‘The thing is,’ said Rackham, climbing into the back seat and taking a cigarette, ‘how much can she be trusted? Not factually, I mean, but in her impressions of their characters. Jack? You knew Boscombe. How did her account add up?’
‘Fairly well,’ said Haldean, blowing out a mouthful of smoke.
‘What I’d like to know,’ said Ashley, speaking over the noise of the traffic, ‘is how Boscombe got hold of Miss Rivers’ necklace.’
‘Yes . . .’ Haldean pulled the collar-stud box out of his pocket and opened it. ‘It’s certainly Belle’s, all right. It’s a unique design.’
‘You’re sure of that?’ asked Rackham.
Haldean smiled. ‘I designed it.’
‘Did you, by Jove?’ Rackham leaned over and took the box. The pendant was a delicate twist of gold wire shaped like an elongated star with tiny emeralds for its points. ‘You did a nice job, Jack. It’s a lovely thing.’ He passed the box back.
‘Thanks. I’ve got a friend who’s a jeweller. He made it for me. It’s not terrifically valuable, but Isabelle will be glad to have it back.’
‘Not only that, but I’d say it answers one question, at least,’ said Rackham. ‘There’s no doubt about where those two got their money from. Horses, indeed! I don’t care if Morton did have a name as a gambler, I’d say robbery was much more likely, wouldn’t you, Superintendent?’
‘It looks that way,’ agreed Ashley.
‘But . . .’ began Haldean impatiently, then shook his head. ‘You might be right. In fact, in one way you’ve more or less got to be right. He could have pinched this pendant at the Ritz, I suppose, or at the Savoy or any of the other places Isabelle can be found when she’s in London. We know from Miss Sheldon that Boscombe liked the high life.’
‘But you’re not happy,’ stated Ashley.
Haldean wriggled in irritation. ‘Not completely. Never mind. Scrub it for now. Can I give Belle her pendant back, Ashley? She’d be very grateful. She wants to wear it at Mrs Verrity’s Red Cross ball. I know it’s evidence and all that, but I’ll give you a receipt and promise that she’ll produce it as and when necessary.’
‘I can’t see why not,’ said Ashley after a moment’s thought. ‘It is Miss Rivers’ property, after all, and it should be restored to its rightful owner. But this idea of Boscombo and Morton being thieves, Inspector. Have you got any more unsolved thefts on file at the Yard?’
‘There are always a few hotel thefts we can’t nail down,’ said Rackham. ‘I can’t think of anything particularly out of the way, but it’s a common enough occurrence. Having said that, your cousin didn’t realize the necklace was stolen, did she, Jack?’
‘She thought she’d mislaid it.’
‘I wonder if anyone else has mislaid anything? It’s your case, Superintendent, but it’d be worth asking the people who knew them.’
‘That’s a very good suggestion,’ agreed Ashley. He opened one of the address books he’d taken from the flat and flicked through it. ‘This is Boscombe’s. Quentin Manderton? He lives in Chelsea. That’s not far from here. Shall we go and see what he has to say?’
‘Quentin Manderton?’ repeated Haldean with a groan. ‘Yes, all right. If we must.’ He started the engine and slipped in the clutch. ‘I’ve run across him a couple of times. He’s a great poet, according to his own estimation, and exactly the sort of person who would be friends with Boscombe. He talks more undiluted eyewash than anyone else in London.’
Undiluted eyewash, thought Ashley, sourly. Yes, that just about summed it up. Quentin Manderton had flung open the door to them. He was giving, he said, a poetry reading and ushered them into a room crowded almost to bursting point with people. Inspector Rackham told Quentin Manderton they were policemen. Manderton roared with laughter, pulled a supposedly funny face, sang ‘A policeman’s lot is not a happy one,’ and immediately started a conversation about unsubstantial realities with a young man in an orange waistcoat. No one asked their names. No one questioned their right to be there. Haldean, who seemed to know at least half the people in the room, was greeted enthusiastically by a young man in a brilliant purple tie who then completely ignored him. The only time everyone was quiet was when Quentin Manderton, announcing himself by banging on a tin tray, read his poems. And the best you could say about them, thought Ashley, was that they were short. Incomprehensible but short. The fumes from a gas ring over which an earnest young woman in khaki trousers was frying bacon and onions made his eyes sting. Everyone seemed to be talking at once and no one, as far as Ashley could see, was listening.
‘But darling,’ shouted a shingle-haired woman who had cornered Haldean, ‘surely what you must try to achieve is a single integrated abstraction.’ She might have been quite pretty, thought Ashley disapprovingly, if she hadn’t been dressed entirely in black, including black lipstick and eye-shadow, and wearing a monocle. She waved away a cloud of cigarette smoke and shouted to where a piano was being tortured in the corner by a thin man with bad teeth and a beard which looked as if it had suffered from moths. ‘Viktorovich, that’s wonderful. So loud. True poetry,’ she continued, turning back to Haldean, ‘is a single perfect note.’
‘Why stick to notes?’ shouted Haldean who, Ashley gloomily observed, seemed to be thoroughly enjoying himself. ‘Surely music is a discarded metaphor. The music of the spheres? Nonsense. We need to reach beyond the perceptions of human sense, probe into the pure uplands of clarified reality. Real poetry touches the immaterial.’
‘Capitalist propaganda,’ grunted the piano player, rising after a few final thumps. ‘What is the immaterial?’
‘What indeed?’ agreed Haldean.
‘Poetry. Bah! Pretty words fit only for children. The only thing which matters is to create change.’
‘Flux,’ nodded Haldean.
‘Does it support the ideology of power or is it the stinking rags of the bourgeoisie? That is the only criterion I will admit.’
‘Boscombe,’ muttered Ashley, his mouth close to Haldean’s ear.
‘Boscombe,’ said Haldean smoothly. ‘Did he support the ideology of power?’
‘Boscombe,’ repeated Quentin Manderton. He had read four poems to great applause and was now refreshing himself with tea taken from a steaming samovar. ‘Jerry Boscombe? Boscombe was a realist.’
‘Boscombe was a bourgeois,’ grunted Viktorovich.
‘Boscombe was a creep,’ said the monocled girl, descending to personalities with a bump. ‘He really was, darling. You know how he hounded poor Richenda and he was terribly mean. And he was always out for what he could get. He’d take anything offered and never give anything back. He lived at Hilda’s expense for months, and dropped her like a hot coal when he’d had enough.’
‘Good parties, though,’ put in Manderton. ‘You went, didn’t you, Haldean?’
‘No,’ yelled back Haldean over the noise. ‘What were they like?’
‘Liquid.’
‘He only wanted to impress us,’ said the monocled girl, who seemed to have a streak of realism of her own. ‘Show off, you know? Darling!’ she shouted to a fair-haired man in a seaman’s jersey who had just come into the room. ‘You’ve brought your Norwegian violin. How wonderful!’ She clutched at Haldean’s arm. ‘You must listen to Ansgar.’
‘And I shall play,’ added Viktorovich.
Much to Ashley’s relief, they didn’t stay for the concert.
Seated in the blessedly quiet saloon bar of the Heroes of Waterloo, Ashley took a deep draught of Bass. ‘Ah,’ he said, and meant it. ‘All artists,’ he said, with deep profundity, ‘are puggled.’
‘Puggled?’ asked Rackham, putting down his mild-and-bitter.
‘Loopy,’ translated Haldean. ‘Half-baked. Nuts.’
‘Too right. God help us, we’ve seen enough to judge. That Russian bloke and his ruddy piano shouting “Capitalists!” at everyone was bad enough and I tell you, I didn’t know where to look when we were at Rupert Lister’s.’
‘The artist’
s model?’ suggested Haldean with a grin.
Rackham nodded vigorously. ‘Say what you like, but I can’t concentrate in a room with a completely naked young woman stretched out on a sofa. And did you see his picture? All green blotches and nothing like the right shape. You seemed to get on all right,’ he added in reproof. ‘All that stuff about mechanical forms and multiple viewpoints and overlapping planes and so on. I’ve never heard you carry on like that before. You took the whole thing in your stride.’
Haldean grinned. ‘I rather like the opportunity to talk total nonsense from time to time. I enjoyed myself, apart from running into that bloke Ditteridge. You know, the neo-vorticist novelist. He really does hate my guts. I write commercial stuff, you see, and he has a soul way above money. It’s not all nonsense, though, Bill. Most of those people are capable of really good work and all the hot air they talk is simply the atmosphere they need to survive.’
‘It’s not atmosphere but gas, if you ask me,’ said Ashley. He looked at the clock on the wall. ‘D’you know, it’s still early. I feel as if I’ve been locked up in a lunatic asylum for a year. To get back to business, the general view of Boscombe seemed to be that he was a bit of a phoney, wouldn’t you say? He didn’t seem to be well liked. Having said that, no one seemed to think he’d stolen anything. Mind you, how they’d know is a question.’
‘He had a “bourgeois attitude” towards money,’ added Rackham.
Haldean finished his beer. ‘Definitely more blessed to receive than to give. Yes, that was the impression I got, too. Look, Ashley, are you keen to get back home right away? I’ve got a yen to visit the War Office, but I’ll be there until at least seven o’clock, I imagine.’
‘That suits me,’ said Ashley. ‘I can always take the train if you’d rather.’
‘No, don’t do that. We’ll run back together, but I do want to go to the War Office. I’ll take Boscombe’s book with me, if you don’t mind.’
‘Help yourself. I wouldn’t mind an hour or two to myself. My wife would appreciate something from London and my daughter’s got a birthday coming up. What d’you want the War Office for?’
‘I want to check Boscombe’s book against the official facts.’ He pocketed his pipe and tobacco pouch and stood up. ‘Nice to see you again, Bill. Ashley, will you meet me outside the War Office at about seven o’clock? That should give me plenty of time.’
Haldean, his spirits sobered by the mahogany-rich fastness of the War Office, smiled with both pleasure and relief as he was ushered in to see Brigadier Romer-Stuart.
He had known the Brigadier, who, despite his rank, was in his early thirties, since the nervous days of the spring of 1918 when Haldean had flown him above the lines. Since then there had been the matter of the mess bill, a scandal which Haldean had quietly defused, and more than a few reminiscent, slanderous and enjoyably long-winded dinners at the Young Services club. Apart from anything else, it was, after the earlier part of the afternoon, a pleasure to talk in coherent sentences without shouting.
His smile of pleasure was returned. ‘Jack!’ said Romer-Stuart, getting to his feet. ‘I had no idea you were in Town. I thought you were down at your aunt’s place for the month. How about a bite to eat this evening? Take a pew, won’t you?’
Haldean pulled out a chair and put Boscombe’s manuscript on the desk. ‘I am at Hesperus, Bingo old man, if you see what I mean, so dinner’s off, I’m afraid. I’m only up for the day. I’ve managed to get involved with a bit of nasty business down in Sussex. A bloke called Boscombe got killed at the village fête.’
Romer-Stuart pursed his lips in a whistle. ‘I say, is that this fortune teller’s tent murder the papers are full of?’
‘That’s the one. There’s been another murder as well, in the same village. A chap called Reggie Morton. I’ve managed to horn in on it, but I could do with some help.’ Brigadier Romer-Stuart looked a polite, if puzzled, enquiry. ‘I want to look up some army records,’ continued Haldean. ‘I don’t know if I’m on the right lines or not, Bingo, but I’d like to see the official account of an incident on the Somme in 1916.’
‘I hope you can be more specific than that. There was quite a bit happening about that time on the Somme.’
Haldean smiled. ‘It’s the Augier Ridge tunnel business. August the 23rd, 1916.’
‘Wasn’t there a VC awarded for that?’
‘Yes, to a Colonel Richard Whitfield.’
‘Well, you can have a look at the history and welcome, and anything else you need. The Regimental War Diaries will be helpful, I imagine. Augier Ridge . . . Augier Ridge . . . I seem to remember there was something shady about it.’
‘I believe so,’ said Haldean. He leaned forward and tapped Boscombe’s book. ‘This is an eyewitness account written by a bloke who was caught up in it all.’
‘Who is he?’
Haldean grinned. ‘This is where it gets interesting. He’s none other than Jeremy Boscombe.’
‘The chap who was murdered?’
‘Ker-rect.’
Romer-Stuart whistled once more. ‘Bit morbid, don’t you think? The voice of the dead and all that. What on earth d’you need to read it for?’
Haldean shrugged. ‘Information. Insight. I dunno. I’ve got the idea that Boscombe was done in because of something that happened in the war. I might be chasing rainbows but on the other hand I might be right. I won’t know until I’ve actually looked at the thing. I’ve read Boscombe’s account before. It’s well done and very lively for a memoir. You know, conversation and thumbnail sketches of his fellow officers, that sort of thing. And, as you said, there’s something shady going on. As I recall, though, it’s rather impressionistic and I’d like to check it against the authorized version.’
‘Well, impressionistic is one fault the official history doesn’t have.’ The Brigadier walked to the outer office and looked at the Corporal sitting at the desk. ‘Baxter.’
‘Sir?’
‘Give Major Haldean all the help he needs.’ He turned back to Haldean. ‘There’s a spare office down the hall. You can work there if you like. Corporal Baxter will see to anything you need.’
Haldean followed Corporal Baxter down the hall and into the sparsely furnished office.
‘You wanted the official history, sir?’ asked Baxter as he showed him into the room.
‘Yes, please. I’ll probably need some other stuff too, but I’ll let you know what later on.’
‘Very good, sir.’
Haldean settled himself at the desk and opened Boscombe’s book. ‘Now then,’ he muttered to himself as Baxter’s footsteps echoed down the hall. ‘Let’s see if I’ve remembered this right, Boscombe, old pal. Because if I have, shady would be a very good description.’ He flicked through the manuscript, found the section he wanted and started to read.
Chapter Five
Pro Patria Mori or Saving Civilization
A Memoir by Jeremy Boscombe
Chapter Three
The events of 23rd August 1916. The Somme.
It’s surprising what passions can still be stirred by the Augier Ridge affair. I’d like to say that I suspected Martin Tyburn from the first; but I didn’t. The only consolation is that nobody else did, either. He was simply the Major, a breed apart from a mere New Army subaltern, who was, as had been frequently pointed out, still wet behind the ears. Of the hero of the affair I can tell you even less. He certainly rescued me (and in the process gave me the worst fright of my life) and, when it was all over, deigned to be treated in the same hospital which had burdened itself with my care, but if anyone wants an insight into the hero’s private life they’ll have to look elsewhere. I can’t write a panegyric about Richard Whitfield VC, because all The Hero did that I can personally testify to was scare me witless. But heroes are like that. I’ve met a few and they’re damned uncomfortable people to be around. They suggest Death or Glory as the only two choices and the third option of keeping your head down never seems to occur to them. Mind you, I wish I�
�d never suggested the Augier Ridge tunnels to the Major . . .
I’ve already given my account of the scheme to rid Great Britain of its surplus youth that commonly goes under the title of the Battle of the Somme. With a thoughtfulness that can scarcely be credited, the Top Brass realized that even we couldn’t be expected to stand it indefinitely. So it was four days in the front line, four days in support and four days at rest. And as, unlike us, the Top Brass had no days actually at the front, there didn’t seem to be any reason why the arrangement shouldn’t carry on for ever. If the Germans ran out of young men before we did, our side would declare the battle to be a roaring success.
My particular part in the war to end all wars was the taking of the Augier Ridge. Every day we’d set out across the pock-marked strip of land to the charred and blasted trees that marked the gentle slope of the ridge; and every evening we’d count up those who were left after the Germans had raked us with machine-gun fire. It was a simple game that even a general could understand, but I’d had enough of it.
I mention this to explain my enthusiasm for the tunnels. After trying to go up the ridge, the idea of going under it seemed to have a lot in its favour. So when Sergeant Jesson pointed out the entrance, I was distinctly interested.
We were quartered in a shelled farmhouse and in the course of clearing out the stables the hole came to light.
‘It’s a hole, sir,’ said Jesson, helpfully, standing by the remains of the trap-door.
I looked at him wearily. ‘I can see it’s a hole, Sergeant. The point is, what’s it doing here?’
The face Sergeant Jesson turned to me was a masterpiece of resigned and dumb indifference. Holes as holes weren’t covered by King’s Regulations. And really, if the French wanted to riddle their landscape with mysterious holes in addition to the millions of craters caused by three armies daily bestowing each other with thousands of tons of high explosive, then that, strictly speaking, was none of his business. He didn’t actually say that if I knew a better hole I should go to it, but the advice hung unspoken in the air.
A Fête Worse Than Death Page 8
