EG02 - The Lost Gardens (14 page)

‘By the look on your face, it must be serious.’

‘I wouldn’t call it serious, but I thought it best that we talk about it.’

‘I hope you’re not up to something illegal,’ she said with a nervous smile.

‘No, nothing like that. It’s just that I’ve been doing a little—well, detective work.’

‘Oh, about Jack? The books?’

‘No. About Major Ryder, actually,’ he said, taking a bite of toast.

She must have heard what he’d said but she didn’t react unduly surprised. ‘So what’s this detective work you’re up to? Ryder, you said?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why is everybody so obsessed with Ryder? Like Bella at dinner that night, suggesting it could be Ryder’s bones in the well. That was plain ridiculous.’

‘Far fetched, I agree. And I’m not obsessed, Jamie, just curious. The reason I’m bringing it up now is that if you feel that—that it’s none of my business and you don’t want it to go any further, then I’ll drop it.’

Jamie frowned. ‘Exactly what is it you’re doing, Lawrence?’

‘I’ve simply been trying to find out more about Ryder’s army career. He intrigues me. I know it’s a bit presumptuous on my part to be poking into your affairs but I saw no harm in it.’ He made an attempt at a smile, a means of lightening the conversation. ‘Particularly if it were to uncover a long-lost English relative of yours.’ His comment didn’t appear to have the effect intended. Her sober expression hadn’t changed so he decided not to pursue the point, simply staring into his coffee, waiting for her to say something.

‘You’re right, Lawrence. You are being nosy. Perhaps you could be more specific?’

He told her about the Army Personnel letter and that, in the afternoon, he was going to meet a former lance corporal, who he believed could shed more light on Ryder. ‘I promise you, if this chap Loftus has nothing to add to what we already know about Ryder, then it’s a dead issue as far as I’m concerned.’

‘Not exactly what I would call a good choice of words.’ She looked at him for what seemed a long time. Then a faint smile appeared. ‘Have you always had this ambition to be a private eye?’

He smiled. ‘Let me talk to Loftus today and that will probably be the end of it.’

‘All right, since you’ve already gone to all this trouble, you go meet him. I’m not sure that I like it but then I don’t see what harm it can do.’

‘Thanks, Jamie,’ said Kingston, relieved.

‘One other thing,’ she said. ‘This is all between you and me. I don’t want Latimer or anybody else made aware of what you’re doing.’

For the next ten minutes Kingston gave her a progress report on the restoration project. Spreading the plans on the kitchen table he showed her the designs he’d drawn up for a pleached lime walk and a thatched-roof summerhouse. ‘When we have more time I have to tell you about the rose garden, too,’he said. ‘You’re going to like what I’ve got planned for you.’

Jamie picked up her plate and coffee mug and went to the counter. ‘What time do you think you’ll be back from London?’

‘There’s a five fifty out of Waterloo that arrives in Taunton at eight twenty or thereabouts,’ said Kingston. ‘Shouldn’t be any problem catching that.’ He paused. ‘By the way, I’ll get a cab from the station. No point in dragging you out.’ He got up. ‘I suppose we’d better get going. James, my tax chap, is a stickler for punctuality—the politeness of kings, as he puts it.’

In Jamie’s car, a Volvo estate, Kingston strapped on his seatbelt and glanced across at her, a grin on his face. ‘You
will
try to stay on the right side of the road, my dear?’

‘Surely you mean the left,’ she deadpanned, looking over her shoulder, backing up.

A ten-minute walk from Wembley Park tube station had brought Kingston to Loftus’s semi-detached house. He hoped the knee-high weeds surrounding a pathetic patch of brick that was the front garden were not an indication of what he might find inside. He winced and rang the doorbell.

When Arthur Loftus opened the door Kingston was taken aback for a moment. The man in front of him somehow didn’t match the voice on the phone. With his stoop, he couldn’t be much more than five feet tall. His face was deeply wrinkled and his eyes were soulful and abnormally large. Wisps of grey hair clung to the side of his shiny pate like fluff from a bird’s nest. His clothes, a baggy cardigan and worn corduroys, looked as if they doubled as sleepwear.

Loftus’s eyes sized up Kingston, then with a nod of his head—on a level with Kingston’s chest—he said, ‘Come on in, doctor.’

‘Thank you, Arthur. A pleasure to meet you,’ said Kingston.

‘Likewise,’said Loftus, stepping aside and pointing with a malacca cane gripped in his liver-spotted hand. ‘Down the hall, second on the right.’

When Kingston had rung Loftus two days earlier, the first question he had asked was whether Loftus remembered an officer by the name of Ryder. ‘Ryder, blimey, how could I forget him, that bastard,’was Loftus’s answer. From then on Kingston hadn’t been able to get a word in edgewise. After listening for a minute or so, he was convinced that a meeting with Loftus was essential. There was no question that Loftus was in full possession of his faculties. His memory, in particular, was remarkable—sharper than his own, Kingston reckoned. Just before hanging up Loftus had mentioned that he lived alone but that taking care of the house had become just too much for him of late. ‘Gettin’ the upper hand it is,’ he said. He also allowed that Kingston’s timing was fortunate because he was about to move up to Nottingham to live with his younger sister. ‘She’s only eighty-one,’ he chuckled, giving his address and directions, and wishing Kingston a polite good day.

This man was Kingston’s final chance. He was the last of the eight men referred to him by the Personnel Centre. In the course of his phone calls, he had found out that two of the men had recently met their maker, one was in an intensive care ward and not expected to last many more days, while another was in the advanced stages of Alzheimer’s disease. Three more, a lance corporal and two privates, he had talked to on the phone and in each case had decided that further questioning would serve no purpose.

Near the end of the dimly lit hall Kingston entered a small sitting room. ‘Ain’t much but make yourself at home,’ Loftus said cheerfully.

Kingston stood for a moment taking stock of the room and debating where he should sit. Jaundiced lace curtains drawn across the bay window made the floral-papered room even gloomier than the hallway. The sofa facing him had lower back pain written all over it. On a spindly-legged table near the window an aspidistra appeared to be in a valiant struggle for survival against a redoubtable trinity: a radiator, light deprivation and Loftus’s indifference. Kingston chose the wingback chair noticing, too late, the dark patch of grease on its upholstered back where countless heads had rested over countless years. Stacked on the low coffee table in front of the sofa, where Loftus was about to sit, were several bulging and dog-eared scrapbooks.

‘How about something to wet your whistle, doc?’

‘No, I’m fine, Arthur. Thanks anyway.’

‘Art. Call me Art.’ He laughed a little laugh but it couldn’t conceal the flicker of sadness in his round eyes. ‘Used to call me Dodger, me mates did.’

Kingston smiled and nodded.

‘You know? Artful Dodger.’

‘Yes, I got it,’ Kingston said, with a tactful smile. ‘Art, it is then.’ He crossed his long legs and shifted to get comfortable, leaning to one side to avoid the grease patch. Before he could broach the subject of Ryder, Art had launched into a loosely chronological account of his army career. It took him the best part of ten minutes to get from square bashing at Aldershot to landing in Normandy. Kingston became so absorbed in Art’s anecdotal mastery that, at one point, he had to remind himself why he was there in the first place.

Finally, it looked as though Art was running out of words. ‘Sure you don’t want a cuppa, doc?’ he inquired.

In his mind’s eye, Kingston pictured a thick-rimmed mug with chips on the lip, filled with a lukewarm mahogany liquid. ‘No. No thanks, I’m fine, Art,’ he said, perhaps a little too hastily. ‘Can I ask you about this officer named Ryder?’ he added quickly, before Art could start rattling off again.

Whether Art had heard him or not, Kingston couldn’t tell. Until now there had been nothing to suggest that Art might have a hearing problem. Nevertheless he had completely ignored Kingston’s question.

‘So, where was I, now?’ Loftus said, picking up a photo from the open scrapbook and holding it up. The faded black-and-white picture was of three grinning uniformed young men, outstretched arms on each other’s shoulders. ‘Here, this was taken a couple of days after we landed.’ He leaned across the table and placed it in front of Kingston, prodding at it with a bony forefinger.

‘That’s me on the right—and Charlie, with the bottle-bottoms, he’s on the left. And there’s young Eddie in the middle—Eddie Butler.’ He let out a long sigh and massaged his brow. ‘Blown to smithereens—’bout a week later. Poor sod. Only sixteen, he was. Silly bugger lied to get in.’ His eyes searched the photo as if seeing it for the first time, and he slowly shook his head.

Kingston remained respectfully silent, studying the young devil-may-care faces, one by one, as he waited for Art to say something. When, at last, he looked up he was surprised to see a smile on Art’s face.

‘Great on the mouth organ, he was,’ Loftus said, nodding to himself.

Kingston cleared his throat. ‘Was Eddie … did that happen when you were trapped in that Dutch town? I forget the name—Klein something—it was mentioned in the letter I told you about. Bloody awful business, by the sound of it.’Immediately the words left his mouth, he regretted having uttered them. He watched as Art stared off into space. Kingston could only ruefully guess at what ghosts his words had aroused.

Art broke the silence. ‘Klein Longstreet, that’s where it were all right. Never forget that place.’

Kingston noticed that Art was looking at him in an odd way. ‘Would you prefer we not talk about it?’

‘No, it’s okay. It don’t bother me any more. Funny, ain’t it, how the mind works. You’d think that after all these years I’d want to forget the bloody war. But, if you wanna know the truth, doc, thinking back on them times—not that I do it that often, mind you—gives me a certain amount of pleasure. I suppose I’ve learned to blot out the bad parts.’

Kingston handed the photo back to Art. ‘Tell me about Ryder,’ he asked offhandedly.

‘I’ll tell you one thing—none of us could stand that snotty bastard.
Lieutenant Ryder
.’

‘Ended up as Major. Did you know he was awarded a Military Cross?’

‘Yeah, one of me mates told me, after the war. What a joke!’

‘Why is that?’

‘Kershaw’s the one who should’ve got a medal.’

‘Kershaw?’

‘Right—Sergeant Jeremy Kershaw. I wouldn’t be sitting here now if it weren’t for him. He’s the one who shot Ryder.’

Kingston raised his eyebrows. ‘Shot Ryder?’

‘That’s right. Should have finished him off while he was at it, if you ask me.’

‘He
shot
his superior officer? It was … some kind of accident, I take it?’

‘It was, according to Jeremy. Happened in a struggle but Ryder swore Jeremy did it on purpose. They put him under close arrest.’

‘My God! What exactly happened?’

Loftus looked up toward the ceiling. Kingston waited silently, respectful that the man was fanning embers of an old fire that would never be fully extinguished.

‘It all took place in that village you mentioned,’ he said looking at Kingston. ‘We were just about done in. What I’m saying is that all of us—all, except that arrogant sod, Ryder—knew that we didn’t have a chance in hell of surviving. After we’d been fighting for our bloody lives all week, the Jerries had finished off more than half of us. We only had enough food to last another day or so, the radio had gone for a burton and we were almost out of ammunition. But Ryder wouldn’t surrender. He wouldn’t hear of it. Kershaw had given up trying to convince him. Ryder even gave us this bullshit speech about never giving in, fighting to the bitter end an’ all that. He was a right nutter, that one. It was bloody awful, I tell you.’ Loftus paused and looked down at the coffee table as if the memories had become too real, too painful. Then he looked back up at Kingston, his face showing no signs of distress.

‘One of the lads, not much more than a kid he was …’ He glanced at the ceiling again. ‘Nah, his name escapes me. Anyway, he’d cracked. Gone round the bend. Couldn’t take it any more, poor sod. We all felt sorry for him, Kershaw more than most. You’d have thought he was his brother. Which didn’t figure ’cause Kershaw was a kinda loner. Tough as nails—afraid of no one.’ Loftus paused to scratch his head. ‘Anyway, early one morning when it was real quiet this young feller takes it into his head to pack it in—surrender. He takes off his helmet and jacket and starts walking over all this rubble toward the Jerries, waving a white flag. Well, according Kershaw …’ He paused and wagged a finger in Kingston’s direction. ‘Now this is second hand, mind you—Ryder, who’s got a pistol, spots the poor bugger as he’s halfway up the street and yells out that either he stops or he’s gonna be shot for desertion. Unfortunately for Ryder, Kershaw shows up and tries to stop Ryder from shooting the lad. He jumps the lieutenant, the gun goes off and the lad gets killed. Then, Ryder and Kershaw are rolling round on the ground wrestling for the gun. That’s when Ryder gets shot and how come Kershaw gets sent up.’ He sighed and stood up. ‘Couple of days later we were captured anyway.’

‘What happened to Kershaw?’

‘He was court-martialled. Heard he got twenty years.’

‘I take it you haven’t heard from him?’

Loftus shook his head. ‘No. I didn’t expect to. We didn’t know each other that well. Like I said, he kept pretty much to himself.’

They talked for another ten minutes or so then Kingston glanced at his watch. He was startled to see it was past five. He was cutting it fine to make the five fifty from Waterloo. He thanked Loftus profusely, apologizing for leaving so hurriedly, handed him his card and left.