The More Deceived (26 page)

Chief Inspector Pride was being reasonable and finding it all rather an effort. ‘At Lord Edward’s suggestion and in his presence, you telephoned your father and arranged to go round to his office?’

‘Yes, I walked. It wasn’t so far and I needed to think a bit. The truth is I wasn’t too keen to have this meeting but Lord Edward had persuaded me my father really did want to see me. And I was thinking I might get killed in Spain – I’d had a few narrow squeaks already. It seemed a bit hard on the old man if I was killed without – you know – making my peace with him.’ James sounded embarrassed. In a typically English way, he did not want to be accused of sentimentality.

‘But in fact it was he who was killed,’ Pride said flatly.

‘Yes, it was,’ the boy said soberly. ‘That makes me glad I went and saw him. I would have felt so guilty if I hadn’t made the effort . . .’

‘He disapproved of you joining the International Brigade and going to Spain – that was what you had quarrelled about?’

‘Yes that and . . .’ He hesitated.

‘And what?’

‘I regret it now but I said some things about mother – about how he treated her.’

‘They didn’t get on?’

‘It wasn’t that. I am sure he loved her but he was always working. He often didn’t get home until nine or ten.’

‘He had an important job. Presumably she knew that.’

‘She knew but that wasn’t it. He was . . . oh, I don’t want to talk about this.’

‘Of course not,’ Edward said. ‘It’s private and painful but the Chief Inspector is trying to find out who killed your father so he has to ask these questions. You want to help him, don’t you?’

‘I do but . . .’

‘Your mother became ill?’ Pride probed as gently as he could. ‘Was your father upset?’

‘He didn’t know. He didn’t realize. Neither of us did.’

‘So when your mother had to go into hospital, it was a great shock?’

‘Yes and I’m afraid I blamed my father. I said he ought to have known. I said I hated him. I didn’t really mean it. I was just angry and scared.’

‘And so – when she died – you said you were going to fight in Spain to . . .?’

‘To spite him, yes. Though I did believe in what the Republic stood for. I was a Communist at school.’

‘That was brave,’ Edward encouraged him. ‘You were at Wellington, weren’t you? That’s an army school. I don’t suppose there were many who felt like you?’

‘Not many,’ James said reflectively, ‘but that made the few of us who were Communists even keener.’

‘And are you still a Communist?’ Pride inquired.

James hesitated. ‘I don’t know what I believe, to tell you the truth. I’ve seen such . . . such things. What happened at Guernica . . . that was worse than anything I had imagined.’

‘Lord Edward has been telling me how brave you were . . . how you saved Miss Browne’s life.’

‘I didn’t do anything special,’ he said, looking at his shoes, but Edward could see he was pleased that they thought he had done well.

‘You’ve done your stuff, anyway,’ Edward said. ‘You’re not going back there.’

‘No, I don’t think I will,’ he said slowly. ‘It wasn’t just Guernica. It was what Mr Griffiths-Jones said.’

‘What did he say exactly?’ Edward’s tone was acid and Pride looked at him with interest.

‘Oh, don’t get me wrong. They were very good to me. When Guy heard I didn’t want to go home when I came back to London, he suggested staying with him and Mr Griffiths-Jones in Chester Square. I was very grateful. I had nowhere else to go. I . . . I didn’t want to bother my aunt. She’s my father’s sister and she would have said I had to go home . . . to my father.’ James sounded suddenly very young and alone.

‘Guy – he didn’t . . . didn’t try anything on? I mean,’ Edward found himself blushing, ‘he didn’t try to . . . to be too friendly,’ he ended lamely.

‘I see what you’re getting at,’ James said, smiling. ‘He didn’t touch me, I promise. I wouldn’t have let him. I don’t like that sort of thing but he didn’t anyway. He was very kind. And David was there – Mr Griffiths-Jones.’

‘What do you think of him?’

‘He’s a great man but sometimes . . . sometimes he frightens me. I don’t know why. I think he would do anything for – you know – the cause. Anything.’

‘He frightens me too, sometimes,’ Edward said drily.

‘I told you,’ he said, turning to Edward, ‘that he made me transfer out of POUM to a different unit.’

Pride looked at Edward for clarification.

‘POUM was not strictly part of the International Brigade, Chief Inspector. It was Anarchist and Trostkyist while the International Brigade is Communist-controlled. As soon as they were powerful enough, the Communists liquidated POUM and other non-Communist fighting units.’

‘Liquidated?’ Pride asked, puzzled.

‘Told them they had to join the Communist Party.’

‘And if they wouldn’t?’

‘They got killed, one way or another,’ James said.

Pride looked shocked. It was just as he supposed. Communists and Fascists – there was nothing to choose between them.

‘Let’s get back to the day your father died,’ he said. ‘What time did you get to the Foreign Office?’

‘I got there about three thirty.’

‘But you didn’t get to see him until four thirty. What did you do for an hour?’

‘I walked about a bit. I remember I stood on the bridge in the park and watched the ducks. I wanted to think things out, don’t you see. It was warm. I sat on a bench.’

‘You brought your father a present?’

James blushed guiltily. ‘I didn’t
buy
him anything. I just noticed that Guy smoked the same cigarettes as my father – you know, those expensive ones.’

‘Murad – Turkish, aren’t they?’ Edward put in.

‘That’s right, and when I told him, Guy said why didn’t I take him some.’

‘You took a packet or was it a tin?’ Edward asked urgently.

‘They were in a box.’

‘Loose? They weren’t in the manufacturer’s box?’

‘No. Guy took them out of their box in the drawing-room and put them in another one – a cigar box, I think it was – that was sitting on the table.’

It was not until he was back in Albany – after delivering James to his aunt – that Edward remembered he had still not told the Chief Inspector about the powder compact the constable had found in the Thames near to where Westmacott had been found hanged. He wondered if he had
really
forgotten or if he had
deliberately
forgotten. He had been reading Freud again and found his theories on the unconscious most illuminating. He was about to dial Scotland Yard and confess everything when the telephone rang. He picked up the receiver to hear Jack Spot’s rather hoarse voice at the other end.

‘I’d heard you were back, my lord, and that Miss Browne had been wounded.’

‘Yes, Spotty. Her friend, Gerda Meyer the photographer, was killed. Verity was lucky,’ he said grimly.

‘Could I see her, do you think? I mean, not if she’s too ill,’ he added hurriedly. ‘But everyone is saying she did wonders and that her reports in the
New Gazette
and the
Worker
did more for the cause than anything.’

Edward thought for a moment and was about to speak when Spotty added, ‘And I’ve got some information about . . . you know.’ He was being discreet.

It occurred to Edward that it might cheer Verity up to have an admirer at her bedside and that it would take her mind off her woes if she got drawn into the investigation about Westmacott’s death. So he said, ‘Yes, indeed. We mustn’t tire her but I know she would like to see you again and hear what you have discovered.’

Edward gave him the address of the Hassels’ house in the King’s Road and asked him to be there at six unless he rang to say she was not well enough. When he telephoned Verity, she was eager to hear what Spotty had to say. ‘Why not ask James to come and we could all have a cosy supper here? Charlotte won’t mind, will you, Charlie?’

There was a muttered colloquoy off stage and then she said, ‘Charlie says she’s out at a conference this evening but that would be all right. She’ll leave us a shepherd’s pie.’

Edward rang James and he accepted with alacrity, sounding eager to remove himself – if only for a few hours – from his aunt’s house. Edward talked to her and fortunately it turned out she ‘liked a lord’ and was quite charmed to hear that he had taken an interest in her nephew.

‘I tell him, Lord Edward,’ she simpered, ‘he ought to give up this Communism. Such a lot of nonsense. I’ve told him, I’ll have no Communist in my house.’

Edward felt deeply sorry for James. He hoped, however, he would be sensible enough not to tell his aunt that he was also going to see the arch-Communist, Verity Browne, along with the socially acceptable Lord Edward Corinth.

‘Well,’ Spotty said with satisfaction, ‘I can tell you who didn’t kill Mr Westmacott.’

Through the blue haze of cigarette smoke – Edward, Verity and Adrian Hassel were all smoking and Spotty was puffing away at one of his foul-smelling cigars – expectant looks could just be made out. They were sitting around Verity’s bed. She had wanted to get up but the doctor had refused to allow it ‘for at least another week’. It had been quite touching to see the way Jack Spot had greeted Verity. He was genuinely in awe of her and it came to Edward that she was now a famous figure and, for the Left, a hero. Spot shook her hand and bowed. ‘I’m greatly honoured, Miss Browne.’ He touched the scar on his face. ‘Now you, too, wear one of these but, whereas mine makes me want not to look in the mirror of a morning, yours is a medal to wear with pride – makes you look . . . dashing.’

Verity blushed but said with dignity, ‘Thank you, Spotty. It’s really Lord Edward and Mr Lyall who are the heroes. Without them, I would be dead. Simple as that.’

She had not looked at Edward and kept her eyes firmly on the ugly face of the gangster in front of her but Edward felt his heart go out to her. It was not her way to be gushing but she was acknowledging that she was glad he had followed his instincts and gone to Spain to be with her in her hour of extreme peril.

Suddenly he felt claustrophobic. It was a big room but the four of them – James, Adrian, Spotty and himself – were squashed together and he was feeling stifled.

‘Open a window, will you, James?’ Edward said, coughing. ‘My brain can’t breathe. Who’s at this conference of Charlotte’s, then, Adrian?’

‘Bloomsbury lesbians,’ Adrian said dismissively.

‘What’s a lesbian?’ James asked.

Verity told him and he looked stunned.

‘I knew about Guy, of course,’ he said, trying to sound grown up,’ but that’s . . . toe-jam. Women don’t do that sort of thing, do they?’

‘Women do whatever men do,’ she said in her lecturing voice.

‘Everything?’ James looked horrified. He saw Edward smiling and blushed. He got up quickly and struggled with the window. Soon a breath of cold evening air dissipated the smoke. Stubbing his cigar out in an onyx ashtray, Spotty went on. ‘It weren’t either the Communists or Mosley’s mob.’

‘I never thought it could have been Mosley’s lot,’ Edward said. ‘Vicious though they are, they don’t have the balls for that sort of enterprise.’

‘And I never thought the Party would sanction murder,’ Verity remarked, with what Edward decided was unjustified confidence.

‘So, Spotty, who was it? You look like the cat who’s got the cream’.

‘The evidence points to it being one Major Stille, from the German Embassy.’

‘No surprise there, then,’ Edward retorted.

Spot looked put out that his news had gone for nought.

‘Sorry, Spotty,’ Verity said, ‘but you see we have had dealings with Major Stille before. Don’t you remember? At the battle of Cable Street, I discovered Stille in civilian dress on
our
side of the barricades, making trouble.’

‘Yes, I do remember now, Miss Browne.’

‘What’s your evidence that Stille’s behind this?’ Edward demanded.

‘It’s all a great secret. No one will talk. Usually, when someone’s taken out a contract I’m the first to know about it. But not this one. Top secret and that costs, I can tell you.’

‘What’s that – a contract?’ James inquired.

‘You see, sonny, when you wants someone done away with there are always a few hard men that’ll do it for you . . . for a price, mark you. But not as much as you might suppose.’

‘So how did you find out who had done it?’

‘I set the dogs on it and they ferreted it out. Can’t say any more than that, my lord. More than my life’s worth.’

‘No evidence to stand up in court then?’

Spotty looked indignant. ‘Who said anything about court, my lord? You wanted to find out who killed Mr Westmacott and I’ve told you. Tell you any more and I’m dead meat.’

‘I understand, Spotty,’ Verity said, ‘and we’re very grateful, aren’t we, Edward?’

‘Yes, of course, extremely grateful. If there’s anything . . .’ He touched his jacket where his wallet lodged.

‘Certainly not, my lord! I’m no informer. I am happy . . . always happy to aid Miss Browne in her investigations but I don’t need no money.’

‘I’m very sorry, Spotty. I had no wish to insult you. So there’s no way we can express our gratitude?’

‘It’s enough being here with Miss Browne, my lord, in her bedroom. They’ll be green with envy when they hears it.’

Verity coloured but smiled. ‘You’d better call it my sickroom, if you please, Spotty.’

‘Do you think this has anything to do with my father’s murder?’ James said in a small voice.

‘Oh, James. You must think we are being very heartless. We ought not to be facetious talking about murder . . .’ Verity checked herself.

‘I don’t mind. I want to help if I can. You see,’ he went on bravely, looking at Edward, ‘if you solve Mr Westmacott’s murder, I think you will find out who killed my father.’

‘You know, James, I think you are right,’ Edward said, patting him on the shoulder. ‘Tomorrow, I am going to have another talk to the people who worked with your father and Mr Westmacott. Pride says they have nothing more to tell – that they know nothing – but I don’t believe it. I think he hasn’t asked the right questions.’

‘I hope you do find out something,’ James said, looking very pale, ‘because I think Chief Inspector Pride believes I killed my father. It looks bad, doesn’t it? I gave him cigarettes just before he died of nicotine poisoning. I had quarrelled with him. I was the last person to see him alive. But for all that,’ he looked around him as if wanting to impress a jury, ‘I didn’t kill him. I loved him and I would give anything to have him back.’