A Case of Conspiracy in Clerkenwell Page 4

  He then disappeared. The elderly lady watched him go with interest.

  ‘I expect you’ll get a good turnout tonight,’ she observed. ‘All the girls like a pretty young man.’

  ‘You’re a wicked one, Miss Flowers,’ said Mildred with good humour.

  ‘Not at all,’ said Miss Flowers. ‘Just an observer of human nature.’

  ‘Anyway, they don’t know he’s on tonight,’ said Mildred. ‘They think it’s Mrs. Belcher. And to be perfectly frank, I think it’s the tea and shortbread that brings them—that and the free trips to the cinema—rather than Mr. Hussey.’

  ‘Well, we’ll see,’ said Miss Flowers. She fished in her bag and brought out a tangled bundle of wool and a crochet hook. ‘Now, I had better go and take my seat.’

  ‘Are you here for Mr. Hussey or the shortbread?’ inquired Freddy, and she gave a delighted chuckle.

  ‘Neither,’ she replied. ‘I’m with the other lot. Much more fun.’

  And with that she departed.

  ‘Well, now,’ said Freddy in surprise.

  ‘Yes,’ said Mildred. ‘She used to come to us, but she’s a little vague, poor dear, and one day she wandered into the wrong hall by mistake and decided she liked the Communists better. She’s one of those women who likes to have a cause, but it doesn’t seem to matter which one. Miss Stapleton has never forgiven her for deserting us. Well, you’d better get off if you want a good seat—they’re starting to arrive.’

  Miss Hodges had now returned breathlessly with the tea, and nobody had any more attention to spare for Freddy, so he took his leave. He passed an open door to a small office, in which Mr. Hussey and Mrs. Starkweather were standing in conversation. Further on, to the left, was the entrance to the main hall, in which the East London Communist Alliance held their weekly meetings. He glanced in, and saw a few people gathered together in groups, laughing and talking. Down a short corridor to the left just after the main hall was the minor hall, in which the Young Women’s Abstinence Association met, while straight ahead of him was a door marked ‘Committee,’ which was standing slightly ajar. He moved towards it curiously, but before he could do anything the door opened and out came a tall, bearded man with a commanding presence whom he recognized as Ivor Trevett, in company with another man, who was elderly and of foreign appearance. They did not even glance at him as they passed. Freddy waited until they had gone then went inside, but saw nothing of interest, for the room held very little apart from a table and chairs, and was evidently used for smaller meetings.

  People were now beginning to arrive for their respective gatherings. For the most part, it was easy to tell which was which, since the members of the Abstinence Association were mostly women and the Communists were mostly men; however, once in a while a man in working clothes would enter the minor hall, or a young woman of respectable appearance would hurry into the larger hall breathlessly, clutching a copy of the Radical. Further, it appeared that some members of the opposite houses were on very friendly terms: Freddy saw a young man and his girl arrive arm in arm, and separate with a kiss and a wave in the lobby.

  ‘Hallo, old chap!’ came a voice just then. ‘You’re here, then. Come to see the fun?’

  It was St. John, in company with Ruth Chudderley, who wore the same aloof expression as she had during their previous encounter. She nodded at Freddy and went into the meeting.

  ‘Is it going to be fun?’ said Freddy.

  ‘Oh, tremendously so,’ said St. John. ‘We’ve a chap this week who’s written a novel about a working man who suffers a lifetime of bad luck and dies the most horribly tragic death. He’s hoping to have it published, and he’s going to read one or two excerpts from it. Then Trevett will be speaking, of course.’

  ‘Ah, yes, I saw they’d let him out of gaol.’

  ‘Just a fine as usual,’ said St. John, with a wave of the hand. ‘The subs generally cover it, although I think we’ll have to put them up soon if he goes on the way he has been lately. And we have our Austrian philosopher, Schuster. Rather a coup of ours, that one. He’s terribly well thought-of in Austria—well, he was until he started writing articles about blowing up the Schönbrunn Palace and had to leave in a hurry. Look here, it’s about to start. You’d better go and sit down. I’ll be speaking, so watch out for me!’

  He hurried off. Freddy entered the large hall and looked around. The room was now almost full, but he saw Miss Flowers gesturing to him from the back row with her crochet. There was a seat next to her, so he took it, then the meeting began.

  If Freddy had expected to discover evidence of a grand conspiracy at Clerkenwell Central Hall that evening, he was sadly disappointed, for the meeting turned out to be almost exactly the same as any other meeting of any other organization. First of all a man stood up on the stage at the front and gave apologies for absences, and announced how much had been taken in subscriptions the previous week, and how the Committee proposed to spend it. Then the minutes of the previous meeting were read out, and one or two motions of procedure put forward, which were debated briefly and voted on. It was all singularly dull—although Miss Flowers informed Freddy in a whisper that it was a pity he had missed last week’s meeting, which had mostly been spent in debating how the King was to be introduced, were he ever to come and address one of their gatherings, and, furthermore, whether one ought to bow to him. Things had become quite heated, she said—remarkably so, in fact, considering that the chances of the King ever attending an Alliance meeting were so remote as to be non-existent. However, since the Alliance had no objection to entertaining questions of a rhetorical nature, the motion had been allowed onto the agenda, and anyone who wished to speak had been given the floor. The meeting had ended at midnight, but only because the caretaker had come and threatened to call the police if they did not leave, and Miss Flowers believed—although she had not witnessed it herself—that some of the more impassioned speakers had continued their debate afterwards with their coats off in the public gardens behind the hall.

  Freddy expressed his sincere regret at having missed all the fun, but had no time to pursue the subject further for just then an interval was announced, and everyone rose at once. At one side of the room a table had been set up, behind which two women stood, serving tea at threepence a time. Freddy had already paid a shilling in subscriptions to attend the meeting.

  ‘For a political movement that doesn’t hold with money, they certainly know how to accumulate the stuff,’ he said to Miss Flowers. She chuckled.

  ‘Yes, they do, don’t they? Much more efficient than the Y. W. A. A. next door. They give their tea away for nothing, but perhaps they ought to take a leaf out of our book and start charging, because I’ve no idea how they keep the thing afloat. Eighteenpence a week I paid them—although the working-class women pay reduced subs of a shilling, and the poorest ones get in free if they plead hardship—and they still never seemed to have any money. I expect that’s because they spend it all on sending their saved women to the cinema and Southend. Either that, or somebody’s had his hand in the till. They’re not all as virtuous as they like to pretend in that association.’

  She nodded significantly and tapped her nose. They were now joined by St. John. He greeted Miss Flowers as an old friend, then turned to Freddy.

  ‘I say, come and meet the chaps,’ he said. ‘Trevett in particular is very keen to meet you. See that round little fellow standing next to him? The one who looks like a dog waiting for Trevett to throw him a bone? That’s Sidney Bishop, our treasurer. He’s common enough, but he has a tremendous head for money.’

  Ivor Trevett had a hearty handshake, a loud, resonant voice, and a tendency to oratory. He affected to be uninterested in the prospect of appearing in the paper, but Freddy noticed that his replies all seemed particularly polished—rehearsed, even—while his gestures and mannerisms were expansive and graceful. He wondered whether Trevett practised in front of the mirror ever
y evening.

  ‘That was an impressive speech you made outside the Tradesmen’s Hall the other day,’ he said politely. ‘It seemed to be received very well.’

  Trevett gave a booming laugh.

  ‘Yes, yes, my boy,’ he said. ‘One always likes to take the opportunity to speak to the man in the street. These meetings in private are all very well, but here one is already preaching to the converted, in a manner of speaking. If we truly mean to overturn the established order of things, then we must get out and mingle with the common people—out into the streets, among the working men and the middle classes—yes, even among those in high society who at present look upon us askance. One day they will come to accept that they, too, will benefit from a fairer, juster distribution of wealth, even if they do not like it at first.’

  ‘And how do you propose to achieve this fairer distribution?’ said Freddy with interest. ‘Do you think you can talk them into it?’

  ‘I very much hope so,’ said Trevett. ‘If it can be done through the power of speech alone, then I shall not be found wanting in my duty. Better to avoid violence if at all possible.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Freddy. ‘Speaking is better than fighting, as a rule. It’s just a pity the police at the Tradesmen’s Hall didn’t agree.’

  ‘I fear that arrest is a hazard of the job,’ agreed Trevett. He ran a hand through his thick, wavy mane of hair. ‘However, it shall not deter me, for I am but one man, and am of little importance when set against the prospect of the greater good. It is hardly a sacrifice.’

  ‘Ivor is such an inspiring leader,’ said Ruth Chudderley, who had come to join them. ‘So many men are not prepared to turn their thoughts into deeds. They are all talk and no substance, but Ivor is not a hypocrite. He has demonstrated time and time again his devotion to the cause.’

  ‘Very true,’ said Sidney Bishop, who appeared just as star-struck by Trevett as Ruth was, and in fact seemed to have no other object in life but to agree with Trevett’s every slightest pronouncement, and laugh uproariously at anything he said that might possibly be construed as a joke. ‘I have no doubt that one day we will see Mr. Trevett appointed to one of the highest positions in the land—perhaps even Prime Minister.’

  ‘Enough of that now,’ said Trevett to Bishop, as one commanding a dog, and Bishop subsided immediately, the picture of dejection.

  Two young men now detached themselves from another group and made their way towards Freddy and St. John.

  ‘Bother, it’s Peacock and Dyer,’ muttered St. John. ‘I suppose you ought to meet them.’

  Leonard Peacock and Ronald Dyer turned out to be two waggish types with a tendency to rag St. John. Since St. John was commonly known to lack a sense of humour, this only made them rag him all the more.

  ‘He’s a Cambridge man,’ explained Peacock, the taller and more talkative of the two. ‘I mean to say, was there ever an easier target?’

  ‘A sitting bird, in fact,’ added Dyer. ‘Why, he practically begs us to do it.’

  ‘Indeed. I ask you,’ said Peacock to Freddy, ‘is there anyone left in the world, from the smallest child to the most doting of elderly ladies, who would be such a chump as to fall for the old glue-on-a-chair trick? And yet you see before you a man who has fallen for it not only once, but three times at last count. Why, even Bishop here isn’t dim enough to be fooled by it.’

  ‘I’m glad you think it’s funny,’ said St. John crossly.

  ‘Oh, it is, it is,’ said Peacock, and the two young men burst out laughing.

  ‘Are you Oxford or Cambridge?’ inquired Dyer of Freddy.

  ‘Cambridge,’ replied Freddy. ‘But only briefly, I’m afraid. They developed an objection to me—on purely spurious grounds, I might add—and after some negotiation it was agreed that no prosecution would occur, but that I had no need of further education and might return to London as soon as I liked.’

  ‘Bad luck,’ said Dyer with sympathy.

  ‘But tell me, what are you doing here?’ went on Freddy. ‘I mean to say, St. John’s had the sickness for years and is quite incurable, but you chaps seem reasonably sane.’

  ‘Oh, come now,’ said Peacock. ‘There’s nothing wrong with wanting to see a more equitable society, is there?’

  ‘Besides, one meets all sorts of clever people,’ added Dyer. ‘Schuster, for example. A fascinating fellow, to hear him speak.’

  ‘Ah, yes, I’ve heard of Schuster. I’d like to meet him,’ said Freddy.

  ‘And you shall,’ said St. John. ‘There he is.’

  An impeccably turned-out man of about sixty with wiry grey hair was now introduced. Freddy recognized him immediately as the man he had seen emerging from the committee-room with Ivor Trevett, and regarded him with some interest. This was the man he had been sent to see. He put on his most respectful manner.

  ‘How do you do, sir,’ he said. ‘I know all about you, of course. I’ve read several of your works, in fact. Very intriguing, the way you look at things. I’ve never seen ideas presented in quite such an original way before.’

  Schuster accepted the tribute as his due.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, with only the slightest trace of a foreign accent. ‘It is true that my mind runs in a different way from that of most people, but I fear my ideas were a little too original for the Government of my country. They threatened arrest, and since I had no wish to spend my declining years in prison, I and my wife decided to come to London.’

  ‘Won’t they come and find you here?’

  Schuster gave a shrug.

  ‘It seems they have no further interest in me now that I have left,’ he said. ‘I was a—how do you say it?—a nuisance, under their feet, but now that I am the guest of another country they do not care. British Intelligence follow me around, naturally, but they are very polite. I know the English—it is not for them, the method of hitting a man over the head and making him disappear forever. If they want to put me in gaol, they will arrest me for leaving my car in the wrong place and then somehow forget to let me out.’

  There was something inscrutable about him. His manner was light-hearted, but Freddy could not tell whether he were serious or not. A woman now came to stand silently by Schuster.

  ‘Ah, but I beg your pardon, this is my wife,’ said Schuster. ‘Theresa, this is a man from the press, who has sympathy with my ideas.’

  Theresa Schuster regarded Freddy from under her lashes, and her mouth curved up a little at one corner. She was a dark, striking woman of thirty-five or so, much younger than her husband, and much more foreign-looking—Freddy might even have called her exotic. She held out her hand in the manner of a queen bestowing grace upon a favoured vassal.

  ‘Yes, I see he is a sympathetic one,’ she said in a voice that was as smooth as silk. ‘You shall come to our house one time. We have a gathering once a month—a kind of salon, yes? We exchange ideas and talk, and there is much music, and drinking, and laughter, and all good things.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Peacock, who was still standing close by. ‘They’re jolly good fun. If Theresa has invited you then you’d better accept. It’s quite a privilege, you know.’

  Schuster began to recount an anecdote about his days back in Vienna, and for a few minutes the attention of the little group was necessarily directed towards him. Freddy was listening too, but happened to look up just in time to see a glance pass between Theresa Schuster and Leonard Peacock when they evidently thought no-one was watching. The meaning was plain to see, and Freddy raised his eyebrows. Peacock turned his attention back to Anton Schuster, looking very pleased with himself, leaving Freddy to draw his own conclusions as to the real reason for Peacock’s devotion to the Communist cause.

  ‘Listen, I want to talk to you,’ came St. John’s voice in his ear, as Schuster finished his anecdote. He took Freddy to one side and glanced about furtively.

  ‘Fire away,’
said Freddy obligingly.

  ‘It’s about Ruth,’ said St. John, after a moment.

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘I mean to say, you’ve seen what a wonderful girl she is, so you can see the problem.’

  He looked at Freddy expectantly.

  ‘I think you’ve missed out the story, old chap,’ said Freddy. ‘What is the problem?’

  ‘Why, I want to marry her, of course!’

  ‘Yes, I thought as much. Congratulations and all that, what?’

  ‘But I need your help.’

  ‘My help? What for?’

  ‘Because she won’t have me.’

  ‘Won’t she? What is it? Is there something about your face that puts her off? I shouldn’t have thought there was anything particularly offensive about it myself, but one never knows with women.’

  ‘It’s not that. As a matter of fact, she says she will have me, but she won’t marry me.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘She doesn’t believe in marriage, you see,’ explained St. John. ‘She believes in free love and all that nonsense. Well, I can’t have that. I’m an honourable man. She shall marry me or nothing.’

  ‘But I thought you Communists were all in favour of the dismantling of the old systems.’

  ‘Well, but I mean to say, there are limits,’ said St. John indignantly. ‘I won’t let a woman ruin her reputation on my account. I mean to marry her and marry her I shall.’

  ‘I should like to see you persuade a woman to do anything she’s set herself against,’ said Freddy. ‘But why Ruth? She seems a nice enough girl, but I should hardly have thought she was your type. Isn’t she a little too intellectual?’