CHAPTER 1
Fair is foul, and foul is fair: Hover through the fog and filthy air.
—William Shakespeare
November 1919
Seaford, Sussex
“Did you thrash the fellow?” my cousin Reg asked my husband eagerly.
“Nothing so brutal,” I protested, casting Reg a chiding look he couldn’t see, having lost his sight during the war, but could no doubt hear in my voice.
One corner of Sidney’s lips quirked upward as he slid a hand into the pocket of his gray worsted trousers. “No, I simply helped the chap back over the fence where he belonged.”
I turned to hand him a gin rickey, arching a single eyebrow wryly. “And by ‘helped’ you mean, ‘shoved him off a six-foot-high wall.’ ”
Reg tipped his head back and laughed while Sidney shrugged, his amused gaze lingering on me as he took a sip of his drink. The ice clinked against the glass.
“Well, the photographer was trespassing, wasn’t he?” my friend Daphne countered from her perch beside Reg, whose side she hadn’t strayed far from in the past fortnight. She fluffed her blond bob with one hand. “He was certainly up to no good. Probably after some scurrilous pictures he could sell to the papers.”
I appreciated her outrage on our behalf, something that brought color into her cheeks and a sparkle into her blue eyes.
Not that Reg could see it. Though he didn’t seem averse to her company. At least, not after I explained to her that he was merely blind, not a doddering old fool. Kindhearted Daphne had meant well, even if at times she was a bit thick. In this case she’d made the same mistake as much of society, including my aunt, in thinking that blind meant incapable and inept. Reg might have lost the use of his eyes, but his mind and wit were still as sharp as ever, and Daphne had swiftly remedied her error.
For my part, I was pleased to see my cousin looking so merry. Escaping from his overbearing mother and the ever-present troubles at his estate, Littlemote House, had done wonders for his spirits. I suspected the fact that—Daphne’s momentary blunder aside—everyone here treating him like he had a brain and a working set of limbs also helped.
My brilliant friend George Bentnick, who’d worked as a codebreaker during the war, reclined in a chair across the terrace of our cottage. The curls of his black hair ruffled in the
evening breeze as he took a drag from his cigarette before turning to blow a long plume of smoke out into the garden. But I hadn’t failed to note the smirk stretching his lips.
“And just what do you find so amusing?” I asked as I draped myself over one of our lounge chairs, making certain the ends of the georgette silk scarf wrapped around my neck weren’t caught behind me. I arranged the skirts of my aubergine gown so that only my ankles peeked out.
“That photographer’s folly. What did he expect would happen when he scaled the fence of dashing war hero Sidney Kent and his beautiful and intrepid wife, Verity?” George questioned, quoting almost verbatim the description so often ascribed to us in the press. He scoffed, lifting his glass. “Kent certainly wasn’t going to invite him in to tea.”
“You underestimate me, Bentnick,” Sidney replied. “Perhaps next time I’ll do that very thing.”
“Oh, but surely there won’t be a next time.” Daphne leaned forward to protest.
This comment was met by four silent looks of disbelief. In my experience, photographers and newspapermen were not so easily deterred. Not when their quarry was guaranteed to sell papers and gossip rags. I supposed it was our own fault for remaining in the limelight for solving murders. Otherwise, our celebrity would have already dimmed five months after Sidney’s celebrated return after the fifteen months he had been believed to be dead, and the revelation of the traitors I’d helped him unmask.
In any case, I was tired of discussing the incident with the photographer. I tipped my head back to admire the streaks of red, mauve, and golden orange painting the sky, and providing a stiff competition to the leaves still clinging to our maple and black poplar trees for the most brilliant prospect. At least, temporarily. I wrapped my juniper-green woolen jumper tighter around me and breathed deeply of the air tinted with the smoke from the hearths burning inside, the earthy aroma of autumn decay, and a faint tinge of saltiness from the sea a short distance away. The breeze sawed gently through the trees overhead, rustling the leaves like castanets, and I allowed my eyes to drift shut. The evening was a lovely one, especially for mid-November.
Certainly lovelier than the evenings I’d spent at our cottage during the four long years of the war. Just a little over a year earlier, nature’s chorus before sunset—no matter how sweet the sound—would merely have been a prelude to the nightly growls and grumbles of the guns echoing across the Channel from the Western Front some seventy miles away. This was why the few times I’d retreated here I hadn’t remained more than a handful of days. Knowing Sidney was over there, his section of the trenches even at that moment perhaps being shelled and fired upon… It was too wrenching to not only be intellectually aware of the danger he was in, but also audibly reminded of it.
Even the relative peace of daylight had been periodically shattered by the sounds of gunfire and explosions from one of
the military camps nearby, the gentle scents of honeysuckle and sweetbriar soured by the drifting stench of gunpowder or some other noxious fume from their training exercises.
A distinctive metallic kak-kak cry filled the air, and I opened my eyes to scowl at the black-winged menace landing on the gable of the cottage roof. “I thought Harley was going to take care of that jackdaw,” I grumbled to Sidney, doubting I was the only one who found the bird’s calls unsettlingly reminiscent of a Vickers machine gun.
“I’m afraid that’s my fault,” a deep voice admitted from over my shoulder.
I turned to find Max Westfield, the Earl of Ryde, grinning sheepishly down at me. His dark blond hair proved to be in need of a haircut, curling upward against the back of his collar.
“One of the tires on my Rolls went flat, and I asked him to change it,” he explained. “And then he uncovered an issue with the axle.”
I couldn’t help but soften at this news. Harley was a wonder with motorcars. Along with his duties as a man-of-all-work here at the cottage, he also repaired motorcars for the local village and its sharp influx of visitors in the summer months. Given the option between catching a jackdaw and tinkering with a motorcar as fine as Max’s pale yellow Rolls-Royce, there was no question what would take precedence. And given the fact that Max was our guest, I couldn’t begrudge Harley the choice he’d made.
“Is that where you’ve been?” I teased him, having wondered where he’d disappeared to for half the afternoon, but having been too lazy to bestir myself to find out.
“Did it happen when we were over at Pevensey?” Sidney queried with a frown. “I noticed there were a number of ruts in that road that needed to be repaired.”
“More than likely.” Max turned toward the drinks trolley, which had been wheeled out onto the terrace. “But then the maintenance of little-used rural roads has hardly been a priority these past five years.”
Our visit to Pevensey Castle, the site of one of the Romans’ Saxon shore forts built to defend Britain from invaders, had been less of a holiday—though we had taken a picnic with us—and more of a matter of unfinished business. A month prior, a letter written by Max’s late father had sent us off on a sort of Romano-British treasure hunt in search of what we’d thought was proof he’d held of the infamous Lord Ardmore’s guilt. One of the clues had been hidden at Pevensey, but we’d been able to sidestep it and skip to the last site. But we hadn’t figured out the purpose of the key he had also left his son, so we’d decided it would be best to search Pevensey for it. However, our visit had been disappointing in that regard. We’d found the clue that would have led us to Littlemote House and the deadly concealed treasure we’d uncovered there, but we still had no idea what the key was meant for.
Part of me was worried whatever the key unlocked had already fallen into the hands of Lord Ardmore. Ardmore had all but openly admitted he was responsible for the deaths of
more than half a dozen people, and had implicated himself in a number of treasonous proceedings. He had proven himself wily, cunning, ruthless, and remorseless. But his somewhat shadowy position with Naval Intelligence and his highly placed friends made him untouchable until we possessed the definitive proof required to bring him down.
Proof that was supposed to lie at the end of the late Lord Ryde’s infuriating treasure hunt. Instead, we’d merely found ourselves with more disquieting questions. For Max even more than the rest of us. Though he presented an unruffled exterior, I could tell he was more unsettled than he wished to appear. When he lifted his drink to his lips, downing the contents in one long swallow before pouring himself another glass, I was even more convinced of it.
I wanted to say something to reassure him, to promise him we would figure out what his father’s key unlocked, to vow that we would find the proof we needed to stop Ardmore and avenge his father’s death. But not everyone on the terrace was privy to the knowledge of our investigation. Besides, I knew that wasn’t what truly disturbed him. It was his father’s culpability in Ardmore’s Zebrina plot, which had enabled the devious lord to smuggle an unknown quantity of the poisonous gas phosgene out of Britain to an unspecified destination—possibly somewhere in Ireland. The late Lord Ryde’s missives from beyond the grave had tried to downplay his role, to deny any knowledge of the Zebrina’s true cargo and Ardmore’s intentions for it, but I knew Max must hold the same doubts I did about the level of his father’s ignorance.
So in the end I remained silent, though I couldn’t help monitoring him from the corner of my eye with growing concern. He took a deep drink from his second glass of scotch, but rather than refill it, he crossed the terrace to sink into the vacant chair across the table from Reg.
“What have I missed?” he asked with forced cheer. “Are there any grand plans for this evening? It is our last night here, after all.”
“Aye, Ver,” Reg chimed in. “What have you got planned for us? Another cribbage tournament? Some nocturnal sea bathing? A spot of snipe hunting?” This last was uttered with a particularly impish grin, poking fun at me for the time Reg and our older brothers had convinced me and my younger brother, Tim, to sneak out of the nursery after dark to join them on a snipe hunt. Of course, had we realized the snipe we were hunting was mythical, and that the pillowcases they’d told us to bring to capture the bird were actually going to be used on us, Tim and I wouldn’t have been so eager to tag along.
“Are you sure hunting is the best idea?” Daphne voiced in concern, artlessly unaware he was teasing me.
“He jests,” I assured her.
“Do I?” he challenged, the natural lines and tiny scars near the corners of his eyes crinkling.
Max chuckled into his drink, and a glance at Sidney and George told me they were also familiar with the general joke.
“Yes, unless you intend to be the hunter strung up in a tree
with a pillowcase over your head this time,” I replied pointedly before taking a sip of my gin rickey.
“That wasn’t my idea,” Reg replied as he echoed the others’ laughter. All save Daphne, that is, who merely frowned, either in confusion or disapproval.
“No, it was undoubtedly Thomas.” His older brother had always been the most domineering. “Or Freddy,” I conceded, for my oldest brother had possessed a reckless and impulsive streak. “But you were also content to leave us there all night at their urging,” I muttered wryly, unwilling to let him off the hook as I recalled the fear I’d felt and the chill of that autumn evening, which had made me shiver in my thin coat. Though even as I’d listened to Tim’s whimpers, I’d refused to cry, determined not to give the older boys the satisfaction.
“Only because I knew Rob would return to release you.” A smile still curled his lips, showing he was far from chastened.
“Yes, Rob always looked out for those who were younger and weaker.” A sharp pain lanced my heart as thoughts of my second-oldest brother tinted the memory with sadness. He had always been the best of us, and when his aeroplane was shot down over France in July 1915, he’d taken a piece of me with him. That I still hadn’t reconciled myself to his loss even four years later simply made matters worse.
I drained my glass of its cool libation, resolutely pushing back the other memories battering at the door to my consciousness. When I opened my eyes, I found my husband watching me from his position leaning against the stone balustrade. It was obvious he knew where my thoughts had strayed, but I knew he wouldn’t say anything. Not now anyway. Not until we were alone. And there was time enough to distract him from doing that.
“No snipe hunting,” I declared as I set my glass on the table nearby. “And I suspect another cribbage tournament would only result in Reg routing us all again.”
Reg’s teeth flashed in a cocksure grin.
I had happened to stumble across a deck of Braille playing cards in a specialty shop I’d visited in London and brought them to the cottage. Reg had initially struggled to adapt to them, but with Daphne’s assistance he had quickly acquired proficiency with them and sightless game play. This did not surprise me in the least. Reg had always possessed a quick mind and a dogged determination. Now, a fortnight after his arrival in Seaford, he was trouncing us all, with the possible exception of George, whose mathematical genius always made games of chance more interesting.
“Nocturnal sea bathing, then?” Reg persisted merrily.
Sidney straightened, crossing closer to the rest of us. “Not this evening. Not with those storms that hovered over the Channel earlier today. The water will be too choppy.”
“Perhaps Verity means to surprise us,” Max chimed in to say, possibly hoping to save me from Reg’s further harassment. But he looked to me with the same enthusiasm.
Given the reason behind my and Sidney’s retreat from London, and our decision to host this extended house party,
we’d gone to great lengths to entertain and distract ourselves and our friends. After all, the one-year anniversary of the armistice ending the war had passed less than a fortnight earlier, and each of us had struggled with the tides of our own grief and loss. We had each lost loved ones, each sacrificed for the war effort—some more than others. While Sidney, Max, and Reg had served as officers in the trenches of the Western Front, George, Daphne, and I had worked for the British Intelligence Services. George had been a brilliant codebreaker for Naval Intelligence, while Daphne worked in the Registry for MI5 counterintelligence, and I had operated in a number of capacities for the Secret Service, even spending time behind enemy lines in German-occupied Belgium and France, liaising with our intelligence-gathering networks there.
Given our collective memories, our collective desire to escape the pomp and circumstance being orchestrated in London to mark the occasion, I’d had my work cut out for me. Though I’d known it was foolish to hope to pass that day and those around it without confronting some dark emotions and painful recollections, I’d done my best to strategically sprinkle our itinerary with welcome distractions. Some mundane and some outrageous. Some peaceful and some dynamic. Each of us had also done our fair share of strolling alone through our gardens or along the rocky beach. Each of us coming to terms with what had passed, our own part in it, and the fortune of our survival to see this day when so many others had not.
So I met the looks on their eager faces with some sense of chagrin as I was forced to admit the truth. “Actually, I didn’t make any specific plans for this evening. I thought we might all be preoccupied with preparations for our return to London.” I glanced anxiously at each of them in turn, searching for signs of disappointment. “But we could make up a table of whist or brag, if you like. Or play some music on the gramophone and roll back the rug in the parlor so we can dance. We’re short on ladies, of course, but I’m sure Daphne and I can rise to the challenge if you gentlemen are willing to take turns.”
George lowered his leg from where he’d crossed it over the other knee and leaned forward so that a curl of his dark hair fell over his forehead. “Don’t fret, Ver. I fear we’ve become quite spoiled in your charge over the past few weeks. We seem to have forgotten we can entertain ourselves.”
“Bentnick’s right,” Max chimed in, tipping his glass to me. “A relaxing evening is just what we need.”
I offered them a tight smile, appreciating their desire to reassure me, but I still felt that I’d let them down. Fortunately, I would have all of dinner to come up with something clever and diverting. Mr. Parson should be appearing at any moment to inform us the meal prepared by his wife was ready. We rarely stood on ceremony at Sweetbriar Cottage, and so had taken to not dressing formally for dinner as we would elsewhere. Someone of an older generation like my mother or my aunt might have balked at such informal behavior, but none of the men minded eschewing their evening attire, and Daphne was accustomed to my ways.
So when the door behind me opened, I sat upright, swinging my legs over the side of the chaise in anticipation of Mr. Parson’s announcement. But rather than declare dinner to be served, he spoke in a strained voice. “Mrs. Kent? It appears you have a visitor.”
My brow furrowed at his choice of words. “It appears I do?”
He cleared his throat, his brow puckering in disapproval. “Yes, well, she claims to be a relation of some kind, but I’m not quite certain.”
I glanced at Sidney in confusion as I pushed to my feet. “What is her name?”
But I could now see beyond his shoulder to the woman standing behind him, having refused to wait in the entry as he must have requested. So when he pronounced her name it was all but drowned out by my exclamation of astonishment.
“Mrs. Ilse Vischering.”
“Großtante Ilse!” I rushed forward, forcing Mr. Parson to step aside as I threw my arms around my great-aunt.
A fur stole was draped around her shoulders, and she smelled of the eau de cologne she had worn for as long as I could remember—a blend of peony, spices, and jasmine. Her husky voice when she whispered in my ear was the same, albeit frayed at the edges with the same rush of emotion I felt. “Mein Liebchen.” However, her shoulders were frail beneath my arms, her body thin, and when I pulled back to look into her eyes, I could see that she had aged greatly in the past five years.
“How did you make it out of Germany?” I gasped.
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