Murder Under A Green Sea

by Phillip Hunter

When it was explained to her that Lindsey was not married to Martha, but merely an old friend, Mrs Dunaway seemed disappointed. She seemed further disappointed when Max introduced himself as Martha’s husband. She made no comment on whether Max was more handsome than she had been led to believe, but she did tell Martha that, indeed, Max was quite tall.

  Then came Rosamunde and her American/African/Australian beau, who turned out to be an Argentinian called Fernando Rojas. It transpired that Rosamunde knew Mrs Dunaway slightly from many years earlier and, of course, she knew Lindsey well. Max was left feeling like a stranger invited to a party in his own home.

  The last people to arrive were Alwyn Frost and his companion, who introduced himself as Edward Hart. Frost was a tall straight man with a serious countenance from which a smile seemed unlikely to emanate. Hart, however, was quite short and slight and seemed a jolly person. It was an odd coupling.

  Alwyn Frost had been married to Martha’s cousin, Dorothy, but she’d run off with an American/Australian/African/Armenian businessman. Or maybe he was Argentinian. Anyway, Martha, on behalf of the family, felt some responsibility towards Frost and tried her best to include him in dinner parties now and then.

  Frost greeted Max and Martha with a nod and accepted a drink, as did Hart, who then revealed something surprising. He said, “I’ve read your work, Mr Dalton. I enjoyed your book on Napoleon’s Russian campaign. That’s why I asked Alwyn whether I could join you tonight. I hope you don’t mind.”

  “Not at all,” Max said, feeling, in fact, elated that he’d finally met someone who’d read one of his books.

  “I do hope we’re not going to talk about wars,” Mrs Dunaway said. “That’s a terribly dreary subject.”

  “Don’t worry, Mrs Dunaway,” Martha said, “I’m sure we can accommodate your interests. What are they?”

  “Well, the church, of course. And, erm…”

  Chapter Ten

  After they’d had a few drinks (excepting Mrs Dunaway, who only drank very small glasses of sherry with the vicar), the eight people took their seats at the dinner table. Flora entered with a tray of warm soup bowls and left, returning with a tureen, which she placed on the table next to each diner, ladling consommé aux perles du Japon (which Flora insisted on calling beef stock with tapioca) into each bowl. While she did this, Max had uncorked a couple of bottles of Sémillon and was moving around the table pouring wine into glasses.

  He sat just as Flora had reached the last person to be served, which was Tony Lindsey. There was a sudden yelp, and everyone looked up to see Flora holding the tureen stiffly before her as she walked quickly from the room. Max frowned and glanced at Lindsey, who was busy inspecting his thumb nail.

  The wine flowed and the talk talked and there were occasional witticisms from Max and Martha and Lindsey, while Mrs Dunaway expressed her opinions of the world and how it could be improved if only people were more like her and her friend, the Reverend Oliver.

  “I think it’s a shame that young people these days have moved away from the church. Don’t you agree, Mr Lindsey?”

  “Don’t know what young people do,” he said. “Never did, even when I was young. Mystery to me.”

  This made Mrs Dunaway laugh, for a reason that only she knew.

  “Do you happen to know Martha’s mother?” Max asked Mrs Dunaway after one of her comments regarding the inevitable demise of Britain as a result of immigration levels.

  “Of course I know Martha’s mother. We’ve been friends for years. Even before Martha was born.”

  “Aha,” Max said, triumphantly. “That explains a lot.”

  Martha smiled at Mrs Dunaway and looked daggers at Max.

  Rosamunde mostly spoke of her darling Fernando, saying things like, ‘He plays golf, don’t you, Fernando?’ and ‘Fernando’s a musician, aren’t you, Fernando?’

  Occasionally, Fernando said, “Sí.” And sometimes he elaborated. But mostly he looked bored.

  “If there’s one thing Fernando’s good at,” Rosamunde declared, “it’s golf and polo.”

  “That’s two,” Mrs Dunaway said.

  “Two what?”

  Frost and Martha chatted about everything except her family and his ex-wife and anything to do with Americans and Africans and Armenians etc.

  Meanwhile, despite Fernando’s lack of enthusiasm, conversation had turned to sport, and Hart had asked about the current state of English cricket. Frost, eager to avoid the subject of Americans etc, said, “Well, I think we’ve been losing games we should’ve won. I don’t know how we lost to South Africa. We certainly wouldn’t have done if we’d kept Jardine and Larwood.”

  This, of course, was a reference to the Ashes series in ’33, and the issue of the leg theory of bowling, which then came up as a topic. Frost contested that it was necessary to win at sport, by whatever method was available, provided it was legal.

  “Not cricket,” Lindsey said.

  Hart, an acknowledged sporting innocent, asked what leg theory was.

  “Oh,” said Rosamunde, “it’s when the bowler tries to kill the batsman, or break his leg or something.”

  “It’s nothing of the sort,” Frost said. “It’s simply a method of bowling close to the line of the batsman in order to curtail his effort and attempt a dismissal from a close field, or by LBW.”

  “Ah,” Hart said, none the wiser.

  Even Fernando was aware of the controversy of three years prior, and looked disapprovingly at Frost.

  “Is that the purpose of sport?” Martha said. “To win at all costs?”

  “Of course,” Frost said. “Sport is the test of a country’s mettle. It has no other purpose.”

  “I agree,” Hart said. “And if your country is able to win, then it is the best.”

  This led Max to a lengthy soliloquy, which came from an article he’d submitted to the Chronicle back in ’33. The article was spiked and Max had long wanted a reason to reprise its content. “Sport,” he said, “gives one a fundamental choice, or, rather, creates the situation in which your character displays one or other of two possibilities: whether to play to win – which entails ruthlessness, selfishness, strength, ambition, all the traits that are commonly regarded as reprehensible – or whether to play fairly, which entails all the opposites and which, while possibly winning you plaudits in the short term, leads to failure. Winners are lauded. Hitler knows this. Mussolini knows this.”

  “Are you comparing Hitler to the English cricket team?” Frost said.

  “Um,” Max said. “Yes. I think I must be.”

  “But the Germans don’t play cricket, do they?” Rosamunde said.

  “Look, what I’m saying is that all the stuff we’re taught when we’re young – honour and fairness and all that – is precisely what the Australians were practising in ’33. And yet you’re now saying that they were wrong to do so. It’s contradictory. You can’t have it both ways, Alwyn.”

  “What are you saying, Max?” Frost said.

  “I’m saying you and all those like you, all the pillars of our so-called civilisation, are false. You tell us how to behave so that we’re docile and pliable, so that we won’t argue with you, and we’ll obey the law. But in reality, you want us to be murderous and cunning and Machiavellian, when it’s in your interests. I’m saying it’s all a lie.”

  “We succeed through hard work and duty,” Mrs Dunaway said.

  But Max was shaking his head. “Talent, hard work, duty, conscientiousness; all these are tangential qualities, incidental. One may have these and succeed if one has ambition, but, equally, one may have these and be ignored if one doesn’t possess the ruthless selfishness of ambition.”

  “You sound bitter, Max,” Frost said. “Books not selling?”

  “Alwyn!” Martha said. “Max doesn’t write books to sell them, do you, darling?”

  “Just as well,” Lin
dsey said.

  “It would be nice to sell some,” Max admitted. “I think I’ve written more than I’ve sold, which is quite an achievement.”

  “What has this to do with Germany playing Australia?” Rosamunde said.

  “Look,” Max said, “what I mean is that at some point, ambition itself became an asset. The very fact that you wanted advancement was reason enough to be given it. The fact that those who were promoted had nothing else to offer was ignored. I saw it in the army, and I’ve been seeing it ever since. Consequently, the country has become run by incompetents who are always looking to climb further up the ladder where their incompetence does even more damage.”

  “Quite a polemic,” Lindsey said. “Almost sounds rebellious. Not a communist, are you?”

  Mrs Dunaway burst out laughing and was in danger of splitting her sides.

  Flora, who had been hovering around the table, shot a withering glance at both Lindsey and Mrs Dunaway.

  “You know your trouble, Max?” Frost said. “You hate the world.”

  “No, Alwyn. Only your world.”

  “You can’t mean that,” Frost said.

  Max wasn’t sure what he meant. His head was beginning to buzz. He had the feeling that he was saying things for the sake of being contrary.

  “Are you drunk?” Frost said.

  “Not yet,” Max said, wishing very much that he were.

  After the consommé and a few of the bottles of wine, most of which had ended up inside Lindsey, Max and Mrs Dunaway, who seemed to have forgotten that she was mostly teetotal, it was time for the main course, which was fillet of beef in a red wine sauce, served with vegetables.

  Max uncorked a Médoc, as well as a Volnay and a St Julien. For himself, he preferred beer, but that was not suitable for a dinner party such as this. Vitriol and bile seemed preferable.

  Having brought in warm plates on a large silver tray and placed them before everyone else at the table, Flora made her way cautiously over to Mr Lindsey, where she put his plate down and thumped him on the head with her tray.

  “Oh, I’m terribly sorry, sir,” Flora said.

  “Flora,” Martha said, “please be careful.”

  “It’s quite all right,” Lindsey said, vigorously rubbing his head, “my fault entirely.”

  “You should be careful, Tony,” Max said, winking at Flora. “You seem accident-prone at the moment, what with your sprained ankle and all.”

  “Stupid of me,” Lindsey said.

  This led to a discussion about various accidents that people had encountered, which became an inventory of injuries, increasingly life-threatening in proportion to the amount of wine consumed. Rosamunde claimed to have been maimed by a hockey stick, and Mrs Dunaway, who was slurring her words a little, had almost been killed by a balloon. Or it might’ve been a baboon.

  Hart then asked Max about his next book, and Max explained that he wasn’t sure yet what he wanted to write, but he had an idea for a feature for the Chronicle on the Berlin games, which led to a new conversation about the new Germany and the rise of Hitler.

  Max, however, was quiet during much of the conversation, listening thoughtfully to the different opinions, which ranged from Mrs Dunaway’s undisguised enthusiasm for a new strong Continental power to Fernando’s shrug and Rosamunde’s admission that she was never really sure what the difference was between Germany and Prussia.

  “And as for East Prussia,” she said, “I haven’t a clue, except it must be East of Prussia.”

  Fernando rolled his eyes at this.

  Only Max and Hart failed to offer an opinion, and Martha, sensing that Max was feeling out of it, said, “Max has been upset about this Rhineland business, haven’t you, Max?”

  Max put down his knife and fork, took a sip of wine and said, “Upset. Yes.”

  “What in particular, Mr Dalton?” Hart said.

  “In particular? Oh, everything in particular. Especially us, in particular.”

  “Us?” Frost said.

  “You don’t mean our country, do you?” Mrs Dunaway said.

  “Yes. I do. We’re doing nothing to stop these people, one after another.”

  “What can we do, old thing?” Lindsey said. “We can’t go to war over the Rhineland. After all, it is German.”

  “We need to stand up to them. They’re taking over the world, and we don’t care because it’s not us they’re seeking to control. Not yet.”

  Martha was now chewing her lip, thinking she might have made a mistake. She attempted to correct the error by glancing at Max and saying, “And those poor Abyssinians.”

  “Oh, yes. That seems rather unfair,” Rosamunde said, also sensing a tension in the conversation, which was in danger of upsetting her. “I mean, the Italians have guns and ships, and what do the Abyssinians have? Spears or swords or whatever.”

  “Swords?” Frost said.

  “Well, bows and arrows, then.”

  “All’s unfair in love and war,” Lindsey said, which made Mrs Dunaway laugh.

  “Using mechanised warfare to impose your rule on an independent country seems a little too unfair,” Max said.

  “Not just independent countries. Their own people too,” Lindsey said, taking everyone by surprise. “Not cricket,” he added.

  “That’s right,” Max said. “The Nazis want to wipe out the Jews and the Gypsies and anyone opposed to them.”

  “Does that matter?” Mrs Dunaway said. “I mean, does it matter to us?”

  “It may not matter to you,” Max said, “but it matters to me.”

  “Are you Jewish?”

  “No, I’m Pisces.”

  “I think he’s terrible,” Rosamunde said. “Hitler. And Fernando agrees, don’t you, darling?”

  Fernando looked up from his food and nodded vaguely. “Que es terrible.”

  “He’s getting some of us at the FO hot under the collar,” Frost said. “We’re all trying to work out what his next move’s going to be. The Rhineland was just the start. He’s a potential threat, for sure.”

  Now, in a disastrous attempt to lighten the mood and to bring fractious sides together, Rosamunde said, “They’re very smart, though.”

  Nobody knew what she was talking about, and there followed a brief silence.

  “I mean those uniforms,” Rosamunde said desperately. “The Germans. The black uniforms. I just mean they look very smart. Black suits them.”

  “Yes,” Lindsey said, “it brings out the colour of their souls.”

  Mrs Dunaway found this very droll. Even Frost smiled at the comment. Poor old Mr Hart seemed to fail to understand, however, in much the same way he seemed to fail to understand cricket.

  Mrs Dunaway said, “It seems to me that our biggest threat is from Stalin and all those communists. I mean, they’re everywhere, aren’t they? It seems to me that Hitler is actually managing to combat the communists. What do you think, Mr Lindsey?”

  “Try not to think, madam,” Lindsey said. “Hurts the head.”

  Mrs Dunaway found this amusing, and became overconfident, saying, “I know for a fact that there are many thousands of communists here. Why, Reverend Oliver told me that most unions are communist. And most working people too.”

  Flora, who was standing next to Rosamunde and missing her plate with a potato, glared at Mrs Dunaway, although that upright lady was unaware of Flora’s glare, or even her existence.

  “Communism,” Max said, “is either a nice idea ruined by human greed or a bad idea saved by human greed, depending on how rich you are.”

  There was some silence after this announcement while everyone tried to work out whether Max had been clever. Max was trying to work out the same thing.

  “I’m afraid I don’t follow your logic,” Frost said eventually.

  Max wasn’t sure himself. But he shrugged away Frost�
��s comment. To be truthful, Max’s usually sharp dry wit was becoming soaked in alcohol and the edge had been blunted by melancholia. He decided he’d have to disguise the fact by feigning indifference; so whenever someone threw an acerbic comment his way, he no longer seemed insulted, or amused. He didn’t seem anything at all, except indifferent.

  “Stalin’s terrible,” Rosamunde said. “And that moustache.”

  Fernando, who had a moustache similar to Stalin’s, raised an eyebrow and glanced at Rosamunde, but she seemed unaware of her faux pas. In fact, she seemed unaware of almost everything.

  Martha attempted to steer conversation towards odd surnames, especially those connected to foodstuffs. However, Mrs Dunaway ploughed through Martha’s question regarding why people would possibly be named after parts of a pig, and continued, stupidly confident of her facts, to cite probable communist conspiracies in most areas of working life.

  “They’re bringing them in from abroad,” Mrs Dunaway insisted. “These ideas. Foreigners bring them in. I mean, they’re just not English, are they?”

  “Do you mean foreigners aren’t English?” Martha said, confused.

  “I think foreigners are fine,” Rosamunde said. “Provided they speak English.”

  “Sí.”

  “But, I mean, the working person simply needs to be guided, like a child,” Mrs Dunaway was saying. “Otherwise they’re liable to believe anything.”

  “Such as your God,” Max said, but too quietly for anyone to notice.

  “Always had agitation,” Lindsey said. “The English. Always had it. Peasants’ Revolt, Cade, Chartists, Levellers, Tolpuddle lot.”

  “Absolutely,” Mrs Dunaway said, perhaps not quite realising Lindsey’s point. “We’d probably be much better off if we didn’t have so many working-class people.”

  “I completely agree,” Max said, leaning back in his seat.

  Inwardly, Martha sighed, knowing that ‘I completely agree’ meant ‘You’re an idiot and I intend to prove it’.

  “I often used to think,” Max was saying, heedless of Martha’s discomfiture, “that we should have fought the war entirely without the working class at all. They just kept getting in the way of all those damned bullets, after all. I mean, what was the point of them?”