Blackest of Lies (17 page)

The room erupted in applause and cheers and although, for an hour or more yet, questions rang out like shots from all quarters of the audience, no one was fooled by their attacks.  All those who posed them were well-known to be in the pockets of either Northcliffe or the Welsh Wizard.  Farmer had been well-prepared and had delivered, as he would boast afterwards, a breezy, confident and well delivered performance.  His audience was entranced, thrown off-balance by this unexpected apparition of an up-beat Secretary of State for War revealing his thoughts and intentions concerning the prosecution of the conflict.  Farmer had all the facts and figures at his finger-ends: he
was
Kitchener.

Relaxing back into his chair, Asquith applauded with the majority of the audience.

And then, suddenly, it was over.  Farmer sighed to himself in grateful relief and left the room with an elastic step to his walk, glad that it was done.  The hardest aspect of it all, now, was to remain stern and unapproachable, instead of grinning from ear to ear like an idiot as he made his way back across to the War Office.

Hubert followed, three steps behind like a good ADC should, and smiled at the civil servant standing on the steps of the main entrance with another of those endless red dispatch boxes.  Farmer, however, was temporarily immune even to those and waved airily in Hubert’s direction who duly signed for it – noting that the signature chit declared the box’s contents to be ‘EYES ONLY’ briefings for the Secretary of State concerning the trip to Russia, to be opened only when the ship was under way – and followed the Minister of State for War up to his ‘borrowed’ office.

**********

On Saturday afternoon, Farmer, Hubert and Fitzgerald went back down to Broome for the last time before their departure for Russia. Farmer, accustomed now to wearing Kitchener’s style of country clothes, was standing in front of the fireplace as though he belonged there.

“What’re you up to, Henry?” asked Hubert, walking in after tea.

Farmer looked round and smiled, sheepishly.  “Hello, Chris.  It’s this thing here.  I thought I’d do a little bit more of it.”  He nodded at the chalk and charcoal drawing on the centrepiece of the heavy stone surround.  “I suppose I really should be working on my dispatches but I just can’t bear the thought of the bloody things.”  He jerked his chin in contempt at a red, ciphered box standing in one of the bay windows, forlorn and lonely.  “That’s the last one of this week’s set and I
still
have the Russian one to do.”

Hubert peered at it from across the room.  “Very dilatory of you, Minister,” he said, wagging a finger and turning to look back at the drawing.  “Oh, right.  I saw it the first day I came down – the day before I called on you at Farnham.”  He sipped the tea he had brought through with him and walked across to look more closely at the sketch.  “Are you going to finish it?”

“Not, really. I thought I’d just put in the motto.  I used to be pretty good at this sort of thing.  No time for it in the past couple of years, of course.”

“I know.  I saw some of the water colours you did during your Boer campaigns.”

“What? How?”

“The ever-flowering Shaw.”

“The impudence of the girl!”

Hubert laughed.  “They were very good, Henry.  I was impressed, I have to say.”  He put his cup and saucer down on a side-table.  “But enough of this, Your Lordship, spill the beans.  You’ve been as quiet as a mouse since we left London this morning.  I’ve given you, now, until – what is it – half past four and still you haven’t opened up.  So start talking – how did ‘lunch with the King’ go?”

“It went fine.”

Hubert waited and then said, “And that’s it?”

Farmer removed the gold pince-nez he sometimes used for close-up work and pulled out a handkerchief, spilling the contents of his pocket on to the hearth.  Hubert bent down and retrieved the coins and oddments, returning them to his companion.

“Thanks, old chap.”

Hubert looked at him closely.  “Come on Henry,” he said.  “Let’s have it.  What happened?”

Farmer laid his chalk down on the mantelpiece and brushed his fingers together to clean away the dust.  “Well, lunch went pretty well.  I managed to spill very little, so I thought things were going swimmingly.  We talked about a number of things – you know, the war, the visit and how I thought matters would turn out in Russia.”  He looked at Hubert.  “You were right, Chris – you and Fitzgerald.  No-one asks you for your family history.  It’s good to have a basic knowledge of his background, of course, but it’s the way you walk and talk that’s the important thing.  Anyway, I was on the point of leaving.  One of the servants had gone off to collect my cap and greatcoat, leaving the King and me alone for a moment or two.  And then, he did a strange thing …”

“What?”

“He shook my hand and said that I was doing a great thing for my country.  He was so sad, somehow.  Just as I was leaving he said ‘God go with you’.”

“What’s so strange about that?”

“That wasn’t it.  As I walked through the door, I heard it.  It was only a whisper but I heard him say ‘
whoever you are
’.”

“He rumbled you!”

“I believe he did.  I suppose it’d be too much to expect the King to be fooled.  I mean, we know he was fairly friendly with Kitchener.  He must have seen that I wasn’t him at some point and I suppose he realised that if we needed a double to go to Russia, there was a good chance the real man was dead.  Or perhaps he
has
been told about it all.”

“My God.”  Hubert patted Farmer’s shoulder.  “We need to keep this from Old Ma Fitzgerald, Henry.  It’d put the wind up him, no end.”

Farmer nodded and turned back to the mantelpiece, inexpressibly sad.  Looking at the drawing, he said, “He should have been allowed to retire here in peace, Chris.  He’d done his bit.  It’s funny but somehow, in all of this business, I’ve come to understand him in a way I never did before, you know what I mean?  Sometimes it’s as if he’s standing right beside me, helping me along, telling me what to do and how to say it.”

“Complete bollocks, Henry, but I do know what you mean.”  Hubert retrieved his tea.

“Very odd feeling.  His
murder
– I just can’t see the sense in any of it.  A peaceful end to a long and worthy life – that’s what he’d earned.  It just wasn’t fair.”

Hubert grunted.  “‘Fair’ is for children, Henry.”

Farmer turned round to gaze at the huge drawing room and leaned back against the mantelpiece. “Do you know, he never really
lived
here?  Never had the time, I suppose.”

“I didn’t know that.”  Hubert shook Kitchener’s shade from his mind and said, “Anyway, Henry, enough of all this or I’ll start crying into my tea – and ‘ration’ tea is weak enough as it is.  Are you happy with everything Fitzgerald told you about the mission?”

“Pretty much.  I’m just to be shepherded around, looking poster-ish and wise but saying as little as possible.”

“That’s pretty much it.  The plan is for us to board the train at King’s Cross …”

“Just you and I?”

“No, no.  The whole circus.  You and your ‘admiring crowd of sisters, cousins and aunts who attend you wherever you go’.”

“I’ve never quite seen myself as Sir Joseph Porter ...”

“... KCB,” chimed Chris laughing.  “So, we all get on at King’s Cross and travel up to Thurso.  MacLaughlin, in fact, will be one of the team.  He knows the real picture and that’ll be good for you.”

“And we get on the boat at Thurso?”

“Again, no, we’ll travel by road along to a little place to the west, called Scrabster.  It’s only a few miles.  And that’s where we’ll be met by a ship, probably a destroyer, that’ll take us across to Scapa Flow.  Two hours, they say, because of minefields and such like.”  

Farmer rolled his eyes.

“It’s great scenery.  Don’t you like sailing, then?” asked Hubert.

Farmer pushed himself away from the mantelpiece.  “Well, actually ... no.  I haven’t said it before.  The whole idea of getting away from the War Office and all those people just waiting to point a finger at me and say ‘
this is the fake Lord Kitchener and I claim my five guineas
’ rather outweighed the notion of being on a boat for that length of time.”

“What’s so bad about that?  It’ll be like a summer cruise.  Are you sea-sick?”

“Dreadfully.  But that’s not the real problem.”

“What is, then?”

Farmer looked at him half-ashamedly and blurted it out.  “Well, if you
must
know, I can’t swim!”

“You can’t
what
?”

“Lots of people can’t swim,” cried Farmer, defensively.  “I’m useless at that sort of thing.  You know that.  I can barely
walk
without destroying furniture that gets too close.”

“I’m not worried about your not being able to swim
per se
, Henry.  It’s just that Kitchener was known to be a strong swimmer.”

“So?”

“So you’d better make sure you don’t let that particular cat out of the bag.  Kitchener was so good, he was able to save a brother officer from drowning in the sea off Ascalon.  That was years ago, of course, but if you let on you can’t swim, even the thickest heads will start thinking.  As it turns out, Kitchener
was
famously very prone to sea-sickness, so that bit’s fine, but don’t let anyone know about the other thing, for God’s sake!”

“Very well.  I can lie for my country when the trumpet sounds”, said Farmer, sententiously.

“I call that noble, Henry, noble.”

“What happens after the crossing, then?”

“You’ll be taken to see Jellicoe on the
Iron Duke
.  He
has
met you several times before but it was three or four years ago – any changes can be explained by the pressures of being War Minister under these circumstance – but if he rumbles you, too, I suppose we’ll just have to brief him on the truth.  He’s Admiral of the Fleet, after all.  The idea is that you have a nice cosy chat, talk about Jutland, tell him what a great job he did, how much you’re looking forward to the trip and then clear off after lunch, with a couple of pink gins inside you, over to the
Hampshire
.”

“The
Hampshire
?”

“She’s your transport to Russia.  Kitchener was on her once before – in the Med, I think.  It was Kell’s idea, actually.  He told the Admiralty that you had specially asked for her.  It would be like ‘coming home’ for you, he told them.   The Navy were beside themselves with joy.  Anyway, remember –
you’ve been on her before
.  We’ll try to get you some pictures or drawings of her – that sort of thing.”

“Right.”

“And then we sail away with a couple of escorts to Archangel and then on to St Petersburg to arrive on the ninth or thereabouts.”

“Sounds lovely.”

“Absolutely.  A summer cruise. Just what the doctor ordered!” he said, smiling at Farmer.

**********

Anne looked up at the dull, overcast skies and realised that the early summer was over for the moment.  A slight, but chill, wind was blowing thinly over the open countryside, causing her to pull her fox boa a little more tightly around her neck as she stepped off the local train.  It chuffed and croaked off into the gloom, leaving her alone in the silence.  Her encounter with MI5’s pit-bulls had her starting at every sound.  For a moment, she stood still, listening – nothing – and breathed tremulously.  It didn’t help that this little adventure might spell the end of her career with Special Branch and, for the twentieth time since leaving London that afternoon, she wondered if she was doing the right thing.  A nauseous feeling in the pit of her stomach was the only reply. 

Walking out through the little wicket gate, she spotted a pony and trap standing outside.  Throwing her overnight bag into the back, she hired the driver to take her to Broome and headed off along the un-metalled road, turning around every few minutes to make sure she wasn’t being followed.  Fortunately, the driver was one of those morose, uncommunicative types so she could take stock of what she was up to.  Thompson would kill her – possibly literally, if today’s uninvited visitors were anything to go by – yet here she was, risking it all … on a hunch.

**********

Fitzgerald had just finished dinner after a long day putting the affairs of Kitchener’s estate into order prior to the next day’s departure.  He relaxed into one of the armchairs in the main drawing room and lit a cheroot, the single luxury he permitted himself in the day.

Mentally ticking off the personalities, he described the group who would accompany Farmer to Russia.  “There will be myself and Hubert, of course.  General Ellershaw from the War Office – you’ve met him, Henry – will be there to help you with the military side of things.  Since Special Branch will have to have their finger in the pie, MacLaughlin will be with us, too – but, of course, you know that.  Sir Harold Donaldson and a Mr Robertson will be representing Lloyd George and his Ministry.”

Hubert turned round in his position at the window seat.  “I thought the Welsh Wizard was coming with us.”