Chapter 3
At St Teresa’s Primary School in Maryport, Headmaster George Salter sat at his office desk writing out a performance report and, realising that he had left his tea to go cold, cursed to himself. Fancying a hot fresh cup, he lifted his eighteen stone frame out of his chair with the intention of walking next door to the school secretary’s office.
As he rose, the highly polished black phone on his equally polished oak desk rang with the internal ring tone. He sat back down and reached for the receiver.
Salter barked in his usual authoritarian manner. ‘Headmaster.’ His secretary, Pamela Bryant, replied. ‘Good afternoon, Headmaster. There is a gentlemen from London for you on the phone, a Mr Swan. He would like to speak to you about school finishing times last year. Shall I put him through?’
Salter raised an eyebrow to this odd request. ‘Yes please Pamela, if you may. Oh, you couldn’t also be a charm and bring in a fresh cup of tea could you? I seem to have let my last one go cold. Thank you so much.’ There was a click on the phone as the call was transferred to the headmaster’s extension. ‘Good afternoon, George Salter speaking. How can I help you?’
At the other end of the phone line, Alex Swan greeted the broad shouldered, thinning haired headmaster of St Teresa’s Primary and introduced himself.
‘Good afternoon, Headmaster. My name is Alex Swan, I am a retired officer of the security services, now running a small investigations office attached to the Ministry of Defence. I was wondering if I could intrude on some of your valuable time to check a date in your school calendar with you.’
Looking out of his office window at the mass of coated children in the playground, Salter replied in an obliging tone. ‘What exactly is your query sir, and I will try and be as helpful as I can.’
Swan acknowledged. ‘I want to confirm with you that on a certain date this year, the school closed earlier than normal on that particular day. The day in question being Monday, the twenty-second of January.’
Salter reached over his desk and took hold of a burgundy desk diary with 1965 in gold leaf embossed on the right hand side. He opened the thick book and thumbed through the pages, until he placed the whole hand firmly on the page marked Monday, January 22nd. He looked down the entries before lifting the receiver to his right ear.
‘Hello Mr Swan, I have the page in front of me now. I’m afraid that there was no such closure on that particular day. As a matter of fact, I can only recall two early closures, one being the last day before the Easter holiday and at the end of the school year last year.’ The headmaster thumbed the pages to confirm his last statement.
Back in Wellesley Mews, Alex Swan had a puzzled expression on his face. ‘Thank you very much for your time sir. Good afternoon to you.’ Swan concluded his call and put back the receiver, rose from his chair and went to the window, watching a red double-decked Routemaster bus disgorge some passengers at the bus stop outside. He began to think to himself, recalling what the Headmaster had informed.
As Arthur Gable drove the silver 1956 Armstrong Siddeley Sapphire through the West End traffic, Kate Townsley spoke to the back of his head. ‘So how long have you two been working together then, Mr Gable?’
Gable looked at her in the mirror. ‘Please feel free to call me Arthur. Actually, we’ve been working together for four years now. Mr Swan was asked to set up an independent department while still with the Security Service, and having worked together before on cases of national security involving Soviet spies, the recent well known scandalous affair for instance, he informed me that he needed a civilian to help him with investigations on cases that were connected to the military. I was due for retirement with full pension, but felt it was still too early for me to be picking up the pruning shears just yet, so I talked it over with my wife Annie, and within a month, Mr Swan and I were on our first case together.’
Kate looked down at her lap. ‘Do you think that Mr Swan will discover the truth about what happened?’
As they had stopped at a red light, the ex-Police Detective Sergeant turned his head to her, giving her a reassuring smile. ‘Don’t worry Miss, Mr Swan is very thorough in all of his investigations. He wasn’t nicknamed The Weasel of MI5 for nothing.’
Later, Arthur Gable returned to the office to find Swan standing looking out of the window. He turned to acknowledge his colleague. ‘How did it go with taking Miss Townsley to her sister’s house, Arthur?’
‘Okay, sir. She cheered up a bit by the time we reached her sister’s place. I was invited in for a quick cuppa, then left them. I bought the evening paper, thought you may like a read of it later.’ Gable placed the folded newspaper down on the desk.
‘Well, looks like we have something already strange to go on, Arthur.’
‘What’s that, sir?’ Gable enquired suspiciously.
Swan turned a full one hundred and eighty degrees on his heel to face him. ‘I phoned the School’s Headmaster, and he informed me that the children did not finish early that day.’
Gable pulled a chair and sat down. ‘Well, either Kate Townsley has got her times confused, or the time of death recorded on the inquest is completely wrong.’
Swan sat down and leant back on his chair. ‘I think I need to see if I can lay my hands on that report. At least then I can decide for myself. I wonder if my old friend Hammer Higgins is up for a clay shoot at The Furrows this weekend. I could let him bag a few deliberately slow birds, then move conversation to the case, and see if he can help in some way.’
Gable smiled. ‘It’s starting to remind me of the scene in that new James Bond film Annie and I saw last week. Bond has a round of golf with the villain Goldfinger and lets him win, even though he’s cheating. This relaxes him, then as Goldfinger is about to play his shot, Bond throws down a gold bar and he makes him miss his putt.’
Swan glanced over at his assistant and nodded. ‘Yes, I am familiar with that scene, as it also appears in Fleming’s book. I must get round to seeing that film. I haven’t seen any of them yet. I’m one of those chaps who like to compare the literary original with the cinematic version. Did the same thing with Gone with the Wind. I will most probably sit there, and then start mumbling to myself on how different things are which will end up with getting me and a lady friend thrown out of the picture palace.’
Gable laughed. ‘Well, I’ll be off home now if it is alright with you, sir?’ He got up and reached for his black raincoat and grey trilby hat, then stopped at the door. ‘What are we doing tomorrow then, sir?’
‘I would like to talk to Miss Townsley again, but I think we can leave that until the end of the week, although I think that she needs a few more days to settle down. What do you think, Arthur?’
Gable sighed. ‘She seemed rather keen to me to give as much of her time to us as she could. I think it best if we could see her tomorrow.’
Swan nodded. ‘In that case, that’s what we will do. Goodnight, Arthur, and my love to Annie.’
Swan smiled as the door shut. He reached for the evening paper and placing it out before him, read the headlines.
At 7am the next day on the English and Welsh border near Leominster, Brinton Aviation’s chief test pilot, Eddie Eagle Eyes Kershaw, closed down the canopy of the sleek silver BR-101 prototype and checked his harness was secure.