on. ‘I’ve heard that Alice was a close childhood friend of Archibald Ashcroft—your great-grandfather’s brother and the son of Lord Thomas Ashcroft.’

Tayte already had his briefcase open on the floor beside him, with Davina’s photo at the ready. He withdrew it and slid it across the table, indicating the two young people he was referring to.

‘I know the names,’ Brendan said, and Rachel nodded in agreement. ‘I’ve no need to tell you that Thomas Ashcroft was a naval man—that much is plain from this picture. You might not know, however, that Archibald followed in his father’s footsteps.’

‘He died very young, didn’t he?’ Rachel said. She sounded unsure.

Brendan nodded. ‘I believe the First World War took him, although I’ve never checked. I suppose that’s why my great-grandfather, Ernest, inherited all this.’ He cast a hand towards the house and added, ‘Fate can change with the wind, can’t it? For good or bad.’

John came out with the aforementioned box then, and Rachel went to meet him, carrying it the rest of the way before setting it down on the floor beside her chair. Tayte thought it looked like an old hat box, and it was still dusty, clearly having been tucked away out of sight and mind for some years. Rachel sat down again, removed the lid and reached inside, bringing a handful of old photographs up onto the table.

‘I knew we had these somewhere,’ she said. ‘It didn’t take long to find them after you called this morning, Inspector.’ She began to flick through the images, pausing from time to time to study one. ‘Most of them look too recent to be of any interest to you,’ she added. Then she set them aside and delved into the box again, bringing up another handful. ‘Here we are. This looks more promising.’

She looked one of the photographs over and then passed it to Tayte. ‘That’s from Granddad Ernest’s wedding. September 1912.’ She grinned at Tayte. ‘I only know that because it says so on the back.’

Tayte turned the image over and read the now faint handwriting. He considered such thoughtful labelling as something of a gift in his profession; an image and a few well-chosen words, especially names and dates, could confirm so much. Rachel offered up another photograph, and Tayte was pleased to see that whoever had written on the back of the image he was holding had clearly made a habit of it.

‘Hubby at the coronation, June 1911,’ Rachel read out.

The image was of a proud, if somewhat stern-faced, man in a highly decorated dress uniform, at what was evidently the coronation of King George V.

‘The handwriting’s the same,’ Rachel added, confirming that the inscriptions had been written by Thomas Ashcroft’s wife.

Tayte noticed that Rachel’s face had suddenly lit up. She had another image in her hand, which she slid across the table. It was the young boy and girl he recognised from the photograph Davina had loaned him: Archibald and Alice, holding hands in front of a merry-go-round. They were a few years older in this image, but the resemblance was unmistakable. The words Tayte read on the back as he turned it over confirmed it, along with the year 1897, making Alice seven years old when the photograph was taken. Tayte squinted at her image, trying to see the resemblance with his client’s great-grandmother, but Alice was still too young in this photograph to be sure.

‘The boy was just like his father,’ Brendan said, interrupting Tayte’s scrutiny.

He looked up to see Brendan looking over his wife’s shoulder at the next image she was holding. A moment later, Rachel offered it up. It showed a young man in a naval officer’s uniform, who looked to be in his early twenties, his abundant smile dimpling his cheeks. In the background a building faced predominantly with Portland stone filled the shot.

‘Archie’s first day at the office,’ Rachel said. ‘July 1913.’

‘That’s the Old Admiralty Building in the background,’ Brendan said.

Tayte looked more closely. ‘London?’

‘Yes, those towers are unmistakable. If the picture were in colour, you’d see them capped with copper, turned verdigris by the weather. It would have been taken from Horse Guards Parade.’

Tayte got his notebook out. When Brendan had said that Archibald had followed in his father’s footsteps and joined the Navy, and that he thought he had died during the First World War, Tayte had imagined the sailor had served aboard one of His Majesty’s warships. Yet this photograph confirmed that Archibald had served at what was, in 1913, British naval headquarters. He wrote the details down and made a note to look into Archibald Ashcroft more thoroughly when had the chance.

British naval headquarters
. . .

The discovery prompted Tayte to wonder what the young officer’s chief responsibilities were prior to the outbreak of war, and in light of Alice’s albeit alleged spy activity, whether he had ready access to information that might prove useful to an enemy. Whatever Archibald’s responsibilities, given where he worked, Tayte believed it was highly likely that he did.

Chapter Twenty

Thursday, 30 April 1914.

Just over a week had passed since Alice had made the discovery that she was not the only person at Hamberley spying for the kaiser. In that time she had travelled to numerous harbours and ports along the South Coast of England, adding Portsmouth, Southampton, Folkestone, and Newhaven to the list of places she had visited at Raskin’s behest, to observe and report on Britain’s naval activity. Accordingly, she had spent little time at Hamberley, and, day by day, the lie that she was visiting her sick friend in Margate had escalated to the point that her friend was now, as far as her parents were concerned, at death’s door. Alice hated lying to her family, and she had come to despise herself for it—and for everything else the people now in control of her life had forced her to become.

The train carrying her home after a thankfully uneventful day in Poole hissed to a stop as it came into the next station. The compartment Alice was sitting in cleared of the middle-aged couple who had been her travelling companions on the London & South Western Railway since Winchester, and she slowly turned her head to the rain-streaked window beside her, noting from the sign on the concourse outside that she was in Woking. She had lost count of how many towns she had passed through. It was already nearly an hour past dark, and she knew it would be very late by the time she was back at Hamberley.

She shifted in her seat, and her focus snapped to the dark reflection gazing back at her. She thought how tired she looked and how changed she appeared even to herself after all that had happened. She thought the old Alice she had known in Holland little more than two weeks ago had now passed beyond both recognition and redemption. Settling back in her seat again, she closed her eyes and forced the only happy thought she could muster into her head.

She saw Chester as she had seen him before she set out that morning, fully recovered, in his little riding breeches, excited to be spending the day with his grandmother and the new pony Alice suspected had been bought for him on account of his recent fever. She pictured Charlotte in the kitchen with Mrs Morris, cake mixture on her nose and a toothy grin on her face, and she was thankful that her mother and the household staff had taken to keeping the children amused during her absence. The images Alice conjured in her mind brought her comfort, but even those happy thoughts were tainted by her situation, because it meant she had not been with her children to share those memories.

Somewhere outside the carriage a whistle blew, loud and shrill, and a few seconds later the train was moving again to the slow puff, puff, puff of the Adams T3 class locomotive that Alice hoped would soon arrive at London’s Waterloo Station. From there she would take the London, Chatham and Dover Railway to Rochester and her bed, and she could not wish herself there soon enough. She wondered how many more tasks she would have to endure, and how many more tiresome train journeys she would have to undertake in the process. She closed her eyes more tightly; with the compartment now empty, she thought she would allow the carriage to rock her to sleep until London, but the sound of the compartment door opening caused her to open her eyes again.

When she saw who had entered, all thoughts of sleep left her. It was Raskin, in a pair of loose-fitting trousers and a thick Aran cardigan, as if he’d just stepped off a fishing boat. The Dutchman filled the doorframe to such an extent that he had to stoop as he entered the carriage. He neither spoke to Alice nor looked at her, and the sight of him caused her to catch her breath, more out of surprise than fear—although fear was never far away when Raskin was around.

Alice watched him close the door and turn into the compartment, carrying his hat and coat and a brown leather case, which he placed on the seat beside him as he sat opposite her. He pushed his fair hair back off his brow and settled. Then at last he looked at her, smiling the well-practiced smile that Alice had learned to see through. She glanced at his hat, a navy-blue peaked cap, the likes of which she had seen aplenty around the docks and harbours she had recently frequented. She noticed it was dry, suggesting he had been on the train for some time, because it had been raining for several stops.

‘I can see you are puzzled to see me, Alice.’

Alice relaxed her brow, which she now realised was set in a deep furrow. ‘Yes,’ she said. She was really past caring how this man came and went about his business with such stealth, but on this occasion she had to admit that she was intrigued to understand how he knew what train she would be on, and more importantly, why he wanted to see her before their usual time. It had become routine for her to hand over her report at night below the garden terrace at Hamberley. Surely he knew today’s report would not yet be ready.

‘How did you know where to find me?’

‘Find you?’ Raskin laughed softly. ‘My dear Alice, I never lost you. I’ve been in your shadow all day. First to Poole Harbour where you took refreshment at Harvey’s Tea Gardens, and then to the quay. As dusk fell, I boarded the train after you, and I have been looking in on your compartment at every stop, waiting for our chance to talk.’

‘Why? What about?’

Raskin took an apple from his pocket and began to toss it slowly from one enormous hand to the other as he spoke. ‘I have something important to tell you. I must remain in London tonight, so I cannot collect my report in the usual way. I will collect it when we next meet, which I hope will be tomorrow. What I have to say cannot wait.’

He reached into the folds of his coat on the seat beside him and withdrew a curved knife that was about eight inches long. Alice locked eyes on it at once and followed its shining steel to the apple that Raskin began to slice, as if he were carving a fine sculpture. He took a piece of apple to his mouth on the edge of the blade and their eyes met.

‘Do you like my knife?’ Raskin offered it out. ‘It’s a whale flensing knife. It used to belong to my father. I’m from a long line of whalers. The handle is made of whale bone and brass. It’s very strong and easy to clean.’

Alice did not like it. She had never heard of a flensing knife before, but she could imagine its purpose. She turned away in disgust and looked out the window, but it was so black outside that all she could see was the compartment and the Dutchman’s angular features reflected back.

Raskin laughed and continued to carve his apple. ‘I have a new task for you, Alice. Something different.’

Alice turned back to him. ‘Different?’

‘Yes, a very special task, in fact.’

Alice knew she had not been recruited in this manner merely to count ships. She had always known there had to be more to it.

‘What is it? What must I do now?’

Raskin sighed as though contemplating how best to tell her. A moment later he said, ‘Traditionally, Britain’s enemy has been France, and so your sea defences are largely concentrated along the South Coast, leaving the eastern shores of Essex, Suffolk, and Norfolk wide open. We are aware that your government, in conjunction with the Admiralty, have prepared plans for the defences of East Anglia, such that Britain would be better prepared to repel an invasion targeted at England’s East Coast by a new enemy.’

‘Germany?’ Alice said.

‘Germany, yes. And Austria-Hungary and Italy. There will be other nations, too. It goes without saying that these plans would be of significant benefit to Germany, come the day.’ Raskin paused and leaned forward on his elbows, apple in one hand, knife in the other. ‘Put simply, Alice. I want you to photograph them for me.’

Alice’s jaw dropped. It seemed laughable to her that she could even get close to such information. Then a terrible thought struck her, and she understood precisely what Raskin had in mind. There was only one way she could do it, and the idea left her numb. She stared at Raskin as he chewed his apple, and then he began to nod slowly, confirming her thoughts, clearly aware that she had just realised what she had to do.

‘Your good friend Archibald Ashcroft will help you,’ Raskin said. ‘I believe he will do anything you ask of him, with a little encouragement.’

Alice was already shaking her head in defiance. ‘I won’t do it.’

‘But you must.’

‘How do you know all this? You can’t know how Archie feels for me.’

‘I am a very good spy, Alice. I know many things. Besides, I heard the two of you talking on the terrace that night I first came to you at Hamberley.’

The idea of the man eavesdropping on her private conversations repulsed Alice, but she thought Raskin would have to understand the depth of Archie’s feelings far better than could be gauged by overhearing what was said between her and Archie that night to believe he would betray his country for her. It occurred to her then that someone at Hamberley must have told him that Archie would do anything for her, and she was reminded of the telephone conversation she had recently overheard in her father’s study, which had told her she was not the only spy at Hamberley.

‘I can’t ask it of him.’

‘You can, Alice. And you will. Or you know what will happen.’

Even if Archie agreed to it, Alice thought she would sooner leap from the train than use his love for her so cruelly against him, but the thought passed when she considered what would happen to Henry and her children. Their lives were more important to her than the betrayal of a friend or a few secrets that might never come to be of any use to anyone.

‘If I do this, will my husband be released? Will all this stop?’

‘I cannot say,’ Raskin said. ‘Such decisions are for others to make. But I am sure it will bring that happy day much closer.’

Alice wondered whose decision it was to make. She wanted to ask Raskin who he reported to so that she might make a plea to him, but she knew she would get no answer from the Dutchman, and her impertinence would only anger him, which was something she did not want to do at any time, let alone while he was holding that awful flensing knife.

Raskin picked up the brown leather case he had been carrying when he came into the compartment. He opened it and withdrew a black metal object that was rectangular in shape and roughly the size of a house brick.

‘It’s a prototype camera called the Ur-Leica,’ he said. ‘It was developed last year in Wetzler, Germany, by Oskar Barnack, an optical engineer at the Ernst Leitz Optische Werke. It’s really a very clever design. It uses 35 mm cine-film. See how small it is.’

Alice took it with a heavy heart, as though doing so meant that she had now accepted the task. ‘It’s quite heavy,’ she said, but she had to agree that it was small compared to all the other photographic cameras she had seen. She thought her Uncle Oscar would love such a device.

Raskin proceeded to give Alice a few instructions, letting her know how to release the shutter and wind the film on, adding that everything else was set up.

‘You will need as much natural light as possible,’ he added. ‘Use of a flash lamp is out of the question. I’m told the lens is designed to cover a wide angle, so it will be difficult to miss your subject as long as you are not too close. A couple of feet should do.’

‘When would you like it back?’ Alice asked.

‘Tomorrow evening.’

‘And where should I take it?’

‘I will find you,’ Raskin said, and Alice did not doubt him.

Alice alighted from the train at Rochester station, still thinking about Archie and the seemingly impossible task Raskin had set her. She had called Archie from a public telephone kiosk as soon as she arrived in London, saying only that she was in trouble and that she needed his help, and Archie had agreed to collect her from
Rochester
without a moment’s hesitation. Alice never doubted he would come.
He’s such a sweet boy,
she thought, wishing now that she had agreed to go for a ride with him in his motorcar when he’d visited Hamberley to see the children the previous Sunday. It had been the only day she was allowed off from her spying escapades, and only then because the railway service was generally so poor on Sundays.

Alice came out from the station building and saw Archie’s car waiting. It wasn’t raining, but she could see from the puddles here and there that it had been, and the yellow and silver Vauxhall C10 had its folding roof up. She stopped and stared into its bulbous chrome headlights for several seconds, wondering how she could go through with this. She had prepared her lines on the train journey and had rehearsed them over and over—lies she knew could not fail to manipulate Archie into doing whatever she asked of him. But even now, she considered whether to just tell him the truth about everything that had happened and leave the rest to chance. She wanted to tell him, but she could not gamble with the lives of her family.

The car’s headlights winked at Alice, and a moment later Archie stepped out. She started walking again as he came to meet her, and he was full of smiles, despite the circumstances that had brought them together for this late night rendezvous. It began to rain again as they met, and Archie laughed.

‘This isn’t at all what I had in mind when I said I wanted to take you for a spin,’ he said. ‘We shan’t see anything of the countryside.’