“Yes,” said Nigel.
“I’ll have to take your names, comrades.”
“That’s new,” remarked Alleyn.
“Instructions from headquarters. We’ve got to be more careful.”
“Just as well. I’m bringing Miss Northgate and Mr. Batherston. Friends of Comrade Marcus Barker.” He spelt the names while the man wrote them down. “They come from Clearminster-Storton, Dorset, and are both right-minded.”
“Anything doing in your part of the world?” asked the man.
“Gosh, no!” said Nigel. “All landed gentry, bourgeoisie and wage-slaves.”
“Bone from the eyes up,” added Angela perkily.
The man laughed loudly.
“You’ve said it! Just sign these cards, will you?”
With an effort they remembered their new names and wrote them at the foot of two pieces of pasteboard that seemed to be inscribed with some sort of profession of secrecy. Angela felt rather guilty. While they did this someone came in at the outside door and walked along the passage. The man took their cards, pulled open the door and turned to the newcomer. Led by Alleyn, they all walked through the door, which immediately was shut behind them.
They found themselves in a large room that still looked like a warehouse. Six office lamps with china shades hung from the ceiling. The walls were unpapered plaster in bad condition. A few Soviet propagandist posters, excellent in design, had been pasted on the walls. The Russian characters looked strange and out of place. At the far end a rough platform had been run up. On the wall behind it was an enlarged photograph of Lenin draped in a grubby festoon of scarlet muslin. There were some thirty people in the room. They stood about in small groups, talking quietly together. One or two had seated themselves among the chairs and benches that faced the platform. Nigel, who prided himself on this sort of thing, tried to place some of them. He thought he detected a possible newsagent, two undergraduates, three Government school teachers, compositors, shopkeepers, a writing bloke or two, and several nondescripts who might be anything from artists to itinerant hawkers. There were one or two women of the student type, but as Alleyn made no sign, Nigel concluded that none of these was Nurse Banks. Evidently the inspector had been to former meetings. He went up to a middle-aged, vehement-looking man with no teeth, who greeted him gloomily and in a little while began to talk very excitedly about the shortcomings of someone called Sage. “He’s got no guts,” he repeated angrily, “no guts at all.”
More people came in at intervals; a few looked like manual labourers, but the majority seemed to belong to that class abhorred of Communists, the bourgeoisie. Nigel and Angela saw Alleyn point them both out to his gloomy friend, who stared morosely at them for a moment and then burst into an offensive guffaw. Presently Alleyn rejoined them.
“My friend has just come in,” he said quietly. “She’s that tall woman in a red hat.”
They looked towards the door and saw the tall woman. Her face, as well as her hat, was red, and was garnished with pince-nez and an expression of general truculence. Banks was a formidable out of uniform as she was in it, Alleyn reflected. She glanced round the room and then marched firmly towards the second row of chairs.
“Off you go,” murmured Alleyn. “Remember, you come from O’Callaghan’s county, but are not of it.”
They walked down the centre aisle and seated themselves alongside Nurse Banks.
She produced an uncompromising mass of wool, grey in colour, and began to knit.
“Don’t you feel ever so excited, Claude?” asked Angela loudly in a very second-rate voice.
Nigel suppressed a slight start and checked an indignant glance.
“It’s a wonderful experience, Pippin,” he replied.
He felt Angela quiver.
“I wish I knew who everyone was,” she said. “We’re so out of touch. These are the people who are really getting things done and we don’t know their names. If only Mr. Barker had been here.”
“Ye gods, it makes me wild!” apostrophised Nigel. “And they call this a free country. Free!”
Angela, who was next to Banks, dared not look at her. Banks’s needles clicked resolutely.
“Do you think,” ventured Angela after a pause, “do you think we could ever make any headway down in the dear old village?”
“The dear old village, so quaint and old-world,” gibed Nigel. “So typically English, don’t you know. No, I don’t. The only headway you could make there would be with a charge of dynamite. God, I’d like to see it done!”
“They’ll all be in heavy mourning now, of course.”
“Yes — for Sir Derek Bloody O’Callaghan.”
They both laughed uproariously and then Angela said: “Ssh — be careful,” and glanced apprehensively at Banks. She was smiling.
“I wonder if he’s here yet?” whispered Angela.
“Who?”
“Kakaroff.”
“There’s someone going on to the platform now.”
“Claude! Can it be he?”
This exclamation sounded so incredible that she instantly regretted it and was infinitely relieved to hear Miss Banks remark in a firm baritone:
“Comrade Kakaroff isn’t here yet. That’s Comrade Robinson.”
“Thanks ever so,” said Angela brightly. “We’re strangers ourselves and don’t know anybody, but we’re terribly keen.”
Banks smiled.
“You see,” continued Angela, “we come from the backwoods of Dorset, where everything died about the time Anne did.”
“The counties,” said Banks, “are moribund, but in the North there are signs of rebirth.”
“That’s right!” ejaculated Nigel fervently. “I believe it will come from the North.”
“I hope you were not very shocked at what my gentleman-friend said just now about O’Callaghan?” Angela ventured.
“Shocked!” said Banks. “Scarcely!” She laughed shortly.
“Because, you see we come from the same place as his family and we’re about fed to the back teeth with the mere name. It’s absolutely feudal — you can’t imagine.”
“And every election time,” said Nigel, “they all trot along like good little kids and vote for dear Sir Derek once again.”
“They won’t do that any more.”
The other seats in their row filled up with a party of people engaged in an earnest and rather blood-thirsty conversation. They paid no attention to anyone but themselves. Nigel continued the approach of Banks.
“What did you think about the inquest?” he asked blandly.
She turned her head slowly and looked at him.
“I don’t know,” she said. “What did you?”
“I thought it was rather peculiar myself. Looks as if the police know something. Whoever had the guts to fix O’Callaghan I reckon was a national hero. I don’t care who knows it, either,” said Nigel defiantly.
“You’re right,” cried Banks, “you’re right. You can’t heal a dog-bite without a cautery.” She produced this professional analogy so slickly that Nigel guessed it was a standardised argument. “All the same,” added Banks with a slight change of voice, “I don’t believe anyone could, if they would, claim the honour of striking this blow for freedom. It was an accident— a glorious accident.”
Her hands trembled and the knitting-needles chattered together. Her eyes were wide open and the pupils dilated.
“Why, she’s demented,” thought Angela in alarm.
“Hyoscine,” murmured Nigel. “Wasn’t that the drug Crippen used?”
“I believe it was,” said Angela. “Isn’t that the same as Twilight Sleep?”
She paused hopefully. Banks made no answer. A young man came and sat in front of them. He looked intelligent and would have been rather a handsome fellow if his blond curls had been shorter and his teeth less aggressively false.