Half a Crown (9 page)

His flat was spare and masculine. In my memory it was all maroon leather and mahogany and tweed. When I went there I was always surprised to notice the softening touches, the tassels on the green velvet cushions, the Victorian paintings, the Japanese teapot,
the delicate china. There was a tiny bedroom there I called mine, where I kept a trunk full of mementos and old clothes, but it was rare for me to spend more than a day or so of any holiday there. It wasn’t just that I found it claustrophobic, but that I always felt in the way. I didn’t doubt that Uncle Carmichael was fond of me, as well as feeling me as an obligation, but even so, I never really felt comfortable staying in his flat. Every time I went into my room I remembered how I had wept the first night I spent there, so solitary and uncomfortable, and aware for the first time that not only my father but my whole life had been taken away from me. Home was a poky rented house in Camden Town, where I knew everyone and everyone knew me. The flat had never felt like home.

Uncle Carmichael nodded to the guard outside, who stepped aside to let us in.

“How do the other people in the building like him?” Sergeant Evans asked, as we trooped upstairs.

“They like the safety, mostly. They had to give him lists of their visitors, of course, so he can let them in, and some of them didn’t like that; that’s why we put in the intercom system so he can call up and ask if someone is expected. But if they really don’t like it, they can always move.”

Jack let us into the flat. I could see him looking at my dirty coat with surprise as he took it, but all he said was “I’ll put the kettle on.”

I went to the bathroom at once. I tidied myself up as best I could, and washed my face and hands, very glad of the hot water and lovely Pears soap. I couldn’t help thinking how nice it would be to wear something I hadn’t had on for twenty-four hours. I slipped into my little room and put on clean knickers, which was a great relief, and some nylons. There wasn’t a skirt in my trunk that wouldn’t have been well above my knee. I had grown, and fashions had changed. I brushed at the mud on my tweed skirt and got most of it off. Apart from that it wasn’t too awful even after everything, so I
kept it on. I brushed my hair and wished I could wash it. I’d have been very glad of a bath, too, but I also wanted the cup of tea Jack had promised, and I felt it was only fair to let Uncle Carmichael tick me off first. I left my face quite bare, as all my makeup had been in my bag, took a deep breath, and went into the sitting room.

Uncle Carmichael was just putting down the receiver of the telephone. “Betsy is relieved to know that you are recovered in one piece,” he said. I would have liked to have spoken to her, and regretted the time wasted on hair-brushing.

“I’d better get back to the Watchtower,” Sergeant Evans said. “You’ll want these papers, sir.”

Uncle Carmichael took them, and turned them in his hands. “Your identity card,” he said, turning to me and handing it over. I took it and slipped it into my pocket.

“They didn’t give me back my bag,” I said, sitting down on the edge of the sofa.

“How much was in it?” Uncle Carmichael asked.

“Only a few pounds, and my makeup case, a few bits and pieces, but it’s an Italian leather bag from Geneva and quite expensive.” Then I remembered. “Betsy’s pearls! They’re in it! We have to get it back. Mrs. Maynard doesn’t even know I borrowed them.”

“Why did you borrow them?” Uncle Carmichael asked.

I squirmed. “Well, Betsy has a lot of jewelry, trinkets, you know, and I don’t have any so when we were in Switzerland we got into the habit of sharing.”

Uncle Carmichael looked away. “You should have told me you needed some.”

“You have been so good to me already,” I said. “I don’t like to ask.”

“I’ve always told you to ask for anything that makes you stand out as different from the other girls. Anything you needed like that.”

“That was when I was in school!” I said. He had been really good
about that. I had never lacked whatever that term’s fad was, whether it was a pink tennis racket or a pin-striped dressing gown or a hamster. Uncle Carmichael had been to boarding school himself and understood.

“It still applies,” he said, brusquely. “Evans, when you get back to the Tower, put through an inquiry to Paddington about Elvira’s bag. You’ll need the case number that’s all over these interminable papers, so you’d better hold on to them for now. We may as well take advantage of the Watch custody nonsense to get hold of the bag—it’s our evidence now. They can’t have any claim to it. As soon as you get it, send it over here.”

“Yes, sir. Shall I go and get on with that now?” he asked.

“Go on. And take the rest of these papers—Elvira will need her card, but all this can be filed.”

Sergeant Evans winked at me as he slipped away, just as he used to do when I was much younger. I could have hugged him.

When we were alone, Uncle Carmichael turned to me. “What on earth did you think you were doing going to the rally? What possessed Mrs. Maynard to allow it?”

“Sir Alan Bellingham, who is a boo of Betsy’s—”

“A boo?” he interrupted.

“That word has been around since the ark. A boo, a beau, a partner your parents approve of. In this case, her parents approve of him a lot more than poor Betsy does.”

“Go on,” Uncle Carmichael said, drawing his eyebrows together.

“Well, he offered to take us, and Mrs. Maynard didn’t want to let us but I was fed up with her and so I said I wanted to go and so they let us,” I admitted. “I see now that I was wrong, but I hadn’t been to one since Dad took me to one when I was a tot, and I thought it would be more fun than the usual sort of deb evening out.”

“As you see, it wasn’t.” Uncle Carmichael sat down on one of the easy chairs, as stiff as a ramrod.

“It was, though, until the riot started. The torches and the uniforms, the parade. The singing. There was an enthusiasm there, the ordinary people—I was having a good time until it all came to pieces.”

Uncle Carmichael wasn’t looking any less furious. “Mrs. Maynard should not have allowed it. She should have known better even if you didn’t. And Sir Alan, having taken you there under his protection, should have looked after you.”

“He was busy looking after Betsy,” I said.

“That’s precisely my complaint!” Uncle Carmichael riposted. “Damn the man for being such a fool anyway. It’s no thanks to him that you even survived the experience.”

“Did many people die?” I asked, remembering that horrible moment when I’d fallen and thought I’d be trampled.

“Nine people,” Uncle Carmichael said.

“I can’t believe I was such a fool,” I said. “I’m very sorry, and I’ll never go near one again.”

“Did your father often take you to them?”

“Only once. And it was quite different, really.” I remembered that long-ago day, the crowds, the parade, the sunshine. “Yet the same, too. The Ironsides expressing the spirit of the ordinary British people.”

He winced. “Did you ever wonder why it was Switzerland I chose to send you to?” he asked, changing the subject entirely as far as I was concerned.

“It’s a fairly ordinary place to go to be finished. With the chance to learn French as well as German. No, I admit, I never thought about it.” I did now, though. What made Switzerland different from France and Germany? The Alps—my first thought, and quite the best thing about my memories of Switzerland—spilled over into both those countries.

Before I could think of anything, Jack came in with the tea tray.
He set it down on the coffee table. “This is the tea you brought us from Switzerland, Elvira.”

Tea, China tea, especially unusual flavors, was always a safe present for Uncle Carmichael, who was impossible to find presents for, regularly causing me agonies at Christmas and birthdays. I usually bought tea for him at Jacksons of Piccadilly, who stock as many teas as wine merchants have wines, and talk about them in the same connoisseur’s tones. I remembered buying the Swiss tea. I had nothing to do for two hours, while Betsy was under the anesthetic, and I had blundered out into the narrow streets of Zurich, catching glimpses through every gap of the blue lake, so much bluer than the sky. I had wandered with no idea of where I wanted to go, unable to sit down for more than a minute, so worried about Betsy and with everything out of my hands now. The little tea shop, with its brightly painted blue and gold tea caddy swinging above the door, had surprised me around a corner. Inside, it had been dark and tea-smelling, and the man who measured out the tea, using a little shovel, had been just like the assistants in Jacksons, although of course we spoke German together.

I poured the tea from the beautiful Japanese teapot into the waiting cups. Of course there was no milk or sugar on the tray, the way there would have been at Mrs. Maynard’s, or even here, if there had been guests. I got up to hand Uncle Carmichael his cup. I would drink the tea, I thought, and then ask if I could have a bath.

“I don’t suppose you saw how the riot started?” he asked, taking the cup.

“I did. I was right there.”

“That’s very interesting,” he said. “Tell me about it.”

So I did, and as I talked he made notes. He was especially interested in the British Power young man, and in the organization of those chanting for him. He wanted to know if Sir Alan was involved with him, which of course I couldn’t tell him. Sir Alan had certainly
steered us to that rostrum. Partway through, Jack came back with plates of delicious Welsh rarebit, the cheese melted just as I like it. I had forgotten about being hungry until I caught that smell, and then I could hardly wait to cut it up. We ate it in our chairs in the sitting room, with more tea, and Uncle Carmichael kept asking me about the riot and writing down what I said.

“In your interrogation in Paddington, they wrote you down as on the British Power side?” he asked.

“That’s nonsense. I kept saying I wasn’t on any side. But in the riot in the cell—,” I began, and then we were launched into that, and into what the women had thought.

I don’t know how long he’d have kept asking me questions, but we were interrupted by Jack coming in again.

“The guard called up from downstairs,” he said. “Are you expecting a Mrs. Talbot? She said to say it was about the Eversley family. Woman in her fifties, he says, harmless and respectable-looking, no weapons.”

“I’m not expecting her, and don’t know the name. Lord Eversley would call me at the office—and if I wasn’t there, Miss Duthie would call me here,” he said. “On the other hand, it’s just the kind of thing Lady Eversley would do, and you did say family.”

“Could be an odd MO for another assassin,” Jack said, glancing at me.

“I’m not a child,” I said. “I know that policemen take risks doing their jobs better than most people.” I knew how much some people hated Uncle Carmichael, too, because I’d met some of them, including one beautiful young man from Cambridge who said Uncle Carmichael was the visible face of repression.

Uncle Carmichael patted his pocket, where I knew he kept a pistol. “The guard already checked her for weapons. Eversley isn’t a name I’d expect assassins to use. Send her up, but observe precautions,” he said to Jack. Then he turned to me. “Elvira, go and have
your bath. I’m not expecting any trouble, but it’s better for you not to be here.”

I stood up. My knee had stiffened, and I lurched for a moment and grabbed on to the arm of the sofa. I was exhausted. A hot bath sounded like the best thing in the world, even if there wouldn’t be any perfume to put in it. All the same, I was curious about the caller, and lingered in the hall to see her coming in. Anyone less like an assassin you couldn’t imagine. She was plump, had gray hair pulled up in a bun, and a dark gray coat with a white collar. She looked like a pigeon. I almost laughed as I went off into the bathroom.

Carmichael wondered what Lady Eversley could possibly want. It was just like her to bother him at home, probably for something entirely trivial. Yet there was something strange about this. He would have thought it a clandestine visit, but a terrorist wouldn’t have allowed a weapons search, and the visitor hadn’t given any of the Inner Watch passwords. He wasn’t sure what to expect.

Mrs. Talbot turned out to be a stout woman in a severe dress. Carmichael guessed at once from her bearing and manner that she wasn’t an assassin, and relaxed. He stood up and came forward to shake her hand, but she gave him a stiff old-fashioned bow.

“Mr. Carmichael,” she said, and he could hear in her voice a slight trace of Westmorland.

“Do sit down,” he said. “Would you like tea?”

“China tea will do very well for me,” she said, surprisingly, and smiled at him almost conspiratorially. She sat on the sofa where Elvira had been until a few moments before.

“Has Mr. Normanby been gossiping about my tastes in tea?” he asked, uncomfortably. Jack raised an eyebrow and left for the kitchen.

“Not Mr. Normanby. I feel as if I know you from a different mutual friend. I once had the honor of being Lucy Kahn’s governess,
and I have recently been editing her manuscript for publication.” Mrs. Talbot smiled as if this astonishing information was a bit of cheerful gossip.

“Her manuscript?” Carmichael asked, dumbfounded. “Lucy Kahn’s manuscript?”

“She has written an account of what happened at Farthing the weekend of Sir James Thirkie’s murder, from her own point of view, of course. She wrote it quite a long time ago, immediately after it happened, in fact, but only recently has there been any possibility of publication. She sent it to me to edit for style and consistency and, well, certain other things.”

“I see,” said Carmichael, who didn’t see at all. He remembered poor Lucy Kahn only too well. She and her husband were the first innocents he had betrayed.

“She talks quite a lot about you, of course. She mentions certain things about you, such as your tea drinking and some of your … other proclivities.”

“How the devil did she know?” Carmichael blurted, entirely disconcerted.

Mrs. Talbot laughed comfortably. “Lucy always had an instinct for that sort of thing.”