by James R Benn
“We should see the vicar,” Helen said.
“Certainly,” David answered. His eyes darted back to Helen. He seemed surprised that she was still looking in his direction. “Are there any other living relatives?”
“None on the Sutcliffe side,” Great Aunt Sylvia said. “There was a cousin in Yorkshire or some other dreary northern place. Died after the last war, I think.”
“I will check Father’s papers in his study to be sure,” Meredith said. “Then, in the morning, Helen and I will call upon the vicar.” Great Aunt Sylvia gave her an approving nod. Meredith stood, a solid Pemberton look of satisfaction on her face. There were things to be done, and she was the one to do them.
AT DINNER, DAVID was in fine form, telling stories of North Africa and his mates in the RAF. Nothing about burns, crash landings, or empty bunks after a mission, but rather high jinks and pranks, the kind of thing families like to hear, as if their young men were all delightful scamps away at summer camp. He told a story about a German pilot who’d been shot down and was a guest in their mess before he was taken away to a POW camp. Knights of the sky, that sort of thing. Helen laughed and touched his arm, which was nice to see, but these white lies were almost too much to bear. I wanted to scream, to tell them about the young boys recently killed and maimed on a beach not far away, their bodies cold and decaying as we sat eating whiting with carrots. I caught Kaz’s eye, and he gave the tiniest of shrugs before taking a healthy drink of wine. He was glad David was in good spirits, I was sure, but I could tell the sudden change in David was bothering him too. A day or so ago, he’d been desperate to find a job that would keep him in uniform and out of Ashcroft. Today, when he should have been down in the dumps, he was the life of the party. Something was wrong.
“David,” Kaz said, taking advantage of a break in the conversation, “I heard something of the local dialect at the pub last night. I had no idea it was so colorful.”
“The fellows had a fine time at my expense, first time I went there,” Edgar said. “It was good-natured fun, as far as I could tell.”
“You didn’t bore them with Shakespeare while spending our money, did you, darling?” Meredith said with a roll of her eyes.
“ ‘Dost thou think, because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?’ ” Edgar said, with a wink toward Kaz.
“Edgar!” Meredith exclaimed, aware that the barb was directed at her.
“Sir Toby, in Twelfth Night, is it not?” Kaz asked, an appreciative grin on his face. Edgar raised his glass to him and then graciously to Meredith, who leveled her eyes at Edgar as she returned the toast. The whole table was in top form tonight.
“What did they say?” David asked, returning to the topic of the local dialect. “I can’t say I’m familiar with West Country idioms.”
“Something about appen the janner and the shord,” Kaz said.
“Appen the janner will find the shord,” I said. “That was the gist of it.”
“Perhaps the seaman will find the gap in the hedge,” Great Aunt Sylvia said from her end of the table. “Janner could mean a fisherman, anyone who makes their living from the sea. It’s an old word, which has become corrupted to mean almost anyone in Devon, and not in a flattering light.”
“Interesting,” David said. “But what’s that about a gap in the hedge?”
“I believe it refers to one who can make his way through cleverness,” Meredith said. “Finding a route no one else has, that sort of thing. David, you should make an appearance at the pub, after the funeral, of course. I’m sure Edgar would be more than pleased to go as well. It’s expected.”
“Lords of the manor, eh, Edgar?” David said, raising his glass. The white wine leapt within the clear crystal as his hand trembled, and he set the glass down a bit harder than necessary. Edgar made a joke about it and everyone laughed, David’s nervousness forgotten. Except by me.
After dinner the ladies left the table and Edgar poured brandies for each of the men, then fired up a cigar.
“One of Sir Rupert’s,” he explained as he sent a cloud of smoke to the ceiling. “No reason for them to go to waste, I say.”
“What would Malvolio think of that?” Kaz said, and I could see a mischievous glow in his eyes.
“Who?” I asked.
“Oh, I take your point,” Edgar said. “Rather droll. You see, Captain, the scene I quoted from at dinner is a famous one. Sir Toby Belch is a high-spirited comic creation, a cunning fellow in love with life and good drink. His nemesis is steward to his niece, Malvolio. Malvolio is a bit of a stickler for propriety and looks down on excess, especially when it comes to drinking.” He was smiling, apparently happy to be compared to a character from his beloved bard.
“I am sorry if I went too far,” Kaz said. “I couldn’t help it after you quoted that line.”
“Not to worry, Baron,” Edgar said, waving his cigar expansively. “Once in a while, I get my say in things. And Twelfth Night is one of my favorite comedies. Although I find the plot with the forged letter a tad cruel, it is still quite amusing.”
“Speaking of quotes, what was that fisherman stuff all about?” David asked. “I’d like to learn more about the dialect, but what was the context of going between the hedges?”
“It was an offhand remark,” Kaz said, not revealing that we’d been discussing the possible paternity of Peter Wiley. “We heard it on our way out, and I was curious.”
That satisfied David, and we left for our rooms. Something was bothering me, and as I ascended the staircase I tried to put my finger on it, but it was late, and I was too bushed for hard thinking. I hoped it would come to me, but the residual aches, pains, and twinges from my healing cuts and bruises came on strong instead. It wasn’t until much later, lying awake, that it I got it. Two things. The first was the envelope. Edgar mentioning the forged letter must have jogged my memory. When I’d encountered Meredith coming out of her father’s study, she’d had a letter in her hand. The stamps were American. Had she taken it from her father? Could it have had anything to do with Peter Wiley?
The other thing was about what was said in the pub. It wasn’t “perhaps the fisherman will cut through the hedges.” Evan had added “as well” at the end. More than one clever man had slipped through that gap in the hedge. What it all meant, I had not a clue.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
THE SOUND CAME from very, very far away. I tried to roll over, hoping it was a dream, but knowing it wasn’t.
“Captain Boyle,” an insistent voice came from the hallway as the hand I assumed to be connected to it rapped again on my door.
“Coming,” I said, stumbling out of bed, noticing the faintest sliver of light showing at the horizon as I glanced out the window. I opened the door to find Williams, in his bathrobe, a look of disapproval on his face and a candle in one hand.
“A Colonel Harding is on the telephone,” Williams said. “He says it is urgent that he speak to you.”
I grabbed a robe and followed Williams. Not so long ago, Harding had told me to take it easy. Now what did he want? Kaz poked his head out from his room and followed along as Williams led us to the telephone in Sir Rupert’s study.
“You can use the telephone in here,” Williams said, switching on a lamp. “I will hang up the receiver downstairs.”
“Thank you,” I said, but the butler had already closed the door behind him.
“Hello?” I said into the mouthpiece. “Colonel Harding?”
“Boyle, I need both of you in Brixham, soon,” Harding said, his voice tight.
“Today, Colonel?”
“This morning, Boyle. Now. You and Lieutenant Kazimierz get in that jeep and don’t stop until you get to Brixham harbor. I’ll be down by the hards along the breakwater. We have a situation. Ships were lost last night in Lyme Bay.”
“Where?” I said, trying to understand what Harding was saying, and what I was supposed to do about it.
“Never mind, just get here, pronto,” Harding s
napped. “This is bad news.”
“How will I find you, Colonel?” I said.
“It won’t be hard. Look for LST 289. She’s easy to spot.” With that, he hung up. The line went silent, then a click, and finally a dial tone sounded. It was a short conversation, so it might have been Williams finally getting to the downstairs telephone to hang up. Or a nosy servant.
“Something’s up,” I said to Kaz. “Harding wants us in Brixham, at the hards.”
“The what?” Kaz said.
“The hards,” I said. “It’s what they call the paved roads that lead straight to the embarkation points. Hard, paved surfaces and concrete ramps built by the engineers. They’re made for tanks and trucks, so they can drive right onto the transports. They’re everywhere along the coast.”
“Of course,” Kaz said. “I’ve seen them. I should have known Americans would create a short name for them. Did the colonel give any clue as to what has happened?”
“No, other than to meet him by LST 289. He said it would be hard to miss.” Sitting in Sir Rupert’s chair, I idly scanned his desk, out of habit—or nosiness. Papers were strewn across the top, as if someone had dumped files out and gone through them. I opened a drawer and saw much the same: papers jammed back into cardboard files, a rushed and sloppy search job.
“Billy, we should go,” Kaz said. “I will see if Mrs. Dudley is up and will provide a thermos of coffee.
“Good idea, Kaz,” I said, getting up and switching off the lamp. Part of me wanted to stay and figure out what the desk search had been all about. Especially the part of me that couldn’t face the notion of more early morning hours in the jeep.
“You’ll have to excuse Mr. Williams,” Mrs. Dudley said in the kitchen a little later, pouring coffee into a thermos and wrapping two ham sandwiches for us. “He has little time to himself and holds his sleep very dear. The telephone woke him early.”
“Is that coffee?” said Crawford, coming in the back door and sniffing the air.
“Have a cup with me,” Mrs. Dudley said. “These gentlemen have got to fly off to Brixham for some reason. Don’t know why anyone would want to go there, especially at dawn. What’s the bother, Captain?”
“Something about ships in Lyme Bay,” I said, shoving my arms into my trench coat.
“I should call my cousin in Salcombe,” Crawford said. “He’s with a shore battery crew on the heights above the harbor. They’ve got a clear view across the bay. I’ll not want to go out on the tide this morning if Jerry’s still prowling about.”
“They probably won’t be out in daylight,” I said. “But you never know.”
“Sounds like real trouble,” Crawford said as we made our way out.
“Colonels don’t call for much else,” I said as we left.
Kaz drove, and I checked the map in between bites of smoked ham on brown bread. We took the bridge over the River Dart, invisible as the early morning fog rose off it like white clouds between low, rolling hills. We got on the Brixham road and took it to the coast, finishing the last of our coffee as we wended our way through the town, down the heights to the harbor below. It looked like a decent little seaside town, and I wondered what Mrs. Dudley had against it.
A small inlet marked the beginning of the harbor area, with small craft and fishing boats moored close in. Beyond them were destroyers, patrol boats, and transports of all sizes. The breakwater was farther out, and we followed the newly widened road as it curved alongside the docks. Harding had been right. LST 289 was tough to miss. The ambulances parked close to the ship, and the frenetic activity all around her would have been signal enough. But as we drove down the hard, the damage was plain to see. The entire stern had been blown off, barely enough of the structure left intact to keep the Channel waters from pouring in and swamping the ship. An open gun mount hung precariously over the gaping hole, wisps of smoke escaping into the clear morning air.
The bow ramp was down, and tanks, half-tracks, and jeeps were driving off, passing us as we pulled over. The men on the vehicles looked straight ahead, silent and grim.
“I can’t believe it’s still afloat,” Kaz said, in a half whisper. Ambulances followed the vehicles, none of them in a hurry. No sirens for the dead. As we got out and walked closer, two MPs quickly came toward us, palms out, ordering us to halt. They tried to give us the bum’s rush until I mentioned Harding’s name, and then one of them escorted us aboard.
The deck was covered in hoses and shell casings. The LST had put up a fight with its light twenty- and forty-millimeter armament. The damage-control party had had a hot fire to deal with as well, judging by the blackened and blistered paint. Inside, we descended metal steps and found Harding at a table in a small room that smelled of oil and smoke. Opposite him was a naval officer, and between them were clipboards and stacks of paperwork. The walls were steel bulkheads with one grimy porthole.
“Captain Boyle and Lieutenant Kazimierz reporting as ordered, sir,” I said, almost at attention. I figured Harding would appreciate some military discipline in front of a navy guy.
“Lieutenant Mettler, Captain of the 289,” Harding said, nodding to the officer, who rose and shook our hands. He was short and dark haired, and had soot streaked across his forehead. He looked frantic and exhausted at the same time.
“Good luck, Colonel,” Mettler said as he left the room. “I’ll let you know if we find the body.”
“What body?” I said as he cleared the door. Or hatch, I think they call them in the navy.
“A very special body,” Harding said. “I can’t say any more right now.”
“Is there anything you can tell us, Colonel?” Kaz asked.
“LST 289 was part of Operation Tiger, the invasion exercise that began this morning,” Harding said. “German E-boats hit the convoy in the night, as it was steaming through Lyme Bay. The 289 was torpedoed. They got off easy. Two other LSTs were sunk.” He threw the pencil he was holding onto the stack of papers in front of him.
“Fully loaded?” I asked. Harding nodded.
“How many men?” Kaz asked, looking at the list of names in front of Harding.
“Hundreds,” he said. “Too many. Only a few from this ship. They managed to get the Higgins boats into the water and used them to push her into port. Smart move, probably saved most of the men on board. There’s probably a thousand soldiers and sailors on each LST. Some have been picked up, but not all.”
“You mean there are still men floating in the Channel?” I asked.
“The attack was at zero two hundred this morning,” Harding said. “The temperature in the Channel waters is forty-four degrees. Unless they’re on a raft, no one’s alive in the water.”
“Colonel, this is terrible, but I still don’t know what we can do to help.”
“They found him, Colonel,” Mettler said, his head popping in from the companionway.
“Come with me,” Harding told us, grabbing a clipboard and following Mettler. We descended farther into the bowels of the ship, boots echoing off steep metal steps, our way lit by jury-rigged lights on electric cables. The companionway ended in a sheer drop where the explosion had blasted clean through the steel and left a gaping hole. Below us was a tangle of wires, twisted girders, and smashed vehicles. Arc welders were glowing points of blinding light in the cavernous opening, and we all instinctively shielded our eyes as we took a ladder down into the hold, where the air smelled of gasoline. If there was a body down here, it was dead ten different ways.
Sky appeared above us through a jagged section of bulkhead, caved in by the force of the torpedo blast. Crewmen leaned in to their pry bars, muscling aside a slab of shorn metal as seawater sloshed against our ankles. Beneath the slab was a pool of oil and blood, the form of a body barely discernible in the gloom. Two bodies, I realized, trapped by the explosion and the section of steel bulkhead that had crushed them.
“You sure?” Harding asked.
“Yeah, that’s him,” Mettler said, pointing at an arm pinned under t
he corpse of a seaman, his dungarees soaked with blood. “He cut his hand, and I recognize the bandage.” There was a wide, dirty bandage at the base of a thumb, which was the best bet for identifying the body. He was dressed in army fatigues with an uninflated life belt clinched around his waist. I could see he was wearing a pack, but his cracked skull distracted me from any further investigation. Suffice it to say, a combat helmet is no protection against an exploding steel wall falling on top of you.
Harding handed me the clipboard and reached down into the mess of blood, bone, brain and oil to break one of the dog tags from the stainless-steel chain. Standing up, he wiped it on his pants, leaving a smear of black and red.
“Captain Andrew Pritchett,” he read. “One down, nine to go.”
“Nine what, Colonel?” Kaz asked.
He didn’t answer. He stared down at the two dead men, their blood mingling with the oil and salt water. One ordinary seaman and one army captain important enough to have a SHAEF colonel confirm his terrible death. But they were equal partners in this endeavor now, neither one less important than the other, neither likely to be mourned more or less for their rank or standing. Death boils all things down to their essence. Not for the living, but certainly for those who lie on the ground or beneath the sea, indifferent to the struggles they have left behind.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
WE LEFT THE ruined, smoking LST behind as we followed Harding in his staff car a few miles up the coast. We were heading to the Paignton rail station, where he promised secrets would be revealed. All we knew was that a German E-boat had put a torpedo in LST 289 and killed a baker’s dozen of soldiers and sailors onboard, one of whom was important enough to make Harding fish around in a bloody soup to snag his dog tag.
