Hollow Crown

by David Roberts

  Harbin grunted, which Edward took for assent. When they started again, Harbin suddenly said, ‘You’ll forgive me for speaking my mind, Lord Edward, but when I first met you last week, I didn’t rate you.’

  It was odd, Edward thought, how the man suddenly sounded more American than he had at Haling. Here, he thought, was the true Harbin, the self-made millionaire, tough as they come but veneered, as it were, with the manners of an English gentleman. Physically desiccated he might be, but there was a toughness of spirit which made him formidable.

  ‘I have seen a little of your aristocracy,’ he went on, ‘and while there are men I admire, such as Lord Halifax whom I am proud to call a friend, for the most part the English aristocrat does not impress me as a type. He appears to me, as an American, to presume on his position in society. In short, the English aristocrat seems to believe the system owes him a living. It’s not the way it works in Baltimore. But I pride myself on being a judge of character and I’m not afraid to admit a mistake. I’m inclined to think I misjudged you. I think you are a lot smarter than you look. Would I be right in thinking, for instance, that you smell a stinking fish in this business of Mrs Harkness’s death?’

  Edward grinned to himself. He liked bluntness and he realized the American was paying him an honest compliment.

  ‘I do indeed, Mr Harbin,’ he said. ‘I can’t prove anything but I am pretty sure Molly was murdered and I believe Inspector Lampfrey thinks so too.’

  ‘So why has he said the investigation is closed? He struck me as an honest man.’

  ‘I agree, Lampfrey is honest – I’m sure of it – but I’m equally certain he has had instructions to drop the case.’

  ‘Instructions from whom?’

  ‘Well, that’s the question. It could be any number of people who don’t want to see anything in the press which might reflect badly on the King and Mrs Simpson.’

  ‘You’ve met Mrs Simpson, I believe, Lord Edward. Tell me frankly. What did you make of her?’

  ‘I liked her. She’s on the make but so are most of us. She’s certainly not the monster some people would have you believe. She’s intelligent, genuinely concerned for the King’s welfare but – and who could blame her – she would enjoy being queen.’

  ‘And will she be?’

  ‘Your guess is as good as mine but I don’t think the people – the ordinary English – would stand for it. Did you see in The Times today the Bishop of Bradford sounding off against divorce? He said remarrying after divorce is bigamy. Of course, he did not mention Mrs Simpson and most of the people reading his views will never have heard of her but if – or rather when – they do, they will be shocked. The middle class here in England, Mr Harbin, is very “moral”. “Moral” may be a synonym for “hypocritical” but they expect and demand that their betters set them a good example.’

  ‘Mmm. In Baltimore, too, I guess. The President, for many ordinary Americans, is above criticism. He personifies America so to talk ill of him is unpatriotic – and yet we know that Warren Harding, for one, was more corrupt than the sachems of Tammany Hall. We all want our leaders to be above reproach but know them to be mortal men like ourselves. I guess that’s the way you think of your king.’

  ‘Yes, Queen Victoria set us an example of probity and rectitude and our middle-class Englishman – and his wife – are Victorian. But you come from Mrs Simpson’s part of the world – what do you think of her?’

  ‘My feelings for Mrs Simpson are ambiguous, Lord Edward. I know a great deal about her past life and it don’t make pretty reading but, on the other hand, she is, as you say, from my home town and I would hate to see her humiliated.’

  ‘You said you don’t think much of our aristocracy, Mr Harbin. If I may say so, I think you ought to understand the effect the war had on my generation. Those of us who were too young to fight – some of us at any rate – felt almost unmanned by the sacrifice our elders made for us. My eldest brother was one of the first officers to be killed in France in 1914. That was over twenty years ago but I confess I am still wrestling with the idea of how I can live up to that example. And, what’s more, we feel – I feel – the sacrifice may have been futile. They promised us that it was to be the war to end all wars but another even more beastly one looms. We’ve had economic depression – my friend Miss Browne is joining the march from Jarrow protesting at the poverty and unemployment which has sucked the life out of the place – and the politicians are powerless, or too inept, to do anything about it. Can you wonder that our young men feel their lives to be futile? I feel it myself – what can I do to serve my country? I’m still trying to find out. A friend of mine who was in the war and came out physically unscathed said to me: “I have a coffin in the back of my head.” It may sound melodramatic but I know what he meant.’

  The American was silent for a minute or two, hunched down in his seat. At last he said, ‘I stand rebuked, Lord Edward. I have seen this sense of futility you speak about in France and in Germany and it is just what Herr Hitler has used to gain power. America came out of the war economically stronger. We had flexed our muscles and found them stronger than we thought but, more significantly, we gained a new confidence in ourselves. Then came the Wall Street Crash and the Depression but we do not have a coffin at the back of our heads. Some of our confidence comes from having a great man at the helm – I mean President Roosevelt whom I am proud to call my friend. He took us off the gold standard against the advice of all the economists and now they claim it was their idea. He introduced fifteen major pieces of legislation in just three months and his New Deal has given hope to the unemployed and the dispossessed.’

  Edward was impressed that a man as cool as Harbin could be inspired to such devotion. Clearly, Roosevelt was no ordinary man. ‘You like him as a man – the President?’

  ‘I most certainly do, Lord Edward. He is serene when all about him are reduced to inaction by anxiety. He’s a cripple but you forget about it when you’re in his presence. He’s confident when there’s nothing to be confident about. Sure I like him. He smokes two packets of Camels a day in an ivory cigarette holder he waves in front of him like a conductor’s baton; that I don’t like but hell, if it’s all there is to dislike about him, I ain’t complaining. He’s a new broom – and I mean almost literally. I was in his office on the first day of his presidency. He opened a drawer in his desk and a huge cockroach jumped out. Turned out the whole place was infested. He had the White House cleaned right through. No more cockroaches, no more crooks, no more corruption.’

  ‘But he doesn’t want anything to do with us on this side of the Atlantic?’

  ‘We feel – the President feels . . . and call it arrogance if you want to – that Europe is finished and that the new century will be ours. It may not be altogether healthy but that’s the way it is with us and it’s why we are so determined to keep out of the next European war.’

  ‘But what about Hitler? Surely you can’t stand back and let him turn Europe into one of the prison camps we read about in the press.’

  ‘That ain’t nothing to do with us. He can do what he wants in his own back yard, I guess. If a skunk is loose in Europe, why should we be expected to clear up the mess? Or, to put it another way, if you see a car wreck is inevitable you make damn sure you’re not in either automobile.’

  Edward dropped his passenger at the Connaught Hotel in Mayfair and, when Harbin had struggled out of the car and the porter had taken his bags, he shook Edward warmly by the hand. ‘Let’s keep in touch, young man. Maybe I can help find you the work you say you are looking for. And if you felt like taking the investigation into Mrs Harkness’s death any further – on an informal basis, of course – I will do what I can to help. I don’t like to see the truth muzzled. You might begin with our host. I don’t say for one moment he’s a murderer – but he has got something to hide. When we went into Mrs Harkness’s bedroom and you went to see if she were ill, or dead as it turned out, I saw him pick something up from the lady’s dressing ta
ble and slip it in his pocket.’

  ‘Did you see what it was?’ Edward asked sharply.

  ‘No, but it might have been an envelope – something white anyway. And there’s another thing: Leo was wearing a dressing gown but underneath he still had on the trousers and the shoes he had been wearing at dinner.’

  ‘You mean he hadn’t been to bed?’

  ‘Maybe, maybe not, but it might be worth you asking him. Goodbye, Lord Edward. Thank you for the lift and for the instructive conversation. I look forward to meeting you again. Here is my card. If I am not there, they will always know where you can get in touch with me.’

  Edward lay fully clothed on his bed and stared at the ceiling. He had told Scannon he needed to be in London urgently but, now he was here, he couldn’t think what it was he wanted to do. His heart was racing and there was sweat on his brow. He wondered if he was going to be ill but decided it was anxiety. He put it into words and felt better: ‘I’m having a nervous attack.’ It was odd the way labelling something made it easier to cope with. So how was Molly’s death to be labelled? Accident, suicide or murder?

  One of the causes of his anxiety was Inspector Lampfrey. He would lay odds the man was honest and yet he had changed his mind about investigating Molly’s death without reason. Except there must be a reason – pressure from someone in authority. Then he was anxious about Dannie. It looked as though she had used him and, what was more humiliating, she didn’t seem to have any compunction about it. She had something to do with Molly’s death but was she merely a liar and a thief or was she a murderer? This brought him to his main anxiety: why had Verity run off like that? He knew why, damn it! He had put her in an impossible position by taking her to Haling, where she had no business to be, and surrounding her with people for whom she had – to put it mildly – an antipathy. But this wasn’t it either! She had trusted him in some unspecified way and he had let her down. He felt diminished in her eyes and that wasn’t pleasant.

  He got up from the bed and paced about the room. What ought he to do? Go and see Joe Weaver and tell him he wanted nothing more to do with Mrs Simpson and her friends and the monarchy could go to blazes. He gave a bark of laughter. He was being absurd. The monarchy was going to blazes whether he minded or not. If he went to see Weaver, he probably wouldn’t even see him. Hadn’t he more or less told him he was a failure last time they had met? In fact, that was odd: Weaver had been nervous and preoccupied – most unlike him. He was normally so confident and overbearing.

  Just at that moment the telephone rang. Edward went out into the hall and picked up the receiver. ‘Lord Edward Corinth’s residence,’ he said on an impulse. If it was someone he didn’t want to speak to, he could pretend he was Fenton and say his master was not at home.

  ‘Edward, you idiot, what are you playing at?’

  ‘Verity, is that you?’ he said stupidly.

  ‘Of course it’s me. Why are you pretending not to be you?’

  ‘Oh, I . . . ’

  ‘Anyway, no time for that. I’ve got some news. Edward? Are you there?’

  ‘Yes, I’m here. I say, you aren’t too . . . disgusted with me?’

  There was a silence and then Verity said, ‘It’s me who should apologize – if that’s what you were trying to do. I had no right to mind who you . . . get friendly with.’

  ‘You’ve every right. You’re my conscience and anyway I . . . ’

  ‘Tommy rot,’ she broke in hurriedly. ‘Don’t start getting maudlin.’

  ‘But you rushed off . . . I thought . . . ’

  ‘For God’s sake, Edward,’ Verity said sharply. ‘You sound quite unlike yourself. I hope you’re not suffering from what the papers call “moral degeneration”. I believe it is painful and incurable.’

  ‘Verity, be serious, I . . . ’

  ‘I rushed up to London because I suddenly remembered I’ve got to give a lecture tonight and I hadn’t prepared for it and all my notes and diaries and so on are here.’

  ‘A lecture?’

  ‘Didn’t I tell you? The Party has arranged a series of lectures for me all over the country to try and drum up support for the Republic and tell the story . . . ’

  ‘From the Communist point of view.’

  ‘That’s more like it! I detect a sting in the tail?’

  ‘I was just jealous – no one has ever asked me to lecture.’

  ‘Well, that’s hardly surprising. What could you lecture on? The decline of the aristocracy? The inequality of British society in the twentieth century?’

  ‘Don’t be sarcastic. I know, I know.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  The clear, bright voice which came squeaking down the telephone line was bracing him as nothing else could. He knew the one thing she hated about him was his tendency to give way to self-pity when, as she never tired of pointing out, he was one of a privileged elite with nothing to be self-pitying about. She was twittering again.

  ‘Edward, are you still there? I said sorry. By the way, talking of lectures, Frank has asked me down to Eton to lecture to the Political Society.’

  ‘Frank?’

  ‘Yes, your nephew, remember him?’

  ‘He’s invited you down to Eton?’

  ‘Why ever not? Don’t you remember how well we got on? He’s more to the left than Comrade Stalin, you know. He makes me sound like Stanley Baldwin.’

  Edward certainly did remember how, when he had taken Verity to meet his nephew at Eton a few months back, they had got on like . . . he wanted to say like young love, but that was patently ridiculous: a seventeen-year-old boy and a twenty-six-year-old . . . girl with ambitions to destroy public schools and everything they represented. The more he thought about it, the less ridiculous it seemed. Then he pulled himself together. Was he going mad to be jealous of his nephew? And there was nothing to be jealous of . . . there was the rub. Was there anything between him and the maddening girl on the other end of the telephone?

  ‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘I was just remembering. When’s the lecture – Frank’s, I mean?’

  ‘Next week – Wednesday. Will you come?’

  ‘Would you mind?’

  ‘I’m asking you to come, ass. I wouldn’t ask you if I didn’t want you. To be honest, I’m pretty nervous about it and would welcome some support.’

  ‘Well then, of course. I say, V, didn’t you say you had some news?’

  ‘Yes. You almost made me forget with all your idle chat. I was talking to our man here – I’m at the New Gazette – and he was telling me that Molly was dropped by the King not just because of Mrs S but because she had been carrying on with someone else.’

  ‘You mean she had been having an affair with another man?’

  ‘For goodness sake, Edward. Isn’t that what I’ve just said. You’ve got to wake up a bit if we are to be partners.’

  ‘Partners, yes.’ He felt a flood of energy surge through him. ‘So who was she seeing?’

  ‘I haven’t been able to find out who she was “seeing” – as you so euphemistically put it – but I intend to ask around.’

  ‘Be careful. We don’t want the whole world to know what we’re up to. And it might be dangerous.’

  ‘Hmm. You think we might flush the murderer out? We’ll talk about it when we meet.’

  ‘When’s that?’

  ‘I thought you might like to take me to dinner after the lecture tonight – that is unless . . . ’

  ‘No, that would be . . . Where’s tonight’s entertainment taking place?’

  ‘At a church hall in the East End – I’ll give you the address. Six o’clock sharp – don’t be late. Come to think of it, you don’t have to attend the lecture as you’ll be hearing the same thing at Eton.’

  ‘No, I’d like to, then I can prompt you when I hear it again, if you get nervous.’

  ‘Good. I must go now and polish the finer points – or rather think what the hell to say. Till tonight then?’

  ‘Mmm, I’ll be there. V . . . ’

>   ‘Yes?’

  ‘Pals?’

  ‘Yes, pals – you dope.’

  Edward thought it prudent to arrive late for Verity’s lecture fearing that, if he were placed in the front row, he might put off the speaker and, more importantly, be in the thick of it when the soft fruit began to fly. The taxi got lost so he was very late when he arrived at the Church Hall, Pitt Street. It might be that the street was named after the celebrated Prime Minister but it might equally have hinted at the black grime which seemed to coat every building. A smell, which might have been boiling glue, hung over the neighbourhood and, as he fished in his trouser pocket for a half-crown, the cabbie looked Edward up and down: ‘Sure you don’t want me to take you back to Mayfair, guv?’

  ‘Oh no, thanks all the same. I’ll be all right.’

  The cabbie shrugged, gave him one more pitying look and accelerated down Kingsland Road, obviously relieved to be leaving the neighbourhood.

  Edward had dressed down for the occasion but, seeing a group of ragged children eyeing him speculatively, he had to admit he might not have dressed down far enough. It occurred to him, looking around, that what Verity said was perfectly true: there was a whole world which people like him knew nothing about. Pitt Street might be only a few miles from Piccadilly as the crow flies but the reality was that the crow never did fly in that direction. His world was delimited by Regent’s Park in the north and Chelsea Bridge in the south. He seldom went west of Kensington Gardens and apart from the occasional lunch with his broker in the City he never went east of St Paul’s, unless he was attending a riot with Verity.

  The area in which he now found himself was as foreign to him as if he had been in Calcutta. The slums all about him were home to many thousands of people – it was one of the most heavily populated parts of the city – and the centre of the furniture and clothing trades. He suddenly felt the force of the cabbie’s remarks. He might like to believe that there was no part of London to which he could not go if he so wished, but he realized that his presence here might easily be construed as an insult and a provocation to those who sweated all hours, destroying their eyesight over sewing machines, and returned with the merest pittance to insanitary, disease-ridden rookeries.