by Mark Ellis
He rose, walked over to the basin, straightened the Van Gogh, and bent to drink copiously from the tap. He had sold that house as quickly as he could after Alice’s death. The agent had told him he could have got a much better price if he’d just been a little more patient. But Merlin hadn’t wanted to be patient. He’d also sold most of the household effects at knockdown prices, needing desperately to get shot of everything as quickly as he could. Alice’s death had been so sudden. The house was full of her – the ornaments, the furniture, the pictures, the china, the air – everything vibrated with her personality, her beauty, her spirit. He couldn’t bear it. Jack Stewart had been a brick. He’d found the agent. He’d found the people to dispose of the household effects. After the funeral, he’d put his friend up for a while at his little flat in Pimlico. And when Merlin had insisted on not being a burden any longer, Stewart had found the bed-sitting room off the King’s Road in which Merlin now shivered.
He had wanted something simple and central. He had the money now, after Alice’s death, to afford something better. He could have bought another house in Fulham or a nice flat in Chelsea. But these lodgings were fine for the moment. He was, in many ways, a solitary man, but he liked the sound of human activity in the house. His landlords were good people. Dr Hewlett was a retired GP, a genial, white-haired man, seldom seen without his pipe and with a penchant for malt whisky and lengthy discussions about the merits or failings of the Surrey cricket team. Mrs Hewlett was a bubbly little Northerner, who chided her husband over the polluting impact of his pipe-smoking but shared his drinking and sporting tastes. In many ways they had the same sort of down-to-earth teasing relationship that he’d had in his marriage.
He splashed the freezing water over his face. It had been a mistake to meet up with Jack Stewart. He’d never been much of a drinker before Alice died – an occasional pink gin perhaps or a glass of red wine. Stewart had encouraged him to drown his sorrow with beer and plenty of it. He had now acquired the taste and was, he knew, drinking too much. This was hard to avoid if your principal, indeed only, drinking companion was someone like Stewart who could, and often did, put six or seven pints away without batting an eyelid. This his friend had done last night at The Surprise. Apparently, he’d been on continuous AFS duty for seventy-two hours, during which time Merlin presumed he hadn’t drunk any alcohol. But then again, since the anticipated airborne arrival of the barbarian hordes had yet to materialise and the Auxiliary Fire Service had little to do but organise sandbagging and practice running up and down their fire towers, what was to stop the firemen dropping into the pub for a few drinks every once in a while? Stewart’s duties certainly didn’t inhibit his scope for pulling girls, as he had elaborated on at length last night after the apologia for Marshal Stalin had been duly delivered. In any event they had drunk a bucketful and Merlin couldn’t remember whether at any stage they’d taken any food to soak up at least some of the alcohol. He thought not.
There was nothing at the Yard to cheer him up and his hangover, if anything, seemed to be getting worse, despite the consumption of three head-clearing mints.
“I think you could do with a nice cup of tea, sir,” said Detective Sergeant Bridges, with what seemed an offensive level of cheerfulness. Merlin grunted and Bridges took this to be an affirmative response. The first thing that he saw on his desk was a memo from the A.C.
I would appreciate, at your earliest convenience, reports on progress on the following items:
The Barnes Incident
The Birdcage Walk hit and run of a week ago, and Johnson’s progress thereon.
Verey’s progress with the East India Dock investigation.
The forthcoming McGillvray IRA terrorist trial.
The review of our fingerprinting methodology requested several weeks ago.
There are a number of other outstanding items as you know but I regard an update on the above as the most pressing.
“Very kind of you to be so accommodating,” Merlin said to himself.
“Beg pardon, sir?” Bridges deposited a steaming cup of tea on Merlin’s desk.
“Nothing, nothing. Thanks, Sergeant. Let’s hope this does me some good.”
Merlin parked the memo under the paperweight on the right of his desk. The paperweight, a bronze replica of the Eiffel Tower, had been a souvenir from his last holiday with Alice before she died. Paris in June 1938 – what a time they had had. He pinched himself hard. At the beginning of the month he’d made a New Year’s resolution to avoid wallowing in the past. He was determined to keep it. There was no room for any more self-pity either. He pinched himself again.
“Any news on Barnes?” It had been forty-eight hours since the girl’s body had been discovered and they still hadn’t received Dr Sisson’s report, promised for the day before.
“I’ve put another call in this morning, sir, but Venables said the doctor had been called out to a road accident in Richmond and that his assistant had no news.”
Merlin slammed his right hand down on the desk a little harder than he’d intended and winced. “What the hell does he think he’s playing at? Idiota!”
Bridges, acknowledging one of the few Spanish pejoratives of his boss which he understood, shook his head sadly and sucked in his breath.
“Did you ask Venables whether he had anything to add to his own completely unenlightening report?”
“He doesn’t.”
“Huh! Any interesting missing person reports?”
“Nothing that really matches in yesterday’s batch but I’m expecting last night’s reports to be sent to me in the next hour.”
“And what about that boat?”
“I’m working on it.”
“Very well. Be sure to chase that police doctor during the morning, won’t you?” He closed his eyes briefly and sighed. “Now perhaps you can ask Peter Johnson and Verey to come up and update me on their cases. Oh, and Sergeant?”
“Sir?”
“Could you have a look in the medicine box and see if there’s anything in there for my headache?”
Arthur Norton straightened his bow tie and applied the last touches of oil to his hair. Wearing his new Savile Row evening wear, he preened in front of the full-length Venetian mirror in his entrance hall. To the casual observer, Norton’s features might appear acceptably regular, though a little spoiled by a weak chin and a puffiness which bore witness to the liveliness of his social life. To Arthur Norton, however, the face which stared back at him was one of which he was inordinately proud. His looks, he thought, especially with the recent addition of a little dignified salt and pepper in his hair, were even improving with age. He wondered briefly whether now was the time to remove the moustache which he had added to complement the portrait a year or so ago. “No,” he murmured, remembering the young debutante who had commented favourably on it the other night. His figure wasn’t so bad either, though his waistline had expanded a little since his arrival in England.
He stepped into the living room and poured himself a large Scotch. He still felt the need for a little Dutch courage before entering the social fray. So unlike his friend and patron, the Ambassador, who had for many years maintained a fantastically complicated private life against a background of expanding family obligations and buccaneering business dealings, yet had little need for alcoholic stimulation. Norton didn’t think he’d ever seen the Ambassador take more than one alcoholic drink in an evening of entertainment, and more often than not he’d seen him drinking only water or a soda. Women were Joe Kennedy’s alcohol, and he didn’t need the hard stuff to put lead in his pencil.
Norton stepped into the pitch-black Mayfair street below his flat and set out on the short walk to his evening’s destination. It was twenty-to-eight and he was due on the hour. As he walked around the corner into Hill Street, he heard steps. He had forgotten his torch and swore at himself. He hurried across the road. Street attacks had multiplied tenfold since the introduction of the blackout. The steps behind him picked up their pace and
he began to run.
“Mr Norton!”
Norton recognised the voice and stopped.
“It’s me, sir.”
Norton caught his breath and turned to face his pursuer.
“Goddam it, what do you want? I’m in danger of being late for a very important dinner.”
Not for the first time, Johnny Morgan sniggered to himself at Norton’s strange way of speaking. ‘New England Lockjaw’, he heard someone call it when discussing the Ambassador. For some reason the Ambassador’s version of the accent was much easier on the ear than Norton’s braying nasal twang.
“Come on Morgan, spit it out or get on your horse. I have no time to waste.”
“It’s about the arrangements, sir.”
“What arrangements?”
“You know. With the girls. Those arrangements. I need…”
A loud bang sounded from nearby and Norton jumped.
“Only a car exhaust, sir.”
“Look, I can’t talk now. Let’s have a word tomorrow.”
“When?”
“I’ll meet you in that pub just around the corner from the embassy – no, then again, let’s meet a little further afield. St. James’s Park, at the entrance nearest The Ritz. Say at about midday. You can get away then, can’t you? With the Ambassador away you can’t have much to do at the moment.”
“Yes, sir. I’ll get away somehow.”
“Very well. So, good night.”
“There’s one thing that can’t wait.”
“What, Goddamit?”
“The money, sir.”
“We can discuss that tomorrow.”
“No, sir. I need some now. I want what’s due. You know the amount.” Morgan’s voice now had a steely edge.
Norton paused for a second before reaching into his trouser pocket. “Lucky for you I’m carrying some cash.”
“I knew a fine gentleman like yourself would be carrying cash on a night out on the town, sir. Better watch out for ruffians, though. Plenty of them about in the blackout.”
Norton handed over some notes then hurried away towards Berkeley Square, while Morgan turned into The Running Footman to check that he hadn’t been short-changed.
Norton’s destination was an imposing house at the end of a side-street behind Claridges. It was a large Georgian property fronted by a fountain, in which various pop-eyed sea-creatures spouted water over a gang of winged cherubs. A uniformed flunkey let him in to a brightly-lit marbled hall, where a pretty woman with a coquettish smile broke off from her conversation with a very tall but stooped elderly man.
“Lady Pelham. A pleasure to see you again. Thank you for having me.”
“The pleasure is all ours, Mr Norton. Reginald, say hello to Mr Norton, you remember, from the American Embassy.”
“Welcome, welcome. Jolly nice to see you again.” Lord Pelham inclined his shining cranium, which was completely bald save for a fringe of white hairs that stuck out untidily over the back of his neck. Norton guessed that he had a good thirty years on his wife, a striking woman with film-star looks, whose clinging pale-blue evening dress stunningly highlighted the shapely contours which lay beneath. Norton eyed his hostess’ diamond-bedecked décolletage appreciatively and wondered whether his lordship was able to take full advantage of his luck in having such an engaging partner.
Reginald Pelham had been a Cabinet Minister long ago. One of his ancestors had been a side-kick of the warrior Duke of Marlborough and had secured rich pickings from this relationship. His lordship had a fabulous stately pile in Oxfordshire, where Norton had recently been a guest at a most enjoyable weekend party. Pelham had only recently married, after many years as a bachelor. An ambitious as well as an attractive woman, Diana Pelham, making good use of her husband’s wealth and position and her own not insignificant connections, had embarked on a campaign to establish herself as a leading society hostess.
“Come, Mr Norton. Won’t you join the rest of our party? We are a small gathering tonight but I believe you will find the company stimulating.” Lord Pelham nodded in the direction of a door just behind him. Norton followed his hosts into a large wood-panelled room, where he was immediately offered a champagne cocktail by a waiter. “Let me introduce you to our other guests.”
Glancing quickly around the room he recognised some faces from his Oxfordshire weekend. Lady Pelham guided him towards two men standing by the fireplace. “I believe you know Major St. John…”
“Norton, hello, hello. And how’s that fine Ambassador of yours keeping?” Major Edward St. John was a stocky, white-haired man, whose bright red nose bore testament to his close affinity with fine wines and spirits. He was a Tory member of Parliament whom Norton knew to be a prominent Chamberlain supporter.
“He’s in the pink, I believe, Major. Still in America but due back next month.”
“Mr Pemberton. Good to see you again.”
Vivian Pemberton, a slight, elegant man whose face appeared to portray a permanent look of mild amusement, was smoking a pungent cigarette through a long silver cigarette holder. He looked back through a haze of smoke. “Likewise, Norton.”
“I saw one of your plays last week. The one at the St. James’ Theatre. Knockout stuff. Are you working on another now?”
Pemberton took a long draw on his cigarette. “I’m afraid the Ministry of Information have me working on some more serious stuff at present. An awful bore, I’m afraid, but as everyone keeps saying, there is a war on.”
The three ladies who had been chatting over their drinks at the other end of the room joined them.
“My wife Madeleine, Mr Norton.”
Norton shook the hand of Mrs St. John, a small mousy creature who smiled weakly at him. The elder of the other two ladies raised her eyebrows at him and held out her hand.
“And this is Lady Celia Dorchester, and her niece, Nancy Swinton.”
Norton kissed Lady Dorchester’s raised hand. Her niece held her hand out at a lower level and he shook it. Supposedly Lady Dorchester had been a famous beauty in her day but it was difficult to discern the traces of her youthful charms through the layers of fat now enveloping her face. Miss Swinton was a tall, healthy, rather gangly-looking girl. Not really his type on first impression – too natural looking a beauty for his taste.
“Norton is a close associate of the American Ambassador, ladies.” St. John drained his cocktail and signalled for another.
“Yes, yes, we know that, don’t we, Nancy? I am a great admirer of Mr Kennedy. A man of such energy.”
Lady Dorchester nodded her head for emphasis and her jowls shuddered. Norton was considering whether Lady Dorchester had been numbered in her youth among the long list of Kennedy conquests, when a servant announced from the end of the room that dinner was to be served.
As the guests proceeded into the dining room, a loud rap was heard at the front door.
“I think that’s our late arrival.” Diana Pelham stepped back into the hall.
Norton had just found his name card between Nancy Swinton and his hostess, when she returned.
“I think you all know Freddie Douglas, don’t you? The fastest rising star in the Foreign Office, at least that’s what Edward Halifax told me the other day.”
Douglas, a slender, good-looking young man with oiled black hair and deep-set dark, wary eyes, smiled apologetically. “I don’t know about that, Diana.”
“False modesty, Freddie. Come on now. Sit down here by me.”
Douglas sat down on Lady Pelham’s other side. He was wearing an immaculate, dark pin-striped suit, unlike the rest of the men around the table.
“Sorry about the kit. Everything’s so busy at the office, I didn’t have time to get home to change. You’re such a sweetie, Diana, I thought you’d tolerate my failings in etiquette.” Lady Pelham gave him a dazzling smile as he paused to look around the table and exchange greetings.
“Arthur. How are you? Enjoyed the other night. I need to chat to you about a couple of things. We’ll speak lat
er.”
Douglas tapped his nose meaningfully and sat back in his chair. “Sorry, Diana. Very rude of me, conversing over your head. My profuse apologies.”
“Don’t worry, dear. Ah, here’s the wine. Now I’d like your opinion on this. Our new butler found it the other day in St. James’. Tell me what you think.”
Norton didn’t hear Douglas’ opinion on the wine but as far as he was concerned, it was as fine a Puligny Montrachet as he’d ever tasted, and that was saying something.
“And so, Mr Norton, do you like living in England?”
“Well, yes I do, Miss Swinton. Of course, I think I’d have to say I’d like it even more in different circumstances.”
“Indeed. Different circumstances. How I long for different circumstances. For the purposes of tonight, let us assume different circumstances and talk about pleasant things. I am tired of talking about the war. My aunt can talk about little else. Are you keen on country pursuits?”
Pretending to a far greater affinity with horses and guns than was strictly accurate, Norton enjoyed his chat with Nancy Swinton. She might be an ungainly sort of girl but on further acquaintance she had a sweet nature and a certain sort of charm. Perhaps his first impression was wrong?
Inevitably, to Miss Swinton’s disappointment and a little to his, the talk of the table at large soon turned to the war and they were not allowed to stay out of it.
“And what do you think, Norton?” The robust colour of St. John’s nose had now extended to the rest of his face.
“Sorry, I didn’t catch what you said.”
“I was saying that this war is a stupid mistake. It’s not Herr Hitler that we should be fighting. It’s the communists and socialists we need to worry about. We should be working with Hitler, not against him. What do you say?”
“I don’t think that would be the Roosevelt administration’s line at present.”
“Oh come on, Mr Norton. I’ve heard Mr Kennedy say much the same thing as I’ve just said.”