Other Paths to Glory (9 page)

‘It was also the best goddamn army in Europe in 1914,’ amended Mitchell. ‘The smallest but the best.’

‘Aye …’ Butler stared down at the names. ‘Ironic, wasn’t it? But go on. I’m still not sure what you’re driving at.’

Mitchell pointed.

‘Well … see how those casualties in the first two years came from the Grenadier Guards and the 8th Hussars and the RFA - I’ll bet they were all regulars. The Kitchener volunteers of ‘14 didn’t see much action in a big way until 1916 – ‘

‘On the Somme?’

‘Right. Just look at those 1916 casualties - four from the county regiment.’

‘But four from the Rifle Brigade. And that’s a crack regular unit.’

Mitchell shook his head.

‘They could still be Kitchener volunteers in one of the Brigade’s service battalions, there were five or six of those on the Somme. But in any case I’ll bet most of the names here from 1916 onwards are New Army men, because the old Regular Army was just about wiped out by then - Ypres and Neuve Chapelle and Loos and so on.’

‘But these aren’t the ones we’re interested in,’ came Audley’s voice from behind them.

‘If Paul’s right, it’s the old soldiers who haven’t died or faded away that we want. So let’s go and see if we can find any of them, gentlemen.’

The difference between the last two of the row of council houses was a commentary on the passions, ancient and modern, of the Englishman at home: Number Nine looked like nothing so much as the forecourt of a busy garage, with cars of varying ages and states of repair lining up on a narrow drive and spilling out onto the verge, their guts spread across the unkempt garden alongside them, while Number Ten’s manicured flowerbeds were still ablaze with roses and chrysanthemums and dahlias thriving on the borrowed time of a mild autumn.

Audley bent down towards a pair of overalled legs which protruded from beneath a well-preserved Morris Traveller.

‘Mr Hutchinson?’

The knees flexed and heels scrabbled for purchase as their owner eased himself out.

‘Eh?’

‘Mr Hutchinson?’

If this, beneath a layer of grease, was Mr Hutchinson then he dated from the wrong war, with only a frosting of grey in his hair. But that was very much what was to be expected.

‘Ah, that’s right. What is it, then?’

‘Secretary of the Elthingham branch of the British Legion?’

‘Ah, that’s right.’ Hutchinson sat up, wiping his hands on a rag. ‘What can I do for you?’

‘My name is Audley, Mr Hutchinson. And this is Colonel Butler - and Captain Lefevre … Could you spare us a moment?’

‘Ah -‘ This time the sound had a gravelly decisiveness to it ‘ - just a tick, then.’

Hutchinson heaved himself stiffly to his feet, carefully erasing the dirty mark he made on the Traveller’s re-cellulosed wing before turning to them.

‘Now - you’d be from the County Headquarters, eh?’

‘They directed us to you,’ replied Audley cautiously, a slight frown creasing his forehead. ‘Do you mean you were expecting someone from headquarters?’

Hutchinson peered down at the car’s wing, absentmindedly polishing it as he did so.

‘Not so soon, I wasn’t - not if it’s about George Davis, that is.’

If he was disconcerted about the unplanned direction the interview was taking Audley didn’t show it.

‘Chairman said he’d be phoning up about it,’ Hutchinson stopped polishing abruptly. ‘It’s a tragedy. But it’s also a bloody disgrace, that’s what it is, Mr - ?’

‘Audley.’

‘Ah - Mr Audley.’ Hutchinson squared his shoulders. ‘We know old George wasn’t very spry, and it’s true he was half deaf too.
And
he’d been to the pub, we know that. But it doesn’t make one bit of difference, ‘cause we’ve been on at the council time and again about that stretch. They say the Ministry refuses point blank to put a limit on it and they won’t put a sign up either, but we say that’s just not good enough. We’re the ones who live here, not the bloody Ministry, and we know better. And what’s happened to old George just proves it - and there’ll be others, you mark my words. So if the Legion can help us make a scandal of it - that’s what it is, a scandal - to go through two world wars and then be knocked over like a stray dog by some little swine that shouldn’t be let on the road - ‘

‘Mr Hutchinson!’ Audley seized the momentary pause in the rising spate of outrage.

‘I’m sorry, but I think we’re at cross-purposes. Or at least partially so.’

‘Eh? How do you mean? You’re not from headquarters?’

‘We are concerned with your veteran members,’ Audley ducked the question smoothly. ‘Of whom Mr Davis was one, of course. But I believe one of our representatives may have been to see you already, just a few days ago - Professor Charles Emerson. Did he come to see you?’

This was the crunch. If Emerson had been running true to form - at least if he was in pursuit of a specific survivor - he invariably sought information first from the local Legion secretary to enable him to plan his questions precisely. Some of his success in recent years had stemmed from his remarkable ability to distinguish the tiny panicles of pure golden truth in oral accounts which others had dismissed as being too adulterated by the passage of time and innocent self-deception.

Hutchinson frowned at Audley. ‘There was a man earlier in the week came to see me at work…’

He broke off, doubt growing in his voice.

‘… but I don’t see what that’s got to do with what’s happened to old George Davis.’

Mitchell came to life.

‘A short man with thick grey hair - that would be Professor Emerson?’

‘Aye, that’s him. But -‘

‘And he inquired about your members who served in the 1914-18 War?’

‘He did, that’s right. He made a list of them.’

‘Could you give us the same names? We’ve mislaid the list, you see.’

The lie came easily and naturally.

‘Well, yes -‘ Hutchinson was puzzled rather than doubtful now ‘ - there aren’t many of them, anyway.’

‘Fine.’

He sounded for all the world like Audley, who was regarding him with approval; the worm had become part of the bird beyond hope of recovery.

‘Ah - well, just let’s see … There’s Ralph Owen and Joe Alien and Tom Brain - ‘

‘Let me get them down.’ Mitchell clicked his ballpoint pen. ‘They all served in the army?’

‘Tom did. With the RAMC at Gallipoli and later on in Palestine, he was.’

Mitchell put a line through Tom Brain.

‘Ralph and Joe were in the Navy. Ralph was in the
Warspite
at Jutland and old Joe was three years with the Dover Patrol.’

A line through them also.

‘And Air Vice-Marshal Howard, of course - he was in the Royal Flying Corps.’

A possible, because there were transfers from the infantry to the RFC. But doubtful because Emerson would have had quicker methods of checking on an air vice-marshal than through any Legion branch secretary.

‘Then there’s old Johnnie Pollard - he was in the army right enough. Won the DCM the first time he went over the top in 1918. And his twin brother Les - he was with him. That was on their eighteenth birthday, and at the end of the day they were the only two left out of their platoon, and not a scratch on either of ‘em. The Lucky Pollards they used to call ‘em.’

Lucky indeed. But if that was the first time then they couldn’t have been at the Somme two years earlier, even if they’d lied about their age as so many youngsters had done in the first flush of patriotism. In 1914 they’d have been too young for that in any case.

‘Yes?’

‘That’s the lot. Fred Foster died last year - he was in the Rifles - and Eddie Turner and Les Collins the year before. They were both with the county regiment, the Royals. That’s the lot of them.’

Damn, damn, damn. Emerson had drawn a blank and so had they, thought Mitchell bitterly, looking at Audley.

‘Except George Davis,’ said Audley.

‘Argh!’ Hutchinson growled, recalled to his earlier anger instantly. ‘And he was our oldest member. September 1st, 1914 he joined up - and it would have been August 4th he used to say, if the squire hadn’t told him to wait for a bit - that was Sir Henry Bellamy. George was a keeper on his estate, so was Fred Foster. They joined up together in the Rifles and they were both wounded the same day in ‘16.’

1916: Mitchell felt a twinge of unease in his stomach, like the first onset of sea-sickness.

‘On the Somme?’

‘Ah, that’s right, yes -‘ Hutchinson broke off suddenly, staring at him as though the unease had transmitted itself. ‘What you want to know all this for, then?’ He looked hard at Mitchell. ‘That’s the same as the other one asked.’

The other one. And just like the other one, George Davis had met with an accident. Just like the other
two.
Three accidents in one day.

‘Hah-hmm!’ Butler cleared his throat briskly. ‘And you were in the army, Mr Hutchinson?’

Hutchinson turned towards his new questioner, frowning.

‘Yes, I was.’

‘What regiment?’ Not even back in the lay-by on the hill above the village had Butler sounded so military.

‘The 23rd Lancers, sir.’ Hutchinson straightened up perceptibly. ‘XXX Corps, attached to the Canadian First Army.’

‘Normandy?’

‘No, sir. I joined them just before the Reichswald offensive.’

‘That’s a coincidence - so did I. Royal East Lanes. That was a hard slog, the Reichswald.’

‘Ah, it was. They said the Germans were beaten before we started, but it didn’t look like it from inside a Cromwell.’

They were nodding at each other like old comrades sharing a private experience, the business in hand quite overshadowed by their memories.

‘And you saw the finish of it, over the Rhine?’

‘Yes, sir. Up beyond Hanover we were at the end.’

‘Good.’ Butler gave a final nod. ‘Now - Professor Emerson asked you about Mr Davis, you say …And you told him what you’ve just told us.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘I see. So you knew Mr Davis quite well?’

Hutchinson bobbed his head, grinning.

‘Ah, that’s right. He was head keeper on the estate when I was a boy - he larruped my backside properly once when he caught me in the woods after pheasants’ eggs. And then when I joined the Home Guard as a lad in 1940 he was our lieutenant, and Fred Foster, he was platoon sergeant. Of course, he’d been a CSM in the Rifles when he was demobbed in 1919, George had. And he was chairman of our branch here after the war - our war - when I joined it.’

All thought of questioning them about their curiosity seemed to have been forgotten now. And that, thought Mitchell suddenly, had been the whole object of Colonel Butler’s digression into the Second World War. He should have remembered that was how Audley and Butler operated, each one moving into the interrogation in support of the other, covering an exposed flank or putting down smoke as required. For all their obvious personal antipathy they functioned as a team when they were working.

‘And now he’s been the victim of a road accident, Mr Davis has, you say?’ said Butler gruffly. ‘How did that happen?’

‘Nobody rightly knows, sir - it was bloody hit and run, that’s what it was, hit and run.’

‘Disgraceful!’ Butler snapped. ‘When?’

‘Last night, sir. George always went for a drink about nine o’clock of a weekday - The Volunteer, that’s the pub on the edge of the village, near the main road. That’s where we want the speed limit moved to, because they come off the road like bloody maniacs into the lane and there’s a blind corner just as you get to The Volunteer.’

‘And that’s where it happened?’

‘So far as the police can tell, yes - about 9.45 it was.’

‘But they have no idea who did it?’

‘Not from what I heard this morning. I know they’re pulling out all the stops, though - they don’t like it no more than we do.’

‘Of course,’ Butler agreed vigorously. ‘And you can rest assured we shall see they continue to do so, Mr Hutchinson. But in the meantime what about his next-of-kin? Was he married?’

‘A widower, sir,’ Hutchinson shook his head.

‘Children?’

‘Married daughter lives in Canada, sir. His son was killed in Burma in ‘44.’

‘But he must have been getting on - who looked after him?’

‘He looked after himself. He was very independent.’

Mitchell looked at Audley for signs of disappointment: it was a dead end - as dead as George Davis.

Audley’s face was impassive, but the look seemed to galvanise him.

‘Who’s looking after the funeral, then?’

Hutchinson drew himself up.

‘Why, we shall, of course. Unless General Leigh-Woodhouse wishes to - I’ll be writing to him this evening.’

‘General Leigh-Woodhouse?’

‘Our County President,’ said Hutchinson in the tones of one surprised at such abysmal ignorance. ‘He lives just over at Wellingbourne Lodge on the other side of the hill. He was George’s old company commander.’

They were in business again.

‘JACK WON’T BE LONG,’
said Audley reassuringly.

‘He’d better not be.’

‘For General Leigh-Woodhouse’s sake?’ Audley acknowledged the point grimly. ‘You could be right there, I agree. But we’re only ten minutes from Wellingbourne. And we owe it to Mr Hutchinson to close up his mouth tight just in case anyone gets ideas about him too.’

Mitchell looked at him across the bonnet of the car, a little surprised.

‘Is that what he’s doing?’

‘Applying the Official Secrets Act, yes - in a comradely sort of way. Jack has the right touch for Mr Hutchinson - they have the Reichswald in common.’

There was a patronising nuance in Audley’s voice which niggled Mitchell, tempting him to needle the big man back.

‘The right touch all round.’

‘Very true - a shrewd fellow, as I said before, our Jack - ‘ The needle bounced off Audley’s hide unnoticed ‘ - and you, too, Paul. For a first go you did remarkably well back there. Captain Lefevre to the life.’

‘We were lucky to get Professor Emerson’s contact man straight off.’

‘Lucky?’ Audley cocked his head thoughtfully. ‘I don’t know about that: you knew his methods, I’d say. What does surprise me is that he set so much store by oral evidence. Letters, yes - though they’re often too subjective to be any real use. But as for memories, I’ve always found them highly inaccurate even after a few hours, never mind half a century.’