Murder on the Titanic

by Evelyn Weiss

again.” She shouts back to Seydlitz. “Get into the back of the ambulance. Your weight there might tip the balance, help us pull out of the crater. It’s worth trying. Hurry.”

  The engine is still running. I start to let the clutch out again, and as I do I see movement all along the horizon, like ants scattering. The Canadian troops are abandoning their trenches in a desperate effort to escape the torture of the gas. And I also see, among them, other figures. Dark uniforms: strange, heavy helmets. Their faces are masked in white, but with black circles for eyes. For all the world they look like an army of skeletons rising from the earth.

  I let the clutch out a little further, feel the bite of the transmission.

  Crash! The windscreen shatters in my face, glass flying into my eyes. What’s happening now?

  I open my eyes again, and I realise I can still see. I can feel fragments of glass sticking here and there into my face. I see a blur of blood colouring my vision, in the corner of one eye.

  “Frocester! We’re being shot at!!!”

  I see Dr Bernard’s face at the side window of the cab. “Try once more, for God’s sake, Frocester.”

  “How about reverse?”

  “Yes, yes. Anything.”

  So this time I try the reverse gear. I lift my foot very, very slowly off the clutch pedal. And then my ears explode, with the sound of another rifle shot.

  I see Dr Bernard’s face again at the window of the cab. But this time, she’s standing a couple of feet back from the ambulance, and I see her shoulders, her arms. The whole lower left arm is drenched in red.

  I must concentrate: clutch pedal. But I look up, and I see an extraordinary, utterly unexpected sight. I see, in the field to the right of us, two British Army uniforms: two soldiers, crouched maybe fifty yards from us. I realise that I recognise the face of one: Corporal Tasker. I can’t see the other one. Both have their rifles out and pointing at us.

  “Dr Bernard! Get back into the back of the ambulance. They’re shooting at us. British soldiers are shooting at us.”

  Then I hear the crack of a third shot.

  “Oh God! Oh God, Frocester!”

  I let the clutch pedal out fully, and I feel the gears biting, the movement of the ambulance – backwards. The front wheel is out of the crater, and we’re moving backwards, away from the gas and the advancing Germans.

  I can hear Dr Bernard opening the door at the back of the ambulance so that she can see where we are going, as we start to trundle backwards.

  “Left a bit, Frocester!”

  “Your left? Or my left?”

  “My left.” I’ve never driven, and steering a vehicle backwards feels weird, counter-intuitive. I need clear instructions. But at the same time I glance across into the field, at Tasker and the other soldier: we’re moving fast now, and they are just tiny khaki dots against the brown expanse of the field. It’s harder to hit a moving target, I think. I concentrate on processing the instructions from Dr Bernard, turning the steering wheel to the left, then to the right, then to the left again as we back along the twisting lane. No more shots have been fired. But as I turn the wheel again, I sense my tongue pushing against the roof of my mouth, involuntarily. An utterly strange, metallic, taste, and I feel a choking sensation in my throat.

  Keep going. My hands grip the wheel, and I attend to Dr Bernard’s shouts. “Left! A bit more, left! Now right!” My eyes smart, blink, then I shut them as I feel a hot, jabbing sensation in my eyeballs. I blink, I look behind us again, and I see a dim greenish mist creeping along the ground, skeins and tendrils wrapping around the stones and clumps of earth.

  “Right a little!” I listen for instructions, move the wheel. I might as well keep my eyes shut, I think. All I can do is grip the wheel, hold my breath, and listen to Dr Bernard’s instructions. We’re still moving, still reversing down the lane, and I just keep listening and steering, listening and steering. There’s a massive jolt: if we’ve hit a crater, we’re finished. But no, we carry on moving. I’m still holding my breath: can I inhale yet? I try to half-open my eyes to look, but the stinging is like fire, my sight is blurred with fluid, and I daren’t open them further. I hold my mouth shut as long as I can, but now I have to take a breath. This time it’s like a flame searing the inside of my mouth and nose: the pain explodes inside my head and I shake like a leaf. But I must keep gripping the wheel.

  “Right! Now left, left!”

  White-hot pain: never, ever did I imagine anything could feel as bad as this. I just must keep control of my arms, that’s all that matters. Right, now left, left. I feel my whole head and chest are incandescent, but I hold that one thing: keep control of my hands, my grip on the steering wheel, and I process Dr Bernard’s instructions. “Left”. Another bump in the road, and yet another, a bigger one, and I think this must be the end, this is the end of me, Agnes Frocester. Eyes shut, blind, nothing but black agony. An image appears among the pain: my Mama and Papa, getting the news that I’m dead, gassed to death, a horror they will live with for the rest of their lives. But I keep my grip on the wheel, I hear “Keep straight now!” and we’re moving faster. It must be a straighter stretch of road. I can’t look, I can’t see anything, I keep listening. But now I have to take another breath, and thank God in Heaven, it’s slightly easier. I breathe again, more deeply, and keep listening for Dr Bernard’s instructions. And now I can hear other voices, Canadian accents again.

  “Nurse! Nurse! You there, driving the van! Stop, stop. We’ll help you.”

  I still can’t open my eyes, but I think: whoever is speaking to me, they can see, they can use their eyes. I want to carry on driving, carry on moving to escape the gas, but I bring the ambulance to a halt.

  “Thanks, Nurse. We’re escaping the gas.”

  “I can’t see you.”

  “Yes you can. Open your eyes.”

  I blink: the stinging in my eyeballs is still fierce, but yes, I can make out the shapes of men, three of them, standing around the ambulance. I blink again, and I see Dr Bernard.

  “Miss Frocester. These soldiers will help us turn the ambulance around. One of them can drive it. So, we can all drive back to Ypres, if we can find the way. The gas is still moving this way. There’s less of it, now, but we need to get back to Ypres. Because we are in the middle of a full-scale retreat.”

  I start coughing and spluttering. “Miss Frocester, take my hand, step down from the cab. I’m afraid I have some more bad news.”

  Everything suddenly seems strangely calm: there’s a silence, and Dr Bernard leads me past the soldiers to the back door of the ambulance. I can hear Dr Bernard speaking.

  “Those British soldiers back there…”

  “Yes, Dr Bernard. They were shooting at us.”

  “I know. Now look.”

  I blink again, and I see blood, the red shadow all down Dr Bernard’s arm. Even now I don’t understand what has happened, but with her other arm, Dr Bernard is pointing at the door, and my gaze follows her fingers. Through the stinging in my eyes, I can see into the interior of the ambulance. Everywhere – sides, floor, ceiling, is splattered with red, crimson drops: they are scattered evenly, almost deliberately, like a polka-dot pattern. The pattern radiates from a single point, and I gaze at a blackened hole, the size of a bullet, in the forehead of the fair, freckled face of Walther Seydlitz.