The connection was cut before Joe could protest or question.
Joe was thoughtful. Earlier in the day, Sir Nevil had been accepting but disapproving of the pressure put on them to close the case. Now Joe would have said he was eager to connive in the official clampdown. Something was going on that he was not being told about. He sighed. What to do? Give in and go along with the theories being cooked up?
Beatrice and Audrey. He had looked into two dead faces in the space of two days. He felt the weight of two albatrosses around his neck and sighed.
He was on his own. He could call on help from no one. Tilly and Bill had been discharged from the case and were heaven knows where by now. Cottingham would have to be informed by note that he was to do no further work. Cottingham. Perhaps not quite on his own, yet. There was an envelope lying on his desk addressed to him in Ralph’s hand.
Inside was a sheet dated and headed ‘Informal (underlined) notes for the attentn. of Comm. Sandilands.’ Below this were further confirmatory notes of times and locations of various guests around the hotel on the night of the murder. A follow-up interview with the lift operator revealed nothing new. The inspector had even swabbed the interior of the lift but failed to find bloodstains. The maids’ trolleys were equally clear of blood traces – Sir Nevil would not be pleased! – and the hotel laundry turned up nothing but the usual assortment of human effluvia. ‘Nose bleed in Room 318 duly verified,’ Cottingham had added carefully.
Joe turned at last to Donovan’s alibi. Just as he had told them, the boot-boy had conveniently spent the vital hour with him in his office. Cottingham had put a note in the margin: ‘Give me ten minutes and an extra fiver on expenses and I could break this. Something tells me the rogue Donovan would have a spare alibi up his sleeve, however. Shall I pursue it?’
He went on: ‘Work pattern. Employment not as implied by D. Very much a part-time job. Manager reveals his real work is with the Marconi Company. On leaving navy, he joined this wireless firm. Many did when guns fell silent. The manager of the Marconi Co. confirms that D. works for them in their electronics research department. Does the expression “thermionic valve” mean anything to you, sir? They say this is a full-time 9–5 job but the subject insists on taking time off at irregular intervals. He has a dependent relative who needs his support. (Ho! Ho!) The firm goes along with this because he’s apparently invaluable. A whizz with the wires or air waves or whatever they use nowadays. If he’s moonlighting at the Ritz he’s a busy boy! But he probably still puts in fewer hours than us, wouldn’t you say?’
Joe looked wearily at his watch. Half past one. He could have been doing a smoochy tango with Tilly. Joe suppressed the thought and read on.
On a separate sheet were notes hastily handwritten in pencil. The heading this time was ‘At the Admiralty’. The information had, Cottingham declared, come from a fellow Old Harrovian who owed him a favour. ‘Nothing questionable about this,’ he had put in the margin and, keel-hauling his maritime metaphors, ‘all guaranteed above-board and Bristol fashion!’
‘All the info my friend was prepared to pass on is in the public domain. It’s just that the public wouldn’t have a clue where to look. He wished us luck with the case – Dame B. had many admirers in the Senior Service where they appreciate a spirited lady. Pleased to reveal all he could about D. Not popular! Seems to have jumped ship before he was made to walk the plank.’ Joe groaned and vowed to do something very naval to Cottingham if he didn’t get a move on.
‘Rose to the rank of Chief Petty Officer – that would be “staff sergeant” in our terms, I think. Talented wireless operator and very intelligent.’ It was Ralph’s next piece of naval gossip that caught Joe’s flagging attention.
Donovan had been posted to Room 40 at the Admiralty. In the war, the Royal Navy Code-Breaking Unit had employed a large number of highly qualified civilian men and women alongside naval personnel. Wireless specialists, cryptographers and linguists. It was thanks to their skills that Admiral Jellicoe’s Grand Fleet had had the edge on the German navy, presenting itself, unaccountably battle-ready, hours before the High Seas Fleet had left port on more than one occasion. If Donovan had worked for Naval Intelligence he was not a man to be underestimated. Joe was forming a further hypothesis based on this evidence and wondered if it had occurred to Ralph.
No longer ‘Room 40’, the Government Code and Cypher School, as it now was, had moved with its director Admiral Hugh Sinclair down to Broadway nearer Whitehall. Joe was aware that GC&CS used the resources of the Metropolitan Police intercept station run by Harold Ken-worthy, an employee of Marconi . . . Set up by the Directorate of Intelligence, the station operated from the attic of Scotland Yard. What had Nevil said? ‘. . . the people over our heads . . .’ Joe had assumed that he meant superior in authority but perhaps the reference had been a more literal one?