Murder by the Sea

Author:Lesley Cookman [Cookman, Lesley]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Accent Press Ltd
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Nineteen

LIBBY GASPED. ‘GOLLY,’ SHE said.

‘Do you know anything about him?’ asked Fran.

‘No, but I know about Mosley, obviously. Must have been famous, this Simon – what did you say? – Madeleine?’

‘Madderling. Yes, he was. At the time, anyway. I’d heard of him vaguely, but there’s a whole potted history of him on the net. You can look him up yourself.’

‘Hold on,’ said Libby, and typed the name into the search engine with one hand. Sure enough, pages of results came up.

‘If you go to the second site listed, you’ll see,’ said Fran. ‘That’s the one that mentions Jane’s aunt, but it looks as though this wasn’t made public until very recently.’

Libby, scanning the article quickly, said, ‘How did you come up with the connection to the house? I mean, does it say anywhere “Jessica Maurice, owner of Peel House, mistress of etc etc.”?’

‘No. I put in Peel House followed by Jessica Maurice and came up with various hits, but none together. It’s easy enough to follow, though, if you happen to want to know.’

‘And you did?’

‘Well, of course.’ Fran sounded much happier than she had for some time, thought Libby. ‘I knew there was something about that house, and this is it. I would bet that Madderling bought that house for Jessica during the war. I was also sure, and this is actually what I found out about Jessica herself, that she was some sort of government agent. Madderling disappeared in ’43, I think, and was never traced. The popular theories were that he’d been disposed of by the British government or the fascist fraternity.’

‘But I thought the fascists were all imprisoned during the war?’ said Libby.

‘Not all of them. The high flyers, were, of course, like Oswald and Diana Mosley and the members of the Right Club.’

‘The Right Club? What was that?’

‘Hang on – here we are – “The main object of the Right Club was to oppose and expose the activities of Organized Jewry”.’

‘Good God!’ gasped Libby.

‘That’s what Fascism was, basically. Extreme right. Anyway, you know enough about Fascism to know about Cable Street and William Joyce and stuff –’

‘Lord Haw Haw?’

‘Yes. Anyway, it turns out that Madderling was an MI5 agent who infiltrated the Right Club. There were others, Joan Miller for one.’

‘Who she?’

‘A former deb. There were lots of them working for the government in one capacity or other. From what I can piece together, she and Jessica were friends.’

‘So that’s why you think she was an agent, too?’

‘It seems logical, doesn’t it?’

‘Yes, it does. Jane doesn’t know any of this, does she?’

‘No, I’m pretty sure she doesn’t,’ said Fran. ‘I told you when I asked her what her aunt did and how did she afford the house, she said she’d never thought about it. She said there’d been some talk in the family about a man during the war, but that was it.’

‘And this man was what’s-his-name?’

‘Simon Madderling.’

‘Well.’ Libby sat back in her chair and drummed her fingers on the table. ‘That’s all very

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