Ebb tide

'It's all right, Susan, I'm no stranger to death. I had to do this for my father ...'

Susan seemed about to say more but held her peace and worked at loosening the woman's clothes.

'She was very beautiful,' Elizabeth remarked sadly.

'But for this,' said Susan, lifting a heavy tress of hair which had once been a glorious auburn but which now contained strands of grey. She exposed the right side of the dead woman's head.

'Dear God!' A coarse scar ran in heavy seams of fused flesh from under the profusion of hair, over the line of the jaw and down her neck. The right ear was missing. 'The poor woman.'

'Looks like a burn,' said Susan, rolling a pledget into the mouth and forcing the jaw closed. 'Mistress, I have to move her to reach her lower parts.'

'Let me help.'

'Tisn't necessary, Mistress, really 'tisn't.'

'It is quite all right...'

Elizabeth sensed Susan's resentment at her interference. It was unlike the woman, with whom she had enjoyed a long and amicable relationship. Elizabeth began to sense something odd about the whole business and said, 'I wonder who she is? She is well dressed for travelling. This habit is exquisite ...'

'Mistress, I...'

'What on earth is the matter, Susan?'

'Tis the Captain, Mistress ...'

'The Captain?' quizzed Elizabeth, frowning. 'What on earth has he to do with this matter?'

Susan shook her head and said, 'If you wish to help, Mistress, take her camisole off. 'Twill be there if 'tis anywhere.'

'Susan! What in heaven's name are you talking about? What will be there?'

'It would have been better had you not known, my dear.'

Elizabeth spun round to see her husband standing just inside the parlour door. Both she and Susan sought to interpose themselves between Drinkwater and the pale form lying half exposed upon the table.

'Well, Susan?' Drinkwater addressed the housekeeper.

'Nothing yet, sir, but I haven't had time to ...'

'Nathaniel, what is all this about?'

'Who is all this about, my dear, would be more correct.'

'You know her, do you not?' Elizabeth's question was suddenly sharply charged with horrible suspicions.

'I do, yes. Or rather, I knew her. Once.'

'Shall I go, sir?' Susan asked anxiously, aware of the gleam in her mistress's eyes.

'That is not necessary,' Drinkwater said flatly. 'I have entrusted you to search her and you know enough to have your curiosity aroused. Such titillation only causes gossip. You would be prudent not to make too much of what you hear, and to speak about it only between yourselves.' He smiled, a thin, wan smile, so that Elizabeth's initial suspicion was at once confirmed. Yet she also felt strangely moved. There was much about the life her husband had led that she knew nothing of, but she sensed that if he had deceived her with this once lovely creature, there would have been more than common infidelity about it.

'She is, or was until last night, a sort of spy,' Drinkwater began, addressing Elizabeth. 'She peddled information and acted as a go-between. Her presence aboard a wrecked lugger in Ho'sley Bay argues strongly that she intended coming here ...'

'Here? To see you?' Elizabeth asked.

'Yes.' Drinkwater sighed. 'It is a long and complicated story, but many, many years ago she was among a group of émigrés we rescued off a beach in western France. Some time afterwards, while resident in England, she turned her coat and married a dashing French officer named Edouard Santhonax. It was he who gave me the sword-cut in the shoulder.' Drinkwater touched the place, and Elizabeth opened her mouth in astonishment.

'Later, he was sent out to the Red Sea where, by chance, I was party to the seizure of his frigate which I afterwards commanded ...'

'The Melusine?' asked Elizabeth, recalling the sequence of her husband's ships.

Drinkwater shook his head. 'No, it was some time after that...'

'The Antigone?'

Drinkwater nodded. 'But her husband and I were to cross paths again. It is odd, but I fought him not far ... no perhaps', he said wonderingly, 'on the very spot where she drowned. Just offshore here, some few miles off the Ness at Orford. I killed him in the fight...'

'Then you made a widow of her.' Elizabeth looked at the face now bound up with a bandage.

'Yes.'

'That is terrible.'

'I do not deny it. But had I not done so, there is little doubt but that he would have made a widow of you.'

Elizabeth considered the matter. 'How very strange.'

'That is not all.'

'You mean you ...'

'I have seen her since,' Drinkwater broke in, 'the last time less than a year ago, in April...'

'Nathaniel!'

'She came aboard Andromeda while we were anchored off Calais. She laid before me information concerning the intention of some French officers to liberate Napoleon after he was sent into exile.' He paused and gave a wry smile. 'It may sound extraordinary, but one might say the world owes the present peace, at least in part, to Hortense Santhonax ...'

They looked at the corpse with a curious fascination, the silence broken suddenly by a faint escape of gas from the body which moved slightly, startling them.

'Oh, Lord!' giggled Susan nervously, pressing a hand to her breast.

Drinkwater's expression remained grim. 'Come, Susan, search the lining of her habit.'

'Do you look for papers, Nathaniel?' Elizabeth asked.

'It occurs to me that she might have been carrying them, yes.'

'But the war is over.'

Yet she intended to come here. Unless she came on her own account, she must have had a purpose.'

'Why should she come upon her own account?'

'My dear, this is neither the time nor the place ...'

'Then let us discuss it elsewhere.' Elizabeth was suddenly brusque. 'Susan is busy and we should leave her to her task.'

Drinkwater shrugged and let his wife hustle him out of the parlour and into the drawing-room.

'Well, sir,' she said sharply, turning on him. 'You have something to tell me, I think. If she was coming here on her own account, and I cannot think, with the war over, that any other reason would move her, I wish to know it. Besides, you said just now that the last time you saw her was in April last. How many times had you seen her previous to that? Do you expect me to believe all this was related to Lord Dungarth's department? Tell me the truth, Nathaniel. And now, before you have a drink, sir.'

'Sit down, Bess, and rest easy,' Drinkwater smiled and eased himself into a chair, leaning forward to rake the fire and throw some billets of wood on it. 'I met her before our encounter last April in the house of a Jew named Liepmann, near Hamburg, and yes, it was all in some way connected with Lord Dungarth and the business of his Secret Department. After his death it fell to me, as you know, to carry on some of his work. Hortense had moved in high places. It was said she was the mistress of Talleyrand, until the Prince of Benevento ousted her in favour of the Duchess of Courland. Did you see her scar? She was badly burned at the great ball given by the Austrian Ambassador in Paris on the occasion of the marriage of the Archduchess Marie-Louise to Napoleon. There was a fire, d'you see ...'

'The poor woman.'

'Yes, she was much to be pitied.'

'And you pitied her?'