The next morning, John called in at his uncle’s house in Chelsea. A row ensued after he mentioned the conversation. Firmly, Charlie told him he ought to follow up the offer. John thought it a preposterous idea. How could he? He had no knowledge of weaponry; besides, he wanted to fight with the North Midlands. Charlie retaliated with the familiar and depressing facts: his father’s estates were saddled with mortgages, which, if they were ever to be repaid, depended on his survival. If he was killed in action, his sisters and his mother would be left penniless: under the rules of entail, when Henry died, the estate, together with the dukedom and the heirlooms, would pass to his half-brother, Cecil. And what then? Cecil was a confirmed bachelor: he was never going to marry and produce an heir. Next – and the last – in line was Robert: he had a daughter, but no son. If John was killed, the line would die out. His family, Charlie reminded him, had been at Belvoir since the eleventh century; he could trace his lineage back to Robert de Todeni, a standard-bearer to William the Conqueror at the Battle of Hastings. Could he really be so selfish as to risk the ruination of his entire family?
While John pointed out that his duty was not to the Manners family, but to his country, the row ended with Charlie begging him to think about the offer. They left it at that. In the weeks that elapsed, there had been no further mention of the matter: John inferred that it had been dropped.
At Merris, on the evening of 15 March, it was with a heavy heart that John sat down to write to Charlie to tell him that he had declined the commander-in-chief’s offer. He was adamant that it was his duty to serve with the North Midlands, but still he felt emotionally torn.
Since John’s arrival at the Front, neither his parents nor Charlie had made it easy for him. Far from putting a brave face on things, their letters were a constant reminder of the hurt he was inflicting on them.
Violet, as the Duke reported, had taken to her bed with an illness brought on by the strain of his departure: ‘Mummy has been very seedy indeed since you left, and Hood says she must take great care as she is so weak and has got neuralgic pains all over.’ A few days later, Violet herself had written to tell him of her collapse: ‘Darling, Very bad stupid unkind flu came and stifled my misery. I wish it had come 4 days sooner for you to be knocked down by it!! You are never out of my thoughts. Please be careful.’
But it was Charlie’s letters that John found painful. He was missing his uncle, and being the cause of anxiety was upsetting. ‘I got your letter from Folkestone,’ Charlie wrote the morning after seeing him off at Victoria station: ‘It was like a glass of champagne. Don’t worry about me, my Colonel. When you left I think I touched the highest point of mind-misery yet reached. I fear I showed it – though I tried not to. Anyhow, now it is to be all philosophy and making the best of it.’
Charlie had not made the best of it; a few days later came another letter: ‘Old boy, I do hope you are all right and that you take great care. Think of me sometimes after 5 o’clock, a lonely creature in my room who never has his thoughts away from you. But who looks forward always to happier times.’
‘Yes, Old Boy, I have often thought of you in your room and I wished I was there for two reasons,’ John replied from Sailly. ‘One to cheer you up, and one to be back myself, but we must both be very cheerful and hope for better times. We are in the same place. Today a tremendous lot of gun firing and as it was a fine sunny day and good for observations and patrolling, our aeroplanes were very active. It really was a very pretty sight. There were five or six up in the air the whole time – some guarding our big gun, and others just letting the Germans know they had better not brave the ground with theirs. Yes, I take great care. I expect now we shall be in this village for some time, as we don’t seem to be able to push any further ahead. Will write again tomorrow.’
He reassured Charlie again in his next letter: ‘You still seem very worried about me out here. Don’t be. I will let you know before you need be. I don’t want you ill when I get back because we shall both have to be extra energetic to make up for lost antiquarian time.’
But only that morning, John had received yet another anxious letter:
Dear Jacko,
Your letters are wonderful. I have just got yours of Mar 12 – but you’ve no idea how terrified I feel at your being so forward. Don’t extra risk things, my Colonel, for God Almighty’s sake.
A small black kitten has suddenly taken up its abode in my tree opposite the dining room here, which you can never see the beauty of. I was going to chase it away but Mrs Leeds says it is the luckiest thing in the world so today I bought some cats-meat and put some milk down and it jumped into my room, where it has remained. I hope it will bring both of us luck. Nothing of this kind must be laughed at now.
As John agonized over his letter to Charlie, he did not have the heart to tell him that he had flatly declined the job at St Omer; instead, he opted to break the blow gently.
‘Old Boy,’ he began:
The question of changing my job was started today by the General receiving by the hand of Sir John’s ADC a letter from the C-in-C on that subject. I read the letter in front of the two and was asked what I should do. I had your feelings and my family well in the foreground but it was not possible to do anything but say that I had no experience in bombs or that I was a famous inventor, both of which I was accredited with in the letter. The letter was not couched in any way of a request or order but merely suggesting that as he had heard of the two attributes to my name I should be a useful person if it was true. I hope you will believe me when I say it was out of the question to do anything else.
Unwitting of his mother’s role in the affair, he was also anxious to spare her feelings: ‘You may use your own discretion about telling this to Mother. Perhaps it is unnecessary to tell her.
‘There have been tremendous losses on both sides these last three days,’ he continued: ‘12000 casualties at Neuve Chapelle. Awful. We move tomorrow – a little way back – what a bore not being able to tell you where. Am very well. Give my love to the cat.’
John need not have agonized over his letter. Charlie would know his decision before he received it.
At General Headquarters, Sir John had sealed the note General Stuart Wortley had sent him inside an envelope, and handed it to a King’s messenger. He was to take it to George Moore at Lancaster Gate.
Even as John was writing, the messenger was halfway across the English Channel. By midnight, Charlie and Violet knew the commander-in-chief’s ‘good plan’ had failed.
51
Early the next morning – 16 March – George Moore summoned Charlie to see him at Lancaster Gate. A footman ushered him into the spacious drawing room. Moore was in an ill humour; gruffly, he invited Charlie to sit down.
‘Your boy’s failed me,’ he growled, handing him General Stuart Wortley’s letter: ‘I don’t understand it. He as good as promised me he would go.’
The drawing room was on the first floor. Overlooking Hyde Park, it was furnished with antiques and paintings of the St Leger. The former ‘property of a gentleman’, they had been bought by Moore in a job lot at auction.
John’s refusal, he went on to tell Charlie, had placed him in an embarrassing position. His ‘Great Friend’ (Sir John French) had entrusted him to execute his plan. He had given his word to the Duchess that he could do something for her son. In declining the job, John had humiliated him: he had been made to look a fool in front of both the Duchess and the field marshal.
A means had to be found to save face all round. But, before proceeding any further, he wanted to know why John had turned the job down. Had his general forced him to decline the offer? Or had he refused it on principle?
Charlie could only reply that while he was unable to explain what lay behind his nephew’s decision, he was equally determined to secure a satisfactory outcome.
‘Find out why he turned it down,’ Moore instructed him. ‘And find out where Stuart Wortley stands.’
Depending on the answers, he continued, they had ju
st two options. Either pressure would have to be brought to bear on John to reverse his decision, or, if it turned out that the general was behind his refusal, he must be made to see that John should be allowed to join Foulkes’s brigade.
They agreed to do nothing for the time being. It was Tuesday; they would reconvene at the Duke’s house at Arlington Street on Thursday. By then, Charlie ought to have heard from John.
When Charlie got home, he was hoping to find a letter from his nephew. But there was nothing in the post. In a state of despair, he spent the rest of the day composing a long letter to him:
Dear Old Jacko
You can hardly realise the miserable broken-down old man who writes to you. Old boy, I had built all my hopes on one event and I don’t think I ever really believed you would fail.
Through Moore, I have heard that you have decided not to go and all doubt removed by being shown Wortley’s letter to Sir John declining it on your behalf. A letter worthy of the man, short and ungrateful and implying that you were no other use than a chauffeur and would be quite out of place on the C-in-C’s Staff – ‘Granby has no inventive genius’, which is a damned lie. The letter was enclosed by Sir John with a note from himself showing surprise and distress. He had thought you would be sure to come to him. I don’t know why I go on writing like this, old boy, except that tonight I really don’t care what happens or what you think of me – utterly miserable – and an utter failure with everything I wish for, or everybody I care for.
M says he can’t understand as you as good as promised him about it and thinks it’s not you but a cursed pressure on you.
Do me at least the kindness, my Colonel, to let me know what happened and whether anything further can be done. I don’t dare talk to your mother, even on the telephone. She is utterly broken-hearted, as so am I.
Dear, dear Colonel, forgive me for writing like this, you don’t know what one feels like in England for one’s friends in this ghastly war. Don’t tell me not to worry because it does me no good, and it is rot into the bargain, but take this letter kindly, you won’t get another one like it again.
Charlie was of course being duplicitous. He omitted to tell John that he was in league with Moore, and that – together with Violet – they were about to take steps to corral him into going to St Omer.
Two days later – on the evening of 18 March – Charlie went round to Arlington Street to see Violet. John’s letter from Merris had failed to arrive. In the absence of any answer from John, and as instructed by Moore, it was important to establish where Stuart Wortley stood in the affair. Their best tactic, they decided after talking it over, was for the Duke to write to the general. It was not, they concurred, a letter that Henry was capable of writing himself. Slow-witted, and prone to ill-considered, angry reactions, he lacked the guile. Charlie would have to draft the letter for him. Violet assured him that Henry would sign it: he was as anxious for John to go to St Omer as they were.
The lights burnt late into the night at Arlington Street. It was a difficult letter to compose. Beyond eliciting a response from Stuart Wortley, its purpose was twofold. First, the general was to be left in no doubt that John’s move to GHQ had the Duke’s blessing. Second, in a bid to ensure his complicity, he was to be flattered into thinking that the Duke was relying on him to provide John with guidance.
Charlie’s masterstroke was the lie around which the letter turned. It did not admit to the fact that the Duke already knew that John had refused the commander-in-chief’s offer.
After drafting the letter, Charlie showed it to Violet:
‘My dear Eddy,’ it read:
I have just heard that John is about to be or has been offered by Sir John French an employment at Headquarters.
I think that John will doubtless turn to you for advice and direction as to what he should do. I would ask you, even at the risk of temporary inconvenience to yourself, to encourage him as far as you can, not to decline an offer of so great importance to himself, which from a natural feeling of loyalty to you, he may not see his way to accept.
I understand the opportunity would bring him into touch with engineering work of an inventive kind, in which I think his capabilities in that direction should ensure his being of use.
I think you will agree with me that for his own sake such a chance should not be lightly discarded.
Yours etc
Rutland
Before handing the letter to a footman, who was to take it to the Duke so that he might copy it out in his own hand, Violet inserted a note below the last paragraph. Ever the consummate flatterer, she knew it was important to make her husband feel that he had at least made a contribution:
‘Then add something like, “I hope you don’t mind me writing,” ’ she wrote: ‘And something of the great praise you have heard of the Division, and its quick moving etc. Your loving VR.’
A week later, on Thursday 25 March, 16 Arlington Street was once again the setting for another clandestine meeting.
52
Shortly before 7.30 p.m., Mrs Seed, the elderly lodge keeper, opened the black wooden gate that screened the house from prying eyes. It was a wet, blustery evening. Above her, the wind rattled the octagonal glass mantle which hung from the keystone of the arch that led into the cobbled courtyard. The light inside it was off. A blackout – a precaution against Zeppelin air raids – was in force and the street was in darkness. There, as instructed by Violet, she waited.
Big Ben’s quarter bells chimed in the distance. It was the quiet hour. On the park side of the street, looking up towards the Ritz Hotel, the forecourts in front of the houses were empty. Their occupants were changing for dinner. In half an hour’s time, fleets of cars would fill the street, bringing their guests. But for now it was deserted.
Well into her eighties, Old Mother Seed, as the family called her, had served the Rutlands since she was a child. Her position was an important one. The lodge was the only route in and out of the house. As Violet’s letters reveal, she depended on Mrs Seed to spy on her children’s movements: she also depended on her when she had visitors she wanted to sequester.
Earlier that day, Violet had called in on the lodge keeper. She was on her way back from Dorchester House, Lady Holford’s palatial mansion in Park Lane. The house, which was now a hospital for wounded officers, was unrecognizable to her. The famous Velasquez, together with other valuable treasures, had been packed away in the cellar. On the first floor, the ballroom where she had danced as a debutante had been transformed into a sitting room for convalescents. Beds, screens, medicine cabinets and operating tables filled the other reception rooms.
Lady Holford had opened her hospital in honour of the forty wounded officers that had arrived from the Front. Among them were the first casualties from the Battle of Neuve Chapelle. It was Violet’s second visit in a week – the previous Wednesday, she had spent the afternoon there with the King and Queen. After a traumatic afternoon sitting at the soldiers’ bedsides, she left after tea.
As Violet hurried home, her priority was to see Mrs Seed. She had explicit instructions for her. At half past seven she was expecting an important visitor. Would she please close the gate after his arrival: no one, she emphasized, must see his car in the courtyard.
At the appointed hour, the cream Silver Ghost she had warned her lodge keeper to look out for turned into Arlington Street. It belonged to George Gordon Moore.
Stepping aside, Mrs Seed stood in the lee of the arch as the car passed. Then – as instructed – she closed the gates firmly behind her.
An hour later, the Duke, Violet, Charlie and Moore were closeted alone in the dining room. To ensure their conversation went no further, the footmen were told to leave the room after serving them. The soft light of the candelabra, the rich tones of the Old Master paintings, the glint of gold and crystal, accentuated the grim expressions on their faces.
A small pile of letters lay on the table in front of them. One was from General Stuart Wortley: it was clear from his reply
to the Duke’s letter – the one Charlie had drafted for him – that he had not influenced John’s decision to turn down the job at GHQ.
‘My dear Henry,’ the general had replied:
Some days ago Sir John French wrote to me saying that he had been told John was an inventive genius; and asked me if I would spare him to go to St Omer to consult with the CRE* there on the manufacture of bombs and grenades. I told John immediately of Sir John’s letter, but he said that he knew nothing of the making of such articles and could not be of any assistance in that respect.
I saw Sir John and told him this but I said that of course if he wished John to go to St Omer, I should certainly not stand in his way. Since then I have heard nothing more of the subject.
We have again relapsed into a condition of inactivity chiefly from want of gun ammunition. I do not see how we are going to supply two armies in the field at opposite ends of Europe – it is difficult enough to supply one.
The Division is getting on very well. I have a Brigade and several guns in the trenches.
Yours, Edward Stuart Wortley
The other letters were from John. Short of being ordered to go to St Omer, he was insisting on staying put with the North Midlands. He was not going to be a party to string pulling: ‘my temperament will not allow of it,’ he told Charlie.
While Violet had convened the crisis meeting, it was Moore who was chairing it. The problem, as he explained, was that the commander-in-chief could not order John to go to St Omer. In recent weeks, the press had accused him of cronyism; he had appointed too many aristocratic officers to his staff. Further, John had spurned his offer: he could hardly be expected to reissue it. First, they had to find a means of keeping the offer open without compromising the commander-in-chief. How they were going to force John to back down was a separate issue – one they would address in due course.
In tackling the first problem, it was Moore who came up with a simple solution. Why not claim that Sir John’s letter to General Stuart Wortley had contained a clerical error? The word ‘bombs’ should have read ‘catapults’. Besides working on explosives, Foulkes’s brigade would be developing missile projectiles. Its remit was to design weapons that could shoot long jets of flame, and hurl canisters of gas, and other chemicals, into the enemy’s lines. John had turned down the job on the basis that he had no experience in ‘bomb making’, but his interest in medieval history was undeniable. The fact that he had no scientific understanding of the dynamics of projectiles, and that his knowledge of catapults was both cursory and incidental to his interest in the medieval period, was irrelevant. The crucial point was that if Sir John could claim that he had meant to say ‘catapults’, and it was John’s historical expertise that he was interested in, he could reissue his offer.
The Secret Rooms: A True Gothic Mystery Page 33