Death of an Unsung Hero

by Tessa Arlen

  “On the day he arrived here, Carmichael was suffering from mutism. But within twenty-four hours of his arrival he was struggling to form words and then within two days only occasionally suffered from blocked speech—stammering his consonants just slightly. It is easy for men at the front to pick up on the outward signs of neurasthenia, you see, because sufferers exhibit certain symptoms of what they call shell-shock for quite some time until they break down completely and have to be given local leave, or in more serious cases are sent home to us in England.”

  “Are you saying that Lieutenant Carmichael had learned one set of symptoms in France, and that after he arrived here he displayed another?” She noticed the slight dip of his head before he looked down to turn a page of notes.

  “In other words, was Lieutenant Carmichael pretending to suffer from neurasthenia?” she pursued, and he smiled and raised his eyebrows. “He was, wasn’t he, sir?”

  He smiled at her in a particularly congratulatory way and then turned his attention back to his notes. “To form a diagnosis on a man’s mental state is often a lengthy and time-consuming business, Mrs. Jackson. But if you are going to simplify things it would seem that his symptoms varied perhaps more than most patients’ suffering from neurasthenia.”

  She wondered how best to get the answers she wanted and realized that sometimes all it took was a directly honest question. She tried again. “I think that perhaps the man we know as Lieutenant Carmichael was not only faking neurasthenia, his change of symptoms tells us something else too,” she said and watched him closely.

  “Sounds like you have formed an interesting theory, Mrs. Jackson.” His smile was encouraging and so she continued.

  “I understand that studies of battle fatigue and neurasthenia show that the men, the enlisted men, lock down in complete silence or mutism as you call it.”

  “Yes, that is so, they withdraw; they are physically unable to speak.”

  “But officers do not suffer in the same way. They try to communicate no matter how distressed they are. They stutter and stammer; what you call blocked speech, am I right?”

  “Yes, that is so.”

  “When Lieutenant Carmichael came to Haversham Hall suffering from mutism, might he have taken a good look at the patients here, our officers, and parodied their symptoms? Did he realize that he was faking the wrong symptoms for an officer?” Major Andrews was gazing at her across his desk with a particularly intense expression. “And then perhaps if he was faking his symptoms,” she tried not to sound too excited, too triumphant, “he was also faking his rank and possibly who he was.”

  Major Andrews brought his right hand down and placed it on top of his desk in a sort of “right on the money” motion, his eyes wide as if he too had just learned something quite useful. “Now, if you will forgive me, Mrs. Jackson, I must leave you, I have a consultation with Lieutenant Phipps, who is waiting for me in the medical wing.” And with that he walked across the room and out of the door, leaving Mrs. Jackson still sitting on the other side of his desk, looking at the open dossier on its surface.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  She sat quite still in Major Andrews’s silent office for a moment or two after he left, her eyes on the dossier. Oh for heaven’s sake, woman, have a look. Upper servants did not, and did not allow those who worked for them, to read other people’s letters or diaries, and they did not creep around people’s offices reading confidential documents. It simply was not done. But you are not sneaking, Edith; he gave you a very clear go-ahead before he left. Just have a good look before you leave. This will be your only chance.

  She reached out and slid the dossier across the desk toward her. She would not read the notes Major Andrews had written about his patient, all she needed was the War Office information at the front of the file. She turned back the pages. And there it was, a form pinned to the inside of the dossier’s front cover, neatly filled in blue ink. Name: Ian Livingstone Carmichael, Second Lieutenant, Company A, Eighth Battalion, Gloucestershire Regiment. Born: 5th August, 1890. Religion: C. of E. Next of kin: a dash indicated there were none, and then the town in which Carmichael had joined up as Cheltenham in Gloucestershire. At the bottom of the page was a note by his commanding officer of the Eighth Battalion, Colonel Varron; the writing was cramped and small and stated mild head injury on sixteenth of March at the Battle of Beauville Wood. Lieutenant Carmichael had been separated from his company and had somehow made his way back to friendly lines and reported to another regiment in the St. Cyprien area ten miles to the south of his company’s position on 20th June, 1916—suffering from shell-shock. There was one more file out and it was sitting in a flat wicker basket. She turned the basket and read, “Captain Sir Evelyn Bray, DSO, MC.” She slid the file across the desk and cracked it open at the first page. The form was completed with almost the same information as Carmichael’s. Captain Bray had been the commanding officer of Company A, with the Eighth Battalion of the Gloucestershires, wounded on 16 March at the Battle of Beauville Wood. Date of birth was 3 January 1886, with the address of Brayley Hall, Brayley, Gloucestershire. His next of kin was Edgar Laurence Bray, brother. And she noted that he had also joined up in Cheltenham.

  Yes, they knew one another all right, they had both joined in Cheltenham as well as being in the same company and the same battalion. She closed the file and put it back into the basket. And with her hastily scribbled notes she left Major Andrews’s office and made her way back to her own.

  She closed the door quietly behind her as if she was worried someone would hear her, and feeling quite shaky with the enormity of her discovery she walked over to her desk and sat down. Something Mr. Hollyoak had told her flashed into her mind about the men who had volunteered at the beginning of the war: “When Lord Northolt’s son joined up in 1914 he took most of the young men from the surrounding area with him. His valet and two footmen from the house, the vicar’s son, several boys from the estate and the tenant farms, and even the local squire’s son had all joined on the same day. They made up an entire company when they went marching off to war. And then after the Battle of Ypres, which took such heavy casualties, the telegrams came pouring in. Pretty near half of the village, the men on the estate, and the cream of the county all went in one day. Wiped out just like that. It doesn’t bear thinking about, does it?”

  Is this what happened in the case of Captain Sir Evelyn Bray? Did he go off to war with boys from the estate and village, and sons of the local gentry? If this was true, then surely it would be easy to find out more about this Private Hector and Lieutenant Carmichael, and perhaps if they were lucky to speak to this other man who had been there on that day, who had presumably been invalided out of the war if he had lost his sight. What was his name again? She opened the telegram: Private S. Glenn. If they were all in Captain Bray’s company they might have known one another before the war.

  There was now only one man alive out of the original four who might be able to help them with what had happened in northern France on the sixteenth of March, and it was Private S. Glenn.

  Mrs. Jackson pulled writing paper toward her and picked up her pen. When she had finished her letter she put it in an envelope, walked to Sister Carter’s office, and hunted through regimental directories until she found the address of the Gloucestershire Regiment’s headquarters. She addressed and stamped the envelope and tucked it into the postbag in the hall. And because she was now very behindhand with her duties she busied herself to finish the roster of work to ready the hospital for the Medical Board’s inspection so that she could go over to Iyntwood and report in to her commanding officer.

  * * *

  “Yes, do come in, Jackson, I can tell you have made discoveries.” Her ladyship was dressed for dinner but she waved her housekeeper to her customary chair, her eyes bright with curiosity.

  “Here is a telegram from Mr. Stafford, m’lady. And I had a most interesting and useful conversation with Major Andrews.” She wasted no time giving her a detailed account of the i
nformation he had made available to her from his files. When she had finished, her ladyship sat staring at her with a gratifying expression on her face that said: How on earth do you do it?

  “When he was last on home leave, m’lady, Mr. Stafford told me about these identity disks all our men wear in combat carrying their name, regiment number, and religion. There are two of them: an octagonal green disk attached to a long cord that goes around the neck, with a second circular red disk attached by a six-inch cord. When a man is killed in action the red one is taken by whoever finds his body and they turn it in to their commanding officer so that men can be accounted for just after battle. The green disk remains on the body for future identification and is only removed when its wearer is buried.” Her ladyship was nodding along, waiting. Jackson took a deep breath. “If, after a battle, a man wanted to change his identity, then all he had to do was switch his identity disks with a man who had been killed. And if he was an enlisted man and he wanted to assume the identity of an officer, he could exchange his battledress for the shirt, tie, and tunic of an officer. It would be that simple.”

  “What about their trousers: enlisted men wear puttees, don’t they, and cavalry officers wear riding breeches and riding boots?” her ladyship asked.

  Mrs. Jackson almost blushed. “I believe that officers rarely wear their cavalry boots at the front, m’lady, when they are in combat. Corporal Budge told me they wear puttees like the enlisted men, stops them being identified by enemy snipers.”

  Lady Montfort frowned. “But his comrades would recognize him, Jackson.”

  “Of which there were very few, m’lady. It appears that Company A, Captain Bray’s company, only had three survivors after the Battle of Beauville: Captain Bray, who had lost his memory; Private Glen, who had lost his sight; and Lieutenant Carmichael, who went missing after the battle and turned up further down the line with a mild head injury and shell-shock. It seems everyone else was killed.”

  “How on earth did you manage all of this, Jackson? In such a short space of time, I mean? In just twenty-four hours you have moved us forward with this marvelous work—well done.”

  Mrs. Jackson felt the tips of her ears grow warm. However wonderful it was to be congratulated, she felt that all she had really accomplished was deepening their inquiry into a darker abyss of perennial what-ifs.

  “The information was there for us, m’lady, it was just a question of knowing where to go for it. And in war the system is in place to document everything, but as we realized the other day, after battle it is probably easy for people to disappear, or even switch their identity. Now I just hope we can work out the rest of this riddle.” But her ladyship appeared to be quite undaunted by the prospect of more unraveling. Her eyes glowed as she reviewed this new information.

  “So really what we are looking at is that these four men—Bray, Carmichael, Hector, and Glenn—were together on a particular day in an event that happened after they survived the Battle of Beauville Wood. Of whom one died of his injuries, one was separated from the others, and one was injured, to be brought back by Captain Bray to safety. And it would appear that this incident was pretty much the last straw for Captain Bray because he lost his memory.” Mrs. Jackson remained silent, and waited, as she watched her ladyship think this through. If anyone will see a way, she will, her mind leaps over the little things like practicalities and rules and she will see what my methodical thinking often misses.

  Standing tall and slender, a silver column in her evening dress, her half-moon spectacles glinting in the lamplight, her ladyship continued. “So this Private Glenn might be able to help us understand the missing details of what happened on the sixteenth of March. But in the meantime, there are some things we have already deduced that point the way.” She lifted her right hand, and Mrs. Jackson smiled. Here we go, she thought, this is where she takes off, and she waited to be enlightened. Her ladyship was a little erratic in her approach sometimes, relying as she did on instinct or intuition or whatever you chose to call it, but she always turned up interesting ideas and stimulated their thinking.

  “First of all, Captain Bray, helped by the therapies of Major Andrews, is emerging from the clouds. The portrait of Private Hector is a direct message from the foggy mind of Captain Bray.” Mrs. Jackson nodded in agreement. “When Private Hector turns up at my hospital masquerading as Lieutenant Carmichael with his fake neurosis, Captain Bray does not appear to recognize him, but he is killed less than ten days later, which means that Hector came here with a plan.” She paused and smiled. “He came here to kill the captain before his memory returned completely, before he could have Hector arrested for desertion and for impersonating an officer.

  “And if Captain Bray and Lieutenant Carmichael knew one another before the war, then surely Mr. Edgar Bray would have recognized Hector as an imposter on the afternoon of his arrival? Were they working together?”

  Mrs. Jackson looked doubtful for a moment. But her ladyship was off again: “Hector alias Carmichael contrived a strong alibi for the day of Captain Bray’s murder: he spent the morning with my daughter, took Dolly down to her pasture, and then joined her for a picnic luncheon just twenty minutes later.” Her ladyship drew in a breath and fell silent for a moment. “Perhaps this is what happened. At the end of their plowing lesson, Hector alias Carmichael came down to the pasture at Brook End Lane and set Dolly free. Mr. Edgar Bray was waiting for him in his stalled motorcar right there on the lane. Off they go up to the kitchen garden together in Mr. Bray’s motorcar.” Mrs. Jackson’s expression changed from doubtful to disappointed. “Everyone was having luncheon, Jackson, there was no one to see them. Hector alias Carmichael kills the captain and they drive back to Brook End Lane, where Hector goes off to his picnic with my daughter, and returns afterwards with her, where they bump into the stranded Mr. Bray.” She was now speaking through tight lips, practically spitting out her words. “Lady Althea mends the motorcar and on they all go.”

  Mrs. Jackson almost shook her head. “But, m’lady, who was that on Dolly, seen at exactly the right time of the afternoon riding in the direction of the kitchen garden? There are even hoofprints going in both directions. Mr. Thrower could have easily seen or heard a motorcar on the drive.”

  “Oh bother! And I suppose a motorcar could not possibly go up the footpath!”

  Mrs. Jackson sighed in sympathy. “Yes, you are right, m’lady, it all falls apart right there.” Lady Montfort got up and raised the lower sash of the window, letting in hot and humid air, and continued as if Mrs. Jackson had not voiced the big hole that was Dolly’s inability to thunder across country like a Thoroughbred. “Well, never mind that bit for a moment. If Mr. Bray and Hector-Carmichael planned this murder together, why would Mr. Bray arrange to meet him just outside our house and shoot him?” She stopped, her hands palm upward, her face beseeching. “Oh bother it all!”

  “Yes, it is rather unlikely, m’lady, when all Mr. Bray had to do was point out that the man posing as Carmichael was an imposter with an ulterior motive for killing his brother. Everyone would believe the brother rather than a cowardly imposter. And we are not able to prove that the man we know as Lieutenant Carmichael was really Private Hector.”

  Lady Montfort stood in the window, her arms folded, and glared at a sparrow singing his evening song on a branch outside. “I am quite sure he was an imposter and one with an ironclad alibi, which prevents him from being Captain Bray’s murderer—it is up to us to break his alibi, Jackson.”

  It is the How that we always ask ourselves at this point, Mrs. Jackson thought. How did Carmichael get to the kitchen garden and back on Dolly in twenty minutes? We have struggled with this one for days now and where are we? Nowhere. It was time, Mrs. Jackson thought, to help them look at it another way.

  “Might Mr. Bray be connected more closely to the death of his brother, m’lady? Do we know what time his motorcar broke down?”

  “It was well after one o’clock. I am not quite sure what time Carmichael and Lady
Althea finished with their picnic.” Her ladyship had lost her spark; her voice was quiet and her manner almost apathetic.

  “But Mr. Bray does have a motive, doesn’t he, and a good one I would have thought, m’lady. With the first son dead, who inherits?” For the first time since the beginning of this inquiry, Mrs. Jackson felt that this question should perhaps have been asked before. Lady Montfort evidently did not, for she sighed about the heat of the afternoon, before she rallied.

  “Now there’s an interesting topic—the business of inheritance, such a complex issue in this country, Jackson, especially where title and land are concerned. I see your train of thought with this one, because it makes sense to consider it. The Bray family is rich, their estate, Brayley, is quite considerable and has been in the family for centuries, and I believe if memory serves that the Brays own the mineral rights to coalfields in Derbyshire. They are a rich, landed, old family. So Mr. Bray, now that his brother is dead, will become Sir Edgar Bray—considerably better placed in society with a much larger bank account than he had when his brother was alive. He has every motive for murder.”

  Mrs. Jackson politely cleared her throat.

  “So, m’lady, Mr. Bray comes down to visit his brother with the intent of killing him. He stops at the kitchen garden on his way to Iyntwood, kills the captain, and then organizes the breakdown of his motorcar to give himself an alibi.”

  “Yes, that would be absolutely acceptable, but Mr. Bray is severely incapacitated, he can only walk with the aid of a stick—he can’t even climb the stairs in the house without help. He would have had to walk into the kitchen garden and I am not sure he is steady enough on his legs to have killed a very fit man.” She looked across the room at her housekeeper. “Why the frown, Jackson?”

  “It’s Dolly, m’lady. We know that Walter Howard saw a horse and rider going along the footpath at the time the murder could have been committed.”