The Unquiet Grave

by David J Oldman

  ‘And what’s that?’

  ‘Read that first.’

  He let out a cloud of smoke, like a locomotive ready for the off, then got up. He fished inside his pocket again and dropped a slip of paper on top of the envelope.

  ‘If you need to get in touch use that number. And keep your eye open for Caomhánach. He’s not stable.’

  ‘That’s what Rose——’ I started to say, but Gifford was already walking away.

  26

  July 2nd

  Susie was alone in the office when I got back. Stan and Jack hadn’t yet returned from lunch down the pub; Peter was off somewhere following his nose.

  ‘You and him all right, Susie?’ I asked.

  She looked at me in that way she had, blinking as if she was short-sighted with a small wrinkle creasing her brow. Cute in her way but she’d copied it from Betty Hutton and hadn’t got it quite right. Before this she’d tried imitating Lauren Bacall but was neither tall nor sultry enough to pull that one off.

  ‘I thought I detected an atmosphere, that’s all.’

  ‘We’re okay.’

  ‘Spoken to Caen yet?’

  ‘All the lines are booked. Might not even be today.’

  In my office I took the envelope Gifford had given me, still feeling out of sorts after talking with him. First it was Jekyll wanting me to hang the murder of Dabs on the SS and now Gifford, too, it seemed. Just so some influential peoples’ connection to a German collaborator didn’t come to light.

  I pulled out the transcript of Müller's interrogation. We rarely received original files but if the document was important enough it would have been replicated by Gestetner, a stencil cut on a typewriter from the original with as many copies made as were needed. Something really important might be Photostatted but we rarely dealt with anything of that nature. Müller's testimony was a carbon copy of the original typed interrogation, and probably a copy of a copy at that.

  Given that thousands of POWs needed to be interrogated, the army couldn’t run to stenographers and the interrogator himself would have had to make notes as he went, in whatever fashion suited him. These would be typed up later, a process that left a great deal of room for misreading and typographical errors. I don’t know if the army Intelligence Division deliberately used substandard carbon paper but there seemed to be something unstable about it. Either it was too light to be legible or smudged at the slightest touch. I’d read thousands of the things and sometimes I thought I’d never live long enough to get the ink off my fingers.

  Müller had been captured in the Falaise Pocket in August 1944——at the same time that Vogel’s body had been recovered. Since Müller served with 25th SS-Panzer Grenadiers, he was of special interest. Brigadeführer Kurt Meyer, then commander of the 25th SS-Panzer Grenadiers, had used the Ardenne Abbey for his regimental headquarters and, after it was liberated on July 8th 1944, the body of a young Canadian officer had been discovered. At the time of Müller’s interrogation the bodies of the other Canadians murdered in the abbey had still not been found. Not long after they were——in the winter and spring of 1945——Müller was dead.

  Reading the transcript, I found that during the interrogation Müller was asked repeatedly about Lieutenant Fred Williams, the Canadian whose body had been found in the abbey. Each time Müller denied any knowledge of the incident, stating that at the time of the massacre his company wasn’t at the abbey. It appeared Müller had a good memory for dates, always able to remember being somewhere else when questioned about a particular event. On the other hand, his memory didn’t seem as good when asked about the names of his comrades. His excuse was that during the last month or two before his capture, the 25th had taken heavy losses and had continually received drafts of new men which meant he hadn’t got to know them well. Of those he could remember, it seemed to me they often bore suspiciously common surnames. But then his own——Müller——or variations upon it——was perhaps the most common German name of all, so I may have been looking for duplicity where none existed.

  As Gifford had warned me I didn’t find the transcript as useful as I had hoped. There was no reference to SS-Mann Richter and his diary nor to Müller’s platoon having been at any château near Maltot on July 10th.

  I went through it again, deciding obstinately that I’d do things my way. I made a note of the names of men in his platoon he had remembered——the dead SS-Unterscharführer Otto Vogel being one of them. Then I pulled out the copy of Richter’s diary we had and added two or three more names.

  Stan and Jack came back from the pub and I put the report aside for Peter to look at.

  Jack, seeing me with my feet on the desk and blowing smoke rings asked, ‘Busy?’

  ‘I’ve just been through the full transcript of Obersturmführer Franz Müller’s interrogation.’

  Jack dropped into his chair and gave a beery belch.

  ‘Where did you get that?’

  ‘Superintendent Gifford.’

  ‘Well, well. The prerogatives of rank, I suppose. So, are we getting somewhere at last?’

  I told him what was in the report. Jack listened attentively. ‘The answer’s no, then.’

  I heard Peter come in and called him through. He put his head round the door, an oddly bland expression on his usually intelligent face. I tossed him Müller’s transcript and he caught it awkwardly against his chest. I told him what I’d told Jack.

  ‘We want to find anyone who might have been with Müller at the château.’ I gave him the list of names I had made. ‘If we really want to know what happened, it’s the only way we’re going to find out.’

  Peter read the list.

  ‘Schmidt...Klein...Hess...Neumann...Hartmann...?’ He looked at me doubtfully. ‘There must be dozens of men with these names who served in the 25th SS-Panzer Grenadiers.’

  ‘Pity there’s not a Featherstonehaugh,’ said Jack.

  I smiled at Peter. ‘Susie said your Caen call is going to take some time to put through.’ Meaning, of course, it gave him time to chase up the Neumanns and the Schmidts.

  ‘I’m putting a letter in the post to them tonight in case I can’t get through to anyone,’ Peter said. ‘But I won’t be holding my breath.’

  ‘It might be worth asking around to see if anyone has compiled a roll of men in the individual 25th SS-Panzer Grenadiers companies. Get Stan on it as well.’

  ‘So where do we go if we can’t find a Klein or a Neumann who was with Müller at the château?’ Jack asked. ‘Want me to type up that report you wrote for Jekyll? We can suggest Müller or the Gestapo were responsible, and dump it back in his lap. Müller’s dead and we ain’t going to identify the Gestapo men, so it’s not as if they’re in any position to object.’

  ‘It’s what Colonel G wants,’ I agreed. ‘I told him yesterday I needed a couple more days to track down Müller’s file, for what that was worth. But if that’s as far as we can take it, so be it.’

  ‘That’s what I like about the army,’ said Jack, feeding a fresh sheet of paper into his Remington. ‘When you don’t know anything push it higher up the chain of command for someone else to worry about. I’ll do a draft then. If there’s anything I can’t remember or don’t know, I’ll ask my superior officer.’

  ‘God knows what you’re going to do when you have to think for yourself on civvy street, Jack.’

  He grunted and started hitting keys. ‘Never said I couldn’t. It’s just that in the army other people like to do it for you.’

  I couldn’t fault that argument so didn’t try. I lit another cigarette as Susie came in with our afternoon cuppa.

  ‘So you’re giving Colonel G your report at last,’ she said.

  ‘Those cute little ears of yours should have been requisitioned as radar dishes,’ I told her.

  She smiled sweetly. ‘Finally given up on the Rose of Tralee? Is she nowhere to be found?’

  ‘Didn’t I tell you? She found me the other night.’

  Susie’s eyes widened. ‘No.’<
br />
  ‘And very different she looked, too. She’d permed her hair and was wearing make-up. She asked after you. In a manner of speaking.’

  Her eyes narrowed again. ‘And what kind of manner was that?’

  ‘I wouldn’t care to repeat it.’

  ‘Bitch. Was her so-called cousin with her?’

  ‘No, I’m glad to say he wasn’t. He’s a desperate man according to Rose.’

  ‘That’ll make two of them then.’

  ‘Oh, I should imagine Rose does all right.’

  ‘Careful Captain,’ said Susie. ‘Sleeping with the enemy can get you shot.’ And she flounced back into her own office, leaving me to reflect upon the possibilities.

  I changed my mind about Jekyll’s report again and told Jack to hold off. I’d only seen him the day before and he wouldn’t be in to the end of the week. That would give Stan and Peter at least a couple of days to see if there was any chance of turning up one of Müller’s comrades. It was a tack I realized I should have tried earlier, but I had been hoping for more from Müller’s interrogation. The moral seemed to be, never wait for what you hope for; grab what you can get first.

  Jack let out a long sigh and pulled the paper out of the Remington again.

  I wondered if I ought to let Ben Tuchman know that it was possible Pellisier wasn’t dead. There was always the chance he had instigated the exhumation himself, but if he hadn’t I assumed Tuchman would want to set the bloodhounds back on the Frenchman’s trail. I really couldn’t believe he hadn’t considered the possibility already but that was all beyond our remit――unless it had been Pellisier himself who had shot Dabs and possibly Kearney. Not that I thought that to be very likely; not with the Gestapo and a unit of SS on hand, men who took to that kind of thing with the avidity of fat men in a bun shop.

  If Pellisier wasn’t dead, though, I couldn’t help thinking it was going to leave Coveney open to some scrutiny. He had identified the man’s body and despite it all being a bit too close to Penny’s family for my liking, I decided to let Tuchman know anyway. His reaction would be interesting if nothing else. And I could still say without bending the truth completely out of shape that I wasn’t the one asking questions about Pellisier. It was going to make me a lot happier if I could leave him to explain to Julia and Penny what it was all about if the need arose.

  Drinking my tea, however, I began to speculate about Coveney’s identification of Pellisier’s body. The corpse had been badly burnt, by all accounts, although apparently not sufficiently to obscure some sort of birthmark by which Coveney had been able to identify him. Albeit by photograph. Perhaps Coveney, like everyone else, had supposed the body to be Pellisier’s since it had been found in Pellisier’s château. Even so, dead or alive, talk of Pellisier’s collaboration wouldn’t be the sort of thing Coveney would care to have bandied about.

  Then I remembered the phone call Jack had taken from the man called Bryce. I hadn’t got back to him but if this Bryce was the one I’d met at Julia’s and was Coveney’s secretary, it seemed likely he’d have been instructed to find out how much we’d discovered. A cynic might surmise that once Coveney got wind of what Pellisier had been doing in Caen, he’d be keen to see that his dead wife’s brother should remain regarded as dead. Coveney may not have been a politician himself, but he was high enough up the bureaucratic ladder to think like one. And in my experience, as with politicians expediency runs in civil servants’ blood like an additive. Having Pellisier charged with war crimes wasn’t going to reflect very well upon him. If I’d read Gifford right it might be that it had been Coveney who had engineered my getting the Dabs’ file in the first place.

  But, as I say, that would be a cynic’s view.

  *

  Towards the end of the afternoon I toyed with the idea of ringing Bryce back and pumping him for information under the pretext of allowing him to pump me. But that could wait and, since it was almost time to knock off, I took Stan down the pub for a drink instead. He’d already had a couple at lunchtime, I’d noticed, which hadn’t helped his morose state of mind, but he wasn’t an aggressive drunk, just a self-pitying one and I was familiar enough with that breed myself to have some sympathy for him.

  ‘Let her settle in for a week or two,’ I suggested over a pint. ‘Ida’s a bright enough girl. She’ll soon find her feet then maybe you can take her out on her day off.’

  Assuming Julia ever gave her one.

  Stan didn’t look convinced. But at least he was no longer blaming me for the situation.

  ‘You can’t hold it against her for moving out,’ I said. ‘After all, the place is little better than a slum and they’re going to pull it down soon anyway. She would only have had to find somewhere else. Now she’s got a job as well as somewhere to live.’

  Stan muttered into his beer. ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘I’ll give her your number and she can give you a bell once she’s settled in. How about that?’

  ‘If you like,’ Stan agreed, as if I had a preference in the matter.

  ‘Good.’ I said to settle it, not at all sure Ida would call him but at least leaving the ball firmly in her court. As opposed to mine where Stan could take a kick at it whenever he felt down.

  We drank up and I put him on his bus before taking the tube to Hyde Park Corner. I didn’t have a phone number for Tuchman, nor an address. The only place I knew he frequented was the drinking club in Soho and I had no idea how often he could be found there. That left Julia although I would have preferred not to have involved her.

  When Ida opened the door I gave her a slip of paper with Stan’s number on it.

  ‘In case you need help with anything, Stan said,’ I lied. ‘Just give him a ring.’

  She tucked the note into the pocket of the maid’s uniform Julia had been so thoughtful to supply, then led me to the drawing room and announced me.

  ‘It might be easier,’ Julia commented dryly as I walked in, ‘if I had the bed made up in your old room, Harry. It would save all this coming and going.’

  She was sitting in an upright armchair by the window, reading a book by the light of some rare afternoon sun.

  ‘Actually it was Ben I wanted to see,’ I said. ‘But I don’t know where to find him.’

  ‘As gallant as ever, Harry.’

  ‘Although it’s always a delight to see you, Julia.’

  She put her book aside. ‘As a matter of fact he’s due in twenty minutes or so. You might as well stay and have a drink. I’ll have to ask you leave after you’ve seen him, though, as we’ve plans for this evening.’ She spoke to Ida who was still hovering by the door awaiting instructions. ‘Mix us a couple of martinis, please Ida,’ she said. ‘Dry for Harry, I should imagine.’

  Ida carefully measured gin into two glasses and followed it with Vermouth. Julia watched like an instructress in a domestic science class.

  ‘I’ve been teaching Ida how to mix drinks. It’s a useful skill to possess. It will set you in good stead for the future, Ida.’

  Ida bobbed dutifully and brought the drinks to us on a tray.

  ‘How thoughtful,’ I remarked. ‘You can always get a job in a pub, Ida, when Miss Parker gets too much for you.’

  Ida hurried out of the room, embarrassed. Julia scowled at me.

  ‘I do wish you wouldn’t say that sort of thing in front of the girl, Harry. But then you’ve always allied yourself with the servant rather than with the served.’

  Had I thought it would do any good, I would have told her that the world had changed. The only wonder was, she hadn’t yet found out for herself. Perhaps it had been the slow accumulation of shifts and alterations that had masked how different everything was now. And forever would be. But even Julia could no longer expect the old privileges to remain. Penny’s parents, Helen and Reggie, were going to find things noticeably more egalitarian upon their return. America might have the reputation of being the shining democratic light of the world, but money spoke louder there than it did almost anywhere and I d
oubted if living there had changed their lifestyle much at all. They had probably spent the war years ordering a bunch of coloured servants around.

  Julia lit a cigarette. ‘You seem rather pensive, Harry.’

  I admitted to thinking about Helen and Reggie. ‘Any news yet on when they’re coming back?’

  ‘They managed to get a berth on the Queen Mary. They leave New York on the twenty-ninth.’

  ‘This month!’ I hadn’t realized it would be so soon.’

  ‘The Queen is taking war brides to Canada. Halifax, Nova Scotia, then sailing to New York. Can you imagine it? What on earth do all those girls think they’ll do in the backwoods of Nova Scotia?’

  ‘I doubt they’ll be obliged to build their own log cabins, Julia.’

  She turned away, remarking, ‘Sarcasm doesn’t suit you, Harry. I don’t know why you persist in employing it,’ making it sound like an itinerant peddler I occasionally engaged for an odd job here and there.

  ‘Penny tells me you are going to live together again.’

  ‘Well, once we’ve found another flat,’ I admitted.

  ‘Are you sure this will be the best thing for her?’

  This display of concern for Penny’s happiness was, as was the case with her sister Helen, a view observed from their own perspective. When focussed upon me, I was to be found somewhere on the outer edges of visibility, a thing of small consideration seen through the wrong end of a telescope. I no longer felt any need to defend myself, although it was one more reminder that some things hadn’t changed and that all the old arguments we had played through before the war would have to be rehearsed once again. As it happened, I was spared having to reply as the doorbell rang and a moment later Ida announced Tuchman. He kissed Julia on the cheek and shook my hand. Julia, with surprising percipience, said she would leave us alone to talk.

  Tuchman mixed himself a drink. ‘Something up, Harry?’