‘holistic.’ You’ll have to ask his lordship, I’m afraid. I don’t go there, as they say these days.”
“Well, let’s have it, then. Save your knees, my dear Pelham. I’ll carry this noble feast up to him.”
“You’ll find him in the armory, Chief Inspector. He’s been up there all morning long since his American friend Mr. Kelly departed.”
“Really? What on earth is he doing up there?”
“Cleaning his guns, sir. He says we’re going to war.”
“War? With whom?”
“I believe he mentioned France, sir.”
“France?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Ye gods.”
Ambrose mounted the smooth worn stone of the curving back staircase leading to the upper floors. Gaining the third floor, he paused at a door of carved oak to catch his breath. The design incorporated two animals locked in combat—the Scottish unicorn and the English lion. The door was slightly ajar and he pushed inside, using the tray. He saw Hawke at the far end of the room with his back to the door, standing beside a sunny window, burnishing an ancient pistol barrel to gleaming perfection. His beloved parrot, Sniper, was on his shoulder.
The walls of the great room were decorated floor to ceiling with spiral arrangements of antique arms. Just below the crown moldings were long ranks of stag antlers. And below that, a profusion of every kind of armament: swords, pikes, pistols, and long rifles. Perhaps a thousand weapons, from the fifteenth to the nineteenth centuries, lined the walls.
Other than the library, Congreve knew this was Alex’s favorite room in the entire house. The heavy velvet draperies had all been tied back away from the tall leaded windows and sunlight flooded the room. On the far wall hung a collection of eighteenth-century pirate flags, including the grim Jolly Roger flown by Hawke’s ancestor, Blackhawke himself.
“Morning, Alex,” Congreve said upon entering the room with the tray. “I saw your personal black standard fluttering from the ramparts and assumed you were in residence. ‘Fortune favors the fast.’ Blackhawke’s noble sentiment.”
Alex turned toward him and smiled. “And, so true, Ambrose! A fast ship and a star to sail her by, that’s the winning ticket. How else do you think I came to sit atop this pile of ill-gotten lucre? Piracy, of course! Give no quarter, lads!”
“Am I interrupting some sort of…private ritual?”
“No, no, by all means, come in, do come in!”
“Where’ve you been hiding yourself, Alex?”
“I just returned from la belle France yesterday morning. I haven’t rung you up because I’ve had Brick Kelly here, you see, and—what’s that?”
“Your lemon.”
“Right. Put it over there, if you don’t mind. I seem to have lost my bottle for it this morning.”
“One wonders why lemon, of all fruits,” Ambrose said, putting the tray down amidst an array of partially disassembled sixteenth-century rifles and flintlock pistols.
Hawke ignored the question and picked up a rifle.
“You see this gun, Ambrose? Bloody marvelous, isn’t it?”
“Stunning. What is it?”
“Wheellock rifle with breech-loader system, manufactured in Augsburg or Nuremberg in 1540. Belonged to some Prussian colonel named Andreas Teuffel von Gundersdorf. Glorious piece, I must say.”
“Alex, speak to me of war. And the dreaded French. But first, speak to me of lemons.”
“Ah. The latest thing,” Hawke said, plucking it from the tray and dipping it in a bowl of white powder. “Plenty of bioflavonoids in lemons, not to mention Vitamin C. Especially good for you if you dip them in this stuff. Natural sweetener the Japanese have been using for centuries. Called Stevia rebaudiana. Produces a blood-sugar-lowering effect on normal nondiabetics. Give it a whirl.”
“I’m trying to quit lemons, thanks very much, but don’t let me stop you.” Bioflavonoids? Japanese sweeteners? What on earth had the world come to?
Alex took a bite out of the thing and made an awful face. “I may give this up. Step closer to the window, Constable,” he said. “I must show you something before we conspire to save the world from the Red Menace.”
“What is it?”
“Look down there, in the courtyard,” Hawke said, feeding the lemon to Sniper, a bird who would eat red-hot plutonium if offered the stuff. “I’ve just noticed something odd. See it, old thing?” He was pointing directly at the Yellow Peril, as Ambrose had privately named his new iron steed.
“Why, yes, I do.”
“It’s a Morgan, you know,” Hawke explained. “A fairly old one, I think. The Plus Four. Wooden chassis. An absolute stunner, I must say. Brilliant paint scheme. I wonder what lucky fellow it belongs to. Pelham hasn’t announced anyone.”
“It’s mine, actually,” Congreve said, desperately trying to avoid looking smug.
“Yours? Don’t be silly, Ambrose! You don’t even know how to drive. You loathe any form of powered conveyance. You’ve not the least interest in—”
Congreve withdrew the keys from his trousers. They caught the light as he dangled them in front of Hawke’s eyes. “Let’s take her for a spin, shall we?”
“That machine actually belongs to you?”
“It does. I drove it here just minutes ago.”
“Good lord, he’s serious.”
“Any interest in a high-speed run over to the Cock & Cork for a bevvy to celebrate? A midmorning eye- opener?”
“We will indeed, but for now we have to talk of more serious matters, Constable. Let’s sit over there by the fire.”
When they were comfortable, Hawke said, “Brick Kelly was singing your praises last night at supper. He gave me something for you; it’s on my desk down in the library. A cold case file. A bizarre murder that occurred in Paris thirty-five years ago. Should you crack it, we could save the whole bloody world a lot of trouble.”
“I should be happy to put this affair on my docket, Alex. However, there’s another murder I’m bashing away at at the moment. My own.”
“Don’t tell me there’s been a second attempt? This is serious.”
“Very serious. This happened last night, in fact. I shot the bastard through a window. Down at Lady Mars’s Spring Cottage. Only winged him, unfortunately. Scene-of-Crime officers are all over the place now. There was a bit of blood on the roses below the window. They’ve promised a report before day’s end. The culprit escaped through the woods to a waiting car. I heard it start, ran to my own vehicle, and gave pursuit. Tried to catch it, you see, and very nearly succeeded. The Morgan is race-tuned. Something to do with the camshaft.”
“Someone is making a concerted effort to kill you, Ambrose. We must put a stop to this. Any idea who it is?”
“I thought it was my cousin, Bulling. And it might well be. But there’s also a Chinese agent involved, Alex, a woman. This might be an old wound reopened, I’m afraid. In which case, they’re after you, as well.”
“Ah. Last year’s tour up the Yangtze River to the Three Gorges Dam. Lucky to get out of there alive, weren’t we?”
“Possibly that unfortunate incident has come back to haunt us. On it’s simply that this woman, Bianca, has it in for me.”
“What’s her beef with you?”
“Her beef? You sound like some kind of film noir gumshoe, Alex. Well. You no doubt remember my dear cousin, Henry Bulling? Formerly employed in a secretarial position at the French embassy in London.”
“Chap whose chin was always trying to reach up to his mouth and finally gave up?”
“Exactly.”
“Peeved about your aunt’s will, was he not?”
“Hmm. My inheritance of Heart’s Ease. At the beginning of this affair, I thought Henry was perhaps
