But—and the implications of this would come more slowly to the woman reading her son’s words—Gabriel Hughenfort was given one faint ray of hope, one man who was in a position to stop the juggernaut. Or so the boy believed. He put his hopes in “the Major,” trusted the man to be his advocate among the powerful, even gave that man his most precious letters, to be returned to the family. And the man had gone away, said nothing, kept or destroyed the letters, and finally—the cruellest twist of all—turned Gabriel’s own finely honed sense of responsibility and nobility against him, using the boy’s bred-in-the-bone consciousness of what it was to be a Hughenfort to keep him from crying the name aloud, using it as a shield to stay the bullets. Use your name, “the Maj.” had drilled into him that last bitter night, and you might save your life, but the cost? Disgrace for the family name forever. Stay silent, offer your life up to Honour, and no one need know. He had held before Gabriel the opportunity to emulate all those Hughenforts who had made the ultimate sacrifice, for one cause or another, to stand with pride beside those demanding ancestors on the walls. And Gabriel fell for it.
With the ashes of that betrayal in my mouth, it was no hardship to avoid the social whirl around the captain’s table during our crossing. I probably ate little more than Iris did, and the work I did during those two days, the paper on biblical deductions for the American journal, turned out considerably more caustic than I had originally intended. Their minds were perverted, I translated the story of Susanna and the elders; Their thoughts strayed from the path of God, and they attended not to the demands of Justice.
For the first leisure hours I’d had since August, these days were proving grimly unsatisfactory.
On the third morning there came a rap at the door. I put down my cup of tea and went to answer it. Iris stood there, wearing the same clothes she’d had on when I last saw her, her face haggard, with dark swathes under her eyes. I pulled her in, took the red journal that she was holding, made her sit on the sofa, and pressed a cup of sweet tea into her hands. I rang for another pot, and some toast, then stood over her until she’d eaten two slices. When she shook her head at more, I drew her a long, hot bath, made her swallow a small whisky, dressed her in a pair of my sleeping pyjamas, and put her to bed.
All without a word between us.
She woke at dinner-time. I was reading, as I had been all that day, when I heard her moving around in the bedroom. When she came out, one of my kimonos belted around her waist, she looked old still, but the dark bruises under her eyes had faded.
“Was Gabriel’s major Sidney Darling?” she asked without preliminary.
I put down my book. “I don’t know,” I answered her. “Would you like tea, or a drink?”
“I don’t want anything.”
“Iris, I know how you feel. Not about this—how could I know?—but in general I have stood in your shoes, and I am well acquainted with the all-consuming urge to get my hands around someone’s throat. I’ve felt it, I’ve seen it, and I know this: You mustn’t allow it to consume you.”
She blinked, and seemed to see me for the first time.
“Iris, you need food and rest and time for quiet reflection. In that order. It won’t do anyone any good if you stretch yourself until you break. Now: What do you want to eat?”
An omelet was what she would eat, so I joined her. Also toast, and cheese, and water biscuits, and an apple tart, with coffee at the end. I poured a measure of brandy into our cups, in the absence of calvados, and noted with satisfaction the colour in her cheeks. With the coffee, the purser had brought the information that all of Iris’ belongings had been transferred to a vacant stateroom not far from mine. Leaving her in my rooms, I followed the purser down the corridor to her new accommodations to retrieve a change of clothing, and when she had dressed I brought out my hair-brush and stood behind her to draw it through her short hair, as a means of giving her the physical contact I thought she needed, in a manner she might permit. She sat stiffly at first, and then more easily, finally allowing her head to loll with the strokes of the brush.
“Ninety-nine,” I said. “One hundred.”
“Did your mother tell you to brush your hair a hundred times each night?” she asked me.
“Oh yes. Not that I bother, you understand, but she certainly did. My father would sometimes brush it for her.” Now where did that bit of ancient history emerge from?
“Well, thank you. My hair has never been so tamed.”
“More coffee?”
“No, thanks. Mary, what are we going to do?”
I smiled as I cleaned the brush of hair. “I’m glad to hear you say ‘we.’ ”
“Well, it would appear that we’re all in this together.”
“Iris, Holmes is very, very good at what he does.”
“Yes. He’d have to be, wouldn’t he? Can he prove it was Sidney who did that . . . I can’t even think of a word for such a despicable act.”
“Murder,” I said grimly. “It was murder.”
She studied my face, and saw there something that seemed to reassure her more than my assertion of Holmes’ competency.
“However,” I told her, “we can’t actually be sure that it was Darling, not yet.”
“Of course it was Sidney. Staff major, ‘my uncle,’ Gabriel called him. The boy only had two uncles, Sidney and Marsh.”
“He called Alistair ‘uncle,’ ” I reminded her.
“Did he? Good Lord, so he did. But to consider Ali as ‘the Major’ is every bit as preposterous as accusing Marsh.”
“I don’t mean that Alistair is a suspect, Iris. I meant that Gabriel seems to have used the term ‘uncle’ for any male relative of his father’s generation. Marsh, Sidney, and Lionel, yes, but also Alistair, who was sort of a distant cousin.”
“He called Ali’s sister Rose ‘aunt,’ ” she conceded reluctantly. “I do remember that.”
“And probably their brother Ralph was ‘uncle.’ Which means that Ivo Hughenfort, who was definitely present in that sector of the Front at that time, might conceivably also have qualified as an uncle,” I reminded her.
“Ivo? Are you saying—oh,” she said. Then, “Oh, Good Lord. Ivo was at the shoot, the day Marsh—we’ve got to—”
I broke into her growing panic. “They know. Marsh has both Ali and Holmes with him. Nothing will happen.”
She did not look too sure about this. Perhaps my voice lacked the requisite note of absolute certainty. I tried again. “Iris, Marsh and Ali have spent their whole adult lives walking in and out of lethal situations. Both he and Ali made the mistake once of thinking England was safe. Neither of them will make it a second time. Iris, I swear to you: I’ve seen those two in action. Nothing will get past their guard.”
“You’re right. I always forget about that side of them. Marsh is a good friend, and such a gentle person that thinking of him as some kind of behind-the-lines soldier is always difficult. Ali is different—him I can see as dangerous. Not Marsh.”
I did not think it my responsibility to tell her just how dangerous that husband of hers was—in the end, considerably more deadly than Ali. Let her simply settle her mind as to their safety and allow her thoughts to turn again to Gabriel. Which they quickly did.
“I wanted to tell Gabriel the truth, Mary. Those two days he spent with us in Paris. He was talking about his parents one evening, telling me how difficult he found it at times to talk freely with them, how he sometimes felt almost as if they spoke another language from his, and I ached to tell him the reason for that. I couldn’t, of course. They were both still alive, and he was Sarah’s whole life. Henry, too, but to drive a wedge between the boy and Sarah would have devastated her. And in actual fact, I was an aunt to the boy. It wasn’t I who raised him and fretted over his childhood illnesses and oversaw his schooling and shaped him into the man he was. But he was so extraordinarily beautiful as a human being, I selfishly wanted to be more in his eyes than just a distant uncle’s estranged wife. I couldn’t tell hi
m, but I wish to God that I had! He might, just possibly, have used that knowledge in the last days. Might have reached out to ask for the help of a mother as he couldn’t do to a scarcely known aunt.”
There was no real reply to that. Nor was there for any of the other painful questions she came out with over the course of the next hours, as she unburdened herself as she had never been able to do before, to anyone. All I could say was, she gave her son a good, loving life, and she had taken the opportunity to lay the foundations of a relationship during his Paris leave. The awareness of Iris as a friend had infused Gabriel’s final weeks with a sense of future, at a time when the world was proclaiming there was no future. Faint reassurance, but gratefully received. She went to her new rooms at two in the morning. By later account, she slept better than I.
The next day we spent walking the decks and talking, about matters that often had nothing to do with Gabriel. We discovered that we had been sailing through the edges of a storm since leaving England, and although the rain was now clearing, the ship continued to heave beneath our feet. I told her about my childhood in Sussex and California, she told me about the growing community of artists and writers in Paris—easy conversation, of the sort that takes place at the beginning of any friendship, but which also allowed us to draw breath and permit our real concerns to simmer in the backs of our minds.
I did send a telegram, through Mycroft lest the village postmistress in Arley Holt prove indiscreet:
WHOM DID GABRIEL ADDRESS AS QUOTE UNCLE QUERY.
The answer came within a message received the next day.
UNCLES MARSH SIDNEY LIONEL ALISTAIR PHILIP RALPH JAMES IVO AND THREE NEIGHBOURS STOP ALL WELL HERE STOP CLERK ARRESTED ADMITS NOTHING STOP HAIG NO MEMORY OF LETTER OR GABRIEL STOP HUNT CONTINUES COMMA GOOD SAILING END.
Philip, I recalled, was the name of Gabriel’s grandfather’s brother, hence the boy’s great-uncle, who moved to South Africa and was never seen again; I thought it doubtful that Gabriel had ever actually met him, although he could have remained an “uncle” for reference purposes, and his sons, if any, might also qualify for the title. Ralph-pronounced-Rafe was Alistair’s brother, who had gone to Australia at the age of nineteen and perhaps died at Gallipoli. Gabriel would have been nine or so when Ralph disappeared, so could have retained an active memory of the man. James, I knew, was the husband of Alistair’s sister, Rose, father of the farming nephew who would eventually take over Badger Old Place. All of which made it conclusive that for Gabriel, “uncle” was a broadly applied honourific. I shouldn’t have been surprised had he used it for close friends of his parents, as well.
The huge passenger liner ploughed its luxurious path through the waves and against the headwinds, putting in at New York late on Tuesday. Although we both had friends in the city, we went to our hotel unannounced, and passed out of the city the following day without getting into touch with any of them. Neither of us felt much inclined for light social banter.
The journey north was tedious to the extreme, and I cursed Holmes silently every time the train slowed, halted, and sat waiting for the track to clear. The snow never quite forced abandonment and taking shelter in an hotel, but it did fret us all the way to Toronto. My only bright spot came with a small article in the corner of a discarded day-old newspaper that I picked up, informing its readers of the temporary closure of the London War Records Offices due to an “infection of unknown origin.” Reading between the lines, I thought the infection bore some names that would be familiar to me: Closing the whole place so that the records might be more readily searched had Mycroft’s stamp all over it.
The address I had been given for Philippa Helen O’Meary was in a small town named Webster, to the west of Toronto. I began to worry that the only means of reaching the place would be by dog-sled, but in Toronto the storm suddenly tired of us. By Thursday morning the skies were clear and our hotel reassured us, with jaunty Colonial confidence, that we’d have no problem on the train.
Somewhat to our surprise, we did not. The tracks were clear, the carriage warm, and by the middle of the afternoon we were pulling up to a small brick building on which hung the sign, WEBSTER. We climbed down onto the freshly swept platform, took a deep breath of furiously clean air tinged with smoke from the train, and looked out across an expanse of pristine white countryside. After the well-hedged fields of southern England—or indeed the countryside around Paris—the land here seemed to go on for a long, long way. We exchanged an apprehensive glance, and went to find an hotel.
The rooms were basic but clean, the odours from the dining room promising, the arrangement of motorcar and driver nearly instantaneous, but no-one knew Philippa O’Meary. Nor Phil nor Hélène. Finally the hotel’s owner took pity on us and suggested the manager of the local bank. There was only one in town, he said, so he’d be certain to know anyone with a savings account or a mortgage. We spent the evening in the tiny town, taking dinner in the hotel dining room with the good citizens of Webster, and for lack of entertainment, went early to bed.
Thus, the following morning we were at the bank’s door at ten o’clock, and were ushered in to the manager’s august presence. I looked at his rotund features, then looked again in annoyance.
“You were dining at the hotel yesterday night,” I accused.
“Why, yes I was. Were you there as well?”
“We were. And the hotel owner knew we were looking to see you today. He might have introduced us then.”
“Oh no. He knows I never work outside of hours. Now, what can I do for you?”
Other than kicking me for the fool I am, I thought, not to recognise a banker—even of the rural Canadian variety—when I am across the room from one? I resolved never to tell Holmes of my failure.
“We are looking for a woman named Philippa O’Meary,” I told him. “She may go as Phil, or Hélène. It’s about an inheritance,” I added, although it was possible that the only wealth to change hands would be a few old letters. Bankers need to hear that money is involved before they take any interest in a matter.
“I don’t believe . . .” His voice trailed off dubiously.
“She has green eyes and was an ambulance driver in France during the—”
“Oho!” the banker interrupted, transformed by recognition. His eyes sparkled, and he all but slapped his knee with pleasure. “You mean Mad Helen!” And we watched in astonishment as he burst into laughter, then thumbed the toggle on his desk telephone to bring in his secretary. “Miss Larsen, would you have Booth run these two ladies up to Mad Helen’s place?”
“Mr Booth is out at the Grimes farm this morning, Mr Cowper. I could see if Mr Rhoades is available.”
“Rhoades is fine. He can leave the ladies there; they’ll telephone to the hotel for a car to fetch them back. Or Mad Helen can, shall we say, drop them there?”
This last baffling remark caused a great deal of merriment on the part of the manager and, to a more subdued degree, his secretary. The latter ushered us out and, obedient if confused, we entered the Rhoades motorcar and were driven out of town.
When we had seen neither barn nor cross-roads for a quarter-hour, and I was starting to wonder if Mr Rhoades might not be entirely honourable in his intentions, a barn appeared on the white-blanketed horizon. A large barn—enormous, in fact, although it lacked the normal complement of silos and farm buildings.
All was explained when we turned in to a drive past a sign proclaiming this the WEBSTER AIR FIELD. The barn was a hangar. Rhoades pulled up next to the front of it, opened our door, and then the three of us stopped dead as the sound of a screaming engine came from overhead. We gaped into the clear sky, and there saw a bright red fighter plane, to all appearances out of control and aiming to crash straight into the hangar. Or into the Rhoades motorcar. On it came, roaring full-throatedly, and at the last possible instant it pulled up, passing so close its wind buffeted our hats.
“There was something in the diary about an aviator’s jacket,” I recalled. “And Dorothea
Cobb told me that Hélène’s brother was a Canadian fighter pilot. That must be he.”
The pilot, having scared us out of our wits, had circled and was lining up his plane with the runway.
“How does one land on the snow?” Iris wondered aloud.
“With care,” came a new voice. We looked at the small door to the barn, over which hung the sign OFFICE, and then lowered our eyes to the figure in the wheeled chair. The hand with which he was shielding his face was slick with old scar tissue, although he grinned as he watched the red machine drop lower and slow in the sky.
As one, Iris and I looked at each other, then at the aeroplane.
“Yep,” said the man. “You’re looking at my sister. Hi, Jimmy,” he added.
Young Mr Rhoades tore his eyes from the flying daredevil and shook his hand. “Morning, Ben. This here’s Miss Russell and Miss Sutherland. They’ve come looking for your sister. You mind taking care of returning them to town when they’re finished? I’ve got a pile of work.”
“Happy to. Good day, ladies. The name’s Ben O’Meary.”
O’Meary’s right hand was less disastrously scarred; close up, his face showed signs of a less comprehensive brush with the flames.
“Crashed in the War,” he told us, a phrase so matter-of-fact, he must have begun a thousand conversations with that same blunt explanation. “They scraped me out and sent me home, to teach my sister to fly. I run the business, she teaches the classes and does the stunt shows. Exactly the opposite of what we’d planned, but ain’t that life? You want to come in? She’ll be a minute.”
But we chose to wait in the open air for the pilot of the red fighter, and he manoeuvred his chair back through the doorway and left us in the cold.
The aeroplane taxied slowly on the slick surface, neared the barn, and then the engine coughed into silence. In a moment, the plane’s pilot climbed out of the cockpit and jumped easily to the ground.
She was a tall woman, as tall as I but broader in the shoulders, and I could well imagine her slinging a wounded Tommy across her back. Then she began to remove the layers of clothing that kept her from freezing. Thick scarf unwrapped from her neck and face, the helmet and goggles. Yes, there were those famous emerald eyes, that ebony hair, but something else as well, a small fact that Gabriel had failed to record.
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