Sweet Poison (33 page)

Seeing the distress on Edward’s face, Verity said hurriedly, ‘Weaver has to be the General’s most likely victim though. He was about to reveal an unpleasant story about his shooting German prisoners, wasn’t he? By the way, why didn’t you ask Jeffries about that?’

‘Do you know, Verity, I just couldn’t bear to. Sounds pathetic, I know, but after what he told us of his admiration – no, that’s too weak a word – his hero-worship of the old boy, I couldn’t face his unhappiness if we got on to discussing that. Am I mad?’

‘No,’ said Verity taking his arm, ‘not mad, but I don’t think you are ruthless enough to make a great detective.’

‘No, I suppose not,’ Edward agreed glumly. ‘I certainly have it at the back of my mind that I forgot to ask Jeffries one vital question. If only I could think what it was, I would go back and ask him now but for the life of me I can’t.’

‘Hey there, don’t look like that. The fact that you aren’t ruthless – it makes you a nice man,’ she said, pressing his arm against her, ‘and I never thought I’d say that about a despised enemy of the working classes.’

He laughed. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘you will stay at the castle tonight, won’t you?’

‘If you wish it and if you promise to protect me, I will,’ said Verity.

‘That’s splendid! Hey! taxi!’ he shouted, walking into the road at risk to life and limb. ‘I’ll drop you off in Hans Crescent and then I’ll go back to Albany, wire Connie we’re coming, and then I’ll come back about five with Fenton and the Lagonda and we can be down in time for dinner. Will that suit you?’

‘Yes,’ agreed Verity, pleased that her saying she would stay at the castle after all had lifted his mood so dramatically. ‘There’s something I have got to do at lunch time but it won’t take long.’

It was only after he had dropped her off at her flat that she realized they still had not reduced the list of suspects. Weaver, Larmore, Friedberg, Haycraft, even the Duke himself had reasons to bump off General Craig, and he had an equal reason for wanting to dispose of any of them. As she held Max in her arms and kissed his furry head she thought, Edward and I are like two dogs chasing each other’s tails. There was a scent – the sweet scent of poisoned wine – but to whom did the scent lead? She put these thoughts aside with a sigh. Before she went to Mersham there was the little matter of a trial she had to attend and it was she who was in the dock.

16

Thursday Afternoon

David Griffiths-Jones grinned at Verity amiably but the other two – a thin-lipped woman of about fifty with iron grey hair tied at the back in a bun and a haggard, depressed-looking man in his thirties, but with the paper-white skin and dull eyes of someone much older – looked at her with something close to malevolence. What did they see, she wondered? She had made an effort to dress sensibly, like a good comrade, but she was aware now that she had failed. She must look irredeemably bourgeois, which of course was what she was. She wore no make-up. She had put on a double-breasted brown tweed coat with a large collar, wide lapels and padded shoulders which she had bought a year ago and never worn. When she had selected it to wear to this ‘kangaroo court’ she thought the outfit had an almost military feel but now she was not so sure. The brown suede shoes were restrained enough and the brown felt hat was serious but she saw now that she ought to have resisted the feather. All in all, she looked less like a soldier of the proletarian struggle than a county lady who hunted three times a week and owned several large dogs. Neither image reflected the reality, as anyone with half an eye could see. She was, in fact, a pretty, lively girl blessed with intelligence and a strong sense of the ridiculous.

‘Verity, this is Comrade Lake,’ David said, indicating the thin-lipped woman. Verity smiled but this was obviously the wrong thing to do: Comrade Lake pursed her lips even more tightly, if that were possible, but otherwise made no sign of being aware of the introduction. ‘And this is Comrade Peterson. He has to catch the night train to Glasgow so he doesn’t have very much time – indeed, neither do any of us,’ he added, seeing Comrade Lake bristle.

‘Is this some sort of court?’ demanded Verity, suddenly angry. ‘I thought, David, that you just wanted to have a talk about my future with the Party.’

‘This is not a court, Verity,’ said David soothingly, ‘but we are a little concerned about your . . . your commitment to the Party. You have been absent from several meetings in the last few days and your participation was required in the Hoxton protest but you were absent. Why was that?’

‘I have been busy,’ said Verity guiltily. She could see where this line of questioning was leading and she did not like it.

‘Busy?’ echoed David.

‘Yes, you instructed me to infiltrate the German embassy, if you remember.’ She was rather pleased with the word ‘infiltrate’.

‘Don’t answer Comrade Griffiths-Jones in that tone of voice,’ said the woman, who reminded Verity of the headmistress of one of the four boarding schools she had briefly attended before being asked to leave. ‘As a Party worker you must obey the instructions of comrades senior to you in the Party and not absent yourself from Party meetings without permission.’

‘You are spending a great deal of time with Edward Corinth, are you not?’ said David.

‘Yes,’ said Verity, ‘and before you ask, I do not approve of him and he is not my lover or anything like that. We are trying to discover who murdered General Craig – that is all.’

She could not quite think why but she felt when she said this as though she was not being entirely honest and that made her crosser than ever.

‘But why should you wish to know who murdered General Craig, if indeed anyone did? He is of no importance – dead or alive. He was an imperialist warmonger and now he is dead,’ demanded Comrade Peterson in a smoker’s wheeze.

‘There is such a thing as justice,’ said Verity unwisely.

‘Aye, there is,’ said Comrade Peterson. ‘These people you have been involved with – what do they understand by justice, these dukes and lords? Do they believe in economic justice?’ he said bitterly. ‘Do they not believe they have the right to exploit other people for profit? Is that justice, comrade?’

‘No,’ said Verity, abashed at the man’s passion. Comrade Peterson was, she knew instinctively, talking from personal experience of poverty, starvation and despair which she could only guess at. She felt humbled. Maybe they were right; perhaps trying to discover who had killed General Craig was an irrelevance, and yet, surely, once one man’s death ceased to be important then no man’s death was significant.

David said, ‘You see, comrade, the people you are mixing with are charming, even well meaning, and that is what makes them so dangerous. They are born to be enemies of the working class. It is important that you go among these people, as you must do, as their enemy. Your one reason for being with Lord Edward Corinth and his kind is to defeat them. Do you understand?’

Without waiting for an answer, he continued: ‘I don’t suppose for one moment that the Duke of Mersham is other than a kindly old fellow who would be distraught if he thought one child was hungry on his account, but the fact is, the wealth of this country – you must have heard your father say this often enough – is owned by a tiny percentage of the population and it is this wealth we in the Party are determined to redistribute. That is what we mean by justice. To put it crudely: the stock exchange must be pulled down and the country houses must be turned into holiday camps for the children of the working class.’

He held up his hand to stop her speaking. ‘The greatest danger is that these good-natured drones – men like your friend Lord Edward Corinth, who have no social purpose – these people are giving the Fascists the power and confidence to delay our victory. Men like your duke are not bad in themselves but they are self-deceived; they think they can negotiate with the Fascists, talk to them as though they were reasonable people, but they are not. That, at least, is something General Craig understood. Even Weaver – with all his money and his newspapers – may not be totally corrupt but that makes him all the more dangerous. He tries to make deals with Hitler’s cronies, men like your friend Baron von Friedberg, and he persuades politicians and the poor fools who read his newspapers that it is possible to talk to these men.’

‘He offered you a job, did he not, comrade?’ said Comrade Lake, turning from philosophy to the particular.

‘Yes,’ said Verity, ‘but I turned him down.’

‘That was foolish of you,’ the woman said. ‘Why did you not consult Comrade Griffiths-Jones or another comrade before taking that decision?’

‘You would have wanted me to work for the bourgeois press?’ exclaimed Verity.

‘Of course! We must use every means we can to bring about the revolution. The
Daily Worker
is an excellent organ and we are all grateful to your father for supporting it, but we are realists, comrade. The
Daily Worker
reaches Party members and, I regret to say, there are far too few of us. We have to tell the masses what is happening and why they should join us.’

This had been David’s line, Verity recalled, and she still found it cynical. ‘You want me to tell Lord Weaver I have changed my mind and that I will write for the
New Gazette
?’

‘That is correct,’ David said. ‘Tell him you are going to Spain and you wish to report on the political situation there.’

‘But I have no intention of going to Spain!’ Verity said.

‘Yes, you will accompany me to Madrid and Barcelona on Saturday. I have your ticket. If you let me have your passport I will get the necessary visas. There is much of interest happening in that country and we must do what we can to support the struggle. You will find it educational.’

When Verity left the shabby little room in East London – the Party headquarters – she was still in a state of shock. She recognized that she had been chastised and brought to heel. She had been given an opportunity of recovering her position in the Party through unquestioning obedience. She understood that she had met three senior members of the Party on an official footing, so they must think she might be useful; that did something for her self-esteem. However, she had now to part from Edward Corinth – that was one of the reasons she was being ordered abroad – and she found this surprisingly hard to accept. Maybe they were right – the comrades – maybe she was being seduced by the easy charm of the aristocracy. Life for a comrade should not be easy and her life had been easy, she knew that. She had a talent for investigation, for getting to the truth, and she was being invited – no, ordered – to put this at the service of the Party. She could not bear duplicity but what if the Party demanded it – for the sake of the Party? What if the truth, as she saw it, was not palatable to the Party? All her upbringing, all her father’s teaching, all her own natural sympathy, lay with socialist ideals and surely David was right: the ends justify the means – victory for socialism was inevitable and her task was to help see it was not delayed.

It was a subdued Verity who accompanied Edward down to Mersham that afternoon. How simple life had once seemed to her. A few hours before she had been quite certain who were good and who were bad; she had thought she knew it was wrong to lie and to cheat. A simple eagerness for truth and justice had seemed to be a more than adequate personal philosophy. Now she was confused and irresolute. She had been conscripted into an army to serve under a flag – a red flag – which demanded absolute obedience and justified duplicity and subterfuge when they served the greater good. She had been told, if not in so many words, that she was a humble foot-soldier in a great cause and that the struggle for social justice involved giving up personal liberty. She wanted to discuss her understanding of this new, harsh reality with her father but, as had so often been the case in the past, he was not to be found. He was abroad, in Greece perhaps; the clerk of his chambers was not sure and had no idea when he would return.

‘It’s a funny thing,’ she said to Edward as they swung down the Great West Road in the newly repaired Lagonda, ‘but I used to think it was the most wonderful thing in the world having a father who so many people admired and relied on but I now see it has its disadvantages.’

‘You mean, with so many at the well-mouth, when you come with your little bucket you cannot get near the water,’ said Edward acutely.

‘How did you know?’ she said.

‘I had the same sort of feeling with my father. I was very much the youngest in the family, the afterthought, don’t you know.’ He took a gloved hand from the steering-wheel and touched his hair, uncertain why he was drawn to confess something so painful to this girl he hardly knew. ‘My father lived for my eldest brother who was to be duke after he died. It never occurred to him that he might die first. It is a terrible thing for a father to have his son die before him, particularly in a world where passing down from generation to generation a title and a great house is all-important.’

‘Your brother died in the war, didn’t he? Surely, that made your father proud? Isn’t patriotism what all the hereditary thing boils down to?’

Edward shot her a look to be certain she was not mocking him but she seemed to be deadly serious. ‘Of course, but the pain is real enough, otherwise where would be the sacrifice?’ he said. ‘My father was destroyed by my brother’s death and like your father, if for different reasons, showed little interest in me or even Gerald thereafter. You know, I’ve been thinking: I believe one cannot understand the modern world unless one accepts the overwhelming power of patriotism. Christianity, your socialism, they are as nothing compared with patriotism, and aristocrats, in the last resort, have always been prepared to sacrifice their sons for their country. It’s one of the reasons that there will never be a French-type revolution in this country, because the working class have always accepted that however foolish and incompetent – even corrupt – their rulers are, they are patriotic. It is the one thing which unites the classes. Did you see the sincere warmth with which the whole nation joined together to celebrate the King’s jubilee? The confusion for people such as us now is that dictators like Hitler and Mussolini are clever enough to know the power of patriotism and use it for their own evil ends.’