The First Casualty (12 page)

TWENTY-THREE

Expressions of sympathy

Agnes Kingsley knew that she would not sleep that night.

For months the silver tray upon which were deposited the cards and notes that had once arrived throughout the day had lain empty. Now, in a bleak pantomime of the life she had once led, the tray was full again. Today, however, the cards were black-edged and the notes contained no jolly invitations to parties and soirées as of yore when the Kingsleys had been a fine catch for any hostess; now the cards carried no more than brusque expressions of sympathy. Curt and cold. The London in which the Kingsleys had once moved observed the niceties — there was, after all, a code — but the disgraced family remained unforgiven.

That was not why Agnes wept. Once, she had thought that the niceties mattered but now she recognized that they did not. She shed no tears that day for her loss of standing or for the indifference of people she had thought of as friends. Instead she wept for her son, whom she had just told that his daddy had gone to heaven. And she wept for herself and for the loss of her husband. She had believed him lost to her months before but this day’s news had taught her that in her heart she had not truly lost him at all.

Until now.

TWENTY-FOUR

Captain Shannon

Perhaps they had drugged him or perhaps it was just the physical and emotional exhaustion but Kingsley did not recall any more of that confusing car journey or indeed its end, and when he finally awoke once again he found himself in yet another strange bed. How many more times, he wondered, was he to regain consciousness in a new and unfamiliar environment? This one at least was considerably more comfortable than the previous ones. The linen was crisp and the room smelt very clean.

‘Why don’t you try opening your eyes?’ said the voice which Kingsley remembered as Shannon’s. ‘We’ve removed the bandages.’

Slowly Kingsley opened his eyes. The light that smashed brutally into his retinas seemed to redouble the pain in his head.

‘Where am I?’ he asked.

‘In a safe house.’

‘As I came to I heard ships. The window is open and I smell salt on the breeze. Have you taken me to France?’

Shannon laughed.

‘No, no. But we are by the sea. At Folkestone.’

‘Ah, Folkestone.’

Kingsley knew, as any well-connected police officer might know, that much of the apparatus of British military intelligence was centred at Folkestone — as, indeed, were the secret operations of a number of the Allied powers, the French, of course, but also the Belgians and, it was rumoured, the Russians, although whether the tottering Kerensky government was still sufficiently in control to consider spying on its western allies was highly dubious.

Now that his eyes had adjusted he was able to look at the man who had taken him prisoner. He had known in the car that Shannon was the younger of his two captors but he had not expected him to be
quite
so young. He could scarcely have been more than twenty-five. It was the voice which was deceptive. That effortless public-school tone scarcely changed in a man from twenty to sixty.

‘You’re young to be a captain,’ Kingsley said.

‘Young man’s war, this,’ Shannon said cheerily. ‘Not many fellows get a chance to grow old.’

Kingsley got straight to the point.

‘I don’t know what you want, Captain, but whatever it is, you have come to the wrong place. I have told you that I will not work for your war. I also told you that I suspect you have gone to a great deal of trouble for nothing.’

‘Look here, why don’t you get up, have a bath and then we can have lunch, eh? I expect you could use a walk?’

Kingsley had longed for a bath, and for some fresh air. ‘Actually, I should like a walk very much, particularly as I suspect you will shortly be returning me to Wormwood Scrubs.’

‘Can’t do that, you’re dead. They’re going to bury you this morning, confines of the prison and all that. Something of a disgrace, I fear. Your wife has declined to attend. Good thing really, considering they’re burying a coffin full of sand.’

‘You find it easy to be flippant about the ruination of a man’s life, don’t you?’

Shannon smiled.

‘As a matter of fact I do, old boy. A few whiffs of gas plus a dead comrade or ten and a fellow quickly learns not to give a damn about very much at all. Besides which, I didn’t ruin your life, Inspector. You ruined it, by being such a pompous prig. We just brought a sequence of unfortunate events to a neat conclusion. I thought we might eat down on the seafront. There are one or two quite good hotels.’

‘Aren’t you fearful that I will be recognized? I may not be Lord Kitchener but I have been in the newspapers. Being dead, I should hate to give an old lady a heart attack.’

‘Oh, I think you’ll be fine, old boy. That beard of yours is coming along nicely, you have a bandaged forehead and I brought you these.’

He handed Kingsley a pair of thick, horn-rimmed spectacles. Kingsley’s eyesight was excellent but these were fitted with clear glass.

‘You were a dapper sort of cove, weren’t you?’ Shannon continued. ‘I’m afraid that the Secret Service doesn’t run to much of a costume budget. When you’ve bathed you can put these on.’

The clothes that he gave to Kingsley were not remotely of the standard that he was accustomed to. Shannon was right in that Kingsley had always been rather elegant in his dress and would never have dreamed of wearing the shabby tweed suit that was now presented to him.

Having washed and dressed, he surveyed himself in the mirror. It was true, he was extremely unlikely to be recognized. He could scarcely recognize himself in the dowdy, bearded, bespectacled fellow who stared back at him and he was fairly confident that nobody else would either.

Thus emboldened, he and Shannon walked out together.

It had not been much of a summer and despite the fact that it was still August, what summer there had been was almost gone. Nonetheless, it wasn’t a bad day for a stroll, particularly viewed from the perspective of a man recently sprung from prison. The air was chilly but the skies were blue. The sun shone, it was bracing and Kingsley realized how much he’d missed the open air.

Together he and Captain Shannon strolled along the Promenade. Shannon turned many female heads as they went, looking splendid in his uniform, with his medal ribbon, his swagger stick, his polished Sam Browne belt and riding boots. He sported a small, rakish Douglas Fairbanks moustache and impeccably brilliantined hair, on which his cap was perched at a jaunty angle. He had bought a toffee-covered apple from a stall and was munching it ostentatiously as he strolled along. In Kingsley’s view, Captain Shannon was a cocky, showy bastard but not a man to be underestimated. Beneath that smooth exterior Kingsley sensed the soul of a violent man.

They passed a small Pierrot theatrical troupe who were drumming up business for their afternoon show by performing a truncated version of it on the Prom. Shannon stopped to watch, forcing Kingsley to do likewise.

‘I say, woof woof!’ Shannon exclaimed, referring to a tall, willowy creature who was doing some solo high kicks in a tiny white skirt with jolly multicoloured pompom buttons down the front. ‘Splendid, eh? Very splendid
indeed
. That’s the stuff to give the troops, eh? Not half! And then some. I do love a showgirl, don’t you? I absolutely
love
a showgirl. Well, they know the score, don’t they? Of course they do. Little teases. Oh, they know the score all right.’

The girl finished her dance. Shannon clapped loudly and was rewarded with a demure smile all to himself.

‘See, told you.’ Shannon grinned. ‘
She
knows the score.’

The girl retired to join the others at the side and the men tumbled on in their white Pierrot suits to perform an execrably unfunny, mimed sketch about a platoon of soldiers falling in and shouldering arms, in which the only joke (such as it was) seemed to be the inability of the soldiers to place their rifles on the same shoulder at the same time.

‘Shame!’ cried Shannon, showing none himself. ‘Bring back the girls!’

There were no young men in the troupe, of course. A young man cavorting about on the Folkestone Prom in a baggy white Pierrot suit with coloured pompoms would have been given short shrift by the crowd that season. There were just old men with horribly dyed hair and too much pancake make-up and eyeliner performing with the young girls.

‘That’s the job to have,’ Shannon observed. ‘Male Pierrot in the age of industrial war. Not a dashing young chap left standing and all the gorgeous ingénues in their smart little skirts and tights left to granddad’s toothless drooling. I don’t know why we don’t send the old fellas over the top and give the young lads a decent shot at the bints. After all, it doesn’t take a lot of youth and vigour to stroll ten yards then get shot to bits by the Boche, does it? You could do it with a walking frame. I really think I might write to the newspapers about it.’

Then the whole troupe assembled for a musical finale, ending, inevitably, with ‘Forever England’. Shannon joined in lustily with the crowd.

Afterwards, as Shannon and Kingsley were about to continue their walk, the leader of the troupe approached them, his face furious beneath its thick cake of dark yellow Five and Nine make-up.

‘I would have hoped,’ he blustered, ‘that a gentleman who holds the King’s Commission might have behaved with more decorum, particularly in front of enlisted men.’

‘Well, you would have hoped wrong then, wouldn’t you?’ Shannon replied. ‘Now push off, you sad old queer, before I pull off your pompoms and stamp on ‘em.’

The old man was clearly horrified but he attempted to bluster it out.

‘I see your regimental badge, sir. I shall write to your commanding officer.’

‘Do you know, old chum, so many of them are dead I think I may even
be
my commanding officer by now. That would be a lark, wouldn’t it, putting myself on a charge?’

Shannon took Kingsley’s arm and turned away. ‘That ‘Forever England’ ditty they sang,’ he said as they resumed their walk. ‘You are perhaps aware that the fellow Abercrombie, who wrote the words, is dead?’

‘No, I was not aware. I have not been in a position to follow the news over the last few weeks.’

‘Try not to dwell on the past, old boy. Look at you now, sunning yourself on the Prom at Folkestone and watching jolly little Pierrettes jump through hoops.’

‘You were pretty unpleasant with that old man. Do you enjoy bullying people?’

‘Oh yes, absolutely,’ Shannon replied. ‘Capital sport. As for him, well, to tell you the truth I’d kill him for thruppence and enjoy the job. No, honestly, I really would. The only Englishmen worth a damn these days are in France, in fact most of them are
buried
in France. This trash back home, putting on patriotic airs and singing bloody stupid songs, should be digging latrine ditches for the comfort of the boys who fight. If they can lark about on the Prom they can dig bogs.’

The two men continued along the pavement in silence.

Kingsley turned to Shannon, who was happily winking and waving at the girls on the beach.

‘All right, Captain,’ he snapped. ‘I’m a patient man but my patience is wearing damned thin. What the hell do you want with me? I demand that you tell me or I tell
you
I shall walk away from you right now.’

‘Oh yes?’ Shannon enquired with casual sarcasm.

‘Oh very much yes, Captain. I know something about disappearing, you know, and I swear I could lose you in five minutes, bruised ribs, bashed head and all. Then you’d be stuck, wouldn’t you, my supercilious friend? Because I am officially dead and once I’m gone there will be no one to look for, will there? A dead man leaves no tracks and I know every bolt-hole in London, aye, and the means to get a passage on a neutral ship from Tilbury if I need to. So if you don’t want to find yourself getting a postcard from a corpse that has relocated its cold dead bones to South America, stop playing your bloody silly spy games and tell me what the hell it is you want.’

‘Yes,’ Shannon mused, suddenly thoughtful. ‘They all say you’re a useful sort of a chap. You’d better be…Ah! Here we are.’ Shannon’s cheerful demeanour returned instantly as he stopped outside a smart-looking hotel. ‘The Majestic. Excellent brunch, I’m told, highly recommended by our code-breakers and, let me tell you, code-breakers are absolute sticklers for having things
just so
. Boring bunch of blighters but they know their tucker. Eggs, bacon, bubble, devilled kidneys, very fine black pudding and, I’m assured, some of the prettiest skivvies on the Prom.’

‘Damn your brunch, Captain, and damn your fatuous gawping at the girls. Say what you have to say and let’s be done with it.’

Shannon made a face of mock disappointment.

‘Surely you don’t object to us conversing in comfort and on full stomachs, Inspector? I confess I have a pecuniary motive for bringing you here. If I eat with you I may keep the receipt and the War Office will reimburse me the expense. If I eat alone then I fear I must stump up the cash myself, and I do hate laying out my own coin if I can be making free with John Bull’s.’

Reluctantly Kingsley allowed himself to be led into the hotel, again reflecting that there was no advantage to him in alienating Shannon, and remembering also that he had not eaten since his last revolting supper in the prison hospital.