The second senior clerk beckoned him into his room, closely warm and fragrant with pipe tobacco. Had he any idea where Mr Creevey-Adams might be or when he might be expected in? There had been a number of calls for him. Several from a lady, saying it was urgent.
‘Mrs. Creevey-Adams?’
‘The gentleman is a bachelor, sir. And a regular at the Oratory.’
As Alexander had left nothing for him to work on, he went to Stanley’s and the pile of short stories waiting on his desk there. He rang Selfridge’s. ‘This isn’t like Miss Altschuler at all. If you’re in touch, please urge her to get in touch’. Much of the time, though, he simply stared out of the window at the steely sky, wondering what on earth he would do without her. By early teatime, he’d given up and was on the underground home, taking a couple of manuscripts with him.
‘I’ve finished with this.’ The train was drawing into the stop before his. ‘Would you like it?’ “This” was the early evening paper, and the man offering it was the professor’s puzzling friend Walter Thomas, a briefcase on the floor between his feet. Thomas handed him the paper, folded over, and pushed his way off.
As the train drew away, Peter glanced down at the page. By the crossword, in a ring of block capitals, as though for an anagram, was scrawled “GLORIA”.
****
‘How’s the knee? Were you laid up for long?’ Thomas must have been confident he would get the message. He was waiting for him in the teashop over a pot of tea and two cups.
‘The knee’s fine, thank you, though I was laid up for a couple of weeks and more.’ Whatever Thomas’s precise role in the Altschulers’ lives, it could pay to play his game for the moment.
‘It was a wicked kick. It’s good to see you again and looking so fit.’ Thomas smiled, the easy smile of an old friend. ‘I’m just passing through on business. How’s Dinah? Have you seen her? I was hoping to catch her and her grandfather on this trip, but I just can’t seem to get hold of them.’
‘The professor’s been detained as an enemy alien dangerous to the state.’
‘Inevitable, I suppose, but I’m sorry to hear that. He’s an old man and not himself. Poor Dinah. How’s she taking it?’
‘I haven’t seen her for three or four days.’
‘But you’re in touch?’
‘Not at this moment.’
‘Not at all?’
‘Not at all.’ He made a decision to come clean; perhaps the man could help. He swallowed. ‘She’s vanished.’
‘Vanished?’ Thomas’s tone was even. ‘No farewell message, no means of getting in touch?’
‘Nothing. Vanished. Completely out of the blue.’
‘I’m sorry. I guess that’s pretty upsetting for you to have your girl vanish. She didn’t leave anything for you? Nothing to remember her by? No card, no book? No telephone number left somewhere?’
Peter shook his head. ‘Somebody cleared out their house. The police, I suppose. Everything. All his notes, books, pictures, everything.’
‘That’s terrible.’
‘Her things have gone, too.’
‘Cleared out completely?’
‘Everything personal. Household things were left.’
‘How will the professor live without Novalis? Perhaps he’ll be able to do some German teaching. He was still teaching a bit, wasn’t he?’
‘Yes. At his house I met a student of his, very briefly. A civil servant just like the man you asked me about. A Scot called Davidson. Lachlan Davidson. We were at the same school.’
‘Seeing you there must have amazed him.’ He smiled then looked serious again. ‘I’m sure you’ll hear from Dinah. When you do, ask her to get in touch with me.’
‘I’ve been wondering if she’s gone home. I posted a letter to her parents.’
‘Posted to Cernauti?’ Thomas sounded surprised. ‘Really?’
‘I suppose to Cernauti, but not directly. Via Paris, by a private business service.’
Thomas looked at his watch and put some money on the bill. ‘I must beat it.’
‘Before you go, why did you do that business with the newspaper to arrange this?’
Thomas grinned. ‘I reckoned it would get you here. I must visit the men’s room. “Clever when you can, fool when you must”, they say. Could you watch my briefcase?’
When he returned, he stood looking down at Peter for a moment and extended his hand. ‘Good luck. I just know you and Dinah will get back together.’ His grip was very firm. ‘By the way, that letter? Was it to a Monsieur Robinson?’
****
Peter ordered more tea and sat on for a while. She was gone. Thomas’s materialising, his questions, said it. She’d gone for good.
Thomas had judged him pretty well; more to the man than met the eye. More to Dinah too. Much more. She knew, must have known, she was going when they parted that night. She’d told her parents in the letter. How happy he’d been to take it for her. To do anything for her.
To go like that. After all that had passed between them, what possible reason could she have had? What would he do now? What on earth?
“The desires of the heart are as crooked as corkscrews
Not to be born is the best for man.”
Quoting not living, Ella would have said. The flâneur quoting again.
Chapter Nine
The telephone was ringing. He’d slept heavily and late. He leaped out of bed, taut with apprehension, readying himself, then needed a moment to realise chambers’ little telephonist was calling with a message: the clerk, Mr Jarvis, would be glad of a word. Something had come up. Could he get into chambers as soon as possible? Everything would be explained when he arrived. ‘As soon as possible, please sir, Mr Jarvis said.’
As he dressed, he wondered what Jarvis, the clerk himself, could possibly want with him, so lowly a figure in chambers hierarchy? Then he hurried out—to his surprise into thick fog. He hadn’t opened the blackout.
****
A narrow alleyway took him from the street directly into the square at the far end of which lay the entrance to his chambers. The alleyway turned sharply just before it reached the square, and the narrow entrance was all but hidden. For that reason, perhaps, the man at the far end – concealed behind one of the arches supporting the Old Library and pulling on a cigarette through a cupped hand – was looking in the wrong direction when Peter went up the stone steps into the chambers’ front door.
Excitement was palpable as he entered. Something in the outer office, in the junior clerks, the telephonist, the secretary, spoke of upheaval in their sempiternal world of profound calm. A junior clerk, his voice high with tension, asked him to call in on Mr Jarvis. ‘Straightaway, if you please, sir’.
Jarvis, flushed and sounding throttled, said the head of chambers was waiting to see Mr Hill at once. They went together, passing Creevey-Adams’s room, which, to Peter’s surprise, had an “In Conference” sign on the closed door.
The clerk went to stand by his head of chambers, the scholarly Henry Skellington KC. As a Cambridge undergraduate, winner of the Porson Prize for translation into Greek verse; now hailed as a copper-bottomed Chancery silk, one of the finest draughtsmen. Normally somewhat shy and reserved, Skellington KC did not invite Peter to sit down but at once cleared his throat and addressed his blotter.
Early that same morning something had occurred that would take these chambers a long time to live down, if ever it could be lived down. The police had come with a warrant, an indubitably valid warrant. They had searched Creevey-Adams’s room, letting slip to Jarvis that they were looking for evidence of activities prejudicial to the efficient prosecution of the war or to the defence of the realm. That this should happen to a chancery set! He could never have imagined it. He pulled at his cuffs and stared at his blotter.
Peter broke the silence. ‘But presumably Creevey-Adams could satisfy them.’
‘Mr Creevey-Adams has taken up residence in the Irish Free State.’ The clerk was speaking. ‘He has informed m
e he is intending to practise at the Dublin Bar.’
‘His family home is in Westmeath. Did he not tell you of his intentions? No?’ The head of chambers finally looked Peter in the eye. ‘He seems to have cleared his desk before leaving.’
Peter hadn’t previously noticed the prominence of Skellington’s Adam’s apple, convulsively rising and falling in his thin throat. ‘I had no idea.’
‘I gather you choose to limit the amount of time you spend here.’ He was addressing his blotter again. ‘Be that as it may, the police do seem to have found something they believed to be of interest, making worthwhile their venture into the Inn. From their viewpoint, at least. Apparently very worthwhile, they appeared to believe.’ Skellington fell silent.
The chief clerk cleared his throat.
Skellington looked up from his blotter and at Peter once more. ‘A large red folder, a locked red folder, that they took away. And my understanding is, Hill, that they found it in your desk. Is that possible?’
‘Creevey-Adams asked me to bring the folder into chambers for him. His desk was locked, so I placed it in mine for safe-keeping.’
‘And forgot perhaps to hand it over to him.’
‘The opportunity didn’t arise. He knew I had it there for him. I often kept his papers when I worked on them.’
‘Be that as it may, the police have the folder now, and I think you can expect an invitation to talk to them.’ He exchanged glances with the clerk, who cleared his throat again. The head of chambers went on. ‘I have every confidence in your agreeing with me when I observe that it would be more desirable and better for all concerned if that call and the ensuing conversation did not take place here, in these chambers. Of course, with Creevey-Adams in Dublin, your devilling for him is at an end. In the circumstances obtaining, I would not expect other junior members to seek to avail themselves of your assistance, intellectually valuable though that might possibly be.’ He looked at Peter expectantly.
‘The red folder is nothing to do with me.’ Peter was aghast, but managed to control himself. ‘I was only keeping it for Creevey-Adams at his request. However, naturally I will spare your chambers my presence, now and in the future. Thank you for allowing me to sit here. I have learned a great deal.’
Skellington rose stiffly to his feet. ‘I am grateful for your discretion. If you decide on the pursuit of a career at the English Bar, perhaps a criminal set would suit you better.’ He had an afterthought. ‘Or divorce.’ He sat down again and began to untie a set of instructions.
The clerk cleared his throat once more. ‘I’ll show Mr Hill out.’ His neck was red, bulging over his collar.
Standing on the top of the stone steps, the clerk said, ‘Goodbye, Mr Hill.’
‘Goodbye Jarvis, and thank you.’
As he disappeared into the fog, Jarvis called after him, ‘Good luck, Mr Hill.’ At the foot of an arch under the library, a cigarette end was still smouldering; others were scattered nearby.
****
He walked steadily in the direction of the Strand, pausing only to look in a legal bookseller’s window. The little telephonist had shyly offered a brown-paper carrier bag to take his diary and the few personal papers and books. They’d been stacked on the floor by his desk. All Creevey-Adams’s remaining books and papers had been stacked on the floor; the sight recalled Dinah’s back room. The Lanvin Arpège box he’d spotted was on his bedside table.
He would go up to his room at Stanley’s office, drop off the bag and think what next. On his way, he stopped to buy a paper and paused for a moment to glance over the front page. The fog was thinning and turning to drizzle. His stomach rumbling reminded him that he’d missed breakfast and he diverted into a Kardomah for a sandwich and a coffee, passing the time with the crossword. There was no hurry. On his way out, he offered the paper to a man in a belted raincoat, smoking and looking into half-drunk, cold cup of tea, who’d come in not long after him.
****
At Stanley’s, he forced himself to pass the time of day, then went up to his attic to concentrate – try to concentrate – on reading the stories on his desk, though the memory of Skellington’s Adam’s apple distracted him. Of course, the whole thing was ridiculous: people had a right to discuss, to campaign for a peace settlement. But then Anselm’s words came back – a state of mind akin to panic over a supposedly extensive British Fifth Column, possible injustice – and when the telephone rang below, he wondered if that was the promised call from the police. He left early and walked briskly to the club. Surely the police wouldn’t try to find him there.
****
Back at home, Madame Duverger had left a French magazine on his desk, the cover advertising a photo-essay on Roumania. He poured himself a nightcap and turned the pages. His mother had certainly been hard at work with her beloved Leica, finding the anecdotal, apparently casual framings that told so much about the world they captured. Not just the Paris of the Balkans, Bucharest, but the countryside, small town and village life. Churches and priests, shops and shopkeepers, blacksmiths at work, peasants in their fields and wagons, soldiers, militia, police, Jews. Images snatched from a train or car window. Searching the pictures, he realised how often, barely in focus in the background or caught on the very edge of the frame, something hinted at political violence, preparation for war, flight, fear. She had ended her photo-essay with pictures of Cernauti in the Bukovina: crowds thronging the opera, a deserted street with an ornate synagogue, the magnificent Austro-Hungarian railway station.
Cernauti. Czernowitz. The questions pressed in. Had his mother met Dinah’s parents? Was there a message in the conjunction of the station, with its piles of luggage and queues of muffled travellers, and the synagogue?
More was promised from western Ukraine. At least she was well and doing what she loved. No call from the police, so far.
In his bedroom, he picked up the Arpège box, black and gold, Art Deco. On the bottom was a tiny sticker. Printemps Paris. The great department store on the boulevard Haussmann was familiar enough from his and Ella’s French holidays with his mother’s friend, the marquis. He’d taken them shopping and to lunch there. Did Selfridge’s stock perfumes from Au Printemps? Turning the box, he saw someone had pencilled four numbers inside the lid.
****
Next morning he took his usual underground towards chambers but left it at the next station and walked back to Gloria. He sat at the table that Walter Thomas had chosen. It was a few minutes before ten.
At five to eleven, he paid and was about to go when a hot and bothered Nick Harry walked in, looked round, saw him, hung up his coat and the trilby hat and came over.
‘What a bloody daft way of making a rendezvous. Our man finally thought to mention you’d handed him a newspaper. Fortunately he’d brought it back. We had to hunt for it, then someone spotted the crossword. One of the secretaries knows this place.’ He picked up the menu and spoke over it. ‘I’d have got in touch with you by phone without all these dramatics.’
‘I thought it would get someone here. Obviously, I couldn’t know it would be you. Before we go any further … tea, coffee?’
‘Coffee please.’ Harry put the stubby pipe on the table, next to it a well-worn leather tobacco pouch and a box of matches.
Peter signalled to the waitress. ‘I can recommend the apple tart, too.’ When she’d gone, he said, ‘I suppose I should ask for whom you’re working and to see some credentials.’
Harry replied promptly, ‘Government service. Security. Do you want to see my papers?’
Peter shook his head. ‘I don’t need convincing, thank you.’
‘I take it you knew you were being followed?’
‘First the clerk, Jarvis, announced my departure. Twice. Then your man practically trod on me every time I stopped.’
‘You should try following someone in the fog. The blackout’s next to impossible. Which reminds me …’ The eyes smiled for a moment. ‘… where’s that girlfriend of yours?’
‘No
idea. She’s vanished from the face of the earth. No messages, no nothing.’
‘We’ve had people looking out for her. No sightings yet.’
‘Why the interest? It’s her grandfather your people have locked up.’
Harry shook his head. ‘I’m here to tell you she’s left you in a load of trouble.’
‘She’s nothing to do with that wretched red folder. Nor am I.’
‘The red folder’s only part of it.’ He paused while his coffee and tart were served, glancing round the café and picking up the stubby pipe. ‘Nice place.’ With deliberation, the pipe was filled, the tobacco tamped down with square strong fingers. ‘Comfortable.’ He lit the pipe and pulled on it with satisfaction, then put it into the ashtray and leaned forward. ‘Now, Peter, please listen to this. Believe me, I’m doing my best to be helpful. Friends who worry about a Nazi Fifth Column are very worried about you. However, different friends who keep their eyes skinned for Soviet agents passing our secrets on to the Nazis via Moscow are also worrying about you. Luckily for you for the moment, they can’t agree between them which master you’re serving, or which is cover for which, or who should do what with you.’
Peter went hot and flushed. ‘But this is all nonsense. I would never betray our country.’
‘I’m keeping an open mind. I’ve made the argument that you’ve wandered into things you don’t comprehend, innocent abroad, taken advantage of. Still, it doesn’t look good for you. Some of our friends say you’ve shown you’re chummed up with the Comintern. Others point to the clear fact of your keeping charge of the potential British Nazi Party membership records, being noted there as a significant supporter, and even writing notes on possible sympathisers.’
Peter suppressed a desire to laugh at it all. In that case, what price his telling Dinah about the dinner guests? Her spy indeed.
Innocence To Die For Page 17