by Bill Mesce
The music ended, the echo of the last notes hung in the hallway, then Sir John rose from the bench and entered the room across the hall. Gordon Fordyce closed the front door and followed him into the room. So did Harry, Ricks, and I.
It was some sort of salon, elegant with its antique chairs and sofas, brocatelled walls, and coffered ceiling, but uncluttered enough to avoid the Victorian stuffiness that afflicts so many of the great old English estates. In one corner of the room the grooms had cleared a space to mount the fir tree. At the far end, above the mantel of a pilaster-framed fireplace, were three portraits, nearly life-size. The center canvas displayed a woman, fortyish, plump but pleasant-faced, sitting in that very room, adorned in the type of high-collared garb common thirty years ago. Flanking her on the left was a picture of a handsome young man, wearing casual riding wear, posed among what looked to be the grounds aback of the house, with a roan pawing the turf behind him. To the right, a canvas of another lad no older than the other, dressed in the tweeds of a young gentleman, posed against a bank of the house’s casement windows.
Tucked in a comer of the room, almost hidden, was a small keyboarded instrument, its compact box wrapped in gilded designs of vines and grape leaves. Perched upon its bench was Woody Kneece.
No one seemed to know quite how to begin until Harry stepped forward: “I didn’t know you played the piano.”
Kneece grinned self-consciously. “Factually, it’s what they call a spinet. Although it’s not a true spinet. The originals were really bitty harpsichords. Right or wrong, Sir John?”
Sir John had still not lost his smile and was shucking off his coat as Gordon Fordyce came up behind him to catch it. “Frankly, lad, you’re better versed in the matter than I. What was that you were playing?”
“Cavatina. My mother likes it a lot.”
“My wife saw that thing at an estate liquidation and fell in love with it,” Duff said. He pointed to the woman’s portrait above the fireplace. “Never learned to play worth a damn, though.”
Kneece fingered the yellowed pages of sheet music. “Somebody played.”
“My elder, Raymond, though I must say he had more enthusiasm than talent. Didn’t matter. ‘Make a joyful noise’ it says somewhere in the Good Book, doesn’t it? Raymond did. It was a wonderful noise to fill the house.”
Woody Kneece studied the portraits. “He was the rider?” “Yes.”
“You still keep a nice set of horseflesh, Sir John.”
“They saw us riding up,” Erik Sommer explained.
“I hope I wasn’t out of line,” Kneece said. “I was using the, you know, the facilities, I saw this as I went by, I couldn’t resist.”
“No problem, lad.”
Kneece pointed to the third portrait. “Your other boy?” “Calvin. Two years behind, but they were inseparable. Calvin didn’t play, but when Raymond sat at the keys he would… well, one doesn’t dare call it truly singing. It was all in fun, you understand. Calvin would be like so…” The older man pointed his toes out at a ninety-degree angle, hands clasped below his heart, elbows jutting out. “… as if he were Jenny Lind or something. Raymond would bang away and Calvin would begin the most god-awful caterwauling…” Woody Kneece, caught up in the spirit of the moment, began a spirited playing of “The Lambeth Walk.” Sir John began to sing along in a faux operatic style that soon reduced the two of them to laughter.
“A joyful noise!” Kneece declared.
“Yes,” Sir John said, wistfully, as he sat on the bench alongside Kneece.
The captain again reached for the keyboard, but this time the tune was plaintive, and in a low, quiet voice, he began to sing:
“The minstrel boy to the war is gone
In the ranks of death you’ll find him;
His father’s sword he has girded on
And his wild harp slung behind him…”
Sir John joined in, his voice a rich baritone that I’m sure was the envy of his parish choir.
“‘Land of song!’ said the warrior bard.
Tho’ all the world betrays thee,
One sword, at least, thy rights shall guard,
One faithful harp shall praise thee.’”
Kneece put his hands in his lap. “I don’t think there’s a sadder song in all the world.”
WI think not,” Sir John agreed. “I’m afraid I’m forgetting myself.” He held out a hand to Kneece. “John Duff.”
“That’s Captain Kneece of the American Army’s Criminal Investigation Department,” Gordon Fordyce spoke with perhaps more emphasis than was required.
“Corps,” Kneece corrected. “Criminal Investigation Corps.” Fordyce seemed not to have heard. “This is Major Voss of the Judge Advocate General’s Corps. And that’s Lieutenant Ricks.”
Sir John went from shaking hands with Harry to Ricks. He nodded at the lieutenant’s bandaged eye. “I hope that’s less uncomfortable than it looks, lad.”
“Should be coming off any day, Sir John.”
“Good, good. And what Department are you from?”
I’m just along for the ride. I had a chance to see an honest-to-God knight’s house. How could I pass that up?”
Sir John chuckled, shaking his head. “Americans.”
“And this,” Fordyce said, pointing to me, “is Mr. Owen.” He named my newspaper.
“I know you, don’t I?” Sir John said as we shook hands.
“The dinner party after Munich, Sir John,” Fordyce supplied.
Sir John chuckled again. “Ah, yes. It was not your point I objected to that evening, Mr. Owen. Certainly history has granted your view more vindication than mine. But it was a social engagement. I thought there were more suitable occasions for such a discussion.”
“Fair enough, Sir John. Then I apologize… retroactively.” We exchanged good-natured smiles to signal that it was all past and forgotten.
Except perhaps by Gordon Fordyce. “They’re here about that business on Orkney,” he said.
“The soldier who was found dead?” Sir John asked. “He was American, then?”
As if in answer, Woody Kneece drifted through a few more bars of “The Minstrel Boy.”
“The minstrel fell but thefoeman’s chain
Could not bring that proud soul under…”
Sir John looked back to Kneece at the spinet, then to the portraits over the fireplace. He turned back to us with a broad, hospitable smile. “You’ll stay for lunch! We had planned only something simple, sandwiches and light refreshment, but still, I insist.”
“As long as you insist,” Harry said.
“Sir John,” Fordyce interceded. “It might be difficult to accommodate the extra guests.”
“Oh, bosh, Gordon! We can use the dining room. I prefer to save all that folderol for formal occasions, but there’s certainly enough room there.”
I leaned toward Harry’s ear and whispered, nodding at Gordon Fordyce: “Methinks the fairy queen is jealous.”
“I think it will just be us for lunch, Sir John,” Erik Sommer said. “I’ll ask the others, but they seemed quite tired after the morning’s ride. I have the belief they will want to rest.”
“Oh, well, then, it’s simple again. Where’s Alden? Alden, we’ll lunch in the library. Gentlemen, shall we adjourn and let these good men tend to the tree? By the way, Erik, fine choice on this tree. Alden, we’ll need extra chairs. Have the chaps lend a hand. Gentlemen, if you’ll follow me…”
He led us across the hall. Fordyce lingered behind to close the salon’s door behind us, shutting it with an unnecessary firmness.
The library was a smaller, cozier room than the salon; the chairs had been selected for comfort, not fashion. There was a pleasant, manly smell of brandy and cigars, of leather book bindings and wood from the oak shelves and paneling.
“Ahhh, the patriarch’s private sanctum, eh, Sir John?” I said.
“Something like that.” Sir John gravitated behind the massive desk set by the casement windows.
&n
bsp; “My daddy has a library kind of like this,” Woody Kneece said. “Smaller, of course. He inherited it with the house. I don’t think my daddy’s ever read anything more than cotton quotes and the bloodlines for his racing stock. But that was Daddy’s comer of the house. When that door closed behind him, you left him alone. He might just be only sitting looking out the window, but if he was in that room…”
“When my boys were alive I never closed the door,” Sir John reflected. “Even when they were small. If I had business to conduct, well, then, some poor guest suffered them climbing about him like monkeys. But I never closed my door to them. Calvin used to like to roost here under my desk. He would be under there moving his little toy autos about, making little purring noises, even if I had someone in here. I used to keep toffees in my desk I would slip to him.”
“I’m sorry I missed those days, Sir John,” Erik Sommer said.
“Beautiful books,” Harry observed, moving along the floor-to-ceiling shelves. “I envy you having the time to read them, Sir John.”
“Major, I must make a confession. As with the good captain’s father, I inherited them. They came with the house, most of them.”
“But not all.” Harry pointed to a shelf of books clearly not as old as the rest of the library. “Not these.”
Sir John shrugged.
The food arrived on a cart with Alden at the helm. On a sideboard, he laid on a buffet of finger sandwiches, a compote offering fresh fruit and nuts, and a pot of tea. While he did so, I joined Harry by the shelf he’d pointed out to Sir John. There were many histories, from Gibbons to Wells, even Caesar. As for the fiction: Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms, Crane’s The Red Badge of Courage, Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front.
I knew what Harry was thinking: the oddness of a man who had lost so much to war studying it in such detail. But Sir John was no different from the doctor who sets himself to learning all there is to learn about a disease to better understand the mechanism that took his children.
As we availed ourselves of the buffet, Peter Ricks indicated a small statuette on the library mantel. It was not a particularly good rendering, the kind of thing one buys more for sentiment than aesthetic appreciation. It featured a youngster in period costume, something medieval, a lute under one arm, bent under the great weight of a broadsword strapped to his back. Ricks caught my eye; we both looked at the statuette and nodded in recognition: The Minstrel Boy.
As we ate, Sir John sat close to Woody Kneece, who regaled him with tales of South Carolina life. Kneece typically displayed a modesty and discomfort with his family’s comfortable circumstances, sentiments that Sir John obviously found admirable.
In the meantime, Ricks, Harry, and I found ourselves seated with Erik Sommer. Gordon Fordyce positioned himself in an isolated comer. His cool gaze kept drifting from our little group to the pairing of Sir John and Kneece.
Sommer made polite conversation with the Americans, asking them about their homes, comparing Harry’s Newark and Ricks’s San Francisco to Stockholm and Sweden’s more northern climes, where the steel manufacturing centers were located.
“That’s a pretty good deal you have there,” Ricks said. For all the hospitable warmth the Swede maintained, Ricks had, since their first introduction, regarded him with a caustic eye.
“Pardon?” Sommer said. “‘Deal’?”
“That neutrality deal. It works out all right for you people, doesn’t it? I mean, you get to keep doing business, make some good money from the war, and nobody’s bombing your factories, your businesses —”
Gordon Fordyce cleared his throat. “Lieutenant Ricks, you are here at the forbearance of Sir John. You may have business with him, but Mr. Sommer is a guest.”
“It’s all right, Gordon.” Sommer waved soothingly in Fordyce’s direction. “In the lieutenant’s place I would feel the same, I imagine. I can only say to you, Lieutenant Ricks, that I am not my government. I did not say ‘This is our policy.’ I am not the owners of my company. I did not say ‘This is who we will sell to.’”
“You’re just some guy trying to make a living.”
“I have my job. What else am I to do?” Sommer bowed his head for a moment, then he put a hand on Ricks’s forearm. “This may mean nothing to you, but I am sorry for the war.” Which I thought a curious statement.
“Perhaps the Swedes would have taken sides if they could have been assured Britain would have protected them better than they did the Norwegians,” Fordyce said.
“Gordon, please.” Sommer said it gently. “As you say, I am a guest. These men are guests as well.”
“How is it you get back and forth between here and Sweden?” Harry asked. “Air? Sea?”
“Ship, mostly.”
“You don’t worry?” I asked.
“You mean, is it dangerous for us? We fly the neutral flag, yes?”
“Still. You must remember that incident last summer.”
Sommer nodded gravely. “Sad, very sad.”
I turned to Harry and Ricks to explain. “I’m sure you remember, Harry. Jerry shot down a commercial plane flying Lisbon to England.”
Harry nodded. “That actor was in it. The guy from Gone With the Wind. The goofy-looking one Scarlett was in love with.”
“It was Leslie Howard, and were he still alive, he would join me in objecting to your referring to English panache as ‘goofy’.”
“People even thought maybe the Germans attacked the plane because Mr. Howard was a spy,” Sommer said.
“I think too many people saw Pimpernel Smith too many times,” Ricks said disparagingly.
“Still,” I said to Sommer, “you must worry.”
“My wife at home, she worries, but here I am,” Sommer said philosophically. “My friends are here. You saw: One even brings his wife. To come see our good friend Sir John…” He shrugged; surely their friend was worth the risk?
Sir John called for a platter of light pastry for dessert. He offered tea and coffee and some of the hot chocolate brought him as a token Christmas gift by Erik Sommer. And, for those more inclined, he offered a fine brandy and cigars from his humidor.
Peter Ricks and I took our rich-smelling cigars from their packing tubes. He smiled slightly and at my questioning look held up the band from his cigar: Cohiba.
“Gentlemen,” Fordyce announced. He shifted in his seat, adjusted his trousers, and carefully crossed his legs at the knees. “I hate to be the taskmaster here, but I think, perhaps, we should address the reason for your visit. While we appreciate the seriousness of the issue, Sir John does have guests who have come a long way and whom he is now neglecting.”
Sir John nodded in Fordyce’s direction. “See what he does for me? If it weren’t for good old Gordie, I sometimes think, the whole machine would grind to a halt. You’re quite right, Gordon, thank you. I know several of you spoke with my man up there, Mr. Bowles. You, Major? And Captain Kneece? Yes, well, I don’t know what I could add. Mr. Bowles was the fellow ‘on the scene.’ That’s the correct parlance, Mr. Owen? ‘On the scene’?”
Harry had produced his little notebook and reading glasses, and was flipping back and forth through the scribble-covered pages. He scratched his head and frowned. “About Mr. Bowles…”
“Teddy Bowles is a trusted, long-time employee, Major. Beyond that, I know the man personally He’s an all-round good chap.”
“I’m sure. You know, that place where he’s living isn’t that far from where they found the dead officer. We were a little surprised Mr. Bowles hadn’t heard anything.”
“Good God, man!” Fordyce sighed. “Teddy Bowles is as old as Methuselah. I’d be surprised if he knew what was going on outside his front door.”
“That’s not how he came across to us,” Woody Kneece chimed in.
“I haven’t seen old Teddy…” Sir John mused. “I had just assumed… When was it, Gordie? When was I up there last?”
“Not since the beginning of the war. Fall ’39.”
“
Maybe…” Kneece began. Sir John and Fordyce looked to him expectantly. “I don’t want to cast aspersions about somebody, well, I can see you like the old fella…”
“But?”
“Maybe Mr. Bowles has a reason to be selective about what he sees up there.”
Gordon Fordyce rose. He crossed to Sir John’s chair, standing close by him. “Before you arrived, Mr. Owen alluded to some sort of misuse of the Orkney property.”
“There are signs,” Kneece continued, “that some kind of ‘traffic’ has been going through there.”
“Traffic?” Fordyce echoed. “Of what sort?”
“That’s something we can’t say right now,” Harry said.
“But you’re sure?” Sir John asked.
“Yes.” Harry said it firmly.
Erik Sommer cleared his throat. “Sir John, perhaps this employee of yours is involved in some side business? Something of his own?”
“Old Teddy? Hardly.”
“Still,” Fordyce said, leaning close to Sir John’s ear, “we should have some of our own people look into this.”
“By all means, Gordie. Good thinking! I’d hate to think Teddy Bowles is up to something he shouldn’t be.” Sir John rubbed his jaw thoughtfully. “If there is something to this… what does it have to do with the American soldier who was killed?”
“Maybe nothing.” Harry flipped to another page of his notes. “You say you haven’t been up there since the war began?”
“That’s right,” Gordon Fordyce said.
“Orkney seems like an out-of-the-way place for a factory. That’s why you bought that stretch of land, right? That’s what we were told: to build a factory.”
“It was that very out-of-the-way nature of the place that attracted us, Major,” Sir John replied. “At the outset of the war, we were quite nervous about the safety of our manufacturing centers here in England. We’d heard a lot about how capable the Luftwaffe was —”
“We were looking for a site out of German bomber range,” Fordyce said.
“But you never built the plant,” Harry pointed out.
“As you say, it was out of the way” Sir John shrugged.
