Anthem for Doomed Youth

by Carola Dunn

  When he finished, Tom said ‘Ah’ again, this time signifying satisfaction.

  ‘You’re our pub expert, Tom. You find it believable that the landlord would confide such a thing to a scruffy stranger?’

  ‘In those circumstances, yes. The chance conjunction—’

  ‘Whew!’ said Ernie.

  ‘The conjunction’ – Tom repeated with a severe look – ‘of talk of the murders and the war, on top of an uneasy conscience because he wasn’t rushing to the police with his information … Well, I can understand him blurting out what was at the top of his mind. He probably regretted it right away. But he’s probably not too worried because, by the sound of it, Chief, the laddie he told doesn’t exactly look like the sort who’s likely to seek out the company of coppers.’

  ‘Would it be a good idea, do you think, to make him worried?’

  ‘Well now.’ Tom stroked his moustache thoughtfully. ‘That I couldn’t rightly say without talking to him first.’

  ‘And so you shall.’ Alec had intended to talk to Shadd himself, but Tom was obviously a better choice. ‘I’ll see what the place looks like before I decide whether Ernie and I should come in with you. Now, let’s go back over Pelham the nephew and this chap you saw in Hounslow last night.’

  ‘Peter Wensley, Major, retired. Pelham the uncle was his superior officer in South Africa, when he had just attained the rank of colonel and was feeling his oats. Major Wensley had married a Boer woman in Pretoria after our troops took the city. She was expecting his child. He assumed she was safe there, but he received a message that she had gone to visit relations in the veld. The whole family ended up in one of our concentration camps and were in dire straits. To cut a long story short, Pelham refused to let Wensley go to his wife’s rescue. She died.’

  No one spoke for an interminable half-minute. Then Alec said softly, ‘No wonder he had it in for Pelham.’

  ‘He’s an old man, Chief. His legs are as shaky as his handwriting.’

  ‘Pelham really liked to throw his weight about, didn’t he!’ said Ernie. ‘He sounds like a real bastard who had it coming to him. Can’t have been the major that gave it to him, though. Not just his weakness, but he didn’t know Devine or Halliday, did he, Sarge?’

  ‘No, he was already in dodgy health before the Great War – wounded in the Boer War – and didn’t rejoin the army. He’s been living in pretty straitened circumstances in that residential hotel for years. Didn’t seem like he knew anyone much except the other residents.’

  ‘So much for him. What about Pelham the nephew, Tom?’ Alec asked.

  ‘He spent the war with the Indian Army in Mesopotamia, Chief. That’s one reason he ended up at the India Office. He was actually out in India last autumn, went out in September, back just in time for Christmas. Which knocks him out as far as Devine is concerned.’

  ‘November, Devine disappeared.’ Ernie had the detail at his fingertips, as usual. ‘The twenty-first.’

  ‘He swears he’d never heard of Devine or Halliday. I couldn’t see any reason to disbelieve him.’

  ‘What did he say about his quarrel with his uncle?’

  ‘The colonel tried to tell him what to do one time too many. The final straw was in ’21 or ’22. He’s not absolutely sure what that particular spat was about, the one that finished off relations between them, because they had so many over the years.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘The colonel disapproved of him going into the civil service rather than the army – that was the most frequent trouble. They disagreed on politics. The nephew dared to protest a couple of times about the way the colonel bullied his wife. All in all, he never expected to inherit anything and knew nothing about his uncle’s will, but presumed that Mrs Pelham would scoop the pool.’

  ‘What did you make of him, Tom? Was he worried about being suspected of doing away with the colonel?’

  ‘Not him. A very ordinary gentleman who was more worried about whether he ought to send his condolences to his aunt, or call on her, or would she maybe not want anything to do with him, in accordance with his uncle’s wishes. After what you said about her, Chief, I ventured to advise getting in touch.’

  ‘She certainly had no qualms about not observing her husband’s wishes!’

  ‘That’s what I thought. What about that bloke you went to see in Southwark? Get anything from him?’

  Alec told them about the porter who had served briefly under Halliday and Devine, and his summing up of their characters. ‘Halliday would obey orders because it was his duty. Devine would go along because he was easily led.’

  ‘You reckon he read them right, this porter?’

  ‘He seemed a pretty astute fellow. It appears more and more likely that Halliday and Devine were dragged willy-nilly into some mischief started by Colonel Pelham. The urgent question is, was anyone else equally involved in whatever it was? Is there another unwitting target waiting out there?’

  Tom shook his head. ‘If he’s read the papers, Chief, he’s not unwitting. Seeing nobody’s asked us for protection, it looks like that’s the lot.’

  ‘Or else he doesn’t read the papers,’ Ernie pointed out. ‘Some don’t. Lots only read the racing pages of The Pink ’Un.’

  ‘Very true, laddie. We better find out if the Sporting Times reported the names of the victims.’

  Ernie made a note.

  By this time they were in the Tottenham High Road. The driver asked Ernie for more precise directions to the Barley Mow. He turned off the High Road.

  ‘Drive past the pub,’ said Alec, ‘then stop round the nearest corner.’

  The Barley Mow, despite its old-fashioned name, was a post-war hostelry in the middle of a row of newish shops. The exterior gave the impression of aspiring to serve a better class of clientèle than would probably ever find their way thither. Hoping to attract the superior sort of commercial traveller, it was surrounded by the dwellings of petty clerks. Either Tom or Ernie would fit in to a nicety.

  ‘All yours, Tom. We’ll wait here.’

  The car uttered a grateful sigh as the detective sergeant got out. As he closed the door and walked back towards the corner, Ernie said in a significant tone, ‘Free house.’

  ‘You think that’s important?’

  ‘We-ell …’

  ‘You’ve got a theory.’

  ‘Well, I do, Chief. But I could be all wrong. I don’t want to talk about it till we hear what Mr Tring finds out.’

  ‘All right. What do you think of Major Wensley and the younger Pelham?’

  They were in agreement that, given Tom’s opinions of their respective characters, neither could seriously be considered a suspect. They had hardly reached this conclusion when Tom reappeared.

  ‘No luck, Chief. The barman says Shadd’s taken the missus and kiddies to the seaside – Clacton – for the day. But they get pretty busy Sunday evenings, so he’s supposed to be back by seven to run the saloon bar.’

  Alec sighed. ‘Then we’ll just have to wait, won’t we?’

  CHAPTER 16

  ‘I’m off for me dinner,’ announced the gardener as he led Daisy and her flock through the gap in the hedge, emerging into the wide world at last.

  Daisy tipped him. The girls thanked him politely, then ran off towards the gate, chattering. The gardener turned in the opposite direction.

  Daisy walked beside him, pleading. ‘You’ll be needed to show the police how to get to him. And out again.’ She hadn’t even attempted to memorise the turns between the body and the exit, after her previous failure.

  ‘’T’s past me dinnertime.’

  He didn’t seem to care whether he inconvenienced the police, and he regarded the presence of a corpse in the maze as none of his business. Time to employ more persuasive means: ‘If you don’t help, they’ll probably have to cut through the hedges to get to the body.’

  For a moment she was sure he was going to give an indifferent shrug and walk on. It was not his maze after all, she presume
d. But he turned to subject her once again to that bright, unsettling stare and said, ‘Tell ’em to look for me in the tool-shed in the Walled Garden.’

  Either he didn’t want to annoy his employer or, like most gardeners, he took pride in his work and didn’t want to see it damaged. Ten-foot yews, cut down, would take a long time to regrow.

  He made for a door in the brick wall and disappeared through it. Daisy followed the girls down the steps, between the grinning gargoyles and past the peacock. Lizzie and Deva were sitting on the bench on either side of Sakari. She had her arm round Lizzie, who had started crying again. Belinda stood in front of them, she and Deva talking nineteen to the dozen.

  Sakari greeted Daisy with relief. ‘I cannot understand one word in ten that these children are uttering. You will tell me all.’

  Daisy gave her a tiny shake of the head. She wasn’t about to describe the body in the children’s presence, though she knew Sakari would want to hear about it. ‘There isn’t much to tell. The gardener took me to the centre, where there’s a viewing platform. Deva was already there.’

  ‘I’m the only one who found it, Mummy.’

  ‘He and I went up and spotted Lizzie and Bel. He led the way to them and then brought us all out.’

  ‘Mummy went round the corner and looked at Mr Harriman’s body,’ said Belinda.

  So much for discretion. ‘I had to make sure it was really there. Not that I didn’t believe you, Lizzie darling, but the police are bound to want to know whether a grown-up actually saw it with her own eyes.’

  ‘I want my mummy,’ Lizzie wept.

  ‘I’m sure she’ll be back soon, darling, with a policeman. We were in there for ages.’

  Sakari looked at her wrist-watch. ‘Not very long. It is ten minutes past noon.’

  ‘It seemed forever. Bel, Deva, why don’t the two of you go with Lizzie up to the street to wait for her mother?’

  ‘An excellent idea,’ said Sakari, as the three went off and Daisy sat down. ‘Now you can tell me everything.’

  ‘I’m pretty sure Harriman was murdered.’

  ‘But of course.’

  ‘What do you mean, of course?’

  ‘Daisy, in this life your karma is to discover the victims of murder and bring their killers to justice. Perhaps in your previous life you were a murderer.’

  ‘Darling, honestly!’

  ‘I am not saying this is so. Who can tell? Perhaps you failed to avenge a killing.’

  ‘Perhaps I was murdered! Now I’m trying to avenge myself.’

  Sakari frowned. ‘Possibly. The workings of karma are inscrutable. That is not quite the right word, but it will do. What is evident is that this is the purpose of your present incarnation. How many murder victims have you found?’

  ‘I prefer not to count,’ Daisy said, with what dignity she could muster.

  ‘Many. What makes you think this Harriman was murdered?’

  ‘He was a bully and a brute.’ She didn’t want to dwell on the injury she had noted.

  ‘Most bullies and brutes do not meet with unnatural death.’

  ‘No.’ Daisy sighed. ‘It looked to me as if he’d been hit on the head, and there was nothing nearby that he could have hit it on in falling. Also, he was laid out as if ready for burial. Enough?’

  ‘Enough. He was murdered. Now we must find out who did it.’

  ‘We?’

  ‘But naturally. My karma is to be your friend. Besides, it will be much more interesting than taking the children to a museum.’

  ‘I thought you liked museums.’

  ‘Not as escort to three giggling schoolgirls. Where shall we start? With those whom Harriman bullied, I dare say. You must know some of them, at least, or you would not be aware that he is a brute.’

  Daisy hesitated. She didn’t want to get Pencote, Tesler and Miss Bascombe into trouble, but they were the only three she had personal knowledge of. ‘There must be many I don’t know,’ she hedged. ‘I heard Mr Rowntree himself acknowledge that Harriman is a bully.’

  ‘We cannot investigate those who are as yet unknown. We must start somewhere. It is someone you like, is it not?’

  ‘You’re a mind-reader!’

  ‘Not I. But I know you, Daisy. You need not fear I shall peach to the police.’

  The occasional unexpected colloquialism in the midst of Sakari’s formal English always delighted Daisy, but she was too worried to appreciate it properly. ‘I’m sure you won’t, darling, but not so sure of Mel.’

  ‘Perhaps it is best that we do not speak freely before Melanie,’ Sakari agreed judiciously. ‘She is in general a very conventional person, though always exceedingly kind to me. However, I think she will in any case not wish to discuss such a subject.’

  ‘No, she won’t, that’s true.’

  ‘Nor have we any facts to lay before the police. We have only your suspicions, which are not evidence, are they?’

  ‘Absolutely not. And now I come to think of it, none of them could have done it anyway.’

  ‘None of whom? And why not? You are being abominably reticent!’

  Daisy laughed. ‘Darling, you’re beginning to sound like my American editor, who never uses a two-syllable word when three or four will do! All right, then. I’ve heard Harriman being perfectly beastly to Mr Pencote, Mr Tesler and Miss Bascombe.’

  ‘Mr Pencote has no legs; Mr Tesler has but one useful hand; Miss Bascombe is a woman. You are right, we must look elsewhere.’

  ‘Belinda told me Harriman bullied the boys who aren’t any good at games. He threatened to beat them, though as the school doesn’t allow caning, he found other ways to harass and intimidate them. But an unathletic child isn’t much more likely than a cripple to have manhandled a grown man into the maze.’

  ‘Deva said Harriman spied on Miss Bascombe and Mr Tesler. Of what else was he guilty?’

  ‘He also called Tesler a coward, because he went to prison as a conchie – a conscientious objector – rather than fight.’

  ‘Gandhiji would approve. How did he offend against Mr Pencote?’

  ‘What does it matter, since Pencote can’t possibly have had anything to do with the murder?’

  ‘Comprehending the way Harriman chose to express his malice may help us to understand who else would be vulnerable, and thus whom he might have mortally offended.’

  ‘You’ve been to too many lectures on psychology! Not to mention grammar. He keeps – kept calling Pencote a hero.’

  ‘This does not seem objectionable!’

  ‘To Pencote it is. He sees himself as a victim, not a hero.’

  ‘So Harriman specialises – specialised in both humiliation and harassment.’

  ‘If he threatened to physically abuse those boys, he may have actually – Oh, here comes a policeman!’

  A single stout, sweating, harried constable hove into view. He was harried not by Harriman or his ghost but by the three girls, who clustered about him, impeding his progress as they all talked at once. Lizzie appeared to have recovered from her unpleasant experience. Melanie walked alongside, looking weary. Daisy felt guilty for having sent her to deal with the police and hoped they hadn’t given her too hard a time.

  She also hoped the bobby was too befuddled by the girls’ chatter to have gathered that Lizzie was the one who had found the body. She wished she had warned them to leave it to her to decide what information the police really needed.

  Behind the group came Kesin, bearing the umbrella-sunshades and a large picnic hamper.

  ‘Excellent!’ said Sakari. ‘I am more than ready for lunch.’

  ‘You’ll be lucky. The order of the day’s going to be talk, not eat. Oh, but I can send him off after the gardener, and then he’ll be occupied in the maze for a bit. We’ll have to eat quickly while he’s gone.’

  ‘You will have to eat quickly, Daisy. I have nothing to contribute in the way of information and I intend to eat at leisure. Melanie, my dear, come and sit down. You are exhausted!’

&
nbsp; The constable stood before them, red face portentous beneath his helmet, legs planted apart, notebook at the ready. ‘Well, now,’ he said, ‘what’s a-going on of here?’

  ‘You’d better take a look for yourself, Constable,’ Daisy said firmly. She pointed. ‘You see that brick wall? If you go through the gate over there, the left-hand one, not the right, you’ll see a garden shed, and in or near it you’ll find the gardener. He can lead you to the body Mrs Germond reported.’

  Pencil poised, he asked, ‘And you’ll be … ?’

  ‘I’m Mrs Fletcher. I can assure you that there really is a dead man in the maze, and I can assure you equally that I can’t possibly find my way back to it.’

  He nodded and, surprisingly, grinned. ‘Used t’get lost in that maze reg’lar when I was a nipper. Thank you, madam. I shall pursue my enquiries as you suggest.’

  He trudged off towards the Walled Garden.

  ‘Quick,’ said Daisy the moment his back was turned, ‘lunch!’

  Kesin had already started unpacking the hamper. The girls rushed to give him a hand. But Melanie said, ‘How can you even think of food? When Kesin opened the boot and took out the picnic Sakari had ordered from the hotel, I nearly told him to put it back.’

  ‘You will feel better after something to eat, Melanie.’

  ‘I couldn’t swallow a mouthful.’

  ‘Then why don’t you tell us about your encounter with the police,’ Daisy suggested. ‘I’ve got to eat fast, because I’m sure I’m going to have to talk to the bobby as soon as he’s seen Harriman. Have a drink, though. You look hot and parched.’

  ‘Here’s some lemonade, Mrs Germond,’ Belinda offered, holding out a pewter tankard. Apparently the Rose and Crown didn’t trust picnickers with their glassware.

  ‘Thank you, dear.’ Melanie sipped, then gulped, and looked much better for it. ‘I must say, Daisy, I do think you might have told me it was Lizzie who found the body!’

  ‘She doesn’t seem any the worse for it, darling. Would you have gone to report it if I had?’