The First Casualty (13 page)

TWENTY-FIVE

A rushed funeral

Agnes Kingsley raised her veil to stare down at the coffin. Her beauty was once more in stark contrast to the grim surroundings of a prison, just as it had been on her visit to Brixton when she had told Kingsley she was to divorce him.

Shannon had lied to Kingsley about Agnes. She had in fact elected to attend his funeral and would never have dreamed of doing otherwise.

They had given her scandalously short notice, forcing her to rush no Regent Street with barely an hour to assemble the appropriate widow’s weeds. She had had to change at the shop and walk out wearing her new black gown with the hem all done up with pins, and with the clothes she had arrived in wrapped in paper by the shopgirl and put in a bag. In was uncomfortable and unseemly but Agnes Kingsley had no intention of allowing the prison authorities to see her as anything other than a proud, upstanding English widow. Her life might have collapsed utterly but that was no excuse for lowering her standards.

She had arrived almost exactly at the appointed hour and as she passed through the huge front door of the prison had demanded that a warder run on ahead to the little courtyard and tell them to pause for a moment, till she arrived.

‘I will not run to my husband’s funeral,’ she said. ‘They must wait or, mark my words, they will
never
hear the end of in.’

They did wait, and Agnes was able to stand before the grave and bid her final farewells during a brief service, in which the funeral rites from the Book of Common Prayer were read out an breakneck speed by a prison chaplain who would clearly rather have been elsewhere.

‘Manthatisbornofwoman…’ the chaplain jabbered. ‘Webringnothingintothisworld…Ashestoashes…TheFather theSonandtheHolyGhost…Amen.’

There were no added readings, no poetry or music.

After the service, such as in was, had ended, the chaplain stepped back and bid the gravedigger begin immediately to fill the grave. Agnes raised a hand to stop them.

‘Wait,’ she said. ‘I wish to read.’

The governor, who had attended the funeral in deference to the rank of Agnes’s father, took Mrs Kingsley’s arm.

‘I am afraid, Mrs Kingsley, that we are a busy prison and do non have time for — ’

‘Unhand me, sir! I wish to read,’ Agnes said firmly, pulling her arm away. The governor bowed reluctantly and Agnes took a paper from her bag.

‘This poem my husband read often to my son, who is only four years old. It is ‘If’ by Rudyard Kipling.’

The chaplain, the governor, two wanders and the gravediggers sighed audibly, but Agnes Kingsley did not read for them.

When she paused at the end of the first verse, in was clear that the governor was itching to intervene and stop the recital but had not quite the courage to do so. In was now obvious to everybody than Agnes intended to read the entire poem, all thirty-two lines of it, and, what is more, to read it slowly, with firm and plodding meter. The governor could only stare up at the sky and count the syllables as she read the third verse and then the fourth. Finally she finished and having done so she dropped the poem into the grave, then she lowered her veil once more in order to hide her tears.

‘Thank you for your patience, Governor,’ she said.

‘You are welcome, Mrs Kingsley.’

‘I must say,’ she added as he escorted her out of the prison, ‘it seems that you were in quite a hurry to dispose of my husband’s remains.’

The governor denied it but Agnes insisted.

‘Is it customary then to bury a man the very next day after he dies? In certainly is not so in Leicestershire.’

The governor explained that this was always the way when bodies were buried within the confines of the prison, since sadly they had no mortuary facilities available to them.

‘And why is he buried in a prison at all? He was not a murderer.’

‘Those were the instructions that the Home Office gave us, Mrs Kingsley.’

Agnes had thought about protesting; she was a proud woman and was certain that the authorities had gone far beyond their rights in disposing of her husband’s remains in this unseemly and underhand manner. In was clear to her that they wished to be rid of the whole ghastly scandal as quickly as possible. But what would have been the point of making a fuss? Douglas was dead and were she to have insisted on arranging for a proper funeral who would have attended?

Perhaps, after all, this was the best way. Kingsley himself had always maintained that when a man is dead, he is dead and that she might chuck him in the Thames for all he cared. Agnes returned to her car and was driven away from Wormwood Scrubs.

TWENTY-SIX

Brunch at the Hotel Majestic

‘I say,
what ho!
Proper little piece, eh? That’s the stuff to give the troops, don’t ye know!’

Shannon and Kingsley had entered the dining room of the Majestic and been ushered to a table in the window by a young waitress who was indeed, as Shannon observed, a delightful-looking girl.

The table was the most secluded one available, partly separated from the body of the room by a cluster of rather large potted palms. A string quartet was situated close by, which, although not loud enough to inhibit their conversation, would serve to mask it from the other tables.

Like most string quartets in hotel dining rooms, they were playing a selection from Gilbert and Sullivan and had arrived at a rather mournful piece from
The Yeomen of the Guard
. Shannon sang along under his breath for a moment as he stared out through the salt-stained window.

‘
Heigh-dy! Heigh-dy!

Misery me, lackaday dee

He sipped no sup and he craved no crumb

As he sighed for the love of a la-dye
.’

Perhaps it was the music but he seemed suddenly to have fallen into a reflective mood. ‘Nannies with babies,’ he mused, ‘old bastards with sticks, fat old bags of matrons and their lapdogs, brats rolling hoops, Jack tars with their girls or more likely strutting about hoping to find one. God’s bones, it’s a peaceful sight, what?’

‘Yes, it is.’

‘How far is it from here to Passchendaele, I wonder? Fifty miles? Rather less than that, I think. Less than fifty miles and a billion too. Here and there could be on opposite sides of the universe, couldn’t they? Rather bizarre, don’t you think? A fellow might take tea here in the morning and if he gets a move on he can have it blown out of his guts in Belgium before he’s had a chance to digest it. If that’s not bloody bizarre then quite frankly I don’t know what is.’

‘I’m sure you’re right.’

‘Do you think any of the people strolling along out there so damned pleased with themselves could possibly have any concept, even in the wildest parts of their tiny imaginations, of the scale of carnage taking place
at this very minute
just fifty miles away?’

‘The casualty lists are public information. Those people out there who you seem to despise are mothers and fathers, sisters, brothers, husbands, friends. They know what’s going on and I doubt many of them are feeling very smug or pleased about it.

Shannon stared at Kingsley for a moment in silence, his face filled with contempt.

‘But of course.
You
haven’t been there either, have you? I was forgetting.’

‘No. I haven’t been there.’

‘Ha. You’re like them. Oh yes, you know that men are dying, dying in their thousands day after day. Everybody knows
that
. But you don’t know
what it’s like
. You could spend the rest of your life trying to imagine it but you’d never get even close. Nobody could who hasn’t been there. You’ll never join our club.’

‘I do not wish to join your club. I wish your club had never been formed.’

‘A mincing machine. That’s what they all say. And it is a mincing machine. But that’s not what it’s
like
. All a mincing machine does is mince things up. Let me tell you, Kingsley, nothing, no words in the English language or any other bloody language for that matter, could
ever
describe what it’s like.’

The string quartet were taking a short break and in their place Shannon began to sing, softly, under his breath. He sang to the tune of an old hymn. Kingsley knew the tune well but the lyric he had heard only once before. It was a soldiers’ lyric and he had heard it late one night at Victoria Station, sung quietly by a group of walking wounded awaiting dispersal.

‘
And when they ask us

How dangerous it was
,

Oh
we’ll never tell them

No we’ll never tell them
. ’

‘And they won’t tell you now,’ Shannon concluded. ‘For they haven’t the wit to do so, nobody has. That’s why everybody’s a bloody poet these days. Everybody
wants
to tell, everybody’s scribbling away, but it’s no good. Nobody will ever find a way to bridge the gap between those who were there and those who weren’t.’

Now it was Kingsley’s turn to quote.

‘
Leprous earth, scattered with the swollen and blackened corpses of hundreds of young men. The appalling stench of rotten carrion
.’

‘What’s that bilge?’

‘Part of a letter which T. S. Eliot sent to the
Nation
.’

‘Bloody poets again, eh? What the hell would he know anyway?’

‘It’s not his, it’s a quote from a letter he received from an officer at the front. I learned it off by heart to quote at my trial…
Mud like porridge, trenches like shallow and sloping cracks in the porridge
—
porridge that stinks in the sun. Swarms of flies and bluebottles clustering on pits of offal. Wounded men lying in the shell holes among the decaying corpses: helpless under the scorching sun and bitter nights, under repeated shelling. Men with bowels dropping out, limbs blown into space. Men screaming and gibbering. Wounded men hanging in agony on the barbed wire, until a friendly spout of liquid fire shrivels them up like a fly in a candle
…
But these are only words and probably convey only a fraction of their meaning to the hearers. They shudder and it is forgotten
. Like you say,’ Kingsley concluded, ‘he was trying to describe it but knew he never could.’

‘Yes. And like I also said, everyone thinks they’re a bloody poet.’

‘It seems to be a common theme, this frustration that nobody will ever understand,’ Kingsley observed. ‘Sassoon made the same point, didn’t he? In his letter?’

‘Ah yes, Sassoon. What a
despicable fucking bastard
.’

Kingsley was shocked at the venom.

‘You disapprove of what he did?’

‘That whining little shit. That windy
turd
. And him an MC too! They should tear it off him. Sneaking home with a bit of shell shock and letting the side down. We can do without war heroes turning conchie on us. Bad enough when famous detectives do it but Sassoon was one of
us
.’

Everyone knew of Siegfried Sassoon and his protest. A bona fide hero, he had become utterly disillusioned and whilst invalided home had written to the newspapers resigning from the army and denouncing the war as wicked and pointless. As he was something of a celebrity, his letter had caused a sensation. He had very nearly been court-martialled, but after a number of strings were pulled and attention drawn to his numerous battle credits he was sent to a hospital to be treated for shell shock.

‘They should have shot him,’ Shannon said.

‘For stating the obvious after eighteen months in the line? That seems a little harsh, Captain.’

‘Oh, don’t get me wrong, Inspector. We all know that he’s right, the war’s gone mad, nothing could possibly be worth the price we’re paying, but they should have shot him all the same because, you see, we
have
to win this war. We just have to. And I can assure you, whatever a revolting conchie like you might think, most of the fellows agree. We’re the British Empire, for God’s sake, we can’t go through all this and
lose
.’

‘We’ve already lost. Everybody has already lost.’

‘That’s just rubbish! We may be ruined, we may be crippled but we haven’t
lost
. There is a difference, you know, but the more people like you and Sassoon go about the place undermining the very bloody easily underminable the closer we all get to packing up and going home and then we
will
lose. The French very nearly did just that, you know.’

Kingsley did not know.

The extraordinary mutiny of the French Army (which had never recovered from the epic slaughter of Verdun) was not yet common knowledge. News of it had been kept as quiet as possible. There were stories and rumours, of course, but the true extent of the mutiny had been suppressed.

‘Terrible business,’ Shannon went on. ‘Just what we did not need with Russia going to hell in a basket. Did you know that at the end of last May at Chemin des Dames
thirty thousand
French soldiers mutinied?’

‘I had no idea.’

‘No, and neither have most of our Tommies, thank God, or perhaps they’d get up and do the same. On the first of June at Missy-aux-bois French infantry took over a
whole town
. They actually established their own anti-war ‘government’. That’s just two months ago. The bloody revolution had actually started
in France
and the entire line was on the verge of collapse.’

‘But it didn’t.’

‘No, but only because the Germans had no idea of the opportunity they were missing. If they’d pushed then, the whole bloody lot would have caved in. But they didn’t and the rebellion was crushed but, let me tell you, nobody’s expecting another offensive from the French any time soon. That’s why we’re so heavily engaged now. It’s all down to us till the Yanks arrive, and God knows when that will be. But I can assure you that when Pétain realized he had a mutiny to deal with he didn’t send the bloody ringleaders to hospital for shell shock. He court-martialled nearly
twenty-five thousand
of them, handed out over four hundred death sentences — won’t carry them all out, of course, but the point was made. It’s the only way in war. I have a lot of sympathy for mutineers but I’d shoot them just the same. Particularly Siegfried bloody holier-than-thou Sassoon.’

The food arrived and Shannon seemed instantly to forget the grim themes he had been pondering in order to flirt with the pretty waitress.

‘Sugar, sir?’ she enquired, holding the little silver tongs in her dainty hand.

‘Ah, sweets from the sweet.’

The girl went a little pink.

‘I shall tell General Haig on you,’ the waitress admonished but it was obvious that she was pleased.

‘And what will you tell him?’ Shannon enquired with easy arrogance. ‘That you like to walk out with officers?’

‘No. I shall tell him that I’m a good girl.’

‘That’s no protection from the army, miss. General Haig would do what he always does and order me to advance.’

‘What
can
you mean, sir?’

‘The British soldier knows no other way. Advance, advance, advance! Storm the enemy’s strongholds and occupy them.’

Now the girl really was blushing, to Shannon’s evident enjoyment. ‘But an efficient advance requires good intelligence. So let me begin to gather some now, pretty miss. What’s your name?’

‘Not telling.’

‘When do you finish work?’

‘I shan’t say.’

‘Come now, my dear, this is a military operation. I order you to tell me.’

‘Well then, I’m Violet if you must know and I get off at half past three but I’m on again at six.’

‘In which case, Violet my dear, I must be prompt. If I were to attend the lobby of this hotel at three thirty-one precisely, might I take you for a stroll by the sea?’

‘Well, you
might
. Why don’t you attend and then you’ll find out, eh?’

‘Good girl! That’s the spirit! Well said, Vi! Three thirty-one it is. And then, over the top, eh!’

‘You officers! You’re worse than the men.’

‘It’s our duty. We are instructed to lead by example.’

The waitress laughed and scurried off.

‘Three thirty till six,’ Shannon observed. ‘Two and a half hours. A lot can be achieved in two and a half hours. We took twenty thousand dead in not much longer than that on the first day of the Somme. Your brother Robert was one of them, wasn’t he?’

‘Yes, he was.’

‘Well, I’m sure I can turn a good girl bad with a similar window of opportunity.’

‘Captain Shannon, if I wanted to watch a dog on heat I would hang about in an alley.’

‘Well, you know something, Inspector, I know I’m being rude but, you see, I have a rule and I never break it.’

‘Rule?’

‘Shannon’s credo. Any drink. Any meal. Any girl. Any time.’

‘I was under the impression that you are on duty?’