A Bitter Truth

by Charles Todd

  But perhaps, with the inquest out of the way, the hue and cry for Davis Merrit could commence in earnest. If he could be found, the police would do their best to find him now.

  I would have given much to know what had become of him. That expression in Willy’s eyes had disturbed me, and I couldn’t quite put it out of my thoughts. After all, it was his possession of the watch that had made the case against Davis Merrit. Not just his disappearance.

  Christmas Day passed, and the day after Boxing Day, Simon and the Colonel Sahib drove me to London to meet my train.

  I said good-bye to my mother, as I always did, at the door of the house. I said good-bye to my father and to Simon at the door of the compartment of my train.

  My father said, “I know you’ve had Ashdown on your mind, Bess. I’ve said nothing, because it takes time to put something like that behind you.”

  I didn’t deny it. Instead I said, “It was very unpleasant, being a suspect in a murder inquiry. Even for so brief a time.”

  “I doubt that’s what’s been on your mind. Let it go. There’s nothing more you can do.”

  I smiled and kissed him, then said good-bye to Simon.

  As the train pulled out, I turned to wave, and saw both men staring after me with nearly the same expression on their faces.

  Worry. As if they knew me too well to be taken in.

  In truth, I was too busy the first weeks after my return to think about a child in an orphanage, but when there was a lull in the fighting, I was given a few days in the rear to rest.

  And there I encountered two nuns with five small children who had been injured in the shelling, their parents killed. Soldiers had brought them to safety and seen to it that they were treated, but it was time to look at the wounds again to see how they were healing. It was work the nuns could do, but I saw their tired faces and worn hands, proof that they were overburdened as it was, and suppurating wounds were nasty to deal with.

  I crossed to the tent where they were waiting in a long line with their charges, and I said to a nursing sister, “Shall I take a look at these for you?”

  “Sister Crawford, would you mind?”

  I took the nuns and the children aside, found a seat for them, and unwrapped the bandages around small arms and legs. Thank God the wounds had begun to close, and the nuns had kept them meticulously clean. I talked to the children as I worked, telling them as they watched me warily that all was well, and to mind the nuns about keeping their bandages tidy and in place.

  A little girl clung to me, her eyes still shadowed. Sister Agnes, the younger nun, said to me in heavily accented English, “She lost her mother and younger brother. It has been very difficult. For a long time, she would not eat.”

  I turned to the child, and in my best schoolgirl French, asked her name.

  “Marie Thérèse,” she answered softly, hardly loud enough for me to hear her.

  “What a pretty name! How old are you, Marie Thérèse?”

  “Six,” she replied after a moment. “My brother was only four.”

  “What was his name?”

  “Henri. After our father.”

  “Ah. A good name, Henri. Did he have blue eyes like yours?”

  “No, they were not blue. There was brown in them.”

  “Did you and Henri play games together?”

  This time she nodded vigorously and began to list their games. I had finished examining her broken arm, which was healing well. It had been a compound fracture, and surgery had been necessary to reset it.

  “My arm was broken too. Almost a year ago,” I told her as I helped her put hers back in its sling. Pushing up my sleeve, I showed her where my break had occurred. Her eyes grew large, and she touched it with a small finger.

  “There is no scar,” she said, wonderingly.

  “And the scar on your arm will also disappear. If you mind the Sisters and take good care of it.”

  “Henri’s neck was broken,” she told me then. “There was no way to heal it.”

  I could have taken her in my arms and held her close, but I smiled and said, “It didn’t hurt, you know. Necks are not like arms.”

  She nodded.

  At that moment, an Australian soldier strode by, a tall man, broad shouldered and fair. I stopped him and indicated the children. “Do you by any chance have chocolates, Sergeant?”

  He grinned down at me. “I believe I do.” The children were staring at him, round-eyed, and watching as he dug into his kit. He came up with a very flat chocolate bar and handed it to me. I thanked him, knowing well that chocolates were treats even for the men. Hadn’t Princess Mary’s Christmas Gift in 1914 included sweets for those who didn’t smoke?

  I handed the bar to the Sisters, to be shared with the children on the journey back to their convent.

  As they prepared to take their leave, effusive in their gratitude, I hugged the children, then said to the younger nun before she turned away, “As a matter of fact, I’m looking for a child. She’s half English, and her father has been searching for her since her mother died.” I described her, using Juliana’s portrait as my guide. “Have you seen her? Do you know where I could find her?”

  But they hadn’t seen her, had no idea where I might begin to look.

  “Convents from the north have been taken in by other houses wherever possible,” she told me. “And a few have been given shelter by benefactors. With so many children displaced by the war, it is difficult to keep proper records. Some are too young to know how they are called. And for others, like this little one”—she touched the head of a boy who must have been close to two years old—“there is no village name or family name.” She shrugged, that very Gallic shrug that said, What can one do?

  I thanked them, and watched them go.

  “That’s a bonny lass, that little one.”

  I jumped, unaware that the Australian was still there just behind me.

  “Yes, she is,” I said, wondering what life held in store for such children.

  “If you ask me,” he replied, echoing my own thoughts, “those are the real victims in this bloody war—begging your pardon, Sister. I sometimes wonder what’s ahead of them. And what sort of men and women they’ll grow up to become.”

  “At least these have found shelter,” I said. “That counts for something.”

  “Does it? My best friend’s mother came out from England when she was seven. Taken from a poor house where her own mother had just died and consigned to a convict ship filled with thieves and whores and the scum of the prisons. She was raped before she reached Australia, and then served as an indentured servant to a family who nearly worked her to death. My friend’s great-aunt took pity on her and rescued her. She turned out to be a fine woman. She never spoke of her trials. She said she had put them behind her. She was the bravest woman I ever knew.” There was pride mixed with an old anger in his voice.

  “She must have been, to survive.”

  “My friend was set on going to England after the war is finished and finding the men who put her on that ship. But of course they must all be dead now. What’s more, my friend is dead. Killed last week. So, with any luck, he’s caught up with them at last.”

  He touched his hat to me and was gone. I stood there, looking after him. And then the nursing sisters were calling to me, asking my help with a delirious patient who had taken a turn for the worse. From what I saw of his leg, swollen around the ankle and purple with gangrene, I knew it would have to come off, and soon. He wouldn’t make it alive to England otherwise.

  Half an hour later a surgeon’s assistant came for him.

  I spent my few days of respite asking if anyone knew of other convents in the vicinity that had taken in orphan children, but no one seemed to be aware of any.

  One doctor, his apron dark with other men’s blood, said, “Why do you want to know?”

  “Curiosity,” I replied. “I treated those five children who were here on Tuesday.”

  “Hmmmph,” he answered. “Though
t you might be one of those wanting us to take on the care of the civilian population. Leave that to the French doctors. We’ve got enough on our hands as it is, trying to save the men who get this far.”

  “What happened to the Corporal with the gangrenous foot?” I asked.

  “Didn’t survive. Bled to death, in spite of all we could do. Just as well. When I got in there I could see it wasn’t just his foot we’d have to take, but the entire leg, if he was to have any chance at living. Too little too late.”

  He nodded and walked away, leaving me standing there. I went back to my assigned quarters and bathed before lying down on my bed.

  It was hopeless, trying to find that child. I couldn’t imagine that Roger Ellis would have had any better luck. Even though he had come back to France while he still had nearly ten days of leave. Had he looked then, or gone directly to his regiment? She was lost in a sea of humanity. Perhaps after the war—but that could be years away, in spite of what was being said about the Americans soon turning the tide. With their ships being destroyed by German torpedoes, how could they resupply themselves, or bring in fresh troops? It would, I thought wearily, be more likely that the Germans and their allies and the British and their allies would simply fight each other to a standstill, until there were no more men, no more shells, and no more bullets left on either side.

  I fell asleep for a few hours, and then went back again to see if I could help. But there had been a lull in the long line of wounded being convoyed back to us, some of them on omnibuses painted khaki, and I finally had an evening to write letters home and indulge myself in a long, hot bath. If I could find someone to heat the water and haul it to my quarters.

  I returned to the Front when my relief was up. On the third day, while bandaging the head of a young private who came from Sussex, I asked if he’d ever been to Ashdown Forest.

  “No, Sister. I’d never left Eastbourne, until I joined the Army.”

  “Do you by any chance know Captain Roger Ellis, of Vixen Hill, near Hartfield?”

  His eyes brightened. “That I do. I served under him for a time. Took good care of us, he did. He said Sussex men must stand up for each other.”

  It was a side of Roger I hadn’t seen before. “He’s liked by his men?”

  “Trusted is the word. You always knew where you stood with him.”

  Noting the past tense, I said, “Knew?”

  He grinned. “Sorry. What was left of our company was sent along to another regiment to make up their numbers.”

  “Then he’s still alive.”

  “Oh, yes. There’s a rumor that he got to Paris one day. Bluffed his way onto a convoy. Went to see the dancing girls, someone said. Perhaps he did. Perhaps not. But he came back from Paris with a bottle of champagne. It was the most expensive he’d ever paid for, he said, and gave each of his men a taste.”

  A very different Roger Ellis from the man I’d encountered in Ashdown Forest. I wondered if Lydia had seen this side of him before the war. If so, I could understand why she had found the man who came home on compassionate leave almost a stranger.

  I moved on to the next patient, and then it was another day, and the fighting was fierce in one sector. We began seeing the casualties around noon. It was in a brief lull that I was reminded of what the young private had said. That Roger Ellis had gone to Paris to see the dancing girls.

  It occurred to me that it was a story certain to please his men. And that wherever he went, it was to find a small child who had reminded a dead man of Juliana.

  Chapter Eleven

  One morning we were brought a dozen Australian wounded, men there was no room for in the crowded forward aid station but who were not severe enough cases to be sent back for major surgery. They were, for the most part, shrapnel victims where bursting shells tore through flesh and bone and sinew.

  We had been warned to prepare for them, and the first inkling we had that they were arriving was an assortment of whistles and jeers and general catcalls, from the English Tommies lying on stretchers or sitting on whatever they could find. It was all good-natured, a rivalry of long standing. And then I heard the most maniacal laughter, so wild and crazed that I went to see what was wrong, expecting some sort of head wound. A burst of laughter followed the sound, and at that moment a tall Aussie Sergeant was limping toward me.

  He greeted me just as I recognized him as the soldier I’d asked for chocolate when the nuns had brought in the five wounded children a few weeks earlier.

  “Still searching for that little girl?” he asked, one hand gripping his other arm at the shoulder. I could see beneath the hasty field dressings that it was lacerated, deep wounds still bleeding.

  There was no time to answer—the other sisters were there, and we got the Australian soldiers inside and began evaluating their wounds.

  The Sergeant insisted that we look at his men before he would allow us to touch him, and as I worked on a leg wound, cleaning it and removing bits of shell, he sauntered over, clapped the young private on the back, and said, “Good lad.”

  The boy—for he hardly seemed more than that—grinned weakly. He was pale, his teeth clenched against the pain, but his Sergeant’s praise saw him through his ordeal.

  The Sergeant then turned to me. “Ever find that lass you were looking for?” he asked again.

  I was surprised he’d remembered our conversation.

  “No luck so far.”

  “You’re not going about it the right way,” he told me. “Put the word out, let others be on the lookout for her.”

  I hesitated, for I realized that word could easily get back to Roger Ellis that an English nursing sister was searching for a fair-haired orphan. But even if it did, there wasn’t much he could do about it, was there?

  “I’d like to find her,” I said over my shoulder as I bandaged another soldier’s back. “Someone I knew was set on finding her and bringing her back to England. He wasn’t the father, but he knew the father didn’t care enough to rescue her. Only he was killed before he could return to France.”

  “Killed?” the Sergeant asked, frowning. “In England, you mean?”

  “He was murdered,” I admitted. “It’s a long story, but never mind. I just want to find her, and then perhaps her family can be persuaded to bring her home. She’ll have a better life than she could have here in this war-torn country.”

  “I’ll put the word out,” he told me. “Describe her again.”

  I did. “It must seem quite fantastical, but she ought to be just that pretty.”

  “If you’ve never set eyes on the lass, how do you know so clearly what she looks like?”

  A perceptive question. I smiled.

  “There’s a portrait of another child—a—a relative of this one. I was told she bears a strong family resemblance to Juliana. That’s how I know what to look for.”

  “A needle in a haystack,” he said cheerfully, “but we’ll do what we can.”

  One of his men began to scream as Sister Bedford probed for an elusive bit of shrapnel.

  The Sergeant was there, saying, “Buck up, my lad, you don’t want those Tommies out there laughing up their sleeves at us.”

  The soldier grinned sheepishly. “No, Sergeant. But it damned well hurts.”

  “You can scream at the Hun when we get back to our lines.”

  That brought a shout of laughter from the others.

  While I appreciated the Sergeant’s willingness to help—I was grateful, in fact—I rather thought he was enjoying flirting with me, and as soon as he and his company were back in the line, my orphan child would be forgotten.

  The Sergeant himself took the painful digging in his shoulder stoically, tight lipped and teeth clenched. I could see the muscle in his jaw clearly.

  When we’d finished, he ordered his men to follow him, and “stop cluttering up the sisters’ ward.”

  I said, “Wait, where is the man with the head wound?”

  He looked at me, then scanned his company. “The only on
e with the head wound didn’t make it, Sister,” he said, frowning. “Unless you’re counting Teddy, there, of course.”

  He gestured to the private who had had bits of shrapnel in his scalp.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, thinking that the man must have died outside the station. I added, “But I daresay your man Teddy will survive.”

  “You’d better believe he will,” the Sergeant said, grinning. “I promised his mother special.”

  And they were gone.

  One of the sisters working on a stretcher case watched them walk away. “I do like tall men,” she commented. “And that one in particular.”

  My next encounter with the Australian Sergeant was nearly a fortnight later, in the form of a message brought to me by a Scottish Corporal who had met him on a muddy road outside Ypres. The Corporal’s arm was in a makeshift sling, and I could tell before I had cut away his sleeve that it was badly broken. He said, his face pale with pain, “Is there a Sister here called Crawford?”

  “I’m Sister Crawford,” I said as I finished with the scissors and laid bare the broken limb.

  “I’m to gie ye this, then,” he answered, and with his good hand, he fished a slip of dirty paper from his blouse. “There’s a Sergeant Larimore fra’ Australia who’s been sending messages back by any wounded laddie he meets.”

  “Ah, the Australian,” I said, smiling, taking the sheet and opening it. I found it was a list of orphanages that he’d somehow come up with by questioning everyone in sight, or so it appeared. I could never have collected such a list on my own, not without weeks of intense searching.

  “Bless him,” I said, after scanning it.

  The Corporal replied, “If it’s only a list that will make ye smile, I’ll draw up one masel’.”

  Shaking my head, I said, “It’s not any list. I’m searching for a convent that used to be in a house on the road south of Ypres. They took in a number of orphans, but with the fighting had to move south to Calais. After that I’ve lost touch with them. There’s a child in that group of orphans that I’m trying to find, for a—a friend.”