Edwards sighed and tilted his head, as if scrutinizing Anthony’s face. “Why have you waited till now, nearly four years, to come with this story?”
To Edwards’s amazement, Anthony’s eyes filled with tears. “I haven’t been able to sleep; I can scarcely work. I’ve started to drink. I think I’ve been trying to forget it, but I can’t anymore.”
“Has anything happened recently that brought it to mind again?”
Anthony started. “No, why do you say that?”
“Calm yourself, Airman. This is an extremely grave business. You are accusing a senior officer of the most serious crime possible. We have to make sure you are . . . remembering it accurately. If you are suffering from battle fatigue, for example, your memories could be confused . . .”
Anthony stood up, his chair sliding backward and nearly tipping over. “My memories are not confused! You don’t forget something like that!” He sobbed and turned away, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand.
SIMS PUSHED THE file away and wiped the weariness out of his own eyes. He’d read all this the first time. The witness, who had been compelled to go over the story twice and then sign a statement, seemed certain. Sims had talked to Corporal Edwards and questioned him closely about the condition of the witness. Anthony had been described as extremely agitated in a way that convinced Edwards of his veracity.
Sims suddenly realized that he himself, annoyed at being seconded to the War Office, had displayed a streak of laziness. So that he could get back to his own desk at the Yard, he had been convinced by the corporal, by the statement, by the War Office Johnnies who wanted a conviction and had wanted to bring the case to a close as quickly as possible by putting the civilian police stamp of approval on it. He could not escape what he now knew—that he would have to interview Anthony himself. Sims knew already it would be pointless, but he could not live with himself if he didn’t.
“I’m going to need to see the witness, that airman Neville Anthony,” he said, when he’d tracked down the corporal.
“Is that entirely necessary? We have a few cases on the books and we need to get on with things. We can’t be wasting time on the ones that are sure,” Corporal Edwards said, his annoyance barely under control. Why did they have to have these bloody civilian policemen involved in this sort of thing?
“Because, Corporal, I’m not entirely sure.” There he had said it. Until that very moment he’d not completely known that about himself. He was no longer sure. If pressed, he would not have been able to offer any explanation that would satisfy this man. A feeling. He suspected the military were not big on “feelings.”
“We have enough to get a conviction,” Edwards was using his insistent voice.
“What if you don’t? What if your witness, who strikes me as a tad unstable, comes apart?”
“Surely you don’t . . .”
“It’s up to you. You drag me here to do your dirty work, so I’m doing it. Thoroughly.”
“Very well. We can bring him in. I’ll contact the Crown.”
“If it’s all the same to you, I’ll see him on my own, and at the Yard.”
GOD, SIMS THOUGHT. This man’s a mess. “So this is your complete statement?”
“Yes. Yes, it is,” Anthony said, his voice shaky. “Why am I having to do this all again?”
“I’m wondering, you see, if there’s any chance you shot the gunner,” Sims suggested.
“No! Why should I? I didn’t even know him. It wasn’t my regular crew. Why would you suggest such a thing?” Anthony could feel the sweat gathering under his arms and could hear his inability to control his voice. They promised the first time it would be over after he signed. Now this policeman was accusing him of shooting Evans!
Sims shrugged. “A man will likely be hanged on the basis of your statement. We like to make sure he’s the right one.”
WATSON PULLED THE door open, searching Anthony’s face. “I’ve been frantic!” He said, pulling Anthony in.
“It’s all right. God, I thought my heart would stop when that policeman turned up at the door. They just wanted me to go over something again. From the war.” Anthony collapsed onto the couch. “Any chance of a drink?” Watson glanced at his watch, and then went to the decanter and poured two glasses of single malt. He didn’t like to splash around this ambrosia from his last trip to Scotland, but the need, or the relief maybe, was great.
“Going over? Going over what? I don’t understand. And why the police for God’s sake?” Watson said. He knew, had known for a while now, that Nev was keeping something from him.
“Look, it’s nothing. It’s done. Can we just drop it?”
Watson looked at him. They’d known each other since grammar school. “Nev. What’s going on? You’ve been a wreck for weeks now. All this mysterious business of statements to people. What are you not telling me?”
“I’ve told you. Drop it. It was about an incident early on, ’41. I thought I saw something.”
“You didn’t have an ‘incident’ in ’41. You would have told me.”
“I don’t tell you everything, you know.” Anthony snapped. “I’m going out.”
Later, listening to Anthony stumble in and settle in the spare room, Watson lay staring at the ceiling, faintly illuminated by the street light that cast a glow over the top of the curtain. The conviction had come over him, and he could not now shake it that all of this might have something to do with Nev warning him off discussing their plane crash. Why? He could not make sense of it. Neville had always told him everything. And then why had that woman come to the door a few days back with that ridiculous story about Flight Lieutenant Darling?
INSPECTOR SIMS PACKED up his files and looking longingly at his desk, which he suspected some swine had taken over during his absence because it was nearer the window, and went out the door. The inspector had Neville Anthony’s new statement. He walked along the river, taking the long way back to the War Office. So their tea room was a little better; he’d stick with good old Yard tea and good old straightforward Yard cases. With a rebellious impulse, he sat on a bench and watched the river traffic, the people going by, busy, with that peculiar mix of dress so characteristic of a people who don’t know if it will rain before they get wherever they are going.
There was nothing to complain of, really. He’d done what he had to. The two statements were identical. He contemplated stopping at the pub, but he had War Office documents and thought better of it. That was the problem, really, he thought, preparing himself for whatever came next: the statements were identical.
LANE, DRESSED IN her blue summer dress with the calla lilies and with her yellow cardigan on her shoulders, saw her reflection in a shop window just before she turned to cross the green to the War Office. Her auburn hair fell to her shoulders in a great wave. She should have tied it back and worn a hat, but she felt like a bride on a summer’s day. She paused outside the door she’d been shown to, her heart beating, a smile of sheer happiness on her lips. She pushed open the door and stopped as if she’d had the breath slapped out of her.
“You!” she said.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Whitcombe, October 1907
“I’VE DONE IT, ALL RIGHT? It was deucedly difficult and it goes against everything I believe, getting people to keep secrets. I could scarcely look the man in the face, but he’s promised. He’ll be married quietly in the New Year. There’s some woman his mother’s always wanted him to marry. Luckily he and Agatha had kept a low profile, didn’t go into society, so no one really noticed what was happening. She lived discreetly in rooms in Knightsbridge.” Browning looked across the vast room at where the decanter sat and then reached up and pulled the bell.
Poor Papa, Mary thought. He looked tired, and his skin was ashen, as if he had been indoors suffering a long convalescence. “Why on earth did they go into Claridge’s? Everyone would have seen them. It would have been all over town.”
“That’s what’s so mystifying. By then he’d decided he
was going to marry her. He took her there to propose. She turned him down flat.” Hastings came in and waited for instructions. “A whisky please, Hastings. I’m sorry I dragged you all the way up. I’m done for. Mary?”
Mary shook her head. She was nearly hopping with impatience to see Hastings gone. The news that Agatha had been offered a proposal of marriage and had turned it down shocked her. How could a woman turn down a proposal from a man with whom she has practically eloped, which would legitimize her position in society and go a long way to erasing the defeat their father was feeling now.
“Papa, what do you mean, she refused him? How could she have?”
“According to Henderson, she said she could not do something so hurtful to Lucy, to force Lucy to live with her betrayal right in front of her face her whole life. He said she charged him with not understanding how very much Lucy had been hurt, and that his lack of understanding persuaded her she could no longer be with him. When I asked where she was, he told me he had no idea. He’d gone to Knightsbridge the following day to try to patch it up with her, and she was gone. He thought she might have come back here, but didn’t want to pursue her to Dorset for fear of seeing Lucy.”
“What a dreadful, bloody awful coward,” Mary said. She turned away, her hand at her mouth, and looked angrily out the window. “Agatha was right about him, anyway. He was not worthy. He would have made a disastrous husband for poor Lucy, only she can’t bring herself to believe it. God, I wish she’d snap out of it! I can’t bear to see her like this!”
“CONSTABLE AMES? HOW do? It’s Fripps across the pond.”
“Sergeant, good morning, or afternoon as the case may be.”
“I’d best be quick. This will be costing a fortune! I got hold of Tilly Barnes and went up to see her in Shaftesbury. She married someone who did quite well in the auto business and lives in great comfort in a house near the town. She was a little reluctant to talk to me at first, till I told her about Agatha. I couldn’t have shocked her more if I told her that her own father was the king of England. They all believed Agatha had died in 1907 in a motor accident, and they were sworn to secrecy about Lucy being stood up.”
“So she knows something about that at least?” Asked Ames.
“She does. She said she felt that bad for the girl. Lucy was very much in love with the bloke, called Henderson, evidently. He’d come out for his first visit with her father and had told her he was going to ask her father’s permission to marry her. Apparently the visit happened, only he didn’t ask her father anything, but just disappeared and never came back. So Lucy went into a decline after this, and everyone was desperate to try to coax her back because she’d always been a sunny little thing. Youngest girl, did I mention that?”
“I knew that. But then what happened?”
“Well, according to Mrs. Barnes, Agatha left, purportedly to visit a school friend in town, and just didn’t come home. Then old Browning came back from town at the end of a sitting some months later, and had the news that the man, Henderson, had been seen with Agatha around town. That sent Lucy into a tailspin that she never recovered from, and her body was found at the bottom of an escarpment sometime in ’08. Everyone assumed she’d done away with herself. The father left his seat in parliament and died a year later. Apparently had a bad heart.”
“How did the story get around that Agatha Browning had died in an accident?”
“Oh, right. Tilly Barnes was that surprised that Agatha was found dead in Canada forty years later. According to Tilly, the servants were all lined up one day and told that Miss Agatha had died in a motor accident in London, and that was that. The family provided no details and never mentioned her name again. That was just before Lucy died. Tilly did say she wondered if the father knew she wasn’t coming back, and having her dead in an accident was a way of getting her out of their lives.”
“I wonder if it was only the servants, or if Lucy and Mary were made to think she was dead as well?” said Ames.
“Hmm. Tilly didn’t say directly,” Fripps continued, “but I got the feeling the girls didn’t know the truth either. One thing that surprised her was that there was no funeral. Agatha was left for officials in London to deal with. They wouldn’t go see to it. It was like they cut her out of their family then and there.”
“I see,” Ames said. Then how had Mary Browning suddenly got the idea to come all the way to Canada and, possibly, kill her sister?
“You know, it struck me, Constable Ames, that something recent must have happened,” Fripps said, as if reading Ames’s mind. “Something that made Mary realize her sister wasn’t dead after all. Did anything happen over there that might have put Agatha in the papers? Did she strike it rich or anything?”
“I never thought of that, Sergeant Fripps. I’ve heard nothing, but it’ll be worth scouring through the local papers to see. Thanks for this. It’s really helped.”
“Think nothing of it, Constable Ames. You’ve given me something besides stolen motors and sheep-killing dogs to deal with! I’ll keep my ear to the ground, for you. Cheerio!”
INSPECTOR SIMS WAS not to be gainsaid. “I don’t care if I’ve seen him, I need to see him again.”
Corporal Edwards looked darkly at Sims. “I can’t think why you are making such heavy weather of this. ‘Open and shut,’ isn’t that what you said?”
“I daresay I did. There’s something about the statements I need to double-check.”
“Oh, for God’s sake! It’s a confounded nuisance. Why couldn’t you get what you needed the first time?”
“Look, you are the people who dragged me here because you said you had to investigate a crime committed in battle. Well, I’m investigating. And while we are in an inquiring sort of mood, why has Darling been carted off to a prison miles away? This city is full of perfectly good prisons.”
“Look, I don’t question Spec . . . the czars of the War Office. That’s where he is. I suppose if you must go, you’d better bloody get on with it, hadn’t you. Try to do a professional job this time!”
Sims thought about the case as he drove along the winding road to Nuffield. Uppermost in his mind was that he was certain Edwards had slipped and nearly said “Special Branch.” If Special Branch was involved, then nothing about the case was going to be straightforward. If Special Branch is involved, he thought angrily, then he was more than likely the very dupe Darling had said he might be.
DARLING HAD BEEN allowed some books. They’d been a new form of literature for him. Detective potboilers. They’d filled the hours in a most unsatisfactory manner, both as to style and accuracy. He had just closed his eyes and was imagining himself in a dark coat and hat, brandishing a revolver at some miscreants cowering over stolen treasure in a damp basement somewhere, when the metal window was opened.
“Visitor.” It was a new guard. Presumably his jocund friend was on his day off.
Darling got up, slipped his laceless shoes onto his feet, and ran a hand through his hair.
“Inspector,” he said when he was shown into the interview room. “This is a surprise.”
“Don’t have time for small talk. I want you to walk me through part of your story again. Now, as I understand it, plane’s gone up, Jerries are shooting, and you’ve sent your men to take cover. Where again?”
Darling was surprised by this question and by the tone in which it was delivered. Gone was the needling superiority of a policeman who thought he knew the defendant was guilty. What had happened? The change in Sims gave Darling a slight upswing of hope. “There was a sort of forest behind us, and along at one end I’d seen a farmhouse. Often the locals were not sympathetic to the German occupation, so I told the men to make for the farm, while I stayed back to provide some cover.”
“And the engineer, Neville Anthony, stayed as well?”
“Yes, though I didn’t know it at first. I didn’t see till I’d turned around to bolt myself.”
“And, very carefully, mind, what happened before you bolted?”
&
nbsp; Darling shook his head, his lips set in a grim line. Finally he spoke. “I knew Evans was badly injured, and I worried that getting him out of there could possibly kill him. I think I was leaning over to look at Evans, thinking about how I might carry him to safety, when I saw someone approaching from the line where the Germans had been firing. I took aim and fired. He wouldn’t have seen me, I don’t think. The bushes screened me. He went down, and I turned back to deal with Evans. That’s when I saw Evans was dead, and as I told you, I didn’t think it at the time, but something subconsciously registered that he’d been shot, and I was surprised. At that point, I turned to follow the men, and that’s when I saw Anthony had stayed to cover me.”
“Did you say anything to him?”
“Well, the conditions were hardly conducive to chitchat, but I probably said something like, ‘He,’ or ‘Evans,’ maybe, ‘is dead. Let’s move it.’ I don’t think he answered. We both just made for the farmhouse.”
“And did you speak of it again when you’d gained the farmhouse? Or at any subsequent time?”
“You mean, with Anthony? No. I told the others when we’d been hidden in a cellar of sorts. No. I just assumed Anthony had seen what I had. He helped me move Evans the first time. He would have seen what kind of condition he was in.”
Sims sat back in his chair and looked at the ceiling, and then leaned forward, his hands clasped in front of him. “I’ll tell you what’s bothering me, Darling. Anthony gave a statement that was written down, and then when I went to see him he told me the same thing, practically verbatim. I find that odd. Unusual, you might say. I also got no satisfactory answer about why you’re being held miles away, causing me to have to drive all the way to Oxfordshire, and, though I’m certain I should not be saying it, I have reason to believe Special Branch is involved in some way.”
It Begins in Betrayal Page 16