The Golf, Cheese and Chess Society

by Jason Blacker

  Damn the Twenty Committee to hell, he thought. He walked into the Mansion. A large home that would compete with many castles in the area if only on its sheer size. MI6 was on the top floor, and he was going to see a man about a murder. That man was Clyde Albutt who happened to think that MI6 was more important than MI5, especially now, during this war of theirs. That belief carried into his posture and general attitude when dealing with anyone from MI5. And anyone from MI5 at BP was sadly, only Walter Brimley.

  Brimley was of the opposite opinion. It seemed clear to him that without a secure internal country, there was no use in trying to secure externalities from outside actors. His reading of history seemed to confirm that opinion. Change and unrest usually came from within. Yes, he was certainly in the more useful of the two security organizations if he had to be honest about it.

  Brimley found Clyde Albutt upstairs in his office smoking a cigar and relaxing as if he might be on vacation in some out of the way inconsequential tertiary office of disrepute. The incompetent, although friendly and affable, Captain Torchier was with him. Brimley walked in without knocking on the door. It was open, and he didn’t have time for courtesies. Not for a man that he despised.

  “Ah, it is the groundskeeper, Walter Brimley. What a delightful surprise,” said Albutt, sitting in his chair and puffing on his cigar. Torchier smiled uncomfortably. He happened to respect both men. Brimley didn’t say anything.

  “I’ve come to inform you that I am now locking down BP. Nobody leaves or enters here without my express permission.”

  “Now listen here, Walter,” said Albutt. “You aren’t in charge. In fact, I’m the man in charge here as you know. Bletchley Park, in case you’ve forgotten, is tasked with external security, that is to say, codebreaking of German and Axis encrypted messages. It is not about the internal security of the United Kingdom.”

  “Regardless,” said Brimley, “internal security of Bletchley and everyone associated with her is my domain. And I say that no one leaves or enters without my permission. The MPs have been notified of same. It would do you well to accommodate my request. Or, if you prefer, you may consult your commander if you are that uneducated in our roles and responsibilities.”

  Albutt didn’t need to. He knew that Brimley could lock down BP if required for an internal security threat. Though he never thought the man would be so vindictive as to actually do that. He stood up and started to point the butt of his cigar at Brimley as he spoke.

  “You’ve been getting too big for your britches, Walt,” he said, and he could see Brimley bristle with the use of that shortened version of his name. “Now, to be fair, just because MI5 has been all but expired ever since the debacle with the internment camps, doesn’t necessary reflect on your own incompetence. However, things are looking up now, that David Petrie, an MI6 chap is in charge. You should be happy, Walt. Now is not the time to be flexing your atrophied muscles.”

  Brimley wanted to reach over the desk and punch Albutt in the mouth. Instead, he took a deep breath before he spoke again.

  “Those things may have been true. But they were only true because you pompous bastards at MI6 didn’t share any of your intelligence with us about this bloody war we’re now in. Maybe that’s because you didn’t know about it. I told David that not all German agents would turn, and that perhaps we hadn’t found all the German agents sent over here.”

  “Yes, and to humor you, Walt, they sent you here to mind your business. Did you ever wonder why you are the only MI5 man here? Let me tell you why. Because you’re wrong. And when you’re wrong and you don’t tow the party line you get sent someplace out of the way. If you’re lucky. You’ve just been lucky, Walt. If I was you, I’d just while away my time, grateful to still be in the service of His Majesty.”

  Albutt, being satisfied with his retort sat back down and continued to smoke his cigar.

  “I have news for you, Clyde. I wasn’t wrong. Are you aware that two of your girls have gone missing?”

  “And who, pray tell, might they be?”

  “Minnie Shelford and Pelagia Paterson with one T,” he said, just because it felt right.

  Torchier leaned in. He was now interested in the conversation.

  “Really?” he asked.

  Brimley looked over at him and nodded.

  “I don’t manage every team, Walt. They’ll show up or their supervisor will deal with them. Who are they with?”

  “They’re Dilly’s Fillies,” said Torchier.

  “There you are. If you’re worried about a couple of the women, Walt, go and tell Dilwyn about it. He’ll sort it out.”

  “I’m not worried about it. I know where they are.”

  Albutt was lighting his cigar again as it seemed to have gone out.

  “Dear God man, then why are you wasting my time about it,” said Albutt.

  “I’m not. I came in here to tell you that nobody enters or exits The Golf, Cheese and Chess Society without my express permission, and if you don’t like that you can take it up with your boss.”

  “You need just cause, Walt,” said Albutt.

  “Where are these two girls?” asked Torchier.

  Brimley looked at Torchier for a moment, and drew out a long pause before answering.

  “Dead,” he said.

  Albutt jumped back up, holding his cigar like a frightened bird in his left hand.

  “You are infuriating, Walt. Absolutely infuriating. Instead of coming out with that, you’ve wasted mine and Captain Torchier’s time these last five minutes with this song and dance routine of yours.”

  Brimley ignored him.

  “What happened to them?” asked Torchier.

  “They were both murdered.”

  “Good God,” said Torchier, standing up now.

  Brimley nodded.

  “Indeed. It’s like I said. We have a German spy in our midsts and it seems like he’s murdered both women.”

  “How do you know this?” asked Torchier.

  Albutt was trying to adjust to what he had just heard. This was very bad news. But depending on the whys and wherefores, it could be even worse.

  “I’ve been running a clandestine operation,” said Brimley, not wanting to give them the satisfaction of the name of it. In any event, Operation Cracking Eggs had now turned into Operation Scrambled Eggs for obvious reasons.

  “And how did this operation reward you with a German agent?” asked Albutt.

  “Group Captain Dowd was approached by a man he met in the pub towards the end of last year who overheard him talking about this place here.”

  “Unbelievable,” said Albutt. “So we’ve been leaking like a sieve for months.”

  “Well, in his defense, he was inebriated,” said Brimley. “In any event we decided to make the best of this situation and see if we couldn’t smoke the fox out.”

  “And this man that Dowd met happened to be the agent?” asked Albutt.

  “No, but one thing led to another. We started to feed them some false but reasonable information that looked like it came out of here and the agent started to meet with Dowd personally. This only happened some weeks ago.”

  “That still doesn’t explain the deaths of Minnie and Pelagia,” said Albutt. “If Dowd was meeting this agent, then what’s that got to do with the deaths of both girls?”

  This was the uncomfortable part. If only Box 500 had listened to him more seriously he might have been able to set up this double cross better from the beginning. Now he had two murders on his hands and the costs might not have been worth the entrance fees.

  “Well, it appears that Dowd has a bit of a loose tongue. Especially when he thinks he’s playing at cloak and dagger stuff. I believe he told this agent the names of the two women he was getting the information from.”

  Albutt shook his head and took a puff on his cigar. Brimley was likely to lose his job over this. Or at the very least he was going to be disciplined.

  “Look,” said Brimley, knowing exactly how this was reflecting
on him, “I was trying to run a double cross without the support of Box 500. If they’d only have listened to me.”

  “And nobody thought to use pseudonyms?” asked Albutt.

  “I had encouraged it, especially when it came to the names of the girls involved,” said Brimley. “But you have to understand, Clyde, that Group Captain Dowd gave me no indication that this man was dangerous, and in fact, we were going to bring him in this coming week and try and turn him.”

  “And now you have two dead women,” said Albutt. “Did they know what was going on? Were they aware of the risks?”

  “I thought it better for their safety that they were unaware of the operation.”

  Albutt shook his head.

  “Sounds to me like you’ve just operated yourself out of a career, Walt. That’s a shame.”

  Brimley didn’t say anything.

  “Anything I can do to help, Walter,” said Torchier, “let me know.”

  Brimley nodded at him.

  “I’ll let you know. In the meantime I don’t want anyone coming or going without me knowing about it. This German is still on the loose, and until he’s caught, I don’t think anyone here is safe.”

  “For once I agree with you,” said Albutt. “By the way, have you contacted Group Captain Dowd to let him know what’s happened and to be on the lookout?”

  “That’s my next task,” said Brimley.

  And with that Brimley nodded and walked out of the office and down towards his office which was with Captain McBurney and the other MPs. To be sure, this hadn’t gone as planned, but he was right. Surely they had to see that?

  “Poor sod,” said Albutt to Torchier. “I think that man’s about to be out of work.”

  “You think they’ll be that tough on him?”

  Albutt shrugged, sat back down and continued to smoke his cigar.

  TWENTY

  The Unmused Muse

  THE Muse’s Mark is an apartment complex in Kensington. It’s for the rich and those who want to appear rich. Rent starts at The Muse for a modest one-bedroom at twenty pounds per month. This is more than Pelagia or Minnie were earning each month when they were murdered.

  Inspector Devlin Pearce was standing inside such a modest one-bedroom flat at The Muse’s Mark. It wasn’t his. He didn’t earn enough to live in a place like this. In any event it wasn’t big enough. There just wasn’t space for his wife and two children in a one-bedroom flat.

  With Devlin Pearce was Detective Sergeant George Lavatish. He was a stocky man of average height with a ruddy complexion and bulbous nose. His eyes were sleepy and the blue-gray color of dead fish scales. He enjoyed drink and he had unruly, curly orange hair. Interestingly, he didn’t have many freckles to go along with his hair and pale skin.

  In front of them lying on the bed was a man who appeared to be in his late forties, or perhaps early fifties, whose name they had recently ascertained as being Group Captain Stanley Dowd. He was with the Air Force, and his official posting had been RAF Biggin Hill Station, which was on the south side of London.

  Group Captain Dowd had been shot through the chest once. He was lying on his back over the covers of his bed. He was wearing blue, striped pajamas and black slippers. There had been no sign of forced entry.

  When Pearce had arrived at the apartment there had been a strong smell of tobacco smoke. It seemed that Group Captain Dowd had been smoking a cigarette before he had been shot. He was clearly not alone. In the kitchen, around a small table were two serving places. Both had coffee cups, half drunk, on the placemats. One of them, Pearce was certain, would be Group Captain Dowd’s. The other he wasn’t sure of. There hadn’t been any fingerprints on them.

  A witness had thought she’d heard a loud bang. Possibly a gunshot coming from this flat. She couldn’t be sure though as there was a lot of noise at that time of morning. That time of morning was six-thirty. When asked if she’d seen anyone leaving the flat she had in fact noticed a dark stranger in the hallway. This man wasn’t dark in the sense of his complexion, she had said, rather he was dressed in dark clothes. He had a black hat on with a black overcoat and black gloves and black shoes. She didn’t get a good look at him as he kept his head down, but he did have black hair.

  She saw him again outside hailing a cab and she overheard what she described as a foreign accent. Possibly German, but she couldn’t be sure. Not aware that a murder had recently been committed, she hadn’t put that much effort into who this man might have been. One other thing she had noticed, was that he walked with a limp. When asked if she had seen him around here before she replied in the negative. Nobody else had seen anything.

  “He must have known his attacker,” said DS Lavatish to Pearce.

  Pearce nodded absentmindedly.

  “Explain why you believe that, Sergeant,” he said.

  “Nothing seems disturbed, Inspector. In fact, it appears he offered his guest coffee. Further, there’s been no sign of a struggle, so Group Captain Dowd must have been comfortable with this man. And it certainly wasn’t a robbery. Look at the pile of money that was next to him.”

  “The money had been collected by one of the bobbies already, but DS Lavatish was correct. There had been fifty pounds in notes next to Group Captain Dowd’s body. This led Pearce to believe that some sort of monetary transaction had taken place before Dowd was shot. The large sum would usually indicate a drug transaction. Perhaps opium. He would be surprised if it indicated prostitution. Unless Group Captain Dowd required a harem of prostitutes, fifty pounds just seemed too much for even the classiest prostitute. A choice of words that Pearce thought was more like an oxymoron than anything else.

  Reflecting further on the amount of money left at the scene, Pearce began to wonder if it was part of some sort of rationing scheme. He knew there was a keen black market during the lean times with lots of money changing hands. Not that Pearce was directly involved in that part of crime, but his colleagues had assured him that a pound of bacon could quite easily fetch 9 or 10 shillings, a sum that was at least four times what bacon had cost before the war.

  The first item to have been rationed was petrol, but the black market for that commodity was limited and small. Pearce had been surprised by this. The other thing he had been surprised by, was the lack of a black market for fruit. He hadn’t seen a lemon or banana for years and yet they weren’t popular on the black market. The most highly sought after items in order of importance were butter, sugar and bacon. He didn’t want to know how much a pound of butter went for. He didn’t ask and he wasn’t told.

  Pearce had looked in Group Captain Dowd’s fridge, and like most fridges it was fairly bare. There was a little bit of butter, a small jar of jam, some carrots and a small piece of mincemeat. There was also a loaf of bread. A small bowl, half-filled with sugar was on the kitchen table. There was of course a jar of instant coffee and a few sundry items. However, the fridge was not full for a man living high off the black market. Unless of course he was a supplier. But the way the items had been haphazardly placed didn’t leave Pearce with the impression that Dowd had recently had it packed full of butter and bacon for sale.

  “Maybe it was a lover’s quarrel,” suggested DS Lavatish.

  “What?” asked Pearce, coming out of his reverie.

  “I said, maybe this was a lover’s quarrel,” said Lavatish again.

  Pearce nodded and thought for a moment, twirling his perfectly groomed mustache.

  “An interesting idea, Sergeant,” said Pearce. “And how would you explain the money left here.”

  “That’s easy, Inspector. Perhaps they’re not getting along anymore. The wife’s left him and has come back because she’s not happy living poorly someplace else. Maybe she comes to tell him she wants the flat. He offers her the money instead. That only infuriates her and she shoots him in a fit of rage.”

  DS Lavatish wasn’t sure he was buying what he himself was trying to sell, but he gave it his best shot. Pearce nodded thoughtfully at his young colleague.
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  “Let’s work through that argument,” said Pearce. “The man does not appear to be married for he is not wearing a wedding ring.”

  “Doesn’t mean he wasn’t married,” replied Lavatish.

  Pearce nodded.

  “Yes, of course not. But a married man in a small one-bedroom flat doesn’t seem quite right. Furthermore, our laws are not kind to women seeking divorce…”

  “I protest, Inspector,” argued Lavatish, good-naturedly. “The Matrimonial Causes Act of ’37…”

  “My dear Sergeant, that was a scant five years ago, do you really think that because a piece of paper has royal assent that the local courts have caught up with the fact. No. I still maintain that divorce is difficult for a woman, and for a man for that matter, not to mention expensive. Group Captain Dowd, if he was indeed married, which, according to my first point I doubt, he should have no need to pay his wife any money whatsoever.”

  “Clearly he didn’t, for she refused his offer, for the money was still there.”

  “And what about the witness testimony about the man dressed in black?”

  “Well, she didn’t see this chap actually leave the flat, did she?”

  “Alright then, where are these photographs that show this blushing bride. The only photograph I’ve seen in this room is that one on his bedside table. And that, as I’m certain you’re aware, is of a younger, I believe in that picture he is a Lieutenant, Dowd. He is standing next to what I believe is the Sopwith Dolphin.”

  The black and white photograph showed a handsome, smiling young man with his hand on the propellor of a biplane.

  “How do you know that?” asked Lavatish, genuinely interested.

  “I was with the RFC in 1918, briefly, until the end of the War. I was hoping to fly one of those, but I was only a young man of eighteen. In any event, the War ended, as you know, in November of that year. Those Dolphins had a short service record, but boy, were they fun in the air despite the problems. So the pilots told me.”