Brighton Belle (3 page)

Father Sandor tried again. ‘What did this Romana Laszlo do, Mirabelle? Why are you looking for her?’

At least this was a question Mirabelle could answer easily. ‘She borrowed a lot of money in London. Four hundred pounds.’ It seemed so trifling now.

‘I see. But that’s not what I mean,’ he persisted. ‘What did she do in the war?’

Mirabelle couldn’t stand it. ‘I don’t know.’

‘But ...’ Sandor hesitated and then decided not to pursue the matter. ‘Well, now you’re here, would you like to visit Jack’s grave?’

Mirabelle sprang to her feet with her heart racing. Bile rose in her throat. She couldn’t. It was a daily haunting as it was. Seeing his name carved in stone would only make things worse.
It had been a mistake to come here. ‘No. Thank you. I have to be going.’ She felt panicky. ‘Sandor, if you find out anything about Romana Laszlo will you call me? Here.’ She
wrote down the office number on a scrap of paper from her bag.

Sandor took it. ‘This is a Brighton number. Are you on an operation? You can tell me, Mirabelle. Are you undercover?’

Mirabelle’s eyes sank to the floor. She wished the stone slabs would swallow her. ‘I’ve never been in the field, Sandor. I was intelligence, not operations, remember. And I
don’t even do that any more. I’m not here to do anything good or worthwhile. I’m simply looking for Romana Laszlo because she owes someone some money. Please just let me have any
information that comes your way.’

And now you think you shouldn’t have come at all,’ he said with a smile, still trying to engage her. The priest’s blue eyes were like pools. Those eyes had seen a lot over the
years. ‘I’m sorry. It was clumsy of me. My nose always bothers me. But I don’t need my nose to see you are upset, no?’ Silence. Sandor laid his hand on her arm. He knew that
if she didn’t want to talk, he couldn’t make her. It was only that, in his experience, talking usually helped people who looked as tortured as the wide-eyed elegant near-widow before
him.

‘I’m sorry,’ Mirabelle excused herself. She felt horribly ashamed. ‘I shouldn’t have come.’

Walking home Mirabelle stopped at the newsagent on the main street and bought her
Evening Argus
without even glancing at the headline. She found herself unable to make small talk with the
man on the till and was grateful that the shop was busy. On autopilot, she strolled towards the front door of her building and let herself in, climbing the airy staircase to the first floor. Inside
the view was wonderful. It was always wonderful. The sea. The sky. The changing panorama of the light as the clouds moved. Mirabelle laid the paper on the pile. Since 11 August 1949, the day of
Jack’s death, she had found herself unable to throw away a copy of the
Evening Argus.
Now there were over five hundred of them piled up against the wall with the edition containing the
worst possible news at the bottom. Buried for one year, seven months and two days now.

No one had come to tell her that sunny day. No one had offered her sympathy or sent flowers. Jack had covered their tracks very carefully. So when she’d sat by the window to read her
evening paper the news had come as a complete shock. ‘Prominent local businessman, forty-nine years of age,’ the article said, ‘recently returned to Brighton after being demobbed.
Mr Duggan died suddenly of a heart attack this morning in the street outside his family home. He had a distinguished war record.’ It didn’t say a word about the fact that he’d
bought this flat for her and he was planning to divorce his wife and live there that autumn when his girls went up to Oxford. He had twin girls, you see, and he loved them very much.

‘It’s 1949 and after all we’ve been through, why shouldn’t we have each other?’ he’d said. ‘It’s only making it happen gently. I can see the
lawyer when the girls have left for college. I’ll arrange everything. But, Belle, will you have me? A divorced man more than ten years older than you?’

Mirabelle had been so happy she’d run around the flat half-naked, scattering pillows in her wake, whooping for joy. ‘Yes, I’ll have you! Yes! Yes!’

They had shared a gin and tonic in celebration and made love on the floor.

Two months later poor Jack was buried in the Church of the Sacred Heart by a wife he scarcely spoke to any more, who had no idea that after what Jack had seen and done during the war the idea of
a God or a church was beyond him.

It had been a long day. Seeing Sandor had brought it all back – memories that she had pushed down now surfaced in a flood. Mirabelle removed her shoes, poured herself a glass of whisky and
sniffed it. She took a sip and then, with shaking hands, she sank down on the pale blue sofa and finally let the tears stream down her cheeks.

3

HA HU HI: I am going to Paris (radio code used by double agent Eddie Chapman)

I
t was colder today. The spring weather was always unpredictable. Mirabelle stared out of the office window. Two men dressed for a dance were
heading home after a long night at the Palais. Their laughter floated up as they sheltered out of the drizzle to light their cigarettes. Pulling her brown cashmere cardigan around her slim frame,
Mirabelle closed the window. She hadn’t slept well. She put the notes she had taken about Romana Laszlo’s debt on Big Ben’s desk. Then she wondered whether to throw out the dying
geranium and be done with it. The mail sat unopened. Clicking back into work mode, as if she had taken a painkiller, Mirabelle slit open the first envelope with the small dagger she kept on her
desk. She removed the cheque. She’d go to the bank later. Then, as she picked up the second envelope, the phone rang.

‘McGuigan & McGuigan Debt Recovery.’

‘Is that you, Mirabelle?’ The priest’s voice was distinctive.

‘Hello, Sandor.’ Her heart sank.

‘I have something for you,’ Sandor said.

‘My boss is going to deal with this one,’ Mirabelle replied crisply, ‘but I take it she’s turned up, then?’

‘Romana Laszlo? Hmmm, yes.’ There was an awkward pause and then Sandor sighed. ‘She is dead.’

‘Dead?’

‘Both she and the baby. She was in labour and there were complications. It was late last night. I’m sorry.’

Mirabelle felt her fingers tingle. She felt inexplicably responsible. ‘That’s dreadful,’ she said quietly. ‘Poor girl.’

‘She died with only her doctor in attendance so she did not receive the last rites. I will officiate at the funeral tomorrow. She has a sister coming from London and they want it to be
quick. Often this is the case and I understand she was widowed recently so there is no husband to mourn her or the baby. Mirabelle, there is something troubling me. Something strange. I talked to
her friend, the doctor. She was staying with him, and I said I also am Hungarian and where was she from, Romana? And he told me Izsak.’

‘Yes?’

‘I know Izsak. I know every Catholic family in the area. I probably know every non-Catholic family, too. It’s a small place and I ministered there – it was my first job when I
came from the seminary. Four little villages and Izsak one of them. Two years I lived there and I never heard of anyone with a daughter called Romana. This girl was twenty-two, this Romana –
she would have been twenty-three next month. Before the war, if she came from a family in Izsak she would have been the age of a schoolgirl. I should know her. But I don’t.’

Mirabelle’s curiosity was pricked, a tantalising flashback of her former life echoing down from London to her sequestered existence by the sea. It felt as if Jack was calling her. Still,
she fought against her instinct. Sandor’s information was interesting, but, telling herself she had to be practical, she dismissed it immediately. If a debtor died it was Big Ben’s job
to claim the money from the estate. That made what she had to do purely administrative and therefore rather easy. Nothing else mattered. Not these days.

‘Thank you, Sandor. Tell me,’ she moved on calmly, ‘do you know who the executor is?’

‘There is a lawyer. Peters. I should think he must be the one.’

‘Thank you.’

Sandor sounded eager. ‘Will you come to the funeral, Mirabelle? Will you send someone?’

Mirabelle sighed. After the way she’d felt yesterday, she wasn’t going back to the church ever.

‘No, that won’t be necessary, Sandor. I have everything I need now. Thank you.’

Sandor hesitated. ‘You know where I am,’ he said at last, ‘if you want to talk.’ Then he rang off.

Mirabelle pushed all thoughts of Jack from her mind. This was her job now. It might not be the important job to which she had been accustomed but it still had to be done. She retrieved Romana
Laszlo’s file, looked up Peters in the Brighton directory and found the number of the solicitor’s practice in Ship Street. The receptionist transferred her immediately.

‘Ralph Peters,’ the lawyer said briskly.

‘Hello,’ Mirabelle said, ‘this is Mirabelle Bevan of McGuigan & McGuigan Debt Recovery. I understand you are handling the execution of a recent estate – one Romana
Laszlo.’

‘Yes, Miss Bevan.’

‘We have an outstanding debt I would like to register with you. Mrs Laszlo owed our client five hundred pounds to date.’

‘You are rather quick off the mark.’

‘Yes, I know. I apologise for that. Can you tell me, please, are there funds?’

‘I imagine so. There is a considerable life insurance policy as I understand it. I don’t envisage a problem. I’ll know the ins and outs in a few days.’

‘I see.’

The solicitor took down Mirabelle’s details and she agreed to send over the original contract with Bert Jennings.

‘I will inform you of the timescale when I know it, Miss Bevan.’

‘Yes, that would be very helpful. There are obviously issues with the interest.’ Mirabelle hesitated. The ministry had gathered enormous amounts of information by simply training
people to ask the right questions. Now she had Peters on the phone Mirabelle found it almost impossible not to try. ‘Mr Peters, may I ask if you knew Mrs Laszlo?’

‘Not at all. I am simply her friend’s solicitor. He brought over her papers this morning and instructed me. She had only recently arrived in England, as I understand it, and did not
have a solicitor of her own.’

‘I see. Where did she come from?’

‘I have no idea. Is it important?’

‘No, no. I only wondered. Unusual name, Romana. Pretty.’

‘Well, I expect it’s Dutch. She had a Dutch passport, I notice.’

‘I see.’

‘If that’s all, Miss Bevan, I must be getting on. I will keep you informed, but I don’t expect it will take too long.’

‘Yes, of course. Goodbye.’

As she put down the phone Mirabelle wondered why she’d pushed. Still, there was no harm in it. Now she had the information she needed to make good on Bert Jennings’ debt though she
also had an uncomfortable feeling in the pit of her stomach. Perhaps, she thought, when Big Ben came back she would see about taking a holiday. Things had been going so well. Mirabelle smoothed the
cuff of her cardigan and straightened the belt that was cinching her waist. Then she heard steps on the stairs. It was certainly turning out to be a very eventful morning and she did not want to
appear to be dallying. She had just picked up her pen but had not yet had time to put it to paper when a man walked into the office without even knocking. He had an extraordinary look on his face,
as if he had seen an angel – a cross, Mirabelle thought, between wonder and disbelief. Debtors often arrived first thing in the morning. They were almost always dressed like this man –
in shabby demob suits – though his expression marked him out from the normally subdued clientele at McGuigan & McGuigan who invariably arrived with a shameful look on their faces,
apologising as they handed over their coins.

‘Come in, I’ll only be a minute.’

Mirabelle motioned the man to a chair and slipped her note inside the file marked
ROMANA LASZLO
and then wrote on the buff cover
DECEASED
in
brackets.

‘Is that the foreign bird over at Dr Crichton’s then?’ the man asked jovially, peering at what she was doing from his chair.

Mirabelle nodded. Somewhere, she thought, Jack is laughing at me. I can practically hear him.

‘I suppose all sorts need money now and then,’ he mused. ‘I delivered her coffin there this morning. Thought it was the same name. Well, I never. Weird lot, them foreigners.
Don’t want an undertaker, oh no. Just a coffin. Basic model. Didn’t even want me to lay her in it. Poor soul. Must be a foreign custom. Nice, really, to look after the body yourself, I
suppose. Keep it in the family, like. Used to be that way here though people don’t bother now.’

Mirabelle sighed. There was nothing for it. The details were too intriguing.

‘And you are?’ she started.

‘Michael Smith. Come to make a payment.’

Mirabelle reached for the ledger. ‘And you work at the undertakers?’ she enquired casually.

‘That’s right. Cobb’s of Patcham.’

Mirabelle scanned through the entries – ten debts on each page. Michael Smith had been running this loan for eighteen months though it looked as if Big Ben normally made a call once a
month to get a little money. Most of the time the man barely covered the interest.

‘I’m paying the lot off today,’ he announced. ‘I want to clear it.’

Mirabelle put her finger on the appropriate entry and read across. ‘Five pounds, two shillings and sixpence.’

Mr Smith reached into his pocket. He proudly withdrew a large white five-pound note and laid it on the desk with a half-crown piece. Mirabelle indicated where he had to sign for completion.

‘Good tipper, that Dr Crichton,’ Smith said, his face showing clear delight at being out of the red. ‘Wanted to give me a gold coin and I said “Oh, sir, I can’t
take that.” Just laughed, he did, and gave me one of those.’ He nodded towards the paper money. “That’s for you,” he said. “Now hop it!” Well, I got out of
there quick, I don’t mind telling you, before he changed his mind.’

It was an outrageous tip, probably worth more than the coffin.

‘Gosh, it is your lucky day,’ Mirabelle said. ‘Do you have Dr Crichton’s address, Mr Smith? I need it for this file.’