Murder Under A Green Sea

by Phillip Hunter

  He looked at Wigram, the glass of brandy cradled in his hand and his eyes delicate and intense. “The fact is,” Max said, “I don’t belong in a good club and I never went to a good school.”

  “But you understand,” Wigram said. “All that other stuff is baubles – your family, your school, your college tie. It’s just the silk lining. It’s the body beneath that counts. It’s this country, this impossible belief.”

  Max found himself nodding, not really knowing why. And then, barely aware of his own words, he said, “I understand. It was the war. History records that empires crumbled and monarchs fell, but Britain survived. Well, we didn’t. We just pretended we did. The system pretended we did. And that’s the great lie. That’s what we know.”

  “Yes,” Wigram said. “Yes.”

  “And that’s what’s wrong; because we know it’s a lie, and we believe in it anyway.”

  “Yes,” Wigram said, but this time quietly, with a finality. “It’s funny, everything we’re told to believe in, all the honour and truth, the safeguarding of weaker peoples – you act in that belief and they condemn you for it.”

  Both men were quiet for a long time. Max felt that he’d discovered a truth of great potency. It was a kind of epiphany, and one that would take a long time to comprehend.

  He blinked when he heard Wigram speak. “I’m afraid I can’t help,” Wigram said. “I don’t know who might be on the Germans’ assassination list. Frankly, they seem to be benefitting quite well with all our senior figures right where they are.”

  “Well, it was just an idea.”

  “You know, this is the sort of story that needs to be told. It needs to be in a newspaper.”

  “There’s a D-notice on it.”

  “Ah. Still, there are ways.”

  “Ways?”

  “Yes. As I said, I’m not able to help. But I know someone who might be.”

  *

  Once outside, Max said, “Since when are you interested in kitchens?”

  “I’m not. But I thought he might talk more openly without a woman present.”

  “Hmm. You were right.”

  “What now?”

  “Now,” Max said, “We’re going to meet Winston Churchill.”

  “Goodness. My parents will be livid.”

  Chapter Forty-Five

  The elderly and rigid Mr Willoughby pointed to a thick oak door across the wide lobby. Max thanked him and then he and Martha walked across the tiled floor, their feet clicking and echoing in the vast chamber, which was more like a church.

  “Only Mr Dalton, I’m afraid,” Mr Willoughby said.

  That brought Max and Martha to a sudden stop.

  “What?” Martha said, turning and giving Willoughby her fiercest glare.

  “No women,” he said.

  Martha appealed to Max, her eyebrows raised. But Max, knowing he would suffer for it later, could only shrug. “Don’t you dare,” Martha said to him. “I’ve done as much as anyone in this case.”

  “Martha, please,” Max said weakly.

  She turned back to the – now nervous – Willoughby and said, “This is an outrage. I demand to see Mr Churchill. Bring him outside if necessary.”

  Max, fearless on many occasions, decided to make a run for it, and slipped quickly through the door, pulling it closed behind him. He heard Martha call his name, and add an expletive.

  The room was large, with shelves made of dark oak along parts of the walls, oak panelling and large, foreboding oils of foreboding statesmen staring down in apparent disapproval and disdain.

  “MAX!” Martha screamed.

  There were a half a dozen men in the room, spread out, each alone and ensconced in deep chairs or studded leather club seats. Several of the men woke up and glared at the door, which, though very solid and firmly closed, wasn’t up to the job of preventing the commotion without from being heard.

  Max saw Churchill sitting at a small table in the corner of the room. Before him were documents, which, pen in hand, Churchill was appraising and amending.

  When Max introduced himself, Churchill, who remained bent over his work, looked up and appeared about ready to charge him. His mouth was tight in a frown, and his forehead creased in thought. His face was quite unlined, though, and his soft, puffy cheeks gave him a baby-like appearance.

  A considerably diluted glass of Scotch sat within reach of Churchill’s left hand, and to his right a half-burned cigar rested in a silver ashtray. The cigar was lit and the rich, heavy tobacco smell filled the air.

  Churchill reached over to the ashtray, lifted the burning cigar, and stuffed it into his mouth where it smouldered, along with his face and demeanour. He said, “Hmm.”

  After a moment, with Max waiting patiently, he removed the cigar, blew out a stream of blue smoke and signalled to the chair opposite, in which Max seated himself.

  “I received a curious telephone call recently,” Churchill said in a gruff, lispy voice, “from Ralph Wigram. He advised that you wished to speak with me, young man, and that I might be remiss if I didn’t allow an audience. So, do you wish to speak to me?”

  “Yes, sir,” Max said. “And so does my wife.”

  “Your, uh, your wife?”

  “Yes,” Max said, glancing towards the door, behind which could still be heard the stream of sharp words and Willoughby’s occasional plea for calm and reason. “She’s a woman of ability and opinion.”

  “And that noise would be she, would it?”

  “It would.”

  “She strikes me as a woman of great purpose,” Churchill said, laying down his pen. “I myself am such a person. I admire all those of great purpose, provided such purpose is not, uh, detrimental to the welfare of our kingdom. Do you think it would be wise for me to speak to her also?”

  “I’d say so.”

  Churchill nodded, as if Max had confirmed to him that the empire was in safe hands and had a good future. He stood and walked to the great door and opened it. Max followed nervously.

  Martha had the unfortunate Willoughby by the shirt and was explaining why she was more qualified than most men to enter the club, when Churchill’s portly figure presented itself.

  “Madam,” he said severely, “I hope by this action that you don’t mean to harm my friend. He is already accomplished in years and I fear, through your agency, might rapidly be shuffled off this mortal coil.”

  Martha let go of Mr Willoughby and, breathing hard, turned to Max and Churchill. She glared at them both, defying them to prohibit her from something, anything.

  “Now, it is a fine day,” Churchill said, “and I am in the habit of breathing fresh air and partaking in nature. Would you both accompany me to the park?”

  The park in question was Green Park, at which place they shortly arrived. The few people scattered around didn’t seem concerned by Churchill’s presence, although one man in a bowler hat, sitting on a park bench, glared at him.

  Max and Martha, now sufficiently calm, walked either side of Churchill who, for the most part, had strolled there with his hands behind his back and his head down, cigar clenched at the left side of his mouth. He listened to Max recount what had been happening recently. This took Max, with Martha’s occasional help, a long time to fully explain and they were, by now, well into the park.

  After Max had finished relating events, Churchill said, “Humph.”

  Then he was silent, his head bent, as if the solution to everything must be on the ground somewhere. He continued to puff on his cigar. Max and Martha waited and became more anxious the longer the silence continued.

  At that point, amid the limes and planes and poplars of Green Park, Churchill stopped and stood and thought. He looked around and, spying a bench, walked over to it and sat. Max and Martha followed suit. Instead of referencing the case in hand, Churchill glanced at Max and said, “H
ave you ever seen war, Mr Dalton?”

  “Yes, sir. I was on the Western Front.”

  “As was I. A terrible thing. You may not believe me when I say I do not like wars. I have seen my fair share of them, over, uh, many years and many continents. There are those who believe me to be a warmonger. On the contrary: Si vis pacem, para bellum. If you wish for peace, prepare for war. That is my belief, and the only way to deal with a man like Hitler.”

  “He’s a madman,” Martha said. “They all are.”

  “Hitler is most certainly mad, young lady, but he’s a madman with an army, and that makes him most certainly very dangerous. He believes in the Aryan race as an ideal. Soon millions of others will believe it. By then, Nazism will be a religion, and those in it will be worshipping an idealised race. It won’t take them long to decide that the other races are subordinate to them, and when that happens it’s a short distance to determining that they should and can control those other races. In their minds, we, here, in this land, are like them. Does that mean we should stand aside and watch as they destroy other lands, other peoples?

  “You see, that’s the thing with a fervent belief – with, if you’ll forgive the word, ‘faith’. Faith must, by definition, discard that which does not adhere, and the more strongly one has this faith, the more determined one is to expunge that which contradicts it. But therein lies the Nazis’ flaw, their Achilles heel – they believe themselves superior, as such they treat everyone else as inferior, and they underestimate us. We’ve already seen it in the way they treat their own citizens. And that’s how we’ll win. We British are not perfect creatures, to be sure, but we try to be and we keep on trying.”

  “You’re talking as if we’re already at war,” Martha said.

  “Oh, we are at war, certainly. Mark these words, young lady; the second Great War has already begun.”

  “Is there any way you can help us, sir?” Max said. “Ralph Wigram thought you might be able to.”

  “He might be correct, but until we know what the story truly is, I cannot help. You understand that I have very little power. I feel sometimes like a shepherd ignored by his sheep while a wolf lurks, hungry and slavering.”

  After these words, Churchill became pensive. His cigar was extinguished, but remained clenched in his mouth. Finally, he looked at Max and Martha. “You said that nothing was found on the body of your friend, Burton, and nothing was found in the room where he and Major Rice were booked?”

  “Yes,” Max said.

  “And two men attempted to, uh, infiltrate your home after these murders.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Humph. Young man, madam, I don’t believe I can do anything to help you, not without some form of evidence. However, these scoundrels who tried to gain entry to your flat must have been looking for something, and that thing must be of considerable importance, given that they were prepared to expose themselves to such a risk of discovery. I suggest you go home and look for whatever this thing is.”

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Back at the flat, Max and Martha were trying to work out what Klopfer and Boyd could’ve been looking for.

  “They must’ve thought Burton gave you something,” Martha was saying.

  “But he didn’t,” Max said.

  “If he’d slipped something to you, you wouldn’t have known.”

  “Yes, but whatever it was would have to be in the suit I wore.”

  “And you’ve checked that?”

  “And I’ve checked that. Lots of times.”

  Something else was bothering Max, however. It was that book in Rice’s house; the history of the Grenadier Guards in the Great War. But rather than the actual words in the book, it was the image of the dog-eared page, the notation – Lies – that kept coming back to Max. Rice was fastidious, and yet he’d scrawled, in ink, over his book and had turned back the corner of a page and cracked the spine, all so that something on that page would remain prominent. Max went into his study and grabbed the book and opened it to the same page. There, as in Rice’s volume, was an account of how Max had brought Palgrave back to the British lines.

  He took the book back into the sitting room and sat and started to read from the top of the page.

  Martha was watching him while he read the book. She often watched Max reading, often surreptitiously. She loved to watch the calmness and concentration on his face while he was absorbed in a book and unaware of being observed.

  In this instance, though, Martha didn’t see calmness in Max’s concentration. She saw distress, pain, confusion.

  Then a key turned in the front door and Flora entered with a basketful of shopping, followed by Eric, who seemed now determined to shadow her until all threats were smothered.

  “Flora,” Martha said.

  “Yes, ma’am?” Flora said, kicking the door closed behind her.

  “Have you seen anything new?”

  “Er…”

  “I mean, have you come across anything that doesn’t belong? Anything in the clothes Max was wearing on Friday?”

  “No, ma’am,” Flora said, putting the basket down by her feet. “Except that ticket, of course.”

  Max dropped the book. “Ticket?”

  “Yes, sir. The one that was in your jacket pocket.”

  “What are you talking about? What ticket? Which jacket?”

  “Your dark grey jacket, sir. You couldn’t find a suitable jacket for the dinner party on Saturday, sir, so Mrs Dalton told me to iron the one you’d worn on Friday night.”

  “My God,” Martha said. “That’s right. And you found a ticket?”

  “I had to take it out when I ironed the jacket. I put it on the window sill, in the kitchen.”

  Max dashed out of the room. Martha, Flora and Eric waited, listening to Max’s footsteps on the kitchen tiles, and then hearing him slamming a drawer closed. When he came back in, he was holding a ticket in one hand and a Webley service issue revolver in the other. “King’s Cross. Left luggage. Martha, stay here.”

  For once, Martha decided not to argue. There was a febrile intensity in Max, his eyes fierce and darting around, sweat on his forehead. And there was the pistol he held, which frightened her.

  Max pocketed the ticket and then broke the Webley open. From his pocket he took a handful of cartridges and loaded the gun, snapping it shut and handing it to Eric. “I need you to stay here with the ladies. Don’t let anyone take them.”

  “Count on me, sir.”

  Then Max was gone, with Martha’s faint words following him.

  “Be careful, Max. Please be careful.”

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Thirty minutes later, Max emerged into the crowd outside King’s Cross Station with a brown leather briefcase clutched under his arm. The case was of fine quality, with a sturdy brass lock. Above this were three gold embossed letters: FJR. Frederick James Rice.

  There was no key, so Max decided to find a butcher’s or fishmonger’s or similar, and ask them to cut the leather strap. He was too impatient to wait until he got back to the flat. Besides which, this was too important to delay. He had to know what the case contained, although he had an idea.

  He decided to head down the Gray’s Inn Road. There’d be someone down there with a knife or scissors. There were bookbinders, that sort of thing.

  He turned left towards Pentonville Road and stopped abruptly as a man walked up to him. Max was about to step aside and let the man pass when he was surprised to see the hatted head tilt up. He was even more surprised to see that the face belonged to Edward Hart.

  The gun in Hart’s hand, however, didn’t surprise him at all.

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  For some minutes after Max had left, Martha, Flora and Eric had remained in situ, all quietly considering what had happened. Despite the dangers they’d experienced, it was Max’s behaviour that most af
fected them. They could all see it, and they all felt frightened.

  Finally, Martha suggested that Flora put the shopping away and further suggested that Eric might help her, which he was pleased to do.

  In truth, Martha wanted some moments alone. She stood and went to where Max had been sitting. He’d left the book open, and Martha sat and started to read.

  ‘It was during this assault that a company from the 3rd Battalion were caught by artillery fire while several hundred yards from either the enemy or their own lines. One shell landed among the men, killing several instantly and fatally wounding their Commanding Officer, Captain Richard Palgrave, DSO. Despite himself having received a severe head injury and disregarding intense enemy fire, Lieutenant David Maxwell Dalton carried Captain Palgrave back to British lines. For this action, Lieutenant Dalton received the Military Cross.’

  Martha closed the book and tried very hard not to weep.

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Hart stood a foot from Max, a short Bayard .32 automatic pistol in his hand, pointed directly at Max’s stomach. Hart had guided Max to one side of the exit, but still in plain sight of dozens of people, all of whom passed by. “Hand me the case, Mr Dalton.”

  “I don’t believe I’ll do that.”

  “It was not a request.”

  “And supposing I don’t?”

  “I would shoot you. I don’t want to, but I shall. I would burn the contents of that case. Then I would simply hand myself in to the police. I have diplomatic immunity, you see.”

  “Ah,” Max said, not having considered that he might actually get shot.

  Hart smiled a nasty smile. He said, “That’s the problem with your country, Mr Dalton. There are those, like you, like your wife, who still believe in the fairy tale of honour among peoples, among the nations. How can you still fall for that idiocy, after all you’ve seen? After what you experienced on the Western Front? It’s a fool’s paradise, and you’re a fool to believe it.”