Part 1

The Crime at Vanderlynden’s

‘Oh, my, I don’t want to die, I want to go home!’

_Song of Kitchener’s Army._

THE SPANISH FARM was awarded the Hawthornden Prize for 1924

THE CRIME AT VANDERLYNDEN’S

_By_ R. H. MOTTRAM

_Author of_ THE SPANISH FARM _and_ SIXTY-FOUR, NINETY-FOUR!

LONDON CHATTO AND WINDUS 1926

Printed in Great Britain

All rights reserved

THE CRIME

AT VANDERLYNDEN’S

*

High up in the pale Flemish sky aeroplanes were wheeling and darting like bright-coloured insects, catching from one moment to another the glint of sun on metallic body or translucent wing. To any pilot or observer who had opportunity or gift for mere speculation, the sight that lay spread out below might have appeared wonderful. From far away on the seaboard with its coming and going of ships, there led rail, road, and wire, and by these three came material, human material, and human thought, up to that point just behind the battle-line where in dumps, camps (dumps of men) and Head-quarters (dumps of brains) they eddied a little, before streaming forward again, more slowly and covertly, by night, or below ground, up to the battle itself. There they were lost in that gap in life--that barren lane where the Irresistible Force dashing against the Immovable Post ground such a fine powder, that of material, very little, of men, very few, and of thought, nothing came splashing back.

But pilots and observers were too busy, adding to the Black Carnival, or saving their own skins from those puffs of Death that kept following them up and down the sky, to take any such a remote view; and even had they been interested in it, they could not have lifted the roof off the Mairie of the village--almost town--of Haagedoorne, and have seen, sitting in the Mayor’s parlour, a man of middle size and middle class, a phenomenon in that place, that had been shocked in its village dignity so many times in those few months. For first it had been turned from one of those haunts of Peace, of small slow-moving officialdom, into the “Q.” office of Divisional Head-quarters. It had become inhabited by two or three English Staff Officers, their maps and papers, their orderlies and clerks, policemen and servants; and now, last of all, there was added to them this quiet, absorbed young man--whose face and hair, figure and clothes had all those half-tones of moderate appropriateness of men who work indoors and do not expect too much. A young man who had neither red tabs nor long boots about him--and who seemed to have so much to do.

The old walls stared. The Mairie of Haagedoorne, half wine-shop, half beadle’s office, had seen soldiers in its four hundred years, had been built for Spanish ones, and had seen them replaced by French and Dutch, English and Hessians, in bright uniforms and with a certain soldierly idleness and noise. This fellow had none of it. Sat there with his nose well down, applying himself to maps and papers, occasionally speaking deferentially to Colonel Birchin, who, a proper soldier, his left breast bright with medals, his face blank and slightly bored with breeding, would nod or shake his head. This was all part of the fact that this War was not as other wars. It was too wide and deep, as if the foundations of life had come adrift on some subterranean sea, and the whole fabric were swaying; it had none of the decent intervals, and proper limits, allowing men to shut up for the winter and to carry on their trade all the time.

The dun-coloured person attached to Divisional Staff, whose name was Stephen Doughty Dormer, indulged in none of these reflections. He just got on with it. He was deep in his job when an exclamation from his temporary Chief made him look up. The Colonel was sitting back in his chair (iron-bottomed, officers, for the use of), his beautiful legs in their faultless casings stretched out beneath his army table. He was holding at arm’s-length a blue printed form, filled up in pen and ink.

Dormer knew it well. It was the official form on which Belgian or French civilians were instructed to make their claim for damages caused by the troops billeted on them.

The Colonel’s mouth hung open, his eyeglass had dropped down.

“You speak this--er--language?”

“Yessah!” (with a prayer it might not be Portuguese). “What language, sir?”

“This is--er--French.”

Yes, he could speak French, and hastened to look. Dormer was a clerk in a bank. Like so many of that species, he had had a grandmother with views as to the improvement of his position in the world, and she had insisted that he should learn the French language. Why she desired this was never discovered, unless it was that she considered it a genteel accomplishment, for she dated from the days when society was composed of two sorts of people, gentle and simple. She belonged to the former category and was in no danger of allowing any of her descendants to lapse. As she paid for the extra tuition involved, her arguments were irrefutable, and the boy intended for no more romantic a career than is afforded by a branch office in a market town, had, in 1900, a fair knowledge of the tongue of Voltaire and Hugo.

He hardly reflected upon the matter again until, in the midst of a European War, he found that that War was being conducted in a country where French was the chief language, and that familiar-sounding words and phrases assailed his ear on every side. This was of considerable service to him, enabled him to add to his own and his brother officers’ comfort; but he never boasted of it, having a profound uncertainty, after years of clerkdom, about anything so foreign and out of office hours. The legend of his peculiar ability persisted, however; and when after more than a year of incredible fatigues and nastiness, his neat methods and perfect amenity to orders were rewarded by the unofficial job of helping in the A. and Q. office of a division, he found his legend there before him. It was therefore with a sigh, and a mental ejaculation equivalent to “Spare me these useless laurels,” that he got up and went over to his Chief’s table, to be confronted by the sentence:

“_Esquinté une vierge chez moi!_”

“What’s _Esquinté_? It’s not in Cassells’ Dictionary!”

“I should say--knocked asquint, sir! Spoiled, ruined; they often say it, if the troops go into the crops.”

“Well, how does it read, then? Knock asquint; no, that won’t do; ruined, you say. Ruined a Virgin in my house. This sounds like a nice business, with the French in their present mood!”

Dormer simply could not believe it and asked:

“May I see the claim?”

“Certainly. Come here. Stop me wherever I go wrong.”

He knew more French than Dormer gave him credit for. He read the blue form, printed question and pen-and-ink reply to the end. It went like this:

Q. When was the damage committed?

A. Last Thursday.

Q. What troops were responsible? Give the number and name of the English detachment.

A. A soldier of the 469 Trench Mortar Battery (T.M.B.).

Q. Were you present and did you see the damage done?

A. No, but my daughter knows all about it.

Q. In what conditions was the damage done?

A. He broke the window (_vitrage_). She called out to him, but he replied with oaths.

Q. Can you prove responsibility (_a_) by witness?

A. My daughter.

Q. (_b_) By _procès-verbal_.

A. They insulted the Mayor when he came to do it!

Q. (_c_) By admission of the culprits.

A. Not necessary. It is visible.

Q. Did you complain to the officer commanding troops?

A. He would not listen.

And so on.

Deposed and sealed at the Mairie of Hondebecq, Nord, as the claim for compensation of Mr. Vanderlynden, cultivator, 64 years old, by us Swingadow, Achille, Mayor.

“What do you say to that?” asked the Chief.

Dormer had a good deal to say, but kept it down. “I can’t believe it, sir. I know the billet. I remember Miss Vanderlynden. She’s as strong as a man and much more determined than most. It’s a mistake of some sort!”

“Pretty circumstantial mistake, isn’t it? Look at this covering letter received with it.”

He held out a memorandum headed: “Grand Quartier General,” in French, to the effect that one desired it might be given appropriate attention. And another from a department of English General Head-quarters with “Passed to you, please.”

“The French have had their knife into us for some time. This’ll be a nice case for them to take up. We must make an arrest at once. Sergeant!”

That Sergeant was a famous London Architect. He came to the door of the ante-room in which he worked.

“In what Corps Area is Hondebecq?”

The Sergeant spotted it in a moment, on the big map pinned up on the wall.

“Very well, wire them to take this up, and make an arrest.”

“There is just one point I should like to put, sir!”

As Dormer said it, he felt it to be “cheek.” His Chief turned upon him the eyeglass of a regular officer who found it rather difficult to imagine how a junior temporary officer could put a point. But Dormer had seen two Courts-Martial, and the thought of some poor brute hauled out of a trench, and marched about for no better purpose than that, kept him firm.

“If an arrest is made, you will have to go on with the proceedings.”

“Naturally.”

“Then you will need a statement from the victim. If we had that first, we should know the truth!”

“Well, you’d better go and get it, as you know the people. You can see Corps and insist on an arrest. But, most important of all, try what a little money can do. He says a thousand francs. Well, you must see what he will come down to.”

Outside Divisional Head-quarters, Dormer turned to the right, to go to his billet, but a military policeman, stepping out from the shelter of the buildings, saluted.

“They’re shelling that way, sir!”

It gave Dormer a queer familiar feeling in the pit of the stomach. Shelling, the daily routine of that War. But being a very punctilious temporary officer, and taking his almost non-existent position in Divisional Staff very seriously, he pulled himself together.

“Oh, well, they’d have hit me long ago, if they could!” He passed on, followed by a smile. He said those things because he felt them to be good for the morale of the troops. Sure enough, he had not gone many yards before the air was rent by a familiar tearing sound, followed by the usual bump and roar. It was well in front of him, and to the left, and he went on reassured. A few yards farther on, close to the side street where he was billeted over a pork-butcher’s shop, he noticed people coming out of their houses and shops to stare, while one elderly woman, rounder than any artist would dare to portray, asked him:

“O Monsieur, is the bombard finished?” in the Anglo-Flemish which years of billeting were beginning to teach the inhabitants of the town. But the centre of excitement was farther on, where the little street of houses petered out between small, highly cultivated fields. Here the first shell had fallen right upon one of those limbers that were to be found being driven up some obscure street at any hour of the day or night. Two dazed drivers had succeeded in cutting loose and quieting the mules. A horse lay dead in the gutter. Against the bank leaned the Corporal, his face out of sight, as if in the midst of a hearty laugh. It needed only a glance, however, to see that there was no head upon the shoulders. It was just one of those daily disagreeable scenes which to Dormer had been so utterly strange all his life, and so familiar for the last year. Dormer made no fuss, but took charge. He knew well enough that the drivers would stand and look at each other. He sent one of them for a burial party from the nearest Field Ambulance, saw that the other tied up the mules and made a bundle of the dead man’s effects--paybook, knife, money, letters--the pitiful little handkerchief-ful of all that remains for a soldier’s loved ones--while he himself pushed his way into the orderly room of the nearest formation, that showed any signs of telephone wires. He had not many yards to go, for the camps lay along each side of that Flemish lane, as close as houses in a street.

He was soon inside an Armstrong hut, with the field telephone at his disposal, and while waiting to be given the orderly room of the Brigade Transport to which the casualty belonged, he happened to close his eyes. The effect was so striking that he immediately opened them again. There, on the underside of his eyelids, was the headless body he had just left. Curiously enough, it did not lie against the bank, as he had seen it, but seemed to swim towards him, arms above his head, gesticulating. Once his eyes were open again, of course it disappeared.

About him was nothing more wonderful than the interior of an Armstrong hut Orderly Room, an army table, an army chair. Some one’s bed and bath shoved in a corner. Outside, trampled mud, mule-lines, cinder tracks, Holland elms, flat, stodgy Flanders all desecrated with War. He got the number he wanted, told the Brigade to fetch their broken limber, gave his rank and job, and put up the telephone. The impression he had had was so strong, however, that walking back along the cinder path, he closed his eyes again. Yes, it was still there, quite plain, the details of the khaki uniform all correct and clear cut, spurred boots and bandolier, but no head, and the arms raised aloft, exhorting or threatening.

If he went on like this he would have to see a Medical Officer, and they would send him down to the Base, and he would find his job filled up, and have to go elsewhere and start all over fresh, trying to do something that was not desperately boring or wholly useless. He had been doing too much, going up at night for “stunts,” and working in Q. office all day. He would have to slack off a bit.

By the time he got back to Divisional H.Q. the car stood ready. The feelings of one who, having been hauled out of the infantry, had then to return to the Forward Areas, were curiously mixed. Of course no one wanted to be shelled or bombed, to live where the comforts of life were unpurchasable, and the ordinary means of locomotion out of use. And yet--and yet--there was a curious feeling of going home. That great rowdy wood and canvas and corrugated iron town, miles deep and nearly a hundred miles long, was where one belonged. That atmosphere of obvious jokes and equally obvious death, disinfectant, tobacco, mules, and wood smoke had become one’s life, one’s right and natural environment.

His companion on this joyless ride was Major Stevenage, the A.P.M. of the Division, an ex-cavalry officer of the regular army, in appearance and mentality a darker and grimmer edition of Colonel Birchin.

Dormer showed him the Vanderlynden dossier as they bowled along. He surveyed it with the weariness of a professional to whom an amateur exhibits a “masterpiece.”

“Colonel Birchin thinks it’s rape, does he?”

“Yes!”

“He’s wrong, of course. Q. office always are! What do you think it is yourself?”

“A nasty snag. What happened doesn’t matter. You and I could settle it for forty francs. But the French have got hold of it. It’s become official.”

“What do you suggest?” Major Stevenage put in his monocle.

“We must go and see the Maire, and get it withdrawn. Let’s see. Hondebecq? It’s the Communal Secretary Blanquart we must see. Shrewd fellow and all on our side. These schoolmasters hate the peasants.”

Dormer knew the area well. Hondebecq was the typical village of French Flanders. That is to say, it was a cluster of cottages in which _rentiers_--peasants who had scraped a few savings out of the surrounding fields--lived on about forty pounds a year English; in its centre, a paved _grand’ place_ held a few modest shops, a huge high-shouldered church, carefully refaced with red brick, and a big, rambling “Estaminet de la Mairie,” next to the village school.

It was here that they found Blanquart, Communal Secretary, schoolmaster, land surveyor, poor man’s lawyer, Heaven only knows what other functions he used to combine. He was the only man in the Commune handy with pen and paper, and this fact must have substantially added to his income. But, like all his kind, he could not forget that he came from Dunkirk or Lille; he had moments when his loneliness got the better of his pride and he would complain bitterly of the “sacred peasants.”

They found him seated in his little front parlour--he only functioned in the official room at the Estaminet on State occasions--busy with those innumerable forms by which the food of France was rationed, her Army conscripted, her prices kept in check and her civil administration facilitated. In the corner between the window and the clock sat an old peasant who said only, “_Bonjour._”

Blanquart greeted them effusively, as who should say: “We others, we are men of the world.” He made polite inquiries about the officers’ health and the weather and the War, leading up to the introduction: “Allow me to present you to Mister our Mayor! And now what can I do for you?”

Major Stevenage, a little lost in the mixed stream of good French and bad English, left it to Dormer.

“It is with reference to the claim of Vanderlynden! Can one arrange it?”

Blanquart had only time to put in: “Everything arranges itself,” before the Mayor cut him short.

“You have some nice ideas, you others. Arrange it, I believe you. You will arrange it with our Deputy.”

Blanquart put in: “Mister the Mayor was insulted by the troops. We wrote to our Deputy!”

Major Stevenage fidgeted. He had found it most difficult to go through this sort of thing, day after day, for years. He had been trained to deal with Asiatics. He turned on Blanquart:

“Why didn’t you write to me first?” but the Mayor cut in again. His general outlook on life was about that of an English agricultural labourer plus the dignity of Beadledom. This latter had been injured, and the man, who seldom spoke a dozen sentences a day, now was voluble. He understood more English than one gave him credit for.

“Why write to you, officer, you are all of the same colour!” (By this time not a German attack could have stopped him.) “My Garde Champêtre comes to tell me that there is a crime of violence at Vanderlynden’s. They demand that I go to make _procès-verbal_. I put on my tricolour sash. I take my official notebook. I arrive. I demand the officer. _Il s’est foutu de moi!_ (Untranslatable.) He says he has orders to march to the trenches. His troops hold me in derision. They sing laughable songs of me in my official capacity----”

“It is very well, Monsieur the Maire,” Dormer broke in. “We go to make an arrestation. Can you indicate the culpable?”

“But I believe you, I can indicate him,” cried the old man.

Dormer waited breathlessly for some fatal name or number which would drag a poor wretch through the slow exasperation of Court-Martial proceedings.

“It was a small brown man!”

“That does not lead us very far!” said Dormer icily.

“Wait!” The old man raised his voice. “Achille!” The door opened, and Achille Quaghebeur, the Garde Champêtre, in attendance on the Maire, stepped in and closed it behind him. He had, in his dark green and sulphur-coloured uniform, with his assumption of importance, the air of a comic soldier out of “Madame Angot.” “Produce the corroborative article!”

Achille found in his tail pocket surely the oldest and most faded of leather pocket-books. From this in turn he produced a piece of A.S.C. sacking, on which the word OATS was plainly printed in black.

“Voila!” said the Maire.

“Totally useless!” growled the Major, turning red.

This made the Maire furious; he grasped the intonation and expression if not the words.

“You others, you are enough to send one to sleep standing up. One produces the _corroborative_ pieces and you treat them as useless.” And there followed a tirade during which Dormer drew the Major outside, with profuse _Bonjours!_ He thought that Blanquart was trying to sign to him that he wanted to say something to him privately. But the Major was upset, his dignity was hurt. A soldier by profession, he had reduced the settlement of claims to a fine art. He was said to have settled three thousand between the time he was made A.P.M. to the division on the Aisne to the day of his death at Bailleul. He told the chauffeur to drive to Vanderlynden’s. The man seemed to know the way, and had probably been to the place many times. As the car jolted and ground over the cobbles into the yard, Dormer said:

“I shall ask for the daughter, Madeleine.”

“Just so!”

“I don’t believe----”

“Nor do I,” said the Major stoutly.

Neither of them could pronounce the word “rape.”

They got out, knocked at the door and knocked again. The place seemed not so much empty and deserted as enveloped in one of those encompassing noises that only sort themselves out on investigation. Too deep for a separator, too near for an aeroplane, Dormer diagnosed it: “They’ve got the Government thrasher in the back pasture, next the rye!” (He had a good memory and could tell pretty well how most of the people distributed crops and work.)

They recrossed the bridge of the moat and skirting the latter entered the back pasture. There against the gate that gave on to the arable “plain,” as it was called in those parts, was the Government thrasher, the women labourers, and right on the top of the stack, old Vanderlynden.

Dormer shouted! Vanderlynden paid not the slightest heed. Perhaps he was deaf, no doubt the thrasher buzzed loud enough; but above all he was one of those old peasants whose only reply to this unheard-of War in which all had been plunged was to work harder and more continuously, and to show less and less consciousness of what went on round about them. There he stood, black against that shy and tender blue of Flemish sky, the motions of his body mechanical, his face between collarless shirt and high-crowned, peaked cap, expressionless. Finally, Dormer took one of the short stout girls that were employed in raking the straw away from the travelling band, and shook her roughly by the arm.

She was, of course, a refugee Belgian. No one else would work like that, not even a Chinese woman. Like a clockwork figure, she began to speak in “English”:

“No bon offizer billet all full you go Mairie!” without stopping for one moment her raking.

Dormer held her forearm rigid, and stopped her.

“_Saagte patron heer t’kom!_”

That reached her consciousness. Throwing down her implement, she put both hands to her mouth and began shouting “Hoi!” at old Vanderlynden, and might have gone on shouting indefinitely if Dormer had not gone round to the French Army mechanic who drove the machine and given him an English canteen cigarette. That would have stopped an offensive. It soon stopped the thrasher and Vanderlynden looked down at his visitors.

“Good day, Patron!” called Dormer; “can we see Mademoiselle?”

The old man got down with unexpected agility. “Good day, my officer, what is it that there is?”

Dormer held out the blue claim form. At the sight of it, there came into Vanderlynden’s face the look that a mule gives its feed, when, expecting and even enjoying bits of wood, leather, and nails, it comes across a piece of tin: not so much protest as long and malevolent calculation of the unknown. As a matter of fact he could not read more of it than his signature. He muttered once or twice, “_myn reclamorsche_,” but got no further.

“Can we see Mademoiselle?” repeated Dormer.

The old man stared at him with the incredulity of a villager who finds a stranger ignorant of village news: “But, my officer, my young lady is gone!”