To displace such uncomfortable thoughts, Carole turned the beam of her torch on to the far wall, to reveal a collapsing bookcase loaded with cardboard storage boxes. They were of antiquated design, probably thirties office equipment, and over them the dust lay as thick as felt.
Carole wished she had gloves, but they were in the pocket of her Burberry, and she was too excited to bother going up to fetch them.
She reached forward to one of the cardboard boxes, lifted the lid, and shone her torch inside.
It was full to the brim of hand-written papers.
The paper was unlined, and the further down the page the small awkward handwriting progressed, the more its lines tended to drift upwards to the right.
Whatever Carole was looking at had been written by Esmond Chadleigh.
Miss Hidebourne riffled through a neat box-file of letters, one of many, each labelled with dates and details of its contents. When they were finally handed over to the County Records Office, the papers would be in excellent order.
‘The same theme recurs in many of the letters, amidst a certain amount of Bracketts domestic trivia and news of old Oxford friends.’ The old lady held one out to Jude. ‘This’ll give you an idea of the sort of thing, Miss Nichol. Dated 1933, the year before Hugo Strider died. Read that paragraph.’
Jude obediently followed the swollen-knuckled finger.
I know I keep harping on about this, Gerard, but I do still feel huge guilt about Graham Chadleigh’s death. I have never been to confession about what I did. I know I should have done, and I know the confidentiality of the confessional is supposed to be absolute, but some deeds are too dreadful to be spoken. (A betrayal of my mental state, perhaps, that I, who have lost the faculty of speech, should use the word ‘spoken’.) It is not just the terror of the confessional that holds me back in this matter. There is also a promise I gave to F, that I would never breathe a word about it to another human soul. I cannot disobey. For so many reasons, F has power over me. He is perhaps the only one who knows the magnitude of the crime that I have committed.
‘I don’t suppose,’ asked Jude, ‘that you have any idea of the nature of the crime which Lieutenant Strider committed.’
The small, white-haired head shook. ‘No idea that I can prove, no. But it’s clearly nothing venial, is it?’
‘No.’
‘And in the heat of the battle, in a hell on earth like Passchendaele, with men armed to the teeth, all kind of things could have happened, couldn’t they? With nobody any the wiser?’
‘Are you suggesting that Lieutenant Strider murdered Graham Chadleigh?’
‘Well, it’s a thought, isn’t it?’ said Miss Hidebourne with a sweet smile.
Carole was sitting with her back against the wall of her cell. Around her spread a litter of open, dusty boxes. She was totally absorbed in the riches she had unearthed.
She focused torchlight on to a letter in the neat copperplate handwriting of Felix Chadleigh.
Dear Esmond,
I am writing this in confirmation of what we agreed last night. Your sisters will be receiving similar letters, and I want you to keep them in a safe place for ever. When I am dead, you will still be able to look at this, and remember the vow you made last night.
We all know what the truth is, the new truth, the truth we will all stand by. Hugo, after some misgivings, has agreed to support that truth too.
Do not let me down. Any of you. I am not so melodramatic as to talk in term’s of father’s curses, but if anyone in the Chadleigh family lets me down in this matter, he or she will earn my eternal hatred, a hatred which will instantly cut through all ties of parental affection and which – believe it or not – I guarantee will continue from beyond the grave.
Your Father.
What on earth could it mean? What was he talking about?
Carole riffled through the contents of the latest box. She found another unlined sheet in Esmond Chadleigh’s distinctive hand. There were scratchings-out and words inserted, a draft of something he was working on.
She read: ‘I’m writing to you at the request of my commanding officer who had a request from Lieutenant Strider for anyone who witnessed what happened to his men . . .’
Carole heard a sound from the main Priest’s Hole above. Her heart leapt in shock, as she looked guiltily upwards.
The beam of a strong torch invaded her hideaway, coming to rest on her face, blinding her.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Jude was thoughtful as she left Miss Hidebourne’s flat and stood waiting for her taxi. The old lady had, reasonably enough, not allowed her to take any of the letters with her, but given permission for further research visits if required. If he was fit enough, Jude wanted to get Laurence to come and look through the material. Though the image of him dripping his cigarette ash over the neat surfaces of Miss Hidebourne’s flat was incongruous, his instinct for research would quickly lead him to what was important.
Jude had found some useful detail in the letters, and pieced together a kind of chronology for Lieutenant Strider’s life in 1917. Writing to Gerard Hide-bourne, he had told how he’d used his influence from out in Flanders to get a commission in his own regiment for the eighteen-year-old Graham Chadleigh. There were a few mentions of the young man’s officer training, details passed on in letters Strider had received from Felix Chadleigh, and the Lieutenant’s clear view that such minimal preparation was inadequate for someone about to face the horrors of the Ypres Salient.
Then, at the beginning of October 1917, Strider wrote to his friend from Bracketts. He’d been given two weeks’ home leave and, since he had no close living relatives, the natural course was to spend that time with his old friend Felix Chadleigh and his family.
Jude recalled how the letter had captured the atmosphere of suppressed tension in the house.
Felix and Mrs Chadleigh are understandably anxious about what the future holds for Graham. I, knowing the full horror of some of the possibilities, exercise great control over what I say, trying to infuse into them a spirit of optimism about the War which I cannot really claim to feel myself. The younger children are in a state of high excitement, running round the house in endless games of mock-battles, in which Esmond is always the British hero, overcoming incalculable odds, while his poor sisters are conscripted into the thankless roles of Boche soldiers. I would find it charming, were I not constantly comparing their innocent play to the reality that lies across the Channel.
There is no escaping the War, though some try. The son of the housekeeper at Bracketts, a lad called Pat Heggarty who worked as a stable-boy here, received his papers last week. Stories he had heard from the Front put the boy into such a blue funk that he ran away . . . the Lord knows where to. Living rough up on the Downs, I imagine, maybe with a rabble of other cowards who refused to answer the call of King and Country.
The incident has put poor old Felix into a serious quandary. Mrs Heggarty has been with the family many years. She’s a devout Irish Catholic and a good worker; neither Felix nor Mrs Chadleigh has ever had cause to reprimand her about anything. And yet can they continue to employ a woman whose son has offended against every moral principle that exists? Felix has not yet made up his mind, though I do not see how he can possibly keep Mrs Heggarty on under the circumstances.