DAVID ROBERTS worked in publishing for over thirty years before devoting his energies to writing full time. He is married and divides his time between London and Wiltshire.
Visit www.lordedwardcorinth.co.uk to find out more about David and the series.
Praise for David Roberts
‘A classic murder mystery with as complex a plot as one could hope for and a most engaging pair of amateur sleuths whom I look forward to encountering again in future novels.’
Charles Osborne, author of
The Life and Crimes of Agatha Christie
‘Dangerous Sea is taken from more elegant times than ours, when women retained their mystery and even murder held a certain charm. The plot is both intricate and enthralling, like Poirot on the high seas, and lovingly recorded by an author with a meticulous eye and a huge sense of fun.’
Michael Dobbs, author of
Winston’s War and Never Surrender
‘Roberts’ use of period detail . . . gives the tale terrific texture. I recommend this one heartily to history-mystery devotees.’
Booklist
‘The plots are exciting and the central characters are engaging, they offer a fresh, a more accurate and a more telling picture of those less placid times.’
Sherlock
Titles in this series
(listed in order)
Sweet Poison
Bones of the Buried
Hollow Crown
Dangerous Sea
The More Deceived
A Grave Man
The Quality of Mercy
Something Wicked
No More Dying
Sweet Sorrow
Constable & Robinson Ltd
3 The Lanchesters
162 Fulham Palace Road
London W6 9ER
www.constablerobinson.com
First published in the UK by Constable, an imprint of
Constable & Robinson Ltd 2008
This paperback edition published by Robinson, an imprint of
Constable & Robinson Ltd 2009
Copyright © David Roberts 2008, 2009
The right of David Roberts to be identified as the author
of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
All rights reserved. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
A copy of the British Library Cataloguing in
Publication Data is available from the British Library
UK ISBN: 978-1-84529-690-2 (hbk)
UK ISBN: 978-1-84529-906-4 (pbk)
eISBN: 978-1-78033-422-6
Printed and bound in the EU
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
For the two Georges
I am most grateful to Lord Brabazon of Tara and Gary Lowe for instructing me in the mysteries of the Cresta Run. Philip Truett knows everything there is to know about Huntercombe Golf Club, and I must also thank Nicholas Courtney who is knowledgeable on a whole range of abstruse subjects.
So shalt thou feed on Death, that feeds on men,
And Death once dead, there’s no more dying then.
Shakespeare, Sonnet 146
It cannot be but he was murder’d here;
The least of all these signs were probable.
Shakespeare, Henry VI
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Historical Note
February and March 1939
1
In the thick fog – a ‘pea-souper’, they called it – Verity Browne nosed her way down unfamiliar streets, her handkerchief to her mouth, dodging the cars and buses which loomed, yellow-eyed and sinister, out of the Stygian gloom. She was looking for Ransom Street, which she knew to be in the maze of narrow alleys behind Warren Street underground station. She strained to see the street names, half-tempted to give it up and return home. The doctor had warned her not to go out in fog as she was not yet fully recovered from tuberculosis and her lungs were still sensitive to polluted air. She had been lucky. It had not been a serious infection but she knew it was foolish to take chances. She asked herself wryly why she had left her gas mask behind.
It was an indication of the dangerous political situation in Europe that, despite Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s every effort to appease Hitler, Sir John Anderson who was in charge of Air Raid Precautions – the ARP – had begun to issue gas masks in anticipation of poisonous gas attacks from the air. Trenches were being dug in the Royal Parks, anti-aircraft gun emplacements hurriedly constructed against the anticipated bombardment by the Luftwaffe’s supposedly invincible planes. Primitive bomb protection shelters, six feet by four, made from six curved sheets of corrugated iron, were being distributed to any house with a back or front garden into which a shelter could be buried. Londoners were resigned to their fate, only asking that the strain of waiting and imagining the unimaginable should at last be over.
Verity’s goal was a branch or ‘group’ meeting of the Communist Party and she felt nervous, like a lapsed Catholic seeking out a mass against her better judgement. She retained only a residual loyalty to the Party. It was no longer the ‘band of brothers’ she had joined in a state of almost religious fervour in 1934. Then she had anticipated becoming an unimportant foot soldier in an army of like-minded seekers after truth, attempting to hold back an inexorable wave of Fascist terror. Spain’s democratically elected government was facing an army in rebellion, supported by the Roman Catholic Church. The International Brigade had been raised to fight for the Republican cause – volunteers drawn mostly, but not exclusively, from the working classes of many countries rallying to the aid of their oppressed Spanish brothers. It had been a logical and thrilling extension of the Party’s defiance of Fascism.
They had been defeated. That was bitter enough. Only a few nights ago she had been at Victoria station to welcome back the pathetic remnants of that proud army of idealists, but the worst of it was that she had seen the Party turn on itself, gnawing at its own entrails. It had been betrayed by its leaders – the cause subverted by devious and unprincipled apparatchiks. The International Brigade, which had gone to Spain to fight for justice and liberty, had been a chaotic amalgam of Communists, socialists, Trotskyists, anarchists and trades unionists. The Communists, on the orders of their paymasters in Moscow, had rejected this communion. They had ‘purified’ the Party of ‘dissident elements’ with the grim determination of the religious extremist. Anyone who refused to accept unquestioning obedience to Moscow was ‘liquidated’.
Verity had never counted obedience among her virtues, preferring independence of thought and action, so she had gradually, though reluctantly, distanced herself from the movement she had joined with such high hopes. She still counted herself a Communist but was seriously thinking of turning in her Party card. However, if anything of the original Party remained, it was to be found in these local meetings where fifteen or twenty comrades gathered together to hear the word preached to them.
She had three special reasons for braving the fog and bitter chill. In the first place she liked a
nd admired the District Secretary, George Castle, a locomotive driver, and his wife Mary. It was in their house that the meeting was being held and this was the first time Verity had visited their new home. When they had first been married, they had lodged in a stinking tenement near the railway line but, painfully slowly, they had saved enough money to rent their new respectable, rat-free abode.
In the second place she had been asked – no, ordered – to be there by David Griffiths-Jones. He was a senior Party figure and had once, briefly, years before, been her lover; in fact, she smiled apologetically to herself, he had been her first lover. He had deflowered her, as she had so much wanted, seeing virginity as one of those ‘bourgeois’ shackles she was determined to discard as she fought clear of what she saw as suffocating middle-class morality. Neither she nor David had pretended to be in love with one another but, as a lover, he had been efficient to the point of brutality. He was pragmatic in everything he did and had discarded her without a word of apology or regret as soon as it suited him.
She had not seen him for many months – not since just before the destruction of the Basque city of Guernica by German bombers in April 1937 – and she was curious to see how he had weathered the political storms which had followed that disaster. She suspected that he had been forewarned of what was to happen to the peaceful, undefended town and had deliberately refrained from alerting the authorities. There was evidence to suggest that Guernica had been sacrificed in a last desperate bid to generate international sympathy for the Republican cause. If it were true, Verity swore she would never forgive him or the Party.
And, finally, there was the reason that David had given her. The guest speaker was to be an old friend of hers – Fernando Ruffino, a young Italian Communist who had joined the International Brigade and fought in Spain against Franco and his German and Italian Fascist allies. Mussolini, desperate to ingratiate himself with Hitler and eager for a share of the spoils, had sent troops and, more importantly, Camproni bombers to Spain to help in the war against godless Communism.
She had liked and admired Fernando, and there had been a moment when they had almost become lovers, but he had been wounded on the Aragon front and hospitalized in France. He had not returned to Spain and was rumoured to be fighting Fascism in Italy. She had heard that he was now married with a child. She knew nothing of Italian Fascism – she had never even been to Italy – and she was looking forward to hearing what he had to say about it.
A policeman materialized out of the fog and, gratefully, she asked him for directions. He was kind enough to walk with her to Ransom Street and waved his bull’s-eye lamp down towards the end of the road.
‘Number nine’s on the left, miss, by the second lamp post. Was it George Castle you was looking for?’
‘Yes, it is, constable. How did you know?’
‘He’s a respected figure hereabouts. There’s folk who owe him a lot. Leastways, that’s what I hear, and that’s despite the company he keeps.’
‘The company he keeps?’ Verity felt rather insulted.
‘No offence, miss, but it’s all politics nowadays and working people has no need of politics. If I may say so, miss, you’d do better not to wander round here, lost like, in your pretty hat and that bag of yours hanging on your arm so tempting. You’d as likely as not lose it on a night like this, if you understand me. Goodnight, miss.’
He touched his helmet respectfully and disappeared into the fog. Verity felt justly rebuked but was angry with herself for not remonstrating with him on the democratic duty of everyone to stand up and be counted. Of course it was all politics nowadays because no good citizen should stand by without protest and watch his country turned into a fascist state. She sighed and then coughed as the fog filled her lungs. She feared that the British – or at least the English – were not a politically aware people.
She turned to knock on the door of number nine. The constable was right about one thing, she admitted to herself. It had been stupid to put on that silly hat – the one she had bought in Bond Street the day before – to pay a visit in this neighbourhood. She saw how it might appear a challenge to the local youths, asking to be knocked off her head. Furthermore, it was not suitable for a Party meeting. Even now, she still had time to tear it off her head and throw it in the gutter, but she did not. Instead, she stuck out her chin in a way her friends would have recognized. Why should she pretend to be what she was not? It was a beautiful hat. ‘Très jolie,’ the assistant had said as she had packed it in its box. But who had made it – a girl sewing herself blind in some dingy sweatshop for a starvation wage? At least she had work. Verity was unable to deal with the contradictions in her life. Perhaps she was unsuitable company for George Castle, as the constable had hinted, but, take it or leave it, she could not, would not, change.
She was late and the tiny parlour was already tightly packed. Castle welcomed her warmly and introduced her. There was David, of course, so tall and good-looking that he seemed to fill the room all by himself. He did not kiss her – that would not have been suitable in a gathering of comrades – but shook her by the hand and seemed genuinely pleased she had come. He had his arm round a girl who hardly took her eyes off him. He, in turn was defensive, even rather awkward as he introduced her to Verity.
‘Lucinda Arbuthnot-Grey,’ he mumbled. ‘I’ve told you about Verity Browne, haven’t I, Lulu?’
Lulu! Verity repressed a giggle. She seemed utterly uninterested in Verity and without so much as a ‘hello’ dragged him away. ‘I’m dying for a ciggie, dahling. Whatever that stuff was we were drinking last night, it’s given me the most ghastly headache.’
‘Shall I put you in a taxi? There’s no need for you to stay.’ To Verity’s astonishment, David was positively oozing concern.
‘Are there taxis in this place?’ she replied in a voice which made even David wince.
‘There’s usually taxis in Charlotte Street,’ George Castle interjected politely, ‘though in this fog . . .’
‘Oh, I know I’m being a bore but would you be a dahling . . .?’
‘Of course,’ Castle said, seeming unmoved at being so addressed. ‘I tell you what, young Leonard Baskin will take you.’
An underfed, spotty youth of about nineteen who was making sheep’s eyes at a pretty girl in her twenties called Alice Paling, who had recently joined the Party, turned at the sound of his name and blushed scarlet. He was clearly not used to escorting girls like Lucinda Arbuthnot-Grey, but an order from George Castle was not to be questioned and he got his donkey jacket and donned his cloth cap while David helped Lucinda into her expensive-looking fur coat.
‘Tomorrow then, dahling? Kiss, kiss.’ She pursed her lips to David, appearing to demand that he acknowledge their relationship. As George Castle held open the front door, allowing a cold, dank swirl of fog to chill the atmosphere, David, as nearly embarrassed as Verity had ever seen him, kissed the girl and put something in her coat pocket – perhaps something with which to pay the taxi, she thought uncharitably.
Lulu – Lucinda Arbuthnot-Grey – was so obviously out of place in this gathering that Verity was puzzled. Why had David brought her and why was he now so happy to be rid of her? He had friends – or at least acquaintances – among the aristocracy and would, without a second thought, have brought one of them to a local party meeting if it suited him but he never did anything without a reason. On the face of it, Lulu was straight out of Mayfair – but that was it! She had finally put her finger on what had been worrying her – Lulu wasn’t real. There was something about the way she pronounced her vowels which made Verity suspect she had been born within the sound of Bow Bells. And her make-up – her lipstick, in particular, had been applied too thickly and her scent was cheap and nasty. And then it came to her. Of course! Lucinda Arbuthnot-Grey was a whore and her real name was probably something without a hyphen. Verity grimaced. She was a snob, she upbraided herself, but, truly, it wasn’t Lulu’s class she objected to – far from it. It wasn’t even her trade. I
t was her affectation. It always made her grit her teeth when someone pretended to be something they weren’t.
She grinned and David asked her sharply what she was smiling about.
‘Nothing – nothing at all. Or rather, tell me, David, would I be right in thinking you wanted me to meet your girlfriend for a reason?’
He smiled but wouldn’t meet her eye. ‘Well yes, but I’ll tell you about it later.’
Of the fifteen people at the meeting, she knew half a dozen. Danny O’Rourke, a fiery public speaker committed to the class struggle, was one. She did not like or trust him and she knew the dislike was mutual. There seemed to be a threat behind everything he said. To disguise her true feelings, she was effusive and he looked unconvinced and embarrassed. The treasurer, Harold Knight, a solid, loyal party man, asked after her health. She brushed aside his concern too hastily, saying – which was true – that it had been a very light bout of TB, and, less truthfully, that she was now fully recovered.
Everyone, except David, looked at her with, if not sympathy, then at least interest tinged with disapproval. She was quite beyond their day-to-day experience – an exotic bird, a celebrity, a woman with a ‘past’. They had read her reports from Spain and Vienna in the New Gazette. She also wrote a monthly column on foreign affairs – of which, Danny often joked, she had had many – for the Daily Worker, the official publication of the Communist Party. It was almost unheard of for a woman to be a foreign correspondent for a national newspaper and, since most working-class men and women had never been abroad, she was admired and envied. Castle considered it a distinct feather in his cap to have her as a member of the group. True, she had not attended many meetings – that was hardly surprising given her other commitments – but she was here now. Furthermore, the presence of David Griffiths-Jones, a party high-up, signified that this was by no means a routine gathering.
Fernando Ruffino appeared from the kitchen with Mary Castle bearing sandwiches – meat paste and sardine – and a large brown teapot. As soon as he saw Verity, he put down the tray he was carrying and came over to kiss her. He drew back to look at her properly and told her she was too thin but more beautiful than ever. ‘If mamma saw you, cara, she would say you needed feeding. Is it true that you have been ill? Merda! But you are better now, Bella? Tell me you are better.’
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