Murder at Hendon Aerodrome E-Book

Christina Koning

• Herausgeber: Allison & Busby
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Serie: Blind Detective
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 472

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

First published as Time of Flight under A. C. Koning. May 1931. For blind First World War veteran Frederick Rowlands, the craze for flying holds little interest - after all, he is unlikely ever to set foot in an aeroplane himself. However, a chance meeting with a famous flier draws Rowlands into the glamorous, and dangerous, world of aviation. When a body is discovered in one of the hangars at Hendon aerodrome, he finds himself buffeted by a turbulent mix of jealousy, betrayal and murder.

Leseprobe

3

MURDER AT HENDON AERODROME

CHRISTINA KONING

In memory of my father Geert Julius Koning (1912–1990), who also knew the Blind Detective rather well.

Contents

Title PageDedicationChapter OneChapter TwoChapter ThreeChapter FourChapter FiveChapter SixChapter SevenChapter EightChapter NineChapter TenChapter ElevenChapter TwelveChapter ThirteenChapter FourteenChapter FifteenChapter SixteenChapter SeventeenChapter EighteenChapter NineteenAcknowledgmentsBy Christina Koning About the AuthorCopyright

The Albatros came at him out of the sun. His plane was on fire before he knew what had hit him. It was only when he saw it – that little lick of flame just starting to emerge from the engine – that he knew he was done for. His gun had jammed, and it was as he was trying to dodge the blasts of gunfire from his attacker’s machine gun that he saw that he was on fire. The flame grew within seconds to a blaze, that would soon, he knew, consume the whole engine before consuming him. His Nieuport was stalled, in any case – if the flames didn’t get him, the fall would.

The Albatros was level with him now; he looked across at the cockpit where the pilot sat, seeing him, in that instant, as a man much like himself. That rictus grin they all wore when closing in for a kill; he had worn it himself, he knew, on many an occasion. The sheen of sweat on the forehead beneath the leather flying helmet. The fixed stare in the cold blue eyes … As he watched, for what seemed a long moment, but which was probably no more that a heartbeat’s duration, the man – his enemy – raised a gloved hand, in what seemed like a gesture of farewell. Then the fuselage was enveloped in a wave of fire …

He woke with a start, his heart pounding, his pyjamas soaked with sweat. For a moment he lay there, waiting for his pulse to slow, his gaze moving slowly around the room, taking in its objects – the heavy brocade curtains on their brass rail; the dressing table with its triple mirror; the box-shaped armchairs; the sleek walnut wardrobe. A room in the furnishing of which no luxury had been spared. He turned his head and saw, on the pillow next to his, a head of platinum blonde hair. It belonged to the woman he had been with the night before; he realised that he had forgotten her name. Some poule picked up in one of the bars in the Boulevard Montparnasse, he supposed. He’d have to get rid of her. A glance at the travelling clock on the bedside cabinet told him it was not yet six. Already exhausted at the thought of what the day would bring, he closed his eyes, fragments of his dream still lingering unpleasantly.

Chapter One

The world had taken to the air. You couldn’t switch on the wireless these days without hearing news of the latest feat by Miss Johnson or Commander Kidson; the newspapers, too, were full of their exploits, and those of the numerous others who’d followed in their wake. Although surely that was the wrong expression, Rowlands thought, being nautical rather than aeronautical? Well, it made not the slightest bit of difference to him, given that he was never likely to set foot in an aeroplane. Not that he cared to: he’d seen enough of the contraptions during his army days. They were more primitive machines then, to be sure – flimsy wooden frames covered with canvas and sealed with dope – but the principle had been the same as with the up-to-date metal-framed models they had nowadays: trusting oneself to the vicissitudes of wind and weather in a thing which resembled nothing so much as a bathtub with wings. At least in these days of peacetime you hadn’t to contend with being shot at.

No, it hadn’t been his idea of fun then, and it certainly wasn’t now even though, as his wife never tired of pointing out, everyone was doing it these days. ‘Lot of silly stunts,’ he muttered, reaching for the telephone. He knew his ill temper was unreasonable and, in fact, on any other day he’d have taken a different line. But with Miss Lawson getting married in a fortnight and Miss Collins off sick, he was pretty much running the office single-handed. Now there was this Croydon business. Being asked to organise a trip to the aerodrome at short notice for present and former inmates of Regent’s Park Lodge, together with a contingent from the Brighton centre, just so that they – the St Dunstaners – could swell the merry throng that would be waiting to welcome home Captain Whatshisname. Well, it was a damned nuisance, that’s all.

He picked up the receiver and dialled: CRO 6858. It rang four times before anybody answered. The voice which did so was young, female; a little breathless. ‘Hello?’

‘Frederick Rowlands speaking,’ he said. ‘Is that Croydon Aerodrome?’ He knew it was; he rarely got numbers wrong. ‘Yes,’ came the reply, followed by a momentary hesitation. ‘But there isn’t anyone here at the moment or, at least, only me. They’re all out at the airfield at present. Getting it ready, you know, for the day after tomorrow.’

‘It was about that I rang,’ said Rowlands. ‘To confirm arrangements for our visit. The St Dunstan’s group,’ he prompted when this elicited no response. ‘We’re invited to the reception.’

‘Yes, of course,’ said the girl, still sounding a bit doubtful. ‘It’s just that I don’t know anything much … I only help out, you know. Stripping down engines,’ she added, with a touch of pride.

‘Very useful, I’m sure,’ said Rowlands. ‘Well, Miss …’

‘Wilkinson. Pauline Wilkinson.’

‘Miss Wilkinson, I wonder if you’d mind awfully taking down a message?’

‘Not a bit. And do call me Wilkie. Everybody else does.’

‘Thank you … Wilkie. If you’d just let them know that there’ll be thirty-three of us, in two charabancs. That’s to say, thirty St Dunstan’s men and … and three children.’

‘Right-ho,’ said Miss Wilkinson. ‘Hang on. I’ll just find a pencil. Thirty-three, did you say?’

‘That’s right. If you’d pass that along, I’d be most grateful.’

‘Will do,’ she said cheerily. Then, as he was about to hang up, she added, ‘I say – it really is going to be the most ripping fun!’

‘Glad to hear it,’ he said, smiling at the fervour with which she spoke. Stripping down engines. He’d done a bit of that himself in his soldiering days – not to mention stripping down and cleaning an eighteen-pounder gun. He’d never thought of it as a job for a woman, though. Which all went to show that the world had changed a good deal in the dozen or so years since his army career had been brought to an abrupt end by a burst of shrapnel. ‘Well, goodbye.’

‘Cheerio,’ said the girl, and hung up. Rowlands turned his attention to other tasks. There was still that pension claim to settle; he’d have to see what old Askew thought about it. With the numbers of men they were seeing these days whose sight had only begun to fail since the war’s end, the business of allocating funds had become that much more tricky. He felt around on the desk in front of him until he found the letter – written by the applicant’s wife (at the former’s dictation, he supposed), and read out that morning by his secretary, in a voice thick with rheum. ‘Dear sirs,’ it said. ‘Hoping this finds you well …’ Here, Beryl Collins had been unable to suppress a sneeze. ‘I am of a sound constitution myself, with never a day’s illness until now …’ The letters often started in this vein, with a note of cheerful bravado it soon became hard to sustain. ‘A veteran of Mons and Neuve Chapelle, I am forty-two years old, married, with five children …’

‘Five! Oh, Lord,’ Rowlands had murmured. They’d fought long and hard to get the Children’s Allowance extended to include all children of blinded ex-servicemen, and not just the ones born before they entered the service. Five shillings a week per child wasn’t a lot, but it went some way towards covering the cost of food, clothes and shoes – as Rowlands himself had reason to know. ‘But with my sight no longer what it was, I find myself unable to do my job …’

‘What was his job, exactly, Miss Collins?’ he’d asked, having allowed his attention to wander at the crucial moment.

‘Factory worker. Making machine tools.’ ‘Bakig bachib tools’ was how it sounded.

‘Ah. Might be one for our retraining programme,’ he said. In the St Dunstan’s workshops in Kentish Town, men with little previous experience were being taught to operate router and borer machines, circular saws and vertical belt sanders – tasks for which they showed considerable aptitude. The scepticism of prospective employers was proving somewhat harder to overcome. ‘All right, Miss Collins, I can take it from here.’ After which he had sent her home, the poor girl evidently being in no fit state to carry on. Which meant that paperwork which should have been dealt with long before now was still cluttering up his desk. Well, best get on with it. Deftly threading the paper and carbons into the Remington machine, which had been modified only by the addition of tiny circles of fine sandpaper, stuck onto the middle keys – Y, H and N – to enable the typist to check his position, he set the tabs for the address line and paragraph indents, and began to type.

St John’s LodgeRegent’s Park

14th May 1931

Dear Mr Askew

I enclose a letter from Mr Harold Liddell, whose sight, damaged by mustard gas during his war service, has been steadily worsening. It seems to me that he might be just the ticket for the Machinery Department since he already has the necessary skills and would only need a certain amount of retraining …

He finished the letter, signed it, and put it, with Mr Liddell’s letter, in an envelope, which he stamped and addressed: ‘W. G. Askew Esq’, the organisation’s Pensions Officer. Lame from childhood, Askew had been passed unfit for the war – a fact which had proved to be of inestimable benefit to the hundreds of men who had returned from it unable to work and in desperate need of some kind of income. It was Askew who wrote letters on their behalf and drafted their appeals to the War Office. Because of him, men who had lost their sight through the gradual effects of mustard gas poisoning rather than in the heat of battle, were now eligible for the basic rate of forty shillings a week, with allowances for wife and children, if any. Men whose blindness had been caused by eye disease, ‘aggravated’, as the rubric put it, by their war service, could also claim subsistence.

It was advances such as these, Rowlands thought, reaching for the next letter on the pile Miss Collins had sorted into Possibles and Refusals, that made all the difference between a civilised society which looked after those less able to help themselves, and one that was not. This wasn’t, he knew, a view shared by everybody. ‘I am utterly weary of the lie-down-and-kick-me attitude of the Socialist Government,’ had opined one such malcontent in a letter to The Times, which Edith had read out to him only the previous evening; while an eminent Fellow of the Royal Society had been quoted in the same newspaper as being of the opinion that ‘it was an hallucination to believe that universal education could ever bring all men to the same level’, and that what he called ‘socialistic legislation’ could only result in a ‘steady decline in the eugenic fitness of the nation’. Dorothy would have had something to say about that, he thought, and then pushed the thought away.

He worked until six, alone in the deserted office, with only the ticking of the big clock on the wall for company. In the two years since he’d been running the place, it had come to seem like a home from home. You couldn’t say it was as lively as his old office had been, with the phones going all day long and a steady stream of visitors to deal with, but it had its moments, he thought. At least here he was his own boss, working to a schedule that was largely of his own devising. From his days as a sixteen-year-old, working in a factory, up to and including his time at Saville and Willoughby’s when he’d been in charge of the switchboard and a great deal more besides, he’d had to develop ways of doing things that relied on order, method and taking pains. It wasn’t always the quickest way, but it got there in the end.

‘That’s that for today,’ he thought, putting the last envelope on the pile ready for posting. He put the cover on the typewriter, and then, as he did every night, straightened the objects on his desk so that they were where he could find them first thing in the morning. Unused stationery he returned to the top right-hand drawer; a file he’d been consulting to the drawer below that. Stamps went back in the tray beside the telephone, with the sections for pencils, pens and paperclips. ‘Oh, Mr Rowlands, you’re so tidy!’ Miss Collins had exclaimed on more than one occasion, as if it were something remarkable in a man. He hadn’t thought it worth pointing out that he wasn’t just being pernickety: if you couldn’t see where you’d put something down, it made sense to return it to the same place each time so that you could find it again.

Blotting paper. He took a sheet from the left-hand drawer and, having discarded the used sheet, tucked the edges of the fresh sheet under the leather corners of the blotter. Paper knife. He weighed it in his hand a moment – there was a pleasing heaviness to it – before returning it to its place. ‘You could do yourself an injury with that,’ Miss Collins had said, meaning that it was sharp. He couldn’t see the use of a knife that wasn’t. The only object of no apparent utility on his desk was a pebble, picked up from Brighton beach some years before. When he was thinking about a particular problem or merely abstracted, as he was now, he’d hold it in the palm of his hand, feeling its smooth, round contours, shaped by the sea, over who knew how long? Millennia, perhaps. As he did so, he couldn’t help wondering where she was now – the woman who’d been with him that day. Did she ever think of him?

He dropped the pebble back on the desk. He oughtn’t to be having such thoughts, he told himself sternly.

Having collected the bundle of letters for posting from the tray, he locked the door behind him, and stepped out into the mild spring air. He drew a deep breath. The best moment of the day, he thought. St John’s Lodge was pretty much equidistant from the two Underground stations which served the area; Regent’s Park Tube being at the end of the more direct route. A sharp right turn would bring him to the Broadwalk; then another right-angled turn down Broadwalk would lead to the Outer Circle, but it was pleasant, sometimes, not to have to follow such rigid geometries, and he accordingly took a more circuitous path, which led through Queen Mary’s Gardens. Beneath his feet, the grass felt soft and springy, and from somewhere close by drifted the scent of flowers. Hyacinths. His mind was flooded, for an instant, by the colour blue. Funny how even after all these years, he still remembered colours.

Something whizzed past his head, just clipping his ear. ‘Ouch!’ He bent to retrieve the missile. It wasn’t, as he’d thought, a paper dart, although it weighed about the same. This was made of balsa wood. A miniature version of the craft he’d seen all those years ago, circling over the battlefields of Mons and Ypres. Flimsy contraptions, which looked as if a puff of wind might carry them away. ‘I say – I really am most dreadfully sorry,’ said a woman’s voice. Rowlands turned towards the sound. Even though he knew perfectly well that a soft voice was no guarantee of a pleasing countenance, he was unable to stop himself picturing the owner of the voice as young and pretty.

He was still holding the balsa wood aeroplane. ‘Yours, I think,’ he said, with a smile.

‘Oh, it’s not mine,’ she said. ‘It’s Teddy’s. That is, my son’s. Teddy, you naughty boy, come and say you’re sorry to the nice gentleman.’

‘Sorry,’ mumbled Teddy, who must have been about five, Rowlands guessed.

‘That’s quite all right,’ he said. ‘Even the best pilots sometimes have accidents.’ He held the plane out towards the child. ‘I expect you’d like this back.’

‘Yes,’ said Teddy.

‘Yes, please,’ put in the boy’s mother.

‘Yes, please.’

Rowlands handed him the plane. At once the child ran off, making the soft buzzing noise small boys made to simulate the drone of an aircraft’s engine. ‘Well,’ said Rowlands pleasantly. ‘I suppose I’d better make tracks.’ But his new acquaintance seemed in no hurry to relinquish his company.

‘We’re on our way home, too,’ she said, falling into step beside him. ‘It’s time for his bath. Only I said he might have ten more minutes in the park.’

‘It’s a fine evening,’ he said.

‘Yes. He’s our only one, you know, so we rather spoil him.’ There was no answer to this, and so Rowlands merely smiled. ‘I’m Irene Metcalfe, by the way,’ she said.

‘Frederick Rowlands.’

‘So nice to meet you. One doesn’t often – meet people, I mean. Or at least, not since we moved to London.’

‘Oh?’ he said politely.

‘Of course, we know people through my husband’s work,’ she said. ‘But …’ Her voice tailed off. For an instant, he caught a glimpse of her life: a mansion flat, in one of the less fashionable streets near the park. Two servants: a cook (of whom she was probably terrified) and a maid, to do the rough. The child taking up most of her day. Dinner parties, once a month, to entertain ‘people from the office’. A dull life for a young woman.

 ‘I’m sure things’ll get better,’ he said gently.

‘I expect you’re right.’ They’d reached the gravel path that led to the York Gate, and beyond it, the Marylebone Road.

‘Well, this is my direction,’ he said. On an impulse, he held out his hand. He felt her take it; hers was expensively gloved.

‘Perhaps I’ll see you again, sometime?’ she said.

‘Oh, I expect so,’ he replied, conscious that he was being evasive. ‘I sometimes come here with my own children.’

‘That’s nice,’ she said flatly. ‘How many children do you have?’

‘Three. All girls.’

‘Aren’t you lucky? I’d have liked a girl,’ she said. ‘Well, good night.’

‘Good night,’ said Rowlands as she walked away.

He was still puzzling over the little encounter as he descended the escalator at Baker Street. Poor girl – how forlorn she’d sounded! Perhaps the marriage … He let the thought tail away. The oft-repeated adage that cities could be lonely places flitted across his mind as he stepped off the moving stair and, taking care to keep to the left-hand side, entered the tunnel that would lead him to the southbound platform. Behind and in front of him tramped others – intent, as he was, on getting to where each wanted to go as quickly as possible. It was a largely silent crowd; what he could hear was the sound of hundreds of pairs of marching feet, people in close proximity tending to fall, unconsciously, into step with those around them. The sound echoed and re-echoed from the tiled walls of the tunnel and was overlaid, as he turned the corner, by the plaintive notes of a mouth-organ, playing ‘Home, Sweet Home’ – its maudlin cadences setting his teeth on edge, even as he reached into his pocket for some change.

Be it ever so humble, there’s no-o place like home …

Reaching his platform at last, he stood well back from the edge, knowing that, in such a crush, it would be all too easy to lose his footing. Still keeping his back to the wall, he shuffled sideways a few feet until he was level with the sliding doors of the first carriage. The train came roaring out of the tunnel, with its hot dragon’s breath. There was the usual surge forward, and he got on, squeezing his way between a burly man in tweeds and a woman weighed down with shopping bags. There were no seats left, but in any case he preferred to stand, hanging onto the strap as the train gathered momentum and, with his free hand, unfolding the paper he’d bought. He’d get Edith to read him the salient details later; for now, it was a way of blending in.

At Waterloo, he climbed the steps to the main concourse, listening out for the announcement that would signal the arrival of the Kingston train. There was still ten minutes to go. He started walking, unhurriedly, to the ticket barrier, moving with a deliberation which, he’d found, meant people tended to get out of his way. It was the ones who weren’t looking where they were going you had to watch out for. Around him, the crowd seemed a shadow theatre of moving shapes. Like silhouettes projected on a wall by torchlight. There was a game he and Harry had played when they were kids. Making shadow pictures with their fingers – a rabbit, a nibbling mouse, a grinning face. Shifting images that changed, with a flick of one’s fingers, into something else. ‘Look where you’re going, can’t you?’ said a voice in his ear.

‘Sorry!’

‘Should think so, too.’ Still muttering, the grumbler moved away, leaving an olfactory trail of peppermint behind him. A swift pint in the station bar, guessed Rowlands, followed by a strong mint to disguise the fact from the wife. And indeed, as he went by, the door of the bar swung open to release a smell of beer and cigarettes. Jovial voices shouted. ‘See you tomorrow, old man …’ A man blundered past him, emitting a gust of beery breath. ‘Toodle-oo …’ And from near the exit, that led to The Cut, came the hoarse shouts of a news vendor: ‘Girl’s Death on Exmoor Latest!’ It had been all over the papers these past few days. An eighteen-year-old servant had gone missing, her body having been discovered some days later in a patch of boggy ground. The Coroner’s verdict, Death by Misadventure, had proved an unpopular one with the local populace. Now, it seemed, fresh evidence had called the verdict into question.

Or so it emerged from the discussion two of Rowlands’ fellow travellers were having as he took his seat in the carriage second from the front and once more unfolded his paper. ‘Stands to reason it’s murder,’ said the first man. ‘I mean, she was half-naked. A young girl doesn’t just run out into the night with next to nothing on.’

‘Some do,’ put in the second man, with a coarse laugh.

‘Not decent girls,’ insisted the first. ‘And they’ve never found her spectacles, neither.’

‘Well, they’ll be searching high and low for ’em now,’ said a third voice. ‘Reckon it was the boyfriend myself.’ There came a murmur of agreement. It usually was the boyfriend, in such cases.

Not wanting to be drawn into this conversation, Rowlands feigned absorption in his paper. Although, if it came to that, he thought wryly, he’d had rather more experience of the kind of thing they were discussing than most. A brief and disagreeable memory of the time he’d – quite literally – stumbled across a corpse, passed through his mind. He let it pass. Trying not to think about such things only made it worse, he’d found.

It was a fourteen-minute walk from the station to Grove Crescent; he’d managed it in eleven. Since he’d taken up rowing again, he’d got much fitter, he thought. On this particular evening, there were quite a lot of people about, enjoying a stroll by the river in the mild spring air, and so he couldn’t risk striding out the way he might have done first thing in the morning. It was one of the things he disliked most about being blind: the caution it imposed upon one’s every movement so that one was forced, at times, to creep along like an old woman instead of going at a smart pace. Even so, it was a pleasant walk, with the river so close at hand. He could smell the weeds and mud churned up by the oars, and hear the shouts of coaches exhorting their respective teams to greater efforts from the towpath. Wouldn’t he like to be out there himself on such a fine evening!

He turned into the broad, tree-lined street where he and Edith and the children had moved two years before. The house was thirty years old: square-built and solid; a step up from the shoddy terraced dwelling they’d lived in when they were first married. The money they’d got from the sale of the chicken farm wouldn’t have been enough, by itself, to buy a place of this size in such a nice neighbourhood, but it was then that Edith’s mother had announced her intention of giving up her own home. ‘Because I can’t really manage by myself any longer,’ she’d said, ‘and I do so miss the children.’ It was this last reason which was the true one, Rowlands thought. At sixty-five, Helen Edwards could hardly have been called infirm, but her ten years’ widowhood had evidently proved a lonely time. Moving in with her daughter and son-in-law had been the solution.

Outside Number 46, Watson was washing his car. It was his pride and joy: a Sunbeam Talbot. ‘Evening,’ called Rowlands, raising a hand as he reached the gate.

‘Evening,’ came the reply, accompanied by the sound of a sponge being squeezed out in a bucket of soapy water. Rowlands walked briskly up the path, and let himself into the spacious hall of Number 44.

‘I’m home!’ he called, into the silence. They must all be in the garden, he thought. But then there came a step on the stair.

‘Hello, Daddy.’ His eldest daughter, Margaret, descended to greet him.

‘All alone?’ he said, kissing her. She was growing tall, he thought. Eleven, now. No longer a baby. Not that Meg had ever been babyish in her ways: his serious child.

‘I was doing my homework,’ she said, in answer to his question. ‘Mummy and Granny and the little ones are picking peas.’

‘Ah.’ He suppressed a smile at this description of her sisters; patted her shoulder, slender beneath the broad strap of her navy serge tunic. How proud she’d been, the day they bought the uniform! ‘You go back to your studies – what is it this evening?’

‘Algebra.’

‘Oh! I used to be rather good at algebra. Give me a shout if you find yourself getting stuck.’ Not that she’d need any help, he thought; she was getting to be a lot better at maths than he’d been at her age.

‘I will.’ Then she was gone, slipping back upstairs to her room and her precious books.

When he’d hung up his coat and stowed his briefcase, he went out into the garden where, to judge from the murmur of voices coming from the direction of the vegetable patch, the pea-pickers were still hard at work. After all the rain they’d had this spring, and now this spell of good weather, he was hoping for a record crop. His runner beans had done well the year before, as had his potatoes and cabbages, but he had expectations this year of his vegetable marrows. When they’d moved to Kingston two summers ago, the garden had been a jungle, with the kitchen garden entirely gone to seed, and some fine old roses badly in need of pruning. He’d soon dealt with all of that.

‘Daddy!’ His youngest daughter was the first to notice his arrival. A moment later, her sturdy four-year-old body threw itself against him, her arms encircling his legs so that he was forced to come to a halt.

‘Hello, Joanie.’ Disentangling her arms from about his knees, he lifted her up and bestowed a kiss on the top of her head. ‘Not in bed, yet?’

‘I said they might stay up until you got home,’ said his wife from the middle of the pea patch.

‘Quite right,’ he said. ‘It’s much too nice an evening to have to go to bed. Evening, Helen.’ This was to his mother-in-law. ‘And how’s my Anne? Good day at school?’

‘Yes, Daddy. Daddy, guess what? I’m going to be a pilot when I grow up, like Amy Johnson.’

‘Oh-oh,’ he said. Ever since he’d brought home the news about their proposed Croydon visit, the girls had talked of little else.

‘And just how,’ he went on, ruffling his middle daughter’s hair, ‘are you going to afford flying lessons?’ Anne had her answer ready.

‘You’re going to pay for them, Daddy – until I get my pilot’s licence. Then I’ll be able to pay you back from the prize money I’ll get from flying to Australia.’

‘I see. Got it all planned out, haven’t you?’

‘Yes,’ she said simply.

‘Well, you won’t be allowed flying lessons or any other lessons if you don’t finish your homework,’ said Edith. ‘Go on. You’ve still got twenty minutes before bed.’

‘It’s only French verbs,’ said Anne carelessly as they began to walk back towards the house. ‘I’ve already done my composition – it’s What I Want to Be When I Grow Up.’

‘Don’t tell me, let me guess,’ her father said.

Chapter Two

‘Of course, they’re wildly excited,’ said Edith as they sat together after dinner, Mrs Edwards having gone up to her room to write some letters, she said, with her customary tact. Since becoming a permanent member of the household, two years before, his mother-in-law behaved, if anything, more like a guest than ever, never failing to ask if she might use the telephone, and making a point of, as she put it, ‘leaving you to yourselves’ in the evenings. ‘Mother, this is your house, too,’ Edith had said, exasperated at one such self-effacing display. But Helen Edwards, who could be remarkably firm when she liked, Rowlands had noticed, stuck to her guns. ‘Oh, my dear, I don’t want you to think me an awful old nuisance,’ she’d said. ‘I’ve heard so many stories about people having their relations to stay and ending up detesting them.’

Well, she was right enough about that, thought Rowlands – although, in his experience, the animosity came about from having too many people crowded together in too small a house, like some of the families he’d known growing up in Camberwell. Nine or ten children, parents and grandparents all crammed hugger-mugger into a crumbling back-to-back, with only a tin tub to wash in and the WC in the yard. No wonder people went for their loved ones with the carving knife. You couldn’t say they had any such reason to resort to murder here, in leafy Grove Crescent, with electric light, hot and cold running water, and an upstairs bathroom with a bath deep enough to launch a battleship. Four bedrooms so that Margaret could have a room to herself in which to do her homework even if it meant Anne had to share with ‘the baby’, as she said disdainfully. Then there was a large sitting room, with French windows opening onto the garden, a dining room and a good-sized kitchen and scullery.

It was twice the space they’d had in Gabriel Street, and, for a time, while Dorothy and Viktor had been staying with them, there’d been seven of them in that tiny house. He realised that it was the second time his sister had come to mind that evening. He wondered where she was and what she was doing now. He hoped, wherever she was, that she was happy. It had been three years now. He didn’t even know whether she was alive or dead.

‘Fred! You haven’t been listening, have you?’

‘What? I heard every word. You were saying about the girls …’

‘And Peter. I was talking about Peter.’

His brother-in-law’s child. A rather dull little chap, in Rowlands’ private opinion. Having a father like Ralph probably hadn’t helped. ‘What about him?’

Edith gave a triumphant laugh. ‘You see! You weren’t listening at all. I asked you if you minded Ralph’s dropping Peter off on Friday night instead of Saturday morning. Only Diana’s got their Bridge party to organise.’

‘I don’t mind,’ he said. Trust Ralph to have to bend arrangements to suit himself.

‘It’s a pity,’ his wife went on, ‘that you’d already said you’d go to this Croydon thing, otherwise we could have gone to Ralph and Diana’s. You know we were invited.’

Thank heaven for small mercies, Rowlands thought. ‘Is there anything in the paper?’ he said. Dubious as he was about the aerodrome trip, it made it all worthwhile, just to have an excuse not to go to Richmond. Being condescended to by his brother-in-law, whose position as a bank manager gave him a certain status – in his own eyes, at least – stuck in Rowlands’ craw. The trouble was, Edith had rose-tinted spectacles where her brother was concerned.

‘What?’ she said now, sounding a little affronted at this abrupt change of subject. ‘I don’t know. I’ll just see, shall I?’

It was their custom of an evening for her to read to him. Sometimes, it was a chapter of whatever book they were reading – just now, it was Priestley’s Angel Pavement – sometimes the newspaper. ‘My personal Talking Book,’ he called her.

‘Please,’ he said. She rustled pages.

‘There’s that awful murder,’ she said. ‘The poor girl on Exmoor.’

‘Yes. I heard about that. Anything else?’

‘There’s an article about Flying Boats. “Are they the Future?” the writer asks.’

He groaned. ‘Spare me.’

‘Or,’ Edith went on mischievously, ‘there’s a report on the Schneider race. It seems these aeroplanes the French are designing can go up to four hundred miles per hour – imagine that!’

‘I’d rather not. Isn’t there any real news?’

‘Well, there’s this – but it’s still air-related, I’m afraid. “Intruders Disturbed at Aerodrome: Police Suspect Sabotage …”’

‘That does sound a bit more interesting.’

‘I’ll read it, shall I?’ She cleared her throat. ‘“Police last night were hunting for two men, who were seen running away from the scene of a break-in at the de Havilland Flying School near Hatfield. The first is described as being about thirty-five years old, five feet eight inches tall, and wearing dark-coloured clothing and a flat cap; the second as aged about forty, five feet ten inches tall, and wearing a light-coloured mackintosh and a soft hat. Inspector Herbert Rawlins of the Hertfordshire Constabulary stated: ‘A hangar was broken into. However, it appears that the perpetrators were disturbed before anything could be taken. The police are keeping an open mind, but have not ruled out the possibility of sabotage.’ It is known that de Havillands have invested considerable sums in developing new machines, specifically for competition purposes …” Shall I read on?’ she said, swallowing a yawn.

‘No, that’s all right. Let’s have the wireless shall we? There might be a concert worth listening to.’

On any normal Saturday, he’d have taken his usual train, but as he’d the girls and Peter with him, Rowlands resigned himself to catching the slow one. Not that his girls were dawdlers, but their cousin was hardly the speediest when it came to getting himself dressed or eating his breakfast. When he’d realised they were going to have to walk to the station, he’d been unable to conceal his dismay. ‘The pater always gets George to run me in the motor,’ he’d said – George being the chauffeur.

‘Well, it’ll be a nice change for you to have some exercise,’ replied Rowlands. Still, you couldn’t blame the lad. As the only child of doting, well-to-do parents, he was on the way to being spoilt rotten. Knowing the fondness of most small boys for things mechanical, Rowlands had hoped the train journey itself would amuse him. But beyond a passing remark that he was to have a new train set for his birthday, Peter had seemed unimpressed by the experience even though the great engine had let off a satisfyingly loud shriek of its whistle as they’d neared Waterloo, and a very fierce-sounding guard had passed through the carriage, demanding to see their tickets.

Nor did the office seem to engage his interest much more, although Anne had demonstrated the mechanics of the swivel chair and the adjustable lamp and shown him how to type his name on the typewriter. ‘Why don’t you take Peter outside and show him the garden?’ said Rowlands when these possibilities had been exhausted. ‘I’ve got a bit of work to do.’ Again, it was Anne who bore the brunt of this, Margaret having cried off, on the grounds that she had some homework to finish. Threading paper and carbons into the machine before beginning the first of his letters, Rowlands resolved that Anne should have the biggest ice cream money could buy when they reached the aerodrome that afternoon.

By half past twelve, the rest of their party was starting to assemble in front of the Lodge. Rowlands exchanged greetings with a couple of those he knew – Eyre and Barlowe – and drew out the list he’d typed that morning as an aide-memoire. ‘Now, Meg,’ he said to his elder daughter, ‘just read the names out in order, will you? There should be sixteen of them.’

She did so. ‘J. E. Barlowe.’

‘Present and correct,’ said the latter.

‘D. J. Calder, R. L. Coxhead, S. M. Eyre.’

‘Present!’ sang out Eyre. He’d been a pilot during the war, Rowlands recalled, which doubtless accounted for his presence today. ‘L. R. Hammond, P. Hewitt.’ Another airman, thought Rowlands. ‘D. V. Llewellyn-Jones.’

‘Here, Miss,’ said the Welshman.

‘L. L. Neate, C. R. W. Passingham, R. Pope, F. C. Rowlands – that’s you, Daddy – G. W. Stratham, J. R. Taylor, S. Twining, and T. S. Turney.’

‘That’s me,’ said a gruff Yorkshire voice. ‘This your girl, Rowlands? Grand little lass, isn’t she?’

‘She’s not so bad,’ said Rowlands. ‘Thank you, Meg. You can hold onto the list, if you will.’ Although now he’d committed the names to memory, he’d have no need of a prompt. Just then, the dull roar of an engine in low gear and the crunch of wheels on gravel signalled the arrival of the charabanc. Another would be setting off from Brighton, with the same numbers of passengers, although, thankfully, somebody else would be in charge of that. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Is everybody here? Or shall I run through the names again? Perhaps people could sing out as they get on board. I wouldn’t want to leave any of you behind.’

‘Anyone got a light?’ said a voice. ‘Only I seem to have left my matches behind. Stratham’s the name, by the way.’

‘Here you are,’ said Rowlands, handing him the box of Swan Vestas from his jacket pocket.

‘Thanks,’ said the other, returning the matches when his gasper was lit. ‘I say, would you care for one of these?’

‘What are they?’

‘Craven A.’

‘Thanks, but I prefer my own.’ Rowlands lit up. Five minutes more and they ought to get going if they wanted to miss the traffic, he thought.

‘I must say,’ went on his new friend, ‘I’m looking forward to this! Haven’t been near an airfield since I crashed my bus at Pop in ’17.’ So he was a pilot, too, Rowlands thought.

‘I had quite a bit to do with you RFC chaps when I was in France,’ he said. ‘Flanders, too. I was a gunner, you know – eighteen-pounder field guns, not Howitzers – so we rather relied on what your lot could tell us of what the enemy was up to.’

‘Well, we tried to make ourselves useful, you know,’ said Stratham. Despite the former pilot’s becoming show of modesty, Rowlands knew this had been a difficult and dangerous job: flying low over the enemy lines, under raking fire from the Archies, while trying to keep the aeroplane steady enough for the observer to photograph the German gun emplacements.

‘Used to watch the dogfights, too,’ said Rowlands, pinching out the stub of his cigarette. ‘Sometimes there’d be thirty or forty BE2cs, against as many Huns, circling around in the sky. I often wondered how you managed not to crash into each other, but you never did – at least not while I was watching.’

‘Oh yes,’ said Stratham, sounding almost wistful. ‘We had some marvellous times. There’s really nothing to beat it. Flying, I mean. Being up there in a cloudless blue sky, looking down on it all, with only your observer for company, and knowing that if you got your kill, there’d be champagne all round in the Mess that night. Really nothing to beat it,’ he said.

‘I’ll take your word for it,’ said Rowlands. ‘Well, that seems to be all of us accounted for. Perhaps we should get going.’

‘I knew him, you know,’ said Stratham as he went to get on board. ‘Alan Percival, that is,’ – this being the man whose exploits they were on their way to celebrate.

‘Did you?’ said Rowlands since some response seemed necessary.

‘Yes,’ said the other reflectively ‘Back in the old days. Not that he had much time for new bugs like myself – he was already an Ace when I joined 3 Squadron. Always very decent to me, though.’ He took a last, deep drag of his cigarette.

‘I say, Stratham old man, get a move on, do!’ sang out a voice from the back of the bus. Hewitt, Rowlands thought. ‘Only I’d rather like to be there before the plane arrives, wouldn’t you?’

As the bus drew into the car park in front of the Airport Terminal, there was still half an hour to go before the ceremony was due to begin. If it began on time, thought Rowlands, as his group began to disembark. The Brighton group, he was informed by the steward who met them at the gate, had already arrived. ‘Mr Potter’s giving them the tour,’ he added. ‘Your lot might like to join them, seeing as how we’ve no news from Captain Percival yet.’

‘All right,’ said Rowlands. ‘Where do we go?’

‘I’ll show you,’ replied the steward, whose name, he said, was Saunders. ‘I say, that little chap looks a bit green.’ It was Peter he meant, of course, the long journey in the rattling bus having disagreed with him.

 ‘You’ll feel better if you’re sick,’ Anne was assuring him. ‘I always feel heaps better after I’m sick.’

Suppressing a groan, Rowlands took charge. ‘Come along, Peter, my lad, I need you to show me the way.’

‘But Daddy …’

‘No buts, young lady. Peter’s going to be my guide to the airport today, aren’t you, old man?’

‘Y-es,’ said Peter, sounding a bit uncertain.

‘Take a deep breath or two if you’re feeling queasy. There! Feeling any better?’

Peter said that he was. ‘Good show,’ said Rowlands. ‘Now, if you’ll keep Mr Saunders in view, we can all get along quite nicely. I say, I’m looking forward to Captain Percival’s arrival in his Gipsy Moth, aren’t you? It’s quite an achievement, flying all the way from Australia. He’s going to break the record, too, I shouldn’t wonder.’

‘Yes,’ said Peter doubtfully. ‘But the pater says his machine’s not a patch on the new Fairey and Blackburn.’

‘Does he?’ said Rowlands as the child slipped a small hot hand into his. ‘I don’t think I know that particular model. Perhaps you’d like to tell me all about it.’

‘Daddy …’

‘In a moment, Anne,’ said her father. ‘Peter’s just telling me about the latest … what’s it called, again?’

‘The S9/30.’

‘I could have told you about that,’ said Anne.

‘Oh, don’t think you’ll be getting off lightly,’ said Rowlands. ‘I’ll need you to describe the aircraft hangars to me. And all the aeroplanes,’ he added.

‘All right,’ said his middle daughter, somewhat mollified. He felt her take his other hand, and the four of them, with Margaret on her sister’s left, fell in behind the St Dunstan’s group.

It was a fine, windless day; good flying weather, Rowlands supposed. He drew a deep breath of the mild, faintly petrol-scented air. As they nearer the first of the hangars, he could hear what sounded like machinery in operation: the whine of a circular saw, followed by a burst of hammering. ‘Our workshops,’ said their guide. ‘I think this is where we’ll find the others. We’ll just pop our heads in for a minute.’ Which they did, inhaling as they did so the unmistakeable smells associated with such places: the sharp chemical tang of varnish and acetate, mingling with the fresher scents of wood and canvas. The sound of voices, echoing in that vast, cavernous space, indicated that they’d found the Brighton group. ‘Well, I’ll leave you to it,’ said Saunders. ‘Hi! George!’– raising his voice to overcome the sound of hammering – ‘Here’s the rest of the St Dunstan’s party.’

‘Ah, you made it, then?’ said the man Saunders had addressed. ‘George Potter’s the name. I’m the Airport Manager. I was just explaining to these gentlemen what’s going on here.’

‘Look, Daddy, they’re mending a wing,’ cried Anne, forgetting, in her excitement, that he was unable to follow her injunction.

‘Yes, this is the repairs department,’ said Potter, who’d overheard her exclamation. ‘Running repairs, you know – like the tear in the wing fabric they’re fixing now. Anything more serious goes to the machine shop.’

‘What kind of plane is it?’ piped up one of their party. Stratham, thought Rowlands.

‘It’s a DH71, otherwise known as a Tiger Moth,’ was the reply. ‘Lovely little machine. Wingspan’s only twenty-two foot six. Built for racing, you see. The one next to it’s an Avro Baby. What’s the matter with that one, Bert?’ he called across to the man who was engaged in overhauling the plane.

‘Touch of engine trouble,’ said the ground engineer. ‘Dirty distributor, it looks like. Nothing a touch of elbow grease can’t cure.’

‘I remember it well,’ laughed Stratham. ‘All those mornings in the freezing cold, washing the engine down with paraffin. Not that it made a blind bit of difference,’ he added. ‘You could get shot down just as easily in a clean plane as in a dirty one.’

‘All the craft in this hangar are racers, aren’t they, Bert?’ said Potter as if he had not heard this remark.

 ‘Next to the Baby we’ve got a nice little Supermarine. Bright blue, with silver facings. Then there’s a Gloster – dark blue, this one, with copper wings and tail. Pretty as a picture, she is. Last one’s a Crusader. White, with blue fairings. The Tiger Moth’s all in yellow. Like I said, they’re pretty things.’

‘Go pretty fast too, I shouldn’t wonder,’ said another voice. Rowlands recognised it as Barlowe’s.

‘You said it, sir!’ was the enthusiastic reply. ‘Two hundred miles per hour is the most any of this size of aircraft can reach although it’s often closer to one hundred and fifty miles per hour. But you couldn’t call any of ’em slow.’

‘A bit quicker than we used to manage, eh, Hewie?’ quipped Barlowe to one of his fellow pilots – Hewitt, Rowlands guessed. ‘Even if we did have the Hun on our tails to lend us speed.’

Leaving the mechanics to their work, the group moved on to the next hangar where they caught up with the Brighton group being given a detailed description of a Blackburn Bluebird. ‘It’s the metal skin that makes it so aerodynamic,’ the guide was explaining. ‘If some of you gentlemen would care to put your hands on the fuselage, you’ll get an idea of what I mean.’ People were accordingly clustering around the big machine –‘Mind how you go there! Propeller’s just in front of you,’ – when Rowlands felt a tug on his sleeve. Peter needed the lavatory, he said.

‘All right,’ said Rowlands. Telling the girls to stay together, and that he wouldn’t be long, he ascertained from Potter where the WC was to be found. ‘Come along, then,’ he said to Peter.

Skirting the edge of the airfield as advised – ‘Wouldn’t do to get your heads knocked off by an incoming plane,’ said Potter cheerily – they reached the Terminal Building at last. Here, the crowds were thicker than they had been a quarter of an hour before, with people entering by the main doors, only to be told by the official posted there that they’d need to go round by the side entrance if they wanted to get to the stands where the reception was being held. ‘Round to the side, ladies and gentlemen,’ he was saying, with monotonous frequency. ‘That’ll be your quickest way. Round to the side.’

‘Expecting a good turnout, are you?’ said Rowlands to the man as he stood waiting for Peter to emerge from the Gents.

‘Something in the region of five thousand,’ was the reply. ‘He’s very popular, is the Captain.’

‘I don’t doubt it.’

‘Broken a couple of records this time, too. Did the Baghdad to Karachi leg in under five days.’

‘Very impressive,’ said Rowlands, to whom this meant little.

‘Yes,’ went on the other, ‘he’s quite a character, is Captain Percival.’ He lowered his voice a fraction. ‘Bit of a way with the ladies, too, between you and me. Why, only the other day he says to me, “Jock,” he says …’

‘I’ve a bone to pick with you,’ said a voice. A young woman’s voice; Rowlands wondered where he’d heard it before. ‘I’ve just seen the list, and my name’s not on it. All I can say is, it’s beastly unfair.’

‘Now then,’ said the man who’d referred to himself as Jock, ‘I never promised anything.’

‘That’s just what’s so rotten,’ she flashed back. ‘All these weeks and weeks I’ve been coming down here and working my socks off – for nothing, mind you! – and you’ve let me think I was in with a chance.’

‘You got the wrong end of the stick then,’ was the reply. ‘You know as well as I do that girls can’t work as ground crew. The men wouldn’t like it, for a start.’

‘I can’t think why. I can service a plane as fast as any man.’ Of course, thought Rowlands. That’s where I’ve heard that voice. It was the other day, on the telephone – the young woman who’d enthused about stripping down engines. What was her name again?

‘Be reasonable, Wilkie.’ That was it: Pauline Wilkinson. Call me Wilkie. Everybody else does.

‘Reasonable! Ha!’ snorted the girl. ‘I suppose the men think it’s “reasonable” for me to give up my idea of flying altogether? Perhaps they’d like me to stay home and give tennis parties instead?’

‘Now, nobody thinks any such thing,’ replied the other, in the tone one uses to soothe a fractious child. ‘All the lads think very highly of you, you know that.’

‘Then why can’t I be on the field when Alan … when Captain Percival’s plane touches down? I’ve earned the right – you know I have, Jock.’ He must have shrugged or made some other gesture of refusal, for she gave an exasperated sigh. ‘It’s just so unfair,’ she said.

‘Look, if it means so much to you, I’ll have a word with the rest of the men.’

‘Don’t bother.’ She must have turned on her heel, then, because a moment later she walked slap bang into Rowlands. ‘Oh!’ she gasped. ‘Awfully sorry! I didn’t see you there.’

‘My fault,’ he said politely. ‘Miss Wilkinson, isn’t it?’

‘That’s right. I’m afraid I don’t know who you are, though.’

‘No reason why you should. The name’s Rowlands. We spoke on the telephone a few days ago.’

‘Oh, that was you, was it?’ Her voice was flat and expressionless – a complete contrast to the way she’d sounded on that first occasion. ‘I passed on your message, by the way.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Don’t mention it. Look, I’m sorry. I’ve got to go.’

‘Of course,’ said Rowlands. He stood aside to let her pass. A moment later, there was the sound of the heavy glass doors swinging shut behind her. The man she’d addressed as Jock blew out his cheeks, expelling a puff of air.

‘Women!’ he muttered, half to himself. ‘Sorry about that, sir. I’m sure she didn’t mean to be rude. It’s just she takes things to heart, our Wilkie.’

‘So I gathered.’

‘I’m Jock Stewart, by the way. Chief Ground Engineer.’

‘Fred Rowlands.’ They shook hands. ‘So you’re the man responsible for getting the planes down safely.’

‘You could say that,’ replied Stewart. ‘Although you wouldn’t hear me say as much in front of one of the pilots. As far as they’re concerned, it’s all down to their skill and judgement.’

‘Well, I won’t give you away,’ smiled Rowlands. ‘I’m just waiting for … ah, here he is. My brother-in-law’s boy.’

‘Hello, young man,’ said the Scotsman. A Glaswegian, Rowlands thought. Funny how different it sounded from the Edinburgh accent once you got to know the latter. Chief Inspector Douglas was from Edinburgh, of course, although he’d spent much of his career in the Metropolitan Police. A good man, Douglas. One way and another, he and Rowlands had spent quite a bit of time together. Although it had been two years since they’d last met, shortly before the trial of the murderer both had helped to bring to justice. It had been an ugly case, and one about which Rowlands tried to think as little as possible.

‘We ought to be rejoining our group,’ he said. ‘We’re with the St Dunstan’s party, as I expect you’d realised.’

‘Only noticed it just this minute,’ said Stewart politely.

Rowlands smiled. ‘I’ll take that as a compliment,’ he said. ‘I don’t suppose you could point us in the right direction?’

‘With pleasure,’ said Jock Stewart. ‘Keep going straight towards the big hangar on the far side. It’s the middle one of three. You can find your way, can’t you, laddie?’ This was to Peter. Peter said that he could, and so, with a final wave of the hand, Rowlands set off, with the child tagging along beside him. Rowlands checked his watch. It was a quarter past three. There’d just be time to find their party before they’d need to make tracks for the main event.

‘Here we are,’ he said as they reached the set of sliding doors that led into the hangar. These were now closed; he slid one of them open. ‘Careful!’ he said to Peter. ‘There’s a step.’

But when they entered the great echoing space, with its pungent smells of spilt oil and paraffin, there seemed to be no one there. The hangar, it seemed, was empty of all human presences; its only inhabitants the silent rows of aeroplanes. Rowlands realised this only when moving a few paces away from the door, he’d almost collided with the edge of a wing. ‘See anyone?’ he said to Peter, who must have shaken his head; unlike Rowlands’ daughters, he hadn’t been taught to make his responses audible. ‘No? They must have moved on elsewhere. Never mind. We’ll soon catch them up.’

‘And just what the bloody hell do you think you’re doing?’ said a voice. Rowlands turned towards it.

‘I’ll thank you to watch your language,’ he said evenly. ‘There’s a child present.’

‘Child, my eye!’ retorted the irascible stranger. ‘You’ve no business here and you know it. Poking and prying around. What are you – some sort of spy?’ Rowlands was left momentarily speechless by this accusation. Even though it was wholly unwarranted on this occasion, it wasn’t the first time he’d been called by that unlovely name. Spy. He felt himself flush to the roots of his hair.

‘I think you’ve got the wrong idea.’

‘Don’t give me that! I saw you. You went right up to it. Had a good look, did you?’