DEATH WILL FIND ME
- A Tessa Kilpatrick Mystery -
Vanessa Robertson
Wild Justice Press
To Gladys, who gives the lie to every mother-in-law cliché.
This is for you.
Oh! Death Will Find Me, Long Before I Tire
Oh! Death will find me, long before I tire
Of watching you; and swing me suddenly
Into the shade and loneliness and mire
Of the last land! There, waiting patiently,
One day, I think, I’ll feel a cool wind blowing,
See a slow light across the Stygian tide,
And hear the Dead about me stir, unknowing,
And tremble. And I shall know that you have died,
And watch you, a broad-browed and smiling dream,
Pass, light as ever, through the lightless host,
Quietly ponder, start, and sway, and gleam --
Most individual and bewildering ghost! --
And turn, and toss your brown delightful head
Amusedly, among the ancient Dead
- Rupert Brooke -
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Epilogue
Author’s Note
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Prologue
France, 1917
The Bugatti crept along the track, headlights off. The driver strained to see where she was going, wary of shell holes or movements in the bushes. She had hoped the night would be cloudy; although it would be harder to navigate, she’d be less visible to unfriendly eyes. Unluckily for her, it was a clear night, the stars bright above. Despite that, she had no choice but to risk it, banking on the car being able to outrun trouble, if not an actual bullet.
Driving an ambulance she always had a certain amount of faith in the talisman effect of the red crosses on its sides. This time she was in a road car, appropriated from a captured German officer. It was much faster and could get her out of danger quickly, but the open top left her exposed and more vulnerable. Every so often she heard a muffled thump as another shell exploded in the trenches a couple of miles away. As always, there was a faint smell of cordite in the air.
She turned a corner and the farmhouse stood before her, its roof holed, a gable leaning precariously. It lay in a slight dip and she let in the clutch, coasting the last twenty yards to keep the engine as quiet as possible. Halting outside the ragged hole where there had once been a front door, she pulled her woollen hat down further over her cropped dark hair and shivered.
Gambling, and hoping, that the missing soldier would have been looking out for help to come, she leaned across and opened the passenger door. Right on cue, a figure appeared out of the darkness and scrambled in, his left leg dragging slightly. Despite the German car, he’d obviously felt it was worth taking the chance that this was friend not foe. Better to take the risk than just stay there and wait for the end. His British army uniform was filthy and an improvised bandage, stiff with dried blood, was bound around his injured leg. Major Bill Henderson, wounded by an enemy sniper while on reconnaissance, cold, weak from blood loss and hungry after four days in hiding, was almost safe. Or as safe as one could be so close to the front line in France.
Setting off almost before the door was closed, she revved the engine too loudly, the sound seeming to echo around the darkness. She cursed and set off back up the track, driving as fast as she dared.
‘Don’t worry. It’s not too far.’ She glanced at her passenger. He was young, probably only in his mid-twenties, a few years older than herself, but with a face lined and aged by pain. ‘Twenty minutes or so and we should be safe. There’s a blanket on the floor, wrap it round you. It’ll keep you warm and hide your uniform.’
‘You’re a girl? They sent a girl to rescue me?’ His voice was husky, his throat raw from dehydration. He sounded incredulous.
‘Well, yes.’ She changed gear, double-declutching neatly, the engine scarcely faltering as she rounded a bend. ‘I do know what I’m doing. I normally drive an ambulance.’
Suddenly, further down the track, a figure emerged and she saw the tell-tale shape of the barrel of a Mauser. She swore under her breath and braked. The soldier moved round to the side of the car, his grey German uniform all too visible. He didn’t look friendly.
‘Guten Abend.’ Her German wasn’t extensive, but if she was driving a German car and if she could just sound convincing enough she might be able to get on her way before the soldier realised that she wasn’t one of his compatriots. She smiled, trying to look polite, glad of the gloves that meant he couldn’t see the whites of her knuckles as she gripped the steering wheel with one hand, the other already reaching down beside her.
‘Wer sind Sie?’ he barked, raising his gun. He wasn’t convinced. Instinctively, her hand closed around the grip of the pistol, also acquired from the car’s last owner. She levelled the Luger at the soldier, and although she felt a flicker of regret as she pulled the trigger it wasn’t the first time she had had to kill a man and she doubted if it would be the last.
Leaving the German beside the track, the single bullet between his eyes instantly fatal, she accelerated away. When she’d put a good quarter of a mile or so between the dead soldier and themselves, she noted the stunned silence of the man next to her.
‘They may have sent a woman, but surely you didn’t think they’d send an unarmed one?’ she asked, turning and raising an eyebrow.
‘You’re not an ambulance driver.’ Major Henderson sounded suspicious, almost accusatory.
‘Not always, no.’ She smiled brightly at him. ‘I’m Tessa Kilpatrick by the way. How do you do?’
Chapter One
Scotland, 1920
Tessa debated which of the two evening dresses that hung on the wardrobe door she should wear. The dark green one with its high neck and long sleeves covered all her scars, although it was an irredeemably dull garment that blended into the background and she knew that wearing it would make her feel similarly invisible. And she was weary of being side-lined.
She stroked the red dress from Fortuny, letting the silk slip through her fingers, watching as the hem whispered and swirled. It was sleeveless, caught at the waist with a narrow belt, and would not cover her scars. But it was beautiful and would make her feel more like the woman she used to be. Not the woman she had become. That red dress had been to a number of country house parties since it arrived from France; however, it remained unworn in favour of the more sedate, green alternative and its equally dull sisters, waiting for an evening when Tessa felt bold enough.
‘The green one, don’t you think?’ Tessa didn’t react, still looking at the dresses and wondering whe
ther wearing the red might give her the courage she needed. It was strange how a slip of red silk could mean the difference between going on as things were, or having the confidence to make changes.
‘I said, surely you’re going to wear the green dress.’
‘I heard you the first time.’ Tessa turned to face her husband, struck as always by how impossibly handsome he looked in evening clothes. James held out a wrist for her to fasten his cufflinks, looking past her to see his reflection in the mirror.
‘I don’t know why Ishbel sent you that dress, it’s not at all your sort of thing. It’s far too showy and it doesn’t cover your arms. She must have forgotten that you wear more sensible dresses these days.’
‘It’s lovely though. I’d feel so glamorous wearing it.’ Tessa spoke lightly, not wanting to betray the significance of the dress. She knew her aunt sending it to her was a means of encouraging her to reclaim the woman she still was, deep down. ‘Besides, wouldn’t you rather I wore the red dress than that dull green one? Shouldn’t your wife be one of the best-dressed women here?’ Tessa remembered when his eyes would light up as she entered a room.
‘But you don’t want people to see your scars, do you? The green is perfectly nice.’ James straightened his bow tie in the looking glass, turning his head to admire the lock of hair falling across his forehead in what Tessa knew he thought was a rakish manner. He was unmarked by the war, still good-looking and attractive.
‘I’ll see you downstairs. People I want to catch up with and all that. Don’t be long, darling.’ And he was gone, without a kiss or a smile, his endearment merely a habit. In the early days of their marriage, he would always wait for her so they could go down to dinner together and they would frequently cut it fine, delayed by kisses and laughter.
When they married, James was the indulged youngest son of an aristocratic family and his entire life had been a round of fun. He’d read for a degree at Oxford, however, punting and drinking societies and jaunts to London for balls took up more time than the Bodleian. It was quite a surprise to everyone when he graduated with an upper second. There had been talk of a job of some kind, running part of the family estates or maybe going into the wine trade, but he didn’t take it seriously and besides, he had no need of a salary. Then the war began and he enlisted, returning to face changes and responsibilities he’d never anticipated. Not many of the giddy pre-war japes were evident now.
Tessa missed fun. Before the war, dresses like the red Fortuny were a matter of course, and she received invitations by every post. She recalled the woman she used to be, before that dreadful explosion as she sheltered in a shell hole trying to save a Tommy, tightening a tourniquet around his mangled leg and screaming at him to breathe, to talk to her, to stay in this world. That woman was capable and brave and confident. That woman would have worn the red dress.
The silk slithered over her body, emphasising her long legs and flat stomach. The green definitely hid her from view, covering most of her injuries from prying eyes. The scars, one on her shoulder where a shard of metal clipped the collarbone as it flew past, and one on her upper arm where another piece embedded itself until a nurse extracted it hours later, were growing less visible as time went on, now fading to a pale silver.
But Tessa still noticed people’s shock when they glimpsed them and she was glad they couldn’t see the others: the savage scars curving across her body, the result of the shrapnel and the rushed battlefield surgery that had only narrowly saved her life. Those were rarely seen by anyone, even James. He said that they were of no concern, but she knew they repelled him and she sometimes felt that they were the only thing he saw when he looked at her.
She carried on getting dressed, hearing laughter drifting up from the hall as guests gathered to drink champagne before dinner. Tessa loathed these weekend house parties that seemed to fill their calendar these days. The people here were mostly friends of James’s from way back; men who’d fought and women who’d stayed at home, protected by their class from dirtying their hands with any sort of war work beyond knitting socks for soldiers at the Front. The weekends when Bill Henderson was a guest, like this one, were a blessing. They played down the story of how they’d met: no-one needed to know he owed his life to Tessa, so they didn’t talk much. James tended to make snide comments if he saw his wife talking to other men, but she always felt more optimistic about these ghastly weekends if Bill was there.
The men never knew how to converse with Tessa: her war-time activities being mostly secret, her decorations out-ranking their own and her injuries making them uncomfortable. The women reacted to her with a mixture of curiosity and guilt and a little envy. Her father might be a baronet and as rich as Croesus, but he was still in trade, and it seemed unfair to them that Tessa had married James, while they, with their vast tracts of family land and their centuries of breeding, had not. And given the shortage of eligible men around these days, many of them were destined never to find a husband. It wasn’t surprising that some of them flirted with James, on the off-chance he might be looking to replace Tessa with someone more suitable now that the war was over.
Marriage certainly wasn’t working out as she’d expected when James persuaded her to elope with him in a breathless burst of romance in 1916, but back then neither of them knew whether they’d even return from the war. Tessa thought about the misguided assumptions they’d had regarding their future lives and how they came home to find that everything had changed. James had been home for a year now, no longer the carefree youngest son but the heir to the earldom and all its estate. Lately, she’d felt as though their marriage was at a turning point. They needed to find a way back to each other if they had any future. Perhaps if she tried harder to be the woman James fell in love with, then he would meet her halfway and some of their problems would seem less insurmountable. That woman would always have worn the red dress, but these days it seemed he wanted her to wear the green one so that she would fade into the background, less of a reminder of the problems they faced.
Standing in front of the mirror, Tessa fastened her stockings, buttoned the straps of her shoes, pulled on her gloves and put on her jewellery; watching the woman she had once been and would be again come alive and she smiled at her reflection. It was time to stop marking time and start living the life she and so many others had fought and died for. That woman would be able to save her marriage. Tessa straightened her gloves, took one last look in the glass and went down to dinner.
Chapter Two
At a country house party, one never knew what might be going on in a dimly-lit room, just as one never knew who would be corridor-creeping between bedrooms in the middle of the night. Standing in the hallway, outside the library, Tessa paused and took a deep breath.
Coming downstairs for drinks before dinner in the red dress turned heads, although it hadn’t elicited the smiles Tessa hoped for from James. Over dinner, she had made polite conversation with her host and the dull man on her other side who talked only of cattle prices and shooting. She had been aware of curious glances from the other women, presumably wondering what prompted her to wear the Fortuny, a dress far more expensive and stylish that any others there; however, Tessa’s eyes were drawn again and again to her husband and the woman beside him who giggled and twinkled, touching his arm and keeping her voice low so that he had to lean in close to catch her words.
The red dress gave her courage, and Tessa reminded herself that the woman who wore it wouldn’t ignore painful truths. Praying she was wrong and hoping to be discreet if she was, Tessa opened the library door. The hinges were well-oiled and it swung open without a sound.
A fire glowed in the grate and a couple of lamps were lit, the Forsyths having recently had electricity run up the drive. By the desk near the uncurtained window she saw two people, their silhouettes outlined by the moonlight. She strained her eyes to identify them and heard the low murmur of a voice she recognised. With a sinking heart, Tessa realised the man with his back to her was her husband and
the gasping woman, on the desk with her arms about his neck and legs wrapped around his hips, her skirt hitched up and the clips of her suspenders glinting in the lamplight, was the woman he’d been so attentive to at dinner.
Caroline was her name, she thought. They’d met at a few of these house parties over the last few months, but Caroline had never made any particular impression on Tessa until she saw her flirting with James. How long this had been going on she had no idea. Tessa cursed herself: she should have paid more attention.
What now? Tessa thought. She could slip away and pretend she’d seen nothing, she could rage and scream, or she could face this head on. She put out a hand and flicked on the overhead light. The two figures froze as they were illuminated.
‘Get out.’ James obviously assumed that the interloper was another guest, probably one of his friends who would laugh off his indiscretion, or another couple looking for a clandestine corner. The woman giggled and ducked her head behind his shoulder as though to avoid being identified.
‘I don’t think so, James. I rather think I’ll stay here and you can explain to me exactly what’s going on.’ Her tone was light, almost conversational. James’s head dropped, horror overtaking his lust, while there was some awkward fumbling as both adjusted their clothing. Then he turned to face her, squaring his shoulders, his expression a combination of wariness and defiance. No hint of contrition, Tessa noticed. His floozy, still somewhat dishevelled, pushed past Tessa and out into the hallway. Tessa shoved the door shut behind her with some force and turned back to her husband.
Death Will Find Me (A Tessa Kilpatrick Mystery, Book 1) Page 1