It was just after midnight. Rose and Vernon had been parked near a radiator at the offices of the Daily Graphic, in the hope that the hot pipes, together with cocoa and sandwiches might coax some warmth back into their aching, shaking bones. Their clothes were smeared with coal dust, they smelt of sick and were stone deaf.
They had had an adventure.
At Heidelberg Station, Rose had checked the timetables and discovered there was a through train to Frankfurt in twelve minutes.
‘Why are we going to Frankfurt?’ Vernon asked, as they joined the queue at the ticket office.
‘Airmail. There’s only one service on a Thursday from 324Heidelberg that leaves from Mannheim airport at eleven in the morning and there’s no service on a Friday. But then I remembered, when I was looking into it, the one from Frankfurt airport leaves at six o’clock in the afternoon. The train gets in at five twenty-two.’
‘And how far is it from the station to the airport?’
‘I don’t know. Perhaps you could ask the man in the ticket office if he knows.’
Vernon’s German was rudimentary, but he managed, ‘Wo ist der Flughafen in Frankfurt?’, then, while the queue behind him grew increasingly impatient, had to get the ticket seller to repeat his answer several times, more slowly and using simpler words.
‘He kept saying Beckenheim.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘I don’t know. And it’s either ten or fifteen minutes or half an hour or longer with a bus.’
‘We’ll ask a taxi driver when we get there.’
In the Alma Dent story, Alma had had a dramatic race against time to get her ‘copy’ in before the paper was ‘put to bed’. Some of this was on horseback while she was being pursued by members of the criminal gang she was in the process of unmasking and who were shooting at her from a fast car. Luckily for Alma, even the fastest car cannot jump fences. Then she had had an altercation with an interfering but well-meaning fellow reporter, male, who had a crush on her and who didn’t want her to file her copy because he knew the criminal gang would seek revenge, hunt her down to the 325ends of the earth and murder her horribly. Alma had had to deal with him, albeit reluctantly, with a single right hook to the jaw – for her dad, who always wanted a son, had insisted she take boxing lessons.
In comparison, Rose and Vernon’s race to meet the deadline had been humdrum. The train had arrived in Frankfurt station a couple of minutes early. There was no queue at the taxi rank and, despite their clothes still being covered in coal dust, the taxi driver agreed to take them. He knew the aerodrome well and the roads were clear all the way. The driver took them right to the door of the Luftpost office. Even at this late hour, the Luftpost agent was happy to make sure that their envelope was included in the mailbags, on receipt, of course, of two Reichsmarks for the stamp. He assured them that, winds and weather being favourable, the plane would land at Croydon aerodrome shortly after ten o’clock.
Rose then wanted to know whether it would be all right if she arranged for a courier to be sent from the Daily Graphic to pick up the letter from Croydon. This proved something of a challenge to Vernon’s German, the agent’s English and Rose’s phrase book, but eventually it was established that a single letter could not be removed from the bag and, though a special messenger service was sometimes available, it could not be obtained at such short notice, and certainly not on this particular flight. The envelope, once it reached Croydon, would be sent onward to its ultimate destination by ordinary post. 326
Rose, it seemed, had lost. ‘What,’ she wondered, ‘would Alma Dent do?’ Alma, she was fairly sure, would run out on to the runway, steal an aeroplane and fly it herself, possibly even low enough down Fleet Street to throw the envelope through a window to her grateful editor. She would have been taught to fly by her father, an ex-RFC man who had always wanted a boy. Rose’s father had been a Birmingham solicitor who was perfectly happy she was a girl and had never been up in an aeroplane or, indeed, higher than the Lickey Hills.
The agent was saying something. Vernon listened carefully and translated. ‘I think he’s saying that it is possible for us to accompany the letter and take it ourselves from Croydon to the Daily Graphic.’
‘What, you mean, go on the aeroplane? As passengers?’
Vernon and the agent spoke German. ‘He says there is room for four passengers. Two of the seats are already taken, but the other two are free and they cost two hundred Reichsmarks – more than ten pounds. That’s a ridiculous amount of money.’
Rose was already burrowing in her satchel and counting out banknotes.
‘It’s Daily Graphic money,’ she said. ‘Is that two hundred each?”
‘I can’t come,’ Vernon said.
‘You must come.’
‘I’ve got nothing to do with the Graphic.’
‘Without you none of this could have happened.’ 327
Rose piled the money onto the counter and the man issued her with tickets.
Vernon always carried his passport as required by law, and checked to make sure it was there, nestling in his inside pocket. ‘You’ve left all your things at the hotel,’ he said.
‘I can have them sent on,’ Rose said. ‘People do that, don’t they? I’ve read it in books.’
‘Or … I’ll have to come back on Monday, anyway. I’ll have to send wires to Ben and Matt to cover for me over the weekend, but I’m sure when I tell them I’ve got engaged they’ll understand.’
It was the first time either had used the word ‘engaged’ and it made them smile. It was, as Vernon had so ineptly explained, much more grown-up than ‘boyfriend’ or ‘girlfriend’.
‘Du musst dich beeilen,’ the agent said.
They ran out to the aeroplane, the pilot showed them where to sit and issued them with enamelled bedpans to be sick into.
Their fellow passengers were two businessmen, one English and one German. Both were dressed for extreme cold in thick, fur-lined, coats. The Englishman also had a deerstalker with the earflaps down.
Rose just had her ginger coat and woolly hat. Vernon a thin overcoat and battered black trilby.
‘First time?’ the Englishman asked.
Rose and Vernon said it was.
‘It’s horrible. The noise is deafening, you’ll freeze to death, 328get chucked about all at sixes and sevens and your stomach’ll swap places with your tongue.’
They returned his grim smile.
‘They didn’t ask for our passports,’ Rose said.
‘No,’ the Englishman said. ‘I don’t think they count us as human beings. Just parcels wrapped in skin.’
She clutched the parcel wrapped in skin that was to be her husband.
Then the noise began.
They had crawled into a taxi at Croydon and, still deafened by the plane’s engine, huddled together for warmth.
In Fleet Street they had half fallen into the Daily Graphic building. A commissionaire approached, saying, ‘You’ve no business in here, clear off the pair of you,’ at which Rose, with difficulty, stretched to her full height and announced, as loudly as she could and in her poshest voice ‘My name is Rose Critchlow, I have flown here on the mail plane from Frankfurt in Germany. Please inform the powers that be, the duty officer, the night editor and anyone else who might be interested that I have the report from Professor Forsch which reveals the identity of the Mystery Blazing Corpse.’
The man at the reception desk was already on the telephone, jabbering excitedly. Within seconds people filled the entrance hall. One examined the drawings and handed them over to some other people who ran off with them to do who knows what. Somebody else, having had a brief conversation with a very senior-looking gent who smoked a 329cigar, picked up a telephone and shouted into it what Rose later learnt are generally regarded as the most exciting words in journalism.
‘Stop the presses! We’re making up a whole new front page.’
A lady arrived and scribbled in a notebook while a man with a hat but no jacket, cigarette dangling, dictated the new front page. Another lady ushered Rose and Vernon into an office, sat them, luxuriously, by the radiator, brought them coffee and offered them whisky, which they refused. Gradually the awful roar, the throb and the clatter of that terrible aeroplane abated, and they could hear as well as see the people around them, all of whom seemed to be screaming at each other and into telephones.
‘Should we tell them we just got engaged?’ Vernon asked.
‘God, no,’ Rose said. ‘They might put it on the front page.’
Vernon nodded. ‘I haven’t told my mum and dad, yet.’ He looked up at Rose as if he’d just said something terrible. ‘Sorry,’ he said.
‘What for?’
‘You haven’t got a mum and dad to tell.’
‘I’ll tell Mrs Westing and Mr Hobbes. Although I am a bit worried the excitement might kill them. Oh, lord.’
‘What?’
Chester Monroe was bearing down on them, looking fresh as a daisy. His suit was a shade of light brown that could best be described as orange. His shirt was blue and his tie red 330with white spots. He wore a white hat, with a brim slightly narrower than one was used to, on the back of his head and was snapping a Lucky Strike cigarette out of its soft packet.
‘Hello there, Miss Rose,’ he said. ‘And you must be Mr Vernon Goodyear. I believe you two have got quite something of a story to tell me.’
He fired questions at them about Professor Forsch and their flight from Frankfurt. They answered politely, volunteering as little information as possible.
‘Now, a little bird told me that you two are … well, let’s say a bit closer than casual colleagues?’
Rose and Vernon’s faces turned to stone. Who was the little bird? Who could possibly know, or even guess? Was he just fishing?
‘No,’ Vernon said. And Rose, only slightly worried that he meant it, echoed, ‘No.’
Chester looked from one to the other as if inviting them to say more.
‘Well, if that’s the way you want to play it …’ he said.
The faces remained stone. Chester gave up that line of enquiry and instead said, ‘Now, tell me about the riots in Heidelberg. Who was doing the rioting and what were they rioting about?’
And thus, Chester ended up with not one but two scoops for the Daily Graphic.
The headline, Blazing Corpse – Mystery Revealed, together with one of Professor Forsch’s pictures, filled the 331front page of Friday morning’s Graphic – the London edition, anyway. The early northern and Scottish editions had to make do with the original front page, which was mostly about Mr Winston Churchill’s demands that Gandhi and the other ‘extremists of the Indian independence movement’ had to be ‘crushed’.
Inside was the full – and mostly inaccurate story – of how Skelton, ‘The Man Who Refuses To Lose’, determined to find the true identity of the burning corpse, had approached the Daily Graphic with the scheme of sending the head of the corpse to Germany, where, he had heard, an egghead scientist by the name of Forsch had worked out his elaborate and very precise scheme for recreating an identity from a skull. Though, to many, the scheme seemed madcap, the Graphic thought it was worth investigating so put up funds ‘in excess of £2,000’ to finance the enterprise. Skelton, man of the hour, had arranged for his assistant and ‘envoyette’, Rose Critchlow, to carry the skull to the Prof. and liaise with the Prof.’s genius British collaborator, Vernon Goodyear, who supervised the work. It also told of how, to get the results of the Prof.’s investigation back to the Graphic, the ‘envoyette’ and the collaborator had chartered an aeroplane and flown through the night – a terrifying journey through wind, rain, thunder and lightning (full story on page 4). The piece was liberally illustrated with pictures of Rose and Vernon, both still covered in coal dust, and of ‘The Man Who Refuses to Lose’, a map of Germany, and an artist’s impression of an aeroplane flying through a storm. 332
The story made excellent copy, there was no doubt about that. It stirred the senses and, when the figures came in, was proved to have added 12.7 per cent to the Graphic’s circulation.
The only disappointment was Professor Forsch’s drawings. Nobody doubted their accuracy, but it was such a very ordinary face with nothing in the way of distinguishing features. Some people said it looked like Stanley Baldwin, the former prime minister, others that it was the spit and image of Captain Scott, the explorer. Most people had an uncle who looked just like that.
The calls started coming in not long after the paper had arrived at the newsagents.
‘He’s a chap I used to see in the Nag’s Head in Walthamstow. I was wondering what had happened to him.’
‘He’s Mr Williams, who said he was going to live in Swindon, but nobody’s heard from him since.’
‘He’s a chap used to work at Taylor’s the chemist in Peckham. Ran off with £12. 17s. 4d. out of the till and was never seen again.’
By mid-afternoon, the Graphic had designated six members of staff to deal with the calls and, with help from the police, sort out the possibles from the duds. The deluge came with the post on Saturday morning. Six bags all from people who were absolutely certain they had the right bloke.
‘All sewn up, then?’ Aubrey said. He was balanced between his heels – legs stretched out halfway across the room – and a 333quarter of an inch of buttock, which was just in contact with Skelton’s desk.
‘From my point of view, yes, it is,’ Skelton said.
‘I heard a rumour that the Graphic was paying you two thousand quid.’
‘That was for finding the identity of the corpse. All we have at the moment is Professor Forsch’s sketches, which I had nothing to do with. In the unlikely event that the Graphic agrees to pay up, I’d have thought Rose should get a sizeable chunk of that cash and Vernon could probably make good use of another sizeable chunk. I’ll be happy with my fifteen guineas.’
‘Fifteen guineas?’
‘One of those Poor Person’s Defence thingummies,’ Edgar said.
‘Oh, those. Three weeks’ work for the price of a pair of socks.’
‘Where the bloody hell are you buying your socks?’ Skelton said.
Aubrey bounced acrobatically off his buttocks and heels and stood without a single teeter. ‘I thought we should have a word about the Beck business.’
‘Ah, yes.’
‘I’ve arranged a meeting with Edward first thing on Monday morning.’ Edward was Sir Edward Atkinson, the Director of Public Prosecutions. ‘I thought we’d better show him the photographs. See what he makes of it all.’
‘Are you sure that’s the right way to proceed?’ Edgar asked. 334
‘Well, we have no credible defence and it would seem a little unfair if Beck was to spend the rest of his life in prison for killing Mrs Roberts with his machines when we know for a fact that she never went near the machines. But the only way we can prove that is to produce the photographs.’
‘All the same,’ Edgar said.
‘You don’t think we might be overestimating the danger presented by Mr Lazell, do you?’ Aubrey said.
‘No. If Lord Rosthwaite is willing to pay a thousand pounds in hush money, Norris Lazell is prepared to slit throats.’
‘I’d have thought if throats were going to be slit, they’d most likely have been slit already,’ Aubrey said. ‘Rosthwaite, after all, offered his bribe as soon as he knew Beck was being investigated. Anybody involved would know it would only be a matter of time before we found out about the Special Treatments.’
From the rack on his desk, Skelton selected a pipe – a billiard with cherrywood bowl and ceramic stem that he hadn’t used for a while. He took it apart, ready for cleaning.
‘Did you read about Phil Kirkpatrick?’ Edgar said.
‘Was he the chap they found nailed to the timbers in the West India Docks?’
‘Wife and kids had their throats slit as well.’
Skelton looked up from his pipe. ‘Wife and kids?’
‘Phil Kirkpatrick had stolen half the loot from some job, hadn’t he?’ Aubrey said. ‘It was a matter of pride’
‘Whereas people seeing Lazell dressed up as a baby with 335a dummy in his mouth wouldn’t damage his pride at all? Is that what you’re saying?’ Edgar said.
Skelton heard a crack and looked down, surprised to discover he’d snapped the pipe stem in two. ‘I didn’t know about the wife and kids,’ he said.