SIXTY-FIVE
The old man was dozing when the mine detonated. He knew from experience that you didn’t so much hear the explosions as feel them. Such was the amount of TNT packed into the tunnels under the enemy’s lines – for the mine could be either German or British, he had no way of telling – that it caused a ripple in the earth. And the resultant wave was so powerful it spread out from Belgium, travelling under the Channel and causing the windows of his cottage on the South Downs to rattle and the building to creak alarmingly. It also set up a powerful resonance of fearfulness in his body. His friend was out there, in the very place where whole swathes of the countryside – and any living things upon it – were swallowed into vast craters. Men were turned to dust in an instant. The thought made him feel nauseous.
He had been resting in his chair in front of the dying embers of his fire. The effort of travelling to Flitcham had depleted his shallow reserves of energy. He had been snoozing off and on for the best part of two days. But the unease generated by the mine meant he wouldn’t be able to sleep for a few hours now. He looked at the clock. Time for some hot chocolate. And a small brandy, perhaps. He would have to get it himself. He had given Bert a few days off. It would take at least that before he had the strength for his next visit, all the way up north to Leigh.
He felt a second vibration through his feet, like an aftershock.
Strange, he thought, they usually detonated the mines first thing in the morning. Just before dawn was the preferred time. Of course, accidents did happen. They always did with high explosives. He looked down at the book he had been reading when he had nodded off. The American Civil War. The technique of burrowing under enemy lines and creating a huge subterranean bomb had been perfected in that conflict.
And something else relevant to Watson’s predicament had also played its part. In certain Confederate states, he had read, if a man was conscripted, he could nominate a willing replacement to go in his stead. These doppelg?ngers had to be roughly the same age and physical fitness, and they were often paid by rich landowners to avoid their sons having to go into battle. It was like nominating a ‘champion’ to fight in your place. If they survived, the champions would come home to wealth and land. If, of course, the South won. It was a double gamble – being alive and on the winning side – but many thought it worth the risk, as they would end up serving anyway.
Something similar had happened at the Flitcham estate, he was certain. He had been somewhat disquieted by Legge when the young man had picked him up at the station. For a long-serving chauffeur, he had been quite an appalling driver. And his conversation was strange, his speech almost childish. But it was when he had seen Legge and Lady Stanwood together that his suspicions had been truly aroused. What the French neurologist, psychologist and author Henri Reclerc called ‘The Silent Language’ had positively screamed whenever they were near each other. Reclerc had studied non-verbal signs and signals that could be used to determine the relationship between people. It had proved very useful in the detective’s work: more than once, people pretending to be brother and sister had revealed themselves as lovers by a simple analysis of gestures.
It was obvious by applying Reclerc’s methods that theirs was no servant-mistress situation. There was an unspoken familiarity between the lady and the driver. Lovers? he had wondered. Was that why Lord Stanwood had been done away with? He had sought out Dr Kibble, who had described the symptoms of Stanwood’s long, slow death that echoed many of the details that Watson had described in his communication. And, Kibble had agreed, at the end he had turned blue, with a facial expression he could barely bring himself to describe. The patriarch had been poisoned. Was it so that Lady Stanwood and the dim-witted chauffeur could carry on their illicit tryst?
No, not lovers, he corrected. The bond was different. He could see it in her eyes, a mix of warmth and selfless concern. And in the driver’s willingness to please. This was not predicated on anything as base or transient as sex. This was a maternal link. The chauffeur, Harry Legge, was Lady Stanwood’s son. He was, in fact, Robinson de Griffon. The new Lord Stanwood. And he was sitting out the war as the family chauffeur. Which had meant the man over in France, the man Watson was chasing, had to be an imposter.