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  He said, ‘I’ll let you know about the straw.’

  ‘Thanks. I appreciate it. And come and see us again soon, Hugh. We’ll try to make it a quieter stay.’

  The cottage was silent. The same silence that he had found intolerable after Laura had died, only broken by the metronomic ticking of the grandfather clock. All his life there had been other people around – family, school friends, fellow officers, Laura, the children – never this devastating silence. Thursday made almost no noise except for occasionally purring gracious approval, but he was there. According to his daily routine, the old cat should have been curled up asleep at the end of the sofa; instead the sofa was empty, its cushions undisturbed. In desperation, the Colonel went through his stack of Gilbert and Sullivan records – the very old-fashioned kind that he had stubbornly kept since he had started collecting them in his school days. He could, he knew, have sat without stirring from his chair and listened to every one of the operettas through headphones clamped to his ears, but it seemed to him that modern recordings lacked substance and depth. Something had been lost in the process: something intrinsic between the listener and the music. It was satisfying – to him at least – to handle a record. To take it from its sleeve, to place it on the turntable, to press the switch and watch the mechanical action begin, before sitting down in his wing-backed chair, whisky in hand, to listen.

  We sail the ocean blue,

  And our saucy ship’s a beauty;

  We’re sober men and true,

  And attentive to our duty.

  The jaunty, salty tune would normally have raised his spirits, but instead he found himself depressed.

  Naomi had been right. He wasn’t satisfied that Don Wilson’s death had been an accident. It had looked like one and the police had concluded that it was one. However, as Naomi had pointed out, if the Australian’s tale had had any truth in it he would have been a serious threat to the crew’s hero status when he started spilling those beans at the reunion. Someone, as Geoffrey had remarked, might have believed him.

  Except that her colourful version of what had happened was guesswork based entirely on a fictional detective story, so far as he could see. He could hardly phone up Inspector Dryden on the strength of it. There was no proof – only his own irrational doubt and Naomi’s fertile imagination. Put together, they added up to precisely nothing. And the shoes and the watch were hardly conclusive evidence. It was true that some of the crew seemed to have harboured a few minor grievances – but so did most servicemen, in his experience. Authority was there to be grumbled about.

  In the Agatha Christie book, the killers had got away with it, though apparently for an acceptable reason. The victim had been an evil villain, the perpetrators of his death fully justified in killing him, and the great Hercule Poirot had diplomatically chosen to retire from the case.

  The Colonel had no case to retire from. The police would not be interested in his totally unfounded suspicions or Naomi’s wild speculations. Geoffrey and Heather were now happily getting on with their lives. Don Wilson was dead and honourably buried. The only people who knew the truth, or would ever know it, were the six remaining members of the Lancaster crew.

  When at anchor we ride

  On the Portsmouth tide,

  We have plenty of time to play.

  Ahoy! Ahoy!

  The balls whistle free.

  Ahoy! Ahoy!

  Over the bright blue sea,

  We stand to our guns, to our guns all day.

  For all he knew, the Lancaster crew had stood to their guns all night, and done everything they were supposed to do. For all he knew they were heroes, not cowards at all. Who was he to question it?

  He let the record finish and turn itself off. When he checked in the kitchen, the bowl of mashed sardines remained untouched. The fridge contained two eggs, some milk and a bit of Cheddar cheese. Ingredients for an omelette that he couldn’t be bothered to make. Back in the sitting room, he sat down again in the wing chair and picked up his whisky glass. The silence was back, except for the relentless ticking of the grandfather clock.

  Freda Butler was making her customary end-of-the-day sweep with the U-boat captain’s binoculars, somehow acquired by her late father, the Admiral. She stood at her sitting-room window traversing the village green, much as the original owner would have deployed them across the ocean from his conning tower.

  There wasn’t a great deal of interest going on, it had to be said. Nice Dr Harvey had driven by in his grey Renault on his way home to the Manor. How romantic it had been that he and dear Ruth had married and what happy news it was about the coming baby. So satisfactory that new life was being breathed into the old Manor. She must start knitting at once. A matinee jacket, perhaps? The problem was should it be pink or blue? Nowadays, so she had heard, it was possible to tell if it was a boy or girl, though, of course, she would never dream of asking.

  Mrs Cuthbertson had also driven past earlier, crouched over the wheel of the Escort, returning from her ladies’ bridge. She had narrowly missed the gatepost turning in to Shangri-La; sometimes she actually hit it.

  Miss Butler had also observed Naomi Grimshaw coming out of the Colonel’s cottage on the opposite side of the green and returning to Pear Tree Cottage next door. They would have been having their usual evening drink – no doubt out on the Colonel’s new terrace in the warm summer weather. Of course, there was no question of any kind of involvement in their case. The dear Colonel had obviously been very much in love with his late wife and was a perfect gentleman, not to mention that Mrs Grimshaw was rather past her best. If, indeed, she had ever had one.

  Miss Butler swept the green once more, like the U-boat commander in search of fresh quarry. It soon came into view in the shape of Major Cuthbertson weaving an unsteady homeward path across the green from the general direction of the Dog and Duck. Nothing new about that, either. Really, it was a disgrace how much he drank, though being married to Mrs Cuthbertson perhaps had its trials and tribulations? One should never sit in judgement. Most marriages, she had long ago realized, had their disadvantages and sometimes she was rather glad that she had remained single. She watched him veer into the entrance of Shangri-La, missing the gatepost by about the same narrow margin as his wife in the Escort. Marjorie Cuthbertson would be concocting some inedible dish in the kitchen and the Major, she knew, would sneak to the drinks cabinet presented by his old regiment which unfortunately, and very audibly, played ‘Drink to Me only with Thine Eyes’ the moment he opened the lid.

  The light was fading and she could see that the Colonel had switched on the lamp in his sitting room; it was glimmering through the windows. He must get very lonely sometimes, just as she did. They had both served in the forces and had known service camaraderie. Retirement took some getting used to and the Colonel, naturally, would miss his wife. As the village knew, he had been away for a few days, staying with friends in Lincolnshire, but now he was back on his own again.

  Miss Butler shifted the powerful glasses a degree to the left and picked up a dark shape slipping through the front gateway to Pond Cottage. Thursday! The ungrateful, bad-tempered, flea-bitten stray that the Colonel had been kind enough to give a home. Personally, she would never have allowed him over the threshold. And the word was that he had been accommodated at considerable expense in Cat Heaven during the Colonel’s absence.

  She kept the binoculars focused on the cat as he trotted up the pathway and disappeared round the corner, clearly heading for the back door and the comforts of Pond Cottage. Cats weren’t fools. They knew when they were on to a good thing.

  Miss Butler lowered the heavy binoculars for a moment, picturing the Colonel sitting alone in his armchair. On second thoughts, even a mangy old moggie might be some company. Perhaps Thursday had his uses after all.

  Footnotes

  Chapter Two

  1 See Old Soldiers Never Die

  2 See Dry Bones

  Mayhew, The Seventh Link