Hollow Crown

by David Roberts

‘Why?’ Charlotte asked.

  ‘She’s there the whole time and knows exactly how the house is run and has access to the keys, but the main thing from Pride’s point of view will be that socially she is of no account. His one idea is to protect his political masters from scandal.’

  ‘Edward!’ Charlotte protested. ‘That’s so unfair. What evidence do you have for saying that?’

  ‘Oh, sorry, Charlotte. I know, Pride’s a clever man but I’ve had experience of his investigations on two occasions and he seemed less interested in getting to the truth and more in avoiding a bad press . . . ’

  ‘He’s doesn’t like us,’ Verity explained. ‘He thinks I’m the worst sort of political extremist and he considers Edward to be . . . well, someone who interferes where he should leave well alone.’

  ‘He thinks I’m an ass,’ Edward said bluntly.

  ‘And you’re not an ass, are you?’ Verity said as if she were comforting a three-year-old.

  Adrian said hurriedly, ‘Right, let’s get down to some sleuthing. It’s all very good fun.’

  ‘It’s not just self-indulgence,’ Edward said soberly. ‘I have no faith at all that Pride or anyone else will find out who killed Molly. I don’t care very much who killed Scannon but Molly was my friend and I refuse to let her death go unavenged just because that would be more convenient.’

  Verity looked at Edward with interest. There was a vein of bitterness in what he said and the way he said it that surprised her. He was no longer the light-hearted young aristocrat with the time and money to harry the police. He was, she thought, disillusioned, disillusioned with the police, with men of power like Joe Weaver and with society as a whole. Was it just that, as one got older, one had the experience to see things as they really were or was it something more profound? Even she had been forced to recognize there was no ‘good’ side to be on. Everyone – even the Party itself – had objectives of which she was largely ignorant but of which she instinctively disapproved. Surely Edward was right: where there was justice to be done one should not avoid doing it. One could argue that finding Molly’s murderer wasn’t their business and there was so much evil in the world and so many victims of oppression that one more case was neither here nor there. That wasn’t her attitude and she was glad it wasn’t his. She wanted to get up, put her arms around him and kiss him but she caught Adrian’s eye. He was smiling at her as though he knew exactly what she was thinking and, to her considerable annoyance, she blushed as though she were a child and not the hardened journalist she liked to imagine she was.

  11

  Verity worked on her book late into the night, tapping away on Adrian’s old typewriter – a Remington portable with its annoying red sticker bearing the maxim ‘To save time is to lengthen life’ – anxious to complete it before the Spanish civil war became history. She was sure the rebels would win – it was only a matter of when – not that she would ever have admitted so much even to Edward or Adrian. Rereading her New Gazette articles gave her the opportunity of re-evaluating her experiences. Her first reports were alive with indignation, confident of the justice of the cause she had espoused. Her naivety made her blush. As the weeks became months, she detected a shrillness in her writing which reflected her growing panic. Why would the democracies not help Spain in its agony? Why were the politicians so venal, the peasant soldiers so badly armed and – more agonizingly – the rebels so convinced right was on their side and justified the most terrible acts of cruelty? And what justified the Communist Party’s vicious war against those who had once been its allies and who still considered themselves part of the Popular Front against Fascism – the anarchists, the syndicalists, the separatists and, most bitter enemy of all, the Trotskyists?

  She had been given two hundred pounds advance on royalties by Victor Gollancz, the left-wing publisher and founder of the Left Book Club. It was the most she had ever earned and, for that reason alone, she was determined to do her best but it was even more important to her to make sense of her activities in Spain, culminating in the shocking defeat at Toledo which, as Edward had guessed, had shaken her to the roots. She had to believe that she had not been mistaken – that the cause to which she had attached herself so uncritically was worth her allegiance.

  When at last she went to bed, she looked at her face in the mirror as she removed the traces of lipstick and rouge she allowed herself – in part to avoid her friends remarking on how pale and drawn she was. She saw a white, round face with a stubborn chin and burning, black eyes which seemed to accuse her. She wondered if courage was self-renewing or whether it ran out like petrol in a car. She felt her store of courage was diminishing and it was odd that being near Edward seemed to help. She didn’t believe women needed men to complete them, as she had been taught. She liked men, she liked sex, but she had convinced herself she did not need a man in her life. And yet . . . she was beginning to wonder if she did not, in fact, need Edward. She had been profoundly shocked to hear of his night with Dannie and she didn’t quite know why. Was it simple jealousy? Or was it that she felt he needed a ‘good woman’ to save him from such squalid affairs?

  She fell asleep wondering and arose the next morning unrefreshed, her doubts unresolved. After a hasty breakfast, she went into the New Gazette to catch up on the news from Spain and to see if there was anything for her to do. Lord Weaver was out of the office until four when he had an appointment to talk to Daphne Hepple-Keen about backing her charitable work for children orphaned by the war. Verity put her head round the door of the editor’s office but Godber refused to acknowledge her greeting, to the ill-concealed glee of the staff who were within earshot. He had taken to pretending she did not exist. He had heard on the grapevine that she was once again going over his head to the paper’s proprietor to win his backing for some wild scheme, and he was seriously considering resigning if this proved to be the case. The editor wasn’t alone in his jealousy of Verity. Men who had worked at the paper for decades resented a woman – not a proper journalist in the eyes of many of them – getting bylines and pretending she was a war correspondent, a job totally unsuited to her age and sex. They made jokes about ‘sleeping one’s way to the top’ and asked themselves if their years of apprenticeship on local newspapers and then on Fleet Street counted for nothing.

  Verity knew all this without having to be told and, since there was nothing she could do about it, ignored it. Mentally shugging her shoulders, she decided to go down to the archive and see what she could find about Lewis Van Buren, the man who Molly said had introduced her to the Prince of Wales.

  There was nothing at all about Van Buren but there was something about Hepple-Keen. The New Gazette’s archivist, an elderly man by the name of Purser, directed her to several volumes of the paper covering the 1920s and, though the references to him were maddeningly few and almost always coupled with other more newsworthy names, Verity began to feel she was on to something. It appeared that Hepple-Keen, before he became an MP, had been some sort of government agent in Ireland. He was mentioned in a surprisingly critical account – given the newspaper proprietor’s close relationship with the government – of the activities of the Black and Tans who had murdered two of Michael Collins’s men in November 1920 and again, in February 1921, when fifteen army cadets had been murdered by the IRA. Precisely what official position he held which brought him to the scene of both crimes was not made clear, but Verity concluded that, though he wore no uniform and was certainly not a member of the RUC, he was a policeman of some kind and a senior one at that.

  Even more interesting was an account of the arrest the following June of a girl called Eileen O’Sullivan who had been in her bath when her Dublin flat had been raided by the British police. The unnamed New Gazette reporter had obviously been amused at her predicament and there was mention of Hepple-Keen ‘escorting her, semi-naked’ into a police van for interrogation. ‘Gallant British officers had protected her modesty’, according to the report but secret files belonging to the IRA leader, Michael Col
lins, had been discovered under her bed. Out of interest, Verity looked up Eileen O’Sullivan’s name in the index and discovered she had ‘died in gaol’ before she could be brought to trial. It made her boil to think of this Irish girl dying for her cause – a cause she, Verity, shared: an end to imperialism.

  She had been so deep in her reading that she had forgotten to keep an eye on the time and it was three thirty when she at last looked at the clock on the wall and realized Lady Hepple-Keen was due in the building in half an hour. Oddly enough, her instinctive dislike of Geoffrey Hepple-Keen – the heavy-handed, brutal policeman the files revealed – made her even more enthusiastic about helping Daphne. At the least, it would annoy him to see his wife become a public figure, applauded for her charitable works. At the best, it might provoke him to do something stupid. Evidence or no evidence, Verity had selected Geoffrey Hepple-Keen as the villain of the piece and the cold-hearted killer. She would ask her friend at Party headquarters if she knew anything more about him.

  Just before she left the archive, she thought she might as well see if there were any references to the other guests at Haling. Unsurprisingly, there were many to Lord Benyon and a few to Larry Harbin, who was described as having ‘the ear’ of President Roosevelt, a phrase that always amused her. She turned rather wearily to Leo Scannon. His public career was covered in considerable detail and his social life was also chronicled with numbing flattery. Verity looked up ten or twelve references during the previous decade but came to the conclusion that, if she wanted ‘dirt’ on the man, she would not find it in the nauseatingly respectful columns of the New Gazette. However, as she was thinking she really must go up to reception to meet Joe’s visitor, she saw that immediately before Leo Scannon’s name in the index was that of Arthur Frank Scannon. This turned out to be Leo’s father. Twenty minutes later, with a grim face, she thanked Mr Purser for his help and hurried up to the entrance hall to discover that Lady Hepple-Keen had already arrived and had been taken up to see Lord Weaver. She went over to the lift and, as she was whisked upwards, went over in her mind what she had just been reading. By the time she reached the top floor where Miss Barnstable shepherded her into the great man’s office, she was certain she had found a motive for murder.

  On Edward’s return to Albany after lunch at his club, he was met by a more than usually lugubrious Fenton.

  ‘Chief Inspector Pride is here to see you, my lord.’

  ‘Pride? Good heavens! What does he want? Has he been here long?’

  ‘Some half an hour, my lord.’

  Edward blanched and contemplated turning tail. He really didn’t want to meet his old enemy at this particular moment but he realized Pride must have heard his voice as he entered his rooms so, taking a deep breath, he pushed open the drawing-room door.

  ‘Chief Inspector,’ he said, holding out his hand and forcing his face into what he hoped was an insouciant smile. ‘How very nice to see you again. I do apologize for having inadvertently kept you waiting but I did not know you were intending to call on me.’

  Chief Inspector Pride did not smile but he did, rather grudgingly, take his hand. ‘That’s all right, my lord. It was just on an off chance. You know Sergeant Willis?’

  ‘Yes of course, how are you?’

  ‘Well, thank you, my lord.’

  The Sergeant was a pock-faced man with a pleasant smile and good-natured eyes. He had been helpful to Edward when he had been investigating the death of his old school friend, Stephen Thayer, and Edward had wondered then, and wondered again now, how the Sergeant put up with working for Pride.

  ‘Please, do sit down,’ Edward said. ‘Fenton, have you offered the Chief Inspector something to drink?’

  ‘Nothing, thank you, my lord,’ Pride broke in. He was looking uneasy and, at the same time, pleased with himself. He did not like Edward; he did not like being on his territory – he would have been more comfortable if this interview had been at the Yard – but he was cautious enough to know that, if he was too minatory now, he might regret it later. He thought he had this complacent, arrogant drone where he wanted him. He had been over the evidence so thoroughly and so often but he had enough respect for Edward and, it had to be said, for his ‘connections’, to be wary of making a mistake.

  ‘So what can I do for you, Chief Inspector?’ Edward said at last, since Pride seemed so reluctant to state the reason for his presence.

  ‘My lord,’ Pride began with a heave of his shoulders, ‘I have reason to believe you have something to tell me about the deaths of Mrs Raymond Harkness and Mr Leo Scannon.’

  ‘Indeed? You mean beyond the statement I made to Inspector Lampfrey?’

  ‘Yes, sir. I have your statement and also those of the other guests staying at Haling Castle at the time of Mrs Harkness’s death. I have also read the Inspector’s report following the examination of the room in which the lady died and there are certain things which . . . shall we say, “don’t add up”.’

  ‘Fire away, Chief Inspector. If I can help in any way . . . ’

  ‘You were the last person to see Mrs Harkness alive?’

  ‘Yes, except for the murderer, of course. No, wait. I believe that Miss Dannhorn went into Mrs Harkness’s room during the night but we don’t know if she was still alive at that point. Or perhaps you do know, Chief Inspector?’

  Pride chose to ignore the question. ‘You had been asked to recover some letters belonging to a certain personage. . . ’

  ‘To Mrs Simpson . . . yes.’ Edward was not prepared to let Pride get away with ‘certain personage’. If the Chief Inspector wanted to accuse him of anything, he wanted him to know that he would not be protecting anyone’s reputation as he sought to defend himself.

  ‘And you were selected for this by the lady in question because you were an intimate friend of the deceased?’

  ‘I had been a friend of Mrs Harkness in Kenya, Chief Inspector, but I had not seen her since she had returned to England.’

  The Chief Inspector changed tack. ‘According to Inspector Lampfrey’s report, you failed to say that you had . . . ah, spent much of the night with one of the ladies staying in the house.’

  ‘That is correct. I did not mention it until I heard from the Inspector that the lady had no objection to her name being mentioned.’

  ‘That was Miss Dannhorn?’

  ‘Indeed.’

  ‘Did you know at the time, Lord Edward, that the lady was hand in glove with a known foreign agent and was herself determined to gain possession of these letters?’

  ‘I wasn’t aware of it, no, but after the event I did begin to suspect. In fact, I asked Miss Dannhorn if she had gone into Mrs Harkness’s room during the night and taken the letters. She denied it.’

  ‘I see. And you did not believe her?’

  ‘No, but there was nothing I could do.’

  The Chief Inspector consulted his notes. ‘Mrs Harkness died from taking an overdose of veronal mixed in brandy from her flask. Your fingerprints and Mrs Harkness’s were the only ones on the flask. Your fingerprints were also on both handles of the door which connected your room with hers. Can you explain why, subsequently, you had to wait for Mr Pickering, the butler, to bring a master key so you could enter Mrs Harkness’s room from the passage? That was when you found her dead.’

  ‘Yes, but you see I didn’t notice the door between our rooms was open until after I found Mrs Harkness dead. My man, Fenton, had told me the night before that the door was locked. Since it was hidden by a screen, I did not know it had been opened – presumably sometime during the night.’

  ‘By whom, if not by you?’ the policeman said menacingly

  ‘By Miss Dannhorn, I imagine. Have you asked her?’

  ‘She is no longer in the country. I am told she is in Germany.’

  Edward was taken aback.

  ‘You didn’t know, my lord?’

  ‘No, I did not. Why should I have known?’

  ‘It is my belief, my lord,’ the Chief Inspector said po
nderously, ‘that you and she were in league to obtain the letters stolen from Mrs Simpson, not to return them to her but to spirit them out of the country to an interested foreign party.’

  ‘But that’s preposterous! Why should I have done that – for money?’

  The scorn in Edward’s voice was wasted on Pride. ‘I was hoping you could give me the answer to that, my lord. Inspector Lampfrey says you admitted to him that you had in your possession the deceased’s handbag in which the letters were probably kept by the lady – I understand she told you she always kept them on her.’

  ‘But the bag was empty.’

  ‘Of course it was empty. You had passed on the letters to Miss Dannhorn.’

  ‘But Lampfrey opened the bag, using force to break the lock.’

  ‘Very ingenious, my lord,’ the policeman said, unmoved.

  ‘I had no motive for doing what you are accusing me of.’

  ‘Mrs Harkness was pregnant either by you or by . . . someone else. Perhaps she was blackmailing you – saying she would tell the world you were the father of her child.’

  ‘I told you, Chief Inspector, I had not seen Mrs Harkness since she returned to England until we met at Haling. Even if I had been . . . . as you put it “the father of her child”, it might have embarrassed me but I wouldn’t have killed her.’

  Edward was sweating now. He looked at the Chief Inspector with disgust. ‘So, are you going to arrest me?’

  The Chief Inspector looked at him for a moment with satisfaction, and Edward realized how much he was enjoying seeing him squirm. A calmness overcame him and he understood that the man was trying to rattle him – to make him say something incriminating. There was plenty of circumstantial evidence to involve him in Molly’s death but not quite enough to make Pride certain he could get a conviction.

  ‘No, sir, we are still in the process of investigating Mrs Harkness’s death and Mr Scannon’s – a man you had no reason to love, I understand.’

  ‘Oh, don’t be absurd, Chief Inspector. Are you going to accuse me of murdering Mr Scannon?’