The Golf, Cheese and Chess Society Read online

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  One - Snow and Stone

  Two - Station X

  Three - Avalon at Ambleside

  Four - In-bye the Fell

  Five - Death so Damp

  Six - Cobbled Hearth

  Seven - Out of the Closet

  Eight - The Roundtable

  Nine - Musical Chairs

  Ten - Frenchman's English

  Eleven - Pearl of Wisdom

  Twelve - Code Mode

  Thirteen - Night Watchman

  Fourteen - Bump in the Night

  Fifteen - Marmalade Park

  Sixteen - Gate Keeper

  Seventeen - The Dead, Damp Dame

  Eighteen - Room with a View

  Nineteen - Scrambled Eggs

  Twenty - The Unmused Muse

  Twenty-One - The Chief and the Thief

  Twenty-Two - Cheese and Chess

  Twenty-Three - Turing and Knox

  Twenty-Four - Four Square

  Twenty-Five - XXXX

  Twenty-Six - An Ugly Scrum

  Twenty-Seven - A Tale of Three Murders

  Twenty-Eight - To Capturing Evil

  Twenty-Nine - Who Disturbs my Slumber

  Thirty - Heavy is the Night

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  THE GOLF, CHEESE AND CHESS SOCIETY

  Jason Blacker

  Copyright © 2017 Jason Blacker

  PUBLISHED BY: Jason Blacker

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  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be copied, reproduced in any format, by any means, electronic or otherwise, without prior consent from the copyright owner and publisher of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. All characters, names, places and events are the product of the author's imagination or used fictitiously.

  Editing: Andrea Anesi

  ISBN-13: 9781927623732

  For lovers of peace, may we never know war.

  ONE

  Snow and Stone

  SNOW and Stone was a quaint little pub in the town of Bletchley. Though in 1942 that was stretching the meaning of town to some degree. Those outside of Bletchley knew the Snow and Stone as being a quaint little pub in Milton Keynes. Milton Keynes being in the county of Buckinghamshire.

  Just as Buckingham Palace is not in Buckinghamshire, so too is Milton Keynes not named after the great poet John Milton nor the great thinker and economist John Maynard Keynes. You see, dear reader, there is a somewhat lacking imagination in the British constitution for the naming of people and places. Though of course this being a jest, from our small sample of two Johns and two Buckinghams you wouldn’t be faulted for believing it.

  But here we are at the Snow and Stone, a very far stone’s throw from London, even if Buckinghamshire does indeed butt up against London proper.

  The best way to get to Milton Keynes from London is to hop on the train in London and get off at Bletchley Station. But we’re not so much interested in getting into Milton Keynes as we are getting to Snow and Stone.

  From Bletchley Station you head south to Buckingham Road and you head west until you take a slight right on Church Green Road. On your right around 100 yards up you’ll find the Snow and Stone pub with its snow-white walls and red door. The red door we are told is to make it easier to find. Though why that would be is quite beyond us, for most of the pub’s customers are from Bletchley Park.

  Inside, a man sits at a small table with a woman. It is late, though they are not the last ones here. It is a cold March evening and the rain slides down the window outside like silvery snails. It is dark, and upon their table is a small oil lamp casting long shadows of his beer mug and her glass of wine. Both nearly finished.

  “Did you bring what I asked?” he said.

  She nods, and leans in.

  “You know I don’t feel very comfortable any more with what you’re asking.”

  He takes a sip of his beer. He could use another but this is already his third and he has important things to do tomorrow.

  “You’ve said as much before.”

  “Yes, but I thought you would have had what you needed by now.”

  “Listen,” he said, his voice getting a little tight, “this is for the greater good of the war effort. You of all people should know that.”

  She doesn’t say anything. She picks up her glass of wine and takes the last sip. She wants to believe him but she feels guilty about all of this.

  “It might be for the greater war effort, but really, whose side are we on?”

  “We’re on the winning side. The right side, and that’s all that you need to know. Think of Sebastian.”

  He shoots her a steady glare over the rim of his foam-specked beer glass. He downs the rest of it. It’s a large sip. He miscalculated how much was left. She stares back at him. She’ll not give him the pleasure of showing how intimidated she really feels.

  “You said you’d keep Sebastian out of this,” she whispers hoarsely, leaning in.

  “My dear, Sebastian has been in this since the very beginning when you signed up to bring me the information from the Park on a biweekly basis.”

  He turned his beer mug around so that the handle faced her. She was getting tiresome. But at least she was reliable and she was forthcoming with the information that he needed.

  “Let me just remind you,” he continued, “that Sebastian benefits quite nicely from our arrangement. That is, as long as you continue to do as I have asked.”

  “Yes, and how much longer must I be your little mole?” she asked.

  He smiled at her and leaned back against his chair.

  “Don’t think of yourself as a mole. Rather think of this as an opportunity to serve the greater good.”

  “I just don’t see how this can help the greater good,” she said, shaking her head wearily and looking across the room at two men. They seemed to be engrossed in a conversation. She didn’t think she knew them, but one of them seemed familiar in a long and forgotten way.

  She picked up her handbag that was sitting by her side. She pulled out an envelope that she’d had to fold in half, put it on the table and slid it towards him. He picked it up and put it in his lap before opening it and briefly flipping through the contents of it.

  “A little light on the information this evening,” he said. It wasn’t so much a question as a comment. She decided not to reply. “Listen,” he continued. “We shouldn’t be meeting here anymore.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because this is a clandestine mission and the fewer people who see us together the better our mission will go.”

  He’d called this meeting between the two of them Operation Cracking Eggs. He’d been quite happy with the name. Said he’d come up with it himself. She didn’t think it made any sense. But then what did she know.

  “Then where do you suggest we meet?” she asked.

  “There’s a little tea shop you can see from Watford Junction,” he said. “It’s called The Cream Puff.”

  “I only get one day off a week,” she said.

  “That’s all we’ll need. One day every other week. Two Sundays we’ll meet at 11am.”

  That was 9 days away. It seemed awfully early to be seeing him again. He saw the doubt creep over her face like worried lines. She wasn’t an attractive woman and doubt made her face even more forlorn.

  “This is in Sebastian’s greater interest,” he said. “He’ll be taking his School Certificate at the end of this year and you want him to do well don’t you?”

  He had a very soft way of making threats. It annoye
d her tremendously as you couldn’t argue with him for he’d deny it. He saw that he was onto a winning wicket.

  “As you know. Students are usually required to obtain their Higher School Certificate in order to attend university. Especially the preeminent schools like Oxford.”

  He was twisting in the knife. She could feel it.

  “But with the proper help, and if he does well enough, Sebastian could enter Oxford next year so long as he is seventeen and his SC marks are sufficiently high.”

  He paused for a moment to let the light of hope grow brighter in her mind.

  “I am the man who can dictate your son’s future,” he said.

  He had her and she knew it. They both did. So long as her son’s future was at stake she would bring him what he wanted, for as long as he wanted it.

  “And you want a good future for Sebastian, don’t you?”

  She nodded.

  “Good,” he said, smiling. “So do I. We’re just like one happy family.”

  He got up and put his hat back on his head. He looked down at her one last time.

  “Wait 5 minutes before you leave,” he said. “And don’t forget our next meeting.”

  “The Cream Puff at 11am two Sundays from now,” she repeated.

  He put on his hat and tipped the brim at her and then walked out the pub. She watched him walk out. And then she got lost in thought.

  She was in this predicament because her husband, though a good man had died, leaving a substantial debt of a few hundred pounds he had amassed through gambling that was now due. And the men asking for it were not taking no for an answer. In fact, they were more convincing than the man she had just sat at the table with. A man who had just gone by the name of Stan. That’s all she knew about him. Other than what she could tell by looking at him.

  He dressed well, he had deep blue eyes, he was tall and good looking and didn’t appear to be married. There was no ring on his ring finger to indicate otherwise.

  The bartender dropped a wine glass he was drying and the smashing of it upon the hard floor brought her back to the present with a start. She had an early day tomorrow at the Park. She got up and tied a scarf around her head. Like a fool she had forgotten her umbrella. At least her coat was warm.

  The bartender wished her a good night as she left. She stopped just outside the door under the eavestrough where it was dry and she could smell the clean rain. She lit a cigarette for the little bit of warmth it offered and stared into the dark night. No street lamps were lit. She would have to find her way home by her flashlight and the small stingy lights leaking yellow halos from the homes on her route back.

  The rain was steady and soft. She took a puff of her cigarette and fished out her government-issued flashlight. She turned it on and started off down the street. Her home was less than a mile away and she had made it in 15 minutes before. She pressed on in the rain, soft as the wet kisses of a baby, and that made her think of Sebastian when he was so much younger. Her life was worth nothing if she could not give him the best start he deserved. He was such a bright boy.

  She thought she heard a cough. She stopped under a tree which, in spite of its lack of leaves, all but stopped the rain. She didn’t look back but she stopped and listened for several long seconds. She could hear nothing so she started on again. A few strides later, once she was sure whoever was following her would have resumed she quickly glanced back. But there was no one there.

  TWO

  Station X

  IN the spring of 1942, Bletchley Park was a hive of activity in the quiet town of Milton Keynes. Much had been done to it ever since Captain Ridley’s shooting party had investigated its use in 1938. There was no Captain Ridley, of course, rather it was one of the founders of the MI6, formally known as the Secret Intelligence Service, Hugh Sinclair who bought The Mansion which was Bletchley Park with his own money for the purpose of secret intelligence work.

  Bletchley Park stood proud on land of 581 acres, though Sinclair only purchased 58 of those acres for the purpose he proposed. It was chosen for both its closeness to London and its distance. It was easy enough to get to London but far enough to be removed from the ongoing German bombing campaign of London proper.

  More importantly it was almost directly across from Bletchley Station. You know that already, but this is more important than you might have thought. You see, Bletchley Station is where the Varsity Line and the West Coast railway line meet. This allows for ease of access to the boffins at the universities of Oxford and Cambridge as well as ease of access to almost every major city in England.

  Pelagia Paterson worked there as one of the WRENS (Women’s Royal Naval Service) posted at what was the good ship HMS Pembroke V. She had a degree in mathematics and she was fluent in German, French, and Italian in addition to her mother tongue of English.

  Pelagia, or Pelly as she was known at B.P., had been married. Her husband, Squadron Leader Paul Paterson had died during the Battle of Britain in August of 1940. He was shot down by the Luftwaffe just past the cliffs of Dover. His plane and body were found years later in the Strait of Dover. He was an affable and patriotic man with a gambling problem, which as you know has caused problems for his widow. He had suggested she might like to work at B.P.

  Pelagia has a son, Sebastian, who currently resides at Rugby School in, of all obvious places, Rugby.

  Pelly leads a group of WRENS in translation in Hut 3, and she is personally responsible for taking the translated text up to The Mansion where SIS attempts to make sense of it.

  “Alright, ladies, we’ve got lots of translation to cover today on this shift,” said Pelagia to her group of 6. “I was told that overnight there has been a large amount of code broken and we need to get it done this morning as soon as possible.”

  She and her group were on the 8am shift which ended at 4pm. It was her favorite shift. But everyone rotated to make it fair. 8am to 4pm, then onto the 4pm to midnight shift, and then worst of all was the graveyard. The midnight to 8am shift. She’d just some time earlier relieved them and the girls all looked extremely tired. And that wasn’t the worst of it. Maisey and her group were coming back at 4pm to relieve them. It was their third week of rotation and that’s how it was, double shifts at the end of your third week. She didn’t envy them, but she didn’t pity them either. She’d be doing the same at the end of next week too.

  Pelly was given the more difficult German texts as her German was almost perfect. Better than any of the other ladies she worked with. It was sometimes difficult to know what they were translating. Very often the German itself was opaque and wrapped up in its own riddles. But that wasn’t for them to decipher. No, she was only required to translate the German into English, and if the Germans were talking about the weather or football, it wasn’t up to her to try and deduce the cryptic meaning of it related to the war. That was for SIS.

  Every hour she took what had been fully translated at that time up to The Mansion for the intelligence officers to make sense of it. That hour was now up.

  “How much have we translated?” she asked, walking around the desks of her group.

  “I have 3 pages here,” said Peggy, “about football.” She grinned as she handed the 6 pages to Pelly.

  Everything was in triplicate and nothing was to stay with them personally at the end of the shift. One copy was filed in the hut. Two copies were to be given to SIS up at The Mansion. Once, a woman had mistakenly put a copy of a translation into her handbag, thinking it was part of her notes. She no longer worked at B.P., and since that day, no notes, diaries or other written materials were allowed by the translators.

  “I have a couple of pages about beer halls,” said Margaret.

  Pelly went round and collected her 4 pages. She stopped at the front and looked out at her group.

  “Anyone else?”

  The other 4 shook their heads.

  “Mine seems to be a tome written by a German Tolstoy,” said Leander. The others laughed. Sometimes, and perhaps it was just as
a ploy, the Germans sent through pages of what seemed like nonsensical ramblings.

  “Alright, ladies,” said Pelly, “best behavior, and I expect to see those fingers flying over the keys like bumblebees when I get back.”

  She smiled at them and left the Hut, closing the door on them. She was well-liked by both senior staff and her underlings. She had been at B.P. for 18 months, stationed here right after her training at the Spy School as they had called it.

  The Mansion was a short stroll from Hut 3. It was just after 9am and Captain Daniel Hagues hadn’t yet arrived. He was one of the military personnel in charge of Hut 3. Usually his shift coincided with Pelly’s, but he was unreliable, and the upper brass either didn’t care or didn’t know. For a place that was shrouded in secrecy, the military’s handle on discipline seemed particularly loose. Pelly didn’t mind it. She and her group of typist translators worked better without his oversight. If nothing else, he was particularly enamored with Leander Cuthill, and that slowed down her work and everyone else’s.

  This morning was bright and cheery like Pelly’s mood. It was a cool morning and on parts of the front lawn leading up to The Mansion, frost clung to the grass like a child afraid to leave his mother’s hand for the first day of school.

  She delivered the translations to the second floor of The Mansion in a large room in the southwest corner. She was told it had been a bedroom when it was still a family home. Though it had been the biggest bedroom she’d ever seen in her life. And it wasn’t even the master bedroom.

  Everything about B.P. was cloak and dagger. The military guards that were spotted around The Mansion looked like ordinary men of the countryside. In fact, everyone was required to wear civilian clothes. Even the farmer’s family with whom she stayed had no idea what she did. Not really. As far as they knew B.P. was continually hosting the well-to-do taking a break from the war to visit the countryside. The rich did, after all, find war tiresome at times.