by Charles Todd
There was silence from the rear seat of the motorcar.
She had assumed—and I hadn’t corrected her—that from the start I was talking about Paul Moreau, who lived in Petite-Beauvais. His wounding, his recovery. For that matter, I was still rather confused about which man I meant. There were similarities in rank, in background. But Father Robert had insisted that Philippe was not one of Paul’s given names.
“I am not familiar with Philippe Moreau,” the nun said curtly. “I did not know the family myself. Only what my governess told me. Je regrette.”
I could only take her at her word.
We drove in silence through the outskirts of Paris. The rain was still heavy and growing increasingly chill.
Once more I’d discovered nothing about Philippe Moreau, not from the priest, Father Robert, nor from this woman. I was no longer even sure that he’d been a prisoner of the Germans, had escaped, and was desperately trying to reach his own lines again. But he did exist; none of us who had rescued him, treated him, or sent him on his way to Paris had imagined him. Who, then, was he?
I pulled my coat collar up around my ears, for the heater in the motorcar barely warmed my toes. Beside me, Captain Barkley had a look of satisfaction on his face. I thought he was rather pleased that all my attempts to uncover information about Philippe Moreau had met with failure. I could be trusted now to convalesce as I should, quietly and responsibly, instead of dashing about in a cold rain without an umbrella.
As we crossed the River Seine and pulled up at the next intersection, I fumbled beneath my coat, looking for another handkerchief in my apron pocket, and something fell out between my seat and the Captain’s, ending up on the floor in the rear.
Sister Marie-Luc bent down to retrieve it for me, saying, “If you please, I’m staying in a small hotel just behind the Church of the Madeleine. If you would be kind enough to put me down—mon Dieu! That man!”
There were still half a dozen pedestrians hurrying across in front of us as Captain Barkley waited for the intersection to clear. Heads bent against the rain, they were briefly caught in the brightness of the motorcar’s partly blacked-out lamps.
She was leaning forward between our seats, and I thought she must be staring at the man with the black umbrella just passing the bonnet. The umbrella was tilted against the force of the wind-driven rain, his collar up, his hat pulled low. I couldn’t see his features or judge his age, but he was hobbling painfully, leaning heavily on a cane.
A civilian—but with a cane—had she glimpsed his face before I’d realized where she was looking?
I turned quickly to the woman behind me. “Who is he? Sister Marie-Luc—”
She leaned back suddenly, where I couldn’t see her face.
“Mais non. I was wrong. One sees ghosts after a while, you know. Faces that one half remembers. Faces of the dead. Wishful thinking, that someone may be alive after all. I am sorry. This is yours, I think.”
And she handed me the handkerchief I’d been searching for.
As we moved on again I looked at those walking along the street. As in England, there were the wounded, some in Army greatcoats, others in civilian clothing—some on crutches, others with canes. Empty sleeves, empty trouser legs, eye patches, and many with wounds that weren’t visible beneath their heavy clothing. Gassed lungs, torn bodies, desperate minds.
Men she might have treated, men I hadn’t, but their brothers in arms in England I knew all too well.
We found her street and the hotel at number 27. War had turned it into a pension, and as we pulled up in front, I saw another woman dressed very much as Sister Marie-Luc was, just stepping out of the door.
“You have been very kind,” Sister Marie-Luc said. “Merci for rescuing me. Most certainly I’d have taken a bad chill. Thank you.”
“I’ll be in Paris for several more days,” I said quickly. “Perhaps we could have lunch together?” Remembering that nuns took a vow of poverty, I added, “I would enjoy having you as my guest.”
To my surprise, she smiled and answered, “Yes. It would be very nice indeed. Thank you.” And then she was out of the motorcar, dashing toward the steps.
Captain Barkley watched her go. “Did you believe her? That she’s a nun?”
I turned to him. “It’s entirely possible. The nuns trained in nursing aren’t always welcomed. Not where there are aristocrats clamoring to care for the wounded. I’ve heard stories of French soldiers being crowded into damp cellars or barns, no water, no food, their wounds untended, and only one or two nurses there, trying to save those they can. If it’s true, that’s rather horrible. I can imagine someone like Sister Marie-Luc might find it deplorable enough that she looks for other ways to serve. She spoke of the railway stations. Diana—one of my flatmates in London—told me much the same story about conditions at the start of the war. It must have been true.”
“God help us,” he said. He took out his watch. “I have a meeting in an hour, Bess. Will you be all right if I don’t take you out to dine this evening?”
“I’m so grateful for the opportunity to go to that village,” I said. “I couldn’t possibly take any more of your time today. Besides, I ought to rest.”
“I’d strongly recommend it. All the bouncing about on those roads must have tired you.”
It had, but I didn’t want to admit to it. Captain Barkley needed no added encouragement to treat me like a delicate violet.
Chapter Six
Captain Barkley dropped me at my own hotel, and after several hours of rest, I dressed and came down for my dinner.
It was hardly better than the meal last evening, but I was hungry and ate the ham, potatoes, and onions, baked in a casserole whose tough crust had been extended with something I was afraid to identify, in place of the full amount of flour and butter. There was a watery flan for dessert, not enough eggs to thicken it properly, and the ever present non-coffee that tasted suspiciously like chicory. There was nothing that could be done about the shortages, and I was grateful for a filling meal. The carrots served with the casserole were surprisingly fresh, however, and I wondered how the cook had come by them. I didn’t leave one on my plate.
Instead of a clear-cut victory, I thought, we were all going to be starved into submission. British, French, and Germans alike.
I was just preparing to leave my table when an English officer came into the dining room and looked around. I myself had come down late, and now all the other tables had been cleared and prepared for the next morning’s breakfast.
“I say, are they closed?” he asked.
“I’m sure they’ll serve you. I’m just leaving. Take my table. There’s a place setting across from me.”
“May I join you, instead? They might take pity on me then.”
I smiled. “By all means.”
His face was thin and drawn, pale with pain, and his left arm was strapped to his chest. I thought I detected a limp as well as he crossed the room to join me. He was probably in his early thirties, his hair fair and his eyes a dark blue.
“Major Anderson,” he said, carefully inserting himself into the chair he pulled out. He went on to name his regiment—one of the Yorkshires—and his home.
“I’m from Lincoln,” he said. “Louth to be precise.”
“Sister Crawford. I’m from Somerset.”
“Ah. My sister lives in Gloucester. Practically your neighbor.” He had a nice smile.
“Indeed.” I examined my memory for anyone I’d cared for in his regiment and found several names of patients who had survived.
“Yes, I know them all,” he answered. “Good men too. I thought surely we’d lose young Bowen. That was a nasty wound. You and your staff must have worked a miracle there.”
The waiter—one of the orderlies—came out from the kitchen, scowling to see a new guest in his nearly closed dining room, but I summoned him and said, “As you can see, the Major is rather late, but I’m sure you can serve him.”
He reluctantly agreed, and aft
er that was dealt with, I asked the Major how his own wound was progressing. “A shoulder, I think?”
“Yes. It’s knit fairly well, but it isn’t strong. The board in England cleared me for light duties and I came back to France barely a fortnight ago. The doctor at HQ took one look at my shoulder and sent me directly to Rouen. And they sent me here to do more exercises. I’m only allowed to take the brace off in my room when I’m resting. A blood— a nuisance, I can tell you.”
“Surely you have someone to help you?”
“My batman died in the same action. They’ve assigned me an orderly. It isn’t quite the same, is it?”
Officers grew comfortable with their military servants, and often a friendship sprang up between them as well that lasted beyond the Army. Simon Brandon, a very young hothead whose future was viewed dimly by everyone else in the regiment, had been taken on by my father. They had become fast friends despite the difference in rank.
“Not quite,” I agreed.
The Major had ordered an omelet but they brought him the same ham and onion pie. With a sigh, he picked up his fork and dug in. “I miss being able to cut my food properly,” he said. And then he added, “I saw you come in today with Captain Barkley. The American serving with the Canadians.”
“Yes, he’d taken me for a drive. We were caught out in the rain as we came back.”
“Where did you go?”
“Petite-Beauvais. Not the city. It’s a small village just north of Paris.”
His gaze was suddenly alert. “Petite-Beauvais?”
“Yes, as a matter of fact.”
“Odd place to choose for a drive. Dreary little village.”
“I’d had a patient from there. It was a spur-of-the-moment decision.”
“My brother-in-law is a French officer. He was to sit on a court martial. The accused was from Petite-Beauvais. A capital case.”
“Was he indeed?” I asked, making an enormous effort to keep my face blank. “Do you recall the name of the accused? Or his rank?”
“Sorry. I don’t know that he told me. Claude was dragooned into service, because he was present on other business and they needed another officer. He only spoke of it because we were lamenting the damage Beauvais—the city, not the village—had suffered at the hands of the Germans. Claude had been married in the cathedral before the war. It’s quite beautiful. He said he could only hope that Petite-Beauvais, wherever it was, had escaped a similar fate. I was surprised to learn there was another town by the same name.”
The city of Beauvais was in Picardy, where some of the fiercest fighting had taken place.
“The church in the village is quite small. The fighting never reached there, but it hasn’t been a very happy place, never knowing from one day to the next if the Front might collapse and pitch them into some rear-guard action.” I tried not to toy with my knife and fork as I asked, “Was the accused convicted on the charges?”
“He probably would have been, if he hadn’t escaped.”
“That was fortuitous indeed. For him. When was this court martial?”
“I don’t know that he told me. Some time ago, I expect.”
There couldn’t be a connection. How many soldiers could a village the size of Petite-Beauvais provide to the French Army? Ten, perhaps. No more than twenty, surely.
The accused could have been any one of them. And it also might explain the reticence I’d felt in the Curé and his housekeeper, or even in Sister Marie-Luc, to talk about the village to an outsider. It would be seen as a disgrace.
I wanted to ask more questions, but the Major took my silence to indicate that the subject was closed.
“You must be tired as well after your excursion. How were you wounded? Or is it something else?”
Something else usually meant dysentery, a scourge of the trenches and hospitals.
“I was shot by a sniper while trying to help a wounded man.”
His face was suddenly stern. “And you’re all right?”
“I will be, when my side has fully healed.”
His expression didn’t relax. “He knew who was in his line of fire?”
“At the last second, possibly. He could have killed me.”
“Still,” he said, and left it unfinished. Hardly something an English sniper would have done was what he must have been thinking.
We chatted while he finished his meal, but we didn’t linger. He escorted me to the stairs, saying that he was stepping out to see if the rain had stopped, and I went up to my room.
If this court martial had taken place in the English Army, I could have asked Simon or my father for details. As it was, I was very much an outsider in Paris, and I could hardly count on Captain Barkley to find out from his own connections what had happened to the accused. I wasn’t even certain it was an officer.
I checked my stitches and then changed my bandages before getting myself ready for bed. There was a little drainage on the old ones, and I cleaned the area carefully. I wondered if that had happened when I’d run for the motorcar in the rain.
It was difficult to reach around and make certain the plaster stuck across my back without twisting more than I liked to do, but I managed somehow. I could have sent for one of the nursing Sisters, but they were busy with the other patients.
Lying awake, listening to the sporadic traffic passing on the street outside, I considered what I had learned, and what Captain Barkley had discovered for me.
It appeared that his connections were useful but not getting me anywhere, and time was moving on. I needed another approach.
In England I would have had resources to turn to. My father’s rank, Simon’s ability to find out information, even my mother’s friends and the wives of other officers from the regiment. Here there was nothing.
But there were nurses, women who dealt with the wounded, who sometimes found in their work that the Army was not their friend or even helpful. They had learned to search out other avenues to be sure their needs were met.
I’d met one. I could meet others.
It was an encouraging thought. And tomorrow, I decided, my side would be hurting too much to allow me to be entertained by Captain Barkley. Let him think that I no longer felt up to continuing my search. At least for the time being. What’s more, we’d run out of options. The Captain would be happy about that.
He took my plea for rest in stride.
“Do you need a doctor to look at that wound?” he asked solicitously. “Should I take you to hospital? I wouldn’t care to report to your family that there’s any cause for alarm.”
“There’s no reason to worry,” I hastily assured him. Then I smiled ruefully. “I should have taken your advice and not overdone. That’s all. But it was so pleasant to dine out. I have enjoyed it.”
“Then I’ll leave you to it. But you must promise me to send me word at once if this is more serious.”
I promised.
“I have my own work to attend to. It isn’t happy work. I feel for the poor bas— poor devils who have deserted. The war is almost at an end. But there are those who stood fast and didn’t desert. It isn’t fair to them.”
Even with my upbringing as my father’s regiment moved around the world to India for its turn to serve the King and the Empire, I was also uncertain where I stood on the issue. Would I turn a blind eye, or carry out the letter of the law?
Then I realized what an opening he’d given me.
“You must know something about this matter. What do the French do about deserters? Are they shot?”
“Tried and shot or hanged, just as in the British and Canadian armies. Ever since the Army mutinied in 1917, there have been deserters, although it’s kept rather quiet, for the sake of morale. And the French are severe with them. Mostly men in the ranks, I’m told. They have no place to go but their homes, and it’s fairly common to find them again.”
“And the officers?”
“They’re quiet about that as well.” He studied me, suspicious. “Why the sudden inte
rest in French courts martial?”
“I dined—here in the clinic,” I added hastily, “with a Major Anderson. One of his friends, a French officer, had served on a court martial. I found it interesting. It must be quite different from the way matters are handled in the British Army. Especially when the prisoner escaped before he could be tried.”
“Not something the French are likely to be happy to talk about,” he said severely. “I shouldn’t bring it up with them.”
“No, of course not. It’s just that I hadn’t heard my father ever mention that as happening in the British Army.” Though of course it must have done. I wasn’t naïve enough to think otherwise. “I did wonder what he was charged with.”
Captain Barkley took out his watch. “I’ll be late for my meeting. Shall I call on you tomorrow, then?”
“That would be very nice.” I smiled and walked with him as far as the door of the convalescent clinic. The sun was coming out, watery but strengthening, and the air had lost its bite.
He left on foot, which told me he was no longer using the borrowed motorcar, and I heard him hailing a taxi just beyond the gates.
I went back up the stairs for my coat and found a taxi of my own. One of the staff had very kindly changed money for us, so I now had francs. I didn’t care to walk as far as the Madeleine and the pension beyond it.
But Marie-Luc Daucourt was not in at the moment, I was told. Whether it was true or she was not inclined to see me, I didn’t know. Glad that I had asked my taxi to wait, I went back to the Hôtel de Belle-Île, preparing myself for a quiet and possibly boring day.
Instead I was met at the foot of the stairs by one of the nursing Sisters.
“Ah, Sister Crawford. Do you feel well enough to read to a few patients? I hesitate to ask, but Sister Stevenson, who usually does it, is hoarse today. She was caught out in yesterday’s rain, and it appears to have gone to her throat.”
“Yes, of course, I’ll be happy to.”
Which is how I found myself in what must have been the library of the original house, amid a group of rather grumpy men, all of them recovering in one stage or another from their wounds. I counted one eye, both eyes, two lost limbs, a surgical patient, and three knees. Beside them sat a little white-and-black terrier.