The Secret Rooms: A True Gothic Mystery (43 page)

A number of the battalions had already started out. It was a relief to be leaving Sailly. For seventy-two tense hours, dressed in full battle kit and camped in the freezing cold in a field on the edge of the village, they had waited for the order to go into action at Neuve Chapelle.
They were three miles
from the battlefield; the shells, fired from the Royal Horse Artillery’s howitzers on the hill behind them, had screeched over their heads. After the battle ended, the scenes in the village, where numerous hospitals were located, had been depressing. Fleets of ambulance wagons had ferried in the casualties; open at the back, the wounded soldiers, their uniforms caked in blood and mud, were all too visible.

Outside the North Midlands headquarters
the walking wounded still crowded the narrow cobbled street. John and General Stuart Wortley were waiting at the entrance to the building. It was mid-afternoon and they had been kicking their heels for several hours. Having completed the final arrangements for the move to Merris, yet another message had come through from General Headquarters. Colonel Watt was on his way; he had an important letter for General Stuart Wortley which the commander-in-chief had instructed him to deliver personally. The general was not to leave until Watt arrived.

It was shortly after
four o’clock when the staff car carrying Watt drove through the wrought-iron gates and pulled up on the gravel forecourt. Stepping briskly out of the car, he saluted the general and handed
him the commander-in-chief’s letter. His instructions were to wait, he explained. The commander-in-chief was expecting a reply by return.

Stuart Wortley read
the letter and passed it to John. ‘He wants you to go to GHQ,’ he said, looking at him quizzically: ‘He tells me you’re a famous inventor and that you know all about bomb-making. What do you want to do?’

An awkward silence followed while John read the letter. As Watt knew – and Stuart Wortley suspected – this was shady business. It was made the more uncomfortable by the backdrop against which it was taking place. The three men, immaculately turned out in their staff officer uniforms, were standing on the steps of the North Midlands headquarters. Through the railings that framed the forecourt, they could see the wounded going past. These were men who had fought bravely for King and country. Watt, the commander-in-chief’s trusted confidant, had been privy to his ‘plan’ from the beginning. He knew it was the location of the Inventions Department
*
rather than John’s ‘inventiveness’ that lay behind his offer: the reference to ‘bomb-making’ was no more than a sop to mask his intention of removing the young marquis from the firing line.

John had barely skimmed
the contents of the letter before he answered the general’s question. ‘The commander-in-chief must have confused me with someone else,’ he replied: ‘I’m not an inventor and I don’t know anything about bombs.’

Relieved to hear that he was not about to lose his ADC to General Headquarters, Stuart Wortley went in search of a piece of paper to write a note to Sir John.

A few minutes later
, he returned and handed the note to Colonel Watt to take back to St Omer.

As Watt left, he saluted the general. Then he shook John’s hand and wished him luck.

While John had no idea that his mother was behind the commander-in-chief’s offer, his reply to General Stuart Wortley was disingenuous. It was not the first he’d heard of the job at GHQ.

‘After tea, Lt-Col. Watt came over with a letter from the C-in-C for our General. I knew what it was about,’ he noted in his diary later that evening.

A month or so earlier – before he left England – Moore had invited him to one of the ‘Dances of Death’.

The commander-in-chief was not at Lancaster Gate that evening; he was in France, finalizing the preparations for the Battle of Neuve Chapelle. Following the customary dinner of exotic delicacies, Moore had sidled up to John and told him about the secret weapons project he was setting up at St Omer. He asked if John would be interested in joining the brigade.

John shared
his father’s opinion of ‘Little Big Head’. He thought him a swaggering, oleaginous figure, and his intimacy with the commander-in-chief – and the inside knowledge it conferred – grated. He was too polite to cut his host; as they chatted at the edge of the dance floor, he feigned interest in what Moore had to say. But he had no intention of following up the offer, or – were it to come to anything, which he doubted – of accepting it. Knowing the American’s infatuation with his sister, he assumed he was bragging because he wanted to ingratiate himself.

The next morning
, John called in at his uncle’s house in Chelsea. A row ensued after he mentioned the conversation. Firmly, Charlie told him he ought to follow up the offer. John thought it a preposterous idea. How could he? He had no knowledge of weaponry; besides, he wanted to fight with the North Midlands. Charlie retaliated with the familiar and depressing facts: his father’s estates were saddled with mortgages, which, if they were ever to be repaid, depended on his survival. If he was killed in action, his sisters and his mother would be left penniless: under the rules of entail, when Henry died, the estate, together with the dukedom and the heirlooms, would pass to his half-brother, Cecil. And what then? Cecil was a confirmed bachelor: he was never going to marry and produce an heir. Next – and the last – in line was Robert: he had a daughter, but no son. If John was killed, the line would die out. His family, Charlie reminded him, had been at Belvoir since the eleventh century; he
could trace his lineage back to Robert de Todeni, a standard-bearer to William the Conqueror at the Battle of Hastings. Could he really be so selfish as to risk the ruination of his entire family?

While John pointed out that his duty was not to the Manners family, but to his country, the row ended with Charlie begging him to think about the offer. They left it at that. In the weeks that elapsed, there had been no further mention of the matter: John inferred that it had been dropped.

At Merris, on the evening of 15 March, it was with a heavy heart that John sat down to write to Charlie to tell him that he had declined the commander-in-chief’s offer. He was adamant that it was his duty to serve with the North Midlands, but still he felt emotionally torn.

Since John’s arrival at the Front
, neither his parents nor Charlie had made it easy for him. Far from putting a brave face on things, their letters were a constant reminder of the hurt he was inflicting on them.

Violet, as the Duke reported, had taken to her bed with an illness brought on by the strain of his departure: ‘Mummy has been very seedy indeed since you left, and Hood says she must take great care as she is so weak and has got neuralgic pains all over.’ A few days later, Violet herself had written to tell him of her collapse: ‘Darling, Very bad stupid unkind flu came and stifled my misery. I wish it had come 4 days sooner for you to be knocked down by it!! You are never out of my thoughts.
Please be careful
.’

But it was Charlie’s letters that John found painful. He was missing his uncle, and being the cause of anxiety was upsetting. ‘I got your letter from Folkestone,’ Charlie wrote the morning after seeing him off at Victoria station: ‘It was like a glass of champagne. Don’t worry about me, my Colonel. When you left I think I touched the highest point of mind-misery yet reached. I fear I showed it – though I tried not to. Anyhow, now it is to be all philosophy and making the best of it.’

Charlie had not made the best of it; a few days later came another letter: ‘Old boy, I do hope you are all right and that you take
great care
. Think of me sometimes after 5 o’clock, a lonely creature in my
room who never has his thoughts away from you. But who looks forward always to happier times.’

‘Yes, Old Boy, I have often thought of you in your room and I wished I was there for two reasons,’ John replied from Sailly. ‘One to cheer you up, and one to be back myself, but we must both be very cheerful and hope for better times. We are in the same place. Today a tremendous lot of gun firing and as it was a fine sunny day and good for observations and patrolling, our aeroplanes were very active. It really was a very pretty sight. There were five or six up in the air the whole time – some guarding our big gun, and others just letting the Germans know they had better not brave the ground with theirs. Yes, I take great care. I expect now we shall be in this village for some time, as we don’t seem to be able to push any further ahead. Will write again tomorrow.’

He reassured Charlie again in his next letter: ‘You still seem very worried about me out here. Don’t be. I will let you know before you need be. I don’t want you ill when I get back because we shall both have to be extra energetic to make up for lost antiquarian time.’

But only that morning, John had received yet another anxious letter:

Dear Jacko,

Your letters are wonderful. I have just got yours of Mar 12 – but you’ve no idea how terrified I feel at your being so forward. Don’t extra risk things, my Colonel, for God Almighty’s sake.

A small black kitten has suddenly taken up its abode in my tree opposite the dining room here, which you can never see the beauty of. I was going to chase it away but Mrs Leeds says it is the luckiest thing in the world so today I bought some cats-meat and put some milk down and it jumped into my room, where it has remained. I hope it will bring both of us luck. Nothing of this kind must be laughed at now.

As John agonized over his letter to Charlie, he did not have the heart to tell him that he had flatly declined the job at St Omer; instead, he opted to break the blow gently.

‘Old Boy,’ he began:

The question of changing my job was started today by the General receiving by the hand of Sir John’s ADC a letter from the C-in-C on that subject. I read the letter in front of the two and was asked what I should do. I had your feelings and my family well in the foreground but it was not possible to do anything but say that I had no experience in bombs or that I was a famous inventor, both of which I was accredited with in the letter. The letter was not couched in any way of a request or order but merely suggesting that as he had heard of the two attributes to my name I should be a useful person if it was true. I hope you will believe me when I say it was out of the question to do anything else.

Unwitting of his mother’s role in the affair, he was also anxious to spare her feelings: ‘You may use your own discretion about telling this to Mother. Perhaps it is unnecessary to tell her.

‘There have been tremendous losses on both sides these last three days,’ he continued: ‘12000 casualties at Neuve Chapelle. Awful. We move tomorrow – a little way back – what a bore not being able to tell you where. Am very well. Give my love to the cat.’

John need not have agonized over his letter. Charlie would know his decision before he received it.

At General Headquarters, Sir John had sealed the note General Stuart Wortley had sent him inside an envelope, and handed it to a King’s messenger. He was to take it to George Moore at Lancaster Gate.

Even as John was writing, the messenger was halfway across the English Channel. By midnight, Charlie and Violet knew the commander-in-chief’s ‘good plan’ had failed.

Early the next morning
– 16 March – George Moore summoned Charlie to see him at Lancaster Gate. A footman ushered him into the spacious drawing room. Moore was in an ill humour; gruffly, he invited Charlie to sit down.

‘Your boy’s failed me,’
he growled, handing him General Stuart Wortley’s letter: ‘I don’t understand it. He as good as promised me he would go.’

The drawing room
was on the first floor. Overlooking Hyde Park, it was furnished with antiques and paintings of the St Leger. The former ‘property of a gentleman’, they had been bought by Moore in a job lot at auction.

John’s refusal
, he went on to tell Charlie, had placed him in an embarrassing position. His ‘Great Friend’ (Sir John French) had entrusted him to execute his plan. He had given his word to the Duchess that he could do something for her son. In declining the job, John had humiliated him: he had been made to look a fool in front of both the Duchess and the field marshal.

A means
had
to be found to save face all round.
But, before proceeding
any further, he wanted to know why John had turned the job down. Had his general forced him to decline the offer? Or had he refused it on principle?

Charlie could only reply that while he was unable to explain what lay behind his nephew’s decision, he was equally determined to secure a satisfactory outcome.

‘Find out why
he turned it down,’ Moore instructed him. ‘And find out where Stuart Wortley stands.’

Depending on the answers
, he continued, they had just two options. Either pressure would have to be brought to bear on John to reverse his decision, or, if it turned out that the general was behind
his refusal, he must be made to see that John should be allowed to join Foulkes’s brigade.

They agreed to do nothing for the time being. It was Tuesday; they would reconvene at the Duke’s house at Arlington Street on Thursday. By then, Charlie ought to have heard from John.

When Charlie got home, he was hoping to find a letter from his nephew. But there was nothing in the post. In a state of despair, he spent the rest of the day composing a long letter to him:

Dear Old Jacko

You can hardly realise the miserable broken-down old man who writes to you. Old boy, I had built all my hopes on one event and I don’t think I ever really believed you would fail.

Through Moore, I have heard that you have decided not to go and all doubt removed by being shown Wortley’s letter to Sir John declining it on your behalf. A letter worthy of the man, short and ungrateful and implying that you were no other use than a chauffeur and would be quite out of place on the C-in-C’s Staff – ‘Granby has no inventive genius’, which is a damned lie. The letter was enclosed by Sir John with a note from himself showing surprise and distress. He had thought you would be sure to come to him. I don’t know why I go on writing like this, old boy, except that tonight I really don’t care what happens or what you think of me – utterly miserable – and an utter failure with everything I wish for, or everybody I care for.

M says he can’t understand as you as good as promised him about it and thinks it’s not you but a cursed pressure on you.

Do me at least the kindness, my Colonel, to let me know what happened and whether anything further can be done. I don’t dare talk to your mother, even on the telephone. She is utterly broken-hearted, as so am I.

Dear, dear Colonel, forgive me for writing like this, you don’t know what one feels like in England for one’s friends in this ghastly war. Don’t tell me not to worry because it does me no good, and it is rot into the bargain, but take this letter kindly, you won’t get another one like it again.