The Unquiet Grave

by David J Oldman

  Gifford stared across the table at me, face devoid of expression as if he was waiting until I had got what Julia called wisecracks off my chest.

  ‘The men that first found the Bren Gun carrier...’ he said.

  ‘What, 4th Wilts, after they retook Maltot?’

  ‘No. This was the same day the carrier was destroyed, July 10th.’

  ‘First I’ve heard of it,’ I said.

  ‘I told you there was something you didn’t know. It was early that evening just before they started pulling out of the village. Some platoons had got lost and communications were out. The Dorsets were trying to round men up to tell them to pull back. Some of them went into the woods and came across the carrier. They were led by a young second lieutenant, a man with a bit of nous about him, if you know what I mean.’

  Given what I knew about the carrier and the proximity of the Hitlerjugend, I wasn’t sure I would have characterized it as “nous”.

  ‘The two in the carrier were still burning but he thought the third man——Dabs——looked as if had been executed. He took his men up the drive to the château to investigate.’

  Gifford sipped his rum. I poured myself another.

  ‘He saw smoke coming out of one of the ground floor windows. As there wasn’t any sign of German troops around he went inside to take a look.’

  ‘I’m not sure I would have,’ I said.

  ‘He found a body in the room that was on fire and by the look of it thought it had been set deliberately to incinerate the corpse. There was a smell of petrol and the hands and head had been burned while the rest wasn’t that badly damaged. His first thought was that whoever had done it had been in a hurry and botched the job. Instead of waiting around to make sure the whole place went up it looked as if they’d scarpered.’

  ‘Just as well for your second lieutenant,’ I said. ‘Or he would have run smack into Müller’s platoon and I’d have been looking into his execution.’

  ‘Actually you wouldn’t,’ Gifford said. ‘Because no one would have been interested if we hadn’t known about what he found.’

  ‘Found?’

  ‘The circumstances made him curious. Dabs being executed and the attempt to burn the body in the house. He put the fire out and found some ID on the corpse――in the name of Claude Pellisier. Then he had a look around. He found some half-burned papers in the grate, which again he thought a bit odd being summer and as they’d set fire to the house anyway So naturally he had a rummage through them.’

  ‘Naturally,’ I said.

  ‘There wasn’t much left he could make out,’ Gifford went on ignoring me, ‘except that some were in English. More than that, several bore the stamp of the British Foreign Office.’

  Gifford paused, watching for a reaction. I didn’t feel like giving him the satisfaction of supplying one.

  ‘He couldn’t have had much time,’ I said. ‘The 9SS-Panzers were already moving up in support of the 10th’s battalions in Maltot.’

  ‘No, he didn’t,’ said Gifford. ‘His men heard armour approaching so they had to pull out pretty sharpish. Lucky they weren’t cut off. The lieutenant had already made a note of Dabs’ ID but couldn’t do anything for the other two as the carrier was still red hot. He did bring back the papers he found in the grate, though. It was afterwards he began thinking that whoever had set the fire hadn’t really meant for the whole château to go up, just the body.’

  ‘Sounds to me like he was the man you should have got to investigate Kearney,’ I said. ‘Not me.’

  Gifford shook his head and for once allowed himself the luxury of looking pleased with himself. ‘Not Kearney. Coveney. We discovered Coveney had been passing information to Pellisier. But you had to be the one to look at Kearney, see if you could establish it wasn’t Pellisier’s body. Call it a pincer movement. You knew the family. That’s why you were attached to Jekyll; so your section would get the file.’

  I found my glass was empty again. Gifford refilled it.

  ‘I wasn’t aware Special Branch had that sort of pull.’

  ‘Not us. The people we answer to.’

  ‘Jekyll told me he hadn’t wanted me handling it in the first place,’ I said.

  ‘It was Sir Maurice Coveney that didn’t want you handling it. He didn’t want anyone handling it. But particularly someone who knew the family, who knew about his connection to Claude Pellisier.’

  ‘I can believe it of Coveney,’ I said, ‘but you’re not going to tell me Jekyll was complicit in leaking Foreign Office files to Pellisier? He may be a hard-nosed prick but he’s not a spy. Never that.’

  ‘Of course not. He didn’t know what Coveney had been up to before the war. But he wasn’t above helping him smooth things over afterwards, when asked to. Coveney didn’t go into details but he told Jekyll something of his family connection to Claude Pellisier and how the Frenchman’s action during the war might prove an embarrassment to him. He told Jekyll that if there was any way it could be played down, he’d be grateful.’

  ‘Grateful?’

  ‘The Coveney family have ship-building interests on the Clyde. There was to be a position in the company for Jekyll when he came out of the army.’

  ‘Well, we’ve all got to look to the future now,’ I said. Gifford’s expression suggested some people might not have one. ‘You said before the war. Did Coveney stop passing stuff once it started?’

  Gifford emptied his glass but didn’t pour another. ‘Not immediately. Being a member of the Anglo-German Fellowship wasn’t uncommon among that class before the war. Even after it started there were some who hoped for an accommodation with Hitler. It was when his wife was killed in a German air raid that he stopped.’

  ‘So I assume he passed his stuff to Reggie Forster in America who sent in on to Pellisier from there.’

  ‘Until America entered the war. But by then Coveney had had second thoughts. And by that time his son had joined up as well.’

  ‘What happens to Coveney now? Have you got enough to arrest him?’

  Gifford looked at his empty glass. ‘Not my decision. Apparently it’s been decided that a scandal wouldn’t be in the national interest. The country needs to rebuild its industry and get back on its feet. There’s no suggestion that the rest of Coveney’s family were involved in his passing information and it’s thought a court case might prove prejudicial to getting the shipyards back to work.’

  ‘He gets away scot-free?’

  ‘You could say Scot-free,’ Gifford agreed, replying with what, if I hadn’t known the man, I might have taken for a joke. ‘They’re taking a lenient view. Coveney never passed anything after his wife was killed when it might have done some real damage and as far as we’re aware seems to have cut all his ties with Pellisier.’

  ‘Until he was asked to identify his corpse?’

  Gifford pursed his lips. ‘I suspect he might have done that for the sake of his dead wife. She had been close to her brother. But he’ll have to resign, of course. Although that’s as far as it will go.’

  ‘Resign?’ I repeated a little caustically. ‘Well, that’s all right then. At least we’ll both be out of work.’

  ‘Which reminds me. There’s someone who wants to meet you. Abel Bryce. Says he’s got a bone to pick with you.’

  ‘I’ve already met him,’ I said. ‘Coveney’s secretary. He’s been trying to get in touch――’

  Whether it was Gifford being there, I don’t know, but recalling Bryce, something else fell into place.

  ‘He told me he met you at Julia Parker’s house,’ Gifford went on. ‘He was none too pleased about you getting him out of bed to deal with Diamaid Caomhánach’s body. He was late for work the next morning.’

  ‘The man with the camera,’ I said. ‘Bryce works for you?’

  ‘Not Special Branch. Bryce is MI5. They managed to put him in as Coveney’s secretary. Bryce was the second lieutenant with nous who found the carrier. Made captain by the end of the war.’

  ‘Not brigadie
r? I’m surprised. Why does he want to see me?’

  ‘I’ll give him this address.’

  ‘They’re knocking the place down,’ I said.

  ‘You’ll hear from him before that.’ He stood up and moved towards the door, leaving what was left of the rum on the table. ‘One other thing,’ he said, as if it had just occurred to him. ‘You might prefer not to be there when the Queen Mary docks at Southampton. It’ll be handled quietly but it might be better if you weren’t there.’

  *

  I found a flat for Penny and myself a couple of days before the Queen Mary was due to berth. North of the Marylebone Road in a service block off the Edgeware Road, the building wasn’t old but had had a bad war and was unfurnished and shabby——unlike Cowcross Street, though, in no danger of demolition. I took a lease on it and arranged for a painter to tidy the place up. Penny was still struggling to get her parents’ house ship-shape and had little time to spare to worry about where we were going to live. I thought she might be upset about my not going down to Southampton to meet the liner but she didn’t seem to mind. Julia was going with her and she wanted to get Helen and Reggie settled before announcing that she and I were getting back together. She hadn’t written to tell them.

  She said she’d try and ring me from Southampton once they disembarked and we agreed on a time. I said I’d wait by the phone in the hall for her call. I didn’t know exactly what Gifford had in mind for Helen and Reggie when they arrived and thought it probably best I didn’t, but I stood by the phone fifteen minutes before she was due to ring and stayed for an hour after, littering the floor with cigarette butts. Even after I knew she wasn’t going to phone I still waited, taking the opportunity to jot down on paper all those telephone numbers I’d scrawled on the plaster over the last months. Even the number for Rose’s flats in Kilburn.

  Finally I gave up and walked down the road towards Kings Cross and bought an evening newspaper. I stopped in a pub and went through each page over a pint, not seriously expecting to find anything but compelled to look anyway. The next morning I waited until almost noon then rang Julia.

  Ida answered with barely a trace of Blackburn leaching through her best telephone manner. In the background I could hear someone wailing and Ida dropped her voice as if not wanting to be overheard.

  ‘Captain Tennant?’ she almost whispered. ‘Something terrible’s happened.’

  ‘My wife’s there is she?’ I asked.

  ‘And Miss Julia and her sister. They took Mr Forster off the ship...’

  ‘Can I speak to my wife?’ I said.

  ‘They’re all in a terrible state, sir. He’s been arrested!’

  ‘I don’t suppose Mr Tuchman’s there, by any chance?’

  ‘Yes. Do you want to speak to him?’

  ‘Please Ida, if I may.’

  The receiver was put down and I could hear muffled voices and the wailing still going on and a minute or so later Tuchman came on the line.

  ‘Harry? If you hold for a minute I’ll pick up the extension.’ I heard him say something to Ida who must have come back to the phone with him and a few moments later he said, ‘Harry,’ again and I heard a click as Ida replaced the receiver in Julia’s hall.

  I could picture him in Julia’s library, a large room with some comfortable chairs and decent books that nobody read. The library was hardly used and Tuchman would be able to speak freely there without fear of being interrupted.

  ‘Ida said they arrested Forster,’ I began before he could say anything else. ‘How are they taking it?’

  ‘Not well. Julia’s sister had a fit of hysterics yesterday. She isn’t much better this morning. Julia’s being a trouper. She spent all yesterday evening on the phone trying to find someone with enough pull to get him released. Of course that’s not going to happen, not immediately. She asked me if I could do anything, but under the circumstances...,’ his voice trailed off.

  I put a toe in the water. ‘Penny told me they’d already been questioned in New York. Something about their immigration status?’

  ‘So I heard,’ said Tuchman, ‘although the story I got from Julia was that they were asking about Helen and Pellisier. Back before the first war? Know anything about that, Harry?’

  It was then I realized just how disingenuous Tuchman could be. I couldn’t be certain Julia had told him about the affair, but it was difficult to believe, given his interest in Claude Pellisier, that he hadn’t ferreted out everything there was to know. Gifford’s interest in Pellisier was marginal beyond the fact he was the recipient of Coveney’s intelligence, which after the fall of France in 1940 could only have reached Pellisier through Forster. I had told Gifford about the affair and he might well have told Tuchman. Either way, the man already knew and one or the other of them had used the information. But since Gifford had got it from me, I could see that I was going to be the one left holding the baby. The only question was how long it would take for Julia to put two and two together and for the penny to drop. And for Penny to drop me.

  ‘How’s Penny taking it?’ I asked.

  ‘Upset, naturally,’ he said, conveying a liberal use of understatement.

  I asked him what had happened at Southampton.

  ‘Gifford’s men went on board with the pilot. It was all low key and as soon as they berthed they took him off through one of the crew exits. They let your mother-in-law disembark but she had to be helped ashore. I’m afraid the press were on hand to record the fact so you’d better expect some publicity. Julia’s trying to keep it out of the papers but it’s only a matter of time.’

  ‘I should come over,’ I said.

  Tuchman didn’t reply immediately. When he did it was obvious he was weighing his words.

  ‘We’ve got Helen calmed down at the moment. It probably wouldn’t do any good for her to see you. Not just now, Harry. Under the circumstances.’

  ‘Tell Penny I called then, will you? And that I took your advice about not coming over.’

  ‘Sure, Harry,’ Tuchman said, and this time there was no mistaking that we both knew where we stood.

  *

  I rang again the next morning. Ida told me Tuchman wasn’t there and that no one else was available to come to the phone.

  By then I knew I was just going through the motions.

  I tried once more later and this time Julia came to the phone. She said Penny didn’t wish to speak to me. I asked why and a moment of icy silence followed before she said:

  ‘How could you betray a confidence, Harry? You told them about Helen and Claude. It’s unforgivable.’

  I thought about suggesting that both her and Penny had betrayed it first and that Tuchman also knew. Even if Julia denied telling him I’d be planting a seed of suspicion which, if unlikely to grow there and then, might germinate later. But for now Julia would assume I was just trying to shift the blame and that would be how it would sound. It might even be the truth.

  Instead I dissembled until she put the phone down on me. I went round there, of course, rang the bell and hammered on the door until Ida eventually opened it. The poor girl was shaking and close to tears as she told me she had been instructed to say I was no longer welcome at the house. I could have pushed past her, I suppose, had I thought it would have done any good. I knew it wouldn’t so stood on the doorstep for several minutes after she had closed the door in my face.

  Strangely, all I could think about at the time was that I was stuck with a lease on a flat I could no longer afford.

  31

  The day I moved out of Clerkenwell Abel Bryce came to see me with the offer of a job. They needed men like me, he said, with a police and army background who were dependable and not afraid to use their initiative.

  He might have added with a suspicious nature and no family ties, but was decent enough not to mention either.

  The youthful naivety I had seen in him when we’d first met at Julia’s seemed subsumed now beneath a mature exterior, as if he had either suddenly grown older or had cast off
a part he no longer needed to play.

  ‘Think about it,’ Bryce said, ‘and come and see us.’ He handed me a card with an address but no name. ‘I think you might enjoy the work. We’re all in it together since that Irish business, after all.’

  If the comment was meant as a veiled threat, a reminder that I still had Caomhánach’s death hanging over my head, he managed not to make it sound as such, and in his face I caught a flash of his former naivety.

  The game, I suspected, came as second nature to him.

  Would I have done what Bryce had if I had come across the Bren gun carrier outside the Château de Hêtres; found the bodies of Arnie Poole and Robert Burleigh in the burning vehicle and the corpse of Joseph Dabs nearby, shot in the back of the head? Would I have possessed the requisite initiative to search the house, the nous to realize things weren’t quite as they seemed?

  I didn’t suppose I would but then we can’t all be John Buchan characters.

  ‘Did you hear about Maurice Coveney, by the way?’ Bryce asked as he got up to leave.

  ‘No,’ I said, pocketing his card.

  ‘Shot himself when Forster was arrested.’

  ‘Did he leave a note?’

  Bryce raised an amused eyebrow. ‘No, and it wasn’t us if that’s what you’re suggesting. We don’t go in for that sort of thing as a general rule――just in case you thought we might. And no, no note. Hard on Coveney’s son. He was quite innocent of any involvement. Spent his war in the Far East and had something of a tough time of it, I’m told.’

  Hard on Helen, Julia and Penny, too, I couldn’t help thinking after he had left. It seemed the men in their family——blood relatives or otherwise——were all destined to betray them to some degree or other. I was the worst in their eyes, of course; even if——in my eyes——the most innocent.

  I didn’t doubt that sooner or later Tuchman, too, would abandon them, but I found it difficult to feel much sympathy.

  Some people——like Mussolini’s mistress for instance——just couldn’t back a winner.