Death In Captivity (21 page)

‘I quite appreciate that.’

‘I doubt it,’ said Colonel Aletti frankly, ‘for it is a system which would be inconceivable in any but a Fascist country. I was responsible for all matters of routine administration, but where there were questions of policy, I had to accept the Party decision – as announced by Captain Benucci. All security matters, too, were controlled by him, through his senior carabinieri officers. I was left almost entirely in the dark. They had their own methods. You may know, for instance, that they employed spies in the camp.’

‘I had heard it suggested,’ said Colonel Lavery, ‘that Coutoules – ’

‘Was Coutoules in the pay of Benucci, then?’ Colonel Aletti sounded genuinely surprised. ‘I did not know that. I was told nothing. The identity of the other was also kept from me.’

‘Of the other?’ Colonel Lavery hoped that his voice did not sound too eager.

‘You did not know, then,’ said Colonel Aletti, ‘that there was a German Intelligence Officer in the camp?’

‘He said
what?’
said Colonel Baird.

Colonel Lavery repeated the information.

‘He must have been pulling your leg,’ said Colonel Baird. ‘The idea’s fantastic. Did he give you any idea who it was?’

‘He couldn’t. He didn’t know himself.’

‘Then how did he come to know about it?’

‘I asked him about that. Apparently Benucci was rather tight one evening and was boasting that nothing went on in this camp without him knowing about it. The Commandant, who hadn’t got much use for Benucci, suggested he was laying it on a bit thick. Benucci said, far from it. The English were so stupid that they didn’t even realise that they’d got a fully fledged member of the German Intelligence Service planted amongst them.’

‘He might have meant Coutoules.’

Colonel Lavery considered this. ‘He might have done,’ he agreed. ‘Coutoules didn’t look much like a German.’

‘Did he say whether he was posing as an officer or as one of the orderlies?’

‘He didn’t say.’

‘If it’s one of the officers,’ said Colonel Baird, ‘I’ll eat my desert boots, in public.’

When he thought about it afterwards Colonel Lavery came to the conclusion that the most remarkable feature of this period was the slow almost imperceptible, but very steady rise in the
morale
of the camp. There was no lack of grumblers when his orders were first made known, but the majority opinion was so solidly behind him that he felt strong enough to ignore them.

Through that boiling month of August – and it was hot even by Italian standards – organisation and discipline improved and the camp ceased very gradually to be a collection of individuals and became a community, inspired by an object. What that object was – what precise hand fate and the Italian Government were going to deal – nobody knew. It was sufficient, at the moment, if they put themselves in the best position to play the cards as they fell.

Hut Commanders instructed their assistants and cursed their black sheep. Colonel Baird drove his digging teams to more and more furious endeavour, and Colonel Lavery found every morning on arising one new grey hair on his head.

Some of the most surprising converts to military enthusiasm were the Old Hirburnians.

‘I must confess, I never saw much sense in that escaping nonsense,’ said Tag Burchnall, ‘but give me a decent, limited, military objective and I’m for it. It might be an idea if we green blancoed our webbing, don’t you think, before parade tonight. It’ll wipe the eye of “B” Section, if it does nothing else.’

It was about this time also that Roger Byfold began his keep-fit campaign. Like everything else that he undertook he went into it with rational and compelling enthusiasm.

‘I’ve given the matter a good deal of thought,’ he said to Goyles and Long. ‘As I told you, it’s quite clear that the time is coming when some special effort will be demanded of every one. I am not sure what form this effort will take. It may demand a rapid gymnastic feat, such as the scaling of these walls, or the jumping from a moving lorry or train – we must therefore maintain bodily suppleness and agility by means of Muller’s exercises before breakfast and a regular physical training class at least once a day. Further, since the initial break will undoubtedly be followed by a long period of marching, we will harden our feet by making first ten, then twenty and later thirty circuits of the compound every evening, in our heaviest boots. Finally, since we shall be traversing a friendly or neutral countryside, we had better brush up our Italian. Tony is the best linguist – he shall give us both an hour of colloquial Italian each day after lunch. Thus, when the moment comes, we shall be armed at all points.’

‘Speriamo,’
said Long in his best colloquial Italian.

It was during this period, too, that Goyles realised the truth about the death of Coutoules. He did not reach his conclusions by any blinding flash of intuition. Like all problems long and seriously thought over, the answer arrived in instalments. New and apparently irrelevant facts came to light, and old facts, long sifted and half-forgotten, assumed a new significance, until finally, as to one who stares into the red heart of the fire, the shapeless began to assume a shape and the formless to take form.

One such odd fact came out of a conversation with the
padre,
a tall Etonian, who had done good work all the previous winter in one of the ‘other-ranks’ camps; had nearly died of enteritis, and had been moved to Campo 127 direct from hospital.

He and Goyles attended the same Greek class, and it was coming away from a morning session that the conversation turned to the remarkable difference between the ancient and the modern inhabitants of Greece, and so, by easy stages, to the late Cyriakos Coutoules.

The
padre
said, ‘I suppose I was the only person who met Coutoules before he came to this camp.’

‘How’s that?’ said Goyles, surprised. ‘I thought this was his first camp.’

‘Indeed not. He was in the Modena other-ranks camp with me last autumn. I believe there was some doubt at that time about his officer status. Then he got himself shifted to Cremona.’

‘Was that the camp at Modena where they nearly had a mutiny?’

‘That was the one.’

‘What exactly happened?’

‘The prisoners found out that the Italian staff were appropriating Red Cross parcels for their private use and lodged a complaint. The authorities then stopped
all
Red Cross issues and halved the ration—’

‘And a lot of the prisoners nearly starved?’

‘It wasn’t a question of “nearly”,’ said
the padre
shortly.

‘I see,’ said Goyles. He turned this over for a moment in his mind. ‘Is it known who was responsible?’

‘I think so,’ said
the padre.
‘Yes, I think we know all right. Nominally it was the commandant who gave the orders, but I think the real villain of the piece was his second-in-command, Captain Bernadi.’

‘A carib?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, I hope someone’s got a note of it,’ said Goyles.

At the time the information made no further impression on him.

It was some days later that he heard the word Cremona mentioned in conversation and linked it up by an effort of memory with what the
padre
had told him.

The speaker was a submariner, a naval lieutenant who contrived (it is a secret known only to the Navy) to combine a look of youthful innocence with a huge red beard.

‘Were you at Cremona?’ said Goyles.

‘For my sins, yes,’ said the submariner.

‘Was it a
strafe
camp?’

‘Not really. We called it the sorting house. I think it was the sort of camp you got sent to if the Italians weren’t certain about you. If they came to the conclusion that you were a hard case you probably went up to Campo 5 at Gavi. They evidently decided that I was innocuous and sent me on here.’

‘Do you remember Coutoules at Cremona?’

‘Yes, more or less. His last week there was about my first. We weren’t chums. Anyway, there wasn’t much time for beautiful friendships at Cremona. Life was grim and life was earnest and the end, in a number of cases, was the grave.’

‘I heard it wasn’t very pleasant,’ said Goyles. ‘Who was the cause of it all?’

‘The real villain was the Intelligence Officer, a deep blot called Marchese. He had one eye and no morals.’

‘He was a bit of a terror, was he?’

‘He was a swine,’ said the submariner.

‘He can’t have been much worse than Benucci.’

‘Put them in the same cage in the Zoo,’ said the submariner, ‘and there wouldn’t have been a cloven hoof’s difference between them.’

‘Hmph,’ said Goyles.

He picked up the next thread in the Theatre Hut. He had strolled in one morning and was sitting quietly at the back watching one of the final rehearsals of
The Barretts of Wimpole Street.

He could not help thinking that Rolf-Callender, for all his faults, was an extremely accomplished actor. On the stage, even without make-up or broad-cloth, he opened out, somehow, into the flamboyant personality of Robert Browning. Off-stage he was insignificant. Behind the footlights he was a person.

As the rehearsal was breaking up Captain Abercrowther caught sight of Goyles and came across to talk to him.

‘Good show, Angus,’ said Goyles. ‘You looked as if you really enjoyed bullying all those children.’

‘It answers a deep-felt want in my nature,’ agreed Captain Abercrowther. ‘But that wasn’t what I had to say to you. There’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you for some time.’

Whereupon he repeated to Goyles the observations which Captain the McInstalker had already made to him about the strange movements of the Italian laundry van.

‘Look here,’ said Goyles, ‘are you absolutely certain that was the night that Coutoules—?’

‘July 1st?’

‘Yes.’

Captain Abercrowther took out a small diary and consulted it.

‘There’s no doubt about it,’ he said, ‘we were both going to dinner that night with Lady Pat Keyne – Basingstoke’s youngest, you know – and that was why we particularly wanted our shirts.’

‘Did you see where the van stopped on its way round the camp?’

‘It only stopped in front of the Senior Officers’ Hut. We were hoping it would come on here, but it didn’t. When it went, it went straight out.’

‘What time would that have been?’

‘Between half-past nine and ten. It was getting a bit dark.’

Goyles mentioned this conversation to Tony Long that evening, and Tony was able to confirm it.

‘I saw the van going out,’ he said. ‘I was at the cooler window. I should have said that it was nearer ten than half-past nine. What’s it all about?’

‘I’m not quite sure,’ said Goyles.

Nevertheless, the pieces were beginning to join together.

‘I’m afraid,’ said Colonel Lavery to his Adjutant, ‘that the Commandant is no longer quite the old friend that he used to be.’

‘I thought it was too good to last,’ agreed the Adjutant. ‘I expect yesterday’s fiasco upset him a bit.’

He referred to an unfortunate moment on roll-call on the previous evening. Evening roll-call, under the new régime, was now a smart, reasonably well-turned-out parade. It was also becoming apparent to the Italians that it was a parade which was conducted almost wholly by and for the benefit of the prisoners themselves.

Companies fell in under their Company Commanders, were inspected, and stood at ease. When the Italian orderly officer was signalled, Colonel Lavery appeared, and the parade was called to attention and handed over to him. At the end of the roll-call – which took about a quarter of the time it had done in the old, disorderly days – the parade was again called-up and properly dismissed.

On the evening referred to, Colonel Aletti had elected to come and watch proceedings for himself.

At their conclusion, when the last name had been called, he had given the order, ‘You may fall out.’

No one had moved an inch. Thinking that he might have been misunderstood, he had repeated the order. Upon which Colonel Lavery had given the order, ‘Parade dismiss.’

It was not perhaps the most tactful way of demonstrating to Colonel Aletti that the control of his camp was changing hands.

‘We shall have to butter him up a bit,’ said Colonel Lavery. ‘We can’t afford to get at cross-purposes just now.’

‘The Italians will have to make their minds up soon which way to jump,’ said the Adjutant. ‘It’s more than a month since Sicily was finished. We must land in Italy before long.’

‘I wish we weren’t quite so far north,’ said Colonel Lavery. ‘With the best will in the world, it’s going to be tricky, and if the Italians turn sour – Yes, who is it? Oh, come in, Baird.’

‘I thought you’d like to hear this,’ said Colonel Baird. It was difficult to say whether he was amused or annoyed. ‘We’ve just had our first security search since the fall of Mussolini.’

‘Was it a thorough one?’ said Colonel Lavery. ‘Did you lose much?’

‘I should have described it as concentrated rather than thorough,’ said Baird. ‘Paoli brought in a dozen soldiers and caribs and a few workmen. They went straight to the kitchen and took up the whole of the floor, including the stove which they removed bodily and the slab it stands on – they seemed mighty suspicious of that stove.’

There was a moment of horrified silence.

‘Then they’ve found the Hut C tunnel,’ said Colonel Lavery.

‘Fortunately no,’ said Baird. ‘Indeed, they had very little chance of doing so, since the kitchen they elected to demolish so thoroughly was the one in Hut A.’

‘But—’ said Colonel Lavery.

‘What—?’ said the Adjutant.

‘By the time they had finished operations,’ went on Colonel Baird smoothly, ‘and had discovered absolutely nothing for their pains except the undisturbed sub-soil of the hut, I had caused to be gathered a large and sympathetic crowd of onlookers who gave them very generous applause as they came out empty-handed. They didn’t look pleased.’