by Max Hennessy
The evening paper had news of shooting and hair-spring tension on the German-Polish frontier, of the complaints of ‘oppressed’ Germans in Danzig and hasty recruiting in Britain, all the sickening signs that war was now only just round the corner, but the British public on holiday didn’t really seem to be very concerned with the approach of Armageddon. Standing on the promenade, it was possible to hear the sound of music from one of the arcades in the town, and holiday-makers moved past along the promenade, laughing, chattering and even singing. Ten years of depression were behind them and for the first time in ages there was money in their pockets which they were determined to enjoy, unaware of the irony that it was rearmament that had given it to them. An occasional National Serviceman – the first of the conscripts that England in her plight had at last been forced to call up – clumped by in big boots and the ugly new battledress.
‘Funny, isn’t it?’ Potter said, watching them. ‘I was here in 1914, too. That was in the middle of a holiday season, also.’
Danny looked at him with concern in her eyes. She had worked for him a long time now and somehow she couldn’t imagine him as a soldier. She had known him, it seemed, all her life, and his gravity distressed her.
‘Frightens me a bit,’ he admitted. ‘Especially now, Danny. Army’s a mess. Run down by pacifists and well-bred chaps who think manners’ll impress that chap in Berlin more than strength.’
She found she wasn’t able to reply for the lump in her throat and he stared at her for a minute, not speaking, feeling as ancient as a Trojan warrior as he looked at her fresh young face, then he jerked himself back to the present again.
‘Come on,’ he said, cheerful again. ‘We’ll get broody standing here. Better go and find this address we’ve got. We’ve still got to get back to London, and Moyalan’ll be wanting to hear how we’re getting on. We’ll bring the car tomorrow, if we find nothing today. Make it easier.’
* * *
Although the hotel, whose name the bank manager in South Audley Street had turned up, was small it was anything but shabby. A bright little place with a very prominent American bar, it was presided over by the owner, a plump blonde with a markedly false accent.
‘That’s the one who’ll know him,’ Potter commented quietly. ‘Finch’s type exactly.’
The blonde woman looked up as they perched on stools at the end of the bar and Potter spoke to her over the glasses. Her eyes became sharp and shrewd at once as he told her whom he was seeking.
‘Finch?’ she said cautiously. ‘What Colonel Finch?’
‘Charles Finch. Believe he had a room here.’
‘Yes, he did,’ she said guardedly.
‘Is he still here?’
‘No.’
She was obviously treading warily and Potter let the matter drop for the moment.
They sipped their drinks while the blonde woman polished glasses, though Potter noticed she was unable to keep her eyes off them for long, and in them now there was a distinct look of curiosity, and the hostility seemed to be fading a little.
‘She’s thawing,’ he pointed out quietly.
He picked up the paper and pretended to read it, but the headline – hitler may move any hour – hit him between the eyes at once. He turned to the inside pages quickly, trying to ignore the import of the front page lead, and read for a while, slowly and deliberately, then he glanced over the top of the newspaper again at the woman behind the counter.
‘On the boil, don’t you think?’ he whispered to Danny.
‘Give her another five minutes.’
They discussed the crisis news loudly for a while then Potter put the paper down and looked up, turning on one of his warmest smiles. Its effect was immediate and Danny knew the woman behind the counter would never be able to resist it.
‘Pity about Colonel Finch,’ he said casually. ‘Like to know where he is.’
The woman behind the bar frowned. ‘I’d like to know where he is, too,’ she said tartly, but with much more willingness.
Potter fiddled with the paper a little, rousing her curiosity more. ‘Not stayed here lately?’ he asked.
She shrugged and went on moving glasses and bottles about. ‘Not for some time,’ she said. ‘And even then it was only on and off. What did you want him for? Is it because of the news?’
‘Not really,’ Potter said carelessly. ‘Represent a firm of lawyers. Anxious to contact him.’
She glanced quickly at him and then at Danny, her eyes interested.
‘Did he come into money or something?’ she asked.
Potter did nothing to remove the opinion she’d obviously formed. It might help, he thought wryly as he hummed and hahed, to let her make up her own mind. She didn’t fail him.
‘If he has,’ she said, ‘I’d be glad if you’d let me know where he is when you find him.’
Turning on his brilliant smile again, Potter persuaded her to join them. She brought fresh drinks and moved to their end of the bar.
‘Does he owe you money or something?’ he asked.
‘It depends on what you mean,’ she said. ‘He asked me to marry him.’
‘Oh! I see.’
She held out her left hand. There was an engagement ring on her finger. ‘It was my own fault,’ she said bitterly. ‘I shouldn’t have trusted him. I allowed him to move in.’ Her shoulders sagged and she looked much older. ‘You know about these things,’ she went on. ‘We behaved as if we were man and wife. He said we’d be married.’ She paused and looked up at Potter. ‘Did you know him?’ she asked.
‘During the war.’
‘Oh, I see.’ She sketched a shrug and went on bitterly. ‘Well, he certainly put it across me,’ she said. ‘I believed him. I wanted a man about the place and he was a good-looking feller in his own fashion. I was prepared to give way a bit to keep him. I knew he had a wife, but I knew they didn’t get on. But then he disappeared and never came back.’
‘Left no address, I suppose?’
‘Not him. Him and his army rank. I’ve heard of people like that. Temporary gentleman.’
‘Matter of fact,’ Potter said mildly, ‘he was a permanent gentleman. Regular officer.’
She pulled a face. ‘You surprise me, I must say,’ she admitted. ‘I meet a lot of Regulars in here. A lot of ’em are bastards, but at least they’re all honest bastards. Still, there’s always the odd one, isn’t there? Did you know him well?’
‘Pretty well.’
‘He said he was in that charge in Russia. That one all the fuss is on about.’ She indicated the evening paper Potter had put down. ‘He used to tell a fine old tale about fighting his way out of that. Was it true?’
‘Suppose it was, in a way.’
She stared. ‘Well, I must say, I never believed him,’ she said. ‘I knew what he was – and I was prepared to take him for what he was – but I never thought he was telling the truth about that. He didn’t seem the type.’
‘Don’t think he was, really.’
‘He was never the chap to get involved in anything like that. How did you find out?’
‘There meself.’
She looked at Potter with new interest. ‘You a soldier, too?’ she asked.
‘Sort of. Territorial.’
She sighed. ‘Well,’ she said. ‘You can always try his bookie. He was a man who liked a bet now and then, and his bookie might help you – though he never helped me. He knew what I was after and I reckon Charlie had told him to keep his whereabouts dark.’
She wrote an address down on a slip of paper. ‘You can try that,’ she said. ‘And you might do me a favour, too. If he’s come into this legacy you’ve been on about, you might let me know. If he’s worth that much, it’d be worth dropping a breach of promise action in his lap, wouldn’t it?’
‘If he were,’ Potter said gravely, ‘it would indeed.’
Part Three
1
Kuprin – 1
Moyalan was faintly dispirited as he crossed the Strand with hi
s clerk towards the Law Courts the following morning. He had been up half the night working on his brief and there had been only a brief message from Potter that morning to say that the elusive Colonel Finch still had not turned up. Into the bargain, the news from the Continent was depressing enough to make him wonder if it were worth while making any effort under the circumstances, or whether the whole process of law and order in Europe was likely to be peremptorily shut down the following day because of the whim of a megalomaniac politician in search of world power.
Hardacre was waiting by the entrance to the Law Courts as he arrived, faintly worried-looking and frowning, and somehow Hardacre’s agitation seemed to bring Moyalan’s spirits back. Like Godliman, he had taken a strong liking to the unabashed Yorkshireman and the fact that he of all people could be anxious, too, made Moyalan’s burden relatively lighter.
‘Worried about Kirkham, Mr. Alderman?’ he asked. ‘You’ve got him this morning.’
Hardacre’s frown vanished at once. ‘I can handle him,’ he said with a grin.
‘I’m glad you’re confident,’ Moyalan observed. ‘Because I’m not.’
‘Well, that’s what I’ve been thinking,’ Hardacre said. ‘That’s why I’ve been waiting for you. P’r’aps I can help.’ He paused and went on earnestly. ‘I’ve got a signal log book at ’ome, Mr. Moyalan, that might be given in evidence.’
Moyalan’s eyes gleamed. ‘What signal log book?’
‘Army,’ Hardacre explained. ‘Railway telegraph. From Khaskov. Captain Barry confiscated it. It contained copies of all messages between Khaskov and Nikolovssk.’
Moyalan leaned forward slightly in his eagerness. ‘How did you come by it?’
‘Captain Barry got typhus and I looked after it for him. I kept it inside me shirt. It helped to keep me warm. I’ve hung on to it ever since, waiting for Major Higgins to ask for it – for some sort of enquiry, you know. He never did, though, and it got put away. I’ve just remembered it. I expect you can get somebody to pick it up and send it on.’
Moyalan smiled. ‘I expect we can, Mr. Alderman,’ he said briskly. ‘In fact, I expect we will.’
He stopped as he saw Hardacre glancing over his shoulder, and he turned to see Higgins just alighting from a taxi. There was no movement from the crowd that gathered every day to see the celebrities arrive.
‘Might just as well not be there,’ Moyalan commented.
‘Always the same,’ Hardacre said, and Moyalan started, not realising he’d spoken aloud.
‘I’ve met a few like him in me time,’ Hardacre went on. ‘They never come to much, even though some of ’em are damn’ good. They just don’t ’ave what you might call public faces, that’s all.’
* * *
While Moyalan’s junior counsel took over for him, and Moyalan and his clerk fought for a telephone connection to a northern firm of lawyers, Kirkham tried hard, with a great deal of bluster, to shake Hardacre’s testimony. But Hardacre, as good as his word, was too old a hand in the cut and thrust of argument, and had long since grown too cunning in the council and parliamentary jousts of South Yorkshire to be intimidated by anyone, and Kirkham had to retire from the contest eventually with a great deal of noise that might superficially have passed for victory but which, in fact, left Hardacre’s evidence untouched.
Moyalan, who had arrived back in court somewhat ruffled after his struggle but triumphant enough to catch Hardacre’s eye as he left the witness box, called as his next witness a small man who, in spite of his grey hairs, was still slim and energetic-looking.
‘You are Captain Count Alexei Josip Kuprin—’ Moyalan began, but the witness shook his head, smiling.
‘How much right I have to that rank and title, I don’t know,’ he said in clipped good English. ‘It seems only right that I should explain that I have no estates and no longer belong to any existing army. I am now simply Alexander Kuprin and I run a hacking stable at Golney in Sussex. I am a British subject and have been for many years.’
Moyalan smiled, acquiescing.
‘Very well,’ he agreed. ‘You were Captain Count Kuprin. All that ceased after you left Russia, did it not?’
‘That is true. I still cannot make up my mind whether to be sorry or not.’
‘Please confine yourself to answering the questions.’
‘Of course. Certainly.’
‘I am going to ask you to start at the end of November, 1919. You remember that period?’
‘Unhappily, only too well.’ Kuprin paused thoughtfully. ‘It was after the affaire of the cars,’ he said. ‘After B Squadron had been sent out and had returned without forty of their effectives.’
‘How was the Colonel at this time?’
‘It seemed just then as though the regiment had become too much for him. He seemed to lose interest.’
‘Why, Mr. Kuprin?’
Kuprin shrugged. ‘I think he’d been eager to make up for the four years he’d spent as a prisoner of war and he’d looked forward to distinguishing himself. Now he saw he wasn’t going to and both he and Major Finch seemed depressed. Nothing whatever was done about Captain MacAdoo’s insolence, or even about the growing murmurs of mutiny in the Russian squadrons.’
* * *
It was clear that confidence, never very strong, was waning more rapidly with every day that passed and, still distressed by the disastrous expedition B Squadron had made, Kuprin found his time occupied by sitting in at nervous conferences between Prideaux and the Russian commanders in the Slavska Barracks.
The news from the north had grown steadily worse and with every fresh item of news the certainty that the Russian troops in Nikolovssk were only waiting a suitable opportunity to defect grew on Kuprin. Their officers were uneasy and were constantly outside the Vronskins’ house after dark, asking to see Prideaux, their manner agitated, their eyes flickering uncertainly about them, as though they saw enemies in every shadow. Prideaux’s responses were always polite if cool, but it was quite clear to Kuprin, who was always there to interpret, that he wasn’t interested in defeat and that their concern with retreat was only depressing him.
‘The damned men are yellow,’ he said indignantly to Finch when he thought Kuprin couldn’t hear. ‘All they’re worried about is what their blasted men think!’
And so would Prideaux, Kuprin thought sadly, if he’d experienced the humiliation of being shouted down on parade, the shame of being laughed at when attempting to restore order, and the sheer terror of trying to escape when all one’s friends were being brutally murdered. Kuprin had experienced it all.
Hope seemed to be receding rapidly. Lloyd George, the British Prime Minister, making a typical volte face, had made a speech in which he had said that his government considered the civil war in Russia virtually over already, and his words had knocked the ground from under the Whites. Kolchak’s Siberian armies were in full retreat by this time, broken into flying splinters, and rumour had it that Kolchak himself was a prisoner. Intervention was dying on its feet.
In the south, Denikin’s retreat was rapidly becoming a rout and the station yard at Nikolovssk was jammed with trains – armoured, hospital, regimental and refugee – so many in fact that it was becoming impossible to shunt, and traffic was being moved south in the order in which it lay in the yards. The whole area of the station had become a monumental jam, with crowds of desperate people surging backwards and forwards with their luggage at every new rumour of a south-bound train, and stalled rolling stock extending northwards towards Alexandropol and Elizabetskaya as far as it was possible to see.
Posters threatening British officers with death had also begun to appear, and the railway workers were indulging in constant strikes for more wages that everyone knew were really the work of the Communists. No instructions had yet arrived for the British in Nikolovssk to join the trek south, but everyone had long since packed their belongings, and Murray-Hughes had moved cautiously northwards to find out what he could of the débâcle. His telegrams kept arriving at
Nikolovssk and were being sent southwards, as instructed, to an arranged destination which passed them on to England via Constantinople and the Middle East. In them, Kuprin noticed whenever he had to handle them, there was still no hint of the disorder in Nikolovssk where, diplomatically, it appeared that Colonel Prideaux and the Kouragine Regiment were standing resolutely in the path of Budenny’s cavalry.
* * *
‘It was nonsense, of course,’ Kuprin said angrily. ‘Sheer nonsense, because we were all well aware by this time of the discontent in B and C Squadrons and we were all just waiting, because we all knew what happened whenever the Reds drew near to a large town.’
‘What did happen?’ Moyalan asked.
Kuprin frowned. ‘There was always trouble in the railway yards first,’ he said. ‘And that had already started. Then it would spread through the town and there would be fires and disorder and strikes as Communist agents started work. Eventually, when it was no longer possible to keep order, the officers would quietly slip away in civilian clothes. It was already following this pattern in Nikolovssk and several regiments were without leadership of any kind.’ Kuprin blinked rapidly as an old and painful memory caught at him. ‘It was a shameful thing, you understand,’ he said sharply. ‘We were fighting a battle that was hopeless from the start because the core of the apple was rotten. It was a humiliating and terrifying experience.’
* * *
Still no instructions had been received for the evacuation of the British troops in Nikolovssk and it was rapidly becoming clear that something had gone wrong. In the confusion, the message to retire south either hadn’t been sent off from Khaskov or, what was more likely, had been lost, deliberately or otherwise, in one of the smaller telegraph offices employing Russians between Nikolovssk and headquarters. Knowing Hardacre’s politics, Higgins quietly sent him down to enquire among his friends, but nothing was forthcoming – not even for Hardacre. The regiment appeared to have been forgotten, and Colonel Prideaux didn’t seem to know what to do. He appeared to be disintegrating rapidly and could only talk excitedly of moving north.