Chapter Twenty-nine

MRS MOFFATT AWOKE TO THE taste of the sherry from the night before and an anticipation more wild than she’d ever had as a little girl.

It was Christmas Day, and she was about to receive the very best gift of her life.

Christmas morning, however, was just another morning at the Buckingham Hotel. The housekeeping lounge might have been bedecked in streamers – and breakfast might have been a little sweeter than usual, with big slabs of fruit cake sitting in the centre of the table – but the hotel’s guests still required their bedlinen to be changed, still demanded their floors to be swept, would still file complaints with the hotel management if their doorknobs and curtain rails were not polished to perfection. A good number of the chambermaids had been permitted the day off to visit family and friends, but many more would have to toil the morning away.

‘But it will be worth it,’ said Mrs Moffatt. ‘Everything you girls have heard about the Grand Ballroom is going to pale compared to our own Christmas ball this afternoon.’

Rosa leaned across the table to some of the new girls and said, ‘Mr Charles normally sends down champagne. And there’ll be little pastry cups from the Queen Mary. And dancing, right here in the housekeeping lounge!’

‘But first,’ Mrs Moffatt continued, ‘we’ve work to do. Happy Christmas, girls!’

And as she watched them file away, Mrs Moffatt smiled to herself. The girls might have spent that morning in anticipation, but she knew no amount of work was enough to distract her from thoughts of what was coming.

*

Some hours later, when Christmas afternoon was already paling towards Christmas night and Rosa, Ruth and all the other chambermaids were welcoming various concierges, porters and pages into the housekeeping lounge for singing and dancing, Mrs Moffatt stood by the tradesman’s entrance on Michaelmas Mews, wrapped in her thick woollen winter coat. The snow had cloaked Berkeley Square for long weeks already, and in the mews it grew in great palaces of ice against the neighbouring town house walls. Mrs Moffatt felt the bite of the wind.

She waited, and she waited, and she waited some more.

Half an hour passed. Then an hour. She reached into her coat pocket and drew out the last letter he’d sent.

Dear Emmeline,

I am back from our training in the Highlands of Scotland, and have received your invitation. Please don’t think ill of me for a tardy reply! I’d be delighted to accept. I still know so little of London, and all that you have said about your hotel fills me with thoughts of how I imagined England would be when I was a boy: the palaces, the spires, the guards on parade! I will be there, with all the pleasure in the world.

Your son,

Malcolm

But he wasn’t here. Mrs Moffatt had sent him directions. She’d sent him her love. She’d written to him, often, across the autumn and winter months – and he’d written back too, with tales of his escapades on the base and little snippets of his life back home. Every letter was a fraction of a step closer towards knowing who this man – her son – really was. But to see him again, to invite him into the world she’d made for herself after she gave him away, would have been such a great stride.

And he wasn’t here.

She turned away from the tradesman’s entrance, her thoughts returning to the warmth of the housekeeping lounge and perhaps a glass of sherry – something to take away the sting of the evening – and there she saw Archie Adams, standing on the other side of the storeroom doors.

‘He didn’t come, Archie.’ Mrs Moffatt trembled. ‘I’m an old fool.’

And she started tearing at the letter in her hands – then stood back, aghast, at what she had done.

‘I’m sure there’s a reason,’ she said, moving towards Archie. ‘He must have been waylaid. Or perhaps there’s a military reason. Something he can’t say .?.?.’

‘Come with me, Emmeline.’

She let him guide the way. Soon, they had passed the housekeeping lounge, with the sounds of such raucous fun and laughter emanating from within; then, they were standing on the outskirts of the reception hall, the air filled with the botanic scent of the towering Norwegian fir. Across the black and white tiles, guests still flowed. The early evening hubbub had already begun in the Queen Mary restaurant. Billy was still standing by the check-in desks, looking strangely solemn for Christmas Day.

And there – as if he’d just stepped through the revolving brass doors, still dusting the snow off his big, broad shoulders – stood Emmeline Moffatt’s son, Malcolm Brody.

Archie felt the change in Mrs Moffatt’s body.

‘He hadn’t forgotten,’ he whispered. ‘He’s just .?.?. an Australian. He doesn’t quite understand English pomp and circumstance. He just brazened through the main entrance, as if he belonged here.’

‘And he does,’ Mrs Moffatt said.

She marched across the reception hall to join him. When at last he saw her, Mrs Moffatt didn’t hold back. She opened up her arms and wrapped herself around him.

Well, it was Christmas, after all.

*

On the other side of London, the Cohens had forgone the traditional turkey or goose. Now that their eldest hen had stopped producing eggs in the coop out the back, she was sitting, pride of place, in the heart of the dining table. At the table, Aunts May and Rebecca had set about dishing out the vegetables. Cabbages and carrots and chestnuts roasted on the fire, while Artie grinned as he slashed the carving knife around in the air, making a ridiculous show of himself – so that Alma, when she came in carrying the gravy jug in one hand and the butter dish in the other, had to say, ‘He’s only showing off, dear. You know how he is.’

‘Oh, I do.’ Vivienne smiled, and Artie sliced into the bird.

It was only the second time she’d visited the Cohen house, though it felt as if she’d been coming here for years. From the peril of two Christmases ago, to the joy and wonder of this: the family ranged around her wanted her to be here; they hadn’t left her to rot in a suite at the Buckingham Hotel, hadn’t summoned her to their estate out of some misplaced sense of obligation, were not suffering her presence, but basking in it instead. As Alma put the gravy jug down, she gazed again at the roundness of Vivienne’s belly and said, ‘Our first grandchild. Next year, there’ll be little feet running around this table. Are you ready, Artie?’

‘I’ve been ready my whole life.’

Alma rather doubted that; responsibility and trustworthiness, dependability and duty had never been words she associated with her younger son. And yet, as she looked at him now, another thought occurred to her: that Artie, much more so than Raymond, knew the meaning of family. He’d been in his fair share of scrapes over the years, he’d made mistakes and paid for them – but he’d never strayed far from the family home, and every single time he’d got into trouble had been because he was trying to do something for the Cohens. No, Alma realised, Artie had sometimes lacked the sense to think things through, but he’d never lacked the heart to care for his family.

She was pooling gravy on Vivienne’s plate when she heard a knock at the door.

‘I’ll get that!’ roared Artie, who had finally stripped every fleck of flesh from the chicken carcass and was removing the skeleton, ready for tomorrow’s soup.

But it was Vivienne who was on her feet.

‘Please,’ she said, ‘allow me.’

Before anyone could argue, she was in the hall and at the front door. When she opened it up, it was to see a whirlwind of snowy white flakes waltzing along the terrace – and there, framed in the doorway, Nancy and Raymond. From somewhere further down the row, there came the sounds of carollers out on their evening jaunt.

‘Vivienne,’ Nancy gasped, and she stepped within, dusting the hallway with snow. ‘You look—’

‘Ready to burst,’ said Vivienne. There were still three months before her baby would come into the world, but already it seemed interminable. ‘I feel strong, Nancy. But .?.?.’ She cupped her hand around her belly. ‘Come on, come inside. Alma’s already serving dinner.’

She caught the creased-up look on Raymond’s face, as if he couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing: Miss Edgerton, once the ruin of the Buckingham Hotel, here in his childhood home. Too many worlds were colliding in this moment; it nearly took his breath away.

Vivienne laughed. ‘I feel exactly the same! Raymond de Guise, the debonair, elegant statesman of the ballroom – and here’s his childhood home! We’re just the same, you and I – two fish out of water.’

Alma was waiting to wrestle Nancy out of her overcoat. Then, after a dozen embraces and yet more talk about the baby to come, it was almost time for Christmas dinner to be served.

‘But you wait there, you greedy lot,’ Alma began. ‘We’re not all here yet.’

Nancy and Raymond flickered their eyes around the table, taking in each member of the family. It was not a big table, already crowded by the seven adults crammed in around it – but, at its head, at Alma’s right-hand side, another place had been laid.

Alma bustled to the bottom of the stairs.

‘You can come down now, dear!’ she called out.

Then, when there was no reply, she dusted her hands on her apron and heaved herself up the stairs.

‘So, you all set, then?’ asked Artie, grinning, in his mother’s absence. He was already gnawing on a chicken leg, though his aunts looked disapprovingly on. ‘Off on honeymoon by New Year?’

‘We’re to go to Lancashire,’ said Nancy, ‘and see the old sights. All thanks to you, Vivienne.’

Vivienne nodded, a smile in the corner of her lips.

‘The Winter Hollers have taken themselves up there for New Year,’ Raymond said, ‘dancing at the Empress. We’ll see them too. And then .?.?.’

He reached into his jacket pocket and produced a set of jangling silver keys. On these, Artie’s eyes lit up.

‘You got it, then? It’s yours?’

‘Number 18 Blomfield Road, Maida Vale. I’ll pick up the keys after Christmas.’

Artie whistled discordantly through his chipped teeth. ‘Somehow knew you wouldn’t be coming back out east, Ray.’

‘But I’ll be here, whenever I can,’ Nancy said. ‘It’s decided. I’m not leaving the Buckingham, and I’m not leaving the Daughters of Salvation either.’ She paused. ‘That is all right, isn’t it, Miss Edgerton?’

‘Vivienne,’ she said. She liked it when they called her Vivienne, or when Artie called her Viv. ‘Not Miss Edgerton, not anymore. Actually, Nancy, Raymond, there’s something you ought to know. You see’ – she blushed – ‘I’m not going to be Miss Edgerton much longer.’ She paused, lifted herself in her seat. ‘I’m going to be Mrs Cohen.’

Raymond, too, raised himself up. He reached out for Nancy’s hand, only to find she was already clasping Vivienne’s.

‘We don’t know when,’ Vivienne said. ‘Perhaps not until after the baby. But I’m done with people looking down on me. This is what I’m doing. And, Nancy, you’ll always be welcome at the Daughters of Salvation. Always. Whether you have children or not, whether you’re with the Buckingham or not – that place is yours as much as it’s mine.’ She paused. ‘It’s going to work. Even without my stepfather’s stipend, we’ve worked it through. Mr Peel’s still supporting us, and there are friends of his, other benefactors, who want to help too. When we can, there’ll be new premises and .?.?.’ She stopped. ‘Artie and I are going to find a place, aren’t we, Artie?’

Artie nodded. ‘We are.’

‘We’ll move there as soon as we can, and we’ll grow the Daughters – and I’ll be a mother, the best mother I can, a better mother, I’m sure, than my own ever was. And—’

Nancy was still clasping her hand. ‘Vivienne, you will.’

‘Moving out of the family home, Artie?’ Raymond beamed. ‘Why, it’s almost as if you’re .?.?. growing up at last!’

Artie whipped his head around. ‘Less of that tongue, de Guise.’

‘Why not just stay here though, Artie? Ma would love to keep you around.’

‘Oh, she’s got her hands full,’ Artie said. ‘And me and Viv, we need our own—’

‘Hands full?’ asked Raymond. ‘What the devil with?’

There was the sound of a creaking floorboard, of footsteps on the stairs.

‘Take a look for yourself, Ray,’ said Artie, dishing out roast potatoes onto each plate. ‘This family just keeps on growing.’

Raymond and Nancy turned. There, in the hall doorway, at the bottom of the staircase, Alma was standing with a little girl with dark hair and a dark complexion. As tall as Alma’s shoulder, she might have been nine or ten years old. She had little black eyes and plump cheeks, which might have dimpled had she smiled. Only, the nervousness that was written on her was all too clear.

‘Raymond,’ Alma began, ‘Nancy, I’d like you to meet Leah Elkamm.’

Raymond had no words. Nor, for a moment, did Nancy. Finally, through the bewilderment, she stood and went to the girl’s side, crouching to take her hand.

‘I’m pleased to meet you, Leah,’ she said, her voice rising with the quality of a question.

‘Take a seat, Leah, dear,’ said Alma, and together they came back to the table.

‘Well, you’ll remember, Ray,’ said Artie, dolloping great splodges of bread sauce, thick with onion and clove, onto each plate. ‘We was in that café in Blackpool. You know – you had that stink of a hangover, on account of not stopping drinking for even a second on the sleeper train up.’

Nancy raised her eyebrows.

‘There was that newspaper, Ray. Homes wanted, for child refugees. After that nastiness in November. All these poor mites, without a place to go to. All those mothers and fathers, getting shot of their young ’uns, if only to give ’em a chance. Well, I brought that paper back with me. Showed it to Viv, and all the rest. Turns out there’s thousands like young Leah here. They’re bringing them in from Berlin, Bavaria, anywhere the Nazis are rounding people like us up and casting ’em out. Some viscount or other dreamed the scheme up. Bring the kiddies here, find ’em decent homes for as long as it lasts.’ He looked up. ‘We’re going to see Leah here right, see. It ain’t much, not considering what those monsters are brewing over there, but every little counts. They say we’re not at war yet, but we are. It’s the war of being kind against being cruel.’

Artie might have said more, then – but hunger had got the better of him, and he had already stoppered his mouth with a whole roast parsnip.

‘The family’s getting bigger, then,’ said Nancy, if only to break the silence. She took them all in, and thought: what a wonder family really was.

‘So, who are we toasting to?’ Alma grinned, raising her glass. ‘My new daughter Nancy, or my daughter-to-be, Vivienne? My grandchild, cooking in there, or our borrowed daughter from far away, Leah?’

Smiles were ricocheting around the table. There was nothing better than smiles like these.

‘Oh, hang it!’ Alma cheered. ‘To all of us, each and every one!’

*

Night had already cast its cloak over Berkeley Square. Christmas night – and, through the revolving doors of the Buckingham Hotel, there came the sound of carollers working their way around the opulent town houses.

But in the housekeeping lounge, there was music of an altogether different sort.

Louis Kildare, Gus Black and Harry Dudgeon of the Archie Adams Orchestra had set up in the corner. Gus had the voice of an angel, and in the confines of the housekeeping lounge they were making a riotous din. When Billy stepped through the doors and saw the tables all pushed to one side, Frank and Rosa jiving in the spot where the chambermaids ordinarily took breakfast, it brought such a smile to his face that the pent-up tension of the last weeks slipped off him. Perhaps, he thought – as he found a drink and made a silent toast to Ansel Albrecht – this was what Frank had always meant when he spoke about letting the music flow through you.

‘Billy!’ Rosa called out, spying him from the makeshift dance floor. ‘Come and join in!’

‘I can’t stay, Rosa. I’m still on shift. Triple pay Christmas night!’

‘One dance, Billy. It’s Christmas!’

Billy flashed his eyes around, looking for a partner – and there was Ruth, chinwagging with two of the other chambermaids on the other side of the room. Billy waved Rosa away – she needed very little persuasion to dive back into her dancing with Frank – and hurried to join the girls.

‘You won’t believe what I’ve just seen,’ he began, finding his brashness once again. ‘I was in the Queen Mary and .?.?.’

It was hard to credit it. Old Tobias Bauer had been there, of course. Christmas dinner for one, all the trimmings – and the waiter and ma?tre d’ fawning around him, just the same as they’d done all year: Herr Bauer, their resident refugee, the most congenial of gentlemen. The sight had made Billy’s skin crawl, as it did every time their paths crossed ways. This time, however, his eyes had been drawn to something else.

‘Right there, in the middle of the Queen Mary – Mrs Moffatt herself! With Archie Adams and a guest for the day. Dressed up, she was, like you’ve never seen her before! And Archie – well, he looked like he does up on stage, I suppose, in that white evening suit of his, but .?.?.’

The girls shared a knowing look and, one after another, sighed deeply, as if they themselves had witnessed some beautiful act of love.

‘I knew there was a reason she wasn’t down here with the rest of us,’ Rosa called over.

‘Haven’t we been saying it all year?’ Ruth smiled. ‘All those times Mr Adams came down here for a cream tea.’

‘The next big wedding in the Grand!’ Rosa laughed as she continued to dance. ‘If it can happen for Mrs Moffatt, it could happen to any of us. Even you, Ruthie!’

Ruth had been enjoying the idea of Mrs Moffatt and Archie Adams walking down the aisle, but now her face darkened.

‘Billy,’ she said, ‘maybe we can get a drink?’

‘Me?’ Billy said, reeling back.

‘Well, you’re about the only one who doesn’t talk about me getting a nice young man these days.’ She stopped. ‘A walk. We could go for a walk?’

Ruth was already marching away. When Billy faltered to follow, Rosa flared her eyes at him – ‘On with it, Billy, you big oaf! That’s the best luck you’ve had all year!’ – and he felt himself compelled to follow.

Soon, he and Ruth were wandering together around the edges of Berkeley Square. The moon had appeared, fleetingly, through banks of cloud, casting its spectral light over the rolling whiteness of Mayfair. Everywhere, the world glittered.

Billy, who had had the foresight to bring his coat with him but had long since offered it to Ruth, shivered as they passed the carollers on the corner.

God rest ye merry gentlemen

Let nothing you dismay

Remember Christ our Saviour

Was born upon this day

Together, they stopped and listened. Words like these warmed the heart on evenings like these, when all around was the unending cold. Billy felt Ruth inching closer to him, wondered for a moment if perhaps her hand might creep across and snake into his. Perhaps his own thoughts turned that way too – there was something about a Christmas night that dispelled all the rejections of the year gone by – but, as soon as he dared himself to dream of it, Ruth spluttered out, ‘Billy, I’m sorry.’

‘Sorry, Ruth? What for?’

The carol was reaching its zenith, the singers filled with passion, as together Billy and Ruth wandered on, their footfalls silent in the snow.

‘Billy, we’re friends, aren’t we?’

Friends, thought Billy, with that familiar plunging feeling inside.

‘Of course we are!’ he declared, breezily. ‘Always will be, if you’ll have me.’

‘Billy, I know I’ve treated you badly. I know I’ve been rude. I know I’ve been – dismissive, Rosa would say, and Lord, she won’t shut up about it, not if you get her started. But the thing is – I know I’ve been hard on you. And I’m sorry.’

They had wandered a little further when Billy said, ‘You don’t have to be. Nobody has to like people they don’t, do they? That’s just my rotten luck. But it’s not your fault, Ruth. We don’t choose who we fall in love with. Love chooses us.’

‘It’s not just that, Billy. It’s .?.?. I haven’t been honest.’

Billy stopped. That sinking feeling he had, it was beginning to merge with all of the other sinking feelings he’d had since Ansel Albrecht. He looked around himself. It was only a short march through the dark here, down through the town houses and across the broad thoroughfare at Piccadilly, to the Merchant Colonial Club. The tension of those lonely trudges through the snow was like a heavy stone in the pit of his belly.

‘Ruth?’

‘Oh, Billy,’ she said – and it seemed to him, then, that she was wrestling with herself. ‘They’ve been asking me all year why I won’t give you a chance. Why I won’t give any boy a chance. Telling me I’ll end up an old maid – and don’t I want to feel like they do? I keep looking at them, at Rosa and Frank, and Nancy and Raymond, and thinking – yes, I do want that. I want that feeling they have. I’m jealous of it. I am! I can’t deny that. And then I was looking at them dance, on the day Nancy got married. Frank was with Rosa, and the two of them, they looked divine. Like they were made for each other. I wanted to be one of them. I wanted to be .?.?. Frank.’

Billy was silent, as if she might say more, but when there was only the silence and the snowfall, he said, ‘Ruth, we all want to feel it. When it happens, it happens. I don’t know if—’

‘No, Billy, you don’t understand. I was watching them dance and feeling that envy I’ve been feeling all year. And I realised – it wasn’t Rosa I was jealous of, it was Frank. I would have given anything to be down there, and Rosa with her arms around me, leading me in that dance.’

Billy said, ‘Oh,’ and for a time that was all.

‘I think I’ve always known. Somewhere inside me. It’s like that night we went to the Starlight Lounge. All you wanted to do was dance – and all I wanted to do was sit at my table with that girl, Martha. I didn’t stop thinking about her all night, Billy. I thought I was jealous of her. She was so beautiful. She knew her own mind. I thought it was that I wanted to be beautiful too. But, no, it was .?.?. the other thing.’ She stopped. ‘I’ve heard about people like me. Something wrong in the head and—’

Billy closed the gap between them, dared to put his hands on her shoulders.

‘Oh, Ruth, you’re not wrong.’

‘I fall in love with girls, Billy. How can that not be .?.?. ?’

Together, they turned to the face of the Buckingham.

‘I think it’s like I said,’ whispered Billy. ‘We don’t choose who we fall in love with. Love chooses us.’

It wasn’t until he’d spoken that he realised his arm was around her, and it wasn’t until some moments later that it occurred to him that she hadn’t even recoiled. She was leaning into him, as if she needed him to be there – not, perhaps, in the way he’d once dreamed, but in the way that she needed it, and this was the most wonderful feeling ever. Suddenly, all of the horror he’d felt in the past few months was being washed away.

‘I think I could dance with you now, Billy.’ She laughed. ‘You’re a good friend.’

‘Oh, Ruth, you’ve seen me dance. I’ve tried and I’ve tried, but I’m not getting any better.’

‘I don’t think that matters, does it?’

Perhaps it didn’t. Slowly, arm in arm, they wended their way back across the picture-postcard expanse of Berkeley Square, in through the tradesman’s entrance and towards the housekeeping lounge. Another fifteen minutes wouldn’t hurt, thought Billy. Nobody would come and chastise him – not on Christmas night. And, besides, one dance with Ruth – whoever she loved – would be a perfect Christmas gift. He deserved that, after everything he’d done for Mr Charles this year.

He was about to slip past the reception hall with Ruth, when a voice halloed him from the shadow of the glittering Norwegian fir – and, when he turned over his shoulder, he saw Tobias Bauer, just emerged from the Queen Mary restaurant.

Not Bauer, he told himself.

Lukas Jager.

‘Mr Brogan!’ the old man was calling, in his best imitation of frailty and old age. ‘I say, Mr Brogan, might I beg your help?’

Billy’s heart sank. There was always a ghost at every feast.

Ruth was still hanging from his hand.

‘I’ll be quick,’ he said. ‘As quick as I can.’

‘Poor old Mr Bauer,’ she said, softly. ‘It must be hard to be alone, and so far from home, on Christmas night.’

Billy watched as she made haste back to the housekeeping lounge. Only then, bracing himself and breathing deeply, did he turn to face Bauer. In the meantime, the old man had started hobbling across the floor, holding his cane with its carved otter head as if he might tumble at any moment. Not for the first time, Billy wondered how much of it was an act; whether old Lukas Jager might, at any moment, pick himself up, wield that cane like a baton, and come out fighting. There had to be some strength in him, after what he’d done to poor Ansel. Dancing made a man strong. Ansel wouldn’t have given up easily.

Billy steeled himself as he said, ‘How might I help, sir?’

The old man reached out to touch Billy’s hand with his papery, trembling own.

‘I wonder if you might .?.?.’ He faltered. ‘Dear me, Mr Brogan, I find myself quite short of breath! Too much figgy pudding, I do believe. It’s playing with my heart.’ He paused, found his composure, went on. ‘I have a letter I forgot to send. A little message of Yuletide goodwill, to my sister and her family. I wondered if you might—’

‘I’m afraid the hotel post room isn’t open on Christmas Day, sir. But if you were to bring it to the desk tomorrow, we’ll be sure it reaches the first collection when the post room wakes up.’

‘Wakes up? My dear boy, what a turn of phrase you have! The post room, hibernating away – so droll! No, no, I’d feel much better – I really would – if I knew it was all taken care of. It’s been preying on my mind. It shouldn’t take two moments. It’s on my writing desk, just upstairs.’

Billy felt coiled. In the housekeeping lounge, Ruth would be waiting. He would have liked to have danced with her, if only as friends. But here stood Tobias Bauer, and in his eyes all the seeming innocence of old age.

All the cunning, Billy reminded himself.

Yet somehow he was standing in the guest lift with Bauer, talking about the Christmas turkey and the chestnut stuffing the Queen Mary made each year. Soon after that, he was following Bauer – at the old man’s snail’s pace – along the plush crimson carpets of the Buckingham’s uppermost storey, wondering again what this letter could possibly contain, what secret pieces of information the old man had picked up in the restaurant that were so vital he had to commit them immediately to paper. What interest did Berlin have in the mystery of who Mrs Moffatt was dining with? What possible purpose was there in Mr Hitler collecting intelligence over what Archie had eaten for dessert, whether the Queen Mary’s cranberries were too tart this year, whether Mr Charles had dined alone or with some member of the hotel board?

‘I shan’t be a moment,’ Bauer began, as he led Billy around a corner and to the secluded door of the Park Suite.

‘I’ll wait here,’ Billy said.

His mind was on the housekeeping lounge. His mind was on the ticking clock. His thoughts were on Ruth, and how wounded she might feel if, having just listened to her most intimate secret out on the square, he didn’t follow her down.

And perhaps it was because his mind was lost in thought that he barely even registered it as odd when Bauer said, ‘Oh no, no, young man, you should come in, please, it’s here somewhere. I do appreciate this, Billy. It saves an old man trotting up and down on Christmas night. I’m not a young man like you. I expect you have big things planned! I’m almost ready for bed.’

So Billy followed him in.

The Park Suite was simple and stark, unadorned with the fineries of the other Buckingham suites. Bauer left Billy at the door and hobbled over to the writing desk Mr Charles had had installed by the bedside. From the collection of newspapers and journals on top, he produced a single envelope, with the address already written on the front.

‘Here we are, Mr Brogan. Come, take it.’

Billy took three strides deeper into the Park Suite, and reached out to pluck the letter from Bauer’s hand.

‘Letters are most important, aren’t they, young man? They’re the heralds we send out into the world.’

Billy looked down. In his hands, Bauer’s letter was hanging.

The name on the front: BILLY brOGAN.

He looked, quizzically, back at the old man – and he perceived in him some difference of bearing, some new sense of elegance and poise. The old man’s shoulders were slightly less hunched, the creases around his eyes somehow smoothed away. And the cane in his hand – he was not leaning upon it. It was, Billy saw now, little more than a prop.

Or, perhaps, a weapon.

‘You may open it, Billy. It is for you, after all.’

The voice was different too. Gone was its lightness, the uncertain warble from the back of the throat. Here was a simple, honeyed voice that oozed with confidence, that expected – no, demanded – to be obeyed.

Billy slipped a finger into the envelope, tore it open, lifted out the page within. On it were written only six stark words, inscribed in bold strokes of ink.

I CAN SEE YOU, MR brOGAN

Billy staggered back. His hand was already reaching out for the door but, in a second, Bauer – no, Jager – had reached out with his cane and, hooking it around Billy’s shin, toppled him to the floor. As he fell, the letter slipped out of his hands.

Billy scrabbled backwards.

He had to pretend.

He had to be everything Lukas Jager was, if he was going to get out of this room alive.

‘What’s going on, Mr Bauer?’

‘Oh, you’ve no need to call me that anymore, Brogan. You may call me by my true name, if you should like.’

‘Lukas Jager.’

‘Very clever, my young friend. Of course, it is not only you, is it? A bog-brained boy from the Emerald Isle doesn’t have the wherewithal to conduct something like this of his own accord, does he? So you’ve had paymasters along the way. Maynard Charles, no doubt, and whoever the spooks are running him.’

‘No,’ said Billy, still lying prone on the floor with Jager’s aged, evil eyes staring down into him. ‘Just me, Mr Jager. For my friend Ansel. He’s the one who told me who you really are.’

Where the words came from, he was not sure. It was instinct, pure and simple. Because, if he wasn’t to get out of this room alive – if he really was to join Ansel in the Great Beyond – then he would do it with his head held high. He wouldn’t do it begging for his life, giving up the people who mattered to him just for the privilege of a few more moments of life. His family were flashing through his eyes: his mother and father; Patrick and Roisin, and all the rest of the Brogan brood. Little Gracie May, who liked to tease him so mercilessly. He wouldn’t let any of them down, not by wasting his last breath begging to a man like Lukas Jager. Not by selling the Buckingham down the river.

‘A hero, then.’ Jager smirked. That smile changed the whole shape of the old man’s face; now he looked pinched and weaselly, twenty years younger, more cunning by far. ‘Fancy yourself a hero for the ages, do you, boy? Well, more fool you. I’ve known about your little scheme for months. Do you think men like me get the wool pulled over our eyes by little boys? What an elegant scheme! To take each letter I wrote and make forgeries of them, eliding things of import, adding little tricks of your own. Counter-subterfuge. Misinformation. The shadow wars. Well, I was leaving breadcrumbs from the start, boy. Special words slipped in, here and there, to identify if my letters were being tampered with. Little turns of phrase that, altered by even a fraction, would alert my associates that my missives were being molested along the way. It took me a little longer to work out that it was you, Brogan. I’ll give you that.’ He sneered once again. ‘I almost feel sorry for you, boy. You’ve been used, and you don’t even know it. I’ll bet they called you a hero, did they? Told you about the great service you were doing for King and country? Well, you imbecile, he’s not even your king, is he? You Irishmen swear no loyalty to King George.’

‘It’s not about King and country. It’s about what’s right.’

‘Well, Brogan, let’s talk about right. Is what they’ve asked of you right? Don’t you see how these men you work for want to start a war, when what they really ought to be doing is seeking to strengthen the peace? There are many of us trying to make this peace last. Good Englishmen, too. Why do you think I’m stationed in this hotel? The knowledge I’ve fed back to my associates, about the lords and dukes of England who want the same thing as we do – peace – has been invaluable .?.?.’

Billy was silent, though Jager thundered on. Because there was something in here, something lost between the words he was saying, that meant everything to Billy, that meant that, perhaps, everything he’d been doing this year was not wasted after all – that, perhaps, at the end of it all, even if he died right here on the hotel floor, he’d made a difference in the world.

Jager did not know about the visit of Reichsgraf von Amsberg and Reichsritter Wittekind. He didn’t know of their purpose in coming to London. He hadn’t reported back on the delegation sent to petition the king. There was hope in that. Buried, perhaps, but hope nevertheless.

‘You fool!’ Billy screamed. The sudden vitriol caught Jager quite by surprise, and Billy took the chance to scramble to his feet, staggering back from the elder man’s outstretched cane. ‘You don’t want peace. Your kind never do. You want – dominion! You only want the peace that comes when good people roll over, when good people don’t fight back, when good people give up and let men like you stomp all over them. You don’t care about peace. You only care about power.’

‘I won’t be lectured by you, Brogan!’

Jager took a stride forward – but Billy saw, in the way that he moved, that not all of the frailties of old age had been an act. He was still stiff. Jager might have been a police officer once, but even police officers got old, with wearied legs and worn-out joints. Billy reached back, clawing for the door.

‘You’ll go the same way David Albrecht’s boy went, that interfering little schwein. Of course, the terrible thing was that it wasn’t Albrecht’s fault.’ Jager shook his head ruefully. ‘I’m sorry, Brogan. I don’t like this any more than you.’

He leaped forward, but in the same moment, Billy’s hand had landed on the door and he wrenched it open, tumbling backwards into the hall. Flailing against the walls, somehow he managed to keep upright. Another three strides and he was round the corner. Another three and he was hurtling down the hall, Jager somewhere behind. Billy would have screamed for help, if only he’d had the breath. Instead, he clawed past the Continental Suite, past the Atlantic, heaving the double doors at the end of the corridor apart and throwing himself at the top of the staircase down which Ansel Albrecht had plunged.

He heard a bell ringing somewhere behind him.

At the head of the great palatial landing, the guest lift was opening up.

‘Billy?’

That voice – it was the only one that could have stayed him. He looked back, saw Lukas Jager bearing down on the double doors through which he’d just tumbled, saw the guest lift hanging open. There, in its golden cage, stood Ruth. There was no lift attendant tonight – no doubt he was down in the housekeeping lounge, dancing with some chambermaid – so, as the doors rolled back, Ruth stood alone.

‘Ruth!’ he screamed. ‘No, get back down! Go!’

Jager crashed through the doors, reeling onto the landing. The girl in the lift doors must have given him pause, because he stopped dead. Billy could see the ice in his eyes as he took stock of this new situation.

Something lifted Billy out of his stupor. He ripped himself from the top of the stairs, threw himself directly across Jager’s path, drove Ruth bodily back into the lift and reached back to haul shut the gate.

‘Sorry, Ruth,’ he stammered. ‘I’m sorry!’

With one fist, he held the golden mesh shut; with another, he pounded the button marked ‘ground floor’.

Lukas Jager appeared at the gate, his face criss-crossed by a golden lattice. He too was reaching out, as if he might stop the lift from moving by brute strength alone. But his fingers failed him. Billy was holding Ruth fast as the lift began to grind its way down.

‘Billy,’ she gasped, ‘what’s going on?’

‘It’s Bauer. He’s not who you think he is.’

‘I saw you follow him into the lift. When you didn’t come back, I wondered where you’d .?.?.’

The floors were passing too slowly. They came to the sixth. The fifth. Each time, Billy prayed that no guest was waiting. Each time, he prayed that Jager hadn’t got there first. No doubt he was hoisting himself down the stairs, even now.

‘I don’t understand, Billy. Mr Bauer, why was he—’

‘His name isn’t Bauer, Ruth.’

The fourth floor ground past.

The third sailed by.

‘His name’s Jager. Ruth, he’s the one who killed Ansel Albrecht.’

‘Killed, Billy? But .?.?. ?’

Here came the second floor. Here came the first.

‘We have to get to Mr Charles,’ Billy gasped.

They hit the ground floor. The doors clicked open. Even as they stepped into the reception hall, Billy fancied he could hear footsteps pounding down the guest stairs, just around the corner. He took Ruth by the hand, screamed ‘Come!’ – and, even though the air was filled with the carolling out on the square, even though they could hear the humming and drumming rising up from the housekeeping lounge directly below, the terror did not leave him. One of the concierges halloed him from the other side of the hall, but Billy did not hear. He was dragging Ruth with him, and he was running for his life.

*

Christmas Day was but another day in the calendar for a hotel director as steadfast and dedicated as Maynard Charles. In his office, he sat behind his great mahogany desk, a crystal glass of brandy in hand, and heaved a great sigh. On the other side of the table, Archie Adams nodded sadly.

‘I’m sorry to drag you away from dinner, Archie. Truly, I am.’

Until moments ago, Archie had been sitting in the rarefied surroundings of the Queen Mary restaurant, savouring his figgy pudding. Maynard had been there too. It was only after he had dined, talking variously with the guests and those among the hotel’s staff fortunate enough to be invited to the restaurant this Christmas, that he had tapped Archie on the shoulder and asked him to accompany him here.

‘It came by the last post, two days gone. I’ve been mulling it over ever since,’ he said, turning an opened envelope in his hands. ‘I understand why you did this, Archie. I only wish that, perhaps, I might have known.’

Though he proffered up the letter, Archie needed to read no further than the first sentence to know what this was. His eyes roamed down, alighting on the signature of Miss Hélène Marchmont.

‘A resignation letter,’ Archie breathed.

‘She has accepted her place at the Court in Chicago. She’s to leave in the New Year. A troupe of dancers to her own. She’ll dance with them for a few further seasons, and grow to be their company director. A woman like Hélène will go far, in a place like that. And to escape England now, to be as far from the Continent as the world can take her – well, who could begrudge something like this?’ He paused. ‘I wish you’d told me, Archie. I wanted to find a way .?.?.’

Archie Adams felt the weight of it, then.

‘I showed her a door, Maynard. I didn’t push her through it. Hélène’s finished here. You’ve known this all year.’

‘And yet .?.?.’

The office door crashed open. In a whirlwind of arms and legs, Billy Brogan appeared with one of the chambermaids, Ruth Attercliffe, at his side.

‘Brogan,’ Maynard Charles began, ‘what the devil—’

‘It’s Bauer!’ Billy panted, gulping at the air. ‘He knows, Mr Charles.’

In a moment, Maynard was on his feet.

‘He tried to kill Billy!’ Ruth cried.

The look on Archie’s face was one of pure shock, but Maynard was already on his feet, donning his dinner jacket once more.

‘Billy,’ he said, in the paternal tone of an officer who cares deeply for his young wards, ‘where is he now?’

‘I don’t know, sir. He took me to his suite. Said he had a letter. He knows what we were doing, Mr Charles. He knows. But .?.?. he didn’t know about the delegation. About von Amsberg and Wittekind. We steered him away from it. Even though he knew, we .?.?.’

Maynard had curled his arm around Billy’s shoulder, and now he turned him around, returned him to the office door.

‘Mr Adams, perhaps you might sit for a moment with young Miss Attercliffe. She may, of course, partake of my brandy, should she wish to – and I would suggest that she should. Miss Attercliffe, I’m going to sort this out now. Stay here, and don’t step out of this door.’

Billy was still taking deep gulps of air as Mr Charles shepherded him down the corridor, towards the reception hall.

‘Who else saw, Mr Brogan?’ Maynard whispered.

‘Only Ruth, sir. The rest are at the festivities.’

‘Then let us keep it that way.’

They had reached the chequered hall, but they were not alone. Lukas Jager – once again with his cane in his hand, hobbling as if he was frail old Tobias Bauer – was already halfway across the reception area, heading into the sparkling shadow of the Norwegian fir.

‘Herr Bauer,’ Maynard Charles intoned.

The old man turned. He seemed to be trembling. The quakes moved up and down his body.

‘Mr Charles.’ He shuddered. ‘There he is, that young man at your side. The most heinous of accusations, Mr Charles, the sort you wouldn’t believe. I can’t .?.?. I won’t stay here a moment longer!’

Maynard glared. ‘Perhaps you’d step into my office, Herr Bauer, and we could discuss this – as two civilised men. It is,’ he said, without a hint of emotion, ‘Christmas Day.’

‘And a Christmas Day far from home,’ Bauer trembled, ‘without friend or family in a thousand miles – and this boy here, accusing me of the most heinous things. And, to cap it all off, his hand in my letters, Mr Charles – my personal correspondence! I’ve never been treated like this, not in all my years. I fled my home because of persecution. I thought it was safe here. His Majesty has no secret police – no, but you have liars and sneaks all the same!’ He paused. ‘Your board will hear of this outrage, Mr Charles. A flagrant abuse of my privacy. Lies and blackmail to boot!’

Other faces were watching the old man now, but Maynard remained impassive. Billy could feel his arm still around his shoulder, but no longer was it comforting; it was pinioning him there, refusing to let him move.

‘Hush now, Billy,’ he whispered.

‘But he’ll get away, Mr Charles. He killed Ansel.’

‘Herr Bauer!’ Maynard Charles called out at last. ‘You’re forgetting. We hold your passport on these premises. It remains secure, in my office safe. Come, and I’ll fetch it for you. You will need your passport, won’t you, Herr Bauer?’

The old man had stalled before the revolving brass doors. And it occurred to Billy, then, that this ruse – this act he’d inhabited for so long – was fraying apart at the edges. No hotel guest fled in the night, not without taking his suitcase and valise with him. No real guest abandoned their passport to the hotel safe.

The man who called himself Tobias Bauer ceased hunching over. He lifted his shoulders, let his cane dangle at his side, turned round with the look, not of Tobias Bauer, but of Lukas Jager, former officer in the Viennese police.

‘I think you know I will not, Mr Charles,’ he said – and then, with his eyes still on them, he stepped backwards into the revolving door, wheeled on the spot, and stepped out into the veil of curling snow.

Maynard bouldered after him. By the time he reached the bottom of the steps, Jager was already sliding into the back of a waiting taxicab, wheeling away through the snow.

Out there, the carollers still filled Berkeley Square with song.

Billy appeared at Maynard’s side.

‘Mr Charles,’ he whispered, ‘he’s gone.’

‘Yes, Billy.’

‘But he won’t ever face justice, will he? For what he did to Ansel.’

Maynard was quiet for a long time. He stood there until the chill of night had started to work its way into his bones.

‘Now, Billy, listen to me,’ he said at last. ‘There are different justices in this life. Herr Jager might not find himself locked in a cell by the Metropolitan Police, but there will be justice yet. There always is, for men like him. A murderer and a spy, Billy. The world catches up with men like that. They fall foul of history, one way or another.’

Billy wasn’t sure he understood what Mr Charles meant, but found himself nodding all the same.

‘He doesn’t know what happened here, though, does he? So there’s still a hope. Maybe Reichsgraf von Amsberg made his case. Maybe Reichritter Wittekind changed hearts and minds.’ He stopped. ‘There might still be peace, mightn’t there, Mr Charles?’

‘Perhaps not peace,’ said Mr Charles, ‘but we’ve every chance of prevailing, in whatever’s to come. It may seem small, Billy Brogan, what we did in this hotel – but the story of the world is built from a thousand little things. There are few heroes, like there are in myths. I learned that in the last war. But there are little heroes everywhere, if you know where to look.’

‘And little villains,’ Billy realised. ‘There’ll be men like Jager all over London, won’t there?’

‘I should think so.’ Maynard paused. ‘I’ve one more task for you, Mr Brogan, if you’re willing.’

‘Sir?’

‘We’ll need to send word of this to my Mr Moorcock, by the Merchant Colonial. I’m sorry, Billy. It might be Christmas Day, but the war keeps coming.’

Billy said, ‘Of course. But .?.?. Mr Charles?’

The hotel director arched an eyebrow, as if inviting him to go on.

‘I think I should like a quiet spring, Mr Charles. This shadow game – I thought I could play it with you, but it’s not for me. See, I’ve been afraid. And – I should think I’d rather be a soldier than a spy.’

With his arm still around the young man’s shoulders, Mr Charles turned Billy around and began to guide him back through the hotel doors. As they crossed the reception hall, their footfalls rang heavily.

A look of deep and grave sadness had manifested upon Maynard Charles’s face. He battled to keep it at bay, lest Billy understand the foreboding he was feeling.

‘Try not to wish for such things, Billy,’ he softly said. ‘For they may be coming sooner than any of us should like. But tonight it’s Christmas. There are still four hours on the clock. There is still cake to be eaten and mince pies on which we must gorge. And, if it’s to be the last before war comes back to this world, well, let us make the most of it. Let me make a toast to you. Billy Brogan – the unsung hero of Christmas night.’