The next morning, the police came with an ambulance to take Montgomery away.
I watched from a dusty window as Carter and Agatha spoke with the constable standing on the gravel of the forecourt next to his Tin Lizzie, its door ajar. It was the same officer who had been sent down the last two times we'd lost one of ours, and I knew what he was required to ask.
Every suicide had to be investigated to determine if it wasn't murder in disguise. I saw the wisdom in that, especially given who we were. Many of the men had been in the most violent situations, had killed on several occasions, and who was to say that, when provoked, they wouldn't do it again? Rages, perhaps murderous rages, were thinkable. Unlikely, but thinkable. Those who didn't know the men very well always had that in the back of their minds. And the police were just as susceptible to those same wary notions as everyone else, perhaps even more so considering who their business put them into contact with daily.
Carter led the ambulance men round the side of the house to the chapel, a metal coffin on poles bouncing between them. The constable continued to ask Agatha questions. Intermittently, he would jot something down in his notebook, but he seemed largely to content himself to nodding and listening as Agatha told him far more than he needed to know.
The men returned with Carter in their wake and loaded Montgomery into the back of the ambulance, slamming the doors shut behind him. With a wave to the constable, they started the motor, and, spewing small clouds of black smoke, slowly circled the court before driving off down the long road towards the gates of Cloud Hill.
Agatha turned and came back into the house, pulling her woollen shawl closer around her shoulders and Carter escorted the constable in the direction of the forest. I imagined to show him Montgomery's cabin and the tree where we found him.
The day was bright with a clear sky. Placid clouds in ordered banks drifted by overhead. It would probably be warmer in the afternoon. That would be splendid for the men out in the fields. They were almost finished with the sowing, I'd been told.
What had happened? Something had set Montgomery off, I was sure of it. The last time I'd spoken to him he was clearly disappointed not to be able to go back to his cabin, but he was coping well. Or was he? Were there problems I knew nothing about?
The constable would certainly want to speak to Link and Rhys-Jones. And I would have to, as well.
At some point.
Agatha had insisted I stay in my room while she and Carter handled the whole affair with the police, arguing that I hadn't been there when it had happened and couldn't be expected to know anything. And besides, the state of my face might cause more raised eyebrows than was good for us. That was fine with me. I had no interest in talking to anyone. Not yet at least.
The letter to Montgomery's family lay on my writing desk awaiting an address. It was a small, white square bursting with helplessness, confusion and sincerest condolences, I can't say had been easy to write. None of us really knew him. The men had tried to befriend him in their usual way, but he'd preferred to steer clear of people if he could.
Nature had been his healer, that's what I'd written. But it was also been what had caused the rumours and the laying of those idiotic snares that had spooked him and brought him inside. That, I hadn't written.
The police would contact his family and delivery the tragic news, but a letter from me was the minimum of decency. Out of the eight letters I'd had to write to the families of the men we'd lost, I'd only ever received two replies. One screaming at me with all the pain of bereaved parents for not keeping their damaged son safe from himself, and the other profusely thanking me for taking in their lad when they could not longer manage with him. Both of those replies -- as well as the five who chose not to speak to me -- had torn me apart.
I felt the sting of tears forming behind my eyes and nose, but sniffed them away and stared instead at the clouds through the dust of the window.
The war would continue to reach out its skeletal fingers for these men for the rest of their lives. That was a reality I faced each and every day. How foolish could people be to believe that a war was over simply because a piece of paper had been signed in a cold railway carriage in the middle of nowhere? A war ended when all the men who had fought in it and those who had witnessed it first hand had passed on, finally safe from their terrifying memories, nothing but anonymous faces in old photographs. That's when it was really and truly over. For everyone.
Something had set Montgomery off. Perhaps we'd never know what it was, and I couldn't spend years ruminating on what ifs. The poor man was police business now and I had living men to prod into the future. I turned away from the window and went back to my bedroom, closing the door of the disused and stale smelling room behind me.
It was almost eleven and I was still in my dressing gown and slippers, not having bothered to even do up my hair. No one was going to see me and I still had some important things to work out. My appearance could go hang.
Throwing myself into the armchair next to my bed, I took up my notebook and pencil again but they only lay uselessly in my lap.
For the longest time, I simply sat there and watched the sky thorough my own window. My notebook was already scrawled full of ideas, page after page of them. Exciting, daring ideas -- and I had no earthy clue if they would work or not. That was the snag really.
I wasn't in Charlotte's league when it came to throwing caution to the wind, smashing on my hat and rushing out to follow my desires with all the confidence in the world that I'd attain them. The last time I'd dared an experiment, I'd brought an innocent lad I was genuinely fond of more pain than I'd ever dreamed possible.
What I ready to take the risk of experimentation and failure again?
That was the truly frightening part. The part that I'd realised as I'd lain in the dust on the floor last night. It was either change or watch everything I'd worked so hard and so long to preserve slide into oblivion as the world around me changed and moved on. Either that, or lose myself in the rubble of all my good intentions, entombed in the memories of the past.
My mistake had been so simple, I'd never even questioned that it. I'd been mindlessly focusing on members of my own class, counting instinctively on their humanitarian leanings and desire to help those in need. I'd solicited employment for the men with establishments of the level I was used to, the level I knew. And I'd been gravely disappointed.
Charlotte had warned me dozens of times and I'd heard, but not really understood. People wanted to be happy, enjoy themselves again, she'd been telling me. Parties, fashion, the flicks, celebrities, dancing, music, that was what was important now. Good times and sparkly shows. Gin cocktails and fancy cars. The war was over for them, forgotten. Nobody wanted to know that these men even existed. Not even those of my class to whom aristocratic responsibility should have been sacred.
That's what had kept me blinded for so long. My own class had let me down in every way I could think of and what was I to do about that?
The way forward, the only way forward that I could see, was to venture out into places and interact with people I never had before, to experiment, and that meant I'd have to trust and be open to suggestions from strangers.
And ask for assistance. Oh, dear God, and assistance.
Weren't any of them good enough for you?
When I'd found him, I'd wrongly assumed that James had kept his face averted out of the shame of accepting charity. Of being forced to admit that you couldn't fend for yourself and were reliant on the generosity of your fellow humans to keep you alive. I'd understood. It was a terrible situation to find yourself in.
And it was exactly the one I found myself in now.
I picked up the pencil, but then put it back down again.
It was from those I'd never even considered before that I'd have to ask for charity. Yes, charity. I'd have to admit I didn't know what I was doing and put my hand out.
I'd have to become the beggar on the street if I was going to help anybody, myself included.
Would I be laughed at? Mocked as a rich woman too feather-brained to know where the tinned custard was to be found? Told to go back to my local horse races and vegetable growing pageants? Scolded for not doing exactly that thing I couldn't do, relying on my own kind for help?
I chewed on my thumb as I watched the passing of the clouds on their carefree journey towards the Irish Sea.
I was going to have to be braver than I'd ever been.
I just hoped I had it in me.