Despite the drama of the crash, Georgina was the only driver who had been badly injured. They were not allowed into her room immediately because a doctor was still examining her. The cottage hospital, excellent in its way, was not equipped to deal with serious injuries and it was obvious that, as soon as she could be moved, Georgina would have to be taken to one of the big London hospitals. Among those receiving treatment for minor injuries was Kay Petre .
‘Mrs Petre,’ Edward said, ‘Forgive me but may I ask if you are badly hurt?’
‘Oh, it’s you, Lord Edward. No, I’m not hurt – just my wrist . . . see? And a toe, but who needs toes?’ She showed him her swollen wrist and hand. ‘Not broken, I hope, but badly bruised. I won’t be racing for a month or two, that’s for sure. But poor Georgina . . . How is she?’
‘Badly hurt but they say she’ll live. We’re just waiting for the doctor. He’s in with her now.’
‘Thank God! I think she was lucky to get out alive. I don’t know what happened. One moment she was going like a bird and the next . . .’ she raised her good hand to her head in a gesture of bewilderment, ‘she didn’t take the corner.’
Edward suddenly remembered his manners. ‘Oh, Mrs Petre, this is Miss Hay’s sister, Mrs Westmacott.’
‘She wasn’t . . . run over, was she, Mrs Petre?’ Mrs Westmacott asked timidly.
‘No, but as I say, I couldn’t see exactly what happened. I was quite a long way behind after my rotten start but she was thrown a good way across the track. I’ve had several prangs in my time but nothing that bad.’
‘From where we were, it looked as if the dust must have obscured her view at a crucial moment and she hit the embankment,’ Edward said.
‘The dust cloud was appalling. The track should have been swept more thoroughly. I’ll tell Percy Bradley so. Of course, there’ll have to be an inquiry.’
‘You don’t think there is anything fundamentally wrong with Sir Malcolm’s new track?’
‘No. It’s fast, of course, but it’s quite driveable. There are some nasty bumps in the concrete though. Perhaps Georgina hit one of them, or some debris left by the builders. We’ll have to wait and see. I am sure the officials are examining the track at this moment. Oh dear, it will be headlines in the papers and they’ll start saying that it’s not a sport suitable for women and we can’t drive safely and all that sort of rubbish.’
‘Well,’ Mrs Westmacott began, ‘I was frightened before the start and I know Lord Edward was worried.’
’Not about women driving,’ he said diplomatically. ‘The best women drivers are no doubt the equal of the men but . . .’ he saw Kay begin to frown and added hurriedly, ‘but do women have the strength to drive such powerful cars?’
‘Georgina has raced much more powerful cars than her Austin. She was perfectly capable of driving it much faster than she was when the crash happened. Perhaps she had a blow-out. It can happen. Who knows? Oh well, there’s no point speculating.’
A nurse appeared and took Kay off to have her wrist and foot strapped up. At the same time, the doctor came out of Georgina’s room and Edward introduced him to Mrs Westmacott.
‘Is my sister going to be all right, doctor?’ she asked nervously.
‘She has a broken arm, a smashed shoulder and a broken rib but, as far as I can tell, she has not suffered any internal bleeding. We are waiting for an ambulance to take her to St Thomas’s in London where she can be assessed properly. One thing is certain, she’s had the devil’s own luck not to be killed.’
Edward was relieved but wondered if the devil had not had something to do with the crash in the first place. It might have been an accident but he was prepared to bet that someone had made the accident happen. He blamed himself for not having insisted Georgina pull out of the race but he knew in his heart that she would never have agreed just to allay his premonition that her car had been tampered with. It remained to be seen exactly how it had been interfered with but he was convinced in his own mind that it must have been. Georgina was an experienced driver and a sensible woman. It was true the dust on the track had made it more than usually dangerous but he could not get the chrysanthemum out of his mind. The best he could do now was to put a stop, once and for all, to this series of deaths and near deaths.
In all the drama, Edward had quite forgotten that, as they left Brooklands to drive to the hospital, Mr Bradley’s assistant had pressed into his hand a piece of paper on which she had written the answer to the query Edward had put to Mr Sanderson at the Foreign Office. He now took the crumpled note from his pocket and read what was on it: ‘You were right. He was born in Munich on December 24th 1913. His mother is English and, when his father died in 1914, she came back to England. I won’t do anything until you tell me. Sanderson.’
When Edward got back to Georgina’s house, he saw at once that Verity was very tired and her wound was paining her. He kicked himself for taking her to Brooklands but he had hoped it would be a pleasant day out, not a day on which death would once again attempt to gather in its harvest. Oddly enough, Mrs Westmacott seemed to bear this new disaster with fortitude and was calm, even competent, when she might have been expected to have had a nervous collapse. She, too, had seen Verity turn very pale and insisted they take her home.
‘You have been very kind – all of you – but there’s nothing more you can do for the moment. As you know, Alice and I were planning to return home tomorrrow,’ she said, ‘and, since Georgina is being moved to St Thomas’s, we may just as well go back. Alice has missed so much school already and I can get from The Larches to the hospital without too much difficulty.’
Edward said he would take Verity back to the Hassels’ house despite Adrian and Charlotte assuring him they could cope with the invalid. However, when they were back in the King’s Road, Charlotte was sufficiently alarmed by Verity’s condition to call the doctor although it was already seven o’clock. Only when the doctor had convinced Edward that Verity was suffering from exhaustion and needed to be left alone to sleep, did he allow Fenton to drive him back to Albany in the Lagonda.
‘Not all soda, old lad, if you don’t mind,’ he said an hour later, as he watched Fenton pour him a restorative. ‘Have one yourself. We’ve earned it.’
He had already spoken to Pride and arranged to meet him at the Foreign Office at ten on Monday morning. Pride had told him that he had gathered in Miss Williams’s boyfriend, Mervyn Last. ‘I frightened the life out of him,’ Pride confessed cheerfully. ‘He turned out to be a postman – married of course – looking for a little bit on the side as you might say. I don’t think he’ll risk anything of the same again. I’m afraid the girl was rather cut up though. I tried to tell her gently but she went into hysterics. Told me I was a liar and I had scared off the love of her life.’ He looked a little sheepish. ‘I ought to have left it to you, I suppose, my lord. I think she would have taken it from you.’
‘Don’t blame yourself, Chief Inspector. The truth was always going to hurt. It almost always does. I’ll talk to her – try and cheer her up a bit.’
Fenton brought over the two glasses of whisky and they both drank appreciatively.
‘Thank you, my lord,’ Fenton said, replacing his empty glass on the tray. ‘Might I ask if you have established the course of events?’
‘I believe so, Fenton. Chief Inspector Pride has agreed to go with me and re-interview the late Mr Westmacott’s colleagues at the FO. I must say, he was most amenable about it. Do leopards change their spots, I wonder? I must also talk to James Lyall again.’
‘May I inquire, my lord, if you have changed your opinion of the young man? You told me you did not believe he had been involved in his father’s death.’
‘I still think so but there are one or two points on which I think he was less than frank with me.’
The next day, Sunday, before he had eaten his breakfast, Edward telephoned the Hassels and was relieved to hear that Verity was very much better.
‘She’s asleep now but s
he says she has something to tell you – something she saw at Brooklands. She thinks it may be important,’ Adrian said.
‘Tell her I will come and see her about two o’clock tomorrow. I have a little sleuthing to do first. Tell her I think I know what she saw but I want to hear it from her own lips.’
15
‘Miss Hawkins,’ Edward said, addressing the white-faced but determined woman sitting straight-backed before him on the edge of her chair, ‘Miss Williams said that she heard Mr Westmacott quarrelling with Mr Lyall shortly before Mr Westmacott disappeared.’
‘Yes.’
‘And you heard them too?’
‘I heard raised voices. It wasn’t my place to eavesdrop.’
‘But you must have been curious as to why they were arguing? I gather it had not happened before.’
‘It was not my business.’
‘No one else heard the quarrel?’
‘No, Lord Edward. They wouldn’t have unless they had happened to be in my office.’
‘I think you did hear what Mr Westmacott and Mr Lyall were quarrelling about,’ Chief Inspector Pride interjected. ‘It would have been unnatural not to have listened – particularly as you must have guessed it concerned you.’
‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘But you do,’ Edward said, almost coaxingly. ‘Lyall was trying to protect you, wasn’t he? Westmacott was saying it was wrong of him to do so.’
‘Protect me? Why would I need protecting?’
‘Because you had been passing files to Mr Younger which he had no right to see, let alone take out of the office.’
‘This is pure fantasy, Lord Edward. What possible reason could I have for letting Mr Younger look at files he had no right to see? In any case, he had every right to look at files in the department.’
‘Not the file relating to the research being carried out at Bawdsey Manor.’
‘I told you before, I don’t know anything about such a file.’
‘Miss Williams saw it on your desk and asked you about it.’ This was Chief Inspector Pride at his most formidable.
‘Mr Lyall may have had such a file. I did not. I don’t even know what goes on at Bawdsey Manor.’ Miss Hawkins was holding firm but Edward could hear the doubt and fear in her voice.
‘Mr Lyall did indeed have a file on Bawdsey in his own cabinet where he kept the top secret files even you were not permitted to see,’ Edward said. ‘So, the question is: why did Miss Williams see it on your desk?’
‘She can’t have done.’
‘But she did. She had no reason to lie and, of course, she had no way of knowing its significance. When it disappeared from the in-tray on your desk, you guessed who had taken it: Mr Westmacott. Foolishly, he took it home either because he picked it up with other files he was working on or because he was curious as to what it was. We shall never know. He came back to the office to ask Lyall to explain what the file was doing on your desk. Lyall said it was of no importance and that he would talk to you, Miss Hawkins, about it – something emollient like that. Westmacott got angry and threatened to tell Sir Robert about the lax way in which secrets were guarded in his department.’
‘This is a tissue of lies. You’ve got no reason to attack me in this way. Why would I have one of Mr Lyall’s secret files on my desk?’
‘Because your son had just returned it to you.’
The blood left Miss Hawkins’s face and she dropped her head, suddenly defeated.
‘You know about Harry?’ she asked in a low voice.
‘We do,’ the Chief Inspector said heavily. ‘You were married in 1913 to a German by the name of Franz Junger. He died in 1914 and you made your way back to England with your baby. It did not do to have a German name in 1914 so you reverted to calling yourself Miss Hawkins. Is that correct?’
She shook her head. ‘I called myself Mrs Hawkins. It did not do to have a baby but no husband. I explained I was a widow. There were many widows in those days. No one was particularly interested. I only became Miss Hawkins again when I joined the Foreign Office.’
‘It must have been hard,’ Edward said gently. ‘With no pension and a baby to feed . . . How did you manage?’
‘I had a little money from my husband. I found some rooms in the East End with a good woman who looked after Harry while I went out to work.’
‘And you eventually took a secretarial course where you met Miss Hay?’ Edward continued.
‘Yes, the war was ending and I was still young. I took a Pitman’s stenographer course and, as you say, it was there I met Georgina – Miss Hay.’
‘Why did you never remarry?’ Pride asked.
‘Because Georgina and I fell in love.’ She looked at the two men defiantly. ‘I know what you think – that it was disgusting and that I am . . . perverted.’
‘I don’t think that,’ Edward said mildly, aware that Pride would certainly be thinking exactly the opposite. ‘Did you live together?’
‘We thought it was better not to do so.’
‘But Georgina – Miss Hay – knew about Harry?’
‘Of course. We brought him up together.’
‘Why did you revert to being Miss Hawkins when you joined the Foreign Office?’
‘Don’t you know, Lord Edward?’
‘No.’
‘They don’t like you being married here. When Miss Williams gets married, she’ll have to leave. They don’t think it’s suitable for married women to work. They’d rather you starve,’ she added bitterly.
‘When did you tell your son who his father was?’ Pride asked.
‘Not until two years ago. I had to. I was able to . . . to pull a few strings and get him a job in this department. It wasn’t really his sort of thing but at least it was a job. I had to tell him then so he wouldn’t say something and get me into trouble.’
‘You mean you told your story to Desmond Lyall and asked for his help?’
‘Yes. He was very kind,’ she said miserably. ‘I . . . I owe him a lot.’
‘But your son wasn’t satisfied?’
‘No. He started to hate me. He brooded about his father. He kept on asking me questions . . . blaming me . . . I don’t know what for. I tried to reason with him but he said I was betraying his father. He changed his name to an English version of his father’s. He did not want anyone at the Foreign Office, other than Mr Lyall, to know he was my son. He started learning German so he could listen to . . . the wireless broadcasts . . . Hitler’s, I mean. He learnt about the strength of the German air force as part of his work and he came to admire it and despise our government’s weakness. He wanted to be an air ace . . . like Von Richthofen. He started going to Sir Oswald Mosley’s rallies. Apparently, he was a flyer in the war.’
‘So what happened? He began stealing secret papers and passing them on to . . .?’
‘To a Major Stille. He’s a German . . .’
‘We know about Major Stille,’ Edward said grimly. ‘We know he is a Major in the SS, based at the German Embassy and that Ribbentrop uses him for all the dirty jobs he wants done.’
‘How did they meet?’ Pride asked.
‘At Brooklands. I don’t think it was an accident. He . . . Major Stille . . . kept an eye on who was flying there . . . oh, I don’t know exactly . . .’
‘But Stille wasn’t satisfied with the low-level stuff Harry was giving him?’
‘No. That was when he made me . . . borrow Mr Lyall’s keys to his cabinet from his coat pocket.’
‘And you got him the Bawdsey Manor file?’
‘Yes.’
‘It was remarkably casual of him to leave it on your desk when he had finished with it.’
‘It was, but he was getting . . . reckless. He was thinking of taking a plane and flying it to Germany. That’s what he used to say when . . . when he taunted me with what he called my betrayal.’
‘But he was of more value to Stille here in London, surely?’
‘Yes. Major Stille told him to stay.’
‘So he said he couldn’t because Mr Westmacott knew what he was up to?’
‘Why had Westmacott come to suspect him?’
‘Harry told me that Mr Westmacott had seen him with Stille in St James’s Park one lunch time and had seen him pass an envelope to him. He had followed Stille back to the German Embassy. When he got back to the office, Mr Westmacott asked Harry to explain himself. Harry said he had passed nothing to anyone and the man he had seen him with in the park was a German friend he had met at Brooklands who worked at the embassy. Westmacott pretended to be satisfied but Harry knew the game was up and it would not be long before the security services would be on to him.’
‘That is what you heard Lyall and Westmacott quarrelling about?’ Edward broke in.
‘Yes, I overheard Mr Westmacott shouting at Mr Lyall. Desmond was trying to tell him he was mistaken. He simply would not believe Harry was . . . a spy.’
‘And you warned Harry? You knew if Lyall refused to act, Westmacott would go over his head . . . to Vansittart?’
‘I had to. What else could I have done? But I never thought . . . I never thought it would end with Mr Westmacott being killed. I swear it. It was a terrible shock.’
‘But that wasn’t the end of it, was it?’
‘No,’ she said in a small voice. ‘When Mr Westmacott was found dead Desmond was distraught. He knew who was responsible and he blamed himself for letting his loyalty to me sway his judgement.’
‘What happened? Did Mr Lyall threaten Harry with . . .?’
‘I don’t know . . . I don’t know!’
‘Well, I think he did say something to Harry,’ Edward continued remorselssly. ‘I think he told him to leave the country or he would be arrested.’ Miss Hawkins said nothing but unconsciously twisted her hands in her lap, so Edward pressed on. ‘And Harry couldn’t leave. Stille wouldn’t let him. So Mr Lyall, to whom you owed so much, had to die. Did you lure him out of the way so your son could put poisoned cigarettes in the box on his desk?’
‘No! No, I swear . . . I would never . . . could never have . . . done that.’
The More Deceived Page 27