No Ordinary Killing

by No Ordinary Killing (retail) (epub)

  It was late afternoon, the place was empty. They ensconced themselves and ordered their drinks from a waiter evidently unprepared and not exactly grateful for the advent of custom. Finch opted for rooibos tea, she herself preferring Ceylon.

  A sudden and welcoming cool breeze blew, ruffling the dangling cotton fringe of their umbrella. Annie supposed she carried the smell of the camp with her. She could not tell. If she did, she hoped that the wind would do something to purge it.

  Captain Finch insisted that he would be paying the bill and that the least he could do was to treat her to a slice of cake. She politely declined. It didn’t seem right.

  The few words spoken were confined to polite chit-chat but the captain seemed to have something he wished to get off his chest. It came awkwardly.

  “Nurse Jones, I realise that this is probably not the assignment you had been anticipating,” he began, entering into something that sounded like a rehearsed speech.

  Is that what he had been writing in his notebook?

  “… and, as a consequence, have now become separated from your colleagues, but you come with the highest recommendation and we have much work to do. For both our sakes …”

  He hesitated, not quite at ease with the text.

  “… I think we can at least attempt some civil discourse.”

  The patronising bastard.

  “For example, where are you from?” he said, horribly forced.

  “Sydney.”

  “You were a nurse there?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where did you work?”

  “The Sydney Hospital.”

  She did not elaborate. He sighed in exasperation.

  “Did you like it there?”

  Did one ‘like’ a hospital?

  “It was well-run, clean, unlike—”

  “Caring for the wounded in wartime can be a shock. I’ve been here three months. It’s still not easy.”

  She stirred her tea, staring into the cup. Tea had become a ritual. Very British.

  “Not just the war wounded,” she said.

  “What we witnessed today is a tragedy,” he conceded.

  She reversed her decision and selected a slice of sponge gateau from the cake stand. It oozed strawberry jam and a thick white cream filling.

  “May I ask you something?” she said.

  “Nurse Jones, I do not wish to press the point. But the correct way to address me would be to employ the occasional ‘Sir’ … ‘Captain’ … either’s fine. ‘Doctor’ if you really must—”

  “That native, this morning,” she carried on, “the one accompanying the two white females …”

  He nodded.

  “What was that all about?”

  “Lord knows.”

  “What was that he threw to you?”

  “From the mines, I think. Some kind of breathing apparatus … But the mother and child will be taken care of. Poor blighters.”

  “They’re all poor blighters.”

  He removed a silver cigarette case from his inside breast pocket. She noted some improvised needlework down one side of his tunic, under the armpit. The thread was green but did not match.

  “Smoke?” he offered.

  “Not really.”

  “You mind if I do?”

  She shook her head. He tapped out a cigarette, lit it and exhaled skyward.

  “And which is why we need to keep on top of things, Jones …”

  The breeze wafted the smoke away behind him.

  “… Reverend Newbold … Dean Newbold is correct. This is just the start. As the war pushes northwards, there’ll be plenty more lost souls like that mother and daughter we saw today. The army can’t allow that to happen.”

  She didn’t like the implication. Camps full of dying blacks seemed inevitable. The army’s real objective was to stop such a fate befalling displaced whites.

  “The papers, they’d have a field day, you understand.”

  He went on to tell her a little bit about himself but she demonstrated little interest. When he probed her for further background information, she kept it curt, sleepwalking through the main points of her recent experiences, avoiding any mention of her civilian life.

  She had spent four weeks in the Cape Town Military Hospital, she said. What they had witnessed there had upset her – all of them – but the nurses had done their duty.

  “Cape Town is a beautiful city.”

  What a pointless thing to say.

  “Did you get to see any of it?”

  “We had little time off. When we did, we were heavily chaperoned.”

  Had it jogged his memory?

  “Not surprised,” he replied. “By day, Cape Town’s a treasure. I long to return and explore it at my leisure, some day, when this nonsense is over …”

  He paused. The war? Nonsense? An unwitting but probably truthful summation.

  “But you’ve got to be careful. And by night … men, drink …”

  She reflected for a moment of her cloistered existence these past few weeks. She yearned for a time where life would not be straight-jacketed.

  “Most of our excursions were confined to all-female tea parties up at the mansion,” she explained.

  “The mansion?”

  “The benefactor of the nurses’ home.”

  He seemed lost in thought again. Was he forming a mental picture?

  “Sir Frederick Hancock,” she added.

  He smiled in recognition. He exhaled a silent chuckle.

  “Rather you than me.”

  Rare candour, humour. Was he human after all?

  She suppressed an impulse to laugh in return.

  “On the odd Sunday afternoon that enough of us were available, he and Lady Verity would invite us over. They have this beautiful house—”

  “Wait, wait … Lady Verity …?”

  “Yes.”

  “Lady Verity Hancock?”

  “Yes.”

  Lady Verity Hancock!

  He seemed excited. She couldn’t understand why.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Lady Verity Hancock. But of course!

  As a benefactor of the nursing home, knew Finch, there would have been ample opportunity for Cox to have run into her … back before the war, when the RAMC was still a work in progress – lots of Cape Town functions, receptions and hobnobbing with the politicos.

  Cox, you sly fox.

  But oh, Cox, what had you got yourself into? Finch could picture the scene – the lonely-heart wife, the stuffed-shirt husband. But the cuckold in question was no poor civil servant. He was Sir Frederick Hancock, personal envoy to the Marquess of Lansdowne, Secretary of State for War, architect of British foreign policy in South Africa.

  No wonder Lady Verity was paranoid. No wonder Cox was being warned off.

  Public knowledge of their affair would have been scandalous – a humiliation for Sir Frederick and social suicide for Lady Verity. But, politically, it would have been crippling, coming at a critical juncture of Britain’s involvement in the Cape.

  And it would also …

  Finch had a sudden sharp realisation.

  … make those letters a valuable political weapon, a means of blackmail.

  Was that why Ans Du Plessis’s guest house had been ransacked? Was that why his own hotel room had been burgled, his tunic sliced open?

  Inspector Brookman was suddenly very present in Finch’s mind. He would have to pass this information on to him right away.

  Nurse Jones was staring at him.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s just that I know the woman, of sorts … Lady Verity Hancock.”

  “You do?”

  “I was just surprised and delighted to hear that she had taken such a personal interest in the doings of the nurses,” he improvised. “All most benefactors want is their name on a plaque.”

  “She was nice,” she added.

  But telling Brookman. How to do so? His possession of the letters would amount to withholding evidenc
e, especially now the ‘other woman’, as it were, was proven to be someone other than Vesta Lane. Even if Du Plessis took the blame with regard to holding them back, there was no denying that Finch had also sat on them, read them …

  What if he bent the truth a little?

  The cogs whirred … Yes … Ans Du Plessis had only found them belatedly, that was they had agreed. She had given them to him yesterday to post to Cox’s widow alongside his other possessions. He had, after all, been charged with that responsibility.

  Yes, yes … He was about to include the letters in the parcel to India but – gentleman to gentleman, Brookman – had grown suspicious of their nature and decided to have a peek to avoid further upset for the wife. He was in a hurry, boarding a train, and had no chance to return them. He was doing so at the first opportunity. And now it was an emergency. They had been stolen.

  He pulled out his notebook, uncapped his pen and made notes. He must rehearse his lie.

  He looked up. Nurse Jones was growing bored and was quite happy to show it. She had drunk her tea, demolished her cake, and had since leaned over to retrieve a discarded Cape Argus from the next table.

  Communicating the information to Brookman would not be easy. It was sensitive material. He could not risk writing it openly in a telegram. In any case, it required too long an explanation. He could get it tapped out in a private Morse message, but again it wasn’t secure.

  He would have to write a letter. Tonight, on the train, he would put it down on paper. When they stopped at Beaufort West or De Aar he could get it to Brookman via the army mailbag. If not possible there, then at the terminus at Hopetown. Chances are the letter would reach Brookman tomorrow or the day after.

  Nurse Jones was examining the front page with its headline:

  ‘ROBERTS AND KITCHENER TAKE CHARGE’

  The paper, like just about everyone, was cheerleading the army’s new leadership.

  Sending a letter still seemed slow. If he’d been in Cape Town, he’d have hobbled round to the station right there and then. He could seek out the local police station here in Paarl but it would take a while to run through the backstory to some local bobby and, even then, much of the information was still privileged.

  If only to …

  As he glanced down at Jones’ newspaper, his blood ran cold. For the first time since that moment when the coroner’s sheet had been pulled back to reveal the dead white face of Cox, he felt truly shocked. He could taste a sudden rise of vomit.

  “You all right?”

  No, he was far from all right. His head spun. For there, over Jones’ shoulder, at the bottom right hand side of the front page, in a neat box, ran a minor headline:

  ‘Suspect in RAMC murder enquiry found dead’

  He snatched the paper right out of her hands.

  “Hey!”

  But there it was, in black and white … Mr. Ashley Kilfoyle of Hout Bay, formerly of Portadown, Ireland, recently charged with the murder of Major Leonard Cox, had been found dead in his Cape Town jail cell. The means of his death were not disclosed.

  “Don’t move,” he told her.

  Armed with the newspaper, Finch hastened towards the post office building across the road, over on the same side as the station. He hobbled in through the door. It had a tiled floor and a high ceiling, overly grand. It was cool, quiet, virtually empty.

  There was a middle-aged woman in a straw hat being served at one of the positions along the long counter, but the rest were free. She had two Pekinese dogs flitting around her skirts. They yapped at him.

  The smell. He must smell.

  A plain-looking female assistant, early 20s, looked up. She had a strange cast to her eye – an outward squint, giving the impression that she was looking at someone over his shoulder. He turned. There was no one there.

  “Can I help you, sir?” she said.

  He decided to pick one eye and stick with it.

  “Please, I need to use your telephone.”

  “Our telephone?”

  “You have one for public use?”

  “I’m afraid it’s by appointment. Do you have—?”

  “It’s rather urgent.”

  The look on his face, he was sure, had done the trick. She pointed to a side room.

  “Shilling deposit, thruppence per minute once you have been connected.”

  “I’m afraid I’ve never used one before.”

  “A telephone?”

  “No.”

  “If you could just wait there, sir.”

  She placed a wooden ‘Closed’ marker at her position and ducked under a hinged flap.

  “Please, follow me.”

  Inside, the candlestick telephone stood on a desk with a worn wooden chair before it.

  “You have the number … the exchange?”

  He didn’t. There was a notepad on the desk and a pen on a chain. He dipped it in the inkwell and scrawled, “Detective Inspector Brookman, Cape Town Police.”

  He reached into his pocket for a shilling but she was suddenly in a hurry, fumbling for a handkerchief. She then cranked a handle on the stand, unhooked the receiver and tapped the lever beneath it.

  “Cape Town … Police Station if you please.”

  He could hear the crackle of a voice on the other end. The woman looked up at him.

  “Wale Street?” she asked.

  Finch nodded.

  “Would you kindly connect me. Thank you.”

  He could hear electronic squeaks and pips. It took another half-a-minute during which the poor woman pretended to stem a running nose.

  There was a response. The woman adopted a more formal tone.

  “Good afternoon. I’m placing a call from the General Post Office in Paarl. I have a gentlemen here who would like to speak to …”

  She read from the note.

  “Detective Inspector—”

  “Brookman,” prompted Finch.

  “Brookman.”

  She passed the receiver.

  “Listen here … Speak here … Allow a second or two to avoid overlap. Bit of a delay.”

  She hustled to the iron-framed window, took a wooden pole with a hook and reached up to pull open the hopper.

  “And when you’ve finished, please hang up the receiver.”

  She scurried out.

  Finch pressed the receiver to his ear. There was the crackle of static, then a voice.

  “Hello? … Hello?”

  Amazing. A voice from 40 miles away.

  “Inspector Brookman?”

  It took a moment for a reply.

  “This is Desk Sergeant Norris.”

  Disappointment. Finch found himself talking slowly and unnecessarily loudly.

  “Sergeant Norris. This is Captain Finch of the RAMC. We met the other day. I had been assisting Inspector Brookman with the Cox murder enquiry. It is with the greatest urgency that I need to speak to him.”

  There was no reply. He began to reiterate when the sergeant’s voice came back. He missed the answer.

  “I’m sorry, could you repeat—”

  “The inspector’s not here, sir. Won’t be back for some time.”

  Finch cast a glance at the newspaper.

  “Kilfoyle … What on earth happened?”

  There was a pause.

  “I’m not at liberty to say, sir.”

  Damn.

  “The inspector. Can I leave him a message?”

  “Of course, sir.”

  “Tell him I have information which may be of vital importance to the enquiry.”

  “Very good, sir, but I think you’ll find it’s an open-and-shut case now.”

  “Sergeant. You must pass this message on.”

  “How do we reach you, sir?”

  “I’m in transit. You can leave a message for my unit at the Hopetown telegraph. But, I stress, it is most urgent.”

  “Right you are, sir.”

  “Thank you. Goodbye.”

  ”Goodbye, sir.”

  Finch sat
for a moment. He wondered whether he should try and contact Rideau, for he too had had suspicions. He would surely pass the information to Brookman on his behalf.

  But then the shock became something else – a chill supposition that his own delay in passing on the letters could somehow have expedited Kilfoyle’s death, whether it be at the man’s own hand or that of others.

  A female voice interrupted him.

  “Hello?”

  It was the telephone.

  “This is the operator.”

  “Hello.”

  “Would you kindly replace the receiver.”

  He hung up.

  He paid the woman at the counter, who had for the olfactory comfort of her customers opened several other windows and already totted up the bill, then limped outside. As he crossed the road, he saw that Jones had procured herself a second pot of tea. She did not look in the best of humour; less so when he performed an about-face in the middle of the street.

  Finch made his way into the train station and checked the departure board, then Cox’s watch. Their train, the 6.15, was due in about 20 minutes’ time. There were already troops assembling. But there was also a later one leaving at ten minutes past eleven. Their orders were to report at Hopetown by noon tomorrow. Catch it and they’d still arrive on time.

  There was one other thing he could do …

  Finch hurried as best he could back to the tea shop.

  “Nurse Jones?”

  “What?”

  “I’m afraid this may sound a little unorthodox …”

  She did not appear enthused.

  “Lady Verity Hancock.”

  “What about her?”

  “The mansion. It’s in Stellenbosch, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you remember where? Would you recognise it?”

  “Recognise it?”

  “The building.”

  “I think so.”

  Finch laid down some coins to cover the tea and cake. The waiter rummaged in his apron for change but Finch told him to keep it.

  “Tell me, how far is Stellenbosch from here?”

  The waiter shrugged.

  “I don’t know… 15, 20 miles?”

  Finch stepped into the street. There were taxis idling in the sun. He put thumb and forefinger to stretch his lips and gave a shrill whistle. One of the buggies sprang into life. It trotted over. The Coloured cabbie looked down.–