by Rhys Bowen
“Can I help you?” said a patrician voice. Ben was tempted to walk away rapidly, but he said, “I’m not sure if I have the right address. My name is Cresswell, and I was told . . .”
“I’ll let you in, Mr. Cresswell,” said the efficient voice. “Take the lift. Fifth floor and turn right.”
At least he was expected. A tinge of apprehension mingled with excitement as the lift rose slowly. He came out to the fifth floor. The hallway was carpeted and smelled of polish, with a lingering tinge of pipe tobacco. He found the flat and saw that Miss Copplestone was also on the doorplate. He took a deep breath before he knocked. The door was opened by an attractive young woman, her well-cut suit and patrician air betraying that in other times and circumstances she would have been a deb and then been married off to a dull young man of impeccable pedigree. For young women like her, the war had presented a great opportunity to escape, to prove that they were good at all sorts of things, not just small talk and knowing where to seat a bishop at a dinner table.
“Mr. Cresswell? Mr. Knight is expecting you. Come in,” she said in a clipped upper-class voice. “I’ll tell him you are here.”
Ben waited, heard low voices, and was immediately ushered into a large, bright room with windows that looked down the Thames to the Houses of Parliament, barrage balloons bobbing over the buildings to prevent low-level bombing raids. The man sitting at a polished oak desk had his back to the view. He was slim and fit-looking, clearly an outdoor type, and to Ben’s amazement, he was handling what Ben initially thought was a length of rope, which uncoiled and revealed itself to be a small snake.
“Ah, Cresswell. Good of you to come.” He stuffed the snake back into a pocket and held out his hand to Ben. “I am Maxwell Knight. Take a seat.”
Ben pulled up an upholstered leather chair.
“Cambridge man?” Knight asked.
“Oxford.”
“Pity. I find that Cambridge produces men who can think creatively.”
“I’m afraid I can’t undo that now,” Ben said. “Besides, Hertford College offered me a scholarship. Cambridge didn’t.”
“Scholarship boy, then?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And before that?”
“Tonbridge. Also on a scholarship.”
“And yet, apparently, you hobnob with the gentry. You know the Earl of Westerham.”
The statement took Ben completely by surprise. “Lord Westerham?”
“Yes. I’m told you’re quite pally with him. Is that correct?”
“I wouldn’t say pally, sir. I wouldn’t presume to claim friendship, but he knows me quite well. My father is the vicar of All Saints, Elmsleigh, the village next to Farleigh. I grew up playing with Lord Westerham’s daughters.”
“Playing with Lord Westerham’s daughters,” Max Knight repeated with the hint of a smile.
Ben’s face betrayed no emotion. “May I ask what this is about, sir? Has my background anything to do with the quality of my work here?”
“Absolutely, at this moment. You see, we need insights, young man. An insider.”
Ben looked up, frowning. “Insights into what?”
Max Knight’s clear blue eyes still held Ben’s. “Three nights ago now, a man apparently fell from a plane onto one of Lord Westerham’s fields. His parachute didn’t open. He was pretty much a mess, as you can imagine. Face too damaged to get an idea what he looked like. But he was wearing the uniform of the Royal West Kents.”
“They’ve taken over most of Farleigh, haven’t they?” Ben frowned. “But they’re an infantry regiment. Where did the parachute come in?”
“It didn’t. Their commander says that his chaps don’t leap out of planes and are all present and accounted for. The identity disc belonged to a soldier who was killed at Dunkirk, and it turns out that the cap badge was the one the regiment wore in the Great War.”
“So a possible spy, then?” Ben felt his pulse quicken.
“Quite possible. I’m also told by one of our bright young women who was going through his clothing—not an enviable task, as you can well imagine—that his socks were wrong.”
“Socks? Wrong?”
“Yes, she’s something of a knitter, and she says that the heel isn’t turned like that in British Army regulation socks. On further investigation, she could just make out the number 42 on them.”
“Forty-two?”
“Metric size.”
“Oh, I see.” Ben nodded now. “So the socks came from the Continent.”
“I’m glad we use Oxford lads. So quick on the uptake,” Max Knight said. Ben flushed.
“Therefore I suppose the question is, what was he doing in Lord Westerham’s field,” Max Knight continued. “Was he there on purpose or by accident?”
“Was there a high wind that night? He could have been blown off course, or the parachute malfunction might have caused him to drift.”
“We’ve checked on that. The breeze was only two knots. Besides, you don’t drift if your parachute doesn’t deploy properly. You plunge straight down.”
“It might just have been pure coincidence that the landing site was Lord Westerham’s field,” Ben said. “He was instructed to parachute down within reach of London or within reach of Biggin Hill RAF station.”
“Then why not an RAF uniform instead of the West Kent Regiment?” He took a deep breath that sounded almost like a sigh. “You can see the tricky situation we find ourselves in, can’t you, Cresswell? If the landing was intentional, if he was a German spy—and we have to assume that is the case—then he was sent to make contact with someone nearby, in an area where a uniform of the West Kents would not arouse suspicion.”
“What about his pockets, sir?” Ben asked. “Was there nothing useful that could be retrieved from his pockets?”
“His pockets were completely empty, apart from a small snapshot in his breast pocket.”
“A snapshot?” Ben asked, half-interested and half-afraid now.
“Of a landscape. Of course it was covered in blood, but the lab has been able to clean it up. We had to prise this out of the hands of army intelligence, by the way. They weren’t too keen to share information. Nobody is these days.” He opened a drawer and took out a slim file, which he opened and turned toward Ben. Ben stood up to look at it. It hadn’t been a very good photograph to begin with. The sort of small snapshot a tourist might take on summer holiday, and now, after having been bloodied and cleaned, it was even more indistinct. From what Ben could make out, it was a general view of an English countryside with fields divided by hedges, and rising in the background, a steep-sided hill, topped with a crown of trees. Amid the trees was just the hint of a village with what looked like a square tower of a church poking above Scotch pines. Ben stared at it. “That’s not anywhere I’ve seen, and it doesn’t look like our part of Kent,” he said. “It looks more bleak, and steep, and windswept. Scots pines, aren’t they? More like the West Country from that square-towered church. Cornwall maybe?”
Max Knight nodded. “Could well be. So what was it doing in his pocket? Was he supposed to make his way there—in which case, why drop him in the middle of Kent? Was he supposed to hand it to someone telling the site for a rendezvous for some unknown purpose?”
“Or the name of the village is somehow significant?” Ben suggested.
Knight sighed again. “Again possibly. You’ll note there were numbers written on it. Almost washed away, but the pen left an impression on the photo paper.” He looked up at Ben. “It’s all right to pick it up.”
Ben took the photograph gingerly and held it up to the light: 1461. “Fourteen sixty-one. Any significant battles take place on that date?”
Knight looked at him long and hard. “That’s for you to find out, son. I’m dumping this in your lap. Reports on you say that you are quick and you’re keen, and you don’t like sitting around twiddling your thumbs. Normally, I’d give something like this to a senior man, but you have what nobody else in this department has—you
’re one of them.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Dolphin Square, London
May 1941
Ben shifted uneasily in his seat. “Excuse me, sir, but what do you want me to do? Find out where the snapshot was taken?”
“That can wait. Right now I’d like you to go home for a few days.”
“But I say, sir, isn’t there an element of haste in this? The Germans wouldn’t have dropped somebody into the Kent countryside unless it was for an urgent mission.”
“The messenger is dead, Cresswell. And with him, presumably the message he carried. They will have to regroup and try again, likely in a different way this time, as they assume we’ll be looking out for parachutists. What we have to find out is for whom the message was intended. That’s where you come in. Go home. Don’t make it obvious, but ask questions.”
“What kind of questions?”
Maxwell Knight looked at Ben as if he were a bit dense. “I’m sure the neighbourhood will still be buzzing with news of the body. Someone will be bound to suggest that it’s a German spy. Watch their reactions.”
“Exactly what are you suggesting?” Ben asked cautiously.
“We must assume that the man did not parachute into that field by accident. If he was a German spy, which we have to assume is the case, why Lord Westerham’s estate?”
“Maybe it was convenient open space fairly close to London.”
“Then why no money in his pockets? He couldn’t get far. He carried no papers, so it appears he was planning to deliver a message in person to someone nearby. Or go to a safe house nearby. And there was no sign of a radio or any way to communicate with his base. My guess is that he was planning to hand over that photograph. So the question is to whom?”
Ben gave an uneasy chuckle. “You’re not suggesting that Lord Westerham or one of his neighbours is working for the Jerries?”
Max Knight gave him a long stare. “Surely you are aware that there are pro-German sentiments among certain members of the aristocracy. The Duke of Windsor is a prime example. He couldn’t wait to visit Hitler in his own lair. Why else do you think he was shipped off to be governor of the Bahamas? So that the Americans can keep an eye on him and foil any plot to put him in power here as a puppet king.”
“Gosh,” Ben said. “But having German connections, or even German sympathies, does not mean that any Englishman would actively work to help Germany, surely? Even the Duke of Windsor would do the right thing if approached by Hitler’s emissaries. He’d never agree to depose his brother . . .”
“Would he do the right thing?” Max Knight held Ben’s gaze. “One hopes he would, but he has already demonstrated weakness and susceptibility to be led, has he not? He abandoned his duty for a woman—for a woman of questionable morals at that. Our present king may not have his brother’s charm, but at least he has backbone. He’ll see us through if anyone can.”
“So you want me to go down to Farleigh and try to root out pro-German sentiments?”
“Go home and keep your eyes and ears open, that’s all. Lord Westerham and his neighbours. Say you draw a five-mile radius. Who does that encompass?”
“Including the two or three villages?”
“Possibly. Although I’m sure all the villagers will tell you quickly enough about anyone who is new to the area, who behaves strangely, once went on holiday to Germany, Switzerland, or Austria, or even likes Beethoven. No, I’m interested in bigger fish, my boy. Someone who might be able to do real damage. Who exactly lives at Farleigh these days?”
Ben laughed. “An entire brigade of the Royal West Kent Regiment for one thing.”
Max Knight smiled, too. “We have army intelligence working on them. So far they’ve come up with no leads there at all. The entire West Kent Regiment was asleep and tucked up in their beds when our man dropped in from the sky. And according to their commander, they all seemed to lead remarkably simple and boring lives before the war. Salt of the earth. Backbone of the country. The butcher, the baker, and the candlestick maker. I meant the family.”
“There at the moment?” Ben paused, thinking. “Well, Lord and Lady Westerham. Their oldest daughter, Olivia, and two younger daughters, Diana and Phoebe. Olivia is married, but she returned to Farleigh with a baby while her husband is overseas in the army.”
“Lord Westerham has other children?”
“Two more daughters. Margot was in Paris, last time I heard. Stuck there for the duration because she wouldn’t leave a French boyfriend.”
“What was she doing in Paris? Finishing school?”
“Oh no. She was already out in society. She wanted to study fashion design and apprenticed herself to Gigi Armande. Doing quite well at it, so one heard.”
Max Knight scribbled something on a pad. “And the other daughter?”
“Pamela. She’s doing some kind of war work in London. Secretarial stuff, I believe.”
Ben was conscious that Max Knight was staring long and hard at him. The man had a powerful stare, almost as if he could read thoughts, and Ben found a flush was creeping up his cheeks. But then Max Knight looked away.
“All sounds admirable, doesn’t it? The quintessential English family and their servants. No new Continental maids or Swiss butlers, I take it?”
Ben grinned. “They are down to a skeleton staff, so my father tells me. All the footmen gone off to fight. And, of course, the family has been allowed to occupy only one wing, so they don’t need that many servants. The cook and Soames, the butler, have been with them for donkey’s years.”
“And what about the neighbours?”
“I take it you mean the upper-class neighbours, not local farmers.”
Max Knight gave the ghost of a smile. “Let’s say I am more interested in the upper-class neighbours.”
“The closest neighbour is my father,” Ben said. “His church borders the Farleigh estate. And I can assure you my father never had any interests outside of history and birds.”
“Birds?”
“Passionate bird-watcher. He’s a typical country vicar—dull as ditch-water, although he’s a good-hearted old cove. My mother died when I was a baby. She caught the Spanish flu in 1920, and so my father’s been on his own ever since.”
“And other neighbours?” Max Knight had clearly dismissed Ben’s father as not important.
“There are Colonel and Mrs. Huntley at the Grange. They returned from India in the mid- thirties. He’s as true blue as they come. There’s an elderly spinster, Miss Hamilton. And then there are the Prescotts. Sir William and his wife. They have an estate nearby. Nethercote. He’s a big noise in the city, as you probably know.”
“And they have a son.”
Ben nodded. “Jeremy. He and I were at Oxford together. He was RAF. Shot down over France and now in a German prisoner-of-war camp.”
“Rotten luck,” Max Knight said. There was something in his expression that Ben couldn’t read. Almost a private joke he was enjoying. He flushed as Knight asked suddenly, “You weren’t attracted to join the RAF yourself, then?”
“I would have liked to, sir. Unfortunately, I was in a plane crash before the war, and my left leg was badly damaged. Doesn’t bend enough to climb in or out of planes easily.”
“That’s bad luck.” Max Knight nodded in sympathy. “But at least you’re doing useful work here, aren’t you? Equally important work.”
“If you say so, sir.” Ben’s face was blank.
“Up till now it hasn’t seemed that important?” Max Knight asked, with the hint of a grin.
Ben wondered how that information got onto his files and what else they said about him. He looked up. “Will that be all, sir?”
“For the moment, yes. I’ll send a memo over to Mike Radison that I’m borrowing you for a while. From now on, you report only to me. Is that clear? And I don’t need to remind you that nothing said here goes any further than this room.”
“Of course not, sir.”
“And that it is of paramount importance
that your neighbours down in Kent have no inkling of why you are there or what you do.”
“I’m sure they don’t, sir. They think I have a gammy leg and I’m stuck in a desk job in a ministry.”
“Then let’s keep them thinking that, shall we? You might even drop a hint that the work has become a bit much for you, and you’ve been advised to take a break.”
“You want me to appear mentally unstable as well as physically incapable?” Ben’s voice had a sudden sharp edge to it.
Max Knight grinned. “If it suits our purposes. You would be amazed at the cover some of those I recruit invent for themselves.”
Ben remembered then that there were rumours about a certain Captain King or Mr. K., the spymaster who lived in Dolphin Square, and a thrill of excitement shot through him that he had just been recruited to be a spy, albeit on the home front.
Ben stood up. Max Knight held out his hand. “Good to meet you, Cresswell. I think you’re just the man for the job.”
They shook hands. Ben remembered the snake in Knight’s pocket. “I say, sir. That snake. Is it some kind of pet? A good-luck charm?”
“I’m a nature lover, Cresswell. An animal lover. I found this poor blighter about to be dispatched by some village children, so I rescued him. He seems to have taken quite well to life in my office.”
“Don’t you ever worry that he might escape from your pocket?”
“If he does, good luck to him. But I rather think he knows on which side his bread is buttered. I suggest you do the same.”
Ben hesitated. “Excuse me, sir, but how do I contact you?”
“You come here, or you send me a telegram with a number where you can be reached. We never use the telephone system, for obvious reasons.”
As Ben walked to the door, Max Knight said after him, “That plane crash. Jeremy Prescott was the pilot, wasn’t he? Got away without a scratch. I hope there’s no bad feelings there.”