A Medal For Murder (8 page)

He shone our way into the dark hall. ‘Need to change the gas mantle in the hall here.’

‘They don’t last two minutes these days,’ I agreed.

He lit me along the passage. ‘You are not theatrical then?’

‘No. I took the photographs for the play.’

‘Of course you did. I remember Lucy telling me about you. Jolly good photographs. Slipped into the back of the theatre on Wednesday evening. Lucy took a good part, but so did they all.’ He lowered his voice. ‘Only, I shan’t let the lower rooms to a theatrical again. Nothing personal, you understand, but horses for courses and all that.’ He pushed open the door at the
end of the hall. ‘These back stairs lead to Miss Jamieson’s quarters. I’ll wait till you are through the bottom door, just to make sure she hasn’t bolted it and locked you out.’

Bag in hand I stepped onto the top step. He had not offered to part with his torch but shone a light.

I turned. ‘Captain Wolfendale, were you in the Great War?’

Why do I always have to do it? He was a captain, that’s why. Same rank as Gerald. Perhaps they had met.

Why do I expect the serendipity of stumbling into someone who will say, Ah yes, Captain Gerald Shackleton, fine fellow, knew him well.

‘Sadly not,’ said Captain Wolfendale. ‘South Africa, that was my last show, and what a show it was.’

‘Then you’re the second person this evening I’ve talked to who fought there.’

‘Indeed?’ he said in a non-committal voice that did not invite further comment.

But in spite of his dismissive tone, I said, ‘I sat next to Mr Milner at the theatre.’

Something clicked in my tired brain. When I had looked through the Wolfendales’ window earlier, the captain was playing a board game. His opponent had reddish-blond hair, just like Lawrence Milner.

‘You’ll know him,’ I persisted.

‘Ah Milner,’ the captain said, ‘the motoring man. Yes, he was in South Africa. Of course, that’s an old war now. People have forgotten all about it.’

‘Not everyone has,’ I said, thinking of my aunt’s old colonel chum who spoke of little else.

‘We had to go in there. They denied Englishmen the vote, you see. Had to have South Africa in the Empire,
under the rule of law. Otherwise it would have been a free-for-all. Boers, and don’t get me wrong, there’s good and bad, but they’re bible-thumping farmers. You couldn’t trust them to manage gold mines and diamonds.’

It was far too late to be having a conversation at the head of the back stairs in the small hours, but it intrigued me that he had no words about Milner, only a general comment on the war – a war that was not forgotten by any means.

‘Did you and Mr Milner serve together?’ I asked.

‘I was all over the show. Started out in ’99, supposed to be relieving Kimberley, but that took longer than any of us expected. Brother Boer was a surprising kind of enemy. Bit of a blighter. He’d run up a white flag, and when you got near, pop!’

‘Goodnight then, Captain.’ I picked my way down the dim narrow staircase. Perhaps it had not been Milner whom I had seen with Captain Wolfendale earlier in the day. But if my guess was correct and they were old comrades, then Milner’s death would come as a great shock to the old man.

 
 

Corporal Lawrence Milner stuck his head out of the carriage window, sick of this bloody heat, sick of being packed like a sardine. The Doncaster dimwits played cards for farthings. The skeleton from Skipton squeezed his canteen for the last drop of water. Every window on the train was open, to suck in a breath of air. A whole trainload of hot, sweaty blokes, trying to breathe.

What a foul bloody war to be dragged into. Fighting to teach Kruger a lesson. Fighting so that the English in the Transvaal could have a vote. My arse. Milner had never voted in his life, and his father neither. No one had ever said to Milner, here’s a vote, lad. If they had, he’d have told them what to do with it. Clear as the nose on your face what it was about. Glory of the British Empire? Glory of the diamond mines. Glory of the gold mines. Make you laugh, if you didn’t think the next bullet might have your name on it.

At least Milner was on the train, not like the poor
sods marching on from Belmont and Graspan towards Kimberley.

November. In England there’d be fog, drizzle, grey skies. Here it was supposed to be spring. Upside bloody down, this country. Dust clouds rose from the flat land. Then sodding mountains and more sodding mountains. It was the White Man’s burden to simmer in cauldrons for the glory of the Empire. Boer bastards in there waiting to pounce, and the top brass too bloody thick to get it. Brother Boer fights dirty. Shoots and melts away. So much for diamonds, so much for gold. Not a sniff. All Milner got for his pains was dust up his snout and a tongue the size of an ox’s. The quicker they gave the Boers it in the neck, the sooner he’d get round to making some money.

The train slowed. Milner rolled a cig. The train screeched to a halt. Cigarette paper stuck to his dry lips. Now he could hear the captain and his arse-licking batman in the next carriage. Milner leaned out to listen. Word was the Boers had dynamited the railway bridge that crossed the Modder River. Milner heard the poncy voice, Captain Wolfendale, saying to his sergeant, ‘What do you see out there?’

Milner couldn’t help but laugh. The idle bugger of a captain didn’t bother to stir to look out of the window. Oh no, his batman could do that for him, when he’d finished licking his arse.

Sergeant Lampton, piping up, doffing his cap with every word. ‘Nothing much beyond the settlement. Open land, the veld as they call it. Dusty . . .’

Milner guessed the captain had begun to stir his gin soaked carcass.

‘No welcome party?’

‘Not yet, sir.’

‘They must have heard the bloody train.’

‘Got your dress jacket here, sir.’

Why don’t you genuflect, Milner thought. Stroke his cock for him.

‘And here’s your belt, cap, gaiters.’

‘God it’s hot.’

‘Wet flannel, sir.’

A few minutes later, Milner watched the pair of them step from the train. The sergeant got out first, holding the door, of course. Milner couldn’t think of anything worse than to toady to an officer. Captain Wolfendale and Sergeant Lampton were a few feet away. Milner instinctively drew back, so as to earwig without drawing attention to himself. It irked him that the two could now see much more than he could.

A tame ostrich rose up from the acacia shrub and stepped forward as if to greet the new arrivals. ‘Come a bit closer and I’ll have you on a plate tonight,’ Milner muttered. The creature dipped its small neat head from side to side, casting a beady eye over the situation, like a pub landlord watching trouble brew.

All the way down the train, soldiers looked out from carriage windows. It was the waiting that drove you mad.

The captain turned and called out in that jolly wanting-to-be-liked voice, that didn’t fool Milner. ‘Sorry, men. War should come supplied with a comfortable waiting room, but it never does.’

The drips obliged him by laughing at his little joke. Not Milner.

Milner strained to hear. ‘I’ll order them off now, sir,’ Sergeant Lampton said quietly.

The captain lowered his voice. ‘Let the blighters wait. They’ll be kicking up dust soon enough.’

So much for which of them was the bigger bastard, Milner thought. He could see why Wolfy wanted to keep them on the train. A small welcoming party hurried across the bridge, led by a major.

The major saluted sharply. ‘Captain Wolfendale?’

‘The same.’

‘Pleased to have you here, sir.’

When the captain had gone, Lampton turned back to the train and gave the order to disembark.

By nightfall, tents were erected, row on row. Men queued for their rations of bully beef, hard biscuit and hot sweet tea. A thunderstorm rolled out a welcome, smacking the tents with sharp pellets of tepid rain.

The sergeant turned his dusty face to the African heavens and ran his tongue over his lips to catch rain drops.

In his tent, the captain wrote his diary.
Men keen to get on with the show.
Through the walls of the tent floated the disembodied voices of the men who’d been first in the queue for food and now had time on their hands. They were singing filthy ditties, arguing the toss as they played dice. A wisp of blue smoke from the camp fire wafted through the tent flap. They were burning acacia bushes and eucalyptus.

A loud argument had blown up, over nothing as usual. A private from Blackburn wanted to lasso the ostrich and bring it along as a mascot. His mate disagreed. The ostrich was definitely a Boer spy, he said.

Sergeant Lampton put his head around the tent flap. ‘Everything all right, sir?’

‘Shut them up,’ the captain ordered. ‘Make an example of them.’

The sergeant hesitated.

‘Just do it. And then look into what I asked you.’

‘Yes, Captain.’

The sergeant took a deep breath, let the tent flap fall behind him. He shut up one private with a punch to his jaw and his mate with a blow to the ribs. ‘You’re disturbing our captain.’

The men fell silent.

A thin young African lad, wide-eyed and anxious, approached the sergeant. ‘Message for Sergeant Lam.’

The sergeant drew him to one side, out of hearing of the men. ‘What’s the message?’

‘For Captain Wolf, a room.’

When the lad did not move, Sergeant Lampton gave him a coin. ‘Go!’

‘Thank you, baas.’

Sergeant Lampton went back to the captain. ‘It’s fixed up, sir.’

The captain nodded. He pulled on his jacket.

Sergeant Lampton watched him go, marching towards what passed for a hotel where a Kaffir woman would be waiting. It had always been the same. Gin. The most comfortable room. A woman. In that order.

Mule carts would transport bell tents, blankets, big guns and cooking pots. Each African mule driver carried a concertina. Sergeant Lampton listened to them at night, playing and singing. He imitated their tunes on his mouth organ. It gave him the odd notion that the mules had an ear for music and would serve willingly.

At four o’clock on a muggy, misty morning, under
marching orders, men stoked the fire with acacia brush. Smoke would mislead enemy scouts into thinking that the camp stayed solid, stayed put. A scouting party gave the all-clear. Men would march alongside the railway line carrying rifles, food and ammunition. The train would come back with reinforcements, heavy guns, and engineers who would hop on and off, repairing the line. They would repair the dynamited bridge.

Long before Lord Methuen gave his pep talk – British pluck, British surprise, British Empire – word had passed through the lines that they would be heading for Kimberley.

The colonel told the major. The lieutenant told Captain Wolfendale. Captain Wolfendale told Sergeant Lampton. Sergeant Lampton told Corporal Milner.

‘I knew it,’ Milner said.

Kimberley had the deepest diamond mine in the world. Its owners scoffed toast and marmalade from gold plates and supped ale from gold tankards. But the Boers had Kimberley under siege.

Captain Wolfendale was ready for the off.

The stationmaster had said that a few Boers were burrowed into the river mud like water rats. Soon see them off.
A scout said six thousand? Six hundred more like
.

Sergeant Lampton despaired of his captain. ‘You’ll be a sitting duck, Captain, all that gleam and polish. Let me . . .’

The sergeant scooped mud from the river, to take the shine off his captain’s buttons, the sparkle from his stars and buckles. The captain frowned. He liked to be pristine.

Soon only the steady, monotonous tramp of thousands of boots could be heard, scudding through stubbly
grass and over small rocks. The thickhead bird that started out with them,
hui hui
, had taken flight.

It must have been a tale, about the enemy digging in the mud. What fool would hide in a muddy trench? If the Boers were anywhere, they would be in the hills. Scouts had gone ahead and would signal back when the sun rose and the heliograph messaging could be put to use.