—”
“Marsh,” I said again, sharply. He turned his eyes to mine.
“Let me follow her. Alistair would stick out, and there’s a hundred places he couldn’t go.” And it would make me feel as if I were doing
“My cousin will manage. He is very good at it.”
“He’s very good in . . . other places, but in London, following a woman and a child? Marsh, I am trained to this. There are few better.” No time for false modesty.
He looked surprised, Iris puzzled, Alistair relieved. The two men consulted without words—the first time I’d seen them do that, here—then Marsh nodded. “Very well; you and Alistair. You can act the happy pair, and follow her into crowds or the cloak-room.”
Not what I had in mind, but the compromise was acceptable, and we finished the meal in peace.
Afterwards, Marsh announced that he and Iris were going for another walk (I refrained from glancing at the streaming window) and Alistair said that he was due to meet his nephew for a discussion of the Badger farms. This left me either to interview children and servants, or to take to the Greene Library.
It was no difficult decision.
Before retreating up the stairs to the sanctuary of the library, I made a quick dash through the rain to a rosemary bush I had noticed growing outside of the billiards room. Feeling more than a little silly, I dutifully laid the wet sprig onto the mantel below the portrait of Obediah Greene, and although I cannot know if it pleased his shade, it certainly made the air sweet.
I went to my room to fetch my pen and a block of writing-paper. When I got back to the library I found Alistair standing in the middle of the library, gazing up at Mr Greene. When he turned, I saw the large, lumpy file envelope he carried. Wordlessly, he held it out, and watched me carry it to the table I had mentally chosen for my own. I loosed the tie and poured the contents onto the pad of clean blotting-paper.
Three fat journals filled with boyish handwriting, five letters, a pair of identity discs (one the standard fibre tag on a neck-cord, the other a brass disc on a chain bracelet), a silver pocket-watch, a much-used pen-knife, several field post-cards, and a leather-bound Testament with the salty tide-marks of sweat staining its cover.
“When you have finished, Marsh asks that you give them back to him.”
“I will. Thank you.”
He turned to leave, but paused in the doorway. “There is a magnifying glass in the desk below the window. Should you need one.” Then he was gone, leaving me to paw through the personal effects of Sub-Lieutenant Gabriel Hughenfort, Earl of Calminster, ducal heir, enigma of the moment.
The identity discs might have been of value for a psychic reading, but all the necklace told me was that it had ridden on a man for longer than some I had seen, and not as long as others. The bracelet showed signs of dried mud, or possibly blood, but I did not see that laboratory attentions would tell me any more than that a man had worn it in mud, and possibly to die. The sweat-stained Testament had been given Gabriel by his mother, on his eighteenth birthday according to the inscription. The pen-knife looked to be a boy’s treasure taken to a man’s job. The letters GATH were scratched crudely into the side, and the shorter blade was bent so badly it was difficult to open. It also had a chip in the blade, I saw when I had finally prised it open. The longer blade was freckled with rust but was still razor-sharp.
I folded the knife away and took up the pocket-watch. Its cover popped easily, showing me hands stopped at 3:18 (How long after its owner’s death? I wondered). On the inside of the cover was engraved
The artefacts had taught me nothing, only that their owner had lived hard in a damp place, which was no surprise. I was left with his written legacy, and with a grimace, I picked up the more difficult first: the letters from the Front.
The field post-cards were the usual thing, their laconic printed phrases sending the message that their soldier was alive and fit enough to wield a pencil—or at least, to direct the pencil of an aide.
On that card, the signature was shaky, from nerves or injury I could not know.
The three letters written in Gabriel’s neat hand were another matter. All had come via the Field Post Office, so their envelopes were stamped with the usual black postal circle as well as the red triangle of the censor. The earliest was dated 27 December, 1917, sent from France, and contained four pages of news that sounded very like an extended attempt to whistle in the dark—aimed at reassuring not them, but himself. The next was from early April, although it did not seem to be the
I then took up his third envelope. This was thinner, and contained but a single sheet of paper. It had also had a much harder journey to reach Justice than the other two: a worn crease across the middle, one edge crushed in, the back of it looking as if it had ridden about in a filthy pocket for days, if not weeks. The glass showed me several thumbprint-sized smudges and the remains of no fewer than three crushed body lice. Sub-Lieutenant Hughenfort had carried this letter a long time before it had been posted.
The sheet inside was undated. It read:
Lies, I thought, all of it pretty lies to comfort the mother and bereft father, just as families were told of clean bullets and instant death even if their boy had hung for agonised hours on the barbed wire of No-Man’s-Land. I only hoped it brought his parents some scrap of comfort, when it reached their hands.
The last letter was addressed by a different hand. It read:
