The Old Vengeful

said Aske to Paul. 'Because whatever it was the old Vengeful had on board, Mon Colonel wanted it, that's for certain—'

Colonel Jean-Baptiste Suchet—

The night-bells of Laon had stopped long since, but sleep still eluded Elizabeth as the roll-call of the living and the dead—

the newly dead and the long dead—continued to echo inside her brain—

Colonel Jean-Baptiste Suchet and Lieutenant Horace Chipperfield . . . and Danny Kahn and Julian Oakenshaw —

and Harry Lippman and Ray Tuck . . . and Harry Lippman and Father . . . and Father and Lieutenant Chipperfield—and Tom Chard and Abraham Timms and the little midshipman . . . and Colonel Suchet and Bertrand Bourienne . . . and Paul—and Paul ...

dummy3

And Humphrey Aske, and Chief Inspector Del Andrew—and Danny Kahn . . . and David Audley, and Faith Audley, and Cathy Audley—and David Audley and Josef Ivanovitch Novikov, and Paul—Dr Paul Mitchell of the King's College, Oxford— Paul. . .

And all the dead Tommies, lying so neatly, row on row, on their hillside in Champagne, below the road on which the king's sisters had chattered their way so long ago . . . and yet not so long ago as Enguerrand had built his tower . . .

Friends and enemies, heroes and villains . . . heroes and villains at the same time, according to whose side they were on—Suchet and Novikov and Audley and Paul . . . and whose side had Tom Chard been on, who had somehow beaten all the impossible odds to break free, and to live to tell the tale?

Whose side? And why?

The questions crowded behind the ghosts closing round her bed in the silence—whatever it was the old Vengeful had on board—what had Father been doing—what had he done—

Then, dissolving the ghosts and the questions both, and startling Elizabeth out of her mind as they vanished, there wasn't quite silence any more: there was the sound of a discreet tap-tap on her door— discreet, but insistent.

X

'ELIZABETH—'

dummy3

But whatever Dr Paul Mitchell, of the King's College, Oxford, whispered after that was lost to her as she scuttled back into bed, conscious more of Madame Hortense's taste in night-attire than of Dr Mitchell's post- midnight opening gambit.

The door closed out the light from the passage, and darkness sprang back into the bedroom.

'Christ, Elizabeth—I can't see a bloody thing!' Dr Mitchell blundered unromantically against the table by the door. 'Put the light on, for heaven's sake!'

Elizabeth drew the sheet up to her neck. 'What d'you want, Paul?' The silly question asked itself before she could stifle it.

'For God's sake—I want to talk to you!' hissed Paul. 'What did you think I wanted?'

Dust and ashes filled Elizabeth, turning to shame and then anger in quick succession. She let go of the sheet —what did it matter what he saw or didn't see?—and leaned across to switch on the bedside lamp.

'What d'you want?' She glared at him in the knowledge that it hadn't been a silly question at all. 'I was trying to get some sleep.'

'I'm sorry.' He blinked at her in the light.

'So am I.' Disgust with herself hardened her voice. 'Well, what is it?'

His face set to match her tone. 'First... as of now, when someone knocks on your door in the night, you don't just dummy3

open up, like Juliet for Romeo. You ask who the hell it is—

okay?'

'Juliet for Romeo' was too close for comfort—too humiliatingly and pathetically close, thought Elizabeth miserably.

'Second ... I am sorry to disturb you, Elizabeth. But I have some news for you.'

'News?' It was on the tip of her tongue to reject the offer until morning, but that would be merely petty, and she was awake now anyway. And there was also something in that voice which didn't match the set expression. 'What news?'

'I've been on the phone to England. I've spoken to David Audley . . . and to Del Andrew, Elizabeth.'

It was sympathy—the news must be bad news. But what bad news could either Dr Audley or Chief Inspector Andrew have for her, who had no next-of-kin, no hostages to fortune?

'Yes?' She couldn't help him, he had to bite on his own bullet.

He stared at her. 'They think they know where—how—how your father got all that money.'

She had been wrong about not having hostages to fortune: she had a hundred thousand of them, and they were going to take them all away from her. She had been briefly rich, but now she was poor again.

'In, fact, they're pretty damn certain. That Del Andrew—he's a fast worker. . .' He continued to stare at her, rolling the dummy3

bullet around, unwilling to clench his teeth on it.