The Frozen Lake: A gripping novel of family and wartime secrets

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.’

ELEVEN

London, Pimlico

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.’

‘So he’s English?’

‘Yes, he’s English.’ Her voice was indignant. ‘As English as you and me sitting here now.’

David Pritchard was Welsh on both sides, but he knew better than to intrude any jot of his personality on the conversation. ‘I had heard, from one or two people I’ve spoken to, who know him, that his English doesn’t always sound up-to-date. That he uses some old-fashioned expressions.’

Mrs Sacker smiled. If that was all they had to go on … ‘It’s his way. It’s what they call an affectation. “Hand in hand with a statelier past,” he says to me. There’s some of the old ways he prefers, and why not?’

‘Not a foreigner then. Not French, nothing like that?’

‘French! I wouldn’t have a Frenchman in my house.’

‘You have had visitors from abroad. A Dutchman used to stay here, our records show. And a Mr Schiller, from Vienna. And one or two Irishmen.’

That was Special Branch for you, suspecting every foreigner of being a danger, and letting these communists get away with murder under their very noses. Only, if it was Irishmen they were after, then Mr Roberts had nothing to worry about.

Inspector Pritchard saw the look of relief in her face. He said nothing, but took another drink of his tea.

‘You’ve no business calling the Irish foreigners,’ Mrs Sacker said. ‘They speak the same language as we do, it’s not right to say they’re the same as Italians or Frenchies. And Mr van Hoek, he might have been English the way he spoke the language. He was in the cheese trade, over here to study our methods, he told me. I’m quite partial to a piece of Dutch cheese, myself, I like a cheese that always tastes the same.’

Inspector Pritchard nodded in agreement, although he would as soon eat a piece of India rubber as Edam. ‘I take it you’re sure Mr Roberts didn’t come from Ireland.’

‘Quite sure, and just to show you he’s English, I’ve seen his passport, which he keeps in the top drawer in his room.’

‘He’s away at the moment, isn’t he?’

‘He is, visiting friends for Christmas, as are millions of other perfectly respectable English people.’

‘Might I have a look at this drawer? See if this passport’s there?’

‘You might not. Not without you’ve got a warrant. But I can set your mind at rest, it’s there all right, for I took up a pile of his laundry only this morning and put his handkerchiefs away in that very drawer, and his passport is there. So he hasn’t done a flit.’

‘Now, why should you think for a moment that we’d suspect him of leaving the country?’

She got up from the table and went to the range to move the large kettle an inch or so to one side. Her bearing was rigid, an effect enhanced by the straight grey dress she wore unfashionably long. Inspector Pritchard guessed that her corsets were inflexible and firmly fastened, although he didn’t know why she bothered, bony types like her hardly needed to cage themselves in whalebone since they came ready stiffened.

‘If you don’t, why do you want to know if he’s got his passport with him?’

‘Do you have Mr Roberts’s current address?’

‘I do not.’

‘You won’t be forwarding any mail to him?’

‘I shan’t.’ Her mouth snapped shut on the words.

Was that because she was keeping his post for him, or because he received no letters? ‘We have information leading us to believe that Mr Roberts is involved with the fascist movement.’

‘It’s no crime to be a fascist, not that I ever heard.’

‘A man’s politics are his own business, I agree with that, but when politics spill over into violence, then it becomes a police affair.’

‘Violence? Mr Roberts? Get along with you. I’d know if he’d been up to any violence, and he never has, and that’s the truth.’

‘I’m not accusing Mr Roberts of any violent act, but the movement he belongs to is happy to use any means, including violence, to achieve its ends.’

‘So you say. I don’t see your lot stepping in to stop the Reds getting up to mischief. And it’s people like you going on about Spain and Hitler that stir up trouble. A citizen of any country that’s keen to keep those Bolsheviks at bay deserves our support.’

Inspector Pritchard got up. ‘You can’t even help us by telling me whereabouts he’s gone visiting? Would it be to the country or to another town?’

‘He’s gone to the south coast, I believe,’ she said, her refined accents now firmly back in place. ‘I’ll show you out.’

His superior listened to the account of Inspector Pritchard’s visit. ‘It bears out what we’ve heard about Mrs Sacker’s sympathies. Do we have anything on her?’

‘Only that her late husband’s name was Säckler, not Sacker, and that he was a naturalised Austrian.’

‘Ah. Do you think Roberts bears further investigation?’

‘I think we should still keep an eye on him.’

‘Difficult, if we don’t know where he’s gone. Do you believe he’s at the south coast?’

‘Not for a moment. Not unless they’ve had a heavy snowfall in Hastings that I haven’t heard about. I saw a tin of wax in her kitchen, and it’s the same kind my youngest son uses on his skating boots when he goes off on these winter sports trips of his. Now, sir, where can you skate without leaving the country? Barring ice rinks, which I don’t feel is where he’s spending his holiday.’

‘This winter, almost anywhere in the north where there are lakes.’

‘Exactly. It could be Scotland, it could be this side of the border. Only I did happen to see a postcard with a picture of Helvellyn sitting above Mrs Sacker’s fireplace. It might be from him, it might not. But he’s up north somewhere, I feel sure of it.’

‘He couldn’t have gone abroad, could he? He may have two passports.’

Inspector Pritchard shook his head. ‘No, I reckon he’s keeping his nose clean. I’d expect all his papers to be in perfect order, without any funny business. We’re dealing with a real professional here, no question about it.’

‘I’ll leave it in your hands, then. Keep me informed.’

Westmoreland

TWELVE

‘Well!’ said Lady Richardson, as Perdita hurtled into the dining room. ‘Is there a fire?’

‘Sorry, Grandmama,’ Perdita said as she eyed the sideboard. ‘I’m hungry, and I didn’t want to be late.’

Lady Richardson looked at her over a silver teapot. ‘You are late. I don’t know why, since you can’t have taken long to dress. You’re in breeches, I see.’

‘I’m going to the stables as soon as I’ve had breakfast.’

‘They seem very generously cut.’

Perdita pulled at the waistband. It was held in by a canvas belt, a necessary addition as the breeches were clearly several inches too large for her. ‘They’re Aunt Trudie’s. I can’t get into any of my jodhs. They’re all too small. These are long enough, only a bit big around the middle.’

Alix came into the room, kissed both her grandparents and joined Perdita at the sideboard. ‘Good heavens, Perdy, what are you wearing? You look a perfect scarecrow.’

‘Oh, thanks,’ Perdita said, going bright red.

Alix could have bitten her tongue off, as she remembered suddenly what it was like to be fifteen, when any adverse remark seemed like a monstrous criticism.

‘I didn’t put that very well. The breeches look as if they belonged on a scarecrow. You don’t look like a scarecrow.’

The damage was done. Perdita kept her head down as she dug a big silver ladle into the dish of porridge.

‘They are Trudie’s,’ Grandmama said. ‘Apparently the girl no longer fits into her jodhpurs.’

Grandpapa looked up from The Times. ‘It seems to me that Perdita needs more than the new frock or two we were talking about. Where does Trudie get her riding clothes?’

‘She has them made. Harold Simpkins, I think,’ Alix said, when Grandmama made no reply.

‘Very well. Get him to come and measure Perdita for whatever she needs. Can’t have her careering about the country in breeches that are far too big for her. People will talk.’

That was an old saying of Grandpapa’s, amusing because he had never given a damn what anyone thought about him or his family. Grandmama, now, she did mind about people talking. Not that she cared a fig for their opinion, but because to draw attention to yourself in any way was ill-bred, a failure of manners.

‘Lots of people get breeches from Partridges,’ Perdita said, glancing up from her porridge. ‘I could, too. It’d be quicker.’

‘Ready-made?’ said Grandmama. ‘I hardly think so.’

‘They mightn’t fit so well,’ said Alix. ‘They need to be comfortable for riding.’

‘I know that. I just don’t want anybody to make a fuss about it, that’s all.’

‘We’ve already established that your wardrobe needs an overhaul,’ Grandpapa said. ‘Go somewhere smart and get whatever you want. Tell them to send the bills to me.’

‘Perdita, go shopping for herself? It’s out of the question.’

‘I’m not suggesting she goes on her own. Alix can go with her.’

Grandmama’s face was a mask, her mouth inflexible. ‘Alix has no idea what is suitable.’

Alix bit back a rejoinder and kept her voice indifferent. ‘If we’re talking about buying off the peg, I don’t suppose it will be a matter of what’s suitable, more a matter of what one can find that’s the right length, Perdita’s so tall now. Lucky girl,’ she added, wanting to make amends for the unfortunate scarecrow remark. ‘There are so many clothes that look better if you’re tall.’

‘Just so,’ said her grandfather. ‘I expect it’ll mean a fair bit of traipsing around from one shop to another. Manchester’s the place to go, you won’t find anything suitable nearer than that. You won’t want to go to Manchester, Caroline, not at this time of year.’

He had her there. Grandmama hated crowds, and a busy city thronged with Christmas shoppers was her idea of hell. Alix turned her back on the table, and stalked along the sideboard, lifting the covers on the usual delicious Wyncrag breakfast. What a fuss about a schoolgirl growing out of her clothes. She piled her plate with bacon, eggs, sausages, tomatoes and mushrooms. She hadn’t, she realized, felt hungry like this for a very long time.

‘Surely a rather large helping,’ commented her grandmother as Alix sat down at the table and shook out a napkin.

‘Tea or coffee, Miss Alix?’ asked the maid, standing beside her with a heavy silver pot in each hand.

‘Coffee please, Phoebe, and lots of cream, if Perdita’s left any.’

Perdita finished pouring cream on to her porridge and licked the drop from the lip with her finger before passing it to Alix. ‘I’ll have it back when you’ve finished with it.’

‘You’ve had quite enough cream, Perdita,’ her grandmother said at once. ‘It’s bad for your complexion.’

‘Not that I’ve got any complexion to speak of,’ said Perdita. ‘Didn’t our mother used to be terribly sleek and smart? Nanny told me once that she looked like a picture in Vogue.’

‘Helena was a most elegant woman,’ Grandpapa said from behind his paper. ‘She paid for good dressing, and Neville loved to see her looking her best. “Buy yourself something pretty,” he would say, and so she did. Clothes, and jewels, too. He bought her some very good pieces, and it was a pleasure to see her wearing them.’

‘Helena was a married woman,’ Grandmama said coldly. ‘And an American.’

Married, good; American, bad, Alix said to herself.

‘Please pass the marmalade, Alix, and Perdita, do you really want toast as well?’

‘Yes,’ said Perdita, spreading a slice with a thick layer of butter. ‘I’ve got to keep up my strength for being out in the snow. Otherwise I might expire from frostbite and exposure, and be found a pale and interesting corpse in the ice.’

Booted, jacketed and with woolly hats on their heads, Alix and Edwin set out with the large sledge in tow. It was an old one that had belonged to their grandfather when he was a boy, and it had the extravagantly curved runners of its time.

‘What about the lower orchard?’ Alix said. ‘The bit where it slopes down almost to the edge of the lake, you always get a good run there.’

‘When we’ve put in a bit of practice,’ said Edwin. ‘We’ll be rusty to start with, when did you last go on a sledge? We’d be bound to have trouble with the trees. Besides, the fun there is shooting out on to the ice, and if we did that, we might get a soaking, it’s where the beck runs into the lake.’

‘Pagan’s Field, then.’ Alix put her arm through his, and they tramped across the snow in companionable silence, the sledge running smoothly behind them on the ice-crusted snow.

‘What’s up, Lexy?’ Edwin asked presently, giving her a perceptive look. ‘I heard you’d broken up with John. Is that true? You never wrote, and I didn’t like to pry. You’re such a prickly old thing.’

She gave his arm an affectionate squeeze. ‘Love’s the devil, isn’t it, Edwin? One longs for it so, and then when it goes wrong, it’s the bitterest taste on earth.’

‘Did it go so wrong?’

‘He upped and left me, you know. He was never happy about our having an affair, it affronted his conscience. He felt the purity of his soul was sullied.’

‘Oh, Lord. Why ever didn’t you marry?’

‘We nearly did, we were unofficially engaged, only he kept on saying that marriage was a sacrament and for life, binding body and soul now and in the next world. All pretty hairy stuff. He just couldn’t bring himself to take the plunge, not when he saw a wedding as a sacrament, not just an announcement in The Times and a morning coat and top hat and Mr and Mrs from then on and making the best of it, as people do. So, naturally, he was nervous about what would happen to his immortal soul if it all went wrong, as marriages often seem to. It’s all for the best, I know; we’d have been miserable together, the three of us.’

‘Three of you?’ Edwin stopped in his tracks and looked down at his twin in surprise. ‘Alix, what do you mean?’

‘It would have been a threesome, that’s all. Him, me, and his conscience. Not really room for us all in the marriage bed, you know.’

‘And his conscience pricked him so much that he left you.’

‘Yes, for a virginal creature of great perfection; no contest, you see.’

‘Anyone we know?’

Her laugh held no mirth. ‘The Blessed Virgin Mary, idiot. He’s gone into the church, become a monk.’

‘Good Lord,’ said Edwin, completely taken aback. ‘I don’t think I ever knew anyone who wanted to become a monk. A Catholic monk? Good thing you kept him away from Grandmama, you know how she is about RCs. Well, let’s hope poring over his conscience makes him really miserable. He wasn’t good enough for you. I’m glad to see the back of your dowdy old clothes, too. Was that a reaction to his going off for higher things?’

‘It was rather. I went a bit wild, generally. Don’t let’s talk about it, it still makes me feel dreadful. Talk about you. How’s your love life?’

‘Hellish, since you ask.’ Edwin stooped and gathered two fistfuls of snow, which he shaped and pressed into a ball.

Alix made another snowball and then began to roll it. ‘You do the body, and I’ll make a head.’

Edwin heaped up a pile of snow and patted it into a semblance of human form. Alix fixed on the head and gave the snowman a bulbous nose.

They stood back and regarded the stout white figure.

‘Not bad,’ said Edwin. ‘We’ll have to find him a hat.’

Alix cleared a patch of snow and prised up two black stones for eyes. ‘And a carrot from Cook.’

Edwin wound his muffler around the snowman’s neck.

‘You’ll be cold without it.’

‘No, I’ll be glowing with exercise, while this poor chap has to stand in chilly stillness. I’ll collect it on the way back, and we’ll see if there’s an old one lying about.’

‘He does look lonely. Should we give him a mate?’

Edwin laughed. ‘Why should he have all the luck? Besides, he mightn’t take to her. Tomorrow we’ll come and build him a twin, that’ll be better company for him.’

What a pair we are, thought Alix, as they took a shortcut, clambering over a dry-stone wall, passing the sledge over and sending it sliding on ahead of them. ‘Is your love life hellish because she’s walked out of your life, or because she’s a shrew, or because she’s already married to someone else, such as your best friend?’

‘You’re my best friend, Lexy. No, she isn’t married, nor a shrew, nor has she walked. She just doesn’t feel about me the way I feel about her.’

The one who kisses and the one who turns the cheek, just as it had been between her and John. ‘Have I met her? Do I know her?’

He shook his head.

‘No.’

‘Would I like her?’

He made an impatient gesture. ‘I dare say. How can I possibly tell? I’d like you to meet her. I’ve asked her up here, told her she can have the rooms above my studio for as long as she wants. Only she won’t come.’

‘Tell me about her. What’s her name?’

‘Lidia.’

‘Is she pretty?’

‘Beautiful, not pretty. She has the kind of timeless face you see in pictures, hers aren’t at all modern looks. She smiled, after we’d met. It went straight to my heart and that was that. Pierced, and bleeding, just like in the songs.’

‘Where did you meet her?’

‘At the Photographic Institute.’

Alix felt a spurt of jealousy; lucky Edwin to find a woman who shared his love of photography. ‘Is she a photographer?’

‘No, she was scrubbing steps.’

‘Edwin!’

‘She’s not a charlady, she’s a refugee,’ he said impatiently. ‘A musician, as it happens. Only think what having her hands in a pail of water all day does for a harpsichordist.’

‘A harpsichordist? That’s unusual,’ Alix said, not wanting to let Edwin see that there was anything amiss with her, although she already loathed this foreign intruder; who cared about her hands?

They had reached Pagan’s Field, a sloping expanse of virgin snow that squeaked and scrunched underfoot. The sledge was long enough for both of them to sit on it, and time and again they toiled and slipped up the hill, dragging the sledge behind them, and then flew down the slope. The run ended with a stretch of flat ground, through which one of the rivers from the fells meandered towards the lake. The rough grass there brought the sledge to a bumpy halt well before the frozen edges of the river, little more than a stream at present, that ran sparkling between undercut miniature cliffs of snow.