Switcheroo (A Gideon Oliver Mystery Book 18)

by Aaron Elkins

  Beside the table was a glassed-in display case of rosy-cheeked Toby jugs, and Carlisle imagined his cheeks were almost as red. He’d come within a millimeter of offering Makepeace a bribe . . . a bribe to Jersey’s living monument to moral integrity. He would have done it too, if Makepeace, out of the decency of his heart, hadn’t cut him off before he was able to get the words out. Good Lord, what was he coming to? But he was sick with worry, ready to do anything, risk anything for the boy, only what was there to do?

  And it was all entirely his fault; that was the worst of it. Out of prideful self-importance—how could Jersey possibly make it through the Occupation without his presence?—he had signed his child’s death warrant, and now, as he saw it, he had only one hope left. Outlandish as it was, he intended to press for it. If it didn’t work, he’d—well, he didn’t know what he’d do, but he’d do something. He swallowed some ale in hopes that it would stop the headache building at the back of his neck, then lit a cigarette, took a long, long drag, leaned back, and closed his eyes.

  He was fifty years old—he’d been forty-eight when Roddy had been born—and Roddy was his first child. He had expected to be a good father when the time came, and he had looked forward with a certain pleasant anticipation to the prospect, but until the night Roddy was born, all of his concern had been for Grace, who had endured a difficult pregnancy, and at the hospital he was so filled with relief on hearing that things had gone well that he had to be reminded that he could go and look at the baby. When he did, the surge of emotion that squeezed his heart had overwhelmed him, and in the nearly three years since, his love, his need to protect this sweet-tempered, sickly, defenseless little thing had grown even fiercer as the child’s frail constitution became more apparent. It seemed to Carlisle, although he never expressed it to Grace, that the boy’s connection to life, to this earth, was frighteningly flimsy. Two or three times a night Carlisle would get up to make sure his son was still breathing. He smiled now at the memory of the happy, sighing smile he would get if Roddy happened to be awake when he came in. Sometimes, if the boy were asleep, Carlisle would “accidentally” jog his tiny foot or shoulder just to see that dawning smile of recognition. (He never told his wife about that either.)

  His own smile faded as the current situation came back to the front of his mind. Slowly, he exhaled the smoke—thin streams from both nostrils—and opened his eyes. When he did, he was startled by the sight of a thin, sallow man dressed in a black, much-worn three-piece woolen suit, uncomfortably standing a bare two feet from him, waiting to be acknowledged. The rest of the acrid smoke exploded from Carlisle’s lungs, scalding his nose on the way out and making him sneeze. “Willie! For God’s sake, man, how long have you been standing there? I thought you said you’d be half an hour.”

  “You said it was important. I thought I should hurry.” William Skinner, Carlisle’s brother-in-law, looked ill at ease. The Merrie Monarch, all gleaming wood and polished brass and nineteenth-century hunting paintings, was not the kind of pub that he usually frequented.

  “I appreciate that,” Carlisle said, motioning him to sit down. “What would you like? Beer?”

  “Half-and-half,” Willie said.

  Carlisle called out to Sadie: “Half-and-half, please, Sadie.”

  “Ale and bitter?” she called back.

  “Ale and porter,” Carlisle said, knowing Willie’s preferences.

  Sadie’s disapproval showed as she pulled down the ceramic handle of a beer tap. Ale and porter was a rough-tasting Cockney concoction that could get you drunk in a hurry, and not often ordered at the Monarch. But then Willie was as true a Cockney as there ever was, London born and bred within the sound of Bow bells, in Watling Street, in fact, right around the corner from Saint Mary-le-Bow itself.

  Carlisle waited for the beer to be delivered and for Willie to have his first nervous sip. “Willie, I have a very great favor to ask of you.”

  Willie blinked several times, his lips compressed, he sat up straighter. When favors had been asked and given between them in the past, it had been Willie who’d been the supplicant and Carlisle the grantor. And indeed, Carlisle had almost always granted them, usually in the form of small salary advances or modest string pulling on one minor governmental matter or another. Now, Willie appeared concerned that repayment day was at hand. As well he might be.

  Willie Skinner had been married to Grace’s angelic sister, Rose, who had since died in childbirth (the baby, George, had survived). Since then he had remarried, so technically the two men were no longer brothers-in-law, but the nature of their relationship, having been formed, remained.

  It wasn’t always an easy one. Willie, a few years younger than Carlisle, had emigrated to Jersey in 1932, when the Depression in England had been at its worst. Other than his luck in snaring the beautiful Rose a few years later, he had soon shown himself to be one of those people whom fate just seemed to have it in for. In the four years that Carlisle had known him, he’d broken his nose, his elbow (twice), and two of his fingers and had come down with appendicitis, gallstones, and (of all things) malaria. His luck with employment hadn’t been any better. In the space of six months, he’d gotten himself let go from three different jobs (assistant floor manager at a chemist’s, bookbinder’s assistant, and deliveryman for a stationery store), his wages going down with each move.

  It wasn’t that he was an obnoxious or difficult employee, or that he embezzled, or that he was discourteous to customers; it was just that his attention would wander once too often, or he’d be too slow about things, or he’d make mistakes—and then make them again after being corrected. Or (this was Willie’s own opinion) that he just wasn’t cut out for that particular work.

  Finally, at Grace’s urging, Carlisle had hired him as an inventory-control clerk at one of his smaller dairy farms. There, under the knowing and sympathetic eye of the longtime plant manager, he was prevented from doing too much damage. The simple, old granite house that stood on the property had gone along with the job, rent-free. Willie had been, and still was, embarrassingly grateful, to the point of bordering on the obsequious, which made Carlisle uncomfortable to be around him.

  Still, on his way from Town Hall, Carlisle had stopped at one of Her Majesty’s red telephone boxes to ask Willie to meet him at the pub. Willie had said he’d hurry but it would take him half an hour to get there from the farm. And here he was, not fifteen minutes later. He’d driven fast. He was worried, all right; something was up, and he knew it. Like any true Cockney, he was distrustful of surprises, of pretty much anything new, really.

  “What sort of favor?” he asked, fortifying himself for whatever was coming with another quick slug of his half-and-half.

  “Willie, you’re scheduled for evacuation to England tomorrow, is that still the case?”

  Willie nodded. “Me, and the missus, and Georgie.” The missus was Bess, Willie’s second wife and young George’s stepmother. She and Willie had gotten married only a few months after Rose’s death, something for which Howard had eventually excused him (Willie was a weak-spined man; it was simply his nature) but had never quite forgiven him. To Howard, Grace’s sister, Rose, had been the epitome of womanhood, generous, beautiful, intelligent, elegant . . . and far, far too wonderful for poor Willie Skinner.

  “Good,” Howard said. “I want you to take Roddy with you. That’s the favor.”

  Whatever Willie had been expecting, that wasn’t it. “You want me to . . . to . . .”

  “To take Roddy with you to England, yes.”

  “But, Howard, he needs . . . well, he needs to be registered-like, to get on them boats. They won’t let nobody on board without that, not even the babies.”

  “No, Willie, what he needs is an entry in the register. And there is an entry in the registry—currently in the name of George Skinner.”

  “My Georgie? But . . . you don’t mean . . . no, wait . . . you want me to make as how your Roddy is my Georgie? And take him with me in his place?”

&n
bsp; “I do.”

  “That’s crazy, Howard. We couldn’t never get away with it. They have a record of Georgie’s weight, his height, even his picture. And he don’t look nothing like Roddy. Blimey, Howard, Georgie’s like five months older.”

  “Two, but what of it? I’m telling you, it’s bedlam at the quay. They’re not going to weigh the children on scales or compare pictures, I promise you. George is a two-year-old. Roddy is a two-year-old. Nobody is going to remark on the difference, or care about it for that matter. One two-year-old boy . . . check. Next, please.”

  Perplexed, Willie shook his head. “So you want as Roddy should . . .”

  “Should go with you to England,” Carlisle said. “In George’s place, yes.” Carlisle’s voice was beginning to tighten. Good Lord, the man was thick.

  “So, Georgie wouldn’t come with us.” His eyebrows had drawn together with the effort to think things through.

  Carlisle slowly nodded. “Correct.”

  “But, but . . . what would happen to him? To my Georgie?”

  “George would remain here with Grace and me—in Roddy’s place, do you see? And if we keep him to ourselves for a few weeks afterward, nobody is going to know the difference here either. At most it’ll be ‘My, my, hasn’t Roddy grown!’ And Willie”—he laid his hand on the back of Willie’s wrist—“I hope it goes without saying that we would treat him as we would our own, with kindness and affection, and we know you would do the same for Roddy. Then afterward, of course, when—”

  Willie finally got it, about one second before Carlisle’s brain would have exploded with impatience. “You want us to . . . to swap one for t’other? Your Roddy would come away with me and the missus and live with us?”

  “Exactly. To all extents and purposes, Roddy would be George. You and Bess would treat him as George, the authorities would believe he was your son, George, neighbors would believe it. Roddy would believe it. And the reverse would be the case on Jersey. For however long this bloody Occupation lasts, until you can come home again, George Skinner would be Roderick Carlisle.”

  This increased Willie’s jumpiness. “Oh, no, I dunno. Lying to school officials and suchlike. Wouldn’t that be breaking the law? Why couldn’t they just keep their own names?”

  “I’d prefer that too, but the German authorities—they’ll be indexing everybody on the island, and the less we can do to arouse their curiosity—This child, he is not yours, yes? Why does he then live with you?—the better. For all we know, the same might be true of the English authorities. It’s safer this way.”

  “But it might be years.”

  “So it might be,” Carlisle agreed sagely, but through clenched teeth. He squeezed the bridge of his nose, shut his eyes tightly, but the actions gave no relief.

  “But what happens when they find out they’re somebody else? And what if we’ns can’t never come back? What then?” The more agitated he became, the thicker the Cockney speech got.

  “Willie, I don’t have answers for you, damn it. How can I know these things?” Shh, simmer down, he told himself. “Look, what I do know is that here in Jersey there are sure to be hardships to come, and that Roddy is not a . . . a sturdy child who is likely to hold up under hardship. But George, why, George is robust, a tough little nipper who can take things as they come and deal with them. Remember the time that monstrous dog barked at him? How he just barked back and the dog was so surprised it simply stood there with its mouth open? I’m completely confident that he’ll come through this perfectly well. And remember, I’ll be staying on as a member of government. Even with the Nazis in overall charge, I’ll have considerable influence. I’ll be able to provide him with protection that other children won’t have.”

  Not bloody likely, but he’d try.

  “Howard, I’d like to help, you know that. God knows I owe you, but this is all, well, too bloody fantastic. How can you expect a father to leave his own baby boy behind to them dirty Nazis, so as he can take somebody else’s kid to a safe place? It ain’t normal.”

  “I know it’s a lot to ask, Willie, but . . .” The cigarette he’d lit only a second ago was put in an ashtray and shoved to one side, along with his mug, so that he could lean more confidentially, more compassionately across the table. He lowered his voice. “Let’s be honest with each other. It’s all ‘my Georgie this’ and ‘my Georgie that’ right now, but we both know how you really feel about him. Don’t you think it might be a good thing to be away from him for a while? For both of you? Don’t you?”

  This was a reference to conversations that he and Grace had had with Willie in the first weeks after Rose’s death. Willie had been truly wretched, near despair, wondering how he could cope without her. (He certainly hadn’t been coping well at the time; he was despondent and unfocused, he’d lost a lot of weight, and the shadows under his eyes spoke of sleepless nights.) Worse, he could barely stand to look at his little son. He hated to touch him, was repelled when he had to clean him up. “I know it’s wrong,” he’d told them. “I know he’s innocent as they come and I’m a rotten dad, but I can’t help it. Because of him, my sweetheart, the love of my life, is gone. He like as killed her! I’ll never see her again, never hear her voice, ever. I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

  The fact that two months later he married someone else raised in Carlisle a certain amount of skepticism as to the depth of Willie’s devotion, but Grace had rightly pointed out that the new Mrs. Skinner was no love match for him. A plump, jolly chatterbox of a spinster who had lived with her niece at the time and was an indeterminate number of years older than Willie, she was there to impart motherly care to George, wifely care to Willie, and congenial company to both. In return, Willie would give her the home of her own that she longed for, support her as best he could, and treat her with husbandly consideration.

  As far as Carlisle knew, both had come through on their ends of the bargain, and the marriage was happier than it might have been expected to be, perhaps because Bess had grown up in East London too. They were a couple of city-bred, streetwise Cockneys for whom London would always be home, but who now lived surrounded by rustics whose idea of a real city was Saint Helier. They needed each other just to have someone to talk to. As far as young George went, however, Willie’s feelings about him remained unchanged. He rarely spoke of him anymore. The child was Bess’s responsibility, not his; that was the deal.

  “A good thing to be away from him for a while?” Willie mumbled after thinking things through. “Yes, I see what you’re getting at.” He sighed. “I suppose it might be.” And then, with sudden intensity: “But Howard, don’t you see—the responsibility of looking after a pale little tyke like Roddy . . . I don’t know as I could—”

  “Wouldn’t Bess look after him, just as she does George now? Wouldn’t she be a good mother to Roddy too?”

  “Well, yes, I suppose so, but I meant the responsibility of looking after his needs—his special foods, his medical care, his—well, you know, better than anyone, I’m not a man of means.” He shrugged and hung his head.

  As the words drifted away to nothing, Carlisle worked to suppress a great sigh of relief, as if a terrible weight had been lifted from his shoulders. It was going to happen; the area of yes or no had been left behind. Whether Willie himself was aware of it or not, they had now entered the negotiations phase.

  Carlisle had been holding an ace in the hole, two aces really, and this was the time to play them. “Willie, you’ve been earning what at the dairy, twenty pounds a month?”

  “What? No, eighteen six.”

  “Well, let’s make it an even twenty, simpler for record keeping. For as long as you have to be gone, I will send you twenty pounds on the first of every month. If it proves impossible to send anything to England, I will have it deposited here at Lloyds in your name, so that it’s all waiting for you on your return. Does that sound reasonable?”

  Willie brightened for an instant and then suddenly turned shifty. He too had grasped that they
were now negotiating. “More than reasonable, Howard. Only—”

  “I will also formally deed the farm to you, free and clear of any obligation on your part.”

  Willie stared at him, eyebrows drawn together.

  Now I’ve overegged the pudding, Carlisle thought with dismay. Made him think there’s something dodgy about the entire thing.

  But Willie had merely been stunned into a momentary silence. “The farm?” he repeated. “Crikey, you mean the one I—”

  “Yes, the one you live on, the one next to mine.”

  “D’you mean the whole thing?”

  “Every bit of it. The house, the land, the cows—although I can’t promise there’ll be any animals left by the time this is all over. But what there are will be yours.”

  “That’s all fine, Howard, it’s wondrous, but there’s another problem. Who knows what the situation’s going to be in England now? They say as there’s work waiting for me there, but . . .”

  “I understand perfectly, Willie. Of course, you’ll need money to get yourself going, and I want to help there too. The banks ran out of cash and closed their doors this morning, but I know I can get my hands on three or four hundred pounds by this evening, and you’re more than welcome to it.”

  And that did it. Salary, property, that was all very nice, but they were off in the distant and uncertain future. Four hundred pounds—today—was another thing entirely. Willie’s eyes glittered and danced like the numbers on a cash register. “Thank you, Howard, that would be a tremendous help. I swear to you, I’ll pay you back as soon—”

  Carlisle waved him down. “Nonsense, forget about that. I can’t tell you how grateful to you I am for doing this. It’ll take me a few hours to collect the money. Perhaps you and Bess could come by this evening? And I guess you’d best bring George.”

  It was all Willie could do to nod. Who would have thought that this bloody Nazi invasion was going to make him a rich man?