In Farleigh Field: A Novel of World War II

“I’ll let you in, Mr. Cresswell,” said the efficient voice. “Take the lift. Fifth floor and turn right.”

At least he was expected. A tinge of apprehension mingled with excitement as the lift rose slowly. He came out to the fifth floor. The hallway was carpeted and smelled of polish, with a lingering tinge of pipe tobacco. He found the flat and saw that Miss Copplestone was also on the doorplate. He took a deep breath before he knocked. The door was opened by an attractive young woman, her well-cut suit and patrician air betraying that in other times and circumstances she would have been a deb and then been married off to a dull young man of impeccable pedigree. For young women like her, the war had presented a great opportunity to escape, to prove that they were good at all sorts of things, not just small talk and knowing where to seat a bishop at a dinner table.

“Mr. Cresswell? Mr. Knight is expecting you. Come in,” she said in a clipped upper-class voice. “I’ll tell him you are here.”

Ben waited, heard low voices, and was immediately ushered into a large, bright room with windows that looked down the Thames to the Houses of Parliament, barrage balloons bobbing over the buildings to prevent low-level bombing raids. The man sitting at a polished oak desk had his back to the view. He was slim and fit-looking, clearly an outdoor type, and to Ben’s amazement, he was handling what Ben initially thought was a length of rope, which uncoiled and revealed itself to be a small snake.

“Ah, Cresswell. Good of you to come.” He stuffed the snake back into a pocket and held out his hand to Ben. “I am Maxwell Knight. Take a seat.”

Ben pulled up an upholstered leather chair.

“Cambridge man?” Knight asked.

“Oxford.”

“Pity. I find that Cambridge produces men who can think creatively.”

“I’m afraid I can’t undo that now,” Ben said. “Besides, Hertford College offered me a scholarship. Cambridge didn’t.”

“Scholarship boy, then?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And before that?”

“Tonbridge. Also on a scholarship.”

“And yet, apparently, you hobnob with the gentry. You know the Earl of Westerham.”

The statement took Ben completely by surprise. “Lord Westerham?”

“Yes. I’m told you’re quite pally with him. Is that correct?”

“I wouldn’t say pally, sir. I wouldn’t presume to claim friendship, but he knows me quite well. My father is the vicar of All Saints, Elmsleigh, the village next to Farleigh. I grew up playing with Lord Westerham’s daughters.”

“Playing with Lord Westerham’s daughters,” Max Knight repeated with the hint of a smile.

Ben’s face betrayed no emotion. “May I ask what this is about, sir? Has my background anything to do with the quality of my work here?”

“Absolutely, at this moment. You see, we need insights, young man. An insider.”

Ben looked up, frowning. “Insights into what?”

Max Knight’s clear blue eyes still held Ben’s. “Three nights ago now, a man apparently fell from a plane onto one of Lord Westerham’s fields. His parachute didn’t open. He was pretty much a mess, as you can imagine. Face too damaged to get an idea what he looked like. But he was wearing the uniform of the Royal West Kents.”

“They’ve taken over most of Farleigh, haven’t they?” Ben frowned. “But they’re an infantry regiment. Where did the parachute come in?”

“It didn’t. Their commander says that his chaps don’t leap out of planes and are all present and accounted for. The identity disc belonged to a soldier who was killed at Dunkirk, and it turns out that the cap badge was the one the regiment wore in the Great War.”

“So a possible spy, then?” Ben felt his pulse quicken.

“Quite possible. I’m also told by one of our bright young women who was going through his clothing—not an enviable task, as you can well imagine—that his socks were wrong.”

“Socks? Wrong?”

“Yes, she’s something of a knitter, and she says that the heel isn’t turned like that in British Army regulation socks. On further investigation, she could just make out the number 42 on them.”

“Forty-two?”

“Metric size.”

“Oh, I see.” Ben nodded now. “So the socks came from the Continent.”

“I’m glad we use Oxford lads. So quick on the uptake,” Max Knight said. Ben flushed.

“Therefore I suppose the question is, what was he doing in Lord Westerham’s field,” Max Knight continued. “Was he there on purpose or by accident?”

“Was there a high wind that night? He could have been blown off course, or the parachute malfunction might have caused him to drift.”

“We’ve checked on that. The breeze was only two knots. Besides, you don’t drift if your parachute doesn’t deploy properly. You plunge straight down.”

“It might just have been pure coincidence that the landing site was Lord Westerham’s field,” Ben said. “He was instructed to parachute down within reach of London or within reach of Biggin Hill RAF station.”

“Then why not an RAF uniform instead of the West Kent Regiment?” He took a deep breath that sounded almost like a sigh. “You can see the tricky situation we find ourselves in, can’t you, Cresswell? If the landing was intentional, if he was a German spy—and we have to assume that is the case—then he was sent to make contact with someone nearby, in an area where a uniform of the West Kents would not arouse suspicion.”

“What about his pockets, sir?” Ben asked. “Was there nothing useful that could be retrieved from his pockets?”

“His pockets were completely empty, apart from a small snapshot in his breast pocket.”

“A snapshot?” Ben asked, half-interested and half-afraid now.

“Of a landscape. Of course it was covered in blood, but the lab has been able to clean it up. We had to prise this out of the hands of army intelligence, by the way. They weren’t too keen to share information. Nobody is these days.” He opened a drawer and took out a slim file, which he opened and turned toward Ben. Ben stood up to look at it. It hadn’t been a very good photograph to begin with. The sort of small snapshot a tourist might take on summer holiday, and now, after having been bloodied and cleaned, it was even more indistinct. From what Ben could make out, it was a general view of an English countryside with fields divided by hedges, and rising in the background, a steep-sided hill, topped with a crown of trees. Amid the trees was just the hint of a village with what looked like a square tower of a church poking above Scotch pines. Ben stared at it. “That’s not anywhere I’ve seen, and it doesn’t look like our part of Kent,” he said. “It looks more bleak, and steep, and windswept. Scots pines, aren’t they? More like the West Country from that square-towered church. Cornwall maybe?”

Max Knight nodded. “Could well be. So what was it doing in his pocket? Was he supposed to make his way there—in which case, why drop him in the middle of Kent? Was he supposed to hand it to someone telling the site for a rendezvous for some unknown purpose?”