The Old Vengeful (11 page)

She didn’t know quite what to make of that, because she knew she couldn’t trust him. But it sounded well-meant, and she wanted to believe that it was.

“I don’t see how I can help you, Mr Audley. But if it really is Number Seven …”

“Ah …how we’ve been lucky there.” Audley had brightened with her surrender. “Owing to Mitchell’s … exuberance … we cannot put any questions to your burglars. But before your arrival on the scene they had collected all they wanted to steal, it seems. So at least we know what they wanted.”

Paul Mitchell nodded at her. “Number Seven, Elizabeth.”

“The old
Vengeful
, Miss Loftus,” said Audley.

“
PUT ON YOUR
seat-belt,” said Paul. “Aske keeps telling me that I must wear it at all times. It’s getting to be a habit.”

The belt clicked, and she had better keep her wits about her, snapped the sound of it. “And now?”

“And now…” his foot went down on the accelerator “…and now … tell me about Number Seven, Elizabeth.”

“Where are we going?”

“Ah … you must have made quite an impression on David, because he’s doing you a great honour—you should be pleased …
and
reassured—you’re going to Steeple Horley.”

“Steeple Horley?”

“The old house—
his
house … You’ll like his wife—Faith is a great lady in her way—“ he snorted as he changed gear “—to be married to David Audley she has to be a great lady.”

Great lady? “
His wife
?” Elizabeth looked down at her creased and shapeless dress. It wasn’t even very clean, either: there was something suspiciously like a stain right in the middle of it—she had last worn this dress when she’d helped the Vicar’s wife with her meals-on-wheels for the old people of the parish. It was certainly not what she would have chosen to wear for a great lady. “Oh lord!”

“Don’t worry!” He observed her consternation. “I don’t mean ‘grande dame’, I mean she’s sympathetic. And she’s not a lot older than me—than you too, Elizabeth. Like they say, he married a much younger woman … and they live in this marvellous rambling old house under the downs—we haven’t got far to go.”

Elizabeth was still appalled. Apart from the dress there was her face and hair, which were irreparable. There was probably a mirror on the other side of the car’s sun-visor, but she couldn’t bring herself to look in it. Everything was bad enough as it was, but to have to meet another woman was downright unfair. She hunched herself up at the thought of it.

“Don’t worry, Elizabeth!” He exerted himself to reassure her. “It’s a good sign—his inviting you to his home … you’ll meet his daughter too—a skinny little blonde creature, the image of her mother, and very sharp like both of them … it means he’s not about to peach about those safe deposit boxes of yours to all and sundry, I’d guess—for a start.”

“I thought that remained to be seen,” said Elizabeth guardedly.

“So it does. But although David’s a damned tricky bastard, he’s not mean with it. Putting one over on other people is what he enjoys, too—putting one over the Inland Revenue, or whoever deals with death duties … that’ll appeal to him.” He gave her another quick glance, but this time a fellow-conspiratorial one, which told her that under the skin, and in spite of their publicly abrasive relationship, Paul Mitchell returned the loyalty and regard which David Audley felt for his subordinate—the same thing which had made the survivors of Father’s old crew stand in the rain for him in their best suits so recently, in that secret society to which she had never been admitted.

“What’s the matter?” Her silence bothered him.

“I have the feeling that I’m being press-ganged, that’s all.”

“Hardly that. It’s your knowledge we want, you won’t be expected to fire the cannon and shin up the mast. And there can’t be anything dangerous involved, not this time.”

“ ‘Can’t’? How do you know that? After what’s happened already?”

Paul shook his head. “David wouldn’t invite you to his home if he was worried about anything. He’s pretty careful that way—that’s why the invitation is reassuring.” He drove in silence for a second or two. “Surprising maybe … I admit I find it a little surprising … but damn reassuring nevertheless, Elizabeth. So tell me about Number Seven.”

Press-ganged or not—and shanghai’d might be a more accurate description for all that had happened to her during the last 24 hours—but press-ganged or shanghai’d or whatever … and reassured or not about her own fate and the fate of her inheritance, she had to trust to Paul Mitchell’s judgement and David Audley’s good faith, even though they were both men outside her experience.

“Where do you want me to begin?”

“Twelve
Vengefuls
,” said Paul, nodding at the road ahead, on which the homeward-bound Sunday traffic was thickening to slow him up. “The Armada
Vengeful
, hanging on to Medina-Sidonia’s shirt-tail up the Channel—King Charles’s
Vengeful
, betraying him at Bristol in 1642, and Cromwell’s 50-gunner in the First Dutch War, wrecked on the Goodwins …—then Pepys’
Vengeful
, scuppered by the Dutch in the Medway in ‘67—then Rooke’s
Vengeful
fighting alongside the Dutch at Gibraltar in 1704—“

Was that his own research, or had he read Father’s earlier chapters?

“Then Number Six, protecting our loyal American colonists from the French in ‘59, but eventually getting wrecked off Cape Hattcras in ‘81 trying to stop the French helping those revolting Yankee rebels— historical irony, you could call that, I suppose.” He drove in silence for a time. “Number Eight—muzzle-loaders versus breech-loaders— I enjoyed Number Eight … He had a nice line in scorn, did your father—‘the mechanics of incorrect decision-making, brought to a fine art in the mid-Victorian navy’—“ he gave her a quick half-look, half-nod “—and so to Number Nine—“

But he had missed out Number Seven altogether, thought Elizabeth, staring at the handsome profile.

“The armoured cruiser—‘the ugliest
Vengeful of
them all, and in her day arguably the worst sailer and gun platform in the whole Channel Fleet’ … But she was also the one that obstinately refused to sink when they used her as a target ship in 1897, wasn’t she—‘to the surprise and embarrassment of all concerned’—right, Elizabeth?”

Not just a handsome face; though: somehow, between last evening and the moment he’d bounced back into her life, and apart from whatever else he’d done, he’d read those carefully-typed pages closely enough to memorise passages from them accurately.

“Plus
my
Number Ten, from Jutland, and
his
Number Eleven, full-fathom-five off Finisterre, or wherever … and we don’t need to worry about that submarine we gave to the Greeks after the war—we know all about that apparently, and it doesn’t signify. So that makes the full
Vengeful
tally—right?” Another look, and then the profile again. And with that face and the self-assurance which went with it there would be equally good-looking and assured girl-friends in tow, if not an elegant wife close-grappled, so it was no use making silly pictures just because he was being gentle with her. She was merely business, and his gentleness was common-sense.

“Not quite.” To stifle that foolish ache she tried to concentrate on that business. “You left out Number Seven, of course.”

“But you are going to tell me about her, Elizabeth—don’t you remember?”

Elizabeth stared at the road ahead, on which the home-going traffic from the coast was thickening. She wished she was going home with them, even to another lonely evening.

“I remember that we started this conversation yesterday.”

“So we did. But yesterday you weren’t exactly brimming with ideas. Quite understandably, in the circumstances, of course.”

“Yes … quite understandably … since I was brimming with alcohol—administered to loosen my tongue, presumably, rather than my brains?”

That earned her a longer look, a little rueful, mostly apologetic, but with a suggestion of respect which she found gratifying.

“Yes … I’m sorry about that. But it seemed a good idea at the time.” He smiled disarmingly. “Anyway, I’m hoping you can do better on reflection.”

Respect was better than nothing, thought Elizabeth as she hardened her heart against the smile: if she couldn’t have anything else from him, at least she could win that.

“But now that you’ve read Father’s chapter you really know as much as I do. And you are the trained historian, not me.”

“But you are the expert on this, Elizabeth—not me.”

“No. I was only the typist. I keep telling you.”

For a minute or two he drove in silence. Then he shook his head slowly at the two small children who were waving at him out of the rear window of the car in front. “No … I don’t think ‘only the typist’ could ever be a description of you, Elizabeth. You’re always going to be a lot more than ‘only the typist’. And that’s not just my opinion … although it
is
my opinion.”

Elizabeth was half surprised, half shocked. “You’ve canvassed other … opinions?”

“Of course! We don’t go entirely blind into something like this, we know a lot about you. But it’s Number Seven we want to know about now.”

Elizabeth was still grappling with the news that she had been … “investigated” was the only word for it… by—by whom? “Who are you, Paul?
What are
you?”

“But you know who I am, Elizabeth. You checked up on me—and quite efficiently, too—the moment you left the fête yesterday.”

She stared at him. “You were in that car—in St Helen’s Street— when I visited Margaret’s bookshop?”

“No. I wasn’t in that car.” Suddenly his expression was intent. “You spotted
that
car?”

“I didn’t exactly ‘spot’ it—I mean, I just saw it … I didn’t really take any notice of it until I saw it again behind me, when I reached home.” His interest made her uneasy.

“But it could have been any car. Why did you notice it?”

“Well …” she floundered under his intensity “… I thought it might be you, as a matter of fact.”

“Why should I follow you?”

This was becoming awkward. “Well—I don’t know—I didn’t know … I suppose I was a bit suspicious of you, that’s all.”

“Christ!” He drew a deep breath, and then relaxed slowly. “Phew!”

“It wasn’t you?” She shied away from the proper question.

“No. I was round the corner, in another car.” He shook his head, but more to himself than at her.

The proper question wouldn’t go away, it had to be asked. “Who was in the car I saw, Paul?”

For a moment she thought he hadn’t heard, as he raised his hand to wave back at the children. Then she thought it was more likely that he simply wasn’t going to answer the question.

“It was a man who goes by the name of Fergusson.” He waved again. “A freelance journalist from Canada.”

“A journalist?” Elizabeth was deeply suspicious of all journalists, both on principle and for their obstinate refusal to spell her name correctly in hockey reports and prize-lists.

“Actually, he isn’t a journalist, and he wasn’t born in Canada in 1942—it
was
1942, but it was in a makeshift hospital alongside the Krasnyi Oktiabr tank factory in a place they called Stalingrad in those days. And he certainly wasn’t christened Winston Fergusson. His real name is Novikov.”

Novikov
! The name came back to her clearly once she heard it pronounced for the second time, even though it had first come to her only indistinctly through the babel of her own thoughts beside the sitting room door—
Novikov
—

If I hadn’t spotted Novikov—

“Josef Ivanovitch Novikov.”

The Russians
, remembered Elizabeth—and this seemed the moment for them at last. “A Russian?”

“A Russian.” He nodded. “You know what the KGB is, do you, Elizabeth?”

That made it all fit, thought Elizabeth numbly, not so much without surprise as with an absence of feelings which was beyond surprise: it didn’t make sense—the people … not just the terrible snake-man, but Paul himself, and little Humphrey Aske, and David Audley, with his kind-brutal face … and the violence, which was beyond experience. It didn’t make sense, but it didn’t have to make sense, it merely had to fit into its own ugly pattern, like some do-it-yourself kit for a science-fiction monster.

“Novikov is a KGB professional.” He took it for granted that her silence was a complete answer. “Like, you might say, PhD, Dzershinsky Street University, Moscow. First Class Honours in Intelligence, Counter-intelligence, Subversion, Manipulation, Disinformation, Corruption and Violence,
cum laude
and so on.”

That
PhD
identified him as a Cambridge man—the very irrelevance of the thought steadied her. “Are you trying to frighten me?”

“No. But if I am succeeding, that’s fine. Because the bastard certainly puts the fear of God up me, I tell you!”

He spoke lightly, but Elizabeth stole another look, and saw the fighter-pilot’s grin—the sub-lieutenant’s deliberate false confidence which Father had written of, when the German Z-class destroyers had heavier armament and their E-boats were faster.

Just as deliberately, she turned herself against her own feelings. “And what’s your … PhD in,
Dr
Mitchell?”

“Ah! Good question!” He snuffled at the thought, as though it amused him. “History, for a start—
The Breaking of the Hindenburg Line
was a thesis before it was a book, to be exact … But after that, you could say that I’m a Secret Policeman—with the emphasis
on policeman
…
Or, as David would say, I’m
a submarine
, and Josef Ivanovitch Novikov is a
U-boat
—would that be an acceptable distinction for Commander Loftus’s daughter?”

“Father hated all submarines, indiscriminately.”

“Hmm … destroyer captain’s prejudice … Then you’d better think of me as an anti-submarine frigate.”

He was mocking her. And, at the same time, he was steering her back towards the seventh
Vengeful
. But that wouldn’t do any more, not
after Josef Ivanovitch Novikov
.