Bones of the Buried (46 page)

‘Not yet, anyway,’ Edward said grimly.

‘You know who else was in London when Thayer was murdered?’ Verity said slowly.

‘Who?’

‘Maurice Tate.’

‘Maurice? But the play, he was rehearsing the play!’

‘No, his mother was ill, he said, and he dashed back to London. He was away for forty-eight hours. Long enough . . .’

‘Oh God, why didn’t I know that?’

‘Because you left me to do the questioning and I got knocked on the head before I could report back.’

‘So Maurice could have knocked you on the head to prevent you telling me . . . in which case you may still be in danger.’

‘Not just me. He’ll assume that I’ve already told you.’

‘Oh God, I’m so confused and yet, just a few hours ago, it all seemed so clear!’ Edward cried in frustration. ‘Well, I’ll wire Pride and get him to investigate
Maurice’s mother and see if she is ill or well or not even alive. Tell me, Verity, could any of our other Madrid friends have been in London when Stephen was murdered?’

‘No, everyone else was definitely here . . . except David, of course. I don’t know where he was.’ She laughed. ‘He said he was on Party business somewhere and I assumed
that meant here in Spain, but it could have been Germany, England or anywhere else. He’s learning to fly, you know. He thinks it might be useful if there’s a war . . .’

She stopped chattering and looked at Edward, seeing his face, suddenly serious. ‘You don’t really think . . .’

‘Verity, I’m just so . . . I don’t know what to think. Look, I’m going to leave you in peace while I go for a walk and send that wire to Pride. If you’ll let me,
I’ll come and fetch you at eight and we’ll go to the Institute together.’

‘Oh, I’ll be all right . . .’

‘I think it would be safer,’ he insisted.

‘Very well, but it’s not necessary. Off you go then,’ she said, struggling to sound cheerful. ‘By the way, Edward, there was something I’ve been meaning to ask you
and keep forgetting. Before you went back to London, you said you had two questions to ask: one for Sutton and one for Hester. What were they?’

‘I asked Sutton if he was Jewish and he said he wasn’t. And I asked Hester what was her maiden name.’

‘Hester? What do you mean?’

‘Hester’s been a little mischievous. She confirmed what I had already guessed: before she was Baroness Lengstrum, she was Hester Belasco. She’s Ben’s sister.’

‘But I . . . I don’t understand. Why didn’t she tell me? What was she hiding?’

‘Nothing sinister though for a moment I thought it might have been. It began as a sort of joke. She and Ben have always been very close. Their parents were divorced when they were children
and they were tossed about from pillar to post. They found they could only rely on each other. As you know, they both tried marriage but for whatever reason – perhaps because of their own
childhood experiences – neither marriage had a chance of success. So, when they teamed up after Hester’s fiasco with that poor blighter Lengstrum, they decided not to advertise their
relationship. Much as she loved him, Hester didn’t approve of the way Ben behaved, particularly with women . . .’ Verity blushed but Edward pretended not to notice. ‘Ben, for his
part, thought it was a good prank. He knew everyone would think Hester was or had been his lover.’

‘Damn him! Damn them both!’

‘Oh, don’t be sore, V. They told you no lies. It was just that it never occurred to you to ask. Hester’s been a good friend to you. Ah, talk of the devil! Here she
is!’

Hester put her head round the door and said, ‘Honey, are you mad at me? I guess you’ve every right to be . . .’

Edward slipped out of the room and left the two women to it. The other side of the door he paused and smiled to himself. Verity did not like being made to feel ridiculous. He was sure she would
forgive Hester for the trick she had played on her but Ben Belasco . . . Was it too much to hope he wouldn’t be forgiven?

It was odd, Edward thought, when Madrid was awash with rumour and counter-rumour that so many Spanish had decided to spend the early evening in the stifling heat of the British
Institute watching a performance of
Love’s Labour’s Lost
. But Madrid was always agog with gossip, political and social, and the Institute was as convenient a place as any to
carry on this activity. Verity had insisted they sit in the front row – ‘in order to give Maurice our full support’ – alongside Hester and Ben Belasco. Edward would have
preferred to be at the back where he could make a discreet exit if he so wished. He thought he might very well so wish. He normally avoided amateur dramatics; they were at best charming –
particularly if one had a child of one’s own on stage – and at worst boring and embarrassing. And
Love’s Labour’s
. . . it was such an abstruse play. He still could
not see why Maurice had chosen it. The wordplay was difficult for the English to make head or tail of, let alone the Spanish. He tried to think what he would feel like being made to sit through a
play by Lope de Vega – in Spanish – and he shivered.

‘Surely you’re not cold?’ Verity said irritably. ‘The temperature must be over a hundred already.’

The first scene was quickly over and Edward was surprised to find that he was actually enjoying himself. The plot was absurd, of course – as if a group of men could remain celibate for
three years! Could he, he wondered, if at the end of it he won . . . love? He smiled grimly. He very much doubted it.

At least the young lords in the play were acting out their charade in the open air! How perverse of Maurice to trap them in this hothouse instead of staging the play outside as he had originally
proposed. ‘Our court you know is haunted by a refined traveller of Spain . . .’ That was good! The Spanish in the audience chuckled. The clowning ought to have been teeth-scraping, but
somehow he found himself laughing. ‘Tender juvenal . . .’ Oliver Featherstone – he had been a tender juvenile. Wait, what was this? ‘How mean you, sir? I pretty?’
Hoden had called Oliver pretty. ‘Love is familiar. Love is a devil. There is no evil angel but love . . .’

Edward’s brain spun and twisted as the voices on the stage duelled, thrust and parried. He had been quite wrong. He had wanted to believe that the deaths of three Eton contemporaries
– all within a few months – had been in some way linked and that he had found the connection! But it had all been too neat. He had wanted ends to tie up as they would in a novel, but
Shakespeare had known better. Reality is rarely neat and men’s actions reverberate in succeeding years through new generations.

In the interval, they drifted out into the street where a soft breeze refreshed them. Edward was so silent that Verity asked him what he was thinking about.

‘Just what a fool I am,’ he said with a half-smile. Verity snorted and went off to talk to a Spanish journalist she knew. She came back with sparkling eyes and flushed cheeks.
‘He says something’s happening,’ she whispered.

‘What sort of thing?’

‘He thinks there may be some sort of uprising.’

‘People have been saying that for weeks,’ Edward yawned.

‘As soon as this is over, I must make some telephone calls.’

‘But after that, can we have supper? I’ve got something to ask you.’

‘Maybe, if there’s time,’ was all she would say.

‘Isn’t that David?’ Hester whispered in Edward’s ear when they returned to their seats.

‘Yes, you’re right. I wonder if there’s something wrong. Look, he’s seen us. He’s waving.’

He was about to tell Verity that her . . . her what? he wondered, her Svengali? her ex-lover? had materialised when the auditorium lights were lowered.

Edward continued to listen to the play with one ear while he puzzled things out. David: he was certain he had killed Tilney. Tom Sutton had been telling the truth when he said he only got to the
cave after the body had been removed. Otherwise the ring would have been found earlier. The Spanish police weren’t fools. David had denied it but the prison governor – what was his
name? Captain Ramón – was his friend. What could have been easier but to give his prisoner parole? How would anyone know? Edward wondered who could tell him about Ramón’s
politics. He didn’t doubt that he would discover he was a committed communist. If he were a member of the Party . . . What an alibi! Anyway, what did it matter? No Spanish court would, in
these days of political turmoil, order one of its most important foreign workers to be rearrested in order to charge him with a murder of which he had already been cleared. It was a preposterous
idea.

Makepeace Hoden; now his death he
had
finally cleared up. He had been killed by Tom Sutton at Elizabeth’s urging. He had probably deserved to die. That was Edward’s only
comfort because, once again, he could never hope to bring Sutton to justice. He was not sure he wanted to now. At one time he had thought he had also murdered Stephen Thayer and for that murder he
might have been convicted. But now? Now, he did not believe Sutton had killed him.

What was that in the play? ‘Beat not the bones of the buried.’ What did that mean? Don’t speak ill of the dead? No, ‘let the dead rest in peace.’ That was it, but
could he do that? His accursed conscience would not let him. ‘To move wild laughter in the throat of death.’ That was all he could do.

It was over: enthusiasm for the actors – for Agustín in particular – applause for the show’s director, Maurice Tate, then a surge into the street. David came up to
them.

‘Verity, I must speak to you. I have had confirmation. The Army of Africa has mutinied in Morocco and Franco – the traitorous bastard – has taken command. General Goded has
taken the Balearic Islands.’

‘What is the government doing?’ Verity demanded.

‘What do you think?’ David said bitterly, ‘Nothing at all – dithering. Azaña is suicidal and the Prime Minister is in hysterics.’

‘We must get down there,’ Verity said decisively.

‘Where? Not to Morocco, I won’t allow it,’ Edward broke in. ‘If you two were captured, you would be shot.’ Verity looked at him with interest. She had rarely seen
him so vehement. The English gentleman, for whom good manners were the highest virtue, had suddenly shown steel.

David said grudgingly, ‘He’s right. In any case, we’ve got things to do here in Madrid first. The government are procrastinating about arming the trade unions and so we must do
it for them.’

‘The police?’ Edward asked.

‘They look like joining the rebellion,’ David said gloomily. ‘Verity, the first thing you must do is file a report for the English papers – a call to arms – the
Republic in danger – that sort of thing. You know what to do. It must be done at once in case the telegraph goes down. I’m going to the armoury. Join me there when you can.’

‘What shall I do?’ Edward asked.

‘You?’ David said contemptuously. ‘What’s it got to do with you?’

‘It certainly is to do with me. Communists are not the only anti-Fascists.’

David stared at him. ‘Well, if you mean it, come with me.’

The next few days were chaotic, frightening and – Edward had to admit it – exhilarating. Here, at last, was something to do – something worth doing. He
helped break open the armouries and distribute weapons to the workers. These latter were men – and some women – of a type unknown to Edward. They spoke a patois he could not understand.
They were clad in coarse cloth and many wore caps. Few had shirts and fewer still boots. They stank of garlic, sweat and the earth out of which they had sprung. When they smiled, which they did
often, they revealed bad teeth, and few of them, but they showed no fear. This, Edward imagined, was what it must have been like in those first glorious days of the French Revolution before the
hard men took control.

The Prime Minister, Casares Quiroga, resigned and his successor, Martínez Barrio, was hooted out of office by the crowd before he had even chosen a cabinet. As the government lost
authority, power passed to self-appointed ‘Anti-Fascist Militia Committees’ who set up road blocks and began house-to-house searches through the better neighbourhoods hunting out
traitors and ‘class-enemies’. Hangings and lynchings became commonplace and, by the third day, Edward began to feel that he was no longer helping protect the Republic but involving
himself in class warfare. David Griffiths-Jones was in his element commanding one of the most effective ‘Committees’ and Verity stood alongside him in a state of ecstasy. This was what
she had been waiting for. This made all the hanging about in cafés worthwhile. This was the head-to-head war with Fascism she had dreamed of.

David’s greatest achievement was to secure the airport and save for the Republic the aeroplanes he had bought from, among others, Nazi Germany. With a rifle in one hand and a pistol in the
other, he dismissed the airport commander and replaced him with one of his own men. Hester had difficulty in saving Ferdy’s life. Apparently the little man had made enemies in the Party. In a
moment of madness, Edward volunteered to ‘bomb up’ a small de Havilland Leopard Moth which was standing on the tarmac. This consisted of laying three bombs on the empty seats for his
passenger – one of David’s militant unionists – to throw out of the door. This he did over the nearby Sania Ramel airfield which was supposed to be in the hands of the rebels. As
far as Edward knew, his bombing raid had no effect whatsoever but thereafter he always claimed to have carried out the first aerial combat mission of the Spanish Civil War.

By the fourth day, Madrid was firmly in the hands of the Republic which meant, in fact, under the control of the Communist Party. Edward became uncomfortably aware that the Republic had fallen
into the hands of faceless men trained in the Soviet Union who, whatever was said in public, had no interest in restoring the Republic. On one occasion, he was questioned – as though he were
a Fascist spy – by a man from the Servicio de Investigación Militar and had to call on David to get himself released from the interrogation.

Later on the same day, as they rested briefly after their Herculean efforts to secure Madrid for the Republic, Edward expressed his misgivings to David. As he might have expected, he was treated
to a lecture which confirmed his detestation of everything the Party stood for. David was quite frank, perhaps hoping to shock him.