by John Gardner
‘I didn’t know Porky Ham was out.’
‘Two weeks ago. Back on the old game by the look of it.’
‘Christ, look at that, in broad daylight: Michael Barnes and Billy Bishop together. Someone’s in for a quick blagging tonight.’
‘You see that?’
‘What?’
‘Hymie Guinsburg. He’s off his manor, isn’t he?’
They knew, as the music hall joke had it, every crook and nanny on their beat.
At the Yard we were treated with civility. They even had a constable bring us milky coffee as we looked through the books, big as lecterned Bibles, full of the faces of evil. Petty larcenists, pickpockets, convicted felons, all incarcerated in rows, on photographic paper, unwillingly snapped.
We hadn’t been given the chance to speak in private, and neither of us knew what to do if we identified the pair. Poppy obviously hadn’t thought the matter through. After half an hour of slow page turning she gave a little gasp and pointed to one picture. It was undeniably the small shaggy one who had gone for her. I would have remained silent, not knowing where the trail would lead if the police picked them up, yet suspecting that somehow it would turn full circle and catch up with Oscar Miller and ourselves. I didn’t take much care while examining the pictures. There seemed to be little point, for almost certainly they knew that there was a link between Miller and myself — and Jane Patterson: which meant Hensman also. I left it to Poppy to pick out the big fellow, which she did a few minutes later. With little feeling I nodded agreement to her choices.
The sergeant smiled knowingly, as if he had already suspected the two men. He then asked if we would sign the statements we had made in the small hours. They had been neatly typed up, and we read through the bare facts in silence, then appended our signatures. We were just finishing when Fox came into the room.
‘A word if you don’t mind,’ he said to the sergeant. His manner was dry as tinder, his presence lofty, removed from the humdrum routine. The room was bare: a wooden table, three chairs and walls done in cheap institutional green. Outside on the river a small boat hooted. Fox took out a packet of Gold Flake. He didn’t offer them around, and for a moment I had the sensation of standing outside the scene looking in. Fox, the sergeant, a policewoman, Poppy and myself: like a waxwork tableau at Madame Tussaud’s.
‘They turned over your drum I hear,’ said Fox, looking at me with his dead eyes.
‘My flat was broken into, yes.’
‘I wonder what they were after, Darrell. I wonder.’
‘Who can tell?’ I shrugged, playing out the lies to the very last, reluctant to go down with the ship, and feeling that if I once admitted to having seen Miller in Basle they would start piling on the accusations. I had a vision of Madame Tussaud’s again. This time the Chamber of Horrors with me among the great murderers, Crippen, Thompson and Bywaters, George Joseph Smith, Simon Darrell. Fox sat down slowly, lighting his cigarette with a Swan Vesta, holding the little wax match until it almost burned down to the tips of his finger and thumb.
‘If you have any idea, Darrell, I would advise you to tell us now.’
Mentally I stood my ground, almost expecting him to make a direct accusation. But it didn’t come. He drew on his cigarette and looked at me hard, his focus on my left ear.
‘I don’t like journalists who meddle. You know that already, but I’d hate to see anyone get himself into a predicament through just being nosy and doing his job. A predicament,’ he repeated. ‘There are some forces at work which the police cannot control, Darrell. If it comes to it, you’ll have to remember that I told you. People you can’t control. The Met has to work with some strange bedfellows these days.’
‘What are you all looking for?’ I asked with as much blandness as I could summon from the pit of my sick and crawling stomach.
‘I told you last night. I’ll know when we find it. I suppose they will as well. A bit odd about Oscar Miller, Darrell. When they found him, his pockets had been cleaned out. No money, not a sou. Even his comb had gone. Odd, don’t you think?’ He rose to his feet. ‘Sure you’ve nothing to tell me?’
I shook my head, out of my depth.
‘Nor you, Miss Cooke?’
Poppy said no in a small voice.
‘We’ll doubtless all meet again then. Thank you, sergeant.’
‘He gives me the creeps, Fox,’ said Poppy later, after we had prised a double room with bath out of the Strand Palace management. The porter on reception looked at us dubiously and asked if it was for just the one night. He seemed surprised when we told him it would be for a few days. ‘He makes my flesh crawl,’ she went on. ‘His eyes are how I imagine a drowned man’s eyes to look. More fish than fox.’
I persuaded her not to go too far from the hotel, and said I would be in touch as soon as possible. Evans was already closeted with Guy when I got to the office and they were both inclined to believe that I had been frittering time away. I told them about the police.
‘So you picked out the two who jumped you.’ Guy had the executive look about him this morning — the best double-breasted suit with chalk stripes and a heavy silk tie. He was lunching with the owner at the Athenaeum, he told us.
‘Puxley?’ I asked. ‘What about Puxley?’
‘It would seem that he fell in front of a local train late last night. It’s odd though.’
‘Why?’
‘You remember, Simon, when you were down on the Hensman case, he said that he was on to something?’
‘I reported it to you.’
‘There was a letter in my post this morning. From Puxley.’ He passed the blue-grey piece of notepaper over the desk. Evans had obviously read it.
Puxley’s handwriting was a mirror of his outward appearance, untidy. You could almost smell the alcohol and hear the tap room banter. It was a short letter.
Dear Mr. Underwood,
As you will know, I have been assiduously following up the Hensman story on a tack of my own and I hope to have a real scoop within a day or so now.
I am sending this by post, because I don’t trust the telephones any more. Too many people can listen in.
As for extra material as background to the story I am putting together for you, might I suggest that you get everything you can on Mr. Hensman’s wife and father-in-law.
I will bring the whole thing to you in person and hope the price will be right.
Look forward to seeing you in a day or so. Yours faithfully,
Wilfred Puxley.
‘Under a train?’ I asked of nobody in particular.
‘A local goods,’ said Guy. ‘Wonder if he really had anything?’
I thought of Puxley with his stained teeth and the bit of spare down in Bude, and Nancy. ‘He comes and goes as he pleases,’ she had said on the telephone.
‘It would seem that it’s dangerous to get too close to the Hensman business.’ Evans was a past master at stating the obvious. He did it in print as well.
‘Any new ideas?’ asked Guy.
I shrugged and Evans coughed. ‘Only one small titbit. Sir Charles Ramsey. I rather think he’s something to do with Intelligence.’
‘Secret Service?’ Guy looked interested.
‘That would be the Boys’ Own title,’ Evans said with a sneer meant to imply that he knew more than he wanted to say.
‘Well, whatever it’s called. He’s part of the cloak and dagger brigade?’
‘From what I can make out, yes.’
I thought of Fox saying that there were some forces which the police could not control, and wondered if that was what he meant.
‘How does that help us?’ asked Guy.
‘They are rather a law unto themselves,’ Evans the schoolmaster, explaining the pluperfect for the umpteenth time. ‘They have a reputation.’
‘For what?’
‘A certain ruthlessness. Ham fisted at times.’
‘Beech’s murder? You mean that would have been easy for someone like Ramsey to cover up?’
‘And to arrange. It’s best not to jiggle about in the secret world.’
‘We’re not jiggling about,’ I said crossly. ‘At least I’m not. I’m caught up in it. Guy, I don’t fancy a bullet in the back.’
‘You’re getting melodramatic, Simon.’
‘Puxley got a bloody railway engine in the back. Was he melodramatic?’
‘An accident.’
‘The verdict on Beech was accidental death. Oscar Miller told me otherwise.’
The telephones were starting to ring: business hotting up. Guy said, ‘I wonder if you should go down to Cornwall again, Simon. No, perhaps not. Have a rout around Beryl Hensman’s background, and don’t forget about the bank. See what you can dig up.’
I had a sudden idea, so obvious that I should have thought of it before. ‘I’ll take a trip over to Somerset House; and make a couple of phone calls.’
‘Keep me posted.’ Guy was dismissing me, but Evans remained, a look of atheism in his eye. I wondered what he was cooking up and knew that whatever it was it could do me no good.
The general editorial office was crowded, so I sought out one of the glass cubbyholes not in use. It had a typewriter, a telephone and an ash tray, which was almost all I needed. Bellowing for a copy boy, I ordered some coffee and when it came I started the telephone calls: three to people I knew in commerce, one to an aspiring merchant banker and last of all I rang the Midland and Provincial Bank in Mayfair. They were all helpful, wad I used the notebook Miller had given me to jot down the essentials. Then I went down to Somerset House and started to look up Beryl Hensman’s antecedents.
Her birth certificate was there, and I had been right about her age. Born 1898. Richard Hood and Gertrude Hood were the parents. Gertrude Hood’s maiden name was Grieben. It meant nothing but it did establish a German connection.
It was past my lunchtime and I thought about a pint and a pie, then remembered that Poppy might be hanging around the Strand Palace. I had been on my own for so long that it wasn’t easy to change habits — even for pleasanter ones. I found her in the room, lying on the bed reading The Nine Tailors which she said she had picked up second hand.
‘Are you bored?’
‘Terribly. What’s going to become of us, Simon?’ She was half joking, though her face told the real story. Having made a decision to come to London, she was now at a loss. We had made no definite plans.
‘How about getting married?’ I tried to make it sound diffident, though I didn’t really know why. After all, it was what I wanted. I had said as much to Fox.
‘You are sure, Sim? It’s been quick.’
‘As sure as one can be. After all, it’s the right thing to do.’
‘Dear Sim.’ She touched my cheek, her hand exploring like a blind person trying to make sense of a stranger’s face. ‘I want you to be certain. I thought, you know, once bitten twice shy.’
‘Shall we get married?’
‘Isn’t there anything else you should say?’
‘That I love you? Goes without saying, Pops.’
‘It never goes without saying. I’ll think about it.’ Her hand dropped to my shoulder and gave it a little squeeze. ‘I’m famished, can we eat?’
They did a tolerable four course lunch in the restaurant. I presumed that it was not as good as the Savoy across the road, but who could tell these days?
At the next table two fat men with business worries talked incessantly about the world situation, as though concerned for their bank balances.
‘France and Britain won’t fight,’ one of them proclaimed, echoing the cosy thoughts of many. ‘There’s no cause. We had enough of it last time. Nobody wants to go through all that again.’
‘If he goes for the Czechs, France’ll have to fight.’
‘Well, that doesn’t mean we’ll be involved. We’ve got no treaty with the Czechs — who are the Czechs anyway?’
‘We’ve a pact with France. If they go, we’ll have to follow.’
‘Hitler won’t go for the Czechs, he’s said so — no evil intentions towards Czechoslovakia.’
‘They reckoned that about Austria, but he’s there.’
‘Austria’s a different matter. Different altogether.’
They went on all through lunch, a counterpoint to my own conversation with Poppy. I told her about some of the information I had gleaned that morning. Particularly the stuff concerning Beryl Hensman’s bank account.
‘She had an account at the Midland and Provincial? How did you find out?’
‘I lied.’
‘How?’
‘Rang them and said I was the accounts department of Fortnum’s and was her cheque for fifty pounds good? Well, not quite in those words. Very discreet at Fortnum’s.’
‘It was a risk.’
‘Not really. I asked a couple of people who might know first of all. One of them thought she banked with Midland and Provincial.’
‘Does it prove anything?’
‘Not really. There was an unexpected link between the Hensman business and the bank robbery. I just thought there might be a further association. I was right, so theoretically she could also have had a safety deposit box there.’
‘But you’re not sure?’
‘No. Just that she banks there.’
‘The police’ll know that.’
‘Almost certainly. I want to find the truth, Poppy.’
The whole problem gnawed away at my brain and stomach, like some disease. We finished coffee before I asked her if she would come to Cornwall with me.
‘Will Guy let you go?’
‘I’m going to try him. He didn’t think it was on this morning, but now I’ve got this and one or two other things, he might just agree.’
She was quiet for a full minute before she asked about Puxley. ‘You haven’t mentioned him,’ she said.
‘He fell in front of a train.’
‘An accident?’
‘So they say.’
‘You said he drank a lot. You didn’t like him.’
‘Liking him has nothing to do with it. I don’t like Guy very much come to that; and I loathe Evans.’
‘Yes, any fool could’ve seen that last night.’
‘Then what’s the matter?’
We both laughed.
‘I’ll marry you, Simon. Yes, of course I’ll marry you.’
‘And come to Cornwall first?’
‘As long as you don’t fall in front of any trains.’
The giggles evaporated.
Guy was in a filthy mood when I got back to the paper. ‘They’re all saying that we won’t stand by France and go in if the Germans march against Czechoslovakia,’ he shouted. ‘This is supposed to be a democracy that stands by its obligations. God help us with Chamberlain at the helm.’
‘He’s a man of peace,’ I shrugged.
‘And what happy piece of news have you got?’ he spat.
‘I want to go and see Mrs. Hensman in Cornwall.’
‘You’re not going near Cornwall. You know what Fox said.’
‘But I know …’
‘She’s not in Cornwall anyway.’
‘No?’
‘No. She came back to London yesterday. We’re still keeping an eye on things, Simon. You’re not the only one chasing this confounded business. I’ve had a report today.’
‘Can I see her in London then?’
‘That’s up to you. It’s not with my blessing. Why?’ he asked, as though suddenly realizing that I might be on to something.
‘Because she banks with the Midland and Provincial, Park Lane branch.’
He made a grunting noise, petulant and at the same time pompous. It was something I had noticed about modern executive journalists, they became pompous and behaved like spoilt children at a much earlier age than most people.
‘And what difference is all that going to make to the Czechs, Simon, eh? Oh, I follow your line. She was the owner of that apocryphal notebook; she was paying off these smooth little c
ivil servants.’
‘With her father’s loot.’
‘Her father? The captain of industry?’ His voice was derisory and on a rising scale.
‘He makes electrical components.’
‘He makes wireless sets. Electrical components indeed. Wireless sets and instruments. He can probably afford to drop a few thousand in the path of oncoming government contracts.’
I felt shocked, as though I had seen him condone some terrible atrocity. It must have shown on my face, for when he next spoke, his tone was conciliatory.
‘I’m sorry, Simon. Yes, I know it’s serious and we shouldn’t rest in the fight to expose corruption, but I’m more concerned about the corruption of Czechoslovakia at the moment. If we let that go, then to hell with all civil servants, and people like Richard Hood. We’ll none of us care, because we’ll all be finished.’
I became very reasonable. ‘Guy, that notebook isn’t apocryphal. I’d swear it exists.’
‘Oh, I’m sure it does, but I think the whole boring business is wasting our time. I should be sending you out into Germany, or to the Czechs, instead of letting you fiddle around with this little mystery. Who in hell cares about Hood, or Hensman, for that matter?’
‘It’s good copy.’
‘So you say.’
‘And people have already died because of it.’
‘Who? That venomous psychopath Miller? A thief.’
‘Puxley.’
‘Who knows with Puxley? He drank, Simon. Maybe he was on to something, maybe not. He turned in one or two good stories, but he was always promising the scoop of the year; it never came. I think he went on boozing benders.’ He pushed some papers around on his desk and pulled a well-subbed piece of copy out of the pile. ‘The inquest gave it as accidental death. Here, read it yourself.’ He thrust it at me.
‘I reported Beech’s inquest, but according to Miller that was no accident.’
Guy pounded his fist lightly on the desk and took a deep breath. ‘Okay, Simon, okay. Yes, I’m angry and irritated with the political situation. I think we’re going to see Britain back down against Hitler. Maybe not this month, but soon. It doesn’t leave a pleasant taste in the mouth.’ He took another deep breath. ‘But that’s not the only thing. We’re leaving the Hensman business alone. We’re forgetting about it. Dropping it.’