The Scandal At Bletchley (Hilary Manningham-Butler Book 1) Read online

  ‘You don’t think he might have been faking some of it? The intelligence, I mean?’

  ‘It’s possible. It does happen.’ The Colonel leant back in his chair. ‘We had one chap who invented a whole roster of agents. None of them existed at all. Ha ha! He compiled his reports from newspaper clippings. We found him out in the end, though. We have ways of checking these things.’

  ‘Perhaps Dottie found the professor out. If he was claiming money for phantom agents.’

  ‘Maybe. It’s all a bit thin, though. Singh just doesn’t strike me as the murdering type.’

  ‘Is there a type?’

  The Colonel shrugged. ‘No idea. Murder’s not really my forte.’

  ‘And I suppose the professor wouldn’t have known about the mix up over the rooms.’

  ‘No. Or about the revolver. I hate to say it, Butler, but the most likely suspect is your man Latimer. He brought that revolver here. No one else could have known about it beforehand. And a silencer too. You don’t carry one of those for self defence.’

  ‘But Harry’s no assassin,’ I insisted. ‘And he’s one of the few people here who’d never met Dorothy Kilbride. In any case, he spent the night...’ I stopped myself, but the Colonel already knew about Miss Jones so there was no harm in repeating it. ‘In any case, he spent the night with Felicity Mandeville Jones.’

  The Colonel sighed. ‘Yes. That does give him something of an alibi. Miss Jones confessed the whole contretemps to me this morning. According to her, they were together from half past midnight until about six thirty.’

  I nodded. That fitted with what I knew. ‘Unless one of them fell asleep for a few minutes.’ Or had been put to sleep, I thought suddenly, remembering the sleeping pills on the bedside table.

  ‘What, you think he might have crept out for ten minutes, grabbed the gun, shot Dottie and then crept back into bed?’

  ‘Not Harry,’ I thought. ‘It’s not his style.’ And murder would have been the last thing on Felicity’s mind.

  The Colonel yawned suddenly. ‘I don’t know, Butler. A bit of a rum do all this. Hell of a way to celebrate an anniversary.’ All at once, just for an instant, Sir Vincent looked very tired. But he recovered quickly. ‘The timing couldn’t be worse,’ he said, leaning forward confidentially. ‘We can’t afford a scandal right now. This new Labour government, they really don’t trust us. Even the Prime Minister won’t talk to me directly. We have to communicate through intermediaries. Mind you, I can’t say I blame him, after that cock-up with the Zinoviev letter.’

  I nodded. I remembered the scandal. It was old news now, but the wound still festered. The Labour Party had lost a general election back in 1924, after a letter had been leaked to the press connecting the party with an international communist organisation. The correspondence had been authenticated by the secret service, but it had turned out to be a forgery. Now Labour had won an election, they had every reason to bear a grudge.

  ‘If there’s a scandal, they could well shut us down altogether. Hand everything over to Special Branch.’

  ‘Lord,’ I said. That didn’t bear thinking about. Scotland Yard were famed for their incompetence. Most of the arrests they did make were as a result of intelligence received from MI5.

  ‘I’m not going to let that happen,’ the Colonel insisted. ‘Don’t worry, Butler. We’ve been through worse affairs than this and come out the other end. And I daresay there’ll be others in the future.’

  Out in the hallway, the telephone started to ring.

  The Colonel flipped shut his notebook. ‘I think that’s everything for now.’ He sat back in his chair. ‘I suppose you’d better send in your chap Latimer next. I think we need a very long talk.’

  Chapter Nineteen

  Professor Singh was dozing serenely in a leather armchair. He looked peaceful resting there, his head dipped down into his chest, his dreams no doubt full of arcane philosophical theories rather than anything actually useful, but a benign figure nonetheless. It is difficult to think badly of anyone when you watch them sleeping, even a know-it-all like the professor. And despite the incriminating evidence of the Newton .32 under his pillow, I couldn’t really believe he was capable of murder.

  I moved into the library and poured myself a whisky from a handily placed decanter left over from the previous evening.

  John Smith was sitting at a small table nearby, quietly reading the morning paper. He was an altogether less attractive figure than the professor. His over-sized belly congealed unpleasantly in his lap, but the man seemed ill at ease. He was dressed as smartly as he could manage, waiting for his wife to come down a second time so that the two of them could head off for church.

  I wondered if the telephone call he’d received had riled him. He did seem somewhat agitated.

  A second call, twenty minutes later, had been answered by Doctor Lefranc. I was on my way to the billiard room at this point, to summon Harry for his interview. ‘It is the Colonel’s men,’ the doctor explained, placing a hand over the receiver. ‘Their vehicle has broken down and they will not be here until at least midday.’ That was one piece of good news, anyway. I left Lefranc to pass the message on to Sir Vincent while I provided the summons for my American friend.

  Harry was in the games room, watching with some amusement as Felicity Mandeville Jones tried to teach Lettie Young to play billiards. The variety star was absolutely hopeless. She laughed as the end of the cue slipped out of her fingers and scraped across the green, missing all three of the balls.

  ‘Bleedin’ hell!’ she exclaimed. ‘I’ll never get the hang of this!’

  ‘Darling, you just need to keep your other hand steady,’ Miss Jones explained patiently. ‘Don’t grip the cue too tightly.’

  The impromptu lesson was providing a useful distraction.

  I caught Harry’s eye and drew him away from the table. ‘The Colonel wants you,’ I said.

  Harry grinned. ‘How’d it go with you?’ he asked, as we left the billiard room and walked together through the main hall.

  ‘All right, I think.’ I breathed deeply. ‘He’s not too happy with you though, after your shenanigans with Miss Jones last night.’

  Harry chuckled. ‘Hey, a guy can’t help being popular.’

  ‘This is serious, Harry. Be careful what you say to him. I think you’re his main suspect.’

  ‘Don’t worry, old man. I can take care of myself.’

  That I had no doubt of.

  In the library, Mr Smith had looked up from his copy of the Sunday Times. ‘Sir Hilary,’ he acknowledged, as I poured myself that whisky. ‘What a bloody mess, eh?’

  ‘I’ve had better days,’ I admitted.

  ‘I thought this weekend would be a nice break for the wife, away from all the usual worries. But it’s been a bloody nightmare. I wish I’d never got involved with the Security Service.’

  ‘I know the feeling. Are you still involved with them, then?’ It was an impertinent question, but I couldn’t resist asking. ‘Or did they pension you off?’ Most of the guests were former MI5 employees, but a few of them remained on the payroll. ‘Sorry. None of my business really.’

  Smith shrugged. ‘It’s no big secret, son. Aye, I’m still active, just about. But I don’t do anything important. I’m just a middle man.’ He lowered his voice slightly and leaned forward. ‘We’ve got people working undercover, in the trade union movement. Informers, you know. Keeping an eye on the reds.’

  ‘Yes, so I gather.’ I had handled a few trade union reports myself, back before the war.

  ‘They send their reports to me and I pass them on. I don’t even read them half the time. I’m just another layer of deniability.’ His nose wrinkled with distaste. ‘Anything I can do to stop those buggers bringing the country to a halt every five minutes. Not that’s it done me much good.’ He sighed. ‘Things are going from bad to worse.’

  ‘That phone call. Was it bad news?’

  ‘Aye. The office got a telegram from New York yesterday e
vening. You remember that company I were telling you about? The American one.’

  How could I forget, after he had droned on all that time, while I had been trying to watch a game of croquet.

  ‘They have a director, Mr Muldoon. Well, apparently he had a heart attack yesterday afternoon. He’ll be in hospital for weeks and there’ll be no decisions on anything; not for some time, any road. And by then it’ll be too late. I’ll be bloody ruined. And I tell you, son, it’s all down to those bloody unions.’

  I gulped down the whisky. ‘That’s too bad, Mr Smith.’

  ‘Oh, it don’t matter for me. I can do without. Self-made man, I am.’ There was a hint of pride in his words. ‘I know how to look after myself. But the wife, she’s used to a proper standard of living. And I’m her husband. I should be providing it for her.’

  ‘You might be able to salvage something. All those factories, must be worth a bit.’

  ‘Not when the creditors move in.’ He sighed again. ‘I’ll be lucky to get out with the clothes I stand in. I’ve already pawned all the jewellery. The wife doesn’t even know. Me sending her up there to check they hadn’t been stolen and they’re not worth two ha’pennies. We’ve got nothing left to sell.’

  ‘Something’s bound to turn up.’ I insisted. The fellow was getting maudlin. ‘Got to look on the bright side, eh?’

  ‘I suppose.’

  Our conversation had roused Professor Singh. He rubbed his eyes and looked past us to the doorway. ‘Mrs Smith.’ He smiled. ‘You are looking most radiant this morning.’

  My head snapped round. Mrs Smith was standing with her arms crossed in the door of the library. Her husband tensed as she dipped her head in frosty acknowledgement of the professor. Her expression was unreadable ‘Are you ready for church, Jonathan?’ she asked.

  Mr Smith placed his hands on the arms of his chair and manoeuvred his great bulk into a vertical position. ‘Aye, I’m coming, love.’ He glanced at a watch on his wrist. ‘Plenty of time.’

  How long Mrs Smith had been standing in the doorway was impossible to judge. If she had overheard anything her husband had said, she was not showing it. The man himself moved past me towards the door. Professor Singh rose to his feet too, though whether out of politeness or with the intention of joining the happy couple I was not immediately sure.

  Lady Fanny Leon had arrived in the entrance hall with her housekeeper and a couple of maids. She was dressed in black – wholly appropriate given the circumstances – and to look at her you would not have known this was anything other than an ordinary Sunday. She possessed that wonderful unflappability that is the hallmark of a true aristocrat, something the Mrs Smith’s of this world could only ever aspire to.

  ‘Will you be joining us, Sir Hilary?’ Lady Fanny enquired as I popped my head out of the side hall. Her voice had a commanding depth, a powerful combination of age and breeding.

  ‘I’m feeling a little tired,’ I apologised. ‘I think I might just sit and read the morning papers.’ I have never been a great church goer and the last thing I needed was some pompous vicar droning on about charity and virtue.

  Mrs Smith gave a disdainful snort. She glanced pointedly at the whisky glass in my hand. ‘I don’t think that will help,’ she said.

  I made a point of draining the glass. ‘We all worship in our own way, Mrs Smith. Don’t let me keep you.’ Bloody woman. It wasn’t as if her husband was any kind of saint, selling off her jewellery like that, without even telling her. To hell with both of them, I thought. I had better things to worry about.

  The party moved along the hallway and out through the vestibule. Some of the valets and ladies maids had joined the household staff. I nodded politely to Lady Fanny as she passed me by. St Mary’s Church was a ten minute walk away, on the southern side of the estate. I had a pleasant view of the steeple from my bedroom window.

  Professor Singh watched quietly as the doors swung shut behind them.

  ‘Not going to church, professor?’ I asked. What kind of religion did he subscribe to? I wondered. Some heathen mumbo jumbo, no doubt.

  ‘I am not a member of the Christian faith.’

  ‘What are you then?’ We moved back into the library. ‘Muslim, Hindu. Buddhist?’ Not that I really cared. An awkward fatalism had descended upon me. I picked up the newspaper Mr Smith had discarded and sat myself down in the leather armchair. It was warm and surprisingly comfortable.

  The professor returned to his seat. ‘I do not believe it is necessary to adopt the primitive belief systems of our ancestors,’ he said. The fellow was incapable of giving a straight answer. ‘A child may be born to parents of one particular religion, but that is not a good enough reason for adopting that same religion oneself. We must each, I believe, come to our own conclusions about the nature of the reality in which we find ourselves.’

  ‘Right.’ I frowned. ‘So not a Muslim, then?’ Honestly, you ask a simple question and you get a lecture in response. ‘So what about killing people, then?’ I asked, facetiously. ‘Where do you stand on taking another man’s life?’

  Professor Singh clasped his hands together. I had a feeling I was going to regret asking that. ‘I do not believe in absolute morality,’ he affirmed enthusiastically. ‘Nevertheless, for society to function, we must impose certain codes of behaviour. Human life may not be sacred in the religious sense, but it is necessary for us to act as if it were. Otherwise, it would be impossible for society to function effectively.’

  I shook my head. I didn’t understand a word. ‘Too deep for me, I’m afraid.’

  There was no stopping the professor, however. ‘A civilised society cannot allow the random taking of life, since violent death – except in war time – undermines the very security that is the chief benefit of any society. Yet violence cannot be eradicated from human nature, so each community must develop mechanisms to deal with it. Our own community is a case in point; and our somewhat confused response to these recent unfortunate events has been fascinating to observe.’

  ‘Well, quite.’ I ruffled my newspaper and took a quick look at the headlines. Wall Street again. I yawned. Lord, I was feeling tired. Professor Singh had picked up a book and was starting to read it. I couldn’t make out the title. I yawned again. These chairs really were very comfortable. It would be so easy just to close my eyes and drift away.

  Anthony Sinclair was smacking me across the head with a croquet mallet. There was a loud thwack as the large hammer struck me from behind. Blood began to dribble into my eyes. ‘Good show!’ the Colonel exclaimed, amidst a smattering of polite applause from the combined forces of the Metropolitan Police Force. ‘Nothing more than you deserve, Sir Hilary,’ Sinclair snarled, standing over me and grabbing hold of my shoulder. ‘Sir Hilary,’ he repeated. ‘Sir Hilary!’

  There really was a hand on my shoulder. My body tensed and my eyes flipped open. I started to cough. ‘Wake up, Sir Hilary.’ A strange figure was looming over me. One of the valets. I struggled to focus. It couldn’t be Hargreaves. This fellow had hair. ‘Sorry to wake you, sir,’ he apologised, as I roused myself from a deep slumber and started to take stock of my surroundings.

  I was still in the library. That damned chair. I had closed my eyes for half a second and fallen asleep. How did I do it? Two murders in less than ten hours and I was struggling to keep my eyes open. I was worse than Professor Singh. I coughed and collected my bearings. The Sunday Times fell from my lap. ‘Must have nodded off there,’ I mumbled. The professor was no longer in the chair opposite me. He had left his book on the table top and must have departed while I was away with the fairies. Perhaps he had gone in to see the Colonel. It was probably his turn by now.

  I focused my attention on the valet. ‘Jenkins, isn’t it?’ Anthony Sinclair’s man, the one I had seen at the cottage tending the dead body of his master. Poor devil, I thought. Someone else whose weekend had been less than ideal.

  ‘That’s right, sir,’ Samuel Jenkins confirmed sadly. He spoke with a mild Welsh lilt, w
hich wasn’t altogether objectionable. Someone had obviously beaten out the worst excesses of his native dialect before giving him a job. And quite right too. There’s nothing worse than a valet with a thick regional accent. ‘Doctor Lefranc asked me to come and find you. He needs to have a word. It sounded urgent, sir.’

  ‘Doesn’t it always,’ I muttered, struggling to my feet. ‘I suppose I’d better go and see what he wants. What time is it?’

  ‘Ten past eleven, Sir Hilary.’

  ‘Lord.’ I had been asleep for almost an hour. No wonder I felt exhausted. A short sleep is worse than no sleep at all. ‘Where is Doctor Lefranc?’

  ‘He asked to meet you in the kitchens, sir.’

  I grunted. The far side of the house. That was typical. I bent over and poured myself a glass of whisky from a decanter on the table, purely for medicinal purposes. I gulped it down in one and, having cleared the cobwebs, I gestured for Jenkins to lead the way.

  As I headed for the door, I caught sight of the book Professor Singh had been reading, resting on the table next to his armchair. Crime And Punishment. Very appropriate.

  The morning room was directly opposite the library, on the other side of a short hallway. The door was open but there was no one inside. I could see straight through to the windows and out onto the lawn. ‘What’s happened to the Colonel?’ I asked. Surely the interviews hadn’t concluded already. I couldn’t have been asleep that long.

  Jenkins shrugged. ‘I don’t know, Sir Hilary. I haven’t seen him.’

  We made our way along the entrance hall to the main stairs and then through a side door to the back hall.

  Jenkins was quite a young fellow, perhaps twenty-five or twenty six. Probably hadn’t seen much of life yet. He was good looking and fair haired, far too attractive to make a decent servant, though perhaps I did him a disservice. I wondered idly what he had thought of his late master. It can’t have been much fun, dressing an oaf like Sinclair every day. But perhaps the journalist had been more forgiving of servants than he had been of the women in his life.