The Kit Aston Mysteries (All Five Books)

by Jack Murray

  ‘Hard at it I see, old chap,’ said Kit with a smile.

  Spunky chortled as he rose to his feet, ‘Meditation dear boy. I’ve taken to it since meeting that Indian chap, Ganga Singh, last year in Paris.’

  Kit wandered over to the window and looked out at the many young ladies walking in the park. Spunky could see where his gaze was directed and smirked.

  ‘I’m sure you’ve been reflecting deeply on the human condition. The physical condition, that is. How do you like the new offices?’ asked Kit.

  One particularly attractive lady walked into view. Both men remained silent in appreciation for a few moments before Kit added, ‘Silly question really.’

  They sat down and Spunky relit his pipe. He glanced at Kit and asked, ‘So what brings you to the other side of the tracks old chap?’

  ‘Have you heard about this match I’m to play with Serov?’

  ‘Indeed Kit, rum fellow that. The boys at the club are considering running a book on it.’

  ‘Really, any takers for the home favourite?’

  ‘Poor choice of word old bean. It would be fair to say that the word “favourite” and Aston are not being spoken off in the same sentence.’

  ‘I don’t blame them,’ admitted Kit. ‘I’m a bit rusty.’

  ‘And he’s a bit better, I gather. Future world champion they say.’

  ‘Has the old boy said anything about it?’ Kit was referring to Mansfield Cumming, head of the Secret Intelligence Service.

  ‘Not to me anyway, but you know what he’s like. Keeps his cards close to his chest.’

  ‘I remember. He had me trying to get the Romanov family to come to Britain whilst neglecting to mention he knew the Bolsheviks were going to start a revolution.’

  ‘Yes, sorry about that,’ said Spunky with sincerity.

  ‘You knew also?’ Kit laughed in surprise.

  ‘Yes, I’d had wind of something. Anyway, this match, you know it could put us in a better position to free some of our boys from Russian prisons?’ asked Spunky, keen to move away from the subject of the Romanov’s.

  ‘Roger said as much. Did you see the article by Billy Peel, in the Daily Herald, by the way?’

  ‘Yes, quite a tribute to your opponent, I thought. Looks like your imminent defeat could, quite literally, herald the beginning of the revolution. Although I’m unclear why a dock worker in Rosyth would be encouraged to take up arms against His Majesty’s Armed Forces based on a chess match.’

  ‘I struggled with that also but no matter. Chap seems convinced on this. Good luck to him.’

  Kit fixed his eyes on his old school friend and said, ‘I was interested in knowing a bit more about Peel. I’ve a feeling he’s going to go to town on this match. I’d like to know what to expect.’

  Spunky remained silent for a few moments, seemingly lost in thought. After a few more puffs on the pipe he said, ‘If you’re asking me if he is in the pay of the Kremlin, I can honestly say, probably not. From what I’ve heard, he’s his own man, albeit hard line socialist.’

  This seemed to satisfy Kit. The two friends chatted for another few minutes before Kit took his leave to visit the hospital.

  ‘Pass my regards to the old man, Spunky,’ said Kit nodding towards the stairs outside Spunk’s office.

  ‘And of course, my thoughts for Mary, I hope she recovers soon.’

  They shook hands and Kit walked down the stairs. Miller was waiting outside in the car. Holding the passenger door open for Kit he asked, ‘Hospital?’

  ‘Hospital.’

  -

  Kit and Miller soon arrived at the hospital, Kit spoke to Harry as he stepped out of the car, ‘Why don’t you pop down to the Telegraph office and get that out of the way. I’ll see you back here at the usual time.’

  ‘Fair enough sir, on my way, I hope there’s some improvement,’ responded Miller hopefully.

  ‘Thanks Harry.’

  He appreciated the constant good humour of Miller. During the darkest moments of the last week, having Miller and Bright nearby had helped. He wasn’t sure how well he would have borne the strain had he been alone.

  The door closed, and Miller sped away. It was less than a few minutes to drive to the nearby Telegraph office. Parking nearby he trotted into the office and noticed the same young woman behind the counter. He walked straight over to her and showed the message he wished to send. She looked up and, although momentary, it was clear she recognised him. Looking at the message, Miller could see, almost imperceptibly, her eyebrows raise, before she resumed her usual professional demeanour.

  Her hair was cut fashionably short and seemed more auburn than he had remembered. He guessed her to be in her early twenties. No sign of a ring on her finger. He wondered how her face would look when she smiled. Miller paid for the telegram, nodded to her without smiling and left.

  -

  The sense of despondency in the hospital was overpowering. It felt almost like a separate, physical presence. The atmosphere was thick with death and illness making movement slow and breathing laboured. He knew he would never like hospitals. Walking along the corridor, Kit was struck by the familiar smell of disinfectant. It always brought him back to France.

  For two months he had lived with the smell as he recuperated from the injuries sustained during the War. He despised the stench and the memories it evoked and yet, it also reminded him of Mary. Of when they had first met, albeit unknowingly.

  Kit had lost the lower part of his right leg in France. Mary was nursing in a station near the front, under an assumed name, when Kit had arrived to be patched up. He was also there under an assumed name albeit for entirely different reasons. He had stayed in the same hospital for a couple of days, semi-conscious, before being moved to another hospital further back behind the lines.

  Unable to see very well because of the drugs, and suffering from noise induced hearing loss, Kit had not been able to connect the woman nursing him to Mary Cavendish when they’d met, once again, at the Christmas just gone.

  As he approached the room housing Mary, Kit felt hollow inside. Every visit brought the same sense of dread. The fear he would be greeted by a doctor. Unsmiling. Pained. No words would be needed. He knew this. It would be there in the face. The look of sorrow. But what would they know of sorrow? How could they know his life would be over, not just Mary’s? What would be left for him to live for?

  He thought about the months recovering in France and then England, the search for the nurse he had fallen in love with, only to hear that her name was, in all probability, an assumed one. Give up, they said, shaking their heads sadly. To lose her a second time would, almost certainly be more than he could bear.

  Finally, he reached the room, he held his breath as he knocked and entered. Bright and Esther looked up as he entered. But Kit was not looking at them. Standing over Mary was a doctor. He looked up at Kit; his face was grave.

  Chapter 11

  Georgy Bergmann accompanied Serov away from Ramsbottom Cotton Mill in Oldham. The day had been surreal. It had started in central Manchester at a hotel with a series of chess matches against county standard players and finished with the Russian chess grandmaster giving a fiery speech, in faultless English, to a meeting of even more fiery Trade Unionist and mill workers.

  It was an emotional speech that spoke of a man who had raised himself up from an orphanage to become a world-renowned chess player and champion, if not of chess, then of the oppressed. This had brought a satisfying cheer. In fact, had the audience been the local mill owners, they might have been just as inspired by Serov’s rise-from-humble-origins-to-prominence story as the local workers, reflected Bergmann cynically.

  Dressed in the unambiguously radical rhetoric of socialism, however, the unthinking audience were swept along by the narrative and cheered the Russian to the rafters. Bergmann looked on in quiet amusement at the onlooker reaction to the, essentially, anti-communist narrative of an individual’s triumph.

  At the end of the meeting, Ber
gmann brought Serov over to a tall, fair-haired man. His striking blue eyes compelled Serov’s attention. He had a small moustache which made his face seem older and more serious. From his bearing it was clear to Serov he was a former army man. There was something more about him, an aura of authority. Serov guessed this must be Mr Kopel. He wondered, idly, if it was Kopel who was really in charge, such was the careless sense of power emanating from him.

  ‘May I present Mr Ezeras Kopel,’ said Bergmann grinning broadly up at the younger man. Serov could see immediately how Bergmann was in thrall to the younger man. It confirmed him in his impression of their relative ranking.

  ‘Please to meet you, Comrade Serov,’ smiled Kopel. Serov also found himself succumbing to the charisma of Kopel. The smile was warm, and the voice had a timbre which made his accented Russian all the more attractive.

  ‘Please call me Filip. I detest formality, Mr Kopel.’

  ‘As do I,’ replied Kopel.

  Kopel’s praise of his speech also revealed a mind that Serov felt was almost equal to his own. While Serov was completely comfortable in the knowledge of his own intellectual superiority, he was self-aware enough to know he was not the most companionable of people. In Kopel, he recognised someone who combined a deep reservoir of intelligence with an easy grace in company. Had he not already taken such a liking to the Latvian he would have defaulted to his usual dislike of any intellectual rival.

  Kopel followed Bergmann, Serov, and Daniels to the car. Bergmann and Daniels sat in silence as Serov and Kopel discussed the work of new Marxist thinkers such as Lukács in Hungary. Fechin, sitting in the front, listened transfixed to their discussion as he drove them back to their hotel in Manchester.

  Bergmann, too, was impressed by the chess grandmaster. Kopel’s idea to bring Serov over was proving inspired. He was every bit as impressive a speaker as he was a competitor at the chess board. The twelve matches from this morning had resulted in twelve comfortable wins. The local press had picked up on Serov’s tour thanks to the sterling platform created by Billy Peel in the Daily Herald. Best of all, the match with Kit Aston was in progress with press interest growing steadily.

  The trip to the mill and meeting the workers had given Serov much to think about albeit for entirely different reasons. Since his trip to Edinburgh, a nagging feeling was emerging from within him that the conditions necessary for the overthrow of the bourgeoisie were sadly lacking in what he had seen so far of Britain. When he had the opportunity, he would discuss this with Kopel. Perhaps his time in Britain could help Serov understand better the progress, or indeed need for, class struggle.

  His presumptions coming over from Russia on the conditions of the workers and their mood were strangely at odds with what he was witnessing for himself. Cases of hardship, cruelty and neglect were not as visible as Russia. The Trade Unionists were a passionate bunch, but Serov could find precious little evidence to see what they were angry about.

  Compared to Russia, where poverty was acute, and the conditions for workers were brutal, the British seemed to be relatively well off. Even the healthy physical appearance of the men he met was in marked contrast to the sallow faced, under nourished, subsistence peasants in his home country.

  The conditions of production were, of course, as Marx described. The workers were enslaved by the machine and the over-looker. However, unlike the Trade Unionists, the workers he’d met had been disappointingly lacking in the grievance he had expected and, in many cases, positively cheerful. Based on the two cities he had visited it was difficult to discern what fetters needed to be cast off the workers. All in all, it was all very disheartening.

  When they arrived back at their hotel, Bergmann picked up messages from reception. They included the latest move from Kit in the match. Clutching the telegram, he showed it to Serov and Kopel.

  ‘If you’ve time we can respond to Aston soon.’

  Serov looked at the telegram and snorted derisively before responding immediately, ‘Bishop takes pawn. I’ll show you upstairs in the room if you like.’

  ‘I‘d love to see more of what you have planned for Lord Aston,’ smiled Kopel.

  Then he and Bergmann led Serov away. As they headed towards the stairs, Kopel turned and glanced at Daniels who nodded in response. Daniels and Fechin headed off in another direction. Neither spoke as they exited the hotel.

  -

  Herbert Yapp had enjoyed his day very much. The opportunity to shake the hand of a man who had shaken the hand of Lenin was one of the highlights of his life. He had been moved by the story of Serov. The story of his rise from the orphanage to become, perhaps, the greatest chess player in the world was inspirational. Utterly oblivious to the contradiction in terms, it demonstrated to Yapp how the proletariat could be an unstoppable force when it could produce individuals like Serov.

  Meeting his companions had also been an interesting experience. Bergmann was clearly a man not to be trifled with. Yapp would have loved to understand more about his part in the glorious revolution. He wondered who the other man Serov had spoken to was. He could not remember seeing such clear blue eyes before. His manner suggested a diplomat, but Yapp was not aware of Russia having many such people in the country.

  Of Daniels and Fechin, he was less certain. He sensed a danger with them. From first sight he guessed shrewdly that they were Russian agents. The idea of Russia having agents in his country gave Yapp mixed feelings. On the one hand he welcomed any movement which would result in the overthrow of the capitalist bloodsuckers. On the other, as a matter of principle, he didn’t like having foreigners in his country. They undermined wages. This was abhorrent to him and was to be resisted. Yapp didn’t stop to consider what British workers were being denied a job by the presence of two Cheka agents.

  Yapp followed his usual route home from the working man’s club, where he had spent a stimulating evening with his comrades discussing the day’s events. Stimulating in the sense that not all his comrades had reached the same level of enlightenment that he had achieved. The arguments had raged long into the evening. It never ceased to amaze Yapp, over a pint or four, how blithely unaware his fellow workers were of the degree to which they were subjugated. This would change as their political education grew. Recognising the need for a classless society based on complete equality would come when they were exposed to more outstanding individuals like Serov.

  Yapp wasn’t sure if it was the effect of the fifth pint or the whisky chaser that accounted for the vision he saw approaching in the dark street. Looking behind him he saw that the street was empty. It was just him and this looming apparition. This was a problem as he was feeling distinctly uncomfortable at the sight of the man. It wasn’t so much his size, although he was a large man, nor was it the funny looking Bishop’s mitre that he was wearing on his head. Granted this was unusual in Oldham, even on a Sunday morning. No, of more concern, was the unintelligible chant he was repeating, which sounded vaguely Russian, accompanied as it was by the twirling of a long, heavy-looking, metal rod, windmill style, in his hand. Then he heard footsteps behind him.

  When the gap reached twenty yards, Yapp made the decision to cross to the other side of the street. The impairment to his faculties brought on by the evening’s activities meant this decision was several seconds too late. Just as he was about to cross the road, he felt his foot get tapped from behind resulting in him pitching forward. This was the last thing Herbert Yapp saw, as the metal rod came crashing down.

  -

  Inspector Maurice McEwan looked down at the dead body of Herbert Yapp. It was well after midnight. He was cold. If he could have been anywhere but here, he would be. However, as murders went, this was an unusual one. McEwan could see the man was clearly lifeless. The doctor hadn’t arrived yet, but the cause of death wasn’t going to be difficult to identify - a blow to the head caused by the object lying, helpfully, beside the dead body.

  McEwan took off his hat and scratched what remained of his hair. He quickly put the hat back on agai
n for fear of catching a chill. Where was the damn doctor, he wondered? He clapped his hands causing a young policeman to look up and inquire if the Inspector needed anything.

  ‘A roaring fire, whisky and a good book,’ replied McEwan sourly. A puzzled look crept over the young constable’s face and McEwan shook his head to indicate nothing was needed.

  McEwan bent down and took a closer look at the probable murder weapon. It was at least five to six feet long and made from metal. In fact, after ten years as an Inspector in the Oldham police force, this was the first time he had seen anyone killed by a Bishop’s crosier.

  Although not a devout man, the Inspector recognised the rod must be religious in provenance. He assumed it must be Christian, although the design was somewhat bizarre. Religious symbols fringed the bottom of the rod. At the head of the Castle were a pair of sculptured serpents with their heads curled back to face each other, with a small cross between them. They were stained red, presumably by the victim’s blood.

  Attached to the serpents was a piece of fabric. There was probably blood on this fabric, but at this moment McEwan couldn’t tell as it was also coloured red. There were some gold letters but the alphabet unfamiliar. At a guess, McEwan would have adjudged the cloth tied to the crosier to be a Russian flag.

  Chapter 12

  The mood at the dinner table was sombre. Kit poked at his food but said little. Neither Esther nor Bright were very hungry. The waiter observed the lack of activity at the table and politely inquired if there was a problem with the food. Esther smiled up at him and shook her head. After the waiter had left, Esther broke the silence,

  ‘It must have been such a shock, Kit.’

  Kit smiled grimly, ‘It was. I wish we’d another fellow looking after her. This chap’s always so mournful looking. Gave me the fright of my life when I saw his face.’