“Cloak and dagger,” she said, a little too gleefully.
“Hardly,” he said. “Just common sense.” Was he the dullest man in existence?, he wondered. Possibly, he concluded.
From a safe distance, he watched her climb into a cab, chatting away to the driver as if they were old friends, and felt renewed envy at her ease.
He waited until the cab had pulled away from the curb before leaving the station. He had not brought his car, feeling slightly nervous of the amount of traffic around Paddington. He needed the open road to come fully to grips with the Austin. And the open road he would have. He was elated—she had agreed to his invitation. He spotted a tram approaching on the other side of the road and set off in pursuit, spurred on by his success, too happy to notice that he was being observed.
In the Park
Nellie sat placidly on a bench by the boating lake in Regent’s Park, a new, unfolded copy of the Express on her lap. She made no attempt to open it and read its contents, rather she sat quietly as if in contemplation, staring out at the lake. Anyone looking at her would have been unable to discern the inner workings of her brain. Not that anyone did look at her. A woman in her sixth decade, dressed in everyday drab, is more invisible than a librarian.
After a while, a man sat next to her on the bench, but her tranquil demeanour remained unchanged. This man, too, seemed to find nothing more interesting than following the progress of the little rowboats on the water. Nellie gave him the briefest of glances. Out of uniform he was insignificant, a bird stripped of its plumage. Nellie murmured to him like one skilled in the art of ventriloquism. “Well, Sergeant, do you have a report for me?”
What a piece of luck Sergeant Oakes was. When she had left Holloway he had dropped into her lap like a ripe plum from a tree, offering to be her informant. For a regular sum of money he would “keep an eye” on his new Chief Inspector for her. Frobisher was a menace to Bow Street, he said, determined on upsetting the happy balance that existed between law-keepers and law-breakers. The nightclubs of Soho, he said, were not alone in feeling nervous about Frobisher, his fellow officers felt the same trepidation. Of course, Nellie knew exactly what he was up to. He had been sent by Maddox to spy on her, not for her. The pair of them must think she was in her dotage. The man was a dolt and Nellie felt sure that she could use him to turn the tables on Maddox. And the added bonus was that he actually was reporting back on Frobisher’s doings. What fools Maddox and his disciple were.
“You must make sure that no one knows of our little…” She sought for the right word.
“Arrangement?” Oakes supplied.
“Yes, our arrangement.” It was a surprisingly good word, Nellie thought. She was arranging.
* * *
—
The nannies made their rounds of the park. The small boys pushed their sailboats out onto the waters of the pond, the rowboats rowed and Nellie remained as serenely unmoved as the great statues of the Buddha in the eastern temples. （She had once considered them as a theme for a nightclub.）
“I’ve got a tip-off for you,” Oakes said. “There’s going to be a raid on the Foxhole tonight. You’ll need to batten down the hatches early.”
“Thank you, Sergeant Oakes. I appreciate you telling me that,” Nellie said. “You’re certainly earning your keep.” He was easily flattered. Maddox must have organized the raid on purpose, Nellie realized, just so that Oakes could warn her about it and prove his credibility. Did he really think he could pull the wool over her eyes?
She placed her copy of the Express beside her on the bench.
They both remained there for a while, watching the water. Not a ruffle of wind disturbed it. Nellie knew that last century there had been a disaster here. Hundreds of skaters on the frozen lake in winter had gone through the ice when it cracked. Many had drowned. There was a lesson in that, wasn’t there? About skating on thin ice. Nellie, beware!
She spotted Landor on the other side of the boating lake. The man popped up everywhere. She frowned at him. He was truly terrible at camouflage. She glanced at Oakes but he seemed oblivious.
Nellie employed her cane to lever herself up to standing. Time to get on, she had a lot to do. She left without saying goodbye to Oakes. On the other side of the boating lake Landor gave her a little nod of recognition. She ignored him, too.
She met regularly with Landor, usually in the little scrub of garden that separated Hanover Terrace from the mews behind, where the Bentley lived and where they were safe from prying eyes, apart from those of Hawker. Hawker was under instructions to ignore these encounters, despite the fact that he could witness them quite clearly from his window when he was washing his few pots and pans after supper.