‘My mother-in-law, Irene,’ says Stella. ‘Mother,’ she raises her voice slightly. ‘It’s the policeman come back to talk to us.’
Judy suppresses a smile at the thought of Nelson being reduced to ‘the policeman’, like a character in an Agatha Christie play. Irene smiles sweetly at Judy.
‘You’re not the same girl that came before.’
‘No,’ says Nelson, rather quickly. ‘That was Dr Galloway, the forensic archaeologist. This is Detective Sergeant Johnson.’
Judy says hallo and accepts an offer of tea. So the boss came here with Ruth, did he?
‘Shall we stay in the kitchen?’ Stella Hastings is saying. ‘It’s much warmer than the drawing room. Jack won’t be long. He’s taken the dogs out.’
Drawing room, thinks Judy. She doesn’t know if she’s ever heard anyone calling it that in real life. She shoots a glance at Nelson who raises his eyebrows.
Stella puts the kettle on and Irene starts arranging cups and saucers. The fire hisses and the sleet hammers against the windows. Judy takes a proffered shortbread and hopes that the interview takes a nice long time. She has no desire to be out on the road again with an increasingly grumpy Nelson. She hopes that Jack Hastings doesn’t come back too soon. She can’t imagine anyone taking a walk in this weather but she supposes that, if you have dogs, you have to take them out. A good reason for not having dogs.
She is halfway through her second cup when Jack Hastings appears, accompanied by what seems to be a sea of dogs, but soon resolves itself into two hysterically wagging spaniels.
‘Detective Chief Inspector. What a pleasant surprise.’
The irony, if it is irony, doesn’t register on Nelson’s stony face.
‘I did say that I’d like another chat.’
‘A chat? Yes, fine. Fine. Chat away.’
Hastings stands in front of the fire and rubs his hands together. It’s a remarkably defensive pose, thinks Judy, like a stag at bay or, perhaps, a politician facing questions across the floor of the house.
‘Mr Hastings,’ begins Nelson, ‘last time I was here we talked about the Home Guard, about any members that might still be alive. You mother mentioned Archie Whitcliffe. He used to send you Christmas cards, apparently.’
Hastings looks over at his mother, who is making another pot of tea, deep in concentration.
‘I remember…’ he says hesitantly.
‘Mr Whitcliffe was living at the Greenfields Care Home. Did you ever visit him there?’
‘No.’ Hastings looks bemused now.
‘What about Hugh Anselm? We spoke about him on the phone.’
Suddenly Irene Hastings puts down the teapot and bustles purposefully from the room. Nelson wonders if he ought to call her back. She’s the one who remembers the war years, after all. Jack Hastings does not seem to have noticed his mother’s departure.
‘Hugh Anselm,’ he says. ‘I don’t remember the name.’
‘You mother mentioned him. He was one of the younger members of the Home Guard. Archie Whitcliffe was another.’
‘She has wonderful recall of those years,’ says Stella, who has briskly taken over the tea-making. ‘But thinking about it can make her upset. They were desperate times here in Broughton, I think.’
Nelson continues to address Jack Hastings. ‘So you’ve never met Archie Whitcliffe or Hugh Anselm?’
‘I don’t think so, no. What’s all this about?’
‘Archie Whitcliffe died last week. Hugh Anselm a few weeks earlier.’
‘But you can’t think there’s anything suspicious about their deaths, surely? I mean they must have been old men. On the phone you said that you thought this Hugh chap had been murdered.’
Judy looks at Nelson. It’s unlike the boss to say something like this to an outsider. Never assume, that was Nelson’s mantra. Why would he suddenly start sharing his assumptions with a member of the public, especially someone who appears almost to be a suspect? She remembers the initial investigation into Hugh Anselm’s death. At the time Clough had described it as a tragic accident, there was even a sort of black humour about the situation. ‘Old dear dead in a stairlift.’ Now the everyday deaths of these two old men are taking on a very different aspect and there is something sinister at work in the cosy room, even if Judy can’t work out exactly what it is.
‘We’re following several lines of enquiry,’ Nelson replies now, perhaps regretting saying so much in the first place.
Jack Hastings looks at his wife and it appears as if she is about to speak when Irene comes back into the room. She walks up to Nelson and places a photograph on the table in front of him.
‘That’s Archie,’ she says quietly, ‘with his hat at an angle. My Buster used to have a go at him about that. That’s Hugh, with the glasses.’
Judy peers over Nelson’s shoulder. The picture is in black and white and shows a group of men standing in front of a grey-walled house. This house, she realises. At first glance they look identical, homogenised by baggy, ill-fitting uniforms and by a sort of sepia-tinted nostalgia. But, looking closer, Judy sees that the three men in front are a lot younger than the others. Even in sepia, they look full of life.
‘I’ve seen this picture before,’ says Nelson. ‘There was a copy in Archie Whitcliffe’s bedroom.’ He looks at Irene. ‘Which was Buster?’
Judy is betting on the walrus moustache, who looks like a old-style army major, the sort of man who could be described as a ‘real old devil’. But Irene points to a small, insignificant-looking chap at the far right of the picture.
‘That’s Buster. Jack looks very like him, doesn’t he?’
‘Very,’ says Nelson.
‘That’s Edwin Butler next to him, he’d been badly shell-shocked in the first lot. That’s Syd Austin, he had the fish shop in the village. His son was killed at Dunkirk. That’s Donald Drummond, he was the gardener here. That’s Ernst Hoffman, the one with the moustache. He was German by birth but his family lived in Broughton for years. He was interned at the start of the war and sent to the Isle of Man. Buster kicked up such a fuss that he was released. Ernst was a scientist, a very clever one.’
Stella wasn’t wrong about the old lady’s memory, thinks Judy. She looks back at the photograph. It’s hard to connect these faded figures, like something from a history book, with the stories of life and death. But to Irene the photo isn’t a historical curio, it’s a memento of her husband, of his friends.
Hugh is unsmiling, as awkward and intense as in his First Communion picture. He looks like the sort of boy who might grow up to do the Telegraph crossword. Archie looks far more cheerful, grinning away as if the whole thing is a game of cowboys and Indians. He looks like his grandson, Judy realises. The same good looks and proud bearing, but where Gerry Whitcliffe seems afraid of showing his true feelings, Archie looks afraid of nothing.
‘Mrs Hastings,’ Nelson addresses Irene who is still looking at the photo, smoothing its edges lovingly. ‘Do you remember any talk of a German invasion in 1940?’
Jack Hastings laughs but Irene says serenely, ‘There was always talk but it never came to anything, did it?’
‘Was invasion a big fear in these parts?’
‘Yes,’ says Irene, carefully covering the teapot with a knitted cosy. ‘We were sure they would come. Buster was sure. He insisted on nightly patrols. They had a boat too. I think it was Syd’s. They’d go out on the moonless nights, sailing along the coves. Buster thought it would happen on a moonless night.’
Judy hears Archie’s voice: On moonless nights, the darks we called them, we went out in the boat. What happened on that dark night, nearly seventy years ago?
‘He set up defences along the beach,’ Irene was saying. ‘Ernst helped him. He knew all about explosives, you see. “They won’t take us by surprise,” Buster used to say. “They won’t find Broughton undefended.”’