After Clare (11 page)

Some time later that same morning, after visiting a small house on the edge of Netherley village, making the duty call which every police officer dreads, Inspector Novak was dropped off at Steadings, while the motor went on to Leysmorton. Within a few moments he was speaking to Hugh Markham, informing him there had been a breakthrough in the case of the murdered soldier found on their neighbouring property.

‘Glad to hear it. Taken enough time, hasn't it?'

‘That's the army for you, sir.' Novak didn't offer any further information, but added that he thought Hugh might like to come over to Leysmorton with him and hear what he had to say – ‘and maybe your granddaughter, too, if you can both spare the time.'

‘Rosie?'

‘She found the body, Mr Markham.'

‘Hmm, so she did. I'll get them to find her. I think she's in the stables.'

He went into the house, and returned after a minute or two, soon followed by Rosie, dressed in a blue Aertex shirt and breeches, her skin glowing and her red-gold hair curled damply on her forehead. Although she caught her breath when she saw the inspector and heard the purpose of his call, she made no objection to accompanying them, and the three of them walked across to Leysmorton, not speaking much, avoiding the subject of his visit. He saw Rosie cast several nervous glances at him, but not being the sort of policeman who wasted time on small talk, he let the silence continue until they arrived at the big house. The police motor was now parked on the gravel outside the front door, and waiting beside it stood his sergeant, Willard, who'd driven them down. No Sergeant Chinnery today. Large, middle-aged and bowler-hatted, Willard nodded and accompanied them to the terrace at the back of the house that overlooked the gardens, where a few canvas chairs and a table stood.

Dirk Stronglove was lounging in one of the chairs, not doing anything obvious, but a notebook and pencil nearby suggested he might be deep in thought over his latest book. He proposed they went indoors, where there were more comfortable seats, but Novak politely declined, recalling how the interior of Leysmorton House had discomfited him previously. He liked it better out here on the terrace. Though he was indifferent to gardens as a rule, he could see why this was said to be exceptional – and even he could appreciate the scent of flowers rising to the terrace. Gardens like this were not much in evidence in Stoke Newington, though plenty of small back plots were lovingly tended. Not theirs. Hannah kept their small terrace house neat as a pin, but the garden at the back was a mess. He was always promising her, and himself, that he would find time to sort it out, but he never did.

They waited in silence while Marta Heeren and Lady Fitzallan were sent for. Marta arrived last, pulling on the same hideous green cardigan she had worn previously, breathlessly apologetic: she had been in the far reaches of the garden, gathering berries from the elder bushes that were allowed to grow there.

When they were all assembled, Willard licked his pencil, adjusted the elastic band around his notebook and prepared to take notes. For such a large man, he was adept at making himself unobtrusive. He sat a little to one side, four-square on a stone bench set just outside the window, his stout legs planted firmly on the flagstones, the pencil between his thick fingers poised to fly across the pages. He could do a hundred and eighty words a minute and never had difficulty in transcribing his notes. He was a bachelor, and a dahlia-fancier in what spare time he had, and when they were at their best, there was always a fresh, eye-dazzling bunch of plate-size blooms for Novak to take home to Hannah. Presents for Novak's children at birthdays and Christmas as well.

Novak got straight down to business and told them that enquiries had revealed that the dead man was, or had been, a private soldier in the Bedfordshire Regiment, that his name was Peter Sholto, and that his father had been informed.

The stunned silence from everyone but Lady Fitzallan made it clear she was the only one to whom the name meant nothing. ‘Peter Sholto?' she enquired. ‘Who was he?'

‘A young chap from the village, who worked for me for a time,' Stronglove answered after a moment. His face had blanched, and he fished about on the table for his spectacles. Presumably those thick lenses magnified or brought the people and objects around him into better focus, but when he chose to put them on, they also obscured his expression.

‘But Peter Sholto's dead!' Rosie protested. ‘I mean, killed in the war, just before it ended.'

‘Not so, I'm afraid. It appears he came right through the fighting.'

‘That needs a bit of explaining,' Hugh said.

‘He was in fact waiting for his discharge when he disappeared, just a couple of days before he was due to be given his demobilization papers. It was still desertion, technically speaking, though the war had been over for five months. Some men still hadn't got their release. Bureaucracy, disorganized chaos, whatever you might choose to call it. Everybody was fed up – I can vouch for that, I was one of them, we were all desperate to get back to Civvy Street – and refusal to stick to the rules wasn't as uncommon as you might think.'

He spoke as if he knew what he was talking about, and Hugh wondered what sort of soldier he had been. Something about him suggested a resistance to obeying orders, an independence that wouldn't go down well with authority; slightly careless of his appearance, without the spit and polish of an ex-soldier, or even a policeman, come to that. Or perhaps it was simply that he was wearing plain clothes, the lack of a uniform, which gave that impression.

‘Didn't the army go after him?' he asked.

‘The usual enquiries were made but in the end nothing came of it, seems he slipped through the net.'

‘But why did his father tell everyone he had been killed?' Rosie was still disbelieving.

‘When the military police came looking for his son, and Mr Sholto learnt what had happened, he says he'd rather people thought his son dead than a deserter, so he put it about that he'd been wounded and died in the last days of the war.'

A silence fell.

In these tight communities – and Netherley was a very small village – people would have every sympathy and do all they could for a man whose son had died fighting for his country, that much Novak knew. But if that son was branded a deserter, whatever the circumstances – no. Not when a dozen or more other young fellows from the village had given their lives during those terrible years and would never return. If Peter had deserted, his father had counted on him having more sense than to return to the village. Now the man, poor devil, must be feeling as though he'd made a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Novak was glad to see that one person here at least understood the father's attitude. ‘Sholto will be damned cut up,' Hugh Markham murmured. ‘He thought a great deal of the boy. Hard to imagine how this came about . . . must go and see him.'

‘He's saying he doesn't want to see anyone,' Novak warned.

‘Edmund Sholto's a very reserved man. He doesn't have many close friends in the village, but I potter down there once or twice a week. We play chess and talk. I think he'll see me,' Hugh said quietly, although it seemed to Novak he did not relish the prospect of the visit. He did in fact look quite upset.

‘You realize what this means?' Novak went on, addressing them as a group. ‘It moves forward the date he was killed – to some time
after
his desertion. After the hospital ceased operating.'

‘But it must have been before Marta and I returned to live here,' Stronglove said quickly.

‘Possibly, but not necessarily. The spot where he was found is a long way from the house, Mr Stronglove, and not often visited, as we've established. He could have been killed there – and buried – at any time after he left his unit in
March 1919, without anyone being the wiser.' He paused. ‘He wasn't killed too recently, though, our experts judge.'

‘The body being a skeleton, of course.'

Novak ignored the sarcasm. Beneath it, he sensed tension in the man; indeed, he felt it running between all these people, just as he had when he'd first talked to them. He hadn't yet got the measure of any of them, though he found the youngest, Rosie Markham, easy enough to read. Instinct told him he ought to heed his feelings, the suspicion that something was being held back, but no one was going to give anything away. His glance eventually came to rest on Marta Heeren, blocky and plain, staring mutely across the garden, fingering the glass beads round her neck as if disassociating herself with what was going on. Her fingers were stained purple-red with juice from the elderberries she'd been picking. As if suddenly aware of his attention on her, she scraped back her chair and without a word lumbered through the French windows and into the house, her hand to her mouth. A door banged and silence fell.

‘She was fond of Peter,' Dirk said after a moment.

Lady Fitzallan made as if to follow, but hesitated and sat back down as he shook his head.

Now why should the news that the skeleton was that of young Sholto have upset Marta Heeren, of all these people here, so much?

His former army commander had described Peter Sholto as having a fair but not outstanding record when he had fought with the regiment on the Western Front, a young man of intelligence, educated, but he'd remained a private – not officer material. No calibre. No leadership qualities, he'd said stiffly. (Not really a gent, Novak had supplied to himself.) The CO added that as far as he knew, Sholto had not been unpopular, though he couldn't say if he had made a friend of anyone in particular in the unit.

It was Lady Fitzallan who broke the silence, remarking quietly, ‘The house was empty. I suppose it's possible he came here to hide, after his desertion?'

He gave her a quick nod. ‘It's possible. And if he did, that the person who killed him knew that's what he intended, and followed or met him here.'

‘Look here,' Stronglove began. ‘If Peter came back to Netherley at all, surely he would have gone home, to his father, not come here. How sure are you it
was
Peter?'

‘I think we can be reasonably confident about his identity, sir. And whether he intended to go and see his father or not, he came to Leysmorton first. Mr Sholto hasn't seen his son for over four years, since his last leave.'

‘One of his army pals who followed him then, wanting to settle old scores maybe?'

‘Maybe. But it's just as likely to be an old enemy chancing on him when he got back to Netherley and following him for the same reason, a quarrel that suddenly erupted – or half a dozen other off-the-cuff reasons, if it comes to that. The question is,
why
did he leave his unit? Was he deserting, or did he intend to return? It's not unknown for men to disappear in response to some family emergency or something of that sort. But speculation's pointless until we have more to go on.'

The identification was good, they no longer had a nameless victim on their hands, but Novak's instinct was telling him this might be as far as they were going to get. Everything was against them. Very likely it would remain one of those unsolved wartime mysteries, of which there were more than was generally known. Three years had elapsed since the young soldier's disappearance, at a time when the nation was still getting back on its feet, pulling itself together after the disruption of four years of bloody warfare; when many people were still displaced from their pre-war lives, homes, habits and routines, and the disappearance of one man after the annihilation of millions was of relatively little importance.

He frowned. No. You had to believe it was important, that it mattered, even amongst the criminal fraternity in which Novak normally worked, where life was cheap. Any man's death mattered. And this one mattered very much to that man in the village whom Novak had just met and had to inform that his son had been murdered – and evidently to Miss Heeren as well. He could not even begin to imagine receiving such news about young Oliver or little Evie, his own two; nor could he imagine ever recovering from such a blow to the heart.

He was beginning to realize that this had ceased to be just another job, to be wrapped up as quickly as possible. Certainly, he was going to have to pace himself, adjust to a different way of working. But he
would
find the killer, he resolved, not just to chalk up one more case solved, but to bring to justice the person who had deprived this young fellow of the right to the life before him, left him in such an ignominious grave and his father's heart breaking with grief.

‘We need to know more about the victim. His death may well be concerned with something that happened during his time in the army, though his having been killed here indicates possible connections with his life before that, so if any of you can think of any reason why this might have happened – his habits, anyone who disliked him, anything at all – I'd be grateful if you'd let me know.' Flipping open the cover of his pocket watch, he gave it a quick glance. ‘I'm going to have to leave you, but I shall need at some point to speak to those of you who were close to him.'

‘I wasn't particularly close to him,' Dirk said shortly. ‘He only worked for me.'

Hugh said slowly, ‘For myself, I scarcely knew the boy – generations apart, you know – but I can tell you now that his father was concerned about Peter. He was restless and not showing any signs of settling down to anything. Edmund was naturally upset when the boy volunteered for the army, but at the same time, he thought it might be the making of him. Maybe he got involved with the wrong sort while he was away?'

‘As someone more his age, you would presumably have known him better, Miss Markham?'

‘Rosie was just a child.'

‘Yes,' Rosie said, looking up from contemplation of her polished riding boots. ‘I was only eleven when the war started, and he was grown up.'