‘Good Lord, it’s you.’
Ian Fleming smiled. ‘I’m afraid so.’ The young naval intelligence officer shifted gears, spun the wheel tightly as they reached Buckingham Palace Road and began driving north. The Bentley only had two seats and Black was uncomfortably aware of Katherine’s body pressed against his side. He could smell the faint perfume of her hair and for a single jarring moment his mind filled with images of the explosion at the Burlington Arcade and the fiery death of Coventry. He shifted slightly in the seat, trying to keep his cane from becoming entangled with the Bentley’s gearstick.
‘Is this someone’s idea of a joke?’ he asked finally.
‘Certainly not,’ said Fleming, glancing quickly in his direction and offering up a broad grin. ‘Just a bit of judicious subterfuge, old man.’ As they slid by the Palace and rounded the Victoria Memorial, Fleming dug into the inside pocket of his coat and pulled out his cigarette case and lighter. He handed them to Black. ‘Light one for me, would you? Have one yourself if you like.’
Black lit two cigarettes and handed one to Fleming along with the case and lighter. Beside the detective, Katherine Copeland squirmed awkwardly and managed to roll down the side window, letting in a blast of cold air. Black drew in a lungful of smoke and recognised the sweet tang of expensive Turkish tobacco.
‘Well,’ said Black, ‘if this isn’t a joke, then perhaps one of you would be kind enough to tell me just what the bloody hell is going on. I’m really not up to playing at Mata Hari and the Scarlet Pimpernel.’
‘All right,’ said Katherine. She spent the next quarter of an hour telling him everything she knew, including what she’d learned from Maxwell Knight. By then they were beyond Maida Vale and Belsize Road, still moving steadily northward. Black stared forward through the windscreen, barely aware of his surroundings. What Katherine had told him was utter madness but it also had the ring of truth to it.
‘Plot within plot, conspiracy on top of conspiracy,’ she said. ‘And now we have to wage a private war all our own.’
‘And Fleming? Where does he fit into all of this?’ The detective glanced at the man beside him.
‘I’ve known Knight for quite some time,’ Fleming said, speaking for himself. ‘We’ve worked together before. He asked me if I could help out. I agreed.’ He frowned. ‘Not to mention that I have my own interest in this whole affair.’
‘The Luffington girl?’
‘Yes.’
‘This is insane! You’re attached to Admiralty and Naval Intelligence. Katherine is an admitted foreign agent and I’ve been stripped of any authority in this case. Liddell made it quite clear: either I resign or I face possible charges. On top of that, from what you tell me, I’m probably under some sort of surveillance.’
‘What Liddell told you and what he’s actually done aren’t necessarily the same thing,’ said Katherine, close beside him.
‘Meaning?’
‘Liddell’s being pressured to stop the investigation into the Queer Jack killings and the man called The Doctor. He can’t help, at least not directly, but we’re his only chance now.’
‘But he won’t hinder, either,’ put in Fleming. ‘It’s a lot of silly bureaucratic mumbo jumbo, really, but there’s nothing to stop you from investigating on your own. Officially you’re on Christmas leave; by this evening the watchers will be removed and hey, presto! Morris Black is no longer a consideration. It was the best that he could do.’ The young naval officer turned the wheel, guiding the Bentley onto West End Lane.
‘Queer Jack is the key to all of this,’ said Katherine. ‘Queer Jack and Liddell’s German.’ She paused. ‘But we don’t have much time left.’
They were in Hampstead now, moving towards the Heath. Behind and far below the city was lost behind the veil of lightly falling snow. On either side of them the suburban terraced houses crouched depressingly, faint wisps of smoke rising almost invisibly from the chimney pots, blank windows already curtained and shuttered against whatever the coming night would bring.
Skirting the High Street they took Branch Hill to Whitestone Pond, dropped down along the East Heath Road, then turned into the Heath itself, swerving abruptly into a small enclave of attached houses.
‘Where exactly are we?’ Black had been to Hampstead often enough but he never knew this street existed, hidden as it was so far off the beaten track.
‘Byron Villas,’ said Fleming, pulling the car to a stop. Black peered through the windscreen. On their left was a short row of twin-storeyed houses, brick-walled, slate-roofed and iron-gated. A stained and crumbling concrete wall ran the length of the row, topped with empty wooden planters half-filled with snow.
Just beyond the end of the row, right on the edge of the open Heath, there was a large crater protected by a makeshift wooden barrier. The last two houses closest to the crater had been severely blast-damaged. Windows were shattered, doors hung drunkenly open and a section of roof was burnt down to the rafters, open to the sky.
‘Inviting,’ Black commented dryly. ‘Jolly nice spot for the holidays.’
‘Better digs than mine,’ said Fleming. ‘I was bombed out of house and home last week.’ He switched off the engine. ‘This was Knight’s idea. Street’s been abandoned for the duration. No one will bother you here.’ He turned and smiled. ‘Quite a famous spot, actually. This is where D. H. Lawrence wrote The Rainbow. ‘
‘Oh, well,’ said Black sourly. ‘That changes everything, doesn’t it?’ He sighed. ‘This is all fine and good but how am I supposed to do anything without my files and notes?’
‘Been taken care of,’ said Katherine, opening the door. ‘Your assistant was transferred God only knows where but he managed to duplicate everything before the files were seized by Butler. Knight sent one of his people round and whisked it all away.’
‘You must be congratulating yourselves. You’ve thought of just about everything.’
‘Just about,’ said Fleming. ‘Your assistant, Swift?’
‘Yes?’
Fleming smiled wolfishly. ‘He outdid the boffins at Bletchley Park. Managed to figure out the message from the Swede. The key was the National Geographic magazine. I’m going through their subscription list now, looking for a possible connection.’
Black spoke wearily. ‘Did it ever occur to you that I was bloody sick and tired of the whole thing? That I might not want to join in on this little lark?’
‘Not for a minute,’ said Katherine, smiling sweetly. ‘After all, Morris, you’re a cop, aren’t you?’
* * *
Dr Charles Tennant sat in the newspaper room of the Brighton Library, leafing through the bound volumes of the Sussex Daily News and the Brighton Argus for the year 1914. Caidin, the headmaster at Wick Hall School, had been totally uncooperative from the moment he discovered Tennant’s purpose but the yellowed newspapers in front of him told the story well enough.
Poppet, in her empty-headed way, had been kind enough to give him the details of Morris Black’s unfortunate trip to Coventry within a few days of the ill-timed event. It had, she said, got the wind up in just about everyone, and Liddell was apparently making life miserable for the entire staff of B Division, herself included. Utter security was now the order of the day, and scrupulous attention to the detailsday-to-day work. No more short days and long lunches for her.
Poppet, in the throes of her own particular brand of passion, had also been kind enough to tell Tennant the name Queer Jack had used in Coventry and which Trench had passed along to Black – Bernard Timothy Exner. She didn’t have the slightest qualm about giving her new lover the name since a thorough search of the records showed that no such person existed, or at least no one presently carrying a National Registration Card.
The name, however, had planted its seed in Tennant’s mind, and a week or so later the psychiatrist had managed another session at the Scotland Yard Central Records Office. There he discovered the reason for the elusive Exner’s non-appearance. Bernard Timothy Exner, born in Nottingham
, August 11, 1903, was dead. Murdered in the vicinity of Cold Dean, Sussex, on September 23, 1914.
Tennant had spent a great deal of time since his first visit to the Yard expanding and refining his ‘profile’ on Queer Jack and he knew instantly that Exner’s neatly inscribed name on the buff-coloured file card was the final proof of his theory.
Queer Jack hadn’t given Trench the name of Bernard Timothy Exner without reason. There had to be a link between the boy murdered thirty-six years ago and the present-day Blitz killer. But what? Tennant was no detective, and his search required some discretion, but eventually he traced Exner to a second-rate public school a few miles north of the city of Brighton: Wick Hall School.
He wrote to the headmaster with a general inquiry about the possibility of enrolling a non-existent child then followed it up with a request for a tour. He’d been given a date for that readily enough – there weren’t many parents these days willing to put their child into a school standing directly in the way of a Nazi invasion – but today, when Caidin discovered Tennant’s interest in the almost forgotten murder, he’d quickly been shown the door. His visit to the library on Church Street had followed but not before he’d managed to slip a copy of the 1914 Wick Hall Annual into his briefcase.
In September and October of 1914, the London newspapers would have been filled with nothing but news of the stalemate on the Marne, or the first zeppelin raids, but in Brighton the leading story was that of Bernard Timothy Exner, barely eleven, at first simply missing, then discovered some days later in nearby Stanmer Park, savagely tortured, violated and then murdered.
According to the reports, Bernard had been well liked at Wick Hall School, even though, as Oswald Freeman, headmaster at the time, suggested, the Exner family was ‘in trade’ and not of the titled aristocracy, to wit, Bernard’s father manufactured bicycles, the Exner Flight being his best-known product, several hundred of which he had donated to the Royal Army Signal Corps for use in France against the Kaiser.
Various other masters at the school had commented that young Bernard had been a bright boy, particularly in maths, and from what they knew he had no real enemies. Given the savagery of the attack, the details of which were not included in the newspaper stories, the local police quickly came to the conclusion that the murderer was a vagrant, or perhaps an escapee from an asylum. Presumably the man had managed to lure the Exner boy away from the school grounds and then, possibly after holding him against his will for some time, murdered him.
The newspaper stories contained only the vaguest allusions to what had been done to the child but the clear inference was that he had been molested before finally being asphyxiated.
The story kept its grip on the local imagination for the better part of a fortnight and then, with the police unable to report any progress, it faded and eventually died. The coroner’s report, filed in a back-page squib under legal notices during the third week of October, concluded that Bernard Timothy Exner had died as the result of foul play committed by a person or persons unknown. The child’s remains had long before been taken back to Nottingham for burial. Like Bernard, the story was laid to rest. Until now.
Tennant set the bound volume aside, opened his briefcase and took out the buckram-covered annual he’d managed to steal from the school library before he’d been evicted by the headmaster. Sitting alone in the newspaper room, he turned the pages slowly, eventually discovering Bernard Exner in a photograph of the assembled lower school.
The boy stared out of the photograph, a small, fixed grin on his innocent face. Very blond, dressed in uniform cap, jacket and flannel shorts. His right stocking was sagging slightly and a scab was visible on his knee. A score of other boys looked up at Tennant from the page, all with identical, vacant looks. He scanned the faces slowly, hoping for some sign, but there was nothing.
Bernard Exner appeared four more times: once in a group photograph of the lower-school cricket team for 1913, listed as being a member of both the junior and school chess clubs, and listed as captain of the junior maths club. According to the notes, Exner had placed second in his division during the National Boys’ Chess Tournament in the spring and sixth overall.
Tennant paused, looking up from the volume. Chess. According to Poppet, that was the clue that had sent Morris Black to Coventry. Queer Jack had been choosing his victims from the membership list of the Correspondence Chess Association. He flipped back and forth through the pages, comparing the names on the lists of the junior, senior and school chess clubs as well as the maths club list. Other than Exner there were only three names that reoccurred: one boy with the unlikely name of George Le Fanu Gurney, Raymond Loudermilk and John Pastermagent. Gurney was a member of the junior chess club and the maths club and Loudermilk and Pastermagent – obviously both upper-school boys – were members of the maths club and the senior chess club.
Pastermagent was also a member of the school chess club, which probably meant he’d gone off on the National Chess Tournament with Exner that spring. It made sudden, terrible sense. According to his ‘profile,’ the trauma endured by Queer Jack had most probably occurred during early adolescence – when he was twelve or perhaps thirteen. He’d be in the upper school, not the lower, his victim younger and more vulnerable. Which probably ruled out Gurney.
Acting on a hunch, Tennant went off in search of a local directory for the Brighton area, found it then returned to the newspaper room. He looked up the remaining two names. There were no Loudermilks of any kind but there was a J. Pastermagent, listed as being resident in Hove, a suburb on the western end of Brighton, and also listed with a business address: J. Pastermagent, rug merchant, 21 The Lanes, Brighton.
‘Good Lord,’ Tennant whispered softly, staring down at the notation. ‘It can’t be that simple.’
There was only one way to find out. He jotted down the address in his notebook, stuffed the school magazine back into his briefcase and glanced at his Rolex. Just past five. If he was lucky the premises of J. Pastermagent, rug merchant, would still be open for business.
The Lanes proved to be a narrow network of alleyways just off East Street only a few blocks away, still busy even at the end of the working day. A blustery snowfall blew up from the Marine Parade and the Pier as Tennant approached.
Pastermagent’s shop was tiny, crouched in the shadow of Harrington’s, a gigantic department store that spanned both sides of The Lanes and spread out, multistoreyed, down two blocks of East Street. A war was on but it was also Christmas and shoppers were everywhere, bundled up against the cold, scurrying along the pavement, puffing up great gusts of steamy breath as they hurried home in time to beat the blackout curfew.
Pastermagent’s already had its heavy felt curtains in place, and for a moment Tennant thought he was too late, but the door opened at his hand, a tinkling bell announcing his arrival. He closed the door behind him and looked around at the walls of the narrow shop, lined with hanging rugs of every description, silk and wool, ornate and primitive, Chinese, Persian and Turkish.
Hundreds more were stacked waist high across the floor, laid out in staggered rows. At the end of the brightly lit room there was another pile, pushed up like a multi-coloured snowdrift in one corner, and beside it a delicately made desk of some dark wood, scrolled, carved and inlaid with strips of ebony and mother-of-pearl.
Behind the desk, a broad-shouldered, youthful-looking man with jet-black hair was scowling down at the cumbersome-looking adding machine in front of him, working the crank with one hand and bashing at the keys with the other. He glanced up as Tennant approached.
‘Thing’s bloody useless,’ he muttered. ‘An abacus was good enough for my father but I’m stuck with this lot.’ The scowl vanished, replaced instantly with a broad smile as the man stood up and came around the desk. ‘Sorry. Mustn’t be a Scrooge.’ He laughed. ‘Mind you, Christmas is a retail event, I suppose.’ He paused and shook his head. ‘Sorry,’ he repeated. The man’s dark complexion was clearly foreign but his speech was educated
and without any discernible accent.
‘Mr Pastermagent?’
‘Quite right.’ The man nodded. ‘Except you don’t pronounce the T on the end. Pastermagen’.’ He laughed again. ‘Mind you, everyone does, so I suppose I shouldn’t mind.’ He extended a hand and Tennant shook it. The grip was firm and dry. If this was Queer Jack he was flying in the face of the psychiatrist’s theory.
‘My name is Tennant. Dr Charles Tennant. I’m a psychiatrist.’
‘Well, that’s a first. I don’t suppose you’re here to buy a rug?’ he added wistfully.
‘No.’
‘I didn’t think so. You don’t have the look.’ Pastermagent shrugged his shoulders and raised his hands in an expression of sadness. ‘Not many do these days, I’m afraid.’ The man’s mood changed yet again, the brilliant smile returning. ‘Would you like some coffee?’
‘That would be nice,’ Tennant answered politely. Pastermagent went behind the desk again. He poured two small cups from a large samovar standing on its own table, stirred in several spoonfuls of sugar and came around the desk again. He handed a cup to Tennant and motioned him towards the pile of carpets in the corner.
Pastermagent dropped down onto the pile and Tennant joined him, balancing the minuscule cup and saucer awkwardly. Seated, he took a small sip of the steaming brew. It was incredibly strong and sweet as treacle. He tasted grit in his mouth and peered into the cup. It appeared to be half-full of dark, sludgelike sand.
‘Hideous stuff, isn’t it?’ Pastermagent smiled. He took a swallow from his own cup and smacked his lips. ‘An acquired taste but I’m afraid it’s all I’ve got on hand. Grows on you after a bit. Quite addictive, really. My father used to say that the grounds cleaned out your bowels like a scouring pad.’ He laughed yet again. ‘Must have known what he was talking about, he was a hundred and two when he died.’ Another mood change. The smile slid away, replaced by a quick, analytical glance. ‘You’re from London, I take it?’
A Gathering of Saints Page 37
