The Price of Silence

by Dolores Gordon-Smith

  Hansel and Gretel number thirteen.

  ‘Well done, Agathé,’ he said quietly as he got back into the Mercedes. ‘We’re going to take another drive and then we’re going to wait for an aeroplane.’

  There was a very satisfying completeness, thought Anthony, as he nosed the Mercedes out onto the open road once more, about using the German wireless system to summon an aeroplane to escape from German occupied territory.

  Hansel and Gretel were on their way to field number thirteen and on their way home.

  TWENTY-SIX

  Tara tucked the eiderdown round the sleeping little girl. Stepping away from the bed she looked round what had been the spare room and was now an impromptu nursery. The fire in the grate, safely encased behind a fireguard, cast a flickering but reassuring light into the room, and the nightlight in its saucer of water was on the bookshelf, safely out of reach. Looking down at little Agathé, (Tara still thought of her as Milly) with her new fluffy toy lamb snuggled up in the bed beside her, she felt a lump in her throat.

  She shook herself as the doorbell rang and hurried to the door, intercepting Ellen, the maid.

  ‘I’ll answer the door, Ellen. I know who it is. Can you keep an eye out for little Agathé? I don’t think she’ll wake up, but come and tell me if she does.’

  ‘Very good, ma’am. I’ll see to the little one.’

  She opened the door to find, as expected, Sir Charles Talbot. Anthony had wanted to see him as soon as he had got off the boat train in London. In the hubbub of St Pancras Station, Tara had insisted that a couple of hours wouldn’t make any difference. At the very least, he should come home and have a bath and dinner first. And, she added, picking up the little girl and giving her a hug, it would give Agathé the chance to get settled into her new home.

  ‘It’s good to see you again, Mrs Brooke,’ said Sir Charles, coming into the hallway. He hung up his hat and coat on the stand and followed her into the sitting room, his face creasing in a smile as he saw Anthony. ‘Brooke! I can’t tell you how glad I am you got back safely.’

  ‘The feeling’s mutual,’ said Anthony, walking to the sideboard. ‘Whisky? And Madeira for you, Tara?’

  ‘I knew it was dangerous,’ said Tara accusingly, as she took her Madeira. She turned to Sir Charles. ‘I can’t get much out of him, apart from the fact the journey home was long-winded.’

  ‘Well, so it was,’ countered Anthony. ‘Don’t worry, Tara, you can have as many details as you like, but the main thing is, both little Agathé and I are here.’

  ‘Agathé?’ questioned Sir Charles.

  ‘It’s Milly’s preferred name. That’s what she was called by the nuns in the orphanage.’ He stretched out his feet towards the fire and sipped his whisky contentedly. ‘My word, Talbot, it was a relief when I heard that aeroplane come into land.’

  ‘You knew you’d be able to get home, though, didn’t you?’ asked Tara, suddenly worried. ‘There was no doubt about that?’

  ‘Not really, Mrs Brooke,’ Sir Charles reassured her. ‘Any agent of the White Lady could carry a message back to us.’

  ‘And I knew that Room 40 could read the German transmissions,’ put in Anthony with a grin. ‘Even so, it took some brass neck to stride into a German post and whistle up a British aeroplane. The rest of the journey really was just long-winded, with about fourteen different trains, a boat and another train. Poor little Agathé was horribly seasick.’

  ‘Like Mrs Brooke, I’m anxious to hear the full story of your adventures,’ said Sir Charles, ‘but first of all, we need facts.’ He cocked an enquiring eyebrow at Anthony. ‘What’s the plot? Do you know why the Jowetts were murdered? And why Harper and his crew wanted to kidnap Milly?’

  Anthony shook his head. ‘I’m afraid I don’t know. On that score, I’m no wiser now than when I left England.’

  Sir Charles groaned. ‘Surely you must have found out something? Didn’t you meet Sister Marie whatever her name was?’ Anthony nodded. ‘Couldn’t she tell you what it was all about?’

  ‘I’m sure she could, but I wasn’t able to ask her,’ said Anthony dryly. ‘I’m sorry, Talbot. You’ll understand, once I’ve explained.’ He took a cigarette from the box on the table. ‘Have you caught Harper? He’ll be able to tell us what’s going on.’

  ‘I’m sure he could, if we could lay hands on him,’ said Sir Charles glumly.

  Anthony paused in the action of striking a match. ‘You mean you don’t know anything?’

  ‘Not a thing.’

  Anthony lit his cigarette and threw the match into the fire with a savage gesture. ‘We’re back where we started,’ he said in disgust. ‘The whole thing’s ruddy well hopeless. We don’t have a clue what it’s all about. We haven’t got any further forward. We’ve achieved precisely nothing.’

  ‘That’s not true, Anthony,’ protested Tara. ‘We’ve got Milly. She’s safe. And so are you.’

  Anthony looked at her and grinned reluctantly. ‘There is that,’ he conceded, ‘but I really wish I knew what was going on.’

  Sixty-four miles away, James Dunwoody, chauffeur in the employ of Automobiles de Luxe Ltd of Islington, was asking himself the same question.

  Mr Dunwoody enjoyed his job. There was no questioning the deluxe nature of his car. It was a Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost, which, according to the adverts, was the best car in the world. Mr Dunwoody agreed. Mind you, the customers paid to enjoy it.

  For the princely sum of six pounds, six shillings a day, of which Mr Dunwoody received eighteen shillings, Mr Dunwoody would drive the Silver Ghost at the customer’s bidding. Usually that bidding involved waiting patiently outside hotels, restaurants and West End shops, but that was all part of the day’s work.

  A job such as this, a straightforward drive along the Great Dover Road to Canterbury, was unusual but that wasn’t any of James Dunwoody’s business. His client was unusual, too. His customers were usually actors, Americans or aristocrats, but this woman was a servant, a nursemaid, with a little girl in tow.

  James Dunwoody was inclined to be friendly but the nursemaid, a stiffly correct, snooty sort of creature, obviously didn’t want to chat. The little girl – James Dunwoody liked children – sat in crushed silence beside her nurse. Poor kid, he reflected. Her parents obviously had more money than Creosote, as he’d heard it expressed, if they could afford to waft their servants and offspring around in Rolls-Royces, but, if it was him, he’d want a kindlier nurse in charge. Rich people could be very rum.

  It was when they were driving through the silent village of Lower Harbledown that the nursemaid, Miss Springer, spoke for the first time in miles.

  ‘Driver! Where are we?’

  ‘Lower Harbledown, Miss, in Kent,’ replied James, who resented being addressed as ‘Driver’ by a mere nursemaid. Who did she think she was? A ruddy duchess or something? Still, it was conversation of a sort, he supposed. ‘It’s Upper Harbledown next.’ He recalled something that always went down well with his American passengers. ‘This is the old Watling Street what the Romans built. We should reach Canterbury by—’

  ‘Very good,’ said Miss Springer repressively. ‘Please stop after Upper Harbledown.’

  ‘Upper Harbledown?’ repeated James in surprise. ‘Do you want to go to Upper Harbledown?’

  He couldn’t think why anyone would want to go to Upper Harbledown. It was an unremarkable little hamlet without anything to attract a visitor, especially on a cold night in autumn.

  ‘I do not wish to go to Upper Harbledown,’ said Miss Springer icily. ‘I require you to stop the car after we have passed Upper Harbledown.’

  Well, he was the driver and she was the customer, and it wasn’t his place to ask questions, he supposed, but what on earth was going on?

  The village came and went. James Dunwoody obediently brought the car to a halt.

  ‘Is this all right for you?’ he asked, an edge of sarcasm in his voice.

  ‘This will do nicely, thank you.’

  After a coup
le of minutes listening to the wind in the trees and watching the grass on the verge picked out by the headlights, James tried again. ‘Are we waiting for something, Miss?’

  ‘Yes,’ she replied tightly. ‘Please be quiet.’

  James swallowed a reply and sat in silence. Then he heard it. It was a car engine, close at hand. He turned his head, looking back along the road.

  A big car, a Vauxhall at a guess, had come out of a side road and was approaching slowly.

  Miss Springer opened the back door and stepped down onto the verge. Reaching back inside the car, she picked up the little girl and waited on the roadside.

  ‘What’s going on?’ asked James in bewilderment.

  The Vauxhall drew to a halt.

  Without a word, Miss Springer crossed to the waiting Vauxhall, opened the back door of the car and, putting the little girl on the seat, climbed in after her and closed the door.

  James Dunwoody wasn’t alarmed yet, but he was seriously puzzled. Miss Springer was an odd customer, but even the oddest of his customers had never calmly stopped the Rolls mid-journey, got out of his car and into another like this.

  ‘Oy! What’s going on?’ he repeated and then stopped.

  The driver of the Vauxhall got out of the car.

  As he walked round the front of the Rolls-Royce, James could see his face was covered by a black scarf.

  James knew real fear at that moment. ‘What’s …?’ he said again and then gasped as he saw the gun in the driver’s hand. ‘Is … Is this a hold-up?’ he gasped, raising his hands.

  ‘No,’ said the driver, raising the gun. ‘This is murder.’

  Anthony treated himself to a late breakfast that morning. As always, at breakfast, he had the Telegraph propped up on the coffee pot. He scanned the headlines quickly but the war had come to a standstill, politics were dull and the stop press announcement of ‘Upper Harbledown, Kent. Chauffeur found shot in Rolls-Royce’ carried no further details to awake anyone’s curiosity.

  He was far more interested in Tara’s account of what Agathé had done and said that morning to both Tara and Ellen, the maid.

  ‘… And, of course, although she speaks French, and poor Ellen hasn’t a word of French, Ellen forgot she couldn’t understand and told her to bring her lamb. Would you believe Agathé went and got it straight away and said “lamb” as clearly as anything! Ellen was tremendously impressed.’

  ‘So it’s going to be all right, d’you think?’ asked Anthony. ‘Ellen acting as nursemaid, I mean? I know she offered, but, after all, she’s not trained.’

  ‘She’s the eldest of a family of eight, though, and she’s very kind-hearted, if awfully sentimental. When she saw Agathé saying her prayers, even if they were in French, she nearly broke into tears.’

  ‘Lots of prayers,’ said Anthony with a grin. ‘That’s what growing up in a convent does for you. By the way, Tara, can she have a kitten? Apparently she had a kitten called Minou she was awfully fond of. She wants another Minou.’

  ‘Minou?’ repeated Tara. ‘That’s the French pet name for a kitten, isn’t it? We’ll have to explain the name to Ellen,’ she added. ‘Of course she can have a kitten. It might even grow up to be a decent mouser. We’ll choose one from the pet shop this morning.’ She broke off as the telephone rang. ‘I’ll answer it,’ she said, pushing her chair back. ‘Ellen’s in the nursery.’

  It was Sir Charles Talbot. ‘Good morning, Mrs Brooke! I’m sorry to trouble you, but can Brooke come along to Scotland Yard? Right away, I mean? I’m with Douglas Lynton now.’

  ‘I’ll pass the message on, Sir Charles. What’s it about, or shouldn’t I ask?’

  ‘It’s about the chauffeur who was shot in Kent. It’s in the papers.’

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  ‘What’s all this about a chauffeur being shot?’ asked Anthony, as he pulled out a chair and sat down. ‘There was an item in the stop press, but that’s all.’

  ‘A fuller story is in the later editions,’ said Sir Douglas Lynton. He glanced across the desk to Sir Charles Talbot. ‘Talbot has got some ideas about it. Quite fanciful ideas, in my opinion.’

  ‘I’ll be surprised if Brooke doesn’t agree with me,’ said Sir Charles equably. ‘Eh, Brooke?’

  Anthony shrugged. ‘If I had the slightest idea of what you’re talking about, I very well might.’

  Sir Douglas picked up a copy of the Daily Mirror and passed it across the desk. ‘This account is as good as any of the others.’

  Anthony picked up the paper.

  Murder in Rolls-Royce. Ploughman’s Appalling Discovery.

  Further to our earlier report, we can now reveal that the police are treating the death of Mr James Dunwoody, 46, of Kenner Road, Islington, as murder.

  Mr Dunwoody, a chauffeur for Automobiles de Luxe Ltd of Islington, was found in the early hours of this morning, slumped at the wheel of his car, a Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost, on the Great Dover Road, near Upper Harbledown, Kent.

  The gruesome discovery was made by Mr Clarence Wistow, 53, ploughman at Abbot’s Farm, Upper Harbledown. Mr Wistow, who at first assumed that Mr Dunwoody had been taken ill, went to his aid, and was appalled to discover the chauffeur was dead, killed by a gunshot to the head.

  The police, who were immediately summoned to the scene, called in the local doctor, Dr W.R. Leighton, who pronounced life was extinct and estimated that the death had occurred around ten o’clock last night. Self-destruction was immediately ruled out as a cause of death, both because of the angle of the shot and the absence of any weapon.

  Mr Dunwoody, who was married with three children, has been a servant of Automobiles de Luxe Ltd for four years and has a spotless record of service.

  A regular attender at Offord St Methodist Chapel, Islington, Mr Dunwoody, a lifelong teetotaller, had no enemies and was respected by all who knew him. No robbery was attempted and no motive can currently be ascribed to this ghastly outrage.

  Anthony looked up from the paper. ‘Well, it’s all very sad, no doubt, if a trifle wordy. It’s damned odd, as well. There doesn’t seem to have been any reason to have killed the poor chap.’

  ‘Precisely,’ said Sir Charles. ‘As you know, I keep an eye out for odd happenings and this seemed odd enough for me to want to know more details.’

  ‘So you came to me,’ said Douglas Lynton with a sigh. ‘Well, you’re perfectly right about one thing, at least. It’s all very odd indeed. There wasn’t any sign of violence at the scene and whatever the motive was, it wasn’t robbery. All the Automobiles de Luxe drivers carry five pounds in cash in the car, for petrol and other expenses, in addition to which, Mr Dunwoody had nearly three pounds in cash in his wallet. Add to that is the fact that a Rolls-Royce is well worth stealing, but the car was untouched. For all the world it looks as if Mr Dunwoody parked his car and placidly waited to be shot.’

  ‘Hold on,’ said Anthony slowly. ‘If he was a chauffeur, who was he chauffeuring? There must’ve been someone else in the car. Unless he’d dropped them off and was on his way home, I suppose, but either way, there must’ve been someone else in the car last night. There’s no mention of them in the paper.’

  ‘No, there isn’t,’ agreed Sir Douglas, ‘but I thought exactly the same thing. Major Barnes, the Chief Constable of Kent, passed the case to us as James Dunwoody is a London man. Naturally enough, the first thing we did was to check with Dunwoody’s firm, Automobiles de Luxe Ltd. Mr Dunwoody did have a client in the car, or should’ve done, at any rate. He called for her at The Rutland Hotel, Mayfair. Dunwoody picked her up at half past five. His instructions were to take her to The Lamb and Flag in Canterbury – it’s an old coaching inn – where a room had been booked.’

  Sir Charles wriggled impatiently. ‘There were two clients,’ he broke in. He paused significantly. ‘A nursemaid and a little girl. The Rutland Hotel confirmed that.’

  Anthony’s head shot up. ‘A nursemaid?’ he repeated.

  ‘Now you understand why I wanted you here, Brooke,’ said
Sir Charles.

  Anthony swallowed. ‘Was the nursemaid Annie Colbeck?’

  ‘I think so,’ agreed Sir Charles to a snort of disapproval from Douglas Lynton.

  ‘The nursemaid gave her name as Springer,’ he said.

  Sir Charles shook his head. ‘Anybody can call themselves anything, Lynton. You know that. The description, such as it is, from the Rutland Hotel fits that of Annie Colbeck well enough. Unfortunately, we don’t know who the child is. The hotel registers, both for the Rutland and the Lamb and Flag, have them listed as Miss Springer and charge. We only know the child’s a little girl because the Rutland Hotel people told us so.’

  ‘Who booked the car?’ asked Anthony.

  Sir Charles shrugged. ‘It could have been Annie Colbeck – all right, Lynton, Miss Springer – herself. The booking had been made that morning in person by a Mrs Marston. Again, the description, such as it is, could easily be that of the nursemaid. Her only really distinguishing feature was a small red mark on her left cheek. She covered it up with make-up but the lady clerk at Automobiles de Luxe noticed it all the same. I don’t know if Annie Colbeck had a birthmark, but that’s something we could check with the Jowetts’ housekeeper, I suppose. Mrs Marston, to call her that, paid the cost of the car in full, so Automobiles De Luxe didn’t ask for her address.’

  ‘Hold on,’ said Anthony slowly. ‘A birthmark, you say? That rings a bell.’ He thought for a couple of moments, then looked up. ‘Miss Anston had a birthmark! Miss Anston of the Diligent. Tara noticed it when she called into the agency.’

  ‘Did she, by Jove?’ said Sir Charles in satisfaction. ‘What d’you think, Brooke? I think this is the plot, the plot that Father Quinet overheard.’

  ‘But where does Milly come into it?’ asked Anthony.

  Sir Charles shrugged. ‘I don’t know, but we’ve got a murdered man and missing child.’