The Frozen Lake: A gripping novel of family and wartime secrets

‘You can trust young Jimmy Ogilvy for that. He’s our policeman, and a right big fellow he is, too. I was thinking I’d step over to his house tomorrow and tell him about those two, he might like to let his superiors know what’s what. Just in case.’

ELEVEN (#ulink_3e50b50a-e651-510b-8864-9501ef6ea0e1)

London, Pimlico

Mrs Sacker knew at once that the man was a policeman. She also knew, before he showed her his card, that he wasn’t from the local police station nor from the CID. Even the most respectable London landlady came into contact with the police; if not questions about her tenants, then there were routine enquiries about residents, temporary and permanent, in neighbouring houses and streets. Landladies are often at home. They watch. They sum people up quickly – and shrewdly, if they want the rent to be paid regularly.

‘Two guineas a week my gentlemen pay,’ she told the dark-overcoated man as she let him in through the front door. No point in keeping him on the doorstep for watchful eyes to take gleeful note. One of your lodgers in trouble, is he, Mrs Sacker?

The man removed his hat and followed her down the stairs to the big, high-ceilinged kitchen. There was welcome warmth and a seat close by the range, and the offer of a cup of tea.

‘Only gentlemen?’ he enquired.

Her mouth pursed. ‘Only gentlemen. Women, however respectable, are a trouble. I mean, you expect gentlemen to be in rooms, but a lady? No, if she’s a lady, she’s at home. With her parents if she isn’t married, or living with a sister or an aunt. I don’t hold with women going out to work, I never have.’

‘Many women have to earn a living, Mrs Sacker, the same as the rest of us.’

‘Taking the bread out of men’s mouths. It’s one thing for a widow like myself to let out rooms, and look after a few gentlemen, that’s women’s work and entirely right. Hoity-toitying into an office and being paid proper wages like a man is quite another matter.’

‘I expect you’re careful about who you take on. Have to be in your line of business, and with a high reputation to keep up. I dare say your rooms aren’t ever empty for long.’

Mrs Sacker wasn’t deceived. He was trying to flatter her into helpfulness. Well, she was as ready to help the police in their proper business as anyone else, but catching criminals was their proper business, not creeping around asking questions about her tenants who were most certainly not criminals.

‘My gentlemen tend to stay. They’re well looked after and why should they move on?’

‘So how long has Mr Roberts been with you?’

Aha, Mr Jago was his target, was he? There was one person they wouldn’t get any information on, and for why? Because he was a gentleman who kept himself to himself.

‘Very respectable, Mr Roberts is,’ she said. ‘More than a year he’s been here now. He’s one that’s been brought up properly, you can always tell a gentleman who’s had a nanny and been to the right kind of schools. Everything in its place, that’s Mr Roberts.’

‘Doesn’t the army teach a man neatness in his ways?’ the policeman asked mildly.

‘It does and it doesn’t. Once they’ve been in the army, they’ll be careful, most of them, about keeping their clothes in good order, they like their shoes polished, put on clean collars, that kind of thing. But someone like Mr Roberts, you can tell he was at a public school. Take his hairbrushes. He’s got a pair of them, laid out on the dressing table just so. With his initials, JR, on the back, and a number below. Not an army number, only two figures, 44. That’s a school number. They all have a number at those kind of schools. In nails on the soles of their shoes and printed on the name tapes. Although you’d know it as soon as you spoke to him, he speaks like the gentleman he is, and he has lovely manners, doesn’t have to think about them, he’s been taught those manners since he could sit up. Course he has.’

‘So he’s English?’

‘Yes, he’s English.’ Her voice was indignant. ‘As English as you and me sitting here now.’

David Pritchard was Welsh on both sides, but he knew better than to intrude any jot of his personality on the conversation. ‘I had heard, from one or two people I’ve spoken to, who know him, that his English doesn’t always sound up-to-date. That he uses some old-fashioned expressions.’

Mrs Sacker smiled. If that was all they had to go on … ‘It’s his way. It’s what they call an affectation. “Hand in hand with a statelier past,” he says to me. There’s some of the old ways he prefers, and why not?’

‘Not a foreigner then. Not French, nothing like that?’

‘French! I wouldn’t have a Frenchman in my house.’

‘You have had visitors from abroad. A Dutchman used to stay here, our records show. And a Mr Schiller, from Vienna. And one or two Irishmen.’

That was Special Branch for you, suspecting every foreigner of being a danger, and letting these communists get away with murder under their very noses. Only, if it was Irishmen they were after, then Mr Roberts had nothing to worry about.

Inspector Pritchard saw the look of relief in her face. He said nothing, but took another drink of his tea.

‘You’ve no business calling the Irish foreigners,’ Mrs Sacker said. ‘They speak the same language as we do, it’s not right to say they’re the same as Italians or Frenchies. And Mr van Hoek, he might have been English the way he spoke the language. He was in the cheese trade, over here to study our methods, he told me. I’m quite partial to a piece of Dutch cheese, myself, I like a cheese that always tastes the same.’

Inspector Pritchard nodded in agreement, although he would as soon eat a piece of India rubber as Edam. ‘I take it you’re sure Mr Roberts didn’t come from Ireland.’

‘Quite sure, and just to show you he’s English, I’ve seen his passport, which he keeps in the top drawer in his room.’

‘He’s away at the moment, isn’t he?’

‘He is, visiting friends for Christmas, as are millions of other perfectly respectable English people.’

‘Might I have a look at this drawer? See if this passport’s there?’

‘You might not. Not without you’ve got a warrant. But I can set your mind at rest, it’s there all right, for I took up a pile of his laundry only this morning and put his handkerchiefs away in that very drawer, and his passport is there. So he hasn’t done a flit.’

‘Now, why should you think for a moment that we’d suspect him of leaving the country?’

She got up from the table and went to the range to move the large kettle an inch or so to one side. Her bearing was rigid, an effect enhanced by the straight grey dress she wore unfashionably long. Inspector Pritchard guessed that her corsets were inflexible and firmly fastened, although he didn’t know why she bothered, bony types like her hardly needed to cage themselves in whalebone since they came ready stiffened.

‘If you don’t, why do you want to know if he’s got his passport with him?’

‘Do you have Mr Roberts’s current address?’

‘I do not.’

‘You won’t be forwarding any mail to him?’

‘I shan’t.’ Her mouth snapped shut on the words.

Was that because she was keeping his post for him, or because he received no letters? ‘We have information leading us to believe that Mr Roberts is involved with the fascist movement.’

‘It’s no crime to be a fascist, not that I ever heard.’

‘A man’s politics are his own business, I agree with that, but when politics spill over into violence, then it becomes a police affair.’

‘Violence? Mr Roberts? Get along with you. I’d know if he’d been up to any violence, and he never has, and that’s the truth.’

‘I’m not accusing Mr Roberts of any violent act, but the movement he belongs to is happy to use any means, including violence, to achieve its ends.’

‘So you say. I don’t see your lot stepping in to stop the Reds getting up to mischief. And it’s people like you going on about Spain and Hitler that stir up trouble. A citizen of any country that’s keen to keep those Bolsheviks at bay deserves our support.’

Inspector Pritchard got up. ‘You can’t even help us by telling me whereabouts he’s gone visiting? Would it be to the country or to another town?’

‘He’s gone to the south coast, I believe,’ she said, her refined accents now firmly back in place. ‘I’ll show you out.’

His superior listened to the account of Inspector Pritchard’s visit. ‘It bears out what we’ve heard about Mrs Sacker’s sympathies. Do we have anything on her?’