‘Mrs Seaforth?’ he asked, although he was sure she was Seaforth’s mother. She had the same high, wide cheekbones and sensitive-looking, almost sculpted mouth. Trave thought she must be in her mid-sixties, but she was well preserved for her age, and he was sure that she must once have been very pretty indeed.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Can I help you?’
‘I’m sorry to trouble you,’ said Trave, taking out his warrant card. ‘My name’s Trave, William Trave. I’m a police officer from London, and I have some questions I need to ask you about your son.’
‘About Charles? Is he all right?’
‘Yes, he’s fine. It won’t take more than a few minutes of your time.’
‘Well, you needn’t worry about that. I’ve got all the time in the world. My husband’s down at the British Legion playing his darts tonight and I’ve only got the radio for company. You’d better come in.’ There was a slight Scots inflection to her voice, but she didn’t speak with any dialect.
Trave followed Mrs Seaforth into a cheerful room that was obviously the parlour. A fire was burning brightly in the grate, and through a wide window at the back Trave could see another garden with a magnificent white wisteria growing rampant all along the rear wall and, up above, a view of birch woods rising up a steep hillside towards the horizon. Not such a bad place to live, he thought, remembering his dark bed-sitting-room back in London, with the wail of the air-raid siren bruising his consciousness every night.
‘So sit down and make yourself comfortable,’ said his hostess, pointing to a chintz-upholstered armchair, one of a pair positioned on either side of the fireplace. ‘The kettle’s just boiled and I’ll make us some tea. I’m afraid that we don’t drink wine and spirits like you’re used to down in London. Temperance is next to godliness, as they say round here.’
‘Tea will be just fine,’ said Trave with a smile, and Mrs Seaforth bustled away out of sight, leaving her guest alone. He looked cursorily around the room, taking in at a glance a barometer by the door, a bevelled oak mirror above the fireplace, and a large framed sampler on the wall behind where he was sitting that asked the Lord to ‘bless this house’. Then he concentrated his attention on two silver-framed photographs on the mantelpiece. One was a wedding picture showing Mrs Seaforth and her second husband — it had to be her second marriage, because they were both middle-aged — standing arm in arm in front of the local church that Trave recognized from having just gone past it on his walk to the hotel from the railway station. They looked happy, Trave thought, and had probably continued happy together, judging from Mrs Seaforth’s friendly, easy-going demeanour.
The other photograph was of two boys, obviously brothers, standing side by side against a white background. At a guess, Trave would have said they were three years apart — fifteen and eighteen, perhaps. It looked older, more faded, than the wedding picture, but it had a strange unstudied quality, which surprised Trave given it was a studio portrait, which must have required the sitters to keep their positions for a long time during the exposure. The older, taller youth was dressed in a military uniform and looked out at the camera with a half-defiant, half-amused smile that was curiously attractive. He had his arm around the shoulder of the younger one, who looked up towards his brother with a devoted, happy expression — happy, Trave guessed, because he was posing for a picture with the brother he idolized.
Trave leant forward, staring hard at the picture. One of the brothers had to be Seaforth, and he guessed it was the younger one, remembering what Ava had told him about the photograph she’d seen in Seaforth’s bedroom of a young man in uniform who wasn’t Seaforth but looked like him. Trave sighed, thinking of how little he knew about the man he was trying to investigate. He wished that he had Thorn with him. Thorn would have known what questions to ask, whereas he was groping in the dark. Still, there was no help for it. He was on his own and he would just have to do his best.
‘Alistair’s the older one. He was so full of life, always laughing, devil-may-care about the world even when he was a little boy,’ said Mrs Seaforth, coming up behind Trave with the tea tray and confirming his guess about the brothers as if she had read his mind. ‘He got into endless scrapes at school, but people always forgave him because he meant well; he wore his heart on his sleeve. The girls loved him — he could have had his pick of them if he’d wanted. And Charlie worshipped him more than anyone. You can see that in the picture. They were inseparable, which was funny because they were so different,’ she went on as she poured out the tea. ‘Alistair so open-handed you could read him like a book, whereas Charlie was always looking deep into things, searching for grievances.’
‘What kind of grievances?’ asked Trave, taking his cup from Mrs Seaforth’s outstretched hand. Perhaps he could just let her talk, he thought, and wait until she said something that seemed important.
‘Oh, I don’t know. Against the English. Flodden Field, where they massacred the Scots in the sixteenth century, isn’t so far away from here. And then he hated the old squire whom my husband, Jack, worked for. He was English too. Charlie said he was exploiting us, charging us too much rent, not making repairs, not paying Jack enough money. Made him sound like he was some kind of Nazi — not that we had Nazis back then.’ Mrs Seaforth smiled, shaking her head at the memory. ‘And Charlie was right in some ways, I suppose, although it was the squire who got him an exemption from joining up in the last year of the war, which probably saved his life. But that just seemed to make him hate the old man even more. Charlie never liked being in debt to anyone. He never has and he never will.’ Mrs Seaforth paused, stirring her tea with a faraway look in her eye. ‘It all seems so long ago now,’ she said half-wistfully. ‘And the war changed everything. It’s like there was a before-the-war time and an after-the-war time, and there might have been a hundred years between the two. You’re too young to know what I mean.’ It could have sounded condescending, but it wasn’t for some reason, just a statement of fact. She looked up, catching Trave’s eye, and abruptly returned to the present. ‘Is Charlie in trouble of some kind?’ she asked. ‘I think you ought to tell me if he is.’
‘No, it’s nothing like that,’ said Trave. ‘We just need to make some background checks. You know how it is.’ He spoke awkwardly, uncomfortable with having to lie to this woman who was being so hospitable. But he knew he had no choice in the matter.
‘So he’s getting promoted,’ she said, but Trave didn’t need to lie this time. She assumed she’d got the right answer. ‘Well, that’s exciting,’ she went on. ‘But he never tells me anything, you know. In fact …’ She paused, holding her spoon suspended in her cup, and Trave suddenly saw that she was fighting to keep her self-control. ‘In fact, I don’t even know what he does down there in London because he hasn’t spoken to me at all. Not for more than fifteen years. So you can see it was a bit of a shock when you asked me about him — brought back a lot of memories which I try not to dwell on too much.’
‘Why? Why hasn’t he spoken to you?’ asked Trave, surprised.
‘Because he blames me for what happened; blames me for having moved forward with my life.’
‘Forward from what? Please tell me what happened, Mrs Seaforth. I need to know.’
‘The war happened. I told you that. Alistair died; my husband died. It’s a common enough story. You can hear it from widows in any town or village in the country.’
She was withdrawing from him, Trave could feel it. He regretted being so direct with his questions. His curiosity had got the better of him and he’d pushed too hard. But he couldn’t give up now. ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Seaforth,’ he said, looking contrite. ‘Really I am. I can see the past must be very painful to you.’
‘It is,’ she said, nodding. ‘I prefer not to think about it unless I absolutely have to. And from what you’ve told me, Mr Trave, it doesn’t sound to me like we need to go down that road,’ she said, giving Trave a sharp look that was at odds with her previous manner. ‘You say you’re here to do a backgrou
nd check on Charles, and I can tell you that I know nothing against him. Quite the opposite, in fact. As far as I’m aware, he’s honest, he’s not been convicted of any crime, and he’s extremely clever. But I expect you know all that already.’
Mrs Seaforth got up from her chair and held out her hand. It was obvious that she wanted her visitor gone. It was difficult to understand why when she had been so welcoming before. He had clearly offended her in some way, touched a raw nerve of some kind. Trave tried in vain to think of a way to keep the interview going and then gave up. He shook her offered hand and walked away.
He walked down the street and round the corner to a pub called The Fox and Hounds, with a dramatic picture of a hunting scene painted on the inn sign, which creaked gently in a breeze that had blown up as if from nowhere while he had been drinking tea with Seaforth’s mother. There were no other customers in the bar, and he sat in a corner inglenook, gazing disconsolately into the brown depths of a pint of the local beer while he waited for the shepherd’s pie dinner that he’d ordered when he came in. He wasn’t hungry, but he knew he had to eat.
‘New to town?’ asked the landlord when he brought Trave the food. He was a big man with a beard, and he seemed friendly enough.
‘Yes, I’m just passing through,’ said Trave, and then added, rousing himself from his lethargy: ‘I’m here to see Mrs Seaforth. Do you know her?’
‘Of course I do. She’s a lovely lady,’ the landlord said heartily. ‘John Seaforth’s a lucky man.’
‘Her husband?’ asked Trave.
‘That’s right. He used to be our postman, but he’s retired now.’
‘I’m here about some business concerning her son down in London.’
‘Never met him. He went south before Mary moved into Langholm. She used to live in a little village a few miles from here with her first husband, Jack O’Bryen. I never knew him. He died in the last war. Their oldest son too. You can see Jack’s name on the town war memorial up in Buccleuch Park.’
‘Just Jack’s?’ asked Trave. ‘Why not both their names?’
‘No reason,’ said the landlord hurriedly, and moved away back to the bar, putting a sudden end to the conversation.
Trave ate his food slowly, turning the landlord’s strange behaviour over in his mind. He’d been friendly like Mrs Seaforth, but then suddenly he’d backed away, just as she’d done. There was something in the past that they didn’t want to speak about. Alistair, the elder son, had been in military uniform in the photograph on Mrs Seaforth’s mantelpiece. He’d fought in the war and he’d been killed in it too, but his name wasn’t on the town’s war memorial. It couldn’t have been an accidental omission because his father’s name was recorded there among the fallen.
Suddenly Trave knew why Alistair’s name wasn’t there. And the knowledge galvanized him out of his lethargy like an electric shock. He needed to see Seaforth’s mother; he had to find a way to make her tell him what had happened, and he couldn’t take no for an answer.
CHAPTER 9
Just as before, Mrs Seaforth opened her front door almost straight away after he’d knocked. It was as if she’d been expecting him to return.
‘I think I know what happened to your eldest son and I need to talk to you about it, about the effect it had on Charles-’, Trave said in a rush, and then broke off, bending over to catch his breath. He’d run all the way from the pub and had a stitch in his side.
She was clearly shocked. She recoiled from Trave as if she’d been hit, then looked away for a moment, trying to collect herself. ‘I’m sorry. I thought I made it clear that I don’t have anything else to tell you,’ she said eventually. Her tone was severe, but she couldn’t quite carry it off. It wasn’t in her nature to be unfriendly.
‘Look, I know this sounds crazy, but it’s a matter of national importance,’ said Trave, throwing caution to the winds. ‘I should have told you before, but the reason I’m here is that some people think Charles is working for the enemy …’
‘For the Germans?’ Mrs Seaforth asked, looking aghast.
‘Yes. And it’s my job to find out if that’s true or not. I need you to help me.’ Trave was still winded and he took deep breaths between each sentence.
‘But how?’ she asked, holding out her hands palms up to emphasize her sense of her own powerlessness. ‘Like I told you before, I haven’t spoken to Charles in fifteen years.’
‘It’s what happened before then that I’m interested in,’ said Trave urgently. ‘Please, Mrs Seaforth. You have to trust me.’
‘You really think this — that he’s some kind of spy?’ she asked incredulously.
‘I think it’s a strong possibility. And not just that — I think he could be plotting something dangerous, something that may affect us all. We may not have much time,’ he said, putting his hand on her arm.
She hesitated a moment more, then gave in. ‘You’d better come in,’ she said, bowing her head.
Trave followed her back into the parlour and sat in the same armchair he’d sat in before, looking over again at the photograph of Mrs Seaforth’s two sons on the mantelpiece. But the picture had a different effect on him from before, when he’d been simply curious about the two boys; now he saw them as actors in a still-unfolding tragedy. Because he was certain that he’d just discovered what had happened to the handsome elder brother with the laughing eyes and the devil-may-care expression. Alistair Seaforth had been killed not by the Germans, but by his own comrades. Far away from home, in some desolate corner of the Western Front, he’d been taken out at dawn, tied to a stake, and shot dead by a firing squad. And his name wasn’t on the Langholm war memorial beside his father’s because executed soldiers were not memorialized; they were legally forgotten. Except that Alistair’s brother, Charles, had refused to forget or to forgive. Looking over at the teenage boy in the photograph staring up at his elder brother with such devotion, Trave had no doubt what his reaction had been.
‘What do you want to know?’ asked Mrs Seaforth, sitting in the chair opposite her visitor and folding her hands in her lap. She held herself rigid, as if preparing for an ordeal that she wished she had been able to avoid.
‘Alistair was executed, wasn’t he? That’s why his name’s not on the war memorial,’ said Trave, dispensing with preliminaries. He understood instinctively that Mrs Seaforth wouldn’t be able to cope with too long a return into her troubled past.
She nodded, looking not at Trave but over his shoulder towards the front window, as if she were gazing into another room in another house that Trave couldn’t see.
‘Why? Why was he executed? What did he do?’ Trave asked.
‘He ran away. They found him hiding in a barn back behind the lines, covered in hay. They shot him two days later. I’m surprised he lasted as long as he did, to be honest with you.’
‘Why do you say that?’
‘Because he was shell-shocked. His nerves were shot to pieces; he was no good to them any more.’
‘How do you know?’
‘It was obvious when he came back here on sick leave in the November of 1915. He shook all down one side; he screamed in his sleep; he wouldn’t look at me. It was like he was ashamed of what he’d seen, ashamed of whom he’d become. He was nothing like the boy he’d been before. His laughter, his happiness, his singing’ — she stopped, groping for the right words — ‘it was all gone. Can you imagine that, Mr Trave? Can you imagine having a child, a perfect child — giving birth to him, rearing him, having such joy in him, so many hopes, and then see them all dashed?’ There was no change in her voice — she spoke rigidly, pitilessly — but there were tears running down her cheeks, and Trave felt ashamed to be causing her such remembered grief.
‘No, Mrs Seaforth. I can’t imagine,’ he said slowly, looking her in the eye. ‘And I’m sorry, truly sorry, to be dredging all this up, but I don’t have any choice. And there’s something I don’t understand. How could your son have ended up back in France if he was such a mess? Surely he wo
uld have been invalided out.’
‘Not France. Belgium. They shot him in Belgium on the eleventh of February 1916 — the day before his birthday. And they sent him back because the doctors said he was fit to go. They gave him electric shocks until he stopped trembling and then they put him on the train. He lasted four weeks and four days after that, and like I said, I’m surprised it was that long.’
‘How did you find out — about the execution? Who told you?’
‘Nobody did.’
Trave waited for Mrs Seaforth to continue, but she remained silent, still and silent like a statue. ‘I don’t understand,’ he said, perplexed. ‘You must have been told about it sometime, or you couldn’t be telling me about it now.’
‘Charlie found out after the war. He wrote letters to everyone over and over again until someone took pity and told him the truth. And then the people in the town got to know when they put up the war memorial and Alistair’s name wasn’t on it. Charlie hated them for that, but it was the law. You couldn’t blame them for following the law. Langholm’s a tight-knit community and the people here have been very good to me over the years. I don’t think I’d have got through my troubles without their support.’
‘You say he found out after the war?’
‘Yes.’
‘So that must mean your first husband didn’t know that Alistair was executed.’
‘No, he didn’t. Jack had an exemption because he was a skilled farmworker, but then when the news came that Alistair had died, killed in action, he was so angry that he volunteered. I tried to talk him out of it, but he wouldn’t listen to me. He wanted blood, German blood, on the end of his bayonet. You know what I mean — an eye for an eye; a tooth for a tooth. But he didn’t get his wish, silly fool. He got trench fever instead within a few days of getting out there, lingered for a week or two in a base hospital, and then died on the boat home. Trench fever’s caused by lice, apparently. Did you know that, Mr Trave? Lice!’ She spat out the word as if it perfectly summarized the waste, the awful pointlessness, of her husband’s death.
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