Murder Most Fair

by Anna Lee Huber

  My heart rose into my throat as I turned to Father, curious to hear his answer.

  He spoked measuredly. “If their anger was great enough.”

  And it was, considering all the lingering, pent-up resentment aimed at Germany, and the fact that their armies and allies had killed forty-nine of the villagers’ sons and one daughter.

  “If they could justify it to themselves as stopping a man from murdering again or fleeing from his crimes, then yes.” He looked at Sidney with a mournful glint in his eyes. “Yes, I think some of them are capable of it.”

  I’d witnessed how cruel and unforgiving people could be to one another. I’d watched a German soldier break an old man’s arm because he didn’t obey his order fast enough. I’d seen a young woman pulled out of line and led away by an officer, knowing full well what he intended to do to her. I’d watched as a pair of French citizens who had been stripped of nearly all their possessions, and reduced to near skeletons by the food restrictions, had then been shot mercilessly in the street when they were discovered concealing one small loaf of brown bread beyond their allotted restrictions. And I’d endured such things without being able to say or do anything, not only out of fear that they would turn on me, but that I would draw their attention and unwittingly reveal my true identity and endanger my mission, as well as the lives of those intelligence-gathering agents within Belgium and France who had helped me.

  But I had never expected I might witness such behavior at home, among the peaceful neighbors of the Dales. I wanted to argue that it wasn’t possible. That the people of Hawes might be grieving, but they would never let such hatred or their desire for vengeance sway them. But Father knew them far better than I did, and he was not prone to speak without careful consideration. For him to admit to such a fear, there must be a great deal of truth behind it.

  When his gaze dipped to meet mine, I could see concern deeply etched in the lines of his face. “Which is why you had better uncover the truth first.”

  I blinked in surprise. “Are you actually asking us to investigate?”

  “It’s what you did for your Aunt Ernestine, and she had high praise for you.”

  I arched a single eyebrow sardonically. “Don’t you mean Sidney?”

  “Aye, well, we all knew who was the brains behind that operation,” he jested, outright shocking me, and making Sidney’s lips quirk upward at the corners. “Whether or not they wish to admit it.”

  Father looked behind him as the door opened, nodding at a neighbor as they ambled away. When he turned back, he moved a step closer, lowering his voice. “That girl deserves justice for what was done to her, and I don’t wish to see the wrong man punished simply for the crime of being German.” His gaze shifted to the side, his brow darkening. “I’d also like to know if one of my neighbors is capable of killing a woman in cold blood for the same reason.”

  I couldn’t say no. Not when I wanted the same answers. Not when I already intended to continue investigating. But there was one last hurdle to overcome that he might be able to help us with. “Mother won’t like it.”

  “I’ll handle your mother.”

  I looked at Sidney, who had observed this exchange without speaking, but who I knew was already aware of my intentions. Then I nodded. “But we’ll need your help,” I told my father. “We need you to keep your ears open and speak with any neighbors you can. People may tell you something they won’t tell us.”

  We all looked up as the door opened again, but this time it was Freddy, who emerged without his coat and hat. He hunched his shoulders, huddling against the wind.

  “Metcalfe has agreed to release the body,” he told us. “Shall I handle the arrangements? I’m headed in that direction anyway to make a call on Mrs. Askew.”

  Father accepted his offer, and the two of them conferred briefly over what was to be done while Sidney and I moved off toward Father’s Rolls-Royce. On the drive home, I was largely silent, staring out the window and contemplating Bauer’s death while Father and Sidney conversed in the front seat. The last of the autumn leaves scattered in our passing, pinwheeling down the side of the road, a bright blot in the gloomy landscape.

  My thoughts slipped to the coming holidays at the end of the month, and whether my parents still chopped down an evergreen to be decorated for Christmas, a tradition my grandmother had brought with her to Yorkshire over sixty years ago. A German tradition.

  During the war, there had been high anti-German sentiment, and a push to abandon all things German. I wondered if in that fervor my parents had abandoned the use of a Christmas tree. And if they had, would they revive it now that the war was over, now that Tante Ilse was here with us?

  As we slowed to turn onto the drive that led up through the copse of trees to Brock House, I contemplated whether I should be the one to request we still do so.

  That was when I spotted him. The man watching us from behind a tree about fifty feet away.

  “Stop the car,” I ordered, sitting forward.

  “What?” One of the men broke off to ask.

  “Stop the car!”

  Father lurched to a halt at the edge of the drive, and I threw open the door to leap out. I set off at a run through the trees, hurdling the shallow ditch at the side of the road. Sidney shouted my name, but I didn’t have time to turn and address him. Not if I was to catch the man. Where had he gone? There! Between the pair of twisted rowan trees. The distance separating us was growing.

  “Stop!” I called after him, pressing onward, grateful I’d chosen to wear half boots instead of pumps for the inquest. Dirt and decaying leaves churned up beneath my feet as they pounded over the earth. The man swerved out of my sight behind a cluster of gorse bushes. When I reached the other side, I could no longer see him, though I ran several more steps in the direction I thought he’d gone before blundering to a stop. I swiveled left and then right, gasping for breath as I scoured the woods.

  “What are you doing?” Sidney demanded as he caught up with me.

  “I saw him . . . in the trees,” I panted. There was no need to explain who “he” was. “He ran . . . I think that way.” I pointed. “But I lost sight of him.” I began to move forward again, but Sidney grabbed hold of my arm.

  “Verity, stop. Think. What exactly were you going to do if you caught up with this man? He could have a gun.”

  I could see now that he was angry. The muscles in his jaw ticked and his eyes snapped. His hat had been abandoned somewhere behind us, either in the motorcar or on the ground, and his dark hair had fallen over his brow, curling as it was wont to do when not kept ruthlessly restrained.

  “He doesn’t,” I protested. “I could tell.” I pulled against him. “Come on. We’re losing him.”

  He yanked me back. “There’s no way you could tell that. Not from the brief glimpse you must have gotten of him. Verity, please.”

  It was the pleading note in his voice that made me stop struggling and turn to face him. He was right. I couldn’t have known. Not for certain. Perhaps it had been foolish of me to run after him, but if I hadn’t reacted immediately, I’d feared he would be long gone before we could return to search for him.

  However, these woods didn’t stretch on forever. They were merely a small copse bordered by open meadows in three directions, and the road to the south.

  I turned in that direction, realizing he almost certainly had doubled back, and perhaps had already slipped across the road and south toward the forests bordering the river. But what I saw before me made me stiffen.

  “I understand your desire to catch the fellow, to find out who he is, but not at risk to yourself,” Sidney scolded, only to break off at the look on my face. He turned to follow my gaze. “What? What is it?”

  In my pursuit of the man, I hadn’t taken note of my surroundings or which way we were running, and so I suddenly found myself facing the sight I’d most wished to avoid since our arrival.

  The crude treehouse was anchored in a large pocket formed between two thick b
ranches and the trunk of an old oak tree. Its boards had aged and were riddled with divots and speckled with moss, but otherwise it appeared as stable as it had always been. I wondered when the last time it had been used. Freddy had said it was still standing, but had he, or Tim, or Grace even, climbed up into it? Or had it lain empty since Rob had left home for the last time to join his squadron in early 1915?

  I flinched away from the thought, just as I flinched away from the structure. My heart now beat more wildly in my chest than it had moments before. Blood roared in my ears, and I feared I might be sick if I didn’t leave this place. Now.

  I pulled from Sidney’s grasp and began to stumble away, slowly at first, and then faster. Back the way we’d come. I didn’t know if Father would still be waiting for us at the end of the drive, but it didn’t matter. I simply had to get away.

  Sidney soon caught up with me, taking a firm grip on my elbow lest I trip in my blind flight. He didn’t speak, but I knew he must have questions. Despite my father’s jest outside the Crown, we were all well aware of Sidney’s intelligence. He must have realized the treehouse held some significance for me, and given my adverse reaction, it didn’t require a genius to realize it must have something to do with Rob.

  By the time we spied the Rolls-Royce still waiting on the drive beyond the trees, with my father standing beside it, I had mostly managed to compose myself, shoving the grief that had threatened to overwhelm me back down into the hole inside me where it belonged and stamping on it with my proverbial foot, for good measure.

  “There was a man lurking in the woods,” I explained in answer to my father’s unspoken question. “I thought it must be the man Isaac Hardcastle and Violet Capshaw were speaking of.”

  Father’s troubled gaze lifted to scan the trees beyond us before he nodded. “Good. Then maybe he already realizes we can help him if he knows something.”

  That was one possibility. But there was also a far more nefarious reason why he might have been lurking there. One that made my decision to recklessly run after him even stupider. My gaze lifted to Sidney’s stern one, realizing he was thinking the same thing.

  Father swiveled to stare down the drive. “I’ll alert the staff and tell them to inform us if they notice anyone watching the house.”

  We were silent as the motorcar continued its journey up the drive to the house. A curtain twitched in the window of the cottage as we rolled past, so I was not surprised when we entered the inner courtyard from the carriage yard that Rachel was waiting for us.

  “Is Freddy with you?” she asked, her arms crossed before her against the cold.

  “Sorry, lass,” Father told her. “He said he had to make a call on Mrs. Askew, and so I asked if he’d transport Fräulein Bauer’s body to Faber’s”—the local undertaker—“on the way.”

  She nodded stiffly, and then turned to retreat to the cottage, but I called out for her to wait. When I told Sidney to go on, I could tell from his arched eyebrows that he suspected I was stalling, not wishing to have the conversation he clearly intended to. But I had other reasons for wishing to speak to Rachel alone.

  When the men had departed, Rachel stood in the doorway, the sharp glint in her eyes not precisely inviting conversation. “Is everything all right?” I began tentatively, worried she may have sought out Freddy for an urgent reason. “Can I help?”

  She scrutinized me, and I realized I wasn’t entirely certain what her opinion of me was. “No,” she finally replied. “Miss Pettigrew has Ruth, and I’m . . .” She exhaled, releasing some of her palpable aggravation. “I just wanted to speak to Freddy.”

  I nodded, still uncertain how to broach the subject I wished to, or how she would react to my interference. I didn’t know Rachel well enough to read her, and I wasn’t certain she wanted me to. But for my brother’s sake, I decided to forge ahead.

  “You said that Freddy paces at night. That he sometimes roams the countryside.”

  Her gaze dropped to the ground, and I could tell she regretted disclosing those things before dinner the previous evening.

  “Sidney does the same thing,” I rushed to say before she withdrew.

  Her eyes lifted, glittering softly in the veiled light.

  “They all do. The men who returned. It’s . . .” I swallowed. “It’s the war, you see.” I shook my head. “Not you or me. They . . . don’t know how to leave it behind. Not after everything they’ve seen. So they try to outpace it, to drive it from their minds with exhaustion. They’re simply trying to find a way to live with it, with the memories, the best they can.”

  For a moment I thought I was helping, that perhaps Rachel might have feared the same thing Grace had said our mother did—that Freddy was having an affair. But then the skin across her angular features tightened and her shoulders stiffened. “Well, he’s home now. And he has a family counting on him. He needs to get over it.”

  With that she slammed the door of the cottage, leaving me standing on the doorstep feeling as if I’d been chastened as much as Freddy.

  CHAPTER 23

  Abbott greeted me at my parents’ door, and I was so absorbed in my thoughts over what had just happened with Rachel that I almost missed what he was saying.

  “You received a telephone call while you were out, ma’am.”

  I turned toward the butler abruptly. “Did they leave a message?”

  He traded me a piece of paper for my coat and hat, which I opened immediately.

  Plan on it. Rosalind

  Hurrying to the telephone on the bureau, I dialed the number I used to contact the Secret Service, leaving nothing but my code name as the message before ringing off.

  “I’m expecting another telephone call from Rosalind,” I told Abbott. “And I’ll be somewhere in the house until it comes through.”

  “Very good, ma’am,” he replied as I turned away.

  I spied Sidney through the door to the drawing room, but hurried on past and up the stairs, trusting he would follow. As expected, I’d done little more than remove my necklace and bracelet before he came striding through our bedchamber door. Before he could speak, I lifted the note to him for his inspection.

  “I trust that Rosalind is actually Miss Silvernickel,” he murmured, leaning against the bedpost as I traded my teardrop earrings for some more understated pearl studs.

  “Presumably,” I replied, for C’s secretary had never actually been assigned a code name before. At least, not any that I knew of. But since Rosalind was one of Shakespeare’s heroines in disguise, it seemed an appropriate sobriquet for the situation. “ ‘Plan on it’ means she has information for me. Had she messaged something like ‘can’t make it,’ that would mean the opposite.”

  “Then she’s found something.”

  “About the bomb that killed General Bishop and his staff,” I reminded him, swiveling to face him. “I can’t imagine it has anything to do with Bauer’s death.” I frowned at my reflection in the mirror. Though I’d said such things about seemingly disparate intelligence before and been proven wrong.

  He crossed to the fainting couch and dropped down on the edge of the cushions, scraping a hand back through his hair. “I suppose there’s no use speculating on what.”

  “No,” I agreed with a sigh. “But . . . I am wondering . . .” I nibbled my bottom lip, trying to find the words to voice what I was trying to say. Sidney waited patiently as I sorted through my impressions. “Well, frankly, I don’t know what to make of the suggestion that the man I saw in the woods, the man so many people have seen lingering about, speaking with Bauer, is the second deserter.”

  “Maybe he isn’t.”

  I nodded, my troubled gaze lifting to meet his. “There’s been no further notes. No attempts at blackmail. And if he’s truly meant to intimidate me, he’d doing a rather shoddy job of it. Tante Ilse’s memory isn’t what it once was,” I regretfully admitted. “And I’m starting to think she might have been mistaken.”

  “You said Landau swore that second deserter hadn�
�t been sent by him, or anyone else in the service. Do you believe him?”

  “I do. And yet I still don’t understand how the second deserter knew to go to Tante Ilse’s home. Despite her recent memory problems, I doubt she mistook the matter. Her former maid, Schmidt, would have still been alive then, and she would have been canny enough to see through most fibs. So whoever the man was, he must have been convincing.” I reached out to trail my finger over a shallow gouge in the wood at the edge of the vanity table. “I know we speculated he might have been a suspicious villager intent on entrapping her, but . . .” I tilted my head uncertainly. “That still doesn’t make sense to me.”

  “Maybe he learned about her from the first deserter.”

  I looked up at Sidney as he sank deeper into the couch, much struck by this idea.

  He shrugged. “Maybe he wanted to help another friend or family member escape from the fighting.”

  “That actually makes a great deal of sense. Becker was obviously a man who cared significantly for his loved ones. It would be logical that he might attempt to help another soldier in that way.” I sat taller in my eagerness. “He could have described the route we’d taken, assured them Tante Ilse’s was a safe place to transform themselves before escaping farther into Germany. They wouldn’t have had the forged papers and documents Becker had been given by us, but they would still have had a chance of passing unchallenged if they feigned an injury or some such thing.”

  I breathed easier having this possible explanation. At least, for a moment. I frowned. “But then why would the second deserter then follow Tante Ilse and her maid to England?”

  “Perhaps it’s just as you said a moment ago. Maybe he didn’t, and your great-aunt is mistaken.” His brow knitted. “Or he followed her hoping she would help him. After all, she’d assisted him in the past under difficult circumstances. Maybe he hoped she’d do the same now.”

  I tilted my head, considering this. “So he approached Bauer, hoping she might intercede on his behalf since Tante Ilse rarely, if ever, ventures out on her own. Her health is too frail for that now.” I felt a pinch in my chest just stating those words. “It makes sense. It even explains why she might have been asking Nimble questions about me, and why she asked me to meet her in that field barn. Maybe she intended to introduce me to him.” I grimaced in skepticism. “And then he killed her?”