‘Don’t worry, miss!’ Dedham’s reassuring voice boomed out. ‘Leaving, not entering. It takes a while to get my two old legs working in concert. You may drive straight on, cabby. As soon as I’ve disembarked my old carcass.’
‘But you told me just now to wait until—’
Lord Dedham cut him off. ‘Nonsense! The lady’s in a hurry. Take her where she wants to go.’
He accepted an arm in support from the grateful young girl and struggled out, shaking down his uniform and straightening his sword. Very pretty, he thought, with a sideways glance at the slender figure under its satin evening coat and the pure profile set off by the head-hugging feathered hat. He wondered with amused speculation from which of his well-to-do neighbours she could be running away. Not a difficult question: it must be that bounder Ingleby Mountfitchet at number 39. She’d appeared from that direction and was casting anxious glances back towards his house. Dedham followed her gaze with chivalrous challenge. It wouldn’t be the first time a girl had fled screeching in the night from that cad’s clutches. If rumour was right he’d been kicked out of his regiment. And it would seem that in civvie street his conduct continued to be unbecoming of a gentleman. High time someone took him by the scruff of his scrawny neck and told him that sort of behaviour would not be tolerated in this part of town. Dedham resolved that neighbourly questions would be asked. By him. In the morning.
He walked the few yards to his door, smiling, eager to share his piece of salty gossip with his wife.
He reached the doorstep and greeted his butler with an affectionate bellow. ‘There you are, Peterson. All’s well with us, you see. We’ve survived the evening. Though it was touch and go at one point – her ladyship nearly died of boredom. During one of my own speeches!’ The expected joking sally was the last intelligible pronouncement the admiral uttered.
Two dark-clad figures crept from the laurel bushes. One called out the admiral’s name. When he spun round, identifying himself, they took up position with professional stealth, a man on each side of the doorstep. Both men fired at the same time.
‘Service Webleys,’ the admiral had time to note before, caught in the cross-fire, he was struck by two bullets in the chest.
An onlooker would have concluded, from the victim’s reaction, that the shots had missed their target. Oblivious of his wounds, he strode back outside with a roar of outrage and drew his sword from its scabbard.
The man who had commanded the fire-power of a dozen twelve-inch guns and a crew of seven hundred aboard a battlecruiser in the North Sea now found himself fighting for his life with a dress sword, alone on his own doorstep, but he laid about him with no less relish, attacking by instinct first the larger, more menacing of the pair. He caught him a slicing blow to the cheek. A combat sword in fine fettle would have split the man’s face in two, but, despite the blunt edge, the admiral was encouraged to see he’d drawn blood. Delighted by the howl of pain he’d provoked, he went for the smaller man, chopping at his gun hand.
A third bullet hit Dedham in the heart.
His sword clattered to the paving and he folded at the knees, collapsing sideways into the arms of his wife. Unconcerned for her own safety, Cassandra had run back to her husband and knelt by his side, supporting him with her left arm. He opened his lips to whisper ‘Kiss me, Cassie’ as he’d often joked that he would in a playful tribute to his hero, Lord Nelson, should he be laid low and preparing for death. But no words would come. He couldn’t seem to draw breath. And Cassandra’s attention was elsewhere. With a croak of astonishment, the admiral blinked to see his wife freeing her right hand from her bag. Unaccountably, the hand he’d so recently fondled in the taxi now held a small pistol which she fired off, shot after purposeful shot, at the fleeing pair. Her scream of encouragement to the butler rang in his ears: ‘After them! Stop the ruffian scum, Peterson!’
Lord Dedham smiled admiringly up at her and his eyes closed on the sight of his wife taking careful aim down the barrel of her Beretta.
The two gunmen raced to the taxi, firing backwards over their shoulders at Peterson who chased after them armed with nothing but fury and his bare hands. They bundled themselves into the back seat next to the shrieking woman in the feathered hat. Unsurprisingly, she rapidly made space for them and their guns on the back seat.
Hit in the shoulder and leg and bleeding on to the pavement, the butler raised his head and watched as the motor erupted into a three-point turn. In his agitation, the driver seemed to clash his gears and the car ground to a juddering halt, its rear licence plate clearly in view in the light of the lamp. Peterson focused, stared and repeated the number to himself.