Colonel Butler's Wolf (2 page)

Beyond the red and green glass panels of the door someone was stirring : J. Dingle, summoned by his two rings. It was a comfortless, solid house, redbrick and bourgeois, dating from the days when Westcliffe-on-Sea tradesmen could afford to tuck a servant or two in the attics under the eaves. And now, built just too far from the sea to decline into a boarding house, it had turned into a respectable nest of small flats for single retired people whose private pensions or prudently invested savings enable them to scorn state aid.

Among whom was J. Dingle: the door swung open and Butler and J. Dingle considered each other in silence for a moment.

“Mr Dingle?”

A small nod. Butler drew his identification folder from his breast pocket and politely offered it to the old man. With the elderly, courtesy was their right as well as his duty.

“I,wonder if I might have a few words with you, Mr Dingle?” Dingle stared at Butler over his half-glasses with eyes that seemed much younger than the rest of his face— bright, birdlike eyes set in wizened and folded skin which reminded Butler of the brazils that had appeared in his home every Christmas to linger on in their bowl for months because no one had the patience to crack them.

The eyes left Butler’s face at last in order to examine the folder, flicking back to compare the face with the photograph, then lowering again to decipher the small print.

At length the examination was complete and the eyes returned, still without expression—it was as though Dingle’s three-score years and ten had exhausted his ability to react outwardly to any event, no matter how unlooked-for.

“You’d better come inside then, Major Butler,” the old man beckoned abruptly with a mottled, claw-like hand into the dark hallway in which the light from outside picked out the highlights of polished woodwork and linoleum.

Butler waited for him to close the door, and then followed him down the passageway, stooping uneasily, to avoid a ceiling which he guessed was far above his head. Now that he was inside it, the house seemed to press in on him.

He was not prepared for the room into which Dingle finally ushered him, a high, well-proportioned room, full of leather-bound books and photographs in silver frames jostling each other on small mahogany tables. There was a fire bright with smokeless fuel in the hearth and a smell of good tobacco. The pity he had begun to feel for Dingle was transmuted instantly into something close to envy—“poor old Mr Dingle” became “lucky old Dingle”.

The old man pointed to a chair on one side of the fire, waiting until Butler had sunk himself into it before settling in one on the other side of the fireplace.

“Just what is it that you want of me?”

“Some information.”

“Tck ! Tck !” Dingle clucked pettishly. “Of course you want information. I may be ancient, but I’m not senile. And I recognise one of those signatures on that little card of yours— though he was only a junior civil servant when I knew him.”

Butler frowned, momentarily at a loss, and Dingle pounced on him.

“Not done your homework, Major?” The lipless mouth puckered briefly and then tightened again. “Perhaps I am leaping to a false conclusion about your arcane purposes. But there was a time in the Second War when I ran errands between MID and NID, and I recall
him
perfectly—I never forget a name or a face. Not yet, anyway.”

Not senile, thought Butler, certainly not senile—even if he had jumped to a conclusion. It was, after all, a reasonable conclusion in the circumstances, however coincidental those might actually be.

But it was strange to think of this skeletal old gentleman striding down corridors which he himself used.

Butler’s eyes strayed involuntarily to the framed photographs on the table beside him. Individuals in cap and gown, team groups in the comically long shorts of yesterday’s sports or immaculate in striped blazers and white flannels; Dingle had been a sportsman in his faraway youth. There was even a group of officers and men dating, by their moustaches, Sam Brownes and puttees, from the ‘14-‘18 war.

“You will not find it easy to recognise me there.”

Butler engaged the bright eyes again. It was time to assert himself. “Not at all, sir,” he snapped. “You’re third from the left in the cricket picture, second row, on the far right in the rugger one and in the centre of the infantry group.”

Lashless shutters of skin descended half-way across Dingle’s eyes in what was presumably an expression of surprise. Which was gratifying even though there was no mystery in the identification: if none of those youthful faces in any way resembled this wrinkled mask there was still one nondescript young face that was common to all the groups and which must therefore be yesteryear’s Dingle.

“I’m here rather by accident, sir,” Butler continued stiffly. “I had intended to call on the headmaster, but it seems that the school is shut up for half term. I was told that you might be able to help me.”

Dingle remained silent.

“I am interested in one of your former pupils, Mr Dingle. I believe you may be able to help me.”

Still the old man said nothing. Butler sensed rather than noticed a wariness in him.

“The name of the man—the boy, that is—was Smith. Neil Smith.”

At last Dingle spoke. “Smith is not an uncommon name, Major Butler. The Christian name is not significant, I have never addressed a boy by his Christian name. Neil Smith means no more to me than any other Smith, and I have taught a great many of them.”

“I think you may remember this Smith. He was a clever boy.”

Dingle regarded him coolly over his half-glasses.

“Five per cent of all boys are clever, Major. Apart from the wartime interruptions I have been teaching for over half a century. Now, how many clever boys … how many clever
Smiths
… do you think I have instructed in Latin grammar and English grammar in half a century?”

Butler sighed. It always had to be either the hard way or the easy way, but with a man like this, with this background, he had a right to expect it to be easy.

“You taught him from 1957 to 1962, Mr Dingle,” he said. “In 1962 his parents emigrated to New
Zealand
—he went from Eden Hall to Princess Alice’s School, Hokitikoura. Have many of your pupils gone to Hokitikoura?”

Dingle’s mouth pursed with distaste: there was no need for Butler to remind him further that on his own testimony he never forgot a name or a face. There could be no doubts now in his mind as to the exact identity of Neil Smith among the five per cent of the clever Smiths.

To soothe his own irritation Butler allowed his eyes to leave Dingle’s face and range for a moment over the room: there might be more to be discerned about the man there.

The bookshelves were as he would have expected: seried ranks of Loeb Latin and Greek library classics and the chaste dark spines of Oxford and Cambridge University Press volumes. On the mantlepiece, of course, the well-stocked pipe-rack and tobacco jar, and one silver-framed photograph in pride of place.

“Good lord,” Butler murmured. “Isn’t that Frank Woolley?”

He stood up to look closer, although he knew immediately that his identification was correct: no mistaking the tall lefthander playing forward—making mincemeat of a short, fast ball. A legend caught for posterity.

On the bottom of the photo was written carelessly: “Best wishes from Frank Woolley to Josh Dingle, who clean bowled him.” There was a date, but it was lost under the edge of the frame.

“Bowled him!” Butler repeated in awe. “That would be something to remember, by God!”

“Surely you are too young to remember Frank Woolley, Major?” exclaimed Dingle. “He retired well over thirty years ago—before the war—and he was no chicken then.”

“1938 he retired,” said Butler. “My Dad took me to see him every time he came anywhere near us—he was past his prime then, but he was still great—Dad always called him ‘Stalky’.”

“You’re Lancashire, then? That was their name for him wasn’t it? I thought I recognised it in your voice.”

“Aye.”

For one sybaritic half-second Butler was far from the isle of Thanet, out of Frank Woolley’s own Kent, and away to the north, sitting beside his father on the edge of the ground at Trent Bridge on a hot summer’s afternoon, knowing that he had twopence in his pocket for a big strawberry ice …

“He played his first innings for Kent against Lancashire, Frank did—in 1906. Or maybe 1907,” said Dingle reflectively. But he could be
that
old, thought Butler. “Johnny Tyldesley flogged him all over the ground.”

Johnny Tyldesley!
It was like hearing someone casually remember the Duke of Wellington—or King Arthur!

“Lancashire scored over 500 in five hours. Frank missed him twice—and then scored a duck.” Dingle’s face suddenly cracked in an unmistakable smile. “That was the first innings though. In the second Frank flogged Walter Brearley just the way J.T. had flogged him—64 in 60 minutes. That was the start of it.”

Dingle nodded at him happily, and Butler realised that he had allowed his own mouth to drop wide open.

“And just what was it that you desire to know about Smith?” said Dingle. “A dark-haired boy, rather stocky. I wouldn’t have said he was quite as clever as you have suggested—if I have the right Smith. In the top ten per cent, perhaps—beta double plus rather than alpha. What has he done to offend the Ministry of Defense ?”

“I’m afraid I can’t tell you that, sir.”

“Hmm … I rather expected that. But if he’s become one of these student revolutionaries I must tell you that I don’t approve Government action against them. It’s the Government and the Press and television that has made them what they are, or what they think they are. Publicity is like power, Major Butler—it’s a rare man who isn’t corrupted by it. Better to leave them alone.”

“What makes you think he’s a student revolutionary? Have you met him recently?”

“Not since he left Eden Hall. That would be ten years ago this July. But we like to keep in touch with our old boys, particularly the ones who do us credit later on. Their names are inscribed on the honours boards. Your Neil Smith—that would be Smith N. H. ?”

“Neil Haig Smith.”

“That would be he. In his time at Eden Hall he was known to his fellows as ‘Boozy’ because of that ‘Haig’, though I’m sure he had never drunk any whiskey in his life then. But he subsequently won an exhibition to the King’s College, Oxford—in English. I recall being somewhat surprised by the news. It was not his strongest subject when I taught him. He should have graduated by now though. Did he fulfill his promise?”

Butler was conscious that the crafty old devil was attempting to approach his earlier question from a different direction. But now he had thawed out it might be unwise to call a halt too abruptly. In any case there was nothing of value to let slip—nothing known to Butler, anyway.

“He was awarded a First.”

“Indeed!” Dingle’s creased forehead crinkled even more “I would have judged him a safe Second, and there’s nothing further from a First than that. One must assume that he was a late developer!”

He nodded to himself doubtfully, then glanced up at Butler. “And you say he was involved in student protest of some sort?”

“I really don’t know, sir,” said Butler—the words came out more sharply than he had intended. Perhaps if Roskill had been well enough to take this job they would have told him somewhat more, but as it was it was the exact and humiliating truth.

“But you do know enough to know what it is you want to know?”

“We wish to know everything you can remember about Neil Smith, sir. What he did, what he said. What foot he kicked with. Which hand he bowled with. What he liked to eat and what he didn’t like. If he had any illnesses, any scars. Everything, sir. No matter how trivial.”

Dingle considered him dispassionately, “Scars,” he murmured. “Scars—and the past tense. Every time you refer to him you use the past tense. So he is dead … or rather
someone
is dead—that is more logical—someone is dead, and you have reason to believe that it is Smith, our Smith of Eden Hall. Is that it?”

Butler took refuge behind his most wooden face. It was at such moments as this that he missed his uniform. In a uniform a man could be stolid, even stupid, with a suggestion of irrascibility, and civilians accepted it as the natural order of things, not a defense. A uniform meant orders from above and blind obedience, too, and British civilians of the middle and upper classes found this comforting because they took the supremacy of the civil power over the military for granted. It was a long time since Cromwell and his major-generals after all!

But better so, he reflected, mourning the mothballed khaki —doubly better so. Better that civilians should patronise the uniform—despise it if they chose to—than worship it or fear it as they did in less fortunate lands over the water. If this was the very last service the British Army did for its country, it would be a mighty victory.

He squared his shoulders at the thought.

“Don’t equivocate with me, Major Butler,” said Dingle severely. “Is Smith dead?”

Butler gave a military-sounding grunt. A few moments before the old man had been almost on his side, but he was slipping out of reach again now. The wrong word would ruin everything.

He gestured to the photographs on the table. “You are forgetting your own experience, sir—“

“I’m an old man now, Butler. To forget some things is one of the privileges of old age. And I’m remembering that I have a responsibility to my old pupils. Before I remember any more about Smith you must set my mind at rest.”

“I can’t do that for you, sir,” Butler shook his head.

“Can’t—or won’t?”

“Can’t.” Butler’s eyes settled on the big leather Bible on the shelf beside Dingle’s left hand. “Remember the centurion in St Matthew—‘I am a man under authority, having soldiers under me; and I say to this man, Go, and he goeth’.”

“Under whose authority are you, Major?”

“Under Her Majesty’s Government, Mr Dingle, as we all are. But you miss my point. I’m not the centurion—I’m just the soldier he gave the order to.”

Dingle’s lips, the double line of skin which served for lips, compressed primly and then relaxed. “Very well, Major. But there’s little I can tell you about him. What I can do is to tell you where to look.”