Paxton was glad to see that Kellaway treated him in a friendly fashion. Evidently there were no hard feelings about the cold-bath treatment. When they had left the mess and were back in their billet, Paxton said: “You won’t believe this, old man, but they’ve refused to credit us with shooting down that Hun.”
“Who are they?”
“Captain Piggott.” Kellaway looked puzzled. “Our flight commander, for heaven’s sake,” Paxton said. “And of course the CO backs him up. Isn’t it a rotten shame?”
“What Hun?” Kellaway asked.
“The Fokker.” Paxton remembered that Kellaway had seen the enemy plane. “The Albatros, I mean. It crashed. I shot the tail off and it crashed.”
“I don’t remember. If you say it happened, of course it happened but I don’t remember anything for the last week. I don’t even remember coming here.”
“Yes, but…” Paxton felt swindled of his kill. “You remember me, don’t you? We left England together.”
“Dexter?” Kellaway suggested. “No. Wait a minute…”
O’Neill strolled in, eating an apple. “You want to stay away from the adj,” he said indistinctly. “There’s hell to pay in the men’s latrines… Jeez, you look a sight,” he told Kellaway.
“What’s wrong with the latrines?” Paxton demanded.
O’Neill took three swift bites of the apple. “Better ask the adj, hadn’t you? All I know is he wants your blood. Two men locked in a cubicle, not very nice, he’s old-fashioned about that sort of thing, I never saw a man so angry, I’d wait until tomorrow if I was you…” But by then Paxton had grabbed his cap and gone. The adjutant didn’t scare him.
Within a minute he was back. He came in quietly and didn’t look at the other two, just sat on his bed and flicked through a magazine. He had never reached the latrines. Halfway there he had remembered that the cubicles in the latrines had no doors.
Beneath his apparent calm all his senses were pounding. O’Neill was chatting to Kellaway but it was a while before Paxton took in the meaning and realised that O’Neill was talking about him. “Personally, I put the peculiar smell down to the constipation,” O’Neill said in that maddeningly flat, unchanging voice of his. “A lot of English people of his sort smell like that. We don’t get it in Australia because Australians invented prunes, did you know that?”
If Sherborne had taught Paxton nothing else it had taught him self-control. This filthy sneering from O’Neill was painful, but Paxton had a trick which he used to deflect it: he repeated to himself the words of his commission: George, by the Grace of God, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and of the British Dominions beyond the Seas, King, Defender of the Faith, Emperor of India, Etc… To Our Trusty and well beloved Oliver Arthur David Paxton, Greeting. We reposing especial Trust and Confidence in your Loyalty, Courage and good Conduct, do by these Presents Constitute and Appoint you to be an Officer…
“I offered him a pound of Australian prunes,” O’Neill said,”but I think he thought they were extra large suppositories and you know he’s not very big in that department. See these pyjamas?”
Paxton could not resist looking up. O’Neill was holding a pair of his pyjamas. He could see the monogram, OP.
“He threw these out,” O’Neill said. “I had ‘em washed in disinfectant, you can hardly tell where the stains were. Piece of advice. Never, ever touch that trunk of his. I don’t know what he’s got in there but he goes insane if anyone touches it.” O’Neill picked up his sponge-bag and went out.
“I don’t think he likes you,” Kellaway said.
“I loathe and detest him. He’s foul and disgusting and he steals everything he can lay his hands on. He stole my pyjamas. Wait a minute…” Paxton thought hard. When had he last seen those pyjamas?
“What was all that gibberish about your trunk?” Kellaway said.
Paxton, frowning furiously, was searching for his keys. “I had to buy this special padlock just to keep the thieving beggar out,” he said. Kellaway came over to see. The keys turned sweetly. The shackle slid out of the staple. Paxton grunted with relief. “I’ve beaten the blighter,” he said. He raised the lid and it fell to the floor with a crash that made him jump.
“Hullo!” Kellaway said. “What’s happened now?”
Paxton picked up the lid and examined it. “Someone’s knocked the pins out of the hinges,” he said. “There’s nothing holding the hinges together.” He put the lid back in place and sat on it. “It shouldn’t be possible, not when it’s shut and locked, but…”
Kellaway delicately fingered the ends of the stitches on his chin. The cut itched, which was supposed to be a sign that it was healing. “Why don’t you get your own back?” he asked. “Hit him, or something.”
“I don’t intend to sink to his level. The man’s a cad, I shall treat him as a cad. Sooner or later the message will sink in.”
“Well,” Kellaway said. “You know best.”
Next day the weather was lovely and the squadron’s Flying Orders were cancelled. Everyone must be available for the Court of Inquiry.
This was unpopular, not just because it meant hanging around all day in one’s best uniform but because it made people feel as if they were being treated like schoolboys. “What’s all the fuss?” asked the Canadian, Stubbs. “The guy crashed a tender. Happens all the time.”
“You don’t understand how generals think,” Foster said. “Planned destruction is one thing. You can have all the massacre and mayhem you like, at the Front. What they won’t tolerate is accidental death behind the Lines. That upsets them. It’s wasteful. Untidy.”
“One of us should own up,” Essex said. “Not me, I’ve got an alibi, I was smashing up a hotel in Amiens at the time.”
After breakfast, Corporal Lacey sought out Paxton and handed him a diary. “I came across this when I was parcelling up Mr. Henley’s belongings,” he said. “I think somebody ought to read it.”
The diary was the size of a pocketbook, with a scuffed green leather cover. “You think it might have something in it that would embarrass his family?” Paxton asked. He tried to remember what Henley had looked like. Something like a potato. Bland and harmless. “Not much chance of that, is there?”
“Somebody ought to read it, all the same.”
“D’you mean you’ve noticed something?”
“Certainly not. Far be it from me to read the private and confidential papers of a commissioned officer. It’s simply that with the Court of Inquiry in session, nothing should be overlooked, no matter how trivial.” Lacey raised a finger. “Apparently trivial.”
“I don’t see what the devil the Court of Inquiry has to do with it.” But Paxton opened the diary.
“June the fourth,” Lacey said.
Paxton found the page, and read, and grunted, and read on. “Good God,” he said, still reading, while his hand took a tighter grip of the pages. “What a pair of gibbering idiots.”
“The adjutant is in his office,” Lacey said.
Paxton showed the diary to the adjutant, who showed it to the CO, who showed it to Colonel Bliss when he arrived to reopen the inquiry.
Bliss read the entry three times.
“So,” he said. “This fathead Henley got tight, pinched the keys of the tender from the CO when he wasn’t looking, realised he couldn’t drive, persuaded the other fathead Kellaway to drive, they got into an argument about its horsepower and decided to settle it by seeing how many horses they could swap it for, but what they thought were horses turned out to be mules.”