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

by Charles Todd

  I could answer that one with a clear conscience. “Not at all. His family isn’t able to come to England to look into his care, and there’s no one else to act for them. He’s been my patient twice, and I am in a position to understand what’s being done for him.”

  That sounded rather pompous to my ears, but she must have believed me, for she rose. “I will allow you to see him, Sister. But not your escort, the Sergeant-Major. With respect, I think it’s not wise to remind him too forcibly of the war.”

  “I have no objection to that decision, Matron,” Simon said quietly.

  And so it was that I was led up the stairs to a room down the passage. Matron hesitated outside the door, then took out a key and unlocked it. Signaling to me to wait, she stepped into the room. “Captain Travis? Are you awake? You have a visitor. Do you feel up to seeing someone?”

  He murmured something I couldn’t hear.

  “No, not your family, I’m afraid. It’s a Sister Crawford.”

  There was silence in the room, but then he must have nodded, for she turned to me. In a low voice, she said, “You may enter, Sister. I’ll be just outside in the event you need me. You have only to call.”

  And so with a deep breath, I moved to the door and walked into that room with some trepidation.

  My first thought was that Matron had shown me to the wrong patient.

  Then the man strapped to the bed lifted his head and stared at me with an expression of pain and anguish and a deep, abiding dread.

  Chapter 8

  I didn’t recognize him at first, but those deep blue eyes staring so fiercely at me I knew at once.

  He was thin, too thin, and his face was marked by all he’d gone through, sallow and strained. Even his fair hair lay lank and lifeless on his pillow.

  I walked to his bedside, reached out, and took his hand. He grasped my fingers in a grip that hurt.

  “They say I’m mad. If I stay in this place much longer, I shall be. In the name of God, do something. Or give me something to end this nightmare.”

  Those expressive eyes were pleading now.

  When I said nothing, my throat too constricted to speak, Captain Travis tightened his grip. “Please. I can’t even lift my arms to tear up my sheets and hang myself. I’ve thought of nothing else for days. But they never forget to put the straps back before they leave me. Five minutes, that’s all I need. Please.”

  “You know I can’t,” I said gently. “But I will do all I can. I promise you. Hold on a little longer. Can you?”

  He closed his eyes. “I don’t know.”

  From the other side of the thin partition that divided what appeared to be a dressing room came screams, unintelligible at first, and then I could identify the words.

  “No, no, no nononono. I can’t go back there, I can’t. For God’s sake don’t make me.”

  “Shell shock,” the man on the bed said wearily. In a flash of memory I saw Captain Travis as I’d first met him, before he’d been wounded, on his way back to his sector after a summons to HQ. Now I was looking at a shell of that man. “He goes on like that most of the night, poor devil. I’ve tried to shut it out, but I can’t.”

  I could hear the orderlies and a Sister trying to quiet their patient with soothing words, but from the depths of the dark well of pain the man was in, they couldn’t reach him. And then blessedly there was silence as he was sedated.

  “I’m not mad,” Captain Travis said in a low voice. “But I’ve learned not to tell them what I feel or think or believe. Not now. I tell them what they need to hear. The staff. I try to convince them that it was only my concussion that made me believe my cousin shot at me. But I haven’t been here long enough, they answer, to be properly evaluated. Then they’ll decide what’s to become of me. Dear God.”

  “Do you still believe it was James Travis?”

  He gazed at me intently, trying to determine whether this was a test, whether I’d been brought in to find out what was really in his mind now. It was shocking to watch him fight for his sanity.

  “No, don’t answer that,” I said quickly. “Forgive me for asking.” I made a swift decision. “Instead, tell me where I can find your English branch of the family. Suffolk is a large county and I have only a short leave.” Simon would be appalled—it was even against my better judgment, but how could I just walk away from here and do nothing? “Perhaps James was missing and thought to be dead, but he’s still alive and his records haven’t been brought up to date.” I knew it was unlikely, but I’d have to begin somewhere. “Anything is better than this.” With my free hand I gestured at the empty, lifeless little room, with nothing of hope or happiness in the plain walls. There was a chest to hold his belongings, and a chair for the Sister or the doctor.

  I shivered. Not even a window. No view of the sky, of sunlight and clouds and stars. He had no way of judging the passage of time, whether it was morning or the middle of the night, save by the routine of the clinic. Nothing to occupy his mind or distract it from his own fears.

  I had the feeling that he wondered, in some far corner of his mind where he didn’t want to look too closely, if he was indeed mad and didn’t know.

  But before very long, I thought, he would lose his mind.

  When he said nothing, still afraid to trust, I said, “Have you heard from your family? What have they been told?”

  “I don’t know. The Sisters don’t tell me anything. I leave this room only to have a bath.”

  “No exercise? No fresh air?” I was dismayed.

  “They aren’t cruel. It’s my fault. In the beginning I fought hard to make someone listen. They have a right to believe I’m dangerous.” He looked away. “I tried to convince the staff that someone must look into what I was telling them, if only to prove me wrong. If I was mistaken about it being James Travis who shot me, it didn’t change the fact that I had been shot twice, once in the back. Whoever had done that, he ought to be found and stopped. Men do go mad out there in the trenches and do crazed things. Did. I sometimes forget that the war is over. It hasn’t seemed real to me.” He hesitated, then took a deep breath. “I tried to make them understand that if he wasn’t a career officer, he’d be mustered out soon, and sent back to England. And no one the wiser. But the thing is, once you learn to kill, and get over the shock of watching a man die at your hands, it can become easier. There’s that to consider.”

  He didn’t sound mad to me. Far from it. Cunning? Was he cunning instead?

  I didn’t think so. Watching that thin, exhausted face, expressive even as he tried not to show any emotion, I found it easier to believe him.

  But then I’d known him, however briefly, before any of this had happened. And I’d had some measure of the man to judge him by now.

  “I’ve lost faith in myself,” he went on. “Lying here, going over and over and over what I saw, I begin to wonder if I imagined all of it. Then I try to lift my arms, and I remember.”

  He was still gripping my hand.

  “Tell me where to find your English branch of the family,” I asked again. “And I will discover what I can about James Travis. If he’s dead, I’ll try to find the man who shot you. But once I do, I won’t lie to you. If I think that you are wrong, that you yourself broke out there in that retreat, I will not hide it from you.” I couldn’t bear to raise his hopes too high.

  “Fair enough.” He looked at me, those intense blue eyes scanning my face.

  There was a tap at the door, and a Sister poked her head in the room. “I’m sorry, Sister. Matron would prefer it if you left the patient now. We try to keep him as calm as possible.”

  “Yes, of course.” As he released my hand, I leaned forward. “Good-bye, Captain. I’ll come and visit you again soon. You can depend upon it.”

  “Thank you,” he said gruffly, and I turned away. But not before I’d heard his desperate whisper. “Sinclair.”

  I walked out the door without looking back.

  The Sister was saying, “How did you find him?”<
br />
  “Quite calm, in fact. Although I would like to see him taken out in fine weather, and given a little exercise. It can’t be good for his mental state to be left alone to dwell on what troubles him. Perhaps he’s ready for a change of scene at this stage.”

  I spoke objectively, as if this man were one of my patients and I had been asked for my medical opinion.

  “We can’t put him in a ward, of course. Most of our patients have problems that disturb the others, one way or another, keeping everyone awake and agitated. You must have heard the poor man we were taking down to have the doctor look at his wounds. They were self-inflicted, you see. In France he was assigned to a burial detail. He can’t forget what he saw. He was only nineteen; it was his first duty. Poor man,” she said again, shaking her head.

  We walked on, down to Reception, where Simon was waiting.

  He had that particular glint in his eye that told me he’d spent his time well.

  Thanking the Sister, asking her to thank Matron again for me, I said, “I’d like to come again. And give the Captain what comfort I can.”

  She smiled, but I had the feeling she believed it was not the best of ideas. I could understand. Many of these men were fragile, and families were not always helpful or encouraging—they hadn’t been out there, they didn’t know how or why their loved one had suffered.

  Brace up! You’re home now. The war is over.

  As if the mind could cope on command, and put the darkness away.

  I found that I didn’t want to leave. On our way back to the motorcar, I walked over to an orderly sitting on a bench with an officer.

  “How is he?” I asked, a visiting Sister inquiring about the patients.

  “No trouble,” the orderly said. He was of middle height, with dark hair and eyes. I recognized the Welsh rhythm in his voice. “He’s too far gone to bring back. So they tell me. Poor sod—begging your pardon, Sister—poor soul.”

  “I’m told it’s a fine hospital,” I said, fishing for information.

  “It is. Staff do their best. It can’t be easy. Some of these men would be better off dead.”

  It sounded cruel, but looking at the patient beside him, I understood what he meant. A young Lieutenant, but there was no life in his eyes, no curiosity about me, no interest in the motorcar in the drive, probably no awareness of those around him.

  “Where is the family who lived here? Are they still in residence?”

  “I’ve never set eyes on them. I expect they left it all to the Army to deal with.” The orderly went on, “When I first came here I’d never seen anything quite like this house. We’d had nothing like it in the valleys, everything black with coal dust, the cottages, the ground, the people. Depressed and depressing. Ma didn’t hold with the fighting, you see, and I went to be an orderly. France wasn’t much better. Men dying of wounds instead of coal dust and their lungs. What did it matter which killed them, I ask you? Dead was dead, wasn’t it? Easy for me to leave the valleys. But I couldn’t imagine anyone giving up living here. I look at the rooms and wonder what it was like, before the war. It makes my heart sing just to see it. They wanted to send me to a clinic closer to home, but I turned it down. I didn’t want to leave.”

  “I came to see Captain Travis. Do you know him?”

  “I’ve taken him down a time or two to be examined. He’s quieter now. He’d rail at them in the beginning. Not like this one, unable to do anything without being told. The Captain, now, he’d shout that what he’d seen out there was real. But it wasn’t. It was all in his head. And he couldn’t understand that.”

  What would it be like, trying to convince someone that you were sane when they were sure you weren’t? Convicted of madness by your own words?

  I wished the orderly well, and walked back to the motorcar.

  Simon turned the crank and got in beside me.

  “Are you all right? What did you find out?”

  “It was rather awful. I wish you’d been there. He’s looking for ways to kill himself. If only for release.”

  “Does he hold to what he’s claimed from the start? That he recognized the man who shot him?”

  “He’s very cagey about that now. He’s learned that the doctors want to see improvement, and that to survive, to have any hope of being released, he must lie.”

  “I don’t know that the medical staff always understands what’s happening,” Simon replied after a moment. “They try—but they sometimes feel the same as the civilian population does, that this is lack of moral fiber—cowardice.”

  I sighed. “He looks terrible, Simon. I hardly knew him.”

  “You’ve done your best. What more can you do?”

  “I want to go to Suffolk. That’s where the English branch of the family lives. They probably don’t know the Captain is here, in England. Or what dire straits he’s in. Apparently the two branches haven’t kept in touch over the years. They might be able to do something to help him. I’d also like to find out more about James Travis. The Army can’t have got it wrong, he must be dead. Still, there could be another brother—a cousin—who resembles him. If we could show that the Captain was mistaken, not mad, it could make such a difference. I don’t know. But I have to do something. Will you drive me there?”

  “Bess—your parents—”

  “Please, Simon. There’s something I must do. If I can.”

  He turned to look at me, something in his gaze that puzzled me. And then he said, “If that’s what you want, Bess, I’ll take you there.”

  I was so relieved I could have hugged him.

  We found a telephone in the next large town and called my mother.

  She hid her disappointment well. But I heard it in her voice.

  “I’ll have your kit packed when you get here,” she told me. “Ask Simon if I can do anything for him.”

  I did, but he shook his head. He lived in a cottage just beyond the wood at the bottom of our garden. It would take him very little time to go there and choose what he needed.

  And so we stopped at my home long enough for a meal. I owed my mother that. Then Simon put our cases into the motorcar and we set out for Suffolk. Darkness came so early at this time of year, and we drove until well after nightfall, making as many miles as we could. But it took us another day to reach Suffolk, and it wasn’t until the dinner hour that we found ourselves in the small village of Sinclair.

  The road coming into town from the south had twisted and turned like a corkscrew, hard driving in the early dark, but Simon knew what he was doing, and we got to our destination in one piece, having dodged hares and hedgehogs and once a startled pheasant asleep in the hedgerow at the side of the road.

  We took two rooms in The George Inn and ordered our dinner. Over our tea afterward in the lounge, we decided not to say anything about the Travis family to anyone in the village until we had had a chance to have a look around.

  We knew nothing about them, and we needed to know what questions we should be asking before giving our mission away.

  I was so tired I slept without dreaming. To save time I’d spelled Simon at the wheel, and it was surprising I didn’t have nightmares about the state of the roads. The cold and wretched rain showers that we’d passed through had overtaxed the motorcar’s tiny heater, and puddles hid the worst of the ruts, making every bone ache from the constant jolting.

  We met for breakfast the next morning. A pale sun had finally risen, and I had looked out my window to see a village green spreading out where the road curved. Indeed, I could see that the village was more or less strung along that road, most of the cottages and shops facing it as it turned and then followed the green in a long sweep.

  I said to Simon as we waited to be served in a very pretty dining room that overlooked the street, “Where shall we begin?”

  “The churchyard, I think. To see what names we will find on the stones there.”

  It was a very good idea. We finished our breakfast and walked over to the church. It was set well back, facing the up
per part of the green, a grouping of thatched cottages between it and the High. Beyond it stood the plain brick Vicarage. We walked along the road, turned up a short lane that led between houses to the rear of the churchyard, and had our first really good look at the church itself.

  A wool church, surely, a reflection of the prosperity of the county at the height of the wool trade, displayed for all to see.

  It was quite long, with a well-defined clerestory and a checkerboard flint pattern along the nave and the apse. The windows were set in delicate stone tracery, and the tower was tall and square with an odd round enclosed staircase running up one side to the battlemented top.

  We walked among the trees, looking at the gravestones. There were a number of Travis headstones here, mostly close by the church itself, going back to the 1700s. We were looking at names and dates, trying to connect the generations, when a woman, her arms filled with greenery for the altar vases, stopped. She was tall, slim, graying, with an air of competence and kindness.

  Smiling, she said, “Looking for a family name? I’ll help if I can.” Then, deprecatingly, she added, “I’m the Vicar’s wife.”

  “Hallo,” I said, trying to conceal my surprise—I’d expected her to nod and walk on. We were not making much progress on our own, and so I added, “There seem to be any number of Travis graves here.”

  “There are more in the chancel. The family has been an important part of the parish for centuries. They’ve a house just beyond the village. Not the old one, of course—it burned in 1817, I think it was. Michael will be able to tell you. The Vicar. Are you related?”

  “To the Travis family? No, sorry. But I do remember having nursed someone by that name. That’s why it caught my attention. I don’t know if he came from here or not.”

  “We lost a good many of our young men,” she said, her face sad, as if she was speaking from a personal loss. “What was his Christian name?”

  “James, I think.” And then I added, prevaricating a little, “Or was it George? No, I believe it was James.”