‘They sound rather frightening.’
‘They are a bit,’ he admitted and smiled. It had been a relief to see him shaking off his recent despondency. If he kissed her (the gift right under his nose, the apple on the tree, the pearl in the oyster) he might smile more, she thought, despite the war.
Click, click, click, click went Mrs Ambrose’s needles. If you could hear but not see her you might think her to be a giant demented insect, although perhaps it was easier to imagine Mrs Ambrose as one of the tricoteuses at the guillotine, knitting serenely as heads rolled bloodily at her feet.
Mrs Scaife’s return to the sofa involved a voyage around the room, during the course of which she pointed out her ‘better pieces’. ‘Sèvres,’ she said, indicating a cabinet full of heartbreakingly pretty china – yellow and gold painted with pastoral scenes. She took out a little coffee cup and saucer for Juliet to admire. The cup was adorned with cherubs who were playing with a pretty goat. Frolicking, Juliet thought.
On the matching saucer, more cherubs were garlanding a lamb with flowers. Juliet felt quite covetous, not so much of the porcelain as of the Arcadian lives that were being led on it.
Mrs Scaife continued the review of her goods and chattels, stroking a large inlaid escritoire fondly (‘Sheraton’), wafting a possessive hand at a variety of ancestral portraits, before pausing in front of one of the large windows. ‘I am under threat,’ she said casually. ‘I am being watched by the government, of course.’ She indicated the street below with a dismissive flick of her hand. Was she? Perry hadn’t mentioned any Watchers, but Juliet supposed it made sense. ‘But I have my own “guards”, as it were. People who are protecting me.’
The voyage resumed. Mrs Scaife paused in her passage again, this time at a silver-framed photograph of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor that had pride of place on a little (‘Hepplethwaite’) side table. ‘Ah, the Duchess,’ Mrs Scaife said, picking up the photograph and gazing admiringly at the Duchess’s thin arrogance. ‘She was very comme il faut. One of us, of course. They will be restored, you know – once Fascism triumphs here.’
‘Queen Wallis?’ Juliet queried. It hardly sounded regal.
‘Why not?’ Mrs Scaife said, navigating her way back to the sofa and dropping anchor (‘Ouf’) on the salmon damask.
‘Shall I read the tea leaves?’ Mrs Ambrose asked.
Mrs Ambrose was, by her own admission, ‘something of a clairvoyant’. She claimed it was a God-given skill so it was quite compatible with her Christian beliefs. It seemed unlikely to Juliet, but apparently Mrs Scaife was attracted by all things occult and she had spent long hours closeted with Mrs Ambrose, staring into pieces of crystal and bowls of water, waiting for signs and portents. ‘The Führer believes that our fate is in the stars, of course,’ Mrs Ambrose said. Juliet wondered if Mrs Ambrose knew that MI5 had employed an astrologer to try to mirror what Hitler’s own astrologer was advising him so they would know what moves he might be planning. (‘Hints at desperation,’ Perry said.)
‘Oh, read Iris’s!’ Mrs Scaife exclaimed.
Juliet passed her cup over, rather unwillingly, and Mrs Ambrose squinted at the dregs. ‘There are difficulties ahead, but you will weather them,’ she intoned. (Was the Sybil at Delphi this insipid, Juliet wondered?) ‘You have already met someone who will change your life.’
‘For the better, I hope,’ Mrs Scaife laughed.
Oh, what fairground nonsense, Juliet thought.
Juliet was heartily glad when Mrs Ambrose said, ‘We should get going, Iris.’
‘Thank you so much, Mrs Scaife,’ Juliet said, tucking the Protocols into her handbag. ‘It was so kind of you to invite me. And so interesting. I would love to talk more.’
‘It’s been a pleasure, Iris, dear. You must come again.’
Dodds, the timorous maid, saw them out, bobbing another curtsey after she had opened the door for them. Juliet slipped her a sympathetic sixpence, which the girl swiftly pocketed with another little dip of her knee.
‘Well, it seems you passed,’ Mrs Ambrose whispered delightedly as they made their way back down the stairs.
Juliet breathed deeply. It was a great relief to get away from the stifling atmosphere of Mrs Scaife’s house and into the fresh spring air.
A thuggish-looking man was loitering on the street corner and Juliet supposed he was one of Mrs Scaife’s ‘guards’. But then, for all she knew, he could have been one of Perry’s men. Whoever he was, she could feel his eyes following them (horrible expression – as if they had detached from his face!) all the way down the street.
‘By the way,’ Mrs Ambrose said, ‘you owe me ninepence. For the verushka.’
Dead Letter Drop
-13-
RECORD 6 (contd.)
19.50
DOLLY. (contd.) He’s sure of them, but how does he know he’s sure of them?
GODFREY. Mm. Does he phone?
DOLLY. Yes. And write.
GODFREY. Write?
TRUDE. You could send a postcard.
GODFREY. Is this MONTGOMERY, yes?
DOLLY. Yes, MONTGOMERY. I think he said quite a bit. I asked him if he knew of any of the people who were definitely anti-German and he said there were quite a few Communists. I said did he know who they were and he said, Oh, yes, he knew one or two of them. He didn’t tell me at the time. Of course I might persuade him later on. It would be something to go on, wouldn’t it?
GODFREY. Yes, yes.
TRUDE. It’s a blasted nuisance if you can only see him for half an hour a week.
DOLLY. He said he doesn’t talk to other people very much, not unless he’s sure of them.
GODFREY. I don’t suppose … (two words) telephone.
DOLLY. No, it’s no good. I’m seeing him on Friday. I’m going to meet him at his place of work.
GODFREY. Well, that’s very good.
TRUDE and DOLLY prepared to depart and then TRUDE said –
Juliet yawned extravagantly. The previous evening she had been at the Dorchester where Lew Stone and his band had been playing and it had been well into the early hours before she and Clarissa groped their way home in the blackout. She had drunk rather too much and, as a result, the daily tedium of the typewriter seemed more onerous than usual – she had to listen several times to catch even the gist of what the informants were saying. So when the doorbell rang, she welcomed the interruption.
As a rule, no one but a messenger boy came to Dolphin Square in the mornings, but it was not a boy, it was a man Juliet recognized but couldn’t immediately place.
‘Ah, the famous Miss Armstrong,’ he said when she opened the door to him. (Famous? For what, she wondered?) He removed his hat and entered without being invited in. ‘Oliver Alleyne,’ he said. Of course. (‘He’s rather ambitious,’ Perry had said.) He was accompanied by a dog, small and cross-looking. With its scowl and its drooping moustache it reminded Juliet of a querulously apoplectic colonel she had met when accompanying Perry to Whitehall the previous week. (France will fall! Do you understand? Does anyone understand?)
‘I’m afraid Mr Gibbons isn’t here,’ Juliet said, although the man was already advancing into the hall, the dog trotting obediently behind him.
Entering the living room in a proprietorial manner, Oliver Alleyne said, ‘So this is where Perry hides out, is it? Perry’s lair.’ He seemed amused by the idea. He was very good-looking, a fact which had rather knocked Juliet for six. Would she have let him in if he had been less handsome?
‘He isn’t here.’
‘Yes, you already said that. He’s at the Scrubs, I’ve just seen him there. It was you I wanted to talk to.’ The dog lay down and went to sleep as if it knew it was in for a long wait.
‘Me?’
He set his hat impertinently on top of Perry’s roll-top, next to the bust of Beethoven. Picking up the bust, he said, ‘God, this thing weighs a ton. You could kill someone with it. Who’s it meant to be?’
‘Beethoven, sir.’
??
?Is that so?’ he said dismissively, as if Beethoven were a nobody. He replaced the bust on the roll-top and perched himself casually on a corner of her own desk. ‘I was wondering if you had any spare time on your hands?’
‘Not really.’
Picking up the sheaf of papers she had just finished typing, he said, ‘Dear God, girl, this is dog work of the lowest order.’ He had a nice speaking voice, educated but with a slight burr, a hint of old Caledonia. (‘Anglo-Scot,’ Clarissa told her later. ‘His family owns huge swathes of the Highlands but they only go there to kill things. Stags, grouse and so on.’)
He began to read out loud as if it were a script and he a rather poor actor. (She felt sure that he wasn’t.) ‘But then he might have said that to me, you see, he might not say so much to other people.’ Dolly, the real Dolly, had an unfortunate Midlands accent, but Oliver Alleyne read her in the style of Celia Johnson, transforming her into something both ludicrous and oddly affecting.
‘He’s sure of them, but how does he know he’s sure of them?
‘Godfrey. Mm. Does he phone?
‘Dolly. Yes. And write.
‘Godfrey. Write?
Juliet glanced at Oliver Alleyne’s dog, sleeping beneath Perry’s roll-top. It opened one speculative eye and looked back at her. It was feigning sleep, she realized.
‘Trude – the Norwegian?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Trude. You could send a postcard.’ (His imitation of Trude was absurd, more cod Spanish than Scandinavian.) ‘Dear God, Miss Armstrong, how can you bear it?’
‘You shouldn’t really be reading that, you know, sir.’ She couldn’t suppress a smile. His attitude invited informality, familiarity even. He had a trivial air about him compared to Perry. She supposed she had a trivial soul herself, why else would she find it an attractive quality?
‘I’m allowed,’ he said. ‘I’m the boss.’
‘Are you?’ she said doubtfully.
‘Well, Perry’s boss anyway.’ Perry had never mentioned this fact. Juliet didn’t think of Perry having a boss. It made her see him in a different light.
‘I hear “Miss Carter-Jenkins” is doing splendid work,’ Oliver Alleyne said. ‘Getting close to Mrs Scaife and so on. Little tête-à-têtes.’
Yes, Juliet was a ‘great success’ with Mrs Scaife, Mrs Ambrose had reported to Perry. She had spent several afternoons now taking tea in Pelham Place with Mrs Scaife and different permutations of the 18b ‘widows’ – women whose husbands, like Mrs Scaife’s Rear Admiral, had had their habeas corpus suspended. ‘My young companion,’ Mrs Scaife called her. ‘I wish my own daughter was as attentive,’ she laughed. (‘Reel her in slowly,’ Perry said. ‘It’s a game of patience.’)
‘You are perfectly placed to see who comes and goes in that house, find out what everyone is saying,’ Perry said. ‘Just listen. She’ll say something useful eventually. Everyone does.’ But really the conversation never stretched much beyond the horror of butter rationing or where to get good staff when they were all joining the armed forces, sprinkled with the usual anti-Semite comments. The Red Book was referred to once or twice and Mrs Scaife gave the distinct impression that it was somewhere in the house, but didn’t elaborate.
Perry had supplied Juliet with a tiny secret camera, hidden in a cigarette lighter – in fact the cigarette lighter that Perry had produced on their otter expedition. (Had he secretly photographed her, sitting on that cold tarpaulin?)
‘Microfilm,’ he said. Conjured up by MI5’s ‘boffins’. So far, however, Juliet had had little opportunity to use the camera as she spent most of her time corralled in the salmon-pink drawing room.
If she wanted to ‘powder her nose’ – Mrs Scaife’s preferred euphemism for the inevitable result of all the tea-drinking – then she was firmly directed to a downstairs cloakroom, when in fact all the interesting things in Pelham Place were on the upper floors. There had been a small triumph a few days ago when she had managed to photograph some envelopes that were waiting on the hall table for poor little Dodds to convey to the post office.
MI5 believed that the Right Club kept in touch with its contacts in Germany through a third party in the Belgian Embassy, and Perry was keen to see whom Mrs Scaife was corresponding with. He had dispatched Juliet to an obscure department in the GPO at Dollis Hill to learn how to open and reseal envelopes, as well as how to prise open locks on briefcases and trunks and so on. She was eager to put some of these new-found skills into practice.
An envelope addressed to ‘Herr William Joyce’ (‘The fifth column’s damn hero,’ a disgusted Perry said) lay temptingly on top of the pile, but unfortunately Mrs Scaife’s cook had interrupted Juliet’s efforts at espionage, clumping up from her kitchen cave with a dinner menu for her mistress’s approval.
‘Lobster,’ she said, rolling her eyes at Juliet and blowing air out of her mouth as if the lobster were a particularly irksome dinner guest that she was going to have to deal with.
Lobster, to Juliet’s surprise, wasn’t rationed, simply difficult to come by, and she had eaten it in Prunier’s with Perry just last week. When he invited her she had hoped for the romance of flickering candlelight and perhaps a second round of more hand-holding (or painful grasping) across the table. The kind of dinner where a man reveals his suppressed passion for you (Miss Armstrong. I cannot keep my feelings to myself any longer), instead of which she was subjected to a lecture on their dinner.
‘The common European lobster, or Homarus gammarus,’ Perry said as the unlucky crustacean was placed before them. ‘The exoskeleton is blue in the wild, of course, the red pigment only released when it is boiled – generally alive,’ he added, twisting off a claw as if conducting an autopsy. ‘Now, pull the legs off and suck out the meat.’
Despite some reluctance, she followed his instructions. After all, it seemed a shame to be boiled alive for nothing.
Post-prandial dalliance took the form of ten pages of dictation over coffee until she was cross-eyed. (‘He was informed that the BBC have been listening in day and night and have heard – capitals, Miss Armstrong – NO SUCH BROADCASTS.’) Plenty of unsuppressed passion, but not for her.
‘Yes, actually I’m going to Pelham Place for tea this afternoon,’ she said to Oliver Alleyne. The prospect of more tea was tedious, she had drunk enough with Mrs Scaife to sink HMS Hood. How was Ian, she wondered? Iris’s imaginary fiancé (and by default hers too) was growing in stature every day. A rapid promotion to captain, a broader chest, a fuller head of hair. Charming manners, but underneath a heart of steel as he stood manfully on the bridge as HMS Hood floundered around on the high seas somewhere—
‘Miss Armstrong?’
‘What is it exactly that you want, sir?’
‘You, Miss Armstrong,’ Oliver Alleyne said. ‘I want you.’
‘I am quite busy actually.’
‘Of course,’ he said. ‘And I can hardly compete with the high drama of this work.’ He tossed the typed pages back on the desk so that they scattered everywhere. I’m going to have to re-collate all those later, Juliet thought crossly. ‘But it will take up hardly any of your time – virtually none, in fact. What do you say?’
‘Do I have a choice, sir?’
‘Not really.’
‘Then the answer’s yes, I suppose.’
‘Excellent. So – to business. This is to be kept just between the two of us. Do you understand?’
‘Yes.’
‘It’s rather delicate. It concerns our friend Godfrey Toby.’
‘Godfrey?’
‘Yes. I would like you to keep an eye on him for me.’
Yet another perfectly horrible expression, Juliet thought. ‘On Godfrey?’ she puzzled.
‘Yes. Keep an eye out’ (worse!) ‘for anything that strikes you as odd.’
‘Odd?’ Juliet echoed.
‘Out of the ordinary, out of character,’ he said. ‘Even slightly.’
Juliet was surprised. Godfrey was the model of probity.
/> ‘Has anything struck you recently?’
‘Well … he was late a couple of days ago,’ she offered.
‘Is that unusual?’
‘Only because he’s never late.’ (You can set your watch by Godfrey.) ‘Hardly grounds for conviction though. I’m late all the time.’
Juliet and Cyril had been in the flat – Cyril nurturing the equipment and Juliet working her way stoically through Godfrey’s transcripts from the previous day – when they heard voices raised in concern in the corridor outside. Someone began to knock very loudly and insistently on the neighbouring door, audible even through their soundproofing (which had turned out to be rather flawed).
A worried-looking Cyril emerged from his burrow and said, ‘Godfrey’s late, miss. He’s never late. They’re out there waiting for him.’
They crept to their front door and put their ears against it. Juliet could make out Betty’s shrewish pitch and Victor’s northern grumble. They seemed upset, anxious that Godfrey hadn’t turned up – worried, perhaps, that his identity had been uncovered by the Security Services (and therefore, by association, theirs too). They were fractious, sheep without a shepherd. Or rats without a Pied Piper. (‘They are very loyal to Godfrey,’ Perry had said to her not long ago.)
‘If he’s taken, then we’ll be next,’ Victor said.
‘We should go,’ Betty said. ‘I’ll telephone him.’ There was some muttering about how that would be incriminating if there was anyone listening to Godfrey’s calls, and then more assertive knocking next door, and then to Juliet’s relief she heard Godfrey’s affable voice growing louder as he approached, apologizing for his tardiness, followed by a twittering of (rather resentful) relief from the neighbours. They had been afraid, Juliet thought. She was glad. They should be.
‘Did he say why he was late?’ Oliver Alleyne asked.