Sweet Poison Read Free Page B

impact had been cushioned by his heavy ulster. No, he could congratulate himself that his idiocy had not been the death of him. It was to be the first time that evening death had chosen to spare him.
    At Mersham Castle the Duke’s guests had already repaired to their rooms to rest and bathe before dressing for dinner. It was a pity that none of them was in a mood to appreciate the airy beauty of this magical castellated house. It had something of the feel of a Continental château or maybe an Austrian duke’s hunting lodge. Certainly, it was not quite English – light and airy where Norman castles had been dark and claustrophobic. It seemed to float in the evening light as serene as the swans drifting on the river which moated the castle walls. On an August evening as perfect as this one, it was more beautiful than any fairy-tale castle. Lord Tennyson, who knew Mersham well, had, it was said, recalled it in his Idylls of the King . No such place could be without a garden where lovers might walk arm in arm and declare to one another everlasting devotion and there were indeed lawns stretching down to the water, also a rather threadbare maze created only a century before in 1830, but the jewel in the crown was an Elizabethan knot garden of intricate design, in August blazing with colour and heady with the scent of roses. Beyond it there was a little woodland called The Pleasury.
    It was not love but death upon which General Sir Alistair Craig VC brooded as he stared at himself in the looking-glass; not his own death, though he knew that was crouching at his shoulder like a black cat, but the death of his beloved wife just a year before, friends dead in the war or after it, and the death of the child in his wife’s womb so many years ago, the son he was never to clasp in his arms. For some reason he could not begin to explain, he thought too of the funeral of his old and revered chief, Earl Haig, a just and upright man who had saved Britain and the Empire but whose reputation was already being savaged by men who called themselves historians but who, in the eyes of the old soldier, were little better than jackals and not good enough to wipe the Field Marshal’s boots. It had been all of seven years ago that he had processed through London with so many other generals, three princes and statesmen from all over the world. From St Columba’s Church, Pont Street, they marched bare-headed along the Mall and Whitehall to Westminster Abbey. Crowds lined the route in solemn silence. Many wore poppies, the symbol not just of those millions who had died on the field of battle but of the great work the Field Marshal had done in helping the wounded and dispossessed in the years after the war. It had been an event, a ceremony, which the General would never, nor ever want to, forget. It gave meaning to his own life that this great man, under whom he had served for three cruel years of war, should be so honoured. And now, was this honour to be stripped away like the gold leaf on a pharaoh’s coffin? Only last year at Oxford, in a debate in the Union, undergraduates had supported a motion that in no circumstances would they fight for king and country. The report in The Times had made his blood run cold when he read it. Pacifism was gnawing away at the nation’s manhood. It was a sickness. He, General Craig, had sent men to their deaths, many thousands of men. It had been his duty. Was it now to be said that, in obeying the orders of that great man now lying in honour in Dryburgh Abbey, he had not done well? Was he now to stand accused of . . . of murder? That was no reward for a life’s patriotic service.
    And what of tonight? Why had he come? Out of respect for the Duke, certainly; he did not altogether agree with the Duke on his attitude to their erstwhile enemy. The General believed, albeit with melancholy bordering on despair, that Britain was enjoying nothing more than a truce in her war with Prussian militarism. He could not believe