‘Damn it all to hell, Pa,’ Max murmured under his breath as he gazed out through the window of the train. ‘Why’d you have to go and die on me?’
SIR CHARLES MAXTED, Max’s grandfather, bought the Gresscombe estate following an early retirement from the diplomatic service funded by his prudent investments in mining and railway stock. The estate had suffered from decades of neglect. But Sir Charles had a keen eye for a bargain. He re-tenanted Gresscombe Farm and demolished the tumbledown Georgian manor house to make way for an Arts and Craft mansion of his own commissioning. Gresscombe Place was a red-brick house of multiple gables and parapeted bays, with high windows to admit as much light as possible in a vain attempt to recreate the dazzling brilliance of Mesopotamia, where he had served as consul for fifteen years. An abundance of Middle Eastern rugs and beaten copper were nods in the same direction, overwhelmed since his death by the more cluttered and heavier-curtained tastes of his daughter-in-law.
Max barely remembered his grandfather. He was only six when the old man died. Sir Charles’s greatest claim to fame was to have assisted Henry Rawlinson, his predecessor as consul in Baghdad, in his pioneering translation of cuneiform script. Max’s father was named in honour of Rawlinson and Sir Charles pursued his interest in Sumero-Babylonian languages to the end of his days.
Haskins, the chauffeur, had been sent to meet Max at Epsom station. He was a taciturn fellow at the best of times and Max knew better than to seek his views on what he described, uncontroversially, as ‘a bad business’. He would doubtless have said the same, in the same neutral tone, if Max had been killed in the war. He was more sentimental about the internal combustion engine than the crazed doings of humankind.
Accordingly, there was nothing in the way of idle conversation to distract Max as they passed the flat quartet of fields west of the town where he planned to open his flying school. Sir Henry had agreed to their use for the purpose with disarming readiness. ‘Gladly, my boy,’ had been his exact words. But gladness was likely to be in short supply now at Gresscombe Place.
And so it proved. The family had gathered to discuss the sad news from France. None of the early-spring sunshine penetrated to the drawing-room where they were assembled: Lady Maxted, the Dowager Lady Maxted as she now was, with Ashley and Lydia, as well as Uncle George, Lady Maxted’s brother. There was a notable dearth of tears, though Max would not have expected his mother to be prostrated by grief, even if she felt it. She was rigidly self-controlled at all times. She considered any display of emotion to be an admission of weakness. And she was not weak. Nor was her daughter-in-law. Lydia was a woman of hard features and firm opinions, who spoke to her husband, her children and indeed her brother-in-law in the same tone she used to instruct her several dogs and horses.
Ashley was predictably subdued in the presence of the two women who dominated his life. He was shorter and bulkier than Max, with darker hair, a puffier face and a ruddier complexion. A knee mangled in a hunting accident ten years before had left him with a slight limp that had spared him frontline service in the war. Somehow he had acquired a captaincy by sitting behind a desk in Aldershot for the duration. He never referred to the contrast with Max’s aerial derring-do and nor did Max, but that did not mean either of them was heedless of it.
George Clissold had arrived hotfoot from an undemanding half-day in the City, where he was something (probably superfluous) in marine insurance. He was, as usual, not entirely sober, but sobriety had never suited him. Lady Maxted claimed to rely on him for advice in financial matters. For his part, Max would have relied on him for nothing beyond the recommendation of a good malt whisky. But he was a genial and unobjectionable presence. And he did at least raise a smile at his nephew’s arrival.
‘Bit of a facer, what, James my lad?’ he said in his rumbling voice as he clasped Max’s hand.
‘A terrible shock, Uncle, yes.’ He turned to Lady Maxted. ‘How are you, Mother?’
‘It is a fearful blow, James,’ she responded. ‘But we must bear it.’
‘That’s the spirit, old girl,’ said George.
Tea was served. Lydia plied Max with an unsought account of how bravely little Hetty had taken the news of her grandfather’s death and the arrangement she had made for Giles’s housemaster to inform him of the sad event. Max knew convention demanded that he display some interest in the welfare of his brother’s children, but he felt even less able than usual to express any. Besides, Lydia was clearly only filling in until the maid left them to it.
‘I shall tell you what Mr Fradgley from the embassy in Paris told me, James,’ said Lady Maxted as soon as privacy was restored. ‘Heaven knows, it leaves much unexplained, but I do implore you all to guard against unwarranted speculation.’ She paused to let her request, which was more in the way of an instruction, sink in. There was already an implication that they should be guarding her good name as well as her late husband’s. ‘Some time last night, Henry fell from the roof of an apartment building in Montparnasse. Precisely when this occurred is unclear. No one seems to have seen him fall – that is, no one has yet come forward to say they did. He was found … in the early hours of the morning … by a group of people leaving a … well, some place of amusement. According to Mr Fradgley, there can be no doubt the fall killed him instantly, which is a blessing, I suppose. Mr Fradgley had already spoken to the police. They were satisfied the fall had been … accidental.’
Max assumed he was not alone in wondering how the police could be so swiftly satisfied on such a point. In the circumstances, suicide was surely a possibility, although not a likely one in his opinion. Sir Henry was hardly the self-destructive type and had been in notably good spirits when Max had visited him in Paris two weeks before. There was, of course, a third possibility. But he was not about to mention it. Still, there was one obvious question he reckoned he could risk asking. ‘How can the police know Pa fell from the roof rather than a window on one of the upper floors, Mother?’
‘I don’t know, James. There must be … evidence pointing to that.’
‘But Mr Fradgley didn’t say what the evidence was.’
‘I’m sure the poor man didn’t want to burden your mother with the particulars,’ said Lydia.
‘But he was definite this occurred in … Montparnasse?’
‘Are you familiar with the area?’ Lydia asked sharply, as if unfamiliarity with Montparnasse would somehow disqualify Max from querying the point.
‘No, I’m not. But … his hotel was off the Champs-Elysées. That’s a long way from Montparnasse.’
‘Is it?’
‘You know he was always very keen on astronomy,’ said George.
‘That’ll be what got him up there. Someone offered him the use of their roof to admire the night sky. It was the equinox, wasn’t it?’
Into Max’s mind came a memory of his father instructing him in the distribution of the constellations one clear summer night around the turn of the century, when his home leave had briefly intersected with Max’s school holiday. Sir Henry had given him a cardboard-mounted chart of the heavens – a planisphere – as a late birthday present and shown him how to identify Perseus and Orion and the Great Bear. On the reverse was a chart of the southern sky, the one Sir Henry saw from his residence in Rio. Max had looked long and often at it after Sir Henry’s departure, imagining what it was like to be so far away that even the stars were different.
‘Please, George,’ said his mother, her words cutting through the memory. ‘This is exactly the sort of futile supposition I wish to avoid.’ She allowed herself a sigh of exasperation. ‘And it is why I want you and Ashley to go to Paris as soon as possible, James, to clarify the circumstances of your father’s death and to arrange for his body to be brought home for a funeral here in Surrey at the earliest opportunity.’
‘Really?’
‘I can’t see why we both need to go,’ said Ashley in his first contribution to the discussion. ‘I can perfectly well deal with … whatever needs dealing with
.’
‘You must both go,’ said Lady Maxted, in a tone Max recognized as brooking no contradiction. ‘It is only fitting that his two sons should accompany him … on his final return to these shores.’
‘Well …’
‘You will do this for your father, won’t you, James?’ His mother stared expectantly at him.
‘Of course, Mother.’ He glanced at Ashley, who was frowning dubiously. The arrangement evidently did not suit him, nor in all likelihood Lydia, which was something to commend it from Max’s point of view. ‘Of course I’ll go.’
AFTER TEA, ASHLEY suggested Max accompany him to his study, so that they might consult Bradshaw and plan their journey. Max suspected he also wanted a word alone with him, out of their mother’s – and his wife’s – earshot.
Certainly planning the journey did not occupy them for long. ‘We can have Haskins run us up to town first thing in the morning and catch the eleven o’clock train from Victoria. Where did you stay when you went over?’
‘The Mazarin. Pa booked it for me. He said it was one of the few places not overrun by delegates to the peace conference.’
‘Conveniently located?’
‘I should say. Halfway between the Arc de Triomphe and the Eiffel Tower.’
‘We’ll cable them, then. We shan’t need to stay for more than a couple of days.’
‘You don’t think so?’
‘You heard Mother. Sort out the paperwork and ship Pa home p.d.q. That’s what she wants. So, that’s what she must have.’
‘But we don’t know what we’ll find out when we get there, Ashley.’
Ashley hurrumphed at that and subsided into the chair behind his desk. Above him hung, as it always had, a large framed map of Mesopotamia circa 1850. The study had originally been their grandfather’s and was furnished much as he had left it. The clay jar on the desk that served as a pencil-pot could easily have been thousands of years old, chanced upon in one of the places marked on the map. Max had been angling for a transfer to the Mesopotamian Front in the months before he was shot down. He had dreamt of flying over the sun-baked remains of the ancient civilization whose language his grandfather had helped to translate. But a dream was all it had been.
Ashley flicked open the silver cigarette-box that stood beside the pencil-pot, took out a cigarette, tamped it on the blotter and lit up. Max sat down and lit one for himself. A short interlude of fraternal understanding elapsed as smoke curled into the air between them. Then Ashley said, ‘Unless you credit Uncle George’s hare-brained idea about star-gazing, it’s hard to imagine anything reputable lying behind this … accident.’
‘What are you suggesting?’
‘You saw Pa more recently than I did. How would you describe his … state of mind?’
‘Cheerful. Optimistic. Rather more so than I’d have expected.’
‘Retirement didn’t suit him, you know. He prowled round here like a caged lion. He greeted the summons to join our delegation in Paris as a gift from the gods. “I’m back in the saddle,” he said to me.’
‘He said the government wanted someone with knowledge of Brazilian politics to advise them on how to respond to Brazil’s claims at the peace conference. Something to do with confiscated German ships and impounded cargoes of coffee.’
‘Coffee? Small beer, more like. I can’t believe his expertise has been in high demand. And given that, he’s probably not been kept very busy …’
‘Yes?’
‘An accident pure and simple’s highly unlikely, James. You know that as well as I do. And suicide’s out of the question, I think we can agree. Montparnasse is a long way from the Champs-Elysées, as you yourself pointed out. I believe it has a somewhat … dissolute reputation.’
Max shrugged. ‘I bow to your superior knowledge.’
‘Well, it’s full of artists, isn’t it?’
‘I believe so.’
‘There you are, then. Models au naturel. Drugs. Drink. Debauchery of all kinds.’
‘I’m sure that’s a—’
‘The point is, Pa probably started mixing in circles he shouldn’t have and ended up dead. How exactly, we may never know. And perhaps we needn’t know. If the French police are happy to write it off as an accident, there’s no sense our raising a stink, is there?’
‘Well, Mother wouldn’t want us to, it’s true.’
‘She certainly wouldn’t.’ Ashley regarded Max studiously through a slowly exhaled plume of smoke. ‘We’re of one mind on this, are we?’
‘I won’t do anything that risks … embarrassing our family, if that’s what you mean.’
‘Good.’
‘Though—’
‘Why did you go and see him, by the way?’
‘Pa?’
‘Yes. Why did you go and see him?’
Max was damned if he would pretend this was anything but a strange question, even though it was not quite as strange as he meant to imply. ‘I hadn’t seen him in nearly five years, Ashley. Even by our standards, that’s a long gap.’
‘You’ll have noticed how his time in Russia aged him.’
‘He was five years older. Like me. I dare say I’m not as twinkle-eyed and clear-browed as I was in 1914. Actually, I thought he was … surprisingly invigorated.’
‘And receptive?’
‘If you like.’
‘You had no other reason for going, then? No … proposal to put to him?’
So, now they had come to it. Sir Henry had promised he would write to Ashley, telling him of his agreement to let Max open his flying school on part of the estate. Max had expected to hear from Ashley once he had received the letter. He had heard nothing. Until now. ‘Did he write to you?’
‘Yes.’ Ashley opened the desk drawer and pulled out a letter, still in its envelope. The stamp was French and Max recognized the handwriting as his father’s. ‘A flying school, eh? Well, well. That’s your plan for the future, is it, James?’
‘Pa liked the sound of it.’
‘I doubt Barratt will.’
Barratt was the tenant at Gresscombe Farm. According to Sir Henry, he had no legal right to object and Max had confidently assumed that was true. ‘He doesn’t seem to be making much use of the fields.’
‘Appearances can be deceptive in farming, as you’d know if you’d ever taken an interest in the estate. I’ve had to manage the place in Pa’s absence. You may be surprised to learn it doesn’t run itself.’
‘Are you going to let me open the flying school, Ashley?’ The moment had come to pose the question directly.
‘Do you really think you can make a success of it?’
‘Certainly.’
‘These are straitened times. Who’s going to have money to throw away on flying lessons?’
‘People who see the commercial potential in becoming a pilot and consequently won’t be throwing their money away.’
‘And what is the commercial potential? No, no.’ Ashley held up his hand. ‘We can save this for the trip. Make a good enough case, James, and, who knows, I might let you go ahead.’
‘I was hoping you’d honour Pa’s agreement.’
‘I’d like to, obviously.’ Ashley smiled, but his smile in fact made nothing obvious. ‘I have to consider the financial security of the estate as a whole. I wasn’t going to mention it, but Lydia’s expecting another child. And there’ll be no easy money for anyone while the nation pays off its war debts. Pa may not have thought this through properly.’ His smile broadened. ‘I owe it to the family to be sure that I do.’
WINIFRED, THE DOWAGER Lady Maxted, had announced that she would rest before dinner. She had retired to her room, where she lay on her bed and contemplated the slow advance of twilight through the half-curtained windows.
Sir Henry’s retirement from the diplomatic service had hung over her head for a decade or more as an unwelcome but unavoidable end to a long separation both had found increasingly congenial. Strictly speaking, she could not be sure Sir Henry had found it conge
nial, but he had never given her cause to doubt it. She assumed and rather hoped he had found some discreet companionship along the way. She bore him no ill will. And certainly she would not have wished him dead in this sudden, strange and possibly scandalous manner. A fall from a roof in Paris, indeed. She shook her head at the tragic inappropriateness of it all. This was not how Sir Henry Maxted should have ended his days – though, to be sure, precisely how he had ended them she did not know.
She thought for a moment of how close they had been at the loving outset of their marriage, of the lengths she had been prepared to go to to ensure his happiness and to protect his good name. Tears came into her eyes for the first time since she had heard of his death. ‘My poor dear Henry,’ she murmured. ‘Who would have predicted this?’
There came a knock at the door. She dabbed her eyes with her handkerchief and was instantly composed. ‘Come in,’ she called. She did not sit up, for she knew who her visitor was. And he would take her as he found her. He always had.
‘You wanted a word, Win,’ said George Clissold, stepping quietly into the room. There was something in his tone and bearing that was fractionally different from the buffoonish uncle he had presented himself as in the drawing-room. ‘Is this a good time? If you really do need to rest …’
‘Sit down and tell me how I’m placed.’
George conveyed an armchair to the foot of the bed and eased himself into it. The evening light fell obliquely on his silvery hair and handsome man-of-the-world features and Winifred smiled affectionately at him.
‘Why did you never marry, George?’
‘Who’d have had me?’
‘There were quite a few who were willing, as I recall.’
‘But I always played fair by letting them glimpse the depraved core of my being before I popped the question. That generally settled it.’
‘What nonsense you do talk.’
‘Yes. I’m known for it. And nonsense is what I may have been talking when I said I thought I’d seen Henry last week. I was probably mistaken. Chance resemblances are common enough. He was out of sight before I could get a proper look at him.’
The Ways of the World Page 2