Ha'penny (19 page)

“Very much the same to all appearances,” Tambourne said. He stretched out his long legs and leaned back in his chair. “Nash was quieter than Marshall, and he didn’t play tennis. He was dark-haired and essentially Etonian. Reserved. English. Good at his job, and good at teaching it to the recruits, as far as I know. He wasn’t as outgoing as Marshall.”

“They were very close, you said,” Carmichael said. “Do you think there’s any possibility they might have been more than friends?”

“Good God, no!” Tambourne sat up straight and knocked over his tea. He snatched for the cup before it broke, but the tea soaked the plate of biscuits. “I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t worry, the biscuits are no loss anyway. Nobody ever eats them, I can’t think why they always send them with tea,” Carmichael said soothingly.

Royston fetched a cloth and dried the table. They settled down again. Tambourne tried to answer again more temperately. “I know the traditions of the Navy are supposed to be rum, sodomy, and the lash, as Mr. Churchill put it, but really, Inspector, you mustn’t think that’s literally true these days. Marshall and Nash were good friends, but there wouldn’t have been anything unnatural.”

Not that Tambourne knew about anyway. “So why do you think they were building a bomb?” he asked.

“It seems like something from an illustrated paper,” Tambourne said. “All I can think, since you have evidence it’s real, is that they must have been secret communists. I’ve been thinking about it, and it’s the only thing that fits. It seems Miss Gilmore was some kind of socialist, according to the latest reports in the
Telegraph.
Marshall, well, all the true blue stuff must have been a facade, though it was a very good facade, it certainly fooled me. He and Nash must have been secret communists for years, underneath, and waiting their moment.”

Royston scratched his head, but wrote it down.

“Why would this be their moment?” Carmichael asked.

“Because of Mr. Normanby coming to power,” Tambourne said. “I mean he’s the very opposite of a communist, so they wouldn’t like him at all. They didn’t like him, Nash didn’t anyway. He called the new organization a coup, in the mess. Marshall shut him up. I thought it was because of not talking politics, but it might have been because of this.”

“So what do you think would have been the target of their bomb?” Royston asked.

“Well if they really are communists, they’d bomb anyone just for the fun of it. Look at that old lady in Wales. But I’d have thought probably the Prime Minister, if there was any way of getting at him.”

“Gilmore and Marshall aren’t going to be bombing anyone now they’ve blown themselves up,” Carmichael said. “Nash, on the other hand, is still out there. Do you think, from what you know of him, he’d carry on with a plan after the others were killed?”

Tambourne hesitated. “Well I would say yes, absolutely he would,” he said. “But ever so much of what I knew of Nash must have been a facade, a lie, if he’s really a communist. So I don’t know that what I think he’d do is worth anything at all. I didn’t know him well anyway, and if he was capable of really being a communist while pretending the views he did pretend, then he could have pretended anything at all.”

There was a little silence after this. “Do you know anything about his family?” Carmichael asked.

“I think they were killed in the Blitz,” Tambourne offered.

“Marshall’s parents were killed in the Blitz,” Carmichael said.

“Oh, that’s right.” Tambourne looked embarrassed. “I don’t know anything about Nash’s family then.”

After he left, Carmichael went through Marshall’s possessions. They had been hastily packed by someone, a rating, or perhaps Tambourne himself, who seemed to get all the jobs nobody else wanted. Marshall had a good supply of uniforms, and two civilian suits, both from good London tailors. He also owned a large supply of wool sweaters in blue and navy blue. Carmichael supposed he would need those for chilly days on the water. He listed them all diligently. There were white tennis clothes, slightly grass-stained. There were socks, neatly rolled, whether by Marshall or someone else, and a heap of white Y-front underpants, not rolled at all. There was a framed photograph of a sailing ship, and another of a bride and groom, by the style of the clothes probably Marshall’s parents.

There were a series of silver cups, all won for racing, including one for the two-man canoe race for 1949, which must be the one Nash had been holding in the photograph. There was a tennis racket in a press. It didn’t seem much, for a whole life. Marshall had been the same age as Kinnerson, and Kinnerson had a wife and a house. It seemed strange that these few things were all that Marshall had left. He opened a little wooden box that contained cufflinks and a tie pin and put it back inside the cup that recorded Marshall of
Valiant
’s victory in the Portsmouth single canoe races for 1945. How long had Marshall been stuck down in Portsmouth teaching ratings to row? Tambourne had seemed tired of it after less than a year.

There was a little pile of books, editions of Kipling, Chesterton, Swinburne, Arnold, Hardy’s poems. There was no address book, but there were two hard-bound notebooks. One of them was quite full of jottings concerning the progress of the ratings at boatmanship. The other contained handwritten poetry.

Carmichael flicked through it. None of it was terribly good. Most of the poems were full of crossings out and arrows indicating that one line was supposed to come before another, followed by a clean version, presumably Marshall’s final choice. The subjects were mostly pastoral, ships, the water. He flicked faster, then his eye was caught by a sonnet, entitled “The Farthing Peace.”

Our fathers taught us that the world was free
Willed it to us in their history
Taught us to rule it and ask no praise
Walking as tall as the Lord of Days.
Then the sirens called and they ran away
Claimed what they had said had been meant in play
Asked how had we taken so seriously
The laws they had made, and they bade us flee.
We fought, then we fled, when we met defeat,
They appeased it as peace, claimed the victor’s seat,
Starved us of money, and men, and might,
And pinched us and prodded us into the night.
Till they found, when they ended beneath the sod,
Just what was meant by a Jealous God.

He too had felt like that, when the peace was made. He had thought the Farthing Peace hollow, had wondered what they had fought for at all, why they had endured the Blitz if they were going to call it a draw with nothing accomplished and claim it as Peace with Honour. Then as the years had gone on without the war being renewed, he had grown reconciled. England will always be England, he had told himself. He wondered when Marshall had written his sonnet. None of the poetry was dated.

He continued flicking through the other lyrics. None were as overtly political, and none of them struck him as even slightly communist. Perhaps Marshall had been the ordinary patriot he seemed. You didn’t need to be a communist to be opposed to Normanby, or perhaps even to wish to blow him up. Appeased it as peace, indeed. He noted the notebooks on his inventory, and went on.

17

A
fter they left, Devlin and I talked for a long time about bombs, which he knew a lot about and I didn’t know anything. But I did know about the inside of the Siddons, and I was adamant that I didn’t want to have to press a button hidden in Yorick’s skull, or anywhere, to blow up the box. “I’d rather wind a clock,” I said. “At least I could get that out of the way beforehand. I’ll do it, Devlin, but I can’t do it while I’m acting, I can’t come out of Hamlet to do it.”

He didn’t like it but he believed me in the end. “Is there anywhere else in the theater with a line of sight on the Royal Box?” he asked.

I wasn’t sure at first what he meant by a line of sight, but it turned out after some explanation that all he meant was a straight line that didn’t go around any corners. “Radio’s like light,” he said. “In fact I was told that it is light in long wavelengths that you can’t see. Radio can go through walls, like the front of the box, but it can’t go around corners. It’s like getting reception on the wireless. You have to get the antenna in a line. We won’t be able to mess about with antennae.”

“I’m not sure there is anywhere else, then,” I said, despondently. I pictured the theater, and the box, and drew a sketch for Devlin, which he studied and then dropped into the half-full glass ashtray, and set it on fire with a match. He always did that kind of thing, making sure not to leave evidence, not as if he were taking extraordinary precautions but quite as if it was the most natural thing in the world.

As it was flaming out to ashes, he said, “Maybe the opposite box has a line of sight. Or there might be a seat up on the other side up in the ha’pennies. I’ll be able to tell when I’ve been in. But if my going in is a once-off thing, it would be better if we leave it until I’ve made the bomb and can take it in and place it.”

“You’re going to make the bomb?” I asked, horrified.

Devlin put his hand on mine and smiled. “Don’t worry so much, darling,” he said. “I’m a professional, I told you that. I won’t blow myself to bits. I never have yet.”

“But where will you make it?” I asked.

He jerked his head at the spare bedroom, where he had said Loy used to sleep. “There are ways of finding places where bombs have been made, but this place is burned anyway, so I’ll make it here,” he said.

“Be careful!” I said, hopelessly.

He laughed. “I’m not an actress working from an old recipe, love. I know what I’m doing. Now, what are the chances we could have the opposite box? Would it be taken, usually, for a first night?”

“Oh yes,” I said. “Always. And if it isn’t really taken, Antony would paper it.” Devlin looked inquiring. “I mean he’d find some nice friends of his in evening clothes to sit in it and applaud wildly. If you’re an actor and not working, it’s easy to get tickets for shows that aren’t sellouts, especially first nights.”

“So we ought to book it early if it turns out we want it,” Devlin said. “Of course, it may be booked already. If there’s a seat up in the ha’pennies, that would just mean having a ticket and getting there early—they don’t sell particular seats up there, do they?”

“No, that’s right,” I said. “You’ve sat up there?”

“Many a time,” he said. “Up rubbing knees with the gods in the ha’pennies.” He smiled. “More my mark than sitting with the peer’s daughters in the upper circle.”

I ignored this and started to clear the dirty dishes from the table.

“The only other possible place would be standing up in the stalls, and that would be very obvious. Hitler’s bodyguards would be bound to spot that and might even shoot before he has a chance to push the detonator.” He stared over at nothing where I’d been sitting. I took his glass and his plate without him moving. “No, I’ll have to do it myself if it comes to that. I can’t trust Loy not to stand there longer than he needs to, just for the thrill of it.”

“He won’t like that,” I said, scraping the plates into the bin. I noticed again how little Siddy had eaten.

Devlin turned and smiled up at me, his slow confident smile. “Don’t worry about Loy, darling. I can deal with him.”

“I wish you didn’t have to,” I said, running hot water into the sink. I’d disliked Loy more than ever that evening. It wasn’t just his arrogance; everything about him set my teeth on edge. “And I’m sure he’s bad for Siddy.”

“It’s not a very happy alliance, that one,” Devlin agreed.

“How long have they been together?” I asked, unsure if he’d answer or just clam up.

“Couple of years, off and on,” he said. He was being more forthcoming than usual. Maybe it was the whiskey. “Since she got divorced from Lord Russell. Thing is that Siddy can give Loy something he needs.”

“I’d think he could get all the women he wants,” I said, not looking at Devlin, concentrating on rinsing the glasses under the hot tap.

“Yes, he can, and that doesn’t do him any good,” Devlin said. “What Siddy can give him is Moscow’s approval.”

I did turn around then. “She really is a communist? Not playing at it? A real card-carrying Stalin-approved communist?”

“I thought you knew that, darling,” Devlin said, looking wary. “You knew she’d been over there.”

“She’s been to Germany too, that doesn’t make her a Nazi,” I said, turning back to the sink and thumping the plates into the water. “She says she’s a communist, but she’s been saying that since she was six years old.”

“She’s made herself what she wanted to be then,” Devlin said. “Moscow gives her things, and she can give them to Loy. Jobs, information. It keeps him with her.”

“I don’t like him,” I said, scrubbing viciously at a plate.

Devlin sat back in his chair. “There’s something you don’t understand about Loy.”

“I don’t understand
anything
about him,” I said, vehemently.

Devlin laughed. “You know he’s an Ulster baronet?” That confirmed what Mrs. Tring had told me. “He owns Arranish Hall, in Ulster. His background is like yours, not like mine. When he dies, they’ll put him in the family tomb with his names and dates and gold coins on his eyes, not just shovel him into a pauper’s grave with a pair of ha’pennies. Yet he has no money, no more than I do, just the name, and the title, and the memory of what it means. And he has one more thing, you know he has a medal, a George Cross? You know how he got it?”

“Something frightfully heroic in the war,” I said, sullenly. Devlin had used an enormous number of pans and spoons making dinner today.

“Well, you know why he was in your war at all? He’s got an Irish passport and the Republic never got involved; he could have stayed safe at home.”