Lucas sat opposite Allenby in the small café where they had met before and listened with increasing anxiety as he recounted the events of the croquet match.
“It’s alarming,” Allenby said quietly. “Elena and Margot aren’t talking about it, but it’s in the air between them. Margot is on the brink of lasting happiness, and Elena…well, Margot is convinced that she’s jealous, because…” He shifted in his seat, suddenly uncomfortable.
“For heaven’s sake, James, get Elena out of there!” Lucas said urgently. “These people are deadly serious. At least one of them is prepared to kill. John Repton’s death is proof of that. Whoever shot him won’t hesitate to kill a young woman who gets in their way, and they know exactly how to make it look like an accident, or even suicide.” After a moment, he added, “I wish we could get Margot out of there as well.”
“I can’t intervene,” Allenby argued. “Margot is nobody’s fool. She suspects that Elena and I aren’t lovers and that we are not moving toward that. She thinks Elena is envious because she’s engaged and soon will marry into one of the best families in England. Or it looks that way. Elena can’t tell her that she is not there simply to celebrate, and neither can I.”
Lucas was not entirely surprised by how Allenby was describing Margot’s behavior toward Elena. He remembered when Margot had been born. Little Mike, his son’s first child, had adapted very well to Margot’s birth—there had only been a year between them—but the age distance between Margot and Elena was greater. Katherine had been very busy with her two older children. They had been full of energy and questions and demanding her attention. Josephine had seen her opportunity as grandmother to give Katherine as much help as was needed. It had been Elena, the baby, who received Josephine’s full attention. She had taught Elena to read, write, and count, with help from Lucas, whenever he was at home, no matter how tired he was or how stressed by the weight of his job in MI6. So, there was no question about it: Elena was far closer to her grandparents than Margot had ever been.
It saddened Lucas that, for too long, Josephine had felt helpless about intervening in this tension between her granddaughters. Lucas shifted his thoughts back to Elena and smiled, sitting in this tearoom in the Cotswolds, talking with Allenby, and remembering the eager little girl who had hung on to his every word, his every idea, like a dry sponge absorbing water.
No doubt it had partly been this undivided attention that had made them so close, but Lucas thought there was also a special understanding between Elena and himself that went much deeper. In his mind, she was entirely female: emotional and inquisitive, demanding he explain everything to her. She had followed him around like his little shadow, always asking questions. What? Why? How? She had trusted him absolutely. She never doubted that he loved her totally, not then and not now. And, of course, she was right.
“I can’t intervene,” Allenby repeated patiently, one eyebrow slightly raised. “Elena is stronger than you think. She was more than up to the task in Berlin, in Trieste, and in Washington. She didn’t fail any of those tests.”
“How do you know about Trieste?” Lucas said sharply. The real test for Elena then had not been the skill that it took to escape; it had been the emotional challenge, the resurrection of old pain and old humiliation, and how she had risen above them.
“Peter Howard told me,” Allenby answered. “I believed she could handle this challenge at Wyndham Hall, no matter what it cost, because of Washington, and I told Peter that. But he thought I should know the whole truth about the Strother case and be aware that if it got a little sticky, Margot might rerun it. The problem is, Elena can’t tell Margot the truth about why she’s there, which would be the only way of defending herself.” His face was shadowed with a quick pain. “Peter told me because he thought this could get nasty, throwing Elena and Margot together. Now that I’ve seen them, I have to agree.”
“Do you? Why?” Lucas asked sharply. He knew the man had to be aware of the situation, but at the same time he still resented Allenby’s having been told.
In truth, Lucas knew little about Allenby, the man behind the smooth exterior. This was a new experience for him because he usually knew his men very clearly, for their sakes as well as his own. But he had not trained Allenby. He knew the man was in his late thirties, half English and half American, and an excellent agent, having dealt largely and successfully with some hard and dangerous cases. He had been educated in England, which was evident in every intonation of his voice, his mannerisms—learned from schooling at either Eton or Rugby—and the ethics that came from cricket, essentially a gentleman’s game. Allenby had gone to America in his mid-twenties. As far as Lucas knew, there were no explanations as to why.
Lucas looked at Allenby now. Was there anything beyond humor and intelligence in that good-looking face? Was there vulnerability, and sometimes ignorance, confusion? He did not trust a man who believed he had all the answers. It meant that he was living in a very small universe, very small indeed, and that one day the real one would consume him if he faced it. And if he turned his back to it? He would be smothered without ever knowing it.
Please God, Elena would not fall in love with a shallow man! She admired strength, but she felt an instinctive protectiveness toward weakness, seeing it only as vulnerability, which she knew all about! Or thought she did.
He shook off this thought. Nothing said she would marry Allenby, or that he was in any way shallow!
“What is it you think you can see?” Lucas asked quietly. He did not add any extra words to emphasize it; there was no need to.
“The more Elena attacks or even doubts Geoffrey Baden, the more Margot will defend him, but—”
“Does Margot love him, in your opinion?” Lucas interrupted.
Allenby looked off into the distance, mulling over his answer. “She wants to be loved—don’t we all?—but love reflects our deepest need, and so some of us can’t let go of it, even when we know it isn’t real.”
“I don’t want a philosophical answer,” Lucas replied tartly. “Right now, I only care about Margot, especially because Geoffrey Baden seems to—”
“Be an ambitious man?” Allenby raised his eyebrows. “He’s an admirer of Mosley and his British Nazis, and we know there are a lot of them. And he’s a social climber who is friendly with the Prince of Wales and Wallis Simpson. Whatever may come of that, Margot is a pretty good stepping stone. She can fit in anywhere. And her father was a British ambassador, with connections both here at home and all over Europe, and that includes Germany. Some of those connections are powerful. Not to mention the fact that she has a grandfather who served with great distinction in the war, although I admit I don’t know yet how much she knows about your role. But I do know that Griselda has been asking a lot of questions, especially about you, and that she is quietly pushing to meet her future sister-in-law’s family.”
Lucas took a breath to protest, but the cold reality of what Allenby was saying struck him like an arctic wind. “You don’t need to go on,” he said, misery in his voice. “Love would have to be very deep indeed to overcome such a betrayal of all those old loyalties, not to mention overcome the losses as well. There is no love at all that could make us abandon our beliefs in good and evil.” He chose his words carefully. Political ideologies could very effectively be dressed up in disguise. Margot was sophisticated in many ways, but none of them political.
“You can teach your children a certain amount of judgment,” he continued, deep in thought, “but you cannot teach anyone wisdom, except a grain at a time. And even that dissolves in the face of being in love.”
He was struck by a deep fear. Margot had already loved a good man and lost him. That wound had taken years of healing, if it had truly healed at all. He stared directly into Allenby’s eyes. “I’ll ask again: Does Margot love Geoffrey Baden?”
“Yes, I’m certain she does.”
Lucas leaned back. “Anything else?” he asked, no lift in his voice. He wanted to be done with this conversation, but discomfort was not an excuse. The investigation into Repton’s death mattered, but the happiness and wellbeing of his granddaughters were of equal importance. Perhaps, to him, even greater.
“I am certain that Repton was on to something that was serious enough for him to risk his life. He was exposing the pieces, but he needed more time before he could bring it all to you or to Peter. I can see lots of the outline, but not clearly enough to know exactly how these pieces fit together. I don’t know what gave him away, but I mean to find out.”
“What is the aim of this plot Repton was trying to expose?” Lucas asked.
“I believe it’s to get rid of some of our best politicians who understand that there’s going to be another war at some point, whenever anyone seriously stands in the way of Hitler’s expansion of German dominion. Someone is going to refuse to bend, and then treaties will be broken. When that happens, we either stand against him or betray those who were rash enough, or desperate enough, to trust us.”
Lucas drew his breath to protest, then realized the futility of it. Allenby was almost certainly right. Denial changed nothing except one’s ability to prepare for it. God knew Lucas did not want another war. He had not wanted the first one. He thought of the ancient British King Canute, who had told his subjects that he could not govern the tides of the sea, then sat on the shore, where the water surrounded him, to prove it.
“What do you know?” he said to Allenby.
“I took another look at what we have of the newspaper clippings that Elena and I got from Repton’s house,” Allenby shared. “They all involved well-respected people who were ruined by scandal and—”
“Important people?” Lucas clarified. “Key positions?”
“No,” Allenby replied. “It isn’t so much who they were, these victims, but the methods used to destroy them. Innuendo. Suggestion, sometimes even denial of guilt before anyone has accused them. In at least three-quarters of the cases, it worked. You don’t need proof, only fear.”
This time Lucas did not answer.
Allenby could read the understanding in his face.
“Repton must have suspected someone at Wyndham Hall of being the leader of a plot to overthrow those who will stand against Hitler,” explained Allenby. “I believe that’s why he went there. To find the link that will tie it all together.”
“David Wyndham himself?” Lucas asked. He hated even the suggestion of it. He liked and even respected the man, but that was irrelevant.
“I don’t know.” Allenby shrugged softly. “That’s the damnable part in this thing, and why it matters so much. There are deep roots of belief in all of it. Not only for those who lost so much in the war, who actually fought in it. People don’t forget those they have loved and could not save.” He took a deep, shaky breath and let it out slowly. “The ruined faces of the dead, all the dreams of those who still live. ‘Never, ever again’ is easy to understand.”
Lucas opened his mouth to say something and found there was nothing he could say that mattered.
“And there are genuine political differences,” Allenby went on. “Isolationists who say that Europe should solve its own problems. That we have no right to commit our people to another useless bloodbath, and we can’t rely on America stepping in again, after we have all but bled to death…and for what?”
“James.”
Allenby shook his head. “I’m not saying I believe that. I don’t think I do. I believe you fight a rising evil and that it will swallow more and more the longer you leave it. Not everyone thinks that way. But when they tell me to go back to the trenches again, I may not feel so crusading. Especially when they take those I know.”
“Do we wait until they are walking our streets, taking our people one by one, and turning them into their own?” Lucas asked. “When the tide is high enough to drown you, it’s a bit too late.” He took a deep breath and refocused. “We need to talk practicalities, James. Do you have any idea who actually shot Repton? He must have had some specific reason to go to Wyndham Hall. He wasn’t a fool, and he didn’t take blind chances. He was looking for something. What?”
“Or he was going to prevent something,” Allenby offered as a counterpoint.
Lucas said nothing. He searched for an argument and did not find one.
Allenby gave Lucas a long, steady stare before saying, “Elena’s room has been searched; we don’t know by whom. They found nothing because there was nothing for them to find. From this, I assume they’ll deduce that either she is exactly who she seems to be, or that she is too clever and experienced to have left anything for them. But they were looking. The only logical conclusion is that they have something to hide from her.”
“Like Repton’s murder? I accept your conclusion as to why he was killed, but we still need to find out by whom,” Lucas said again. “Then we decide what to do about it. And find out who is at the head of this.”
“If it was David Wyndham, he’s the best damn actor I’ve ever seen,” Allenby claimed. “It could be his brother-in-law, Landon Rees, or Geoffrey Baden himself. Since Repton was killed with a rifle, it could even be one of the women, including Griselda, possibly with a partner’s help. But as much as I want to know who did it, I want to know who they’ll turn against next.”
“How far are you on that?” Lucas asked. “Apart from the fact that the Wyndhams, particularly Griselda, are closer to the Prince of Wales and Mrs. Simpson than we previously knew. I’ve heard rumors that David Wyndham may have given a lot of money to the pro-Nazi cause, which isn’t a crime. It’s what it leads to that’s a worry.”
“It goes back to this effort to blacken the name of Robert Hastings.”
“A serious effort?” Lucas wondered. That was something he had heard only as a whisper, even a point of ridicule.
“I think so. It seems far-fetched, but people are believing it.” Allenby’s face was grim. “If they blow up this rumor that he was inappropriate with a young man, it could force Hastings to resign.”
Lucas said nothing in response. Hastings was a brilliant man, a trifle eccentric, but not dangerous in any way. Since Churchill’s recent silence, Hastings had spoken up to say he believed Hitler’s ambition was boundless. His was one of the most powerful voices for strengthening the navy and putting more money into the Royal Air Force and the army. “Are you saying this is a serious threat to Hastings in the next election?” he asked. “Are you sure this is not a threat built out of nightmares?”
“I don’t think they’ll let him run. His party can’t afford to lose the seat. In fact, they might force him to resign quite soon.”
“And get who to replace him?”
“I don’t know,” said Allenby. “At least, not yet.”
“Wyndham won’t run, surely?”
“Don’t think so,” Allenby replied. “My guess would be the chief constable of the county, Algernon Miller. I think he’s a friend of Oswald Mosley, he’s quite close to the Wyndhams, and he’s definitely ambitious.”
Lucas did not reply. There was too much to think about already, and now another dark cloud was on the horizon.
Allenby shook his head in frustration. That gesture hung in the air as if words had been spoken.
The men remained in the café sitting in silence for a little longer before they both left, Allenby to walk the mile or so back to Wyndham Hall and Lucas to drive home.
Toby greeted Lucas at the door, panting enthusiastically with his tongue hanging out, already having forgiven him for not bringing him along.
“I didn’t go to the woods,” Lucas apologized, kneeling down to hug the wriggling dog, whose tail was wagging so hard it turned his whole body.
“Are they all right?” Josephine asked worriedly, walking into the foyer. She, too, had been waiting for Lucas to return, but there was anxiety in her face, not exuberance.
Lucas stood up, and Toby’s wriggling subsided obediently. “So far,” he replied, but the anxiety did not disappear from Josephine’s face. There was more to say, and she would worry more. Their marriage had always been based on truth. The whole truth. He released a loud sigh. “I think it can only get worse. I’m sorry.”
She touched his arm. “What are you apologizing for?”
Her voice was soft, but he had known her for well over half a century, and he understood the meaning behind her response. She was not in for a quick burst of anger, but for a long, detailed discussion.
“Lucas, you sent Elena in to help Allenby find out who killed Repton. She has to do that, even at the cost of Margot’s feelings,” she reminded him gently. “It’s her job. And you do not know our granddaughters very well if you think that either of them will give in easily. It is Margot’s future that is at stake, either for a good marriage or for a very bitter disillusionment. And we have no way of knowing which it is to be. But if it’s the latter, that will be very hard for her. Even if she learns something negative about Geoffrey Baden, she will fight to believe in the man and to support him. But for Elena…it is a job, one at which she excels. And she knows, however high the price, that this is the path she has chosen. It’s not only what she believes is right; it is her way of belonging, of proving herself of value. Neither of them will give in easily. You must know that.”
He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Yes, I do. But I’m afraid they will lose each other along the way, and they will both think it is Elena’s fault.”
Josephine’s face was bleak. “Then it is up to us to do what we can. First thing is to make sure Elena follows the facts, not the emotions. I haven’t met this man Allenby. What do you think of him? And for heaven’s sake, be honest! This is not a time for niceties, and especially not for half-truths. And if you don’t know, admit it.” She looked at him more narrowly.
“Aren’t you going to ask me if I like him?” he said wryly.
“Do you?”
“Yes, actually, I do. Not sure why. I think part of it is because I can’t always read him. Another part is because he treats Elena as an equal, but I think he is also protective of her.”
“If he has any brains at all, he will read you like an open book, as far as she is concerned,” Josephine replied dryly. “What does he think is going on at Wyndham Hall?”
“British Nazi sympathizers with considerable power and what seems to be an acquaintance with the Prince of Wales and Wallis Simpson, and also with Oswald Mosley and his Blackshirts. And since Elena has seen the Nazi Brownshirts firsthand, she knows them as unrestrained power. For all her social ambitions, Margot has not had that same exposure.”
“Is Wyndham himself part of this?”
“I don’t know. Not openly, at any rate. Allenby says David Wyndham’s sister, Prudence, is married to a man with a lot more wealth than appears outwardly. Landon Rees is his name. He’s an industrialist with strong connections to steel manufacturers and munition works in Sheffield, but he’s also doing business in the Ruhr Valley in Germany.”
“And this is the family Margot will be marrying into?” She raised her eyebrows only very slightly.
“The conclusions are hard to escape, Jo. Society is riddled with people who lost their sons, brothers, fathers, husbands, everything of value in the last war. It was only sixteen years ago. They don’t want another, not at any price. And we can’t afford another. God help us, we are barely risen from our knees since the last.”
“You would think we ought to know better,” she murmured.
He did not answer. Of course, what she said was right. But in regard to Margot’s marriage, the death of Repton and what Allenby and Elena could find out were also relevant.
Repton’s death was a thorn in the side of MI6, and it would be disrespectful to his memory not to dig deeply to find his killer, no matter where the investigation took them. Turning a blind eye for any reason at all was reckless and, to Lucas, as equal a betrayal as giving assistance to the enemy.
Josephine smiled. “Go and have a game in the garden with Toby. He’s been waiting for you since you went out without him.”
“I can’t take the dog into a café!” he defended himself, as if being accused of abandoning Toby.
“You observe the obvious, my dear, but that is completely irrelevant to a dog!”
He knew what she meant. He could apply that same concept to people. All the madnesses of war, ideologically or physically, mechanically or geographically, were all irrelevant when compared with the pain and the irretrievable loss of yet another generation.