Wives at War (25 page)

‘And even if you could, you probably wouldn't?'

‘I certainly wouldn't,' Kenny said.

‘Because I'm married to Dominic Manone?'

‘That's it.'

‘And you aren't really nice Uncle Kenny, are you?'

‘No.'

‘Do I have to be careful of you too?'

‘Yes, Polly, you do.'

‘All right,' Polly said. ‘I appreciate your candour. One last question and then I'll go. Who do I have to watch out for, who can do me most harm – Dominic or Christy Cameron?'

‘It's too early to say.'

‘Are you telling me I'm out on a limb?'

Kenny hoisted himself from the chair, walked around the table and opened the door. ‘You'll have to go now, Polly.'

‘Wait,' she said. ‘Are you trying to tell me that I have to make the running on my own?'

‘I'm not telling you anything.'

Polly rose, straightened her skirt, adjusted her hat and followed him out into the corridor. He walked a half-step ahead of her and she noticed that the long, steady stride of the beat constable had been replaced by a shambling gait that made her brother-in-law seem furtive.

He stopped at the head of the stairs and looked down the spiral of the banister rail, down at clerks and uniformed officers visible on the landings below, then he turned, put a hand on her arm and drew her close.

‘Hughes,' he said softly. ‘I'd watch out for Hughes, if I were you.'

‘Fin, but—'

‘Goodbye, Polly. I'm sure you can find your own way out.'

‘Yes, I'm sure I can,' said Polly, and with more bewilderment than gratitude, kissed him quickly on the cheek and hurried downstairs to the street.

*   *   *

He felt like a heel, a real piece of low-life, but that didn't stop him prowling through the house. He started on the top floor and worked his way down, room by room, consoled by the thought that Polly would expect nothing less of a spy. He hadn't been trained in the so-called art of spying, of course. He had been shoved into the field with only his wits and a contact number to guide him and wasn't even sure that Marzipan and Jamie were working towards the same end.

Funding the Italian Resistance? Yeah, right! He'd watched the Polish Resistance in action and had been less impressed by their organisational skills than by their courage. Italian soldiers, sailors and airmen weren't shedding their blood because they despised Mussolini, however, or because the Nazis were prodding their asses with bayonets. He'd seen for himself the situation in Spain. He knew why Franco had so far refused to declare for Hitler. Spain was flat broke and gripped by famine, and needed to maintain trading relations with Britain, Canada and the USA. When it came to Italy, though, he was forced to rely on what Jamie had told him and for that reason felt that he was no better than a spear-carrier standing at the back of a very big, very crowded stage.

Goddamn it, he was a seasoned photojournalist who'd been in some pretty rough spots so what the hell was he doing in an empty house in Scotland rifling through a lady's drawers? What secrets did he hope to uncover in Polly's closets that would help the Allies win the war?

The lady's drawers, though, did contain a few surprises.

First off there was the matter of the passports.

Mrs Manone had two of the precious things.

They were hidden where you'd least expect to find them, not tucked under her frillies in the master bedroom or in a shoebox on the top shelf of a closet. They were up in the nursery suite, or what had once been the nursery suite. Christy was surprised to find the rooms untouched since that morning sixteen months ago when Manone had lifted his kids from their beds and carried them off to New York.

The beds had been made in both the little bedrooms and in the nanny's room – Patricia's room – too.

Clean sheets, pillows plumped, windows unmarred by blackout material; pretty curtains printed with goldfish and mermaids, let in a flood of daylight. Toy boxes, books, a doll's house, teddy bears, a rank of lead soldiers, a miniature fire truck, the low, square table in the centre of the playroom still set with cups and plates. All that seemed to be missing was buttered bread and strawberry jam – and the kids themselves, of course.

In the smaller of the toy boxes were jigsaws, comic papers, colouring books, a paint box all dried out, and, right at the bottom, a pale blue stationery box fastened with a cute blue ribbon.

Kneeling, Christy fished out the stationery box and untied the ribbon.

At that precise moment, he reckoned he knew how Babs must have felt when she found the photographs of Polly's kids in his bag: a feeling of guilt justified, of minor misdemeanours excused. He wondered if Babs had sat back on her heels and let out a grunt of satisfaction too.

The passports had never been used. One was date-stamped June 1937 and might, Christy reckoned, be obsolete. The other was new issue, a wartime special with the blind stamp of a government department impressed on the cover. He held it to the light and read the blood-red letters stamped across the top of the page: ‘Travel Approved'.

Travel where? Approved by whom?

He had no idea, just a vague suspicion that the lawyer Hughes might have supplied Polly with the valuable document in case he and she ever had to make a break for it.

He looked at the photograph.

Poor lighting had leeched the shadows from her face and her mouth was prominent, lip rouge pure black as if it had been inked in afterwards. She had longer hair and a startled, wide-eyed expression that made her appear almost childishly naïve. He studied the photograph for several seconds then put the passports back in the stationery box and examined the rest of the papers.

Letters, letters from her children, from Stuart and Ishbel, postcards of New York landmarks with polite pencilled greetings on the back. No suggestion of codes or secret messages and nary a mention of Patricia or of Jamie, which indicated either unusual juvenile discretion or censorship on Manone's part.

There was no correspondence from Manone hidden in the stationery box or the nursery or, so far as Christy could discover, anywhere in the house. And only when he'd finished his search did it dawn on him that what he'd really been seeking in the lady's drawers was evidence of duplicity, some shred of proof that Manone was playing the US State Department for a sucker, and that Polly was part of it. If she was, she was playing it clever, too clever for a dim-witted, half-baked amateur to stumble on at his first fumbling attempt.

No, if he wanted to catch Polly out he would have to make her trust him enough to be careless or – and the thought made him wince – convince her that he loved her and that come hell or high water, he wouldn't let her down.

*   *   *

‘Oh, for God's sweet sake, Polly,' Fin Hughes said, ‘don't tell me you're falling for this chap?'

‘I'm not that much of a fool.'

‘Oh, you are, you are,' Fin said. ‘You may not care to admit it but you're just like all the rest.'

‘The rest of what?'

‘Women, snuggling up to any chap who gives you a bit of attention.'

‘Is that why I “snuggled up” to you?'

‘Of course it is,' Fin said, ‘in addition to the fact that I represent a degree of stability in troubled times. I also know where the bodies are buried.'

Polly glanced up sharply. ‘Bodies?'

‘Purely a figure of speech. Are you really giving me the heave-ho?'

‘You have the audacity to criticise women and yet you can stand there and ask me a daft question like that. Dear God, Fin, all I said was that it might not be a good idea to pop over on Saturday night because Christy Cameron is staying at my house temporarily. Do you hear me –
tem-por-arily.
'

‘I'm not deaf.'

‘Sometimes I wonder,' Polly said.

‘Where's he sleeping?'

‘In my bed.'

The defence of civil liberties had earned Fin a small fortune in the months since emergency legislation had been introduced. He had been quick to realise that trade union officials would read threat in the small print of the acts, would vigorously resist any government censorship on union meetings and would regard the new anti-strike laws merely as weapons in the eternal struggle of Labour against Capital. In rational argument Polly couldn't hope to get the better of him but she possessed persuasive powers of another kind and did not hesitate to use them.

‘He sleeps in my bed and I sleep downstairs.'

‘Tell you what,' Fin said, ‘I'll lob him a fiver and he can take himself off to a top-class hotel for the weekend.'

‘Now you're just being silly.'

‘How long will he stay with you?'

‘I'm not sure, probably until Jackie goes back to his unit.'

‘And then you expect him just to pack his little bag and trot meekly back to your sister's house?'

‘I don't see why not.'

‘Because by that time you and he … Oh, never mind,' Fin said.

He had come stalking into her office at half-past three still clad in formal morning dress. Polly had to admit that he looked mighty impressive. She had seen him naked just once too often, however, and no man, even one at the peak of his profession, could maintain an air of authority when you'd watched him crouch in a few inches of tepid water in a bathtub or wrestle for his share of the quilt in a bedroom as cold as a tomb.

She had been writing when he'd entered, compiling a first rough draft of holdings she might be able to liquidate without excessive interference. Folders lay on her desk, box-files stacked by her chair.

Fin had spotted them immediately.

‘What are you doing, Polly? What
are
you doing?'

‘A little basic arithmetic, that's all.' She strove not to appear nervous. ‘I'm just curious as to what I'm currently worth.'

‘To me,' Fin said without warmth, ‘a very great deal.'

‘Thank you,' Polly said. ‘Now what's that in pounds, shillings and pence?'

He came over to the desk and perched on it, blotting out light from the window. He looked so intimidatingly severe that she was surprised when he leaned over the folders, snared her chin with one hand and kissed her.

‘Immeasurable,' he said. ‘Quite immeasurable.' He drew back, eyeing her all the while. ‘Give me a couple of hours and I'll take you to dinner.'

‘I can't,' Polly said.

She expected him to wax sarcastic or at least ask her to explain why but he was too shrewd to fall into that trap. He stood up, stretched his arms above his head and performed a little knee-bending exercise, then said, ‘Cameron's not blackmailing you, by any chance, is he?'

‘Blackmailing me?' Polly laughed shakily. ‘Of course he's not blackmailing me. Whatever put that idea into your head?'

Fin shrugged. ‘He's a photographer. I thought perhaps…'

‘That because he photographed Babs, he also has designs on me?' She laughed again, even less convincingly. ‘You've been reading that Raymond Chandler novel again, haven't you, the one you said was depraved?'

‘If you need cash,' Fin said, ‘ask me.'

‘I am asking you.'

‘How much do you need, Polly?'

‘A very great deal.'

‘For him, isn't it? For Christy Cameron?'

‘No, for Dominic.'

Fin nodded, unsurprised. ‘Why does Dominic want his money now? Does he think Britain is going under?'

‘I've no idea what Dom wants it for,' Polly lied. ‘I'm not even sure he wants it all. He has merely requested a tally.'

‘Through this Cameron chap?'

‘Yes.'

‘A letter, a cable—'

‘Might be intercepted.'

‘That's true.'

‘If you recall,' Polly said, ‘you're the one who suggested I wait for Christy to come to me. Well, he did, and now we know what he wants, or at least we
think
we know what he wants. It isn't me, darling. He has no interest in me whatsoever. He's after money, money that Dominic feels he has claim to – which, I suppose, he has.'

She hadn't forgotten Kenny's parting words, his warning.

She would give Fin only a few pieces of the puzzle and only because she couldn't advance without him. She wished that Dom's accountant, Victor Shadwell, had still been hale and hearty for she had always trusted Victor. But he was an old man now, very frail and rather inclined to wander mentally. She really was out on a limb with no one to support her or catch her if she tumbled, not Fin, not Dom, not Kenny MacGregor and most certainly not Christy, the man she was falling in love with, who, for all his charm, might turn out to be more of a rotter than any of them.

‘Selling stock at this time,' Fin said, ‘is highly unwise.'

‘I'm well aware of that and so, I suspect, is Dominic.'

‘You know, of course,' Fin said, ‘that all your holdings are registered and that your American dollar securities cannot be transferred? Have you seen the list of securities that the Treasury can call up at any time?'

‘I don't believe I have,' said Polly.

‘Massive,' said Fin, ‘massive and all-inclusive.'

‘Do you mean we can't sell anything at all?'

Fin hesitated before answering. ‘Not quite. Regulations state that the prices paid for securities taken over shall be not less than their market value.'

‘Who sets the rating?'

‘The Treasury.'

‘Based on what?'

‘The sterling equivalent of dollar quotations on the New York or Montreal stock exchange on the day of call-up.'

‘What if we choose to sell securities before they are taken over?'

‘We, as holders, are free to seek permission so to do.'

Polly put a hand to her brow. ‘It's all very complicated.'

‘Of course it is,' Fin said. ‘That's why you have me.'