The Case of the Murdered Major: A Ludovic Travers Mystery Page 3

  CHAPTER II

  TRAVERS FINDS OUT

  October arrived. Shoreleigh itself had undergone a tremendous transformation, storming as it now was with troops and defences. As far as concerned the Prisoner of War Camp, the most important happening in the town had been the early establishment of Shoreleigh Garrison Headquarters, which—for the benefit of the uninitiated—may be described as the parental and ruling military authority of the whole area. It had its Brigadier and Staff, who were everywhere abroad on tours of advice and inspection. Such, of course, were the official descriptions of its activities; those advised and inspected preferred to describe them as blue-pencil Nosey Parkering and ruddy interference.

  Then, of course, it was the duty of Garrison Headquarters to disseminate War Office, Command and other Orders, and to collect the innumerable weekly and monthly returns. Stirrop found that Headquarter Staff a godsend. He was always round at their Mess standing drinks and receiving them, relating the Story of My Life to such as cared to listen, and ingratiating himself generally. In his own camp he would be constantly quoting the opinions of Headquarters, and, nearly always, against those of his own staff; and, even more infuriating, there was nothing too trivial for him to ring them up about. At all hours of the day he would announce that he would have to go round and consult Headquarters, and off his little bantam legs would scurry him, while his cold little eyes would be everywhere as he went through to the main gate, looking for causes of complaint.

  “What’s his idea?” Winter asked Travers once. “You and I both know he’s in this war for what he can get out of it. Is he trying to scrounge a better job, or get made up to Colonel, or what?”

  Travers shrugged his shoulders.

  “Don’t know,” he said warily. “Perhaps he wants a little intellectual relief. After all, you and I are a couple of pretty boring cusses to spend one’s days with.”

  That month brought tremendous changes in the camp. Dulling, the civilian doctor, had turned up early, as had all his R.A.M.C. staff. A prisoners’ hospital had been equipped inside the main building, and there was an annexe outside the barbed wire for troops. Under him were also such people as sanitary men and cleaning fatigues, and within his jurisdiction was the huge kitchen which would deal with prisoners’ food. All troops had their cooking headquarters outside the barbed wire.

  It was a great day when the balance of the Administrative Staff arrived, and as Stirrop happened to be away shooting, Travers received the party. There were two batmen. One named Brown, alias Sniffy, he would share with Winter. The other, named Timms, was for the Commandant. There were two provost-sergeants, whose principal work would be with the prisoners. Their names were Stamp and Ebbing, and each was an old-timer.

  And so to the two warrant-officers. Mr. Ramble, the Regimental Sergeant-Major, was short and sturdy, and, independent of his ribbon record, was obviously a fine soldier. Travers took to him at once, and was to rely on him much. What Travers liked was his quietness of manner. No crisis could flurry him, and, above all, he not only knew his job from A to Z, but was blessed with a strong sense of humour.

  Regimental Quartermaster-Sergeant Mafferty was cast in the same mould, but yet vastly different. He was to be Travers’s right-hand man, and, indeed, the man upon whom the whole camp depended, so it might be as well to look at him rather closely.

  In height he would be about five-foot-ten. He was lean, his complexion was brick-red and his cheek-bones high. His dark moustache was waxed to points of needle sharpness, and his back was straight as the familiar ramrod. In repose his face had an expression of grimness and taciturnity, but when he smiled, which was rarely, at once the whole man changed to something exceedingly likeable, and one remembered the smile and forgot the taciturnities. His ribbons showed him to be a first-class fighting man.

  Travers interviewed the two warrant-officers in his own room, and decided to be frank from the start. He confessed his own ignorance compared with their knowledge, said that he expected them to stand by him and that, for his part, he would never let them down.

  “You needn’t worry about the work here, sir,” Mafferty told him with that warm smile of his. “That’ll be cushy, sir.”

  “That’s right, sir,” said Ramble. “You leave it to us, sir, and we’ll see that everything goes O.K.”

  When Mafferty had gone, Ramble stayed behind.

  “May I say something to you, sir?”

  “Why not?” smiled Travers.

  “Well, sir, I much appreciated, and Quartermaster-Sergeant Mafferty did, the way you spoke, and I’d like to mention something in confidence.”

  “Well?” invited Travers, still smiling.

  “I’ve known Tom Mafferty for years, sir. He’s the best man at his job in the whole Midland Command. I’d go further than that, sir. He’s the best in the country.”

  Travers’ eyes narrowed slightly.

  “Then where’s the catch?”

  ‘Catch, sir?”

  “Yes. If he’s all that good, why hasn’t some big show collared him? Or why hasn’t he got commissioned rank? Why’s he been side-tracked down here?”

  “Well, sir, that’s what I was coming to,” said Ramble, slowly recovering from the rapier astuteness of Travers’s questions. “The fact is, sir, he’s his own enemy.”

  “Just how?”

  “His temper, sir. He’s been broken twice on account of it, and been made up again because he was too good a man to be kept down.”

  “Does he drink?”

  “No, sir. He’s fond of his glass the same as I am, and he’s the quietest living chap you know. But if he knows he’s right about anything, sir, he sticks to it, and that’s when he’s likely to lose his temper.”

  “His Irish temper, shall we say?”

  “That’s right, sir. The fact is, sir, he can’t stand being interfered with. He knows his job and—well, to put it bluntly, sir, he won’t stand mucking about.”

  “And not a bad point of view either,” said Travers heartedly. “The trouble is apparently that the Army hasn’t thought the same.”

  Ramble gave an impeccable salute.

  ’“Well, thank you very much, sir. And now, if you’ll excuse me, sir, I’ll go and see to my men.”

  It was another great day when the guard marched in: “D” Company of the 2/5th Midshires, comprising three officers and a hundred and twenty men. Stirrop announced that he would take the salute, and Travers had never felt such a fool in his life as he and Winter—twin satellites—stood behind the fussy little man trying so hard to look like a hairy-chested soldier.

  The Midshires were a Territorial battalion, and their officers took their job most seriously. The junior was Second-lieutenant Pewter, then came Lieutenant Dowling, and a Captain Byron was in command. Byron, a solicitor in civil life, was about thirty years old; very tall, very thin, and very earnest. What he didn’t know—which was an enormous deal—he made up in enthusiasm, and his men were said to adore him. His manner was diffident and nervous, but like Mafferty he had a really attractive smile.

  It was the duty of that guard company to furnish all outside duties and fatigues, as well as the guards themselves. The latter were not too onerous. The windows had been so heavily wired that no guards were needed inside the building itself, but a provost- sergeant with a runner would sleep there when prisoners were in camp, in case of any disturbance, and there was quite an elaborate system of alarm bells. All that the guards did, therefore, was to hold the main entrance gate, and to patrol by day and night between the wire aprons. To get from the building to anywhere outside, one went through a heavily wired series of gates, furnished with padlocks, the keys to which were issued only to certain responsible officers.

  Officers’ quarters and Mess, as well as all administrative offices, were outside the wire, and so communication between them presented no difficulties, and required no keys. But there were many other keys for all that—keys to admit to the main building, for example, and keys that locked the prison
ers’ rooms.

  Is all this boring you? I hope not, but if it is, be assured in mitigation that it is all essential. And if you think you are getting something of a conception of what a Prisoner of War Camp may be like, then perhaps you have forgotten two vitally important things. Ludovic Travers had never taken them into his calculations, and they were two more signs that the world had moved on while he had been standing still.

  First was the question of the black-out. How could one guard prisoners and prevent escapes when the whole camp, in common with the rest of Shoreleigh, had to be inkily dark? Well, it just couldn’t be dark, so between the aprons of barbed wire there was a modified system of flood-lighting. On receipt of an air-raid warning yellow, this lighting was immediately turned out, and all guards were doubled.

  Then there was the general question of A.R.P. Not only, mind you, the provision of respirators for troops, and suitable trench shelters, and covered posts for sentries, but the finding and training of rescue parties, fire pickets, decontamination squads, and demolition groups. There was a gas decontamination centre to equip. Fire points had to be made all over the main building and in the various huts, each point with its sand and water buckets, stirrup pump, shovels and gloves, and all the rest of it.

  No wonder that one of the largest rooms on the ground floor had to be taken over as a store. You know the song—

  There is Ham, there is Jam,

  In the Quartermaster’s stores . . . !

  Well, in Travers’s stores there were things which even that flippant ditty does not mention. There were blankets by the thousand, everything for the re-equipment of troops, spares of this and that from dining-room crockery to razors, safety, and cleavers, cooks’. And in case prisoners should arrive wounded, filthy or lousy, there were hundreds of sets of clothing. And towels, soap, disinfectant, latrine paper, bed-boards and trestles, tables, forms, chairs, bedding and the Lord knows what, all to be indented for, ledgered and frequently checked, and you have some idea of why Travers made a slight miscalculation when he so blithely assumed that quartermastering should be easy.

  There is one last preliminary to mention—the arrangement of staff rooms. The guard had their own offices among the hutments, but the camp headquarters was in that building where Travers had first met Winter. Apart from it, a few yards away, was a smaller room which had been comfortably fitted up as the Commandant’s office, but it is the main room that matters.

  It is an easy room to visualise. Imagine a building the shape of a matchbox standing on edge. Two rooms are downstairs and two correspondingly up, with a staircase as you enter the right-hand downstair room. In that right-hand room was Winter with a clerk, now, since there were no prisoners, acting as officer in charge of Ρ.A.D., or, as the civilian might prefer—A.R.P. In the larger room upstairs was Mafferty with two clerks, one on general work and the other principally concerned with rations. In the smaller room was Ramble, who, according to the administrative lay-out, was the Commandant’s right-hand man.

  In the larger room downstairs was Ludovic Travers, or the Adjutant, or Captain Travers, whichever way you like to look at him. His room had a wash-up and lavatory, as had Winter’s, and since the chimney ran in the middle, there was a fire in each of the four rooms. In the Adjutant’s office was the main telephone, with extensions to upstairs, to the Commandant’s office, to the guard at the main gate, and to the guard company office. Travers, in either words, had to have his finger on the pulse of things, though there were to be times when he would curse the day that telephones were ever invented.

  The staff of his room consisted of two people—a runner, though only occasionally, and a shorthand typist. When the Administrative Staff turned up it was discovered that there was no shorthand-typist among the clerks, so authority was obtained from Garrison to engage a civilian. The result was Bertha Dance.

  Miss Dance was of the tallish, willowy type; a mistress of personal embellishment and with an excellent control of the hips. If Nature had been left to itself she might have been really good-looking; as it was she might have been described as not without attraction. At her work she was absolutely in the first class, but the trouble was she was none too fond of work and her chief anxiety seemed to be to ingratiate herself with the Commandant. Though she was consistently late, Travers gave up reprimand, for she had the hide of a hippo.

  “You certainly know how to pick ’em!” was Winter’s comment to Travers after her first interview.

  Travers smiled and left it at that. What he had almost said was, “You ought to know,” for he had more than a shrewd idea that Winter was very much of a ladies’ man. He was very rarely in Mess of an evening for one thing, and at least two women would occasionally ask to speak to him on the ’phone. Also he was very much of an immaculate in the manner of get-up and appearance. One quite amusing thing Travers discovered for himself when he and Winter one day were leaning over a document—that the handsome black of his colleague’s hair was due less to Nature than to art.

  And now that we know practically all we need about No. 54 Prisoner of War Camp, what about a quick look round, with a rough diagram as guide?

  Three miles out of Shoreleigh you leave the Green Man on your left and where the road forks take the left hand. Soon you come to a ten-foot brick wall, spiked on top, and on its inside—which of course you can’t see—are huge entanglements of barbed wire.

  At the main gate you are halted by a sentry. If you have a Government pass, signed by the Commandant or Adjutant, you are admitted and you find yourself in the pleasant park whose trees you have seen as you approached by the road. Outside the inner gate, opposite the main building, another sentry halts you by day, though at night you would not have been allowed to enter the camp at all without reference direct to an officer.

  You run your eye over the building. It reminds you of a beautifully set blancmange. Funny little crenellated towers balance all the corners, but it is the main entrance that fairly staggers you, for it consists of almost a semi-circle of regular circular pillars, rising to the top of the first floor, where it supports a semi-circular species of balcony. Two other floors rise above it, making four in all.

  You are taken, perhaps, to the Adjutant’s office, and as you near it you see a sentry patrolling between two thick aprons of barbed wire. If it is a fine day and there are prisoners in the camp, you may see them at exercise in the pretty considerable spaces between the barbed wire and the main building. Farther north, beyond the barbed wire, you see long rows of huts, and troops moving about, and a lorry or two, delivering rations perhaps, or stores, or collecting swill or camp rubbish.

  The Adjutant’s office you enter by the second door of that old coach-house building. It is a well-furnished room as far as offices go; there is an air of peaceful activity, and there is a cheerful fire. An even more homely touch is the teacup by the side of the typewriter which is being manipulated by a languorous-looking lady with well-defined lips and the loveliest red nails. You tell yourself that there are many worse jobs than that of an adjutant, and you certainly wouldn’t mind changing his for your own. There, perhaps, you are right, but more likely you are wrong.

  The dice are weighted in your favour for the simple reason that it would be far too tedious for you to wade through even an ordinary day in Captain Travers’s life. But each morning Sniffy Brown brought a cup of tea at 07.45, and at 8.15 Travers entered the Mess for breakfast. At 09.00 he was in the office, and from then till 19.00 hours, except for a break for lunch, he was hard at it. Sometimes the rush of work would drive him frantic. The ’phone would ring incessantly, Garrison would pester, the War House would want to know, and something was bound to go wrong with rations or laundry or boot repair of troops. Mails would come and go, the Commandant would clamour for this and that; pow-wows had to be attended, and practices for air-raids, fires, and prisoners’ escapes. A dozen people would have to be interviewed and the camp inspected. There would be wordy and windy conferences with Stirrop, and often brass hats woul
d call. All the cash accounts would have to be made up, and if it was the end of a monthly pay period, the extra work would be as long and trying as that which confronts a bank at the end of a quarter.

  In those first few months of the camp’s existence, all days were alike, and Travers got accustomed to getting his weekly bearings by the arrival of Friday, which is pay-day and meant more work, but also a visit to the Shoreleigh bank. In the evenings he was rarely out of camp, for the rules had it that either the Commandant or his second-in-command must always be on tap, and since Stirrop came somehow to assume that Travers wished for no leisure, he was rarely in Mess himself. Often, indeed, Travers would return to the office and work there till late, while Mafferty, slogging unavailingly at catching up with the vast accumulation of before his arrival, would be working upstairs too.

  But at 22.00 hours to the dot, Travers would move along to his camp-bed, though not always to sleep. As the weeks went by he would often he awake for hours, so full of anger and indignations that the very whirl of his thoughts would frighten him. When he awoke in the night, the maddening thoughts would again start their circling, and it would often be dawn before he could fall asleep again.

  The reason of all that, of course, was Major Stirrop.

  CHAPTER III

  THE GOOD SHIP 54

  There are ships that are happy and others not so happy. No. 54 Prisoner of War Camp was a damnably unhappy one. Travers’s own private description of the place was “hell with oases.” And the perfectly infuriating thing was—as both Ramble and Mafferty were one day to point out—that the camp might not only have been an exceedingly happy one, but a place where one could have done good work and yet had a reasonably good time.