by Charles Todd
The door opened before he could answer. I now had only seconds left. I laid a hand on his forehead, as if judging whether or not he had a fever. And bending over him, I spoke softly so that only he could hear me. “Please, if you think of anything, tell Mr. Groves to pass it on to Mark. You must try. And don’t give in. Mark is doing all he can.”
And then I turned and walked briskly out of the room.
I went to find the doctor to ask what was to be done about their prisoner patient.
“He’s been refusing to eat,” the doctor told me, annoyance in his voice. “I can’t say I blame him, I can’t imagine that the food brought in to him is anything he’s been accustomed to.”
“It isn’t a matter of what he’s accustomed to, is it?” I suggested. “I believe he’s abandoned hope.”
“It’s the weight of his guilt.”
“Is it? Did the police tell you that? Or is it a very real fear that he’s been abandoned by the law? He hasn’t been allowed to see his family—no reading materials—no exercise. He might as well be a condemned man.”
The doctor seemed surprised. “Are you telling me the truth?”
“Ask Mr. Ashton yourself. Speak to his gaolers. I’ve only just been informed myself. It’s—troubling.”
“So many men died in that blast. It’s inconceivable that something didn’t go wrong.”
This was exactly the frame of mind that made it possible for so many people to believe the worst about Philip Ashton.
I swallowed what I’d have liked to say, that he wasn’t being very fair. I already knew that fairness didn’t enter into it.
“I’m sure something did go wrong. And the Army came to the conclusion that it was a tragic accident. They didn’t put the blame on Mr. Ashton.”
“Yes, well, they demoted their own man.”
This was news to me.
“I’m sorry?”
“They demoted him to Lieutenant and put him behind a desk in London. Someone told me that. I don’t recall who it was, but he’d been a brevetted Captain for the duration.” A nurse was walking down the hall toward him, and he said, “I must go, there’s a patient in surgery. I’ll do what I can for Ashton.”
I put out a hand to stop him. “Where is Captain—Lieutenant—Collier now?”
“I have no idea.”
And then he was gone.
It was late, but I hoped to find the telegraph office to send a message to my father. And then I remembered that he was leaving on the morning train. Most likely it wouldn’t reach him.
And where was Simon? Still in France? I could use his objective viewpoint. I needed information, information I didn’t think Mark would have.
I was on my way to meet him when I discovered the hospital had a telephone and I begged the use of it.
My mother wasn’t at home. She was still in London. I left a message. And another at my father’s club.
Mark was waiting outside for me. He must be eaten up by anxiety by now! I hurried out the door and saw his motorcar in the shadows at the corner of the building.
He got out at once and ran toward me.
“How is he? What happened?”
I told him. “The doctor will do what he can,” I ended with more optimism than I actually felt. “But he’s in no danger. I promise you.”
Even in the light spilling out from the hospital windows he looked grim.
“It’s true then, that they’re pressing him not to fight.”
“Yes, I think Worley must feel that it’s impossible to go forward, and he’s going to lose if he does. That it’s best to hope for mercy. But I’m not ready yet to believe that. Mark, what happened to the officer who was the liaison between your father and the Army?”
“Captain Collier? I’ve no idea. He was recalled during the investigation. Well, there was nothing for him to do in Cranbourne. I seem to remember some possibility of sending him north to oversee the expansion of the Scottish mill that was to take over from Ashton Mill.”
I said, wanting to pace in my frustration, “Yes, but I need to find him.”
“Do you think he knew more than he told the authorities?”
“He might be able to tell a jury that your father couldn’t have caused the deaths of those men. He can give evidence for the defense, explain how difficult it was to keep up production, the pressure on the workers, the dangers they faced. He was your father’s opposite number. That would bear weight. It would help.”
“Is there any chance I’ll be allowed to see my father?”
“Not tonight,” I said, trying to soften the blow. “But he’s all right. Just—discouraged. As you’d expect.”
“Come on, then. Into the motor. We’ll sort this out at Abbey Hall.”
It was the invitation I was waiting for. An opportunity to speak to Mrs. Ashton.
“Thank you, Mark.” He took my kit and carried it to the motorcar, and in a matter of minutes we were on our way. But he had looked back at the hospital wistfully, as if he could see through the very walls into his father’s room.
Mrs. Ashton was delighted to see me. Clara perhaps a little less so. I was given my old room and offered a late supper when they discovered that I hadn’t eaten since breakfast.
They were all eager to hear what I could tell them about Philip Ashton. Mrs. Ashton had been fretting about her husband all day, and I could see that she had tried to put a good face on her worry and it had given her a thundering headache instead.
I repeated what I’d told Mark, leaving out only what the doctor had said about the liaison officer.
And then the questions began. How the patient had looked, how he felt, how serious were his wounds, asked in endless variations, as if to elicit some small comforting fact that I might have forgotten or left out. I repeated myself a number of times, trying to give them a little hope.
“I told everyone I was a cousin,” I said ruefully. “A lie, but Inspector Brothers had seen me here in the house, and so he was willing to accept it.”
“Never mind,” Mrs. Ashton said. “It’s a very small lie compared to those being told about us. What’s more, it worked.” She put out her hand. “I’d be glad to call you cousin, if the Inspector comes prying. But tell me . . .”
The round of questions began again.
“I knew I should have sent him food from the house,” she worried. “I knew it must be better than what the police could manage.”
“They wouldn’t allow it,” Mark reminded her.
“How much weight has he lost? Are you sure it’s not serious?”
It was nearly midnight when Mark called a halt to the questions and sent us all to bed. I climbed the stairs gratefully, and my eyes were closing even as I blew out my lamp.
The quiet room, the quiet night, played their part, and it was nearly seven when I awoke.
It was difficult to get Mrs. Ashton alone. Clara was there, and if not Clara, Mark, debating whether or not to return to the hospital waiting room in the hope of catching a glimpse of his father.
In the end, he and Clara went off to Canterbury together, although I knew it to be hopeless.
Grateful for this opportunity, I turned to Mrs. Ashton as we walked in her enclosed garden. The day had turned decidedly chilly, and we wore wraps against it, even though we were protected from the wind.
“What happened to the officer who was the liaison between Mr. Ashton and the Army?” I asked, not knowing any better way to broach the subject.
She stared at me, then walked on. “I have no idea. The Army recalled him.”
“But you don’t believe that,” I said. “You think he’s still here, somewhere, in Cranbourne or else in Canterbury or one of the nearby villages.”
“No, truly, he was recalled. To London. They felt he was too close to the situation to take part in the Army’s inquiry in
to what happened,” she said. “I expect he’s in France somewhere by now. If he’s still alive. Philip didn’t keep in touch with him, so I have no idea.”
“Then why did you stand at the window on the night of the fire, when you thought everyone had gone to bed, and threaten someone if he hurt your family?”
Surprised, she walked on a few steps, and then turned.
“Bess. How did you hear that?”
“I had walked outside, hoping to find footprints or something else, to show Constable Hood in the morning.”
“I wanted to lash out at whoever had done this. I thought perhaps it was one of the women who had been widowed, and she might be frightened off if she could be convinced we knew who had started the fire. But I don’t really believe that all these people making our lives so wretched are acting on their own. I’ve lived in Cranbourne since Philip brought me here as his bride. I know these villagers. And so I’ve been looking for whoever it is who began this business. But I can’t find him—or her. Every time I think I might be getting close, I realize I’m wrong again. I tried to persuade Philip that it was all a conspiracy, but he never wanted to believe his own people had turned against him.”
I didn’t know whether to believe her.
“Why were you out there?” she asked, as she realized the implications of what I’d told her. “Was Mark with you? Clara?”
“No one was with me.” And then, goaded by disbelief, I said, “I saw your face, Mrs. Ashton. You believed you knew.”
She walked on, and I followed her. I was about to ask again, even if she threw me out of her house, when she stopped.
“Yes, all right. At one point I was afraid it was Alex. Alex Craig. Well, no, that’s not quite true. I didn’t want to believe it could be. But I was frightened too, you see. Not thinking clearly. I knew he sometimes came to the house late at night, when he couldn’t sleep. He loved Eloise the way I’d loved someone once, when I was very young. And he lost her twice. First to Mark and then to the Spanish influenza. I had hoped letting him say good-bye to her would help him. And so I felt betrayed that night, when we had the fire. I was upset over Philip, and seeing the sitting room alight was the last straw. And I couldn’t tell Mark what I feared, could I?”
Some of the tension went out of her face, as if she was glad to have told someone what she believed at the time. But I still wasn’t sure I believed her. Yet, in a quick search in my memory of all the people I knew of who might be involved, I couldn’t think of anyone else she might feel so intense about. And until the incident with Nan, the dog, the personal attacks had actually seemed to stop.
“Tell me about the liaison officer,” I asked, attempting to turn the conversation now. “Do you think he would speak on behalf of your husband if we could find him? It might go a long way in the trial if he explained to the jurors what working in the mill was like.”
“Captain Collier? I didn’t like him very much.” She walked over to the border and snapped off a seed pod. It fell apart in her hand, and she looked at it in surprise, as if it had hurt her.
“You didn’t?”
“He was always on about what should be done to increase production, and Philip had enough on his mind without that constant pressure,” she said, slowly, as if trying to put her feelings into words. “He was ambitious, anxious to prove himself. To keep that temporary rank.”
Ambitious. I was suddenly reminded of the portion of a letter I’d found in the study, secreted in a Jane Austen novel. Had Mrs. Ashton asked questions about Collier of a friend in London, because she was worried about her husband? Possibly even before the explosion? I thought it might be likely. Who else could it have been? And, of course, she wouldn’t have wanted her husband to know about her query.
She was still talking about Collier. “And yet he had very little experience with gunpowder. Or at the Front, for that matter. He’d worked in Stores—he’d had some experience with manufacturers; boots, blankets, that sort of thing. And so it was thought he could learn about cordite as well. He wanted to be seen as the Army’s man in Cranbourne, and it was a constant battle to rein in his enthusiasm for new methods that hadn’t been tested. Philip was always trying to keep him focused on what was possible or realistic. I don’t think he realized what a pest he’d become. Even at social gatherings he was always looking for some advantage to himself. I learned to avoid him. But to answer your question, I don’t think his testimony would go very far in helping Philip. Even if he willingly came forward.”
“I’ve heard you and Mark mention several times that Captain Collier pushed the workers too hard for greater output. Does Mr. Groves know this? It could be important.”
She shook her head. “Not hard enough to make them careless. That was the last thing he’d want to happen. It was Philip he pushed. And it made Philip appear old-fashioned, uninterested in progress or improvement. Which was unfair, when he had so many lives to consider.”
“Did the Captain blame Mr. Ashton for what happened?”
“He was as stunned as everyone else. He’d gone into Canterbury the evening before, to have dinner with a friend on his way to the Front, and that morning they went to early services before Captain Collier saw him off on his train. He was just leaving the railway station when the explosion occurred. People were shocked, wondering if Dover was being shelled by a German cruiser or if there had been an earthquake, or a zeppelin raid, and it was an hour before the Captain could find someone to take him back to Cranbourne. By that time, it was too late, the fire was well and truly burning, and there was nothing anyone could do. To his credit, he sent men straightaway to The Swale and all along the coastline to look for German boats and saboteurs. The Army commended him for that. But of course there weren’t any.” She let the seeds sift through her fingers, watching them fall. “In some ways we’d have been better off, all of us, if it had been Germans. Even the Captain. He might well have gained a promotion out of it. Have you said anything to Mark about finding Collier and asking him to appear?”
“Briefly. He didn’t know what had become of the Captain.”
“Not surprising. Mark barely knew him.” She smiled wryly. “Except through my letters, complaining about the Captain’s latest peccadillo.” We stood for a moment by the fishpond, watching the wind ripple the clear surface. “I’m afraid, Bess. I don’t know where to turn for help. Philip had so many friends. And so many of them have fallen away since the troubles began. Or had already moved to London for the duration. I’ve thought of writing to several of them, but I never quite found the courage. I was afraid they might reject my plea for support. I’ve had enough of rejection now.”
She turned to stare unseeing at the house. “There’s something else that could be looked into. The women who worked at the mill were terribly upset. For one thing, of course, they’d just lost their livelihood and many of their friends if not relatives. A number of them had breakdowns. It haunted them that if it had been a Saturday or a Monday, they’d have been killed as well. For another, there’s the fact that we found so few remains. The ruins were searched as soon as they were cool enough. There had been talk about a mass grave. But there wasn’t enough to bury, Bess. If you go into St. Anne’s, to the nave, there’s a large brass memorial plaque to the dead. We had that put up, listing every man’s name. But the women who survived the dead, and the women who might have been killed if the explosion had happened on another day, felt it was not enough. They raised the money themselves to put up a stone in the churchyard.” She cleared her throat, as if it was suddenly tight. “It was as if they felt our money was tainted. That the brass plaque was erected to salve our consciences.”
I hadn’t seen either of the memorials.
“They can bear grudges, these village women. They might even want to see Philip hang.”
I didn’t have the heart to tell her that they had also turned their backs on the Vicar.
“W
ell,” she went on. “That’s water under the bridge, is it not? I can’t bear to think about it any longer. Are you absolutely certain that Philip’s wounds weren’t life-threatening? That he didn’t at least try to kill himself? You aren’t holding back something, are you?”
But even as I tried to reassure her, I knew it wasn’t enough.
CHAPTER TWELVE
MARK HAD NO luck at the hospital. He was refused permission to speak to his father, or even to see him.
Angry and worried, he went to call on Mr. Groves, and as he related the meeting to his mother and to me, it was clearly not a pleasant one.
“It’s true what Father told Bess—that they want him to throw himself on the mercy of the court and claim that the fire was an accident. They’re suggesting that when he went over to see the extent of the damage, he inadvertently set off a spark that started the blaze. Groves and Worley feel it’s the only way to avoid a far worse outcome.”
I said, “But I thought no one was certain whether the fire caused the explosion or followed it. Besides, if your father admits culpability, he could be held responsible for the deaths of workers who might have survived the blasts.”
“No one could have survived,” Mrs. Ashton said.
“But there’s no proof of that, is there? He could find himself faced with endless claims for wrongful deaths—loss of income—whatever someone wants to accuse him of. Even the Army could come back to you and demand money because they couldn’t rebuild in the ruins.”
Mark said, “I know. It would break us financially. But the alternative could well be a hanging.”
“Philip will never agree to such a plea,” Mrs. Ashton said.
Clara, who had been silent for a time, spoke up. “What if he does agree? And the court refuses to accept his plea? And they insist on trying him anyway? He’ll be seen as doubly guilty. By his own admission and by the findings of the jury.”