Light Cavalry Action

by Max Hennessy

  He looked up at Finch. ‘When did you leave Novorossiisk, Colonel?’ he asked.

  ‘March 27th, 1920.’

  ‘With the last of the British troops?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And Countess Seinikina? What became of her?’

  Finch’s brows came down. ‘She attached herself to a Russian,’ he said. ‘The last I heard, she’d got to Constantinople.’

  Moyalan nodded. ‘By the time you arrived in England, you also had written a report on the action at Dankoi?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’ve studied this report. It seems very close to Mr. Murray-Hughes’ fanciful despatch. At times the wording is exactly the same. And they are the words of a newspaperman, not a soldier. Did you use Mr. Murray-Hughes’ despatch to help you?’

  ‘I might have.’

  ‘During the journey home, did you show it to Colonel Prideaux?’

  ‘Yes. Officially, it was his despatch, but I wrote it because he was sick.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  Finch stared at his fingers for a moment and the court seemed to sigh with impatience. Then he lifted his head and it was as though he had finally decided to brazen it all out. ‘He said he couldn’t let it go through. It wasn’t true and he would have to correct it.’

  ‘What did you do? Did you suggest that he’d be wiser to take what was going? Especially as he would most probably receive promotion as a result of it? Is that what happened?’

  ‘Yes.’ Finch nodded heavily. ‘I suppose so. Something like that.’

  ‘And you? What was to be your attitude? Whom were you going to support?’

  ‘I said I’d support Murray-Hughes.’

  ‘What did Colonel Prideaux say to that? Did he insist that he would have to do something about the report?’

  ‘Yes. But things just went on. We talked a lot but nothing was done.’

  ‘And what happened when you reached England?’

  ‘We received a message by the ship’s radio, informing us that we were to report to the War Office. It also informed Colonel Prideaux of an advance in rank to brigadier and that he had been awarded the d.s.o.’

  ‘On recommendations that had come from Ekaterinodar?’

  ‘I think so, yes.’

  ‘So that Colonel Prideaux was now even more in a cleft stick? He had received a d.s.o. and an advance in rank because of a recommendation made chiefly on the strength of Mr. Murray-Hughes’ wildly false report. It’s hard to take a d.s.o. from a man and hard to demote him without someone wanting to know why. He was in a very difficult position, was he not?’

  ‘Yes. I suppose he was.’

  ‘What happened at the War Office when you returned?’

  ‘They confirmed the rank and the award.’

  ‘And you?’

  ‘They told me I could expect a step up, too.’

  ‘I’m delighted.’ Moyalan’s voice was harsh. ‘And, of course, you still didn’t enlighten them as to the truth?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And your report was accepted and released to the newspapers?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What happened afterwards? – about the report, I mean.’

  ‘I later received a telephone call at my hotel. I was asked to go round and see Brigadier Prideaux. Murray-Hughes was there. Prideaux had been on to him and he was a bit scared by what he’d stirred up.’

  ‘What was said?’

  ‘Brigadier Prideaux had just come from hospital and he was very worried about the turn of events.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘He said he felt he had to deny the report.’

  ‘And what happened?’

  ‘There was a discussion.’

  ‘And did you tell him there wasn’t much he could do about the report you’d written, as parts of it had already appeared in the newspapers like Mr. Murray-Hughes’ story? Was that roughly what you said?’

  ‘I said there’d been a lot of publicity.’

  ‘And that, in view of what had happened, there wasn’t much he could do?’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘Did you also suggest, as before, that he’d be wiser to let the report go?’

  ‘I might have.’

  ‘And in the end, did he decide to let it go?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And the report was filed and accepted by the authorities with the falsities still in it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you saw Brigadier Prideaux become Major-General Prideaux and eventually Lieutenant-General Sir Henry Prideaux?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Moyalan paused. ‘Colonel Finch, did you ever write a report on Major Higgins for his personal file?’

  Finch hesitated. ‘I think so,’ he said. ‘Someone had to do it and Brigadier Prideaux was still in hospital. As second-in-command, it fell to me.’

  ‘Do you remember what you said of Major Higgins?’ Finch reddened. ‘I think I gave him an indifferent report,’ he said.

  ‘Why? According to the evidence we have heard in this court, if any man deserved a good report from Russia, it was Major Higgins. Why did you write what you did?’

  ‘Because,’ Finch hesitated, ‘because – because he had delayed in getting his men away – from Nikolovssk. It must have been because of that. Or perhaps…’

  He stumbled to a halt. Moyalan said nothing and the court was silent. It was clear that the messages Finch had not sent and his threat to break Higgins were in everybody’s mind.

  Moyalan’s pause seemed endless and Finch moved restlessly, acutely uncomfortable. At last, Moyalan put down his papers and looked up at him.

  ‘You must have read in the newspapers of this case, Colonel,’ he went on quietly. ‘It has been very fully reported. Yet you took a great deal of finding when you were needed to give evidence here. Why did you not come forward?’

  ‘It wasn’t my affair.’ Finch’s words could hardly be heard.

  ‘You mean you didn’t come very well out of it,’ Moyalan snapped. He tried again. ‘Was there any other reason why you didn’t wish to give evidence? Why did you keep changing your address, for instance, and why were your tracks so well covered when we were searching for you?’

  ‘Personal,’ Finch muttered. ‘My wife.’

  ‘I see.’ Moyalan paused for a second then he looked up at Finch again. ‘When did your difficulties with your wife commence?’ he asked. ‘Months ago? Weeks ago?’

  ‘Months ago? Years ago!’ Finch sounded disgusted.

  ‘Then why is it,’ Moyalan snapped, ‘that all your changes of address date only from the time when this writ for libel was taken out?’

  Finch hesitated and it seemed as though the court held its breath again. Finch licked his lips nervously once more and Moyalan persisted.

  ‘Had someone perhaps encouraged you to keep out of sight, Colonel?’ he demanded. The judge glanced at Kirkham, but Kirkham made no sign of being interested any longer, and Moyalan pressed the question once more.

  ‘You are on oath, Colonel,’ he pointed out and, after a while, Finch nodded slowly.

  ‘Was money involved?’

  Finch nodded again and Moyalan pounced. ‘Who was it, Colonel?’ he demanded. ‘Who did this encouraging? Was it General Prideaux?’

  There was an audible shocked gasp from the gallery, but Finch shook his head. ‘No,’ he muttered. ‘It was Murray-Hughes.’

  Moyalan threw down his brief. ‘Murray-Hughes?’ he said reflectively. ‘Well, I won’t go into that, Colonel. I’ll leave the court to form its own opinions, but it would seem to me that there could have been a deliberate attempt to interfere with justice.’

  He glanced at the judge and Godliman raised his head. ‘I have considered that, Mr. Moyalan,’ he said quietly.

  Kirkham made no comment. He was looking aged and shaken.

  Moyalan nodded slowly. ‘One last question,’ he said. ‘When General Prideaux was in that witness box where you now stand, it seemed to me, as it pro
bably seemed to His Lordship and the jury, that, after all these years – all these years when Major Higgins lived with the truth of what happened in Russia without saying anything – after all those years and with the constant repetition of the story, the General, who, to be fair, doubtless remembered little of it anyway – has come to accept that he deserved his decoration. Over the years, has that been your impression?’

  Finch stared at him unhappily. ‘Yes,’ he said.

  ‘Thank you, Colonel Finch. You have been most helpful. That will be all.’

  Sir Gordon Kirkham was rising slowly to his feet. He moved like a very tired man. He knew and everyone else knew that Moyalan had demolished his case and that the speech for the prosecution and the speech for the defence would be nothing but formalities.

  Epilogue

  Potter didn’t speak as Danny met him in the corridor outside the court and they went together into the Strand. The weather had changed and the quietness of a dusty summer evening had descended on London. Big Ben was chiming in the distance but most of the traffic had vanished and the home-going people had thinned out, though there were still a few at the entrance to the Underground, staring uneasily at the international headlines that suddenly dwarfed the importance of the Prideaux case, ‘america’s 11th hour appeal,’ they said. ‘polish crisis hopeless, rush to build air raid shelters.’

  They seemed to add to the weight of weariness that sat on Potter’s shoulders. He felt tired and in need of a drink.

  He guided Danny into a bar and, without asking what she wanted, bought them both a whisky and soda. Neither of them spoke until they had drunk, then Danny looked up.

  ‘It’s finished, isn’t it, Mr. Potter?’ she asked.

  Potter nodded. ‘It’s finished,’ he agreed.

  There had been a short cross-examination of Finch, a half-hour of wasted argument in which Kirkham had proved nothing but that Finch’s testimony only added weight to that of Higgins. Then, as Moyalan had re-examined on one or two minor points Kirkham had endeavoured to labour, there had been a certain amount of restless movement round Kirkham, with clerks handing him messages which had left him sitting slumped in his seat, his face thunderous.

  Godliman had looked at him, waiting for a lead as Moyalan had sat down.

  ‘Sir Gordon,’ he had prompted after a long pause. ‘The defence has closed. You have indicated that you might wish to recall General Prideaux before you addressed the jury. Do you now wish to do so?’

  Kirkham had risen wearily, his brows down. ‘I have just been informed, my lord,’ he said heavily, ‘by a message from my chambers that the General is unable to be in court. I have to announce that he has been taken ill and, on his doctor’s advice, has had to go abroad for a short while.’

  It had been an admission of retreat and of defeat.

  ‘Godliman will hardly need to sum up,’ Potter said, staring at his drink. ‘Case’s over. It was always Prideaux who was on trial, not our man, and he never had a chance against all that stuff of Higgins’.’

  Danny shrugged. ‘It was clever of Moyalan,’ she said. ‘Bringing out all that about Finch. What’ll happen to him now?’

  Potter gestured. ‘The army wouldn’t touch him with a barge pole after this. He might sneak into one of the other services in the event of an emergency, but I doubt if he’d have the nerve to try.’

  ‘And Murray-Hughes?’

  Potter considered. ‘He’ll never be credited as a war correspondent, I suppose. They’ll never trust him again. Still,’ he shrugged, ‘I don’t suppose that’ll stop him making a damn’ good living elsewhere. I just hope his conscience is enough to stay with him and spoil it for him if he does.’

  Danny nodded, depressed somehow by the way the case had ended. ‘I can’t see what’s been achieved, Mr. Potter,’ she said bluntly. ‘That poor man! He must have gone through hell.’

  ‘Who? Higgins?’

  ‘No. Prideaux. Think of his wife. She’s probably spent all her life admiring him. Think of having to face her now with this.’

  Potter gave a twisted smile. ‘Trust a woman to let her heart talk for her instead of her head,’ he said. ‘Danny, he was guilty of what Higgins accused him of – even if only indirectly. He really was.’

  ‘But he was in an awful position! If he’d let the letter go without comment, it would have seemed he was admitting all that it implied. And if he didn’t let it go, then inevitably the truth would come out. Why did he go ahead with it? He must have been mad.’

  Potter shrugged again. ‘You heard what Finch said: Over the years he’d come to believe it all. People do, y’know.’

  ‘Well, he’s finished now, isn’t he? Whichever way you look at it, a legend’s gone.’

  She looked up at him. ‘Why did he do it, Mr. Potter? Why did Higgins write that letter? He must have known what would happen. It was deliberate, to bring Prideaux down, but it’s not really proved anything, has it, except that Prideaux at fifty-five’s a different man from Prideaux at thirty-five.’

  ‘Perhaps it was seeing that hand of his wife every single day of his life. I think he loves her very much, Danny, in spite of the way they got hitched.’ Potter paused. ‘It was a clever dodge of Moyalan’s about her holding the Bible in her left hand. Shock tactics, when it came out about them.’

  ‘Do you think Higgins wanted revenge?’

  Potter shrugged. ‘Revenge’s a pretty sterile satisfaction,’ he said.

  ‘What then? Because he wanted credit in the end for what he did?’

  ‘Never,’ Potter said. ‘You saw him. He’s not the type.’

  She gestured. ‘Well, surely,’ she pointed out, ‘it can’t be a good thing for ordinary soldiers to read all this, with this beastly war about to burst on us! They’ll all be looking over their shoulders from now on, to see if their officers are like Prideaux or Finch or Murray-Hughes.’

  Potter sighed and she looked at him anxiously. ‘Why then,’ she persisted, ‘if not for revenge?’

  Potter toyed with the stem of his glass. ‘Perhaps it was something he said to me a few days ago, Danny,’ he began slowly. ‘He said “There mustn’t ever be another time.” I think if Prideaux hadn’t been named possible c.-in-c.. b.e.f., he’d never have written it. Only way there was of re-opening the case after all these years, y’see. Yet, y’know…’ he paused ‘…I think up to then he’d been quite willing to forget it all – until Prideaux’s name was put forward.’

  She was silent and Potter went on thoughtfully. ‘Think he wasted his time, though,’ he said. ‘Prideaux would never have got the b.e.f. Nothing but newspaper talk. He’ll stay at home planning, and when it’s over he’ll get a barony and leave the army and pick up a few directorships as Lord Prideaux. Within a year or two, everybody’ll forget his d.s.o. doesn’t really belong to him, and the grass’ll grow just as green over his grave when he’s dead as it will over those chaps we buried in Russia.’

  He became silent and she watched him for a moment. His eyes were sombre and she felt somehow on the verge of tears.

  She sat still for a while, thinking. ‘But it wasn’t entirely his fault,’ she said slowly. ‘And he wanted so much to make a good job of things – so he wasn’t letting his family down. Now he’s got to start all over again.’ She paused. ‘I’ve learned a lot about things since I joined the firm, Mr. Potter,’ she went on uncertainly. ‘There seems a lot of unfairness in this world.’

  He smiled, his face full of a sad sort of understanding.

  ‘Where do we go from here?’ she asked. ‘What’s the next move?’

  As he turned to answer, his eyes fell on a newspaper on the counter. Hitler’s savage face stared out at them, over the lines of goose-stepping soldiers, and, inset, lost among the type, as though already overshadowed by events, the Prime Minister waved as he had on his return from Munich.

  Potter sighed. He was old enough to be aware that they were going nowhere. There would be no next move. They, too, had reached the end of something, and when
life started again afterwards things were going to be so different it was going to be a changed world they lived in. Perhaps, like Prideaux, they all needed to question their consciences to see if they weren’t to blame.

  Danny had also noticed the newspaper and he saw her frown, perplexed, aware that something was happening that she didn’t comprehend. It was probably going to be harder, he decided, for young people like her, without the knowledge of what was to come and with only a fragment of their lives lived.

  He saw her eyes on him and he smiled quickly with the confidence of age and experience, making an effort to be gay that seemed to warm her and brush aside her uneasiness.

  ‘Let’s have another drink,’ he suggested. ‘We can worry about that later.’

  Next in The By Air, By Land, By Sea Collection:

  The Thirty Days War

  A swarm of enemy aircraft. A hopeless task. A brilliant commander.

  Find out more

  About the Author

  Max Hennessy was the pen-name of John Harris. He had a wide variety of jobs from sailor to cartoonist and became a highly inventive, versatile writer. In addition to crime fiction, Hennessy was a master of the war novel and drew heavily on his experiences in both the navy and air force, serving in the Second World War. His novels reflect the reality of war mixed with a heavy dose of conflict and adventure.

  Also by Max Hennessy

  The RAF Trilogy

  The Bright Blue Sky

  The Challenging Heights

  Once More the Hawks

  The Captain Kelly Maguire Trilogy

  The Lion at Sea

  The Dangerous Years

  Back to Battle

  The WWII Naval Thrillers

  The Sea Shall Not Have Them

  Ride Out the Storm

  Cotton’s War

  North Strike

  The Flying Ace Thrillers

  The Mustering of the Hawks

  The Mercenaries

  The Courtney Entry

  By Air, By Land, By Sea Collection

  The Lonely Voyage

  Light Cavalry Action