"All clear so far," I told him. "But I've still got a few more farms in the north of the county to check out."
"I used to know someone in your department," he said.
"Oh, yes?"
"Sir Charles Trumper."
"Before my time," I said taking a swig from my beer, "but they still talk about him back at the ministry. Must have been a tough customer if half the stories about him are true."
"Bloody right," said Wrexall. "And but for him I'd be a rich man."
"Really?"
"Oh, yes. You see, I used to own a little property in London before I moved up here. A pub, along with an interest in several shops in Chelsea Terrace, to be exact. He picked the lot up from me during the war for a mere six thousand. If I'd waited another twenty-four hours I could have sold them for twenty thousand, perhaps even thirty."
"But the war didn't end in twenty-four hours."
"Oh, no, I'm not suggesting for one moment that he did anything dishonest, but it always struck me as a little more than a coincidence that having not set eyes on him for years he should suddenly show up in this pub on that very morning."
Wrexall's glass was now empty.
"Same again for both of us?" I suggested, hoping that the investment of another half crown might further loosen his tongue.
"That's very generous of you, sir," he responded, and when he returned he asked, "Where was I?"
"'On that very morning . . .'"
"Oh, yes, Sir Charles—Charlie, as I always called him. Well, he closed the deal right here at this bar, in under ten minutes, when blow me if another interested party didn't ring up and ask if the properties were still for sale. I had to tell the lady in question that I had just signed them away."
I avoided asking who "the lady" was, although I suspected I knew. "But that doesn't prove that she would have offered you twenty thousand pounds for them," I said.
"Oh, yes, she would," responded Wrexall. "That Mrs. Trentham would have offered me anything to stop Sir Charles getting his hands on those shops."
"Great Scott," I said, once again avoiding the word "why?"
"Oh, yes, the Trumpers and the Trenthams have been at each other's throats for years, you know. She still owns a block of flats right in the middle of Chelsea Terrace. It's the only thing that's stopped him from building his grand mausoleum, isn't it? What's more, when she tried to buy Number 1 Chelsea Terrace, Charlie completely outfoxed her, didn't he? Never seen anything like it in my life."
"But that must have been years ago," I said. "Amazing how people go on bearing grudges for so long."
"You're right, because to my knowledge this one's been going on since the early twenties, ever since her posh son was seen walking out with Miss Salmon."
I held my breath.
"She didn't approve of that, no, not Mrs. Trentham. We all had that worked out at the Musketeer, and then when the son disappears off to India the Salmon girl suddenly ups and marries Charlie. And that wasn't the end of the mystery."
"No?"
"Certainly not," said Wrexall. "Because none of us are sure to this day who the father was."
"The father?"
Wrexall hesitated. "I've gone too far. I'll say no more."
"Such a long time ago, I'm surprised anyone still cares," I offered as my final effort before draining my glass.
"True enough," said Wrexall. "That's always been a bit of a mystery to me as well. But there's no telling with folks. Well, I must close up now, sir, or I'll have the law after me."
"Of course. And I must get back to those cattle."
Before I returned to Cambridge I sat in the car and wrote down every word I could remember the landlord saying. On the long journey back I tried to piece together the new clues and get them into some sort of order. Although Wrexall had supplied a lot of information I hadn't known before he had also begged a few more unanswered questions. The only thing I came away from that pub certain of was that I couldn't possibly stop now.
The next morning I decided to return to the War Office and ask Sir Horace's old secretary if she knew of any way that one could trace the background of a former serving officer.
"Name?" said the prim middle-aged woman who still kept her hair tied in a bun, a style left over from the war.
"Guy Trentham," I told her.
"Rank and regiment?"
"Captain and the Royal Fusiliers would be my guess."
She disappeared behind a closed door, but was back within fifteen minutes clutching a small brown file. She extracted a single sheet of paper and read aloud from it. "Captain Guy Trentham, MC. Served in the First War, further service in India, resigned his commission in 1922. No explanation given. No forwarding address."
"You're a genius," I said, and to her consternation kissed her on the forehead before leaving to return to Cambridge.
The more I discovered, the more I found I needed to know, even though for the time being I seemed to have come to another dead end.
For the next few weeks I concentrated on my job as a supervisor until my pupils had all safely departed for their Christmas vacation.
I returned to London for the three-week break and spent a happy family Christmas with my parents at the Little Boltons. Father seemed a lot more relaxed than he had been during the summer, and even Mother appeared to have shed her unexplained anxieties.
However, another mystery arose during that holiday and as I was convinced it was no way connected with the Trenthams, I didn't hesitate to ask my mother to solve it.
"What's happened to Dad's favorite picture?"
Her reply saddened me greatly and she begged me never to raise the subject of The Potato Eaters with my father.
The week before I was due to return to Cambridge I was strolling back down Beaufort Street towards the Little Boltons, when I spotted a Chelsea pensioner in his blue serge uniform trying to cross the road.
"Allow me to help you," I offered.
"Thank you, sir," he said, looking up at me with a rheumy smile.
"And who did you serve with?" I asked casually.
"The Prince of Wales Own," he replied. "And you?"
"The Royal Fusiliers." We crossed the road together. "Got any of those, have you?"
"The Fussies," he said. "Oh, yes, Banger Smith who saw service in the Great War, and Sammy Tomkins who joined up later, twenty-two, twenty-three, if I remember, and was then invalided out after Tobruk."
"Banger Smith?" I said.
"Yes," replied the pensioner as we reached the other side of the road. "A right skiver, that one." He chuckled chestily. "But he still puts in a day a week at your regimental museum, if his stories are to be believed."
I was first to enter the small regimental museum in the Tower of London the following day, only to be told by the curator that Banger Smith only came in on Thursdays, and even then couldn't always be relied on. I glanced around a room filled with regimental mementoes, threadbare flags parading battle honors, a display case with uniforms, out-of-date implements of war from a bygone age and large maps covered in different colored pins depicting how, where and when those honors had been won.
As the curator was only a few years older than me I didn't bother him with any questions about the First World War.
I returned the following Thursday when I found an old soldier seated in a corner of the museum pretending to be fully occupied.
"Banger Smith?"
The old contemptible couldn't have been an inch over five feet and made no attempt to get up off his chair. He looked at me warily.
"What of it?"
I produced a ten-bob note from my inside pocket.
He looked first at the note and then at me with an inquiring eye. "What are you after?"
"Can you remember a Captain Guy Trentham, by any chance?" I asked.