with waves lapping down inside. The twelve-foot-high housing would keep the water out, even if she was heeled hard over. But, still. Stoke had the very strong feeling he was seeing something here that he wasn’t supposed to see. Problem being, all he saw was nothing.
The dank oily space reminded him of something he’d seen as a kid. Couldn’t place it. Then he did. The bomb bay of a B-52. There were some metal shavings on the floor, like something had been sheared off when the keel was coming out or going in. He bent and picked up a handful. That’s when the barrel-shaped thing in his pocket started clicking rapidly. What the hell?
Click-click-click-click-click.
Hell, it was a dosimeter. Measured radiation. He pulled the guard’s little glass vial out of his bag and looked at it carefully. Iodine pills. Yeah, okay, iodine. For radiation sickness. Interesting.
He’d have to ask the baron about all this interesting shit next time they got together over some cold Liebfraumilch at his secret villa up in sunny Bavaria.
His big schloss.
Chapter Twenty-seven
Gloucestershire
“YOU HAVE HIDDEN TALENTS, AMBROSE CONGREVE,” DIANA Mars said. The other guests had departed, leaving the two of them alone for a moment. She had just unwrapped his gift and they had moved outside to the stone flag terrace overlooking the parterre. Beyond the formal garden, the dusky green countryside rolled in a gentle succession of rounded hills down to the silvery ribbon of the Thames.
“Well, it’s just a study,” Congreve said of the watercolor he’d fussed over endlessly.
“Don’t be ridiculous. It’s quite good. In fact, it’s perfectly lovely. What is prettier than a crabapple in bloom?”
It was dusk, and thin veiled fingers of fog slid over the distant river and into the black trees that crowded the banks. She had surprised him with the invitation to late tea at Brixden House. Called out of the blue, she did, as he was sitting by his solitary library window thinking abstract thoughts and staring at the phone. For some reason, just at that very moment, he realized he had been thinking of Diana Mars. Yes, he certainly had been, he thought as he picked up the telephone and heard her voice.
It was one of those odd little chip shots to the green that the universe is capable of making now and then.
Ambrose had accepted the invitation immediately, realizing just how badly he wanted to see Diana before he left for New York. All business, of course—he needed to apprise her of Scotland Yard’s latest thinking in the missing butler case. Sutherland had just given him a new report. But also, he wanted to give her the picture he’d painted of the crabapple that stood outside his kitchen. He’d asked Mrs. Purvis to wrap it in some old Christmas paper he kept folded for just such emergencies. She’d done it, but she hadn’t seemed too thrilled about it, for some reason. Women were such curious creatures.
Vexing.
“Ambrose Congreve,” Diana had said when they were still standing in her parlor by the window. She’d just opened the picture and she was tracing his signature at the bottom of the watercolor with her delicate white finger. “The name sounds like some sweet old soul in a floppy hat out tending his rosebushes on a rainy spring morning.”
“It does?”
“Yes.”
“I wonder, shall we step outside for some air?” asked Ambrose, who desperately needed some himself. This floppy-hatted cove she imagined was hardly the robust picture he wished her to have of him. He’d just have to throw more color into the next picture. Perhaps an action scene. A trout rising or a salmon leaping. That might do it.
They moved a bit farther out across the flagstones, near the ornately carved balustrade that overlooked the darkening woods below.
“I have a garden, you know, Diana. Oh, nothing like this, of course. A few dahlias. I’ll be at Chelsea this year. With a hybrid I’ve got high hopes for. If I could only think of a name for it.”
Damn it. He was only digging his hole deeper. What on earth was wrong with him?
“I’ve heard your house is charming, Ambrose.” She took his hand and squeezed it briefly before letting go. It sent such a shock rocketing through the system that numbness started traveling up his arm. He scrambled for a reply before the charge could fry his brain completely.
“Really?” he managed to croak out before his jaw could lock up. “From whom?”
“Oh, friends of friends. Friends who know you.”
“Really? Who—?”
Ambrose had started to ask which friends and then hesitated. He felt a strange wave, a heady mixture of flattery and confusion wash over him. She was asking around about him, was she? And she was bold enough to admit it. He plowed ahead, willing himself to stay on his feet. He would look ridiculous staggering over to the stone ledge and tumbling arse-over-teakettle into the boxwoods below.
“I say, Diana. You’ve been an awfully good sport about all this China Doll business. And now that Sutherland and I are off to New York for a week or so, I wonder—are you quite sure you don’t want my chaps from the Yard on the property any longer? Sutherland would be delighted with the assignment. I worry about you, to tell the truth. Out here in the country, all alone.”
Diana patted his arm in what was meant to be a reassuring gesture.
“All alone? Hardly. One of the blessings my dear husband left me with is hot and cold running servants. Besides, I think you’ve scared them off, whoever they were. At the window that night. I don’t think they were expecting anyone to shoot back.”
“Well, I’m not at all sure that is the case. There has been a subsequent incident, which I shall describe to you in some detail. I wonder, has any staff seen hide or hair of your former butler? Oakshott?”
“Not since Scotland Yard was here to question everyone. Poof. I never even had the pleasure of firing him. Why?”
“It seems that last night someone tried to kill my dear friend Alex Hawke.”
“Lord Hawke? I don’t know him, certainly, but…how?”
“A woman. Talked her way into his house. Some ruse or other about car trouble. Pulled a gun and shot him at point-blank range. She missed, but it was a close thing. He was wounded.”
“Do you have any idea who she was?”
“Yes. Chinese, actually. Perhaps the twin sister of a woman he met in the South of France. I think it was our friend Bianca Moon paid him a visit.”
“Not really?”
“It’s the only explanation that makes any sense,” Congreve said, tamping down some fresh Peterson’s blend into his bowl. “I believe our Bianca and her sister and Mr. Oakshott are somehow complicit in the attempts on my life and Hawke’s. All working in tandem, as it were.” He was on his own turf now, the solid platform of an investigation, and feeling much less dizzy. He fired up the meerschaum and tried to appear stern and reflective. Floppy hat, indeed.
“What do you really think, Chief Inspector?” Diana asked, after a few long moments had passed. “About all this nonsense?”
“I’ll tell you what I think. Would you like to stroll down to the river? There’s still enough light left in the sky to walk down and return before dark.”
“Lovely idea,” she said, looking up. Her eyes were dewy in the fading light.
He got yet another high-voltage shock when he lightly took her hand as they descended the slippery stone steps to the parterre. It was as if she had electrical currents surging through her veins instead of blood like any normal woman. He took a deep breath and hung on, trying to get both of them to the bottom of the mossy steps without breaking any bones. What on earth had gotten into him lately? Buying that yellow Morgan and racing around
