After securing his package, Melrose thanked them again and raced down to his car.
Sir Oswald Maples lived alone in a cream-painted mews house off Cadogan Square. He lived by himself despite the fact that he needed two canes in order to get to the door in the wake of Jury’s ring.
He said, holding up one of the canes as if to shake Jury’s hand, “It’s not as bad as it looks. I don’t always need these, just when the knees start going underneath me. Come on in.” He used a cane to wave Jury into the living room.
Jury thanked him and removed his coat, which Sir Oswald told him to toss over the banister. Then-again with the cane-he pointed to an overstuffed armchair across from a sofa where he’d been sitting himself. He must be over eighty, yet brandished the canes in the high good humor of a boy. Watching him whip them around to lean against the arm of the sofa, Jury wondered if he thought they were playthings. Had there been a servant and a buzzer to call him hence, Jury was sure he would have used the tip of the cane to press the button.
“It’s rheumatoid arthritis, but the discomfort comes and goes. Would you like a drink, Superintendent?” He pointed to a tumbler beside him containing a finger of whiskey. “Or is it a bit early in the day for you?”
It wasn’t yet noon, but Jury felt a sadness descend on him whose source he couldn’t name-or perhaps he could. He felt as if he needed a drink, after all. Sure. Needing a drink was the first step. Or maybe it was the last. But he hated to see Maples drink alone… No. That was the last. “No thanks. I just drank a bucketful of coffee.”
Maples nodded and leaned back against the green love seat. “You wanted some information, you said on the telephone, about Ralph Herrick.”
“Yes. As I told you, it was Colonel Joss Neame who mentioned you as possibly remembering Herrick. You knew him.”
The older man nodded. “I did, yes.”
“You were with the code and cypher branch of intelligence?”
“Ah, yes. GC and CS.”
“I’m involved in a homicide investigation. A man named Simon Croft was shot. You might have read about it.”
“Oh, yes. I’ve seen that house on the Thames. Often wondered who lived there.”
“Simon Croft did. Alone. He was writing a book about certain years of the Second World War. Croft knew Ralph Herrick. Croft was only a boy, but he rather idolized the man. A fighter pilot, a hero. Not surprising, I suppose.”
“Indeed not. No, there was no question about Herrick’s heroism. His courage was almost-wanton.”
Jury smiled. “A strange way of putting it.”
“I know. But it was almost seductive, that courage, and he did throw it around. I don’t mean he bragged; that was the last thing he’d do. I mean-it was as if courage were an afterthought. God knows he had it, though. He took out, nearly single-handedly, four Junkers over Driffield, in Yorkshire. The bombers didn’t have a fighter escort; they realized finally they couldn’t send bombers without escort by Messerschmitts, but the 109s didn’t have the range to fly all the way from Norway.” He grew thoughtful. “Herrick commanded a squadron of Spitfires that intercepted the German bombers which were hammering one of the Chain Home radar stations. Absolutely critical. Herrick’s squadron downed all but one. No, there was no question about his courage, Superintendent.”
Jury thought for a moment. “His family-rather, the one he married into-talk about him as though he were, well, an idol. He was idolized by more than one member. But one person took exception to this picture. She said she found him much too ‘plausible… one of those smooth racketeers one sees in old American films.’ That was her description.”
Maples threw back his head in a soundless laugh. “That’s very good, that is. Let me tell you something about Herrick: a great deal of that courage he displayed was of the daredevil kind. I think it came from his not giving a bloody damn about much of anything. In some way I think he felt the whole war was a card game and he had an ace in the hole.”
Jury smiled. “Did he play it?”
Maples reached for the decanter he had placed on a table beside him, poured himself another drink and raised the decanter in question to Jury, who again declined. “Oh, I’m quite certain he played it. But the important thing was the game itself.”
Jury handed him the book, opened to the page on which Simon had listed the dates. “This book belongs to Simon Croft, Sir Oswald. Joss Neame helped identify some of this marginalia. He thought you’d be able to help.”
Maples took the book, took up his rimless spectacles and bent over it.
“And the last page, that list of words, I marked.”
Turning to the page, Maples read off the list. “ ‘Enigma’… God, I don’t believe this.’ ” Sir Oswald nodded. “Pretty obviously worried about it, wouldn’t you say? Ralph Herrick’s work with the Enigma codes is what I wondered about. It could be what this Croft fellow wondered about, too.” Maples put down his glasses, tented his hands and regarded Jury over the tips of his fingers. “We learned from certain decrypts-and also a POW-about an operation that was going down in the middle of November on the night of a full moon-thirteenth, fourteenth, fifteenth. It was to be a three-stage operation: code name ‘Moonlight Sonata’-a sonata, you see, being a three-part piece. So the note there-” he pointed to Jury’s book “-refers to that plan of attack.”
“This was the attack on Coventry? There was no advance warning?”
Maples seemed to be studying the pattern in the wallpaper behind Jury. “Not precisely true, although a lot of people think it is. We knew Coventry and Birmingham were possible targets, but an enciphered map showed the locations to be London and the Home Counties. I’m simplifying the code business here, but the map misled us; the decrypt was wrong. That wasn’t the only time I wondered,” Maples said, musingly. “Rather I didn’t wonder at the time or I’d have done something. I wondered when it did no particular good.”
Jury frowned. “You had reason to believe Herrick had something to do with the mistaken decrypt?”
“Oh, I’m fairly certain he did; it was through his hands the map passed. I mean, he did the final decrypt.”
“An honest mistake?”
“Could have been, yes. But the ‘honest mistakes’ were building. There was the Bismarck business.” Maples motioned with two fingers toward Jury’s notes. “That date you have there. May 24, 1941. That was the day of the attack on the Bismarck. We had one hell of a time with the naval Enigma. It was some time before we finally broke it.” Reflectively, Maples scratched the neck beneath his collar. “The biggest problem was not being able to read the code far enough in advance to take action.”
“But could someone have been working on both keys? The RAF and the Admiralty?”
“Good question. Ordinarily, no. But Ralph had clearance to go from one place to another. At Bletchley, the keys worked on were in different huts. Security was hard to maintain. It was too easy for things to slip out. And there were so many people involved. I expect it wasn’t until after Herrick had gone to the Orkneys that I seriously started wondering. Hatston, that’s where our Fleet Air arm base was. Also we had one of our satellite interception sections based there.”
“Herrick died there, I understand.”
“Hmm. You haven’t, I suppose, talked to anyone in military intelligence? MI5, MI6?”
Jury shook his head.
“I mention that because I think they were on to Herrick and posted him there, as a temporary measure. Or, indeed, intelligence outfits being the bastards we always were, sent him on a permanent basis. You see, he was murdered a few months later. Of course, it was made to look like an accident, a drowning. Very convenient, I think.” Sir Oswald puffed out his cheeks and sat forward fixing Jury with steely gray eyes. “Then there was ‘Julia.’ ”