by Charles Todd
Sunday morning it rained again. Not just the occasional shower, but a hard steady rain that had no intention of going away.
Most of us went with Serena to attend morning services at St. Ambrose Church in Diddlestoke, and listened to a homily on faith in times of trouble. The rector, aptly named Mr. Parsons, was eloquent. Most of the congregation were wearing black, although the Government had tried to persuade people to eschew mourning, to keep up the spirits of those at home as well as the returning wounded. My blue uniform coat stood out among them.
On the walk home, I asked if anyone knew someone in the Wiltshires, adding casually, "I haven't heard from friends in a while. Are they facing serious opposition? Should I be worrying?"
There was a general shaking of heads. Lieutenant Bellis added, "I shouldn't, if I were you. Your letters probably haven't caught up with you yet."
I had to leave it there.
Jack and Serena had gone ahead, to see that breakfast was ready for us, and afterward we played bridge. It was fun at first, but then the friendly bickering grew more strident as the better players argued over each hand. I lost interest and wandered away.
Captain Truscott was a tall, thin man suffering from nerves. His hands shook as he dealt the cards, almost like a palsy. No one had said anything as he twice dropped cards, or his fork fought to find his mouth at meals. But his mind was sharp and his sense of humor intact.
He too was soon banished from the tables, and he came in to join me in the music room. He'd asked me earlier to call him Freddy.
"May I join you?" he asked politely.
"Of course. This is a sanctuary for hopeless bridge players."
He laughed. "Do you play?" He gestured toward the piano.
"Not as well as I should like." Pianos are delicate creatures and dislike being shipped around the world, much less being carted from cantonment to cantonment on the backs of camels or in swaying oxcarts, absorbing dust and monsoons in equal measure. Lessons were possible only when my mother could find an instrument in fair enough tune to make learning the rudiments of playing even possible. She has perfect pitch, and I realized much later what agony of spirit she must have endured, even trying to pass on a little of her skill to her only daughter.
Captain Truscott walked across the room, sat down at the piano, adjusted his chair a little, and began to play.
Freddy, I discovered, was amazingly gifted, his hands steady and sure on the keys. I came to join him, turning pages in the music he'd found. It was a pleasure to listen to him.
He smiled up at me, but I could see his mind was elsewhere, as if the music reached deep inside.
As he moved on to another piece, this one from memory, he said, "Marjorie Evanson liked to listen to my playing. Her husband was Serena's brother. A pilot. They don't have much of a record for longevity. Marjorie formed a sort of club for women who were the wives or widows of fliers. They met once a week in her London house to give each other support and comfort."
Something else I didn't know about this woman.
"Who has taken over the group now?"
He shrugged. "I hope someone has. But she was the driving force. It may have collapsed without her."
Moving effortlessly to another piece, this one an Irish ballad, the keys rippling softly under light fingers, he fell silent.
Then to my astonishment he said, "There was another man. I don't think Serena knows. But I saw them together some months before Marjorie's death. Two? Three? I'm not sure. At any rate, they were in a small restaurant on the outskirts of Rochester. Not a place I'd expect to find her, but I knew her at once. I'd had a flat, you see, and had to wait for it to be repaired. So I'd come to The Black Horse to have something to eat while I waited. There was a girl with me-she was engaged to someone else and worried about gossip. I was taking her back to London for her fiance, it was completely aboveboard, but you know how people talk."
I could easily see how that might happen. With trains so crowded and having to wait for troop-train priority, everyone asked for lifts from someone going their way.
"Did Marjorie see you?"
"Oh, yes, I'm sure she did. She was facing the door as I stepped into the room. She looked away at once, and I backed out, telling Nancy I didn't care for the restaurant after all. I couldn't see the man she was with. His back was to me, the lights were dim, and there must have been something wrong with the chimney, because there was a smoke haze hanging about. I knew it wasn't Meriwether, but that's about it. The man was dark, and looked to be about my height. Before Marjorie saw me, they had their heads together in a way that seemed rather-intimate, if you know what I mean."
I did. And his description matched that of the man I'd seen. "Could you tell if he was in uniform? Anything to indicate rank or regiment?"
He shook his head. "I was too busy beating a hasty retreat. He could have been-"
And at that critical moment, the door opened and Cynthia came in with Lieutenant Gilbert.
"We heard the music," she said. "It's war in there-" She gestured over her shoulder. I could just hear Patricia arguing with Jack Melton about a hand. "We've escaped."
That was the end of a private conversation, but just before lunch, when we had no more than a minute alone, Freddy said, "I can trust you to keep that confidence? I wouldn't want to hurt Serena."
"Of course."
And that was that. I walked over to where Jack was showing off his gun collection. The cabinet was mahogany and lined with a pale velvet. Two prizes were there on display. I'd noticed them before. Jack was just pointing to the early American Colt revolver.
"My uncle went out to the American West to raise cattle. He had a weak chest and he hoped either for a cure or to die of it more quickly out there. To everyone's amazement, he survived, made a fortune, came back to England, and lived to be seventy-seven."
Everyone laughed, as they were meant to, and Jack's hand moved onto a pair of dueling pistols. Halfway there I saw his fingers pause for an instant where the lining was indented but nothing lay in that spot. It was an infinitesimal pause, but I saw the flicker of expression on his face and then he went on smoothly, "These belonged to my great-grandfather. Handsome, aren't they? He bought them not to kill anyone but because he believed a gentleman ought to own a pair. They were never fired in anger, but I have it on good authority that when he tried them here at the Hall, they pulled slightly to the right, and he missed his target, hit his coachman's pet goat instead, and there was a terrible uproar. The goat survived, but the tip of one horn was shorter than the other for the rest of its life, and my great-grandfather was required by the magistrate to pay compensation. Only no one could decide on the value of a goat. In the end my great-grandfather paid the coachman five pounds, a princely sum in that day, and was ordered to swear he would never dismiss the coachman or eat the goat."
I moved past them as his audience laughed again, and went to find Mary. Our train left for London an hour after lunch, and we were nearly ready.
She was rather quiet on the first leg of our journey. Busy with my own thoughts, I was content to let the silence between us lengthen.
After a time she said, "You know, it just goes to show that to eat well, one should live on a farm."
That was not as far-fetched a conversational gambit as it might sound. She was seeing a naval officer whose father was a gentleman farmer, like Jack, and she had been dithering over whether to marry him should he propose or find someone more likely to enjoy the social whirl in London.
I murmured something noncommittal, and she went back to her own reverie.
I myself had been thinking about Serena Melton.
I'd had no brothers-or sisters for that matter-to help me judge how one might feel in Serena's shoes, having lost Meriwether. Would I have been forgiving or vindictive? The closest I could come to imagining her emotional state was to consider something happening to Simon Brandon. He wasn't related, but I'd known him all my life and loved him dearly. If someone caused his death, I'd be fur
iously angry and determined to see that person punished.
Soldiers are mortal, we had all been touched by that loss. But Serena's brother hadn't given his life for King and Country. He'd died under tragic circumstances, just after the doctors had felt it safe enough to send him home. He'd had a good chance of surviving his wounds. First hope, then despair.
I myself had grieved in my own way for Meriwether Evanson. And so had Matron, for that matter.
I took a deep breath, more like a sigh, and Mary said, "Was it a boring weekend? I'm sorry for dragging you there."
"I was very glad I went," I told her truthfully. But I was looking forward to spending the rest of my leave with my family. I'd had my fill of spying.
I had been back in France nearly ten days when the letter came from Inspector Herbert at Scotland Yard.
It was brief, and it contained a photograph. I turned it over, to find myself staring into a dead man's face. I could see clearly the bullet wound in his temple.
I turned to the letter. This is Lieutenant Fordham. He died of a single gunshot wound to the head. Forgive me for sending this to you without some warning, but I'm told you're in France and there's no other way. Fordham's death appears to be a suicide. I use that word, appears, because there is a modicum of doubt. He was an officer in the Wiltshire Fusiliers. Are you still certain that the man with Marjorie Evanson the evening of her death was in this regiment? Could this be the man?
I looked again at the photograph. But I already knew the answer. This was not the man at the railway station.
I felt a chill. Suicide among soldiers was more prevalent than the Army admitted. It wasn't good for morale to give exact numbers, they said. Why had Lieutenant Fordham chosen to kill himself? What demons drove him? And why-other than his regiment-had Inspector Herbert thought this might be the man I'd seen with Marjorie Evanson?
Was there something in his suicide note that pointed in that direction?
And what did Inspector Herbert mean by "appears to be a suicide"?
His brief message told me so little that my curiosity was aroused. I found myself thinking that he'd have done better to satisfy it.
I reached for pen and paper to answer him before the next post bag left. Poor man. To answer your questions: I am not mistaken in the matter of the Wiltshires. And this is not the person I saw at the railway station.
But even as I finished putting those words down on paper in black ink, stark on the page, I glanced again at the photograph. Lieutenant Fordham was a handsome man even in death, and if he were charming into the bargain, he might easily turn a lonely woman's head. He was the sort Serena Melton should have invited to a weekend party, not a Lieutenant Bellis, who considered himself a friend of Meriwether Evanson's, or Captain Truscott with his shaking hands. They were loyal to the dead, and not likely to confide anything they might know to a grieving sister.
I added another line to my message. What weapon did Lieutenant Fordham use to kill himself? Service revolver? Other?
It was the price Inspector Herbert must pay for not being more straightforward. For something had just struck a chord of memory.
Thinking about Serena and her house party had brought to mind a vivid image of Jack Melton's hand pausing over an empty depression in the lining of his gun cabinet.
To suspect Serena Melton of killing a man she thought was her sister-in-law's lover was ridiculous. And yet-and yet I had seen for myself how deep her grief and anger ran. If she'd found someone she believed was the guilty man, and there was no way of proving it, what would she do?
For one thing, she wouldn't have a weapon handy, in the event she needed to use it. That was a very different thing from being so angry one could lash out with the first thing that came to hand. Besides, Lieutenant Fordham was a soldier, with a soldier's reflexes. He wasn't likely to let someone walk up to him, revolver in hand, and fire at him.
I was letting my imagination run away with me. But as much as I didn't want to believe it, there was most certainly the possibility that Marjorie had had more than one lover. And Lieutenant Fordham could have had his own guilty conscience.
And so I didn't tear up the reply to Inspector Herbert and start again. I left the query in my letter.
But Scotland Yard never answered. Not even to thank me for helping them with their inquiries.
CHAPTER SIX
Finally I WROTE to Simon Brandon.
He had been my father's batman, his friend even though he was less than half my father's age, and eventually his RMS, his regimental sergeant-major, a position of some responsibility as well as prestige. If anyone could find the answer to my question without involving the police or causing a stir, it was Simon. His contacts were myriad, and they had long memories of service together.
I knew my father well enough to be sure he'd find the answer to my question, and then want to know why I had asked it. The Colonel Sahib, as we called him behind his back, was accustomed to commanding troops in battle. Raising a daughter would-he'd thought-be as simple as taking a seasoned company on maneuvers. He could do it blindfolded. Hands behind his back.
By the time I was walking, he was in full retreat from that position. "She'll be running the British Army before she's ten!" he'd warned my mother. It wasn't long before all the servants and half the men in his command were enlisted in a conspiracy to keep me safe. Not to mention our Indian staff and all their relatives.
The Army has a code of its own. I had been well taught not to air its dirty linens in public, and in India my father would have made short work of finding out who had been involved with Lieutenant Evanson's wife, and seeing to it that he was disciplined. Or learning how Captain Fordham had shot himself. It would have gone no further, been dealt with quietly and appropriately. We weren't in India now, but the same circumspection was still there, inbred in us.
A letter came back faster than I'd expected. It occurred to me that Simon had somehow arranged to have it sent with dispatches. The post where I was presently stationed was notoriously slow. And sent with dispatches, the letter wouldn't pass through the hands of the military censors.
I opened it quickly, eager to see what he had discovered. Bess. It's been hushed up. I can't discover why. What's this about? Do you know this man?
Before I could answer Simon, we were moved again, this time to the tiny village of La Fleurette, so destroyed by war and armies that I could find nothing to show me what it might have looked like, once upon a time.
There was a pitted street, half buried in piles of rubble, only the west wall of the little church still forlornly standing, and miraculously, a stone barn that had somehow escaped damage. It was whole, even its roof intact.
"Praise God," Sister Benning said, looking up at it. "Now to see if we can do anything about the inside."
The lane into the barn's forecourt was no more than a muddy and rutted track. The barnyard was already jammed with lorries and ambulances jostling for room, and we had orderlies clearing up the interior as fast as they could, so that we had a space in which to work.
The walking wounded were already sitting on benches, shoulders drooping, bloody bandaging around heads, torsos, or limbs. Sometimes all three. Stretchers with the worst cases were being set across frames made from mangers, and a surgeon was already at work, calling for us to hurry and bring him what he needed. The first of the dead had been taken away, out of sight in what had been the milking shed.
It was chaos, and we were accustomed to it, having packed in such a fashion that we could find anything we wanted immediately.
Ambulances were coming in now in twos and threes, and I was meeting them, trying to sort the wounded into those who could wait, those who needed immediate attention, and sometimes, offering up a brief prayer as I came across a soldier who had died on the way to us.
We worked almost thirty-six hours without respite on one broken body after another. Someone had managed to brew tea, and we drank gallons of it without milk or sugar, to stay awake. I took my turn at the tab
les where Dr. Buckley was operating, my eyes on his hands and the wound. Ellen Benning, on the other side, was constantly mopping his brow, and as I looked up, I realized he was flushed, perspiration rolling down his face, and I wondered if he were ill. At a break while the patients were being shifted, I led him outside and asked, "Sir, what's wrong?"
He looked at me, his eyes so tired that they seemed sunk in his head, lined and puffy with lack of sleep.
"I'm well," he told me irritably. "Don't hover."
I said nothing more, letting him go back to work without protest.
And then as suddenly as the flood had begun, it started to taper off.
I saw Dr. Buckley huddled with one of the ambulance drivers, their faces grim.
We had reached a point where we could actually catch our collective breath when Dr. Buckley began to load the wounded, ambulatory and stretcher cases, into whatever vehicles we had, sending them back down the line. The empty vehicles were returning for their next load when I quietly asked what was happening.
"The Germans are about to break through along the Front. We're moving out as quickly as possible. The Army is trying to hold them, but I don't think there's much of a chance now. Best to be prepared."
It was the story of this war-a few yards gained at horrendous cost, then lost again with even more casualties from trying to hold on against all odds. A retreat today, an advance tomorrow, and then retreat again before the next advance, like a bloody tug of war.