Farthing (11 page)

“If you read that letter, darling, which you’re welcome to, you’d see that Hugh and I talked about some things men don’t usually talk about with their sisters,” I said.

David went absolutely rigid. “You know that?” he said.

“I know, and it doesn’t bother me at all,” I said, and decided that whatever it sounded like I was going to

use our terms rather than the ugly ones. “Hugh knew that you were like him, Macedonian rather than

Athenian.”

Surprisingly, that made David laugh. “I know that whenever you start burbling absolute nonsense that you’re really saying something very profound, but what on earth does that mean?”

“Alexander the Great was Macedonian,” I said. “He loved Hephaistion, but he also got married twice and had a son. Plato was Athenian, and he thought love could only possibly be between boys. Then there are Romans, who think it can only be between men and women and are sometimes very down on anything Greek at all. Hugh thought most men were Macedonians pretending to be Romans, and a few really were Romans and a few really were Athenians. If you’d been an Athenian you wouldn’t have wanted me.”

“You’re quite extraordinary,” David said. “And you’ve known this all this time and never mentioned it?”

“People often don’t like to talk about it,” I said. “I once shocked Eddie Cheriton almost out of her wits by asking if Tibs was Athenian.”

“You can take it from me that Tibs is as Athenian as… as Pericles,” David said. He was looking at me in an absolutely bemused way. “So you knew all along that Hugh and I were lovers and thought it didn’t matter?”

“I knew it mattered a great deal,” I contradicted. “I knew you were in love—I told you, Hugh wrote to me about it. He talked about what you just talked about, that kind of male love you get when you’re saving each other’s lives, and the terrific friendship there was in the Squadron, and the special love you two had for each other. I wrote back that it must be like the Sacred Band, but I don’t think he ever got that letter.”

“He got it the morning he died,” David said, and now tears were spilling down his cheeks. “It
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was in the pocket of his flying jacket when he burned up. We always used to get the post at breakfast in the

Squadron, and he looked so pleased reading it that morning that some of the fellows were teasing him that it was from a girlfriend, and he said no, it was from his sister, and then there was a flap so he slipped it inside his jacket and we went out to the planes.”

I was crying now; we both were. It was eight years ago, but it felt as if it had just happened. I could picture poor old Hugh putting the letter inside his jacket and going off to fight, dying knowing I thought it was like the Sacred Band.

“But how could you marry me and not tell me you knew all this?” David asked, after a little while.

“You never mentioned it either,” I said. “And Hugh was dead, a long time before I met you. If he’d still been alive it would have been different. I suppose I was a tiny bit jealous that you’d loved someone else before you loved me, but it helped that it was Hugh, whom I loved too, and that it wasn’t a woman. I

know I can believe you when you say that I’m the first woman you ever loved.”

“I wish Hugh had told me he told you,” David said. “But then I suppose I’d have been afraid to talk to you.”

“That ghastly concert,” I said. We smiled at each other, remembering.

It was a charity concert to raise money for rebuilding London houses that had been flattened in the Blitz. I

don’t know why they’d suddenly thought of doing this in 1947 when they’d been flattened in 1940, or maybe they’d been doing it all along and I hadn’t noticed. David was there with his mother because his

father was a big donor and had been given tickets he didn’t want to use, but his mother had wanted to go. I was there with Billy because Eddie was performing, playing the cello in the first half. Terrible screeching— I’d be amazed if it persuaded anyone to give anything. But she was also playing a duet in the second half so we couldn’t leave at half-time, and there was a kind of bun fight, trestle tables set up and lemonade and cakes at only ten times the price you’d pay for them at a Joe Lyons, but all in a good cause. I was bored rigid, and also parched. I sent Billy into the fray to get me a drink, and he came back with the drink and also with David.

I was bored, bored, bored, and here was someone really different. I liked his looks. Yes, he was obviously Jewish, but he was also obviously gorgeous, in a dark handsome way. I knew at once when I

heard the name. “Would that be Flight Lieutenant David Kahn?” I asked.

“Not any more,” David said, and smiled meltingly at me. “But would you be Hugh Eversley’s little sister?”

There and then we made a date, though we didn’t call it that. I insisted he call on me to talk about Hugh, and when he said he couldn’t call on a young lady, I invited him along to a party Mummy was having the next week. Billy was horrified. When David had gone off to take lemonade to his mother he started hissing in my ear. “Can’t you tell the fellow’s Jewish? You can’t possibly mean to know him, Lucy.”

“You seem to know him,” I said.

“I’ve had business dealing with him, as anyone might. I don’t know him socially!”

“You introduced him to me—that’s knowing him socially,” I said, nastily. “Besides, he was in the RAF

with Hugh. I think it’s nonsensical to make social distinctions that exclude someone who risked his life for his country.”

I didn’t persuade Billy, but I enjoyed shocking him. Daddy accused me of using David against my family, the world they made and forced me to live in. At the beginning, that was half of what
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I wanted; the other half was to talk about Hugh. I didn’t fall in love with David until the party when we really did talk, though he says he fell in love with me that first minute at the concert, seeing me there among all the others.

“You do know it’s illegal,” David said now, bringing me back to the present.

“What? Oh, being Macedonian? Yes, I know. It’s a crazy law; they never prosecute.”

“They do sometimes. They do if they want to get someone for something else. They keep the laws on the books as a way of controlling people, making sure everyone does what society wants. So they’d never prosecute Tibs, though he all but openly sleeps with his stableboys. Billy will marry, and Billy, or his son, will inherit the title. If there wasn’t any Billy, if they had to force Tibs to marry and produce a son, they could use the laws to threaten him—we could put you in prison for this, they’d say.”

“I won’t tell anyone,” I said, giving him the reassurance that all this was really asking for. “I haven’t told anyone all this time, after all.”

“It’s something a man needs to keep very quiet if he has enemies,” David said. “And all Jewish people have enemies.”

That reminded me of something. “Would you say Mark Normanby is Macedonian or Athenian?” I

asked.

“He’s married,” David said. “Macedonian.”

“But they don’t have any children. I’d always assumed that too, because really I’ve always thought he’s quite attractive. It’s just something Angela said yesterday and Daphne’s reaction.”

“Angela accused Mark of being Athenian?” David said, astonished. “Is this the kind of thing women talk about when they’re alone?”

“Not usually, but they were being really vile to each other,” I said. “Probably just bitchiness.”

I was going to go on and explain what they’d said, but there was a knock on the door.

Jeffrey was there. “If it isn’t an interruption, madam, Inspector Yately would like to have another word with Mr. Kahn.”

“He’ll be down presently,” I said.

I hugged David hard, straightened his tie, and sent him off to the police, which felt rather more like sending him off to the middle of the Colosseum with the lions than I would have liked.

10

On top was a note from Sergeant Stebbings, the phlegmatic desk man at the Yard.

“Aren’t you playing in exalted company! This seems to be most of what you’ve asked for. We’re missing reports on a couple of the less well-known guests, which we’ll get after in the morning and send down to you. I thought it was better to let this catch the last post tonight. Let me know if we can do anything else for you.”

Carmichael sorted through the documents underneath. Enough to be getting on with, definitely enough to be getting on with. Before he had glanced at more than half the pile, he noticed the thick bond and unusual length of legal paper and dragged that one out.

“The Last Will and Testament of Sir James Martin Thirkie of Thirkie, Bart,” he read. “Prepared by

Gillibrand and Stubbs.” It was the solicitor’s copy, probably their spare copy, knowing Gillibrand and

Stubbs, a firm who behaved as if it were still 1810. He was surprised they’d deigned to draw up the will of a mere baronet.

The will was surprising. It had been drawn up just after Sir James’s marriage, and was dated August 6, 1945. The ancestral home of Thirkie, in Yorkshire; Campion Hall, in Monmouthshire on the Welsh border; Thirkie House in Knightsbridge; some other property, named and listed; and all he died possessed but ten thousand pounds, went to “Captain Oliver Sinclair Thirkie,
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address care of Whites

Club, St. James’s Street.” Ten thousand pounds went to “Angela, Lady Thirkie, unless she should provide an heir, as by the terms of our marriage settlement.” Should she provide an heir, he got everything, with Angela as sole guardian in his minority. The marriage settlement had been thoughtfully appended, so Carmichael was able to see that “Angela, nee Dittany” had given up control of her own property on marriage, that she would get it back, in addition to the ten thousand pounds, as a widow. If the marriage was dissolved in any other circumstances… He skimmed over the provisions—nothing at all for her if she were divorced, a big loss for him if he were. The usual stuff in fact, except for the stuff about the heir. Lady Thirkie must be hoping rather vehemently that the baby she was expecting was a boy, he thought. He wondered if she would smuggle in a boy if it happened to be a girl, as some Queen of France was said to have done.

That settled the question of who benefited by his death. She did if she had a boy; if not, she did to some extent and his cousin Captain Thirkie inherited. Carmichael scribbled a note to investigate Captain

Thirkie. He wondered if Sir James would have changed the will had he lived. As it was, if the child was a

daughter she would be portionless. Surely that would have occurred to one or the other of them now that

Lady Thirkie was pregnant? “If you die and it’s a girl, she’ll have nothing,” Lady Thirkie might have said.

What would he have answered? “By Jove, yes, I’d better get onto the solicitor chappies.” Or would he never have spared it a thought? He wasn’t an old man, or sick, to worry about dying.

Carmichael turned to a neatly typed sheet, Scotland Yard’s report on Sir James Martin Thirkie, Baronet.

“Born, 19 June 1909, Thirkie, West Yorkshire.”

If he’d lived, he would have been forty in six weeks. Carmichael was surprised he was so young.

He’d have guessed from five to ten years older, from the corpse, and from the man’s standing in the country.

“Parents, Sir Robert Martin Thirkie, Bart, 1880-1917; Lady Letitia Harriet Thirkie, nee Francis, 1885—.”

Father killed in the trenches, mother still alive, though she must be getting on. He did a quick calculation.

Sixty-four. She’d have seen it in the papers, if nobody had thought to tell her. It would be a terrible shock.

“Siblings, one, deed., Matthew Thirkie, 1907-39.”

Older brother killed right at the start of the second war. Presumably Captain Thirkie was the son of Sir

Robert’s brother.

“Married (1) 1932, Lady Olivia Jane Larkin, 1914-40. No issue.

Nobody could call them a fortunate family.

“Married (2) 1945, Angela Mary Dittany, 1924-. No issue.”

She was ten years exactly younger than his first wife, and fifteen years younger than him. No issue wasn’t precisely right; issue pending, more like.

“Educated, St. Crispin Preparatory School, 1916-22, Eton 1922-28, Magdalene College, Cambridge, 1928-31.”

About what he’d have expected. Sent away to school at seven, poor blighter, and his father killed the year after.

“Degree: B.A., Second Class Honours in Mathematics, 1931. M.A., (Cantab), 1935. College
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rowing blue.”

Maths, eh? An unusual choice for someone of his background. A predisposition in that direction? But second class, not first. And he rowed for his college?

“Elected Conservative MP for Monmouthshire, by-election 1932.”

Of course, while his brother lived he’d have been capable of being elected to the Commons.

“Re-elected in General Election of 1935. Served in ChamberIain’s National Government as Junior

Health Minister, and later as a deputy to the Foreign Secretary. In November 1939, on the death of his brother, he ascended to the Lords, where he became Foreign Spokesman for the Chamberlain and later the Churchill Governments. In May 1941, he dealt with the Hess Mission, and went back with Hess to

Berlin, returning on June 1 with negotiated peace terms that ended the war. He became Foreign Secretary after the 1942 ‘Victory’ election, in which capacity he served until the 1946 election.

From

1946—47 during the Charlton government he was Shadow Foreign Secretary. Since the 1947

election he has served as Minister for Education.”

Yes, yes. Carmichael skimmed over the paragraph. He knew all that.

“Closest political associates the ‘Farthing Set,” Lord and Lady Eversley, the Earl of Hampshire, Mark

Normanby MP. Political enemy: Sir Winston Churchill, who frequently abuses him in conversation, calling him a traitor. Thirkie’s relations with Eden and other leading figures in his own party are occasionally stormy but generally amicable. Thirkie is widely respected for his noted personal integrity.“

Churchill couldn’t have killed him. He wasn’t here.