In Pale Battalions - Retail

by Robert Goddard

  ‘Maurice! When you’ve served the lady, I want these biscuit tins moved.’ She went out again at once.

  Lupson leant across the counter towards me. ‘I can’t talk now,’ he whispered.

  I found myself whispering as well. ‘I wouldn’t keep you long.’

  ‘That’s not the point. I’d like to discuss it, really.’ He thought for a moment. ‘I’ll be doing my rounds in the van later. We could meet then, if you like.’

  ‘I’d like that very much.’

  ‘This end of South Parade Pier. Half-past four.’

  I nodded in agreement. He swayed back into an upright position and, feeling foolish, I ordered a twist of tea.

  Lupson was precisely on time. At 4.30, I was standing near the entrance to the pier, looking down over a low wall at the beach and the few bathers braving a keen breeze, when his bull-nosed, rusting van pulled up beside me and he climbed out, sucking nervously on a cigarette.

  ‘It’s kind of you to have come,’ I said, in an effort to put him at his ease.

  He shrugged his shoulders awkwardly. ‘Shall we walk a way?’

  We moved slowly in the direction of Southsea Common. As we went, I told him what little I wanted him to know of my connection with the Meongate murder. I hoped it would draw him out and I was not disappointed.

  ‘Mrs Lupson hated Uncle Arnie. That’s why I couldn’t talk earlier. When we first married, we lived over the shop with my mother and him. It was a tight squeeze. They didn’t get on. Now, my uncle and me – that was different. I was closer to him than to my own dad. When I was a lad, he told me all about the Meongate murder. Other cases, too – but that one most of all. He’d always come back to it, like a dog to his bone. He’d take me for walks to Milton Park – or down to his allotment – and go through it, time and again.’

  ‘Why did you say I’d left it twenty-five years too late?’

  ‘Because that’s how long he’s been dead. He always reckoned we hadn’t heard the last of it, you see. He always maintained that, one day, it would crop up again and he’d be proved right – right about who the murderer was. They didn’t want to know – his superiors, I mean. They wanted it hushed up. But my uncle wouldn’t stand for that – so they sacked him.’

  ‘I understood he’d retired.’

  ‘That’s not the way he looked at it. He brooded on it endlessly, cooped up in his little attic room; ran through it, over and over, for my benefit.’

  ‘What was his theory, Mr Lupson? I’d be fascinated to know.’

  ‘You can read it in his own words. He sent a letter of protest to the Chief Constable about the case being closed. Typed it out laboriously on the old sit-up-and-beg machine he kept in his room. It sets all out in detail. I’ve brought the carbon copy he took. I thought you might like to see it.’

  It was more than I could have hoped for. When we’d retraced our steps to the van, Lupson pulled an old attaché case from beneath the driver’s seat, lifted out a bundle of papers, detached a crinkled clip of flimsy sheets and handed them over solemnly. Then he leant against the bonnet, smoking another cigarette and taking the air, while I read his uncle’s letter.

  It took the form of a memorandum, with neither address nor salutation.

  CONFIDENTIAL

  To: The Chief Constable

  From: A. W. Shapland, Det. Insp.

  Date: 13th November 1916

  Subject: The Meongate Murder Inquiry

  I realize you will not welcome another communication from me on the above subject, but I feel obliged to state my position clearly, since the plain implication of the Watch Committee report on this case is that its investigation was mishandled. That, I take it, is why my recall from retirement has been so abruptly terminated, although no formal explanation has so far been given to me.

  If this case is to be considered closed, it must be on the basis that Lieutenant Cheriton murdered Mompesson before taking his own life. The only motive put forward to explain this is Lord Powerstock’s claim that Cheriton was victimized by Mompesson on account of his dubious war record. It seems to me that there are three fundamental objections to this explanation.

  1. Why should the gun used to kill Mompesson not subsequently have been found amongst Cheriton’s possessions?

  2. If Cheriton suffered from neurasthenia – as stated at the inquest – how did he manage to plan and execute such a cool and calculated murder?

  3. If Cheriton really did kill Mompesson in order to refute his allegations of cowardice, why did he not make this clear in a note to be found on his body, when, by leaving no note, he only encouraged the assumption that he could not face returning to France?

  I think it highly likely that, in fact, Cheriton did leave a note, that it was removed from his body and destroyed and that this was done because the note identified the real murderer. The only person in a position to remove such a note was Lieutenant Franklin and I believe he did so because he was the person named in it. To substantiate this, I bring to your attention the following.

  1. Amongst Mompesson’s possessions, I found a paper recording a date (June 13th) and an address in a slum district of Portsea. The address was later shown to be an unoccupied set of rooms above a woodyard. Mompesson had no known connection with Portsmouth, but you may recall that the first Lady Powerstock was implicated in the Mermaid Inn sedition case of 1904, centred on Portsea. She was known to have formed an association with one of the defendants, a radical agitator named Daniel Fletcher.

  2. When questioned, Franklin claimed to have left the White Horse Inn alone at about 10 p.m. on Friday, 22nd September, i.e., about an hour before Mompesson was murdered. Major Thorley, on the other hand, stated that he saw Franklin leaving in the company of another man (whom he did not recognize).

  3. Entering Meongate in the early evening of Sunday, 24th September, I surprised Franklin and Mrs Hallows reading and discussing the First Lady Powerstock’s published account of her charitable work in Portsea.

  4. Questioning Mr Gladwin, father of the first Lady Powerstock, that same evening, I asked him if the late Captain Hallows was really the son of Daniel Fletcher rather than Lord Powerstock and what event of significance had occurred at Meongate in the middle of June this year. He became unreasonably agitated and refused to answer any questions.

  5. Mrs Hallows left Meongate early on Monday, 25th September and has not returned there since. I know she purchased a single ticket to Portsmouth at Droxford railway station that morning and I believe she is now resident on the Isle of Wight at an address known to Lord and Lady Powerstock. I understand they have given you an explanation of her departure from Meongate, but that explanation has not been passed on to me.

  6. When I disclosed my knowledge of the Portsea address to Franklin on the morning of Tuesday, 26th September, he immediately left Droxford. He was followed first to the aforesaid Portsea address and thence to the Mermaid Inn, where he stayed overnight. The following morning, Wednesday, 27th September, he eluded our officer whilst boarding the Isle of Wight ferry. He returned to Droxford that evening.

  I suggest the only conclusion that can be reconciled with the foregoing is as follows.

  Captain Hallows did not die in France in April, as reported, but deserted, returned to this country and went into hiding with the aid and connivance of his wife. Daniel Fletcher, his natural father, sheltered him at the address in Portsea from 13th June onwards. At some point, Franklin was also let into the secret. I am unable to say how Mompesson discovered the deception, but, upon doing so, he attempted to use the information to blackmail one or all of the parties concerned. Franklin and Hallows met outside the White Horse Inn on the evening of 22nd September and agreed to silence Mompesson. One or both of them then entered Meongate and murdered him. They were seen leaving his room by Cheriton, for whose nerves this was the last blow. Mrs Hallows subsequently joined her husband in Portsea and they slipped away to the Isle of Wight. Alarmed that I knew of the original hiding place, Franklin followed in order to warn
them. Having satisfied himself as to their safety, he returned to brazen out the inquest.

  I very much regret having to end my career with an unsolved case, especially since I am certain it could have been solved had I been given the support I was entitled to expect. I deny that my questioning of Lord and Lady Powerstock – or any other witness – amounted to harassment and I wish it to be recorded that the order forbidding me to pursue my enquiries on the Isle of Wight fatally handicapped my investigations.

  I urge you to re-open this case. In view of the evidence placed before you in this memorandum, I believe you have no alternative but to do so. I await your decision.

  ‘He never received a reply, Mrs Galloway. It was the final insult. He served them faithfully for more than forty years – and that was his reward.’

  Yes. He had done well. He had read the clues and reasoned his way to a solution. He was so nearly right. Of course Lord Powerstock would have had friends on the appropriate committees to say: ‘Enough is enough.’ Naturally, Olivia would have known which ears to whisper in: ‘My stepdaughter is pregnant and has left our house in disgrace. Call this man off.’ Who would believe Shapland’s crazed theory of dead men walking and old allegiances come to the fore? Nobody. His only answer would be the blank wall of official silence.

  ‘He always said we hadn’t heard the last of it. He told me, time without number, that, one day, he’d be proved correct. Is that why you’ve come now, because, after all, he’s been shown to be right?’

  Lupson’s face, lit by the sun where it slanted through the windscreen of his van, was strained by the strength of his faith in a childhood idol. I could read in it all the clinging bitterness of a dead policeman’s exile from the one, last case he could never abandon. How could I tell his lone, gauche relative that, in the end, it had been for nothing?

  ‘Yes, Mr Lupson. That’s why I came to see you. I know the whole story now. Your uncle was right all along.’

  They were the words Lupson wanted to hear. For myself, Shapland’s letter of protest served only to remove the last shreds of doubt about Willis’s story. It was true, in every detail. He and Shapland had struggled through the same maze and had emerged as ignorant as each other of what really took place at Meongate the night Mompesson died.

  If I was to learn any more, I knew it would mean talking, even pleading, with a man whom I’d hoped never to see again: Mayhew. If anybody could tell me why Olivia had acted as she had, how I’d come to be her ward rather than Grace Fotheringham’s, then it was Mayhew. Next day, I rang his old offices. After some prevarication, they gave me his private address: a bungalow in the New Forest. I drove down there the same afternoon.

  Mayhew’s retirement home was near Cadnam, on the eastern fringe of the forest. I don’t know what I’d expected, but it certainly wasn’t a newly built, terracotta-roofed residence at the end of a recently concreted drive, with a screen of poplar trees behind the house and horses grazing in the field beyond. This wasn’t at all the venue I associated with a grey-suited, grey-faced solicitor. Nor had I expected the door to be answered by a Mrs Mayhew, who looked twenty years her husband’s junior and said she’d thought I was the man who came to clean the swimming pool. She directed me to the rear garden, where ‘Larry’ was ‘deadheading some roses.’

  He seemed surprised to see me as I was to find him, dungareed and flat-capped, clipping at his hybrid tea bushes with a panting basset hound in attendance.

  ‘Mrs Galloway,’ he said. ‘The very last person …’

  ‘I’m sorry to call unannounced,’ I said. ‘I wonder if I might have a word with you.’

  ‘Concerning Lady Powerstock’s will?’

  ‘Not exactly.’

  ‘You could have written. I still visit the office once a week.’

  ‘Could we talk now?’

  ‘Very well.’

  He led me to a garden table near the swimming pool and we sat opposite each other in camp chairs. There was no offer of tea, no suggestion that my visit was anything other than an unwelcome invasion of his privacy. Accordingly, I dispensed with all preliminaries.

  ‘What can you tell me about Grace Fotheringham?’

  His face betrayed no reaction to the question. ‘What do you wish to know?’

  ‘The circumstances surrounding her surrender of me to my grandparents.’

  ‘I’m not sure I can help you.’

  ‘You corresponded with Miss Fotheringham at the time of my birth, giving her to understand that my grandfather wanted nothing to do with me. Is that not so?’

  ‘I believe you’re correct.’

  ‘Did you correspond with her again?’

  ‘Once, as I recall.’

  ‘For what reason?’

  ‘It was early in 1920. Lady Powerstock indicated that she wished to retrieve you from Miss Fotheringham’s keeping.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘The reason formed no part of my instructions. I wrote to Miss Fotheringham seeking her compliance. At first, she refused.’

  ‘Only at first?’

  ‘Since she was not your legal guardian, she could have been obliged to comply, but proceedings to that end did not prove necessary.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I don’t know. Lady Powerstock handled the matter personally. At all events, Miss Fotheringham relented and you were installed at Meongate.’

  ‘What became of Miss Fotheringham?’

  ‘Once again, I don’t know.’

  ‘She left the school where she was working, abruptly, in the summer of 1920. Do you know why?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I’m not sure I believe you, Mr Mayhew.’

  Even this insult failed to move him. ‘That, of course, is your privilege.’

  ‘I think you know a great deal more about my family’s affairs than you’ve ever disclosed.’

  ‘A family solicitor, Mrs Galloway, is not normally noted for his indiscretion. Lord and Lady Powerstock used my services for many years. I always respected the confidence they vested in me.’

  ‘And now they’re both dead?’

  ‘As Lady Powerstock’s executor, I still recognize an obligation to her.’

  ‘But not to her granddaughter?’

  ‘Not at any rate to you, Mrs Galloway.’

  The subtle distinction was transparently unpleasant. It signalled that I would gain nothing by pressing the point. I rose hurriedly from the chair. ‘Goodbye, Mr Mayhew.’

  ‘Mrs Galloway …’ He looked at me inquisitively for a moment. ‘May I ask how you heard of Miss Fotheringham?’

  ‘No,’ I replied, smiling to spite him. ‘You may not.’

  I returned to Wells that day realizing that I had explored and exhausted every avenue – and learned nothing beyond what Willis had already told me. There seemed no choice but to abandon my search.

  With a conscious sense of finality, I wrote to the Imperial War Graves Commission, seeking information about the man who’d died in Franklin’s name. Their reply confirmed what I knew.

  ‘First Lieutenant Thomas Blaine Franklin, Hampshire Light Infantry, died on 16th August 1917, aged 25, whilst attached to the Northumbrian Regiment. After the war, the Army Graves Service were unable to locate his grave and he is therefore commemorated by name on the Memorial to the Missing at the Tyne Cot Military Cemetery, Belgium.’

  For all that I did not doubt Willis’s word, it was hard to accept the thought that this, a stranger’s name, was truly the record of my father’s death and that Franklin wasn’t really dead at all. How could I explain it to anyone when, sometimes, I scarcely believed it myself?

  I wondered often if, one day, Willis would return, knock at the door one Sunday afternoon and walk back into my life. But he had said that he would not and time proved him as good as his word. I had no way of finding him. He had vanished. Sometimes, increasingly as the years passed, I wondered if he’d really come at all, if I hadn’t just imagined his visit. There was no proof, after all, nothing tangible by which to re
member him. That thought alone deterred me from confiding in Tony – or you, as you grew older. I told myself there was no point endlessly rehearsing the past, that to have learned the truth about my parents was enough. Willis was proved right. In the end, I did forget him.

  TWO

  BY THE TIME I was fifty, Ronald was at university and you were away at boarding school. Tony was working harder than ever because of Jimmy Dare’s illness and seemed to spend less and less time at home. So, after twenty hectic years, I found my life slipping into tedium and solitude. Accordingly, when the past next intruded on my settled world, I no longer saw it as a threat to comfort and security, rather as a challenge to be welcomed.

  In the middle of January 1968, I received a letter from a firm of Cornish solicitors, Trevannon & Roach, of Fore Street, Fowey. I’d never heard of them, but they, it seemed, had heard of me. I read the letter aloud to Tony over breakfast.

  ‘Dear Mrs Galloway, We are acting as executors for the estate of the late Mr John Willis of 13 Bull Hill, Fowey, who died on 7th January and bequeathed to you, under the terms of his will, the house which he owned and occupied, along with its contents. It would be much appreciated if you could contact Mr Gerald Trevannon in order to make arrangements to take possession of the property.’

  I’d instantly regretted reading the letter out. It was as shocking to me as it would be inexplicable to Tony. Why had Willis left me his house? Surely our one meeting fifteen years before didn’t warrant such a gesture. Why deliberately hide himself from me, then send this eerie posthumous message? Was Fowey where he’d been heading when he’d boarded that train and left me without a clue to his destination – until now?

  ‘Who’s John Willis?’ said Tony, his face creased by a puzzled frown.