One Enchanted Evening

by Anton du Beke

  Peeling off the first page, he handed it to Raymond.

  *

  8 September 1936

  Graf Schecht in Queen Mary, 8 p.m. Duck breast and port sauce.

  Graf Schecht invites Lord Edgerton and wife to the family townhouse in Munich. Charles Londonderry is to be in attendance. Graf Schecht believes that, if enough of London’s aristocrat class are sympathetic to the aims of Mr Hitler’s government, they can successfully persuade the Right Hon. Mr Baldwin to agree formal peaceful terms.

  14 October 1936

  Lord Edgerton is in attendance in the ballroom and invites Dr Bernhard Weber, new attaché at the German embassy, to drinks in the Candlelight Club. Weber and Edgerton are later joined by Mr Oswald Mosley of the British Union of Fascists. Mr Mosley impresses upon Weber that a pact between the British Crown and the National Socialists in Germany can be effected. Gossip indicates a pact will soon be formalised between Germany and Italy. Weber suggests this be seen as a model for how an agreement might be worked between Great Britain and her German cousins. Would the King not be amenable? Weber asks. Lord Edgerton is certain he would and, by the end of the evening, has promised to send an invitation to the King via his private secretary.

  3 November 1936

  Felix Kraus (of Kruger-Kraus Holdings) dines in the Queen Mary. Mr Chamberlain’s personal secretary Frederick Dunn is in attendance. Kraus passes a ‘belated anniversary’ card to Dunn for transference to Mr Chamberlain. Message intercepted in hotel post room: an invitation to high tea at the German Embassy.

  30 November 1936

  Dr Weber dines with German nationals, Herr and Frau Mayer. Herr Mayer’s son is liaison to the Hitler Youth movement (see papers filed June 1935). Current estimates membership of five million boys of good German stock. Conversation recorded is only partial – my boy feared he had been caught eavesdropping – but understanding is that, before Christmas, membership of the Youth will be compulsory to all true-blooded German boys. No Jews or so-called ‘inferior races’ are permitted membership. All Youth will be trained in arms. FIVE MILLION German boys are being trained as basic-level soldiers. Sirs, Nazi Germany is not only rearming. It is CONSCRIPTING.

  Raymond’s eyes drifted up from the pages, each of them typewritten and initialled in the corner with two florid letters: MC. Maynard Charles.

  ‘What are these?’ he whispered.

  ‘I need Lord Edgerton’s set in the Buckingham as often as possible, Raymond. That’s why I don’t object to Nathaniel White strutting around our ballroom as if he owns it. Not because I’m desperate to please our lord. Because I’m—’

  Raymond uttered, ‘You’re a . . . spy.’

  ‘Not a spy,’ said Maynard Charles, and for the first time he seemed agitated. ‘I dislike the word. It conjures up so much slipperiness. And I am as straight and by-the-book as they come. But, yes, ever since Lord Edgerton took majority control of the board, I have been collecting . . . intelligence, you might say. Things overheard. Things whispered in the privacy of our hotel. Lord Edgerton knows many men of interest – not just his union friends, the Astors, the Londonderrys, but all of his associates from the continent. When they come to our hotel, it is my obligation – no, my responsibility – to listen. In some small part, because of the intelligence I have gathered in this hotel, the British Security Service were forewarned of the Nazis marching back into the Rhineland in March – enough time for them to get their agents out of there. Because of the “gossip” I have collated from our dining rooms and Candlelight Club, and combined, one can only assume, with that of my counterparts in other institutions, we are aware of a plot within the Establishment itself to broker terms with Herr Hitler as soon as the political class allows. This might look like it’s merely a luxury hotel, but it is, in fact, an open front in a war we are fighting – a war which, if we are not good enough, may yet consume us all. So when you call me a fascist dog, Mr de Guise, I am at once proud that my deceptions have gone undetected – and filled with rage. For I am anything but.’

  Raymond had so few words. He opened his mouth but all that he could say was, ‘I thought you were just a money man.’

  Maynard Charles decided to take this in the good humour in which it was almost certainly not intended. ‘I’ll take that as a compliment. I am, as you say, a money man, Raymond – but it is not all that I am. I have my values too. I have my private life to protect.’ It was the first moment he’d shown any vulnerability; his voice trembled, until he conquered himself once more and his reserve returned. ‘You must understand this dangerous business, Raymond. I don’t tell you it lightly. I shouldn’t tell you it at all. Yet, when you stormed in here and accused me of lying down in bed with the very worst in this world, well, something in me snapped. You’re too young to have fought in the Great War, Raymond, but I am not. I spent myself in Flanders and France. I bled into the earth and watched my boyhood friends tumble, one after another. I won’t see it again. Lord Edgerton and his ilk, they’re manoeuvring towards a kind of peace. They think there are terms we can come to that might stop Mr Hitler landing his soldiers on English beaches. If the right ministers can be put into the right positions, if the men on the street can be whipped up into wanting it – why, we might have Mr Hitler taking tea with the King on the lawns at Buckingham Palace. They’d sell my country – our country – to the worst of all men. The way they see it, there’d be no war at all – because it would be over before it even began.’ Maynard paused. ‘It’s happening, even now. English aristocrats flock to Berlin to meet their German cousins. Even King Edward of old might have been swayed. But an England united with that host across the water? The cost of it is too much to bear.’

  ‘So you sell their secrets . . .’

  ‘Their secrets belong to the Buckingham. They are mine to sell, should I choose. I am doing what little I can, Raymond. But the Great War enveloped us all and so will a new war, if it comes to pass. I would not see my life ruined twice over. I am still fighting my war – but I’m fighting it in a different way, the only way I know how. I will have peace, Raymond. I won’t see a generation slaughtered again.’

  ‘You’d be fired if they found out.’

  ‘Worse, Raymond. Much worse. That is why they must never find out. It is not just my livelihood at stake. The meetings that take place in this hotel may seem inconsequential, but they are but pieces of a puzzle. Together they build a picture – and that picture might be the difference between war and peace in Europe.’

  ‘You can’t possibly do all this on your own, Mr Charles. Why, you’d have to be in twelve different places at . . .’ Raymond’s words petered out, as a realisation hit him. ‘Billy Brogan. The hotel pages. You aren’t the only spy in this hotel . . .’

  Maynard Charles cringed. ‘I’ve told you how distasteful I find the word.’

  ‘But you have a network.’

  ‘I have need of it. Pages and chambermaids can slip by unseen. In and out of a guest’s room, should the need arise. Billy Brogan has proven indispensable, though I’m quite certain he doesn’t yet understand how or why. And now I have need of another.’

  Raymond hesitated. ‘Wait there, Mr Charles. I’m exiled from my ballroom, aren’t I? And now you intend to . . . what? Enlist me?’

  ‘Your brother out there fought them, didn’t he? He did it in the only way he knew how: boorish, with his fists and knives. Well, you have more wiles about you, de Guise. Good Lord, you’ve kept up a bigger deception than mine for half of your existence. Yes, thinking about it now, you’re more cut out for this line of work than I am. And Nathaniel White is in our ballroom. Exorcising him is the wrong thing to do. But so too is ignoring the fellow, leaving him to his own devices. He has grown . . . fond, shall we say, of Vivienne Edgerton. What they do with their bodies is of no importance to me. But what they say might be. Nathaniel is privy to gossips from his family that might prove invaluable. He must let things slip. I want those things heard. I want them recorded and observed.
I want somebody in the ballroom who knows what I know. Someone who has his wits about him. Somebody like you. So, what do you think, Raymond? If I was to scratch your back, perhaps you would scratch mine?’

  Raymond lifted himself in his seat. ‘You’d put me back in the ballroom?’

  ‘I’ll admit I was a little . . . rash in ejecting you so summarily.’ Maynard Charles betrayed just a hint of embarrassment. ‘I was too emotional in my reaction. I felt attacked, you understand. But then I came to my senses.’ He paused. ‘It is expedient for us both. I’ll have Brogan release a rumour that you were merely absent for a few days, recuperating the last of your health. Then, when you step out in the ballroom again, it can be an event. The Return of de Guise.’

  ‘Nathaniel White won’t be happy.’

  ‘I don’t give two hoots about how happy he is. He will not relinquish his position. You may need to be seen to play second fiddle. Just for a while. Just watch him for me, Raymond. Christmas is already on us. The New Year’s ball is two weeks away. In less than a week our suites open to the great and the good. Without the King in attendance, we must still put on a show. And, of course, Lord Edgerton is gracing us with his presence for New Year. All of his compatriots will be here with him. Mr White, Senior. Mr Mosley.’

  Raymond thought: yes, I can dance for them. I danced for those bastards before. I came here tonight to get one up on them, didn’t I? To balance the scales. But what’s a little stolen and redistributed treasure compared to this? They’ve riches enough they might hardly notice . . . But Cable Street was just the beginning, wasn’t it? Another step down that road, a couple further, and suddenly the world could change. What if I can help stop that? What if I can do what’s right for my country, for my people, for my family by staying right here in the Buckingham Hotel, by spying on them just like Maynard Charles wants? Gossip, he calls it. Intelligence. Information. Well, it’s all of those things, but it’s something else as well – it’s power. It’s the power to do what’s right. To protect people who need protecting – not up on the barricades like my brother, but in my own way. ‘It’s time to pick a side,’ Artie had said. Well, now, at least, Raymond was being given the chance to prove it.

  ‘I’ll do the work for you, Mr Charles,’ he said with a dark finality. ‘But there’s still the problem of Artie. My brother.’ And Nancy, he thought, then pushed the image of her to the back of his mind.

  Maynard Charles darkened. ‘Yes. This, I haven’t forgotten. You brought your brother here so that you might steal from me. Am I simply to let it go unpunished?’ He seemed to muse on the idea. Then he crouched again and, opening a locked drawer in his desk, came back with a roll of banknotes in his hand. Delicately, he peeled off the top layers, slipped them inside an envelope, and sealed it. ‘Artie Cohen was never here. He won’t be seen here again because I’m giving the doormen explicit instructions that, if he is seen here, they are to deal with him in the way doormen all over the world deal with intruders. And, of course . . . Raymond de Guise doesn’t have a brother, does he?’

  Raymond accepted the envelope, staring in disbelief at Maynard Charles. ‘You’d overlook it, just like that?’

  ‘Use this money wisely. I need you, Raymond. There are other worlds inside this hotel. I feel I must balance them. In spite of tonight . . . you are one of the good souls. The world needs good souls, so let us stand beside one another. So –’ and here Maynard Charles paused, doubt creeping into his voice for the first time – ‘make Artie listen, Raymond. Make Artie see sense. But if he were ever to set foot in this hotel again . . .’

  ‘You’d do that for a petty thief, Maynard?’ asked Raymond, with a twinkle in his eye.

  Maynard Charles nodded. ‘It wouldn’t be the first time. I’ll write it off as an unaccounted loss – replacement of a guest theft, perhaps. Well, you don’t think you’re the first to come here and try and rob my hotel, do you?’

  *

  Nancy Nettleton was composing a letter to Frank when there came a knocking at her bedroom door. Proudly – because she had not yet let Rosa and Ruth or any of the others see her cry and she didn’t mean to tonight – she stood and opened it.

  And there stood Raymond de Guise, dishevelled in clothes that could hardly have been his own, while over his shoulder – in the kitchenette where she had gone to make a soothing cup of tea after she had woken in the night – Rosa stood gawping.

  ‘Rosa!’ Nancy gasped. Now was not the time. Now was not the moment to tell them everything. ‘Rosa, please, I’ll explain . . .’

  ‘Nancy,’ Raymond breathed.

  ‘What’s he doing here, Nance? Nancy Nettleton, of all the things I’ve seen in this hotel!’ She was crowing with laughter now, the strangest mix of bewilderment and hysterics that Nancy had ever heard. ‘You – you little country mouse!’ she said with glee. ‘You’re the scandal! Ha! Here, Ruth! Agatha!’ Rosa spun around to call along the hallway to the other girls’ rooms. ‘Get out here! You won’t believe who’s turned up at Nancy’s door . . .’

  I’ll get fired, Nancy thought. She was sure she could already hear the girls stirring behind their doors, roused from sleep by the promise of some scandal. Raymond, you bloody fool.

  Nancy reached out, took him by the arm, and hauled him within. As she slammed the door, she caught Rosa’s eye – and braved the slightest smile. ‘Please, I’ll explain . . .’

  Inside the room, Raymond towered over her. She stepped forward, shaking, drew back her arm and slapped him once across the cheek hard. Raymond winced.

  ‘I deserved that,’ he said. ‘Nancy, I behaved badly towards you and—’

  ‘You deserve more.’

  For a moment, there was silence.

  ‘You can’t just walk in here! The girls saw you. What if Mrs Moffatt . . .’

  I can hear them outside the door already . . .

  ‘I should have come to you before I left. I’m sorry. I thought you’d betrayed me. I wasn’t thinking straight, Nancy. I haven’t been thinking straight for months. I didn’t know who I was. Whether I was Raymond de Guise or Ray Cohen. Whether any of it mattered at all. But what I hadn’t seen, what I should have seen weeks ago is . . . even when my head’s been in a chaos, even when my worlds have been colliding, there’s one thing I have seen straight on. And that’s you . . .’

  Nancy was silent.

  ‘I know it wasn’t you, Nancy. Somebody betrayed me to Maynard Charles, told him who I really am. It wasn’t until tonight that I realised – Billy Brogan was in his pocket. Brogan brought me a letter from home, so Brogan knew too. It must have been Billy. And do you know what? I can’t blame him. The boy has a family, doesn’t he? We all have families to support – and it’s a dark world out there. It’s growing darker by the day. Nancy,’ he whispered, ‘I’m sorry.’

  He leaned forward, as if to kiss her, but Nancy withdrew. ‘You don’t win me over as easily as that, Raymond. I’m not the desperate little country girl people seem to think I am. And I have other things on my mind than what’s happening to us.’

  Nancy stared at him for a moment then strode to her dresser, opened one of the drawers and produced from it a little lavender drawstring purse. She’d cleaned it up since she’d found it on the floor of Vivienne Edgerton’s suite, but the two glass phials still rattled within. She upended it and spilled them into Raymond’s open palm.

  ‘I’ve seen addiction before, Raymond. You know I have. The ruin it made of my father’s mind was so much worse than the disease that was ruining his body. And that’s what it’s doing to Vivienne Edgerton. I found her, Raymond. Sprawled on her suite floor, lying in her own filth. She might have perished, right there, with no one to hold her – and all because of this . . .’

  Raymond was reeling. Of all the things he’d expected coming here, this was the most surprising. ‘Vivienne’s a wreck of a girl,’ he said, ‘but she does it to herself—’

  ‘NO!’ Nancy took the phials and slid them b
ack into the lavender pouch. ‘Vivienne is wanton and Vivienne is cruel. Vivienne’s a drunk and all of these things people say, but they’ve never given her a chance, have they? I’m the one she stood there and openly mocked and threatened, but I’m willing to see past it. Why isn’t anybody else? All they see is the stupid, pretty little rich girl desperate for attention down in the ballroom.’ Nancy paused. ‘Well, I see her for what she really is. She’s an addict. She’s lonely and lost and she’s scared and, if she’s cruel and destructive and she doesn’t care, well, that’s the reason why.’

  By now Nancy was breathless. She resisted Raymond’s arms and steadied herself until she could speak once more.

  ‘You’ve got that look in your eye,’ said Raymond. ‘Nancy, what do you mean to do?’

  ‘Why, isn’t it obvious?’ she replied, folding her fist so tightly around the lavender pouch that the glass phials inside shattered with a satisfying crunch. ‘I’m going to do for Miss Edgerton what I did for my father. She’s too far gone to do it herself, so . . . I’m going to help her out of it, and there isn’t a thing in the whole of the Buckingham Hotel that’s going to stop me.’

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  MAYNARD CHARLES SLAMMED HIS OFFICE door and prowled the room, stopping only to pour a stiff brandy from his decanter. He drank it in one, then poured himself another. The first was to relieve all of the tension that had been pumping through his body as he faced Raymond de Guise. The second was to take the edge off the sudden wooziness that hit him as he drank back the first. By the time he poured himself a third, he had reached some equilibrium again. He was calmer, more self-possessed; the doubts that he had done the right thing were beginning to fade as the brandy’s warmth spread around his body.

  He stood at the window. He’d made a mistake here, somewhere. A hotel director was supposed to be a master tactician. He was supposed to be able to move his pieces around the board with the skills of a chess grandmaster, deploying his bishops and knights, quietly advancing his pawns until they, too, could take positions of influence in the vast hotel engine.