NINE
Later that same day, Lieutenant Michael Greenwood stepped out of the lunchtime May sunshine into the gloomy oak panelled lobby of the St George’s Hotel. In his role as the newly arrived colonial, Martin Rycroft, he had supplied himself with a Baedeker’s guide. That it was also useful to Michael Greenwood, the junior officer, was something he was young enough to conceal from himself.
Baedeker described the St George’s accurately, if succinctly. ‘Hotels in Westminster and Belgravia’, ran the heading. ‘Convenient for the Houses of Parliament, Westminster Abbey, the government offices, Hyde Park, etc.’
Westminster and Belgravia did not feature ‘Hotels Of The Highest Class’; they were to be found on the adjoining pages: ‘In Or Near Piccadilly’ and ‘In Or Near Charing Cross And The Strand’ and their names, to an impecunious second lieutenant, were like spells; Claridges; The Ritz; (‘sumptuous’) The Savoy; The Cecil; The Waldorf. With ‘restaurant, ballrooms, palm courts etc.’ (and what ‘etcs.’ there could be was anyone’s guess) their prices matched their status. ‘Room 21s, with bathroom from 35s.’
Thirty-five shillings for a room with a tub! By jingo, reflected Michael, that was a dickens of a lot, far more than he could ever afford.
The St George’s rates were more modest. ‘Room 9s., with bathroom 15s.’ His Majesty’s Government did not run to private bathrooms, but the ‘charge for a hot bath was noted as ‘1s. Gratuities (‘tips’),’ Michael had read, thankful for the information, ‘should amount to 10-15% of the bill and be divided between the head waiter, the waiter who has specially attended to the traveller, the chambermaid, the “boots” etc.’ A prudent note was sounded; ‘to produce the best results they should be distributed weekly.’ This, Michael, happily aware that it wasn’t his own money he was distributing, proposed to do.
One other piece of worldly wisdom he owed to Baedeker. ‘Money and valuables should be securely locked up in the visitor’s own trunk, as the drawers and cupboards of hotels are not always inviolable receptacles.’
True, ‘objects of great value had better be entrusted to the keeping of the manager in exchange for a receipt’, but as the sole object of his stay in the St George’s was to be robbed, he wanted to make it credibly difficult for any prospective thief, not downright impossible.
The wash-leather bag of diamonds was securely in his pocket, but the maps of the waters of Mount Erok, all beautifully coloured by John Rycroft to show the location of the supposed diamond find, were kept, as Baedeker had suggested, in his trunk. An ordinary thief wouldn’t touch them, but if the plan worked, they should draw a German agent like a magnet.
As he crossed the lobby the clerk looked up from the reception desk. ‘Mr Rycroft?’ He coughed apologetically. ‘I’m afraid we’ve had a small problem.’
‘Oh yes? What is it?’
‘One of our porters found a man trying to force the lock on your door. Don’t worry,’ he added hastily, ‘the porter saw the man off before any damage was done. Unfortunately O’Dwyer, the porter, suffers from a stiff knee, so although he gave chase, the man escaped.’
‘Did he get a look at the chap?’ asked Michael.
The clerk shrugged. ‘Not really, I’m afraid, sir. O’Dwyer says he was a little nothing of a man with a moustache, but that’s all. Naturally, if anything had been taken, we would insist O’Dwyer make a full statement to the police, but in the circumstances . . .’ the clerk broke off.
‘In the circumstances it doesn’t seem worth making a fuss,’ Michael said.
The clerk looked relieved. ‘Thank you, sir. No hotel likes having the police called in. It doesn’t do us any good, sir. The guests don’t like it.’
Michael shook his head. ‘There seems precious little you could tell them anyway. Thanks for letting me know and –’ he reached in his wallet for a ten shilling note ‘– if you could let the porter have this. Tell him I appreciate what he did.’
The clerk took the note. ‘Thank you, sir. Thank you very much indeed.’
Michael walked up the stairs with a frown. It looked as if things were starting to happen. He could wish that O’Dwyer hadn’t been so assiduous in his protection of the hotel property, but he could hardly explain that to the clerk.
Maybe Bertram Farlow and Peter Warren could add to the porter’s description. They should have seen what happened from their vantage point across the corridor. He just hoped that the man hadn’t been scared off completely. Unless the thief went for the maps in his trunk, any burglary could be nothing more than coincidence.
Still deep in thought, Michael turned the key in the door to his room. From the corner of his eye he saw a figure detach itself from the shadow of a pillar next to the door. He half-turned, then there was a sudden thump in the small of his back and a voice whispered close to his ear.
‘I have a gun. It is only a small gun and will not make much noise. It might not kill you, but it will certainly cripple you. Open the door.’
Michael froze. He knew that Farlow and Warren were watching from across the corridor and, at the far end of the corridor, a porter was unloading bags. His instinct was to lash out, calling for help. As if the man read his thoughts, the gun jabbed painfully into his back.
‘Don’t be stupid.’
Michael swallowed and decided not to be stupid. The voice chilled him. He’d expected a thief, not an assassin. There was something horribly compelling about the man’s even, articulate, unexcited tone. Michael had no doubt that the man would leave him sprawled in helpless agony, while he walked away. Besides that, he was supposed to be burgled. Farlow and Warren must think it was all going according to plan, but it shouldn’t have happened like this. He had no idea how scared he would be.
He heard the man’s hiss of satisfaction as the key turned in the lock and the door swung open. Then they were inside the room, the door shut behind them. Michael wanted to turn, to see his assailant, but the gun remained in the small of his back. ‘What now?’ Michael asked. There was a crack in his voice. He wished there wasn’t. ‘What’s all this about?’ he tried, and this time his voice stayed steady.
There was a sigh close to his ear. ‘Diamonds, Mr Rycroft. Somewhere in this room are your maps charting where you discovered diamonds. Find them for me.’
‘Diamonds?’
‘Do not waste my time,’ the man said in a snarl. ‘Your government does not believe you. I do. Get the maps. And don’t turn round!’ The last words were punctuated by jabs of the gun.
Michael’s lips were very dry. He didn’t have to act scared, he was scared, but more than that, he was angry. ‘They’re in the trunk under the bed,’ he said sullenly.
‘Take out the trunk.’
Michael walked across the room, the gun still pressed against his spine, and stooping under the bed, drew out the brass-bound trunk.
Kneeling on the floor, he could see the man’s feet and trouser legs. The shoes were long and slim, with thin soles. Expensive shoes, he thought, desperately trying to find something he could describe to Colonel Brooke later. But the shoes were just shoes. There was nothing unusual about them. He unlocked the catch on the trunk and took out his briefcase with the maps in it.
‘Stand up,’ said the man. ‘Slowly.’
Michael stood up and felt the briefcase taken from his hand. There was a click as the briefcase was opened, followed by a rustle of papers and a little breath of satisfaction.
‘Good. Now the diamonds, Mr Rycroft.’
More than anything in the world, Michael wanted to lash out. He restrained himself with a physical effort. This is supposed to happen, he repeated to himself. This is what we hoped would happen.
The gun was anchored in his back. ‘The diamonds are in my pocket,’ he said.
There was a soft, humourless chuckle. ‘Very wise. Take them out.’
If only this wasn’t supposed to happen he could have used the bag of diamonds as a weapon to give weight to his fist, struck out with it, kicked backwards, risked the blasted gun. Anything rather than be robbed by this swine with his expensive shoes and clipped voice.
Michael took the wash-leather bag from his pocket and held it to one side. A man’s hand, with fair hair on the back and neatly manicured nails, came forward and took it from his palm.
‘Very good.’ The triumph in the voice was almost unendurable but what he said next startled Michael.
‘Stand against the wall.’
‘What?’
‘Stand against the wall.’
Michael stood with his face to the wall, senses tingling. The muscles in his arms tensed and his fingers bent, ready to spring. The man gave a little, quick breath. For the first time the gun left his spine. Almost immediately it was jammed against the side of his head.
Using his fingers as a lever, Michael hurled himself backwards, smashing his fist behind him wildly as the gun exploded next to his ear.
The man’s chin jerked back as the blow connected. Michael threw himself on him. A powerful arm swept across his windpipe, knocking him back. He cracked his head against the edge of the chest of drawers and for an instant the room went black. The man scrambled for the door.
Michael, scarcely able to breathe, heard, through the roaring in his ears, someone knocking. The door opened and Peter Warren stood in the doorway.
‘Hold it,’ he shouted, then the man raised the gun and fired at point-blank range.
Warren looked down at his ripped, bloodied, shirt front. He seemed about to speak, then he was thrust out of the way as the man leapt past him. Warren, thrown to the floor, clawed at his chest, juddered and lay still.
Michael staggered across to Warren and shook him helplessly. The sightless eyes stared back. He got to the door, in time to see the black-coated back of the man race down the corridor. The porter who had been unloading luggage stepped forward as if to stop him. ‘No!’ yelled Michael.
The man jerked to one side, evaded the porter’s grasping hands and raced down the stairs.
The porter, utterly bewildered, gazed at Michael clutching at the door frame. ‘Here,’ he called, coming towards him. ‘What’s been going on?’
He stopped short as he saw Warren’s body. ‘Oh my God,’ he said. ‘He’s dead.’
Sir Charles lit a cigarette and looked sightlessly at Anthony, his eyes clouded with worry. It was Sunday evening and they were in Anthony’s rooms.
He’d been summoned back to London by a telephone call, supposedly from the War Office. He knew something must have gone badly wrong. He’d just found out what.
‘That poor devil, Warren,’ said Sir Charles. ‘He didn’t have a chance. When I think we set this up, Brooke . . .’
‘We couldn’t know the thief was a killer,’ said Anthony uneasily. ‘He could have walked in, demanded the goods and Greenwood would have handed them over. I think Greenwood’s had a very lucky escape. Warren’s killer sounds a real swine.’
‘He’s a cold-blooded murderer,’ said Sir Charles with feeling. ‘It’s a pity Greenwood didn’t get a good look at him. I’d like to know who we were dealing with. He’s not a professional crook. No professional would rob a hotel room in that way. He obviously didn’t know how to pick a lock, so simply waited for Greenwood to come and open the door.’
‘Can’t Greenwood tell us anything?’ Anthony demanded.
Sir Charles shook his head. ‘Not much. The killer had a clipped, well-spoken voice, expensive shoes, fair hair and manicured nails and both Farlow and the hotel porter thought he was tall, well-built and wore a soft hat and a dark coat. Greenwood says he didn’t have any accent to speak of, certainly not an Irish one. It’s not much to go on, is it? He was certainly going to murder Greenwood, even though he’d got both the diamonds and the maps. Warren simply got in the way.’
‘Where’s Greenwood now?’ Anthony asked.
‘He’s still in the St George’s, but in a different room, of course.’ Sir Charles got up and stretched his shoulders. He looked very tired. ‘I’ve tipped the wink to Scotland Yard that it isn’t an ordinary murder, if there is such a thing.’ He sat quietly for a few moments, then stirred. ‘One thing Farlow could tell me about was the failed burglary.’
‘Failed burglary?’
‘Yes. The successful theft was the second attempt. The first one was at half eleven this morning. Eleven thirty-two, to be exact. The interesting thing is that the first attempt was obviously by a different man. Now he did sound like a pro. He was armed with either a long-bladed screwdriver or a chisel and he was just about to get to grips with Greenwood’s door, when a porter came round the corner and chased him off. See if this rings any bells. Farlow describes him as a thin, nondescript man of medium height with a small moustache and a scar on the side of his chin. Farlow got a good sideways view of him.’
Anthony sat up. ‘He sounds like my thief, Talbot. The one who pretended to be a club servant.’
Sir Charles nodded. ‘That’s what I thought. So we’ve got one attempted robbery by someone who sounds like a real crook, followed by the successful one by someone who isn’t so much a crook as a killer.’
‘The employee and the employer in fact,’ said Anthony. ‘That’s how I see it, anyway. The Weasel bungled the job, so the fair-haired chap took a hand.’ He paused. ‘The second chap – the well-spoken one – sounds like a gentleman, doesn’t he?’
Sir Charles gave an irritated sigh. ‘But we’d placed the gentleman at Starhanger, or thought we had. Talking of Starhanger, do you think there’s any chance Veronica O’Bryan did have a riding accident? I only ask because it seems odd, if she was planning an escape, that she left the letters.’
‘I wondered about that, said Anthony, reaching for the cigarette box. ‘I think she must have acted on impulse. Once she’d decided to run for it, she couldn’t risk coming back to the house. In any case, she probably thought the letters were safe in the jewellery box. It was a pretty good hiding place, Talbot. It took me some time to find it, and I’ve done that sort of thing before. She must have had some money on her because, somehow or other, she got up to London and told whoever about the diamonds.’
‘Couldn’t she have telephoned?’
‘I wouldn’t like to give a message like that over the phone, I must say. She could have phoned and arranged to be picked up in a car, I suppose. That’s something we could probably check. The trouble is, she vanished a long time before the alarm was raised. With a good horse she could’ve got a long way from Starhanger.’ Anthony tapped his cigarette on the ashtray. ‘Did you manage to get “Frankie’s Letter” read?’
‘I did. It was difficult to crack but simplicity itself once the code people had tumbled to it. The code changed with every “Letter”. D’you know what the key was? The bridge problems in a completely different part of the magazine. Once that was spotted, it was easy. The numbers on the bridge scores gave the relevant words in the “Letter”.’
Anthony nodded. ‘Bridge problems ties it to Veronica O’Bryan, all right. Tara O’Bryan told me that setting bridge problems was one of her mother’s skills. What was in the “Letters”?’
‘Dynamite.’ Sir Charles drew a deep breath. ‘My people went back over the whole run of the magazine. It started before the war. The first few issues are innocent enough, and then the information starts. There’s reports of armaments at Woolwich Arsenal and proposed troop movements by train. There’s notes of which ships are in the Chatham Dockyard and how the mouth of the Thames is guarded. It details which regiments are bound for active service and an unbelievable amount about who’s who in the government – and whose mistress is whose, as well. The private lives of the senior ranks of the army and navy are recorded in some detail, too.’
Anthony’s eyebrows shot up. ‘My God! Is the information accurate, Talbot?’
‘As far as we can tell, yes. Some of it even we don’t know. When we said that someone at the heart of society was the worse sort of spy, I must admit even I had little idea of how much they could pick up. Perhaps the “Letter” which is of most interest to you is the one concerning Cavanaugh. It says he’s in Kiel and asks for him to be taken care of.’
‘And so they took care of him,’ muttered Anthony.
‘If that wasn’t bad enough, it seems as if there’s something big planned. It’s hard to make a guess what it is, but it could be a bomb attack or even a full-scale shelling of the coast, as happened on the east coast in December.’
Anthony winced. The bombardment of the east coast had been an act of sheer brutality. There had been no military target. Eight German battleships turned up out of the mist of the North Sea and opened fire on Scarborough, Whitby and Hartlepool, wounding and killing nearly six hundred civilians from a six-month-old baby to an eighty-six-year-old lady. The attack had been celebrated in Germany with the singing of the Hymn of Hate. ‘We will never forgo our hate; hate by water and hate by land . . .’ That was occasionally played by British military bands as a joke. Some joke.
Sir Charles looked, thought Anthony, more than tired. He suddenly seemed grey with worry. ‘All we do know is that some particular person or persons are the target, concealed in the general outrage. It says the party in question will be in place on the fourteenth of June.’
‘The fourteenth?’ repeated Anthony. ‘That’s less than a fortnight away. Isn’t there any other clue?’
Sir Charles shook his head. ‘No.’ He got to his feet and stretched his shoulders. ‘So you see, Brooke, we simply have to find Veronica O’Bryan.’
‘Why the devil can’t we arrest Sherston? After all, it was his paper the wretched “Letter” appeared in.’
‘Where will that get us?’ Sir Charles’s voice was thin with impatience. ‘I’ve been warned off Sherston. I saw the Home Secretary earlier and was left in no doubt as to what I can and can’t do. We have to get this right.’
So that was why Sir Charles looked so tired. Anthony was prepared to bet he’d had damn all sleep last night and to top things off, he’d been hauled over the coals by a politician.
‘Unless there’s real rock-solid evidence,’ continued Sir Charles, ‘real evidence, proving Sherston’s the gentleman and knows about “Frankie’s Letter”, then he’s in a position to make the biggest stink there’s ever been. Sherston is friends with half the cabinet, for heaven’s sake. If we get this wrong – if I get this wrong – not only will my head be on a platter but the whole service would be torn apart. We’d never recover and in the meantime the Germans, who’d know all about it, would have a field day.’
He leaned his arms on the mantelpiece, choosing his words carefully. ‘There’s another reason, too. You know how hysterical the spy mania is. Ironically enough, Sherston’s helped to create it. If he’s innocent, he’d never live it down.’
He turned and looked at Anthony. ‘That’s wrong, you know. I still care about that. He’d be ruined and perhaps worse, as some half-baked patriot would be bound to take a crack at him. Besides that, if we arrest Sherston, it tells the enemy we’re onto them.’
‘But Veronica O’Bryan will tell them that anyway,’ protested Anthony. ‘She knows Frankie is a busted flush.’
Sir Charles shook his head. ‘We can’t be certain. It looks that way, I grant you, but she only knows what she overheard. We don’t know what she did hear. What if we apparently do nothing? They must expect us to raid the offices of the Beau Monde. Say we don’t. Won’t that look as if Veronica O’Bryan went off at half-cock and panicked unnecessarily? Publicly speaking, Veronica O’Bryan went horse riding and never came back. It was an accident. Let’s play along with that for the time being. They might even think we believe it. We’re supposed to, when all’s said and done. After all, we don’t know how far the ramifications of this thing spreads, especially with the Irish angle. I’m not sure who’s involved, but there’s a good few politicians and public men who are sympathetic to an Irish National State. The Home Secretary was worried about that. Frankie might just be the tip of the iceberg.’ He glanced at the clock and rubbed his face with his hands. ‘It’s getting late. Let’s see what turns up tomorrow.’
Anthony leaned forward and stubbed out his cigarette, sitting thoughtfully for a few moments. ‘All right. I agree. In the circumstances doing nothing will confuse the enemy and I’m all for that. I’ll tell you something, though. I’m going to make a prediction. Warren’s murderer, our fair-haired friend, sounds like the man at the top to me. He’s ruthless and efficient. We’re going to hear from him again.’