Captain Fremantle knew exactly how much work Ludovic had on hand. The former commandant had always made a point of visiting injured ‘clients’; even, on rare occasions, attending their funerals.
‘Very good, sir,’ said Captain Fremantle.
‘Oh, and, by the way, you might tell the mess-corporal I shall be dining down tonight.’
There was a mood of exuberance, almost of exultation, in the ante-room that evening. The eleven surviving members of the squad had made their second jump in weather of undisturbed tranquillity. They had overcome all their terrors of the air and were confident of finishing the course with honour. Some sprawled at their ease in the armchairs and sofas; some stood close together laughing loud and long. Even Gilpin was not entirely aloof from the general conviviality. He said: ‘I don’t mind admitting now I didn’t quite like the look of it the first time,’ and accepted a glass of bottled beer from the despatching officer who had that morning ignominiously bundled him into space and stepped firmly on his fingers as he clutched the edge of the man-hole in vain resistance to the force of the slip-stream.
Into this jolly company Ludovic entered like the angel of death. No one had believed the literal detail of de Souza’s fantasies but their repetition and enlargement had created an aura of mystery and dread about the commandant who lurked overhead and was seen and heard by none, which Ludovic’s appearance did nothing to dispel.
He overtopped the largest man in the room by some inches. There was at that time a well-marked contrast in appearance between the happy soldiers destined for the battlefield and those who endangered their digestions and sanity at office telephones. Standing before and above those lean and flushed young men, Ludovic’s soft bulk and pallor suggested not so much the desk as the tomb. Complete silence fell. ‘Present me,’ Ludovic said, ‘to these gentlemen.’
Captain Fremantle led him round. He laid a clammy hand in each warm, dry palm and repeated each name as Captain Fremantle uttered it ‘… de Souza … Gilpin …’ as though he were reciting the titles of a shelf of books he had no intention of reading.
‘Can I get you a drink, sir?’ de Souza boldly asked.
‘No, no,’ said Ludovic from the depths of his invisible sarcophagus. ‘I too have my rules of training to observe.’ Then he surveyed the hushed circle ‘One of you have been incapacitated, I learn. You are now an eleven without a spare man, without A. N. Other. What is the news of Captain A. N. Other, Fremantle?’
‘Crouchback, sir? Nothing new since I saw you. The X-ray is tomorrow.’
‘Keep me informed. I am anxious about Captain A. N. Other. Pray continue with your festivities, gentlemen. They sounded hilarious from upstairs. Continue. My presence is entirely informal.’
But the young officers emptied their glasses and laid them aside.
Gilpin’s eyes were on the level of Ludovic’s breast.
‘You are wondering,’ Ludovic said sternly and suddenly, ‘how I acquired the Military Medal.’
‘No, I wasn’t,’ said Gilpin. ‘I was just wondering what it was.’
‘It is the award for valour given to “Other Ranks”. I won it in flight – not in such a flight as you have enjoyed today. I won it by running away from the enemy.’
Had there been any suggestion of mirth in Ludovic’s manner, his hearers would have been ready enough to laugh. As things were, they stood abashed. Ludovic took a large steel watch from the pocket below his ribbons. ‘It is time for dinner,’ he said. ‘Lead on, Fremantle.’
Hitherto at this station it had been the habit to drop into the mess at any time up to half an hour of dinner being announced and to sit anywhere. Tonight Ludovic took the head of the table. The chief instructor took the foot and there was some competition to sit as near him as possible. At length two unhappy men found themselves obliged to take their places on either side of Ludovic.
‘Do you say Grace in your mess?’ Ludovic asked one of them.
‘Only on guest nights, sir.’
‘And this is not a guest night. It is the antonym. We are commemorating the absence of Captain A. N. Other. Do you know a Grace, Fremantle? Does no one know a Grace? Well, we will eat graceless.’
The dinner that night was particularly good. The oppression of Ludovic’s presence could not keep the hungry young men from their food. A murmur of conversation spread from the foot of the table but did not quite reach the head where Ludovic ate copiously and with a peculiar precision and intent care in the handling of knife and fork – ‘like a dentist’, de Souza described it later – in his own simply constructed solitude, as remote and impenetrable as Guy’s brief excursion in the skies. When he had finished he rose and without a word softly and heavily left the room. But his going did not appreciably raise the general spirits. Everyone discovered he was weary, and after the nine o’clock news went up to bed. De Souza was sorry Guy was not with him to discuss the evening’s gruesome apparition. He had already dubbed the commandant ‘Major Dracula’ and his mind was teeming with necrophilic details which Gilpin, he knew, would condemn as bourgeois. Downstairs the staff lingered. They had been a cosy little band. The awe in which they held Ludovic had not seriously threatened their comfort. Now, it came to each of them, a dislocation impended, perhaps of absurdity, perhaps of enormity; something, at any rate, profoundly inimical to their easy routine.
‘I’m not altogether sure of the form,’ said the chief instructor. ‘What does one do if one’s commanding officer goes mad? I mean who reports it to whom?’
‘He may get better.’
‘He was a damn sight worse tonight.’
‘Do you think the clients noticed?’
‘I don’t see how they could help it. After all, this batch aren’t refugees.’
‘He’s not actually done anything yet.’
‘But what will he do when he does?’
Next day was fine and the routine was repeated but that evening there was little exhilaration. Even the youngest and fittest were complaining of bruises and strains, and all found that familiarity did not entirely expunge the natural reluctance, inherent in man, to fling himself into space. Ludovic appeared at luncheon and dinner, without éclat now. At dinner he introduced one topic only, and then to Captain Fremantle, saying: ‘I think I shall get a dog.’
‘Yes sir. Jolly things to have about.’
‘I don’t want a jolly dog.’
‘Oh, no, I see, sir, something for protection.’
‘Not for protection.’ He paused and surveyed the stricken staff-captain, the curious and silent diners. ‘I require something for love.’
No one spoke. A savoury, rather enterprising for the date, was brought to him. He ate it in a single, ample mouthful. Then he said: ‘Captain Claire had a Pekinese.’ After a pause he added: ‘You would not know Captain Claire. He came out of Crete, too – without a medal.’ Another pause, a matter of seconds by their watches; of hours in the minds of his hearers. ‘I require a loving Pekinese.’
Then as though impatient of a discussion on which his mind was already decided, he rose from the table as suddenly as he had done the night before, stalked out giving an impression that even then there was awaiting him on the further side of the oak door the animal of his choice, which he would gather to himself and bear away into the haunted shades that were his true habitat.
He shut the door behind him but through the heavy oak panels his voice could be heard singing a song, not of his own youth; one which a father or uncle must have sung reminiscently to the extraordinary little boy that was to become Ludovic:
‘Father won’t buy me a bow – wow – wow – wow.
Father won’t buy me a bow – wow – wow.
I’ve got a little cat and I’m very fond of that
But what I want’s a bow – wow – wow – wow.’
‘It might be a good thing,’ the chief instructor later said to Captain Fremantle, ‘to sound one of the more responsible of the clients and see what they make of the old man.’
Ne
xt day the wind was blowing hard from the east. All the morning the squad sat about waiting on weather reports until at noon the chief instructor announced that the exercise was cancelled. Captain Fremantle, who during the past thirty-six hours had become increasingly nervous in the contemplation of Ludovic’s evident decline, welcomed the respite as an opportunity to carry out the chief instructor’s plan.
He chose de Souza.
‘Someone ought to go and call at the hospital. Care to come and see your fellow Halberdier? We might lunch out. There’s quite a decent black-market road-house not far away.’
They went into the wind without a soldier-driver. As soon as they were clear of the villa Captain Fremantle said: ‘Of course I know it’s not strictly the thing to discuss a senior officer but you seem to me a sensible sort of fellow and I wanted to ask you unofficially and in confidence whether any of you chaps have noticed anything odd about the commandant.’
‘Major Dracula?’
‘Major Ludovic. Why do you call him that?’
‘It’s just the name he’s got with our squad. I don’t think anyone ever told us his real name. He is certainly singular. Has he not always been like this?’
‘No. It’s been coming on, especially the last few days. He was never exactly bonhomous; kept himself to himself; but there was nothing you could actually put your finger on.’
‘And now there is?’
‘Well, you saw him the last two nights.’
‘Yes, but you see I didn’t know him before. I had a theory but from what you tell me it seems I was wrong.’
‘What did you think?’
‘I thought he was dead.’
‘I don’t quite get you.’
‘In Haiti they call them “Zombies”. Men who are dug up and put to work and then buried again. I thought perhaps he had been killed in Crete or wherever it was. But clearly I was wrong.’
Captain Fremantle began to wonder if he had been wise in his choice of confidant.
‘I wouldn’t have mentioned the matter if I’d thought you would make a joke of it,’ he said crossly.
‘It was merely a hypothesis,’ de Souza conceded airily; ‘and of course it was based on the brief period I have had him under observation. I dare say the real explanation is quite prosaic. He’s just going off his rocker.’
‘You mean a case for the psychiatrist?’
‘Oh, that’s not what I mean at all. They never do any good. I should get him a Pekinese and keep him hidden as much as you can. In my experience the more responsible posts in the army are largely filled by certifiable lunatics. They don’t cause any more trouble than the sane ones.’
‘If you’re going to treat it all as a joke …’ Captain Fremantle began.
‘It will certainly be a joke to Guy Crouchback,’ said de Souza. ‘I expect he’s in need of one. Air Force jokes are deeply depressing.’
They reached the hospital, a temporary and unsightly structure. A flag of the RAF flapped furiously overhead. Crouched against the wind they mounted the concrete ramp and entered.
A long-haired youth in Air Force uniform sat at a table by the door with a cup of tea before him and a cigarette adhering to his lower lip.
‘We have come to see Captain Crouchback.’
‘D’you know where to find him?’
‘No. Perhaps you can tell us.’
‘I don’t know, I’m sure. Did you say “captain”? We don’t take army blokes here.’
‘He came yesterday for an X-ray.’
‘You can try Radiology.’
‘Where’s that?’
‘It’ll tell you on the board,’ said the airman.
‘I suppose it would be no good putting that man on a charge for insolence?’ said Captain Fremantle.
‘Not the smallest,’ said de Souza. ‘It isn’t an offence in the Air Force.’
‘Surely you’re wrong there?’
‘Not wrong; merely facetious.’
It was not a busy hospital and this was its least busy hour. The patients had been fed, and left, it was supposed, to sleep; the staff were feeding themselves. No one was in the room marked ‘Radiology’. The two soldiers wandered down empty corridors whose floors were coated with some dark, slightly sticky substance designed to muffle their footsteps. ‘There must be someone on duty somewhere.’ Seeing a door labelled ‘No visitors’, de Souza opened it and entered. He found an inflamed and apparently delirious man who broke into complaint that his bed was overrun with poisonous insects.
‘DT’s, I suppose,’ said de Souza. ‘Perhaps if we ring his bell someone will think he has taken a turn for the worse and come with sedatives.’ He rang and at length an orderly appeared. ‘We’re looking for an army officer named Crouchback.’
‘This isn’t him. This one’s on the danger list. You’d better come out,’ and when they were once more in the corridor he added: ‘Never saw anything like it before. Some joker in Alex gave him a parcel “by hand of officer only” to take to London. It was full of scorpions and they escaped.’
‘What risks you boys in blue do run for us! But how do we find Captain Crouchback?’
‘You might ask at the registrar’s.’
They found an office and an officer.
‘Crouchback? No, never heard of him.’
‘You keep a list of the inmates?’
‘Of course we do. What d’you think?’
‘No Crouchback on it? He came yesterday.’
‘I wasn’t on yesterday.’
‘Could we see the officer who was?’
‘He’s off today.’
‘It sounds like a plain case of abduction,’ said de Souza.
‘Look here, I don’t know who the devil you two are or how you got in or what you think you’re doing.’
‘Security check up. Just routine,’ said de Souza. ‘We shall make our report to the proper quarter.’
When they left the building the wind blew so fiercely that speech was impossible until they reached the shelter of the car. Then Captain Fremantle said: ‘I say, you know, you shouldn’t have spoken to that chap like that. It might get us into trouble.’
‘Not us. You perhaps. My identity, you must remember is a carefully guarded secret. Now for the black market.’
The road-house offered shelter from the gale but none of the luxuries of Ruben’s. Indeed, it differed from neighbouring hotels only in enjoying a larger share of the rations sold by Captain Fremantle’s own quartermaster-sergeant. They were able to eat, however, with more zest than under Ludovic’s sinister regard.
‘Pity we didn’t get to see Crouchback,’ said Captain Fremantle at length. ‘They must have moved him.’
‘These oubliettes open and close constantly in army life. You don’t think he was kidnapped on the commandant’s orders? He harped rather, did he not, on the absence of Captain A. N. Other? You might almost call it “gloating”.’ Stirred by the heavy North African wine de Souza’s imagination rolled into action as though at a ‘story conference’ of jaded script-writers. ‘In assuming insanity we have been accepting altogether too simple an explanation of your commander’s behaviour. We are in deep political waters, Fremantle. I was surprised to meet old Uncle Crouchback at the bus station; a man clearly far too old for fooling about with parachutes. I should have been suspicious but I was thinking of the simple, zealous officer I knew in 1939. Four years of total war can change a man. They have changed me. I left an unimportant but conspicuous part of my left ear in Crete. Uncle Crouchback was sent here with a purpose. Perhaps to watch Major Ludovic; perhaps to be watched by him. One or other is a fascist agent; perhaps both. Uncle Crouchback has been working at HOO HQ – a notorious nest of conspiracy. Perhaps sealed orders were sent to your Ludovic, giving no explanation; curtly remarking “the above-mentioned officer is expendable”. Someone was remarking the other evening that it would not be difficult to arrange for a “Roman Candle”. Crouchback’s number in the squad was already known. No doubt Ludovic and his accomplices had arra
nged a trap of the kind.’
Captain Fremantle’s simple mind, warmed, too, by the purple ferruginous vintage, was caught by the idea.
‘As a matter of fact,’ he said, ‘that was the first thing the commandant asked when I reported Crouchback’s accident. “A Roman Candle?” he asked as though it was the most natural thing in the world.’
‘It would have seemed natural. The commandant was not to know the hour of the assassination. It might have been on the first afternoon; it might have been yesterday. But Crouchback’s little accident saved him – for the time being. Now they have caught up with him. I don’t think you or I will ever see my old comrade-in-arms again.’
They discussed and elaborated the possibilities of plot, counterplot, and betrayal. Captain Fremantle was a simple man. Before the war he had served in a lowly capacity in an insurance company. His post for the last three years had given him an occasional glimpse into arcane matters. Too many strange persons had briefly passed through his narrow field of vision for him to be totally unaware of the existence of an intricate world of deception and peril that lay beyond his experience. Roughly speaking he was ready to believe anything he was told. De Souza confused him only by suggesting so much.
Later, as they drove back, de Souza developed a new plot.
‘Are we being too contemporary?’ he asked. ‘We are thinking in terms of the thirties. Both uncle Crouchback and your Major Dracula came to manhood in the twenties. Perhaps we should look for a love motive. Your commandant is plainly as queer as a coot and Uncle Crouchback’s sex-life has always been something of a mystery. He never made his mark as a coureur when I served with him. This may well be a simple old-fashioned case of blackmail or, better still, of amorous jealousy.’
‘Why “better still”?’
Captain Fremantle was far out of his depth.
‘Altogether less sordid.’
‘But how do you know the commandant has any connexion with Crouchback’s disappearance?’
‘It is our working hypothesis.’
‘I simply don’t know whether to take you seriously or not.’
‘No, you don’t, do you? But you must admit you have enjoyed our little outing. It’s given you something to think about.’