‘When the military police came looking for his son, and Mr Sholto learnt what had happened, he says he’d rather people thought his son dead than a deserter, so he put it about that he’d been wounded and died in the last days of the war.’
A silence fell.
In these tight communities – and Netherley was a very small village – people would have every sympathy and do all they could for a man whose son had died fighting for his country, that much Novak knew. But if that son was branded a deserter, whatever the circumstances – no. Not when a dozen or more other young fellows from the village had given their lives during those terrible years and would never return. If Peter had deserted, his father had counted on him having more sense than to return to the village. Now the man, poor devil, must be feeling as though he’d made a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Novak was glad to see that one person here at least understood the father’s attitude. ‘Sholto will be damned cut up,’ Hugh Markham murmured. ‘He thought a great deal of the boy. Hard to imagine how this came about . . . must go and see him.’
‘He’s saying he doesn’t want to see anyone,’ Novak warned.
‘Edmund Sholto’s a very reserved man. He doesn’t have many close friends in the village, but I potter down there once or twice a week. We play chess and talk. I think he’ll see me,’ Hugh said quietly, although it seemed to Novak he did not relish the prospect of the visit. He did in fact look quite upset.
‘You realize what this means?’ Novak went on, addressing them as a group. ‘It moves forward the date he was killed – to some time after his desertion. After the hospital ceased operating.’
‘But it must have been before Marta and I returned to live here,’ Stronglove said quickly.
‘Possibly, but not necessarily. The spot where he was found is a long way from the house, Mr Stronglove, and not often visited, as we’ve established. He could have been killed there – and buried – at any time after he left his unit in March 1919, without anyone being the wiser.’ He paused. ‘He wasn’t killed too recently, though, our experts judge.’
‘The body being a skeleton, of course.’
Novak ignored the sarcasm. Beneath it, he sensed tension in the man; indeed, he felt it running between all these people, just as he had when he’d first talked to them. He hadn’t yet got the measure of any of them, though he found the youngest, Rosie Markham, easy enough to read. Instinct told him he ought to heed his feelings, the suspicion that something was being held back, but no one was going to give anything away. His glance eventually came to rest on Marta Heeren, blocky and plain, staring mutely across the garden, fingering the glass beads round her neck as if disassociating herself with what was going on. Her fingers were stained purple-red with juice from the elderberries she’d been picking. As if suddenly aware of his attention on her, she scraped back her chair and without a word lumbered through the French windows and into the house, her hand to her mouth. A door banged and silence fell.
‘She was fond of Peter,’ Dirk said after a moment.
Lady Fitzallan made as if to follow, but hesitated and sat back down as he shook his head.
Now why should the news that the skeleton was that of young Sholto have upset Marta Heeren, of all these people here, so much?
His former army commander had described Peter Sholto as having a fair but not outstanding record when he had fought with the regiment on the Western Front, a young man of intelligence, educated, but he’d remained a private – not officer material. No calibre. No leadership qualities, he’d said stiffly. (Not really a gent, Novak had supplied to himself.) The CO added that as far as he knew, Sholto had not been unpopular, though he couldn’t say if he had made a friend of anyone in particular in the unit.
It was Lady Fitzallan who broke the silence, remarking quietly, ‘The house was empty. I suppose it’s possible he came here to hide, after his desertion?’
He gave her a quick nod. ‘It’s possible. And if he did, that the person who killed him knew that’s what he intended, and followed or met him here.’
‘Look here,’ Stronglove began. ‘If Peter came back to Netherley at all, surely he would have gone home, to his father, not come here. How sure are you it was Peter?’
‘I think we can be reasonably confident about his identity, sir. And whether he intended to go and see his father or not, he came to Leysmorton first. Mr Sholto hasn’t seen his son for over four years, since his last leave.’
‘One of his army pals who followed him then, wanting to settle old scores maybe?’
‘Maybe. But it’s just as likely to be an old enemy chancing on him when he got back to Netherley and following him for the same reason, a quarrel that suddenly erupted – or half a dozen other off-the-cuff reasons, if it comes to that. The question is, why did he leave his unit? Was he deserting, or did he intend to return? It’s not unknown for men to disappear in response to some family emergency or something of that sort. But speculation’s pointless until we have more to go on.’
The identification was good, they no longer had a nameless victim on their hands, but Novak’s instinct was telling him this might be as far as they were going to get. Everything was against them. Very likely it would remain one of those unsolved wartime mysteries, of which there were more than was generally known. Three years had elapsed since the young soldier’s disappearance, at a time when the nation was still getting back on its feet, pulling itself together after the disruption of four years of bloody warfare; when many people were still displaced from their pre-war lives, homes, habits and routines, and the disappearance of one man after the annihilation of millions was of relatively little importance.
He frowned. No. You had to believe it was important, that it mattered, even amongst the criminal fraternity in which Novak normally worked, where life was cheap. Any man’s death mattered. And this one mattered very much to that man in the village whom Novak had just met and had to inform that his son had been murdered – and evidently to Miss Heeren as well. He could not even begin to imagine receiving such news about young Oliver or little Evie, his own two; nor could he imagine ever recovering from such a blow to the heart.
He was beginning to realize that this had ceased to be just another job, to be wrapped up as quickly as possible. Certainly, he was going to have to pace himself, adjust to a different way of working. But he would find the killer, he resolved, not just to chalk up one more case solved, but to bring to justice the person who had deprived this young fellow of the right to the life before him, left him in such an ignominious grave and his father’s heart breaking with grief.
‘We need to know more about the victim. His death may well be concerned with something that happened during his time in the army, though his having been killed here indicates possible connections with his life before that, so if any of you can think of any reason why this might have happened – his habits, anyone who disliked him, anything at all – I’d be grateful if you’d let me know.’ Flipping open the cover of his pocket watch, he gave it a quick glance. ‘I’m going to have to leave you, but I shall need at some point to speak to those of you who were close to him.’
‘I wasn’t particularly close to him,’ Dirk said shortly. ‘He only worked for me.’
Hugh said slowly, ‘For myself, I scarcely knew the boy – generations apart, you know – but I can tell you now that his father was concerned about Peter. He was restless and not showing any signs of settling down to anything. Edmund was naturally upset when the boy volunteered for the army, but at the same time, he thought it might be the making of him. Maybe he got involved with the wrong sort while he was away?’
‘As someone more his age, you would presumably have known him better, Miss Markham?’
‘Rosie was just a child.’
‘Yes,’ Rosie said, looking up from contemplation of her polished riding boots. ‘I was only eleven when the war started, and he was grown up.’
Marta Heeren’s alleged fondness for the boy wasn’t referred to. Nova
k knew he would have to speak to her, but she clearly wasn’t in any fit state to be questioned at the moment. He stood up, nodded to Willard who closed his notebook with a smart snap, and thanked them all. ‘I think that’s as far as we can go for now. We shall be continuing with our investigations, of course, and we’ll let you know if anything else transpires.’
After leaving them all outside on the terrace, Marta had blundered through the library and into the hall, where she came to a halt and gazed wildly around as if she didn’t know where she was, uncertain where to go. Today was the morning when one of the village women turned out her bedroom, lunch was being prepared in the kitchen, and trying to find privacy in one of the secluded corners of the library, with everyone still on the terrace, wasn’t possible. There were a dozen other places in the house where she could have hidden herself, so many in fact that the choice seemed an impossible one in her confused state, and in the end she simply sat down on the big oak settle, where for only the second time in her adult life she burst into tears. Peter! Oh, Peter! Why did you have to come back here?
Peter, slim and lithe, with smooth olive skin, eyes like black obsidian and thick eyelashes any girl would have given her soul for . . . He had reminded her, when she had first seen him, so much of Dirk when he was the same age.
As a little girl, Marta had not taken to her new stepmother, Florence Vavasour, who had married her widowed father, a big, stolid Dutchman. Florence was a tight-lipped woman who did not believe in spoiling children, but it was not for taking her mother’s place that Marta resented her: she did not even remember her mother, who had died when she was a baby. She had felt excluded, no one now noticed her or wanted her affection, and she tried to gain attention by naughtiness: getting her pristine clothes dirty, savagely destroying and defacing the few toys and picture books her new stepmother allowed, baffling her father. That changed when Marta first saw her little stepbrother in his mother’s arms, a newborn baby with an angry red face, tiny starfish hands and unbelievably delicate, pearly fingernails. Where jealousy might have been expected, from precisely that moment on she had loved him with a fierce protectiveness that had lasted all their lives.
Was it only this memory of caring for Dirk that had made her love Peter, or the fact that Dirk, a grown man, no longer needed her quite so much?
How long she sat there, she didn’t know, but presently she managed to pull herself together and dry her eyes. Her heavy face fell back into its usual stoic expression, and after a moment or two she thought she might be ready to go into the kitchen and get on with her wine-making.
But just as she prepared to go, Dirk and the two policemen came into the hall as Dirk escorted them to the front door. Novak and his sergeant hadn’t noticed her in the shadows at the far end, but Dirk had seen her and now came towards her. He sat down beside her and put his arm around her shoulders. ‘Maartje, Maartje.’
The sound of her real name, now only ever used by him, nearly upset her again. It had always been she, the big sister, who had looked after, comforted and protected him, but Dirk for his part was more tender with her, more understanding, than he was with anyone else. They had always supported one another, and always would. She would never let him down. It would be all right.
She let his hand stay where it was for a moment, then drew away. She didn’t like to be touched by anyone, sometimes not even by Dirk. She took a breath. ‘Run along now,’ she said, standing up. ‘I expect you have your work to attend to.’ Like a small boy, he obeyed. It was his instinctive reaction to his older sister.
Nellie Dobson, who came in daily from the village to cook, had brought one of her grandchildren with her – it was little Violet today – and Marta could hear her prattling in the kitchen. She pushed open the kitchen door and went to the table, where she sat with Violet on her knee and felt the warmth of her small body, and smelled the baby smell of her hair while she showed her how to pick over the elderberries with her fat little fingers.
‘I suppose I can go and change now,’ Rosie said, after the police and Dirk had disappeared. Hugh, too, rose from his chair.
Emily said, ‘Please, Hugh, stay a moment, if you will.’
Rosie left them and they sat for a while without speaking. The August garden, at the end of a long, hot summer, was beginning to look exhausted, the trees heavy with leaf, some already yellowing, the first steps towards the year’s gentle slide into autumn. Only the Hecate tree stood far off, dark and unchanging, its black-green shape silhouetted against the sky.
Hugh looked expectant as Emily turned to him. Perhaps he was hoping for the talk she had promised when she first arrived, and which he had, with admirable patience, not pressed her for.
‘There’s something on your mind, Hugh.’
He grunted but didn’t say anything for a while. ‘You noticed. Yes. In a way, I feel responsible for all this.’
‘You? How?’
‘Responsible in that I brought them to Netherley, Edmund and his son.’
‘Which doesn’t mean,’ she replied after a moment, ‘that you should blame yourself for the boy’s death. Who is Edmund Sholto?’
‘He lives in one of those two cottages belonging to Steadings – you remember them, just outside the gates, where old Mrs Cantor used to live. When she died and her cottage became vacant, I offered it to him. He had bought a bookshop, specializing in antiquarian books, in St Albans, that’s how I came to know him.’
‘Of course.’ Emily knew Hugh’s interest in books had always extended beyond the actual publishing of them. He possessed a fine collection of old and rare volumes, and some valuable first editions. Bookshops drew him like a magnet.
Sholto had come to the area after his wife had died following a long illness, which had been a particularly harrowing time for both him and their young son. Peter was about ten when they left Cornwall, and Edmund wanted to get right away from it all, for both their sakes, make a new start. He decided to settle in St Albans, where he found good schools for Peter and a bookshop for sale, with accommodation attached. But, added Hugh drily, having a passion for books doesn’t necessarily bring in a living. Edmund had been a schoolmaster and was in no way a man of business. The bookshop did not make money and he was lucky enough to sell it before it collapsed completely. It was then Hugh had offered him the vacant cottage.
‘That was an act of kindness.’
‘Kindness?’ He raised an eyebrow. ‘Self-preservation, more likely. There’s no one else in Netherley I can talk to with the same degree of compatibility.’ He rose to go.
She knew he hadn’t told her everything. If she pressed him, he might tell her what he was holding back, but she felt she had no right. There were many things she hadn’t told even Hugh, dearer to her than anyone else, and never would.
Eleven
When the prospect of working for Dirk Stronglove had first been mooted at Dee’s wedding, Val had scornfully dismissed the idea. He told Poppy he would have to be desperate to take on that sort of job. ‘And I don’t believe I’m that far gone, not quite, not yet.’
‘Since when have you been able to afford to be so high-minded? Lots of men would simply jump at such an offer. It’s only a temporary thing, anyway, isn’t it?’
That had certainly been made quite clear in that first brief chat he’d had with Stronglove. ‘True. Until he finishes his current book, while he makes up his mind whether to have his eyes operated on or not. Poor devil, what a decision to have to make! He’s quite keen to have someone working with him who might have an understanding of what he’s about – actually, he’s quite impressed by Oxford, me reading English and all that.’
‘There you are, then.’
‘Haven’t you been listening to a word I’ve said? I can’t take it.’
But his protests had been token, because Poppy had been quite right. He wasn’t in a position to reject any reasonable job, especially one which offered a decent remuneration, as this one did. And despite what he had said, here he was, living in at Leysmort
on because Emily had suggested that was the only thing for him to do, Netherley being miles from any main line station, and Val not having any transport. Yesterday, Dirk had suddenly announced he needed a day off to give himself a break, and Val was free to do the same. So he had taken the opportunity to come up to London to collect more of his belongings – and to see a man he knew about the purchase of a second-hand motorcycle. On a borrowed bicycle, he’d ridden over to Kingsworth Halt to catch a train which eventually brought him to London.
He had been thankful, when he’d come to see Poppy in her smart little London shop, to find Xanthe Tripp absent. Waiting while she left him in order to accept delivery of several large parcels that had arrived at the same time as he did, he looked around, feeling he was in Aladdin’s cave – though one for initiates. One had to admit, Poppy really had flair, even if the ornaments, fabrics and furnishings bore no resemblance to anything anyone looking for comfort would wish to have in their home – apart from some rather nice cream leather sofas. He knew that Mrs Tripp’s interest was less in the artistic side of the business and more in finding clients who wanted to keep in the swim and leave the stuffy old pre-war ideas behind. There were apparently plenty of those, but regrettably few who could afford to implement this and follow the fashions of the moment.
‘How is work at Leysmorton, then?’ Poppy asked as the door closed behind the delivery man. ‘I trust you’re managing to survive without prostituting your art?’
‘No sarcasm, Pops, please.’ He paused. ‘It was old Emily who recommended me to Stronglove, I’m sure of it.’
‘Indirectly perhaps. She and Hugh.’
‘She’s obviously decided we both need looking after – this job for me, and I hear she’s commissioning you to redo her library. Can that be true?’
‘Yes, what fun.’
There was a slight pause. ‘I’d be very sorry to see the Leysmorton library looking anything like – this,’ he observed cautiously, casting another glance around at strange, angular lamps and sleek, streamlined furniture, fabrics in violent colours, ‘and sorry if you’re asking too much. It’s jolly decent of her to try and help us, after all.’
After Clare Page 9