The Ways of the World (5 page)

As Max crossed the hall, bound for the dining-room, where he supposed breakfast would be waiting for him, he noticed that the door to the library was open. His mother stepped out through it to greet him.

‘Good morning, James,’ she said quietly. ‘Do you have a moment?’

‘Of course, Mother.’

He followed her into the library. The room faced east and was
normally one of the darkest in the house. Only at this hour was sunlight, albeit of a watery variety, flooding through the high bay window at the far end. Lady Maxted walked towards it and came to a halt by the massive floor-standing globe that was one of the more memorable fixtures of Gresscombe Place.

‘When you were a child, the globe was always at this angle,’ she said, laying her hand on a gleaming curve of the north-western Pacific Ocean.

‘Really?’ Max joined her beside it and realized that it was true. He had regularly turned the globe and peered at the islands of the Japanese archipelago and wondered what his birthplace was like. He shrugged. ‘Well, it’s strange to have been born somewhere one has no memory or knowledge of.’

‘We lived in Japan for two years. I assure you I had little more knowledge of the country at the end of that time than I had at the beginning.’

‘But you remember it.’

‘Increasingly, my memories seem like recollected dreams. Spring blossom so bright it hurt my eyes. A deafening chorus of frogs after heavy rain. Junks bobbing on the water. Winking cages of fireflies on a market stall. Ghost-moths thumping against the window-screens on hot summer nights. Really, what does any of that amount to? Impressions, nothing more. And even they are fading.’

‘I should like to go there one day.’

‘Then I’m sure you will. You do as you please, James. You always have.’

‘Are you praising me or rebuking me, Mother?’

‘Neither. I am quite reconciled to the fact that you have never been what might be termed an obedient son.’

‘Perhaps Ashley does enough obeying for both of us.’

‘Perhaps he does. I know I can rely on him to protect your father’s memory at all costs. Whereas you …’

‘Whereas I?’

‘Will go in search of the truth … wherever it is to be found.’

‘Would you prefer me not to?’

‘No one should act against their nature. I’m confident you won’t. All I ask is this: if you discover your father was the victim of
something other than an accident and if you discover what that something other was …’

‘Yes?’

‘I should like to hear of it before you proclaim it to the world.’

Max felt the full force of his mother’s gaze as he stood before her. He had supposed she wanted him to support his brother loyally in suppressing any scandal they came across in Paris. But it appeared she did not believe him capable of fulfilling such a role. Nor did she want him to. She had something altogether more subversive in mind. ‘I suspect Ashley would be more than a little alarmed by this conversation,’ he said.

‘Then don’t mention it to him. I certainly won’t.’

‘Very well.’

‘Do I have your word?’

‘That I will tell you the truth – if I uncover it – before I tell anyone else?’

‘Precisely.’

It was a safe enough bargain, Max thought. He could follow Ashley’s lead and assure his mother there was no sinister explanation for Sir Henry’s death. He had ample room for manoeuvre. Troublingly, though, he was beginning to believe he would need all of it. ‘You have my word, Mother.’

She stepped forward and kissed him on the cheek. ‘Thank you, James. I know you will keep it. Tread carefully in Paris, won’t you?’

‘But not
too
carefully?’

She smiled at him. ‘There is no danger of you doing that.’

An hour later, after hurried breakfasts and equally hurried farewells, Max and his brother set off.

MAX SURPRISED HIMSELF
by maintaining an even temper and a flow of uncontroversial conversation as the journey proceeded. His brother Ashley –
Sir
Ashley now, as Max felt sure he would not be allowed to forget – expatiated, with no apparent sense of irony, on the challenges of managing the military supply chain in time of war. Aldershot sounded positively perilous in his version of events.

He had never been as near the Front as he was now going, however. The devastation to be seen from the train near Amiens, stretching around them, had a noticeable effect on him. Perhaps, Max thought, he could dimly imagine the horror buried not so deep beneath the mangled earth. It shamed him, though he hid the emotion as best he could. Ashley was not about to admit that Max had been one of those braving the hazards his crocked knee had spared him.

Ashley had cabled Fradgley at the embassy in Paris telling him of their travel plans. A note from him was waiting for them at the Hotel Mazarin on Lion-&-Unicorn-crested paper.

‘It’s dated today,’ was Ashley’s first reaction.

‘What of it?’ Max asked, feeling vaguely curious about his brother’s thought processes.

‘A civil servant bestirring himself on a Sunday suggests our visit is being taken seriously. It’s an indication that they mean to show us every consideration. As they should.’

A more sinister possibility had occurred to Max. The attention they were receiving suggested to him that Sir Henry’s death was a problem the likes of Fradgley wanted to solve as quickly and easily as possible. And that did not necessarily involve establishing the truth of what had happened to him. ‘How very reassuring.’

Ashley nodded in agreement, apparently believing Max meant what he had said. ‘It is, isn’t it?’

A desolate Sunday evening stretched ahead. Max had no intention of spending it dining with Ashley and enduring another outbreak of Aldershotian reminiscence. He said he was in need of an early night and went up to his room; then, as soon as the coast was clear, he took himself off in search of entertainment.

The ringing of the telephone roused him the following morning. Being jolted awake always had the same effect on him. He believed for a moment that he was back with his squadron and his first thought was the thought that greeted him unfailingly in those wartime dawns.
I’m damned if this will be the day I die
.

Then the gloomy furnishings of his hotel room came into focus around him. He fumbled for the telephone.

‘James?’ It was his brother. And he did not sound happy.

‘Yes … Ashley.’ Max covered the receiver and cleared his throat. ‘Good morning.’

‘Fradgley and Appleby will be here in fifteen minutes. I thought I ought to check with you that you’ll be ready.’

‘Oh, yes, yes. I’ll, er … be down directly.’

‘Did I wake you?’

‘No, no. Of course not.’

‘Mmm. I’ll see you shortly, then.’

Max was no stranger to washing and shaving against the clock. He reached the lobby with one of the fifteen minutes remaining and spotted Ashley grumpily perusing a newspaper in the writing-room.

‘How goes the world?’ Max ventured by way of greeting.

‘Badly.’ Ashley folded up his newspaper in an explosion of rustling. ‘The Reds are running amok in Budapest.’

‘I had no idea.’

‘Don’t you follow the news?’

‘Would it benefit me if I did?’

Ashley frowned at him, uncertain, as so often, whether to take Max’s remarks seriously. ‘That early night doesn’t seem to have done you a lot of good.’

‘Sometimes you can have too much sleep.’

‘Symptoms of which are bags under the eyes and a deathly pallor, I assume.’

‘The lighting in here isn’t catching me at my best.’

‘Flippancy isn’t likely to serve us well today, James.’ Ashley tossed the newspaper aside and stood up. ‘I believe our visitors have arrived.’ He nodded towards the lobby.

It was easy for Max to tell which of the two was Fradgley and which was Appleby. He took the short, thin, pale-faced man with a tight little mouth to be Fradgley, every inch the self-effacing minor diplomat, and his bulky, balding, jowly companion of the farseeing gaze and self-possessed smile was surely Appleby.

Introductions swiftly confirmed Max’s surmise. Appleby, he noted, was plain Mr Appleby, though an admission to high police rank would have been no surprise. He had the cautious, watchful demeanour of some kind of detective, combined with an air of authority.

He and Fradgley expressed brisk condolences before explaining what assistance they could offer. ‘Your father’s body was removed to the mortuary of the military hospital at Port-Royal,’ he said. ‘I assume you’d like to satisfy yourselves as to his identity.’

Ashley appeared taken aback by the possibility that it could be in doubt. ‘Surely you’ve established that.’

‘Of course, Sir Ashley,’ said Fradgley, suddenly all of a flutter. ‘It’s merely a formality.’

‘We would like to view the body,’ said Max.

‘Naturally.’ Appleby eyed Max as if it was now obvious to him which of the brothers he should pay attention to. ‘And then the address where the fall occurred?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then let’s proceed. We have a car waiting.’

They were driven across the Seine by the Pont de l’Alma, then along the quais as far as the National Assembly, before heading south towards Montparnasse. Fradgley set out in exhaustive detail the procedures that would have to be followed to permit the removal of Sir Henry’s body from France, assuring them throughout that he would personally attend to such matters and that he hoped to complete them within twenty-four hours. His purpose seemed to be to emphasize just how hard he was working on their behalf, though Max wondered if all this bureaucratic bustle was actually on someone else’s account.

Fradgley was sandwiched between Max and Ashley on the rear seat, while Appleby sat beside the driver, puffing at a pipe and casting occasional glances at Max over his shoulder.
Let the silly little man talk himself dry
, his wary half-smile seemed to communicate.
Then you and I can get down to business
. All he actually said in the course of the journey, though, was a remark on the weather, after rain had begun to pelt the windscreen. ‘Paris in the spring can be rather overrated, you’ll find.’

L’Hôpital Militaire, Boulevard de Port-Royal, was an echoing warren of a place, the air tinged with disinfectant, the corridors peopled by sombre nurses and amputees from the war learning to
walk with only one leg – or none at all. The mortuary was in a distant, largely silent wing, where no nurses were to be seen, only overalled functionaries apparently immune to the prevailing chill.

Sir Henry’s body was waiting for them on a trolley in a cold, windowless room. There was a taint of decay in the icy air, Max noticed. If anyone else noticed it, they did not say. But Fradgley lingered in the doorway behind them, as if reluctant to come too close.

An attendant raised the sheet covering Sir Henry’s face. The right side of his head was covered by a bandage, but there was no doubt it was him, altered though he was by death: the eyes closed, the mouth unsmiling, the spirit gone.

‘He suffered a severe brain injury in the fall,’ said Appleby. ‘Death would have been instantaneous.’

There were various cuts and scrapes around the visible part of Sir Henry’s face, bruising and swelling around his eye and rucklings of the flesh at the edge of the bandage that hinted at the damage beneath.

‘Were there other injuries?’ Max asked.

‘Most of the bones in his body were probably broken,’ Appleby replied. ‘It was a long drop.’

‘I think we’ve seen enough,’ said Ashley, his voice cracking as he spoke. ‘It’s certainly our father.’

‘We should retrieve his signet ring,’ said Max. ‘Mother will want to have it.’

‘It’ll already have been removed,’ said Appleby. ‘Commissioner Zamaron of the Paris police has his personal effects. We’re due to collect them later from the
préfecture
.’

‘Could we just check, in case it’s been overlooked?’

‘I’m sure Appleby knows what he’s talking about, James,’ said Ashley.

‘Even so …’

Appleby shrugged and said to the attendant, ‘
La main gauche, s’il vous plaît
.’

The sheet was folded further back to expose Sir Henry’s naked torso, a patchwork of bruises, angrily dark against his chalk-white skin. Ashley started back. ‘Good God,’ he exclaimed. Max took
some bitter pleasure from knowing how poorly prepared his brother was for encounters with the physical consequences of violent death, whereas he had seen much worse than this all too many times.

‘As you see,’ said Appleby, ‘the ring’s gone.’

So it was. But looking down at Sir Henry’s lifeless hand, Max noticed something else. The fingernails had been cut severely short and none too carefully at that. Sir Henry had always taken pains about his appearance. Such clumsy trimming was not his work. Someone else had done it. Though whether before or after his death …

‘Have you seen enough, Mr Maxted?’ Appleby asked.

Max nodded. ‘Yes. Quite enough, thank you.’

Appleby signalled to the attendant, who drew the sheet back over Sir Henry’s face. Max bade his father a silent farewell, then turned away.

‘We can go now.’

IT WAS ONLY
a short drive to Carrefour Vavin, where they emerged from the car into the heart of Montparnasse. But the neighbourhood’s artistic reputation was belied by a scene of workaday ordinariness. The weather was dank and cold, the shoppers and passers-by had no time to pause for intellectual banter and the café terraces were empty.

Fradgley had had much less to say for himself since visiting the mortuary and glum introspection had claimed Ashley. It was left to Appleby to direct proceedings and to Max to ask the questions that needed to be asked.