“No sense of humour,” Lindsey said. “Can’t take a joke. Easy way to spot ’em.”
“Germans?” Martha said.
“Nazis. Germans are fun. Nazis aren’t. Make a joke about their Führer, won’t crack a smile. Same with all zealots, what have you. Too important, see? Too serious to laugh at.”
“Who were those other two hooligans?” Martha said.
“One with the knife was Wilhelm Klopfer, Gestapo thug. Fat one was Arthur Boyd, nasty piece of work. From Newcastle, one of Mosley’s Blackshirts.”
Max, meanwhile, had thought of something. He said, “How did you happen to be here, Lindsey?”
“We’ve been watching you for a while, old thing. Unofficial, you understand. Not our bag, Blighty.”
“What on earth are you talking about, Tony?” Martha said.
“He means he’s MI6,” Max said. “Right?”
“Right.”
“I don’t understand,” Martha said. “Max?”
“MI5 are responsible for internal security. Tony here is with MI6, who aren’t allowed to operate in this country. They’re foreign intelligence.”
“Spies?”
“Officers, please,” Lindsey said.
“And Burton?” Max said. “Rice?”
“Nothing to do with us. Pity. Got themselves killed.”
“Wait a minute,” Martha said. “Tony, you knew? I mean, you knew Max was innocent and you still let that awful Inspector Longhorn arrest him?”
“Yes. Sorry. Had to, you see, otherwise we’d have tipped off Hart. And we needed to find out what he was up to. Blown that now, of course, but…”
“But the four of us are alive,” Martha said.
“Yes. Compensation, I suppose.”
“You suppose?”
“We wouldn’t have let anything happen to you, old girl. We’ve been watching you ever since old Burton got it. After that, one of our sources told us Hart had been talking to Frost at his club and managed to get an invite to your dinner party. Naturally, it was clear that we had to get someone there ourselves and, since you’re an old friend, it was decided it should be me, which is how I’m involved. It was a joint intelligence thing. So, you see, you weren’t in danger. Except for that stunt on the train when you escaped. That was quite a thing, by the way. I hear it was like The Thirty-Nine Steps or such.”
Martha said, “There was a man on the train. Old Mr Tomlinson. He has heart problems.”
“How in hell did you know that?”
“Is he okay?”
“Physically, yes. But mad as a hatter. Kept babbling about murder conspiracies and arms being chopped off.”
Something had occurred to Max regarding the dinner party. “And all our drink, Lindsey,” he said. “Was it part of your cover to consume two bottles of Sémillon and half a bottle of Médoc?”
“Sorry, old boy. Had to let everyone think I was a sop. Just an act.”
Here Lindsey turned to Flora and said, “Very much apologise for my behaviour towards you, Flora. All part of the act, you see?”
“Yes, sir,” Flora said, more concerned that Eric would question her about it than the incident itself. But Eric was dazed by information at this point and was trying to work out whether Max was in the Gestapo.
“So, maybe you can tell us, who the hell was Crawford?” Max said to Lindsey.
“Crawford was Branch.”
“A branch?” Martha said. “I do wish you two would speak in English.”
“Special Branch. They investigate agitators, political movements. That kind of thing.”
“If he was a policeman, why didn’t Inspector Longford know about him?”
“The Branch keep their business hush-hush, especially from the rest of the Met.”
“So what happened to Crawford?” Max said.
“We don’t know. He was supposed to meet your Major Rice and Sergeant Burton. He was going to interview them, at length, I understand.”
“You were right, Max,” Martha said. “That explains why Rice and Burton booked into the Peterborough hotel, and why they planned to stay a night.”
“Yes,” Max said. “And when Crawford didn’t show, Burton and Rice had to improvise.”
Flora and Eric were sitting listening to all this, trying to follow it. At one point, it occurred to Flora that Eric had possibly saved Max and Martha’s lives by going to Huntingdon and smuggling them back to London. She gave Eric’s hand a squeeze and said, “We should go to Southend one day.”
Eric’s face went the colour of a pig’s heart.
“But why would Crawford want to interview them?” Max asked Lindsey. “What for?”
“Well, that’s where things get tricky. We don’t know. According to his Chief Super, Crawford was investigating usual Branch stuff – Blackshirts, in this case. He ran a number of informants inside that lot, and had a call from one of them on Wednesday.”
“Do you know what the call was about?” Martha said.
“Only that it was about a job the fellow had done a month earlier. In Swindon, I believe.”
“Swindon?” Max said.
“You all right, old boy?”
“My God,” Martha said. “Swindon.”
Max explained to Lindsey that they’d asked Mr Bacon to find men from Max’s old company.
“What he found was that in the last two years, three of my platoon have died, and Burton made that four, and three of those deaths were in the last few months. One of those deaths was a man called William Halford, a private. He died of a supposed heart attack in Swindon last month. And Crawford was meeting a Blackshirt who wanted to talk about a job he did in Swindon, a month ago. That’s too much coincidence.”
Lindsey thought about that for a moment, then nodded and said, “I’ll put a call through to the locals, get the details of the death. I have to say, though, I think you might be right. It might’ve been murder; a heart attack is easy. Digitalis, for example. I’ll let Swindon police know.”
“But we still don’t know what happened to Crawford,” Max said.
“The Branch have been trying to locate his informant, but they can’t find him. Crawford telephoned his office after meeting him and told them that he had to follow it up.”
“When did Crawford call?”
“Some time Wednesday afternoon. Shortly after four o’clock.”
“He must’ve called Rice at the same time. Rice acted urgently, and was at Burton’s by Wednesday evening.”
“I’ll check with Lincolnshire police,” Lindsey said. “They interviewed Rice’s wife.”
“Do you know where he telephoned from?” Martha said.
“A phone box in Cheshunt.”
“That’s in Hertfordshire, isn’t it?”
“Yes. Just north of London. His phone call came from a box outside the railway station. The police are checking the coins for fingerprints.”
“I know where Crawford is,” Max said suddenly.
“Impossible,” Lindsey said. “Even his own office don’t know where he is.”
But Martha was looking at the expression on Max’s face. His eyes darted here and there across the floor, reflecting the firing of thoughts and ideas. “Max?” she said.
He looked up at Martha, and said, “It was your circle.”
“Circle?” Lindsey said.
“What about it?”
“What on earth are you two on about?” Lindsey said.
“Martha had a brilliant theory. She reasoned that if Rice and Burton had both travelled to Peterborough, then there must’ve been a reason. And if Crawford was booked into the hotel at the same time, they must’ve chosen Peterborough because it was a central location for them all, thus most convenient. So, she drew a circle with the centre in Peterborough and the radius reaching Lincoln, which is where Rice l
ived.”
Lindsey thought about this for a moment. He said, “Maybe Crawford lived in Peterborough.”
“Oh,” Martha said. “I hadn’t thought of that. Did he live in Peterborough?”
“No,” Lindsey admitted.
“So the theory is still valid,” Max said.
“Well, I suppose so,” Lindsey said. “Tell me, then. Where did this circle of yours get you?”
“It skirted Nottingham, Leicester, Coventry, a lot of empty space in East Anglia, and just north of London.”
“Still doesn’t help us.”
“Not by itself. But when Burton met me he had the late edition of the Evening Standard. I knew there had to be a reason for that, so I got hold of a copy. There was a short piece about an unidentified body found in Enfield Lock on Friday. A body will bloat with gas after death. Now, a man killed on Wednesday and weighted down in the water might float to the surface two days later. I think Detective Crawford is currently in a mortuary near Enfield.”
“So that’s why he didn’t show up,” Martha was saying excitedly to Lindsey. “Crawford, you see? So then things really got interesting.”
“We think,” Max said, “that Rice and Burton must’ve assumed something bad had happened to Crawford, and they came to London.”
“To see Max.”
“They arrived at King’s Cross, bought the paper and read of the death in Enfield. They must’ve realised it was Crawford, which is why Burton brought the paper along when he met me at the pub.”
Then it was Martha’s turn to have an epiphany. She said, “And I know why Burton had Crawford’s driving licence.”
Lindsey shook his head. “You’ve both been watching too many films.”
Even Max was surprised by Martha’s declaration. “You do?” he said, a little too doubtfully.
“You’re not the only logical genius here,” Martha said. “Actually, it’s rather obvious. Look, what did Rice have on him?”
“Nothing,” Max said. “So?”
“So, they killed him and took all his papers. Tony, why would a killer take all the documents from a dead body?”
“To confuse the authorities. Give one more time to do what one has to do.”
“Exactly. Now, if we assume the same people who killed Rice also killed Burton, they would’ve searched him too. In which case, why would they leave a driving licence?”
“They wouldn’t.”
“You see? They didn’t fail to take the driving licence, they left it themselves. And that’s why his face was beaten badly – to make identification difficult, which is what happened.”
“But Burton had a train ticket too,” Max said, “and they didn’t take that.”
“Because it was in his hatband, which was lying a few feet away in a gutter. They killed him and took all documents except the ticket – which they’d missed.”
“I think the old girl’s got something,” Lindsey said.
Martha smiled brightly and poked Max. “So, what does that tell us about the fact that Crawford’s driving licence was found on Burton?”
“Um…”
“Lindsey?”
“Uh…”
Martha sighed elaborately and said, “It tells us two things: first, the people who killed Burton likely killed Crawford, and took from him his identity papers. And it also tells us that they probably panicked with regards to Burton. They must’ve seen him talking to Max in The Lion and they got worried, so they killed Burton and then planted Crawford’s driving licence on him…”
“To confuse the police. I understand. Yes, I think you’re right.”
Lindsey whistled and said, “Think you’d both better come with me. Right now. We’ll talk in the car.”
“Where are you taking us?” Max said.
“To see the German Ambassador.”
“You can’t,” Martha said sharply.
“Why not?”
“Look at my hair, and my dress. I’d need an hour, at least.”
Chapter Forty-Three
About five minutes later, Max and Martha were holding on for dear life as they raced down the Bayswater Road in Lindsey’s Alvis Speed 20, slaloming between cabs, trucks, carts, cyclists, motorbikes, buses, cars and the odd pedestrian, and all while Lindsey was speaking with a cigarette in the corner of his mouth.
“Hart was born in England, certainly,” he was saying. “In 1886. His father was a doctor. Very respectable. When old Dr Hart joined the choir, Edward was seven and his mother took him back to live with her family in Munich. He has just enough Britishness in him to speak without an accent, but not enough to conceal his difference. Not one of us, see?”
Lindsey slammed on the brakes as a cyclist cut across the road. He punched down a gear and roared off, the engine buzzing with power. “At the start of the war, he was studying for a doctorate at Cambridge. Philosophy. Or History. Something like that. Anyway, he volunteered for the army in ’14. Because of his background, the army put him in Intelligence, which was bloody stupid of them. We think he was a double, you see? He was supposedly working for British Intelligence, trying to recruit German agents. In fact, we believe he was passing information to the Germans that he was pretending to recruit.”
“Why is he still around, then?” Martha called from the back seat.
“Two reasons. First, we can’t prove anything. In fact, nobody even suspected him until after the war, when some eager bod in the Corps decided to review and file all the wartime intelligence reports. All the received intelligence was graded, according to its importance, and this chap noticed a pattern with the information Hart had come up with: it was good to begin with, and then became useless very quickly.”
“In other words, he baited the line and we kept biting,” Max said.
“Exactly. In fact, most of it was likely false information. Who knows what damage he did.”
“But even if you can’t convict him,” Martha said, “surely you can throw him out of the country?”
“Ah, well, old thing, that’s the second reason he’s free – we wanted him in place. We knew what he was, you see? But he didn’t know that we knew. So, we could watch him, find out what he was up to. Meanwhile, we could allow him to see whatever we wanted, so we could get the Germans to think what we wanted them to think. That’s blown now, of course.”
Martha, who’d known Lindsey for fifteen-odd years, was stunned into silence by these cumulative revelations. The fact that Lindsey was a spy or secret agent or officer, or whatever, was incredible enough. The fact that he had, indeed, had a job for years was even more amazing. The thing that flabbergasted her most, however, was simply that he had never spoken as many words in her presence as he was now speaking. It was as if someone had put a penny in him and off he went.
“We think he met Hitler sometime in the early thirties,” Lindsey was saying, “and became a member of the National Socialists. He’s quite senior, an Obersturmbannführer in the Schutzstaffel.”
Lindsey braked sharply and rolled the car to a stop outside a rather dull newly built semi-detached house in Shepherd’s Bush.
A man in a dark grey suit opened the door. He was about six and a half feet tall and almost as wide. He nodded to Lindsey, who brushed past him and led Max and Martha into a drawing room at the back of the property where a slim, elegant man in his mid-fifties sat in a large Victorian chair, reading a red-bound book.
“Max, Martha, may I present His Excellency Leopold von Hoesch, German Ambassador to the Court of St James,” Lindsey said.
Von Hoesch stood sharply and, very erect, bowed slightly. Max thought he was going to click his heels. Instead, he took Martha’s hand and touched it to his lips, then straightened up and shook Max firmly by the hand, smiling warmly. “It’s a great pleasure,” he said. “My friend Lindsey has been telling me about your, uh, adventures. He telephoned me earlier t
oday, in fact, and told me that he thought you might be in some trouble. I’m sorry we could not be of help.”
“Yes,” Lindsey said, answering Max and Martha’s glances. “Would’ve blown things.”
“And I am truly sorry you have suffered at the hands of my fellow countrymen,” Von Hoesch continued.
“It’s not your fault,” Martha said.
“Perhaps so, but… I feel… uh… responsible. I am the German Ambassador, after all, and they are German subjects. Unfortunately, they answer to a different authority.”
“The Nazis,” Max said.
“Yes,” Von Hoesch said, “the Nazis.”
He paused for a moment. “Shall we sit?” he said.
Everyone having made themselves comfortable, Von Hoesch continued. “I felt, and Mr Lindsey agreed, that you should know something of the truth of the matter. It might be of help.”
The ambassador here glanced at Lindsey, who gave a small nod. “For some time now,” Von Hoesch said, “the policies of my government have led me to question my role, and, indeed, my loyalty.”
He let that sentence go into the air, then he sighed deeply and said, “They don’t like me. And I confess that I don’t like them, and they know it. I was appointed to the position of Ambassador a year before Hitler came to power, and I’ve raised objections over some of the German foreign policy. I particularly opposed the recent remilitarisation of the Rhineland, for instance. Hitler is one who doesn’t abide opposition. So, I feel I don’t have much time. I’ve known this for a few years, of course.”
“What do you mean, sir?” Max said. “That you don’t have much time?”
“I expect to be recalled shortly, and I would expect Von Ribbentrop to take my place. Hitler is worried about Britain. He knows that he isn’t in a strong enough position – presently, at least – to do what he wants if he antagonises the British. France, he doesn’t care about. It’s the Royal Navy he fears. We saw the effects of a blockade during the war. That’s why the naval agreement was of such importance. Your government failed to see the consequences of that agreement. I was sidelined, so I wasn’t able to warn your government. You see, Hitler doesn’t care about agreements, unless they’re in his favour. He sees this as the start of a naval programme.”
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