Churchill hurried from the chamber and Conrad left also. He made his way to the Prime Minister’s room in the Commons and told a clerk there that Mr Churchill had asked to see him. Then he waited in the corridor. At one point he saw the Civil Servant striding rapidly towards him. Conrad bent and tied his shoelace. Fortunately, the Civil Servant was too preoccupied to recognize him.
A string of Cabinet ministers filed past him in glum silence. A short time later they emerged from Churchill’s room chatting to each other. There was a buzz of barely suppressed excitement. Whatever the Prime Minister had said to them, he had said it well.
‘Mr de Lancey. The Prime Minister will see you now.’
Conrad entered the Prime Minister’s spacious room where he was shown to a sofa. Churchill occupied an armchair next to him and lit a cigar. He looked worried. He jabbed his cigar at Conrad.
‘You have ten minutes, Mr de Lancey. Tell me more about this threat.’
So Conrad told him. About Sir Henry Alston and his plan to subvert the British government to concede its country’s independence to Hitler, without the British people even realizing what was happening. About how Lloyd George would become Prime Minister and the Duke of Windsor would become king. About powerful figures in the press, the army, the civil service and Parliament who would support this new government. About a Major McCaigue in the secret service who was in Alston’s pocket. About how Conrad’s own father had been sent to France to fetch the Duke of Windsor and had died on the way in murky circumstances.
Churchill puffed at his cigar thoughtfully. ‘It’s exactly what I fear most,’ he said. ‘A coup by stealth rather than by fascist mobs on the street.’ The cigar glowed. ‘What proof do you have that Lloyd George and the Duke of Windsor are involved?’
‘No direct proof. Just what I have told you.’
‘Do you know whether they are knowing accomplices? Or are they compliant dupes?’
‘I have no idea, sir,’ said Conrad. ‘My impression is that Alston keeps his plans very close to his chest. He likes to manipulate people if he can, rather than tell them openly what he is about.’
Churchill grunted. He stared at Conrad for a full minute.
‘Wait here, de Lancey,’ said Churchill. ‘I would like you to repeat all this to the Foreign Secretary. You have no reason to think that he is involved?’
‘None,’ said de Lancey.
Churchill summoned Lord Halifax. Within a couple of minutes the lean frame of the Foreign Secretary appeared at the door. He was six feet eight inches tall, very thin, with a left hand that took the form of a black clenched fist with a thumb on a spring. A birth defect, not a war wound. Despite the hand, Lord Halifax was a good shot, as Conrad had witnessed once on a grouse moor in Yorkshire.
His eyebrows shot up when he saw Conrad.
‘Do you know Mr de Lancey, Edward?’ said Churchill.
‘Indeed I do,’ said Halifax.
‘He has something to tell you,’ said Churchill.
Halifax frowned. ‘We don’t have much time, Prime Minister.’
‘I know that, Edward. But listen to him. Just for ten minutes. Listen to him.’
Conrad repeated to the Foreign Secretary what he had told the Prime Minister. Halifax listened closely, his face registering ever-deepening shock. Afterwards he asked more or less the same questions as Churchill had.
‘I find this very hard to believe,’ he said, when Conrad had finished.
‘Do you?’ said Conrad.
The lines in Halifax’s long face deepened. ‘Maybe not,’ he said. He stood up and went to the window, which overlooked the Thames. He spoke with his back to Conrad. ‘I find your father’s actions particularly disappointing. I know him… I knew him well, most of his life. We were at Eton together.’
‘I know,’ said Conrad.
‘I’m sorry about what happened to him. I would have said he was a good man, a great man.’
‘Except for this,’ said Conrad.
‘Yes,’ said Halifax. ‘You know we might lose this war, de Lancey?’
‘Yes,’ said Conrad. ‘But isn’t it better to lose it on the battlefield or in the Channel or in the air than in the back corridors of Westminster?’
‘That’s what the Prime Minister thinks,’ said Halifax. He shook his head. ‘What they are up to is treason pure and simple. I cannot be part of it.’
‘No, sir,’ said Conrad.
The War Cabinet met again at seven o’clock. Churchill told them of the enthusiastic reaction of the Outer Cabinet to his proposal to fight on. He reiterated that he was not in favour of making an approach to Germany at the present time.
He turned to his Foreign Secretary. Lord Halifax looked thoughtful. But he said nothing.
The conversation turned to whether and how to make an appeal to the United States.
It was decided. Britain would fight on.
Conrad stood in the square and turned back to look up at the Houses of Parliament, the place where his father had spent so much of his time over the previous ten years, and, if France fell, the one place where democracy would live on in Europe. Conrad had done all he could — he had persuaded Churchill and he had persuaded Halifax. It was up to them to deal with Alston and his co-conspirators and to fight the war to its end.
Conrad knew there was a good chance that the end might mean defeat for Britain. But after all the turmoil and confusion of the previous year, the prevarications of the phoney war, the loss of his sister and his father, and the imprisonment of Anneliese, there was one thing of which he was certain: it was a war that had to be fought and he had to fight it.
Hôtel du Palais, Biarritz
‘Dave, what did that Veronica woman say to you, when you were outside on the balcony?’
The Duke of Windsor glanced at his wife, who was trying on earrings for dinner. They were in the bedroom of their suite. She had made a point of not asking him about Veronica de Lancey, but she couldn’t resist any longer.
‘Oh, it was nothing, darling,’ said the duke.
That didn’t satisfy her. He should have known it wouldn’t. ‘It can’t have been nothing! Did you see how fast she bolted?’
The duke sighed. Time for a little lie. ‘You know how these young women can be? You would think that now we are married and with you actually sitting inside, she would have known better. It’s extraordinary! So I sent her away with a flea in her ear.’
Wallis’s eyes flicked up from the mirror. The duke knew she was considering whether Veronica de Lancey might be a ‘good friend’ from the old days. But she wasn’t, and Wallis knew it. She let it drop.
The duke left the bedroom and moved through to the sitting room. He lit his pipe and went out on to the balcony to watch the sea. He fished out the cable he had received from Sir Henry Alston in London the night before and quickly reread it.
Then he struck a match and lit the corner of the telegram, letting the ashes scatter in the soft Atlantic breeze.
Epilogue
Summer 1940
It was seven o’clock in the morning when the bell rang in Alston’s flat in London. He pulled on a dressing gown and went downstairs to answer it. He was still drunk from the copious amounts of whisky he had put away the night before when he had heard that Constance had been killed a week earlier in France, together with Lord Oakford.
There were four policemen at the door: two detectives and two uniformed constables. They were arresting him under Defence Regulation 18B. They asked him to get dressed, pack a few things and accompany them.