“It was a long, hard road, Mister Boisjoly, but can we agree that we’ve arrived?” asked Ivor.
“We have,” I concluded. “Each of you saw a different Flaps Fleming — at different times and in different places.”
“Not I,” said the vicar. “I visited the major on numerous occasions in his home, and he regularly attended Sunday services.”
“Morning services, Mister Padget,” I pointed out.
“Well, yes… Oh, yes. I see what you mean.”
“Everyone who saw Mister Boodle’s lively interpretation of the role of Major Aaron Fleming at the Sulky Cow did most of their spiritual spadework in the evenings,” I said, “while the real Flaps was enjoying evenings in with my maiden aunt. Puckeridge is the only one among us to have met both Flaps Flemings, because he attended morning services. There he saw the major, but obviously made no connection between that retiring stranger and the extroverted hero from the pub.”
“But surely someone must have encountered both men in their true identities,” speculated Padget.
“And yet, they didn’t,” I persisted. “Owing to an historic feud, none of you ever visit Steeple Herding, and Mister Boodle spends most of the week in London. Cosmo, Mister Barking, Everett, and Miss Barnstable only ever met the man they thought was Flaps at the Sulky Cow. Mister Padget and Aunty Boisjoly only ever saw their Flaps Fleming at church or in his home, Tannery Lodge, where until very recently he lived the life of a recluse.”
“I fear that I still must differ with you, Mister Boisjoly,” differed Padget. “Mister Barking visited the major many times in his home, as did Mister Millicent.”
“Did you, Mister Barking?” I asked.
“Not as such, no.”
“No. And neither did Cosmo. Barking didn’t wish it to be known that he was making no progress on the statue of the hero, and Cosmo had similar incentive with regards to his book. Indeed, the fact that they both claimed to have been there and to have seen the missing war memorabilia was what convinced me that neither of them had.”
“What war memorabilia?” asked Ivor.
“Exactly. There wasn’t any. For reasons which will be made very clear in a moment, Major Fleming eschewed all documentary souvenirs from his time in France.” I once again held up my pamphlet on copyright law. “It was only when Cosmo saw this, with a clear picture of the man he knew as Flaps Fleming, that he realised the truth. Unfortunately for Cosmo, even then he managed to get the wrong end of the stick entirely — he thought that he was in a position to blackmail Mister Boodle into assigning him the rights to the life story of Flaps Fleming.”
“And this is what he told Everett Trimble,” guessed Ivor.
“It is. Until then, Everett could hardly believe his luck — Mister Boodle’s innocent appropriation of the fame of Flaps Fleming had lain the blame for his crime firmly on Aunt Azalea, but then Cosmo called him aside — no doubt enthusiastically, the poor ninny — to show him what he’d found.”
“It’s damning,” said Kimble. “But how does it prove that Mister Trimble killed Major Fleming?”
“He’s the only one who could have,” I explained. “Monty visited the pub on Christmas eve, where he met the regulars. Everett had long harboured resentment about his father’s suicide, but it was only when Monty told him that Flaps Fleming had, for his own safety, sent Sargeant Trimble back to England, that he was able to focus his ire. Everett is an impetuous, hot-headed man, with ten years of anger boiling inside him. He left the pub, he went to Tannery Lodge, he met the second Flaps Fleming and he expressed his dissatisfaction with the war effort.”
“The tracks in the snow weren’t from Tannery Lodge to the pub,” twigged Kimble. “They were the other way round.”
“Exactly,” I confirmed. “And by the time the snow began to fall on Christmas eve, Cosmo, Monty, and Mister Padget were in each other’s company, and in a position to alibi Miss Barnstable. Soaky Mike was left alone in the pub, but we know the tracks weren’t his, because — sorry Soaky — they were more or less straight.”
“But what about the fire? Who stoked it up on Christmas morning?” asked Kimble.
“Nobody did. Everett is impulsive, but he’s also a quick thinker. He put a frozen log on the fire — a practice which I note is common even here at Herding House — it defrosts and then finally begins to burn. It would have given the impression that it was placed on the fire hours later. To obscure the evidence of the extra ash, which we all noticed, and perhaps to give us something else to think about, Everett added volume one of the war diaries of Charles à Court Repington.”
I pulled over to the soft shoulder, conversationally, and allowed everyone to catch up in their own time. Alice and the kitchen maid were laying a generous sideboard of roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, steamed root vegetables, roast potatoes glazed, I believe, in goose fat, and sherry gravy. To see us through the interim, Puckeridge distributed champagne cocktails.
Ivor happened to be standing next to Monty when they raised their glasses in season’s greetings, but then stopped before the champagne could do him any good.
“Hang on, Boisjoly,” he said. “What about Monty? He knew the real Flaps Fleming during the war. We saw them in the picture together at Tannery Lodge.”
I sipped my cocktail, for theatrical effect, before saying, “Oh, Monty knew that the man he met at the Sulky Cow wasn’t Major Fleming, but he didn’t expect him to be, did you Monty?”
“No, sir, I did not,” said Monty. “I was expecting something else altogether.”
“I daresay you were. This, finally, was Monty’s secret — he knew that the other man who survived the encounter with the Zeppelins that fateful evening in December, 1917, the man who moved directly to the Fleming country seat of Graze Hill and took up a solitary lifestyle in Tannery Lodge, was no more Major Aaron Fleming than Mister Boodle is. Isn’t that correct, Monty?”
“It is. I didn’t expect this blighter, though.”
“No, you were expecting, I think, Second Lieutenant Carwyn ‘Cardiac’ Rhys-Thomas, a man who had joined the air force to escape three wives and a mountain of debt. A man who, when he found himself the lone survivor of his entire squadron, with a bandaged face and his pick of new identities, became the wealthy, reclusive hero, Major Flaps Fleming.”
“Exactly so,” said Monty. “Wasn’t bothered by it, you understand, only came by to kid him about it. Didn’t expect to get him killed.”
“Well, dash it man, why didn’t you say anything when he was?” demanded Ivor.
“I think that I can answer that, too,” I said.
“Well, of course you can.”
“Monty didn’t speak up for the same reason that he’s allowed Cardiac to live as Flaps Fleming for all these years — he has a second secret. Monty really is the spy of Dunkirk.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
The Twist in the Case of the Ghost of Christmas Morning
“A Bosch spy? In Hertfordshire?”
Nobody in particular said those exact words but it was a sentiment broadly shared and expressed. I held up a conciliatory palm.
“Not a Bosch spy,” I said. “A double-agent, acting on behalf of His Majesty’s intelligence services, to dazzle and confuse the nation’s enemies with false information.”
“How could you possibly know that?” asked Monty.
“You told me, Monty, when you said that you knew my father, and furthermore had fraternised with him in the VIP mess. Up to but not, notably, including the day he was put out of my mother’s misery, my father’s signal strength was his capacity for self-preservation. He contrived to see out the war in the offices of military intelligence, in Whitehall, where no mere fighter pilot would ever have made his acquaintance. You met him there when you accepted the daring and, may I say, heroic role of passing disinformation to the enemy under the assumed identity of the spy the Germans had placed in the Dunkirk squadron — the real Montgomery Hern-Fowler.”
“Okay, that’s it,” said Ivor. “You�
�re tight. Is anyone who they claim to be?”
“I think we have a full and frank census now, Inspector.”
“Well, if this isn’t Flight-Lieutenant Hern-Fowler, who is it?”
“I should have thought that would have been obvious,” I said. “This is Major Aaron ‘Flaps’ Fleming.”
“You are tight.”
“That’s as may be, but the real Montgomery Hern-Fowler is half-German. Spent his formative years skating on the Rhine and scaling the Zugspitze. This Montgomery Hern-Fowler doesn’t know the German word for dachshund which, by the way, is dachshund.”
“That doesn’t make him Major Fleming,” argued Ivor.
“No, it doesn’t,” I conceded. “I confess I’m guessing a bit now, on the strength of that photograph in Tannery Lodge. The man we thought was Flaps Fleming was second from the left, and in the middle was the man we took to be Montgomery Hern-Fowler. It seems much more likely that a posed squadron photograph would place the captain in the centre. However, it also explains why Monty didn’t reveal his true identity until he knew that whoever was going about killing Flaps Flemings was fully satisfied that he’d got them all.”
“But, where have you been since the war ended?” asked Aunty.
“I’m not at liberty to say, my dear,” said Monty. “But Anty is almost spot-on, but for an important point of posterity — Montgomery Hern-Fowler was half-Jerry, it’s true, but he was the double-agent, sending all manner of fairytale to Bosch command. When he died — fighting for England, I’ll have you know — I took his place. After the war, there was still work to be done, and it was best done in the name with which I ended the war. I’m retired from all that now, which is why I finally returned to Graze Hill.”
“And you wrote to Mister Padget to say that you were coming. He, in his dual roles of local vicar and community blabbermouth, let it slip to Cardiac, which is why he was preparing to up sticks. He broke off his engagement with Aunt Azalea, and he arranged with his solicitor to sign over all his worldly goods, or at any rate those of Major Fleming.”
“And that’s why he said goodbye that day in the pub,” mused Barking, wistfully.
“No, I recognise it’s a bit of a trial without a programme, Mister Barking, but that was Josilyn Boodle. You’ve never met Flaps Fleming.”
“Oh, right you are.” Barking brooded on this for a scant moment. “Then why did he say goodbye that day in the pub?”
“Because he knew he’d been rumbled, didn’t he?” I pointed out. “He’d been told by Cardiac that anyone else who could identify him was dead. But suddenly and without warning Monty appears. Not only did he know the real Flaps Fleming, he recounted that absurd ghost story and obliged Boodle to confirm it.”
“Just a bit of fun,” said Monty.
“You weren’t curious what had happened to Cardiac?”
“Only slightly,” said Monty with a shrug. “I knew that Cardiac was using my identity and that worked well for our purposes — if Aaron Fleming was in Hertfordshire he could hardly be working for British Intelligence. I was surprised when this chap turned up but, knowing Cardiac, I reckoned he’d sold the Flaps Fleming cover and moved on.”
“You thought he’d franchised your name?”
“Wouldn’t put it past him. He was a rogue, a blighted scoundrel with a history that would shame a Frenchman.” Monty looked hard into the fire, which reflected and danced in his eyes. “And he was one of the four finest lads I’ve ever known.”
Aunty Azalea slipped her arm into Monty’s and tipped her head onto his shoulder, and there was a general warm chumminess as we all looked at something in the fire.
“More champagne, please, Puckeridge,” I said. “And pour some out for the staff.”
More popping and pouring followed, and I took a position next to the Christmas tree.
“Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Flaps Fleming, hero of the hour.”
“I think that’s you, Anthony, if I may call you Anthony,” said Monty.
“If, as I suspect is the case, we are soon to be related by marriage, you may even call me Anty, if it won’t cause awkward moments,” I said. “But you are nevertheless the hero of the hour, or you soon will be. Miss Barnstable, I believe there’s something for you beneath the tree.”
Sally looked at me with the sullen suspicion with which I will always lovingly associate her, and then approached the tree. As advertised, she found an ornate, festive envelope with her name on it. She turned away and opened it, and then turned back to me.
“What’s all this then?”
“It’s the deed to Constable Kimble’s family farm,” I said. “When the real Aaron Fleming has signed it, which I feel confident he will do if he wants my blessing for his marriage, full title will fall to you both.”
“But, what about the Sulky Cow? I can’t leave Soaky alone in the pub.”
“Your father will doubtless want to be of service on the farm, what with you converting it into a bijoux residence for Hildy, my favourite cow. If you’ll just hand that envelope to Mister Barking…”
Sally took up another gift from beneath the tree. Barking stepped forward, accepted and opened it.
“It’s the deed to the Sulky Cow,” he said, as though speaking an unfamiliar language.
“What a relief,” I said. “I was afraid it might be another commission for a statue, or a shares offer on one of your visionary schemes, for neither of which, Mister Barking, have you any talent. Just as soon as Flaps has settled a reasonable market price on Miss Barnstable and Soaky for the purchase of their pub, you are no longer a blacksmith, sculptor, yo-yo hopeful and comically inept swindler — you’re a pub landlord, free to set the prices as you see fit.”
“I don’t know what to say.”
“Then say nothing, Mister Barking. Merry Christmas. It’s very much its own reward, I find, spending other people’s money. Talking of which, Mister Padget, I believe you’ll find under the tree a cheque for a very generous contribution to the Saint Stephen’s renovation fund, including a specific endowment for returning the clocktower to its original state, and budgetary surpluses for an organ, heating, a roof, or any other mad extravagance which takes your fancy. Will that satisfy requirements, Miss Barnstable?”
“Me? What have I got to do with it?”
“Ah, now we get to the dark, mysterious secret of the enigmatic Reverend Padget. He longs for you and Constable Kimble to marry at Saint Stephen’s, an eventuality which he hopes will bring together the sundered citizens of Graze Hill and Steeple Herding.”
“We’re getting married in Saint Bartholomew's,” announced Kimble, with the sweet, simple certitude of one who has yet to cross a wife’s better judgement. Sally crossed her arms and addressed him silently beneath hooded eyes. “I mean, if that’s what you want, of course,” Kimble added with judicious haste.
“It’ll be just like Romeo and Juliet,” I said, “without the emotive poetry of a suicide pact — apologies to those who haven’t seen it yet. Now, who’ve we missed? Ah, Inspector Wittersham.”
“I’m just happy to have this all settled.”
“Good, because that’s all you’re getting. Finally we have the stolid, solid, Mister Puckeridge, without whose expertise I would almost certainly have struggled with these baffling puzzles for another half day, possibly longer.”
“It’s a pleasure just to be of service,” said Puckeridge from behind a mask of perfect composure.
“Then you’ll be pleased to know that this is what the future has in store for you,” I said. “When the real Flaps Fleming has made an honest woman of my aunt and resumed his role at the centre of municipal affairs, this house will be positively shaking to the foundations with nibs and nobility.”
“Oh, yes?” Puckeridge glanced at the former Monty.
“Here and there, I suppose, once in a bit,” said Authentic Flaps. “The occasional Prime Minister, from time to time, can’t really be avoided, in my position. Edward, obviously…”
“
Prince Edward, sir?”
“For the moment.”
Puckeridge, finally, smiled openly, and swallowed his champagne in a single throw.
The morning of December 28, 1928 was cold and crisp and clear. Hertfordshire rolled away past the window of our compartment in gleaming, glorious blue and white. I was to miss the spellbinding charm of dairy country until a village derby of weddings planned for Spring, and until then I would reflect on my newly enlarged and rediscovered family, on Hildy the Graze Hill Golden, and on the terrible sacrifice of brave lads who died for me and my country and each other.
Vickers, who must always sit in the direction of travel or he forgets he’s on a train and is susceptible to anxiety when he looks out the window, was leafing through volume two of Charles à Court Repington’s war diary. At some point, perhaps ten minutes out of Steeple Herding, he raised his eyes and then followed my gaze out the window and to the skies. I had been watching Graze Hill, which was now a gentle, bucolic, white and evergreen rise on the horizon.
Above it, a heretofore unseen puff of cottony mist had formed, seemingly from nothing. Possibly it was an escaped bit of errant steam from the locomotive. But then, from within the cloud, sprung four biplanes — Sopwith Camels, I expect — flying in smooth, solid formation. They were war artefacts, clearly, and they bore battle wounds of torn fabric, bullet holes, and burns. The planes kept pace with the train for a few moments, and then banked, somehow upward, toward the heavens, and were gone.
Vickers and I shared the sort of look that two adults might exchange after having seen, say, a leprechaun. Vickers nodded, subtly, and returned to his book, and I to my musings on the mysteries and marvels of this world and the next.
The Case of the Ghost of Christmas Morning (Anty Boisjoly Mysteries Book 2) Page 20