His tone hung ominously over the otherwise silent office as I followed him into mine and shut the door behind us. He didn’t look inclined to sit, so I had little choice but to stand as well. He laid his attaché case on Jack’s desk and pulled a slim file out. He handed it to me without comment and watched as I opened it.
There was only a single page of close-typed text and it didn’t take long to read. After all, I’d written most of it myself, if in a different form. At the bottom I saw that Jekyll had already countersigned it. All it was waiting for was my own signature.
‘You don’t think it worth attaching Hess’s statement?’ I asked, looking at the back of the single sheet on the off-chance I had missed something.
Since there was nothing in the brief report about Claude Pellisier, the SD officer or the Gestapo; no mention of blood groups or switched identities; I didn’t suppose he did. But I thought it worth mentioning anyway.
‘I’m aware the chances of bringing a charge is slim...’ I went on, glancing up at him. But his expression——the kind you get by taking a chisel to lumps of Scottish granite——told me not to persist. To give myself something to do during what became a rather oppressive silence, I read the report again, spotting one or two uncorroborated assumptions I had missed the first time. SS-Unterscharführer Vogel having been found with Kearney’s discs had now been credited with sole responsibility for his death and for the murder of Dabs. All mention of the rest of Müller’s platoon had been removed.
What I finally said was, ‘You’ve chosen to omit any mention of Claude Pellisier, I see.’
‘You’ve provided no proof that this Frenchman who was allegedly at the château was Pellisier.’
‘None,’ I agreed, ‘beyond the fact that the body buried in the back garden carried his ID and was identified as him by his brother-in-law.’
Colour rose in Jekyll’s face which made something of a change from granite grey.
‘Irrelevant,’ he snapped.
‘And the Sicherheitsdienst officer?’
‘You only had Hess’s word that he was there. The word of the SS.’
‘I judged him a reliable witness,’ I said.
Jekyll scoffed at that, as though my judgement rated somewhere below his opinion of Hess’s word. I had come that far, though, and rather than accept a rout decided I might as well try and make some sort of stand.
‘The point is, if we accept the body in the château as Kearney’s then it can’t have been Pellisier. Which means Coveney misidentified him. Whether in error or——’
‘That, Captain Tennant,’ he interrupted brusquely, ‘is beyond your remit. You have no evidence beyond an SS corporal’s testimony to back up this theory. Testimony you seem to hold in higher regard than the fact of Kearney’s ID discs being found in Vogel’s possession.’
I pointed out that one didn’t necessarily contradict the other. ‘What I have may be circumstantial, but there is the birthmark...,’
‘Are you calling Sir Maurice Coveney a liar?’
‘I didn’t call him anything,’ I replied evenly. ‘I never mentioned him in my report. Nor did I included him in my investigation.’
‘And while we’re on the subject of the investigation,’ said Jekyll, ‘who authorized that jaunt of yours to Ireland?’
‘I used my initiative, sir. I was investigating Kearney’s background.’
‘Initiative?’ Jekyll roared. ‘You are fortunate I don’t regard it as Absence Without Leave.’
I knew he had considered it as his tone capitalized the offence.
Not for the first time I thought how ironic it was that the value the army placed upon a soldier’s initiative never really matched their desire to have men do what they were told.
But Jekyll hadn’t finished. ‘...and as for this fantasy concerning IRA involvement...’——which I thought a little odd since I had never mentioned the IRA to him let alone included it in my report——‘...are you seriously suggesting it had any bearing upon the events in Normandy?’
‘Kearney’s real name was O’Connell,’ I replied evenly. ‘His involvement with the IRA was peripheral but it did have a bearing on the case. The birthmark――’
‘Birthmark again!’
For some minutes Jekyll’s voice had been loud enough to carry next door and I could picture the others exchanging glances as they listened.
‘All I required from you were facts,’ Jekyll went on. ‘Verifiable facts. All you’ve given me, Tennant, is supposition and innuendo.’
He snatched the file from my hand, slammed it on my desk and took a pen from his breast pocket.
‘Sign it.’
I considered pointing out that naming Vogel as the man responsible for the murder of Dabs and Kearney was hardly a verifiable fact. But from the beginning Jekyll had seemed to have made up his mind as to what he wanted the eventual report to say, and nothing I’d done in the meantime had persuaded him otherwise.
I wondered what he’d do if I refused to sign. I was out of a job anyway――out of the army altogether――although I supposed there remained the possibility that he could have me court-martialled before my papers came through. That didn’t seem likely as he wouldn’t want to give me the chance to produce what evidence I did have, and I almost thought of seeing if he’d go that far. Until it occurred to me that an alternative was for him to have me broken to the ranks again. There were possible grounds for charges of disobeying orders and being absent without leave and I considered what all that might entail――not least the loss of a captain’s pension.
And what did it matter anyway? If I did sign the thing it would make no difference. The report would be filed away and in all probability never see the light of day again. Besides, Gifford and Tuchman knew as much as I did about the business and would do whatever they thought necessary regardless of any doctored army report. Regardless of Jekyll. Regardless of me.
When it came down to it, signing was a matter of principal and a matter of morality, even if the exercise of either of these luxuries on my part wouldn’t change a damn thing.
So I took Jekyll’s pen and signed.
‘I never wanted you in my unit in the first place, Tennant,’ Jekyll informed me as I gave him his pen back. ‘You came with a reputation for circumventing orders and I didn’t think you’d be the kind of man I’d want on my team. I derive no satisfaction from having been proved right.’
I hadn’t been aware I had come with any sort of reputation, but I didn’t suppose it the best time to enquire about that, so, as he stuffed the file back in his attaché case and marched out of the office without another word, I didn’t say anything either.
As the door closed noisily behind Jekyll and I emerged from my office, I said to the others who were looking embarrassed:
‘He wanted some changes to the report,’ and left it at that. I saw no reason for them to catch my flak.
*
We spent the rest of the week squaring up our files and sending any unfinished business over to the New Cavendish Street office. What was left we carried to an unused room along the corridor that housed some empty filing cabinets doing little other than gathering dust.
By Friday morning everything had been cleared away and our offices had taken on an air of desolation. I’d already had Jack make copies of my original report on the carrier and had taken these home. All that remained at the office were a couple of sacks of waste paper, the furniture and two typewriters.
At lunchtime I suggested we retire to the pub for a final drink together, locked up the office and the room where we had stored our files and gave the key to a rather subdued Susie to run round to Jekyll in New Cavendish Street. She’d been quieter than usual, not her bouncy self for the last few days, and though the others put it down to the break-up of the section, I wasn’t so sure. It almost came as a surprise, after we’d been in the pub for three-quarters of an hour or so, that she turned up at all.
‘Did you give Jekyll the key?’ I asked her as Jack went to
the bar to get her the rum and blackcurrant she favoured.
‘He wasn’t there,’ she said, her new and uncharacteristic diffidence preventing her from looking me in the eye. ‘I gave them to that secretary of his.’
‘Absent without leave,’ I quipped, but she didn’t pick up the irony as she might once have done.
I raised my glass to everyone and announced, ‘Well, that’s it. We’ll be civilians before we know it and will have to start working for a living.’
We toasted each other, talked a little about the last few months and said we’d keep in touch. Susie left first, making the excuse of a date that evening. She gave us all a peck on the cheek and left. Peter had an interview at a law firm on Monday morning, he said, and needed to bone up on criminal jurisprudence or some such, and bade us farewell. Stan said he was going up to Burnley to see his brother. He was thinking of starting out in the building trade and said there’d be a spot for Stan if he wanted. That left Jack and me. So I got another round in and asked him what his plans were. He pursed his lips and, unusually for him, kept them tight, just saying he was giving it some thought. Then, out of the blue he said:
‘She’s been transferred, you know.’
‘Who’s been transferred?’
‘Susie. She not getting her papers. At least, not yet. She’s been transferred to another section.’
‘How do you know?’
‘I saw the letter. Something called Section D. The offices are in Hallam Street.’
‘Does she know you know?’
Jack pulled a face. ‘Nah. I often open all the letters if I’m in first. Just slit them, you know, while I’m waiting for the kettle.’
I had noticed before how helpful Jack was like that, giving everyone a hand with their correspondence. Saving them time by opening their letters.
‘When was this?’
‘Last week.’
‘Before Jekyll told us?’
‘Yeah.’
‘She say anything to you or the others?’
‘No.’
We had another beer then Jack said he had to see a man about a dog so I had one more by myself and killed the rest of the afternoon in a cinema. When I woke up I found I’d killed the best part of the evening, too. I went home, exchanging I couldn’t help thinking, a deserted office for a deserted building.
Before going up the stairs I rang Gifford’s number. He wasn’t there so I left a message to say I would no longer be contactable at the office. I was about to leave the number of the phone in the hall until it occurred to me that there was no one left to answer it there, either.
Lying on my bed in the dark I felt as if I must be at one of those points in life where everything is undergoing change. The odd thing was I felt no different at all. There was no sense of my being on the cusp of anything new. Perhaps I would begin to feel different over the weekend, yet I still suspected that come Monday morning I’d get up ready for the office and realize I had nowhere to go to.
30
July 15th
I met Penny on Monday at Paddington so found I had something to do after all. She came up to open her parents’ house ready for their return. The place had been shut up since they had decamped to America. I suppose we might have used the house ourselves after they left but with air raids every night neither they nor I had wanted Penny in London. There had been some talk of renting it out while they were away although the Blitz just then had taken the edge off the London market. Later, when they might have rented it out to some of the military brass that gathered before the invasion, they had been put off by reports from friends of how the services treated rented accommodation. Consequently it had remained empty and there was the stale musty smell of disuse hanging in the hall when we unlocked the door.
The house appeared undamaged. We wandered from room to room, peeking under the dustcovers and into empty cupboards. In the half-light that seeped through the shuttered windows, everything seemed to be covered by that dust which spontaneously materializes in the absence of people. Wiping my finger along a shelf thinking the place was going to take some cleaning, I told Penny she might have difficulty in finding people prepared to go back into service.
‘I don’t see why,’ she replied, ‘people will still need work, won’t they?’
‘Yes, but domestic service may not be the kind of work they’re prepared to do after what they’ve been through.’
‘We’ve all been through it,’ she retorted. ‘It was the same for everyone.’
That wasn’t quite true, particularly in Reggie and Helen’s case. But I didn’t think it politic to mention the fact.
‘Where is everything anyway?’ I asked her. There was still furniture in all the rooms, hulking silently under their covers like an ark full of Noah’s specimens waiting to repopulate the world, but there was little else; no drapes or paintings, no rugs or china.
‘Packed away in the cellar,’ Penny said, and she looked through the keys on the ring and strode off down some back stairs to the kitchens. She threw the master switch on the fuse box in the corridor and led me through the kitchen door.
An array of pots and pans smeared with six years’ worth of grime hung from ceiling hooks, as if the dust and grit exhaled from the bombed buildings had deliberately sought out undamaged property to demonstrate Penny’s point on the egalitarian nature of war. She unlocked the cellar door and flicked on the light switch. A flight of steps led down into a gloomy cavern that hung with cobwebs and smelled of damp. Wine racks lined a wall and in the centre of the cellar packing cases were stacked four deep.
‘I used to hate coming down here as a child,’ she said, reaching for my hand.
‘I don’t blame you. This is the sort of place they’re finding unexploded bombs.’ I felt her stiffen and began to say I was only joking when I was forestalled by a rodent scuttling across the floor.
‘Rats,’ I said.
Penny shivered and retreated back up the stairs.
‘I hope Mummy’s Meissen is all right.’
‘They won’t eat that,’ I said, ‘although they might like to eat off it. You find a cultured strain of rat in this part of London.’
‘Stop it,’ Penny said.
‘If I were you I’d get a firm in to unpack that lot. I don’t suppose your mother did it herself when they put it away.’
‘Broughton organized it,’ Penny said, referring to the butler her parents had employed before the war, a man who had always regarded me as something one might find sticking to the underside of one’s shoe.
‘I’d forgotten about Broughton,’ I said. ‘What happened to him?’
‘Oh, Daddy let them all go when they closed the house.’
She looked at me as if expecting some sort of comment on the loyalty of employers but by now I’d learned when to keep my mouth shut.
‘Why are they coming back so soon, anyway?’ I asked instead. ‘I thought all the liners were still repatriating troops or shipping off war brides.’
‘They are,’ Penny said, locking the cellar door again. ‘But all the troops and the brides are going the other way so it wasn’t difficult to get two berths from New York to Southampton.’
‘It’s hardly going to be a luxurious voyage,’ I pointed out. ‘Ferrying a few thousand troops twice a month will have played hell with the furnishings.’
‘The alternative was to wait until October when the proper service starts again.’
‘I can’t see what the hurry is. You’re not going to get this place straight by the middle of next month even if you find the staff.’
‘There’s some sort of problem over their immigration status. Mummy said some men from the State Department came to see Daddy about it and all of a sudden he wouldn’t hear of anything except packing up and coming home.’
‘But they’ve been there six years,’ I said. ‘Why is there suddenly——’
‘I don’t know!’ Penny protested. ‘I’m not even sure Mummy does. Something to do with the war being over now. You
know what Daddy can be like.’
That proved to be another opportunity for me to keep my mouth shut so we went upstairs in silence and checked through all the bedrooms and bathrooms.
My attempts to get Penny to linger in one of the bedrooms proving unsuccessful——an irritating coyness in the family home I remembered from our courtship inopportunely resurfacing, as if the ghost of her girlhood still haunted the house——I at least extracted a promise from her to come back to my flat later. But this was only on condition that I accompany her round a succession of staff agencies in the hope of recruiting the household servants her mother would expect to be in place on her return.
By five o’clock when the agencies closed we’d achieved nothing except to argue over some triviality and I took her back to Julia’s, her promise to come to the flat forgotten.
I went home alone, which was probably just as well as I found Gifford waiting for me in the flat. He had let himself in. After twenty years in Special Branch I suppose it was a habit he wasn’t able to break.
‘I hope you brought your own tea this time,’ I told him, putting the kettle on the electric ring.
He didn’t reply, just pulled a half bottle of Navy rum out of his pocket and placed it on the table. I turned off the kettle and fetched two glasses.
‘What are we celebrating?’ I asked. ‘My being unemployed, or have you got a promotion?’
‘I saw a copy of the report you gave to Jekyll,’ he said.
‘Oh? If you want to see the original I’ve got one of my own here somewhere. Want to compare notes?’
Gifford poured two shots of rum. I picked up my glass and tasted it; I didn’t really care for rum any more than I cared for scotch or gin but since I seemed to have become a drinker I knocked it back anyway.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said. ‘Tuchman has enough evidence now to reopen his case against Pellisier.’
‘In Jekyll’s opinion it’s all circumstantial.’
‘Not quite. There’s something you don’t know.’
‘Just something?’ I said. ‘I was under the impression there was a lot I didn’t know.’
The Unquiet Grave Page 33
