Chapter Twenty-three

OF ALL THE LETTERS AND PACKAGES Billy Brogan and Frank Nettleton had spilled in the post room, only one remained out of place. There it lay, perched on the edge of Mrs Farrier’s desk, torn open by Billy’s own hand, forgotten in the confusion as they rushed out of the room.

And there it lay, until morning came.

Monday morning was always the time the Buckingham cleaners arrived. Long before the breakfast trolleys were warmed up, when all was still dark across Berkeley Square, Mr Winthrop and his army of cleaners set about their work.

The cleaners who visited the hotel basements set about their work with gusto. They knew this hotel and its secret corners as well as any concierge who darted up and down its halls. So, when one of the cleaners fumbled a key into a lock and swept on into the post room, they barely batted an eyelid as they swept around the room, lifting each item from Mrs Farrier’s desk and dusting beneath it. They barely batted an eyelid at the scraps of paper and screwed-up envelopes that had tumbled out of the waste-paper basket. They thought nothing of it as they swept the ripped-open envelope hanging off the edge of the desk into the refuse sack they carried on their rickety old trolley.

They did not know, and never would, that, as they left Mrs Farrier’s office, they were carrying Vivienne Edgerton’s whole world.

Nor did they know that, when they pulled their rickety old trolley into the service lift, spilling some of its contents onto the lift floor, they left the envelope for Vienna Mansions, New York City, behind. Or that, some time later, when a porter named Daniel Broome stepped into the lift and stooped to pick up the letter lying there, they had changed the Buckingham Hotel forever.

Daniel Broome knew it. Being the sort of boy who bored easily, he had no compunction about opening the letter up and reading its contents. When he realised it had come from the hand of Miss Edgerton herself, the compulsion to read the whole thing was too much to bear.

Inside this letter was a secret too big to be contained. Daniel tried. When he told his fellow porter, Ralph, about it, he swore him to secrecy. It wasn’t Daniel’s fault that Ralph told three friends, and it wasn’t Ralph’s fault that those three friends told twelve others. It wasn’t Daniel’s or Ralph’s fault when one of those friends, the sous-chef O’Neill who’d been romancing the chambermaid Yvette, took the news back to the chambermaids’ kitchenette that evening.

As for the letter itself: by the time All Hallows’ Eve came, a full week later, it had been passed from hand to hand, read from high to low.

Nobody ever knew what became of that letter. Perhaps some kindly chambermaid, seeing the injustice of it all, ripped it to shreds in her refuse sack. But by then it hardly mattered. In a hotel like the Buckingham, rumour was like disease.

Until, in a faraway Suffolk mansion, the telephone rang.

*

Vivienne Edgerton had once been used to being summoned to Maynard Charles’s office. She’d have imbibed too much in the Grand Ballroom the night before, or she’d have spat too much bile at some concierge, and a message would come: Mr Charles will see you now. Ordinarily, it was Billy who brought such messages, and so it had been today.

Now she stood outside the door to the office as Billy beat his retreat. Lifting her fingers, she took a deep breath and knocked.

She didn’t need this today. There were things she needed to do. Ever since meeting Hélène Marchmont and Mrs Moffatt, she’d felt a new steel inside her. Being pregnant was not an ordeal she had to endure. She’d been thinking of it all wrong, just riding the waves of it, terrified to think about what came next. But those words Mrs Moffatt had spoken, they altered everything inside her. What she needed was control, pure and simple. She would take charge of it herself. It was, she had started to reflect, exactly what life had been preparing her for.

Then she opened the door, and everything changed.

It wasn’t only Mr Charles in the office – though there he was, dressed in his starched shirt and braces, like always he was. Standing before the ornate desk was Vivienne’s mother, and looming over her, Lord Edgerton.

‘Close the door, Miss Edgerton.’

For a moment, she did not. She stood there, in its frame, and felt the roundness of her belly, pushing up against the house dress that could no longer truly hide it, and felt her heart hammering. No, felt two hearts hammering inside her. She took in their faces, one by one. So they’d sprung her a trap, she thought. How long had they known?

‘Close the door, Vivienne,’ Lord Edgerton intoned.

With gritted teeth, she did as she was told.

As the door clicked shut, her mother burst into a torrent of tears.

‘Well,’ Lord Edgerton seethed, ‘it’s true, then?’

‘Mother, why are you—’

‘Answer the question, damn it!’ Lord Edgerton boomed.

Vivienne looked from one to another. Maynard had seen the expression that coloured her face before. It was the look she used to have when she staggered drunkenly out of the Grand, only to come face to face with one of the night managers, or Maynard himself. It was the look that said she was cornered.

‘How do you know?’ she breathed, valiantly trying to keep her composure.

Lord Edgerton had opened his mouth with some sneer, but into the fractional silence that followed Maynard said, ‘I’m afraid it’s been the gossip of the hotel, Miss Edgerton. I’m yet to discover where it originated. Have you, perhaps, taken someone into your confidence?’

She could not believe it of Mrs Moffatt. She could not believe it of Miss Marchmont. And yet here was all the evidence she needed, that her secret was out: her mother could not take her eyes off the plumpness of her belly.

What did it matter? Another week, another two, and she would have had to shed the secret herself.

‘Why don’t you sit down, Miss Edgerton?’ Maynard began, in his most even tone.

By God, how Vivienne hated that tone! She’d heard it so many times. Maynard Charles, her royally appointed keeper, inviting her in here, bidding her to sit – and then explaining, in his rehearsed, calm voice, why she had to change her ways, her behaviour, her very character. At least, that was the way it had always seemed. Right now a little piece of her was telling her that he was doing the only thing that he could – anchoring the moment, tempering the excesses of Lord Edgerton’s anger, gently guiding Vivienne so that she didn’t throw herself off a cliff.

Something in her recoiled.

‘You’re all standing,’ she said, ‘so I’m going to stand. I’m not a child. You can’t drag me in here as if I am. What happens next? I’m to be caned? I’m to be disinherited? I’m having a baby,’ she snapped, and in the moment she was proud that she was not crumbling in the face of it. ‘I haven’t killed a man.’

‘Vivienne Edgerton!’ Lord Edgerton roared. ‘Sit!’

‘I won’t speak to you,’ she said – and though she started out tentatively, somewhere in those words she found her courage again. ‘You’ve no law over me. I’m twenty-one years of age. Stepfather or not, you’ve no business telling me what to do. I’ll speak to my mother, or not at all. Do you hear me, Bartholomew? Do you hear?’

Bartholomew. Maynard had never heard a word used quite as much like a weapon. Not my lord, not Father. Bartholomew. By God, he thought, she’s got some courage. Something inside him respected that, though he was careful not to show it. He took a fractional step backwards, as if to indicate he would provoke the situation no further.

‘Tell her, Madeleine,’ Lord Edgerton uttered.

‘Yes, Mother,’ Vivienne began. ‘Tell me.’

‘What have you done, Vivienne?’ Madeleine gasped.

As always, her voice inspired a terrible ire in Vivienne: the way she’d shed her New England accent in favour of this crude imitation of the England of old. As soon as she’d married the old brute at her side, she’d wanted to forget: the States; New York; Vivienne’s true father, five years in the ground. To Vivienne’s ear, she sounded like a fool. Was there anything worse than a fraud?

‘We’ve been so proud of you this year. No more dramas. No more .?.?. little love affairs, like you used to have. You’d cleaned yourself up, Vivienne. You nearly killed yourself with those excesses of yours, but you—’

‘Call it what it was, Mother,’ said Vivienne. ‘I was a nasty little addict. Opiates. Champagne. Whatever I could get my hands on. It carried me through for a while.’ She shrugged, openly, inviting further attack. ‘I’m not that girl anymore.’

‘But look at you .?.?.’

Vivienne folded her arms around her bump.

‘It’s a baby. It isn’t a—’

‘A baby, out of wedlock, fathered by Lord knows who!’ Madeleine exclaimed. ‘You’ll ruin our lives. Can’t you see what this will do to us?’

‘Your wretch of a daughter is to be my undoing,’ Lord Edgerton seethed.

Seemingly, he had forgotten his gadabout son, engaged to be married to some different heiress every season. He could drink and whore his way across the Continent, thought Vivienne, and nobody batted an eyelid. But the rules were different for women, weren’t they?

‘I’ve something important to say to you, then,’ Vivienne declared – and, not for the first time, she clung on to the things Mrs Moffatt and Miss Marchmont had said of their lives. ‘I’m not your undoing. I’m not going to ruin your life. This is my life. And I’ll ruin it my own way.’

She turned on her heel, as if she might leave – but some vital piece of courage had deserted her, and when she hesitated, her mother asked, in a faded, fragile voice, ‘Who is the father?’

Vivienne’s hands had turned into claws.

‘A better man than the one you chose to be my stepfather.’

‘I’ll hear no more of this!’ Lord Edgerton thundered. ‘You’ve been happy enough to take my stipend each month. You’ve been happy enough to live in my hotel, without paying a penny of board. You’ve been happy enough to sashay around town, without for a moment thinking about your future. To leech off my family estate, as if it belonged to you. Well—’

‘Leeching off you?’ gasped Vivienne.

‘Why, yes!’ Lord Edgerton fumed. ‘What else do you call it? For three years, Vivienne, you have lived at the cost of my estate. But the finest hotel in London, the generous allowance you’re permitted – none of it matters to you, does it? Because, time and again, you’ve shown what you are. There isn’t an ounce of gratitude in you. You’re a spoilt little rich girl, and now—’

‘You fool.’ Vivienne laughed, ‘I haven’t spent a penny you’ve given me on myself since two Christmases ago. Not since that moment I .?.?.’ Nearly died, she was going to say, but stopped herself. ‘You’ve no idea, have you?’ She laughed, then, wild and free. Even Maynard was disturbed. ‘Haven’t you noticed that I haven’t been in the Grand in months – not unless it’s been at your insistence. Haven’t you people wondered where I go each night? Off to lose myself in some other drinking hole – is that what you think? Well, nothing could be further from the truth, Bartholomew. Every single penny you’ve given me in nearly two years, I’ve put to work. Oh, not like you put money to work – with more and more investments, just to grow the size of your hoard. I’ve put it to good work – the work of helping people. I’m not a spoilt little rich girl, Stepfather. I’m the manageress of the Daughters of Salvation. I’ve helped save a thousand lives. I’ve put food in the bellies of a thousand hungry people. I’ve helped bring hundreds out of their addictions, so that they too can help others like them. The people I’ve seen you ride past in the street, without so much as a second look. The people you disregard because, to you, they’re just .?.?. ants. They’re my people. And I feed them by leeching off you, as you so kindly put it!’

The silence in the hotel director’s office grew thick. This was not the silence of simmering tension, though that was here somewhere as well. This was the silence of a world being changed. Of understandings being rewritten. Of continents shifting against one another, as Lord Edgerton struggled to understand the words Vivienne had just spat out.

His eyes revolved, to find Maynard.

‘Have you known about this, Mr Charles?’

Maynard lifted his palms in silent entreaty.

‘This ends, now,’ Lord Edgerton began. His face still wore its perplexity, but in his core he remained in command. ‘Maynard, this wretch of a stepdaughter of mine has been stealing from me on your watch, and—’

‘I do not believe you can judge it theft, sir. Her allowance was freely given.’

‘To spend on the essentials of a civilised life in society. Not to squander!’ He revolved again, looking imperiously down his nose. ‘And the way you tell me this, with such glee, as if I cannot just snap my fingers’ – which he happily did – ‘and end it. Not a penny more will come from my estate to you, and this bastard you carry.’

‘Bartholomew,’ Madeleine piped up, ‘please .?.?.’

‘And, what’s more, your residency at this prized address is, as of this moment, revoked. Do you hear me, Vivienne?’

She let the silence linger, then gave a wan half-smile.

She could feel her baby inside her. But she didn’t mean to let her stepfather’s wrath disturb the unborn child a moment longer. There and then, she swore that Lord Edgerton would not colour this child’s life, not as he had coloured hers.

Neither would her mother.

‘You speak about this hotel as if it’s been a blessing for me,’ Vivienne said, cool and collected. ‘You keep telling me I ought to be grateful. I used to think it too. But that’s not the truth. I didn’t realise it, for a time. I’d lost myself in drink and powders. But I see it clearly, now. Granting me a room at this hotel was never a gift. It was an exile.’ She directed this next to her mother. ‘You let him exile me, so you could have your new life, and pretend the old one never happened. I’ll never be like you, Mother. My child’s going to be loved.’ She stopped, reaching for the door. ‘And I don’t need money – yours or anybody else’s – to do that.’

Then she was gone. She didn’t even have the anger left in her to slam the door.

Madeleine called after her. She might even have gone to the door, if she hadn’t felt her husband’s vice-like fingers on her arm.

‘She’s already lost, Madeleine,’ he whispered.

Vivienne might have moved beyond anger, but there was still wrath in her stepfather. He turned it, now, on Maynard.

‘You’ve lost your grip on this hotel, Mr Charles.’

‘My lord, I implore you. Whatever she’s done, Miss Edgerton is a young woman at risk and we ought to—’

‘At risk?’ Lord Edgerton scoffed. ‘To hear her speak of it, she’s queen of this little East End hovel. You’ve been blind, Maynard. Either that, or you’ve been lying to me for years.’

Maynard was silent.

‘Blind,’ Lord Edgerton continued, ‘just like you were blind to Hélène Marchmont. These women see you for what you are. Old bachelors like you, never married, they’re too easily swayed by a pretty face. Women young enough to be their granddaughters. You’re losing your touch. You’ve turned soft. This hotel survives by rigour, Mr Charles. It doesn’t survive by you acting like a grandfather – or, worse, as if you’ve been bewitched. You need to pull your socks up, man. You need to start cutting losses. If there’s war to come, we need to be protected. I need you—’

‘Rest assured, my lord, that this will be dealt with.’

‘I’ve already dealt with it!’ Lord Edgerton raged. The brutish power of his voice quelled even Maynard. ‘Clean out my stepdaughter’s suite. It is to have its first new guest in two days’ time. It can start making some money for us, not squandering our time. By God, man! You were this hotel’s crown jewel. You could have sailed her through a hurricane at sea. But now .?.?.’

Maynard sensed the hesitation and seized the moment.

‘I’ll tidy the scandal away, my lord, as I tidy every one of them.’

‘Like you did Hélène Marchmont?’ Lord Edgerton laughed. ‘Get a hold of yourself, man. You’re losing the respect of this hotel. And when that crown slips, it never sits right again. You have one week to get on top of these things. Don’t forget, Mr Charles – John Hastings isn’t the only member of the hotel board!’

Maynard Charles had to steady himself after Lord Edgerton strode out of the office, trailing his tearful wife with him. It wasn’t that he didn’t understand his future was in the board’s hands. That was the way it had been since he first arrived at the Buckingham Hotel, in those fitful days after the Great War. Men of middle rank like Maynard were never truly the masters of their own destinies. The board of the Buckingham Hotel couldn’t see it – they thought him a cut above – but everybody was just clinging to another rung on the ladder, trampling on the people below to save themselves being trampled from above.

His eyes gravitated to the decanter of brandy that always sat on his desk.

His fingers reached for it.

But a little voice inside him stayed his hand.

No, he told himself. Not this time. This time, he didn’t need to dull the feelings. This time, he needed to sit with them, to let them wash through him, to work a way through.

A knock came at the door.

Lord Edgerton had left it ajar as he stalked away, and through the crack between door and frame there appeared first the face of Billy Brogan, and then the anxious, screwed-up face of Frank Nettleton.

‘Not now, Billy,’ Maynard snapped, and again the thought of the brandy came back to him.

‘Sir, it’s important.’

‘Can’t you see I’m busy?’

Frank’s head had disappeared, but Billy’s remained. Maynard supposed it was his fault. He’d used the boy for so many of Moorcock’s little errands – eavesdropping in the Queen Mary, asking prying questions at the concierge desk, and now off to the post room – that he’d become overly familiar.

‘Mr Brogan, this had better be important.’

‘It is, sir.’ Billy turned over his shoulder, into the corridor, and said, ‘Come on, Frank. Mr Charles hasn’t got all day!’

Maynard had almost lost his patience at the prevaricating that was going on in the corridor outside. His anger was beginning to give way to a kind of guilt – guilt that he hadn’t known what was going on under his nose: that he hadn’t understood how Vivienne was resourcing this project of hers; that he’d been steadfastly looking the other way for so long that he hadn’t noticed the changes in her body. But all of those thoughts vanished when Billy dragged Frank within and, swiftly and deliberately, closed the door behind them.

‘Mr Charles, when you sent me to the post room, I thought I’d just be sitting there. Slumped at the desk and listening to Mrs Farrier’s stories. But then .?.?.’

Frank bustled forward and pressed a bundle of papers, and one ragged envelope, into Maynard’s hands.

‘What is this?’ asked Maynard, turning the pages in his hands, even as a feeling of terrible disquiet overcame him. One of the leaves was in a Germanic language; the other was in English, though with so many amendments and crossings-out that it, too, looked like a kind of hieroglyphics.

‘The first is the letter Ansel Albrecht wrote the afternoon before he was .?.?. found,’ said Billy.

‘Killed,’ corrected Frank.

Maynard Charles looked up, his face a mask of thunder.

‘What the devil are you talking about?’

‘I know we shouldn’t have, M-Mr Charles,’ Frank began to stutter. ‘It was something Ruth – she’s one of the chambermaids – said that got me started. How Ansel oughtn’t to have been on the guest stairs at all – so how was it he was found there, dead?’ Frank had turned crimson, but he did not stop speaking. ‘Then I remembered what Ansel had been doing that afternoon. He was going to write to his father. He said there was something important he had to write home with, straight away. And, well, Billy and I thought – it’s the weekend, so that letter hasn’t been sent yet. We’d go and find it .?.?.’

Maynard hung his head. ‘Does Mrs Farrier know?’

‘Know, sir?’

‘That you two detectives have been sifting through her post bags.’

Billy interjected, ‘It’s what you sent me there for, Mr Charles.’

To be caught in a moral trap by Billy Brogan! The thought was unimaginable.

Maynard found his spectacles, balanced them on the bridge of his nose. Then he drew his desk lamp nearer and began to read.

‘Who translated this?’

‘We did, Mr Charles.’

‘You?’

Frank nodded, feverishly. ‘Billy’s father has a friend, down at Billingsgate. Came over from Salzburg just after the Great War. He helped. He was only five when they left, but he had a dictionary. And .?.?.’

Maynard Charles heard no more, for he was lost in the letter.

Dear Papa,

Where to begin? First off, know that I am well and in good health, and that our English adventure continues to amaze. Now that the Autumn Serenade is over, we look to the Christmas season. I have written to you of the magnificence of the Serenade before, and I still carry it in my heart. Mama would have fallen in love with it, I’m sure. But you, Papa, even if you had resisted its charms, you would fall in love with what Christmas has to offer. There is to be a wedding in the ballroom. And, after that, the Midwinter Ball.

But enough of the ups and downs of ballroom life – though I know you love it so!

Something happened at the Serenade that I am yet to understand. Papa, I believe I need help, and I dare not ask Jonas and Mr Schank, for I do not want them to think I am undermining the beauty and success of this voyage. I want to dance with them forever. I would not want them to think I was causing a fuss.

As I danced during the Serenade, I looked up – and there, at the railing overlooking the dance floor, was a face I have never forgotten. Lukas Jager was staring back at me. I would recognise those eyes anywhere, Papa. The way they look upon you so kindly, hiding all that is hidden underneath. I have never forgotten, Papa, that night when I was eight and he came to dinner, and the way he fawned over Mama, while belittling all of your work. To think, that a man like that could rise to become a kommissar in the police force, while you remain a staff sergeant. To bully and belittle his way to the top .?.?.

I have not thought of Jager in so long. I admit, I was afraid of him when I was small, and even more afraid in this last year, with all that happened in our dear Vienna. Indeed, I fear writing too much, in case these letters are read by people with no business to read them, and I cause trouble for you, Mama and Lisette. But I am afraid, Papa, and I don’t know what to do. For I have done some investigating of my own, just idle questions here in the Buckingham Hotel, and here Jager does not go by the name of Jager at all.

Here his name is Mr Tobias Bauer, and he lives in the hotel’s Park Suite as a refugee from the after-effects of the Anschluss. The Anschluss! That occupation of our dear Vienna that you and your brothers in arms did so much to resist. That destruction of our home from which there is no turning back. That Anschluss which, no matter how much our friends and their families resisted, Lukas Jager was always at ease with, in a way that I remember made Mama’s skin crawl.

I do not know the meaning of any of this. But Lukas Jager, who vanished from Vienna, is alive and well and living at the Buckingham Hotel. And I cannot help, Papa, but remember how he tried to convince you and your fellows to step aside, to let the German tanks roll into Vienna, to stop the pointless resistance of the Viennese police.

Lukas Jager is here, and I do not know what to do.

Send me word, as soon as you can. Until then, I am praying that his path and mine do not cross again.

Your son,

Ansel

Maynard Charles set the letter down. Somewhere along the way, he had started reading it out loud.

‘Who else has seen this letter?’

‘Not a soul, Mr Charles. We came to you as soon as we had it.’

‘We think it’s accurate,’ chipped in Frank. ‘We checked every word, over and over.’

Maynard tried to make sense of it. He cast himself back to the spring, when he’d sat in this same office with Tobias Bauer and promised him the world. A refugee in need, he’d thought. An old man whose world was falling apart. This letter – if it was true – changed everything. He scoured it again.

‘It might be that Ansel was mistaken,’ he said. ‘A case of mistaken identity. It happens.’

‘But .?.?. he’s dead, sir,’ Frank whispered.

Maynard nodded. Some things were absolute. Once again, he searched for more certainties in the letter.

‘Why would he change his name, if he was genuine?’ Billy asked. ‘That’s the thing we’ve got to cling on to, Mr Charles. Proves he’s a liar, at least.’

‘I have his passport,’ Maynard began.

He stood, shifted aside the portrait of the Buckingham’s original board that hung on the wall, and revealed the safe hidden behind it. A few twists of the lock later, he brought out a leather passport book marked with REPUBLIQUE D’AUTRICHE on its front. When he opened it up, both the picture and the name of Tobias Bauer peered back.

‘It’s all present and correct.’

‘He wasn’t mistaken, Mr Charles.’

There was such certainty in young Nettleton’s voice. Maynard absorbed it and started feeling it too.

But if Ansel Albrecht wasn’t mistaken, that left only one real option. There were agencies in the world who provided fraudulent passports. Forged identification papers, so that people might travel unseen. No doubt Moorcock, and everyone he worked with, had fake papers in dozens of different names. And that meant .?.?.

‘A spy,’ Maynard whispered, ‘in my hotel.’

‘He saw Ansel, that night in the Grand.’

All of a sudden, Maynard remembered it too. Ansel Albrecht had become separated from his partner on the dance floor. A commotion had erupted above. Not just Hélène, going to pieces, taking flight back through the stage doors; Tobias Bauer, reeling backwards, professing how magical the air of the evening was – while, at the same time, stumbling unchecked away from the dancing throng. Ansel Albrecht had been following him with his eyes. He remembered it vividly.

‘What if Ansel went to confront him?’ Billy began. ‘A man like this Lukas Jager wouldn’t want his secret to be out. What if Ansel went there to promise him he wouldn’t breathe a word, but Jager couldn’t—’

‘Supposition,’ said Maynard, though he dared not admit how close to the truth he thought Billy must be. ‘All conjecture, until we know otherwise. Boys, sit down.’

There was such force in Mr Charles’s words that both Billy and Frank did as they were told.

‘We need to go to the police, Mr Charles.’

Maynard shook his head. ‘We’ll do nothing of the sort. Not until we know the facts.’

‘But, Mr Charles!’ Billy protested. ‘It’s a murder. Ansel was murdered. That fall was no accident. If we don’t go to the police, we’re just letting it—’

‘You’re not availing yourselves of the facts. You’re not asking yourselves the right questions. Boys, I’ve asked you to perform certain tasks for me before. Fascists and Nazis in and out of this hotel, turning over the fates of millions in my dining room, plotting up and down my halls. You know the kinds of games that get played. You’ve listened and reported for me.’ He stopped. ‘So ask yourselves a question. Not what did Bauer – or Jager, or whatever his name is – do, but .?.?. why.’

‘Well, to stop his secret coming out, sir! To preserve all his lies!’

Frank came out of his silence, picked himself up.

‘That’s not what Mr Charles means, Billy. He means .?.?. w-why is Jager here at all? Why come here with a fake passport and a fake name and take up residence in the Park Suite? It can’t have been for Ansel. That w-was an accident. He can’t have known the Winter Hollers would come here. So .?.?. why is he here?’

The three of them remained in silence, until at last, Billy said, ‘We’re listening to them. But they’re listening to us too.’

‘Billy?’

‘Mr Brogan’s right,’ said Maynard, with a terrible solemnity. ‘What I’m about to tell you must go no further than these walls. Do I make myself clear?’

Frank wasn’t certain he wanted to hear at all, but Billy was already nodding.

‘The Buckingham is awaiting the arrival of a delegation from Germany’s old aristocracy. You may not think this worthy of note, for we’ve long been a home to aristocrats from across the Continent. But this delegation comes with a different aim – they seek to petition the Crown to change their course of action against Nazi Germany, to stop ceding control of Europe to them, to stand up for what’s good and right. This, of course, would not suit those fascists in Berlin. They seek to keep Great Britain toothless for as long as they can – until, in the end, any chance of being resisted is gone. They are quite content with Mr Chamberlain’s “peace”, quite content with His Majesty sitting back and twiddling his thumbs.’ He paused. ‘If Jager is here at our hotel, it means he’s listening too. Perhaps he’s here to identify them. To eavesdrop on them, and report back to his paymasters – just as I’ve been reporting to mine. Perhaps, even, to change hearts and minds, to tip the balance back in favour of this damaged, fractured peace.’

The queasiness in Frank’s belly started to grow. He needed the fresh air. He needed to get out.

‘Kick him out, Mr Charles,’ Billy declared. ‘Eject him from the hotel. Tell him he’s no longer wanted.’

No, thought Maynard. I couldn’t.

‘Murder is murder. Isn’t it, Mr Charles?’

If only the world was that simple. Maynard looked at Frank, then, with something approaching envy. How he wished he was as young and na?ve as that simple lad, wanting only to dance, not knowing the true measure of evil in the world, nor the real cost of a life.

‘If I kick him out – if I drag the Metropolitan Police in here – I’m sending them a message. His paymasters will know. And .?.?. without evidence, what good am I doing? He has a passport. He has his papers. All we have is a letter from a poor dead boy, and a case of mistaken identity.’

‘It’s not a mistake though, is it, Mr Charles?’

‘No, Billy, I’m afraid it is not.’ Maynard reached into a drawer of his desk, scribbled a note on a piece of headed notepaper, sealed it with wax into an envelope, and pressed it into Billy’s hand. ‘Take this, at once, to the post room. It’s to leave with the evening pick-up, and you’re to be there when it happens. In the meantime, Frank, you’re to get some rest. This has taken the wind from your sails, boy, and you’ve more work to do yet. I’m sorry, but you’re both to keep this a secret. Justice will be served for Ansel – you have my word. But, in the meantime, you’re to keep yourself out of trouble. Keep out of Tobias Bauer’s path. If you see him about the hotel, you’re not to look him in the eyes. You’re to give him the widest possible berth. Do you understand?’

Frank nodded, but all of his words were gone.

‘That will be all, boys.’

As Billy stood, teasing Frank up from his seat alongside him, he said, ‘What are you going to do, Mr Charles?’

‘I’m going to seek the counsel of people who live and breathe this world more deeply than me, Mr Brogan. I know you’ll find this hard to believe – but I’m going to follow my orders.’

*

That night, as Billy Brogan waited in the post room for the Royal Mail vans to arrive, and Frank nestled in the chambermaids’ kitchenette with Rosa, trying desperately not to think of Tobias Bauer, Vivienne stepped out of the back door at the Daughters of Salvation. With her woollen winter coat wrapped around her, she made haste for the high road.

The taxicab was waiting. She said little as she got into the back. All day long she’d worked in the offices behind the red brick chapel. For a time, the work had been enough to keep at bay the echoes of her mother and stepfather, the bitterness and bile. Now, as the day neared its end, she felt spent. The baby was turning inside her, and she had to remind herself that this was a joyous thing. Perhaps her mother didn’t want her, perhaps her stepfather had finally found the excuse he wanted to be rid of her forever – but she would never be alone again.

The taxicab took her north from Whitechapel, through the grand estates around Old Street – and, at last, to the little garden oasis of St Luke’s Fields, where there sat a veritable mansion behind iron railings. In the summertime, Vivienne had stood here and listened to a beautiful string quartet playing, while the owner of the house petitioned his wealthy friends to contribute to the Daughters’ cause. Now she made her way along a thin, meandering path in the dark.

The deep October night had drawn in around her, and she began thinking of a warm bed, a thick eiderdown, cocoa and teacakes and a hot bath in which to soak her weary feet. The thought that it would not be at the Buckingham – that it never would be again – had not yet truly dawned on her.

She knocked on the door.

‘Hello,’ she said, when it finally drew back. ‘You said .?.?.’ Before she could say any more, her voice broke open, unleashing all the pent-up emotion of the day. ‘You said there’d be a place for me, if ever they found out.’

The figure in the door stepped back, inviting her to the warmth within.

‘There’ll always be a place for you here. You know that. But, Vivienne, what’s happened? Is there something wrong?’

She hadn’t wanted it to be like this. She hadn’t wanted to tell anybody, not until the time was right. Certainly not the man standing in front of her now. But she found her composure, tried to smile – for really, this was joyous news – and declared:

‘Warren, I’m pregnant.’