17 October 1940
The Dorchester, London
2230 hours
The Dorchester’s bartender approached Talbot as he walked up to the bar. “Ah, if it isn’t Mister Bell’s friend! What can I get you?”
“Good Lord, does Jack really come here that often that you automatically associate me with him?” The bartender merely shrugged his shoulders in reply. “No matter. Gin and tonic, if you please.”
Talbot fished inside his jacket inside breast pocket as the bartender mixed his drink; the barkeep soon placed the full glass on the bar. “Here you are, sir.”
“Thank you, my good man. Here, I have something for you,” he said, pulling his hand out of his jacket and holding its contents up. “A nice, crisp one pound note.”
“Well, thank you, sir!” said the barman as he reached for the banknote.
“If,” Talbot said as he pulled his hand back from the bartender’s reach, “you first answer a couple questions.”
He leaned on the bar. “All right, but make it quick! I have customers to attend to.”
Talbot pulled out a photo of Mr. Benson. “You recognize this fellow?”
“Yes, he’s been here before.”
“He was here a couple of weeks ago with a woman. What do you know about her?”
“A couple of weeks ago? That’s rather vague, can you be a little more specific?”
“The night that Vera Lynn was performing here.”
“I don’t recall seeing him...wait, yes, I do remember seeing him now that you mention it. Usually he drinks at the bar, but that night he went straight to a table and had the waiter serve his drinks, that’s why I didn’t remember seeing him at first. He was with a couple of people, one of them was a woman.”
“Brunette?”
“Yes.”
“Were the two of them getting...friendly, to put it delicately, with each other?”
“Now what’s all this about exactly?”
“This gent’s been going steady with a friend of mine. Thing is, she’s a blonde, and she’s also the jealous sort. Got the picture?”
“Now look,” he said, lowering his voice, “I don’t want to get in the middle of some lovers’ row!”
Talbot laid the banknote on the bar, reached back into his pocket, pulled out a money clip, and peeled off another one pound note. “Maybe this will make it worth your while. Remember anything now?”
The barkeep hesitated, prompting Talbot to peel off a third banknote. “How about now?”
The barman grabbed the cash. “She was on his arm all night, and he had his arm around her shoulder constantly. They may have kissed once or twice.”
“That wasn’t so hard now, was it? Thank you for the assistance, I’ll be in touch if I need anything else.”
“Wait, there’s more! I can tell you who she is!”
“Sure, why not? I’ll make it an even five if you do,” Talbot replied, peeling two more pounds off his wad of cash.
“It’s that girl Jenny, the one you were dancing with last time you were here.”
Talbot’s eyebrows arched. “What was that? Are you serious?”
“Dead serious.”
“Does she still come around regularly?”
“She’s here right now.”
“Where?”
“One of the tables by the dance floor.”
Talbot peeled off a five pound note. “Here, keep your mouth shut. If anyone asks, this conversation never happened.”
“What conversation?” the bartender replied, taking the note and walking to the other end of the bar.
Talbot quickly downed his gin and tonic and made his way towards the dance floor, doing his best to act as nonchalant as possible. Scanning the area, he spotted Jenny sitting at one of the tables with the same two friends from last time. He adjusted the knot of his necktie and approached the table; he walked halfway past the table before suddenly stopping and feigning surprise. “Jenny! I almost didn’t see you there!” he said, “What a pleasant surprise!”
She looked up at him, puzzled for a moment before recognizing him. “Geoff!” she said as she broke into a smile, “I wasn’t expecting to see you here tonight! How are you?”
“I’m rather well, thank you. Shall I sit down and talk, or should we continue the conversation on the dance floor?”
She stood up and extended her hand. “I thought you would never ask. Lead on!”
Talbot took her hand and led her onto the dance floor, where they started dancing a rumba. After several minutes, he leaned in close and spoke softly into her ear: “You know, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you since we last met.”
She smiled. “I must have made quite an impression.”
“Indeed. Shame you had to leave so early the last time though, things were just getting...enjoyable.”
She leaned in even closer and whispered in his ear: “We’ll finish this dance, then I’ll meet you in my office in five minutes.”
“Understood.”
The song finished, and Talbot walked Jenny back to her table. “Would you excuse me for a moment,” he said loud enough for her companions to hear, “I have to go say hello to some friends.” He walked across the ballroom, out into the lobby, and down the corridor, where he took up position in the last telephone booth.
Right on schedule, the door slid open five minutes later. “I see you did remember,” said Jenny as she smiled seductively at Talbot; she stepped inside the booth and shut the door, tossed her purse on the shelf next to the phone, then threw her arms around his neck, knocking him back against the wall as she kissed him. After a few moments her arms released Talbot, and she began unbuttoning her suit jacket as she continued to kiss him; Talbot took the opportunity to make his move.
“Jenny, before we...get carried away...I want to...ask you something,” he said during the brief moments when he could free his lips from hers.
She leaned her head on his shoulder and kissed him on the neck. “Try to make it quick, darling,” she said softly in his ear.
Talbot briefly winced. “Darling”? What the hell is that hussy getting at? Never mind that now, I’ve got business to take care of. He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled the photo out. “Tell me,” he said as he pushed Jenny off of him and held the photo up in front of her face, “what you’ve been up to with this man.”
Her eyes briefly widened as she saw the photo, enough for Talbot to take notice. “Nothing!” she replied, “I’ve never seen this man before in my life!”
“You’re not fooling anyone, Jenny, so stop insulting my intelligence.”
“Well, you’re not my boyfriend, Geoff, so I don’t see why it’s your concern if I’m doing anything with him!”
“I don’t particularly care what you’re doing with him. His girlfriend, however, is a very good friend of mine and she certainly does care. I’ve seen her angry before, and trust me, you’re lucky that I’m questioning you and she isn’t!”
“He has a girlfriend?”
“Yes.”
“You’re lying!”
“They’ve been going steady for over six months.”
“You’re serious?”
He raised his right hand. “I swear to God.”
“That bastard! Honestly, he never told me he had a girlfriend!”
“Of course he didn’t. If I were to go sleeping around I wouldn’t tell them that I had a girlfriend either.”
“Sleeping around? Is that the kind of girl you take me for? I’ll have you know that I never did anything with Joshua that I haven’t done with you, I have my morals! Besides, he acted like a proper gentleman and knows how to treat a lady, which is more than I can say for that disgusting foreigner he was with!”
“What foreigner?”
“I don’t know, he said it was a Swiss business partner or something. The man was a bloody pervert, he offered me a hundred quid to put out for him!”
“Wait, what? Hold on, I think you’d best start over from the beginning. How did you meet Benson in the first place?”
“Fine,” she said, fishing a cigarette from her purse. “Get your fancy Yankee lighter out and we’ll talk.” Talbot pulled his Zippo out and lit Jenny’s cigarette; taking a long draw on it, she blew out a large cloud of smoke and started talking: “I first met Josh here a few months ago. He was a nice chap, buying me drinks and just sitting with me and talking. After a couple weeks of that, he told me that he couldn’t come here at nights anymore due to his work schedule, so he started inviting me to lunch every week, and a couple of times he took me out shopping afterwards and bought me some things.”
“When did he stop coming here at evenings?” interrupted Talbot.
“I think it was around the end of June, beginning of July. Anyway, like I said, he was taking me to lunch and buying me things, just throwing his money around like it was nothing. Apparently he makes good money working at the Bank if he could afford spending all that on me, especially when he even made it a point to say that we weren’t going steady or anything, that we’re just friends.”
“So this has been a regular occurrence for the past few months?”
“Yes.”
“All right. Now tell me about the other week.”
“Well, seeing as how I’m here all the time I managed to find out that Vera Lynn was going to perform that night. I told Josh about it and said that I thought it would be good fun if the two of us went to see her sing. I mean, she’s a big star, it’s not often anymore that you get to see someone like her performing here. He really didn’t want to come, said he had to meet with some Swiss banker, so I told him to bring his friend along and they could discuss business after the show. They did end up coming, but it was rather odd, it was like they didn’t want to talk while I was present. Then that creep made a remark that he would give me a hundred quid if I were to go back to his hotel with him.”
“Then what happened?”
“I slapped him and stormed off! Then Josh came running after me trying to apologize for his friend, and he offered me a hundred to not tell anyone about what had happened. He said his friend was someone important, and if word of this got out he’d be ruined. He was really insistent about it, so I just took the money to make him happy, then Josh called me a cab and I left. Though it was rather strange, now that I think about it…”
“What was?”
“When Josh paid me, he said he took the money from his friend to give to me, that he figured I’d turn it down if his friend offered to buy my silence but I’d be more likely to accept it if he were the one paying me. Then he gave me a stack of one pound notes, still wrapped up like it just came from the bank. He literally gave me a hundred one pound notes! He said that it was the best way to keep people from finding out about it, since one pound notes could be spent easily without people asking questions.”
“So he paid you with the Swiss man’s money?”
“I believe so.”
“Sorry, but the fact that a foreigner is carrying a stack of money around like that strikes me as suspicious, especially when it’s still wrapped up. Can you remember anything else about the money?”
“I don’t know, let me think...the band that was holding the notes together, there was writing on it in some foreign language. I assume it came from Switzerland.”
“Do you still have the band?”
“No, I threw it in the dustbin when I got home. I have some of the banknotes with me though.”
“Let me see them, if you don’t mind.”
Jenny started fishing around her purse again, this time pulling out a wad of cash, which she handed to Talbot. He examined them: they were brand-new and sequentially numbered, and according to Jenny were apparently sourced from overseas. Alarm bells were going off in the back of his head.
He pulled out his money clip. “Jenny, I’m going to buy twenty of these notes from you,” he said, peeling off several five pound notes, “and assume a great financial risk. If my suspicions are correct, you’ve just made twenty quid at my expense.”
“What? Are you saying these notes are fake?”
“That’s what I intend to find out. But I must implore you, nobody – and I mean nobody – can know about this. Especially Benson and his friend. I trust twenty pounds is enough to buy your silence?”
“The bastard cheated me out of a hundred! Why should I keep quiet? I ought to turn him in to the police!”
“Absolutely not, you’ll do no such thing! If my suspicions are correct then this may be much worse than a simple counterfeit job.”
“What, you don’t mean...German spies?”
“I never said that, but if that is in fact the case then you can see why we’d be in grave danger if anybody finds out about this. Now, can I be assured that you’ll keep quiet?”
“All right, I won’t say anything. But you better know what you’re doing!”
“I have some contacts who should know how to handle the situation. You’re just going to have to trust me on this.”
“I don’t particularly like it,” she said as she put her jacket back on, “but I guess I have no choice.” She picked up her purse and turned towards the door. “I’ll rejoin my friends now, since you’ve pretty much ruined the mood!”
Talbot grabbed her arm. “Hold it! You’ve got to make it look like we were necking instead of having a conversation. Muss up your hair and smudge your lipstick a bit.”
“Seriously? Is that really necessary?”
“Would you prefer to take your chances that Jerry spies aren’t out there watching us right now?”
“Fine!” she said, turning around; he pulled a tube of lipstick from her handbag and began applying it, laying it on thick. “Come here,” she said to Talbot as she capped the lipstick and put it back in her purse; as he leaned in, she grabbed his shoulders and proceeded to kiss him repeatedly on his cheeks and neck, and once on his shirt collar for good measure. “There,” she said as she released him and ran her hands through her hair, “that should convince them. Now you keep up your end and try to rub those off with your handkerchief before you go back out there, can’t make it look too obvious.”
“I’ve half a mind to bill you for a new shirt collar!” Talbot said, pulling a handkerchief from his pocket as Jenny turned to leave the phone booth.
“You wouldn’t dare!” she replied as she opened the door; stepping out, she paused and turned back to face Talbot. “Besides, you know you enjoyed it!” she said with a mischievous smile, then closed the door as she left.