Cedric had suggested Inner Temple Gardens as a good spot to meet, but at 12.30 there were so many people eating sandwiches there that he proposed a walk along the Embankment instead. ‘Better than sitting on a park bench with the reek of hard-boiled eggs all around you,’ he told Dick. ‘I never eat lunch unless it’s a business affair, but I have to admit to subversive signals from the inner man at about this time. A spot of exercise would be doubly mortifying to the flesh, and therefore beneficial. I hope you’re not hungry, by the way.’
Dick shook his head. He had eaten a late breakfast and prolonged it with extra rounds of toast and coffee as he strove to convince Jane that she should stay on the team. Without really carrying the argument, he had persuaded her not to make an immediate decision. He had driven her back to Brook Green and entered the flat with her. Together, they had made a second check of her desk and filing cabinet. Nothing had apparently been removed. After a few minutes, she had thanked him and said she felt in control and there was no need for him to remain there.
He told Cedric about the break-in. ‘Jane is understandably shaken,’ he added. ‘She’s in two minds about going on with this. We can’t let her drop out now, Cedric. She’s been working flat out making contact with people out of the top drawer who might know something, and the results are starting to show.’
Cedric side-stepped the point about Jane altogether. ‘The question is, who is on to us?’
Dick showed with a shrug that it wasn’t his most immediate concern. ‘One of the tabloids?’
Cedric pondered the possibility as they strolled past the black hull of the Discovery. ‘I can’t see it. All right, the word is probably out that we are launching a new investigation into the Hess affair, and they may know who is involved, but I can’t see them breaking into a fellow-journalist’s flat. Not the Fleet Street boys. It’s not the same game as trespassing at Balmoral with a telephoto lens.’
‘Who would you put your money on, then?’
‘You say it was a tidy job?’
‘Almost immaculate.’
Cedric nodded. ‘Special Branch or MI5. Probably the latter.’
How would they know what we’re doing?’
‘Come on, Dick. Where were you all last week?’
‘The Public Record Office. I didn’t talk to a soul.’
‘But you filled in applications for the Hess files.’
Dick clicked his tongue.
Cedric asked. ‘Did you check to see if they bugged the flat?’
‘It didn’t cross my mind.’
‘For Christ’s sake, Dick! Make a point of it, will you? This isn’t party games.’ For a moment, the roar of a courier’s motorcycle reverberated off the stonework of Waterloo Bridge. Cedric waited, then said. ‘We’re in trouble.’
Dick steered him in what he hoped was a more positive direction. ‘Have you heard from Red?’
‘Not a word,’ answered Cedric morosely, ‘but then I wouldn’t expect to. He’s not the type who calls the office for a chat. We’ll walk as far as Hungerford Bridge. I’ll pick up a taxi at Charing Cross.’
‘There’s something else?’
Cedric nodded. ‘I asked our man in Washington to do some digging in the National Archives. He found a copy of the cable that Churchill sent President Roosevelt one week after Hess arrived in Britain. By then, Kirkpatrick from the Foreign Office had conducted three long interviews with Hess, and got the peace terms he was offering. Churchill makes no secret of the offer, but he tells Roosevelt frankly that Hitler refuses to negotiate with the existing British government.’
‘Does he say who they expected to negotiate with?’
Cedric sniffed. ‘Exactly as I told you last weekend. Members of a “peace movement” which would oust the Churchill government. Churchill brushes this aside as an example of the ineptitude of German intelligence. But Roosevelt wasn’t convinced. Do you know the comment he’s reported to have made to his staff? “I wonder what is really behind this story.”’
They walked on for some way without speaking, past Cleopatra’s Needle, towards the iron railway bridge. A passenger train trundled out to the suburbs.
‘We found something else in the Washington Archives,’ Cedric resumed in the same downbeat tone. ‘A memo to Roosevelt from Sumner Welles, who was his Under-Secretary of State. On 22 June 1941, the British Ambassador, Lord Halifax, called on Welles. He was exercised about reports that were circualting in the States. It seems that Herbert Hoover, the former President, was openly saying that Hess had come with specific peace proposals and that leading members of the Conservative Party in England had called on Churchill with a demand that he give serious consideration to them. They were threatening to withdraw their support in the House.’
Dick whistled his reaction. ‘It went as far as that, did it? Halifax denied it, of course.’
‘In a curiously ambivalent fashion,’ Cedric answered. ‘He said that it was unnecessary for him to state that the reports were entirely untrue.’
‘Foxy old devil!’
‘And it never came to anything because, on the very day this conversation took place, Germany invaded Russia. Hitler had turned his attention eastwards, so the immediate threat of Britain being over-run was lifted. Churchill could tell the rebel Conservatives to take a running jump, and he probably did.’
Dick almost crowed his satisfaction. ‘It’s slotting into place, Cedric. What we’ve got is Churchill fighting for his political life in those six weeks after Hess arrived.’
Cedric was not so sanguine. ‘It’s no bloody use without names. Who were these rebel Conservatives? We’re no nearer to identifying them.’
They had reached the Embankment underground station. They started up the stairs towards Villiers Street.
‘Would you have a word with Jane?’ Dick asked.
Cedric sighed heavily. ‘Later.’
They reached the taxi-rank in the forecourt of Charing Cross Station. Once Cedric had climbed into a cab, Dick went down the steps of the underground. He took the District Line to Hammersmith and spent an hour in the library there before going on to Jane’s. At a shop in the Broadway, he bought a new lock for her door.
She had finished checking the flat. ‘I’m more organized now than ever I was before,’ she announced. ‘I threw out heaps of useless bits of paper I’d accumulated. Clearing things out is a therapeutic exercise.’ No more was said about resigning from the team. She certainly didn’t look in a negative frame of mind. She had put colour on her eyes and she was wearing a green silk tee-shirt that turned every movement she made into a distraction. Dick gave her an approving glance, but each of them knew that their relationship was professional.
He told her about the meeting with Cedric, and they searched the apartment for hidden bugs and found none.
‘So much for Cedric’s theory,’ said Dick. ‘He’s obsessed with this idea that MI5 are on to us.’
‘I was thinking about it as I was going through the files,’ said Jane. ‘It could equally have been someone who heard that I was asking questions about the Hess affair and got worried.’
‘You mean someone implicated with the Nazis?’
‘Or their son, or grandson. Family honour still has to be defended at all costs.’
‘Whoever it was, I’m changing the lock on your door.’
She smiled. ‘Masterful. That leaves the feeble woman to make the coffee.’
Later, while she was watching him at work, he told her about his visit to the library. ‘They have a copy of the diaries of Sir Alexander Cadogan.’
‘The man the Duke of Hamilton wanted to meet after talking to Hess? Nice work, Dick. What did you discover?’
‘If you remember, Hamilton called the Foreign Office and tried to set up a rendezvous. He wanted Cadogan to drive out to Northolt to meet him – which raises two questions. Why Cadogan? And why Northolt?’
Jane shook her head. ‘Where exactly is Northolt?’
‘About ten miles west of here. In a 1941 car, the Duke could have made it to the Foreign Office inside forty-five minutes, yet he wanted Cadogan to come to him.’
‘For a private consultation?’
Dick nodded. ‘Where they could set aside the usual FO formalities. Off the record.’
‘That answers the first question,’ said Jane. ‘How about the second: why Cadogan?’
‘Because he was a civil servant and not a member of the War Cabinet. He was in a privileged position, independent of the politicians.’
‘There’s no need to lecture me on politics,’ she gently reminded him. ‘Hamilton could have told Cadogan what Hess proposed without Churchill knowing a thing about it. Is that your point?’
‘Yes.’
She drew up her shoulders and gave him a wry look. ‘But as Hamilton wasn’t able to get through to Cadogan, what are you driving at?’
He put down the screwdriver and turned to face her. ‘Just this. Last week, I read Sir Anthony Eden’s account of the Hess business. The way he tells it, Churchill’s staff intercepted the call from Hamilton. Intercepted. The word is significant. This was a call to the Foreign Office, Jane, not a German spy tapping out a message to Berlin. The way I see it, Churchill was a fortunate man. If that call hadn’t been intercepted, God knows what would have happened.’
‘It would have been up to Cadogan, I suppose,’ Jane commented evenly. ‘What did you learn from his diaries, then?’
‘He seems to have been the impeccable diplomat, scrupulously impartial in his dealings with politicians.’
‘Do the diaries mention Hess?’
‘Oh, yes. He says, on 12 May 1941, that in all the years he has kept the beastly diary, he has never been so hard pressed, and it was mainly due to Hess. On 14 May, he reports that Hess is the bane of his life.’
‘Why?’
‘Because the Cabinet is divided and Churchill is having tantrums and drawing up statements that nobody else will endorse.’
‘That ties in with what Jacob told me. Is there any clue as to whether Cadogan would have given assistance to a right-wing coup?’
‘On the Sunday when Hamilton was trying to set up the meeting at Northolt, Cadogan was weekending at his cottage in Sussex. The message was passed on, and a meeting was fixed for later that evening, but within half-an-hour Churchill was on the line to tell Cadogan he need not be troubled.’
‘Fast work.’
The bleep of the phone cut through their conversation. Jane left her chair to cross the room.
‘Careful what you say,’ Dick cautioned her.
It was Cedric on the line, his voice terse and strained. ‘Jane? Is Dick with you?’
‘Yes. Do you want a word?’
‘No. I just want both of you to get over here as soon as possible.’
‘To your office?’
‘Yes. And Jane …’
‘Yes?’
‘Don’t speak a syllable to anyone.’