Stealing the Crown (A Guy Harford Mystery)

by TP Fielden

  He started. He hadn’t seen Ted Rochester in the chapel but suddenly there he was – charming, suave, and as always, just a bit too pushy.

  ‘Yes. She wasn’t quite sure what it was about, and neither am I. May we talk some other time? I’m nominally in charge of this show.’

  ‘I hear you’re in a bit of a tailspin over Ed’s death,’ lied Rochester – he’d heard nothing of the kind.

  ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

  ‘The suspicious circumstances.’ This was sufficiently vague for the reporter to sound as though he knew what he was talking about.

  Unversed in Fleet Street trickery, Guy replied, ‘They may look suspicious to you, but they don’t to Tommy Lascelles. What’s good enough for him is good enough for me.’

  ‘If there’s something that needs to be cleared up, I have friends in all sorts of places who can be of help.’

  ‘I’ve no idea what you’re talking about. And thanks for the offer, but it’s all under control.’

  ‘Ah!’ cried Rochester. ‘So there is something!’

  ‘Don’t you have anything else to write about?’ said Guy, irritatedly setting off for the funeral reception.

  ‘Someone else said that to me last night,’ came the self-satisfied reply. ‘I’ll repeat my answer to her – people always say that when you’re close to uncovering the truth.’

  ‘There’s no truth to uncover. See you around, Ted, you won’t be welcome at the wake.’

  Later that night, Guy and Rupert were jammed in a corner of The Grenadier. He’d ditched the mourning clothes and was wearing one of his Tangier shirts in pink linen.

  ‘That’s a bit bold,’ said Rupe, handing him a whisky.

  ‘Oh, shut up. I’m fed up with the whole business. I don’t know how much longer I can stick it at the Palace.’

  ‘What now?’

  ‘Topsy Dighton, the Master of the Household, had me upstairs after the funeral and gave me his opinion on how it could have been done so much better.’

  ‘Ah well. All over and done with now, though?’

  ‘Not exactly. In fact, far from it. That file you showed me the other night.’

  ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about,’ said Rupe with a steely smile, his eyes quickly scanning the pub.

  ‘What? Ah, yes . . . yes,’ stumbled his apprentice. ‘Of course not. Well, to put it another way, I read something very interesting about Lady Easthampton. As a result, I went back to Markham Street and popped my head round the door.’

  ‘How did you get in?’

  ‘Rodie made me a key.’

  Hardacre laughed out loud. ‘And after all you’ve said about her! Anyway, why the visit?’

  ‘I was looking for something, anything. If you’d been around I would have asked you to come along for the ride.’

  ‘I’ve been busy.’

  ‘Well, as it turned out I managed perfectly well without you. And found what I was looking for – thanks to your file; I wouldn’t have known what to look for otherwise.’

  Rupe winced at the mention of the file but let Guy continue.

  ‘There was an envelope containing a handful of letters and cards signed “S” and “Suzy”. Your friend Lady Easthampton.’

  His flatmate looked around uneasily. ‘We really shouldn’t be talking about this in a pub, but what did they say?’

  ‘Very little. Most were about making appointments to meet. Spattered with kisses and endearments but nothing actually suggesting an affair. And there was a book of photographs she’d given him which she’d signed. I brought them all back to the flat – you can have a look if you like.’

  ‘What sort of dates were they written?’

  ‘Well, they peter out about the time Adelaide took the children off to stay with her father. If you recall, the old buffer next door said that it was around then Ed disappeared and the house was left empty.’

  ‘When did the correspondence start?’

  ‘Some time towards the end of last year. The words she offers in them are a bit of a come-on, if you know what I mean, but there’s nothing else in there. Though,’ added Guy archly, ‘I daresay the GPO, being experts on letters and cards and suchlike, will be able to read more into them than I have.’

  ‘Ha ha. Your round.’

  Guy waded through the crowd to the bar, and while waiting to be served found himself looking around to see if Rodie had arrived. He hadn’t exactly agreed to go dancing when they saw each other in Claridge’s, but the shirt must have been put on for a reason.

  ‘So what do you think?’ he said to Rupe when he brought the drinks back. ‘Suzy Easthampton, I mean?’

  ‘Well, if I were a betting man, I’d say she was up to her old tricks. She’s spent the whole time since she got here from Poland sucking up to increasingly influential people. You can actually track her upward path from the odd MP through the Cabinet to the House of Lords and – eventually – ending up as the wife of a lord herself. She’s had affairs with all of these men, I imagine, but if they were asked they’d claim they’d never heard of her.’

  ‘I assume they have been asked?’

  ‘In a manner of speaking.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And it means the authorities don’t have anything on her – her hands appear to be clean, and yet they know she’s associated with this man Zeisloft who is working for the Germans.’

  ‘Why don’t you . . . er . . . why don’t the authorities pick her up?’

  ‘She’s disappeared. That’s to say, nobody’s seen her since just before your colleague’s unfortunate death. I’d say,’ said Rupert, looking up at the ceiling, ‘that what you’ve discovered could be of great use.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Careless talk costs lives, old chap. Haven’t you read the wall posters?’

  ‘This is ridiculous,’ said Guy. ‘We can’t go on talking like this. You don’t work for the General Post Office, Rupe, and there’s no point in pretending you do. We’ve been living in that flat too long for you to want to keep it up.’

  ‘Let’s go for a walk,’ agreed Rupert, nodding. ‘It may be incredibly noisy in here but there’s always someone listening.’

  They wandered out into the summer night, Guy casting one last glance around the pub to see if the small form of his burglar friend was seated somewhere. For once, there was silence in the skies and they wandered off into Belgrave Square, with its wide pavements and large stone houses. The place was deserted, save for a pair of policemen on their nightly beat.

  ‘You’ve gathered I work for the government,’ said Rupert. ‘I guess it’s pretty obvious. I’m going to leave you to guess which arm, but whatever your guess it’s sure to be wrong. I let you have that report on Suzy Easthampton because it’s our belief she’s been trying to reach a certain target. You’ve seen the pattern of behaviour since her arrival in Britain – working her way up the social ladder – and I have to say she’s done remarkably well to have got as far as she has. I think we have to put that down to the fact that she’s sexually attractive – and that she has a powerful brain to go with it. She senses men’s vulnerabilities and knows just how to play them.’

  ‘I can’t see that poor old Ed Brampton was such a good catch, if what you say is true.’

  ‘Let’s sit here.’ Rupert pointed to a wooden bench within sight of the two bobbies. He lit a cigarette and went on, ‘It wasn’t Ed she was after, it was the Duke of Gloucester.’

  ‘Gloucester? Why him, for heaven’s sake?’

  ‘You have to go back a bit, Guy, to understand this. Have you heard of Operation Willi?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No reason why you should. This time last year the Nazis attempted to kidnap the Duke of Windsor and encourage him to work with Hitler on a peace settlement, or – if Hitler invaded Britain – to put him on the throne in place of the present king.’

  ‘What? He’d never agree to something like that! Surely it can’t be true!’

  ‘There’s more to
it than that – but basically they thought they could buy him off. They put aside fifty million Swiss francs as bait. It didn’t work – and Windsor was sent to the Bahamas, where he’s acquiring a nice tan.’

  ‘And representing our interests.’

  ‘You might say that. Anyway, Windsor is out of the way. But the Duke of Gloucester is not, he’s most definitely here – and, we learn, very restless. He’s a bit of a handful and the powers that be don’t quite know what to do with him.

  ‘We think that Lady Easthampton had been given the task of getting to know the Duke in order to work the same magic trick on him as they did on Windsor – only with better luck this time.’

  ‘Explain the logic.’

  ‘If Hitler invades, King George will either be locked up or shot. Harry Gloucester will be given the throne and ordered to sweeten the populace and keep them from revolting.’

  ‘That’s just incredible. It wouldn’t work – people wouldn’t stand for it.’

  ‘Wouldn’t they?’ said Rupert. ‘Look at the Channel Islands. Hitler’s done a pretty good job there of subduing the populace. All you have to do is starve people, cut off their water and electricity, chuck a few in jail and shoot anybody that doesn’t like it. It’s not rocket science.’

  ‘So what would be the point of King Harry if Hitler’s ruling the country?’

  ‘Maintaining the status quo. Keeping the natives quiet. If you pluck a new king from the existing royal house, people sooner or later will fall into line behind him.’

  ‘I can’t see that happening.’

  ‘It’s not what we think, it’s what they think, and they’re convinced they nearly pulled it off with the Duke of Windsor. Look at that visit to Germany just before the war, even raising his paw in a Heil Hitler salute.’

  ‘To my certain knowledge, Harry Gloucester was blown up in France last year – by the Luftwaffe. I doubt he feels that warmly towards Herr Hitler after that.’

  ‘You’re wrong. You have only to read that series of articles in The Week about his German sympathies. And you can bet your bottom dollar he’d feel warmly about the prospect of the throne beneath that ample bottom of his.’

  ‘Well . . .’ Guy was about to tell Rupe the rumours of Gloucester’s ambition circulating in Buckingham Palace, but then said, ‘Look, this really isn’t the place to talk. Let’s go back to the flat, you can take a look at those Suzy Easthampton letters, and then maybe we can work out some rules of engagement. I’m just as bound by secrecy as you are.’

  ‘Well, yes. I think you might be able to help me,’ said Rupert, rising and nodding towards the police constables, who were going for a stroll.

  ‘And I think you might be able to help me,’ said Guy. ‘Is there any whisky left, d’you think?’

  CHAPTER NINE

  There was a problem finding a shilling for the gas meter. Neither man had the right coin in his small change, though by the end of their search the kitchen table was covered in a sprawl of half-crowns, florins, sixpences and threepenny bits.

  ‘Try the cup on the dresser.’

  ‘OK, got one,’ said Rupert, taking it down from a shelf. ‘Oh, I nearly forgot, this is for you.’

  He fished in his pocket and handed over an envelope.

  ‘From?’ said Guy, but he knew. The energetic scrawl, quirky and malformed, said it all.

  He peeled it open to find two tickets to the Hammersmith Palais. On the back of one, the same hand had written ‘Next Monday. 10 p.m. You’ve got my ticket too, so don’t be late.’

  No signature.

  ‘I thought she was coming to the pub tonight. She was certainly threatening to.’

  ‘Bless my buttons. Give us a kiss!’

  ‘Ohh . . . put a sock in it!’ rasped Rupert. ‘How much longer, Guy?’

  ‘Charlotte? She’s just pleased to see us. Been alone all day – it’s no way to treat a parrot.’

  ‘All’s well! All’s well! Where’s the Captain?’ Charlotte edged along her perch and gave Rupert a venomous stare.

  ‘All I can say is, I hope it won’t be here much longer!’

  ‘Rodie,’ reminded Guy. He surprised himself with the mention of her name.

  ‘Yes. She’s working for me tonight.’

  ‘Good Lord, really?’

  Rupert opened a bottle of brown ale – ‘All there is, I’m afraid.’

  ‘I’ll have a cup of tea.’

  ‘So, as you say, the moment has come when we lay our cards on the table,’ said Rupert. ‘You’ve known, roughly speaking, what my job is more or less since you moved in here, only you’re too much of a gentleman to come out and mention it. Obviously I know what you do. But not the details. It’d be pointless, and highly irregular, to have a full exchange of information between us, but it appears we might be able to help each other out. On that basis, are you prepared to break open the Official Secrets Act and let a few home truths come fluttering out?’

  ‘In return for a similarly guarded breach of the rules?’

  Rupert nodded and smiled.

  ‘Go on, then,’ said Guy. ‘You go first.’

  Rupert went over to the blackout curtains to make sure no light was escaping into the summer night. ‘I don’t think it would take a genius to work out that if Ed Brampton hid away a number of letters from his Hungarian lady friend, and those letters all pointed to a series of meetings, that something was going on between them.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Guy, ‘but before you go any further, my understanding – from my clerk and from his widow – is that if Ed had eyes for anyone, it was the Queen, not some raven-haired Mata Hari, if that’s what she is.’

  ‘The Queen? Do you mean . . . ?’

  ‘No, absolutely not. I think he was a bit besotted, that’s all. We’ll never know what she thought of him – she sent some lovely flowers, by the way.’

  Rupert nodded vaguely. ‘Suzy Easthampton’s plan was to sleep her way to the top. Why she did it didn’t seem to make any sense up until you discovered those letters – but now we have her and Ed Brampton in the same room, it makes everything much clearer.’

  ‘If I understand it correctly, she’s been in England since 1935,’ said Guy, shaking his head. ‘That’s a long time to wait about to pull off something like this.’

  ‘It may not have been like that in the first place. Remember, her boyfriend is an arms dealer. Maybe the original brief was to get close to a Cabinet minister or two during all that sabre-rattling before war was declared and see what developed from that. Then war came . . . and suddenly Zeisloft, if that’s his real name, has an incredibly valuable asset to sell to the Germans – he owns an undercover agent, in place in London, mixing with the crème de la crème. Operation Willi has gone phut, but now here’s another bite at the cherry. Our Suzy is directed to get as close to the Regent Designate as she can. So she turns her headlights on Ed, and away we go.’

  ‘So how can I help? Do you want me to alert the King, through Tommy Lascelles?’

  ‘Too soon for that – there’s no concrete evidence. An adventuress turns up on our shores, finds herself a useless drunk of a husband who happens to be a lord, and that’s it. But there is something else you can do.’

  ‘Yes?’ Guy was feeding Charlotte a piece of apple through the wires of the cage.

  ‘Go and talk to Adelaide Brampton. You know her quite well, obviously.’

  ‘And say what? You thought your husband was in love with the Queen but in fact it was a Hungarian spy all along?’

  ‘Wives have a way of knowing things. She’ll tell you more.’

  Guy thought about the abandoned portrait in the hall.

  ‘Well, I can certainly ask her. The whole thing comes full circle, really. And this is maybe where you can help me, Rupe.’

  ‘Mm?’

  ‘Adelaide’s angry at the cover-up over his death. Tommy Lascelles wants the whole matter squared away and forgotten, and to the best of my ability I’ve done what he asked. But old Dighton – the Master of the
Household – he’s kicking up a fuss. My clerk told me that he and Ed had a very strange relationship, given that Ed was supposed to be working for Lascelles – Dighton would get him to do errands which had nothing to do with his official duties. There was a diary with the various things he did for Dighton, but that’s gone missing.

  ‘Then there’s the question of what he was doing with a gun, since he didn’t possess one, and how an experienced army officer could make the mistake of accidentally putting a bullet into himself, sufficient to cause his own death.

  ‘And then there’s the mystery of what happened to Ed in the last weeks of his life. The moment Adelaide retired to the country with the children, he shut up the house in Markham Street and disappeared – where did he go?’

  ‘Maybe he was with Suzy Easthampton.’

  ‘I assume you were having her tailed?’

  Rupert looked embarrassed. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘not exactly. And, you know, there’s a war on. We were keeping an eye on her, but maybe not that close an eye. Not all the time. There are others.’

  ‘Well,’ said Guy, ‘it seems to me you need to find out what’s happened to her, while I talk to Adelaide and see if she’s got anything to say about Lady Easthampton. Don’t you have any idea where she might be?’

  Rupert drained his beer.

  ‘Her husband lives in a small house on the River Thames at Bray. Then there’s the family estate in Perthshire – thousands of acres. If Lady E’s disappeared up there we’ll never find her. Well,’ he admitted, ‘not easily.’

  ‘I’ve got something to add which I hope won’t go any further,’ said Guy. ‘And in order to get something from Adelaide, I really need some help.’

  ‘Go ahead.’

  ‘As you know, until that last-minute reversal Ed Brampton was about to be promoted to become the Duke of Gloucester’s private secretary – a good step up for him, but actually quite an important appointment from the Duke’s point of view as well, because he needs a safe pair of hands to look after him. Tommy Lascelles told me the other day the Duke’s always agitating for a bigger job – “We have to find something for him to do, he’s becoming quite restless,” he said.