Authors: David Roberts
‘No! No, I swear . . . I would never . . . could never have . . . done that.’
‘But he managed without you, somehow, didn’t he?’ Pride almost snarled. ‘He even had time to leave his . . . his “calling card”, his little joke, his dead flower. Did it give you a shock when Mr McCloud found it under the cigarette box?’
‘I . . . I didn’t believe it . . . not at first. Harry said he was going to get out. I didn’t know that he was planning to kill Desmond . . . Mr Lyall. I would have stopped him. He knew I would have stopped him – that was why he didn’t tell me. All he said was he thought, if he could take some plans of the new aeroplane Vickers are developing, he would be welcomed in Berlin.’
‘He was going to take them from the Vickers factory at Brooklands?’ Pride asked, looking up from the notebook in which he was writing.
‘Yes. That’s what he said.’
‘But he didn’t?’ Edward chipped in.
‘No. I . . . I told the whole story to Georgina. I was desperate. I didn’t know what to do. She said to leave it to her. She met Harry and told him he had to give her his word that he wouldn’t try and steal any plans or anything like that. She said she would warn Vickers to take extra precautions. She said he should just leave the country. She offered him some money. It was rash of her but she loved him, too, and she wanted to give him a last chance.’
‘And, in return, he tried to murder her,’ Edward finished up.
Pride looked at Edward. Then he said, ‘I have to tell you, Miss Hawkins, that I have charged your son with murder and I shall now take you over to Scotland Yard where you will be formally charged with being an accessory to murder.’
He nodded to Edward. ‘Good day, Lord Edward. Thank you for your assistance. I don’t think your presence is required at the Yard, unless . . .’
‘No. Thank you, Chief Inspector. My job is done, I believe.’
Miss Hawkins looked at him and a flare of unadulterated fury illumined her face.
‘Yes, you’re done! You,
Lord
Edward,’ she imbued the word with sarcasm, ‘have destroyed me and my son. It’s so easy for you with all your privileges and your smug superiority. Who are you to judge me or my son? What have you ever known of hardship? Of surviving in a world where even your love is a crime? What do you know of love? And as for your patriotism . . . I spit on it.’
Verity heard what Edward had to say in silence. When she had considered the case against Miss Hawkins and her son, she said, ‘So the man I saw in driver’s overalls and helmet and goggles talking to Miss Hawkins was . . . ?’
‘Her son.’
‘They seemed to be quarrelling.’
‘She was pleading with him not to do anything to hurt Georgina.’
‘But he took no notice?’
‘No, he thought Georgina had rumbled him – not just about his spying but about having murdered Desmond Lyall.’
‘And Lyall – he blamed himself for Westmacott’s death?’
‘Yes. If he had done what Westmacott demanded, it would all have been out in the open and there would have been no point in Stille killing him. In fact, I believe he blamed himself for two deaths – his wife’s as well as Westmacott’s.’
‘He went to see where Westmacott had been found hanging?’
‘Yes, and perhaps tossed the thing he loved most, his wife’s compact, into the river.’
‘As a sort of offering?’
‘Yes.’
‘You said James had been less than frank about his last meeting with his father?’
‘Yes. You see, his father made a sort of confession to him. He wanted to give James his blessing for having the courage he had lacked in going off to Spain to fight the Fascists. He broke down and told James that he felt responsible for Westmacott’s murder. The boy was very upset and urged his father to go to the police or to me. He said he wanted to but he couldn’t because he would never betray Miss Hawkins who was perhaps his only real friend. They certainly had some sort of bond. I think he felt he had betrayed one colleague and couldn’t betray another. He probably knew he was signing his own death warrant. James said he was in a very confused state of mind and kept repeating that it was better to betray your country than your friends.’
‘Was that why James rushed back to Spain?’
‘Yes, V. He wanted to get out of the moral maze he found himself in. He thought that at least in Spain it was obvious who was right and who was wrong.’
Verity looked at Edward to see if he was being ironic but his face gave nothing away. ‘I see,’ she said slowly. ‘Why did James not tell you about this earlier?’
‘Because he would never betray his father and he had been sworn to secrecy. It was only when James saw that I had worked it out for myself that he thought it was all right to tell me what his father had confessed.’
‘And did they part on good terms – the father and son?’ Verity asked doubtfully.
‘James said that, when he left, his father hugged him for the first time since he was a child and told him that he was right to stick to his principles and he wished he had had the courage. So, yes, I think they parted well.’
‘I’m glad about that. I think his time in Spain has turned him from a boy into a man. We have had some long talks and I think he’s going to do something . . . something good in the world.’
‘Is he still a Communist?’ Edward could not resist asking.
‘He said he regretted nothing,’ Verity replied with dignity, ‘but that for the moment he has had enough of politics. He’s thinking of becoming a Quaker and a pacifist.’
They both thought about this and then Verity asked, ‘Do we know what Harry did . . . to the car, Georgina’s, I mean?’
‘Not yet. Something to the steering, I think, but the engineers are still working on it.’
‘And the chrysanthemums? They had nothing to do with anything?’
‘Not quite. They were a little joke. I discovered that – along with the Japanese and Chinese myths about chrysanthemums – there is also a German legend. On Christmas Eve a wood-cutter and his family who lived in the Black Forest were sitting down to their meagre supper when they heard a knocking at the door. They found a beggar on the step, blue with cold and starving. The wood-cutter fed and warmed the beggar who then revealed himself to be the Christ. The next day he was gone but he had left behind a white chrysanthemum.’
‘And he . . . Harry was born on Christmas Eve in the Black Forest?’
‘Yes, or at least near the Black Forest.’
‘But the chrysanthemums were dead.’
‘Yes, V. They were dead. That nice, callow boy who liked cricket was a bringer of death.’
‘Oh, Edward, what a horrible mess. It was all so unnecessary. That hateful Major Stille. He seduced Harry – politically. He had Westmacott killed in that revolting way to stop the boy leaving the Foreign Office.’
‘Yes. He must have flattered him – told him he was too important where he was. It must have made Harry feel very proud.’
‘At least we can get Vansittart to have Major Stille expelled, or whatever they call it.’
‘I don’t think so. It’s much better Stille doesn’t find out how much we know. That way we can keep an eye on him and perhaps feed him false information. Also, we don’t want there to be a lot of questions in Parliament about why we are deporting a German Embassy official.’
‘Oh God! How typical! I might have guessed you’d want to have it all covered up.’
‘I’m afraid so, V.’
‘Tell me, Edward, do I take it that you
are
a policeman now?’
‘I think I’m a sort of policeman – a very irregular one and I don’t seem to be paid anything. Do you mind awfully?’
‘I thought so! I’m in love with a secret policeman! I can’t believe it. Or rather I can.’
‘Look, V, we had better have this out. In a year or two we will be at war, I’m sure of it. I know it sounds pompous but then, as you often say, I
am
pompous, but the country’s security is worth defending. If Harry Younger, or people like him, are stealing secrets – details of our defences or the plans of aircraft engines Vickers Armstrong are developing – then we need to stop them. If I can do my little bit towards helping Britain prepare for that war, then I am proud to do it. It’s not about stopping you and your Communist friends choosing to bark up a tree which you can’t see – or won’t see – is rotten at the top. If that’s what you want to do, no one will stop you, as long as it doesn’t involve helping David Griffiths-Jones and his kind undermine our capacity to defend ourselves. Right, lecture over. Now you can tell me I’m a Fascist and you don’t want to have anything more to do with me.’
The expected outburst failed to materialize. At last she said, ‘I’m not in any mood to throw bricks at you, Edward. I have had my eyes opened by what happened at Guernica. As I told you, I have had some long talks with James and I think you were right: David did send us to Guernica to witness the German attack knowing some or all of us might be killed. He did not try to warn the town about it because he wanted . . . he wanted the worst to happen so he could say to the world – look what these Nazis do. I don’t altogether blame him. I can see the logic of what he was thinking and what did it matter if Gerda or I were killed?’
‘Or me,’ Edward added gently.
‘Or you or André. David is utterly ruthless – I have always known that – but his object is still one I approve of. Even if Stalin is not . . .’
‘The genial father of his people but a bloody murderer?’ Edward said, suddenly angry.
‘Even then, Communism is right, even if there are wrong things done in its name.’
‘I get you,’ Edward said bitterly. ‘Just because the Borgias weren’t very good popes, that doesn’t make it wrong to be a Catholic?’
‘Yes.’
‘What else did James tell you?’
‘He said it was quite true that the International Brigade was purged of its anarchists and Trotskyists. Everyone had to join the Party and take their orders from Moscow or be . . . liquidated.’
‘Liquidated! Don’t use euphemisms to me, Verity! You mean “killed”.’
‘Yes, I suppose I do,’ she admitted sombrely. ‘The logic of it is quite clear. We must be as ruthless as the enemy if we are to win.’
‘But you admit the Republic is finished?’
‘I do. I’m not a fool. Franco is too strong and the democracies have abandoned Spain, to their cost, but what you won’t admit is that we were right to fight. To sit back in a defeatist way and say these bullies are too strong for us is not an option any of us should take. The longer we delay fighting the Fascists, the harder it will be to defeat them.’
‘I do agree but I still think you cannot fight without the whole will of the people behind you. The failure of Baldwin and Chamberlain is that they have done nothing to harness that will. They have shown no leadership, preferring to do the “popular” thing and shrug their shoulders and say it will be all right. Which, of course, it won’t.’
‘The point I’m making,’ Verity went on, as if Edward had not spoken, ‘is that if the Republican government had not been the Popular Front – a rag-bag collection of all sorts of anti-Fascists with nothing in common but their hatred of Fascists – if it had been a well-organized Communist government, then Franco might have been stopped.’
‘But that’s democracy, V. It may not be efficient but efficiency isn’t everything. Why exchange one dictatorship for another? Don’t you see,’ he went on, suddenly in deadly earnest, ‘that the individual human freedoms which you and I regard as the bedrock of everything we value in life are being reduced by force – I mean the tyrannical will of Hitler and Stalin – to nothing. We become corpses or slaves under their malign lust for power.’
‘But the Communist ideal is worth striving for.’ Verity refused to bow before his attack.
Edward looked at her, pale even against the white pillows behind her head, exhausted but determined not to abandon her faith. He had not the heart to argue further.
‘Anyway,’ she said, rallying, ‘aren’t you saying it’s all right for you to be a policeman and defend the state, even if it involves sacrificing a few liberties along the way?’
‘There are liberties which have to be sacrificed – temporarily – in the defence of democracy but that’s a long way from saying the one-party state is a good thing. The means are
not
justified by the ends . . . but I don’t suppose we’ll ever agree about that,’ he finished hurriedly, fearing that he was being too hard on her.
‘But we’re on the same side?’ Verity looked at him pleadingly.
He touched her hand. ‘One for all and all for one. Of course we are! I love you, V, whatever you call yourself. You can call yourself a dolphin for all I care.’
‘Why did you say that . . . dolphin?’
‘I was thinking of poor Lyall. When Westmacott’s body was found he knew that in some way he was to blame. Maybe he hadn’t worked out exactly how but he knew he ought to have listened to Westmacott and reported the security lapse to Vansittart. He went to pay his respects at the place where Westmacott had been murdered. He left in the water the most precious thing he owned – his dead wife’s powder compact bearing the dolphin design. He always wore a ring with the same design. When she died, he kept the compact to remember her with.’
‘Do you love me as much as that . . . as much as Lyall loved his wife?’ Her eyes searched his face, as though she were trying to see into his soul.
‘I do, V, I do.’ He leant over her and kissed her on the lips.
‘And I love you, Mr Secret Policeman,’ she whispered. She smiled but her eyes were full of tears.
Fred Cavens was back from Germany and Edward was fencing fiercely with him as though he was trying to rid himself of a deep-seated anger. Fenton was watching anxiously. He still held to the view that, though Lord Byron might have fenced in his rooms in Albany with equanimity, it was now more seemly to take exercise in a gymnasium or some other place specially designed for the purpose.
‘How was Herr Himmler?’ Edward gasped as the bout ended. ‘Did he ask your views on the will of the English to withstand a German offensive?’
Cavens blushed. ‘No, my lord. We fenced. That is all.’
‘I shall believe you, Fred, but you know, you must soon make up your mind on which side of the fence you stand, if you will forgive the pun. Sitting on the fence is a painful business.’