Finding Major Calogreedy turned out to be Charles's easiest task so far. There were only two Calogreedys who'd seen service in the war. Calogreedy and Weatheral had offices at Lambeth. A telephone cal established that Calogreedy was in the office, running the business, and had indeed seen action in France. Laurence made an appointment to go over and see him the folowing Friday at midday, ignoring Charles's efforts to lure him to a party in Suffolk.
'But we're celebrating,' Charles had said and added, 'Funny choice of day to track down this Calogreedy.'
It was not cold so he decided to walk. He passed down a peaceful Kingsway towards Aldwych but as he got nearer to the Strand he seemed to be crossing the tail-end of a crowd, the bulk of which he could see pushing westwards towards Whitehal. The mass of people were hardly moving. Just out of sight, but stil just audible, was a brass band. He listened and recognised it as a hymn. He knew the words to it. 'Victor, he rose; victorious too shal rise, They who have drunk His cup of sacrifice.' Hearing it so unexpectedly made a great impact on him. Although he was far from sharing its sentiments now, the music was as powerfuly evocative as ever; to his horror, the conflicting emotions made him shiver.
As the hymn died away he realised with a shock the significance of Charles's apparently throwaway remark. Almost simultaneously the bels of Big Ben rang out over a nearly silent London. Eleven o'clock. It was Armistice Day. This year there was a ceremony at the new Cenotaph and a few of those around him were wearing the paper poppies. They looked oddly frivolous but the expressions on the faces in the crowd belied that. Whether the crowds wanted to see the King or wanted to honour their dead, everybody was looking back, either in sorrow, as here, or in jubilation—going to the races or, like Charles, preparing for a party. The country was divided: between those who wept and those who danced.
Except he was doing neither. Only three years had passed, yet he had forgotten it was the eleventh. Peace descended more abruptly around him now than it had in 1918; he could hear the flutter of squabbling pigeons on a window ledge. The sky above him was uniformly grey.
He remembered when the news had come through in France. He'd been in a makeshift stable, examining a sick horse. They were trying to decide whether to shoot it. The horse was coughing and roling its eyes as a young farrier tried to restrain it. Its jaw was dark with saliva and it looked completely mad. The new adjutant had rushed in but was stopped in his tracks by the sight of the deranged horse. Then he said, 'It's over.' And for a second Laurence had thought he meant they should hurry up and shoot the horse. Once he understood what the officer realy meant, his first thought was that it would be marvelous to have a clean colar every day. His second had been a feeling of such profound pointlessness that even remembering it now made him want to weep.
When the silence came to an end, he crossed over Waterloo Bridge, which was bitingly cold in the wind, and then moved into the shelter of buildings on the south bank of the river. He walked briskly along York Road towards Lambeth. The business was easy to find: a middle-sized factory abutted the road. Above a wide archway the words 'Calogreedy and Weatheral' were speled out in ironwork. The buildings were quite old but the sign looked new. When Laurence entered the gateway a young man in a dark suit came towards him.
'Mr Bartram,' he said, holding out his hand. 'Would you please folow me, sir?'
Calogreedy's office was just across a smal yard. Laurence stepped forward and greeted the tal man who had stood up behind his desk. As the door closed behind them, a distant background of banging and grinding became fainter.
'The men al wanted to come in, business as usual, but we stopped for the commemoration,' said Calogreedy, shaking Laurence's hand and nodding back towards the yard. 'I said a prayer. It was appreciated, I think, but one never quite knows.'
Calogreedy was obviously a military man, upright and with decisive movements. He had dark hair, a neat moustache, blue eyes and weathered skin. He was about forty-five, Laurence guessed. The entire wal behind him was covered in photographs. Some looked recent and were of what Laurence presumed was the factory floor: with workbenches, presses and tool racks as a background to ten or so men in overals. One picture was of Calogreedy shaking hands with a government minister. The more faded ones were either regimental or apparently taken in India: a tiger shoot, a magnificent picnic overlooking a fort in the foothils of some mountains, and one of what looked like the 1912 Durbar. The King and Queen stood pale and stiff under a silken canopy, dwarfed by ostrich- plumed officers, jeweled maharajahs and ornately decked elephants. It might as wel have been another century.
'Wel, to start with, you've certainly found the right man. Funnily enough, the only other serving Calogreedy—I believe—was my brother Godfrey. He's a director of the company, too, and might as easily have been here today, but I'm clearly the man you are after. Basil Calogreedy. A regular. Indian Army.' He nodded to the photographs. 'Sappers.'
Laurence wondered, briefly, whether Calogreedy had been in the same outfit as his fictitious brother, Robert.
'Came out in 1919 and bought this business. We've been expanding ever since. Weatheral was a sleeping partner. Very much asleep, in fact, as he passed on before the war, but the name means something in the locks and safes world so we kept it. Doing wel. Factories in Birmingham and Bristol. Unfortunately, we live in hard times: men come out of uniform and there's no job for them.' He sat back, placing the palms of his hands flat on his desk. 'Outcome: desperation. Burglary. Petty theft. Solution: good locks. Al the men I take on have been in uniform. We owe it to them. Find they can't get skiled positions because they've been out of their trade for four years and some fifteen-year-old is being trained up for a pittance.'
He shook his head in apparent disbelief at his own words before his attention returned to Laurence.
'I can't think I've much to contribute but perhaps if you fire off some questions, something I say wil be of use. Strange business, your friend's death. Sadly not unique, though.'
'It was very hard for his sister and widowed mother,' said Laurence. Then, hesitantly, 'Do you remember an incident in 1916? I believe you were passing through a vilage near Albert where there was a colapse of a major trench system. Two men kiled, one injured? My friend was one of those men.'
Calogreedy wrinkled his brow. 'It happened al too often,' he said, but it was obvious that he knew what Laurence was talking about. 'I wasn't actualy there on that occasion—I was surveying another stretch. It was my servant who helped get the men out. They were lucky. Lucky not more men were down there, I mean. I'd been sent forward because the diggers were anxious about the stability of the trenches; they were pushing ahead at terrific speed. HQ wanted them back in commission, but they didn't have the materials to prop the new tunnels adequately and the ground was chalky; tree roots a problem, as I recal, and they kept running into abandoned German trenches. Anyway the colapse simply bore out my judgment. Three or four men, including your felow presumably, were underneath when it caved in. Byers, an officer and an NCO got the survivor out.'
'Byers?' said Laurence, remembering the name on John's list.
'Yes. Leonard Byers. He was my servant—a good man; tremendous aptitude for figures. Farm boy. Bit of a
