Dead Man's Land (40 page)
Something similar had happened at the Flitcham estate, he was certain. He had been somewhat disquieted by Legge when the young man had picked him up at the station. For a long-serving chauffeur, he had been quite an appalling driver. And his conversation was strange, his speech almost childish. But it was when he had seen Legge and Lady Stanwood together that his suspicions had been truly aroused. What the French neurologist, psychologist and author Henri Reclerc called ‘The Silent Language’ had positively screamed whenever they were near each other. Reclerc had studied non-verbal signs and signals that could be used to determine the relationship between people. It had proved very useful in the detective’s work: more than once, people pretending to be brother and sister had revealed themselves as lovers by a simple analysis of gestures.
It was obvious by applying Reclerc’s methods that theirs was no servant-mistress situation. There was an unspoken familiarity between the lady and the driver. Lovers? he had wondered. Was that why Lord Stanwood had been done away with? He had sought out Dr Kibble, who had described the symptoms of Stanwood’s long, slow death that echoed many of the details that Watson had described in his communication. And, Kibble had agreed, at the end he had turned blue, with a facial expression he could barely bring himself to describe. The patriarch had been poisoned. Was it so that Lady Stanwood and the dim-witted chauffeur could carry on their illicit tryst?
No, not lovers, he corrected. The bond was different. He could see it in her eyes, a mix of warmth and selfless concern. And in the driver’s willingness to please. This was not predicated on anything as base or transient as sex. This was a maternal link. The chauffeur, Harry Legge, was Lady Stanwood’s son. He was, in fact, Robinson de Griffon. The new Lord Stanwood. And he was sitting out the war as the family chauffeur. Which had meant the man over in France, the man Watson was chasing, had to be an imposter.
After much searching, Major Watson found Staff Nurse Jennings in the small chapel around the back of the Big House. It had been kept consecrated, for use in the Sunday services that were compulsory for all ranks who were mobile. It was often full and an overspill Communion or blessing was held in a marquee next door.
Jennings was busy lighting candles. ‘We are having a memorial service,’ she said, when Watson entered.
Miss Pippery wasn’t the only staff member that the East Anglian had lost that day. Two orderlies had died and a QA nurse was hovering on the brink of the next world, not expected to make it through till the following day. Plus there was poor old Caspar Myles to be commemorated.
‘Non-denominational,’ she added.
‘Good. Staff Nurse Jennings, I came to say goodbye and thank you.’
She stopped what she was doing and turned to face him.‘You’re leaving?’
‘For the time being. I have to help arrest the man who murdered Shipobottom and the others. I would imagine I will have to spend time helping formulate the case against him.’
She waited, a mix of apprehension and curiosity written across her features.
‘It’s Captain de Griffon.’
She clearly wasn’t expecting this revelation. ‘Lord Stanwood? But—’
‘He isn’t Lord Stanwood. We’ve all been taken in.’
‘You are certain?’
‘As I can be at this moment.’
She shook her head at this. ‘For a while I thought it might be Lieutenant Metcalf. Then Mrs Gregson. She had a history, you know.’
‘I know. Her ex-husband told me.’
‘God forgive me, I think part of me hoped it would be her,’ she confessed.
Watson was shocked. ‘Why on earth would you hope that?’
She moved to a pew and sat down, head bowed. Watson came and stood next to her.
‘That’s not a nice thing to say.’
She looked up, her eyes glistening. ‘Nice? Oh, Major, it’s wicked. Very wicked. But, women like Mrs Gregson . . . I don’t know, they make the rest of us seem so pale, so feeble.’
He sat down next to her. ‘I have known men like that.’
She put her head on his shoulder, exhausted. ‘I’m sorry if I caused you concern when I left to see my brother. I thought you were being over-protective.’
‘I was. I am. It’s a curse. But I am not sorry. I speak as one who will remember you as a friend for the rest of my days. Although, of course, I might have fewer days left than most here.’
It was meant to be a jest about his age, but the church now seemed very chill indeed.
‘Don’t say that. Please.’
‘I have to go. I have some business to attend to before I leave.’
Jennings sat up and straightened her clothing. ‘Where are you really going?’
‘As I said. To the front. I’m going to try to find out why a man would adopt a whole new identity and then, in the midst of war, set about murdering his own side.’
‘You don’t know?’
‘I know the answer must lie in Leigh. In the mills. The owner dead, workers dead. I suspect something terrible happened there. And whatever it was, this is where it came home to roost.’
Come hear the story of two sisters, sisters
good and true,
They worked the reels in Lancashire,
and only wanted their due.
They asked for men and women to be treated the same, to be
treated all alike,
And if that was not to be, they
promised a bitter strike.
Well, you won’t strike, you cannot strike, you will not strike, said the boss,
For the Lord will hear of it, and it’ll surely
be your loss.
Oh, we can strike, we will strike,
we are ready to fight
And you can tell the Lord Stanwood,
his mill will close tonight.
And if the looms stop turning, he said, stop for even for one day
If I know Lord Stanwood, you’ll be the ones to pay.
And a tattler standing by and hearing
what was said,
He swore Lord Stanwood he would know, before the sun was set.
And in his hurry to carry the news,
he bent his breast and ran,
And when he came to the broad millstream, he took off his shoes and he swam.
And the next day the engines were all quiet, the looms were very still
And be sure that no cotton was going to come out of that mill.
The same pay for the same work, the women marched and shouted,
But the men who knew the Lord, a good ending they doubted.
And the first message came that if they called off this strike, ended their charade,
Then the Lord would make sure that the sisters, they’d be richly paid.
But we cannot leave the other girls, we cannot leave them that way,
For we are honourable women, not ones to betray.
And after four more days, another note it came
Would the sisters meet with the bosses, before they all went lame?
But come alone, it said, and come to the woods at dusk
For the Lord himself will come along, for meet with you he must.
And so the two sisters went after sundown, they went down to the woods,
Only to find no Lord, but seven men in hoods.
And they grabbed the sisters hard and rough
And threw them to the ground.
We’ll teach you to strike, they said, and they began to pass them round.
Well, the older she pleaded and begged and made them a promise fair
If they spared her little sister, she would be their mare.
And so while little Bess watched the seven, gagged so she couldn’t shout,
They took their pleasures with the older girl, till no man was left out.
And by the time they had finished with her, there was madness in her eyes
And they left the sisters in the grove, deaf to their terrible cries.
And if we hear of any of this again, even hear your very name,
We’ll be back for little Bess, and she will get the same.
And to make sure they remembered, remembered what they had done,
They carved their number on Annie’s skin,
A stroke for each man who committed the sin.
And so the sisters left the mills, left with a terrible curse
And a promise to come back one day and do their very worst.
This is the true story of two sisters, sisters brave and true,
They worked the reels in Lancashire, and now they’ll give their due.
The captain finished singing and cleared his throat, trying to hide the emotion. It always made him choke up.
‘Do you know that song, Corporal Tugman?’ de Griffon asked his temporary batman, who was polishing the captain’s boots. Sunderland, his regular servant, had been taken ill. He had asked Tugman to stand in, for the usual fifteen shillings a week, until Sunderland returned. He was not, though, to be excused from other duties in the same way as a proper servant usually was. And no more mention of being promoted to sergeant.
‘Not in that version, sir,’ the man replied brusquely.
They were in one of the officers’ dugouts, an L-shaped sandbag and plank room – the ceiling supported by four impressive timber props – which successive occupants had tried to make homely, despite the instructions from high command that any creature comforts might erode the ‘offensive spirit’.
There was a gramophone, although only two records were left intact to play on it and most of the centre was taken up by a makeshift billiard table, created from a cut-down door. On the walls were some theatre posters, framed poems, a tester with ‘Home Sweet Home’ and an arrow pointing to the left stitched on it, some Old Bill cartoons and a selection of purloined street signs from local towns and villages. Pride of place was a meticulously painted crest of Uppingham School, executed by an old boy, probably dead by now. On a low, homemade table sat a stack of tatty magazines – mostly
Bystander
and
Punch
. There were books, too: well-thumbed and often mildewed copies of Homer and Horace, Henty and Kipling.
The dugout smelled of lamp and stove fumes, cigarette and pipe smoke, damp socks and chloride of lime from the latrines, but it was relatively dry and, apart from the occasional rat incursion, comfortable. It would be his home for a week, although by the next day he would be sharing it with several other officers – there were four bunks in the shorter section of the ‘L’ – as fresh units arrived. Still, most of his men were spending the night in rubber-lined funk holes or standing up to their ankles in water and mud in the forward trenches. And poor Metcalf was in a wooden box, awaiting the gravediggers’ attentions.
‘You don’t care for the song?’
‘I don’t, sir. No.’ His eyes remained fixed on the leather he was buffing. ‘Not that version. Begging your pardon.’
‘Which version do you know?’
‘It’s about a lady who sleeps with a commoner. And it’s Lord Darnell in the version I heard. Not Stanwood, sir.’ He shook his head in dismay. ‘I mean, that’s your brother.’
‘Yes, just a little personal joke there.’
‘Right, sir,’ he said, not amused.
‘They were real, you know.’
‘Who?’
‘The two sisters in the song. Pass me my cigarettes, will you? Thank you. Anne and Bess Truelove. She had a baby, Anne. But her mind was gone. They had marked her, you know? Cut a number in her skin, to show how many had taken her. Of course it sent her over the edge. Seeing that every day. The child was brought up by Bess. In Italy. Where nobody knew their story.’
‘There,’ said Tugman, not really listening, giving one last rub on the boots. ‘Bloomin’ shame to go out there and ruin them.’
‘Terrible shame to get killed in unpolished boots, Corporal. Just won’t do.’
‘Sir?’ It didn’t do to talk about such things.
‘Looking forward to tonight? Chance to do something other than a bit of spit and polish? Get one back for the lieutenant?’
‘I am,’ said Tugman, without conviction. He didn’t want to think on the death of Metcalf, the hideous randomness of it. ‘Good of you to choose me, sir.’
De Griffon looked at his wristwatch. An hour or so to go. ‘Well, that’s a fine job, Tugman. I think a drink is in order.’
Tugman looked doubtful. Rum rations were issued at stand-to, just after dawn or before going over the bags.
‘Come on, I know it’s not morning, but it’ll keep the cold out. Gets mighty chilly out there in dead man’s land.’
Tugman looked uneasy. He wasn’t sure what had got into the captain. It wasn’t like him to be maudlin. But it got them all in the end, the feeling that the end might be nigh. Some men even foresaw their own death, in gory detail. And it came to pass, just as they had described. Had the captain been cursed with a dream or a vision? Some premonition or a prediction, like poor old Shippy. ‘You mean no man’s, sir.’
‘Of course I do.’
De Griffon took out his hip flask, poured a shot for Tugman and handed it over.
‘You not having one, sir?’
‘In a while, Corporal,’ de Griffon said with a smile as Tugman threw it back. ‘In a while.’
Watson was seething by the time he reached the concrete loading apron of the overhead railway. He was enraged at the way the nocturnal army had sprung into life at sunset, spilling out onto the roads its battalions of marching soldiers, details loaded with precious water destined for the trenches, ration orderlies humping dixies of hot stew, and the convoys of lorries and carts moving men from rest to reserve and active and back again, all of which contrived to block his way to the front. Going into that mêlée would require the determination and stamina of a spawning salmon.
He was mad at the idiots who had managed to misdirect a whole company, who were now jamming the roads trying to find the correct village.
He was angry at the German airmen for wasting an innocent, harmless life. Miss Pippery deserved to die old, with many grandchildren to mourn her.