Death Will Find Me (A Tessa Kilpatrick Mystery, Book 1)

by Vanessa Robertson

  ‘All sorts of things. Look at the birds. Do you see that blackbird over there? She must be building a nest. I see her flying back and forth all day with bits and pieces. When the gardener brushes Rummy here,’ he pointed to the still-sleeping dog, ‘he leaves the hair in the garden for the birds to use in their nests.’ Tessa saw Rasmussen look at his watch, heard him sigh. They didn’t know when his sister would return and she might not be so easily fooled by their story.

  ‘When I was injured, my family were a great comfort. It must be nice to be at home with your sister.’ Tessa tried again to bring him back to anything approaching the subject.

  ‘You were injured?’

  ‘Yes, I drove ambulances.’

  ‘Oh.’ He looked curious, then turned his attention back to the breadcrumbs on the plate, moving them around with his fingers, lining them up into rows. ‘My brother died during the war. Papa too. They say it was probably for the best. He hasn’t had to see me like this.’ Bartlett waved a vague hand as his voice died away. ‘But I’m happier now that I’m not in the hospital. And I’ll get better soon and then my sister says we can, maybe, move somewhere else.’

  ‘When I was getting better, it helped to keep in touch with comrades. People wrote and visited when they could. Do you keep in touch with many men from your regiment?’ Tessa smiled, still trying to mask her impatience.

  ‘Not really. A few visited me in hospital but my sister says it’s better to keep to ourselves.’

  ‘Who visited you, John? Did William Forrester come to see you? Or Callum McKenzie? Or James Kilpatrick?’ She wondered whether the names might trigger a reaction.

  ‘Forrester was in the hospital. My sister said it would be better for me to be at home away from him.’

  ‘And James and Callum? Did they come?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’ Bartlett turned his attention back to the birds. ‘Did you know that robins’ eggs are blue? I always think that’s unusual. Such a dull brown bird and yet its eggs are so colourful.’

  He rambled on about birds’ eggs and Tessa glanced across at Rasmussen. He looked impatient. It had only been a few minutes, but with the possibility of Bartlett’s sister reappearing at any moment, and given that she seemed so over-protective, he didn’t want to waste time. Tessa turned back to Bartlett. It was time to press him a little harder, to move the discussion on from ornithology. ‘What did Forrester want to talk about, John?’ Tessa leaned forward a little, maintaining eye contact. ‘Did he want to talk about what you all did in the war? Did he want to talk about Norrie Douglas?’ At the sound of this name, Bartlett started to look agitated. His eye flicked around the room, his bird-spotting tranquillity shattered.

  ‘What about Norrie Douglas?’ His voice was harsher.

  ‘He’s the boy you all sentenced to death, isn’t he?’ Tessa kept her voice low but conversational, her eyes fixed on Bartlett’s. ‘You accused him of cowardice and the other three convicted him. You had him shot dead, didn’t you?’ As she spoke, she felt a wave of fury at a war that was fought for hubris and the terrified conscripts like Norrie Douglas, shot for cowardice when what they did was really the sanest and bravest response to the madness around them.

  ‘I did what I had to do.’ Bartlett spat out the words. ‘It was him or me.’ The eyes that met Tessa’s were as cold as hers.

  ‘What did Norrie do, Bartlett? What did you say he’d done?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter now. Not any more. What’s done is done.’ Tessa got the feeling that he was simply repeating what he’d been told so many times. But looking in his single eye, she knew that deep inside, underneath the rambling layers of birdwatching trivia, he knew the truth and he knew what he’d done.

  ‘Tell me.’ Tessa’s face was close to Bartlett’s, her eyes not wavering from his. ‘Tell me what you did.’ Her voice was icy. Bartlett looked down.

  ‘Norrie wasn’t a coward. I made a mistake and I blamed it on him. I did what anyone would have done.’ He spoke quietly, looking down, not wanting to broadcast his confession or meet their eyes.

  ‘You had him killed to save your own skin.’ Tessa sat back a little.

  ‘It doesn’t matter. And look at me – I’ve paid too.’ Bartlett was lucid now and Tessa wondered whether how much of the rest was just an act.

  ‘You told a lie and let Norrie Douglas take the blame for what you did.’ Tessa repeated the confession back to him. ‘You had that boy shot to save yourself. And you think this wheelchair and a burnt face make up for that?’ She took a breath, composing herself. ‘And is that why McKenzie and Kilpatrick and McNiven have been murdered?’

  ‘I’m not saying any more. You can’t make me.’ He pursed his lips like a child who was trying to cover up a nursery misdemeanour.

  ‘So who killed them, John? Who did your dirty work?’

  Bartlett went to turn his chair away, deciding that the conversation was over, but a wheel caught on the rug, tipping it off balance and sending him sprawling.

  Dropping to the floor, Tessa’s face was close to his, her left hand holding his wrist, her right hand around his throat. Any compassion was gone; she wanted answers and she knew that this man had them.

  ‘Who killed them, Bartlett? Tell me.’ She felt Rasmussen’s hand on her shoulder and shook him off. ‘Tell me.’

  ‘No.’ Bartlett wriggled, trying to get away from Tessa’s steely grip and determined eyes. ‘I can’t. I mustn’t.’

  ‘If you don’t tell me I’ll see you hanged.’ Tessa knew there was no way Bartlett would face such a penalty for his part in a conspiracy to murder those who posed a threat to him, but she hoped that the threat would scare the information from him.

  ‘I can’t tell you. But it will be over soon. Only Forrester now and then I’ll be safe. But George said I mustn’t tell anyone.’

  The name hung in the air but before Tessa could follow this up the housemaid returned with a tea-tray. A tray which hit the floor with a crash and shatter of bone china.

  As she got to her feet, resisting the temptation to kick the man on the floor, now sobbing and shaking, Tessa acknowledged to herself that it must not have been the tableau the maid had expected. After all, nice ladies from charities did not normally throw cripples to the ground and terrify them into speaking while threatening to throttle them.

  ‘Well, that’s been terribly helpful, Mr Bartlett.’ Tessa smiled brightly, adjusted the angle of her cloche hat and turned to Rasmussen. ‘We’d better be going now though. Come along, Hamish.’

  Back in the car, Rasmussen drove around the corner before stopping and looking at Tessa. His usually impassive expression had been replaced by something that Tessa couldn’t interpret. Surprise, definitely. A little shock, almost certainly, and more than a smattering of respect. She smiled at him.

  ‘Well, that was helpful, wasn’t it? We know the motive behind the murders and we have a name. When we got there I wasn’t sure we’d get much out of him at all.’

  ‘You were rough with him. He’s a cripple, he’s not all there in the head—’

  ‘He’s responsible for the death of Norrie Douglas, not to mention James, McKenzie and McNiven. Save your pity, Inspector, he doesn’t deserve it.’

  ‘I really don’t know what my superiors would think of your interview methods.’ Rasmussen was shaking his head. ‘I never expected… I mean, that’s not how ladies like you do things.’

  ‘Really, Inspector?’ Tessa looked up from brushing a little dust from the knee of her skirt. ‘Then I suspect you don’t know many ladies like me.’

  ‘Obviously not.’ He smiled a little and sighed, still shaking his head. ‘Where did you…?’ He gave up, knowing there would be no answer for him.

  ‘You know I can’t tell you. But remember those medals I showed you, Inspector? Well, they didn’t give me those for knitting more socks than anyone else.’ Tessa smiled brightly at him. ‘Shall we get going? We need to find out who George is.’

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Back
in Edinburgh, over coffee and sandwiches, Tessa, Bill and Rasmussen settled down once more at the table in the dining room at Royal Circus. Tessa started to stack papers that were no longer needed, keeping in front of them only the records that concerned the court martial of Norrie Douglas and the men involved. She wondered how much James had known about this, whether he’d known that Bartlett was lying and been complicit in the deception. How much had all of them known about this? She was struggling to feel sympathy, because if they knew and went along with it, then maybe they were simply receiving their just desserts? She hated the thought that she’d once been in love with a man who could do this.

  But the time for thinking about that was later. William Forrester was the last of the men who had taken part in the court martial, the third of the officers forced to act as judge, jury and to pass the dreadful sentence of execution. Now he was under a death sentence of his own. He was safe, for now, but it was vital they find the man Bartlett had named as the killer.

  ‘We’re looking for anyone named George,’ Rasmussen stated, rather obviously. ‘Assuming Bartlett’s telling the truth of course.’

  ‘Should you have questioned him more? Got a few more details?’ Bill asked. Rasmussen glanced across at Tessa and shook his head.

  ‘I don’t think we’d have got much more out of him. He’s not going anywhere. It’s more important to find this George chap and keep Forrester safe. I’ll talk to Bartlett again in the next day or two.’

  ‘You don’t think he’s got much more to tell us?’

  ‘Maybe, but he’s certainly not a witness that I can use in court. Heaven knows what Bartlett is or isn’t aware of.’

  ‘Oh, I think he’s clear about this. It’s the focus of his life at the moment. What he’ll do when they’re all dead, I don’t know.’ Tessa thought it might only be this obsession with eliminating those who he believed posed a risk to him that was keeping him going. He’d said that the dead men had been killed to silence them, to stop them telling the truth.

  ‘Well, not all of them are going to end up dead as long as we find George.’

  ‘Quite so.’ Tessa watched Bill and Rasmussen shuffling papers, skimming them for a mention of George. It wasn’t an uncommon name; surely there would be scores of possible suspects?

  ‘Here, look.’ Bill handed Rasmussen a grubby sheet, full of long lists in an immaculate copperplate hand. ‘A man in his battalion named George Forsyth. They served together for three years and must have known each other. Do you think it could be him?’

  ‘It’s the only George?’

  ‘So far. He lives at Barnton.’

  ‘Come on, then. We might as well go and see him.’ Rasmussen started to look around for the coat and hat he’d dumped on a chair and which Florence had taken away to hang up. ‘Tessa?’

  ‘Mmm?’ She wasn’t paying attention, instead flicking through some other papers. ‘You go. I want to stay here and check something else.’ A detail was drifting just out of reach. The man in Barnton might be who they were looking for but she wasn’t sure. ‘It’s not far to Barnton, so if it’s not him you’ll be back in no time. I’ll find some more possibles.’

  Not waiting for her to explain or change her mind, the two men left abruptly, Rasmussen informing Bill that they would flag down a police motor car or a cab in the street. Tessa watched from the window as they hurried away. A few flakes of snow started to fall, and she wondered why she was so sure that they were chasing a chimera.

  Aware that William Forrester was next on the killer’s list and that Craig House Hospital was far from impregnable, Tessa went up to her library and placed a telephone call to the matron. She extracted a promise that visitors to him would be refused for the moment. Tessa didn’t go into details but rather just adopted her most officious tone and hoped that she wouldn’t get into trouble for lying about working for the War Office. At least Forrester would be safe. For now, at any rate.

  Back downstairs, Tessa turned back to the papers on the table and to John Bartlett’s military record. She flicked through the pages, certain that the identity of the murderous George could be found in there. It had to be someone who had a motive to protect him and someone who was close to him. Unless you were a madman, risking the hangman’s noose to exact revenge was not something you did for a friend. It was something you did when bound by passionate love, or blood, or abject fear.

  Blood.

  Tessa saw it then; in the details of his family background, the seemingly irrelevant detail that she’d skimmed over so many times but which must have lodged at the back of her mind, a pin-prick in her memory, unsettling and insistent.

  John Bartlett’s was not a large family. Parents both dead, his brother killed at Flanders, his sister’s fiancé killed on the Eastern Front. His sister: Georgina.

  And then it all made sense. A woman dressed as a housemaid or lady’s maid could easily pass a note to James requesting him to attend an assignation at the boathouse and he would suspect nothing, and nor would any of the other guests at the house party. Dressed as a charwoman, she would pass unnoticed among the respectable tenements of Marchmont, where most of the households would have some sort of servant. Dressed in tweed and strolling through the countryside of the Scottish Borders, she would not give cause for comment, especially if she’d taken the family Labrador with her. And in the war hospital, a woman dressed as a nurse or an orderly would not arouse suspicion among the many staff that peopled the place.

  Tessa could kick herself for not considering that a woman could be the murderer. Bill and Rasmussen might dismiss the idea but she of all people knew that women were capable of such things, especially when the stakes were high.

  Because the men had been shot, this had thrown them: it was an unusual weapon for a woman. John’s handgun must have been shipped home with the rest of his possessions when he was ill, and it would have been simple enough for Georgina to teach herself how to use it, especially if she’d found somewhere suitably deserted where shots would not be heard.

  The death of her parents, her husband, her older brother, and then coming so close to losing John must have been devastating for Georgina, or George as Tessa suspected her brothers had always called her.

  Tessa could understand how, traumatised by loss, she might start to believe her brother’s agitated claims that he was at risk if the truth about Norrie Douglas was exposed. All that mattered was he had convinced Georgina something terrible would happen to him if these men were not silenced and she, driven by fear, had felt it necessary to take brutal action.

  Then something else struck her. Georgina hadn’t been at home when they’d visited this morning, and Tessa recalled John mentioning there was only Forrester to deal with now. He had known that Forrester would soon be despatched and that Georgina was on her way to attend to this last loose end. Bartlett’s body and mind might be beyond repair, but he understood enough to know that soon his secret would be safe.

  Ten minutes later, the Vauxhall roared out of the mews and along Circus Lane. Tessa had tried to telephone the hospital again, but the operator couldn’t put the call through and so her only option was to go there herself. She told Florence to get a message to Rasmussen and Bill somehow. Then she took her gun from the locked drawer of her desk. She pulled on her gloves and greatcoat, buttoning it as she hurried down the garden. As she drove, every time she changed gear, she felt the Luger pistol shift against her hip and she was glad she’d kept it. After the war, Tessa had thought about disposing of it, but didn’t know how to? And besides, a sentimental part of her wanted to keep it, for the gun had saved her life more than once and maybe useful in the future? She had never considered that she might need it so soon, to defend an injured man against a madwoman intent on silencing him.

  Accelerating into the bends of The Mound as though racing in a hill climb, Tessa wasted no time, overtaking cabs and trams and taking shortcuts down back streets. Snow still fell, light but sufficient to make the roads slippery although Tessa took little no
tice. She roared through the genteel streets of Merchiston, revving her engine and taking rash chances at the junctions before finally driving down Colinton Road and turning up towards the hospital. And there it was; the vast edifice, at once both reassuring and forbidding.

  Using the drive might cause her to be noticed as the sound of her engine broke through the hush that always accompanied snowfall, deadening some sounds and amplifying others. Tessa left the Vauxhall at the side of the road and set off on foot. As she jogged up the drive, she was glad of her boots, for the snow was deeper on this side of town where the ground was higher and it was falling faster now. The gun banged against her thigh and she undid a button of her coat, reaching inside to tuck the Luger into the back of the waistband of her tweed trousers – a waistband that was a little tighter than usual, she noticed with some irritation.

  The hospital was in front of her, more like a grand country house, in style, than a repository for the shattered of mind. Inside all was polished parquet, and starched uniforms were less in evidence that one might expect; outside on the lawns, officers played croquet in summer and read beneath the oak trees, horrors banished for a while at least. It offered both peace and quiet to soothe the damaged mind, but also gates and walls and locks to imprison. Every week, when she’d visited Johnny, Tessa had remembered a line from a Siegfried Sassoon poem, written when he was a patient here, and tears had welled up and been fought back. ”When are you going out to them again? Are they not still your brothers through our blood?”

  Every time she visited, Tessa was reminded that these men were her brothers too, that she still had a responsibility to them. Now, she needed to risk her own life once more to save another.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  At the top of the steps of the grand entrance, Tessa paused and took a deep breath. She flicked snow from her coat, undid the buttons and stamped the snow from her boots. She would have preferred to look a little more respectable; however, it was more important that she was calm and didn’t go flying in, yelling about a murderer stalking one of the patients. This would terrify everyone and, if her deductions were correct, alert Georgina to her discovery. Instead, she smiled in her most charming manner at the man who opened the door to her, hoping that if she behaved as though it was perfectly normal for slightly dishevelled women in trousers and army greatcoats to arrive at the door, then he wouldn’t question it. Failing that, her title and a tip would do the job. To be certain, she slipped off her coat and folded it over her arm.