A Gathering of Saints

by A Gathering of Saints (retail) (epub)

  ‘You must be Black,’ said the shorter man as they approached. ‘I’m Milner-Barry and Piglet at the trough is the inimitable Dr Alexander.’

  ‘Hugh,’ said Alexander, speaking around a mouthful of food.

  ‘And the lady?’ asked Milner-Barry.

  ‘Katherine Copeland.’

  ‘A Yank!’ said Milner-Barry. Black noticed that he was a blinker, the eyes shuttering up and down nervously. Probably a reaction to members of the opposite sex. ‘The advance guard of Lend-Lease?’

  ‘Not really.’ Katherine smiled. ‘I’m helping out Detective Inspector Black.’

  ‘Officially?’ asked Milner-Barry.

  ‘Yes,’ Black answered before she could say anything.

  ‘Well, then,’ Milner-Barry said. ‘I suppose you should sit down.’ Black drew up chairs for himself and Katherine.

  Alexander mopped up the last bit of pie with a morsel of bread and sat back in has chair, sighing. Black saw that he had a large inkblot on the pocket of his shirt. An old stain, faded by a number of washings. The collar of the shirt was frayed and so were the cuffs. Glancing down, Black saw that the man’s right shoelace had come undone.

  The innkeeper drifted over from the bar and Black asked for coffee. Katherine asked for the same. The man nodded and went back to the bar.

  ‘I remember speaking to you some time ago. A murder investigation.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  Milner-Barry glanced at Katherine. ‘Am I to presume that this young lady has some sort of security clearance?’

  ‘She’s here on my authority,’ Black answered, sidestepping the question.

  ‘Well, then, I suppose it’s all right then.’ Milner-Barry cleared his throat and looked briefly across the table at his friend. Alexander smiled beatifically and pulled a straight-stemmed pipe from the pocket of his jacket.

  ‘I was checking a list given to me by Captain Liddell,’ said Black.

  ‘Alibis.’ Alexander nodded. ‘I remember now. Skulduggery and jiggery-pokery. Cloaks and daggers everywhere.’

  ‘Presumably we’re not suspects,’ said the shorter man.

  ‘No,’ said Black. ‘You’re not. However, it did occur to me that you could help in the investigation.’

  ‘Deputies,’ said Alexander. He lit the pipe and blew a cloud of sweet-smelling smoke towards the ceiling. ‘Two-Gun Milner-Barry; double-barrelled by name, double-barrelled by nature.’

  ‘Enough of that, Piglet,’ said Milner-Barry with mock sternness. The innkeeper returned with a coffee service, put it down on the table and then withdrew again. Katherine poured for herself and Black. ‘What is it that you think we can help you with, Inspector?’ Milner-Barry glanced at his wristwatch, realised he wasn’t wearing one and pulled a pocket watch out of his vest. ‘It is Christmas, after all.’

  ‘Trees to trim, stockings to fill,’ murmured Alexander. He seemed to be enjoying the conversation immensely, especially his own contributions. Black sighed inwardly. Interviewing the two men was difficult enough; working with them on a daily basis would require the patience of Job.

  ‘Chess seems to be the linking factor in a series of murders,’ he said bluntly. ‘That and an association with the work being done at Bletchley Park and perhaps Cambridge University. Both of you are chess masters, both of you work at Bletchley Park and both of you went to Cambridge. An associate of yours had one of the murder victims as his assistant last year.’

  Milner-Barry smiled weakly. ‘Well, that’s succinct enough at any rate. Proper scientific method.’

  ‘How exactly can we assist you?’ asked Alexander, sitting forward in his chair.

  Black shrugged his shoulders and took a sip of his coffee. ‘I’m not quite sure. I’m simply flailing about at this point.’

  ‘We do quite a bit of that ourselves,’ said Alexander.

  ‘You said that chess was a linking factor,’ said Milner-Barry, ignoring his companion. ‘How is that?’

  ‘The murderer chose his victims from the membership list of the British Correspondence Chess Association.’

  ‘Good Lord,’ said Alexander, taking the pipe from his mouth. ‘We both belong.’ He glanced at Milner-Barry. ‘So does Turing, for that matter.’

  ‘As do eleven hundred and twenty-six others,’ said Black. ‘It’s a long list.’

  ‘Do we presume that the man in question is a player?’ Alexander asked.

  ‘Yes. A knowledgeable one. One of the matches he played by mail used something called the Reti opening.’

  ‘Munich.’ Alexander nodded. ‘In ’thirty-five.’

  ‘’Thirty-six,’ corrected Milner-Barry.

  ‘As you say,’ Alexander murmured, giving his friend a nasty look. ‘Munich, 1936.’

  ‘Anyone using the Reti would shorten your list considerably, I should think,’ said Milner-Barry, his voice serious. ‘It’s something you’d expect to see from a master, not the average player.’

  ‘How many masters are there?’ asked Katherine.

  ‘In this country?’ said Alexander. ‘Perhaps a hundred. Fewer now, with the war.’

  ‘How many of them do you know?’ asked Black.

  ‘Most,’ Alexander answered.

  Milner-Barry nodded. ‘Between us we probably know all of them.’

  ‘Not really the types you’d expect to go around killing people,’ said Alexander. ‘Academics mostly, like MB and myself. The odd solicitor, the occasional anomalous one from the House of Lords.’

  ‘As well as being a chess player, the man seems to have considerable mechanical skills,’ said Black. He thought of the vicious little instrument he’d seen in Spilsbury’s laboratory and the grisly artefact the pathologist had dug out of Jane Luffington’s spine. Master chess player, master craftsman, master killer.

  Milner-Barry shrugged. ‘Not an impossible combination. Chess and mathematics have a lot in common. Music as well, come to think of it. Was your man a musician by any chance?’

  ‘Not that I’m aware of. Was there anyone at Cambridge who had those sorts of skills? Mechanical aptitude and chess?’

  Alexander thought for a moment. ‘Not that I can recall. Mind you, I didn’t have much contact with the engineering types,’ he said finally.

  ‘Nor I,’ added Milner-Barry, shaking his head. He thought for a moment then frowned. Suddenly his eyebrows rose. ‘Winkle!’

  Alexander nodded. ‘That’s right. I’d forgotten about him.’

  ‘Who is this man Winkle?’

  ‘A technician at the Cavendish and the Engineering Laboratory,’ Milner-Barry explained. ‘Good God! Winkle!’ He glanced at Alexander quickly. ‘He did some work for Turing too,’ he said quietly. ‘At Dollis Hill.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ said Black. ‘Dollis Hill?’ What did Turing have to do with a north-London suburb?

  ‘Nor should you,’ said Alexander quietly. ‘Very hush-hush, I’m afraid.’ The two men glanced at each other covertly.

  Black sighed. Another secret. ‘Forget that for the moment. What can you tell me about him, this Winkle?’

  ‘He was a technician, just as MB mentioned,’ said Alexander. ‘A machinist, electrician, general technical dogsbody. Quite a wizard when it came to following a diagram. Build anything you asked for.’

  ‘Did he play chess?’ asked Black.

  Milner-Barry laughed explosively. ‘Dear me, yes! That’s what made me think of him.’ He paused. ‘Actually, he didn’t so much play chess as remember it.’

  ‘I believe you’d call him an idiot savant,’ said Alexander. ‘I think that’s the proper term. He could recall games played twenty or thirty years ago, move for move.’

  ‘We made a bit of a game out of it,’ put in the shorter man. ‘You’d call out something like, um, “Maroczy–Vukovic, London, 1927, Alekhine defence,” and he’d trot out the whole thing, either on a board, or straight out of his head. Quite extraordinary.’

  ‘Useless as a player of course,’ said Alexander. ‘Had no style of his
own. A mimic. A mirror, that’s all.’

  ‘Would he have known the Reti opening?’

  ‘Without a doubt,’ said Milner-Barry. ‘No one in his right mind would actually use it, of course; the defence is far too well known except for the London System Variation.’ The mathematician smiled. ‘The game can become quite independent after the second or third move. It’s a transpositional.’

  Black looked at the man blankly. ‘I’ll have to take your word for it.’

  ‘Generally it results in a loss or resignation in twenty-five moves,’ said Alexander. ‘The London System is even chances.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Black. The two men at the table seemed to live in an entirely different universe from his own.

  ‘You call him Winkle,’ said Katherine.

  ‘A nickname. Never knew his real one.’ Alexander frowned. ‘Never thought to ask him, come to think of it.’

  ‘Is he still at Cambridge?’ Black asked.

  ‘No,’ said Milner-Barry. ‘As we said, he was working at Dollis Hill but that all came to a bad end, I think.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Alan told us about it. Turing, that is. Winkle was never, um, what one might call a social lion. Kept very much to himself. One day he simply went off the deep end, so to speak. Ran about muttering all sorts of odd things, smashing instruments. Had to be let go.’

  ‘There’d be a record of his employment surely?’

  Alexander shrugged. ‘Presumably. I don’t think there’s much chance of putting your hands on it. Not on Christmas Eve.’

  ‘Would he have been attached to the Ministry of Works? Or hired directly by the university or this place at Dollis Hill?’

  Milner-Barry laughed again. ‘We’re boffins, Inspector Black, not bureaucrats. Why on earth would we know something like that?’

  ‘You could ask Charlie Snow, I suppose,’ Alexander suggested. ‘I imagine he’d know and if he didn’t he could find out.’

  ‘Snow.’ Milner-Barry nodded. ‘The very man.’

  ‘Who is he?’

  ‘Read physics. King’s, I think. A little before our time. Made him a fellow and then he went off to the city. Funny little gnome of a man with tiny little feet and an enormous bald head. I believe he does something obscure now, like writing novels. Boring ones. Uses his initials like that fellow Priestley on the wireless. C. P. Snow he calls himself.’

  ‘I’d call him a pompous ass,’ put in Alexander. He smiled. ‘Merely my own, uninformed opinion, of course.’

  ‘Why would he know anything about Winkle?’ asked Black.

  ‘Well, because it’s his job,’ said Milner-Barry. ‘His bit for the war and all that.’

  ‘Writing novels?’ asked Katherine.

  ‘No, dear heart,’ said Milner-Barry, blinking at her sweetly. ‘I’d venture to say that writing novels and waging war are mutually exclusive. Charlie does the hiring and firing of all the scientific types. DSP. One of those obscure offices connected to the War Ministry. Department of Scientific Personnel.’

  With the interview complete, Morris Black and Katherine Copeland thanked the two men for their help then left the inn. It was mid-aftemoon and it was snowing again. They stepped out into the cold air, snowflakes whirling erratically in the gusting wind. They reached the parked car and Black went around to the passenger side. Katherine pulled open the driver’s door, pausing before she got in behind the wheel.

  The detective stood for a moment, watching the blowing snow as it dusted the young woman’s hair, glistening jewel-like in the dusky, silver light. Tiny flakes of it were on her eyelashes and the cold had put a flush of colour on her cheeks as well. She was very beautiful.

  ‘The one they call Winkle.’

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘He’s the one, isn’t he?’ Katherine said quietly, speaking to Black across the roof of the car.

  ‘Yes.’ He nodded, feeling it for the first time. ‘He’s the one.’

  * * *

  Seated on the padded seat at the bow of the launch, Guy Liddell yawned and pulled the fur collar of his coat a little more tightly around his neck, shivering in the chill breeze blowing in from the Irish Sea. He’d been travelling since early morning, taking the train from Euston Station and arriving in Blackpool at four. Met there by the British Amphibious Air Lines bus, he’d been driven the few miles to the Flying Boat Terminal at Squires Gate. After collecting his ticket and handing his one small bag to the attendant, he’d been escorted to the small boat that would take him out to the aircraft.

  Fifty yards ahead, tethered to its moorings like some gigantic, prehistoric flying whale, was a Short S23 Empire Flying Boat, tossing gently in the wind chop ruffling the waters of the shallow bay. From where he sat, Liddell could clearly make out the name on the bulbous nose of her fuselage: Cathay.

  According to the ticket clerk, Liddell was lucky; the airline normally operated the route to the Isle of Man with much smaller Saunders-Roe Cutty Sark amphibians but today the RAF was using Cathay to test its newly installed long-range fuel tanks.

  The huge aircraft had been impressed at the beginning of the war and was eventually destined for use by Coastal Command but it still had its original and quite luxurious Imperial Airways fittings. Even better, Cathay was much faster than the Saunders-Roe machines and could make the trip across the Irish Sea from Squires Gate to Douglas Bay or Ronaldsway in half the usual time. Liddell would be in the air for less than an hour.

  The launch reached the tethered giant and swung around beneath one massive wing to the rear passenger door. Liddell climbed out of the boat, went up the short companionway ladder to the hatch and stepped inside the aircraft.

  The ticket clerk had told the truth. The main compartment on the passenger deck was more like the drawing room in a good-sized country house. Velvet curtains over the portholes, divans and couches instead of ordinary seats, soft lighting from recessed lamps and thick carpeting everywhere.

  The colours were all soft and easy on the eye, gentle shades of green and blue and tan. By the looks of it Liddell was the only passenger. He found a comfortable, upholstered club chair close to one of the windows and settled gratefully into it.

  Almost instantly a white-jacketed steward appeared and Liddell ordered coffee. Before it arrived, the four cowled engines fitted on the wings began to fire, one after the other, and soon Cathay began to move off along the water, steadily gathering speed. After a brief sense of weightlessness, they were in the air and gaining altitude, swinging to the north and heading out to sea.

  The steward appeared again, this time with a tray loaded down with an elegant silver coffee service. He unhinged a small hidden table in the bulkhead, set down the tray and poured. Liddell thanked him briefly and the man withdrew. The intelligence officer took out his pipe, lit it and stared out the window, allowing the coffee on the table in front of him to cool.

  He was still astounded at how quickly things had changed; it seemed somehow to defy all the deeply entrenched and glacial laws of bureaucratic entropy. He’d given the Pig and Eye information on Chips Channon, Butler and the others to Desmond Morton on Friday the twentieth. Within hours of Liddell’s leaving Rab Butler’s office on the twenty-third, yesterday, Churchill announced a surprise cabinet shuffle.

  Halifax was out, banished to the ambassador’s post in Washington, and Eden was the new foreign secretary. God knows what had happened to Channon and Butler as a result. Margesson had survived the purge, though, Churchill having ‘promoted’ him to the position of war minister. It was a promotion in name only, of course, given Churchill’s iron grip on all the services.

  The cabinet changes offered a ray of hope but at the root Liddell knew that little had really been altered, at least as far as he was concerned. It appeared that the possibility of Maxwell Knight’s bloodless coup d’état in the name of negotiated peace had been staved off, at least for the moment, but the threat was still there. The men listed in Liddell’s confidential report to Morton weren’t
the only ones who saw position and advantage in a new and firmer order.

  And now there was this new question to consider, the strange series of events that had led him to a comfortable seat in the broad, metal-clad belly of Cathay. The German Jew internee, Werner Steinmaur, and his bizarre allegations.

  The man’s letter, and its incredible contents, had gone through a complicated game of leapfrog that had seen it shuffled from office to office, eventually reaching Liddell six weeks after it had been sent. Attached to the letter and its translation was a brief, unsigned note on 10 Downing Street stationery informing Liddell that he had full authority to use whatever means necessary to establish Steinmaur’s astonishing claim as quickly as possible.

  According to the letter, Steinmaur, an orderly in a Berlin asylum prior to the war, had once seen a man he assumed to be a German or Austrian doctor in conversation with Reinhard Heydrich. Years later he swore he’d seen the same man, dressed in a British Medical Corps uniform, touring the Huyton internment camp in Liverpool.

  The claim was reiterated several times within the letter and Steinmaur was more than willing to prove his assertion by identifying the doctor, either in person or through photographs. This he would do in exchange for an unconditional release from the Manx camps. Other than that there were no conditions or demands. All he wanted was his freedom.

  At first Liddell assumed that Steinmaur’s incredible assertions were nothing more than the last desperate act of a desperate man but his constant referral to ‘the doctor’ was too much of a coincidence for Liddell to dismiss out of hand. Eventually he decided to follow it up. Now here he was.

  Half an hour into the flight his musings about Steinmaur’s allegations were interrupted by a visitor. A uniformed officer came through the forward door of the passenger compartment and approached the intelligence officer.

  ‘Captain Liddell?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Bit of trouble with the weather, I’m afraid, sir.’

  ‘Oh?’ Liddell glanced out the window. Beyond the end of the wing there was nothing to see but a blank wall of falling snow.