Other Paths to Glory Page 8

  ‘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.

  7

  ‘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.’

  ‘Yet you spend half your time talking to people.’

  ‘And the other half cross-checking what they’ve told me.’ Audley’s attractive grin lit his face. ‘I didn’t say it was useless to me - I’m not a historian at this moment. In my business one good thumping lie can be worth more than a lot of mundane truth, and there are times when what a man doesn’t say tells me more than what he actually does say … Come to that, there are times when questions are just as good as answers - I’d rather know the questions Emerson put to that poor old chap Davis than the answers he gave. He may not even have had any answers.’

  Or they might have been different from the answers General Leigh-Woodhouse had in store for them, hopefully, thought Mitchell. And those in turn might be different from what Rifleman Fred Foster and the two long-dead riflemen whose names were inscribed on the war memorial might have told them.

  He stared towards the memorial sadly. Although it didn’t help, his flight of fancy for Butler’s benefit had probably been accurate: those were almost certainly men from George Davis’s battalion, killed on the Somme between July and November. One of them, he remembered now, had been a Bellamy, a relative - a son, even - of the ‘squire’ who had delayed Davis answering Lord Kitchener’s appeal for volunteers. That had a positively feudal ring about it, the squire’s son and two of his gamekeepers going to the war together, smacking more of Agincourt and Crecy than the Somme. But then those battlefields were all in the same bit of France, and schoolboys a thousand years hence would no doubt confuse them into the same war. The squire’s son and two gamekeepers!

  ‘The Poachers!’ exclaimed Mitchell triumphantly.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ Audley’s eyebrows lifted.

  ‘The Poachers - that’s the unit George Davis must have belonged to!’ Mitchell clapped his hands together. ‘I should have guessed it straightaway. It has to be them.’

  ‘The Poachers?’

  ‘They were gamekeepers, both of them. And the squire told them when to enlist - that clinches it, see?’

  ‘My dear Paul, I don’t see at all. Why should the gamekeepers turn into poachers?’

  ‘Because that’s what their nickname was - the 28th - no, it was the 29th - the 29th Service Battalion of the Rifle Brigade. They actually called themselves the Gamekeepers Rifles, but everyone called them The Poachers because they were supposed to be such terrible thieves, almost as bad as the Australians.’

  Audley gazed at him tolerantly. ‘They were all gamekeepers, you mean to say? All of them?’

  ‘Well, not every single one. I believe they did enlist a few genuine poachers among others.’

  ‘They?’

  ‘The Landowners’ Association. It was their executive committee who had the idea in the first place, when the Government called for half a million volunteers in 1914 - it was Lord - un -damn it, his name’s on the tip of my tongue - Lord Horton, their president, who proposed it.’

  ‘Simmer down, Paul, simmer down.’ Audley was smiling at his excitement, little knowing its reason. ‘So the Landowners enlisted their gamekeepers - and what did the War Office make of this remarkable gesture?’

  ‘The War Office?’

  ‘Well, did they welcome this private army?’

  ‘Private - ?’

  Mitchell was surprised how ignorant Audley was of the war. It was amazing that so much had been forgotten about a great event still within the living memory of old men and women. And yet the fact was undeniable; even the Battle of Britain in 1940 was history now, a finest hour which had ticked away before half of the present population was born. The Great War had not only been a generation before that, but it was the more obscured by the hideous memory of a million war dead - Butler’s three-to-one ratio - like the scar of a wound too frightful to be displayed.

  ‘It wasn’t like that - it wasn’t like 1939, when everyone knew how horrible war was. In 1914 everyone wanted to be in it - ‘

  He was conscious that he was floundering, getting away from the vital fact.

  Audley looked up suddenly.

  ‘Ah, Jack - mission completed?’

  ‘Aye. He understands the situation now, and I think we can rely on him. A sound chap,’ Butler grunted. ‘And now the sooner we see the General the better, I’d say.’

  ‘Just one moment, Jack. Paul here seems to have something he wants to impart to us about the 1914 Volunteers.’

  ‘Huh! Poor devils!’ Butler swung towards Mitchell. ‘I can tell you something about that. My dad joined up then with two-thirds of the men in his street - the Blackburn Industrials they called themselves. One of the Pals’ Battalions of the Royal North-East Lanes they became.’

  ‘The Blackburn Industrials - that’s what I’ve been trying to say,’ cut in Mitchell. ‘They had so many volunteers the local people tried to join up in groups with their friends to form complete battalions. The Glasgow City Tramways formed a battalion - and the headmaster of a big grammar school up north enlisted all his old pupils. And there were the Tyne-side Irish and the Manchester Clerks’ and Warehousemen’s Battalion -‘

  ‘Joined together and died together,’ Butler growled. ‘After Beaumont Hamel half the wives in our street were widows.’

  He turned to Mitchell again.

  ‘So what?’

  ‘I know which unit George Davis was in, that’s what. The 29th Special Battalion, Rifle Brigade.’

  ‘The Poachers,’ murmured Audley. ‘Have you ever heard of them. Jack?’

  ‘Eh?’ Butler frowned.

  ‘God! Don’t you see?’ Mitchell’s patience snapped. ‘I know more than that - I know where they served on the Somme. I can even guess why Charles Emerson was so excited if it was the Poachers he was after.’

  ‘Why?’ Audley came to life.

  ‘It’s one of the great feats of arms of the whole battle: how the Poachers took Bully Wood and the Prussian Redoubt. And it’s also one of the greatest mysteries.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Let me show y
ou in the Official History - I saw you’ve got Volume Two of 1916 in the car - ‘

  ‘All right.’ Audley held up his hand. ‘You can brief me in the car on the way to the General. Come on.’

  Mitchell thumbed through the familiar red-bound book to the index at the back. He ran his finger up the column: Royal Scots, Royal Irish, Royal Fusiliers - Rifle Brigade … 1st Bn, 4th Bn, 7th Bn, battalion after battalion - how many thousand riflemen had been engulfed by the Somme! - 18th Bn, 26th Bn - 29th.

  ‘Here we are.’

  He spread the pages open - Hameau Ridge, the name of the battle, on the top of the left hand one and Capture of Prussian Redoubt on the right, signifying the pages’ contents.

  ‘Wait.’ Audley was shuffling the contents of one of Butler’s files on his knee. ‘I’m looking for a map.’

  ‘There’s one here.’

  ‘Not the one I want - Bully Wood, you said?’

  ‘Yes, but it’ll be marked “Bouillet Wood”, or maybe “Bois de Bouillet”.’

  Mitchell craned his neck, looking curiously at the sheaf of papers in Audley’s hands: they all seemed to resemble the photostated triangular fragment of the Beaumont Hamel map he had seen originally.

  ‘What - ? These are German, though - ‘

  ‘That’s right. All from the map you so efficiently identified for us.

  ‘You mean, you had more bits of it - the French gave you more of it?’

  ‘No, they gave us just the one bit. But it was obviously from a folded map, and once we’d traced a copy of the original map I thought it’d be interesting to see which bits they hadn’t given us - our technical boys worked out from that how it was most likely folded. So here you are: take your pick.’

  Mitchell examined the fragments in turn. One was near Grandcourt, on the Ancre, where the winter fighting had gone on remorselessly after the battle’s end, half forgotten by the historians now, but in Emerson’s view of decisive importance; another was south of Mametz, on the British start line of July 1st - too early for the Poachers - and another up the road to Bapaume, beyond the Butte de Warlencourt - in an area which hadn’t fallen until the German retreat to the Hindenburg Line -that was much too late. Hameau.

  The name sprang at him. ‘The deadly ruins of Hameau on the skyline’ - Hameau, ground into the mud by ceaseless shellfire, but still vomiting up crews for its machine-guns from its cellars and dugouts every time the British infantry rose from their trenches.

  ‘This is it,’ he whispered. ‘See where the ridge is - Hameau village there, then the sunken road and the open ground, then Wald von Bouillet and the Feste Preussen on the tip of the spur - this is it exactly. Wald von Bouillet is Bois de Bouillet - Bully Wood the soldiers called it - and Feste Preussen is the Prussian Redoubt of course.’

  Butler’s Rover slid to a standstill in the lay-by where they had left Audley’s plebeian Morris.

  ‘Do you want to collect your car now?’ Butler turned to them. ‘It’ll save time later.’

  ‘Yes.’ Audley nodded. ‘But more to the point. Jack, I’ve got work for you now. We’d better split up here. We’ll take the General, Paul and I … you get on to the Department. Tell them about the old man, Davis - get to the police on that and see if they’ve turned up anything more on the Emerson killing. Get them to check Paul’s insurance salesman against anyone who may have been here or at Farley Green - try the contract killers’ file, this has a contract smell about it. And I want the latest report from France also, particularly if they’ve got a fix on Ted Ollivier.’

  Butler glowered at him mutinously, presumably at the prospect of donkey-work to be done by him while Audley enjoyed himself.

  ‘But most of all I want you to dig up all there is on the Poachers - the 29th Battalion of the Rifles. Find out how many of ‘em are still alive, where they live and so on. And then dig up the records on - what would it be under, Paul - the Bully Wood-Prussian Redoubt business?’

  ‘The battle of Hameau Ridge - September-October 1916.’

  Audley nodded.

  ‘On that. Jack.’

  ‘There are some good air photographs of it in the Imperial War Museum,’ said Mitchell.

  ‘Air photos - now there’s a thought,’ exclaimed Audley. ‘We should have thought of that before. Get them to hire a light aircraft - Hugh Roskill’s fit to fly now and he can take the man Steele, the photographic genius - get them to fly over the Somme area and pick up anything interesting. But especially the Hameau Ridge - get that from all angles.’

  ‘That’s going to take rime,’ Butler demurred.

  ‘Not much. From London to the Somme as the crow flies must be about the same distance as London to York - if Dick Turpin could do that in a day on horseback, Hugh Roskill can be there and back by plane before tea.’

  ‘And the French?’

  ‘What’s it got to do with them? Tell Hugh to fly on to Paris and have tea there - and then change his mind and fly home again. It’s practically on the direct route.’

  ‘And if Sir Frederick queries it?’

  Tell him we’ve got one murder, one likely murder and one attempted murder already. Remind him Ted Ollivier’s mixed up in it, and my thumbs are still pricking. And tell him I’ve got Mitchell with me, and everything’s shaping up nicely.

  ‘They watched Butler disappear in a shower of disapproving gravel and with an angry engine roar. Yet there was a lesson he’d left behind him - that with Audley disapproval didn’t mean disobedience.

  ‘I don’t think your shares stand very high at the moment,’ said Mitchell.

  ‘Oh, Jack doesn’t like me very much,’ replied Audley airily. ‘He doesn’t approve of the homo Audliensis in general, it figures too many angles for him to regard it favourably. Like why our boss will give me everything I want just at the moment, for instance, whether it’s a uniform for you or a spy-plane for me.’

  ‘And why is that?’

  ‘Ah, that would be telling! But let’s say now the British and the French are in the European Community together we’re not above doing them a good turn … And as for our Jack - if you think his not liking me influences him in any way, then you mistake your man. Jack sees himself in some sense as my nursemaid - which in some ways is what he is - and consequently he becomes uneasy when I’m out of his sight. The nursemaid may not love the Little Master, but she doesn’t let him reach through the bars and prod the lions and tigers all the same. And she expects him to play the game too - Always keep tight hold of Nurse, For fear of finding something worse.’

  It occurred to Mitchell that simply by doing the driving himself Colonel Butler could go a long way towards preserving the Little Master from life’s perils. But he didn’t know Audley well enough yet to criticise his car-handling without giving offence; that was an action as foolhardy as finding fault with a woman’s cooking, to be undertaken only when death was the alternative.

  ‘And naturally the Little Master can’t resist prodding lions.’

  ‘Only to wake them up a bit.’ Audley grinned at him, drifting into the centre of the road as he did so. ‘But I don’t mean just me. Butler’s like that with everyone - if there’s a risk to be taken he can’t bear to let anyone else take it.’

  There was something rather 1914-18 about Jack Butler. He was like Feilding, the Coldstream Guardsman who had commanded the Connaught Rangers at Ginchy, who could never bear sending out a subordinate on any dangerous duty and always contrived to do the job himself.

  ‘And are we going to prod a lion now?’

  ‘General Leigh-Woodhouse? I hardly think so, Paul. A very old lion, he’ll be - and on our side of the bars.’

  Audley paused.

  ‘It’s the snakes in the grass we’ve to watch for … But you were going to read me that passage about Hameau Ridge from the Official History. You’ve been holding on to the book as though your life depended on it. I can’t wait to hear your mystery story.’

  ‘Oh - yes -‘ Mitchell looked down guiltily at the red volume which he’d be
en holding in front of him like a buffer, his finger still thrust in the Prussian Redoubt page. ‘Well - yes, of course … It was all part of the XX Corps night attack on Hameau - ‘

  ‘Night attack? I thought they only raided each other at night.’

  ‘Yes, well strictly speaking it was a dawn attack, the main one, like Rawlinson’s successful attack on July 4th, remember - ‘

  ‘Remember?’ cut in Audley testily. ‘I can’t remember what I never knew. It’d be better if you remembered you only spoke generally about the Somme last night. I’m not an expert.’

  ‘Sorry. The idea was for the assault brigades to form up during the night, when they couldn’t be seen, and then go in just before first light. But before that they needed to capture Bouillet Wood on the right flank of the attack, or at least keep the Germans busy there while the main attack went in to the west.’

  The main attack being on Hameau village?’

  That’s right. You’ve got to imagine this ridge lying parallel to the British line - Guyencourt on the left, then Cemetery Crossroads, then Hameau village, with the sunken road leading up to Bouilletcourt Farm, then open country and finally Bouillet Wood - Bully Wood. The key objective was Hameau in the centre.’

  ‘And what about the Prussian Redoubt?’

  That was on the very edge of the ridge east of Bully Wood.”

  ‘Where did that figure in the attack?’

  ‘It didn’t. It was too strong to be attacked, they reckoned: it was built into the ruins of the Chateau de Bouillet, with ravines north and south - Cobra was parallel to the British lines, just behind the German front line, and the north one, Rattlesnake, was where their reserves used to mass, because it was safe from everything except plunging fire.’

  ‘So they were just going to leave it?’

  They hoped to outflank it eventually, after they’d taken Hameau. But that was to be in the exploitation phase.’

  Audley nodded.

  ‘I see. And where did the Poachers come into all this?’

  ‘They were in the second wave of the Bully Wood attack, part of the 29ist Brigade. The North Berkshire Fusiliers went in first, but they were wiped out. They overshot the mark and no one really knows what happened to them.’