Corpus

by Rory Clements

  ‘I was at Bene’t Street until lunchtime, then I went to the butcher’s and grocer’s and came home. I haven’t heard any news. God, Tom, what is happening?’

  She seemed on the point of collapse. He took her in his arms and helped her sit at the kitchen table. ‘I’m so sorry, Lydia.’

  ‘But Margot had just called Nancy for some reason. Nancy was going to tell me about it at the cinema. Tom, this is all so horrible and weird.’

  Wilde poured her a fresh glass of wine. She gulped at it.

  ‘We used to be a team, Margot, Nancy and I, back in our Girton days. Clever girls with high ideals and a mission to change the world. Oh, poor Mrs Langley. She was lovely. Our weekends at their house were all walks, horse talk and drinks, but it got us away from our studies for a day or two. And she baked the most wonderful cakes. This is terrible. Poor Margot. If she’s been trying to contact them, she must be frantic with worry.’

  ‘Where is she? The villagers say they haven’t seen her recently.’

  ‘I don’t know, Tom. I haven’t heard from her in an age. She’s a bolter. Married some ass with a minor title and then she did a runner – and I can’t say I blame her because he was completely chinless. I rather thought she must have scooted off to London or the South of France – anything to avoid the trouble she’d have got into at home. Her father was an absolute stickler for good behaviour. He would have been incandescent.’

  ‘Well, the police will find her. She must be told.’

  ‘Do you think it’s connected with Nancy’s death? It must be. Both Margot and Nancy’s fathers knew each other well. They were friends.’

  Detective Superintendent Bower hadn’t seemed interested in the friendship. ‘We’ll find out,’ Wilde said, not really believing it. He clasped her hand. ‘I’ll cancel tonight, yes?’

  ‘Yes, cancel. I can’t bear to see anyone.’ Her body suddenly shook. ‘No, God no, don’t cancel. The stew’s just about cooked. Anyway, I want to hear what your Mr Eaton has to say. And I want to get sloshed.’

  *

  Wilde told Lydia most of what he knew about the murders, trying as hard as he could to avoid the gruesome details. Lydia sat in stunned silence, unable to take in the full horror of these past hours and days. She peppered him with questions, most of which he couldn’t answer and others that he wouldn’t. At last she poured another large wine, drank it in one, and returned to the pastry.

  ‘I can still cancel this evening.’

  ‘No, Tom. I may as well drink myself into oblivion among friends as alone.’ She told him she had invited Peggy Rale and Jean Whiston from Bowes & Bowes. ‘We were a bit shy in the female department and they were the only ones who came to mind. With luck, they’ll steer you men away from fist fights. I don’t think I could bear any trouble tonight.’

  *

  Eaton was the first to arrive. Lydia immediately latched on to him and began to question him about Nancy and the Langleys. ‘Surely there must be a connection, Mr Eaton?’

  ‘The problem is Corpus Delicti. Ancient British law. Without proof of a crime, there is no crime. And in the case of your friend Nancy, there is certainly no proof of crime and scarcely any evidence to speak of. Merely her fears, a trip to Berlin and suspicion on your part and my part.’

  ‘And her father’s,’ Wilde said. And mine, too, after all that has happened.

  ‘Indeed.’

  ‘But your suspicion isn’t without cause, is it, Mr Eaton?’ Lydia said. ‘You know something – something about our trip to Berlin. How do you know about that, by the way?’

  ‘As I told Professor Wilde, I hear things. I’m a pretty good reporter. And Miss Hereward wrote it up herself.’ He brushed her question aside. ‘But I’d like to find out more. Someone in Cambridge will know the truth. Whatever she was doing in Berlin, it wasn’t off her own bat.’

  Lydia wiped her hands down her apron, shook her head and turned to Wilde. ‘God, Tom, this is all too much. I’m getting scared. Bloody terrified, actually.’

  From everything Wilde knew of Lydia, he guessed it would take a lot to unnerve her. And even more for her to admit it. ‘We’ll talk more later,’ he said.

  She nodded. ‘You’re right. Go and get yourself drinks. I’m keeping this bottle of wine for myself.’ She bustled them out into the dining room and retired to the kitchen. Wilde looked at the closed door. She was trying to carry on as normal – working on the book, attending the rally for Kholtov, serving up dinner, keeping herself busy to dull the pain. But everything was mechanical. Must do this, must say that, must be jolly, must get drunk, mustn’t admit I’m vulnerable. It didn’t fool him for a moment.

  He headed for the drinks cabinet. ‘Now then, Lydia has a reasonable Scotch and there’s gin but no tonic. Hang on, I think there’s some angostura here. Yes, here it is. Pink gin? Hah, she’s got in some vodka for Comrade Kholtov. What will you have, Eaton?’

  ‘Scotch, no water.’

  As he was pouring, there was a knock at the door. The two young women from the Bowes & Bowes bookshop were standing on the doorstep, looking rather awkward. He knew them vaguely, had asked them to order books for him. ‘Miss Rale, Miss Whiston, come in, come in,’ he said, ushering them inside. ‘Let me introduce you to Philip Eaton. And a quiet word in your ear. Lydia’s feeling rather shredded tonight. Death of a very good friend.’

  Wilde wondered what Lydia had been thinking of by inviting these two. They were presentable enough, but they would be lost in this evening’s company. Peggy Rale sparkled like lemonade (though she asked for a port and lemon), and Jean Whiston was as prim as the sherry she drank. Both proclaimed a love for books: Peggy read Agatha Christie and Georgette Heyer while Jean spoke quietly of her love for Tolstoy and Gide and was currently reading Strait is the Gate, which she found most profound and rewarding. Wilde smiled and nodded; he had found it deathly.

  It was another three-quarters of an hour before Yuri Kholtov and Horace Dill appeared, just as Lydia was beginning to panic. Both of them had been drinking.

  ‘We’ve been talking about the King,’ Dill boomed. ‘We know what to do with kings, don’t we, Yuri?’

  Kholtov laughed and his large body shook. He blew out a stream of toxic smoke from his papirosa ‘people’s cigarette’.

  With introductions made and drinks poured, dinner was ready and they fell into their allotted seats. Peggy began to giggle and Wilde realised that Kholtov was doing something to her leg under the table. The Russian leant across and kissed her throat and she shivered with pleasure.

  Horace Dill was a less amiable drunk. He continued to rail against the government, the King, Mosley, Mussolini, Hitler and Franco, then turned to Eaton. ‘They’re all in a conspiracy against the people. Isn’t that so? This man we are supposed to revere as our king and head of state is as Nazi as the Nazis.’

  Wilde was surprised by Dill’s familiarity but then it struck him. He and Eaton must know each other. Dill had been a history don since before the war, and Eaton, as a one-time history undergraduate, must have attended his lectures, perhaps even been under his supervision. Why had they allowed themselves to be introduced as strangers?

  ‘So you two must already know each other,’ Wilde said.

  Dill and Eaton met each other’s eyes and smiled. ‘I once had high hopes for this young man,’ Dill said. ‘But the bourgeois filth was ingrained too deep in his rotten soul. Now look at him! He’s taken the Tory shilling at His Majesty’s capitalist press!’

  Eaton laughed. ‘Glad to hear you still spitting Bolshevik bile, Professor Dill. Good to know some things never change. Now have another drink and pay attention to your hostess.’

  Lydia was sitting opposite Horace Dill, breathing in the fumes from his enormous cigar. The table was already littered with ash. A fug of fumes hung over the guests like a city fog. ‘Don’t bother about me,’ she said. ‘I’m more than happy listening to everyone else this evening.’

  ‘She’s all right, that Lydia Morris.’ Dill slurred the wor
ds. ‘Her heart’s in the right place. Bit theoretical perhaps, but we’ll have her at the barricades yet.’

  ‘What about Nancy Hereward?’ Wilde asked. ‘Did you get her to the barricades?’

  Horace Dill peered through his spectacles, his little pig eyes boring into Wilde’s. ‘What are you suggesting, Tom?’

  ‘You’re a very amusing man, Horace, but you do have a tendency to send young innocents into the front line. Did you do that to Nancy Hereward, perhaps?’

  ‘She was worth a hundred of you, Tom Wilde. I’d have trusted that girl with my life. Her death is a damned tragedy.’

  And so there had been a closeness between them. Another of Horace Dill’s projects, like John Cornford. Wilde wondered about the hapless Roger Maxwell. He had spotted him with Dill, deep in conversation on several occasions, just as he had seen Eugene Felsted coming under Duncan Sawyer’s influence. If this was the way the young were going – splitting to the furthest extremes – it boded ill for the future of the world.

  So, Wilde thought, perhaps he had the first part of his answer, the identity of the man who had sent her on a mission in Berlin. Now he needed the second part, the nature of her task. ‘I’d very much like to discover the truth about her death, Horace. There is a suggestion that when she went to the Olympics in August she was asked to do some covert work for the Comintern. Would you know anything about that?’ His gaze strayed from Dill to Eaton, and then back to Dill.

  ‘Fuck you, Tom. I don’t like men who dance on graves.’

  ‘What was she doing for you?’

  Horace Dill looked away. ‘Where’s that fucking vodka bottle?’

  Wilde caught Eaton’s eye. If the reporter was put out that his theory about Nancy’s secret work had been mentioned, it didn’t show. He was watching and listening rather than joining the conversation. That was what reporters and spies did, wasn’t it – watched and listened? Wilde pushed on. ‘It occurred to me, Horace, that if her death was not suicide or accident, then you might have an idea who wished her dead.’

  The rest of the table fell silent.

  ‘Who wanted her dead?’ Dill shouted. ‘Who do you think wanted her dead, you imbecile? The fucking Nazis. Ask Mosley or Slievedonard or Londonderry or that creep Sawyer. Ask their fucking lordships. Ask the fucking Pope or the fucking Church of England. Ask Baldwin or Churchill or Ribbentrop.’

  Jean Whiston started to rise from her chair. ‘I’m sorry, Lydia, I don’t think . . .’

  Dill hammered the table with the haft of his knife. ‘Sit down, you stupid woman. Are you a Christian, is that it? Have I offended your superstitious sensibilities by mentioning His Holiness the fucking Pope? Is that it?’

  Jean looked to Lydia for assistance, but her eyes were heavy from drink and she shrugged helplessly. When Horace Dill’s tail was up, he could squirt a non-stop flow of noxious bile from his arse. Nothing short of death or earthquake would stop him.

  Dill waved the knife at Jean. ‘I’ll tell you about religion. I’ll tell you about the priests with their dirty fingernails up the choirboys’ cassocks, the nuns with their cunts all waxy from the altar candle. Power and money – your money – that’s what they want, you stupid little whore.’

  Jean Whiston was standing now. She stepped away from her chair, pushed it neatly back to the table, fetched her coat and handbag and, without another word, walked from the house.

  ‘That was unforgivable, Horace,’ Lydia said, tears beginning to flow. ‘You were abominably cruel.’

  ‘Moronic tart. Anyway, I see her friend’s still here. You’re not offended are you, miss whatever your name is?’

  ‘Miss Rale. And my dad was at Jutland so I know all your dirty words, Mr Dill, and plenty more besides. I know bugger and sodomise, too. I’m sure you know all about those words, don’t you, Mr Dill?’

  Horace Dill’s elephantine face twisted into a scowl, then exploded into a roar of laughter. ‘Your dad would certainly know them, being a Navy man.’

  Peggy snuggled closer to Kholtov, her eyes still on Dill. ‘Now, eat your food, smoke your filthy cigar and shut up, you nasty old man – you’re upsetting my lovely Russian friend here.’

  Wilde rose from his chair and touched Lydia on the shoulder. ‘I’ll go after Jean Whiston.’

  ‘Thank you, Tom.’

  *

  Wilde caught up with her at the bottom of the road. ‘Miss Whiston, I’m sorry about that.’

  She met his eyes. He could see that she had been crying.

  ‘It wasn’t your fault, Professor Wilde.’

  ‘Still, it shouldn’t have happened. Can I walk you home?’

  ‘I’ve got a flat near Cat’s. I’ll be all right.’

  ‘I’ll see you home safe.’

  She managed a modest smile. ‘Thank you. It’s nice to know there are still a few gentlemen in this horrible world.’

  *

  By the time Wilde returned, Leslie Braithwaite had arrived and was sitting at the table in his place, gorging on a large plate of stew, washing it down with neat whisky. He glanced up at Wilde, then returned to his eating, thrusting large spoonfuls of meat, gravy and vegetables into his hungry maw.

  Wilde took Jean Whiston’s chair and placed it at the head of the table, beside Kholtov. ‘How long are you planning to stay in Cambridge?’ he asked the Russian.

  ‘Are you worried that I might start killing people, Professor Wilde?’

  ‘Perhaps I’m too late.’

  Kholtov turned to Lydia with a hurt expression. ‘Your friend lacks manners, Miss Morris.’

  Wilde wasn’t having it. ‘Oh balls, Kholtov, I just lack your belief that the end justifies the means. That’s all. I know what has been happening in the Soviet Union – and I have a very good idea of what is now happening in Spain.’

  ‘Do you? I tell you, Mr Wilde, I learnt much at the Spanish front – about England. Britain. Here.’

  ‘Such as?’

  Kholtov’s mouth opened then shut, as though someone had kicked him under the table. Wilde looked across the table at Dill, glassy-eyed, drunk and taciturn. Had Kholtov been about to say something that he didn’t want revealed?

  ‘Anyway,’ Kholtov continued, returning to Wilde’s original question. ‘I think you are sadly misinformed. I am adviser to the legitimate Spanish Popular Front government of Francisco Caballero. I am not a savage. The people of Spain are fighting for their very existence against Franco’s fascist monsters. I ask you this – why you think me some sort of assassin or executioner? I have never heard of you, sir – why do you presume to know anything about me? It is most hurtful. You have an English word for it, slander.’

  ‘So how long are you staying?’

  He swept the question away with a flick of the hand. ‘Not more than two or three days.’

  ‘And then? Back to the killing fields of Spain?’

  ‘The killing fields of Spain?’ Dill exploded back into life. ‘You bleeding heart Yanks! In the real world, there’s a struggle between good and evil – and all the while you drink soda from your electric refrigerator and clean your house with a vacuum cleaner. In Spain and Germany, it’s kill or be killed.’

  ‘Oh, I think it’s a lot more complicated than that.’ Wilde turned his gaze back to Kholtov. ‘Well?’

  ‘No, I’m not going back to Spain. To Moscow. I have an appointment there.’ He looked across at Horace Dill. ‘It will be a great pleasure to see my family again after so long away.’

  Wilde pressed him. ‘Ah – so your work in Spain is finished?’

  The Russian was silent for a few moments. Peggy Rale moved away from him.

  ‘I think we all know what a summons to Moscow means, Professor Wilde. We are not children. We do not need fairytales.’

  ‘You mean a bullet in the head? Have you been denounced? If so, why not stay here – seek asylum in Britain or America? I am sure you must have secrets to sell.’

  Kholtov pasted a grin on his face and slammed the flat of his hand down on th
e table. ‘How easy it is to have fun at your expense, Wilde. I am joking, of course. Comrade Stalin loves me like a brother. He would never harm a hair on my head.’

  The telephone was ringing in the hall. Lydia pushed back her chair, rose unsteadily to her feet and went to answer it.

  ‘Well, that’s all right then. You’ll be a hero of the Revolution.’

  ‘Mr Wilde, you take a great interest in the affairs of others.’

  ‘So do you. You travelled all the way to Spain to stick your commissars and weapons into their affairs. But from what I hear, you’re so busy shooting the Trots there’s no ammunition left to fight General Franco. And now here you are in Cambridge, doing your best to lure yet more young men to their doom.’

  Lydia returned. ‘It’s for you, Tom.’

  Kholtov lit another strong cigarette and took a deep drag, blowing a cloud of smoke across the table. ‘Go to the telephone.’

  Wilde turned to Lydia. ‘Why would anyone call me here?’

  ‘Perhaps they don’t know your number.’

  Wilde rose, still angry, and went to the hall where he picked up the receiver. ‘Thomas Wilde speaking.’

  ‘It’s Sir Norman Hereward. Forgive me for calling so late, but I wanted to thank you for returning the photograph. It was very thoughtful of you. I’m sorry I couldn’t see you.’

  ‘Think nothing of it, Sir Norman.’

  ‘Good. Well, let me know if you hear anything.’

  Wilde heard a faint slurring in Hereward’s voice. He had been at the brandy, always his drink of choice. ‘Perhaps I could call on you tomorrow.’

  A heartbeat pause. ‘Very well. If you think you can be of use. Say two o’clock?’

  ‘I’ll be there.’

  *

  By the end of the evening, Braithwaite had finished up all the leftovers and gone to his room, Horace Dill was slumped across the table and Kholtov had disappeared into the night with Peggy Rale.

  ‘I think I’d better make my way back to the Bull,’ Eaton said. ‘Thank you for a most stimulating evening, Miss Morris.’