Текст книги "A Spider in the Cup"

Автор книги: Barbara Cleverly

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CHAPTER 4

“Bacchus!” Joe greeted his Special Branch super as he slipped into the small office, stepping his way with care over snakes of wiring to a seat at the desk. “Hell’s bells! Did you get that?”

“Still getting it!” James Bacchus handed him a spare headset. “Oo, er! He doesn’t mince his words, your senator, does he?”

With a shake of the head, Joe turned down the offer. “What? Listen in to them tearing into the assistant commissioner as soon as his back’s turned? No thanks. I don’t want to ruin my day. It’s started so well … Leave ’em to it—I can imagine!”

“Clearly, you can’t.” Bacchus grinned, reluctantly taking off his own set and checking that his stenographer was working away. “You seem to have made a good impression. Those two blokes are the best of buddies and they’re doing a lot of agreeing. Kingstone’s decided you’re a good egg and his mate”—Bacchus looked at Joe in puzzlement—“seems to be telling him Sandilands walks on water. You sure he knows you?”

The Branchman frowned suddenly. “Perhaps it’s all a bit too sweet? Look—whoever this Armiger bloke is—I think he’s twigged. I think he’s aware of your little trick. That bit of jiggery-pokery with the screwdriver. By the way—don’t bash the bloody metal base again!” Bacchus grimaced. “Now—the senator—I’d say he was taken in. Disarmed by your gesture as intended. No idea you’d disconnected the light bulb and left the microphone linked. I can always tell. When you’ve listened in to as much of this garbage—heard as many lies over the wires as I have—well, you can tell. The body guard … mmm … not so sure. Play it back and judge for yourself. While you were coming over here, Armiger started filling his boss in on the Sandilands saga. Sickening gloop about how you saved each other’s lives in the war, ran the gauntlet of German snipers, shared your last drop of rum … you know the sort of thing.” Bacchus made his judgement: “He’s aware. And, I think, passing a message. Slippery as a shit-house rat, if you ask me. Who the hell is William Armiger?”

Joe sighed. “Well, for a start—he’s not Armiger. Though whoever chose the name for him seems to know the bloke well. It means ‘bearer of arms’ and I’ve never known him without one. Or to be unwilling to use it. And he never misses.”

“Sounds like the perfect bodyguard. Are you going to tell me his real name?”

“Armitage. Slight change but enough to evade our border procedures. He was a sergeant in my outfit in France and under my command. Very effective soldier. He doesn’t exaggerate—he did indeed save my life. He calls me ‘Captain’ because that was my rank at that critical moment. It’s a way of reminding me of what I owe him, presented as ironic deference.”

“What an arsehole!”

“He’s that all right. But he joined the police force and was a good officer.” Joe paused for a moment, weighing his words. “Yes, a good officer. Intelligent, active and ambitious. He was being groomed for a starring role in the force—an example to the lower classes—ability will get you to the top in the new Britain. What he didn’t tell the force was that he was doing a little cat burgling on the side. Or that he was a paid-up member of the Communist party. You should read his file, James. More entertaining than a night out at the Haymarket! Our enterprising lad got his fingers badly burned one night when, in the act of burgling, he ran up against a villain even more resourceful than himself. Blackmail and murder ensued.”

“Murder? What the hell is he doing still on the loose?”

“He killed a woman, James. In cold blood, as if that makes a difference. Murdered her to order. To save his skin and that of another. In all this he acquired grateful friends in very high places. Friends who had no compunction in going over my head. The powers that be were very thankful to see him sail off aboard the liner to the States and, I’d guess, they eased his path once he’d arrived. Letters of recommendation and all that. But with the threat of the gallows looming over him, they never expected him to return to our shores. I fear Armitage has not kept his side of the bargain.”

“Why’s he back, then? A man of resource such as you describe—he could have avoided the duty. Must have wanted to make the trip rather badly. He’s up to something.” James Bacchus gave Joe a very direct look. “And I think you probably know what it is.”

“Oh, he’s probably come back for his cat,” Joe said lightly. “Big ginger creature. Unpleasant biter. When Bill went off in a hurry, Superintendent Cottingham took it into care and he’s still caring for it, I believe. Yes—at the top of his list of things to do you’ll find: ‘a) Rescue Marmalade. b) Put a bullet in Sandilands’ head.’ ”

“Gawd!” Bacchus groaned. “You don’t give me an easy life, Joe! Are you telling me I’ve now got to provide a guard for the guard? You and this villain are both technically working together to protect the senator against …” He raised his shoulders, searching for a word. “… the world? Would that cover it? And Armitage is out to top you before he puts his gun back in its holster. What’s he using, by the way?”

“Great cumbersome thing. A Colt?”

“I’ll get that checked.”

“How …?”

“I’ll just ask my opposite number at the FBI what they’re ‘packing,’ as they say, offering supplies of ammunition and all that. We can be helpful when we want. They’re very grateful, especially since they discovered their own so carefully shipped stores had gone missing from the checkroom. We hint, loftily, that they’ve been mightily careless. The Italians actually believed us when we fed them the same codswallop and sacked their quartermaster. And the French! But the Americans—well, they play our game. They know we can’t tolerate a capital with armament of one sort or another loose on the streets for an indefinite time. They’d do the same.”

Bacchus, whose attention had hardly strayed from the headset, now picked up one earpiece and applied it casually. “Your bloke’s on the move. Armitage. Says he’s going up to their rooms … Senator’s calling for another pot of coffee. Thinks his girlfriend might pop in for breakfast. Are we sure Kingstone’s got a girlfriend, Joe? Haven’t seen hide nor hair of her … Ah! Here’s Cottingham strolling over to introduce himself. Here’s your chance! Get out into the corridor and trip up your pistol-packing sergeant.”

Joe was already sliding out.

“THERE YOU ARE, Sarge!”

“There you are, Captain!”

The cheerful calls rang out at the same moment across the width of the black-and-white tiled vestibule.

“I was wondering if …” Joe began.

“So was I!” Armitage grinned. “I was hoping you’d lingered behind, retying a shoelace.” He waved away the attentions of the footman. “Shall we take the elevator?”

The two men got out on the third floor, and Joe followed the sergeant down the thickly carpeted corridor.

“They’ve put you in here, 310,” said Armitage. “Got your key, sir? Senator Kingstone is directly opposite in 315. His friend is booked into 316 and I’m in 314.”

“Oh, good. We can all have a game of bridge if it gets boring,” Joe muttered.

“We’ll take a look inside.” Armitage took a ring of keys from his pocket and opened the door of Kingstone’s room.

A perfectly ordered, carefully decorated and furnished suite of rooms greeted them. Joe noted fresh flowers on low tables, easy chairs, a desk. The bed was in a separate room and enjoyed the luxury of an adjoining bathroom fitted out in white marble with silver taps.

“The staff has been in already,” Joe remarked, taking in the made-up bed, the neatly arranged toilet items.

“Any little surprises here?” Armitage asked, matter-of-factly.

“We’ve been here four days and I’ve checked thoroughly—you’re not the only man who carries a screwdriver about with him—but unless the Yard really has pulled itself into the twentieth century at last, I’d say the whole suite was clear. Wouldn’t want the senator’s romantic idyll being shared with your thugs in the Branch.”

Joe cut him short. “What do you take us for, man? Cads? Absolutely no intention of intruding. What did your”—he gave slight stress to the “your”—“Secretary of State say when he closed down your code-breaking section? ‘Gentlemen do not read each other’s mail.’ A very proper sentiment! Gentlemen do not listen in to a chap’s private conversations with a lady friend either.”

Armitage listened to all this with a cynical smile. “Besides, the staff here is well trained and observant. Probably on the payroll. You can learn anything you need to know from their reports.”

“Exactly. You know our methods.”

“Yep! And that’s going to be a help. Siddown, Captain,” he drawled, indicating two easy chairs. “Time we got a few things straight.”

“The first thing you can straighten out is your accent,” Joe said, his expression mild and interested. “Do I detect Tennessee? I’m no expert but it does have a flavour of the catfish rather than the jellied eel, these days.”

“Trick I learned from you. I was never sure you knew you were doing it yourself, but I noticed all right. You could talk to a pepper-and-salt brigadier in his own accent one minute and then turn and sound off at the men in trench lingo the next. It gives people confidence if they’re talking to someone who speaks as they do. If you get it right, they don’t even notice you’re doing it because they’re hearing what they’re expecting to hear.”

Joe smiled. “Just as I’m hearing upper class London at the moment? You always did have a linguist’s ear, Sarge.” He went on talking as he set about a routine examination of the room, opening and closing windows, locating the fire escape, locking and unlocking the communicating door. “Tell me—anything else left over from the good old days? Your Communist sympathies are alive and well, are they? I hear the States are a hot bed of red-tinged societies these days.”

The sergeant’s handsome features had frozen into a noncommittal expression and Joe realised that his first barb had found its target.

“That was a long time ago. Mark it down as a young man’s folly and forget it.”

“Not quite ready to do that yet. We’ve kept the original reports the Branch presented on your activities and affiliations. It includes photographic evidence.” Joe decided to pin down Armitage with a second shaft. An underhand one he despised but which he feared might be his only restraint on this wayward and contradictory man. “One never knows when they might come in useful … You’re an agent in the FBI, I think Kingstone said?”

“Okay, okay! I’ll save you saying it,” Armitage said, his teeth clenched. “Blackmail isn’t—or used not to be—in your repertoire. But it’s no more than I expected. One word dropped to J. Edgar Hoover—my boss—and that’s my career, perhaps my life, finished. He’s been leading a cleanup of anything or anyone tainted by communism for years now. He doesn’t need proof. Suspicion is enough to land you in jail. You have me over a barrel. Happy with that?”

“Have you met him, this boss of yours? This latter-day witch-finding general?” Joe’s interest was clear.

“I have.”

Joe waited.

“Hoover’s effective, driven, ruthless and won’t be crossed.”

“How tiring,” Joe said with a sympathetic smile. “From that description, I’d say you and your boss were two for a penny. But—to save you saying it—there are less pleasant aspects to the man’s methods and character. I hear from one who knows these things that he is also egotistical, disloyal, vindictive and devious but, like many of his kind, seems always able to bob, unscathed, to the surface.”

“A piece of shit. You said it, sir.”

“Which makes me wonder why on earth you would have pursued a career with the FBI.”

“I’m a policeman. They are the force of law and order. But don’t be superior! Where do you think I learned some of the dirtier tricks of the trade? The Yard could give J.E.H. a few tips in skulduggery. ‘The boy who thinks ahead, gets ahead,’ my old headmaster used to say. Like in soccer—it’s speed and cunning you need. I just make sure I’m faster on my feet than the men blocking my way. I trip ’em up and run. Whoever they are.”

“Bill, as one whom, in the past, you’ve left writhing on the ground clutching an ankle, I’m aware of your qualities. Always have been,” Joe said. “So I do ask myself why a clever, self-seeking bastard like you comes back and sticks his head in a noose?”

Armitage turned to him, face flushing with emotion. “It won’t come to that. But if it did—what’s one life? I’m no martyr—you know that—but we’re talking about millions of lives and you don’t even know it! You really haven’t worked it out, have you?”

“We all know Britain’s bankrupt, Bill. You don’t need to tell us. The weight of the war loan repayments to the States will sink the country. Some say it’s a calculated sinking by our cousins. Good of you to come back all this way to check the price of a loaf in the old country. We know just how urgent it is that the world sorts out its finances at this conference. Chaos, depression and starvation will ensue if we don’t. We could be facing a lingering decline. King George is about to make that very point when he speaks at the opening. We’re aware all right.”

Armitage groaned. “To hell with the finances! ‘Lingering decline!’ ” he scoffed and, putting on an elegant Mayfair tone: “ ‘I say, my dear, I really think, in the interests of economy, we must reduce our indoor staff to a dozen, don’t you agree?’ If only that was what you had to fear! No—you’re looking at a sharp, sudden, bloody defeat at the hands of a ruthless enemy. You’re looking at London in flames. A world in flames.”

“Indeed? Do calm down, Bill, and tell me when this Armageddon is about to break around our ears. Did I detect a note or two of the Götterdämmerung in that outburst? Do I have time to go out and get myself a gas mask?”

Armitage glowered. “No, you don’t. It’s started and you’re in the front line of the advance party. You’re not forty yet, Captain. In your prime, I’d say. I’d get myself measured for a uniform if I were you.”

Joe sighed. “Look, if it’s the thought of fighting the Germans all over again … I don’t think you need be quite so hysterical. Always worth watching, of course—the Hun—but the Versailles Treaty conditions really knocked them back. The controls on rearmament, in particular, were swingeing. It takes a devastated country longer than fifteen years to get up on its feet again.”

Armitage gave him a pitying look. “Controls? If there’s money involved, people will always get around them. Especially arms manufacturers. The French have just sold four hundred tanks to Germany. Did you know that?”

“Careless clowns! They shipped them via Holland, as if that’s going to fool anyone for two minutes!”

The pitying look hardened to withering. “Who the hell cares about dispatch dockets? Those tanks are on their way! And what about the sixty bombers they’ve had the bloody nerve to order from your own Vickers company in Birmingham?”

Joe didn’t give Armitage the satisfaction of questioning this piece of information although it was news to him.

“And our … your pathetic government will rubber stamp it and ship them off. The Luftwaffe will get their bombers all right. One way or another. German air aces—the bloody crew we were trying to shoot out of the sky—have been shopping in the States for dive bombers. They rather liked the performance of the Curtiss Hawk II. They were sent a cheque for a couple by their air chief, Goering—remember him? Bloody fat Hermann! He’s done well for himself. And these planes have been sent over to Germany. Where they’ll be taken apart and redesigned. Made more deadly.”

“Nice to know the new government values its war heroes. Even a defeated country has the right to defend itself,” Joe said mildly. He always squeezed information out of Armitage by quietly needling him.

“Defence! That’s the last thing their new Chancellor has in mind!” Armitage reacted predictably and rounded on Joe, his face unacceptably close, his voice low and forceful. “Adolf Hitler. Vicious little thug! All this materiel will be in the hands of a man who declared—even before he took office—that ‘We shall never capitulate. We may be destroyed, but if we are, we shall drag the world with us—a world in flames.’ ”

“Ghastly sentiments! Cue Wagnerian clash of cymbals?”

“Yes,” Armitage snarled. “Bring ’em on! That was a statement of nasty intent if ever I heard one.”

“Hitler spooking you, Bill? Terrible man, as all agree. But, look here, we’ve had him thoroughly checked. The man’s an incompetent. He’s made a mess of everything he’s put his hand to throughout his life—and that’s not much seeing that he’s an incurable layabout! He’s not even German by birth. He’s an Austrian shirker who made the injudicious decision to dodge the draft by running off to Germany. Where he was promptly shoved into the army, kicking and screaming. He played an unwilling and undistinguished part in the war at a safe distance behind the front line in the capacity of military messenger boy, I understand. He’s since gone on to fail at architecture, art, music and all the rest of his butterfly interests. One wonders what we have to fear from a man who can’t get out of bed before noon.”

Armitage gave him a scathing look. “Well, he’s succeeded now, all right, hasn’t he? And how! Straight into the top job. He must be saying something the Germans want to hear.”

“According to our man in Berlin—one of our men in Berlin—who’s met him and been granted an interview, he’s quite mad. ‘Pop-eyed but friendly,’ was his first impression. Until someone mentioned Communism and then he climbed the walls and began to chew the curtains. He frequently goes off into a raging, spitting rant, they say. Most embarrassing. Our chap didn’t know where to put himself. Can’t be long before someone realises and calls for the men in white coats. In one of his sober moments, Hitler confided to our bloke that, in his view, there was room in the world for just three empires: the German, the British and the American.”

Joe remembered the MI6 man who’d been briefing him in European politics only the day before. Tall, sandy-haired and courteous, he’d been struggling, Joe sensed, to keep his alarm hidden under his outer shell of easy confidence. An ex-soldier like Joe, he’d sensed a sympathetic understanding and divulged more than he ought to have. And Joe was seeing here in Armitage the same unfocussed, dawning horror, hearing the same urgent need to inform and warn. Two Cassandras in as many days plucking at his sleeve and demanding that he listen to their blood-chilling message.

“And your agent believed him?” Armitage asked, one eyebrow raised.

“Yes, he did. I wouldn’t myself, but many do,” Joe replied lightly.

“Well, thank the Lord someone’s taking Hitler seriously. You should replay those words. They’re not the words of a maniac. Examine the meaning. ‘German Empire.’ There’s a million deaths in those two words. Such an empire would cover the whole of Europe. Bye bye France, Poland, Holland and anyone else who gets in his way. Knocked out. Italy, Austria and other satellites, gobbled up. The British? A tougher nut to crack. And it’s thought he has a sneaking admiration for the Anglo-Saxons. First cousins to the Prussians, most of them, he reckons. Though he’s got that wrong. You try feeding that idea to a Cockney sparrer and hear what he says!”

“We might expect him to try to do a deal?”

“He might try it on. Wouldn’t work. Your politicians, your aristocracy, your businessmen, plus a few nutcases might be showing him favour, but they’ll never convince the millions of ordinary folk that there’s any good can come out of an alliance with Germany.”

“The vote’s in the hands of a mass of people who still say, ‘Did my husband, my son, my uncle Alfred die in vain?’ ” Joe agreed. “We hate the French and I think we hate the Germans more. But it’s the American aspect of all this that’s got you in a lather, isn’t it, Bill?”

“Right. The American Empire. That’s the pivot.”

Pivot? An echo of his conversation with Kingstone came back to trouble Joe.

“Huge German immigrant population in the States. Considerable sympathies for the old country and its post-war sufferings under the British boot.” Armitage was talking fast now, eyes flitting occasionally to the door. “All stridently anti-Communist. In fact, they have an affinity with Herr Hitler. Brown-shirt brigades have started marching through the streets of New York—so far unchallenged. And, running the country are politicians and money-makers who, if they’re even aware the British exist, either discount or loathe them. Many admire the control and order the new breed of right-wing dictators in Europe is exercising. ‘Just what we need,’ they’re saying, ‘a touch of the Mussolinis. Get the trains running! Build those autobahns! Fix the economy!’ ”

“It’s no secret that the Americans already consider themselves the supreme world power. Perhaps they’ll be gracious enough to take on some of the onerous duties that go with the title? Take a bit of weight off our shoulders?” Joe suggested, deliberately to provoke a revealing response. “Always supposing they don’t just pull the eiderdown over their ears when the guns start banging and retreat into isolationism again.”

Armitage was grim. “Don’t scoff! Isolationism may be the best you can hope for. Hasn’t it occurred to you that if the US were to come out in favour of—or at the very least, fail to condemn—German expansion, this little island, for all its naval strength, will be caught like a walnut in a pair of nutcrackers? Hitler will use the States to help him bring down Britain. And the States will use Hitler to the same end. And then what?”

Joe shuddered theatrically. “My God! We could well end up seeing you as puppet Commissioner of Scotland Yard, Bill, in a client state. I wonder what you’ll call it? The Forty-Ninth State of the USA or Neue Deutschland? Let’s not pursue that thought. Yet.”

“Do you ever stop arsing about, man?” For an uncomfortable moment Joe had the feeling that Armitage was going to reach out, take hold of him by the shoulders and shake him. The sergeant displaced his anger by kicking a hole in a Claridge’s wastepaper basket. “It’s more than a thought. It’s a plan and it’s being worked on. Some of the planners will be sitting smirking around that conference table next week. Working towards our … your destruction. The buggers are right here in London. Sipping their Earl Grey from china cups in swish hotels. Honoured guests. Copper-bottomed reputations on the world stage. And the one man who can make a difference—cast his weight on one side or the other—is …”

“Right here, under our joint care, Bill? I had realised.”

“I hope you’re armed with something a bit more effective than a screwdriver, Captain. At this darned conference—this free-for-all—he’ll be rubbing shoulders with every villain in Europe and beyond that. It may not come to assassination—he’s more valuable on his two feet and reporting back to the president. He gets listened to. He’s a fair-minded man. But he’s a conduit. If he returns, primed, to tell Roosevelt what he already is disposed to hear—that Britain’s not worth his support, that it’s a busted flush, a treacherous, vindictive, self-glorifying bastard of a country—well, support, if any is coming, will go to Germany.”

Joe cleared his throat. “It’s going to be a long, sweaty month, Bill. I’ve heard you. And understood.” He felt a sudden rush of disgust with undercover skirmishings, dubious allegiances and threats of daggers in the back. Impatience broke through as he spoke briskly: “Bill! We’re not politicians, we’re not spies, we’re policemen! Let’s do what we’re trained to do. It’s all we can do. And we can start by remembering why we’re here. To protect that powerful and, I believe, well-intentioned man downstairs. A man I can respect. I liked him.” He strolled to the window. “How active is our bird? Could he manage that fire escape if it came to a sudden exit?”

“No problem there! He’s as spry as a mountain goat. Fists like cured hams and he knows how to use them. I wouldn’t tangle with him.”

“Weaknesses? I like to know where a man keeps his Achilles heel.”

Armitage thought for a moment then jerked his head at the next room. “There’s only one. Her, next door.”

“The ballet dancer?”

“She makes him less than he is. She reduces him to a twitching wreck. It’s pathetic. He’d follow her to the ends of the earth. Well, he does. Would marry her tomorrow, he says, but she won’t oblige. Taking little thing but I wouldn’t trust her far.” He flicked a glance at Joe and added carefully, “Russian’s her first language. Born in St. Petersburg, she claims. She doesn’t know I speak it and I’m keeping that quiet.”

“Very wise,” said Joe. “Shall we cast an eye over her billet? I think we should get to know this lady who has the attention of the man who has the ear of the president who has his finger on the trigger of the gun that’s pointed at our head.”

They entered another opulent space, the twin of the suite they had just left. Joe stood for a moment looking around for and not seeing signs of occupancy.

“Has she been here?” Joe asked.

“Her things are in the cupboards,” Armitage said, throwing open a wardrobe. “Her maid unpacked for her.”

“Maid? Is she on the premises?”

“She has a room somewhere on an upper floor. Julia’s not seen her either. I checked before breakfast.”

“Julia?”

“Julia Ivanova. The maid. She’s not some gaga old biddy—she’s as smart as a whip and pretty as a picture. If you like Russian looks. Dark, high cheekbones, suffering Madonna expression.”

“And where is she at the moment, this icon?”

“Up in her room, I expect. They’re as thick as thieves, I’d say. You ought to talk to her.”

“These are mostly evening dresses,” Joe commented, riffling through the silks and velvets on the hangers. “French labels.” He bunched the midnight blue silk of the dress at the front of the rack and drew it towards him. “Madeleine Vionnet. Oh, how smart!” He sniffed with pleasure. “And a trace of L’heure bleue.”

“Very apt! The Blue Hour. Twilight. That’s when she lives her life. In the evenings. She sleeps until noon, rehearses or performs until ten. The rest of the night’s hers to do what she likes with. Never sees daylight! Terrible life! At least that’s Kingstone’s version of it.”

“Different generations, backgrounds, interests … You’d wonder what on earth they had in common,” Joe said, mystified.

“Until you see them together.” The unromantic Armitage frowned and Joe stayed silent, understanding that he was struggling to clothe in words an emotional state that was outside his experience. “Weird, it was. Seemed made for each other. Very natural together … not lovey-dovey. No, nothing sloppy—just … together. In a room full of people you’d know those two were a pair. Still—she’s used to performing, I have to remind myself,” he finished with a return to his usual hard-headed asperity.

“How long have they been carrying on? Would you know that?”

“Six years. He saw her dance in Swan Lake at the Metropolitan when the Diaghilev company was touring the States and was knocked sideways. They say he travelled everywhere with her until they all came back to Europe.”

“Is he a faithful lover?”

“Lord, no! There was a showgirl on the liner over—maybe there were two—who caught his eye. You couldn’t call either of them faithful. They have others in their lives but they never discuss it with each other, according to Kingstone. Tatler magazine knows more about her past than he does.”

“And that’s a useful thought,” Joe murmured. “Worth following up, perhaps.” He sighed. “An extraordinary way of going on! Or am I being old-fashioned? Tell me—where is she at the moment? Did she spend the night here?”

“Told you—I don’t know. You’ll have to ask the maid.” And, tetchily: “This female element is all new to me too. The bodyguard’s not someone they’d confide in. If they see me at all, I’m the great gowk in the corner, always in the way unless they’re actually being shot at, then they see the point of the broad shoulders. Ideally, for this job, you’d be sans eyes, sans ears and sans you-know-what. Inconveniently, if you want a useful triggerfinger you have to have the rest of the package. Natalia turned up with her luggage and her maid on Monday. Warm reunion. I know she was here on Tuesday night, though I didn’t see her. I think I heard her though!” Armitage cringed at the memory. No sign of her on Wednesday and she wasn’t here last night, according to Julia. That’s all I can tell you.”

“Isn’t he concerned? And shouldn’t we be concerned? I’m supposing our remit embraces mental equilibrium as well as physical well-being.”

Armitage considered this. “I’d leave it,” he advised. “It’s a game they play. Wouldn’t do for you and it certainly wouldn’t do for me. I’d fetch her a wallop! She’ll be back.”

Joe picked up a silver-framed photograph from the dressing table. “This is her, the runaway, here with Kingstone?”

“That’s her. Taken in Switzerland last winter.”

Joe admired the small figure tucked like a teddy bear under the senator’s arm. Clear features in a pale rounded face were softened by an abundance of curling black hair and a furry hat. Dark eyes as round as buttons peered out with a gleam of mischief from the sheltering folds of tweed suiting. “An informal pose,” the society magazines would have sniffed but Joe was enchanted. The photographer and whoever held the snapshot in his hand was involved in their careless gaiety and—yes—their undisguised affection.

“And our worldly, sophisticated statesman is truly in love with this ‘taking little thing’ you say?”

Armitage bridled at the question. “How would I know? You’re asking, so I’ll say—‘in love’ doesn’t come near. Obsessed? No, sounds too melodramatic and mad. This is something strong but it’s not uncomfortable … Magicked! That’s it! Poor bloke’s been magicked!” He dismissed his flight into fantasy with a shrug and a grin.

Joe groaned. “That’s all we needed! Look, Sarge, I can’t give you a direct order any more, so I’ll give you a bit of advice. Find the antidote for this love potion before worse occurs. Oh, and when you’ve found it—give me the recipe. You never know when it might come in handy.”