her shining dark hair. “Besides, in the dark I wouldn’t be able to see you. Here I can. You’re really very beautiful. What instructions?”
“What?” She was momentarily flustered, unbalanced by the sudden switch, then compressed her lips in mock ferociousness. “We sail at eleven o’clock tomorrow morning. Please be in your cabin at six o’clock in the evening. At that hour the purser will arrive to discuss seating arrangements, or some such, with you. He’s a genuine purser but he’s also something else. He will make absolutely certain that there are no listening devices in your cabin.” Bruno remained silent. “I notice you’re not talking about melodrama this time.”
Bruno said with some weariness: “Because it hardly seems worth talking about. Why on earth should anyone plant bugs in my cabin? I’m not under any suspicion. But I will be if you and Harper keep on behaving in this idiotic cloak-and-dagger fashion. Why the bugging of Wrinfield’s office? Why were two men sent to look for bugs in my place aboard the train? Why this character now? Too many people seeing that I’m debugged, too many people knowing that I can’t possibly be all that I claim to be or that the circus claims that I am. Too many people having their attention called to me. I don’t like it one little bit.”
“Please. There’s no need to be like that —”
“Isn’t there? Your opinion. And don’t be soothing to me.” “Look, Bruno, I’m just a messenger. Directly, there’s no reason on earth why you should be under suspicion. But we are — or we’re going to be up against an extremely efficient and suspicious secret police, who certainly won’t overlook the slightest possibility. After all, the information we want is in Crau. We’re going to Crau. You were born in Crau. And they will know that you have the strongest possible motivation — revenge. They killed your wife —” “Be quiet!” Maria recoiled, appalled by the quiet ferocity in his voice. “Nobody has spoken of her to me in six and a half years. Mention my dead wife again and I’ll pull out, wreck the whole operation and leave you to explain to your precious chief why it was your gaucherie, your ill manners, your total lack of feeling, your incredible insensitivity that ruined everything. You understand?”
“I understand.” She was very pale, shocked almost, tried to understand the enormity of her blunder and failed. She ran a slow tongue across her lips. “I’m sorry, I’m terribly sorry. That was a very bad mistake.” She still wasn’t sure what the mistake was about. “But never again, I promise.”
He said nothing.
“Dr Harper says please be outside your cabin at 6.30 p.m., sitting on the floor — sorry, deck — at the foot of the companionway. You have fallen down and damaged your ankle. You will be found and helped to your cabin. Dr Harper will, of course, be there almost immediately. He wishes to give you a full briefing on the nature of the operation.”
“Has he told you?” There was still a singular lack of warmth in Bruno’s voice.
“He told me nothing. If I know Dr Harper he’ll probably tell you to tell me nothing either.”
“I will do what you ask. Now that you’ve completed your business, we may as well get back. Three taxis for you, of course, rules are rules. I’ll take one straight back to the ship. It’s quicker and cheaper and the hell with the CIA.”
She reached out a tentative hand and touched his arm. “I have apologized. Sincerely. How long must I keep on doing it?” When he made no answer she smiled at him and the smile was as her hand had been, tentative and uncertain. “You’d think a person who earns as much money as you do could afford to buy a meal for a working girl like myself. Or do we go Dutch? Please don’t leave. I don’t want to go back. Not yet.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. It’s — it’s just one of those obscure — I don’t know. I just want to make things right.”
“I was right. First time out. You are a goose.” He sighed, reached out for a menu and handed it to her. He gave her an odd look. “Funny. I thought your eyes were dark. They’ve gone all brown. Dark, flecked brown, mind you, but still brown. How do you do it? Have you a switch or something?” She looked at him solemnly. “No switch.”
“Must be my eyes then. Tell me, why couldn’t Dr Harper have come and told me all this himself?”
“It would have created a very odd impression if you two were seen leaving together. You never speak to each other. What’s he to you or you to him?”
“Ah!”
“With us it’s different. Or had you forgotten? The most natural thing in the world. I’m in love with you and you’re in love with me.”
“He’s still in love with his dead wife.” Maria’s voice was flat, neutral. Elbows on the guard-rail, she was standing on the passenger deck of the M.C. Carpentaria, apparently oblivious to the chill night wind, watching in apparent fascination but without really registering what she was seeing as the giant dock-side cranes, with their blazing attached arc-lamps, swung the coaches inboard.
She started as a hand laid itself on her arm and a teasing voice said: “Who’s in love with whose wife, then?” She turned and looked at Henry Wrinfield. The thin intelligent face, chalk-white in the glare of the arc-lamps, was smiling.
“You might have coughed or something,” she said reproachfully.
“You did give me a fright, you know.”
“Sorry. But I could have been wearing hob-nailed boots and you wouldn’t have heard me above the racket of those damned cranes. Well, come out with it, who’s in love with who?” “What are you talking about?”
“Love,” Henry said patiently. “You were declaiming something about it when I came up.”
“Was I?” Her voice was vague. “I wouldn’t be surprised. My sister says I talk non-stop in my sleep. Maybe I was asleep on my feet. Did you hear any other Freudian slips or whatever?” “Alas, no. My loss, I’m sure. What on earth are you doing out here? It’s cold and starting to rain.” He had lost interest in the remark he’d overheard.
She shivered. “Day-dreaming. I must have been. It’s cold.”
“Come inside. They have a beautiful old-fashioned bar aboard.
And warm. A brandy will make you warmer.”
“Bed would make me warmer still. Time I was there.”
“You spurn a night-cap with the last of the Wrinfields?” “Never!” She laughed and took his arm. “Show me the way.”
The lounge — it could hardly have been called a bar — had deep green leather armchairs, brass tables, a very attentive steward and excellent brandy. Maria had one of those, Henry had three and at the end of the third Henry, who clearly had no head for alcohol, had developed a distinct, if gentlemanly, yearning look about the eyes. He took one of her hands in his and yearned some more. Maria looked at his hand. “It’s unfair,” she said. “Custom dictates that a lady wears an engagement ring when she is engaged, a wedding ring when she is married. No such duty devolves upon a man. I think it’s wrong.”
“So do I.” If she’d said he ought to wear a cowbell around his neck he’d have agreed to that, too.
“Then where’s yours?”
“My what?”
“Your engagement ring. Cecily wears one. Your fiancee. Remember? The green-eyed one at Bryn Mawr. Surely you can’t have forgotten?”
The fumes evaporated from Henry’s head. “You’ve been asking questions about me?”
“Never a one and no need to ask either. You forgot I spend a couple of hours a day with your uncle. No children of his own so his nieces and nephews have become his pride and joy.” She gathered her handbag and rose. “Thank you for the nightcap. Good-night and sweet dreams. Be sure to dream about the right person.”
Henry watched her go with a moody eye.
Maria had been in bed no more than five minutes when a knock came at her cabin door. She called: “Come in. It’s not locked.”
Bruno entered and closed the door behind him. “It should be locked. What with characters like myself and Henry prowling around —” “Henry?”
“Last seen calling for a double brandy. Looks like a Romeo who’s just found out that he’s been serenading the wrong balcony. Nice chain.”
“You’ve come to discuss decor at this time of night?”
“You allocated this room?”
“Funny question. As a matter of fact, no. There were seven or eight cabins to choose from, the steward, a very nice old boy, offered me my pick. I took this one.”
“Liked the decor, eh?”
