Ha'penny (27 page)

“Don’t go,” I said. “I’d miss you terribly, and it’s clear you don’t want to.”

“I don’t, but it might be such a chance for Walter,” she said, looking fretful. “Oh do come and talk to him, Fats, you’ve always been cleverer than me.”

“What has cleverness got to do with anything? Your instincts are telling you not to go, and if you say that to Walter he can weigh that for himself.”

“Walter doesn’t count much on instincts,” she said, sadly, and dropped a large blob of lobster mayonnaise right onto the bodice of her beige lace dress.

24

L
ord Scott isn’t someone we can just arrest,” Carmichael said, as they drove back to the Yard.

“He’s one of Churchill’s lot, isn’t he?” Royston asked. “Gah, they’re all as bad as each other.”

“He’s certainly not one of the Farthing Set. We’ll need to get warrants, and whether the Chief will give them to us on a servant’s word . . .” Carmichael sighed.

“You believed him though, didn’t you, sir?” Royston stopped at a red light and Carmichael felt the pressure of the sergeant’s earnest gaze.

“Yes, I believed him, for what that’s worth. There wasn’t any malice in the way he named names, and he confirmed Nash. I said Lieutenant and he came right back with Bob. If he’d been making them up he’d have had more on the mysterious Sir Aloysius.”

“Oh, don’t you know him?” The light changed and Royston drove off. “Unless there’s more than one Irish Sir Aloysius, which I suppose there might be. I was thinking he must be Sir Aloysius Farrell, George Cross, the Hero of Calais.”

“The name does ring a vague bell,” Carmichael said. “Was he the young officer who got the Guards out at the last minute?”

“That’s the one. He was all over the papers at the time.”

“But why the devil would someone like that be involved in this conspiracy?”

“Why would Lord Scott? Or Marshall and Nash for that matter? Or Gilmore? They want to get power for themselves by killing Mr. Normanby. Exactly the same as the Farthing thing but the other way around. That’s why I said they’re one as bad as the other.”

They inched their way in silence for a while through the early evening traffic; black taxis, red buses, cars of all descriptions. “I’ll ask for reports on all of them tonight, but it’ll be too late to get warrants until tomorrow, and I’ll have to see the Chief,” Carmichael said. “You have any idea about the girl, Siddy?”

“Sorry, sir,” Royston said. “Funny name for a girl. If we can’t find her any other way we could check all the birth records for girls called Sydney for about the right dates. Can’t be many.”

“I don’t envy the constable who gets that job. But it’s more likely a nickname. Or Sydney could be her surname.”

“Or Siddons, like the theater,” Royston put in.

“If we get Sir Aloysius, he’ll probably lead us to her. She probably isn’t important anyway.”

They drew up at the Yard. “Park the car and get off home, I’ll see you here bright and early tomorrow,” Carmichael said, getting out.

Stebbings was still at the desk. “Hello, sergeant, is the Chief still here?”

“Just gone off, sir,” Stebbings said.

“Well, I need a number of things.” Stebbings took up a pencil and waited. “I need to know where Mrs. Louise Green is. She was arrested Friday, booked at Hampstead under the Defence of the Realm Act. Then I want urgent reports on Lord Scott, his secretary Mr. Nesbitt, Sir Aloysius Farrell, and any other Irish Sir Aloysiuses there may be. Next, I want an appointment with the Chief first thing in the morning, on a matter of warrants for arrests for the Gilmore bomb.”

“Yes, sir,” Stebbings said. “We should have all of that for you by the morning, sir.”

Carmichael turned and left, feeling curiously deflated. Jack would be waiting for him, he thought as he headed towards Holborn tube station, and he could make him happy for once by being home on time and taking him out for dinner.

Tuesday morning at eight-thirty, Carmichael was back at the Yard. “Reports are on your desk, and you have an appointment with the Chief at nine,” Sergeant Stebbings said.

“Thank you, sergeant.”

Stebbings didn’t respond.

Lord Scott’s report reminded Carmichael very much of the ones he’d been sent at Farthing. Scott was an aristocrat and a politician. Philip John Scott, born in 1889 with a silver spoon in his mouth at Coltham Court, eldest son of the previous Lord Scott and his wife Honoria Mary. Educated Harrow and Oxford, fought and was wounded in the Great War, married in 1921 to Pamela Dixon, of the American millionaire Dixons. One son, Benjamin Charles, born 1923; two daughters, Diana Honoria, born 1925, and Susan Pamela, born 1927. Pamela died in the Blitz, Lord Scott never remarried. He had sat in the House of Lords for the last thirty years, meddling in the country’s affairs. He had held minor office under Baldwin, again under Chamberlain, and had risen to the heights of being briefly minister for munitions under Churchill during the war. Since then, he had remained a Churchillian, hostile to the Farthing Peace. He had been Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster under Eden, which could mean anything or nothing, and held no current post.

He turned to Sir Aloysius Farrell, expecting more of the same. It began similarly. Sir Aloysius was born in 1914, the son of an Irish baronet and his wife Agnes. His father had died in 1916 on the Somme, so he had inherited the title very early. Unlike Lord Scott, there had been no money—the report didn’t outright say as much, but Carmichael could tell from the name of the school young Sir Aloysius had attended. If they could have afforded it, he’d have been at Harrow, Eton, Winchester, Rugby, or perhaps Stonyhurst if they were Catholics. Instead he went to somewhere called St. Michael’s in Bournemouth. It wasn’t even one of the second-tier public schools. Carmichael had been to a school like that himself, a minor school that aspired.

Sir Aloysius had left school as soon as he could, and who could blame him, in 1930. He had gone straight into the Army and spent three years as a lieutenant. Then he had come to the end of his term of enlistment in 1933 and left. He was next heard of in court in Ireland being reprimanded in an IRA case, in 1935. Then, in the summer of 1939, he was arrested in London with a bomb in his possession, clearly part of the IRA bombing campaign of that summer. He had been offered the choice of prison or returning to the Army, and he had naturally chosen the Army. This led him to Calais as part of a sacrifice Churchill was making, landing a battalion in Calais to distract Hitler from the evacuation of Dunkirk. Against all odds, when all his superior officers had been killed, Sir Aloysius had managed to rally the remnants of the battalion and get them out of Calais and back to England on a half-sinking French cruiser he had commandeered. He remained in the Army until the end of the war, and then disappeared as far as the record went—no more arrests, no marriage, no visible career. His mother had died in 1944. His residence was listed as Arranish Hall, Ulster.

There’s a bomber if you like, Carmichael thought, stunned. The only wonder was that they’d made such an amateur bomb and blown themselves up. The IRA usually knew what they were doing. But Green had said that Sir Aloysius had wanted them to wait until he could get hold of a friend who could help.

The phone rang. “Nine o’clock,” Stebbings said. “The Chief’s expecting you.”

Carmichael rose, clutching the papers, and made his way to the lift.

“What’s all this about?” Penn-Barkis asked as soon as Carmichael stepped into his room.

“Green has fingered the other conspirators in the Gilmore case,” Carmichael said.

“Who is Green?” Penn-Barkis gestured impatiently to a chair; Carmichael sat.

“Green is Gilmore’s servant. I wanted to see you, sir, because this is potentially sensitive; some of the people he fingered are titled. We’ll need proper warrants.”

“Are you sure the servant isn’t just spinning you a tarrydiddle? It could be a lot of trouble if we wrongfully arrest prominent people.” Penn-Barkis frowned.

“Yes, sir, I know, sir,” Carmichael said. “But Green’s very anxious to ensure his wife’s safety. He says she’s quite innocent, and he’s terrified that she’ll be sent to the Continent and to a camp. I don’t believe he was lying when the only hope of her safety is through us.”

“Where is she?”

Carmichael realized he still didn’t know. “She’s in custody, but I’m not sure where. I asked Stebbings yesterday to find out, but the information wasn’t on my desk this morning. Green’s in the Scrubs, and she’ll be in one of the women’s prisons.”

“Oh very well, go on.” Penn-Barkis steepled his fingers and looked at Carmichael over them.

“One of the fellow conspirators is Nash, who we knew about, if you remember, sir, Marshall’s friend. It seems likely he was in the house at the time of the explosion. We already knew about him, though we still don’t know where he is. The others are Lord Scott—”

“Lord Scott!” Penn-Barkis interrupted. “You want to arrest Lord Scott?”

“Yes, sir,” Carmichael said, doing his best to keep his voice calm. “You have to remember this is a case where the conspiracy was attempting to blow up the Prime Minister.”

“I suppose Lord Scott would have something to gain from that,” Penn-Barkis conceded. “Go on.”

“The other major figure is Sir Aloysius Farrell. Green didn’t know his full name, just Sir Aloysius and that he was Irish, but there don’t seem to be any other candidates, especially when you consider that Farrell has IRA connections going back fifteen years. He’s a bomber, sir, he was caught with an IRA bomb in 1939. We need to find him and pull him in.” Carmichael offered the report, which Penn-Barkis took and glanced at.

“Anyone else?” he asked.

“A girlfriend of Farrell’s called Siddy; we don’t know anything at all about her.”

Penn-Barkis dismissed her with a wave of his hand.

“Lord Scott’s secretary, Mr. Nesbitt. We can pull him in with Scott, if we can get Scott.”

“We can get a warrant for Lord Scott’s arrest,” Penn-Barkis said. “The difficulty is that he’s the kind of man who has friends in high places, within the system. If we applied for a warrant, it’s possible that someone would tip him off. Yet if we arrest him without one he might contrive to get a magistrate to release him.” He sat in silence for a moment, staring out of the window at London spread out below him, then he picked up the telephone. “Put me through to the Home Office,” he barked into the instrument. There was a pause. “Yes, Penn-Barkis here, I need to speak to Lord Timothy. Yes. Yes. Yes, it is urgent. Well, could you ask her to ask him to call me? Certainly, yes, thank you.” He put the receiver down again and smiled at Carmichael. “I’ll be in touch when I’ve had a word with the Home Secretary,” he said.

Carmichael stayed where he was, despite the clear dismissal. “And Sir Aloysius?”

“Get a warrant right away and bring him in,” Penn-Barkis said.

“The problem is that we don’t have the faintest idea where he is. He has a house in Ireland, but—”

“No, he won’t be likely to be there,” the Chief agreed. “Well, this is where the new identification cards really come into their own. For one thing, when he applied for them he must have given an address, though he could have given his Irish one. But beyond that anyone who stays at a hotel, or who rents any kind of accommodation has to show them, and the hotel keepers and landlords have to keep records, and send them to us. If he’s in London, which I think is a reasonable assumption, we should be able to find him by a search through our own papers. Put somebody on that right away. I said all along that this system would make our lives easier.”

“Yes, sir,” Carmichael said, and stood.

“Let me know if you’re leaving the building,” Penn-Barkis said.

“Yes, sir.” Carmichael walked over to the lift. As he stepped in, he heard the telephone ring.

Royston was waiting in his office. “Sir Aloysius is an IRA bomber,” Carmichael said.

Royston blinked. “I thought he was a war hero?”

“He’s both,” Carmichael said. “And I’ve got a lovely job for you. Check the address Sir Aloysius gave when he got his new papers. Also, go through all the files on hotels and rentals for the last month and see if you can find out where he is. Check under
A
as well as
F,
sometimes clerks get confused by a title.”

“I already did that for Nash,” he objected.

“That reminds me, you can do it for Marshall too. Marshall and Nash had a place in London, remember?”

“But don’t we have the telephone number for it?” Royston asked.

“You’re absolutely right, sergeant, and I’d entirely forgotten. I called it that first morning, and then gave up on it and called Portsmouth and never thought of it again. You go and get on with Sir Aloysius the Bomber and I’ll find out from the Post Office where the place is that the telephone number belongs to.”

The Post Office were obliging, and gave him an address in Chalk Farm. He itched to be off there at once, but waited for Royston and Penn-Barkis. Royston came back first. “Nothing,” he said. “Not a sausage, under
A
or
F
. Probably staying with friends, or the room is in the name of that Siddy girl.”

“And what address did he give when he got his papers?”

“Arranish House, Ulster. But he got the papers issued in London.”

“No help at all. He must be trying to hide. But the man must have friends, relations, who know where he is.” Carmichael glared at the report.

“Maybe one of them will turn him in, like the Greens,” Royston said. “There is another possibility. I had a word with Jenkinson, who knows about the Irish side of things, and he said that if he’s Irish he might have an Irish passport, which would do for checking in at a hotel. No different from using his card, you might say, but it seems that in the Republic they’re not sufficiently careful about handing out passports, and if he’s an IRA man he might have more than one, in different names.”

Carmichael groaned. “Wonderful,” he said. His telephone rang. He picked it up. “Carmichael.”

“Penn-Barkis here, Inspector, and the Home Secretary wants to see you, to go through the evidence. You have an appointment with him at ten tomorrow morning, in the Home Office. Don’t take any action in the matter of Lord Scott until after you’ve spoken to Lord Timothy.”