by Aly Monroe
Cotton had been a little anxious that he would be asked what he himself did but now saw very clearly that there was no need.
Margot had an elderly female servant she called Nanny who was cooking the meal. Nanny kept coming out of the kitchen to complain to Margot that she wasn’t a cook.
‘Come on,’ said Gus, ‘I’ll make the gravy. You all love my gravy.’
The meal was chestnut soup, a brace of tough pheasants accompanied by very burnt onions and a purée of Jerusalem artichokes, and then some Cheshire cheese and quince – all from the country. It was amazingly bad but no one gave any sign of noticing. The drinks were mixed, according to what people had been able to bring. Eggnog mixed with phrases like ‘the future of mankind’, port with names like Stanislavski, and brandy with gossip about people Cotton did not know.
‘You don’t like theatre,’ said Gus.
‘I much prefer film,’ said Cotton. ‘The boards don’t squeak and the thing is edited, scenes are reshot if required. That might be tedious for the actors but it does suit the spectators.’
Gus laughed. ‘You just like the lack of rapport, the lack of contact. You want to ignore the uncertainty, the danger in live performance.’
‘I absolutely love it. A film actor can concentrate on the role rather than appealing for applause or getting put off by a cough. On film an actor can get more chances. On stage the audience is stuck with a mistake, a badly cast actor or a fluffed or forgotten line.’
‘My dear chap, theatre is much closer to life.’
‘But not always well-acted or convincing,’ said Cotton. ‘Ham it up on film and you run out of work. I’m sure you are thinking of David Hume. He described the mind as being like theatre – but seen far more rapidly. Film is actually getting there. The actors don’t have to exit the stage. The frame can cut. More important, it allows for whispers rather than bellows. On film the smallest movement of a face can be important. On stage it’s a windmill of arms and voices getting hoarse as the greasepaint melts.’
‘But that’s the point! Theatre wants catharsis,’ said Eric. ‘We don’t want to be observing shop girls or people on the Tube!’
Cotton smiled. ‘But catharsis on stage is usually bombastic, false or frenzied. The actor intrudes. On stage the actor’s relationship with the audience is too important to the actor. It can look as if he’s too involved in self-expression, wants a reflection. A film actor has to concentrate on the role.’
Cotton stopped speaking. The tough pheasant and burnt onions were beginning to cause his stomach problems.
‘Have you ever seen a film called Ecstasy?’ said Gus. ‘It’s Hedy Lamarr being naked before stardom. It’s sometimes called “The Burning Bush”.’
Cotton nodded. ‘I saw it in Germany in 1945.’
‘What did you think?’
‘Do you really want to know?’
‘Yes!’
‘OK,’ said Cotton. ‘Miss Hedy Lamarr is very beautiful. However, the nobility of physical work in the film is much overrated and the story, elderly mind, educated impotence, young, uneducated muscle, all those symbolic clouds, trees and horses become tiresome.’
‘I rather liked those gleaming muscles,’ said Gus. He laughed. ‘But do you know how the director got those looks of ecstasy on Miss Hedwig Kiesler’s beautiful face? He jabbed her in the bottom with a safety pin!’
Cotton smiled. ‘But the pin was off screen, surely?’
‘My!’ said Gus. ‘You prefer your acting in real life, don’t you?’
‘I’ve never been on stage,’ said Cotton, ‘so I have never had to come off it.’
Cotton had barely got up from the table when he was punched on the arm.
‘Are you telling me I’m too fat?’ said Anna Melville.
‘No.’
‘The film may have been made in Czechoslovakia but she’s an Austrian Jew, you know, from Vienna.’
‘All right.’ Cotton frowned. Did she normally compete with film stars who had changed their names?
‘You are a bastard,’ she said.
‘Why exactly?’
‘I have worn my black grape dress.’
In case he failed to understand, she pointed at her plumped breasts.
‘Lovely,’ he said, ‘but I’m afraid I have indigestion.’
‘I could squeeze it out of you.’
Cotton leant across and kissed her on the lips. She was momentarily surprised, then pushed her tongue into his mouth and moaned. He broke the kiss.
‘You’re very sweet and ripe,’ he said.
‘Jesus, don’t say that. I want to be tart.’
Cotton grunted before he smiled.
‘I’m going to go now.’
‘Suit yourself, Mr Stiffy, but when you get very frustrated, I’d be happy for you to bear down on me.’
Cotton went to Margot to thank her for ‘everything’. Margot giggled. Then giggled some more. He walked to the front door but was pursued.
‘I don’t think it’s your generous soul Anna’s after,’ said Gus Mallory.
‘I see,’ said Cotton. ‘You’re a kind of interpreter, is that it?’
‘My dear chap, as Stanislavski said, you go in and you go out of a character to get the rounded whole.’
‘You’re a poet, Mr Mallory. Tell Margot again, it’s been lovely.’
Cotton went back to his flat. He had a headache but groaned mostly because he had been stirred and irritated.
He grunted. ‘Black grapes,’ he said. A moment later he tasted burnt onion on his teeth and went to brush them.
In the afternoon of Monday the 20th Cotton received a telephone call from Geoffrey Ayrtoun.
‘Any news of Watson?’
‘No.’
Ayrtoun sighed. ‘Is it wise to let Watson handle this himself?’
‘I’m not sure we have much choice.’
‘Good,’ said Ayrtoun. ‘Glad you got that off your chest. Of course you are right. We have few resources and, as you say, probably less choices. You’re on a “do what you can with what you’ve got” kind of job.’
‘Are you saying I should expect something else, something new?’
‘I have absolutely no idea. You did your best for Watson, kept him out of jail. I’m not holding you to more, just asking you to keep your eyes peeled on this – and anything else that crops up.’
‘And?’
Ayrtoun made a noise. ‘The problem with the Starmer-Smiths of this world, the would-be moralists, is that the stupid bastards don’t understand the effects of their righteousness.’
Cotton waited. Ayrtoun cleared his throat.
‘Are you in a position, Colonel, to give me a guarantee that A. A. Watson has not responded to his abrupt banishment by going with what he has to a foreign power?’
‘No, I’m not,’ said Cotton. He raised his eyes towards the cornice. The pattern in the plaster was a sort of cut-off oval, like a beheaded egg with swags.
‘You see?’ said Ayrtoun. ‘Do try to find him, old man. It would be better for everyone.’
But Cotton had no success when he called the other agencies. Nobody had any information at all on Watson’s whereabouts. For what it was worth, MI5 in their watch on Soviet buildings and people had nothing either.
Cotton talked to Dawkins. Dawkins had nothing to report either.
‘He must have the car off the road,’ he said.
‘Perhaps. How far have you enquired?’
‘If we’re lucky,’ Dawkins said, ‘he’ll have holed up in Devon or Shropshire or somewhere while he thinks of what to do.’ He paused. ‘Look, unless we step this up, making him a wanted person and put out a nationwide alert, we’re pretty well stuck. He’s not actually wanted for a crime, is he?’
‘No,’ said Cotton. ‘Thanks. One last thing. Today I was asked whether or not I could guarantee Watson hadn’t gone to the Soviets. Of course I couldn’t.’
‘Yes,’ said Dawkins. ‘But I can’t guarantee these Jock razor boys the journalist told y
ou about haven’t got anything to do with Watson’s disappearance. I don’t believe they do, though. Why would they bother now that his security clearance has been taken away?’
Cotton grunted. It was a sort of ‘yes’ but was hardly happy.
On Tuesday, 21 January the temperature dropped very sharply. At about three thirty in the afternoon thick snow began to fall. In London at least there was very little wind. The snow settled and began to layer. For a spell people looked cheerful in all that white. But Cotton noticed on his way home that the screeching of the Tube wheels had become sharper, as if there was a knife grinder nearby, and by the time he had crunched the short way to Wilbraham Place from Sloane Square station he could barely feel his fingers and feet except as vague areas of ache. ‘A bad night for water pipes,’ someone had said on the Tube.
Cotton drew the curtains in all the rooms and put on the electric fire in his sitting room. He prepared some leek and potato soup and listened to the news on the radio while it was cooking. The storm was very bad and snow was drifting ‘in eastern areas and the Midlands’. Drifts as high as twenty feet had been reported. In certain parts of the country temperatures between 10 and 15 degrees Fahrenheit were expected overnight.
He telephoned his father who told him the snow was deep all right but he was well wrapped up and sitting by the range in the kitchen.
Cotton then ate the soup and some bread and a scrape of butter. He listened to some music but gave up because Art Tatum sounded particularly crackly, and began reading a book called Laughter in the Dark that he had picked up in a second-hand bookshop along with one called Miss Lonelyhearts. Around nine, he checked on his bedroom. Despite the fat central heating pipes, he could see his breath. He unplugged the electric fire and took it through to warm the bedroom, opened the doors to the kitchen and put on a gas ring.
Later he heated some milk, put a small shot of whisky in it and drank it before he went through to his bedroom. He got out another blanket, and just before he got into bed he parted the curtains and looked out on D’Oyley Street. There was about two feet of snow on the road and the snow, though less, was still falling. This was London and the complete silence felt strange.
18
ON WEDNESDAY, 22 January 1947 one of the guests at the Greyhound Hotel in Croydon did not respond to his wake-up call at 7 a.m. Unable to get any response or hear anything inside the room, the bedroom door was opened by hotel staff at about 8 a.m.
The police and the ambulance service were called at once. The first to arrive was a police constable on foot at about 8.15. He closed the room again and waited.
The heavy snow – it was still falling – and the extreme cold were causing mayhem. The train, Tube and bus services were fitful and slow when they operated at all. Snowploughs and gritters were out on the roads but new snow was falling on what they cleared. By the time the security alert was given it was 9.30 a.m.
Cotton received a telephone call from Dickie Dawkins of Special Branch at 10.15.
‘Your man Watson would appear to have topped himself. In the Greyhound Hotel, of all places.’
‘Are you there?’
‘You’re joking. I’ve only just heard myself.’
‘Are the trains running?’
‘Nobody seems to know.’
Cotton telephoned Hans Bieber. The driver was unimpressed by the winter weather.
‘I will collect you,’ he said. ‘I have snow chains.’
‘I don’t know how they’ll work on Streatham High Road.’
Hans made a tutting noise. ‘I have driven in snow before,’ he said. ‘Give me ten, maybe fifteen minutes.’
Cotton called Dickie Dawkins to offer him a lift.
‘Your Kraut driver? No. I’m trying the train. They’ve got the snowploughs out.’
Hans Bieber took twenty minutes to arrive.
‘Not tyres, weak windscreen wipers,’ he complained. ‘They stick on the snow.’
They experienced a tremendous skid however, both sliding sideways and turning right round as soon as they started, ended up facing the wrong way a couple of inches from a white mound secreting another vehicle.
‘Scheisse!’ said Hans.
Cotton said nothing. He thought he should leave Hans to his job.
‘What kind of stupid snow is this anyway?’ said the driver, but the skid had done its job and Hans Bieber got them facing the right way with a sort of determined delicacy and then concentrated on his job, without speaking.
What surprised Cotton was that Watson should have gone back to the Greyhound Hotel to commit suicide. He had found Watson to be stubborn, naïve but also very decided. Was this really as crude as ‘This is where my career ended. Look what you have made me do!’?
They drove over the Thames. The river looked the colour of milky tea and the texture of wallpaper glue. Cotton had never seen the Thames freeze over. He wondered what kind of temperature it would take to make it icebound.
He put the tartan rug over his knees and settled back. After a while watching the snowflakes stream past, he closed his eyes and found something similar moved under his lids.
‘Can you see?’ he asked Hans.
‘Not much. That is why I am going slow.’
‘It’s not a criticism, Hans.’
‘There are flurries,’ said Hans, ‘at any speed.’
‘You’re doing well,’ said Cotton. He opened his eyes. The needle of the speedometer was flickering between ten and fifteen miles per hour.
It was 12.45 when they arrived at the Greyhound. There being so many official vehicles and no space left in the courtyard, Hans dropped Cotton off and went to look for somewhere to park. Standing by an oddly conjoined grandfather clock in Reception, put together from two different historical fashions, Cotton learnt Dickie Dawkins was still not there. He decided to wait and took up the offer of a mug of soup and a chicken sandwich and the same for Hans Bieber when he arrived. He was shown into the hotel manager’s office and briefed by a police inspector.
The manager of the Greyhound said that Watson had arrived ‘with the snow’ the evening before. Since October he had stayed there several times, arriving in the afternoon or evening, before leaving quite early the next morning.
‘He drove himself, sir,’ said the police inspector. ‘It’s a little Austin. Parked in the courtyard.’
‘Have you looked at it?’
The inspector did not answer directly.
‘Make sure nobody touches the deceased’s motor vehicle,’ he said to a constable. He looked at Cotton. Cotton moved his hand as if about to speak.
‘No, check the inside. See if there’s anything there.’ He paused. ‘The keys will be upstairs. Just check if there is anything visible.’
Watson had gone to his room and stayed there. He had asked for a fire to be lit and had ordered room service – whisky, a ham sandwich with mustard and an apple. He had tipped the waiter sixpence.
‘The next anybody knew was this morning,’ said the inspector.
‘Where’s the body?’
‘Still upstairs, sir. The doctor’s up there now.’
‘Are you calling this a suicide?’
‘Not until we have all the information.’
‘Did he leave a note?’
‘We haven’t found one so far, sir.’
‘All right. I’ll wait for Mr Dawkins. Have you any information on when he’ll get here?’
‘No, sir.’
Cotton went out to the reception area. Hans Bieber raised his chin.
‘What?’ said Cotton.
‘The nancy boy is here.’
‘Where?’
‘In the bar. I’m not going there.’
Cotton shrugged. ‘I don’t mind.’
He went through. Derek Jennings was on a bar stool with a pink gin in front of him. He stood up.
‘Sit down,’ said Cotton. ‘I want to know whether Watson saw anybody last night. The Greyhound says no.’
‘Well, they would, wouldn’t they,’
said Derek.
‘The police and Special Branch will certainly be asking around to see whether or not the management is correct. Take care, of course, but I want you to speak to the staff as well. Clear? We need to know of any patrons who might not want to come forward. Not just nice young men. Include those who might have had difficulty getting home to their wives and children last night. Go wider than the Greyhound.’
Derek nodded.
‘Have you eaten?’ asked Cotton.
‘No.’
‘My driver is in reception. They’re offering soup and a chicken sandwich. Tell him I say you’re on our tab.’
It was 1.25. There was a disturbance in reception caused by Dickie Dawkins’s arrival. He, his hat and coat were entirely covered with snow. Cotton went to see him.
‘I had to damn well walk from East Croydon station,’ said Dawkins unnecessarily. He was beating his hat against his leg.
Cotton took this as a complaint that the police had not collected him by car and saved him the walk.
‘Bloody Brighton train,’ said Dawkins, struggling to get out of his coat. ‘We got stuck at Wandsworth Common. Right,’ he said. ‘Have you seen the body?’
‘No,’ said Cotton. ‘I’ve been waiting for you.’
‘All right,’ said Dawkins. He paused. ‘Is there anything to eat?’
‘Soup and a chicken sandwich.’
‘I’ll have some of that,’ said Dawkins. ‘Thigh meat!’ he called out.
‘I’m sorry, sir, the chicken is over.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘The chicken is finished, sir.’
‘What have you got?’
‘Some Argentinian corn-beef, sir.’
‘With mustard,’ said Dawkins.
They went upstairs. Watson’s room had a policeman outside. Inside they found the doctor, a detective sergeant and the body. Watson was still in the four-poster bed, on his back. His eyes were closed. Beside him on the bedside table was a plate, a rat-tail knife and the remains of an apple on it. Watson had eaten about half. Beside the plate was an empty syringe.
‘Can you smell that?’ said the doctor, pointing at the plate on the bedside table. ‘Sometimes people describe the smell as being like bitter almonds. But they may have bitten an apple seed. That’s got a small amount of cyanide in it too.’