The Rest is Silence (Billy Boyle World War II Mystery) (36 page)

“So what does this mean, exactly?” David asked, looking uncomfortable with such revelations.

“First, let me ask when Peter Wiley died,” Farnsworth said, turning to me.

“We are trying to determine exactly when,” I said. “It was during a training accident, and his death likely occurred in the early hours of the morning on April twenty-eighth.”

“After the death of Sir Rupert,” Farnsworth said.

“Yes,” I said. “The baron and I saw Peter after Sir Rupert died, in the hallway. And then briefly after we came back from the pub, later that night. That was the last time I saw him. Apparently he left early the following day.”

“Are there others who can attest to that?” Farnsworth asked, looking at the group. David, Kaz, Meredith, and Helen all concurred.

“I saw him later that evening,” Edgar said. “After Captain Boyle and the baron went off to the pub. He was in the library, looking for something to read. He was apologetic about being a houseguest under the circumstances. Perhaps that is why he left so suddenly.”

“All that matters for our purposes is that Sir Rupert predeceased Peter Wiley,” Farnsworth said. “Whether by minutes, hours, or days, does not matter. Lady Pemberton, can you attest to what has been said here? You are the only other family member who could do so.”

“Yes,” Great Aunt Sylvia said in a restrained voice. “The affair did occur, and I had suspected that Rupert continued it in some fashion while he was in London. I recall that Miss Greenshaw asked for time off to visit her mother in Taunton. That may have been the case, or she may have gone on to London.”

“And the arrangement for Julia and Mr. Wiley to marry and emigrate to America?” Farnsworth asked, his pen poised over his papers.

“I do not recall all the details,” Great Aunt Sylvia said, her chin held high. “But I do know there was a payment made.”

“Presumably to give the child a name and a decent start in America,” Farnsworth said.

“What other reason could there be?” Great Aunt Sylvia said.

“The arrangement was a surprise to Sir Rupert?” Farnsworth said.

“It was,” Great Aunt Sylvia said. “But he finally came to see the wisdom of it.”

“I take it the child was not born here,” Farnsworth said. “Did Julia Greenshaw and Ted Wiley marry before they left?”

“The marriage was recorded in the village church,” Great Aunt Sylvia said. “I was not privy to Julia’s giving birth. They left immediately after the marriage ceremony.”

“Rather abrupt,” Farnsworth said.

“That was the point, wasn’t it?” Great Aunt Sylvia said, the ghost of a smile on her lips.

“Very well then,” Farnsworth said, jotting a final note. “In the light of what has emerged this morning, I conclude that Peter Wiley was indeed the illegitimate son of Sir Rupert Sutcliffe. Therefore, he inherited the bulk of the estate upon Sir Rupert’s death.”

“But Peter is dead,” Helen said, glancing at the others with a confused look. “What happens now?”

“What happens, Mrs. Martindale, is that most likely you and your sister inherit from Peter Wiley,” Farnsworth said. Helen looked startled and Meredith gasped. Hard to blame her, with all that dough falling into her lap when seconds ago she’d had nothing. “As half-siblings, you each stand to inherit an equal share from his estate.”

“Most likely, you said?” David asked, his hand holding Helen’s.

“We must determine for certain that Peter Wiley was not married and had no children or other siblings,” Farnsworth said. “From what Sir Rupert told me, that seems to be the case, but we must confirm the facts. We must know whether he left a will himself, although in my experience young men do not consider such things, especially since
his mother was still alive when he left America. It will be a simple matter for an attorney in New York City to investigate. Barring any unforeseen developments, the ownership of the property should be established within a matter of weeks. In the meantime, I can provide access to the accounts for any necessary expenditures. I imagine the upkeep of Ashcroft House to be no small matter.”

“Yes,” Helen whispered, a trace of surprise and shock in her voice. She looked to Meredith, who covered her mouth with the handkerchief, maybe to keep from gasping out loud again, or maybe to keep the whoops of joy contained until the elderly solicitor left. Farnsworth gathered up his papers and said his goodbyes, as somber as an undertaker. I had the feeling he’d found all this talk of love affairs and American bastards upsetting. Not your usual last testament.

Great Aunt Sylvia walked him out, and I heard Farnsworth tell her she could rely on his discretion. No one need know the convoluted route the inheritance took to end up with Helen and Meredith. Hushed tones and dirty secrets, all part of the service.

With some difficulty, I steered David away from the group after giving my congratulations.

“Last night at the pub, you mentioned seeing tire tracks,” I said. “Motorcycle tracks, right?”

“Yes,” David said. “What of it?”

“Could you show me where? It won’t take a second.” He agreed, shaking his head in puzzlement. He led me out the rear door and along a lane leading to a large barn with a stone foundation and several oversize doors. A greenhouse jutted out at a right angle, and there was a fenced-in garden nearby.

“Here,” he said, pointing to a depression between the lane and an open door to the barn. “You can still make them out, but not as clearly as I saw them just after that heavy rain.” He was right. The soil was crumbling, but the tread marks were clear. Inside, he showed me faint oil stains were the motorbike had been parked. “What’s this all about, then?”

“You didn’t see anything else? Anything odd or out of place?” I asked, avoiding the question.

“No. As I said, I was simply puttering about, looking at what was left in the barn. It was too much of a jumble to bother with, so I gave up.” He was right. This section of the barn was filled with junk: broken pieces of furniture, rusted machinery—there was barely enough space for us to stand in.

“Now I must get back, Billy,” David said. “This has all been quite a surprise.” He didn’t know the half of it.

I found Kaz and brought him to the barn to show him what was left of the tire tracks.

“It rained
after
Peter left here, quite hard,” Kaz said. “Perhaps he returned?”

“Or never left,” I said.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

W
E DROVE TO
Greenway House, and I filled in Colonel Harding on Meredith and Helen’s windfall and the discovery of the motorbike tracks.

“It could have been anyone,” Harding said. “Maybe a visiting local.”

“Petrol is pretty hard to come by,” I said, taking a seat in Harding’s cramped office. “Most folks use bicycles for short trips.”

“An overloaded bicycle could have made those impressions,” Kaz offered. “Maybe Crawford is selling off produce.”

“I don’t give a good goddamn about produce,” Harding said, slamming his fist on his desk. “Or bicycles or motorbikes. What I care about is that an American officer with the highest security clearance has been killed. Murdered, if Dawes is right about him being suffocated. We’re right back to where we started when I first sent you here. We have a single dead body in a top-secret area and too many unanswered questions. Where and why was Peter Wiley killed?”

“One possibility is he returned to Ashcroft House for some unknown reason,” I said. “That would explain the tire tracks being intact after the rainstorm.”

“It is logical,” Kaz said. “But it does not explain how he ended up in the Channel. We should talk to Lieutenant Siebert about the manifest.”

“Go ahead,” Harding said, lighting a Lucky Strike and tossing the matchstick into an overflowing ashtray. “When you’re done, head to
Dartmouth. General Montgomery decided he needed his own investigation and sent an officer to question surviving personnel.”

“Montgomery? Why is he sticking his nose in?” I asked. General Bernard Law Montgomery was famous for his disdain for Americans and his extremely high self-regard.

“He’s got a right,” Harding said. “The landing force will be under his command during the invasion, so he wants to get to the bottom of what went wrong. At least he sent an American officer. You’ll find Major Brian McClure onboard LST 289 in Dartmouth harbor.”

“There is one other thing we should do,” Kaz said, bringing up the subject he and I had discussed on the drive over here. “We need to thoroughly search Lieutenant Wiley’s office.”

“I told you; I looked and saw nothing out of the ordinary,” Harding said. “The same as when you searched his room.”

“His room was not a secure location,” I said. “If he had anything to hide, something that would be a clue as to where he was, his office would be the safest place to leave it.”

“And you think you can find it when I couldn’t?” Harding said.

“It’s my job,” I said. “A cop is naturally suspicious of everyone. You’re probably too much of a gentleman to do a proper search anyway.”

“Okay, cut out the brownnosing, Boyle. Have a chat with Siebert, then get back here. I’ll take you in.”

“Thanks, Colonel. Is Big Mike around?” It would help to have another bluecoat in khaki in on the search, if only to distract Harding if he didn’t like us pawing through top-secret stuff.

“I had to send him to London earlier this morning with some reports. He should be back in a few hours. Now get out of here. I have more on my plate than one dead naval officer.”

Siebert was ensconced in an upstairs room that served as his office, bedroom, and dining room, by the looks of the dirty cups and dishes scattered about. It was even more of a mess than the last time we’d been here. Add hospital room to the list, thanks to the white bandage around his head and another wrapped around his wrist.

“What do you want this time?” Lieutenant James Siebert said. He
had files stacked on files on the table in front of him. Wads of carbon paper filled a wastepaper basket, and his hands were grimy with the stuff. He’d evidently rubbed his eyes at some point, and he had the look of an injured raccoon.

“I want you to give us your full attention,” I said. “I’m sorry you were hurt, but I need some answers. You’re the officer in charge of assigning observers to Operation Tiger, right?”

“Yeah,” he said. He gestured vaguely in the direction of two mismatched chairs and winced, holding his bandaged wrist.

“We need to know which ship Lieutenant Peter Wiley was on,” I said.

“Wiley’s a pain in the ass, like I explained last time,” Siebert said. “He told me Harding gave him the okay to go along, and I assigned him to LST 507. Then when I didn’t see his name on the orders, I asked Harding about it. He chewed me out for not checking with him first.”

“Lieutenant Wiley is dead,” I said.

“What? How?” Siebert said, obviously surprised. “Jesus, I didn’t know. I wouldn’t have said that if I’d known.”

“He washed up on the shore with all the other bodies,” Kaz said.

“That’s not possible,” Siebert said. “He wasn’t on any list. I made sure of that after Harding got through with me.”

“He couldn’t have snuck on?” I asked. “The boarding must have been hectic.”

“No,” Siebert said, leaning back in his chair and working through the possibilities. “Individual observers had to present their orders when they went onboard, and then the names had to be checked against the personnel manifest. I guess he could have gone on with an infantry unit, but a naval officer would look out of place. He’d be spotted right away and questioned.”

“When was the last time you saw Lieutenant Wiley?” Kaz asked.

“Right before he went off on leave,” Siebert said. “I was glad to see him go, so he wouldn’t pester me anymore about Operation Tiger.”

“Did he say why he was so desperate to be on board?” I asked.

“No, he just insisted he had to. Said it was important for his work.”

“What was his job here exactly?” I asked.

“No idea,” Siebert said. “He did it behind a locked door in a guarded room. Not something you ask about around here.”

“Why did you go on the maneuver?” Kaz asked. “Was it important for you to be there?”

“Hell, no,” Siebert said. “I organized everything ahead of time. I could have stayed warm and dry, but I thought it would be fun. Can you imagine that? I went out on the 507 and ended up floating on a section of decking until a British destroyer came along at dawn. It was not fun.”

“Are these all the manifests?” I asked, pointing to the piles in front of Siebert.

“Shipping manifests, unit orders, departure schedules, all the paperwork required to get thousands of GIs onto a convoy of LSTs on time,” he answered. “These are the personnel manifests, by ship. All the individual brass and observers not part of a participating unit.” He handed a folder to me and I glanced through it. The original list was typed, but names had been lined out and others written in.

“This is a mess,” I said. “How do you know who went where?”

“Tell me about it,” Siebert said. “I was getting changes up to the day before the exercise. New units were added and squeezed out any room for extra men on some ships. Last-minute orders from generals and their staff, that sort of thing.”

“Did you look for Peter Wiley’s name in there?” I said.

“No. I would have been the guy who put him on the list. No reason to go searching through all this when I know I didn’t.”

“You’re certain no one else could have added his name?” Kaz asked.

Siebert looked irritated. “I locked this stuff up whenever I left the office,” he said. “I even took the manifests with me on that damn joyride, in a waterproof bag. There’s no way. I never thought anyone would be dumb enough to go against orders and add their name to the list, but it was a top-secret exercise, so I kept everything secure. Besides, names are checked on each boat as well. They have duplicate lists, so adding a name to my list doesn’t ensure you get onboard.”

“Listen, Lieutenant,” I said. “I have orders that would let me force
you to go through those manifests standing on your head. So save us a lot of aggravation and do it, okay?”

“Harding told me about your paperwork from Ike,” Siebert said. “All right, even though I don’t see the sense of it.”