Death In Captivity

by Michael Gilbert

  Colonel Baird was a less practised speaker than Colonel Lavery, but he made up in directness what he lacked in flourish. He said, ‘Things have been happening in this camp in the last few days that we don’t like, and that we can’t explain. Most of you know, and if you don’t it’s time you did, that the body of Leiutenant Coutoules was found about ten days ago in very suspicious circumstances. Captain Byfold has been arrested by the Italians on suspicion of having had a hand in his death. We happen to know that this is nonsense. A lot of people thought Coutoules was an informer – I mean, that he told the Italians about escape plans and so on. I don’t suppose we shall ever know the truth of that now. But something else more unpleasant has grown out of it.’

  Colonel Baird paused here, not for oratorical effect, but simply because he wanted to be very careful about what he said next. The silence in the hut was painful.

  ‘Certain facts have led us to believe that there may still be an informer among us. I can’t say any more at the moment. I asked that the orderlies should not be here today. I don’t want this information passed to them.’

  Colonel Baird paused again, almost as if he had finished. Then it seemed to occur to him that some explanation of his closing remarks might be required.

  ‘I don’t want you to think,’ he said, ‘that we suspect any particular orderly. We don’t. It’s just that their backgrounds are more difficult to check than yours are. Most of you chaps come from a very small number of regiments and schools, and businesses and families. We’ve done a certain amount of work on you already. I hope you won’t take it the wrong way, but we’re going through the whole business again to see if we haven’t missed someone. It may mean asking you a lot of silly questions, but it can’t be avoided.’

  He turned to Colonel Lavery to indicate that he had finished.

  ‘Very well,’ said Colonel Lavery. “That’s all.’

  2

  ‘Just picture me,’ said Rupert Rolf-Callender, ‘trudging through the Italian countryside, dressed in some or all of these clothes.’ He had laid his spare wardrobe out on his bed. It consisted of two very thin Italian cotton shirts, a pair of bathing trunks, three pairs of sunglasses and a pair of leather sandals.

  ‘You shouldn’t have flogged all your issue stuff for cigarettes,’ said the Honourable Peter Perse. ‘Now you’ll have to get it back again. It’s going to be a buyers’ market, too.’

  ‘It just shows you,’ said Tag Burchnall virtuously to his friends. ‘What did I say all along? Don’t worry about footling escape schemes. Just keep absolutely fit and let the Army think for you. Can anybody lend me some dubbin?’

  Overstrand said to his friends in Room 10, ‘My God, that shook them. Were you looking at their faces when the S.B.O. talked about storming the walls?’

  ‘They didn’t look too happy,’ admitted Tony Long. `I’m not sure that I exactly welcome the prospect myself, not in broad daylight. It would be an awfully long way up that wall with a couple of machine guns firing at you.’

  ‘It was the first time that half of them have faced up to the fact that the war isn’t finished,’ said Overstrand. His voice sounded bitter. ‘They’ve spent a year, lying in their beds in winter and on them in summer, and physically and morally they’re as hard as a school of baby jellyfish.’

  ‘I didn’t quite get what Baird meant about security,’ said Baierlein. ‘What’s the connection between security and Coutoules?’

  This question was obviously aimed principally at Goyles who weighed for a moment the claims of professional integrity against friendship and decided that a limited amount of indiscretion could do no harm.

  “They think,’ he said, ‘that the Italians knew that Coutoules was going to be killed and dumped in a tunnel.’

  ‘In our tunnel?’

  ‘No. In some tunnel; when we produced him in the Hut A tunnel they naturally assumed that that was where the interment had taken place.’

  ‘So they knew all along that it was a fake,’ said Baierlein. ‘I thought they got on to poor old Roger rather smartly.’

  ‘Yes, but look here,’ said Overstrand, his face getting red, as it usually did when he was excited, ‘that means there’s another informer in the camp.’

  ‘That’s Baird’s idea,’ said Goyles patiently.

  ‘But was it this other informer and his pals who killed Coutoules?’

  ‘Not necessarily. They just told the Italians it was going to happen.’

  ‘Then who did kill him?’

  ‘That’s the thing we’ve got to find out. There are really two enquiries going on, you see. One’s a sort of security check to spot the informer. The other’s a criminal investigation – who was doing what, where and with whom the evening of July 1st – that sort of thing.’

  ‘Well, Tony and you and I were all right,’ said Grimsdale a little tactlessly. ‘We were all in jug. What about you three?’

  ‘It can’t be Goyles,’ said Baierlein, ‘he’s the detective in the story. And Byfold has been arrested for the crime by the Italians, so by all the canons of detective fiction he can’t be guilty. It must have been Overstrand—’

  ‘Plenty of motive,’ said Grimsdale, ‘we all know he hated Coutoules.’

  ‘I don’t see,’ said Overstrand angrily. ‘Why has it necessarily got to be one of us six?’

  ‘Don’t be a goat,’ said Baierlein. ‘Grim was only pulling your leg.’

  ‘One good thing,’ said Goyles, adroitly changing the subject. ‘We’ve got the word to push on with the tunnel double shifts. They want us to have it ready by the end of this month.’

  ‘All very well to talk about pushing on,’ said Baierlein. ‘It’s true that we’ve cleared the fall, but we can’t go ahead without putting a proper roof across that cavity. It’s a bloody big hole. You can’t do it with fiddling little pieces of bed board. I was down there yesterday to measure it. If you stay the four corners as close as possible to the fall, you’re still going to need a huge sheet of plywood, or something of the sort.’

  ‘I doubt if there’s such a thing in the camp,’ said Goyles.

  ‘My God, but there is,’ said Overstrand. ‘And you shall have it.’

  3

  ‘Good morning, Tenente Mordaci,’ said Tony Long affably, as he leant from his window.

  ‘Good morning,’ said Mordaci. He hitched his cloak over his shoulders and creased his face into an amiable smile. He was not averse to paternal conversations with blond young English lieutenants. Nevertheless, he was never quite certain that Tenente Long was really as respectful or as ingenuous as he liked to appear. Indeed, the respect of the prisoners for their jailers seemed to be getting distressingly smaller every day. There was an undercurrent of feeling. Even Mordaci, who was not the most sensitive of men, had noticed it.

  ‘And how are i nostri?’

  ‘Our gallant troops are everywhere in good heart.’

  ‘As at El Alamein?’

  ‘At El Alamein we were grossly betrayed and deserted.’

  ‘And at Tripoli?’

  ‘The greater part of our troops were safely evacuated from Tripoli.’

  ‘And at Pantellaria?’

  ‘An unimportant outpost.’

  ‘And now in Sicilia?’

  ‘In Sicilia great victories are daily being gained.’

  ‘And soon in Italia?’

  ‘Italia – never.’ Mordaci waggled a fat forefinger reprovingly at his young interrogator. ‘Never shall foreigner defile the sacred soil of Italy.’

  He hitched his cloak once more round his massive shoulders and rolled off across the compound with the satisfied smile of one who has dealt firmly with a tiresome interrogator. It may be that had he known that Tony had spoken to him simply because it was part of his duty to detain him for as long as he could – or had he even guessed that, somewhere beneath his feet as he stood talking, the sacred soil of Italy was being excavated at the rate of more than a square yard a day – it is possible that had he known all this his smi
le might have been less complacent.

  4

  That afternoon the new prisoners were allowed to join the rest. Since the news of the invasion of Sicily was by now general, and had in fact appeared, suitably garbled, in such Italian newspapers as were allowed into the camp, there seemed no point in keeping them in the already overcrowded Italian Staff Quarters.

  Normally, new prisoners were welcomed immediately into the living huts, where they found themselves the centre of a gratifying amount of attention. They personified the outside world. They were the latest news. On this occasion, however, Colonel Baird’s hand was over them from the moment they entered the camp, and they were taken immediately to the Senior Officers’ Quarters, where they were brought, one at a time, before the Escape Committee, in session in Colonel Baird’s room. The interrogation was friendly, but thorough.

  The first of them happened to be the little dark subaltern who had semaphored the news of the fall of Sicily. His name turned out to be Potter.

  ‘Now, Potter, perhaps you could give us a few details, Regiment and Division and so on. I see you were in the Signals.’

  ‘Yes, sir. I was signals officer in the 15th R.H.A.’

  ‘What Division was that?’

  ‘Eighth Armoured – that’s their Divisional Flash I’m wearing.’

  ‘So it is, I hadn’t spotted that. Who commands them now?’

  ‘Colonel Williams.’

  ‘Is that Chubby Williams?’

  ‘No, sir. It’s his brother. Chubby commands the Ninth.’

  ‘Of course. By the way, where did you say you were at school?’

  ‘Shelton.’

  ‘Oh, yes. Which house?’

  ‘School house.’

  ‘Let me see. You’re just twenty-two. I suppose you would have left there in ’39.’

  ‘’38 actually, sir. I left early to start my articles.’

  And so on.

  At the end of about fifteen minutes the officer concerned, feeling that he had been very carefully and skilfully taken to pieces and put together again, was allowed to join his hut where, of course, the questions started all over again.

  ‘You were in the 15th were you? Oh, Tag – here’s a chap who was with the 15th in Sicily. He says Mike has got a Battery.’

  ‘If Mike’s got a Battery,’ said Burchnall, ‘all I can say is, it’s a damn shame I was ever captured. I should have been a Brigadier by now.’

  5

  Next day Goyles’ plans suffered a setback. He heard about it after breakfast from Long.

  ‘I say,’ said Long, ‘have you heard the latest?’

  ‘Nobody ever says that, in that particular tone of voice,’ said Goyles, ‘unless it’s bad news, so out with it.’

  ‘I’m not sure whether it’s bad news or not,’ said Long. ‘Rather a sign of the times, really. Benucci has stopped all walks.’

  ‘Curse,’ said Goyles.

  ‘If you ask me, it’s not because he’s worried about people escaping. It’s simply because he’s afraid that the populace will begin to show too much sympathy with us. They haven’t been exactly hostile as it is. With the Eighth Army in Sicily they’ll begin to pelt us with flowers.’

  ‘It isn’t that,’ said Goyles. ‘I’m not all that keen on walks. It’s just that – look here, you’ll have to keep your mouth shut about this.’

  ‘This detection business is ruining your faith in human nature,’ said Tony coldly. ‘Of course I’ll keep my mouth shut. What is it?’

  Goyles explained about the arrangement he had made with Biancelli.

  ‘I see,’ said Tony. ‘Yes. That is a bit awkward, isn’t it? What exactly were you hoping to get out of him?’

  ‘Coutoules had the end room in the S.B.O.’s hut. The north-east sentry platform is the only one that overlooked his window. If Coutoules was in his room at lock-up, almost the only way he could have been got out was through the window.’

  ‘Why? They don’t lock the hut door at night.’

  ‘I know. But think of the risk. Even if Coutoules was dead when they got him out of his room, it would have meant carrying the body past half a dozen doors. Anyone might have looked out. If he’d still been alive and kicking the risk would have been greater still.’

  ‘I don’t believe you could kidnap anybody out of one of these huts without everybody knowing about it,’ said Tony thoughtfully. ‘But that’s not the point. I agree that if anything was to be seen Biancelli probably saw it. I don’t imagine you could have got much out of him on a walk, though. The sentries nearly always walk in pairs. There’s only one place in this camp where you can rely on an hour’s undisturbed conversation with a sentry. Do you think you can get a message to Biancelli?’

  ‘I expect so. The Quartermaster seems to be able to get hold of them.’

  ‘Then ask him when he’s next going to be on guard in the cooler.’

  ‘Tony,’ said Goyles, ‘that’s brilliant.’

  ‘It’s the fish diet,’ said Long modestly.

  6

  ‘I say,’ said Baierlein, ‘have you heard what’s happened?’

  Goyles turned over on his bed and groaned. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘they’ve stopped all walks.’

  ‘No doubt,’ said Baierlein, ‘but that wasn’t what I meant. They’ve removed Potter.’

  ‘Which Potter?’

  ‘He wasn’t in the camp long enough for us to get on Christian name terms,’ said Baierlein. ‘Young Potter – the chap in the Royal Corps of Signals who came in with the last bunch.’

  ‘The one who did the semaphoring?’

  ‘That’s the chap.’

  Goyles sat up slowly, to consider the new development. On the face of it, it didn’t seem to make a great deal of sense.

  ‘What actually happened?’

  ‘They didn’t make any palaver about it. Nothing like they did about Roger. Paoli came in after lunch, and told him to get packed, as he was going on somewhere else. Not that he’d got much to pack, poor chap. The people in his hut had a quick whip-round for him and got together some food and a set of battle-dress.’

  ‘Did Paoli stay with him whilst he was packing?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Baierlein. ‘Why?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Goyles, ‘it just occurred to me that they might have wanted to stop him talking. Supposing he had a bit of information they particularly didn’t want him to pass on. If he suddenly heard he was going to be moved to another camp, his natural reaction would be to try to tell it to someone. If Paoli was standing over him, he couldn’t. That’s all.’

  ‘It’s possible,’ said Baierlein. ‘But don’t forget he’d been in the camp nearly twenty-four hours. The Escape Committee and the “I” people had already had a go at him. To say nothing of the people in the hut. The poor chap hardly stopped answering questions from the moment he got into the camp, till he was removed. If there was anything, surely he’d have spilled it already.’

  ‘Always supposing,’ said Goyles thoughtfully, ‘that he knew exactly what it was that he knew that the Italians didn’t want us to know.’

  ‘This detecting business is going to your head,’ said Baierlein.

  7

  ‘It’s all very well to talk about getting yourself arrested,’ said Goyles, ‘but it isn’t so damned easy, just at the moment.’

  ‘There’s ingratitude for you,’ said Tony.

  ‘I’m not ungrateful,’ said Goyles. ‘I still think it was a brilliant idea. And I’ve been in touch with Biancelli. He says he will be on the cooler guard tomorrow night. It’s a twenty-four-hour guard – two hours on and four off. All I want is a few days solitary, starting tomorrow, and everything in the garden would be beautiful.’

  ‘Forget to salute the Commandant.’

  ‘He never comes into the camp nowadays.’

  ‘Be rude to Benucci.’

  ‘That’s the trouble. Benucci’s such a tricky customer. If you say something perfectly outrageous to him, he just grins like a cat, and you fee
l a fool. I suppose you could go a step further and trip him up and kick him in the stomach or something. Then he’d probably pull out his toy revolver and shoot you.’

  ‘Hmph,’ said Long.

  ‘The trouble is everybody’s in such an awkward frame of mind at the moment. It’s going to be damned tricky—’

  ‘You just leave it to me,’ said Long. ‘Everything shall be arranged. You want the best prisons. We have them. Tactful insults a speciality.’

  8

  ‘Well, I call the whole thing a lot of nonsense,’ said Rolf-Callender. ‘Ever since the S.B.O.’s speech people have done nothing but form threes and slope arms and talk the most ropey old nonsense about attack in depth and where they’re going to site the “B” Echelon. I suppose one can’t prevent them making fools of themselves, but when it comes to suggesting that we give up the play—

  ‘Has anyone actually suggested that we drop it?’

  ‘Not in so many words, but I can tell from the way Uncle Percy looks at me’ (he referred to his Hut Commander, an elderly regular Major in Indian Cavalry) ‘that he thinks we’re just fiddling whilst Rome burns. Personally I can’t see it at all. Didn’t the Duchess of Thingummy give a ball on the eve of Waterloo?’

  ‘If she hadn’t,’ suggested Peter Perse, who never missed an opportunity of provoking Rolf-Callender, ‘Wellington mightn’t have come so jolly near to losing the battle.’

  ‘I can’t see it,’ said Bush. ‘It isn’t as if we were using anything that anyone else would want if we did have to escape – unless you suggest that Peter tries to get to Rome dressed as Elizabeth Barrett Browning. I agree that the general get-up is smashing, but I’m afraid the skirt would date him.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Rolf-Callender. ‘Just because they want to play at soldiers, is that any reason to stop us playing at theatricals? When it comes to the big night, I expect our performance will be far more amusing than theirs. And I shall tell Uncle Percy so next time he wants me to join one of his TEWTS.’