UNDER THE LAMPLIGHT

By Kevin P. Thornton

“Under the Lamplight” first appeared in In the Key of 13, by the Mesdames and Messieurs of Mayhem, Carrick Publishing, 2019.

Later, Armstrong remembered the broken sequence of events.

There was the request for Canadians of German background. Nothing official, all word of mouth. But everyone knew what it was—spying—which Armstrong despised. In his world, if you confronted a criminal, you did it face-to-face. Spying seemed like cheating, and he would have no truck with it.

He spoke some German, thanks to his Bavarian mother. Not enough, but even if he had been fluent, he wouldn’t have volunteered. Sergeant George Armstrong did everything by the book. Even the other members of the detachment joked that Armstrong slept at attention, ramrod straight. Honorable, upright, the epitome of a Mountie.

Still, when one of their own had applied, Armstrong had supported his request, despite his professional and personal misgivings. He had been encouraging, even enthusiastic. They had worked together, the two of them, trying to fill in the parts where the military briefings seemed sparse. Privately, Armstrong thought the idea was a bit amateurish, and he worried his constable was being cast into the unknown, with no means of escape.

“It’s a good career move,” he’d said. “And after, who knows?”

“It’s dangerous,” Armstrong had replied. “You can’t afford to make a mistake.”

“You worry too much. I’ll be fine. My German is near perfect. I’ve been completely briefed, and I think I can do this. Before you know it, I’ll be in and out, and life will be back to normal. We’ll be keeping the peace, wearing the red serge and always getting our man.”

***

They had tried to prepare him thoroughly, but there were so many unknowns. They’d told him, “Your back story is the best our intelligence can create. Your papers belong to a real soldier killed on D-day plus one. He was chosen because he came from a small German village wiped out in a bombing raid, five miles from your family’s original home. Your accent won’t give you away, and there’s no one in the camp who will know you. You will be safe.”

***

The telegram from Edmonton had asked Armstrong to attend to the death of a policeman at a POW camp. It also said: “There’s a strong suggestion it’s Rudy.” So he’d been prepared, as prepared as one could be.

His body was lying in the mortuary attached to the clinic. Prisoner of War Camp 139, Fort Clearwater, Alberta. It was January 12, 1945. Inside, the room was clinical and cold. Outside, it was -40°F, and the wind was picking up.

Armstrong looked at the corpse on the table. He lifted the clipboard. Name and rank: Unteroffizier Rudi Hertzen. Date of birth: February 25, 1920. Died: January 11, 1945. Age at time of death: 24. Cause of death: exsanguination by way of a neck injury. There was more, and George read it all, absorbing the details, numbing himself to the reality.

He looked at the paperwork again, anything to avoid looking at the body. Rudi Hertzen. They’d let him keep his first name, at least, as they’d funneled him into his undercover role. Of course, they’d changed the spelling, using the German Rudi instead of Rudy. Armstrong hadn’t known where they had sent him, had imagined he was overseas. What a horrible irony that he had ended up here, at Camp 139, so close to home.

***

The coroner’s report seemed competent and professional. The words on the official government forms had been carefully chosen. The coroner would have been cautious. Sometimes a death in a camp wasn’t treated the same as a civilian murder. They were prisoners of war, after all, the enemy. This one was different. The victim was one of their own. And there was only one suspect.

“Where is the prisoner?” Armstrong asked.

“In the guardroom,” a corporal replied. None of the officers had escorted him, a lowly sergeant in the RCMP. Armstrong was used to the tension between the services. In any event, he preferred the company of the corporal, a member of the Veterans Guards and likely a First World War soldier.

“Where did you serve?”

“I was at the Somme,” the corporal said.

“You were lucky, then,” said Armstrong, “to have survived. My dad served, as well.”

“Where?”

“Ypres first, then Amiens.”

“Was he lucky, too?” the corporal asked.

“No. He never came home.”

The corporal nodded, then seemed to be about to put his hand on Armstrong’s shoulder. Armstrong would have liked that.

Instead, the corporal drew himself to attention. “Where to now, sir?” The sir was unnecessary, but it had the weight of the untouched shoulder in it, and Armstrong was momentarily comforted.

“Let’s meet the suspect,” he said.

***

The wind had died down, so the cold didn’t slice through his body. Instead it settled on him, weighing him down, permeating his clothes and feeding on exposed skin.

The camp had been built in 1943, as the tides of war shifted. It was five miles outside Fort Clearwater, and was about as far north as one could go before Alberta became the Northern Territories.

As Armstrong and the corporal walked across the parade ground, they passed the main hall, and Armstrong could hear singing. It was a familiar tune, muffled by the cold.

“What’s that?” he asked.

“The prisoners’ choir,” the corporal answered. “They’re really rather good actually, they even stretch to a bit of Wagner and Mozart when the mood takes them. That’s one of their favorites, though. ‘Lili Marlene,’ it’s called. It’s very popular with the soldiers on both sides.”

“I recognize it,” Armstrong said. “It’s been on the radio.”

Which may have been true, but it was the recording by English singer Anne Shelton he remembered. They had borrowed it from the radio station after some bright spark from the army sent a telegram suggesting that learning the words to the song would be useful for the cover story they were creating for Rudy.

Armstrong had been angry at the sheer amateurishness of the command. “Where in the hell does he think we are going to get that in northern bloody Alberta? Does he think German sheet music just grows on trees?”

Along with the recording, they had commandeered a German-English dictionary from the school. They sat in front of the detachment gramophone, transcribing the words from the song before translating them into German. Armstrong had thought it a waste of time, but he had been carried along by his constable’s enthusiasm.

The holding cell was small, fronted by an even smaller office. Armstrong stopped there first, taking off his layers, exposing his uniform. The lieutenant at the desk looked like a teenager, newly promoted, trying to fill out his uniform. He had large owlish glasses with thick lenses that told Armstrong why he wasn’t serving in a more active role.

Armstrong picked up the paperwork, glancing over it. Feldwebel Pieter Schmid, the suspect, having lost part of his foot, had been captured in Normandy in July 1944, and shipped back to the prisoner of war camps in North America. There wasn’t a lot of information about him; prisoners were only obliged to give their name, rank and service number. Schmid had been in the camp for only a month, which raised questions in Armstrong’s mind. Even with his injury, why had it taken six months for Schmid to get here, and where had he been?

As Armstrong walked back to the cell, he heard the lieutenant pick up the phone and dial.

Feldwebel Schmid lounged on a cot in the cell, smoking a cigarette. It was a standard military folding cot, the same ones they used at police training. If you knew where to kick it, the cot’s legs would collapse. Armstrong did so, and Schmid fell to the floor, his dignity and cigarettes scattered.

“Next time I walk into your cell, you stand to attention,” Armstrong said in German.

Schmid looked surprised, then said, “I speak English.”

“Good. Then tell me why you killed Hertzen.”

“What makes you think I did?” Schmid said. There was a slight air of confidence about him, unwarranted given the report Armstrong had read.

“You were seen by one of the guards.” Armstrong looked at his notes. “Tower 7 has an excellent view of the only door to the building. Prisoner Rudi Hertzen was seen entering the entertainment storeroom at 16:30 hours. It was snowing, and his were the only footprints into the building until 16:48, when you went in. You came out again at 16:52, leaving your fresh prints in the snow. At 17:14, the guard realized he hadn’t seen Hertzen leave the building, so he raised the alarm. They found Hertzen, dead, stabbed in the throat. They arrested you 47 minutes later. Any questions?”

“They couldn’t identify anyone from Tower 7,” Schmid said. “It was dark.”

“There’s a lamp above the door. You were recognized.”

“By a retired soldier from 80 yards away? They can’t even see beyond their noses.”

“There are only a handful of prisoners with authorized access,” Armstrong said, “and you are the only one with a pronounced limp.” He closed his notes. “I’d like your written confession, if only to save you the embarrassment of telling the court how incompetent you were. In all my years as a policeman, I have never seen such a ham-fisted murder. You really thought you could get away with this in one of the most closely guarded camps in the country?”

Still looking surly, Schmid remained silent.

Armstrong was angry, angrier than he had ever been. He wanted to knock the sullenness off Schmid’s face. It was a rage he had never before felt on the job. He clenched his fists. No, that’s not the way. The book. Do things by the book.

“The good news is that you will be tried for murder in Fort Clearwater and not in a military court, so it will be quick. No hiding behind the Geneva convention for you.”

“And the bad news?” Schmid said.

“He’s a hanging judge, so whichever way this war ends, you won’t be around to see it.”

Armstrong had the satisfaction of seeing the terror on Schmid’s face. Then he felt guilty about that satisfaction, as if he had not maintained police procedural standards of impartiality.

He was also confused by Schmid’s behavior. It was as if Schmid had believed, up until that moment, that he was going to get away with it. But how? It was the easiest murder case Armstrong had ever had to handle. He had no doubt that Schmid would see the gallows before summer.

“Sergeant!”

Armstrong turned at the voice behind him. It was the duty lieutenant.

“Sergeant, the colonel wishes to see you immediately.”

***

The same corporal led him to the commanding officer’s building.

Judging from his ribbons, Colonel Drummond was a veteran of several wars. They were a proud record of Drummond’s service, and a storyboard that Armstrong could read as well as any soldier. In addition to medals from the First World War and other campaigns, Drummond had the Queen’s South Africa Medal for service in the Second Boer War. That had ended in 1902, so this was a man with nearly 50 years in uniform. Armstrong was impressed.

“Did he do it?” the colonel asked.

“You know that I don’t have to share the results of my investigation with you.”

“Indeed. How far do you think you are going to get in this camp—my camp—without my permission?”

Armstrong bristled, but the colonel went on. “Come, come,” Drummond said. “Sit down. And please, answer my question. It is of the utmost importance.”

“Very well,” Armstrong said. “Feldwebel Schmid may be the dumbest murderer I have ever met. He is the only suspect and until I told him he’d likely be hanged by July, he seemed to be oblivious to his situation. If I cared enough, I would say he is mentally incapacitated.”

“In some ways, it’s worse than that,” Drummond said. “Here, read this missive from HQ. It will explain everything, including Schmid’s hubris.”

It was a short message. Armstrong read it in silence, horror mounting within him. He flung it at the colonel and raced for the door, running through the cold to the guardroom.

***

“Tell me who you are.”

“Feldwebel Pieter Schmid, service number—”

Armstrong turned to the lieutenant. “Get out. This interview is now classified.”

“But—”

“Get out now or so help me I will throw you out the window.”

The lieutenant left as rapidly as his dignity would allow.

“Now,” Armstrong said, “Tell me who you really are.”

“My name isn’t important, but I’m a captain, undercover, from U.S. Army Intelligence. I was injured during the invasion, sent home and given this assignment.”

“Hence the limp,” Armstrong said. The injury also explained Schmid’s whereabouts since D-day.

“It’s less of a hindrance here than in the infantry.”

“And your mission?”

“You are not cleared for that.”

“I am cleared for anything I want,” Armstrong said. “Even though our countries are allies, you are a foreign spy dressed in enemy uniform. You have no legal protection under the Geneva Convention, and you have just murdered a Canadian policeman.”

Armstrong wasn’t sure about that last detail, but he bet that Schmid knew even less about international law than he did.

“Unteroffizier Rudi Hertzen was actually RCMP Constable Rudy Becker, a colleague and a friend,” Armstrong said. “I should shoot you myself, save the hangman’s time. Now, I’ll ask you once again. What was your mission?”

“Can I sit down, at least?”

Armstrong dragged two chairs into the cell.

“I was given my cover last year,” Schmid said, “and inserted into the prisoner system along with about a dozen others. We were all German-Americans, and we didn’t know where we were going, I swear it. We were all supposed to be in the States. Six hundred prisoner of war camps on this side of the Atlantic. What are the odds I’d end up in Canada? Typical military SNAFU.”

“What’s a SNAFU?”

“Military slang. Situation normal, all, er, all fouled up.”

“The mission,” Armstrong said. “Get to the mission.”

“Nazi hunting. We’re trying to identify who the Nazis are.”

“Why?”

“There are stories coming out of Europe of atrocities being committed. Really bad stuff, like you couldn’t even imagine,” Schmid said. “The war is going to end soon, this year definitely, and the high command doesn’t want the Nazis getting away. There’s talk of trials after the war for murder and even worse. They are calling them war crimes. The Germans have been trying to exterminate all the Jews in Europe, as well as gypsies, homosexuals, the insane, socialists and many more.”

Schmid paused to take a drag from his cigarette. His raspy voice gave credence to his story. “We don’t want any of them to get away, and it’s not just us. The Brits started infiltrating their own people into their camps nearly two years ago, and I guess Hertzen was part of the same for you guys.”

“And?” Armstrong prodded him.

“And it was working for me. I grew up speaking German. I’m from Little Germany on the Lower East Side. So I sound the part, and my cover story was good. When I arrived, I joined the choir as members get special privileges. They can move around the camp easier, they have access to all the prisoners.

“In just over a month, I’ve identified a hundred men who are hard-core Nazis, and I have names and details. These records are going to be important. I kept notes of the things they said, where they’d served, their organizations, the work they had done. They trusted me, thought I was one of them. I was doing well. I had the evidence to nail them. And then Hertzen arrived.”

“What happened?”

“He stuck out like a sore thumb. Whoever briefed him…”

Schmid paused, wiping his brow with the back of his hand. He looked at Armstrong, half-sad, half-defiant.

“I’m Jewish. Half my family is German, but on my Mother’s side they’re Ukrainian, and her family escaped the pogroms in Russia. I’ve heard all the stories from back then, but what the Nazis are doing to the Jews now is far beyond anything this world has ever seen. Which makes this work vital. My notes are needed. After the war, they have to be held accountable.

“So when Hertzen blundered in, looking like a Boy Scout, it didn’t take long before people started getting suspicious. Not just of him, of anyone who seemed too friendly.”

Schmid paused to light another cigarette. He was chain-smoking now, the rhythm of his actions punctuating his story.

“It was at choir practice yesterday. I heard some of them, the Nazis, talking about Hertzen. They said they knew he was a spy, and they were going to get him during the night, make him talk. After practice, I watched him go to the storeroom and followed him in. I told him what they were saying, what they were threatening to do to him. He didn’t believe me, and he attacked me with a shank.”

“He attacked you?” Armstrong didn’t believe Schmid, could sense the cover-up starting to fall into place. Schmid had been protecting himself. He hadn’t cared who Rudy was.

“He attacked me. I defended myself. He died.”

“Where is the shank?”

“Somewhere out there in the snow. I don’t know where.”

His story rang false in Armstrong’s ears, but it was good enough to keep Schmid from ever seeing the inside of a courtroom. The Canadian government would not risk the wrath of the Americans by putting one of theirs on trial.

***

Armstrong stood, defeated. He was never going to be allowed to arrest Schmid, regardless of what he’d done. He would try, but he knew how this would play out. They’d escort him off the base, he’d write a report, send it to RCMP headquarters in Edmonton along with his findings. And it would be buried, or maybe returned with a recommendation that Sergeant Armstrong be posted to Tuktoyaktuk.

“Just one last question. How did they discover he was a spy?”

Schmid laughed. “I told you he hadn’t been prepared. During choir practice, he started singing the wrong words to ‘Lili Marlene.’”

“What do you mean?”

“Hertzen didn’t know the German lyrics. It sounded like he was singing a translation of the English words. I tell ya, the Nazis were near killing themselves laughing at how incompetent he was.”

***

Armstrong saw Drummond before he left. He wanted to tell him that a good man had died, and he would do all within his power to have Schmid arrested.

Drummond allowed him to rage on for two minutes before he stopped him.

“We are at war,” Drummond said. “I don’t know why the undercover American killed the undercover Canadian, nor do I care. The reason why I don’t care is there is nothing I can do. This is a Grade A first-class mess. We should have known the American was here. If we had we could have separated them so they didn’t get in each other’s way.”

He sighed and rubbed his hand over his bald head, as if to erase the memory of it all.

“The Americans will never admit they made a mistake, and by the time you get back to Fort Clearwater and write your report, I’ll wager that Schmid will be on his way home,” Drummond said. “I’m sorry for your loss, as well as the loss to the RCMP. Any man who is prepared to do what Constable Rudy Becker volunteered for is a brave man.”

“Yes,” Armstrong said. “He was very brave.”

***

The wind started up again as he rode back to town. He had Rudy’s personal effects strapped to the motorcycle and he could feel the box nudging against his back.

At the detachment, he sat in the cabin he’d shared with Rudy. As a sergeant, he’d rated separate accommodation, and it had been logical for Rudy, as the senior constable, to use the other bedroom.

Armstrong walked into the room. It was sparse, Rudy had never owned much. In the morning, he would pack it all up and send it to the family. Rudy had a younger sister. She was engaged to a mining engineer in Calgary and had been planning a summer wedding. Rudy had wanted Armstrong to go down with him to the wedding.

“You’ll like her,” he’d said, “and they’ll like you.”

The side table next to the bed held some papers. Armstrong picked them up. They were the translation of “Lili Marlene” they’d worked on together.

“This is on me,” Armstrong said aloud. “This is all on me. Oh Rudy, my Rudy. What will I do?”

Then he started to cry and sat down on the bed in Rudy’s room, the bed they’d never slept in because Armstrong’s room had more space and his bed was bigger.

He cried for his loss, his heart-wrenching loss, and he cried because he felt responsible for Rudy’s death. Rudy, so brave yet so foolish.

Mostly though, he cried because this was the only place he could.

“Oh, Rudy. My poor Rudy.”