When Tuppence dared regain consciousness, the first, most alarming sight of her godmother's flared nostrils almost decided her on slipping back into a faint. Fortunately, prising her eyes open a little more revealed Freddy who, although not exactly a pretty sight, was a far more sympathetic one.
"How are you feeling?" Freddy asked.
Aunt Maud indicated with a sniff that it was of little consequence to anyone how Tuppence was feeling. A puff of air sharply exhaled further added that anything Tuppence was suffering, she had most definitely brought on herself through wanton sinfulness, and thus had a duty to suffer in silence.
"Much better. I do feel such a fool." Tuppence eased herself up a little.
"Oh, don't!" Freddy smiled sympathetically down at her. "Where are you staying? The Grand Atlantic, I suppose? I think we should let your husband know where you are, and send for your things. You're staying until you're quite better, of course."
Aunt Maud sniffed again. "Is that really your place to offer, dear?" She somewhat obviously thought it was not, which gave Tuppence pause to wonder. What exactly was the two women's place in the household?
Freddy stiffened, and her unbeautiful face flushed. "If you wish, I'll ask Vere. I'm sure she would wish Mrs Beresford to stay the night. In fact, she should stay rather longer, and her husband, too. We're always in need of some gay company here. It's rather dreary out in the country with only old corpses around," she added pointedly.
Aunt Maud glared at her, then turned pointedly back to her knitting, the needles clacking furiously. "I suppose that is settled, then. Prudence, I shall speak with you when we can be alone."
Tuppence gulped and nodded. There was blessed silence for a moment, during which Tuppence's brain was working furiously. She had expected something more decadent from Lindenlea. The presence of Aunt Maud in a den of spies and evil was utterly incongruous. Perhaps Mr Carter had been wrong, after all?
But then, Mr Carter was not the kind to be wrong.
She eyed Freddy thoughtfully, from under lowered lashes. When unaware of being watched, Freddy's face relaxed into notably unhappy lines - somewhat like a sad and not entirely unwicked goblin. With the monocle discarded, the shadows under her eyes were dark and deep.
Lifting her head from the pillow, Tuppence asked:
"Why are you called Freddy, and not Freya?"
Aunt Maud looked up from her knitting and expressed her opinion of nicknames with a snort.
Freddy shrugged her square shoulders. "Well, look at me. I'm not anyone's idea of a Nordic goddess." It was difficult to argue the point. "Why are you called Tuppence?"
"I suppose I've never been known for my prudence," Tuppence admitted, trying to ignore a second snort. She returned Freddy's comradely grin, but her mind was still racing. 'Freddy' was an irreproachably English moniker, but the same could hardly be said of 'Freya', or, indeed, 'Keller'. Of course, many people in England had unEnglish names, and were presumably not all spies. It was just that the girl looked so utterly miserable. What exactly was she doing at Lindenlea?
Tuppence wondered... she wondered very much.
Tommy took a cocktail from the tray and gulped a little down, wishing it was stronger. He was worried. It had been impossible to refuse being asked first for a drink, and then back to Lindenlea for dinner, after skilfully managing to lose just enough in a friendly round of golf with the Honourable Harold 'Hal' Burt and his friend, the charming and chinless Walter 'Wally' de Worthemley-Smythe to establish the three of them as friends for life. He simply couldn't give up a chance like that. But where on earth was Tuppence? There had been no sign of her at the hotel. Tommy vehemently wished he had pressed his wife further out her plans. He took another gulp.
"Worried that the little woman has let you slip the leash, eh, eh?" asked Wally, towards whom Tommy had already formed a firm dislike, nudging him hard in the ribs and making him spill some of his drink. "Enjoy your night of freedom while you can!"
"I thoroughly intend -" began Tommy, but the words dried on his lips. Descending the staircase was a rather odd looking young woman, Tuppence, and - Tommy's eyes were drawn inexorably to Tuppence's middle, and stayed there.
"Tommy!" Tuppence yelped, happily. Her eyes shone with glee. "What a coincidence! Freddy, no wonder we couldn't contact my husband at the hotel."
Tommy took a deep sip of his cocktail to steady his nerves. Unfortunately, at this moment he also took in the third person in the descending group, an elderly woman glaring at him as if he was the devil himself.
"Oh - Tommy - allow myself to present my godmother, Aunt Maud." Tommy choked over his cocktail, sputtering his way through a combined greeting and apology.
"Heh, heh, poor old boy - can't escape the wife and in-laws wherever you go!" chortled Wally, in high delight. Tommy wondered if it was too much to hope for that Wally would turn out to be the spy, and would be shot at dawn.
The bell rang for dinner at that fortuitous point. Tommy offered his wife his arm, and took the opportunity to hiss furiously in Tuppence's ear.
"Whatever are you playing at, Tuppence? I've told everyone we're on honeymoon! And your aunt!"
Tuppence twinkled up at him. "I'm sure no one thinks a thing of it. Don't be such a stick-in-the-mud, darling."
"Stick-in-the mud!" Rather fortunately, further conversation was forestalled as they took their seats.
Once the dinner party was underway, firmly putting Tuppence's duplicity out of his mind and concentrating on the business to hand, Tommy paid careful attention to his fellow dinner guests. Somewhat to his distress, he had found himself seated with Aunt Maud to his right, who fortunately mostly ignored him, except for the occasional reproving snort. Lady Beck was cast rather in the mold of Boedicea, or of Tuppence's Aunt Maud. Tommy guessed that the latter worthy lady had encountered his gracious hostess at some holiday resort for the elderly and wealthy, and formed an instant bond based on booming voices and terrifying sniffs. Next to his formidable wife, Lord Beck, universally know to his family and young guests as the Professor, was a bit nondescript. Hard to realise he was such a brilliant brain under that colourless, almost silent exterior - greatest military inventor in England, according to Mr Carter... He seemed interested in nothing but his victuals, which he consumed with great intensity.
As for the rest of the guests, well, Tommy was beginning to feel somewhat discouraged. It seemed impossible that Lindenlea was a den of evil. The two young people had filled the house with their friends, well enough, and the atmosphere was frantically gay and jaded all at once. On the surface, the guests were exotic enough, but they sorted out into, he felt, quite ordinary types. The artistic ones with shapeless clothes and monocles, the young women chiefly distinguished from the men by having shorter hair, he supposed were Hal's friends. Then there were what he felt to be the peacocks - Bright Young Things, the women dripping with jewels and beads, the men with perfectly tied cravats and hawing laughs, that he presumed to belong to Vere. It was difficult to remember any of their names. One and all, he felt, were essentially tedious, and unlikely to be associated with any sinister plots.
Tommy heartily wished he was back home with Tuppence, who seemed, somewhat to his surprise, to be enjoying herself immensely, her clear laughter ringing out often. Tuppence, he reflected, generally did manage to enjoy herself.
Only one woman stood out particularly. If Tommy had been privy to the earlier conversation, he might have concluded that Vere Linden was far more worthy of the name of a Nordic goddess than Freddy could ever be. Vere was, he couldn't help noticing, simply breathtaking. Her statuesque figure and clear pallor were set off by an abundance of red-gold curls, held in place with a simple gold band. The huge blue eyes under her pencilled eyebrows were both fine and lustrous - almost too lustrous, Tommy thought suddenly, as the spell of her beauty wore off a little. They roved constantly from face to face without, he felt, taking much in. And her long, lovely fingers were shaking - twice, when Tommy addressed some innocuous remark to her, her grip fumbled and she nearly dropped her fork.
Tommy found himself interested in Vere Linden.
Harold Burt's voice, louder and somehow more strident than it had been on the golf course, broke into his thoughts:
"It's all a mess, isn't it? I mean, we had the chance after the last war to put things right, for once and for all." He looked down the table, catching everyone's eye, but lingering, Tommy noted, on his beautiful cousin. "And instead, what happened? More of the same!"
"What exactly are you so keen to have changed?" Tommy asked quietly.
Harold gave him an impatient look. "Everything! Look at all the unemployment, all the waste of humanity. Give the average working class man the chance, and he'll sit with his pipe all day while England falls to wrack and ruin around him! The typical English man has forgotten how to work."
Tuppence caught Tommy's eye across the table. Her lips formed the question: fascist sympathies?
Tommy shook his head slightly. There was something false, to his ear, about the nervous bravado in Hal's voice. He seemed a very different boy to the pleasant, fashionable young peacock he had seemed on the golf course. Interesting...
"What about the typical English woman?" a girl Tommy believed was called Freddy asked, her small brown eyes gleaming suddenly in the candlelight. "Should she be put to proper labour as well?"
Hal laughed. "There are some women, I grant you, who are made and best fitted for labour. But a woman's best place is in the home. It's the job of her men to look after her. Why - look at Vere," he added, following suit, in a somewhat besotted manner if Tommy was any judge. "She's made for a man to worship and protect."
"Am I really? So, is that what I am?" Vere asked, so very quietly that Tommy was not sure anyone but he had heard her. He stared at her, ignoring one of the Bright Young Things' flirtatious challenge to Hal as to which kind of woman she was, but Vere's restless glance had stilled for a moment, fixed blindly on the plate before her.
Matters did not improve much after dinner. The Professor, it seemed, was firm about rules about port being served after the ladies had departed; one of the Bright Young Things, a girl with the unlikely name of Mopes, had trilled with laughter about the quaintness of it all, and been silenced with a crushing look from Lady Burt.
Tommy made a lame attempt to draw out Hal Burt and a few of the others about political affairs, but deprived of his female audience, Hal seemed completely unbothered. The Professor seemed deeply irritated at them all, but particularly Tommy and his right-leaning apparent sympathies. He glowered more and more the more Tommy tried, finally muttering that it was all stuff and nonsense and stalking off, slamming the door on the way. Poor Tommy felt quite unpopular.
His head was beginning to ache, and with the oppressive presence of the Professor gone, the conversation revolved most unhelpfully around the races and the ladies. Tommy felt, quite suddenly, that he couldn't bear it any longer. It was a mare's nest - he was sure of it.
He slipped out the French doors into the coolness of the summer night. No one seemed to observe, or at least to care, about his exit.
It was better, out in the darkness and fresh air. Tommy lit a cigarette, and paced a little, cheering himself by imagining just what he would say to Tuppence about her mad schemes when they were alone. He had nearly died of shock when he'd seem her padded middle!
Conversation and laughter drifted from the house. Gradually, however, Tommy began to be aware of other conversation, singularly devoid of laughter: hushed, urgent tones coming from around the corner. Pricking his ears, Tommy carefully extinguished his cigarette, and eased closer to the wall, finally looking around.
The Freddy girl was deep in a whispered argument with Vere Linden. The contrast between them as they stood there couldn't be stronger - looking at them, Tommy was disagreeably put in mind of a golden Rhine maiden being accosted by an evil dwarf.
"It's no good, Vere, I won't get it for you! You mustn't ask me."
"Darling, I have no choice. You're the only one who will help me. Please..." Vere lifted a lovely, pleading arm, gleaming in the moonlight, to Freddy's shoulder.
The smaller girl shook it off. "I won't! Do your own beastly work."
"Freddy..."
"No! Oh, listen to me, it's no good. You've got to give it up. For your own sake... Come away with me, dear, and we'll get you better."
"Oh, I can't! It gets hold of you, Freddy... I can't give it up now."
"Then go to the devil!" Freddy turned on her heel and ran towards the house.
Vere started after her, then made a hopeless gesture, and leaned back against the tree. After a while, she took something out of her bag. Tommy watched her a little longer, then quietly stole back to the house.
The reason for at least part of Vere's odd behaviour was suddenly very clear to him.
"Oh, Tommy, isn't it fun? I feel like the adventure is really started at last! And wasn't I clever to worm my way in?" Tuppence kicked off her shoes, then wrestled the pillow out from under her dress. Tommy watched her somewhat disconsolately.
"It wasn't in the slightest bit necessary. I told you golf was the key."
"Oh, nonsense. It's much more fun this way. And you'd hardly be asked to stay the night over a game of golf."
"I suppose it's nothing to you," Tommy said coldly, "that everyone in this household believes me to be a callous seducer and the ruin of a clergyman's daughter?"
"It is probably seen as one of your good points, with this lot," Tuppence remarked unrepentantly. "Besides, you made an honest woman out of me, didn't you?"
"Everyone makes mistakes," he pointed out. Tuppence flashed him a merry smile. "The worst of it is, who would expect to meet your godmother here?!"
"She's secretly chuffed to know she was right about you all along. She'll be eating out of your hand in no time" Tuppence said wisely. "Oh, Tommy, any luck with the men?"
"None at all. There's Hal - but I'm entirely convinced he didn't believe a word he said himself. He's not the snake in this grass, I'm sure of it. He was just trying to impress his father's lovely ward - the old story."
"It's curious, though, that the thinks the route to Vere's heart is the enforced labour of the working classes," Tuppence said thoughtfully.
"It is suggestive, I'll grant you that. And, speaking of the devil..." He quickly filled Tuppence in on the results of his eavesdropping.
"So, the beautiful Vere is a drug fiend," Tuppence said slowly. "And Freddy is supplying her with the dope. Oh, Tommy - I am sorry about that. Freddy is terribly nice."
"Really? I thought she seemed an awfully hard case!"
"Oh, she tries very hard to appear so, heaven knows why. Girls seem to do that nowadays. But she's sweet. And not at all happy. It's all horrid, really." Tuppence shivered. "She's been so kind, and I've wormed my way here under false pretences - and now we're calmly considering whether her friend is a traitor, with full intention of turning her in to the authorities if so."
"It's not always a nice business, this," Tommy agreed. "I say, Tuppence, I think Vere is going to try something tonight. I don't know if it's anything to do with stolen information - in fact, I'm beginning to think the spying is a pure fiction - but perhaps we should do something in any case. I don't like the thought of a splendid girl like that being preyed on."
"Such chivalry! She is quite pretty," Tuppence said, a trifle frostily. "Awfully wet, though. So - shall we burn the midnight oil, and keep a look out?"
"I don't know," Tommy began. "After all, a woman in your delicate condition -"
Tuppence threw the pillow at him.