Fox from His Lair

by John Harris

  Pargeter frowned. ‘I’ve seen none.’

  ‘They’re all around.’

  ‘Where?’

  The inspector looked uncertain. ‘Well, anyway, that’s what I understood. I must admit I haven’t seen ’em myself, come to think of it, but there are several Yank aerodromes around. There’s one near here – at Chiteley. There’s a railway line that supplies it.’

  ‘What with?’

  ‘Spare parts. Bombs. Food. There’s always an ammunition train standing in the siding for when the level in the bomb dumps goes down. When it does, they move it up to Colchester and from there portions of it are shunted around to local stations for the dromes. As it gets split up and disappears, they shunt another into Chiteley. The bomber boys have been busy lately with the second front and the scheme was devised so that there’ll never be a shortage of bombs. Endless belt sort of thing; the war’s getting a bit like that these days, isn’t it?’

  Pargeter’s eyes were narrow. ‘Who told you all this?’ he asked.

  ‘One of the American officers. You can meet them any night in the pub at Chiteley. It’s full of bomber crews.’

  Returning across the Thames to Dover Castle to make further enquiries about Jacobson, Pargeter learned that the Guards Armoured Division were also in the area, together with two other armoured divisions, while American infantry divisions were in Ipswich and Folkestone. In Intelligence, he managed to sneak a look at train schedules and routings; certainly the railway had carried into the area a great many British and American troops, their routings and numbers clearly marked, and the roads appeared to have been full of lorry convoys. Indeed, he thought, there seemed to have been a remarkable amount of casualness about ‘secret’ and ‘top secret’ documents.

  ‘This the jumping-off spot for the invasion?’ he asked.

  The officer he asked shrugged, blank-faced. ‘Well, there’s a lot of wireless traffic. And I’ve seen landing craft, hangars, loading ramps, gliders and armour.’

  As Pargeter drove back along the coast, he was thoughtful. Off Dungeness there were several vast constructions of concrete and steel protruding from the Channel, evidently resting on the seabed, as big as vast blocks of flats. They looked as if someone had picked up part of the city of New York and dumped it offshore, or as if some vast factory had risen from the water, and he could only assume they were part of the preparations for the coming invasion.

  Back in London, he tossed his cap on to his desk and sat down, staring thoughtfully at his blotter. After a while, he reached for a cigarette and rang a bell. It was answered by a girl in the uniform of a Wren second officer.

  ‘Anything happened?’ he asked.

  Second Officer Elizabeth Wint produced a lighter and lit his cigarette. ‘No,’ she said. ‘No enquiries either. Any moment now somebody’s going to decide we’re surplus to establishment and send us back to the war.’

  Pargeter went on sitting quietly for a moment, studying a notebook he had taken from his pocket and tossed on to the desk with his cap. Then he looked up.

  ‘Remember a naval officer in Plymouth in February getting knocked on the head and being dumped in the sea?’

  ‘Vaguely.’

  ‘Do we have a file on it?’

  Second Officer Wint crossed to a steel cabinet by the door. ‘The police decided he was a pansy,’ she said. ‘Been chasing Americans, they thought.’

  ‘That’s what I understood. Let’s have the file.’

  Elizabeth Wint fished inside the cabinet. She came from the same class as Pargeter himself. Moneyed, privileged, beautiful, well-bred and not-too-clever, she had a flat at Dollis Hill and they’d been carrying on a desultory affair for some months now.

  She laid the file in front of him. It was marked ‘Jensen, Lieutenant-Commander Hector, RNVR’.

  Pargeter opened it. The circumstances and the background were surprisingly like those of Dunnaway and Jacobson. Jensen had been a paymaster-commander in the Regulating Branch of the navy with the job of examining ships’ books. This had taken him along the whole south coast of England and in the months before his death he, too, seemed to have been working with the Americans. What he had been working on seemed vague, however, and Pargeter wondered if he, also, had had a fondness for American officers.

  The coincidences were too great to be ignored. ‘Wonder if there’s a mass murderer about,’ he mused. ‘A different kind of Ripper – like that chap in 1942 who killed all those prostitutes in air raid shelters.’

  Second Officer Wint pulled a face. ‘These weren’t prostitutes. They were men.’ She glanced at the files. ‘Not particularly small men either.’

  ‘Pansies?’ Pargeter suggested. ‘Makes ’em vulnerable. If you’re expecting affection, you’re hardly in a position to resist a knife in the gizzard.’

  He turned over a sheet of paper on the file in front of him. ‘Lecturer in Modern Languages, Durham University, 1935 to 1939. Author of Germany Wakes, National Socialism in Bavaria and The Hitler Regime.’ He gestured at the empty chair on the opposite side of his desk. ‘Sit down, Liz,’ he said.

  Second Officer Wint pulled up a chair and, lifting one elegant black-stockinged leg, she crossed it over the other. Pargeter studied it approvingly. ‘Fancy dinner tonight?’ he asked.

  ‘On service rations, who wouldn’t?’

  ‘I can find somewhere.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘The usual.’

  ‘I’m a glutton for punishment.’

  Pargeter’s stiff face didn’t smile. ‘Let’s get back to business,’ he said, tapping the file. ‘Pansies? Or genuine officers doing their job?’

  ‘They seem to have been pretty fond of the Yanks.’

  ‘I thought that was the privilege only of women.’

  ‘Well, they do have smart uniforms and bulging wallets and they are eager to please.’

  ‘They’re also pretty eager to get people like you into bed.’

  Second Officer Wint smiled. ‘They try hard,’ she agreed.

  They seemed to have drifted off the subject again. Pargeter brought it back with a jerk.

  ‘You heard of that affair at Slapton Sands?’ he asked.

  ‘It drifted up the line. Was it bad?’

  ‘Around seven hundred men.’

  ‘Whew! Think the Germans got wind of what was happening?’

  ‘I’m beginning to. Suppose our friends were pansies and were being blackmailed into passing on information?’ Pargeter paused, studying his fingers, then he looked up cheerfully.‘I think I’ll go and see my friend Iremonger again,’ he decided.

  Six

  Colonel Iremonger was no more pleased to see Pargeter a second time than he had been the first.

  ‘How in hell can I tell you if the guy was making love to American officers?’ he demanded furiously. ‘They didn’t tell me! And, for God’s sake, I’ve got something better to do than chase pansies round the south of England to ask ’em what they get up to in their spare time.’ He stared hard at Pargeter, convinced, as he had been from the beginning that he was lazy, stupid and privileged. An intensely patriotic man him-self he considered Pargeter, like most British, to be too damned casual by a long way. Iremonger was a man who could stand with his hand on his heart in front of the Stars and Stripes without a second thought, but he guessed that Pargeter, like many Englishmen, would be faintly embarrassed even to stand up for the National Anthem.

  ‘It’s not part of my job,’ he growled.

  ‘It might be,’ Pargeter said blandly.

  Iremonger swung round in his chair and stared at Pargeter angrily. ‘You got something I haven’t got?’ he demanded.

  ‘What makes you think that?’

  ‘You’re smiling like the cat that ate the canary.’

  Pargeter’s smile disappeared abruptly and his face became so blank that to Iremonger it looked as though it belonged to someone else who’d gone away and left it behind.

  ‘Probably,’ he said.

  ‘Well, come on
, give!’

  Pargeter made a little shuffling movement as though he were shifting his position inside his uniform. ‘I discovered,’ he said, ‘that the gentleman I’m interested in was around Slapton just before Exercise Tiger took place. It led to a few thoughts.’

  ‘Such as what?’

  ‘Such as you’ve probably got something I haven’t got.’ Pargeter’s smile returned. ‘It would seem to me that you and I might work together with some measure of success.’

  Iremonger didn’t relish the idea and he sat back, frowning, to light a cigar as big as a torpedo. None too willingly, he offered one to Pargeter who declined gracefully. Iremonger eyed him warily. Pargeter was wearing a wooden expression now and suddenly he began to suspect that under the po-faced facade he was a lot smarter than he looked.

  ‘Azalea’s survivor,’ he said. ‘The guy from the German E-boat that sank – a guy called Emil–’ he moved the papers on his desk until he came up with the correct one – ‘Emil Puttkamer, Able-Seaman Emil Puttkamer – he said everybody on board knew they’d had orders to pick up officer survivors. Note that: not enlisted men, officers. My guess is that they were after the Bigot guys and it sure as hell gave Security a fright when they found there were ten of ’em missing.’ It had also, he remembered, led to the suspicion that the Germans hadn’t just stumbled on the rehearsal.

  Pargeter rubbed his nose. ‘Any idea who could have tipped ’em off?’ he asked.

  ‘These guys of yours who were murdered?’

  ‘It had to come from higher up than that.’

  Iremonger sighed. ‘Mebbe we ought to work together a little.’ He made the suggestion ungraciously because he wasn’t sure that working with Pargeter was going to be anything but a chore, but he was intelligent enough to realise it had to be done. ‘Where do we start?’

  Both Iremonger and Pargeter were a little startled to find themselves in double harness. For the life of him, Pargeter couldn’t imagine that they’d ever find anything in common. Iremonger simply resigned himself to a month or so of misery. Pargeter, he decided, probably drank milk.

  They agreed – mutually and with relief – that they should cover different fields. Iremonger was to ask around the units, which had taken part in Exercise Tiger. Pargeter was to ferret around in Essex and among the corridors of Whitehall. Within a matter of days, he was back in Iremonger’s office.

  ‘Know anybody called Fox?’ he asked.

  Iremonger stared at him, chewing one of his monstrous cigars. ‘There was a guy back home in Nebraska,’ he said, blank-faced. ‘Name of Champlin Dilwara Fox. Snappy name. He was a half-breed who used to collect trash.’

  Pargeter blinked at the sarcasm. ‘I’m talking of an American officer,’ he pointed out coldly.

  ‘Then why not say so?’ Iremonger scowled. ‘No, I don’t. Why?’

  ‘My murdered officers seem to have one or two common denominators. One of them a chap called Fox.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Detective in Essex picked up a name and I checked back. That chap, Dunnaway, in Portsmouth, I was investigating, and another chap earlier in Plymouth were also interested in a chap called Fox.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Asked the officers they met.’

  ‘Find out anything?’

  ‘He seems to be an American officer. At least he wore American uniform.’

  Iremonger chewed at his cigar for a moment. ‘Think he’s some sort of agent?’

  Pargeter gave a small shrug. ‘We needn’t persuade our-selves that there aren’t German agents around,’ he said. ‘London have had their eye on two or three, I gather, but, as far as I can learn, most of ’em were arrested before they had any chance of doing any harm. I think the tip-off about Slapton Sands came from a senior official in the Foreign Office who was on loan as senior liaison officer to your people. His job was to sift information for senior American officers. His wife’s an ambitious type with money who’s looking for a title for her husband. She’s got a big house in north Hampshire and makes a practice of inviting allied officers to spend weekends there. Away from the pressures of duty. We all suffer from them.’

  Iremonger glanced sideways at Pargeter. He looked as though he’d never suffered from pressures of any kind in the whole of his life and was taking great care that he wasn’t going to in the future, and Iremonger was suddenly reminded of a paragraph in the booklet on the British which he’d been given as he’d sailed from New York for Europe. ‘The British are reserved,’ it had said. ‘But don’t be misled by soft speech and politeness. They can be tough.’ He glanced again at Pargeter and decided that it probably applied to him.

  ‘Sure,’ he growled. ‘Pressures are hell.’

  Pargeter smiled. He looked like a sleek tomcat. ‘Our Foreign Office gentleman had had a paper on the Slapton rehearsal through his hands and probably talked too much to one of his wife’s guests. That weekend – the weekend before Slapton – they were all Americans.’

  ‘And the guy in London? The Foreign Office guy?’

  Pargeter smiled. ‘He’s been removed from his job and sent to Birmingham with the Ministry of Supply. I imagine his wife’s not very pleased because it means the end of his promotion and the next step would have carried a knighthood. She’ll now remain plain “missis” to the end of her days.’

  Seven

  Two days later, Iremonger appeared in Pargeter’s office. When Pargeter arrived, he was drinking coffee with Elizabeth Wint and obviously enjoying the experience. The harshness in his manner had gone, and he even appeared to have produced a certain amount of charm.

  Elizabeth Wint smiled. ‘Colonel Iremonger dropped in with some information for us,’ she said.

  ‘So I see.’

  Iremonger rose and beamed at the girl. ‘Thanks for the coffee,’ he said. ‘Next time I’m up, I’ll remember to drop a can in for you. Might even run to a pair of nylons.’

  Pargeter held open the door of his office for him, his face blank and disapproving, and as Iremonger took the chair opposite his desk, he extracted his cigarette case and offered it to the American.

  ‘You married, Iremonger?’ he asked.

  ‘Me?’ Iremonger knew what was running through Pargeter’s mind. ‘I’m not the type to be hemmed in by out-of-date inhibitions like that, Cuthbert. Why?’

  Pargeter shrugged. ‘Nothing,’ he said, deciding he’d better keep an eye on Elizabeth Wint. ‘What’s this information you’ve got?’

  Iremonger made himself comfortable. ‘This guy, Fox. In 21st Army Group there are thirteen Foxes. There are also three in the navy and four in the air force. I talked to ’em all. There are also one hundred and ten enlisted men of various ranks with the name.’

  ‘What did they have to say?’

  ‘They’d never heard of Dunnaway, Jacobson or Jensen.’

  ‘Telling the truth, d’you think?’

  Iremonger’s expression seemed to indicate that it was an insult to suggest that an American could tell a lie. ‘That weekend party you talked about,’ he said. ‘There were six Americans there. None called Fox. I talked to them all. Five I’ll vouch for. The sixth is our guy.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Guy called Julius Weddigen. Lieutenant-commander, USN. He’s a medic. Psychiatric branch. His job’s to go the rounds and tell the guys what to do if they’re wounded when the invasion starts, how good the medical services are, and how quick we can get ’em back to safety if they’re hit.’

  To Pargeter it seemed a strange psychology for an invasion – the British army was busy telling its troops they were immortal and that it was the Germans who were going to die.

  Iremonger was still talking. ‘He was at a party,’ he said. ‘A different party. There were British, Free French, Poles, Czechs, Americans. He was heard shooting his mouth off about Slapton.’

  Pargeter was silent for some time then he looked up.

  ‘This chap Weddigen,’ he said. ‘Would it be a good idea to check all th
e people who might have heard him?’

  Iremonger stubbed out his cigarette. ‘I did. Personally. All the Americans and all the British. The others were a bit harder. I don’t speak their languages. It seems our friend, Weddigen, actually mentioned talking to a guy called Fox.’

  ‘My Fox?’

  ‘I guess now he’s probably my Fox, too.’

  ‘Have you found him?’

  Iremonger frowned. ‘No, I haven’t. But as it was a pretty casual party and people took their friends and a bottle – you know the sort – that wouldn’t be so goddam strange, would it?’

  ‘Was he British?’

  ‘According to the report I got, Weddigen thought he was American but he later wondered if he was right. I guess he’s still wondering back in the USA because, like your Foreign Office guy, he’s been demoted – and posted home for opening his big mouth too wide. He also wondered if he was a Pole or something, acting as a liaison officer. I guess the truth is he didn’t know what the hell he was. It was a warm night and they took their jackets off and there was a lot of hooch and girls. And in any case, there aren’t any Poles with us except at top level. They’re all with your people at the other side of England.’

  Pargeter stubbed out his cigarette and lit another – not so much because he wanted one as because it helped to take away the smell of the cigar Iremonger had now lit.

  ‘Wonder if any of my murdered officers had met your friend Weddigen, or his friend Fox?’ he mused.

  Iremonger studied him. ‘What’s on your mind?’ he asked.

  ‘They were all introspective types. All quiet. All linguists. All with free and easy jobs. All with strange friends–’

  ‘Americans,’ Iremonger pointed out indignantly.

  ‘Strange for Englishmen.’ Pargeter corrected himself quickly. ‘And I’ve discovered there’s no suggestion of homosexuality about any of them.’

  ‘A guy doesn’t trumpet that sort of thing about.’

  ‘A guy certainly doesn’t trumpet that sort of thing about,’ Pargeter agreed. ‘But one might expect that out of the three of them, somewhere there might be some hint of it.’