Shadows of War

by Michael Ridpath

  ‘I think it’s important,’ said Conrad.

  They sat in silence for a few moments. Conrad didn’t want Anneliese to go, and he sensed she didn’t want to leave. ‘By the way, I don’t have dreadful choice in women,’ he said. ‘I chose you.’

  ‘My point precisely. That was a waste of time.’

  ‘Don’t be silly, Anneliese. The weeks I spent with you in Berlin were the best in my life.’

  A warm smile crept across Anneliese’s lips and she lowered her eyes.

  The café was small and the tables were crammed together. Anneliese and Conrad were squeezed close to each other so that their knees were almost touching.

  Conrad leaned over and kissed her.

  For a moment she stiffened and he thought she was going to push him away, but then she relaxed.

  ‘Conrad, I’m shocked,’ she said as they broke apart. ‘An English gentleman like you in a public place like this!’

  ‘This is wartime,’ Conrad said. ‘People do this kind of thing all the time.’

  ‘You’re telling me. When I go to the hospital in the middle of the night the streets are teeming with prostitutes. It’s worse than Berlin before the Nazis! You English have become sex-obsessed.’

  ‘Sorry,’ said Conrad with mock sincerity. He took out a scrap of paper and scribbled something on it. ‘I’m having dinner with my father this evening, but I’m not staying at Kensington Square tonight. Mama is in Somerset and I can’t face Father alone all weekend. This is my hotel. It’s in Bloomsbury.’

  Anneliese took the piece of paper.

  ‘Are you going to the hospital now?’ Conrad asked.

  Anneliese nodded.

  ‘What time do you finish?’

  ‘It’s not too bad tonight. I’ll probably get away about two.’

  ‘Come and see me then. We can discuss politics. Art. Music. Like we used to.’

  ‘I remember what we used to do.’

  Conrad shrugged and smiled.

  ‘At your hotel?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘At two in the morning! They won’t let me in.’

  ‘Of course they will. A respectable nurse like you.’

  Anneliese glanced at the piece of paper and then at Conrad. ‘You have spent far too long up in Scotland with no female company.’

  ‘That’s definitely true.’

  Anneliese folded the paper and put it in her bag. ‘No, I won’t come and see you in your hotel, Conrad. But I will write and tell you how I get on with Constance, and we can talk again next time you get leave. Now I must go to work.’

  Conrad watched her go. Oh, well. It had been worth a try.

  Pall Mall, London

  It was several months since Conrad had last seen his father, and Lord Oakford was looking well, certainly much better than he had in the immediate aftermath of Millie’s death. Since Conrad wasn’t staying at Kensington Square, they were dining at his father’s club. In the bar they had discussed the shambles of Conrad’s unit’s manoeuvres around Britain and the North Sea during the Norwegian campaign. Oakford seemed despondent about Norway and the conduct of the war in general.

  Conrad was surprised how well they were getting on; perhaps he should have stayed at Kensington Square after all.

  They went through to a corner of the crowded dining room, and as their soup came, Conrad broached the subject of Lord Copthorne.

  ‘Yes, it was a tragedy,’ said Oakford. ‘Hundreds of people have died on the roads in the blackout. Things should get better with these longer days, thank God.’

  ‘Did you know him well?’

  ‘Not very well, no,’ said Oakford. ‘Only through Henry Alston – they were good friends. Nice enough chap, but his political views were a bit simplistic, I thought. I went to his funeral. Very sad.’

  ‘Do you know his wife, Polly?’

  ‘No. Met her for the first time at the funeral. She’s quite a bit younger than him. Far too young to be a widow; but with the war there will be many more like her. Why do you ask?’

  ‘I understand that she thinks Alston might have run him down.’

  Oakford spluttered into his soup. ‘Now that is absolutely ridiculous! Who told you that?’

  ‘Apparently her husband and Alston had some kind of disagreement.’

  ‘That doesn’t mean Henry ran him down.’ Oakford laughed; the idea seemed genuinely absurd to him. ‘As I said, poor Freddie’s political views were a bit simplistic for my taste, and probably for Henry’s as well. He had that ignorant anti-Semitism that so irritates me. I don’t have to tell you about that. If they did have a bust-up it might have been over Freddie’s extremism.’

  ‘Veronica and I are seeing Polly Copthorne tomorrow,’ Conrad said. ‘Veronica is an old friend of hers.’ Conrad had just telephoned Veronica, and although he hadn’t told her why he wanted to see Polly, she had agreed to introduce him. She had sounded enthusiastic, in fact.

  ‘To ask her if Alston killed Freddie?’ Oakford said.

  ‘To ask her why she thinks he might have done.’

  ‘Waste of time,’ said Oakford. ‘Complete waste of time. And I didn’t realize you still saw Veronica.’

  ‘I don’t,’ said Conrad simply.

  Conrad was pretty sure that his father didn’t know anything useful about Lord Copthorne’s death, and so he let it drop. ‘Can you imagine Henry Alston as Prime Minister one day?’

  Oakford thought. ‘Yes, perhaps one day. Maybe after the war. As you know I have a high regard for him: he’s brilliant.’

  ‘But not sooner?’

  ‘He has only been an MP for five years. If Chamberlain falls, which is becoming more of a possibility every day now Norway is such a disaster, then I wouldn’t be surprised if Alston found himself in the Cabinet.’

  ‘And you?’ asked Conrad. It hadn’t occurred to him before that his father might return to government.

  ‘I would serve if asked,’ said Oakford. ‘It would depend who was PM. It would be a good opportunity to make my views about peace known.’

  ‘Does Henry Alston know the Duke of Windsor?’ Conrad asked.

  ‘Hold on a moment, Conrad,’ said Oakford, frowning. ‘Are you trying to create some conspiracy here? I thought Van warned you off all that.’

  ‘He did, it’s true,’ Conrad admitted.

  ‘Then why do you ask me these things?’

  ‘I wonder if in some way they are connected to Millie’s death.’

  ‘That’s outrageous!’ said Lord Oakford, his eyes alight. ‘Don’t pull Millie into your paranoid fantasies. Yes, Alston and I both met the Duke of Windsor when he came to London in February. And yes, we did talk about ways of bringing this war to an end. Which is a perfectly honourable goal. And I resent your implication that it isn’t!’

  Conrad wanted so badly to argue with his father. But he knew he wouldn’t get anywhere, and nor would he get any useful information from him. If Anneliese was correct and there was something fishy about Lord Copthorne’s death and about Henry Alston’s political ambitions, his father would deny all knowledge of it.

  So he bit his tongue. ‘Sorry, Father,’ he said. ‘How are Charlotte and Matthew?’

  Bloomsbury, London

  Conrad was awakened by a gentle knocking at his door. He turned on the bedside light and checked his watch. Half past two.

  It took him a moment to realize who it was.

  He smiled as he hopped out of bed and padded over to the door in his pyjamas. He opened it.

  There was Anneliese, in her nurse’s uniform, her fist raised to knock again.

  ‘Hello,’ he said, grinning.

  ‘Shut up,’ she said. She pushed him into the room and shut the door behind them. She reached up and kissed him, her tongue darting around his mouth. He felt her hands on his chest under his pyjamas. She pushed him back towards the bed, and then, with a sudden movement, ripped open his pyjama jacket, causing buttons to scatter across the room.

  She pushed him back on to the bed and t
ugged at the cord holding up his trousers. He was already hard as she pulled them down.

  ‘Anneliese—’

  ‘Shh...’

  She strode across him still in her uniform and kissed him again. He clumsily began to unbutton her dress.

  She stood back from the bed, and slipped it off. In a couple of moments more she was naked.

  She was beautiful. So beautiful. He wanted her more than he had ever wanted her before.

  She lowered herself on to him and began to move, slowly for a few seconds and then with an increasing urgency. He responded, until with a final upwards thrust he pushed her high off the bed.

  ‘Hello,’ she said a moment later, and kissed his nose.

  36

  Bloomsbury, London, 5 May

  Veronica picked Conrad up from his hotel in a Rolls-Royce. She was wearing the uniform of the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry, the FANYs. Conrad hadn’t seen her for over a year. Tall and slim, her red hair stuffed under her cap, she looked good in her khaki uniform.

  Anneliese had slipped out of Conrad’s hotel room at dawn, leaving him a little groggy but in better spirits than he had been for a long time.

  ‘What is this, Veronica?’

  ‘It’s my Aunt Peggy’s. She donated it to the war effort. I drive a sweet old general around London in it.’

  ‘Very nice,’ said Conrad. ‘And why the uniform on a Sunday?’

  ‘People will ask fewer questions. Hop in the back and pull your hat down over your face. You look far too young for me to be driving you around in this.’

  It was next to impossible to get petrol these days, unless you knew how. Obviously, Veronica knew how. Conrad wasn’t going to complain; being driven in Veronica’s aunt’s Rolls along empty roads to the Copthornes’ house in Buckinghamshire was infinitely preferable to struggling with the wartime train timetable again. He didn’t have much time before he had to return to his unit, and Polly Copthorne was his best chance to find out what had happened to Millie.

  As they drove, Veronica chattered on about her life during the war. How she loved driving old generals but she was looking for something more exciting. How Linaro was a beast. What their mutual friends from their brief marriage were doing – people Conrad could scarcely remember and certainly didn’t care about. They had always been Veronica’s friends really. He responded briefly to her own enquiries about his life.

  ‘How’s that little Jewess you found in Germany?’ she asked brightly.

  ‘“That little Jewess” is finding life difficult,’ Conrad said, Veronica’s casual condescension puncturing his good mood. ‘It turns out it isn’t much fun being half-Jewish in Nazi Germany. Or being in solitary confinement in a concentration camp. Even here her father can’t find a job despite being a qualified doctor.’

  Veronica was silent in the front seat. ‘Sorry, Conrad,’ she said eventually. ‘The war hasn’t really touched us properly yet, has it? One forgets about the people who have already had to suffer Hitler for years.’

  Conrad felt slightly guilty; he should feel grateful that Veronica had dropped everything to chauffeur him up to see her old friend. He was grateful.

  They drove on in silence for several minutes until they approached the village in the Chilterns where the Copthornes lived. Their house could be seen from a distance. It was a dull nineteenth-century pile, but it overlooked a pretty valley of woods, hedges and lush green pasture. The Copthornes had come by their title recently, through trade, like the Oakfords: merchant banking in the Oakfords’ case, brewing in the case of the Copthornes. Not like Veronica’s family, whose father, the twelfth Baron Blakeborough, stomped over the same fields as his ancestors had for hundreds of years. There was a difference: you couldn’t be brought up in the English aristocracy without being aware of it, and knowing that everyone else was aware of it too.

  ‘I came here after Freddie’s funeral,’ Veronica said. ‘And I used to join Polly here for house parties when Freddie was wooing her – that was when his father was still alive. Polly was dotty about him then. In fact, I really think she was always dotty about him.’

  Conrad thought he could detect a hint of wistfulness in Veronica’s description of a happy marriage.

  ‘My father said Freddie’s politics were extreme,’ Conrad said.

  ‘Not exactly extreme,’ said Veronica. ‘A lot of people used to think like he did. It’s just others have changed their minds and he didn’t.’

  ‘Like you?’ Conrad well remembered Veronica’s excitement at the new, modern, well-ordered Germany.

  ‘Yes, like me. I used to tease you about being a Red. Well, you were right about Germany, I will grant you that. I knew things were wrong when the Nazis invaded Czechoslovakia last year. Then they invaded Poland and we went to war with them. And look what they have done to people like your poor German friend. You were right all along: Hitler is a beast, and we have to stop him. I’m trying to do my bit, however pathetic that might be. But I envy you being a man, Conrad. You can actually go and fight.’

  ‘But that’s not what Freddie thought?’

  ‘We’ll have to ask Polly.’

  Polly Copthorne answered the large front door herself, threw her arms around Veronica and burst into tears. Conrad stepped back.

  After a few seconds, Polly stood back. ‘I’m sorry, Mr de Lancey. I’m still quite emotional since Freddie died. And Veronica is such an old friend. I am surprised myself how pleased I am to see her.’

  Conrad recognized Polly from a couple of the dances he had attended when he was in pursuit of Veronica. She was a small woman with a delicate round face, not much in the way of chin, but dark, clever eyes. Her face looked younger and more innocent than Veronica’s, but two straight lines had been scoured downwards from her eyes towards the edges of her lips. It was a face that was being changed by grief.

  ‘I remember you,’ said Polly, and held out her hand for Conrad to shake. She led them into a drawing room, which was surprisingly prettily furnished given the bland austerity of the house’s façade. Polly asked a maid for tea and then talked about her worry of what to do with the house. She would like it to be a convalescent home or a hospital for wounded soldiers. The problem was there were just not that many of them.

  ‘That may change soon,’ said Conrad.

  Polly glanced at him. ‘Norway?’

  ‘That. And France. The Germans will attack France some time, I am sure of it.’

  ‘So tell me Mr de Lancey—’

  ‘Conrad.’

  ‘Conrad. Veronica says you want to talk to me about poor Freddie’s death?’

  ‘I do,’ said Conrad. ‘But let me tell you first about my sister, Millie, who also died last November.’ Veronica had suggested that this would be the best way to win Polly’s trust, and it worked. Conrad was vague about which Germans exactly Millie had met in Holland, but he did speak about Henry Alston and Marjorie Copthorne’s friend Constance.

  ‘I’m so sorry to hear all that,’ Polly said with the sympathy of someone with a fresh understanding of grief. ‘So you think this Constance might have killed your sister?’

  Conrad shrugged. ‘That’s what the Dutch police think. And Constance and Henry Alston are lovers.’

  ‘Lovers? I didn’t know Henry had a mistress! I wouldn’t have thought he was the type.’

  ‘I’m sure he kept her very quiet.’

  Polly put down her tea cup and stared hard at Conrad, assessing him. Conrad waited. People usually trusted him because he usually told the truth, and he was certainly telling the truth now.

  ‘My husband and Henry Alston knew each other for several years,’ she said eventually. ‘Ever since Henry became an MP. They were very good friends, especially in the last year or so. They shared the same views on the war: they both wanted to stop it at any cost. I met Henry a few times, but he gave me the creeps. It wasn’t his scars; there was just something about him. And Freddie and I disagreed about the war. I think if we are fighting the Germans we should jolly well bea
t them, and that Hitler is an awful monster.’

  ‘There’s something to be said for that,’ said Conrad.

  ‘I know Freddie and Henry used to see your father sometimes. Freddie had a lot of time for him, and for Henry. Said they were both brilliant men and just what the country needed. Freddie, love him though I did, poor darling, wasn’t brilliant, and he knew it.

  ‘Then, just before he died, Freddie became worried about something. Dreadfully worried. I don’t know what it was, but I know it had something to do with Henry Alston, some sort of scheme he had which upset Freddie. He almost told me but then he changed his mind. I tried to push him on it, but he said I was better off not knowing. That worried me in itself.’

  ‘Have you any idea what this scheme was?’

  ‘No, none, except that it troubled him deeply.’

  ‘My father says that perhaps Freddie was too extreme for Alston and that is why they fell out?’

  Polly Copthorne laughed. ‘It was always Henry who had the ideas and Freddie who followed. Freddie never told me what those ideas were, he thought I would disapprove, but they excited him. Until they didn’t. And then he was run over.’

  ‘You think Alston might have run him down deliberately?’

  ‘Yes. I do. He was meeting Henry that night at Erskine’s. Henry left a few minutes before him. Freddie was run over in the lane before he got to St James’s. Why would anyone be driving fast enough to kill someone in a dead-end side street in the dark unless they wanted to do just that? Kill them.’

  ‘Did you tell the police?’

  ‘Oh, yes. They were very interested. They had questioned Henry once, and were going to question him again. Then it all went quiet. I asked the policeman who had interviewed me why, and he said they had evidence a driver unknown to Freddie had knocked him down and just drove off. The policeman wouldn’t say what that evidence was. He didn’t look happy about it; he looked sorry for me.’