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

by Charles Todd

  We talked a little longer about the winter campaign, and then I said, “How long have you lived in Sinclair? All your life?”

  “Yes, my father was the postmaster here. And we bred King Charles spaniels. Lovely little dogs. I enjoyed the puppies, and always hated it when someone came to claim them. But of course we’d have been overrun if I’d had my way and we’d kept them all,” she ended, laughing. “I painted some of them—those are upstairs in my room.”

  “Did you know James Travis?”

  “Everyone did. I was older than he was, worst luck, or he might have been my first love, instead of Geraldine’s elder brother.”

  “Geraldine?”

  “Sorry, one of my friends at school.”

  I had tried several times to bring Sister Potter around to Mrs. Travis. I finally asked outright. “Everyone speaks highly of him. He must have had fine parents.”

  “His father, Hugh, was a lovely man. I heard rumors of a wild youth, but according to my mother, once he married, he settled down and was all that a squire should be. He knew everything there was to know about every family in the parish, and if someone needed help, he was there to see to it.”

  “Was?”

  “Yes, he died two years before James, for which I was grateful. I don’t think he could have borne that loss too. James’s sister died young, and it nearly broke his heart. She was such a pretty little thing, and as sweet as she was pretty.”

  “You haven’t mentioned his mother?”

  “She was a Cecil before she married. Not of the main branch of that family, but certainly a cut above the likes of Sinclair. I always thought she must have loved her husband very much to come to live at The Hall.”

  “It must have changed her, losing him as well as her children. I can’t begin to imagine what that would be like.”

  “She’s kept to herself since word came of James’s death. But she knows everything that happens here. I’m not quite sure where she comes by all the news, much less the gossip and rumors.”

  I thought I knew. The Vicar. Or his wife.

  As if it had just struck me, I asked, “But who is the heir?”

  “I just got back to Sinclair fairly recently. But Mrs. Caldwell—the Vicar’s wife—told me that there has been some difficulty over finding the next of kin. What with the war and all. James had to make out a new will while he was at the Front. It’s up to the solicitors to hunt the heir down, whoever he is, but so far I’ve not seen him.”

  “That must be worrying to Mrs. Travis.”

  “I don’t think it is, really. The house is hers as long as she lives. There’s never been a dower house. At a guess, she would prefer not to have a stranger come in and upset everything.”

  And that was all I could learn. The talk moved on to what would happen now the war was over and the Kaiser had abdicated. What’s more, it was time I took my leave.

  Rising, I thanked her, and she saw me to the door. “I don’t know how long you’re staying in the village,” she said, “but do come again. No one else in Sinclair chose to train as a nursing Sister. I’m afraid I’m rather a fish out of water. It’s pleasant to have someone to talk with.”

  I promised I’d call again, and then set off toward The George.

  She hadn’t said anything about a cousin from the Caribbean, and I wondered if she knew about Captain Alan Travis.

  Back at the inn, I tapped on Simon’s door to let him know I’d returned, and we compared notes.

  After I’d told him about my visit with Sister Potter, he gave me an account of his conversation with the owner of the inn.

  “I asked if Mr. Spencer had stayed here before, and I was told he hadn’t. But the Vicar had come in this morning while we were in Bury, to inquire about the guest who’d come to grief. It seems that the daily at the Vicarage had brought the news of Spencer’s fall when she came to work this morning. At any rate, the Vicar indicated that he would look in on the man and ask if there was anything he could do.”

  “That’s kind of him,” I said. “Unless he came not out of duty but to carry news to The Hall.”

  “A little of both, I think. Are you ready for lunch?”

  I was, and we went down to the dining room.

  Betty, the young woman who was serving today, took our order and asked if we’d heard anything more about poor Mr. Spencer.

  While Simon told her what little we knew, I wondered if she was the one who had started the rumor mill buzzing this morning. The woman who did the dishes had already passed the news on to Mrs. Horner.

  She lingered to hear all the details, and then went back to the kitchen to relay our order.

  When she returned with our soup, she said quietly, glancing over her shoulder to be sure she wasn’t overheard, “I hear you’ve been asking questions about James Travis.”

  I wasn’t at all surprised that she had somehow discovered that. “I’d heard of him from a wounded officer I’d treated,” I told her, wary of adding to her store of tales. “It must have been a shock when the news came of his death.”

  “It was. Tragedy seems to follow that family. My mother says it wasn’t just this generation. Mr. James’s father lost an older brother, and their father lost a sister and two brothers. It’s as if the Travis name was doomed to die out.”

  Betty, I thought, had read too many romance novels.

  “Hardly doomed,” Simon replied, smiling.

  “It’s not to be taken lightly. There was a curse put on them. There was a terrible fight between brothers years before this generation, and the younger stormed out, swearing he’d never darken the door of The Hall again in his lifetime, nor his heirs after him, and he damned his brother and all his line before disappearing. Never to be heard of again.”

  With that final whisper, she turned away and disappeared in her turn—through the kitchen door.

  “That was rather tangled,” I said, “but if I followed her at all, it was Captain Travis’s ancestor who stormed out and went to Barbados. That fits with what I was told by the Captain. Save for the curse, of course.”

  “Do you suppose there’s any truth to what she was saying? That would explain why Mrs. Travis doesn’t want the lost branch of the family turning up to inherit The Hall.”

  Using what came to hand, I sketched out the Travis genealogy as I understood it. “The salt cellar and the pepper are the two brothers who quarreled. Next came the brother who lost his sister and brothers. He’s my fork. He had two sons—your teaspoon and mine. One of the teaspoons died—here, you can have yours back again—and the remaining teaspoon was James’s father. I make that four generations, counting James.”

  Grinning, Simon looked at my handiwork. “I expect that’s close enough.”

  “Which explains why Mrs. Travis is so adamant that the Captain must not inherit.”

  “She married into the family. I’m rather surprised that she should carry on the feud.”

  “She might feel that she’s her husband’s voice in this matter. We don’t know how strongly he might have felt. If she adored her husband as I’ve been told she did, she might feel honor bound to uphold his views. Family histories can take on a life of their own.”

  Simon was silent, and I realized suddenly that he was looking inward. I’d never known anything about Simon’s own family. He never spoke of them, and that seemed odd to me, a happy child with two loving parents. One day I’d asked my mother where his mother was—I must have been six or seven at the time, but I remember it clearly—and she had answered that some children were orphans and had no parents now. I’d pitied him for a very long time, and I was glad he’d found a family of sorts with us.

  I concentrated on my soup, giving him time to recover.

  After a moment he said, “Perhaps James never felt as strongly about past history. Or he saw something in the Captain that he liked, and the past didn’t matter. The more I hear about James Travis, the more I like him.”

  A thought occurred to me.

  When James went to
war, he must have made a will. Most soldiers did. Even though his father was still alive at that time. Who had he named then? His father or his mother, most likely. But when he had to make a new one, he’d thought about the future. If he hadn’t met the Captain that day in the Gare du Nord, if he hadn’t realized at some point that this stranger was the cadet branch of his family, who would he have named instead?

  The man who was now represented by Mr. Spencer?

  Chapter 11

  I found I’d lost my appetite.

  Pushing my plate away, the soup only half-finished, I looked out at the row of houses and shops across the way from where I sat with Simon.

  Colorful, distinctive, a pretty village tucked away in a corner of the county, one of a string of others like it. But at the heart of Sinclair was loss and sadness. The wooden memorial stood out on the wintry green, starkly reminding everyone who could see it of the men who had gone to war and never come back.

  I was beginning to understand what was happening in Mrs. Travis’s mind. Her son was dead, and she would want to respect his last wishes and see that they were carried out. Only, how could she?

  Had he written to her, mentioning Alan Travis, that look-alike cousin on a platform in the Gare du Nord in Paris? Or knowing the family’s view of the cadet branch in Barbados, had he simply asked his solicitor or someone in London with the contacts to carry out his instructions, to find out more about this man? Perhaps he’d simply liked what he saw in that brief exchange and trusted to his intuition. He hadn’t expected to die so soon.

  Everyone called James Travis a very nice boy, a very nice man. Perhaps he was just that, and thought the time had come to heal the breach in the past.

  I turned to Simon. “What I don’t understand,” I said, almost continuing my thoughts aloud, “is where Mr. Spencer comes into this. Was he stealing those papers—assuming, of course, that he did steal them—to show to Mrs. Travis, or to make certain they were never shown to her? Which doesn’t make sense, because the solicitor, Ellis, could simply replace them.”

  “I wonder what inheritance law has to say about dealing with someone who is diagnosed as mad?” Simon asked me.

  “I think in general the question may be whether or not the estate is entailed. If it must go to the next legitimate heir, then there probably isn’t much say in the matter. Unless of course if it can be shown that the madman isn’t the next legitimate heir.”

  “Which is probably what Mrs. Travis is struggling to do. To find someone else.”

  I sighed. “A muddle, isn’t it? And I don’t know if Captain Travis would want the estate if he was handed it.”

  “Perhaps if Mrs. Travis knew that, she would be much happier.”

  “Now I understand why she’s so particular about strangers here in Sinclair. Why she doesn’t want anyone speculating about her son’s will. I wish I could go to The Hall and talk to her.”

  “You can’t, Bess. This is a problem you can’t fix.”

  “I know. But before I leave England, I’ll find a way to help Captain Travis. I can’t go away and leave him in that empty, wretched room, with everyone thinking he’s mad.”

  Simon gave me a wry smile. “Why am I not surprised.”

  We finished our meal, and I suggested we try again to see Mr. Spencer. “Although how I expect to ask him about those papers in his valise, I don’t know.”

  I went up to my room to wash my hands and fetch my coat. When I came down again, there were two Constables and an Inspector standing in Reception, speaking to the owner of The George.

  They turned as one when I appeared.

  The man not in uniform stared for a moment, then walked over to me.

  “Good afternoon, Sister. My name is Howe. I’m an Inspector with the police in Bury St. Edmunds.”

  “Hallo,” I said, trying to conceal my curiosity and at the same time appear to be perplexed.

  “I understand you know a Captain Travis?”

  I blinked in surprise. I’d expected to be asked about the mysterious Mr. Spencer. “Yes, I do,” I answered after the briefest hesitation.

  “I’m told by the clinic where he was being treated that you strongly recommended that he be allowed to exercise each day?”

  “I didn’t think it was necessary to keep him bound to his bed for twenty-four hours of the day.”

  I was feeling a surge of alarm now. What had Captain Travis done? Had he been given more freedom—and in despair, used it to try to kill himself?

  Had he succeeded?

  I kept my gaze on Inspector Howe’s face, unwilling to ask.

  “The clinic holds you responsible. Captain Travis was allowed to walk outside, in the company of an attendant. As soon as they were out of sight, he overpowered the man, took the orderly’s clothing, and left the clinic grounds. A search has been made. He hasn’t been found. That was three days ago.”

  I swallowed hard against the rising nausea I felt.

  “Do they—do they believe he intends to do himself a harm?”

  “The doctor in charge of his case feels that it’s possible.”

  “What can I do?” And another thought struck me in the same moment. “How did you know I was here? In Sinclair?”

  “There had been an inquiry at the clinic from a solicitor in Bury. Mr. Ellis. The clinic asked us to contact him, to see what he might know about Captain Travis. Mr. Ellis told us about your visit this morning, demanding better treatment for him.”

  I could see where this was going. I had complained at the clinic, I had complained to Mr. Ellis. Therefore I was responsible. Inspector Howe was right.

  “I felt the Captain’s condition didn’t warrant keeping him strapped to his bed. I believed it wasn’t madness that afflicted him, but something else. A confused state of mind possibly resulting from temporary shell shock.”

  There, I had said it.

  And I saw the distaste on Inspector Howe’s face, and in the faces of the two constables behind him.

  “I understand he believes that Lieutenant James Travis tried to murder him,” the Inspector said. I realized that he’d had quite a conversation with the clinic. And while Travis was just another name in Wiltshire, here in Suffolk, it had meaning. Here in Suffolk, it was known and respected.

  “Mr. Ellis is mistaken there,” I said, collecting my wits. “Captain Travis glimpsed the officer who shot him in the head, and afterward, as he tried to discover who it was, he somehow fixed on the name of James Travis. Of course unaware that Lieutenant Travis was in fact dead, and had been for months. Blows on the head are sometimes difficult. Often people who have suffered one don’t have a clear memory of how it happened. They remember up to the moment—and then there is only a blank.”

  He wasn’t satisfied. “Why should he have decided on James Travis?”

  “The officer who shot him—in Captain Travis’s account—resembled James. Or so he thought.”

  “But James was dead.”

  “Yes, but Captain Travis didn’t know that. I’ve told you.”

  “Why should a British officer shoot the Captain in the first place? Was he trying to leave the field? Deserting?”

  Shell shock. Lack of moral fiber. Cowardice . . .

  “Of course not. There was a retreat, and retreats are often mad scrambles. Anything can happen. The Captain was attempting to rally his men.”

  “Was the Captain reported for leaving his post under fire?”

  I held on to my temper. “He did not leave his post. The other officer, the one he believed shot him, was probably firing at the Germans, and Captain Travis mistakenly thought he was shooting at him. It’s even possible that the shot fired by that officer did hit the wrong man—Captain Travis.”

  But they didn’t believe me. I was, after all, a nursing Sister, not a trained Army officer. Never mind that I held an officer’s rank in the Army, a system decided by the Services to give us the protection of rank.

  I could almost see the thoughts running through the heads of the three p
olicemen.

  I wished for Simon, who at least could support my views. But he hadn’t come down yet.

  “This is beside the point,” I went on. “What matters is that Captain Travis is ill. I hope he is found to be safe.”

  “What’s his connection with the Travis family here in Sinclair? Would he try to reach Suffolk, to find the man he believes attempted to kill him?”

  Far be it from me to tell them who Captain Travis was. Let them find out for themselves that it was likely that he was James Travis’s heir.

  “I’m not even sure he understands that the war is over. He would want to return to his men. I can’t think why he should come to Suffolk.”

  “You are here.”

  “Yes, with a friend. I have some few days of leave. I wanted to escape from the war for a little while.”

  “Odd that you should choose the village where the late James Travis lived.”

  Oh, for heaven’s sake.

  “What are you trying to tell me, Inspector? Am I to understand that you have come to Sinclair expressly to accuse me of some wrongdoing?”

  “A Constable on the Bury force saw you loitering outside the Ellis chambers. After there had been a break-in.”

  I had to give Inspector Howe credit where it was due—he was thorough.

  “Sergeant-Major Brandon and I had dinner in Bury that night and had gone for a walk. Hardly loitering!”

  I could read his expression. What was I, a nursing Sister, doing in the company of a man in the ranks?

  Suspicious indeed.