‘Didn’t even know such a thing had such a name,’ Poppy droned. ‘You are clever.’
‘Johnny here has friends in all sorts of very high places,’ Elizabeth Dunedin informed her. ‘Johnny here is a much travelled fellow.’
‘Some might even say a fellow traveller,’ Lord Lypton said, hooding his eyes at Poppy in what she thought he must imagine to be a sexy fashion as he looked at her. ‘Although which carriage he’s in is sometimes debatable.’
‘Come off it, Lyppy,’ Basnett laughed. ‘I’m not the only fellow here who knows the man. You met him too.’
‘Not as often as thou, Johnny. Three times now, is it not? Or maybe four?’
‘One’s been mighty fortunate to have been invited, that’s all,’ Basnett replied, having drained a whole glass of wine in one draught. ‘Not sure the housepainter’s quite as honest as he makes out – you know, one wouldn’t feel quite at ease turning one’s back – while Goering – different fish altogether. Goering’s a gent, do you see. Goering would fit in perfectly well and happily here – different sort of chap altogether. Ribbentrop – well, not quite so sure, but Goering – got a lot of time for our Hermann.’
‘Got a lot of time for a lot of people, our Johnny,’ Lypton said generally, drumming the table in front of him rhythmically with his fingers. ‘Had a lot of time for our Neville, right? Great admirer of NC, our Johnny.’
‘So are you, Lyppy,’ Basnett replied, piqued. ‘Can’t say he isn’t a friend of your family too.’
‘Chamberlain never spent quite as much time chez moi as he did chez toi, old lad. But then there’s no accounting for taste, is there?’ He smiled and looked at Poppy. ‘No accounting for people’s tastes – particularly the taste of politicians.’
‘Chamberpot just liked what Johnny laid on for him, that’s what,’ Elizabeth Dunedin remarked. ‘You’re just jel-jel, Lyppy. Always prone to attacks of green eye, our Lyppy.’
‘I just cannot understand, Lizard, why Neville and Halifax of all people should use Johnny here as the means of communicating to Hitler the views of the government.’
‘The government that was, Lyppy,’ Elizabeth reminded him. ‘We have a new boy at the helm, remember?’
‘Let me put it this way, Lizard. The views that matter. If things go the way they should we should still be able to get the peace we all want very soon. New boy or no new boy.’
‘No new boy hopefully,’ Basnett said without thinking, earning himself looks of reproof from both Lypton and his hostess. ‘Sorry!’ he said gaily, as if he had just given away a small surprise instead of something important, particularly bearing in mind the gist of the secret message that had been placed in Poppy’s tin of Black and White cigarettes.
Basnett continued to regale the dinner party with an account of how the democratic press was a constant thorn in Hitler’s side and how the Führer had told him that Chamberlain should throw journalists into a concentration camp.
‘Only if you put all your press chappies likewise, I told him.’ Basnett laughed. ‘Fair’s only fair, dash it. Put your chaps in a camp and we’ll all be the merrier for it. Know what he said? Know what Hitler said to me? I vill put zem in ze zame camp! I vill put zem in ze zame camp! How about that, eh? How about that?’
This anecdote re-established Basnett’s credibility until, overcome by drink, he gradually disappeared under the table. His outsize wife had already retired.
‘Good riddance,’ Lypton said, lighting a cigarette and staring with contempt at where Basnett had been seated. ‘Don’t know why you tolerate the idiot, Lizard. I really don’t.’
‘Because, Lyppy, he has oodles of dough,’ his hostess replied in a tired voice. ‘Remember?’
‘I was quite interested in what he said about Hitler though,’ Poppy drawled. ‘About Hitler getting shirty about what the press says about him over here.’
‘You think he has a bit of a raw deal, do you?’ Lypton wondered idly.
‘He’s done wonders for the German economy already, so one’s told,’ Poppy replied. ‘And for their employment. Pity the same can’t be said for this lot over here.’
‘Singing our song, my dear,’ Elizabeth said with a glance to Lypton. ‘Isn’t she, Lyppy? Told you she was one of us.’
After the gentlemen had rejoined the ladies and a few idle hands of cards had been played, Lypton sat down at the piano and revealed himself to be a surprisingly adequate musician. Poppy came over and watched him.
‘Well done,’ she said, clapping almost silently after Lypton had finished playing a Schubert impromptu. ‘That was rather good.’
‘Do you play, Diona?’ Lypton enquired.
‘Not as well as you, no.’
‘Can you read?’
‘A bit.’ Poppy shrugged, as if it was of no real consequence.
‘Try this then.’ Lypton produced a Chopin nocturne and set it open on the piano music stand. ‘You take the right hand.’
It was a piece Poppy knew, but even so she played well enough to have been able to sight read it. By now, a lovely young woman and a handsome man playing beautifully at the piano had the attention of everyone in the room, not least Scott, who was the first to lead the applause when they had finished playing.
‘Good,’ Lypton said, turning to look at Poppy. ‘You played that very well.’
‘Ta muchly,’ Poppy said in her best mock cockney.
‘In fact I’d say we make rather a good duo.’
‘Would you?’
‘Wouldn’t you?’
‘Who knows?’
Poppy smiled briefly, and got up from the piano, happy that she now had the man she had marked eating out of her hand. She was also happy when on returning to her room to go to bed she discovered when checking the contents of her handbag that her membership card of a certain international Fascist party, so kindly supplied to her by Jack Ward, had been put back in its holder.
When Marjorie returned after her lunchtime break she found Jack Ward in Major Folkestone’s office, together with a short, wire-haired and bespectacled man she recognised as Nigel Greene from C Section. Seeing there was some sort of conference in progress Marjorie excused herself and went to leave the men alone, only to be summoned back immediately by Major Folkestone.
‘It’s all right, Marjorie,’ he said. ‘We’re nearly finished. Not that there’s any cause for privacy, because we seem to have drawn a bit of a blank here.’
Marjorie glanced at Jack Ward who was too busy to take any notice of her since he was carefully studying a leather-bound journal he had in his hand, turning over page after page as if in search of some solution.
‘As I said’ – Nigel Greene took off his glasses and cleaned them on the end of his tie – ‘I thought it was some really, really smart code – that he’d invented some sort of impenetrable screen through which we couldn’t pass. At least I must say I did hope so.’
Jack frowned, looking up now first at Nigel Greene then round at Major Folkestone.
‘No,’ he said after a thoughtful silence. ‘No, I don’t think lightning ever strikes the same tree twice, as the old saw has it.’
‘You see all these strokes, do you?’ Nigel continued, pointing out the markings on the page that Jack Ward had been examining. ‘They all go in slightly different directions, which made us think that it had to be coded – and that all these various strokes at their various angles represented the next layer, the first level of the code if you like. But they don’t. It’s a red herring. Devised to put us off – or waste our time.’
‘Or both,’ Jack added, looking up at him briefly. ‘But then why go to all that trouble? To fill a journal – what is it? Two hundred odd pages? With thousands and thousands of these lines – all painstakingly done. No fudged work this – it would have taken Tetherington hours and hours. Yet you say it’s a marsh light. A device to throw us – or whoever got hold of this journal when they shouldn’t have done – but why? If the book contains nothing of any sense at all, if it is just a mass
of meaningless hieroglyphics, what’s the point? Why lock it away in a safe – and why should all hell break loose when it was nicked? Tell me that, somebody, if you will.’
Major Folkestone frowned deeply, thought for a long time then raised his eyebrows and shrugged hopelessly.
‘Haven’t the faintest, sir,’ he said. ‘Not a clue.’
‘Maybe there was something else in the safe, sir,’ Greene suggested. ‘And when this book was stolen they thought the real prize had gone.’
‘No,’ Jack Ward replied immediately. ‘Before they set off after us they had time to look into the safe and see what was gone. If there had been anything else there they’d have seen it then. But since this was all that was taken – and since all hell followed on hard – we have to assume this book was and still is the real prize.’
‘Yes, I think you have to be right, sir,’ Marjorie ventured carefully, earning a look of slow surprise from Jack who had barely been aware of her presence.
‘Marjorie?’ he wondered. ‘You have something to say on the matter?’
‘Don’t think this absurd—’
‘We won’t,’ Jack interrupted. ‘In this job the absurd is more often than not the answer. So go on.’
‘It’s just I remember reading a story to Billy once, when he was a bit younger – it was in one of his comics, as I remember it.’
‘A comic?’ Major Folkestone snorted lightly.
‘It was a Sexton Blake adventure, as I also remember it,’ Marjorie went on with her usual stubbornness, because when it came to theories she was a dog with a bone, and would never let go.
‘As a matter of fact I like Sexton Blake,’ Jack admitted, staring with sudden interest at Marjorie. ‘Good stuff, actually.’
‘Well, in this story, they were looking for some vital clue – or evidence, I can’t remember what precisely, and I don’t suppose it matters. The point is there was this old volume – a large heavily bound book – it played some vital role or other, and Sexton Blake I think it was – or it might have been his assistant …’
‘Go on,’ Jack encouraged her, as she tailed off, feeling suddenly embarrassed as she realised everyone was staring at her. ‘The point being?’
‘Whoever it was had this idea that what they were looking for might not be in the book but in the – um – cover. And that is rather thick, sir. Bit like me, eh?’
She had hardly finished before Jack had started to search his pockets for his precious penknife.
‘It was actually a priceless drawing, which they’d concealed in between the front board and the binding, but you know a lot of these tales are based on real facts,’ Marjorie finished lamely.
‘Always worth a try,’ Jack nodded, sticking his pipe back in one corner of his mouth. He glanced at Nigel as much as to indicate that it might have been a good idea if his section could have come up with the same sort of solution, while Major Folkestone fingered his dapper moustache in hope of concealing his own embarrassment.
‘It was just a thought.’
‘Might even prove to be more than that,’ Jack replied, as, penknife in hand, he began to cut the leather cover.
It took some time, during which they all stared at the hands that were carrying out the painstaking task, until finally the front and back board of the journal had come free. Between the hide and the board was a piece of white paper, which Jack now carefully removed.
‘Film, by George,’ Major Folkestone exclaimed as he leaned over to take a closer look.
‘In miniature—’ Jack smiled fleetingly, before wandering out of the room at his usual unhurried pace followed closely by a sheepish Nigel Greene.
‘As a matter of fact,’ Major Folkestone nodded after them as they left, ‘I don’t mind admitting I’m a bit of a Sexton Blake fan myself. Well done, Marjorie.’
He smiled at Marjorie, who turned away. Poor old Major Folkestone. He really was no hero, not like Robert Maddox.
Billy was late home. Marjorie went in search of him as she had often to do, finally finding him sitting on one of his favourite perches, a length of the park railings that ran around the home paddocks. From there he had a clear view of the skies, and more interestingly the seemingly endless battle being carried on above them. Even as Marjorie arrived by Billy’s side there was the buzz and throb of aeroplanes overhead, and looking up to where Billy was pointing she could see a stream of incoming enemy bombers being attacked by a wing of RAF fighters.
‘Hurricanes,’ Billy said. ‘Even better than Spitfires, I think. They’re getting cleverer too – see? They’re coming in over Jerry now – usually out of the sun and coming down bang! on his tail. See?’
Marjorie watched as the planes sparred as if in some make-believe airborne ballet. They looked for all the world like some sort of graceful birds, swooping down on to each other, except for the deadly streams of lead that poured from the guns in their wings.
Marjorie could see it was somehow magical to Billy.
‘Billy – time to come in.’
‘Not just yet, Marge – look – fantastic!’
Marjorie looked up at the sky feeling more than a sense of dread as she fell silent, watching this time in pity. Despite the fact that the men in the dark planes with Swastikas painted on their sides were the enemy, as she saw one diving to earth before finally bursting immediately into flames she felt a sense of utter desolation, and it seemed to her that she could hear Aunt Hester’s voice murmuring, ‘There is nothing worse than losing one’s son, do you know that, Marjorie?’
Now, suddenly, thousands of feet above them another Messerschmitt exploded, turning from a plane into a fireball in a second, a huge orange and red and yellow ball that spun in the sky before falling in hundreds of fragments on the countryside of Kent far below.
‘Yeah!’ Billy cheered, jumping down off his railing and raising both fists in the air. ‘Yeah! Yeah!’
‘Don’t, Billy, don’t!’ Marjorie pulled him by the arm. ‘That wasn’t a nothing – that was somebody. A human being.’
‘That was Jerry, Marge! That was our enemy!’
‘One of them. It was also someone’s son.’
‘Don’t be so soppy, Marge!’ Billy called back over his shoulder as he ran off down the edge of the paddocks. ‘We’ve got to kill them before they kill us.’
Marjorie followed him down the fields, looking around her at the great park with its myriad fine trees, some of which had been planted many hundreds of years before. Now it seemed somehow that they appeared to be reproaching the mayhem in the skies above them, as if all the leaves were turning brown in protest at the death and destruction they could sense.
She knew from Aunt Hester that an early autumn was meant to presage a hard winter, and despite the earlier success in finding the film, something which must have cheered up Major Folkestone’s section no end, Marjorie felt low, as if there was nothing much to look forward to now, as if she had realised, too late, that really killing the enemy was no solution, only an admission of some kind of past failure, that something which should have been stopped years before had finally blown up in their faces.
And that was it really, she realised slowly, that was what was making her feel low, something Aunt Hester had always been on about, way back when, something which Marjorie had never really understood at the time.
‘By applying the principles of hygiene, disinfection, and so on, and so on,’ she used to say proudly of her heroine Florence Nightingale, ‘which now seems such a basic nursing principle, but which was certainly not then, Florence Nightingale proved that you not only saved the necessity for amputations, you saved lives. Same with politics. Clean out the political wounds, make sure your disinfectant is working, and you won’t have to amputate the limbs.’
Nevertheless, on their way back to the cottage, as much to cheer herself up as to encourage Billy, and despite the fact that she knew she was breaking all the rules, she told Billy about finding the true content of the mysterious journal.
‘I
say, not bad, Marge.’
Billy shook his head in admiration, not of her, but of Sexton Blake.
‘Funny though, don’t you think, Billy? Getting a solution out of a comic. I mean that is funny.’
‘Yeah,’ Billy agreed. ‘But then whoever wrote the story in the first place – I would say he could well have been a spy himself, because a lot of those writers were, Aunt Hester said. Remember that story when he caught the bloke who was dressed up as a woman?’
‘I don’t think so, Billy. Remind me.’
‘You remember. They were in this railway carriage, and Sexton Blake suspects this woman of not being a woman, so he throws him-her a box of matches?’
‘Yes, of course. And the woman puts her knees together and catches them like a man,’ Marjorie finished for him.
‘Yeah. ’Cos if he’d been a woman she’d have opened her knees and caught them in her skirt. It was brilliant. So the bloke what wrote Sexton Blake—’
‘Who wrote Sexton Blake,’ Marjorie corrected him.
‘Yeah. I don’t know,’ Billy replied in all innocence. ‘Anyhow – he must know a thing or two. See what I mean? I say, I wonder what’s in the films, Marge? Could be something vital. Could save England. Imagine.’
Overcome with excitement, Billy turned a cartwheel in front of Marjorie.
‘German War Secrets Cracked By Top British Agent!’ he cried like a news-vendor. ‘Read All About It! Read All About It! German War Secrets Cracked By Top British Agent!’
Marjorie laughed, and, lifting her hand as if to give Billy a smack, gave chase. But Billy had got too quick for her now, and easily out-sprinted her back to the cottage, while overhead the now victorious Hurricane fighters dipped their wings and wheeled down out of the blue skies to head for home.
Locked away in his attic flat at Home Farmhouse, Eugene Hackett sat waiting for the call that for once was late in coming. They were usually so punctilious in calling. He glanced at his watch, worried that the deadline was now five minutes old.
He waited another thirty seconds then tried once again to establish contact. This time he was successful.
Daughters Of Eden: The Eden Series Book 1 Page 32
