A Gentleman's Murder

by Christopher Huang

  “Pain and suffering, Mr. Peterkin? Is that all?”

  What did she want him to see? Eric turned to the first painting he’d seen, the armless soldier. He swallowed again, and stared into its painted eyes for a good long minute. They seemed sad, he concluded, but not despairing. It was that faraway, romantic sadness of a noble hero looking back over his journey. The buttons on the man’s uniform gleamed, and he held himself in a way that radiated pride and dignity. Mrs. Benson had painted the light striking his jawline at just the right angle to emphasise its strength.

  Turning around, Eric spotted a gold band gleaming from the shrapnel-scarred nude’s ring finger. The green eyes above were taunting, he realised, and the jaw was held in an attitude of challenge. And the expression on the mustard gas survivor was one of laughter in the face of loss. It was the survival of spirit, pure and simple.

  Mrs. Benson nodded. “You can’t tell a man to run at a line of rifles and then throw him away because a bullet’s taken off half his face. I wanted people to see. I wanted these men to know that they were still worth something. Some of them needed to be reminded. We didn’t get the difficult surgical work here, Mr. Peterkin—those men all went to Graylingwell first. The men who came here came to recuperate after they’d already been patched up and were quite sure they weren’t going to die tomorrow. And once you’re over that great anxiety, once you know you’re going to live, you start to wonder what your life is worth, without an arm, without a leg … without a face. People look at you, and that’s all they see. It didn’t seem fair.”

  Eric was studying the paintings with more of his usual curiosity. The pain and suffering were still there, but there was something more behind them. A hero did what was right, he thought, whatever the cost to himself.

  Looking further, he caught sight of a familiar face: Patrick Norris, grinning from another canvas. Norris’s teeth were whiter than in reality, and springtime glowed from the fields in the background. Mrs. Benson had captured quite accurately the essence of his laughter and love of life.

  “Here’s someone without a scar,” Eric said, picking the painting up. It was dated just earlier that year, in May.

  Mrs. Benson only laughed softly. “Some scars aren’t visible, Mr. Peterkin.” She stopped just a foot away from Eric. Their eyes met. “You must know that,” she whispered. “Nobody comes out of a war unchanged.”

  “I’m just as I was before.”

  “Are you really?”

  “Of course I am.” But even as he said it, a vision of no-man’s-land swam before his eyes, and the paintings around him faded into a reality of broken men, scattered by an exploding mine. He blinked to snap himself out of it.

  Mrs. Benson’s hand went up to his cheek, and Eric, afterwards, would wonder why he didn’t flinch at the familiarity.

  “I’d like to paint you, I think. You’re … not exactly handsome, no, but unusual. I saw the way you were looking at the photographs in the reception room and all these paintings here. You had this expression of such rapt fascination. I don’t know how that boyish fascination with the world survived Flanders, but it did, and … yes. I’d like to paint you.”

  “Mrs. Benson—”

  “Helen.”

  “I’m not sure this is appropriate.”

  Mrs. Benson—Helen—didn’t seem to hear him. She said, “I always wondered what Albert saw in Emily. The lure of the exotic, I expect.” Her expression hardened. “Albert had no business running off, trying to play the hero to her memory. I thought he’d forgotten about her by now. It wasn’t fair.” Tears sprang up in her eyes, and Eric guessed they were as much from anger as from grief.

  They were standing so close to each other now that he could smell the same warm muskiness he’d detected on the divan blankets. Helen’s hand had fallen to his collar, and now burnt against the pulsing artery in his neck. Norris’s portrait was all that stood between them. Cautiously, Eric lowered the portrait, then reached up to catch Helen’s hand and hold it away. Her hand twisted in his to clasp it and pull it towards herself. Eric felt reluctant to let go, though he felt sure it would be wrong to take advantage of her in her current weakness. She was a new widow: there was Benson’s memory to consider, and Eric understood very well how the pain of loss could lead one to seek comfort from regrettable sources.

  The soft crepe fabric of Helen’s black dress rustled against the stiff, starched front of his shirt. She moved to rest her head on his shoulder.

  Eric wasn’t sure what he’d have done if Avery hadn’t come barging in right that minute.

  “There you are,” Avery cried. “I wondered where you’d gone. The housemaid was just showing me around. There’s a cottage out that way, which she says used to be the groundskeeper’s cottage until this place became a hospital.”

  The spell was broken. Helen was Mrs. Benson again; she stepped away from Eric and said, a little too brightly to be natural, “Yes, the nurses were lodged there, including Emily. Women only, of course. They’d come up to the house by the path and come in through the west wing vestibule. This room here became the quarantine ward, for patients with contagious diseases. Before the War, it was the dairy; but of course, we don’t make our own butter and cheese anymore.”

  Leading them back out into the vestibule, she pointed out the adjacent dispensary, where the drugs were kept. It had whitewashed walls and a terracotta tiled floor, and its small square windows were positioned high and out of reach. The smell of disinfectant still lingered in the corners of the now-empty cabinet.

  They trooped back through the little room with the desk and the cot, which had been, as Eric suspected earlier, the nurses’ station and resting room, then continued back down the passage to the main house. They’d all slipped into pretending that nothing had happened in the studio—what had once been the quarantine ward—and that Mrs. Benson had only been giving Eric a tour of the house.

  Glancing back at his friend, Eric was sure that, for all his usual obliviousness, Avery hadn’t been fooled one bit.

  RETURN TO LONDON

  AS THE VILLAGE OF WEXFORD CROSSING slipped out of view behind them, Avery slid down in his seat and braced his knees against the dashboard, making himself comfortable. The air had crossed the line from merely brisk to distinctly chilly, and he wrapped his scarf around himself a few more times. Meanwhile, Eric was enjoying the cold blast of air over his head, which was boiling over with new ideas. The touch of Mrs. Benson’s—Helen’s—hand on his cheek still burnt, and he wanted more than anything to have the feeling blow away in the wind.

  “I hope you’re happy with the outing,” Avery said. “I can’t say I enjoyed it all that much, but I expect you’ve solved the whole mystery based only on what Mrs. Benson told you.”

  “And what I found in the old office at the manor. Yes, Avery, the things in Benson’s box must have all come from here. The medical report came from Parker’s file, the photograph came from Mrs. Benson’s mantelpiece, and both the scissors and the hypodermic kit were probably leftovers from the hospital. I don’t know what happened to them, though. That’s as much a mystery as anything.”

  “So where does that leave us?” Avery asked.

  “The disappearance of Emily Ang,” Eric replied. “Benson talked about righting some great wrong, and Mrs. Benson said her disappearance was the thing occupying his mind. If we know what happened to Miss Ang, we’ll know what happened to Benson.” He paused, thinking. “She can’t have got far, I don’t think. A Chinese woman out here in the English countryside would have stood out something awful.”

  “You don’t think she just ran off on her own, then.”

  Eric shook his head. “No. That wouldn’t make sense. So if she did disappear, it would have to be foul play: kidnapping or murder.”

  “Is it still white slavery if she isn’t white?”

  “Avery!”

  “I’m only joking.” But Eric shot him a glare to show he was serious, and Avery hastily apologised.

  “If it were wh
ite slavery,” Eric said, “she can’t have been the only one. There’d be other reports of missing women around the area. And if it were murder, someone might have found the body, though it wouldn’t have been identified. That’s the sort of thing that gets reported in the news. Avery, first thing tomorrow morning, we’ve got to visit the British Museum and search the newspapers. We’re looking for reports of missing persons and unidentified bodies discovered in the south of England. That should be good enough to be starting with.”

  “Oh, research,” said Avery dully. “My favourite. I don’t know why you bother. You knew this woman even less than you knew Benson. And speaking of Benson, I honestly think he was just asking for it.”

  “What do you mean?” Irrationally, Eric wondered if Helen—Mrs. Benson—had something to do with it.

  “His box, Eric. Box 13. An unlucky number, and it’s hardly a surprise what came of it. Frankly, if I were him, I’d have insisted on changing boxes immediately, and none of this would have happened.”

  “He didn’t have much choice. The vault was full—” Eric stopped. Wolfe knew that the vault was full.

  “What?”

  “Wolfe could have forced Benson to take whatever box he wanted by taking the last box and vacating it at the last minute! No, that doesn’t make sense unless he knew Benson would be wanting a box that evening, and could prepare for it.” The next mile was spent lost in thought, and then Eric said, “I have it. Benson said it was Aldershott who showed him how the vault worked. Perhaps box 13 was Aldershott’s, which he gave up to Benson because … oh, call it hospitality. A favour for the new boy. Whatever the reason, Wolfe guessed that the only person likely to have vacated a box for Benson would be the one who was actually showing him the boxes. And if he knew which box was Aldershott’s, he’d know which box Benson had.” Eric felt quite pleased with himself.

  “That’s one mystery solved, then. Don’t say I’m of no help to you. And how do you reckon Inspector Parker got in, or did Wolfe let him in after his own spot of burglary?”

  “Mrs. Benson’s scuttled my ideas about Inspector Parker,” Eric said, frowning in consternation. Parker’s leaving when he did meant he wasn’t involved in Emily Ang’s disappearance; but Parker’s removing her photograph meant he was connected to it somehow. It really was quite vexing. Eric did have one concrete lead, though, such as it was: the notepaper scraps from the Butterworth Arms in Chichester. If it came down to a matter of handwriting, the simplest thing to do would be to compare the note against written entries in the register at the Britannia. Everything else would have to depend on what he and Avery found in the newspaper archives, and what they said about Emily Ang.

  “You know, I don’t think I like her very much,” said Avery, interrupting Eric’s train of thought.

  “You never even met her, Avery!”

  “Not Emily. Mrs. Benson.”

  Eric fell silent. “War does things to people, Avery.”

  “That’s no excuse! If it brought out the ghoul in her, then that ghoul was always there to begin with. All those mutilated people! It was horrifying. And you! You were completely taken in by her. I expect she fed you some romantic twaddle about noble heroism, and you believed her.”

  There’s still a certain nobility in smiling through the pain, Eric thought. But Avery seemed to have slipped into a foul mood, and nothing Eric could say would rouse him out of it.

  Eric left a brooding Avery Ferrett at the Arabica before proceeding back to the Britannia Club. The last time he’d been there was Saturday, when they’d found Benson’s body. The police inquiry under Inspector Parker had just begun, and a general state of discomfiture was spreading through the air. He remembered that, coming out from his interview, he’d found the dining room empty and lifeless. Far from remaining silent in the background, a couple of attendants were whispering anxiously in one corner about the recent developments. Those who could leave had left, and those who could not didn’t seem to know what to do with themselves.

  None of that had quite departed from the Britannia in the time since.

  The soft clink of silverware was still missing. There were no diners tonight, and the smell emanating from the dining room was not of meat and gravy but of lye and disinfectant. Someone must have decided that Benson’s murder rendered the premises unclean, and ordered a thorough scouring of the public rooms. Perhaps it was simply for want of something to do. The waiters right now were lounging about, looking as much at a loss as the attendants that other day.

  Peering down the corridor to the vault stairwell, Eric caught sight of the cleaning staff—characters one generally never actually saw—scrubbing away at the wainscoting in Aldershott’s office. Ugly black marks blotted various surfaces, and Eric at first wondered if the fireplace had exploded and deposited soot everywhere. He soon realised, however, that this was in fact fingerprint powder. The police had gone over every inch of Aldershott’s office with the stuff, and the rest of the corridor appeared much the same. One often read of fingerprint powder, but no one ever told you how tiresome it must be to remove it afterwards. Eric could only imagine what the scene must be like down in the vault itself, or up in Benson’s room.

  Even Old Faithful, still behind the front desk, seemed a little more on edge than usual. “You’re a sight for sore eyes, sir,” he said as Eric came to sign the register. “I doubt we had more than a handful of gentlemen come in here today. No one rightly knows what to do, now there’s been a murder.”

  “It’ll come right again, Cully. It’s just been too soon, that’s all.”

  “I hope you’re right, sir.” Old Faithful heaved a sigh, then brightened up again. “Oh, and there’s a letter here for you, sir! From Captain Aldershott himself.”

  Eric took the cream-coloured envelope from Old Faithful with some surprise. The thick, smooth card paper was luxurious under his fingertips—too fine an article to be wasted on ordinary notes and memoranda. Eric guessed a polite social engagement was in the offing, and tore it open to see.

  Mr. and Mrs. Edward Aldershott

  cordially request the company of

  Mr. Eric Peterkin

  for dinner on

  Friday, the 31st of October,

  8:00 P.M.

  The address was in Mayfair, not far from Marble Arch and Hyde Park. Eric noted that, whereas his own name and the date and time of the event were handwritten onto blank spaces, as might be expected with an invitation card bought at the stationer’s, the Aldershotts’ names and address were printed along with the rest of the card. Evidently the Aldershotts gave dinners often enough to want a set of personalised invitation cards prepared.

  But why was Aldershott extending the hand of friendship to Eric now? No doubt it was something of a response to the recent upheaval. Eric looked around again at the listless waiters just visible through the doorways of the dining room, and the corridor blackened with fingerprint powder. Perhaps it was even something of an apology for words exchanged in the heat of the moment. Aldershott must surely have realised by now how right Eric had been in warning him against tidying up his ransacked office.

  Whatever the reason, Eric was happy to accept.

  He glanced up at the grand staircase and the painting of the Arthurian Knights on the landing. The lights were dim, and he couldn’t see his usual touchstones, King Pellinore and Sir Palomides. There really is nothing quite like a crisis to spark camaraderie, he mused. When the shelling begins, you don’t care who or what the next soldier is, as long as he’s watching your back.

  And speaking of shoving things about, here was a torn envelope shoved between the pages of the register. It looked identical to the one Eric himself had just ripped open, and it was addressed to Oliver Saxon.

  “Begging your pardon, sir, I should have caught that.” Old Faithful took both torn envelopes from Eric and deposited them in a nearby wastepaper basket. “Lieutenant Saxon does tend to leave things lying around when he doesn’t want them. Half the books in the reading room have his scr
aps tucked in them for bookmarks.”

  But Eric was looking at the entry right at the bottom of the previous page. Mr. Oliver Saxon, written in a textbook-perfect cursive, but for the curiously formed lower-case r in Oliver. Funny that such a slovenly individual should have such fine penmanship, but it was a perfect match for the notepaper Eric had found in the Sotheby Manor office. He took out the scraps of paper and laid them atop the register to confirm it. Yes, the handwriting was identical.

  Saxon, who supposedly had no personal connection to Sotheby Manor, had been there at some point on or after the twentieth of July 1918, with a special interest in Emily Ang.

  Eric remembered Saxon being manhandled up the stairs, and how the tension thickened the air when his eyes met Parker’s. Saxon had a key to the club’s back door and could come and go as he wished. There wasn’t any question, with him, of how he got in or how he might have disposed of any bloodied clothing. And Saxon was the only one with a reason to know that Benson might be found at the club that night. Why had Benson decided, at the last minute, to spend the night at the club rather than at Saxon’s? One assumed concerns over Wolfe’s proposed burglary, but what if it were really about Saxon?

  Perhaps, Eric thought, perhaps he’d read this from the wrong side around. Perhaps Parker had been a secret ally of Benson’s, and the two had followed the trail to Saxon. Who better to enlist in an investigation, after all, than a police detective?

  THE LONDON PAPERS

  THE GRAND ENTRANCE of the British Museum stretched across Great Russell Street, almost all the way from Bloomsbury Street in the west to Montague Street in the east. An Ionic colonnade reached around a wide plaza from a central neoclassical Greek portico; the pediment above, with its carved figures representing the progress of civilisation, proclaimed the institution’s position as a temple of learning. It was early in the morning, and harried academics—shabby, clumsy, and giving the impression of having just fallen out of bed—hurried up the front steps to claim a desk in the great circular Reading Room at the heart of the museum. A few early tourists in sturdy walking shoes were drifting in to see, perhaps, the Elgin Marbles, or the Egyptian exhibits, or any number of other relics of antiquity—and stopping just as much to see the museum itself. All of them looked a little lost and insignificant between the towering columns.