Smoke and Mirrors: The next instalment of the riveting Marnie Walker series

by Leo McNeir

  Ralph nodded. Eustace continued.

  “For the past year I’ve been acting as a kind of external tutor to a research student in Bonn. His name is Günter Kroll and he’s writing a doctoral thesis on military intelligence in preparation for the invasion of Britain.”

  “That doesn’t sound much of a threat to our security. The deployment of the Home Guard is hardly controversial any more.”

  “That’s right. But they were assembling a huge amount of data.”

  “They being your fifth column, presumably.”

  “Yes, plus the usual airborne photo-reconnaissance and naval observation. The Germans compiled a vast amount of material in enormous detail: coastline features and coastal defences, potential landing areas, centres of population, just about everything imaginable.”

  “And now out-of-date by half a century,” Ralph observed. “So no-one here is going to get very excited about it.”

  “Which is possibly why no-one here tries to interfere in my contact with Kroll. I’ve been over to see him a couple of times and we’ve examined the material in the Federal Archives. You wouldn’t believe how much they’ve got, Ralph, tonnes of dossiers, literally, maps showing key services, harbours, power stations, electricity supply cables, road and rail networks, even phrasebooks of questions that would be useful for interrogation.”

  “So you see how they planned the invasion from the German side, using information partly gathered from agents based in Britain. British intelligence surely knows all about this.”

  “Of course. It was the British army that captured it all during the invasion of Germany.”

  “Henry, I think the time has come for you to explain what it is that’s brought you here today. What you’ve told me is very interesting, but none of it is confidential. It’s been open to public scrutiny for years.”

  Eustace sat in silence for some time. Ralph was beginning to wonder if he was having second thoughts about divulging what he knew when Eustace began speaking quietly.

  “Kroll has stumbled on something by chance. It concerns Nazi sympathisers in Britain.”

  “At the time of the war?”

  “At that time, yes, but it has far-reaching consequences today, consequences that go to the top echelons of the British establishment.”

  “You mean the monarchy?”

  “Possibly.”

  “And you believe that is why you’ve been warned off.”

  “Yes.”

  “Let’s get this straight, Henry. Your colleague in Germany, your student, has found something in his researches that implicates the British monarchy in Nazism. Is that what you’re saying?”

  “It’s along those lines.”

  “Presumably this isn’t about Edward VIII and his association with Hitler. All that’s common knowledge.”

  “Of course.”

  “It’s also known that King George and the royal family would have nothing to do with him and that he was more or less banished, first to Bermuda during the war and then to a life in exile in France.”

  Eustace shrugged. “Common knowledge, as you say.”

  “Henry, I think even the most committed republican would find it hard to believe that the present queen and her family are Nazi sympathisers.”

  Eustace shrugged. “No. But I keep coming back to my question: who is powerful enough to get me warned off when I start asking about that extra body in the grave?”

  Ralph sat back in his chair and stared into the distance. The options were very limited. The monarchy? He dismissed the idea. The government? The conservatives had been in power a long time, but Major was a moderate and even Thatcher and her most dyed-in-the-wool cronies were no fascists, except to certain factions of their banner-waving far-left opponents. Who, then, could it be? Rogue elements in the security service? What could they want to cover up? What could be so important so many years after the war had ended? Ralph turned back to Eustace.

  “Can you explain precisely what Herr Kroll discovered?”

  “Before I do, Ralph, let me say that I’ve been through the same thought process as you. I don’t know what you’ve concluded, but frankly, so far I’ve drawn a blank.”

  “Tell me about Kroll’s research. You said he’d stumbled on something.”

  “It was entirely by chance while he was looking for something else.”

  Ralph’s turn to shrug. “That’s the nature of scholarship. Look at Alexander Fleming and penicillin.”

  “Exactly. The Federal Archives in Bonn contain files on hundreds of agents based in Britain, possibly thousands. Kroll was carrying out a survey on how many were picked up by British intelligence services and in what areas. He was looking for potential case studies on how the agents were detected and what happened to them subsequently.”

  “Are you sure the army intelligence officers didn’t go through all that after the war?”

  “There’s stacks of the stuff, Ralph. Most of it was very mundane: codenames, weekly returns – much of it inconclusive – password changes, notes on bomb damage, shipping movements in and out of ports, details gathered from newspapers. Most of it was out-of-date as soon as the war ended.”

  “But not all of it.”

  Eustace shook his head. “Kroll came across a file in the Abwehr – military intelligence, you know – relating to the capture of an agent based in Oxford. That’s what first attracted his interest. Under interrogation the agent offered information about high-up Nazi sympathisers as a deal to save his life. Convicted spies were of course hanged at that time.”

  “Were such deals common?”

  “Rare, but not impossible. The file dried up at about that point and –”

  “Sorry, Henry. I don’t quite follow. How did the Abwehr officer – presumably the agent’s handler – know about the interrogation and the deal?”

  “That’s the interesting point. The agent’s last official message back to Berlin told of his suspicion that he’d been rumbled. When he failed to report in at the next appointed time, the Abwehr officer – a Major Manfred Hallgarten – suspected he’d either been arrested or killed. A week or so later Hallgarten received a letter that was only to be sent to him from a member of that agent’s family in Germany if he was caught.”

  “How would they know that?”

  “Possibly from a contact in Britain who knew what had happened.”

  “I see. And this letter?”

  “It explained that the agent had a kind of insurance policy. It seems he’d deposited with a colleague a document detailing everything he knew about Nazi sympathisers in the British establishment. It was to be passed to the authorities in the event of his death or disappearance.”

  “So the agent would certainly have used this in his interrogation.”

  “Undoubtedly.”

  “What became of the agent?”

  “There’s no mention of him again in any of the Abwehr files that Kroll has so far examined. Technically his file was closed.”

  “And the document, Henry? Do we know what became of that?”

  “No, but there was an oblique reference to something that might have been it in wartime cabinet papers that were made public last year.”

  “Fifty years after the end of the war, and it’s still reverberating after all this time. Is that the end of the line?”

  “Kroll has managed to track down the agent’s handler in the Abwehr.”

  Ralph sat up. “Has he spoken to him?”

  Eustace pursed his lips. “No. He died in 1988.”

  “All very frustrating. So the trail has gone cold.”

  “There is one other thing, Ralph. Major Hallgarten had a daughter, Ingrid.”

  “Had?”

  “She’s alive and well and a professor of social anthropology at one of the universities in Frankfurt.”

  “Interesting.”

  “The bad news is, she refuses absolutely to discuss her father’s career as an army officer and a Nazi.”

  “Is she on the far right hers
elf?”

  “Quite the opposite. She’s regarded in political circles as a hard-line left-winger.”

  “There’s no chance that she might be willing to talk to Günter Kroll?”

  “She’s adamant. A brick wall would be more co-operative.”

  *

  Anne had spent the afternoon in Milton Keynes, first in the library, then on a visit to the food centre with a long list. She returned in time for tea.

  “No Ralph?”

  “He has a visitor from Oxford, a friend of Guy’s.”

  “Why did this friend come here? Ralph goes to Oxford every week. Couldn’t it wait?”

  Marnie put her pen down and sat back in the chair.

  “Everything seems so surreal these days. I wonder where it’s all going to end.”

  Anne walked over and perched on the edge of the desk.

  “That business in Oxford yesterday was weird. I mean, what could possibly be so important about a body that’s been in the ground for fifty years that it gets everyone jumping about? It’s not as if Knightly St John’s the centre of the universe, is it?”

  Marnie reached into a desk drawer and pulled out an OS Explorer map. She spread it open, and Anne swivelled off the corner of the desk.

  “You’re checking to see if Knightly actually is the centre of the universe? I think you might need a bigger map.”

  “I just wondered how Sarah Anne’s grave site related to the Court and its grounds. It must be about here.”

  They pored over it together, Marnie tracing a line with her finger from the back of the churchyard, past the executive houses to the grounds of Knightly Court.

  “This doesn’t help much, just shows how it looks now. I remember we talked about this with Randall. It didn’t quite sink in at the time.”

  Anne straightened up. “Hang on a minute.” She crossed to her desk and grabbed a folder from the pending tray. “I’ve got some bits and pieces in here, in the archaeology file.”

  Marnie was amazed at how much material Anne had collected. The folder was thick with notes, photographs, maps, diagrams and plans. Anne extracted one document and unfolded it as she carried it back to Marnie.

  “Look, this is one of Dick’s sketch maps of the area. It’s a copy from something in the county archives, shows most of the village from the church to down here soon after the civil war.”

  Marnie retraced the line from church to manor house. She found it interesting that so much had changed in over three hundred years. Knightly Court looked smaller then, and the church stood in a more isolated position, the village seeming little more than a cluster of houses, quaintly drawn on the plan, with a few lanes leading off one main street. In the area where the development of Martyrs Close now stood there was nothing indicated but trees.

  “I’m not sure I’m much further forward,” Marnie muttered.

  “We did this in geography at school, interpreting maps,” Anne said, looking over Marnie’s shoulder. “It’s surprising how much you can tell.”

  Marnie sat back to give Anne a clearer view. “There you are, then, surprise me.”

  Anne leaned over and studied the map in silence for a full minute.

  “It’s interesting, isn’t it?”

  “I’ll take your word for it, Anne. D’you want to give me a clue?”

  Anne tapped a finger-nail on the spot where they knew Sarah Anne Day was buried.

  “It’s interesting to see what isn’t there.”

  “I’m willing to be persuaded.” Marnie sounded dubious.

  “Well, I think maps in those days were partly drawings and partly diagrams. You can see how the cartographer has drawn little cottages in the high street.”

  “Okay.”

  “And so these trees drawn where Sarah’s buried probably mean that the whole site was fairly dense woodland. See? He’s drawn them close together. They still do that on modern maps.”

  “They buried her in a spot where the grave was well concealed, you mean.”

  “Yes.”

  “Is that what you meant when you said you were interested to see what wasn’t there?”

  “No. What isn’t there is the gate in the churchyard wall.”

  Marnie craned forward, her nose almost touching the surface.

  “Would you expect a map to show that kind of detail?”

  Anne pointed again. “Look. The other gate’s marked, with the footpath from the Court.” She ran her finger along the wall towards the trees. “But no path or gateway at this end.”

  “I see what you mean. If this is accurate, there was no doorway back then.”

  “Of course not,” Anne said.

  “Why of course not?”

  “Because that was the way the Knightly Court estate workers went to church in Victorian times.” Anne indicated a place between the Court and the church. “They built cottages about here for some of their staff.”

  “You’re right, Anne. That must have been about two hundred years after Sarah’s death.”

  “She was buried well away from where people would walk.”

  Marnie nodded. “Until they wanted to create a path through the woods to gain access to the church so that the workers wouldn’t share the same route as their employers. Do you have a plan from that time in your folder?”

  “Probably. I’ve got just about everything in here.”

  True to her word, Anne soon dug out an estate plan from the end of the nineteenth century. Marnie spotted the new footpath at once.

  “There it is! What do you make of that, map-reader extraordinaire?”

  Anne returned to sitting side-saddle on the desk.

  “Actually, I’m not sure what this proves, Marnie. The Victorian footpath doesn’t really go very near to Sarah’s grave. It skirts the churchyard wall along there, and the area was still heavily wooded.”

  “Until when?”

  “Dunno. Perhaps until they built Martyrs Close? I haven’t any modern plans at that kind of scale. What are you trying to find out, exactly?”

  “I was wondering at what point Sarah’s grave was revealed, that’s all.”

  Anne began gathering up the papers. As she picked up the oldest plan to fold it together, she paused to look at it, smiling.

  “I love the detail they included in those days, Marnie. Look at this bit here.”

  On that part of the map showing the fields that now extended down to the canal and Glebe Farm, the cartographer had drawn in sheep dotting the slope all the way down the hill. Anne laughed gently.

  “Perhaps if he came back now he’d draw archaeologists on the hillside.”

  Marnie smiled at the sheep. Every one had its own individual face, as if they had sat for portraits. She tried not to let her smile fade too quickly at the thought that that same land later contained the graves of dead labourers and witches.

  Chapter 37

  War Grave

  On Tuesday morning Marnie braced herself for the call at nine on the dot. It never came. Anne had already left for Knightly Court, and Marnie was pleased that her strategy of heading off Celia’s bleating seemed to have worked.

  Anne arrived back some twenty minutes later to report that Celia was nowhere to be seen. Marnie’s cunning plan was working. With luck, by the end of the day the master bedroom would be re-papered before Celia had time to think about it. Marnie was convinced that that part of the programme would deliver a major psychological advantage. Once Celia saw the tangible result of the redecoration in her own bedroom, it would become a haven and she would become less critical. At least, that was the idea.

  Anne was reporting on progress at the Court when the sound of a car arriving made them both freeze. It had come to a halt beside the farmhouse. But it was not the svelte, designer-label Celia who wafted past the window on the way to the office door. In familiar cheese-cutter and tweeds, George Stubbs hove into view, tapping twice on the plate glass as he plodded by. The cheese-cutter was doffed as he poked his head round the door.

  “Good m
orning, fair ladies.” His voice was rich, like thick gravy on a Sunday joint. “Not disturbing you, am I?”

  “Come in, George. You’re rather early for coffee.”

  He waved a dismissive hand. “Just popped in as a courtesy. Come to see the excavations, if it’s no trouble. Haven’t been down for a while.”

  “Do you know Dick Blackwood, the site director?” Anne asked. “I could take you round and introduce you, if you like.”

  He beamed. “Best offer I’ve had all day.”

  As Anne turned to go, Marnie said, “Just a sec. George, can I ask you something?”

  “Are you back on your missing persons trail, my dear?”

  “Only indirectly. Come in for a moment.”

  As George advanced into the office, Anne pulled up the visitors’ chair, and he lowered himself onto it.

  “How can I help? I spoke to my cousin Albert about people going missing in the war, but he’s no wiser than I am.”

  “Did you ever play in the woods as a child?”

  “They were private property in those days, Marnie.”

  “You haven’t answered my question, George.”

  He grinned. “Yes, of course. Sherwood Forest, we called it, played Robin Hood there.” He winked and tapped the side of his nose. “Don’t ask what we got up to with Maid Marian!”

  He guffawed at his joke, but rapidly subsided in the face of Marnie’s non-reaction.

  “Would that include the woods where Martyrs Close now stands?”

  “Ah, that was much more difficult. The Court’s back yard, so to say.”

  “Can you remember how long ago they felled the trees in those woods, the ones by the churchyard?”

  “Quite some time ago now.”

  “Was it when they came to build Martyrs Close in the seventies?”

  “Oh no, much earlier, during the war, nineteen-forty, forty-one perhaps?”

  “As early as that?”

  “Of course. The country needed the timber. It had to come from British sources. Supplies from overseas weren’t reliable. The Jerries were all over Scandinavia, U-boats in the Atlantic.”

  “So they chopped down mature woodland trees. Such a loss. Presumably they replanted with saplings?”

  “Absolutely, although …” George took on a faraway look. “Funny, now that you mention it, never occurred to me at the time. I was just a small boy.” He grinned again. “If you can imagine that.”