The Lost Bookshop(97)
‘Look at her skirt.’
I zoomed in and saw something I had missed before. There were stitches on the material.
‘Words,’ she said, prompting my brain to kick into gear. ‘A story. The same one that’s on my skin, she sewed it into her clothes.’
‘What the—’
I looked at her back again and saw the initials at the end.
EJB.
My scalp tingled and it felt like my hair was standing on end.
‘Henry, I think this is Emily Bront?’s manuscript.’
Chapter Fifty-Two
OPALINE
London, 1946
Inspired by The Count of Monte Cristo, I spent months searching for information and came across a newspaper article about a soldier’s family who believed he had been wrongly executed for cowardice. They named the unit. It was my brother’s. I had my lead, all I had to do was follow it.
I uncovered damning court martial papers from two trials held in Ypres, where fifty men had been sentenced to death by firing squad (or murdered, depending on your viewpoint). Just days before the Armistice was signed and in full knowledge that the Germans were about to surrender, my brother had ordered two more men to be shot. I took the papers to a Mr Turner, a journalist working with The Times, and he agreed to investigate further.
From the trial record, it was clear that they were suffering from shell-shock. In Lyndon’s own hand, he wrote that shell-shock was a regrettable weakness, not found in good units. ‘There is insufficient evidence for a conviction,’ he’d written, yet he recommended a death sentence in order to send a message to the battalion, who had suffered great losses the day before. There was no mention that it was the general’s military strategy that had led to these wasted lives. One was an Irish soldier, Frank O’Dowd, who was shot for refusing to put his hat on because it was wet through from the endless rain. He was drugged by a doctor to get him through the final hours in the death cells. Mr Turner had been able to contact the medic, who confirmed that O’Dowd was a volunteer soldier. ‘They couldn’t see brave men when they were standing there in front of them,’ the medic had told him. He also confirmed that, once the firing squad had finished, my brother gave the Irishman the final coup de grace, a bullet to the head.
I spent the night at the Great Western Royal Hotel in Paddington. Unlike so much of London, it had made it through the war relatively unscathed, with some minor air-raid damage to the roof. It was strange being back home. I no longer felt a part of the fabric and the people seemed strange to me, different somehow. The war had robbed them of so much. In that, I should have felt a kind of solidarity, but my war had been a very different one. I met with Mr Turner for lunch and he handed me a copy of the article they would print in the paper the following day.
I read the article. It was powerful. Turner was an exceptional journalist and, rather than making a pantomime villain out of my brother, or a monster capable of terrible evil, he presented him as a very real man who had chosen brutality over human decency. This somehow made him more real, more accountable for his crimes.
‘No going back now,’ he said, tipping his hat to me before disappearing into the crowd on the street.
‘There is an old saying, Before you set out on a journey of revenge, you must dig two graves,’ said a woman’s voice, deepened by time and wisdom, yet unmistakably that of my old friend Jane.
‘Jane!’ I cried, embracing her tightly. I had written and asked if she would meet me in the hotel lobby.
‘Confucius said that,’ she warned, fearing the endeavour would somehow destroy me too. ‘Are you sure you want to go through with this?’
‘I need to own my story. To take back my power.’ I realised now that I shared another commonality with the families of those dead soldiers. I was shamed into silence. Ashamed of what happened to me, of how I had somehow ‘let’ it happen to me and of how people would look on me now, as some sort of damaged woman. I felt tainted by it. Other than Josef’s quiet and humble company, I had isolated myself from the world because of it. Was I ready to return? Maybe not, but then, does one ever feel truly ready? All I knew was that, in that moment, I had suffered enough in my silence. At least the pain of speaking out might bring me courage.
‘The world needs to know who Lyndon Carlisle really is. I offered up my own story - Commanding Officer Carlisle, The Reaper, had his own sister locked up in an asylum for the insane.’
‘Good grief! Will your editor print it?’ Jane asked.
‘It’s something of an old boys’ network at The Times. What Lyndon did to me doesn’t count, apparently.’
‘That’s absurd!’
‘Mr Turner was of the view that any hint of mental weakness could tarnish my reputation and detract from the “real story”. His words.’
‘Perhaps he has a point,’ Jane mused, chewing her lip. ‘Lyndon might use it to his advantage.’
‘I suppose you’re right. One last sacrifice to see justice done.’
I had set events in motion now; there was no turning back. Was I scared? Of course I was. Yet the story had now become so much bigger than me, I felt responsible to act on behalf of all those who would never have the opportunity to get justice for what my brother did to them. I would restore some integrity to the Carlisle name. I felt it was what my father would have wanted also. The time had come. I had to confront him face to face.