Free October Men by Anthony Price

pioneers and they were retreating. And they were bombed a lot by those aeroplanes that made a screaming noise—“
    “Dive bombers.”
    “He didn’t call them that—Stinkers he called them.”
    “Stukas.”
    “That’s it, sir. All the way back until they were near Dunkirk. And the Germans were right behind them then, almost mixed up with them, you might say. And they sent Charlie and some other soldiers to find out if they was in this farmhouse. At night it was—that was really why it was. They couldn’t really see what they were doing, you see—“
    She was staring at the table edge as if it fascinated her.
    “And there was Germans in it. One of them shot at Charlie on the stairway, and Charlie killed him. And then he went up and there was another, and he killed him too. And then he heard this door open, and he went at it with his bayonet, sir—it was dark, and everyone was shouting and shootin’—“
    She raised her eyes to his at last. “It was the farmer’s wife, sir. But he couldn’t see , that was the trouble—it was so dark. And when she screamed out, then the fanner came for him, tryin’ to stop him I suppose, and he—he—he didn’t know—“
    She was pleading with him now.
    “It’s all right, Clarkie. Of course he couldn’t know. No one could have known—it could have happened to anyone. He shouldn’t blame himself.”
    “That’s just it, sir. He doesn’t even remember it, or he doesn’t seem to remember it clearly, like it was mixed up with the nightmares in his mind.”
    “But he’s told you about it.”
    “No, sir. That was what the army doctor told me in the hospital when he came back, when he wasn’t himself like. He’d got it all written down, the doctor had. That’s why—“ She stopped, staring at him.
    That ’ s why.
    Richardson stared back, seeing at last, fully and clearly, right through the pathetic tangle.
    He could see her fear now, the reason that had shut her mouth: taken by itself, what Charlie had done was no more than pure self-defence, a reflex action. But if this old horror had been resurrected— the big, simple soldier, more likely wilder with fright than with anger, slaughtering a couple of innocent civilians in the dark and by accident, and then cracking up when he’d found out what he’d done—!
    He ought to have realised that Clarkie’s fear was a practical one, not an emotional response: she might guess what it would do to old Charlie to have that night raked up in court, that memory he’d locked away self-defensively in his subconscious mind. But what she feared was the doctor’s record, the dusty proof not only of Charlie’s mental instability but also that once before he had killed first and questioned afterwards.
    “And it was my fault, Mr. Richardson, sir—I forgot clean about it when I saw the light up here. I made him come, he didn’t want to.”
    So it wasn’t for David’s sake, to cover his disappearance, that she had kept quiet, that at least was certain; David had simply become the victim of her concern for Charlie.
    But David was no defector, that was certain too: the traitor who came to the end of his tether and was forced to abandon his home and his fortune and his country would never have made his getaway happy as a sandboy, excited as a boy with a new bicycle!
    He nodded reassuringly at her. “Don’t you fret, Clarkie—it’s going to be all right, I promise you. I’ll see that Charlie’s in the clear, don’t you worry.”
    But equally David would not have swanned off so happily without any by-your-leave—not when he’d been acting the way he had—unless he’d been up to something, that too had to be faced.
    David was no defector, certainly. But unlike old Charlie, David was still in trouble.
    “But first I’d like to know a bit more about that dinner of yours, Clarkie,” said Richardson.

V
    BOSELLI WAS a long way out of line and he knew it; it was this knowledge rather than the first heat of the day which