The First Casualty

by Ben Elton

  ‘That is what he told me, although I only believe it now I hear it confirmed by you, Sir Mansfield. Captain Shannon is not a man whose uncorroborated word I would ever be minded to accept on any subject at all.’

  ‘Yes,’ Cumming said, opening a tin of biscuits. ‘I’d heard you were a good judge of character. Garibaldi?’

  ‘Captain Shannon is an unbalanced sadist and a dangerous lecher,’ Kingsley said, declining the biscuit. ‘It takes no great leap of judgement to see that.’

  ‘Mmm. A bastard indeed, but my bastard, which is all that matters really, isn’t it?’

  Cumming sat down in one of the two armchairs that stood before the mean little unlit fireplace and indicated that Kingsley should take the other. Above the mantel hung a rather fanciful painting of Napoleon’s surrender at Waterloo. The spymaster stared at it for a few moments as if seeking to draw inspiration.

  ‘The problem is,’ he said finally, ‘the death of Viscount Abercrombie is making waves. Damned fellow got murdered, you see, and what with him being who he is, HM Government decided to lie about it. Probably a mistake as it’s turned out but at the time it seemed a good idea. This is a modern age, you see, an age of celebrity. And in particular just now, the celebrity poet. You’ve probably heard about the trouble that blighter Sassoon has caused with his damned anti-war letter to the press. If he hadn’t been a poet, a celebrity poet, The Times would never have published it.’

  Cumming had been dunking his garibaldi in his tea for too long and half of the biscuit broke off, falling back into the cup. He swore creatively for a moment while fishing about in his cup with a teaspoon.

  ‘Where was I?’ he said, having retrieved most of it and eaten it off the spoon, a process which Kingsley found rather unpleasant to witness.

  ‘Celebrity poets,’ Kingsley prompted.

  ‘Ah yes, more popular than cricketers these days. They’ll be putting them on cigarette cards next. Brooke started it, of course, with all his Little Englander romantic tosh:

  ‘Stands the Church clock at ten to three?

  And is there honey still for tea?’

  ‘Bloody rot if you ask me. I’ve been to Grantchester and, let me tell you, it’s boring. Not surprised the clock stopped, lost the will to carry on, I imagine.’

  Kingsley sipped his tea and kept silent. No doubt the master spy would get to the point eventually.

  ‘Well, anyway, here’s the thing. At first Abercrombie’s death looked like an open-and-shut case: the Military Police arrested one Private Hopkins and charged him with the murder. The obvious thing to do was to keep it all as quiet as possible and let the people’s memory of their fallen hero remain pure. Unfortunately, certain circumstances and witness statements have emerged which must at least give us reason to doubt Hopkins’s guilt, and some people here in London — influential people — got wind of it. Lord Abercrombie, the dead chap’s father, had been happy that Hopkins be quietly shot and his son’s reputation remain unscathed. However, the other side started crying foul and now everybody’s clamouring for further explanations. If things develop unchecked, either one side or the other is bound to start talking. It will all come out, including the government’s original lies, and we shall have a scandal and a trial on our hands to rival the bloody Dreyfus case. Divided nation and all. Working man pitted against aristocrat, Labour fighting Tory, with the poor old Liberal government stuck in the middle. What we need, and need quickly, is for the thing to be properly investigated and, if humanly possible, for the truth to be established. If that could be achieved and the evidence placed privately before the warring parties, the matter might yet be quietly laid to rest.’

  Of course Kingsley could see where all this must be leading. He was not, after all, being told this for nothing, but he could not understand why they needed him.

  ‘Surely this is a job for the Military Police?’

  ‘Well, you’d have thought so, wouldn’t you? But of course the Labour lot won’t have it; they don’t trust the police at all. They say they’ve already been compromised by leaping to judgement.’

  ‘Then surely your department…’

  ‘Ha! If Labour and the unions don’t trust the police, they trust us less. I have been told that when the War Office suggested that the SIS take over the investigation, Ramsay MacDonald actually laughed. I can see his point, of course; we do have something of a reputation for harassing revolutionaries. The funny thing is, the Conservatives don’t really trust us either, convinced we’ve been infiltrated by Bolshies. Who’d be a spy, eh? No, I’m afraid neither the police nor the SIS will do. What is needed here is a disinterested party, a figure of proven integrity and high moral credentials who also happens to be a brilliant criminal detective.’

  The fact that this was flattering did not make it any less astonishing. ‘You mean that Bonar Law and Ramsay MacDonald have been discussing me?’

  ‘Oh, don’t be so modest, Inspector, you know damn well that you were the Yard’s best man.’

  ‘Well, yes, I was but…’

  ‘And all this conchie business, hateful though it may be to most people, has shown that you are a man of unassailable principle. Honestly, you couldn’t be better suited to help break this deadlock if we’d designed you ourselves. It didn’t take long for your name to come up. In fact, looking at the secret minutes, it seems to have been the Prime Minister himself who suggested you.’

  Kingsley sipped his tea, pretending to take this with a pinch of salt but secretly rather thrilled.

  ‘Well, well. The Prime Minister, eh?’

  ‘Yes, although that may simply have been him trying to take the credit. He is rather prone to that, you know. Great men often are, I find.’

  ‘So the Prime Minister himself asked for me?’

  ‘Absolutely. There was, however, one problem.’

  ‘My being in prison.’

  ‘Exactly. There was talk of granting you a pardon or at least a stay of sentence but that was scarcely practical, given the notoriety of your offence and the public opprobrium in which you were held. More to the point, people would have wanted to know why you had been released and then the whole thing would have come out anyway. We needed your skills and your reputation, but we did not need you.’

  ‘Hence my death.’

  ‘Exactly. There was a meeting in camera at the highest level where the proposal was put to those politicians who have currently taken such an interest in this case. They were asked whether, if a way could be found whereby you, a brilliant ex-police officer, proven to be of high moral integrity, could conduct an investigation anonymously, those politicians would abide by the conclusions you drew. They agreed.’

  Despite all his troubles, Kingsley could not avoid a feeling of satisfaction.

  ‘I’m most gratified.’

  ‘And so we were briefed to produce you anonymously and here you are. Dead, but all present and correct to do an enormous service to your country. Solve this murder mystery before it drives a bloody great wedge right down the middle of our fragile wartime consensus.’

  Kingsley lit a cigarette. It was an astounding story and yet he could see the logic.

  ‘Well,’ he remarked, after he had exhaled the deep draught of tobacco smoke, ‘it is true that both the police and the intelligence service are hopelessly compromised.’

  ‘Hopelessly. We might as well all pack up and go home. Only you can do this, Inspector. Only you can serve your country in this matter.’

  Cumming was no fool when it came to judging a man’s character and he could see that the biggest chink, probably the only chink, in Kingsley’s intellectual armour was his vanity.

  ‘I certainly do appear to be the logical candidate.’

  ‘So you’re game?’

  ‘I didn’t say that.’

  ‘Of course, if you don’t think you’re up to the investigation…’

  ‘Don’t bother with that old trick, Sir Mansfield. I’m a little too long in the tooth to be cajoled with such simplistic
psychology as that.’

  But of course Kingsley wasn’t. The suggestion that he might not have the confidence to attempt the challenge had raised his hackles, no matter how much he might try to disguise the fact. Cumming continued to twist the knife.

  ‘I’m just saying that I’d understand if you thought you couldn’t crack it. The trail’s pretty cold after all.’

  ‘My decision has nothing to do with whether I can ‘crack it’ or not,’ Kingsley said, with some irritation. ‘If anybody can ‘crack it’, I can. Therefore were I to attempt to ‘crack it’ and fail I would know that the case was not ‘crackable’ and hence there’d be no shame in my having failed. I am merely taking time to consider the parameters of your proposal.’

  ‘Consider away then, always remembering that each minute increases the probability that whatever evidence and witnesses remain will be blown to Hades.’

  ‘I’d need authority to conduct inquiries, particularly in a military zone. I presume your plan would be to equip me with a new identity. A policeman?’

  Cumming could see that he had hooked his man.

  ‘Absolutely: Captain Christopher Marlowe of the Royal Military Police.’

  ‘And if I did take on your job…at the end of it, what then?’

  ‘You and your new identity depart these shores, Inspector. For good. Australia, we think. Lots of openings for energetic men there, particularly considering how many they’ve lost in France and Turkey. Not a lot of questions asked either.’

  ‘My wife and son?’

  ‘Inspector, they were lost to you anyway. You would never have survived your prison sentence.’

  Kingsley was under no illusions about the value the SIS would place on his life at the end of an assignment like the one proposed. Alive, he could cause a great deal of embarrassment.

  Cumming could read his thoughts.

  ‘His Majesty’s Secret Intelligence Service does not deal in murder, Inspector.’

  ‘Millions are being killed. Why trouble yourself over one more?’

  ‘I suppose I must simply ask that you trust me.’

  Kingsley stared at Cumming as the master spy busied himself clearing up the tea things. Perhaps it was best not to dwell on the future but to consider the present. He was a man whose old life had been over anyway. What did it matter what he did?

  And then, of course, there was the thrill of the chase. Kingsley took out a little spiral notebook and pen that he had bought at WH Smith and Sons at Victoria Station. He could not help himself, he was a born policeman.

  ‘You spoke about ‘circumstances and witness statements’ which give you reason for doubt?’

  Cumming smiled. A policeman with his notebook was surely getting down to work.

  ‘Well, the first question to be asked is what was this great hero doing in an NYDN centre in the first place, and what a coincidence it is that Hopkins was in the next-door room.

  ‘NYDN?’ Kingsley enquired.

  ‘Royal Army Medical Corps acronym for Not Yet Diagnosed — Nervous.’

  ‘You can’t be serious.’

  ‘I’m entirely serious. That’s what the army calls these places. They don’t like the term ‘shell shock’, don’t like it at all.’

  ‘And just how ‘nervous’ was Viscount Abercrombie?’

  ‘Well, this is the point: nobody knows. He’d only been at Château Beaurivage a week before he was shot.’

  ‘Was he in a ward?’

  ‘Sadly not. A few witnesses would be nice, but being aristocracy and famous to boot he had his own billet.’

  ‘And the theory is that Private Hopkins went in and shot him?’

  ‘Well, that’s how it looks. God knows he’s got the motive and he was found later with the gun, but as I say nobody actually saw him do it.’

  ‘So where do the doubts come in?’

  ‘Well, the first point is that Hopkins swears blind he didn’t do it.’

  ‘In my experience most murderers tend to take that line. What else?’

  ‘Rather more disturbingly, we have two eyewitness reports that suggest somebody else was in Abercrombie’s room shortly before he was found dead.’

  ‘Who? ‘

  ‘An officer, that’s all we know. He disappeared and has not been seen again.’

  ‘Are these witnesses reliable?’

  ‘One’s reliable and the other’s pretty dubious. The dubious one’s a private soldier, chap called McCroon, who had also just been admitted to Beaurivage and had in fact spent much of the earlier part of the evening with Hopkins doing raffia work. It seems to have been this fellow who first cried foul and got word of Hopkins’s arrest to his union.’

  ‘Did nobody else at the centre speak out when it was announced that Abercrombie died in battle?’

  ‘No, the incident had happened at night and only a few of the medical staff were aware of it. They are all military personnel and hence subject to military law, and they had been told to keep quiet.’

  ‘You say that this McCroon was a friend of Hopkins’s?’

  ‘Probably more of a comrade.’

  ‘You mean a political friend?’

  ‘Yes, McCroon was a political comrade. They were both avowed Socialists, in fact Bolsheviks.’

  ‘Well, such a figure might easily make up a story about shadowy officers to help a comrade and confuse the authorities.’

  ‘True, but the other witness is less easy to dismiss. A nurse.’

  ‘Male or female?’

  ‘A girl. Steady sort, only twenty-two but with over a year’s service behind her. All at the sharp end too, as close to the guns as girls are allowed to get, which is pretty close these days.’

  ‘The police told you that?’

  ‘No, we conducted cursory inquiries ourselves. Shannon has been over and spoken to her. We wanted to be able to provide you with as much information as possible in the short time available.’

  ‘You say that Hopkins had a motive for killing Abercrombie?’

  ‘Well, apart from him being a Bolshevik and Abercrombie being an aristocrat, a few days previous to the murder he’d got Field Punishment Number One for disobeying an order at the bathhouse.’

  ‘Field Punishment Number One?’

  ‘Most unpleasant, being lashed to a gun limber, and Abercrombie was in charge of the punishment detail.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Of course the same motive Hopkins has for killing Abercrombie gives the military a very real motive for wanting to railroad him straight to the gallows. As you know, the situation at the front is pretty desperate; nobody knows if the British army will go the way the French did, or, worse still, the Russians. General Staff are certainly very nervous. For them, the fewer Bolshies like Hopkins in the trenches the better.’

  ‘Are you saying that people think the army would execute an innocent man in order to rid themselves of a pithead revolutionary?’

  ‘Believe me, people will believe anything. What about the Angel of Mons, eh? The human capacity for superstition and theories of conspiracy is endless. Particularly if there’s a foundation for them, which in this case there is. Any number of people knew that Abercrombie was in that NYDN centre. Officers and men alike, there’s plenty of them wondering how a man with shell shock came to be killed in battle. Rumours fly around and before you know it the truth gets lost altogether — which can be all to the good — but in the meantime the tittle-tattle in the ranks is that Abercrombie was murdered, murdered by another officer. They believe that the toffs know the truth but won’t hang one of their own; far better and more convenient to frame the Bolshevik next door who’s suffering from shell shock.’

  ‘I can see that it might be an attractive theory to war-weary soldiers.’

  ‘Yes, well, fortunately at the moment these ideas are confined to the troops at the front. We control the press and currently the wider world believes that Abercrombie died a hero. They’ve never heard of Hopkins. But if we shoot an innocent man and it ever comes out, God know
s what might happen. Don’t forget that Hopkins was a miner. Have you any idea what the miners could do to the war effort if their union decided to turn nasty? Practically the entire fleet is still coal-fuelled.’

  ‘You’re not trying to tell me they’d strike, surely?’

  Cumming was about to respond but instead a loud and commanding voice answered from the door. A loud and commanding voice with a strong Welsh accent.

  THIRTY-THREE

  Illustrious company

  ‘Oh, I don’t think they’d do that. I bloody ‘ope not anyway, boyo! Do you see?’

  Kingsley looked round and nearly fell off his chair with surprise. He was lucky not to upset his tea. The figure who had entered the room was the most instantly recognizable person in Britain, after the late Lord Kitchener and the King himself. A man who had dominated the House of Commons for over a decade, first as President of the Board of Trade, then as a revolutionary Chancellor of the Exchequer, a Minister of Munitions and finally, after Asquith’s career had been machine-gunned along with the flower of Kitchener’s army on the Somme, as Prime Minister. David Lloyd George was Britain’s most famous politician since Gladstone: ‘Lloyd George knew my father,’ the troops often sang, ‘Father knew Lloyd George.’ Or ‘Lord’ George, as the old and the poor had called him after his famous ‘People’s Budget’ had introduced to Britain the concept of state pensions and social security. Other names were whispered too, for it was generally accepted that Lloyd George’s famous energy did not stop at politics; he was the most incorrigible womanizer to hold high office since Henry VIII.

  ‘I must say, the rather splendid thing that this war ‘as demonstrated so far,’ the great man continued, entering the room — ‘No no, don’t get up, lads, I’m not the bloody Pope, am I now?’ but Kingsley and Cumming had already jumped to their feet — ‘is that the British working man and ‘is brother at the front puts ‘is country before class. Mind you, last year you could ‘ave said that about the Russians, couldn’t you? And look at them now! Confound the lot of ‘em. This is Thompson, by the way. Say ‘ello, Thompson.’

  ‘Hello, sir. Hello, sir.’