Death on a Pale Horse (8 page)

Perhaps it was no more than I expected, but there was more to come from Captain Sellon, though he sounded impatient to have the thing over with.

“These things exist because of defects in the legal system. You know, I presume, that an ordinary regimental court-martial is only empowered to try non-commissioned officers and other ranks. Its officers have to be dealt with in public at a general headquarters court. A trial like that makes a lot of noise and does no good to morale. Have you not been taught that—doctor?”

“I can't say I have been. Justice ought surely to be dispensed in open court.”

He gave a short exasperated sigh.

“To be sure. As it is in England. Out here, any public trial may smear the regiment in the eyes of our own people and the Indians as well. Let me show you. A crime need not be great in order to bring disgrace. Sometimes it is only military incompetence or perhaps insubordination. Of course it may be something more serious. A young officer as mess treasurer may embezzle part of the funds. Even worse, it might be some kind of offence against a woman. Imagine what the story would do to that woman if it were spread all over the native newspapers! Oh yes, doctor—there is a press for the Pandies out here as well as our own. The troublemakers know how to use it. Well, then, say a young man has gone wrong but simply needs a sharp lesson. A subalterns' court-martial, junior officers who are his equals, administers that lesson to him in private. It is irregular, but it is found to be useful.”

“I have never heard of such a thing before,” I said. I did not add that the more I heard of it, the less I liked it.

“Did they teach you so little of Army life at Aldershot?” Sellon inquired.

He was quite right. No one at Netley Hospital had thought it necessary to inform me of these military curiosities during my medical training. He still looked at me for all the world as though I might have been an impostor in uniform. Who was he? He seemed remarkably well informed about military law.

“How long have you been in the Army, sir—or in India at least?” he inquired laconically. “Not very long, I think!”

I protested at this.

“A trial of whatever kind must be a matter for judicial authority. There must be proper rules, a report, and an appeal procedure.”

Sellon continued more slowly, as if determined that I should understand every word.

“These trials are not reported. They are not officially spoken of. Any commanding officer will know when one is taking place. The rumour mill sees to that. Sometimes he may even be called to give evidence. But he has no official knowledge of its proceedings, its verdict, or its sentence.”

“And that is what you call mess jackets at midnight?”

For the next ten minutes or so, Captain Sellon described this arcane procedure—or midnight ritual, as I might call it. Let us say that the offender had been charged with conduct that might bring disgrace on the regiment if it went to a public hearing. One of the junior captains—Sellon, perhaps?—would be appointed president of the court. Four lieutenants would be its other members, rather than the nine more senior officers at an official hearing. Another captain would be prosecutor, and the defendant would be allowed to choose any other officer in the regiment to represent him.

When the rest of the officers and the servants had retired for the night, three tables would be arranged round three sides of the mess room and draped in green baize. They would be set out with papers, carafes, and glasses, and legal reference works, just as if this were a properly constituted court. The wicks of the oil-lamps would be trimmed and those present would wear formal mess-jackets and medals, as at an official tribunal. Witnesses would sit outside in the ante-room until they were called, sworn, examined, and cross-examined. All those involved were automatically assumed to be under an oath of secrecy, as a matter of honour. Some honour, I thought!

How could anyone not see the dangers of this drum-head ritual? I imagined myself being tried privately by such gadflies as Jock and Frank with Sellon as my judge! And, of course, there was no right of appeal to the world outside, let alone the Courts-Martial Appeals Court. But far from being a black mark against a regiment that settled its own problems in this sinister way, it seemed to be thought of more highly.

Yet even if a defendant was convicted, how could a collection of subalterns have any legal redress against him? They could not cashier him, unless he chose to send in his papers and resign. They could not imprison him, let alone shoot him or hang him. They would, apparently, have kept him under escort so that he could not “do a bunk,” as Frank put it, until the trial was over. But what then?

I tried to imagine what had happened in the 109th Foot to bring about such a midnight charade. The regiment had been in India for seven or eight years and would have returned to England by now but for the emergency in Afghanistan. It had been stationed near Lahore, living among the local community. It occupied British army barracks such as might have been found at home in York or Colchester or Canterbury.

It seemed from my companions' conversation that there had been a scandal, six or nine months ago, involving the regiment I was no longer to join. It had ended in this macabre ritual. But whatever the offence and whoever the culprit, what could the outcome of the so-called trial have been? Captain Sellon would bite his tongue out rather than tell me. All the same, he seemed anxious that I should understand the uses of such a secret court.

“I don't think you quite grasp the point, sir,” he said more patiently: “it is no substitute for the legal process and, for myself, I cannot condone it. But a man who misbehaves without committing a felony is often given the chance of putting things right privately. A chance of being dealt with quietly by his own kind. It may seem a privilege in its way. He avoids public disgrace with his reputation at issue.”

“He welcomes this secret trial?”

“I will give you an example. Some years ago, a young lieutenant was mess treasurer in a regiment brigaded with my own. He was a decent enough fellow in most respects but not as well endowed with money as most of the others. To keep up appearances and pay his mess bills, he pilfered the funds of his comrades which were in his trust. In the circumstances and at his age, it was folly rather than villainy. It could not be ignored, but a formal public trial at brigade headquarters would have destroyed his reputation and career.”

“It would,” said Frank, nodding emphatically but still smiling.

“I speak of what I know, doctor,” Sellon continued. “As a matter of honour, his name and misconduct were never revealed by those other subalterns who judged him. He was tried by his equals and convicted. Indeed, he admitted his guilt.”

“And what was his sentence?”

“He was to go ten rounds against a junior captain who had been a school and regimental boxing champion. No one could compel him to do so, but it was the price of avoiding a public trial.”

“He agreed?”

“He did. Of course, he was no pugilist and after that half hour he had been badly beaten. Yet he had tried to hold his own against a superior antagonist. In this he had shown a good deal of pluck. By doing so, he won back much of the reputation which he might have lost through an act of folly—as I choose to call it.”

“What happened to him then?”

“He remained in the Army, though not in the same regiment. He transferred and began again. I think you do not understand, perhaps, that such rituals are also the way in which the Army protects its own.”

I certainly understood how much I still had to learn about India and the codes of its British rulers.

“What happened in the 109th Foot?”

Captain Sellon leant forward again.

“Since you are no longer joining that regiment and have heard nothing so far, I think we may leave the matter there. We have talked enough of these things to give you an understanding. You will forgive me if I do not choose to make them a matter of gossip. If you ever discover the answer to your question, it will not be through me.”

His two juniors were unwilling to contradict him, in his presence. As for me, I was about to face life and death somewhere beyond the Khyber Pass. Joshua Sellon was right. Regimental tittle-tattle was something best avoided. Or so I thought.

About half an hour before reaching Lahore, we stopped at a remote junction on a wide and fertile plain. There was a loop in the line where our train was held back, waiting for an on-coming set of southbound coaches to pass us on its return to Delhi or Bombay. As we sat there, our carriage door was opened by an officer in the uniform of a brigade major. He summoned Captain Sellon out to the platform. They spoke for a moment about something that was evidently confidential. Then, as the door was closed from outside, it became evident that Sellon had been commanded to join a conference further up the train.

While we waited for the southbound train to pass, I knew that Jock and Frank would never keep their mouths shut in their captain's absence. As for Joshua Sellon, I was never to see him alive again.

2

J
ock gave Frank a nudge.

“You ass!” he said, gasping and grinning before he looked at me again. “It's all right, sir. Not your fault. You weren't to know about old Josh.”

“What about him?”

“He's only Provost Marshal's Corps! That's all! Snooping into black-guards, as they say. He's done court-martials, but he won't tell tales.”

“The long and the short of it was the Putney-Wilson case,” said Frank, eagerly but quietly, as if Sellon might still be listening, “that's what happened in the 109th. You'll hear about it anyway in Lahore. But I daresay the tale reached the English press. Emmeline Putney-Wilson?”

“I don't believe so.”

“Really? Not the suicide? It surely must have done.”

“I think not. At any rate, I cannot recall it in the papers.”

“Well, Emmeline was married to Major Putney-Wilson of the 109th. He was seconded to Delhi for several months. She was a pious sort of lady, it seemed, devoted to the two little children. First row of the garrison chapel on Sunday morning, hymn-book open. Voice of a prima donna and looks of a pretty horsebreaker. Also a voice for amateur drama but nothing too racy. He and she were a real pair of uprighters. You couldn't imagine her breathing the same air as so-called Colonel Moran.”

“Why is it,” Jock butted in, “when a hymn-singer and her tambourine fall from grace, it's for a bounder? Perhaps she thinks it's the only way to save him.”

“In a nutshell,” Frank resumed, “Rawdon Moran was a rotter. Some fellows seemed to think him likeable. In other words, he paid for their pale ale and they laughed at his talk. No one thought him straight. After all the women he'd had, he must have found Emmeline Putney-Wilson easy to pick off. But she, poor little girl, got herself into a tangle. Love and guilt, I suppose. Wanting him and then feeling foul when she'd got what she was after. If ever the balance of a mind was disturbed, it was hers.”

Jock took his chance.

“Of course he left her, as anyone with any sense knew he would. From being pretty and prim, she began to look grim and sick. The garrison chapel saw the last of her because she couldn't face the talk. And, of course, Putney-Wilson wouldn't be on detachment in Delhi for ever. A month or so went by, and every day she seemed more wretched at what would happen when he came home. The affair with Moran was over, but the tittle-tattle wasn't. Even if someone didn't tell him outright, sooner or later Putney-Wilson was going to hear the whole story by accident.”

“And Moran?”

“Oh, he forgot her after a few weeks. Except when he was laughing with one or two cronies over having a high-style, nosein-the-air saint on her knees in front of him. To cut a long story short, the night before Putney-Wilson came back, she couldn't take any more. She hanged herself from the bannister of their bungalow. She'd given laudanum to the two children, I suppose to prevent them growing up to hear of their mother's shame. Mercifully for them, the dose was too small to do the job.”

“He destroyed her,” Frank chimed in; “everyone knew that. They kept his name out of the inquest and made it look like simple madness. People do go mad out here, you know. Men and women. More often than you think.”

To me, this pathetic story seemed worthy of a Greek tragedy. I was fascinated to see how the mere telling of it had sobered these two young rips. It was truly appalling.

“So the subalterns of the 109th put him on trial at midnight?”

Jock nodded.

“They took him by surprise, or they'd never have caught him. Two junior captains put him under arrest and escort. They held him in his own room until that evening. He was not allowed to speak to anyone. His meals were taken to him. There wasn't much documentation, and the case was simple. He had never hidden what he did.”

“What about the regimental commander?”

“Colonel Tommy? I daresay he'd be glad to get rid of Moran at any price. Officially, he knew nothing about the trial. Unofficially, he must have known. Still, he was a good sort, the last man to interfere. Most of them hoped they'd see Moran kicked out of the regiment. A piper playing the Rogue's March while they cut off his buttons and epaulettes. But without Emmeline Putney-Wilson to give evidence, there was no simple proof of a crime. What Moran had done seemed worse than most crimes, but he put it all on her as an hysterical little girl who couldn't handle a bit of fun. Even in front of the court, the wretched fellow took a high tone. He wouldn't answer any charge or enter a plea. He refused to recognise the court or to have any part of it. They gave him an officer for his defence. Captain Learmont, from the support company. Captain Canning, the adjutant, was elected president with four lieutenants to sit with him. It took them just one session, a couple of hours, starting at midnight.”