Elizabeth Edmondson - The Frozen Lake - A gripping novel of family and wartime secrets

The woman at the next table cast a frowning glance towards them, her mouth pursed up in disapproval. Her sons were listening avidly to the discussion about the American visitor, and she gave them a quelling look before starting up a very dull conversation of her own about whether the scarf she had bought for Uncle Bobbie would prove to be warm enough for such bitter weather as they were having.

After dinner, the solicitor bore Freddie away to the tap for a game of shove ha’penny. ‘I haven’t played for years,’ Freddie said.

‘Good, then I’ll beat you. Better than taking on the locals, they have a way with the ha’pennies.’

Michael wandered into the room that served as bar and sitting room, pipe in hand, and ordered a brandy. ‘And something for yourself,’ he added to the landlord.

He sat down in a settle by the fire, and the landlord joined him in a minute or two, a pewter mug of bitter ale in his hand. They sat in companionable silence while Michael lit his pipe, and then the landlord spoke. ‘We’re fair glad you and Dr Kerr were able to come, Mr Wrexham. We were in a way to being perplexed about those empty rooms. No trouble filling them, you’ll say, in weather such as we’re having, but we’d turned away two visitors, and it’ud look bad if you hadn’t come, and we’d got the rooms spare after all, for they were insistent they’d have the rooms if they weren’t taken, and I’d not be wanting them under my roof.’

‘Why, what was wrong with them?’ Michael asked idly, watching the smoke from the fire curling up the chimney.

‘If you’d seen them …’ The landlord pursed his lips, shook his head. ‘The moment they came in here, looking for me, I thought, aye, now, here’s summat to think about, and if these two men don’t mean trouble, my name’s not Robert Dixon. Very short hair one of them had. Nothing wrong with short hair, but there’s no need to look like you might have taken your own razor to your scalp. Bristly, I’d call it. That was the bigger of the two men. Although it was the other that did the talking. He had short hair, too, but more gentlemanlike, if you take my meaning. And a smooth way of talking. I fancied, just for a moment, that I’d seen him somewhere before, but the wife says no, that was just my imagining.’

He paused to take a good draught of his beer, and Michael sipped his brandy, more than half-asleep now.

‘The long and the short of it was, I said right out, polite, mind you, but definite, as how we were full up and likely to be so right to t’other side of the new year.’

Michael stirred himself, feeling that he was expected to express a proper interest. ‘So what didn’t you like about them, Mr Dixon?’

‘I’ll tell you what I didn’t like, and then you tell me if you think I did wrong. They weren’t wearing those uniforms that have been banned, but I reckon they might as well have been.’

‘Uniforms?’

‘Black shirts is what I’m talking about; they looked as though for two pennies they’d be dressed up in that uniform those Mosleyites like to wear.’

‘Good Lord,’ Michael said, waking up properly. ‘You mean you think they were British Fascists?’

‘I do that,’ the landlord said, pleased with Michael’s reaction. ‘I’ve seen some of those folk, in Manchester, and they’ve got a look to them I don’t care for. Now, you tell me this, Mr Wrexham, in my place, what would you have done?’

‘Oh, I don’t think I’d care to have a pair of fascists in black shirts under my roof, if that’s what they were, and I dare say you’re right. What on earth are they doing up here? It’s a bit off their usual haunts, I should think.’

‘They said they were up here for sport. Skating and that, the same as my other guests. “Toughening ourselves up,” one said. “And a spot of business,” said the other. Well, they didn’t look like men who needed any further toughening, and that’s a fact, and I shouldn’t care to think about what their business might be.’

‘So you turned them away?’

‘I did that. Which is why, as I said, I was that pleased when Dr Kerr telephoned us again, saying he’d take the rooms for himself and for you.’

‘I wonder where they went.’

‘Now that I can tell you. They’ve got rooms at Mrs McKechnie’s up at the top of the town. She’s not so fussy, she’d let to Old Nick himself if he could pay. Being a Scot, you understand.’

‘Well, well,’ Michael said. ‘Let’s just hope they don’t get up to any of their tricks up here.’

‘You can trust young Jimmy Ogilvy for that. He’s our policeman, and a right big fellow he is, too. I was thinking I’d step over to his house tomorrow and tell him about those two, he might like to let his superiors know what’s what. Just in case.’

Mrs Sacker knew at once that the man was a policeman. She also knew, before he showed her his card, that he wasn’t from the local police station nor from the CID. Even the most respectable London landlady came into contact with the police; if not questions about her tenants, then there were routine enquiries about residents, temporary and permanent, in neighbouring houses and streets. Landladies are often at home. They watch. They sum people up quickly – and shrewdly, if they want the rent to be paid regularly.

‘Two guineas a week my gentlemen pay,’ she told the dark-overcoated man as she let him in through the front door. No point in keeping him on the doorstep for watchful eyes to take gleeful note. One of your lodgers in trouble, is he, Mrs Sacker?

The man removed his hat and followed her down the stairs to the big, high-ceilinged kitchen. There was welcome warmth and a seat close by the range, and the offer of a cup of tea.

‘Only gentlemen?’ he enquired.

Her mouth pursed. ‘Only gentlemen. Women, however respectable, are a trouble. I mean, you expect gentlemen to be in rooms, but a lady? No, if she’s a lady, she’s at home. With her parents if she isn’t married, or living with a sister or an aunt. I don’t hold with women going out to work, I never have.’

‘Many women have to earn a living, Mrs Sacker, the same as the rest of us.’

‘Taking the bread out of men’s mouths. It’s one thing for a widow like myself to let out rooms, and look after a few gentlemen, that’s women’s work and entirely right. Hoity-toitying into an office and being paid proper wages like a man is quite another matter.’

‘I expect you’re careful about who you take on. Have to be in your line of business, and with a high reputation to keep up. I dare say your rooms aren’t ever empty for long.’

Mrs Sacker wasn’t deceived. He was trying to flatter her into helpfulness. Well, she was as ready to help the police in their proper business as anyone else, but catching criminals was their proper business, not creeping around asking questions about her tenants who were most certainly not criminals.

‘My gentlemen tend to stay. They’re well looked after and why should they move on?’

‘So how long has Mr Roberts been with you?’

Aha, Mr Jago was his target, was he? There was one person they wouldn’t get any information on, and for why? Because he was a gentleman who kept himself to himself.

‘Very respectable, Mr Roberts is,’ she said. ‘More than a year he’s been here now. He’s one that’s been brought up properly, you can always tell a gentleman who’s had a nanny and been to the right kind of schools. Everything in its place, that’s Mr Roberts.’

‘Doesn’t the army teach a man neatness in his ways?’ the policeman asked mildly.

‘It does and it doesn’t. Once they’ve been in the army, they’ll be careful, most of them, about keeping their clothes in good order, they like their shoes polished, put on clean collars, that kind of thing. But someone like Mr Roberts, you can tell he was at a public school. Take his hairbrushes. He’s got a pair of them, laid out on the dressing table just so. With his initials, JR, on the back, and a number below. Not an army number, only two figures, 44. That’s a school number. They all have a number at those kind of schools. In nails on the soles of their shoes and printed on the name tapes. Although you’d know it as soon as you spoke to him, he speaks like the gentleman he is, and he has lovely manners, doesn’t have to think about them, he’s been taught those manners since he could sit up. Course he has.’