Chapter Twenty-One
The young man at reception was polite, but insistent. “I’m sorry,” he said, “but I can’t allow anyone into a room if they’re not registered.”
“Oh,” Martha said. “But it’s really important.”
“I’m very sorry, miss. Perhaps you could try later, or take it to his home.”
Max had been waiting outside, smoking a cigarette. When Martha emerged from the hotel, she shook her head and shrugged.
Max said, “I thought you said your sex appeal would win over any man.”
“Any normal run-of-the-mill simple man.”
“Very simple, I should imagine.”
“It worked on you, didn’t it?”
Max, having trapped himself, didn’t have anything to say to that.
“I did discover which room he’s in, though,” Martha was saying. “I pretended to write a note to leave for Mr Burton and the receptionist put it into the pigeon hole for number twenty-one.”
“That’s clever.”
“I saw it in a film.”
“While you were in there, I had an idea.”
“Really?” Martha said, sounding a little too surprised.
“Yes. Look, you go back and tell the receptionist that you have to see Mr Burton personally. Then you’ll give him your telephone number and describe me and ask him to hand this card to Mr Burton when he arrives. Then I’ll give you a minute and go in and ask for the key to room twenty-one and you’ll say ‘Oh, Mr Burton, I’m so glad to catch you’ or something. The receptionist will see that I match your description of me, ergo, I must be Burton. He won’t think otherwise.”
“Unless he knows what Burton looks like.”
“No. Think about it. We know Burton got in on Friday evening, late, probably.”
“Why do we know that?”
“Think, Martha. Mr Bacon told us that the police had found a late night final edition of the Standard rolled up in his jacket pocket. That goes to print at five o’clock, just in time for people going home from work. And we know Burton arrived at King’s Cross from Peterborough on Friday, because he had the ticket that said so.”
Martha looked at Max as if he were explaining to her the difference between Einstein’s theories of relativity. She said, “Oh. Uh.”
“Let me explain it in simpler terms. It’s likely he bought the paper at King’s Cross Station. After all, you would, wouldn’t you? You’d get out of the train and buy a copy of the Standard, and if he had the final edition he must’ve got to King’s Cross in the evening. And if so, he would’ve checked into the hotel in the evening.”
“So?”
“So, my darling, there are different staff on in the evenings in hotels. There’s a night manager and night staff just starting their shift. Now, it’s daytime, so I’d imagine the receptionist hasn’t met Burton. In which case, I can be Burton. You understand?”
“Yes,” Martha said slowly. “Unless the staff alternate…”
“Oh.”
“…and unless Burton checked in earlier and bought the paper later, en route to meeting you, say.”
“Uh.”
“And besides, it won’t work. I’ve seen you lying, and you’re hopeless.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Max knocked on the door to room twenty-one. He and Martha waited, listening for any signs of life inside. After a moment, Max knocked again, the bangs sounding flat and dull. Then he unlocked the door and opened it slowly, and they entered.
The room was dark and cool, the heavy curtains drawn, and the few items of furniture were no more than vague shadows. It was a twin room, two single beds along the left-side wall, with a small bedside cabinet between them.
But the most obvious thing about the place was the faint smell, organic and rotten and with an oozing sweetness to it.
Both of them instinctively covered their mouths and noses. Max knew the smell straight away. His body went stiff, with a kind of reflex action. Martha didn’t understand immediately, but realised from Max’s reaction that it was bad.
They stood for a moment, silently, as if they feared to go further, but were drawn to anyway.
Max closed the door, turned on the light and walked towards the beds.
Then he stopped and stared at the floor where the body of a man was lying face down in a dark, almost black pool. Max instinctively turned to Martha, trying to prevent her from seeing the body, but it was too late. She gasped, staggered back a few paces, her hand to her mouth, her eyes wide in shock.
“My God,” she said, closing her eyes and turning sharply away from the sight.
Max went over to the corpse and knelt down beside it. The dead figure had once been a man, and quite old, with grey hair, neatly cut and thinning. He was wearing a decent suit and good-quality black leather Oxfords with leather soles, hand stitched, Max thought.
Max placed the back of his hand on the face, then lifted one of the arms, putting it down again gently.
Martha had now recovered a little and was watching Max from a distance, as if she were scared the body would jump up and attack her.
Max stood, glanced around the room, spotted the radiator and went over to feel it. “It’s cold,” he said, mostly to himself. He then opened the wardrobe and saw a man’s overcoat, which he checked, searching the pockets, which were empty. He went back to the body and carefully felt inside the jacket pockets. There his fingers met nothing.
Next, Max checked the chest of drawers; these were also empty. Finally, he went to the small cabinet between the beds. Again, there was nothing.
He went back to the body. “Don’t look,” he said to Martha.
He took a gulp of air and slowly put his hands under the body, rolled it over and stared at the face of the dead man, the skin bluish-pale and marbled, the eyes bulging, protruded.
Max stood quickly, backed away from the corpse. “We have to go,” he said, his voice low and trembling.
“Shouldn’t we tell someone? Call the police?”
“No. We just go.”
He continued to stare at the dead man’s face, frozen for ever.
“Max? What is it? What’s wrong? Max?”
Finally, Max looked away from the body. He looked at Martha, and he was white.
“Max,” Martha said.
“I’m in trouble.”
“Why? What’s wrong?”
“I know him. I know who he is.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Anyone casually glancing at Max and Martha leaving the hotel would have assumed they were a young couple, handsome and beautiful and rich. They would have seen two privileged carefree people strolling together in the weak spring sunshine.
But had anyone scrutinised them more completely, they might have seen that the woman was walking unsteadily, and that she had to cling tightly to the man just to make it a few yards. And they would have seen that the man’s face was ashen and grim, his eyes dark with some kind of fury.
Martha wanted to get a cab, but Max told her that the police would inquire of cab firms whether anyone had been collected from the hotel recently. They might even show photographs of Max and Martha to the cab drivers. Somebody would remember, and that would place them at the scene.
“But the hotel staff saw us,” Martha said.
“We can’t help that. We need to walk and seem normal. And we need to go north or west or east. Not south, not back towards Pimlico.”
So they walked, and held each other tightly, and said nothing. After twenty minutes or so, when they were just two of hundreds of people jostling along Piccadilly, they entered a tea shop and took a seat at a table in the corner, a long way from the window and other occupied tables. The waitress came over and Max ordered a pot of tea, and Martha went into the ladies’ room and was sick.
When she came back, Max lit a cig
arette for her and himself, and poured the tea.
“We’re just an ordinary couple,” he said. “We’ve come to pick up a book from Hatchards, something I need for research, and maybe we’ll go to the pictures or maybe a gallery. All right?”
Martha nodded, although she wasn’t really listening. “I don’t understand what’s going on,” she said. “Max, my God, that man—”
“I know,” he said. “Try not to think about it.”
“What are we going to do?”
“I don’t know.”
“You said you knew him. How?”
“Let’s drink our tea,” Max said. “Then we’ll go for a stroll in the park. Green Park should be fine. Then I’ll tell you a story.”
He put his hand on Martha’s, which was deathly cold. This thing he’d always been scared of had happened. The thing he’d always feared had come true; Martha, his beloved wife, had seen death, and would know of his part in it.
“Who was he, Max? That… that body?”
“He was a company CO in my old battalion. Major Rice. He’s the one who was reported missing. The police know I was connected to him, and now they’re going to think I’ve killed him.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
They were sitting beside each other on a bench, along a promenade lined with trees. Above them, a London plane tree was just coming to life after the winter. Small, bright, fresh green leaves were letting themselves be known along the wide branches and on the small twigs of the broad ancient tree.
Martha held her coat about her tightly. Max, leaning forward, drew on a cigarette. “We were in a shell hole,” he said, his voice low, monotone, “half filled with foul, stinking water, up to our knees in mud. We’d been given the order to advance, but the barrage was late and when it got started most of us were already halfway across. It was supposed to be a creeping barrage, you see.”
He left it at that, hoping Martha would understand what he was implying. But when he turned his head to see her, she looked at him blankly and shook her head very slightly, as if she had to tell him that she didn’t understand, but was fearful that he’d explain.
Max nodded slowly, took a drag from the cigarette. He told Martha that the British army had learned that a sustained artillery bombardment – a barrage – of the German lines didn’t have much effect. “The Germans were well dug in, so they just sat below and waited it out,” he said. “When the order to advance would come, the Germans would be back up, back in their machine gun nests, and our soldiers would be mowed down. So our lot developed the creeping barrage.”
With a creeping barrage, Max explained, the artillery would aim at a point in the middle of no man’s land, and the infantry would advance as the barrage moved slowly ahead, the idea being that the shells would hit the Germans, who’d have to take cover, and would be followed quickly by the British troops, denying the enemy a chance to get back to a firing position. “It worked well,” he said. “In some cases.”
“But it was late,” Martha said, and Max could see that she now understood the horror of that.
“Yes. It was late. The distance between trenches wasn’t uniform, you see. It changed from one sector to the other. Ours was closer than most, so the powers-that-be had worked out a varied timetable for the bombardments to begin.”
He flicked some ash away, watched it scatter on the light wind. “But somebody fouled up. I don’t know why. And the batteries behind us were late. And nobody told them to stop. And nobody told us to wait. So when we got the order to advance, we had no artillery cover. That wasn’t too bad. The Germans knew what was coming and were keeping their heads down.”
Max paused for a moment, and took a long drag on his cigarette, letting the smoke out slowly, watching it as it was spread into nothing by the breeze. “We were about halfway across when the artillery started, and slammed right into us.”
He felt Martha shiver, and he wanted to put his arm around her, hold her tightly and tell her the world wasn’t so bad. But he couldn’t do that, not right then. He didn’t trust himself to make it sound convincing. And he didn’t want her seeing what his face might be betraying at that moment. “Our artillery were using shrapnel and high-explosive rounds.”
“Shrapnel?”
“Canister. Case shot.”
“I see,” Martha said quietly.
“They were supposed to cut the barbed wire, and wipe out forward German positions.”
There was a rustling sound as the wind strengthened for a moment. Max looked up, as if he had only just become aware of his surroundings. In the distance, a family were walking slowly, the woman holding the hands of two small children while the man ambled ahead. The children were sucking on lollipops, the man was sucking on a cigarette. Further on, an elderly man walked with a cane, while a younger woman – his daughter, perhaps – held on to him.
“They burst in the air,” Max said, “shrapnel shells. They’re beautiful to watch, in some ways, they’re like small clouds being born, and they raise the earth up like waves. But they weren’t beautiful then, not when my own battalion was being cut in half by them.”
He paused again. Martha put her hand on his back, felt the shivering of his body. He didn’t seem aware of her touch, or even of her presence. “And then the barrage stopped,” he said. “Somebody must’ve told the artillery what had happened. It should’ve taken us to within a hundred yards of the lines so that we could charge it and give the Germans no time to recover from the artillery fire. Instead, we were caught in the open. We were sitting ducks. Our entire battalion was stuck in mud in the middle of no man’s land, half of us dead or wounded, while the Germans calmly went back to their posts. They’d had plenty of practice. It was a slaughter. Another one. I was with three others from my company. We couldn’t go ahead. We couldn’t go back.”
A man in a pin-striped suit and bowler hat walked towards them, his attention fully on the newspaper in front of his face. Max waited until he’d gone by, and then waited some more.
“We were strung out,” he said, “and everyone took cover as best they could. I and those nearest me threw ourselves into a shell hole. Burton was one of the ones there. He was a sergeant in my platoon, I told you that, didn’t I? We’d become quite good friends. And our company commander was there too, man called Captain Palgrave. And a young private. I can’t remember his name. He hadn’t been with us long.”
He took another drag on his cigarette. “And then the gas came. You’d think it would be like fog, this gas. But it’s not. It’s heavier and slower, and it’s an ugly pale yellow-green colour, like the slime you find in stagnant ponds. Or maybe it only seemed like that because you had to look at it through the glass in your gas mask. It’s not even like a gas at all, it’s more like a living thing.”
He heard Martha sniff, and knew she was crying softly, and trying to keep it to herself. He wanted to hold her. But he wasn’t finished, and it had to be told now. It had to be. So he said, “If you’re lucky, and you’re in a trench or a shell hole, and there’s a breeze, you can watch it float over your head. But it’s heavy stuff, dense. Well, there was no breeze on this day and we watched as the gas came crawling down the sides of the crater, as if it were seeking us out, one by one, and clinging to our bodies.”
“But… but you had gas masks,” Martha said desperately. “You must’ve done.”
“Yes,” Max said. “We had gas masks. We had three of them. The problem was, there were four of us in that damned hole.”
Martha gasped and threw a hand up to her mouth. She didn’t trust herself to speak, except to utter two words. “Oh, Max.”
“You see, our company CO had lost his as he’d run back to our lines. We’d all been running flat out, hundreds of us. Well, the hundreds who were able to run—”
He shrugged, and was quiet for a moment.
“Captain Palgrave,” he said finally. “Our company command
er. Our leader. Captain Richard Palgrave. And he’d lost his bloody gas mask. And the gas was coming and we all knew what it meant. We’d all seen men choking their lungs up, coughing blood and bile, their hands ripping at their throats, trying to get oxygen in, tearing at their own flesh, just to free them from this bloody burning gas.”
Max was quiet for a long time. In fact, because it was so long, Martha eventually said, “Is that it, Max? Is that what you want to tell me?”
He shook his head, and over his shoulder he said, “No, there’s more. But I need a drink before I tell you.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
They strolled back towards the Embankment, slowly and without words, avoiding Victoria, close to where the Alderney Hotel was located, but otherwise not taking much note of where they were. Max kept turning down side streets every time they came to a main road, and Martha simply followed.
After a while, Max looked up and glanced around. He saw a pub called The Falcon and headed that way.
They took a seat at a corner table in the lounge, Martha with half a stout and Max with a pint of bitter. The public bar was busy, and they could hear much chatter and laughter coming over the wooden partition, but the lounge was almost empty, only a couple of elderly ladies jabbering away at the other end.
Max drank deeply from his glass, then wiped his hand over his mouth. He lit another cigarette with his silver lighter. The smoke caught in a burst of sunlight that sent rays down to the ground and lit up patches of the dirty, dusty wooden floor.
Martha sipped her stout, then put the glass down and pushed it away from her. She waited.
Max wasn’t looking at her. Instead, he watched the motes of dust trapped by that sunlight.
Murder Under A Green Sea Page 10