He could not help but wonder at what occupied the minds of those on the crowded pavements, apart from the everyday need to earn a crust. Was it sport perhaps? Fred Perry had won at Wimbledon for the third time; the Indian cricket team was struggling through a long summer of defeats, the supporters thrilled by Wally Hammond’s century, showing a return to form for England’s best batsman; and across the pond Max Schmeling had knocked out Joe Louis.
If the nation was still in the grip of an economic depression it hardly showed in the metropolis, especially in the short dead-end road that led to the imposing entrance of the Savoy Hotel, filled with taxis and long black limousines, all overseen by a magnificently attired doorman. The effects were being felt elsewhere, in mining villages and valleys, in the northern industrial centres and idle shipyards.
That induced a slight feeling of guilt, given his destination. Still, lunch at Simpson’s was always something to look forward to: properly aged rib of beef or saddle of lamb carved at the table, though it was not a place where the matters on which he was ruminating would stir even an eyebrow. To the denizens of Simpson’s the unemployed were lazy, not benighted, the dropping of mustard gas on innocents, as long as they were black or brown, more likely to lead to a degree of indifference rather than condemnation.
The spread of fascism in Europe, from the Black Sea to the Baltic, would be seen as a minor irritation in one of the great food bastions of the British upper crust; the clientele tended to be people who had a lot of admiration for anyone who made the trains run on time, added to a less than charitable attitude towards trade unions or workers demanding a decent standard of living.
Peter Lanchester was already ensconced, nursing a schooner of sherry, looking very much at home in the Grand Divan. The dark-panelled dining room was full, as usual, and there was the odd glance of recognition as the new arrival made his way to the table — London society was a touch incestuous and he was, after all, a person who carried with him a certain amount of notoriety; not many people can claim to have been acquitted of murder in an infamous crime passionel.
Good manners insisted he made eye contact with the one or two people who could be said to be part of his wife’s social circle, as well as some of the very attractive ladies present. He was, by nature, incapable of ignoring them. In turn, they could not disregard the arrival of an extremely good-looking man, well dressed but with a hint of the rogue in him, obviously very fit and sporting a deep and even suntan of the kind hard to achieve under English skies.
‘Cal, old boy! You look as if you have just come back from yachting with our besotted monarch.’
Said loud enough to be overheard at several tables, the remark was greeted with blank looks by the ignorant and a cold stare by the very few in the know. Edward, the yet-to-be-crowned King of England and Emperor of India, was sailing in the Mediterranean with his American lover, Wallis Simpson, divorced once and filing for a second, causing tongues to wag in the higher reaches of society, though the great unwashed at home were being kept in ignorance by a self-imposed news blackout. Every other national press in the world was openly speculating on how far the golden boy would go.
‘The American newspapers are saying he wants to marry her,’ Cal said quietly, as he slid into his seat, nodding at the invitation to join Peter in a sherry.
‘Cause a hell of a stink if he tries. Anyway, how do you know what the American papers are saying?’
‘Had a letter from a journalist chap I met in Ethiopia. Seems they’d rather print front-page stories about our king-emperor and his less-than-chaste mistress than anything about Italian atrocities.’
‘Romance sells newspapers, poison gas dropped on fuzzy-wuzzies does not.’
That remark had got Lanchester a glare, the return look — arched eyebrows added to a cynical grin — an indication that it had been a deliberate attempt to get under Cal’s skin. To his guest, Peter Lanchester had always been a mite free with his tongue when it came to the common insults, reflecting the attitudes of those with whom he mixed — members of London’s clubland, the country house set and golfing bores.
Eschewing the temptation to react, he had decided to stick to the king. ‘Not that one should care a fig what the booby is up to with his clapped-out paramour.’
That got an arched and cynical eyebrow. ‘You call our future king a booby?’
‘So would you if you’d met him.’ Reacting to the enquiring look, Cal had added, ‘Lizzie introduced me to him, given he moves in the same social circle as my too-easily-bored wife. As a man, he is short in the arse, vacuous in expression, vain, pig-ignorant and, for reasons best known to the gods, beloved by the great British public or the press that feed their fantasies.’
‘Quite a condemnation.’
‘I assume I am here for a purpose, Peter, and that has nothing to do with Edward Windsor?’
‘Little bird told me you were off to Barcelona?’ Cal was surprised, wondering how he knew, but he had merely nodded as a tall schooner of Manzanilla Pasada was placed before him. Lanchester had then smoothed a hand over his black swept-back hair and looked at him keenly. ‘Which prompts me to ask, Cal, if you have ever heard of a body called Juan March Ordinas?’
‘Hails from Majorca and has made a tremendous pile, originally from tobacco smuggling, though he was quite active during the war as well, shipping supplies of arms through the Mediterranean on the q.t. for both sides. Pals with the monarchical party, though he was threatened with choky after King Alfonso abdicated in ’31 and the Republic came into being. Not fancying a prison cell, he then escaped to Gibraltar where the powers that be, namely His Majesty’s Government, refused to hand him back to Spanish justice.’
‘And I thought I was going to surprise you.’
‘Come on, Peter, in the world in which I move Juan March is quite well known. You can’t amass illegal millions through smuggling without flagging yourself up to your competitors, not to mention those who might want to avail themselves of your routes and shipping. He also dabbled in lots of other nefarious things. My guess is he did a bit of spying for us in the war and I daresay there are some skeletons in our Whitehall cupboards as far as March is concerned that no one wants made public, hence the privilege of protection.’
‘He is holed up in London, Cal, and making mischief.’
‘Nature of the beast.’ Presented with a menu, Cal had aimed it at his host. ‘I hope you are not seeking to inveigle me into risking my neck for the price of a decent luncheon, because, let me tell you, he is not a fellow to mess with, he’s a killer. Quite a few who tried ended up floating face down in the Med.’
That had got a mischievous look. ‘Risking your neck is something you would do whether I asked you to or not.’
Callum Jardine was unable to fault that; he had only been back in London for a few weeks and already he had felt a sense of boredom setting in, not aided by his own personal problems of a socially active wife he could neither ignore nor live with. Peter Lanchester knew him too well; they had served as soldiers together in the last months of the Great War and afterwards in seeking to contain an insurgency in Mesopotamia.
It had been a loose connection, recently strengthened by what had happened in Germany, Romania and Ethiopia, but he could not say, in any way, that he knew the man well. There had been hints of a job with British Intelligence in some capacity, but Cal had no idea if he was still employed or was, as he had hinted, on the scrap heap due to financial cutbacks brought on by government economies.