Read Ebook: The crime at Vanderlynden's by Mottram R H Ralph Hale

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Ebook has 990 lines and 54796 words, and 20 pages

"In what Corps Area is Hondebecq?"

The Sergeant spotted it in a moment, on the big map pinned up on the wall.

"Very well, wire them to take this up, and make an arrest."

"There is just one point I should like to put, sir!"

As Dormer said it, he felt it to be "cheek." His Chief turned upon him the eyeglass of a regular officer who found it rather difficult to imagine how a junior temporary officer could put a point. But Dormer had seen two Courts-Martial, and the thought of some poor brute hauled out of a trench, and marched about for no better purpose than that, kept him firm.

"If an arrest is made, you will have to go on with the proceedings."

"Naturally."

"Then you will need a statement from the victim. If we had that first, we should know the truth!"

"Well, you'd better go and get it, as you know the people. You can see Corps and insist on an arrest. But, most important of all, try what a little money can do. He says a thousand francs. Well, you must see what he will come down to."

Outside Divisional Head-quarters, Dormer turned to the right, to go to his billet, but a military policeman, stepping out from the shelter of the buildings, saluted.

"They're shelling that way, sir!"

It gave Dormer a queer familiar feeling in the pit of the stomach. Shelling, the daily routine of that War. But being a very punctilious temporary officer, and taking his almost non-existent position in Divisional Staff very seriously, he pulled himself together.

"Oh, well, they'd have hit me long ago, if they could!" He passed on, followed by a smile. He said those things because he felt them to be good for the morale of the troops. Sure enough, he had not gone many yards before the air was rent by a familiar tearing sound, followed by the usual bump and roar. It was well in front of him, and to the left, and he went on reassured. A few yards farther on, close to the side street where he was billeted over a pork-butcher's shop, he noticed people coming out of their houses and shops to stare, while one elderly woman, rounder than any artist would dare to portray, asked him:

"O Monsieur, is the bombard finished?" in the Anglo-Flemish which years of billeting were beginning to teach the inhabitants of the town. But the centre of excitement was farther on, where the little street of houses petered out between small, highly cultivated fields. Here the first shell had fallen right upon one of those limbers that were to be found being driven up some obscure street at any hour of the day or night. Two dazed drivers had succeeded in cutting loose and quieting the mules. A horse lay dead in the gutter. Against the bank leaned the Corporal, his face out of sight, as if in the midst of a hearty laugh. It needed only a glance, however, to see that there was no head upon the shoulders. It was just one of those daily disagreeable scenes which to Dormer had been so utterly strange all his life, and so familiar for the last year. Dormer made no fuss, but took charge. He knew well enough that the drivers would stand and look at each other. He sent one of them for a burial party from the nearest Field Ambulance, saw that the other tied up the mules and made a bundle of the dead man's effects--paybook, knife, money, letters--the pitiful little handkerchief-ful of all that remains for a soldier's loved ones--while he himself pushed his way into the orderly room of the nearest formation, that showed any signs of telephone wires. He had not many yards to go, for the camps lay along each side of that Flemish lane, as close as houses in a street.

He was soon inside an Armstrong hut, with the field telephone at his disposal, and while waiting to be given the orderly room of the Brigade Transport to which the casualty belonged, he happened to close his eyes. The effect was so striking that he immediately opened them again. There, on the underside of his eyelids, was the headless body he had just left. Curiously enough, it did not lie against the bank, as he had seen it, but seemed to swim towards him, arms above his head, gesticulating. Once his eyes were open again, of course it disappeared.

About him was nothing more wonderful than the interior of an Armstrong hut Orderly Room, an army table, an army chair. Some one's bed and bath shoved in a corner. Outside, trampled mud, mule-lines, cinder tracks, Holland elms, flat, stodgy Flanders all desecrated with War. He got the number he wanted, told the Brigade to fetch their broken limber, gave his rank and job, and put up the telephone. The impression he had had was so strong, however, that walking back along the cinder path, he closed his eyes again. Yes, it was still there, quite plain, the details of the khaki uniform all correct and clear cut, spurred boots and bandolier, but no head, and the arms raised aloft, exhorting or threatening.

If he went on like this he would have to see a Medical Officer, and they would send him down to the Base, and he would find his job filled up, and have to go elsewhere and start all over fresh, trying to do something that was not desperately boring or wholly useless. He had been doing too much, going up at night for "stunts," and working in Q. office all day. He would have to slack off a bit.

His companion on this joyless ride was Major Stevenage, the A.P.M. of the Division, an ex-cavalry officer of the regular army, in appearance and mentality a darker and grimmer edition of Colonel Birchin.

Dormer showed him the Vanderlynden dossier as they bowled along. He surveyed it with the weariness of a professional to whom an amateur exhibits a "masterpiece."

"Colonel Birchin thinks it's rape, does he?"

"Yes!"

"He's wrong, of course. Q. office always are! What do you think it is yourself?"

"A nasty snag. What happened doesn't matter. You and I could settle it for forty francs. But the French have got hold of it. It's become official."

"What do you suggest?" Major Stevenage put in his monocle.

"We must go and see the Maire, and get it withdrawn. Let's see. Hondebecq? It's the Communal Secretary Blanquart we must see. Shrewd fellow and all on our side. These schoolmasters hate the peasants."

It was here that they found Blanquart, Communal Secretary, schoolmaster, land surveyor, poor man's lawyer, Heaven only knows what other functions he used to combine. He was the only man in the Commune handy with pen and paper, and this fact must have substantially added to his income. But, like all his kind, he could not forget that he came from Dunkirk or Lille; he had moments when his loneliness got the better of his pride and he would complain bitterly of the "sacred peasants."

Blanquart greeted them effusively, as who should say: "We others, we are men of the world." He made polite inquiries about the officers' health and the weather and the War, leading up to the introduction: "Allow me to present you to Mister our Mayor! And now what can I do for you?"

Major Stevenage, a little lost in the mixed stream of good French and bad English, left it to Dormer.

"It is with reference to the claim of Vanderlynden! Can one arrange it?"

Blanquart had only time to put in: "Everything arranges itself," before the Mayor cut him short.

"You have some nice ideas, you others. Arrange it, I believe you. You will arrange it with our Deputy."

Blanquart put in: "Mister the Mayor was insulted by the troops. We wrote to our Deputy!"

Major Stevenage fidgeted. He had found it most difficult to go through this sort of thing, day after day, for years. He had been trained to deal with Asiatics. He turned on Blanquart:

"Why didn't you write to me first?" but the Mayor cut in again. His general outlook on life was about that of an English agricultural labourer plus the dignity of Beadledom. This latter had been injured, and the man, who seldom spoke a dozen sentences a day, now was voluble. He understood more English than one gave him credit for.

"It is very well, Monsieur the Maire," Dormer broke in. "We go to make an arrestation. Can you indicate the culpable?"

"But I believe you, I can indicate him," cried the old man.

Dormer waited breathlessly for some fatal name or number which would drag a poor wretch through the slow exasperation of Court-Martial proceedings.

"It was a small brown man!"

"That does not lead us very far!" said Dormer icily.

"Wait!" The old man raised his voice. "Achille!" The door opened, and Achille Quaghebeur, the Garde Champ?tre, in attendance on the Maire, stepped in and closed it behind him. He had, in his dark green and sulphur-coloured uniform, with his assumption of importance, the air of a comic soldier out of "Madame Angot." "Produce the corroborative article!"

Achille found in his tail pocket surely the oldest and most faded of leather pocket-books. From this in turn he produced a piece of A.S.C. sacking, on which the word OATS was plainly printed in black.

"Voila!" said the Maire.

"Totally useless!" growled the Major, turning red.

This made the Maire furious; he grasped the intonation and expression if not the words.

"I shall ask for the daughter, Madeleine."

"Just so!"

"Nor do I," said the Major stoutly.

Neither of them could pronounce the word "rape."

They got out, knocked at the door and knocked again. The place seemed not so much empty and deserted as enveloped in one of those encompassing noises that only sort themselves out on investigation. Too deep for a separator, too near for an aeroplane, Dormer diagnosed it: "They've got the Government thrasher in the back pasture, next the rye!"

They recrossed the bridge of the moat and skirting the latter entered the back pasture. There against the gate that gave on to the arable "plain," as it was called in those parts, was the Government thrasher, the women labourers, and right on the top of the stack, old Vanderlynden.

Dormer shouted! Vanderlynden paid not the slightest heed. Perhaps he was deaf, no doubt the thrasher buzzed loud enough; but above all he was one of those old peasants whose only reply to this unheard-of War in which all had been plunged was to work harder and more continuously, and to show less and less consciousness of what went on round about them. There he stood, black against that shy and tender blue of Flemish sky, the motions of his body mechanical, his face between collarless shirt and high-crowned, peaked cap, expressionless. Finally, Dormer took one of the short stout girls that were employed in raking the straw away from the travelling band, and shook her roughly by the arm.

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