He rang off before Joe could argue.
Cyril Tate had been an odd choice for Society columnist. Joe wasn’t surprised to hear that he’d been moved sideways, having privately considered the man too astute, too talented and too middle-aged to be wasting his time trailing around after debutantes. When his copy escaped the editor’s blue pencil, it was lightly ironic and certainly lacked the deferential tone the readers of such nonsense expected. He was valued, Joe supposed, by his paper for the quality of his writing but also for his talent with a camera. Readers were increasingly demanding photographic illustrations of their news items and papers like the Standard found that their sales increased in direct proportion to the square footage of photographs they printed. Armed with his Ermanox 858 press camera, he could stalk his prey up close and then write the reports to support the photographs. Only one pay-packet. Only one intrusive presence at the scene. Economical and practical.
A confident-looking man in trim middle age and wearing a slightly battered dinner-jacket was standing at the bar when Joe arrived, laughing with the barman. The room was almost empty of drinkers at this early hour and had the air of quiet readiness of an establishment about to launch into something it does well. Everything was in place, shining and smart. Silver shakers stood in a row; the lemons were sliced, the ice was cracked. In a corner, a pianist lifted the lid of a baby grand piano and began to riffle over the keys.
‘Harry’s working on a cocktail for you, Commander,’ Cyril greeted him cheerfully.
‘It’s called The Corpse Reviver,’ said Harry Craddock. ‘Very powerful concoction.’
‘Trying to put me out of a job?’ said Joe.
Harry smiled. ‘Not necessarily. Four of these taken in swift succession will unrevive any corpse.’ He listed the ingredients.
Joe shook his head in disbelief. ‘Thanks all the same but I’ll stick to something simple. What about you, Cyril?’
Cyril was prepared. ‘The Bee’s Kiss,’ he said. ‘I’ll toast the Queen Bea with an appropriate potation.’
Harry deftly measured light and dark rum into a cocktail shaker, adding honey, heavy cream and ice. He shook it lustily and poured the golden foam into a cocktail glass which he presented, with a flourish, to Cyril.
Joe eyed it doubtfully. ‘Spoon? Are you having a spoon with that?’
Cyril took a sip and licked his lips. ‘Delicious! Looks so innocent, doesn’t it? Honeyed, frothing, inviting? But beware – there’s a sting in there! Too much of this and you’re on your back and feeling ill. Have one?’
‘No thanks. I don’t drink rum these days. I’ll have a White Lady.’
‘Ah, yes. Army, weren’t you? I expect it would put you off.’ His sharp eyes crinkled with humour. ‘Not a problem for me. Ex-Royal Flying Corps – they tried to keep us well clear of intoxicating spirits!’
They took their drinks to a secluded table.
‘Right, Cyril,’ said Joe, ‘that’s enough of the heavy symbolism. Get to the point, will you? I’m a busy man.’
‘Are you though?’ The tone was annoyingly arch. ‘You confirmed on the telephone information that had been put my way by an official source. You’re off the case. You’ve been left sitting twiddling your thumbs – just like you left me at the Ritz the other night.’ He gave Joe a forgiving smile.
‘Ah! That was you?’
‘None other. And I mean – none other. Everyone’s been discouraged from taking an interest but I’m not so easy to put off.’
‘And you have contacts.’
Cyril didn’t reply. Joe wouldn’t have expected it. Journalists were skunks but they all had honour when it came to refusing to name their sources. He was surprised when Cyril said, ‘The Irishman. I’d say – watch him, Commander . . . if you were still allowed to watch him. He’s the link between my two areas of expertise, you might say.’
‘Not sure I follow you, Cyril.’
‘Well, covering this crime story, as I was – my headline was going to be “Mysterious Death of Wren at Ritz” – it occurred to me that I was particularly well placed to have insights, what with my society background an’ all.’
‘Do you have them often, these insights, and are you prepared to share them with me?’
‘You know about the Hive?’ Cyril’s voice had become businesslike and low.
‘I know it exists. Nothing more. Peripheral to my enquiries?’
Cyril shook his head. ‘I don’t believe so. Listen! These girls that buzz about getting ready to save the country, sharpening their stings ready for the Russian bear . . . know who teaches them their skills? Down at the Admiralty building, there’s a room that’s been set aside for their use and one of their instructors is our friend Donovan.’
‘Skills? What sort of skills?’
‘Wireless training – intercepts, code-breaking, signalling. The sort of stuff the girls were good at in the war.’ He paused and sipped again at his cocktail. ‘It just occurred to my suspicious mind to wonder whether the bloke might have extended his brief somewhat.’
‘I am aware of the man’s extra-curricular relationship with the Dame,’ said Joe carefully.
‘Well, push the thought a bit further. Good-looking bloke. Heart-breaker perhaps? What do you say to him being the honey in this nasty little cocktail?’
‘Girls apt to develop a crush on the teacher, you mean?’
Cyril sighed. ‘This is more than the plot of a girls’ school story, Commander. Frolicksome larks among the Wrens . . . I’m talking about sinister manipulation.’ He reached out and touched Joe’s arm to underline his earnestness. ‘Sinister enough to lead to death.’
‘Death? Whose death?’ asked Joe uncertainly.
‘Ah, well. This is where the lighter side of my job gives me that insight I mentioned. Not sure anyone else has made the connection. There’s only about six girls in this group. They’re crème de la crème – intended to form the core of any future organization. What would you say if I told you that two of them had killed themselves? Over the last two years. Committed suicide. Coincidence? Two out of six? I don’t think it could be. Hushed up, of course. I only took notice because they were both on my socially-interesting list and now, when I come across a third death connected with this little set-up, I begin to smell a rat – and perhaps a good story.’
‘Are they sure it was suicide?’ Joe asked awkwardly, uncomfortable to be professionally on the back foot in this discussion.
‘No doubt. There were valid reasons, farewell notes and all that. One jumped off a cliff in the middle of a family picnic, the other took an overdose of something no one suspected she had access to. They’ve been replaced with fresh recruits, of course. But it makes you think. You’d no idea, had you?’
‘Cyril, the Dame only died three days ago. I’d have got there.’
‘Never will now though, will you? You’ll read the official story of her death in tomorrow’s paper. The line we were handed is that her companion –’
‘Don’t tell me! I practically dictated it,’ said Joe. ‘And don’t dismiss it. It’s certainly possible.’
‘Plausible at best.’ Cyril gave him a knowing look. ‘So you’re off the case and sent to Surrey?’
‘I’ve a few days’ leave lined up.’
A waiter approached and Cyril ordered fresh cocktails. When the man had moved out of earshot he said carefully, ‘And it mightn’t be a bad idea to be out of the capital over this next bit.’
‘The strike, you mean? It’ll affect the whole country. Even deepest Surrey.’
‘Not talking about whether the trains are running or the milk’s delivered to your doorstep – I’m talking politically.’
Joe was silent, afraid he knew where this was leading.
‘Word is you were something of a hot-head not so long back, Commander. Union man? If all this turns nasty, people will go about looking for bogeymen. Lists are being drawn up so that if heads have to roll the chopping will be done in an orderly way . . . with military precision,�
� he said with emphasis.
‘How would you know all this, Cyril? Home Secretary your cousin or something?’
‘I’ll just say I have a fellow pen-pusher on a grander sheet than mine who’s well connected. He occasionally gets hold of stories that he’d never be allowed to print in his august journal. But if another less hidebound paper with a forward-looking owner who’s not so impressed by the British Establishment breaks it first, he can then follow suit the next day – once it’s in the public domain. That’s how it works these days – regulated revelation, you might call it. But the upshot is – and I say this because you’ve done me a good turn in the past –’ Joe couldn’t for the life of him remember what it was – ‘check your slate’s clean. Keep your head down until this has blown over. Someone’s got his eye on you.’
Alarmed, Joe decided he’d heard enough of Cyril’s ravings and prepared to leave. ‘Cyril, I actually think that’s good advice and I shall heed it,’ he said easily. ‘And thanks for the tip about the girls. Now how do I pay you for this? In cocktails?’
‘Thank you very much, Commander, but there is one more thing if you wouldn’t mind?’
He walked over to the bar, picked up something he’d left concealed behind it and returned to the table. ‘Just for my records . . . to use next time you clear up a case. “Debonair detective, Joseph Sandilands, in his favourite watering-hole.”’
The flare of the magnesium flash caught Joe wide-eyed and resentful, cocktail in hand. An anxious waiter dashed forward, soda siphon at the ready.
Chapter Twenty
Joe strolled down the Strand, both intrigued and disconcerted by Cyril’s flourish. His recipe for good relations with pressmen was a measure of co-operation blended with a strong dash of scepticism and a twist of humour and, on the whole, it seemed to go down well. While resenting their ever more powerful presence in public life, he acknowledged that they did an essential job with some skill and he managed to stay on fair terms with the ones he encountered. And, occasionally, as now, he would be rewarded with a nugget of information. But it was the warning that troubled him.
Sir Nevil had growled the same message and he’d decided to ignore it. Dangerous perhaps. You could get too familiar with the same old sniper who never changed his position. But when you heard enemy fire coming at you from a fresh direction – time to get your head down. And what about Bill? He was more exposed in the firing line than was Joe. He’d tried to warn him, without giving away the details of the plundered file, but Bill had just shrugged it off. He’d said something half-hearted about visiting an aunt in Southend but Joe hadn’t believed a word of it.
Tuesday evening. Joe looked at his watch. Seven. On impulse he struck off to his right and made his way up the Charing Cross Road and just before he got to Oxford Street, he plunged west into Soho.
He always felt he was invading these streets. Once off the broad avenues, they became narrow and crooked. Here and there were glimpses of the remains of centuries-old rookeries, tumbledown houses that had been overstuffed with people, throbbing with crime and stinking of poverty. Now, thankfully, almost all had been demolished to make way for workers’ houses though these themselves were fast degenerating into slums. In spite of the chill of apprehension and the sharpening of his senses which always accompanied him when he walked along these alleys, Joe knew that life and limb and the wallet in his pocket were in far less danger here in Soho than they were on Oxford Street.
Through these few acres flowed a motley population of uncounted thousands from dozens of different countries. You could even occasionally hear a native cockney voice. Joe was amused to hear one hail him as he strode towards Dean Street:
‘Corns and bunions, your honour? Try a dab of my special tincture!’ The hawker waved a bottle filled with vivid green liquid. ‘Nothing goes into this but pure herbs and the sweat of my brow . . . oh, go on, sir! Man in your job – he’d need a bit of relief for his feet.’
How the hell had he known? Joe crossed the road to avoid the stench of decaying horse-flesh from a cat’s meat man’s barrow and found himself running the gauntlet of pair after pair of dark eyes and importunate hands that stole out from darkened doorways as he passed. ‘Silk dresses, sir? The best in town!’ Samples of their work fluttered from poles over shop fronts, relieving with their vivid Eastern colours the sooty façades.
Now what accent was that? And how on earth did you ever keep track of the movement of the races within this small world? One week the shops were all French with primeurs, pâtés and pastries. The next they might be Italian, Jewish, Russian . . . His copper’s eye took in a chalked sign on a door as he passed and he automatically noted the number. One cross meant opium was available, two offered cocaine as well. So – the Levant was moving north? But he was looking for a Russian enclave. Bordeaux Court off Dean Street, Bill had said.
A shop front announcing ‘Imperial Vodka’ told him he must be getting close. He listened to a band of children who were plunging about the streets, kicking at empty cans, orange peel and something that could just have been a dead cat. The chatter and squeals were in a mixture of cockney and Russian. These back streets, he knew, had given birth to Bolshevism. In 1903. Over twenty years ago. Lenin, Trotsky and Karl Marx had all lived here. But he was looking for an unknown Russian.
Bill’s teacher was somewhere about but if he were to stop someone and ask where he could find a Russian waiter who also taught the language, he’d be given a dozen different names, all wrong, or a dusty answer. The rozzers were not welcomed in these streets and if a passing quack could recognize him for what he was, he’d get nowhere, or worse – sent around in circles.
He looked at his watch. Nearly seven thirty. He’d come on a wild-goose chase. With some vaguely chivalrous urge to protect and warn the sergeant, who probably knew better than he did how to take care of himself, he’d be wasting a good hour. He admitted that what he really wanted was to share his news about the deaths in the Hive: potentially explosive information which deserved to be evaluated by two professionals and not left to the cocktail-fuelled imaginings of a journalist.
He stood at the entrance to Bordeaux Court and looked down the alleyway. It was dirty, untidy and seething with activity. A mother leaned out of a first-floor window and called her children inside . . . in Russian. This was the place but which room above which shop? Joe studied the lie of the land. A cul-de-sac. If Bill were going to turn up for his evening lesson as usual, he’d do it at a regular hour which would be after his working day and allowing time for his tea and a wash and brush-up. He should be here within the next half-hour, Joe calculated. Unless, of course, he had indeed gone to visit his auntie. He’d have to approach from Dean Street, past the lamp-post where two little girls were swinging about on ropes, squealing with excitement.
A sudden scent of minestrone and the thought of Bill tucking into his tea reminded Joe that he’d eaten nothing since his breakfast at the Lyon’s Corner House. The delicious Italian aroma was coming from a tiny frontage in the street facing the head of the court. Joe went in. The room was so small he feared he had invaded a private home but the presence of a smiling waiter in a white apron reassured him. He asked for the table in the window, delighted to have at once an observation post and an opportunity to order a dish of their soup and a glass of red wine.
The kitchen appeared to be below the dining room and its chimney, a piece of metal piping, rose through the floorboards and conducted the spicy vapours outside into the street. Joe’s dish of minestrone and hunk of peasant bread came creaking up in a small lift through another hole in the floor.
He was so delighted with the experience, he almost missed Bill.
Whoops and shrieks from the street drew his attention. The footballing boys had gathered in welcome around the tall figure of Armitage as he entered the court.
Joe got to his feet, preparing to dash outside and hail the sergeant, but he hesitated, watching the scene develop, apprehensive and puzzled. A ball had been produced an
d the sergeant was making his way, dribbling with the skill of a professional down the alleyway. This was obviously a weekly occurrence. Bill scored a goal by hitting the lamppost squarely in the middle then they all moved into a circle and performed feats of sleight of foot that amazed Joe. Bill did another solo turn, weaving nimbly around the bollards that closed off the alley, the ball never more than an inch from his feet. After ten minutes of this Armitage called goodbye and walked away down the alley, fending off the raucous pleas to do it all over again.
Joe didn’t bother to watch where the sergeant went. It hardly mattered now.
Hastily, he paid for his soup, pronouncing it the equal of anything he’d had at Pagani’s, left a large tip and walked, deep in thought, back to the taxi rank on Oxford Street.
Time he was in Surrey.
Chapter Twenty-One
Lydia Benton hurried to greet her brother with a warm hug when he came down to breakfast on Thursday.
‘Goodness, Joe! It’s like hugging a hat-stand! However did you get so skinny? Come and have some porridge. And tell me you’ll stay a week! It’ll take that long at least to put some flesh back on your bones. Now . . . talk to me quickly. I reckon we have ten minutes before the girls come down from the nursery and Marcus gets back in from the stables. So – tell me what you’re planning.’
Joe outlined his intentions and Lydia listened, shaking her head with disapproval.
‘But are they expecting you?’
‘I certainly hope not! Something will have gone very wrong with my plans if they are.’
‘You ought at least to telephone them first and ask if it’s convenient to motor over. You can’t go about the county barging into people’s houses unannounced. This isn’t Chelsea, you know! Try the smoked haddock.’
‘I’ve no intention of giving warning. That’s the whole point. The family will all be at St Martin’s for the funeral. And if they’re expecting to see me there, they’ll be disappointed. I’ve asked Ralph Cottingham to go in my stead to represent the Met. I’ve had a hunting accident. I’ve been in a coma for two days and you’ve been worried about me, Lydia.’
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