The Poison Tide

sweetest man, she wrote, an old school chum of Reggie’s. Her breathless sentences made him smile. The Honourable James had swept her off her feet — a position, Wolff reflected wryly, she was quite accustomed to — and he’d married her within the month. The Honourable James wanted so desperately to volunteer but unspecified health problems kept him at home, serving King and Country in the City. I know dear Reggie would want me to be happy. You do too, don’t you, darling? Only, I haven’t told James we used to be friends, he would be awfully jealous. We did have fun, didn’t we, darling.

Wolff closed his eyes and tried to recollect their lovemaking, but could conjure only opaque images of a sort that hardly did her justice. Was it ever possible to recall more or was that particular pleasure like a tiny bird with brilliant feathers that hovers for a moment in the sun before it flutters away for ever? Turkey was the sort of shit- brown memory he would never lose. ‘Fool,’ he muttered to himself as he bent to stoke the fire. He didn’t love her, he wasn’t jealous, but there would be no finer way to spend a wet afternoon than to share a bed with the new Mrs Lewis. ‘Goodbye, Violet.’ He kissed the damp paper, then cast it on the fire and watched it shrivel to ash. Later, he read his mother’s letter, the one she always wrote; dutiful, patient, pious. Bent low over the escritoire in her Sunday room, her face framed by stray grey hair, her brow creased in concentration, the pen tight between her thin dry fingers; this, Wolff could imagine with the ease of a gallery Vermeer. And after, into the fire too, because Jan de Witt had neither lover nor living mother.

When her ghost had left the room he rang Laura. For something to do, he told himself disingenuously. Don’t get involved on an operation was the third dark commandment. He’d slept with many women but broken it only once. After eight years the recollection still made him wince. Another brown memory.

Miss McDonnell wasn’t at home, he was informed by her aunt’s housekeeper. He left his name but no message. Absurdly, he was relieved. This is the dissonance of my life, he thought, a piece played on a badly tuned instrument, staring uselessly from another window into another street. Christ, it was going to be a long evening with only his tired memories and the little spy in the derby hat for company. Poor devil.

21. Opera Lover

UPTOWN ON THE same evening, Dr Anton Dilger was sipping champagne with his new friend while casting warm glances at an older and very dear one. The queen of the New York night was holding court beneath a crystal chandelier in the ballroom of the German Club with the press and rich box regulars at the Met in attendance. Those who didn’t know Frieda Hempel thought her plain and a little matronly; those who did were caught in a glittering spell.

‘She’s worth more to us than a dozen old aristocrats in Washington,’ Paul Hilken whispered at his elbow. ‘Just look at Bodzansky. He worships her.’

Yes, the conductor was moonstruck; and I am too, Dilger reflected.

And yet she had greeted him in her crowded dressing room at the opera house like a stranger, large brown eyes only for Kahn, the railroad banking baron, and his friends. Dr Dilger, isn’t it? A pleasant surprise. I hope you enjoyed tonight’s performance. Performance. After so many months he’d forgotten that her performance didn’t end with the orchestra or in a shower of carnations at the curtain, but only when she stepped from her dress in her chamber — and sometimes she was the self-conscious artiste in silken sheets too. She’d cut him because he’d spoken proprietorially, too eager to impress his new friend Hilken, yes, cut him, humiliated him, left him seething with embarrassment, just to remind him she was a prima diva who belonged to everybody and to nobody. Confounded, he was inventing lame excuses when a dresser found him, with an invitation: Frau Hempel would like to invite the doctor and Mr Hilken to a reception to be given in her honour.

Hilken was a member of the German Club. He was a member of a good many clubs, Dilger had discovered in the course of the three days they’d spent together. It was Hilken who’d persuaded him to enjoy some society, visit the homes of other Germans, share a box at the opera.

‘There’s nothing to be gained from hiding in the country with your sister. Live a little, Doctor. That’s what people will expect,’ Hilken had assured him. ‘Then you can return to your laboratory with a lighter heart.’

Dinner one night at Delmonico’s, the next at the Waldorf. By the time they reached the bottom of their first Latour, they understood each other perfectly. They were more or less the same vintage, good Germans both — Hilken from Baltimore — they shared the same dry sense of humour, the same shameless hauteur, the same taste in women. He was slight of build with the sort of boyish good looks that, in Dilger’s experience, appealed to ladies who were ready to lie about their age. Of the laboratory and their work, they had barely spoken. ‘We’ve used the first batch here and in Boston,’ was all Hilken ventured of their operation, ‘but that’s Hinsch’s business.’ For the first time since arriving in America, Dilger had managed to forget why he was there for a few hours, to pass a night without waking.

Frieda was hanging from Bodzansky’s arm now, smiling indulgently, head bent a little but with her eyes lifted beneath long lashes to his face. The conductor said something amusing and she laughed a perfect little portamento, lifting her hand gracefully, forefinger crooked as if grasping the neck of a violin.

‘Applause, please,’ Dilger muttered irritably.

‘The Austrian Jew?’ enquired Hilken. ‘They say he worked for Mahler.’

Dilger didn’t give a fig who the fellow had crept to; for goodness’ sake, why did everyone make such a fuss of musicians? Then she caught his eye, amusement playing on her lips, and he loved and he hated her for provoking him, and he wanted her, and hoped she felt the same.

‘Ah. That’s a pity.’ Hilken shifted at his side. ‘I think we should leave.’ He stepped closer, turning his back on the room. ‘There’s a club we might try.’ The waiter was hovering with a bottle of champagne but Hilken waved him away.

‘No, just a minute,’ Dilger protested, presenting his glass. ‘What’s the hurry?’ He’d only just managed to catch Frieda’s eye.

‘We should be careful.’

‘I’m always careful.’

Hilken shifted his position again, sipping his champagne to disguise the turn of his head. ‘The man in the dark suit — to the left of Mencken… see him?’

Short and dapper, hair swept back from a high forehead, military bearing, late thirties, a nonchalant air and easy to discover amongst the guests floating about the ballroom because he was almost the only man who wasn’t in white tie and tails.

‘Von Rintelen. He’s using the name “Gache” but a lot of folk here know who he is. It would be better…’

‘I know,’ interrupted Dilger. It had been the Count’s last instruction: keep the operations separate, the circle tight, no chances, and he’d mentioned von Rintelen by name.

‘But disappearing in a puff of smoke would be worse,’ he declared with a tart confidence that he knew owed more to his determination not to let Frieda slip away than to an honest appraisal of the risk. She was drifting in to dinner on someone else’s arm, a preening banker perhaps, a shipping magnate or manufacturer, the sort of club patriot who toasted the Kaiser one day and his enemies the next.

‘You haven’t mentioned my name to von Rintelen, have you?’

‘Of course not,’ Hilken retorted hotly. ‘But you know, Hinsch sees a good deal of him.’ He pressed two fingers to his lips anxiously. ‘And he drinks too much. But I’m sure…’ Precisely what he was sure of, and why, he wasn’t at liberty to say because the subject of their whispered conversation began walking purposefully across the knotted pile towards them, his arms folded like a German genie.

‘Hilken, what a pleasant surprise,’ he said smoothly. ‘You were at the opera? Mencken says Frau Hempel was sublime, but isn’t she always?’

‘Always,’ Hilken replied, shifting his weight uneasily from one leg to the other. ‘May I present my friend, Dr Dilger.’

Rintelen turned to gaze at him amiably.

‘A German from the state of Virginia,’ Hilken continued. ‘And you studied at Heidelberg University too, Doctor?’