In Pale Battalions (21 page)

“Franklin: thank God you’ve shown up.” His voice was as tremulous as his grasp.

“You’re the first person to be glad to see me back.”

“What?” I saw that he was beyond any subtlety.

“I think the police had me down as their prime suspect.”

He grasped my arm. “I don’t . . . I don’t understand what’s happened, Franklin. One of us . . . somebody . . . has killed him.”

“So it would seem.”

“But . . . it’s awful. I’m sure it must be . . . connected . . . that it must all be tied in . . . but how could . . . ?”

“Connected with what?”

He looked at me then with a desperate flare of hope. “Could we . . . go somewhere . . . and talk? I need . . . I need to talk.”

“Sorry. I’m on my way to see Lord Powerstock. But . . . maybe later.”

The hope in his face crumpled and I felt sorry I could spare him no more time. “Oh . . . I see. Right-o, Franklin. Maybe . . . I’ll see you later.” He stumbled off up the stairs. I wasn’t surprised the murder had tested his already strained nerves.

Lord Powerstock was waiting for me in his study, the grey light from the window behind him blurring the set and sombre lines of his expressionless face: the head proudly held but the brow sorely furrowed, as if only by a conscious suppression of the merest flicker of genuine feeling could he avert a revelation of the wreck his spirit had been reduced to.

His hand moved vaguely in some gesture of lordly greeting.

“It’s good of you to have come, Franklin.”

“Not at all. I was appalled to hear what had happened.”

“Take a seat . . . and a drink, if you will. It’s early, I know, but in the circumstances . . .”

I poured myself a large whisky. “I hope the police haven’t been too intrusive. I’m sorry I wasn’t here to give a hand.”

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“No matter, no matter.” He spoke slowly, as if dredging the words with difficulty from the silt of his pervading sorrow: a sorrow in which Mompesson’s death was just one contributory grain. “The police have . . . done their duty. It’s hardly their fault.” I sat down opposite him. “Have they advanced any theories?”

He began to finger his tie-pin. “Nothing was stolen. There were no signs of a forced entry. They conclude . . . Mompesson knew his murderer. I must conclude the same.”

“That’s disturbing.”

“A member of the household . . . Shapland as good as said. We’d all retired for the night, so as he sees it, it might have been any one of us.”

“I think he suspected me at one point.”

“If I did so myself . . . I would not have asked to see you. But you are my son’s friend, Franklin. You . . . are the only one I can turn to.”

I was taken aback. “Surely . . .”

He held up his hand. “Do not trouble yourself to protest. It is so.

They tell me Major Thorley is missing. If he should turn out to have killed Mompesson . . . all well and good. If not, what then?” He lowered his hand slowly, with an air of resignation.

“I don’t know. Shapland can’t be sure the murderer wasn’t a stranger to us.”

“But we can be . . . can we not? You know how matters stood between Mompesson and my wife. Come, do not pretend otherwise—you are a perceptive man. And lately . . . I have begun to worry about Leonora. I think that you have done so also.” There was a pain in the very tone of his telling: the pain of having known, all along, what he could have done to prevent his family’s tragedy unfolding as it had. I had thought that he was merely, albeit culpably, unaware, but now I knew it to be worse than that. This exile in his study was self-imposed, to keep the truth at bay. The world had taken his first wife and their only son and left him the tattered remnant of his good name. Before Olivia’s threat to deprive him even of that, he had retreated into the shadowy sanctuary of his private thoughts. But, at dire need, a gentleman knows his duty and follows its prompting. That he was now trying to do.

“Lord Powerstock, did you know Mompesson had it in his mind to propose marriage to Leonora?”

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“Yes, though it was not he who told me, but Charter. At first, I could not believe it.”

“But later . . .”

“I came to see how it might be so.”

I moved towards the conclusion I felt he was willing me to draw.

“In the circumstances, killing Mompesson must have seemed . . . the right thing to do.”

He shook his head dolefully. “Indeed it must. But not to me. I didn’t kill him, though now he’s dead I wish I’d had the courage—the resolution—to have done it . . . or done whatever was necessary to rid us of him. It was, after all, my responsibility. But no. I didn’t.

Nor did you. We carry decency too far, Franklin, you and I. We make it an excuse for not intervening in all the wrongs being done around us . . . and in our name. I fear . . . I so very much fear . . . that we left another to do what we should have done for John’s sake. I very much fear . . . for Leonora.” “Leonora?”

“She was the object of Mompesson’s ambition. She was left . . .

to find a way of thwarting it.”

“Could she not simply have refused him?”

He grew—if it was possible—grimmer and more hesitant still. “My wife . . . has provided me with . . . certain evidence . . . that Leonora is in no position to refuse a proposal of marriage.” He looked down. “I cannot . . . understand. But I am bound to forgive.” So. He knew. Olivia had guessed—or discovered—that Leonora was pregnant and lost no time in wounding her husband with the knowledge. And now, in his despair, Mompesson’s murder assumed a sinister colour. Torn between accepting a loathsome marriage and facing public disgrace, Leonora might—if driven beyond endurance—have ended her conflict of conscience with one violent act.

“I believe . . . she will talk to you, Franklin. See her. Learn what you can. Tell me what you learn—however unpalatable you think I may find it. I need to know. Above all, I need to be able to do my duty by my family. You understand?” I felt I did. “Yes, sir.” I rose to go. “I’ll do my best.”

He said nothing, but caught my eye as I turned at the door before going out. His one solemn nod was a consent—for me to do on his behalf whatever needed to be done.

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In the hall, all was sudden bustle. The sergeant was making for the door while one of the constables followed him, bearing a bundle of Mompesson’s possessions and a jumble of notes and forms.

Shapland was watching them from halfway up the stairs. He grimaced at me with what I think was meant to be a smile.

“Good news, Mr. Franklin,” he boomed. “Major Thorley has been detained at Alton. We’re going up there to question him. So you’ll be left in peace—or whatever it is that prevails here.

Constable Bannister will look in later, but you may not see me again until tomorrow. I have some inquiries to make.” By now, he had reached the foot of the stairs.

“I hope they prove fruitful, Inspector.”

“We shall see.” He turned towards the door. “Don’t worry. We shall meet again.”

So Shapland was gone—but not for long. And, in the poised uncertainty of his imminent return, life at Meongate stood still as we waited, all held suspect in our different ways, for news—of Thorley, or the post-mortem, or some revelation that might exonerate us.

None came that day, nor seemed likely to. So, as if to evade the guilt that hung implicitly over us, we kept ourselves to ourselves, sealed in our rooms, or pacing the lawns, or sitting distractedly at windows, conspiring, by our mutual silence, to pretend that nothing had happened.

But something had happened and, though I for one did not mourn Mompesson, the shock of his death and what it might mean could not be kept at bay. I lay on my bed as the afternoon slipped anxiously away, rehearsing in my mind all the possibilities that might have led us to the chalked outline of the night’s events. I clung, if only for comfort, to the plausible notion that many beyond Meongate might have had cause to hate Mompesson and one might, perhaps, have come to the house under cover of darkness and murdered him. Blackmail—in any form—had not seemed beyond him and, given his arrogance, he might well have practised it on somebody who was not about to give way.

Bannister returned from the village in mid-afternoon with no news from Alton and stood guard at the front door, though whether

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to keep watch on the residents or turn away visitors was not clear.

Certainly, there was no word from Mompesson’s friends or family, if he had either, though a shabbily dressed man did drive up—and was sent packing—who might have been a reporter. Otherwise, all was eerily uneventful, as if Shapland were deliberately testing our nerves, waiting for something—or someone—to break.

From his point of view, I knew, none of us was to be trusted.

Thorley, a drunkard in debt fleeing the scene of the crime, was, if anything, too obvious a candidate, though what he was blurting out even then was anybody’s guess. Cheriton, it seemed clear, would run a mile at the sound of a shot, far less fire one himself. Among the resident officers, therefore, the three most accustomed to using a gun, I might seem the likeliest to have turned one on Mompesson.

The fact that I could remember nothing after leaving the White Horse was bound to count against me and Shapland was not to know—as I did myself—that such a decisive act was beyond me.

What I could not deduce was how much Shapland knew—be-yond his shrewd surmises—of Mompesson’s relationship with the Powerstocks. His role as Olivia’s lover was not in doubt, but why—after all this time—should Lord Powerstock have intervened? If he had not, then was this the fruit of some harboured jealousy on Olivia’s part? She had failed in her advances to me. She might have followed me to the observatory and seen what was to be seen, might—in a rage—have murdered Mompesson if she could not have sole possession of him. But I had seen the unmistakable marks of her casual sensuality: pleasure, not possession, was her object.

Which brought me back—however I tried to avoid it—to Lord Powerstock’s fear that Leonora had been driven to murder. She had denied it, but what I had seen from the observatory was either shameless and perverted, neither of which she was, or sadistic and suborned. I knew Mompesson to be the former; could Leonora have been the latter? If so, what pressure had he exerted upon her? Why was she bound to yield to his demands? The truth on that score might explain what so far had eluded me: why anyone would have had to resort to murder to be rid of Mompesson.

I had to speak to Leonora, had to make one more effort to persuade her that silence and denial were not enough. I left my room and 144

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went down to the conservatory at the time she customarily took tea there: but not that day. Only the cat was in his usual place.

As I retraced my steps, I met, in the hall, Sally, the maid, bearing a laden tea-tray towards the stairs. I asked her who it was for.

“Miss Leonora, sir. I’m ’oping she’ll eat something.”

“Here,” I said, winking, “let me take it up.” She hesitated.

“It’s all right. I’ll persuade her to eat some of the shortbreads—I promise.”

“I’m not sure as I should.”

“This business has been a strain for you, I imagine—being first on the scene.”

She blushed. Though too simple to convince Shapland or me that she and Lady Powerstock had discovered the body together, she was not so simple as to be unaware of that. “As you say, sir.”

“So why not make yourself some tea while I take this?”

“Well . . . I could do with a bit of a sit down.”

I smiled. “Off you go then.”

She was surprised to see me rather than Sally—and yet not surprised. She was sitting at a small table in the bay window, writing in her diary, with a vase of dahlias before her and a pink-curtained view of the park beyond.

“Hello, Tom,” she said simply, flipping the diary shut as she turned towards me.

“I brought your tea.”

“So I see. Won’t you join me?”

“I was hoping you’d say that.” I set the tray down on a cabinet by the door. In front of me, on the wall, there was a gilt-framed photograph of a wedding party: I recognized Hallows and Leonora in the centre. “Though I expect you realize this isn’t strictly a social call.” “Only if it is are you welcome to stay.” Her face and her voice were determined, but not unkind. I looked around the room and saw there all the placidly pleasing touches that made it her particular haven: the simple but restful furnishings with a half-read novel left here and an intricate piece of embroidery there, a Turneresque landscape on one wall and an upright piano, with music in its stand,

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against another. There was no visible sign—beyond the wedding portrait—that Hallows had spent time there, but I could imagine him relaxing in one of the floral-patterned armchairs and watching, with quiet joy, his lovely wife jotting in her diary. At that moment, I too wished mine were just a social call.

“You know it can’t be quite that,” I said, as I poured some tea and carried it over to her.

“Thank you.”

“Lord Powerstock’s very worried about you. So am I. He knows, you see . . . about your condition.”

Suddenly, her tone was icy. “You had no right to tell him. He would have heard it from me—when I judged it best.”

“As God’s my witness, Leonora, I didn’t tell him. I think Olivia must have guessed.”

She looked away. “Of course.” Then back at me. “I’m sorry.

These days, I suspect . . . everybody.”

“So, I think, does Inspector Shapland. And that is why we’re so worried about you.”

She smiled. “You needn’t worry for that reason. Whoever killed Ralph has my gratitude. But it wasn’t me.”

I tried a guess. “The father of the child you’re carrying and the murderer of Mompesson: could they be the same person?”