The Corpse in the Garden of Perfect Brightness

by Malcolm Pryce

  Chapter 23

  The station was deserted. The only activity was the gentle steaming of a wood-burning German Krauss 2–4-0T, still warm from the day’s work. With luck there was steam enough to carry us back to the city.

  We climbed aboard. I opened the firebox door and placed in two shovelfuls. Jenny released the brake and grabbed the regulator lever, like the big hand of a clock, and pushed it sideways. We began to move. Hardly perceptible at first, but then quickly gathering pace, until the night outside was gliding by. Jenny eased back slightly on the regulator, I put in another shovelful. She ran well. All grew dark on the footplate, apart from the copper-red glow from the firebox at our feet. Every time I opened the firebox door to throw in more wood it was as if a giant had struck a match. Our speed built, we lurched gently from side to side and up and down, the metal creaked and groaned, soon we were drenched with sweat. The din was deafening and glorious, it filled our ears and pumped our stomachs with the deep rhythmic chuffa-chuffa-chuffa-chuffa. The rhythm built and built and our eyes gleamed, our nostrils pricked with delight at the sweet, sweet smoke, and we worked as a team without need for words. The obedient train roared and wailed as Jenny pulled the whistle cord, roared and wailed and roared. We felt it deep inside us. ‘Oh Jack,’ said Jenny, turning to me with eyes sparkling, ‘it’s … it’s … oh my! Oh Jack! It’s …’

  ‘Yes!’ I shouted above the din, ‘yes! Isn’t it?’

  ‘Oh yes, yes, yes, oh my, oh Jack, golly! Oh yes, it’s … it’s … oh Jack, it’s so … oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, Jack … yes, yes … Oh!’

  Chapter 24

  We emerged from the railway station onto the square. The same one Lieutenant Colonel Nopsansuwong of the Royal Siamese Police, Foreigner Division, had brought me to on my second morning in Bangkok. We had parked outside three buildings, the railway station, the prison and Hotel 90, and he had told me the loneliest man in all the world was in there, and given me to understand he meant the prison. Did he know the truth? I suspect he did.

  The blind girl stood by the entrance and turned towards us, alerted by the sound.

  She held out her tin. ‘You good heart, sir.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, putting a coin in. ‘We are friends of Mr Curtis. We have come to see him.’

  ‘Curtis,’ she said simply and turned to walk inside. We followed her. We ascended the stairs in her wake and walked along the landing to the room from which the man with the chamber pot had emerged last time and bidden me a cheery greeting: ‘Turned out fine again.’

  Outside the door, we paused for an instant and then went in. I did not know what to expect, perhaps a man living in squalor and degradation of the worst sort. Instead I found neatness and cleanliness, but in the man residing there a different sort of degradation, that of the soul. The room was tidy and simply furnished, like a monk’s cell. A bed, a bedside table, a window leading on to a balcony. A chamber pot. And a chair in the corner in which sat a man. Curtis. Bright yellow waistcoat, bright blue trousers, blue bow tie and hair in a permanent wave. Lips that were rouged. Only the red ringmaster’s jacket was missing. And I saw what it was that had so scandalised the guests at Spaulding’s party, even more than the necklace of human ears.

  ‘You … you have dressed yourself as a golliwog,’ said Jenny.

  It was true, although he had not applied boot blacking to his face as the seaside entertainers do.

  He nodded, sadly. ‘Are they not hateful things? I oversaw their making for five years and never realised. When I arrived at Spaulding’s party, they were appalled, calling me all manner of things. And I said, “Why? What is it you dislike about them? You are happy to have them on the backs of your jam jars.” They didn’t understand, of course. They couldn’t. Do you?’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ I said.

  ‘I think I do,’ said Jenny.

  ‘For many years in Singapore, I worked in the Colonial Service. Then one day I discovered they were not what I thought they were. They were … rotten. Can you imagine what that might be like?’

  We both stared at him without answering his question.

  ‘Empire is rotten. Or at least it is for those who break their backs in the noonday sun to pay for it.’

  ‘I think we should leave here straight away, Mr Curtis,’ I said. ‘Roger is coming here. He intends to kill you.’

  ‘Yes, they want to kill me. Mustn’t let folk find out about the Scharnhorst Plan.’

  ‘Am I right in believing, Mr Curtis, that these people – Room 42 – arranged the boating accident, and are planning a similar fate for the flying boat?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ he said simply, as if passing a remark about the weather. He took a longer look at me. ‘So you are Jack. I doted on your mother, did you know that?’

  ‘I thank you for those kind words. Might it not be a good idea if we removed ourselves somewhere safer to continue our discussion?’

  ‘Really doted on her,’ he said, ignoring my last remark. ‘We all did. You know where she is now, don’t you?’

  ‘I confess I would be most—’

  ‘Hello, Curtis.’ We all turned to the door. It was Roger. ‘Nice to see you again. And Jack, too! You sure get around.’

  ‘No!’ cried Mr Curtis, and jumped up and ran to the window.

  Roger fired a shot that missed. Curtis ducked out of the window onto the balcony. There was a water tank adjacent and he clambered onto it. Seeing this, Roger ran back the way he had come, clearly aiming to take the stairs and catch Curtis at the bottom. I ran to the window in time to see Curtis scramble down onto the ground and get up.

  ‘Stay here,’ I said to Jenny and went out to the stairs on the landing. She ignored what I said and followed.

  We heard a shot being fired and a man cry out. We saw Curtis limping into the railway station with Roger in pursuit. We ran after them. Roger stopped and turned, framed by the entrance door. He smiled and pointed the gun at me.

  ‘Sorry, Jack,’ he said. ‘Spy swaps are not really my thing.’ He took three steps towards us, so close that he couldn’t miss. ‘Time to say—’

  A gunshot rang out. They say if you hear the report, it missed. Tonight I heard the report and it was Roger who didn’t. The bullet struck him in the right eye. He turned to stone and stood there for a second before toppling forward like a felled tree crashing to earth.

  Jenny and I both turned to see who had shot him. We found ourselves facing a man with a gun. A man with a burned face.

  ‘Hello, Jack,’ he said.

  ‘If you are going to shoot me,’ I said, ‘would you be kind enough to let my wife leave first.’

  ‘I’m not leaving,’ said Jenny.

  ‘I haven’t the slightest intention of shooting you,’ he said. ‘It would be a rather pointless thing to do considering the particular trouble I have taken to save your life, even making up a cock-and-bull story about a Russian spy swap. I am only pointing the gun at you in order to ensure you are not tempted to do some mischief before you have read what I wish you to read. After that you can shoot me if you like, and with my blessing.’

  I looked at him, mystified. ‘You killed my friend Ifan.’

  ‘If you mean the Welsh miner who died at the engine sheds, I can assure you it wasn’t me who pushed him into the path of the train.’

  ‘You were there that day asking for me!’

  ‘Yes, indeed I was. But I went there to warn you.’

  ‘Is there any reason why I should believe that?’

  ‘No, not yet. That’s why I’m still training the gun on you.’

  He drew a folded piece of paper out of his jacket pocket and threw it across.

  ‘Mrs Wenlock, perhaps you will read it to us.’

  Jenny took the paper and read.

  EXT. THE MANOR HOUSE IN WISSKIRRIEL. NIGHT

  TITLE: APRIL 1913

  A fire at night. Flames engulf the west wing of the house. MILLIE, the maid, stands on the balcony of her room in terror. There is no way b
ack through the fire, and she dare not leap.

  MILLIE

  (Screams)

  CAPTAIN SEYMOUR appears on the balcony next to MILLIE’S. He leaps across and takes her in his arms. He begins to climb down the ivy, while holding on to her. A crowd has gathered below, they gasp. As the climbers reach the first floor a gust of wind blows a burning curtain and wraps it around CAPTAIN SEYMOUR. He drops MILLIE, who falls safely into the raised arms of the people below. CAPTAIN SEYMOUR falls heavily to the ground, engulfed by flames. Onlookers race to fetch water to douse the fire.

  TITLE: MAY 1913

  EXT. THE LAWN. DAY

  MILLIE pushes a bath chair across the lawn. CAPTAIN SEYMOUR, wearing pyjamas and dressing gown, is seated in it. One half of his face is badly burned. They reach the summer house, the main house no longer visible. She wheels him in and positions the chair so that the CAPTAIN is afforded a view of the Downs and towards the sea. It appears that this is an established ritual. MILLIE slips her arms around his neck, and presses her head to his, again in a manner that suggests this too is an established ritual.

  MILLIE

  Alone at last, my darling!

  ‘I don’t imagine this will be very welcome news to you, Jack, but I’m your father.’

  I stood rooted to the spot, with no idea what to say. What was I to make of all this? Eventually, I said rather stupidly, ‘I thought my father was the stable boy.’

  ‘That’s the story I circulated. It’s one of the many reasons Curtis hates me. He’s got a long list of reasons. I spoke to him earlier, but I’m afraid he has disowned his father.’

  ‘Is there any reason why I should not do likewise?’ I said.

  ‘That’s for you to decide, Jack, but this really isn’t the place. I can tell you about your mother, and indeed where to find her, but we need to do something about this corpse here before we are discovered. Would you be kind enough to help me drag him to the car over there?’

  I looked at him dubiously.

  ‘Jack,’ he said, ‘surely you can see we need to get away from here?’

  He put the gun into his pocket, and I realised there was little point holding a discussion here. We dragged Roger over to his car. There was another man lying across the back seat. It was Spaulding, and he had a bullet wound in his temple.

  ‘It’s been a busy night,’ said the man with the burned face.

  We put Roger in the boot and propped Spaulding upright in the back seat, leaving room for me to sit next to him. Jenny sat in the passenger seat and the man with the burned face drove us to a destination he had clearly worked out in advance. It was a deserted warehouse next to the river’s edge, with a jetty that ran out into the river. We drove the car onto the edge of the jetty, left the brake off, and pushed it into the river. It slowly disappeared under the water.

  Once back at the hotel, we sat in the bar while my father ordered three whiskies and explained about the Scharnhorst Plan.

  ‘You see,’ he said, ‘the common man thinks that the ruling families care about him. But the truth is that the ruling families of Europe are loyal to each other, not to the peoples of the countries they happen to live in. For a start, they are all related to each other. So they watch each other’s backs. They understand only too well how easy it would be for the masses to turf them out of their palaces. What baffles them is why the masses don’t see it.

  ‘Marxist socialism had raged like wildfire through Europe, and the ruling classes realised they needed to do something about it, put down something of a firebreak. And so the plan was envisaged, to have a sort of bloodletting of the proletariat, winnow them out a bit. Take the wind out of their sails. This was one of the hidden aims of the Great War. But of course, no one had any idea about trench warfare at the time. They assumed it would be over in three months. No one imagined it would go on for four years, and that twenty million men and women would die fighting for the possession of a piece of land not much bigger than a football field.’

  He paused and observed my reaction. I looked at him. If I assumed him to have been in his twenties when he sired me, it would make him now around sixty or so. But he looked older, as if the weight of the secrets he was now disclosing had been hard to carry across the years.

  He made a gesture with spread hands, to signal the scale of the calamity that might ensue if word of this wicked plan became public knowledge. ‘Just imagine it! What people would say if they knew it had all been engineered! It was imperative that when hostilities ended all evidence of this plan was destroyed. It was my father who arranged the boating accident.’

  ‘Was he in Room 42?’

  ‘Yes. I didn’t know about any of this at the time. I found out later. That appeared to be the end of the matter: your mother was understood to have perished when her ship to Australia foundered.

  ‘But when it appeared more recently that she might perhaps be alive, Room 42 reopened the case. I think I have succeeded in closing it again. I have furnished them with proofs that Millie died on the island and that the Scharnhorst Plan is not mentioned in the screenplay. I’ve also sent them a picture of her gravestone, which I had faked. As long as she stays hidden and quiet she should be fine. Well, I will leave that to you to arrange.

  ‘I am also going to give you a dossier containing everything I know about the Scharnhorst Plan. Names, dates, minutes of meetings … You can use it to bargain for your freedom, if the need ever arises.’

  ‘What about Curtis?’ I said.

  ‘Curtis hates me. He hates me for what I did to Millie, and the stable lad. Because I was the one who urged him to sign up. And to be honest, I don’t greatly mind about Curtis. You only have to look at him to see that he is not my son. The Countess had a passionate side to her in those days. And I think she suspected that I was the father of Millie’s child – this may be the reason she persecuted her. But she could not be open about it because she knew that she had committed a similar indiscretion in bearing Curtis.

  ‘I think that’s all I have to tell you, Jack. As I said, I do not expect you to admire me. I was a cad. I abandoned your mother. The paradox is that had I been willing to do the right thing by her, if I had given everything up in order to be with her, I would have had a far happier life than the one I have had. I don’t deserve to have led a happy life. I shall end it by my own hand tonight.’

  ‘No!’ I said feebly, more from convention than conviction.

  ‘You need not concern yourself. My life has reached its final act anyway. I have a condition you see, a degenerative condition of the brain. The doctor has given me six months. I could hang on longer, but eventually one loses the ability to care for oneself. I would rather get out before I reach that stage. Trouble is, you cannot know with any certainty when, so it is better to get out sooner rather than later. You know the custom. When the time comes, retire to Room 42 with a bottle of whisky and a revolver. I have booked Room 42 and the time has come. If you should meet your mother, could you tell her I am sorry? Nothing more.’

  ‘How shall we find her?’ asked Jenny

  ‘I have posted to your room the final page of the screenplay, which contains some clues for you to follow. And now I will take my leave. Would it be asking too much to shake you by the hand, Jack?’

  And so I shook the hand of my father.

  That night a thunderstorm raged over Bangkok. The storm crashed and banged for hours. One of those bangs was accompanied by a muzzle flash from Room 42.

  Chapter 25

  I now pronounce you man and wife,’ said Webster. The marriage was between Mr Earwig and Miss Sugarpie.

  ‘Sell book buy lady gold,’ she had said to me earlier, demonstrating an arm jangling with gold. She looked incandescent in a white wedding dress. Earwig wore an expression of beatific pride. He was a man transformed utterly, whose fortunes had taken a turn for the better in a manner he had never in his life dared hope. I was best man. This was an office I had never occupied before.

  It was a beautiful morning. The sky wa
s pink and duck-egg blue. The sun had not yet fully risen, but already there was enough light to fill the world. The Empire Flying Boat shimmered, the river water lapping softly against her hull.

  A week had passed. Spaulding and Roger’s deaths had not been discovered. It turned out that Mr Kilmer had known all along about the bomb. He told me he had been informed about it by old friends working in a newly formed wing of military intelligence called the Office of Strategic Services. I asked him how they knew, and he replied that they knew everything. The bomb now lay safely in pieces at the bottom of the Chaopraya River.

  After the wedding ceremony was complete, guests began to board the flying boat. Kilmer sat at the controls. Next to him on the bridge, Webster took his position as co-pilot. Solveig Connemara and Sam Flamenco were on the jetty, walking to the hatch. Mr Flamenco leaned on the arm of his wife, his unsteady gait exacerbated by the gentle sway of the jetty. Solveig had been right that night in the garden about the photo. Jenny needed no convincing that it had been staged by the chaps. She said there was nothing to forgive, although that did not stop her from teasing me about it.

  Mr Kuribayashi wheeled Hoshimi out and past. She was still wearing the Gosling’s Friend badge.

  ‘Mr and Mrs Wenlock, might I just say what a pleasure it has been to meet you both, albeit so briefly?’ said Hoshimi.

  ‘We have so enjoyed meeting you, too,’ said Jenny.

  ‘It’s such a shame we cannot persuade you to join us.’

  ‘We will be thinking of you,’ I said.

  ‘And I of you! Parting is such sweet sorrow, is it not?’

  ‘It certainly is,’ I said.

  She looked over towards the plane. ‘I do hope Mr Earwig will not hold it against me – for what I said about Christopher Robin.’

  ‘I’m sure he won’t,’ I said. ‘My feeling is, he is far too chuffed with life to worry about a thing like that.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Hoshimi. ‘He is as pleased as Punch.’ She reached out and shook my hand solemnly. ‘Adieu!’ she said.