Farthing (27 page)

had served my special dumpling soup only the week before, and given his little son a candle on his creme brulee because it was his birthday. But now his face was screwed up with hate and he would have smashed me as well as the window if I had not run.”

“Where are your family now?” I asked.

Mrs. Smollett turned to me as if she’d forgotten I was there. “Dead,” she said. “My husband was killed in the fighting. He died in September 1939, honorably, defending his country. Marya was shot by a

Heinkel as we escaped across France. The road was blocked with refugees and they wanted it for their tanks, so they flew over and shot at us, just to clear the way. I flung myself in a ditch, but Marya fell, shot through the head. I stayed in the ditch and watched the tanks passing over her body. Then after that I got up and took the money she was carrying from her shoe, and kept walking. Yusef died in 1946 in a camp called Treblinka. I heard from somebody who managed to escape, who knew him there. He came to find me. Yusef, he said, was able to help many people before he died, because he was a doctor. Without medicines or instruments, without even bandages, at night after working all day in a factory on slave rations, still my son was a doctor, and I can always be proud of that.”

She had tears streaming down her face. I got up and put my arms around her, unable to see so much sheer misery without trying to help, however inadequate such a thing was. She shrugged me off angrily and turned to David. “You think what you do can make a difference to whether that happens here,” she said. “You think we Jews in Poland, in Germany, in Hungary, we did something wrong, something to deserve what happened to us. No. It doesn’t make any difference. It wasn’t our fault. It isn’t something it’s at all possible to control.”

“But England is different,” David said. “You’ve been safe here for ten years. We fought against Hitler, and we’d fight again if there was any threat of him coming here.”

“They didn’t fight him in Europe,” she said. “Besides, you still don’t understand that it wasn’t
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Hitler who broke my window. It wasn’t one mad German—it was the hate that everyone has inside them against the

Jews. I used to think just the same as you do. I thought so until I was forty years old. You’ve just been lucky so far, that’s all.”

“I’ve been very lucky, I know that,” David said. “But come and see me in London about the money for your restaurant.”

Then Mrs. Smollett got up, and went back to the kitchen.

“She’s lost sight of hope,” David said. “Not surprising, considering what happened to her family, to lose every one of them like that. But she’s wrong about England. People care about liberty and justice, and there’s resentment, but not that buried hatred. That kind of thing would never happen here.”

“I wonder what drastic measures Mark has in mind?” I said, before I could catch the words back.

24

The gutters of Bethnal Green ran with rain. There were few people about, and most of those looked as if

they wanted to be home as soon as they could. It was still daylight, but the heavy clouds made it almost dusk already.

“Where will we find people who know Brown, sergeant?” Carmichael asked.

“In the pubs, of course, sir,” Royston said. “It’s about the only place we’re likely to find anyone on a night like this.”

“We could try temperance meetings, or bible readings,” Carmichael suggested.

Royston looked at him in horror for a moment, then began to laugh.

They hit gold on their third attempt. The Queen’s Head knew nothing of Brown, and the White Horse could tell them only that he was an unemployed fitter from Sisal Street, which they knew already. But at the Three Feathers, a most superior establishment owned by Bass, which sported polished horse-brasses on all vertical surfaces and rejoiced in a public, a lounge bar, and a snug, the landlord knew Brown and was prepared to talk to them. The pub had only just opened for the evening. The landlord, a beefy man with a wispy moustache, left a barmaid in charge of the other bars and led them into the snug.

“Liked a scrap,” the landlord said, handing them each a free pint of bitter, the policeman’s prerogative in any poor London area. “He wasn’t above letting someone pay him for it neither.”

“You mean he was a hired bullyboy?” Royston asked. Carmichael sipped his beer and found it indifferent.

“Not exactly that. Not full time, like, or with a gang.” The landlord leaned across the bar and lowered his voice, though the only other person in the snug this early was an ancient man nodding over his pint in the corner. “Brown wasn’t a Londoner,” he confided.

“We believe he was from Runcorn,” Royston said.

“Some such heathenish place,” the landlord agreed. Carmichael buried a smile in his pint.

Southerners!

“Anyway, he wasn’t a Londoner, and he wasn’t in any gangs or anything like that. I wouldn’t have let him drink in here if he was,” he said, with an air of assumed virtue.

“But if you wanted someone beaten up…” Royston suggested.

“Maybe. In a small way, from time to time.” The landlord looked from one to the other of them. “I don’t know nothing definite, and he always behaved himself in here, but that was the tone of what I heard. Not like a bullyboy, more like if there was a scrap going, Brown would stand up with you for a couple of quid.”

“Did he have a lot of friends?” Royston asked.

“No. He kept to himself, mostly. He’d come in here with a group from work, but nobody really
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close.

Most of the Mottrams fitters drink in here. Then when he was laid off, he’d come in and see who was here, on a Friday or a Saturday, drinking one half-pint over the whole evening unless someone stood him a round.”

“Laid off?” Royston asked.

“Don’t say you don’t know about that?” The landlord looked quite excited. “Laid off from Mottrams, he was, right after Christmas, because he tried to organize a union among the fitters and boilermakers. Big fuss there was about it at the time. He was quite a hero.”

“Red, was he?” Royston asked, with a casual ease Carmichael admired.

“Not really.” The landlord frowned. “We get them in here, of course, the Reds: the Labour lot, and the

Union lot, and the Commies, and the Trots. They all hate each other worse than poison. They sit in groups in the public, ignoring each other. Some landlords would see them off, but I don’t mind them.

They’re mostly quiet, and they hold their drink. If there’s any trouble, say one of them were to get drunk, the rest of them take care of it. But I never seen Brown with any of them, except the Union crowd right after he was laid off. I don’t think he was organized, like. In fact, I think Brown wanted to better himself.

He wanted more out of life than to be a fitter. Maybe that’s why he wanted a union, so he could work in it. He used to read, you know, when he was working, always a book in his pocket.”

“Do you know what books?” Carmichael asked.

The landlord looked at him as if he had taken leave of his senses. “What books?” he echoed.

“Just books… small ones, mostly,” he added, as if that might help. It amazed Carmichael that there could be men in the world for whom the distinguishing characteristic of a book was its size, or possibly its color.

The landlord was by no means stupid. Indeed, he was far more observant than most; he’d have made a good policeman. He had probably left school at eleven or twelve and sunk his talents into managing this little business for a big brewery, his intellectual horizons ending at the far side of the bar.

“Did he have a girl?” Royston asked.

The landlord turned back to him with an air of relief. “No. Or at least, if he did he never brought her in here. And he could have.

We’re smart, as you can tell—we have lots of ladies coming in the lounge bar, especially at the weekends. You can’t pick and choose your customers in this trade, at least; you can turn people away, but I don’t do it unless I’ve a reason. Brown was someone I wasn’t sure about, because of what I told you. If I’d seen him with a nice girl I’d have felt happier—that would have gone with the books and the bettering himself. Or if I’d seen him with the other kind of girl, that would have meant something too. But

I never did, and from time to time I’d hear that he’d been in a scrap, and I’d prick my ears up, because if

I ever heard anything for sure that made my mind up he was a nasty customer I’d have banned him.“

“Not queer, was he?” Royston asked, cocking an eyebrow.

“Certainly not!” The landlord looked affronted. “I don’t allow any of that sort in my bar.”

“How about guns?” Carmichael asked. “Ever hear that he might do anything with guns?”

“No.” The landlord looked almost frightened. “What’s he done, shot someone? I’ll ban him now. I’ll never let him show his face in here again.”

“He shot at someone, and they shot back and killed him, so you’ll have no need to ban him,”

Carmichael said.

“So he was caught up with gangs after all?” The landlord stared at him in consternation.

“No, you weren’t wrong in your guess; it doesn’t look anything like gangs at all. It seems he was a rum fish altogether.” Carmichael finished his pint and looked at Royston, who drained what was left of his in one draught. “I think we can move on, sergeant,” he went on. “Landlord, you’ve been very helpful and it’s much appreciated.”

“Any time I can do anything for the police, only too happy,” he said.

Back in the car, Carmichael shook his head. “He could have hung out with other Reds elsewhere,” he said. “They all hate each other. His group might have met anywhere.”

“Or the ones who go in the pubs and talk Red are the ones who only talk, and the ones who take action stay quiet about it,” Royston said.

“I wish we could find the girl.” Carmichael patted his case where her picture was. “I’m surprised by all that, him liking a scrap and the books. I wonder what they were? It seems as if we’re no closer to untying our ball of string, sergeant; it only gets more knotted however we try.”

“Should we check the other pubs now, sir?”

“Yes… no.” Carmichael frowned at the rain-streaked windscreen. “Let’s get a bite to eat and then check out Thirkie’s chauffeur, and then let’s come back and check the other pubs.”

“Probably a good idea,” Royston said. “Though we can kill two birds with the first part. The Black Swan down the road serves food.”

The Black Swan knew nothing of Brown, but served an adequate steak and kidney pie with a half of stout for Carmichael, and a greasy gammon and chips, with another pint of bitter, for Royston.

Thirkie House was just off Sloane Street, within walking distance of Harrods and Harvey Nichols and the

Knightsbridge tube station. Its eighteenth-century elegance looked dark and forbidding in the rain. A

footman answered Royston’s authoritative knock.

“There’s nobody here,” he said, reluctantly letting them into the front hall after they had revealed their identity. Carmichael looked around with appreciation. The original Georgian plaster moldings were very fine, and the hall table, with barley-sugar legs, was one of the best he’d ever seen. A silver card salver sat on it, empty. “Lady Thirkie has gone down to Campion Hall.”

“We want to talk to Sir James’s valet, or chauffeur, or whatever he is,” Royston said. “I assume he’s here?”

“Whatever he is,” the footman sneered, with the aura of one whose position has been clearly defined for centuries. “Marston, his name is, and he isn’t here either.”

“Where is he?” Carmichael asked, before Royston could open his mouth.

“Gone down to Campion too. Lady Thirkie rang up this morning from Farthing and said for him to take the car down there to meet her, to drive her up to Thirkie tomorrow or the next day. He set off right away, but it’s a long drive, and in all this awful rain, I don’t expect he’s there yet.” The footman didn’t look at all sorry for his fellow’s labor.

“Where is Campion?” Royston asked.

“It’s in Monmouthshire,” Carmichael said, remembering the will.

“Almost to Wales, I’ve heard, though I haven’t been there myself. Old Lady Thirkie lives there, Sir

James’s mother,” the footman said.

“Lady Thirkie went there by train from Farthing, I take it,” Carmichael said. “Why does she want to drive from there to Yorkshire? The train would be much quicker and more comfortable, surely?”

“And if she did want to drive, why would she want the two-seater?” the footman asked. “Sir
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James

hardly cold yet, either, shocking I call it.”

“Are you suggesting Lady Thirkie and Marston are conducting an improper relationship?”

Carmichael asked, delicately.

The footman laughed. “You could put it like that,” he said. “Disgusting, isn’t it?”

“Did Sir James know?” Carmichael asked.

“He left Marston here when they went down to Farthing, didn’t he? That looks like knowing to me, or something like it. But I don’t know. He didn’t dismiss him, just said he wouldn’t be needing him and left him here.”

“Was Marston here all the time they were away?” Carmichael asked.

“Oh yes, and grumbling every minute of it,” the footman said.

“Couldn’t go and didn’t want to stay and never happy, not even now she’s sent for him.”

There was nothing more to be got out of him. When they were safely back in the car and headed in the direction of Bethnal Green, Royston ventured, “Another knot, sir?”

“If it’s true and he knew, it’s a very good motive for her to kill him,” Carmichael said.

“And Brown and the Bolsheviks?”

“Opportunistic sniping in the open season,” Carmichael suggested.

“Could she have got his body back up to the bedroom? He was quite big and she’s quite small.”

Royston frowned. “I don’t think she could have done it alone. And you checked whether Marston could have gone down to help her.”

“He could have. It’s only a two-hour drive, and he had a car. He could have left London after sour grapes in there went to bed, got there at eleven-thirty or midnight…” Carmichael trailed off. “It’s possible, but it’s very elaborate, and it would have had to have been planned in advance. I want to talk to Marston, and I want to talk to Lady Thirkie again.”