Death of an Unsung Hero

by Tessa Arlen

  Colonel Valentine put down his empty glass on the tray to follow his constable and Mr. Bray from the drawing room.

  “Indeed he is,” Colonel Valentine agreed, looking, Mrs. Jackson thought, not the least embarrassed. He had, she noticed, not caught Lady Montfort’s eye during the last part of her story. But he came forward toward her now and congratulated her most chivalrously on the cleverness of their deductions.

  “It is Captain Bray who has all my sympathy and pity. It’s the old Cain and Abel story,” Lord Montfort added, as he extended an inviting arm for Colonel Valentine to leave them, as it was getting late, and after the exhausting business of murders, conscientious objectors hiding on his land, and bringing in the harvest, it had been quite a reducing several days.

  Mrs. Jackson accompanied the colonel into the hall. “Can I drive you back to Haversham Hall, Mrs. Jackson, since I am going that way?” The elderly man bowed to her most respectfully as a Black Maria came up the drive to take away Mr. Bray.

  “Thank you, Colonel, it is a particularly unpleasant night.” They stood together in the doorway and stared at the wall of rainwater falling heavily on the drive as two Market Wingley constables opened up the double doors of the police van. “Thank goodness the harvest is safely in,” she said as the colonel put up his umbrella to escort her to his motorcar. “But where is your inspector, sir? I don’t think I have seen him in a while.” For Detective Inspector Savor had been conspicuously absent ever since the arrest of Sir Winchell.

  “My dear Mrs. Jackson, how interesting you should bring that up. Detective Inspector Savor has made himself most useful over this business of the stolen petrol, but I am afraid he simply has no talent for understanding people. You see, Mrs. Jackson, I understood right from the start that you and her ladyship were far more suited to deductive reasoning than Inspector Savor ever will be, so I just arranged for him to stay out of your way.” And Mrs. Jackson had to look away and bite the insides of her cheeks so that he did not see her smile.

  * * *

  “There you are, Jackson.” Her ladyship put her head around the door of Mrs. Jackson’s office. “I was hoping I would find you here. My goodness, what a to-do at the Market Wingley inquest, and thank goodness for the Defence of the Realm Act and his lordship’s determination that neither of us should get up in front of a court full of curious people and testify.”

  “Well that is certainly good news, m’lady.” Mrs. Jackson was heartily relieved that they had not been gawked at like a couple of exhibits at the fair.

  “Yes, indeed. The whole inquiry was revealed by the wonderful Private Glenn, the intelligent Major Andrews, the records from the War Graves Commission, and of course Captain Bray’s painting. Then there was Mr. Bray’s saddle and Walter Howard’s observations from his barn, and to pull things all together the ringmaster was once again Colonel Valentine. Between us we certainly manage to make our dear colonel look like Sherlock Holmes, don’t we, Jackson?” And with her customary generosity: “And why on earth not, after all the fun is in the puzzle, not in standing up in court and showing off!”

  Mrs. Jackson lifted her seriously depleted sherry decanter. “And it was just in the nick of time, m’lady, that the inquest was held so quickly and everything officially resolved before our Medical Board review.” When she said “in the nick of time,” she meant it. The day after the arrest of Mr. Edgar Bray for the murder of his brother had been a whirlwind of activity, culminating with the arrival of the War Office and the Medical Board’s most supercilious bureaucrats who had cluttered up their time for three exhausting days.

  “And particularly good news from the War Office just now, Jackson, by the way.”

  “Good news, m’lady?” Mrs. Jackson turned with a glass of amontillado in her hand, which she offered to her ladyship.

  “Thirty-five officers will be arriving at the hospital after Christmas along with an additional medical officer! Hard as it is to find good workmen, we will have the guest wing cleaned up by the end of November and ready for our patients’ families when they wish to visit. Major Andrews says family visits do wonders for men who are suffering from neurasthenia.”

  Now was the time for her to ask a favor of Lady Montfort, something she was most uncomfortable about. But it seemed that, as usual, her ladyship had done one of her intuitive leaps over small details such as actual information or the need to utter every single little thing.

  “So, I thought perhaps when Mr. Stafford is next on leave, he might like to come and spend some time with us—we will be able to offer him a nice room here, if he wouldn’t mind staying in a hospital. And then we could thank him for his help. After all, if he had not been in a position to give us access to the War Graves records, Mr. Bray would be a baronet and galloping about being lord of Brayley Manor.” She laughed, and Mrs. Jackson lifted her glass of sherry.

  “So when is Mr. Stafford next due for some home leave, do you happen to know, Jackson?” She gazed across the room at her, her face quite empty of expression, but did she detect a glint in her ladyship’s eye?

  “Christmas week, m’lady, and I am quite sure he would be happy to accept an invitation.” There is no point in being coy, Mrs. Jackson thought, and wondered if Mr. Thrower might be talked into parting with another goose for Christmas dinner.

  Author’s Note

  Craiglockhart Hospital and the Treatment of Shell-shock in 1916

  I have to thank the Royal Journal of the Society of Medicine in London for most of my information about shell-shock as it was called then and now referred to as post-traumatic stress disorder. Craiglockhart Hospital in Scotland is perhaps the most famous shell-shock hospital of the Great War. It was set up to deal with the epidemic of psychological casualties created in the muddy trenches of the Western Front; and, in particular, with the huge increase of casualties following the Battle of the Somme in 1916, the year in which Death of an Unsung Hero takes place.

  Craiglockhart’s fame is unsurprising in that two of the finest poets of a war overflowing with poetic voices were treated there—Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon. It was Sassoon who nicknamed the place “Dottyville.” The hospital’s literary importance has been established by Sassoon’s memoirs, and Pat Barker’s Regeneration trilogy and a film version of the first of Barker’s novels, all of which contributed insight and historical context in the writing of this book.

  Craiglockhart also has an important place in the development of British neuropsychiatry. The concept of a psychological stressor resulting in physical symptoms was still a relatively novel one in 1916; the necessities of coping with an epidemic of psychological casualties in the context of the war allowed some fundamental aspects of Freud’s ideas regarding repression and the unconscious to gain greater acceptance in the medical profession.

  Just like my fictitious Haversham Hall Hospital, Craiglockhart was inspected twice by the War Office: on each occasion the commanding officer was relieved of his position and another appointed. These administrative shake-ups illustrate the differing views held by the War Office and the civilians in uniform working at Craiglockhart. The traditional military (and often societal) view was that shell-shock sufferers were “lead-swingers” and malingerers who should be treated in an appropriately punitive fashion and not sent on holiday in the Scottish countryside.

  I modeled Haversham Hall’s chief medical officer, Major Andrews, on two notable doctors at Craiglockhart: Dr. John Rivers, who believed in the benefits of “talk therapy” to a generation and class of men who were brought up to repress emotions and feelings in times of stress, and Dr. Arthur John Brock, whose active and behavioral approach created what he termed “ergotherapy,” or the cure by functioning. Brock believed that the shell-shocked needed to rediscover their links with an environment from which they had become detached. They could do this only through active and useful functioning: through working. He organized many activities in the hospital to provide his patients with a means of helping themselves back to health often based on writ
ing poetry, painting, and participating in sporting events. He also organized temporary teaching posts for soldiers at local schools, jobs at local farms assisting undersupported farmers, and he even fostered links with an Edinburgh sociological group to open the eyes and the ears of the men to the social deprivation and inequalities in the home-front society.

  Between October 1916 and March 1919, 1,736 patients with shell-shock were treated at Craiglockhart. Of these, 735 were listed in the registers as “D. M. U.”—discharged (or declared) medically unfit. Some 89 were recorded as having been given home service—usually in administrative or bureaucratic roles. There were 78 listed as having been discharged to light duties, commonly training new recruits or assisting with military bases in Britain. Some 141 were transferred to other units for further treatment or because there were more appropriate places for their treatment to be continued elsewhere; and 758 in total were listed as having been returned to duty.

  It is easy to be misled by the stiff-upper-lip and the forced jollity of both officers and enlisted men at this time into underestimating their intense degree of suffering, and the often limited degree to which that suffering could be alleviated by the caring and the expertise of the medical profession, as this stanza from a poem clearly indicates:

  Craiglockhart memories will be sad,

  Your name will never make us glad;

  The self-respect we ever had

  We’ve lost—all people think us mad.

  The Women’s Land Army

  Three million British men fought in World War I, but just as important to the war effort were the women they left behind. By 1915 Germany’s best chance of victory lay in starving Britain into surrender through a naval blockade, so the country had to become more self-sufficient. The Board of Agriculture set up the Women’s Land Army and over a quarter of a million volunteers flocked to help. Most of them were city girls and were not particularly welcomed by farmers, but by the end of 1916 nearly all work done on farms was accomplished by women.

  Awards and Medals

  There were many awards that an individual might receive for a conspicuous and gallant act of valor, usually in the presence of the enemy, while serving in the British, Dominion, and Colonial armed forces during the First World War. Listed below in order of precedence are those mentioned in Death of an Unsung Hero:

  Victoria Cross (V.C.)

  Distinguished Service Order (D.S.O.)

  Military Cross (M.C.)

  The Battle of Beauville Wood

  The Battle of Beauville Wood is a fictitious battle, but it is based on the Battle of Delville Wood (Bois d’Elville) which was fought between 15 July and 3 September 1916, part of a series of engagements in the 1916 Battle of the Somme in the First World War.

  ALSO BY TESSA ARLEN

  A Death by Any Other Name

  Death Sits Down to Dinner

  Death of a Dishonorable Gentleman

  About the Author

  TESSA ARLEN lives on an island in the Puget Sound. Her pleasures in life are simple: cooking and enjoying good food with family and friends, long walks with short-legged dogs, and planning her next garden project. You can sign up for email updates here.

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  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Map

  Cast of Characters

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Author’s Note

  Also by Tessa Arlen

  About the Author

  Copyright

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  DEATH OF AN UNSUNG HERO. Copyright © 2018 by Tessa Arlen. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

  www.minotaurbooks.com

  Cover design by David Baldeosingh Rotstein

  Cover photographs: mansion © Stuart Hickling / Alamy Stock Photo; man © iStock/duncan1890; dog courtesy of author

  The Library of Congress has catalogued the print edition as follows:

  Names: Arlen, Tessa, author.

  Title: Death of an unsung hero / Tessa Arlen.

  Description: First edition. | New York: Minotaur Books, 2018.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2017044450 | ISBN 9781250101440 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781250101457 (ebook)

  Subjects: LCSH: Countesses—Fiction. | Upper class—England—London—Fiction. | Murder—Investigation—Fiction. | GSAFD: Mystery fiction. | Historical fiction.

  Classification: LCC PS3601.R5445 D435 2018 | DDC 813/.6—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017044450

  eISBN 9781250101457

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  First Edition: March 2018