Subject: Murder by Clifford Witting

Author:Clifford Witting
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Galileo Publishing
Published: 2023-04-13T14:32:26+00:00

CHAPTER NINETEEN

I

SATURDAY began badly.

It was largely the fault of Master Aubrey Lovelock. His official position in Battery Office corresponded to that of an office boy in a civilian business. There was need of a bright, willing youth for all the little tasks that cropped up: to go and tell the Quartermaster that the Captain wanted him; to slip down to the village for paper-clips, or tobacco for the Major; to run off copies on the duplicating machine; to empty the filing-trays on the officers’ desks.

Master Aubrey, however, accounted himself above such trifling employment. In fact, he accounted himself above any employment at all. His self-appointed mission in life was to be spotless and beautiful. In my attempt to describe him and his attitude towards the war, I am reminded of the subject of that magnificent outburst of Hotspur’s in Shakespeare’s Henry IV: “...a certain lord, neat and trimly dress’d, fresh as a bridegroom; and his chin new reap’d show’d like a stubble-land at harvest-home; he was perfumed like a milliner; and ’twixt his finger and his thumb he held a pouncet-box... he made me mad to see him shine so brisk, and smell so sweet, and talk so like a waiting-gentlewoman of guns and drums and wounds,—God save the mark!... and but for these vile guns, he would himself have been a soldier.”

The blank verse is wrecked by my brutal abstract, but it is hardly necessary to quote the whole long speech.

Sweet Aubrey, loveliest gunner of XYZ, had passed his trade test and had been mustered as an Army clerk, so it was evident that he did have ability and could have shown it had he so desired. But all he wished was to be a graceful parasite. His favourite manœuvre was to play one of us off against another. If Paul needed him for some small task, he was just about to do something for me; if I attempted to enlist his aid, he was on the point of carrying out an order given by the Battery subaltern, Mr. Bretherton. When cornered, he appealed to the Sergeant-major. I cannot recall a single occasion when Yule failed to uphold him.

On the Saturday morning in question, things were brought to a head. One way and another, Paul and I had had a hectic month. Demands on us had been heavy and arrears were beginning to pile up. Soon after the morning’s work had begun, Paul called Lovelock over to his desk. Lovelock rose from his place, which was just inside the main entrance door to Battery Office, lounged languidly across the hut, to stand by Paul with his hand on his hip. Paul held out a sheaf of amendments to be pasted in the relative sections of the unit’s reference library—King’s Regulations and the like. Lovelock took one look at them and backed away with a shocked whinny, explaining that he was looking through the 1941 A.C.Is. for the Captain.

Without a word, Paul got up from his chair, went through the Sergeant-major’s empty room and into the office shared by the Captain and the O.

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