The Traitor's Bones

by Evelyn James

  He appeared to be a man who cared deeply about others, whatever their nationality, but who resented having his patriotism and loyalty to his country questioned. At least, that was what he wrote in 1916; unfortunately, situations and people changed. Might Lound have altered his opinion? Maybe he felt that his religious calling overruled any loyalty he had to a country? After all, as a priest his fundamental function was to serve God and God was nationless.

  Clara was starting to think it was possible Lound had betrayed his country, not out of sympathy for the German cause, but for some sense of humanity she had not yet grasped. The real question was, why had he disappeared? And was he dead or merely in hiding?

  “You! Young lady!”

  Clara did not at first realise she was being accosted. When she did she stopped in her tracks and glanced over as an older man ran across the street. He narrowly missed being run down by a grocer’s cart, the horse veering around him just in time, causing the driver to swear.

  “You!” The man barked again at Clara.

  Clara realised the figure fast approaching her was Amadeus Lound and she braced herself.

  “I need a word, at once!” Amadeus demanded.

  Clara frowned at him.

  “I do not believe we have anything to discuss.”

  “We do and you will talk to me,” Amadeus was loud and people were taking note, though no was attempting to intervene.

  “What do you want?” Clara asked him.

  “We should…” Amadeus had started to notice how many people were nearby. His initial anger had forced him across the street, now he was feeling reluctant to speak out. “We should go somewhere private.”

  “I only intend going home,” Clara told him.

  She did not like the way he had yelled at her across the street and was not about to give him the opportunity to berate her in private. She knew very well why he was chasing her down. Somehow, he had learned she was investigating his son’s disappearance, more than likely through Colonel Matthews who seemed very keen to protect Amadeus’ reputation.

  “No, you will come with me and we shall talk,” Amadeus puffed up his chest, but Clara was not going to be bullied.

  “I have no intention of going anywhere with you after the way you have just spoken to me,” Clara told him coldly. “You can speak to me here, or not at all.”

  Amadeus looked like he might grab her arm and drag her away, Clara took a pace back from him and was ready to put up a fight if needs be.

  “Look, you…” Amadeus ground his lips together as if not sure what name to call her. He spoke low. “I know what you are up to and I will have none of it.”

  “What am I up to?” Clara asked him, not intending to give him an easy time.

  “You know,” Amadeus snapped, his eyes slipping from side-to-side, looking at the people walking past them. “This whole matter should be forgotten about, do you hear me? No more poking your nose in it!”

  “What matter?” Clara pressed him, feigning ignorance.

  “Don’t play dumb!” Amadeus growled and his voice had risen again, but he was not going to say the words Clara wanted him to.

  In that case, Clara would say them for him.

  “You mean I should stop looking into the disappearance of your son in 1917?” Clara said in a very clear and loud voice.

  Amadeus shook his fist at her.

  “Shut up!” He yelled at her.

  “I would have thought that any father would want to know what happened to his son and why he never came home,” Clara persisted. “Why have you abandoned your son, Mr Lound?”

  People had stopped and were now paying full attention. Lound glanced around him and his nerve went. There were too many eyes on him and his fear for his reputation was his weakness.

  “My son is dead,” Amadeus hissed at Clara.

  “You have proof of that?” Clara replied.

  Amadeus turned on his heel and stormed off. Clara watched him go and felt herself relaxing again. Amadeus clearly believed his son was a traitor and did not want his disappearance investigated for fear of what might be found. Well, tough. Clara was poking her nose in, she was going to root around and find out the truth.

  That is, as long as Emily had the courage to stand up to her father. If she asked Clara to stop, then Clara would. And that would really annoy Clara. She hated being pulled off a case, especially when she had just got her teeth into it.

  Chapter Nine

  Clara was not entirely surprised when Emily Priggins appeared on her doorstep that evening. She had been expecting her. Emily almost stumbled in through the door. She looked in a dreadful state and there was a nasty red mark on her cheek suggesting she had been struck. Clara took her through to the kitchen and sat her by the fire to warm her. She was shaking all over, but that might have been from shock.

  The second Annie saw the woman she knew there was a great need for a fresh pot of tea. Clara pulled a chair up in front of Emily and clutched her hand.

  “Your father?” She asked.

  “He knows I have hired you to investigate Christian’s disappearance.”

  Clara nodded. She had feared as much.

  “I think Colonel Matthews may have revealed us. I am so sorry Emily. I was trying to contact him about your brother.”

  “I understand,” Emily squeezed Clara’s hand. She had been sobbing, but had stopped by the time she had reached the Fitzgerald house. Now she was breathless and hiccoughing from crying.

  “Emily, if you wish me to stop…”

  “No!” Emily’s voice was so firm that it sounded just like Amadeus when he had accosted Clara. She suddenly saw that there was a lot of the father in the daughter. “You must carry on. I knew this could happen, I won’t be defeated.”

  “Good,” Clara smiled at her. “But what about you?”

  Emily’s head drooped. Despite her words, she looked at the end of her tether.

  “We have a spare room,” Clara said. “You can stay here.”

  Emily said nothing for a moment, then she drew herself up straighter.

  “I don’t intend to give my father the satisfaction of seeing me run away,” Emily replied. “In any case, I need to get hold of anything that relates to my brother from the house. I can’t do that here. I shall go home.”

  “That is very brave.”

  Emily snorted.

  “I am too damn stubborn to do anything else. More than ever I want this matter resolved and my brother’s innocence demonstrated. I want you to prove this stupid Colonel Matthews wrong, so I can throw that in my father’s face!”

  Clara hesitated. She was not certain Matthews was completely wrong, though the betrayal he and Amadeus Lound imagined might not be what really happened. It worried her that there could be a grain of truth in the accusation, just a grain.

  “I can only find out the facts, Emily,” Clara said carefully. “They may or may not prove your brother innocent.”

  “I appreciate that,” Emily said, though Clara was not convinced.

  She decided to change the subject.

  “I was going through your late husband’s file on Christian before you arrived.”

  Annie appeared with a hot cup of tea and a slice of fruit cake. She had discreetly cut off the edge where it had charred in the oven. Emily accepted both tea and cake.

  “Gerald was very supportive. He would have solved the mystery of my brother’s disappearance, if only he had had more time.”

  Emily fell silent, a new sadness creeping over her. She was a woman who had lost an awful lot in her short life and for reasons out of her control. Clara felt she was clinging to her brother’s memory as a means of surviving her grief for her husband.

  “Your husband confirmed my suspicions that nothing much was ever officially done by the military over this matter. The intelligence service does not appear to have delved deeply into the situation. I think someone covered it up, probably to protect your father more than your brother.”

  “Colonel Matthew
s,” Emily said.

  “I would imagine so. What is his link with your family? Why is he so determined to shield your father?”

  “I don’t know much about him,” Emily replied. “He and my father are old friends. From before I was born. I think they went to school together, but I have never personally met Colonel Matthews. I think if I did I would slap his stupid face, so it is probably just as well he has never come to the house.”

  “Your husband did as much as he could in England,” Clara continued. “After the official military records proved unenlightening, he traced the priests who worked with your brother. I shall follow up on them. It doesn’t appear that he had the chance to interview them.”

  “No,” Emily looked bleak. “His illness overtook him. He never was strong. The work you speak of took him months, and there is so little of it. He could only bring himself to work on the problem when he was well enough and that was rarely. The long hours at his office took their toll. When he came home, he was simply exhausted and could do no more. I understood that, though I know he felt awful about it, as if he was somehow negligent.

  “In the last weeks of his life, he became distressed that he could not complete the task he had set himself. I told him it did not matter, but he could not accept that.”

  Fresh tears trickled down Emily’s face.

  “At some point, this became about finishing my husband’s work as much as being about finding Christian. Can you understand that?”

  “Yes, I can,” Clara promised her. “I will do what I can to solve this mystery.”

  “And you will not let my father intimidate you?”

  Clara laughed.

  “Never! I think I gave him a fright anyway, he thought I was going to say aloud in the street that your brother had been accused of treason. Of course, I wouldn’t do that, as I don’t want to tarnish his memory. But if your father thinks I just might do something like that, all the better.”

  “Hopefully he will stay clear now,” Emily nodded. “Life is so complicated!”

  “Sometimes,” Clara agreed.

  They drank tea and ate cake until Emily had fully calmed down. Then she declared that she was heading home.

  Annie shook her head sadly once Emily was gone.

  “Some people are so afraid of the truth,” she sighed.

  “I haven’t said anything to Emily, but there are elements in her husband’s file on Father Lound’s disappearance that suggest he had a feeling there was truth to the rumours.”

  Annie looked surprised.

  “But surely Emily has read the file?”

  “I can’t say if she has, or whether she is so blinded to the truth that she overlooked the clues in her husband’s notes. Whatever the case, I think there is more to this than just nasty gossip.”

  “Have you ever thought about it, Clara, how a man might betray his country?” Annie asked.

  “I can’t say I have,” Clara shrugged. “I suppose I should now, but, well, it’s hard when you are in a time of peace and war seems very far away. It’s difficult to really imagine those desperate times. And I never was at the Front. I can only picture it in my mind.”

  “I think there are a lot of reasons someone might betray their nation,” Annie said. “I have been musing on it a lot. I think there is the obvious one – greed. Financial gain might be all some people require, they perhaps have no real links to their nation and no attachment to it.”

  “I don’t think that was Father Lound,” Clara replied to her. “I could be wrong.”

  “Another reason could be that the person feels an affinity with the enemy, maybe they believe in their cause more than their own nation’s.”

  “An ideological traitor,” Clara nodded.

  “Then, you might betray your country to save yourself,” Annie added. “I can see that being a very powerful motive. If you are surrounded by the enemy and the only way to live or avoid being tortured is to reveal some secret about your country, then I think it takes a very brave man to remain mute.”

  “You have spent a lot of time thinking about this,” Clara remarked, raising an eyebrow.

  “Making bread dough is an excellent time to let the mind wander,” Annie said with pride. “I have a final reason.”

  “Go on.”

  “Love, you might betray your country for the love of a person. Not necessarily a lover, but a parent, a sibling, a child, even a good friend. You might do that if your love for that person meant more to you than notions of honour,” Annie paused. “I would betray this country for you or Tommy, you know.”

  Clara smiled, that was a very personal confession coming from Annie.

  “Thank you, I hope to never put you in a position where you have to.”

  “Any of those reasons could explain what Father Lound did,” Annie said. “That is, if he really did betray his country. Do you think these rumours of treachery stem from the fact he disappeared?”

  “I guess so,” Clara said uncertainly. “They seem to have been spread after he vanished. Which brings us back to that fundamental question: why did he disappear?”

  “Was he murdered?” Annie clasped her hands together. “By this Colonel Matthews, perhaps? Then he spreads rumours that Father Lound is a traitor to cover up what he did!”

  “That might be pushing the evidence we currently have,” Clara almost laughed at Annie’s wild idea, but restrained herself. After all, she had uncovered far more bizarre motives for murder in the past. Nothing could be ruled out at this stage.

  “When I have more evidence, then hopefully this will all make sense,” Clara explained. “Hopefully.”

  “We are still going to Belgium?”

  “Most likely, unless Colonel Matthews is willing and able to tell me exactly what became of Father Lound. Which I doubt. I think he is going to be a hard nut to crack,” Clara winked at Annie before heading back into the parlour.

  Lying on the parlour table was Gerald Priggins’ file on Father Lound. As Emily had said, it was a thin file and it was obvious Gerald had not been able to devote much time to the effort. But what he had uncovered was troubling. Gerald had somehow managed to get cuttings from Belgium newspapers, remarkable for two reasons – that newspapers had been printed at that stage in the war when paper shortages were rife, and that they had survived. Gerald apparently had a contact in Belgium, someone who had access to wartime newspapers, specifically the ones produced for the town where Albion Hope had once stood. A handful of these cuttings had been about the founding of Albion Hope and events happening there. There had been a copy of the cutting about Father Lound conducting the town mayor’s funeral and another about an Easter party held at the house, where Lound was briefly mentioned for organising an egg hunt for the children.

  However, the cutting that had caught Clara’s eye had come from a newspaper printed at the end of the war. The slip of yellowed paper had been dated at the top in pencil – 1 October 1918. Almost a year after Father Lound had disappeared.

  There was not much to the article and it was all in French, perhaps the reason Emily had overlooked it – if she had read her husband’s file. The font was rather archaic and challenging to read. The title said simply – Body Found in Woods. Clara had transcribed the rest of the article into English so she could take better account of what it said. It seemed important as well as alarming.

  “Body Found in Woods. Yesterday a body was discovered in woodland by two local boys. The remains were badly decomposed and appear to have been there for some time. They had been partially buried, but recent rain had washed the upper soil away to reveal a skull.

  “The police attended with a local surgeon and the remains were fully removed. Apart from a few missing finger and toe bones, the skeleton is complete and appears to have been untouched by wildlife. It is believed the skeleton is that of a man, however, it has so far been impossible to identify the victim as there were no personal belongings with the bones except for a gold crucifix found near the neck and a rosary which appeared to
have been clutched in the deceased’s hands.

  “Death occurred due to a gunshot wound to the back of the skull and there is every reason to believe the individual was a victim of callous murder. Fragments of clothing revealed little and it is felt that unless further evidence can be found the identity of the man, and that of his killer, will never be determined.”

  Clara read through her transcript again. She could see why the cutting had been sent to Gerald. The body in the woods had the trappings of a priest and the only person known to have vanished without explanation from the town (as far as Clara knew) was Father Lound. The link was casual, admittedly, but it was worrying.

  And if this was Father Lound, it raised a variety of new questions. The bullet wound suggested an execution killing, the rosary in the man’s hands suggested he was praying or at least clutching them at the time of his death. The presence of the gold crucifix ruled out robbery as a motive. But no one appeared to link the discovery with the disappearance of Lound or, at least, so it appeared from the newspaper. Clara would need to find out more and she would need to do that in Belgium by questioning the relevant authorities.

  Unless Colonel Matthews really did know more and was willing to help her.

  Clara sighed. She had had enough for one evening. She tidied up the file and put it away in the box with the letters. Why would anyone want to murder Father Lound? A good question, but there were no answers to that in the box. She had a tiny window into Christian’s life from these letters and papers and that was simply not enough. There was too much she didn’t know about that period of his life in Belgium, when he decided he must vanish or, perhaps, someone decided for him.

  Clara gave up on the unanswerable questions for the time being. When she had the right information she would know what really happened to Father Lound. It was finding that information that was the tricky part.