“That’s an interesting way of thinking. It says something of the man.” Carl filled the quiet as Fergal stopped for breath.
“There has been too much war, too much destruction, too much death, too much requirement for men to be brave. It is my sincere hope that all that has been achieved since 1815 will be of lasting value. In my life I have known peace only since that year. Fifty years of war and fifteen of peace.”
“So he’s writing this in 1830,” Carl interrupted. “I had been wondering why there are no dates on anything other than that first page which was obviously written last. I think it’s important we can tie everything in time as well as place. Anyway Fergal, I’m sorry, I interrupted. Please continue.”
“The pretence undertaken with the gentleman who is known as Claude Olivierre has been effected to ensure that our children will not be faced with the same horrors their fathers faced and will not have to endure the same black despair of memory.”
“He’s admitting a ‘pretence’ isn’t he? We’re getting close aren’t we?” Skye asked, trying to ensure her voice did not display her excitement.
“I think we might be, but we will only know what we know when all four volumes are read,” Carl said firmly.
“There will, no doubt, be challenges in the future of which we cannot dream,” Fergal continued reading. “I pray that the sacrifices of all those involved in our intrigue will have been worthwhile. I pray that our sons, and their sons, and their sons in turn, will never be asked, as we were, to face the horrors of war.”
“Whatever they did they seem to have been doing for very good reasons,” Carl commented. “Carry on Fergal.”
“The bargains were made. I kept my part and my neighbour has kept his even if others did not keep theirs.”
“I wonder what that means.”
“Well, dear girl, I suspect we’ll have to wait for the decoding to find out.”
“We know the Frenshams and Liverpool are involved, don’t we?” Fergal began.
“We can’t assume that just because they were the godfathers.”
“But their names seem to crop up often in what I skimmed through. Also Wellesley-stroke-Wellington is involved somehow.”
“Well he was involved with most things in this period,” Carl added.
“Well whoever it was, someone let him down,” Skye concluded.
“Do you think he could just be making it all up?” Fergal raised something that had been worrying him since the morning. “There’s an awful lot of name-dropping.”
“You mean he’s just writing this all because he’s bored?” Skye asked doubtfully.
“He’s admitting to being a spy, why would he do that if he really was one? Is he fantasising? Or could he have laid the whole thing on as a game? The notebook and the codes, the letter, the locket, even the diaries could all be some elaborate hoax.”
“But the chest exists doesn’t it? And that’s real.”
Carl had been listening to the exchange between Skye and Fergal. He had considered the same thing but had come to the conclusion that Sir Bernard had no reason to lie. “I believe it is genuine,” he said firmly. “Everything I’ve been able to double-check has proved to be absolutely spot on.”
“That’s what I think too, I just had to make the point.” Skye realised Fergal had never actually believed what he had said.
“Anyway, having cleared that up, you must listen to this.” Fergal picked up other pages copied from the second folder. “It was not only Claude Olivierre who was a creation of this scheme. Sir Bernard Lacey was also an artificial construct. The man born Jim Mercer lived on the periphery of society, on the edges of the political and military worlds, gathering intelligence by subterfuge and by his wits, and through time Jim Mercer became Bernard Lacey. For more than forty years he travelled across Europe and the Americas plying his trade in the drawing rooms and salons of the influential and in the ale houses and bordellos frequented by the lowest in society. He was a chameleon, fitting into whatever situation he found himself. He learned to alter at will his demeanour, his language, his accent, even his face, to allow him to become the person he needed to be in whatever circumstance he found himself.”
“Interesting. What else?”
“On another page, In the winter of Eighteen Hundred and Fifteen Bernard Lacey was appointed Baronet and gifted a country estate, Oakridge Court, a fine house despite being located on the then unfashionable Island of Wight. He was granted a generous ten thousand pounds and a pension to enable him to live in comfortable respectability. In part, the Duke told him, these rewards were for ensuring one hundred years of peace for England but he saw them only as the means of completing his job. Living in close proximity to CO was necessary to ensure his charge was kept safe and in character as he extracted every piece of information that may or may not enable England to avoid conflict.”
“Anything else before we get a chance to go through this a little more systematically than you appear to have done?”
Fergal took Carl’s admonition lightly as he looked for another of the pages he had marked.
“He regrets more than he could express that Constance never knew his true self. He had grown to love and respect her yet she could never know who he was and how badly she had been used. Just as the man we had called Claude can never tell his Patience. It disgusts him that men can be so easy with the feelings and the lives of others. That proves a lot doesn’t it?” Fergal looked at Carl who had been listening closely as he had read the passages from the volume he had yet to study.
“I’m afraid it proves nothing. Everything, as I continually have to remind you, is circumstantial. Everything fits into our scenario but nothing proves it.”
“Anyway, I told you Wellington was involved. The Duke has to be Wellington.”
“As much as we have read and learned there is still nothing that gives us any proof that Claude Olivierre was the man we think he was. Sir Bernard has been very clever. Nothing he has written in plain text is incriminating, it’s all certainly suggestive, but there’s nothing incriminating.”
“So we just have to wait for Carl’s cipher expert and the decoding of the final volumes?” Skye asked.
“Indeed we shall. But in the meantime let us work through this second volume. We have a day or so before Margaret arrives.”
*
Fergal and Carl met Margaret Hart off the early ferry on Sunday morning. As they drove the now familiar lanes from Yarmouth to The Lodge they said nothing of their suspicions and told her nothing of the reason for their being holed up in a house on the Isle of Wight. Margaret would have to make up her own mind about the contents of the diaries.
“I’m pretty certain this contains the key to the cipher.” Carl handed Margaret the book and watched as she read the words on the cover.
“1915?” Margaret asked. “That’s a bit out of your period, isn’t it Carl?”
Carl said nothing, merely handing over the volumes written in code and the cipher book.
“Can’t you give me any clues at all? It will help if I know some proper names, places, that sort of thing.”
“The name Bernard Lacey will occur,” Carl said. “And possibly the name of this house, The Lodge, and also an estate called Oakridge. But you do need to have a completely open mind.”
“Is it about the war? Everything seems to be about one war or the other at the moment. Centenaries of this, seventy years since that.”
“Please Maggie, just work it all out. And if it says what we think it might then you’ll have to help us decide what to do with the information it contains.”
“How very mysterious.”
“Will you be all right here or is it a bit crowded? If you want a quiet room there’s the library.”
“The library will be good assuming there’s somewhere to plug in my laptop. I’m assuming you’ve got wi-fi?”
“I know this is the Isle of Wight but we’re not completely in another century,” Skye responded sharply.
“Sorry.” Margaret apologised quickly. “Do you want me to start now or have I time for a cup of coffee?”
*
Three hours later they broke off for lunch and a progress report from Maggie.
“I think I can see the way he’s working, at least in this first section. He seems to vary. When was it written?”
“We think in the 1820s and 30s,” Carl answered.
“That would fit, I was thinking sometime in the early-to-mid-nineteenth century. I have to say that, for its time, it is quite remarkably sophisticated. Do you know anything of the cryptographer?”
“Yes, but we don’t want to give you any preconceived ideas as to the content.”
“I didn’t think you would say anything. I can say he’s used an unpredictable combination of polyalphabetic substitution and keys of varying lengths. The issue is to work out which alphabet is used with which key. As I build up some idea of the pattern of his thinking, I am assuming it was a man, I will get quicker. I haven’t quite worked out his sentence construction.”
“But you are making progress?” Carl asked encouragingly.
“I am. I thought his first words were I am Bernard Lacey but then I realised the way he works his negatives. His first sentence is, in fact, I am not Bernard Lacey. He doesn’t say who he is, just that he is not Bernard Lacey.”
“We think his birth name was Jim Mercer,” Carl said helpfully.
“I haven’t come across that name. Anyway, then he wrote a very helpful sentence. If I hadn’t known better I would say he wrote this to help the decipherer, he would have known how useful repeated words are.” Maggie looked down at her notes and read. “I write from memory but my memory is good. Then he does another. I hold in my memory the events of long ago as clearly as if they were the events of yesterday. May I ask who this man who was not Bernard Lacey was?”
“Whoever he was he was my three times great-grandfather,” Skye answered when she realised neither Carl nor Fergal was going to say anything.
“So all this urgency and mystery is just about a family’s history?” Maggie asked doubtfully. She was not convinced when Skye nodded. “I don’t believe you.”
“We must all get back to work. I’ve been away from Cambridge over a week now and people will soon start to ask questions and God alone knows how Fergal is explaining away his absence to his employer. There is still so much to do. And, Maggie, you will be able to answer your own question when all those pages are decoded.”
Chapter 21
1802-1815
After his sons were born Sir Bernard spent much of his life in his study at Oakridge Court reliving the long years of war.
He committed everything to paper. Some sections he wrote in plain text but others, more sensitive, he painstakingly transcribed into his code. As he remembered those years he was acutely aware of how much could have gone wrong and how much could have gone better. There were times when he felt an uncomfortable pride in what he had achieved but more often he ended his days of reminiscence conscious that Chance, Fate and Providence had played a far greater part than he.
*
In the year 1802, with the Peace of Amiens signed, our political masters encouraged the populace in the view that the war was ended and the country safe. To anyone concerned with the security of the newly formed United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, however, it was known there was still much to fear. There seemed always to be campaigns in Hindustan, a dangerous young general in France, Napoleon Bonaparte, had made it his business to resurrect the war in Europe and the war the United States of America was waging against the North Africans was threatening to involve the English Navy.
I had been too long in the Americas. I had faced delay upon delay. My ship had taken five days longer than it should on the voyage across the Atlantic Ocean to Falmouth and the coach had had to divert south of Bodmin Moor, adding who knew how many hours to my journey.
It was nearly noon and we had still to cross the Tamar out of Cornwall when the coach veered sharply and come to an abrupt halt. I swore loudly in my frustration, I had thought my trying journey almost done.
As I jumped down onto the rutted track my first concern was to assess the situation; a tree blocking the road was frequently the prelude to an ambush. Robbery and murder were commonalities on the highways as there impoverished ex-soldiers made what living they could from unwary travellers. I judged that the falling of this tree was a natural event and since I could see no brigands waiting in ambush I returned my pistol to my pack.
Although I was, in appearance at least, a gentleman and had held my own in the best drawing rooms of society, the nature of my work was such that I was fit and strong and used to manual labour when it was necessary, but moving the obstruction seemed beyond my capability and the driver gave no help.
After I had travailed for some minutes I became aware of a figure discernible through the debris of the tree’s foliage and a voice, strong but unthreatening, offered assistance with simple sincerity. I accepted, sensing no danger. We heaved and hauled to remove the obstacle from the coach’s path and some minutes had passed before I was able to get a proper look at the man who had come to my aid.
I will never forget that moment.
Some would say it was chance, that these things cannot be ordered, but that morning Fate and Providence were not random, they had conspired to do what was right. They had conspired to put this man in my path.
Despite his strength he was of slightly less than average height. He was thin, but before his current obvious state of starvation I judged he would have been well built. His face, somewhat gaunt through hardship, was firmly featured; his mouth small, his lips almost womanly, his nose pronounced, his nostrils small, his hair straggly and thin, his forehead high, his eyes on the dark side of grey.
The likeness was extraordinary.
After more than a decade of war every man, woman and child in England thought they could recognise the man they called ‘Boney’ but the posters and the cartoons they saw were caricatures. Those images had not been designed to allow the populace to recognise the face of their country’s enemy, they had been drawn to instil fear or to poke fun and bore as little resemblance to the man himself as the many flattering official portraits.
But I had had conversation with First Consul, General Napoleon Bonaparte, I knew his true appearance, and this man, this starving wretch on a back lane in Cornwall, was his very doppelganger.
I had been involved with war since my voice was high and my chin bore little more than feathery down and there had been countless situations where my life, and the lives of others, had depended on the accuracy of my instant judgement. That more often than not my instincts had been sound meant that I not only still lived but had risen high in my career as intelligence agent for my adopted country.
In those first moments I had no idea in what manner this man could be used but I did know that I could not let him escape me. I suggested to him that we find an inn for some refreshment after our exertions. The men on the Admiralty Board who awaited news from America would have to wait some hours longer. The man made no immediate response and I suspected him wary of conversing with a gentleman, so I told him my name and that I simply wished to thank him for his assistance. He nodded slowly and joined me in the coach.
All my questions were answered apparently with honesty, but in the briefest of manners. He told me his name was Ennor Jolliffe. I judged him to be around thirty years of age. I asked if he had wife and children. He said none. I asked if he had parents or family. He said none. I asked if he had friends. He replied ‘I had one once but he is dead.’ I tried to take his measure. Was he simple or simply wary of a gentleman stranger who seemed to be showing too much interest in his person?
The inn in the village of Lostwithiel was a pleasant one, not crowded but used to dealing with any manner of traveller without warning, so food and drink were supplied in a private room with neither fuss nor delay.
I judged Ennor Jolliffe had been a sol
dier. Any man would see that he was down on his luck and had been sleeping in the hedgerows. He would not be anticipating the winter with any joy so might be amenable to being taken back into the service of his King.
Many ex-soldiers were ruffians, called the scum of the earth by the only man on whom I bestowed my unquestioning loyalty and respect. Was this Ennor Jolliffe scum or was he a man who could be trusted? I had that hour in that Lostwithiel inn in which to decide and within that hour I was sure Providence had provided a suitable character as well as a perfect visage.
I asked my question quietly, hoping that Jolliffe did not recognise how important his answer was to me. I asked him if he would agree to, once again, be in the service of the King.
He replied that there was no war. I said there was always war, our country always had enemies who wished us ill, here and overseas. When he asked whether he would join his old regiment I informed him that there were other ways to serve than to wear a scarlet uniform and bear arms.
I could see him wondering what it was I was asking of him and deciding that, whatever it was, it had to be better than walking the lanes of Cornwall waiting to die in the winter’s cold. His answer was a slow nod of his head.
The journey to London was a long one. We were to spend at least two days in each other’s company, and in that time I learned all I needed to about Ennor Jolliffe.
He was born, and lived the first twenty years of his life, in an isolated fishing village on the south-east coast of Cornwall. He was given no education because there was no need for him to read or write as from the age of four he lived and worked in the bakery owned by the woman he had always called Ma. Ma was not his mother, he told me, his mother’s name was Tegan and she had died giving him birth, but he had not known that for many years. He said he had always been called Ennor even though it was not a name, simply one of the many words for stranger in the language of Kernow.
A Set of Lies Page 37