A Deadly Caper (Innocents At War Series, Book 2)

by Andrew Wareham

  Mr May suggested that he might prefer to stay at a great height in such circumstances; given a choice, in fact, he would continue to stay on the ground.

  “It’s a young man’s game, Mr May, and it makes us old before our time, I much suspect.”

  Tommy read his way through the Mess library, most of it the books he had sent from Winchester, and drank just a little too much each evening. An airfield was a boring place when there was no flying.

  Mail arrived, and was devoured, Tommy retiring to his billet and sitting in front of the oil stove that had appeared as if by miracle as the snow began to fall. He did not know where or how Smivvels had come by it, and he carefully asked no questions, simply accepted the comfort. Smivvels would have to come with him if he was posted out of the squadron; that could be organised and he had the right now.

  Four thick letters from Monkey, an instalment written each day and sent weekly. Very difficult to decide what order to take them in – he wanted to know that she was still well and that demanded reading the last first, which was not the most rational of courses. He decided to open them in date order.

  Village news – she was a member of the War Comforts Committee now, as she had forecast and it was a pain, not for the work but for the dear ladies she was forced to keep company with. All was well. The second letter said that her mother had joined her in Wilton for a week or two, and was very welcome, the house being empty of an evening otherwise. Then he read that her brother George was in rapid decline, his chest failing, his lungs congested; her mother had returned to Long Benchley and was visiting him daily – not that he seemed entirely aware of the fact. Her father was very busy in London – Tommy would have heard of his peerage, she presumed. The last letter said that she expected to hear any day of George’s death; the pneumonia was incurable, his general state so weakened that he could not fight the ailment, even had he wished to.

  She had been informed that he had received another Mention and wondered whether he was not behaving rather rashly, not that she would presume to ‘carp or criticise’.

  Tommy noticed that she offered the expression in quotation marks as if she expected him to recognise it; he must ask Adj – there was a chance he might know. He would speak to him in the morning.

  “Gilbert and Sullivan, Tommy; the Pirates of Penzance – ‘when the foeman bares his steel’, and so on?”

  Tommy shook his head; he had never quite managed to take in a performance of the renowned operettas.

  “Heard of them, mind you, Adj. But never got around to going to one. I suppose I ought to, one day.”

  “Has all culture escaped you, Tommy?”

  “Most of it, Adj. Too busy, doing things that seemed more important at the time. Mind you, most of them seemed more important because they were more important. I stayed alive as a flier because I learned all I could about flying. I think I’ve read just about every issue of all of the magazines, and I can remember a lot of what I picked up from them. I know how to survive in the air because I’ve read about most of the problems that can crop up. I used to sit in the canteen at Brooklands for hour after hour when I wasn’t flying, working through the magazines. No time to go out to concerts and things, Adj.”

  “Pity you never went to school, Tommy – you would have picked up a few things other than flying. Mind you, on the other hand, you would not be as skilled in the air as you are now. It cuts both ways, or so I must imagine.”

  Tommy shrugged – it was too late for might-have-beens.

  “I shall amaze Monkey by understanding her reference and suggesting that we should take in some Gilbert and Sullivan, one day.”

  He glanced out of the window, across the foot-deep layer of snow on the field.

  “It’s starting to snow again, Adj. Not a chance of a thaw before the others come back. I might well get away yet.”

  “I’ll be surprised if you do not, Tommy. The weather to the east is bitterly cold and the snow will freeze and turn to ice. Give me a hand with this stuff from Wing, will you? Reports and indents and their like – you might as well get an idea what comes across my desk, and what I do with it. You will command a squadron one day, so you need to know the administration.”

  At least a half of the correspondence dealt with rations and much of the rest with the issue of stores.

  “Check and double-check, Tommy – in a vain attempt to stop the quartermasters embezzling their stores. All quartermasters are on the take, Tommy – you just have to make sure they hide their depredations so that Wing or Brigade or Division or whoever you report to can’t claim you should have noticed what was happening. The clerk will deal with most of this. What else have we got? Hah! Interesting stuff here – Intelligence reports on your bombing raid. What have they to say?”

  Tommy waited, quite interested to know what they believed had happened.

  “Official reports to Berlin – and I wonder how they came to read them? Let us see, they say that the raid was made by a full squadron of twelve machines, each carrying at least one hundred pounds weight of bombs as well as petroleum incendiaries. Many of the larger bombs failed to explode and some have been recovered and examined, which is not good news. Losses amounted to forty men killed and more than one hundred sent to rear medical facilities and as many again lightly wounded. Thirty of horses killed or put down. Twenty carts destroyed, and four motor lorries and two railway wagons. Stores to the value of eight thousand pounds burned. The train was carrying coffins – the dead of the previous two days in that section of the front being returned for honourable interment in their home towns; many of the dead incinerated! Much distress occasioned among the battalions they came from.”

  Tommy shook his head – killing the dead a second time was inefficient, he believed.

  “Wing is very pleased, as is General Henderson, and the result is that they have decided to go ahead with the proposal to create squadrons that will specialise in bombardment, separating them from those whose main function will be reconnaissance. Eventually the intention is that the bombardment squadrons will be able to double as reconnaissance, as soon as they have reliable two-seaters to perform both functions. Details are to be finalised and we shall be informed of the changes in the next week.”

  “On my own head be it, Adj. It would seem that I shall be leaving you.”

  A Deadly Caper

  Chapter Eight

  Monkey was bored and was finding village life in winter quite remarkably tedious. The garden was covered in snow, leaving the gardener and his boy almost nothing to do other than saw wood for the fires; there was nothing there for her. The snow balled in the hooves of the horses so that riding was not possible either. She had her books and her easel, was attempting landscapes, but not to her own satisfaction, and there was a limit to the amount of time she could spend reading. She had not the least interest in cookery and would spend none of her days in the kitchen; other housework, of course, was quite out of the question for a lady, and she would not have known what to do anyway.

  Outside of the house, the village committee for the troops took up a few hours of each week, most of the time spent sipping tea and discussing ideas for good works rather than actually performing them.

  She was driven into Salisbury twice a week, buying a book on each occasion but mostly just drifting, looking at the town and finally coming to know the cathedral, glancing into shop windows, occasionally making a small purchase.

  In reality, she was simply waiting, specifically at the moment for the black-edged envelope to come from Long Benchley with the news of her brother’s death. She had bought her mourning suits already, easily obtained, the clothes shops full of black. She had noticed that hemlines were rising, skirts reaching mid-calf, but she was not at all sure that the effect was ladylike. She would take advice from her mother before she ventured into this rather daring fashion.

  One relief was that the post from France had settled down and she received at least one letter a week from Tommy. She heard the rattle at the front
door and the parlour-maid Maisie picking up the letters and calling to her.

  “Two for thee, ma’am. You wants to open the one from thees mother, ma’am!”

  Maisie came into the room, the letters presented on a silver tray. She was sad-faced, properly so, but unaffected by the news of death – she was not an old retainer of the family, although she had every hope of remaining in its service now. She was in her twenties and this was her second house, the lady of the first having died late in the past year. She could not imagine being anything other than a housemaid in a small, middling sort of gentleman’s establishment, comfortable in her own room and doing the work she was used to.

  “Thank you, Maisie. Best you should pull the blinds, please.”

  The letter from her mother was short and simply confirmed George’s death on the previous day; he was to be buried in Long Benchley on Friday and she should speak to her father regarding the arrangements. That meant a walk to the Post Office to use the telephone there.

  She went up to her room and changed into mourning; full blacks until the funeral, half for the remainder of the month and an armband for three months at least for a brother. The conventions of mourning were relaxing to an extent, now that so many were experiencing death in the family. It would have been full blacks for six months for her husband, and that possibility was always in the back of her mind.

  “My brother has gone, Mrs Rudge, finally.”

  Mrs Rudge had known George at a distance – the Squire’s son – and was aware of the extent of his wounds.

  “Poor lad, ma’am! Yet, a blessing, maybe, ma’am, for he was in no case ever to live his life. He will be in a better place, ma’am, sad though it is to say it! Blinds till the funeral, ma’am, but no wreath to the door knocker, not for your brother.”

  There were specific rules for mourning displays other than clothing, followed as far as cost allowed by all classes.

  “I shall see a case packed for you, ma’am, for you will go to your mother, will you not?”

  “She will need me for a few days, I think, Mrs Rudge. I am to telephone my father now.”

  “I shall tell that chauffeur to make the car ready, ma’am. You will go this afternoon, I do not doubt.”

  “I must finish my letter to Tommy first, Mrs Rudge, to tell him the news and where I am to be found for the next few days. Just as long as he is not the next…”

  Mrs Rudge trod firmly on any pessimism; she could not permit her lady to fall into the glooms.

  “What will be, will be, ma’am, and we cannot be knowing it yet. Captain Stark is a brave man and the best of the pilots, so his poor father always told me. He stands a better chance than many with his medal and all of his Mentions, ma’am. You will see him standing tall on the doorstep one of these fine days, ma’am.”

  “So I shall, I doubt not, Mrs Rudge. I must run up to the Post Office. I shall take the tin of toffees to post as well!”

  The toffees had been ordered from Harrods – it being necessary to send him only the best – and had arrived on the previous day.

  “Do you want to carry all that weight, ma’am?”

  “I don’t think that four pounds will over-burden me, Mrs Rudge!”

  “That’s as maybe, ma’am, but you don’t want to be slipping on those icy pavements.”

  Mrs Rudge had her suspicions of her lady’s condition, though she would say nothing to her as yet.

  There was no need to inform any of the village dwellers of the death of her brother; Mrs Cresswell, the village Postmistress, also operated the telephone exchange and heard every conversation made using it and was generous in her spreading of all interesting news. Telephone calls were still uncommon and hence likely to be important; she was much valued as the source of the best gossip.

  The drive to Long Benchley took nearly three hours, the Lanchester in low gear more often than not. The main roads had been cleared of snow drifts by the military traffic to and from Salisbury Plain, but the road surface had cracked up and the ruts were full of ice. They passed two long convoys of munitions – mostly artillery shells – going south towards the coast.

  “Building up supplies for the Big Push in the spring, ma’am. Hundreds of shells for the field guns!”

  “You were a Rifleman, were you not, Marks?”

  The chauffeur was about thirty, had served twelve years and had come out as a corporal; he was still lean and fit.

  “That I was, ma’am. Coming to think that I should be again, ma’am. Got me good-conduct badges as well as me two stripes on the old jacket and I ought to be wearing it again, or so I do reckon. But, I can’t leave thee stuck without a driver, ma’am, or with no man to look after the ‘osses.”

  They kept a pair of horses in the stables as well as the Lanchester.

  “I can learn to drive, Marks. We could find a boy in the village with time in as a stable-lad, if you feel you must go.”

  “Right enough, ma’am. I can be lookin’ about for a lad next week. Won’t take two or three days to teach thee ‘ow to drive well enough to pick up a licence, ma’am.”

  “It looks quite easy in some ways, Marks, but I don’t quite like slipping about on ice, you know.”

  “Neither do I, ma’am. As for easy, well it’s got to be, ain’t it? If so be I can do it, and me no more nor a soldier, then so can you, being a lady and bright with it, if thees will excuse me, ma’am.”

  She laughed and sat back in the comfortable leather seat, wishing that the manufacturers had been able to fit a better heater. She wrapped her coat tight around her, tucking her feet up to get warm.

  Her parents were both in the house when she arrived, her mother bursting into tears before retiring to her bedroom, father shaking his head sadly.

  “Before you ask, Grace, I am no longer quite so sure that it is honourable to die for one’s country. You may have been right to query that. Still, he is gone now, and at least the pain is ended for him. For us, there remains still the worry over our other soldier, well, airman, actually. I bumped into Sykes a few days ago, by the way, and he tells me that Tommy has distinguished himself again in the way of bombardments. He is to be shifted across to a new squadron they are forming, one of several in fact, which is to be employed mainly in what they are now calling ‘bombing raids’. He is to be senior captain, appointed as second-in-command of the squadron. There may well be another piece of ribbon for his chest as well. Apparently, the King has authorised British soldiers to receive foreign decorations, and there is talk of the Belgians giving out some awards to fliers who have fought over their conquered territory. The Tsar of Russia is giving out some of his orders, too!”

  “The Order of the Bear, First Class, Father?”

  “Might be, my dear – after all, the Danes have the Order of the Elephant, which sounds even more unlikely!”

  They managed to laugh, even if weakly.

  “It must be a full military funeral, I am afraid, Grace. Mr Lloyd George insists upon it, and for reporters to be present. We must show that the people in government can lose their sons too.”

  “Cynical, Father?”

  “Mr Lloyd George is all of that, and is a naïve idealist as well, sometimes at the same moment. He is an able and charming man, and a ruthless, pitiless schemer, at one and the same time, or so it seems. He has done much that is good for the ordinary people of this country, yet he will pull the wool over their eyes with no compunction. I cannot claim to understand the man, but he is far more able than I could ever be; he is the consummate politician, but I do not know if he is anything more. I work for him, and am proud that I am allowed to do so, but I cannot truly respect him; at the same moment, I will defend him against those who will attack his record and his plans. I do not know what he is, Grace, nor can I imagine what the history books will say of him.”

  “I would like to meet so intriguing a man, Father.”

  “You will not do so, except in my company, Grace! He has no concept of morality and will, not to put too fine an edge up
on the matter, seek sexual gratification from any and every female he meets – and only too often he is successful in his philandering. He is a predator, Grace, without conscience, but open-handed to those who have satisfied him. He gives away honours and money quite equally, which provides a difficulty, as he has no money of his own. He is open to bribery, because he is always poor!”

  She was shocked, having lived a protected existence, a naïve country girl.

  “But… if this is known of him, Father, surely every man in London must keep his womenfolk away from Mr Lloyd George!”

  It was time for his daughter to grow up, thought Lord Moncur.

  “Many a husband, and no few fathers, are willing to accept a baronetcy or even a peerage, or a contract to supply the War Office, in exchange for introducing their ladies to Mr Lloyd George, my dear. I will assure you that I am not one of those gentry!”

  “Good God, sir! I did not know that such behaviour was possible of any man – or not of one who calls himself a man!”

  “That, and far worse, my dear. That is one of the many reasons why I have preferred you not to live in London, and why I was quite happy that you did not go to a school where you would have made friends among the daughters of these people. Better to be countrified in this day and age! I am glad too that you have Tommy.”

  “As long as I continue to have him, sir. The newspapers publish lists of our fallen heroes which appear every day, and they are not short, sir.”

  “They have hardly begun yet, Grace. There will be attacks in France starting next month, just to see how determined the Germans are, to discover whether they might not be tempted to talk instead of fight. If they were to offer to withdraw from Belgium and Alsace and Lorraine, then it would be possible to end this war. They could keep Luxembourg, and we would offer no objection to them retaining the whole of their conquests in Poland and around the Baltic. We could negotiate over their colonies. They could not retain Tsingtao – that must stay with the Japanese now - but almost every other territory could be the subject of discussion. It might not be impossible to talk about a new set of European alliances, to break up the Austrian Empire and the Ottomans, and perhaps to drive the Russians back into Asia, where they belong. But nothing will be possible without success in battles in France and Belgium to persuade the Kaiser that the cost of the war is too great for anything he may win. That will involve the deaths of many more tens of thousands of our soldiers, and of his.”