The Second-last Woman in England (12 page)

Anne huffed moodily but did as she was told.

Downstairs in the garden the young man turned towards Mrs Wallis and took her hand.

A moment later Jean left the bedroom and went quickly down two flights of stairs to the hallway. She opened the address book and picked up the telephone, but it was not Doctor Rolley’s number that she dialled.

Chapter Seven

OCTOBER 1952

At the newly relocated offices of Empire and Colonial Shipping Lines off Chancery Lane, Jeremy Rocastle’s office was still cordoned off. Yellow incident tape, of the variety one had got used to during the war, marked off an area around the doorway of his now vacant office. One expected such a thing around a bombsite filled with rubble and debris but here in the office, amid the soft olive-green carpet and the red leather armchairs and the forbidding portraits of former directors, it was incongruous. It was indecent.

Cecil averted his eyes from the sealed office door and its distasteful yellow tape.

In the first week following Rocastle’s disappearance Scotland Yard had gone through the building like a bout of influenza and statements had been taken from everyone from Sir Maurice himself down to the fluctuating team of Jamaican women who nightly cleaned the offices.

Cecil himself had been among the first to make his statement: Rocastle had worked in his department. He had known the man for a little over a year. He had trusted Rocastle, naturally. The man had dined at his house. He had met Rocastle’s wife. On the evening in question Cecil had noticed nothing unusual. He had left the office at around 6 pm and had not seen Rocastle since.

It was a simple and truthful statement of fact. No one had asked: did Rocastle ever behave suspiciously? Did he ever do anything to make you question his honesty? Had you ever resolved to report his actions to a fellow director and then failed to do so?

Cecil had signed the statement and it had been taken away in a cardboard box along with all the others.

The investigation had continued, photographs had been taken, descriptions had been circulated, doorknobs, desks and the company safe had been coated in powder and dusted for fingerprints. Why? What was the point? They all knew who had perpetrated the crime.

The share price had dropped, of course. It was only to be expected. Foolish to suppose a story like this would remain out of the press for long, and the newspapers had had a field day. And they hadn’t spared Rocastle: old Etonian, Cambridge man, a trusted position in a highly respected firm, a respectable wife. (‘Respectable’! That was the word the newspapers used when someone’s family origins were rather obscure. Poor Mrs Rocastle.) Any whiff of scandal was eagerly pounced upon. At least there was no question anyone else was involved; that anyone else in the firm had even the slightest idea what was going on.

Cecil had stayed in his office each evening late into the night. If one worked extra hard, if one could prove one’s loyalty to the firm, to one’s colleagues, by excelling, by working through the night if need be—Lord knows, he had done it often enough during the war—if one could just do that, night after night—

But he didn’t work. He simply sat and went over it all in his head, and in the end he got no work done at all. Night after night. And in the mornings Miss James looked at him oddly and gave timid smiles and said nothing.

And then it had suddenly stopped. The police had packed up and gone. Now, two weeks later, all that remained was the yellow incident tape. Had the police simply forgotten to remove it? He must remember to get Miss James to telephone them.

Rocastle’s name had been removed from his office door. There were four small holes where his name plate had been unscrewed. Cecil had passed this very door that Monday morning in August on his way to a hastily arranged meeting with Standforth. But one could not simply destroy another man’s career without at least warning him; without at least giving the fellow a chance to explain himself, to prepare some sort of defence. He had gone back and knocked on Rocastle’s door—

‘Morning, Wallis.’

Cecil started as McAnley Stanforth, the senior director and Sir Maurice’s right-hand man, passed him in the corridor.

‘Morning, Standforth.’

‘Still trying to come to terms with our black sheep, are you?’ Standforth said, nodding towards the cordoned office.

Cecil forced a smile.

‘Yes. Something like that.

‘Well, I shouldn’t worry too much about it, old man. Someone like that, a rotten apple if you like, well, they’re bad through and through. Chaps like you and I can’t imagine it. Makes it hard for us to spot them.’

‘Yes, no doubt you’re right,’ Cecil agreed, but as he watched Standforth stride down the corridor and disappear into his office, he thought: but I
did
spot it. And I knocked on this door and I confronted the man.

Rocastle had been sitting at his desk when Cecil had entered, sipping a cup of tea and reading the
Daily Mail
. Well, that ought to have sounded warning bells straight away. The
Daily Mail
! At Empire and Colonial! Rocastle had looked up calmly enough, almost cheerfully, and there had been nothing in his face to indicate guilt. Nothing to even suggest he recalled the conversation he and Cecil had had the previous Friday about the erroneous entries in the wages ledger.

Cecil had felt a moment of disquiet. Had he made a mistake? Was he about to make an even bigger mistake and, in the process, jeopardise this young man’s career?

But there had been a principle at stake.

‘Rocastle, I have given the incident we discussed on Friday a great deal of thought,’ he had announced, ‘and I feel it incumbent upon me to advise you that I have resolved to report it to Standforth.’

He had seen the slightest flicker of something—fear? surprise?—pass across Rocastle’s face, but otherwise the fellow had remained remarkably cool. Cecil had pressed on.

‘An error has been made—whether purposely or by accident—and it needs to be reported. And as Standforth is director of finance, he needs to be advised. It is, I am sure you understand, nothing more than a precaution. There can be no question of fraud. Everything must be out in the open.’

As he had outlined this course of action Cecil had had every intention of carrying it out. And yet he had not done so.

‘Oh, Mr Wallis. Mr Sayid telephoned while you were out. I took down his number. He’s staying at the Ritz and asks that you telephone him there this afternoon.’

Cecil looked up to see Miss James rising from her station, a modest teak desk outside his own office, her shorthand pad and her pencil stub poised to record his reply.

And here was the antidote, he realised; here was the cure to the yellow incident tape and the unsteady share price and the unwelcome boots of Scotland Yard in the corridors and the rotten apples like Rocastle: Miss James. Steady, reliable, faithful secretary of more than fifteen years standing, still manning her station with that same effortless determination, that stalwart and flawless professionalism, that utter dependability. Why didn’t the blasted newspapers ever report that?

‘Thank you, Miss James,’ he replied. And then because he could think of nothing to add he smiled.

Miss James blushed a deep red and sat down still flourishing her pad and pencil as though she didn’t quite know what to do with them.

Cecil stepped into his office and closed the door, pausing to draw breath. The sense of calm order that his office provided had been a steady comfort over the years but in the past two weeks it had become almost a craving. The office door was shut and Miss James was a formidable barrier against the world and the worst that it could throw at him.

He crossed the office and settled himself in the large leather chair at his desk. It was a rosewood partner’s desk, Victorian, though not as old as the desk in his study. This was a functional desk, a daily desk. The rich rust-brown rosewood shone pleasantly in the late October sunlight. The telephone, an ink-well, the in- and out-trays and a large leather writing pad were precisely positioned. That morning’s
Times
was the only thing that spoilt the order. Nothing about the Rocastle affair in it, thank God. (How had it got to the point where he viewed his morning paper with a sinking feeling that did not abate until he had passed the editorial and letters pages?) Today all there had been was a story on Peter Goodfellow resigning from the Ministry, which was surprising—well, it seemed to have surprised Harriet, at any rate, who had rushed off to telephone Valerie for the gossip—but it was not a story that was going to affect the firm’s share price. He picked up the
Times
and deposited it in the bin.

Photographs of the fleet lined his office: the
Tostig
which had made the run to New York in five days in 1910; the
Harold
which had shipped troops to Cape Town during the Boer War; the
Ethulwulf
, which had done the Peninsular mail run at the turn of the century and was now in dry dock at Plymouth awaiting break up; and the
Alfred
and the
Eadred
, which had been sunk by enemy action in the North Atlantic in ’41 and ’43. Above his head was the
Swane
, flagship of the Empire and Colonial fleet, taken by a
New York Times
photographer at the climax of that final record-breaking crossing in ’38. Four days, one hour and eight minutes! It had been thrilling—even Harriet had been caught up in the excitement of the moment.

Then the following month the
Queen Mary
had done it in three days and twenty hours.

He frowned. It seemed odd now to imagine Harriet excited. Perhaps his own excitement had carried them both along. And now, looking back, even his own excitement seemed to belong to another person.

It had not been Harriet’s first Atlantic crossing, of course. More than a year before the
Swane
’s triumph she had visited New York to stay with an aunt and uncle, a voyage that had ended with the King’s abdication and Harriet’s arrival at his office one cold morning in December ’36, where she had sat before this very desk in a cherry-red coat and hat.

It had been Miss James’s predecessor, the elderly Miss Clough, who had knocked on his office door—the old office, then, over at Moorgate—and he had started up from this desk feeling guilty because he had been staring at the wall for the last half hour trying to take in the news from the Palace.

‘There’s a Miss Paget to see you,’ Miss Clough had calmly announced, standing in the doorway, so that for a brief second or two one could believe that all was right with the world and one’s King had not just abdicated. But two red patches stood out on Miss Clough’s cheeks.

Miss Paget? Oh dear Lord, yes.

‘Thank you, Miss Clough. Please show her in.’

Duty called and one must put the abdication to one side, for this particular interview was going to be tricky.

This Miss Paget, even now waiting outside his office, had just returned from New York aboard the
Swane
, which had docked the previous evening. According to Miss Clough, she had been travelling with her elderly father and unfortunately the father had died about two days out from Southampton. Heart failure, a natural death, but any death on board was a diplomatic and bureaucratic nightmare. Empire and Colonial Lines definitely frowned upon it. But sometimes it could not be avoided. And today was just such a day—and what a day to be dealing with such matters!