“Rule three,” said Hunloke directing his answer at the Derbyshire lass, “everybody is a suspect. The one thing we can rule out is an attack by the Germans, for other than the escapees, they were all locked up in the camp at the likely time of the killing.”
“Well, I hope you’re not including me in your list of suspects? And that was rule four...,” declared Poppy indignantly.
“Yes, Mrs Gray,” smiled Hunloke, “You are, as is each and every one of us. Would you like to make a confession?”
“Poppycock!”
“I’ll take that as a no, Mrs Gray... Rest assured, I have no reason to suspect you. Although until we know the time of death with any certainty, we all need to provide alibis.”
“No wonder they didn’t want you at Scotland Yard!” stated Poppy. Hunloke wondered where that snippet of information came from.
“I’ll take that in the spirit it was intended. A word of caution. It is my assumption that we were selected for this strange mission at Flash because of our ineptitudes in their various guises. If there is some insidious hand at work then I’m afraid that person has made a big mistake, I’ll excuse you two ladies from that comment regarding ineptitude.”
“I should think so too!” insisted Poppy.
“All I’m saying is, we have to be careful. If Mills finds out we’re looking into his background then he might become suspicious. Play to your strengths, in your case, Brian, talk only to your trusted colleagues, fellows like you who ‘don’t like to blab’, as I think you put it.”
“What am I supposed to do?” asked Christine.
“Help Brian. You seem to enjoy a paper trail as much as he does.”
“And the escaped POW’s?” asked Conway coming back to his earlier question.
“Indeed, the escaped POW’s. Like I said, that really isn’t our problem right now. But I’m intrigued by what Mills told me. I’m supposedly in charge of the camp for the time being. I’ll liaise with Donovan, he seems a good chap, and speak to the Lagerführer. He may know more than he’s letting on. I think that’s enough to be getting on with for now.”
“I don’t see why you have roped Carey and I into your game?” challenged Poppy.
“Because you’re both very much part of the Flash Estate in your own ways. Flash House is at the centre of all this. And if I had precluded you from this meeting you’d only badger us all to death to find out what was going on.”
“I don’t know what you mean...” Poppy’s chagrin was beautifully played.
Whilst the others trooped out of the library, Carey remained sitting in the chair, alone with Hunloke. “Why did you want me here, Thaddeus? I’m no use to anyone. I have nothing to offer.”
“You’re here because I want you here. I’m sick of hearing people belittle themselves,” he said irritably.
“You’re angry with me...” Carey turned her head defensively away from him to present her wholesome left profile.
“And don’t do that when you’re with me!” he snapped. He noticed the pained look on her face and guiltily moderated his voice. “You really don’t have to...” He smiled apologetically.
“I’m sorry, it’s force of habit. I should join the others...”
“I wish people would stop leaving me! Christ, if they don’t offer to leave, I make the suggestion for them!” Hunloke climbed down off the desk and approached the fire. He fought the urge to light a cigarette. “It was a bloody stupid idea to wear these rags.”
“But it worked,” she said.
“You think so?”
She smiled. “Yes I do, Thaddeus.”
“Carey...?”
“Yes, Thaddeus?”
“I know I’m an awkward bugger. I’m trying not to be.” The smile was his most blatantly sardonic when only half of his face rose expressively. He noticed that Carey, unlike most people, did not flinch or look away. “I’m not very good at being... normal.”
Carey stared dispassionately up into his face. He had hoped she might offer a token of encouragement, an olive branch to aid his lack of social grace. However, her eye was soulless, her thoughts unfathomable to his seeking gaze. He deflated before her and she watched his lips sneer with anger, anger directed at himself.
“I’m sorry, forget I said that!” he blustered. “It was a bloody stupid thing to say. It’s been a shit day... Sorry, I don’t know what came over me.” He stumbled for his Lucky Strike cigarettes and she watched his fingers shake with embarrassment as an energised cloud of smoke erupted from the tip of the cigarette.
Still she remained emotionless until a flicker of a smile, perhaps a memory of another time, softened her face.
“You are a strange man, Thaddeus. You really don’t know yourself do you?”
“So what am I?” he asked, feeling awkwardly exposed like being naked in a crowded room.
“Very Victorian, no, Edwardian, I’d say. Very proper and sad with a terrible sense of fair play that no one around you seems to be able to live up to. The world has moved on, Thaddeus. You must learn to move on with it.”
“I’m trying to catch up, believe me.” His smile fleetingly returned.
“I have nothing to offer you,” she said quietly, “I find solace only with God now.”
He thought of their first meeting and how she had tried to kill herself and wondered, as an atheist, how such an act sat with her alleged religious convictions. In that moment it became clear to him that his fascination with Carey Gladwin transcended any physical desire. He was a physical man yet found he had no craving for Carey in that regard. He simply wanted to understand her, that to understand Carey Gladwin was to understand himself.
“Perhaps you should attend chapel with me on Sunday?” she suggested.
“Chapel? You mean attend church?”
“Chapel, Thaddeus, not church. You might find it helps you.”
“Well, I suppose I could. I need all the help I can get...,” he replied begrudgingly.
Carey stood up. On tiptoes, she kissed him on his left cheek. “I’m damaged goods don’t forget...,” she whispered tenderly. “And be careful of Poppy, she isn’t like us...” Carey Gladwin abandoned Hunloke to smoke alone in the library.
‘Damaged goods’ he thought. Who the hell beneath the roof of Flash House wasn’t?
Hunloke was preparing, in the words of Poppy Gray, to retire for the evening when there came a sharp knock on the door from the adjoining music room. Brian Conway appeared and stood self-consciously just inside the room with Christine.
“Sir, do you think we might have a word?”
Hunloke emitted one of his many sighs. Conway appeared apprehensive and a little flushed. “Feel free, Brian. I was just going to bed to read but I’m in no rush.”
Brian Conway walked slowly into the room with Christine beside him. Hunloke noticed that she had recently been crying, her eyes were puffy and red but her face appeared far from distressed. He sensed the gist of Brian Conway’s intentions before the words were uttered.
“Sir, Christine and I have been talking, whilst we were washing up, actually.”
“Glad to hear it,” replied Hunloke facetiously.
“It’s a difficult subject to bring up, sir,” muttered Conway. “It’s about a rather delicate situation.”
“Speak up, man, I can hardly hear you.” Purely for effect, Hunloke lit a cigarette. He never offered one to the lieutenant, who looked plaintively at the glowing stick.
Conway took a deep breath and lurched into his prearranged spiel. For some reason, he recalled the occasion when he first met the wallowing Hunloke standing by the Clifton Suspension Bridge in Bristol. “Christine is pregnant, sir.”
“Congratulations, Brian, you’re a fast worker...”
Conway looked aghast at Hunloke but the captain only had eyes for the corporal and the smile of amusement that lit her pretty face. “No, sir, you don’t understand, it wasn’t me but a damn Yank who took advantage of her,” blurted a mortified Conway. “The thing is, sir, we can’
t leave her in this condition!”
“‘We’, Brian? I can assure you it had absolutely nothing to do with me...”
“No, you idiot, I didn’t mean it like that!” Conway raised his voice excitedly. When he realised what he had said, he paused, waiting for Hunloke’s vitriolic comeback.
“So what are ‘we’ going to do about it, Brian?” encouraged a muttering Hunloke. Ash dropped from the cigarette clenched between his teeth onto the fireside rug.
Silence reigned as Conway took a deep calming breath. “Sir, I have asked Corporal Baldwin to marry me. I can say that we met prior to our coming here and that I am the father of her child.”
Christine burst into tears once again and Conway automatically placed a consoling arm around her.
Hunloke was astounded when he felt tears prickling his eyes. They smarted and he wafted cigarette smoke away from his face to intimate the source of his discomfort. “Brian...,” said Hunloke.
“Yessir?” Conway too looked tearful.
“Congratulations. I’m very happy for you.”
“You are...?” stammered Conway bashfully.
“It’s a wonderful thing you’re doing. I hope you’re both very happy together.”
“You’re not angry?”
“Why the hell does everyone think I’m angry all the time!” replied Hunloke cantankerously. “I don’t know if she told you, but I offered her a forty-eight hour weekend pass yesterday when I could see she was unhappy,” lied Hunloke. “Why don’t the pair of you go down to the Smoke? You can travel down tomorrow on the pretext of the investigation. It might, after all, be better if you spoke to your contacts directly rather than by phone. Come back next week when you’ve compiled your report on Beevor and Mills. I’ll make sure all the paperwork is ready for you in the morning.”
Brian Conway didn’t know what to say. “Thank you, sir,” was all he managed. Christine Baldwin turned to face Hunloke before reaching the door when they made to leave the library. Her fiancé failed to notice her mouthed words of ‘thank you’ aimed at the captain, nor did he spy Hunloke’s acknowledging wink.
“I don’t know what’s happening to me!” uttered Hunloke frustratedly. He was standing by his dressing table smoking.
“Nothing is happening to you, things are just happening around you,” answered Poppy. She was sitting neatly on the side of his bed. Her late night visitation to his bedroom now seemed a perfectly natural occurrence in the distracted mind of Thaddeus Hunloke. “You should be glad we sorted out the situation with Christine and Brian.”
“Why is everyone suddenly quoting the royal ‘we’?” he sighed.
“Well, I’m sure we all played our little part, even Flash herself.”
“You think the house is a she?”
“Of course she is a she. She may have a rather butch exterior but she has the guile of a lady.”
“I’m taking Carey to church on Sunday...” He wondered why the declaration made him feel uncomfortable. She turned slowly to face him and he caught the momentary look of hurt that dissipated as quickly as it had appeared with an affected laugh.
“You, the avowed atheist, going to chapel? They’ll eat you for breakfast. The things a man will do in pursuit of a fox...”
“She isn’t a fox,” he replied, unsure of whose honour he was defending.
“Isn’t she...? Well, I hope she’s worth the chase.” She looked away toward the curtained window.
“You’re bonkers,” accused Hunloke. “Look, Poppy, I’m tired, I need to kip. I want to sleep beneath the blankets tonight. I need a quiet night.”
“I understand, Artie. One doesn’t sleep the same when dressed atop the bed.” Poppy stood slowly to her feet and slipped off her dressing gown, revealing her clinging white cotton nightdress. She pulled back the bed covers and slipped into his bed.
He remained standing by the dressing table looking across the room at the figure wriggling in his bed, attempting to find the hot water bottle. “What the hell are you doing?” demanded Hunloke.
“Trying to warm my feet...”
“No, no, you know what I mean!”
“Oh, shut up, Artie. It was your idea to get in bed.”
“No, it was my idea for me to get in bed, not you!”
“I thought all you working class types slept together to keep warm. I once read it in a book.”
“Maybe in 1844. Not in 1944!”
“God, you are such a curmudgeonly old man...,” the words were barely audible as she slipped lower into the bed.
The stubborn aspect of Thaddeus Hunloke’s character refused to yield. He felt tired, confused, and cold. His mind was an emotional turmoil for which his soldierly experiences had ill prepared him. Her earlier analogy of the hunt seemed most apposite. Only what with everything that was happening around him, it felt that he was the vulnerable quarry.
Was he really prepared to share a bed with Poppy Gray? The acceptance of such an immoral concept failed to perturb him as it should, that she was a young married woman did not once cross his mind. He interpreted her presence in his bed as a provocation from which he was damned if he was going to shy away. In addition, he was lying to himself if he denied he did not want her. What would be would be.
He determinedly stubbed out his cigarette, trod to the side of the bed, and stripped off his clothes before reaching for his pyjamas on the bedside chair.
“My goodness, what a mess...” She was examining his naked lower torso beneath his pyjama jacket while he stood briefly exposed with his back to her. His left buttock was scarred with red wheals and a chunk of the gluteus muscle was plainly deformed. The scars continued down his left leg where the entire skin appeared pitted and pockmarked by white lesions where the burning shrapnel had penetrated the skin. He quickly pulled on the pyjamas bottoms and climbed stiffly into bed before switching off the light.
“That must have hurt...,” she whispered. Her bare feet wrestled with his for domination of the hot water bottle.
“Yep, it did... For a while I thought I was going to lose it,” he answered contemplatively.
“What, this...?”
He flinched with shock from the audacious touch of her cold hand and brushed it quickly aside. “No, my leg... Do you know what saved it?”
“Saved what? This little watchamcallit?” This time, he made no attempt to displace her persistent hand.
“Polishing my boots...” He placed his left arm around her and pulled her closer. The warmth of her body had a mesmerising, soporific effect upon his wandering mind. “Every day in hospital, I religiously polished the new pair of boots they had issued me following Dunkirk. Removing the dimples and buffing them with spit and polish, I knew that one day I’d wear both of them.”
“You are a most determined man, Thaddeus Hunloke... Sleep tight; don’t let the bedbugs bite. But not just yet...”
Chapter 20 - The Journal.
Friday, 1st December 1944.
The dream was of a beautiful summer’s day. The Flash Estate had been transformed by the hand of time. The forested trees hung heavily with dappled foliage beneath the vibrant sunshine.
He walked without a limp in his borrowed pyjamas along a path through the aging woodland, planted with soft wood species, giving the air a velvety, fragrant pine scent. The ground beneath his feet revealed a spongy texture, strewn with decades of fallen needles and desiccated pinecones.
After a period of easy passage, the landscape dramatically changed. A rutted firebreak of a dozen yards divided the pine forest from the deciduous hard wood plantation. He was no woodsman but was learning fast. The trees were predominantly hazel and alder, interspersed were saplings of the downy birch with their hirsute serrated leaves. When a child on scout camp, he had been taught the kindling properties of the peeling white bark of the silver birch.
Unlike the pine forest, the deciduous plantation teemed with life. Insects flitted irritatingly about his face. He struggled to part the interlacing stems of the springy branches, wh
ich whipped his exposed skin, leaving his arms with a multitude of stinging welts. The going here was harder than he had hoped for, the abundant flora clung obdurately to his bare feet and he was compelled to make frequent references to his compass to keep him on track.
The birdsong around him subsided, leaving only the warning calls of contemptuous carrion, berating him for his errant behaviour. He wondered why he was so sentient to their call until he realised it was not only the temperate weather that encouraged his rising breathing and heart rate.
He reached a clearing, the home to a mighty English oak, perhaps living on the land before the estate was even conceived. It stood phallically erect, mocking him, inviting envious comparison.
Abruptly, he found himself running through the plantation, springing branches of young trees now morphing into lashes that cruelly flagellated his body with callous intent.
The scene shifted and he stood blinking away the stinging sweat in the nave of the estate chapel at the intersection of the north and south transepts. He knew the door to the crypt lay off to his left but it was towards a tapestry depicting Da Vinci’s ‘Last Supper’ hanging on the wall of the north transept that his feet guided him.
Lifting the wall hanging, he revealed a narrow stone archway and wooden door that opened by its own volition. A spiral staircase twisted down to a cleric’s perfunctory office lined with surplices on a row of coat hooks fastened to a wooden rail. For reasons that defied explanation, a circular wooden plug in the coat rail appeared depressed and the end coat hook lay bent as though buckled by a phantom vestment. His eyes fell upon a gaping panel in the far wall that heralded a black void beyond...
“Good morning!”
Hunloke’s eyes opened in an instant, prompted by the nudge to his bony ribcage. The room appeared as dark as night, no light encroached the heavy blackout drapes. Memories of the vivid dream vanished leaving just frothy fragments that evaporated with his awakening consciousness and the realisation of who was prodding him.
“Morning...,” he replied with difficulty, his mouth dry and claggy. “You sound far too awake. What time is it?”
Dancing with Artie (Thaddeus Hunloke Book 1) Page 21
