Before the Poison

22

Extract from the journal of Grace Elizabeth Fox (ed. Louise King), June, 1944. Normandy

Friday, 30th June, 1944 A curious thing happened today. Lt. Maddox, one of the surgeons, chose Dorothy and me to accompany him on a special mission. In charge was a man introduced to us only as Meers, and a couple of strong, silent corporals I can only describe as thugs. I did not like Meers. I did not even recognise the uniform he was wearing. He was cold and had a cruel twist to his mouth. I could tell by the way he acted towards Dorothy and me that he does not like women and would not have taken us with him if he had his way. He hardly spoke, and when he did, he only talked to Lt. Maddox. He did not even look at Dorothy or me. I made certain he never spotted my journal. He was the kind of man who would have confiscated and destroyed it with great pleasure. We could see the devastation of the beautiful French countryside from the jeep. Roofless farmhouses, fields full of bomb and shell craters, dead livestock scattered everywhere. How the poor French people must hate us all, Allies and Germans alike. Even in freeing them we are destroying their homes and livelihoods. Still, I suppose these can be rebuilt, whereas a future of Nazi rule is not something to be contemplated with equanimity. We arrived at a grand chateau, which reminded me of one of our English stately homes, surrounded by a high wall with wrought-iron gates, an arched entrance and acres of grounds. Here and there lay a dead cow, and someone had dug a pit in which more bodies of livestock were burning. The smell was terrible. There was some bomb damage to one of the wings, and the ruins were still smouldering. Meers spoke to the officer at the gate, who scrutinised all our identity cards before letting us through. Dot and I had butterflies in our stomachs. There were a number of military vehicles in the grounds, and groups of soldiers standing around smoking, as if detailed to be there simply to keep an eye on things. Without a word, Meers jumped out of the jeep the moment it came to a halt. Lt. Maddox shrugged, and we all followed Meers and the corporals inside. We were issued face masks and surgical gloves as we entered. It was a grand place, full of vast echoing halls, wainscoting, gold leaf, ornate cornices and chandeliers, broad, curving staircases with thick patterned carpets. The one odd thing I noticed was there were no paintings on the walls. It was clear that there had once been some by the discoloration in certain areas, so perhaps the owners had hidden them in the cellar to prevent them from being damaged. In many of the rooms and halls were rows of empty makeshift cots and beds, which made me think the place had been used as a hospital of some kind. Meers led us through a maze of imposing corridors, down some stone stairs, and we ended up at a reinforced door with a black skull and crossbones, like the Jolly Roger, on it, and a sign that read EINGANG VERBOTEN. Even I knew enough German to realise that meant NO ENTRY. As Meers started to open the door, he turned to Lt. Maddox and told him there were some men inside the room, and if anything could be done for them, especially anything that might make them capable of talking, we should do it. That was why we had been brought here. Lt. Maddox looked at us and nodded. This was our job, after all, no matter who they were. It soon became obvious, however, that there was nothing to be done for anyone in that room. It was large and cool, with damp stone walls, and had perhaps once been a wine cellar or some sort of storage area, but now it was a makeshift hospital ward, with rows of beds full of dead patients, about thirty or more of them, all men, and all emaciated. Some lay half out of bed, some completely on the floor. We checked them all, and not one showed signs of life. It was not immediately clear what had killed them. There were no signs of bullet wounds or the usual battlefield injuries. Many had terrible rashes and what looked like scald marks or electrode burns on their skin, sores and pustules, but nothing that appeared serious enough to have caused death. Still, we were not there to perform autopsies; we were there to see what could be done, and clearly nothing could. While we were checking the men, I noticed that the corporals had turned up with a handcart, and Meers was tossing the contents of the filing cabinets into it. Some of the files lay strewn on the floor, some partially burned, so it looked as if the Germans had tried to destroy them before deciding that a quick flight was the better option. Meers also forced open the medicine cabinets and added their contents to the cart. I noticed a bottle labelled SARIN and another TABUN. I had never heard of these medicines, but then my German was not that good. Meers was very careful in his handling of them, though, and he managed to find a compartmented wooden box of the kind used for shipping wine, and slotted each bottle in an individual compartment. After a brief consultation with Lt. Maddox about the hopeless state of the patients, Meers called over one of the corporals to take us back to the hospital. That was all. We were dismissed. Lt. Maddox said something about finding a cause of death, but Meers told him that was not his problem. As long as no one could be saved, then we had done our jobs and we could go. Lt. Maddox insisted that we should at least try to identify the men, so that we could inform their next of kin. Meers said that was not important, that they were probably just Jews or Polish slave labourers. The lieutenant argued that he would have to conduct more extensive tests to make sure they were not the victims of infectious diseases, but Meers would have none of it. He said that the bodies would be burned and gave the corporal a brisk nod. I felt that if we did not do as we were told, and leave now, the corporal would pull out their sidearms. Things were that tense. So we left. When we got back to the hospital, they were packing up for a move, so we all got stuck into it and the incident was briefly forgotten.

January 2011

I thought I had mastered the art of sleeping on planes, but that night as we droned somewhere over the Sahara Desert, I just couldn’t do it, despite the dimmed lights and the spacious business-class seat. I had dozed just long enough to miss the end of the movie I was watching, and the flight attendant had surreptitiously removed my half-full glass of wine from the tray. Now I was wide awake again. I reached for the touch-screen, desperately seeking something else to watch, but there was nothing that interested me, especially not Death Knows My Name, and though my eyes weren’t heavy enough to close in sleep, they were too tired to read. Instead, I plugged the headphones into my iPhone and went back to the late Beethoven string quartets I’d been listening to earlier.

Even then, my mind wasn’t so much on the music as it was thinking forward to the meeting I was hoping for. Louise had done a great job, though it had taken her a couple of weeks, and it was now the end of January. She had tracked Billy Strang through his father, the shoe shop manager, finding an address and birth details. Then she had gone on to work her magic and, after a short period of despair, when the trail seemed simply to end, she found that he had done his National Service between 1952 and 1954, then emigrated to Rhodesia in 1956 and moved to South Africa in 1980. He now lived near Cape Town. It was simply the outline of a life story, and though I could imagine some of the details myself, given the dates, it would be interesting to get to Billy himself and hear his story to fill in the blanks.

After talking to Louise, I had booked a flight as quickly as possible, but I had deliberately not tried to get in touch with Billy for the same reason I hadn’t phoned Sam Porter before my trip to Paris. It’s a lot easier to say no to someone from a few thousand miles away, over the telephone, than it is if he’s standing on your doorstep. Again, I knew this was a risk. He could be out of town, could even be dead – though Louise assured me the public records showed he was still alive and paying taxes – but the risk of alerting him and of having him simply refuse to talk to me at all was too much to contemplate, so I decided to play it by ear.

The odds were good. I calculated that Billy would be close to eighty now, much the same age as Wilf and Sam, so he probably didn’t get out and about all that much. And I could also think of no reason why Billy should not want to tell me his story. If nothing else came of my trip, I would at least get a few days’ holiday in Cape Town. It was summer there, too, another reason I might find Billy Strang at home.

Because it’s an overnight flight, about twelve hours or so, and there’s only a two-hour time difference, I had hoped to arrive well rested and ready to go, but it didn’t seem to be turning out that way. After breakfast, we began our descent and landed without incident. I looked out of the window and saw that the sun was shining on the lush green hills, the light possessing that ineffable quality I had only ever seen in parts of Africa.

I could feel the heat as soon as the doors opened and I stepped on to the jetway. Cape Town is a busy airport, but the formalities didn’t take too long, and in no time I was in the Hertz office signing my life away for a cheap Japanese compact and asking for directions out of the airport.

It turned out not to be too difficult to get on to the N2 and then head north-west towards the city centre and the waterfront, where I was staying. It was still the morning rush hour, and there was plenty of traffic going both ways. Before long, I came to that stretch of highway, several kilometres long, which appears to the American or northern European eye to be one enormous shanty town, with row after row of flat-roofed leaning shacks of corrugated iron and cardboard and hardly a gap between them. The kind of place you see straggling down hillsides in Caracas, Rio or Buenos Aires. But people who knew better had assured me that there is some level of organisation within the communities, schools and health facilities, and the government is also building some decent brick houses to move families into.

Soon I could see Table Mountain ahead of me, and I began concentrating on the road as it neared the city. I could stay on the highway most of the way, the woman at Hertz had assured me, but I would have to negotiate one or two city streets at the end. It wasn’t so hard. At least they drove on the left, and I had got accustomed to that since moving back to Yorkshire. Soon I was telling the guard at the gate that I was a guest at the hotel, and he was waving me through. I parked by the waterfront, took my small travel bag and computer case from the back seat and went to check in.

I had booked two nights at the Cape Grace, both because its name sounded appropriate, and because I’d heard it was one of the best hotels in the city. That became pretty evident right from the start, when I was invited to sit down and enjoy a cup of tea as I checked in. In no time, I was in my room on the top floor, opening the French windows to the balcony and gazing out on Table Mountain to my left and Signal Hill straight ahead of me, across the marina and the downtown core. Though the rest of the sky was clear, there was a hint of cloud and mist on Table Mountain, which really did resemble a long, flat table, or anvil.

I leaned on the railings, breathed in the warm air and sighed. Laura and I had come here for our ‘second’ honeymoon in the late nineties, not long after apartheid was overthrown. I remembered South Africa then as a beautiful, blighted, haunted, hopeful, exciting country. It had fascinated us, from the tensions of Johannesburg to the beauty of the Cape Winelands and a three-day safari at a private game reserve near Kruger Park. I had so many memories, but that had been over ten years earlier, and the country had changed a great deal since then.

Laura had loved the markets, the craft shops and clothes stores with their unusual patterns and bright colours, colours that seemed to exist only here, greens or browns that somehow never looked the same anywhere else in the world. I also remembered a large record shop where I had bought a lot of CDs of South African jazz, and I wondered whether it was still in business.

But I wasn’t here to get maudlin over my loss, I told myself. I was here to find Billy Strang, and after a shower, over an early lunch on the waterfront, I would take out the road map the Hertz lady had given me and plot a route to Simon’s Town, where he was living.

I drove more or less straight south. Years ago, with Laura, I had driven down the peninsula as far as Cape Point, but I didn’t remember much very clearly, except for the rolling waves and the penguins and baboons. Simon’s Town wasn’t quite as far, but it was a good way down, and it seemed like a beautiful place to retire.

The house I was searching for stood high above the town, overlooking the harbour and the purplish-blue and green Indian Ocean beyond. Though the sun shone brightly and the sky was pure blue, a strong wind had sprung up, and I had to struggle to get out of the car. Below me, I could see thousands of whitecaps and larger waves crashing on the beach and the big rocks that reared out of the waters of the bay.

I turned and gazed at the house. It was a boxy sort of place, a modern design, all white stucco, large picture windows and hacienda-style open verandas. There were three storeys, each a different-sized cube stuck asymmetrically on top of the one below. It wouldn’t have been out of place in southern California. Laguna Niguel, say, or Huntington Beach. Whatever Billy Strang had done since he had left England, he had done very well for himself.

When I found what I thought to be the front door, I rang the bell. Nothing happened. I knocked, then rang it again. Still nothing. He was out, and I had no idea where or for how long. I only had myself to blame for coming on spec like this, assuming an eighty-year-old man would be pretty much housebound. Maybe he was off surfing somewhere, or having a tryst with his twenty-year-old lover. The only thing I could do was keep trying.

I drove down to Boulders Beach, parked and walked out to see the penguins. The wind was howling, blowing up sand everywhere and raising tears in my eyes. Even the penguins could barely stand up straight. I could hear the waves crashing and smell salt spray in the air, feel it in my hair, on my exposed skin. I hurried back to the car and drove farther down the coast as far as Castle Rock. The wind wasn’t so bad there, so I got out at a viewpoint and took a few photographs to show Heather. She had wanted to come with me, but decided in the end it wasn’t worth it for just three days. I promised I would take her for a proper holiday somewhere when all this was over. Before I left, I had given her a copy of Grace’s journal to read, and as I stood in this lonely spot at Castle Rock, it was an entry from that journal which came into my mind. I couldn’t help but think of Grace standing here that day in 1940 on her way to Singapore, of that stolen kiss with Stephen Fawley. It looked very much as if this was where one of the photographs had been taken, the one in which she was trying to hold her hair in place, not Cornwall, after all.

A number of baboons appeared on the rocks over to my right, eyeing me curiously. I knew to be careful around them, so I started heading slowly back to the car. They watched me as I went, then turned their backs and mooned me, as they must have done Grace and Stephen, though she had been too delicate to describe it in her journal. I drove back to Simon’s Town and tried Billy’s house again. Still nothing.

I decided I would give it one more try today, then come back again tomorrow. I would have one more whole day after that, as my flight didn’t leave until after ten at night the following evening. This time I found a sheltered cafe by the harbour and sat in a window seat sipping an espresso, reading Saturday Night and Sunday Morning and watching the dance of the spray through the window. I seemed to be pinning a lot of hopes on this visit, I thought, not to mention spending a lot of money. But the money wasn’t a problem, and nor was my time at the moment. I just hoped I wouldn’t leave empty handed. I had come this far, and I needed to know the full story.

After about an hour and two strong coffees, I drove back up the hill to the white cubist house. The first thing that raised my spirits was the silver BMW in the driveway. The front door was also slightly ajar, and I could hear the sound of radio voices coming from inside. I rang the bell, the door opened and a head as brown and bald as a varnished banister knob and as pitted as a walnut shell peered out at me, a birthmark like a teardrop where his hairline used to be, a bristly grey goatee beard around his mouth.

‘William?’ I asked. ‘William Strang?’

He eyed me with suspicion. ‘Who wants to know?’

‘My name’s Chris Lowndes,’ I told him. ‘You don’t know me, but I live in Kilnsgate House.’

‘Then you’re a long way from home, aren’t you?’ he said, but his manner softened. ‘You’d better come in. Never let it be said that Billy Strang doesn’t know how to treat a visitor from the old country. And Billy’s the name. Always has been, always will be.’ There was little, if any, Geordie left in his accent, which had also taken on a hint of South African cadence. It wasn’t strong, though the result was a very unusual mix. Even Henry Higgins would have been hard pushed to guess where Billy Strang came from. He was a couple of inches shorter than me and seemed in good shape, whippet thin, sinewy and economic in his movements, as if he used just as much energy as he needed and was keeping plenty in reserve.

I followed him through a hall with a high white ceiling and a parquet floor. ‘I called earlier, but you were out,’ I said.

‘Tennis club.’

‘Do you play?’

‘Of course I play. Why shouldn’t I?’

‘No reason.’

‘Just because I’m eighty doesn’t mean I can’t still give these young whippersnappers of seventy or so a good run for their money.’ He grinned. ‘Besides, the widow Cholmondeley’s always there on a Tuesday, and I fancy my chances there. Lovely arse on her. Come on. Sit down.’ He pointed towards a huge sofa with matching armchairs upholstered in zebra skin. I thought that was probably as illegal as it was tasteless, but maybe it was fake. A tiger-skin rug lay on the hardwood floor in front of the huge fireplace. No fire burned. Instead, I heard the hum of a central air-conditioner and felt the artificial chill. A ceiling fan whirred above, distributing the coolness. ‘Drink?’ he offered. ‘I don’t indulge any more, myself, but there’s pretty much anything you want.’

‘I’d better not,’ I said. ‘I’ve got to drive back to Cape Town later.’

‘Suit yourself.’ He went to the cocktail cabinet and poured himself a squirt of soda. ‘I suppose you’d better tell me why you’re here, then,’ he said. ‘But first you can tell me how Kilnsgate is. It’s been a bloody long time.’

As I told him, I saw a wistful expression pass across his lined and tanned face, and his eyes seemed fixed on a point somewhere way beyond me.

‘I haven’t really thought about those days in years,’ he said.

‘Why did you leave?’

‘England? Because it was fucked. They sent me off to kill Mau Maus in Kenya for two years, and when I got back I couldn’t think of a thing I wanted to do in the old country. Not a thing. Kenya gave me a yen for adventure, for Africa. There were a lot of opportunities for private soldiering back then, if you weren’t too fussy who you worked for. I did a few things I’m not proud of, then I met a bloke from Southampton who ran a tobacco farm in Rhodesia, as it then was. Hard work, but what a life. All there for the taking. Until the troubles started, of course. He said I was welcome to come and work for him any time, so I did. Twenty pounds in my pocket. I soon had a few acres of my own and a well-bred English lady for a wife. I lasted until 1980 through sheer stubbornness, but it was clear long before then the way things were going, and that the stubbornness would be the death of me if I didn’t get out soon. I’d already seen my neighbours butchered. It was a bad situation all round. And a dangerous one. Luckily, I’d been smart with my money, put most of it in bank accounts in Jo’burg or London. It wasn’t hard to arrange a quick move over the border before the natives came and hacked us to pieces like they did my friends and neighbours. My well-bred English lady had already left me by then and gone back to her family in England. Didn’t have the stomach for it. I got involved in the wine business here on the Cape. Did very well at it, too. Retired ten years ago. That’s it. Potted life story so far. And now you’re here. But I’m sure you didn’t come all this way just to hear about me.’

‘Partly. It’s an interesting story. I went to America. Los Angeles. It was a bit safer there.’

He laughed. ‘That’s arguable. Still… we’re both alive to tell the tale.’

‘Yes. Look, I’ll get to the point. When you were seven, you were evacuated to Richmond, and you spent some time up at Kilnsgate House, didn’t you?’

‘That’s right. About four months in all. Some of the happiest days of my childhood. It was a funny time, though. As if the earth was standing still. People were expecting bombing raids and poison gas attacks every day, but nothing happened.’

Now I was approaching the true purpose of my visit, I was beginning to feel apprehensive about broaching the subject. After all, perhaps at the age of eighty, after a successful life, a man might not appreciate talking about being abused at the age of seven, might not even remember it, if he believed that those same months were the best of his childhood. I would have to edge my way there gently, if I possibly could. ‘How did you take to it? It must have made quite a change for you?’

‘Oh, yes. I was a city boy through and through. Not a slum kid, mind you, my dad had a decent job in a shoe shop, then later in a department store, but I certainly wasn’t well versed in the ways of country life, outside a few books I’d read. Still, I wasn’t as daft as some of the kids who thought apples grew in boxes and cows were no bigger than dogs.’

‘So how was your time at Kilnsgate?’

Billy thought for a moment. ‘Happy, as I told you, for the most part. That first month the weather was marvellous, and school was out till late September because of the war, so I got to explore the area. It was like an extended holiday. Are the lime kilns still there?’

‘Indeed they are.’

‘I used to hide in them if I wanted to disappear for a while.’

‘Why would you want to disappear?’

‘I was a kid. Playing. It was a bit lonely up there, so I lived in my own world. Maybe I was hatching my famous plans to defeat Hitler. Or maybe I was on the run from the Gestapo.’

‘What about school?’

‘It was OK. I got teased a bit because of my accent. But there were some good kids there, too. It was certainly no worse than the school in Newcastle.’

‘And the Foxes?’ I ventured.

‘I got lucky there,’ he said. ‘They wanted to set an example, but they also wanted someone who knew how to use a toilet and wash behind his ears. I fitted the bill. Rationing or no, we always had plenty of food – Hetty Larkin made wonderful cakes and pies – and Mrs Fox used to play piano for me and sing of an evening. Voice of an angel. I’d never heard anything like it before. Not that she couldn’t manage the occasional popular song, mind you. We’d have a good knees-up, every now and then. Usually when she had her girlfriends up and old misery-guts was away somewhere.’

I paused, remembering Grace’s exquisite but untrained voice on the recordings Louise had given to me. ‘Misery-guts?’ I said.

Billy wrinkled his nose. ‘That’s what I called him. Dr Fox. Ungrateful of me, I suppose, but he was bit of a tartar, really. Luckily, like I said, he was away a lot. Important war business, don’t you know. Or so he implied. Now I come to think of it, he was probably telling the truth, even that far back. But I didn’t like him right from the start.’

‘Why not?’

‘It’s hard to say, really. I just sensed something… cold, maybe even a bit cruel, about him. He frightened me. I remember once I had a nasty boil on the back of my neck and he lanced it. Hurt like hell. Didn’t bother to be gentle or give me anything to ease the pain. It was almost as if he enjoyed it.’

‘Causing pain?’

‘Yes. But that’s probably being fanciful, in retrospect. I didn’t know so much at the time.’

‘What didn’t you know?’

‘He never hit me or anything, if that’s what you mean.’

‘And you liked Grace?’

‘I adored her.’ He paused to remember for a moment, then frowned. ‘I often wonder what became of her. Do you know?’

I stared at him, open mouthed. ‘You mean, you don’t… you haven’t…?’

‘What? No. Nothing. I lost touch completely after… oh, it must have been near Christmas 1952, just before I got sent to Kenya. I never went back. Never heard anything again. You tend to lose touch with the rest of the world out here.’

I could see the waves crashing on the rocks way below through his picture window, the rolling hills stretching all along the bay. How was I going to play this? There was no way I could avoid giving Billy an unpleasant shock. I studied him closely and decided that he was the kind who took life straight up, as it came at him. He had to be to survive the kind of life he’d lived. But I still just couldn’t simply blurt it out. ‘Maybe I will have that drink, after all, if you don’t mind?’

He gave me a knowing smile. ‘Of course. What’ll it be?’

‘Red wine, if you have any.’

He went over to the cocktail cabinet and poured me a glass from a decanter. It was silky smooth and had an aroma of blackcurrant, and a hint of tobacco. ‘I take it you have something difficult to tell me, or you wouldn’t be procrastinating in this way,’ he said, tilting his head to one side, bird-like.

‘Am I so transparent?’

‘I’ve had a lot of practice.’

‘Grace Fox died in April 1953,’ I said.

‘So soon,’ he whispered. ‘So young. That wasn’t long after I saw her. She seemed fit and well enough. How did it happen? Accident?’

Now came the hard part. I took a swallow of wine. When I was sure it had all gone down the right way, I said, ‘She was hanged for poisoning her husband.’

Billy’s eyes opened wide in astonishment. ‘No. She can’t have…’

I leaned forward. ‘I’ve been thinking the same thing,’ I hurried on. ‘That she didn’t do it. Can’t have done it. But I’m not so sure now. It could have been natural causes, but we’ll never know that for certain one way or the other. I think she might have done it, but not for the reasons everyone assumed, not for reasons that got her hanged, and if they’d known the truth they might have gone a bit easier on her. That’s really why I came to see you. I think you can help me shed some light on it.’

‘I can’t believe…’ Billy just shook his head. ‘She just couldn’t have.’

‘You visited her in Richmond between Christmas and the new year in late 1952, didn’t you?’

‘Yes. I was finishing my training at Catterick. I found her telephone number and she agreed to meet me. We went for a walk around the castle walls. It was a lovely day for the time of year, I remember.’

‘You were seen together by several people. It came out in the police investigation, though it was never mentioned at her trial.’

Billy frowned. ‘Why would it be? I mean, I don’t understand.’

‘As evidence that she was promiscuous, a loose woman. That’s what the prosecution worked so hard to prove. She had a lover, a young artist. They said that was why she plotted to kill her husband.’

‘I find that hard to believe,’ Billy said. ‘But the alternative is… surely it can’t have been because of me?’

‘I think it might have been,’ I said. It was time to take the plunge. ‘I know it must be difficult for you to talk about it, but I think you arranged to meet Grace that day to tell her that Ernest Fox had abused you while you were an evacuee at Kilnsgate House, didn’t you? Maybe you’d only just remembered, or maybe it had been bothering you for a while, and this was your opportunity to unload the burden before you went off to war. The mind plays strange tricks. But I think when you told her, she believed you. She must have had her own suspicions by then, noticed little things, and I think she also did it partly to protect her own son. He was seven at the time, your age when you were there in 1939. People didn’t talk about those sorts of things back then. Nobody would have believed her, anyway. She couldn’t live with it, with him and what he’d done, what he was no doubt going to do again, so she poisoned him.’

Billy sat staring at me open mouthed. He was amazed, I supposed, that somebody had worked it out after all these years. I drank the last of the wine, and he reached for his soda. His hand was trembling slightly. The silence stretched until he finally said, ‘That’s a very interesting theory, Mr Lowndes, very interesting indeed, but I have to tell you that it’s nothing more than a load of bollocks. Quite frankly, you’re not much of a detective. You’re so far off target they’d have to send out a search party for the truth.’