by Charles Todd
“Corporal Thompson,” one of the wounded men said, relieved that they were to have someone read to them after all. He pointed to the little dog. “He’s the cook’s dog, but he’s not allowed in the kitchen. Nor is he allowed out in the garden. We’ve taken him on for the duration.”
Corporal Thompson was better behaved than my audience. The book chosen for today was a French novel of manners, of all the choices, and instead they wanted to hear Wilkie Collins’s The Moonstone.
“Something rousing,” as one of them put it.
We found the book on the shelf of possible reading material, most of it left behind by former patients, and I began to read.
An hour later, I closed the book at the end of a chapter and promised to read again the next day.
The patient with both eyes bandaged said, “You’re not regular staff. I don’t recognize your voice.”
“No, I was wounded, like you, and I’m here to convalesce.”
They wanted to know more about me, how I came to be wounded, and what I thought about the war ending at long last.
I didn’t tell them who my father was, but I was as honest as I could be about my training and experiences as a nurse.
They were respectful—each and every one of them had been tended by a nurse when they were brought in wounded and they knew how to behave. Which didn’t stop some of them from flirting a little.
Major Vernon, I discovered, was an Intelligence officer. He had very little to say about what his duties were, but he seemed quite sensible and steady.
After the others had gone back to their beds for medication or exercises, he sat where he was. He was the officer with the patch, but his left eye, a very dark blue, was focused on me.
“Colonel Crawford’s daughter, are you?”
“Yes, that’s right. What have they told you about your eye?”
“Bits of shrapnel. They tell me it won’t bother me after the lesions heal. I hope to God they’re right.”
“Career officer?”
“For my sins. Yes.”
He toyed with a signet ring on his finger and then said, “Captain Barkley tells me you’re looking for a French officer. Care to tell me why?”
I smiled. “He was one of my patients before he was sent on to Rouen. He cut quite a swath there, I’m told. I have wondered how he’s managed with his feet so badly cut up.” The words were hardly out of my mouth when it occurred to me that this was a man who would take them literally—and then wonder why. But it was too late now; I could only hope his questions were idle ones.
“Trench foot?”
“No.”
“I’m curious. It’s not a wound you see very often, is it? Lacerated feet.”
I took a deep breath. “He was found wandering about in the night, dazed and bleeding from a number of wounds. Although none of them was life threatening, the accumulative loss of blood had left him quite weak, and he probably hadn’t eaten for several days. His uniform was in tatters, he was cold and confused. It was when I put a hot water bottle at his feet that I saw what a state they were in. Apparently his boots had been stolen. He had walked on bare feet from wherever he’d been wounded. I was told later by a Sister at the British hospital that he had escaped from a prisoner-of-war column. His injuries were consistent with his story.”
When he said nothing, still turning the signet ring, I added, “I don’t quite see why Captain Barkley should have mentioned my interest in this man.”
I didn’t think he was going to answer me. And then he got up and shut the door to the passage before coming back and taking his seat.
“I should have palmed you off with some tale or other—that the Captain was jealous, that he thought your interest was too personal. Or perhaps that he had told me because he admired the courage of such a man. But as you are Colonel Crawford’s daughter, and you’ve given me a fair account of your meeting with this patient, there’s more that I must say.”
He had my full attention now.
“I know nothing about this Frenchman who was found in the middle of the night, and near a British aid station. Let me be honest about that. But I’ve had several conversations with my French counterpart, and his people are actively looking for someone they want very badly. Do you know anything about the Paris Gun?”
“Yes.”
“The French were always fairly certain that the Germans had a man here in Paris who could assess damage, give the guns better coordinates, and monitor the effect that this weapon had on the civilian population. You know that the shells appeared to come out of nowhere? Because they were hurled so high, there wasn’t the usual scream of an incoming shot. They simply came out of the sky without any warning, and did quite a lot of damage. It was very bad for morale—the French had believed Paris was safe. That stopping the Germans on the Marne had prevented Paris from being taken, and the resulting stalemate in the trenches would preserve her in future. They were damn—very nearly right. But this new artillery piece changed all that. Paris was suddenly vulnerable, and it appeared that the Germans were making one last miraculous effort to outflank the defenders and bring the city to the point of surrender. And then the firing simply stopped. At the time, nobody knew why.”
“And the officer—I presume he was an officer—was never caught? But what if he didn’t exist? What if the speculation was wrong, and the gun was firing at random, for the greatest effect?”
“A very clever observation,” Major Vernon said approvingly. “But French Intelligence was adamant about this: He existed. And he must still be in Paris.”
“And you are suggesting that Lieutenant Philippe Moreau just might be the man they were after? That he’d been trying to escape when our men found him? Or—conversely—could be the scapegoat for him?”
“You are most certainly your father’s daughter,” he said, smiling. “Captain Barkley tells me that you looked for one Pierre Moreau in some obscure hamlet near the Forest of Fontainebleau. And that you looked for a Paul Moreau in Petite-Beauvais. And it was fairly clear that neither of them was your man. What’s more, you have a photograph of this elusive Lieutenant.”
I was rather angry with Captain Barkley by this time. He had no business to tell anyone this much without even consulting me. And yet he had. To Captain Broussard, and now to this man.
“I do. But it was given to me in good faith by a fellow nurse who took it because she wanted to show her family at home what a handsome Frenchman she had met. If you don’t even know if this spy exists, you don’t have a photograph of him. Now, if I give you mine, it could become a witch hunt, and in the end, this Lieutenant Moreau could find himself facing a firing party. The French Army might not be too particular about that, if they needed to cover themselves with glory. There was the mutiny. And then the Americans came to do what they and the British couldn’t do—bring Germany to her knees. Catching this spy would be quite a coup for the French.”
“Yes, well, there’s a great deal of truth in what you say.” He turned as the door opened and an officer leaning heavily on a cane came in to search the shelves for a book. Major Vernon smiled at me, and we waited in silence until the officer had found what he was after and withdrawn. “And I am not French Intelligence. Nevertheless, I am curious. It’s curiosity that’s kept me and many of our soldiers safe for four very long years.” He grimaced. “And to tell you the truth, this inactivity is driving me mad.”
I knew he was right. Eye patients were often the most difficult to keep quiet. They were well in every other respect, impatient for results, and had more energy than was usual in a hospital or convalescent clinic.
Still, I didn’t trust him. If this began as a game for him, a way to while away the time he was here, what would he do with any information he found out? Put it all down to an exercise and walk away? Or feel honor bound to tell the French what they themselves might not have discovered thus far?
He seemed to know what I was thinking, for he said wryly, “You’re not certain you trust me. Which tells me
that you must know more than you’ve mentioned to Barkley, or perhaps to anyone else. What you’ve told me so far, while interesting, would hardly send a man to his death.” He waited, then went on. “All right. Let me put it to you this way. You wouldn’t, given your own wound, have rattled along these French roads in search of a former patient if you yourself didn’t have some reservations.”
True again.
“If you aren’t in love with him, the only other possibility is that, given your upbringing, you have reason to suspect him—or at the very least, ask questions about him.”
I smiled. “You must be very good at your work.”
He didn’t return the smile. “I am. I need to be.”
I said, “What I know about this man—whatever you may think—could be explained away very easily. Which means I am not protecting him, so much as I’m making certain that I am not judging him unfairly.”
“Well put. All right. I won’t harass you with probing questions. But I hope you’ll decide to trust me, if and when you are certain of your facts. Is that a fair request?”
“It is.” Someone else was coming through the door, and I rose. “It has been interesting to talk to you, Major. And now I must return to my quarters for a rest.”
He rose, accompanying me to the door, as a Lieutenant with surgical tape bulging around his middle walked in with the precise movements of someone who is afraid of waking up the pain again.
“I say,” he asked, “I missed the reading today. Could you find the book for me, Sister? I’d like to catch up with the others.”
I went to the desk near the windows and picked up The Moonstone. “Our place is marked,” I said as I handed it to him.
“Will you be reading tomorrow?”
“I don’t know. You’ll have to ask someone. They haven’t spoken to me about it.”
“Thank you, Sister.” He turned and walked stiffly toward the door again.
Major Vernon, quietly watching him, said, “He was bayonetted, poor devil. And very lucky the man doing it was not very good at it.”
He escorted me to the staircase, nodded to me, and walked on.
I went up the stairs debating with myself whether I should have trusted him.
And I thought about what Major Anderson had told me last evening, about the man who had escaped the French court martial.
Spy? Prisoner? Or just a man who tried his best to escape from his captors?
There was no answer to that.
But it left me with food for thought as I propped myself up in my little bed and started to read a volume of French fairy tales I’d found in the little bookshelf against the wall. The illustrations were glorious and helped me with any uncertainties over the vocabulary.
But even as I read about glass slippers and handsome princes, I decided I’d done the right thing when I’d been wary of confiding in Major Vernon. Or even Captain Barkley for that matter. He meant well, the Captain, but his primary concern was my welfare, and given our past history, I didn’t think I could convince him that I knew what I was doing.
With a sigh I went back to the travails of the kitchen maid who had fallen in love with a prince. They seemed far more surmountable.
The next morning I went again to the pension where Sister Marie-Luc had taken rooms.
Once more I was told that she wasn’t in.
Was she avoiding me? Or out and about on her own affairs?
I walked down as far as the Church of the Madeleine in the hope of finding a taxi to take me back to the Hôtel de Belle-Île.
Just as I was about to step into one that had pulled to the side of the road, I heard someone call my name.
Turning around, I saw Sister Marie-Luc hurrying down the steps of the church.
“Have you come to see me?” she called. “I’m so sorry. I went to hear a recital on the great organ.”
Holding the taxi, I said, “It’s rather early. Still, will you have lunch with me?”
“Yes, but of course.” She hurried to catch me up, and we got into the taxi together.
“I’m afraid I don’t know the best restaurants for lunch. Do you have a suggestion?”
She did, and she gave the address to the taxi’s driver.
I found myself in a small, rather dark little restaurant on a back street I had never heard of. The owner apparently was a friend of hers, because he came at once to seat us and ask what we would like. I had a little difficulty with his Breton accent, but we soon decided on our meal, and he left to give his orders to the kitchen, which was the domain of his wife and his sister-in-law.
The omelet was very good, with fresh onions and chunks of potato. The coffee was beyond even the owner’s control. We drank wine instead, and talked about nursing, how it had changed as the war taught us more and more techniques to save men’s shattered bodies.
“But for their minds,” she said as we finished our food and sat back to drink the last of the wine, “there is often no cure. What they have seen and done—it is beyond medicine.”
I had to agree with her. And then I said, “Would you know Paul Moreau, if you saw him walk through that door?”
Frowning, she looked at me. “You are obsessed with this man.”
“No. Just looking for a friend,” I said lightly.
I brought out my photograph of Philippe Moreau and put it down on the table between us.
Something in her manner changed, her eyes narrowing, color rising in her pale cheeks.
“Where did you get this?” she demanded. “And why is he wearing an American uniform?”
“Do you know him?” When she didn’t answer, I told her an abbreviated version of my encounter with the nurse in Rouen who had a camera. “She gave me this photograph to take back with me to the hospital where the Lieutenant was treated. He charmed them all, it seems. But I was more concerned with his wounds.”
“You should have nothing to do with this man.”
“I’m sorry?”
“He is evil. You must put him out of your mind. And you would be wise to burn this photograph. It is not worth keeping.”
“But who is he—and more to the point, what has he done?”
“Unspeakable things. I saw him in Belgium. He’s a monster.”
“Was he German? In the German Army?”
“No, I refuse to look at him another moment.” She pushed the photograph back to me and summoned the Breton, who came at once with our reckoning. “Alors, my friend, we must go. How is your son? You have not spoken of him.”
Her friend, as she called him, shook his head. “Jerome? He has dark days. I have hidden anything that could do him harm. But I fear that he will take his own life soon. If he has to throw himself into the Seine.”
“I will come and see him. I will see what I can do.”
“Bless you,” the man said. “He is well in body now, and that’s why I’m so afraid. While he couldn’t do anything but lie there, I believed I could help him. Now—he’s stronger than I am. And steady enough on his feet to walk wherever he wants to go.”
“I will come,” she said, nodding, and passed the reckoning to me. I paid it, as I’d promised I would, and we left the little restaurant.
“What’s wrong with his son?”
“Shell shock is what you call it, I think. He remembers too much, and it has nearly destroyed him. His wife has already left him. His friends. But he is so tormented he can’t turn away from what he sees in his head. It’s rather terrible. I have done what I could. It may never be enough.”
“No.” I had dealt with such cases too.
She looked up and down the street. “I will go and see him now. You should be able to find a taxi at the next corner. Thank you for lunch.”
And she was walking briskly away, not waiting for an answer. I called to her, but she never turned.
I realized then that she had had no intention of traveling back to the pension with me. Not after my questions. The restaurant owner’s son had given her a polite excuse for avoiding any o
thers.
In the end, I walked on toward the corner and eventually found a taxi.
Who was this man who called himself Philippe Moreau? And what in the name of God had he done that made a nun hate him so?
Chapter Seven
I went up to my room when I reached Belle-Île, wanting to think, and with any luck, possibly rest. My side was burning rather badly, and the pain worried me.
But they called me down to read again, and I went, reluctantly.
I was relieved to see that Major Vernon was not among those who’d come to hear the next installment of The Moonstone.
The reading went smoothly, no interruptions, and there were questions at the end about the characters and the plot. I sat there and listened to my audience, smiling at their enthusiasm.
When the hour ended and patients went off to their wards, I put the book on the desk and started for the stairs.
Major Vernon was waiting there for me.
He smiled, raising both hands as if in surrender.
“I wondered if you would consider having dinner with me this evening. Not to talk about spies or wounded men. Just to enjoy the evening.”
Hesitating for a moment, I said, “I’m rather tired . . .”
“Are you?” The smile changed to a grin. “Colonel Crawford’s daughter in retreat? I don’t believe it.”
“We don’t socialize with patients,” I said primly, falling back on the rules of my service. “It isn’t encouraged.”
“I’m not your patient. In point of fact, there is nothing in the rules that prevents two patients from socializing.”
I laughed. “Were you perhaps a barrister before the war?”
“Guilty as charged. I was trained in the law but found soldiering more to my liking.”
“And you promise, no discussion of capturing anyone?”
“I give you my word.”