Nemesis

by Rory Clements

  ‘My cause was just,’ he told Wilde now in the cold confines of his little cell. ‘God will understand.’

  Wilde handed him a cigarette and lit it for him. He had come here because Marfield had asked for him and because there were questions that he would like answered.

  ‘You denied involvement in the murders of Rosa Cortez and Dr Charlecote, and yet you must have known of them.’

  ‘You would have to talk to Elina and Rowlands about those deaths.’

  ‘As you know, I can’t do that.’ Wilde had heard the grisly details of Elina’s murder in the courtoom. Her body had been mutilated with a hundred knife wounds.

  Marfield shrugged and drew deeply on the cigarette.

  ‘And Tripp – Lincoln Tripp – you have said nothing about him.’

  Marfield smiled. ‘How do you think I knew the Vanderbergs were visiting you in Cambridge?’

  Wilde nodded slowly. He had thought as much. ‘Would you be willing to testify that he gave you information and assisted you? Write an affidavit, perhaps?’

  ‘Why would I do that?’

  ‘For the sake of your eternal soul, Marcus! Despite your many temporal sins, I know you have a soul. I have heard it in your voice.’

  ‘Perhaps I will, then. We’ll see. You know that Lincoln always loathed the Kennedys? He hated their athleticism and their bright broad smiles. Most of all, he despised their arrogance and belief that they had a God-given right to rule the world.’

  ‘So his motive was personal rather than political?’

  ‘Oh, he had come to loathe the Communists during his time in Moscow, but I accept that might not have been his primary motive. Rowlands approached him in Russia after apparently hearing of various conversations in which Lincoln expressed admiration for the Führer. The fact that he despised the Kennedys even more than Stalin only made him more amenable to Rowlands’ approaches.’

  ‘What of Tim Laker? He loved you and shielded you.’

  ‘More fool him.’

  Laker was pleading not guilty to the charges of aiding and abetting Marfield, claiming he was acting under duress and coercion. His trial was slated for December; in the meantime he was being held in custody near Cambridge.

  The prison officer, standing quietly in the corner of the room, tapped his wristwatch. ‘Time’s up, I’m afraid.’

  Wilde rose from the wooden chair and looked on Marcus Marfield for the last time. He slid the remains of the packet of cigarettes across the table to him. ‘Would you like anyone else to come and see you? Your mother? Ptolemy? Claire?’

  Marfield’s eyes were bright. His hair was longer, and he looked again like the charming young man who had turned up at college back in the autumn of 1936. He shook his head firmly. ‘No, please don’t let them come. But you can tell Claire and my son that I am sorry.’

  *

  On the day of the execution, Wilde watched as a demolition squad pulled down the last blackened walls of his house and began to remove the rubble. He was still unsure whether to rebuild the property or cut his losses and combine the land with Lydia’s so that they would have one large garden, perhaps with an outhouse or studio where he could work. If they didn’t marry, of course, there could be legal difficulties.

  ‘Well, what are we going to do?’ he said as Lydia joined him at the border between their properties. She was beginning to swell now; decisions needed to be made.

  ‘Doris was lecturing me this morning.’

  ‘Doris? She’s never been at all judgemental. She always knew we were living in sin!’

  ‘But she’s less happy about a child being born out of wedlock. “An illegitimate child will always carry a stain,” she said.’

  ‘And what do you think?’

  ‘I think she’s right, Tom. But I still don’t care. I want to live with you for the rest of my life. I want us to share a home and bring up our child together. But I’m not going to get married just because the world says I should.’

  He looked at her with love. Tears were streaming down her beautiful face. He took her in his arms and folded her into his body. ‘Same old Lydia,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t have you any other way.’

  *

  At five minutes to eight, Marcus Marfield began to sing. Outside the cell door, the executioner Thomas Pierrepoint and his assistant looked at each other with raised eyebrows.

  ‘Takes all sorts,’ Pierrepoint said.

  ‘What’s that song, Mr Pierrepoint?’

  ‘Couldn’t tell you, son.’

  On the stroke of eight they entered the cell and with quick and long practised movements, strapped the prisoner’s wrists together and hooded him.

  ‘Lord now lettest Thou thy servant depart in peace . . .’

  Although the words of Stanford’s Nunc Dimittis were now muffled by the hood, the vocal line rang strong and true. And so Marcus Marfield, sometime choral scholar and undergraduate of Cambridge University, was bundled the last few yards to the death chamber, singing as he went.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  I owe a huge debt of gratitude to two former Cambridge choristers. Ashley Grote, the Master of Music at Norwich Cathedral, was a chorister at King’s and, later, an organ scholar. He took great pains to explain the workings and day-to-day life of the Cambridge choirs. He also introduced me to Michael Keall, who arrived as a chorister at King’s in 1939 – the year in which Nemesis is set – and trained under the organ scholar David Willcocks. Michael ended his time at King’s School as senior chorister in 1945 and eventually became headmaster of Westminster Abbey Choir School. He kindly talked me through the life of a wartime Cambridge chorister and showed me his photograph albums.

  As always, it is a pleasure to thank my editor and publisher Kate Parkin for her endless patience and brilliant suggestions, and my agent Teresa Chris for her wise and tenacious support. I would also like to express my thanks to everyone at Bonnier Zaffre. They are all superbly talented and professional. Last but not least, I am immensely grateful to my wife Naomi, along with all the other members of my family and friends.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Rory Clements was born on the edge of England in Dover. After a career in national newspapers, he now writes full time in a quiet corner of Norfolk, where he lives with his wife, the artist Naomi Clements-Wright, and their family. He won the CWA Ellis Peters Historical Award in 2010 for his second novel, Revenger, and the CWA Historical Dagger in 2018 for Nucleus. Three of his other novels – Martyr, Prince and The Heretics – have been shortlisted for awards. Nemesis is the third of his thriller series featuring Professor Tom Wilde. The first two, Corpus and Nucleus, are available in paperback from Bonnier Zaffre.

  To receive exclusive news about Rory’s writing, join his Readers’ Club at www.bit.ly/RoryClementsClub and to find out more go to www.roryclements.co.uk.

  If you enjoyed Nemesis – why not join the

  Rory Clements Readers’ Club by visiting www.bit.ly/RoryClementsClub?

  Turn over for a message from Rory Clements . . .

  Dear Reader,

  The story of my new novel, Nemesis, mostly takes place in the last days of peace and the first days of war in August/September 1939. No one knew what sort of war it would be – but they feared that gas bombs would be dropped on cities and they worried that there would be a return to the horrors of trench warfare.

  One thing was certain: the role of America would be crucial. Winston Churchill certainly understood this better than most – and very quickly opened a secret correspondence with President Roosevelt, pleading for warships.

  Would America join the fight against fascism – or would they stay out? That question is at the heart of my story.

  In researching the book, I wanted to know how people felt at the time. So I read many diaries, newspapers, letters and memoirs based on diaries – contemporary accounts of major events and everyday life.

  I love these testimonies because – unlike history books – they were written at a time when no one knew what the
outcome would be.

  Here are some fabulous examples:

  Wednesday, August 30th, 1939: ‘We passed the night in a deserted hotel in a deserted Nice. Early in the morning I went down to buy L’Eclaireur du Sud-Est, and when I had finished reading the editorial (which advocated peace at any price) I ran up the stairs like a madman to break the news to G that there would be no war.’ Arthur Koestler, Scum of the Earth. ‘G’ was his twenty-one-year-old lover, the sculptor Daphne Hardy.

  Thursday, August 31st, 1939: ‘It has been decided to evacuate three million mothers and children tomorrow from the menaced areas. The six o’ clock news is very glum. It is odd to feel that the world as I knew it has only a few more hours to run.’ Harold Nicolson, diary.

  Friday, September 1st, 1939: ‘Today, early in the morning, Germany attacked Poland without any prior warning. So war has begun and the world has crossed the threshold of a new epoch. It will emerge from it much changed.’ The diary of Ivan Maisky, Soviet ambassador to London.

  Saturday, September 2nd, 1939: ‘Awful news: they are planning to close the theatres! I rushed off to the New to see John and Edith Evans for the last time doing The Importance.’ Diarist Joan Wyndham, Love Lessons.

  Sunday, September 3rd, 1939: ‘A strange, prolonged wailing noise (the first siren of the war) broke upon the ear. We went up to the flat top of the house to see what was going on. In the clear, cool September light rose the roofs and spires of London. Above them were already rising thirty or forty cylindrical balloons. We gave the government a good mark for this evident sign of preparation.’ Winston Churchill, The Gathering Storm.

  Monday, September 4th, 1939: ‘Be silent, be discreet, enemy ears are listening to you. Now get ahead, do your job and don’t worry.’ Daily Mirror editorial.

  Tuesday, September 5th, 1939: ‘Hearing the accounts on the wireless of the loss of the Athenia, I remembered something, and digging in the writing-table drawer presently found what I was looking for – the Lusitania medal, struck by the German government to commemorate the sinking of this vessel on 7th May 1915, with the loss of over one thousand lives. On one side is portrayed a crowd of passengers at a Cunard shipping office taking tickets from the skeleton Death. On the other the liner, carefully modelled, showing a deck cargo of aeroplanes and guns (which she did not carry) is just vanishing below the waves.’ Lilias Rider Haggard, Norfolk Notebook.

  Wednesday, September 6th, 1939: ‘I attended my first war wedding yesterday. The bridegroom wore an A.R.P Badge instead of a carnation in his buttonhole, and the bride carried a gas mask.’ Evening Standard, The Londoner’s Diary.

  Thursday, September 7th, 1939: ‘I long for you to see our house – all sandbagged up and with paper strips across the windows. It looks like a fortress. Bongie does his rounds every night hammering at people’s doors if he sees a chink of light.’ Violet Bonham Carter in a letter from Gloucester Square, London, to her son Raymond. ‘Bongie’ was her husband, Sir Maurice, an air raid warden.

  Friday, September 8th, 1939: ‘The first person to be executed under yesterday’s decree – Himmler has wasted no time – is one Johann Heinen of Dessau. He was shot, it’s announced, “for refusing to take part in defensive work”.’ William L. Shirer, Berlin Diary, a day after a decree authorising the death penalty for anyone endangering the defensive power of the German people.

  Saturday, September 9th, 1939: ‘I heard today at the Foreign Office that the French fear the war will last at least until the spring of 1941; here we are more optimistic, though the news from Poland continues appalling.’ Sir Henry ‘Chips’ Channon, diary.

  Sunday, September 10th, 1939: ‘When the siren sounded at midnight the first time, a French colonel banged at our door in the Continental Hotel. “Les avions! Les avions!” In the underground hotel kitchen we huddled in our bathrobes. An American waiting for passage home tore his gas mask out of its case and wore it for hours.’ Eric Sevareid, CBS radio reporter in Paris.

  Monday, September 11th, 1939: ‘It is small wonder that, in some cases, the hospitable smiles of the first day or two have changed to lamentations and secret tears’. Unsigned letter in the Manchester Guardian telling of the hardships rural housewives face in trying to feed evacuee children on ‘one and twopence halfpenny per day’.

  Tuesday, September 12th, 1939: ‘It is difficult to know whether this war is being run by Joe Kennedy, the Home Office or the fighting services. Kennedy has been telling Lord Halifax (Britain’s Foreign Secretary) exactly what he thought we should do.’ Guy Liddell, MI5 director of counter-espionage, diary.

  Friday, September 22nd, 1939: ‘We will carry on the war against England with icy-cold mathematical reasoning . . . I believe the English people have been enervated by too much city living, that they are hardly capable of heroism, and that, with the exception of the old aristocracy, their culture is worthless.’ Anonymous Luftwaffe pilot in letter to Friedrich Reck, Diary Of A Man In Despair.

  Thursday, September 28th, 1939: ‘Today planted out sixty spring cabbage. Might also go in for rabbits and bees. Rabbits are not to be rationed. The butcher says that people will not as a rule buy tame rabbits for eating but their ideas change when meat gets short. Titley says he made a lot of money out of rabbits at the end of the last war.’ George Orwell, diary (Titley was his neighbour).

  Friday, September 29th, 1939: ‘Our ultimate war aims should be based on the goal of a long-range settlement for Europe which would prevent a recurrence of situations like the present, as well as liquidating the Nazi regime. They must therefore include plans for an incipient federalisation of Western Europe.’ Julian Huxley, letter to The Spectator.

  I hope you agree that these entries are intriguing. I was particularly fascinated by the last one, by Julian Huxley – discussing the possibility of a European Union before the war had even got under way!

  As always, I thank you for your interest in Tom Wilde and Lydia Morris and the world of Cambridge and Europe in bygone days. To find out more, please visit my website www.roryclements.co.uk. You can also join the Rory Clements Readers’ Club at www.bit.ly/RoryClementsClub. It only takes a moment, there is no catch and new members will automatically receive exclusive extras. Your data is private and confidential and will never be passed on to a third party, and I promise that I will only be in touch now and then with book news. If you want to unsubscribe, you can do that at any time.

  Of course, I would be delighted, too, if you could spread the word about my books. Online reviews are particularly welcome, and I always read them!

  I hope my books give you as much pleasure as I take from researching and writing them.

  With my best wishes,

  Rory

  Don’t miss the first books to feature Professor Tom Wilde . . .

  1936. Europe is in turmoil. The Nazis have marched into the Rhineland. In Russia, Stalin has unleashed his Great Terror. Spain has erupted in civil war.

  In Berlin, a young Englishwoman evades the Gestapo to deliver vital papers to a Jewish scientist. Within weeks, she is found dead, a silver syringe clutched in her fingers.

  In an exclusive London club, a conspiracy is launched that threatens the very heart of government. When a renowned society couple with fascist leanings are found brutally murdered, a maverick Cambridge professor is drawn into a world of espionage he knows only from history books. The deeper Thomas Wilde delves, the more he finds to link the murders with the girl with the silver syringe – and even more worryingly to the scandal surrounding the Abdication . . .

  Available in paperback and ebook now

  The eve of war: a secret so deadly, nothing and no one is safe.

  June 1939. England is partying like there’s no tomorrow . . . but the good times won’t last. The Nazis have invaded Czechoslovakia, in Germany Jewish persecution is widespread and, closer to home, the IRA has embarked on a bombing campaign.

  Perhaps, most worryingly of all, in Germany Otto Hahn has produced man-made fission and an atomic device is now pos
sible. German High Command knows Cambridge’s Cavendish Laboratory is also close, and when one of the Cavendish’s finest brains is murdered, Professor Tom Wilde is drawn into the investigation. In a conspiracy that stretches from Cambridge to Berlin, and from the US to Ireland, can he discover the truth before it’s too late?

  Available in paperback and ebook now

  First published in Great Britain in 2019 by Zaffre

  This ebook edition published in 2019 by

  ZAFFRE

  80-81 Wimpole St, London, W1G 9RE

  www.zaffrebooks.co.uk

  Copyright © Rory Clements, 2019

  Cover design by Nick Stearn

  Cover photographs © Shutterstock (Liberty), Everett Collection Inc/Alamy Stock Photo (Photograph)

  The moral right of Rory Clements to be

  identified as Author of this work has been

  asserted in accordance with the Copyright,

  Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organisations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.