James Philip - Empire Day

Henry had not seen his daughter this agitated since he could not remember when. She had been marvellously combative in the interview at Hempstead; her mother would have been proud of her. The way she carried off her performance was a thing of beauty…

“The CSS has arrested the poor man’s whole family,” the young woman told her father, her tone of voice indicating that she thought he was being more than usually hard of understanding. “His son-in-law was killed resisting arrest at the Admiralty Dockyard, his daughter is in hospital under heavy guard. They say one son worked on the speedboats that crashed into those big ships, and the other two might have tried to crash their aeroplanes into ships in the Bay. One of them is still alive. You’ll never guess who was in the aeroplane with him?”

“This is true,” her father confessed dryly. “I’ll never guess!”

“Leonora Coolidge!”

“Who?” Henry Howland inquired patiently.

“The heiress, daddy!” Jennifer despaired of him. “Her father owns practically all the Hamptons and three or four of the biggest hotels on Long Island! Those Coolidges!”

“Oh… What on earth was she doing in one of those aeroplanes?”

It seemed like a reasonable question.

The daughter shook her head in frustration.

“I should imagine that’s what the CSS is asking her right now, daddy!”

“Yes, I should think so…” Henry Howland frowned. “You wouldn’t have thought that chap was the sort, would you?”

“Isaac Fielding?” Jennifer paused for thought. “Well, the CSS are continually telling us that you can’t tell that much about a book just from its cover.”

Her father pursed his lips.

They had both read Two Hundred Lost Years from cover to cover as part of their preparation for the scene in the police station. All their assignments were ‘scenes’ or ‘tableaus’ of a theatrical nature, nothing to do with real life. That was what had been so unnerving about the last few days even before they heard about the tragic events elsewhere that weekend.

“No, but you can never tell. Can you?”

“Daddy!” Jennifer snapped angrily.

“What, my dear?”

“ That man will be put on trial for his life.”

“Quite right, he deserves whatever he gets…”

“You were at his house when he was arrested. You were in the car alone with him for over an hour. We both spent several hours with him or observing him on the day other members of his family tried to kill the King!”

“Oh,” Henry Howland groaned, the penny dropping. “Oh, dear…”

“We could be called to give evidence at his trial!” This Jennifer impetuously said, out aloud, expressing what they were both thinking.

One way or another their career as well paid undercover – albeit dedicated thespian – undercover agents of the Colonial Security Service had just crashed into a brick wall.

Jennifer swallowed, dry-throated.

Her parents had been CSS informers most of her life, she had been one since she was a teenager and that had never been a problem.

Until now.

Now, everybody would soon know their dirty little secret!

HMS Lion, Upper Bay

“What happened to the lady?” Alexander Fielding asked. He hurt everywhere. That was new, the pain had always been localised all the other times he had crashed. Not that he had been in much of a position to do anything about it; the battleship’s 0.8-inch cannons had virtually chewed his Bristol V to pieces by the time it hit the water. He had no idea what had happened to the other aircraft. He assumed it must have been blown to smithereens.

“Your accomplice was only lightly injured. She was transferred ashore by police officers about an hour ago,” a man with one of those English, stick-up-the-arse superior voices said dismissively as if he was addressing a dog turd.

“What do you mean,” Alex protested feebly, ‘my accomplice?”

Answer came there none.

“She was my bloody passenger, that’s all…”

He must have passed out because the next time his eyes blinked open – not an easy thing because they seemed full of gunk – a stern-faced middle-aged woman in nursing apparel was standing over him taking his pulse.

Alex realised he had no idea where he was.

“You are in the sick bay of HMS Lion,” the woman informed him. “The ship you tried to sink yesterday.”

Whatever happened to the presumption of innocence?

Okay, so that was the way it was.

“The lady was okay?”

“Yes, cuts and bruises mainly. Unlike you, she was certified fit to be interrogated by the authorities on shore without delay.”

“Anybody wants to talk to me I’m game,” Alex insisted. “I’ve got nothing to hide. I tried to tip that idiot McIntyre into the sea. I would have if you hadn’t shot off one of my wings.”

He felt a beaker being pressed gently to his mouth, blissfully cool liquid wetting his cracked lips and tricking down his chin. Then he slept again.

“…I’ve got no time for traitors but if you badger this man I will have you thrown off the ship, do we understand each other Detective Inspector Danson?”

Alex would have sworn that the answering voice was feminine.

“I’m not here to ‘badger’ anybody, sir!”

She had brown eyes, a mane of red hair and she was watching him like a cat watches a mouse hole. Or at least that was the way it seemed to him.

The woman smiled wanly.

“This hasn’t worked out very well for you, has it, Mister Fielding?”

She had a Vermont accent.

Alex tried to focus on the warrant card she held in front of his face.

Detective Inspector M.R.D. Danson.

“What does the ‘M’ stand for?”

It was not the most original chat-up line he had ever deployed; beggars could not be choosers.

“Melody,” she explained. “My parents were musical. I’m not, probably because of all those piano lessons they forced me to attend when I was little.”

Alex guessed she was in her mid-thirties.

No ring on her finger…

She was dressed like a Long Island middle-class housewife but had not bothered with any of the make-up too many women plastered over their faces these days.

Putting away her warrant card she sat in the chair at the foot of the bed and went on studying the injured man.

“You were a fighter ace in the Border War?”

“I shot down five Spanish scouts, if that’s what you mean?”

Melody Danson shrugged.

“Tough guy, yeah?”

Alex would have shrugged but it would have hurt too much.

“Okay,” she sighed, drawing some kind of conclusion from the man in the cot’s silence. “I’m here because Surgeon Commander Coverdale, this ship’s chief doctor, is too English to tell me, a woman, to go to Hell. Just looking at you I know you are too badly knocked about for anything you say to me to be taken seriously in a court of law, even in the twin-colony. Not that this thing will go to court up here, the Governor will want to see justice done in Philadelphia. So, at least you’ll get a fair trial before they hang you. I’m told that strictly speaking treason is still a hanging, drawing and quartering offence but I think Viscount De L’Isle will probably stop short of all that medieval nastiness.”

“I’m not guilty of…”

“No, of course you’re not, Mister Fielding,” Melody Danson agreed. “But, when I tell you what you are up against you’ll have to admit that things are not looking good for you.”

Alex reckoned passing out again would be a good idea.

However, consciousness stubbornly persisted.

“This is the thing,” the woman went on, matter of factly. “I’m only on the case because my colleagues were just about bright enough to work out that either they let me work my magic on Surgeon Commander Coverdale, or they would have to wait a week, or maybe two, to interview then and by that time the big boys in Philadelphia will be all over this one and their day or two in the spotlight will have come and gone before they even got the chance to get their dancing shoes on. So, the next person you talk to will be, I suspect, a jaundiced, somewhat embittered senior member of the Colonial Security Service who once gave somebody the benefit of the doubt in nineteen-fifty-three and has been regretting it ever since.”