by Aly Monroe
Rigsby frowned. ‘Morton,’ he said.
‘That’s your name for him, is it?’
‘What?’ said Rigsby. ‘Are you suggesting I was misled?’
‘I don’t know what references you took up.’
‘I was under the impression I was doing my bit in the national interest.’
‘But we are talking cash, aren’t we?’
‘Yes. It’s not unknown and there was nothing untoward about the transaction. All monies are accounted for and the receipts in order.’
‘Who owns the house?’
‘We act as agents. I assure you the owners know nothing of this. They are abroad.’
‘Where?’
‘The owner is in the ICS, the Indian Civil Service, and was very pleased we had let the house in such difficult market conditions. And at the full asking price.’
‘How did the money arrive?’
Rigsby looked down at his ring finger. ‘Through the letter box,’ he said quietly. ‘There was a note saying Mr Morton would be calling in and to have the contract and keys ready.’
‘Did you meet Mr Morton?’
‘Of course, I did! One doesn’t let houses lightly, you know.’
‘Who else did you see?’
‘The two gentlemen who came before.’
‘And showed you identification?’
Rigsby looked nervous. ‘Yes. I’m pretty sure they did.’
‘That’s all right, Mr Rigsby. What were they like?’
‘Decent enough chaps. One was called Cunningham. I remember that. And the other one was called Crouch.’
Cotton nodded. ‘Could you describe them?’
‘Not very well,’ Rigsby admitted. ‘This is some months ago. One of them had a moustache, quite thick. The other looked younger, in his twenties perhaps. Quite fresh-faced. That was Crouch. The older man with the moustache was the one who did the talking.’
‘Do you have a copy of the contract?’
‘Of course. I say, there are not going to be any problems, are there? The lease is up at the end of March and we don’t want anything untoward.’
‘The contract?’
It was standard stuff. Paul Mair had signed his side as Morton and given his previous address as being in the Avenue Foch in Paris. Rigsby had signed for the owner, John Campbell Muir, whose address was given simply as New Delhi, India.
‘Do you want to see the inventory?’ said Harold Rigsby.
‘Inventory of what?’
‘Why, of the contents of course! The furniture and everything. The house is fully equipped, I can assure you. Some quite good quality stuff there, and the odd painting.’
Cotton nodded. ‘I see. I couldn’t have a copy, could I?’
It turned out there was not a spare copy, but Cotton looked at it. It was several pages long. Canteen of cutlery, full dinner service, Regency-type dining table and eight dining chairs, silver candlesticks in the drawing room . . .
‘Good,’ said Cotton. ‘Thank you.’
Mr Rigby was looking alarmed. ‘I say, Mr Morton is still there, isn’t he?’
‘Yes,’ said Cotton. ‘Of course he is. In fact we saw him yesterday evening.’
‘So what’s this about?’
‘It’s a cross-check,’ said Cotton. ‘Whatever we are doing we have to ensure everything is above board. That no one is trying anything on. This varies from profiting to . . . well, we understand Mr Morton was given some fuel by his Soviet neighbours. They appear to have handed quite a lot out.’
Mr Rigby grunted indignantly. ‘That’s because the Soviets have friends in that damned miners’ union. The rest of us are living with candles, for heaven’s sake!’
‘Thank you very much, Mr Rigsby. This conversation is—’
‘Of course, not a word.’
Cotton shook Rigsby’s plump hand and he and Hans left the shop and walked to the Triumph. Hans paused before opening the car door.
‘Do you mean that Mair has flogged off the furniture?’ he said.
‘It certainly looks possible.’
Cotton was intrigued that Hans looked agitated, rather more than he had at the idea of someone providing syringe and cyanide to a suicide. They got into the car.
‘But that would be a crime,’ Hans said.
‘Yes,’ said Cotton.
Hans started the motor. ‘Are we going to see Mair again now?’
‘No,’ said Cotton.
‘That fat man might go and see him. I would.’
‘Yes, Rigsby may go along but I doubt if he’ll go in. We’ll go to Wardour Street. I want to speak to Freddie Igloi.’
Hans frowned. ‘You are having Mair watched?’
‘No. That would upset the Soviets. And we don’t want to do that, at least not yet.’
27
IN WARDOUR Street Freddie Igloi told Cotton that Paul Mair had made three telephone calls in the hour after they had left.
‘I have the numbers here. Two of these calls were to London but the third was to a place called East Grinstead. That was a very short call.’
Cotton took down the numbers and went back to the office. Miss Kelly took some time.
‘That East Grinstead number was the hardest. They don’t like giving out the number of important people.’
‘Who are we talking about?’ Miss Kelly dropped her voice. ‘Sir Cyril Healey-Johnson. He’s the third baronet. I looked him up in Debrett’s.’
Cotton knew the name but little else. ‘He’s not an MP any more, is he?’
‘No. He stood down in 1945.’
‘The other numbers?’
‘One to his sister. About ten minutes. One to an Anglican priest. Long call, about half an hour. The third call, to Sir Cyril, lasted no more than a few seconds.’
Cotton thought. The sister would be for help or forgiveness or goodbye. The Anglican priest would be against self-slaughter. The third call either for help or appeal, doubtless cut short.
‘What kind of priest?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘High? Low?’
‘Society. English. From the north of England.’
‘How are we doing for money?’ asked Cotton.
‘Petty cash?’
‘Yes. Ten pounds, for example.’
There was a pause. ‘Five would be better,’ said Miss Kelly.
‘Seven pounds ten shillings, then,’ said Cotton.
‘Payment to?’
‘Paul Mair. By post. Preferably by tomorrow.’
Miss Kelly could convey disapproval without any obvious movement.
‘Thank you very much, Miss Kelly.’ Cotton picked up the telephone but had something to say before he called.
‘Miss Kelly, I want to arrange a meeting with Oleg Cherkesov of the Soviet Embassy. This will need all kinds of clearances.’
‘He’s top class,’ said Miss Kelly. She meant that Cherkesov came in the first rank of Soviet representatives in the UK.
Cotton nodded and called through. Paul Mair took a long time to pick up.
‘Paul?’
‘Ehm—’
‘This is Peter here. Peter Cotton. I came to see you the other evening.’
Paul Mair grunted. ‘What is it you want?’
‘I have just arranged to have seven pounds ten shillings sent to you. You should get the money tomorrow morning. It will come by post and it will be in cash.’
There was a pause. ‘It’s not enough to get away, you know.’
‘Yes, I do know that.’
‘So why are you sending it?’
‘In payment, Paul. You’re going to write a report.’
‘What about?’
‘Wake up, Paul. I want a full statement of your relationship with A. A. Watson. Omit nothing. Is that clear?’
‘I suppose so,’ said Paul Mair. ‘I don’t have any paper, you know.’
‘That’s one of the reasons you’re getting some money, Paul. You’ll be able to buy some and a pencil if need be. Buy some food as
well. If you want I can send a secretary. She could take down what you say, type it up and have you sign it.’
Another pause. ‘How do you know I won’t bugger off?’
‘Because we know about the furniture.’
‘That’s not a problem.’
‘Why not?’
Cotton could almost hear Paul Mair frown. ‘I’ll just say I went away for a couple of days, came back to find the house stripped. The neighbours won’t have seen anything and the insurance will pay.’
‘What on earth makes you think we’ll keep quiet?’
Mair grunted.
‘Right,’ said Cotton. ‘Do you know anyone called Cunningham? Or Crouch? They might have been together.’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘What about Sinclair and Boyle? They’re Glaswegians.’
‘I don’t know Glasgow,’ said Paul Mair.
‘Paul, I’m asking if you saw them before you accompanied A. A. Watson. Perhaps they persuaded you.’
‘No. My instructions came on rice paper.’
‘When?’
‘Beginning of January, I suppose.’
‘Come on, Paul. Was it before or after the sixth?’
‘I think it was about the tenth, actually.’
‘How did you meet Watson?’
‘Went to Oxford. Met him in a pub.’
‘How did you get to Croydon?’
‘Oh, that was entirely his idea. He turned up here, wanted to stash his car in my garage for a few days. We took it from there.’
‘All right. Are you clear now? You have something to do. Write down anything you remember. And I mean anything.’
There was another pause. ‘I’m going to wait until the money arrives,’ said Paul Mair.
Cotton stifled a sigh. ‘Fine,’ he said. ‘Is that clear now? You have something to do.’
There was yet another pause. ‘I’m going to wait until the money arrives,’ said Paul Mair again.
‘That’s fine,’ said Cotton. ‘You do that. But I want the report by Monday, clear?’
‘Do hang on,’ said Mair. ‘You couldn’t give me a Q & A with the money, could you? It would help structure my report, you see.’
Cotton nodded. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I’ll do that.’
Miss Kelly brought him a checklist. Apart from Ayrtoun, MI6 would have to give approval for a meeting with Oleg Cherkesov. And MI5 would have to be informed.
‘We have to make a formal application,’ she said.
‘Mention this involves A. A. Watson, deceased, an ex-agent of theirs called Paul Mair who claims (a) he assisted Mr Watson in his suicide and (b) that he was previously and unsuccessfully approached by Mr Cherkesov and that they will know more than I do about Mr Cherkesov’s relationship with Mr Beria, presently in charge of the Soviet atom bomb project.’ He looked up. ‘I think that’s enough for now. I’m happy to be briefed and/or accompanied. I perfectly well understand I’m not part of the Soviet department nor privy to our own military developments. If MI6 agree, they should inform MI5.’
‘Is that all, sir?’
‘I’m going to write a Q & A for the man who’s getting the money. They should go off together.’
Cotton called Dickie Dawkins and told him something of what was happening. ‘I’ve just found out where Watson’s car was. In Totteridge, apparently. Not that our ex-MI6 man comes over as very reliable. He’s writing a report but needs help.’
‘Ask him if he encountered Radcliffe,’ said Dawkins.
‘Any particular reason?’
Dawkins sighed. ‘No, I suppose not. But God, it’s cold here.’
‘Is he giving you a rough time?’
‘No,’ said Dawkins. There was a pause. ‘He’s overbearing,’ he said.
‘All right,’ said Cotton.
When Cotton put down the phone, Miss Kelly handed him a note. It was a government release. Miss Ellen Wilkinson, Minister for Education, had died earlier that day, aged 55, in St Mary’s Hospital, London, ‘of pneumonia’. ‘It says the cause of death was really a heart attack brought about by an accidental overdose of barbiturates. Accidental my eye,’ said Miss Kelly.
Cotton was aware Miss Kelly was agitated.
‘I’ll bet you, sir, Mr Morrison will not attend her funeral.’
Cotton blinked. ‘The ground’s frozen,’ he said. ‘They’re using pneumatic drills to dig up potatoes. I think dead bodies are being stacked.’
‘She was a socialist,’ said Miss Kelly. ‘She may have chosen cremation. That’s got priority.’
‘Are you all right, Miss Kelly?’
Moira Kelly shook her head. ‘It’s a damned shame,’ she said. ‘She sacrificed herself. If their affair had become public Mr Morrison would have been ruined.’ She shook her head. ‘He had no idea of her sacrifice. And now he will be too frightened to attend her funeral and will think she killed herself to get at him.’
Cotton thought about it, possibly even of saying Miss Kelly couldn’t be sure Morrison would not go, but then thought of Morrison and the self-concern of politicians. He looked at his secretary.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. It did occur to him to ask himself whether Miss Kelly had ever fallen for a married man. He didn’t ask her.
She blinked at him. ‘Thank you, sir. I shouldn’t have said those things—’
‘It’s all right.’
‘I didn’t admire her politics but—’
‘It’s really all right.’
Miss Kelly nodded. ‘I’ll get on, sir.’
Cotton wrote out the Q and A for Paul Mair. He kept thinking he had missed something, but gave it to Miss Kelly so that it could catch the post.
The next day, Friday, 7 February, the Government had no need to keep insisting on the official history at least, that Miss Ellen Wilkinson had died of pneumonia. The Right Honourable Emmanuel Shinwell MP, Minister of Fuel and Power, read out to the House of Commons a list of measures meant to spread the effects of the lack of coal evenly and fairly. Domestic consumption of electricity would be forbidden between the hours of 0900 and twelve noon and also from 1400 to 1600. Anyone using electricity at those times faced a fine of one hundred pounds sterling or three months in jail. There would be no ‘external lighting’. The television service would be suspended and radio transmissions cut. Newspapers would be reduced. The list was long and included the banning of greyhound racing. German POWs would be put to clearing the railway lines with their hands, if necessary.
When Cotton got back home that evening he found Anna Melville had laid papers all over the kitchen table.
‘You have a marvellous table,’ she said. ‘It’s big and it’s flat.’
‘I’m glad,’ said Cotton. At one end of the table was a bottle of wine and a glass. The glass was empty, the bottle almost. ‘What are these papers? Drawings?’
There was an element of strip cartoon or storyboard about them. She had drawn twelve squares across each A4 sheet, but in each square there were only one or two curves and, like some sort of punctuation, occasional blank squares. He recognized the paper as his, taken from a drawer in his desk.
‘You should think of these as akin to photographic negatives,’ she said.
‘All right. Black background, lines as white?’
‘There will be colours in the lines. Do you know what blacklight is?’
Cotton had taken off his overcoat and scarf. He saw her eyes looked a little bloodshot.
‘I’ve heard of it being used as a means of checking whether a banknote is genuine or counterfeit,’ he said.
‘You really know how to make a girl’s heart skip a beat, don’t you?’
‘I know. Is there any wine left in that bottle?’
She checked. She shook her head. ‘Just dregs,’ she said.
‘I see.’ He went to the cupboard and got out another bottle of wine. He had two left. ‘You’re talking of UV light, is that it?’ He took a cork off the corkscrew and began opening the bottle.
‘Yes, I am!
Good for you! Are you thinking of getting me drunk?’
‘I just thought I’d drink some before it disappeared.’
She laughed and held out her glass.
‘Blacklight theatre,’ she said. ‘It’s quite a Czech thing.’
The wine gurgled.
‘I haven’t seen it.’
‘It’s because we can’t see black on black. Our eyes, I mean. An actor dressed in black can move unseen against a black background. Another actor can appear quite normally. But perhaps the objects around him will move. We usually use luminescent paint on those.’
‘All right,’ said Cotton. ‘But am I right in thinking you probably wouldn’t act The Cherry Orchard in this way?’
The girl laughed. ‘You could, you know! But you’re right in a way. Do you know Méliès?’
‘A moon with a face and a rocket in one eye? Surely he was a film-maker?’
‘He was playing with our perceptions! Making jokes, surprising us.’
‘I’m not sure I have grasped what your blacklight is yet. Right now I am somewhere between optics and tricks of light.’
‘You make the stage into a black box, sometimes called a cabinet. You use blacklight and luminescence.’
‘Do the actors speak?’
‘Ah. There’s a lot of blacklight theatre that likes mime. But you could, you see, simply have luminescent lipstick and have mouths speaking.’
‘And you could just have them cover their mouths rather than turning away.’
She looked surprised.
‘I mean that Méliès cut the film. It’s the speed of the change that confuses. In blacklight you can be more fluid. Is that right?’
She closed one large eye on him.
‘What’s the matter?’ he said.
‘You might be getting hold of this.’
He laughed. ‘Don’t bet on it.’ He indicated the papers on the table. ‘What are you working on?’
‘A dream, I suppose. My dream, that is, not dreams in blacklight.’
‘Difficult.’
‘Very,’ she said. ‘There’s the expense. With a venue, actors, the light and all the rest, I’m estimating about four hundred and fifty pounds.’
Cotton had no idea of theatre finances or whether this was a large amount or not. He did remember Christopher Fry was supposed to be getting paid exactly that sum to write a play.