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‘Yes, but emotion is very draining, you need to keep your strength up.’
He said goodbye to the luscious Irene, the bosomy barmaid who presided over the bar at the Nag’s Head, and they went outside.
‘Touch of frost, tonight,’ said Oliver. He lifted his hand as a cab came in sight, and opened the door for Polly.
Sitting in the dark, slightly smelly interior, Polly asked, ‘How much does it cost to get to France? Oh, I suppose that’s a silly question. You’d travel first class.’
‘Third class would be about ten pounds,’ Oliver said. ‘Having second thoughts?’
‘I haven’t got ten pounds,’ Polly said regretfully. ‘Having ten shillings to spare at the end of the week would be a minor miracle.’
‘Get some more of those book jackets you do.’
‘And there’s my work in Lion Yard to consider. I don’t want Mr Padgett finding someone else to take my place.’
‘It seems that you’ll have to give it up in any case, so why not a month sooner?’
‘No, Oliver. It’s tempting, but I can’t come, and that’s that.’
SIX
Max Lytton arrived at the Feathers Inn before Inspector Pritchard. It was an old-fashioned pub, not so very different from when it was built in the seventeenth century, with its polished wooden boards and a warren of narrow passages and staircases that led into unexpected rooms or out into one of its several yards. It had been a haunt of highwaymen in its heyday, and it was easy to imagine booted and cloaked men lurking in dark corners or in the cobbled courtyard, where the stables had been turned into a bar.
Max went into the downstairs dining room, a discreet place, with the tables set against the walls and screened by high-backed wooden seats. A perfect place for private conversation, which was what Max wanted. A log fire burned in the wide stone fireplace, and there was sawdust on the floor. He found an empty table and sat down with a tankard of the pub’s famous ale.
‘I’m waiting for a friend,’ he said to the waiter who was hovering to take his order, and as he spoke, he saw Pritchard standing at the door. Pritchard hesitated, looking round and then, as Max rose, lifted a hand in greeting and came over to join him.
A pint of bitter was brought for Inspector Pritchard, and the waiter came back to take their order. He could recommend a cut off the joint of Welsh lamb, excellent today or, of course, there was the inn’s renowned steak and kidney pudding.
‘They make it in the traditional way, with oysters,’ Max told Pritchard.
‘I’m not a great man for shellfish,’ Pritchard said in his lilting Welsh voice. ‘I’ll have the lamb, since it comes from my country, and our sheep are the best in the kingdom.’
The waiter went away, and the two men regarded one another in silence. They had met two years before, when Inspector Pritchard was a detective sergeant, hoping for promotion. He had been working on a murder case, and Max, obtaining information that the police had no access to, had passed it on to the eager policeman. The case had been solved, a very unpleasant criminal brought to justice, and Pritchard had got his promotion.
‘I take it this is a professional meeting,’ said Max.
Pritchard’s soft brown eyes were guileless, but Max knew better than to take the look of sleepy indifference at face value. Pritchard was a wily man, who possessed a strong moral sense coupled with a healthy cynicism as to the essential evil dwelling within his fellow beings.
‘Professional, yes, but a matter best not tackled through the usual channels, do you see?’
‘Unofficial business? That doesn’t sound like your outfit.’
‘Not precisely unofficial, just best if the details are kept between the two of us. You have your masters and I have mine. And yours are happy for me to talk to you about this. They, too, want to keep it unofficial for the time being.’
To his friends and relatives and to the closed world of London society, Max Lytton was no more than a man about town. An attractive man, surprisingly still a bachelor, despite the best efforts of debs and their mamas. He came from an old family, had considerable private means — a fortune inherited from a great aunt had come as a surprise to a younger son and a source of discontent to his father and older brothers. Because of this, he could live the life he wanted; a life to which his father took endless exception. ‘Didn’t fight for your country in the war, now you live an idle life, of no value to yourself nor anybody else. We weren’t put upon this earth to be comfortable, but to leave it a better place, I don’t see you doing that.’
Max knew there was no point in remonstrating or arguing with his father, who knew perfectly well that it was lameness from a childhood dose of polio that had prevented him being butchered in the trenches. The fact that he had spent a hardworking and successful war in Military Intelligence meant nothing to his father, a retired general. ‘Desk job, waste of time, the place for cowards and men too old or effeminate to fight.’
Nor did his father have any idea that he had been one of the few men from his department kept on after the war ended, when the intelligence services were largely wound up, with the remnants tucked away in a forgotten corner of Whitehall, starved of funds. Although recently, things had begun to change, the situation in Russia was ringing alarm bells, and to the knowledgeable men who had experience of Germany, so were the repercussions of the Treaty of Versailles.
‘Excuse me, sir.’ The waiter put plates down in front of them, and then returned with a steaming pie which he set in front of Max. Another waiter arrived with a trolley, to cut thick slices of the succulent lamb for Pritchard. Dishes of potatoes, carrots and cabbage were placed on the table, and the waiters withdrew.
Pritchard spooned redcurrant jelly on to his plate beside his lamb. Max plunged a spoon into the golden crust of his pie and transferred a generous portion to his plate.
‘If it’s a police matter, I don’t see what it has to do with us,’ Max said.
‘Then you haven’t heard that I was transferred last year,’ said Pritchard. ‘To Special Branch.’
That surprised Max. The soft-spoken Welshman had a keen mind and that extra grain of intuition that singled out the exceptional policeman from the ordinary. But Special Branch? Perhaps it was a sign of the times, an indication of how alarmed the powers that be were about the rising anger and intensity of those who felt life hadn’t offered them a fair deal. Which, in many cases it hadn’t. Extremism was on the rise, certainly in continental Europe, possibly now even in England.
In which case, Special Branch would need capable officers like Pritchard. There was, after all, more to maintaining the peace of the realm than catching criminals.
Special Branch and the intelligence services worked in an uneasy alliance, with some bitter spats about territorial demarcations. If Pritchard’s and Max’s superiors were working together on this, it would mean that they were after someone who had dealings that went beyond the merely local and criminal.
‘Out with it,’ he said. ‘What particular game is afoot?’
‘I don’t see you as Watson, nor myself as Sherlock Holmes,’ said Pritchard, spearing a roast potato and chewing it carefully. He wiped his mouth with his napkin and took a draught of beer. ‘I believe you know Sir Walter Malreward?’
‘Ah,’ said Max. ‘Malreward. Yes.’
‘By reputation, in the way of business, or personally?’
‘He is a man much in the public eye, and I have a slight personal acquaintance with him. As to his business affairs, no, I have nothing to do with them.’
Pritchard was playing with him. Pritchard must know perfectly well who Sir Walter’s constant companion was, to use the coy words of the lower kind of newspaper. Mrs Harkness. Cynthia Harkness, recent divorcée, and Max’s sister.
‘Surely he isn’t up to any mischief? He runs what passes for a reputable publishing empire, gives money to the poor, is active in middle-of-the-road politics, keeps his nose perfectly clean.’
‘Do you like him?’
Max took refuge in his tankard of beer. Like, dislike, what did that have to do with it? ‘If your lot are interested in Malreward, it’s hardly relevant how I may or may not feel about him. I don’t go in for feelings.’
‘I know that. But you’re a fair judge of a man, for all that.’
‘I wouldn’t climb a mountain with Malreward on the other end of the rope, if that’s what you mean.’
‘I didn’t know you went in for climbing,’ said Pritchard, glancing down involuntarily to where he knew Max’s bad leg would be stretched out beneath the table.
‘I speak figuratively.’
‘He is said to be tough but honest in his business dealings.’
‘In which case you need to examine your sources more carefully,’ said Max. ‘No one gets to be as rich as Sir Walter is without being ruthless and sailing pretty close to the wind somewhere along the line. Risks are how fortunes are made. If you believe any businessman as successful as Malreward got there in any other way, I have some fairies at the bottom of my garden that I’m willing to sell to you for a reasonable sum.’
Pritchard smiled. ‘Leave the fairies to us Celts, Mr Lytton. No, but Sir Walter’s record appears to be cleaner than most. Which makes him a sensitive subject, which is why we’re here and not in my or your office. Our lords and masters like Sir Walter. There’s talk of him being offered a junior post in the government.’
Max frowned. It wasn’t unusual for there to be some official vetting of a man’s background before he was recommended for a difficult post or high honours, but it was hardly his line of work. ‘Surely they went into his habits and antecedents before he got his knighthood.’
He fell silent as the waiter appeared to scoop up the empty plates and dishes.
‘Very good, the lamb,’ Pritchard said to him.
‘Thank you, sir. Apple pie to follow? With cream or custard?’
The apple pie duly arrived, and Max poured cream over his portion. ‘What’s Sir Walter been up to that’s caused these twinges of alarm? It can’t just be the possibility of a government position.’
‘We found out about it quite by chance. As you know, we take an interest these days in some of the smaller political groups. Both left-wing and right-wing outfits.’
‘Trotskyists and Marxist Leninists on the one hand, and the blackshirts and others of a fascistic tendency on the other, you mean.’
‘You’d know more about the fascists than I would, you’ve been in Italy recently, haven’t you?’
‘Yes, and although quite a few of the great and the good hold that fascism is our only bulwark against a Bolshevik takeover, my superiors are suspicious of any group that wants to overthrow society, challenge Parliament, or generally go in for rabble-rousing.’
‘There’s a group of anarchists we at the Special Branch are keeping our eye on, too, since we don’t want to see any trouble from that direction, either.’
‘You’re hardly going to tell me that Malreward is a secret anarchist or Leninist?’
‘No. It’s stranger than that, and therefore possibly more sinister. He’s given quite a substantial sum of money to the Communist Party, but also to several groups of quite a different persuasion. And to the aforesaid anarchists.’
‘It doesn’t smack of intense political conviction.’
‘It does not. And it doesn’t fit in with the reasonable, moderate Conservative person he appears to be.’
‘It sounds to me as though he’s intent on stirring up trouble. Of one kind or another.’
‘Exactly. And the sums involved are quite large, and we’d like to know where they’re coming from.’
Max shook his head. ‘That’s no mystery. He’s a very rich man.’
‘Yes, and we have access to his accounts and to his bank, and these funds haven’t passed through any of what you might call normal channels.’
‘That just means he’s had the sense and know-how to cover his tracks.’
‘We have reasons to believe that Sir Walter has sources of income other than those arising from his perfectly open and respectable business dealings.’
Max’s heart sank. He didn’t like what he was hearing, not one bit. What had Cynthia got herself into? ‘Out with it. Drugs?’
‘It doesn’t look like it, although that was our first thought. Yet he is up to something crooked, I’m convinced of it, and when you read the file, you’ll come to the same conclusion.’
‘It seems incredible to me. Why should a man who has built himself a large fortune and reached the position Sir Walter has feel a need to have any underhand or criminal dealings? Why jeopardize the chance of a post in the government?’
‘Then tell me why, if he’s an honest and upright citizen, does he pour large sums of money into subversive organizations?’
‘Perhaps he feels this country needs a wider political base, so that matters are more thoroughly debated from both sides of the political divide.’
‘And perhaps a flight of purple pigs are going to sail past the window,’ said Pritchard.
Coffee was brought, and Pritchard lit a pipe. Max gazed into the fire, watching as flames licked round a new log and another log broke and fell into the grate in a shower of sparks.
Pritchard took a good draw on his pipe, then removed it from his mouth and let out a stream of smoke. ‘This comes close to home for you. Your sister, now…’
‘Yes.’ If Sir Walter were revealed to be up to anything dangerous or crooked, the repercussions for Cynthia would not be pleasant. She had suffered a certain amount of vilification over her divorce, coming as it did after her flagrant flaunting of herself in Sir Walter’s company, and among her set, her husband was very well liked.
He wasn’t going to pass judgement; he had wished Cynthia would be more discreet, but it wasn’t her way. On the other hand, it might turn out that Sir Walter was not up to anything illegal, let alone criminal. A man could choose to give money where he wanted, there was no law against handing over sums of money to any political movement that wasn’t actually banned. It could be a quirk in his character, there could be a dozen reasons for such behaviour, although Max felt in his bones that there was more to it than the whim of a rich man.
‘I took the liberty of mentioning the circumstances to my superiors,’ said Pritchard. ‘And — ’
‘If this is a job assigned to me, I’ll do it,’ said Max without hesitation. ‘If my sister ends up made uncomfortable by it, well, that’s too bad. One can’t let emotional and personal ties get in the way of what has to be done. I take it my brief is to find out if Sir Walter is making money on the side, if he has ties to any foreign political groups — that’s what your lot are really afraid of, isn’t it? — and what else he might be doing with his money.’
‘You’re very brutal about it. Mrs Harkness — ’
‘Is a grown-up. If she plays with fire, she may get burnt. What background information do you have on Sir Walter?’
‘I brought the file with me.’ Pritchard dug into his brown leather briefcase and pulled out a buff folder, stamped Secret. He passed it to Max. ‘Knighthood three years ago, member of the Conservative party, everything above board. He owns a house in London, another one in Wiltshire. There are gaps, however. He came to England before the war, from France, where he has another house.’
‘As does my sister,’ said Max. ‘In the same place as Malreward, that’s how they met. I wonder if she’s going to France for Christmas…’ His voice tailed off, and he was silent for a while, thinking about what Pritchard had told him, turning possible approaches over in his mind. ‘If she is, I can invite myself to spend Christmas with her there. Although she might, of course, be staying at Malreward’s villa.’
‘Isn’t that mixing your personal and professional lives rather too closely?’
‘No, I don’t think so. It could be useful in both ways.’ Max gave Pritchard a direct look. ‘I’m fond of my sister. She might not thank me for it, but if Malreward turns out to be a crook of some kind, the sooner she finds out the better.’ He didn’t add, preferably before she marries him and finds herself in God knows what kind of a mess.
‘Is it a very strong attachment?’ Pritchard asked. ‘With society ladies, it’s not always easy to tell.’
‘Is that a polite way of asking if she likes his wealth rather than the man?’
Pritchard looked taken aback by the coldness in Max’s voice. ‘It is not. It is only that women of her — of your — class live according to a different set of rules than those which apply where I come from.’
Max raised a hand to acknowledge the rebuke. ‘True enough. However, I believe women generally find Sir Walter an attractive man. He has a masculine energy about him, and the aura of success has its own appeal.’
‘A virile man,’ Pritchard agreed. ‘And a forceful one. I shouldn’t like to cross him.’
‘That’s exactly what you’re proposing I do, however.’
‘He won’t be aware that you have any interest in him, not the way you work. Your sister doesn’t know what you are, what you do?’
‘No,’ said Max.
Which was probably true inasmuch as he had never told her; on the other hand, he had a suspicion that, unlike the rest of his family, she had a good idea that his apparently idle life wasn’t entirely what it seemed.
Max paid the bill after a mild protest from Pritchard, and the two men walked out into the pale sunlight which was just filtering through scudding clouds. They stood on the corner of Kettle Street, watching the traffic in Holborn rushing past, red buses the only patches of colour among the cars and wagons and drably coated pedestrians.
‘I may call in Lazarus,’ Max said, as they parted.
Pritchard, about to head for a bus stop, paused. ‘You take it that seriously?’
‘Yes,’ said Max, and watched his companion dive through the traffic and board his bus just as it was drawing away. Yes, he took it that seriously.
