by R. N. Morris
‘Of course not. I’m just trying to understand.’
‘He might have said something to someone. He might have told his mother. Is that who told you?’
Quinn gave a vague wince, which was all the answer she was going to get, then switched to another line of questioning. ‘Did you see any strangers come to the house in the days before Sir Aidan’s death?’
‘No. I didn’t.’
Quinn picked up on her emphasis. ‘But someone did?’
There was a beat of tremulous silence before she answered. ‘John. I thought at first that it was just … well, you know, that it was to do with what had happened. All part of acting up after his father’s visit to the nursery. I thought he was making up stories. He has a vivid imagination. It didn’t make any sense, you see, what he said.’
‘What did he say?’
‘He said he saw his father talking to Mr Toad. You know. Mr Toad of Toad Hall. From The Wind in the Willows.’
Quinn was aware of Macadam’s agitation at the periphery of his vision. He turned to face it. ‘Yes, Macadam?’
‘What do you say we take the boy in, sir? Show him some mugshots.’
‘Take him to the police station?’ cried Miss Greene in alarm.
‘To Scotland Yard,’ said Macadam brightly. ‘I dare say he would think that quite an adventure.’
Her expression brightened as she thought about it. But then suddenly clouded again. ‘You would have to ask his mother.’
‘What objection could she have, if it helped us catch her husband’s murderer?’ asked Macadam, evidently in all innocence.
But there was a possibility, Quinn thought, that his question contained its own answer.
Before they could act on Macadam’s suggestion, the door to the drawing room was thrown open and a red-faced Special Constable Elgar burst in.
‘Steady on, man,’ cried Macadam. ‘We don’t want you fainting again.’
Elgar was waving a torn-off scrap of musical manuscript paper in his hand. He thrust it towards Quinn, who viewed it with suspicion but made no move to take it.
‘I’ve got it! I’ve cracked the code!’ It looked like Macadam’s fears were about to be borne out: the great composer was short of breath and appeared unsteady on his pins.
But a gleam of excitement shone in his eyes.
FORTY-TWO
Commander Irons held his gaze for longer than was polite. Of course he did. That was how it was with these people. They were not polite. They used whatever dirty tricks they could to unsettle you. That gaze, for example, had the effect of making Leversedge feel like one of the suspects he interrogated. He felt every word he said was doubted, his motives questioned, his character disparaged.
Irons even kept his eyes on him as he downed the last half inch of his beer.
He smacked his lips in satisfaction, licking away the foam. ‘Go on then. What have you got?’
Leversedge cast a nervous glance around and swallowed drily. He would have to choose his words carefully. ‘Are you sure I can’t …?’ He gestured at Irons’ empty glass.
Irons finally turned his gaze away and signalled to the barman. The pot was taken away and filled. Leversedge ordered a pint of bitter for himself and took a grateful draught from it. ‘I know that this current investigation is of interest to you.’
Irons’ expression gave nothing away.
‘Naturally, you will want to be assured that it is being handled appropriately.’
Irons gave a loud gasp in appreciation of his beer. It was deliberate and disdainful.
But Leversedge ploughed on. ‘I believe it will be useful to you to have someone inside Quinn’s department reporting back to you on his conduct of the case. Given its importance and sensitivity.’
Still Irons maintained his impassive expression. Something twitched in one eyebrow, as if he was considering raising it. But it seemed that he thought better of the gesture.
Minimal as it was, Leversedge took it as a sign of encouragement. ‘I’m willing to offer my services.’
Even this failed to provoke anything other than an aggressive sniff and a further swig of beer.
‘There have already been a number of decisions that have caused me concern. To begin with, of course, there was the decision to send DC Willoughby to his death.’ Leversedge waited for some response to this. None was forthcoming. ‘Secondly, last night he directed one of his officers, Sergeant Inchball, to terrorize a witness. This man Inchball is well known for his brutal methods. It would not surprise me if his actions resulted in a complaint. At the very least, it draws attention to the department in a manner that I think you will agree is unhelpful.’
But there was no indication of agreement – or otherwise – from the intelligence officer.
‘Finally, Quinn has had me pursuing an entirely fruitless line of enquiry, in what I believe is a deliberate attempt to sideline me from the investigation. Why would he do that? you may ask.’
But Irons showed no inclination to ask that or any other question.
‘I do not say he is deliberately attempting to undermine his own investigation. Or at least I cannot prove that he is. Yet. However, you have to ask yourself, why would he send his most senior, most experienced, and dare I say it, ablest detective on what can only be described as a wild goose chase?’
Irons swilled a mouthful of beer around his teeth. It was an unpleasant but compelling sound.
Leversedge was forced to wait for it to finish before continuing. ‘Don’t get me wrong. I think Quinn is a great detective. I know his methods are unconventional, but he gets results. I’d be the first to admit that. That’s why I was so keen to move over and work under him in SCD. To be honest with you, he was a bit of a hero of mine. But something doesn’t feel right about this. It’s not like him to drop the ball. He’s not a fool. He’s not incompetent. He’s not lazy. There’s something else going on here.’
The twitching eyebrow that had been limbering up earlier finally jumped up interrogatively. It felt like a breakthrough.
‘I can’t help thinking someone’s got to him. Given the interest you chaps have in the case, which presupposes some kind of national interest, my fear is that the someone who has got to him could be an enemy agent.’
Irons slipped off his barstool and downed the remains of his pint standing. He placed the empty pot on the bar in front of him before tipping a terse nod in Leversedge’s direction.
With that, he was gone.
FORTY-THREE
Quinn put a hand to Elgar’s elbow and gently steered him back out of the room. Although he had little expectation of anything worthwhile arising from Elgar’s outburst, he thought it wise to exercise a degree of caution. Whatever the special constable thought he had discovered, it was probably best not divulged in front of Miss Greene.
Macadam joined them in the hallway, closing the door to the drawing room behind him. Quinn looked warily up the stairs. Lady Fonthill had said she was going to see the children in the nursery, but he had no proof that she had in fact done so. She could easily be lurking on the upstairs landing. As far as he was concerned, her ladyship was by no means in the clear over her husband’s death. And so, he put a finger to his lips and escorted the special constable back to Sir Aidan’s studio.
When the door to that was closed behind them, he gave a nod of encouragement. ‘Now then, Constable Elgar. What was it you wanted to say to me?’
Elgar once again held out the slip of paper for Quinn to take.
Quinn looked down at the lines of staves. On the first of them was written a sequence of musical notes. He was unable to make any sense of it. Music had never been his thing. Besides, it was typical of amateur detectives to be always looking for secret codes everywhere. He waved the paper dismissively. ‘What is this?’
‘It is a code. Of sorts. Don’t you see?’ Elgar hummed the snatch of discordant melody that the music box had produced, as if that was enough to persuade the policemen of his point. He then leant over the pia
no and picked out the same notes.
‘May I?’ asked Macadam.
‘Ah, yes,’ said Quinn, relinquishing the paper. ‘I forgot, you used to play the piccolo.’
‘Is this the treble clef?’ asked Macadam.
Elgar looked up sharply. ‘Of course.’
‘You didn’t mark it.’
‘Well, I didn’t need to. I knew.’
‘No key? No time signature? No bars?’
Even Quinn thought Macadam was pushing his luck. After all, it was a bit rich for a former piccolo player in the Boys’ Brigade to be criticizing the great Elgar on his standard of musical notation.
Elgar, however, seemed to take it in his stride. His tone was a little abrupt perhaps, and forcefully insistent. But it was clearly excitement, not irritation, that stirred him. ‘Not necessary. This isn’t music. As I said, this is a code. Although perhaps it would be more accurate to say cryptogram.’ He came back over to stand next to Macadam as he studied the fragment of notation.
To Quinn’s annoyance, Macadam seemed to be enjoying himself. ‘Well, let me see. What you have is A, E flat, E flat. A, E flat, E flat. C, B. C, B.’
‘Correct.’
‘What does it mean?’ Despite his scepticism, Quinn was intrigued. There was undoubtedly a pattern there.
‘At first, I could make head nor tail of it. And then I remembered Bach.’
Quinn closed his eyes in exasperation. ‘What about Bach?’
‘Well, he would write his name musically. How could he do that, you may ask, given that there are only seven notes in the Western musical tradition? Those, as you will know,’ here Constable Elgar addressed Macadam, ‘are represented by the letters A to G. In short, there is no H. And so while he could write B-A-C easily enough, he could not add the final H. Except that in the German system of notation’ – Elgar broke off for effect and was no doubt gratified by the interrogative bounce in Quinn’s eyebrows – ‘the letter B is used for B flat, whereas B natural is represented by the letter H. And vice versa. Letter representing note. Note representing letter. And so, Bach can be written by the notes B flat, A natural, C natural, B natural. You will see here, at the end of this phrase of ours, we have C natural and B natural repeated. Which, if I am not mistaken, spells C-H-C-H.’
‘C-H-C-H? Where does that get us?’
Elgar held up a restraining hand, which only succeeded in infuriating Quinn further. ‘What you have to remember is that even using German notation, the communicative possibilities are somewhat limited. It’s not an effective code as such. It’s more like a playful way of concealing hidden messages.’
‘Playful? You think this is some kind of game? I’ll remind you, one of my officers was murdered.’
A glint of steel shone in Elgar’s eye. ‘And what if this is the very thing that leads you to his murderer?’
‘Hear him out, sir. You never know,’ urged Macadam.
‘Very well. Go on.’
Elgar nodded to acknowledge Quinn’s concession. ‘Such messages do not remain hidden to those who know what to look for.’ Elgar gave a nonchalant wave of his hand, to signify that he was one such person. ‘Now, to go back to the first part of our message … Using the same German system, A natural is simply A. However, E flat – well, if you think of how the Germans write the letter S in the Gothic script, it looks a little like the flat symbol, does it not? So E flat is Es, that is to say, the letter S. A natural, E flat, E flat spells Ass.’
Quinn’s bafflement was profound. He gave voice to only one of many questions that perplexed him.
‘Ass?’
‘Yes. And if you repeat it, A natural, E flat, E flat twice spells Ass, Ass. Or rather, assass.’
‘Assass?’
‘Yes.’
‘Which means?’
‘Well, to put together the complete phrase, we have A-S-S, A-S-S, C-H, C-H. Or you might say, assass ch-ch. Remember, we cannot represent every letter in the alphabet. So we have to fill in the gaps ourselves. Assass could be short for assassin, perhaps. Or maybe assassinate. It could be a command. Assassinate ch-ch.’
Quinn felt his heart pound out a rhythm that seemed to match the broken tune of the musical code. ‘Churchill.’
Macadam’s eyes widened. ‘Cor blimey, sir. You don’t think …’
Quinn snatched the scrap of paper back from his sergeant. ‘Churchill was due to attend the concert. He knew Sir Aidan. What we may have here is evidence of a plot to assassinate the First Lord of the Admiralty.’
FIFTH MOVEMENT
FORTY-FOUR
Monday, 21 December, 1914
Quinn was at his desk early again on Monday.
Elgar’s apparent breakthrough seemed to take the case in a new direction. But despite his enthusiasm of the previous day, Quinn now found himself less than convinced that there was anything in it. He wondered if his resistance was down to the fact that someone else – an amateur, to boot – had made the discovery. Certainly, it niggled at him that a knowledge of music had been the key to unlocking the mystery. To put it bluntly, he wouldn’t have had a hope in hell of cracking it, and he didn’t like the feeling of being dependent on something he didn’t wholly understand. On top of that, the solution that Elgar had proposed, ASSASS CHCH, was hardly conclusive.
That said, if correct, this was the first direct appearance of Churchill in the case. It was a further connection between Sir Aidan and the First Lord of the Admiralty, besides the fact that they had been at Harrow together.
What the music box was doing in Sir Aidan’s possession and who had sent it to him were questions to which Quinn would dearly like to have known the answers.
As soon as Macadam got in, Quinn had him do a spot of background digging on Sir Aidan. It was the kind of work that Macadam thrived on. He would disappear to the library for hours on end, only emerging when he had exhausted whatever sources of information he had found. Invariably, it would turn up at least one nugget.
‘Anything in particular you’re looking for, sir?’
‘When a man like Sir Aidan has a row with his wife, where does he go? To his club, would be my guess. So, you could start with a list of his clubs.’
‘That’s easy enough. Debrett’s will have the answer. Although we could just ask Lady Fonthill, you know.’
‘I’d rather keep her out of it, if it’s all the same to you.’ Quinn remembered the scene that had taken place shortly after their conference with Elgar yesterday. They had met Lady Fonthill in the nursery. She had not responded well to their efforts to question her son. Perhaps she was simply being protective. But obstructive was another word that had come to Quinn’s mind.
‘Whatever you say.’ Macadam retrieved his bowler, which he had only just hung up. ‘Oh, before I go, sir, I was thinking about that description. You know, the one the boy gave to his nanny. Mr Toad, didn’t he call him? Remember? You know who that made me think of?’
‘No, who?’
‘When I was in CID, one of the villains Coddington had in his pocket – or was it the other way round? I never found out. Anyhow, this fella, he had the very face of a toad, he did. He was meant to be an informant, but I reckon he was running rings around Coddington and his cronies …’
With impeccable timing, it was now that DI Leversedge entered the office. He glared antagonistically at Macadam at this mention of Coddington’s cronies – it wasn’t so long ago that he might have been considered one of them.
‘What are you saying?’ demanded Leversedge.
‘Go on, Macadam,’ encouraged Quinn.
‘Well, all I was saying is, you might want to include one Tiggie Benson’s mugshot in the ones you show the boy. If I know anyone who looks like a toad, it’s Benson.’
‘What’s going on?’ asked Leversedge warily once Macadam was out of the room.
‘The boy, John Fonthill, Sir Aidan’s son, is coming in later to look at mugshots. Apparently he saw his father talking to a stranger. If there is a connection with this fellow Benson, it wo
uld be interesting. How did you get on yesterday?’
Leversedge gave an evasive shrug.
‘What does that mean?’
‘Waste of time.’
‘Did you speak to the Russians?’
Leversedge hesitated a beat before replying, ‘I didn’t get anything useful out of them. A blind alley, I’d say.’
Quinn regarded Leversedge with a narrowed gaze. ‘What about Boland? And Dame Elsie?’
‘Err, couldn’t track them down. I suspect they were out of town.’ There was something strangely guarded about Leversedge’s manner that piqued Quinn’s suspicion.
‘What makes you think that?’
‘Just, well … they weren’t at home. Let’s put it that way. I’ll get on the blower today. Save on the shoe leather. If you really think it’s worth pursuing.’
‘You were the one who was pushing this line of enquiry,’ Quinn reminded him.
‘Yes, yes. Just tying up loose ends really, isn’t it? It sounds like you’re on to something more promising with this lead from the boy. What time is he due here?’
Quinn consulted his pocket watch. ‘We agreed eleven o’clock. Initially, his mother was dead set against it. She didn’t want him upset any more than he was already. However, the boy was keen as mustard. When we explained that it might well lead to the arrest of her husband’s murderer …’
‘She changed her mind?’
‘Strangely, no. She was even more opposed.’
‘Interesting.’
‘Yes.’
‘So how did you persuade her?’
‘The boy had a tantrum. She had to agree to it to calm him down.’ Quinn pocketed the watch with a small wince. He had got the result he wanted, but the means of gaining it gave him no great satisfaction.
‘Did you discover anything else that I ought to know?’
Quinn pursed his lips, indulging in a moment’s hesitation before telling Leversedge about Elgar’s potential discovery. He could not explain his reluctance to confide in Leversedge. But something about his DI’s demeanour this morning had him put his guard up. Nevertheless, he brought Leversedge up to speed.