“Oh my goodness,” said Aunty, as though there was a chance that Monty’s story ended badly.
With calm deliberation, Monty levelled us off at about forty-five hundred feet. “I said to Flaps, well old man, we had a good run. I suppose we’ll be joining Cardiac, Mush, and Tippy sooner than expected. Won’t they be surprised to see us! On Christmas Day, no less.”
“Your late colleagues?” I surmised.
“Second Lieutenant Carwyn Rhys-Thomas, Second Lieutenant Morris MacIntosh, Lieutenant Terrence Mountjoy. Best lads to ever recover a spin and come up shooting.” Monty chose that moment to glance out the window and use his napkin to address some issue he had with his eyes. “They all three died the day we took on those Zeppelins.” Monty’s normally booming voice reduced momentarily to an emotional croak. “Sacrificed themselves for each other. And for Flaps and me.”
“We’re very glad they’re still waiting to see you, at least, Monty,” I said.
Monty turned back to the table and leaned onto it.
“That’s just it, my boy,” he said.
“What is?”
“There we were, screaming toward destiny at full throttle. The Bosch had us dead to rights. Then, on a tuppence, they both pitched into a deliberate spin, dropped about a thousand feet and decamped like they were fired out of a cannon.”
“How peculiar.”
“Never a truer word, Boisjoly. As peculiar as anything you’ve ever seen,” said Monty with solemn satisfaction. “We went into that cloud alone, but we came out in battle formation with the very best wingmen that heaven could spare. Cardiac, Mush, and Tippy had come back to escort us home one last time.”
Aunty Azalea burst into tears. Alice laughed that delighted laugh that one employs when seeing a bully slip on some ice. Even Puckeridge put his shoulders slightly further back, as though working through a cold shiver.
“We exchanged a long, last salute,” continued Monty . “And then they peeled away. And then… then they were gone.” Monty looked down at his fish knife and once more mourned three brave boys.
Silence reigned, apart from Aunty happily weeping. I reflected on whether or not now was the right moment to ask Monty if he was a German spy and decided, on balance, that it was not.
In the next instant Monty snapped back to the present, popped an entire devilled egg into his mouth, and said, “Of course, their deaths only fed the rumours that there was a spy amongst us.”
“A spy, Monty?” I said, aghast. “Not really.”
“Of course not really,” he said. “It was a counter-intelligence operation by the Germans. We had the same sort of brief — if you’re ever captured and you feel you must tell the enemy something, tell them that the Americans have managed to recruit an agent on the kaiser’s kitchen staff, or that the navy has developed an airborne contaminant that cuts cabbage yields in half. Anything to sow confusion and cause the Bosch to waste their time.”
“And this particular ruse targeted you.”
“Me? No, of course not. Where did you get that idea?”
“I mean, you, as in the squadron. The collective you.”
“Ah, quite. I take your meaning,” Monty acceded. “Dunkirk had its share of rotten luck, just like everywhere else at the time. So the filthy slander that one of us was tipping off the Hun got more credibility than it deserved, which of course was none at all.”
“Of course.”
“There weren’t five more British lads in the entire armed forces. Flaps was from Hertfordshire. Dairy country, for pity’s sake. Went directly from making kites out of parcel paper and pine twigs to Balloon Section.”
“Were you all flyboys by calling?” I asked, slyly manoeuvring the conversation around to pre-war skiing conditions in the Hornerdörfer.
“Don’t be absurd,” scolded Monty. “Until the war the state of the art in powered flight was still the Wright Brothers’ bicycle shop. Mush MacIntosh was a mechanic in Glasgow. Farm machines. Hadn’t even seen an aeroplane until he signed up to keep them flying. Left a wife and two daughters behind, poor chap.”
“And Cardiac?”
“Three wives.”
“He was certainly doing his part, but I meant with respect to his background.”
“That’s the majesty of service, Boisjoly.” Monty leaned away from the table to allow Alice to clear and replace his cockpit. He leaned toward me again over a demi filet de sole meunière and ris au safran. “Their backgrounds didn’t matter. Tippy Mountjoy was a clubman — theatre, dinner parties, Monte Carlo, anything but work. A waster. Sort of bludger who needed someone to steam-iron his handkerchiefs…”
As he said this, Monty’s eyes settled conspicuously on my own crisply pressed and plaited pocket triangle. “...Never did a thing for anyone but himself until he put on a uniform. Cardiac was the same — a womaniser and a gambler, joined up to escape his mounting debts. But wing-to-wing with brothers in arms, they were the bravest, most selfless, stoutest hearts to ever polish a brass button.”
“And Flaps?”
“Eh?”
“Major Fleming.”
“Even worse,” barked Monty. “Family owns practically everything you can see for miles around, you know. He had a duty to these people, but he always thought he was too good for them. Wouldn’t even associate with the locals. Took to flight the way a previous generation would have taken to mountaineering or big game hunting — to set himself apart from the lower classes. In command of a squadron, though, he came into his own.”
“But did he ever dig a cow out of a snowbank?”
“Not to my certain knowledge, no,” answered Monty distantly.
“Well, heroism takes many forms, as you no doubt know. And what of Montgomery Hern-Fowler? What is his story of noble reformation?”
“Ah, well, in dear old Monty, you have the worst scoundrel of them all.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Sainted Stephen’s Sticky End
Despite my subtle gamesmanship, I was unable to draw from Monty a confession that he was a traitor to his class and country. He was much more responsive to my aunt’s expression of the famous Boisjoly charm in the form of swooning sighs and the random but judiciously deployed ‘tell me more’s. Of course, this only generated more tales of daring, including a variation on Flaps’ adventure in which he found himself flying in formation with an enemy squadron. I assume it’s the sort of thing that happened pretty much on rotation during the Great War.
And so it was that I was feeling decidedly fifth-wheelish. I had never seen Aunty Azalea so immersed in anything that wasn’t a velvet curtain, and I don’t mind saying that I was rather moved by the scene.
Angling for an excuse, I remembered, with a twinge above the left temple, Padget’s opus. I claimed that I had to have a look at it before seeing the Vic later that evening. Aunty and Monty gave me leave with little dissent, though, and I doubtless could have told them that I was late for an appointment to have my head shaved and elaborately tattooed for exactly the same effect.
I returned to my room initially with the intention of laying on a few more layers before facing the cold, but when I spotted the vicar’s Christmas carol on the nightstand I felt a pang of whatsit — no doubt the Germans have a word for it — that dread one feels for a moral duty in equal measure of the guilt one experiences for feeling that way.
It was every bit as diabolical as Vickers had described it. I believe that “ambitious” was the sweet-tea euphemism he employed and it was certainly that, with knobs on, but it also appeared to presume a lavish intimacy with the Book of Acts on the part of the listener. The story, in broad strokes, is that Stephen was gadding about Jerusalem like he’d bought the place, putting the wind up any community elder who’d give him the time of day. Casting about for a wheeze to chivvy Steve’s wicket, the local nibs settled on fitting him up for a charge of blasphemy.
Standing accused before the Sanhedrin, a sort of borough council of the day, he didn’t deny all charges or claim to have been a
cting under the unfamiliar influence of strong drink, as I might have done, but instead took the opportunity to inventory God’s blessings on the nation. Let us assume that was, as a defence argument, neutral. But Stephen’s closing act was a vision of God in his heaven with the messiah — a controversial character in the Holy Land at the time — at his right hand. This would have been, technically, blasphemous, and hence a dubious defence against a charge of blasphemy.
So Stephen was carried off by a mob, who doubtless later regretted the rashness of their behaviour, to a place of execution outside the city. They took off their coats, presumably to free up their pitching arms, and laid them at the feet of a bystander who later turned out to be Saint Paul. This is relevant for some reason which for the moment escapes me. Stephen used his last moments to ask God to have mercy on his persecutors, which was quite sporting, because in the next moment they had at him with all manner of jagged rock. The story of Good King Wenceslas it most decidedly is not.
Padget’s contribution to the insatiable market for new Christmas melodies was this grisly tale expressed as rhyming couplets and put to the tune of a medieval German spiritual. On its own that’s hardly a fatal blow to the career prospects of a Christmas carol — we know that Hark, the Herald, Angels Sing started life as an ode to the development of the printing press, of all things, and the school convocation favourite Oh, Christmas Tree was initially a biting diatribe against a fickle-hearted female. Padget’s lyric raised the bar considerably, though, and was ostentatiously sticky in almost exactly the same way God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen isn’t.
I was musing on how best to rephrase ‘tasteless and baffling’ as constructive criticism when there was a discreet tap at the door followed by an equally discreet Vickers.
“Ah, Vickers, excellent timing,” I said. “I’m rather at loose ends with regards this giddy song of woe by O. Padget, Bach. of Div.”
“I was remiss, sir. I meant to propose putting it on the fire.”
“You did. And I like it. It’s bold and direct. The only flaw in this otherwise waterproof plan is that it leaves me underprepared should the vicar wish to continue our discussions of the piece tonight, a likely contingency, in light of the generous praise I so rashly lavished on this atrocity. Listen to this first verse…
Famed far and wide for charity
Not to mention perspicacity
Saint Stephen spread the word of God
In a manner many found quite odd”
Vickers visibly winced. “Yes, sir. That verse had, unfortunately, lingered in memory.”
“I don’t doubt it,” I said. “And that’s not the worst bit.”
“I concur.”
“No, I mean, there are portions that were rendered illegible during my heroic battle with the snowbank. What do you make of this…”
Saint Stephen was accu-u-used
Quite falsely was abu-u-used
He was dragged before the Sanhedrin...
I can’t make out the next bit.”
“Who accused him of eternal sin?” suggested Vickers.
“Well, it fits,” I said, appraising the offence like a demonic crossword puzzle. “Not quite scaly enough, though, by the standards of the rest of this drivel.”
“Might I propose, sir, simply standing by your initial appraisal?”
“Persist in pitching porkies, you mean? That sounds cowardly, Vickers, and ideal. Mind you, it’s going to be a trial repeating all that adulation with a straight face, now I’ve read the thing.”
“Nevertheless, it strikes me as the strategy least likely to stimulate further discussion of the work.”
“Probably true,” I said, folding the lyric safely out of view in my pocket. “And what could possibly go wrong?”
The sky, snow and sun had stayed largely with the programme laid out that morning and provided a clear winter backdrop to my walk to the barren no-man’s land that is the border between Graze Hill and Steeple Herding. The effect was inclement warmth, and by the time I’d plodded to the frontier I was as breathless and clammy as I’d have been crossing a wheat field in midsummer. At the top of the hill I was rewarded once again with a sweeping view of winter in Hertfordshire including the town of Steeple Herding and its railway station, resembling from that perspective a scale model train set complete with tiny working signals and level crossing, and a miniature dangerous patch of ice in front of the little post office. Closer at hand, set snugly into the woods, was a winsome cottage of rude stone, a thatched roof, and the familiar blue beacon light denoting the building as the constabulary shared by the two villages. I knocked on the door and, in a matter of two ticks, it was swung open by Inspector Wittersham.
“Oh, it’s you,” said Ivor, with the nasally impatience of a man with a cold answering a door on a winter’s day. “Best come in then.”
Constable Kimble had managed to make of his home and office a space that was somehow neither. Ivor, wrapped in a becoming shawl of some whiskery weave, bade me sit at a table that also served as a work desk, while he topped up the kettle from a pump at the back wall. That, and an iron coal stove, appeared to amount to kitchen facilities in the little cottage. There was also a broad wooden filing cabinet which doubled as linen storage and, to offset the officious tone with a touch of home, a small but serviceable jail cell.
Ivor clattered another cup and saucer onto a mismatched tumble of a tea set and fell heavily into the chair opposite.
“Where’s the constable?” I asked, quite sure that, had he been there, I’d have noticed.
“On his farm,” said Ivor. In fact, he quite clearly said “Ob hid farb”, but I worked out the subtext in an instant.
“Touch of hay fever, Inspector?”
Ivor looked up at me from the teacup from which he had been inhaling hot vapours.
“I have a cold,” he said, as haughtily as he could manage without non-aspirated consonants, which isn’t really very haughtily at all.
“You don’t fancy building a snow fort then. The sun’s been at it all morning and it’s peerless packing snow.”
“What are you doing here, Mister Boisjoly?”
“Reporting in, Commandant. I bring detailed communiqués from the enemy encampments.”
“What enemy encampments?” Ivor was rubbing his forehead, now, as though some new influence was worsening his condition.
“The vicarage, chiefly,” I replied. “Did you know that Monty Hern-Fowler was a spy?”
“Is he?”
“Not to be pedantic, but I didn’t say that he is a spy, I said that he was a spy.”
“Was he?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “According to the vicar and Cosmo Millicent, the major thought he might have been. The story goes that the squadron was experiencing all sorts of uncanny misfortune that could have been attributed to a Cuckoo in the nest.”
“A what?”
“A Cuckoo bird. They lay their eggs in the nests of other birds. Rather cold-hearted survival mechanism, as it goes, but I expect they know best.”
“Returning to the matter of spies, if you can manage it…”
“Monty practically confessed to me,” I said. “I mean, he didn’t so much confess as deny that there was a spy at all, but he took the position that he was the worst of a formidably bad lot.”
“How many suspects is that now, Mister Boisjoly?” Ivor sneezed and then blew his nose in a kerchief that looked entitled to a military pension. “Mister Trimble killed the major to steal his reputation, I believe... his nephew murdered him for the rights to tell his life story… the blacksmith wanted revenge when the major failed to finance his conkers venture…”
“Yo-yo.”
“...his yo-yo factory, as you say… the vicar resented the unfulfilled promise to do up the church… Soaky Mike regarded the victim as a rival for charity drinks… Sally Barnstable, you’ll have to help me out with this one, she objected to him drawing trade to her pub?”
“Her father’s pub, I think you said.�
�
“Indeed. Makes all the difference. Is there anyone in Graze Hill that you don’t suspect, apart from your aunt?”
“Yes,” I replied swiftly and certainly. “I believe Hildy the cow to be as pure as the driven snow.”
“That leaves only your aunt’s staff, who can all account for one another’s movements. And your aunt. Face it, Mister Boisjoly, whatever confused theories you’re able to invent, at the end of the day, it’s your aunt’s footprints in the snow.”
“And the major’s.”
“Precisely.” Ivor stirred his tea until the spoon was once again available to be stabbed in my direction. “And so the only possible explanation for the circumstances around the murder of Major Aaron Fleming is that your aunt visited him yesterday morning, after he’d been to the pub, where he gave everyone to understand that he was leaving Graze Hill. Doubtless he told Miss Boisjoly the same thing, and that there was no future in their romance, the very romance upon which she had been resting her last hopes of matrimony. She responded as do so many women scorned.”
“Then why tell me she’d seen him that morning? And why not make some effort to cover her tracks, literally and figuratively?”
“Are you suggesting that the damning evidence against your aunt is evidence of her innocence?” asked Ivor. “No one is suggesting that she’s a criminal mastermind. This was clearly a crime of passion.”
This verdict seemed to cheer the inspector, somewhat, and he closed his eyes and sipped his tea in dreamy contemplation of the prospect of hanging my Aunty Azalea.
“Did you say ‘farm?’”
“Hmm? No, I didn’t say ‘farm’.”
“You did,” I persisted. “When I asked you where Kimble was. You said that he was on his farm.”
“Yes, that’s right. He has a small holding on the Steeple Herding side of the hill. Why?”
“I’m not sure,” I confessed. “Just strikes me as peculiar, a constable having a farm. Like a vicar having a motorcycle, or a cat having a dog.”
“It’s just a patch, apparently. He doesn’t work it so much as shore it up against the ravages of nature. He’s there today digging out an earth cellar that collapsed under the weight of the snow.”
The Case of the Ghost of Christmas Morning (Anty Boisjoly Mysteries Book 2) Page 11
