Invitation to Die Page 8

  “‘Not ashes. I know what this is! The crumbly bits of earth are just that! From a few miles north of here. But the larger crystal bits are what it’s all about.’ I poked at them with a pencil. ‘Ranging from black in colour, through dark purple and reddish brown. Good Lord! Some of these are quite large. Abel, these are diamonds. Rough, untreated ones. Cleaned up and polished by a jeweller, they must be worth . . . Oh, I have no idea! A king’s ransom? Whatever that’s worth these days.’

  “‘No kings in these benighted parts to consult—or kidnap,’ Abel muttered. ‘But there are one or two demigods of business and industry who might pay for something nefarious on the quiet by transporting this stuff out of Kimberley. Payment? Bribe? Nest egg? Who’s it meant for? Where’s it going? You know, Dickie, it might have been better for us if they had been ashes.’ Abel was always quick to see two moves ahead. He looked again at the corpse. ‘I wonder if those turds found out who he was?’

  “‘I’d guess the rider gave away the gold as a sweetener, hoping they’d let him get away with the really important item he was smuggling in his haute couture boot. We’re going to have to search his things for an identity. And then, at some time in the near future, we’ll have to declare this lot and hand it in to the authorities. We wouldn’t want to be hauled in for looting. A charge which any reasonably sharp-nosed army disciplinarian could make to stick, no bother.’

  “We fell silent at this awful thought. And it was, believe me, a prospect to make the blood run cold. It was a new offence. Or rather a very old offence, restated by the army. Looting. Some young idiots had nicked a few bales of fabric and a couple of ducks for their supper—nothing special—when moving through a recently taken Boer town. Jacobsdal? The top brass had come down on them like a ton of bricks. The British army simply does not tolerate such conduct, we were all lined up and told. New regulations were published. Any individual arrested and found guilty of ‘looting’ was to be hanged immediately. Yes—hanged! And his battalion found guilty by association. While the looter swung from the nearest telegraph pole, his mates would be marched off south to base and spend the rest of the war in an army jail on punishment detail, their names forever sullied.

  “Overstated and viciously cruel but effective. We didn’t want to risk that.

  “‘What about the lads?’ Abel wanted to know.

  “‘We prepare them for the worst. We give them the whole score,’ I decided. ‘I’m not wandering about the veldt until relieved with the weight of this round my neck. We come clean with them. We tell them that as soon as we get back to civilisation we declare these items. And to make sure no blame sticks to any man in this patrol, I’ll write a letter to that effect and put it in my pack along with the stuff. Now we’ll leave them laid out on the table so everyone can take note that nothing underhand’s been done or is likely to be done. As far as they’re concerned, the goods are in transit to Lord Methuen’s Ninth Brigade and temporarily under the joint care and custody of this tactical sub-unit. We’ll tidy up this poor young chap as best we may.’ We cleaned up his face and put his shirt back on.

  “Abel nodded agreement. Finally, ‘Shall I get them in now?’ he asked.

  “Alarmed, intrigued and concerned, they filed in and we pulled up stools and chairs and sat down, all seven of us, including the dead gentleman, around the table.

  “‘Crikey! ’e’s been in the wars! What the ’ell ’appened to ’im?’ was Syd’s sensitive comment.

  “‘Our dead friend here was so unfortunate as to run into a couple of murdering Boers. The pair you have met and dispatched. No idea who he is or what his business is, but he seems to have been a messenger of some sort out from Kimberley. My best guess would be that he was a De Beers operative. Look at the table. These are the goods he was carrying stashed away.’

  “Ratty, eyeing the gold bars with relish, spoke out of turn. ‘Cor! That’ll be on its way down to Lord Methuen and the Ninth! It’s our next year’s wages we’re looking at! That’s ours, lads! Compliments of Cecil Rhodes!’

  “But one of us didn’t have eyes for the gleam of gold. To my horror, Syd grabbed the sugar basin. ‘I know what this is!’ he chortled. ‘My mum took me up west to Fortnum’s in Piccadilly for my twelfth birthday tea. This is sugar! But special coffee sugar! It’s rock candy sugar crystals! She let me eat a whole basin-full and didn’t make me have coffee with it.’ Before we could say anything, he’d licked his finger and was sticking it into the pile of rough diamonds. Abel managed to get to his hand and smack it away from his mouth just in time.

  “We explained the nature of his ‘coffee crystals’ and what the army’s new rule on looting implied for us, should anyone decide to take things the wrong way and make an example of any poor innocent trooper. Death or imprisonment, in short. Everyone agreed that disclosure—and as soon as possible—was called for, and that in the meantime, it should stay where it was, safe on the table under everyone’s gaze. We made practical plans for the concealment of it, should we be attacked. I wrote out the letter, we all signed it as witnesses and I put it underneath the sugar basin.”

  Catching Redfyre’s exasperated sigh, the prisoner nodded and laughed. “I know! But there were no army regulations to cover these very particular circumstances! And, funnily enough, the table really was the safest place. Every man became its guardian dragon. Whenever anyone entered the room, he would automatically run a checking eye over the haul. We got so used to seeing the bars of gold, no one batted an eyelid when Abel reached out casually one morning and grabbed one to use as a paperweight to hold down his mother’s recipe for beef stew while he chopped and scraped and filled a saucepan.

  “And we got on with our duties. We cleaned and cooked and repaired, perversely taking satisfaction in having a roof of our own over our heads. We’d wake one another in the night to say: ‘Cor! Hear that rain? Poor old Ratty, standing lookout in this! Hope he’s found somewhere to shelter.’ I ran a tight ship, and every man did his bit.”

  “Did you experience any military action?”

  “We fired off quite a few rounds at the jackals. They came for the fruit. The tree wasn’t called a jackalberry for nothing! Lemony-tasting and refreshing. We ate a lot of it.”

  “Your supplies were sufficient?”

  “Course not! We scavenged for food like the jackals! The Boers had brought hardtack with them. Have you ever eaten biltong?” He pulled a face. “Hope you never have to. Plenty of game about, though. And we were good shots. Antelope tastes like venison, and Lieutenant Hardy was a dab hand with the roasting spit and the stewpot.

  “But no enemy or friend hove into view. We exercised the horses, reconnoitred the area, watched the railway line, darned our socks and passed the time. Herbert put his skills to repairing the saddle of the black horse. An intricate piece of needlework, which he managed by equipping himself with shoe-mending materials nicked from the Boers’ kitbags. There were several individual pouches contrived for the ingots within the saddle. ‘Never know when you’ll need to hide ten bars o’ gold,’ he said with a wink. ‘That’s been used afore, I reckon. A real bit o’ craftsmanship that is!’

  “Then, once he was satisfied with his repairs, he used the saddle and the horse for riding out on reconnaissance. He was the only one of us the black would tolerate near him.” He smiled. “So poor old Herb found himself doing quite a mileage up and down alongside the railway track every day. With three horses and a mule in his charge, he had his work cut out.”

  Redfyre interrupted the domestic saga to ask what they had done with the body of the young rider. Had they established his identity, reported his death?

  “We did,” the prisoner replied. “Taped into his left armpit, he had a small light-case-cum-wallet. An étui is probably what he’d asked for at Asprey’s when he kitted himself out in London. It was of the softest calfskin, but it can’t have been comfortable even so in that hot, dry country. He was half French, half En
glish, I was later to find out when I had time to do a little research. An employee, but also a relative of one of the Company’s directors. I never did find out whether Louis Duvallon was out and about on the Company’s business or making a well-funded break for freedom on his own account. I rather suspect the latter. It must have been excruciatingly tedious for a sophisticated chap like Louis to have been cut off from the world for six months with no sign of relief, bombed, shot at, starved by a rabble of discontented peasants. He can’t have been enjoying Uncle Cecil’s hospitality all that much, either.”

  “Can you be certain that he was a lone rider? Risky thing to do, wasn’t it? Taking off through enemy territory like that all by oneself?”

  “Yes. Indeed. That’s what made me think he was engaged in clandestine, possibly criminal activity. But the suspicion was strong among us that he was not a single swallow. Just in case his friends turned up enquiring, I decided to keep his body available for a day or two before burial. There was a sort of outhouse on the cool southern side of the cabin. With a big stone slab for butchering and keeping bush meat, I assumed. We laid him out there in a rudimentary coffin we cobbled together from a pile of planks left over from the building.”

  “You buried him out on the Modder?”

  “Eventually, yes. About a week after we arrived. The men were complaining about the smell. They had all been for stripping the corpse at once and heaving it into the river. Stupid, perhaps, but I felt I had a duty to do right by him. He’d looked me in the eye, after all, recognised me for what I was, an honest British soldier, and entrusted me with his fortune. Probably not his to bequeath, and certainly not mine to inherit, but it was a bond of sorts. Lacking volunteers, apart from a little grudging help from Syd, I cleaned and dressed the body myself in his own gear. Made it look decent. Then Ratty and Herbert between them dug a grave deep enough to make it jackal-proof, some distance away from the cabin. We all stood around, and I delivered the nearest I could manage to a Christian burial. We put a four-foot cross made of jackalberry boughs at the head of the grave with his initials carved on it. It was a big marker—a precaution, in case later anyone wanted to recover the body . . . Cecil Rhodes cast a long shadow in those parts. If he decided to make enquiries about the fate of his kinsman, it could have caused problems for us.”

  He lapsed into the deep silence Redfyre had learned to respect in the men he questioned. Then, haltingly, thoughts moving faster than his words: “Funny that!” he said. “It never struck me before—the day the company rode away from that foul place, I looked back. That cross had become part of the scenery. It wasn’t there . . . It wasn’t there,” he murmured again. “I expect some lumbering animal had stopped to scratch its bum and knocked it over. Africa! What a country! It wears down, reclaims, silts up and covers over. And now no one will know he’s there.”

  “No visitors apart from wandering wildebeest?”

  “No. It was very strange. No one came near us. We could hear fighting going on to the east and Long Tom pounding down on Kimberley to the north, but we were in the calm eye of the storm. Nevertheless, we stayed uncomfortably tense and always on the alert for danger. It’s easier to face an enemy when you can see his eyes. The worst is when you realise you’ve been looking into those eyes for months and he’s sitting right in front of you.”

  “I’m sorry, you’ve lost me.” Redfyre was startled. “Are you implying that one of you was a traitor?”

  “In a way, we had our traitor. Not so much betraying his country as betraying his unit. In my book, that’s as bad.”

  Redfyre nodded agreement.

  “I woke up earlier than the others one bright morning on tea-making jankers. It was day eight. The day after the funeral. I ran an eye over the table. Right number of gold bars. Diamond dross in the basin. Or was it? Something wasn’t quite right. At that precise hour. the sun was slanting down through a high slit window and catching the rough stones. Where it should have been striking sparks of amber and red through the dust, there was barely a responding gleam. I gave it a closer look and ran a finger through it. It wasn’t my imagination; the dust hadn’t merely settled differently over the crystals. I stirred Abel awake and he came to have a look with me. ‘Tip it out,’ he advised.

  “We poured it onto a clean tea cloth and examined it. The surrounding earth was the same. But the lumps were different. Abel fetched the magnifying glass he used for starting fires, peered and passed it to me. ‘Some bugger’s done a switch,’ I concluded. ‘These pieces are not crystalline. And they’re all the same colour. Grey—dark to light. He’s left one or two of the smaller diamonds on top for show.’

  “‘And I could take you straight to the very patch of river gravel, not fifty yards from here, that these ugly lumps came from,’ Abel said. ‘Who the hell? When?”

  “‘Remind me, Lieutenant . . . Did we have visitors yesterday between the hours of sun up and sun down? Did Lord Methuen pop in for tiffin? Did Her Majesty come to tea?’

  “‘Bloody didn’t! And there was somebody here in this shack all day, coming and going, but always in pairs—as scheduled. None of us goes anywhere without his shadow around this place. I get sick to death of seeing your ugly mug every time I turn my head!’

  “‘It has to be one of us, Abel, doesn’t it?’”

  “‘Or two of us.’”

  Chapter 7

  Cambridge, Friday, the 16th of May, 1924

  Outside the Wren Chapel, a dinner-jacketed Digby Gisbourne consulted his pocket watch. Two minutes before six. He resumed his pacing to and fro across the portico. He resented performing this menial welcoming duty, which could so easily and more properly have been done by the appropriate college servant, but of course, he hadn’t dared make his views clear to the formidable Fanshawe. Too-big-for-his-boots Rendlesham had stepped in, frozen him and ticked him off for complaining when he’d raised the matter. Hadn’t young Gisbourne understood that discretion—nay, secrecy even—was the quality to which their group owed its existence? And, as the youngest member, Gisbourne must expect to take on subaltern duties. It was no time at all since he was at Harrow—he could hardly have forgotten how these things work?

  Digby scanned the busy street for likely candidates. Half the men passing were wearing day clothes—business suits and homburgs. Some were, like him, already in evening dress, prepared for one of the succession of end-of-term celebrations that seemed to start earlier and earlier these days. This would be the last of the year’s Friends’ dinners. He’d had a glimpse of the menu—impressed by the wine that Fanshawe was proposing, he was looking forward to it. He’d finished his academic year—a damned hard one, in fact—and was ready to indulge in a little relaxation, hilarity and good sport. It had been agreed that he should take the part of lead hound tonight. Perhaps he could teach the old fuddy-duddies a few new steps? He was on his mettle!

  What had Rendlesham told him? “Watch out for an army greatcoat, an unkempt, tramp-like appearance and—mind what you say. You’re not to frighten him off. It is vital that this one attend. He’s very special, remember?” Digby shuddered. It didn’t sound very promising. How did one greet a tramp in a friendly manner? His usual technique on encountering one such obstructing the pavement was to move him out of his way with the vigorous application of the point of one of his highly polished Oxfords. Digby presented an impressive figure with his wide shoulders and prematurely gnarled hands acquired from years of rowing. People of all ranks of society instinctively made way for him. The thought of communicating with a vagrant was giving him pause. A “Wotcher, mate!” and “’ello, me old mucker!” were the only verbal exchanges between down-and-outs he’d ever heard.

  “I say! You must be he! My Hermes? Indeed, my Hermes Psychopompos?”

  At the tap on the shoulder, Digby whirled around to face the stranger, whose silent approach he’d missed. The owner of the gravelly, educated voice. “Hermes who?” he heard himself blurting.
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  “Hermes Psychopompos. My divine guide to the Underworld. I believe that’s where we’re bound? May I present myself? For this evening, I’m Noël Coward. Not my choice of alter ego, but the whimsical jeu d’esprit of your man Rendlesham. I suspect he was not being altogether kind! May I present your card?”

  In bafflement, Digby looked briefly at the card the tramp produced from the inside pocket of his greatcoat and waved it away, all his attention on the lean, handsome face sparkling with impish good humour. “Mr. Coward? Well, I’ll be damned! You are a surprise! But, er—no, your suspicions are well founded. He wouldn’t be. In fact, the words ‘kind’ and ‘Rendlesham’ in close proximity would curdle a sentence. But how do you do, sir? We’re to perform introductions later, so for the moment, I’ll be your soul-shifting Hermes. I’m rather charmed by the idea! I’ll just say, I’m delighted that you could manage to get along at such short notice for our little soirée.” And as the nearest cracked college bell started to bang out six: “Right on time! Well done! So, er . . . this way.”

  He was beginning to recover from his surprise and, heartened by the familiarity of the man’s tone of voice, which much resembled that of his old housemaster, Digby felt confident enough to hazard a jest of his own. “But first—obol, sir?” He held out a hand, palm up, with a winsome smile. “I believe there is a fee for crossing the River Styx, though nothing more alarming than a raging gutter separates us from our dinner. The ditches are in full spring spate this evening, you’ll find.”

  The man grinned and pressed a shining shilling coin into Digby’s hand. “Sorry, no obol—a bob will have to do. It may prove well worth the charge—I understand that a dunking in the Sinister Stream bestows invulnerability. A quality I may find myself in need of before the evening’s out.”

  “Oh, you require invulnerability, do you? That’s extra. Messy business, dunking. And someone has to hold you up by the heel. You’d be looking at me a long time before you thought of Achilles’s mother. Now, what was her name?”