The Bee's Kiss Page 24

  Was there the faintest sneer as he went on? ‘Loving your country isn’t the prerogative of the upper classes, Captain, though I know they think they own the title deeds to the finer feelings. I’ve got less reason than most to feel gratitude to bloody old Britannia – the old bag’s never shown me any favours! But it’s my country and I’ll support it however I can. And that’s not an unthinking, visceral reaction. I question everything, including patriotism.’

  ‘And you think you’ve come up with the right answers?’ Joe hardly needed to offer encouragement. Armitage seemed eager to unburden himself. The life of a government-paid assassin, Joe reflected, must be a lonely one.

  ‘In fact, I’d say it’s the lack of patriotism of the flag-waving sort that’s the saving grace of this country. In my class, at least, we don’t much admire the jingle of spurs and the parade of power. Did you notice in this last lot – when we marched, it wasn’t the victories we sang about, it was more likely to be the disasters. It wasn’t our glorious leaders – it was the rotten old sergeant-major we immortalized in bawdy verse.’

  ‘So unmilitaristic are we, you’d wonder we ever managed to acquire an empire,’ Joe commented mildly.

  Armitage glowered, angry to be misinterpreted. ‘Bloody old Kipling would have understood,’ he said. ‘You only have to look at those peaked Prussian helmets to see what I mean. Mad! Try issuing those to the British Army and you’d be greeted with outright guffaws through all ranks. You can’t get away with nonsense like that without breaking up on the British sense of humour.’

  ‘Good God, man!’ said Joe raising an eyebrow. ‘If you launch into a eulogy on jellied eels I’ll have you chucked into a cell to cool off.’

  ‘Of course you will!’ Armitage smiled. ‘See what I mean? It’s to keep blokes like you from having to get their hands bloodied again that blokes like me wield the occasional scalpel. You’re not all worth the effort but – where else in Europe would inordinate appreciation of jellied eels be a criminal charge? I’ve thought it through. I have my own philosophy.’

  ‘A killer with a conscience?’

  ‘That’s right. For your own good, Captain, we’ve never had this conversation. This goes so high it’d make your head spin. You risk annoying some forceful people. Can’t imagine what the going rate is for making a Commander of the CID disappear but there’s bound to be one.’

  ‘But what possible danger could she be to the state?’ Joe persisted. ‘Playing Girl Guides with a bunch of silly debutantes and the lout Donovan?’

  He was pleased to have provoked the response he wanted.

  ‘Not silly girls at all! Clever, able, well-trained girls.’ Armitage hesitated, weighing the knowledge that he was exceeding his brief against his understanding of his superior officer which was pushing him beyond his limits. He came to a decision. ‘Girls who, though they were unaware of it,’ he went on, ‘had, in their charming little heads, the power to lose the next war for us.’

  ‘Lose a war, Bill? But they were training to help win wars.’

  ‘Tell you a story.’ He leaned back and Joe had a clear impression that he was about to call up a brandy and soda. ‘Know who I mean when I mention Admiral Sir John Fisher?’

  ‘Of course. Father of the modern navy . . . innovator . . . brilliant man. Destroyers, submarines, torpedoes, guns – he was responsible for the state of readiness of the fleet when war broke out. It was Jack Fisher who said: “On the British fleet rests the Empire.”’

  ‘And he wasn’t wrong. It was his protégé, Admiral Jellicoe, who actually led the fleet into battle. Now, the Germans were caught on the back foot on several occasions early in the war because Jellicoe always seemed to know where and when they were massing for attack. The reason he was able to give them a bloody nose was the SIGINT warnings to Room 40. Signals Intelligence. Wireless telegraphy, radio, whatever you like to call it. Their shipping movements were being monitored, the information collated and interpreted and handed to Jellicoe on a plate. He and Admiral Beatty were on their way while the German fleet was still in harbour. At the battle of Jutland, he had victory in his pocket and the German fleet trapped at night in open waters at the entrance to the Skaggarak. He was ready to blow them out of the water come dawn but – he faltered. He was given signals information and he ignored it. Let them get away. No one’s quite sure why.’

  Joe wondered why Armitage was imparting this information so freely and who was his source. He had remarked an unusual political slant which didn’t quite chime with what he had understood to be Armitage’s philosophy.

  ‘Jellicoe decided to accept instead the inaccurate information from his scouting cruisers,’ Armitage revealed, watching for Joe’s reaction. ‘Reverted in the middle of battle to the tried and tested old methods. If he’d acted in accordance with radio intelligence supplied, which was very clear as to the position of the High Seas Fleet, Jutland might have turned out really to be the victory Churchill told us afterwards it had been and not the uncomfortable and bloody draw it actually was.’

  ‘Why was the intelligence not acted on? Do you – or your masters – have a theory, Bill?’

  ‘You fancy yourself as a psychologist – you tell me! There is a phrase they’ve invented to cover it: the Incredulity Factor. A sudden refusal to put your trust in modern technology.’

  ‘I know it well,’ said Joe. ‘It affects me every time I change gear.’

  He thought he would get the most out of Armitage by keeping their exchanges as light as possible and maintaining, as far as he could, their old relationship. ‘But I do begin to see how a well-placed squad of Wrens could wreak havoc at sea,’ he added carefully.

  ‘Yes, there’s no doubt that Jellicoe’s hesitation was due to incredulity but – think! Suppose a wireless operator had been in a position to send him a further communication confirming his own doubts. “Ignore previous message . . . we got it wrong . . . HSF now reported sailing west . . .” Bound to have influenced his decision!’

  ‘Certainly. We all like to have support for our own misjudgements.’

  Armitage looked at him steadily for a moment then continued: ‘The navy was pivotal. If the Germans had destroyed us at sea in 1916 and blockaded the country – no supplies coming in and no troops going out – we’d have been on our knees in six months.’

  Joe knew Armitage was not exaggerating when he said, ‘One duff message, Captain, that’s all it would take.’

  Joe’s reply came haltingly, unwillingly. ‘And if the sender has knowledge of the language, coding, wireless technology . . . and – perhaps most vital – an understanding of overall strategy . . . Oh, my God! But would a woman ever be given such an influential role?’

  The full enormity of the scenario had hit Joe and he shuddered.

  ‘It didn’t take the navy long to discover the girl recruits were smarter than the men when it came to SIGINT and they’re nothing if not innovators at the Admiralty – if it works, use it. If war were to break out again, I’d expect Queen Bea’s girls or the like to be operating in the signals section. Wireless, signals, codes. The next lot will be won or lost in the airwaves not in the trenches. One bad communication from a trusted source at a critical moment, that’s all you’ll need!’

  At last Joe was in possession of the awful truth.

  ‘Are you saying the Dame was preparing to betray her country to the Bolsheviks?’

  Armitage’s laugh was derisory and triumphant. ‘God no! I never thought I’d hear myself say it but – you’re wrong on two counts there, Captain!

  ‘For a start, her country, the one she really paid allegiance to, was not England. Given the chance, she was intending to foul up things for the British fleet and bring about a victory for the country she truly cared about – Germany.’

  Joe felt suddenly awash with horror. Armitage must have been watching his every movement intently. He produced his brandy flask. ‘Gulpers, I’d say, sir. Go on!’

  Joe was thankful for the warmth searing its way down his t
hroat. Too late he remembered who had offered the drink.

  ‘It’s all right,’ said Armitage, amused. ‘Only the best scotch in there. I’ll have one myself.’

  ‘What a headache she must have given the various departments once they found out! But how did they get to hear?’

  ‘One of the girls who killed herself – no idea who . . . no need for me to know that – is understood to have written a letter to her highly placed father confessing all and warning him. Action was swiftly taken.’

  ‘Ah! The sting!’ Joe mused. ‘The venomous shaft she placed killed the victim but brought her own death with it. I like a neat, classical ending! But I see the problem: difficult to charge her with anything because, technically, she’d done nothing wrong. Her crime was in the future. Conspiracy, perhaps?’

  ‘You’re forgetting the friends in high places.’

  ‘Couldn’t one of them have been primed to take her out on to some terrace and hand her a brandy and a revolver, in the good old British tradition?’

  ‘There’d still have been public interest aroused. And these days we have to consider the reactions of the bloody press at every turn. They don’t just turn up and meekly take dictation from the Home Office any more. She was a colourful woman and very much in the public eye. There’d have been talk in any circumstances – but the tragic, though understandable, death at the hands of a burglar is a nine-day wonder. Cat burglars have become a national obsession – everyone was expecting something like this to happen. Just a question of time. She was unlucky. No one minds the press running with that story – let them enjoy it. But think, sir . . . if the truth came out about the Queen Bea . . . Remember the scandal of the trial of Sir Roger Casement after the war. We’re still in the outfall of that seven years on.’

  ‘And he was an Irishman! How much worse if a woman regarded by some as an English heroine were similarly exposed!’

  ‘More or less the conclusion the department arrived at, sir. Thought you’d get there in the end.’

  ‘So, they send in Armitage under cover – and what cover! A CID sergeant no less! He watches his subject go up to her room – noting that she’s alone – sets off outdoors on patrol wearing a cape and, on his two good legs, shins up the building, breaks in, murders the Dame and spends some time laying confusing evidence that will send the Plod off in several wrong directions.’

  Joe paused, deep in thought. ‘No. You didn’t break in, did you, Bill? No sound of glass smashing reported by anyone . . .’ Then, seeing his way through, ‘You let yourself in by means of an unlatched casement. You’d been on patrol throughout the building earlier that evening. What was to stop you getting into her room – pass key part of the security man’s kit? Perhaps you borrowed one from a maid on her 9 p.m. rounds? And you unlatched the window while she was down below at the party? Then, when the hour comes for your external patrol, you simply push the window open silently from outside. You kill the Dame, steal her necklace, mess up her clothing to make it look personal, bash in the glass, muffling the sound with a Ritz towel, and redistribute the glass from the window. There, that’ll give someone a double headache! You probably put the jemmy and emeralds inside the pockets of the cape . . . I did wonder what that bulge was when you sat by me at the coffee stall . . . no, all right! I didn’t! Any blood splashing would have been fended off by the waterproofing of the cape and would have been invisible outside in the dark on a wet night.

  ‘So you go back out through the window, parting company with the poker halfway down . . .’ Joe hesitated. ‘Then you smarten up, with all the time in the world, in the staff cloakroom and rush about efficiently when called upon later on the discovery of the body. Of course, as it turned out, you didn’t have all the time in the world. You hadn’t bargained for Tilly Westhorpe taking it into her head to pay the Dame an impromptu visit. Very nearly wrecked everything for you, Bill. No wonder you wanted her off the job. Sharp-eyed, saucy young Tilly watching your every move! Playing detective! Nightmare!’

  ‘You’re doing well, sir,’ said Armitage affably. ‘There’s only one thing wrong with it and I don’t mind mentioning it as I see you’ve clocked it as well. Doesn’t quite make sense, does it? I didn’t kill Dame Beatrice. They’ve paid me for it all right but I had to confess that someone had already done the job for me. She was lying there dead when I went in. Just as you saw her later.’

  ‘So what happens now, Bill?’ Joe sighed.

  For a moment he thought he might have overplayed his role. Indecision from his commanding officer was not what Armitage would have expected. But he seemed to think it a reasonable question in the circumstances and replied with a perceptible relaxation of his taut muscles. ‘Only one thing that can happen, Captain. You say, “Case closed and let’s look forward to working on the next one.” Then I bugger off.’

  Joe narrowed his eyes, flinched, exclaimed sharply and examined the end of his cigarette which, unregarded in his absorption with the story, was burning his fingers. Armitage’s eyes followed it. A tap on the door divided his attention for a split second. It was long enough.

  ‘Come in, Ralph!’ Joe called.

  The inspector entered to find Armitage still seated, staring, unbelieving, down the barrel of the Browning Joe was holding steadily in his left hand.

  ‘Ralph, did you bring them? Good. Cuff him to the chair, will you, and remove his gun. It’ll be on his inside left. Holstered. Try and stay out of range, Ralph – if he moves, I’ll shoot him.’

  A pale but defiant Armitage, hands locked behind his back and a further set of handcuffs fastening him to the chair, listened in silence as Inspector Cottingham produced a warrant for his arrest and began to read it out.

  ‘This is a bloody farce!’ he hissed, exasperated. ‘There’s nothing you’ll be allowed to stick on me. Don’t think it! And I told you,’ he sneered, ‘I didn’t even bloody well do it.’

  ‘I know you didn’t. Just have a little patience, old chap, and hear the inspector out. He’s about to do you for . . . what have we got, Ralph? . . . breaking and entering the premises of the Ritz, stealing an emerald necklace, interfering with evidence to a murder, pre- and post-commission obfuscation . . . Carry on, Ralph. You read it – I’ll sign it.’

  Cottingham, having completed his arrest manoeuvres with professional smoothness, now stood to one side, agitated and questioning. His eyes flicked nervously between the revolver which Joe still held at the ready and its target.

  ‘He wasn’t armed. Sir! It’s Armitage! He’s one of us!’

  ‘Was one of us. Technically still is. He goes through the motions, draws the pay, uses the cover but his loyalties are with some other department. Probably under the same roof, though we’ll never know it.’

  ‘Special Branch?’ asked Cottingham. ‘One of McBrien’s busy boys?’

  ‘Special? No, I’d have said rather – Extra Special. We’re not allowed even to think about it. A branch of a branch of the Branch, perhaps? A twiglet?’ He composed his features. Mistake to descend to levity. In a voice of purring conspiracy he added, ‘And if I guess rightly, there’ll be several firewalls between the grandee who first murmured from the depths of his leather armchair in a St James’s club that perhaps the Dame had gone too far and the time, sadly, had come . . . and, at the end of the line: the finger on the trigger, the hand on the poker.’

  Cottingham was uncharacteristically nervous. ‘Dangerous work perhaps, sir, to meddle in matters like this?’

  ‘Oh, yes! Which is why I’ve taken certain precautions. I sent off this weekend a thick envelope for delivery to my lawyer. In the event of my unforeseen death, the letter will be copied to . . . and there follows a list of ten influential people. And, just to be sure, memos have gone to Sir Nevil, the Head of the Branch, the Foreign Secretary, the editor of the Mirror and, perhaps most importantly, to the Leader of His Majesty’s Opposition, to inform them of my insurance policy. A mixed bag of heroes and villains there! Having this in common – none of them will want what I�
��ve said to become public knowledge. I’ll be roundly cursed in some quarters but – what the hell! – this is England, not bloody Russia!’

  He wondered if he’d been melodramatic but Cottingham seemed impressed by the speech.

  ‘Should have included your resignation with that little lot,’ Armitage growled.

  ‘But what will happen to him?’

  ‘Yes, Ralph. I share your concern. The situation is most dangerous for the sergeant. Broken tools get thrown away. If we let him loose on the streets we’d probably find that a passing hackney cab driver would accidentally lose his grip on the wheel with disastrous consequences for the sergeant within the week.’

  ‘Harsh retribution, sir? Considering you seem to agree with him that his only crime was burglary and tampering with evidence. That’s five years maximum.’

  ‘It’s just a holding charge, Ralph. He’ll be out of our control – and protection – as soon as his papers reach a certain level. Get your coat and hat. We’ve some ground to cover before he gets released. We’re going to pick up evidence of his other crime and then we’ll have to think about a further warrant. Get on the phone, will you, and whistle up an escort down to the cells?’

  Armitage had turned pale and was frustratedly tugging at his handcuffs. He glared in silence as Ralph asked, ‘Other crime, sir? What have you in mind?’

  ‘The murder of Miss Audrey Blount. Let’s not forget Audrey.’

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  ‘Where are we going, sir?’ Cottingham asked as Joe commandeered a police car and driver.

  ‘We’re going to pay a call on Armitage senior. According to the file, Bill’s home address is Queen Adelaide Court, just off the Mile End Road beyond Whitechapel. Being unmarried, his next of kin is a Mr Harold Armitage, his father. Retired soldier. Nothing so helpful as a search warrant in our pockets, Ralph, so we’ll just have to charm our way in. And while we go, I’ll fill you in on the latest developments in the Hive you discovered.’