THE LAST TIME Eric had been in this office, it was to be interviewed by Inspector Parker. There had been a dozen policemen scurrying about then, but not now. Now, he and Bradshaw were alone, in a cosy confidentiality that invited the telling of secrets. An attendant had just gone after filling the chipped teapot; steam wafted from its spout, and the Edward VII coronation teacup stood ready with sugar and milk for tea. Above the desk, the ridiculous children’s book illustration of the tortoise on a bicycle made Eric’s suspicions of minutes ago seem quite far-fetched. Still, as connected as Bradshaw was reputed to be, the man had to know something.
While waiting for the attendant to leave, Eric had idly picked up a book from Bradshaw’s desk and was now peering at its worn-out spine. “Shell Shock and Its Lessons,” he read aloud. “Grafton Elliot Smith and Tom Hatherley Pear … Smith’s the fellow who’s been doing all those X-ray studies of the Egyptian mummies in the British Museum, isn’t he? I had no idea you had an interest in this sort of thing.”
Bradshaw stood, plucked the book out of Eric’s hands, and returned it to a drawer. “You didn’t come in to discuss my reading material, did you?”
Eric shook his head. “You were a company sergeant major at the training camp near Chichester during the War, weren’t you? Did you ever have much to do with the war hospitals there? I mean Sotheby Manor in particular.”
“Sotheby Manor? Yes, I remember the place. I dropped by every other week.” Bradshaw sat leaning forward over his desk blotter, hands clasped before him. The morning sun caught at his beard and picked out the laugh lines around his warm brown eyes. “I was friendly enough with Sir Andrew Sotheby and most of the doctors and nurses. A lot of the patients were men I’d trained and got to know before sending them off to the War. Of course I visited them. You give a soldier his due when he comes home, whether he’s whole, injured, or in a pine box. Why?”
“Benson worked as an orderly there during the War. Did you know him then?”
“I did. I arranged for his transfer there, in fact. But that was a long time ago.”
“Benson was murdered just one week ago.”
“Yes, but Sotheby Manor can’t be relevant now, can it?”
“You know Benson was married to the daughter of the house. She said she’d spoken to you after she got the news of her husband’s death. If you were friendly with her father and visited as often as you say, you must have known her before her marriage, too.”
“Ah. You’ve been there, and you’ve spoken to Mrs. Benson, then. Yes, I knew her well enough. Is that what you’ve been up to this whole week? You’re not actively investigating the murder, are you?” Something of the truth must have shown on Eric’s face, because Bradshaw let out a low chuckle and said, “You really are your father’s son! But the Colonel always knew better than to waste his efforts. Scotland Yard is handling the case, Peterkin; they don’t need our help.”
“What if there were extenuating circumstances?”
“Extenuating circumstances? What do you mean?”
The face behind the desk radiated warmth and confidence, and Eric was tempted to simply tell him everything, as he would his own father. But he’d begun to wonder, since the encounter at Brolly’s, at what lay behind that fatherly facade.
“Before he died, Benson told me he had to correct an old injustice. I thought it worthwhile to take up the torch, as it were. Discreetly.”
“I see.” Bradshaw sighed. He had the long-suffering look of a father whose children kept stealing his cufflinks for chess pieces. “And you came to me for help. You’ll have to tell me more if I’m to do that.”
Eric weighed his words. “It was about the disappearance of a nurse back in 1918.”
Bradshaw’s eyebrows went up. Eric had been watching for his reaction, and was frustrated that half of it was hidden behind that snow-white beard. For the rest, there had been the expected flash of surprise in Bradshaw’s brown eyes, and … something else? It was gone as fast as it had appeared, the Father Christmas mask once more in place.
Bradshaw got to his feet. Eric moved to stand, too, but was waved back to his seat. Bradshaw ambled around Eric to the office door, which had been left slightly ajar. He glanced out into the empty corridor—Old Faithful had already gone back to his post at the front desk, and of course no one else was about—and quietly closed the door.
The silence deepened; Eric always forgot how well the walls and doors of the Britannia kept out the sound. The office became its own little world, cut off from everything else.
Eric turned around again. Bradshaw was regarding him with a faintly puzzled expression. “Is something wrong?” Eric asked.
Bradshaw shook his head and returned to his seat. “I know the case you mean. Emily Ang … I remember her, yes, but her disappearance is ancient history, or so I thought.”
Bradshaw’s expression was all fatherly concern.
Eric said, “Not her disappearance. Her murder. There was a skeleton unearthed in Bruton Wood. Benson was sure it was her, and he thought he owed it to her to find the truth. I’m sure he had his reasons for not going to the authorities. Perhaps he didn’t have enough yet to make his case to them.”
“You got all this from Mrs. Benson?”
Eric shook his head. It occurred to him that the things said in the fog last night had been shared in confidence, and he should not reveal Saxon’s part in the matter. “I’ve learnt a few things since speaking to her,” he said. “I know now that whatever happened to Emily Ang must be relevant to Benson’s murder. The question is, what exactly did happen?”
Bradshaw didn’t answer immediately, and the dark mahogany of his eyes gave nothing away. At last, he said, “That was a long time ago, Peterkin.”
“You were in and out of Sotheby Manor quite frequently, you said. I wondered if you might have been there the day she was last seen alive—that was the twentieth of July, Mrs. Benson’s birthday. Six years ago, yes, but the nurses had a party that day. That might help to fix events in your mind, if the disappearance doesn’t already. Were you there that day?”
Bradshaw nodded slowly. “I can’t promise you everything, but what do you need to know?”
Eric started with something simple. “Do you remember if Saxon was there?”
“I don’t remember ever seeing him there. I can’t think of any cause he’d have to visit.”
“Norris?”
“Norris was one of the men I trained. I remember visiting … Yes, I think I remember him at the party.” A smile played across Bradshaw’s face. “He was popular with the nurses, as you can imagine.”
“What about Wolfe?”
“I first met him at Sotheby Manor, but I don’t think it was at the party.” Bradshaw shook his head. “My idea of the timing tells me he should have been there, but I can’t say I remember it at all. And he does tend to stand out.”
“And Aldershott?”
“He was a friend of Sir Andrew’s … but I’m sorry. I don’t remember.”
“Inspector Parker?”
“Parker?” Bradshaw stopped for a long time, his eyes focused on Eric’s, then said, “Parker’s another of the men I trained, and I know he wasn’t there. A little bird told me that he was up for the Victoria Cross, and I remember I brought it up at the birthday party. Everyone wished he was still there so they could congratulate him and maybe raise a toast in his honour. I was quite proud of him.”
“Do you remember if any of them were close to Emily Ang?”
“I wouldn’t know.” Bradshaw gave Eric a long, calculating look. For a moment, Eric was reminded not of Father Christmas but of an ancient reptile regarding the foolishness of mortals. There was, perhaps, a reason Bradshaw seemed to have such an affinity for tortoises. The old man said, “You know, Peterkin, this determination of yours reminds me a lot of your father. He had a keen, questioning mind, but he also had … shall we say, a little more experience than you? He knew when to drop a thing and move on. So I’m telling you to drop this and move on—not just because you ought to leave this to the authorities but because you’re on the wrong track. It seems clear from your questions that you think the officers of the Britannia are involved. They aren’t. I can’t tell you how or why I know, but I can swear it to you, on my honour, that none of them had anything to do with this—not with Emily’s death and disappearance, and, following your own logic, not with Benson’s murder.”
There was a steel edge in Bradshaw’s tone that Eric had never heard before, and his eyes were stern. It was, he suspected, the old drill sergeant coming to the fore. He said, “You seem very sure—”
“Did you ever think to wonder how Benson knew the Bruton Wood skeleton was Emily? I’ll tell you. He knew it was her because he put her there.”
“What? Oh come now, you don’t expect me to believe that!” The idea was laughable. Wasn’t it? But Bradshaw wasn’t laughing. He was, instead, watching Eric’s reactions with a strange, reptilian sagacity.
“Benson was the one who buried Emily Ang in Bruton Wood,” Bradshaw repeated. “That is the truth. I’ll swear to it on my honour.”
He said it with an earnestness that was hard to gainsay, and Eric found his initial disbelief giving way to slack-jawed shock. “But,” Eric managed to stammer, “how can you possibly know this?”
“I can’t tell you that, Peterkin. But you wouldn’t have come to speak to me if you didn’t think I’d know a few things I shouldn’t.”
“Benson was looking for Emily’s killer!”
“Did he actually say she’d been killed, or are you merely assuming human agency behind her death?”
It was true. Nobody had actually said, yet, that Emily was murdered. “If she wasn’t murdered, then why all the secrecy around her death?”
Bradshaw shrugged. “There’s a lot of strangeness in this world, Peterkin. If you put it in a book, no one would believe it. And I don’t say that Benson killed her, only that he buried her. I assumed he knew all along what had actually happened to her, but perhaps … well, perhaps I was mistaken. Or perhaps you are.”
Was Bradshaw lying? He had to be. But if he were, how was one to catch him out? And if he weren’t, then what did it mean? Eric thought back to the man who’d said, with such conviction, that he was about to right a great wrong. Could that same man have been an active participant in whatever that “great wrong” was? Was it, as Saxon seemed to have assumed, guilt that motivated Benson?
“I gave you my word, Peterkin.” Bradshaw waved a hand vaguely around the office. “Listen. How do you imagine I got where I am today? ‘Bradshaw Gets Things Done, Bradshaw knows people, Bradshaw pulls a string in Cornwall and half the gentry of Northumberland jump.’ That’s what they say about me, isn’t it? It’s all built on favours and promises, Peterkin, and that in turn depends on the integrity of my word as a gentleman. So when I say I give my word, that has to mean something. If not, then all this comes crashing down. My word was good enough for your father; I hope that counts for something more than a hospital orderly’s hearsay.”
“You lied to the press about Joseph Davis and all those men who’d shot themselves.”
“I gave my word to let them have their dignity. That’s more important than the truth sometimes, and the War left some men with precious little of it.”
Eric thought of the ex-servicemen whom Old Faithful had admitted into the club lodgings. Supposedly, it was Aldershott’s idea, but Eric wouldn’t be surprised if Bradshaw had had a hand in it as well.
That wasn’t the same thing, though. “What if it’s a choice between one man’s dignity and another man’s justice? What then?”
“What do you think, Peterkin?” Bradshaw poured himself a cup of tea and sat back to sip at it. He looked far too comfortable to be plagued much by any moral dilemmas. “Questions like this are far from exceptional in this world, and I’m surprised that you seem to think they are. That’s another thing your father understood.”
“My father taught me about honour,” Eric said. “He taught me that a gentleman does what’s right—”
“No. A gentleman does what he thinks is right. That may not be the same thing at all. He may do what’s right for the wrong reasons, or he may get his hands dirty doing wrong to achieve the right ends. It’s never so simple as any code of honour will have you believe. Yes, I lied about Joseph Davis, and a dozen others besides. But I dare you to look their widows and children in the eye and tell them you think I was wrong.”
Eric watched Bradshaw, once again thinking of the different masks the man wore. He was beginning to suspect that, if there did exist a sinister side to this personification of Father Christmas, it was not in opposition to the fatherly persona, but an extension of it. Bradshaw would do anything for his men, even if it meant covering up a murder.
Benson, a conscientious objector, had never been one of Bradshaw’s men.
“Where were you last Friday night?” Eric asked, turning to simpler topics. “I don’t remember seeing you anywhere about.”
There was a shift behind Bradshaw’s beard that might have been his mouth curling up in triumph. He was willing to keep playing the game, but there wasn’t much fatherly favour in it now. “As I told the police, I was at a music hall. Brolly’s. Mr. Breuleux will vouch for me, I’m sure.”
Of course he would. As Bradshaw would vouch for anyone and everyone.
Eric got up and said, “I know you were lying about Inspector Parker not being at Sotheby Manor, by the way. Benson had a photograph that proved he had been there. If you’d said you didn’t remember, that would be one thing; but you said quite definitely that he hadn’t been there. And I notice you didn’t wonder why I’d think to connect Parker with Sotheby Manor: you knew the question was coming, and you were waiting to feed me the lie. Why? Does someone’s dignity depend on Parker being absent that day?”
That got through to Bradshaw, and the Father Christmas facade hardened into that of the rarely seen sergeant major. “That’s none of your business, Peterkin. Horatio Parker is a fine man, and I won’t have you besmirching his honour for the sake of some long-forgotten story.”
“Was he responsible for what happened to Emily Ang?”
“I can’t answer that!”
“You seem to be answering for many more people than you’ll admit. Not just Davis and all the men in those ‘accidental’ shootings. I reckon I can understand those. But I wonder where it all ends.” In his mind, Eric flipped through images of the various people connected to the murder. Were there any inconsistencies in their pasts that Bradshaw might have had a hand in? Aldershott? Saxon? Norris?
Eric stopped on Norris.
“Norris was supposed to have spent three months in Italy immediately after his election to the board of officers in April,” Eric said. “But that’s not true, is it? There’s a portrait of him in Sotheby Manor dated in May. What’s the story there, Bradshaw? What did you do, and why?”
But Bradshaw had settled back again, at ease, laugh lines creasing. “Ah, that’s got nothing to do with me. Don’t look so surprised, Peterkin. I can’t be involved in everything that happens in the British Empire, no matter how the gossip builds me up. I believe Norris was renting the old groundskeeper’s cottage from the Bensons. That’s all I know. I expect he simply lied about where he’d been to make it all seem that much more romantic.”
“But if he was only in Sussex, why would someone else have to cover his duties here for three whole months?”
“I can’t answer that. Because I do not know.”
Bradshaw was telling the truth this time, Eric thought. He’d been too agitated about Parker for this new ease of manner to be anything but genuine relief.
“Will that be all, Peterkin?” Bradshaw asked, getting to his feet to open the door for Eric.
“For now,” said Eric, going to the door. “This isn’t over yet.”
“Peterkin.” Facing him, Bradshaw rested a hand on Eric’s shoulder and looked him in the eye. It was a familiar gesture, but not at present a welcome one. “I know it’s hard to let things go, but please, take my advice and give this up. Your father would have understood. I give you my word that no one here had anything to do with the murder, and after all, was Benson worth turning the club on its head? If Emily had been murdered, then he’s at least an accomplice to murder.”
“And what does that make you?”
Bradshaw sighed. “One who’s been around for far too long, and who’s seen too many good men come and go.” He gave Eric’s shoulder a friendly squeeze, and there was a sympathetic smile behind the beard; but Eric thought he caught a gleam of something ancient and reptilian in the depths of those eyes.
Eric closed the door on Bradshaw’s office with a slight sense of regret. He didn’t know if he could really think of fatherly old Bradshaw in quite the same way again.
It wasn’t until he was halfway down the corridor that he thought of it: Mrs. Benson had never spoken of any business dealings with Norris. She had, however, spoken of renting the old groundskeeper’s cottage to Aldershott. What Aldershott wanted with the groundskeeper’s cottage of a deteriorating country house was a mystery, but Eric had the idea that it must have had something to do with Norris.
Of course, he could speak to Norris, but Eric thought Aldershott owed him an explanation for more than just a cottage rental.