by Tessa Arlen
Althea looked crestfallen. “Yes, Harry has spoken to me about that, and I quite understand the safety side. But about the chaperone thing, I am sorry, Mama, really I am—I forget that the country is so much more behind the times than London.” Leaving Clementine to wonder exactly how her daughter spent her time in Town when she was staying at the houses of Clementine’s closest friends.
* * *
Pandemonium was perhaps too strong a word for what was waiting for Clementine and her daughter when they went down to join the men in the red room, but it came close.
Standing center stage and waving his arms and shouting almost incoherently at her husband was Sir Winchell. If he carries on like this he will have a heart attack, was all Clementine could think as she and Althea paused in the threshold of the drawing room, waiting to be noticed so that Sir Winchell could rein it in. And then as she heard the words “malingerers and cowards,” she thought, Oh no, it’s the hospital again, but what can possibly have precipitated this display?
“It is an outrage, a … disaster. Our boys are fighting fearlessly to protect our country and you harbor malingerers and cowards in your mother’s house? I would never have thought in a million bloody years to see deserters given a holiday at a country house…” And as for this this frightful language … She coughed to alert Sir Winchell that the company was no longer exclusively male, but he was too enraged to care.
“All of them should be damn well shot for cowardice and desertion. I can’t tell you how outraged everyone in the village is. They might not tell you, Lord Montfort, but I hear…” He started waving his arms again, his complexion deep red, his breathing harsh and labored. Her husband’s face was expressionless. At one point he reached out a mollifying hand, hoping perhaps to calm the man, but Sir Winchell was beyond reason.
Edgar Bray, who was sitting by the fireplace, leaned forward on the stick he had planted between his legs. “I say, old chap, steady on. My brother was far from being a coward, he was decorated for bravery. One of the highest medals of honor our country can bestow!”
Sir Winchell rounded on him like an angry dog. “Then he needed to be back in the war, leading his men to victory, not cowering here digging up damned potatoes and whining about his fears to a doctor who would be more usefully occupied in a field hospital taking care of men who are … who are … dying in pain.” His voice broke at this point, and it was clear to Clementine that he would either have an apoplectic fit or burst into tears.
“My brother was wounded in action, Sir Winchell,” Edgar Bray said, his voice controlled but his eyes hard and bright with anger. “He brought back a man from behind enemy lines, after three harrowing days of battle. Saved the man’s life, attempted to save the lives of others. He was mentioned in dispatches and awarded the Distinguished Service Order.” Bray took a deep breath before he continued. “He was so exhausted he could hardly walk, and yet he returned to find his stranded men and bring the survivors back to safety. The next day he woke up in hospital and had no idea who he was.” Mr. Bray’s self-control threatened to unravel as he recounted his brother’s bravery, and he ran his hand through his hair, his eyes miserable at the thought of his suffering. “He was a casualty of war just like any man who has lost a limb, or his sight.” He looked across at Sir Winchell. “I am sorry for your loss, sir. I know how hard it is to lose the only member of your—”
“My sons died with honor … not hiding out … in a hospital for cowards.”
Ralph interrupted, “That’s enough, Meacham, more than enough.”
Clementine realized that this could only get worse. “Sir Winchell…” she said as she went across the room toward him, but he was already walking to the door.
“They should be lined up against a wall and shot … every one of them.” And he stamped through the open doorway and out into the hall, ignoring the butler as he proffered his hat and overcoat. The door slammed and silence rang through the room.
“How on earth did that happen?” Clementine asked her husband, who was still standing in the middle of the room looking at the door. “Someone should go after him, he is most terribly upset.”
“He will do better on his own. He can walk his anger off on the way back to his house. I will go over and see him tomorrow. Whatever anyone says to him tonight will not be heard.” He turned to his remaining guest, who was sitting quietly in his chair with his hands clasped around the silver handle of his stick, his head bent forward. “My apologies for our neighbor, he recently lost both his sons. Grief has made him unreasonable.”
The younger man got slowly to his feet. “I completely understand, Lord Montfort, of course I do. I am afraid I might have made things worse, but it is hard to not say something. My brother had his faults, as we all do, but he was far from being a coward.” He bowed his head to Clementine and then to Althea. “I think it would be best if I said good night. It has been a long day and I promised Lady Althea that I would accompany her and Captain Talbot to Holly Farm tomorrow. What time do we leave?” He turned to Harry.
“At about half past nine,” said Harry. “We’ll see you at breakfast.”
The man took a step forward with practiced ease, his lame leg slightly behind his good one. He steadied himself, brought his weaker leg forward, and then walked across the room with immense dignity for one a little lopsided in his gait. At the door he stopped and turned to Clementine. “Lady Montfort, thank you so much for your hospitality. I had no idea until this evening how much your family has invested in your hospital for these stricken men. I am forever in your debt … for your compassionate understanding and care of my brother. Thank you.” And with that he left them all standing in a room that still felt electrically charged with Sir Winchell’s outrage.
“Time for a brandy,” said Lord Montfort, and Clementine wondered if she had said the words herself.
Chapter Fifteen
The following morning Clementine awoke early to birdsong and a dewy lawn sparkling in the early light. She watched the last of a thin mist lift up through the trees and evaporate in the sunlight. It’s going to be a perfectly splendid day! “And a hot one,” she said to her wardrobe as she took out a white lawn blouse and a sensible walking skirt. I might wander over to Holly Farm in the afternoon and see how the harvest is coming along. She tossed a wide-brimmed rolled-straw hat onto the chair next to her clothes and looked for a pair of sturdy walking shoes.
The only thought in her head as she left the house through the terrace door and started up the drive toward Haversham Hall was that they could most certainly cross Lieutenant Standish of Dodd Farm and the happy-go-lucky picnicker Lieutenant Carmichael off their list of suspects, which left Forbes at the Home Farm still on it. Her step was light and brisk and she swung her arms purposefully, anticipating a day bristling with clues hitherto hidden and each now shouting to be acknowledged.
As she rounded the corner of the drive and the entrance to the north gate of the kitchen garden she was not surprised to see Mrs. Jackson striding toward her with a particularly intent look on her face. They met up at precisely the place where Bill the gander would take up his territorial stance in the afternoon.
“Good morning, m’lady.” Mrs. Jackson was wearing her VAD shoulder cape in navy bordered with crimson, colors flattering to her pale complexion and rich auburn hair.
“Hullo there, Jackson, it’s a beautiful day, let’s go for a stroll along the lane and visit the Home Farm, we can say hullo to everyone and do some discreet inquiring. Have the officers all left yet for Holly Farm?”
“Not yet, m’lady. Lady Althea told me that once Lord Montfort had talked Mr. Howard into accepting their help, then the Land girls would drive our officers over and drop them at the foot of Holly Lane. We don’t want Mr. Howard to see any Land Army girls today. It might be too provoking.”
“And how is Lieutenant Phipps?”
“Sister Carter said he had a bad night of it.”
“And our other officers?”
“Captain Mart
in has calmed down somewhat, but he is still on edge. Corporal Budge said there were no signs of his neurosis about whether his breakfast tea was made with muddy water, or that dropping crumbs on the cloth is a sign of a slack regiment. But the rest of them are in reasonable shape. Lieutenants Forbes and Standish are proud that they learned to use a scythe yesterday. They were all beginning to gather in the officers’ mess as I left the hospital to go off to Holly Farm.”
As they walked down the drive Clementine related her very useful conversation with Sir Winchell Meacham about his day of fishing. “Sir Winchell said that he spent those hours of the day on the footbridge, Jackson. So if Standish had wanted to get to the kitchen garden without bumping into him, he would have had to walk down Dodd Lane and cross the river at Brook End bridge and then come up the footpath through the wheat field that I walked the other morning. How long would that have taken him d’you suppose? Hours I would think.”
“Certainly a long time, m’lady, and he could still have been spotted by Sir Winchell both coming and going along Dodd Lane from the footbridge.”
Together they turned right into the lane to the Home Farm and arrived at the back of the farmhouse just as the farmer’s wife, Mrs. Allenby, came out of her kitchen. She was a tall woman with dark hair drawn off her face and the tired and rather preoccupied expression that all farmers’ wives wore these days. “Good morning, m’lady,” a little bob, “and Mrs. Jackson,” a polite nod of the head. “What can I do for you—Mr. Allenby is around somewhere, probably slopping the pigs. Ah, there’s young Davey, he’ll know.” She waved her tea towel and a tall boy of about eight or nine came across the barnyard. He hastily raised his knuckles to his forehead when he saw Clementine and then looked down at his boots in embarrassment.
“Good morning, Davey, how are you today?” Clementine said, and Mrs. Jackson felt in her pocket for her bag of mint imperials. Davey had reached that awkward age when boys find it difficult to say hello to people they didn’t know well.
“Is Lieutenant Forbes coming over to the farm today, Davey?” Clementine asked, and the boy finally mastered his reserve and lifted his head, but couldn’t bring himself to look at them directly; he gazed shyly to the emptiest part of the barnyard. “Not today, ladyship.”
“Ah yes, your harvest is in, isn’t it? I expect you and your father will go over to help Holly Farm bring in their wheat this morning.” He nodded vigorously that they were. “Then we shall have a nice old-fashioned harvest supper on the village green when it’s all in. Won’t that be lovely?” She turned to Mrs. Allenby to give her reason for their visit: “We are hoping you will make some of your wonderful blackberry-and-apple crumble for the harvest supper, Mrs. Allenby. We will be celebrating a bumper crop this year.”
The farmer’s wife said she would be happy to, and now used to the idea that he was expected to converse, Davey drew himself up. “The lieutenant and me were soldiers on parade.” He saluted smartly, and his mother laughed.
“He really enjoyed working with Lieutenant Forbes. Followed him everywhere, didn’t you, Davey?” The boy nodded again, eyeing Mrs. Jackson’s bag of sweets with interest.
“I don’t think he has ever worked so hard before, and Davey is a hardworking boy.” His mother reached out and ruffled her son’s thick brown hair. “Says he wants to go away to war and become a soldier, don’t you, lad?”
“I marched behind the officer all day. He said, ‘Lift them stooks up onto the cart, Davey,’ and I did. He said I was strong for my age—I’m ten next month.” He pushed his chest out and his mother’s tired eyes softened.
“Did he leave you in charge then, Davey?” asked Mrs. Jackson, opening her bag of sweets.
“Oh no, I was part of his work detachment. He called me Private Allenby and I had to stick close. I told him the names of all the birds and flowers in the hedgerows and he told me all about the different types of guns they use in the war. We was a fighting unit all day.”
Mrs. Jackson offered her bag of sweets and the boy took one, hesitated, looked at his mother, and took another. “For later,” he said as he stowed it in his trouser pocket, and because he knew it was bad manners to eat sweets in front of her ladyship, he held the second sweet in his hand.
“Don’t let your sweet get all sticky. I don’t mind if you eat it now,” Clementine said. “So Lieutenant Forbes did not go off and leave you to work alone then?”
Was it her imagination or did the boy look embarrassed and unsure. It was hard to tell with boys as reserved as Davey. He looked down at his feet and then his eyes slid up to his mother’s face. She nodded her head, no doubt to remind him that he must answer all questions politely, especially since this was her ladyship.
“No, m’lady, we was together all day.” His indistinct reply came from around his sweet. “We marched out to the fields after breakfast with my dad and old Mr. Walsh and my friend Johnny and then Lieutenant Forbes and me loaded the stooks onto the cart. He even let me drive the tractor. It were a fine day. Me mam brung bread and cheese and some cider for our dinner and after that we had a smoke.” He was scolded by his mother for the last part and looked off across the barnyard, seeking an escape.
“Well that sounds like a first-rate day to me!” Clementine laughed. “So it was just you and the lieutenant building stooks was it?” She saw that slight hesitation again before he nodded and she couldn’t tell whether it was his natural reserve or he was being evasive. “He din’t know how to build one but I did. I showed him how: twelve sheaves to a stook, I told him, got to make ’em stand tall so they can dry out.”
His mother laughed. “You’ll turn the lieutenant into a farmer yet.”
“Mam, I must go to me dad and help him with the pigs.” They said goodbye and Mrs. Jackson gave him another sweet for later on.
“He has certainly shot up this year,” Clementine said as they watched him turn the corner of the piggery.
“Yes, he has, m’lady. I’m praying that this war will be over and done with soon. It’s the only thing he talks about, being a soldier.” She turned briskly back toward her farmhouse, tucking her tea towel into the waist of her apron. “It’s getting warm, going to be a hot day. I have just made some lemon barley water; can I offer you a glass?”
And as they sat on a bench in the shade of the front porch, Clementine said, “Such a nice straightforward boy, young Davey; he will miss working with the lieutenant as he will most likely pass his Medical Board review in a few days.”
Mrs. Allenby sipped her lemon barley water. “Yes, Davey misses his brother and the lieutenant is about the age our Tom was when he went off to fight a year ago. Lieutenant Forbes is a very decent gentleman—all your officers are. Pity they have to go back to that war, you would have thought they had done enough, wouldn’t you?” And with a polite good-morning the farmer’s wife went back into her kitchen, leaving Clementine and Mrs. Jackson to walk back to Haversham Hall.
“Let’s go along the cart track to the kitchen garden,” Clementine said, and they turned left up the lane and set out along the dusty track toward the south gate of the kitchen garden. “Well, it would seem that all the young men at the hospital are in the clear, Jackson. Although it is rather a chancy business to rely on the memory of a nine-year-old boy.”
“And especially one who was not being strictly truthful, m’lady.”
“Do you think Davey was lying to us, Jackson?”
Her housekeeper shook her head. “Not lying exactly, but something was troubling him.”
Clementine waited; Jackson was after all the one who understood young people—especially those who might be intimidated by her own lofty position.
“What makes you say that?” she asked as they walked up the track, careful to keep to the shady side. She thought she knew, but she wanted to hear what Jackson was thinking.
“He was evasive when you asked him if Forbes had left him alone, m’lady. Something about his demeanor was uncertain, embarrassed. Perhaps he had been asked not to mention th
e lieutenant’s absence. I am not sure.”
She had seen Davey’s hesitation, too. “He wanted us to stop questioning him. Oh dear, Jackson, this doesn’t look good for Forbes, does it?”
Mrs. Jackson didn’t answer immediately. She smiled and said, “I like young Davey, he’s a straightforward sort of lad. Perhaps it would be worth my while to drop in on him again.” And Clementine understood that she would go alone.
“Good idea, Jackson. And don’t forget to take your bag of sweets with you. Do you remember Lord Haversham’s addiction to those colossal bull’s eyes they sold in the village when he was Davey’s age?”
Mrs. Jackson started to laugh. “He would wrap it in his handkerchief and hide it in his pocket when he had to come into the house, m’lady. It used to drive Nanny mad. I don’t think Mrs. Allenby would thank me if I arrived with one of those jawbreakers for Davey.”
They had come to the south gate and Clementine looked at her watch. “Just fifteen minutes to walk along the track to here. But they were out in the fields to the east. So add another twenty minutes or so…” Someone had closed the heavy gates and together she and Jackson pushed one side of them open. “So where are we with our suspects, Jackson? I think we have cleared all of our officers except for Forbes.”
“I can account for all our staff at the hospital. Not one of them was without an alibi, often two or three since we all work so closely together. Except of course for VAD Fuller, who was the last person to see Captain Bray alive, and whose only alibi is that she came back to the house with enough beans for luncheon upstairs and down. But I can’t imagine her capable of that sort of violence, m’lady. It would be completely out of character.” She stopped for a moment, fanning her face as the morning was becoming hotter by the moment.
“Out of character? Jackson, haven’t we always said something like this before and then there was a horrible ‘aha’ moment at the end?” Her ladyship produced a handkerchief and dabbed her upper lip.