The White Lie

THE LEGEND

1913. Captain Scott and his four companions reach the South Pole to find their Norwegian rival Roald Amundsen has won the race. Defeated, they set out on the 850-mile journey to their ship. Apsley Cherry-Garrard, the explorer sent out to meet them at One Ton depot, peering South through thick spectacles, sees only an infinity of white, and turns back. A year later Scott's pitched tent is found, just ten miles from the depot, and the bodies within speak of hunger, the unbearable strain of hauling the sledge, and the brutal winter cold. They lie in a tomb of ice. Cherry is left forever tormented by thoughts of what might have been.

THE TRUTH

1969. Ten years after Cherry's death, Falcon Grey—who as an orphan of the Blitz was brought up at the explorer's country estate—receives a bequest: a small red notebook that was found in Scott's tent. It is a diary, and it states that they were not victims of the cold, or hunger, but murder, in the coldest of blood. Suspects range from envious foreign powers—such as the Kaiser's Germany—to revolutionaries and even Scott's own men. Vital clues lie in the tent, so Falcon goes South to the ice to see it for himself, but someone is desperate to conceal the truth and will kill to keep the secrets under the ice.

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