That Old Black Magic

by Cathi Unsworth

  “Is the warden about, do you know?” he asked. “Could you take me to him?”

  The boy cocked his head. “I could,” he mused. “But how do I know you’re not a Jerry spy? Or General Custer planning a sneak attack?”

  Despite the bleakness of the situation, his words made Spooner laugh. “Well, if I am, I’m handing myself in to you,” he said, holding out his upturned palms as if to be handcuffed.

  The little boy seemed to like this. He threw himself into the air, punching an arm out before him and yelling. “All right then, mister,” he said, grabbing hold of Spooner’s hand in his mucky paw. “Come with me. The rest of you, stay here – and keep yer eyes peeled for Custer.”

  The ARP warden was called Ted Hendricks and he ran a bicycle shop on Moor Street, though Spooner’s small guide led him to the door of the place where he could be found on a Sunday morning – inside the saloon bar of The Leopard pub, where he was playing darts with a group of men that included the boy’s father.

  Spooner handed out some more of his cards, explained to them that he was a talent scout sent by a London agency to book some local musicians, among them two girls that had given an address on the now destroyed Richard South Street. The men quickly established that this would have been a boarding house run by a Queenie Simpkins, who was killed in the air raid along with her guests, despite the fact they’d been sheltering in the basement. But they didn’t know if everyone who lived with Mrs Simpkins had been in that night. Some of them thought that one of the lodgers had been out in Brum and escaped the carnage. Though they couldn’t agree on how many lodgers Mrs Simpkins had, nor who they all were.

  After further discussion, which extended out to the rest of the pub, it was the barmaid who hit upon the solution – Spooner should go and talk to Mrs Smith, because Mrs Smith knew everything. Another murmur of dissent went up: it was approaching Sunday lunchtime and not perhaps the best time to call. But, countered another voice, Mr Spooner had come all the way from London – surely she would want to help him? Mr Smith, a small man quietly reading a newspaper in the furthest corner of the snug, was consulted. He shrugged and said that if Spooner thought he was a brave man, he didn’t see why not.

  Crazy Horse was whistled back by his father and told to show his new friend to the right house, in the middle of the terrace beyond the shops at the end of Moor Street. For his help, Spooner gave him sixpence and his young guide whooped even louder as he ran back in the direction of the bombsite, happy with his lot – which was more than could be said for Mrs Smith.

  As the pub regulars had predicted, this formidable looking woman was not happy to be disturbed from the operations of her Sunday roast. However, when Spooner presented her with the card denoting his credentials, she brightened. Delegating all cooking chores to her daughter, she showed Spooner through to her sitting room where he was invited to rest on the chair usually reserved for Mr Smith.

  Spooner found himself surrounded by lace doilies, china dogs, framed religious paintings and family photographs and more rambling pot plants than even Janet’s dining room. Having shouted further instructions into the kitchen for roast potatoes to be turned, carrots to be put on to boil and tea to be made and brought forth, his hostess descended onto the settee.

  “Do please call me Mavis,” she instructed Spooner, in a tone more refined than the one with which she had just been dispensing orders.

  The Oracle of West Bromwich was in her late middle age, wore her black hair up in a bun and viewed her guest through penetrating green eyes. With her long, dark skirts and a knitted shawl around her shoulders, she gave off the impression of an imperious, if suburbanised, gypsy queen. Spooner noted the copies of the spiritualist journal Two Worlds lined up in the magazine rack by the fireplace and further envisioned his hostess at the centre of a circle in a darkened room, asking all present to join hands so they could partake in gossip from the Other Side.

  Once her daughter had brought the tea in the best china and returned, red-faced and frazzle-haired, to the kitchen, Mrs Smith turned her attentions to the events leading up to the evening of the nineteenth of November.

  “She was a tender-hearted woman, Queenie Simpkins,” she said, holding her teacup with little finger aloft. “Went to school with her, I did, knew her over fifty years. Terrible to think of her passing the way she did.”

  “And you’re sure I’ve the right address for her?” asked Spooner. “Where I would have found Anna Hartley and Clara Brown?” Putting his cup down, he went into his jacket pocket for the picture of the latter and handed it over. “I’ve only got the picture of Clara, I’m afraid. Have I got the right person?”

  Mrs Smith wrinkled her nose as if a bad smell had passed beneath it. “No,” she said, “it wasn’t her that lived with Queenie, but she was friends with the one that did. Anna, did you say her name was? Yes, and a fine pair they made too. This one,” she handed the print back to Spooner, “was all big and clod-hopping. That Anna looked like a little fairy next to her. I dare say she had some fairy in her. Played the fiddle, didn’t she?”

  “That’s right,” said Spooner. “Clara played the piano and they sang together as an act. Did you ever happen to see them?”

  Mrs Smith’s eyebrows rose almost to the top of her head. “I should think not, dear,” she said. Then she caught herself, modified her tone. “Not my kind of thing, the music hall. But it’s like I was saying, Queenie would listen to all the sob stories, take in all the waifs and strays. She lost her husband, you see, and once her eldest had wed, there was nothing left to keep her going until she cracked on to the idea of taking lodgers. Don’t get me wrong, most of them were very respectable people. I’m just not sure your Anna was.”

  “Why do you say that, Mrs Smith?” Spooner asked. “I’ve been told she’s very talented and it is a prestigious organisation I’m representing here.”

  Mrs Smith put her cup down. “Be that as it may, Mr Spooner,” she said. “But once she gave that Anna houseroom, Queenie never had a moment’s peace. There were supposed to be strict rules about guests, and about coming in at night at a reasonable hour.” She rolled her eyes. “I know we live in trying times and it’s not always easy to get about, especially after dark. But she had people coming at all hours. Not just that big-boned redhead, either,” she curled her top lip. “There were men.”

  “Men?” Spooner echoed.

  Mrs Smith nodded. “Men. Two of them. Their boyfriends, I suppose. One of them had a great big car he used to come and go in. Called himself an officer, if you can believe that anyone like that would be caught messing about with the likes of them. And the other one,” Mrs Smith pulled her shawl closer around her and spoke her next words in a whisper, “said he was a Dutchman. Now what do you make of that, Mr Spooner?”

  She watched Spooner’s mouth open and close twice before she saved him the bother of replying. “That Anna told Queenie they’d worked together before, that he was some kind of entertainer. But I don’t believe that either. What would a Dutchman be doing here, in West Bromwich, at a time like this?”

  Spooner felt a trickle of sweat run down his back. Perhaps Mrs Smith really did know everything. But it wasn’t a spy that his hostess took her mystery man for.

  “They were confidence tricksters, you ask me,” she rattled on. “Come from the circus, all of them, putting on an act the whole time. And there you are, you see. She did the vanishing act when she needed to, didn’t she?”

  Spooner clattered his cup back into his saucer. “On the night of the air raid?” he said.

  Mrs Smith nodded. “Myrtle from over the road saw her. She turned up the next day, the Wednesday morning – well, it would have been more like lunchtime – in time to see the wardens pulling bodies out of the wreckage. Just stood there, in her glamorous frock from the night before and her violin case, with nothing to go back to. Myrtle’s soft-hearted too. She took pity on her and got her George to take her to the Sally Army in Brum and she’s not been back here since.”


  Spooner sensed he was being dismissed before he even realised a figure was hovering in the doorway – Mr Smith, back from the pub and ready for his Sunday lunch. “It’s all right, Don, we’ve finished here,” his wife said. “I’ll show the gentleman out.”

  “Well, thank you for your time, Mrs Smith,” said Spooner, stepping out onto the street as everyone else was going indoors to be fed. “And for your tea.”

  “Go to the Sally Army on Corporation Street,” were her final words. “I expect they’ve managed to find somewhere to put her.”

  The tribe had moved off from the bombsite now but, as he got back into his car, Spooner noticed another car parked across the street that hadn’t been there before – a black Ford Anglia. He couldn’t see anyone inside it. But when he drove off a few seconds later it followed him.

  6

  LITTLE LADY MAKE BELIEVE

  Monday, 17 February 1941

  “Anna?”

  The woman in the Salvation Army uniform knocked gently on the door. Spooner crossed his fingers behind his back. There was a sound of a radio being silenced.

  “Who is it?” another voice came through the door.

  “There’s a gentleman here to see you. He’s come all the way from London, from one of the big talent agencies, looking for musicians to play in the bands down there, and he’s been told how great you are.” She turned to look at Spooner, her face anxious. “That’s right, isn’t it?” she whispered. He nodded.

  The previous afternoon Spooner had decided to go straight from West Bromwich to the Citadel on Corporation Street, just stopping at High View to make another call to London. The black Ford Anglia had kept with him right into the city centre, but must have got tired of the circuitous attempts Spooner made navigating his way back to John Bright Street, as it lost interest in following him somewhere around the ruins of the old Bullring.

  But once Spooner was there, Janet’s offer of roast beef for lunch was as impossible to resist as her breakfast bacon. At three in the afternoon he arrived at the Citadel to find the building turned into a canteen for servicemen. Air raids had made it too dangerous to be used as a place of worship, he was told, so the Army had gone back to street preaching in daylight hours. But when he said he was searching for someone who had been bombed out in West Bromwich on the nineteenth of November, the officers went out of their way to be helpful.

  They led him to the woman who was now knocking on her spare bedroom door. Judith Atherstone played trombone in the Salvation Army band and she had been out with them yesterday afternoon raising money. Spooner made a generous contribution to their funds on behalf of the Paramount Agency and Judith had told him her story. She had recently persuaded her elderly mother, with whom she lived in Edgbaston, to let her take in a young waif who was a fellow musician, a girl who had lost everything but her instrument and the clothes she stood up in during the raids of the nineteenth.

  She didn’t immediately volunteer her lodger’s name because, she explained, the girl had been in such a state of shock and distress when she first came to live with them. Only by accompanying her with her music each day had she managed to calm the girl back down to relative normality. Though she had claimed to have no family or friends to turn to, Judith had got the impression her lodger was hiding from someone. She was terrified of going out and of unexpected rings on the doorbell.

  “Perhaps what she needs is a fresh start,” Spooner had suggested, outlining the sort of package Norrie offered musicians he wanted to hire, hoping that her shared passion would help Judith understand such an opportunity and let him in to talk to Anna – he was certain this had to be Anna. The only alternative to getting her story was to inform local CID there was a suspected spy at this address, something neither he nor his boss wanted to happen. Taking this course of action might send up a signal to Clara and these two mystery men that they’d been rumbled and give them the opportunity to flee.

  Besides, neither he nor the Chief knew if Anna had any idea about Clara’s real identity. The Chief wanted Spooner to proceed with his cover story in the hope that Anna would come back to London with him of her own free will. But Judith didn’t think she would.

  “I’ve tried to get her to come out and play with our band,” she explained, “and sometimes, if we’ve had a good session, she’ll be all for it. Then, as soon as the moment comes when I try to get her to leave the house, she just digs in her heels. I honestly think she’s terrified of something – or someone – out there. She even asked for me to have a lock put on her bedroom door, which upset Ma, when she’d already been so kind to her.”

  “I understand,” said Spooner. “But if she’s the person I think she is, then you have a major talent locked away in your spare room. If she is Anna Hartley,” he said, noting how Judith blinked and looked down when he said the name, an indication that she wanted to avoid both lying and giving her friend away. “The reason I want to bring her to London is that I’m convinced she’ll have an audience. See, I’m a wee expert on folk tunes and she’s collected a lot of rarities. Songs that might not have been heard for hundreds of years, but tell us about our history in ways that books don’t. They’re like heirlooms handed down the generations by the people who could play and remember them, usually the women.” When he got to this point, Spooner realised it was his grandmother talking, and from the expression on Judith’s face, her sudden possession of his words was turning the situation to his advantage. “They’re important,” he finished, “and it’s a tradition I want to keep alive.”

  “If that’s really what she’s done,” said Judith, “then I will try to help you convince her.”

  She suggested Spooner call round again tomorrow morning at ten o’clock, and to wait outside her door without knocking or ringing the bell until she let him in. Now, at the top of her stairs, he heard a sound of footsteps, of keys being turned in the lock. The door opened a fraction and Spooner found himself staring into a pair of wide, sea green eyes.

  “Did you tell him who I am, Judith?” her voice had the cadences of birdsong, lilting between the West Midlands and somewhere else, but with an unmistakable ring of fear.

  “No, dear,” Judith said. “He’s an expert on folk music and he knows all about you. He’s been told how brilliant you are by the people here and he wants to bring you down to London – which I’ve got to admit, is better than you hiding away up here. You’ll give him the chance to talk to you at least, won’t you?”

  The sea green eyes rolled between Judith and Spooner, finally resting on him. Spooner had already selected a song he hoped Anna would like, if it wasn’t already in her repertoire. Instead of introducing himself, he began to sing.

  “Sylvie, Sylvie, all on one day, She dressed herself in man’s array, A sword and pistol all by her side, To meet her true love she did ride.”

  The sea green eyes widened, and so did the gap between their owner and the doorframe. A round face was revealed, framed by white-blonde hair that sprung out from around the headscarf she had tied around it. Her expression turned from serious to curious as he sang.

  “She met her true love all in the plain, ‘Stand and deliver, kind sir,’ she said, ‘Stand and deliver, kind sir,’ said she, ‘Or else this moment you shall die!’”

  A smile slowly spread across Anna’s face. She nodded her head and picked up the next lines herself, in a voice high and pure as mountain air.

  “Oh, when she’d robbed him of all his store,’ she says, ‘Kind sir, there’s one thing more, A diamond ring which I know you have, deliver that, your sweet life to save.’”

  Then she put her hand to her mouth, looked across at Judith and started to laugh. Judith shook her head. “You’re a dark horse, aren’t you?” she said. “No wonder Mr Spooner’s been looking so hard for you. Will you let him in now?”

  Anna opened the door far enough to reveal all four foot ten inches of her, dressed not in the glamour Mrs Smith had described, but a pair of dungarees and jumper. She gave Spooner a shy smile.


  “You’ve proved you know your music,” she said, “so all right. But, Judith,” she looked at her friend anxiously, “you won’t be far, will you?”

  “No, dear,” said Judith. “I’ll just be downstairs. I’ll bring you up some tea.”

  “Come in then,” Anna said to Spooner. “I’m afraid it’s not exactly the Ritz.” She stepped aside and let him enter. The room had the sort of irredeemable chill that came with high ceilings, despite being stuffed full of large, dark wood furniture – a wardrobe, dressing table, radiogram and bed, over which had been thrown a knitted Afghan, lending a splash of colour to the otherwise austere surroundings. A music stand was set up underneath the window, next to which, on a high chair, rested the violin case. Anna picked it up and placed it down on the bed as carefully as if it had been a child.

  “Please,” she said, “have a seat. And don’t mind what’s on the music stand. That’s just something to please Judith. She’s been so good to me.”

  As Spooner sat, he noted the score was for “Nearer, My God, To Thee”.

  “Apart from this,” she continued, touching the violin case, “I don’t own a thing. Even these clothes came from the neighbours. Outgrown by a twelve-year-old girl,” she said. “So anyway,” she sat down on the bed next to her precious remaining possession, “who was it told you about me?”

  “Bertie Adams,” said Spooner, “from the Hippodrome. He’s an old friend of my boss, Norrie Denman – you’ll have heard of him, I take it?”

  Anna nodded, bit her bottom lip. “That’s the Paramount Agency, isn’t it?”

  “Aye.” Spooner nodded. “You might have heard that there’s a shortage of jazz musicians in London right now. Every hotel wants its own dance band but there’s not enough to go round who can actually play the music. Bertie put a few our way and while I was up to see them, I wanted to follow some ideas of my own. See, I’m sure you’re good enough to sit in on any of these bands, but my own passion is for the folk songs and when Bertie told me you had a collection of them, I wanted to talk to you about it. If you don’t mind me saying, it’s quite unusual to find someone as young as yourself with such an interest.”