A Study in Murder (3 page)

‘Hanson? He’ll live,’ said Watson of the new arrival who had tried to slash his own throat. ‘Most of the blood came from his ear. Krebs managed to get to him before he
sliced through anything major.’

‘Good. You know he played rugby for England?’

‘He’s that Hanson? Scrum half for Cornwall? Played in the Olympics?’ Where, Watson didn’t bother adding, Australasia – basically the Australian rugby team –
had slaughtered them 3–32.

Isbell nodded. ‘Yes. Graduate of Camborne School of Mines. He was captured making a recce into no man’s land for the most effective placement of explosives. Affected him quite badly,
being captured. The Senior British Officer at Friedberg, his last camp, requested a transfer here as he felt the regime more conducive to his recovery.’

They had reached the innermost of the camp’s twin perimeter fences. Beyond them was a ploughed field, the soil stiff and cloddy and varnished with the evidence of the morning’s
frost, its furrows awaiting the next crop of mangels. Further on was a copse, its skeletal trees tantalizingly close, the spindly branches seeming to beckon as they waved in the lusty breeze
coming, fortunately, from the south. ‘Seems that at Friedberg he tried to walk into the kill strip,’ Isbell said, nodding at bare earth between the two fences. ‘Lucky he
wasn’t shot.’

‘Perhaps he wanted to be shot,’ said Watson.

‘Only been in a few months, y’know. Wire fever usually takes longer to take hold,’ said Isbell. ‘Before men do anything quite so reckless.’

‘There is a particularly black sort of wire fever,’ said Watson. ‘I’ve seen men try to scale those fences in full view of the guards. And I’ve seen guards oblige
them by shooting them in the back.’

‘Good Lord. In cold blood?’

Watson nodded.

‘Where was this?’

‘Karlsruhe camp.’

‘You complained?’

‘In writing. To the commandant and the Red Cross. Precious little good it did me.’

‘Well, whatever you call the fever, I think Hanson has it bad. The thing is, I knew his brother at school. I was wondering if you could keep an eye on him for me? Just until we can get him
to snap out of it. Find him something useful to do?’

‘Such as?’

‘The Escape Committee. Always needs extra hands.’

The Escape Committee’s role was to dream up ever more elaborate ways to go over, under or through the wire. In truth, few succeeded. Hauptmann Halbricht might be a reasonable, some would
say soft, commandant – there were far tougher camps in the system – but he was no fool. He also had the knack of swooping down on any plotters at the last possible moment, meaning the
Escape Committee had to start all over again when its precious stock of forged documents, German marks, maps and railway timetables were confiscated. However, Watson was aware that the thought of
escape, the minutiae of its planning and execution, kept many a man sane, even though the schemes might come to naught. And in some camps, the planning bore fruit – he had heard of men who
escaped nine, ten, twelve times. And the exploits of those who made a ‘home run’ – including Lieutenant-Colonel Crofton Bury Vandeleur, the first man to ‘nip out’ from
Krefeld, as he put it – became the stuff of legend around the camps.

‘Of course I will,’ agreed Watson. There was the flat report of a distant shotgun and a whirl of crows took to the air, looking like moving ink splashes against the pale blue sky.
‘It will give him a sense of purpose. Of continuing the fight.’

‘That’s the spirit.’

‘And once he is discharged from the infirmary, Hanson can come into my billet. There’s a spare bunk.’

‘Good man,’ said Isbell. ‘I appreciate it. Strange how some can’t take it, eh? Even a fit chap like Hanson.’

Watson turned his back on the outside world as the nervous crows settled on the branches once more, flexing their wings in anticipation of further flight. ‘Incarceration? The fact is,
Colonel, none of us expected it. Death, yes. Maimed, gassed, also very likely. But this –’ he swept an arm across the expanse of the camp – ‘to be locked up as prisoners in
Germany? They feel a failure, diminished as men.’

Isbell grunted as if he was talking rot, but Watson knew he understood. The man’s meticulous grooming and adherence to a strict daily routine was a way of keeping such thoughts at bay.
Watson had his patients, and therefore a role to play. Everybody else had only time to kill, and it lay heavy with many of them. There were only so many football matches and concerts with pretty
adjutants in frocks one could stomach.

‘And how are you bearing up?’ Isbell asked.

‘Me?’ Watson asked.

‘Burned, weren’t you? In one of those bloody useless tanks, I hear.’ The colonel was well informed. Isbell had been taken prisoner when the tank was still a glimmer in
Churchill’s imagination. But the wire fences were porous, fresh prisoners updated inmates, and news in letters sometimes slipped by even the German censors. And then there was the camp
‘Marconi’, the gossip machine that spread information – some of it even true – about every inmate and, as if by magic, sometimes let news leap from one camp to another.

‘I was well cared for,’ Watson said, which was the truth. He had seen the propaganda posters of German nurses pouring water onto the ground in front of thirst-racked and wounded
British soldiers, but his experience suggested it was just that: propaganda. When Watson had been blown out of the tank at Flers, he had been picked up by a German patrol in no man’s land and
delivered to a field hospital where German nurses had dressed his burns and cared for him to the best of their ability. ‘There’s scarring, of course, but not too bad. And it’s on
my back, so I don’t have to look at it. It’s healed well, for a man of my age.’

‘Good.’ Isbell pulled down his jacket and ran a hand down the buttons, although it was hardly creased. ‘There’s something you should know.’

‘About Hanson?’

Isbell took the major’s arm and guided him away from the small clump of men who had gathered at the fence to smoke and exchange news from their letters.

‘Halbricht had me into his office yesterday,’ said Isbell. ‘I expected the normal housekeeping, but he told me an exchange is being negotiated, whereby some prisoners will be
released to spend the rest of the war in neutral Holland, in or around Scheveningen. They will play no further part in combat, but . . . well, it’s freedom, of a kind.’

‘And you are telling me this because . . . ?’

‘Halbricht says the first tranche will be any prisoners over the age of forty-eight. Which means you and Digby Rawlinson. Plus any medical men are also to be released, which means
you’ve hit two sixes there, old boy. Time to leave the crease. It’ll take a few weeks to finish the formalities, apparently, but your name has gone forward, Major Watson. To all intents
and purposes, you are going home.’

The dead came calling once again. That night the four men sat around the table, with the curly-haired lieutenant, Archer, leading the proceedings as he always did. It was after
curfew. They could hear the prowling dogs yelping and snarling bad-temperedly as they padded between the two outer fences of the camp.

Archer laid his hood to one side as Harry, the orderly, put out the flask of drink and four glasses and then retreated.

Archer raised his glass. ‘To those on the other side we are about to contact. Salutations.’

‘Salutations,’ the others replied, and all four threw the corrosive liquor to the back of their throats.

‘Concentrate, gentlemen,’ Archer said as he pulled down his silken hood. ‘Who are we attempting to contact tonight?’

‘My brother. Jimmy Hulpett,’ said one of the men, the sceptic about communication with the other side who, nevertheless, had been intrigued enough to come back a second time.

‘I suggest we all hold hands while you tell us something about your brother.’

‘Jimmy is – was – younger than me. We both joined up at the same time. I had been through cadet school, so I went to officer training. Jimmy didn’t want to have anything
to do with that. He went in as a private, although he was a corporal when he—’

‘His personality,’ chided the medium gently. ‘Tell us about his character.’

‘Jimmy was a joker. A practical joker. Loved to play tricks. Fill your boots with sand, make papier mâché spiders to leave in the lavatory for our sister, Sylvie, to find.
Always had a joke, Jimmy, not all of them clean. He didn’t get on well at school. The teachers thought he was lazy or stupid, but he had a sharp mind. Just not for letters. Numbers he was
good at, which is why he started the betting ring that got him expelled . . . Blimey.’

The smell.

‘Go on,’ said the medium. But the moment the words left his mouth he felt a rush around him, a dozen voices ringing in his head at once. He felt a mix of elation and nausea.

‘Quiet, quiet, please, gentlemen,’ he pleaded, and squeezed the hands of those on either side of him.

‘You all right?’ one of the regulars asked Hulpett. ‘You’ve gone quite pink.’

‘It’s that bloody drink. Worse than last time.’

‘Shush.’

The medium let his breathing become steady and even as he waited for the cacophony to subside. So many dead now, they had to jostle to be heard. He imagined only the strong made it, even on the
other side.

‘Jimmy?’

‘
Not Jimmy. No.
’

‘Who then?’

‘
Paper.
’

A
frisson
of excitement ran through the medium. It was his unknown soldier, the one who had written the unintelligible pages through him on the last firm contact with the dead. Archer was
ready this time. ‘I need to know who you are,’ he said firmly, as if he could really influence the actions of the dead.

Archer clutched the pencil tightly and at once it moved over the paper, in a series of shaky but flamboyant loops.

‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ said Hulpett.

The voices faded and the pencil clattered onto the table. ‘What?’ Archer demanded of the man who had broken his concentration. ‘What is it?’

‘This.’ Hulpett snatched up the paper with the spirit’s signature. ‘Captain Brevette.’

‘What about him?’ Archer asked.

‘Captain Brevette’s still alive,’ Hulpett said. ‘We had a postcard from him. He’s probably having a whisky at his club as we speak. Well, it proves one
thing.’

‘What’s that?’ Archer raised the hood. ‘What are you saying?’

‘It can’t be Brevette.’ There was genuine disappointment in the voice, for Hulpett had hoped to make contact with poor Jimmy. Now, he simply felt foolish for believing that was
possible. He jabbed a finger at Archer. ‘You’re a bloody charlatan, just like the rest of them.’

Hulpett sprang to his feet, knocking the home-made chair over as he did so, and strode from the rec hut, muttering as he went. Archer cleared his throat and picked up the pencil once more.
‘Gentlemen,’ he said as he slipped down the hood, ‘shall we continue?’

The familiar name leaped off the page, but the German officer made sure he showed no emotion. He looked up at his opposite number, a Major Pitt from the British Office for the
Welfare of Prisoners of War, and frowned.

‘Is something wrong?’ asked the third man in the room, a Dutch colonel by the name of De Krom.

The Kaiser’s man lit a cigarette. His fleshy features relaxed, although what he said brought dismay to the other two men around the table. ‘I am afraid there are men on this list who
do not deserve to be released.’

‘Oh, for crying—’ began Pitt before he caught himself. The three officers were in a private meeting room at the Hotel Europa in The Hague. Outside the window, a prosperous
country, only sideswiped by war, went about its business. For months now representatives of the warring governments had been trying to finalize a plan whereby elderly prisoners and those in need of
medical treatment could be repatriated to neutral Holland, to serve out their time in relative comfort. It was a generous offer from the Dutch. Both sides wanted it. And Holland would be paid
handsomely for its hospitality. But now the German was backsliding on the agreement.

Pitt glanced at the pasty-faced De Krom, who seemed equally unhappy. He was repeatedly running a hand through his wispy blond hair, a nervous tic that was probably responsible for his incipient
baldness.

‘Look here, we have been through all this,’ said Pitt, trying to moderate his tone. He knew he could be hectoring at times. ‘All of those men are special cases.’ He read
from the list of qualifying conditions. ‘They have diseases of the circulatory system, serious nervous problems, tumours and severe skin diseases, blindness (total or partial), serious face
injuries, tuberculosis, one or more missing limbs, paralysis, brain disorders like paraplegia or hemiplegia and serious mental illnesses, or are over the age of forty-eight or qualified medical
practitioners. As I say, every single person has one or more of those afflictions. Every single one. None of them will be released to contribute to the war effort, no matter how vital they might
be. We have approved everyone on the list you gave to us. And, I might add, you are getting an allocation of thirty more men than we are.’

The German stubbed out his cigarette. ‘Calm down, Major. There are just three names I object to. You can put replacements forward, of course.’

‘Object? For what possible reason?’ De Krom asked. It was almost midday and he already had his mind on lunch.

‘I don’t have to give you a reason. I know that these men are a threat to the security of the German Imperial State. That they cannot be trusted to keep their bond. I’m
sorry.’ He stood and straightened his tunic. ‘But if they remain on the list . . . I am afraid our work here is over.’

He glanced at the door. Outside were civil servants from each of the three countries, the cogs in the machine that had worked out the fine details of the exchange. With them were members of the
Red Cross and both British and German organizations responsible for prisoners’ welfare. And the press, waiting for the announcement they had been promised, some of them armed with cameras the
size of sea chests.