Old Cases New Colours (A Dudley Green Investigation) (The Dudley Sisters Saga Book 9)

by Madalyn Morgan

  Ena dropped her gaze. She wondered whether to tell Sir John about Nick Miller. Nick had given her a great deal of help. He’d provided names, dates and places. She chewed her lip thoughtfully and came to the conclusion that, if she was going to tell Sir John about O’Shaughnessy, she needed to tell him about Nick. She looked up at the clerk. His pen was poised.

  ‘Nick Miller, the owner of the Minchin Club in Brighton, an ex-spy, born in Berlin of Austrian parents, told me that Crowther was the wife of his old university lecturer. According to Nick, Professor Martin Krueger had been a high-ranking military man. He was a lot older than Helen. Nick told me Crowther, or Frau Krueger, had an affair with one of her husband’s students and bore him a child. Her husband had been a Nazi supporter and close confidant of Hitler’s so, fearing for her life, when she found she was pregnant she disappeared. When the child was born, she gave it up for adoption which, Nick said, she had regretted ever since. It was after that Frau Krueger came to England as the spy, Helen Crowther.’

  ‘Could O’Shaughnessy have been the father of her child?’

  ‘No. Nick Miller would have said if he was. Anyway, twenty years later Crowther learned that her illegitimate daughter was also in England.’

  ‘And by then she was the Personal Assistant to the Director of MI5.’ Sir John blew out his cheeks and shook his head. ‘And you believed this, Nick Miller—?’

  ‘Yes. Her daughter’s name was Freida Voight.’

  Sir John’s eyes widened. ‘The double agent your husband handled at MI5?’

  ‘The same,’ Ena said, doing her level best to keep her voice even. How did Sir John know Henry had been Frieda’s handler? Aware that he was waiting for her to continue, she said, ‘Frieda Voight committed suicide and Helen Crowther blamed Henry. She later convinced herself that Henry had killed Frieda.’

  ‘So, in her mind your husband had got away with murder.’

  ‘Which is why Crowther went to inordinate lengths to make her own suicide look as if Henry had killed her. She almost got away with it too.’

  A thoughtful silence followed. Then Sir John asked, ‘Do you think O’Shaughnessy was involved in Helen Crowther’s death?’

  ‘Undoubtedly. They weren’t related, but there had been a strong bond between them since 1936.’

  ‘Love?’

  ‘Yes, for the fatherland,’ she spat in disgust.

  ‘His cover as an Irish actor was a good one.’

  Ena inhaled deeply, swallowing the emotion that threatened to erupt in the form of tears. ‘I’d like to see O’Shaughnessy swing for killing my associate Artie Mallory’s friend, Hugh Middleton. Hugh’s only crime was being in the wrong place at the wrong time. My friend Sid Parfitt and Mac Robinson too. I don’t suppose we’ll ever know to what extent O’Shaughnessy was involved with their deaths, but Nick Miller told me he was.’

  Sir John shrugged his shoulders. ‘I can’t promise you we’ll get him for the deaths of Parfitt or Robinson, but we’ll get him for the murder of Hugh Middleton and the attempted murder of Mrs Robinson. As for treason, because of his German passport there’s nothing we can do about that. He swore on oath that the passport in the name of O’Shaughnessy was given to him in Berlin before he came to England, the one in the name of Crowther was given to him by Helen Crowther when he arrived in England – both of them forgeries, but he insisted the German passport was authentic. The Sussex Police had it examined and agreed. O’Shaughnessy may be a murderer, a liar and cheat, but in the eyes of the law he owed the King of England no allegiance. He said he was an honourable man, a patriot who was loyal to his country as McKenzie Robinson was to his.’

  ‘How dare he liken himself to Mac Robinson, the director or MI5. Good God, the man has some nerve. Ena told Sir John Hillary everything she knew about Shaun O’Shaughnessy. She remembered every detail about their first meeting in the house of Helen Crowther, when he appeared out of the blue. A planned meeting by him and Crowther that she now knew was a set up to find out what Ena knew about the murder of her colleague, Sidney Parfitt – and if Sid had left anything that would incriminate either of them.

  ‘At the time of his death, Sid was about to share with me the network of spies and agents he’d unearthed. At Crowther’s house, while she was out of the room, O’Shaughnessy tried to intimidate me. He began to flirt with me.’ Ena shuddered at the memory. ‘As I said, he was intimidating and asked me about someone named Collins. I told him nothing. Later, however, when Crowther and I were at the station before I boarded the train to London, I warned her about him. What a fool I was.’

  Sir John changed the subject quickly. ‘How did you meet Helen Crowther?’

  ‘I met her after McKenzie Robinson’s funeral. I knew of her before then because Henry worked for Mac Robinson. Crowther had been Mac’s private secretary before becoming his personal assistant. She worked for Mac for decades. Everyone at MI5 trusted her completely. Her cover was rock solid. She had lived a lie for so long that no one suspected her of being a spy. She even befriended Mac’s wife, Eve,’ Ena said with distaste. ‘She confided in me that she and Mac had been having an affair. She said she had loved him from the day she started working for him and was heartbroken when he died.’ Ena looked at Sir John, her eyes sparkling with loathing. ‘McKenzie Robinson didn’t die from a stroke, as the newspapers reported, Sir John. Mac was murdered. At the time they thought by Frieda Voight, but it was his lover, Helen Crowther who murdered him.’

  Sir John Hillary pushed himself out of his chair, strolled over to the window and looked out. ‘What I don’t understand is, O’Shaughnessy got away with treason because he was a German citizen with a German passport. Why didn’t Helen Crowther do the same? Why kill herself?’

  ‘She wouldn’t have needed her German passport. She was so high up the food chain if she’d have wanted to get out, Berlin would have got her out. No, Sir John, Helen Crowther didn’t kill herself to escape the noose. She was consumed by hate. She took her own life and made it look as if my husband had killed her because she believed he had killed the only person she had ever loved, her daughter.’

  ‘Revenge!’ Sir John sighed. ‘I’ve read the case. Even so,’ he looked perplexed. ‘She would have known that there’s nothing personal between a foreign agent and their handler.’

  ‘Frieda Voight, Crowther’s daughter, jumped from a church roof. Crowther convinced herself that my husband had killed her.’ Tears stung the back of Ena’s eyes and she swallowed to rid the sadness she felt. ‘I’m sorry, I knew Frieda Voight and I feel partly to blame for her death.’

  ‘Could you elaborate?’

  ‘We had worked together in the war. We worked for an engineering company in the Midlands, making components for a secret communications facility…’

  Sir John looked sideways at Mr Martin and after the slightest shake of the head, his clerk stopped writing.

  ‘I exposed her as a spy in ‘45, Thirteen years later I exposed her again. The night she committed suicide she came to my home and ever since then I’ve felt that I could have done more to help her.’

  ‘Good God. Is any of this on record?’

  ‘I don’t think so. I saw the woman thirteen years after she’d been caught as a spy. I thought she was dead. I went to her funeral, but her death was a cover.’

  ‘The best!’

  ‘It was until I saw her in Oxford Street. But to answer your question, no, there is no record. I searched the Home Office and MI5’s archives trying to find her. I even went up to the engineering factory where we were employed. There was no record of her anywhere. Every trace of her had been removed. It was as if she had never existed.’

  Sir John picked up a four-page document from his desk. ‘I’ve thoroughly read your account of Shaun O’Shaughnessy, but I must tell you, however, that there are holes in it. There are times and dates missing.’

  ‘When I knew O’Shaughnessy, I worked for the Home Office. I was head of the Cold Case department and as such, I signed the Official Secret
s Act. Some things I was not, nor am, at liberty to disclose. Not even under oath at the Old Bailey.’

  ‘O’Shaughnessy’s lawyer will take advantage of that.’

  ‘If he does, there is nothing I can do about it. I’ll tell the truth, but I will not break the Official Secrets Act.’

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Ena slammed the office door shut and marched across the room to her desk. She took a quarter bottle of whisky and two glasses from the bottom drawer, poured three fingers of scotch into each glass and motioned to Artie that one was for him.

  ‘It was that bad, was it?’

  ‘Worse,’ Ena spat.

  Artie left his seat, pulled out the chair on the other side of Ena’s desk, sat down and took a drink of his scotch. ‘What happened?’

  ‘As you know, Sir John Hillary, QC has called me as a prosecution witness in the case against O’Shaughnessy.’

  ‘Which is why you had a meeting with him today.’

  ‘Yes, but I’m called tomorrow. It doesn’t give me much time to prepare.’ Ena took a swig of her whisky. ‘And, Sir John Hillary said O’Shaughnessy’s brief will be hard on me when he cross-examines me, so I’ll need to be on the ball. Damn!’ Ena said again and poured herself another shot of whisky. ‘How has it been here?’

  ‘In between taking calls, which there have been many,’ Artie said, jumping up and retrieving Ena’s diary from his desk and placing it in front of her, ‘I’ve been checking the files, making sure dates are correct and putting them in alphabetical order.’ He grinned. ‘A bit like old times.’ He knocked his whisky back. ‘But without Sid.’

  Ena poured him another drink. ‘You’re a star, Artie Mallory, I don’t know what I’d do without you?’

  Artie took drink of his scotch. ‘I’m sure you don’t,’ he said, with a touch of sarcasm in his voice, ‘but you’ll soon find out.’

  Ena lifted her head from the diary. ‘What do you mean? You can’t leave. Not with all the work we’ve got on.’

  ‘Ena, I need a job with a salary. I’ve loved working with you for the last couple of weeks, but I need to pay the rent and the bills.’ Artie looked around the room. ‘I’ve even got used to being here again, but I need to eat.’

  Ena laughed, ‘I thought you did eat, on me. Sorry, that was a stupid thing to say.’ But seriously, Artie, I need you. With Doreen Hardy’s case, the art theft and the death of George’s father, which by the way was murder, I was going to offer you a job.’

  Artie almost choked on his drink. ‘You were?’

  ‘Of course. I was hoping you’d do the surveillance work on the Hardy case anyway, but now I’ve been called into the Old Bailey tomorrow, I need you to be a full-time investigator.’ Ena leaned back in her chair and smiled cheekily at her old colleague.

  ‘With a proper salary?’

  ‘And a payslip, tax, National Insurance stamp – everything done properly. I’ll ring the accountant the first opportunity I get and tell him to put the new investigator at Dudley Green on the books. What do you say?’

  Artie squealed with delight. ‘Yes! I say yes!’

  Ena topped up their glasses. ‘Here’s to the new investigating agent at Dudley Green Associates.’

  Artie raised his glass. ‘Thank you, Ena.’

  Ena lifted her glass and clinked his. ‘Artie, you’ve earned it.’

  ***

  Ena was beginning to feel hungry. Sir John Hillary’s clerk, Mr Martin, had shown her into the waiting room at nine o’clock that morning and she had been twiddling her thumbs for more than three hours. She looked around the room. It was typical of most waiting rooms, chairs with high backs and hard seats, small windows that were too high to let in much light and plain painted walls – in this case, light green. Ena stood up and stretched. Three black and white framed prints hung on the walls. She looked at the nearest one. It was by William Hogarth. ‘He gets around,’ she said aloud. The first print was called Beer Street. Ena turned up her nose at the drunken men and women – fat presumably from consuming too much beer. The next was called Gin Street. ‘Ugh!’ Her eyes fixed on a baby falling through the air upside down, dropped by its drunken mother. She didn’t look at the third print, but walked over to the window.

  From the little she could see of the sky, it was azure blue with candyfloss clouds. White clouds were unusual in London. Standing on tiptoe she could see the bell tower and four spires of The Church Of The Holy Sepulchre. The Sepulchre-without-Newgate, as it was called locally. The Sepulchre always reminded her of the nursery rhyme, Oranges and Lemons. ‘When will you pay me said the bells of Old Bailey.’

  Ena had walked past the church that morning on her way to the Central Criminal Courts. Eerie to think the Old Bailey had been built on the site of the old Newgate Prison. Parallel to the court, the road followed the line of the city’s wall and beneath it, it’s said, runs the Fleet River. Ena was fascinated by history and decided to buy a book about the City of London.

  The room was hot and airless. She tried to force open the window, but it wouldn’t budge. She flopped down on the chair and exhaled with frustration. She was beginning to feel irritable. The porcelain face of the big clock on the wall above the fireplace said five minutes to one. She had now been sitting in the claustrophobic little waiting room for four hours.

  She was humming Oranges and Lemons when the door opened. ‘Sir John sends his apologies, Mrs Green. They have broken for lunch, so perhaps you’d like to get something to eat?’

  ‘Thank you. It’s fresh air I need more than anything. And a telephone.’

  ‘There’s a bank of telephones in the main entrance, but at this time of day, they are usually occupied. If they are, turn left out of the main entrance and cross the road. You’ll see several telephone boxes on the corner of Old Bailey and Limeburner Lane.’ Sir John’s clerk held the door open for her. ‘The case will resume at two o’clock,’ he said as she passed.

  There was one free telephone in the main entrance. As she headed towards it a man pushed past her. ‘Press!’ he shouted and took the telephone. With his head in the booth, the man lit a cigarette before lifting the receiver. Ena stood at the side of the booth and strained her ears hoping to hear what the reporter had to say about the O’Shaughnessy case that morning, but she was unable to hear above the frantic reports of half a dozen journalists shouting at the same time.

  Ena made her way out of the building. She needed a telephone. She needed to know if Artie had any success at Wandsworth Prison where Mrs Hardy’s husband was doing time for armed robbery.

  She crossed Old Bailey and as she neared Limeburner Lane saw two red telephone boxes. They were both empty, she stepped into the first and dialled the number for the office in Mercer Street.

  ‘Dudley Green Associates. How can I help you?’

  ‘Artie, it’s me, Ena. What did you find out this morning?’

  ‘Visiting is this afternoon from three o’clock until four. I had to part with a fiver, but it was worth it. The screw on the gate rang through to his mate in the office who said Hardy was having a visitor this afternoon. A visiting order was sent to Mrs Hardy.’

  ‘He’s getting out in a few weeks. What’s his game?’

  ‘Money? A job? And I don’t mean work.’

  ‘I knew what you meant, Artie. Do you think you can get back to the prison before visiting time?’

  ‘If I leave now.’

  ‘Tell Mrs Hardy not to let her husband know she has money saved. Bloody man will take her for all she’s got again.’

  ‘I’ll get over there now. Tell me about O’Shaughnessy tonight.’

  ‘Court finishes at five.’

  ‘Shall we meet back at the office at, say, five-thirty?’

  ‘Say six in case Hillary needs to speak to me. But not at the office. Let’s meet at the Lamb and Flag. I’ll need a large drink by the end of today.’

  Ena found a café along Limeburner Lane and bought a sandwich.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

 
Waiting outside Court No 1 at the Old Bailey, Ena listened to Sir John Hillary’s address.

  “My Lord, the prosecution’s case is that Shaun O’Shaughnessy did murder in cold blood, Mr Hugh Middleton on February 27th 1959.” There was a short pause. “The prisoner is also accused of orchestrating the murders of Sidney Parfitt, an investigating officer with the Home Office in September 1958, and the director of MI5, Mr McKenzie Robinson, in September 1958. There is also evidence that he assisted in the suicide of Helen Crowther on December 23rd, 1958. What I know for a fact is that Shaun O’Shaughnessy murdered one man and was complicit in the murder of two others.” Another silence, this time longer. Ena made a fist of her hand and punched the air. Sir John was giving the jury time to digest the severity of O’Shaughnessy’s crimes.

  “My Lord, the prisoner was apprehended by the East Sussex Police while attempting to strangle Mrs Evelyn Robinson, the widow of McKenzie Robinson, in her home at 15 Victoria Crescent, Hove, on March 3rd, 1959. There is no doubt in my mind that if the Police had not arrived at Mrs Robinson’s house when they did, she too would have perished at the hands of Shaun O’Shaughnessy – and today the prisoner would have four counts of murder to answer for, not three. My Lord, I would like to call my first witness, Mrs Ena Green.”

  “Call Mrs Ena Green!”

  Mr Martin opened the door and as Ena entered Court No 1 a sea of faces turned to look at her. Her heart began to thud, but refusing to let her nerves get the better of her, she held her head up and took a steadying breath. Court No 1, the most famous of England’s criminal courts, was smaller than she imagined. Wood-panelled walls and stained oak desks and tables made the room appear dark. The only colourful image was that of the judge, Justice Hubert Peckham who, in a red robe trimmed with white fur, sat on what looked to Ena like a throne directly above the clerk of the court. The desk of Sir John Hillary as the prosecution barrister was nearest the jury. The desk of the defence lawyer, Mr Theodor Anderson, was near the prisoner in the dock. An icy shiver ran down Ena’s spine as she caught sight of Shaun O’Shaughnessy standing in what looked like an ornate wooden fortress. The dock dominated the room and dwarfed O’Shaughnessy, as it must have done William Joyce. The infamous Lord Haw-Haw appeared three times in Court No 1 in 1945 before being convicted of treason and hanged in January 1946. Abhorrent as hanging was to Ena, she hoped the same fate awaited Shaun O’Shaughnessy for murdering Hugh Middleton and for the part he played in the murders of her friends, Sid Parfitt and McKenzie Robinson.