Ha'penny

by Jo Walton

  “We’d better get on then, hadn’t we?” Then, without starting the engine Devlin took off the brake and began to freewheel down the long winding hill. I didn’t scream, or close my eyes, or flinch, just sat close beside him staring straight ahead until at the bottom the engine caught and he went into the next uphill stretch as if it had been nothing out of the ordinary. He looked down at me and smiled, the bastard, and I knew he’d meant it all along, just like bloody Shaw, meant it for a metaphor.

  10

  Carmichael left Jacobson and his men to organize the search for the Greens and headed towards the Yard. It was past noon, and he wanted to know if Peter Marshall had turned up at his ship. “No point in you waiting about, sergeant,” he said to Royston as they drove down Great Russell Street. “I’m going to call my way through Gilmore’s address book. I’ll probably be all afternoon. You go back to her house and collect all her papers and have them brought here.”

  “Everything?” Royston confirmed. “Right, sir. I’ll get on with it.”

  “Keep the car, it’ll make it easier for ferrying them about,” Carmichael said.

  Royston raised an eyebrow at the irregularity. “Are you sure, sir?”

  “Oh for heaven’s sake, Royston, it’ll save no end of time, and it’s Sunday, nobody’s going to be checking whether I’m in the car every moment. Regulations ought to let sergeants have the use of a car if they need it.”

  “Yes, sir,” Royston said, dubiously, pulling up outside the deco monstrosity on High Holborn that was New

  New Scotland Yard. Carmichael climbed out and waved him away.

  There were no messages waiting so he went to his office and called the Portsmouth number. It seemed there was still no sign of Marshall, and Captain Beddow agreed to send someone up to London to attempt identification.

  “Who was Marshall’s best friend?” he asked.

  “That would be Nash,” Beddow replied. “But Nash is off on leave. He was also chummy with young Tambourne, who’s here on duty. I’ll send him up to London on the next train.”

  Carmichael confirmed train times and arranged to have Tambourne met at Waterloo at five-thirty and brought to the Yard. Then he called Hampstead and left a message for Jacobson there.

  He sent the bombing leaflet through for identification and analysis. He asked the Sunday desk sergeant to see if the Yard could identify the ownership of the red Austin they suspected of being Marshall’s. He asked for information and any records on Gilmore, Marshall, Gilmore’s servants, and Antony Bannon. Then he couldn’t put it off any longer. He pushed aside the piles of paper covering his desk sufficiently to clear a space large enough for a fresh legal pad of paper and Lauria Gilmore’s address book and appointment diary. He proceeded to stare at them for a few moments, before opening the address book and picking up the phone.

  By the time Royston came back with the papers he had reached D. Many of Gilmore’s friends, including Antony Bannon, seemed to be away from their telephones on this beautiful Sunday afternoon. The rest seemed to be the theatrical mix he had been expecting, and only too glad to make appointments to see Inspector Carmichael in the coming week.

  “Go to Waterloo for the five-thirty from Portsmouth, Royston, and pick up a young naval lieutenant called Tambourne. Come back here to collect me, and we’ll all go and look at Marshall’s body.”

  “At five-thirty?” Royston said, only the slightest hint of being hard done by in his voice.

  Carmichael sighed. “I know it’s working late, and on a Sunday, and I suppose I could have someone else do it, but even though I’m not expecting much joy out of the identification from what Jacobson was saying, I want to talk to Tambourne and find out what I can about Marshall. We’ll probably need to go down to Portsmouth and talk to all his friends at some point. I can get someone else to go with me if you’re in a hurry to get off.”

  “I am expected at home,” Royston said. “But if it’s all right with you, sir, I could pop round there now and tell Elvira what’s up so she’s not waiting for me, and then get back to Waterloo in plenty of time for five-thirty.”

  “You do that, Royston.”

  He was a good man, Carmichael thought, as Royston went. He shouldn’t keep holding it against him that he had betrayed Carmichael to Penn-Barkis over the Thirkie case. In most ways, it was a shame Royston couldn’t be promoted past his present position. He was as intelligent as any of the officers in the Yard, and had better police instincts than most of them. Impossible to contemplate, of course. Royston betrayed his social origins in every word he spoke.

  Carmichael picked up the telephone and settled down to it once more.

  At M, the desk sergeant came back with a positive identification of the Austin as belonging to Lieutenant Peter Marshall of Portsmouth. Carmichael thanked him, and went on. Nash, Robert, was listed under N, with the same Portsmouth number as Marshall. Tambourne’s identification seemed to be very much a formality. Where was Nash on leave, he wondered, and where had he been on Saturday morning? He made a note.

  He had reached R and filled up much of his week when Royston next put his head around the door.

  “I’ve got Tambourne in the car,” he said.

  “I’ll just get my hat, sergeant.” Carmichael stood and stretched. “Oh, and you were right, the car’s Marshall’s,” he added.

  “Makes this identification bit of a waste of time, doesn’t it?” Royston said.

  “I want to know why Marshall and Gilmore would build a bomb,” Carmichael said. “This Lieutenant Tambourne might be able to help there. What’s he like anyway?”

  “Young,” Royston said. “Tall.”

  Lieutenant Tambourne was a long-legged young man in naval blues who seemed to fill most of the backseat of the police Bentley. “I don’t know why they sent me, I suppose I was the one Old Bed thought he could best spare,” he confessed frankly.

  “Captain Beddow said you were a friend of Marshall’s,” Carmichael said, twisting his neck to look at the young man as Royston drove them to the mortuary.

  “Well we messed together,” Tambourne said, dubiously. “Don’t know that I’d say I was his friend.”

  “Who were his friends?”

  “Well, he and Nash were thick as thieves. Apart from that, well, he was a matey fellow, on good terms with everyone, everyone will miss him, but he didn’t have any other particular pals. I suppose Old B— I mean Captain Beddow must have thought we were friends because he and I used to play tennis together sometimes. The Valiant’s a training ship, you know, pretty much permanently at Portsmouth, and we have our own courts there. Marshall was very keen, but Nash doesn’t play at all. He found out one day from something I said in the mess that I play a bit and nothing would do for him than to get up a game. Then we used to play any day it wasn’t raining and neither of us was working. I wasn’t in his class, he always beat me, but I could make him run sometimes, and he liked that.” Tambourne pushed back a lick of hair that was falling into his eyes, in what was clearly a habitual gesture.

  “What sort of person was he?” Carmichael asked.

  “Open, friendly . . . good at tennis . . .” Tambourne didn’t seem to understand what he was being asked.

  “You’re doing your National Service, aren’t you?” Carmichael asked, to put him at ease.

  “Yes, and in September I’m done with it and I’m off to Oxford, and I can’t say I’ll miss it.”

  “Marshall was career Navy though?”

  “Oh yes. And his father and grandfather before him, I remember him saying. He was frightfully Hearts of Oak and all that. A little bit intimidating for some of the fellows. There was another National Service lieutenant who was just counting the days and couldn’t get on with him at all. They used to have rows about, well, whether National Service was necessary for everyone, and whether Britain really needed a navy. But then the other man, Phelps, had funny notions. He’d been to some little school—” He shrugged apologetically.

  “You were at Eton?�
� Carmichael suggested.

  “Harrow,” Tambourne said, apologetically.

  Carmichael smiled, thinly. He himself had been at “some little school” so insignificant that it barely counted as a public school at all. “And Lieutenant Marshall?”

  “Oh, he was at Eton right enough,” Tambourne said cheerfully.

  “What were his politics?” Carmichael asked.

  Tambourne frowned. “You’re not supposed to have politics in the Navy,” he said. “And Marshall was career Navy. But as I was saying he was for King and Country all down the line. Always saying the country was going to the dogs, but for people like Marshall, it always is going to the dogs and at the same time worth laying your life on the line for. Not a cynic, if you know what I mean, not him and not Nash either.”

  Royston braked; they were at the mortuary.

  Tambourne, when he unfolded himself from the car, proved to be even taller than he had looked, well over six feet. “How do they fit you in a ship, Lieutenant?” Royston asked.

  Tambourne laughed. “Better than they could in an aeroplane at any rate. They wouldn’t have me in the RAF. Look, can I ask you what’s the procedure here? I’ve never done any of this before.”

  “We’ll go with you to the room where the body we believe to be Peter Marshall’s is being stored,” Carmichael said. “Then you will either make the identification or fail to be able to make it. If you feel you can formally identify the body as that of Marshall, there’ll be a statement for you to sign to that effect.”

  “So it’s quite a quick business?” Carmichael nodded reassuringly. “And then what?”

  Carmichael was surprised by the question. “Well, I may want to ask you a few more things, and then you’ll be free to go.”

  “Do I need to go back to Portsmouth tonight? I brought a bag, because we didn’t know how long it would take. I could have a whole evening and night in London and go up in the morning.”

  “That’s between you and your commanding officer, but I’m certainly not about to tell him precisely how long the identification procedure took,” Carmichael said.

  “Thanks!”

  There was a little garden beside the police mortuary, with a stone bench in it surrounded at this season by regimented rows of primulas and a little square of grass in need of cutting. Carmichael indicated the bench. “Let’s sit down for a few minutes and get the questions over with first, and then you can head off as soon as we’re done inside.”

  Tambourne obligingly sat on the bench, sticking his long legs out in front of him. Royston took out his notebook and began scribbling, no doubt setting down what he remembered of what had been said in the car.

  The cold of the stone crept through Carmichael’s trousers, despite the warmth of the early evening sun. “Did you know that Marshall knew Lauria Gilmore?” Carmichael began.

  “Yes, actually. He knew her son during the war, they were on the same ship. He told me once when the subject of theater came up.” Royston and Carmichael exchanged a look. Kinnerson again. “Her son introduced them during or immediately after the war, and they became friends. He always went to her plays. I knew he and Nash both used to see her sometimes in London.” Tambourne smiled agreeably.

  “Is Nash Eton too?”

  “Oh yes.” It seemed to strike Tambourne for the first time. “Nash is going to be absolutely gutted when he hears. They’ve been together since they were thirteen. They were like David and Jonathan.”

  “Someone should break it gently to Nash,” Carmichael said. “Do you know where he is on leave?”

  Tambourne shook his head. “Old Bed will know,” he said. “Poor old Nash.”

  “And what was Marshall’s job, on the ship?” Carmichael asked.

  “Training. Valiant’s a training ship. Taking in raw recruits and turning out sailors, you know the drill.” Tambourne was staring off into the distance.

  “And was he good at it?”

  He looked at Carmichael again. “Extremely good at it. All the men got on with him, and they always enjoyed his course.”

  “What exactly did he teach them?” Carmichael asked, patiently.

  “Use of small craft. A surprising number of people don’t know how to use a little boat to go out to the ship, or back to the dock. He’d teach the whole thing, rowing, small-scale sailing, knot-tying, inflating inflatables. Everyone enjoyed it. I enjoyed it myself when I took the course.”

  “Nothing to do with explosives?”

  “Nothing at all.” Tambourne seemed to understand the question after he’d answered it. “You think he had something to do with the bomb that blew him up? Because he wouldn’t know anything about that, and even more he wouldn’t do anything like that. He was all straight down the line King and Country stuff, true blue.”

  “There’s nothing you can think of that would make him resort to building a bomb?” Carmichael asked gently.

  “Nothing in the world. He wasn’t a Jew or a terrorist! Marshall, my God, the last man in the world. He must have got caught up in the blast by accident. If it is him. Maybe something else has happened to Marshall and this body is some bomber.”

  “That’s what you’re here to tell us,” Carmichael said, and stood. “We may as well get on inside before I ask you anything else that might just be wasting everyone’s time.”

  The staff were expecting them. “The male body in the Gilmore case,” Royston said. “Possible identification.”

  “It’s not—” The attendant hesitated.

  “We’re all grown men,” Carmichael said, and followed him down the corridor.

  The room was chilly, especially after the warmth outside. The attendant pulled out a drawer.

  The corpse was naked, as usual, and very mangled indeed. The head and upper body were particularly bad. Tambourne blanched and swallowed hard, as Carmichael had expected. “I can’t possibly tell, nobody could possibly—,” he said, then stopped. “You know, it is Marshall,” he said, and turned aside and retched.

  Carmichael had vomited until there was nothing left in him, the first time he saw a dead body, in France, in 1940. Then he’d vomited again the first time he’d seen a man he knew killed next to him, strafed from a Stuka. But before they’d got away from Dunkirk he’d become hardened to it, and years of police work had only made dead bodies that much more familiar. He didn’t like the sight, but he didn’t feel nauseated, just terribly aware of what a waste it was. How many secrets had this mangled thing that used to be Marshall taken with him into death? How long would it take Carmichael to discover them? He shook his head and looked back at Tambourne. “How do you know?” he asked.

  Tambourne wiped his face with his handkerchief. “It’s his legs,” he said, his voice unsteady. “Nobody could know him by his face, but I played tennis with those legs a couple of times a week for the last nine months. Poor Marshall. Damn. Damn me. What a horrible way to go.”

  11

  Devlin stopped at a call box in a tiny village somewhere and made a call, no doubt to Coltham. I didn’t run away, I didn’t even try. I sat in the car and watched a hen scratch at some larkspur at the side of the road by a red brick barn. The thought that I was alive to see it was quite exhilarating. I felt almost drunk on the way the sunshine showed up the blue of the larkspur and the brown feathers of the hen. Devlin got back in and kissed me. He grinned when I asked who he was calling. “Got to let Loy know where his precious car is,” he said.

  We reached London and my flat at about half-past six. I had to give Devlin directions for the last half a mile. He parked neatly between two other cars. “You get your things, whatever you need for the next two weeks, and come straight down to the car,” he said. “Then we’ll have dinner and go home.”

  It occurred to me at once that if I was inside on my own I could lock the door and telephone the police. But not only would that be breaking my word to Uncle Phil, I didn’t quite believe that Devlin wouldn’t get me anyway. My only hope was for him to trust me, my only hope of anything, of
life, of another two weeks. I still thought I’d find a way out of actually doing it, but I thought I might be able to think of a plan later, when I knew what their plan was. I didn’t entirely believe I was going to go through with the whole thing; I was going part of the way with them, to fool them, because I wanted Devlin, because I was afraid. I couldn’t risk him thinking he hadn’t entirely convinced me.

  “It will be much easier if you come in,” I said.

  He smiled. “I don’t want your flatmates to see more than they have to.” He’d got out of me on the way home who I lived with and all about them.

  “What, you’re planning to watch me and be invisible? Because you know I’ll probably be working with both of them at the theater? Mollie’s probably going to replace Lauria as Gertrude, and Mrs. Tring is my dresser. It’ll seem much more normal if you come up, and I introduce you, and it’ll also save me from having to explain quite as much as I would if you don’t. They won’t believe I have a boyfriend if they never see you.”

  Devlin looked at me for a moment, and then shrugged. “If that’s how you want it,” he said.

  “I won’t say I’m staying with you until opening night,” I said. “I’ll just say for tonight, and then sort of let it extend. That’ll be much easier.”

  “You know how to tell your own lies,” Devlin said, amiably enough. “Is Loy’s car safe out here?”

  It wasn’t of course. “We won’t be long,” I said, and opened the downstairs door with my key, then held it open for Devlin. He took it at once and let me go through first. I led the way up to the flat. I unlocked that door too, and called out that I was home.

  Mollie came out of her room immediately. She was wearing her red butterfly dressing gown, which covered her from her neck to her ankles and made her look dramatic and oriental. “I’ve got the part!” she said.

  And as easily as that I was back in the real world, the world where the play was the most important thing and getting the part counted for everything. I hugged her. “Oh Mollie, that’s wonderful,” I said.