Nemesis

by Rory Clements

CHAPTER 39

  Every day, the unspoken ghost haunted them. Every time Wilde stepped from the house, he scanned the street from end to end. Every time he left Lydia to go to college, he feared something would have happened to her when he returned.

  Something. Marcus Marfield.

  There had been no sign of him since the events at Gilderstone. But he was out there somewhere, and capable of anything.

  Life had to go on, though. The good news was that the Rudge had been returned to him. It was coated in thick dust and mud, of course, but that was easily fixed. Wilde wanted to spend some time with her, to clean her up, bring a shine back to the chrome, give her a workout along the roads he knew so well, preferably in the more undulating pastures and lanes to the south of Cambridge rather than through the Fens. He had had enough of that flat, watery landscape for a while.

  The war wasn’t even four weeks old and on the western front, not a lot seemed to be happening. Reports from the Maginot/Siegfried line spoke of desultory skirmishes and bombardments, but nothing else. Germany’s eastern front was another matter. Warsaw had succumbed to the advancing German armies and the Soviet Union had invaded Poland from the east ‘to safeguard the interests of the Russian minority’, but the truth was lost in the fog of propaganda. Wilde feared Poland was all but lost.

  Joe Kennedy’s family had sailed or flown home to America and arrived safely. No more outrages by U-boats on American citizens had been reported.

  And upstairs, Lydia lay naked between the sheets of her large bed. They had talked in a roundabout way of marriage. Both were acutely aware that a baby born out of wedlock might be at a disadvantage. ‘Perhaps we have to do it for the child’s sake,’ she said.

  ‘Do what?’ Wilde replied, stubbornly refusing to be the one to ask or suggest marriage.

  ‘You know – marry.’

  ‘Are you proposing to me?’

  She had jabbed him in the ribs and left it like that. They were progressing at about the same speed as the war. Which was to say not at all.

  Now Wilde was supposed to be brewing the morning coffee, but he couldn’t resist slipping out for another look at the Rudge. She had been found abandoned behind an old wagon, and the police had kindly returned her to him. He was their friend now they knew for certain that he hadn’t been responsible for the death of Special Constable Caney. Marfield’s prints had been found all over the windpump and inside Caney’s house. They had been found, too, in the isolated farmhouse where he and Rowlands had held Wilde and had killed two defenceless and harmless old people, and on the Thompson sub-machine gun he had intended to use at St Peter’s. They would probably find them on the Rudge, too, if they could be bothered to look.

  The whole country knew now that it was a young man named Marcus Marfield who was wanted for the murder of Charlie and Agatha Farrow and Keith Caney. What no one knew, however, was where he was. He had vanished, still in his red cassock and white surplice. That had been over two weeks ago and the manhunt had settled down. There were other matters of concern.

  ‘We know where Marfield’s not,’ Eaton said, when pressed by Wilde during their lengthy and intense debriefing session. ‘We’ve had eyes and wire taps on the Samovar, on both Mrs Marfields – and on Lincoln Tripp. We know he’s not with any of those people.’

  ‘What about his brother?’

  ‘We’re keeping an eye on him. As much for his own safety as anything, because we are pretty sure the Kossoff woman was looking for him for some reason. Ptolemy Marfield is an innocent in all this; I’m certain he’s not hiding his brother.’

  The whereabouts of Elina Kossoff – known to Joe Kennedy as Elina Ulyanova – were clear. She was at home, here in Cambridge, defying rumours that rationing would soon be imposed and serving good coffee and cakes at the Samovar. She had been interrogated thoroughly by Special Branch officers in the presence of Philip Eaton, and she had answered everything with a smile. What crimes was she supposed to have committed? The shooting dead of Dr Eric Charlecote up on the Gogs? Why would she do that when she didn’t even know the man – and, anyway, where was the evidence? The knifing of Rosa Cortez in Cambridge market in broad daylight? No evidence, no witnesses.

  Yes, she knew Marcus Marfield, but so did many people. And no, she wasn’t going to deny that they had once been lovers, but that wasn’t a crime was it?

  The bullet found in her room by Wilde could not be mentioned, of course. Eaton had discussed with Wilde the possibility that they could say it was found elsewhere, perhaps in her handbag, but the conversation went nowhere. Eaton thought Wilde was being a little too priggishly correct in his dismissal of the idea, but for Wilde it was a matter of practicalities. Eaton’s suggestions would be laughed out of court.

  There was, too, the matter of her work for Joe Kennedy. That must surely have given her access to his movements; knowledge with which an assassination could be plotted. Why did she want a job like that when she had a successful business to run in Cambridge? And why had she used an assumed name? They were good questions, but ones Kennedy himself did not want answered. She said nothing on the subject, did not even acknowledge that she had been there or had ever used the name Ulyanova. The whole matter of her employment in Kennedy’s office was not to be re-opened at any cost. Nor would the events at St Peter’s Church on the Gilderstone estate see the light of day. War regulations were imposed; no mention of it would be made in the press or elsewhere.

  ‘You can’t even begin to go there,’ Jim Vanderberg said. ‘Joe Kennedy’s whiter than white, pure as the driven snow. Everyone in the diplomatic service and in Washington DC knows what he’s like, but that’s not for public consumption. Any suggestion of extramarital affairs would put the mockers on his presidential aspirations, Tom, so forget it.’

  ‘But this is murder – and the attempted murder of Joe Kennedy’s entire family!’

  Vanderberg shrugged. ‘You know that, I know that – but the good folks back home in the States sure as hell won’t. Period.’

  ‘Where did Kennedy meet her? Do we at least know that?’

  ‘Well, he’s not going to answer questions like that, and nor is she. If you want my best guess, I’d say it was one of those goddamned weekend house parties he enjoys so much. The Cliveden set, that sort. He always manages to find a bedmate among the staff. At a guess, I’d say this one was deliberately placed in his path. We may never know.’

  Apart from her visits to the US Embassy, there was, too, the matter of her call on Ivan Maisky, the Soviet ambassador. Wilde pressed Eaton about that, but the MI6 man had no definitive answer. ‘Perhaps it was just a bluff. Good tradecraft to muddy the water.’

  Equally difficult was the matter of Lincoln Tripp. He was adamant that he had acted correctly in ensuring that the bodyguard was outside the church. No, he had not been aware that Marcus Marfield was the would-be assassin. If Mr Vanderberg had suggested that was the case, the message to him had somehow got lost in transmission. Why had he not insisted the event at the church be cancelled in the light of the threat? He insisted that he had not realised the severity of the danger. And anyway, Joe Kennedy would have overruled him. He apologised profusely if his actions had been inadequate; he had been as shocked and horrified as anyone by the events that unfolded.

  Jim Vanderberg was not happy. He wanted Tripp moved from London back to the States at the earliest opportunity. What the Kennedy clan thought was not recorded. They were old friends of the Tripps and had no reason to doubt his story.

  Lastly, there was the matter of an attempted poisoning at a house called Longrow Cottage in a pristine village in the county of Hertfordshire, an incident brushed off as a domestic matter by Eaton when he first heard of it. Since discovering that the daughter of the house, Claire, just happened to be the wife of Marcus Marfield, the incident had taken on new significance.

  *

  Claire’s father, Joel McPhelan, had always been an early riser. The sound of the horse’s hoofs on the metalled road and the clinking of the milk bo
ttles marked the start of his morning. And then he liked to make a cup of tea and plan his school day; perhaps finish off marking if there was any left over from the night before.

  On the day of the attempted poisoning some unexplained noise had drawn him to the window and he had pulled back the edge of the blackout to see a dark figure – a woman, he was certain, although she appeared to be wearing men’s clothes – approaching his front door.

  She bent down, looking round furtively, and seemed to be fiddling with something. He knew the milkman had already been, for he had heard the hoofs clattering on the road, and the clink of empties being taken and today’s pints being deposited, so he couldn’t for the life of him see what other reason anyone would have had to be on his front doorstep at that time in the morning.

  At breakfast, Joel McPhelan had looked on his only daughter with great anxiety. At the best of times, he was fearful for the safety of his family. He was a timid man, but worried for others, never himself.

  This morning he was beside himself with terror.

  As his wife cooked bacon and eggs and as his little grandson Walter sat in the high chair being spoonfed porridge, he watched with growing apprehension. Even though the two new milk bottles did not look as though they had been tampered with, he had taken them from the doorstep and put them in the back shed, unopened, and told his wife the milkman had somehow missed their house. Later, he would call the police, but in the meantime he did not wish to alarm his wife or daughter.

  There was a matter that had to be addressed. Why had Claire descen-ded on them unnannounced? Of course, she and Walter were always welcome, but her arrival had been precipitous and surprising. Something was wrong, he was certain. And the activity on his front doorstep this morning only served to heighten his sense of dread. Sooner or later, he would have to have it out with Claire. He was sure of only one thing: this involved Marcus Marfield.

  Eventually, the forensics laboratory found Thallium in the bottles. More than enough to kill a family of four, including a small child. The forensics boys had tried to lift fingerprints from the bottles, but the only ones they found belonged to Joel McPhelan himself. Even the milkman’s prints had been wiped.

  And when the police organised an identity parade, Mr McPhelan hadn’t been able to pick out the woman he had seen.

  *

  Elina Kossoff was off the hook. For now. ‘She’ll make a mistake,’ Eaton assured Wilde. ‘We’ll get her.’

  ‘Can’t you use war regulations to have her interned?’

  ‘I may do that, eventually. But for the moment we’d rather keep an eye on her. See where she leads us.’

  ‘You mean to Marfield?’

  ‘Possibly. Or others. We have to wonder whether this was confined to those we already know about. The link to France makes it almost certain that more were involved.’

  ‘German intelligence?’

  Eaton shrugged. ‘Honoré could be Abwehr or SD.’

  ‘What if she slips the net? Who’s to say she and Marcus won’t devise another attack?’

  Eaton had no answer to that and while Wilde assumed the Kossoff phone was tapped and monitored, he didn’t like the thought of Elina Kossoff living in the same town. Wilde spent half his waking hours worrying about Lydia and their unborn child.

  As these thoughts flew round his head, Wilde washed the Rudge down with warm water and soap, clearing out mud from all the little nooks beneath the seats, in the suspension springs, around the tank and the engine and the exhausts, like a nurse looking after a delicate invalid. Only when he was certain he had freed her of all the encrusted filth did he begin to check her working parts and then, at last, he polished her to a perfect shine, so that the chrome dazzled. In all it took him half the day. Every now and then Lydia brought him coffee and sandwiches.

  ‘It’s good for you,’ she said, as she watched him work. ‘All academics should have to get their hands dirty and do some real work once in a while.’

  ‘I can’t argue with you about that, Lydia Morris.’

  ‘That’s good, too. Because if I’m going to ask you to marry me, Tom Wilde, I want to be sure you take a vow of obedience and keep it.’

  He ignored her half-hearted proposal and stood back from the Rudge, satisfied at last. ‘I’m taking her for a spin.’

  ‘Can I come?’

  ‘Not in your condition.’

  ‘There’ll be three of us soon. You’ll have to sell it and get a car.’

  ‘A horse and cart might be more useful once petrol rationing kicks in.’ He smiled to soften the words.

  He filled the empty tank from a jerrycan, mounted the bike and tried to start the engine. The Rudge spluttered a couple of times, but then roared into life. It was late afternoon and the air was freshening. He hadn’t wanted to ride out north of Cambridge – too many bad memories – but something drew him in that direction and in a few minutes he found himself in Histon. He stopped at the kerb outside Claire Marfield’s house. Had she stayed with her parents or come back here? Surely she could feel nothing but loathing for Marfield now, after watching that brutal film?

  Wilde sat astride the motorbike, the 500cc engine purring gently beneath him. The orchard had been harvested, the fruit stripped from the branches for jam-making or market, and autumn beckoned. He was about to ride back towards Cambridge, when he saw three people walking along the pavement in his direction.

  Two women and a child. They looked familiar. As they got closer, his eyes widened in astonishment. It was Claire and her mother-in-law, Margaret Marfield, together with little Walter, clutching both their hands.

  Wilde pulled up his goggles so they could see his face and waved.

  ‘New motorcycle, Professor?’ Claire said, smiling as she came near.

  ‘As good as.’ Wilde looked at the elder woman. ‘Mrs Marfield?’

  ‘You’re surprised to see me here, Mr Wilde.’

  ‘I am.’

  She inclined her head. ‘I took your advice. I’ve come to mend fences with my daughter-in-law. I want to get to know my grandson.’

  He was astonished. The chilly Margaret Marfield acting like a human being? He supposed that both women had been victims and they had that in common, but it was the last thing he had expected to see.

  ‘Will you come in for a cup of tea, Professor?’ Claire said.

  ‘Perhaps another time,’ he said. ‘I’m expected home.’

  ‘Well, you’re always very welcome, as is Lydia.’

  *

  Wilde rode to college, feeling slightly ashamed of himself for having neglected the place these past weeks. He was well aware that his absences would simply add to the feeling among the other Fellows that he was a bit of an outsider. They were right, of course.

  The Master, however, seemed happy to see him and shook his hand warmly, expressing his concern for the ordeal Wilde had endured.

  ‘Now,’ he said briskly, ‘to business. We’re expecting about half the usual complement of undergraduates to turn up for Michaelmas.’ Sir Archibald was standing gazing out of the side window onto the Master’s court. Wilde joined him and together they contemplated the ancient Mulberry tree. ‘Wonderful crop this year.’

  ‘Mulberries or undergraduates?’

  The Master laughed. ‘We’ll know about the undergraduates in due course.’ He breathed in deeply and held up his sherry to the light, examining its golden hue. ‘But whatever their intellectual gifts or otherwise, I want college life to proceed as normally as possible. War or no war, the country still requires educated young men. And those that come here deserve the best we can offer, for who knows what their country will demand of them in the months and years ahead?’

  Wilde pretended to sip the sherry that had been poured for him, then put down the glass, hoping the Master would not notice. ‘Of course, Master.’

  ‘And you, Wilde, have you given any further thought to what you intend to do?’

  ‘I shall be staying here for the present. I am happy to commit myself to t
his year, at the very least.’ After all, he thought, I will have a wife – a wife? – and baby to care for.

  ‘Good man. All hands to the pump. Hopefully not literally. We will need to set a good example to the undergraduates: strict blackouts and well-organised rationing when it comes in. You’ll be expected to take your turn at fire-watching each week. And your undergraduates will all have to join the Officer Training Corps, because if this show lasts as long as the last one, they will all be called up eventually.’

  ‘Indeed.’

  ‘What about the Home Guard – will you sign up?’

  ‘As an American citizen, I’m not sure they’ll have me. But I’ll certainly investigate the possibility.’

  ‘Well, that’s your business. Anyway, drink up your sherry’ – did Wilde detect the shadow of a wink? – ‘and then get yourself off to Horace Dill’s rooms. He’s been asking for you.’

  *

  Crossing the old court, Wilde bumped into Tim Laker struggling with a jerrycan. The choirmaster looked exhausted and even more frail than usual. ‘To lose a voice like that – Marfield is irreplaceable,’ he lamented.

  Did the fact that Marfield was a mass murderer really not take prece-dence over the needs of the choir?

  ‘Don’t look at me like that, Wilde. It’s a tragedy – an absolute bloody tragedy.’

  Wilde glanced at the jerrycan.

  Laker shrugged. ‘It’s just a little petrol for the Austin. Everyone’s doing it, aren’t they? How much sugar and coffee have you got stockpiled at home?’

  Wilde left him and climbed the newly painted staircase to Horace’s rooms. The Master had told him that the lung cancer had worsened and Horace had returned to his bed. When there was no answer to his knock, Wilde peeked in and saw the shrunken form slowly rising and falling in the tangled folds of his bedclothes. He was just turning to go, when he heard a low wheezing voice.

  ‘So I was right about fucking Marfield!’

  ‘Were you?’

  ‘Said he was a Nazi, didn’t I?’

  ‘Did you? All I remember is you saying he wasn’t one of yours.’