Lost Among the Living(75)

I couldn’t do it. I wasn’t built for subterfuge, not like he was. I checked that the pane of glass between us and the driver was up, and then I blurted, “Did you kill your cousin?”

That quieted him. There was no sound but the hum of the motor.

“There’s nothing I can do if you did,” I continued. “It was years ago, and no one would believe me. I wouldn’t believe me. The inquest is long over, and it would be your word against mine.”

When Alex spoke, his voice was soft, with a chill in it like a descending fog. “How very extraordinary.”

“It isn’t,” I protested. “It isn’t extraordinary that I would at least wonder. You were here in the house that day. You specifically requested leave. You were seen talking to her the day before she died. There’s so much you haven’t explained to me. And don’t tell me it wasn’t murder, because it was.”

“No,” Alex said. “It isn’t extraordinary that you would wonder, though I don’t deny it stings. What’s extraordinary is that you and I seem to be on the same mission after all this time.”

I stared at him. “What do you mean?”

“You asked me,” Alex said slowly, “last night what other reason I had to come to Wych Elm House. Well, now you’ve found it. I’ve come here, Jo, because I want to find my cousin’s murderer. Just like you do.”





CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE



The rain was coming down in cold spatters, blown by gusts of wind. I held the brim of my hat as Alex helped me from the car, and I waited as he unfurled his umbrella and held it over our heads. We were at the end of Anningley’s High Street, facing downhill toward the church, but Alex touched my arm and steered me down a side lane. “Let’s walk a while,” he said.

I followed, my handbag under my arm. Though it was dark and chill, I was still glad to be out of the close confines of the motorcar, and the fresh air on my cheeks was welcome. “I don’t suppose you could possibly explain,” I said to my husband.

“It’s a very long story.”

I sighed. “You seem to be full of long stories. Please tell me this one as well.”

Alex walked quietly beside me for a moment. We were strolling down a lane lined with small cottages, their front yards thick with hedges and browning rosebushes, the dead heads of rhododendrons bowing over the fences. The ground was wet and dotted with puddles, and but for a single farmer’s cart on the road in the distance, no one was about. I leaned in close to him, taking up as much space under the umbrella as I could. He was lost in thought and did not seem to notice.

“I told you,” he said finally, “that I turned down Colonel Mabry’s offers for most of the war. But in 1917, while I was at the Front, he contacted me about something he said affected me very closely. Something he thought I’d want to know.”

“What was it?” I asked.

“Military Intelligence had intercepted a set of plans that were on their way to the enemy. Specifically, it was a map of the Sussex coast near Wych Elm House, along with a detailed drawing of the base there. The Ministry of Fisheries installation had been repurposed for military use in 1915, for the repair and supplying of warships.” He glanced at me. “The drawings were skillfully rendered, I can say with authority, since I saw them myself.”

“So the gunboats weren’t there by accident all those years ago,” I said.

“As I said, I’m not told much. The place was taken up for the war effort, since it’s in a useful spot on our shipping routes. When Mabry intercepted the drawings on their way to the Germans, of course he knew what it was. The obvious conclusion was that someone either in or around Wych Elm House made the drawings for the enemy.”

I was getting wet on one shoulder, so I looped my arm through his and leaned closer to him under the umbrella, frowning. “Why would the Germans want these drawings?”

“To plan an attack on our ships. The inlet is perfectly wide and deep enough for U-boats to get in, if the Germans knew where to send them. The drawings were made from the vantage point I’d used as a boy.”

I paused, digesting this in shock. “They were made on Forsyth property? You’re saying that the Germans could have used the drawings to attack the base? And someone from Wych Elm House supplied them?”

“It certainly looked that way,” Alex replied. His hat was pulled down on his forehead, and he was staring ahead at the road, his long stride adjusted to my shorter one. The wool of his sleeve was warm through my glove. “It’s also possible the drawings were made by a visitor to the house, or someone passing through the area.”

“The man in the woods,” I said immediately. “The stranger who died. You’re saying he was a—a spy?” Even as the word came out of my mouth, I could not believe I was walking in the calm, damp, peaceful English countryside, talking about spies.

“I don’t know who that man was,” Alex admitted. “To this day, I have no idea. The drawings were intercepted long before that day. Intelligence had to send someone, and Colonel Mabry told me that if I did not go to Wych Elm House to investigate, he’d send another agent. I didn’t like the idea of some stranger bumbling through my family. So I accepted the assignment and came to my aunt’s house in Sussex for a visit.”