‘I gathered you had returned, Lieutenant.’
‘Briefly. I’m moving out straight away. I shall stay in the village till after the inquest. Then you’ll see no more of me.’
‘We had a letter from Leonora, as you must know. She gave no address, but it was postmarked Newport, Isle of Wight. I recall she had a bridesmaid who went to teach on the island.’
‘You could trace her if you wanted to. But do you?’
‘No. Naturally not. I am, of course, glad to be rid of her.’ She saw my eyes widen at her frankness. ‘Let us dissemble no more. I take it from your assent to her exile and your failure to pour out a torrent of allegations to the police that you are reconciled to the course we proposed before you left here, that you have come to heed my warning.’
‘I shan’t make any trouble for you, Lady Powerstock. I’m finished with you here. All I want to do is go away …’
‘And die for your country? How noble.’
‘I’ve seen enough nobility here to last me what remains of my lifetime. Now, if you’ll excuse me …’ I made to go past her, but she did not move aside. And I could hardly, with all that had happened, lay a hand upon her. I halted and refused to give best to the directness of her gaze. We were close enough now for me to catch the scent of her perfume, the same perfume she’d worn once before, and wore now to shame me.
‘Tell me, Lieutenant: what did she do to win your silence? Did she offer you more of what you saw from the observatory?’
I made no move to strike her: to have done so would have been her victory. I said nothing: it was the only reply to her taunts. I knew at last that I was free of her; that, no matter what she said or did, I would have none of it. This time, I would simply walk away. No man could have defeated her: that I saw clearly for the first time. Perhaps Bartholomew had supposed he could suborn his young, wilful model, but he it was who had drowned. Perhaps Lord Powerstock had thought she would adorn his failing, feudal years, but she had imprisoned him in his own house. Perhaps Mompesson had thought he could play her false, but she was falser still. And Hallows? If he had escaped her, it was only to die.
At last, she moved aside. ‘You are a fool, Lieutenant.’ She spoke softly as I went past her, almost clinically, without malice.
I thought of Cheriton, dead against an elm in the park, a note to her clutched in his hand. ‘I have been a fool. It is true.’ I picked up my jacket and bag. ‘But no more.’ Then I walked out on to the landing and she did not follow.
A few moments later, I was walking down the drive of Meongate for the last time. I did not look back. Olivia would have been watching and I was determined to show her no sign of weakness.
At the hotel, I unpacked again, then opened the other letters I’d collected from Meongate. One was from the Coroner’s office, summoning me to be present at the magistrates’ court the following Tuesday at 10 a.m., as expected. The other was from a firm of solicitors in Winchester: Mayhew & Troke, ‘acting for Lord Powerstock in connection with proceedings shortly to be held before the Coroner for South Hampshire.’ Would I do Mr Mayhew the honour of calling at his offices before the week was out to ‘clarify one or two aspects of the case?’ I cursed silently: till the inquest was over, I could not be rid of them. Resistance, I knew, was useless. I walked into the village and telephoned Mayhew’s number from the post office. A clerk who answered suggested two o’clock the following afternoon and I agreed.
I made my way back by a path that led past the water-mill. There, I lingered by the watercress beds and watched the millwheel lap the water in its lazy, foaming circles, watched its prosaic, mechanical beauty in the grey light of late morning and wondered whether, after all, Hallows deserved of me the perjury I planned.
I don’t know how long I stood there, lulled into introspection by the rhythmic slush of the water, but the spell was only broken by the crack of a twig underfoot as somebody approached. I wheeled round to find Shapland smiling at me with genial curiosity, leaning on a walking stick that did nothing to lessen his look of a city policeman loose in the countryside.
‘Good to see you back, Mr Franklin. I’ve just been up to the Station Hotel to see you. Why did you leave Meongate?’
‘I didn’t want to impose on their hospitality any longer. I’d have left Droxford completely if it weren’t for the inquest.’
‘And where have you been for the last couple of days?’
I hesitated, certain he knew the answer already. ‘Here and there.’
He walked past me and leant on the railings flanking the watercress beds. ‘Did you meet Cheriton’s father while he was here?’
‘Briefly, yes.’
‘It was only natural he’d be cut up about the boy, of course, but it’s tragic he should have to worry about an accusation of murder being added to the shame of suicide.’ He looked back at me. This time, he wasn’t smiling. ‘Don’t you think?’
‘We are surrounded by tragedy, Inspector.’ I looked at him blankly. I knew he’d had me tailed to Portsea, knew now, with his talk of tragedy, what he was driving at: that Cheriton was our fall guy, the one scapegoat who couldn’t complain. But for Hallows’ sake, above all for Leonora’s, I couldn’t admit one grain of the shame I felt.
‘I’ll walk back some of the way with you.’
He was scarcely the company I wanted, but I couldn’t object. We walked past the mill and crossed a stile on to a path beside the stream that fed the wheel. I said nothing, but Shapland wasn’t to be deterred.
‘Police work has its share of tragedy, Mr Franklin, as I’m sure you can imagine. I thought I’d seen the last of it, but life plays tricks on you, don’t you find?’ I thought of Fletcher saying the same and still I remained silent. ‘For instance, this isn’t the first case I’ve investigated that involved the Powerstocks. Twelve years ago I had a hand in a sedition case in Portsmouth: quite a sensation in its time. One of the conspirators turned out to be a friend of the first Lady Powerstock.’ He paused and I waited for his next attempt to draw me out. ‘But that doesn’t surprise you, does it?’
‘Nothing about you surprises me, Inspector. I’m sure you know every twist and turn of the criminal mind.’
‘Who said I was talking about crime? My theme was tragedy – not at all the same thing.’
‘I’m not sure I see much difference.’
‘Then let me explain. Lord Powerstock’s first wife mixes in strange company and dies young. His second wife is unfaithful to him and she has his daughter-in-law appear to take an unhealthy interest in the same disreputable man. And, thanks to the war, he loses his son and heir. Finally, a young officer chooses to commit suicide on his property. Enough, I think, to comprise a tragedy.
‘Crime, on the other hand, is altogether more specific. In the late evening of September 22nd, somebody enters Ralph Mompesson’s room at Meongate and shoots him dead. Crime, pure and simple.’
We had come to a gate on to the lane that led to the hotel. I went through, but Shapland did not follow. He leant against the top bar of the gate and regarded me with quizzical scrutiny.
‘My job is to investigate the crime, of course. But I’ve always tended to stray from the strict letter of my duties.’
‘Is that wise?’
He began tapping the bars of the gate with his stick. ‘Probably not. It may explain why I never attained a higher rank.’
‘I must get back to the hotel. Are you coming any further?’
‘No. You carry on.’
‘Very well. Good day to you, Inspector.’
He said nothing. He may have nodded, but by then I’d turned my back on him. I heard his stick beating time to my steps on the gate and felt his eyes on me, all the way down the lane.
‘It was kind of you to call at such short notice, Lieutenant. I do appreciate it.’ Mayhew was speaking, Lord Powerstock’s solicitor, a mild, modulated man, hair sleeked down and face professionally erased of meaning; yet, withal, there was something in his eyes, something veiled but minatory, tha
t suggested he saw more clearly than his vapid pronouncements might seem to imply. ‘The recent deaths at Meongate have greatly distressed his Lordship. He has asked me to protect his interests at the forthcoming inquest.’ The room was wood-panelled and lawbook-lined, dusty with accumulated reticence. From the window, there was a view of the cathedral, its gothic stone as grey as the day, pigeons flapping mournfully at every carved device. ‘These are, I trust, in tune with your own: that a natural reluctance to impute motive to one who has taken his own life should not deter us from connecting the two events.’ I wasn’t sure I still grasped his meaning, or why he’d wanted to see me, what it was they required of me beyond a mute compliance. ‘I therefore thought it prudent to seek from you some confirmation that any evidence you give to the Coroner will be consistent with such a conclusion.’
‘Mr Mayhew, you should know there’s nothing I could say to suggest who killed Mompesson. I can only speak – will only speak – of what I saw with my own eyes.’
He lowered his head and flattened his hand in some gesture of approbation. ‘Precisely. Be factual – and frugal even in that.’ He turned to his desk and handed me a sheet of paper, on which had been typewritten a passable summary of my account of finding Cheriton’s body. ‘Does this encompass what you intend to say?’
I scanned it. ‘Yes.’
‘Neither more nor less?’
‘As you say.’
‘One thing.’ He leant forward intently. ‘The police, I believe, have been disposed to query the absence of a note. A suicide note, you understand.’ He smiled momentarily. ‘You are sure there was none, are you not?’
His gaze was to the floor. I might almost have imagined, beneath the patina of professional discretion, some tremor of distaste for what he had been obliged to do in the service of Lord Powerstock’s disorderly household. What, after all, might he have known of their varied failings? ‘There was no note.’
‘I need hardly say that any impression to the contrary, however created, would rebound to the substantial disadvantage of all concerned.’
I had come to Winchester to be suborned by softly spoken gravitas, to give this hired lawyer the assurances his master – and his mistress – had been denied. And all the way, along the city’s cobbled streets and up the steps of Mayhew & Troke’s steepling Tudor premises, I had sensed as much – and not resisted. ‘There is nothing to fear on that score.’
‘Splendid, splendid.’ But there was no splendour in his voice. ‘I am, as you must realize, Lieutenant, entirely in his Lordship’s confidence. A comprehensive knowledge of his personal affairs is implicit in what I am about to say.’ He paused, as if to allow me to object. But I said nothing. ‘It seems to me that there is no good cause to make any mention at the inquest of the circumstances in which Mrs Hallows may find herself. Or, indeed, of any part you may have in those circumstances.’
I wondered idly what line Olivia had fed him, how she had depicted us, how much of it Lord Powerstock had brought himself to believe. And Mayhew? Belief was not his business. The law, with all its evasions, was.
Seeing that I still proposed to say nothing, he resumed. ‘His Lordship tells me that he has now reconciled himself to the fact that, following Captain Hallows’ death, he has no responsibility for Mrs Hallows. She may, as it were, go her own way. I am told the information may be of interest to you.’
Leonora too, then, had been thrown over in Powerstock’s retreat from threatening scandal. Whatever view of events he had had distorted for him by Olivia, this was the gloss upon that distortion: they would not pursue Leonora if I did not pursue them. And the inquest was to be proof of my agreement. ‘You may tell his Lordship, Mr Mayhew, that I entirely understand the position. He has nothing to fear from me.’ Mayhew’s eyes widened faintly: fear was an unprofessional concept. ‘Now, since we are all at one on this issue, perhaps I may bid you good day.’
* * *
I spent the weekend at my uncle’s house in Berkshire. For once, the brittle aloofness of my reception was welcome. With Anthea away nursing in France, I was left very much to myself, which is how I wanted it. Even my uncle’s reflex endorsement of The Time’s condemnation of ‘peace talk’ failed to stir me.
On Monday morning, I reported to Aldershot for my medical board. An RAMC colonel and two manifestly bored regular officers conducted a desultory examination of my case.
‘Three months since you were wounded, Lieutenant.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Thoroughly healed?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘No reservations about returning to active service?’
‘None, sir.’
‘I gather you’ve to give evidence at an inquest this week. Young fellow from the Wiltshires who shot himself.’
‘That is so, sir.’
‘Well then, gentlemen,’ the colonel said, turning to the other two. ‘I think we are agreed that Lieutenant Franklin is fit to resume service. Perhaps an initial three months at home?’
I wanted none of his indulgence, only to be rid of all the home front had brought me. ‘Excuse me, sir, but I do feel fully recovered, able to undertake general service abroad without further delay.’
The colonel’s brow furrowed: I can’t have looked the heroic type. ‘Very well, Lieutenant. General service abroad.’ His pen began scratching an entry on a form. ‘Report to barracks a week today.’
‘Thank you, sir.’
* * *
An hour later, I was at Alton station, sitting aboard the Meon Valley train, waiting for it to pull out. We were already late, but I was in no hurry. At length, a labouring locomotive gathered steam and we clanked forward. At the last moment, a figure silhouetted in piston steam flung open a door and jumped aboard. He looked into my compartment and instinctively glanced away: I didn’t want to encourage company. To no avail, it seemed. The door from the corridor slid open.
‘Franklin: so they’ve dragged you back too.’ It was Thorley. He slung his bag on to the luggage rack above my head and slumped down opposite me, breathing heavily. ‘God, this is a bind.’ He didn’t seem surprised to see me, nor as garrulous as his former self.
‘You’re wanted for the inquest?’
He nodded. ‘Damned inconvenient. I’ll be asked for my assessment of Cheriton’s state of mind. But how do you assess a nonentity?’
‘What about Mompesson?’
‘I know nothing about that one.’ He coloured and glared out of the window. ‘Have you got a smoke? I hadn’t time to buy any.’
I gave him a cigarette and lit it for him as the train juddered over some points and curved south away from the main line. ‘You’ve got off lightly, Major, believe me. Compared with those of us who were there at the time.’
‘I wasn’t sorry to hear it’d happened. Got me off a bit of a hook, actually.’
‘I know. You told me all about it at the White Horse that night.’
‘Tongue ran away with me. Strictly out of order. By the way, who was the fellow you went off with?’
‘Sorry? What fellow?’
‘When I came to in the bar, you’d run out on me. So I took a look outside. Just in time to see you lumbering off in the distance, three sheets to the wind. Some fellow was helping you along.’
The passing landscape froze. There had been somebody in the yard behind the inn that night, somebody who left with me. But I had been alone come morning. I saw our faces – Thorley’s and mine – reflected in the grimy window, saw another face – still beyond my reach – lodged in my memory.
‘Something wrong?’
‘I remember no such person, Major. So far as I can recall, I left alone.’
‘He was there, large as life.’
‘Have you mentioned this to the police?’
‘I told them as little as I needed to. No sense queering your pitch. We’ve got to stick together in this.’
So another pact was silently concluded. Our train chugged south towards Droxford whilst I mechanically recited the ev
ents at Meongate that Thorley had missed. Behind my words, my mind strained after one night beyond recall, on which Thorley had cast the only glimmer of light. When, half an hour later, we disembarked at Droxford, Thorley headed for the White Horse, but I did not accompany him. We had reached an understanding, but that was all.
I had deliberately avoided Meongate for some days, so there was an element of shock in once again being in the same room as Lord and Lady Powerstock. This time, however, it was the small, stuffy courtroom adjacent to Droxford police station, musty with wartime disuse and suddenly crowded with coroner, clerks, police, jurors, witnesses and onlookers.
Towards the rear were elderly village folk not about to miss a cause célèbre, towards the front those with an interest in the case. I avoided Olivia’s glance and took my seat away from all of them. Yet still I could not keep my eyes from them. Lord Powerstock sat bolt upright and stared straight ahead. Mayhew leant across for the odd word with him, though Olivia appeared to do all the talking. Shapland was at the front, flanked by two constables. Of Charter there was no sign.
The coroner was a stout, bustling, impatient man. Perhaps the murder of foreign nationals in wartime struck him as of little account. At all events, he opened the proceedings briskly.
The police pathologist gave a clinical account of the killing. ‘The deceased was killed by a single gunshot from close range just behind the right ear, which pierced the cerebellum and would have caused instantaneous death. The calibre of the bullet and the velocity on entry are suggestive of a small, wide-bored pistol. I examined the body where it lay shortly after three a.m. on Saturday, 23rd September, by when rigor mortis had not set in. I conducted a full post-mortem some six hours later. All the signs were indicative of death having occurred very shortly before the body was discovered at eleven-fifteen p.m. on Friday, 22nd September.’
Shapland gave a thorough if weary account of the police investigation and was asked what he had established of Mompesson’s background. ‘Very little, sir. He lived alone in a second-floor apartment in Wellington Court, off Knightsbridge, in west London. He was evidently a man of some means. He speculated successfully on the stock market, lent more money than he borrowed and part-owned a racehorse stabled at Epsom. He was a moderately well-known figure in London society but seems to have had no close friends. The United States Embassy have been unable to trace any relatives.’
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