by Bill Mesce
“Raymond.”
“Oh, bravo, someone’s been doing his homework! Yes, Raymond, he enlisted first, that August when the guns first went off. Calvin was too young then, but he followed in T5, soon as he was of age.”
“Sir John said they were close.”
“Oh? You’ve been talking to Sir John?”
I smiled, as if helpless to undo my silence.
“I’ve half a mind not to tell you a word more until you promise to share.”
I took her gloved hand. “Daphne, this is not something you want to share.”
She may have played the effete, silly society butterfly, but there was sterner stuff underneath. She had been in the newspaper game long enough to sense when something of heft was afoot.
She smiled approvingly, then returned to the attitude of condescending lecturer. “Raymond was gassed at Ypres, and the little one, poor Calvin, he was lost at Passchendaele. Then the mother, she was always a frail sort, and every day the boys had been in service took a toll on her. Miriam was taken in the influenza pandemic after the war.”
She had snuffed out her cigarette — thank God — and was now picking at the prawns.
“I thought you weren’t going to eat anything.”
“I’m ignoring you, dearie.” She popped a glob of pink flesh into her mouth. “See? Completely oblivious.”
“If Sir Johnnie was as close to his family as you say; well, you said it was brutal on him.”
“Oh, quite.”
“He’s not exactly playing Miss Havisham down there in Belleville.”
“For a few years he was. Oh, these are quite good! You really should order some for yourself! I’d share, but then there’d be less for me! As I was saying, yes, he did spend some time brooding behind closed curtains, and there was a worry that the whole Duff business thing would collapse and the Defense Ministry would have lost a major supplier. Up pops Gordon Fordyce. You know him? He was there that night you insulted Sir John.”
“I didn’t insult him. I merely asked —”
“He was the one who had you thrown out.”
“I remember.”
“Despite Gordon Fordyce’s shortcomings of personality, Sir John took quite a shine to him. More and more, he let ‘Gordie’ lead him back to some semblance of a living life. Indeed, I think Gordon Fordyce may be as close to an heir apparent as Sir John has.”
“I want you to look at this picture, Daphne.” The particular picture I laid on the tablecloth for her showed the host’s end of a dinner-party table. A laughing Sir John sat at the head. On his right sat Gordon Fordyce wearing a cool, polite smile. On Sir John’s left sat the man I’d been introduced to as Erik Sommer. Scattered among the guests at that end of the table were the woman and other two men I had seen ride up outside Sir John’s house with the Christmas tree-laden wagon the day before.
“Please look at the picture, Daphne. These are the people I’m interested in. This bloke, this one, and this couple.”
“Oh!” She chomped down on another prawn. “The Germans!”
I’d not had a drink since the brandy at Sir John’s. Right then, I wished I could’ve afforded to order a double scotch from the restaurant bar. “Excuse me?”
“The Germans.”
“They’re Germans? All of them?”
She seemed puzzled at my emphatic reaction. “Being they’re from Germany, that’s what I call them: Germans. What do they call them in Scotland? Kumquats?”
“Sometimes I find it difficult to believe anyone invites you and your tart tongue to anything.”
“I’m always on my best behavior in the dining salons, dearie. The scorn I reserve for you.”
“All right, these Germans. Who are they?”
“Business associates of Sir John’s. Very chummy, actually. As a matter of fact, if I remember correctly…” A prawn hovered in front of her mouth as she bit her lip and closed her eyes.
“Yes?” I prompted.
“I’m thinking, dearie. Perhaps if I fuel the gray matter…” In went the prawn. “Yes, well, Sir John had been dealing with them for a bit by then, and he’d even introduced them to the ambassador.”
“Ambassador Kennedy?”
“That’s why they were there that evening, dearie. All chums, a League of Nations of Business.”
“Do you remember their names? This one, this bloke. Does the name Erik Sommer sound familiar?”
“It does sound familiar, but… It was Erik something. Hm. Stahl! Erik Stahl. And this one I remember…” She touched a face I’d not seen at Belleville the previous day. Like the others he was in his thirties, handsome, confident.
“Him?”
“Oh, yes, there were five of them, dearie. A regular little Germanic cabal. I remembered Erik because he was something of the ringleader, spokesman, whatever you want to call him. Likable. Married, I’m afraid. Oh, don’t make a face, dearie, you’re hardly a Puritan.”
“There does seem to be an age difference, Daphne.”
“Given the choice, wouldn’t you prefer a peach fresh from the tree over one dried and shriveled on the ground?” She smiled, and I got an uncomfortable peek at her tongue running along the inside of her teeth.
“You were saying,” I prodded.
“Ah.” She sighed. “Well. This one I remember because he died recently.”
“When?”
“This past summer. He was on that aeroplane from Lisbon, the one with poor Leslie Howard. That was tragic about Leslie, wasn’t it? Although I never forgave him Gone With the Wind. He made Englishmen look like simpering twits.”
“He was playing an American.”
“Then maybe it was the Yanks who shot him down. You don’t think it’s true, do you? That Leslie was some sort of spy?”
“Spies don’t simper. This fellow, this German, what was his name?”
“That’s why I recall it because at first no one knew he was on that plane. He was under an assumed name, incognito and all that. I suppose he was trying to sneak out of Germany. No one really knew who he was until Sir John showed up at the War Ministry asking that if the body or any effects were recovered, he’d like them turned over to him. One question led to another and that’s how they found out: Anton Vogler.”
I had my notebook out and jotted them down: Erik Stahl. Anton Vogler. “And the others?”
“Oh, let me see… Dearie, this was eons ago, you understand that? I remember the wife was Leni something.”
I opened the file, the thick collection of pieces on Joseph Kennedy during his three-year tenure at the Court of St. James. “Here’s the clipping, Daph, your story. Can you put the names in the piece to the faces in the picture?”
“You’ll notice they didn’t run the photo. That was because of you, you know.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“The story, for reasons of which you should be painfully aware, came up a bit short — too short to warrant a photo was the editorial decision. All right, let’s see. The couple, that’s Rudolf and Leni, the Emmerichs. Rudi and Leni, I called them, because they were so cute together.”
“Cute.”
“And that was Albert Lindz.”
“You said they were German businessmen? What kind of business were they in?”
“Dearie, I’m there to see how beautiful they are and how fashionably they dress. That these people may actually do something is another Department. I thought that was your Department, in fact. Is it true what you said earlier? Or were you simply cozying up to me to make me cooperative?”
“Was what true?”
“That you don’t mind your fruit… a little seasoned.”
The look in her eyes was unmistakable and I laughed. “God, Daphne, don’t you ever get tired of the game?”
The look changed, became weary. “You’re quite pleasant company when you’re not making an utter ass of yourself, Eddie. I’m at the point where I’m more interested in good company than anything else.”
“I hear terriers are
nice.”
“I take it back. You’re a complete ass even when you are being pleasant company. Just for that, I’m calling over the waiter. I understand they have an absolutely extravagant suckling pig, and I want to hear what the most expensive desserts are. I may order two… and not eat a one!”
“I see you had lunch with Daphne,” Bertie Welles said.
I had only a passing interest in what he had to say just then. My attention was focused mainly on the apple — Bertie’s routine midaftemoon snack — he was slicing into six precise crescents on a kerchief he’d spread on his blotter.
“Aye. Well, Daphne had lunch. I sat and watched.”
“I hadn’t heard there was anything between you two.”
“Nothing to hear. Strictly collegial.”
He sighed.
Bertie Welles and I had come on the paper together eons ago, had even shared a desk as novices. These days, he was penning Bertie’s Well, which was something of a curio in the financial section of our paper. Bertie was less interested in stock indices, wage/price controls, and the other arcane business minutiae than in the obvious but oft-ignored fact that behind all business are people. Bertie’s Well was a twice-weekly portrait of some business wizard or another and how the wizard’s personality manifested itself in the subject’s commercial operations. Hardly fodder for The Economist, but that’s what I liked about Bertie.
“I thought perhaps you were getting yourself back in the game,” Bertie said.
“With Daphne?”
“She’s not a bad-looking bird for her years. Who was it that said older women are grateful?”
“Are you going to eat all that apple?”
“I’d intended to, yes. I should warn you that if you’re going to be trysting about with Daphne St. Claire — well, old boy, I doubt your current financial structure could stand the strain.”
“It wasn’t a tryst and I don’t think I’ll be eating again until next payday.”
He looked mournfully down at his apple, like a general sending his troops off to bloody battle, then passed two of the crescents to me. “Chew them slowly and it’ll get you through tomorrow.”
“I need some background help, Bertie, and it’s right in your line of country Sir John Duff.”
“Something brewing with Sir John?”
“As I say, it’s simply background material. I’m just trying to learn the lay of the land. What have you got?”
“You know he’s not a real baronet?”
“I’ve gotten most of the personal particulars from Daphne.”
“You’ve already been to Daphne about this? Are you sure there isn’t something here for your chum Bertie?”
“Positive.”
He tried to gauge if I was simply being hoggish. We may have been old mates, but a good story was a good story. But after a moment, he saw this was something else. “To think I’m sharing my apple with you and getting nothing in return.”
“I’m a swine, forgive me.”
He smiled, rose from his desk, turned to the row of file cabinets behind him and returned with a folder. It made a substantial thud when he dropped it on the desk. I began to flip through the clippings and notes about Sir John Duff.
“His people like to present Sir John as a Horatio Alger tale, particularly that gnat that’s always hovering about him.”
“Gordon Fordyce?”
“You know him? I’m Mr. Numbers; you’re the wordsmith. Isn’t there a word ‘unctuous’?”
“It means oily, smooth, greasy.”
“It’s a perfect word for Fordyce, don’t you think? It even sounds like him. Unctuous. Well, Fordyce takes great care with Sir John’s public image, and that’s the angle he likes to tout.”
“From what I see in this file, that’s not quite accurate.”
“Sir John has certainly built up quite the little empire for himself, but he got a nice start from Daddy Daddy owned a shoe factory in Coventry.”
“That must have cost dearly when the Germans erased Coventry.”
“The factory was destroyed in the Blitz, but Sir John was long out of the shoe business by then. But that shoe factory was the start of the family fortune. During the Boer War, Daddy made a right treasure through a contract supplying the Army with boots. John Junior was his daddy’s right hand, then. He saw the possibilities, got Daddy to diversify, buying other garment manufacturers with the Boer War profits. They turned that boot contract into a series of contracts supplying uniforms to the various military branches. Daddy died in 1911, control passed to John Junior, then the Great War came along and Johnnie’s plants couldn’t make uniforms fast enough. In no time he was up to his eyes in sterling.”
Bertie wiped his fingertips on the kerchief, then pulled a photograph from the file showing a young Sir John Duff posing outside a brick factory bearing the sign, DUFF & SON SHOES LTD. On either side of Sir John were the two young men whose portraits I’d seen at Belleville: Raymond and Calvin Duff. In the background of the photo, on a scaffold suspended from the roof of the factory, painters were adding an S to “Son” — DUFF & SONS SHOES LTD.
“He could’ve made twice as much and I doubt he’d’ve felt it compensation for losing those boys,” Bertie said. “You know about them? And the wife? Left the poor old boy devastated. For years he just let things run themselves and the business began to unravel. He was sitting down in that place he has near Canterbury and wouldn’t pick up the reins to bring it to order. There was a fair bit of concern about that in Whitehall; Duff was a leading military contractor.”
“That doesn’t sound like the Sir John I met.”
“Oh, you’ve been down there, have you? Talked to the old man, eh?”
“He seems to be carrying on bravely.”
“You have to credit Fordyce there. I grant you, he’s hardly the bloke most would care to share a pint with, but Sir John liked him right enough, and he’s not just some leech living off Duff… at least not completely. He’s got a bit up here.” Bertie tapped the side of his noggin. “Fordyce not only got Sir John out of Canterbury and back in the office, but he was the one who guided him into the subassembly business.”
“The what? Sir John makes submarines?”
Bertie Welles smiled and shook his head. “Damn, mate. You are just completely at sea, aren’t you?” He noticed I’d finished my two slivers of apple while he had one left. He pushed it across the desk to me.
“Subassemblies. Small pieces of big machines. Say you’re Vickers. You make very nice machine guns. But whenever one part of the world isn’t shooting at the other, the demand for your product tends to go down, and if all you make is machine guns, then your business suffers. Gordon Fordyce had Sir John get out of the uniform business and into factories that make precision machinery parts for contractors who make the whole item. Look, here’s a Duff factory that makes the recoil mechanism for Vickers, and that also makes the bobbin system for mechanical sewing machines. War comes, and he can convert the sewing machine half of the factory to making machine-gun parts without the massive retooling required to convert a whole plant.”
“And when people would rather sew than shoot each other —”
“He reverses the conversion. It paid off amply for Sir John between the wars, and these days, well, yes, there’s Vickers as well as Supermarine, Hawker, Rolls-Royce, Avro… There’s a lot of the old boy around.”
I showed him the same dinner-party photograph I’d shown Daphne St. Claire. I pointed to the Germans. “Do you know these men?”
“Oh, yes! Let’s see, that’s Erik Stahl, that’d be Vogler… You know the poor sod died this past summer? Went down with —”
“Leslie Howard, yes, I know.”
“Did you like his movies?”
“Simpered too much for my tastes.”
“Simpered?” He shook his head, puzzled, and returned to the matter at hand. “I even did a story about them and Sir John!” He pulled out a clipping that included a photograph of Sir John with the Germans and
Joseph Kennedy toasting one another in Sir John’s library. The headline for the story ran Duff Signs with Germans, Yanks for Transatlantic Venture. The dateline for the story was March 1938. “The idea was they’d create a financial pool to invest in projects that took advantage of their respective resources, and then turn it out in the three markets: America, Germany, and the U.K.”
“I’m surprised Whitehall allowed a principal military contractor to deal with the Germans like that.”
“There was a concern. But Chamberlain was still on about appeasement in those days. And the arrangement did have the imprimatur of a Crown endorsement.”
“Windsor.”
He smiled at my insight. “As you obviously know, he was a chum of Sir John’s. The expressed hope — from the duke, from Sir John, even from Ambassador Kennedy — was that the venture would demonstrate the possibilities for the various major powers to deal peaceably and profitably together. These were not starry-eyed idealists, mind you. At least in part, Sir John was sincerely motivated by the loss of his sons. And Mr. Kennedy, I’m sure, had a concern about something similar happening to his boys. But even with that in mind, let me tell you that these men — all of them — are intelligent, practical men. What they were promoting was an intelligent, practical paradigm.”
“But then came the war and that was that.”
“Quite. Do you remember a Bertie’s Well I wrote back in ‘37? The one that got Himself in such a huff he spiked it? There was quite a to-do about it, even a call from the PM’s office to the publisher.”
“We were still on the appeasement tack then, and the thinking was your piece was not fostering understanding between the nations. You were instructed, as I remember, to stick to writing about business instead of bylining agitating editorials?’
“It was a business story! It was a simple financial deduction that there could be no incentive to keep Mr. Hitler from eventually going to war. He’d dedicated the whole German economy to war materiel. To hang an entire national economy on a single product is fiscal madness. I made the case that it showed Mr. Hitler to be someone not interested in sound financial policy nor money matters. He was not a practical man, nor in many ways particularly intelligent. Mr. Hitler, I concluded, is a madman.”