Doctors Wear Scarlet

by Raven, Simon

  And now, Anthony, I’m very tired, so forgive me if I don’t write any more. Give my love to all in England. My research is a bit disorganised, but I’m on to one or two good things, you can tell them. And don’t let me down over this. As if you would. Tell Piers and come as quickly as you can.

  Yours with love,

  Richard.

  This was the letter – rambling, spasmodic, imploring, in no way resembling Richard’s usual curt and elegant communications – from which I learnt that I was needed and that I could no longer treat the affair merely as an interested and helpful but largely inactive spectator. Definitely and without question of argument the letter told me I must now take part. It also posed a number of minor problems which only emphasised the impression of mystery that was now beginning to attach to Richard and everything he did. Who or what was this “company” he referred to? Why did he need “setting straight” about matters in England when he had been gone barely nine months? Why was he too “tired” to write to Piers as well as to myself? Why had he left Corinth a full month before he had originally planned? But it was neither essential nor even possible to enquire into such points at the moment. Let them resolve themselves hereafter and as they might. For the import of Richard’s message was very plain: the time had come to act.

  But first I owed it to Tyrrel to let him know about the new developments and to tell him what I proposed to do. I had no doubt that he would approve my decision, he might make some helpful suggestions, and I was far from averse to renewing our acquaintance. So late on the afternoon of the day on which I had returned from Cambridge and found Richard’s letter, I was shown by a courteous and non-committal policeman into a grimy top-floor office in the Charing Cross Road.

  Tyrrel rose to his feet with a charming smile of welcome. “I thought,” I said, “that all detectives lived in antiseptic offices surrounded by scientific devices.”

  “Too many of us these days,” said Tyrrel. “Too much crime, too many detectives, not enough room. So those of us that don’t mind being old-fashioned are…boarded out.”

  “Better the Charing Cross Road than too much hygiene?”

  “Perhaps,” he said, and pulled up a chair for me. “It’s very nice to see you, Mr Seymour. And looking so healthy after your trip to Cambridge.”

  “I never–”

  “Please.” He waved a hand in faint deprecation. “It’s not that we’re watching you, sir. But we were quite keen to know when you’d go to Cambridge, so we took steps to be informed. You’ve been most prompt…in reporting back, if you’ll pardon the expression.”

  “I’m not sure I shall. But I certainly have something to tell you.”

  “I shall be grateful.”

  So I told Tyrrel what I had learned in Cambridge: – that neither Walter nor Penelope had known of Richard’s impending return; that Marc Honeydew was full of speculation and empty of knowledge; that Piers had been asked to join Richard for the summer. Having then laid some stress on Richard’s confession of impotence, I gave the substance of Piers’ theory about his motives for going to Greece and their essentially unstable nature, and I concluded, with some embarrassment, by telling Tyrrel how Piers had spoken of Richard’s death. This last item seemed to intrigue him; and since I had nearly omitted it altogether, I found this disconcerting.

  “This Piers Clarence,” Tyrrel said: “you’ve described him to me as a young man given to short, sharp and sensible judgements. Why should he come up with dreams and forebodings?”

  “I was surprised myself. But he told me this in a most unoracular way. Quite coolly, just as if it was another common sense contribution.”

  “Perhaps he’d been having too much to drink?”

  “At nine in the morning?”

  “You have a point… It makes me all the more anxious,” Tyrrel said, looking up with resignation at his fly-blown ceiling, “to meet Master Clarence.”

  “I’ve left him waiting in Cambridge to come when called.”

  “Aha. I see you’re entering into the spirit of the thing, Mr Seymour. And what about Clarence’s theory: that Mr Fountain went away to escape being stifled and made impotent by conventional college life, to assert the…heroic side of his nature?”

  “It fits.”

  “I suppose so… And Clarence intends to join Mr Fountain in Greece?”

  “He did – if he could get the money. In any case,” I said, “he’ll certainly be going now. And not alone.”

  And then I showed Tyrrel the letter I had just received from Richard. He read it through to himself, muttering and grimacing from time to time, slapping with a ruler at the flies who were amusing themselves on his desk.

  “Not the sort of letter,” he said at last, “that should be written by a scholar and a holder of the Military Cross.”

  “Not at all.”

  “Which reminds me that I still have your Cavafis, sir. You’re in no hurry to have it back?”

  “None.”

  “Good. I like the historical poems best. The barbarians coming to Constantinople. All that about Alexandria. Do you know Alexandria, Mr Seymour?”

  “I’m afraid not.”

  “It is a city of considerable charm and wickedness. But not heroic, because its…gods, shall we say?…have become urbanised. Whereas in Crete… You do propose to go to Crete?”

  “But certainly. I came to get your approval and your suggestions.”

  “And what do you propose to do when you get there?”

  “Find Richard. Clear up any mess he may be in. And see that he gets safely home.”

  “Admirable,” said Tyrrel slowly and almost in mockery. “But suppose you can’t find him? Suppose he’s gone, for example, to… Alexandria?”

  “Then we shall have to follow. But why should he do that? His invitation is very clear.”

  “He might change his mind, sir. People who write that sort of letter change their minds a lot. And whom shall you take with you?”

  “Piers Clarence, of course. And I thought one more: Major Longbow.”

  “Major Longbow?”

  “I told you of him the other night. He was Richard’s company commander.”

  “Ah, yes,” said Tyrrel, slapping his ruler down with a crack: “but why him?”

  “Because Richard likes him and is accustomed to obey him. And because he is a man of great resource, whose occasional and laconic remarks I find amusing.”

  “So. Good,” said Tyrrel, rising to his feet and suddenly becoming brisk and forthright. “Good, good, Mr Seymour. I am not disappointed in you. Take Mr Clarence and Major Longbow. If you need extra currency apply to me. Leave soon, Mr Seymour. Come back soon. Don’t fiddle about, sir. And I should like to meet your companions before you go. You will ring up?”

  “Indeed.”

  “Thank you. Go well, Mr Seymour, and go fast. Fast, fast, fast,” he sang out like a sergeant-major on a barrack square. And then, in a lower voice, “Theseus triumphed in Crete by making friends with a woman. You might do the same, sir.”

  “What can you mean?”

  “This ‘company’ of Mr Fountain’s, sir, to which he refers in his letter. He’s got a woman. Or so they say. Yes, so they say.”

  He pressed a bell and the whole building seemed to shake. “But I shan’t give you any details,” he said, “because I don’t know them. Anyway, too much detail is bad for an expedition which is just about to leave. Expeditions should go out to the sound of trumpets, sir, not to the nagging whine of detail… Constable Kershaw,” he said to the non-committal policeman who had entered, “show Major Seymour out.”

  The next step was to summon Piers from Cambridge. This I did by letter, asking him to be in London within a week, having done his duty by his mother and totally prepared to spend the rest of the summer abroad. (I added that he need no longer concern himself about money, since I was going to Greece along of him and would see to the matter for him.) A week, I thought, would give me enough time to make the arrangements necessary for us to
leave London about June 25 and reach Crete by July 1. There was no point in getting there earlier, despite the exhortations of Tyrrel; for Richard was not prepared to meet us before then, and I must in any case allow time for him to send his list of rendezvous.

  Thus far, and as concerned Piers, the arrangements were simple enough: it might not be so simple, however, to persuade Major Roderick Longbow. Yet persuaded he must be; for I had hit on him in a brief moment of real inspiration, and a more suitable man could not have been conceived. He was fond of Richard, Richard was fond of him, they were both used to a relationship in which Longbow gave the orders or at least had the backing of authority. Furthermore, as I had told Tyrrel, Longbow was a tough man and a man of resource. He was accustomed to remain silent, or, when social occasions required it, to talk with an inanity which could only be a deliberate parody of the idiom used by those about him; but from time to time, with a few friends or when an active decision of some sort was required, he would give tongue to a series of downright common-sense statements so supremely apt in substance and pithy in expression that one was reminded of the legends which surround the great Duke of Wellington. He went to the heart of a situation by the most direct route and used a fine sharp knife to cut his way in. He was a realist, he was a tactician, he was a highly practical man who could even use his hands to good effect: in the circumstances which I must anticipate, such assets might be priceless.

  But Roddy Longbow was at this time in command of our Regimental Depot at Ludlow. It was not an exacting post, but that was not to say he would be able to come abroad at a week’s notice and stay away for an indefinite period. And then, of course, Army Officers were at that time forbidden by the Army Council to set foot in Greece. Not to mention the difficulty Roddy might have in getting a visa if we wished to drive through Yugoslavia – the Yugoslavians being inclined to conceive that all British officers whatever are immoderately given to spying. Still, Roddy had a fine style of clearing obstacles once he was set on a thing; the expedition in prospect was after his heart; and so I packed my bag and went to Ludlow for a night to try how I might win him for our cause.

  In the end, and for all my anxieties, this was not difficult. Roddy listened to the story, and pronounced in characteristic fashion that I was too much concerned with theories of Richard’s behaviour, too little with ways and means of finding him and fetching him back.

  “The thing is to get him out with a whole skin, Anthony. You can see about his neuroses when you’ve got him home. And what’s all this about a woman?”

  “Inspector Tyrrel seems to think he has one with him.”

  “Providing an effective cure for this impotence you talk of?”

  “Inspector Tyrrel is not acquainted with the details.”

  “Well in any case she’s going to be a bloody nuisance. The only women people can pick up in Greece are rich American whores or poor Greek ones. The first kind are possessive, the second treacherous.”

  “Tyrrel thinks we might use her to help us.”

  “She’d be more use at the bottom of the sea. And who’s this Piers Clarence? A chum of Richard’s, you say?”

  “You’d like him. He has keen wits and a sly tongue.”

  “I’ll take your word for it,” said Roddy Longbow: “and if he tries to borrow money from me I shall kick him in the crutch.”

  “You’ll come with us then?”

  “I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

  “And the Depot? And the ACI which says you mustn’t go to Greece?”

  “I have a second-in-command, Anthony, who spends most of his life and all of his money on racecourses. He can now stay away from them and do some work for a few weeks, no doubt to the benefit of his pocket. And the Brigade Colonel, to whom I must apply for leave, is a second cousin who knows that I know that he is unfaithful to his wife. There will be no trouble from him.”

  “And the ACI?”

  “No one will know where I am.”

  “You’ll have to give a leave address,” I said.

  “But not necessarily the right one. I never do that in case they actually have the nerve to recall me. I shall say I’m going to Sicily. If they should try to get hold of me there, then they won’t be able to and I shall simply tell them when I get back that my car broke down and I didn’t make it.”

  “The Greeks may not like it when they see from your Passport that you’re a British officer.”

  “They won’t see anything of the kind. My Passport says my occupation is the possession of ‘Private Means’. Never put your real profession on your Passport, Anthony. They hate ‘journalists’ in one place and ‘officers’ in another, but everybody welcomes a mere man of ‘private means’.”

  “You seem to have everything very neatly arranged.”

  “All that is necessary,” said Major Longbow, “is a little common sense and a lack of superfluous scruple.”

  When I got back to London from Ludlow, there was a vulgar postcard from Piers which acknowledged my instructions. He would be with me on June 23, wanted a bed in my flat until we left, and had found his own money “thank you very much”.

  During the next three days I arranged for us to drive to Venice and take a boat from there to Crete. We would leave on June 26, spend single nights at Sens, Aix-en-Provence and Milan, pass two nights and a day in Venice, and catch the boat on July 1st. If Richard liked the idea of driving some of the way home, then there was no harm in it; but for a number of reasons, paramount among them the quality of the food and the roads, I was anxious to avoid Yugoslavia.

  On June 23 Piers arrived at my flat in the early afternoon.

  “Where did you get your money?” I asked.

  “I borrowed it from Penelope Goodrich.”

  “You what?”

  “I told Penelope that Richard badly wanted to see me but that I hadn’t any money to go. I knew she’d do anything for him, you see. She havered about a bit, but in the end she lent me two hundred pounds.”

  “You little shit. I told you I’d arrange the money for you. Why did you have to go pestering poor Penelope?”

  “Because you, my dear Anthony, would have paid all the bills yourself and rationed me to about sixpence a day spending money. But as it is I’ve got two hundred pounds in my own pocket.”

  “Well, you can give me a hundred and fifty straight away,” I said. “Fifty for travelling expenses already incurred and the rest to make sure you don’t spend the lot before we even leave.”

  He handed it over without a murmur. It was only years later that I learned he had in fact borrowed three hundred from Penelope.

  On the evening of June 24, while Piers and I were having a drink, Roddy Longbow appeared.

  “All set?” he said.

  “We leave Lydd airport by the car ferry at noon on the 26th,” I told them. “Tomorrow night we are to have dinner with Inspector Tyrrel, who wishes to meet you both. Then early to bed and leave here at nine sharp. All right?”

  “Very officer-like directions,” said Piers languidly.

  Roddy gave him a short look.

  “Little boys who have no money,” he said, “do not impress their elders by jangling loose coppers.”

  In fact, however, Piers and Roddy took to each other very easily. Piers was cheeky and rather tartish, Roddy was amused and affected severity. Piers could play the role of gad-fly: Roddy was happy to answer with an occasional lazy slap. I could only hope that Piers was not going to become whimsical and tiresome, but on the whole I credited him with too much good sense for that. In any event, dinner that night was pleasant, and I found myself looking forward to our journey, and to spending my time in this company, with more enthusiasm than I had felt about anything for years. There was, of course, a shadow over the party; but in London, on a bright June evening, it was not yet a deep shadow. There was more excitement in us than apprehension: for how could we know then, despite all that Tyrrel had told us and we ourselves had surmised, the true nature of the horror we were later to find in
Crete?

  When the 25th came, the day before we were to leave, there was still no letter or message from Richard. For whatever reason, he had not kept his promise to tell us where to meet him. And yet he had now been in Crete since June 8, and must surely have known long since what his movements were to be…

  That evening we dined with Tyrrel as arranged.

  “So he hasn’t told you where to meet him?” Tyrrel said.

  There was a brief silence, during which Piers picked at a fingernail and Roddy scanned the wine list with concentration and disapproval.

  “No.”

  “I warned you,” said Tyrrel with a trace of satisfaction. “People who write letters like his change their minds very easily. He may not want you after all. He may hide. He may leave Crete. So how will you go about finding him? You, Mr Clarence,” he said sharply to Piers, “how will you find your friend?”

  “I shall leave that to my acknowledged seniors,” said Piers, glancing at Roddy and myself. He started gaily in on a plate of smoked salmon, while Roddy whispered sternly to the wine waiter.

  “You must do better than that, Mr Clarence, I want your ideas on the matter, sir.”

  “Crete is a small island,” said Piers, thoughtlessly eating. “If he’s there, then we should be able to trace him. If he’s not, then someone will surely know when he left and in what direction.”