The First Casualty (40 page)

‘Captain Shannon, you are trying my patience!’

Kingsley blurted it out and knew immediately that he had dropped his guard. Shannon leaned languidly against a tree, a sneer upon his face.

‘Oh dear, have I touched a nerve? I rather think I have. Perhaps the good captain has taken his comfort where he could find it? She don’t half scratch, eh? And bloody strong, considering she’s practically a midget.’

Kingsley struggled to master his rage. He understood very well that Shannon was deliberately making him angry.

‘The mistake that was made in the early part of this investigation,’ Kingsley said, slowly and clearly, ‘was to presume that the two eyewitness reports regarding an officer leaving Abercrombie’s room referred to the
same man
. They did not. I know this because McCroon told me that Nurse Murray was still in the room with Hopkins when he left it. Hence the man with the music case who pushed past McCroon immediately thereafter could not have been the same man that Nurse Murray saw when
she
left the room some time later. Abercrombie was visited by
two
officers on the night of his death. Subaltern Stamford was the first of them and it was he whom McCroon sighted.’

Shannon shrugged and then, as was his habit, lit a fresh cigarette from the burning stub of the previous one, as if to say that, much as he would like to, he could not get overexcited about Kingsley’s revelations.

‘You interviewed McCroon in the field, didn’t you?’ Shannon drawled.

‘Yes, I did. We shared a shell hole for a short time.’

‘Cool bit of work, I must say. Well done. You’ve made quite a soldier, haven’t you? I saw the medal citation that Colonel Hilton submitted after you shot up that Hun trench. Cumming and I shared a smile when that came through. Nice work for a conscientious objector, we thought. So much for all that bloody ‘offended logic’ you used to bang on about ad nauseum. How many blameless, innocent Germans do you think you killed, by the way?’

Now it was Kingsley’s turn to chain-light a cigarette. He was rarely rattled by anybody but Shannon had a curious ability to get under his skin.

‘So the obvious question is — ’ Kingsley began, having drawn deeply on his fag.

‘Do they bother you,’ Shannon insisted, ‘those dead Germans? Do you dream about them at night? Can you still see their faces? Bet you can.’

‘If Nurse Murray did not see Stamford — ’

‘I mean, what an appalling moral balls-up for you, eh? You ruin your life, let down your beautiful wife and desert your son so as
not
to kill Germans, and within days of arriving in France you’re slaughtering them by the bloody trenchful. Damned strange way to claim the moral high ground, if you ask — ’

‘If Nurse Murray did not see Stamford,’ Kingsley continued, calmly and firmly, ‘who did she see? And I think we both know the answer to that question, don’t we, Captain Shannon? Because the officer Nurse Murray saw was you.’

Shannon smiled and stepped away from the tree on which he had been leaning. His stance was no longer quite so nonchalant; the cigarette still hung lazily from his lips but nonetheless he looked
ready
.

‘Me? Inspector Kingsley,’ Shannon drawled, and this time Kingsley did not bother to correct his name, ‘why would she have seen me?’

‘I should have spotted it earlier — in fact Nurse Murray gave me the clue without knowing it on the first day I met her, but I only understood its significance when I realized that there
had
to have been two officers sighted.’

‘And what did the delightful but rather violent Nurse Murray tell you?’

‘She said, ‘First Captain Shannon came. Then we had the murder and the police said they’d solved it and now you turn up.’ Do you hear that, Captain?
First Captain Shannon came
. You did not
go
to France to interview the witnesses in the case, you were already there.’

The ash was growing longer on Shannon’s cigarette but he did not flick it off.

‘I never denied it. I’m a soldier, where else would I be but France?’

‘But you weren’t in combat. You had already been seconded to the Security Service. You were here on spy duties, looking at the likes of Hopkins and McCroon, weren’t you?’

Shannon shrugged once more and the ash fell.

‘Yes, I was, as a matter of fact, and I would have told you so had you asked. Now that Kerensky’s gone in Russia and Lenin’s in, our number-one fear is Bolshevism in our own ranks. But what, if you’ll forgive me for asking, has any of that to do with Abercrombie ?’

‘Well, Abercrombie may not have been a Bolshevik but he was no longer quite the standard-bearer for British arms that he had been, was he?’

‘Wasn’t he?’

‘I think you know he wasn’t. Abercrombie was totally disillusioned with the war. His view was graphically described in his recent poetry and, what is more, he intended to do something about it.’

‘You seem to know rather a lot about a chap who died before you had a chance to meet him. Have you been consulting a spiritualist?’

‘No, no. Just reliable witnesses. In the last days of his life Viscount Abercrombie had been anxious to secure a green envelope, whereby he might send a letter home that would escape the eye of the censor.’

Shannon’s hand was resting on the leather cover of his holster now. Kingsley had not seen Shannon’s arm move towards it but, nonetheless, there his hand was, fingers toying with the little button that secured the flap. Shannon smiled a patronizing smile.

‘Amazing how soldiers believe that ‘green envelope’ rubbish,’ he drawled through his cigarette smoke. ‘For heaven’s sake, if we want to read a man’s letters we read them, whatever colour the envelope is.’

‘Abercrombie had already had one letter refused him. His colonel had picked up the one in which he was attempting to resign his commission and refused it passage. But this wasn’t a letter to the
army
, was it? Otherwise it would have been an internal matter. So to whom was Abercrombie writing? Not his mother, I think. What possible help could she be in the matter? His father perhaps? Hardly, I doubt the Tory Chief Whip in the House of Lords would be very sympathetic. No, my view is that he was writing to a newspaper. He intended, in fact, to follow directly in the footsteps of Siegfried Sassoon. Colonel Hilton, perceiving the disastrous effect that this change of heart would have at home, came to see Abercrombie here at Château Beaurivage and attempted to get him to change his mind. Furthermore, he explained that if Abercrombie would not reconsider, the colonel intended to forward the inflammatory letter to Staff HQ. This he did.’

‘And you think that the letter came to me?’

‘I cannot imagine who else they would give it to other than the senior security officer on the ground. Your brief was to deal with mutiny and here was mutiny indeed, and of the most inflammatory kind. A decorated officer refusing to serve? The author of ‘Forever England’ denouncing the war as stupid and wicked? It would take a far less astute mind than yours, Captain, to deduce that this was a very dangerous letter indeed.’

Shannon had flipped the button on the cover of his holster, so that the leather flap was hanging loose.

‘Here was a man,’ Kingsley continued, ‘who could do far more damage to morale than working-class Socialists like Hopkins and McCroon could ever do. They had
always
been against the war. Abercrombie, like Sassoon, had been
turned against it
, which is far more corrosive. And Abercrombie was a much worse case than Sassoon: certainly they had both been decorated for valour, but Abercrombie had been a celebrated jingoist, he was the son of a senior Conservative politician,
a British aristocrat
…’

‘He was a lily-livered swine, that’s what he was,’ Shannon snarled, for the first time losing something of his sangfroid. ‘A damned turncoat about to let the side down with a bloody almighty clunk.’

‘Except that you did not intend to let him, did you? So late one night you crept into the château, that same château which housed the revolutionary troublemaker Hopkins, one of the very men you had gone to France to deal with. What a happy coincidence, simply too good to miss. Two birds with one stone, eh? Dispose of a national embarrassment and frame a Bolshevik into the bargain.’

For all that Shannon had tried to provoke Kingsley, it was now Shannon who was the angry one. He spoke with bitter venom.

‘How do you think the other fellows would have felt? The ones still in the trenches doing their duty? How would they have felt to learn that national bloody hero Abercrombie thought they were all
sheep
, cattle! Fools making a pointless sacrifice?’

‘So you entered the viscount’s room, took up one of his boots to act as a silencer and then shot him through the heel of it as he slept.’

Something in Shannon seemed to change. He had made a decision and so once more was his old, relaxed, arrogant self.

‘Yes, as a matter of fact, I did,’ he said with a shrug and an easy smile. ‘I rather liked the macabre little detail of there being only one boot left at the scene, like in a novel. You know, the thing that defies all logic and baffles the investigation. Not that I intended there to be any investigation.’

‘Because you planned to pose as a staff officer and call off the Military Police.’

‘Yes.’

‘A Colonel Willow.’

‘Mmm. Don’t know why I picked that. Constance Willow was the first girl I tupped — that must have been it, although God knows why. A servant, don’t you know. Often the way, I’ve found, talking to other chaps.’

‘So you shot Abercrombie and no doubt intended to plant your gun on poor deranged Hopkins, but then you noticed that Abercrombie still had his gun amongst his kit. A most unusual circumstance for a hospital patient, I’m sure.’

‘Yes, I hadn’t expected it.’

‘But having seen it you couldn’t resist the added detail. It would always have appeared strange that Hopkins had had a gun available to him, but to have snatched up Abercrombie’s
own
gun in a moment of madness, that was
much
more plausible. An added touch which seemed brilliant at the time but which was, of course, to lead to your undoing.’

‘Well, obviously I never dreamed that a ridiculous figure like yourself would think to go sneaking about the place digging up corpses and comparing bullets. Too clever for my own good, I suppose.’

‘No, Captain Shannon, you are not. I am. Because it was only your plan to frame Hopkins for Abercrombie’s murder that sparked the political row which brought me into the game in the first place. If you had just sneaked in and killed him, you probably would have got away with it.’

‘Oh, I think you’ll find that I
did
get away with it, old boy.’

Whilst still maintaining his same easy smile Shannon lifted the leather flap of his holster and rested his hand on the butt of his gun. Kingsley had on an officer’s greatcoat, and there did not appear to be anything so large as a weapon secreted within it.

‘So you pocketed your own smoking weapon,’ Kingsley continued, ‘took up Abercrombie’s and fired it once, no doubt out of the window. I’m sure that if we searched for long enough we should find a bullet lodged in one of these trees hereabouts, or perhaps a slaughtered squirrel.’

‘Probably,’ Shannon agreed, affecting a yawn. ‘I’m such a damned superb shot that I’d probably hit
something
even at random in the dark.’

‘You then took up the ruined boot and Abercrombie’s smoking pistol, crept into the next-door ward and deposited the incriminating gun on Hopkins’s bed. Having done that you made a hasty exit, walking away from the ward up the corridor. It was then that Nurse Murray returned, having forgotten to take away the needle she had administered to a patient earlier. She saw your back as you made your retreat. Later on, when she heard about the murder, she of course drew the mistaken conclusion that the mystery officer had departed from Abercrombie’s room, when in fact it was Hopkins’s ward that you had just left.’

‘Ah, the lovely Nurse Murray.’

Shannon’s hand closed around the butt of his gun.

‘Yes, the lovely Nurse Murray,’ said a voice from within the trees.

Nurse Murray stepped out from the foliage in which she had been hiding, holding in front of her, in both hands, a German officer’s magazine-loaded Mauser pistol, cocked and in the approved firing position.

‘Take your hand away from that holster, Captain, or I shall shoot. You know very well that I have good cause.’

‘Well, well, well,’ Shannon drawled, ‘what’s this, Kingsley? An accomplice?’

Shannon had not yet moved his hand away from his gun. Perhaps he was about to, or perhaps he was going to draw it. Nurse Murray was clearly in no mood to wait. She lowered her sights, pointed the gun at Shannon’s groin and squeezed the trigger.