the power to fix what was broken. This—this—was what Eve needed.
I sprinted back to her room, heart pounding. “Eve, look—”
The door gaped open. The bed stood empty. The satchel with the Luger was gone.
I hadn’t even been gone five minutes. She must have been up and moving the minute I tiptoed out, as cool and collected as she’d been shaking and crying just moments before. Fear roared through me again, hammering at my temples like spikes of ice. I ran to the open window, searching the street below, but I saw no tall gaunt figure. You sneaky bitch, I thought in a wave of fury, at her for tricking me and at myself for being tricked.
I knew where she was going. I couldn’t telephone the police, and I couldn’t wait for Finn. The Lagonda sat at the curb below.
I stuffed Violette’s telegram into my pocket, snatched the car keys from the bedside table in my room, and ran.
CHAPTER 40
EVE
It was, Eve supposed, a dirty trick.
“Faster,” she told the cabdriver, tossing a handful of francs into the front seat. She didn’t care if she spent every coin she had. She wouldn’t need any for a journey back.
The cab sped along as Eve sat relishing the comforting weight of the Luger in her lap, her eyes dry. All those crocodile tears, easily shed and just as easily wiped away. Underhanded and unscrupulous, but she’d seen no other option as she looked at Charlie standing implacably between her and the door, soft mouth set in a firm line. Eve smiled. What a different girl from the truculent, uncertain little thing she’d first found on her doorstep.
I’m sorry I won’t ever see you again, she thought. I am so sorry for that.
“You look very serious this evening, madame,” the cabdriver said, jocular. “Didn’t you say you were going to visit a friend?”
“Yes.”
“A long visit?”
“Very.” Eternal, in fact. Eve had no intention of leaving René Bordelon’s house once she entered it. That was the reason she didn’t fear prison. A dead woman couldn’t be put behind bars.
The Luger held seven shots. Six were for René, and it might take all six—evil men clung hard to life. The last shot, Eve was saving for herself.
“Just like you, Cameron,” she murmured aloud, not seeing the darkening streets of Grasse slipping by. Instead she saw a grainy headline from a newspaper clipping: “Soldier’s Death.” When had that been, ’22? No, ’24. The words had stabbed Eve through a massive hangover. Concerning the death of Major C. A. Cameron—
The world had disconnected. Eventually Eve had managed to pick up the clipping again—from an overseas paper, mailed to her by a solicitor—and read through dry, burning eyes. There was a strangled sound, and it took her a moment to realize it was coming from her own throat.
—death of Major C. A. Cameron of the Royal Field Artillery, who died at Sheffield Barracks as the result of a revolver wound; the coroner returned a verdict of suicide.
Cameron, dead. Cameron with his warm eyes and his Scottish lilt. Cameron kissing her bruises away, murmuring, You poor brave girl . . .
By ’24 they hadn’t seen each other in what, five years? Not since that day in Folkestone. But they’d telephoned sometimes, generally in the small hours of the night when one of them was drunk. Eve had known he was back from Ireland; he’d talked a little of his training school, talked with more excitement of being made military attaché to Riga . . .
But instead, he’d blown his brains out.
The evidence shows that the deceased had brooded over his nonappointment as an attaché at Riga, the newspaper announcement read, canceled due to his having undergone a sentence of penal servitude.
The army had punished him for the old sin, Eve had thought bitterly. They didn’t mind an officer with a soiled reputation if there was a war on, but afterward he was just an embarrassment.
I’ll go on working until I can’t anymore. His voice rang in her ears once again, so loud and clear he might as well have been sitting in the cab with her. Then I suppose I’ll die. Bullets, boredom, or brandy—that’s how people like us go, because God knows we aren’t made for peace.
“That we aren’t,” Eve murmured.
It wasn’t until the solicitor arrived on her doorstep the following day that she fell apart completely. The solicitor who had mailed her the announcement of Cameron’s death in the first place, now bringing legal papers and assuring her of his