As the Crow Flies Read online

  The next clue came in the bottom line of an obituary, to which I wasn’t paying much attention until I discovered that a Mrs. Trentham would be coming into a fortune; not an important clue in itself, until I reread the entry and learned that she was the daughter of someone called Sir Raymond Hardcastle, a name that allowed me to fill in several little boxes that went in both directions. But what puzzled me was there being no mention of a Guy Trentham among the surviving relatives.

  Sometimes I wish I hadn’t been born with the kind of mind that enjoyed breaking codes and meddling with mathematical formulas. But somehow “bastard,” “Trentham,” “hospital,” “Captain Guy,” “flats,” “Sir Raymond,” “that brat Nigel,” “funeral,” and Mother turning white when she saw me dressed in a captain’s uniform seemed to have some linear connection. Although I realized I would need even more clues before logic would lead me to the correct solution.

  Then suddenly I worked out to whom they must have been referring when the marchioness had come to tea all those years before, and told Mother that she had just attended Guy’s funeral. It must have been Captain Guy’s burial that had taken place. But why was that so significant?

  The following Saturday morning I rose at an ungodly hour and traveled down to Ashurst, the village in which the Marchioness of Wiltshire had once lived—not a coincidence, I concluded. I arrived at the parish church a little after six, and as I had anticipated, at that hour there was no one to be seen in the churchyard. I strolled around the graveyard checking the names: Yardleys, Baxters, Floods, and Harcourt-Brownes aplenty. Some of the graves were overgrown with weeds, others were well cared for and even had fresh flowers at the head. I paused for a moment at the grave of my godmother’s grandfather. There must have been over a hundred parishioners buried around the clock tower, but it didn’t take that long to find the neatly kept Trentham family plot, only a few yards from the church vestry.

  When I came across the most recent family gravestone I broke out in a cold sweat:

  Guy Trentham, MC

  1897–1927

  after a long illness

  Sadly missed by all his family

  And so the mystery had come literally to a dead end, at the grave of the one man who surely could have answered all my questions had he still been alive.

  When the war ended I returned to Trinity and was granted an extra year to complete my degree. Although my father and mother considered the highlight of the year to be my passing out as senior Wrangler with the offer of a Prize fellowship at Trinity, I thought Dad’s investiture at Buckingham Palace wasn’t to be sneezed at.

  The ceremony turned out to be a double delight, because I was also able to witness my old tutor, Professor Bradford, being knighted for the role he had played in the field of code-breaking—although there was nothing for his wife, my mother noted. I remember feeling equally outraged on Dr. Bradford’s behalf. Dad may have played his part in filling the stomachs of the British people, but as Churchill had stated in the House of Commons, our little team had probably cut down the length of the war by as much as a year.

  We all met up afterwards for tea at the Ritz, and not unnaturally at some point during the afternoon the conversation switched to what career I proposed to follow now the war was over. To my father’s abiding credit he had never once suggested that I should join him at Trumper’s, especially as I knew how much he had longed for another son who might eventually take his place. In fact during the summer vacation I became even more conscious of my good fortune, as Father seemed to be preoccupied with the business and Mother was unable to hide her own anxiety about the future of Trumper’s. But whenever I asked if I could help all she would say was: “Not to worry, it will all work out in the end.”

  Once I had returned to Cambridge, I persuaded myself that should I ever come across the name “Trentham” again I would no longer allow it to worry me. However, because the name was never mentioned freely in my presence it continued to nag away in the back of my mind. My father had always been such an open man that there was no simple explanation as to why on this one particular subject he remained so secretive—to such an extent, in fact, that I felt I just couldn’t raise the subject with him myself.

  I might have gone years without bothering to do anything more about the conundrum if I hadn’t one morning picked up an extension to the phone in the Little Boltons and heard Tom Arnold, my father’s right-hand man, say, “Well, at least we can be thankful that you got to Syd Wrexall before Mrs. Trentham.” I replaced the headset immediately, feeling that I now had to get to the bottom of the mystery once and for all—and what’s more, without my parents finding out. Why does one always think the worst in these situations? Surely the final solution would turn out to be something quite innocuous.

  Although I had never met Syd Wrexall I could still remember him as the landlord of the Musketeer, a pub that had stood proudly on the other end of Chelsea Terrace until a bomb had landed in the snugbar. During the war my father bought the freehold and later converted the building into an up-market furnishing department.

  It didn’t take a Dick Barton to discover that Mr. Wrexall had left London during the war to become the landlord of a pub in a sleepy village called Hatherton, hidden away in the county of Cheshire.

  I spent three days working out my strategy for Mr. Wrexall, and only when I was convinced that I knew all the questions that needed to be asked did I feel confident enough to make the journey to Hatherton. I had to word every query I needed answered in such a way that they didn’t appear to be questions; but I still waited for a further month before I drove up north, by which time I had grown a beard that was long enough for me to feel confident that Wrexall would not recognize me. Although I was unaware of having seen him in the past, I realized that it was possible Wrexall might have come across me as recently as three or four years ago, and would therefore have known who I was the moment I walked into his pub. I even purchased a modern pair of glasses to replace my old specs.

  I chose a Monday to make the trip as I suspected it would be the quietest day of the week on which to have a pub lunch. Before I set out on the journey I telephoned the Happy Poacher to be sure Mr. Wrexall would be on duty that day. His wife assured me that he would be around and I put the phone down before she could ask why I wanted to know.

  During my journey up to Cheshire I rehearsed a series of non-questions again and again. Having arrived in the village of Hatherton I parked my car down a side road some way from the pub before strolling into the Happy Poacher. I discovered three or four people standing at the bar chatting and another half dozen enjoying a drink around a mean-looking fire. I took a seat at the end of the bar and ordered some shepherd’s pie and a half pint of best bitter from a buxom, middle-aged lady whom I later discovered was the landlord’s wife. It took only moments to work out who the landlord was, because the other customers all called him Syd, but I realized that I would still have to be patient as I listened to him chat about anybody and everybody, from Lady Docker to Richard Murdoch, as if they were all close friends.

  “Same again, sir?” he asked eventually, as he returned to my end of the bar and picked up my empty glass.

  “Yes, please,” I said, relieved to find that he didn’t appear to recognize me.

  By the time he had come back with my beer there were only two or three of us left at the bar.

  “From around these parts, are you, sir?” he asked, leaning on the counter.

  “No,” I said. “Only up for a couple of days on an inspection. I’m with the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food.”

  “So what brings you to Hatherton?”

  “I’m checking out all the farms in the area for foot and mouth disease.”

  “Oh, yes, I’ve read all about that in the papers,” he said, toying with an empty glass.

  “Care to join me, landlord?” I asked.

  “Oh, thank you, sir. I’ll have a whisky, if I may.” He put his empty half-pint glass in the washing-up water below th