No More Dying

by David Roberts

  The taxi was a neutral, transitory place in which to deny her faith – a secular confessional but with no priest to offer absolution. Edward said nothing. There was either nothing to say or too much.

  At last, in a voice as free of emotion as he could manage, he volunteered, ‘Was there any particular moment when you finally decided . . .?’

  ‘David asked me to blackmail Joe Kennedy. Apparently, he had photographs taken of him in bed with Lulu. I couldn’t do that and, before you ask, I couldn’t tell Pride about it either.’

  ‘Yes, I quite see. You are the last person in the world who could ever blackmail someone.’

  ‘And . . . and . . .’ She hesitated. It was a test. Would he pass it? ‘He said he had photographs of me with Leonard Bladon that he would show you if I didn’t do what he asked.’

  ‘The blackguard!’ Edward could barely restrain himself. ‘I hope you told him to go to hell.’

  ‘More or less,’ she said, turning to him and smiling for the first time since they had left Pride’s office. ‘Is there anything you want to ask me?’

  Edward looked puzzled. ‘No, why should there be? I always knew he was . . . if you’ll forgive me using the word, a shit, so it doesn’t come as much of a surprise.’

  She nodded. He had passed the test. He had not felt it necessary to ask whether the photographs of her with Bladon actually existed. Had he done so, she doubted whether she could have married him.

  When he was back in Albany, Edward thought he would take the bull by the proverbial horns and see if Casey Bishop would talk to him. He had been disappointed that Verity had been unable to get as much out of him over dinner as he had hoped. But then Casey was not a fellow who could be pumped for information without being aware of it and giving away precisely nothing. Casey obviously liked the look of Verity and, though Edward would not have admitted it, he had hoped that, if she flirted with him, he would become careless or try to impress her by letting her into some secret. He didn’t for one minute believe that she had had an affair with Leonard Bladon. He didn’t even think she would have renewed her affair with Adam von Trott. That was over. Verity did not forgive men who had let her down. But Casey . . .? No, he was quite sure . . . but, then again, he was damned attractive and had stolen women from him before.

  He telephoned the embassy. Casey was on the point of going home but he agreed – rather reluctantly, Edward thought – to meet him the following evening.

  ‘I can’t do anything before then, I’m afraid. I’m going to have a hell of a day but, if you don’t mind a late dinner, we could meet at a little place I know in Greek Street called the Golden Gate.’ Edward hadn’t heard of it but was always ready to extend his knowledge of London nightlife. When he asked what sort of place it was, Casey said it was ‘a kind of nightclub where people like him could relax’.

  When Edward dropped her at Cranmer Court, Verity suddenly found herself fagged out. She wanted to throw herself on her bed and sleep. It didn’t please her, therefore, to find Alice Paling waiting for her outside the flat. She was sitting on the top stair holding her knees to her chest in a foetal position. She had obviously been there some time. When she looked up as the lift doors opened, Verity saw that her eyes were red and her ineffective attempts at make-up had dissolved and then crusted. She wore a cheap hat, which had been sat upon quite recently, and her thin coat was missing a button.

  ‘Alice!’ Verity said breezily. ‘Whatever are you doing here? You look a mess. What’s the matter?’ She knew she sounded unsympathetic but the last thing she felt like was mothering Alice, whom she had always rather despised. Verity had always thought that women’s propensity to cry was a weakness which should be resisted if at all possible. It only bolstered men’s stereotypical ideas of the ‘weaker sex’.

  ‘It can’t be that bad,’ she continued, fumbling for her key. She almost added, ‘Buck up, old thing,’ which she remembered a hockey mistress telling her when she had been concussed for a few moments after being whacked on the forehead by an opponent’s stick.

  ‘But it’s not all right,’ Alice wailed. ‘He’s left me and he promised to marry me.’

  ‘Who promised to marry you?’

  ‘Fernando, of course. He said he wasn’t in love with you any longer. He told me so.’

  ‘In love with me? How ridiculous! Of course he was never in love with me. He just enjoys flirting, like all Italians.’

  ‘He said you’d been lovers in Spain. He said you were ever so brave.’

  ‘I’m afraid he was telling fibs, Alice. We were never lovers and I was never especially brave.’

  It was obvious that Fernando had said whatever it took to get the wretched girl into bed and had then grown bored with her – as was inevitable – and dumped her.

  ‘Alice, he led you up the garden path. He was trying to impress you just to get you to . . . you know.’

  ‘To sleep with him? Oh no, he truly loved me. He often said so.’

  Verity promised herself that, if she ever saw Fernando again, she would give him a piece of her mind. To bamboozle this simple-minded girl was below him.

  ‘You know he’s married?’

  ‘He said he was lonely. He said his wife didn’t . . .’

  ‘. . . understand him?’ Verity groaned. Surely Fernando could have come up with something a little more original. Perhaps Alice was just too easy a conquest and he simply couldn’t be bothered.

  ‘Come in.’ She unlocked the front door and shoved the girl – now weeping again – in front of her. She went into her tiny kitchen and put on the kettle. It was nearly five and she felt like a cup of tea, though if Alice stayed around much longer she would need something stronger. ‘So he’s left you? Did he say why – where he was going?’

  ‘He said he had an important job to do and wouldn’t be coming back.’

  ‘An important job . . .? I wonder what that could be? Was he speaking somewhere?’

  ‘No, he’d finished his lecture tour. He had raised quite a lot of money for the fight against Fascism. He’s so brave . . . the stories he told about dodging the police and Mussolini’s thugs. I admire him immensely,’ Alice added unnecessarily, cheering up for a moment.

  ‘But now he’s gone,’ Verity said flatly, wanting to bring the silly girl to her senses. ‘He seduced you and left you – a typical man! Presumably you . . . I mean he protected you when you were making love.’ It was ridiculous to be coy about condoms but there was enough bourgeois reticence left in her to make her feel embarrassed at having to spell it out.

  ‘Oh, no. He said, as a Catholic, he didn’t believe in birth control.’

  ‘How very irresponsible of him.’ Verity was exasperated and anxious. She felt she had to impress on Alice the potential seriousness of her situation. The girl’s next words confirmed her worst fears.

  ‘That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. You’re the only person I can talk to. I know you’ve had a lot of lovers. You see, I think I’m pregnant.’

  ‘Alice, are you sure? Have you seen a doctor?’

  ‘No, I haven’t got one.’

  ‘Your parents must have a doctor.’

  ‘But he tells them everything. When I was a child, I cut my finger breaking into my piggy bank. I made Dr Evans swear not to tell my father but he did. My father was furious with me.’

  Verity could see it all – the tyrannical father and the put-upon mother. If he had been furious with Alice for trying to break into her piggy bank, what would his reaction be to the news that she was pregnant? The imagination boggled. ‘How pregnant are you? I mean, how long has it been . . .?’

  ‘About a month . . . I’m not sure.’

  ‘That’s not long. Perhaps you are mistaken.’

  ‘No, I’m quite certain,’ the girl said, almost triumphantly. ‘I feel sick at the sight of food and I’ve missed my period.’

  Verity was annoyed with herself for being surprised – even slightly shocked – to hear Alice refer to her menses so casually even th
ough she had long advocated open discussion of ‘women’s problems’, as such matters were coyly described. It was clear to her that much misery could be avoided if a little light could be shone on the dark ignorance of most young women about how their bodies worked.

  ‘At the meeting in George Castle’s house – you were sleeping with him then?’

  ‘Oh yes.’

  Verity thought savagely of the easy way he had tried to seduce her with quotations from Dante, with Alice – his lover – in the same room. She remembered him telling her quite brazenly that his little boy was the apple of his wife’s eye – or words to that effect. Her opinion of Fernando dropped to zero.

  ‘I thought you would be able to arrange an abortion for me,’ Alice continued naively. ‘I asked a friend and she said that if I went to some struck-off doctor, I might be hacked open and die of blood poisoning.’

  The friend had obviously been determined to prevent Alice having an abortion by frightening her with horror stories. Verity, too, had heard stories of bungled abortions carried out by drunk or incompetent doctors and was not going to contradict her.

  She sighed. ‘Oh, Alice, you are a little fool. Have you tried gin and a boiling hot bath?’

  ‘Yes, and I’ve jumped off a chair.’

  Verity remembered guiltily that for the past month or two she and Edward had not bothered about using the Durex she kept in her bedside table. She realized that she did not have a leg to stand on when it came to criticizing Alice. True, she was engaged to be married and Edward would never desert her but even so . . .

  ‘I want to talk to Fernando. Where did he say this “important job” was?’

  ‘He said he was going down to Kent – a place called Westerham. Do you know it?’

  ‘Yes, I know it but why would he be going there? It’s not a big town . . .’

  ‘I know it wasn’t to give a lecture. I think he said he was going to . . . what was it? It was a quotation, I think. Fernando’s so clever. I remember – “Kill Claudio”. I asked him who Claudio was – another Italian, I suppose – but he just laughed.’

  12

  ‘Your hunch was right,’ Liddell said grimly. ‘Our man in Rome has heard about a plot to kill Mr Churchill. At first he dismissed it as one of those wild rumours which abound in Mussolini’s court. The Italians are so indiscreet it’s almost impossible to keep a secret, however important, for more than a few hours. Il Duce is always looking for ways to please Hitler and apparently he thinks this plan he’s cooked up with the Abwehr will do the trick.’

  ‘And do we have a name yet?’ Edward asked.

  ‘Not yet but our man’s working on it. I feel a little easier in my mind now we have something to go on. I’ve had a list drawn up of every Italian in Britain with a criminal connection and known Fascist sympathies. It’s a long list, I’m afraid, and it’ll take some time to go through. The damnable thing is that we don’t know how much time we’ve got,’ he added grimly.

  ‘Mr Churchill has invited me to stay at Chartwell for a few days but I’ve told him I have to be back in London by the end of the month.’

  ‘For your wedding?’ Liddell said with a grin. ‘Yes, you mustn’t be late for that.’

  ‘After that Mr Churchill, or rather Colonel Moore-Brabazon, has very kindly arranged for us to spend two or three days in St Moritz. A sort of honeymoon,’ Edward smiled shyly. ‘I know it’s absurd to talk of honeymoons at my time of life but, God knows, if we don’t have a few days together then, I don’t think we ever shall. Verity has convinced herself that she’s well enough to go back to work and she’s angling for a posting to Czechoslovakia, but Lord Weaver has refused to promise her anything for the moment, thank goodness.’

  ‘She’ll be lucky to get back to Prague,’ Liddell replied grimly. ‘I have it on the best authority that Hitler is about to march across the border.’

  ‘Surely not?’ Edward said in surprise. ‘I thought the Prime Minister had made it clear that, if he did, we would go to war.’

  Liddell shrugged. ‘The politicians are fooling themselves and everyone else if they think Hitler will stop now. He’s like a runaway steamroller. He can’t stop even if he wanted to.’

  With an anxious heart, Edward walked out into Trafalgar Square. He glanced up at Nelson on his column and hoped he saw more clearly with his one eye than Mr Chamberlain did with two. It was a cold day but the sun was out so he decided to stroll round to his club for a bite of lunch. When he reached St James’s Street he found that, after all, he wasn’t hungry and on a whim hailed a cab and asked to be taken to Prince’s Gate. He thought he might have a look at the cars parked near the Kennedys’ residence. He realized it was hardly worthwhile but he was possessed by a restlessness that made him want to do something, however futile. He grinned. How different he was from an American ‘private eye’, he thought. Why couldn’t he knock down some door with a ‘gat’ in his hand and rescue some ‘dame’? No, that wasn’t his style but he’d give a lot to force his way into the residence and look for clues as to how poor Lulu had died. But that wasn’t going to happen.

  He paid off the cab and strolled across the street. There were no large American cars in view. Disconsolately, he walked into the mews behind the building where he knew Casey lived. He had told him that he had a flat over the garage where some of the embassy cars were parked. Edward noted that security was lax. Not a single policeman was on duty and, if the Americans had their own people patrolling the building, none was in evidence. The doors to several of the garages in the mews were open and chauffeurs in shirtsleeves and mechanics in boiler suits were tending their machines. Edward’s latent interest in cars was sparked by the American ones which stood out among the Rolls-Royces which were also on view. A huge, streamlined Lincoln Continental caught his fancy and the chauffeur who was polishing it allowed him to look it over and answered questions about its speed and reliability.

  The chauffeur admitted that the Ambassador had imported a total of four cars. Apart from the Lincoln, there was a Duesneberg – a sporting model that Joe Jr had bought in California at the urging of Gloria Swanson, his father’s mistress – and two Cadillacs. He was unable to hide his enthusiasm for these beauties and, when Edward asked if he could see either of them, he looked shifty and said he had been told not to let anyone into the garage. However, when Edward produced a banknote, the chauffeur told him that he could have a quick look as no one was around.

  He led him into the back of the garage and, switching on a light, revealed a magnificent Cadillac Sixty Special. It had been designed by William L. Mitchell, a protégé of the great General Motors designer, Harley Earl. Elegant but compact despite its size, it sported chrome-edged windows and squareback fenders. Edward’s mouth fell open and he experienced a moment of disloyalty to his beloved Lagonda.

  When he asked to see the other Cadillac, the one Washington had driven to Cliveden, he was told that it was being used to take the Ambassador to an event and was not expected back for at least a couple of hours. With expressions of mutual esteem, Edward and the chauffeur parted company. As he turned to go, Edward asked if his friend Mr Bishop lived above the garage.

  ‘When I lunched with him the other day,’ Edward said, trying to sound casual, ‘he asked me to drop in on him but, to tell the truth, I can’t remember the number.’

  The chauffeur, who had obviously never been told that anyone using the phrase ‘to tell the truth’ was almost certainly lying, pointed to a door a little further along the mews but said he thought Mr Bishop had accompanied the Ambassador on his outing.

  Edward thanked him again and went over to the door. There was no bell so he rapped on it with his knuckles and, to his surprise, the door swung open. He glanced right and left but for the moment there was no one in view so, taking a deep breath, he slipped inside and closed the door behind him. There was something about the place that made him sure no one was at home but he called out anyway. When there was no reply, he decided he might as well explore. He knew that
technically he was house-breaking but, if Casey did return unexpectedly, he could say he was just looking for him.

  There was a tiny entrance hall and then a steep flight of narrow stairs to the flat. As he stepped into the living-room, he saw that it was small but had been expensively modernized. The room, which stretched the whole depth of the garage below, was divided by a counter around which stood two or three stools. On one side of the counter there was a tiny kitchen and, on the side on which Edward was standing, a table at which six people could sit. At the far end, he saw a seating area with an uncomfortable-looking white leather sofa, a couple of armchairs, a glass-topped table and a radiogram.

  He looked round, searching for something personal – photographs perhaps – which might give him a clue to Casey’s interests and character. He saw nothing, which was in itself revealing. Here was a man who concealed his personality even from his friends.

  Seeing a door which he presumed led into the bedroom, he went through it and was startled to find a large double bed with white silk sheets and a huge abstract painting on the wall behind it. He wondered whom Casey entertained between such luxurious – not to say decadent – sheets on that grand bed. He decided he was in the room of a practised seducer and it made his stomach churn. He pushed open the bathroom door and looked in. It was scrupulously clean with just shaving kit and a toothbrush in evidence. There was a cupboard with a mirror attached to the wall behind the basin. Feeling he had gone so far that he might as well go further, he opened it and saw a row of bottles, some containing pills and others fluids. He looked at the labels on two of the bottles and was shocked.