Last Writes (9 page)

‘Wait you behind me, all of you,’ he said, ‘while I take a look for myself.’ Sheriff Rhuaraidh Macmillan stepped delicately over the stony ground that had been the platform from which Calum Farquharson had taken his fatal leap, though keeping well back from the edge of the drop. ‘Where were you all when Calum took his jump?’

‘We three were over the other side, and Lachlan was with him this side,’ said Hamish.

‘Seeing him off,’ said Ian Macrae.

‘Aye, that he was,’ agreed the sheriff dourly. ‘With a vengeance.’ He stooped and touched the ground in one place and then another. He brought his fingers up before his face to examine them more clearly and then asked, ‘When did you all last take meat together?’

‘The day before yesterday,’ said Hamish, looking mystified.

‘And where?’ barked the sheriff.

‘At Castle Balgalkin,’ stammered Hamish. ‘Lachlan’s brother’s place.’

‘Then that’s where Lachlan Leanaig can answer to a
charge of murder,’ said the sheriff, turning away from the Black Rock.

‘Murder?’ echoed Hamish Urquhart. ‘But it was only a hen.’

‘It was a calculated killing,’ said the sheriff sternly. ‘Why do you suppose you three were sent up the other side?’

‘To catch Calum when he landed?’ suggested Malcolm Alcaig.

‘So that you couldn’t see the fat on the stone that made his pole slip,’ said the sheriff, advancing his sticky fingers for their inspection. ‘And which is probably why Lachlan Leanaig is off to the Cloutie Well with Calum’s coat. I daresay there was fat on that too, after Calum took it off and threw it on the ground just before he jumped.’

‘I can’t tell you how excited the children are, Henry.’ Wendy Witherington had just met her brother off the London train at Berebury. ‘They’ve been looking forward so much to your coming down.’

‘Nothing like as much as I have to getting away from London, believe me.’ Henry Tyler gave his sister a friendly kiss and heaved his Gladstone bag into the boot of the little car standing outside the railway station.

‘You poor dear,’ said Wendy. ‘It must be hard going there for you just now.’

‘Between the Stresa Conference,’ said Henry, who worked at the Foreign Office, ‘and the machinations of Herr Adolf Hitler, it is.’

‘Well,’ she said calmly, ‘you know that nothing exciting ever happens here in Calleshire so you should get a little rest while you’re with us.’

‘My dear sister, what makes you think that taking young
Edward to Sir Alan Cobham’s Flying Circus isn’t going to be exciting? If that isn’t, then I don’t know what is.’

‘I know, I know,’ she conceded. ‘And I can assure you that you’re not the only one to be excited. Edward’s been talking about nothing except those magnificent men in their flying machines for weeks. He’s been saving up for the flight ever since Christmas.’

‘Good fellow.’

‘Actually,’ admitted Wendy, ‘he’s only got two shillings so far, but with the half a crown you’ve promised him, he’s nearly there.’ She steered the car out of the station forecourt. ‘I understand he has high hopes of getting the last sixpence out of his father.’

‘And what does Tim have to say about that?’

‘I think,’ said Tim’s wife, ‘that he hopes to negotiate a deal with Edward over removing some weeds in the lawn in exchange for that sixpence, but I’m keeping out of that one.’

‘Wise woman,’ declared Henry Tyler stoutly. ‘If only some politicians could manage to keep their distance from some equally delicate negotiations, our life at the office would be much more manageable.’

‘Treaty trouble?’

‘It’s not so much treaties that are the problem,’ he answered her seriously, ‘as hidden alliances.’

‘Ah …’ Wendy negotiated a blind corner with care. ‘Secret promises.’

‘You could say, Wen,’ went on Henry, bruised from recent encounters with both Lord Halifax and Herr Joachim von Ribbentrop, ‘that treaties are only written to be torn up …’

‘I wouldn’t say any such thing,’ she protested.

‘But at least,’ he carried on regardless, ‘with a treaty you can see what was and what wasn’t agreed in the first place. Gives you somewhere to start.’

‘Henry, you’re getting cynical.’

‘I can assure you, my dear, with the best will in the world, hidden alliances can undo a country completely.’ Henry stared out of the passenger window as the car passed through the environs of the pleasant and peaceful little market town of Berebury and wondered how long it would remain both pleasant and peaceful. ‘I’m glad Edward’s happy, anyway. That’s something to be grateful for at this sad juncture in world history.’

‘Ecstatic would be a better way of describing his state of mind,’ said Edward’s mother frankly, ‘even though at this very moment he might well be on his knees pulling out dandelions.’

‘I’m glad to hear it,’ said Henry Tyler. ‘Aeroplanes are going to be the only way to travel one day and it’s good for small boys to begin to learn that while they’re young.’

Wendy Witherington shivered. ‘There’s a war coming, isn’t there, Henry?’

‘Edward’ll be too young for it,’ he replied obliquely. Obliqueness had been raised to a high art at the Foreign Office. ‘Much too young.’

‘Even so I still don’t like the idea of him – or you, for that matter – going to a Flying Circus,’ frowned Wendy. ‘It doesn’t sound very safe.’

‘I don’t think Alan Cobham wants it to sound safe,’ said Henry Tyler who, by virtue of working where he did, knew all about the difference between what something sounded
and what it actually was. ‘He wants it to sound exciting even though it may be – will be – safe.’

Wendy shivered again. ‘All I want is for everything to be safe,’ she said.

‘It isn’t going to be “Peace for ever” old thing, or even “Peace for long”,’ he said, giving her a sideways glance, ‘but I think you know that anyway, don’t you?’

Wendy Witherington sighed. ‘I do, and so does Tim.’ She essayed a smile. ‘At least Jennifer doesn’t want to go up in an aeroplane. She says the noise keeps her dolls awake.’

‘Good for Jennifer,’ said her doting uncle warmly, as Wendy slowed the car down for a pedestrian crossing. ‘I say, not yet another Belisha beacon in Berebury, surely?’

‘We shan’t be able to move for them soon,’ forecast Wendy. ‘I don’t know if Mr Hore-Belisha knows what he’s started with his crossings for making pedestrians safe.’

‘Probably not. Politicians seldom do realise what they’ve started and they’ve moved on before anyone finds out. There’s just one thing though, Wendy,’ Henry said, his mind still back at his office desk. ‘I must warn you that if the Abyssinian Crisis gets any worse, I may have to go back to London in a hurry – or even to France.’ He grimaced. ‘I’m afraid the League of Nations isn’t quite as resolute as the League of Gentlemen.’

‘Henry, I beg of you not to mention Abyssinia while you’re here.’

He looked up, puzzled. ‘But Haile Selassie …’

‘It’s not him,’ she said. ‘It’s Edward and his friend Frobisher.’

‘Edward and Frobisher?’

‘Edward and Frobisher and all the other boys in their class at school. They’ve started to say “Abyssinia” instead of “I’ll be seeing you”, and I just won’t have it.’ She turned her head. ‘And it’s no use your laughing, Henry. It’s no laughing matter.’

‘No,’ he agreed soberly. ‘Abyssinia is no laughing matter. The Lion of Judah is having a very hard time just now.’

‘Poor little man,’ she said compassionately. ‘I felt so sorry for him when he walked out of that meeting.’

‘He may be short in stature,’ said Henry, ‘but he’s a great fellow all the same.’

‘There’s something else Edward and his friends are chanting all the time these days,’ went on Wendy Witherington, the wife and mother in her triumphing over current affairs, ‘so I’m warning you now.’

‘Thank you,’ he said and meant it. If only his political masters would give the Foreign Office more warning of what they were about to do and say before they did either life would be so much simpler for all concerned.

‘You know that expression, Henry, “If pigs could fly …”’

‘Of course.’

‘They finish it with “you’d have to shoot your bacon”.’

‘So you would,’ he said solemnly. Saving bacon – other people’s bacon, that is – was what he had to do in his line of work. All the time.

‘There’s something else you should be prepared for,’ she said lightly. ‘Edward has decided he wants to work in the Foreign Office like you. He’s going to ask you what he should study.’

‘History and human nature,’ grinned Henry, ‘and a few dirty tricks on the side.’

‘I’m not so sure that I like …’

‘I know, tell him to start by learning to read upside down,’ said Henry. ‘That always comes in handy when you’re sitting opposite a chap who’s got his guidance notes on his desk in front of him.’

Wendy took a left turn and waved her hand in the direction of a big field on their right. ‘That’s Berebury aerodrome over there.’

‘Airfield,’ he corrected her. ‘They don’t call them aerodromes any more.’

‘What about the sausage?’ she pointed to something red waving in the breeze. ‘Are they calling that something else now, too?’

‘Windsock,’ he said.

Young Edward used the right word for it, too, the next day when he and Henry reported to the little office at Berebury Airfield. ‘And the wind’s right for take-off, Uncle Henry,’ he said jubilantly.

‘Good.’ Henry pointed to a plane on the runway, its propeller already turning. ‘Is that ours?’

‘No. That’s a Heracles,’ said Edward knowledgeably. ‘She goes to Le Touquet. Regular run every morning by the Calleshire Aviation Company.’

As the doors of the airport waiting room opened and a little clutch of travellers emerged, Henry realised that they were indeed genuine passengers not mere seekers of flying experience.

‘Not many of them, though,’ observed Henry. ‘The plane’ll be half empty.’

‘I know. Frobisher’s father says they won’t be able to keep up the service much longer at this rate and he’s
very worried because he’s got a lot of money invested in it.’

‘Then what’ll happen?’ asked Henry. Thinking about what would happen in a given set of circumstances was something he did all the time – and only wished his political masters would do the same.

‘Frobisher’s father says if it goes on losing money it would have to close down,’ said Edward. ‘And then he’ll be bankrupt.’

‘I can see that it might have to shut up shop,’ said Henry, a man who prized realism in others. ‘And if he put all his eggs in one basket …’

Edward gulped. ‘Frobisher says that would mean that they have to sell their house and move away. Frobisher wouldn’t like that and neither would I.’

‘Then what’ll happen?’ said Henry automatically. In the privacy of his own office in Whitehall he called his usual sequence of questions ‘Consequences’.

‘Dunno,’ said Edward. ‘Not after that. I’d miss him, though. A lot.’

‘Edward,’ asked Henry, ‘do you and your friend Frobisher ever play the game of Consequences?’

‘Sometimes,’ said Edward. ‘When we’re bored.’ Suddenly he tugged at Henry’s sleeve. ‘Look, Uncle, there’s our plane. Over there.’

First, Henry watched as the Heracles took to the air, executed an elegant turn and set off over Calleshire towards the French coast, and then looked at where Edward was pointing. ‘And is ours named after a Greek hero, too?’

‘I don’t think so,’ said Edward uncertainly. ‘We haven’t
started to do Greek yet. It’s just an old biplane, anyway.’

‘Don’t tell your mother that, will you?’ begged Henry. ‘She’s worried about us enough.’

‘Nothing to worry about,’ said the boy confidently, ‘though I wish we were going up in that DH 84 over there. Lovely, isn’t she?’

Henry looked across the airfield at yet another aeroplane.

‘A De Havilland,’ Edward informed him. ‘They use those for the London–Paris run, too.’

‘But you can’t fly to Paris from here,’ said Henry. His secretary had already ascertained in advance that if Henry were wanted in France he would have to fly from Berebury to Le Touquet where he would be met by a car and driver and hastened away to a conference at an unspecified location. To go back to Croydon, let alone Hendon, from Berebury and fly from there, would take much longer. Too long for his masters, anyway.

‘No,’ said Edward. ‘That one goes to Le Touquet, too.’

‘Why are there two services going to the same place?’

‘I’m not sure,’ said the boy. ‘Frobisher’s father thinks it’s strange, too. But I can tell you one thing, Uncle Henry …’

‘What’s that?’

‘People seem to prefer the De Havilland plane. Frobisher’s father says that the Berebury Flying Company is doing very well and he can’t understand why when the Calleshire Aviation Company isn’t.’

‘I wonder why, too,’ said Henry idly, before putting the thought out of his mind as they were called to the departure lounge on the tannoy system. What exercised
his thought processes after that was the exact position in the stratosphere of the Seventh Heaven. Wherever it was, Edward at least reached it that morning.

He, himself, was brought heavily down to earth as soon as they got back to his sister’s house.

‘It’s just too bad, Henry,’ said Wendy, ‘because you’ve really only just come, but you’ve got to go now …’

‘London calling?’

‘London calling,’ she said, ‘but it’s France where you’re wanted. You’re booked on the four o’clock flight to Le Touquet.’

‘That’s the De Havilland,’ said Edward before Henry could ask. ‘Can Frobisher and me …’

‘I,’ his mother corrected him automatically. ‘Not me.’

‘Can both of us, then,’ said Edward impatiently, ‘come and see you off? Oh, please, Uncle Henry, please, Mummy.’

‘Your secretary,’ went on Wendy, ‘said she was sorry it was so late in the afternoon but the earlier flight was fully booked.’

‘Oh, please, Mummy,’ persisted Edward, ‘can we go to watch Uncle Henry take off?’

‘If he doesn’t mind,’ said Wendy Witherington, passing the buck with practised maternal ease.

‘The earlier one being the Calleshire Aviation Company’s and the later one the Berebury Flying Company’s?’ suggested Henry. ‘Well, well …’

His sister frowned. ‘I think that’s what she said but it wasn’t a very good line. Anyway, your tickets will be ready for you when you get to the aerodrome.’

‘Airfield,’ chimed Henry and Edward in unison.

‘And,’ said Wendy Witherington, rising above the correction, ‘there will be a car waiting for you at Le Touquet.’ She glanced down at a piece of paper in her hand. ‘Your secretary thought you would like to know that your minister will be waiting at your destination.’

Henry bit back his immediate retort in the interests of childcare.

But he got back to the airfield early enough to drift into the offices of the Calleshire Aviation Company and enquire casually about a flight the next day.

‘Very sorry, sir, but tomorrow’s service to Le Touquet is fully booked,’ said the booking office clerk, consulting a chart on the desk in front of him at some length.

‘I really do need to get to France by tomorrow evening,’ lied Henry. ‘It’s quite urgent.’

‘I could only fit you in if there’s a last-minute cancellation,’ said the man. ‘And we can’t count on that. Very sorry, sir.’

‘Is there any other service?’ asked Henry.

‘You could try the Berebury Aviation Company,’ offered the man. ‘They may be able to help you.’

‘I’ll do that,’ said Henry.

In the event what he did was scribble a note, which he handed to Edward. ‘Give that to your friend Frobisher,’ he said.

‘Frobisher?

‘For his father,’ said Henry. ‘It might save him from going bankrupt.’

‘But, Uncle …’

‘For Frobisher’s father,’ said Henry Tyler. ‘So that he knows his booking clerk’s telling the customers that the planes are full when they aren’t.’