Chapter Two
They did not blindfold James, but allowed him to stand, smoking a last cigarette. He centred his thoughts on Margaret Mary. He could hear her playing a gigue. Bach, he thought.
He noticed the soldiers looked frightened, and very young. The officer shook his hand and stepped back. James stood to attention. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the officer unsheath his sword. He heard the first order, then there was a scuffle and a runner came hurrying up to the officer. In seconds, the squad was marched away and James found himself being hustled back into the building.
They brought him coffee. Then the inquisitor came in. James thought of him, almost immediately, as ‘The Professor’. He wore a crumpled suit, needed a haircut, perched steel-rimmed spectacles on the end of his nose, and appeared unfamiliar with his duties.
‘The Professor’ said his name was Einster, and insisted on shaking hands. He started to leaf through a heavy file, as though he could not find his place. When he finally spoke it was as if he was reading from the file, but he looked up at James, smiling happily.
‘Yes. You’re James Railton. Your father and mother are deceased – I am sorry about that; I think I once met your father in London, some years ago. He married a second time. Now, what was her name? Anna? Hanna? …’
James shook his head. His name was Franke. It was all in the record.
But ‘The Professor’ raised his head, giving the same, pleasant smile. ‘Of course, her name’s Sara isn’t it? She has been married again, I gather, to an American. Now Lieutenant Railton, I’d like to talk about a number of things, and, if you play the game, you will not have to go through the somewhat harsh and final realities of which you had a preliminary taste this morning.’
They went on like this for almost two weeks, James denying he knew anyone called Railton, and ‘The Professor’ nodding, taking no notice as he recited a litany of Railtons, their follies, foibles, strengths and weaknesses.
He knew it all, down to Uncle Giles’ real position at the Foreign Office. In the end, James just refused to comment, or corroborate.
*
Everyone tried to be helpful to Charles. ‘We understand about the strain, old chap, but it was a deuced silly thing to do,’ Kell said. Giles did not see him or speak to him again for some time, but he had several visits from Basil Thomson who wanted to know many things.
The bulk of their first conversations, which all took place in Thomson’s office at Scotland Yard, was about ‘The Fisherman’, and the work Charles had already done on the case.
He was taken to the Yard by car, and always returned directly to Cheyne Walk. A plainclothes officer stayed outside the front of the house, another was stationed at the rear. These watchdogs remained in place around the clock.
After four days, Kell came to see him again. They wanted to keep it in the family, he repeated, by which he meant within a small circle of people at MI5 and the Branch. ‘There will have to be an enquiry, and I can’t promise anything. The worst will be dismissal, the best a severe reprimand. Personally I’d like to keep you on, Charles. I shall do my best. Get yourself well represented. And try not to give everything to Thomson.’
‘Everything about what?’ Charles felt numb. He was not sleeping, and his mind roved around the reasons for him being so foolish. He knew the true motivation, but it all seemed so trivial. ‘Everything about what?’ he repeated.
‘This “Fisherman” business. Try to keep some of it back. I’d like us to have a crack at the rogue. Basil’s put Wood on it; friend of yours, isn’t he?’
‘If Wood’s looking into the murders it won’t be worth while my trying to hide anything. Damned good man, Brian Wood; he’ll get all I found, and more besides.’
Kell looked downcast, then said Wood had already come up with something.
‘Oh?’
‘The girl. Drew. Haas. Call her what you will…’
Charles waited.
‘Wood doesn’t think she was killed by the same person as the others. Something about the way the scarf was knotted.’
A tiny portion of the puzzle fell into place. ‘Is that why Thomson’s been questioning me, and going through my movements again and again? I’m a suspect?’
Vernon Kell appeared embarrassed, ‘Well, it has been mentioned – not seriously, of course. You really are in the clear, but you know what policemen are like.’
‘It’s ludicrous.’
‘Yes. Yes, I know.’
‘What about the knot?’
Kell failed to meet his eyes. ‘Fiske, Douthwaite, and the MacGregor woman were all found with the scarf tied very professionally behind the left ear. I don’t know which particular knot was used…’
‘Baden Powell will tell you, he knows the bloody knots backwards, always trying to teach them to his damned Scouts.’
‘You wanted to know.’ Kell gave a humourless laugh. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘The Drew girl… Well, the scarf was just pulled very tight at the back of her neck, and tied in what we used to call a Granny.’
After dinner, Mildred talked a lot, and none of it made much sense. She went on and on about her childhood, her father and mother, the future, and the course of the war. Mildred had not been told about the current trouble in which Charles found himself, and she did not appear to have noticed the plainclothes men.
The next day they drove Charles to the Yard again, and went through everything. It took a long time, and, towards the day’s end, Kell saw him alone to say that the Court of Enquiry was set for the following week.
‘I can suggest a good man to represent you, and, of course, it’ll be a private matter, in camera, but do you want Mildred to be told?’
‘I think not, why should she be bothered?’
‘Just in case.’
‘In case the Branch decide to take me off and do me for murder?’
‘I really don’t think that’ll happen, but…’
‘No’ Charles was firm. ‘No, I don’t want Mildred told, and I hope nobody else in the family – apart from my Uncle Giles – is going to get details of this.’
‘Mary Anne?’ Kell raised an eyebrow.
‘No!’ He had not thought much about Mary Anne since it all happened. That night, Charles found himself going over the night she had left Cheyne Walk. How had she managed? And how had she got herself back to Rouen?
*
When Mary Anne ran from Cheyne Walk, in tears, on that July evening in 1915, she had no idea where to go, or what to do. She took the old nut-brown Gladstone, filled only with essentials. There were six pounds and eighteen shillings in her purse, an inordinate amount of money, but she had been paid in cash only the week before. She did have her bank book to hand though, so was unlikely to go short.
She found a taxi cab in Beaufort Street and asked the cabbie to take her to King Street. Half way there, she changed her mind. It was foolish to run off to relations. Her answer was to get out of London quickly. She was angry with her mother, and sorry at the same time. Mama, she thought, must be somehow deranged. It was not surprising. The world had gone crazy; the horror of what she had already seen and experienced had undoubtedly made her into a harder person; but her Mama had never undergone hardship, in spite of her favourite cliché, ‘Oh, Mary Anne, life is very hard.’
She told the cabbie to take her to Euston Railway Station. Dora Elliott should still be on leave, there had been a letter only the day before, wishing her luck – late – for the Court Martial ordeal. Nobody else had seen it.
There were detachments of troops at the station, and the place was crowded with people. She bought a single ticket to Liverpool, and found she had two hours to wait.
There were more delays, and it was not until six the following morning that Mary Anne arrived, armed only with Dora’s address.
In the end her confidence, and heart, failed her. The cab driver gave her an odd look when she asked for the address, and when, near the docks, he began to slow down in the narrow street with the litt
le terraced houses crowding in one on the other, doors opening straight out onto the pavement. Mary Anne told herself that she could not possibly impose upon Dora or her family.
Only then, with a shock, did Mary Anne remember Dora’s words on their first day at the Clearing Station. I’ve never been a lady in my life… living in a Liverpool hovel with seven brothers and sisters… Papa… home drunk of a Saturday night… virtually rape your elder sister…
‘Sorry, driver,’ she swallowed, ‘I’ve changed my mind. Could you take me back to Lime Street Station. The hotel.’
He shrugged, and the cab drew away.
She felt disgusted with herself. On reflection, Dora had become more than just an acquaintance during the last weeks in France. She was always bright, very intelligent and fun – treated as an equal by all men and women, including Mary Anne. Nobody ever thought of Dora’s background. Dora was simply Dora. As she registered at the hotel, under the name Edwards, out of caution, Mary Anne argued that it would not have been fair to bother Dora at this time in the morning.
At two o’clock that afternoon, she took another cab, making the cabbie stop on the corner of the street so that she could walk the hundred yards or so to Dora’s drab front door. There were grubby children playing on the pavement and some of the doors were open, spilling an unpleasant odour of stale food and unwashed bodies into the close air. Women and men lounged in doorways. One man whistled at her, another made a clicking sound with his tongue.
The woman who answered her knock – dressed in black, a tattered shawl around her shoulders – had the look of defeat in face and eyes, and the smell of flesh unused to soap and water.
She was thin, with a pointed nose and untidy, greasy, greying hair. The tired eyes were wary and loaded with suspicion.
They stood looking at one another for several seconds before Mary Anne asked to see Dora Elliott. Vaguely she was aware of a small child clinging to the woman’s skirt, and of others in the dark bowels of the room behind the front door.
The woman did not reply, simply turning her head to shout, almost too loudly for her frail body, ‘Our Dora! There’s a lady to see yer.’
It was with a certain amount of relief that Mary Anne saw Dora’s face come poking out of the gloom behind the woman’s shoulder.
‘Railton!’ she gave a little gasp. ‘What the bloody hell’re you doing here?’
‘Came to see you, Dora. I need help. I…’
‘Oh Jesus, Joseph and Mary. You can’t come in here, it’s crawling with kids, and Da’ll be back soon. Wait,’ and she was gone, the woman still standing blocking the doorway, her eyes warning Mary Anne that she could not cross the threshold.
A few seconds later, Dora appeared in her coat, took Mary Anne’s arm and propelled her away from the house and down the street, keeping up a running monologue. ‘You idiot, Railton, a girl like you coming down here. It’s safer on the Western Front. If you live here, you’re born to it, but a stranger, well, you could have been robbed, set upon, or… Oh, Christ, I was going to say or worse, but you’ve had “or worse”. This is about the roughest part of the city…’
‘I’ve managed in rough places before…’
‘Rough places? Yes, the Deux Bateaux in Rouen when the soldiers are a bit tiddly, that’s about the roughest you’ve seen, my girl. You haven’t been brought up to it, and if Da’ got back and took a fancy to you… Well, Railton, I’d have had to clobber him with a frying pan. I’ve spent the best part of my leave trying to get the place clean and hygienic. You’ve no idea; where’re you staying and what’s wrong?’
They went back to Mary Anne’s hotel, and over tea she told the whole story to Dora who turned out to be completely unsympathetic. ‘Oh Lord, Railton, you upper crust people’ll be the death of me. You manage to get yourself almost murdered, but when your Ma behaves like a stupid cow all you do is run away. You’re pathetic. You honestly don’t know what life’s about, do you?’ She threw up her hands, almost knocking over the tea service and causing the waitresses to look down their noses.
‘I can’t be responsible for the whole bloody world, Railton. Anyway, I’m off tomorrow – to stay with my Auntie in the country for the rest of my leave.’ She looked up, smiling. ‘You come as well. You’ll like my Auntie, lives in a little village near West Kirby. Cottage, roses round the door, the sea almost up to the front garden, and a husband who can’t be called to Kitchener’s New Army because he works the shrimp boats. Fresh eggs, butter and milk, fresh air, and only the dicky birds to wake you in the morning. You’ll feel better for a week there.’ She gave her cheekiest grin, ‘and there are some nice boys in the village – or there were. I ’spect they’re all in France by now. You be ready. Half past eight. Platform three. I’ll meet you.’
They spent an unforgettable week together. Dora’s aunt proved to be a plump woman with sun-bleached hair, and a complexion like old leather. She accepted Mary Anne as one of her own and, between them, Aunt Mabel and Dora introduced Mary Anne to life as she had never before known it. The weather held and the two girls spent their days walking along the Wirral peninsula, lying on the grass watching the birds and looking at the sea, with its multitude of changes in colour and movement.
As for boys, there were none to be found, for, as Aunt Mabel said – ‘Kitchener’s taken the lot, men and boys.’
Towards the end of the week, the girls, who shared a small room, lay in nightdresses on top of their beds. The window was open to cool the room, with only the occasional sound of a predatory bird, or night creature, overlying the constant sound of sea-change. Restless, Dora sighed a lot, turning one way and another, while Mary Anne lay still, looking at the moonlight pattern on the ceiling.
‘Can’t you sleep?’ she whispered.
‘Oh, it’s hot, and… Oh, hell, I have to go back to bloody France on Monday. Sister Price yapping at me all day and saying I’m a disgrace; the CMO having another go…’
‘The Chief Medical Officer? Having a go at what?’
‘I’m a bad influence. It’s only because I work hard, and they’re short of nurses, that I’m allowed to stay at all.’
‘Why, for goodness’ sake?’
Dora giggled, ‘I got caught. With an officer, in one of the broom cupboards…’
‘They wouldn’t throw you out just for a bit of spooning.’
‘I’m afraid, dear innocent Railton, the officer in question had his spoon right in when they caught me. It couldn’t have been the most edifying sight – Nurse Elliott with her skirts around her waist, and 2nd Lieutenant Ponsonby-Smythe, or whatever his name was, shovelling into me hard as he could.’
‘But Dora, surely you don’t…’
‘I told you. I know it’s not usual, but I also know there’s more than one nurse at the General Hospital who’ll give herself to help the convalescent lads gain confidence, and have something to remember. I certainly don’t regret it. Grief, I could do with one now.’
‘A man?’
‘Well certainly not an eggcup. I’m sorry, Railton. You had a bad experience, and I don’t suppose you think of sex as being pleasant…’
‘That’s not true,’ she snapped. ‘Yes, it was horrible, but, well, as we’re speaking woman to woman, there’s at least one man I know that I’d do it with tomorrow.’
‘Really?’
They were silent for a time, then Mary Anne asked, ‘What’s it like, Dora? What’s it really like? Doing it?’
‘Come over here and I’ll show you,’ she whispered. ‘Don’t be shy, come on. It won’t be as good as with a man, but I can teach you things.’
Slowly, Mary Anne slid from her bed. Her knees trembled as she took the two paces towards Dora’s bed then, her friend’s arms came up round her neck. Mary Anne felt their lips touch and Dora’s tongue slip into her mouth. The warmth came bursting into her loins as their bodies touched.
Afterwards, in the dark, they held one another close, stroked each other’s hair and faces, whispering endearments, and so fell int
o sleep, wrapped around one another like children.
‘It’s much better with a man,’ Dora said, the next day. ‘Only thing is that a man’s face is more scratchy. You coming back to the hospital with me, Railton?’
It was the first time Mary Anne had thought of that possibility. ‘They’ll send me straight home. Nobody’s given permission for me to go back on duty – I’m also under age for France, though nobody’s found out yet.’
‘And I bet they don’t even know you haven’t got permission. Look, I have to get my warrant from the RTO at Liverpool. Your name won’t be on the list, but that’s not unusual – you’ve got your uniform with you, haven’t you?’
‘Of course.’
‘Then come along. Nobody’s going to find out until well after Christmas. By then you’ll have made yourself indispensable. They say there’s going to be a big push in the spring. We’ll all be needed.’
It seemed to Mary Anne that she had two choices, return home and seek forgiveness, and chance entrapment, or risk the wrath of some RAMC Colonel in France. She opted for France, and, as Dora had foretold, nobody even realized until well after Christmas.
*
When the Court of Enquiry sat at the end of March, it found Charles Railton guilty of a serious misdemeanour, likely to endanger the country’s safety. The proceedings were held in secret, and Giles came to give a personal character reference, telling the court of the mental strain his nephew had been suffering at the time of the incident.
Vernon Kell spoke of Charles’ loyalty, and discipline. Attention was drawn to the fact that he had been secretly honoured with a decoration.
The Branch made no suggestion that he was in any way involved with the murder of his mistress, Hanna Haas, otherwise known as Madeline Drew.
On the sixth day they found him guilty, and there was an unpleasant night while he waited for the sentence. In the end, he got a Severe Reprimand, and was free to return to duty immediately.
‘I don’t think you’ll do anything so stupid again,’ Kell told him. ‘How’s Mildred taken it?’