Lessons in Solving the Wrong Problem - Charlie Cochrane Page 0,11

of what happened was, in my experience, almost unhelpfully wedded to telling the truth. If he said Edward jumped, then that’s how it must have appeared to him. It would have been in keeping with the boy’s character.” At last Henry glanced across at them. “He’d thrown himself into the water before in the previous few months and one of us had got him out. My mother insisted that had been merely a case of over-exuberance on the lad’s part, a desire to learn how to swim, as his brothers could, but I felt that was wishful thinking.”

“Your parents must have been heartbroken.” Jonty could imagine the effect such an occurrence would have had on his mother and father.

“My mother only. My father had died in an accident the previous year, so we were doubly affected in a short space of time. She was stoic, of course and putting on a brave face for society, but I truly believe she never really recovered. My mother—” Henry stopped.

“Your mother?” Jonty prompted, after the silence became uncomfortable.

“Nobody outside our immediate family knows this, gentlemen. I pray that if I tell you, you will maintain that secret.”

“I promise you that no word will pass our lips.” Orlando, clearly offended at the implication that they would ever consider breaking a confidence, frowned magnificently. He cut a wonderfully austere and dignified figure, standing upright on the bridge. Like an old-fashioned judge presiding over his court with a rod of iron, whose promise could be counted as law. “Be assured that we have been trusted with many secrets, including those of kings. Were we to abuse that trust, we would have lost any right to continue in our career—if I may call it such—as consulting detectives.”

His lordship inclined his head, although not before Jonty spotted the little grin the man was attempting to suppress. “I apologise for even suggesting such a thing. Alas, not everyone lives up to your standards of honour. I’ll tell you as much as I can, but I’d prefer if we could walk on.”

Leaving the scene of the tragedy, Henry’s tension appeared to ease. Understandably so: how awful to be reminded of the event every time one crossed the bridge.

“Thrice, in the year following Edward’s death, my mother believed she saw the boy. It was put down to grief, her desire to have her son by her side once more leading to hallucinations. Yet she was adamant that she hadn’t dreamed it. He’d been there.”

Jonty had heard of such things, the bereaved person’s mind leading them to a kind of mental wish-fulfilment. “That must have been very upsetting for her.”

“The strange thing is that it wasn’t, Jonty. Far from making her frightened or distressed, the apparition—or delusion, or whatever you would care to call it—brought her nothing but happiness. As though he had dropped in for a visit. If it was indeed his ghost walking abroad then it was a completely benign visitation. It helped her through the depths of grief.” Henry swished his stick at an unseasonal dandelion clock.

“Do you believe it was his ghost?” Orlando asked.

“I don’t know what I believe. Nobody else ever saw him on any of the three occasions, as far as I’m aware. He didn’t appear separately to any of us, family or servants, and there was never a fourth occasion upon which he appeared to my mother. She happily and peacefully lived another ten years, before she was struck down with cancer. At the end she was still content, ready to join Edward in a home that isn’t subject to ruination or the effects of time.” Henry smiled in fond remembrance. “Even though she must have been in agony, she kept her spirits up. Each day was one day closer to seeing Edward again.”

Jonty could imagine his mother expressing similar sentiments had she lost him in his early days. “Might I ask where she believed she saw him, those three times? Was he on the bridge itself?”

“No. He was never by the lake, so this wasn’t a case of a spirit retracing its last steps. On the first occasion, he was walking down by a little copse where we get a drift of snowdrops every year. He’d always loved seeing them, from when he could barely toddle. He’d drag his nurse there every day when they were in bloom, to admire the sight. Another time he was near the ruined chapel of ease that’s a quarter mile along the road from the estate’s east lodge.”