Justice Hall - Laurie R. King [119]
“I wrote to the family, of course. But then that is how you found me, so you know that. Writing letters to families was one of the main duties of officers. I found later that there’d been heated exchanges in the House of Commons over executing volunteers, particularly when they were not even legally adults. However, the Army deemed capital punishment a necessary tool in the maintenance of moral fibre, so instead of doing away with executions, they simply concealed them from the people at home. Death notifications became merely ‘died in active service.’ My own letter refrained from mentioning the manner of Gabriel’s death, stressing instead the love his men had for him. I kept the details to myself, since I assumed the major would write and I did not wish to contradict whatever he chose to tell them. What a tragedy, that his parents did not have his final words to them. I suppose this means that Gabriel’s own letters were lost as well?”
“Do you mean to say that this major appropriated the boy’s letters?”
“Goodness. I always assumed he had. That same afternoon, I helped Gabriel’s batman—McFarlane was his name; poor fellow, he was heartbroken—to pack up Gabriel’s effects and return them to the family. There was a pretty biscuit tin where I’d once seen Gabriel put a letter from Hélène, and it was gone. I didn’t have the heart to ask McFarlane about it—he was on the edge of tears the whole time. I thought that Gabriel had instructed his man to give them to the major, or perhaps to destroy them. They might have been too personal for him to wish his family to read.”
“Do you remember McFarlane’s full name?”
“Jamie, I think it was—Jamie McFarlane. A gnarled stump of a man; looked as if he’d live to be a hundred and ten, but he died two days before Armistice. Not from injuries, either, but an illness. Pneumonia, as I recall.”
It was frustrating beyond belief, Hastings’ tantalising bits of information that lacked any evidence to tie them together. The picture of Gabriel’s last days had evolved into a ghostly sketch, but every possibility of adding colour and dimension—the major’s name, the batman, the girlfriend’s surname, Gabriel’s letters and diary—was snatched out of our reach as soon as it appeared.
“And the diary, no doubt, went the same way,” Holmes complained bitterly.
But to our surprise, Hastings was again shaking his head. “No. Gabriel kept that with him during the night, and wrote small notes in it from time to time.” And then, as Holmes was opening his mouth to demand what in God’s name had happened to that piece of Gabriel Hughenfort’s life, Hastings’ next words dropped into the room with the impact of an unpinned grenade, tumbling over each other in his haste to explain, and justify. “He gave it to me at dawn, just as they came for him, and said to keep it safe until someone came to ask me for it, and so I kept it, and I waited, and the War ended but no-one came. No-one came! That was when I learnt his true name—only then, nearly a year after his death, did I breach its pages to see if I could find . . . But when I discovered who he was, I didn’t know what to do—I could not bring myself to write to such a family. No, Gabriel told me to keep it safe until someone came to ask me for it, so I kept it safe, and no-one came. Until you.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Holmes recovered his voice first. “You have this diary?”
“Then you weren’t sent to retrieve it?” Hastings said, which sounded more a confirmation of suspicions than a question.
“Why didn’t you tell us you had it in the first place?” I demanded.
“I thought you would ask for it and then leave,” he answered slowly. “When you did not immediately do so, I realised that I wanted you to hear the entire story. Would you have stopped here the afternoon if I’d offered you the diary the minute you arrived? Gabriel deserved having his eulogy delivered once, at least. Thank you for listening.”
With an