“The sixth day of Christmas
My true love sent to me
Six geese a-laying,
Five gold rings,
Four colly birds,
Three French hens,
Two turtledoves, and
A partridge in a pear tree.”
Craig’s pace quickened. He was still relaxed, still humming in rhythm to the flowing, ebbing tune drifting over the town from the waterfront. Tomorrow everyone would be singing it; by next week everyone would be dancing to it. Old Rosie, back in Paris, would never guess the influence of his brain child on the cultural patterns of an Aegean island. Craig began to laugh again, and then sobered up. He had come into the little square with its church and ghostlike houses. Other ghosts were wandering around there too. He could see Berg stopping beside the church, looking at its small belfry; suddenly swinging around to look up at the hotel’s high entrance under the heavy vine. Even now, thought Craig, I can feel the chill in my blood as I drew back, stood motionless, against that wall. The man is dead, lying in a room of rose-patterned chintz and pink lampshades. If he were alive? I wouldn’t climb these steps so confidently.
He reached the entrance under the vine. Madame Iphigenia, a shawl around her shoulders, was there to greet him. “She is well,” she whispered. “She would not eat until you came. I have kept food in the kitchen for you both. Hot food. You wash and change. In your old room. They entered. They searched. What a mess! We have cleaned it all. It is comfortable again.” She fell silent, looking at him, taking the small suitcase from his hand, shook her head. “But it is good now?”
“Very good.” Then he smiled, and said, “Madame Iphigenia, I admire you very much.”
He ducked under the low lintel of the door and entered the small lobby. One light burned there, casting a soft shadow. Veronica was sitting in a high-backed armchair. She had bathed, and washed her hair—it fell loose and clean over her face. She was asleep, huddled into a thick dressing-gown that was twice her size.
He put his hands on the arm of the chair, bent down, kissed her gently.
She was awake at once, looking up at him with those wonderful eyes.
“I didn’t mean to do that,” he said softly. He kissed her gently again.
“All right?” she asked, still anxious. “Everything is—”
“All right,” he told her quietly.
She looked at him. She smiled. “That will be my only question,” she promised him.
“We’ll have plenty of other things to talk about.” He kissed her once more. “Plenty.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Helen MacInnes, whom the Sunday Express called ‘the Queen of spy writers’, was the author of many distinguished suspense novels.
Born in Scotland, she studied at the University of Glasgow and University College, London, then went to Oxford after her marriage to Gilbert Highet, the eminent critic and educator. In 1937 the Highets went to New York, and except during her husband’s war service, Helen MacInnes lived there ever since.
Since her first novel Above Suspicion was published in 1941 to immediate success, all her novels have been bestsellers; The Salzburg Connection was also a major film.
Helen MacInnes died in September 1985.
ALSO AVAILABLE FROM TITAN BOOKS
HELEN MacINNES
A series of slick espionage thrillers from The New York Times bestselling “Queen of Spy Writers.”
Pray for a Brave Heart
Above Suspicion
Assignment in Brittany
North From Rome
Decision at Delphi
The Venetian Affair
The Salzburg Connection
Message From Málaga
While We Still Live
Neither Five Nor Three
Horizon
Snare of the Hunter
Agent in Place
PRAISE FOR HELEN MacINNES
“The queen of spy writers.” Sunday Express
“Definitely in the top class.” Daily Mail
“The hallmarks of a MacInnes novel of suspense are as individual and as clearly stamped as a Hitchcock thriller.”
The New York Times
“A sophisticated thriller. The story builds up to an exciting climax.” Times Literary Supplement
“Absorbing, vivid, often genuinely terrifying.” Observer
“She can hang her cloak and dagger right up there with Eric Ambler and Graham Greene.” Newsweek
“An atmosphere that is ready to explode with tension... a wonderfully readable book.” The New Yorker
TITAN BOOKS.COM
ALSO AVAILABLE FROM TITAN BOOKS
THE MATT HELM SERIES
BY DONALD HAMILTON
The long awaited return of the United States’ toughest special agent.
Death of a Citizen (February 2013)
The Wrecking Crew (February 2013)
The Removers (April 2013)
The Silencers (June 2013)
Murderers’ Row (August 2013)
The Ambushers (October 2013)
The Shadowers (December 2013)
The Ravagers (February 2014)
PRAISE FOR DONALD HAMILTON
“Donald Hamilton has brought to the spy novel the authentic hard realism of Dashiell Hammett; and his stories are as compelling, and probably as close to the sordid truth of espionage, as any now being told.” Anthony Boucher, The New York Times
“This series by Donald Hamilton is the top-ranking American secret agent fare, with its intelligent protagonist and an author who consistently writes in high style. Good writing, slick plotting and stimulating characters, all tartly flavored with wit.” Book Week
“Matt Helm is as credible a man of violence as has ever figured in the fiction of intrigue.”
The New York Sunday Times
“Fast, tightly written, brutal, and very good...”
Milwaukee Journal
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Helen Macinnes, The Double Image
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