Chapter Thirty-Two

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

A gnes de Montfort nodded to the ma?tre d’ at the Metropole and surrendered her fur coat to the hat check girl, then took the arm of her fiancé, Joseph P. Allerdyce, and processed with him to her table where many of the rest of the Empire family were gathered.

Heads turned.

Agnes and Joe were a striking couple, both large, on the upper end of middle age, and sumptuously dressed. Joe, brought up in music halls and now the owner of a number of theatres and sundry places of entertainment in Highbridge and beyond, lived in his new modernist mansion, while his fiancée remained in her rambling farmhouse and continued to train racehorses. Neither seemed intent on setting a date for their wedding.

Joe had seen The Empire slip from his hands not once, but twice – first into the hands of Lady Lassiter’s late husband, and then again into the firm grasp of his beloved and her sister-in-law. He told anyone who would listen, however, that he was pleased with the bargain he’d made, valuing her above any theatre in the country.

Their engagement had marked Agnes’s period of late blooming in Highbridge high society, and a distinct change in her style of dress. The youth of the city were now as likely to copy her in their choices as to ape the London magazines. As Agnes was a woman of intelligence with firm opinions, but who cared very little what anyone thought of them or her, she had also gained a reputation as a devastating wit.

Lillian stood up from the table to receive them both and Jack watched as Agnes greeted Nikolai with considerable warmth, then immediately summoned a waiter to order steaks and Martinis for herself and her partner. They had met at the Christmas party of course. Jack wondered if Agnes and Nikolai had friends in common. She had more aristocratic blood than any of the rest of them, and sometimes it seemed to Jack that these families with ancient lineages formed a sort of international club.

Joe greeted his fellow guests, shook hands with Nikolai, then waved towards the bar, where the citizens of Highbridge who wanted to listen to the music and dance, but who couldn’t afford dinner, had congregated in chattering groups. A painfully thin man with a collar too large for him jogged up immediately.

‘Terry, well, here he is. Nikolai, this is Terry Sheldrake. He’s the manager at The Playhouse and has been squeaking like a rabbit since he heard you were in town. Can you take five minutes to hear what a genius you are?’

Nikolai nodded, and replied with great seriousness. ‘Out of respect to you, Mr Allerdyce.’

Joe’s mouth twitched into a reluctant smile, then he found a chair next to Jack and lifted up his Martini in his large paw-like hand.

‘What are you doing dining here, Jack? They poisoned half your crew only the other week.’ He chuckled. ‘Cracking night you got out of it, though.’

‘Which we toasted gleefully with your champagne.’ Jack rubbed his chin. ‘Not a lot of choice in Highbridge, though, if you want a decent feed and a good band. Though I did my best. No, the chicken salad was supposed to be chucked away, then got sent round to us by mistake.’

‘What are they doing feeding you anyway?’ Joe asked as his steak – bloody and the size of a railway novel – was set in front of him. ‘They’ve never sent anything to my theatres I didn’t ’ave to pay through the nose for.’

‘An admirer of Harold’s, apparently. It made for a hell of an evening, but now we’re offered the best tables and an astonishing discount, so I think we’ve come out rather well from it.’

Joe began slicing his steak. ‘I’d been for thinking you’d lost your ability to land on your feet at every turn. Seems it’s coming back to you. Gramophone records now, is it, then? Novelty of running a top-tier theatre worn off, has it?’

Jack could never tell if Joe was teasing him or not. He suspected Joe knew this.

‘A man’s allowed to seize the day, isn’t he, Joe? Or seize the man, in our case. I practically kidnapped Dixon Wells off the street, then Tom realised the extent of his talents and the opportunity they represented. I see the new shop as a complement to the theatre.’

Joe arched an eyebrow in a manner which would have destroyed any of his employees. Jack was made of sterner stuff, but it still made him uncomfortable.

‘Do you think it’s a bad idea, Joe?’

That tempted another half-smile from Joe. ‘You mistaking me for a fortune teller, lad? It might succeed, it might not. It’s how you go at it that counts. And I’m at the age now where I like seeing you try. Glad to see Tom taking the initiative a bit. Agnes is fond of him, but thinks he needed a bit of a kick.’

‘Yes, he’s gone flying at the whole thing. The rest of us are just trying to catch up. Well, we can’t mess it up as badly as I did the restaurant,’ Jack said with a trace of bitterness. He had nothing against the Metropole, even after the chicken salad, but when he saw it as full and bustling as it was this evening, he couldn’t help resenting its success.

‘No! You can’t do worse than that, so that’s summat.’ Lillian and Grace had always taken so many pains not to make feel Jack feel guilty about the failure of the restaurant, so Joe’s candour made him feel oddly better. ‘And Tom’s a decent piano player, so even if he loses his shirt, he won’t starve.’

‘What about you, Joe? The season at The Playhouse this year isn’t in your usual style.’

The waiter arrived with Jack’s partridge, and he started sawing at it with a will. Partridge was his culinary nemesis. He liked the taste of it, but always forgot how fiddly the bits were to pull apart. He tried not to glance enviously at the steak.

‘Chekhov and Strindberg not to your liking, Jack? Well, not mine neither, but there’s a fashion in these plays for sex problems and drunks. If someone goes mad at the end, they only like it better. You ever seen any of Nikolai’s work?’

‘No. Any good tunes?’

‘Ha! His last was called The Slum Doctor of Prague and had a chorus of the unfortunates. They all wore masks and moaned throughout.’

Jack was horrified. ‘Not quite Riviera Nights , is it?’

A ripple of applause started around the stage, which built to a roar as Mabel Mills and her jazz men took the stage for their main set. The crowd around the bar surged onto the dance floor, and Ruby Rowntree, sitting a couple of places down from Jack, between Tom and Nikolai, clasped her hands together, then sat forward with her chin in her hands, blissful as a child.

Lillian was watching her fiancé talking to the manger of The Playhouse, and felt a buzz of pride under her ribs. How strange that in those blank years of her early widowhood, she had thought all the excitement of her life was gone. Now she had Jack, and the theatre, and Nikolai. Then, after not performing in public for more than twenty years, she had found herself on stage again and had loved it. She was grateful to Stella for giving her the opportunity – or, rather, by her strange behaviour, turning opportunity into a necessity. But Stella was obviously deeply unhappy. Perhaps Grace would have been able to find out what was troubling her so much, given time. Lillian’s own efforts to enquire had been shut down. Of course Stella was upset about her friend, but she was sure there was more to it than that. Guilt: a terrible thing, and Lillian had largely lived her life free of it. Regret, yes, and shame, after she’d given birth to Jack and handed him over to be raised by another woman, but she’d known then she was doing the right thing for him, so no guilt.

And now there was this recording scheme. Tom and Jack had taken her over the figures in the weeks since they first announced the idea, and it seemed plausible. Not sound, exactly, but plausible, perhaps, if they were extremely lucky. She found herself staring across the table at Dixon Wells. The boy was sweet, strange, but certainly brilliant in his way, and Jack and Tom both seemed to like him very much, so why, when her eye fell on him, did she feel so uncomfortable?

‘Wool-gathering, Lillian?’ Agnes said, between mouthfuls of her steak.

‘A little. Agnes, have you ever had the feeling of being afraid when you look at someone? Someone who doesn’t in any way seem frightening, but you find yourself terribly on edge when he’s around.’

Agnes followed the direction of Lillian’s gaze, and raised an eyebrow. ‘No, but I’ve seen horses do it.’

Lillian put down her glass. ‘You’ll have to explain.’

Agnes swallowed, and washed down her steak with the last swig of her Martini, before signalling to the waiter for another. ‘I made a bad mistake in my early days as a trainer. Hired a man who seemed as if he knew his business, found out in a week that he was mistreating the horses, so I got rid of him, of course. A year later I hired a different lad, and though he was perfectly civil to the beasts, they wouldn’t go near him. Turns out he was the half-brother of the first man. They saw the likeness, even when I couldn’t.’

Lillian had been lost in a London fog once – only for a moment – when her then husband, Sir Barnabas, had stepped away from her to find a taxi. The murk had been so dense she had lost sight of him, and for a terrible vertiginous moment, she felt as if the entire world had gone with him, leaving her in a nightmarish limbo, where monsters might surround her at any moment. Now, the world she knew seemed to disappear and drop away from her again, leaving her lost, disorientated and alone with this new, terrible thought.

‘Lillian . . .’ Agnes’s voice was low. ‘Lillian, my dear, are you ill?’

Lillian concentrated on the table top. I must not faint. Here is my glass, here is my knife, and my fork, and my buttered Dover sole. ‘I am well.’ She forced herself to concentrate on her own breathing. ‘Agnes, do you know anything of Dixon Wells’s family?’

‘No,’ her friend said slowly. ‘I think Jack hinted he is at odds with his father, who is something in the Foreign Office.’

Lillian swallowed. ‘Yes, he mentioned that. Agnes, might you enquire a little further, discreetly?’

The waiter set down the Martini glass in front of Agnes, and she pushed it towards Lillian. ‘Here, you take that one.’

Lillian grasped it gratefully. ‘Thank you.’

‘Not at all, my dear. Not at all. And yes, I’ll make enquiries.’

‘And now,’ Mabel Mills said from the stage, ‘I have a very special announcement . . .’

Lillian composed her face into an excited smile, but the fingers that clenched the stem of her borrowed Martini glass were white.

Vladimir Taargin wondered if he should speak to the bookseller about the upstairs room. The damp of the winter had leached in through the warped windows and there was a distinct smell of mould. No doubt, he considered, any attempt to make the place more comfortable would draw attention from the neighbouring properties, and that, he would rather avoid.

He stood where the light of the gas lamps cast enough light through the dusty panes of glass to read by, and opened the envelope the bookseller had handed him. More photographs from the Metropole of Kuznetsov and his fiancée. Useful, but . . . Ah, here was one of the Grand Duke and Lillian Lassiter in conversation with a group of American jazz musicians. That could prove useful. The notes were also interesting. So Nikolai was lecturing about modern theatre. He had some people at the Daily Bulletin who would be able to make something of that.

The door behind him opened and Christian entered, shaking the London rain from his umbrella onto the dusty floor.

‘I am sorry I am late, Your Excellency,’ he said at once. ‘My superior asked me to speak with him, and I feared refusing might cause suspicion.’ Taargin slid the notes and photographs back into the folder.

‘You were correct to comply, Christian. Any news?’

Christian joined him at the window and peered into the street below. ‘The Prince of Wales has decreed his tour with Prince Stefan in the north will be extended for two more days,’ he said. ‘He says he wishes to take Stefan to play a round at the Birkdale Golf Club on the north-west coast. Near Southport, but as far as I can tell, no firm arrangements for those days have been made.’

‘Really? The Prince of Wales is a profoundly frivolous person. Golf!’

‘Sir . . .’ Christian cleared his throat. ‘Southport is only eight kilometers from Highbridge.’

Taargin twisted his head sharply. ‘Eight kilometres?’

‘The Prince of Wales has made no mention of Highbridge. Nor of Kuznetsov. And it is, apparently, a very fine golf course.’

‘Yet it feels a little too close to be a coincidence,’ Taargin growled. ‘Are you certain, Christian, there has been no private communication from Stefan requesting this alteration?’

Christian looked baffled. ‘I handle all the correspondence at St James’s Palace, sir. I have seen nothing which looked suspicious.’

‘And neither have our friends at home.’

‘And so?’

‘And so, Christian, our hands are tied. The newspaper stories about Nikolai and his extravagances are having some effect among the people. While the king toils day and night for their comfort and security, Nikolai cavorts around on stage dressed as a rat. There we have had some success. But be vigilant, Christian.’

‘Sir, there is something else.’

‘Go on.’

‘The Foreign Office has put an appointment in the prince’s diary with this gentleman. An expert on Marakovia, apparently, called . . .’ He took his notebook from his pocket and turned the pages. ‘Here it is.’

Taargin glanced at the page, and for the first time since they had met, he smiled.

‘Yes, I remember Sir Gideon. One of these sybaritic Englishmen their Foreign Office would occasionally foist on us. I shall take him to dine at the Ritz. As I recall, his politics, such as they are, are not dissimilar to our own.’

‘And another gentleman, a Colonel Osman? The prince requested his attendance at briefings.’

‘I have never heard of him, but I’m sure the Prince of Wales will listen to Sir Gideon.’