The Great Darkness

by Jim Kelly

CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO

  Brooke had not sat in the chapel since the day of his father’s memorial service more than thirty years earlier. Snow then; bright sunshine now, streaming through the stained glass, splashing the reds and purples and blues over the polished wood. Stupidly, he found himself shocked by the unheroic dimensions of the building, for the chapel of his memory was vast, a cathedral in white stone, crammed with pews, the giddy roof a spider’s web of vaulting. Front row, next to his mother, the lectern set before them, it had felt as if each speaker, every reading from the Bible, or Tennyson, or Kipling, had been chosen for him alone.

  Today, he sat alone in near silence, the only noise the swish of a broom somewhere beyond the open door of the sacristy. The chapel felt mean and – to use a favourite phrase of Claire’s – jumped-up, its neo-Gothic kings and saints misplaced, its draped regimental standards out of scale.

  The school porter who’d shown him in had located the plaque at Brooke’s request, in brass, set in the tiles of the floor:

  Prof. Sir John Brooke

  1833–1908

  Pupil, governor, patron

  President of the British Paediatric Association

  Nobel laureate in medicine 1903

  For his work on serums and infant diphtheria

  The porter leant on his broom. ‘Saved lives, he did,’ he said. ‘That’s what they say. Thousands – millions even, in the Empire, India and such. You a doctor, are you?’

  ‘He was my father,’ said Brooke.

  The porter rearranged his broom. ‘Blimey. That’s a thing.’

  Embarrassed, the man fled.

  Near the plaque, a glass box had been set on a wooden board, a gun inside, and a brass plate recording the exploits of its owner, a young subaltern in the Sudan who’d single-handedly quelled a revolt. It made Brooke think of pistols in boxes, locked away, and the extent to which an alibi can rely on the precise whereabouts of an object – particularly the murder weapon – as much as a person.

  He let the idea flourish in the cool silence.

  Footsteps echoed down the nave and, glancing to the west doors, he saw a man approaching at a clipped, military pace. He introduced himself as Dr Paget, headmaster.

  ‘Inspector? They said you’d be here.’ Paget sat awkwardly in the choir stall facing Brooke, straightening a narrow tie at his throat. ‘Your father brought great honour to the school,’ he added.

  Brooke executed a fractional nod. ‘Frederick Staunton,’ he said. ‘More to the point, his mother. You know her well?’

  ‘Yes. A widow. She visits the boy often, but he never goes home. In the holidays he attends cadet schools, outward bound. Several of the boys have families here in Cambridge; it means they can take part fully in the life of the school. A few day boys, certainly, but they’re, how can I put it, on the fringe?’

  ‘You taught him?’

  ‘Teach – Freddie’s in the lower sixth, he’s just sixteen, young for his year; in fact the youngest, I think. Small lad, but tough. He’ll finish next year but there’s already talk of a commission if he doesn’t go straight up to university. Bright, too, so a scholarship’s within his grasp, which would dispense with the fees, of course.’

  Born in 1923, Brooke calculated: three years after his father’s heroic death.

  The chapel clock struck the hour and Dr Paget raised his eyebrows as if that might mark the end of their conversation.

  ‘Fees always paid on time?’ said Brooke.

  ‘Like clockwork,’ said Paget, and Brooke could feel the icy cold sense of disapproval in the words. He wondered how much the staff of St Botolph’s knew of Mrs Staunton’s trade.

  ‘I’d like to talk to him if I may,’ said Brooke.

  ‘That is not so easy,’ said Paget. ‘As I said, he’s a keen cadet, and they’re out beyond the nets on the range. A good shot, Freddie. And popular, all things considered. And I’d have to get Mrs Staunton’s permission for you to see him. School rules, you see, given his age … I’m sure you understand. Or you could get his guardian’s permission.’

  Brooke could not resist the bait. ‘Freddie has a guardian?’

  ‘Yes. One of our governors here since the last war. I’ve always understood that he was the late Mr Staunton’s commanding officer. He takes an interest in Freddie; not a keen interest, but there it is.’

  ‘I’ll need the name,’ said Brooke.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE

  Brooke slept for a precious hour in cell six, his subconscious mind working all the while to fit together the intricate puzzle that was the fate of Chris Childe, so that when he woke, at just after two in the morning, it seemed, if not straightforward, then at least darkly visible in its barest bones. The heart of it all was Vera Staunton’s false story of her husband’s tragic death in the Great War. Once he’d understood that, and why she’d lied, everything else stood in a clearer light.

  The test of fire, as it were, would come in precisely eight hours’ time, at ten o’clock the next morning, at an appointed place: a place, in fact, of execution. He’d yet to summon the guilty, but he had no doubt they would come, eager to incriminate others, and return to the scene of their crime.

  First, he had to set an innocent man free.

  Despite the hour, he found Major Stone reading in his cell. Brooke noted the cover: Clausewitz, The Art of War.

  Brooke produced the gun, with its etching: ACEF.

  ‘The irony is that it’s this weapon which proves you couldn’t have killed Chris Childe,’ he said, commandeering the only chair in the cell. He’d brought down a bottle of whisky from his desk and poured two shots into tin mugs. ‘You’re free to go, Major, but please hear me out, by way of apology.

  ‘The gun belongs to Vera Staunton, you see. At first, I admit, it seemed probable that you’d taken it from her rooms. Then I realised it was the weapon itself that was your alibi …

  ‘It was at Madingley Hall when I found it in your locker two days after the killing. You left the hall before the killing, and spent three days in London, returning through the gates just ahead of my own car.

  ‘Do you see? The hall is secure, and all visitors have to log in and out. You could not have returned the gun – certainly not in person, and I don’t think anyone has suggested you have a horde of accomplices.

  ‘Whoever placed the gun in the locker, and disposed of the Webley .45, was trying to frame you. From that certainty we can begin again … The fact of the matter is the killer proved your innocence in the process of trying to put a noose round your neck.’

  Brooke gulped the malt, wincing.

  ‘It’s late, so if you wish to sleep, do. I’ll leave the door open, and the duty sergeant has his orders. You have my apologies again. I’ve no doubt that if the case had gone to court, a jury would have found you guilty. So it’s a narrow escape for us both.’

  They shook hands. Brooke left, and didn’t look back. Stone had uttered not a word.

  The streets were dark, a few pedestrians hurrying home, the shopfronts already boarded. The last bus edged along Regent Street, standing room only, faces pressed glumly against the glass. A squad of soldiers building a sandbag wall outside the post office had stopped for cigarettes, lounging, one of them wolf-whistling as a young woman sped by on a bicycle.

  At Frank Edwardes’, he drank tea, and while the radios beeped with their Morse code messages, he consulted the house copy of Who’s Who, and then discussed the approach of winter, a hint of frost in the city air, leaves scattered across the outfield of Fenner’s, already gathering in drifts amongst the trees beyond the boundary.

  The siren remained mute, and so later, when he reached Market Hill, it was crowded, and Rose’s tea hut in full swing. Hot fat laced the air as she studiously riddled a battalion of frying sausages.

  Taking his own mug, he walked away to the fountain.

  At the corner of the square, where Peas Hill ran past the assizes, he noted five black cabs parked on the rank. Jo Ashmore’s voice was in his ear, trying t
o impress on Brooke her fears for the safety of her brother, Marcus: ‘He left by cab last night at midnight, according to Father.’

  He spoke to the cabbies. The first hadn’t done a job out at Newnham Croft for a week. The second said that at that particular time it would be the night shift. So Brooke waited, and the five cabs were taken, and there was a halcyon lull in which a group of students sang an ethereal madrigal on the steps of Great St Mary’s.

  Then three cabs climbed Peas Hill. Climbed? It was such a subtle incline that it was impossible to tell which way was up, which way was down. Except for Castle Hill, the city was a fitting gateway to the flat Fens.

  All three cabbies were adamant they had not picked up a fare from one of the big houses at Newnham Croft.

  The cabs were taken; the rank left empty.

  After waiting twenty minutes, Brooke was about to walk on when a cab crept into the square, its swaddled headlights hardly distinguishable at all. It was only the polished black paintwork which gave it a physical reality, the reflections on its surface shimmering as it took pole position on the rank.

  Yes, the cabbie had picked up at the house the night before. A young man, a suitcase, a suit on the back seat.

  ‘He’d had a drink,’ offered the driver, tilting his wrist.

  ‘Destination?’

  ‘Madingley Hall. The big house …’

  CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR

  Sleep was now impossible, even in the fitful fleeting form that Brooke endured, so he threaded his way through the maze of the old ghetto to Doric’s lodge, and with a pair of powerful torches they set out through the college’s linked courtyards. Crossing Great Court, Brooke told the porter what he knew of the night Ernst Lux had fallen to his death.

  ‘Never liked young Mr Ashmore,’ said Doric, leading the way under the arch and into North Court. ‘His father’s no better. Knighthood next, you see. One of the great and good, and about as deserving as the rest.’

  The court lay in moonlight, all the student rooms blacked out. Brooke positioned Doric by the small fishpond at the centre and told him to play the torch on the facade of the West Range, across which Ashmore and Lux had climbed on the night of the Great Darkness.

  The route, as related by Ashmore, was still fresh in his mind: down the chimney – a narrow niche between two buttresses – then across, using a thin decorated ledge for a series of handholds, before descending the drainpipe. That, at least, had been their plan.

  Lux had fallen from the decorated ledge, his body destroyed by the pinnacles of the porch below. Brooke levered himself up onto the small roof over the door, using a short stretch of the same drainpipe. Pinnacles of stone rose around him like stalagmites. The thought of human flesh falling onto these vicious spikes sent sympathetic pains bolting through his limbs. In the moonlight he could detect dried patches of blood, and worse. Recalling Lux’s corpse, laid out on Dr Comfort’s metal table, he could see again the ugly trauma to the skull: the bone splintered like eggshell, revealing a hint of the brain within, the glazed and bloody tissue with its maze-like pattern.

  ‘According to Ashmore, they got the body down and carried it out through the watergate,’ said Brooke, returning to ground level.

  An arch was set in the east wall, obscured by weeds and a rose covered in thorns. Brooke pinned it back with his arm so that Doric could get to the lock. They both had to set their shoulders against the oak but when it finally gave way it shot open, so that they were both pitched out onto a path which ran beside the river. In five minutes they’d reached the spot on the Backs where the early morning dog-walker had found Lux’s tangled body.

  Marcus Ashmore’s story fitted the ground plan perfectly.

  Doric stood very still, and it was only when the moon came out and Brooke could see the porter’s lips that he realised he was praying. It wasn’t that Brooke had no faith of his own, just that in his daily life he found the existence of a god of little practical help. And he certainly didn’t believe in the efficacy of prayers. In the desert, in his cell, he’d said many, with little result. They walked back in silence, a funeral procession without a body, locking the watergate behind them.

  Back in the North Court, the porter led the way towards the lodge but, in a gesture of farewell and resignation, Brooke looked back one last time at the spot where Lux had fallen. This time he saw the truth. It had always been in plain sight.

  The porch, which had taken the force of Lux’s falling, flailing body, was not beneath the narrow decorative ledge, with its delicate handholds. It stood directly under the chimney down which, Ashmore had explained, they braced their bodies, feet to one side, backs to the other. Such a descent was meat and gravy to them: simplicity itself, a manoeuvre without danger or, indeed, a requirement for a strong nerve or concentration.

  But it was here, at this precise point, that Ernst Lux had fallen to his death.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE

  Brooke arrived first at the Mill Road Cemetery. A dawn mist had thickened, reducing visibility to a few yards, so that crosses and statues, tombs and sarcophagi, looming grey to black, came into intricate focus and then faded into white. The path, which led from the broken iron gates, slid past a chapel with a single spirelet and then split three ways. Brooke turned right to the tumbledown cemetery wall and circled the graveyard until he reached a bench opposite a stone, set flat in the ground, marked by a police lantern and a single bunch of flowers. In the stone was etched the military crest of the Machine Gun Corps.

  By the bench stood an old gas lamp, a monster of Victorian ironmongery in black and gold, with the arms of the city crudely cast. Brooke noted the three boats under a gilt bridge, supported by hippocampi: Neptune’s steeds, half horse, half fish. The heraldry seemed to chime with the liquid morning, the thickening fog depositing a million miniature globes of water on Brooke’s overcoat and skin. He imagined tiny seahorses suspended in each drop.

  The cemetery, comfortably able to swallow a dozen football pitches, had been reduced to the intimacy of a Turkish bath. Close by, he could hear buses idling on Mill Road, the wet swish of cars crawling through the gloom, and the chiming of clocks to mark the hour. Chris Childe had died at this spot, his body slumped across the gravestone of his parents.

  Brooke shivered, turned up his collar and lit a cigarette.

  Out of the mist, with a martinet’s military step, came Colonel George Swift-Lane. He took his place on the same seat, but at the far end, leaning on the iron armrest so that he could turn his small, wiry frame to face Brooke, slipping off a pair of leather driving gauntlets.

  ‘The Bentley?’ asked Brooke.

  Swift-Lane ignored the question, producing a silver cigarette case. It was probably the mist but in profile the colonel’s face seemed covered in bead-like sweat.

  ‘Why are we here, Brooke? I’m a busy man. Do we have news?’

  ‘I’m intrigued by your passion for vehicles,’ persisted Brooke, setting his hat down on the seat, refusing to be hurried. ‘Did it start in Russia, with the ACEF? I looked up your Who’s Who entry; you’ve had an adventurous career. A whole army of armoured cars to direct – it must have been heaven. Or was it the élan, so to speak, of the expedition that took you to Russia, or the politics? Then off to military intelligence when you returned home, very rakish. Calls for something stylish, certainly, but isn’t the Bentley a bit over the top?’

  ‘The Bentley’s new. But don’t let me stop you. You’re obviously enjoying yourself. Is this why I’ve been summoned here, to discuss my choice of vehicle?’ The simple set of four sentences had left him breathless.

  ‘No. I wanted to talk about why you killed Chris Childe, right here, on this spot.’

  For half a minute the colonel was silent, staring straight ahead into the mist.

  Finally, he laughed, checking his watch. ‘I’ll give you five minutes, Brooke. Then I think it’s time I visited the chief constable in person. I think your career is about to come to a premature end.’

  ‘It all goe
s back to Corporal Harry Staunton,’ said Brooke. ‘His story leads us here, to this spot. The facts speak for themselves. You were his senior commanding officer in Russia, although you were several hundred miles away on the day he died. A heroic death, and a promise made by his pals to return his gun to his widow. It fell to you to do the honours, because you’re a Cambridge man, and you were going home. Stop me if I go wrong … And so you met Vera Staunton.’

  Swift-Lane seemed to make a decision then, visibly relaxing his shoulders, leaning back in the seat.

  ‘Alright, let’s play it your way,’ he said. ‘I’ll tell you what happened, Brooke. Then it’s over.’

  He kept it short, and brutally to the point.

  Yes, he’d tracked down Staunton’s widow, and brought with him her late husband’s pistol. And there was a small sum of money, raised by the battalion, to supplement the pension.

  ‘It was clear to me that Mrs Staunton had found her feet …’ He let that hang in the air.

  ‘She was on Babylon Street?’ interjected Brooke.

  ‘Yes. She was not in any pressing need. I gave over the hundred-pound annuity. There were other officers in pursuit of … what shall we call it, Brooke? Female company. I effected introductions. That is the extent of our relationship.’

  ‘I see,’ said Brooke.

  ‘I doubt that very much. It was a matter of honouring the dead. Her husband was a brave man.’

  ‘Very much so. But not the father of Frederick. The dates don’t match. I’ve been to the school. You are on the board, I see. You’re the boy’s guardian. In fact, I think it’s possible you’re his father. Were you in pursuit of female company? You were certainly in a position to pay.’

  Swift-Lane tilted his head upwards to let the mist fall on his face.

  Brooke stopped there because he heard approaching footsteps. At a turn in the path Vera Staunton appeared, walking under an umbrella. The colonel half stood, reached out a hand and then sat back down, adopting a curious slow-motion descent.