The Shattered Tree

by Charles Todd

  I was still suspicious, but I nodded. “Very well.”

  “Good. I can’t call for you at six, I’m not allowed near the Nursery. But I’ll be waiting here.”

  I thanked him and climbed the stairs to my room.

  When my bandages were changed, there was still a pink tinge on them, a little darker than it had been yesterday. I was overdoing, I knew that. With clean bandages and the curtains drawn against the day, I tried to sleep for a while, to give my body a chance to recover.

  Instead I had to stop myself from tossing and turning—or at least what passed for it, considering how painful my side still was.

  I was ready by a few minutes before six.

  When I came down the stairs, Major Vernon wasn’t waiting for me.

  Thinking the watch pinned to my uniform might not be right, I walked to the door and looked out at the darkness.

  He wasn’t standing in the courtyard or by the gate.

  I waited five more minutes, and then reluctantly went into the dining room where the ambulatory patients and some of the staff ate.

  I was well into the main course, a casserole containing a starchy gravy, a medley of vegetables, and strands of meat that might be roast pork, when Major Vernon swept into the dining room and looked around. Spotting me, he came directly to my table.

  He was still wearing his greatcoat, and I saw that the shoulders were damp with rain.

  “I am so sorry,” he said, standing before me, a frown on his face. “I wouldn’t have missed our dinner plans on purpose. I was quite looking forward to it. The thing is, I’d gone for a walk at half past four, and I’ve only now come in. The police are looking for someone—they’ve blocked a number of roads, and are stopping every man to demand his papers. It was an hour or more, the first time, waiting my turn, and even longer the next. Will you forgive me?”

  Everyone was staring at us.

  “Yes, of course,” I answered, smiling. “Do sit down, you might as well dine here with me. And you can tell me who the police are after?”

  He took off his greatcoat, folding it over the back of an empty chair.

  “God knows. Every male over the age of fourteen, or so it appears. Civilian or military. The police went through our papers meticulously, asking questions. Where are we from, why are we in Paris, where are we staying, how long we’ve been at that location, who could vouch for us there. And all the while they were watching our faces, as if they expected us to be lying. I was curious, and asked them why I was being stopped and questioned. They paid no heed. On the second occasion, I was asked to turn in profile while they conferred. I think they must know enough about this man that they’re certain they’ll find him before the night is out. God help him, whoever he may be. They’re quite serious about this hunt. And rather careful about how it’s conducted.”

  A Lieutenant by the name of Burrows had heard our conversation, and he leaned forward. “The last time there was a search like the one you describe, it was a spy they were after. I wasn’t here, but a friend of mine was. Apparently they never found the man. Or if they did, it was kept very quiet.”

  “I expect we’ll never know what was on tonight.” Major Vernon looked at my plate. “Tell me dinner is edible.”

  “Mysterious but edible,” I answered, and he laughed.

  But I could tell his mind was still on his experiences at the police barricades. As an Intelligence officer, he might have gleaned more from the police than they had from him.

  We were eating our pudding when Captain Barkley came in. Surprised to see him—the kitchen here fed patients and staff, not guests—I smiled as he came across the room to our table and, with a nod to the Major, took the chair next to me.

  “I’ve finished my meal,” I said apologetically. “If I’d known you were coming, I’d have waited.”

  “How are you this evening, Bess? Less tired, I hope.”

  “Yes, I’m feeling quite rested.”

  One of the staff started toward our table, a frown on her face, and I could see that she was uncertain about what to say to the Captain.

  Forestalling her, I said quickly, “I’m afraid the kitchen is closed.”

  “Actually, I need to speak to you privately.” He glanced toward Major Vernon. “If you’ll excuse us? I won’t be long.” Rising, he held my chair for me, and I had no choice but to stand up and follow him out of the room.

  There wasn’t much privacy here. Convalescent clinics are busy and usually rather full, and Belle-Île was no exception. But for once Reception—where the orderly in charge usually sat in the wide marble entry with its grand staircase and high ceiling—was empty. There were several chairs against the far wall, and Captain Barkley led me there, waiting for me to sit down. So I did. But he remained standing.

  “I’ve some rather bad news for you, I’m afraid.”

  My heart turned over. Simon? One of my flatmates? Surely not the Colonel Sahib. Or Mother, safe at home in Somerset?

  “What is it?” I asked. “Tell me. Straight out.”

  “It’s the nun. Sister Marie-Luc. I’ve just been told she was found in a back street along the Left Bank. She’s been stabbed.”

  For an instant I couldn’t take it in. My mind was so busy sorting through those I cared about that the sudden—to me—shift in direction was almost confusing.

  “Sister Marie-Luc? But I’d just seen her—” I broke off. The Captain didn’t know about our lunch. “—since we dropped her off at the pension,” I amended quickly. And then I actually heard what he’d said. She’s been stabbed.

  That meant she’d survived.

  I rose. “Where is she? I should go to her. What happened? Why would anyone wish to hurt a nun? They’re respected, their habit would surely be protection enough.” But even as I said the words I remembered that this nun had put aside her habit in order to serve in the military hospitals.

  “Was she interfered with?” I asked, wondering if rape had been the motive. She certainly hadn’t been dressed well enough to be taken for someone worth robbing. Her clothes were neat and serviceable, and she wore them with the air of a Frenchwoman, making the simplest clothing seem a little more elegant than it might have done on anyone else. Even so, there was nothing about her to draw attention.

  Captain Barkley was shaking his head. “I don’t know many details.”

  I remembered: she was going to see the Breton café owner’s son. Was it he?

  He went on, pacing before me. “The police are searching for someone. They’ve got barricades set up across Paris. Whoever he is, they’re intent on finding him.”

  “So that’s why people are being stopped and asked to identify themselves,” I said. “Major Vernon got caught up in it. He told me about it.”

  “Yes, I’ve had a devil of a time myself,” the Captain responded ruefully. “I’d have been here two hours ago.”

  “But how did you discover the search had to do with Marie-Luc?”

  “I’m tasked with finding peo— deserters, remember? I thought it might have some connection with my own work. At any rate, I asked to see a senior officer. He told me what he knew.”

  “I must go to the hospital to see her. Someone should be there with her.”

  “Not tonight. It wouldn’t be advisable. Besides, she’ll have had surgery and won’t be awake.”

  I’d been turning toward the door, but stopped at that. He was right. She wouldn’t know I was there.

  “Did she identify her attacker? Is that what the police have to go on?”

  “They wouldn’t tell me.”

  No, probably not, I thought. The police knew what—or who—they were looking for, and they had no need to ask anyone else for help.

  “Someone heard her cry out,” he went on. “By coming to her aid and getting her medical attention straightaway, whoever it was probably saved her life.”

  “But what was she doing there, where she was found?” Had she been coming back from visiting the Breton’s son? Or was he the one who had hea
rd her? Even possibly the one who’d attacked her? She had been so sure she could cope with him and help him.

  “They wouldn’t tell me that.”

  I sat down again. “This is terrible news. I really wish I could go to her.”

  “Your feelings do you justice, Bess, but she hardly knows you. Leave her to the care of the hospital staff. They’ll see that she’s properly looked after. You need to conserve your own strength. A long bedside vigil is the last thing you need just now.”

  He was right, of course. And considering how we’d parted, I had a feeling Marie-Luc might not be happy to see me.

  “Could she tell the police anything that was helpful?” Was what I knew important?

  “If she did, they didn’t tell me. It’s a civilian matter, after all. Once I’d discovered that it wasn’t related to a deserter, I had no authority to ask questions.”

  “It might be your affair,” I pointed out. “For one thing, it might have been a deserter looking for what little money he could find. If he was desperate.”

  Captain Barkley considered that. “Possible. But not likely,” he said after a moment.

  “Where was she taken? To which hospital?”

  “She was carried to Casualty in one close to the Left Bank, then transferred to one just off Vendôme. A Catholic hospital. They will see to it that she’s cared for.”

  I wondered. But I thanked him and asked if he would go with me to see her in the morning. He didn’t seem very enthusiastic about that.

  “You should put all your energies toward recovery. You’re needed at the Front, Bess. All your skills.”

  “I don’t think a visit to a patient just out of surgery will cause a setback. But perhaps you’re right. Perhaps I should wait and see how I feel in the morning.”

  “I’m sorry to upset you over this, but I thought you would wish to know.”

  “Yes, of course. Thank you. It was considerate of you.”

  He left soon afterward.

  I debated asking Major Vernon to escort me to the hospital, but if the barricades were still up, the police still questioning everyone, it might take hours to get there, and might result only in our being turned away. Tomorrow, then. I could go on my own.

  I found the hospital with some difficulty. It was not a large facility, and indeed, I saw that for the most part, the patients were elderly nuns, older women, and a number of charity cases. The corridors were quiet, and the sisters walked down them with a swish of long skirts, their shoes making hardly any sound on the stone flooring. They nodded to me beneath the wide white sails of their headdresses but didn’t speak. Eventually I found the ward where Sister Marie-Luc had been taken, and went down the row, looking for her bed.

  I hardly recognized her. Without her woolen cap, her hair was short and a dark brown. Her face was too thin, her eyes too large. She stared up at me, and for a moment I thought she was too feverish to know me because there was no recognition in her gaze.

  I stepped between the beds and smiled down at her. I could see now that she had been given something for the pain and was barely aware of her surroundings.

  It would be unfair to bring her back to feeling pain. I was about to turn away, thinking I could come again, perhaps in the afternoon, when her gaze sharpened.

  “Sis—” Her voice was a croak, barely intelligible. Clearing her throat, she said in a tentative tone, “Sister Crawford?”

  “Yes, I’ve come to see how you are, if there is anything I might do for you. Captain Barkley told me where to find you.”

  “Did he? How kind.” She seemed to lapse into a drifting sleep once more, but I stayed where I was. After a time she said, “It hurts.” Her eyes opened again, and there was pain and anger in them now. “He did this to me.”

  “The Breton’s son?” I asked. “Was it Jerome, Marie-Luc?”

  She had drifted away again, and this time she didn’t come back, her breathing deep and steady.

  Jerome was shell-shocked. But somehow I didn’t want to think of him stabbing her. As a rule, a man who suffered from shell shock was more likely to harm himself than those around him, unless he was so deep into nightmare that he couldn’t distinguish family or friends from the figures that lived in his head.

  But there were exceptions. There were always exceptions.

  I stayed for a few minutes longer and then went to find the Sister in charge of the ward.

  “You are a friend?” she asked, peering at me over her glasses. It was hard to judge her age, but the soft skin of her face told me she was at least sixty. Her brown eyes looked twenty years younger.

  “Yes. I have only just heard what happened to her. How is she progressing?”

  “The knife, it was not clean. We fear for infection. It struck her in the ribs just below the left breast, and then slipped on the cartilage, or perhaps she twisted away at that moment, for it cut a long gash down to her right side. There was loss of blood, but no organs touched. Only the muscles in the chest wall. We have done what we could. She will live. Barring, of course, infection. There will be a very bad scar. But she will be the only one to see it.”

  “I’m very glad to hear it.”

  “The wound could have been far worse, vous comprenez. It was intended to kill.”

  “I’m told someone found her in time?”

  “As to that, there is nothing I can tell you. The police have not confided such information to us.”

  I thanked her, walked back down the long corridor to the stairs, and followed them to the ground floor.

  Hesitating outside the hospital doors, I watched the traffic pass by for a moment and then made up my mind. Finding a taxi, I went back to the restaurant owned by the Breton family.

  It was closed.

  A neighbor, leaning out a window in the upper story of the house next door, called down to me. “There is illness in the family. They will not open today.”

  “Is it their son? Do you know? Is it he who is ill?”

  “The police came, and they closed at once. I tried to hear, but alors, my ears are not very good anymore.” She shrugged ruefully.

  “Do you know where they live?”

  “But of course, above the shop. Like me. That is my dressmaker shop below. But it is Sunday, I am not open.”

  I had lost track of the days.

  “Does their son—Jerome—live with them?”

  “Non. He has a small atelier, a studio, in the next street. Or is it two streets over? He was a painter, before the war. He stretched his own canvas, made his own frames. I liked his work. But the critics, they say he lacks a sense of light, but what do they know, the critics. They do not paint, do they?” Her voice was contemptuous.

  I thanked her and was about to walk on when she added, “He has changed, Jerome. I have not seen him since he was sent home with bad headaches. He does not come to the café. But his mother cries sometimes at night, and I hear her. C’est très triste.”

  It was sad.

  I asked again, “You don’t know where to find Jerome? Where he lives?”

  “Non. Je regrette.”

  I smiled and walked on.

  Why had the police come for the Breton couple? I still didn’t know their names. I turned and went back to the restaurant. And there, in a corner of the glass window, was what I was looking for: Auguste Karadeg, Proprietor.

  My side was hurting, but I took a taxi back to the Catholic hospital—it was called St. Anne’s—and asked once more to see Sister Marie-Luc.

  I was told she was still sleeping.

  It was time to go to Belle-Île and rest. I was walking out the door when a voice called, “Sister?”

  I turned to find a French policeman standing in the hospital doorway.

  “Yes?”

  “May I have a moment of your time?” His English was surprisingly good.

  “Yes, of course.”

  He waited for me to join him, and then led the way to a narrow office just beyond Reception. He was fairly tall, dark hair flecked wi
th gray, and his eyes were as blue as the sky. I could see at once why he had returned to serve with the police—his left sleeve was pinned to his chest.

  “You have come twice to visit Sister Marie-Luc, the nun hurt in the street last evening?”

  “I met her a few days ago, quite by accident. But as we’re both nurses, I think we liked each other. We had lunch just yesterday.” I was hoping by being so open that he would reciprocate.

  “Yes, at the restaurant owned by Monsieur Karadeg. Madame Karadeg has confirmed this.”

  “I went there this morning. I’d wondered if they knew Sister Marie-Luc had been hurt. I found it closed.”

  I tried to make my expression questioning. Encouraging him to talk to me. But he was too professional to be drawn out.

  “We are searching for their son. Jerome Karadeg. He was seen with her shortly before the attack. There is a witness. We are looking for more.”

  But no one saw the actual stabbing? I wanted to ask. It sounded that way.

  “Is that who you were searching for last night? Several of the ambulatory patients at Belle-Île were caught up in your sweep. They didn’t know why.”

  “For young Jerome Karadeg?” He was surprised. “I doubt it. He is dangerous, yes, but the police were very busy last evening. Crime does not wait for the war to end, Mademoiselle.”

  British police had told me much the same thing.

  “One of them, a Canadian officer, has told me the search was for the person who had stabbed a nun.”

  He frowned. “Indeed.”

  I suddenly had the feeling I should extricate myself from this conversation as quickly as I could.

  “Or am I wrong?” I tried to look flustered. “Was he the one who told me my friend was in the hospital?” I shook my head. “I’m recovering from a wound, and some of the medications I’m given confuse me.”

  His expression changed to one of concern. “Should I escort you back to hospital? It would be a pleasure.”

  “Yes, if you please. I’m rather light-headed. I expect it’s from not eating properly with the sedatives. But I have had so little appetite.”

  Diana knows how to flirt and usually has any man wrapped around her little finger in a matter of a few minutes of conversation. I should have taken lessons. The best I could do was to plead frailty. But at least I’d distracted the police from Captain Barkley and his connection with the nun. Or our search for Philippe Moreau.