Hollow Crown (21 page)

One of the causes of his anxiety was Inspector Lampfrey. He would lay odds the man was honest and yet he had changed his mind about investigating Molly’s death without reason. Except there
must be a reason – pressure from someone in authority. Then he was anxious about Dannie. It looked as though she had used him and, what was more humiliating, she didn’t seem to have any
compunction about it. She had something to do with Molly’s death but was she merely a liar and a thief or was she a murderer? This brought him to his main anxiety: why had Verity run off like
that? He knew why, damn it! He had put her in an impossible position by taking her to Haling, where she had no business to be, and surrounding her with people for whom she had – to put it
mildly – an antipathy. But this wasn’t it either! She had trusted him in some unspecified way and he had let her down. He felt diminished in her eyes and that wasn’t pleasant.

He got up from the bed and paced about the room. What ought he to do? Go and see Joe Weaver and tell him he wanted nothing more to do with Mrs Simpson and her friends and the monarchy could go
to blazes. He gave a bark of laughter. He was being absurd. The monarchy was going to blazes whether he minded or not. If he went to see Weaver, he probably wouldn’t even see him.
Hadn’t he more or less told him he was a failure last time they had met? In fact, that was odd: Weaver had been nervous and preoccupied – most unlike him. He was normally so confident
and overbearing.

Just at that moment the telephone rang. Edward went out into the hall and picked up the receiver. ‘Lord Edward Corinth’s residence,’ he said on an impulse. If it was someone he
didn’t want to speak to, he could pretend he was Fenton and say his master was not at home.

‘Edward, you idiot, what are you playing at?’

‘Verity, is that you?’ he said stupidly.

‘Of course it’s me. Why are you pretending not to be you?’

‘Oh, I . . . ’

‘Anyway, no time for that. I’ve got some news. Edward? Are you there?’

‘Yes, I’m here. I say, you aren’t too . . . disgusted with me?’

There was a silence and then Verity said, ‘It’s me who should apologize – if that’s what you were trying to do. I had no right to mind who you . . . get friendly
with.’

‘You’ve every right. You’re my conscience and anyway I . . . ’

‘Tommy rot,’ she broke in hurriedly. ‘Don’t start getting maudlin.’

‘But you rushed off . . . I thought . . . ’

‘For God’s sake, Edward,’ Verity said sharply. ‘You sound quite unlike yourself. I hope you’re not suffering from what the papers call “moral
degeneration”. I believe it is painful and incurable.’

‘Verity, be serious, I . . . ’

‘I rushed up to London because I suddenly remembered I’ve got to give a lecture tonight and I hadn’t prepared for it and all my notes and diaries and so on are here.’

‘A lecture?’

‘Didn’t I tell you? The Party has arranged a series of lectures for me all over the country to try and drum up support for the Republic and tell the story . . . ’

‘From the Communist point of view.’

‘That’s more like it! I detect a sting in the tail?’

‘I was just jealous – no one has ever asked me to lecture.’

‘Well, that’s hardly surprising. What could you lecture on? The decline of the aristocracy? The inequality of British society in the twentieth century?’

‘Don’t be sarcastic. I know, I know.’

‘Sorry.’

The clear, bright voice which came squeaking down the telephone line was bracing him as nothing else could. He knew the one thing she hated about him was his tendency to give way to self-pity
when, as she never tired of pointing out, he was one of a privileged elite with nothing to be self-pitying about. She was twittering again.

‘Edward, are you still there? I said sorry. By the way, talking of lectures, Frank has asked me down to Eton to lecture to the Political Society.’

‘Frank?’

‘Yes, your nephew, remember him?’

‘He’s invited you down to Eton?’

‘Why ever not? Don’t you remember how well we got on? He’s more to the left than Comrade Stalin, you know. He makes me sound like Stanley Baldwin.’

Edward certainly did remember how, when he had taken Verity to meet his nephew at Eton a few months back, they had got on like . . . he wanted to say like young love, but that was patently
ridiculous: a seventeen-year-old boy and a twenty-six-year-old . . . girl with ambitions to destroy public schools and everything they represented. The more he thought about it, the less ridiculous
it seemed. Then he pulled himself together. Was he going mad to be jealous of his nephew? And there was nothing to be jealous of . . . there was the rub. Was there anything between him and the
maddening girl on the other end of the telephone?

‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘I was just remembering. When’s the lecture – Frank’s, I mean?’

‘Next week – Wednesday. Will you come?’

‘Would you mind?’

‘I’m asking you to come, ass. I wouldn’t ask you if I didn’t want you. To be honest, I’m pretty nervous about it and would welcome some support.’

‘Well then, of course. I say, V, didn’t you say you had some news?’

‘Yes. You almost made me forget with all your idle chat. I was talking to our man here – I’m at the
New Gazette
– and he was telling me that Molly was dropped by
the King not just because of Mrs S but because she had been carrying on with someone else.’

‘You mean she had been having an affair with another man?’

‘For goodness sake, Edward. Isn’t that what I’ve just said. You’ve got to wake up a bit if we are to be partners.’

‘Partners, yes.’ He felt a flood of energy surge through him. ‘So who was she seeing?’

‘I haven’t been able to find out who she was “seeing” – as you so euphemistically put it – but I intend to ask around.’

‘Be careful. We don’t want the whole world to know what we’re up to. And it might be dangerous.’

‘Hmm. You think we might flush the murderer out? We’ll talk about it when we meet.’

‘When’s that?’

‘I thought you might like to take me to dinner after the lecture tonight – that is unless . . . ’

‘No, that would be . . . Where’s tonight’s entertainment taking place?’

‘At a church hall in the East End – I’ll give you the address. Six o’clock sharp – don’t be late. Come to think of it, you don’t have to attend the
lecture as you’ll be hearing the same thing at Eton.’

‘No, I’d like to, then I can prompt you when I hear it again, if you get nervous.’

‘Good. I must go now and polish the finer points – or rather think what the hell to say. Till tonight then?’

‘Mmm, I’ll be there. V . . . ’

‘Yes?’

‘Pals?’

‘Yes, pals – you dope.’

Edward thought it prudent to arrive late for Verity’s lecture fearing that, if he were placed in the front row, he might put off the speaker and, more importantly, be in
the thick of it when the soft fruit began to fly. The taxi got lost so he was very late when he arrived at the Church Hall, Pitt Street. It might be that the street was named after the celebrated
Prime Minister but it might equally have hinted at the black grime which seemed to coat every building. A smell, which might have been boiling glue, hung over the neighbourhood and, as he fished in
his trouser pocket for a half-crown, the cabbie looked Edward up and down: ‘Sure you don’t want me to take you back to Mayfair, guv?’

‘Oh no, thanks all the same. I’ll be all right.’

The cabbie shrugged, gave him one more pitying look and accelerated down Kingsland Road, obviously relieved to be leaving the neighbourhood.

Edward had dressed down for the occasion but, seeing a group of ragged children eyeing him speculatively, he had to admit he might not have dressed down far enough. It occurred to him, looking
around, that what Verity said was perfectly true: there was a whole world which people like him knew nothing about. Pitt Street might be only a few miles from Piccadilly as the crow flies but the
reality was that the crow never did fly in that direction. His world was delimited by Regent’s Park in the north and Chelsea Bridge in the south. He seldom went west of Kensington Gardens and
apart from the occasional lunch with his broker in the City he never went east of St Paul’s, unless he was attending a riot with Verity.

The area in which he now found himself was as foreign to him as if he had been in Calcutta. The slums all about him were home to many thousands of people – it was one of the most heavily
populated parts of the city – and the centre of the furniture and clothing trades. He suddenly felt the force of the cabbie’s remarks. He might like to believe that there was no part of
London to which he could not go if he so wished, but he realized that his presence here might easily be construed as an insult and a provocation to those who sweated all hours, destroying their
eyesight over sewing machines, and returned with the merest pittance to insanitary, disease-ridden rookeries.

Attempting to ignore the jeers of the urchins at his back, he stepped smartly into the church hall and was met by a stink of humanity and a noise which deafened him. It was a few moments before
he could see Verity. She was not actually speaking but was sitting beside a large woman in twinset and pearls, a fur tippet and a remarkable hat laden with highly coloured fruit. A small man in
black with a Charlie Chaplin moustache was muttering to the front row. Even if the audience had been quite silent he would have been inaudible at the back of the hall but, in the circumstances,
Edward doubted whether even the front row heard what he was saying. The large lady was restless, clearly appreciating that a riot was imminent if the little man did not give way to someone more
popular. At last, unable to bear it any longer, she got to her feet and in stentorian tones called the meeting to order and proceeded to introduce Verity.

Edward’s emotions on seeing Verity – looking very small and vulnerable – stand up and take two or three steps towards the lectern were similar to those of a father watching his
child being taken away by a teacher into the school playground for the first time. She was so close yet quite beyond his reach and at the mercy of a hostile mob. Verity would, of course, have
resented any such feeling on his part as patronizing. She would have pointed out that ‘the mob’ was just a few hundred people, the majority of whom were sympathetic to Communism if not
actually Party members. In addition, she was by now reasonably used to public speaking and, being naturally confident that her views on any matter, political or personal, were the right ones, she
was not diffident. She had witnessed so much suffering and horror in Spain – suffering of which most middle-class English girls were blessedly ignorant – that addressing a meeting in an
East End hall could hardly be considered intimidating. The odd thing was that, despite all this, Verity was nervous. It was partly that her nerves had not recovered from the battle for Toledo and,
more immediately, that she had been warned by the lady who was to introduce her – in a hurried, whispered colloquy while the little man was failing to make himself heard – that the
meeting had been infiltrated by a group of blackshirts who were planning trouble.

She stood for a moment, her rather absurd hat quivering like a black halo over her head, waiting for the crowd to be silent. Edward had never heard her speak in public before and was frightened
for her. What if they laughed at her? What if they threw things at her? He need not have worried. Her voice was light but audible even at the back of the hall where he was standing sandwiched
behind a costermonger smelling of fruit and sweat and a navvy, to judge from his calloused hands, who kept on looking at him as if he were from another planet. Verity spoke of ‘the war
against war, against want, against poverty and against exploitation’. There was nothing new in what she had to say but she said it with such evident sincerity, blazing with anger when she
mentioned ‘the employers’ and the ‘exploiting classes’, that no one could remain indifferent. Some in the audience were soon shouting their support, cheering and clapping,
and Edward joined in the applause until he saw the expressions on the faces of those near him. It was borne in on him that he was being identified as the nearest representative of the
‘exploiting classes’ and that his approval of the speaker was seen as ironic. He tried to melt into the background but was unable to do so. He looked what he was: an English gentleman
who had ‘never done a day’s work in his life’, as Verity had labelled him during one of their rows.

He was just wondering if he was going to be able to edge out of the hall without being pulled limb from limb when he was saved by the blackshirts. An organized barracking began from a group of
them in the middle of the hall which drowned out Verity. Enraged supporters of the speaker started their own noisy protest and, inevitably, scuffles broke out, fists flew and noses were bloodied.
The large lady on the platform rose to her feet appealing for order and received a vegetable – Edward thought a turnip but Verity identified it later as a tomato – on her majestic
bosom. There was a moment’s pause as this affront to the lady’s dignity was digested – not, of course, literally – and then chaos. By sticking together, the blackshirts, who
probably only numbered about thirty, were able to do considerable damage before being ejected into the road just as a group of burly policemen arrived in a Black Maria. Edward was ejected at the
same time – his shirt torn where his neighbour had grabbed it and the jacket of his suit covered in muck from the floor on which he had briefly been rolled. Reluctantly, because, as he tried
in vain to explain to his assailants, he was not himself a blackshirt, he had begun to return punch for punch and was soon laying about him with some effect. By the time he had been thrown out of
the hall by the costermonger and three of his friends, he had gained their respect as a fighter if not as a political theoretician.

He panted to one of the policemen, ‘I say, I think . . . ’ and was knocked unconscious by the constable’s truncheon.

Edward woke with a blinding headache. He was in an ambulance and the clanging of its bell made his head hurt worse than ever.