by Charles Todd
We were almost finished with our lunch, sipping the last of our cider, when the Corporal and the young French girl rose to pay for their meal and leave. I wished with all my heart that I could follow them, but I couldn’t very well walk out on Sister Emery.
I watched as they made their way toward the door. It wasn’t ten feet from where we sat. And I had no menu to hide behind.
Should I let the man know I recognized him? Or should I keep my face down, looking in my pocket for the little gift I’d managed to find for Sister Emery?
In the end, I simply looked up as they came parallel with us, and smiled.
The girl smiled back, a dimple in one cheek, but the British Corporal ignored me. I knew then that he must have remembered me from the German trench.
But did he remember me from India ten years ago?
I rather thought he had.
By the time Sister Emery and I had finished our omelets and settled our own account, there was no sign of the Corporal or the young French girl.
I was back in a forward aid station when the messenger from HQ arrived just at dusk. Pulling off his goggles and his gauntlets, he went to the doctor who was scrubbing up for surgery. Dr. Patton nodded in my direction, and the messenger came across the slippery wet ground to hand a letter to me.
I thanked him, glancing at the handwriting. It was from Simon, and he had managed to send it by the military pouch. Avoiding the censors.
I opened it as soon as the messenger was on his way again.
There was no message inside. Only a cutting from a newspaper.
I unfolded it, and as I read it, my knees felt unsteady.
It was from a London newspaper, but the headline read:
Fire in Winchester Takes Life
of Elderly Photographer and His Daughter
Scanning the article, I saw that the fire had occurred late at night, trapping the two inhabitants of the shop in the upstairs living quarters. Their bedrooms were said to have been on the second floor and the stairs were engulfed in flames before they could escape.
Mr. Gessler, it seems, had taken two well-known photographs in his career. One was the runner-up in the Derby, a horse named Parsifal that went on to win twenty other races before making a name for himself at stud. There was an impressive list of his offspring and the races they had won.
The second photograph was of Queen Victoria in her carriage on the occasion of her Diamond Jubilee. She had turned her head slightly and seemed to be staring directly into the camera lens. At the time of her death, according to the cutting, it had been carried in most of the newspapers of the day.
Except for these, Mr. Gessler had not been a famous London photographer, and from the dusty windows of his shop, it appeared that his business had failed as he aged. There was no reason to believe that his death was anything but a dreadful accident.
But the last sentence of his obituary was chilling.
The Winchester police have not concluded their investigation into the fire and have not ruled out foul play.
I looked in the envelope to see if there was a later cutting, giving the final police report. But there wasn’t. Which could mean that the London papers had not found it newsworthy—or that the investigation was incomplete.
Who would wish to kill the Gesslers?
More important, did it have anything to do with our visit?
There was one certainty, however.
The man I was nearly convinced was Lieutenant Wade must surely have been in France when the fire occurred. That arm in its sling wouldn’t have earned him a transfer to England for further treatment.
As soon as I could, I wrote to Simon, but it was three days before I was able to send the letter off by the next messenger.
There was little I could say openly.
And so I wrote,
Our friend the sapper was here in France on the date in question.
The next time I was in Rouen, after turning over my charges, I went back to La Poule Rouge and sat at the same table by the window, ordering a coffee and an omelet, this time with cheese and onions. The same middle-aged woman in a dark dress came to take my order, and I thought perhaps she remembered me, for I had told her when we were giving our order that we were celebrating Sister Emery’s birthday.
This time I chatted a bit about the weather and how the city had grown before bringing up the question I intended to ask.
She had just brought my omelet, and I said as she arranged the plate before me, “The last time I was here, there was such a pretty girl sitting over there, the table in the corner. She was with a British soldier. Does she come here often?”
She turned to look at the table, frowning, as if trying to remember. “She is young and very fair?”
“Yes.” I nodded. “And such lovely eyes.” I couldn’t have said whether they were blue or brown, my attention had been on Lieutenant Wade.
“She should not give herself to that one, the soldier. It is wrong,” she told me, dropping into French, and I knew then that she did remember the girl.
“Surely she has parents who would warn her to be careful,” I agreed.
“Ils sont mort,” the woman told me. They are dead.
“A pity. Who then has the care of her?”
“An aunt. She is old, blind. And even if she were not blind, she can see nothing but the money her niece brings in.”
A woman of the streets? Surely not! I felt a surge of sadness.
My expression must have mirrored what I was thinking.
“Not yet. But the soldiers, they are sorry for her, and give her money. It will not be long before a pathetic story is not enough. They will want more, these men.”
“Where does she live?”
But the woman had said enough. She wished me a good appetite and left me to my meal.
I ate the omelet with pleasure and drank my coffee, all the time wondering how I could find out where the girl lived. If she took money from British soldiers, she might well know the name of the man who was with her that day.
But when I asked a second time, the woman’s lips tightened in a narrow line, and I knew then it was useless.
But I was persistent. If she came here and brought the soldiers here, then perhaps she lived nearby. Somewhere in this quarter.
I walked for nearly an hour, up one street, down another, crossing over to look into café and shop windows, then crossing back to do the same on the other side. I had nearly given up—a sprinkle of rain was becoming a hard shower—when I saw her.
She was standing in the recessed doorway of a small church, and as I came closer, I saw that she was crying.
She must have realized I was staring, because she turned away, facing the wooden door and looking up at the tympanum of the arch and the array of stone saints carved into the stone there.
I stopped, speaking in French. “Mademoiselle, is something wrong?”
I had no way of knowing if she remembered me, if that was why she turned away.
“Mais rien, merci, Soeur.” Nothing, thank you, Sister. Her back was still toward me, and the stone saints appeared to hold her attention.
“But there is, if you stand here in the rain, crying. Let me help.”
She broke down, her head going into her hands, sobs shaking her slim shoulders.
“I have no money.”
I could hardly make out the words, she was crying so hard. I touched her hair gently, as one would a child’s, and she turned, flinging herself into my arms.
It appeared that a soldier had befriended her, taking her to a restaurant for lunch, but instead of giving her money, as the others before him had, he wanted to take her to a hotel first.
“I am not that kind of girl,” she whispered. “I am not. But sometimes they think I am, and they say very cruel things to me when I refuse to go with them.”
“But who looks after you, my dear? Is there no one?”
“My aunt, but she is old, she needs medicine and food. We have no money, I must beg on the streets.”
It was possible that, having failed to persuade the soldier to give her what she needed, she thought she could wring sympathy and a few sous from me. But I said, “And there is no one else?”
“No one. My parents are dead. My father was a soldier, my mother fell ill of the influenza. It took her but not my aunt.”
“I think I know someone who can help you,” I said briskly. “They have very little money themselves, but they will do what they can. For your aunt and for you.”
She was skeptical. I could see it as she moved out of my arms and stared at me.
“They are nuns,” I told her. “If your aunt is ill, they will help you nurse her. And they will feed you as well. You needn’t beg.”
It took me nearly a quarter of an hour to convince her to come with me, but in the end, I took her to a convent I knew of, knocking on the door, giving my name to the porteress, and sitting with the girl during the interview.
Her name was Claudette Miniere, after her father, and she lived two streets from La Poule Rouge. Her aunt had dropsy and could not walk or work. And she herself had no training. “Besides, I am too pretty,” she told the nuns. “The shopkeepers turn me away, because men come around to speak to me but buy nothing.”
It was true. Pretty shopgirls were vulnerable, and more than one had ended up pregnant and starving when she was no longer attractive. The older women who owned or worked in most of the shops saw trouble when someone like Claudette arrived on their doorstep and turned her away. It was not worth training someone who would leave as soon as she caught the eye of a man wealthy enough to keep her. Or who would believe false professions of undying love. War had not changed that fact of French life.
The nuns had seen many Claudettes, but she was young enough that I thought they would help her. And I was right. One of the nuns, Sister Marie Justine, agreed to return to their flat and have a look at the aunt.
Now was my chance, and I said, “Before you go, Claudette, I was in La Poule Rouge a fortnight ago, and you were sitting at a table by the back wall with a British soldier, a sapper. Do you remember him?”
I tried to describe him, his sling, his scar—but it was several minutes before we could agree on which man I was speaking of. I saw the elder nun’s mouth tighten as she realized what the girl must have been doing. A decent meal for herself, a few sous for her grandmother. A desperate life.
“Do you recall his name? Did he tell you what to call him?”
“I think it was Walter. Yes, that’s right, Walter. Corporal Caswell.”
I sat there with my mouth open, I was so surprised. Of all the names that I thought Lieutenant Wade might be using, it had never occurred to me that he might have chosen the name of the family he was accused of killing in Petersfield.
I wanted to ask Claudette if she were sure. But Sister Marie Justine was eager to be on her way to see the aunt before the rain got any heavier, and I smiled, thanking her, thanking Claudette, wishing her well.
After they had gone, another of the nuns, Sister Marie Joseph, said, “This man is known to you?”
Again I was caught off guard.
“I don’t know,” I told her truthfully. “But I think he is someone from the past who has reappeared unexpectedly. From my family’s past, not Claudette’s,” I added hastily.
“Is he likely to come back for her? Or harm her?”
“I don’t know,” I said again. “But I shouldn’t think it’s likely. When his arm is fully healed, he’ll be back with his regiment.”
“Just as well,” Sister Marie Joseph replied. “There was a warmth in her voice when she spoke of this one. And that is unsafe for a vulnerable child who is on the streets.”
“Perhaps because he was kinder than most,” I said, almost against my will. But I was remembering that he hadn’t touched her as they left the restaurant. He hadn’t put his good arm around her shoulders or her waist, he hadn’t held her hand. That could have been because he’d recognized me, but I thought not. What’s more, she had given me a friendly smile, without anxiety or stress, as if not afraid of the demands that might come once they were in the street.
I reached the Base Hospital just in time to meet my convoy north. Teddy, driving my ambulance, nodded to me, and we joined the long line of vehicles and men heading toward the fighting.
Chapter Ten
When next I was given leave, I was grateful that it was Simon who met me as my train came in. I had already handed over my charges in Dover—to Diana, one of my flatmates. She had been there visiting her fiancé and had been ordered to see to the chest and abdomen cases I was bringing in. We barely had five minutes to catch up on news, and then she was gone.
I was just as glad because these cases were to be sent to a number of clinics in the north, and I was tired. It had been a long tour, and I slept most of the way from Canterbury to Victoria Station. By the time Simon walked up to take my kit from me, I felt a little more rested.
My parents, he informed me, had driven up to Chester to see an old friend who had just been invalided out of the regiment after major surgery on his back. They would return in two days, happy to spend the rest of my leave with me.
As we drove to Somerset, I told Simon what I’d learned.
He whistled when I gave him the name I thought Lieutenant Wade was using.
“Of course he could have lied to the girl,” I added, “but somehow I don’t think so.”
“It’s worth looking into. Meanwhile, the findings in that fire that killed the Gesslers are interesting. Arson, they believe, because the blaze began in the entrance to the shop, not in the back room where there still were chemicals for the developing process. As I remember, the lock on that shop door was a simple one. Anyone could pick it, slip inside, start a fire on the stairs, and see that it was blazing well before stepping out again.”
I hadn’t noticed, but it was typical of Simon to remember such details. It was one of the gifts that had made him a formidable Sergeant-Major.
“One good bit of news—they didn’t burn to death. They were overcome by the smoke.”
“I’m glad. It was hard to think of them trying to escape and finding no way out.” I’d seen so many burn victims, mostly pilots. It was not an easy death. “Do the police have any suspects in mind?”
“According to the London papers, they don’t. The inquest brought in a verdict of murder by person or persons unknown.”
“Do you think it was connected in any way to our visit? I wish we’d never gone to see them.”
“I don’t know,” he said, glancing at me and then back at the road. The late summer evening was already moving toward sunset, the days closing in. It would be dark before we reached home.
Rather than putting Iris to the trouble of serving dinner to one person, we stopped on the way and ate at a small inn just over the border into Somerset. The menu had once included a roast of apple and pork, but tonight there was only a bit of old beef.
“I want to go back to Petersfield,” I said after we’d been served. “It couldn’t have been Lieutenant Wade who set that blaze. And if he doesn’t have an accomplice, then it must have been someone from the village. But why kill the Gesslers? We just went to see them about a photograph. We never asked them about Lieutenant Wade. I doubt that Mr. Gessler even knew his name.”
“I don’t think it had anything to do with our visit. You’re making too much of it.”
“If you truly believed that, Simon, you wouldn’t have bothered to send me that cutting.”
He looked across the room to where a family had come in to dine.
“All right,” he said finally. “It was probably no more than a coincidence that they died so soon after we were there. But I d
on’t particularly care for coincidences where you’re involved. I wanted you to be on your guard.”
“The Gesslers had lived in Winchester for twenty-three years or more,” I said. “And no one had set fire to their shop. What’s more, it’s been closed for how many years?”
“Let’s go back to the beginning. Did anyone take notice of what you’d bought at the charity stall?”
I tried to think. “The woman who sold the items to me seemed to be happy to be rid of them. She packed everything carefully in that box. Except the chair, of course. I carried that in my hand. For all the world to see. I took both with me to the inn. Janet Burke and her mother saw the chair, but that was all. Then you came and took the box and the chair from me and put them into the motorcar. Anyone might have seen me carrying those things. I wouldn’t have been aware of it. And that chair identified me easily as the one who had bought the other things.”
“No one could see the frame or the photograph in it?”
“No. But I’m reminded of something. The woman at the stall told me that the frame had been bought and then returned.”
“By whom?”
“I don’t know. At the time, I didn’t think to ask.”
“No, of course not.” Simon had finished his food and set his knife and fork across his plate. “For all we know, we showed the Gesslers one photograph, and their killer was worried about an entirely different one. One we have no knowledge of. That makes more sense. Suspicion, even if unproven or entirely untrue, can still ruin a man or a woman. It’s as good a motive for murder as any other.”
I moved the small square of beef that seemed lost amidst the potatoes and the vegetables around my plate, my appetite gone.
“Bess. You aren’t responsible. If anyone is, I am. After all, it was I who found the link between the frame and the Gesslers.”
“I want to go back, Simon. I don’t know precisely why, but I owe it to the Gesslers, and I want to know what this business has to do with Lieutenant Wade. If Reverend Gates is there, perhaps he can tell us more about the Caswells. My parents are in Chester. We could drive there tomorrow.”