In Pale Battalions - Retail

by Robert Goddard

  ‘My parents have always been strangers to me, Mr Willis,’ I said at length. ‘It is the penalty of being an orphan. I never thought I would come to know them. Yet now, in a sense, you have brought them to me.’

  ‘Only their story,’ he said in a voice husky from long silence. ‘Only the truth their daughter had a right to know.’

  ‘Why did you wait so long?’

  His reply seemed strangely defensive. ‘Without that notice of Lady Powerstock’s death, I wouldn’t have known how to contact you.’

  ‘Yet surely you assumed Miss Fotheringham had adopted me.’

  ‘Then let’s just say the notice pricked my conscience. The more so when Payne told me you were Olivia’s ward. It made no sense. It still makes none. For that I’m truly sorry.’

  ‘It’s hardly your fault.’

  ‘Your father died for me, Leonora. I could have tried to ensure his daughter was properly cared for. I simply assumed it could be left to Grace.’ He smiled grimly. ‘No pun intended.’

  ‘I don’t think you need feel guilty. I don’t resent your acceptance of my father’s offer. I believe he owed it to you. I’m glad he honoured the debt. It was a noble act.’

  Willis swallowed hard. ‘We owed each other … more than I can say.’

  ‘Did you believe what he said about not killing Mompesson?’ I was giving voice to a secret hope. I wanted to believe my father really had slain his enemy.

  Willis’s reply was uncompromising. ‘Yes. I do.’

  ‘He may have said it to make it easier for you to escape his offer.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Leonora. He was telling the truth.’

  ‘But if he didn’t do it, who did? Who could have?’

  ‘That’s one question I can’t answer.’ He looked up. ‘Here’s my train.’

  I hadn’t noticed the train approach and, now, as it drew in, I realized for the first time that Willis really was about to leave me. My messenger from nowhere was about to return to his element. ‘You’ve told me nothing about the life you’ve led since 1917,’ I said in a rush, sensing it was already too late to hope that he would.

  ‘There’s nothing to say,’ he replied. The train drew to a halt. He rose and picked up his bag.

  ‘Where will you go now?’

  ‘Home. If you can call it that. You won’t hear from me again.’

  ‘Why not? I’d like to.’

  ‘Now you know the truth, it’s best forgotten. And so am I.’ He held out his hand. My own felt lost when clasped in his large palm. He shook it once, then nodded and turned to climb aboard the train. I stepped forward and held the door open behind him.

  ‘There’s so much more I’d like to ask you.’

  ‘And there’s more I’d like to tell you,’ he replied, looking back, ‘but I’ve said enough. You have a husband and two children waiting at home for you. Their happiness is more important than my tired recollections of sadder times.’

  ‘I wish you could meet them.’

  ‘It’s better that I shouldn’t. If I were you, I wouldn’t burden them with my story. Goodbye, Leonora. Go home. Be happy. Forget me.’

  ‘How can I?’

  ‘You will.’

  I released the door and he slammed it shut. A whistle sounded behind me. I raised my hand and he touched his hat. Then the train began to move. He didn’t lean out of the window, so the last I saw of him was a thin, refracted shape obscured by sunlight on dirty glass and the lurching, narrowing angle of the train. I followed it as far as the end of the platform, watched it fade rapidly from view, recalled that other train – that other parting – more than thirty years before, and when the dwindling shape had become a smoking speck and finally vanished, I realized how, for all he had confided in me, he had, at the last, still succeeded in eluding me.

  What had he done, where and who had he been since walking away from my father that April morning in 1917? Why had he waited till now to see me? Was it that he could not do so till Olivia was dead? If so, was the reason connected with her decision to take me away from Grace Fotheringham? What had she hoped to gain by it? If John Willis knew the answers, it was too late to glean them from him.

  I remember speaking to the man on the ticket barrier as I left, asking him what train the Witham service connected with.

  ‘Anything on the main line, missus. One way as far as Penzance. The other to London and beyond.’

  ‘The man I came on with earlier: you clipped his return ticket. Did you happen to notice where he was going?’

  But he couldn’t remember Willis, far less his destination. ‘Don’t you know?’ he said. And, of course, I didn’t.

  As I walked slowly home, I realized how absurd it would sound if I related Willis’s story to Tony, then admitted that I’d not only kept his first visit secret but also had no way of contacting him again: no proof, if it came to it, that he was not a figment of my imagination.

  When I turned into Ash Lane, I suddenly thought how acute Willis’s advice had been. In a sense, I did just want to go home and forget him. Had he come to me ten years before, it would have been different, but the truth he’d brought now seemed somehow redundant in my ordered, settled life, far as it was from Meongate and all that had happened there. If I told Tony that I wasn’t illegitimate after all, he might try to re-open the whole question of my claim on Olivia’s estate, whereas I still wanted nothing of Meongate, no inheritance, however meagre, to suggest that I was beholden to the woman who’d tried to take my father from me. It was enough for me to know now that I truly was Captain Hallows’ daughter. Yet I had no way of proving it. Indeed, to convince others, I would have had to expose him as a deserter. That was a secret I was happy, even proud, to keep.

  So it was simpler to tell Tony nothing, safer to trust no one but myself with my new-found knowledge. Eight years of marriage had not entirely dispelled the secrecy of my youth. When I did act, it was cautiously.

  The following weekend, I told Tony I was thinking of spending a day in London; shopping trips to town were a periodic treat in which he was happy to indulge me. Early on Wednesday morning, the tenth of June, I set off.

  But I didn’t go to London. I got off the train at Westbury and boarded one for Portsmouth. There I took the ferry to the Isle of Wight and another train, across the island, to Ventnor, retracing Franklin’s journey of thirty-seven years before.

  At Bonchurch, I found what I was looking for: a small, plain, white gravestone simply inscribed. LEONORA MAY HALLOWS, 1891–1917. The question Olivia had forbidden me to ask was answered at last. I filled the vase with water and left the flowers that I’d brought.

  I sat in the churchyard for nearly an hour, wondering whether, one day, I would take you to see your grandmother’s grave. Yet how could I? To reveal one part of Willis’s story was to reveal all. And I already knew I wasn’t equal to that. So I mourned my mother alone. I suppose, in my heart, I also wanted, now that I had something of her at last, to keep it to myself, to preserve her memory as my personal secret. I placed a standing order with a florist in Ventnor to replenish the vase regularly and have renewed it annually ever since. If we went to Bonchurch now, we would find fresh flowers on her grave. And we will go there – for now we can.

  I left the churchyard reluctantly, knowing I had other business in Bonchurch.

  Sea Thrift was much as it had been described to me. I entered nervously, wondering if, by any chance, Grace Fotheringham still lived there, if this was the moment when I would see again my pretty lady of long ago.

  But it was not to be. A querulous, liver-spotted little man answered the door. He assured me that the name Fotheringham meant nothing to him. My enquiry seemed to irritate him.

  ‘She lived here during the First World War,’ I said.

  ‘I can’t help you. My wife and I bought this house seven years ago – from a Mr Buller.’

  ‘She was a schoolteacher.’

  ‘Mr Buller was a dentist.’

  ‘At East Dene College.’


  ‘Never heard of it.’

  I asked at the post office. There too the name Fotheringham rang no bells. But when I mentioned the college, it was a different matter.

  ‘Closed in ’39,’ the man behind the counter said, scooping ice cream from a pail for the cornet I’d felt obliged to order.

  ‘Then nobody would remember somebody who taught there?’

  ‘You could try Miss Gill. She was on the staff. Still lives in the village.’

  He gave me the address: a crooked-roofed cottage perched on the wooded slope above the church. Miss Gill, a stout, panting, bustling lady, received me in her musty conservatory, where she was dispensing seed to a caged colony of song-birds.

  ‘East Dene? Yes, I taught there for more than thirty years.’ She peered at me round the end of a cage. ‘Are you an old girl? What did you say your name was?’

  ‘Galloway. And no, I never went there. I’m trying to trace somebody who taught there. A Miss Fotheringham – during the First World War.’

  ‘Fotheringham?’ She rattled the bars of a cage. ‘Don’t squabble! There’s plenty for everyone. Fotheringham, you say? Ah yes – Grace Fotheringham.’

  ‘That’s her.’

  ‘Left under a cloud, as I remember.’ She clicked her tongue at the birds. ‘Simply failed to turn up at the start of the autumn term: 1920 it would have been.’

  ‘Do you know why she left?’

  ‘Absolutely no idea. I had better things to do with my time than enquire into such matters. But she was clearly … well, not sound.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘She fostered an orphaned baby. Can you imagine? A woman in her position. Extraordinary. Quite extraordinary.’

  ‘Any idea where she went?’

  ‘None whatever. I think we were all glad to see the back of her.’

  There was no more to be learned in Bonchurch. I returned to Portsmouth and asked a taxi driver to take me to the Mermaid Inn, Nile Street.

  ‘There’s no Mermaid in Nile Street.’

  ‘There must be.’

  ‘Not as I’ve ’eard of.’ He leant out and shouted to the driver next to him on the rank. ‘’Ere, Reg, ever ’ear of a Mermaid Inn in Nile Street?’

  ‘Yeh. Bombed out in the war. Never rebuilt.’

  So I had him take me to Brickwood’s Brewery instead, where I was referred to a Mr Draycott as having the most reliable memory for lapsed tenancies. I found him stooped over a desk in a busy office above the yard.

  ‘The Mermaid? Yes, your information is correct. Destroyed in the Blitz: April 1941. We’d probably have closed it after the war anyway. Trade was contracting in—’

  ‘It’s the tenant I was interested in.’

  He paused for a moment, then remembered. ‘Nora Hobson. She ran the place with her brother. Fellow named Fletcher. Both killed in the bombing raid.’

  Another dead end. I went to the library and looked up the same back copies of the local newspaper that Franklin had. It was all there, in verification of his account. I even found a report of the inquests into Mompesson and Cheriton. That too bore him out. But documents, it seemed, were now the only witnesses. The actors in the drama were beyond my reach.

  My next step was disguised as a shopping trip to Bristol. In reality, I drove to Winchester and located the auctioneer who’d handled the sale at Meongate. However loathsome they were, Olivia’s two paintings were embedded in the tragedy that had overtaken my parents: I’d begun to regret my rejection of them. And the book Olivia had taken from me, the book with which I’d fought off Sidney Payne: Willis’s account had made me want to read it for myself, bloodstained or not. I’d almost begun to hope that Olivia hadn’t destroyed it after all.

  The auctioneer remembered the sale well; it was relatively recent.

  ‘I’m trying to trace some of the items you sold, Mr Woodward,’ I explained. ‘Some paintings by an artist named Bartholomew and a book: a church committee report on poverty in Portsea at the turn of the century.’

  ‘As far as the paintings go, I think I know the ones you mean.’ He smiled. ‘A pair of rather obsessive medievalist pieces.’

  ‘That’s them.’

  ‘Let’s see.’ He thumbed through a ledger. ‘Yes, here they are. Two oils, by P. Bartholomew. They went for twelve guineas. Not bad, all things considered.’

  ‘Who bought them?’

  He shrugged. ‘A member of the public. Paid cash. He wasn’t a dealer, that I do remember.’

  ‘And the book?’

  ‘Except for a couple of Victorian atlases and some Trollope first editions, we sold the contents of the library as a job lot to a local bookseller – Blackmore’s in Jewry Street.’

  Mr Blackmore was as helpful as I could ask. ‘They were no great bargain, Mrs Galloway. I haven’t sold many of them. I don’t remember the book you describe at all. But you’re welcome to have a look. They’re rather scattered about the shelves now, I’m afraid.’ I looked, but in vain.

  There seemed, as I walked away from the shop, one more avenue worth exploring. At police headquarters, the officer behind the enquiries desk volunteered what information he could – but that wasn’t much.

  ‘The name Shapland means nothing to me, madam, though that’s not surprising. If he retired during the First World War, he’s probably dead by now, so even the pensions branch couldn’t help you. Where did you say he was stationed?’

  ‘I don’t know for sure. Portsmouth seems likely.’

  He pondered for a moment. Then: ‘You could try George Pope. He’s been desk sergeant at Pompey since Adam was a lad. If Shapland was stationed there, George would remember him.’

  It hardly seemed worth the effort, but I was determined to trace every loose end that I could. A fortnight later, Tony went away for a few days to Manchester on business. I took the opportunity to drive down to Portsmouth. I’d telephoned ahead and established that Sergeant Pope would be on duty at the police station and he, it seemed, was expecting me.

  ‘Are you the lady who phoned earlier?’ He filled his large uniform with pride and looked at me with piercing eyes set in the large, sad face of a man who’d contemplated a lifetime of crime.

  ‘I am, yes. I was very much hoping to have a word with you.’

  ‘It must be my lucky day.’ He smiled with sudden, endearing coyness. ‘What can I do for you?’

  ‘I’m trying to trace an Inspector Shapland. I think he was stationed here and I was told you might remember him.’

  He frowned. ‘Do you mean Arnie Shapland?’

  ‘I don’t know his first name. He retired before the First World War – and was recalled during it.’

  The great grey head nodded in slow remembrance. ‘You do mean Arnie Shapland. He was an inspector here when I joined the Force. Prickly old …’ His concentration returned to the present. ‘But that was forty-two years ago. You’re right: he retired just before the Great War. Why should a young lady like you be interested in old Arnie? He must be dead and gone these twenty years or more.’

  ‘He investigated a case involving my family. It was never cleared up.’

  ‘What case?’

  ‘A murder. At Meongate, near Droxford, in 1916.’

  ‘The Meongate murder?’ he chuckled. ‘Fancy you dredging that up. Yes, it was one of Arnie’s. His very last case. He was put out to grass again straight afterwards.’

  ‘He didn’t stay on until the end of the war, then?’

  ‘No. The case turned sour on him. The aristocracy were mixed up in it.’ He caught himself up. ‘Your family, did you say?’

  ‘Yes, but do go on. You won’t offend me, I assure you.’

  ‘It’s just that he claimed to have solved the case. Insisted, I should say. Went on insisting, long after he was told to drop it. Then he was taken off the strength, suddenly, as if …’

  ‘As if somebody wanted to shut him up?’

  Pope smiled again. ‘As if his conclusions weren’t too popular. Let’s say that.’

  ‘A
nd what were his conclusions?’

  ‘I was a raw young copper, Mrs Galloway. Arnie Shapland wasn’t about to confide in me – or anyone else.’

  ‘His family, perhaps?’

  He shook his head. ‘I wouldn’t have thought so. He was a bachelor. Lived over his sister’s grocery shop in Goldsmith Avenue. Her son runs the place now.’

  I shared Pope’s scepticism, but it was no great hardship to drive across the city to M. & F. Lupson (Groceries & Provisions) and try my luck.

  It was a dowdy, dun-painted corner shop at the end of a terraced street. From the other side of Goldsmith Avenue came the dull, heavy clanking of a railway goods yard. Otherwise, the populous neighbourhood was strangely still and silent, drugged by the sultry afternoon. Inside the shop, torpor and gloom prevailed. A thin, nervous-looking man was weighing and packing tea: its acrid scent hung in the air.

  ‘Mr Lupson?’

  ‘Er … Yes.’ He turned, sank the scoop in the sackful of tea, wiped his hands aimlessly on his apron and looked wanly towards me. ‘Can I help you?’

  ‘I believe you’re the nephew of Arnold Shapland, the police inspector.’

  He frowned. ‘Well … Yes …’

  ‘He investigated the Meongate murder in 1916. Does that mean anything to you?’

  ‘Meongate?’ His words came slowly, in time with his thoughts. ‘Meongate, you say?’

  ‘That’s right. I know it’s a long time ago, but it’s a tragedy that still hangs over my family. I gather your uncle thought he’d solved the case and was then taken off it. I wondered if he might ever have … said something …’

  Lupson’s glasses had slid most of the way down his nose. Now he pushed them back up, focusing his eyes with sudden, gleaming animation. ‘The Meongate murder. You know about it?’

  ‘My family lived at Meongate.’

  ‘Well, well, well. So Uncle Arnie was right after all. It’s just a pity you left it twenty-five years too late.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  A smile had broken out on his drawn, pinched face – a lop-sided smile of strange, unfamiliar pleasure. ‘He said we hadn’t heard the last of it. He said he’d be proved right in the end. Well, well, well. Who’d have …’ Suddenly, the smile dropped from his face and his mouth clamped shut. A moment later, I saw why. A hard-jawed woman with scraped-back hair had entered the shop from the rear. I had the immediate impression that she modified what she was about to say when she saw me. Even so, there was no gentleness in her tone.