A Poison of Passengers Read online

  ‘You recognise him?’ Greenfield asked in surprise.

  ‘Oh, yes.’ I nodded and took another gulp of whisky. ‘Lord, yes.’ That rounded, boyish face and those sparkling eyes. It was unmistakable. ‘That’s Harry Latimer.’ I coughed again, taking a moment to recover my wits. ‘We’re...erm...we’re old friends.’

  Greenfield pressed back in his chair. ‘You know Latimer?’ His brow crinkled slightly. ‘That I didn’t expect. It’s a long time since he last worked for British Intelligence.’

  ‘Oh, I’ve known him a long time. And he gets around, does Harry.’ I bit my lip. The two of us had been friends since the war. I had first met him in New Orleans, a few days after the armistice; but I had never thought to see him again. The last time we had bumped into each other had been in England in the autumn of 1929. I had been caught up in a rather unfortunate series of events at a country house in Buckinghamshire. At the end of it, for reasons too onerous to go into here, I had been forced to fake my own death. As far as Harry Latimer was concerned, I was dead and buried. ‘Look here, Terrance,’ I admitted now, ‘this could be dashed awkward.’

  ‘How so?’ Greenfield put down his glass and recovered the photograph, which he pocketed smoothly. He knew nothing of the Bletchley affair, of course, and I was not about to explain it to him. But I had to tell him something.

  ‘Well, for a start, he knows my real name.’ That was something almost nobody knew. ‘You say he’s travelling on the Galitia?’

  Greenfield nodded. ‘Booked a ticket just the other day. When we saw the name of the ship, we thought of you. That’s why I suggested coming here. I gather this is a regular haunt of his. I was going to point him out to you.’

  My eyes widened in alarm. ‘He’s here? Harry’s here?’

  ‘Yes. Just around the corner. Look, you can see his reflection in the mirror there.’

  I glanced across the crowded room at the wide floor-length mirror. Sure enough, the familiar figure was reflected there, albeit from behind, the broad shoulders and the loosely cropped hair. My old friend, Harry Latimer, as I lived and breathed. He had ordered the fish as well. And he would get the shock of his life when he saw me. A phantom rising up from his past.

  ‘No idea who he’s dining with, though,’ Greenfield added.

  I blinked in surprise, as I recognised his companion. Her face at least was fully visible. ‘That’s Mrs O’Neill,’ I said. She was a large, matronly woman in her early fifties. ‘She’s staying at the Alderley hotel, just down the hall from me.’ I had booked myself into a pleasant room there for my last couple of nights in New York. ‘She’s travelling on the Galitia too.’ The woman had made a point of introducing herself to me. ‘Why she would be dining with Harry I have no idea.’

  ‘Mr Latimer has an eye for the ladies, I understand.’

  That was true enough. Harry did have something of a reputation in that respect. There were half a dozen irate fathers back in England who would happily see Harry Latimer keelhauled, and doubtless a similar number in the United States. ‘Yes, but young and blonde,’ I said. ‘Not middle aged widows. Even rich ones.’ Mrs O’Neill was not short of a bob or two, that much I did know. I brought a hand up to my face. ‘Lord, do you think he might have seen me?’

  ‘Who knows? If he knows you that well, you’re going to have to say hello. It won’t make any odds, from our point of view. You won’t be able to avoid him, once you set sail.’

  I dropped the hand. That was true. ‘Lord, I was hoping for a quiet trip home.’ I gazed across at the mirror once again. ‘Perhaps I should bite the bullet and go over now.’ If I had to say hello, I might as well get it over with. It might be quite fun, to see the look of horror on his face when I appeared before him. Harry did not like surprises and this would be the surprise of a lifetime.

  Greenfield dismissed that idea with a wave of his fork. ‘This is your last evening in New York. You can worry about Harry Latimer tomorrow. He probably hasn’t even noticed we’re here.’ He put down the fork. ‘Actually, I thought we could take in a show after dinner. Something a little risqué. I hear there’s quite a good...what the devil?’

  It was at this point that the head waiter banged his tray, some fool shouted ‘bomb’ and, moments later, we found ourselves part of the stampede.

  Now I was out on the street and Terrence Greenfield was disappearing from view. If anyone could find out what was going on in the restaurant, it was our man in New York. I reached into my jacket pocket, to pull out my cigarette case. At that moment, a loud female voice called across to me. ‘Mr Buxton! I thought it was you! Isn’t it awful?’

  I tried not to shudder as the familiar figure of Mrs Susan O’Neill bustled across the pavement towards me. She was an imposing woman, perhaps five feet four in height, stocky, and with lively darting eyes peering out from an otherwise bland face. She was dressed in an elegant silk evening gown, fashionably cut. It might have suited a woman half her age. It was certainly no protection from the cold. She had probably come out with a fur coat and a hat, but there had been no time to retrieve it from the cloakroom.

  I pocketed my cigarette case and raised a reluctant hand in greeting. I had forgotten all about the woman, in the mad panic to leave the restaurant. ‘Not an ideal evening,’ I agreed. My eyes, however, were fixed on her escort, a handsome scoundrel who was smiling benignly.

  ‘Do you think it really is a bomb?’ Mrs O’Neill babbled. Her accent was a refined east coast American, but I flinched at the volume of it. ‘Ought we to move further away?’

  Her companion did not seem particularly concerned. ‘Oh, I think we’re safe enough here, Mrs O’Neill. Even if it is a bomb.’ His eyes flicked back to the restaurant. ‘If it was going to go off, I figure it would have done it by now.’

  ‘Very likely,’ I agreed, with a grim smile.

  Harry Latimer returned my gaze with some amusement. He was a tall, broad shouldered fellow in his late thirties, a veritable bear of a man. He was handsome in a boyish way; perhaps not quite a matinee idol but a decent enough lead in a second feature. It was a little over two years since I had last seen him and he did not seem to have aged a day. Harry threw me an easy smile. Oddly, he did not seem surprised to see me, which in itself was something of a surprise. Perhaps he had already clocked me back in the restaurant.

  Mrs O’Neill’s attention was focused firmly on the evacuation. ‘We might have all been killed,’ she burbled.

  ‘Oh, we’re safe enough out here,’ Harry said, scratching an earhole. ‘So, are you going to introduce me to your friend?’ His accent, unlike Mrs O’Neill’s, was a smooth transatlantic hybrid, not quite British or American. Years spent flitting across Europe had mellowed his speech patterns somewhat.

  ‘Oh, yes, of course!’ Mrs O’Neill exclaimed. ‘Do forgive me. Mr Buxton, this is Harry Latimer. He’s from New Jersey. Mr Latimer, this is a friend of mine from England, Mr Henry Buxton.’ The word “friend” was stretching it a little. We had barely known each other for two days.

  ‘Buxton?’ Harry lifted an eyebrow as he thrust out his hand. He would not have heard that name before. It was one of many aliases I had used in recent years. Reginald Bland. Henry Buxton. I had even been Mrs Harold Bannerman, briefly, crossing from Guatemala to British Honduras. ‘A pleasure to meet you,’ he said.

  ‘Er...likewise,’ I agreed. Whatever the man was up to, he seemed content to present me as a stranger in front of Mrs O’Neill. Business always came first with Harry. If he was at all surprised at my unexpected return from the dead, he was not going to show it in front of his new best friend. The man had a superb poker face.

  A gentle splatter of rain was beginning to fall on us. The woman started to shiver.

  ‘Mrs O’Neill, you’re freezing,’ Harry observed, with a creditable stab at concern. He whipped off his jacket. ‘Here, let me,’ he said, placing the garment over her shoulders, to the delight of the middle aged widow. As he did so, his hands gently brushed the clasp of her pearl necklace.
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  ‘Mr Latimer is my guardian angel,’ she purred. ‘He saved my life.’

  Harry waved away the compliment. ‘You’re exaggerating,’ he protested lightly.

  ‘I don’t think we were in any real danger,’ I declared. ‘I suspect the front of the building is where the action would be, if there was going to be any.’

  ‘Oh, not the restaurant,’ Mrs O’Neill said. ‘Would you believe it? Twice in one day!’

  ‘The police too.’ Harry Latimer grimaced, glancing across the street. A patrol man had just rounded a corner, moving in to take a few statements from some of the diners on the opposite side of the road. Harry tended to dance around on the wrong side of the law and was never happy when the boys in blue were in the vicinity. The senior officers would be at the front of the building by now, with the bomb squad if necessary. And Terrance Greenfield would be poking his nose in, finding out exactly what was going on.

  ‘Twice?’ I asked, not quite following.

  ‘Oh, you won’t have heard,’ Mrs O’Neill said. ‘Mr Buxton, it was dreadful. I was attacked, in broad daylight, just as I was leaving the hotel this morning.’

  ‘Good lord.’

  ‘The doorman was calling me a taxicab. I stepped out onto the side walk, when this horrible, horrible man, he grabbed hold of me.’

  ‘To be strictly accurate,’ Harry interjected, with the slightest of smirks, ‘he grabbed hold of her purse.’

  ‘Good grief. A robbery?’

  ‘My handbag,’ Mrs O’Neill confirmed, ‘He snatched it from me, before I even knew what was happening. Then he ran off down the street. It was awful. If Mr Latimer hadn’t been there...’

  ‘I was just coming around the corner,’ Harry explained. ‘I heard Mrs O’Neill call out, I saw the bag and I realised straight away what was going on.’

  I nodded grimly. I was beginning to understand only too well.

  ‘I confronted the guy and managed to pull the bag away from him, but he gave me a good sock to the jaw and, I have to confess, that winded me. By the time I’d recovered myself, he’d run off.’

  ‘Harry was so brave!’ Mrs O’Neill gushed. ‘My knight in shining armour. And do you know, he wouldn’t accept a cent in reward?’

  The hero of the hour shrugged modestly. ‘Hey, I was just doing what any good citizen would do.’ By this time, I was struggling not to laugh. It looked like Harry was up to his old tricks again. But Mrs O’Neill seemed oblivious to the deception. ‘And I was happy to accept an invitation to dinner,’ Harry added.

  ‘And you’ll never guess,’ Mrs O’Neill continued breathlessly. ‘Mr Latimer is booked on the Galitia as well. Isn’t that a coincidence?’

  ‘It certainly is,’ I agreed, straight-faced.

  By now, the rain was falling steadily. Mrs O’Neill pulled Harry’s jacket tightly around herself.

  ‘We ought to get you back to your hotel,’ Harry suggested. ‘Are you at the Alderley too?’ This question was directed at me.

  ‘Yes, on the third floor. Why, is that where you’re staying?’

  ‘No, I’m at the Waldorf Astoria, a little further on.’

  ‘What, the new place?’

  ‘Yeah, that’s the one.’ It had only been open a couple of months. ‘Hey, would you mind, old man?’ He glanced up at the sky. ‘I think we should get Mrs O’Neill back to the Alderley, before the rain really hits.’ The woman opened her mouth to protest, but Harry lifted a hand. ‘We can send someone for the coats later on.’ I had the impression my American friend was rather keen to move on, and not just for Mrs O’Neill’s sake. The further we got from the police, the happier he would be.

  I was less keen to desert my post. I couldn’t just abandon Terrance Greenfield, even if it was pouring down. ‘I was here with a friend,’ I said. ‘He seems to have wandered off somewhere.’ The rain was falling quite heavily now. ‘I dare say I can catch up with him later.’ After all, I had been tasked with keeping an eye on Harry Latimer and – bomb or no bomb – I might as well make a start on it. ‘Mrs O’Neill?’ I extended an arm and the American woman took it gratefully.

  ‘I’m so lucky,’ she beamed, ‘to have met two such nice young men.’

  Mrs O’Neill was mistaken on almost every count. It was not luck that had led Harry Latimer into her life. It had been design. Harry and I were not exactly young, he was not exactly nice; and I was not exactly a man. Oh, I certainly looked the part – square jaw, broad shoulders, deep voice – but though I presented myself to the world as an English gentleman, the fact was that I had been born a woman. There was no malign intent in my deception. I had simply chosen to live my life as a man.

  It was my father who had set the ball rolling. He had wanted a son and had insisted on raising me as a boy. When I reached adulthood, I had decided to continue the charade. It was a matter of convenience more than anything else. Men have always been afforded greater latitude than women and, in a society which routinely regards females as “the weaker sex”, it was a source of some pride to me that I had managed to pass myself off so easily as a man. The physique helped, of course, not to mention the bandages restraining my rather modest chest, but it was the attitude more than anything else that helped to convince people, that effortless superiority so many men contrive to project, despite their obvious imperfections. The fact that I was able to replicate it and pull the wool over so many eyes gave the lie to their absurd prejudices. I had been a spy, a thief, a man about town, even – God help me – a detective, and though I seldom acquitted myself as well as I might have hoped, I had at least survived in the male domain on equal terms.

  Harry Latimer’s deception was altogether more tawdry. I had got the drop on that from the moment I had first caught sight of him at the restaurant; but it wasn’t until we had settled Mrs O’Neill comfortably back into the hands of her companion, Miss Wellesley, at the Alderley hotel, that the matter had been formally broached. ‘That poor woman,’ I said, as we made our way along the corridor towards the elevator. ‘She doesn’t know what a viper she’s invited into her nest. You haven’t changed, Harry.’

  The American did not bat an eyelid as he pressed the call button. ‘I can’t imagine what you mean.’

  ‘The purse snatching this morning. It was a set-up, wasn’t it?’ Harry shrugged, non-committally. ‘Come off it, Harry. I know you too well. You wanted to effect an introduction. Get her confidence. Who was the purse snatcher? A friend of yours?’

  Harry grinned. ‘An acquaintance.’ He rubbed his chin as the elevator arrived at our floor. ‘He really did sock me one.’

  ‘That must have been galling for you.’ Harry was a past master at the art of fisticuffs. He could best anyone in a fight and he wouldn’t enjoy losing out like that, even if it was just for show. ‘Bit over the top, though, wasn’t it? Couldn’t you have bumped into Mrs O’Neill at the breakfast table or something like that?’

  ‘Oh, sure, sure,’ Harry said, as the lift operator pulled back the gate and invited us inside. ‘If we’d been staying at the same hotel. But I figured I might as well make a show of it.’

  ‘Presenting yourself as the hero of the piece.’ We shuffled into the elevator and the doorman closed up the gate in front of us.

  ‘That’s about the size of it, old man.’ The operator pressed a button and the lift began its descent. ‘You know me too well.’

  ‘Yes, unfortunately.’ And I had a pretty good idea what he was aiming for too. I waited until we were out of the lift before articulating my suspicions. ‘It’s the necklace, I take it. The pearls.’ I had noticed the chain hanging from Mrs O’Neill’s neck the first time we had met. A good twenty or thirty pieces in all, on a simple string. If they were genuine – which I was sure they would be – they would be worth an absolute fortune.

  Harry smiled slyly. ‘Such a pretty thing, that necklace. It seems such a waste, hanging from the neck of a widow like Mrs O’Neill. I could put it to much better use.’

  ‘I’ll bet you could.’ We moved across
the foyer.

  ‘Hey, you’re not exactly lily-white, old man,’ he observed, as we strolled casually towards the bar. ‘Last time I saw you, you were heading for the morgue.’

  ‘Ah yes.’ I grimaced. ‘That may take a little bit of explaining.’ I was surprised Harry had left it this long before bringing it up. He was probably making a point of taking it all in his stride.

  We moved into the saloon bar and settled down at a small table in a quiet corner. The bar was poorly named. There was not a drop of alcohol to be had anywhere. We ordered two glasses of soda water and, when they arrived, I pulled out my flask and topped it up with a spot of whisky. Harry did likewise, though he preferred brandy. ‘Great minds think alike,’ he said, pocketing his own canteen and lifting his glass. He sat back in his chair. ‘So what’s the story, Hilary?’

  ‘Henry. Henry Buxton now.’

  ‘Henry.’ He grinned. ‘How come you’re not pushing up daisies?’

  ‘It’s a long story,’ I admitted mournfully. Harry had been there at Bletchley, so he knew most of it. I explained the rest as best I could. The faked suicide, when things had gone against me. The help I had been given from on high.

  ‘I figured at the time it was all a little too neat. And the Colonel...’ Our former boss at MI5. ‘He wouldn’t have let you die. He always had a soft spot for you, old man. Can’t imagine why.’

  ‘It’s thanks to him I got away at all. What about you?’ Harry had had his own problems that weekend. ‘You left England shortly afterwards, I take it?’

  ‘I was asked to leave. The Colonel’s not so fond of me. Told me to get out in no uncertain terms.’ He shrugged cheerfully. ‘The perils of a life lived to the full. It meant I had to miss your funeral. But I gather there was a good turn out.’

  ‘Yes, so I heard.’ I didn’t like to think too much about that.

  ‘Which reminds me.’ Harry grinned again. ‘You owe me ten shillings.’

  I blinked. ‘Ten shilling?’

  ‘For the wreathe, old man. For the wreathe.’

  I let out a snort. ‘Is that all I was worth?’