A Case of Conspiracy in Clerkenwell

by Clara Benson

  ‘But—’ said Freddy.

  ‘You’d better do as I say if you don’t want to get us both into trouble,’ she said.

  ‘But—’ said Freddy again. He did not like this at all.

  Just then a taxi arrived. Mildred was still leaning heavily against him, and he shovelled her into the cab with more efficiency than good manners. She immediately fell asleep.

  ‘Where to?’ said the driver.

  Freddy looked at Mildred and tried to picture Mrs. Starkweather’s face if he arrived at Upper Montagu Street with her unconscious daughter slung over his shoulder.

  ‘Fleet Street,’ he said.

  The driver smirked.

  ‘Right you are, sir,’ he said, and they set off. In a very few minutes they arrived at Freddy’s place, and Freddy, with some difficulty and a little assistance from the taxi-driver, at last managed to get Mildred out of the car and up the stairs. He then put her into his bed and went into the sitting-room, there to spend an uncomfortable night curled up on the sofa.

  He was awoken at just after eight by someone shaking him by the shoulder. It was Mildred.

  ‘Mph? What’s that?’ he said groggily, and tried to sit up.

  ‘You do sleep late,’ she said. ‘I’ve been awake for hours. Listen, I’ve been thinking: we’ll have to tell Mummy I stayed at Iris’s last night.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I told her I was going out with Iris anyway, so it’ll be easy enough to convince her. I’ll just say Iris was taken ill, or something, so I didn’t want to leave her.’

  ‘Taken—ill?’ said Freddy. He was not at his best first thing in the morning, and it took a little while for new ideas to register in his brain.

  ‘I’m going to telephone her now,’ said Mildred.

  ‘Who, your mother?’

  ‘Well, Iris first. I’d better make sure she’ll back me up. Then I’ll call Mummy and explain.’

  Freddy had now woken up properly and was regarding Mildred in something like wonder.

  ‘Mildred, aren’t you feeling awfully sick?’ he said.

  ‘No,’ said Mildred in surprise.

  ‘No headache, or anything like that?’

  ‘Well, perhaps a slight one,’ she said, as though she had only just noticed it. ‘But I always wake up with a bit of a headache when I go to bed late. Why?’

  Freddy stared.

  ‘No reason,’ he said at last.

  ‘I am rather hungry, though. I don’t suppose you have anything for breakfast?’

  ‘Breakfast?’ said Freddy, as though this were an alien concept. It was rare that he rose early enough to indulge in breakfast.

  ‘Oh, never mind,’ said Mildred. ‘We can go out somewhere once I’ve telephoned Iris and Mummy.’

  Two long telephone-calls later, they went out to a little eating-place near Charlotte Street. Mildred ate with a hearty relish, and Freddy could do nothing but watch in amazement as she polished off a large plate of kippers, then followed it up with two boiled eggs and finally several crumpets with butter and honey. At last she pushed her plate away and gave a sigh of satisfaction.

  ‘I don’t think I’ve enjoyed a meal so much in ages,’ she said. A worried look flitted across her face. ‘I drank rather a lot last night, didn’t I?’

  ‘I think you did, yes,’ said Freddy.

  ‘I know I must have, because I don’t remember much about it. I didn’t make a fool of myself, did I? I mean to say, I didn’t do anything too dreadful? I remember losing my watch playing cards, but there wasn’t anything worse than that, was there?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Freddy, who was feeling slightly guilty at having abandoned her for almost the entire evening.

  ‘I didn’t find out anything about Miss Stapleton,’ she said sadly. ‘Or if I did, I don’t remember it. Perhaps I’m not cut out to be a detective.’

  ‘Never mind,’ said Freddy. ‘You had fun, at any rate. That’s what you wanted, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, I did,’ she said, brightening up. ‘It was fun. I can say I’ve tried all that sort of thing now, although once was enough, I think. I shan’t do it again.’ She looked up as a smartly-dressed young woman with a head of golden-brown curls came in and joined them. ‘Oh, hallo, Iris. There was no need to come out, you know. I’m quite all right.’

  ‘What on earth have you been doing, Mildred?’ said Iris Bagshawe, sitting down at their table and removing her gloves in a business-like fashion. ‘I didn’t understand half of what you said just now on the telephone. Of course I’ll say whatever you like, but tell me what you meant. Have you really been drinking?’ She glared at Freddy. ‘What have you been doing now?’ she said accusingly. ‘You know Mildred doesn’t drink.’

  ‘I haven’t done anything,’ said Freddy. ‘We went to a party last night and Mildred found out, just as thousands have done before her, that gin cocktails are best taken in moderation. It was nothing to do with me.’

  ‘I don’t believe that for a second,’ said Iris. She had a very pretty nose of which she was rather proud, but she was now wrinkling it up as she looked at Freddy, as though he were something distasteful. ‘I know exactly what you’re like. I’ll bet you told her it was soda water or something, just for a joke.’

  ‘Oh, no he didn’t,’ said Mildred. ‘I did drink too much, but it wasn’t really his fault.’

  ‘It wasn’t my fault at all,’ said Freddy, stung by the ‘really.’ ‘It’s not as though I forced the stuff down your throat, is it? As a matter of fact, I seem to recall warning you off it several times.’

  ‘Hmm,’ said Iris sceptically. ‘Where exactly did you take her?’

  ‘To a party at the house of some friends of your brother’s,’ said Freddy. ‘It was meant to be a sort of salon of Communist intellectuals, but it turns out that Communist intellectuals like to drink just as much as the rest of us, and they wanted Mildred to join in.’

  ‘Oh, they’re the worst for that sort of thing,’ said Iris. ‘We had to have words with St. John when he brought a couple of them home to Tewkesbury at Christmas. They drank the house dry and were quite ill-mannered. I mean to say, one can ignore an uneducated accent, but they were rude to the servants—which one doesn’t exactly expect from people who are supposed to be trying to improve the lot of the working man—and they took liberties with the supplies. And on top of all that, one of them got rather over-familiar with me.’

  ‘Did he, indeed?’ said Freddy, more indignantly than he had intended.

  ‘Yes. Ralph had to speak to him about it. He soon stopped after that.’

  ‘I should think so. How is old Ralph, by the way?’

  ‘Oh, all right, I expect,’ said Iris, dismissing her intended with magnificent indifference. ‘Did you see St. John last night, then? I haven’t seen him for weeks. Is he still chasing after that horrid girl who always looks as though she’s chewing a lemon?’

  ‘Ah, yes,’ said Freddy. ‘He is, but I don’t think you need worry about ending up with her for a sister-in-law. When I saw her last night she was—er—demonstrating an enthusiastic admiration for another man’s political convictions.’

  ‘What? Who?’ said Mildred, open-mouthed.

  ‘Ivor Trevett.’

  ‘Goodness!’ said Mildred. ‘Poor St. John. He’ll be awfully upset.’

  ‘I dare say he will, but I’m glad of it,’ said Iris. ‘He’s an ass, but the Chudderley would have made him miserable. And the rest of us, too,’ she added. ‘Imagine having to make polite conversation with someone who can’t understand a joke.’

  As it happened, this was exactly Freddy’s opinion of Iris’s fiancé, but he said nothing.

  ‘Oh, that man at the next table’s forgotten his umbrella,’ said Mildred suddenly. She picked up the article in question and went after him, and Iris Bagshawe immediately turned to Freddy, eyes
narrowed.

  ‘What are you up to?’ she hissed. ‘Why did you take Mildred out? She’s far too innocent for you—not your type at all.’

  ‘She talked me into it,’ he replied. ‘If you must know, I was there looking for a story, and she insisted on coming.’

  ‘You didn’t—you didn’t—do anything awful, did you?’ she said, with a note of fear in her voice.

  ‘Of course I didn’t do anything awful,’ he said stiffly. ‘I took her to the party, then I took her home and tucked her up in bed as though she were a new-born babe, while I spent the night freezing on the sofa.’

  ‘Hmm. Well, if you say so, I suppose I ought to believe it,’ she said. ‘But you’d better be telling the truth.’

  ‘I am, I swear it,’ said Freddy.

  She regarded him with something akin to sorrow.

  ‘It really is time you grew up, you know,’ she said.

  Freddy was nettled at this, for he felt he had been behaving well lately, and that he was being unfairly attacked. He had no opportunity to say this, however, before Mildred came back in. Iris rose and put on her gloves.

  ‘Come on, Mildred,’ she said. ‘We’ll go home together and concoct something for your mother on the way. I’m sure we can think of something convincing.’

  ‘All right,’ agreed Mildred. They prepared to depart. ‘Thank you, Freddy,’ she said. ‘I had a splendid evening. Let me know if you find anything out,’ she added in a whisper as Iris straightened her hat.

  Freddy nodded, and the two girls left, Iris casting a doubtful glance back at him as she did so, and leaving him in no very cheerful frame of mind. There was nothing to do now but settle the bill and head back home, where he fell into bed and slept until the early afternoon.

  Freddy’s next concern was to tell Henry Jameson all he had learnt at the Schusters’ party, but he quickly found that even Intelligence men take Sundays off, for nobody answered when he called. It would have to wait until Monday, he decided, but in the meantime there was no harm in trying to track down a copy of The Secret of the Black Veil, the book he had found in the second box-room at the Schusters’ house. He eventually found a slightly dog-eared copy tucked behind all the other books on a shelf outside a dingy bookseller’s shop at Waterloo, and bore his prize triumphantly back home, where he brought out all the coded advertisements Henry had given him and set to work with the most recent message, hoping against hope that he was on the right path. After a few minutes he pulled at his ear in disappointment and looked at the string of gibberish in front of him. Unless he had been reading the code incorrectly, this was the wrong book. He tried again, just to be sure that he was doing it properly, but no—the message which came out made no sense at all. The advertisement from the previous week produced equally unsatisfactory results, as did the one from the week before that. This was a blow, and Freddy was ready to give up, annoyed that he had seemingly been so close to solving the coded messages only to be disappointed. He decided to have one last attempt, this time taking the oldest of the advertisements and trying with that, and immediately sat up in excitement as a message began to form before his eyes.

  ‘Ah!’ he said, and regarded his handiwork. Now this was certainly a communication of sorts, although Freddy had little idea what it meant. As far as he could tell, the purpose of the message was to call a meeting of a particular group of people, but he was unable to understand anything beyond that, for the people and places referred to had been given code-names. From what he could see, however, it did not refer directly to any of the members of the East London Communist Alliance. He took another advertisement, and for the next two or three hours absorbed himself in the task of deciphering the coded announcements. When he had finished he gazed at the results thoughtfully. He had managed to decipher twenty-four messages, all of which were much the same as the first one and made little sense to him, although Henry Jameson might understand them better. There was nothing to be done until he could speak to Henry, so Freddy put the papers away and spent the rest of Sunday in idle pursuits.

  The next day he took the book and the advertisements to the Clarion’s offices with him when he went in to work. His colleague Jolliffe saw him poring over the three messages he had been unable to decipher, and looked on with interest as Freddy scratched his head.

  ‘Is it a new game?’ he said.

  ‘You might say that,’ said Freddy. ‘It’s one of those codes that you crack by referring to pages in a book. Just a silly thing, you know. Mungo bet me I couldn’t decipher it. I’ve got all except three of them, but I can’t understand these ones at all.’

  ‘Are you sure you’re using the right book?’ said Jolliffe, coming to look.

  ‘I think so,’ said Freddy. ‘It worked for the other messages.’

  ‘Perhaps they’ve tried to make these ones more difficult,’ said Jolliffe. ‘Have you tried counting the pages backwards?’

  ‘I didn’t think of that,’ said Freddy, and tried it. ‘No go,’ he said at length.

  ‘Let me try,’ said Jolliffe. He pored over the book for some minutes with a pencil, then frowned. ‘I think it must be a different book,’ he said. ‘I mean to say, look here: page twenty-one has nothing but an illustration on it. And this one, too: it says page thirteen, but the word that comes out is ‘inflatable.’ That doesn’t make sense. And page four is the copyright page and doesn’t have enough lines. This can’t be the right book.’

  ‘Yes, I think you must be right,’ said Freddy.

  ‘It looks as though the book you want is a short one, too,’ observed Jolliffe. ‘All the pages given are low numbers. Isn’t there a clue in one of the other messages as to what it is?’

  ‘No, and it’s a damned nuisance,’ said Freddy. He was disappointed, for he had hoped to turn up triumphantly at Henry’s office with the codes all deciphered. Still, he had made a start, and he was anxious to report what he had found so far.

  Henry was looking distracted and worried when they met, but cheered up a little when Freddy placed the book and the messages on his desk.

  ‘Oh, well done!’ he said. ‘How did you find it?’

  ‘It was at the Schusters’ house,’ replied Freddy.

  ‘You didn’t take it from there?’ said Henry, in some alarm.

  ‘No, I left it and bought my own copy.’

  ‘I’m glad to see you have some sense,’ said Henry, relieved. ‘Best not to draw attention to ourselves if possible. What else did you find?’

  ‘Well, it appears that Anton Schuster is the one who is writing and posting the advertisements,’ said Freddy. He felt in his pocket and brought out the envelope he had taken from St. John’s waste-paper basket. ‘This is how they arrive,’ he said. ‘The typewriter which was used to type that address was at the Schusters’ house.’

  ‘Is that so?’ said Henry. He read carefully through the messages Freddy had written down from the codes. ‘Hmm,’ he said at last. ‘Code-names within a code, I see, and it’s a pity you couldn’t crack the last few, but look at these seven messages here. I don’t suppose you remember what happened on the dates mentioned?’

  ‘Not offhand,’ said Freddy politely.

  ‘No, you wouldn’t,’ said Henry. ‘Last year we had a certain amount of trouble with unofficial strikes in several places at once by some of the more excitable members of the Labourers’ Union. Rowbotham hadn’t approved them, and there wasn’t a vote, but somehow several small groups managed to organize themselves efficiently enough to walk out all at the same time. Each of the strikes was preceded—and supposedly caused—by the sacking of a shop steward, and we strongly suspect the dismissals were deliberately orchestrated in order to foment unrest. We believed John Pettit and his group of agitators were behind it, but he denied it absolutely—condemned the strikers, in fact—and we couldn’t find any evidence that he was lying. But now it looks as though Schuster had a hand in it, too. He mu
st have been communicating with the activists in the North by means of these advertisements. I dare say if we search Pettit’s house we’ll find he, too, owns a copy of The Secret of the Black Veil.’

  ‘I doubt it,’ said Freddy. ‘I understand his house burned down a few weeks ago—oh!’

  He stopped and laughed suddenly.

  ‘What?’ said Henry.

  ‘Of course! That’s why the last three messages make no sense,’ said Freddy. ‘Pettit lost his copy of the book in the fire and they had to change to a new one quickly.’

  ‘Ah, yes,’ said Henry. ‘I wonder why he didn’t just buy a new copy, though.’

  ‘They don’t print many copies of these penny-dreadfuls,’ said Freddy. ‘I expect once they’ve all sold out they don’t bother printing any more. I had trouble finding it myself.’

  ‘Yes, that makes sense,’ said Henry. He looked at the papers before him. ‘So, then, thanks to you, we now have a firm connection between the East London Communist Alliance and what is going on elsewhere. I knew there was something. It’s just a pity we don’t have the messages for the last three weeks. I’d like very much to know what they say, as I have the feeling they are planning something very soon, and I suspect it has something to do with this march and rally on the fifteenth.’

  ‘Yes, they’re all getting very excited about that,’ said Freddy. ‘What do you think it is, then? Do you expect all the workers to descend on London for a day’s fun, and then refuse to go back to work afterwards, spurred on by their leaders? Surely you’d have heard something to that effect if that were the case.’

  ‘No, I don’t think it’s anything as obvious as that,’ said Henry. ‘I know I said it might be possible to organize a general strike in secret, but I do rather think we’d have got wind of it somehow—and in any case, the majority of workers like to have a say in these matters. I can’t imagine their being at all keen to walk out without being asked to vote on it first. No, whatever it is, it must be known only to a small number of people. But who is behind it, in your opinion? Are they all in on it, do you think?’