Justice Hall

hoping that his held the blank. And do you know what that lad called out to his executioners when he heard the bullets going into their chambers?

“‘Aim true, boys!’ he said. ‘Don’t let me down.’?”

And with that, Hastings finally buried his face in his hands and wept. I was not far from sobbing myself, and Holmes’ stony features concealed little of his own emotion.

It would have been a mercy to end there, to offer the man our bleak thanks and leave him to his misery. Since that was not possible, we were obliged to regroup, to ply Hastings with food and drink until he had regained his equanimity. It was distressingly like the medical attention given a man to enable him to stand with his blindfold in place.

An hour later, with a degree of colour returned to those sallow cheeks, Holmes went after the last pieces.

“You told us he had a visitor.”

“The night before the execution, yes.”

“Only one?”

“Two, in addition to myself and his batman, but one was simply a representative from his men, offering their farewell greetings. The other was an officer, a staff major I had not seen before. He asked me to leave them alone, spent perhaps two hours with Gabriel, then left.”

“Did the boy tell you who this major was, what they said?”

“He was a friend, perhaps a family member. Some person of long acquaintance, to judge by the warmth of the handshake. And the man did seem to do some good. Before he arrived, Gabriel was growing increasingly agitated—pacing in his cell, unable to settle to prayer or conversation. He had been asking me if I would take a letter to the commanding officer. He had not written anything as yet, but he seemed to think that the letter might save him. I tried to press him—if there were mitigating circumstances, health problems, if he’d lied about his age, anything that might convert his sentence, that I could present in appeal—but before I could find out what he had in mind, this major arrived, and when he left, Gabriel’s demeanour had altered entirely. Whatever they said to each other, the boy’s fear had vanished, replaced by a calm acceptance that gave him a sort of wisdom beyond his years. He seemed to radiate holiness, if that doesn’t sound like some foolish fancy of an old man. He was very beautiful.”

“And you have no idea who this red-tab major was?”

“I don’t.”

“What did he look like? Tall, short, blond, what?”

“It was fully dark. The nights were brief then, but he came well after mid-night. He was shorter than I, but not much. I didn’t see his hair. If it is important, you might ask his family. They will almost certainly have saved the letter Gabriel wrote them.”

“It was brief and uninformative,” Holmes told him.

“No, no, I mean his last letter, the one he wrote and gave to the major.”

There was a moment’s startled silence. Then Holmes said grimly, “You had best tell us about this letter.”

“Do the family not have it? Perhaps they destroyed it. I can understand not wanting to have it as a reminder. It took Gabriel more than an hour to write, earlier that evening, before the visitor came. It came to several pages, I remember that, and was addressed to ‘Father.’ I did not ask to read it; I merely provided the paper and pen.”

“The only letter the family received was a rather grubby object of less than a page, informing them that he was going into battle on the morrow and that he loved them. It was undated.”

“Most of the soldiers carried similar notes, a final good-bye in case they were killed. But there was nothing else from the major?”

“There was no letter from any major.”

“Oh, dear Lord. It must have been lost. What a great pity. But he must have gone to see them, after the War. He was some sort of family, after all.”

“They had no word.”

“But . . . he was staff.” Meaning, staff officers, secure behind the lines, did not suddenly get themselves killed in the final months of fighting. Hastings assumed that we knew this, and continued with his narrative.

“I wrote to the family, of course. But then that is how you found me, so you know that. Writing letters to families was one of the main duties of officers. I found later that there’d been heated exchanges in the House of Commons over executing volunteers, particularly when they were not even legally adults. However, the Army deemed capital punishment a necessary tool in the maintenance of moral fibre, so instead of doing away with executions, they simply concealed them from the people at home. Death notifications became merely ‘died in active service.’ My own letter refrained from mentioning the manner of Gabriel’s death, stressing instead the love his men had for him. I kept the details to myself, since I assumed the major would write and I did not wish to contradict whatever he chose to tell them. What a tragedy, that his parents did not have his final words to them. I suppose this means that Gabriel’s own letters were lost as well?”

“Do you mean to say that this major appropriated the boy’s letters?”

“Goodness. I always assumed he had. That same afternoon, I helped Gabriel’s batman—McFarlane was his name; poor fellow, he was heartbroken—to pack up Gabriel’s effects and return them to the family. There was a pretty biscuit tin where I’d once seen Gabriel put a letter from Helene, and it was gone. I didn’t have the heart to ask McFarlane about it—he was on the edge of tears the whole time. I thought that Gabriel had instructed his man to give them to the major, or perhaps to destroy them. They might have been too personal for him to wish his family to read.”

“Do you remember McFarlane’s full name?”

“Jamie, I think it was—Jamie McFarlane. A gnarled stump of a man; looked as if he’d live to be a hundred and ten, but he died two days before Armistice. Not from injuries, either, but an illness. Pneumonia, as I recall.”

It was frustrating beyond belief, Hastings’ tantalising bits of information that lacked any evidence to tie them together. The picture of Gabriel’s last days had evolved into a ghostly sketch, but every possibility of adding colour and dimension—the major’s name, the batman, the girlfriend’s surname, Gabriel’s letters and diary—was snatched out of our reach as soon as it appeared.

“And the diary, no doubt, went the same way,” Holmes complained bitterly.

But to our surprise, Hastings was again shaking his head. “No. Gabriel kept that with him during the night, and wrote small notes in it from time to time.” And then, as Holmes was opening his mouth to demand what in God’s name had happened to that piece of Gabriel Hughenfort’s life, Hastings’ next words dropped into the room with the impact of an unpinned grenade, tumbling over each other in his haste to explain, and justify. “He gave it to me at dawn, just as they came for him, and said to keep it safe until someone came to ask me for it, and so I kept it, and I waited, and the War ended but no-one came. No-one came! That was when I learnt his true name—only then, nearly a year after his death, did I breach its pages to see if I could find . . . But when I discovered who he was, I didn’t know what to do—I could not bring myself to write to such a family. No, Gabriel told me to keep it safe until someone came to ask me for it, so I kept it safe, and no-one came. Until you.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Holmes recovered his voice first. “You have this diary?”

“Then you weren’t sent to retrieve it?” Hastings said, which sounded more a confirmation of suspicions than a question.

“Why didn’t you tell us you had it in the first place?” I demanded.

“I thought you would ask for it and then leave,” he answered slowly. “When you did not immediately do so, I realised that I wanted you to hear the entire story. Would you have stopped here the afternoon if I’d offered you the diary the minute you arrived? Gabriel deserved having his eulogy delivered once, at least. Thank you for