At the Dark Hour

by John Wilson

  They had almost finished filling the grave with soil and it heaped up into a mound. Under there lay Jenny. There was an uncertain silence as the sound of metal chopping into earth ended. Wreaths were laid. Simon began to sob again.

  – Are you all right?

  Julia asked softly. Simon nodded and wiped his face with his hand. They turned and began to walk back to the cars, Julia still holding onto him. He realised that, unwittingly, Jenny had saved his life, and he vowed to her that he would try and help her step-mother.

  ****

  Julia helped Simon into the third Rolls and climbed in after him. The doors closed with a reassuring clunk and the cortege headed back down the Avenue retracing the route to Eaton Square. Simon looked awkwardly over his shoulder until Jenny’s grave was out of sight, and then turned and watched the two black cars ahead of them as they moved slowly back to the main road.

  As the cars left through the North Gate of the cemetery the man in the top hat whom Simon had noticed earlier emerged from behind the statue of an angel and walked unhurriedly towards the grave. He leaned down slightly to read the inscription on the grave-stone and ran an elegant forefinger delicately along the gold letters before picking up the wreath that Pemberton had placed on the grave, bringing it up to his face and sniffing at it carefully. Then he straightened up and stood for a while deep in thought. And after a few minutes Roland Blytheway began to walk briskly towards the South Gate.

  Chapter Seventy

  (Saturday 15th March 1941)

  Adam pulled himself up to a sitting position in his luxurious bed, groaning heavily as he did so. He plumped up the downy white pillows behind his head, picked up again Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller and began again to read its shockingly lubricious prose. He had known of the book’s existence as Orwell had written kindly of it, but as it had been banned and only smuggled copies had entered the country, he had never expected to have the opportunity to read it. There was a knock at the door and Caldwell entered with a tray of tea and toast. Adam looked at his watch and wondered when Blytheway would return.

  He had not been invited to attend Jenny’s funeral, but then again he had been in no fit state to do so, even surreptitiously. Blytheway had talked him out of attempting it. And so he had persuaded Blytheway to go in his place. Roly had not thought much of the idea.

  – It would be bad enough if I was to be spotted hovering round the statuary – but think how it would look if you were caught scurrying about!

  – But it would be worth the risk.

  – That’s precisely my point! – there was a hint of exasperation in Roly’s voice – nothing can be gained from this caper.

  – Please, Roly!

  – Oh, very well. The postponement of your trial means that I have time on my hands. I shall go in disguise.

  This conversation had taken place on the evening before the funeral. Although the trial had been postponed – and despite what Blytheway said – he seemed as busy with other work as he had always been and would often leave home before Adam awoke, not returning until seven or eight in the evening. However, he always found time to give Adam a potted summary of the day’s developments and to tell him more, as he discovered them, of the events of the 8th March. There had been no mention of the Café de Paris in the press but it seemed to be common knowledge around the Temple, as was Pemberton’s tragic loss. There was, said Roly, a groundswell of sympathy for him, and Adam realised, belatedly, that Blytheway’s anticipation of this was probably another reason why he wanted to get him away from the Temple for a while.

  There had been another development, however. There was growing chatter to the effect that Pemberton had returned to the bottle. There had been stories of him staggering as he walked down Inner Temple Lane. He had been seen in El Vino’s for the first time in almost twenty years, drinking alone. Whilst his initial, and continuing, indisposition was due to bereavement it appeared that his heavy drinking was not helping. When Jones, at Blytheway’s bidding, had telephoned McKechnie’s solicitor to suggest an adjournment of the upcoming trial, this had been readily accepted. Mrs McKechnie’s solicitors were also quick to agree to this.

  By the end of the week Adam was beginning to feel a little better and was becoming bored of looking at the counterpane. Blytheway had given him Tropic of Cancer to read.

  – The Renshaws gave it to me as a “thank you” present whilst we were out at the Dorchester after their triumph in the literary cause célèbre. I haven’t had time to read it yet but they told me it was decidedly louche!

  And so, on the Saturday morning of the funeral, Adam was reading a banned book in a first-floor bedroom in Roly’s house in Bedford Square. There was a knock at the door and Blytheway entered.

  – What do you think?

  He gave a twirl. He was wearing a dark frock coat with a black waistcoat underneath. The linings were made of purple silk and it had been tailored to accentuate his waist. Under his wing collar he wore an oyster-coloured cravat and on his head was a tall black silk top-hat.

  – Roly! I thought you said that you were going in disguise! You’ll stand out like a sore thumb!

  – Context is everything, dear boy. Context. I shall be invisible. I still think this is a complete waste of time. I shall see you later and report.

  He swished out of the room saying “imbecile de course” in a stage whisper. And he had been gone now for almost four hours. Adam finished off his toast, put the tray to one side and returned to the novel. Before he had read more than a page the door swung open and Blytheway entered with a flourish, his top hat in one hand and a bunch of daffodils and bluebells in the other.

  – Flowers for the invalid!

  He began arranging them in a vase, topping it up with water from the large porcelain carafe in the corner of the room.

  – How’s the Tropic of Cancer coming along?

  – I can see why it was banned. All those rude words! I’m glad no one’s looking over my shoulder.

  – Then I simply must read it as well.

  – Tell me about the funeral.

  – Well, as I suspected, there isn’t much to tell. I got close enough to the chapel during the service to hear that Pemberton had chosen Pergolesi. He went up in my estimations with that.

  – Were you seen?

  – Yes. I’m afraid I was seen. But I wasn’t noticed.

  Blytheway proceeded to describe the funeral and burial to Adam exhibiting once again the peculiarity of his “photographic” memory. He was able to identify to Adam everyone who was there, what they were wearing (some inevitable sartorial criticism), what they were carrying and where they were standing around the grave. He described how Agnes, Sebastian and Stephen had been kept separate from Julia, and how Julia had walked at the back with a young man with a crutch. He described the cars as they arrived and as they left – the sun glinting on the black paintwork – and who was in which car.

  – It was a lovely morning. You could almost feel spring in the air. That’s where I got your flowers.

  – Is that it?

  – Well, I told you that I thought it would be a wild goose chase. And largely it was. But there were two points of interest.

  – Go on.

  – Well, first, it was the way Pemberton was walking. There was a tendency to splay out his right leg – not with every step but quite frequently. And he stumbled more than once. I’d seen him walk this way before in his drunken days after Joan. I wanted to be sure, however, and when the cars had all gone I went and had a sniff at his wreath. There was a distinct whiff of whisky on it – as though he had been drinking that morning and spilt some on his hands. He also looked thinner than before.

  – And what else?

  – There seemed to be a surprising closeness between Julia and the boy with the crutch. She put her arm around him and it stayed there, from the grave all the way back to the car, and she helped him.

  Adam was taken aback.

  – Do you think there is something going on there? />
  – No, sweetheart. At least not in the way I think you mean. I think the young man is Simon Jenkins, Jenny’s sweetheart, and that Julia was trying to comfort him. I was too far away to make out whether this was genuine but when I attempted to get a little closer the boy looked straight at me so I slipped out of sight.

  – Why would it not be genuine?

  – I really don’t know, Adam. On the one hand there can be little doubt but that Jenny confided in him and wrote copious letters to him. She probably also spoke to him about her evidence. On the other hand it may well be no more than guilt.

  – Guilt?

  – Yes. You see I’ve found out why Pemberton hit Julia that night. It seems that when she discovered that it was Jenny rather than, as she had thought, her own daughter who had died, she began laughing hysterically in Pemberton’s face. I think I can understand now why he reacted as he did. And why he is continuing with the petition.

  – I had no idea.

  And if Julia is counting on help from Simon Jenkins, I suspect he will be less likely to come to her aid if he finds out about that.

  Chapter Seventy-one

  (Monday 17th March 1941)

  Jones arrived to work early. He had taken the previous Thursday and Friday off to spend at home with Mrs Jones. But after four days discussing the ration book he was glad to be back at work once again. Sonia had barely taken her coat off when he walked into his office. Beyond the frosted glass his room seemed to be as he had left it.

  – Mr Bateman called on Friday to make an appointment. He’ll be here at ten o’clock.

  Jones sighed. He had been expecting this.

  – Thank you, Sonia.

  And without more words he opened the door and went over to his desk. Sonia had laid out Thursday’s and Friday’s correspondence, opened and date-stamped, together with his diary noting that morning’s appointment. The Novak file was where he had left it next to the telephone. He picked it up and opened it. All his loose-leaf handwritten notes fell onto the floor and he scrabbled around to pick them up. He hadn’t got round to archiving the file. He leafed through his notes and the memories of that strange week came alive again. It was, he thought, the most surreal few days he had ever experienced in a court room. Falling, he supposed, had acquitted himself adequately in the end. But Blytheway had been a revelation. He thought back on the many put-downs he had heard repeated by his colleagues and tried to square these with the performance he had seen. He couldn’t. Was it envy, malice or prejudice? It could not possibly touch upon his abilities. In thirty years he had seen nothing like it. Blytheway, although distant and somewhat frivolous on a superficial level, had always been civil – at least to those upon whom he could have unleashed his powerful scorn. He had reserved this for the powerful, like Preston. And when Blytheway had approached him after the trial and asked whether he would be prepared to instruct him on a pro bono basis to defend Katya Hoffer he was so flattered that he accepted without a second thought.

  He shuffled the papers and put them back in the file. Then he wrote a note to Sonia asking that she file them in such a way that he could retrieve them quickly when he needed them. There was little new in last week’s correspondence. The dramatic things had happened before he took his unprecedented days off.

  Everyone knew by Sunday morning that the Café de Paris had been hit. Late on Sunday evening Blytheway had called him at home. How he got the number Jones did not know. Jenny Pemberton was dead and Adam was seriously ill. The trial would not be starting the following day. Jones had felt a great rush of relief followed immediately by shame at the fact that the death of an innocent young woman could provoke such feelings in him. He had mapped out long nights of work that now could be postponed. It took a little while for the implications for the trial itself to sink in. Blytheway had told him that Jenny had signed the statement prepared for her but it had not been witnessed.

  Later that week Blytheway had told him to contact McKechnie’s lawyers and ask for a postponement of that trial as well. All the lawyers were in agreement that this had to be so. After this had been achieved he dictated a letter to Bateman telling him that the trial was being put off by reason of the indisposition of Pemberton and Falling. Blytheway’s call had come on the Wednesday morning. The cancellation of the Pemberton trial meant that he had been able to catch up with his paperwork. The postponement of the McKechnie trial, probably until after Easter, meant that he was ahead of himself. And so he decided to take a couple of days off, forgetting briefly about the tyranny of the ration book.

  It was a relief to be back in his office. He put thoughts of minuscule quantities of bacon, cheese and beef out of his mind and called Sonia into his room. Sitting behind his desk he began dictating his responses to the correspondence as she took a diligent note. He glanced at his watch. It was five to ten. He called a halt to his dictation and handed the Novak file to her with the instructions for it, and asked her to bring in Bateman when he arrived.

  He pulled out the McKechnie file and was leafing through it when Sonia knocked on his door and ushered in Bateman.

  – What’s wrong with Pemberton?

  – What do you mean?

  – Has he been injured? I wanted this thing over.

  – No. He hasn’t been injured. But that’s not the point.

  – Why did you agree to it being put off without talking to me first then?

  – He’s just buried his daughter for Christ’s sake!

  – I should have been consulted.

  – Did you know that she had died?

  – Yes I did. Everyone in the office knows. But why should that stop him from doing his job? Everyone else has to!

  Any lingering sympathy Jones had for Bateman dwindled away at this point.

  – You heartless bastard!

  He regretted it almost as he said it, but it had the desired effect.

  – I’m sorry, mate. It’s just I’m under a lot of strain with all of this.

  Jones softened.

  – I shouldn’t have said that. I’m sorry.

  – Don’t get me wrong. I’m really sorry for the poor gal. But I don’t know where I am. I’ve arranged a week off work.

  – I can write a letter to your boss explaining everything.

  Bateman laughed rather hollowly.

  – That’s a good one! My boss is McKechnie. He’s taken a week off as well.

  – Then he should be sympathetic.

  – Look. When is this thing is going to happen?

  – I don’t know exactly. But as soon as I know I’ll make sure you know.

  – Thanks, mate.

  – The other thing is that, even if we had wanted to go ahead we couldn’t have.

  – Why not?

  – As I said in my letter Mr Falling is ill again as well. He was fire-watching that night and had another attack.

  – I didn’t take that in.

  – As soon as I know about the new date I will tell you.

  – Thanks, mate.

  Bateman got up to leave and the two shook hands. Jones ushered him out of the office and left it to Sonia to show him back down into Fetter Lane. He rather liked the man even though he was convinced that he was not telling the truth.

  He went back to considering the remains of the correspondence, ready to start dictating again. Sonia re-entered carrying the morning’s post, still held together by an elastic band. He slipped off the elastic and shuffled his way quickly through the unopened letters. It was the usual Monday stuff: expensive envelopes, some bearing the identity of the sending solicitor with his name and address neatly typed onto them. Then he came to something out of the ordinary. Near the bottom of the pile there was a smaller envelope – Basildon Bond – and his name and address had been written in a rather poorly formed blue ink. He put it down in front of him and shuffled the remainder of the pile into a tidy stack before placing them on the corner of his desk. Then he picked up his paper-knife and motioned to Sonia to leave his room.

  T
here were two pale blue rectangles of writing paper, folded in the middle. He slipped them out of their envelope and spread them out before him. Written in the same ink as the envelope, his correspondent had not used joined-up writing; instead vowel and consonant appeared to have been painstakingly formed. He turned to the final sheet to find the identity of the sender and felt a surge of alarm tighten across his chest. It was from Betty Sharples. With everything else that had been happening over the past week or so he had not given her a single thought. He had sub-poenaed her to attend at the Royal Courts of Justice, Strand, on Tuesday 11th March. Whatever else he had succeeded in doing after Blytheway’s late-Sunday-night telephone call, he had failed to stand her down.

  Dear Mr Jones,

  This is a letter from me Mrs Betty Sharples. Do you remember you came to see me about making a statement? I am writing because I am very upset at the way I have been treated.

  You got a court order against me to make me come to court this Tuesday to give evidence in Mr Falling’s case.

  I came to court which wasn’t easy and I wore my best dress but when I got there nobody knew what was going on.

  I had to ask a lot of people before somebody could tell me that the case was not happening! I was so upset I was crying. So I went home again.

  You nor nobody else has told me what is going on!

  Well I hope it is over now. I would of gone into the dock for Mr Falling on Tuesday but I do not think I could go back to that place again.

  I am sorry for writing to you because I know you are a solicitor. But I had to let somebody know that I was very upset.