The Day of Disaster Read online

  ‘Liar,’ rejoined Loftus. He was half-way through a second, slightly more Rabelaisian verse when Kerr joined in.

  To the roar of their voices, the Bentley sped on, through Salisbury, through Shaftesbury, into the open country again.

  All at once they noticed half-a-dozen military vehicles ahead of them, small parties of infantry in full battle-dress on either side of the road.

  ‘It looks like manoeuvres,’ Kerr said.

  ‘Keep your hand on the horn,’ Loftus implored.

  ‘Who’s driving?’ demanded Kerr.

  ‘All right, all right,’ said Loftus, ‘have it your own way.’

  It took them four hours to reach Weymouth.

  They passed another, smaller convoy of men and war machines on the move, just outside the seaport, not knowing that the very men they passed had sent terror into Emile’s heart six days before.

  The hospital was in a residential quarter of the town.

  A nurse, a sister, and finally the matron saw them. The first two were firm; the visitors could not see the patient Emile. The matron, a tall well-built woman with a face set in lines of severity which the expression in her eyes belied, received them in a small but well-kept office.

  ‘I haven’t given general instructions that you are to be admitted to the boy’s ward, Mr. Loftus,’ she said. ‘I had a telephone message asking me to give you every facility, but not to allow it to be widely known.’ If she felt curious about such a message, she concealed her curiosity well. She went on: ‘He’s been asleep for the past two hours, but I’ve just been told that he’s awake again.’

  Loftus lingered, sensing that more was to come.

  ‘He’s saying the same words—they’re practically all he’s uttered since he came round. “Loftus—spell it backwards”.’ The woman played with a pencil, not looking at either of the two men.

  Loftus smiled; until then his expression, like Kerr’s, had been almost wooden. Nothing in his face suggested a man of unusual intelligence, but the smile was transforming. It made him at once likeable and authoritative.

  ‘That must be puzzling you plenty,’ he said. ‘How many people have heard him?’

  ‘Five or six. Myself, Sister Ewan, two nurses and Dr. Shapgold.’

  ‘I wonder if you could find out whether any of them have made the phrase a subject of conversation?’ Loftus asked. ‘If it has got about it doesn’t much matter, but if it could be prevented it might be of service.’

  ‘I don’t think any of them will have talked,’ said the matron, tentatively. ‘I can’t be sure, of course.’ She looked a little disturbed. ‘I’ll do what I can to make sure that it isn’t made a gossip item, Mr. Loftus.’

  ‘Thanks very much,’ said Loftus warmly. ‘And if you could find out while I’m here whether it has gone the rounds I’d be very appreciative. Now——’ he settled back in his chair, giving the impression that he had all the time in the world to spare—’I wonder if you will give me a précis of your own, and the doctor’s opinion of Emile?’

  ‘Of course,’ said the matron.

  In five minutes, Loftus and Kerr knew that Emile was a lad of nineteen or twenty, under-nourished and, sometime within the past year or eighteen months, the victim of a flogging. He had two scars on his right leg, probably from bullet wounds. In his delirium he spoke a fluent, bastard French, interlaced with a number of Flemish and half-Flemish words. He had at one time been of good physique, and was probably of farming or peasant stock. Despite privations, he was in fair bodily health and would quickly regain lost weight. Mentally he was an enigma.

  The matron went on slowly: ‘I’ve discussed the case with Dr. Shapgold, Mr. Loftus. We agree that the way in which we might get over his present mental halt is to confront him with the man whose name he is repeating so frequently, but——’ she paused.

  ‘There might be difficulty in convincing him that I am the man,’ said Loftus slowly. ‘Yes, I can see that. Has he shown any liking for any particular nurse?’

  ‘Yes, Nurse Caroll.’

  ‘I wonder if Nurse Caroll could be in the room when I speak to him?’ asked Loftus. ‘It’s obviously going to be a heck of a job to get him to talk. She’s quite reliable, I hope?’

  ‘I wish I had twenty others as good. She isn’t on duty at the moment, but I think she’s in her room.’ The matron lifted a telephone. Nurse Caroll was in her room and would report for duty, in five minutes. Loftus smiled his thanks.

  ‘You’re being a great help, Matron.’

  ‘If you have in mind what I think you have,’ said the matron enigmatically, ‘you are going to be a great nuisance, Mr. Loftus.’ She smiled. ‘No, don’t press me to explain just now!’ She relaxed a little. ‘I hope you can help the lad.’

  ‘I think we can,’ said Loftus, and to Kerr’s discomfort spent several minutes explaining Kerr’s activities at the ‘nursing-home’.

  As he spoke, there was a tap at the door.

  ‘Ah, Nurse Caroll.’

  Kerr rose quickly, while Loftus eased himself up with the help of his stick.

  It was not hard to imagine why the matron wished she had twenty nurses like this girl. It was easy to see that she would inspire confidence in her patients, and that she would find no trouble too great to help them. She was beautiful all right, but Loftus and Kerr were mainly aware of the intensity of her eyes. They were blue, large and wide-set, the lashes framing them as dark as her hair and her eyebrows. It was the curiously direct expression, however, that compelled attention.

  Loftus thought: By George, she’s lovely!

  The matron introduced them, smiling, then turned authoritatively to Nurse Caroll.

  ‘Mr. Loftus is going to try to convince Emile that he is his friend. I want you to go with him to the ward.’

  ‘I see.’ The girl’s voice was quiet and a little husky. There was breeding in it, and in her face and figure. Again Loftus found himself curious about her, but he put the thought aside, as he commented easily:

  ‘It probably isn’t going to be a walk-over, and I hope you’ll be able to help.’

  ‘I wonder if I can go in the ward for a few minutes on my own?’ asked Nurse Caroll quickly. ‘I might be able to make him understand who’s coming.’

  ‘That’s a good idea,’ said Loftus.

  The girl looked at the matron, received a nod of approval, half-turned, and then turned again and regarded Loftus steadily. There was an odd silence in the room.

  ‘You are his Loftus, aren’t you?’ she asked.

  ‘I think I can guarantee that,’ said Loftus quietly. ‘But he doesn’t know me, except by name.’

  ‘That doesn’t matter. I just felt——’

  She broke off and hurried out of the room. The matron was smiling as she lifted a telephone and asked for tea and biscuits for three to be sent to the office.

  ‘Nurse Caroll has spent a lot of time with Emile,’ she said. ‘Her off-duty time as well as duty. I think she’s a little afraid of what might happen if he’s disappointed.’

  ‘We won’t disappoint him,’ Loftus said.

  ‘No—o.’ The matron appeared to understand, or at least acquiesce, in the delicacy of the situation, chatting tactfully, and not too directly, about her staff as they waited for the tea. Nurse Caroll, it appeared, was one of three who spoke French, though the only one to speak it fluently. She had worked in London during the blitz, and during that time her only brother had been reported missing, believed killed.

  ‘What was her brother in?’ asked Kerr. ‘Not the Southshires?’

  ‘I think that’s the regiment,’ said the Matron.

  ‘Oh,’ said Kerr.

  ‘Did you know the brother?’ asked Loftus quickly.

  ‘I know his wife’s people,’ said Kerr.

  They were interrupted by the arrival of tea, which they had just finished when a message came from Emile’s ward; could Mr. Loftus come at once?

  Another nurse was waiting to guide him. She walked too quickly for him,
then, looking round to see the cause of his delay, realisation struck her suddenly. She blushed a vivid red, her distress and solicitude almost harder for Loftus to bear than her youthful haste.

  He smiled understandingly as he reached the ward, influenced at once by the hushed atmosphere of the room.

  Nurse Caroll was sitting on the foot of Emile’s bed, one of the lad’s hands in hers.

  ‘Here he is, Emile,’ she said in French. ‘I’ve promised to find him for you, and here he is.’

  Loftus stepped slowly towards the bed, feeling the fast beating of his heart. He saw a face that was clearly young, and yet had lines at eyes and mouth which were more rightly those of one old enough to have experienced the bitterness of life. The eyes were grey, and deeply frightened. Had the youth not been so thin he might have been good-looking. His lips were trembling just then, and very pale. He looked at Loftus yet appeared to be shrinking away, as if afraid of him.

  ‘This is Mr. Loftus,’ Nurse Caroll said.

  Loftus said in French almost as good as hers: ‘I expect Emile will know me better if we spell it backwards, don’t you? S-u-t-f-o-l.’

  One hand stretched out towards Loftus, the other still gripped the nurse’s. The boy’s whole body began to shake.

  ‘Loftus, spell it backwards!’ he cried. ‘I have found him, found him!’ He clasped warm, bony fingers about Loftus’s hand, and the pressure was surprisingly fierce. ‘The letter,’ he shouted, ‘the letter, it is for you, the letter!’

  ‘I was hoping you would have a message for me,’ said Loftus easily, and glanced at the nurse. He saw her shake her head, almost imperceptibly, and knew that she was telling him there had been no letter found on Emile. He had a queer spasm of acute disappointment, coupled with a conviction that for the moment at least he must pretend to know all about it, and not disappoint the invalid.

  ‘The letter!’ exclaimed Emile. ‘M’sieu, for safety I place it in my boot. And now I have no boot, I have none!’ His voice went upwards on a note of terror, rising higher and higher.

  3

  Find the Letter

  Nurse Caroll released the lad’s hand from Loftus’s arm and held it, together with his other hand. She spoke quietly but with a stern, almost a sharp note.

  ‘Your boots are downstairs, Emile. Don’t behave like a child, or I shall lose my patience.’

  Emile turned his gaze from Loftus quickly, and his trembling increased rather than eased.

  ‘Mam’selle, please, I am sorry. Forgive.’ He stared into the blue, almost disconcerting eyes, and something of her strength and calmness passed from her to him. He sank back on the pillows, steadier, calmer. ‘The letter, please, get it for Mr. Loftus.’

  ‘I’ll go downstairs and get it myself,’ Loftus assured him. ‘What was it like, Emile?’

  ‘It was—a letter.’

  ‘Did you read it?’

  ‘Many, many times, M’sieu. But it made no sense.’

  ‘It was in English, perhaps,’ said Loftus.

  ‘But non, M’sieu, English I can read although with much labour. It was not in any language.’

  ‘Then it was in code?’ said Loftus insistently. His heart was beating as fast as his mind was working. Craigie had been right to send him here without loss of time. He had no serious doubt that the message in the letter had reached Emile through a Department Z agent in France. Craigie had known such a contact, of course, for it was a regular thing that when contacting with one another by telephone, and wanting to prove the genuineness of the contact, Department Z agents gave their name and then spelt it backwards. The simplicity of the system had ensured its safety; it had not been mis-used during the ten years since Craigie had inaugurated it.

  Emile leaned forward again, less tensely.

  ‘That is so, M’sieu. Letters and figures, all mixed up, so that they made nonsense. He read it quickly, M’sieu, very quickly.’

  ‘Did he?’ Loftus knew that to ask quick, direct questions would be to do more harm than good. The story had to come as Emile felt he could tell it.

  ‘Yes, M’sieu, and he was so near to death. He had been wounded M’sieu, by the Boche, they had discovered that he was English, not the son of France that he pretended. Even I, Emile, did not know, for he came amongst us many years ago, and it was believed he came from Brittany. They are farmers, the Bretons! Often my father has talked of M’sieu Legarde, how foolish he was to talk of politics, for my father knew how the Boche worked in France, and knew that even before the war it was not safe for a man to talk too freely.’

  ‘Your father is a wise man,’ Loftus said.

  Emile stared at him, the large staring eyes suddenly filling with tears. He did not speak for several seconds, and when he did his voice was choked and his lips were trembling violently.

  ‘He—is dead, M’sieu. He was killed by the accursed Boche, he would not surrender English wounded.’ The young voice gathered speed, the words seemed to come from every fibre in the thin body. ‘My mother, she watched them kill him, they held her and made her watch while the bullets struck him. And then they mistreated her, mistreated her!’ His voice rose to a scream, his eyes were glazed, and he was looking into horrible things, into unfathomable distances of the mind. The nurse stood up, but retained her grip on the lad’s hands. Emile cried:

  ‘And afterwards she killed herself, my mother, my beautiful mother, she killed herself. Dead, dead, dead, all dead,’ he muttered. He sank back, his eyes closed, his body heaving.

  Nurse Caroll said: ‘It might help him, now that he’s talked about it.’ She released Emile’s hands and eased him downwards in the bed, then stepped to a table and brought a damp, cold cloth to sponge the lad’s forehead. ‘You won’t try to make him talk any more, will you?’

  ‘No, not now,’ Loftus hesitated, and then said spontaneously: ‘Nurse, if the patient has to be moved, will you come with him?’

  ‘To where?’

  ‘A private nursing-home,’ said Loftus.

  ‘I doubt whether the matron will release me,’ said Nurse Caroll quietly.

  ‘It can be arranged, if you’ll say “yes”.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Nurse Caroll. ‘Will you go now, please?’

  Loftus went out, closing the door gently behind him. Back in the matron’s office he said apologetically: ‘I’m going to be the nuisance you expected, Matron.’

  Kerr looked puzzled, but the matron lifted her hands in a gesture of resignation.

  ‘I thought so,’ she said.

  ‘What is this?’ demanded Kerr.

  ‘Matron made it pretty clear that she thought we’d want to take Emile away, and that to give Emile the best break he can have we’d need Nurse Caroll. So——’ Loftus, half-laughing looked across at her.

  ‘Maddeningly selfish of you,’ Matron answered decidedly, then laughed a little. ‘Oh, well, I needn’t be professional with either of you, that’s a help. When do you want to take him away?’

  ‘It had better be tomorrow morning,’ Loftus said. He explained briefly what had happened, and then added: ‘So we must have his boots.’

  ‘I’ll send for them.’ The matron telephoned for Emile’s clothes, then listened for a moment before saying sharply. ‘Are you quite sure?...’ She replaced the receiver looking at Loftus worriedly. ‘What a strange thing. He didn’t have any boots when he came here,’ she said. ‘His feet were bare.’

  There was less than half an hour of daylight left of that warm Spring day, and the evening was growing chilly when Loftus and Kerr stepped into the Bentley.

  The matron had promised that the patient and Nurse Caroll would be ready at ten o’clock in the morning; Kerr had undertaken to send an ambulance for them. Not once had Loftus been compelled to use pressure. In bidding them farewell, the matron asked them not to keep the nurse longer than they needed her, and hoped they found the letter.

  She evinced no curiosity about it at all.

  Kerr let in the clutch, and as the car started off he said reflective
ly: ‘A fine woman that, Bill.’

  ‘Ye—es. Both of ‘em, for that matter.’ Loftus paused. ‘I hope to God we find that letter. Did you ever meet Tim Langham?’

  Kerr shook his head.

  ‘Hm. I saw him once before the war when he slipped over for a week-end to tell us that the Nazis in the Calais district pretty well outnumbered the anti-Nazis. Craigie sent the report through, but I expect it was filed with a thousand others.’ Loftus was frowning and staring ahead of him. ‘Langham’s name in Lens was Legarde. The information we had from him up to six months ago, when I went out of the limelight, was always right up to the mark. That letter matters a whale of a lot.’

  ‘Well,’ said Kerr, ‘if the police haven’t got his boots, the Home Guard will have. They won’t have been thrown away.’

  ‘I hope not,’ said Loftus.

  He followed the directions the matron had given him, and Kerr pulled up outside the main police station a few minutes after leaving the hospital. Loftus showed a card which was signed by the Home Secretary, and gained him a quick entry into the Station-Superintendent’s office. A tall, thin-faced man appeared to understand that they did not want to waste time. He telephoned two or three people and then replaced the receiver with a gesture of annoyance.

  ‘None of our men took the boots,’ he said. ‘You’ll have to see the Home Guard people. They passed him on to us on Wednesday night. You’ve got a car?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Loftus, ‘but——’

  ‘You’ll want a man to take you round, now that it’s nearly dark,’ said the Superintendent. ‘I’ll lend you one.’ He telephoned again, and replaced the receiver. ‘Detective Welton knows the country well, and if you have a long job you’ll be all right with him.’

  Loftus thanked him, and they went downstairs.

  They found a plainclothes man waiting with an expression of great eagerness beside the car.

  Once more settled in the Bentley, Loftus stretched his legs as far as they would go. The artificial one was aching, or it appeared to be, far more than the other. His thigh was certainly painful; there was no imagination about that. A picture of Emile and of the nurse passed through his mind. He went through the disjointed conversation he had held with Emile, and he felt the poignancy of the shouted statement, reading into the high-pitched voice something of the horrors of the German occupation.