A Casualty of War: A Bess Crawford Mystery (Bess Crawford Mysteries)

by Charles Todd

  The landscape was heartbreaking. We’d been accustomed to the blackened, cratered, bloody expanse of No Man’s Land, but now we were seeing what the German occupation had done to this part of France. Villages had been leveled, orchards cut down, garden walls turned to rubble, and the flowers that once had bloomed there had been churned into the earth. Under gray November skies, the sight was even more desolate. And often what couldn’t be taken away had been burned. Even the church where Dr. Weatherby had set up his latest aid station was hardly more than a shell, and what was left of the walls and the altar was scarred. The window frames, without their stained glass, were stark outlines against the night sky, their Gothic glory skeletal.

  Still, the crypt was habitable and dry, although the tombs there had been damaged. With the November rain and cold winds, it offered a little shelter, and we had partitioned it to suit our needs.

  I had been warned not to go into any other half-ruined house or shop in the village. The church had been swept by engineers and declared safe, but they had had no time to look elsewhere. The Germans had left traps behind, to make it hazardous to retake territory.

  Dr. Weatherby had greeted me effusively, delighted to have me back, and I was very glad to see that his staff—which earlier had been anxious and unsettled after Sister Belmont’s attempted suicide—were as steady as they’d been when I had left them. And the doctor himself was a seasoned veteran now, competent and unflappable.

  The level of noise from the nearby artillery companies was almost unbearable above ground, and even in the crypt we could feel the ground shaking with it. It had intensified, as if both sides were eager to use up their stockpiles of shells. The heavy bombardment left us with jangled nerves and raw throats from trying to speak over it. If they could hear these guns in Canterbury, England—and I knew that this had been so for most of the war—being so much nearer was painful.

  We were seeing a wider variety of patients. With the colder weather, the Spanish flu had returned, almost as if it was determined to kill those who had escaped its clutches in the last round of infections. We had even taken in a number of German soldiers too ill with the flu to be evacuated with their companies.

  We also saw wounds from exploding traps. One Sergeant told me that in one of the villages they were clearing, his men discovered a baker’s oven intact. One of them opened it to see if there were any loaves inside. He set off an explosion that killed him instantly and severely wounded the others who had gone in with him. Another soldier went into a garden looking for potatoes and was killed by a device hidden among the plants. Ingenious traps waiting for the unwary. It slowed the British advance, watching out for such surprises.

  We’d also treated cases of poisoning, from drinking water from deliberately contaminated wells.

  And there was still no word of an end to the fighting.

  My second evening there, Dr. Weatherby and I had just finished a very delicate bit of surgery.

  A piece of shrapnel had lodged near the spine in the patient’s neck, but Dr. Weatherby feared that the jostling of the ambulance on the journey to a base hospital where there were more-experienced surgeons would leave the young Lieutenant paralyzed, and so he had decided to remove the shrapnel himself despite the risk.

  “If I don’t get it right,” he said quietly to me, “it will be no worse than leaving it in.”

  He managed it somehow, and I’d marveled at his nerve and steady hand.

  “There. He’ll do. Orderly, handle him carefully. Tag him for Blighty.”

  I was bathing the patient’s face as Dr. Weatherby spoke, and I saw the conflicting emotions there. Relief, yes, and a feeling of despair for leaving his men behind.

  Trying to reassure him, I said lightly, “I shouldn’t worry, Lieutenant. Base Hospital might overrule that.”

  He glanced up at me, a wry smile breaking through the haze of the drug we had administered.

  We watched the Lieutenant being carried out, and then Dr. Weatherby washed his hands. He brushed them, still wet, across his eyes. “God, I’m tired. Will this killing never stop?”

  I called to the orderly just outside. “Next.”

  He stuck his head inside the surgical area. “That’s it for now, Sister. We’ve got four minor wounds, and Sister Harvey is taking care of them. There’s time for a cuppa, if you like.”

  We did. A cup of tea was an elixir beyond price, I thought, even without sugar or milk. Hot, soothing, restorative. The kettle had just boiled when Sister Harvey came to join us, and she brought a tin of biscuits that had been tucked into her birthday packet. She shared them with us, and I took one gratefully. I could have devoured the entire tin, all at once realizing how hungry I was. How long had it been since lunch? I couldn’t remember, because it was already dark, and impossible to judge the hour. And then one of the orderlies appeared, bearing a tray of sandwiches. They were dry but we ate them, and we were just balling up the papers they’d been wrapped in when the orderly returned to warn us that he’d spotted the first of the wounded from the fighting we could hear going on a mile or so ahead of us. Sister Harvey, tucking her precious biscuits aside, hurried away to assess them.

  Dr. Weatherby got to his feet. “No rest for us, eh? Well, at least we enjoyed our tea.” He stretched his shoulders, and we turned to climb the steps up to the nave, where Sister Harvey had shaded her lamp against the risk of snipers and was preparing for the new patients. We could hardly see the stretcher bearers and walking wounded coming toward us. Ghostly figures plodding slowly, silhouettes outlined by the artillery flashes, like summer lightning across the clouds, only noisier. And then we hurried below again.

  We brought in the stretcher cases first, always the worst. The first man, a Sergeant, died even as we tried to stem the flow of blood from an artery in his leg. The second had a shattered arm, and so it went, until I lost track of everything but Dr. Weatherby’s quiet voice, giving me orders.

  I finished binding up a chest wound, then called, “Next,” to the orderlies outside the canvas that separated the surgery from the lines of cots and stretchers.

  And a new patient was brought in.

  He was lying under a blanket, unconscious, his face such a bloody mask I couldn’t at first judge where his wound was.

  I dipped a cloth in a basin of water, then began to clean away the blood. Much of it had already dried across the lower part of his face, and I left that, concentrating on his forehead and then his hair, already stiff with it. I could see that the left shoulder of his tunic was black with blood as well. Head wounds always bled heavily. And then I found the long groove through his hair on the left side, deep enough that the skull was showing.

  Dr. Weatherby began to probe the wound. “Bullet. Rifle, I should think, not machine gun. Close call, that. See how it bored a line along the bone? He’s lucky it didn’t penetrate to the brain. Only the barest fraction of an inch deeper, and we’d have had a very different story.”

  We set about cleaning the wound and binding up his head. We were just about to call for the orderlies to take him out when his lashes fluttered and his eyes opened. “Ah. An angel,” he murmured, gazing straight at me. And then as full consciousness returned, he tried to sit up on the table. I realized I knew him. Captain Travis.

  “I want that man arrested—” he shouted, pointing at the orderly standing by the partition opening. Breaking off, he looked wildly about the surgical area. “Where the hell am I?”

  “Forward aid station—” Dr. Weatherby began, but the Captain cut in.

  “Take me back to my command. Now. I saw him. It was deliberate.”

  Dr. Weatherby tried to restrain him. “What was deliberate?” he asked.

  “He shot me. On purpose, damn it. He has to be stopped.”

  “Who shot you?” I asked, trying to soothe him by appearing to take him seriously.

  “I don’t know—yes, I do. It was an officer. The next sector. I don’t know his name.” His head must have begun to swim, because he put a hand
up and closed his eyes. “Get me back there. I’ll walk if I must.”

  “You’ll go nowhere,” Dr. Weatherby said firmly. “Not for a few hours.”

  “We’ll see about that,” Captain Travis said and swung his legs off the table, intending to leave. But the exertion and the anger were too much. His knees buckled as he tried to stand, and he went down. Dr. Weatherby and the orderly caught him before his head hit the ground, and another orderly came at my call to help put the Captain back on his stretcher. His head lolled, and I thought it just as well that he’d lost consciousness.

  “Strap him down,” the doctor instructed them. “I can’t give him anything. Not with that wound. And keep him as quiet as you can.”

  They settled the unconscious man, covered him again with a blanket, and took him away as I called for the next patient.

  It was well after midnight when we had dealt with the last of the wounded. An ambulance convoy had come and gone, taking away the most serious cases, but there had been no room for the Captain. A last-minute stomach wound had taken precedence.

  I washed my hands, said good night to a weary Dr. Weatherby, and started for my own bed. The Sisters were in a corner of the crypt, set off from the wounded by canvas, so that we had a modicum of privacy, although conditions were rudimentary at best.

  It was then I remembered Captain Travis. Sister Medford had night duty, charged with alerting Dr. Weatherby or me if a patient had difficulties or a serious wound was brought in, and as I looked for the Captain, intending to see how he had fared, she met me with a grimace.

  “The man’s mad,” she said quietly, so that he wouldn’t hear her. “See if you can do anything with him.”

  I went to kneel by his stretcher, and he glared at me.

  “Take these straps away. I have work to do.”

  “Do you have a headache?” I asked, reaching out to take his pulse. It was pounding.

  “I have a headache that would kill a horse,” he said angrily. “What do you expect? I was shot in the bloo— in the head.”

  “You need to rest. In the morning we’ll decide if you’re fit to resume your duties.”

  “I’m fit now. I was shot deliberately. Do you understand me? By another officer. I have to do something about it.”

  I could feel the pent-up rage in him.

  Thinking to let him talk, and perhaps calm him down, I said, “Why are you so certain it was deliberate? Were you retreating? It’s always chaos then, hard to tell friend from foe.” My tone was reasonable, inquiring, giving him the feeling that I believed him. The truth was, I didn’t know if I did or not.

  “Because he looked straight at me. For several seconds. We’d been caught in the open by machine gunners and were trying to get back to our own lines. It was orderly enough, but we’d been moving up in force, and the retreat was fast and bloody. My men, other companies, other officers shouting orders, and those in the rear trying to give us covering fire. The German troops we thought we’d pinned down led us into a trap. I was helping Sergeant Willard, whose leg was bleeding profusely. A Lieutenant was just ahead of me, but he turned to say something to his men. He saw me then, stopped, stared at me with a frown, and then reached down for a rifle someone had dropped. He picked it up, pointed it directly at me. I shouted at him to keep going. Instead he fired. I remember thinking the Germans had followed us, that he was trying to stop them. Then I realized I’d been hit. And instead of looking shocked, he smiled. I saw his face, damn it. He intended to kill me. You don’t mistake something like that.”

  “Did you know this man?”

  “He must have been new to that sector. I could see his rank—Lieutenant—and I knew some companies had taken heavy casualties earlier. The odd thing was, I remembered thinking in that split second that he looked a little like my great-uncle. The photographs I remember seeing of him when he was young.”

  “Perhaps he’s your cousin, your great-uncle’s son.”

  “My great-uncle had two daughters,” he said irritably. “They aren’t likely to be serving in the British Army.”

  “No,” I agreed, summoning a smile. Fatigue was hitting me like a blow. I could feel myself going down quickly. But he didn’t give me an answering smile.

  “You don’t believe me,” he said, closing his eyes, anguish in his face. Then he opened them again. “Why should I make up something like this?”

  “You’ve had a serious head wound. You’ve been unconscious. There’s the possibility of a concussion,” I offered. “You might not be thinking clearly.”

  “A head wound isn’t likely to make me imagine someone shooting me. And there’s the wound to prove it.” He tried to lift a hand to point to his bandages, and swore under his breath when the straps stopped him.

  “Lieutenants carry revolvers,” I reminded him. “Not rifles. Why didn’t he simply raise his revolver and fire?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Did the wounded Sergeant see this happening?”

  “He might have done. I managed to get him back to our lines before I passed out.” He turned his head. “He must be here. He must have been brought in at the same time I was. Ask him yourself, if you won’t believe me.”

  But I was nearly sure it was his Sergeant who had died on the table. He’d been shot in the leg, and the bullet had nicked an artery in his thigh. He’d almost bled out by the time he reached us.

  I didn’t want to tell Captain Travis this. Instead, to keep him quiet, I said, “Your Sergeant? I think he was sent on to the base hospital.”

  He lay back, closing his eyes. “I’m telling the truth,” he said quietly. “Whether you believe me or not, that’s what happened.”

  “Well, look at it this way,” I said, making my voice philosophical. “You’ll be better able to do something about this Lieutenant tomorrow morning, when your headache subsides.” I used my torch to examine his eyes, and I didn’t like what I saw. “Just now you’re more likely to collapse halfway back to your lines. And we can’t spare anyone to lead you.”

  “I can make it. It’s only a headache, after all,” he said stubbornly.

  “Possibly. I don’t doubt your determination, Captain. But you’ll need your wits about you, dealing with this Lieutenant. You can’t go roaring in demanding his blood. Not with your only witness back in Base Hospital. You’ll have to prove your case, and the last thing you want is to fall down flat on your face in the middle of your argument.”

  He could see the sense of that, although I could tell he didn’t care for it.

  “Do you have any other relations who might have joined the Army?” I asked, trying to distract him. “Perhaps on the Suffolk side of your family?”

  His eyes focused on me, intent suddenly, but I could tell he was thinking of something else.

  “Good God, I think you’ve hit on something,” he answered finally. “I’m the only male of military age in my immediate family. But I’ve just remembered. I should have thought of it before this. It was in Paris. I was there on leave. 1917. Late April.” He was frowning now. “I was just stepping out of the train at the Gare, and an officer was waiting to take my place in the same carriage. He looked at me, and I looked at him, and I had a feeling that I knew him. He must have felt the same way. He said, ‘You aren’t by any chance a Travis?’ I told him I was. He said, ‘We must be related.’ And he held out his hand. ‘James Travis, from Suffolk,’ he said, and I answered as I took it, ‘Alan Travis, from Barbados.’ He laughed at that. ‘The lost branch of the family? By God, I think you must be.’ And I laughed too. ‘Lost? Never. We know exactly where we are.’ He said, ‘Come to Suffolk when the war is over. Before you go home. I’d like that.’ And I told him, ‘I might even do that. It’s not likely you’ll ever find your way to the Caribbean.’ Just then the whistle blew, and the train began to move. He leapt aboard, calling, ‘Good luck, cousin.’ I wished him the same.”

  The Captain was staring up at the undercroft ceiling, seeing another place, another time. After a long mom
ent, he added, “I liked him. I wished we’d had time to know each other better. But there was no time, you see, the train was pulling out, and I never ran into him again. I hadn’t thought about that encounter since.”

  He seemed quieter now. I was beginning to think I’d taken his mind off his pressing need to get back to the lines. Perhaps we could both get a little sleep.

  I was about to rise to my feet when he looked at me again. And this time he saw me, not the past.

  “Why in God’s name,” he said, his voice so low I wasn’t sure he was speaking to me, “why in God’s name would James Travis want to kill me?”

  I stayed where I was, trying to read his face in the dim light of the shaded lamp.

  I’d succeeded in lancing the boiling rage that was consuming him. But inadvertently I’d also put a name to the man he was so certain had tried to kill him.

  “Did James look at all like your great-uncle?” I asked, casting about for a distraction.

  He closed his eyes, bringing back his memory of another time and place. “Yes. I think so. A little. That would explain why he seemed familiar today.” He opened his eyes, and I could see his disbelief fighting with his certainty. “James Travis. I don’t see how it could have been anyone else.”

  “I hardly think that side of the family would wish to kill you,” I said, striving to divert him from his conviction. “Besides, if you didn’t recognize him straightaway in that brief instant before he shot you, how can you be sure he knew who you were? After all, you said yourself it was a fleeting resemblance. And you haven’t seen each other since Paris. That’s long enough that you can’t possibly be sure. And you’d liked each other then. If you want my opinion, when you go back to confront him, you’ll discover that he’s an entirely different person.”

  “You don’t understand. I saw death staring me in the face, Sister. In that moment of clarity, I saw him. I’m not likely to be mistaken.”

  “Captain—”