In Pale Battalions (24 page)

How I envied Thorley as that long, absurdly sun-splashed Sunday slipped painfully away at Meongate. For reasons of his own, Shapland had let Thorley go, but I was required to remain, expected to wait patiently whilst all I knew was a seething restlessness of body and mind. Perhaps that was Shapland’s hope: that in some sudden release of the tension I would reveal the truth he thought I possessed. Little did he know that for me as much as for him that truth was still only a shifting, uncertain shape in the darkness glimpsed from the corner of the eye, never there when you looked in its direction.

I didn’t wait for the police to leave, but took myself off for a long walk round the lanes, reasoning that physical exhaustion was about the only kind of comfort I could hope for. I could never now hope to know what Cheriton’s note contained, but I couldn’t stop trying to guess. That, I realized, was the measure of Olivia’s cruelty in persuading me to give it up. I had escaped one kind of seduction only to succumb to another.

I did not return to Meongate until early evening. An uneasy qui-etude that might have seemed at any other time merely peaceful hung upon the place. There was no sign of the police, nor, indeed, of anyone else. The ticking of the clock in the hall was magnified by a background of silence and immobility. Cheriton was no longer there to pace and fret, nor Mompesson to smile and swagger. There was no click of balls from the billiards room to signal Thorley passing an idle hour. In different ways to different ends, they’d gone.

I was about to go up to my bedroom when I heard something, a slight and delicate rustle from the morning room: somebody was there after all.

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I went in and found Leonora, seated in a corner reading a book: it was the turning of a page that I’d heard. She looked up without smiling and put the book down on a side table.

“Hello, Tom,” she said gravely.

“When I came in, I thought the house was deserted.”

“Lord Powerstock was unable, for obvious reasons, to attend morning service, so he’s gone to evensong instead. And Olivia’s gone too. She wouldn’t want him to be seen there alone. I’ve not seen Charter since this morning. Nor you, till now.” “I’ve had a lot to think about.”

She looked directly at me for the first time. “I was so very sorry to hear about Lieutenant Cheriton. To take his own life . . . It’s awful.”

I walked slowly over to the cabinet and poured myself a Scotch.

“I’m not sure it is awful.”

“What do you mean?”

I went back with the Scotch and sat opposite her, hunched in my chair. “He’d probably have been killed when he went back to France anyway.”

“That’s hardly . . .”

“And when I found him, he looked somehow more peaceful than he’d ever seemed here.”

“Why should he have done such a thing?”

“Maybe because he killed Mompesson.” I swallowed some of the whisky. “But I don’t think he did, do you?”

“No.”

I wanted to tell her then that I’d given away the only evidence Cheriton had cared to leave, but instead I drank a little more whisky and told myself to believe that the note had never existed.

“I don’t suppose the truth of it will ever be known.”

“Perhaps not.”

I set the glass down and rose from my chair. “Leonora . . .” I struggled for the words with which to approach the issue between us.

“Yes?”

“How well did you know Cheriton?”

“Hardly at all. He kept himself to himself, perhaps too much so for his own good.”

“It’s just that . . .” As I looked down at her, my eye was taken by the book she’d been reading. It lay face down, but on its spine was a title at once familiar to me:
Deliberations of the Diocesan

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Committee for the Relief of the Poor of Portsea
. Why that, of all books, at such a time? I stared at it in puzzlement.

“Is something wrong?”

“This book . . .”

“You know it?”

“Yes. I saw it in the library. But . . .”

She seemed strangely defensive. “Why should I not be reading it?”

I went back to my chair. “No reason. No reason other than . . .

How is it possible, after all that has happened, with two men dead, with your home in uproar, for you to sit here, quietly reading an obscure volume of social research?”

“I’m sorry if I disappoint you.”

“You don’t. You baffle me. This book is dedicated to John’s mother, isn’t it? She wrote part of it. Yet there seems more to it than that.

Olivia called it a convenient fiction. What did she mean by that?”

“She meant she resented Miriam’s memory.”

“Of course. But why read it now? Something with so little bearing on the present. It seems . . . heartless.”

“Think that if you must.”

“Unless . . . it has a bearing.”

She seemed about to say something. The form of a word hovered on her lips. I could believe, in the half-light of descending evening, that she was about to vouchsafe a secret. Then something stopped her. She looked abruptly towards the French windows that led to the conservatory and by the sharp intake of her breath I knew that somebody was there.

It was Shapland. A ragged, slope-shouldered, apologetic figure framed in the doorway, cast in crepuscular shadow. I jumped up.

“Inspector . . .”

He scratched his head and smiled as he advanced across the room. “Sorry to disturb you. I came round through the garden. The scent of the lavender is . . .”

“Spare us the botany, Inspector. What do you want?”

“Don’t take on so, Mr. Franklin. I didn’t mean to interrupt.

Why not let Mrs. Hallows continue with what she was saying?

Something with a bearing on my inquiries, perhaps.”

Leonora smiled disarmingly. “It was nothing, Inspector, I assure you. We were merely discussing a book we’ve both read.”

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Shapland stooped and tilted the book so as to read its title. His brow furrowed. “Portsea? You surprise me, Mrs. Hallows.”

“Why?”

“Hardly an edifying subject for a fine lady. I served my time as a constable there forty years ago, before the Diocesan Committee took much of an interest, I’m afraid. I gather the first Lady Powerstock picked up the contagion that killed her there—and I can’t say I’m surprised.” “You seem well informed about my family.”

“I’ve learned a little—but not why murder or suicide should have come to this house. Nor what bearing the first Lady Powerstock’s good works in Portsea have upon the case.”

“As I’ve told you: none at all.”

At that, I intervened. “Inspector, what can we do for you? It’s late for unannounced arrivals.”

He grinned at me. “I was hoping to see Mr. Gladwin. He’s the only member of the household I’ve not questioned.”

“I doubt he can tell you much.”

“Nevertheless . . .”

Leonora rose abruptly and crossed to push the servants’ bell by the door. “I think you’ll find him resting in his room, Inspector. I’ll have you shown up.”

“Thank you.”

“I hope you’ll bear in mind that he is very elderly.”

“Aren’t we all? Don’t worry, Mrs. Hallows. I shan’t keep him long. Like Mr. Franklin, I don’t expect him to tell me anything that will alter my conclusions.”

“And what are those conclusions?”

“Officially, I’m inclined to go along with the theory that Cheriton killed Mompesson and then himself. Unofficially, I don’t believe a word of it. But, since everybody wants me to plump for that, who am I to resist?”

At that point, Fergus came in and, at Leonora’s request, showed Shapland up to Gladwin’s room. I watched him go with relief, but, if Leonora felt the same, she didn’t show it.

“He thinks I had a hand in this,” I said after a while.

“So did I, at first.” She had resumed her seat and that same look of wisdom beyond my reach.

“But not now?”

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“No. Not now. Now I think it is you who are suspicious of me.

And for that I cannot blame you.”

“I only want to help. You know that. Everything you seem to be, everything I feel about you, is contradicted by all I’ve seen in this house.”

“I realize that. I wish it were not so.”

“Was Shapland right then? Are we all condoning a presumption of Cheriton’s guilt to hide our own?”

“Tom, you must believe I know nothing of what drove Lieutenant Cheriton to kill himself.”

It was too much. This time, I had to tell her. I poured myself some more whisky. “Cheriton left a note. I destroyed it without reading it. Shapland knows nothing about it.” I had not dared to look at her as I spoke, but, when I turned towards her, her expression was unaltered.

“Oh, Tom. You shouldn’t have done that.”

“Believe it or not, I did it for you. I believed the note might contain evidence linking you with Mompesson.”

“What made you think that?”

“Olivia . . .”

“What has she to do with this?”

“The note was addressed to her. She persuaded me to let her destroy it—for everybody’s sake.”

She shook her head slowly. “She has deceived you. It can have served only her ends.”

“I know. But she convinced me that Cheriton knew as much as I did. And I couldn’t let that knowledge reach Shapland. I was afraid—am still afraid—that Cheriton might have visited the observatory before or after me.”

“How could he have done? He had no key.”

“That’s just it. When I went there, at the time you specified, the door was unlocked.”

She looked down. “Oh God.”

“What’s wrong? What does it mean?”

“It means that what I most feared has happened—and I don’t know what to do.”

“Then let me try to help. I think John would have wanted you to let me.”

A smile hovered on her lips. “Yes. I think you’re right. But I 164

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can’t speak of it now . . . with Inspector Shapland upstairs and Olivia due back at any moment.”

“When then?”

“Tomorrow. We’ll go for a ride in the trap, get away from this house. Then I’ll tell you all that I can.”

“Very well.”

“Now I think I’ll go to my room. I don’t want to be here when Olivia returns.” She rose. “I’ll ask Fergus to get the trap ready at ten.”

“I’ll look forward to it.”

“I’m not sure you should.” She moved to the door. “Good night, Tom.”

She went out quietly, closing the door behind her, and leaving me to ponder in the failing light what she could not tell me till morning. I crossed to the table and picked up the book she’d been reading. The pages fell open, as if from frequent use, at Miriam Powerstock’s posthumous contribution. I lit the oil lamp beside the chair, sat down and began to read.

“Squalor Amidst Plenty” was very much what I’d expected: a measured but compassionate plea for attention to be given to the material and moral welfare of the people of Portsea . . . good, civilized, tub-thumping prose. I could easily imagine Hallows’s regard for the mother who wrote and felt such things. “There is a regrettable tendency to expect little of the humblest and oldest quarter of a dockyard town beyond the poverty and prostitution, the drunkenness and degradation, that we actually find there. With that complacent attitude this essay and this writer have no sympathy. Too long have we tolerated this slur upon our conscience. Too long have we ignored the misery and misfortune of those whose tragedy is that they know nothing beyond the mean alleys and diseased dwellings of Portsea.” It went on in much the same vein. The late Lady Powerstock proved by the depth of her review that she knew the people and places she was describing well enough to justify her conclusion: that without the respect and help of their betters, the inhabitants of the area could not hope to escape the disease and squalor which made them notorious. Of the barefoot children and ragged, drunken men, the scabbed harlots and carousing sailors, the labyrinth of drinking dens and decrepit tenements, she wrote evocatively. She

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was brave to have visited them and braver still to tell others what they did not want to hear. But, as I and others knew, it had done her no good. Living words from a dead woman: they meant little enough to me at the time. Little enough indeed, for I had not the eyes to see what Leonora had truly been reading.

Noises from the hall alerted me to Lord and Lady Powerstock’s return. Having, like Leonora, no wish to see them, I slipped out of the room and headed for the back stairs. As I went, I heard Shapland explaining his presence to Olivia; evidently, he’d finished with Charter.

I slept well that night. Somehow, the thought that Leonora would at last tell me the truth that lay behind those weeks at Meongate was comforting. It kept my hope alive that her account would leave my respect for her intact and the way to love still open.

I took breakfast with Charter, who was, for once, more sombre than me, picking at his kipper with the air of a preoccupied man.

“I hope the Inspector didn’t give you a hard time last night,” I said, in an effort to lighten the mood.

He shook his head where normally he would have smiled. “It would take more than that fellow to give me a hard time. Matter of fact, I think it was rather the other way about.”

“It’s just that you seem a bit . . . down.”

“I don’t like to see young lives wasted, that’s all. It depresses me.”

“You mean Cheriton?”

“Of course.”

“Lord Powerstock seems to think it resolved matters in the best way we could hope for.”

“Edward’s a good enough man. It’s a pity he doesn’t sometimes have a little more imagination.”

“So you don’t . . . ?”

I broke off at the sound of running feet from the hall. Sally burst into the room, flushed and breathless.

“What’s the matter, girl?” said Charter.