Troubled Midnight (21 page)

“Now Julia is the one for company. Don’t know if she’s just blessed with a lot of friends, but they never stop. Round the clock, young women, mostly calling on her all times of the day or night. Don’t know what she’s up to, but money’s involved somewhere.”

Curry grunted and Suzie said, “In that area she might be involved in anything. Even S-E-X.” She spelled.

“Interesting really,” Elsie Partridge continued. “Interesting that nobody seemed to talk about the woman who died with him. Few people knew.”

“They knew at Brize Norton,” Curry said.

“And the two who killed them knew. May have known for some time.” Suzie nodded and pulled down the corners of her mouth.

“So, what you want us to do?” Curry asked.

Elsie gave a heavy sigh. “Okay. I want you to visit both women.” His voice seemed to change down like someone shifting gears in a car. “Not in any official capacity, mind you. Take a bit of getting used to, Suzie. No need to go in showing Warrant Cards, that sort of thing. Go in as old friends of Tim Weaving. Curry knows the form, so he’ll tell you how to do it. Just paying a visit of condolence, eh? What?”

“But what d’you really want us to do?” Curry asked.

“Been thinking about that.” Once more his voice changed down. “I’ll tell you what I think…” and he talked for around fifteen minutes, telling them, in some detail, how they should go about the visits. He used the word guile often, and also said it would be like taking sweets from a baby; this way they would never know they were being interrogated.

When he had finished talking, Elsie Partridge did one last – and to Suzie, strange – thing. He got to his feet, tapped his pockets, nodded towards the organ in the middle of the room. “How about a hymn? Get the blood going. Good idea?”

“Of course, boss.” Curry rose bringing a bewildered Suzie with him. Elsie seated himself at the organ and pumped the foot pedals. “How about ‘Fight the Good Fight’,” he said and struck a chord, then launched into:

Fight the good fight with all thy might,

Christ is thy strength and Christ thy right;

Lay hold on life, and it shall be

Thy joy and crown eternally.

By the time they reached the last verse Suzie was singing along as lustily as the two men.

“Does he often do that, warble a hymn?” She asked Curry as they drove towards Knightsbridge. Elsie had made a telephone call and Curry’s Vauxhall Ten was replaced with another of the same make, dark blue this time.

“Known for it,” Curry sashayed through the light traffic. “Embarrassing sometimes if you’ve got some hairy great knuckle dragger like Ed in tow. Come to think of it, Ed quite likes the odd hymn. Fight the good fight would be a favourite with him.”

“Like being back at school,” Suzie squinted at him.

“Hardly,” he stared ahead.

They reached Harrods and turned left. “Have you thought,” Suzie said, “if you’re right about Colonel Weaving having been killed by one of the officers from the Glider Pilot Regiment, whoever it is will be sitting in Norfolk House, COSSAC HQ, now, this minute listening to the Classified stuff?”

“I’ve thought of nothing else since we left Ivor Place.” A long pause followed, then, “I ever tell you about the ARP warden who went to a house of ill repute to complain about a blackout infringement? Back in 1940?”

Suzie shook her head knowing something pretty terrible was coming.

“Well, the old Mother Judge came to the door and asked what was wrong. The ARP man says, ‘you’ve got a chink in the second floor front bedroom.’ ‘You’re wrong,’ says the Mother Judge. ‘He’s a Japanese gentleman.’”

Chapter Fourteen

SHE WAS A little woman, small-boned, neat but without the gloss you would expect from someone as independently wealthy as her. When she opened the door to them Suzie was surprised, thought she’d have servants to do things like that, open doors, wait at table, cook grand meals. She knew people had lost their maids, cooks and butlers because of the war but never quite believed this applied to the very wealthy, and Ann Tooks was
very
wealthy, two or three million. Curry had said, “It all came from her grandfather who invented something commonplace that, once invented, became indispensable in every home. Something like the seal on certain kinds of jars or bottles, maybe it was the doormat. Who cares? She had two brothers and the cash came down through their father. When he died it was split into three equal portions and bingo, rich lady.”

“We’re friends of Tim Weaving’s,” Curry said. “We know you were close to him, and it seemed the right thing to do, drop in and see you. We were in this part of London so thought we’d come.”

“But, if it’s inconvenient…” Suzie began, just as they’d rehearsed it.

“No … No, please come in,” Her face said she didn’t really want to see them, and her manner, gestures, body language said go away, but they took no notice, went in just the same.

“Can I get you anything? Cup of tea? Coffee? Though I’ve not got any decent coffee…”

“We’re fine Miss Tooks,” and as he said it realised that her name allowed for some of his quirky humour: Miss Tooks.
The greatest mistook of my life, was saying goodbye to you.
He laughed inside, solemn look outside.

“My friends call me Annie.”

“Annie,” Curry tried it on for size.

“Then how are you, Annie?” Suzie asked as they entered the drawing room. Very nice, she thought. Good furniture, modern, deep leather chairs and a long matching buttoned Chesterfield; predominantly green décor, green leather on the chairs and the Chesterfield. The walls papered in an exquisite light green paper with a discrete contrasting design, two shades of green, blending well. Some jade on the mantelpiece, and a couple of large green glass ashtrays on the side tables. Good pictures, four of them, though Suzie couldn’t have named the artists. Though she did note they were chosen for subject, impressions of woods and wide meadows, hint of a windmill on the skyline: Norfolk, she thought.

It wasn’t until they were actually in the room that Curry started to introduce himself and Suzie. They shook hands and Annie Tooks said how nice it was of them to come, she was grateful. She was lying, that was plain by her manner, the way she spoke and the fact that she was holding her hands crossed in front of her, over her breasts, classic defensive movement.

Then she came clean.

“I think I should tell you that I fell out with Tim. Much earlier this year. In the spring. Irreparable. I’m still upset by the news of course, naturally, though I hadn’t even seen him or spoken to him since March, the bastard. He was a bit of a rat with the ladies. Though I wouldn’t have wished his kind of death on a rat.”

“How did he end? How was he killed?” Suzie asked, waiting. “We haven’t been able to find out.” A cop’s question she had learned from a sergeant when she was on the beat. They had gone one day to break the news of a close relative’s death to a well-known local man and the sergeant had told her she was the one who had to do it. She had obviously been nervous and hesitant, so when she told the man to sit down he immediately said, “It’s alright. I know you’ve come to tell me that my aunt has died.”

Without a pause the sergeant had said, “How do you know that?” concerned that this may not be a natural death. As it happened, a friend of his aunt had just telephoned him with the news, but Suzie had never forgotten the speed with which the sergeant had asked the question and she had learned from it.

Now in the Hands Place flat, Annie Tooks said, “Oh, I don’t know the details, but he was murdered. That’s enough isn’t it? Murdered with a woman. I should imagine some jealous husband … Didn’t the papers say she was married to someone who’d been awarded the Victoria Cross?”

“Yes, but…” Suzie began.

Curry cut in, “Look, if there’s anything we can do…”

Annie Tooks lifted her head and it was clear she was beginning to cry, not weeping with sorrow, angry tears now brimming in her eyes. “No, really…”

“I mean, his parents. We’re in touch with his parents.”

“I never met his parents,” she said coldly, all but spat, the anger showing now in flushed patches on her cheeks and tears starting to run down, little deltas forming on her skin. “I was supposed to meet them. Several times. We were to announce our engagement.…” Gulping air now. “But it never happened. He never got around to it. It was always just over the horizon…”

“I’m sorry,” Curry flapped his arms as though saying, ‘what could I do’ and Suzie moved over and put an arm around the woman. One way or another she’d had a lot of practise comforting people.

Now, close to Annie Tooks, Suzie saw that the corduroy skirt she wore was an expensive garment, tailored, the material a crushed raspberry colour, the twin-set of a similar shade, yet the clothes looked dowdy on her and Suzie realised they were uncared for, creased, dirty, stained. She also wore no make-up and her hair needed attention, possibly some more of whatever she used to turn it into the light golden colour. Clothes were difficult enough these days with rationing, ‘to provide a fair distribution of available supplies’ though most women she knew tried to keep what they already had, mainly pre-war garments, in good, and smart, condition. Suzie remembered when clothes rationing had come in, over the Whit weekend of 1941. The plan had been kept so secret – to avoid panic buying – that, when the ration was announced as sixty-six coupons worth a year, there were no coupons available and clothes shops initially took margarine coupons instead.

Harrods advertised that now clothes were on the ration a sewing machine was almost as good a weapon as a spade. But by now, Christmas 1943, it had become increasingly difficult to look bandbox smart. Most people were either in uniform or shabbily dressed. Annie was more than shabby and Suzie remembered her mother saying of a woman who’d started to look down at heel, ‘that woman’s letting herself go’. At the time she’d thought that a strange expression. Now looking at Annie Tooks she saw how apt it was.

Annie wept at full bore now, while Curry was trying to talk her down from fast approaching hysteria.

“Annie, listen to me,” Curry managing the paradox of firm and gentle. “We’ve only just met. You need to talk, Annie. Talk to us. Come on now, it’ll do you good…”

“Problem shared…” Suzie added.

Slowly the raging fury subsided and was reduced to quiet sobs. “I’m … I’m crying … for him…” she managed. “I loved him so much.”

Oh Lord, Suzie thought, how melodramatic are we going to get?

“He let you down?” Curry asked, bringing about a fresh tide of howling tears.

You can discover much by guile,
Elsie had counselled.

“Talk about it,” Suzie added. “Spill it out, Annie.”
Oh God, I feel like someone in a bad film,
‘Spill it out, Annie’. In her head she heard it with an American accent.

But Annie did. Spilled it out: how Tim Weaving had made the sun shine every day, how he’d asked her to marry him and she, trusting, had felt that the offer having been accepted, immediately opened the bedroom door.

“I gave him everything … Did everything he wanted … Made myself available in every possible way.” The tears again drizzled, a rallentando of sobs, degenerating to lento.

Bloody hell,
Suzie said silently,
is this going to get even more melodramatic?
Her eyes caught Curry’s and she had to look away.

“Let it all out, Annie,” Suzie muttered, still with her arm around the woman, fingers clawed about her shoulder. “Tell it all.”

“I suppose I fall in love too easily,” she said.

Jeeroosaalem. How old is this woman? I fall in love too easily. Crikey.

“I met Tim Weaving at the house of a friend: Sylvia Picket, girl I was at school with; you can imagine the nicknames. She was in the middle of a little run around with one of Tim’s officers.”

“Which one?” Curry asked, as though it didn’t matter a damn to him.

“Wilson Sharp. Captain Sharp.”

“Sure,” Curry smiled.

The saturnine young captain. Suzie kicked it around in her head. Countryman, walked loosely, behaved as he would strolling down a village street. She thought of him as tough, as though he had confidence enough for the whole regiment. He was tall, tanned face, dark-hair, floppy dark hair. Sharp had given Tommy a hard time about the morals of men and of war.

“Wilson Sharp,” she said aloud. “Wouldn’t like to get on the wrong side of old Wilson Sharp on a dark night.”

Annie stopped crying, took a long sniff of air through her nose. “No. No you wouldn’t. Some civvies tried to pick up Sylvia in a pub, Lord Nelson out near Wantage. Young civilian chaps, working locally I think. Wilson Sharp saw them off. Went for them like a bloody bulldog. Sylvia told me they turned and fled. Wouldn’t have minded Wilson for myself really.”

“But you had Tim, Colonel Tim Weaving.”

“For a while. ‘Till he found someone else and didn’t even tell me … Julia … Sylvia and Wilson are engaged and I hear it’s serious. Wants to marry her quickly it seems.”

“Richardson,” Suzie added. “Julia Richardson.”

“That’s the girl.” Pause. Could have heard a bomb drop in the silence, or a pin for that matter. “I’m sorry.” She relaxed, body sagging, then another intake of air through the nose, the back of her hand across her eyes, getting rid of the tears. “I’m so sorry … I think I’ve had a stupid bit of the hystericals…”

“He treated you badly,” Curry told her.

Suzie said, “You’re entitled to the Harry hysteriers.” Everyone had started to use the military affectation of Harry in front of words and ’ers on the subject – Harry crashers, Harry brokers. Her widowed brother-in-law, Vernon Fox now a Royal Marine Commando Lieutenant had told her that when he was at Deal they had an imaginary Marine Harry Flakers because they were all tired out at the end of a strenuous day.

“Let me get us some tea,” Annie stood up, eyes red-ringed and cheeks stained; but now she was invested with a terrible calm. They followed her through the hall into her small kitchen knowing that sudden calm in people prone to severe emotional fits was not a good sign. Sometimes an unusually tranquil mood following high drama signified deeper problems.