Chapter Fifteen #2
‘But that’s the ridiculous part, don’t you see?
’ she said earnestly. ‘Yes, he and I dated, and honestly, I was looking for some fun, you know? It had been a while since I had any. And the lovemaking turned out to be rather extraordinary, I must say, so I came back for more the next couple of nights. But as good as it was, I realised this wasn’t going to last, so I tried to explain that to him.
He refused to accept it, and that’s when I began to see he was a bit off his rocker. ’
‘How so?’
‘He told me over and over that we were meant to be together for all time, and he got more and more agitated. He was starting to frighten me, so I told him it had been lovely, but I was done and moving on. He asked if I was going back to The Right Sort and I said, yeah, that was why I signed up, and he said he’d make sure the next man wouldn’t end up with me.
I’m afraid I didn’t take him seriously enough. ’
‘When was this?’
‘Our last day together. The Sunday before he attacked Tony.’
‘You had already received an invitation from Mr Danforth for a date by this point.’
‘Yes.’
‘But you continued to see Lonsdale.’
‘Like I said, the lovemaking was good,’ she said, shrugging. ‘Spectacularly good. And a girl can date more than one man at a time, you know.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me this when I interviewed you after the incident?’
‘I was scared,’ she said, looking down. ‘I hadn’t taken Kenny seriously, so when poor Tony was attacked, I thought you’d somehow think I had something to do with it. I’m sorry. I should have told you.’
‘You should have,’ agreed Parham. ‘You should also have told me your true name.’
‘My what?’ she exclaimed, startled.
‘Your true name,’ he repeated. ‘Miss Charlotte Cater, is it not?’
‘I’ve never heard that name before in my life!’
‘You are the younger sister of Bruce Cater, who died fighting in Spain in 1937,’ he said. ‘He was a classmate of Mr Danforth, who your family blamed for persuading your brother to join that fight. Your entire family, including you.’
‘I have no idea what you’re talking about,’ said Lowle.
‘What about this afternoon, Miss Cater?’
‘My name is Evelyn Lowle,’ she insisted.
‘You tried to kill Mr Danforth by means of a hypodermic syringe filled with enough morphine to cause a fatal overdose.’
‘I don’t know anything about that,’ she said.
‘Miss Sparks saw it happen.’
‘She’s mistaken. It was probably left in the room by one of the nurses.’
‘And you made statements to her at the time—’
‘Then she’s lying,’ said Lowle, her expression contemptuous. ‘She came in and attacked me out of the blue. She had to come up with some story to justify that.’
‘You also struck a police constable.’
‘I was defending myself from Miss Sparks,’ she said. ‘Everything was in the heat of the moment. I didn’t realise I had hit him.’
‘She’s good,’ commented Gwen as they listened.
‘She’s been trained,’ said Iris glumly.
The interrogation went on for over an hour. Lowle never broke or deviated from her story.
‘He still doesn’t know about her Intelligence role,’ said Gwen. ‘The operation. That could help him connect the dots.’
‘We can’t tell him about it,’ said Iris. ‘Not without permission. We’ve skated perilously close to the edge as it is.’
The door opened, and Parham came in.
‘I don’t know if I can charge her for the first attack,’ he said wearily. ‘She paints a plausible picture of Mr Lonsdale as a jealous lover. Not that I believe it for a second, but a jury could. It would be her word against Sparks for the second attack.’
‘What about the constable who came into the room?’ asked Sparks. ‘Surely he saw or heard something to support the charges.’
‘He was too involved in breaking up the fight between the two of you to notice whether or not she had the syringe. And once he had been hit in the throat he was down, choking and trying to breathe again. He didn’t hear what was being said in the room during that.’
‘There’s still my word,’ said Sparks.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘But what occurs to me is that she rendered a constable hors de combat with a single blow. That’s not something a woman can normally do—’
‘I can,’ said Sparks.
‘So can I,’ said Mrs Bainbridge.
‘Normally,’ he repeated. ‘You’ve both had training.
I suspect she’s had some as well. And if that’s the case, then I think there may be more to this mess than is apparent.
Given what I know about your background, Miss Sparks, as well as your early involvement in this matter, I am asking you directly: is there something crucial that you’re not telling me?
Something that you can’t tell me because of security reasons?
If there is, then you may not be allowed to testify against her. ’
Mrs Bainbridge looked at her partner imploringly, but Sparks shook her head.
‘You’re a very good detective,’ Sparks said to him. ‘How long can you hold her without charging her?’
‘Realistically, until the morning,’ he said.
‘Let me see what I can do,’ she said.
The cab pulled up in front of the entrance to the courtyard. They climbed in and Iris gave the driver the address. Then she heaved a sigh as they pulled away.
‘Come on, it might work,’ said Gwen.
‘No, it wasn’t that,’ said Iris. ‘I’m just thinking about every poor decision I’ve made in my life to bring us to this moment.’
London, 1938
Sparks was engrossed in a report on increases in German steel output by Reichswerke Hermann Goring since the Anschluss, jotting down notes and statistics, translating on the fly the sections she’d incorporate into her own report.
She didn’t see Mr Pelton, her supervisor, approaching until he was nearly on top of her, leaning over her desk and cutting off the light from the overhead dome lamps.
‘His Nibs wants you,’ he said. ‘He needs that report.’
‘Now?’ exclaimed Sparks. ‘But it’s due tomorrow. I’m not done updating the conclusions.’
‘Bring what you have, give him the gist orally on the end bits,’ said Pelton. ‘You can type those up later. Move, girlie. He doesn’t like to wait.’
‘Blast,’ she muttered, gathering the stacked completed sections along with her handwritten notes.
Her desk was one of dozens down in a large room in the bowels of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office building on King Charles Street.
The undersecretary was three storeys up.
She clutched her papers to her chest and slid sideways through the array of similar desks until she reached the hallway, then she half-walked, half-ran, dodging clumps of conversations clogging her route until she reached the staircase.
She was mentally rehearsing her conclusions as she walked into the undersecretary’s anteroom. His secretary glanced at her, then more pointedly at the mantel clock which sat under a portrait of Edward Wood, the current Secretary of State.
‘He’s been waiting,’ she said ominously.
‘I was only told eight minutes ago,’ said Sparks.
‘Then you should have been here four minutes ago,’ replied the secretary, picking up her telephone and dialling. ‘She’s here. Yes, sir, I’ll send her right in.’
She hung up and pointed over her shoulder to the oaken door to the inner office. Sparks walked up to it, knocked and went inside.
Rab Butler, the undersecretary, was seated behind a massive desk, with a pair of green banker’s lamps flanking the blotter.
There were all manner of maps mounted on easels on one side of the room, while a large, burgundy leather-covered sofa took up the other side, a low table in front of it.
A man she had never seen before was sitting there, observing her while smoking a Dunhill, his cigarette case on the table.
‘Good morning, Mr Undersecretary,’ she began. ‘I understand you wanted my report now instead of tomorrow. I was going to finish typing it this morning so as to incorporate the newest production statistics, but I’d be happy to summarise my conclusions orally.’
He waved off the proffered stack of paper.
‘All a ruse to fetch you here, my dear,’ Butler said with a genial smile. ‘I wanted you to meet someone. Brigadier Thomas Meredith, may I present Miss Iris Sparks, one of our best and brightest.’
‘How do you do, Brigadier?’ she said, turning to him as he rose from the sofa.
‘Miss Sparks,’ he said.
‘I’ll leave you to it,’ said Butler.
Sparks stared in surprise as he walked out of the office and closed the door. Then she turned back to the Brigadier.
‘What is this?’ she asked.
‘Direct question, right to the point,’ said the Brigadier. ‘What do you think it is?’
‘You have a military title but you’re not in uniform,’ she observed. ‘You look too young to be retired—’
‘Thank you,’ he said drily.
‘So some branch of Intelligence?’
‘Soundly reasoned, Miss Sparks,’ he said. ‘Anything else?’
‘Your name isn’t Thomas Meredith,’ she said. ‘The initials on the cigarette case on that table are S.P. Unless you stole it.’
‘Or unless I meant for you to see it and assume that,’ he said. ‘You came to the Foreign Office a few months ago.’
‘Yes, after graduating—’
‘From Newnham College,’ he said. ‘With top marks and a reputation for both a brilliant mind and a somewhat reckless approach to university life.’
‘You’re only young once,’ she said.
‘Multilingual,’ he continued, walking towards her. ‘And you spent a term in Berlin.’
‘Yes, at the—’
The slap came from his right. She blocked it with her left hand, the report tumbling to the carpet by her feet. He nodded approvingly.
‘Good,’ he said. ‘I also was given to understand—’
This time, it came from the left, but she was anticipating something of the kind and merely stepped back as his hand passed safely in front of her face.
‘—that you’ve had some self-defence training,’ he continued calmly as if nothing had happened.
‘Yes, sir. Care for a spar?’
‘Not at the moment,’ he said. ‘I’m recruiting, as you no doubt have guessed by now. Depending on how your training goes, I could keep you here analysing what information comes in or I might send you out into the field.’