Bones of the Buried (6 page)

‘No.’

‘Well, never mind, you’ll like him. Not quite out of the top drawer but very clever.’

‘The Tilneys? It’s worth my going to see them if there’s time?’

‘Definitely. It’s what you would do in any case if you were thrashing around looking for ways of helping Griffiths-Jones. It’s a pity
he
doesn’t have any parents
alive.’

Godfrey Tilney’s parents – once they understood who he was – were pathetically pleased to see Edward. Clearly, the only thing they lived for was perpetuating
the memory of their son and here was an old school friend ready, even eager, to talk about him.

The maid had ushered Edward into a drawing-room which he imagined had remained largely unaltered since the reign of Queen Victoria. The room was dominated by a ‘baby grand’ piano
covered by some sort of lace-edged tablecloth which, in turn, was covered with photographs in silver frames and knickknacks. It looked as though it had never been played. Antimacassars lay primly
– like lace bonnets – on stuffed armchairs and a peculiarly offensive silver stag sat on the mantelpiece eternally fending off two hunting dogs.

Before Edward had time to examine the photographs on the piano, the door opened and he saw a large, unhealthy-looking woman with a pale face and eyes reddened from lack of sleep or excessive
weeping.

‘Lord Edward Corinth?’ she said nervously, holding his card in vague puzzlement.

‘Yes, Mrs Tilney. I do apologise for calling unexpectedly but I am only in London for a day and I wanted to express my sympathies for your dreadful loss.’

‘I remember now. You were a friend of Godfrey’s,’ she said, brightening.

‘Yes, a school friend. I had not seen him for years, don’t y’know, but it was a terrible shock . . .’

Edward had thought it might be better to play the amiable ass which, as Verity would say, did not require much acting ability.

‘How very good of you to call. Please do sit down, Lord Edward. I . . . we miss him . . .’

‘Yes, of course you must,’ said Edward gently, seeing that tears had filled the woman’s eyes and raw emotion was preventing her from speaking. To give her time to recover he
stuttered, ‘I’ve been in America so I missed . . . I’ve only just heard. Frightful business. How did it . . .? Or am I . . . do you not want to talk about it?’ He wanted
desperately to comfort the distraught woman but, even more, he needed to know if she had any information which might help him understand what had happened to her son in the hills outside
Madrid.

‘No! To be frank with you, Lord Edward, it’s still all we can think of. Until this man is executed . . .’

‘But why did it happen? Who would want to . . . to hurt Godfrey?’

‘Well, that’s exactly what we can’t understand. We – my husband and I – attended the trial in Madrid. A horrible place,’ she added, actually shuddering.
‘We don’t speak Spanish of course and the interpreter’s English was not very good so I dare say we missed much of what was said. The evidence seemed quite clear, you know: a knife
which belonged to this man – ’ she could not bear to say Griffiths-Jones’ name – ‘and some bloodstained clothes were discovered in his rooms but I never did understand
why he had done such a dreadful thing . . . to my poor innocent boy. They were supposed to be friends.’ To Edward’s discomfort tears poured down her cheeks – tears of which she
seemed quite unaware, perhaps because they were as natural to her now as smiling had been before her son’s death.

Edward persevered: ‘The bloodstained clothes – were they Godfrey’s?’

‘No, they belonged . . . to that man, but they thought the blood was his. He must have . . . got it on himself when he . . . when he stabbed . . . Oh! How can people be so wicked, Lord
Edward?’

‘Were the embassy people helpful?’

‘Oh yes, the ambassador was very sympathetic and he gave us a nice young man to look after us while we were in Madrid.’

‘Would that have been Tom Sutton by any chance?’

‘Why yes! Do you know him?’

At that moment the door of the drawing-room opened and an elderly, straight-backed man with a military moustache entered the room. He put out his hand to the grieving mother and looked at Edward
reproachfully.

‘What is it, Rosemary, my dear?’

‘Oh, Henry, this is an old school friend of Godfrey’s, Lord Edward Corinth. He has been abroad – in America, did you say, Lord Edward? – and has only just
heard.’

‘Lord Edward,’ said Henry Tilney, ‘it is very kind of you to call but you can see we are not in the way of being . . . sociable. You were a friend of my son at Eton?’

‘He was a little older than me – two or three years and of course that sort of age difference means quite a lot to schoolboys, but I think I can say we were friends. We weren’t
in the same house but we played squash together – that sort of thing. I was very surprised and saddened to hear about your loss.’

‘Yes,’ said the man miserably. ‘He was our only son and we had such high hopes . . . but there we are. We should not build . . .’ His words tailed off as if the effort of
speaking was too great.

‘If I remember, Mr Tilney, you were a Member of Parliament – a Conservative – but Godfrey . . . from what I understand he was . . . he was on the left?’

‘Yes,’ said Tilney, smiling wanly. ‘I was MP for Marylebone – retired at the last election, but yes, I’m afraid we did not see eye to eye politically. Godfrey was a
lawyer, you know. He was very concerned with issues of social justice. Got mixed up with that chap D.F. Browne, do you know who I mean? Can’t stand the fellow myself. Anyway, he –
Godfrey – suddenly got the idea that he was needed to help . . . what do they call it now – you know the alliance of left-wing parties . . .?’

‘The Popular Front.’

‘Yes, that’s right. Though why he wanted to go to Spain when there was more than enough for him to do here, or so I should suppose, I don’t know.’

‘Might I ask, sir, was Godfrey a member of the Communist Party?’

‘Of course not!’ broke in Rosemary Tilney angrily as though Edward was accusing her son of being a criminal. ‘He was just devoted to . . . he wanted justice . . . and this was
his reward. Is that justice, Lord Edward? Is it justice that he was murdered for no reason at all?’

As Edward left the gloomy house permeated by grief, he could not but feel that their mourning was tinged with guilt. Perhaps all parents feel guilt if their child dies before they do; it is
against the law of nature. Or was it that they were blaming themselves for not having understood what their only son was trying to do with his life? The father must have thought his son had spat in
his face by rejecting his own political values so comprehensively and it was no good trying to tell him that most children rebelled against their fathers.

The anguish of loss: Edward knew something of the pain felt by parents when their children predeceased them. His eldest brother, Franklyn, had died in the first week of the war and his father
had never come to terms with the tragedy. He had been in a very real sense a prisoner of war. Gerald, Edward’s other brother, who had succeeded as Duke of Mersham, had never been forgiven by
his father for surviving while the favourite son had not. It had caused a fracturing of relationships in the family from which everyone had suffered. Edward, very much the youngest of the three
brothers, had, in effect, grown up fatherless because the old Duke had gone into a depression from which nothing could stir him except death itself.

One thing was certain: it would have been worse than useless to ask the Tilneys to plead for Griffiths-Jones’ life. If he had suggested it, he would have been thrown out of the house. It
was better to keep their goodwill so he could go back to them at some future time if he needed their help. Mr Tilney had obviously been puzzled at the absence of any apparent motive for his
son’s murder and it puzzled Edward too. What reason had Griffiths-Jones, or anyone else for that matter, to murder Godfrey Tilney? Griffiths-Jones was one of the most determined and committed
political animals he had ever met and to be behind bars now, just when the new government was taking control of the country, must be, to put it mildly, frustrating. He suspected Griffiths-Jones of
being utterly ruthless in pursuit of his ambitions and he was quite ready to believe that he would kill without remorse if he needed to, but to muck up a murder so as to end up in front of a firing
squad seemed out of character. He was too efficient to leave evidence all over the place, as he was alleged to have done. No, no, no! Edward was quite ready to believe David Griffiths-Jones capable
of murder – capable of murdering
him
even – but not of making a hash of it.

It was an odd way of proving someone innocent but the more Edward considered the matter, the more he felt Verity was right, if for all the wrong reasons. For Verity, her lover was a saint
– if the Communist Party had saints – battling tyranny and incapable of anything shoddy or underhand. Edward believed he knew that was nonsense. He had just a few days to try and prove
to an indifferent world that the man condemned to death for murdering Godfrey Tilney was guilty of much but not this. He doubted he could do it but, for Verity’s sake, he was determined to
try. As for blackmailing Griffiths-Jones into becoming a police spy for Basil Thoroughgood, it was just as likely he could turn water into wine but he had to pretend it was a possibility if he was
to have Foreign Office help in getting a stay of execution. There would be no point in finding out who really had killed Godfrey Tilney if Griffiths-Jones had already been tied to a stake,
blindfolded and shot.

Bragg was a piratical figure with only one eye, the other being covered by a black patch. He also boasted a wooden foot. It was a miracle he could fly at all. In the last days
of the war he had almost been killed in a dog fight over the outskirts of Albert. A splinter of wood had entered his eye blinding him immediately and causing him almost unbearable pain. Somehow,
with extraordinary fortitude, he had managed to land the aircraft before losing consciousness, but his foot had been trapped in the fuselage and had had to be amputated. He ought to have died of
blood poisoning or the sheer pain of his wounds but he survived and even learnt to fly again, though, as Edward knew, it could be a frightening experience for his passengers.

Edward had picked up Verity from Holland Park shortly after five o’clock. By the time they got to Croydon – the Lagonda had made good time on the empty roads – it was getting
light. It was perishing cold and Verity looked very small buried under a tartan rug and a huge ulster Edward had brought for her. She wore a black beret, a long woollen scarf round her neck and
heavy leather gauntlets. Edward was aware they had a lot to talk about. There was so little he knew about the circumstances of her life in Spain. How well did she know Tilney? What was his
relationship with Griffiths-Jones? Was one of them senior to the other in the Party? Because, whatever his parents believed, Verity confirmed that he was an active communist. Who else might have
wanted Tilney dead? Lots of questions, but somehow he knew that, today at least, he would never ask them. Not having seen Verity for six months made him shy or even guilty – guilty that he
had not missed her more. It was ridiculous, he knew, but he felt he had been idling his life away in an unreal world of luxury and artifice while she had been roughing it in the real world, making
a name for herself as a journalist to whom people listened. Perhaps it wasn’t guilt he felt but envy.

In any case, it was too early and much too cold to ask and answer questions. It was enough to ride in silence through the Surrrey countryside with this feisty, gallant girl beside him, for once
silent, vulnerable and trusting. She was so different from the girls he had met as a young man in the drawing-rooms of Mayfair and Eaton Square, waiting complacently or apathetically to be selected
for breeding by one of the arrogant males before whom they paraded. Even then the ‘deb’s delights’, as the men were called, had referred to ‘the season’ as a cattle
market and had made jokes about the mothers who chaperoned their girls with such terrible determination.

They had the hood up over the tonneau and Verity snuggled up to him and fell fast asleep, making it difficult for Edward to change gear without waking her. In her sleep she occasionally
shivered, whether from the cold or because of her dreams, he could not say. He felt unutterably happy.

Croydon aerodrome was not much more than a cluster of hangars around a tarmacked runway. The one building of character was the control tower and there they found Harry Bragg already prepared for
take-off. He fed them hot black coffee and bacon sandwiches to keep out the cold. ‘Good to see you, Corinth. Last time must have been two years ago in Mombasa, eh?’ The two men shook
hands, more or less ignoring Verity, in Bragg’s case out of shyness. Since his disfigurement, he felt he was repulsive to look at. Verity, still in something of a trance, did not seem to
notice him at all. ‘The weather looks set fair,’ Bragg said. His voice was a little slurred, not because of drink, though he and Edward both had flasks of brandy with them, but because
of his war injury. ‘It’s going to be cold, old lad – and noisy. This old bus is a goer – no question of that – one of the fastest in the sky but she’s noisy and
she leaks. Know what I mean?’ He grinned. Edward knew what he meant – it was going to be very cold.

Bragg was curious about why his old friend was being whisked off to Madrid in an aeroplane instead of the usual train journey across France but he knew better than to ask. Lord Weaver had given
him his instructions in person but had told him nothing except that he was to deliver Verity, the
New Gazette’s
Spanish correspondent, and Lord Edward Corinth to Madrid with all
possible despatch and then return to London to await further orders. Now all he said was, ‘We won’t be able to talk much on the flight but I will indicate like this if there is anything
I think you ought to see.’ He waved his gauntlet-covered hands first in one direction and then in the other.