by Mark Ellis
A small, impeccably dressed man was sitting with Miss Edgar when the policemen entered her office. Bridges nodded to the man. “This is Mr Herman Zarb, sir, the First Secretary at the Embassy. He and I spoke last week when you were otherwise engaged.”
Zarb rose and shook hands. “Pleased to meet you, Chief Inspector Merlin. This is all so terrible. Beyond understanding really. I hope everyone is being helpful. We must catch the criminals responsible.”
“Everyone’s been most accommodating, sir.” He decided to pass over Norton’s failings for the moment.
“Have you made any progress?”
“A little, but it’s slow.”
“If there’s anything Miss Edgar or I can do, please let me know.” He picked up his gloves. “I think we’ve covered everything, haven’t we, Philippa? I’ll be on my way. Good luck with your enquiries, gentlemen.”
Zarb retrieved his overcoat and trilby from a stand in the corner and departed.
“We’re keen, Miss Edgar, to have another word with Miss Donovan. Is she back at work?”
“I’m sorry, she’s not here. The state she was in on Friday I did tell her that she was free to take today off if she hadn’t fully recovered over the weekend. I think she has taken me at my word.” A siren began to wail nearby. “Oh, dear. There it goes again. I’d better get everyone down to the basement.” Miss Edgar reached down to a drawer in her desk and removed a brown box from which she pulled out a gas mask. “Will you be joining us, gentlemen?”
“No, thanks. We need to get on. Do you think Miss Donovan will be at her own lodgings or staying with her brother?”
Bridges leaned across to help Miss Edgar, who was struggling to close the box – it had an awkward latch mechanism. “Thank you, Sergeant. I should think she’s with her brother. That’s where she said she was going when she went off on Friday. The address is here in my address book.”
As Bridges took down the details, Miss Edgar grabbed her mask and bustled out into the corridor. “Come on everyone! Down to the basement please. Hurry up. Let’s have no stragglers.”
It was raining heavily outside and the policemen paused on the steps of the residence to watch the massed umbrellas race towards the shelters. A solitary plane moved in and out of the clouds above them.
“It’s off on the left side of the Edgware Road, Sergeant, shortly after the road changes to Maida Vale.” Merlin gazed blankly out at the sodden streets. “Zarb didn’t seem unduly perturbed about how we are carrying out our investigations, did he?”
“No he didn’t. Did you think he would, sir?”
“I didn’t tell you before, but part of the bollocking I got from the A.C. concerned complaints from the US Embassy – supposedly the absent Ambassador himself. Apparently he told the Foreign Office that we were being heavy-handed and undiplomatic. But then Mr Zarb, the senior diplomat actually here on the spot, couldn’t have been more charming to us just now.”
“I’ll bet you can put the complaints down to Norton.”
“Quite so. In any event the A.C. wants us to have a soothing word with the chap at the Foreign Office who relayed the complaint.”
“Something to look forward to then.”
As they reached their destination, the all-clear sounded and the pavements rapidly filled with people. They pulled up outside one of a long row of Victorian terraced houses. The Donovans’ house appeared to have been painted recently and stood out brightly in the otherwise shabby street.
A small, round-faced woman wearing a white apron opened the door. “Can I help you?”
Merlin displayed his police badge and asked for Kathleen Donovan.
The little woman’s face flushed and her hands fluttered in the air. She had a decidedly broad Irish accent. “Oh, dear. The police. Kathleen’s here alright. I’ll let her know you’ll be wanting to see her. Come on into the front room, if you please.”
The policemen followed her into a small sitting room to the right of the hallway. The scent of pipe tobacco mingled with the appetising smells from a meat stew cooking somewhere at the back of the house.
Mrs Cormac Donovan flitted busily around the room with a feather duster. When she was satisfied she motioned for the policemen to take their seats and went to the bottom of the stairs. “Kathleen. Can you come down? It’s the police to see you.”
She arrived looking apprehensive, wearing a cream dress which highlighted the rich colour of her hair.
“Kathleen looks a little better but she’s still not right. Cormac and I told her she should have another day’s rest and that’s what she’s doing. If it causes problems at the Embassy, so be it. The girl needs to recover her health after the dreadful – ”
“Yes alright, Marie. There’s no need to go on.” Kathleen smoothed her dress and perched nervously on the edge of an armchair.
Merlin declined the offer of tea and indicated that they required privacy with Kathleen.
“I see. Yes. I’ll be in the kitchen if you need me.”
Merlin waited till the door had closed. “Sorry to bother you again. There were one or two questions we forgot to ask you last time.”
The girl tossed her hair in what Bridges thought was a rather beguiling manner. “I hope it’s not anything more about the night I went out with Johnny.”
“No, I haven’t got any more questions about that except, that is, I wondered if any memories of the visitor had surfaced.”
She shivered as if a strong draught had hit her. “Nothing.”
“Very well. Joan Harris then. We know you occasionally did things together. Did you visit her lodgings?”
The interview proceeded slowly with answers being extracted like teeth. Bridges realised that Merlin’s previous untypically rough handling of the girl had left its mark. Gradually, however, and together the policemen made progress. Kathleen revealed that she had visited Joan several times at her lodgings, but never at night and never in a taxi. They’d done the normal sorts of things young girls in London did on their days off – the parks, the pictures, tea and cakes and so on. Joan had been very secretive about her social life otherwise, but Kathleen knew that she had been taken out to nice places like The Ritz and the Café de Paris. Naturally Kathleen had been interested in hearing more about these visits but Joan had clammed up about them as soon as any questions were asked.
“She was odd really – one minute she’d mention these places with excitement, and then she’d seem depressed about them. She was quite – oh, what’s the word? – cynical sometimes. She used to tell me that men weren’t all they were cracked up to be and I should watch out for myself.”
Joan had never revealed who had accompanied her to these places, and Kathleen certainly couldn’t think that one of the men might be Johnny Morgan, nor indeed anyone else at the residence or Embassy.
Notwithstanding, Merlin had listed a few names. Mention of Arthur Norton provoked a sharp intake of breath and the policemen leaned closer to her. She smelt of roses. Merlin assured her that she would not get into trouble by talking to them about her superiors. Her vivid green eyes appraised Merlin carefully. “I’ll trust you then. Mr Norton is a vile man. He’s always smarming up to the girls in the office. He thinks he’s God’s gift, and if you’re passing him in a corridor or in an office, his hands always seem to…” She squirmed in her chair, “to be everywhere.”
“And he would have been like that with Joan.”
“Of course. He did it to anyone in a skirt and she was probably the prettiest. I would have assumed it even if she hadn’t mentioned it to me.
“Did she…”
They were interrupted by the sound of voices in the hallway then the door opened to reveal a tall, middle-aged man with the same blazing red thatch of hair as Kathleen. The man had to bend to avoid the door lintel as he entered. He wore a long, brown jacket, and the bottom half of his trousers and his boots were caked in reddish-brown mud. Attached to his right hand was a little girl of seven or eight. “Who have we here then, Katy my sweet?”
The child looked up in confusion. “I don’t know, Daddy.”
“It’s the police, Cormac. They’ve come to ask me a few more questions.”
The man patted the little girl on the back and sent her off towards the kitchen. “Cormac Donovan.” He held out his hand. “Pleased to meet you. I hope you haven’t been upsetting Kathleen any more. She was in a terrible state when she got here on Friday after you had questioned her.”
“It’s alright. The two officers are only doing their job and I’m not in the least upset today.”
“Glad to hear it, my dear.”
Donovan’s wife appeared, shaking her finger at him and complaining about his failure to remove his filthy boots. She sent him off down the corridor.
Merlin asked for a few words with the couple.
“Let me just go and give young Katy her stew and I’ll bring Cormac back with me.”
“You won’t be needing me again, will you?” Kathleen rose to her feet.
“Not today, thank you. If we have any more questions will you be back at work tomorrow?”
“I’ll be there.” The scent of roses lingered after she disappeared behind the door.
Merlin walked over to the fireplace and examined the framed photographs lined up on the mantelpiece. An unsmiling, grey-haired woman dressed in black lace sat on a bench outside a whitewashed cottage, presumably somewhere in the depths of Ireland. Another photograph showed an old man with a shock of white hair dressed in a dark suit and white shirt without a tie, smoking a pipe in front of what seemed to be the same cottage.
“My parents, Chief Inspector.” Cormac Donovan smiled as he came through the door. “At home in County Kerry a few years gone. My father’s dead now, I’m afraid, but my mother’s still going strong. Do you have parents living?”
“No. My father died some time ago. He was always an unlucky man. He was killed by a bomb in a Zeppelin raid in 1917. Not many died like that. He was so upset when I went off to the front. Thought I was bound to cop it and probably I should have, but I came home without a scratch and he got clobbered by a bomb down by the West India Docks. My mother never got over it and died a few years after.”
“Sorry to hear that. My parents were a little luckier, though they had a hard time. They had a smallholding which they worked all their lives until my father died. Struggled to bring up a family of seven. But my father lived to see seventy and my mother’s just turned sixty.”
“Is Kathleen the youngest of your parents’ children?”
Cormac Donovan pulled a pipe out of one of his trouser pockets, tobacco and matches from the other and sat down. He pressed the tobacco firmly into the pipe-bowl and lit up. “Yes. Kathleen is the youngest child by several years. Bit of a surprise to us all she was. She had a difficult birth as well. But everything worked out fine in the end.”
Mrs Donovan reappeared. “Kathleen’s keeping an eye on Katy but I hope you won’t need us for too long, as Katy’s got to get back to school.” She wiped her hands on her apron and smiled nervously at her husband as she balanced herself on the arm of his chair.
“Only a few questions. Mr Donovan, I believe that you have some involvement in the building trade?”
Donovan took a long pull on his pipe and poked his chin in the air. He had a strong, weather-beaten face with large, grey-green eyes and a prominent, broad nose. “That’s a very grand phrase, isn’t it, ‘some involvement in the building trade’? I’m a carpenter, and I work on building sites. Occasionally if there’s no carpentry work on site, I turn my hand to other general labour.” Donovan held his arms in front of him and flexed his muscles. “I’m a strong man, Chief Inspector, and strength has its uses. I’ll turn my hand to anything to keep my family as comfortable as I can, and I do that alright, don’t I Marie?”
“Oh, yes. Cormac’s a good provider. A hard-working and good man, there’s no one can say otherwise.”
“How long have you been living in London?”
“It would be about five years this April, wouldn’t it, Cormac?”
Donovan nodded.
“And Kathleen has been in London since – ?”
“She came over in the summer. May or June it was. She’d seen the advertisement for a job working for Mr Kennedy in an Irish paper, applied for it and came for an interview. She succeeded at the interview and was offered the job.” Mrs Donovan glanced at her husband who patted her hand.
“They say old Joe Kennedy has an eye for the pretty Irish lasses, so that’s probably why she got it.”
“Oh, Cormac. She’s a very bright girl!”
“She is that too, but I don’t think her looks did her any harm.”
Merlin’s stomach rumbled as the smell of the lunchtime stew briefly broke through the pipe fumes. “How long did Miss Donovan stay with you until she moved to her own lodgings?”
“She stayed about a month. I told her that it would be much better if she stayed with us. A beautiful young girl like her on her own in London. Anything could happen. Look what did happen to her friend Joan. There are a lot of evil, godless men in this place and that’s the truth. I’ve told her that Marie and I would be more than happy to have her here now.”
“Is she going to move in with you?”
“She’s got a mind of her own and we can’t force her. She says she’ll think about it.”
“Did either of you ever meet Johnny Morgan?”
“No, Cormac and I never did.”
“Did Kathleen tell you anything about him?”
“Only that he was a Welsh boy and that she liked him.”
“What did she tell you, when she came to see you last week?” Donovan removed his pipe and placed it in an ashtray at the foot of his chair. He leaned forward and held a large, gnarled hand up to his wife. “Kathleen arrived here from work on Wednesday night. She was very pale and upset. She told us about her friend Joan’s death. She also told us that she had had a little too much to drink on Tuesday, with a friend, because she was so upset. She said she felt like a rest and did we mind her staying with us. Of course we were happy to help her.”
“She didn’t say any more about the drinking episode, who she was drinking with or what they did?”
“She didn’t give us any detail and we didn’t press her for it either. She looked all in. We packed her off to bed with a hot drink and a hot water bottle. She rested on Thursday and went back to work on Friday. On Friday, as you know, she learned about Johnny’s death, and you interviewed her. By the time she came back to us on Friday afternoon, she was in a bad way again. Marie put her straight to bed.”
“Did she tell you that Johnny Morgan was the friend she’d been drinking with?”
“No, she didn’t say anything about him except that he had been murdered.”
Merlin nodded at his Sergeant. “Thank you both. Sorry to disturb your lunch.”
Donovan clambered to his feet and gave Merlin a firm handshake. Out in the car, Merlin looked at his hand. A faint brownish-red stain covered his palm.
Ignoring the complaints of the secretaries in the outer office, Norton pushed through the door and strode into the room.
Zarb was at his desk sipping Coca-Cola from the bottle, a half-eaten ham sandwich in front of him.
“Nice lunch, Herman? What’s the matter? Can’t afford a glass?”
“What do you want, Arthur? If you need to see me, make an appointment like everyone else.”
“I need to see you now. I’ve got vital information for the Ambassador and I’ve tried to contact him but can’t get through.”
Zarb slowly finished his sandwich. He turned in his chair to take in the view over Grosvenor Square, wiped his mouth with a napkin and swivelled back to look at his visitor. “It was indeed a nice lunch, until you barged in.” He looked his visitor up and down. “Seems like you’ve had a good one too – several Martinis, I’d guess? You should bear in mind what that Hollywood friend of the Ambassador’s – Cary Grant or Errol Flynn – I can’t remember which,
said – ‘a good Martini is like a woman’s breast: one is too few and three are too many’.”
“Shut up, Herman.” He pulled a white handkerchief out of his pocket and blew his nose loudly, before falling heavily into the chair facing Zarb.
“I have important stuff to pass on and I can’t raise him on the phone.”
Zarb’s thin lips creased into a smile. “If it’s serious, you’d better tell me and I’ll make sure the Ambassador gets to hear it.”
“Come on, Mr Secretary, you know that the Ambassador likes me to plough my own furrow. He gets his official information from you and your colleagues and his unofficial stuff from me. You know he doesn’t like mixing them up.”
Zarb leaned forwards, steepling his hands in front of his face. “I don’t think there’s much I can do to help you then.”
Norton snorted angrily and a stale smell lingered in the air. “Look, tell me where the Ambassador is, will you? I rang Palm Beach. They said he wasn’t there and refused to tell me where he was. Same thing when I rang Hyannisport. Said they’d let him know that I needed to talk to him urgently but I’ve heard nothing.”
“Perhaps he’s keeping some pleasant female company and doesn’t want to be disturbed for a few days. Anyway, Arthur, if you’ve got something confidential to tell him, you shouldn’t be discussing the matter over an open telephone line. Our friends in MI5 are all over the telephones at the moment. I’d use some other safer form of communication if it’s something you don’t want the British to know about.” “Depends which British.”
“Pardon?”
Norton shrugged.
“And as for the Germans,” Zarb continued, “our people and my friends in Whitehall tell me that there are spy-cells everywhere. Best to work on the assumption that the Post Office is not secure in either direction, I’d say.”
Norton shifted impatiently in his seat.
“Of course, Arthur, you could put a message into cipher and we could wire it over to the Ambassador. I’m pretty sure the cipher hasn’t been broken yet, but of course there are few absolute certainties in the world anymore.”
