On the following Saturday afternoon, Dick drove his Renault down the M23 through Surrey. Beside him, Jane studied the exit signs.
‘We’ll take the next one and work our way down towards Ashdown Forest,’ she told him.
‘The next one? Are you sure?’
She let him overtake a container truck, and then said, ‘This is my trip, all right?’
‘My petrol.’
‘On expenses,’ she reminded him.
Late on Friday, she had met him coming out of Cedric’s office and remarked how dispirited he looked. He had told her it was the look of a man who had spent four practically fruitless days at the Public Record Office and just been ordered back there for another week. She had taken pity on him and invited him on her Saturday assignment.
But he was still grumbling about the PRO. ‘I found two Foreign Office files on Hess, and it’s obvious that everything interesting has been removed from them. You can see where the stuff has been taken out. There are two War Office files, and one of them has a hundred-year restriction on it.’
‘Frustrating for you.’
He wasn’t content with sympathy. ‘I suppose you had a fascinating week, hobnobbing with the aristocracy?’
Jane stared out of the side window. ‘There wasn’t much of that, and what there was was unproductive, if you want to know.’
‘But reassuring?’
‘Reassuring? Why?’
‘There don’t appear to be any skeletons in the Conservative Party cupboard.’
Jane turned to face him. ‘Don’t push me, Dick.’
‘I wasn’t. I was about to update you on my meeting with the ex-MI5 man.’ He related what he had learned on Brighton beach, pointing out that Stones had dismissed Cedric’s theory of a right-wing plot. ‘And I had to believe him. MI5 knew the people to watch. They’d declared themselves in the pre-war years. Most of them belonged to pro-German or anti-Semitic organizations, like the Right Club. The worst of them were interned, and the rest either left the country or came under the closest scrutiny.’
‘We might as well give up, then?’
‘I didn’t say that. I’m bloody sure there was a cover-up. You only have to look at the gaps in the files. I told Cedric we’ve got to go to sources that haven’t been pruned and censored. Not books and files. People.’
‘Which is why you came this afternoon?’
He nodded. ‘Tell me about McTeviot.’
‘Jacob? He’s the only person I know who might have something helpful to say. He’s a retired diplomat, an old friend of my father. He was in the Ministry of Information in the war. He’s over eighty now, and quite outspoken about the establishment. Daddy says it’s one of the mysteries of the twentieth century how Jacob ever got his knighthood.’
‘I thought they came automatically to high-ranking civil servants.’
‘Not if they campaign for the abolition of the House of Lords.’
‘He’s left-wing?’
Jane smiled. ‘And slightly dotty.’
‘A communist?’
‘A sort of homespun example, the home being stately.’
‘He sounds amusing. Is he discreet?’
‘No!’ laughed Jane. ‘Not in the least. That’s why I want to talk to him. Junction 10. This one.’
In another twenty minutes, they turned into the drive of Sir Jacob McTeviot’s residence, to be waved down by a blue-uniformed official.
‘Two? House and grounds, sir?’ he asked Dick in an automatic way.
‘Actually, we’re personal friends of the owner.’
The man drew back a step and touched his cap. ‘Very good, sir. There’s no charge anyway. In fact, every visitor is given something: a copy of Sir Jacob’s little red book.’ He handed one through the window.
‘Thanks.’
‘If you feel like making a contribution to the upkeep, that’s another thing,’ the man went on, his fingers still curled over the top of the window. ‘To save embarrassment, Sir Jacob suggests five pounds from his friends.’
Dick passed out a five-pound note and drove on without another word. Jane had to bite the insides of her cheeks to stop herself from laughing.
Judging from the rows of cars drawn up behind the house, Ashdown Towers was a popular venue for weekend drivers. It was a Gothic extravaganza of red brick, a peculiar structure dominated by turrets and gables and studded doors.
At the one marked ‘This Way In’, they were informed that Sir Jacob was not in the house. ‘Step across the croquet lawn and the Alpine meadow,’ the woman on the door advised them, ‘and you should find him at Mao Junction.’
‘At what?’
‘A station on the miniature railway. Each one is named after a revolutionary hero.’
Half-way across the Alpine meadow, Jane spotted Sir Jacob McTeviot and waved. He was on the station platform ushering children into carriages. His faded blue jacket and peaked cap might have been an engine-driver’s outfit, or the uniform of Mao Tse Tung. Tall and upright, with the extra inches on the waist that are acceptable in an old man, he busied himself with the task of seating the young passengers as graciously as if he were escorting the corps diplomatique to a Foreign Office reception.
Jane waited for him to blow his whistle, and then stepped across the track behind the departing train.
McTeviot held out his arms to her. ‘Jane, my dear!’
Dick watched from the Alpine meadow. This was Jane’s show, as she had stressed, and anyway she was likely to extract more confidences from the old man if she were not accompanied.
When the polite exchange of family news was complete, Jane told McTeviot she had no idea that she would find him so busy.
‘Don’t give it a thought,’ he insisted.
‘I’d be so grateful for a few minutes of your time.’
‘On business? Something frightfully confidential for the Diary?’ said McTeviot with relish. ‘State secrets, perhaps? I’m your man. Try pumping me and see what you get.’
‘It’s rather public here.’
McTeviot raised his finger like a preacher. ‘There’s nothing untoward in that, my dear. The people have a right to be informed.’
‘They will be, at the proper time,’ she solemnly assured him.
‘There speaks the journalist. Very well, young lady, you shall have your exclusive.’
Minutes later, they were making an ascent in a hot-air balloon, red in colour, with Power to the People written on its side. For Jane, it was a maiden flight. If she felt tremors of nervousness at being borne skywards with an eighty-year-old eccentric at the controls, she tried not to betray them. She was pretty sure the old man led a charmed life, even if her own could not be guaranteed.
Conversation was impossible while the burner was working, so she viewed the grounds, seeing how fully Ashdown Towers had been equipped for visitors. Everything except a safari park was down there: funfair, boating lake, ponies, camels and llamas, go-cart racing, maze and a row of vintage cars and carriages.
Suddenly the burner was silent, and they were drifting through the void in stunning silence. McTeviot’s misty blue eyes invited Jane to state her business.
She didn’t hedge. ‘You were at the Ministry of Information in 1941. What can you tell me about Rudolf Hess?’
The eyes glittered. ‘That old fascist? How does he keep going? Are you preparing his obit, or something?’
‘Something,’ answered Jane, hoping he would leave it at that. ‘What’s the inside story?’
‘On Hess?’ Sir Jacob gave a wheeze and grabbed one of the main cables, jerking the balloon alarmingly. ‘The inside story, as you put it, was a dog’s breakfast. The entire cabinet were at each other’s throats – Winston, Eden, Beaverbrook, Duff Cooper.’
‘He was Minister of Information?’
‘Dear old Duff, yes. My Minister. He had reason to be hopping mad. Hess landed on Saturday night, but nobody told us. The first Duff knew about it was on Monday night – and that was from the wireless, the blessed German wireless! Winston finally phoned him at ten that night, forty-eight hours after Hess arrived. It was a shambles from beginning to end.’
‘Why.’
He flapped his hand. ‘The silly arses didn’t know how to handle it. Couldn’t agree. The BBC were told to put out a statement that Hess had been bumped off by the Gestapo, and that went into the eleven o’clock news.’
‘The Cabinet didn’t want it known that he was in Britain?’
McTeviot sniffed. ‘They didn’t have a cat in hell’s chance of keeping it quiet. It was all in the papers on Tuesday morning. Hess had a very good press. Clean-living family man and all that. Winston was in a flap. He prepared a statement for Parliament and showed it to Anthony Eden, the Foreign Secretary. Eden disappoved and prepared an alternative statement. The telephone wires were red-hot. The argument raged into the small hours of Thursday. Duff simply wanted some directive to clear up the speculation. He went to see Churchill. Max Beaverbrook was already there. The Beaver had a lot of sway with Winston, you know. He persuaded Winston to leave it to him to handle the press. They told Eden over the phone at half-past-one in the morning, and he wasn’t pleased.’
‘Do you think they had something to cover up?’
McTeviot said, ‘I know it,’ and gave another blast on the burner. ‘Beaverbrook invited the press to lunch at Claridges the same day and told them to go to town on Hess with as much rumour and speculation as possible.’
‘A smokescreen?’
‘Any damn thing they liked. He came over to assassinate Churchill, or to elope with Unity Mitford, or he was just plain bonkers. It was supposed to confuse the Germans.’
‘The Germans – or the British?’ speculated Jane.
‘I can tell you it didn’t much impress the people closest to events. There was bitterness about the way it was handled.’
‘Did Duff Cooper know what was going on?’
McTeviot chuckled. ‘The Minister of Information? Completely in the fog. He was a disillusioned man, and so was Harold Nicolson, his Parliamentary Secretary. They tried their damnedest to get the truth. Duff banged the desk in Number Ten and Harold raised the matter over a private lunch with the Churchills. In a matter of weeks they were both sacked from the government.’
Jane’s heart was pumping hard, and not because of the altitude. Her hunch had already paid off. She had learned more in these few minutes than she had all week. She felt intuitively that the old man had more to tell her if she could tease it out. ‘Did you ever find out what created the panic?’
He shook his head. ‘I’m afraid not, my dear. It was cataclysmic, I can tell you that. Winston was on hot bricks. I never knew him so jumpy.’
‘Who else would have known?’
‘Beaverbrook, for sure. He interviewed Hess, you know.’
‘But that was later, in September,’ Jane pointed out.
McTeviot gave her a sharp look. ‘You have done your homework, young lady.’
‘Other people interviewed Hess. The Duke of Hamilton, Ivone Kirkpatrick and Sir John Simon. Presumably they learned the real reason for the flight?’
‘Presumably. Like Beaverbrook, they’re all dead now.’
‘If there was someone else I could talk to …’
‘… you’d have to find your way into Spandau Prison,’ said McTeviot, leaning over the side to wave to the children on the miniature train. ‘He’s the only one left who knows the truth, and maybe he’s forgotten it by now.’