He settled himself back in his own chair. 'Ah, that's more comfortable. Now, how far back in the past do you want to go? Ladysmith?'
'Ladysmith?' echoed Sloan, considerably startled.
'It was Mafeking they made all the fuss about—they forgot the siege of Ladysmith.' He fixed Sloan with a bleary eye. 'Do you want to know about Ladysmith?'
'You were there, sir?'
The General gave a deep chuckle. 'I was there. I was there for a long time. The whole siege. And I've never wasted a drop of drink or a morsel of food since.' He leant forward. 'Are you sure about that brandy?'
'Certainly, sir. Thank you.'
The General took another sip. 'Commissioned in '99. Went through the whole of the Boer War. Nearly died of fever more than once. Still'—he brightened—'none of it seemed to do me any harm.'
This much, at least, was patently true. They were looking at a very old man indeed but he seemed to be in possession of all his faculties. Sloan thought back quickly, dredging through his schoolboy memory for names of battles.
'Were you at Omdurman, Sir Eustace?'
Sir Eustace Garwell waved the brandy glass under his nose with a thin hand, sniffing appreciatively. The veins on his hand stood out, hard and gnarled. 'No, sir, I was not at Omdurman. Incredible as it may seem now, I was too young for that episode in our military history. At the time I was very distressed about missing it by a year or so. I was foolish enough to fear that there weren't going to be any more wars.' He gave a melancholy snort. 'I needn't have worried, need I?'
'No, sir…'
'Now, on the whole I'm rather glad. You realise, don'tyou, that had I been born a couple of years earlier I should probably be dead by now.'
Sloan took a moment or two to work this out and then he said, 'I see what you mean, sir.'
'The East Callies were there, of course. Battle honours and all that…'
'Yes.' Sloan raised his voice a little. 'There is just one little matter on which you may be able to help us by remembering. After Ladysmith. Probably sometime between the wars.'
'I was in India from '04 to 1913,' said the General helpfully. 'In the Punjab.'
'Not those wars,' said Sloan hastily, hoping Sir Eustace was too deaf to have heard Crosby's snort. 'Between the other two.'
'Ah. It wasn't the same, you know.'
'I daresay not,' said Sloan dryly.
'Everything changed after 1914 but war most of all.'
'Do you recollect a Sergeant Jenkins in the Regiment, sir?'
There was a row of ivory elephants on the mantelpiece, their trunks properly facing the door. Sloan had time to count them before the General replied.
'Jenkins did you say? No, the name doesn't mean anything to me. Known quite a few men of that name in m'time but not in the Regiment. Hirst might know. Ask him.'
'Thank you, sir, I will.'
'They put me on the Staff,' said the old voice querulously. 'You never know anyone then.'
'Did you ever have a woman called Grace Jenkins working for you either, sir?'
'Can't say that we did. We had a housekeeper but she's been dead for years and her name wasn't Jenkins.'
'Or Wright?'
'No. One of the cleaning women might have been called that. You'd have to ask Hirst. They come and go, you know.'
If the dust on the ivory elephants was any measure, this was one of the times when they had gone.
'No, not a cleaning woman,' said Sloan. 'A children's nurse, perhaps. A nanny?'
'Never had any children,' said the General firmly. 'No nannies about the place ever.'
'I see, sir. Thank you. Well, then, I must apologise for disturbing you. Routine enquiry, you understand.'
'Quite so.'
Sloan got up to go. 'About a woman who used to work as a children's nurse for a family called Hocklington- Garwell and we're trying to trace…'
Without any warning the whole atmosphere inside the drawing room of The Laurels, Cullingoak, changed.
Two beady eyes peered at Sloan over the top of the brandy glass. Just as quickly the old face became suffused with colour. A choleric General Sir Eustace Garwell put down his glass with shaking hands.
'Sir,' he said, quite outraged, 'is this a joke?'
He struggled to his feet, anger in every feature of his stiff and ancient frame. He tottered over to the wall and put his finger on a bell.
'If I were a younger man, sir,' he quavered, 'I would send for a horse whip. As it is, I shall just ask my man to show you the door. Goodnight, sir, goodnight.'
CHAPTER TWELVE
As always, Sloan was polite.
He had long ago learned that there were few situations where a police officer—or anyone else, for that matter— gained by not being.
Henrietta was sitting opposite him and Crosby in the little parlour of Boundary Cottage.
'Yes, Inspector, I'm certain it was Hocklington-Garwell. It's not really a name you could confuse, is it?'
'No, miss, that's very true.'
'Besides, why should I tell you a name like that if it isn't the one I was told?'
'That's not for me to say, miss.'
She stared at him. 'You do believe me, don't you?'
'The mention of the name certainly upset the old gentleman, miss. He ordered us out of the house.'
Henrietta just looked puzzled. 'I can't understand it at all. It was Hocklington-Garwell and they had two boys. Master Michael and Master Hugo. I've heard such a lot about them always…'
'The General said he hadn't had any children,' said Sloan.
'There you are, then. It must have been the wrong man…'
'But the merest mention of the name upset him, miss. There was no mistake about that.'
She subsided again, shaking her head. 'I can't begin to explain that. They're wrong, you know, when they say 'What's in a name?' There seems to be everything in it.'
'Just at the moment,' agreed Sloan. He coughed. 'About the other matter, miss…'
'My father?'
'The man in the photograph.'
'Cyril Jenkins…'
'Yes, miss. We've got a general call out for him now, starting in the Calleford area…'
'You'll find him, won't you?'
'I think we will,' said Sloan with a certain amount of reservation. 'Whether, if we do, we shall find he fulfils all three conditions of identity…'
'Three?'
'That your father, the man in the photograph and Cyril Edgar Jenkins are all one and the same.'
She nodded and said positively, 'I can only tell you one of them, that he was the man in the photograph.' She tightened her lips. 'You'll have to tell me the other two afterwards, won't you?'
Sloan frowned. There were quite a few little matters that Cyril Jenkins could inform them about and the first question they would ask him was where exactly he had been just before eight o'clock on Tuesday evening. Aloud he said, 'We'll tell you all we can, miss, though you realise someone might simply have borrowed his photograph to put on the mantelpiece here?'
