I woke in the dark, in silence. The Germans had stopped shelling, which meant that we must have stopped their advance finally--that or our lines had collapse completely, and they could advance without the walking barrage. But no, that was defeatist talk and even in the privacy of my own thoughts I could not allow that.
The lamp had gone out. I must have fallen asleep at my desk, writing the endless letters. I could perhaps find it in the dark, I knew exactly where it was hanging over my desk, but I didn't want to risk stumbling over one of my men in the dark. When the sun came up enough light would filter through cracks and shell holes for me to see the way. I had plugged what I could lest the Germans see my feeble lamplight, but enough remained to find the lamp, though not enough that I could write without the lamp.
Writing the letters to the men's families was the worst part. They were all heroes, of course. Never mind Dickens, killed by chlorine gas in the latrine with his pants about his ankles. It sounded like a joke, a rude joke never to be told in polite company. For his parents, for his sweetheart waiting for him to come home and marry her, he died with a rifle in his hands, fearlessly facing the enemy.
How far had I gotten before I fell asleep? I remembered finishing Sergeant White's letter: I gave him the right last words, "God bless the king! Tell my mother I love her!" Gone was the weeping and swearing, the smell of shit from his perforated intestines. He died peacefully, in no pain, boldly looking into the next world.
It wasn't lying; an Oxford man never lied, at least not about important things. It was the death he deserved. A classical education gave me the mot juste to comfort a grieving family, the proper quotations to eulogize a heroic death. There was no unpleasantness, never any unpleasantness. The Crown had given me the command of a company after I had taken a First in literature, perhaps knowing I would need this skill.
There were thirty-eight letters to write, nearly a third of the company. I could remember each of them if I tried. Had I finished all of them before falling asleep? The relief, the hope, was almost unbearable. If I was finished I could rest, really rest for the first time since the Germans overran our position.
The silence was broken by the sound of footsteps while I was still trying to enumerate the dead and their letters. I lay back, hoping the Germans would mistake me for one of the men. They had come once before, but I had hid. There was no time to hide now. I could only close my eyes, lie still, and hope that if they shot me our side would re-take the bunker and find the letters.
"Is he still unconscious?" The words were English, but the accent American. I had to wonder how old the speaker was--the boy sounded like a woman!
"Could be," another American voice said, older this time. They were Allies, but something in the tone I didn't trust. If they were deserters, battlefield looters, an Allied officer was the last thing they would want to see. My sidearm was missing, a careful exploration revealed, and while I didn't want to shoot looters, still less did I want to be shot by them. "You sapped him pretty hard," the man continued with a note of complaint.
"He saw you! You walked out into the hall like a total guffin, without even looking! Should I have let him raise the alarm?"
"Of course not. I just don't want to add a murder charge if they nab us, that's all."
"He's not dead, see? He's breathing," the boy said. I exerted every ounce of control to avoid stiffening in alarm. They knew I wasn't a corpse; I could only hope they didn't decide to correct that oversight on the part of the Germans. "You need to relax, honey bunch. We have the necklace, and with Bertie missing they'll assume he took it."
"You'd better get back to that mansion before the quality return, then." The man dropped into a stuffy English accent for those two words, the tone more sarcastic than respectful.
"Oh, no," the boy said. "Bertie kidnapped me, doncha know. His dear aunt will receive a ransom note from him in a day or two."
The man chuckled. "You're wicked, Charley, just wicked. You think she'll pay?"
"Probably not." I could imagine the shrug I heard in the boy's voice. "It'll confuse the trail some more either way."
The machinations of the deserters was nothing that would help the Kaiser, but as a British officer I had the duty to prevent lawlessness among the troops. I was contemplating how I could disable them both without my sidearm when the door burst open. An inarticulate cry of rage followed by the sound of a struggle convinced me to risk opening my eyes a slit.
A lamp set on a shelf near the door allowed me to see that I was no longer in the trenches, but in a cellar of some sort, apparently belonging to a farmhouse. Two men, one older, perhaps in his late-twenties, the other younger, were engaged in a fight while another figure looked on. The third figure turned and I realized that she was a woman, not the boy I had assumed. She might have been the owner of the farmhouse, though she didn't look or sound like the French country-women I had encountered.
The younger man gained the upper hand, forcing the older back against the cellar wall, attempting to choke him while pounding his head against the stones. The younger man's back was to the woman, so he never saw her draw a sap from somewhere in her clothing and aim it for his head. Only chance saved his skull as he jerked to the side, the sap landing on his collar. The blow was sufficient to make him lose his grip on the older man and sink to the floor in pain, however. I could sympathize, having cracked my collarbone once in a riding accident, or at least I would have sympathized if I could have been certain that I hadn't just witnessed a falling out amongst thieves.
The older man stepped away from the fallen man with a look of mingled relief and contempt. "Took you long enough," he growled at the woman. I recognized his voice as the one who had been talking to the boy--the woman--before.
"I had to wait until I could get a clear shot," she said. "Fine lookout I'd be in if I knocked you out instead of him."
"Great." He reached a hand up to finger what I imagined must be a rather sore neck. "So what do we do with two of them now?" He turned towards me and I quickly closed my eyes again.
"Myrtle!" the man on the floor cried. It took me a moment to realize that must be the woman's name, that he wasn't just mangling French profanity. "You don't have to do this. I don't care what you've done in the past, I love you! Come away from here, from this man. Live with me and be my wife."
It was one of the more impassioned proposals I'd ever heard, not that I make a habit of listening to other men proposing, but it failed to move his intended audience. "You poor goober," she said with no discernable sympathy. "Why should I live in some draughty English castle with you when I can get all the money and enjoy it someplace warm and sunny?" She gave a light laugh, chilling in its heartlessness. "We should give them each another knock on the noggin for luck, tie them up, and skedaddle," she said to her companion.
I risked opening my eyes again, knowing my only chance was to disarm her when she came close. As a result I saw what the two conspirators did not, the cellar door opening a second time.
"I wouldn't advise that," a calm and cultured voice said just before my lieutenant appeared in the doorway. "This house is surrounded by police. I suggest you surrender." Lt. Wimsey was out of uniform, but I was never so glad to see him. The Allies must have pushed the Germans back to their former lines.
"I don't think so," the American deserter said, pulling a pistol from his waistband. "Not when I have an English aristocrat or two as hostages!"
Both the man and the woman were watching Wimsey, with their backs to me. I sat up and Wimsey's eyes widened a trifle before he got his face back under control. I made a circular gesture with my hand, encouraging him to continue.
"Oh, I don't know," he said conversationally. "I think you could find more valuable hostages. I'm a younger son, don't you know, the spare of the heir and spare, so to speak, and Thetford here has a younger brother, one too young for the War, if you get my meanin'. I can't say how valuable you'll find a pair like us."
Good man, Wimsey. Their eyes were on him and his voice covered up any noise I made moving up behind them. A quick and gentle pressure to two points on the neck and the man dropped like a puppet with its strings cut. I kicked the pistol away from his limp hands.
"Well done, Wooster old man!" Wimsey's voice cut drilled into my aching head like hot lead through butter. The room seemed to sway for a moment.
"Thank you, Lieutenant." He looked clean and in control. "I take it we've pushed the Germans back?"
He hesitated a moment before speaking. "Yes...yes, we have." There was a larger story behind that, I sensed, but it could wait. We weren't finished here, as Wimsey demonstrated by turning to the woman. "Well, mademoiselle?" he asked. "Unless you too have a gun I suggest you surrender peacefully."
"She may not, but I do," the man with the probably broken collarbone said, holding up the gun I had kicked away. The gun was levelled, but not precisely aimed at any of us.
Wimsey screwed the monocle that gave him the name Winderpane amongst the men into his eye, peering through it at this new potential threat. "And whom do you intend to shoot with that, might I ask?"
"Myself, perhaps," he said. "Or this treacherous jade," he added, waving the gun at the woman.
"Oh, Sidney!" She was a good actress, I had to give her that. Real tears were falling from her eyes. "I had to say that. Raleigh is a violent man; he would have killed you if he knew I love you!" The last three words came out in a sob.
He wavered for a moment, I could see it in his face, and then his expression hardened and the gun came around to point at her chest. "I don't believe you. Why should I believe you? Why should I believe any damn woman!" It was strong language to use in front of a lady, but after she sapped him I couldn't say I blamed him.
Wimsey stepped forward. "Right, then--"
The gun fired and a bullet lodged in the ceiling. "Stay where you are, Wimsey. I'm not finished with this--this--"
"Jezebel?" I offered.
"She's not worth going up for murder, Thetford," Wimsey said as casually as another man might observe that going out in the rain would ruin a good hat. "The law can deal with her, her and her accomplice."
The gun wavered and I prepared to duck. "She led me on! She made a fool of me!"
"Will being court martialed make you look less foolish?" I asked. Wimsey shook his head at me and I took the hint to keep my mouth shut.
"Women make fools of men," Wimsey said. He considered a long moment. "Well, not all women. I could introduce you to a few--" He chuckled. "There's an opera singer I know. She'll lead you on, but you'll like where she leads." He kept moving as he talked until he was standing in front of Thetford and the gun. "She's not worth it," he repeated.
For a frozen moment in time Thetford stood with his gun pointed at Wimsey's chest, Wimsey gazing at him without fear or censure. With a cry Thetford let the gun fall. Wimsey put a precautionary foot on it before laying his hand on the stricken man's shoulder.
The woman had been following this drama with the keenest of interest, of course. She took the opportunity of the gun's fall to make her escape, or tried to. I brought her down with a flying tackle, the impact knowing the breath out of me, and the curtains came down on consciousness.
***
I awoke an instant before Jeeves appeared with my morning tea, or rather Jeeves appeared an instant after I awoke.
"Good morning, sir."
"Good morning, Jeeves." I struggled to sit up. "I had the most peculiar dream. Squid and Flim--" but already it was fading.
"I imagine you did, sir." The tea he handed me, strong and bracing, washed the rest of the night-fancies away. "Inspector Parker has arrested Charlotte and Raleigh Durham, you will be pleased to know."
I took a sip of tea. "And who are Charlotte and whatshisname?" It really was a capital morning, despite the slight remnants of a headache.
Jeeves opened the curtains and bright sun shone in. "Charlotte Durham is the real name of Miss Myrtle Chandler, while her husband, Raleigh Durham, has played the roles both of Walters and Miss Chandler's father."
"Impostors, eh?" Aunt Dahlia had not been much plagued by the species, unlike some chatelaines of our acquaintance. "Ah, well, into every country-house some impostors must fall, eh, Jeeves?"
"Indeed, sir."
A knock sounded at the door and Jeeves let Flim and Squid in. I wasn't sure whether I wanted to see Squid so early in the morning, but he was in, so I wasn't inclined to give him the bum's rush, as they say in New York. Squid's left arm was bound to his side in a sling. I indicated the newest fashion accessory with a wave of the tea cup.
"Have a little accident?" I asked.
"Are you trying to be funny, Wooster?" Squid growled.
"Funny? Me?" I shook my head and a further remnant of the headache manifested itself. "I never make jokes before breakfast." One of Jeeves's morning pick-me-ups would not have gone amiss right then. With preternatural understanding Jeeves appeared at my elbow with a glass.
Squid opened his mouth to say something, probably at high volume judging from his expression, but Flim put hand on his shoulder.
"Thetford and I just came to say goodbye," Flim said once Squid had subsided. "Now that the Durhams have been arrested and the emeralds recovered I'm taking the old boy up to London for a few days, introduce him to a few people, that sort of thing."
Aunt Dahlia always seemed to start talking about the trains after a week's visit, lauding the frequency and quality of the train service between Market Snodsbury and the metropolis. "I should be back in London in a few day," I offered. "Look me up at the Drones Club next week and I'll give you lunch."
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