Hollow Crown (15 page)

‘We do. I’m afraid he’s not quite so nice. He made a friend of a boy we know – an artist. Well, he was trying to paint pictures but he wasn’t very good and
I’m afraid he knew it. Anyway, I’m not sure where – at a party, I think – he met Scannon who took him up in a big way. He introduced him to a lot of people; sponsored a show
at the Albemarle which was a bit of a disaster. Made Matt look rather ridiculous, you know, like putting costume jewellery in a Cartier case. For about six or seven months they were inseparable and
then, as suddenly as he had taken him up, Scannon dropped him. To cut a long story short, the poor boy got more and more depressed and, despite everything his friends could do or say, he cut his
wrists.’

‘Good God!’ Edward exclaimed. ‘Is Scannon a . . . you know, a pansy then?’

‘So I believe though, of course, I never discussed it with Matt.’

Nothing more was said and Edward got the impression Charlotte was unhappy that Adrian had told the story of their friend’s suicide. However, the dinner was a success. He talked to
Charlotte about childhood adventures and caught up with her career. It appeared she had gone to New Zealand, married and divorced a sheep farmer, returned to London and gone rather wild. ‘As
anyone would,’ Adrian said loyally, ‘after New Zealand.’ Then she had met Adrian and they had – as he put it – ‘done what neither of us had thought we would ever
do: fall in love. The old cliché but somehow, when it happens to oneself, it don’t seem a cliché but just as though one had invented it.’

Edward was touched and liked Adrian even more.

As Edward was leaving, Charlotte said, ‘I’ll do a bit of sleuthing about friend Scannon. You never know, I might find something interesting.’

‘Well do,’ he said, ‘but be careful not to seem you’re accusing him of anything. There is such a thing as the law of slander and no reason to believe he has anything to
do with Molly’s death, even if it does prove to be murder.’

‘Don’t worry, “I will roar you as gently as any sucking dove”, as Shakespeare puts it. See, Verity, even as a child he was timid and a bit of a prig. No wonder I had to
put an ice-cream down the back of his neck.’

‘Half a jiff, he told me
he
put ice-cream down
your
back!’

For the next few days Edward rattled around London talking to people in Molly’s ‘set’, friends of the King such as Fruity Metcalfe and Dickie Mountbatten. He
had dinner one evening with Perry Brownlow at his club and questioned him about the weekend Molly had robbed Mrs Simpson. Perry, indiscreet to the point of idiocy, told him stories of what went on
at Fort Belvedere which made him furious. To think that a man who behaved in that way and surrounded himself with such worthless people was now his king! However, he could discover nothing which
shed further light on what he was still convinced was murder. He also investigated, as far as he dared, Leo Scannon’s friends and associates. He didn’t want it to get back to Scannon,
or indeed to Joe Weaver, that he had been asking questions about him and his set so he was careful merely to sound curious rather than suspicious. The man knew ‘everyone’ and, from
behind their hands, ‘everyone’ seemed pleased to gossip about his ‘underground life’. There was no question he had some undesirable acquaintances. A ‘grisly
crew’ as he termed them when Fenton brought him his whisky on Friday night. He valued Fenton’s intelligence and had no hesitation in going over with him what he had found out but he had
to confess that, when all was noted and accounted for, there was nothing tangible to add to what he had known or at least suspected when he began his inquiries.

Fenton had made a few inquiries himself. He had talked the murder over with Pickering but the butler had been unable or unwilling to tell him anything of interest. ‘He hinted, my lord,
that there was some mystery about old Mrs Scannon’s companion, Miss Conway, but, when I tried to make him talk about it, he clammed up on me.’

‘Hmm, interesting, but I don’t see how anything to do with Ruth Conway could relate to Mrs Harkness.’

It was a frustrating business and Edward found that when Sunday dawned he was glad to have something else to think about.

It was a perfect day. The sun shone and London looked almost foreign – as though a respectable married lady was displaying herself like a street walker. As the Lagonda
weaved through the crowds near the Tower, Edward remarked that it might be a public holiday – Derby Day for instance – but he was wrong. The mood of the crowd, though outwardly
good-natured, was purposeful and even stern. The Lagonda attracted curious and sometimes hostile stares and Verity, unusually quiet, said suddenly, ‘I’m beginning to wish we had walked
or gone on a tram like everyone else. I’m not sure this car makes quite the right impression.’

‘You mean, they’ll think we’re going to support Mosley?’

‘Well, we don’t look “working class”.’

‘But I thought you said Communism was for
all
the people.’

‘Not class enemies, you ass. People still remember the General Strike, you know.’

Edward narrowly missed running over a child which had rolled out of its mother’s arms into the road. He raised his hat and apologized to the woman, who swore at him.

‘Mmm, maybe you’re right but, damn it, I don’t like to be intimidated.’

Obstructed by the ever-increasing crowds which overflowed the pavements and colonized the roads, they slowed to walking pace and even Edward began to feel uncomfortable. This was not the
good-humoured crowd of the Peace Pledge marches of the previous year. These people were earnest and determined. They came level with a policeman who held out his hand to halt them. ‘You
can’t take this motor car any further, sir. It wouldn’t be safe. I suggest you leave it round the back of Goodman’s Yard. It ought to be safe there.’

It was with some relief that Edward obeyed, feeling that the officer had enabled him to surrender his car without loss of face. Even on foot, Edward and Verity stood out from the rest. Fenton
had recommended an old suit, sensibly fearing the violence which might be offered it by the mob, but it was perfectly cut and his tie was perfectly knotted. His hat, one of Lock’s best grey
homburgs, was perfectly placed on his head which Lionel, his barber at Trumpers, had only recently shorn. He wore no spats but he might as well have done. He was immediately recognizable as a man
about town who ought not to have ventured into this other world of cloth caps and threadbare jackets.

Verity had her own ideas about what to wear on marches. Long experience had taught her that comfortable shoes were the first priority and that the hats she liked – wide of brim and often
heaped with fruit or feathers – attracted derision and usually ended up in the gutter. Instead, she wore a tight little brown felt hat. Her faintly military coat had heavily padded shoulders
but again, her whole outfit suggested money. It was too bad, she thought, that comrades had to look so dreary. She wanted to show solidarity with the less well-off but considered it would be
hypocritical to ‘dress down’. Like it or leave it, she was who she was. She held her chin a little bit higher and clung on to Edward’s arm a little bit tighter.

It was a considerable relief to both of them when they heard a yell and caught sight of Tommie signalling to them. The man of God pushed his way through the mob with the practised ease of a fly
half and greeted them with slaps on the back. Edward winced. ‘Sorry, old boy. Didn’t mean to hurt you but isn’t this glorious?’

He was excited and, when Tommie got excited, he tended to get physical.

‘Yes,’ Verity said, the sparkle in his eyes energizing her. ‘We haven’t missed the fun, have we?’

‘No, no! But there are hundreds of police. They have orders to keep us well away from the BUF but they won’t succeed. We’re all just a bit fed up with Mosley’s
posturing.’

‘So what’s going to happen?’ Edward felt nervous. He wasn’t a natural political agitator. He certainly wasn’t a Communist and he felt Verity had put him in a false
position but, on the other hand, it was right he should stand up against the National Socialists as Mosley now called his party – that or the British Union. He had dropped the word Fascist,
not wanting to be too closely associated with the Nazis. He had even changed the Party’s emblem from the Roman ‘fasces’ to a lightning flash in a circle, which the Communists had
labelled the flash-in-the-pan.

The sound of bells from half a hundred City churches, summoning Londoners to worship another god than mammon, rebuked them for what they were about to do. ‘Oughtn’t you to be in
church?’ Edward asked Tommie – Verity thought rather meanly. ‘It is Sunday.’

Tommie looked momentarily downcast and Edward immediately regretted his jibe.

‘I think the Lord would want me to stand up for the just against the unjust,’ he said. ‘He didn’t himself spend many hours in the Temple, you know. He liked to be among
the people,’ he added stiffly and Edward was silenced for a moment.

‘Where are we going exactly?’ he inquired at last.

Verity said, ‘Jack Spot – you know who I mean?’

‘He’s one of your Party’s organizers, isn’t he?’

‘Yes, we’re meeting him and other Party workers in Cable Street. I think the idea is to build a barricade to stop the Mosleyites marching through the East End.’

‘I see,’ Edward said, wondering if he could make an excuse and leave before the bricks started flying. ‘I thought this was just going to be a peaceful demonstration, not a
revolution.’

‘Don’t be so wet, Edward,’ Verity said crossly. ‘Tommie and I will look after you if you’re scared.’

‘It’s not that, it’s just that . . . ’

They had turned down Chamber Street and a dull roar, like the sea breaking on a distant shore, came on their ears. It thrilled and excited Verity and she wondered if Edward might be right:
perhaps this was the revolution. They increased their pace, as did those around them, suddenly fearful they might be missing something. When they turned into Cable Street, an amazing sight greeted
them. A wall of furniture, corrugated iron and scrap metal had been thrown up across the street and a man whom Verity identified as Jack Spot, the Communist agitator, was standing on it shouting
and waving what looked like a chair leg. He was conducting the crowd in the chant which Marshal Petain had coined in 1916 at Verdun but which Verity had first heard in Spain: ‘They shall not
pass!’

‘
No pasaran!
’ A shiver of recognition ran down her spine and, letting go of Edward’s arm, she thrust herself forward towards the barricade, carried along by others
equally caught up in the moment as herself. Edward looked round and, finding he had lost her, turned to speak to Tommie but he too had disappeared. He sighed but was not unduly alarmed. He took it
that, given Verity had survived the siege of Toledo, she would not come to much harm in this crowd of like-minded thinkers. He made his way into Dock Street to get out of the worst of the crowd.
When he had been walking for five minutes, he saw that he had come out, as it were ‘behind the lines’, at the Royal Mint. There were crowds here too but of a very different kind to the
mob of chanting anti-Fascists he had left in Cable Street. He was faced with rank upon rank of Mosley youths and, Edward noted with some surprise and not a little disgust, several hundred young
women, all dressed in uniform – black shirts, broad belts, breeches and boots. He guessed there might have been as many as three thousand.

As he watched, there was a roar of engines and Mosley himself appeared, standing upright in an open Bentley with a police motor-cycle escort. The Bentley came to a halt and Mosley solemnly got
out with two or three men who were not in uniform and began to inspect his troops. Edward recognized William Joyce, chief propaganda officer of the BUF, among them. Mosley was wearing the uniform
he had designed himself – a black military-style jacket with an armband of red and white, which he said signified ‘action within the circle of unity’ whatever that meant. His
breeches were grey and, inevitably, he wore jackboots. Edward thought he looked rather absurd and – his greatest criticism – un-English. The would-be dictator solemnly walked up and
down the ranks of blackshirts inspecting them as though they were a regiment of soldiers rather than a private army of thugs.

Edward said out loud, ‘That has to be the rummest thing!’

‘It is a bit odd, isn’t it?’

He looked round in surprise. He was hardly aware he had spoken aloud but obviously he had and now he saw who had answered him. It was none other than Sir Geoffrey Hepple-Keen.

‘For goodness sake – what are you doing here?’ he exclaimed.

‘I might say the same of you,’ Hepple-Keen replied mildly. ‘I’m here on official business.’

Edward looked at him searchingly. ‘You’re not a policeman. You’re an MP.’

‘I’m a politician and this is politics.’

Just as Edward was going to press him to be more explicit, a man appeared on a rooftop brandishing a red flag. As Edward watched, he gave the clenched fist salute of the Communists and then bent
over to pick up either a stone or a roof tile, which he threw as cleanly as though he were aiming a cricket ball at the stumps. By some amazing fluke, the missile hit Mosley on the shoulder. He had
just returned to his car and was standing in the front ready to take the salute. He staggered and then righted himself. As if it had been a signal, from behind the barricade came a shower of stones
which rattled against the Bentley, one smashing the windscreen. Mosley looked round in bewilderment, as if he could hardly credit what was happening. His chauffeur rapidly backed the car out of
range and, as he did so,Mosley lost his balance and fell back on the seat. Edward laughed and turned to Hepple-Keen to see his reaction, but he had disappeared.

The situation was now getting out of hand. Missiles were pouring over the barricade and the sound of shouting seemed to suggest that the artillery attack presaged an all-out charge. To do the
blackshirts justice, they remained in ranks and had not yet retaliated but their leaders were looking towards Mosley for instructions. More police arrived and a senior police officer who, Edward
learned later, was Sir Philip Game, Chief Police Commissioner, went over to talk to him. Edward could not hear what was said but Mosley was gesticulating violently towards the barricade so it was
not difficult to guess what he was demanding. He had permission to march down Cable Street and he was now prevented from doing so by a rabble of Communists and anti-Fascists. The Commissioner
scratched his head but at last gave an order. From out of nowhere, it seemed to Edward, the street was full of mounted policemen and, at a word from their commander, they charged the barricade. It
was an awesome sight and Edward wondered if London had seen anything like it since the Gordon riots a hundred and fifty years earlier.