Sweet Poison (23 page)

‘And does Lord Weaver know that his stepdaughter might have got her dope from a night-club he owns?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t think so. Obviously I did not tell him and I don’t think Inspector Pride has.’

There was suddenly a great deal of hushing and Edward saw that a tall, thin man with bad acne and a scraggy beard was on his feet introducing a poet to the little audience. The bookshop was a well-known meeting place for left-wing intellectuals and Edward felt himself to be out of place. He had the feeling that card-carrying Communists and ‘fellow travellers’ would probably lynch him at the end of the reading. If they did he would probably let them: he was exhausted by the events of the afternoon. By the time Hermione was in hospital and he had been interviewed by Inspector Pride, who could hardly contain his disapproval of Edward’s unauthorized entry into a house not his own, it was five thirty and the last thing he wanted to do was to listen to young things spout poetry in Bloomsbury. On the other hand he did not feel like resting: he wanted to discuss things with Verity and make some sense of what had happened to Hermione.

When he saw the poet rising to his feet, acknowledging the applause with a pleased look on his face, he realized that underlying his decision not to obey his first instinct and skip this rendezvous was something else: an instinct that Verity’s interest in poetry was not entirely intellectual. The man with acne had given way to a Greek god, or that was the way it seemed to Edward. He was six feet of brawn, tall, broad-shouldered, with a noble head, strong chin and corn-yellow hair which flopped becomingly over his blue eyes. He wore grey flannels, an open-neck Airtex shirt, sleeves rolled to the elbow as though he could not wait to get down to some hard manual work. A tweed jacket was lying where he had tossed it over the back of a chair. Edward disliked him before he had even opened his mouth. He disliked him even more when he did. He had a resonant deep baritone with a pronounced Welsh lilt and Edward immediately put him down as a member of a male-voice choir, a combination of musicians for which he had always had an aversion. Worst of all, when Edward began to listen, he had to admit that the man was spouting some rather good verse, among some exhortatory dross. Certainly, everyone around him seemed to think so. The little Parton Street bookshop was crammed with people leaning against shelves, peering around piles of George Meredith and H.G. Wells. Edward himself was leaning against modern poetry by people whose names, when he examined the dust covers, were unknown to him: someone called Auden was the only one he had heard of. Auden dug into his left buttock and, as he moved to make himself more comfortable, a pile of slim volumes by one David Griffiths-Jones slipped away on to the floor with a slap of protest just as the poet was lamenting, in sonnet form, the death of a dear friend. ‘Ssh!’ said Verity fiercely.

‘Sorry,’ he whispered back. ‘What’s his name?’

‘David Griffiths-Jones; I told you, for God’s sake!’ she whispered back but so loudly that a man in a black felt hat and a Crombie, leaning against Virginia Woolf’s
Orlando
, shushed her. She then listened in seeming rapture as the poet proclaimed:

‘When I utter
Stalin
I mean good.

When I utter
Stalin
I mean courage.

I mean eyes shining.

I mean ceaseless activity.

‘When I utter
Stalin
I mean yes,

Whenever you call me I am there;

You are my present, my yesterday,

You are my tomorrow.’

When the poet had finished, Verity, along with most of those present, applauded vigorously. The favoured versifier bowed gracefully and accepted the applause with a modest shake of his head. The man with acne got on his hind legs again and said how grateful they all were; what a success the poet had been in Boston and New York and how pleased they were that he had agreed to sign copies of his book. It appeared that most of these were now languishing on the floor owing to Edward having leaned upon them too heavily. He and Verity hurriedly began to scoop them up, Verity all the time complaining at his clumsiness so that he began to wish he had not come after all. He had felt tired and listless when he returned from his burglarious afternoon but had been unable to rest. He felt worse now. The shock of finding poor Hermione close to death and a man murdered, even if the latter would not be missed, was only now beginning to take its toll on him. He wanted Verity to tell him he had acted with decision and vigour but, though she had been very shocked to hear about Hermione, she had not seemed to think
he
might be in need of any comfort.

While he had been half listening to David Griffiths-Jones, it had suddenly occurred to him that Verity might report the attack on Hermione Weaver and the murder of Charles Lomax in the
Daily Worker
, another scoop for that publication, usefully, no doubt, demonstrating how wealth did not bring happiness. But how could he ask Verity not to use what he had told her? They were partners of a sort and he had to trust her, but the truth was he did not altogether trust her. He was attracted to her but he knew her to be capable of subterfuge, and she was incontestably possessed of a ruthless streak which he admired unless he was to be one of its victims – a toad beneath her harrow? He did not quite know what the phrase meant but it seemed to express what he felt now as he saw the poet kissing her on the lips.

Well, of course, a girl as pretty and outgoing as Verity was going to have close friends, lovers even, Edward told himself, and he had no reason to object if she allowed herself to be kissed by Greek gods. After all, he doubted she even considered him to be a friend and certainly there was no question of him being anything more. Why would a girl with strong left-wing principles find anything appealing about a member of the despised upper classes? He continued to flagellate himself until Verity released herself from the poet’s embrace and turned to him. ‘Oh, David, this is a friend of mine, Edward Corinth.’

He glowed: she
did
consider him a friend and she had not embarrassed him by using his ridiculous title.

‘Lord Edward!’ said the poet genially, spoiling it all. ‘I thought it was you when I was reading just now and you tipped all my books on the floor. Don’t you remember? We were at Cambridge together.’

‘Hello, jolly good, were we?’ Edward said vacuously.

‘Of course we were. You were at Trinity and I was at Queens’. We both rowed a bit,’ he added, speaking to Verity.

‘Golly,’ said Edward. ‘Yes of course! How rude of me. You got a blue, didn’t you?’

‘Oh yes, but who cares. Fancy seeing you here! Somehow I would not have put you down as a member of the Party.’

‘Oh yes, I came with Verity.’

‘Stupid! David means the CP. He’s not a member of the Party, David. He’s just hanging around because we are investigating a murder.’

‘Gosh! That’s great,’ said David oddly. ‘Look, I’ve got to sign some books.’ He gestured deprecatingly at a little table piled with his books and guarded by a cross-looking woman in spectacles, no doubt an employee of the bookshop who wanted the poet to begin earning his keep. ‘But why not let’s all go and have a meal after?’

David drifted away to be surrounded by adoring fans. ‘How well do you know that man?’ said Edward suspiciously.

‘Well enough,’ said Verity haughtily, ‘though I don’t know what it has to do with you.’

‘Are you coming with me to the Cocoanut Grove this evening or not?’

‘Yes, but there’s lots of time. We can’t get there till ten at the earliest. We have plenty of time to have a bite to eat with David first.’

‘Oh, do we have to?’

‘What’s got into you, Edward? Don’t you like David? I thought it was rather rude of you to pretend that you did not recognize him.’

‘I didn’t at first,’ said Edward in an injured tone, ‘but then I did.’

‘But you don’t like him,’ Verity persisted.

‘No, if you want to know, I didn’t and still don’t. He’s all a bit too good to be true, for one thing.’

‘Oh, that’s nonsense.’ She looked at him, suddenly interested. ‘I do believe you are jealous!’

‘Now you are being silly,’ he said. ‘What is there to be jealous about?’

‘That’s not very polite either. It was me who ought to have said that. Anyway, like it or lump it, he’s a friend, so either be polite or leave us. It’s up to you.’

‘No, I’ll stay,’ said Edward meekly.

It was only with some difficulty that Griffiths-Jones shed his admirers and it was eight thirty before he, Edward and Verity settled themselves in a Greek restaurant in Fitzroy Street where the poet made himself very much at home. The owner and his wife and daughter welcomed David as a long-lost son and fawned over him. Edward was amused to see how he put on a great show of modesty while all the time encouraging the flattery. It seemed unfair that Verity should shout at him for being patronizing but not seem to mind David’s careless put-downs and veiled sneers. He reprimanded her for going on the Peace March which apparently had been against the Party’s policy. He praised her piece in the
Daily Worker
but criticized it for not being hard-hitting enough.

‘You know, my dear,’ – Verity seemed not to notice ‘my dear’ when it came from David – ‘you have a talent for sniffing out capitalist conspiracy but you must be careful not to become enamoured of the very corruption we have to root out. The world has to be changed,’ he added with slightly sinister intensity.

This seemed to Edward to be aimed at himself, and Verity had the grace to look embarrassed. David sailed on quite unconcerned to speak of his work for the cause. He had been to Moscow, it appeared, and he expanded on the joys of five-year plans, workers’ communes, collective farms and the honour done to him when he had an audience with the great leader himself. Verity was entranced. He had been to Spain where he said there was a very good chance of seeing the first elected Communist Party government. Verity’s eyes shone and Edward got more and more depressed. In an odd way, Griffiths-Jones reminded him of a Catholic convert so in love with the Pope and the Papacy he had abnegated his normal critical faculties.

‘When I first read
Kapital
,’ – it was fashionable to omit the definite article and pronounce the word ‘
Kapital
’ in as German an accent as one could manage – ‘it came as a revelation.’ David consciously or unconsciously used religious terminology. ‘I realized that individualism resulted in tyranny and that the people needed to be liberated. How was that to be done? Their strength had to be forged into one voice, one will.’

He went on to talk about the division of labour, the classless society, superstructure and substructure, empowering the unions. ‘We must trust Uncle Joe,’ he repeated like a mantra.

Edward’s attention had wandered during David’s dissertation on Marxism and the eventual overthrow of capitalism by the proletariat so he did not register that he had finally ended his tirade until he heard Verity giving the poet a detailed account of General Craig’s death at Mersham Castle.

David seemed uninterested in how the General had died and if he had been killed or had committed suicide or, indeed, if it had all been a terrible accident. His attitude seemed to be that it hardly mattered how an enemy of the people died and Verity ought not to trouble herself with such bourgeois trivialities. However, he was interested in Mersham Castle: who had been at dinner with the Duke, what had been discussed and the purpose of the dinners. Edward felt uneasy when Verity repeated what he had told her about the Duke’s design to do all that he could to prevent another war. There was nothing in it that any ordinary person could possibly object to but he still thought that it almost amounted to an act of betrayal discussing it with Griffiths-Jones.

David was particularly interested in the Bishop’s presence at the dinner, but whether he approved of Haycraft or disapproved Edward was unable to say. When they got on to Peter Larmore and Friedberg, David really came to life. Verity, half ashamed, said that the German had seemed to take to her and had actually invited her to the embassy; rather to Edward’s surprise and certainly to Verity’s, David urged her to telephone him and take him up on his invitation. The idea seemed to be that she had a unique opportunity of getting inside the enemy camp and spying out the land. He added, ‘We believe the Germans have some kind of hold over Larmore. If you can find out what it is, it would be very useful.’

‘Useful in what way?’ chipped in Edward. ‘You mean you would expose him in the press if, say, you found out he was selling secret information to the Germans?’

‘Possibly,’ said David, unperturbed by the tone of Edward’s voice. ‘Would you think that was wrong?’

Edward was stumped. He could not say that Larmore did not deserve to be exposed if he was guilty of spying or selling secret material to a potential enemy but he hated the idea of the Communist Party using such a scandal for its own dubious ends. Fortunately, David had not waited for Edward to answer. ‘Anyway,’ he was saying, ‘it is more likely we would do nothing. Better know your enemy’s weakness and let it destroy what it feeds on in its own time.’

Edward was thoroughly exasperated by this time. He found it almost impossible to sit calmly and listen to the man and to witness the effect it was having on Verity; he was also puzzled why David was prepared to speak so frankly in front of one whom he certainly regarded as a class enemy and possibly, though of course unjustifiably, as a rival for Verity’s affections. Just as Edward was about to get up from the table and leave David and Verity together, the poet anticipated him. He rose from the table like Poseidon arising out of the ocean, shook Edward warmly by the hand, kissed Verity on the lips – an act of deliberate provocation, Edward was sure – and vanished, leaving Edward to pick up the bill.

Edward was not sure where to start in his disapproval of David Griffiths-Jones. Not even a husband would kiss his wife on the lips in a crowded restaurant, not even a cad would send a girl to seduce his enemy. Pimping, that was what it amounted to, he thought, encouraging Verity to go and see Friedberg, and only a man of inordinate vanity would tell a girl she was consorting with the class enemy when actually eating in a restaurant at his expense. It was a tribute to Edward’s common sense that not one syllable of what he was thinking did he allow to escape him. He knew instinctively that any criticism he might make of Griffiths-Jones, however mildly expressed, would have her down on him like a ton of bricks. Instead, he asked her if she would mind accompanying him to Albany so he could change. Verity was already dressed for the evening’s entertainment, but he had not cared to turn up at a poetry reading in a left-wing bookshop at six o’clock in white tie and tails. He had known he would be enough of a fish out of water without doing that. Verity graciously consented to go. To visit, unchaperoned, a young man’s apartment was not something many well-brought-up girls would agree to do but Edward now had evidence enough that Verity was not a conventional girl; she had liberated herself from the rules of propriety laid down by society for the guidance of young women as part of her politics. He was developing a strong curiosity about her upbringing and would have liked to meet her father, the well-known barrister who, he gathered, found no contradiction in being a Rolls-Royce-owning member of the Communist Party. But, he reminded himself, at present Verity had not even told him where she lived let alone invited him to meet her parent.