“I wondered if we might see each other.”
Was this too much out of the blue? Was it too subtle? Would he understand the choice of words, see each other instead of her asking to see him?
He understood what she was proposing instantly. “Yes. I’d like that.” And before Jennie could ask when, it all fell neatly into her lap. “Look, I’m at Lady Astor’s. Convenient to call you from here.”
She understood that there’d be no logging of the call, or even a trace of anything but the trunk call charge.
“Damn boring weekend. Wanted to get away from business. But it’s all they’ll talk about here.” She let him go on. “Nancy’s dry and the drinks are bloody awful. Look, there’s nothing on here till dinner. What if I motor into town?”
“Today?” Jennie gulped. “That might work, Tom.” She made herself sound casual and even a bit hesitant. Pretending to leaf through a diary, she replied. “Let’s see...No, nothing. That’s fine. Your place, Ebury Street, still have it?”
“Indeed.” Enough silence to look at a wristwatch. “Might be a bit tricky on this end. I’ll have to slip out of here after luncheon, without anyone noticing. Let’s say three.”
“Very good. See you then.”
She put down the receiver with a smile. It was the waiting that had made things so difficult, reduced Jennie to drunkenness. Now Mosley’s own impetuousness, ardour...no, his lust had annulled the time. But you look a slattern, Jennie. Will it matter? Yes. You’ve got to get in the door, into the bedroom perhaps. The first thing Jennie needed was a bath, if only to warm up. She let the water run high and soaked for a long time, thinking through her plan. Then she chose the gown she’d worn that night at the Trevelyans’, when Mosley had first laid a hand on her thigh. Would he remember?
At one fifteen she strode down the steps of the block of flats, carrying a sack with the Webley in its box. She had tried to place the revolver in her coat pocket. It was simply too large, and too heavy to secure in a belt, she’d tried that too. Carrying it in the bag just seemed risky. What if it fell out, or the bag dropped or was ripped? What if she tripped and the bag opened? No, she’d have to carry the gun in its case.
Cab or tube? A cabbie might remember you. Will it matter? Of course, if you want to get away with it, if you want to protect Walter. The Underground then.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Jennie recognised the little MG roadster at the kerb in front of Mosley’s Ebury Street house. But there was no one about and the street was quiet. She mounted the two steps and rang the bell. She could see through the glass at the side of the door that it was Mosley himself coming to the door, not a servant.
“It’s open!”
She heard the words, pushed on the door and found it giving way.
Tom Mosley was before her, in the same dressing gown he’d worn the afternoon she’d gone to see him in the midlands during the election. She remembered how she’d resisted temptation, how he’d fobbed off her concerns, how she’d allowed herself to be captured by her hopes. It wasn’t so long ago, was it? The recollection raised a strengthening anger in her. He reached for her sack and Jennie almost recoiled. But it was an innocent gesture. Without noticing its heft, he put it on the side table and took her coat. Then, saw the dress and smiled almost shyly. They moved together into the lounge, a room still sparsely furnished, with wide windows giving out onto the narrow street. It was obviously a room Mosley spent little time in, even less now he was PM. “Drink?”
“Sherry, please.”
“Rather demure, Jennie. Can’t I offer you something more... fortifying?”
“Very well, a whiskey and soda.” She tried to smile.
They stood facing each other, sipping their whiskeys in silence. He’s probably impatient to move to the bedroom, Jennie thought. Well I can’t just go to the entry and take out the gun. She needed him to give her a few moments alone. But he’s waiting for me to make the advance, why? Deciding on action, she moved towards him, reached for his hands, she placed one on each of her breasts and opened her mouth as she moved her face up towards his. This was, she knew immediately, exactly what Mosley was waiting for—her desire, her carnal appetite to match his own. He didn’t want to have to seduce, he didn’t have the time, the patience for it. He’d never needed it with Jennie. She could feel his body responding as he moved his hands over her body. Then he took her by the hand to lead her to the bedroom.
On one side of the double bed lay a silk negligee in blue and a matching silk robe. She moved to that side. Once they were standing on opposite sides of the bed, his look willed her to undress. She did so, as she’d done before, slowly but without unnecessary suggestiveness. She let the gown drop from her shoulders. She wore nothing beneath it, nothing at all. Nude, she raised the negligee over her head and let it slide down her body. She did not bother with the robe, letting his eyes continue to rove across her body. But Jennie was doing everything by calculation, not as before, by naked desire. Can he tell? No, he’s too absorbed by his own feelings to notice mine just now.
Mosley began to loosen his dressing gown.
“Just give me a minute, will you Jennie?”
He turned for the bathroom. This is your moment. She made for the hallway, pulled the box from the sack, opened it, checked the position of the cartridge in the barrel. Then she placed the revolver in the sack, carefully, so she could reach in and grasp the gun’s handle as she withdrew it. Then she walked back into the room holding the sack at her side.
Her pulse racing, her head throbbing, Jennie could not hear the front door of the flat open behind her as she moved back into the bedroom. Entering, she saw Mosley come out of the bathroom still wearing his florid dressing gown, now tied loosely, with his bare chest visible between the broad lapels. It was the way he stared past Jennie, mouth agape, that made her realise there was someone behind her. She turned her head. There, standing in the doorway, was the man who’d been following her for weeks, the man with the owlish glasses, in a heavy coat, with his hat—a homburg—in his hand. No, it’s not in his hand. It’s covering his hand, she immediately realised. Mosley saw it too and understood immediately, for he raised his hands in a gesture of surrender. There was a weapon beneath the homburg. The man’s arm was held out at a right angle from his body, and it was casting the hat back and forth on an arc between the two others.
Mosley dropped his arms to his sides. He looked at each of them for a moment and spoke. “Jennie, apparently you don’t know Malcolm MacDonald, formerly MP for...a Nottingham constituency.” Sounding casual and utterly composed, he continued, “Which one was it, Malcolm?”
The man now spoke. “Bassetlaw, Sir Oswald, north of the town.”
Mosley turned towards Jennie. “Jennie Lee, MP for North Lanark. You two really should know each other. Malcolm is the son of our former leader and PM, Ramsay MacDonald.” Jennie turned to look at the man. He was her half-brother.
Mosley knows. Does this MacDonald know?
Her unvoiced question was answered immediately. “I know who Miss Lee is.” The voice was calm, factual, steely. “She’s my sister.” He corrected himself, “My half-sister. And she ruined my father...her father.”
Jennie watched his arm move towards her. Gesture or threat? Revenge is a dish best served cold...hadn’t you told yourself the same thing?
As MacDonald’s arm moved toward Jennie, Mosley smiled slyly, in a show of sangfroid. “Look here, old man. I helped.”
“Shut up.” MacDonald’s tone was malevolent. Or was it dismissive? Jennie couldn’t tell. Watching them both, he began speaking to her. “Once you knew he was your father, you set out to destroy him.”
Words of reply were forming in her mouth even before Jennie realised what he’d revealed. Mum told him, told Ramsay MacDonald, told him I knew, told him after I visited Cowdenbeath. It came back sharply, her mother’s admission in that grim little café beneath the railway bridge. And then she wrote to tell him? Why? Jennie had to reply. “No, that’s no
t why I did it at all. I wish I had never known.”
Mosley was missing something. “When did you find out, Malcolm?” Jennie was taken aback by the familiarity. Is he using the man’s Christian name to make common cause?
MacDonald did not turn towards him but remained fixed on Jennie. He addressed his reply to her.
“After the defeat...my father showed me a letter from your mother. Then he told me about your”—he paused, looking at each, while distaste spread on his face—“relationship.”
Jennie and Mosley glanced at each other. Does he know about the Duke and Duchess of York, the back channel from the palace? But then Jennie realised there was something now much more important he might know about—Mosley’s treason. Could he know that too? No, he doesn’t, he can’t. And she no longer had the papers to prove it to him. Damn! Would he even care? It’s me he’s going to kill.
As if he’d read her mind, MacDonald now shifted his stance directly towards Jennie.
“The shame, the suffering, the pain you caused my father, after fifty years of trying to serve the working people of this county. To be turned out of office as a traitor to his people, his party, his honour, when all he wanted was to save the country.” He stopped, pointed the hand in homburg at her. Still, the hat did not fall from the weapon beneath it. “And destroyed by the hand of his very own daughter.”
If she was going to discharge her mission, Jennie couldn’t wait a moment longer. Her right hand reached across to the sack she held, grasped the Webley and withdrew it as she stepped up to Mosley. She pushed the barrel at his neck and pulled the trigger. His eyes seemed to bulge in their sockets just before Mosley crashed to the floor.
The recoil was so great it knocked her back and she never heard the report. When she reopened her eyes there was a body on the floor and she was covered, literally covered with the man’s viscera. Her stomach immediately began to churn as she wiped what could only be grey matter from her eyes. She looked at MacDonald. He was motionless and still held the concealed weapon towards her. She waited for him to pull the trigger. Seconds passed, half a minute. They stood facing each other. When nothing happened, Jennie walked to the bathroom. She had to cleanse herself, no matter how little time she had left. As she closed the door, she realised she was still holding Walter Reuther’s revolver. Now she’d never be able to return it. Found carrying it, he would become an accessory after Mosley’s murder.
Two minutes later, she re-entered the room, naked, having left the gruesome negligee on the floor at the foot of the bathtub. MacDonald was still there, his feet still fixed to the floor, his face quizzical. Unashamed, again she waited for him to shoot. When he didn’t, she walked round the corpse oozing on the floor. She reached her clothes and began to dress. What is he waiting for? Perhaps he no longer has the stomach for it, having witnessed one shooting already. She was having trouble not vomiting herself. How can he just stand there? But there he was, motionless contemplating what had just happened.
Jennie picked up the sack, went back into the bath for the Webley and strode past MacDonald into the hall. Then she spoke. “Very well. I’m leaving now.” Silence.
The street was as deserted as when she’d arrived. Apparently, no one had responded to the sound of a gun firing. Jennie walked off towards Victoria Station and the tube. In its anonymity no one had seen her come or go.
* * *
Sitting at the desk in her darkened flat, Jennie was startled by the telephone next to her. It was about nine o’clock, or at least she’d just heard some bells tolling out the time, bells she’d never noticed before. She took the receiver from the cradle but said nothing, waiting.
“Jennie, is that you? It’s Nye. You won’t have seen the papers? I’m at Beaverbrook’s office at the Evening Standard. The late editions have just gone out. Not on the street yet.”
“What is it?” Her voice was a monotone.
“Mosley’s dead. Suicide.”
Suddenly she was awake and alive again. “What? Suicide?”
Nye must have had a paper in his hands. He began reading from the copy:
The Prime Minister, Sir Oswald Mosley, was found dead in his London flat this evening. The body was discovered by his manservant returning to his duties from a day off. Sir Oswald had evidently shot himself with a Webley service revolver that was found in his hand. There was no suicide note or other indication of why he had killed himself. The Prime Minister had been spending the weekend at Cliveden, the home of Lord and Lady Astor. Neither his absence from that estate nor his presence in London was known to anyone. Sir Oswald had evidently arrived alone, as his two-seat roadster was found parked at the kerb before his Ebury Street flat.
Nye stopped reading. “Well, what’d you make of that, Jennie?
“Nye, be a good fellow, come and see me...right away.”
She put the receiver back down. Nothing for it but to keep on living. She rose from the desk and began turning on lights.
Now the questions came. Why had MacDonald done it, covered up everything, even leaving a revolver of the same kind as her own at his side? Did he have the stomach to kneel over the corpse and put Mosley’s finger round the gun butt? Had he removed her negligee and robe? Were the police covering matters up, as apparently they had in the case of Frank’s death? A hundred answers came to her. Perhaps MacDonald had no stomach for another killing, he couldn’t kill a woman, not his half-sister, he knew more than he was letting on, or surmised it after following me for days.
Or perhaps when I killed Mosley he began to think there was much more to all this than he knew.
Then she saw the sack, still standing on the side table by the door. The Webley. They won’t be looking for it after all, will they? It was a ten-minute walk to the Gresham Hotel on Bloomsbury Street. There was no one at the registration desk to receive the package for Mr Reuther. So, she left it in the sack with a note bearing his name. Jennie was back well before Nye arrived.
“You’re a brave man, to want to marry me, Nye Bevan.”
* * *
The cons seemed very much to have the better of the pros, Jennie thought. Inside, she still loved Frank, and grieved for him so deeply she felt there was little emotion left for anything or anyone else. But she knew Nye loved her, and she liked him awfully. It would have to be enough. She didn’t want to be lonely anymore, or even as much alone as she had been when Frank was still... still there.
More than once she’d asked Nye why they had to marry.
“Can’t we just live together quietly, discreetly?”
Nye was firm. “It won’t wash, Jennie.”
“You mean the prudes in our constituencies might get wind?”
“No. I mean my parents won’t allow me to live ‘in sin.’ It’s that simple.”
“Big bro Nye Bevan, frightened of his mum?”
“You’ve met her, girl. Will you cross her?”
“Very well, I’ll marry you. But I won’t wear a wedding ring and I’ll not take your name.”
* * *
He’d begun courting Jennie the moment she’d asked him to come to her flat that day Mosley had died. Nye had diverted her, entertained her, brought her out of herself, first cautiously and slowly and soon more actively. And somehow, he did it without ever intruding on her grief about Frank. About her hand in Mosley’s death, it was obvious he knew nothing. Nor, apparently, did the rest of the world.
She could only ever think of Mosley as dying...not being killed, still less killed by her. And she would no more tell Nye what had actually transpired than she would have gone to Scotland Yard. It would have made him an accessory. Besides, she felt no guilt, none whatever. It was enough that Malcolm MacDonald had held her fate in his hands for a moment. Had silently judged her, pardoned her, and then disappeared entirely from her life, not even nodding to her as they passed in the Palace of Westminster once parliament was recalled.
Somehow, Nye knew how to pursue Jennie now, what she needed after Frank’s death. She wanted Nye as a friend
, a companion, and fellow stalwart. He was not ardent, at least not immediately, never pressed, showed Jennie that he would never even try to domesticate her. He had watched her too long and too closely to make a conventional marriage, or even a confining one.
* * *
There were a few reporters hanging about, mainly from the Beaverbrook press, the morning Jennie and Nye emerged from the Holborn Registry Office on a day late in October 1934. The newspapers’ interest was unsurprising. By now, the pair were well known fixtures in the parliamentary sketch writers’ columns. No longer in the Speaker’s Coventry, Jennie had resumed her full-throated voice on the Labour back benches, aiming her barbs in counterattack almost exclusively at Tory complaints about waste in public expenditure. Nye had become a parliamentary private secretary to the minister of Labour, the unbending and very reluctant Labour minister Ernest Bevin. This had given the hacks daily opportunities to record how each man was confused for the other in their Whitehall offices.
As the flashbulbs popped, the reporters shouted questions at both of them.
“No hat, no gloves, no veil, how can we tell who the bride is, Jennie?”
Jennie’s smile broadened into a grin as she held up her left hand.
“No ring either, boys.”
“Did you forget to buy one, Nye?” It was the reporter from the Daily Express.
Jennie answered for him. “I just don’t like rings, boys.”
“Mrs Bevan, will you be giving up your parliamentary seat?”
Nye stepped forward and raised both hands in the air. “I wish to announce that if anyone addresses a political question to this lady”—he turned to beam at Jennie—“as Mrs Bevan, the question will not be answered.”
At this point Jennie stepped in front of Nye. “The question wasn’t addressed to you, Nye.” Then she looked at the hack, pointing her thumb behind her at Nye. “What he said is right. And to save your breath, the answer is no. In fact, I’ll be leaving tomorrow to go to Geneva with the Prime Minister.”
The Intrigues of Jennie Lee Page 30