Douglas took it, and read it in silence.
‘Come on, Super, give us a smile. You’re wrong and you know it.’
‘The Major,’ said Douglas, speaking slowly so that he could think about it himself, ‘is a physicist, an expert on radioactive substances. He was a lecturer on nuclear physics.’
‘You’ve lost me,’ said Harry, rubbing his nose.
‘Those burns on the dead man’s arm,’ said Douglas. ‘Sir John didn’t mention those last night. Perhaps the little Major went there to examine them.’
‘From a sun-lamp?’
‘Not from a sun-lamp, Harry. Those burns were bad ones, the sort of skin damage a man would suffer if he was exposed to the rays that come from radium, or something like that.’
There was another knock at the door. The SS guard commander came to say that SS Signals wished to report that four new telephone lines were connected and tested. No sooner had he said so than Huth’s direct line rang. Douglas picked up the phone on his desk and said, ‘Standartenführer Huth’s office, Detective Superintendent Archer speaking.’
‘Archer – oh, splendid. General Kellerman here. Is the Standartenführer with you?’ Douglas looked at his watch. That Kellerman should be telephoning here at this time was amazing. He was not noted for his long working hours.
‘He’s in number three conference room, General,’ said Douglas.
‘Yes, so I understand.’ There was a long pause. ‘Unfortunately he’s left orders that no calls should be put through to him there. That doesn’t apply to me of course but I don’t wish to make the operator’s life too difficult, and there seems to be something wrong with the phone in the conference room.’
Douglas realized that Huth had given the phone operator the ‘direct orders of the Reichsführer’ stuff, and then left the phone off the hook, but he had every reason to help the General save face. ‘The phone is probably out of use because the Signals staff have been changing the phone lines.’
‘What?’ shouted Kellerman in shrill alarm. ‘At this time of night? What are you talking about?’ He changed to German and became more authoritative. ‘Look here. What is this about changing phones in my office? Explain what’s been happening. Explain immediately!’
‘Purely routine changes, General,’ said Douglas. ‘The Standartenführer preferred that Sergeant Woods and myself were accommodated in the clerk’s office next to his. This meant putting in extra lines for us and bringing our outside line up here – it’s usual to keep an outside number unchanged during the process of an inquiry…informants and so on.’
From somewhere near the General’s elbow there came the petulant murmur of complaint. It was youthful and feminine, and Douglas found no resemblance to the voice of the General’s wife, who had flown from Croydon to Breslau to see her mother the previous week.
‘Oh, routine, you say,’ said Kellerman hurriedly. ‘Then that is in order.’ He paused with the phone capped at his end. Then he said, ‘Have you been with the Standartenführer this evening?’
‘I have, sir,’ said Douglas.
‘What exactly is the problem, Superintendent? He never arrived at the Savoy, you know.’
‘The Standartenführer has a great deal of urgent work outstanding, General,’ said Douglas.
At that moment Huth entered the room. He looked at Harry Woods who was resting against the desk with his eyes closed. Then Huth looked at Douglas and raised his eyebrows quizzically.
At the other end of the phone, General Kellerman said, ‘Do you think I should come over there, Superintendent Archer? I can rely upon a loyal and conscientious officer like you to assess the situation.’
Huth had walked over to his desk and now stood with head bent towards the earpiece of the phone.
‘I’m sure that the General…’ Huth tried to grab the phone but Douglas held on to it long enough to say, ‘The Standartenführer has just come in, sir.’
Huth took the phone, cleared his throat and said, ‘Huth here, General Kellerman. What is it you want?’
‘I’m so pleased to locate you at last, my dear Huth. I want to tell you –’
Huth interrupted Kellerman’s greeting. ‘You’re in a nice warm house, General, in a nice warm bed, with a nice warm woman. You stay there and let me continue my work without interruption.’
‘It’s simply that my switchboard couldn’t seem –’ the phone clicked as Huth dropped the earpiece back on to its rest.
Huth looked at Douglas. ‘Who gave you permission to discuss the workings of this office with an outsider?’
‘But it was General Kellerman…’
‘How do you know who it was? It was just a voice on the phone. I’m reliably informed that your drunken friend here…’ he jabbed a thumb at where Harry Woods was blinking at him, ‘…can manage a fairly convincing imitation of General Kellerman’s English.’
No one spoke. Any of Harry Woods’s previously stated intentions to tell Huth straight about the decorum of having the little Major along to the mortuary had been put aside for another time.
Huth tossed his peaked cap on to the hook behind the door and sat down. ‘I’ve told you once, and now I’ll tell you for the last time. You’ll discuss the work of this office with no one at all. In theory you can speak freely with the Reichsführer-SS, Heinrich Himmler.’ Huth leaned forward with his stick and jabbed Harry Woods playfully. ‘You know who that is, Sergeant? Heinrich Himmler?’
‘Yes,’ growled Harry.
‘But that’s only in theory. In practice you won’t even tell him anything, unless I’m present. Or if I’m dead, and providing you’ve satisfied yourselves personally that my life is extinct. Right?’
‘Right,’ said Douglas quickly, fearing that Harry Woods was working himself up to a physical assault upon Huth who was now waving his stick in the air.
‘Any breach of this instruction,’ said Huth, ‘is not only a capital offence under section 134 of the Military Orders of the Commander-in-Chief Great Britain, for which the penalty is a firing squad, but also a capital offence under section 11 of your own Emergency Powers (German Occupation) Act 1941, for which they hang offenders at Wandsworth Prison.’
‘Would the shooting or the hanging come first?’ said Douglas.
‘We must always leave something for the jury to decide,’ said Huth.
Long ago Seven Dials had been a district noted for vice, crime and violence. Now it was no more than a shabby backwater of London’s theatreland. Douglas Archer got to know this region, and its inhabitants, during his time as a uniformed police Inspector, but he little thought that one day he would live here.
When Archer’s suburban house – situated between two prongs of the German panzer thrust at London – had been demolished, Mrs Sheenan had offered him and his child bed and board. Her husband, a peacetime policeman, was an army reservist. Captured at Calais the previous year he was now in a POW camp near Bremen, with no promised date of release.
The table was laid for breakfast when Douglas Archer got back to Monmouth Street and the little house over the oil-shop. Mrs Sheenan’s son,