SUDDENLY THERE WAS URGENCY. SMEDLEY RECALLED THAT THE NEXT bus was almost due, so the three of them ran. Jumpy and chattery, he waited at the bus stop with them until the bus arrived, a creaky old double-decker. Alice and Jones both found seats, but not together, so they had no chance to talk.
Alice was beside a verbose middle-aged lady with pronounced—loudly pronounced—opinions on the Germans, the war, prices, food shortages, the need for rationing, and many, many other topics. Letting this blizzard of complaint drift around her, Alice sat back and marveled at the sudden emergency that had disrupted her life.
She had met Julian Smedley four times previously, with a lapse of years between each encounter. He had always been one of Edward's closest friends at Fallow, and always more of a follower than a friend. It might be more accurate to say that Edward had always been Smedley's friend, for Edward was one of those people who had friendships thrust upon them. Her memories of Smedley were like photographs in an album. Weedy little boy on page one, then pimply adolescent, and now wounded hero on page five. Each memory was strangely different. He had been shy and owlish, yet mischievous and quietly witty. Moreover, as Ginger had pointed out on the train down, Julian Smedley had always possessed a gift for falling on his feet. When the cake was passed out, the largest piece would usually land on his plate, yet nobody ever disliked him.
Perhaps even a missing hand counted as a largish piece of cake in 1917. He had been buried alive by a shell burst and dug out in time. Now he was out of the war, which was what mattered. Ginger said he had medals galore, although she would never have marked Julian as a potential hero. Why had she made that stupid, stupid remark about them? Buried alive!
Shell-shocked or not, Julian Smedley had talked Jones and herself into this madness very slickly. She might lose her job over it, although jobs were no problem now. She might even go to jail, although that prospect was sufficiently improbable not to trouble her unduly. She was not the one in danger. If things went wrong, the police would want to know by what right she had taken a motorcar belonging to Sir D'Arcy Devers. The danger was scandal.
The bus groaned into Canterbury at five minutes to three, and there was a branch of the Midland Bank directly across the street. With a wave to Jones, she ran over to it and managed to cash a check just before it closed. Ready money might be useful.
After that she had a chance to talk with her fellow conspirator. They walked side by side to the station. He looked haggard and worried. Jones she had met only once before, and now suddenly they were plotting an illegal undertaking together. He seemed so much a typical, dull schoolmaster, a stolid rock, pitted and barnacled by wave after wave of untiring youth. He was obviously close to retirement, possibly due to having been put out to pasture before now had the war not intervened, a tweedy badger of a man. By no means cuddly, but unthinkable as a criminal.
"Have we both gone insane," she asked him, "or are we merely bewitched?"
"You've been wondering that too, have you? I decided that it's something to do with the war. It's stripping away all our pretences, layer after layer."
"Pretences?"
"Our veneer of culture. Illusions. Everything we hid behind for so long. We see those young men who have gone out into hell to fight for a cause, and we realize that they now know something we don't. Life and youth seem infinitely more precious than they did three years ago. Many other things have become trivial and meaningless."
She considered that thought and decided it was more profound than it had sounded at first. He had an aching conscience, this Mr. Jones.
"I am extremely grateful to you, and—I confess—more than a little surprised that you would let yourself become involved in this for the sake of my cousin."
The schoolmaster cleared his throat. "Ahem! Your cousin is an admirable young man. I feel very sorry for his many misfortunes. But I should be less than honest were I not to admit that my primary interest is Julian Smedley."
"He has severe emotional problems," she said warily.
"He has been horribly damaged, both physically and mentally. We old men who have stayed home and sent the young to fight for us—we do have certain obligations. At least I feel that way. And you cannot conceive the difference between the Smedley you met today and the one I saw last Sunday."
She remembered the tears. "Better?"
"Infinitely better. His efforts to aid his old friend are working a miracle cure on our young hero."
So that was why he had let Smedley talk him into this! What would Smedley think if he knew that? That reasoning would not sound convincing in the witness box at the Old Bailey. How would Smedley react if they failed?
"I wish he were not coming!" she said. "If he would just set off the alarm and then stay with the other inmates, then no harm could come to him." But they had both argued that case, and Smedley had insisted.
"I am sure he has his reasons. We must show him that we trust him. It is the best treatment he could get."
"Your sentiments do you honor," she murmured. "Have you ever had children of your own, Mr. Jones?"
He laughed feebly. "A highly improper question to put to a lifelong bachelor! I suppose I could be platitudinous and say I have had hundreds of sons, but that would not be true. Perhaps twenty-five, a little less than one a year. I always hoped that a year would bring forth at least one. Sometimes it did, sometimes it didn't. Rarely two. Two of them are involved in this."
She squeezed his arm. "I hope they appreciate you."
"Perhaps they will one day. Not now."
They turned into the station. It was ominously crowded.
"They are sending all the engines to France, you know," Jones complained. "And some of the rails, too! Let us go look at the board."
According to the board, there was a train in fifteen minutes. The waiting room was packed to the doors. By mutual consent, they wandered along the platform together, taking the chance to talk.
"May I inquire about this automobile, Miss Prescott?"
It was a very fair question.
"I told you I have the key. Its owner would certainly not object to my using it. He has let me drive it before."
"And why do you think it has petrol available? Why do you believe it to be in operating condition?"
Alice sighed and decided that there had better be honor among thieves. "His wife is a woman with a great deal of influence."
She glanced sideways at her companion, expecting to see a bristling of shock. But Jones had a trick of using his pince-nez to mask his eyes, and his face gave away nothing.
"Does she know you have the key?"
"She does not know I exist. I am certain of that. You know it's illegal now to employ men between the ages of eighteen and sixty-one in nonessential industries, and yet she still has a chauffeur. What strings she pulls I cannot imagine, but she does. Admittedly she is not in good health, but I feel that morally Captain Smedley has a greater claim on the vehicle tonight than she does."
Jones uttered his quiet chuckle again. "Learned counsel would hesitate to present such an argument in court. And what happens if we are caught and the lady finds out?"
Alice winced. "She will not lay charges, I am sure. It would cause tongues to wag."
That was not true at all. Lady Devers would trumpet it to the four corners of the earth. She was a vindictive, malicious bitch. Alice would not tell Mr. Jones that. He was more shocked by bad language than he was by confessions of adultery.
A porter began shouting, "London train!" and they had no further chance for private conversation.
They reached London. They struggled through the traffic, which was already mounting toward the evening rush. They stopped to do some shopping for supper and came at last to her flat.
As always, her hand was trembling when she unlocked the door. The day's post lay on the mat, where it had fallen through the slot. She snatched it up and peered at the envelopes. What she dreaded was not there, and she was another day closer to the end of the war.
The official notice would not come to her, of course—it would go to the bitch in Notting Hill—but D'Arcy had taken his sister into his confidence before he was posted overseas, and Anabel had promised faithfully that she would notify Alice if the dread announcement ever came. Alice could not bring herself to trust that arrangement. Every day she read the obituaries and casualty lists in the Times, although no one knew how outof-date those might be. On Sundays she would sometimes go up to Notting Hill and walk past the house, looking for the drawn blinds that would be evidence of mourning. That was how she knew about the chauffeur.
She made tea and prepared a drab meal. She suggested that Jones take a nap, in preparation for a sleepless night, but he was too anxious about the coming ordeal to relax. They must be out of town before dark, he insisted. He dare not try to drive in traffic in the dark.
Alice prepared some sandwiches from the ugly wartime bread. She dressed in the warmest tweeds she possessed. She took the precious key from her bottom drawer, and pressed a kiss on D'Arcy's photograph. Then she went back into the sitting room and found Jones nodding before the gas fire. He looked up with a guilty start.
"Come, my lord!" she said. "We must embark upon our pilgrimage to Canterbury, as in days of yore. You shall be my verray, parfit gentil knyght!"
He hauled himself out of the chair, blinking behind his pince-nez. "And you, my lady? The prioresse?"
"The wif of Bathe, I think, is more my role. Shall I tell you a tale upon the way to lighten the journey?"
Mr. Jones looked deeply shocked that she should even know that story.
They sallied out into the streets again. They took the tube, and then a bus, and so they came to Notting Hill. It seemed a very mundane way to embark on a mission of romance and high adventure. And all those long miles must be retraced.
The lockup was one of six, in what had been a stable until five or six years ago. There was no one else about in the gloomy little yard. The rain had ended, but the skies remained gray and gravid.
The key still worked. Jones groaned loudly when he saw the size of the motorcar. The great black dragon almost filled its kennel, so that there was hardly room to move around it. Alice had only been here two or three times, and she could not recall why D'Arcy had ever given her the key. She could remember every drive she had ever had in the car, though—wonderful, intoxicating journeys out of town with her lover, stolen hours of happiness together.
Jones inspected every inch of the monster. Alice fidgeted, fearing that some neighbor would come driving in and think to investigate the strangers, although it was more than probable that the cars in the other lockups had been abandoned for the duration of the war. Adjacent houses overlooked the yard. Would some kind friend think to telephone Lady Devers and inform her that her car was being stolen?
Jones checked the fuel tank with the dipstick and examined the jerry can chained on the running board. Both seemed to be full, he said glumly. He had been hoping for a last-minute stay of execution, perhaps. The oil in the lamps was low, he said, and he could find no spare oil. They must stop somewhere and buy some before the garages closed.
That was not enough excuse to give up the expedition. Alice found a motoring rug in the back. She adjusted it over her knees as she settled herself in the seat next the driver's. Jones turned the crank. The motor caught at once. He backed the car out of the lockup and went to shut the doors. The adventure had begun.
Sometime in the small hours, Julian Smedley would set off the fire alarm in Staffles. Edward, who would not be expecting the signal this night, would be jerked out of his sleep by bells ringing to signal his escape . . . .