Deadly Anniversaries

by Marcia Muller

  To refuse would have been inhuman. I apologised, snatching up my coat and following her to the door. “Thank you, Mrs Prescott—here’s my card, please let me know if you think of any—”

  But the door was shut, the heels retreating.

  Food for thought, as I went down the scrubbed front steps and along the street.

  As Mrs Straub had said, nurses, no less than the soldiers they treated, could suffer long-term consequences from the endless grinding months of trauma, day in and day out, over the long years of war. Mrs Prescott could be one of those, repelled by questions that threatened to stir up memories.

  Yet if that were the case, would she not have tried harder to leave nursing entirely, instead of returning to a lesser and civilian form of daily reminders? And her responses: easy and forthcoming when it came to nursing duties and helpful mothers, then tightly monosyllabic when asked about children or husband. And wasn’t there something about the photos over the fire? The husband, in uniform, was placed slightly apart from the others. And although I had seen his face from the settee, a person seated on the other chairs—including what was clearly her habitual seat—would not.

  As for her left forearm, why did she occasionally grip it—and not want me to notice her doing so? Did her old traumas include a physical one like a broken wrist? Was that why she’d worn that thick sweater despite the room’s warmth, because of something on her arm she didn’t want me to see? Such as... What? A scar? A tattoo?

  “Oh for heaven’s sake, Russell,” I said aloud. Women like Faith Prescott didn’t have tattoos.

  I stood for a minute on the busy pavement, staring down unseeing at the descending steps to the Underground station. Time to search out the other two women in London? Or look more closely into Faith Prescott? She was hiding something—there was no doubt about that. But was it her secret, or that of one of the others?

  I sighed, and descended into the dim and smoky depths. I’d give it this afternoon, and if nothing came up I would change my course. And I could always treat myself to the cinema and a nice anniversary dinner when this was finished.

  Many dusty hours later, I returned the latest of the file folders to the Somerset House records clerk. I now knew the rough outlines of what had happened, that spring of 1915. And I knew who could fill in the details.

  Outside on the busy pavement, I was surprised to find the sun nearly down. What time was it, anyway? I glanced down at my wrist, finding my watch reversed, and reached over to paw it around—and my hand went still. After a moment, I smiled. Yes.

  Back at the Prescott house, I waited across the street beneath an overgrown lilac until the two upstairs windows went dark. A few minutes later, a light went on behind the curtains downstairs.

  I crossed over to the nurse’s scrubbed steps. This time I knocked softly rather than pull the bell: no reason to wake the freshly sleeping children upstairs. The door came open, and I gave the children’s mother an apologetic smile.

  “Good evening, Mrs Prescott. I need to know about the steel bangle you wear on your left arm.”

  * * *

  It was, as I’d expected, nearly identical to the one encircling the wrist of Anik Singh. It was large for a woman’s arm—yet instead of slipping it off before she answered the door, she had pushed it up her arm and pulled down the cuffs of her sweater to hide it.

  That told me the bangle was more than an idiosyncratic piece of jewellery to her.

  She made tea, reassuring her curious mother that all was well before she closed the older woman out of the parlour. While she poured, I went over to the desk. Her stationery was indeed in the top drawer: same width, same paper, same watermark I’d seen on the other. In a cubbyhole at the desk’s back was a pair of scissors with three-inch blades.

  I returned the page to its place, closed the drawer, and went to the settee to accept my cup.

  “It was the knife, wasn’t it?” she asked. “That gave me away?”

  “Yes.”

  “How? I didn’t put my address on it, didn’t use newspaper to pad it. I even printed it so no one could recognise my handwriting.”

  I was tempted to tell her that the knot in the twine could only have been that of a nurse, or some such nonsense, but I refrained. “No, it was the knife itself. Manvir Singh was in the habit of etching it with the battles in which he carried it. When his brother saw that its final reference was to Neuve Chapelle, he knew its owner had survived. At least, long enough to carve words into the blade.”

  She gave a bitter little shake of the head. “I knew I should throw it away. Even if it was important to him.”

  “Why get rid of it at all? You’d had it for ten years.”

  “My son came across it in the attic. It’s lethally sharp. Not a toy.”

  “This would be your eight-year-old?”

  “My—yes. My first two are both girls.”

  I knew that from the photos covering the mantelpiece.

  “Do you know where he is buried? They didn’t send his remains home. His brother might like to know.”

  “Oh, they only buried the Muslims, somewhere up in Surrey. The Hindu and Sikh religions require cremation, so they built a special place for that out in the countryside.”

  “There’s a burning ghat in Sussex?”

  “Not anymore. They did make a sort of memorial chapel on the site. Remote, but rather pretty.”

  I could only imagine what the local farmers had made of crematory smoke drifting over from the next field.

  “And the ashes? Are they at the memorial?”

  “They were scattered at sea.”

  So much for a graveside visit, then.

  “It sounds as if you were very fond of him.”

  “I was fond of many of those soldiers. Often young, always in pain, far from home, and in that peculiar setting, yet all were eager to return to the fight. Even those far too badly wounded to be put back on the Front.”

  “Yes, I understand that Manvir’s injuries might have made it impossible to handle a rifle.”

  “He was certain that he’d be judged fit for duty. His hearing would have been the following week.”

  “Really? But I thought—Wait. How did he die?”

  Her eyes dropped, and her hand came over to turn the bracelet on her wrist, around and around. “There was a fight.”

  “Amongst the patients?”

  She tipped her head, a gesture I took as a shamed yes. And it was true: even discounting her fondness for one of the participants, a nurse might be ashamed of allowing any kind of scuffle to arise between patients, and all the more if it had led to a death.

  “So what happened? Was there an arrest?”

  She shook her head. “The army had the hospital write down Mani’s death as being from his wounds. Which in a way was almost true, since the bullets had left him weak in all but spirit. At any rate, he was cremated and his...the other man was sent back to the Front. He died there, a year or two later.”

  I stared at her, saw a tear start down her cheek only to be wiped away vigorously. She lifted her head, and I saw her bitterness. “By the summer of 1915, they were desperate for soldiers. Remember, conscription did not start until the following year. If it was an accident, not an attack, then they could have their officer back.”

  Had the dead patient been English, things might have gone differently, but she was right: by June, there was not a man to spare. Even if he had killed another man in a fight.

  “What was his name? The man responsible for his death?”

  “Does it matter? He died. Knowing who it was could only harm his family.”

  Holmes would want me to press for the name. But Holmes was not here.

  She could be lying, I thought. Certainly she is leaving things out. But perhaps a little more research might prevent my thoughtlessly crashing through the lives of innocent familie
s. Perhaps not asking questions might be the better way, just this once.

  She noticed the direction of my eyes, which had dropped again to where she worked the steel bangle around her wrist. She took a deep breath, then seized firmly around the circlet to pull it off, handing it to me over the tea things.

  It was warm and smooth and heavy in my fingers. The kara was as much a part of Sikh doctrine as the kirpan, worn by men and women alike. The simple steel bangle, unadorned and never removed, was a constant reminder of God and the strength of the warrior. And sometimes of other things, as well.

  I held it out to her. “His brother has Manvir’s kirpan. This would only confuse matters.”

  Slowly, listening to the meaning behind my words, she took it.

  I stood. “You won’t hear from me again. But here’s my card. In case you wish to speak to me about anything.”

  I laid the white card on the table, and gathered my things.

  When I left, the kara was back on her wrist, and wonder was dawning on her face.

  * * *

  I did not get back to Sussex until the late the following evening. To my considerable relief, Mr Singh was not there waiting for me, having retreated to a guesthouse in Eastbourne: that difficult report could wait until tomorrow.

  It was an even greater pleasure to discover that Holmes had returned. He came downstairs to find me slumped into a chair before the fire, coat and hat still on, too tired to move any farther.

  He tossed some wood on the embers and fetched us each a drink, then sat in the other chair, legs stretched out to the warmth.

  Silence descended. Broken by Holmes clearing his throat. “Er, Russell. I believe I may have neglected to wish you a happy anniversary.”

  I looked at him blankly for a moment, then laughed aloud. “Oh heavens, I’d forgot all about it. Don’t worry, Holmes, you can make up for it next year. Let’s say for our fifth wedding anniversary.”

  He looked both relieved and confused, which is never a bad state for a husband. I put down my glass, shed my outer garments, and went to see what I could find by way of supper. And lunch.

  “Was Mr Singh still here when you got back?” I asked around a mouthful of cheese and biscuits.

  “He’d just gone. But Mrs Hudson told me you had left a houseguest for her.”

  So as he took out his pipe and tobacco, I told him about my days: the newspaper article, the Sikh gentleman, the head nurse in Lewes. As often happened, the telling stimulated the reflection, allowing my thoughts to run on two tracks, one aloud and one internal.

  In those early months of the War, ten years ago, social niceties had gone the way of the Queen of Hearts’ soldiers: up in the air. Anything was possible. Women became bus conductors and police constables, delivered beer, and worked in factories. Women carried stretchers, drove ambulances, and nursed male patients—until a tabloid newspaper stirred up scandal, and the younger of those nurses were tidied away.

  Mrs Faith Prescott, however, was too valuable to waste. A trained nurse before she married, with a husband and children, she was no blushing innocent. And with a mother at home to care for the children, she could be kept on at the Pavilion hospital until a full complement of male nurses was brought in.

  She was fond of her patients, some—it must be said—more than others. With one in particular, a darkly handsome young man in a turban, she formed a bond.

  A bond that in the normal course of events would have broken when Rifleman Manvir Singh was discharged and shipped home, leaving behind him a degree of heartache and a handful of wistful memories.

  “But that’s not what happened?” Holmes’s prompt startled me into attention.

  “No. I spent the day up to my neck in records at the War Office, piecing it together. And even now, I could not say for certain that the ‘bond’ between Mrs Prescott and Manvir Singh was any more than romantic fantasy.

  “However, in the last week of May, her husband, one Captain Jonathan Prescott, stepped on something in the trenches and developed an infection. A minor one, but sepsis moves fast in those conditions, and he was given medical leave before it got to the point that he lost a foot.

  “Captain Prescott came home the first week of June, some two weeks before the last of Brighton’s women nurses were due to be replaced. He, as many men would, resented his wife not being home to care for him, but it was wartime, she was needed.

  “However, either he caught her by accident, or he suspected wrongdoing and went to the hospital specifically to find out. There he discovered his wife and her patient. Mind you, the whole thing took place out of doors in the Pavilion gardens, a very public place, so whatever he saw can’t have been actually compromising. But he thought it was, and started shouting and threatening and finally attacked Manvir Singh physically. In the fight that followed, Manvir died. An accident, to some extent, although Prescott was fit and Manvir was still weak, with one arm he could barely lift.

  “And now I have to decide how much of this to tell Mr Singh tomorrow. Because Captain Prescott was never charged. Not with manslaughter, not even with assault. The police considered it a fight between equals, despite Manvir’s condition, and the death an accident. The army was happy to haul Prescott back to the Front, and not lose one of its officers to prison. One does suspect that his superiors knew what had happened and disapproved, because his leave was cut short and he was sent back to France. Where he died the following summer.”

  Holmes smoked, and we listened to the fire for a time. “So,” he said, “what are you going to tell your client?”

  “I’m not sure he needs to know. I can’t help thinking that the truth will make many people unhappy. Even more unhappy than they are. What would you do?”

  “As you know, Russell, I have never hesitated to lie to a client in service to a greater good. Has justice been had, here?”

  “The killer is long dead. And honourably so.”

  “What, then, would be the benefit in further punishment of his family—or indeed, that of the victim?”

  “We agree, then. Good.”

  Having reached that conclusion, Holmes pulled back his outstretched heels and knocked the dregs of his pipe into the fireplace. He dropped the empty pipe into the ashtray, set his hands on the arms of his chair—then noticed that I had not moved.

  “Something else?”

  “Nothing that affects my meeting with Mr Singh tomorrow. But something that might come back in the future, yes. Not for some years, I imagine, but I left the door open by giving her my card.

  “The first time I went to see Mrs Prescott, she’d been warned I might come. She hid the kara before coming to the door, and rearranged the photographs on the mantelpiece. One of those showed her two daughters and an infant, who was little more than an armful of white clothing. When I went back to the house that evening, the pictures were back in their original places, and one that was missing had been restored. It showed all three children, and was far more recent.

  “She lied to me, early on. She said her youngest child was eight, then corrected herself to eight and a half. Among the dusty papers I sorted through today was a church registry, in the parish where the family lived before they moved up to Mrs Prescott’s new position in London. The boy was born in February 1916.”

  “Nine years old. Not something a mother would get wrong.”

  “Unless she hoped to lead me away from a scent.”

  “How far did you pursue matters? Did your day’s travels include military records?”

  “They did not. Although I would not be too surprised to find that certain of Prescott’s superiors breathed a small sigh of relief when his honourable death in battle came before he could be granted another home leave.”

  “Sometimes,” my husband agreed firmly, “ignorance can be the wiser choice.”

  “Indeed.”

  He rose, tightened the belt of his d
ressing gown, and walked through checking the windows and doors before going back upstairs.

  I sat for a bit longer, gazing into the last flames among the embers.

  That second photograph, the recent one that reappeared on the mantelpiece, had indeed shown a lad rather more mature than eight years of age. It had also shown a boy with remarkably dark, handsome eyes, skin that would tan quickly in the summer, and the shiniest black hair this side of India.

  Someday, on an anniversary perhaps, his mother would give him a steel bracelet, and a story.

  * * *

  NORMAL IN EVERY WAY

  BY LEE CHILD

  In 1954, the San Francisco Police Department was as good or as bad as any other large urban force in the nation. Which is to say it was mixed. It was part noble, part diligent, part grudgingly dutiful, part lazy and defensive, part absurdly corrupt, and abusive, and violent. In other words normal in every way. Including in the extent of its resources. Now they seem pitifully few. Then they were all there was. Manual typewriters and carbon paper, files in cardboard boxes, and old rotary dial telephones, sitting up straight and proud on metal war surplus desks.

  It goes without saying there were no computers. There were no databases. No search engines. No keywords or metadata. No automatic matching. All there was were men in a room. With fallible memories. Some of them drank. Most of them, in fact. Some put more effort into forgetting than remembering. Such were the times. The result was each new crime was in danger of standing alone, entire unto itself. Links and chimes and resonances with previous crimes were in danger of going unheard.

  All police departments were in the same boat. Not just San Francisco. Every one of them evolved the same de facto solution. Separately and independently, fumbling blind, but they all ended up in the same place. The file clerk became the font of all wisdom. Usually a grizzled old veteran, sometimes confined to a desk due to getting shot or beaten, presiding over a basement emporium packed with furred old file folders and bulging old boxes on shelves. Usually he had been there many years. Usually he chatted and gossiped and remembered things. Sometimes he knew a guy who knew a guy, in another part of town. He became a database, as imperfect as it was, and the guys who knew guys became a network, even though partial and patchy. Carbon-based information technology. Not silicon. All there was. The same everywhere.