The next clue came in the bottom line of an obituary, to which I wasn’t paying much attention until I discovered that a Mrs. Trentham would be coming into a fortune; not an important clue in itself, until I reread the entry and learned that she was the daughter of someone called Sir Raymond Hardcastle, a name that allowed me to fill in several little boxes that went in both directions. But what puzzled me was there being no mention of a Guy Trentham among the surviving relatives.
Sometimes I wish I hadn’t been born with the kind of mind that enjoyed breaking codes and meddling with mathematical formulas. But somehow “bastard,” “Trentham,” “hospital,” “Captain Guy,” “flats,” “Sir Raymond,” “that brat Nigel,” “funeral,” and Mother turning white when she saw me dressed in a captain’s uniform seemed to have some linear connection. Although I realized I would need even more clues before logic would lead me to the correct solution.
Then suddenly I worked out to whom they must have been referring when the marchioness had come to tea all those years before, and told Mother that she had just attended Guy’s funeral. It must have been Captain Guy’s burial that had taken place. But why was that so significant?
The following Saturday morning I rose at an ungodly hour and traveled down to Ashurst, the village in which the Marchioness of Wiltshire had once lived—not a coincidence, I concluded. I arrived at the parish church a little after six, and as I had anticipated, at that hour there was no one to be seen in the churchyard. I strolled around the graveyard checking the names: Yardleys, Baxters, Floods, and Harcourt-Brownes aplenty. Some of the graves were overgrown with weeds, others were well cared for and even had fresh flowers at the head. I paused for a moment at the grave of my godmother’s grandfather. There must have been over a hundred parishioners buried around the clock tower, but it didn’t take that long to find the neatly kept Trentham family plot, only a few yards from the church vestry.
When I came across the most recent family gravestone I broke out in a cold sweat:
Guy Trentham, MC
1897–1927
after a long illness
Sadly missed by all his family
And so the mystery had come literally to a dead end, at the grave of the one man who surely could have answered all my questions had he still been alive.
When the war ended I returned to Trinity and was granted an extra year to complete my degree. Although my father and mother considered the highlight of the year to be my passing out as senior Wrangler with the offer of a Prize fellowship at Trinity, I thought Dad’s investiture at Buckingham Palace wasn’t to be sneezed at.
The ceremony turned out to be a double delight, because I was also able to witness my old tutor, Professor Bradford, being knighted for the role he had played in the field of code-breaking—although there was nothing for his wife, my mother noted. I remember feeling equally outraged on Dr. Bradford’s behalf. Dad may have played his part in filling the stomachs of the British people, but as Churchill had stated in the House of Commons, our little team had probably cut down the length of the war by as much as a year.
We all met up afterwards for tea at the Ritz, and not unnaturally at some point during the afternoon the conversation switched to what career I proposed to follow now the war was over. To my father’s abiding credit he had never once suggested that I should join him at Trumper’s, especially as I knew how much he had longed for another son who might eventually take his place. In fact during the summer vacation I became even more conscious of my good fortune, as Father seemed to be preoccupied with the business and Mother was unable to hide her own anxiety about the future of Trumper’s. But whenever I asked if I could help all she would say was: “Not to worry, it will all work out in the end.”
Once I had returned to Cambridge, I persuaded myself that should I ever come across the name “Trentham” again I would no longer allow it to worry me. However, because the name was never mentioned freely in my presence it continued to nag away in the back of my mind. My father had always been such an open man that there was no simple explanation as to why on this one particular subject he remained so secretive—to such an extent, in fact, that I felt I just couldn’t raise the subject with him myself.
I might have gone years without bothering to do anything more about the conundrum if I hadn’t one morning picked up an extension to the phone in the Little Boltons and heard Tom Arnold, my father’s right-hand man, say, “Well, at least we can be thankful that you got to Syd Wrexall before Mrs. Trentham.” I replaced the headset immediately, feeling that I now had to get to the bottom of the mystery once and for all—and what’s more, without my parents finding out. Why does one always think the worst in these situations? Surely the final solution would turn out to be something quite innocuous.
Although I had never met Syd Wrexall I could still remember him as the landlord of the Musketeer, a pub that had stood proudly on the other end of Chelsea Terrace until a bomb had landed in the snugbar. During the war my father bought the freehold and later converted the building into an up-market furnishing department.
It didn’t take a Dick Barton to discover that Mr. Wrexall had left London during the war to become the landlord of a pub in a sleepy village called Hatherton, hidden away in the county of Cheshire.
I spent three days working out my strategy for Mr. Wrexall, and only when I was convinced that I knew all the questions that needed to be asked did I feel confident enough to make the journey to Hatherton. I had to word every query I needed answered in such a way that they didn’t appear to be questions; but I still waited for a further month before I drove up north, by which time I had grown a beard that was long enough for me to feel confident that Wrexall would not recognize me. Although I was unaware of having seen him in the past, I realized that it was possible Wrexall might have come across me as recently as three or four years ago, and would therefore have known who I was the moment I walked into his pub. I even purchased a modern pair of glasses to replace my old specs.
I chose a Monday to make the trip as I suspected it would be the quietest day of the week on which to have a pub lunch. Before I set out on the journey I telephoned the Happy Poacher to be sure Mr. Wrexall would be on duty that day. His wife assured me that he would be around and I put the phone down before she could ask why I wanted to know.
During my journey up to Cheshire I rehearsed a series of non-questions again and again. Having arrived in the village of Hatherton I parked my car down a side road some way from the pub before strolling into the Happy Poacher. I discovered three or four people standing at the bar chatting and another half dozen enjoying a drink around a mean-looking fire. I took a seat at the end of the bar and ordered some shepherd’s pie and a half pint of best bitter from a buxom, middle-aged lady whom I later discovered was the landlord’s wife. It took only moments to work out who the landlord was, because the other customers all called him Syd, but I realized that I would still have to be patient as I listened to him chat about anybody and everybody, from Lady Docker to Richard Murdoch, as if they were all close friends.
“Same again, sir?” he asked eventually, as he returned to my end of the bar and picked up my empty glass.
“Yes, please,” I said, relieved to find that he didn’t appear to recognize me.
By the time he had come back with my beer there were only two or three of us left at the bar.
“From around these parts, are you, sir?” he asked, leaning on the counter.
“No,” I said. “Only up for a couple of days on an inspection. I’m with the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food.”
“So what brings you to Hatherton?”
“I’m checking out all the farms in the area for foot and mouth disease.”
“Oh, yes, I’ve read all about that in the papers,” he said, toying with an empty glass.
“Care to join me, landlord?” I asked.
“Oh, thank you, sir. I’ll have a whisky, if I may.” He put his empty half-pint glass in the washing-up water below th
e counter and poured himself a double. He charged me half a crown, then asked how my findings were coming along.
“All clear so far,” I told him. “But I’ve still got a few more farms in the north of the county to check out.”
“I used to know someone in your department,” he said.
“Oh, yes?”
“Sir Charles Trumper.”
“Before my time,” I said taking a swig from my beer, “but they still talk about him back at the ministry. Must have been a tough customer if half the stories about him are true.”
“Bloody right,” said Wrexall. “And but for him I’d be a rich man.”
“Really.”
“Oh, yes. You see, I used to own a little property in London before I moved up here. A pub, along with an interest in several shops in Chelsea Terrace, to be exact. He picked the lot up from me during the war for a mere six thousand. If I’d waited another twenty-four hours I could have sold them for twenty thousand, perhaps even thirty.”
“But the war didn’t end in twenty-four hours.”
“Oh, no, I’m not suggesting for one moment that he did anything dishonest, but it always struck me as a little more than a coincidence that having not set eyes on him for years he should suddenly show up in this pub on that very morning.”
Wrexall’s glass was now empty.
“Same again for both of us?” I suggested, hoping that the investment of another half crown might further loosen his tongue.
“That’s very generous of you, sir,” he responded, and when he returned he asked, “Where was I?”
“‘On that very morning…’”
“Oh, yes, Sir Charles—Charlie, as I always called him. Well, he closed the deal right here at this bar, in under ten minutes, when blow me if another interested party didn’t ring up and ask if the properties were still for sale. I had to tell the lady in question that I had just signed them away.”
I avoided asking who “the lady” was, although I suspected I knew. “But that doesn’t prove that she would have offered you twenty thousand pounds for them,” I said.
“Oh, yes, she would,” responded Wrexall. “That Mrs. Trentham would have offered me anything to stop Sir Charles getting his hands on those shops.”
“Great Scott,” I said, once again avoiding the word “why?”
“Oh, yes, the Trumpers and the Trenthams have been at each other’s throats for years, you know. She still owns a block of flats right in the middle of Chelsea Terrace. It’s the only thing that’s stopped him from building his grand mausoleum, isn’t it? What’s more, when she tried to buy Number 1 Chelsea Terrace, Charlie completely outfoxed her, didn’t he? Never seen anything like it in my life.”
“But that must have been years ago,” I said. “Amazing how people go on bearing grudges for so long.”
“You’re right, because to my knowledge this one’s been going on since the early twenties, ever since her posh son was seen walking out with Miss Salmon.”
I held my breath.
“She didn’t approve of that, no, not Mrs. Trentham. We all had that worked out at the Musketeer, and then when the son disappears off to India the Salmon girl suddenly ups and marries Charlie. And that wasn’t the end of the mystery.”
“No.”
“Certainly not,” said Wrexall. “Because none of us are sure to this day who the father was.”
“The father?”
Wrexall hesitated. “I’ve gone too far. I’ll say no more.”
“Such a long time ago, I’m surprised anyone still cares,” I offered as my final effort before draining my glass.
“True enough,” said Wrexall. “That’s always been a bit of a mystery to me as well. But there’s no telling with folks. Well, I must close up now, sir, or I’ll have the law after me.”
“Of course. And I must get back to those cattle.”
Before I returned to Cambridge I sat in the car and wrote down every word I could remember the landlord saying. On the long journey back I tried to piece together the new clues and get them into some sort of order. Although Wrexall had supplied a lot of information I hadn’t known before he had also begged a few more unanswered questions. The only thing I came away from that pub certain of was that I couldn’t possibly stop now.
The next morning I decided to return to the War Office and ask Sir Horace’s old secretary if she knew of any way that one could trace the background of a former serving officer.
“Name?” said the prim middle-aged woman who still kept her hair tied in a bun, a style left over from the war.
“Guy Trentham,” I told her.
“Rank and regiment?”
“Captain and the Royal Fusiliers would be my guess.”
She disappeared behind a closed door, but was back within fifteen minutes clutching a small brown file. She extracted a single sheet of paper and read aloud from it. “Captain Guy Trentham, MC. Served in the First War, further service in India, resigned his commission in 1922. No explanation given. No forwarding address.”
“You’re a genius,” I said, and to her consternation kissed her on the forehead before leaving to return to Cambridge.
The more I discovered, the more I found I needed to know, even though for the time being I seemed to have come to another dead end.
For the next few weeks I concentrated on my job as a supervisor until my pupils had all safely departed for their Christmas vacation.
I returned to London for the three-week break and spent a happy family Christmas with my parents at the Little Boltons. Father seemed a lot more relaxed than he had been during the summer, and even Mother appeared to have shed her unexplained anxieties.
However, another mystery arose during that holiday and as I was convinced it was no way connected with the Trenthams, I didn’t hesitate to ask my mother to solve it.
What’s happened to Dad’s favorite picture?
Her reply saddened me greatly and she begged me never to raise the subject of The Potato Eaters with my father.
The week before I was due to return to Cambridge I was strolling back down Beaufort Street towards the Little Boltons, when I spotted a Chelsea pensioner in his blue serge uniform trying to cross the road.
“Allow me to help you,” I offered.
“Thank you, sir,” he said, looking up at me with a rheumy smile.
“And who did you serve with?” I asked casually.
“The Prince of Wales Own,” he replied. “And you?”
“The Royal Fusiliers.” We crossed the road together. “Got any of those, have you?”
“The Fussies,” he said. “Oh, yes, Banger Smith who saw service in the Great War, and Sammy Tomkins who joined up later, twenty-two, twenty-three, if I remember, and was then invalided out after Tobruk.”
“Banger Smith?” I said.
“Yes,” replied the pensioner as we reached the other side of the road. “A right skiver, that one.” He chuckled chestily. “But he still puts in a day a week at your regimental museum, if his stories are to be believed.”
I was first to enter the small regimental museum in the Tower of London the following day, only to be told by the curator that Banger Smith only came in on Thursdays, and even then couldn’t always be relied on. I glanced around a room filled with regimental mementoes, threadbare flags parading battle honors, a display case with uniforms, out-of-date implements of war from a bygone age and large maps covered in different colored pins depicting how, where and when those honors had been won.
As the curator was only a few years older than me I didn’t bother him with any questions about the First World War.
I returned the following Thursday when I found an old soldier seated in a corner of the museum pretending to be fully occupied.
“Banger Smith?”
The old contemptible couldn’t have been an inch over five feet and made no attempt to get up off his chair. He looked at me warily.
“What of it?”
I produced a ten-bob note from my inside pocket.
He looked first at the note and then at me with an inquiring eye. “What are you after?”
“Can you remember a Captain Guy Trentham, by any chance?” I asked.
“You from the police?”
“No, I’m a solicitor dealing with his estate.”
“I’ll wager Captain Trentham didn’t leave anything to anybody.”
“I’m not at liberty to reveal that,” I said. “But I don’t suppose you know what happened to him after he left the Fusiliers? You see, there’s no trace of him in regimental records since 1922.”
“There wouldn’t be, would there? He didn’t exactly leave the Fussies with the regimental band playing him off the parade ground. Bloody man should have been horsewhipped, in my opinion.”
“Why?”
“You won’t get a word out of me,” he said, “Regimental secret,” he added, touching the side of his nose.
“But have you any idea where he went after he left India?”
“Cost you more than ten bob, that will,” said the old soldier, chuckling.
“What do you mean?”
“Buggered off to Australia, didn’t he? Died out there, then got shipped back by his mother. Good riddance, is all I can say. I’d take his bloody picture off the wall if I had my way.”
“His picture?”
“Yes. MCs next to the DSOs, top left-hand corner,” he said, managing to raise an arm to point in that direction.
I walked slowly over to the corner Banger Smith had indicated, past the seven Fusilier VCs, several DSOs and on to the MCs. They were in chronological order: 1914—three, 1915—thirteen, 1916—ten, 1917—eleven, 1918—seventeen. Captain Guy Trentham, the inscription read, had been awarded the MC after the second battle of the Marne on 18 July 1918.
As the Crow Flies Page 39
