Hollow Crown

by David Roberts

  ‘I see,’ Edward said. ‘How many were there?’

  ‘Seven but some were several pages.’

  ‘What else had gone? Were there any jewels missing?’

  ‘None.’

  ‘Presumably you told Lord Brownlow what had happened?’

  ‘I didn’t want to make a fuss but of course I had to. You understand why?’

  Edward had to admire the woman. She spoke in her clear, even voice of having lost love letters from the King which, were they to be published, would embarrass not only herself but the King and the rest of the royal family. As a divorcee, she was already unwelcome in the homes of many ‘respectable’ people but this might make her untouchable. As Edward knew well, the morality of the British upper classes was built on an agreed hypocrisy. Once a girl was married and had produced ‘an heir and a spare’, as the saying went, she could enter into affairs with married men provided nothing leaked out to the press. It was a small world in which everyone knew everyone and was probably related in some way. Only divorce ruined a woman’s reputation. Now, here was the King considering marrying an American woman of no family, without money, who had divorced one husband and was in the process of divorcing a second. Whatever her faults, Edward admired her courage in facing a world which would rejoice at her downfall.

  ‘So whoever it was who took these letters knew what they were looking for. What about your maid?’

  ‘Maddox is utterly trustworthy.’

  ‘Did Perry suggest calling the police?’

  ‘Yes, but we agreed that had to be a last resort as the news of the theft would be reported in the newspapers. In any case, we both felt that whoever stole the letters would want to return them – for a price.’ There was contempt in her voice.

  ‘And that’s what happened?’

  ‘Yes. Perry’s party broke up the next day and, the morning after, I received a hand-delivered note from Mrs Harkness, one of the house party, saying that she would return the letters if I promised to leave the country and never see . . . never see him again.’

  ‘When was that?’

  ‘That was Wednesday, ten days ago.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘I consulted Perry. He suggested either I go to the police or go see Joe. Joe’s a true friend,’ she said, giving him a look of genuine warmth. ‘He said he could discover, without arousing suspicion, if anyone had offered my letters to a newspaper and they hadn’t. He then remembered you were a friend of Mrs Harkness and said he would talk to you. Of course, if you can’t do anything, there will be no alternative to asking the police to get them back but I’m afraid to do that, as I told you.’

  Edward pulled on his cigar and said, ‘Of course, I will do what you ask but you must not assume I will be successful. Molly’s a determined woman. Might I ask – and you must forgive me if I am being impertinent but it is necessary for me to know what I’m up against – the letters, are they from the King – intimate letters?’

  ‘Yes. He writes me every day we are parted and sometimes – you’ll think it absurd – even when we’re staying in the same house. But they . . . they’re not just what the press would call love letters. They are almost diaries. He writes me exactly what he’s thinking, what he is doing, who he saw in the day, his opinions . . . ’

  ‘Good heavens! Why did you not keep them in a safe? Did it not occur to you that you might lose them if you took them with you on weekend visits?’

  Edward wondered if he had been too harsh but Wallis, with a quiet dignity, said, ‘I took them with me because I liked to read them.’

  After a long pause, Edward turned to Weaver. ‘Joe, would any English newspaper print these letters? Surely, stolen property . . . the lawyers could stop . . . ’

  ‘No reputable newspaper would publish stolen letters but of course the American newspapers would make hay with them. That would leak back into the English press – not the New Gazette, but scandal sheets like Cavalcade or political papers with an axe to grind such as the Daily Worker.’ Weaver looked meaningfully at Edward. He was indirectly warning him not to say anything to Verity Browne about Wallis Simpson’s loss. As a card-carrying Communist, she might feel the Daily Worker, the Party’s official mouthpiece, ought to report the failings of the King.

  Edward made one final effort to avoid having to undertake a task which gave him a sick feeling in his stomach. ‘Ought it not to be someone Molly knows to have the King’s ear, like Perry or even Leo? By the way, I assume the King does know about the theft . . . ?’

  ‘Not yet,’ Weaver said. ‘He’s got enough to worry about at the moment. We’ll have to tell him if this doesn’t work but . . . ’

  Scannon said, ‘The idea is you join a house party at Haling . . . ’ Haling was Scannon’s country house in Wiltshire. ‘I’ve got a dozen or so people coming so Molly won’t feel I’ve set anything up. She’ll assume I don’t know anything about what she’s been up to if no one else . . . I mean like Wally or Perry or even Joe . . . are part of the party . . . ’ Edward was momentarily nonplussed to hear Wallis referred to as Wally. It sounded so absurd a name for her. ‘She’ll be thrilled to know you’re coming, Edward. She was talking about you only the other night and wondering why she never saw you.’

  Wallis looked far from pleased. Scannon was talking about her enemy as if she were still a friend.

  Edward said, ‘Well, I’ll do my best. Have you got Molly’s letter here?’

  ‘Yes,’ Weaver said. ‘I’m keeping it in my safe but I assumed you would want to read it.’

  He passed Edward a blue envelope which smelled faintly of violets. Apart from the words ‘Mrs Simpson’, heavily underlined, there was no address. He took out a single sheet of blue paper. It had no address or telephone number on it and it began abruptly, without a ‘Dear Mrs Simpson’: ‘If you want your letters back give up David and go home to America. If not . . . I mean it . . . I will take them to the newspapers. Go away!’

  It was signed with the initial H.

  ‘We’re sure H is Molly Harkness? I haven’t seen her handwriting for some time.’

  ‘Yes,’ Scannon said, ‘I have compared it with letters from her I have received . . . I keep every letter anyone ever sends me . . . ’ he said with a wolfish grin. ‘Not only is it in her hand but the scent is unmistakable – Après l’Ondée. It’s Molly all right.’

  Edward sighed. ‘Right then, but ought I not to go and see her privately . . . ? Where is she living?’

  ‘Knightsbridge . . . Trevor Square,’ Weaver said. ‘But we mustn’t make too much of it. Best you tackle her on neutral ground, I think.’

  Edward sighed again and Mrs Simpson looked at him with clear black eyes showing no emotion. ‘It would be a great service to me and to the King, Lord Edward, if you would do this. I know it is distasteful to you but . . . ’

  ‘Please say no more. I will do my best. Which weekend are we talking about, Scannon?’

  ‘Next weekend. The sooner the better.’

  ‘Short notice! Will everyone be able to come?’

  ‘They have already been invited.’

  ‘I see,’ Edward said. He did not like the idea that his willingness to drop everything and come down to Wiltshire had been taken for granted.

  ‘If you had refused to come, I would have tackled Molly myself, but I know she would have taken no notice of anything I had to say,’ Scannon said, as if he could read his mind.

  ‘Don’t look so gloomy,’ Weaver said jovially. ‘Dannie’s going to be one of the party, isn’t she, Leo? You’ll like that, won’t you, Edward?’

  The tiger smiled.

  2

  Edward was still feeling bad-tempered when, the following Tuesday, on the way to his bank, he saw a girl he knew coming out of Galeries Lafayette struggling with an unruly gaggle of carrier bags and beribboned boxes.

  ‘I say, driver, stop the cab, will you. I’ve got to rescue a damsel in distress.’

  The taxi screeched to a halt causing the driver of an omn
ibus to swerve and curse. Edward opened the door and called, ‘Verity! Let me give you a hand with those.’

  ‘Oh, Edward, is that you! I can’t see anything through these parcels. I was just wondering how I was going to get home without coming an almighty cropper.’

  The girl who dropped with relief into the back of the taxi was a none-too-tall, black-eyed, merry-looking child of about twenty-five. When she had struggled out from under her parcels, she kissed her rescuer and then began rearranging her hat which had been knocked askew in her efforts to negotiate a particularly large hatbox on to the folding seat. She was very fond of hats.

  ‘Golly,’ said Edward, regarding her with frank admiration. ‘What on earth has happened to your hair, Verity?’

  ‘Oh, do you like it? Mr Cizec has “bingled” me. I’m short-haired for life.’

  ‘It is short but I like it. I think it makes you look gamine.’

  ‘Gamine? Is that good? Anyway, where are we off to?’

  ‘Wherever you want. I was on my way to Coutts but that can be postponed. If I can take you home . . . By the way, where is home?’

  Verity Browne had given up her Knightsbridge flat when she had gone to Spain for the New Gazette twelve months before and on her brief visits to London since then she had stayed with friends. ‘I’m staying with Adrian Hassel. You remember him?’

  ‘The artist? Does he still paint green stick men and orange suns?’

  Edward had met Hassel soon after he had first met Verity and to his surprise – because he disliked ‘aesthetes’ on principle – liked the man. He had a house and studio in the King’s Road. Edward gave the address to the cab driver.

  ‘He’s very successful, I’ll have you know,’ Verity said as the cab cut in front of a brewer’s dray, occasioning a cascade of parcels on to Edward’s lap. ‘The nibs think he’s the goods. His last exhibition was at one of those swanky galleries in Albemarle Street and everything sold, so don’t sound so superior. You should have bought one of his pictures when you had the chance. You won’t be able to afford them now.’

  ‘But surely you’re not staying with Hassel unchaperoned?’

  ‘Oh, don’t be so old-fashioned, Edward. I’m not a blushing virgin, you know.’

  ‘Verity!’ Edward expostulated.

  ‘If you must know, Adrian’s married now so it’s all quite respectable.’

  ‘Married! I didn’t think he was the marrying kind.’ A vision of the elegant young man, dressed in green, his favourite colour, gesturing with his cigarette holder, sprang unbidden into his mind.

  ‘Well, you’d be wrong then. Adrian is a red-blooded Tarzan, so there, and Charlotte is a dear.’

  ‘Charlotte?’

  ‘You won’t know her. She was Charlotte Bracey. We were at school together – though I went to so many, I really can’t remember which one.’

  ‘But I do know her. She writes books, doesn’t she?’

  Verity looked at him in surprise. ‘I didn’t know you had arty friends!’ She was a little bit annoyed to find he knew any of her circle. It wasn’t that she was ashamed of Edward but her friends liked to tease her for having as a beau a member of the class which she, as a Communist, absolutely deplored so, as far as possible, she kept him out of sight.

  ‘Oh yes, I know Charley,’ said Edward thoughtfully.

  ‘What does that mean? I don’t like your tone of voice.’

  ‘Sorry, V. It wasn’t a tone of voice at all. Her parents lived near Mersham. We knew each other as children. Went to the same parties – that sort of thing. I once dropped icecream down the back of her neck. She played a good game of tennis,’ he mused. ‘I’d love to see Charley again. We rather lost touch when she went to London after her parents died. I didn’t even know she was married.’

  ‘She’s married,’ said Verity crossly. She hated talking at length about other women when she was with Edward. She might not want him for herself but she disliked the idea of his being some other woman’s friend. She glanced across at him. She had to admit it: he was attractive. He was slim but broad in the shoulders. He had all his hair. He looked – she thought appraisingly – rather less than his thirty-six years but his brown eyes were those of a man who had seen some of the world’s less comfortable corners. He had a good chin, always so important. She could never find any man attractive with a weak chin. Round his mouth two or three creases furrowed his face when he smiled, which he did frequently, but his rather thin lips and beakish nose suggested that, beneath the veneer of the perfectly dressed ‘man about town’, a more formidable figure lay dormant.

  ‘I saw Joe on Saturday, Verity,’ he said seriously. ‘He said you had a narrow escape at Toledo. I’m afraid I missed seeing your report in the paper. You won’t get yourself killed, will you?’

  Verity turned her head away and looked out at the Ritz which they happened to be passing. ‘We were defeated. We have to face facts. Those Arab troops of Franco’s . . . they behaved like . . . ’

  Edward saw from the back of her head that she was upset. He said gently, ‘Might I be allowed to take you out to dinner? I would like to hear all about it.’

  Verity looked at him and seemed to be satisfied with what she saw. His was not idle curiosity. He would understand, she thought. After all, he had seen the first few days of the war. So many of her London friends said they wanted to hear what it was like in Spain but, when she began to tell them, she saw their attention wander. She sometimes wondered if she alone saw the importance of this fight with Fascism. But, of course, the Party understood what it was they were fighting for.

  As if he had read her thoughts – it was odd how different they were and yet how often they found themselves thinking the same things – he said, ‘I really do want to hear what’s been going on in Spain. I’ve been worried sick about you.’

  He hadn’t meant to sound so intense but it was good to put the feeling he had suppressed into words. With an effort, he tried to lighten the atmosphere. ‘Am I allowed to ask how a Communist Party member squares her conscience with these?’ He poked with his foot at one of the Galeries Lafayette bags.

  ‘The comrades are so serious it sometimes gets in the way of their dress sense,’ she giggled. ‘I really refuse to look dowdy just because the cause is good. You do agree?’

  ‘Not being a comrade I really can’t comment, V, but I do like seeing a pretty girl dressed . . . ’ He was going to say ‘dressed to kill’ but stopped himself. ‘. . . . to brighten up our sad old world. In fact, you look so good I have half a mind to . . . ’

  ‘Ah, here we are!’ Verity said suddenly as the cab pulled up outside the house of her friends. ‘I would ask you in but I happen to know Adrian and Charlotte are out so it wouldn’t be proper, would it? Now help me out with these.’

  When Verity, after a struggle with the door key, had let herself in and Edward had dropped her parcels in a pile in the narrow entrance hall, she said, ‘Well, goodbye then. You rescued me once again so I suppose I ought to collapse in your arms. I tell you what, come to lunch on Sunday.’

  ‘’Fraid not. I’m spending the weekend in Wiltshire.’

  ‘Oh, I see. Going to murder a few peasants? Please God defend me from the upper classes at play.’

  ‘Ha! ha!’ Edward said ironically. ‘Anyway, it’s pheasants, not peasants. What about dinner at Gennaro’s on Tuesday?’

  ‘Mmm, maybe. I’ve got a meeting in the afternoon.’

  ‘A Party meeting?’ he inquired ingenuously.

  ‘Sort of,’ she admitted. ‘They’re sending some of us on the Jarrow march.’

  ‘Jarrow? Bede’s home?’

  ‘It will be known for something other than the Venerable Bede in a day or two, I can tell you,’ she said grimly. ‘I sometimes think we really are two nations – the privileged and the people.’

  ‘Disraeli.’

  ‘He wasn’t CP, was he?’

  ‘Yes he was – if you mean Conservative Party.’

  ‘Idiot! It may have escaped yo
ur notice that Jarrow’s shipping industry has been destroyed and the poverty of the people there is heartbreaking.’

  ‘I suppose I did know.’

  ‘No you didn’t. No one could if they hadn’t seen it with their own eyes. That’s the point of the march: to bring the reality of what has happened to the town, and other towns like it, to London so that people like you can begin to understand what is happening to our country.’

  ‘So when’s it to happen?’

  ‘It’s happening already. They’ve started marching and should reach London before the King opens the new parliament. They think he will do something for them, poor dears.’

  ‘They’re marching three hundred miles to see the King? It sounds like a nursery rhyme.’

  ‘It isn’t a nursery rhyme for them. More like the Peasants’ Revolt. Anyway, it’s just the sort of thing the King might do to annoy Baldwin. He’s very good with people, you know.’

  ‘I know, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean . . . Hey! I thought you didn’t approve of kings?’

  ‘Not in principle but this one – whatever his politics – has a feeling for ordinary people in distress. Perhaps he knows what it’s like to be bullied.’

  ‘Please, Verity, you’re going to give me palpitations! If you start defending the monarchy I’ll start believing Colonel Lindbergh is Little Bo-Peep.’

  ‘Now that’s interesting. Why should such a brave man be a Fascist? Anyway, the point is the Jarrow marchers hope to shame all you lot who don’t give a tinker’s cuss how the other half of the country lives or dies into some sort of action.’

  ‘You’re not marching?’

  ‘The last bit. A party of us is going to meet them at St Albans – or somewhere just outside London. But it’s going to take them three weeks to get here. Tommie’s coming, and some of the others.’ Tommie Fox had been at Cambridge with Edward and was now vicar of a parish in Kilburn. He was one of the only truly good men Edward knew. ‘Why don’t you join us?’