Stealing the Crown (A Guy Harford Mystery)

by TP Fielden

  ‘Though he rather looks down his nose at me, I think he was sounding me out to see whether I wanted to take the job on – I think they’re a bit desperate. But Ed was the man who would have sorted him out, made him do his best for King and country and all that, not me.

  ‘Why, then, was he suddenly dead? It wasn’t an accident, Rupe, I’m sure of it. And then Sir Topham Dighton keeps pushing me to do something more with the investigation, but I’ve been thinking about that, and I ask myself whether in fact it isn’t a devious trick – Dighton thinks I’m such a bumbling idiot that I’m sure to muck up any inquiry into Ed’s death.’

  ‘Why d’you say that?’

  ‘Well, he keeps going on about what happened in Tangier. He calls me – in that supercilious way of his – his Tanja Man. He clearly thinks I’m a complete buffoon.’

  Rupert gave a snort of laughter. ‘Have some beer. I think you’d probably better tell me about Tangier.’

  A mile away in a windowless, airless basement room beneath the Air Ministry, a young Royal Air Force officer stood vaguely to attention with a vacant expression on his face.

  Sitting opposite, three oldish men with many rings decorating their uniform sleeves looked down on him with ill-disguised contempt.

  ‘A complete disgrace!’ said one vehemently. ‘Here we are, in the middle of the world’s greatest conflict, and you go and do this!’

  The young officer looked straight ahead, saying nothing.

  ‘Of the three armed services we are the most courageous but the least regarded. We won the Battle of Britain but still we face an ingrained prejudice. We at the Ministry are doing our damnedest to try to correct that balance – to get rid of the prejudice! – and then this happens.’

  Another, older, man joined in the assault. ‘This is nothing short of a court martial offence which should put you behind bars and have you dismissed from the service. And after your very decent show in Spitfires, too. It’s shameful!’

  The third man, sitting between the other two, brought the proceedings to order. ‘Flight Lieutenant Haskins,’ he intoned, ‘you are accused on two counts, the first of breaching the rationing regulations, punishable under the provisions of the National Security Arrangements. This offence carries a maximum of six months’ imprisonment.

  ‘Second, you are accused of bringing the service into disrepute. The offence means the forfeiture of your commission and your dismissal in disgrace from the Royal Air Force.’

  ‘Permission to speak, sir.’

  ‘Go ahead.’

  ‘Will you be court-martialling Queen Mary as well?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I understand she holds the rank of Honorary Colonel of the Queen’s Own Rifles. I looked it up. The offence I’m accused of therefore undeniably includes another officer. And I ask myself why I am standing here, alone, unrepresented. Is this actually a court martial?’

  The air vice-marshal sitting in the centre replied, ‘I warn you to take care, young man. Remember your precarious position! In answer to your question, this is a preliminary hearing. To ascertain the facts of the case. To, er, limit the damage it may cause the service.’

  The accused took this in, then said, ‘I wonder if I may sit down?’

  ‘You may not! Stand to attention!’

  ‘I hope you don’t mind,’ said Haskins mildly. ‘I’ve got a sore knee.’

  ‘Oh, get him a chair!’ the AVM irritatedly ordered a guard standing by the door. ‘Now tell us in your own words what happened.’

  ‘I was coming back to camp from Chipping Sodbury, but my transport let me down,’ said the officer, leaning back comfortably. ‘So I was thumbing a lift. I wasn’t having much luck when up drew this large Rolls-Royce and the chauffeur told me to hop in. Well, I wasn’t going to say no to that!’

  ‘What happened then?’

  ‘I didn’t recognise her at first, I’m not much of a royalist to be honest, but gradually it dawned on me that the old lady in the car was Queen Mary. She made me sit next to her and was all chummy and nice – apparently she quite often takes pity on servicemen thumbing lifts, and it was my lucky day.

  ‘She started asking me about my war, and I told her about being shot down over the Channel in my Spitfire and how,’ he said resentfully, ‘I was now only considered ready for the scrapheap. “A burned-out case”, they called me.

  ‘She asked what I was doing now and I told her. “The best they can find for a chap with eight enemy kills and a Distinguished Flying Cross is to give him the kitchens to manage,” I said, and at that she got frightfully interested – not in my DFC, mind, but the kitchens.

  ‘“Do you ever get any sausages?” she said, and I told her of course we do. “We don’t have sausages at Badminton,” she said. “I love sausages. Can you get me some sausages?”

  ‘What could I do? She’s the queen – well, she used to be – and it was an order. I went back to the camp and had a think about it. It’s not difficult to move the rations around a bit so I got hold of a few pounds of sausages and took them over to Badminton. A big place, it is, a duke lives there and . . .’

  ‘Get on with it!’

  ‘I was told to introduce myself to someone by the name of Coke, a sort of ADC to the Queen. Well, I can tell you, this chap was embarrassed. He realised straight away it was a breach of regulations; he said to me, “She’s always doing this. She goes to people’s houses and we come away with items of furniture. She’s a ruddy magpie! And now this,” he says, “this really is bad. Can’t you take ’em back?”

  ‘I told him I’d already “lost” them in the accounts book and it would draw attention if I brought them back. “Give ’em to Her Maj and God bless her,” I said. “Hope she enjoys ’em. You’re starving her here, do you know that?”

  ‘He thought that was very funny and told me what they’d had for dinner the night before. A right old bean-feast.’

  ‘Did you take any money from him?’

  ‘Ten shillings. He insisted. Said I was to put it in the mess fund if nothing else.’

  ‘Did you?’

  ‘No, actually. I went into the officers’ mess, bought a round of drinks, and raised a toast to the royal family.’

  ‘He took money,’ said one of his inquisitors to the chairman. ‘Another offence.’

  ‘Permission to speak,’ said Haskins.

  ‘Yes,’ came the weary reply.

  ‘Surely the offence is with Her Majesty? She instigated the . . . crime, if that’s what it is. I’m just a junior officer acting on orders from a senior officer who also just happens to be a queen.’

  ‘Did you get the impression she’d done this before?’

  ‘I have no idea. No harm done, though, surely? It was a lot of sausages but we have a thousand men on the base, it was a drop in the ocean. She’s got a bit of a cheek, though – she asked me when my day off was and told me I was to report to the house and volunteer for what she called “wooding” – chopping down trees and the like. I told her I had my hands full in the kitchen. She’s a rum one, that.’

  ‘Let me explain something to you, Flight Lieutenant,’ said the air vice-marshal crisply. ‘If this gets out there’ll be all hell to pay – the royal family using their influence to breach rationing laws, and having a good tuck-in at the same time as the rest of the nation is practically starving. It’s just the sort of thing the Daily Mirror, or that frightful chap at the News Chronicle – what’s his name, Rochester? – would love to get their teeth into.’

  ‘It’s not likely to get out, though, is it?’ said Haskins. ‘It being the royals?’

  ‘Why do you think you’re here?’ barked the senior officer. ‘Somebody reported you to the RAF Police. That same somebody could just as easily pick up the telephone and dial a number in Fleet Street.’

  ‘And so they ought. Jolly good story,’ said the young pilot, only half under his breath.

  ‘Flight Lieutenant, your actions risk bringing the Royal Air Force into the gravest disrepute. The
light-hearted way you approach this scandalous breach of the law is deeply regrettable. Were it not for your distinguished service during the Battle of Britain . . .’

  ‘Yes?’ said the officer, sensing – as he’d sensed at ten thousand feet, when he saw the Messerschmitt raiders turn tail and skedaddle eastwards, mission vanquished – that the threat had passed.

  ‘Were it not for that service I should have you arrested. As it is, you will be posted to Canada, where you will instruct whippersnappers like you how to fly a Spitfire properly. Dismissed!’

  ‘Righty-o,’ said Haskins, and wandered out without so much as a salute.

  CHAPTER TEN

  ‘You’ve never been to Tangier?’

  ‘No.’

  Guy thought of his abandoned house smothered in bougainvillea and surrounded by fig trees like huge umbrellas, the light at dawn, and the long, seductive sunsets. ‘It’s not everyone’s cup of tea – pickpockets and counterfeiters and everybody changing foreign currency as fast as they can. Intriguers and spies and very rainy in winter. Very much an acquired taste.’ He could have said: It is paradise to me and I would happily die there.

  ‘A bit dicey now, though.’

  ‘Only up to a point. The Spanish marched in and took control in 1940 and declared it a neutral city; that’s to say, it’s they who run the place, and everyone else – the Germans and British, the Italians and French – are all expected to be on best party manners.’

  Rupert lit a cigarette. ‘How did you come to – how shall we say it – work for our government out there?’

  Guy looked up at the canvas on the wall. The sunset he’d painted, going down over the Grand Socco, looked a lot like Turner but with deeper, more passionate colours.

  ‘There’s a remarkable British colony out there – everybody knows everybody, and mostly they all get along together. The doctor is a dour old Scotsman called Harry Dunlop, but it’s his wife, Teddy, who’s the life and soul of the party. By coincidence she’s also our top spy there. Once the war got under way, every single nation worth its salt turned up in Tangier because of its strategic importance – it dominates the gates of the Mediterranean, you see, only nine miles of water between it and Europe. So if you want to invade anywhere, you pass right by our door. First step in your plan for world domination is to set up an embassy or legation in Tangier and spy on all the others.’

  ‘I thought the capital city was Rabat. Surely the embassies are there?’

  ‘Nobody seems to take any notice of that. The kind of people who turned up in Tangier once war was declared weren’t interested in diplomacy, but they did pack an awful lot of cloaks and daggers in their suitcases.’

  ‘But why you? Don’t tell me our government has so few trained agents that they had to haul you in off the street to help out!’

  ‘It wasn’t quite like that. Just before war broke out I was painting away quite successfully and had an exhibition in the El Minzah Hotel. A chap who called himself Henri d’Orléans came into the gallery one day and bought two.’

  ‘Orléans? Isn’t he . . . ?’

  ‘Obviously, as an artist you know if someone buys a picture, they like your work – but if they buy two, they love it. So I took the trouble to go over and talk to this man and we got to know each other. I thought he was rather grand, the way he talked, and yes, you’re right – it turned out his title was Comte de Paris, and if France still had a monarchy, he’d be King Henri VI today.’

  ‘This is where you got your taste for royalty, Guy!’

  ‘Very funny. He lives in a place along the coast called Larache, and he invited me down there to paint some exteriors of the house. When I got there he’d come and sit and talk while I painted, but he only seemed to have one topic of conversation – the restoration of the monarchy in France. He thought it was extraordinary the way the House of Windsor had managed to cling on after the Abdication – “In my country, King Edward would have been guillotined” – but he felt the coming war was sure to alter things in his favour.’

  ‘But they haven’t had a throne in France for a hundred and fifty years! He can’t honestly think it’s ever going to come back.’

  ‘He thought that if France was overrun by Germany, like in the First War and the Franco-Prussian war, his people – wanting strong leadership and fed up with the politicians – would rally behind him. He still believes that to this day.’

  ‘What an extraordinary encounter. But what happened, how did you get pulled into becoming a government agent?’

  ‘Well, I finished the paintings and came back to Tangier. I was having dinner with Dr and Mrs Dunlop and, naturally, told them what I’d been doing. Teddy – Mrs Dunlop – arranged to come round to my studio the next day to look at some of the sketches, and that’s when the whole mess started.’

  Rupert had taken out a small notebook with a ‘GPO’ stamp on its cover. ‘D’you mind if I make a note?’

  ‘As long as it doesn’t compromise what I’m doing at the Palace.’

  ‘For my eyes only. Go on.’

  ‘Teddy Dunlop swore me to secrecy, then told me I could be of immense assistance to the British government. She said that officially Britain could have no contact with someone like the Count of Paris because he basically wants to overthrow the French Republic – who just happen to be our closest allies in this war. On the other hand, he has a huge following in France. If the Vichy government falls, and the people decide they don’t want de Gaulle, that’s Henri’s chance to grab the throne. And he will if he can – remember those bloody riots in Paris only six or seven years ago, when people were on the streets demanding the return of the monarchy?’

  ‘Several people were killed, I seem to remember.’

  ‘Well, it shows the level of feeling, and Henri d’Orléans believes he can benefit from that. Teddy Dunlop told me that if he becomes King Henri, they want him in their pocket. So does everyone else, of course, and the general feeling is he’ll give his friendship to the highest bidder.’

  ‘Sounds like a trustworthy sort of chap.’

  ‘He’s French, Rupe, what do you expect? On the other hand, you have to see it from his perspective – he wants his throne back. There has to be a line of communication between him and London, one strong enough to airlift him away should the need occur. In the absence of anything more concrete, I, apparently, was it.’

  ‘You became the go-between.’

  Guy nodded. ‘We’d got on very well while I was down at Larache, and Henri said his son needed painting lessons. He was only six but very talented, and his father wanted an established artist to bring him on. So back I went to Larache and became court painter to the French throne – ha! – plus the Count’s unofficial contact with the British government.’

  Rupert was scribbling something in his notebook and didn’t look up immediately. ‘Did he mention the Cagoule?’

  ‘That bunch of thugs? The men who’ve pledged to put him back on the throne? He pretends he doesn’t know what they’re up to, but he told me enough to make me think he does. All too clearly.’

  ‘They’re bankrolled by Mussolini. Technically, therefore, your Henri’s the enemy.’

  ‘Rupe,’ said Guy, ‘if there’s one thing I’ve learned since this war began, it’s that there are ten different kinds of enemy. Some are more enemy than others. With people like the Count of Paris, who could be our greatest ally tomorrow, you have to screw up your eyes, blank your mind, and erase the word from your vocabulary.’

  ‘Humph,’ growled Rupert. ‘So then what – you’re staying down the coast with the Count and his son, passing back what you learn to this Mrs Dunlop. What went wrong?’

  Guy sighed. ‘He was happy with the arrangement – he wanted Britain to be his friend as much we wanted to be his.’

  ‘So what happened? You fell out with the Count?’

  ‘He fell out with me. Everything was going smoothly, and once war was declared he wanted to enlist in the British Army. But then in 1940 he thought the eva
cuation from Dunkirk – leaving France to face the future alone – was the grossest possible betrayal. He called on his followers to support the Vichy government, so once again, he is our enemy.’

  Guy went on: ‘By this time, Tangier was filling up with legations and embassies and consulates. The Germans and their hangers-on commandeered the Rif Hotel; our side stuck to the El Minzah. The two places were stuffed with double agents who took money from both sides for telling basically the same story – just hopping from one bar to the other, then back again. And of course everyone’s room was being turned upside down; it was chaotic. Then the Americans came in, sending a dozen men calling themselves vice-consuls but who were nothing of the kind – they were spies. Rather superior material to our own lot, intellectually and experience-wise, and so Teddy Dunlop persuaded me to cosy up to them, painting being an innocent-looking sort of profession to their eyes.’

  ‘And?’

  Guy sighed. ‘It was a hot night, and I was sitting with one of them, a man called Don Williams from Cincinnati, in a café near the Rif Hotel where the Germans hang out. To cut a long story short, I suggested he infiltrate a group of evacuees from Gibraltar, boys with rather too much drink inside them, and see whether he couldn’t get inside the hotel when they went in.

  ‘A high-ranking German military attaché was there – Colonel Reiner – and with him some popsy from Berlin who’s said to be close to Hitler. She started making scathing remarks about the Allies, and one of the Gib boys got up, walked over, and smacked her in the mouth. There was a spectacular brawl, blood all over the place, and Williams got caught up in it. When they discovered he was American – well, let’s put it this way, the fine diplomatic balancing act so carefully crafted by the Spanish was on the brink of collapse. The Germans had captured – or “arrested” – Williams, and were leaning on the Spanish authorities to have every other US citizen kicked out of Tangier.’

  He gave a derisive laugh. ‘It was put to me that the whole course of the war could have altered if the Spaniards hadn’t taken a firm hand, and of course I – the innocent British artist – carried the can for the whole damned incident. I have to tell you, Rupe, the whole thing appalled me. I’m a painter, not a spy. But it looked like a British agent had deliberately put the cat amongst the pigeons, pushing a US diplomat into a brawl involving a high-ranking Nazi officer. Whitehall using any tactic it could to drag America into the war. It wasn’t like that, but somebody had to take the blame and it was me. Teddy Dunlop had me airlifted out to Lisbon that night, and I was sent home for a carpeting at the Foreign Office.’