She lay down and made a mental list of possible next steps.
1. Go back to Major James and fish for information without dropping Jonathan in it. Major James, who had written her the official version of Dan’s death.
2. Drop Jonathan in it. Jonathan, a man whom she had witnessed striving for justice in the case of the one-armed veteran, and whom Dan said was his friend—who’d told her a wildly different version of Dan’s death, but one that she was not allowed to quote from.
3. Seek out Anthony Dore. Anthony Dore, a man she’d never met, who wrote her a slightly different version of Dan’s death, and had been accused by Jonathan of actually being Dan’s murderer.
4. Quiz Jonathan, testing his story.
5. Go home and think about it.
She tried to sleep, hoping that when she woke she would have the answer.
The morning sky was gunmetal gray, rendering The Daphne drabber than before. In the bathroom down the hallway there was a pair of clean knickers sitting tidily on the floor in front of the sink. Philomena had a vision of the owner stepping out of them and leaving them there. Had she been alone? She had a sudden vision of sex with Dan. She didn’t chase it away. She let it last as long as it wanted then washed herself, thinking again about Jonathan’s story, about Jonathan’s character, about what she felt about Anthony Dore in advance of ever having set eyes on him. She told herself to guard against pre-judging him, then went out in search of some breakfast.
She re-introduced herself to Major James’ aide and asked if it would be possible to see the major for a few extra moments before she caught the train home. This was an untruth in the sense that it made it sound as if her train was imminent when in fact she didn’t intend traveling home immediately, but it wasn’t a downright lie.
There was a mirror in the waiting area. She saw that her eyes still displayed the bright dilation of the grieving and the scared. Everyone must be familiar with that look through the war, and now, in the aftermath. Big eyes in shrunken faces. The points of light on the tips of her irises were pronounced that day. She realized Major James was watching her look at herself, a wary look in his eye. Was he sneaking about or had she been preoccupied? He ushered her into his office. As before, she sat on the creaky seat and he perched on the front of his desk, but then she saw that he changed his mind and took his seat the other side, as if the necessity had occurred to him to be more formal.
“Thank you for seeing me again,” she said.
“I’m pleased that I am able to,” Major James replied, showing his practiced smile.
“There is something that I meant to ask you yesterday, that I forgot to.”
“Oh?” said Major James. “Fire away.”
She steadied herself. “I received several letters of condolence from military sources,” she said. “One of them puzzled me at the time because it referred to my fiancé’s death as a ‘crime.’”
“A crime?” asked Major James. “Really?” He was acting as if he didn’t understand. “Did they elaborate?”
“No.”
“They shouldn’t have written that. Whoever they were.”
Philomena ignored his oblique request for the identity of the writer.
“But something did happen? Something unusual?” she asked.
He mused for a few moments. It was obvious that Philomena knew that something had happened. She hoped that he wrongly assumed—as she intended—that he knew who had written to her that Dan’s death was a crime.
“There was an unfounded allegation of a crime, made by a man who couldn’t substantiate any of it. No evidence of a crime. No witnesses. That’s all.”
“Was there an inquiry?” she asked.
“Yes,” said Major James. He winced and seemed to lose his nerve: “Look, I really can’t tell you anything more.”
“Was it a crime or wasn’t it?”
“It was an accusation. Whoever wrote to you was out of turn in bringing it up. I’m afraid that I am very pressed for time,” he said, rising suddenly from his seat.
“Let me tell you what I know,” said Philomena, also rising. “I shall be very brief. Please give me just one more minute of your time.”
“I have nothing to say except this,” said Major James. “Pursue it and you’ll end up in court.”
“Please, just confirm for me, was there an allegation that my fiancé’s death wasn’t at the hands of the enemy? Please!”
Major James paused, nodded several times to himself then once to her. She felt herself shiver. Last night Jonathan’s story had seemed slightly dream-like, but now it was solidifying. She said: “One officer alleged that another officer had killed my fiancé?”
Major James nodded.
“Over a gambling debt?”
Major James nodded.
“But he didn’t witness the crime and nor did anyone else?”
Major James nodded.
“The man making the allegation claimed that the gambling debt arose from a game of cards?”
Major James nodded.
“But the accused man denied that any such game ever took place?”
Major James nodded.
“And the pledges, or IOUs, were never found?”
Major James nodded.
She guessed: “The accused made it clear to all concerned that the allegations shouldn’t be repeated.”
Major James nodded. That meant he had been warned off by Anthony Dore?
“The accused was Anthony Dore,” she said.
Something in Major James balked at confirming this. He neither nodded nor shook his head. She tried a different question.
“The accuser was Jonathan Priest?”
Major James began to move crab-like to the door. “Your time is up, I’m afraid. I’m sorry about your fiancé,” he said. “Being the last to die is especially poignant—”
“Yes,” she interrupted, “you didn’t tell me that he was killed after the war ended.”
“It wasn’t after, as such. It was contiguous.”
“What does that mean?”
“The war didn’t stop dead on eleven a.m.”
“No,” she bristled, “for Dan it stopped ‘dead’ a few moments after, while men were stopping fighting and deciding not to kill each other anymore. That much is true, isn’t it? That Dan was killed while other men were acting as if it was all over?”
“It is extremely difficult to end a war. Especially when not everyone wants to. And for men in the midst of battle, it’s impossible to know the overall picture. They can only deal with what’s in front of them. It’s very hard to trust that if one stops fighting the enemy will do the same.” He was becoming strident. “To make any kind of accusation stick you require a witness or physical evidence. Anybody who doesn’t have these should tread very carefully, very carefully indeed, and think more than twice before repeating any allegation that a particular crime has been committed.”
“I think that you are thinking something in error,” she said. “I haven’t misled you but you have assumed that you know the identity of the person who described Dan’s death as a crime. It was Anthony Dore. He wrote to me that Dan’s death was a crime.”
Major James was speechless for a moment. His eyes flicked to and fro.
“Captain Dore wrote that to you?” He looked aghast.
“Yes,” she confirmed.
“Anthony Dore wrote to you?”
“Offering his condolences.” It struck Philomena that it was significant that Major James didn’t think that it was at all appropriate for Anthony Dore to write to her. Which told her what? That Major James thought that Anthony Dore had been in some way impertinent to write to her, or brazen, perhaps, or just plain wrong.
“You don’t think that it is quite the thing for Anthony Dore to have done, do you? The letter is the reason I thought that Dan and Anthony Dore were friends. Here it is.”
She handed it over without waiting for an answer and watched Major James read it. Outwardly he gave very little away.
/>
“I really have to get on,” he said, handing the letter back. “I’ve told you all I can.”
Philomena wondered if he cared. She liked to think that he did.
After that second meeting with Major James she knew that she would have to meet Anthony Dore and decide about him for herself. But as soon as Dore knew she was Daniel Case’s fiancée then any chance she had of extracting the truth from him would be gone. His guard would come up. And he must have a guard after what he’d been accused of. Instead she decided to seek Jonathan out to tell him that Major James had confirmed that he had made a serious allegation against a fellow officer. Which wasn’t the same as saying that Major James had confirmed that Anthony Dore murdered Dan. Not the same thing at all.
She had a cup of tea in an ordinary working people’s cafe and settled herself before visiting Jonathan’s chambers, where she discovered from Jones what sort of time he’d be back. She decided against going to court again to watch him because Jones said in view of the time it would be too easy to miss him as he left. And she’d begun to feel uncomfortable being in places she wouldn’t normally visit, being amongst only men all the time. There were hardly any women in and around the courts. Only the odd mother or younger woman in the public areas.
With some time to kill she wandered north-east. The ancient area of Lincoln’s Inn gave way slowly to less salubrious surroundings. A railway line ran above, borne on a viaduct. Underneath, arches housing modest industrial units. The people here were ones that she felt familiar with. Self-employed men and women running their own affairs. There was a cabinetmaker, an upholsterer, and a marble merchant. She noticed one arch had “Art Gallery” painted in rough brushwork directly onto the brick. The door—the slightly smaller than man-sized one inset in the big one that opened the entire front of the arch—was ajar. She positioned herself so that she could see inside. The interior walls had been whitewashed. She could see paintings hanging on them. What she couldn’t do, though, was raise her foot to step over the threshold, despite the fact that she wanted to. She’d been to galleries before, but big, municipal ones where the paintings hung in ornate rooms and you knew they had to be good otherwise they wouldn’t be there and nobody made you feel stupid by finding out what you didn’t know about “art.” That was her main fear, that someone would make her feel stupid if she entered that tiny, intimate art gallery. Someone would ask her if she found a certain painting was like that by such and such, or reminiscent of thingy. And they’d confidently recite foreign names that didn’t sound anything like their spelling. She turned to go and nearly bumped into a strong-looking woman coming the other way.
“Crikey,” she said, in a strange accent.
“Sorry,” replied Philomena.
“I thought you were about to go in,” said the woman, in what Philomena guessed was an American accent. She scrunched up her nose. “It’s free entry,” said the woman. “It’s mine, so I should know. Come in. Just look. I won’t bother you. I’ll leave you alone in the room with them, okay?”
Philomena had just enough time to worry who exactly it was that the American wanted to leave her alone with before she took her by the arm and guided her into the gallery.
She needn’t have worried. It was only the paintings the woman referred to. Philomena brought them to mind later as she watched Jonathan make his way down the pavement toward his chambers. There were two pictures in particular that had made a deep impression on her. One was a depiction of a figure, a civilian, lying dead in a street, apparently after an attack. The cobbles had been thrown up and a shutter on a nearby building was dislodged. The rag doll figure lay limp, a pool of blood around its head. She’d looked closer and realized it was a child wearing shorts. The second picture was of soldiers but they were all square and machine-like, in rows. The earth that they were trying to dig into was metallic in color. Men and metal seemed to have commingled. It wasn’t realistic. It looked like the men would clank when they walked, and get rusty if left out in the rain.
Twenty minutes had passed while she looked at the paintings. She sought the owner out in order to say thank you before she left, but the woman hadn’t seemed to expect anything of her; she’d just waved her away. Philomena tried to place Dan and Jonathan and Major James within the worlds depicted in the art. Mud, blood, metal machinery; masses of men, dead children—the hell they’d inhabited so recently. How much should she take that into account?
She allowed Jonathan to see her before he entered his chambers. He stopped and studied her from twenty feet away. What had he been going through since he’d told her his story? What on earth was she going to tell anyone back home? She couldn’t return that night and start telling relatives, friends, that Dan might have been murdered.
Jonathan was still a few feet away when she heard herself say to him, “It’s Dan’s birthday, today.”
Then they were in Jonathan’s office and he was sympathizing with her and saying he hadn’t known that and quizzing her about what she’d done that day.
“Here. Have a drink of this.” He was standing over her.
“Oh,” she said, smelling the brandy, “no thank you.” But she felt so tired and so in need of comfort, and so friendless.
“Go on, yes.”
And in the moment when she took the glass he was giving their fingers touched and recoiled before Jonathan let go.
“Happy birthday, Dan,” she said.
“Happy birthday, Dan,” echoed Jonathan.
They both sipped their drinks. After a few moments she asked: “What did you hope I’d do after you told me your story?”
“I didn’t have a single objective,” replied Jonathan. “You have a right to know.”
“You wanted me to know so I would have to share the burden,” she countered, firmly.
He neither confirmed nor denied this.
“I want you to meet me when your work is over for today,” she said.
“May I ask what for?” said Jonathan.
“I don’t know yet.”
She hadn’t known until that moment that she’d stay another night.
CHAPTER SEVEN
She found a cleaner hotel, The Whitehall, in the same relatively inexpensive part of the city. Her room still didn’t have much in the way of furnishings, but there was no sewerage pipe running from ceiling to floor. Her view was restricted to, mostly, a tenement block, but at least there was a margin of sky.
She sent a telegram to Jo, apologizing for staying another day. After recreating her shrine to Dan she lay down on the bed and allowed her hands the freedom to make unconscious shapes in the half-light.
No rest. She found she’d adopted a new, less elegant habit; twisting the cheap metal band on her wedding finger. She rose and went to the window. Across the way in the tenement block a young, white-faced man in shabby army uniform stared out of his window. Against the dark of his room his face appeared almost translucent. Philomena couldn’t tell if the young man was looking back at her. The distance between them, and the angle, and the fact that he was immobile made it impossible to know. She took up her coat and hat and set off to meet Jonathan at the cafe they’d eaten in after their first meeting—The Conduit—the one with the friendly waitress.
“Why do you like it so much here?” she asked Jonathan.
“Did I say I liked it so much?”
“You come here a lot, I can tell. They know you.”
“It’s a bit of a strange reason, actually,” Jonathan admitted. “Some might think it a macabre reason.”
She looked around for signs of anything macabre. It all seemed spick and span and newly decorated. The waitress thought she was looking for her and came over so Philomena had to apologize; they had everything they wanted.
“Are you going to tell me why you like it here so much?” she asked.
Jonathan shifted slightly and smiled nervously.
“It was bombed in the war. A Gotha dropped a bomb on the street.”
“I see.” She thought about G
othas and Zeppelins. Their deadly visits had been front-page news during the war, as had the bombings of German civilians.
“I suppose I first came here to have a look at what remained of the damage. It interested me, the idea that while I was fighting in another country my own was being bombed from the air. I’m not sure that that’s ever happened before. I came to the street and this place was open. I came in. I liked it. I’ve never discussed the bombing with anyone here. I feel at home. I don’t know whether that has anything to do with the fact it was war-damaged.”
Philomena looked up and around for any signs of damage. Jonathan’s story made her regard the cafe’s near-perfect condition differently. The recent decoration had been a necessity, the completion of a rescue.
“How’s your new hotel?” he asked.
“Slightly less gruesome than the first.”
Even he didn’t know where she was staying, now.
“So you didn’t go straight back to Major James or march up to Anthony Dore and blurt it all out and drop me in it,” said Jonathan, trying to grin.
“I went back to Major James. I don’t think I dropped you in it. I didn’t say how I’d come by the information—I didn’t say I had any information, actually. I was a bit sneaky. I said that one of the letters I received about Dan’s death described it as a crime.”
Jonathan wrinkled his nose, recalling his letter to her. He certainly hadn’t used the word “crime.” “Is that an actual letter or one you created?”
“Actual.”
Now he leaned forward, and his voice took on an edge. “May I ask who wrote it and are they a potential witness?”
“They’re not a potential witness, no.” She added nothing, waiting for him to have to ask another question.
Armistice Page 8