Mad About the Boy?

by Dolores Gordon-Smith

  Miller spooned some stew out of the pan and put it on a tin plate for Stanton. It tasted delicious. Spiky had his own plate but Miller ate out of the pan.

  ‘I’m sorry to see you’ve fallen on hard times, sir,’ said Miller after they’d finished. ‘We all thought happy times were coming after the Armistice, but you never can tell, can you? Lots of gents came off worse, I know.’

  Armistice? What was the man talking about? ‘What Armistice?’ asked Stanton, puzzled.

  Miller laughed. ‘The one when the war stopped, of course,’ he said. ‘I don’t know about any others.’

  Stanton was desperately tired. The Armistice was too complicated to think about. Perhaps it would all make sense in the morning. He lay down beside the fire and the last thing he knew was Miller putting a coat over him before he drifted away to sleep.

  It was a long time before Miller went to sleep. He didn’t trust Spiky. Spiky would rob his own grandmother and nobody was going to touch the Captain.

  The Captain. Miller looked affectionately at the sleeping man. He’d been one of the best officers in the Royal Sussex, and that was saying something, thought Miller, with a surge of loyalty to his old regiment. He pulled an apple out of his pocket and looked at it doubtfully. He’d never really liked apples since the war. The smell reminded him of gas. He stuck the apple on a stick and put it in the fire. They weren’t too bad roasted. Gas! He remembered the Captain shouting ‘Gas!’ Very keen on gas drill, the Captain was, and quite right, too. There’d been a lad at Hell’s Corner who couldn’t manage the straps on his mask. He’d ended up with eyes like ping-pong balls. Dead, of course. Just as well, poor kid.

  He rooted in his pockets once more and pulled out a stub of cigarette, lighting it with a twig from the fire. The Captain. He’d always wondered what had happened to the Captain. They’d been given the order to advance on Passchendaele Ridge. It had been miserable weather, nearly as bad as today. But at Passchendaele there was mud, mud and more mud and shell-holes deep enough to drown in. Miller smoked his cigarette thoughtfully, remembering the scene. The machine-gun bullet had hit him in his leg and he’d gone down. That should have been it. On the Somme a bullet in the leg meant a nice Blighty one but at Passchendaele he knew he’d drown before anyone could get to him. He had always hated the thought of drowning. And now he was going to drown in mud. He’d seen enough bodies floating in shell-holes to know what was in store. They all swelled up. Disgusting, it was. He didn’t want to drown.

  If he’d been with his section he’d have put a brave face on it. That’s what an NCO did. Don’t let the men down, Corporal Miller. Drilled into you, that was. But there were no men. Just himself, a wounded leg, the rain drenching the sodden ground, and that terrible fear as the mud grew deeper round him hour by hour.

  There was no chance of a stretcher-bearer. Fritz had taken nasty and were machine-gunning the Red Cross lads. Bloody Fritz. Bloody war. Bloody mud.

  And then the Captain had arrived. Miller wiped the back of his hand across his eyes. It always got to him like this. Remembering what it was like to wait helplessly for that horrible mud to fill his mouth and his lungs and then to hear the Captain’s voice always made his eyes smart. He’d learnt the full story afterwards. The Captain had called for volunteers and taken them out himself. Braving the raking machine-gun fire he’d made three trips, bringing in the wounded. Miller would never forget his gratitude at the sight of the Captain’s long, determined face as he pulled him out of that mud and on to a stretcher. When they got back to the lines, he could see the Captain had organized fresh men and was going out again. He had to be stopped. Talk about the pitcher going too often to the well . . .

  From his stretcher, Miller had grabbed the Captain’s hand. ‘Please sir, don’t go. They’re all playing harps by now.’

  The Captain had grinned. ‘Don’t be bloody silly, Miller. I heard someone call out. I can’t leave him.’

  And that was that. He hadn’t come back, of course.

  Miller heard the story in a hospital behind the lines the next day. Fritz arranged a truce at long last to clear the wounded and amongst them was the Captain. Apparently he wasn’t right in the head any more. He’d found his injured man, been wounded himself, and spent the entire night in a shell-hole, holding up the injured Tommy so he wouldn’t drown. The Tommy was dead by the time they found him but the Captain had to be forced to let him go. He’d got the DSO and a bad dose of shell shock. A night out there would drive anyone barmy. Passchendaele.

  Miller threw away his cigarette and ate his roasted apple, looking affectionately at the man beside him. Shell shock. It didn’t seem like the poor beggar was right yet, not the way he was talking about the Armistice. The fire was dying down. Spiky was dead to the world. He wouldn’t give the Captain any more trouble. Miller lay down and, although he missed his coat, was soon fast asleep.

  Stanton awoke in the early morning, feeling stiff and bruised. Drifting in and out of sleep, he lay for a little while, his eyes still closed, hearing the sound of men speaking in low voices. Then the voices went away and the only noises were those of the birds and of someone walking round as if they were trying to be quiet. He sat up, saw Miller, and the events of the previous night came flooding back to him.

  ‘Morning, sir,’ called Miller cheerfully. ‘Spiky’s gone. There’s free bread and soup being given out at Great Syston if you get there before twelve o’clock and he wants some.’ He was frying something in a pan. ‘Eggs, sir,’ he said in answer to Stanton’s enquiring look. ‘The lock on the hen-run up the way isn’t all it might be. There’s some bread, too. It’s only a couple of days old. It’d be wasted on the pigs, that would.’ He scooped some on a plate and gave it to Stanton. ‘Tuck in, sir, while it’s hot.’

  Stanton tried a tentative spoonful and found it surprisingly good. ‘This reminds me of the army,’ he said between mouthfuls.

  Miller laughed. ‘What I wouldn’t give for a cup of army tea right now. By the way, sir, who’s Jack? You were saying his name in your sleep.’

  ‘Jack?’ The name brought mixed feelings but it had an oddly sinister overtone. The memory stayed frustratingly elusive. ‘I don’t know. Miller – you keep calling me “sir”. Who am I?’ Miller looked startled at the question. Stanton smiled and touched the bandage on his head. ‘I’ve had a bit of a knock and I can’t seem to remember anything. Who am I?’

  Miller wiped out the dirty plate with a tuft of grass. ‘Captain Stanton, sir. I don’t recollect your Christian name. You lived in Upper Ranworth, the next village to me.’

  ‘That’s right.’ The words were like a candle in the dark. ‘That’s where I live. Upper Ranworth. My house is there. Home.’ Miller packed his pan and plate into an old knapsack. ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘I’m off, sir. You get home. You don’t want the likes of me tagging along. No, you can’t stop me, I’m off.’ He looked for a moment at the outstretched hand Stanton offered him and blinked. ‘Please don’t thank me, sir. You got me out of that shell-hole. I’ll never forget it.’ He broke into a sudden, delighted grin. ‘And you hit old Spiky. I’ve been wanting to do that for a month of Sundays.’

  Stanton watched him go, then shook himself. He’d better be going too. Home? Apparently home was a place called Upper Ranworth, wherever that was. Maybe they’d be able to tell him what he’d done. But who were they? His parents were dead. He did remember that. Other odd flashes of memory came to him as he walked along in the rain-fresh summer morning. Miller had mentioned Jack. Jack? Of course, he’d known a Jack at school. He had a vivid picture of a crowd of cheering boys sitting round a boxing-ring, while a dark, foreign-looking type stood over him. ‘I say, did I wallop you a bit hard? I didn’t mean to go for the KO.’ Concern in the black eyes, followed by relief as Stanton got up and the odd realization that they were friends. But who was this other Jack? The one who’d done something so terrible that he shrank at the name – where did he fit in? And what was he was running away from?
r />   Chapter Ten

  Haldean folded up the last of the newspapers and put them back on the hall table. His uncle always took a good selection of newspapers which were left in the hall for the benefit of anyone who wished to inform or entertain themselves over breakfast. He opened the front door, went down the steps and, with his pipe drawing nicely, strolled down to the knot of men waiting by the gates of Hesperus.

  There wasn’t, he thought, anyone at Hesperus who would be informed, still less entertained, by that morning’s papers. Despite Uncle Philip’s urgent wish that it could all be kept quiet, there wasn’t the slightest chance that Fleet Street would allow the murder of Lord Lyvenden to go unremarked. Even if Lyvenden had been a mere nobody, the Sensational Slaughter, as the Daily Messenger put it, would have made the front page. When the headline writer could add, as he gleefully had done, Of Peer, Hesperus was well and truly in the news. Diabolical Crime thundered The Times. Appalling Tragedy said the Express, adding that Victor, Lord Lyvenden, had succumbed to ferocious blows. The Morning Post, catering to a more restrained readership, had contented itself with Death Of Lord Lyvenden but it was a lone voice of sobriety amongst front pages peppered with adjectives such as Grim, Gruesome and Ghastly. The Messenger had something of a scoop in that, in addition to a photograph of Lord Lyvenden, it also had photographs of Stanton and, Haldean was pained to see, of himself.

  It hadn’t improved Sir Philip’s temper when he saw that, in addition to his other worries, Hesperus was under a state of virtual siege by Fleet Street’s finest. The fact that his nephew, from whom he had looked for better things, knew a good few of the reporters personally didn’t alter his opinion that they were a pack of scurrilous knaves and vagabonds. ‘Riff-raff’ and ‘Jackals’ were the kindest terms he had used.

  ‘Haldean!’ called Ernest Stanhope of the Messenger, pressing up to the barred gate. ‘Give us some news, old man. We can’t get a thing out of anyone in the house and the lodge-keeper won’t let us into the grounds.’

  Haldean grinned. ‘He’s under orders, I’m afraid. I can’t do anything about it. The trouble is, Stanhope, that nobody knows very much to tell you, apart from the bare facts that Lord Lyvenden was murdered yesterday and Stanton’s still on the run. Where did you get the photo of Stanton from, by the way?’

  ‘One of our bright lads looked up his address in London and had a word with the porter of the flats where he lives. It cost a few quid, but it was worth it. What did you think of seeing yourself in the news this morning?’

  ‘Not much.’

  Stanhope laughed. ‘Pull the other one. It’ll probably sell a few more books for you. Have you any idea where Stanton could have got to?’

  Haldean shook his head. ‘I know how he got out of the grounds, but that’s all. He ran across the lawn, waded through the river, carried on through the far field where there’s usually cows pastured, and then, I imagine, through the woods and on to the Breedenbrook road. I was able to follow his traces some of the way and guessed the rest. Goodness knows where he is now.’

  ‘Thanks, Haldean,’ said Stanhope, scribbling in his notebook. ‘That’s something, anyway.’

  A shout came from the back of the group, announcing that Superintendent Ashley had arrived. Stanhope abruptly left Haldean and raced to where Ashley was holding court. Ashley, who knew the importance of keeping the Press satisfied, made a brief, polite and uninformative statement before battling his way though to where Haldean was standing by the lodge-keeper’s gate ready to let him in.

  ‘Thanks for coming down to meet me,’ he said as they walked up the drive towards the house. ‘I got your message about the gates being locked.’ He jerked a thumb backwards. ‘I had no idea all this crowd would be here. They’re a damn nuisance.’

  ‘The poor devils have to earn a living,’ said Haldean tolerantly. ‘Uncle Phil’s up in arms about them hanging around, but what can he possibly expect? I know quite a few of them through working for On the Town. Not that newspaper men and mere monthly magazine types, such as me, have much in common, but Stanhope’s all right, for instance, and so’s Morgan of the Sentinel and some of the others. By the way, if you want to come and go without running the gauntlet all time, I’ll show you the entrance from the Home Farm on to the grounds. They haven’t discovered that one yet.’

  ‘Let’s hope that state of affairs continues,’ said Ashley with feeling. ‘Now, what was it you said on the telephone about looking for a key? What key? The key to Lord Lyvenden’s room was on his dressing table. Sir Philip’s got it now.’

  ‘As a matter of fact, it’s in the lock of the door,’ said Haldean. ‘I asked Uncle Phil for it earlier and he told me to leave it there. The garden suite’s one of the very few rooms I can’t get into with my room-key. I suppose the lock’s better than most of the others because it’s a fairly new addition to the house. Anyway, what I was looking for was the key to the french windows.’ Haldean led the way up the steps and into the hall. ‘I can’t find it. Aunt Alice said it was always left in the lock, but it’s not there now. I suppose it could have been swept up by the men who cleared away and boarded up the window yesterday afternoon, but I asked Grafton, the head gardener, who supervised the clearing up, and he was certain no one came across it.’

  ‘Is it important?’ asked Ashley.

  Haldean tapped out his pipe on the heel of his shoe. ‘It might be. I’m not sure. It just seems odd it’s gone missing. By the way, could Aunt Alice have a word with you? She’s in the conservatory.’

  Lady Rivers was standing by the conservatory door, looking out on to the lawn. She turned to them with a tired smile. ‘Thank you for coming to see me, Mr Ashley. Are those wretched reporters still at the gates, Jack?’

  ‘They are, Aunt Alice. We’ll have to think of something to say to them. If Uncle Philip, Ashley and I can work out a proper statement, I’ll try and do a deal so that they’ll leave us in peace.’

  Her shoulders relaxed. ‘If you could do that, Jack, it would be a great help.’ She sat down and looked helplessly at Ashley. ‘It was bad enough when Mr Preston shot himself, without having this to cope with as well. Poor Philip really does hate all the fuss.’ She shook her head briskly. ‘Still, Mr Ashley, you don’t want to hear about our domestic concerns. I wanted to ask if you have had any news of Captain Stanton?’

  ‘Yes, we have, Lady Rivers,’ said Ashley.

  Haldean looked at him sharply. ‘What? You didn’t tell me that.’

  ‘I was going to,’ said Ashley pacifically. ‘We’ve had over a dozen sightings of Captain Stanton, most of which I’ve discounted, but out of all the possibles, I think there’s two probables. It seems that the Captain was treated for a head wound in Cranston Cottage Hospital. A man answering his description turned up on the doorstep in the late afternoon. He was in a pretty poor state and needed four stitches for a head wound. The doctor isn’t a particular expert on gunshot wounds, but when I asked him if the injury could have been caused by a bullet, he agreed it was possible. I’d have preferred him to have been more definite, but he wouldn’t commit himself. After Captain Stanton received treatment, he insisted on paying his bill and leaving and, of course, there was nothing the hospital could do to stop him. Not that they suspected he was a wanted man at that stage, you understand, but the doctor thought he should stay the night for his own sake. He seemed very vague, which is, of course, what you’d expect. He seemed frightened, too, the doctor said.’

  ‘Frightened of being caught?’ asked Lady Rivers.

  Haldean shook his head. ‘That wouldn’t be it. He’d be frightened of the hospital. It goes back to when he was treated for shell shock,’ he explained in answer to Ashley’s enquiring look. ‘I don’t know exactly what happened to him, because he could never bear to tell me, but I don’t think the treatment was as sympathetic as it might have been.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Ashley, clearly unmoved. ‘Be that as it may, he got out as soon as he could. He must have known we were after him, Haldean, no m
atter how vague he appeared. He didn’t give his own name, which tells you something, but evidently said the first name that came into his head. He called himself Timothy Rivers.’

  ‘He used our name?’ said Lady Rivers indignantly.

  Haldean moved uneasily. ‘Look, Aunt Alice, don’t be too hard on him. If you think of the state he was in yesterday, it’s likely he didn’t know what he was doing.’ He caught her look, realized his plea had fallen on stony ground, and moved on. ‘What about the other sighting?’

  ‘It was a report from a tramp in Great Syston. Apparently Captain Stanton camped with them overnight on the road between Melling Bridge and Caynor. The man says that Captain Stanton, if it is him, didn’t seem quite right in the head, so we’re warning people not to approach him.’

  ‘Arthur wouldn’t be a danger to anyone,’ said Haldean.

  ‘How on earth can you say that after yesterday?’ said Lady Rivers in exasperation. ‘You’re as bad as . . .’ She broke off. ‘Can you give me a few minutes with Jack, Superintendent?

  ‘Of course, Lady Rivers.’ Ashley stood up. ‘I’ll wait for you outside, Haldean.’

  After he had gone, Lady Rivers didn’t say anything for some time, but sat looking at her hands entwined tightly together in her lap.

  ‘Aunt Alice?’ prompted Haldean. ‘What is it?’

  ‘What,’ she said, clearly holding her temper in check with difficulty, ‘are you playing at, Jack? You evidently still have some affection for this Arthur Stanton and I suppose I can hardly blame you for that. However, don’t you realize what effect even a casual remark from you in support of Captain Stanton will have on Isabelle? She is behaving in a disgraceful way to Commander Smith-Fennimore. After becoming engaged to him – an engagement which both I and your Uncle Philip thoroughly approved of – she threw him over in the most public and distressing way. She refuses to speak to him and is acting as if Captain Stanton was the man she had agreed to marry. What’s behind it?’