In Pale Battalions (35 page)

I wanted none of his indulgence, only to be rid of all the home front had brought me. “Excuse me, sir, but I do feel fully recovered, able to undertake general service abroad without further delay.”

The colonel’s brow furrowed: I can’t have looked the heroic type.

“Very well, Lieutenant. General service abroad.” His pen began scratching an entry on a form. “Report to barracks a week today.”

“Thank you, sir.”

An hour later, I was at Alton station, sitting aboard the Meon Valley train, waiting for it to pull out. We were already late, but I was in no hurry. At length, a labouring locomotive gathered steam and we clanked forward. At the last moment, a figure silhouetted in piston steam flung open a door and jumped aboard. He looked into my compartment and I instinctively glanced away: I didn’t want to encourage company. To no avail, it seemed. The door from the corridor slid open.

“Franklin: so they’ve dragged you back too.” It was Thorley. He slung his bag onto the luggage rack above my head and slumped down opposite me, breathing heavily. “God, this is a bind.” He didn’t seem surprised to see me, nor as garrulous as his former self.

“You’re wanted for the inquest?”

He nodded. “Damned inconvenient. I’ll be asked for my assessment of Cheriton’s state of mind. But how do you assess a non-entity?”

“What about Mompesson?”

“I know nothing about that one.” He coloured and glared out of the window. “Have you got a smoke? I hadn’t time to buy any.”

I gave him a cigarette and lit it for him as the train juddered over some points and curved south away from the main line.

“You’ve got off lightly, Major, believe me. Compared with those of us who were there at the time.”

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“I wasn’t sorry to hear it’d happened. Got me off a bit of a hook, actually.”

“I know. You told me all about it at the White Horse that night.”

“Tongue ran away with me. Strictly out of order. By the way, who was the fellow you went off with?”

“Sorry? What fellow?”

“When I came to in the bar, you’d run out on me. So I took a look outside. Just in time to see you lumbering off in the distance, three sheets to the wind. Some fellow was helping you along.”

The passing landscape froze. There had been somebody in the yard behind the inn that night, somebody who left with me. But I had been alone come morning. I saw our faces—Thorley’s and mine—reflected in the grimy window, saw another face—still beyond my reach—lodged in my memory.

“Something wrong?”

“I remember no such person, Major. So far as I can recall, I left alone.”

“He was there, large as life.”

“Have you mentioned this to the police?”

“I told them as little as I needed to. No sense queering your pitch. We’ve got to stick together in this.”

So another pact was silently concluded. Our train chugged south towards Droxford whilst I mechanically recited the events at Meongate that Thorley had missed. Behind my words, my mind strained after one night beyond recall, on which Thorley had cast the only glimmer of light. When, half an hour later, we disembarked at Droxford, Thorley headed for the White Horse, but I did not accompany him. We had reached an understanding, but that was all.

I had deliberately avoided Meongate for some days, so there was an element of shock in once again being in the same room as Lord and Lady Powerstock. This time, however, it was the small, stuffy court-room adjacent to Droxford police station, musty with wartime disuse and suddenly crowded with coroner, clerks, police, jurors, witnesses and onlookers.

Towards the rear were elderly village folk not about to miss a 234

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cause célèbre
, towards the front those with an interest in the case. I avoided Olivia’s glance and took my seat away from all of them. Yet still I could not keep my eyes from them. Lord Powerstock sat bolt upright and stared straight ahead. Mayhew leant across for the odd word with him, though Olivia appeared to do all the talking.

Shapland was at the front, flanked by two constables. Of Charter there was no sign.

The coroner was a stout, bustling, impatient man. Perhaps the murder of foreign nationals in wartime struck him as of little account. At all events, he opened the proceedings briskly.

The police pathologist gave a clinical account of the killing.

“The deceased was killed by a single gunshot from close range just behind the right ear, which pierced the cerebellum and would have caused instantaneous death. The calibre of the bullet and the velocity on entry are suggestive of a small, wide-bored pistol. I examined the body where it lay shortly after three a.m. on Saturday, 23rd September, by when rigor mortis had not set in. I conducted a full post-mortem some six hours later. All the signs were indicative of death having occurred very shortly before the body was discovered at eleven-fifteen p.m. on Friday, 22nd September.” Shapland gave a thorough if weary account of the police investigation and was asked what he had established of Mompesson’s background. “Very little, sir. He lived alone in a second-floor apartment in Wellington Court, off Knightsbridge, in west London. He was evidently a man of some means. He speculated successfully on the stock market, lent more money than he borrowed and part-owned a racehorse stabled at Epsom. He was a moderately well-known figure in London society but seems to have had no close friends. The United States Embassy have been unable to trace any relatives.” “You say he had no friends, Inspector. Would you say he had enemies?”

“It wouldn’t surprise me, sir. He had in his possession a number of promissory notes, some long outstanding.”

“We will leave you to pursue that matter, Inspector. Have you found any trace of the weapon described to us this morning?”

“No, sir. I examined a number of sporting weapons and military revolvers lodged at Meongate. None had been recently used and none fitted the description.”

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The coroner consulted his notes. “A small, wide-bored pistol.

Would that be commonly known to the uninitiated as a derringer?”

“I believe so, sir.”

“A weapon more common in the United States than this country?”

“I believe so, sir.”

“Thank you, Inspector.”

Shapland cast a baleful look in my direction as he left the box, as if to warn me that, even if the coroner fell for an American connection, he wasn’t about to.

Olivia’s performance was, as I might have expected, impeccable.

She entranced the court with her perfect imitation of the dismayed hostess. She had heard what might have been a shot at about eleven o’clock, had been concerned for Mr. Mompesson when he did not answer her knock, had fetched her maid, had entered the room and had found, too awful to recall, what the court now knew.

“May I ask, Lady Powerstock, how long you had known the deceased?”

“Somewhat over a year. My husband and I had entertained him at Meongate on several occasions.”

“Did you ever gain the impression that he felt in any way threatened?”

“Not at all. Mr. Mompesson was the most relaxed and carefree of men. Of course, we knew nothing of his business dealings. He was merely refreshing company and had done much to lighten my husband’s sense of loss following the death on active service of his son.” “The police found no evidence of a breakin, Lady Powerstock.

Does this, to your mind, preclude the idea of an intruder?”

“Far from it. My husband is not—I should say
was
not—in the habit of locking any of the doors at night. An intruder would not have found it necessary to break in.”

“Quite so, Lady Powerstock. Thank you.” The coroner’s mind seemed to be moving more and more in a direction that suited us all.

Then, suddenly, before I’d expected it, the case was over. No more witnesses were called. The coroner explained his reasoning to the jury. “The business of this court, ladies and gentlemen, is to determine the cause of the death of Mr. Mompesson. It is abundantly 236

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clear in this case that the deceased was murdered and I shall shortly direct you to return such a verdict. It will then be for the police to continue their investigations into who may have committed that murder.”

And so it was. The verdict was brought in that Mompesson had been murdered by “a person or persons unknown” and the court was adjourned for luncheon. The coroner departed, the jury followed him and, slowly, all the others drifted away. Thorley came across and invited me to join him at the White Horse. I declined.

Nobody else spoke to me.

The court reassembled an hour later. The same jurors were sworn in to consider the next case: the death by gunshot wounds of David John Cheriton, second lieutenant. The same whey-faced pathologist presented his gruesomely dispassionate findings. This time, they only confirmed what I already knew. And this time I was the next witness.

“How did you come to be resident at Meongate at this time, Lieutenant Franklin?”

“I had been invalided home from France to recover from a shoulder wound sustained in action on the first of July. During the summer, I received an invitation to spend some time at Meongate, Lord Powerstock being in the generous habit of accommodating convalescent officers.” “When did you arrive at Meongate?”

“Early in September.”

“Was Lieutenant Cheriton then also in residence—on the same basis?”

“He was.”

“From what was he convalescing?”

“I don’t know.”

“Did he give any sign of having been physically injured?”

“No.”

“Did his malady, then, appear to have had a nervous origin?”

“There were some indications of that. But I didn’t pry into the matter. He kept himself very much to himself.”

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“Did he display any notable reaction to the death of Mr.

Mompesson?”

“I can’t say I had the opportunity of discussing it with him.”

“Please now describe to the court what you found upon leaving the house early on the morning of Sunday, 24th September.”

I repeated my well-worn account. But the coroner didn’t let me go without obliging me to convert omission into perjury.

“Was there a note or any other sign on the body to indicate why Lieutenant Cheriton might have acted so drastically?”

“I didn’t search the body.”

“But there was nothing visible?”

“There was nothing.”

Shapland said his piece, then Lord Powerstock was called. Making his way to the witness box, he moved more slowly than usual, seemed shrunken and shuffling, reduced already to the pale shadow of a proud aristocrat.

“How long, my Lord, had Lieutenant Cheriton been your guest?”

“Since the beginning of August.”

“Did you know the circumstances of his invalidity?”

“I was given to understand that he had suffered from what is commonly known as shell shock.”

“You knew nothing more specific than that?”

“Not until Mr. Mompesson volunteered certain information to me during one of his visits.”

“What was that information?”

“Mr. Mompesson had, by chance, met in London Lieutenant Cheriton’s company commander from France, who was on leave at the time; he had mentioned to him that Lieutenant Cheriton was staying at my house. The officer expressed surprise and disclosed that, in his opinion, Cheriton had displayed sufficient cowardice in the face of the enemy to warrant a court martial rather than convalescence. Mr. Mompesson said that he felt I ought to know this.” “Did you take any action arising from this intelligence?”

“No. I did not consider it my business.”

“Did Mr. Mompesson take any action?”

“I cannot say for certain. But there were indications that he confronted Lieutenant Cheriton with the accusation. I recall interrupting one heated conversation between the two when it was 238

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difficult not to construe that it had been the subject under discussion. Mr. Mompesson, I should add, was proud of having been decorated for gallantry whilst serving in the Spanish-American War of 1898 and was not a man disposed to tolerate weakness in others.

From about this time, Lieutenant Cheriton’s state of mind seemed to me to deteriorate progressively.”

“When was this?”

“Towards the end of August.”

“And how did this deterioration manifest itself ?”

“Moroseness. Reluctance to converse. A nervous tremor in the hands.”

Next, Thorley.

“When did you arrive at Meongate, Major?”

“A week after Cheriton.”

“What was your impression of him?”

“Frankly, I thought he’d lost his nerve.”

“Did you notice any sign of friction between him and Mr.

Mompesson?”

“Yes. Can’t say it surprised me. Mompesson was a cocky fellow.

He was like a cat with a mouse.”

“When did you leave Meongate?”

“Twenty-second of September.”

“Shortly before the murder of Mr. Mompesson?”

“Yes. Strange coincidence.”

“Why did you leave?”

“I thought it was time to get back in harness. Too much moping around isn’t good for morale.”

“When you heard subsequently of Lieutenant Cheriton’s death, were you surprised?”

“Can’t say I was. He had a medical board at the end of the month. I don’t think he could face the thought of going back.”

“Did you connect his death in any way with that of Mr.

Mompesson?”

“Can’t say I did. If Cheriton had had the nerve for that kind of thing, he’d have pulled himself together a long time ago.”

An Army doctor was produced who stated that Cheriton had been diagnosed neurasthenic. He had detected no signs of clinical depression but had, on the other hand, not seen him since he took