Half a Crown (23 page)

The redhead looked at Penn-Barkis. “You haven’t observed anything that made you suspicious?” Penn-Barkis asked, in a kindly, almost fatherly way.

I knew that what came next was being asked all these same questions in a more uncomfortable way. And I knew that everyone talks in the end. “Nothing whatsoever,” I said, in my best supercilious Arlinghurst manner.

“Yet he took you in all this time about being a homo, I suppose he could have hidden it from you,” the redhead said, in skeptical tones.

I just stared at him. It wasn’t like the thing with Sir Alan where I really did feel guilty about my behavior, or the riot, where I really had been in the wrong just by being there. Nothing they could say about Uncle Carmichael made any dent. I even tried to tell myself that they could be lying about the homosexuality bit, except that it explained such a lot and fitted so well.

“Well, it’s getting late, Inspector Bannister,” Penn-Barkis said, looking at his watch. Outside the sky was darkening. London looked far away below us. “Shall we leave it until the morning?”

“Yes, sir, if that’s what you think best.” I was very pleased to have a name for the redhead at last.

Penn-Barkis looked at me. “We’ll have to keep you in overnight and talk to you again in the morning, unless you have any more to say now.”

“Have you arrested Sir Alan?” I asked.

“If you’re not engaged to him, I don’t see why that’s any of your business,” the redhead, Bannister, said.

“I just wanted to ask you because if you had and you’d be seeing him, that you could make it clear to him, that when I said no, that’s what I meant,” I said. “If he’s been telling people at his club he could ruin my reputation, make me seem a frightful jilt.”

Now this was all true, but the reason I was asking about it was to see what chance they thought I had of getting away afterwards. If
they laughed at the thought of my reputation mattering, it would mean I wouldn’t survive. If they gave it some thought, it meant I had a chance. They didn’t give me anything though. “We’ll be sure to tell him,” Bannister said. “Now come with me.”

Penn-Barkis shook his head, more in sorrow than anger and more like a headmistress than ever. I could hardly believe they thought their charades would fool anyone. I suppose most of the people they had to deal with were awfully stupid. My dad used to say that villains were, mostly.

Inspector Bannister took me down in the lift, holding my arm in a precautionary way, but not very tightly. I could have broken away and run, except that it wouldn’t have done me the least little bit of good. I’d still have been in New New Scotland Yard with no way to get out. It might have gained me thirty seconds, that’s all. I thought about it, because thirty seconds of freedom might have been all there would ever be, in which case it would make a better memory. I decided not to, because it was so futile, and because there was still a chance of getting released at the end. I didn’t think they’d be able to arrest Uncle Carmichael, and I knew he wouldn’t give up on trying to get me away. The more I behaved like an innocent person—which I absolutely was—the better my chances of eventually being released. I hadn’t done anything wrong, after all.

The lift opened onto a dingy corridor painted dark green to the dado line and pale green above. Bannister didn’t say a word, just led me off to the right, where the corridor widened and there was a desk with two bobbies sitting behind it. “Royston,” Bannister said.

“Yes, sir,” one of the bobbies said, getting up and coming forward. The other one ticked something off on the ledger on the desk. “Complete search, sir?”

“Yes, sergeant,” Bannister said.

They took me into a little bare room, with pale green walls and a tiled floor, like a bathroom. They made me take off absolutely all
my clothes, while the sergeant read out what they were and the other bobby wrote them down. The other bobby seemed thoroughly bored and droned out the name of each item as he got to them. “One mauve dinner dress. One underskirt, silk. One brassiere, French. One sachet, embroidered with an
E.”
Bannister watched all the time, smirking. I just stared over his head. It wasn’t any worse than showering with Lavinia Wooton-Smythe, in fact, not as bad, because he just smirked, he didn’t make comments. It was surprising how much my experiences under arrest reminded me of boarding school, actually.

At last I was absolutely starkers and all my clothes and possessions had been listed, including my Swiss watch, which I knew I’d never see again, any more than poor Betsy’s pearls. The sergeant came up to me, looking embarrassed. “Bend forward, miss,” he said. Then he poked his finger gingerly into my bottom, ugh.

I knew this was meant to humiliate me, as well as search for anything I might have hidden. I’d never have thought of hiding anything up my bottom, or in my fanny either, where he poked next, but I could see how clever terrorists might, though it must be frightfully uncomfortable. The funny thing though was that the sergeant’s embarrassment and calling me “miss” served to make it all seem much more like going to the doctor. It would have been much worse if that horrible Bannister had done it.

When he’d quite finished poking at me, the sergeant gave me a paper smock. It was made of thick gray paper; it went on over my head and came down to my thighs. There were no sleeves. “Cell eighteen,” he said, and led the way out of the tiled room and down the corridor. To get to the lift, I’d have had to go past the desk, but there was a chance both men would be checking in another prisoner. The real difficulty would be getting past the sergeant in the glass booth upstairs, because in this gray thing I’d be horribly conspicuous. At least it didn’t have arrows printed on it, as I’d heard prison
clothes did. I’d also be cold, I realized as I walked down the corridor. The tiled room had been heated, but I started to feel chilly as we walked.

“Do you want the toilet, miss?” the sergeant asked. “Because once you’re in your cell, you won’t come out until morning.”

I decided the sergeant was a good man, despite his having done unspeakable things to me. He was probably kind to children and animals and loved by his family. “Yes, thank you,” I said.

The toilet had no lock, more and more like Arlinghurst, but they didn’t actually watch me while I was in there. There were no windows, and no way of escape. I took a handful of toilet paper and stuffed it inside my smock. It was the hard scratchy kind, and I thought I might be able to use it to write a message. I hadn’t thought what I’d use to write—I think I really just took it because they’d taken everything I had, and it gave me some control to have something they didn’t know I had, even something as small and silly as that. I drank a little of the tap water while I was washing my hands. There was nowhere to dry them, so they stayed wet, which made me feel even colder.

Bannister shoved me into the cell, when we got to it, but this time I was expecting it and managed to stay on my feet with two or three running steps. The cell was gray. It had a shelf about as long as a bed, but with no blanket or pillow. There were no windows, and the fluorescent light was way above my head out of reach. The door had a barred window to the corridor. It was cold. Bannister followed me in, and leaned on the wall. The door shut behind him with a clang, and I found myself wanting to call out to the nice sergeant to come back.

I sat down on the “bed.” Bannister told me to stand up. I stood up, raising my eyebrows as if it was the most ridiculous request but I was complying to be polite. He asked me all the same questions he’d asked me upstairs, varying the order, and sometimes being very
precise and sometimes very vague. I was cold, and after a while my legs started to tremble with the cold and being tired. I don’t know how long it went on for. They’d taken my watch. He didn’t touch me, but he wouldn’t let me sit down and he never stopped asking me questions, the same questions, over and over, about the riot, about Uncle Carmichael, about Sir Alan and British Power.

Eventually the sergeant came back and asked if everything was all right, and Bannister said he was finished and would come back in the morning. He went off, and I was alone for the moment. I took the toilet paper out of my armpit, where it had been scratching me the whole time, and sat on it. The bed was as hard as concrete, and very cold. I was shivering all over, big shivers that shook me. The muscles in my calves were cramping, and I rubbed them as best I could.

I was doing that when the sergeant came back and let himself into my cell. He had a blanket, which I took most gratefully and wrapped around myself, even though it was gray and woolly and itchy. “Oh, thank you so much, sergeant,” I said. When I got up to take the blanket, I’d dropped one of the pieces of toilet paper, and the sergeant saw, but he didn’t say anything, just handed it back to me.

“I knew your father,” he said. “I remember you when you were a nipper, too, Elvira. Do you remember me? I’m Sergeant Matlock. Constable Matlock then.”

I didn’t remember him at all, but it seemed rude and ungrateful to say so. “I think I do,” I said. “It was a long time ago.”

“And Sergeant Royston had a lot of friends,” he said, not seeming at all hurt. “Some of them he might have been better off keeping away from, as things are. It pains me to see a nice girl like you in a cell for nothing more than knowing someone who’s been causing trouble. What could you know about it, I asked them. You’re what, seventeen, eighteen years old?”

“Eighteen,” I said. “Nineteen in May.”

“Just two years older than my eldest, Rosie,” he said, sitting down on the bed beside me. “You wouldn’t know anything about Commander Carmichael’s misbehavior. You’re too young.”

“Can you get me out of here?” I pleaded. “I don’t know anything, and I’m so cold and tired and I’m afraid of Inspector Bannister.”

“You poor little scrap,” Sergeant Matlock said. He put his arm around me, which I welcomed for the comfort as well as the warmth. “But I can’t let you go, it’s more than my job’s worth; I’d be in here myself if I did that, or more likely off on a transport with the detainees. That’s what’ll happen to you if you don’t give them something, you know.”

Off on a transport, off to the work camps of the Reich where I’d be fed on starvation rations and worked literally to death. It was what terrified me—what terrified everyone, what kept us all quiet and living in fear. I started to cry. “I don’t have anything to give them,” I said, in despair.

“Then why don’t you cooperate? Tell them what you do know, about your uncle’s visitors and that? About anything you might have wondered about? It’s no harm to you, and if he’s innocent there’s no harm to him either. It’s just that Inspector Bannister thinks you’re holding something back, so he’s going to push you until he finds out what that is. It’s probably nothing important, but if you tell him, he’ll have something to go after, so he’ll leave you alone, and let you go home.”

“There’s nothing that would satisfy him,” I said, moving a little away from the sergeant so I could wipe my eyes with the toilet paper.

“Why don’t you tell me, and I’ll see what I think?” he asked. He looked patient and reliable, like my father, like Sergeant Evans, like the men I had grown up with.

A shadow fell across the wall of the cell. I looked up, and saw
Inspector Bannister outside the door. He came back about thirty seconds too soon, because I had fallen for the whole thing and was about to tell Sergeant Matlock all about Mrs. Talbot and what I’d overheard. Now I sprang to my feet, dropping the blanket. “You’re working with him!” I said.

“Of course I am, but that doesn’t mean that what I say isn’t true,” Sergeant Matlock said, taking a step towards me.

“Get away from me,” I said.

“Come out, sergeant, it isn’t going to work,” Bannister said. “Let’s leave her until morning. Check on her every fifteen minutes, would you?”

“Yes, sir,” Sergeant Matlock said, stolidly, not looking at either of us. “Do I leave the blanket?”

“No, I don’t think so, not unless there’s been any cooperation.”

Sergeant Matlock picked up the blanket and folded it, then went out of the cell. I was a little warmer than I had been, which was partly the blanket and the sergeant’s arm, and partly rage.

I tried to sleep. I curled up on the freezing cold slab and shut my eyes. The light stayed on. Every fifteen minutes either Sergeant Matlock or the bobby who had recorded my possessions came into the cell and shook me awake, to “check on me.” I did sleep for a few moments here and there. Eventually the bobby escorted me to the toilet, and when I returned to the cell there was a cup of hot sweet tea and some cold porridge on the slab, which I ate. I assumed by this that it was morning. I expected them to come to take me back upstairs at any moment. The tea warmed me and I did some Swiss calisthenics, which warmed me even more. They left me alone for long enough for me to begin to wonder if they’d forgotten me, and to regret not having tried to sleep again.

On Monday morning Carmichael was in the office before Miss Duthie arrived. He had an appointment with Mark Normanby at ten, and he wanted to set wheels in motion before that. He went down to the records office himself, walked past the duty clerk, and snatched up the report on Alan Bellingham, Bart.

Sir Alan was born in 1929, which made him thirty-one, surely much too old for Elvira, who was only eighteen. What could the Maynards be thinking? Carmichael realized he was grinding his teeth, and stopped. Sir Alan inherited his title at the age of ten, when his father, Colonel Sir Ulger Bellingham, 1889-1940, was killed fighting in Belgium with General Gort’s forces. He had also inherited Rossingham Manor, in Cambridgeshire, and a small amount of money. Death duties were high in 1940, and the family had needed to struggle to keep the house. Young Sir Alan’s trustees—his mother, Lady Prudence nee Arden, and his uncle, Oswin Bellingham—had sold off a lot of family treasures in those years. Nevertheless they had contrived to send Sir Alan to Eton and to Jesus College, Oxford. After Oxford, which he left with a first in Mathematics, Sir Alan had gone into the City—an unusual choice, in 1951, even for a mathematician. He had done well, parlaying his small fortune into a large one and even managing to buy back the treasures his trustees had squandered during his minority.