‘I see,’ said Tony. ‘Yes. That is a bit awkward, isn’t it? What exactly were you hoping to get out of him?’
‘Coutoules had the end room in the S.B.O.’s hut. The north-east sentry platform is the only one that overlooked his window. If Coutoules was in his room at lock-up, almost the only way he could have been got out was through the window.’
‘Why? They don’t lock the hut door at night.’
‘I know. But think of the risk. Even if Coutoules was dead when they got him out of his room, it would have meant carrying the body past half a dozen doors. Anyone might have looked out. If he’d still been alive and kicking the risk would have been greater still.’
‘I don’t believe you could kidnap anybody out of one of these huts without everybody knowing about it,’ said Tony thoughtfully. ‘But that’s not the point. I agree that if anything was to be seen Biancelli probably saw it. I don’t imagine you could have got much out of him on a walk, though. The sentries nearly always walk in pairs. There’s only one place in this camp where you can rely on an hour’s undisturbed conversation with a sentry. Do you think you can get a message to Biancelli?’
‘I expect so. The Quartermaster seems to be able to get hold of them.’
‘Then ask him when he’s next going to be on guard in the cooler.’
‘Tony,’ said Goyles, ‘that’s brilliant.’
‘It’s the fish diet,’ said Long modestly.
‘I say,’ said Baierlein, ‘have you heard what’s happened?’
Goyles turned over on his bed and groaned. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘they’ve stopped all walks.’
‘No doubt,’ said Baierlein, ‘but that wasn’t what I meant. They’ve removed Potter.’
‘Which Potter?’
‘He wasn’t in the camp long enough for us to get on Christian name terms,’ said Baierlein. ‘Young Potter – the chap in the Royal Corps of Signals who came in with the last bunch.’
‘The one who did the semaphoring?’
‘That’s the chap.’
Goyles sat up slowly, to consider the new development. On the face of it, it didn’t seem to make a great deal of sense.
‘What actually happened?’
‘They didn’t make any palaver about it. Nothing like they did about Roger. Paoli came in after lunch, and told him to get packed, as he was going on somewhere else. Not that he’d got much to pack, poor chap. The people in his hut had a quick whip-round for him and got together some food and a set of battle-dress.’
‘Did Paoli stay with him whilst he was packing?’
‘Yes,’ said Baierlein. ‘Why?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Goyles, ‘it just occurred to me that they might have wanted to stop him talking. Supposing he had a bit of information they particularly didn’t want him to pass on. If he suddenly heard he was going to be moved to another camp, his natural reaction would be to try to tell it to someone. If Paoli was standing over him, he couldn’t. That’s all.’
‘It’s possible,’ said Baierlein. ‘But don’t forget he’d been in the camp nearly twenty-four hours. The Escape Committee and the “I” people had already had a go at him. To say nothing of the people in the hut. The poor chap hardly stopped answering questions from the moment he got into the camp, till he was removed. If there was anything, surely he’d have spilled it already.’
‘Always supposing,’ said Goyles thoughtfully, ‘that he knew exactly what it was that he knew that the Italians didn’t want us to know.’
‘This detecting business is going to your head,’ said Baierlein.
‘It’s all very well to talk about getting yourself arrested,’ said Goyles, ‘but it isn’t so damned easy, just at the moment.’
‘There’s ingratitude for you,’ said Tony.
‘I’m not ungrateful,’ said Goyles. ‘I still think it was a brilliant idea. And I’ve been in touch with Biancelli. He says he will be on the cooler guard tomorrow night. It’s a twenty-four-hour guard – two hours on and four off. All I want is a few days solitary, starting tomorrow, and everything in the garden would be beautiful.’
‘Forget to salute the Commandant.’
‘He never comes into the camp nowadays.’
‘Be rude to Benucci.’
‘That’s the trouble. Benucci’s such a tricky customer. If you say something perfectly outrageous to him, he just grins like a cat, and you feel a fool. I suppose you could go a step further and trip him up and kick him in the stomach or something. Then he’d probably pull out his toy revolver and shoot you.’
‘Hmph,’ said Long.
‘The trouble is everybody’s in such an awkward frame of mind at the moment. It’s going to be damned tricky—’
‘You just leave it to me,’ said Long. ‘Everything shall be arranged. You want the best prisons. We have them. Tactful insults a speciality.’
‘Well, I call the whole thing a lot of nonsense,’ said Rolf-Callender. ‘Ever since the S.B.O.’s speech people have done nothing but form threes and slope arms and talk the most ropey old nonsense about attack in depth and where they’re going to site the “B” Echelon. I suppose one can’t prevent them making fools of themselves, but when it comes to suggesting that we give up the play—
‘Has anyone actually suggested that we drop it?’
‘Not in so many words, but I can tell from the way Uncle Percy looks at me’ (he referred to his Hut Commander, an elderly regular Major in Indian Cavalry) ‘that he thinks we’re just fiddling whilst Rome burns. Personally I can’t see it at all. Didn’t the Duchess of Thingummy give a ball on the eve of Waterloo?’
‘If she hadn’t,’ suggested Peter Perse, who never missed an opportunity of provoking Rolf-Callender, ‘Wellington mightn’t have come so jolly near to losing the battle.’
‘I can’t see it,’ said Bush. ‘It isn’t as if we were using anything that anyone else would want if we did have to escape – unless you suggest that Peter tries to get to Rome dressed as Elizabeth Barrett Browning. I agree that the general get-up is smashing, but I’m afraid the skirt would date him.’
‘Exactly,’ said Rolf-Callender. ‘Just because they want to play at soldiers, is that any reason to stop us playing at theatricals? When it comes to the big night, I expect our performance will be far more amusing than theirs. And I shall tell Uncle Percy so next time he wants me to join one of his TEWTS.’
‘If that’s all agreed,’ said Bush, ‘what are we waiting for. On with the rehearsals.’
‘There’s one thing,’ observed Captain Abercrowther, who was trying on a formidable pair of side-whiskers. ‘I haven’t haird yet how you propose to deal with that wee dug.’
‘Flush,’ said Rolf-Callender thoughtfully. ‘Yes. He is going to be a bit of a problem. I suppose that if the worst came to the worst we could cut—’
‘Shame,’ said Bush. “The Barretts without Flush! It would be like
Hamlet
without the First Grave-digger.’
‘I know, but – ’
‘I had an idea about that,’ said Captain Abercrowther. ‘Has that fellow Paoli not got a wee dug—?’
‘But it’s not a spaniel.’
‘Not precisely a spaniel, no. But it’s a plain, white, podgy little creature and seems tolerably placid. Could not some of our make-up artists—? ’
‘Liver and white markings,’ cried Rolf-Callender.
‘A pair of false ears!’ suggested Bush.
‘And a nubby little tail!’
‘Mac,’ said Peter Perse, ‘it’s the idea of the century. I can plainly see that this performance is going to be a riot.’
The next morning, making his rounds of the camp, Tenente Mordaci suddenly stopped.
He stopped because he fancied he heard his name.
Not only his surname, which would have been interesting, but his Christian name, too.
More interesting still.
He looked round him. He was standing in the open space between Hut B and Hut C and it was from a window in Hut C that the voices seemed to come.
He knew well that Hut C was notorious for containing a high percentage of evil characters, maniacs who could not see that they were well off out of the war, but must ever be plotting and scheming and disturbing the peace of mind of those lawfully placed in authority over them.
It was clearly his duty to investigate. His presence did not seem to be suspected. Hitching his cloak round his shoulders – a subconscious gesture, in moments of crisis – he tiptoed to the outer wall of the hut and sidled along towards the window.
What he saw transfixed him with astonishment.
Seated on a bed, surrounded by a grinning group of prisoners, was a most extraordinary figure. Padded into gross obesity with many pillows, the lips puffed and reddened with make-up, a doll on his knee, a blanket thrown cloak-wise round his shoulders, and an absurd travesty of a carabinier’s cocked hat on his head, it took Mordaci a few seconds to recognise the usually sedate Goyles.
It had never occurred to him that Goyles was an actor. It now appeared that he was a very competent ventriloquist also.
Mordaci peered closely at the doll.
It appeared, from its dress, to be a lady of doubtful taste and nonexistent virtue.
Since nobody was looking towards the window, he was able to study this edifying scene for some minutes.
‘But Ercolo,’ said the doll, ‘your suggestions fill me with alarm and suspicion.’
‘Come, come now,’ said Goyles, in a revolting imitation of Mordaci’s unctuous bass. ‘You are a woman of the world.’
‘It is because I am a woman of the world that I hesitate.’
‘Then hesitate no longer. It is I, Ercolo Mordaci of the Carabinieri Reali, who speaks—’
‘It is I indeed who speak,’ said Mordaci.
All heads in the room swung towards the window in gratifying unison.
‘It is I who speak, and I say that you will cease this imposture and accompany me to the office—’
‘But, Tenente—’
‘At once.’
‘It’s only a play I was rehearsing.’
‘And its name?’
‘Oh – we hadn’t thought of a name.’
‘Beauty and the beast,’ suggested someone from the crowd.
‘Enough,’ said Mordaci. ‘This vileness will bring its own reward. For seven days at least you shall not pollute the camp with your presence.’
‘There you are,’ said Tony Long, five minutes later, ‘absolutely painless. I’ll help you carry your kit as far as the guard house.’
The Punishment Block, or the cooler, stood, as has been already explained, in the outer section of the camp. In this area, between the inner wire and the north wall, lay the guard quarters, the carabinieri offices, the Italian administrative huts, and the prisoners’ food and clothing store.
Surrounded as it was on all sides by Italians, the cooler itself was not particularly well or systematically guarded. It comprised a small, brick block, divided by a central corridor, with two cells on either side. Those on the north (or outer) side were traditionally reserved for British prisoners, those on the other side for Italian soldiers who had been found guilty of derelictions of duty. On one side, at the end, was an ablution room. At this point the corridor turned through a right angle, so that the actual entrance door was out of sight of the cells themselves.
In this entrance door a sentry was posted. It was his duty to make a periodical turn up the passage and inspect such cells as were occupied, by glancing through the inspection slit in the door.
Since the sentry wore heavy, studded boots, and the floor of the corridor was tiled, his arrival on a tour of inspection never really took anyone by surprise.
The possibilities of this arrangement had been quickly appreciated, and a succession of self-condemned prisoners, suitably equipped, had already rendered the barred windows of the two British cells rather more ornamental than useful. Long and Baierlein had also proved that a rough dummy in the bed was sufficient to satisfy a sentry, particularly one who was looking from a lighted passage into an unlighted cell.
The whole arrangement was so scandalously careless, Goyles reflected as he sat on his bed that evening with his phrase book of Modern Greek, that it would be criminal not to take some advantage of it. There seemed no reasonable doubt that four prisoners, if only they could get into prison suitably equipped could get out of the window, on to the roof, and over the wall, with a minimum of difficulty.
The loose bar and brick could be replaced from the outside, as Tony Long had already demonstrated, and if dummies were left in the beds they would not be missed until reveille.
Suitably equipped – that was the snag. Even in Italy during the summer, you needed, for a cross-country journey, food and warm clothes and maps, and a host of other things: you could scarcely hope to smuggle them past the very thorough search which took place before you were jugged.
Even so, there might be a solution that—
At this moment the lights went out and Goyles glanced at his watch. It was ten o’clock.
Biancelli, he knew, was not due on guard until eleven.
He got up on to his bed, covered himself with a blanket, and prepared to wait. To prevent himself from nodding off altogether, he forced himself to think about the death of Coutoules. In his mind he went over and over every fact that he knew, and then again, remorselessly.
He realised that he had very few facts to build on. But equally, as Colonel Shore had said, the whole problem was so crazy that any feasible solution must surely be the right one.
Might Biancelli be bringing him just that one little
extra fact
which would make all the difference – the twist which would unlock the whole puzzle?
It was very quiet in the cell.
There was no Italian wireless blaring tonight. In the silence Goyles could hear a murmur of voices from the Carabinieri Block next door. He could almost make out individuals – the deep bellow of Mordaci, the thin pipe of Paoli, the incisive tones of Captain Benucci.
When he looked at his watch again, it was eleven o’clock. He swung his feet over the edge of the bed and sat up. His bed was alongside the door and on a level with the peephole, so that he had a clear view of the passage as far as the turn. He could hear the sentry, who had not stirred for the last hour, moving about, no doubt in preparation for his relief.