by Ian Hamilton
I crept up the stair, keeping well below the stone balustrade, for before I had mounted three steps I was out of cover of the hoarding, and in full view of the road. The door was of solid oak, studded with iron. I tried the jemmy on it. A toothpick would have been as effective. Regretfully I crawled back down.
To our left, as we faced the Abbey, and extending towards Poets’ Corner, was a line of low sheds, and we next investigated these. In the dim glow of my hooded torch we crept through the eerie darkness. On both sides were workbenches, loaded with stone and drawings, and we were careful to make no noise, since at any moment we expected to see a burly watchman leaping from the shadows.
We were brought up short by a door, but a door in a lean-to shed was nothing to our magnificent jemmy. We opened it leaving scarcely a mark and making no sound at all. We stepped out into shadow, rounded a corner, and stopped short of a dazzling patch of light. There, brown and solid before us, was the door to Poets’ Corner. We had successfully outflanked the bolted gate.
We went no further, as it was not yet time to assail the door. We had to get Kay from her hotel, and we had to wait until such time as we felt certain that the watchman had just completed his rounds. But the important thing to us was not just that we had found our way to a door that we knew could not stop us; it was that we had set in motion the first of a series of events which were to force us to go on and on and on, until we either succeeded or, as seemed very likely then, were caught. We had started trying at last.
We retreated the way we had come and closed the doors behind us. We stuck the hasp on the outside gate close to the wood, so that only a thorough examination would show that it had been tampered with. Then we walked boldly down the lane, swaying a little and crooning softly, like three drunks who had just completed private business against the wooden hoarding.
Our next task was to rouse Kay. It was not a pleasant one, for no hotel keeper likes to be aroused at three o’clock in the morning. It annoys them. We drove round to the telephone boxes outside the Central Hall, but although I let the number ring for more than 5 minutes there was no reply. We jumped back into the cars. I drove the old Ford with Alan by my side, and Gavin drove the Anglia, a disposition which was to affect our later plans. As we drove to St Pancras we talked blithely of using the jemmy on the door of the hotel, if they would not let Kay out.
Alan and I pulled up outside the hotel, while Gavin waited round the corner. I got out and hammered on the door. At length a basement window opened. ‘What do you want?’ said a voice.
‘I want Miss Warren,’ I said. Sir Victor Warren, the Lord Provost of Glasgow, was tied completely to London control of Scotland. Kay had felt that a Lord Provost should win some distinction in his life, so she had registered under the name of Victoria Warren. I expect that is all he will be remembered for.
There was a spate of grumbles, and I apologised profusely.
‘I’ve just had word that my father’s ill,’ I said, feeling that it was a poor lie, ‘and we’ve got to leave for Scotland right away.’
‘All right. All right,’ complained the voice. ‘I’ll go and tell her.’
I went out and sat in the car beside Alan. The end of the jemmy was in my trouser pocket, with its haft buttoned up under my jacket. It gave me a comfortable feeling to know that very shortly we would be using it on the door of Westminster Abbey.
A man came along the road, climbed the steps to the hotel and knocked on the door. The light splashed out across the pavement. He passed in and his shadow crossed the threshold behind him. The door closed.
‘Well, well!’ said Alan, slightly scandalised. ‘That man got in easily enough.’
I thought of my knuckles bruised from beating on the door.
‘My knock can’t have had the right accent,’ I said ruefully.
‘He’s probably reaping where you put in all the spadework,’ said Alan, getting his metaphors mixed.
As we waited for Kay, we discussed what business could bring yet another caller to the hotel at this hour of the morning. Truly, we thought, this was not at all the type of hotel for a lady to stay in.
Meanwhile, in the hotel, Kay had left her door slightly ajar. Suddenly she heard downstairs the soft single ring as a telephone receiver was lifted. The voice of the hotel manager was so faint that she could make out only a word or two, but it was enough to convince her that he was telephoning the police.
She dressed hurriedly, not knowing what was amiss, but fearful that something had happened to put us in danger. Before she was able to warn us, the front door opened and the man we had already seen passed in.
She listened intently, and was able to piece together what was going on. The landlord, suspicious of us and of the telephone call at 3 a.m., had telephoned the police, since he believed that we had put Kay into the hotel while we went to commit some crime. He was not an unobservant man.
Outside, we continued to laugh and joke rather uneasily. Then the door opened and the stranger came straight down the steps towards us. He flashed a Metropolitan Police warrant card under my nose.
‘I’m a detective,’ he said.
My stomach convulsed and my palms sweated. There is nothing like a guilty conscience for giving you a feeling of guilt.
‘Do you mind if I take some details?’ he continued, going to the top of his list of rhetorical questions.
‘Of course,’ I said, meaning the opposite. ‘Is there anything wrong?’
‘Only routine,’ he replied. ‘Can I see your driving licence?’
I fished it out and gave it to him. He took down my name and address.
‘What’s the trouble?’ I asked, rather testily. The jemmy in my pocket seemed as big as a tree trunk.
‘You realise,’ he said, ‘that this is Christmas Eve, and thousands of people are in the West End with no transport to take them home?’
‘I dare say,’ I said. ‘But I’m not lending them my car.’
‘As it is, several hundred cars have already been stolen.’ He looked at me. I stared back coldly.
‘What is the number of your car?’
He emphasised the words ‘is’ and ‘your’ just sufficiently to let me see that he thought I had stolen the car.
Like a fool I had forgotten to memorise the number. ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I hired it.’
His questions got more and more difficult, as I could give him neither the name nor the address of the garage it came from. That had been Gavin’s part of the preparations, and although he sat just round the corner I did not want to refer the detective to him, lest he should take Gavin’s name and the number of the Anglia also.
The detective was not impressed. He turned from me and blew a short blast on his whistle, and waved to someone unseen up the road. As though it had come straight out of an American film, a large police car appeared from nowhere and drew up diagonally across my bonnet.
I turned on the righteous indignation of the innocent citizen whose liberty is being infringed by the state.
‘I’ve read Dicey,’ I said. ‘I’ve read Bagehot. I’ve even read Blackstone and the Road Traffic Acts. And not one of them says that the citizen must know the number of the car he’s driving.’
At this recital of the English classicists the policeman became more polite and more insistent. Kay at this moment came out of the hotel, and began confirming everything I said. She looked as though she were ready to leap forward and bite the detective on the leg if he were not very careful.
At last I saw that our arguments were making him exasperated. We wanted at all costs to avoid being run in on suspicion of car theft. Even if we could prove our innocence of that charge, there was the jemmy in my pocket, and a torn padlock at Westminster that would set people thinking.
‘Look here,’ I said. ‘There’s a man sitting round the corner in a Ford Anglia car who can prove everything I’m saying. He’s got the car hire receipt. Go and see him.’
The detective’s lip seemed to curl. He thought this was
a clumsy subterfuge to get him off the scene, while we made off. Yet something in our bearing made him hesitate.
‘All right,’ he said at last. ‘But your friend can come with me.’
He took Alan round as surety, and Kay climbed in beside me. The driver of the police car eyed me distastefully, but he turned away long enough for me to slide the jemmy out of my pocket and under the seat.
In a moment the detective arrived back in affable conversation with Gavin. He had seen the car hire receipt. It was in Gavin’s name, and I, uninsured as I was, had really no right to be driving the car, but the detective was quite satisfied.
He compared the receipt with the number of the car he had written down in his little black book.
‘I hope you’re satisfied, Constable,’ I said sententiously. ‘You nearly made a terrible mistake.’
He apologised again and again. There were, it appeared, many dishonest people about, and one had to do one’s duty. He asked us where we were going, and as that was a question we could hardly answer, we vaguely mentioned the Edgware Road as our most rapid route north. He was now bursting with the desire to be of assistance, so he directed us there with a plethora of detail.
As we drove away we suddenly relaxed. To my astonishment, I discovered that I had enjoyed every minute of the excitement. This was something nearer to honourable fight than the ignoble brush with the nightwatchman, when I had lied like a petty criminal held by the ear.
But in spite of our elation as we drove away, we could not avoid a feeling of unreality. It was as though we had been picked up, put on a chessboard and moved from square to square. With the lengthened perspective of time it seems even more unreal. It was an incident completely unrelated with anything else that had happened, or was to happen. We were certain that the suspicious hotel proprietor and the detective and his driver would immediately connect the disappearance of the Stone with our untimely leave-taking of Kay’s hotel. Four young Scots in two cars were not that common. Yet not one of them made a connection between us and what they read in the papers or heard on the BBC news a few hours later. I do not know why not, yet I know the incident happened. When you set out on an adventure, happenings have a habit of happening to you. I wonder if the time will ever come when the police arrest you on even a glimmer of suspicion. I hope not. Certainly we were acting unusually, but then it was early on Christmas morning and they had no crime to charge us with. Why they didn’t connect these four youngsters with what happened an hour or two later at the Abbey is beyond any understanding.
Chapter Eleven
Ever beset by doubts, I was on edge again by the time we reached the Edgware Road. It was all a complicated trap, and they were following us about, laughing and waiting to pounce. But it was Kay who laughed, ridiculing any such idea, and at the Edgware Road we turned south, back towards the Abbey. I briefly explained what we now intended and asked if she was fit to go on. She assured me she was. I emphasised that it was a long time until dawn, and that it would be a long day after that, but her teeth flashed in a dark snarl, so I let it go. Her few hours in bed seemed to have done her good, and she was prepared for anything.
Only later did it come to me that yon was never flu. We had chilled her to the marrow. Then we three had stolen the excitement, while we left her sitting all day in a car, alone and waiting for action. When it did not come, her adrenalin ran out on her, and I was too selfish to notice. A kind word was all she needed, and I gave her none. She had always plenty for me, and in her need I failed her. Now, impelled by her enthusiasm and spirit, we went on for our next attempt.
We passed Marble Arch, drove down Park Lane and along Piccadilly to the Circus, which was peopled with strange figures. There are many ways of celebrating Christmas. The streets were quieter as we went west, and Whitehall was long and oily dark and empty. The only traffic was the occasional police car coming and going from Scotland Yard. Outside the War Office, we pulled in to the kerb, and Kay and I went into the Anglia to sit with the other two in our last council of war. I took the jemmy with me, hiding it under my coat. From there, I slid it under the front seat of the Anglia. We were all flushed with past excitement, and even I was eager for more, all doubts gone. Although we had been delayed, the timing still synchronised with our calculations. Four o’clock rang from Big Ben. If our estimations were correct, the watchman should have finished his rounds.
Since the detective had taken my name and address and the number of the car I was driving, we decided to use the Anglia for the whole job. The Anglia was unknown to the police, and even if it were spotted in suspicious circumstances outside the Abbey, it was a common brand of car, and had a chance of slipping through. It would take the police some time to do all the routine work to connect us to it. We reckoned that we had a good 12 hours, and maybe more, before that happened. Strangely, it was a connection they never made. It was unfortunate that we had now only one effective car, but we had to accept that. We decided, also, that since I had had my name taken by the police, I would set out west for Wales in the identified car as a decoy, while the others headed south-west for Dartmoor with the Stone.
Having agreed our strategy, we moved. I parked my car in the car park along Millbank from the Abbey, and carefully locked it and put the keys in my overcoat pocket. The detective had said there were thieves about, and I was prepared to believe him. I would need the car later. When I had secured it, I rejoined the others in the Anglia.
Old Palace Yard was deserted, so we did not need to make a dummy run. Alan swung the Anglia straight into the lane and, halfway up, switched out the lights. At the top he manoeuvred it round skilfully in the restricted space. The engine reverberated terrifyingly off the Abbey walls, as the Ford was a noisy little car, but when it was turned, with its bonnet pointing into the lane, it seemed so small beside the soaring buttresses that we were certain it would not be seen. We got out and Kay slipped into the driving seat.
Ignoring the long way round through the mason’s yard, the three of us vaulted the high railings, crossed past the lamp post, and stood crucified by its light against the shining door. At least we should not work in darkness.
Gavin put his shoulder to the door. ‘The jemmy,’ he hissed.
I turned to Alan.
‘The jemmy!’
‘What?’ said Alan. ‘I thought you had it.’
Sheepishly, I returned to the Anglia and got it from under the seat where I had hidden it 10 minutes before.
At first we made little impression on the door. The two halves met closely, and were covered with a lath of wood, which ran all the way over the join from top to bottom. But I knew that this was the one door in the Abbey that was of pine, and not of oak as the others were. It should be forcible. We were desperately afraid of noise, and each creak sounded like a hammer blow. Inside the Abbey it must have resounded loudly enough to waken the British dead. You could hear them stirring and sitting up. We ignored the noise and worked on. First we prised off the covering lath of wood, and then with the sharp end of the jemmy we chewed away sufficient space to allow us to force the blade between the two sections of the door. Then the three of us put our weight on the end of the jemmy, and the door began to give a series of creaks, each of which sounded like the report of a shotgun. At each creak we expected a police car to sweep up the lane, summoned by the watchman. Let it come. We had already done more than most.
I could now put my fingers through and feel the hasp on the inside. It was slack. One side of the door was held by a bolt mating with a hole in the stone of the floor, and when we prised up this side of the door, the bolt came free. Our gap widened to three inches. We could see into the Abbey. There was no watchman there.
We put the blade of the jemmy close behind the padlock, and together we all wrenched mightily. With a crash the door flew open. In the car, Kay heard the noise and shuddered. But the way into the Abbey was open.
We swept into the dark of the bare stone transept. I returned and pulled the doors close behind me. I had
rehearsed that part.
A light glowed dimly at the west end of the nave, but the rest was in black darkness. We went down the transept in silent hurry, and found that the gate in the metal grill was open. We crept through and round and up into the Confessor’s Chapel. We did not listen for the watchman, for we might have heard him coming. At least, at least, we would touch the Stone.
The chapel was in darkness. The glimmer from my torch showed the glass doors into the Sanctuary as black sheets, and I hastily turned it to the side, where it shone wanly on the green marble tomb of Edward I, whose dead bones Bruce had feared more than he feared any living Englishman.
The other two had already lifted aside the rail which kept the public back. The Stone was before us, breast high, in an aperture under the seat of the Coronation Chair. We prised at the bar of wood that ran along the front of the Chair as a retainer for the Stone. It was dry with age and it cracked and splintered. I shall strike no attitudes about being sorry to damage it. The Stone was behind it and it had to go.
The Stone should now theoretically have slipped out, but it was a very close fit and its weight made it unwieldy. I got to the back and pushed and it moved a little. The chains on the side kept catching on the carved sides of the Chair, and since the three of us were working in a sweating fever, not one of us had the patience to hold the light. At last we saw that brute strength and black darkness would not budge it, so we called a halt. Then, one man holding the torch, one prising at the sides with the jemmy, and one pushing at the back, we started afresh. It moved. It slid forward. The English chair would hold it no longer.
We were sweating and panting. It was coming. The plaque saying ‘CORONATION CHAIR AND STONE’ fell from the Chair. I caught it in mid-air and thrust it into my coat pocket. They would not need that now. It was almost free. One last heave. ‘Now,’ said Gavin. I pushed from the back. It slid forward, and they had it between them. I rushed forward to help them and we staggered a yard. We had to put it down. It was too heavy.
