Angels Dining at the Ritz Read online

  Angels Dining at the Ritz

  John Gardner

  © John Gardner 2004

  John Gardner has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

  First published in 2004 Severn House.

  This edition published in 2015 by Endeavour Press Ltd.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  This book is for

  Lisa Moylett

  With undying thanks

  for taking over when the

  going got tough

  There were angels dining at the Ritz,

  And a nightingale sang in Berkeley Square.

  Eric Maschwitz:

  ‘A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square’

  Chapter One

  This is the BBC Home and Forces Programme. The time is eight o’clock on Monday 17th August. Before the Morning Service, here is the news and this is Alvar Lidell reading it. Downing Street and the War Office have announced that General Bernard Montgomery has taken command of the Eighth Army in Cairo. General Montgomery has replaced General Gott, who was killed ten days ago when the aircraft in which he was travelling was shot down, and…

  …It is reported from Moscow that the German Sixth Army has now reached the outskirts of Stalingrad. There is heavy fighting in the area…

  …The Home Office has issued a communique saying that during last week’s night raid by the German Luftwaffe on East Anglia there was a direct hit on a mental hospital in Colchester resulting in many casualties. The Home Secretary, Mr Herbert Morrison, referring to this incident, said that it was another indication of the Nazi lack of respect for innocent lives…

  …In Norfolk, three members of the same family have been found shot dead in their home near King’s Lynn. The Norfolk Constabulary are treating the deaths as murder and Scotland Yard has been called in. The victims have not yet been named…

  *

  Tommy Livermore was with the Deputy Assistant Commissioner (Crime) in his office on the fifth floor of New Scotland Yard, the big turret room looking down on the ornate gates; the Reserve Squad called in early because of the killings in Norfolk.

  ‘Ascoli?’ For a moment he sounded as though he’d never heard the name. Then he repeated it. ‘Ascoli? Right, Arthur?’

  ‘Max Ascoli,’ the DAC (Crime) prompted, frowning because Livermore’s mind seemed to be elsewhere.

  ‘Max Ascoli KC. You don’t forget a name like Ascoli, do you?’ Tommy smiled to himself. ‘Max Ascoli who defended…?’

  ‘Goldfinch, yes. That Max Ascoli, Tommy.’ The Deputy Assistant Commissioner (Crime) was a big man, tall and broad with iron-grey hair, the manners of a courtier and that sleek just-shaved look to his jowls whatever the time of day. He was particularly nice when it came to people like Detective Chief Superintendent Livermore because of his title — the Honourable Thomas Livermore — though nobody at the Yard ever called him that, and the Press referred to him as Dandy Tom because of the detail and eccentric cut of his Savile Row suits.

  The DAC (Crime) was a bit of an arse-licker who held the Royal Family and members of the so-called aristocracy in respect; as, of course, did most people.

  ‘Sands-Ascoli, Lincoln’s Inn, Arthur.’ Tommy sounded speculative, then added the address. ‘Did one hell of a job for Goldfinch. I’d never met him before the Goldfinch trial, but I’ve known Willoughby since I was a kid. Ned Sands was a friend of my pa’s.’

  Willoughby was Sir Willoughby Sands KC, whose father, Ned, had formed the Sands-Ascoli partnership with Max Ascoli’s father, old Sam Ascoli, died 1937, Coronation year when George VI and Queen Elizabeth were crowned in Westminster Abbey, a huge event surrounded by much pomp and ceremony: special mugs handed out to the kids with pictures of the new king and queen on them; public ox roasts up and down the country; great rejoicing and a lot of legless drinking everywhere.

  ‘My pa used to say if I ever murdered someone I should send for Ned or Will Sands.’ He gave a mirthless little laugh. ‘Never did, but by heaven, Max Ascoli did the trick for Golly Goldfinch.’

  ‘He had good expert witnesses, Tommy. Did him proud, and we all knew that Golly Goldfinch was — to use the technical term — a raving loony. Max Ascoli simply put the seal on it, demonstrated it to the world.’

  ‘And now he’s dead?’

  The Deputy Assistant Commissioner nodded and even made the nod appear to be the action of a mourner: solemn and grief-touched. ‘Max Ascoli, his wife, Jenny, and the boy, Paul, seven — eight — years old, poor little sod.’

  ‘Strewth! You think it’s connected with Goldfinch?’

  ‘Highly unlikely.’ Count of three. ‘How could it be? Golly’s banged up at His Majesty’s pleasure.’

  A picture of the girl, Lavender, came into Livermore’s head, but he didn’t mention her out loud. Lavender was still around, somewhere or other. They’d never caught her and that rankled; Lavender was Golly Goldfinch’s cousin and suspected of all kinds of nefarious doings connected with some of the murders they’d felt Golly’s collar for. Then he nodded, saying good thing Golly was banged up, and the DAC knew what he was thinking — we’d have been certain about it if Goldfinch had been topped. Tommy Livermore often said they should have topped Golly Goldfinch and had done with him. ‘Doesn’t matter a snowball in hell that he was unhinged. We had him bang to rights over sixteen or more murders; maybe a lot more if we hadn’t stopped counting. Should’ve hung the little bugger, my view, heart.’

  And Suzie Mountford would nod vigorously because when Tommy had one of his hanging moods on him the only thing you could do was agree. After all, he should know. He had attended the execution of the one person they’d got for aiding and abetting Goldfinch. ‘Swift as an arrow from the Tartar’s bow, as the Bard says,’ his terrible smile. ‘There one minute, gone the next. Pierrepoint knows the job. Sticks him on the trap, talking to him all the time, reassuring him, “You’ll be all right with me, son,” steps back, trips the lever and he’s gone. Kur-lunk. Doesn’t cost the taxpayer a penny once the execution’s paid for. Should’ve happened to Goldfinch. Just over a minute from entering the condemned cell to stretching his neck. Dead humane.’

  And if anyone dared oppose him and suggest capital punishment was barbarous, Detective Chief Superintendent Livermore would make an angry sound and say, ‘Yes, and the earth’s flat, I suppose. Eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. That’s the sensible way.’

  In fact he had been holding forth on the death penalty to three of his sergeants — Billy Mulligan, Molly Abelard and Suzie Mountford — when the DAC had called him up to the fifth floor about the killings of the Ascoli family in East Anglia, Long Taddmarten, fifteen miles south of King’s Lynn, which was why they’d all got the early phone calls.

  Now he went back to his fourth floor office, dramatic front pages of the Police Gazette gilt-framed on the walls and the little model guillotine on his desk. He called in Billy and told him the score, left him in charge, then sent for Molly Abelard, Suzie Mountford, Ron Worral and Laura Cotter, who did photograp
hs and crime scenes, a DC called Peter Prime, very good with fingerprints, and another DC by the name of Free, ballistics and firearms, also good with local organization out in the sticks.

  He got them into his office together with Brian, his driver, and another driver name of David Rooke, predictably called ‘Doc’ or ‘the Doctor’ because of his initials, D.R.

  Tommy was about to give them the story so far when his telephone rang, the red one direct from the switchboard.

  *

  It was the Clerk of Chambers, Adrian Russell, who broke the news to Willoughby Sands when he arrived a little after nine on the Monday morning. Russell stood waiting as Sir Willoughby shuffled, wheezing, up the stairs. In chambers they tried to keep clients well away from the front hall when Willoughby Sands KC arrived, just in case they formed the opinion that the famous barrister was on his last legs. Those stairs took their toll and invariably the great man got into the hall red-faced, breathless and in a condition of near collapse.

  Lugging a briefcase and a cloth bag of books, Willoughby fastened his bright watery eyes on Russell, grey and with a new pallor somehow tinged with fear; the secretaries, gathered outside Russell’s domain at the end of the hall, looking like the chorus of a Greek tragedy, one of them weeping.

  ‘What’s this?’ he snapped, preparing to receive terrible news. Perhaps it was his son with the 8th Army in the Libyan Desert, or his wife, whom he’d left less than an hour previously. She’d been a little peaky of late. Heavens, she rarely complained. ‘Come on,’ he said, modulating his voice. ‘Something’s up. What is it?’

  Russell fidgeted, moving from one foot to the other, and not meeting his eye. ‘I think, in your office, sir.’

  Willoughby sighed and moved towards his door. Old Russell was past it really, looked scruffy, he thought, not for the first time, but what could you do? Russell had stayed on because he knew the chambers, knew the partners, had known them for thirty-four years. Couldn’t get or train a younger man in wartime, damn it. But the problem remained: Russell was becoming unkempt, shabby, a greasy Dickensian figure in chambers.

  Willoughby flopped into the old captain’s chair behind his desk, dropping the book bag and the briefcase, still out of breath, his heart thumping in his ears, thinking that he must lose some weight — he was always conscious of his permanent obesity, his greed. Lord, make me slim but not just yet.

  The door closed behind Russell.

  ‘I’m sorry, sir,’ his clerk’s voice matching his age, something Willoughby Sands had not noticed before. ‘It’s Mr Max, sir…’

  ‘Max? What about Mr Max?’ Max Ascoli, the other partner in Sands-Ascoli, Lincoln’s Inn. Four or five years Willoughby’s junior, Max Ascoli, but following well in his father’s footsteps — old Sam Ascoli, who had formed the partnership with Willoughby’s father, Ned Sands, a legend down the Bailey.

  ‘He’s dead, Sir Willoughby.’

  ‘Dead? Can’t be bloody dead. Spoke to him on the telephone last night.’

  ‘Nevertheless, sir, he’s dead.’

  Oh my God, Willoughby thought. Max takes Jenny and the boy to Norfolk and that oversized cottage to avoid the bombs, then catches it from some stray Heinkel unloading from six thousand feet over King’s Lynn.

  ‘How?’ he asked. ‘Another Baedeker raid?’ The so-called Baedeker Raids were the bombings supposedly picked personally by Hitler from the Baedeker guidebooks, reprisals for the RAF bombing of Cologne. The Luftwaffe now targeted the great cathedral cities of England — Exeter, Bath, Norwich, York and Canterbury.

  ‘No, Sir Willoughby. Mr Max was murdered. Shot to death in his home, sir. Shot in the face, the Chief Constable said.’

  ‘Christ in an MG! His face?’

  ‘His face, sir.’

  ‘Jesus on a tandem! I’ll have to ring Jenny,’ his hand moved towards the telephone.

  ‘No, sir. No good, sir. All three of them — faces shot away with a twelve-bore, they said.’

  ‘All three?’ voice rising to a squeak. ‘When?’

  ‘Sometime during the night, Sir Willoughby. Early hours. The Chief Constable of Norfolk thought you should know. Said they were getting the best possible people on to it. The Yard.’

  ‘Damned right I should know. All three? Jumping Jesus!’

  Adrian Russell didn’t hold with Willoughby Sands’ blasphemous language. He winced every time a colourful description of Our Lord came out of his boss’s mouth. In fact he had on one occasion remonstrated with him, to which Willoughby had replied, ‘I apologize if it offends you, Russell. But I’m certain My Maker is big enough and powerful enough to understand what help His name is in banishing tension and frustration in me. Personally, I think He approves, and I’m sure He doesn’t mind.’

  His hand again went out to the telephone and he asked the chambers’ switchboard operator to get him Whitehall 1212, the number for Scotland Yard’s Private Branch Exchange (PBX). Until relatively recently every man, woman and child was aware of that number for it was the one the BBC urged you to call with information or in an emergency. Since the mid-1930s that had changed and the 999 number had replaced it.

  ‘Whitehall 1212,’ a female answered from the Yard, and Sir Willoughby Sands asked for Detective Chief Superintendent Livermore. ‘…Reserve Squad,’ he added, and when the Honourable Tommy Livermore answered, he identified himself: ‘Tommy? Willoughby Sands.’

  ‘Yes. Willoughby, I’m terribly sorry.’

  ‘You on to it, Tommy?’

  ‘Yes, Will, we’re just leaving.’

  ‘Get him, Tommy.’

  ‘Of course, Willoughby.’

  ‘And keep me informed. This is very personal.’

  ‘Yes, Willoughby.’

  Tommy cradled the instrument and Suzie raised an eyebrow and made a comical face. ‘That was Willoughby,’ she said softly out of the corner of her mouth.

  ‘Have care, Susannah.’ Tommy looked straight into her eyes. ‘You’re not too old for me to — ‘ He stopped, pulling himself together, coughing, realizing where he was. Suzie blushed to the tips of her toes, remembering some of the games they played over weekends, the servant and the strict master. She liked those games. So did Tommy. The squire and the young serf: highly stimulating.

  Tommy gave them the bare facts. Max Ascoli KC, the silk who had defended Golly Goldfinch last year, murdered — though the body had yet to be identified. The whole family, wife and child, all found in Ascoli’s country house — ‘It’s called a cottage, Knights Cottage, but I think we’ll find it’s something more substantial.’ Tommy also told them he understood the three victims’ faces had been almost blown away, all of them as though their killer wanted them obliterated. They were on the case, going in two cars: Brian would drive the Wolseley and the Doctor, David Rooke, the Railton they’d borrowed off the Sweeney. The claret one.

  Last year down the Old Bailey, Max Ascoli hadn’t done much defending in the Goldfinch case because Golly had pleaded guilty, diminished responsibility. Ascoli simply had to keep his client from taking that nine o’clock walk and going down the drop with a noose round his neck, and he did that admirably with the aid of trick cyclists and other specialists. Now he was dead and his client still alive in a place for the criminally insane.

  Brian drove Tommy Livermore, Suzie and Molly Abelard (who else?); Doc, in the Railton, had Ron Worral, Laura Cotter (snaps and crime scenes), Peter Prime (dabs), and Dennis Free (guns and locals). They drove in convoy, not stopping anywhere except five minutes at a pub for a pee, stretch the legs. The two cars left just before nine, four hours later.

  ‘Very flat, Norfolk,’ Tommy said, stretching and doing his Noel Coward voice to match the line from Coward’s play Private Lives, the imitation not really very good. ‘Very flat, Norfolk, that’s why they’re building all these aerodromes so the RAF and the USAAF can get out there and bomb the buggery out of the Nazis. See what I mean?’

  They were passing the perimeter track of an aerodrome where big planes were taxiing, l
anding and taking off all the time: mostly RAF, Halifaxes and Lancasters and a couple of twin-engined jobs nobody could recognize — everyone learned aircraft recognition, fact of life. The girls craned their necks, peering at the strange shapes: you didn’t get to see many real aeroplanes close up if you spent most of the time in London.

  A few miles further on — a gorgeous afternoon, deep-blue sky, burning sun — Suzie asked, ‘Can we talk about the case, Chief?’

  ‘Yes, please,’ added Molly.

  Tommy shook his head. ‘I’ve already told you. You know exactly what I know: a house called Knights Cottage in Long Taddmarten —’

  ‘I think they just call it Taddmarten round here,’ Brian said from behind the wheel.

  ‘Three bodies, two male, one a child, and one female. All three shot in the face with a twelve-bore; that’s all I know, three people called Ascoli. Okay?’

  A couple of minutes later, Tommy Livermore said, ‘About an hour.’ No explanation.

  It was just after two o’clock.

  They understood just after three o’clock on that summer afternoon when Tommy gestured — ‘That must be Long Taddmarten over there, Church of St Mary Magdalene.’ The gesture was simple, a flick of the hand towards the wide clear horizon and the sharp grey spire and huddle of buildings, silhouettes against the deep blue.

  They had long left the Fenlands behind and were in the flat rolling country, surrounded by farmland: fields of corn as far as the eye could see. Right up to the edge of the world, Suzie thought. She’d never been in East Anglia before, never seen the sweep of land as though God had levelled it out, put in the odd roll or hump of grass, the occasional tree, sometimes a little stand of them unexpected against the skyline. You looked and knew that it went on for ever and a day.

  ‘The field of the cloth of gold,’ Tommy murmured as though he was also awed by the sight — the ribbon of straight road cutting through the rustling, slightly bending, rippling corn — then, far away, a mite to their left, came a sudden flash, like the sun glinting off a piece of glass, a heliograph set just above the ears of corn.