He nodded. ‘One of them. And Marcia did a lot of wheedling, very effective she was too. A number of fifth columnists fell for her charms. Indeed, some of her work was invaluable. Mind you, she was never really liked in the outfit – too self-centred perhaps; but she was highly regarded all the same. One of the top operators. Still, all good things come to an end.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Blotted her copybook – rather badly. In fact, not to put too fine a point on it, she made a monumental cock-up.’ The words were said quietly but Rosy thought she detected a flash of anger in his eyes.
‘What sort of cock-up?’ she enquired carefully.
For a few moments he was silent, and then said, ‘At the time there were some who called Marcia Beasley a traitor, a turncoat. They still do, in fact. I never saw it in that light myself. She was just very, very stupid. Appallingly so. And it cost us dear – a few of us, at any rate.’
Rosy moistened her lips which had suddenly gone bone dry. Traitor? Turncoat? The words hung in front of her – leering, jeering, cavorting accusingly before her eyes. It couldn’t be! Traitors were other people, not those one knew and certainly not one’s aunt. The idea was obscene!
She ground out her cigarette and confronted him furiously. ‘What are you doing coming here and saying these dreadful things? How dare you!’
‘I dare because it has to be said. Because given the situation, it is expedient you should know. And as I have just indicated, I do not myself think there was any deliberate intention or malice in what she did. It was an ignorant blunder that led to, shall we say, unfortunate consequences …’
Rosy gazed at him, absorbing the words, noting the edge in his tone. ‘So … what did she do?’ she asked falteringly. ‘What happened?’
‘What happened was that she fell wildly in love with the man she was sleeping with, i.e. one of her dupes. She got hopelessly tight one night, lowered her guard and in an access of maudlin idiocy, let slip the name of one of our sabotage projects in France. Her bedfellow – who I suspect had already sensed he was being set up – promptly relayed this to his spymasters. They in turn moved smartly and had the saboteurs ambushed before they could reach their target, a big gun emplacement on the Normandy coast.’ Richard Whittington paused, and then added dryly, ‘Fortunately for us the German defence unit proved almost as witless as your babbling aunt. They intercepted the raiding party all right, but in the melee messed up their hand grenades, and by the time they had sorted things out we had managed to escape with only a few casualties and no one dead or captured – which was just as well for Marcia.’
Rosy stared at him, transfixed. ‘My God,’ she whispered, ‘and – and I take it you were one of these raiders, one of the casualties?’
He stretched out the shortened leg with its metal ankle brace. ‘Scars to prove it.’
‘I am so sorry,’ she whispered helplessly.
He shrugged. ‘Not your fault. These things happen – part of the hell of war. And after all, it could have been so much worse.’
There was no answer to that. But she had a question: ‘The project, did it have a name?’
He gave a mirthless laugh. ‘“Operation Coal Scuttle”, of course. An apposite title, don’t you think?’
She nodded. As she had guessed. ‘Yes, that rather fits with something Donald told me, about Marcia shouting the word in her sleep. It must have preyed on her mind.’
‘Oh yes, it preyed all right. Preyed for the rest of the war and afterwards. Of course, it was never proved that the tip-off came from her, but it doesn’t take long to sniff these things out, especially if you’re trained in that sort of thing as we were. Eventually she admitted it to me herself, but by then I’d guessed anyway. She merely confirmed what one had thought for some time. Naturally I was angry – furious – to think she could have been so stupid. But I knew it wasn’t malevolent or deliberate and so didn’t bother to pursue things. No point really. I just made damn sure she was never used again. By that time the war was virtually ended anyway, her job was already surplus to requirements.’
‘But,’ Rosy said slowly, ‘somebody was ready to pursue things, weren’t they? Ready enough to take their revenge years later by killing her and leaving a calling card in the form of the coal scuttle!’
He shook his head. ‘Not exactly.’
‘What do you mean “not exactly”? Presumably that’s what you’ve been telling me: that she was shot in revenge for this bloody awful thing she did! The police did say something about the bullet being from a service revolver.’
‘Oh no, my dear Rosy, that’s not it at all. The headgear was an irrelevance, a sort of additional embroidery it would seem, perhaps the gift of someone with an arcane sense of fun. Who knows? She was killed for something entirely different; something which I fear may have dangerous repercussions. She wasn’t killed for anything she had done in the past but for what she might have done in the present – had she been allowed to live.’
‘What on earth do you mean?’ Rosy exclaimed. ‘First you tell me she was responsible for some shameful action in the war, and now you say she was killed not for that but to prevent her doing something dastardly now, in peacetime … Poor Marcia, clearly a walking time bomb. Goodness, one had no idea!’ The sarcasm of these last words belied the vortex in her mind. Could it be true what the man was saying? What sort of life had Marcia been leading? And in any case, why was he telling her about it … What the hell did he want?’
‘What I mean,’ he continued quietly, ‘is that your aunt held data whose publication would have been more than embarrassing to certain people. She had at her disposal facts that were they to become known to the British authorities would result at best in these people’s imprisonment and at worst a walk to the scaffold. Most likely the latter. It was imperative she be silenced.’
‘Oh yes?’ said Rosy evenly. ‘What data would that be? And how did they know she had it?’
He gave a sardonic smile. ‘As you may have realised, despite her training in the SOE discretion was not your aunt’s forte. Had she kept silent all might have been well, but foolishly she chose to disclose her knowledge – to the gentlemen themselves. She started to blackmail them. Big house in St John’s Wood, extravagant evenings at the Ritz, trips to Deauville … it all had to be paid for. Marcia was no pauper, but hedonism on that level invariably needs the occasional financial boost, and that’s what she proposed giving herself via this lucrative little sideline.’
He passed her a cigarette which she declined, lit one for himself and watched the smoke as it spiralled to the ceiling. Rosy also watched it, thinking, ‘Stupid idiot woman: first a traitor – or as good as – then a blackmailer. My God, Ma and Pa would turn in their graves!’ She felt slightly sick.
‘I suppose,’ she said coldly, ‘it was something sexual – the targets being past conquests, fringe members perhaps of her wartime “clientele” and now fearful of their respectable personas being blown apart.’
He laughed. ‘Nothing so jolly. Besides, I told you, their necks are at stake. Even the prudes draw a line at executions for sexual dalliance. She held a more dangerous secret.’
‘So what was it?’
‘A bomb plot – against Churchill. But like several it was pathetically flawed and never got off the ground. Nevertheless, although clumsy the intention was serious. Those involved were Nazi sympathisers yet British to the core – pathetic hangovers from some of the drawing rooms of the 1930s, and harbouring a collective egotism masquerading as political ideology. As far as we are aware they and their like are now comfortably cushioned within the middle ranks of the British Establishment, fondly assuming that had Germany won the war its unbounded gratitude would have secured them even greater elevation. The very fabric which they were once so ready to destroy is now their cosy eiderdown. Your aunt was unfortunate enough to have learnt their identities and to hold tangible proof of their connection.’
Rosy was silent, not sure what to say – not sure wha
t to believe. But, she reasoned, it had to be true, surely – pointless to invent such a tale; and despite the absurd soubriquet the man was clearly no fool.
‘So where did Marcia get this information?’ she asked. ‘And in any case how do you know about it? What is your concern exactly?’
‘My concern, Rosy, is to get their names and enough evidence to make them swing. Members of my family were in the French Resistance. These same reptiles, or at least a couple of them, were responsible for their capture, torture and death – along with several others. I may have overlooked your aunt’s blunder of 1944 but I have no intention of letting this particular brand of treachery go by. They have survived so far but I’ll find them in the end, whatever the obstacle … or,’ he added softly, ‘the cost.’ His fingers lightly stroked the cane at his side while the grey eyes fixed her with a hard impersonal stare; and once again she felt a chill of fear.
But she was also perplexed. ‘You mentioned “we”. Who are the others? MI5 or something? Or are you still linked with the SOE? Though I thought they were disbanded ages ago.’
He shook his head. ‘Oh no, my days of office are over. I am now what you might call freelance – a much more convenient and flexible position, and one allowing infinite latitude! Suffice it to say that there are still one or two of us – ex-Intelligence – who are rather keen on flushing out our country’s hidden predators, exposing those who have gone to ground and who now thrive under a cloak of national virtue. However, unlike Marcia our aim is not covert blackmail but something much more satisfying: public shame and retribution … or, if necessary, private dispatch. The means are immaterial but one way or other we will destroy them.’ He paused, and then said musingly, ‘You could perhaps liken us to a pack of relentless bloodhounds sniffing the air for putrid spore and driven by a moral imperative.’
‘Crikey!’ thought Rosy; and felt like adding, ‘and led by a limping Jack Russell with beetle brows and a snout for vengeance.’ However, she kept the observation to herself and instead asked again how her aunt had obtained the information.
‘From Flaxman – or Fleichmann, to give him his proper name. He was the spy she fell in love with and blabbed to about the coal-scuttle operation. He slipped back to Germany shortly afterwards and, as you might expect, she never heard from him again … that is, until about four months ago when out of the blue she got a letter from Munich. Apparently he was on his deathbed – literally. Legacy of an old war wound. And according to Marcia he felt creased up with remorse for the hurt and “embarrassment” he had caused her in the past! A case of death focusing the mind, I suppose. Anyway, by way of recompense and as a token of expiation, or whatever you like to call it, he had sent her the German dossier on the Churchill plot conspirators, plus an original coded message which they had sent to their Nazi masters confirming plans for a coup on the Maquis in Caen – the one that caught my cousins.’
‘So what was she supposed to do with the stuff? Take it to the police?’
He gave a wry laugh. ‘Oh, nothing so worthy! Dying lover boy suggested that she kept it as a hedge against the exigencies of old age.’
Rosy gasped. ‘You mean she was supposed to …?’
‘Exactly. He intimated that should she ever feel a pecuniary drought he was sure that those named would be only too ready to accommodate her requests for a little financial bolstering. According to Marcia, his exact words had been, “My dear, screw them for all they’re worth. It’s the least you deserve.” And that, Rosy, is precisely what she did.’
‘So how do you know this?’
‘She told me. Rang me in Paris, gloating about her lucky windfall, the “stick of dynamite” that had fallen into her hands, as she called it. I couldn’t quite follow what she was talking about at first. Sounded excited and befuddled at the same time. On the gin, probably. But after a bit of patient probing I suddenly realised what she was saying. I could hardly believe my luck. We had been after this little clique for years but couldn’t get hold of their real names, let alone tangible evidence, and here was your dear aunt blithely crowing about it down the telephone!’
‘How convenient,’ Rosy observed dryly. ‘But why did she bother to confide in you? Why not just get on with her own agenda, i.e. “screwing them for all they were worth”, as apparently this Fleichmann advised?’
‘It was probably her way of trying to make amends for her part in the coal-scuttle fiasco. Despite all that outward insouciance the thing troubled her badly. So once this data fell into her hands she evidently thought she would make double use of it – boost her bank balance and salve her conscience at the same time. The file and names were to be a kind of peace offering, a propitiatory gesture to old comrades, and I think she was simply eager to let me know what she had in store for us … Ironic, really – same pattern of apology as her lover’s, and not notably useful to either.’
‘No, I suppose not,’ muttered Rosy stonily, eying her glass and wondering how she could give it a discreet refill without replenishing the visitor’s. ‘Anyway, what did you do?’
‘I met her, of course. Came over to London and took her out to lunch – naively assuming she would produce the goods there and then. Not a bit of it!’ He gave a grim laugh. ‘Might have guessed she’d be difficult. Always was. “But darling,” she said, “of course you can have the stuff, but all in good time. A girl’s got to look after number one you know, and I am building up a nice little nest egg – in fact a socking great goose’s egg. There’s just one rather substantial transaction to organise and that’ll be the last, it really will. And then you can have the whole bang shoot. Frankly, good riddance to it; but for the moment I’m not saying a word. You will just have to be patient.” Well naturally I tried to persuade her otherwise but she clammed up entirely. I even tried plying her with some vintage Krug as a kindly inducement, but she waved it aside saying she was off to a matinee and didn’t want to sleep through the first half. So I walked her to the theatre and we parted on the understanding that she would deliver the goods the minute she had completed the “transaction”.’
‘And then she was killed.’
He nodded. ‘And then she was killed.’
There was a brief pause, during which Rosy struggled to arrange her thoughts – or rather, grappled to absorb what she had just heard. The whole thing was outlandish, surreal … and yet, of course, so was Marcia’s death, and that was real enough. Clearly the woman must have done something pretty wild to have provoked such an end, to have elicited such hate. Or fear. Yes, on the face of it blackmail seemed as likely a cause as any.
But even as these thoughts flashed through Rosy’s mind they were overlaid by a much more pressing concern: why was the man disclosing this at all? He still hadn’t said what he wanted of her! She looked up to see him regarding her intently. ‘And so you see, Rosy,’ he said softly, ‘one rather needs your cooperation in the matter.’
She returned his gaze impassively and heard herself saying in a tone far more poised than she felt, ‘Well, Mr Whittington, assuming that what you say is true, I am hardly in a position to cooperate with your plans – whatever they might be. You see, I knew next to nothing about my aunt – not latterly at any rate. We rarely met, and hadn’t much to say to each other when we did. I don’t mean that there was an active antagonism but we had so little in common. Our lives were quite separate.’
‘Yes, I know,’ he said casually.
Rosy was startled. ‘What do you mean you know?’
He shrugged. ‘What I say. She mentioned you when we last met.’
‘Mentioned me! Whatever for?’
‘She thought you might be useful. That is to say, as a convenient recipient for the bomb plot evidence. “My niece is a frightful prig,” she said, “but like her mother, she’s stubbornly discreet. And after all, there’s nothing like belt and braces. I may keep a copy and send her the original as additional security until I’ve completed my negotiations. You can be assured it would reside in a rather stuffy safe house.”�
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Prig, stuffy? Rosy was enraged. But before she had a chance to protest or produce a cogent retort, the man continued: ‘As it happens, I rather assume she did no such thing; she was always a procrastinator. But if by chance you do have the thing somewhere I should be obliged if you would hand it over.’
Despite the quiet conversational tone, Rosy knew she was being given an order. But lack of possession made her both bold and angry. ‘Like hell,’ she snapped. ‘You’re right, I don’t have it. And even if I did it’s not the sort of thing I would give to a total stranger. I mean, you could be anybody!’
Whittington cleared his throat and with a rueful smile said, ‘Ye-es, that’s me, I suppose. Anybody and nobody … an apt description. Your caution is exemplary. And as said, I don’t believe you have it. But’ – and here the tone darkened – ‘it is quite likely that others may, and I strongly advise you to be on the qui vive. Watch your step, change the locks – and get good ones this time, a child could deal with yours! And above all contact me if anything should in fact come into your hands – or if anything unusual occurs that could lead us to them. Any approach, however vague or oblique, and I must hear immediately. It’s imperative. Do you understand?’
Rosy shrugged and nodded. ‘If you say so. But how should I contact you?’
He drew out his wallet and scribbled something on a slip of paper. ‘Any information or suspicions ring this number in Paris. I or a colleague will be there.’ He got up abruptly, gathered hat and stick and limped briskly to the door, where he turned, and with a polite smile bade her goodnight.
‘Just a moment,’ Rosy called, ‘being such a frightful prig, what’s to stop me telephoning the police to report harassment by an intruder and telling them everything you have just told me?’
‘Because, my dear, in your case intelligence precedes priggishness. You are far too bright not to see the implications of such a move.’ He raised his hat and slipped from the room shutting the door quietly behind him. For some seconds Rosy stared at the vacated space, listening for the sound of uneven footfalls along the passage; but there was silence.
A Little Murder Page 12
