The First Casualty

by Ben Elton

  After that Nurse Murray was quickly besieged on all sides by officers clearly anxious to spend a few moments in the company of a woman, even if she was an uncompromising Suffragette. Kingsley took the opportunity to try to gather a few more opinions of Abercrombie from his brother officers.

  ‘Nice chap, much quieter than I’d have expected,’ seemed to be the general impression.

  ‘He came to us after the London Regiment (Artists Rifles) got ripped to bits at Plug Street, so we didn’t know him long,’ said one man.

  ‘Yes, we were expecting someone rather grand, putting on airs and all,’ another officer added, ‘what with him being famous and a viscount, etc., etc. Father’s Tory Chief Whip, you know. But actually he was quite withdrawn. Well, let’s face it, he ended up here, didn’t he? Not Yet Diagnosed, eh? But pretty ‘nervous’ nonetheless.’

  ‘I think his old outfit getting mauled so badly they had to break it up hit him pretty hard,’ said a third.

  ‘Still can’t quite work out how he managed to get himself killed in battle though,’ the second officer added. ‘Last we all heard, he’d been sent down here.’

  It was not long before the party began to wind down. The men had long since departed, looking forward to a sleep undisturbed by shells or something stronger than tea at an estaminet, or maybe even a trip to the No. 1 Red Lamp. The officers too were drifting off, the whisky having run out and the nurses all gone to their rooms. Kingsley had not seen Nurse Murray since he had left her cornered by officers and so he set off to walk back to his billet. He had not slept in a bed since his night in the hotel at Victoria and he was looking forward to the poor little cot at the Café Cavell as if it were a feather-stuffed four-poster

  The rain had stopped earlier and the night was not cold. There was a fullish moon and the way was clear, so Kingsley decided to take a short cut across the lawns. It was not long, however, before a light rain began to fall once more. The clouds covered the moon and the night suddenly became very dark. Kingsley was forced to walk with his hands held out before him and he very much regretted his decision not to stick to the gravel paths.

  Just then a voice behind bid him stop.

  ‘I love the feeling of rain, don’t you?’ It was Nurse Murray. ‘I mean, I know it’s hellish for the troops but back here, in this beautiful château filled with nothing but pain and sadness, I sometimes think it’s the only clean thing there is left.’

  She must have followed him from the house, and he had not heard her because of the soft, springy turf on which they were walking. She had waited until he got amongst the first trees before approaching him. He could scarcely make her out in the darkness.

  ‘Private Hopkins did not murder Viscount Abercrombie, Captain.’

  ‘How can you be so sure?’

  ‘I just know it.’

  Still he could not see her but he sensed that she was close. The rainclouds were thick around the moon now and the darkness was almost impenetrable.

  ‘You should go back to the château,’ he said. ‘Shall I esco — I mean accompany you to the door?’

  ‘I told you I like the rain. Besides, it’s too dark all of a sudden. We should wait for the clouds to pass or we shall lose our way and break an ankle.’

  It was certainly true that the night was now darker still and the rain heavier. It seemed that they were fairly stuck.

  ‘Is there any smell more exquisite than fresh rain in a wood?’ the voice enquired, and now it was directly in front of him. She could not have been more than a foot away.

  ‘Why did you follow me?’

  ‘You interest me. Come on, we should get beneath the trees.’

  ‘I could not tell you where they were.

  ‘I can, I eat a lot of carrots.’

  He felt her take his hand in hers, a tiny hand but a confident one with a firm grip. Kingsley allowed himself to be led until he felt the rain no more, save for the occasional bigger drops that plopped down as the water filtered through the leaves which he knew must be above them.

  ‘How is it that I interest you, Nurse Murray?’ Kingsley asked, as once more they stood still together in the darkness. She had not let go of his hand.

  ‘Well, as I said, you don’t seem like a military policeman to me. I don’t really believe you are one. Perhaps you’re a spy.’

  ‘A spy? What sort of spy?’

  ‘Oh,’ just any old spy. There’s more to this mystery than meets the eye, I think. First Captain Shannon came. Then we had the murder and the police said they’d solved it, and now you turn up,’ a seasoned military policeman who doesn’t salute when he’s supposed to, doesn’t stamp about like they all do all the time and doesn’t know what a green envelope is.’

  It took a moment to sink in and then Kingsley felt ashamed. He was astonished that his face could be read so easily, and by a girl of twenty-two.

  ‘Ah,’ was all he could say, knowing that there was no point in denying the ignorance in which she had caught him out.

  ‘For your information, a green envelope is the only avenue by which a soldier may send a letter home which will avoid the eye of the censor. All post sent from the front is routinely read except that which is contained in the much-coveted green envelope. The troops get about one a month if they’re lucky.’

  ‘And anything contained therein is not read?’

  ‘That is the theory.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Kingsley said quietly. ‘I was wondering.’

  They were silent for a moment while the rain grew more noisy. Still Nurse Murray held his hand but it did not make Kingsley feel uncomfortable. Normally it would have done but for some reason it did not.

  ‘So you’re a civilian then?’ she asked.

  ‘Let us say that my commission…is a recent one. Very recent.’

  ‘Good. That means I haven’t broken my rule.’

  ‘What rule is that?’

  ‘Never to feel kindly towards a copper.’

  ‘I’m afraid that I am a copper, Nurse Murray, just not a military one.’

  ‘Damn. Oh well, exception and rule and all that, eh? My name’s Kitty, by the way. Short for Kathleen.’

  ‘May I call you Kitty then?’

  ‘I hope you will.’

  Had she squeezed his hand? He thought perhaps she might have done, but oh so lightly.

  ‘What sort of thing is normally put in a green envelope?’ he enquired.

  ‘Two things. Sex and moaning. That’s what a man keeps private. His erotic thoughts and his opinion of his superior, who tends to be the person who censors his letters. Of course mainly it’s sex. Sex. Sex. Sex. That’s all anybody seems to think about out here.’

  ‘I see.’

  The rain was falling ever harder and the leafy canopy was affording less and less protection from it.

  ‘You will be wet through,’ Kingsley said. ‘Will you take my coat?’

  ‘If you insist,’ she replied.

  Finally disengaging her hand, Kingsley took off his greatcoat and held it before him. He felt her feel for the coat. With one hand she took it but regained hold of Kingsley’s with the other. Then he heard the coat falling to the ground. She had dropped it as she pulled his hand towards her in the pitch blackness. Then she drew it inside her blouse, which she had clearly unbuttoned in anticipation, and placed it upon her naked breast.

  ‘Modern girls,’ she whispered, ‘so forward.’

  It was small but wonderfully firm and springy. The skin was very wet and the nipple that nestled in the palm of Kingsley’s hand had grown big and hard in the night air. Kingsley did not withdraw his hand. He had not expected this and he had not sought it, but now that it had happened he was intoxicated. His throat was dry and his every nerve had sprung alive. He did not pause to consider as suddenly he reached forward with his other arm and pulled her towards him. She was at least a foot shorter than him and he had to gather her up off her feet in order to kiss her, which he did, holding her to him in one arm whilst with his other he kneade
d at her breast.

  Then, as quickly as he had clasped her to him, he disengaged himself.

  ‘I’m…I’m married,’ he gasped.

  ‘Lucky Mrs Marlowe.’

  ‘I love my wife.’

  ‘Bully for you. I’m not asking you to love me.’

  The voice now came from closer to the ground than before. He felt her fingers at his trouser buttons. Still he could see nothing,’ nothing at all. The night was like a cloak; perhaps it was the darkness that was weakening his resolve. It felt so anonymous, so secret.

  ‘I can’t,’ he pleaded, but he was already surrendering.

  He had been alone for so long.

  ‘You can,’ she insisted, struggling with the buttons.

  ‘I love her,’ he said, pushing her fingers away.

  ‘And you can still love her tomorrow, unless you’re dead,’ she replied, putting her fingers back inside his fly. ‘Only moments count in this war. Each minute is a whole new lifetime out here.’

  This time he did not push her fingers away. He could not. The rain and the darkness and the smell of the sodden trees and the feel of that firm wet skin, that strong hard nipple and then her lips on his had intoxicated him.

  He stood there, his head thrown back with the rain falling on his face, as he felt fingers reaching into his fly and searching for a way into his long johns. Murray was a nurse and used to undressing men; it was not long before she had found what she was looking for and liberated his straining manhood, and then he gasped out loud. The warmth of her mouth on him was almost too much to bear.

  ‘Oh Jesus. Yes!’ he gasped as her lips and teeth closed savagely around him and he felt the tip of her tongue poking and probing. Then, just when he was beginning to think that he must explode, her mouth was gone and in its place he felt her hands once more and he smelt the unmistakable smell of oiled rubber

  ‘Glad this wasn’t hanging on the line to dry when you saw my room,’ he heard her say. ‘I think even I would have been embarrassed.’

  She slipped the big thick rubber sheath over him and then pulled him down to her. Kingsley soon discovered that beneath her skirt she was wearing nothing. He felt the thick, luxuriant bush of soft wet hair between her legs and in a moment he was buried inside it.

  ‘Ooh-la-la!’ she breathed as he smelt the clean aroma of her short bobbed hair and the rain-sodden grass around it. ‘Oooh-la-jolly well-la!’

  And so they made love together in the pouring rain, with Nurse

  Murray emitting a stream of girlish exclamations which seemed to indicate that she was enjoying herself. ‘Gosh’,’ ‘Golly’ and, as things moved towards a conclusion, even ‘Tally ho!’

  When it was over she pushed him off, stood up and lit a cigarette. It was still too dark to see anything but the glow of the burning tip, and by the way that was moving about Kingsley sensed that she was buttoning herself up.

  ‘Jolly nice,’ she said, ‘most invigorating. Lovely. Gasper? They’re yours anyway.’

  ‘I’ll wait a moment.

  ‘Suit yourself. Excuse me,’ she said.

  Then the little red dot descended and once more he felt her hand upon him.

  ‘Just grab this if that’s all right with you,’ she said and pulled the sheath from his collapsed manhood. ‘I forgot to take it back once, from an American doctor who was here studying our work. Had to go round and ask for it in the morning. Most awkward.’

  ‘I can imagine. So you, uhm, do this often?’

  ‘When I feel like it. I’m very fond of sex. Does that surprise you?’

  ‘Not now.’

  ‘It surprises some men, particularly Englishmen. They think that women don’t really like it at all and just put up with it. What’s the old joke? Marriage is the price men pay for sex and sex is the price women pay for marriage.’

  ‘Yes, I’ve heard that one.’

  ‘Load of tommyrot. Women need sex as much as men. Intellectually, of course,’ I’d definitely prefer it to be sapphic but frankly the idea revolts me. I love women in every sense except for sex and I feel exactly the opposite about men.’

  ‘And when you meet a man who attracts you, you make love to him? ‘

  ‘If he’s interested and it’s convenient and I’ve got my trusty baby-barrier handy.’

  ‘Captain Shannon?’

  ‘I did not make love to Captain Shannon. I was momentarily attracted to him but I very soon lost interest. Beastly fellow. There was an altercation.’

  ‘An altercation?’

  ‘He wished to stick it where I did not wish it to be stuck.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘We did not part as friends.’

  ‘I imagine not.’

  ‘Unlike tonight, I hope.’

  ‘Oh, definitely. I should be honoured to consider myself your friend, Kitty.’

  ‘Good, then that’s done, Christopher…Christopher Marlowe,’ she mused. ‘Funny sort of name to choose. But then you’re a funny sort of chap, aren’t you? Toodle-pip.’

  And Staff Nurse Kitty Murray disappeared into the night. Kingsley lay on the grass for a little while, letting the rain fall on him. Perhaps hoping that it would somehow wash away his sin. For he was suffused with post-coital guilt. What had moments before felt ecstatic now felt miserable. He still loved Agnes,’ even though she was lost to him, and he felt the pain and guilt of having been unfaithful to her. Something he had never in his life intended to be. In vain did he argue with himself that Agnes had treated him cruelly and failed to stand by him in his hour of greatest need. He didn’t care; he loved her. She was his Agnes,’ the sweetest girl he ever knew, all the sweeter perhaps because she was not perfect and never pretended to be. He missed her terribly and now he had betrayed her utterly. He found himself caressing the wedding ring that Agnes had returned to him at Brixton Prison and which he had worn upon his little finger ever since. The rain on his face mingled with sudden tears.

  FOURTY

  The Military Police

  The following day Kingsley set out for Armentières, to visit the Military Police station that had responded to the emergency at the château on the night of Abercrombie’s death. There was plenty of motor transport on the roads and once more Kingsley’s captain’s pips guaranteed him a lift, but it was heavy going. Every possible byway was swollen with military traffic. The enormous British offensive was continuing unabated, despite the startling lack of progress.

  ‘We were supposed to be in Passchendaele on the first day,’ Kingsley’s driver said. ‘It’s been a fortnight and we aren’t there yet.’

  The troops considered Armentières to be an unattractive, dirty little town but that did not stop them visiting it, and over the previous three years it had become little more than a military camp. On occasions it had been within range of the German guns and had suffered accordingly, but the house in which the Military Police unit was accommodated was undamaged. Kingsley had managed to telephone ahead and so he was expected. The most senior soldier in the unit, a sergeant, greeted him at the door.

  ‘Sergeant Bill Banks, Royal Military Police, sah!’ he said, coming to attention, saluting smartly and stamping loudly.

  ‘At ease, Sergeant,’ Kingsley replied. ‘We shan’t be able to chat very comfortably with you stamping and saluting the whole time.’

  ‘I don’t do it all the time, sir. Only when it’s prescribed.’

  ‘By the book?’ asked Kingsley, remembering his prison doctor.

  ‘Yes, sir, by the book.’

  Kingsley was shown into what had once been the parlour of the house but was now the sergeant’s office. He was given a most welcome mug of sweet tea, served with fresh milk. The Café Cavell had had coffee only, and it was coffee that resembled no coffee he had ever drunk.

  Kingsley got straight down to business.

  ‘So, Sergeant. You attended the scene of the murder?’

  ‘That’s right, sir, I did.’

  ‘So might I see your scene-of-crime report?’


  ‘My what, sir?’

  ‘Your report. The report you and your men assembled at the scene of the crime.’

  ‘Do you mean the Incident Notification, sir?’

  ‘Possibly.’

  The sergeant reached into a cabinet and produced a sheet of paper.

  ‘Here are you are, sir,’ he said proudly. ‘There’s a copy with Division and two here on file. In my filing drawer, which is where I keep my files. I have considered destroying them, seeing as how the incident which they describe has been officially designated as not having happened, but I would not wish to destroy an official file without having filed an official request to do so. But I can’t file this request since the file describes an incident which officially did not happen and hence clearly cannot be on file. It’s all most confusing, sir.’

  Kingsley glanced at the sheet. Beneath the date and time, the report was brief:

  Attended Chateau Beaurivage RAMC NYD(N) Facility after being alerted to incident over telephone by Medical Officer in charge.

  Discovered Viscount Alan Abercrombie in bed, shot in the head. Called to next-door room where Nurses had discovered patient Private Thomas Hopkins in possession of Abercrombie’s service revolver which had recently been discharged. Arrested Hopkins for murder.

  Kingsley handed back the piece of paper.

  ‘That’s it? That’s all you wrote?’

  ‘That’s all that happened, sir.’

  Kingsley sighed. There was no point getting angry; it was not his business to teach the Military Police rules of procedure that would have been obvious to an eight-year-old who had read The Hound of the Baskervilles.

  ‘I visited the crime scene myself yesterday. There was no bullet hole in the bed or the floor so I’m presuming that the bullet did not pass through his head.’

  ‘That sounds right, sir,’ Sergeant Banks replied rather doubtfully.

  ‘No autopsy was performed on the corpse,’ I believe?’

  ‘Not that I know of, sir. We certainly never asked for one. What would have been the point? We could see he was dead.’

  For a moment Kingsley wondered if the man was joking. But he wasn’t.