‘So what’s your story going to say then?’
‘I don’t think I have enough to go on yet. We need to find out more. The wife didn’t give us much, did she?’
‘No.’ He decided not to mention the widow’s impassioned, urgent final message.
‘Other than that she doesn’t believe Lund committed suicide.’
James sat back. ‘How do you know that?’ He pictured Lake on the other side of the closed door, her ear pressed to the wood, hearing Margaret Lund’s warning.
Not for my sake. For yours.
Dorothy took a sip of wine, licking her lower lip afterwards like a cat. ‘Oh, sometimes you just know, don’t you? Call it woman’s intuition.’ She briefly touched his hand as she said that, her fingers as cool as they had been when they had shaken on their deal all those hours ago.
‘It’s a lovely evening,’ she said as they headed outside. ‘I’m going to walk a bit. Care to join me?’
James looked at her — this young woman who knew how to get a man to talk and how to listen, whose hair was a perfect, lustrous honey-blonde, who through the cloud of cigarette smoke still managed to smell so alluring — and settled on his answer. ‘I’m tired, Miss Lake. I enjoyed our dinner very much, but I’m going to turn in.’
‘Of course,’ she said. ‘I’ll walk you back to the Club.’
The stroll was short, but seemed to take an age. His chest seemed to be crackling with a kind of static energy; he was breathing unevenly. Neither of them said a word.
At last they were at number four hundred and fifty-nine. He was about to knock on the door when he felt her hand on his arm. She guided him round so that they faced each other.
‘Good night, my handsome Englishman,’ she said, and she moved her face close to his. He could have moved at that moment, but he did not and, an instant later, he felt her lips touch his. Lightly, the slightest brush of her mouth, but the taste — of the wine, of her lips — was strong. Combined with the smell of her perfume, the freshness of her skin, it was intoxicating. One second became another and another, until he felt the first tiny touch of her tongue.
Suddenly, and without conscious volition, he sprung away from her, appalled. Reaching in his pocket for the key Walters had given him, he pivoted and opened the door of the Elizabethan Club, mumbling, ‘I really am dreadfully sorry. Good night.’ He stepped inside, shutting the door loudly behind him.
He pressed his head hard against the wall. What had he just done? What the hell had he just done? Florence’s last message to him, delivered twice, had been a declaration of love — and how had he rewarded her? By embracing an American girl, a perfect stranger. Kissing her…
But he had broken away, he told himself. He had resisted. But not straight away. He had held that kiss for at least a second or two; he had not rejected it immediately. No wonder Florence had left him. He was a loathsome rat, unworthy of her love. He lifted his head and let it fall against the wall and then did it again, harder this time. How could he have done such a thing?
‘I’m sorry to disturb you, sir.’
Immersed in guilt and self-disgust, James had not heard the butler approach.
‘It’s just I thought you’d want to know.’
‘Know what, Walters?’ James tried to compose himself.
‘That a lady came here looking for you today. An English lady — with a little boy.’
Chapter Twenty-nine
The butler might as well have slapped him in the face. The effect of Walters’s words was instant, as if he had been abruptly woken up. James stared at him for a while before speaking, then peppered him with questions.
‘When were they here?’
‘About four o’clock this afternoon, Dr Zennor.’
‘And how old was the child?’ He locked the butler with a gaze that did not waver.
‘I’m not good at these things. I’d guess he was-’
‘How tall was he? Show me how high he stood. Here? Or higher? And tell me again, what she said. Her exact words, please.’
‘I opened the door to her and she said she had heard an Englishman was staying here, a Dr James Zennor and she wondered if she could speak to him.’
‘And what did you say?’
‘Please Dr Zennor, you’re making me a little uncomfortable staring at me like this. Please. Let me tell you what happened my own way.’
James exhaled. He had to get a grip on himself, not to descend any further, not now. Florence and Harry here, in this very spot a matter of hours earlier: the very thought of it made him feel light-headed. He took a deep breath and followed Walters as he shuffled out of the hallway and into the first sitting room. Too agitated to sit, James grasped hold of the top of one of the high-backed leather chairs.
‘All right,’ Walters began. ‘There was a knock on the door just after four or so. A quiet one, kind of uncertain. I opened it and there was this lady there, holding her son’s hand. She looked kind of nervous. She didn’t even come in at first, just asked if you were here and if she could speak to you. I told her I was expecting you back later. I asked her in, but she said no. Just could I tell you she’d called. The little boy seemed shy: he kept staring at me from behind his mother. I don’t think he ever saw a black man before. Round-eyes, he had. Very quiet.’
‘Very quiet.’ Yes, thought James. That sounds like Harry. ‘And can you describe what she looked like, Walters?’
‘A tall lady, sir.’
‘Very beautiful, very straight-backed and upright? With smiling eyes?’
‘She looked very kind, sir.’
‘Kind, yes… ’
‘Though she looked worried too.’
‘Did she tell you how she knew I was here?’
‘Yes, sir. She did. She said she had seen you. In town.’
James felt himself unsteady again, as if his legs were about to give way. The thoughts were rushing into his brain so fast, they were falling on top of each other. If Florence had seen him, why hadn’t she rushed over to him immediately? Where exactly had she seen him? And when? Surely not today, when he was with Dorothy Lake? Had Florence seen the two of them just now… His stomach twisted. What if he had come all this way, if he had crossed the Atlantic, only to be rejected as a faithless husband now, here in America? He cursed himself and his weakness all over again.
It took a moment to compose himself. At last he said quietly, ‘And did she leave anything for me, a card or a letter?’
‘She just had me write down her details, so that you could get in touch with her. I’ll go get them.’
James watched the butler shuffle off to the backroom that seemed to serve as both his office and his home: there was certainly no other bedroom in evidence, and yet he seemed to be at the club day and night. James waited a while, pacing and clenching his fists. But even the thirty-second delay was too much. He walked out of the sitting room, meeting a returning Walters in the hallway.
‘Here it is, sir.’ The old man passed him a small square of paper.
It was as if a slab of stone had landed on James’s chest.
Elizabeth Goodwin, staying with Mr and Mrs Swanson, New Haven. Telephone number…
The words were swimming on the page, the disappointment clouding his vision. His head began to throb, the pain from banging it against the wall suddenly asserting itself.
The butler must have seen his desperation because he began muttering some kind of reassurance, the words lost and muffled in James’s ears.
What an idiot he had been, once again succumbing to foolish optimism. The warning sign was there in how Walters had described the appearance of the woman at the door: kind, he had said. Florence certainly could be kind and generous. But kind was not the first word any man used to describe her. If it had been Florence at the door,
