Death Sits Down to Dinner (10 page)

Clementine had already heard of Harry’s hoped-for involvement with the RNAS from Captain Wildman-Lushington at dinner last night. With this information tucked away, she had rather hoped that her husband would continue on to luncheon at his club after his interview with Detective Inspector Hillary, so she could find out from Harry just how involved he was with Mr. Churchill’s Royal Navy Air Service, in case she needed to square him. Now here was Harry blurting out his news, and inviting another family storm.
Perhaps it’s for the better
, she thought.
Now we can honestly air our opinions, since he has obviously decided to make flying his future and stop dillydallying around a subject that makes us anxious.

“Has it occurred to you that you are not yet of age?” Lord Montfort’s voice was severe, and he looked at his son from underneath frowning brows, not an auspicious sign.

“Well of course it had, but I didn’t think it was somehow relevant, it’s just a few months after all. I am sorry, sir; do you object to my joining?” Harry could be disconcertingly contrite with his father, and always at the right time, Clementine thought with admiration. But however penitent his outward manner, it didn’t appear to have its wished-for effect.

“Of course I object to your joining, my boy. It’s a damn silly and irresponsible thing to do and certainly not expected of you, or your position. We are not at war! I know Churchill is eager, but there are those in the government who will do everything in their power to prevent us being embroiled in a war with Germany, and our foreign secretary is one of them. If you want to lead a useful life until you inherit, there is a constituency being kept warm for you in the county. Politics is the only real job for people like us, that and the stewardship of our land.” His frown deepened and he put his sherry glass down on a side table with more force than was necessary. “And anyway those machines are death traps.”

Oh dear, not that tone,
Clementine thought; and she saw her son’s face take on exactly the same expression as his father’s, brows down, chin up. She rushed in to say, “I met Captain Wildman-Lushington at dinner the other evening, he’s Mr. Churchill’s flying instructor, and you know he was quite reassuring about the
new
aircraft. Did you get a chance to talk with him, Ralph? You didn’t? Oh, well he said the Farman biplane was quite stable, it’s the twenty-third edition of the first one, by the way. And if Mr. Churchill can fly a plane…” She left it for them to draw their own conclusions. Her husband shot a look of such reproach in her direction that she felt disloyal and hurriedly added, “Nonetheless, Harry, you have a duty to your position in the family, first and foremost.”

“And you can’t assume your duty with a broken neck. You are my only son. Your job is to inherit and take your place in the Lords, not join the military. There it is. Your duty as a Talbot comes first, Harry.”

“So am I to take it that you are forbidding me to join the air service?” Harry asked, rather taken aback that his summons from Mr. Churchill had not gone down quite as well as he’d hoped.

Silent, Lord Montfort lowered his head and considered, his lips pressed together. After a good interval he looked across at his son, his face still stern. “Why should I forbid anything? I haven’t been asked yet to give my consent.”

“I’m sorry, sir, that was rather shabby of me.” Harry met his father’s gaze.

“Well then?”

“Well then, Father, I would like to be involved with the Royal Naval Air Service, it would be off-the-record for a while, and if it were to become official I would be offered a commission and accorded the rank of captain.” Harry’s voice was no longer nervous, and his face shone with the zeal of the already converted. “I believe that we will be drawn into a fight with Germany before too long, and if so, air reconnaissance would be an important element to an expeditionary force in achieving a quick resolution. I can be of real value, you see.”

Clementine heard her son’s sincere need to be of use, of value. She understood that ache to have a real job, a useful purpose in life. When she was younger, she remembered, she had often felt quite frustrated that her role consisted of producing an heir, acquiring a fashionable wardrobe, and running households in town and in the country already run by a staff of well-trained servants. As the years had gone by she had found distractions: her orchid house and designing Iyntwood’s new gardens. She had truly enjoyed her young children without completely usurping Nanny’s regime in the nursery. But often she had found herself needing so much more. It was different for her husband. He had his estates to run, which consumed the greater part of his time. He took an interest in the magisterial duties of the county and, even though he was not active in politics, took his seat at the House of Lords whenever government became too radical. And he was actively engaged in all country life and its sport and had bred an excellent line of hunters from his stallion Bruno. But if Harry felt the need to be useful then he should run as member of parliament for Market Wingley until he inherited his father’s title, when he would move up into the Lords.
It isn’t a question of what we want to do; it is a question of what we have to do, our generation understand this, why doesn’t Harry’s?
She remembered her husband as a younger man steadfastly learning from his father the duties that came with owning land, and the massive responsibility that burdened it.
We are far more dutiful
;
we never questioned our lot in life but continued where our parents left off, most of us with less money.

But Harry’s apology had its effect. She knew her husband was willing to try to understand his son’s fascination with aircraft. His wish to join the RNAS did not come as a complete surprise, as both of them had been worn down by Harry’s persistent fascination over the years with any form of transportation other than the horse.

“Harry, you have had this obsession with machinery ever since you were a boy. First it was motorcars and now it’s aeroplanes.” In her husband’s mind, flying was the sort of thing only the foolhardy did, and would keep on doing until it was finally accepted that man’s natural element was firmly on the ground and not in the air. “I think there is nothing we can do about it, unfortunately, as it seems to be a part of who you are. What does Vetiver have in mind?”
He sounds almost resigned,
Clementine thought.

“It’s an idea of Mr. Churchill’s actually—he wants me to help set up a training program for flyers and to bring in aircraft that would be useful when we go to war. I’m working with Tom Sopwith right now on a machine—” He stopped himself. “Actually, shouldn’t really talk about it. You understand how things are.” He looked embarrassed.

There couldn’t have been a more unfortunate answer,
Clementine thought,
that this was Churchill’s idea.

“I would like to think it over, Harry,” was Lord Montfort’s only response, and both his son and his wife understood the wisdom of allowing this to close the subject.

“Luncheon
is
ready, m’lady.” A slight whiff of reproof from White; Ginger’s delicious food must not be kept waiting.

*   *   *

But as it turned out, the day’s events were on Harry’s side. When Clementine went upstairs to dress for dinner at the Waterfords’, Harry received a telephone call from the Admiralty. Later, when she joined her husband in the hall to wait with him for Harry to finish, so that they might all leave together, their son came out of the library. It was clear that his conversation with Captain Vetiver had not been a pleasant one, for Harry looked quite shaken.

“Great Scott,” Lord Montfort exclaimed when Harry drew him to one side and related his conversation with Captain Vetiver. “The boy was with us only two nights ago at dinner. What can have happened?”

Harry reluctantly turned to include his mother with news that did not advance his cause for the RNAS. “Captain Wildman-Lushington was flying this afternoon, and his plane went out of control as he was coming in to land. It hit the ground, both pilots were thrown clear.”

“Oh, thank God he was thrown clear … but is he badly injured?” Clementine could hardly believe what she was hearing.

“Unfortunately, Wildman-Lushington was killed.”

It took some moments before Clementine could properly take in what her son had said. She heard the words, but fear that had started as a far-off flutter now gathered force and threatened to submerge her understanding. She was aware that her voice was barely audible even in the stillness of the hall. It was a whisper, a croak.

“Surely not,” she said. “Surely he survived?” Neither of the men answered her, and her heart rate picked up.
There must be some mistake; why, only two days ago he was standing in Hermione’s drawing room, taking immense pains to reassure me that flying did not present the dangers it did a year ago.
Marvelous innovations all the time,
he had said,
safety a priority
. She sought reassurance that she had misunderstood, but there was none. Captain Wildman-Lushington had been killed outright.

The panicky moment began to ebb, and in its place a dull sadness took hold and lay in her chest, heavy and unpleasant. She could still see the bright, eager young face and the slight swagger of pride as the young man had told her that he had taken Churchill “up” and that the First Lord of the Admiralty had taken over the controls and flown the plane himself under his instruction. Bits of their conversation floated back to her: his enthusiasm as he explained the difference between one sort of aeroplane and another; the pride he had taken in being part of a new navy elite; and the naïve enthusiasm of a young man with his entire life before him. She felt almost angry as she remembered him.

“Terrible news, Harry.” Lord Montfort was as shocked as she was, and she waited for him to express his dismay that young men were foolish enough to put themselves in such danger. Lord Montfort walked over to his son and placed a consoling arm on his shoulder.

“Why was the Admiralty telephoning you?” he asked.

“I was invited to go out to Eastchurch tomorrow with Captain Vetiver. That was him on the blower. Captain Wildman-Lushington was one of the pilots I was going to talk with about the training program.”

“Did he say why the captain’s machine crashed?”

“No, he did not, but I’m afraid a lot of it is due to poor training. Pilots don’t often have enough mechanical knowledge of the machines they fly. Each flying officer must be taught how to cope with his plane’s idiosyncrasies, or at least learn to discover what they are so they can fly them effectively. The engineering experience I picked up at Sopwith can help with that. And I have to convince the navy that the Farman has had its day.”

And then Clementine’s husband said something rather surprising, the last thing in fact that she ever thought she would hear him say, and when she heard it she felt bleak despair.

“Well then, Harry, I think you should accept their commission if they offer you one. It seems your path is set for you, my boy.” He clapped his hand on his son’s shoulder almost in congratulation, and then wound his silk scarf around his neck. He took his hat from the butler, then turned to his wife and gave her his arm.

“We will not be back late tonight, White. Lord Haversham will be leaving in the morning; he has to go to Eastchurch.”

Now that her husband had had time to adjust to the idea, and understood that his son had a skill that was needed, Clementine saw that it merely became in his mind the transference of duty.

Her mood was introspective as they left the house and climbed into their motorcar. She thought again of Captain Wildman-Lushington: what an appalling waste, and for what? What on earth was it about men that drove them continually to push against nature? These thoughts sent her further inward as she tried to understand the world she lived in. During her childhood in India, the fastest method of travel was on horseback. She was fifteen when she had seen her first steam engine. It wasn’t until she was nearly eighteen and had come back to England that she had seen a motorcar—a loud, faulty thing that made more noise than progress. Now she could make the journey from London to Iyntwood in under an hour by motorcar, or in thirty minutes on an express train. Communication had become so sophisticated as the telephone had taken over from the telegraph; she often wondered if people would forget how to write a decent letter.

And now, because of the restless nature of mankind, in the past several years young men had taken to the air, or tried to take to the air, in flight. Her sense of alarm deepened the more she contemplated the wasteful death of a bright young man who, barely two years older than her son, had been killed in the pursuit of something that could be of no real use to anyone at all.

*   *   *

Later that night, as she tossed around in her bed, Clementine asked herself the same question she had been asking herself all evening: was Wildman-Lushington’s plane crash an accident? Could an aeroplane be made to fall out of the sky on purpose? And if it could, was the young man’s death in any way linked to the murder of Sir Reginald? She lay awake for a long time in the dark, running over the catastrophic evening at Hermione Kingsley’s house. In the end, she got up out of bed and, sitting at her desk, took out her diary and in the back divided the double spread of pages into columns. Then she wrote down as best as she could remember exactly who had been where between the hours of eleven o’clock and when they had found the dead body of Sir Reginald. She paid particular attention to when the women had left the dining room, and in what order and at what time the men had arrived to join them in the salon. When she had done this she realized she had several large gaps in her timetable. Well, it was a start and she would continue to work on it, and hopefully over the next few days would build a complete picture of where everyone was when Sir Reginald had been murdered.

The clock chimed the half hour and looking up she saw that it was well past two o’clock in the morning. She had to be up in time to talk to Harry before he left for Eastchurch.