Farthing

  He interviewed Harry at the stables, whose story agreed with Lizzie's, that the ride had been organized well in advance and had not seemed at all unusual. He said they were dressed for riding, but was very vague as to what exactly they were wearing. Carmichael didn't press him. Mrs. Simons had given a very exact account of what Mrs. Kahn had been wearing in the morning, which he told Royston to pass on to the manhunt unchanged.

  "She said she was wearing a pink skirt, and when I checked her things there was a pinkish skirt on the bedroom floor," Royston objected.

  "Never mind," Carmichael said. "I think she had two."

  "I don't think so," Royston said. "I have Yately's list from when he searched their things, and it only has one pink skirt on it. And there's a pair of beige slacks missing."

  "Let it go through, sergeant," Carmichael said. "Are there any jackets missing?"

  "Not as far as I can tell," Royston said. "Mrs. Kahn was wearing a cream silk blouse—that isn't here, so she's still wearing it. Some of her underwear is also missing, unless it's being laundered. Mr. Kahn doesn't seem to have taken a jacket, though he has a light sweater."

  "They'll be cold come evening," Carmichael said. "And they'll have trouble booking into a hotel without luggage."

  "Yes, sir," Royston said. "Though if they've gone to London and they've got money they could buy a suitcase easily enough."

  "The Yard's sending Jenkinson to speak to Lady Eversley to see if she knows of any friends who might shelter them," Carmichael said. "You give Mrs. Simons's description to Yately to give to the Winchester police. Say she might also have slacks if you like."

  "Yes, sir," Royston said, his face unreadable. "Sir—how do you think they knew to run? We didn't know we were coming down until just before we left, we were still on the trail of Lady Thirkie. Nobody knew last night, when they were making plans to go."

  Lizzie's story had cleared him as well as herself, Carmichael realized, with a lifting of the spirits.

  "Perhaps someone told Lord Eversley about the star last night or this morning, and he got in touch with them," Carmichael said.

  Royston went off to speak to Yately, shaking his head.

  Yately came in before Carmichael had time to do anything. "I need to use the telephone for the description," he said. Carmichael pushed the instrument towards him, and listened while he gave it. Mrs. Kahn was described as wearing a pink skirt and cream blouse, or possibly slacks, carrying a large cream purse, with a recent wound on her cheek. Mr. Kahn was apparently wearing a brown jacket, perhaps leather.

  "They were definitely at the station," Yately said when he'd finished. "We've found the horses in a field near there. He bought a ticket for London and she bought one for Winchester. The stationmaster knew her, but not him—Jewish-looking fellow in a brown jacket, he said. He didn't see what train they went on; he wasn't looking out at the platform."

  "Kahn didn't have a brown jacket," Carmichael said.

  "He must have picked it up somewhere. Cunning they are, Jews, especially about clothes. Well, we'll be able to have a crackdown on them now—some of the lads are quite cock-a-hoop about it."

  Carmichael didn't ask where, in the verdant but essentially empty countryside between Clock Farthing and Farthing Junction, Kahn might have found a brown jacket growing on a bush. "Where could they get to, in the Southampton direction?" he asked instead. "We've got plenty of men in London on the lookout already."

  "I've alerted the local forces across the whole West of England," Yately said. "If they'd changed at Southampton they could have gone anywhere, on the Salisbury line, or on to Portsmouth, even back to Aylesbury and into London that way. You should have someone watching Paddington as well as Waterloo."

  "We have men at all the mainline London stations," Carmichael assured him. "We've also sent out an alert to garages who hire cars to be aware of the possibility they might try to take one. That's nationwide."

  "The description will go out on the BBC tonight," Yately said. "Wherever they're hiding, they won't be able to lie low for long, and then we'll have them."

  "Sergeant Royston and I are going back to London tonight," Carmichael said. "I don't see that there's much we can do from here that you can't do yourself, though we'll stay in close touch."

  "Yes, sir," Yately said. "I'll be sure to keep the Yard informed of anything that comes up here."

  The phone rang. "That'll be my call to the Yard now. I'll let them know how we're getting on. Then I'll collect Royston and leave."

  Yately gave a wave that was half a salute, and left the office. Carmichael picked up the phone, and in moments he was connected with Sergeant Stebbings.

  "Not much progress," he said, and outlined what Yately had found at the railway station and all that had been done. "With Kahn, it's just a case of waiting until they get unlucky or we get lucky, and we'll pick him up. Tomorrow I want to go down to Campion and speak to Lady Thirkie."

  "The Chief wants this wrapped up quickly," Stebbings reminded him. "Come into the Yard in the morning and we'll see what needs doing. No use chasing hares into thickets when it's obvious we've got our man."

  "There's much more solid evidence against Lady Thirkie than against Kahn," Carmichael protested.

  "Ah, but he's run, which is a sure sign he did it," Stebbings said, comfortably. "I'll see you in here in the morning then."

  29

  Abby met us in Portsmouth station. She was wearing a coat, quite naturally, because it had started to rain as we'd been crawling around the south coast, and she had a carpetbag with her. Apart from that she was just Abby, the same as always, with a little more gray in her hair. When she saw us she hugged me, and then David, which was wonderful of her because she'd only met him once before, when she'd come up to London for the day and we'd all had lunch. She hadn't been at the wedding because Mummy had control of the guest list, and she naturally regarded Abby as no more than an ex-servant.

  "There are police by the station entrance," she whispered into my ear as she hugged me. "I don't know if they're looking for you. Come into the buffet and have a cup of tea. We can go out when the London train comes in, if they think you're coming from Southampton."

  I think she said the same to David. He took her carpetbag, quite naturally, and we all went into the buffet. It's a poky little place, but they gave us stewed tea and that rather nasty fruitcake that the railways always seem to serve.

  The buffet was L-shaped, and we went into the part of the L away from the counter.

  Abby opened up her bag as we sat down, and took out of it an off-white raincoat and a black macintosh. "I hope this coat fits you," she said, giving it to me. "The mac will have to be for you, David, because I didn't have anything else that might be a man's to hand, and I didn't want to take anything Mr. Talbot would miss."

  "You're amazing," I said.

  "I hope very much that I'm overreacting," she said. "We shouldn't talk about it here, in case. Put your purse inside my carpetbag. I think the best thing is if you carry it, David, as if you've just arrived from London and Lucy and I have come to meet you."

  David took off the jacket and we put that into the carpetbag too. Then he pulled the mac on and looked quite different, much less respectable, as if he might be some kind of insurance agent or a man who kept a bicycle shop. The white coat was too big for me, but I belted it tightly.

  "You shouldn't have put yourself into trouble for us," David said.

  "I thought they might know your clothes, and they might be looking for a man and a woman together or separately, but not for an older woman as well," Abby said.

  "If they ask, I'll be your daughter and David my husband," I said.

  The London train came in then, wheezing its way onto the platform like an old man with asthma. None of us had touched a drop of the tea or a bite of the wretched fruitcake. We all stood and went out onto the platform, waited until the doors opened and people were rushing out, and rushed out with them. We were soon out onto The Hard, the Portsmouth seafro
nt by the docks, where Nelson's Victory is, and the huge bay that is always full of Navy ships painted battleship gray. There were two young policemen, fresh-faced and with a country look to them, standing at the station entrance. They were scanning the crowd but they took no notice of us, whether because they weren't yet looking for us or because there were three of us I don't know. The train had taken what felt like hours to get to Portsmouth, though nothing like as long as it would have taken to get to London, but I had absolutely no idea how long it would take the police to start seriously looking for us.

  "We can't go home just yet, unfortunately," Abby said, leading the way down the harbor, away from the docks. "I don't know if you know, David, but my husband and I run a day school. The girls go home at five, and after that we can smuggle you in. What a pity it's summer and light so late!"

  "What time is it?" I asked.

  "It's a quarter past three," Abby said. "I think the best thing to do would be to have tea in one of the hotels. Again, nobody will be looking for the three of us. It's possible that later they'll start to check your friends, but I doubt they'd do it yet."

  David was looking at Abby with undisguised admiration. "Have you ever been a spy?" he asked.

  Abby laughed. "Hasn't Lucy told you?" she asked.

  David looked at me. "Told me what?"

  I looked at Abby. "You told me not to tell anyone!" I protested. I looked around. There was nobody on the seafront in the rain but us and a few black-backed herring gulls, skimming along the rails like figure skaters. "Abby's one of the stations for getting people out of the Reich," I said.

  "I can't believe you didn't tell me!" David said. "I told you about Chaim!"

  "And I'd have told you if I'd been doing anything. I wasn't. It's just Abby."

  "You helped with money from time to time," Abby said.

  "Who do you work with?" David asked.

  "Children, mostly," Abby said. "That means people who have just been discovered to be Jewish, or people from newly conquered parts of the Reich. I hide them at the school, where one child more or less doesn't cause much comment. Then we send them to Canada, or Brazil. Sometimes it's easier to get papers for one, sometimes for the other. But doing any of this at all makes you think about security. I'm not in the danger the stations in France and Germany are. But I'd be in trouble if I got caught, and I'd stop being able to help people."

  "Are you Jewish?" David asked.

  "I'm a Quaker," Abby said. "Now, here we are—the Queen Anne's Head is a very superior sort of hotel to take tea."

  The hotel was very grand, in a faded way. It had dusty potted palms and Edwardian gilded scrollwork chairs. It had a huge white piano. It looked as if it had been designed before the Great War for good times that had never come. It should have been inhabited by men in spats and women with enormous ostrich feathers reaching up from their hair. A faded waiter came out of some recess and looked at us as if we were rather poor replacements for the ghosts of grandeur that haunted the place.

  "Tea," Abby said, crisply. "Earl Grey tea for three, and your afternoon tea."

  "Yes, Mrs. Talbot," the waiter said.

  "They know you?" I asked, as we sat down among the fronds.

  "I take tea here regularly with parents of pupils, and prospective pupils," she said. "He'll take you for some of those. He's also extremely unlikely to come back after he's brought our tea. I rather like the place, I know it's dowdy, but it's dowdy in such a grand way you feel honored to be allowed to see it. So much of Portsmouth is pure eighteenth-century squalor. Now, make yourselves comfortable, because we need to stay at least an hour."

  We took off our coats, though I kept on my jacket. The waiter came back with a big silver tray, which he put down on the table. There was a huge teapot and everything you need for a really good cup of tea, and a plate of little cucumber sandwiches cut into triangles with the crusts cut off, and two plates of buns. "The amazing thing is that it's no more expensive than the Kardomah café," Abby said. "I don't know why more people don't come in here." The waiter left, smiling a secret smile, as if he knew why people didn't come in, but he would never tell.

  "Now, tell me why you're here," Abby said, pouring the tea. "I assume it has to do with the murder of Sir James Thirkie? You didn't kill him, did you?"

  "Of course not," I said.

  David looked rather awed at the matter-of-fact way she was taking it. "Would you be sitting here eating buns with us if we had?" he asked.

  "I'm sure Lucy wouldn't kill anyone without a very good reason," she said. She handed David his tea. "And although I don't know you very well, I'm prepared to trust her judgment, at any rate for the time being. So, you didn't kill him?" She handed me my tea, just as I like it, delicate and exquisitely perfumed.

  "I didn't kill him," David said. "I had nothing to do with it. I was asleep in bed and knew nothing about it until the next morning. But it seems that someone has been going out of their way to make it look as if I did it."

  "Jews and Bolsheviks. Did you see the papers this morning?" Abby asked.

  "We did," I said. "It's awful."

  "It's a terrible attack on liberty," Abby said, and took a bun. "So, why did you run?"

  "Somebody warned us that the police were coming to arrest David, with new trumped-up evidence," I said. There was no point telling Abby who it was.

  She nodded. "Do you know who actually killed him?" she asked, practical as ever.

  "I have ideas," I said. "But not real proof, not police-station proof."

  "And without that their frame against David is likely to hold?" she asked.

  "Who do you think did it?" David asked me.

  "Mummy," I said. "At least, not just Mummy. Mummy and Angela and Mark and maybe Daddy."

  "Reichstag fire," Abby said, immediately.

  "Exactly," I said. "That's what I said this morning when I saw the papers. The only thing that doesn't fit is the Bolshevik. Can you imagine Mummy allying with a Bolshevik, or even speaking to one?"

  "Lady Eversley might feel she could touch pitch on this occasion," Abby said. She took a bite of her bun and cream oozed out. She wiped her mouth with her napkin. "But why would she want to get rid of Sir James?"

  "Reichstag fire," I said. "The sympathy vote. I'm not sure how much Daddy knew when. He knew about it yesterday, I think, but perhaps not on Sunday morning."

  "There's no evidence," David said. He had taken a cucumber sandwich and was playing with it, opening it and separating out the pieces, but not eating anything. He looked terribly fretful.

  "What is the evidence, Lucy?" Abby asked.

  "It's all terribly circumstantial and inferential," I said. "Things like Mummy being up at six in the morning and on our corridor, where she had no reason to be, and Angela behaving oddly, and the very strange conversation she was having with the others about whether she should go to Campion, where Mark and Mummy were bullying her, and the way Mark was looking at Daphne, and a large dose of cui bono, of course."

  "They definitely benefit," Abby said.

  "Oh, and, this is important, Mummy absolutely insisted that we go down this weekend, and there was no real reason. I didn't want to at all but David thought it might be an olive branch so we did."

  "Beware of Greeks bearing olive branches," Abby said, which made me snort and almost choke on my eclair.

  "She wanted to ask me to talk at a subscription dinner in London in June," David put in. "I think in all of this you attribute too much to Lady Eversley, Lucy. It's far more likely Mark Normanby is the driving force. He's the one who has really benefited, and also the one who was in France and could have bought the star and given my name."

  "Well, it would have to be a very good case to take to a solicitor if you wanted to argue against them, and it seems you have a very feeble one," Abby said. "We're going to have to get you out of the country."

  David gave a little moan. I took his hand. "We'll be together," I said.

  "Jews are supposed to be wanderers without a
home of their own until they regain the Promised Land," Abby said, in a cheerful bucking-up tone of voice—though it was as bad a thing to say as the worst thing I might have said, because of the way David felt about everything. I squeezed his hand hard.

  "I know that's the accepted view, but if that's the case, I must be a very bad Jew," David said. "I've always loved England so much."

  "Do you have any money?" Abby asked.

  "A few hundred pounds," David said, which amazed me. I thought if he had twenty-five it would have been a lot. "Just what I carry around," he added.

  "I have less than ten pounds," I said. "But I brought some things we could hock. Mummy's Wedgewood bowl, and her gold mirror and set, and her jewel case. I don't know what's in it—whatever she was leaving in Farthing, I suppose. I have my own jewel case as well."

  "That might not have been a sensible idea," Abby said. "That means you have broken the law. Theft isn't murder, but it's still wrong."

  "In a Dachau emergency?" I asked.

  Abby sighed. "No, perhaps not. Might as well have a look at what you've got. Money's going to be necessary."

  "My father would help us," David said.

  I pulled my bag out of the carpetbag and extracted Mummy's jewel case. The case itself looked worth a bob or two, being gold, and although it was monogrammed, it was Mummy's monogram, ME, which anyone might use. I tapped the clasp to open it. Inside, among a cluster of earrings and bracelets and pearls nestled the greatest mother-daughter heirloom of all, the one she had refused to give me on my marriage, the Ringhili diamond.

  "Good gracious," Abby said. "You'd better put that away."

  I closed the case. "Well we certainly can't sell that," I said. "The rest of it's probably worth another few hundred pounds. The Wedge-wood bowl's worth more, but we wouldn't get the full amount for it in a hurry."