Death In Captivity

by Michael Gilbert

  ‘I hope there’s not going to be any nonsense about allowing baseball on the rugger pitch,’ said Rollo Betts-Hanger. ‘I hear the Sports Committee has been approached.’

  ‘Baseball. Surely we haven’t sunk to that!’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Betts-Hanger. ‘It’s quite an interesting game when you look into it. People in America get quite keen on it, I believe.’

  ‘I’ve no objection to them playing baseball, as long as they don’t do it on the rugger pitch.’

  ‘Someone was arguing,’ said Billy Moxhay, ‘that July wasn’t the right month for rugger. Perfect nonsense, I thought. Rugger’s an all-the-year-round game. As I pointed out, the only reason chaps don’t play rugger during the summer in England is because the ground’s too hard. Here the ground’s hard all the time, so it makes no difference.’

  ‘Quite right,’ said Burchnall. ‘Has anyone seen Jerry?’

  At this moment the door burst open and Jerry Parsons arrived at a gallop. His face was red and he appeared to have lost his voice. His friends stared at him in amazement.

  ‘I say,’ he said at last. ‘Do you know what?’

  ‘End of the war?’

  ‘Revolution in Italy?’

  ‘Extra issue of Red Cross parcels?’

  ‘No, I say, this is serious,’ said Parsons. ‘They’ve simply gone and pinched them—’

  ‘Pinched what?’

  ‘The rugger posts.’

  A horror-struck silence was broken by Burchnall.

  ‘This is the final, ultimate limit,’ he said. “They can’t do it. I’ve a good mind to go straight to the S.B.O.’

  8

  At about five, o’clock that afternoon – the 5th of July – a garment of comparative peace lay over the camp. The sun still held much of its noon power, and most of the prisoners were lying on their beds in their huts or toasting themselves quietly in the open.

  A jazz band was practising in the Theatre Hut, and a lethargic class was being lectured to in the open space between Huts D and E, on the Logistic Problems involved in Hannibal’s campaigns.

  Even the sentries seemed to feel the weight of the afternoon and they were dozing as openly as they dared on their platforms.

  The history don was lying back in his deckchair, and wishing that he could have been spending the afternoon in a punt on the Cherwell. He was watching, with half his attention, a large covered lorry of the Italian Army type, which had stopped in the road outside the main gate and was now manoeuvring backwards and forwards in an apparent endeavour to turn in the narrowest part of the road.

  It had got halfway round now, and was facing directly towards the outer gate.

  It started to move.

  The sentries on both gates ran forward and threw the gates open. The van accelerated.

  A towel was whisked out of a window. The professor jumped to his feet and dropped his book.

  The van was inside the camp now, and coming on fast.

  In one of the end rooms in Hut C a bell rang three times urgently. Four men left their bunks with a jump and disappeared through the door. As the last of them reached the kitchen, they could hear the Italian Army lorry squealing to a stop outside, and a high-pitched scream of orders as the hidden carabinieri leapt from the back of it.

  ‘They’ll have to take their chance,’ said the leader of the four, and as he spoke the stove was already on its way down.

  There was a thumping of feet outside the hut, and the passage door burst open.

  The stove was back in position now and one of the men was doing some quick work with a broom.

  ‘We shan’t be able to get out of here,’ said the leader. ‘Pretend to be hanging up clothes – and for God’s sake, Peter, push that wire further down inside your shirt. I can see the end of it from here.’

  There was a second of silence, followed by a mutter of Italian voices, among them Benucci’s.

  ‘They’re in Goyles’ room.’

  ‘Don’t whisper,’ said the leader, ‘and try to look as if you really are hanging that shirt up to dry. At the moment you look as if you were auctioning it.’

  There was another silence, and they heard Byfold’s voice.

  ‘I demand to be taken to Colonel Lavery.’

  ‘I fear that Colonel Lavery has no jurisdiction in this case.’

  ‘Then I protest.’

  ‘You may make your protest in the criminal court that tries your case.’ Benucci’s voice had lost a lot of its suavity. He sounded vindictive and triumphant.

  There was a further stamping of feet. The hut door slammed and the lorry drove away.

  Chapter 5

  Goyles is Given a Job

  At ten o’clock on the morning following Byfold’s arrest Goyles knocked on the door of Colonel Baird’s room and was asked to come in. When he saw that Colonel Shore and Commander Oxey were there, he apologised and prepared to back out.

  ‘Come right in,’ said Colonel Baird. ‘This isn’t a committee meeting. Have you got some news for us?’

  ‘That’s what I wanted to ask you, sir,’ said Goyles. ‘Have you heard anything more about Byfold?’

  ‘Not a thing. Just a typical Italian trick.’ He slapped angrily at a fat black fly on the wall. “They might have been kidnapping him, not arresting him, the way they went about it.’

  ‘I expect they thought there would be a riot if they walked in and took him,’ suggested Commander Oxey.

  ‘Might have been, at that,’ said Colonel Shore.

  ‘What’s the worst they can do to him?’ asked Goyles, putting into words for the first time something that had been worrying him all night. ‘They can’t try him, can they – he’s a prisoner of war?’

  ‘I wouldn’t be too sure about that,’ said Baird. ‘I remember a case in one of our camps – it happened in the prison cage at Asmara, when I was temporarily in charge of it – a lot of real, dyed-in-the-wool, last-ditch Nazis got the idea that one of the other prisoners was a traitor. I don’t know if he really was, or if it was just that he didn’t say “Heil Hitler” smartly enough when spoken to – anyway, they ganged up on him, and one night, after lights-out, they held a set-piece trial and found him guilty, and strung him up. They didn’t even pretend to be sorry about it – told everybody what they’d done.’

  ‘What happened to them?’

  ‘The three ring-leaders were shot,’ said Baird shortly.

  ‘I see,’ said Goyles. A sudden, quite terrifying idea had occurred to him which he took a good deal of pains to suppress.

  ‘I’m afraid,’ went on Baird, ‘if they convince themselves that they’ve got a good case, there’s no doubt they could – well, they could make things very sticky for Byfold.’

  ‘Even though they know he didn’t do it?’

  ‘We know he didn’t,’ said Baird. ‘And if the worst comes to the worst we could tell them the truth. But why should they believe us even then? We might have been making the whole thing up to save Byfold’s skin.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Goyles. ‘And, of course, we’d lose the tunnel’

  ‘It wasn’t only the tunnel I was thinking of,’ said Baird, ‘I think it’s a good tunnel, and it might be a very useful tunnel. But if it came to a direct showdown – tunnel or Byfold – I guess I know which way we’d vote. But it isn’t. We could lose both of them, quite easily, if we played this wrong.’

  ‘There’s only one possible thing to do,’ said Commander Oxey. ‘To my mind, it’s clear as day. We’ve got to find out what actually happened, who killed Coutoules, and why and where – and how his body got in that tunnel.’

  Colonel Baird turned to Goyles.

  ‘Would you like to take that on?’ he asked.

  Goyles looked considerably startled.

  ‘The Committee would back you, of course. It’s not the sort of thing they could very well undertake officially. You’re a friend of Byfold. It would be quite a reasonable assignment for you. We’ll give it out that anyone who’s got any information
about Coutoules – where they saw him last – whether they noticed anything suspicious – that sort of thing – is to contact you.’

  ‘Yes – but—,’ said Goyles. He was trying hard to see himself in the role of special investigator.

  ‘Of course, I’ll do anything I can,’ he added, ‘only don’t hope for too much. Have you got any general idea about it all – I mean, it seems quite crazy.’

  ‘On the face of it,’ said Colonel Shore, ‘it is crazy. That’s what ought to make it easy to solve. If it was ordinary, there might be half a dozen solutions, and you could never be sure that you’d get hold of the right one. With a crazy problem like this, if you can find any solution at all, it must be the right one.’

  ‘Something in that,’ said Commander Oxey. He had a deep respect for the American’s intellect – a respect based subconsciously on the fact that Colonel Shore looked like Gary Cooper, who was the only American film star of whom the Commander approved.

  ‘We were talking about it when you came in,’ said Baird. ‘We hadn’t got very far, but for what it’s worth you can have it. We thought that the general idea – the shape of the thing – was that Coutoules was an Italian informer. We thought that either there were people in the camp who knew a lot more about this than we did, or else – it would amount to the same thing in the end – who thought they knew a lot more than we did. They get together – it must have been four of them at least – and kill Coutoules quietly – by tying a wet towel over his face, or holding his head in a pillow or something of that sort. Then they do more or less what we did in the other tunnel – open it up, drag him down, and pull a bit of the roof down on top of him – having first filled his mouth with sand.’

  ‘What about what the doctor said – about him having been alive under the sand, and trying to scratch his way out?’

  ‘It’s not a pretty idea at all,’ said Baird. ‘But having gone that far is there any reason they shouldn’t have gone a bit further, and faked that detail too, after he was dead?’

  ‘I suppose not,’ said Goyles doubtfully. ‘I take it this means they must have been people out of our hut.’

  ‘Not necessarily. They must have known how the tunnel worked, but they needn’t necessarily have been from the hut itself. People wander in and out of each other’s huts pretty freely, don’t they, till lock-up time?’

  ‘Do you know,’ said Goyles, diffidently but firmly, ‘I don’t believe it.’

  Colonel Baird and Commander Oxey looked quietly up at him, and Colonel Shore said, ‘No? Tell us why, then.’

  ‘It just doesn’t seem to me to be the sort of thing that could have happened, sir. I don’t believe that any group of people could have got Coutoules off somewhere, and killed him, and taken him into Hut C, and put him down the tunnel, and – and done all the other things you mentioned, sir – without someone knowing about it. Why, you can’t blow your nose in this camp without at least three people coming along in the course of the day and saying how sorry they are to hear you’ve got a cold. As for murdering someone and hiding the body – it’s just not on.’

  ‘Right,’ said Baird. He didn’t sound annoyed, only interested. ‘What’s your idea?’

  ‘I haven’t got an idea yet,’ said Goyles, ‘but I’ve got a question that I think wants answering. It seems to have escaped notice in the general excitement, but it’s just this. Why wasn’t Coutoules missed on roll-call that morning?’

  This took a moment or two to sink in. Then Colonel Shore slapped his leg softly and said, ‘That’s quite a point, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Commander Oxey. ‘Why wasn’t he missed? What happened on roll-call that morning in our hut? You’ve got the room next to him, Baird.’

  ‘I’m trying to think,’ said Baird. ‘So far as I can remember it was an ordinary morning roll-call. They must have been a little late, because I remember I was up and dressed and I don’t get out of my bed a minute before a quarter-past eight.’

  ‘I think they were a bit late, that morning,’ agreed Commander Oxey. ‘I’d just finished my daily dozen – as often as not they open the door when I’m in the middle of them.’

  ‘I’m always asleep anyway,’ said Colonel Shore. ‘So I can’t help you.’

  ‘Well, say they arrived at twenty-to-nine. It was the little boy – Paoli – who was taking roll-call. He looked in my room, said “Good morning” or something like that – he had a carib with him, I think, but the carib didn’t come in. Then – by God, you’re absolutely right – they didn’t go into Coutoules’ room at all. I didn’t consciously notice it at the time, but I’m sure you’re right. They just turned about and marched off down the passage.’

  ‘Coutoules had the room next door, didn’t he,’ said Goyles, ‘that’s the last one in the passage?’

  ‘That’s right. We two were always the last two to be inspected.’

  ‘It’s funny either way,’ said Colonel Shore. ‘If your recollection’s right, it’s odd enough that they didn’t look in his room on that one particular morning – ’

  ‘They might have skipped it because they were late –’

  ‘Well, they might. On the other hand if Baird is wrong – it’s some days ago, and he might have been thinking of some different morning – well, it’s funnier still. If they deliberately refrained from looking into Coutoules’ room that one morning, then either they did the thing themselves, or they were in the know about it being done. It’s quite a thought, isn’t it? Suppose Coutoules was an informer, but his bosses were finished with him. He wouldn’t be much use to them after he’d been spotted. And suppose there was another reason for them not persevering with Coutoules – because they’d got a second, unsuspected informer in the camp. So what happens? A party of prisoners decides that it’s time Coutoules was liquidated for his treachery. The second informer tells the Italians. The Italians say, “Splendid. Suits us. So far as we’re concerned he’s safer dead,” So they just sit back and let it happen. The only detail they forgot was that they weren’t supposed to know about it at roll-call next morning. It was quite an easy thing to forget. None of us remembered it until a minute ago.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Baird. ‘Yes. But do you see what it means? It means that the Italians must know all about the Hut C tunnel.’

  The three men looked at the New Zealander. It was Goyles who spoke first.

  ‘Not necessarily, sir. If Colonel Shore is right, they might have known that Coutoules was going to be killed that night, but they might not have known where he was going to be put.’

  ‘Take it a step further,’ said Commander Oxey. ‘They might even have known that he was going to be put into a tunnel, without their informer knowing which tunnel, or exactly where the tunnel was, or how it worked.’

  ‘That does explain one thing,’ said Baird. ‘I always thought they were being unnaturally smart about the way they tackled the Hut A tunnel. It wasn’t like them at all. All that photographing and finger-printing. But if they knew Coutoules was going to be murdered and planted in some tunnel or other for them to find, it makes much better sense. They’d have had the whole procedure worked out in advance.’

  ‘Duns Scotus and the Medieval Schoolmen,’ observed Colonel Shore unexpectedly, ‘used to devote many hours to arguing the question of how many angels could balance on the point of a needle. As they were unable to decide either on the size of the needle or on the amount of parking space required by an angel, no very exact conclusion was ever arrived at.’

  ‘Moral appreciated,’ said Baird. ‘If you’re willing to take this thing on, Goyles, the first thing you’ll have to do is to ferret about and find out who saw Coutoules last that evening. Anything else that might be helpful, too, of course.’

  ‘I can take what steps I like?’

  ‘You’ve got carte blanche, so far as we’re concerned. And we’ll give you any help we can. The first thing, I suggest, is that we’ll put it round the grape vine that anyone with information should see you. There’s one other
thing. If you should chance on anything’ – Colonel Baird paused, and looked at his two committee men – ‘particularly anything that affects the security of the escape arrangements, we should like to know about it first.’

  ‘Not the S.B.O.?’

  ‘We shall pass it all on to Colonel Lavery, of course,’ said Baird. ‘We’d just like to have first cut at it, that’s all.’

  Goyles went straight back to his own room, which was empty, and lay down on his bunk with a pillow behind his shoulders, an attitude which he normally found helpful to thought.

  He had quite a lot to think about.

  He realised that he was in a position which, as a reader of detective novels, he had often imagined himself occupying without ever really expecting to do so. He had been invited to investigate a murder.

  The position was, in many ways, a remarkable one.

  His suspects, although numerous, were closely gathered together, within the walls of one small piece of the earth’s surface, measuring not more than two hundred yards in any direction.

  It was a community, moreover, which was relatively without privacy. What he had said to the Escape Committee on this point had been exaggerated, but not greatly. The inmates of a camp like this really did know everything about everybody else: partly because they came of a class which is trained to be observant and partly because they had plenty of spare time in which to observe. One result of this he had encountered already. The most closely guarded escape plans had a disconcerting habit of becoming common property overnight.

  Again, it was an investigation with no possibility of competition from the regular police force. Any official action which there might be would be likely to prove unhelpful, if not actually hostile.

  Lastly, and above all, Goyles was aware that he was now deputy of the most powerful authority in the camp. It was true that Colonel Lavery, as S.B.O., was the administrative head, and his regime in normal matters was accepted without undue demur. On the other hand, the twenty-five or thirty per cent of the prisoners who were actively engaged in escaping owed a strong, almost a fanatical allegiance to their own elected committee. It was powerful because it was practical. Even its sanctions were practical. There had been a prisoner who had voiced too loudly and too often, his dissatisfaction at having to give up a bed board for the lining of a tunnel. One day he had found himself without any bed at all. His protests had been quite unavailing and he had slept on the floor for a week, until space could be found for him in a new room.