The Great Betrayal

by Pamela Oldfield

  ‘Get on with it then, because I have a warrant for his arrest.’

  A curtain moved at a window across the street. It doesn’t take long, she thought resentfully and wondered how many others were peeking from behind their curtains.

  ‘Is he in or isn’t he? You’re his landlady, so you should know.’

  ‘Maybe I should, but I don’t. I was dozing. He may have slipped out.’ She wondered if he could hear what was going on at the front door – and if so, was he making good his escape? Did he, for some reason, need to make an escape? It would be easy to climb out of his window and down on to the roof of the privy. Then he’d be out of the back gate and into the alley and away.

  The constable whispered something to his colleague, who nodded and watched him run off along the street.

  The sergeant’s smile was cold. ‘Alley at the back, is there?’

  ‘Course there is. What’s he supposed to have done, my Mr Burke?’

  ‘None of your business, madam. Now, are you going up to wake him or shall I do it? I can get a warrant to search the place.’

  Mrs Duggett hesitated, thinking about the state of her home. There were a few cobwebs, shoes in the wrong place, laundry in the bath soaking . . . She tossed her head, turned on her heel and went upstairs. What have you gone and done, Mr Burke? she asked silently. It would be a shame to lose him because he paid almost regularly and was no trouble. Not until now, anyway.

  She knocked on his door. ‘Are you in there, Mr Burke?’ she asked loudly. Then, she lowered her voice and spoke through the keyhole: ‘Only, there’s two coppers at the door asking for you. Leastways, there was, but one’s gone round the back to the alley. They won’t say what it’s about, and I’ve told them you might have gone out.’

  The key was turned in the lock, the door opened and a very sooty hand grabbed her arm and pulled her inside. Her lodger was in his underwear, and she quickly averted her gaze from his scrawny frame. The door was relocked as Mrs Duggett stared round. There was soot in the fireplace and on the carpet. She tutted crossly and decided to try and make him buy her a new piece of carpet. Surely, he hadn’t tried to escape up the chimney. ‘What’s happening?’ she asked, noticing for the first time how terrified he looked. As he scrambled into his clothes he was trembling, his eyes wide, his face white as chalk.

  He pointed to a very sooty looking package which lay in the hearth, wrapped in newspaper. ‘I have to hide that!’ he hissed, reaching for his shirt. ‘I was looking after it for a friend, but he’s scarpered and . . . it’s a pistol!’

  ‘A pistol!’ Mrs Duggett took a step backwards, one hand on her heart.

  ‘Shh! It’s not loaded. You’re quite safe. What do they want?’

  ‘They’ve come to arrest you. That’s what they said.’

  Before either of them could decide what was best to be done, they heard heavy footsteps on the stairs.

  A deep voice said, ‘I’m coming up, Mr Burke, and I want no nonsense from you.’

  ‘That’s the sergeant.’ Mrs Duggett wrapped her arms around herself defensively. ‘You’d best go quietly, Mr Burke,’ she suggested. ‘You don’t want it to end in fisticuffs. There are two of them, and if you try and fight back they might say you were trying to . . .’

  When the footsteps reached the landing they speeded up and the door was thrown open. The sergeant stepped into the room and glanced round, noting the rumpled bed. ‘Willis Burke, I am Sergeant Harris, and I’m arresting you on a charge of—’

  ‘I was never in the shop!’ Burke stammered, sinking back on to the bed. ‘I was just the driver!’

  Ignoring him, the sergeant continued: ‘—of fraud and misleading the public and obtaining money by false pretences. Anything you say may be used in evidence against you.’

  He stammered ‘I – I don’t know what you mean. Fraud? Wh–what’s that about? Mrs Duggett will tell you I’m a model citizen. She’ll vouch for me.’ He looked at her imploringly.

  Mrs Duggett, however, had gone as far as she was prepared to go to help him. ‘Vouch, indeed! Don’t you go dragging me into whatever it is. And what’s that about a shop? I know nothing about any shop.’ She turned back to the policeman. ‘It’s nothing to do with me. I don’t know what he does with his time.’

  The sergeant grinned. ‘Hardly a character reference!’ he sneered. ‘We’ll have to see what he says down at the station.’ He grabbed his prisoner by the arm and yanked him to his feet.

  Seeing her lodger’s terrified expression, Mrs Duggett relented slightly and added, ‘But I don’t reckon he’s done anything wrong, Sergeant, because he’s a man of God.’

  ‘Oh yes? Is that what he says?’

  ‘It’s true!’

  ‘That’s a matter of opinion.’ He pushed his face close to Willis Burke’s. ‘Ever heard of a private wedding, Mr Burke?’

  She went on as if he had not spoken. ‘A man of the cloth, as they say. He wouldn’t hurt a fly!’

  ‘Oh, wouldn’t he? I think Mrs May Ellerway would see it differently!’ He frowned at the mess in the hearth. ‘What’s all this soot then? Made a right mess.’

  Mrs Duggett rallied. ‘A bird came down the chimney. A pigeon. They do that. They get stuck, then they panic and fly down instead of up.’ She smiled at her lodger. ‘Always gives you a bit of a fright, doesn’t it, Mr Burke? Mind you –’ she turned to the sergeant – ‘I’m expecting him to pay for a new bit of carpet, ’cos I told him to stuff some newspaper up the chimney and he hasn’t bothered. So this mess—’

  ‘I will do it. Yes.’ Her lodger nodded eagerly, but the policeman had lost interest in the soot. Very deliberately, he pulled handcuffs from his pocket. ‘Please hold out your hands, Mr Burke.’

  ‘But I’m not guilty! I haven’t done anything!’

  ‘I shan’t ask again. Are you resisting arrest?’

  ‘No, but I . . . Well, not exactly.’ Closing his eyes, Willis Burke held out his hands.

  The sergeant snapped the handcuffs around his wrists. ‘You are charged with falsifying marriage documents and impersonating a vicar!’ He looked out of the window and signalled to his colleague, who had found his way to the back alley and was waiting at the back gate. Pushing up the lower sash window he shouted, ‘Get back here pronto, Constable! We’ve got him.’

  Minutes later, as a shocked Mrs Duggett watched, the three of them left and closed the door behind them. She was aware, in the ensuing silence, of a sense of loss, and was thoroughly unsettled, but by the time she had made a pot of tea, Maggie, her next-door neighbour, was knocking on the door demanding to know what was going on. Telling the exciting story of her lodger’s arrest cheered Mrs Duggett up again.

  Maggie said, ‘Lodgers come and go, Mrs Duggett. You’ll soon find someone else.’

  It wasn’t until the next morning, when Mrs Duggett went into Mr Burke’s room to tidy up and strip the bed, that the landlady found the pistol under the pillow, and wondering what to do with it unsettled her again.

  While Willis Burke was being arrested, Lydia was peeling potatoes for their evening meal and finally allowing herself to think the unthinkable about the man she loved. Her peeling knife moved slowly as the minutes passed and the peelings fell softly into the tin bowl in the sink. As her painful thoughts whirled, she added the finished potato to those already in the water in the saucepan and her hand reached automatically for another . . . and then another, until her conclusions became an agony of despair and she uttered a faint cry that was almost a sob. She dropped the potato, the knife fell from her hand, and she staggered back, her hands groping blindly to find somewhere to sit before she fell. Seated, she stared vacantly, her face was pale and her breathing laboured.

  ‘John!’ she whispered. ‘John!’

  He was never coming back! He had gone . . . somewhere. He was obviously in danger from those unseen enemies of the country’s government. The tell-tale signs were there, she told herself, but she had ignored them. John had taken her jewellery ‘to get it insured�
� and would never return it because he needed money, because he was being pursued. If he returned to them, she and Adam and her Father would also be in danger.

  ‘Oh John! My dearest!’

  He had not been able to say goodbye to his son because he was forced by circumstances beyond his control to desert them – to protect them, most likely, she thought. Whatever threatened him meant that he’d had no option but to put his wife and child at a safe distance. But what was it that threatened him?

  ‘Something is terribly wrong!’ she murmured.

  The vague doubts and worries that had afflicted her throughout the past weeks had suddenly crystallized into something that felt like a certainty.

  She said, ‘John!’ and felt her stomach churn. Why did she feel so certain that she would never see him again? How did she know that he would never again hold her in his arms or wake beside her in their bed? Her body felt leaden, and she could scarcely see across the kitchen. She felt shocked and so cold. Was she going to faint? ‘No, do not lose control!’ she told herself.

  She could hear Mr Phipps and Adam in the backyard. The latter was trying to teach the kitten to fetch a ball.

  ‘He’s not like a puppy,’ Mr Phipps explained. ‘He’ll run after it, but he won’t bring it back.’

  ‘Why won’t he?’

  ‘Because he doesn’t understand what you want him to do. He just wants to play with it. Cats don’t learn tricks the way dogs do.’

  ‘But why don’t they?’

  ‘Nobody knows, Adam, but they don’t.’

  Lydia closed her eyes. ‘I’m going to be sick!’ she whispered and stumbled towards the sink. Pulling out a bucket from beneath it, she threw up the contents of her stomach as tears forced themselves down her cheeks.

  ‘My dear, Liddy! You’re ill!’

  Her father had come in from the front room and now hurried to her, his face creased with concern. ‘My dear, you must go upstairs and rest. I’ll bring you a cup of tea.’

  Looking into his familiar face, Lydia was suddenly reminded of years past, before he had started to change, and that provoked more tears. A moment later she was on her feet and he was holding her in his arms, patting her back gently and murmuring soothing words which brought a small glow of comfort. Clinging to him, she smelled the familiar mix of his shaving soap and pipe tobacco – a smell which carried her back to her childhood when she would run into his arms on his return from the shop. Always he had a biscuit for her, hidden in his jacket pocket.

  ‘I’ll help you upstairs, Liddy, and then I’ll put the kettle on and bring you some tea – or maybe some Ovaltine. You can rest. I’ll see to the bucket. Now come along, dear.’

  Gratefully, she allowed him to help her up the stairs, his arm around her waist. When they reached her bedroom he watched her climb on to the bed.

  He said gently, ‘Whatever has happened, Lydia, you are not alone. You still have me and little Adam.’

  Astonished by his perception, Lydia blotted her tears on the sheet and closed her eyes. After he had gone she finally acknowledged that what she had always dreaded was happening. She was losing her husband, and Adam was losing his father. Their future was bleak.

  When Leonard Phipps came back indoors with Adam and the kitten, Sooty fell into his basket and went to sleep. George took the lodger on one side and explained that Mrs Daye was unwell. He found a new puzzle for Adam and settled him in the front room, before leading Mr Phipps back into the kitchen and sitting him down. Then he sat down beside him and leaned forward.

  ‘I’m worried about my daughter,’ he said without preamble, ‘and I’d be glad if you would help keep an eye open for any signs of distress. The fact is that she has had a bad shock – she has come to the conclusion that all is not well with her husband and that he may have left her.’

  ‘Left her? Good Lord!’

  ‘I’ve had my suspicions from the day I met him. All this unnatural secrecy about where he is and what he is doing. I don’t think he really works for the government, and I believe it has just dawned on her that . . . Well.’ He shrugged. ‘That he is in some kind of trouble. I noticed she was no longer wearing her diamond ring, and she admits he has taken back all her jewellery. Presents he gave her over the years. Says he’s getting them insured. That’s poppycock!’

  ‘But the PSD? Couldn’t we—’

  ‘There’s no such place – in my opinion. Just a red herring. He’s spun her a yarn, and she fell for it. Poor Lydia. Why she married him is a mystery to me.’

  ‘I did find all that rather odd, I must admit, but it wasn’t my place to—’

  ‘Well, now it is!’ George tapped the side of his nose. ‘She thinks I’m in my dotage, and I may not be the man I was five years ago, but I’m not completely daft yet! Sometimes I get muddled, but most of the time I know which day it is and who’s on the throne!’ He gave a short laugh. ‘Don’t ask me. I might say Queen Victoria!’

  ‘I wouldn’t dream of—’

  ‘I’m usually fairly lucid, so far so good, but my father went this way, poor old boy. It’s not easy getting old, but you’ve a long way to go . . .’ He took out his pocket watch, opened the back and blew gently into it. Closing it, he checked the time. ‘Ah yes! This watch keeps pretty good time. Yes . . . A nice little timepiece. I shall leave it to Robert when I die.’ He slipped it back into his waistcoat pocket. ‘Where was I, Mr Phipps?’

  ‘We spoke about your daughter and her husband and where he is now.’

  ‘Ah! So we did. Yes, I see what goes on, but I bide my time.’

  Mr Phipps was looking very worried, thought George, as well he should. He was a policeman, and he was in a better position to discover the truth – if he cared to make the effort.

  ‘So, Mr Meecham, you don’t really think he is a spy – or do you?’ Mr Phipps asked.

  ‘No. Not sufficiently well educated to be a spy. They don’t take just anybody, and that’s what he is – just anybody. No, he’s up to something, and he may well be in danger now, but I doubt the government knows anything about him.’

  ‘I’ll do whatever I can to help you.’

  ‘Thank you. He’s a wrong’un! That’s all I know, and I don’t want him ruining my daughter’s life – if he hasn’t already done so.’ He glanced round. ‘Where’s the boy gone, I wonder? Where’s young Robert?’

  ‘Adam is in the other room doing his puzzle.’

  ‘Adam? Oh yes, of course.’ He rose slowly to his feet, suddenly feeling exhausted by his extended conversation. ‘I promised Liddy a mug of Ovaltine, so she will be wondering where it is and thinking I’ve forgotten.’ He put a finger to his lips and nodded towards upstairs where Lydia was resting. ‘Not a word!’

  ‘Of course not, sir.’

  ‘I thought two heads would be better than one, and we do have a problem.’

  ‘You can rely on me.’

  George smiled. ‘I thought that would be your answer.’ He stared round the room in search of inspiration. ‘Now, where was I going?’

  The interview room was small and simply furnished with a table and two chairs, a coat stand, and a waste-paper basket made of raffia. Willis Burke viewed it with distaste. He regarded the sergeant sullenly and said, ‘It stinks in here!’

  ‘That’s the smell of fear, Mr Burke.’ The policeman laughed. ‘No doubt you’ll be adding to it in a minute. Sit down. You need to answer a few questions for us.’

  ‘And then I can go?’

  ‘Maybe, and then again maybe not.’

  Burke removed his cap and folded it into a roll, then sat down after brushing some imaginary specks of dirt from the chair. He had decided to put on a show of bravado, but inside he was trembling and his mind was racing. What could he say and what must he conceal? He must watch out for trick questions. The police were very good at that.

  ‘Name?’

  ‘Willis Burke.’

  ‘Not a reverend, then?’

  His pulse speeded up, and his grip on his cap tightened. Was this
really what it was about? ‘I didn’t pass the exams. I could have been a vicar. I studied it all . . . Well, not quite all, but enough. I had to give up because . . . of ill health.’

  ‘Ah yes. St Joseph’s, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Who told you I’d been to college? Who told you I was at St Joseph’s? I bet I know!’

  ‘So do you have any real qualifications to do with the church?’

  ‘I told you I couldn’t take the examinations. I can guess who told you I didn’t. That so-called friend! If I ever see him again . . .’

  ‘And this friend? His name, please.’

  ‘I’m not saying his name. You can’t drag him into this.’

  ‘Not even if he’s dragged you into it?’

  Burke hated the man’s sly smile – the cat with a mouse. He remained silent. He would outwit this sergeant, he vowed.

  ‘Mr Burke, are you or are you not qualified to take religious services?’

  ‘Yes . . . At least, in a private way. That is, sort of.’ He studied the man, hating his moustache and his red face and his hands with their big fingers. Like sausages. Instinctively, he glanced at his own hands, preferring his slim fingers, which his aunt had once described as artistic – much to his mother’s delight.

  ‘So would you call a wedding a religious service, Mr Burke, and would you be qualified to take such a service?’

  Burke let out a long breath while he thought desperately. How much did this man know? And who had told him? Who had dropped him in the mire? Could it really have been Dolly’s mother? More likely Don or Sid.

  He said, ‘I hope, Sergeant, that you haven’t been talking to a certain Donald Wickham, because if so he has misled you. He’d say anything to get me into trouble, so if it was him you can forget it.’ When the sergeant made no answer, Burke stumbled on. ‘Never have got along with the man. Or his brother, come to that. I’ve known them a long time, but never got close to them. They’re a funny pair, the brothers. Not to be trusted, if you know what I mean. Not what you’d call—’

  ‘So you wouldn’t pretend to marry someone if you weren’t qualified to actually do so.’

  ‘No. Wouldn’t be right, would it?’ He risked a smile.