Troubled Midnight

by John Gardner

  Suzie laughed, then went quiet. “It’s bloody serious, isn’t it?” realising as she said it that this was a huge and somewhat dim précis of the situation.

  “If Elsie’s right they could have the details of Overlord in Berlin by the end of the week.” The statement was lit with melodrama. Curry paused, shook his head, then said, “Christ.”

  As they walked through Shepherd Market into Shepherd Street Suzie asked how in heaven’s name they could muscle in on the business of becoming a go-between getting from Cyclops and Julia.

  “You can but offer, Suzie. Just keep your bowels open and your powder dry.”

  Too much, she thought, This is really just too much.

  Curry pressed the bell-push. Far away inside the house they heard the electric buzz of the bell and a cut glass voice saying, “Just coming. Hold your horses.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  AN ELABORATE LADY – late twenties – opened the door to them, only a crack, less than twelve inches, peering out, eyes going straight past their shoulders and down the three steps, searching the pavement beyond, worried that they could have arrived with people she didn’t want to see.

  “Yes?” Voice like a cello, very posh and rather grand, at times swooping.

  “Julia Richardson?” Curry asked and Suzie saw the woman trying to make up her mind whether she should own to it or not.

  “Yes,” coming down on the side of truth and pulling the door open another six inches. “What can I…?”

  And Curry went into his routine about being friends of Tim Weaving and had spoken with him only a couple of days before he’d been killed, “He mentioned you, said where you lived. We came to offer our condolences.” The same spiel they’d agreed, and the woman smiled saying it was good to know that Tim still had his sense of humour before he died.

  She wore what women were calling a housecoat these days, a long dressing gown in red and blue, buttoned down the front with a bit of a waist to it and the big skirt trailing on the floor, heavy on clothing coupons – kind of thing you saw Beau Brummel wearing in movies about the Prince Regent and his pals.

  Suzie thought the hair was good, sleek, black, falling to the shoulders, nicely done, in good condition, two hundred brush strokes a night she guessed. Nice oval face, snub nose, dark eyes and colour in her cheeks. From what Suzie could see she carried no extra weight.

  She pulled the door open and as she did so seemed to relax, as though she was on familiar ground. She’s accepted us, Suzie felt as they passed through into a wide hall decorated with heavy wallpaper, a dark blue sprinkled with small gold fleur-de-lis; there was a thick blue carpet under foot and the walls were decorated with eighteenth-century maps in Hogarth frames, tasteful, Berkshire, Hampshire, Dorset and Cornwall; a small oak table and chair to their right, with a telephone and message pad; doors to left and right and the wide, curving staircase straight ahead.

  Julia Richardson led them through the door on the left, into a sitting room. “Excuse my disarray,” she said running her right hand, palm outwards from neck to waist, indicating both her body and state of undress.

  Excuse my disarray, did anyone really speak like that? Suzie wondered.

  “James Shepherd,” Curry introduced himself, “and my friend, Susan Mountford.” He stuck his hand out and the woman took it with thumb and two fingers, then did the same to Suzie, a limp gesture. Tommy used to say you should never trust anyone with a limp handshake, so she decided not to trust Julia Richardson.

  The room was cluttered, little side tables here and there, arranged almost haphazardly: a three-piece suite covered in a floral pattern, huge red roses with green stems and thorns visible against a creamy background, the furniture placed in an almost geometric pattern, the settee pushed a shade too close to the fireplace – a log fire burning merrily – and the two chairs as near as they could get. There was a sideboard against one of the three walls, a nice mahogany with some polished silver pieces on display.

  Two windows looked out onto the street, between them a strange picture of an inn interior, meant to be early nineteenth century but too good to be true, a man in a crimson waistcoat (‘weskit’ she presumed from the period novels she’d consumed as a young adult), sporting a long-stemmed clay pipe, showing off a boy to two equally flush and coloured waistcoated men seated close to the fire. There were tankards of ale around, and some men sitting in close conversation at tables near the wall, the odd serving wench wandering around in the background. Could have been Squire Trelawney and Dr Livesey introducing young Jim Hawkins to Captain Smollet in a cheap edition of Treasure Island, ideal for a chocolate box – if you could get chocolates – or the subject of a jigsaw. Here it was as out of place as an erotic painting in a nunnery. The picture almost mesmerized Suzie it was so out of place. There was a looking glass in an ornate gilt frame over the fireplace and too much tat on the marble mantelpiece, a little green bowl decorated with gold dragons, a dark wooden crucifix with inlaid mother-of-pearl, an African bowl and – once more an incongruity – a model Spitfire on a curved stand.

  Julia Richardson dropped her voice to a loud whisper, indicated the settee silently asking them to sit while she said to Suzie, “A former boyfriend,” having seen her looking at the Spitfire. “January ’41 over the Channel. Sad, I was at school with him. James. James Simmnel.”

  “One L like Lambert, the Pretender chappie, Simmnel,” Suzie muttered.

  “Good God,” Julia Richardson sounded as if the breath had been knocked from her body. “You knew James?”

  “I met him, Jamie Simmnel? Yes?” Suzie nodded, remembering the time and place she met him, a perilously young flight lieutenant, at a flight dispersal towards the end of 1940, there at Middle Wallop when she had to question his flight commander, Fordham O’Dell. Christmas Eve, 1940. That dreadful year that still haunted Suzie. The Christmas she was sent to talk with Squadron Leader O’Dell, fitting it in with her Christmas visit to Charlotte in Overchurch, and all that went on at that time. Jamie Simmnel – M’father says we’re descended from scullions and dairymaids was what he’d said and Fordy O’Dell had asked her if Jamie had been looking after her, Can’t cook and has difficulty putting milk on his cornflakes, Fordy had said.

  “Extraordinary,” Julia said. “How on earth…?”

  “Oh, some squadron party at Middle Wallop,” she lied rather too quickly. “My sister used to live quite close. We were there all the time, or in the local…” and she knew that was a mistake because she couldn’t remember the name of the local pub used by the pilots.

  They went into a little sidetrack about how small the world was and all that, and Suzie again said how sorry she was about Jamie Simmnel.

  Julia said, quite coldly and suddenly, “You’re police aren’t you?”

  “What?” Curry with an upward sweep of his voice and quite convincingly.

  “You’re police and you’re on the murder investigation – Tim’s murder I mean.”

  “My name’s James Shepherd and I work for the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries. Suzie would have bet that he had a visiting card – which he did and drew it from his wallet now, handing it to her – complete with a fake telephone number where it would be answered by some girl who’d say, “Mr Shepherd’s out at the moment,” or “Mr Shepherd’s away for a few days. Can I get him to telephone you back?”

  They had arranged all this and Suzie provided her story now, she worked for the House of Commons, wanted to join the WAAF but they wouldn’t take her because of some medical problem. It was “Pretty dull working in the House, and they hardly paid a living wage. Scandalous.”

  Curry had taken her through it all, his cover story, then her’s – called it a Legend, very calm and ordinary. “I’m a close friend of James’ and we’ve known Tim for ages, In fact James was at school with Tim.”

  So they began to go through their phoney backgrounds, quietly digging into Julia’s past, present, and possibly her future.

  “We are terribly sorry,” Curry leanin
g forward, full of sincerity.

  Julia Richardson started to giggle. “I think you should know that Tim Weaving and I were never really engaged…”

  “But I saw the announcement in the Times…”

  “He told us…” Suzie added.

  “No,” Curry kept a straight face, eyes wandering and uncertain. “You weren’t really engaged?” Waiting, trying to will himself to appear shocked.

  “But we talked to people,” Suzie frowned. “Talked to people who met you with him. Tim, you were with him at Brize Norton. They had a party for you in the mess. We know about it.” She counted to fifteen then added, “But his parents, both of them, they said … talked about the engagement…”

  “Probably said they were surprised, and as for the party … You knew Tim, any excuse.” Julia Richardson was quite calm but quiet.

  “Surprised?” Curry putting a great deal of query in his voice.

  “He had his reasons,” Julia told them, signalling them to keep quiet and let her do the talking. “He was in a bit of a fix…”

  “A fix indeed?” Curry waited, straight-faced. Solemn.

  “… Yes, a bit of a fix. Tim Weaving was an idiot sometimes … With women, I mean. He had got into a bit of a state with a girl called Annie Tooks. Bit of an hysteric he told me. Wouldn’t take no for an answer. Only way to do it was fuck off out of it,” she pronounced it ‘orf’. Fuck orf out of it. “Show her a clean pair of heels, so to speak. Well, a clean something or other.”

  Suzie said that sounded rather ruthless.

  “Timothy was ruthless. I’ve known that for years.” Very matter-of-fact, Miss Richardson.

  “Doesn’t sound like the Colonel Tim Weaving we knew,” Suzie sounded saddened by this revelation, and not a little shocked by Julia Richardson’s language, as if she was not one of the girls and didn’t approve of the girls all that much.

  “So you just agreed … agreed to go along with the story?” Curry asked and she tilted her head in acknowledgement, yes, that was about the top-and-bottom of it. “I was very fond of Tim. He couldn’t hurt me though. A shit like that could never hurt me,” said the forthright Miss Richardson.

  “Well,” Curry sounded angry, trying to keep rage battened down below the hatches. “Well, I see,” meaning he didn’t actually see it at all. “You feel nothing then, Miss Richardson? About Tim’s death?” He flapped his arms, and did a penguin gesture.

  A short silence seemed to lengthen the distance between them.

  “No. No, I wouldn’t say that,” Julia looked away, not meeting their eyes. “No, I felt immense bloody sadness. I mean we’re losing people, friends hand over fist, losing them to the bloody Nazis. But you don’t really expect your chums to go down to some common little murderer.”

  Suzie said no you didn’t, and Curry asked to be excused, as they used to say at school. “Sorry, but can I use your bathroom?” was what he said and Julia said, of course, “Straight up the stairs and it’s on the right, three stairs up to a white door.”

  It was what they had agreed. Curry said he’d be away for about four to five minutes so she went into it straight off.

  “James wouldn’t like it, me mentioning this…” Suzie started.

  “Mentioning what?”

  “Tim knew that … Well, that I really hardly make enough at the House of Commons. He said if I was ever in the area I should look you up. Said that you had helped some of his pals. Work, he said you sometimes were able to get work for friends. I just wondered…?”

  “Work?” sounding puzzled, then, “Oh, yes. The bits of courier work. Things I do for the Swedish Embassy? Would that be it?”

  “He mentioned the Swedes, yes.”

  “It’s very little. About a fiver a pop. All a bit cloak and dagger, but yes, give me your phone number.”

  She didn’t sound enthusiastic, but Suzie rattled off the special number that the little ginger man, Elsie Partridge, had provided.

  “I’ll give you a tinkle if there’s anything. You know, any friend of Tim’s.”

  They walked back to the car parked in Curzon Street. Walked in silence until Curry said, “What a little darling.”

  “The longer we go on with this the more I dislike Tim Weaving.” She sounded as though she wanted to spit. “Unpleasant bugger.”

  “He wasn’t exactly nice either,” Curry said with a grin and Suzie gave a little laugh. “You gave her the bait?” he asked.

  “Of course, and I think she took it.”

  “I wonder,” he started the car put it into first, pulled out and began to retrace their route back to Ivor Place. “You really think you popped the idea into her head? Seemed a bit of a long shot to me.”

  “And me, but I suppose Elsie knows best.”

  Suzie leaned back and began to think about the identity of Cyclops. Did it particularly matter to her? Surprisingly it did, not so much because he had been behind Tim Weaving’s death but because whoever he was had become a traitor.

  Hutt? Major Shed Hutt. Cyclops? Shed Hutt was from the landed classes with people, not a father and mother, but ‘people’. There was an estate in Scotland, a castle and probably a house or flat in town. She wondered if he had been mixed up with that knot of supposed intellectual upper class wafflers who wanted to back Hitler and the Nazis. What were they called, the Clivedon set? Approving of Hitler’s selective breeding. Oh, Yah, yah.

  Wilson Sharp? Cyclops? The village-born, plough-following, confident young officer Wilson Sharp, tall, tough, bronzed and dark-haired. Maybe, he was certainly single-minded enough.

  Puxley? Cyclops? Certainly possible. Accused of being treacherous in the RAF, another one who was single-minded. Puxley had simply swapped one job for the next.

  Or perhaps Colonel Bartholomew Belcher. Could Belcher be the profound liar and thief they thought of as Cyclops? On the surface he appeared to be a pompous, empty-headed man who in spite of his lack of imagination had been able to master parachuting and flying a glider. Perhaps that should read because of having no imagination. Certainly their Cyclops had shown no imagination when he had tried to have them killed. Just bloody stupidity trying that on the spot, at Brize Norton. Someone had once said to her that the bravest men were often men who had no sense of creativity and could never imagine the worst that might happen if they took the bravest course. She didn’t know if this was true or not, but if it was then Bart Belcher could be the bravest man who ever walked the earth. He would certainly be the thickest.

  Yes it mattered. Suzie allowed the thought to drain through her mind. One treacherous bastard, she thought. One who could reach out and scoop up the details of the forthcoming invasion. Yes. She thought of the dead, who in the last war, the Great War, the war to end all wars were called the Glorious Dead. If the Allies planned to barge across the Channel and smash their way over the beaches of France, she thought of the dead who’d lie three or four deep in the sand, their blood soaking several feet deep, and that would, in the end, be down to one man. Cyclops selling his country out.

  Chapter Seventeen

  THE TELEPHONE RANG in Julia’s Shepherd Street house around ten-thirty-five, and she let it go on for at least four rings. She never gave the number when she answered, like most people did. They’d say, Flaxman 46789 bold as brass, but a policeman had told her, “Never do that. Never give your number because unscrupulous people will call you at random, check the number, ask for your address then use it to your disadvantage.” Julia didn’t really understand how they’d use it but at the time she’d trusted the cop. Wrongly as it turned out, but that’s another story.

  Sadler was in a telephone booth downstairs on the ground floor of the hotel, close to the big reception area and near the restaurant where he had eaten earlier. He still had a few hours work to do on his report, but there was plenty of time for him to finish it.

  “Mopsy?” he said when Julia answered.

  “Who do you want?” she said, recognising his voice.

  “I want Mopsy Flanders. Oh, lord I
think I’ve got a wrong number.”

  “Yes, I think you have, there’s no Mopsy here, and no Flopsy either.”

  He apologised, half-heartedly, and hung up.” Now he would wait for six or seven minutes while Julia got herself into a coat, put on some sensible shoes, found her torch, then headed out to the phone box on the corner of Market Mews.

  One day, Sadler considered, the General Post Office would put an end to telephone boxes that were able to receive calls; too many people could use them for nefarious acts; they were a godsend to whores and their pimps, also for illegal gambling and villains who had no access to a private telephone and regarded certain numbers in call boxes as their own: as indeed Sadler and Julia always used the box on the corner of Market Mews when they did not wish to use Julia’s telephone, easy prey to the official Watchers and Listeners belonging to the police or MI5, the Security Service: only Sadler didn’t tell that bit to Julia. Sadler simply stuck to his elaborate lies and Julia, a foolish girl, swallowed them whole.

  After almost ten minutes, Sadler dropped coins into the box and dialled the number in Market Mews. Julia picked up on the second ring and Sadler pressed Button A.

  “Good,” He said after making certain that it was Julia at the distant end. “Tomorrow,” he told her. “Tomorrow. Nice and public. St Paul’s Cathedral. Carol Service at 6.30 pm.”

  “A bit quick,” she sounded doubtful, adding, “but we’ll manage.”

  “We’d better. This is very important.”

  “I said we’ll manage,” she snapped, then asked if there were any special orders. Sadler went through what he called the dress of the day. Red hat and a dark scarf visible at the neck. Also visible a copy of the News of the World. “Sticking out of her bag, or she could be carrying it.”