Night of the Fox. Jack Higgins

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СКАЧАТЬ saith the Lord: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live.

      Cullen sounded even more Irish as he lifted his voice bravely against the heavy rain. He wore a dark cloak over his vestments and one of the funeral men stood beside him holding an umbrella. There was only one mourner, Sarah Drayton, standing on the other side of the open grave, an undertaker behind her with another umbrella.

      She looked perhaps forty-eight or fifty although, as I discovered later, she was sixty, small and with a figure still trim in the black two-piece suit and hat. Her hair was short, expertly cut and iron gray. She was not in any way conventionally beautiful, with a mouth that was rather too large and hazel eyes above wide cheekbones. It was a face of considerable character with an impression of someone who had seen the best and worst that life had to offer, and there was an extraordinary stillness to her. If I had seen her only in passing, I’d have turned for a second look. She was that sort of woman.

      She ignored me completely and I stayed back under what shelter the trees provided, getting thoroughly damp in spite of my umbrella. Cullen concluded the service, then moved toward her and spoke briefly. She kissed him on the cheek and he turned and moved away toward the church, followed by the funeral men.

      She stayed there for a while at the graveside and the two gravediggers waited respectfully a few yards away. She still ignored me as I moved forward, picked up a little damp soil and threw it down on the coffin.

      ‘Dr Drayton?’ I said. ‘I’m sorry to intrude. My name is Alan Stacey. I wonder if I might have a few words? I’m not a reporter, by the way.’

      Her voice was deeper than I had expected, calm and beautifully modulated. She said, without looking at me, ‘I know very well who you are, Professor Stacey. I’ve been expecting you at any time these past three years.’ She turned and smiled and suddenly looked absolutely enchanting and about twenty years of age. ‘We really should get out of this rain before it does us both a mischief. That’s sound medical advice and for free. My car is in the road outside. I think you’d better come back for a drink.’

      The house was no more than five minutes away, reached by a narrow country lane along which she drove expertly at considerable speed. It stood in about an acre of well-tended garden surrounded by beech trees through which one could see the bay far below. It was Victorian from the look of it, with long narrow windows and green shutters at the front and a portico at the entrance. The door was opened instantly as we went up the steps by a tall, somber-looking man in a black alpaca jacket. He had silver hair and wore steel-rimmed glasses.

      ‘Ah, Vito,’ she said as he took her coat. ‘This is Professor Stacey.’

      ‘Professore.’ He bowed slightly.

      ‘We’ll have coffee in the library later,’ she said. ‘I’ll see to the drinks.’

      ‘Of course, Contessa.’

      He turned away and paused and spoke to her in Italian. She shook her head and answered fluently in the same language. He went through a door at the rear of the hall.

      ‘Contessa?’ I asked.

      ‘Oh, don’t listen to Vito.’ She dismissed my query politely, but firmly. ‘He’s a terrible snob. This way.’

      The hall was cool and pleasant. Black and white tiled floor, a curving staircase and two or three oil paintings on the wall. Eighteenth-century seascapes. She opened a double mahogany door and led the way into a large library. The walls were lined with books, and French windows looked out to the garden. There was an Adam fireplace with a fire burning brightly in the basket grate and a grand piano, the top crammed with photos, mostly in silver frames.

      ‘Scotch all right for you?’ she asked

      ‘Fine.’

      She crossed to a sideboard and busied herself at the drinks tray. ‘How did you know who I was?’ I asked. ‘Canon Cullen?’

      ‘I’ve known about you since you started work on Harry.’ She handed me a glass.

      ‘Who told you?’

      ‘Oh, friends,’ she said. ‘From the old days. The kind who get to know things.’

      It made me think of Tony Bianco, my CIA contact at the embassy, and I was immediately excited. ‘Nobody seems to want to answer any of my questions at the Ministry of Defence.’

      ‘I don’t suppose they would.’

      ‘And yet they release the body to you. You must have influence?’

      ‘You could say that.’ She took a cigarette from a silver box, lit it and sat in a wing chair by the fire, crossing slim legs. ‘Have you ever heard of SOE, Professor?’

      ‘Of course,’ I said. ‘Special Operations Executive. Set up by British Intelligence in 1940 on Churchill’s instructions to coordinate resistance and the underground movement in Europe.’

      ‘“Set Europe ablaze,” that’s what the old man ordered.’ Sarah Drayton flicked ash in the fire. ‘I worked for them.’

      I was astonished. ‘But you can’t have been more than a child.’

      ‘Nineteen,’ she said. ‘In 1944.’

      ‘And Martineau?’

      ‘Look on the piano,’ she said. ‘The end photo in the silver frame.’

      I crossed to the piano and picked the photo up and her face jumped out at me, strangely unchanged except in one respect. Her hair was startlingly blond and marcelled – that’s the term I think they used to use. She wore a little black hat and one of those coats from the wartime period with big shoulders and tight at the waist. She also wore silk stockings and high-heeled shoes and clutched a black patent-leather bag.

      The man standing next to her was of medium height and wore a leather military trenchcoat over a tweed suit, hands thrust deep into the pockets. His face was shadowed by a dark slouch hat and a cigarette dangled from the corner of his mouth. The eyes were dark, no expression to them at all, and his smile had a kind of ruthless charm. He looked a thoroughly dangerous man.

      Sarah Drayton got up and joined me. ‘Not much like the Croxley Professor of Moral Philosophy at Oxford there, is he?’

      ‘Where was it taken?’ I asked.

      ‘In Jersey. Not too far from here. May nineteen forty-four. The tenth, I think.’

      ‘But I’ve been in Jersey long enough to know that it was occupied by the Germans at that time,’ I said.

      ‘Very much so.’

      ‘And Martineau was here? With you?’

      She crossed to a Georgian desk, opened a drawer and took out a small folder. When she opened it I saw at once that it contained several old photographs. She passed one to me. ‘This one I don’t keep on top of the piano for obvious reasons.’

      She was dressed pretty much as she had. been in the other photo and Martineau wore the same leather trenchcoat. The only difference was the SS uniform underneath, the silver death’s-head badge in his cap. ‘Standartenführer Max Vogel,’ she said. ‘Colonel, to you. He looks rather СКАЧАТЬ