Shroud of Darkness

by E. C. R. Lorac

  “Very well,” he said quietly. “I’ve said what I felt I had to say: perhaps Miss Maine is right, and it’s for Sally to decide. So good night—and I think your room is beautiful.”

  “Come again one day when the sun’s shining,” said Libby. “Of course I’m coming to see you out—and I’ll promise to bolt the door quite safely, let down the drawbridge, and man the keep.”

  Her laughing voice came across from the passage, and Sally turned to Brian.

  “Was that awful of me? He’s been so good to me.”

  “It wasn’t awful at all,” said Brian stoutly. “This isn’t his thing. It’s nothing to do with him: and if anybody’s to give you advice Macdonald can do it, or that game old scout who toted me around—Jenkins. I like him. He’s a hundred per cent human.”

  Elizabeth slithered back into the room again with a gliding step that was partly a “mannequin act,” partly the poise and interplay of beautifully developed muscles.

  “Oof!” she cried. “Hurt feelings—but it was better to say it right out. Brian’s staying to supper, isn’t he? We’ll open some tins to celebrate. That’ll be a treat for him. I expect he’s used to eggs and cream and good red meat and all the things we can’t get, so some frankforters from U.S.A. and grenadillas from down under will be a change for him.”

  “Look here, are you quite sure——” began Brian, but Libby cut in:

  “The one good thing about me is that I’m never half sure,” she said. “You can make up the fire, put the glasses in the kitchen, and then go to sleep on the chesterfield till we wake you up. Come on, Sally—we’ll slap the frankforters in the oven with all the potato crisps we’ve got.”

  A few moments later Sally sat on Libby’s bed while the latter “did her face.”

  “I’m afraid I wasn’t as polite as I should have been,” said Sally, still worrying about Garstang.

  “That’s enough of that. He’s got to learn where he gets off,” said Libby. “Did he tell you he was at Paddington Station himself on Monday evening, Sally?”

  “What?” gasped Sally, sounding as though the wind had been knocked out of her.

  “At Paddington Station,” repeated Libby calmly, “at the time your train should have got in and didn’t. Charles Masters was there, studying the arrival indicator, because he was trying to meet an aunt who never travelled after all. Charles saw Garstang, dithering around the indicator when ‘90 minutes late’ went up. After that he went home—Charles, I mean.”

  “But why on earth did Dr. Garstang . . gasped Sally.

  “Take a deep breath and pull yourself together,” said Libby. “Of course he went to meet you, just to see you were safe. You ought to have realised it long ago, Sally. You’re quick enough with people you don’t know, but you’ve always regarded Garstang as tantamount to the Pope, Mahatma Gandhi, and Socrates rolled into one. Garstang’s an ordinary, middle-aged man who lost his heart to a teen-ager—being you. I knew it at once when he gave me the once-over that day you told him you and I were going to share digs.”

  “Cripes . . .” said Sally, and the voice which uttered the idiotic word held a whole world of bewilderment and enlightenment.

  “So now you know,” said Libby. “It’s just one of those things. I think he ought to have told you he was at Paddington, because someone’s bound to blow the gaff to the C.I.D. eventually and it won’t look so good if he hasn’t told them. But he’s no right to start arranging your life for you—and if you do decide that London’s too foggy to live in, I’ve got some much better ideas than Garstang has. Now let’s go and cope with the tins.”

  4

  By the time that the contents of the tins had been dished up, and the three young people had settled round the supper table, Sally had got her second wind after Libby’s shattering analysis. If Sally were quieter than usual, Libby was more animated.

  “I must tell you, I’m nearly bursting with it,” she said. “There’s been a scheme on for exchanging English and Swiss physiotherapists, and I’ve been offered six months at a Swiss clinic up in the mountains near St. Moritz, partly as demonstrator, partly as student—a sort of marriage ceremony between national techniques. Of course I said I’d go—who wouldn’t?—but I’ve cadged a job for you, Sally, as well. They wanted some English typist-interpreters, and your French is better than most. Anyway, I think it’s a far far better thing to do than for you to trundle back to Kingsbridge and get broody.”

  “Lord! I should say it was!” exclaimed Brian. “Glory, you’ll get all the winter sports.”

  “Yes. Skiing at the week ends and dancing every evening,” said Libby happily. She turned to Brian. “When your buddy’s fit to travel, you’d better bung him out to us and we’ll make him the world’s fittest again. Oh, damn that phone . . . I do hope it’s not another blight.”

  “I’ll go,” said Sally.

  She came running back a few moments later, her face alight with laughter.

  “I do think they’re peaches—the C.I.D. That was that old angel face of an Inspector Jenkins: he’s sending us a good honest charlady in the morning because they sacked Rosa for us and he doesn’t like to think of us with all the chores to do.”

  “Here’s a hearty vote of thanks to him,” cried Libby. “They’re certainly doing their best for us—a bobby outside and a char inside—won’t they have fun.”

  “What’s this about Rosa, and why did they sack her for you?” asked Brian, and Sally said:

  “Let’s tell him about the book, Libby, and how it disappeared. He might have some other books Richard had scribbled in.”

  “Do you know, I think that’s quite an idea,” replied Libby.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  DR. GARSTANG walked down the garden path which led from Sally’s front door to the gate, and paused a moment when he reached the pavement. Something about the set of his head and shoulders denoted both weariness and defeat; two men were watching him (though Garstang noticed neither of them) and both thought, in their own particular idiom, the equivalent of: “He looks as though he’s had it.”

  It was just as the psychiatrist was about to cross the road (with singularly little attention to the traffic which roared unceasingly along the Maida Vale) that he felt a hand on his arm, and a man’s voice spoke close beside him.

  “It’s Dr. Garstang, isn’t it? You probably don’t remember me, but I’ve just been to call on you.”

  Garstang shook the other’s hand off impatiently and took a step back, and the two men stood and looked at each other in the light of the street lamp which shone down on them.

  “Yes. I remember you. I’m not likely ever to forget you,” said Garstang. “Your name is James—or it was once—and you were a stooge in M.I.5. You were wrong in every supposition you made so far as I was concerned.”

  “We all make mistakes sometimes,” said James, and his voice was quite good-tempered. “I’m still a stooge in M.I.5, which means that my mistakes haven’t been essential ones. The one mistake which is never forgiven in our job is to give a chap the benefit of the doubt if doubt there is. Now I realise that it gives you no pleasure to see me—but a job’s a job. Chief Inspector Macdonald has asked me to get in touch with you about this story young Salcombe told you today—the Cologne story.”

  Garstang stood very still, with his hands thrust down into his pockets. “Why not ask Salcombe about it, and get your facts at first hand?” he asked. “Presumably you know where he is.”

  “Yes, I know where he is, all right,” rejoined James. “That’s why I’m here. I was going in to see him, but it’d be more satisfactory to have a word with you first, if you’ll be good enough to answer a few questions. I can see Salcombe later. My car’s just across the road—can I run you home? Talking on the pavement’s a cold job.”

  “And if I don’t care to be driven home in your car?” enquired Garstang.

  “That’s up to you, sir. You can go by bus or tube or taxi if you’d rather, but you’ll still find me waiting on the doorstep
when you get home. That’s how it is. I’ve no wish to be more tiresome than I’ve got to be, but I’m on duty, and that’s all there is to it.”

  “Oh, very well. I’ll come with you,” said Garstang, “but don’t expect me to forget the part you played when last we met.”

  He turned with James, and they crossed the road to the waiting car. Like all police cars, it was a beautifully serviced vehicle and James handled it like an expert, so that they slid off smoothly and silently, gliding between buses and taxis as though the traffic opened up to allow their passing. They turned left, off the main road, slid-through St. John’s Wood and into the quiet curve of the Outer Circle to York Gate and so across the Marylebone Road and into Wimpole Street.

  “Well—you can drive: I’ll say that for you,” said Garstang. “I respect real skill when I meet it.”

  “I daresay that’s a backhanded compliment,” said James dryly; “I’ve driven all over Europe in my time and my life’s depended on being able to drive—just a bit better than the chap who was after me.”

  Garstang opened the front door with his latchkey, and James followed him into the hall.

  “Come upstairs to my flat,” said Garstang. “You’re on duty, I’m not. I’ve had enough of my consulting room today. There are over fifty stairs, but I don’t suppose you mind that.”

  He switched the lights on and went ahead up the carpeted stairs: the dignified house was very quiet: James wondered if the caretakers were in, far below in their basement, but there wasn’t a sound to indicate that there was anybody in the house but themselves. They went right up to the top floor, which was enclosed as a self-contained flat, and again Garstang opened a door with a latchkey, and led James across a narrow passage into a sitting room.

  It was a comfortable room, though very plain: there were big modern chairs, a deep plain-pile carpet, a great number of books on built-in shelves, and no pictures, photographs, or ornaments. Carpet, upholstery, and curtains were a warm greyish colour, and the walls and ceiling were a lighter tone of the same colour. It was a markedly restful room, and James said:

  “You’re nice and peaceful, all on your own up here.”

  “Yes. It’s as quiet a spot as you could find in London,” said Garstang. “When you’ve been listening to interminable expressions of other people’s confusions all day, you want to come back to a room which poses no problems. You’d better take your coat off—it’s warm in here. Sit down. I’m going to have a drink. If you’d like to join me, help yourself.”

  He opened a cupboard, produced whisky, syphon, and glasses, and mixed himself a whisky and soda: his movements were deft and very quiet: there was no rattle of glasses or indication of tremor in his competent hands, for all the weariness of his face. Putting the glasses and drinks on a low table between their two chairs, he lit a cigarette and said:

  “Well? What do you want to know?”

  “First, about the house in Cologne young Greville recognised, sir.”

  “Yes. You probably know it. You know Cologne as well as I do—or very nearly. If you drive out of the city towards Bonn, past the Severin, and through the Lindenthal area, you pass the municipal offices, which were built in the late twenties——”

  “Yes: German sham Gothic, running to height and spires and pinnacles and suchlike extravagances,” put in James.

  “That’s it, and a hundred yards further on there’s a crossroads: if you turn left—eastwards, that is, towards the Rhine, there are some older houses.”

  “Yes. Wait a minute. Lindenstrasse,” said James. “A wealthy Jewish family named Nanheim owned the big house behind the lime trees: it was confiscated and presented to one of Himmler’s stooges—we hoofed him out in ’46.”

  “Yes, but before you reach that, there’s a less pretentious little house, with a fine cedar of Lebanon on the lawn, and some copper beech trees: that’s the house Greville remembered. It was a school for small boys—what we should call a prep school, and Pastor Baumgarten had run it for years. Greville must have been at school there, of course. The pastor made a point of taking English boys if he could get them.”

  “That’s quite a point,” said James. “Accepting your assumption that Greville was at school there, how do you work out the rest of the story?”

  “Either of us could work it out,” said Garstang wearily, “though we’d have to guess our way along. The boy was between seven and nine years old at the time. It’s to be supposed his parents were living in Germany: they were English-speaking, because the boy spoke English when he recovered his speech. He didn’t utter a word of German so far as I can gather, and that leads me to believe that he hadn’t been at the school very long. If his parents were English, they’d have tried to get him—and presumably themselves—out of Germany before war was declared. On the other hand there’s the chance that they sent the boy out of Germany, but stayed themselves.”

  “The Grevilles found the boy in March ’41,” said James, “nearly twenty months after war was declared.”

  Garstang nodded. “There’s more than one way of explaining what happened in the interval,” he said. “The boy might have been sent into France, or the Netherlands, and have eventually arrived in England as a refugee. Hundreds of them got over here, you know that, months after the fall of France. It seems consistent with the rest of the story: if the boy had been living the life of a fugitive, with people who were always on the run, cut off from his own parents, and had arrived in England during the blitz, the bombing might have been the last straw: it didn’t ‘turn his brain,’ to use the common phrase, it drove his memory underground, as it were. It doesn’t often happen—but it can.”

  “That’s your pigeon—the loss of memory,” said James, “but I’m interested in your earlier point, that the boy’s parents may have sent him out of Germany, but stayed too long themselves and got caught there. That’d explain why nobody ever claimed him: if the boy were brought over as a refugee, and the folks who brought him were killed in the bombing, there wouldn’t have been anybody left to claim him.”

  “That was my own assumption,” replied Garstang.

  “But why Plymouth?” argued James. “They wouldn’t have kept refugees there: they were sent to reception camps inland.”

  “Admittedly: but fishing craft from Europe did get to this country: they made port all along the Cornwall-Devon coast, from Falmouth to Brixham. If a skipper had risked bringing his craft over, he’d have landed at the first inlet he could make——running up to Devonport through the shelter of Cawsand Bay, likely enough, and if he did it on the night of the Plymouth blitz, the upshot wasn’t so surprising after all.” Garstang paused a moment, and then added: “What followed can never be proved. I gather that the child’s clothes were half burnt off him: there was nothing in his pockets, nothing to prove identity—that fits in with the refugee idea, to my mind. Of course if he’d been found on any other night than that one, half the police of the county would have got busy analysing his charred rags. As it happened the police had their hands full with more urgent matters just then.”

  “My God, they had,” agreed James. “You’ve given a lot of thought to this, sir. How do you connect up the boy’s appearance on Roborough Down with what happened to him at Paddington Station?”

  “At the moment I don’t, because I’m not being given the chance to connect up anything,” said Garstang. “As I see it, there are two lines of approach: one is the police method, to work backwards from ascertained facts: the other is to go back and investigate from the earliest known event—Greville’s recognition of Pastor Baumgarten’s house. Salcombe said: ‘They’re all dead.’ It’s very improbable, you know. Someone in that household will have survived—nurse, teacher, servant—and that someone could tell us who the boy was, and who his parents were.” He broke off for a moment and James waited for him to go on. “You see, as a psychiatrist, I’m bound to take into consideration that the boy’s memory was coming back. We don’t know what he did, what enquiries he set going, w
hat he remembered. Macdonald accepts—as he’s bound to accept—that Greville came up to London to consult me. What we don’t know is who else he came to consult: who met him when he arrived. . . .”

  2

  “You’ve made a very interesting reconstruction, sir,” said James, “but there’s another interpretation of the same facts. You say that Greville was English, because he spoke English. Hadn’t it occurred to you that he might have been American? You see, U.S.A. wasn’t in the war at that period, and Americans were still persona grata in Germany. They could go in and get out.”

  “Quite true,” said Garstang, “but how do you account for the disappearance of the parents? United States citizens weren’t allowed to vanish off the map without some sort of pother being made. If the child had been American, enquiries would have been made about him.”

  “Where?” asked James. “The answer is obviously ‘in Germany,’ if the boy and his parents were in Germany. The enquiries would have gone through the American consulate, which was still functioning until U.S.A. declared war on the Axis after Pearl Harbor. As to whether any such records were salvaged, or whether anybody would remember anything about them is a different story. But leave that out for the moment: I’m suggesting that it would have been possible for an American businessman, or diplomat, or consular employe, to get from Germany to Britain in the spring of 1941. It would probably have been a long trek, through Switzerland, France, and Spain, to Lisbon—unless the passengers concerned were important enough to be given seats in a German aircraft and get to Lisbon that way: and from Lisbon they could have come by sea—as you did yourself, sir.”

  “I might remind you that I didn’t reach England until July ’41,” put in Garstang, “some months after Dick Greville had been found on Roborough Down.” Suddenly he cried out in exasperation: “Am I to be haunted by you all my life? Weren’t you satisfied with the facts you collected about me during the war? Didn’t you go on long enough then?”