This Side of Murder

by Anna Lee Huber

  A tall brick wall extended past the gatehouse, acting as the boundary to the castle’s smaller east garden, through which we’d passed upon our initial arrival to the island. We followed the wall into the sheltered space, which operated as a sort of a breakwind against the increasingly stronger gusts that threatened to rip my hat from my head. However, the trees above us still whipped about, their leaves slapping together like sharp applause, reminding us that rain was not far off. The air was thick with anticipation and the scent of the sea and the coming storm.

  “You know that what Felix said back there was utter claptrap,” he insisted. His eyes were soft with concern. “Charlie might have idolized Sidney to some extent, but he never—”

  I pressed a hand to his arm, halting his flow of words. “I know. There’s no need to explain,” I assured him with a tight smile. “Felix likes to stir up trouble.” My brow furrowed. “I think he just wants everyone to be as frustrated and miserable as he is.”

  Of course, that didn’t make his words any less true. Maybe Charlie had had strong feelings for Sidney, inappropriate or otherwise, but I knew Sidney better than to believe he’d ever returned them. I was fairly certain he’d always been faithful to me. I had never questioned the truth of our physical intimacy. But even if he hadn’t, I couldn’t believe it would have been with a man, and certainly not with a subordinate. I had overheard some of the crude comments made by my colleagues in the Secret Service. I was not ignorant of the existence of men who preferred the company of men. But Sidney was not one of them.

  Max sighed heavily. “You’ve described Felix to a T. It’s why he was never promoted beyond first lieutenant. We couldn’t risk having him destroy the morale of an entire company.”

  “I’m surprised he was promoted beyond second lieutenant.”

  He cleared his throat. “Yes, well, by the end we were running rather short of experienced officers.”

  I nodded, feeling thoughtless for even remarking on it.

  Max lifted aside the branch of a holly tree that had dipped low over the path, letting me pass through first. I noticed that his eyes cut behind us as he did so. Checking to be certain we hadn’t been followed?

  “I hope I’m not being too forward,” he murmured, lowering his voice so that it was just audible above the crunch of the dirt beneath our feet and the rustle of the wind through the trees above us. “But I couldn’t help but notice your reaction to the letter the butler passed you earlier, and I wondered . . . Well, I suppose I’m curious whether we’ve both found ourselves in the same predicament.”

  I looked up at him expectantly, refusing to react, to give any indication that I faced any particular dilemma until he explained his. My time with the Secret Service had taught me too well that it was better to play dumb than risk revealing yourself unless you were absolutely certain of the other person’s loyalties. And sometimes not even then.

  He offered me a strained smile. “I received a rather . . . unsettling letter a few weeks ago. It urged me to attend this house party.”

  My back straightened at his admission.

  “You see, I wasn’t going to come. In fact, I couldn’t figure out why I’d even been invited. Walter and I had always rubbed along quite fine, but we certainly weren’t any sort of chums. Definitely not close enough for him to have invited me to his engagement party.” He frowned down at his feet. “And then this letter arrived, and after reading it, I suppose I felt I had to come.”

  “What did it say?”

  His soft gray eyes were troubled. “That the sender—whoever he is—has information about Ben Gerard’s death.”

  “Sam’s brother?”

  He nodded.

  “But what information?”

  He raked his hand back through his hair in obvious frustration. “I don’t know. I admit I was suspicious of Ben’s death from the beginning, but I couldn’t find any evidence to prove it didn’t happen exactly as it was reported. That it wasn’t just another senseless casualty among the hundreds of thousands of other senseless casualties.”

  I inhaled sharply, trying to breathe past the band tightening around my chest. The same band that had seemed to press down on me, making it impossible to breathe deeply throughout the entire war.

  “Why were you suspicious, then?” I turned to study his furrowed brow, remembering what Sam and Max had revealed this morning. “Was there something odd about that trench raid?”

  “No, not really,” he admitted. But then he hesitated, as if weighing how much he wished to say. His mouth twisted in scorn. “Unless you count Ben’s being ordered to take part, when he’d led another stunt into No Man’s Land just five days earlier. Generally, the men, particularly the officers, rotated that duty.”

  “Because it was so dangerous?” I guessed.

  “Yes.”

  I scowled at the bushes bordering the path. Then why had Ben been ordered to go again so soon?

  “And Ben came to see me shortly before he was killed.”

  Hearing the graveness of Max’s voice, I looked up to meet his eyes, knowing what he had to reveal next was important.

  “He confided in me that he had some misgivings about the death of two soldiers from his battalion who had been convicted of desertion and killed by firing squad a few months prior.”

  My eyes widened. A serious offense indeed.

  “Ben was convinced the two men were framed, and that the entire matter was orchestrated by one or more of his fellow officers.”

  My head spun at the implication, and my heart clutched in dread. “Did he say who?” I finally managed to push from my dry throat.

  “No, he was hesitant to name names. Not without proof.” Max’s brow lowered thunderously. “But, by Jove, I wish he had.”

  “Why on earth would someone do that to two innocent men? Men they commanded?”

  But I was really thinking of Sidney. Why would he do such a thing? Was this the crime that my mysterious correspondent had alluded to as being traitorous?

  Max clasped his hands behind his back, staring at the path before us. “To cover up their own crimes. Out of pure spite. Who knows?”

  “But aren’t you at least familiar with the deaths he was referring to? I mean, wouldn’t the paperwork for such a court-martial have passed through your HQ? And since it was a capital offense, wouldn’t the convictions have needed to be approved?”

  He seemed astonished I knew this. “Yes. But, following protocol, the matter was presided over by officers from another division. I only saw the paperwork later because I wanted to understand what had happened.”

  His eyes were dark with shadows, and I realized what he wasn’t saying. He’d studied the case because he felt responsible. Yet another failure he heaped on his plate.

  “So you know which officers were at least involved? Who his accusers were?” I pressed.

  “I do. But I don’t know if Gerard was suspicious of all of them. I don’t actually have any proof of wrongdoing on any of their parts, only Ben’s vague remarks that he had uncovered discrepancies between some of the officers’ stories and what some of his men had confessed to him about the matter. So you understand why I find Ben’s being ordered to take part in that raiding party—a mission from which he never returned—to be a little too coincidental for my liking?”

  “I do,” I replied calmly, though my insides were tied in knots. “And now Jimmy is dead—one of the men who reported that Ben had been killed.”

  “Exactly.” I could hear the satisfaction in his voice that I had worked out that implication on my own. That he hadn’t had to put it into words. “Jimmy was also one of the officers who testified at that court-martial.”

  “So Jimmy’s apparent suicide might not be so apparent after all,” I added, finishing both of our thoughts.

  I wished I could feel as relieved as he seemed to be to have shared all of this with me, but the truth was his confession had only made me more wary. Yes, I now had more information than before about what my anonymous lett
er writer may have been hinting at. I had another potential angle to pursue. But I had no way of knowing if Max was being completely honest with me.

  Maybe Max truly had received a letter from a mystery correspondent. Maybe he had been lured here the same as I had. However, I also couldn’t dismiss the possibility that Max himself could actually be my anonymous letter writer. That this sudden revelation wasn’t merely a way to share information with me without giving himself away directly.

  As angry as that last message had made me, I couldn’t dismiss the warning it had contained from my mind. The truth was, I didn’t know who I could trust. And if I chose the wrong person to confide in, it could end in dire consequences—for me, for Sidney’s memory, and possibly for another guest if Jimmy’s death was not as straightforward as it had been made to appear.

  Crossing my arms over my chest against a sudden chill, I cupped my elbows with my hands and glanced sideways up at Max where he continued to stroll beside me. The thorny thing was that I wanted to trust him. I wanted to take someone into my confidence, and he seemed the natural choice.

  For reasons I didn’t fully understand, I felt drawn to him. I could already feel the seeds of attachment beginning to grow inside me, stirring something within my breast. It was comforting, and yet somehow terrifying all at once. And I wasn’t sure I wanted to name this feeling or examine it too closely. Not now. Not yet. Maybe not ever.

  I exhaled a ragged breath. “And you have no idea who sent the letter?” I could hear my anxiety and wished I’d taken the time to temper my tone.

  Fortunately, Max seemed too preoccupied by his own thoughts to notice. “To be honest, at first I wondered if it might be you.”

  “Me?”

  “Yes.” His gaze held mine steadily. “There was something in your eyes when we chatted on that road north of Poole after our near collision. Something that made me think you knew something. You seemed . . . uncertain.”

  “Uncertain?”

  “Like you weren’t sure how to proceed after you discovered who I was. I thought maybe you hadn’t been prepared to meet me so soon.”

  Thinking back on those few snatched moments, I supposed I could see how he had interpreted my reactions as such. Except, he had my motivations turned around. I wasn’t hesitant to share information. I was wary of receiving it.

  “But how would I have known anything about Ben Gerard’s death?” I asked.

  “That I wasn’t sure about, though I supposed there was always the chance, however unlikely, that Sidney had shared something with you. But then Walter made his ill-advised comments at dinner.” His eyebrows arched in expectation. “And I realized you weren’t exactly who you portrayed yourself to be.”

  “Whatever do you mean,” I replied in feigned bewilderment.

  The skepticism stamped across his features told me he wasn’t fooled, but he didn’t press the matter. “Well, regardless, your reaction to that letter you received this morning made me change my mind.”

  I considered lying. Telling him the message had come from my mother, or a friend in London, or a creditor pestering me to pay a bill. Anything but the truth. But whether he was my unknown letter writer or another recipient of that mysterious person’s correspondence, I knew he wouldn’t believe me. Not to mention that it seemed an ill use of the faith he had shown me if he was merely another pawn lured here. I needed to tell him something, even if it wasn’t the strict truth.

  “You’re right,” I admitted. “I also received a letter from an anonymous sender.”

  The manner in which Max’s head perked up, as if he was almost shocked to discover his suspicions were correct, gave me more confidence in what I was about to share.

  “Like you, I never intended to attend this house party. Though I was less shocked than you seem to have been to receive an invitation. Sidney and Walter had been the closest of friends, after all. And with Sidney . . . gone, it seemed they were extending a courtesy to invite me in his stead.”

  I inhaled, buying myself some time as I debated how much to share. “But then I received a letter urging me to attend. That the letter writer had information about Sidney’s death I needed to know.” I frowned. “Naturally, I was mistrustful. But the way they spoke about my life, about Sidney’s life before he died. Well, I thought if there was any chance they were being truthful, I should come, or else I should never forgive myself for not hearing what they had to say.”

  Max’s steps halted as we reached the arched doorway through which we had entered the castle’s east garden when we first arrived on the island. I stood farther back, still sheltered by the wall, away from the worst of the wind now buffeting the island. But in the distance I could see the waves of gray water being whipped up to foaming white.

  When he turned to look back at me, his eyes were dark with apprehension. “Did they give you any hint as to what information about Sidney’s death they wished to share?” he asked, forced to raise his voice to be heard over the gusts of wind.

  “None.”

  He did not respond immediately, but I could see his mind was chewing on something unpleasant. When next he spoke, I wondered if it would not have been better had I told him the complete truth.

  “Then maybe Sidney’s death is also not so straightforward.”

  I stiffened. “What do you mean?”

  He moved back into the garden, away from the arch, taking hold of my arm to draw me closer. “I’m not sure how much was disclosed to you about your husband’s death. I suspect not much. Commanding officers tend to be rather circumspect in that regard. But your husband was killed during a time of great chaos. The Germans bombarded our trenches for days and then overran our front lines, and some of our commanders”—his voice hardened in frustration—“being too stubborn to accept when withdrawal with the chance to regroup was necessary, failed to call the retreat until far too late. At some point during that turmoil, your husband was shot and killed.”

  I stared up at the grim set of Max’s jaw, trying to breathe, struggling to maintain my composure. I hadn’t known any of the details of Sidney’s death, only the date, the name of the battle, and the possible location where he was buried. And yet I sensed Max was trying to tell me something more, something I hadn’t yet grasped.

  “I wasn’t there, but I read enough of the reports to comprehend it was absolute madness. If anyone were going to choose a moment to silence your husband, Verity, it would have been the perfect opportunity.”

  CHAPTER 11

  I was so stunned I had trouble finding my words. “Are you saying. . .” I crushed the mauve taffeta of my skirt in my hands. “Do you mean . . .”

  “I don’t know anything,” Max replied. “Not for certain. But I do know that I wasn’t the only person to whom Ben Gerard voiced his doubts. He told me he’d also confided in Sidney. And while your husband’s death was many months later, I don’t think he’d forgotten about it. Not if the fact that he requested Sam Gerard join his company is any indication.”

  I spun away to press my hand to the rough bark of an oak tree, trying to remind myself that this was all just supposition born of my lie.

  But was it?

  None of the facts and implications Max was relaying had been changed. They were still true no matter what my mystery correspondent had written. Could Sidney have been killed by friendly fire? Or was the crucial bit of knowledge contained in Max’s words that Sidney had also known about Ben’s suspicions? And knowing what Ben suspected, had Sidney then chosen to silence him?

  Max stood behind me, silently offering me his sympathy. I was grateful he didn’t try to touch me or offer me any hollow words of comfort. Had he been more demonstrative, I’m not sure I could have remained composed.

  I lifted my gaze from the point I stared at unseeing, and a blur of movement in the distance caught my eye. Standing straighter, I tried to peer through the curtain of trees and flowering shrubs to catch another glimpse of what I thought I’d seen. But whoever the person was—if they had even been
there at all—had vanished.

  I swiveled toward Max to ask if he’d seen anything, but his gaze was still considerately averted from me. When he turned to face me, I could see no trace of alarm, only weary compassion.

  Maybe it had only been a trick of the light. Some illusion created by the wind-beaten trees and the growing gloom. As if to emphasize that explanation, I felt the first splatter of rain against my cheek and glanced up at the forbidding sky.

  Max stepped forward to pull my arm through his and hastened me down the path toward the house. But just at that moment Felix came bustling through the archway, which led down toward Umbersea Castle’s grandiose pier, almost colliding with us. Both men pulled up short, glaring at each other.

  Though Max had always been careful to mask his true feelings about Felix in the past, he did not bother to do so now, eyeing him with naked hostility and distrust. “What are you doing out here, Halbert?”

  “Not that it’s any business of yours,” Felix mocked, “but I’ve been catching a bit of fresh air before the deluge starts.” His sharp eyes raked over the sight of me clinging to Max’s steadying arm. His lips curled into a nasty sneer. “I think the more pertinent question is, what are you doing out here?” He turned his feet toward the castle, but not before adding one last parting shot. “I would have thought you’d find one of the chambers in the castle far more comfortable.”

  The muscles in Max’s arm flexed beneath mine, making me suspect he would have liked nothing better than to slug the other man. But another splatter of rain reminded us of the urgency of returning to the castle. He started forward again, tossing one last glance over his shoulder through the open arch. I followed his gaze down toward the pier where Walter’s yacht was securely docked, wondering what he was contemplating.