Copper's cruise 19

 

 

 

Chapter 19 death of a cad part 5

 

“Really, do we have to put up with this?” sneered Guy Purvis. “None of us has anything to hide, copper, and you’re one of those who had issues with Thwaite.”

“And because I took steps to deal with him in a sanctioned and legal fashion, having asked to have him put ashore, I had no need to throw him overboard. If I could at the moment without ripping open my belly,” said Alexander. “And yes, you do have to put up with this. I’ve said I’ll accept any reasonable story of a struggle.”

“Well, I have nothing against the fellow,” said Purvis. “Other than that he was a bore, like all you old fogeys with your war stories. The world is for the young.”

“Just as well; us old fogeys will be too old to fight if the pessimists are right, and that there will be another world war growing from the resentments left of this last one,” said Alexander. “And you’re welcome to it.”

“There’s a generation who are damaged by it,” said Miss Goldsworthy. “And the rest find those who were in the war disturbing: those of us too old to truly understand, and those, like Mr. Purvis, who are too young. But we who are older have, at least, the tolerance and experience to do our best, as we have had the best part of our lives; be gentle with Mr. Purvis, Mr. Armitage, he is frightened of war, and he does not want to have to face the reality of it head on, which is why he makes fun of it. It’s all a piece with this jazz music, and wild dancing, and taking such silly risks with drugs and fast cars, it’s a way of declaring that they can live life fast and not be touched by reality, because reality reminds them of the evil in the world, and they need a fantasy life to escape from the reality they are reminded of in the thousand yard stare of the veterans who have seen more than they can possibly imagine, and more than they want to contemplate.”

“Silly old bat,” said Purvis, contemptuously.

“She’s very close to the mark,” said Alexander. “I was cut by two boys younger than you, Mr. Purvis, who felt they had missed out on living life to the full in being too young for the war. They wanted to prove their superiority by torturing me to death. Pathetic, really.”

“Shit! What happened? How did you survive?” asked Purvis, despite himself.

“Language, in front of a lady,” said Alexander. “They neglected to tie my feet, and I kicked one in the head. My man hit the other one and my men arrived, a little on the drag. I’d set myself as bait to catch them before they started on other family members of theirs, or the general public. Most unpleasant; their idea of violence came only from the sanitised version of   violence on screen.”

“Some of these films are dangerous,” said Miss Goldsworthy.

“Only to the weak minded,” said Alexander. “They are in Broadmore. I would like to feel sorry for them, but it may take me a while. The high-pitched giggle of the younger one is a scarier noise in nightmares than the squeak of a tank’s treads and the rumble of its engine.”

Purvis tried to hide the shudder he gave.

“You seem,” said Miss Goldsworthy, “Remarkably rational, considering your likely experiences.”

“The trick is to capture the memories of the good things,” said Alexander. “Capturing as booty fifteen pounds of Swiss chocolate from a Hun gun position, and drinking hot chocolate on a cold night; looking at the sunrise through jewelled dewdrops on the web of a tenacious spider which had taken up residence on our gun; a determined tendril of ivy, attempting to colonise barbed wire; and how an old fence threw an elongated shadow onto mist which looked like a cross on Easter morning, as a sign of hope to bring courage.”

The old woman nodded.

“We cannot claim to have the same experience, but the bombing of London by the zeppelins brought similar small miracles of life to the fore,” she said. “Now, I imagine you want to know what I remember of the night.”

“If you please,” said Alexander.

“The first time I was disturbed was the incident which you have dissected with masterly thoroughness.  I was irritated, and I confess a trifle alarmed by the violence of the demands of the man, Thwaite, and I readied myself, like dear Ida, to go to the aid of poor Anne, should he force his way into her cabin. I do not have a firearm, myself, but I have always found that even the most intemperate of men are inclined to return to some species of quiescence if a steel knitting-needle is introduced with a degree of force to some of the more tender portions of their anatomy. It appears to discourage them.”

“Indeed, it would do so,” said Alexander.

“I heard Mrs. Freeman’s… forthright… comments, and that Thwaite snarled a bit and left. I can’t really describe his angry noises any other way, though I confess I saw him more as an overfed Pekinese than as a dangerous wild animal,” said Miss Goldsworthy.  “I spent twenty minutes reading my Bible to return me to a state to sleep with a clean conscience, and I was just dropping off when I was roused again.  By voices.  I would say that they were towards the men’s side of the cabins, but between there and the lounge, and had I not had the window open, I doubt I would have heard anything.”

“And one of them was Thwaite?” asked Alexander.

“I could not swear to that,” said Miss Goldsworthy. “You see, both voices were whispering.  I might not have even noticed them, had they been speaking normally, but you know how it is with a whisper; your mind wants to strain to hear it, and so it wakes you up, where normal tones do not. You know how it is in hospitals.”

“You are absolutely right, ma’am,” said Alexander. “I recall the nurses who tried so hard to be quiet always woke me up, and the ones who carried on as usual, I could quite ignore.” He looked at her intently. “How much of what was being said were you able to make out?”

“Not all of it,” said Miss Goldsworthy, looking embarrassed. “Oh! I know why I thought it was Thwaite, because the other voice called him ‘Captain Flashman,’ and I thought, that isn’t a term I’ve heard in a long time; when I was a girl, ‘Flashman’ was a name of a bully, from Tom Brown’s Schooldays, you know.”

“Indeed, and that would suggest someone like Thwaite,” said Alexander. “A slightly old-fashioned term for him.”

“Yes, I thought so,” said Miss Goldsworthy. “And, frankly, I cannot see either of the Messers Beauchamp reading such literature. And certainly not Mr. Curtis, or Mr. Freeman. You, I am sure, are familiar with the book.”

“Yes, it was in the family collection, and I read it, along with tripe like ‘Eric, or Little by Little,’ and the surprisingly entertaining ‘Little Lord Fauntleroy,’ the excellent ‘Stalky and Co,’ which I had for my eleventh birthday. And various stories in ‘Boys’ Own Paper,’ of course.”

“Well, it struck me as not entirely accurate for Captain Thwaite, who struck me as very much unlike Flashman. Flashman is clever, cunning, lazy, able to be charming, and cruel. Thwaite seems to be industrious, stupid, socially inept, and totally unaware, most of the time, what a nuisance he is. Was, I should say. His hounding of Anne is inconsistent with a man who has a secret and delights in tormenting a victim with hints; he blurted it all out, and seemed to expect to sleep with her because of his perceptions of who she had been, not as a means to silence him. I don’t know if you agree, Mr. Armitage, but I do consider myself a bit of a student of human nature.”

“I think you sum it up very well indeed,” said Alexander. “We could do with you at the Yard.”

“Well, I don’t know about that, but I am flattered that you should say so,” said Miss Goldsworthy. “The person talking to him told him that there were limits to how much he would take. Thwaite – if it was Thwaite - said that he did not know that was meant. The whispering became harsh and moved away. I was just wondering whether I had dreamed it or not, when I thought I heard a cry and a splash. And, oh, Mr. Armitage, I have been praying for forgiveness that I did not go to investigate, but convinced myself that I had been reading too lurid fiction, and that I had been dreaming.”

“You probably were, you silly old coot,” said Reginald Langburne.

“Unlikely; she had not seen your moustache,” said Eric.

“It isn’t done for an officer of the Yard to make personal comments,” said Alexander. “I fear you did not dream it, Miss Goldsworthy, but I cannot think that you should feel for one moment any blame for not going to investigate. You have every reason to suppose that a man was killed, and for a senior lady to go and confront a killer is not bravery, but insanity. I am glad you did not risk yourself. And that you came forward in public, so that nobody thinks you can be silenced.  I am also quite aware that you did not withhold anything, but genuinely wondered if you were sleeping or waking. However, it does sound more like a murder than an affray turning into assault, leading to Thwaite being thrown deliberately overboard. I suspect he may have been hit on the head again, that he did not yell and scream. But it does not show well for the killer that he did not do anything.  To laugh over a man getting a wetting is one thing, but to just leave him in the dark… I am thinking that you would have heard a splash if anyone had thrown a lifebuoy or rope.”

“I think so, too,” said Miss Goldsworthy.

“Well, I am now going to ask Mr. Curtis and Mr. Langburne what, if anything, you heard overnight.”

“I didn’t hear anything overnight,” said Curtis. “And you know what? That’s because there was nothing to hear.”

“You missed the altercation  with Miss Grant?”

“I… yes, I did, but I allow that a number of people did,” said Curtis. 

“Then why not allow that Miss Goldsworthy heard what she did?”

“She’s a silly old bat.”

“In your opinion; why do you think so?”

“She rambles.”

“But she gets to a cogent point; and hidden in her discursive speech, there are gems of information. And believe me, boy, if you think she rambles, you’ve never spent two hours trying to dissect the occurrences of five minutes from a terrified and shaken witness whose main concern is whether her dog will be worried that she was going to be late home, and what the neighbours will say, and what her husband will say about her getting mixed up in the police, and whether the insurance will pay for the dent in the car where the getaway car slammed into her as she fumbled her way along the road and she accidentally caught three very fine villains.”

“I wouldn’t have your job for all the tea in China,” sneered Curtis.

“It has its highlights,” said Alexander. “Now, I wonder if the reason you’re picking holes in this is because you’re the late booking who settled for a steward’s cabin, making the steward have to travel in steerage, which he was complaining about to my man? And you’re defensive because you aren’t as well off as you would like to pretend? You aren’t the only one, the Freemans are taking the trip of a lifetime and are needing to economise, having run into some unexpected costs. The two young officers running around the widow Worthington are officers of the new era without money or family behind them. And you know what? A sensible person has respect for them as people. Nobody’s looking down on you, son, so stop jumping down throats.”

“I… right,” said Curtis. “Well, fine, then.”

It was all the apology anyone was going to get, and Alexander nodded. He motioned to Miss Goldsworthy to hold her peace.

“It would be gentlemanly to apologise to a lady,” said Alexander.

Curtis went red.

“I’m sorry, ma’am,” he said. “He’s right, I feel like a fish out of water.”

“I accept your apology,” said Miss Goldsworthy. “At least you have the finer feelings to feel that you are having to work to fit in. Captain Thwaite never showed any such recognition of his inability to relate to others, and he was quite grossly rude to any number of us.  You could do worse than watch Mr. Armitage.”

Curtis nodded, abruptly.

“I didn’t hear anything, though; except a door shutting near my end of the male cabins which briefly woke me.  So, may I go?” he asked.

“You may,” said Alexander. “You may escort Miss Goldsworthy back to her cabin.”

Curtis opened his mouth, then a look of sudden revelation crossed his face.

“That means you don’t suspect me,” he said.

“It does,” said Alexander. “But don’t leave the country in the next few days. That’s a copper joke.”

Curtis managed a laugh.

“I won’t break out the aeroplane with folding wings I have stowed under my bed,” he said, and looked gratified when Eric and Alexander chuckled at his weak riposte.

“Good man,” said Alexander. That appeared to be a breakthrough to the rather prickly youth, who gave him a shy, almost boyish, smile.

Alexander waited for the young man and old woman to leave, and looked over at where Reginald Langburne was sitting, sprawled back in a chair, with one foot up on another chair, shuffling cards one-handed as was his wont.

“And now,” said Alexander, “Did you want to tell me why?”