by Colin Murray
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘and that’s another bone I‘d like to pick with you.’
‘Again, I apologize, but it seemed like too good an opportunity to let slip. A simple telegram ensures some goodwill with a well-known French Communist trade union leader and further establishes my bona fides without doing too much harm.’
‘If you think that’ll put Robert in your debt, I’m afraid you don’t know him all that well. And you really don’t know what harm it could have caused.’ I laughed and shook my head. ‘But what’s all this got to do with Jenkins and Jonathan Harrison anyway? And why use Miss Beaumont as a tethered goat? There are no cloaks and daggers in Jenkins’ wardrobe.’
John spoke for the first time. ‘Oh?’ he said. ‘So, what is it all about,’ he said, ‘if we’ve got it so wrong?’
I sighed. ‘Perhaps I will have that drink, after all,’ I said. ‘Is there any red wine?’
Jameson nodded. ‘Yes, and I’m told it’s good, but I wouldn’t know. No sense of smell or taste,’ he said, raising his hands to his face again in the same clumsy gesture. ‘A source of regret.’
John poured me a glass of something almost purple from one of the decanters, and I sat next to Miss Beaumont. Jameson had not been misled. It was good wine.
‘Sometimes,’ I said, inclining my head towards John, ‘you intelligence types are too clever for your own good. But how come you found us this evening?’
‘I was in Cambridge, visiting old tutors and so on,’ John said, indicating Jameson, ‘with my boss, Andrew, who’s down at the station, and it really was a coincidence that we were out for a walk and bumped into your two friends. A kidnapping offered a pretty good excuse for some arrests. We’ve been looking to question Jenkins for a while. We’ll let him stew in custody for a day or two and talk to him in due course.’ He sipped his whisky and then looked at me with a wry smile. ‘So, tell me how we’ve got it so wrong.’
I did, and I asked them to put in a word for Bert, who wasn’t involved in the abduction. They didn’t promise. They also didn’t reassure Miss Beaumont about Jonathan.
I carefully avoided being too explicit about a couple of things, but I must have come across as evasive because John asked the really awkward questions. Where was Jon? And where were the diamonds? I gave the only answer I could. I didn’t know. John didn’t believe me. And I don’t think he was convinced that there wasn’t more to the whole affair either. But that’s clever-clogs intelligence men for you.
Jameson shook his head and quoted, he said, from Dean Swift again. ‘“I never wonder to see men wicked, but I often wonder to see them not ashamed.”’
I wondered if this Dean Swift was any relation to the Jonathan Swift I’d heard of, the one who wrote about an island of little people.
TWENTY-SIX
I awoke suddenly with a crick in my neck from sleeping on the sofa and the certainty that there was someone else in the room. An insipid, watery light from a street lamp outside seeped into the room through a gap in the heavy curtains, and I saw a pale movement by the door.
I knew instantly that I was in the room we’d talked in before the supper of ham, cheese, home-baked bread and pickles. The heavy aroma of John’s cigar lingered in the stale air. I sat up and coughed. My head still ached, and my neck was stiff.
Miss Beaumont, a ghostly figure in a man’s white shirt, slid through the semi-darkness and sat on the sofa next to me. ‘You do know where Jon is, don’t you?’ she said.
‘I’ve an idea,’ I said.
‘Find him,’ she said, ‘please. And warn him about what’s going on.’
‘I’ll try,’ I said. But I was thinking that warning him wasn’t going to help at all.
She laid her head on my shoulder. ‘You’re a nice man, Tony,’ she said. ‘Reliable, loyal, decent.’
All those things that Jonathan Harrison was not, I thought. She might as well have said dull, unexciting, unattractive, boring. I was conscious that neither of us was wearing very much and that the light from the window was backlighting her shirt and rendering it almost transparent.
I closed my eyes and thought of Mrs Williams, Ann.
‘We should leave now,’ she said. ‘Before anyone gets up. We could catch the first train to London and go to Jon. Warn him.’
I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t see the point.
‘I don’t trust those men,’ she said. ‘I think they want to go with us to find Jon.’ That didn’t sound like such a bad idea to me. ‘If we can get a start on them . . .’
‘If we leave now,’ I said, ‘that really will raise their suspicions. They’ll think we know something, and they’ll track us down. They’ll have someone waiting for the train.’
‘We’ll go by taxi.’
‘To London! How much money do you have on you?’
‘None,’ she said.
‘Well, I don’t know if I have enough for train tickets. And I certainly don’t have enough for a taxi.’
She took her head from my shoulder and folded her arms.
‘Why don’t we lull them into a false sense of security?’ I said. ‘Continue with our story that we don’t know where Jonathan is. They can feed us breakfast, find me a clean shirt and take us back to London. Then, when they’re not watching, I’ll look for Jonathan.’
‘It may be too late by then,’ she said.
‘It may be too late now,’ I said.
‘You promise you’ll find him?’ she said, laying her head back on my shoulder.
‘I promise I’ll try,’ I said, wondering again why I didn’t just tell Jameson and his friends where I thought he was and leave it to them to pick him up. But I knew, really. One of the reasons was leaning softly against me. The other sat – solid, hard and gleaming – in Bernie’s safe.
I sloshed about in a hot bath for fifteen or twenty minutes and that felt good. I shaved and that felt better. I dressed in clean underwear, shirt, socks and a good quality grey suit that Jameson had found that all more or less fitted me, and that felt wonderful. My shoes lacked polish and looked as though they’d been used to daub a hut with more than its fair share of mud, but apart from that I felt dapper enough.
I let John take the bandage off my head, bathe the wound and then dab it with TCP. I wasn’t so keen on the last bit, but he seemed to know what he was doing.
I’d acquired a few bumps, scrapes and bruises in the last few days, but this one took the biscuit. Technicolor couldn’t have done it justice. Still, I wasn’t seeing double and the swelling had gone down. Anyway, everyone I knew loved me for my personality, not my matinée idol looks.
Surprisingly, John’s boss, Andrew, had not turned up to interrogate us, so I assumed that they were planning to turn us loose and see what transpired.
I tucked in to the bacon, eggs, toast and tea that Mrs Atkinson, the amiable, lean woman of forty or so who ‘did’ for Dr Jameson, placed in front of me. If she was surprised or put out in any way by my and Miss Beaumont’s presence, she didn’t show it.
Miss Beaumont nibbled at a slice of toast and sipped at a cup of tea while I made an attempt on the world record for number of slices of toast munched and cups of tea consumed in one ten-minute period.
By a quarter past nine we were ready to be whisked away to the Smoke.
I asked if Harrison had turned up at his rooms yet, but Jameson just shook his head. The enquiry didn’t go unnoticed by John. His eyes brightened, and a little smile tugged at his lips. About as subtle as a brick through a window, then.
I tried to lessen the impact of that by smoothly moving on and asking how I should return the clothes to Jameson. He dismissed it by just saying, ‘As and when . . .’
Mrs Atkinson had wrapped my own crumpled and soiled garments in a neat brown-paper parcel tied with string. I thanked her and tucked it under my arm.
The resolutely male nature of Dr Jameson’s home meant that Miss Beaumont was dressed in the same clothes as the day before, but she didn’t complain. In fact, she didn’t even seem to
notice. And if she was a little less than her delightfully fragrant self, I wasn’t going to comment.
The Wolseley was outside, and John’s boss was behind the wheel.
It was another lovely day. The only clouds were white and lonely.
Miss Beaumont sat as far from me as possible on the back seat and stared out of the window. John and Andrew talked quietly together, traffic buzzed past us and stretched out in front like a slow-moving military convoy. I reminded myself that Easter Saturday was upon us. I dozed off. Once you’ve seen one field, you’ve seen them all.
I awoke when John asked for directions to my humble abode. (Actually, he didn’t use that phrase, but, since we were gliding along a drab and rundown Leytonstone High Road, I thought I detected a slight sneer in his voice.) I suggested turning right at the Thatched House into Crownfield Road and following that to Leyton High Road. Not the most direct route, but we eventually pulled up outside the Gaumont.
Enzo was standing at the door to his café smoking, passing the time by glaring fiercely at two small boys who were kicking a ragged, grey tennis ball perilously close to his steamed-up window. He occasionally glanced glumly up at the still clear sky, probably anticipating rain. I nodded to him as I hauled myself and my brown-paper parcel out of the car. He raised a hand in a half-hearted greeting and retreated back inside. Clearly, he thought the danger to his window had passed and drizzle was imminent.
I thanked John and Andrew and said a stiff farewell to Beverley Beaumont. I asked her if she would be all right on her own, but she waved away my concern. John reassured me that he would see her safely in her flat. I told him quietly that it was in a little disarray and then asked him how he would get in as I didn’t think she had her keys. He said he’d manage. Then he smiled knowingly and told me to take care.
I watched the car turn into Lea Bridge Road and then, adjusting my parcel under my arm, waited for a bus and an old lorry to lumber past before marching smartly across the sunlit road and setting the bell jangling on the door to the shop.
Artie Shaw’s big hit from before the war, ‘Begin the Beguine’, rippled pleasantly and welcomingly around the untidy little room. The hole in the ceiling didn’t look out of place in the general chaos of half-empty boxes of records, sheet music and Hohner mouth organs. In fact, it looked right at home.
Jerry greeted me as warmly as the music. He looked up at the intrusion, put down the descant recorder he was examining, beamed and came out from behind the counter. He peered at me and then stepped back to admire the new contours of my face.
‘Wow,’ he said, ‘that’s some bruise.’
‘You should see the other guy,’ I said automatically and laughed at the thought of Alfred with both arms in slings. Well, it would save on handcuffs. And it would make wiping his bum with the old San Izal an interesting experience.
‘I don’t think I care to meet the man who could do that to you,’ he said. He patted my back. ‘Nice suit. I don’t think I’ve seen that one before.’
‘A recent acquisition,’ I said.
‘Listen, there’s someone upstairs. It’s a bit awkward,’ he said.
‘Who?’ I said.
He shrugged, and I thought it best to just trudge up the stairs and find out.
Ghislaine was sitting on my grandfather’s old chair, smoking. The fug in the room suggested she’d been there for some time. I dropped my package on the old kitchen table and smiled at her. ‘Where’s Robert?’ I said.
‘He’s a pig,’ she said.
‘Does he know where you are?’ I said.
‘Of course. I told him I was going to someone who cared about me.’
I heard Jerry clumping up the stairs.
‘He’ll come for you, Ghislaine,’ I said. ‘And probably for me.’
She shook her head firmly, and her hair tumbled over her eyes. She brushed it away with a careless sweep of the hand holding her cigarette. ‘No. He told me to do what I must.’
That didn’t mean that he would let her.
‘He even gave me money,’ she said. She picked up her handbag, balanced it on her lap, rummaged in it and then triumphantly waved a handful of notes. There must have been twenty-five or thirty pounds there. ‘And –’ she patted the bag affectionately – ‘I have brought some protection.’
Jerry was standing in the doorway. He put his hand on my shoulder. ‘I’ll put the kettle on,’ he said and scuttled off to the scullery.
Ghislaine thrust the money back into her bag and stood up. ‘But, Antoine,’ she said, looking at me for the first time, ‘your head. What happened?’
Nothing, I thought, compared to what will happen if Robert decides to turn up and take offence.
‘It’s a long story,’ I said and looked around rather theatrically. ‘Where’s Emile?’
Ghislaine gave an exaggerated shrug. ‘Someone delivered him to the hotel late last night. He was still sleeping this morning when I left. Robert laughed, saying that one day with you has exhausted him. He should have suffered one year, as we did. It’s taken us nearly ten years to recover.’
I sighed and sat down behind my desk and stared at the dust motes spiralling slowly in the rays of sun that slanted through the window. It reminded me of smoke swirling in the light from the projector in a cinema. At least Robert was cracking jokes at my expense. That probably meant that he wasn’t planning to cut my throat in the immediate future.
I’ve never asked that my life be uncomplicated, but I would like it to be less of a mess than it is. Neat, elegant solutions to simple problems is all I ask. But the people I know seem to be messier and less predictable than most. One problem takes a step back, fades into the background and then another steps forward, hogging the spotlight, upstaging the others, mugging away at me.
Ghislaine looked at me anxiously. Her eyes were red-rimmed. They might have been irritated by the smoke from her cigarettes, but it looked to me as if she’d been crying.
I smiled at her. ‘Did Robert really beat you?’ I said. ‘Before you came, I mean.’
‘It’s not that,’ she said. ‘It’s everything. I’m angry at him, but it’s not his fault.’
I looked askance at her. She sounded like Beverley Beaumont. What is it with women and good-looking and feckless, brutal men?
‘He is a passionate man, and he loves me,’ she said defensively. ‘But, Antoine, I’m so weary of everything. I have to get away. You know, winter in Paris can be so cold – in January last year les clochards were dying in the streets. And then, in the summer, they were dying again, but of the heat. And there’s the politics: one government after another. Robert loves it, and I hate it. He still looks forward to the triumph of the workers. I dread it. I think I want to be somewhere stable for a little while: a city where people don’t die of the cold in winter and of the heat in summer.’
‘London isn’t paradise, Ghislaine. People die here of the cold,’ I said.
‘Tant pis,’ she said sadly as Jerry came in carrying a tray with a teapot, a milk bottle and some cups on it.
‘What’s that mean?’ he said.
‘So much piss,’ I said.
‘Really?’ he said, raising an eyebrow and lowering the tray on to the table at the same time.
‘No,’ I said, ‘not really, but that sums up my life. And Ghislaine’s.’
He busied himself at the table, clinking cups, and said nothing.
We waited in gloomy silence for the tea to brew, then Jerry looked up and smiled grimly. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘at the risk of making your life even pissier . . .’
‘Go on,’ I said bleakly.
‘I don’t quite know how to put this . . .’
‘Come on, Jerry, out with it,’ I said.
‘Orient lost two nil to Brentford yesterday.’
Ghislaine, if not at all bewitched or bothered, certainly looked bewildered as Jerry and I laughed like drains.
The musty landing outside the Imperial Club smelled faintly of sour beer, urine and vomit, although Con
nie’s powerful scent and perfumed talcum powder masked most of it. I sneezed hugely when I arrived at the top stair.
‘That’s a nasty case of hay fever,’ the lady herself, resplendently draped in one of her voluminous flowing gowns and perched on her little chair, murmured. ‘At least, I hope it is. Can’t let you in with a cold, can I?’ She looked around, beyond Ghislaine, who had followed me up the stairs. ‘And where’s the good-looking one with the little beard? You never bring her.’
‘Jerry’s minding the shop,’ I said, and it was true. He had declined Ghislaine’s offer of a meal, saying that he had a living to make and Saturday was his big day. ‘And he’s shaved his beard off,’ I added.
‘I’ll bet she looks even prettier,’ Connie said and waved us in.
Ghislaine giggled. I imagined she found Connie amusing. I doubted that she’d followed the conversation.
After eating chips, peas and tough, salty gammon topped with a slice of fibrous tinned pineapple at Enzo’s, we’d made our way into town. I didn’t really want Ghislaine with me, but she was keen to come and so leave Jerry on his own. I think that, in spite of what she’d said, she worried that Robert would turn up, and she didn’t want him to find her with Jerry.
I wanted to ask Roger if he’d seen Jonathan Harrison in the last day or so, but that was just an excuse. I told myself it was about leaving Ghislaine somewhere safe (because I intended leaving her with Roger), but I could have done that by telling her I’d meet her in a couple of hours at the V and A. No, I knew that I was delaying the inevitable.
