Ha'penny (13 page)

“What were his politics?” Carmichael asked.

Tambourne frowned. “You’re not supposed to have politics in the Navy,” he said. “And Marshall was career Navy. But as I was saying he was for King and Country all down the line. Always saying the country was going to the dogs, but for people like Marshall, it always is going to the dogs and at the same time worth laying your life on the line for. Not a cynic, if you know what I mean, not him and not Nash either.”

Royston braked; they were at the mortuary.

Tambourne, when he unfolded himself from the car, proved to be even taller than he had looked, well over six feet. “How do they fit you in a ship, Lieutenant?” Royston asked.

Tambourne laughed. “Better than they could in an aeroplane at any rate. They wouldn’t have me in the RAF. Look, can I ask you what’s the procedure here? I’ve never done any of this before.”

“We’ll go with you to the room where the body we believe to be Peter Marshall’s is being stored,” Carmichael said. “Then you will either make the identification or fail to be able to make it. If you feel you can formally identify the body as that of Marshall, there’ll be a statement for you to sign to that effect.”

“So it’s quite a quick business?” Carmichael nodded reassuringly. “And then what?”

Carmichael was surprised by the question. “Well, I may want to ask you a few more things, and then you’ll be free to go.”

“Do I need to go back to Portsmouth tonight? I brought a bag, because we didn’t know how long it would take. I could have a whole evening and night in London and go up in the morning.”

“That’s between you and your commanding officer, but I’m certainly not about to tell him precisely how long the identification procedure took,” Carmichael said.

“Thanks!”

There was a little garden beside the police mortuary, with a stone bench in it surrounded at this season by regimented rows of primulas and a little square of grass in need of cutting. Carmichael indicated the bench. “Let’s sit down for a few minutes and get the questions over with first, and then you can head off as soon as we’re done inside.”

Tambourne obligingly sat on the bench, sticking his long legs out in front of him. Royston took out his notebook and began scribbling, no doubt setting down what he remembered of what had been said in the car.

The cold of the stone crept through Carmichael’s trousers, despite the warmth of the early evening sun. “Did you know that Marshall knew Lauria Gilmore?” Carmichael began.

“Yes, actually. He knew her son during the war, they were on the same ship. He told me once when the subject of theater came up.” Royston and Carmichael exchanged a look. Kinnerson again. “Her son introduced them during or immediately after the war, and they became friends. He always went to her plays. I knew he and Nash both used to see her sometimes in London.” Tambourne smiled agreeably.

“Is Nash Eton too?”

“Oh yes.” It seemed to strike Tambourne for the first time. “Nash is going to be absolutely gutted when he hears. They’ve been together since they were thirteen. They were like David and Jonathan.”

“Someone should break it gently to Nash,” Carmichael said. “Do you know where he is on leave?”

Tambourne shook his head. “Old Bed will know,” he said. “Poor old Nash.”

“And what was Marshall’s job, on the ship?” Carmichael asked.

“Training.
Valiant
’s a training ship. Taking in raw recruits and turning out sailors, you know the drill.” Tambourne was staring off into the distance.

“And was he good at it?”

He looked at Carmichael again. “Extremely good at it. All the men got on with him, and they always enjoyed his course.”

“What exactly did he teach them?” Carmichael asked, patiently.

“Use of small craft. A surprising number of people don’t know how to use a little boat to go out to the ship, or back to the dock. He’d teach the whole thing, rowing, small-scale sailing, knot-tying, inflating inflatables. Everyone enjoyed it. I enjoyed it myself when I took the course.”

“Nothing to do with explosives?”

“Nothing at all.” Tambourne seemed to understand the question after he’d answered it. “You think he had something to do with the bomb that blew him up? Because he wouldn’t know anything about that, and even more he wouldn’t do anything like that. He was all straight down the line King and Country stuff, true blue.”

“There’s nothing you can think of that would make him resort to building a bomb?” Carmichael asked gently.

“Nothing in the world. He wasn’t a Jew or a terrorist! Marshall, my God, the last man in the world. He must have got caught up in the blast by accident. If it is him. Maybe something else has happened to Marshall and this body is some bomber.”

“That’s what you’re here to tell us,” Carmichael said, and stood. “We may as well get on inside before I ask you anything else that might just be wasting everyone’s time.”

The staff were expecting them. “The male body in the Gilmore case,” Royston said. “Possible identification.”

“It’s not—” The attendant hesitated.

“We’re all grown men,” Carmichael said, and followed him down the corridor.

The room was chilly, especially after the warmth outside. The attendant pulled out a drawer.

The corpse was naked, as usual, and very mangled indeed. The head and upper body were particularly bad. Tambourne blanched and swallowed hard, as Carmichael had expected. “I can’t possibly tell, nobody could possibly—,” he said, then stopped. “You know, it is Marshall,” he said, and turned aside and retched.

Carmichael had vomited until there was nothing left in him, the first time he saw a dead body, in France, in 1940. Then he’d vomited again the first time he’d seen a man he knew killed next to him, strafed from a Stuka. But before they’d got away from Dunkirk he’d become hardened to it, and years of police work had only made dead bodies that much more familiar. He didn’t like the sight, but he didn’t feel nauseated, just terribly aware of what a waste it was. How many secrets had this mangled thing that used to be Marshall taken with him into death? How long would it take Carmichael to discover them? He shook his head and looked back at Tambourne. “How do you know?” he asked.

Tambourne wiped his face with his handkerchief. “It’s his legs,” he said, his voice unsteady. “Nobody could know him by his face, but I played tennis with those legs a couple of times a week for the last nine months. Poor Marshall. Damn. Damn me. What a horrible way to go.”

11

D
evlin stopped at a call box in a tiny village somewhere and made a call, no doubt to Coltham. I didn’t run away, I didn’t even try. I sat in the car and watched a hen scratch at some larkspur at the side of the road by a red brick barn. The thought that I was alive to see it was quite exhilarating. I felt almost drunk on the way the sunshine showed up the blue of the larkspur and the brown feathers of the hen. Devlin got back in and kissed me. He grinned when I asked who he was calling. “Got to let Loy know where his precious car is,” he said.

We reached London and my flat at about half-past six. I had to give Devlin directions for the last half a mile. He parked neatly between two other cars. “You get your things, whatever you need for the next two weeks, and come straight down to the car,” he said. “Then we’ll have dinner and go home.”

It occurred to me at once that if I was inside on my own I could lock the door and telephone the police. But not only would that be breaking my word to Uncle Phil, I didn’t quite believe that Devlin wouldn’t get me anyway. My only hope was for him to trust me, my only hope of anything, of life, of another two weeks. I still thought I’d find a way out of actually doing it, but I thought I might be able to think of a plan later, when I knew what their plan was. I didn’t entirely believe I was going to go through with the whole thing; I was going part of the way with them, to fool them, because I wanted Devlin, because I was afraid. I couldn’t risk him thinking he hadn’t entirely convinced me.

“It will be much easier if you come in,” I said.

He smiled. “I don’t want your flatmates to see more than they have to.” He’d got out of me on the way home who I lived with and all about them.

“What, you’re planning to watch me and be invisible? Because you know I’ll probably be working with both of them at the theater? Mollie’s probably going to replace Lauria as Gertrude, and Mrs. Tring is my dresser. It’ll seem much more normal if you come up, and I introduce you, and it’ll also save me from having to explain quite as much as I would if you don’t. They won’t believe I have a boyfriend if they never see you.”

Devlin looked at me for a moment, and then shrugged. “If that’s how you want it,” he said.

“I won’t say I’m staying with you until opening night,” I said. “I’ll just say for tonight, and then sort of let it extend. That’ll be much easier.”

“You know how to tell your own lies,” Devlin said, amiably enough. “Is Loy’s car safe out here?”

It wasn’t of course. “We won’t be long,” I said, and opened the downstairs door with my key, then held it open for Devlin. He took it at once and let me go through first. I led the way up to the flat. I unlocked that door too, and called out that I was home.

Mollie came out of her room immediately. She was wearing her red butterfly dressing gown, which covered her from her neck to her ankles and made her look dramatic and oriental. “I’ve got the part!” she said.

And as easily as that I was back in the real world, the world where the play was the most important thing and getting the part counted for everything. I hugged her. “Oh Mollie, that’s wonderful,” I said.

“I sobbed and sobbed for Antony,” she said. Then she saw Devlin in the doorway. “Who’s this?” she asked, frowning at me then glancing down at her dressing gown to make sure she was decent.

“This is Devlin Connelly,” I said. “He very kindly ran me back to London. I’m going out for dinner with him. Come in properly, Devlin, and have a glass of wine or something while I get myself together. This is my flatmate Mollie Gaston.”

“I saw you in
Dunkirk,
” Devlin said, taking her hand. “I’m sure you’ll make a beautiful Gertrude, but nobody will believe you’re old enough to be Viola’s mother.”

“I’m going to have silver streaks and do older body language,” Mollie said, but her eyes were on me, and she was still frowning. Well, it wasn’t like me to turn up with strangers at odd hours. “Viola—”

“Where’s Mrs. Tring?” I asked.

“It’s Sunday night, she’s gone to chapel,” Mollie said. I should have thought that for myself.

“Do give Devlin a glass of wine while I duck into my room for a moment!” I said.

“Of course,” Mollie said, and led Devlin off to the kitchen pro testing that he didn’t want anything and we were only stopping for a moment.

My script was already in my bag. I threw clothes and underwear and makeup and everything I thought I might need into a carpet bag. I knew I could ask Mollie or Mrs. Tring to bring anything I’d forgotten to the theater. I threw off the clothes I was wearing and put on my turquoise Parisian dress, the one that shows off my collarbones and which Mrs. Tring says is only barely respectable. I wanted to look nice for Devlin. I dug around in my underwear drawer and found my Dutch Cap, in its little box, and thrust that into my bag next to the script. I might live longer than the next two weeks, I might. I sprayed perfume everywhere, brushed my hair, pinned it back, and stuck one of Antony’s pink roses into the pin. I looked at myself in the mirror. In
Buttered Toast
my cue had come at the end of a poem the young hero recited to Mollie as Lucinda. As he finished I came on as the maid, saying “Buttered toast?” and holding a plate of it out in front of me; it always got a huge laugh. But it was his lines that came into my head as I looked at myself in the mirror in my best dress, with the rose, and the Dutch Cap in my bag. “Though we cannot make our sun stand still, yet we will make him run!”

“Not more beautiful, that isn’t possible, but beautiful for the evening,” Devlin said, when I came into the kitchen. He was standing by the window, keeping an eye on the car. He looked relaxed and at ease. He had been busily charming Mollie, but Mollie wasn’t entirely charmed. “We have to leave you alone for a moment, if you don’t mind waiting, Mr. Connelly,” she said, and dragged me into her room. So much for doing less explaining!

“What do you think you’re doing?” she whispered as soon as the door was shut.

“What, you don’t think he’s gorgeous?” I asked.

“Charm of the Irish,” she said, rolling her eyes. Mollie was part Irish herself, or so she sometimes said. “But this isn’t like you! You never go out with men when you’ve got a part.”

It was true. Men were for between-parts times, or when I was well into a successful run. I’d never normally start something new just when I was beginning to rehearse. “But look at him,” I said, feebly enough, but it was all I had. “Don’t worry. I’ll be at the theater in the morning, word perfect.”

“You’d better be, or I’m calling the police,” she said. “Are you sure everything is all right?”

I thought about telling her. But what could she have done? She might even have approved—she’d certainly said now and then when she heard one of those stories about stone soap that she hated Hitler. Besides, Devlin could have easily killed us both if he thought we were a threat. “Everything’s fine,” I said. “Don’t worry, Moll. I know what I’m doing. I’m pretty sure I won’t be back tonight, we did some kissing in the car, but I’ve got my Cap.”

“He’s probably a Catholic,” she said, direly.

He almost certainly was. “He needn’t know I’ve got my Cap then,” I said.

“There’s something about him,” she said, frowning. “Vi—”

“That’s what I find so devastatingly attractive,” I said. “I can look after myself.”

She frowned, but stepped away from the door. I went out to Devlin.

As we went down to the car I realized that I was ridiculously overdressed for dinner, unless he changed too, and that meant going back to his place first. I hadn’t thought about it, I’d only wanted to make myself look my best, or I might have wondered whether he had evening clothes, or if he did whether they might be at Coltham. “Am I overdressed?” I asked. “Because I can change again if so.”