Mornings in London Page 8

Despite my best efforts, I understood little else, until I came to the conclusion of the article. The author noted that the device was useless as a radio amplifier but reported that these odd waves could be made to bounce off objects, thus revealing their position. But, I thought, Hülsmeyer had already found a way to protect ships. Hadn’t Freddie known about that? Was I on a wild goose chase?

  I sat tapping the desk. Certainly if the British navy had learned about Hülsmeyer’s device, they would have jumped on it, so Freddie’s document was undoubtedly out-of-date. For us, anyway. For the Italians? Possibly, but wouldn’t they have read about the German’s ingenious device for ships in fog? What else moved in fog? Trains, cars? Planes!

  I returned the materials, thanked the librarian, and took the Tube straight home to question Nan, whose memory of the late war is both sharp and extensive.

  “Dear boy, of course there was bombing!” she said. “Those damnable zeppelins came first, dumping bombs right and left wherever they wanted. Later on, it was planes, Gothas, mostly. They killed a lot of poor souls. Criminals was what they were, criminals. They just came out of nowhere, though whenever they could, our boys got up in the Sopwith Pups and Camels. I remember the first time a Camel crew shot down a bomber at night.”

  “High-risk work!”

  “Bravest of the brave,” said my nan. “You understand they could only fly in daytime or on moonlit nights. Otherwise they’d have been flying blind.”

  “And same for the gun crews on the ground trying to spot enemy bombers?”

  “Of course.”

  “They needed a way to see in the dark,” I said, thinking of Hülsmeyer’s device for ships in fog.

  “Might as well wish for Baron Munchausen’s spectacles.”

  “I think that’s what they’re working on. I think that’s maybe what Freddie got his hands on. We need to hide those negatives, Nan.”

  “Let me take care of that, dear boy.” She wrapped them carefully in a piece of paper. “Who might come after them? Official or not?”

  “Both, I’m afraid.”

  “Official needs a search warrant.”

  I nodded. “Whoever killed Freddie might not.”

  “Right. Then for now, behind that loose wallpaper in the alcove? I’ve been meaning to repaste the strip, anyway.”

  “Perfect,” I said.

  Nan hesitated for a moment. “I think in two different places,” she said then. “They are really quite different.”

  “Right.” My nan is big on classifications and on making distinctions. “Two separate places then. Who knows, we may have two different people after them.”

  Chapter 7

  There was no sign of Poppy that night nor for the whole weekend. Aunt Theresa phoned the local vicar, her MP, the chief constables of two jurisdictions, and the editors of four major dailies without being any the wiser. Despite leaving several messages, I failed to connect to Poppy’s friends, so the only things we learned that weekend were that the police were keeping an eye on Victoria Station arrivals and that no body had turned up on the Sussex Downs.

  I would get discouraged, scared Poppy was dead, and minutes later I’d be furious that she’d taken French leave. The weekend was bad all around and concluded with a quarrel with Maurice, only partially redeemed by an exciting reconciliation. Normally, I quite like erotic drama, but under the circumstances, even his studio paled. Monday night, I phoned to say I had some last-minute designs to finish up. True enough, but what I actually did was shine my shoes, darken up my hair, and set off for Piccadilly Circus, home to the Dilly Boys, working-class chaps out for an evening and willing to give well-heeled gents a good time.

  Why did I do that—other than the obvious? A subconscious agenda, Maurice would say. He knows all about Freud and has been educating me on the subconscious and hidden drives—and not so hidden ones, too. He says that our ideas are not all under our control (no surprise there) and that ideas for paintings really spring from unconscious impulses. That night, I must have had an idea percolating, because I turned down a good-looking boy and a burly fellow who would have suited me fine and fattened my purse. Such restraint was rewarded when I was passing under the giant lighted Bovril sign. Just ahead was a well-set-up fellow in a short jacket. Underneath, I recognized the muscular rump last seen in knee breeches. Monday was the agreeable Jenkins’s night off, and I remembered that he usually spent it in London.

  “Hello, Jenkins!”

  He turned and, I thought, hesitated just a beat before he smiled. “Hello, Mr. Bacon.”

  “On the Dilly, it’s plain Francis.”

  “Not Francine?” When he winked, I knew things would go all right. We had beer and sandwiches and got on so well that I nixed the idea of a hotel room. Back we went to the design studio, and after various amusements, he became forthcoming about Larkin Manor.

  “I’m worried sick about Poppy,” I said. “She was bruised to a fare-thee-well. I can’t imagine she was in any shape to walk miles on a wet night. She could be dead and buried on the Downs for all we know.”

  “Miss Penelope,” Jenkins said carefully, “was assisted.”

  I sat up in bed. “Assisted? You mean in leaving the manor?”

  “The major thought it best she left.”

  Well! Magnus Larkin was a much better actor than I’d credited. I’d quite believed he was as surprised as the rest of us. “Do you know why?”

  “Mysterious are the ways of the officer corps. I think he felt unable to protect her. But same old, same old. He gives an order and expects it to be carried out.”

  “He was your officer in the war,” I guessed.

  “That’s right. I was his batman, and he was better than most. After the war, I needed a job.” He paused a moment. “And even though he couldn’t really afford me, I think the major wanted a familiar face.”

  I wondered who could be more familiar than his wife and daughter.

  Jenkins didn’t answer for a moment. He found his cigarettes and lit one. Smokers always have an excuse to delay an answer or to marshal their thoughts. I may take to carrying fags about just to be able to fiddle with the packet. “The western front,” he said finally, “was another world, and ever since, we’ve been citizens elsewhere. It’s not a place we can talk about with the people at home.”

  I nodded. I’d met other soldiers with the same reaction. “You took Poppy somewhere?”

  “I drove her to Hastings very late to the big convalescent home the major knew and dropped her off. It’s where the major recovered after the war, so he knows the staff. I told her that she’d be safe there and to stay put.”

  “But she didn’t.”

  “Too right. I was sent out again yesterday afternoon. I was supposed to pick her up, cover her tracks, as the major said, but Miss Penelope had already made another arrangement. According to the convalescent home, she’d gone that very morning.”

  I thought this over and felt better in one way, worse in another. Poppy hadn’t met Freddie’s fate at Larkin Manor, but she was still missing and could not be assumed safe. She must have had a very good reason to drop out of sight with no word to anyone, not even her mother. “Did you have guests this past weekend?”

  “The Tollmans stayed the weekend, and the Groves came for Sunday lunch. They’re pretty much a fixture lately.” His cigarette glowed red as he drew in the smoke. “The madame is very interested in politics.”

  “And the major?”

  “He’d like to see all politicians shot,” said Jenkins.

  The next day, I saw Jenkins off to an early train and got right to my drawing desk where I was busy all morning with pencils and watercolors. I finished up the designs I had promised, and by two o’clock, weary of virtue, I decided I deserved a break. I was putting on my jacket when the bell rang in the showroom. There was Signor Rinaldi, another visitor from Larkin Manor. Could that
be a coincidence?

  “Buongiorno, Signor Rinaldi,” I said. My Italian, such as it is, was mostly learned from cheap London eateries.

  “Ah, Mr. Bacon,” he replied and bowed. Today, he was a courtly item, all charm and flourishes. “I have come to visit the delightful studio that I have heard so much about.” And he beamed.

  I thought it best to go into my usual spiel, that we offered the latest in Continental design, adapted for the English market and fabricated locally. “Good British construction,” I concluded, although most of my workmen were German Jewish exiles.

  He went over to the small display rugs and petted them like dogs, a reason I try to put light-colored rugs out of reach. “Furniture, too,” he remarked. “Impressive. The major had mentioned your work, but as so many of your nation are amateurs, I did not expect this.”

  I smiled at his condescension; I personally thought Italy’s great artistic days were behind it—no matter what Mussolini said.

  “We did not have a chance to talk at the manor, not after that most distressing event! And the fair Miss Penelope?”

  I shook my head. “No word.”

  “The methods of the English police are different,” he said. His haughty expression suggested how much more satisfactory the results would be in Il Duce’s Rome.

  I did not respond, but Signor Rinaldi was not to be discouraged. He suggested that we might have a drink to remember poor Freddie, whom we had known as the others had not. I was a trifle surprised; previously Rinaldi had seemed as indifferent to Freddie’s fate as the others at the house party.

  “I was just going to lunch,” I said, “but I could manage a drink.”

  Rinaldi became enthusiastic. He knew a very good Italian restaurant in Soho with the most excellent fish and proper wines. “Not the usual exports. You will enjoy,” he assured me and led the way to Taverna Firenze. It was an upscale restaurant with paneled wainscoting, ornately patterned wallpapers, and a small army of allegorical nudes. I believe that we were seated under Wisdom, an ironic choice for us, but the service was princely, and the food was so good that I began to see the point of diplomacy. The wine, too, was marvelous, and with our second glass, Rinaldi proposed a toast to Freddie.

  I raised my glass with many reservations. “To a man of the future!” Rinaldi said, and he repeated the phrase in his native language.

  “I would have said Freddie was a man of the past,” I ventured. “He had the traditional ambition of marrying an heiress.”

  “No, no,” Rinaldi said. “He belonged to the future. He saw the wave of history.”

  More like its backside, I thought.

  “He understood the necessity for change, for consolidation, for a strong central director.”

  “For someone like your Mussolini?”

  “Il Duce has restored Italy to a greatness not seen since the Romans.”

  “I don’t know about that. After all, the sun never sets on the British Empire.”

  Rinaldi waved this off. “Your empire has passed its peak. The future is with the new men of the new order, men with strength and discipline.”

  “That doesn’t sound much like the Freddie I knew.”

  “Nonetheless, Freddie served the future.”

  “Really?”

  “He was a patriot, eager to promote ideas his own country lacked. He felt a resurgent Italy would rouse the sleeping British lion,” Rinaldi concluded and showed me his perfect teeth.

  A most ingenious defense of selling out one’s country! I wondered if Freddie had believed any such thing. “I am surprised, Signor Rinaldi. You probably don’t know his reputation here, but the rumor was that his lovers were lucky to escape with reputations intact and wallets only half empty.”

  Rinaldi’s toothy grin vanished. He leaned forward, all business. “Great empires are built on great—and little—crimes. One must be willing to dirty, even bloody, one’s hands.”

  “Someone felt that way at the manor.”

  Rinaldi shrugged; his gestures struck me as more eloquent than his speech. “Freddie, as you say, had bad habits. Lately, politically enlightened, he put them to better use.”

  “Really?”

  Signor Rinaldi nodded vigorously. “Look at England now. Unemployment, want, dissension, yes? Misery and poverty in the north, the homeless on the Embankment, ragged children in the streets. This country needs a firm hand and a planned, rational economy.”

  “Plus a big military?” I asked, remembering Il Duce’s recent military ventures.

  “A great nation needs a great army,” he said. “It absorbs the jobless and gives direction to the aimless.”

  “I still do not see where Freddie fits in. He detested honest work, and his whole aim was money.”

  Signor Rinaldi looked around and dropped his voice. “Freddie found useful information for me. He sometimes uncovered things such as are good for diplomats to know.”

  I’ll bet, I thought.

  “Before the Larkins’ house party, he indicated that he had something important for me, but he wanted more money than usual. We were in negotiations about the price when the fatal quarrel with the fair Miss Penelope occurred.”

  “Bad timing from your point of view,” I agreed.

  “But now I have hopes.”

  “Really?”

  “Let us not play about, Mr. Bacon.” Rinaldi’s voice sharpened. “Freddie claimed to have the material with him, but I never saw it. I assume he hid it somewhere at Larkin Manor. Why else would he have returned after such a dramatic exit?”

  “Agreed, but why not take it with him in the first place?”

  “He did not have the opportunity, suggesting that he must have hidden it somewhere outside his own room.”

  “And you believe this because—”

  “Because I searched his room—but only his room. Whereas you and the divine Miss Penelope had ample opportunity to search her possessions.”

  “What makes you think we’d have thought of such a thing?”

  “Do not pretend to be stupid. You were both observed. Right up until your cousin disappeared.”

  That, I thought, explained the mystery man lurking outside Poppy’s mother’s house and probably the chap on the motorbike, too. “Poppy was nervous about her flat,” I said. I find it is best when lying to include as much of the truth as possible. “She sensed that someone had been in the flat and she wanted me to go with her.”

  “Yet you returned alone to the flat just the other day. Suggesting you must have a key.”

  “Not at all,” I said, although I was alarmed: I’d been sure the only people who noticed me were the two cops in the patrol car. “I went on the off chance Poppy had returned. The front door was unlocked, but she wasn’t there, and I wasn’t able to get into her flat.”

  “So unfortunate,” Rinaldi said. “Freddie believed his information was worth a hundred pounds. A useful sum for any young man.”

  “A sum that would tempt me if I had found anything. Of course, once you had the information in hand, there is no guarantee you would think it worth so much.”

  “There’s risk for both sides in these negotiations,” Rinaldi said in a philosophical tone, and he signaled the waiter. “We will finish with grappa. You’ve had grappa?”

  I shook my head.

  “You must try grappa! A very special drink.” He added something in rapid Italian to the waiter.

  I wasn’t paying much attention. I was trying to recall the exact appearance of the street outside Poppy’s apartment. I could only remember seeing a few passing cars and two or three women occupied with shopping bags before the arrival of the police car. No suspicious loiterers. No men on motorbikes. No men, at all, along the quiet street. That left only the two cops, an idea that made me anxious. What if one of them—or their officer—was somehow in touch with Rinaldi? What would that me
an?

  Two small glasses arrived with a clear liquid just touched with gold. The waiter set them down with ceremonious care.

  “Salute,” said Rinaldi.

  “Cheers!” I took a sip. It was potent and a little bit odd, but I drank it up. Almost immediately the room began to waver, causing Rinaldi to lose definition in an interesting way, as if his flesh were melting and shifting to take on new forms.

  “You’ve drugged me,” I said. Or thought I said, for I am uncertain that my vocal apparatus was working. While I have a good head for alcohol, drugs affect me too strongly and quickly to give me any pleasure. I stood up. Or thought I did, but maybe I was not successful, for the last things I saw before I was lifted into utter darkness was the tiled floor and a leg of the table.

  Rustling nearby. Rats in the old stable? Mice in the kitchen walls? Walls where a bus was heaving itself into gear? I opened my eyes on darkness and then on wavering lights that combined with the smell of fuel and garbage to stir my digestive system. With my head throbbing and acid filling my mouth, I levered myself upon one elbow and lost the best meal I’d had since I returned to England. I wiped my face on my handkerchief. I was looking at a high wall. And bins. There appeared to be a deal of elderly vegetables in the neighborhood, probably keeping company with rancid fat.

  I shifted my legs, happy to feel them move, and caught my knee on something sharp. I shifted the other way and my elbow connected with something splintery. A little more investigation showed that I was lying on a heap of splintered wooden crates. That suggested an alley. Near a market or restaurants. I staggered to my feet, the walls on either side wobbling. I leaned against the bricks and moved toward a rectangle of night sky and unstable lighting.

  Ahead of me was a park, and as my head cleared somewhat, I recognized Soho Square. With its streetlights on. So it was evening. When I’d last been on planet Earth, it had been afternoon, and I’d been sitting under Minerva, goddess of wisdom, being foolish with . . . with Rinaldi. I remembered that I’d denied having anything of Freddie’s but hadn’t absolutely closed the door. Bad move, Francis.