by Joel N. Ross
And Whiskbroom, in Berlin. Whiskbroom wasn’t merely a highly placed asset; he was a mirror. He was Davies-Frank’s age and class; he spoke English as well as Davies-Frank spoke German. His wife was Joan’s age, and almost as beautiful. He had three children. He risked his family to fight the fascists, braver than any soldier in the field. If the Twenty fell, he’d pay the ultimate price.
No, not too difficult to remember the reasons.
“Quiet tonight,” Farquhar said as he followed Davies-Frank into the transcription room. He grinned at Melville. “Running low on steam, is he?”
“Well, nighttime,” Melville answered with a weak smile. “He’s most likely asleep.”
Farquhar tapped the stack of notebooks. “Did some talking earlier, looks like.” He turned to Davies-Frank with a mock sigh. “Our guest always turns mum when I come on duty. I’m starting to think he doesn’t approve of my handwriting.”
“You’ll have to type his Christmas card,” Davies-Frank said. He locked the door as he and Melville returned to the hall. “He’s sleeping nights now?”
“He may be awake,” Melville said. “I really couldn’t say.”
“He was nocturnal last week—you were on night shift then, weren’t you?”
“Only through Thursday.”
“Of course,” Davies-Frank said. “Bit of excitement today.”
“Oh? Oh—the fire.”
“Yes, the fire,” Davies-Frank said absently, considering the various transcriptionists’ output as they walked toward the office. Unless he was mistaken, Sondegger had filled two notebooks with his rantings when Melville was on duty, but only a dozen pages with Farquhar or O’Brien—as if he could distinguish between Melville and the others. Davies-Frank glanced at Melville, shuffling beside him. Ought to buck up the poor sod, bent under the weight of Sondegger’s words. “Carefree bachelor, aren’t you?”
“Afraid I am.”
“Explains why you’re given nights. Like Mr. Highcastle, you’re a born bachelor. I caught Highcastle wearing a gold watch with a gray jacket, something a wife would never allow.” He shook his head, grinning, but Melville failed to return his smile. “Had to speak sternly to him. One prefers silver with gray, of course. . . .”
Melville bobbed his head twice. He was a nervous one. Still, he’d been vetted and approved. Probably been tough as rock when he’d begun the work. They all grew nervy as the days wore on—too much at stake. Too much depended upon so little.
CHAPTER
SEVENTEEN
MORNING, DECEMBER 2, 1941
“HOME,” TOM SAID. “Sweet home.”
He raised himself from the pillow. His head was heavy and battered as a big brass gong. Took a week to lift it, but he persevered. That’s how tough he was.
He hitched himself against the headboard and eyed the room. It was the sort of cubby he’d grown to know too well the past six months. A small impersonal room, with a small impersonal bed, upon which nothing could not be rendered small and impersonal. His skin smelled bitter and mixed badly with the close air. The curtains were open. Outside, black clouds were raining a torrent.
He didn’t hurt much. He’d slept, but it had been doped sleep. Sleep without rest.
A railway man had found him an hour before dawn. “I didn’t hear a bloody sound,” the man had said. “Worked right through—not a single sound.” The railway man thought there’d been a raid. He thought Tom had been bombed.
Tom had laughed, spat blood, and said, “Rowansea.”
He’d passed out, awakened, and passed out again. At the Rowansea, there was a commotion. Tom saw it in flashes: the front drive, the Court Room, the hallway, the stretcher too narrow for his shoulders.
The doctor tutted, said Tom shouldn’t have done himself harm.
Tom said no, it had been muggers. Get Davies-Frank.
The doctor examined his hand, tutted again.
Tom told himself it was someone else’s hand, nothing to do with him.
The doctor primed a syringe. Morphine?
“No,” Tom said.
“Won’t feel a pinch,” the doctor said.
“No.”
“You ought to be ashamed, sir, at your age, afraid of—”
The doctor tried to stick the needle in him and Tom bucked on the stretcher. Knocked one of the nurses away, laid a couple knuckles on the doctor’s arm. Flashes of a struggle—one-sided, as Tom was strapped down. MacGovern pinned him, his hot breath in Tom’s face.
Mrs. Harper appeared and shooed them away. Tom had wanted to fall weeping onto her wide starched bosom. Instead, he told her to get Davies-Frank. He needed to speak to Davies-Frank before the next set of gorillas killed him. Who the hell were Kong and Teeth? He needed to speak to Sondegger, needed to find Hyde Street Misfits. . . .
There was a prick in his leg and MacGovern grinned down, syringe in hand. Tom swung at him, hard as a butterfly closing its wings.
IT SET RUGG OFF, the servants’ entrance at Burnham Chase. Him, a day laborer? Fookin’ night, that’s when he labored.
“You’ll give the tweeny fits,” Renard told him. “A face like that.”
Rugg made a noise in his throat. It set him bleedin’ off.
Inside was a cramped hallway, ceiling low enough to give him a crick in the neck. He yanked his fingers one at a time, heard the joints crack, and followed Renard into a low underground room, wooden tables and cabinets for ancient bloody hand-servanting, a scratch of window over a tin sink. The bleedin’ boot and knife room.
Renard stood near the door. Rugg looked about for something to snap. Saw an old gent’s shoehorn. He snapped it. There was a shallow pit in one of the wooden tables, from all the hands over all the years, polishing, sharping, polishing, sharping. Made a fine seat for his arse.
Chilton came and he and Renard chattered for a long space about nothing that needed chatting. Then Chilton said, “You had no difficulty finding the man?”
No difficulty? Ice-cold swamp-dark night. Near froze his eggs off.
“No difficulty at all,” Renard said. “We caught him outside the Waterfall, and took him to a . . . a more private locale.”
“He was forthcoming?”
“We convinced him cooperation was the wisest course.”
“He is fragile and deranged—it cannot have proven too difficult.”
“Fragile?” Rugg blew air out his nose. “Yank is fragile as boot leather. Took some bloody convincing.”
“He told you what, exactly?”
Rugg shoved the heel of his hand against the cut on his cheek and let Renard talk. Renard liked talking.
“He was visited yesterday morning by a man from the Home Guard. David Frank. Frank wanted—”
“David Frank.” Chilton’s gray eyes glittered. “Is he a Jew?”
“Dunno about that, m’lord,” Renard said.
M’lord. Be yanking his forelock next. Rugg snapped another bit from the shoehorn.
“What news of the American’s brother?” Chilton asked.
“He doesn’t know where his brother is,” Renard said. “He’s as keen to find him as you are. Now, this David—”
“—FRANK IS SOMETHING ELSE.” Renard’s teeth protruded in a feral smile. “The Yank was reluctant to chinwag about him. Closefisted and par, par—what’s the word?”
Chilton didn’t answer. These men had their uses, but it was certainly not incumbent upon him to further their education.
Rugg shifted. “Parsimonious,” he said in his womanish voice.
“Parsimonious,” Renard said. “Our Mr. Wall gave nothing but tripe.”
Which Chilton knew was correct. David Frank and the Home Guard—both lies.
“You could not convince him to speak?” Chilton asked, and then immediately regretted the question. He should demand, not inquire. To do otherwise dimini
shed his authority, and authority was the reason fascism was “the wave of the future” as Anne Lindbergh wrote, while democracy was the withered fruit of a withered tree.
Sadly, the persons of fascism were rarely as exalted as the philosophies. These two men were regrettable specimens. Chilton imagined they would be most happy scrawling slogans—“Christians Awake! Don’t Be Slaughtered for Jewish Finance!” “Stop the War, Stop the Warmongers!”—if they were sufficiently literate to scrawl. Still, after the Public Order Act, there were few who could be trusted. Chilton’s source had assured him of the pair’s effectiveness, and discretion.
“Yank has his Achilles’ heel.” Renard’s toothy smile widened. “His Achilles’ palm. It got him talking. He saw some dustup in Greece. We heard about that, didn’t we, Rugg?”
Rugg cracked a knuckle.
“And David Frank?” Chilton said. “I presume you have details.”
The details were worthless—Tom had taken refuge in delirium. Still, enough remained to make Chilton a great deal more curious, especially given what he already knew.
The first call had come yesterday morning. Ponsonby had brought the phone to the breakfast table. “The Metropolitan Police, m’lord.”
“This is Chilton,” he’d said into the phone.
A police sergeant introduced himself and inquired as to Chilton’s health.
“My health is sufficiently good that strangers have no cause for concern.”
The sergeant asked if he was a relation of Thomas Wall.
“By marriage.”
The sergeant said Tom had left the Rowansea and might be heading to Burnham Chase.
“Has his brother been informed?” Chilton asked.
The sergeant had been unable to contact Mr. Earl Wall. Perhaps Lord Chilton knew where he might be?
Lord Chilton did not. But Lord Chilton was curious. Thomas Wall had escaped again—and Earl was impossible to locate? Perhaps this would occasion a change in the fraternal relationship. Perhaps Earl would reappear for his brother’s sake. Chilton’s best leverage against Earl was Tom, but it was no leverage at all while the two remained estranged.
He’d been in the library, letting his mind play over the possibilities, when Ponsonby reappeared. Busy day for the telephone.
“A Mr. Rowans, m’lord.”
Chilton waited for the door to click shut before answering. “Chilton.”
“This is the, er, man who you arranged to—”
“I know who you are, sir.”
“I have, er, I have news about the man who—about the patient, the American.”
“I have heard the news already,” Chilton said. “And am disappointed it was not you who informed me of it.”
“That he’s gone from the hospital? No, this is new news. This is, er, news of a more particular interest.”
Chilton bent over the phone. “The patient had a visitor?”
“He did, yes. He never met him, though. The patient was scheduled for an appointment this morning, but he’d gone by the time the visitor arrived.”
“The visitor was a relation?”
“Not his brother, no,” the caller said. “A man from the City. He secured Mr. Wall’s temporary release. For the one day only. I’ve never heard of such a thing.”
“What is the man’s name?”
“Rupert Davies-Frank.” He spelled it. “Claims to be from the Home Office, but there’s some confusion on that count.”
Curious. To Chilton’s knowledge, Tom Wall was exceptional for one reason only: his relationship with Earl. If that relationship was repaired, Tom could be used to extract information from his brother and, through him, from both American and British intelligence. But who else would have interest in him?
He gave the caller his instructions, then had Jesper drive him to his club. He made a few discreet inquiries. Who was Rupert Davies-Frank?
The men he trusted couldn’t say. The men he didn’t, wouldn’t.
After additional inquiries, he’d discovered that Davies-Frank had been educated at the right schools, belonged to the right clubs, attended the right events. His wife was a relation of Lady Bassington. Davies-Frank was not SOE. Didn’t seem to be MI6. Davies-Frank was a cipher. And Davies-Frank had business with Thomas Wall.
It was excellent news. Events were proceeding apace. Chilton had been imposed upon by Rugg and Renard for too long, allowing them sanctuary on his land. They’d be his eyes and ears in London now—and his hands.
WHEN TOM WOKE, his hand was rebandaged. He was alone in the room. After two hours and six mugs of water, the door opened and Tom lifted his head, hoping to see Davies-Frank, but it was a PC with a clipboard of questions.
“Sounds like Rugg and Renard,” the PC said after Tom told the story. “Rugg’s the ape, Renard the ferret. A pair of likely villains—and buffers.”
“‘Buffers’?”
“Fascists. Mosley’s men, the BUF.”
The British Union of Fascists. “You know who they are,” Tom said. “Pick them up.”
The PC nodded solemnly. “Eyewitness is Sgt. Thomas Wall. Resident in the Rowansea Royal Hospital. The odds of a supported complaint are remote. If it was Rugg and Renard, they make it easy not to find them.”
“Exile the Duke of Windsor, but you can’t slam a couple of likely villains?”
“We would ‘slam’ them, as you say, if they’d not gone quiet.” The PC tapped his clipboard. “And if it were worth the effort to chivy them out.”
“What’s their angle?”
“Hoist boys, demanding with menaces. An injured man alone in the dark is meat and drink to them. They brought away how much?”
“They weren’t after my wallet. I need to contact Mr. Davies-Frank; he’s at the Home Office. Fire Control. It’s urgent.”
The PC tapped his pen against his teeth. “I spoke with a doctor. Funny vocabulary they have. Excitation and acute sensitivity and fixation.”
“Sure. I beat my own ribs against a wall to see what they’d sound like breaking.”
“I understand they are only bruised, sir.”
Tom didn’t bother sighing.
More questions, more answers. The PC left and Tom watched the ceiling. Rugg and Renard were Blackshirts, and they knew about Davies-Frank. Who were they working for? Maybe Earl was Duckblind. Both were missing, both connected to Sondegger, both traitors. He had to warn Davies-Frank he was blown. He stood unsteadily and stepped into the hall.
Mrs. Harper took his elbow before he got five steps.
“I need a phone,” he told her.
“I left a message for your Mr. Davies-Frank,” she said. “Don’t fret yourself on his account.”
“Forget Davies-Frank. I want to talk to my tailor about a couple new suits.”
When she finally allowed him the phone, he spoke with Directory Enquiries. The woman told him no Hyde Street Misfits was listed. He asked for Hyde Street Tailor. Nothing. Asked for another misfit shop or tailor or haberdasher on Hyde Street.
She told him there was no such street.
“What?” he said.
“There’s no street with that name.”
He made her say it again. No such business, and no such street.
He’d thanked her and stared at the wall. Back at the Rowansea, back where he belonged. He needed Davies-Frank, needed Sondegger. He needed Hennessey Gate, a new lead on Earl.
He gathered what remained of his strength and sent Mrs. Harper off with his bedpan. He ruffled his bed, created a lump under the blankets. He edged himself behind the door and made a little noise. The new orderly with the walrus mustache stepped in, checked the lump of blankets, and Tom slipped out on stocking feet.
Straight into MacGovern’s scarecrow smile. Back to bed again. Home sweet home.
CHAPTER
EIGHTEEN
; AFTERNOON, DECEMBER 2, 1941
CHILTON CUT ACROSS the grass toward the paved terrace and paused at the scalloped lily pond, the water still as glass, reflective as his mind. Renard had reported that Tom said “David Frank” was from Whitehall, and that he was from the Admiralty, that he had flown a Gladiator on Crete. That he was chained to a rock, lashed to a mast. . . .
Renard had repeated Tom’s fabrications with relish, while Rugg scratched at a fresh scab on his chin, his mouth sour and skeptical. Still, despite the lies, much had been accomplished. They’d confirmed Davies-Frank’s presence. They’d given Earl a reason to surface—to help his brother, who had been so cruelly mistreated. Chilton had done what little he could to mend the fraternal relationship.
He nodded to himself and turned onto the yew walk, unable to suppress a flush of pleasure at the rich verdigris of the hedge. The garden was his pride. It was also the strongest bond he shared with his daughter—their love of everything green and growing. What Harriet failed to understand was that one must ruthlessly prune in order to foster new growth—in society as in horticulture.
On the west lawn, he passed what would blossom, come spring, into a display of Darwin tulips with ground cover of aubrietia, alyssum, wallflowers, and polyanthus. Past the lawn, the blue spruce was looking well, though not so well as it would when the Japanese weeping cherry came into bloom. He surveyed the John Downie with its red-flushed yellow fruit; the early-flowering magnolia with heavy white cups; the row of clipped yew in parade-ground order.
Chilton ascended the sundial terrace steps and heard a low and distant mumbling—the put-put of an engine upon the front drive. His pleasure deepened. It was Harriet’s MG. He’d greet her at her car today, instead of in the library. She would understand he was apologizing for his behavior when last she visited. It was a shame they argued, but she was too bright and too beautiful—too much like her mother—and her naïveté pained him. He could no more ignore her devotion to Churchill’s cause than he could ignore cankers gnawing at the limbs of an ancient elm.
