The Telegraph talked about the Bolshevik menace, and seemed to take it for granted that the same man who had attacked Lord Eversley had killed Sir James Thirkie. "Englishmen will not allow our policy to be set by armed anarchists in the pay of Soviet Russia!" the Leader screamed. The pictures were from the files: Lord and Lady Eversley opening a factory the year before, and Lucy Kahn at the time of her wedding. It went on to praise Lord Eversley's marksmanship and police efficiency. The Telegraph often praised police efficiency, except for the times when it called for the blood of some policeman who had not been efficient enough to suit it. Its own foreign news was a day behind The Times; it said that Kursk had changed hands again.
The Manchester Guardian also quoted Carmichael extensively. It went so far as to show a picture of him, taken the day before, outside the gates of Farthing. It urged the House not to allow its natural sympathy for the Farthing Set in their misfortunes to overwhelm it in the vote this evening. Carmichael read that twice and thought hard about it, closing the paper without more than glancing at the foreign news headline: "Hitler's work camps: are they really efficient?"
He went down to breakfast in a thoughtful frame of mind, and found Royston already at the table, reading the Daily Herald. "You're up early," he said.
"Bloody bird wouldn't shut up," Royston said. "I hate the country; you can keep it. Will we get back up to London today, sir?"
"I should think so," Carmichael said. "What news?"
"Lord Eversley shot a Bolshevik, nation rejoices. And the police want to hear about anyone who saw a man on a motorcycle," Royston summarized.
"How about the foreign news?" Carmichael sat down and rang for his breakfast.
"Foreign news?" Royston squinted at him suspiciously. "The Emperor of Japan is to visit President Lindbergh in San Francisco to discuss closer economic ties between the Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere and the USA. Oh, and Kursk changed hands again."
"You've restored my faith in the papers, sergeant," Carmichael said, as the landlady brought his breakfast. "I was beginning to think that the foreign news had no overlap whatsoever."
"Why did you want to know?" Royston poked gingerly at a sausage.
"I wondered if this business, that looks at first blush as if it relates to British politics, might possibly relate more to politics in some other country, such as Soviet Russia, or possibly Nazi Germany. This theory would seem to be disproved, at least if one relies on the great British newspapers to tell you anything."
"Anything interesting in the other papers?"
"The Telegraph urges the country and the Tories to stand firm behind the Farthing Set, while the Manchester Guardian wants them not to be swayed by natural emotion into giving the Farthing Set too much power."
"They've got too much bloody power already," Royston grumbled, mopping up his egg yolk with his toast.
For the second day running, there was a fat envelope waiting for Carmichael at Farthing. "Check into the billiards thing," he said to Royston. "Do it yourself, don't let Yately do it, if Yately even bothers to show his face here this morning. Find out who remembers Normanby and Thirkie playing billiards, and what time it was."
He opened the envelope. Before he could do more than glance at the top report, on Bolshevik activity, the telephone rang.
"Call from London for Inspector Carmichael, police priority," the operator sang. Carmichael waited with the big clumsy receiver tucked between his ear and his shoulder, reading the report, a pen in his hand for taking notes. It seemed that Soviet, Bolshevik, Communist, and Trotskyist activity had been rather low of late, according to police sources, and there had been no rumors of planned assassinations or attacks.
"Is that you, Carmichael?" a voice barked in his ear.
"Yes, sir," Carmichael said, putting down the report, his heart sinking. Chief Inspector Penn-Barkis would telephone himself only with bad news, or if he meant to interfere.
"I've had calls from very high places about your keeping everyone penned up down at Farthing. I didn't give in to them, I said you could keep them there until ten this morning, but after that, anyone you don't arrest is free to go. And better not be too enthusiastic about arrests, considering who these people are. There's nothing more to do down there—come back to London."
"Yes, sir," Carmichael said, writing neatly on his notepad: "There is one law for rich and poor alike, which prevents them equally from stealing bread and sleeping under bridges."
"They've been told already," Penn-Barkis said. "Do any last interviews you need to."
"Yes, sir," he repeated, drawing a box around what he had written.
"Come in and see me when you get back to the Yard."
"Yes, sir," Carmichael repeated. "Is that all?"
"No. Sergeant Stebbings wanted a word about the raid last night. I'll put you through to him now."
"Thank you, sir," Carmichael said, automatically, drawing curlicues around the box and contemplating the words inside. If he'd told some factory workers or miners suspected of murder to stay at home where he could talk to them, nobody would have raised the slightest murmur.
"Stebbings here," Stebbings said.
"Yes, Carmichael here, sergeant, what is it? Something on Brown?" He tapped his pen.
"Brown, or Guerin, doesn't have a record here under either name. Nothing known. I've sent you down what we have. We're investigating in Bethnal Green, where it seems someone of that name did live at that address. He lived alone, so there's not much progress as yet."
"Oh well," Carmichael said, crosshatching the corners of his square.
"What I wanted to say, sir, was we found a link with the other man."
"Which other man?" Carmichael asked.
"Kahn, sir. We went into his flat last night, tidy search, like you asked for. Nobody would know we'd touched a thing, but we turned it over properly."
"Yes, yes, but what did you find?" Carmichael dropped his pen and it rolled over the table, sputtering ink.
"Very incriminating letters from a member of an underground Jewish group, urging him to revolutionary action and murder," Stebbings said, as if he were remarking on the weather. "They didn't mention this specific case, but they wanted him to find an opportunity to get Sir James Thirkie, Lord Eversley, Lord Timothy Cheriton, and Mr. Normanby together and blow them up."
"Were they blackmailing letters?" Carmichael asked. "Did they threaten, or say 'Unless you do this we reveal something about you'? Or were they just encouraging him to do it?"
"The latter," Stebbings said. "From the letters we have, it appears he kept refusing, but he continued to correspond with them and to send them money. We only have their half of the correspondence, but there's a constant tone of 'Thanks for the money but it isn't enough, take action against this fascist family you've married into.' "
Kahn. He'd been completely wrong. Kahn all the time. He'd pulled the wool over his eyes properly. Kahn and an underground Jewish group. But Guerin wasn't Jewish, he was a Bolshevik, and the Bolsheviks hated the Jews almost as much as the Nazis did. "Are they signed?"
"They're signed Chaim, though I don't know if that's how you say it," Stebbings said, pronouncing the name like chain—"C-H-A-I-M."
"All of them?" Carmichael rescued the pen and wrote the name down.
"All of them. Same hand, too. No addresses on them, though they are dated."
"What are the dates?"
"Over the last eight months, which would be since Kahn moved into this flat, on the occasion of his marriage. If there were earlier ones, we didn't find them. The most recent one is dated last Tuesday, May third."
"On May third they were urging him to blow up the Farthing Set with a bomb," Carmichael said, smelling his lady-sawn-in-half again. "And on Saturday night he kills Thirkie, alone, by gas? How often were the letters sent, normally?"
"About once a month, or every six weeks," Stebbings said.
"Thank you very much, sergeant," Carmichael said. "I don't suppose you have any idea who this person is?"
"None, sorry, sir. I checked the name, but we don't have anything, and it's just the one name, don't know if it's a first or a last name."
"No known Bolshevik connections?"
"No, sir." Stebbings sounded regretful.
"Does he sound like a Bolshevik, in the letters?"
"Rather the opposite, if anything. He says several times that Stalin's as bad as Hitler. He talks a lot about smuggling people out of the Reich and says that Stalin's copying Hitler and they'll have to smuggle people out of Russia soon too."
"A Jewish underground group," Carmichael said. "Do we know of any?"
"One or two, which we'll check out now," Stebbings said. "They mostly want to establish a Jewish state in Palestine."
"That isn't illegal," Carmichael objected. "Perfectly respectable people want to do that. Balfour when he was Prime Minister wanted to."
"You know more about that than I would, sir," Stebbings said. "I was talking about people who go out to Palestine and blow up railway lines or shoot at soldiers, terrorist actions like that."
"Ah. That's a red herring from the sound of things. What I was wondering from the content as described was whether these letters might have come from the Continent. Are they in envelopes? Did they come from England or across the Channel?"
"No envelopes, so no telling," Stebbings said. "The notepaper is cheap, but it doesn't look foreign. You should look at them yourself, sir. Should I send them down?"
"I think I'll be back in London later today—hold on to them for now," Carmichael said. "I'll be in touch, sergeant. Thank you again."
"One more thing," Stebbings said. "It turns out he may be a sodomite too, Kahn. There's letters in Mrs. Kahn's possession from her brother, who was in the RAF with Kahn, talking about their undying love, and David and Jonathan, and all manner of Greeks."
"Probably just boyish stuff and nonsense," Carmichael said. "From Mrs. Kahn's brother you say?"
"They're everywhere, sir," Stebbings said, gloomily.
"Well, this doesn't have any bearing on the present case, being as Mrs. Kahn's brother was killed in 1940," Carmichael said. "Put the whole lot on my desk. I'll go through them when I can."
"See you later, sir," Stebbings said, and rang off.
Carmichael turned his pen in his hands, then wiped his fingers on his handkerchief. He looked at what he had written, but it didn't apply. Kahn, however Jewish, however queer as a young man, was rich, had been rich before his marriage, he came of a rich banking family. He had a friend who was a Jewish revolutionary, a friend he sent money to, a friend smuggling Jews out of the Reich, a friend who urged him to violent acts. Was that enough to arrest him for the murder of Sir James Thirkie? Surely not. But could he risk letting him loose, when he had letters in his possession urging him to kill a man who had been killed, and at a time when he had the means and the opportunity? If he arrested Kahn, Kahn would hang. He would be convicted in the press before he ever got to trial, and a prosecuting barrister would look at Carmichael's thin thread of evidence and paint it as broad as a highway. Then Kahn would hang, and if he wasn't guilty, the guilty person would be laughing. But Kahn could have done it, have decided not to kill his own relations-by-marriage but satisfy his friend with Thirkie, who had stopped the Jewish war.
He reached out for the bell-pull, to ask Jeffrey to send Kahn in, and hesitated. Not Bolshevik, Stebbings had said, rather the opposite. Guerin/Brown had that Bolshevik card. If this was a political plot, then it was a Bolshevik one. Guerin/Brown could have been unconnected with the Thirkie murder, but he couldn't quite believe it. Carmichael ground his fists into his eyes, feeling as if he had everything upside-down. He rang the bell, and waited. He read the report on the Bolsheviks. It said nothing about Jews.
Jeffrey knocked. "You rang, sir?" he asked.
"Please ask Mr. Kahn if he can see me," Carmichael said. "And send in some China tea for us both, if it isn't putting too much of a strain on the kitchen at this time of day."
"Yes, sir," Jeffrey said. "Is it true, sir, that everyone is allowed to leave after breakfast? The London servants are all in a flurry about it."
"Yes, most people will be leaving," Carmichael said. "There's no reason to keep everyone here any longer."
Jeffrey left. Carmichael put down the Bolshevik report—why did they have to have so many antagonistic splinter groups anyway? Most people got on splendidly without any. Underneath it was a brief report on Alan Brown, tenant of 23 Sisal Villas, Bethnal Green. Date of Birth, 6 February 1925. Unemployed. Last place of employment: Mottrams. Position: fitter. Reason for leaving employment: dismissed 3 January 1949, accused of trying to start a union. Not known to the police.
So he'd been out of work since January, and he sounded like a red, all right, trying to start a union. But if his real name wasn't known to the police either, why was he living under the name of Brown? Faked identity cards didn't come cheap.
Lizzie brought tea, and Carmichael poured a cup for himself. Then Jeffrey tapped on the door again, and ushered in Kahn. He was wearing a light gray traveling suit and carrying a slate gray coat.
"My wife and I are ready to leave," Kahn said.
"Sit down, and have a cup of tea," Carmichael said, pouring a cup and pushing it across the desk. He waited until Kahn was sitting. "Who's Chaim?" he asked.
Kahn betrayed absolutely nothing. The cup did not tremble in the saucer. "I have no idea what you're talking about," he said.
Carmichael took the pad where he had written it down, noticed in time what was written above it, turned to a clean page and wrote it down again. He handed it to Kahn. This time there was a reaction—he saw him flinch a little, and his teaspoon tinkled.
"Chaim," he read, pronouncing it more like "Kiy-am." He looked up from the paper, distress visible. "Where did you find this name?"
"Who is it?" Carmichael insisted.
"He is a friend of mine, a hot-headed Jewish friend," he said, setting his cup down on the desk. "You've found his letters? You've searched my flat?"
Carmichael said nothing for a moment. It wasn't the answer he was expecting. He had expected more absolute denial, which would have been very hard to deal with. "What's his full name?" he asked.
Kahn opened his mouth, then closed it again. "I don't have to speak to you, Inspector, and I certainly don't have to betray my friends to you when that would mean betraying them to the Gestapo and having them end up in a worse place than you could ever imagine."
"I've seen the reports on the work camps," Carmichael said.
"The press know nothing—" Kahn began dismissively.
"I've seen the real reports," Carmichael interrupted. "Your friend Chaim gets people out of them?"
Kahn stared at him for a moment, then spoke. "Yes. When he can. More often he helps people escape before they get to them— false papers so they can live as Aryans, passports or visas so they can get out."
"And you give him money, to help him with this?"
Kahn nodded. "Not very much money, not enough, but how can I refuse?"
"The Gestapo are always telling us that our rich Jews are financing the escape of their Jews," Carmichael said.
Kahn laughed without mirth. "I hope you deny it."
"I always have so far," Carmichael said, evenly.
"I don't have to say anything without a lawyer present," Kahn said, immediately defensive. "When it's a matter of helping you catch a murderer, a murderer I know nothing about, then I will help you as much as I can, even though I see suspicion falling falsely on me simply because I'm Jewish. But when it comes to this kind of thing, you can't make me talk."
"We can go that route if you like, Mr. Kahn, but I have to tell you that if you make such a request, I'll be forced to arrest you, and once the machinery of arrests begins to grind, you might find yourself very rapidly on the gallows for the murder of Sir James Thirkie. I don't want that, because I'm by no means sure you did it, but from the evidence we have against you it would be possible to make a very good
case."
Kahn picked up his tea and took a sip, and then another. "What do you want to know?" he asked.
"As well as helping European Jews escape the Reich, Chaim urged you to revolutionary actions in this country?" Carmichael asked, quite gently.
"You have searched my flat," Kahn said, putting his tea down again. "Very well. Yes. Yes he did. He was always coming up with some scheme. He thought that since my marriage brought me into contact with people he called British fascists, I should take some violent action against them."
"And what did you think?"
"That he was talking nonsense, of course!" Kahn said, vehemently. "The Farthing Set aren't fascists; there are no fascists in Britain. I hoped that Lord Eversley and his friends might learn from this connection that British Jews are much like other British people, and perhaps agree to allowing more European Jews into the country, or into other parts of the Empire. If I'd killed them, even one of the out-and-out anti-Semites, I'd have made everyone hate the Jews. Britain might have become as bad as Germany. It was madness. It could only make things worse here, to no purpose."
"And is that what you said to Chaim?"
"Of course it is, over and over again. Every time he wrote I'd send him back a long letter explaining all this business. He didn't understand the British situation. He saw that things here aren't perfect, and thought half a loaf was the same as no bread, which is arrant nonsense. My father manages to get a number of visas every year, entirely legally, by money and influence, not very many, true, but for each individual life saved it makes all the difference in the world. We can't help European Jewry by using the methods of fascism. It's much more likely that we can change public opinion and policy, slowly."