by Seb Spence
“I’ll see what I can do, but no guarantees.”
“I’m counting on you Bronx. Bring the Browning automatic that Minton gave me and come in civvies – we’re going to the theatre.”
2.
Friday, 16th May, 1941: Northampton
Bronx phoned just after breakfast to confirm that he would be coming up as requested. He had contrived to get a 24-hour pass and would be arriving just after 1pm. Barton, however, had had an unexpected problem putting his plan into action: the ward sister had refused to give him permission to leave the hospital – she felt he might be overdoing things by going on an outing two days in a row. Despite much pleading from Barton, she was adamant, and it was beginning to look as if he, and not Bronx, would be the one who could not go to the ball.
Fortunately, Dinger overheard the exchange and was able to come to the rescue. “You need the services of the escape committee, my boy,” he advised and then told Barton about a route he had perfected for getting in and out of the hospital unseen. It involved climbing out through a ground floor window in a bathroom at the back of the convalescent wing and scurrying twenty yards to a row of high bushes that ran parallel to the wall of the building at that point. There were mainly storerooms in that part of the hospital, so no one was likely to be looking out of a window and see him. The bushes extended back a further fifteen yards, all the way to the perimeter fence, and, though dense, were easy enough to pass among.
“The fence itself is six feet high and made of wire mesh secured to concrete posts,” Dinger told him. “Once you reach it, turn left and walk along it until you come to a post with a white chalk mark. I’ve cut all the wire up to the half-way point on that post. All you have to do is pull the mesh back by the bottom corner and you can slip under it easily, no need even to crawl. Once you’re through, walk down the other side of the fence to the main road and wait out of sight for your lift. I’ll meet your chum at the front door when he arrives and tell him to pick you up on the road.”
Dinger offered to make sure the window was kept unlocked and said he and the others would cover for him if any of the nurses or medics came looking. If Barton were present for lunch, they probably would not be suspicious if he skipped tea.
“You need to be back for lights-out, though, Barton – they’re wise to the old pillows-under-the-blanket routine.”
The scheme worked perfectly and by a quarter past one, Bronx and he were well on the way to Northampton. They got there in good time and parked the car in a side street near the theatre. Barton did not want to be conspicuous and so left his walking stick in the car. He found he could manage reasonably well without it, though he was walking with a slight limp.
The Lyceum was a small Victorian theatre in a quaint two-storey building. ‘Affairs and Graces’ seemed to be popular, and they had to queue for ten minutes at the box office to buy tickets. They got in just before the curtain went up. The seats they had managed to obtain were in the stalls, at one end of the fourth row from the stage. Barton felt it was a good enough spot: sufficiently close to get a clear view of the actors. He looked round behind him. The place was almost full; there must have been four or even five hundred people there, including those in the balcony seats. At least half of the audience were in uniform.
“The place is a bit diminutive isn’t it?” Bronx commented. “Wouldn’t be any good for someone with claustrophobia.”
“‘Intimate’ is the word,” Barton corrected.
#
The setting throughout the play was supposed to be a drawing room in a stately home. Vivian Adair was one of the first to appear on stage. She was playing the part of a young woman secretly engaged to two different aristocrats and trying to decide which one to choose. Wearing a short, white tennis dress and carrying a racket, she looked cool and poised, much as she had done that night at the Silver Masque Club. Also on stage with her was a man playing the part of her uncle: he was a small, thickset figure with thinning, black hair. Barton took out the playbill he had removed from the entertainments board at the hospital: it indicated that this was Hugh Silverman – another of the gang members, if Barton was correct.
A couple of minor characters – a butler and a vicar – appeared and disappeared, and then a second woman, playing the part of an elderly headmistress, came on. Skinny and sporting thick-rimmed spectacles, she was dressed in a beige cardigan and sweater set. According to the playbill this was Jane Wilkinson – another possible gang member. She had been made to look in her sixties. As she had on heavy make-up and was wearing a grey wig and spectacles it was difficult to tell what she looked like in reality. Barton felt she was probably around forty, which ruled her out as Cobalt.
Shortly after her appearance on stage, the two male leads entered: Mitch Robertson and Elliott de Johns. Barton recognised de Johns straightaway as the man with the mole on his neck who had spoken to him at the bar in the Silver Masque Club, the man who had accompanied Vivian Adair there the following week. It was then that Barton remembered exactly when he had come across this play before in London: it had been on at one of the venues he had visited on the day he had first gone to the Silver Masque Club, the day he had met de Johns. Was this just a coincidence, he wondered, or had the man followed him to the club? An uneasy feeling came over Barton, and he hoped he was not noticeable from the stage.
As far as he could tell from what he had seen of Vivian Adair as he passed by her in the corridor at the Silver Masque Club, she was a natural blonde: the lustrous golden-blonde hair he had seen her with there did not come out of a peroxide bottle. As there did not seem to be any other women in the cast, Barton began to wonder how Cobalt fitted in.
During the final scene of the first act, the vicar was on stage again, exchanging double entendres with a French governess. In common with many small theatre companies, some of the actors were having to perform multiple roles in the play, and Barton realised the governess was Vivian Adair again, this time wearing a brunette wig and tarty makeup. He took out from his wallet the photographs he carried of Lucy Walker. Although facially Vivian Adair was not identical with Lucy, in terms of age, build and general appearance they were very similar. He realised in a flash that the brown-haired girl that GK had reported must have been Vivian Adair, either wearing a wig or with dyed brown hair.
As the curtain closed for the interval, Bronx turned towards him and beamed: “This is a great show, Barton. I’m glad I came along.”
Barton glared at him. “You’re not supposed to be enjoying yourself, Moncur. Remember why we’re here. Let’s go to the bar – I’ll fill you in on what I’ve worked out.”
They found a corner table in the bar area where they could speak without being overheard.
“I’ve figured out who Cobalt is – it’s the blonde, Vivian Adair.”
“I thought you said Cobalt had brown hair?”
“She must have dyed it or have been wearing a wig when GK saw her. Anyway, there’s something else. I’ve seen one of the other cast members before – I met one of the male leads, Elliott de Johns, at the Silver Masque Club. He spoke to me there, so there’s a good chance he might recognise me if he sees me in the audience. This could be dangerous: if he suspects I’m following him around ... ”
“But why would he think that? He saw you in a club months ago, and now you’re here watching the play he’s in – what’s suspicious about that?”
“This company were performing ‘Affairs and Graces’ in London back in January. It was on at one of the venues I visited when I was going round making enquiries about a brown-haired actress. The day I called at that theatre was the day I met him at the Silver Masque Club. I suspect he may have found out I was nosing around and followed me to the club.”
“That’s not so good, Barton. If he spots you here, he may guess you’re on to them. Should we leave now?”
“No, we’ll stay and risk it. I need to get a better look at them all.”
#
When the second half got underway, the repa
rtee started coming thick and fast, and the audience became increasingly merry. Swept up by the atmosphere of jollity, Bronx soon forgot again why they were there and began to enjoy the performance. Barton, however, was unaffected by the laughter going on around him and paid little attention to the play. He sat dourly scrutinising the cast, trying to commit their faces and voices to memory, Vivian Adair especially. In the story she was cast as an upper-class minx, and Barton had to admit she gave a good performance: confident and sophisticated but bantering and flirtatious with her admirers. As expected in a low farce of this type, garments were shed: several of the men, including the vicar, lost their trousers and, as foretold by Dinger, Vivian Adair spent much of the second act in her underwear.
Immediately after the last curtain call, Barton and Moncur got up to leave, but because their row of seats was near the front of the theatre, they were at the back of the crowd making for the exit, and it took a while for them to get out. The lights had come on in the auditorium, and in case any of the cast might be watching from the wings, Barton took care to mingle with the crowd to make himself inconspicuous. When they finally emerged from the theatre, they went straight to the side street where they had parked and got into the Alvis.
“What now, Barton? You’ll have to contact your man Minton and tell him we’ve tracked them down.”
Barton seemed reluctant to agree to this. “It would be better if we had some clear-cut evidence. There’s still a chance that all this could just be coincidental.”
“But you said yourself that the blonde girl’s definitely Cobalt.”
“I’m convinced, but do we have enough to convince Minton?”
“This is a job for the professionals, Barton. For a start, there are too many of them for us to tail. You need to persuade Minton to send a Special Branch team to put them under surveillance. If you’re correct and this is the gang, the Branch men will catch them at it.”
“I suppose you’re right. We’d better find a phone, then.”
The Alvis was parked about 30 yards down the side street and was facing towards the thoroughfare on which the Lyceum stood. Just as Barton finished speaking, a thin, middle-aged woman wearing glasses walked across the end of the street. She was carrying a brown leather music case, and as she looked down the road to check for traffic, Barton got a good look at her face.
“Wait a minute,” he said excitedly, “I think that’s one of them there – it’s the Wilkinson/Wilks woman. Let’s follow her. We can maybe find out where they are staying.”
“Are you sure this is sensible, Barton? We don’t want to end up like GK.”
“It’ll be alright. The two of us can surely handle her if things go wrong; but they won’t – we’ll keep our distance and she’ll never know. Come on.”
With that, they both got out of the car and set off after her. She was heading away from the centre of the town and walking so briskly that Barton had difficulty keeping up. They stayed well behind her, but it turned out to be unnecessary, for she did not look round even once.
About twenty minutes later, she reached a large park, entered through the main gates and continued down a wide, tree-lined avenue that led into its interior. The playing fields on either side of the avenue had been turned into allotments and a couple of men could be seen working their patches. Smaller, tarmacked paths branched from it now and again, and she eventually took one that curved off into a thickly wooded area on the left. After a short distance, the ground began to rise steeply on either side of the path, so that Barton and Bronx found themselves walking between two embankments about twelve feet high. Trees and bushes were growing up the slopes and on the flat area beyond the top. The path, which was about eight feet wide, sloped gently downwards as it meandered through the wood and was heavily shaded, for although the trees were spaced out they were sufficiently close that they formed a continuous canopy overhead.
After about a hundred yards, the raised areas of ground on either side began to curve away from the path, and it emerged in a large, circular clearing into which several similar paths converged. In the centre was a large, concreted area on which stood a small, single-storey, rectangular brick building with a flat roof. The woman stopped outside the building, and Barton and Bronx immediately took cover in the thicket at the side of the path. Cautiously, they moved forward to a bush from where they could observe her without being seen. She was standing at a spot from which she could see down all the paths that lead into the area and seemed to be checking that no-one was around. After looking along each path in turn, she entered an open door at one end of the building.
The embankment at the side of the path, though steep, was easily scalable thanks to the mass of exposed tree roots sticking out of the earth, and Barton suggested they climb to the top and walk along the ridge towards the building. This would enable them to get closer to it without being spotted. Having scrambled to the top, they moved forward cautiously through the undergrowth and shrubbery to the edge of the clearing and crouched down behind some bushes opposite the doorway. They were about twenty yards from the building and looking down towards it.
Moncur noticed a sign by the door announcing ‘Ladies’. “She’s popped into the loo,” he remarked. They watched the building in silence for several minutes, then Moncur spoke again: “I have to say, I’m a bit uncomfortable with this, Barton.”
“With what?”
“Spying on a public convenience. I’m sure we could be arrested for it. I thought this espionage lark would be a bit more glamorous than this.”
“I can assure you it’s not. Now shut up, she’ll be coming out soon.”
As if on cue, the woman emerged from the door, looked about her again, and then began walking back the way she had come. As she walked below their vantage point she was completely unaware of them concealed in the foliage. Barton noticed she was no longer carrying the music case.
“What do we do now,” Bronx asked, “continue following her?”
“No, my guess is she’s just heading back to the theatre for the evening performance. Besides, I suspect she’s left the music case in the loo for someone else to pick up. I think we should wait and see who collects it.”
“How long will that be? I don’t fancy hanging around here indefinitely.”
Barton looked at his watch: it had just gone six.
“I expect the park will close at some time, perhaps at seven or eight. I think whoever is picking the case up will be along before then.”
Barton stood up and began to climb down the embankment.
“Where are you going?”
“I’m going to see what’s in that case.”
“You don’t mean you’re going into the ‘Ladies’? Is nothing sacred?”
“Whistle if you see anyone approaching.”
On reaching the path, Barton looked about to make sure no one was coming and then made towards the entrance. Once inside, he inspected the interior for somewhere she could have hidden the case, but there did not seem to be a hiding place. The furnishings were very basic: a single sink and mirror – no cupboards. There were three stalls and he looked in each but saw nothing obvious. However, on checking them a second time, he discovered that the case had been concealed behind the cistern in one of them.
He pulled the case out and looked inside. It contained a few dozen pages of sheet music, but nothing that looked suspicious. The information she was passing on, he supposed, was probably hidden somehow on the sheets, either in invisible writing or in code, or perhaps as a microdot. He realised he did not have the time to examine them in detail – whoever was collecting the case could appear at any minute. Accordingly, he replaced the sheets, put the case back in its hiding place behind the cistern and returned to Bronx to continue the vigil.
Ten minutes passed and no one appeared. Then a man with a dog on a lead sauntered into view on one of the paths but went by without stopping. Five minutes later, a woman with an infant in a pushchair arrived and took it into the ‘Ladies’. They emerged
after a further five minutes and continued along another of the paths.
“I’m going back in to check if the case is still there,” Barton announced.
“What! You surely don’t think that mum and her kid are spies?”
“Who knows – she might have hidden the case in the pushchair.”
Barton went into the stall again and looked behind the cistern. The case was still there, but to confirm that nothing had been removed, he felt he should check the music sheets were still in it. He extricated it and flicked through the contents. As far as he could tell, the sheets were all present. It was then that he heard someone whistling outside. He wondered at first whether it was the man summoning his dog, but then suddenly it dawned on him that he had told Bronx to whistle if someone was approaching. He stuffed the case behind the cistern and walked rapidly out of the building. No one was around, so he darted straight for the bushes opposite and made his way as noiselessly as possible up through the undergrowth back to Bronx.
“You’ve barely made it, Barton. Some woman’s just walked by and gone into the loo while you were picking your way through the bushes. If you’d been another few seconds in the place she’d have seen you.”
“I can’t do much more of this,” he responded breathlessly, bending down and rubbing his right thigh. “The leg’s starting to feel weak.”
While Barton attended to massaging the leg, Bronx continued to watch the door below. “You may not have to,” he said a few moments later, nodding towards the building, “I think we have a contender!”
Barton looked down in time to see, emerging from the doorway, a young, brown-haired woman carrying the music case. There was something familiar about her, and he narrowed his eyes to focus them better; he was thunderstruck when he realised it was Grace Harrison.
She walked by below them and headed off on the same path that they had come along. Once she was out of sight, Barton straightened up and for several seconds stood in silence, unable to say anything. His mind raced as he tried to decide whether he should divulge to his friend who the woman was.
