THE SCAR ON the lamppost where a bullet had narrowly missed its target the night before was still there. Eric could see no sign of a bullet hole in the tarred wood blocks with which the street was paved, however. Unless the whole thing had been his imagination, one of the houses opposite was going to have a bit of a surprise one day when the owners repointed their brickwork.
All around him, residential Mayfair that Saturday morning was awake and oblivious with ladies strolling along to pay calls on close acquaintances. The terraced townhouses stretched down the street on either side, some in limestone but most in brick, and all of them patterned with tall mullioned windows in regular rows and columns. Tiny, narrow basement courts separated the houses from the street, with wrought-iron fences to keep one from falling in.
The memory of the gunshots in the fog seemed more unreal the more he thought about it. The sense of isolation had reminded him of Flanders, and with Flanders had come the memory of gunshots. But Saxon had heard it too, hadn’t he? Eric clung to that thought. If someone else had heard the shots, he couldn’t have imagined them. Could he?
Meanwhile, the sense of Bradshaw’s hand on his shoulder still lingered, much as Mrs. Benson’s touch on his jaw had, though Eric took something vastly different from it. It was … not unclean, precisely, but similar. Bradshaw didn’t offer his support in expectation of anything, but one still felt bound by the obligations of gratitude; and when the time came, Bradshaw was not above appealing to that obligation. It was, Eric realised, integral to his network of favours owed and rendered, and how he Got Things Done.
Eric didn’t think he owed Aldershott much. The relationship there was more antagonistic, and therefore simpler. One knew exactly where one stood.
“Morning calls,” that ill-named mainstay of social life among the well heeled, generally took place between three and six in the afternoon; at eleven in the morning, one called only on intimate friends—the ones who didn’t mind a bit of informality. Eric wasn’t so intimate with the Aldershotts as to permit a social call in the actual morning, but the butler recognised him from the previous night’s dinner party and, perhaps assuming Eric to be here on business, admitted him into the study without comment.
Little had changed in the study since last night, except that he was seeing it now in the bright light of morning, and he had time to really examine his surroundings. The rosewood bookcase, he saw, was full of dry financial material. The taxidermied animals were more fascinating, though the daylight emphasised their lifelessness and gave them a more eerie, unearthly effect. He remembered the Andean condor over the door, and now he was able to identify several others: a glassy-eyed lemur, a pair of beavers, the heads of animals too big to fit into a small urban study whole.
Eric was still examining the stuffed game when Aldershott walked in. “This had better be good, Peterkin,” Aldershott growled as he shut the door. “Put down that stuffed mongoose.”
“I couldn’t get a good look at it last night,” Eric said. “I grew up in India, you know. Well, partly, anyway. Did you know—”
“Peterkin!”
Eric set down the mongoose. “I wanted to know about Norris’s visit to Italy earlier this year.”
Aldershott was taken aback. “What’s that got to do with anything? Why don’t you ask him?”
“Well, I doubt he’d care to tell me the truth, and I fancy you know more about it than you let on. I also fancy he was no closer to Italy than I am right now. He was at Sotheby Manor, wasn’t he?”
“If you know that—”
“I want to know why.”
“You think I have the answer to Norris’s business?”
“I think you were paying for it. Mrs. Benson said she was renting the groundskeeper’s cottage to you, not to Norris. She also said you were the inspiration behind the plan to turn Sotheby Manor into a rest home for addicts, and I think you were a major investor in that plan. Taken together, it all seems a bit suggestive … Nothing definite, of course, but that’s what I came here for.”
Aldershott stared at Eric. Slowly, he sat down behind his desk.
Eric remained standing. He could practically see the wheels turning in Aldershott’s mind. After yesterday’s interview, his questions today must seem like a non sequitur, and Aldershott must be wondering just how much goodwill he could extend now—if only to get rid of Eric—and whether it was worth his while.
Eric shrugged. “I expect it doesn’t matter. I could ask Mrs. Benson instead; I know she’ll tell me. And if not, someone else will know. It’s just a question of asking around enough.”
“Wait.”
Eric waited.
The muscle in Aldershott’s jaw twitched as he struggled with a decision.
Eric turned again to exit the study. As his gaze met the dead eyes of a bear, he heard the springs of Aldershott’s chair release, and three words rang out.
“The soldier’s disease.”
Eric turned back around to face Aldershott, meeting a gaze that was more exasperation and sadness than anger.
Aldershott sat down again and said, “You’re not the sort of fellow who shuts up easily, are you? All right. I’ll tell you about Norris’s little holiday, but it doesn’t go further than these four walls, is that understood? Your word.”
“The soldier’s disease,” Aldershott repeated. “Morphine addiction. That was a relic of the American Civil War, when morphine was new and everyone was using it to treat everything. Countless men wound up dependent on it for years afterwards. We never really thought much of it here in Great Britain, though, did we? Until the middle of the War, you could just walk into Harrods and buy a morphine kit off the shelf. Well, the War certainly opened our eyes to what could happen with morphine. You’ve only to read the newspapers these days to see.”
“Are you telling me that Norris was suffering from a morphine addiction?”
Aldershott nodded. “It came to light right after the last elections at the club. I wanted a proper look around the place to know what I was getting into, and there was Norris, in one of the lodging rooms, with all the paraphernalia around him.”
Aldershott stood and went to the window. It looked out behind the house to a public garden, and a few children were playing there under the watchful eyes of their nannies. The trees swayed in the breeze. Inside, the air was as still as the stuffed heads on the wall.
“He was just lying there,” Aldershott continued, “staring at the ceiling. He’d used his tie as a tourniquet—I’d always wondered before how he kept ruining his ties—and it was hanging off his elbow onto the floor. My first reaction was to scream at him for the mess, but he didn’t care. He was just … limp, barely breathing, and too far gone to care. I realised I was wasting my breath shouting at him and took action instead. I discarded the empty bottle; everything else I packed up and put away. Then I had him shipped off to Sotheby Manor. Sir Andrew was long gone, but I knew his daughter, and I knew Benson. I knew Norris would be in good hands. And that’s all the fellow needed: someone to tell him no. Look at him now, Peterkin. I don’t know if you had much contact with him before, but he’s a different person.”
Eric thought of jolly, bright-eyed Norris, and nodded. Eric had never personally met anyone in the grip of a morphine addiction, but Avery had, and Avery described the poor fellow as a horrific crank when he wasn’t limp and lethargic from a fresh dose.
“I reckon you saved his life,” Eric said, with feeling. Aldershott nodded and turned from the window. Their eyes met, and there was a mutual understanding in them. Eric had had a corporal very much like Norris: Blake, a fun-loving scoundrel who got the whole platoon to laugh. Less than a month before the Armistice, he’d walked out onto the parapet, looked into the dawn, and blown his brains out. Eric often wondered if he could have done anything to prevent it.
“Norris was my second in command after Wolfe got his promotion to captain,” Aldershott said, returning to his chair. “He was a very different prospect from Wolfe, as you can imagine. Morale went up, even if some of the ordinary standards of regimentation went down.”
“And you felt responsible for him.” As Eric still felt responsible for his men, scattered though they were. He could easily relate.
“It’s a very sorry officer who doesn’t feel some sort of responsibility for the men below him, Peterkin. As an officer yourself, I hope you understand that much, at least.”
“Do you know how he wound up addicted to morphine?”
“I should think that’s obvious. Norris loves life and laughter. How much of that did you see in the trenches?”
“I remember that we found ways of carving humour out of the horror,” Eric said. “There were plenty of bright spots in between everything else.”
“Not enough,” Aldershott growled. “And especially not for Norris. He needed to lose himself completely in something, and eventually he found morphine. I think he began stealing it from the Sotheby Manor dispensary when he was warded there.”
So it had been going on for years. Eric tried again to imagine Norris with the irritability Avery had described, and decided that an irritable Norris might seem like a more mature, grounded individual than the fun-loving scamp he now was.
Eric stood up. “Thank you, Aldershott,” he said soberly. “I think I understand poor Norris a little better now.” Norris had escaped Corporal Blake’s fate, at least.
“Think nothing of it. I hope you understand what I mean when I say the fellow deserves his privacy.” They’d been discussing Norris like a pair of concerned friends, and Aldershott had slipped into that mode with surprising ease. He actually smiled as he stood up to shake Eric’s hand.
Eric felt a little bad about demolishing the goodwill that seemed to have arisen between them. But he wasn’t quite done yet. He doubted whether all the goodwill in the world could induce Aldershott to give him the answers he wanted. A shock was needed, and Aldershott, relaxed, was primed to receive it.
“Oh, just one more thing,” Eric said, turning abruptly from the door. Aldershott’s smile vanished. “What did you do with the photograph and the medical report you took from Benson’s box?”
Aldershott nearly exploded. “How in hell—”
“From what Wolfe said, it seems plain someone else got to Benson’s box before he did. I think that someone was you. Easy enough, since you were given the vault combination when you became club president. No, don’t say anything, just listen. You knew exactly which box Benson had because it used to be the box you’d been given as club president. You had the master key, too, so it was easy for you to get into the box. All you had to do was wait. I remembered the lip prints on the brandy glasses in your office, all the cigarettes in the ashtray, and the open transom; someone had been waiting in there after the cleaning staff had gone, and opened the transom to let the stale cigarette smoke air out overnight. This wasn’t the same person who’d broken in, or the ashtray wouldn’t have been upset on the floor. I think you waited there until you thought it late enough that no one would notice, but not so late that you risked running into Wolfe as he fulfilled his part of the bet. I think you crept down to the vault, used the combination you’d been given back in April, opened Benson’s box with your master key, and removed the photograph and medical report from it. Then you left, by the front door, and destroyed the two items.”
Aldershott had gone white with anger. He’d been too shocked and angry to interrupt Eric’s speech, but he found his tongue now. “I think you should leave now, Peterkin,” he said, keeping his voice steady with some effort. “Leave before I have you thrown out.”
“Were you wearing gloves that night, Aldershott?”
Aldershott said nothing, but reached for the bell pull that would summon the butler.
“I think you weren’t wearing gloves that night. Why should you? You weren’t there to commit murder, and you cannot have expected the door would be dusted for fingerprints. But it does mean that your fingerprints are in fact all over the door wheel. Even if the police have identified those prints as yours, they probably haven’t attached much importance to the fact. You’re the club president, and you have the combination by right. Your fingerprints should be all over the place. But how many people go down to the vault unattended by Old Faithful? Except for Bradshaw, who changes the vault combination from time to time, no one lays a hand on the vault door but Old Faithful himself. Everyone else waits while it’s opened for them.”
Aldershott gave the bell pull a vicious yank. Eric thought he could hear the bell jangling all the way from the servants’ hall.
“I just want to know about those two items,” Eric said quickly. “The photograph of Helen Sotheby’s birthday party and the medical report for that scar on Inspector Parker’s face. What have they to do with each other, and why did you leave the other items—the surgical scissors and the hypodermic kit?”
“We’re done here, Peterkin. Or more precisely, you’re done. I’m having you thrown out of the Britannia Club so hard, your sorry yellow arse will bounce off the pavement.”
The door cracked open to admit the butler, and Eric reflected that this hadn’t quite gone as planned. He was sure he’d deduced the truth, but it took a little bit more than that to shock anything out of Aldershott, it seemed.
“That’s all right,” Eric said, moving away from the butler. “I can find my own way out.”
“Good-bye, Peterkin.”
Eric didn’t protest as the butler took him by the elbow and firmly propelled him out of the study.
He was just being shown the door when Mrs. Aldershott, coming down the stairs, hailed him. In her habitually sober everyday clothes, she looked at first glance like a no-nonsense governess or schoolmistress, but she was smiling in equal parts welcome and amusement.
“You’ve been speaking with my husband,” she said. “Let me guess: it was an unmitigated disaster. Was it about Emily?”
Eric tried to collect himself. “In a way.”
Mrs. Aldershott let out an indulgent huff and dismissed the butler. She drew Eric into the drawing room just in time to avoid being seen by Aldershott, who stormed through the hall and slammed out of the house. She said, “I haven’t had much opportunity to question him about it since last night, and he’s been more obstinate than usual. It makes me almost wonder if he were involved in some fashion.”
She said it as though she thought the idea preposterous, but Eric had no doubt whatsoever that Aldershott was involved. “I think it is a little early to be expressing my suspicions, ma’am.”
“Because I’m his wife, no doubt, and it might cause irreparable damage to our marriage! I’m made of sterner stuff than that, I hope. Edward likes to kick up a fuss about every little thing, but there’s not much bite to him in the end. Underneath that prickly, standoffish facade, he really cares almost too deeply about people.”
He did seem to care enough for Norris, and Eric recalled what he’d learnt earlier this morning about the club’s secret practice of offering lodging to ex-servicemen on the street. Eric could believe it. “He hides it very well.”
“Oh, it’s absolutely true. There’s not a day goes by without him worrying about what the Britannia Club is doing for its shell-shocked members. All he ever reads is literature by very learned men about the nature of shell shock, or war neuroses, or whatever they’re calling it these days.”
They were back in the entrance hall now, and Eric noticed that, indeed, there were two new books sitting on the hall table. “Shell Shock and Its Lessons,” he read. “Bradshaw has a copy of this. I saw it in his office Saturday morning.”
“That would be Edward’s old copy. He’s been trying to get Bradshaw interested.”
The second book was Psycho-Analysis and the War Neuroses. Eric flipped it open. “Karl Abraham and Sandor Ferenczi. This one has an introduction by Sigmund Freud—I’ve heard of him …”
“It’s really quite fascinating, this study of the war neuroses, or however you want to call it. War strain, battle fatigue … Edward prefers to call it shell shock, but, well, leave it to a soldier to define everything in terms of war—”
“How clinical.” So they were calling it a madness now. People did talk about shell-shocked soldiers going a little mad, but now it was official. Eric felt his hackles rise.
“Edward says the primary function of the Britannia Club is to provide a safe place for affected ex-servicemen to gather. He’s a firm believer in the benefits of camaraderie in the face of crisis.”
“The gentlemen of the Britannia are perfectly sane,” Eric snapped. “I know a lot of us haven’t been able to look at fireworks the same way since the War, but that’s just the way of things. We’re not mad.”
“Nobody says you are.”
Eric hefted the second book in his hand and brushed a finger over the title. “You’ve got doctors who specialise in madmen calling this a ‘neurosis.’ How else should I take it?”
His little flashes of unbidden memories were not a neurosis.
“But you do admit that something has changed. It doesn’t matter what people call it: the fact remains that, since the War, some people have terrible nightmares, some people have difficulty adjusting to peace, some people react badly to loud, sudden noises … They’re sane in all the ways that matter, Mr. Peterkin, but has no one ever jumped on you to protect you from a Christmas cracker?”
“Oh, Wolfe.” Of course, last night’s slip must have also occurred elsewhere and in other contexts. “Wolfe has things under control. It isn’t a … a neurosis; it’s simply the way he’s been trained to handle things. The man holds himself so steady all the time, I reckon he’s allowed an odd quirk or two.”
Mrs. Aldershott shook her head. “I was thinking of someone else. It doesn’t matter whom I meant, but it just goes to show that it’s hardly exceptional. And I’m not surprised to hear about Mr. Wolfe. He pretends to be so utterly unflappable, but really he’s just doing his best to put a brave face on things. I have it on good authority that once, while he was lodging at the Britannia, he spent half the night cowering under the bed because someone had upset a dustbin under his window.”
Eric winced. He really should have been more careful and circumspect. Now he’d gone and given Wolfe away, and the man would hardly thank him for it.
Mrs. Aldershott continued. “He feels this need to keep everything under control at all times. Of course, he was a touch demanding even before the War, but my understanding of it is that the War made him absolutely unbearable. Meanwhile, other men have sought comfort in their excesses—drink, or drugs, or … or other vices.”
Wolfe’s self-control had fooled Eric, at least until last night. Before that, Eric would have called Wolfe one of the sanest men he knew.
Eric tossed the book back onto the hall table. There seemed to be little else to say about it. “‘We’re all mad here,’” he quoted sarcastically.
“We are.”
Eric looked up. Mrs. Aldershott’s expression was serious.
“Mr. Peterkin,” she said, “did you wonder, at dinner last night, why there’s no mustard in our cruet? It’s because neither Edward nor I can abide it. It sets us to remembering things we don’t care to relive. You must know that Edward survived a mustard gas attack, and he was lucky to do so. Many of the men who’d been with him died of it, days afterwards, and it haunts him terribly. And I remember those cots, all those men who could bravely endure bullet wounds and shrapnel and broken bones in silence, all of them wailing and crying … and me not being able to do anything about it except wash their boils and eyes, and hope … One whiff of ordinary table mustard and I’m there all over again. Does this make us mad, Mr. Peterkin?”
Eric laid a hand on her arm, and she shook herself, clearing her head. He didn’t want to call it madness, but it wasn’t quite normal, either, and Mrs. Aldershott made it sound like the brink of insanity. And it sounded uncomfortably similar to his own unpleasant memories, rising unbidden in moments of stress. They were not a neurosis, he told himself again, but with somewhat less conviction than before.
Perhaps they weren’t. That didn’t mean they weren’t there. And if both the Aldershotts had had the same sort of experience—if Wolfe’s reactions to loud noises were the same sort of thing, and if even Norris had had trouble coping—then he was not alone.
He was not alone.
“I had better go,” he said quietly. “There’s a man I need to see in Chichester before the day is out.” He was thinking of Dr. Timothy Grey, the coroner who’d examined the Bruton Wood skeleton. Eric didn’t want to interrupt him at work, nor did he want to intrude on him on a Sunday. That left today, Saturday afternoon, as his one chance for a visit.
“Is it about Emily?”
Eric nodded.
“Then you had better go. Tell me whatever you’ve learnt, when you’re done.”
Eric returned to the street, giving it a cautious scan for hidden gunmen before heading down in the direction of the parking garage where the family Vauxhall was stashed. He was thinking of his men in the light of what Mrs. Aldershott had said. It was easy to see that one or two had been affected by the War in some way, but most had seemed normal enough. He thought it unlikely that they’d all been affected, but it seemed just as unlikely that none of them had. One maintained a stiff upper lip, and this sangfroid let one carry on while all around were collapsing in hysterics; but that didn’t mean one wasn’t possessed of human emotion.
Eric was halfway to his destination when a dark grey Austin pulled up beside him.
“Mr. Peterkin!”
“Mrs. Aldershott?”
Mrs. Aldershott was indeed driving the motorcar. She beckoned for him to get in, and he did. “I assume,” she said, “if you’re going to Chichester that you’re headed for Victoria Station. But if so, you’re walking in the wrong direction.”
Eric shook his head and gave the address of his parking garage. “I’d rather motor down,” he said, looking around the Austin. It was a pre-War model, but very well maintained. “Of course, I shan’t expect you to take me all the way there. Doesn’t this model of motorcar use a hand crank to start?”
“Which makes it therefore an unladylike choice?” The hand crank had a tendency to break its operator’s wrist. “I’m not so delicate as that, I assure you. Edward’s had this since before the War, and he doesn’t like to discard anything. It’s still a perfectly decent motor, hand crank or not.”
“Well, I thank you for the ride.”
“Think nothing of it.” She paused to negotiate a corner, then said, “Listen, Mr. Peterkin. I think I’ve said already how much I want to know about what happened to Emily. I’d always assumed that the police had already done everything possible, and I didn’t think an outside inquiry would yield much more. Certainly, the newspapers didn’t have anything to say. But it occurred to me, just after you left, that if you’ve connected her disappearance to Benson’s murder, then you’ve got a lot further than anyone ever did. So, if there’s anything I can do to help you along, I’ll do it.”
“Your husband doesn’t seem amenable to that.”
“Edward can go jump in the lake. It’s not his sister we’re talking about.” There was that brisk, businesslike ruthlessness that carried Mrs. Aldershott past the attendants at the Britannia and, no doubt, many a blustering general during the War. “I was technically Emily’s next of kin, you know, at least as far as the English authorities were concerned. All her things were passed on to me after the police were done with them. I’ve had a look over them from time to time, but nothing’s stood out for me. Perhaps you’ll see something there that I’ve missed.”
Eric turned to her and broke into a broad grin. “That would be a godsend, Mrs. Aldershott. I can’t thank you enough.”
“Oh, I’m just doing this for my own satisfaction, believe me. I’ll let you have today for whatever errands you have in Chichester. But tomorrow evening, I’ll come find you at the Britannia Club and we’ll go over Emily’s things together.”
“No, not the Britannia.” Word would get back to Aldershott if his wife were to seek Eric out at the club; and after their earlier interview, Eric didn’t want another confrontation just yet. “Do you know of the Arabica coffeehouse, near Soho Square? Meet me there. I’ll be in the booth right at the back.”
It was a date. Mrs. Aldershott dropped Eric off in front of his parking garage, then set off for home while Eric turned his sights on Chichester and the Bruton Wood skeleton.