‘Well?’ said Stratton. The top of Rogers’ head barely reached his chin, and when he looked up, Stratton’s impression was of a small boy caught with an apple up his jumper. ‘I see what you mean, Inspector,’ Rogers said, easing his collar with a nervous finger. ‘It could have been very embarrassing. But really, I had no idea at all . . .’
‘I understand,’ said Stratton, paternally. ‘Perhaps it’s best to say no more about it.’
‘I quite agree.’ Rogers nodded enthusiastically. ‘You’re absolutely right.’
‘PC Ballard is just having a word with the gentlemen from the shop, and I’m sure that once he’s explained matters it’ll all be plain sailing, and you’ll be free to go about your business.’
‘Well, that is good news. I’m very grateful to you, sir, for sorting it out.’
Noting the ‘sir’, Stratton thought he might as well take a flyer. ‘There’s nothing else you’d like to tell me, is there, while we’re waiting? Of course,’ he added, ‘I’m sure the gentlemen from the shop will be understanding, but there’s always a risk that they’ll decide to press charges, and it may not be possible to dissuade them.’ He stared intently at Rogers, who swallowed several times.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘Now that you mention it, I did remember something, after you came to see me.’
‘What was that?’
‘Those chaps you were asking about, the ones who came to see Joe Vincent. I did see someone. I was,’ - he cleared his throat - ‘mistaken, when I said I was out. That was a different evening entirely. It only came back to me after you’d gone.’
Stratton raised his eyebrows.
‘I thought of it a couple of days later,’ said Rogers, ‘Funny thing, memory.’
‘Yes, isn’t it? Did you let them in?’
Rogers nodded. ‘There were two of them. I can’t say I got a good look, but one was a tall man, wearing a suit if I remember rightly, and there was a younger one with him.’
‘Can you remember anything else?’
‘The younger one was shorter, medium height, I’d say. Dark hair, brown I think, not black. No hat - the older man had one. I’m pretty sure the young one was wearing a suit as well, but I can’t really recall. Something dark, anyway.’
‘What time was that?’
‘About nine o’clock, I think.’
So the men had been there for over two hours. ‘Did you hear any noise coming from upstairs after that?’ Stratton asked.
‘I don’t remember anything. A couple of bumps, perhaps. I must have thought it was the men coming back downstairs. I could have told them Joe wouldn’t be there.’
‘Why didn’t you?’
Rogers looked nonplussed. ‘I don’t know. I suppose I thought they might want to leave a note or something.’ Or you didn’t like the look of them, thought Stratton.
‘Had you seen them before?’ he asked.
‘No, never.’
‘Well,’ said Stratton, ‘it’s better than nothing. But,’ he continued, severely, ‘it would have been a lot more help if you’d remembered all this when I asked you.’
Rogers looked crestfallen. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘it slipped my mind. I mean, it didn’t seem very important, and I didn’t think. I suppose I just thought they were friends of Joe’s, and I forgot about it.’
Like hell you did, thought Stratton. ‘Never mind,’ he said reassuringly, ‘I know now. But these little things . . . We do rely on the public to help us in our investigations, you know.’
Rogers beamed - he was back on the right side of the fence, helping the police, status restored. ‘Of course,’ he said, and then, emboldened, ‘Might they have had something to do with Miss Morgan?’
Stratton countered this question with one of his own: ‘Did you know Miss Morgan?’
Rogers, having been helped back on to the moral high ground once more, consolidated his position with a disapproving sniff. ‘I knew what she looked like, of course,’ he said. ‘And I’d heard her often enough. Singing, banging about . . . Joe’s a quiet lad, Inspector, considerate, but, to be honest, I’ve been on the point of complaining to Mrs Cope a few times, about the noise she made. Of course, she spent most of her evenings in the pub.’ The last word was invested with enormous disapproval.
‘Are you quite sure you didn’t hear anything?’ asked Stratton.
‘No. I was listening to the wireless.’
‘So you heard nothing?’ Rogers shook his head.
‘Did you hear Mr Stockley’s gramophone?’
‘I don’t think so. I don’t remember hearing it. Mr Vincent is all right, isn’t he? I haven’t seen him since . . . Not that I keep a look out but . . . nothing’s happened to him, has it?’
‘No,’ said Stratton, adding, in a voice that precluded further questions, ‘He’s gone away for a few days.’
‘Oh,’ said Rogers, with the air of one who’d just received privileged information. ‘To be honest,’ he added, ‘I never thought Miss Morgan was a good influence on him. Not that it wasn’t most regrettable . . . I was most surprised when I found out she’d been in films, but then I’m not a picturegoer myself.’
Stratton, feeling that nothing more was to be gained from Rogers, managed to get rid of him after repeated handshakes and assurances of gratitude and a lot of guff about nasty misunderstandings and distressing unpleasantness. He went off to find Arliss, reflecting as he did so that the morning hadn’t been entirely wasted, after all.
EIGHTEEN
Diana gazed at the empty birdcage behind Mrs Wright’s head and hoped she wouldn’t actually nod off before the old lady started to unburden herself. She’d been out late the night before, dining with members of the Right Club, and the low-ceilinged cottage parlour was stuffy and cramped. Photographs of Mrs Wright’s dead husband and her only son, killed in the Great War, covered every surface.
Diana sipped her tea, and waited. She’d come down on the train to investigate a rumour that the church tower was being used to house an enemy transmitter. Having inspected the tower and ascertained from the vicar that this couldn’t possibly be the case, she’d come to assure the source of the complaint that she had nothing to fear. This sort of thing was, as Apse had foretold, becoming pretty routine: in her first week’s work she’d travelled to Barnet, Woking and Aylesbury to convince fearful (or, in one case, simply dotty) elderly ladies that their neighbours weren’t consulting maps with evil intent or signalling to the Germans with lighted cigarettes, and that their foreign servants (a bewildered Portuguese couple) were not hatching plots to overthrow the country.
‘It’s the old church tower,’ said Mrs Wright. ‘It isn’t used any more, and nobody goes there, you see.’
‘I’ve spoken to the vicar, Mrs Wright, and he assures me that no-one has been up there. It isn’t safe.’
‘But I saw someone. He had a ladder.’
‘It was the verger, Mrs Wright. He was making some repairs. The tower is empty. We do appreciate your concern, but there’s really nothing to worry about.’
Mrs Wright leant forward and grasped Diana’s hand. ‘But there is, my dear. It’s not surprising you didn’t find anything - they can make these transmitters the size of a cigarette packet, and then they hide them between the bricks. I have proof.’
‘What sort of proof?’
‘Topsy.’
‘Topsy?’
Mrs Wright turned her head to look at the empty cage. ‘My canary. He died.’
‘I’m sorry. But I don’t see . . .’
The old lady patted her hand. ‘Of course you don’t, dear. I’ll show you.’ She rose from her chair, opened a drawer in the dresser, and produced a small bundle wrapped in a table napkin, which she placed in Diana’s lap. Realising what it must be, she tried not to flinch. ‘They killed him.’
‘Who killed him, Mrs Wright?’
‘With the transmitter.’ The old lady looked impatient. ‘The rays. They come over the cottage, from the machine in the tower. Canaries are sensitive to that sort of thing - that’s why they use them in coal mines, poor lambs.’
‘But they use them to detect gas. Carbon monoxide and methane and things like that.’
‘Exactly!’ Mrs Wright beamed as if she were a teacher and Diana a clever pupil. ‘That’s why Topsy died. Look!’
Diana, who’d been trying to avoid the sight of the package on her knees, gave a discreet sniff. It didn’t smell too bad . . . hoping that Topsy hadn’t been dead for very long, she took one corner of the material between a thumb and finger and tugged, gingerly. The material unrolled enough for her to see a stiff bundle of yellow feathers with pathetically extended claws. ‘You see?’ said Mrs Wright. ‘The rays killed him.’
‘I don’t think so,’ said Diana, gently. ‘Was he very old?’
Mrs Wright shook her head. ‘He was in the best of health. And then last week, he stopped singing, and I could see he wasn’t well at all. He was listless, and his eyes were dull, and he wouldn’t eat . . . and then he died.’
‘Perhaps it was a disease?’ suggested Diana.
Mrs Wright shook her head again. ‘He was fine.’
‘This room is quite hot, isn’t it? Perhaps he didn’t like it.’
‘Canaries need warmth. They come from hot places, you know.’
‘Yes, but . . .’ Diana was starting to feel desperate. ‘Topsy was an English canary, wasn’t he? I mean, he was born here. Perhaps . . .’ she tailed off.
‘I’m afraid there is only one explanation,’ said Mrs Wright, firmly.
‘What about the birdseed?’ asked Diana. ‘If the shortages have made it hard for the seed merchants to get hold of the right things - for the mixture - that might have affected him.’
Mrs Wright stopped shaking her head and looked thoughtful. ‘I suppose that is possible,’ she admitted. ‘The man in the shop did tell me they’d had some difficulties.’
‘I expect that’s it, then,’ said Diana, trying not to sound as relieved as she felt. ‘I really do think it’s the most likely explanation. Have you told him about Topsy?’
‘No. Perhaps I ought to have a word with him.’
‘I think that’s an excellent idea,’ said Diana.
Having succeeded in persuading Mrs Wright that it wasn’t necessary for her to take the canary’s corpse back with her for a post-mortem, Diana walked back to the station. After only a scratch breakfast and no lunch, she felt quite feeble with hunger and fortified herself as best she could on grey tea and an awful pie in the station buffet while waiting for the London train.
She secured a seat in a second-class carriage full of young WREN couriers talking about their boyfriends. It made her think of Claude - dangerous territory, this, like walking across a mined beach - but she gave herself up to it all the same, and thoroughly enjoyed it. Despite her good intentions, she’d been frantic when he hadn’t contacted her for three whole days after the débâcle in Trafalgar Square, and then pathetically relieved (although careful not to show it), when he’d telephoned her at Apse’s office - which obviously meant that he’d been keeping tabs on her movements - and asked her out to dinner. Afterwards, they’d gone to dance at the Kit-Kat Club in Regent Street. It had been Diana’s first visit, and she’d thought it rather louche, but great fun. Their goodnight kiss had made her tingle all over, and she’d gone home feeling light-headed with happiness, although the delirium was somewhat spoiled by a horrible sense of guilt about Guy. How is it possible, she asked herself, to feel elated and miserable at the same time? No one could hope to make sense of such a confusing conflict of emotions.
The sound of the WRENs’ giggles brought Diana out of her reverie. Admiring their uniforms, so much more flattering than those of the ATS, she listened to their chat, reflecting that none of them were married, yet they seemed to know far more about men than she did. This struck her as unfair, but then again, she had it all to discover - if she chose to, of course. Otherwise, the thought of staying married - and faithful to - Guy, and sharing only his bed was depressing. It wasn’t his fault - after all, he wasn’t a bad man - but the monotony of it, the sheer boredom, year after year, of having to school herself to be numb, not to want, not to have feelings . . . Someone should have warned me, she thought. Stopped me from getting married. Told me I was too young. But who? Her aunt had thought it a good match, which, seen at a distance, it was, and lots of her friends had been married at nineteen. That was the purpose of the season: the launch into society, the suitable husband. And anyway, she’d been so sure of her love for Guy that even if someone had told her, she wouldn’t have listened . . . A sudden and very intense physical memory of Claude’s thumb rubbing her nipple through the fabric of her dress made her turn towards the window, fearful that one of the girls might catch her blushing. There’s no point dwelling on any of this, she thought. I have a job to do. I must, must, must - she closed her eyes tight and willed the imaginary Claude to remove his hand - concentrate on the important things.
She entered Dolphin Square from the Embankment and turned right for Apse’s flat in Frobisher House, opposite Forbes-James’s block. Like F-J, Apse worked partly from his home, but his flat was on the top floor, in the shape of an E minus its middle stroke. The front door opened onto a large office-cum-sitting room, and all the other rooms - the kitchen with its outside fire escape; the bedroom, the dressing room and so on - came off a dark, narrow L-shaped corridor. Privately, Diana thought that F-J’s flat, with its balcony onto the river, was much nicer and airier. Apse’s flat was a bit like the man himself, dark, with rooms concealed around corners. Not that F-J was open, exactly - that business about his wife, for instance - but Apse was . . . Diana frowned, searching for the right word. ‘Distant’, that was it. As if you were speaking to someone who was standing on the other side of a wall. Not because he wouldn’t meet your eye, and he certainly wasn’t furtive, but he didn’t seem to be wholly there. But he appeared decent enough, so perhaps she was exaggerating this impression of distance because she was supposed to be suspicious of him. If he were pro-fascist, then it made sense that he would be guarded in his speech - and Mrs Montague and her friends certainly seemed to think that he was, or might be, sympathetic to their cause. She’d brought up his name several times in their company, but received very little response, beyond vague murmurings about reliability and usefulness, which she didn’t feel she could query without drawing attention to herself. But he must be up to something, surely, or why would they have wanted her to work for him?