A Medal For Murder (28 page)

‘Come and look at our new setup,’ Lampton said, and walked him to the tobacconist’s shop. ‘It’ll be yours truly behind that counter in a few weeks’ time.’

There they parted, shaking hands, Lampton slipping a half crown into Milner’s pocket.

Lampton felt cheerful. Life had been kind. The next day, he set off for the shop, intending to try a new tobacco, perhaps the Perique.

The old tobacconist with his parchment face and yellow moustache took a pinch of snuff. ‘Some people call this a filthy habit. There’s worse habits in my book, like procrastination.’

‘Oh?’ asked Lampton, wondering what the fellow was getting at.

The tobacconist tapped the counter with his nicotine stained fingers and ridged brown nails. ‘When will the captain sign on the dotted line?’

Lampton frowned. The business should have been done and dusted by now. He lit his pipe. Out of long habit, he spoke loyally, ‘The captain won’t be tardy, it’ll be in hand.’

To sit on the other side of the tobacconist’s counter, on a high stool, would be very heaven. He would do all the work of course, but he didn’t mind that, was used to it. Let the captain take his strolls, drop into public houses, visit his lady friends to his heart’s content.

Lampton had stopped playing the rolling stone. He never wanted to leave England again. He’d had enough of countries where you boiled or froze.

The tobacconist snooked and gobbed into his spittoon. ‘I’m glad to hear you say that, Mr Lampton. The solicitor’s confidential clerk was in this dinnertime for his Cut Cavendish. He has that snide clerk’s way of letting on to something he won’t properly tell. Hintful like, that something’s gone wrong with the sale.’

Lampton’s answer came out with more confidence than he felt. ‘Oh, you know these clerks, jumped up fellows with no excitement in their lives. They always reckon to know something that puts a chap out of humour. Helps pass their dull days.’

Lampton gazed into the shop window. In his mind’s eye, he set up his new display. The longing to be settled came over him. Who knows, perhaps he would find himself a wife, some quiet creature who would put his dinner on the table every night, do his washing and polishing as he had washed, cooked and polished for the captain all these years.

As he walked back towards the rooms he shared with the captain, Lampton heard someone call his name. It was Milner. Lampton expected to be tapped for another
bob or two. But Milner said he had found a couple of days’ work. The meal and the half crown Lampton gave him had changed his luck.

That evening Lampton set out the table for himself and the captain: a pork pie apiece, pickled onion, bread and butter, glasses of ale. When they were in service, he and the captain had not eaten at the same table.

‘You must do it, man, if we’re to be in business together,’ the captain had insisted. ‘Changed times call for changed manners.’

After their meal, the captain left, to visit his lady friend, the widow. It was Lampton’s guess that the captain would move in with the widow, eventually.

Lampton cleared the dishes. He rinsed the plates over the tin basin with water poured from the jug. The tobacconist’s shop had excellent facilities – an indoor tap and a privy out the back that was shared with only three other shops. If the captain did set himself up with the widow, Lampton would have a place all to himself when the shop door closed at night.

There was only one comfortable chair in the Bloomsbury rooms. Lampton sat in it when Wolfendale was out. So it was a fluke that he found the letters – not one, but two. At first, he took them to be something to do with the business over the tobacconist’s, and that the captain had forgotten to mention them, pushed them down by the side of the cushion out of absent-mindedness. He never was good at attending to brown envelopes. But if they were to do with the purchase of the tobacconist’s, then Lampton had a right to know.

The contents of the first letter did not perturb Lampton. Trust the captain to play cards close to his
chest and not reveal where he got the wherewithal to buy the shop. It had been forwarded from army headquarters.

 

Beresford & Black

Solicitors

27 Albert Street

Harrogate

19 June 1903

Dear Captain Wolfendale

It is my sad duty to inform you of the death of Miss Hilda Wolfendale of 29 St Clement’s Road, Harrogate.

You are the sole beneficiary under your aunt’s last will and testament, excepting a small bequest and proviso for her lady companion.

While we could arrange for the execution of the will through a London solicitor, you may wish to visit Harrogate so that you can view the property willed to you, and give us your valued instructions.

Assuring you of our condolences and best attention at all times.

We remain,

Yours faithfully

S Beresford

Beresford & Black

The second letter, dated two days ago, was brief. Mr S Beresford thanked Captain Wolfendale for his letter. He looked forward to seeing him at 4 p.m. on the 17th instant. Mr Beresford was pleased to hear that the captain would be taking up residence in Harrogate – such a fine and healthy place. A clerk would be at the
station by 3.20 p.m. to meet the 11.20 a.m. train from King’s Cross.

At first, the sergeant could not keep still. He seemed to be in a dream where nothing was quite real. For twenty-five years he had been batman to Captain Wolfendale. When Lampton was a private, Wolfendale was a lieutenant. He had washed the captain’s underwear, tended his wounds, fed him, saved his life, watched him claim the VC. And he did not resent any of that. He thought he knew Wolfy. He did know him. Inside out. He knew his likes, his dislikes, the stories of his boyhood, his way with women; and his one weakness of always betraying the women who fell for his charms. That Cape Town schoolteacher. What was her name? Miss Marshall. That was a bad do.

The soft old chair cushion sagged under Lampton’s sparse weight.

One enormous question threatened to burst his brain. But no. The answer must be no. The captain would not betray him. The captain would not betray his own batman, the person who knew him best, who knew him longest.

A railway timetable had lain on the sideboard since they took the rooms. A strip of newspaper marked the King’s Cross to Harrogate page. There was a question mark next to the 9.50 and a tick against the 11.20.

When the captain came back, three hours later, Lampton was still sitting in the big old chair. He had pushed the letters back into their place at the side of the cushion.

‘Dozing are we?’ said the captain.

That was the kind of banter they had developed since leaving the army. The ‘we’ had lulled the sergeant into
a false sense of security. Now various little telltale signs came back to him. When he had spotted the captain consulting a railway timetable, the captain had looked up and said, ‘The widow Philomena has it in her mind to have a day by the sea.’

Lampton made a move to get up from the chair, but his heart and his hopes held him there. He said, as lightly as he could, ‘Did you and the widow arrange your little outing?’

‘We did not,’ said the captain. ‘She nags so, you know. Did I say that before?’ Without waiting for Lampton’s reply, the captain said, ‘It’s all washed up between us. She’d be a millstone around my neck.’

‘What now then?’ asked the sergeant.

‘I shall take that day out on my own, tomorrow, have a breath of bracing sea air. I’ll take meself off to Brighton in the morning on a ten something train. Stop the night there if the fancy takes me.’

‘Brighton?’ said Lampton in a flat, unenthusiastic voice, still hoping that he was wrong about the captain’s betrayal. ‘Bit of sea air might do us both good. Shall I come along with you for company?’

‘Why no, old chap. We live too much in each other’s pockets. Let me go there and stride by the sea, and think of how we shall get on when we have the tobacconist shop.’

‘Will you be signing the lease and such shortly?’ Lampton asked.

The captain waved his hand. ‘It’s all coming along nicely.’

‘If you’re stopping the night, I’ll pack a bag for you,’ said Lampton. ‘You’ll want your shaving kit.’ The captain had never packed a bag of his own.

‘No need. You can’t play the batman forever. All that’s behind us now. Let’s have a toast to me being fancy-free again. The widow Philomena, she’d got too bossy by half.’ The captain had already had a skinful. But he seemed in jovial mood and not to notice that the sergeant had little to say and no enthusiasm for raising a toast.

Wolfendale poured whisky and handed a glass to Lampton. ‘We’ve seen a lot together, and I’ll never forget it. I couldn’t have wanted a better batman.’

Lampton gulped down the whisky. This was where the captain would break the news about his inheritance.

‘And by God, we saw a new kind of war altogether with the last show.’

‘We did,’ Lampton agreed.

‘You shouldn’t have resigned just because I did,’ said the captain. ‘Do you have regrets about leaving?’

The sergeant shook his head.

‘Come, man, yes you have. You’re a natural for the army. You could sign on again you know. Any regiment would open its arms to you, with your record.’

So that’s it, thought Lampton. You are just going to leave without a word, after all these years. Why?

It is because, he answered himself bitterly, he is as tired of me as he is of that putrid widow. He looks at me and sees the ravages of war, dead men’s eyes, lost limbs, a small dark hole in a young man’s forehead.

And because he understood him so well, he could almost forgive. But Lampton thought of that tobacconist’s shop; its blue wispy fragrance, and the gentle touch of tobacco leaves, so soothing to fingers used to loading a gun. The sense of loss hit him with the force of a bayonet in the gut.

The captain reminisced through a full bottle of whisky. On the stroke of midnight, he staggered to his bed. At the doorway, he turned. ‘I’ve ordered a cab to take me to the station in the morning. For the Brighton train.’

For a long time, the sergeant sat like a man in a trance.

When the captain began to snore, the sergeant opened the door to his room and looked in. Wolfendale’s portmanteau was already packed. When had he done that? Earlier in the day, perhaps, when Lampton was reassuring the tobacconist that all would be well with the exchange of contracts. The sergeant carried the case into the other room and set it on the table. He opened the catches. Naturally, it was badly packed. Item by item, he emptied the case: good suit, best shoes, three shirts and six collars, underwear, socks. The batman neatly repacked the case.

How long he sat there, Lampton could not have said. The gas mantle popped and spluttered as the captain called out. He was being sick, he wanted the basin.

Dutifully, Lampton picked up the basin and carried it into his captain’s bedroom.

The man looked a mess – pale sweaty face, a hairnet keeping the black waves in place. He was just about to vomit. His eyes met the sergeant’s and his mouth opened, expecting the basin to be there for him. Suddenly, he was black in the face, his eyes filled with terror and pleading.

Lampton pushed him back, quite calmly, so the captain, used to such ministrations did not object. When the sergeant put the pillow over his head and held him very still, he barely struggled.

*

During that long night, Lampton thought carefully about what he had done. ‘Do it to them before they do it to you,’ had been his captain’s mantra. Was this worse than killing the smooth-skinned young Boer, against whom he bore no malice, who had done him no wrong, a young man fighting for his own land?

Lampton did something he had only ever done once before, and that in secret. He put on the captain’s uniform.

He was still wearing it, and had not slept, when the young woman arrived at the door early the next morning, carrying an infant.

‘Captain Wolfendale?’ she asked.

‘Yes,’ he said boldly, for that was the only course.

‘Mrs Granger sent me. You’ve to take care of the child.’

‘Mrs Granger? I don’t know a Mrs Granger.’ A pang of misgiving made him hold his breath. Perhaps he did not know everything about the captain after all.

‘Miss Marshall as was. She has made a good marriage with a clergyman. If he finds out her sin, all that will go to the bad.’

‘Look here, this won’t do.’

The Cape Town schoolteacher had come to England to have her baby. That was meant to be an end of it.

‘I’m not to take no for answer,’ the nursemaid said.

‘It’s the only answer.’ Lampton heard himself adopt the captain’s tone of voice. But somehow the voice did not convince. He would have to try harder.

‘I’m to say,’ said the nursemaid stubbornly, ‘that she doesn’t want to make a clean breast to her husband, but she will, rather than see the child be farmed out. She said to remind you that your name is on the birth certificate.’

He would have to get her out of here. ‘Look, you can’t stay. There’s been a tragedy.’