Ha'penny

by Jo Walton

  “Plenty of time yet,” Mrs. Tring said, but she didn’t stop me.

  I went out into the corridor. Mollie popped her head out of her dressing room. “Thank you for the roses,” she said. “And Devlin sent me some freesia—do thank him for me. That’s very kind of him.”

  “He must like flowers with scent,” I said. “He sent me a whole jasmine tree in a pot. Mrs. Tring thinks it means he wants to marry me.” I rolled my eyes.

  Mollie avoided the issue by changing the subject. “What have you got there? Something misdelivered?”

  “Meant for the Royal Box,” I said. “I’m taking it through now.”

  “Right,” she said, entirely uninterested.

  30

  Carmichael limped around the car to see Royston’s body on the gravel, his arms flung out away from the red ruin of his chest. “He should have stayed in the car,” Ogilvie said, sounding very far away. “He got out after the first shot.”

  Coming to help, Carmichael thought, uselessly. Royston’s eyes were open, staring up in blue outrage at the unclouded sky. He must have taken a whole shotgun blast at close range and fallen backwards.

  Ogilvie was saying something about the damage to the car. “They’ll be able to beat the dents out and it will be good as new,” he said.

  “You have no idea what you’re talking about,” Carmichael said.

  “You really should get to the doctor, sir,” Ogilvie said. “You’re very pale. I’ll clear up here.”

  Carmichael supposed the numb state he was in must be shock. He nodded and let efficient flat-faced Ogilvie manage him and the other wounded into the van and have them driven to the hospital at Maidstone. There he almost welcomed the pain as the doctor dug the pellet out of his calf. He kept his eyes open. Whenever he closed them he saw Royston splayed out on the driveway. He had lost friends in the war and got over it. He wished he could remember the trick of it.

  His leg felt much worse with the pellet removed, though it looked much better neatly bandaged. They had cut off his ruined trousers.

  The doctor wanted to keep him in hospital for a couple of days for observation. “The wound isn’t serious, but you lost a quite a bit of blood,” he said. “We’d like to keep an eye on you.”

  “Just let me telephone the Yard and my man and let them know where I am,” Carmichael said.

  They pushed him to a corridor phone in a wheelchair. He used his police priority to call the Yard first.

  Stebbings took the news calmly, as always. “That’s too bad,” he said, unemotionally, when Carmichael told him Royston was dead. “So where is Deputy Inspector Ogilvie taking Lord Scott? The Chief will want to know.”

  “I don’t know,” Carmichael said. “He didn’t say. I told him to keep them all together. No news of Mrs. Green, is there?”

  Stebbings remained unruffled. “Nothing has turned up on her yet, sir. Do you know when you’ll be fit for duty?”

  “They’re just keeping me here overnight to keep an eye on me. I daresay I’ll be able to limp in tomorrow or Friday.”

  Jack, who had always been a little jealous of Royston, without any cause at all as far as Carmichael was concerned, was shocked. “Just like that?” he said.

  “It’s a dangerous job,” Carmichael said.

  “I suppose you haven’t quite taken it in yet,” Jack said. “Are you sure you’re all right, P. A.?”

  “I caught the extreme edge of a blast of bird shot, that’s all. I’m fine.”

  “Where exactly are you? Do you want me to come down?”

  The corridor was public, people kept passing. Jack’s voice in his ear was like a connection to sanity and warmth. He wished they could speak freely.

  “Of course I want you to, I’m not sure it would be wise.” A pretty nurse, passing, turned and gave Carmichael a smile. “Why don’t you come down tomorrow afternoon and bring me some clothes. They should be ready to let me out by then. It’s Maidstone General Hospital. I don’t expect it’s far from the station, and if it is, take a cab.”

  “You’re not alone, are you?” Jack asked.

  “I wish I were,” Carmichael said, honestly.

  “Good-bye then, P. A. Look after yourself. I’ll see you tomorrow.” Jack hesitated, and the hesitation came across the line as clearly as if it had been words.

  “You know how I feel,” Carmichael said. “See you tomorrow.”

  He was wheeled into a private room and helped into a hospital robe and then into bed. The Yard would pay for him to be patched up, he thought, or if not Normanby’s new Watch would. He was glad to be alone. If he had been in a ward, he would not have had any privacy at all. The nurse settled him with a cup of terrible strong tea with milk and what she called a nice book, which meant a trashy American paperback about, judging by its lurid cover, brave Nazi partisans and oppressive Russian commissars in the Ukraine. Carmichael ignored both and, when she left him alone, saying she would be back in an hour with his supper, lay in silence staring at the ceiling, wishing he were a Frenchman or a woman or even a dog, that he might give expression to his grief.

  They gave him a sleeping tablet that night, and he did sleep, though his dreams were terrible. Late the next morning the doctor examined him and said he was free to leave, but not to overstress his leg until the wound was healed. Jack arrived soon afterwards with Carmichael’s favorite light linen suit and a much brighter tie than Carmichael preferred. “You’re not quite thirty, P. A. You don’t have to dress as if you’re sixty,” Jack said.

  “I’ve always liked the way you call me P. A.,” Carmichael said, quietly.

  “It’s because of all the time in France when I only knew your initials on the company record,” Jack said. “I didn’t know what they stood for, and I got into the habit of thinking of you that way.”

  What Carmichael liked about it was that it was something nobody else had ever called him. He smiled at Jack, and straightened his tie. “It should be black, for poor Royston,” he said.

  “Was he married, do you know?” Jack asked.

  “His wife ran off with a docker, three years ago now. He had a little girl, Elvira. He paid his landlady to look after her when he was working. Sometimes she’d be alone in the house and when she opened the door she’d pretend she had a mother who’d just popped out for a moment.” Carmichael remembered the last time he had seen Elvira. “We always used to give her something at the end of a case.”

  “What’ll become of her now?” Jack asked, offering his arm to help Carmichael down the steps. “How old is she?”

  “She’s eight,” Carmichael said. “I don’t know what’ll become of her. Her mother didn’t want her and I don’t know if there’s anyone else. I suppose I ought to go and see her and see if she needs anything.”

  “You mean she might be left without anybody? And without a ha’penny either?” Jack’s voice rose.

  They went out into the corridor, in which lingering smells of institutional cooking overlay the scent of disinfectant. “If she’s left like that, we should do something for her,” Carmichael said. “Send her to school, she’s a bright little thing. Adopt her, even.”

  “What, take her to New Zealand with us?” Jack asked, as they came out into the fresh air. The taxi driver opened the door as soon as he saw them coming.

  “We can’t go,” Carmichael said.

  “But you finished the case, P. A.,” Jack protested, as they settled into the taxi. “Railway station, please.”

  “I suppose I did. But—” he stopped. Jack looked at him in some concern. He indicated the driver. “Let’s talk about this later.”

  On the train, alone together in a first-class compartment as it pulled out of Maidstone station, Carmichael went on. “Normanby offered me a job. A promotion. An agency. I—it was the sort of offer with a threat behind it.”

  “So you can’t get out?” Jack asked, his eyes on Carmichael’s.

  “I can’t. It’ll mean more money. And maybe the chance to do some good—to turn judiciou
s blind eyes, and to make it better than it might have been.” Carmichael looked out of the window and saw the Kentish countryside blur together.

  “What is this agency?”

  “It’ll be called the Watch. It’s to keep an eye on terrorists and communists and all that kind of thing,” Carmichael said, miserably.

  “A Gestapo?” Jack asked.

  “That’s the first thing I said, too. They might as well call it that and have done.” Carmichael gritted his teeth.

  “And you think you could really do some good doing that?”

  “Well, perhaps, or at least prevent some evil.”

  Jack shook his head. “I know you’ve just lost a close friend, P. A., but even so that sounds crazy.”

  “I’m riding a tiger,” Carmichael said. “If I let go, it’ll savage me, but if I can hold on I might be able to steer it away from innocents.”

  “You know what happened to the young lady of Riga,” Jack said, but he smiled.

  That night Carmichael slept in his own bed, and his dreams were better.

  The next day, he rang the Yard. “Are you fit for duty, sir?” Stebbings asked.

  “I’m out of hospital but limping along well enough,” Carmichael said. “Do you need me to come in, sergeant?”

  “Nothing urgent, if you need to rest. There’s a pile of papers here for you, shall I send them round?”

  “That would be very kind,” Carmichael said.

  It was midmorning before the pile of papers arrived, brought by Ogilvie. Carmichael winced involuntarily at the sight of him when Jack showed him in. It wasn’t Ogilvie’s fault, he knew that, but he’d never be able to see him without thinking of Royston’s death.

  “Are you still in a lot of pain, sir?” Ogilvie asked. “I must say I admire how you carried on with the bullet in you.”

  “It was one shotgun pellet, at quite long range, nothing really,” Carmichael said, regretting now that he had given in to Jack’s urging and put his foot up on a footstool.

  “Well some light reading might do you good,” Ogilvie said, sitting, uninvited, on the sofa. “I also wanted to say, sir, that when you take up your new duties I’m to be one of your officers. It’ll be a pleasure to work with you.”

  “Likewise, likewise,” Carmichael said. “You did very well at Coltham, Ogilvie. Any progress on that?”

  “I expect it’s all in your reports, sir. Shall I leave you to them? If you need anything done, call the Yard. I don’t expect I’ll be their errand-boy again, I just wanted to come and say hello and see how you were doing, and let you know that even though you lost your driver you’ll still have friends about you.”

  Jack, who had been hovering invisibly doing his butler act, opened the door to show Ogilvie out.

  “That man has no cheekbones,” Carmichael said, grumpily, as Jack came back alone.

  “You can’t blame him for that, P. A.,” Jack said. “It’s the surgical removal of tact that seems to be more the problem.”

  “He really was very efficient at Coltham,” Carmichael said gloomily. “I won’t ever be able to find a pretext to sack him.”

  “Perhaps he writes the worst reports in the world,” Jack said, brightly.

  “We can only hope,” Carmichael said. “Oh Jack, bless you, you do me so much good.”

  “And tomorrow when you’re walking better, we can see if we can find poor Royston’s little girl and do some good to her,” Jack said.

  The reports were terribly dull. Mrs. Green was still missing. Lord Scott categorically refused to speak. He had been charged with murder of Royston and the dead constable, in addition to treason. He refused even to say that the murders were self-defense. Carmichael wondered why on earth he was being quiet. Could he possibly still be hiding something? Sir Aloysius was still at large. He went on, uncomfortably.

  The servants made up for Lord Scott’s taciturnity with their loquacity. There were detailed reports of the day of the arrests, differing only by point of view. The butler, Goldfarb, who was charged for attempted murder, claimed Lord Scott had ordered him to take up a shotgun. Carmichael wondered if he might get away with that in court. He was the one who had shot at Carmichael, and clearly hadn’t been very good with the weapon.

  He stopped to eat the light lunch Jack prepared, a pleasant omelette aux fine herbes with fresh brown bread and butter. He lingered over a pot of tea afterwards, then took up the reports again. He was still plodding through them at mid-afternoon, and was about to pick up the eminently tedious lists of people who had been at Coltham for lunch or dinner in the past month, when the doorbell rang. Jack answered it, then came in to Carmichael.

  “It’s an Inspector Jacobson, from Hampstead.”

  “I’ve no idea what he wants, but I’m glad enough to be interrupted. Send him in,” Carmichael said, tossing down the reports. “And bring some tea.”

  Jacobson came in and hovered uncertainly in the doorway. “How are you?” he asked.

  “Bored,” Carmichael said. “Do me a favor and have a cup of tea with me if you have time and take my mind off all this.”

  “I don’t know if you’ll want to when you hear my news, but I’ll be glad to.” Jacobson sat down. “First, let me say how sorry I was to hear about Sergeant Royston. He was one of the best. The Force can’t afford to lose a man like that.”

  “I don’t know how I’ll manage without him,” Carmichael said.

  “Quite the best type,” Jacobson said, and they sat a moment in companionable silence, broken when Jack came in with the tea tray. Carmichael saw he had brought milk and sugar, and used the silver teapot. “Will you pour, please, Jack?” he asked. “You know how I like mine—how about you, Inspector Jacobson? Milk? Sugar?”

  “Milk, two sugars,” Jacobson said, and took the cup Jack handed him with every appearance of enjoyment. “Not often I get time to stop in the afternoon for tea,” he said, taking a sip. “Ah. Better than strong drink that is.”

  “So what’s your bad news?” Carmichael asked, when Jack had gone back to the kitchen, closing the door behind him.

  “We’ve lost Mrs. Green, and I mean really lost, not mislaid.” Jacobson looked guilty when Carmichael hissed a breath. “Sorry. But it’s plain now she’s got away. We might find her again, but she’s on the loose.”

  “You needn’t look so confounded guilty, it isn’t your fault,” Carmichael said.

  “I know, but I feel bad about it because I was there when Sergeant Royston pulled her in. And I can’t help feeling that if they can find a way to blame me for it they will.”

  Jacobson might as well have had “scapegoat” tattooed on his forehead, Carmichael thought. He must be an extremely good officer to have avoided it all his career so far. “Go on,” he said.

  “Well, I spent all day Wednesday while you were being a hero, and yesterday too, looking at every single woman in Islington Women’s Prison, and talking to all the staff, in case they remembered anything. Eventually someone remembered one of the others taking a woman off somewhere, but the other warder, whose name is Jones, denied ever having done such a thing. So I looked into Jones, and what do you know but she’s a communist, a red from way back. When I confronted her on that she admitted that she had helped Green escape, but she didn’t know where she was now.”

  “A communist connection,” Carmichael said. “I take it Jones is somewhere safe?”

  “In our lockup in Hampstead,” Jacobson said. “On a suicide watch, no belt, no metal cutlery, and guarded round the clock by men I trust.”

  “But there weren’t any communists in the plot as far as we had it,” Carmichael said. “I was putting this down as a conspiracy between Lord Scott and his old-fashioned Churchill-style patriotism and Lauria Gilmore’s naive socialism, with an odd IRA connection.”

  “Well I suppose it might be an old IRA connection,” Jacobson said. “Churchill and Scott were the negotiators with Michael Collins when the Free State was set up. Scott might have made some friends then.”


  “I’ve never understood the Irish,” Carmichael said.

  Jacobson laughed. “Did you know the only synagogue the Third Reich have ever built is in Dublin?”

  “How’s that?” Carmichael asked.

  “You know how the Irish stayed neutral in the War? Well, some German pilot got lost and thought he was over Liverpool when he was over Dublin, and dropped his stick of bombs. The Irish government complained to Hitler, and he was very eager not to give offense to them because he didn’t want them coming in on our side. It might have made all the difference to the Battle of the Atlantic if we’d had bases on the West of Ireland. Anyway, Hitler paid compensation for the damage done in Dublin. One of the buildings bombed was the synagogue. They rebuilt it with the compensation money, better than before.”

  Carmichael chuckled. “I expect the Jews all over Europe laughed at that one.”

  Jacobson stopped laughing. “I hope so,” he said. “They could do with a good joke.”

  “Anyway, well done on finding a communist connection at last. You may have lost Mrs. Green, but that connection is something the Home Secretary will be very glad to have. I expect you’ll get a commendation or a promotion out of it,” Carmichael said, heartily.

  Jacobson frowned, and drank his tea. “I don’t expect I will,” he said. “I would if not for—but some of them can’t ever forget I’m a Jew. Sometimes I think about chucking the whole thing. But what else could I do? I’m forty-five, it’s a bit late to start again.”

  “I’d offer you a job in the new Watch, but I’m not sure that’s quite what you’d like,” Carmichael said.

  “Not quite,” Jacobson said.

  “Think about it,” Carmichael said. “I could certainly find a place for you. I’d like to have you.” Jacobson was a good man, an honest man, and a man who knew how to resist being made a scapegoat. That would be a useful skill in the Watch. And it might be a good thing, or possible to represent to the Home Secretary as a good thing, to have a good Jew in a prominent position, to show the bleeding hearts that they weren’t persecuting all of them, only the guilty.

  “Thank you.” Jacobson looked thoughtful.