Chapter 16

16

By agreement, Harry and Oliver kept to their rooms while the police spoke to John Archer. As promised, he had glossed over their roles in the drama, describing them as family members who had most unfortunately been caught up in a murderous conspiracy. Mindful of their master's instructions, Agnes and Mary had maintained the deception during their interviews. The police had finally left around dawn, with Donaldson and Eliza as their prisoners, and the package of poisoned tobacco as evidence. Hollow-eyed and exhausted, the remaining members of the household had stumbled to bed. None of them had risen much before midday.

‘I gave Agnes and Mary a few days off,' Archer said, when Harry came downstairs to find him sitting at the dining table. ‘I believe Agnes intends to go to her mother's and Mary has taken to her bed. I'm not sure what there is to eat in the kitchen but I daresay we'll manage.'

Oliver had appeared soon after and they had pulled together a lunch of cheese and cold meats, with some of the excellent bread Mary had baked the previous day. Harry was pleasantly surprised to find Philip St John's condition had continued to improve, despite the events of the night before. After lunch, he had asked Harry to join him on a gentle stroll around the grounds. ‘I want to feel the sun on my face. I've been stuck inside for too long.'

They took things slowly, for which Harry was glad as she had several aches of her own. She had insisted Philip St John wrap up warmly against the cold, and had layered him in several scarves. Very little of his face was visible but Harry felt his eyes upon her as they walked. ‘It appears you are not quite what you seem, Miss Moss. You are certainly not my nephew's cousin, as he told the police.'

She kept her own gaze straight ahead. ‘Oh? In what way am I not what I seem?'

He smiled. ‘Let's not play games. I know you ask questions and find answers. I know you make observations and set traps. And I know you saved my life, and perhaps that of my nephew. You are a detective, Miss Moss.'

Harry did not reply. How could she when everything he said was true? But St John had not finished speaking. ‘My nephew tells me you have read several of my books.'

The change of conversational flow wrong-footed Harry. ‘Um – yes.'

‘And he has revealed the circumstances behind my first novel?'

Harry frowned. ‘Yes.'

Philip St John stopped walking. ‘I will be blunt, Miss Moss. Were you sent here by the family of Rupert Templeton to make a claim against me?'

She felt her jaw drop in sheer astonishment. ‘What? No, I came because your nephew sent a telegram to…' Harry gaped at him. ‘Why would Rupert's family send anyone to…?' And then in her mind, several things that had been fighting for her attention tumbled into place all at once. She let out a long breath of understanding. ‘Oh. Because he wrote The Blood-soaked Soil . Not you.'

He eyed her coldly. ‘If Rupert's family did not send you, how could you know that?'

It took her a moment to formulate an answer, because she wasn't sure herself. ‘I didn't,' she said. ‘Or not until just now. But there were lots of little clues, really. The night we first met, you kept insisting it was your hand. I assumed at the time that you were distressed by the way it shook. But when I read some of your later works, I realised how different they were from The Blood-soaked Soil . I knew how you came to write it, so I thought that explained the differences. The mutilated first edition in your library confused me – I couldn't understand who would do such a thing.' She glanced over at him. ‘But it was you.'

He let out a slow sigh, laced with a pain that Harry suspected he had been holding on to for more than a decade. ‘You must understand, we had so much time to fill. Most of the men slept, or wrote endless letters home. Rupert and I discovered early on we were both storytellers. We used to dream of being published, of people reading our work, and somehow hit on the idea of using our time to write. But as the months dragged on, a sense of fatalism settled over us. Rupert in particular started to feel he would not escape the trenches and his gloom brought me down too. So we made a pact. If one of us died and the other made it out, the survivor pledged to find a way to see their writing published.' He hung his head. ‘I am ashamed to admit that is exactly what I did.'

Harry kept her gaze averted as they walked, wanting to make the story easier to tell. After a moment, St John went on. ‘When Rupert died – a stupid, senseless death caused by a moment of carelessness – I was half-maddened by grief. I remember stumbling to his kitbag, digging out the battered old biscuit tin he kept the pages rolled in against the mould and the rats, and tucking it in my own bag. It sat there for months, untouched. And then there was a flood – some of the sandbags were blown away by shells and the rainwater poured into our billet. A lot of men lost everything – cigarettes, photographs from home, rations – all drenched and thick with mud. My own manuscript was ruined but I didn't care. I'd lost the heart for writing when Rupert died. His tin was safe, though.'

She could picture the scene. ‘It sounds dreadful,' she murmured, her heart aching.

Philip St John shrugged her sympathy away. ‘About six months later, the war was over. I got demobbed fairly quickly and went home to my old life, moving back in with my mother and my sister, who was raising her boy on her own, having lost her husband at Gallipoli.'

‘John,' Harry observed.

He nodded. ‘I went back to work at the bank but nothing was the same.' He paused, frowning. ‘No, that wasn't it. In a lot of ways, everything was the same but I wasn't. I found it almost impossible to blindly respect the people I'd once obeyed without question – the manager at the bank who had been too old to fight, the vicar who had seen nothing of life at all. I tried to settle back in, told myself the dissatisfaction would pass in time, but all the time I yearned for escape. And eventually, I remembered Rupert's story, and the pact we'd made.

‘I hadn't realised how much he'd written. I had only got about half way through the story I'd been writing, but Rupert had pretty much finished his. It was written in the funny sort of shorthand we'd developed between us – I'm not sure anyone could have made sense of it but me. Anyway, I began to write it out in longhand, spending every evening bent over the kitchen table until my hand ached. My mother suggested I get a typewriter but I didn't want that. Writing Rupert's words made me feel close to him again, somehow. I didn't want anything to get in the way. Before long, I'd transcribed the whole thing and I knew right away that it was something special.'

He smiled sadly. ‘He was always so much better than me, you see. At first, I planned to send it to his family but there was the pact we had made. What if they didn't appreciate how good it was, and kept it for themselves, as a piece of the man they had lost? Once it was out of my hands, I would have no say in what happened next. Wouldn't I be letting Rupert down, breaking our pact, if I risked allowing that to happen?'

Harry nodded in slow understanding. The crime was undeniable but it helped to get a sense of why St John had done what he had.

‘I couldn't tell you when I first considered passing Rupert's writing off as my own. My mother was telling anyone who would listen that I was writing a book, oblivious to the fact that I hadn't written an original word for years. I thought about sending it to some publishers with a covering letter explaining what had happened but realised that was fraught with difficulty too. In the end, I managed to convince myself that pretending I had written it was the only way.' He let out a hollow laugh. ‘If only I had known.'

‘You didn't anticipate the level of success,' Harry said.

‘No,' St John said. ‘Nor – somewhat naively – that the publisher would want more books.' He stared at the ground. ‘I've spent the last ten years trying to live up to the promise of somebody else's brilliance. It – it has not been a pleasant experience.'

Harry was quiet for a moment. ‘Your other books are good,' she said. ‘Different, of course, and now I know why. But still engaging stories.'

‘You are being kind,' he said. ‘But I am not ashamed of them – they were the stories I was meant to tell. I like to think I did a good thing in getting Rupert's out there too, although taking the credit was very wrong.'

Harry could not disagree. ‘John tells me you take meticulous care over your royalty statements, that the payments for The Blood-soaked Soil are held separately.'

He nodded. ‘My solicitor holds instructions on what to do with the monies after I die. I do hope poor John will not be too disappointed not to inherit the income. He will, of course, have Thrumwell Manor. I bought it with some of the royalties from The Blood-soaked Soil but have long since repaid that money with my own earnings.'

There was no denying Philip St John's actions had been criminal but Harry found it hard to judge him too harshly. It certainly seemed that no one could have berated themselves more strongly, in spite of the advantages he had gained. And she had no doubt Philip St John had worked hard at making the shorthand writings of his friend into something that would catch a publisher's eye. He had probably put more of himself into the story than he had realised but she suspected that he would reject any suggestion that he had added anything to Rupert's brilliance. ‘You did at least fulfil the pact,' she said, after a long silence. ‘You found a way to get his story into the hands of readers.'

St John let out a bark of laughter. ‘I don't think Rupert would see it that way. The thought of how I cheated him haunts me still, even after all these years.'

Harry shook her head. ‘I think it's time to stop that, Mr St John.'

He turned to her then, and she saw resignation mingled with a strange sort of hope on his face. ‘Will you shame me, then?' he asked.

Harry regarded him steadily. ‘I will not,' she said. ‘You cannot change what is done and you have made more than enough effort to redress the balance. I assure you, your secret is safe with me.'

His eyes moistened as he sighed. ‘I cannot tell you how much it helps to have told someone at long last.'

‘I can imagine,' she said softly. ‘Secrets are a heavy burden.'

A strained silence fell over them as they walked. ‘I think you are quite a surprising young woman,' Philip St John said, at length. ‘I'm not sure I've met anyone quite like you.'

‘I know the feeling, Mr St John,' Harry replied, with a self-deprecating smile. ‘Most of the time, I surprise myself.'

‘I am sorry, Miss Moss. I refuse to let you go under such circumstances.'

John Archer was standing beside the fireplace in the drawing room, his forehead knotted in the kind of forbidding frown Harry was more used to seeing from her father. ‘I am sorry to disappoint you, sir, but both Mr Holmes and I are quite firm on the matter. There will be no settlement of your account, no payment needed. Our services come for free and that is the end of it.'

Archer appealed to Oliver. ‘Come now, Fortescue, surely you can make her see reason. I am deeply indebted to her – to you both – for everything you have done here. Please allow me to compensate you accordingly.'

Oliver shook his head. ‘It is not my business. I do my best to help where needed, but I am not in the employ of Sherlock Holmes.'

‘I have never heard of such a thing,' Archer exclaimed, throwing his hands up. ‘It is a ridiculous way to operate a business. However do you make any money, if you never charge your clients?'

Harry smiled. ‘As you will know from Mr Holmes' published adventures, the fees he charges are discretionary. In your case, there is no charge.'

‘Preposterous!' Archer exploded.

Oliver took a step forward. ‘Might I make a suggestion? Miss Moss has certain charitable concerns in which she takes an interest.' He fixed Harry with a meaningful look. ‘Perhaps a donation to one of those deserving cases might be appropriate. The Brighton charity, perhaps?'

It took Harry several seconds to catch his meaning but the moment she understood she had to admit it was an excellent idea. The difficulty lay in persuading Cecily to accept help but she did not have to know where the money had come from. ‘That could work,' she said, looking at Archer. ‘If you agree.'

He nodded. ‘I am always happy to support worthwhile causes. Shall we say ￡200?'

Harry swallowed a gulp of surprise. It was more than she dared hope for, enough to see Cecily settled in a good house away from the slums of Circus Street, with plenty left over for food and living expenses for at least a year. ‘That is very generous. Thank you.'

‘On the contrary, Miss Moss, it is a small price to pay for all you have done for us here. You both have my undying thanks, as does Mr Holmes. Although I am beginning to suspect his role is rather exaggerated in the accounts I have read.' His eyes twinkled as he regarded Harry. ‘Perhaps even the greatest detective is only as good as his assistant, eh, Miss Moss.'

Harry couldn't quite hide her smile. ‘I couldn't possibly say, Mr Archer.'