by Mike Hollow
‘Well, yes,’ said Soper. His voice was hesitant and, thought Jago, a little suspicious. ‘I suppose he has.’
‘And deserving of congratulation.’
‘Of course, yes. Well done, Cradock,’ he said. ‘Well done. Keep up the good work.’
‘Yes, sir,’ said Cradock. He smiled keenly at Soper, pleased by this approval and not least by the fact that as far as he could recall, this was the first time the DDI had got his name right.
‘Right, carry on, then,’ said Soper. ‘I’m sure you both have duties to attend to.’
‘Yes, sir,’ said Jago. ‘We do indeed.’
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
By a quarter to twelve Jago had completed his duties. The order to search had not yet appeared, but he’d briefed Cradock and would phone in later to check whether it had turned up. Now something else was in his thoughts, a far more pleasurable prospect: he was going to see Dorothy. It was only two days since he’d last been with her, but it felt like a week. This time he wouldn’t be sharing her with a crowd of other people, either. It would be just the two of them.
The first thing he’d done the previous evening when he got home from a long day’s work confident that he’d got Joan Lewis’s killers behind bars was to phone Dorothy. As always, his call to her at the Savoy reminded him that they lived in different worlds. Yes, she was only there because her newspaper had put her in the same luxury hotel as the rest of the American press corps, but that was only part of the difference. Their backgrounds were separated by more than the Atlantic Ocean, and he sometimes wondered whether the gap between them was any less bridgeable.
He’d wanted to know whether she’d be free for lunch today, and he’d been excited when she said yes. He was about to suggest he introduce her to some more traditional British cuisine when she cut in with a proposal of her own. It would be her surprise, she said: ‘Just meet me outside the Ministry of Information in Malet Street when I’ve finished my meeting there, and I’ll take you somewhere that I think you’ll enjoy. I should be out by twelve-fifteen.’
At ten past twelve Jago got off the Central Line Tube train at Tottenham Court Road station and took the short walk to Malet Street, in the heart of Bloomsbury. The ministry was housed in what had been for just the couple of years between its construction and the onset of war London University’s new Senate House, an imposing art deco fortress in white stone that soared nineteen storeys above the street in a demonstration of strength and solidity. To Jago it seemed like a piece of America transplanted into London, the capital’s first New York-style skyscraper: a home from home for Dorothy, perhaps.
He couldn’t help feeling some amusement at the transformation it had now undergone, in purpose if not in appearance: from the academics’ lofty pursuit of truth to something more banal. Taken over by the government when war came, it was now, he imagined, stuffed full of civil servants immersed in censorship, propaganda and no doubt all manner of nefarious tasks. He looked up at the rows of windows towering over the neighbouring streets and wondered which one of them masked the office of Mr A. J. Mitchell, the official who’d originally brought Dorothy into his life. He smiled at how he’d resented the idea of being forced to nursemaid an American war reporter. Now here he was pursuing her across London for the pleasure of sharing lunch with her.
She emerged punctually from the building and waved as she strode towards him.
‘Come along,’ she said, grabbing his arm and marching him back the way he’d come. ‘We’ll take the Tube.’
‘Where are we going?’ he asked.
‘I’m not telling you – it’s a surprise. All I’ll say is we’re taking the Northern Line to Strand station, but then we have to get off because the line’s closed from there to Kennington.’
‘Why’s that?’
She lowered her voice. ‘Apparently there’s an unexploded bomb lying close to the tunnels under the Thames, so the trains can’t run.’
‘You’re very well informed.’
‘I am. I’m a journalist, and I know a lot of people with interesting jobs. But there’s no need to worry – I don’t repeat everything I hear. Except maybe to a policeman.’
She flashed him a smile, which he returned, and at Strand station he discovered she was right: this was as far as the train went, and all the passengers got off. As they negotiated the final steps up to street level Dorothy grabbed his arm again.
‘This way,’ she said, heading away down the Strand. Within moments they were at the south-east corner of Trafalgar Square. To their left was the ugly cocoon of corrugated iron thrown up round the equestrian statue of King Charles I to protect it from bomb damage, which Jago had last seen when he’d met Dorothy here a few weeks ago. But now something had changed: right beside it there was an area of rubble forty or fifty feet across where a crater had been filled in.
‘I expect you heard about the bomb,’ said Dorothy.
‘Yes, I heard there’d been something, but not the details,’ said Jago. ‘I see the king survived, though,’ he added, nodding towards the corrugated iron, which appeared unscathed.
‘Yes, but that’s only because the bomb went ten feet or more down into the ground above Trafalgar Square station before it exploded. I spoke to a man who told me they reckon it was a 250-kilo bomb, and he said ten people sheltering at the bottom of the escalator were killed. I can’t write about it, of course, because of the censors, but keeping these things out of the papers doesn’t stop people finding out – anyone who tries to use Trafalgar Square station will know, because it’s still closed until they’ve fixed the bomb damage. But at least it hasn’t stopped us getting here, has it?’
She led him off round the crater site towards Nelson’s Column, but he still didn’t know their destination. The last time they’d met here Jago had been the one in charge, taking her for a bus ride all the way to Tower Hill, but now as they entered the square again he could only ask where she was taking him.
‘To lunch, of course,’ she replied. ‘But we’re going to have a cultural experience too, to repay you for the ones you’ve organised for me – only this time it won’t be the best fish and chips in West Ham. It’ll be the finest music in the world. In there.’
She pointed to the National Gallery, ranged along the northern side of the square, and at once he understood. The gallery was no longer the place to go to see art: all the treasures had been evacuated, like the children, to places of refuge around the country where they’d be safe from bombing. The cultural experience she must have had in mind was the lunchtime music concerts.
‘I see,’ he said. ‘You mean Myra Hess, the pianist – those concerts she’s been organising.’
‘That’s right. Have you been to any?’
‘No – it’s not the kind of thing I do, and I don’t know enough about music to appreciate it.’ He felt wary of admitting that he’d never been to a classical music concert. ‘I’ve heard about them, though,’ he added. ‘I should think everyone has. It’s certainly a great idea for brightening people’s lives up. But chamber music’s probably more your cup of tea than mine, isn’t it?’
‘If you mean I like it, then yes, I do. But this’ll be the first of these lunchtime concerts I’ve been to. I’m writing a piece about them, because people’ve heard about them even in America. I interviewed Sir Kenneth Clark the other day – you know, the director of the National Gallery – and he told me all about it.’
‘You move in more exalted circles than I do. So he gave you a couple of free tickets, I suppose.’
‘Certainly not. We’ll be paying our shilling to get in, just like everyone else, only I’ll be treating you. That’s one of the interesting things about the whole idea – they only cost a shilling because they’re for ordinary people, and the money goes to help the musicians who lost their jobs when the government closed down all the concert halls. But we’ll need to be quick – it starts at one o’clock.’
Dorothy steered him towards the classical portico which marked the
entrance to the gallery, scattering pigeons in all directions. They hurried past the square’s elegant fountains, now turned off for the war and surmounted by brutally functional loudspeakers, and up the steps to the road between the square and the National Gallery, where the traffic was light enough for them to weave through the cars and buses to the other side. Jago pulled a handful of change from his trouser pocket and picked out a florin.
‘Put that away,’ said Dorothy. ‘I told you this is my treat.’
Jago obeyed. ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘But what about lunch?’
‘Lunch is on me too. You may have heard they do food here now – a bunch of women volunteers run a sandwich bar for people who go to the concerts, and I’ve heard it said that the sandwiches are the best in London. They say the honey and raisin ones are the most popular.’
‘Sounds good to me,’ said Jago, although he still felt a little uneasy at not paying.
They joined the queue at the entrance and were soon inside. They made their way towards the eastern end of the building, through rooms which had once been adorned with some of the world’s finest paintings but were now empty, their precious contents scattered to secret hiding places far from London.
‘They’ve had to move the concerts too,’ said Dorothy. ‘The room where they used to be held has a glass dome over it, so when the big air raids began the gallery moved them to a safer room in the basement.’
The room was already crowded when they reached it, and uncomfortably airless. Every seat was taken, but people were standing round the edges or sitting on the floor. It seemed to Jago there must be three or four hundred of them, of all ages, and their appearance suggested that they came from all walks of life.
‘Obviously very popular events,’ he said as they found a place where they could lean against the wall.
‘Yes,’ said Dorothy. ‘When I interviewed Sir Kenneth, he said there’s too much music around that’s supposed to be cheering us up but actually drives any intelligent person into an even worse despair. What he called “patriotic imbecilities”.’
‘Very well put, I’d say.’
‘He said he thought people were crying out for something to take them away from all the muddle and uncertainty of war, and that’s what he and Myra Hess wanted to give them.’
‘I see. So is Myra Hess playing for us today?’
‘Yes. That’s why I suggested we come today. She doesn’t play every week, because I think she wants to provide work for other musicians, but today she’s playing a couple of Brahms sonatas.’
‘German, then. We didn’t hear much German music in the last war.’
‘I guess that’s not surprising, but apparently these concerts include lots of German classics, and the audiences like it.’
‘Perhaps we’ve become more civilised,’ said Jago. ‘Though I doubt it.’
A man and a woman appeared on the makeshift platform and were greeted with a burst of applause from the audience. The woman cut a diminutive, stout figure in a black ankle-length dress, with a single string of pearls at her neck. She looked about fifty, with a strong, confident face, and her dark, centre-parted hair was swept back over her ears. Jago recognised her immediately from newspaper photos as Miss Hess. The man, with moustache, glasses and thinning hair, looked a good dozen years or so older. He was wearing a dark grey lounge suit with a waistcoat and a plain tie. Jago didn’t recognise him, but the programme named him as Lionel Tertis and confirmed that the instrument he was carrying in his left hand, with a bow in his right, was a viola.
A hush descended as they began to play. Jago considered himself an ignoramus in matters of classical music and assumed it would go straight over his head, but from the start he was intrigued by the way the two instruments seemed to speak to each other. There was something stirring about it, but also a feeling of melancholy and a hesitancy that reflected his own mood exactly. He closed his eyes. Soon he was immersed in the music, borne along by it and unaware of his surroundings. Only the tumultuous applause at the end of the second sonata broke the spell.
It was Dorothy who spoke first.
‘So, did you like it?’
‘The music? Yes, I did – very much.’
‘I hoped you would. What did you like about it?’
‘I don’t know, really. I’m no judge of music, but it definitely affected me, as though it was taking me somewhere else, away from here, and I was looking at everything from higher up – looking at myself from the outside. Do you ever feel like that – suddenly seeing yourself and wondering what on earth you’re doing?’
‘I do, yes.’
‘Well, it made me think about how a man like Brahms could give his whole life to writing that kind of music, and how someone else could give their whole life to playing it, and then I was wondering what I give my own life to. Locking up villains, I suppose.’
He’d answered his own question and was about to continue, but realised his train of thought was leading straight to the question he didn’t want to discuss with anyone, not even Dorothy – the question of what he really wanted to fill his life.
‘So,’ he said, as lightly as he could, ‘where do we go for those sandwiches?’
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
‘Did you know a bomb went off here yesterday?’ said Dorothy, changing the subject as they made their way to the sandwich bar. She sensed that Jago had something on his mind and didn’t want anyone intruding. ‘Apparently it landed on the other end of the gallery last week without exploding, so the Royal Engineers were here for days trying to defuse it, but it went off during yesterday’s concert just as everyone was in here listening to Beethoven’s Razumovsky String Quartet.’
‘I didn’t know that,’ said Jago, grateful to her for sparing him further probing.
‘From what I heard, they were in the middle of the third movement, the minuet, when there was a huge explosion,’ she continued. ‘And the amazing thing was, the quartet just played on as if nothing had happened – didn’t miss a note. I hope one day I’ll be allowed to write about it.’
‘Were there casualties?’
‘Apparently not – but a lot of damage to the west end of the building.’
They reached the sandwich bar. Jago declined the recommended honey and raisin sandwiches which Dorothy chose for herself, and opted for ham and chutney instead, with a generous slab of fruit cake and a cup of coffee. They took their lunch away to the quietest corner they could find.
‘You’re right about the sandwiches,’ said Jago appreciatively as they began to eat. ‘They’re very good.’
‘I told you so. Sir Kenneth said the profits from the food and coffee all go to the Musicians’ Benevolent Fund, same as the takings at the door. The problem is, they can’t fit so many people in down in the basement, so now the concerts are in serious financial trouble.’
‘Does that mean they’ll have to stop?’
‘Fortunately not. It seems my own home town’s stepped in to help. He told me the Boston Symphony Orchestra held a special festival of British music just recently to raise money for your lunchtime concerts here and sent over enough to keep them going right through the winter.’
‘That should cheer the place up. Especially if they keep selling this fruit cake.’
‘I’m glad you like it. I wanted to give you a treat to celebrate the end of your case. You’ve got it all wrapped up now?’
‘Yes, but it was a peculiar business. We ended up arresting the victim’s mother-in-law and another woman last night at a seance.’
‘A seance?’
‘Yes. Who’d believe it? In 1940. You must think we’re still living in the Middle Ages here. Mind you, I suppose you have that kind of thing in America too.’
‘Oh, yes. I don’t know about now, but when I was in my first newspaper job in Boston I found out there were dozens of spiritualist churches in the city. And before that, when I was a kid, my parents took me to a talk by your Sherlock Holmes man, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. It was at Symphony Hall, i
n 1922, and I thought it would all be about his stories, but actually he was talking about spiritualism, which I’m sure they didn’t agree with. He was passionate about it. The place was packed, too. He talked a lot about the afterlife – he said people would have bodies just like we do, and clothes and houses, even furniture.’
‘And what would they do for all eternity? Apart from polishing the furniture.’
‘He said they’d work, but there’d be abundant leisure too.’
‘That sounds just like the Greenshirts.’
‘The what?’
‘Just some group I came across during the investigation. They started out calling themselves the Kibbo Kift and said they’d make a better world, then they turned into the Social Credit Party and reckoned we should save the economy by giving free money to everyone. Then we’d have a wonderful future of leisure without poverty. Two sides of the same coin, though, in a way, I suppose.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, the spiritualists and the social credit lot both got a following because of what happened in the Great War, and I think it was all about what people wanted to hear. They’d listen to anyone who promised them a better world to come, whether it was in this life or not.’
‘You can’t blame them for that.’
‘I don’t. It’s just that I’m a bit sceptical about politicians who make big promises, and when it comes to all that psychic stuff I find it even harder to swallow. I’ve seen too many con tricks in my time – from hustlers playing Find the Lady on the streets to business fraud and embezzlement, you name it. Did you ever hear about the photographs of fairies that some girls in Yorkshire took during the last war? They said they were real, and even the great Conan Doyle believed them.’
‘Oh, yes, I think that story went around the world. We certainly heard about it in the States.’
‘Psychic photography, that’s what they called it – quite a craze. Someone even took a picture of the Cenotaph on Armistice Day that got in the papers. That was in 1922 as well, I think – and it showed extra faces that were supposed to be spirits of the dead or something. People got very excited, but it was obviously a fake.’