Elena wanted to sleep, but her mind was tingling with fear. Her heart was still beating hard from escaping whoever had shot at them at Repton’s house.
She thought about the dinner party Saturday evening and how she had said and done all the right things. To her ears, however, it had sounded artificial, as if she were trying too hard. And at church the following morning, her mind had been too full of the bishop’s sermon and all the jarring notes she thought she heard from him. But now, she and Allenby had at last made a move to learn more about Repton’s death. And they had learned what?
She shifted her thoughts to Margot. She was happy for her sister, wishing happiness for her almost as much as Margot wished it for herself. But Elena was deeply afraid that Geoffrey Baden might be accustomed to mixing with people whose opinions Elena was increasingly against. Opinions, she believed, that could be harmful to the country.
She could empathize with those who had lost people they had loved. Margot had lost both her husband and her brother, so her grief was easily understood. But this did not change the terrible reality of Adolf Hitler, nor the concern that his beliefs were being increasingly embraced here in England. It might be partly a wish to leave behind the hardship and the fear that were a legacy of the war, to let go of the tension, to build anew, to heal. That was natural. But part of it was the age-old wish for a new social order with more justice, something closer to equality. But was that what Hitler really stood for?
Elena had had the unique experience of seeing Hitler’s true philosophy reflected by the Brownshirts in Berlin, and then again by the storm troopers during the Night of the Long Knives. She had witnessed the dead bodies, blood everywhere, the book-burning frenzy, and the sheer blind terror. These horrors could never be properly explained to anyone. Not that she had tried! What she did for MI6, even her own father did not fully know. Only Lucas did, and Josephine. But then, Grandmother Josephine always seemed to know everything.
But what did Margot see in Geoffrey Baden? Strength, gentleness, a quick sense of humor, and the self-confidence of a man who was sure of his values and prepared to act on them? In fact, commitment? He had that in common with Paul, Margot’s first husband. At least, that was how Margot thought of Paul, and it was all that Elena could remember. She had been too young to form a strong opinion on her own.
But was Geoffrey anything like Paul in the ways that mattered? And was it any of Elena’s concern anyway?
She finally went to sleep, not knowing the answers to any of her probing questions.
Elena awoke with the same weight of concern pressing down on her. She got up, washed, and dressed in a navy linen frock, its simplicity relieved only by the bold white buttons down the front. Many women would have chosen something cool and floral, delicate, but this suited her well. Not Margot’s favorite choice for her, but Elena had her own mind.
She went downstairs and found that everyone had already had breakfast. Only the maid was left in the room. “I’m sorry.” Elena smiled at the woman. “I slept too well.”
“It’s still early enough to have poached eggs on toast and a fresh pot of tea,” the maid said with an easy smile. “The marmalade is very good. Cook makes it herself.”
“Then yes, I would like that very much, thank you. Is everyone up and gone already?”
“Yes, ma’am. Mr. Allenby asked me to tell you he’d like to explore the garden, and he’ll wait for you in the gazebo. That’s at the end of the long lawn, ma’am.”
“Thank you,” Elena repeated. “I’ll go there as soon as I’ve had breakfast. The delicious dinner I had should have been enough to satisfy my stomach for days, but I’m hungry!”
“Yes, ma’am. I’ll fetch you a fresh cup of tea while Cook does the eggs.”
The food arrived, and Elena ate quickly, partly because she was hungry, which wasn’t surprising considering last night’s activity, but mostly because she wanted the opportunity to speak candidly with Allenby in the privacy of the garden.
As soon as she finished breakfast, she walked out of the house and along the length of the lawn, heading for the gazebo. She was enjoying the spring in the grass, a soft cushion under her feet. The long border was full of the last of the summer flowers, Michaelmas daisies in shades of purple and blue and late asters that gave larger, paler blooms on shorter stems.
At the end of the lawn, she took a turn into an avenue of trees, their leaves already touched with yellow. Many of them were chestnuts, always the first to break into leaf in the spring and the first to mellow into gold in the autumn.
There were huge trees in London. The city also had an unusually large number of parks. It was said that if you planned your way very carefully, you could get from one side of the city to the other just by moving from park to park. But not even London had parklands with trees like these. One whole avenue was lined with ancient giant beech trees, their smooth trunks soaring into the air and spreading enormous fans of leaves. The slight breeze moved those leaves so they rippled like water. Elena could not see the sky as she looked up, so thickly were the branches entwined above her.
She heard it the moment before she saw it, a loud rustle, the scraping of branch on branch. She looked up and then froze. An enormous limb was hurtling toward her, smashing its way through the leaves and cracking the larger branches overhead. She threw herself down onto the pile of leaves already fallen. As the branch crashed to earth, it landed across her, but its smaller branches only, so her feet and back bore the weight of the impact. Were it not for the buffering of these, it could have broken her back, or struck her on the head and face.
It took a moment before she became conscious of the pain in her legs. A huge wave of awareness washed over her. She had escaped death by inches. And she was not yet free! Who had done this? Where were they? Up in the trees still? Were they climbing down to finish the job?
She needed to get up right away, but the enormous branch was across her, pinning her to the ground. She took a deep breath and tried to think. She could move her feet. Her flesh stung, but there were only scratches and the thin tearing of the skin.
For a moment, she was still too stunned to move. She caught her breath sharply, held it briefly, then began to get up, slowly at first, then as quickly as she could. She looked up again. She saw nothing but large and slender branches barely moving as they turned lightly in the wind. She could not see anyone at all, either up in the tree or in any direction along the path. There was no one there.
Until suddenly…movement. A figure disappearing into the bushes. She thought of Repton. What had she done to make someone suspicious of her? What had she said or done that had given her away so soon? How clumsy or stupid had she been? Or was it someone who knew already that she worked for MI6? It seemed impossible, but that was an explanation, albeit a dangerous one.
As she began to walk away, she saw the smears of mud on her skirt and made an attempt to brush them off. She would have to explain the mud somehow, if anyone noticed. What would she say? That she had tripped over something and fallen? Margot might tease her, suggesting they could not allow her out alone. It would not only be embarrassing, it would be ridiculous. She could imagine their expressions behind her back. Better to say nothing.
She started to walk a little more quickly. She would probably have an ugly bruise on her thighs tomorrow, but at least no one else would know about it.
Allenby was waiting for her in the gazebo. From a distance, she saw his tall figure pacing. He turned and saw her, then started to come down the steps toward her. He stopped abruptly, as if changing his mind, and stepped back into the shadow of the gazebo, where he was less obviously visible.
She quickened her step and reached him in moments. Before she could apologize for being a little late, he spoke.
“What happened? You look a mess.”
“Do I look that bad? It’s—” She stopped herself. It was stupid to lie. She suddenly remembered Washington, D.C. They had been there together in the spring, when the dogwoods were in full bloom, and then they had faced the horror she could not have imagined.
“What?” he pressed urgently.
“A branch fell from one of the trees. It missed me. That is, it landed on me, but smaller branches stopped its impact.”
“That doesn’t sound like a miss!”
“I sort of dived out of the way,” she explained, brushing at the dirt yet again. “Not very elegant, but it spared me any real injury. My dress is a bit stained, but at least it’s not torn. I guess it’s more of a mess than I thought.”
For a moment, Allenby’s face expressed shock, real fear. Then he controlled it. “Did you see anyone?”
“Not at first,” Elena said. “But then I saw someone retreating quickly into the bushes.”
“Don’t go out in the garden again alone.”
She was suddenly cold, as if a chill were running through her. She did not meet his eyes. “I won’t.” It was barely a sound at all.
Allenby remained silent, as if deciding on the next move. “As far as you’re concerned, it was an accident. And you got dirty when you tripped, moving out of the way. Do you understand?”
She realized that he agreed with her that this was very possibly an attempt to injure her, if not worse. Again, she shivered, as if standing in a harsh winter’s wind and not a balmy September morning with the leaves only touched with gold.
“I had another look at the newspaper cuttings, and I think they add up to something. I don’t know yet why Repton collected these accounts of scandal. Not many of them are people we know, but some are: public figures, a judge, a prominent company chairman, a bishop, and another politician, who all slipped up, made mistakes, were publicly named, and of course lost their jobs and had their reputations ruined.”
“If only we knew exactly why Repton kept the cuttings.”
“I agree that’s what we need to find out. The subjects don’t seem to have anything else in common, except that they were ruined by scandal. But did Repton see something deeper?”
They crossed the floor of the gazebo, and Elena sat on the bench. Allenby remained standing, looking back toward the way she had come.
“The most important thing we still have to find out is why anyone felt they had to kill Repton right now,” Allenby continued quietly. “What did he discover that was so dangerous to somebody that he had to be silenced?” The expression on Allenby’s face was a mixture of confusion and anger. “He was after something, but I’m not sure whether he even knew what it was. He certainly did not tell anyone.”
“You mean Peter didn’t tell you,” Elena corrected him. “That’s not necessarily the same thing.”
“Would he send you out here without all the information he could give you?” he countered.
The thought confused her. She glanced sideways at Allenby’s face. It was full of meaning, emotion, the kind of face you thought you could read. And then you realized that he meant you to think that, and that perhaps you couldn’t read it at all. “Do you suppose Peter knows?” she asked.
“What?” He gazed at her curiously.
“Whether Repton was killed because of why he came here, looking into Wyndham Hall, or for something that he discovered only after he got here?”
He frowned very slightly. “That’s a very good point. And it might make a difference. It started as a suspicion about Hitler sympathizers in Britain and may still concern them.” After a moment, he added, “Someone is on to us, Elena. We have to be more careful.”
She nodded. “Being shot at…” She left the thought unfinished. “I suppose timing matters also.”
“We know only that Repton was shot in the chest here, and then was moved.” His voice was low and tight, as if he had difficulty forcing the words out of his throat. He did not look at her.
“Who was Repton watching?” She needed to know the answer and yet dreaded it. Was it someone at Wyndham Hall? She understood why Lucas had asked her to do this particular job, and she would have resented it had he not, using her being Margot’s sister as his excuse. But that would have meant, at least to her, that she was not good enough to work on the difficult cases, the emotional ones that tested her mettle, her ideology, and her beliefs. And what if the worst happened? What if Margot’s new friends were somehow involved in this murder? Or they were sympathizers who might end up on the side of the enemy if another war took place?
It was the ultimate test of her loyalty, working to solve what could be a national situation while her sister’s reputation, her very future, could be at stake.
What would she be prepared to pay in terms of pain or grief? She might not have time to weigh the alternatives. Her priorities needed to be decided now.