Farthing

  "Ah, Carmichael," he said. "Take a seat. Have you finished all that Thirkie nonsense?"

  "Nonsense, sir?" Carmichael sat in the other armchair and waved away a cigar.

  "Members of Parliament and Bolsheviks and Jews, all waiting around for you to finish talking to them—it sounds like nonsense to me," Penn-Barkis said. "But now you've evidence that the Jew and the Bolshie did him in between them, and we can close the case?"

  "No, sir," Carmichael said. Penn-Barkis's eyebrows went up. Carmichael took a deep breath. "The case on the Bolshie's clear enough, he was standing there with a rifle in his hand, a .22, but a real rifle, good enough to kill someone. He shot at Lord Eversley and Mrs. Kahn, wounding both of them. But as for his involvement with the Thirkie murder, it's impossible that he should have done it. He couldn't have got into the house. Thirkie was gassed in his car, sir, and then his body was taken into the house, which must have needed help from inside at the very least. There he was arranged in his bed as if he'd been stabbed, with lipstick over his chest to simulate either blood or the red breast of the Farthing robin, and a Jewish star attached by a dagger."

  "Why go to all that trouble? Why not just stab him in the first place?" Penn-Barkis asked.

  "Possibly to intimidate Thirkie's friends, or possibly to implicate the Jews in the murder, sir," Carmichael said. "Or it's possible that there were two parts to the business—one party who killed him, and another who arranged his body later. It's even possible the death was suicide."

  "Why would a man like Thirkie kill himself? He had everything to live for. If the vote tonight goes the way it's looking, he'd have been Home Secretary."

  "Yes, sir." Carmichael thought about the vote. "Maybe someone else wanted the job."

  "Do you have any evidence of that?" Penn-Barkis sounded incredulous.

  "No, sir," Carmichael said. "I do know that Mr. Normanby lied to us about the time he last saw the dead man alive, and I don't know what purpose he had for lying, but that's all."

  "Probably something perfectly rational." Penn-Barkis puffed at his cigar and sent out a cloud of smoke. "Or he might have been mistaken. Did you ask him?"

  "There's no possibility he could have been mistaken, sir. But as you say, he could have been lying for some reason unrelated to the murder, and I didn't like to press him too hard, as he's a member of Parliament and also as he had no reason to kill Thirkie."

  "I thought you implied he wanted his job."

  "Mr. Normanby was tipped to be Chancellor, and now he seems to be tipped to be Prime Minister. Thirkie would have been junior to him in any case, sir." Carmichael frowned.

  "And what about this Kahn, the Jew?" Penn-Barkis asked. "Have you arrested him?"

  "No, sir. He had no reason to do it, and the crudity of the star rather points away from an intelligent man like Kahn than towards him. He's also a rich man and a banker. The only real evidence against him are some letters in his possession from a man called Chaim, a Jewish revolutionary, not a Bolshevik, an anti-Bolshevik, calling on him, as recently as last Tuesday, to blow up the whole Farthing Set. I prefer not to arrest him without a closer link, but he remains under house arrest at Farthing."

  "So what do you want to do?" Penn-Barkis put down his cigar. "I can't have this dragging on too long. The politicians are at my heels as it is."

  "Yes, sir," Carmichael said, wishing there was no such thing as politics and that he'd never heard the word. "I want to keep Royston, and I want to dig a little more into Brown, the gunman, his background, his friends, to see if I can find anything that leads me anywhere."

  "You can have until the end of the week," Penn-Barkis said, looking at his watch. "It's a quarter to six now, and it's Tuesday. That gives you two whole days, but that's all."

  Carmichael stood. "Yes, sir."

  "On Friday morning, we're announcing the whole thing, that someone's in custody, or that Brown acted alone, and everything has to be tied up by then."

  "Yes, sir," Carmichael said, because he could say nothing else. The crumpled paper pressed through the lining of his trousers pocket.

  Penn-Barkis picked up his cigar again.

  "I'll get on with it then, sir," Carmichael said.

  Back in his own office, Royston looked up inquiringly. "Have a bad time, sir?" he asked, sympathetically.

  "We have until Thursday night to wrap this case up, sergeant," Carmichael said. "Friday morning, Penn-Barkis will be announcing that it's all settled."

  "Ah, and I was hoping I might get down to the George for a pint this evening," Royston said. "I expect you would have been glad for a quiet night in too, sir. We'd better get down to Bethnal Green, though, but at least we'll sleep in our own beds—that's a comfort."

  That was more of a comfort than Royston imagined, Carmichael thought. He picked up his case. "Where the devil is the photograph?" he asked. He cast about on the desk unsuccessfully. Royston sat quietly, and Carmichael appreciated the lack of reproof in his silence. At last he found it, in an envelope. "Leigh on Sea," he read again on the back. "We may have to go down there, but I hope not."

  "Southend, isn't it?" Royston asked.

  "The posh end of Southend," Carmichael agreed. "All benches and pensioners and fading gentility."

  "Not much for a Bolshie," Royston said. "Shall I bring the car round? It's still raining stair-rods."

  "Yes, bring it round," Carmichael said. "I'll come and wait in the portico."

  Stebbings was talking into his cream telephone as Carmichael passed. He signaled for him to wait. After a moment he put the telephone down and snapped on the wireless. It gave a hum and then the drone of the BBC announcer came up. The six o'clock news, of course. "After the confidence vote this evening in the House of Commons, it appears that Mr. Mark Normanby will be the next Prime Minister. . . ."

  Stebbings snapped it off again. "Told you he'd get in, the sodomite," he said. "Though it'll be good for us, of course. Apart from when it comes to himself, he's very strong on law and order."

  "Gah," Carmichael said, and stepped out once more into the driving rain.

  23

  I came back to my senses a little later, when I remembered about the Bolshevik. That Bolshevik was real; Inspector Carmichael had told me about him. Besides, he had shot at me, or at Daddy, and Daddy had killed him. Mummy would never get anyone to shoot Daddy—Mummy needs Daddy too much. Daddy gives Mummy her own position. Besides, she'd never make an alliance with the Bolsheviks either. She hates the Reds like poison, not just Russia but Reds in this country as well, the trade unionists and people like Bevan. She wouldn't have anything to do with them, which meant I must have been wrong, paranoid perhaps. Maybe pregnancy makes you paranoid, I thought. Besides, there wasn't any reason for her to kill Sir James.

  Then we listened to the six o'clock news, in the library. The BBC announcer told us the result of the vote, Mark to be Prime Minister, and his new cabinet to be announced soon. Then Mark himself came on, his voice thin and distorted by the wireless. "Some anarchists and Bolsheviks and Jews have this week attacked those of us who have sometimes been called the Farthing Set," he said. "As usual, these people were cowardly and attacked people when they can't hit back. They managed to murder Sir James Thirkie, architect of the Peace with Honour, perhaps the best man in England, and one of my greatest friends. They killed him in his bed and attached a Jewish star to his chest as a calling card. But they could not subdue the Farthing Set, or frighten us, or keep us from power. Even as he lay dead, Sir James did not make the symbol they wanted, of a helpless dead man slain by a cowardly Jew. His chest was stained red with his own blood, red, like a robin's breast, like the Farthing robin that symbolizes our part of the Conservative Party. Sir James is murdered, but the rest of us live on. Lord Eversley managed to kill one attacker, a card-carrying Bolshevik, who sniped at him from cover. We will take extreme measures against these cowardly terrorists, who attack not just us, but England in us, and our conception of the way the country can go forward and be a better p
lace." I stared at the set. "That was the Prime Minister," the BBC announcer concluded. "Meanwhile, in San Francisco, President Lindbergh has announced closer ties—"

  David snapped the wireless off. "I wish he hadn't added Jews to his list," he said. "Still, I suppose there is that star."

  "The sooner Inspector Carmichael finds the real murderer the happier I'll be," I said. Then I saw why Mummy might have killed Sir James, if it wasn't for the Bolsheviks. She could have killed him precisely to sway public opinion towards the Farthing Set, to make the sympathy vote go in their direction, to make Mark become Prime Minister. I wondered about the "extreme measures" he wanted to take, and shivered.

  Lizzie knocked on the library door. "Tea is served in the breakfast room," she said.

  Mrs. Smollett turned up trumps with that nursery tea; it was everything I could have hoped for, and the very antithesis of the terrible artificial Frenchified meals in six courses we'd been eating since we arrived. In addition to all the things I'd asked for, there was half a heavy dark fruit cake, the brandied kind. I don't know where she can have magicked it up from—it isn't the sort of thing people can keep lying around. When we'd been eating for a few minutes, Lizzie opened the door and Mrs. Smollett herself came in with a tray containing a huge plate of hot Polish pancakes, and a little red earthenware pot, like a jam dish only more curved, full of caviar, and another matching little dish of cream and chives. She gave us a smile as big as Trafalgar Square as she set the tray down. She's a big woman, not fat at all, but big, with coarse gray hair scraped up under a cap, and of course she wore a big apron, like any cook. She wouldn't normally come out of the kitchen, and if we'd been eating in the dining room rather than the breakfast room I'm sure she wouldn't have come even now. She'd come for the perfectly sensible reason that she'd made the pancakes specially as a treat for us and she wanted to see our reaction.

  "You really are spoiling us, Mrs. Smollett," I said. "You shouldn't have gone to all this trouble." Though even as I said it I was reaching for one and helping myself from the little red pots.

  "I don't mind how much trouble to go to cooking for those I know will enjoy it," she said, in her funny English that was still accented after all this time.

  I couldn't answer because I had my mouth full, and it was exquisite, the hot pancake and the cold cream and the caviar simply exploding on my tongue.

  "We certainly do appreciate it," David said. He was being polite and finishing up the bite of roast beef and bread and butter he had left on his plate before taking a pancake.

  "Mmmmmmmmmm!" I said, incoherently but emphatically.

  Mrs. Smollett laughed. "I was sure you would like."

  "Doesn't Daddy count the jars of caviar?" I asked, finishing my mouthful. I knew he counted the wine and the spirits.

  "That is Mrs. Simons's affair. When the family are in residence I use what ingredients I like, just the same as Mrs. Richardson does."

  "Mrs. Richardson could never have given us anything half as delicious," I said. "Do take one while they're hot, David darling."

  "I intend to have my fair share, not just one," David said, jealously.

  I laughed. "Mrs. Smollett," I said, taking another (they're tiny things, Polish pancakes, in case you've never been fortunate enough to have them, only about two inches across), "if you ever feel you're ready to leave Farthing, you know we'd be only too happy to give you a home, and employment, and all your heart desires, if you'd only cook these pancakes for us once in a while."

  "If ever I leave Farthing, which is my second home, it will be when I've saved enough to open once more my own restaurant, in London as it used to be in Warsaw," she said.

  "You used to have your own restaurant, and you know how to run it yourself?" David asked, his head coming up like a dog scenting a rabbit. "How much do you have saved?"

  Before I knew it, she and David were deep into the financial details of what it would take, and he'd as good as promised to set her up!

  "Sit down," he said, and she was so bemused she sat down with us, still in her cap and apron.

  "Have a pancake," I offered, selflessly. "Or perhaps one of these lovely scones?"

  "No, no, I couldn't," she said.

  "You'll have to come into the bank and fill out forms," David said. David hadn't stopped eating, he was simply steamrollering through the pancakes. "But from what you tell me, I don't think we'd hesitate for an instant. It would be my decision, and I'd be all for it, except for a slight ethical qualm about sitting here eating their caviar and tempting you to leave Lord and Lady Eversley. Are you sure you won't have some yourself, it's extremely good."

  "I am on three months' notice, which I could at any time give," Mrs. Smollett said, shaking her head at me as I offered her the pancakes again. "It would take that long at least to find a suitable place and make it ready. But I think perhaps when I fill in the forms you would find I was not a suitable person. I am not British born, and I am a Jew, and a woman."

  "My bank makes a speciality of lending to Jews and women," David said. "That will be something that counts for you, rather than against you. We lend small amounts, and to a banker what you're talking about is a small amount, though it may seem large to you. We lose some money, but we do very well in general. In addition to loans, we invest in businesses that do well for us, when they want to expand, and I predict that in future that might come to be the main part of our business."

  "And for how long have you done this?" Mrs. Smollett asked, her dark eyes wide.

  David hesitated, a pancake halfway to his mouth. "As a separate bank of my own, only this year. But it has been my division of my father's business since the war—we just split it off that way recently."

  "Your father subsidizes you?"

  "My father is a very rich man; he can afford to do it," David said. "He began by subsidizing me completely, and not really believing in me. I saw it during the war, looking at the way society interlocks at the bottom, talking to the other pilots. I saw how wealth could be expanded from the bottom up, rather than the top down. My father and uncles took a lot of persuading, but now they admit that I'm right and this method can actually make money. Take your restaurant. You're right: no conventional bank would lend you money, a woman, a Jew, an immigrant, a servant. You could show them what you'd saved in twelve years, you could cook them pancakes, which really are excellent beyond words—" He reached for the last one, which was his by strict count so I let him have it. I was stuffed full anyway. I cut myself just the tiniest sliver of the fruitcake.

  "But they'd take no notice, because they want to invest in the railways and big factories, steelworks, shipworks, or maybe—if they are a little more visionary—in some big picture like the industrialization of India. They're not interested in a little Polish restaurant in London. You're too small for them, and too insecure. But I don't see a little restaurant; I see a successful business that will employ, what did you say, ten or twelve people, besides yourself. It will take a dozen people who are presently unemployed, or barely employed, who are a burden to the country, or who are working in menial positions, and give them jobs with hope."

  Mrs. Smollett nodded. "Twelve people, waiters and dishwashers and assistant cooks and cleaners. That's what it took in Warasaw." I nibbled my fruitcake and poured myself another cup of tea. I always loved hearing David talk about his work, and it was quite fascinating to almost see him doing it.

  David finished his pancake, and went on, quite quietly but utterly sincere: "And perhaps, as well as employing twelve people and making a profit for you, and for us, it will also help in a small way with the position of the Jews. Maybe the Londoner, instead of saying from ignorance that the Jews are greedy and cowardly, push to the front of queues, take seats on buses, will say on reflection that they are not so bad; Mrs. Smollett cooks pancakes to make the heart glad, and David Kahn lends money to poor people to start businesses, and he fought all through the Battle of Britain."

  Mrs. Smollett shook her head. "They will ne
ver say that."

  "Why not?" David frowned. Behaving as well as possible to be a good counter-example to people's beliefs about the Jews was one of the things he believed in most dearly. I put my hand on his and squeezed gently, but he didn't look at me and hardly seemed to notice.

  "My restaurant, my old restaurant in Warsaw, the Nazis—," Mrs. Smollett said, then faltered, and began again. "When the Nazis came, my customers did not say, 'Oh, do not persecute the Jews because Mrs. Szmolokiewitsz makes lovely pancakes and Mr. Szmolokiewitsz has willingly accepted his draft call into our army and their son Yusef is a doctor and their young daughter Marya is at the conservetoire learning to play the piano.' They said, 'Oh, the Nazis are right, the Jews are greedy and treacherous and we have always hated them.' When they smashed the window of my restaurant, it was not the Germans who did it, it was the Poles. And one of them who was in the front with stones in his hand was a customer, who I had served my special dumpling soup only the week before, and given his little son a candle on his crème brulée because it was his birthday. But now his face was screwed up with hate and he would have smashed me as well as the window if I had not run."

  "Where are your family now?" I asked.

  Mrs. Smollett turned to me as if she'd forgotten I was there. "Dead," she said. "My husband was killed in the fighting. He died in September 1939, honorably, defending his country. Marya was shot by a Heinkel as we escaped across France. The road was blocked with refugees and they wanted it for their tanks, so they flew over and shot at us, just to clear the way. I flung myself in a ditch, but Marya fell, shot through the head. I stayed in the ditch and watched the tanks passing over her body. Then after that I got up and took the money she was carrying from her shoe, and kept walking. Yusef died in 1946 in a camp called Treblinka. I heard from somebody who managed to escape, who knew him there. He came to find me. Yusef, he said, was able to help many people before he died, because he was a doctor. Without medicines or instruments, without even bandages, at night after working all day in a factory on slave rations, still my son was a doctor, and I can always be proud of that."