Angels Dining at the Ritz

by John Gardner

  ‘And the locals,’ said Molly who had just joined them. ‘I had a drink in the public bar tonight and the men’re scandalized at the way — I quote — the women’re hurling themselves at the bloody Yanks. One of them said the girls round here are all wearing these new American knickers — one yank and they’re off.’

  Tommy sniggered obligingly and then Molly asked if he knew anything about a bomb disposal team coming in the morning.

  ‘Didn’t I tell you, Moll? I’ve asked them to put these newfangled metal detectors over the ground, find the shotgun maybe.’

  After dinner Suzie went up to his room and they discussed going through the batch of Paula’s letters to Max.

  ‘Notice you didn’t mention them to la Palmer,’ Suzie a shade spiteful.

  Tommy grinned, baring his teeth, ‘Not a complete fool, heart.’

  Outside it started to rain. Heavily with some thunder in the distance.

  Suzie stood up while Tommy still leafed through papers. She wandered over to the window and moved aside an inch of the heavy blackout material — cost a fortune to keep the light in these days. Peering out she said, ‘This has set in, it’s going to be horrible out there tomorrow.’

  ‘Good job we’re staying in doing the letters then, heart.’

  ‘I’m going to bed then,’ and she was out of the door before he could object, didn’t feel like being pumped by Tommy tonight, ignored the strangled cry from behind the door and headed for her room, then felt guilty about it.

  It was still raining in the morning.

  Chapter Ten

  Golly woke in the dark and heard the rain and thought today is my day, and shivered with excitement under the bedclothes, hugging himself. He was always aware of his broken face, too aware of it, but only occasionally was he aware of his broken mind. Today he knew he was not as other men, his brain on fire, and was happy because it would be his difference that would help him get out of this place: his predatory instincts and his cunning. And Lavender’s cunning.

  Then he wondered if he had dreamed the visitations and knew he hadn’t. For two nights someone really had unlocked his cubicle door, come in and squatted beside the bed, whispering instructions. It was not like the old days when a woman had told him who to kill with the wire. This was a man and he whispered very close to Golly’s ear, sometimes snarling, told him he must time things right.

  He didn’t reason that this had to be one of the night staff, but somehow thought it could be Mr Edgehill, possibly Mr Colls, but Golly could never have explained how that thought came into his head. He remembered the advice though. It’s a matter of timing: got to be dark by the time they decide to get you out and into hospital, take you to Addenbrook’s in Cambridge, take you in an ambulance. ‘Don’t worry, Golly, your auntie’s going to have help from inside Saxon Hall, never do it otherwise.’

  Start it gently, start it early and work up to the real thing in the evening, just getting dark. That was the advice and he had the little cake of soap, bit bigger than a sixpenny piece, and the Player’s Navy Cut cigarette stowed away.

  Mr Christopher Bolt offered him Post Toasties at breakfast.

  ‘Not hungry, Mr Bolt.’

  ‘Come on, Golly, you’ve got to eat breakfast.’

  ‘I’m off colour, Mr Bolt. Be all right later.’

  ‘What colour would that be then, Golly? Sky-blue-pink or black as a badger’s whatsit?’

  They made him try some Post Toasties with milk and sugar. At the thought, Golly found he really felt sick. The thought of it all did it, and he ran and threw up on the polished floor. They made him clean it up himself and he was put on floor polishing for the rest of the morning up until the stand easy — coffee and biscuits — at eleven.

  Then he wondered if it was taking only half of his medicine that had brought back the voices. When he had first come to Saxon Hall Dr Cornish said the tablets they gave him would stop any voices coming into his head.

  Wondered if it was that doing it now. He liked Dr Cornish: he’d miss him.

  *

  Molly had appointed herself chief knocker-up. She banged on all the team’s doors at half seven unless you put a do not disturb sign out. This morning she dragged Suzie up from a vivid dream.

  Suzie dreamed regularly of her dead father, always different but somehow refreshingly she consistently met him in the same place, a celestial golden summer corn or wheat field.

  Whenever she met him in dreams, since his death, her father had grumbles — eternal rest was actually eternally being busy, wearing him out, always being chivvied by beings Suzie presumed were angels. This time he missed her mum. ‘I do wish your mum’d get a move on and join me, Suzie. I miss her so and we get no timetable here to tell us when to expect a loved one. Not till the last minute anyway.’

  As she washed and dressed, so the dream shook Suzie into turmoil. You expected to be together with your beloved after death, but Mum had married the Galloping Major after Daddy had been killed, so what would happen? Would she be reunited with Daddy, or would she wait in some limbo until the Galloping Major arrived and would they be reunited and where would that leave Daddy? Also worrying was that he never mentioned her sister in these walks through the golden summer cornfields that were nearly recognizable as the cornfields of her youth, ones that she would stroll through in the summers of her adolescence.

  It was all confusing and worrying.

  Tommy was already in the dining room when she got down. ‘Want a few minutes over at the charnel house before we start on the letters,’ he said. ‘You game?’

  ‘I’m always game.’

  ‘Weren’t game last night, heart.’ Eyebrow cocked, quizzical look.

  That made her feel guilty and she mumbled some rubbish about not feeling up to much last night.

  Tommy grunted and they ate the watery kippers in silence until Molly, trim, shining and ready to take on all comers, arrived at the table. She talked of the minutiae of the investigation, results of the blood samples that had been sent to forensics in Hendon, the number of fingerprints that had been lifted from Knights Cottage that didn’t match those of the three family members or the staff.

  Prints had been taken from the trio of corpses, and they had tracked down Mrs Axton and daughter Juliet and taken their prints. Peter Prime, their fingerprints man, had concluded there were other odd traces in the house and also a persistent number of one other, unidentified, set of prints. These had been made recently and were, Prime would bet his pension, the killer’s prints. ‘Been all over the house,’ he said, ‘wandering around, peering in cupboards, peeping in drawers. Probably had plenty of time after he’d killed them. Had the run of the place.’

  ‘You think we’re going to get the metal detectors today, Chief? Find the weapon?’ Molly asked.

  ‘Not if it goes on hissing down like this,’ bite on his toast and marmalade. ‘Don’t suppose they’ll use the things in the pouring rain.’ Grin, ‘Should imagine sparks fly out of their bums if they use them in a drizzle, let alone a deluge. Funny stuff electricity.’

  Then he told Molly to stand by because Max’s uncle Freddy was coming over tomorrow to formally identify the bodies.

  ‘That’ll be nice,’ Molly said and Tommy gave her a swift grin and said that on Saturday they’d all be going to the dance at the aerodrome, ‘Best bib and tucker.’

  ‘Haven’t brought me bib, or me tucker,’ Molly crowed and even Suzie had to smile.

  Brian drove them to Knights Cottage, and when he switched off the car’s engine the background music became the sibilance of the rain as it drenched the leaves of nearby trees. They ran, almost hand in hand to the banded oak door while Molly followed up with the keys, there to stand guard over the house while Tommy did whatever he was determined to do.

  Suzie asked what they were looking for, standing in the hall, where the flagstones still held traces of Max Ascoli’s body, the smears of blood and some small traces of mud, the front door half open and Molly just inside in her grey tre
nch coat, hands jammed in the pockets.

  ‘Don’t really know, heart. Read this article about an American murder cop who prowls around a crime scene, just mentally sniffing the air, sees what comes into his head. I’m probably too straightforward a bloke to do it: mumbo-jumbo stuff, but thought I’d try.’

  ‘No harm, Tommy.’

  ‘What I thought…’ and he began pacing the hall, then climbed the stairs, muttering to himself, much as he had done when they were last there — ‘Jenny is woken by the shot, heart — tell me if this makes sense.’

  For a good half-hour Tommy roamed. He stood for a long time just looking at the open master-bedroom door, then went inside and stared at the painting, the battered coastline, the fishing-boats on the harsh stone beach, upright and tipped, the sea behind them grey and cold, the pewter sky and the storm clouds.

  Suzie could still catch the iron scent of blood in this place, and felt the oppressive tingle of the horrors that had happened here, also she sensed that Tommy was getting something from just gazing around, standing in this place that had seen the last violent end to an entire happy family.

  But she was wrong. ‘Only thing I feel here is that whoever did this was fucking mad,’ Tommy finally said. ‘Who’d put a gun to the head of a sleeping eight-year-old?’

  From a couple of hundred yards away came the hullabaloo of four Wright Cyclone engines.

  *

  The new upper turret gunner was called Sol Schwartz and he had thrown up in the head off the crew room. Nobody could blame him because he had inevitably heard what had happened to little Tim Ruby.

  Today they were going to bomb the big submarine base at St-Nazaire, attacking high, around four hours from start to finish. Wild Angel came off the concrete uncomfortably close to the wood at the end of the runway, lifted into the air with everything straining and Ricky LeClare crossing himself as the big airplane scrabbled for height, dropped a wing, corrected, then disappeared into the low cloud.

  It was a difficult and dangerous climb out. They had thought the whole thing would be scrubbed because of the heavy rain, but the Met Officer said they would be above the weather by 6,000 feet and the front would end by the time they reached the Channel. They tried to believe this as the airplane juddered, wallowed and scratched at the insubstantial sky, a thick blur of cloud and rain lashing against the plexiglas of the windshields and turrets, the rain making runnels, pouring down in little rivers and roads, lakes and ponds, whipped by the wind. Willie Wilders, in the area they called the radio room, was hanging on to the handle of the escape hatch like grim death and praying to God to let them come through this without the terrible sudden lurch revealing another Fort, climbing beside them, followed by the rip and splinter of the collision they all feared: the bang and the huge ball of flame consuming them.

  At just over 6,000 feet they burst from the solid dark-grey wall of mist and rain into the glare of sunlight and the bowl of blue that reached above to infinity. In front of them the first three Forts that had taken off just before them. From his position in the tail, Peter Peliandros watched and smiled, as Fertile Myrtle breasted through the murk below, followed by Lana May, about a minute later and too close.

  Ricky opened the taps and the Wright Cyclones roared as he caught up and slid into position behind Jamaica?, Purty Baby and Iza Comin’. Within fifteen minutes they were in their defensive formation and nosing across the Channel, clear far below in the distance the submarine pens at St-Nazaire they would attack from 25,000 feet.

  ‘Those other ships ahead, Rick?’ Crawfoot asked, squinting, peering into the peppered air over the target.

  ‘No, brother, that’s their ack-ack.’ It was like a solid wall in front of them.

  ‘Jesus,’ cursed Bob Crawfoot. ‘You mean we gotta fly through that?’

  ‘If we want to bomb the target that’s what we have to do.’

  ‘Jesus,’ said Crawfoot, once more with feeling.

  *

  For the best part of three hours they sat in Tommy Livermore’s room, Tommy and Suzie, facing each other across the table, the letters spread out in front of them, sorted into chronological order, letters from P, certain now that they were from Paula Palmer to Max Ascoli — Maxie — from October 1939 until last week, the final one just before death had brought a full stop to a romance started in the twenties, dropped brutally then picked up again in the first falter of war.

  They read pieces to each other, passed the letters to and fro, making notes as they went.

  ‘Don’t really believe it, heart.’

  ‘Difficult,’ Suzie shrugged.

  ‘They read like letters written with the express purpose of building a story.’ Tommy screwed up his face as if in some agony, and went on to say that from the outset they were asked to believe that Max had dropped P for Paula like proverbial bricks when the invisible lover became exceptionally visible. ‘She’s supposed to have slunk off but remained true to old Maxie. Lived in the shadows, had his baby, went on through life just living for the day when he relented. A day he had foretold. A likely story. What, fourteen-odd years of it? Can’t see the Paula Palmer we saw yesterday sitting meekly bringing up baby, watching Max marry, seeing that Thetis had days out with Daddy?’ He shook his head slowly.

  ‘We’re going to need some handwriting analysis.’

  ‘I’ve asked Molly to send someone over to King’s Lynn. Ask Paula nicely.’ Pause, sigh, ‘Mind you, heart, I’ve no doubt that our Paula wrote these letters, and if by any chance it’s true I’d like to know where the others went.’

  There were huge gaps in the correspondence: things referred to in some letters never went to their inevitable conclusion, and in many cases P referred back to things she was supposed to have written in earlier letters now missing from the collection.

  ‘So, she put these together by design, for some reason?’

  ‘Why not? If she spent all that time waiting for him she could’ve built up an explosive head of steam. What if that telephone call was at three or four in the morning like Thetis thought? What if P had set the whole thing in motion: seen to it that someone was in Taddmarten already? Set it all up, sent whoever over with her letters to leave in Knights Cottage after he’d finished them off?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Why what?’

  ‘Why leave the letters there?’

  ‘To give us the bare bones of her tale. How she’d waited year after year while he became the great barrister he was destined to become, standing aside while he married the American girl…’

  Suzie didn’t see it, shook her head, remarked on the various purple passages, like the long, highly adolescent poem in which she put herself and Max together from the beginning of time:

  We were together in the cave,

  Wrapped in skins;

  And again at Hastings For our sins;

  When William came, and

  Down the ages,

  Century by century,

  Clasped in each other’s

  Minds and bodies until now.

  ‘I mean, how sentimental can you get,’ Tommy rolled his eyes. ‘It’s pure girls’ school Lower Fifth. I don’t see the woman we spoke to yesterday writing that kind of drivel — certainly not the woman who paints those pictures.’

  ‘The burning bush’s quite good.’

  ‘Ah, you mean…’ He sifted through the letters, finding the right one and reading: “‘And when I was naked you hadn’t forgotten what you said all those years ago, my red hair, you smiled and, ‘the burning bush,’ you said.’” He pulled a face. ‘Yes, heart, it rings true but why would she tell him what he’d said? He knew what he’d said. It’s scene writing. She’d never repeat it to him. Why?’

  ‘And what if we find these are genuine?’ Suzie smirked at him.

  Softly, almost under his breath, he sang, ‘a woman is two-faced: a worrisome thing that leaves you to sing… On the whole, heart, we should regard these letters as a red herring.’

  Blues in the Night, Suzie
thought.

  ‘Until it’s proved otherwise.’

  Tommy nodded his assent.

  *

  They flew through the wall of flack, shells exploding all around them, not one ship touched, Ricky hanging on to the control yoke, Crawfoot ready to take over if something happened to him, Wild Angel bucking and groaning all through as they turned west to fly directly over the submarine pens, Will Truebond in control now as he hunched over the Norden sight and the bombs screeched down to the thick concrete and steel below.

  The bomb doors didn’t close when Ricky flicked the lever, so Bob Crawfoot went back and cranked them manually as they turned north again, going out over the sea and back to England and the base. When the bomb doors were open they produced extra drag you didn’t need when you wanted to get the ship out of there in a hurry. They had just crossed the French coast, heading out to sea, almost free of the flack, when they were hit.

  The 88 mm shell exploded a few feet from the starboard wing root, showering the starboard inner engine with shrapnel, ripping at the fuselage and starting a fire in the radio room. Mercifully Willie Wilders was unharmed, grabbed a fire extinguisher and started to tackle the fire beginning to burn holes in the fuselage.

  At the same moment another shell exploded somewhere near the far end of the catwalk running back towards the tail, pieces of hot metal punctured the fuselage and exploded one of the oxygen bottles close to the waist gunners’ positions.

  LeClare and Crawfoot now wrestled with the controls, fighting to keep the aircraft level as it fell out of formation, losing height, spluttering and stuttering, showing signs of mortality.

  Wilders was now throwing burning debris out, through the hole burned in the fuselage within the radio room. He stamped out the remaining fire and came out on to the cat-walk to find that the explosion of the oxygen bottle had resulted in a wall of flame just behind the waist gunner positions.