Death of an Unsung Hero

by Tessa Arlen

  Chapter Thirteen

  After luncheon Clementine put on her hat, found her secateurs and heavy leather gardening gloves, and went out to work in her rose garden—an occupation that she usually enjoyed. But today there were so many unanswered questions teeming through her head that she didn’t know which of her considerable problems to tackle first: the murder of Captain Bray; the War Office and the Medical Board review; the insistence by their neighbor Sir Winchell Meacham that the hospital be closed; her daughter’s blithely unconventional behavior; their elder daughter Verity’s determination to continue to stay on in Paris just miles from the fighting; or Harry’s habitual brandy at breakfast. As the afternoon wore on, hard work stilled most of the arguments going on in her head, or at least distilled them into some sort of order.

  If we are methodical we will sort out who killed Captain Bray, which will take care of the Medical Board next week. We have at least cleared most of our officers—not a single one of them could possibly have had the time to find his way to the kitchen garden at the critical time.

  She bent down and pulled up a particularly stubborn weed before she returned to clipping off dead roseheads with her shears. Althea is not a wayward girl, she is just carried away with all this independence, so it is important for me to be firm with her. And as for Verity, if the Germans break through the line there will be plenty of time for Etienne to bundle her and the children off to Chinon.

  She raked up garden debris and fallen leaves and realized that her greatest concern at the moment was for her son. His evident low spirits at being temporarily out of action did rather indicate that he had completely lost the capacity to enjoy simple, everyday life. For the last two years combat has been his everyday life—the thrill of it, the risk, the camaraderie with the men he leads; sitting around at home waiting for his arm to heal must be absolute misery for him: it gives him far too much time to think.

  She tackled the painful business of tying back rose shoots and stems over the domed hazel withies that supported them. It was a job that took all her concentration if she was to avoid being badly scratched. And as for Sir Winchell, poor old thing, I can surely persuade him to understand the hospital’s value so he doesn’t turn up at the Medical Board review and rave at them to close us down. She looked up from tying back a particularly powerful and thorny stem and caught sight of her son, sprawled in a lawn chair apparently asleep under the chestnut tree. An hour later, in spite of her leather gloves, she came off worse in an altercation with a particularly vicious old damask rose and decided that it was time to call it a day.

  The best thing about gardening, she thought as she surveyed the immaculate beds around her, is that you can see results immediately. She threw the last of the dead heads into the barrow. Her son was still recumbent in his wicker chair at the bottom of the lawn. Glancing at her watch and seeing that it wanted only half an hour until tea, she walked down to join him.

  Harry was not asleep. He was lying inert in his chair, an empty brandy glass in his left hand, his splinted right arm in its sling resting on his chest. He was staring across the lawn toward the west, watching the late summer sun as it started to sink in the sky. The shadows were lengthening on the lawn and the light had turned to the glowing green-gold of late summer as the sun’s rays slanted through the canopy of the chestnut tree. Now that she was no longer active, Clementine shivered. She noticed Harry’s leather flying jacket lying on the grass, picked it up, and slipped it around her shoulders. Its lambskin lining was immediately comforting. She sat down in the chair next to his and he turned his head toward her and smiled a welcome.

  It had taken Clementine years to accept her son’s love of flight. When she had visited the flying field at Eastchurch at the start of the war, she had been quite disappointed when she had seen her first aeroplane: an ungainly machine squatting like a giant toad in a field. She had half turned to her husband in surprise. “Yes, they are rather unimpressive on the ground,” he had said, smiling at her disappointment. “But wait until they take off!” She had watched the machines clumsily bump across the roughly mown grass of the airfield, and thought how ridiculous they looked as they lurched upward in a roar of overworked machinery, leaving a trail of petrol fumes in their wake. She had lifted her hand to her nose at the thick, oily smell as Lord Montfort had lifted his to shade his eyes, the better to enjoy the spectacle. “Now look at them, darling, a little more interesting when they are up, don’t you think?”

  He had been enthralled with the skill of the young flying officers that afternoon as they watched the squadron of planes fly in formation, tumble and turn in the sky, and then surge upward to peel away left and right when she thought they might crash into a church steeple. “Superb!” Lord Montfort—the man who had for two years frowned at the idea that men should take to the air, especially his son—was captivated. “Oh marvelous, would you look at that? Absolutely splendid, what incredible skill! Can’t believe how fast the things can go. And now look, they are flying like a flock of geese, wingtips barely feet distant from each other!”

  Sitting in her peaceful garden, she felt a shiver of apprehension for Captain Harry Talbot, as he preferred to be called these days, who had chalked up seventeen aerial victories this year; he was one of the youngest flying aces of the war in France and the highest-scoring ace of his squadron. She shook her head to rid it of the image of her son in his fragile aircraft. Would he be able to reconcile himself to being a landowner when this war was over? How would any of these young men be able to return home and carry on as before?

  “Beautiful afternoon,” she said by way of a greeting.

  He glanced at his empty glass and then down at the bottle of brandy sitting demurely underneath her lawn chair. “Quite lovely,” he said politely, evidently wrestling with the idea of another drink with his mother sitting guard over the bottle.

  “I went over to Brook End Farm this morning after breakfast with Althea. All her Land girls were gathering there to finish bringing in the harvest—such enthusiastic workers.”

  “Doing a capital job … every one of them. Jolly good show,” he said.

  “Did you have a moment to go there today, to Brook End I mean?”

  “Helped ’em out for most of the a.m. Two of their tractors were kaput.” This was how her son expressed himself these days. These brief utterances laced with the slang used by his fellow pilots were used as a polite wall to keep conversation on a superficial level.

  “She said she was teaching Lieutenant Carmichael to plow, yesterday. I had no idea you both knew how to do that.”

  His response was glib: “Best thing about a country childhood. Plowing kept me on the straight and narrow all my life.” He smiled at her and she heard the soft slur in his speech from an afternoon in company with the brandy bottle. “Althea does a crack job with her Land Army. Far better ’n I could.” She guessed he was alluding not just to plowing, he was referring to his sister’s love for the estate and its thousands of fertile acres. If Harry was completely honest, he found the land and all its attendant burdens terribly dull. She tactfully kept the conversation away from her son’s interest in the estate.

  “I do hope Mr. Howard comes off his high horse about the Land girls helping him with his crop.”

  “He will; they really know their stuff. It’s ’stonishing how fast they can whip through a wheat field.” He turned his head back to the western horizon.

  “Have you met Lieutenant Carmichael? He is on farm detachment at Brook End.”

  Harry considered her question, his eyes half closed in the strong late afternoon side light. “Yes, I met him the other day. Seemed a decent enough chap—nice manners.” He came out of his lethargy and sat up in his chair. “What’s up, Mama, something wrong?”

  “Something wrong?” Where has he been in the last two days? A man was brutally murdered in our kitchen garden, and he asks if something is wrong? She sighed—it was more of a huff of irritation.

  “Of course you must be worried. It d
oesn’t do for Althea, or any of her Land girls, to be anywhere alone when there is a murderer on the loose. I’ll talk to her about it—please don’t worry.” He was concerned now, she realized; he had actually used a sentence with more than four words in it. No matter how unhappy he is, he is still the same kindhearted soul he always was. It was an inexplicable relief to see her son emerge at last from the preoccupied and withdrawn state he had been in for the last few days.

  Her feet were cold. She got up from her chair and he joined her to walk farther down the lawn, where they stood looking out across the valley. A river mist started to drift into the water meadow, collecting in long thin golden strands at the bases of the trees. Cows slowly moved through the mist toward the gate at the far end, where they stood in a patient herd, waiting for evening milking. “The golden hour,” said her son as they gazed down on the simple beauty of pastoral England. His voice was low, but not so low that she didn’t catch his wistful tone. And then his mood changed. “It could be any one of them I suppose, your patients up at the hospital.” She turned her head so quickly that he laughed. “I know, I know they are all perfectly harmless, but someone in our little world is a murderer, and it isn’t one of our local farmers, is it?” He stamped his cigarette into the ground and put his hand on her shoulder. It was the first gesture of affection he had shown in the days since he had come home. She reached up and patted his hand.

  “I worry most about Althea—I know she and her Land girls are together, for most of the time, but she doesn’t stop to think things through very carefully.”

  “Yes, I know, Ma.” He hadn’t called her Ma since he was fourteen. “I am going to be with her wherever she goes from now on. I just had to be up at Brook End earlier than her this morning. We are going to Holly Farm together tomorrow morning, bright and early, to volunteer our help to Mr. Howard to bring in his harvest. All of us—the Brook End people, the farm-detachment officers, and our local Land Army volunteers—will spend every moment of the day with Althea, and if Carmichael or any of his brother officers try to lure her off for plowing lessons I’ll give him a swift kick in his posterior.” He took her hand, gave it a squeeze, and let it go. And Clementine felt such reassurance and gratitude that she stood on tiptoe and kissed him quickly on the cheek. A cloud of brandy fumes so strong that they made her eyes water engulfed her for a moment. But all she said was, “Harry, thank you. It is quite awful when murder happens in a small community. Everyone is suspicious of each other—and especially of our officers.”

  “I am sure you and Mrs. Jackson will work out what happened in the kitchen garden long before old Valentine and his policemen have even come up with their first suspect. You’ll probably have pieced it all together by this time tomorrow.”

  They started to walk back up the lawn to the house; its windows reflected the glowing sun as it sank lower in the sky. Harry breathed a long sigh. Was it contentment or loss? She linked her arm through his and said, “When I came down to you just now, you were quite lost in your thoughts.”

  “It’s the time of day I enjoy the most,” he said; and aware that it was bad form for mothers to reveal too much concern, she said nothing. “I love the sky, ’specially in the early morning and evening. I think it is why I enjoy flying so much. But it is as clear as a bell here, not a plane in sight.” He obviously decided that that was enough war talk for one day because he fell silent.

  She was quite happy to change the subject. “Supposing you were at Dodd Farm and you wanted to get to the kitchen garden quickly without being seen?”

  “So not up our drive, or on foot?” He shot her a bright, inquisitive look as she shook her head. He was evidently pleased to help her with this part of the puzzle, because he launched into considering it with enthusiasm. “A few of our farmers have motorcars and there are a good many tractors about. The Land girls have a lorry but it’s a huge beastly thing. Anything with a motor would be noisy and could be easily spotted or heard coming along our north or east drives. But a bicycle would be quick, silent, and easy to ride on all of the footpaths and bridle trails around here that lead to the kitchen garden’s south gate, and there are plenty of bikes about. One of the saddest things about the country these days is that there are no horses any longer, except Papa’s Bruno and Dolly.”

  * * *

  “Please come in, m’lady, and get warm. Once the sun goes down it gets quite chilly in the evenings, especially in this house.” Mrs. Jackson gave the logs a stir in the grate. Lady Montfort had arrived without announcement at the door of her office and it had seemed quite natural to ask her to join her in her evening glass of sherry. She hoped her ladyship did not think that she was being presumptuous, but if she felt at ease drinking a glass with her then surely that was all that mattered.

  “Your health, Jackson,” Lady Montfort said as she held up her sherry to the firelight in salute to her hospitality. “I have always thought amontillado is such a perfect drink for autumn.” The pale gold of the wine caught the orange firelight and became a glowing amber, and she lowered the rim and took an appreciative sip. “I love these September days when they start to draw in earlier and it’s hot in the day and the evenings are chilly enough for a fire.”

  “Autumn’s not far off now, m’lady.” They sipped in companionable silence for a while.

  “So I hear you had rather a dramatic end to your afternoon, Jackson, with that dreadful inspector!”

  With the first log fire of the season, a glass of sherry, and an attentive audience, Mrs. Jackson enjoyed recounting Lieutenant Phipps’s near arrest. When she came to the part about Mr. Thrower providing an alibi for the unfortunate Phipps in the shape of an aggressive gander, they were both laughing. “Mr. Thrower really enjoyed himself, m’lady. You know how once he gets going he loves to tell a good yarn. I think this one will be repeated all over the county.”

  A merry laugh from her ladyship as she sipped away; she appeared to be quite delighted at the inspector’s set-down. “And Inspector Savor will be portrayed as a witless city boy, Mr. Thrower as a wise old gaffer, and Bill will get bigger and meaner with each telling. I remember the Allenbys’ eldest boy used to creep into the orchard to steal apples until he ran into old Bill.” Lady Montfort was still smiling at the memory as she put her glass down on the little table at her elbow.

  “I asked Colonel Valentine about the potato spade, Jackson, this morning. He very reluctantly informed me, as you already know, that it was not used to kill Captain Bray. Wrong shape—something more like a length of lead pipe, he said. Interesting, don’t you think, that Inspector Savor was quite ready to arrest Phipps even without a murder weapon? Rather putting the cart before the horse I think.”

  “Yes, m’lady, the inspector is rather impatient, not a useful trait in a murder investigation, I would have thought.”

  Lady Montfort glanced at her wristwatch. “We should put our heads together, Jackson, before I have to run back to Iyntwood. Mr. Bray has decided he will join us for dinner this evening and I only have twenty minutes or so before the changing bell. Do you think Lieutenant Phipps is safe from arrest now?”

  Mrs. Jackson gave the fire a stir with the poker and the flames leaped higher, sending sparks up the chimney. “The inspector still believes that Lieutenant Phipps killed Captain Bray, m’lady. He said that under the Defense of the Realm Act he could arrest and imprison Lieutenant Phipps merely on suspicion. But Major Andrews wouldn’t back down. He said time and again that Phipps could not have had the time to kill Captain Bray and hide the weapon. In the end, the major threatened to take the whole business before a military tribunal, and since we are all in the army here, then military law takes precedence over civil law. The inspector left in a right sour mood. But until we can prove otherwise, Lieutenant Phipps is still a suspect and not allowed to leave the hospital building, even to go into the garden.

  “Not one of our officers on cider detachment, nor any of the staff in the house, could have done the murder, m’lady. I have checked very caref
ully, none of them were alone or missing at the time Captain Bray was killed.” She took a sip of her sherry.

  “Before I forget, Colonel Valentine did confirm the time of death. The captain was killed between the hours of half past eleven in the morning and about half past two in the afternoon. Which brings us to the men on farm detachment: Lady Althea says that they could not have left their work in the fields without their absence being noticed—even when they stopped work for luncheon. I am not too sure we should be complacent about any of them, until we have checked on their alibis between those hours.” And Lady Montfort gave the example of Lieutenant Carmichael’s day with her daughter, embarrassing though it clearly was to her to have to admit that Lady Althea had not behaved in a way suitable for a lady.

  What on earth are these girls thinking with their silly picnics with men unknown to their families? Mrs. Jackson wondered. Not that she could possibly imagine Lady Althea behaving badly.

  “So you see, Jackson, Lieutenant Carmichael could not have made it from Brook End Farm, across the footpath that cuts through the Holly Farm wheat field, to the kitchen garden’s south gate, murdered the captain, and then returned all in twenty minutes—even if he had a bicycle handy, which I suppose he might have. Well one thing has clearly emerged from today, whoever murdered Captain Bray brought a weapon along for the job and either took it away with him or hid it carefully perhaps to retrieve later.” She got to her feet and warmed her hands in front of the fire.

  “And if Ellis’s account of her morning is reliable, m’lady, Captain Bray was last seen alive by her at twenty-five minutes to one and found dead at about half past two, which gives our murderer two full hours, more than enough time to get from Dodd or the Home Farm.” Mrs. Jackson put her sherry down on the side table with such intention that the foot of the glass made contact with its wooden surface with sharp click. “Forbes at the Home Farm could have walked along the cart track straight to the south gate of the kitchen garden; it would take maybe just twenty minutes. He could have killed Captain Bray and then walked back within an hour, perhaps less.”