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Ian’s face had turned completely white. He gently put his arms around the sobbing maid, then held her tight, bu
t when he spoke his voice was half-strangled in his throat. “Come away. You can’t help him. Don’t look…” Firmly he guided her around the corner from sight.
Elena was left staring at the dead body sprawled on the floor. The closed door must have been holding him up, and when the girl opened it he fell out. He was an unremarkable middle-aged man. Dark-skinned. Black hair receding a little. He was probably Italian, but he could have come from anywhere. Did Ian know him? Is that why he was so upset? He had looked totally shocked. Elena was shaking, yet she managed to shoot one picture before putting the camera away. She was a photographer, true, but it might seem intrusive, and perhaps it was illegal, to photograph a crime scene like this.
“Signorina…Miss…please, come and sit down…” A man took her tentatively by the arm.
She turned to face him. “I’m all right, thank you, but he’s…” she took a breath, “…clearly dead. Who is he?”
“I have no idea.” The man was an assistant manager at the hotel. She knew him by sight from the last few days. “Please…I wish to call the authorities. It cannot be an accident. Where he is…”
“No, of course not.” At least he had not tried to soothe her with lies. “I’ll go to my room.”
“Are you all right? Do you need someone?”
“No, thank you. I am with my sister.” She said goodbye and went back along the corridor to where Ian was speaking gently to the maid in fluent Italian, but he was still very pale, and the hand he had on the maid’s arm, where he was still supporting her, was white-knuckled, almost as if she were holding him up as much as he was holding her. An older maid appeared along the passageway and took control, thanking Ian and firmly dismissing him.
Two uniformed police officers went past the woman and spoke to Ian in English.
“Now, sir, if you will tell me what happened?” one of them began.
Ian told them honestly.
“And this young lady was with you?” The officer looked at Elena.
“Yes,” Elena agreed.
“And do you know this poor man?” He indicated the body lying on the floor.
“No, sir,” Ian replied, his jaw muscles tight, his voice shaking a little.
Elena was almost certain he was lying.
CHAPTER
3
Lucas Standish sat in the armchair in his study and stared out of the windows into the garden. The pattern of leaves against the sky always pleased him. Even the bare winter branches had a unique delicacy. Now the trees were at the height of their spring perfection.
The study looked like the room of an ordinary elderly man in pleasant retirement, except perhaps for the remarkable number of books that lined the walls. Lucas was a quiet man who read about life. That was what he was to others, even to his own family.
But he had been head of Military Intelligence—MI6, as it was known—for a good part of the war. In his thoughts, he would say “the last war” because he feared that there would be another. He was in his early seventies, and not officially part of the service anymore, but his interest had never slackened, and he knew a great deal of what was happening now. He had many sources, quite apart from piecing things together with his own intelligence: what was written in the newspapers and, at times, what was not written, the half-truths that concealed the greater lie.
Winston Churchill was the only politician whose judgment he trusted. He knew and liked the man personally and thought his opinions sound. But Churchill had been out of power for some time, and, what mattered now, he was likely to be for the foreseeable future. No one in office listened to him because they did not want to believe that what he said was true.
Lucas could understand that, dear heaven, too easily. He longed to be able to believe that the meteoric rise of Adolf Hitler was no danger to Europe, certainly not to England. But every sense in him, every instinct, told him that it was, and that the danger was increasing by the week. Only four months ago, at the end of January, Hitler had assumed complete power with the almost unanimous approval of his people.
New ideologies were surging up all over Europe in the wake of the devastating losses of war. Since the assassination of the Tsar of Russia, fear of communism had shifted power to the right-wing ideologues everywhere else. In Italy, Benito Mussolini had created much change for the good, but his total control was already tightening, becoming oppressive, creating the bedrock for the madness of dictatorship. Some of the stories Lucas had heard bordered on the ludicrous, and yet he knew they were true, and the present laughter would be short-lived.
In Spain, various political factions were vying for power. Who knew where that would lead?
But it was still Germany that was the source of his deepest concern. The treaty after the war had been too harsh. Millions of people who were not to blame for any part of the Kaiser’s glory-seeking had suffered. Blame was pointless. Probably no one was free of it, even if it were for complacency; not for action, but for inaction.
Lucas’s thoughts were interrupted by a light knock on the door. “Come in,” he said quickly. He knew it would be his wife, Josephine, to remind him that their son, Charles, and daughter-in-law, Katherine, were coming to dinner, and he should get himself ready—physically with a clean shirt, and emotionally for the differences of opinion that would inevitably arise. They always did, no matter how much he swore to himself not to be drawn in.
Josephine entered the room. She was the same age as Lucas. They had been married for over half a century, and yet he still found pleasure in looking at her. More than pleasure, a warmth, and gratitude for all they had shared. Many men might not have found her beautiful, but he still did. It was in her eyes, and her quick smile, the vitality in her, even when she sat unmoving. He knew her candor frightened some people, but he liked it. He found it a touchstone of honesty, a cleanness of mind and soul. His granddaughter Elena had some of that quality. It had skipped a generation; there was nothing of it in Charles.
“I know,” he said, before Josephine could speak. “They will be here in half an hour. He’s always on time.” He was not sure if that was praise or complaint. If he was honest, he was not looking forward to the visit. Recently he and his son always seemed to be disagreeing about politics. Of course, Charles did not know Lucas’s part in the secret services. One did not tell even family about such things. As far as they knew, he was a civil servant with a job too boring to discuss. The very existence of MI6 was not generally acknowledged.
