African Designs
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Over lunch, Augustus and I discussed further how we might discover who had arranged to have me followed. Well, it was not in fact the only topic of conversation; I had increasingly found his views and opinions on many topics both interesting and illuminating, although I found myself tempering my desire to sometimes vigorously challenge his thoughts with the genteel politeness of my upbringing. "There is no point in intercepting one of the men actually following you," he asserted, once we had returned to the mysterious tail business, "They will not know who they are actually working for. Their point of contact will no doubt be some disguised go-between in some dark back-alley." I nodded. "In any case," I said, "I believe I am no longer being followed. I have not detected any tail for several days now." "Thay may well have stopped," he agreed, "After the little episode with the ferry, they suspect that you suspect that you are being tailed, so they are no longer doing so. Although you will have to assume that somebody could be behind you all the time." I nodded again. "Is that a problem?" "I don't think so. You need to fully engage with your society and charity works. Your diary, your calendar of engagements needs to be virtually a public document. You need to be on speaking terms with everybody: aristocrats and plutocrats, policemen and newspaper reporters, philanthropists and benefactors." I smiled. "I can see I am going to be very busy." It was much later when a chance remark led me to suspect the party who had arranged to have me followed. I was in individual conversation with Edith von Hötzendorf, the English wife of the consol of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Edith was somebody I had met at one of the many afternoon tea parties which the ladies of my acquaintance seemed to enjoy so much, an opportunity of gossip away from the ears of bored husbands. She had struck me immediately as a woman of very considerable intelligence, who came from a family with some slight place in British society and had considerably improved her station by marrying General Conrad von Hötzendorf. In the way of small talk, Edith asked me how I was enjoying my time in Africa, adding, "So many opportunities for new experiences, like bathing in the Indian Ocean or calisthenics with Chinese martial artists." I hope I managed to hide my startled reaction behind sipping from my teacup and uttering some mildly enthusiastic platitudes about exciting possibilities. I did note that Edith was watching very closely at the time. Although I had discussed my sea-bathing experience in detail with many of the ladies - some had seemed quite genuinely shocked at the prospect of immersing oneself in sea water - I had not mentioned my visits to Madame Liu's studio to anybody in my circle. It was not public knowledge. I can only assume that Edith had learned of my not-particularly clandestine assignations from her husband, one way or another; that he had orchestrated my tail, and she had had seen or overheard this somehow. The other possibility, of course, was that Edith and the General were working together, a husband-and-wife partnership which might be involved in intelligence-gathering and who-knows what else. Her words might have been an accident, a slip of the tongue - although I suspect that an intelligent woman like Edith knew exactly what she was doing - or, more likely, a subtle message designed to keep me on my toes or off-balance. I resolved to pay very close attention to the words and actions of Edith and her husband in the future.
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Part 4
