Free The Company of Saints by Evelyn Anthony Page B

people’s,’ Mary White said firmly. ‘She’s a lovely girl, but spoilt absolutely rotten. And it’s your parents’ fault, I’m sorry.’ Under the light, her cheeks had flushed pink with indignation.
    â€˜Mary,’ Sir James said, ‘you’re not to go into battle! I’ve always said I’d rather face a regiment of Gurkhas than my wife when she thinks something isn’t fair.’
    They had coffee and Davina went up to bed early. She was still suffering from the five and a half hour time change. She felt tired and desperately low. ‘Put it out of our minds till the morning.’ Easy for James White; impossible for her. He hadn’t allowed her to deceive herself. Without waiting for the morning, Davina knew the explanation White would give. Confess yourself a spy, allow yourself to be turned and you are practically invulnerable thereafter. You can meet your Russian contact, pass the doctored information and other secret material with it. It was an old ruse.
    She got up, pulled back the curtains and opened the window wide. She felt stifled, as if she couldn’t breathe properly. And after that conclusion, there was the worst suspicion of all. Walden had never loved her. He had been a plant from the beginning. She’d said it herself in that awful moment in Paris. ‘You made all the running. You were determined to start something.’ He had pursued her with singular purpose. And she had let herself be caught. She closed her eyes against the cool night air. She shivered for a moment, as she had done in the centrally heated bedroom at the Ritz.
    If his love for her had been an act, then she had no right to stay in her job. Anyone capable of being taken in like that was unfit to sit in James White’s chair. But there was one way to prove it. She wondered what James White would say. She shut the window and went back to bed. Exhausted, she fell asleep immediately.
    â€˜Davina looked well, I thought,’ James White remarked to his wife. ‘A bit tired after her trip to Washington.’
    Mary poured out the remains of the coffee. ‘Damn, I’ll have to make some more – don’t talk nonsense, dear, she looked utterly miserable. Now, you can tell me why she came to see you. She’s never liked you, so it must be something very urgent.’
    â€˜Not very,’ he smiled at her, ‘because I’d already foreseen it and the thing is in hand. She doesn’t know, of course.’
    Mary looked at him. ‘You’re retired,’ she said. ‘But nobody would think so. Anyway, you can tell me about it.’ While he was head of the SIS she hadn’t asked a single question concerning his work. As soon as he became a private person, his wife’s curiosity was insatiable. She asked him about everything, even the most insignificant detail. What was in his mail, who was that on the telephone, why was he so long in the village …? It must have been a great strain keeping silent all those years, he reflected, and he loved her for it.
    â€˜You remember that advertising chap, Tony Walden?’
    â€˜The one with the yacht and the stupid blonde wife?’
    â€˜That’s right. He and Davina have been having an affair for quite some time.’
    â€˜Good Lord!’ she exclaimed. ‘I am surprised. I can’t think of him as her type.’
    â€˜There’s no accounting for women’s taste in men,’ he answered. ‘That’s what makes them such bad security risks. It appears that the wealthy jet-setting Mr Walden is being blackmailed by the KGB. I don’t have to fill in the details for you, dear, but it’s put Davina in a very difficult position.’
    â€˜You can give me the details in a minute,’ his wife said firmly. ‘Just let me make some more coffee.’
    When he had finished, she frowned, thinking hard. ‘What a blow for the poor girl,’ she said at