The Unquiet Grave

by David J Oldman

  ‘Oh, how?’

  I explained about the Graves Commission and the Paymaster General’s Office. ‘When he rang my office to make an appointment he said he was with the Provost Marshal.’

  ‘He rang you?’

  ‘My corporal. I didn’t speak to him myself. Then he rang back to cancel. Said he couldn’t make it and would call again.’

  ‘But hasn’t.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘How would he know who the families of the dead men are and where they live, if it’s not official?’

  ‘Not a clue. That’s why I thought he might be one of yours. Although I suppose if you’ve got the men’s names there are still ways of finding out. It’s what we often have to do.’

  ‘You have access to regimental files.’

  ‘As I said, that’s why I was wondering if it isn’t official. That Hendrix might have some sort of pedigree.’

  Gifford had taken out a notebook and jotted a few things down while we talked. He made another note and glanced up at me, eyebrows raised once more.

  ‘William Kearney? Irish?’

  ‘County Wicklow. A place called Ballydrum.’

  ‘The others?’

  ‘No, although it’s always possible Dabs might have been. He was a Barnado’s Boy so he could have come from anywhere.’

  I thought then that I should have mentioned an Irish connection at the outset. Nothing ever concentrates Special Branch’s mind more than an Irishman. They had been chasing Fenian tails ever since Cavendish and Burke had been murdered in Phoenix Park seventy years before.

  ‘What about Kearney’s family?’

  ‘Only a sister. Her name’s Rose. She came over to find out what had happened to him.’

  ‘You’ve talked to her, I take it?’

  ‘Yes, but not before Hendrix had. He told her he was arranging her brother’s back pay.’

  I told him then how Rose and her cousin had left their address owing rent. Only that it turned out he wasn’t her cousin. Gifford wanted to know about Patrick Cochrane then and I repeated what the letting agent had told me, that Rose and Cochrane had said they were husband and wife.

  Gifford rubbed his thumb and finger down the length of his nose as if I had finally said something to stimulate his olfactory sense.

  ‘And what do you think? Married or not?’

  ‘Unlikely,’ I said. ‘It was probably just a convenience to get the flat.’

  Gifford grunted, closed his notebook and slipped it back into his pocket.

  ‘I’ll ask around,’ he said, lips curling into the smallest of smiles. ‘For old time’s sake. I’ll get in touch with you. Don’t ring my office again.’

  He glanced down at his glass, assured himself it was empty, then stood up. We shook hands briefly and he left.

  I sat at the table with my untouched pint for a few minutes longer, aware that the only thing we hadn’t talked about was Maurice Coveney.

  *

  Instead of going home I walked back to Farringdon station and took the Piccadilly line to Hyde Park Corner. It was a fifteen minute walk to Julia’s house from there and passing Belgrave Square found several people sitting on benches under the trees, enjoying the evening.

  I hadn’t called ahead to warn Julia I was coming; I didn’t want to give her an excuse to be out. She might have been out anyway, of course; it was a Saturday night and before the war she had led a busy social life. She still did, I suppose, if her theatre party was any indication, but I didn’t have anything to lose. The alternative was to go back to my flat and look at the walls till it was time to go to bed.

  Expecting her not to be home, it came as a surprise when she answered door almost as soon as I rang the bell. She looked at me as if she was surprised, too, the expression soon replaced by one of mild irritation.

  ‘Harry,’ she said quite tonelessly. ‘What a lot we’re seeing of you recently.’

  The ‘we’ was the royal pronoun and didn’t announce the presence of anyone else. I deduced as much from the fact she had expected someone else when the doorbell rang. But Julia was too well-bred to conduct a conversation on the doorstep and she stepped aside to let me in. We went into the drawing room.

  ‘I’d offer you a drink but I’m expecting a friend any moment.’

  And I could see she was dressed for an evening out, even if there was something more restrained about her evening wear than I remembered from before the war. Perhaps it was the lack of jewellery. She wore none except for a pair of discreet earrings and a simple string of pearls. Ostentation had gone out of fashion in much the same way as Jew-baiting had.

  ‘I’ll only stay for a second,’ I assured her. ‘It’s just I was wondering how you happen to know Maurice Coveney.’

  For a second she seemed nonplussed. That disconcerted me as I’d rarely seen anything disturb the surface of Julia’s sangfroid.

  ‘Maurice? Why do you ask?’

  ‘I was just curious. The man he brought with him——’

  ‘The fellow in that jacket?’

  ‘His name’s Jekyll.’

  ‘I don’t recall.’

  ‘I happen to work for him.’

  She raised a plucked eyebrow. ‘Small world, isn’t it?’

  I waited for an answer to my original question but when it showed no sign of putting in an appearance went on:

  ‘I was wondering why Jekyll was here and who Coveney might be.’

  Julia reached for a cigarette from a box on the table and lit it with a lighter I remembered from when I lived there——a Dunhill gold-plated affair that looked like a petrol can and at a crime scene would have qualified as a blunt instrument. She blew a stream of smoke into the air above my head so as not to fog the few feet between us.

  ‘Maurice Coveney? Surely you’ve met before? His wife was a good friend of Helen.’

  ‘Penny’s mother?’

  ‘They were at boarding school together. Became friends. Helen used to holiday with Marie-Louise’s family. She was killed in an air raid four or five years ago.’

  ‘I heard that,’ I said.

  ‘Did you know she was coming back?’

  This time my sangfroid took a knock. For a second I thought she was still talking about Coveney’s dead wife and that perhaps Julia had taken up spiritualism.

  ‘You mean Helen?’

  ‘Of course I mean Helen. Reggie needs to see to his business interests.’

  As far as I was aware Penny’s father’s business interests before the war had consisted solely of having his name on the board of several large companies. I didn’t know he actually did anything.

  ‘When?’ I asked. ‘The transatlantic passenger service hasn’t started again yet. There’s the troopships, but even if they manage to get a berth they’re not going to find that very comfortable.’

  Julia waved her cigarette in the air, leaving a little trail of smoke like one of the new jet aircraft.

  ‘Oh I don’t think they’ve set a date yet. I’m sure Penny will let you know.’

  I sensed a certain vicarious pleasure evinced in Julia’s tone and assumed she was looking forward to the prospect of me meeting my in-laws again.

  Helen and Reggie Forster had scuttled off to America on the outbreak of war. They had wanted Penny to go with them——an invitation which although not specifically voiced had obviously not extended to me. Not that I would have considered it. I was ambivalent about Penny’s going, though. Although there was an air of rats leaving a sinking ship about it, since it was my wife’s safety being discussed I hadn’t let moral scruples get in the way of a decision. Not that it had been mine to make and not that Penny took up the offer. She said her place was with her husband and so, only a little reluctantly, I agreed with her. That was shortly before I joined up and, after training, was posted overseas.

  ‘They’re well, I suppose?’ was about all I could think to ask Julia.

  ‘Reggie has a heart condition. Nothing serious.’

  I resisted the obvious rejoin
der. But it was hardly surprising news. Reginald Forster had been flirting with a heart condition for years, eating and drinking too well and too often, his only exercise as far as I knew getting in and out of his chauffeur-driven car.

  Before the war he had toyed with the idea of standing for parliament. He had the money and the connections but as the political situation in Europe deteriorated he found himself on the wrong side of public opinion. He had been involved with the Anglo-German Fellowship, a pro-Nazi society that promoted closer ties with the Third Reich and had lobbied for a similar government here. The first time I met him he asked if I was related to an Ernest Tennant, some banker who was secretary of the Fellowship, and soon lost interest in me when I said I wasn’t. Similar societies had closed when the nature of Hitler’s regime became apparent, but the Anglo-German Fellowship soldiered on until 1939 when, I suppose, the allegiance of its membership began to come under scrutiny. In the end even Reggie resigned, issuing a statement, I recalled, about being “no longer able to tolerate Hitler’s anti-Semitic laws and the German government’s aggressive policies”.

  That had come as a surprise to me. In private he was forever ranting about the Jews and Hitler’s heroic stand against Jewry’s capitalist conspiracy. Somewhat rich, I had always thought, as most socialists would have looked upon Reginald Forster as an archetypical capitalist. I hadn’t been politically minded then, nor am much more now, but at least before the war one knew who one’s enemies were and it didn’t usually turn out to be some East End tailor or music hall comedian whose name happened to be Cohen or Bloom. But there are two sides to every coin and the one thing going for me as a son-in-law was that Reggie was able to tell his friends that at least I wasn’t Jewish. Having them back wasn’t going to be an unalloyed joy.

  The doorbell rang again and Julia stubbed her cigarette out, looking at me pointedly. I didn’t follow her down the hall. One man leaving as another man entered might seem too much like a shuttle service. So I waited until she brought her caller into the drawing room and, to my surprise, he turned out to be an American. He was forty-something, short greying hair and well-groomed in an expensively tailored suit. Good-looking, he conducted himself with that laconic ease many Americans possess. A birthright in the home of the brave and the land of the free, perhaps. My surprise was compounded when she introduced him.

  ‘Harry, this is Benjamin Tuchman.’

  He didn’t look Jewish but there was no escaping his name.

  ‘Harry is Penny’s husband,’ Julia told him, presumably so there could be no misunderstanding.

  ‘Ben,’ said Tuchman as he shook my hand and cast an eye over my uniform. ‘Still in, Harry?’

  ‘They’ll remember me sooner or later and let me go,’ I said. ‘I thought you lot had all gone home by now.’

  ‘I like it here,’ Tuchman said, giving Julia the benefit of a wide grin. ‘Besides, someone’s got to keep an eye on the boys we left in Germany.’

  ‘Last time I saw them,’ I told him, ‘they were doing all right by themselves.’

  We carried on in this style for a minute or two until I saw Julia getting restless and said I had to be leaving.

  Unlike her brother-in-law, I had never found Julia to be overtly anti-Semitic, although like all her class she couldn’t help the odd casual display of prejudice; that was bred in the bone and generally manifested itself through unthinking slights and rudeness. It was one of the things I first liked about Penny: that she didn’t seem to have inherited the attitude.

  I discovered this the first day I went to the house as a lowly police constable following a break-in. Jewellery had been taken. Penny and her parents were there and when an assessment of the value of the stolen items was required, Penny’s father told me I could get one from the Hatton Garden jeweller who had appraised the gems for insurance. The man happened to be Jewish and Reginald Forster made a pointed remark upon the fact——something along the lines of the jeweller’s race being untrustworthy and the possibility of his having fingered the house for the raid, no doubt hoping to buy the loot for less than he had valued it. Penny had protested at this only for her mother to tell her not to contradict her father. To her credit, Julia had supported Penny and said the idea was ludicrous; only spoiling her defence by adding that even though the jeweller was Jewish she had always found him to be honest.

  As she walked me to the door I was hoping for her own sake that Julia had learned to curb her comments in front of Tuchman. My first impression of him, however, was that if she had not, he would be quite prepared to tell her so.

  ‘He seems like a nice chap,’ I said as I opened the door.

  She glared at me, assuming sarcasm I suppose.

  ‘He is, Harry,’ and added, deliberately lowering her voice, ‘and I like him. So none of your wisecracks please.’

  ‘Wisecracks?’ I said with mock surprise. ‘Julia, you’re already learning the lingo.’

  But I didn’t count that as a wisecrack.

  14

  June 23rd

  Sunday morning I heard voices, looked outside my door and found Ida talking to Sam on the stairs. Whether he was on his way out or coming home I couldn’t say, although he wasn’t carrying a bag marked swag. He nodded to me cheerfully and carried on up to his flat. Coming home, I supposed. I suspected Stan had forgotten I’d asked him to tackle Ida about Hendrix so I asked if she could spare a moment.

  She was wearing a rather moth-eaten pullover on top of a faded flowery dress and when her face brightened it didn’t seem to matter. There was no longer much sign of the battering she had taken from her husband and, since I’d managed to find some tea, she sat at my kitchen table while I boiled the kettle. She was smiling in an innocent, girlish way that made me think she was probably young enough to be Stan’s daughter.

  ‘Settled in?’ I asked.

  ‘Thank you, Captain Tennant. It’s nice here.’

  I crossed Blackburn off my list of places to visit, set the pot to brew for a few minutes and put a loaf of bread on the table. Next to it I placed a jar of jam Penny had brought up from the country the first time she’d come to see me. Ida stared as if it were the Koh-I-Noor diamond. I got her a plate and cut her a slice of bread.

  ‘I’ve got some marge,’ I said, offering her the spread.

  She put a little margarine on the slice then carefully took only enough jam to bring a blush to its face.

  ‘Go on, take some more,’ I told her. ‘It’s damson. My wife brought it up from the country and I don’t really care for it.’

  ‘You’re married?’ she asked, taking a bite and smearing jam across her chin.

  ‘She lives with my mother.’

  ‘In the country? I’d like to live in the country.’

  I poured the tea. ‘You told Stan you’d been visited by someone from Arnold Poole’s battalion. Do you remember if he gave his name as Major Hendrix?’

  ‘That’s right,’ she said, her mouth full of bread and jam. ‘Major Hendrix. He asked me about Arnie and his sergeant. What was his name?’

  ‘Kearney.’

  ‘Sergeant Kearney, that’s right. He told me Arnie’s dad sent him round since Arnie used to write to me regularly. I told Sergeant Woodruff because of the letters.’

  The “Sergeant Woodruff” surprised me. But it might have been she was being formal because I was Stan’s commanding officer.

  ‘Can you remember anything about him?’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. What he looked like, for instance?’

  She stopped munching long enough to give it some thought. Then she sipped her tea. She wrinkled her nose and shrugged. ‘Like an army officer.’

  ‘Tall, short? As tall as me, say?’

  ‘No not as tall as you, Captain Tennant. Quite short, really, now I think about it.’

  ‘Moustache or clean-shaven?’

  ‘Clean-shaven. And he had a little round face, if you know what I mean. Perhaps I shouldn’t say it but I thought he looked
a bit odd.’

  ‘Odd?’

  ‘It was his nose mostly. A bit like a dog’s.’

  I tried to think what a dog’s nose looked like. Every shape under the sun.

  ‘How was his nose like a dog’s?’

  ‘Squashed in,’ said Ida.

  ‘You mean like a Boxer or a Bulldog?’

  ‘No, smaller. One of those small ones.’

  ‘A pug?’

  ‘Is that what they’re called? And his hair was brown and sort of wavy. I remember thinking it looked a bit long for an army officer.’

  She seemed to have been quite observant although when I tried to picture all the parts together I ended up with a dispirit mess.

  ‘Did he speak with any sort of accent?’ I asked.

  She giggled. ‘He sounded funny.’

  ‘In what way funny?’

  She shrugged again. ‘Like in the pictures.’

  ‘Like the movie stars speak, you mean?’

  ‘Not the Hollywood stars. I mean like the British actors. You know, posh, but not quite natural.’

  When I enquired as to what Hendrix had asked her, she said she couldn’t remember exactly. Mostly about the other men on Arnie’s carrier, Sergeant Kearney in particular, she thought. It had seemed a bit odd to her, she said, since as he was from Arnie’s battalion she assumed he’d already know all about him. But she hadn’t asked because her husband was due home any moment and was worried about what he might think.

  ‘You didn’t tell him about your letters?’

  Ida blushed. ‘I gave them to Sergeant Woodruff. He was nice to me and Johnny——that’s my husband——he never liked me keeping them.’

  ‘But you didn’t think to give them to Hendrix.’

  ‘No. Perhaps I shouldn’t say it, but I didn’t like Major Hendrix. You won’t tell anyone that, will you?’

  I assured her I wouldn’t, then asked how she was managing, half-suspecting that Stan might be helping her out with money.