An Impartial Witness

“I’m afraid not. He was an officer in the Wiltshire Fusiliers, and I have a good memory for faces. I believe I’d know him if I saw him again.”

He digested that. “And have you spoken to the police?”

“Of course. And I told them what I’d believed at the time, that she was distraught enough to have done herself a harm. Instead she was murdered. I can’t help but wonder why she was in such great distress.”

“Surely that was obvious. She was saying good-bye to her lover. Who else could it have been?” There was contempt in his voice.

“I don’t know,” I told him. “We’ve all assumed…” I realized then that there could be another reason for the officer’s coldness. “Perhaps he was sent to offer her promises, or, more likely, considering her distress, to tell her she couldn’t rely on the other man. Rather cowardly of him, if that’s true, to send an emissary. And what sort of man would be willing to take on such an onerous duty, even for a friend?”

“I liked Marjorie,” he admitted after a moment. “If she had turned to me, I’d have quietly found a way to help her, even though I disapproved of what she’d done. But she didn’t. I’ve had to watch my wife suffer through the shock of her death and then Meriwether’s death. Just now I find it hard to feel any sympathy for Marjorie’s despair.”

“Whatever happened on that railway platform, that person bears some responsibility for Marjorie’s death. If it hadn’t been for him, she’d have been at home, out of danger.” My voice trailed off as I looked up at the entrance to the Marlborough at that moment. Michael Hart was standing there glaring at me. He couldn’t have overheard what I’d been saying. Not at the distance between us. Could he?

Jack Melton followed my gaze in time to see Michael Hart turning away, walking stiffly back into the hotel.

Serena’s husband looked from his departing back to my face, then he said sharply, “If you want to know who Marjorie could have turned to, there’s your man.” And he started to walk away.

“He was in France,” I said, stopping Mr. Melton with an outstretched hand. “Out of reach. Who else—?”

“Was he? Out of reach?” Melton asked. “I would have sworn he was in England.”

And he was gone, leaving me there in the middle of the pavement, in the path of those passing by.

By the time I’d collected myself and gone back up the hotel steps and into the lounge, there was no sign of Michael Hart. I asked Reception to page him for me, and then to send someone to his room.

But he was nowhere to be found.

At the flat, Mary was washing up the last of the dishes. I went to my room, murmuring something about letters to finish, and instead sat by the window thinking about what Jack Melton had just said about Lieutenant Hart.

Truth? Or lies?

But why should he lie?

I’d seen the fleeting expression in his eyes when he recognized Michael Hart at the top of the hotel’s steps. Antipathy, certainly. Anger as well. But was the anger directed at Michael or what Jack and I’d been discussing?

Impossible to know the answer. Still, I’d made a mistake talking to him about Marjorie. But I’d heard his attempts to rein in Serena’s vehement emotions, and I’d believed we might discuss Marjorie Evanson’s last hours and look for something, anything, that could lead us to the truth.

I remember my mother telling me as a child, “Bess, my dear, you can’t always expect others to see things as clearly as you do.” I didn’t always remember that lesson.

I’d failed to take into account that the man was also a husband.

But I’d learned something in the encounter with Jack Melton. Marjorie must have met that train with high hopes that she could share the burden she was carrying. And she walked out of the railway station knowing that there was no help in that direction, whether the officer she’d met was her lover or someone she thought she could trust.

What’s more, her husband had just returned to England, and she must have felt the pressure of time catching up with her. She might not have known the exact date, but she would have known from Meriwether’s letters that it would be soon.

And if she was three months’ pregnant, it would be increasingly difficult to hide the fact. Something had to be done. Was she considering ridding herself of the child? Finding a place for it with another family? But that would mean leaving her husband for six months while she hid herself away somewhere. And it would very likely destroy her marriage. Did she expect the father of her child to marry her if she were divorced by her own husband? Did she love him at all?

Impossible to know. But that rejection as the train pulled out most certainly sharpened her need to find help somewhere.

But if she had known that Michael was in London…

I caught up my hat and purse and with barely a word of explanation to Mary, went down to my motorcar.

Marjorie’s housekeeper wasn’t happy to see me again. It struck me that she thought I was meddling, behind Michael’s back. “We’ve told Lieutenant Hart all we could,” she began.

“Yes, of course you did,” I answered quickly, before she could shut the door in my face. “He forgot to ask if you could give him the names of one or two of her closest friends? I’ve come alone because he needed to rest.”

“Is he in terrible pain?” she asked sympathetically. “There were new lines in his face. I don’t remember them being there before. He was never one to take life seriously, always a smile.” She stood aside and I stepped into the entrance.

“He tries not to be dependent on drugs.” It was what his aunt had told me.

“That’s good to hear. There was a footman once when I was a girl. He was addicted to opium. Mr. Benson—he was the owner of the house where I was maid—locked the poor man in his room for a week, to cure him. I never heard such screams and cries, begging to die one minute and cursing us all in the next breath. We thought surely he’d die.”

“It must have been terrifying.”

She took a deep breath, as if shoving the footman back into the past where he belonged. I wondered if she’d had a fondness for him once.

“Names, you said. At a guess, her two closest friends were Mrs. Calder and Mrs. Brighton. Mrs. Brighton lives one street over, at Number 7. I’ve returned a book Mrs. Evanson borrowed, that’s how I know. Perhaps she can tell you how to find Mrs. Calder.”

Calder. I knew that name. A distant cousin. Was this the same woman?

“And the ladies who attended the group meetings for wives and widows? Were they close to Mrs. Evanson?”

“They came and went, you see, there was no time to make real friendships.”

I could understand that. “Thank you,” I told her. “This is a beginning.”

I left my motorcar where it was and walked the distance.

But there was black crepe on the door of Number 7, encircling the knocker. The folds were still crisp and new.

I hesitated and then lifted the knocker anyway, and a red-eyed maid came to the door. She said immediately, “Mrs. Brighton isn’t receiving. If you care to leave your card?”

“I’m so very sorry to intrude,” I said, and prepared to turn away. Then I asked, “I’ve just come to London from Somerset. I was to meet Mrs. Calder here—I didn’t know—” I gestured to the black crepe. “She must have tried to reach me and I missed her message. Do you know how I could find her? I’m afraid I left my diary in the hotel.”

A shot in the dark. But it found its mark.

“She called only this morning,” the maid said, and gave me what I wanted before she quietly shut the door again.

I drove to Hamilton Place, and found the house I was looking for at the corner of its tiny square.

As I got out, I stood to one side as a nurse wheeled a wounded man along the pavement. He was in a chair, his eyes bandaged, one arm in a sling, a leg missing. I smiled at the sister, and then went up to knock at the door.

Mrs. Calder was in. I was shown into a small sitting room, and she rose to meet me, a query in her glance.

She was a tall woman, rail thin, with fair hair and blue eyes. I introduced myself as a friend of the Evanson family, and she frowned.

“Indeed? I don’t recall meeting you at Marjorie’s,” she said, suspicion in her tone.

“I’m not surprised,” I said easily. “I’ve been out of the country.” Her eyes dropped to my uniform. “I was one of Lieutenant Evanson’s nurses.”

“You know he’s dead.”

“Sadly, yes. Matron told me on my last visit to Laurel House.”

“What brings you to see me?”

“I was in Little Sefton only a few days ago. I understood from Alicia Dalton that you’re related to Marjorie Evanson.”

She was still wary. I searched for a way to convince her I meant no harm.

“It seems to me that very little progress has been made in finding out who killed Mrs. Evanson. And it matters to me, because her husband died when he shouldn’t have. Not medically. He’d passed the crisis. He was counting on seeing his wife as soon as possible. Someone took that away from him. I don’t want her murderer to escape justice.”

“But why come to me? You should be speaking to Victoria Garrison, Marjorie’s sister.”

If it was a test, I was ready for it.

“With respect, I don’t believe I should. We had words in Little Sefton. She thought Serena Melton had sent me there to spy.”

“And were you?”

“No.”

Helen Calder sighed. “There’s no love lost between them. A pity, but there you are. Even tragedy failed to bring them together.”

“There’s more. I have reason to believe that Marjorie had met someone, perhaps six months ago. It’s possible I’ve seen this man. I don’t know his name, but she met him at Waterloo Station the night she died. I happened to be coming up from Laurel House, and it was sheer coincidence that our paths crossed.”

“Marjorie had a good many friends. It could have been any one of them.”

“She was so distressed. Crying, in fact. I don’t think that was like her. Do you?”

After a moment she said, “No, she wouldn’t have made a scene. Not Marjorie. But I’m afraid I can’t help you. It would be—prying. And she’s dead.”

“This polite conspiracy of silence is all very well and good,” I pointed out, a little angry with her. “But I think Marjorie would approve of a little ‘prying’ if it meant her killer was found out.”

Helen Calder studied my face for a moment, and then nodded. “You’re absolutely right, you know. We’ve all taken such pride in closing ranks to protect her memory. I never considered the fact that we were protecting her murderer as well. But you see, people do ask about her death, and I’ve gotten quite good at fending off gossipmongers. Heaven knows there have been enough of them. But even if I answer your questions, what possible good will it do?”

“I myself stepped forward when there was a notice in the newspapers asking for any information about Mrs. Evanson on that last day of her life. I met with an Inspector Herbert at Scotland Yard. It was not as difficult as I’d expected.” I smiled. “Sadly, I don’t think what I told him about seeing her at the railway station was very useful. But it did fill in a part of their picture about her movements after leaving her home earlier in the day.”

She said, “Yes, all right. There was a man. I don’t how she came to meet him. She told me he was in London just for the day, and they talked for a bit. And then he asked her to join him for dinner. I know this because Marjorie mentioned it casually in another context, that it brought home to her just how much she missed Meriwether and the things they often did together. It pointed up her loneliness, she said, and she was left to face that. ‘I shan’t do that again,’ she told me. ‘It’s too painful.’”

“Did she tell you the man’s name?”

“No, and I really didn’t care to ask. I didn’t want to make more of the event than she already had done. I was hoping it would come to nothing.”

“But she saw him again?”

“She must have done. I met her coming out of a milliner’s shop with a hatbox in her hand. She greeted me sheepishly, as if she hadn’t wanted to run into anyone she knew. I was about to tease her when it occurred to me that perhaps she was dining with that man again. There was almost a schoolgirl’s furtiveness about her.”

“Can you be sure it was the same man?”

“I must believe it was. Marjorie wasn’t the sort to take up with strangers, and it was no more than a month after the first dinner.”

“What happened next?”

“It was almost a month later—two months after that first dinner—and she was standing waiting for a cab, and I saw she’d been crying. My first thought was that she’d had bad news about Meriwether, and she answered that she’d had a letter from him only the day before and he was all right.” She shook her head. “Looking back, I wonder if she’d broken off with this man. It was the last time I saw her—she began to refuse invitations, keeping to herself after that. There was this group of women she worked with. I told myself at the time that listening to their experiences was doing her more harm than good. I should have made an effort to see her, but I had my own worries, and I kept putting it off. To tell you the truth, I thought she might feel compelled to confess, and I didn’t want to know.”

“Do you perhaps know of a Lieutenant Fordham?” I asked.

Mrs. Calder frowned. “Ought I to know him? Do you think he was the man Marjorie was seeing?”

“I have no real reason to believe it. His name came up in a different connection. But I’d like to ask, if Marjorie were in trouble—of any kind—would she have turned to you for help? And if not to you, where would she go?”

“She didn’t come here. My housekeeper would have told me if she had called. I wish she had.” She shook her head. “There’s really no one else she was close to. Except for Michael Hart. But of course he was in France.”

“If you could ask among her friends? It could lead somewhere.”

“Yes, by all means. I’m ashamed now that I didn’t do something. You’re very brave to take on this search. It should have been me.”

But she hadn’t wanted to know.

I told her how she could contact me, and thanked her.

Sadly, we were still no closer to finding Marjorie’s killer.

I was outside on the pavement, preparing to crank the motorcar, when I realized that she hadn’t asked me if Marjorie was pregnant.

Did she know already? Or was this something else she didn’t want to hear?

CHAPTER ELEVEN

AS I WAS about to pull over at the Marlborough Hotel, I saw a face in a cab window that caught my attention. Serena Melton. She appeared to be very upset.

I swerved back into heavy traffic, ignoring a horn blown in disgust, and fell in behind her cab, wondering where she might be going, although it was more likely that she was coming from somewhere instead.

But I was right. She was going. I trailed her back to the house where her brother and his wife had lived. She asked the cabbie to wait and went up the steps to knock at the door.

There was no answer. She waited for a moment and tried again. And again no one came to answer the summons.

She was coming back down the steps, when I turned in behind the cab and called to her.

“Serena? Imagine running into you in London. Could I take you somewhere?”

She looked at me, and after a moment paid off the cabbie and came to join me in my motorcar.

“What brings you to London?” she asked. “I thought you were in France again. “

“How are you?” I asked her instead of answering. Then, “Is anything wrong?”

“I’ve just had a most unpleasant conversation with someone who knew my brother’s wife. It was very upsetting.”

“In that house? The one you were just coming out of?”

“No, no. That’s my brother’s house. I was hoping to have some tea and a lie down, before taking the train home.”

“Are you any closer to finding out who killed your brother’s wife?” It was baldly put but there was no other way to ask.

“How did you—oh. The weekend at Melton Hall.” She sighed, pulling off her gloves and then after a moment putting them on again. “It’s been the most hopeless task. But the police are still sitting on their hands, doing nothing. I spoke to the inspector in charge this morning. He tried to assure me that everything possible was being done. But it isn’t. I know it isn’t.”

“It’s likely—” I began, but she interrupted me, turning toward me with anger in her eyes.

“His latest theory has to do with someone from Oxford. I don’t know that Marjorie even knew anyone there. He’s grasping at straws.”

I couldn’t explain what I’d been told about the reason the police were searching for that person. It wasn’t my place to pass on such information if the police had not. And so I said, “Do you have any idea what your sister-in-law did that day?”

“The police have told me that she went out in the early afternoon and never came back. She knew Merry would be arriving that day, and I’d assumed she would go at once to see him. I was intending to visit him the following day, when he was a little more rested from his journey. But of course the police were at our door before I could go. And it was left to me to tell him what had happened. I couldn’t understand how she’d come to die in London. I thought there must be some mistake. They’d had some difficulty in identifying her—her purse was taken—and if her housekeeper hadn’t spoken to the constable on their street, the police wouldn’t have known who she was as soon as they did.”

It was, for the most part, what Michael had learned from Marjorie’s housekeeper.

We were nearing Kensington Palace. I said, “You remarked earlier that you’d just had an unpleasant conversation—” I left it there.

“I wish you hadn’t reminded me. This woman had the audacity to say that people were talking about Marjorie long before she was killed, and that she was asking for trouble, walking down by the river at night on her own. She made her sound like a common tart, looking for custom. It was there, in the tone of voice she used.”

“What sort of talk was there?”

“That she was avoiding her friends, insinuating that she must be in some sort of trouble. Well, someone in London knows where she was that evening. Why won’t he or she tell us the truth?” Her voice was rising again, and she fidgeted with her gloves as if they had offended her, not the woman. “I blame Helen Calder. She ought to have noticed something. Marjorie would have listened to Helen if she’d spoken up. In the beginning, before it had got too far. But she shut her eyes, didn’t she? The sort of woman who wasn’t willing to put herself out for anyone, safe in her own rectitude.”

It was a harsh indictment, not really warranted, but I’d seen Helen Calder’s willing detachment even when she suspected that Marjorie was growing too fond of the man she’d been seeing. I didn’t believe that she could have changed the situation, but I could understand Serena Melton’s feeling that she might have made a difference.

“There must be a reason why she—” I began.

But she interrupted me for a second time. “We’re speaking of behavior that led to murder. I would have said something, if I’d had any inkling that Marjorie was being talked about. I’d have confronted her and told her what I thought of such selfish conduct.”

“Are you saying that her—that an affair had something to do with her death?”

She cast a withering glance in my direction. “When you flout the rules of society, you leave yourself open to the consequences of your actions. If she’d been at home, if she’d been with respectable friends, she would still be alive and Merry would still be alive.”

All pretense that Marjorie had been killed in the course of a robbery had been dropped. I don’t think Serena was aware of it, the volatile mixture of distress and anger, grief and frustration blinding her to everything else.

We drove in silence for a time, and then she said, “I might as well go home. I don’t feel like facing any more blank faces and lies. The people who could really help me are Marjorie’s closest friends, but they’re fiercely loyal. Or else Victoria has told them not to talk to me. I wouldn’t put it past her.” She flicked a glance in my direction. “Marjorie’s sister. I can’t abide her, and neither could Marjorie.”

The pent-up feeling of helplessness driving her must be exhausting, I thought, for there were new lines around her mouth, and circles beneath her eyes.

I said, “Would your brother want you to go through this anguish, trying to get at the truth?”

“I don’t know whether he would or not. But if the shoe were on the other foot, he’d have moved heaven and earth to find out who had killed me. I can do no less. Just because I’m a woman, I’m not going to walk away from this.”

I couldn’t have said whether Lieutenant Evanson would have felt that way. But then he hadn’t lost his sister while I was caring for him. I couldn’t have guessed how angry he would have been, or if he’d have left matters to the police.

“Would you mind dropping me at the station? I’m sorry to ask you to turn around. But it would be a kindness.”

I did as she asked, and when she had left the motorcar, she turned back to me and said, “If you hear anything about Marjorie, anything at all, you would let me know, wouldn’t you?”

Now there was a conundrum. I hadn’t told her what I knew. And I couldn’t in good conscience promise to keep her informed. And I wasn’t sure I trusted her to act wisely if she did learn the truth.

“Serena—” I began.

But she said bitterly, “You’re just like the rest, aren’t you?”

“No,” I said sharply. “I will go to the police if I hear anything that’s helpful in finding her murderer. That’s what everyone should do.”

“Liar,” she answered, turning her back.

And she was gone, marching toward the station as if she were marching to war.

In a way she probably thought she was.

I took Michael, still protesting, back to Little Sefton.

“I’ve made a promise to your doctors,” I told him over his protests when I finally ran him to earth at the Marlborough. “After I keep it, you’re free to do as you like.”

He was not in a good mood. As we threaded our way through London’s traffic—mostly bicycles, military convoys or vehicles, omnibuses, and the occasional lorry trying to make deliveries to the next shop—I let him sulk.

He did it beautifully. But I was immune to his blandishments.

When we were in the clear and running through the countryside beyond London, I said, “I came looking for you earlier. Where were you?”

At first I was sure he wasn’t going to tell me. Finally, he said, “I went to Scotland Yard.”

Surprised, I asked, “And did they have news for you?”

“They would tell me nothing.” There was suppressed anger in his confession. “Apparently I’m a suspect in Marjorie’s death.”

“But—you said you were in France.”

Yet Jack Melton had told me he was not.

He turned to look at the passing scene, as if he hadn’t heard me. Then, grudgingly, he went on. “I haven’t said anything about it. I was given forty-eight hours’ leave. A foreign object in my eye. I was sent to a specialist in London. My men were in rotation, I could be spared. He removed the particle, gave me drops and a patch, and I went straight back to the line. I didn’t actually lie. Everyone thought I was in France. I let them go on thinking it. But the Yard stumbled on the truth.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I hadn’t heard from Marjorie for three months. Just—silence. I wrote to Victoria, but she wouldn’t answer. That worried me more. I tried to get word to Meriwether, to ask him if everything was all right. But it didn’t get through. When my eye was inflamed, they thought I might lose it, and I was given the choice of seeing someone in Paris or in London. Luckily, I knew a chap in school whose father was an eye surgeon in Harley Street, and the doctors at the Front approved.”

“And did you see Marjorie?”

“No. I sent her a telegram the day before, telling her where I would be, begging her to come and sit with me for a bit. Either she didn’t get the message or she had something else on her mind. She never came.”

He was staring at a field where cows grazed, and so I couldn’t read his face.

“And you didn’t go to the house? Why not?”

“I was told not to leave the surgery. Not to move for twenty-four hours. I waited all that day and the next for her, and she didn’t come.”

“You went back to France, not knowing she’d been killed?”

He didn’t answer.

“Michael—?”

He turned to me, his face twisted with grief and anger. “Do you know how many times I’ve wondered if she was on her way to Dr. McKinley’s surgery when she was killed? How many times I’ve wondered if she might have lived if she’d been with me instead of out on the street somewhere and vulnerable?”

And Marjorie’s housekeeper had said she went out earlier in the day and never returned. From the train station, could she have been on her way to see Michael? Was the timing right?

Catching sight of the next turning, I asked as I slowed for it, “You couldn’t leave the surgery?”

“Dr. McKinley told me not to jar the eye in any way. He left me in a darkened room and his wife brought me my dinner and my breakfast the next morning.”

“So you weren’t supervised?”

“I was there whenever they looked in on me,” he said, which wasn’t necessarily the same thing.

I let a little time pass.

“Was it your child she was carrying?”

“No,” he said quietly. “It was not.”

And this time I believed him.

We arrived in Little Sefton late in the afternoon. I took Michael directly to the house of his aunt and uncle.

As I helped him get out of the motorcar, stiff from the drive down, he said, “Thank you, Bess Crawford. For taking me to London.”

“I’m sorry it wasn’t more helpful.”

“It made me feel less useless. As if I’d at least tried to find the truth.” He nodded to me, picked up his valise in his good hand, and walked up to the door. There he turned, and with that smile that seemed to light up the world, he said, “Give my regards to Sergeant-Major Brandon.”

I laughed in spite of myself.

I went on up the street to Alicia’s house and knocked at the door. She was surprised to see me but greeted me with friendly warmth. “I didn’t expect to find you on my doorstep. But do come in. I’ll put on the kettle and make sandwiches.”

I thanked her and joined her in the kitchen as she worked. It was her cook’s day off, and she was rummaging in the pantry for cold chicken and a pudding as she said, “This is my dinner, but I dine alone far too often. It will be nice to have someone to share my meal.”

We ate it in the kitchen, and talked about everything but the war.

“I’m tired of knitting and growing vegetables to save room in the holds of ships for war materiel,” she said as we ate our pudding. “I’m restless, I want to do something useful, really useful. But Gareth won’t hear of turning the house into a hospital or my going to London and finding work. I type, you know.”

“Do you? You’ll be in demand.”

“I think what he really wants is to know that nothing has changed at home. Not the village, not the house, not me. That it’s all there to come back to.”

“A good many soldiers feel that way. It’s what sees them through.”

“He sent me photographs in the last letter but one. Would you like to see them? His father gave him a camera for his birthday and he’s been using it to capture memories, he said.”

“I’d love to see them.” I had a long drive ahead of me, but she had been good enough to invite me to dine, and I owed her a few minutes of my time.

She went off to find the letter, and I finished my pudding, looking out at the kitchen garden and the outbuildings and the quiet peace of late afternoon.

Alicia came back with the envelope, and took out a sheaf of photographs. “He found someone who could develop these for him. They cover a year or more. I was so pleased to have them, because now I know what his world is like.”

But the photographs were not his world as it truly was. It was a tidy look at war that made me want to cry. Had Gareth chosen to spare his wife, or was he afraid that the censors would object to the truth and confiscate these photographs?

There were tents pitched in neat rows, well behind the lines, like an encampment for troops on parade. Artillery that was silent, the gunners standing grinning in front of a jumble of empty casings. A group of French children, smiling for the camera, their faces unmarked by fear and despair. I turned it over to see the name of the village where this was taken, and it was well south of the lines too. There were several photographs of his fellow officers posing absurdly, as if they hadn’t a care in the world. But I could see the tension around their eyes, belying their antics. There was even one photograph of Meriwether Evanson’s aircraft, with Meriwether standing proudly with a hand on the prop, his face only partly shadowed by his cap. Alicia pointed him out to me.

“I should have sent that to Marjorie, but I couldn’t part with any of these for a while…” She let the words trail off as she handed me a few more photographs from another envelope.

Here were another group of officers standing together at a crossroads, a line of soldiers and caissons and well-laden lorries passing behind them.

I recognized the uniforms—the Wiltshire Fusiliers. And third from the left was a face I knew.

Staring at it, I said, “Do you have a glass? I’d like to see this one a little more clearly.”

“I think there’s one in Gareth’s desk.”

She went away and I tried to contain my excitement while I waited.

Alicia came back with a small magnifying glass that she said was a part of Gareth’s stamp collection, and I took it from her, holding it above the photograph.

I’d been right. The third officer from the left was the man I’d seen with Marjorie Evanson at the railway station.

I turned the photograph over. The caption just read: Friends meeting by chance.

“Do you know who these friends are?” I asked her.

“Just the two on Gareth’s right. I don’t know that one.”

“Could I possibly borrow this, if I promise to return it safely?” I asked. “Just for a few days.”

She was reluctant to part with it, but in the end allowed me to take it with me.

I thanked her for my meal and set out for Somerset.

The light was with me most of the way, the long light of an English summer evening, a warm breeze blowing through the motorcar, the world looking as if it had never been at war. And then I caught up with a field ambulance carrying wounded to a nearby house that had been turned into a clinic, taking the rutted drive in first gear.

My first thought on leaving Alicia’s house had been to find Michael and ask him if he recognized the man standing at the crossroads with Gareth. But I wasn’t sure that was wise.

And so I went to the one person I knew would find the answer for me without asking questions.

Simon.

It was beginning to rain hard as I drove up the drive and put my motorcar in the shed where it lived while I was in France.

I pulled the shed doors closed and made a dash for the side door of the house.

My mother, startled by the apparition meeting her in the passage, said, “Oh. I didn’t hear you coming.”

“I’m not surprised. It’s pouring down out there. Mother, did Simon come to dine tonight? Is he still here?”

“I expect he is. Where’s your handsome young artillery officer?”

“Back where he came from.”

“You decided not to keep him?”

I laughed. “His heart belongs to someone else,” I said lightly and went up to change out of my wet clothes.

At the sound of voices, Simon came out of my father’s study. He greeted me with raised eyebrows. “Have you abandoned young Hart to the tender mercies of The Four Doves again?”

“Alas, I was afraid he might be taken up for murder,” I responded.

Simon laughed, but it was wry amusement.

In fact, I was telling the simple truth.

“But that reminds me,” I went on, taking the photograph from my pocket. “I’d like very much to know the identity of the man third from the left. It’s important.”

Simon still had contacts with men he’d known while serving, both in my father’s regiment and in others that had crossed his path. It was very likely someone would recognize that face.

He looked at the photograph, read what was written on the reverse, noted the uniform, then regarded me with interest. “Where on earth did you find this?”

“It was quite by accident,” I told him. “A matter of pure luck.”

“Let me see what I can do.” He pocketed the photograph and turned to speak to my mother as she came into the room.

I’d always thought she was the only person on earth Simon Brandon would obey without question—next, of course, to the Colonel Sahib. He would have walked through fire for her sake. There were those who whispered that he was in love with the Colonel’s lady, but his devotion had very different roots.

My father eyed me with interest as I came into his study. “What, no lost sheep? No crusades to lead? You’ve abandoned all hope of saving some poor soul?”

I laughed. “Sorry. I’m between causes at the moment.”

“That’s rare,” he said, his suspicions aroused, but he said nothing more, changing the subject with the ease of long practice.

We were just going up to bed when our village constable bicycled to the house and asked to speak to me.

I went to the sitting room, where he’d been shown, and my father accompanied me.

Constable Boynton greeted me and said, “There’s been word from Inspector Herbert at Scotland Yard, Miss Crawford. Someone took a shot at Lieutenant Michael Hart in Little Sefton an hour and a half ago.”

“Michael?” I exclaimed, bracing myself for bad news. “Is he all right?”

“He’s unharmed. In fact, he reported the incident himself. He was walking in the garden. No one heard the shot, no one saw the shooting. Inspector Herbert wishes to know if you could put a name to his assailant.”

My first thought was Serena Melton. I wouldn’t have put it past her to shoot—and miss—with the weapon that wasn’t in the gun cabinet where it belonged. But I’d seen her onto the train. No, I’d dropped her at the station, I corrected myself. I had no idea which train she’d taken.

On the other hand I could see that Michael Hart could easily have invented the entire incident to take himself off the Yard’s suspect list. And mine.

“Please tell Inspector Herbert I can’t help him in this matter. I wasn’t there, and I don’t know who could have tried to shoot the lieutenant. I’m sorry. But if I learn anything more, I’ll be in touch.”

“Thank you, Miss. And my apologies to Mrs. Crawford for disturbing you so late,” Constable Boynton said, and took his leave.

As the door closed behind him, my father said, “You’re making a habit of being consulted by an inspector at Scotland Yard these days?”

“Not really consulted,” I said, trying to make light of what had just happened. “I was there, in Little Sefton, only a few hours ago.” But how had Inspector Herbert known that?

The constable in Little Sefton must have remembered my motorcar and reported that I’d just brought Lieutenant Hart home from London. The fact that Inspector Herbert knew such details indicated all too clearly his interest in Michael.

Which told me that the murderer from Oxford hadn’t proved to be the Yard’s man. In spite of what the Yard had told Serena Melton.

“Indeed,” my father was saying thoughtfully. “I don’t believe you were telling the whole truth when you refused to help Constable Boynton.”

The Colonel Sahib knew me too well. “I didn’t refuse. I just didn’t want to make false accusations,” I answered him. “Not when I had no real proof to support them.”

“Very commendable. And is there any remote possibility that we shall be in danger in our own garden?”

“If in fact someone actually shot at Lieutenant Hart, it would have been a very personal matter. And not one that I’m likely to be involved with.”

“I’m delighted to hear it. Perhaps I should have a word with this Inspector Herbert. I don’t care to see you dragged into inquiries.”

“I wasn’t dragged into anything. I happened to be a witness to two people having a conversation in a railway station. I knew one of them but not the other. And the one I knew was later murdered. But hours later, long after I was sound asleep in my flat. The trouble is, the other person, the one I didn’t recognize, could probably give the police a great deal more information—that is, if he could be found. He’s been conspicuous by his absence.”

There. It was out in the open. The whole story. Mostly.

“And Michael Hart is involved? How?”

“He’d known the dead woman for many years.”

“But he’s not a suspect.”

I hesitated a heartbeat too long in answering that.

My father gave me a straight look but said no more. He held the sitting room door open for me. Simon had gone, and my mother was waiting to speak to my father after I went up the stairs. I knew very well she’d have the story of Constable Boynton’s intrusion before they followed me up to bed.

I couldn’t sleep. I dressed, then went quietly down the stairs and out the door, looking up at the wet night, the trees softly dripping rain, the sounds of night creatures loud in the stillness.

Simon, wearing rain gear, came up behind me as I started to walk along the stepping-stones that led around the house. I wasn’t going farther than the little gazebo my father had put up in the garden there for my mother, but of course he had no way of guessing that.

He said, “If you’re thinking of going to Little Sefton tonight, I’ll drive you.”

I shook my head. “There’s no point in it. I’d come no closer to the truth than the police have done. Did my father tell you what Constable Boynton wanted to speak to me about?”

“Of course,” he said, grinning. “Your mother had it out of him as soon as you were out of the room. He walked down to see me afterward.”

“What did she have to say about the shooting?”

“As I recall, her exact words were, ‘I wouldn’t worry, if I were you, Richard. I think young Mr. Hart is looking for sympathy.’”

Trust my mother to see into the heart of the matter.

I said, “If he came to speak to you, what are you doing here? It’s late.”

“I had a feeling you might decide to go to Hampshire.”

“This time you were wrong.”

I could see a flash of something in his eyes before he turned away. “It occurred to me that Lieutenant Hart’s death—if he’d been killed tonight—would bear a striking resemblance to Lieutenant Fordham’s.”

I hadn’t linked the two. Yet. But Simon was right, in time I would have.

I woke up the next morning with a headache. Rare for me, because I seldom had them. But I hadn’t been able to sleep until close on four o’clock because my mind was trying to sort out the tangle of events.

A nurse is trained to observe. It’s her duty to see what is happening to the patient in her charge—she’s the eyes of the doctor on the case. Any changes must be noted, and she’s expected to know what they represent: a sign of healing, of a worsening of the patient’s condition, the onset of new symptoms, or a simple matter of indigestion. We’re expected to know when to summon Matron or the doctor, and when to cope on our own.

Use that training, I told myself. Don’t jump to conclusions.

There had to be some evidence somewhere.

Marjorie had spent five hours that were unaccounted for. She could very well have walked to the nearest hotel and used a telephone to reach someone. But that person hadn’t come forward. She could have taken a cab to the house of a friend. But according to Helen Calder, she had been cut off from her friends—she had told Helen herself very little, for that matter, and then only in the early stages of the affair. She could have confided in a complete stranger in a tea shop, someone who would listen but not judge. That person hadn’t come forward either. She couldn’t have traveled very far between the time I saw her and when she was killed. Perhaps an hour in any direction, if she were meeting the person she’d telephoned. But no restaurant or other public place had contacted the police to say she had been seen.

Very likely she never left London.

And Michael was in Dr. McKinley’s surgery. Marjorie knew that.

Had she walked the streets for a time, working up her courage to talk to an old friend? And then made her way to the surgery after hours, when the doctor was least likely to look in on his patient? She wouldn’t have wished to arrive with her face blotched by tears.

I could see the police point of view there.

I wondered who had told them that Michael was in love with Marjorie? Otherwise, they would have interviewed him and moved on, since he had no apparent motive. Was it Victoria?

Of course police suspicions would have been aroused by the fact that he had said nothing about seeing her that night. Unless he swore she had never come there. Michael could hardly have stabbed her in the surgery. And if he disobeyed orders and left, he risked the doctor finding him gone.

Where could one go to commit a quiet little murder?

If someone had intended to throw Marjorie’s body in the river, surely it was easier to do the deed nearby, rather than having to transport a body any distance. It was dark there, with London wary of Zeppelin raids. A well-lit river was a navigator’s delight. That might explain why Marjorie was still alive when she was put into the water—it would be impossible to make sure she was dead.

Michael had said that he was haunted by the possibility that Marjorie had been killed on her way to meet him.

If that were true, had Marjorie told someone where she intended to go, and that person had prevented her from reaching the surgery?

Walk with me for a little while. We can talk by the water, it’s quiet there. Then you can go on to the doctor’s surgery…

That was a far more realistic possibility than encountering a stranger.

Back, then, to someone she knew.

Had she told the man at the railway station where she was going? I hadn’t seen him descend from the moving train, although Inspector Herbert had asked me specifically about that point. But there was the next station.

First Lieutenant Fordham. Then Michael Hart. The only person I could think of who would have a reason to shoot both men was Serena Melton. She was obsessed, searching for the baby’s father. And I wondered if Jack suspected that, if it had been the reason he’d been afraid of blackmail.

I’d fallen asleep on that thought.

Ignoring the headache as best I could, I dressed and went down to breakfast. My parents had already eaten theirs and gone. The sun was out again, the rain only a memory.

I could imagine my father driving to London to have a word with Inspector Herbert. But he had a good head start, I’d never be able to catch him up.

I drank a cup of tea, ate some dry toast, and went out to the shed where I’d left my motorcar. It was low on petrol, and I was about to take it to the smithy-cum-garage to see to that.

Simon was coming around the corner of the house. He had a tennis racket in his hand, and I realized that he and my mother must have been playing. “Who won?” I asked.

“I did. By the skin of my teeth. Where are you going?”

I told him.

“I’ll see to the petrol. Then I’m off to Sandhurst.”

“Business or pleasure?” I hoped it was my photograph that was taking him there.

“I’ve to see someone there on War Office business,” he said. “After that I intend to bring up the photograph.”

I thanked him, and then asked if he knew where my father had gone.

“Something came up. He’s on his way to Portsmouth to meet someone. That’s how I was dragooned into a game of tennis, in his place.”

I wasn’t sure whether to believe him or not. Portsmouth—and London afterward?

And then I did, when Simon said, “You’ll stay close to home while we’re away? I don’t like the idea of shots flying about in gardens. Besides, your mother wouldn’t mention it, but I think she’d like a little time with you.”

I’d have liked to go to Little Sefton and ask Michael Hart about the shots fired at him. But I could hardly knock at the Harts’ door and boldly ask about an event that had occurred hours after I left. I persuaded myself that if Simon was successful in identifying the man, I could return the photograph to Alicia as promised. And she was sure to tell me what had happened, and it would seem very natural to speak to Michael then.

Besides, Simon was right about my mother.

“I promise,” I told him, and with a nod he was gone.

CHAPTER TWELVE

I WAS JUST coming up the avenue of lime trees later that day when I heard Simon’s motorcar pulling in behind me.

“Were you able to put a name to that face?” I asked, hope rising.

“Unfortunately, no.”

My spirits plummeted. “Oh” was all I could manage to say.

Simon smiled. “I can’t work miracles, Bess. He’s in a territorial regiment. They come and go, those charged with their training barely getting to know them before they’re shipped to the Front. Besides, it’s not a very clear likeness. And at the moment, I must go up to London.”

To my eyes it was. Or had I wanted it to be the right man? With his cap on, shading his face—but that’s how I’d seen him at Waterloo Station.

“Let me go with you.” I put on my most innocent face.

He was instantly suspicious. “Why?”

“I have some shopping I’d like to do.”

He nodded. “All right. After breakfast, then.”

I was ready the next morning when he came knocking at the door a little after seven. My mother had given me a long list of things she needed and couldn’t find locally.

We drove in silence for a time, and then he said, “Look, Bess. This is all well and good. But you need to spend more time with your family.”

“I feel guilty enough,” I told him. “But I also feel responsible. Day after day, I watched Lieutenant Evanson cling to that photograph of his wife, and on the long journey home, I helped him count the hours until he saw her again. He was stoic, never complaining. Only, I was the one who saw her—he never did. He wasn’t even well enough to attend her funeral. Then he killed himself, slowly, patiently, until he’d succeeded. He was one of mine, Simon. He should have lived.”

He reached over and took my hand. His was warm and safe and comforting. “You can’t save all of them, Bess,” he said gently. “That’s the trouble with war. Men die. Your father and I close our eyes and see a thousand ghosts. We know they’re there, but we can’t stare too long at their faces. We have to move on. Put the living first. There are already enough monuments to the dead.” His voice was bitter as he finished.

I said nothing, too close to tears, and I knew how he disliked tears.

After a while he released my hand, and then he changed the subject.

Simon hadn’t particularly cared to see me go into nursing, but when the war came, it was what I wanted to do. If I couldn’t fight with my father’s regiment, as a son would have done, I could at least keep men alive to fight again another day.

Simon had decided that the rigors of learning my trade would discourage me. But mopping floors, changing dressings and bed-pans, sitting with the dying, and standing by without flinching when horribly wounded men came through the tent flap had toughened me in ways I hadn’t expected. If my father’s son could face death on a battlefield, my father’s daughter could certainly face the bloody ruins of brave men.

India and the other places where my father had been sent in the course of his career had also helped me cope with the ugliness of what I had chosen to do. Death and disease, poverty and despair were just outside the compound gates in Agra and other places. I had only to ride a mile in my mother’s carriage to see maimed lepers and begging children, ash-covered holy men lying on a bed of hot coals or a starving family covered with sores. I knew early on that life for some was very hard and for others much more comfortable.

“A penny,” my companion said as we drove through the next small village.

“I was thinking about India.”

“I dream of it sometimes. Do you?”

“Yes—oh, Simon, stop, please!” I reached out, my hand on his arm.

He did as I’d asked, pulling in behind a baker’s cart. I was out of the motorcar almost as soon as it came to a halt.

“Captain Truscott!” I called to the Army officer just walking into a bookshop. He turned and recognized me at once.

“Miss Crawford! How good to see you. What brings you to Maplethorpe?”

“I was passing through, on my way to London.”

“I’m leaving for London myself in half an hour. Have dinner with me tonight.”

“The Marlborough?”

“Yes, indeed. Shall I come for you?”

I told him where to find me and that Mrs. Hennessey was the guardian at the gate. “Let her see that you are the most responsible officer in the entire Army, and she’ll come upstairs for me.”

He laughed. “Seven, then?”

“Seven.”

And I was back in the motorcar before the baker had finished his delivery at the tea shop next to the bookstore.

“You’ve thrown over the dashing young lieutenant for a captain, I see.”

“He was at the Meltons’ house party. He knew Marjorie Evanson and her husband.”

“Which explains why you leapt out of a moving motorcar to chase that man into a bookstore and beg him to take you to dinner tonight.”

“I did no such thing,” I answered indignantly.

Simon laughed. “That’s how your mother would see it.”

That was true. I don’t know why I had rushed after Captain Truscott, but it had been a spur-of-the-moment decision. It was a bit of luck to find him again at all.

We reached London and Simon set me down at the flat, where I went up to look for anyone who might be there. But I had it to myself, and I decided that my first order of business was to speak to Inspector Herbert.

He was not at the Yard, having been called away to deal with a problem in Bermondsey. The elderly constable who escorted me to his office and back down the stairs again took pity on me when he saw my disappointment. “He’s got a meeting tomorrow at eight o’clock with the Chief Superintendent. If you are here at nine o’clock, he’ll make time for you.”

I thanked him and left. I’d expected I’d be staying over in London, anyway. The problem would be persuading Simon to stay too.

By the time I reached the flat again, having stopped along the way to find items from my mother’s list, I discovered Simon waiting for me, leaning against the wing of his motorcar, arms crossed.

I gave him my packages and he stowed them in the motorcar. Three more he carried inside for me, where Mrs. Hennessey gave him permission to take them up the stairs to the flat, while she watched with an eagle eye. “He’s a very attractive man. Friend of the family or not,” she murmured to me. “And there are standards to maintain. The families of my young ladies expect it.”

I suppressed a smile. If Mrs. Hennessey didn’t trust Simon, the most trustworthy of men, I wondered what she would make of Lieutenant Hart. Temptation incarnate.

But dear soul that she was, she did her best to safeguard those of us who lived in the flats above, and we all loved her.

When Simon came down again, we went to his motorcar and he took me to lunch. I’d wanted to ask him what he’d learned, but he was in a dark mood and I knew better than to push. We talked about other things—where I’d gone shopping, what I’d heard from my flatmates, news of mutual friends, everything under the sun but what was uppermost in my mind.

And then, at the end of our meal, as the waiter set our trifle in front of us and walked away, he finally said, “I’ve found the name of the man in that photograph. Are you sure you want to hear what I’ve learned? Or shall I send it along to this Inspector Herbert of yours, and let it be finished?”

“Is it someone you know—or my parents know?” I asked, suddenly worried.

“No.”

“Then tell me, please.”

“He’s Jack Melton’s brother.”

I sat there, stunned.

I hadn’t expected the man to be someone I knew. But then I’d never actually met him, I reminded myself. Only his brother. Serena’s husband. Still, it was too close to home for comfort.

“What is his name?” I couldn’t remember ever hearing it.

“Raymond Melton. He’s a captain in the Wiltshire Fusiliers. And in France at the moment.”

I took a deep breath.

“It can’t be. No, I don’t think he would dare—Serena’s brother’s wife?”

“You know nothing about the man. What sort he may be.” Simon’s voice was harsh. “Go to Scotland Yard, tell Herbert what you’ve learned, and leave it to him.”

“But it doesn’t make sense,” I said, dabbing at the trifle with my spoon, not wanting to meet Simon’s eyes.

“That’s because you don’t want to believe it.”

“It will break Serena Melton’s heart. She’ll never forgive him. And she will blame Jack as well.”

“Why?”

“Because her brother died of grief. She didn’t care all that much for Marjorie, even when they married. But she loved her brother with all her heart.”

I had wanted to find this man, to keep the inquiry on track. And as is common with most meddling, what I’d learned would have repercussions. Once Raymond Melton was questioned, Serena would give Jack no peace until he told her all he knew.

Still, so much fit together. Marjorie would have met Raymond Melton. And if she had run into him in London one day, she would have had no qualms about dining with him. Even Mrs. Hennessey, a stickler for propriety, wouldn’t have batted an eye.

“Why was he in England five or six months ago? It couldn’t have been an ordinary leave. He must have been here longer than most.”

“He was seconded to General Haig’s staff, and he was coordinating supply shipments. They were being held up, finding transport was a problem with the German submarines taking such a toll. London was his base. From there he could visit Manchester or Birmingham or Liverpool with relative ease. He also had a staff motorcar at his disposal.”

“I can’t imagine what she could possibly have seen in him,” I said crossly. “He seemed so—distant. Michael Hart is so much better looking, if it was a fling she was after. And he loved her, he wouldn’t have walked away from her and left her there all alone.”

“Raymond Melton didn’t kill her. He couldn’t have. I asked. He caught the train and reached France precisely when he should have.”

But trains were slow. He could have borrowed a motorcar, using the excuse that he’d missed his connection.

Simon was saying something that I didn’t catch.

“Sorry?”

“He’s married, Bess. Raymond Melton is married. They have two children.”

I recalled the boy and girl I’d seen at Melton Hall the day Mary and I arrived. Raymond Melton’s children? Very likely, though she’d referred to them as cousins.

“Oh, dear God. What am I to do, Simon? It will ruin their lives.”

“This is why I didn’t want to tell you.” He signaled the waiter. “I’ll take you back to the flat and then speak to Inspector Herbert myself. He’ll know how much will have to come out during the inquiry, and how much he can keep from the newspapers for the time being. Leave it to him. Then I’ll drive you back to Somerset.”

He didn’t say, bless him, that I should have handed Gareth Dalton’s photograph to Scotland Yard. Then I’d have been ignorant of the connections. Like the ostrich with her head in the sand.

“I have a dinner engagement with Captain Truscott,” I answered distractedly. “It would be unkind to break it. Besides, Inspector Herbert is away.”

“Then I’ll wait and drive you home tomorrow.”

Rousing myself, I said, “No, that’s not the right way to handle this, Simon. I made a promise to Inspector Herbert. I told him I’d let him know what I discovered. I’ll speak to him myself.”

We argued that point for a good five minutes, and then Simon capitulated.

“It may be the best way after all,” he said. He settled the bill and then led me out of the restaurant. “What matters is to put this behind you as soon as you can.”

We had reached the pavement when I remembered something. Hearing a quick indrawn breath, Simon turned to me. “What is it?”

“I ran into Jack Melton outside the Marlborough Hotel when I was in London with Lieutenant Hart. I felt an obligation, I don’t know why, to tell him that on the night she died I’d seen Marjorie with a man I didn’t recognize, and I think I said something about the Yard searching for this man, to help them with their inquiries. And he told me that I ought to be looking instead at Michael Hart. Little did he know.” I paused. “Or did he? No, somehow I have a feeling that Raymond Melton keeps himself to himself.”

Simon swore under his breath in Urdu, thinking I wouldn’t recognize the words, but I did. Bazaar life is very colorful. A child’s ear soon picks up bits and pieces of Hindi and Urdu. I quickly learned which words I could and could not repeat in front of my elders.

“How close is he to his brother, do you know?”

“I can’t answer that,” I told him.

“Then the sooner you get to the Yard, the safer you will be.” He shook his head. “There’s something wrong with this whole affair, Bess. Don’t you feel it as well? Something rather—sinister. You’ve learned too much, for one thing, and for another, the murder of Marjorie Evanson was particularly vicious. Don’t tempt her killer, whoever he may be, to try again.”

“But Raymond Melton is in France.” I wasn’t as convinced as Simon was.

“For the moment.”

“Do you think he knows where she was going after the train left?”

“Would she tell him? Perhaps she would, to make him jealous.”

What had been set in motion that rainy evening in the railway station? Was that only the tip of the problem, the more visible half? What about Michael Hart?

I realized all at once that we were standing in everyone’s way as they came and went from the restaurant, forcing them to part like the Red Sea around us.

“We can’t discuss it here.” Simon took my arm and led me to the motorcar, holding my door for me. He turned the crank with more than his usual vigor, then got behind the wheel. “We can’t talk in your flat either. Where would you like to go?” When I didn’t answer, he said, “Scotland Yard? Even if Inspector Herbert isn’t there, we’ll tell someone else what you know. It will be finished, Bess.”

“Yes,” I said. Reluctantly. But I knew he was right.

As it happened, Inspector Herbert had just returned from Bermondsey, and we had to wait half an hour for him to make his report to his superiors. Finally I heard his footsteps, loud on the bare floorboards, as he came down the passage, and then he opened his office door and was shaking hands. I explained Simon’s presence, and after that we all sat down.

I had a distinct impression of cold feet—they wanted to carry me back out of the room again as fast as possible. But it was too late.

“Well,” Inspector Herbert was saying. “What brings you here, Miss Crawford?”

Simon opened his mouth but I forestalled him.

Inspector Herbert listened carefully as I told him what I knew about the man at the station. And he asked to see the photograph that I’d given Simon.

“It belongs to someone. I promised to bring it back to her as soon as possible.”

He was busy scanning the face of Raymond Melton. After a moment, he reached into his drawer and drew out a looking glass. “You’re quite sure this is Captain Melton?” he asked after a moment, still bent over the picture. He reached up to turn on the lamp at his elbow and brought it closer. I thought to myself that by the time he gave that photograph back to me, Inspector Herbert would have memorized Melton’s face.

Straightening up, he turned off the lamp, set the glass back inside his drawer, and leaned back into his chair. “What did Marjorie Evanson say to this man, on that rainy evening in London?” he mused. “What did it set in motion, that meeting?”

“She may have kept her own counsel,” Simon pointed out. “Given his conduct.”

“Yes, that’s possible. I expect she was too upset to dine anywhere, and she wouldn’t wish to be seen by anyone she knew. We’ve looked into tea shops between the railway station and the river. Churches are more difficult—they’re often empty at that time of day. She could sit quietly in one until she’d recovered, with no one the wiser. It seems unlikely that she’d turn to a friend—no one has come forward, at any rate. I’ll try to bring Melton back to England for questioning. Although since he’s made no effort to contact me, I don’t have much hope in that direction. At least we have a witness who puts him there with Mrs. Evanson. We’ve tried to find others, but the stationmaster tells us it was very busy, and a weeping woman seeing a soldier off is too common. People try to pass by without looking, give them a modicum of privacy.”

“If he’s Jack Melton’s brother,” Simon commented, “he can’t claim he didn’t know she’d been killed.”

I confessed, “I’ve told his brother about seeing a man with Marjorie the night she died. But I didn’t know then who he was. I was trying to help Jack Melton get to the truth before his wife did. She’s frantically searching for someone to blame. Serena Melton is likely to do something rash. And it won’t bring her brother back.”

Inspector Herbert was staring at me, weighing up what I was saying.

“Yes. Well. I don’t think any harm has been done.” He leaned forward, his elbows on his cluttered desk. “Since you didn’t know his brother, and you aren’t likely to meet him, Commander Melton won’t be unduly worried. The likelihood is that his brother hasn’t confessed his adultery, anyway. Especially if he learned Mrs. Evanson was murdered that evening. Is Captain Melton married, do you know?”

“Yes.” It was Simon who answered. “So I’ve been informed. There are two children.”

“All the more reason to keep his—relationship—from everyone. Doesn’t speak well of his character, does it?” Inspector Herbert turned to me. “It’s amazing that you found this photograph. Well done.”

I said, giving credit where it was due, “It was Sergeant-Major Brandon who put a name to the face.”

Inspector Herbert smiled. “You can safely leave this matter to us now. Which reminds me, about Michael Hart—”

I had done enough damage, talking out of turn. “I see no reason for him to lie. If he says he was shot at, then he was. The local people will probably discover it was boys who came across their father’s service revolver and were tempted to try it.” I cast about quickly for a way to change the course of the conversation. “You haven’t told me—has that man from Oxford been found?”

“He was apprehended in Derby. I don’t think we need to concern ourselves with him any longer.”

“And Lieutenant Fordham?”

“Ah. That’s another matter.”

I waited, and after a moment he said finally, “Lieutenant Fordham knew Marjorie Evanson in London, before she was married. His mother was a friend of her late aunt’s. As he had never married, we wondered if the friendship had been renewed while he was convalescing. Mrs. Evanson escorted him to medical appointments on a number of occasions. He was one of several wounded she volunteered to work with. She would meet a train, see that the patient got to his destination and then back to the train.”

That explained why no one in Little Sefton knew of him, and why Marjorie’s staff didn’t know the name. They had been hired after her marriage to Meriwether Evanson. Michael had helped select them.

But why had she let her aunt’s staff go?

It seemed that everything I learned generated more questions.

I thanked Inspector Herbert, and he nodded.

“Finding this photograph was a piece of luck. We’ve been on the point of setting this inquiry aside for lack of new information.” He smiled ruefully at Simon. “You’d think, in a time of war, when England is fighting for her life, people would put their petty differences aside and work together. But crime never goes away. We’re shorthanded here at the Yard, but the number of cases seems to climb by the day.”

It was a way of reminding us that he was busy. But I had one more question for him. “Captain Fordham,” I said. “How did he die? You never told me the outcome of your investigation.”

At first I thought he would tell me it was police business and not mine. But he said, “That’s a very odd affair. There is a small lake on the Fordham property. At one end a bridge crosses to an island just large enough for a stone table and benches. Summer picnics and that sort of thing. As far as we can determine, he walked out onto that bridge one evening and shot himself. He went over the low parapet into the water, but he was already dead. The weapon went with him, and we haven’t found it yet. The water is rather deep just there and quite murky.”

“Was it really a suicide?” I asked.

“We believe now that it must have been. But we can’t be sure. No note, you see, and his family can’t think of a reason for him to take his own life. He didn’t use his service revolver. That was still in the armoire with his uniform. He was wearing trousers and a white shirt when he died. His family is adamant that he wasn’t grieving over Mrs. Evanson. They refuse even to consider suicide.”

“Which leaves murder? Or was his wound severe enough to drive him to do something drastic?”

“A stomach wound,” he said. “Very unpleasant, I’m told.” He reached for a folder, pulling it in front of him but not opening it. A sign that our visit had ended.

We exchanged polite farewells.

Dismissal as well, telling me that the Yard no longer required my efforts.

He rose as I did, reached across the desk to shake hands with Simon Brandon, and came around to accompany us to the door, where a constable was waiting to see us out of the Yard.

Simon had nothing to say until we had reached his motorcar, and then he turned to me before he opened my door.

“It was really very clever of you to discover who the officer with Marjorie Evanson was.”

“It was more a matter of seeing what was before me. And of course making Alicia’s acquaintance in the first place. She wouldn’t have thought to show those photographs to an inspector from the Yard. I don’t think her husband knows Raymond Melton, by the way. Alicia did recognize the other two men. He probably just happened to be with one of the other men at that crossroads.” I smiled, remembering. “I like Alicia. She’s been busy matchmaking, you know. She suspects there’s a growing attachment between Michael Hart and me. There was, of course—a murder.”

Simon laughed in spite of himself. “You’re impossible,” he said, opening my door.

And then he was suddenly quite serious, one hand on my arm to make certain I was paying attention. “But mark me, Miss Elizabeth Alexandra Victoria Crawford, you will heed the advice of Inspector Herbert and leave the death of Mrs. Evanson to the proper authorities to solve. You’re in enough danger in France; I don’t wish to spend every leave pulling you out of trouble before it comes to your mother’s ears!”

He invariably brooked no nonsense when he used my full name.

I wisely said nothing.

When he got behind the wheel, he added for good measure, “And that includes the suicide of the unfortunate Captain Fordham.”

I was actually thinking about his death and wondering if the weapon would ever turn up, deep end of that lake or not.

As if he’d read my mind, which I was sometimes convinced he could do, Simon turned to me and said, “Bess.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

I SPENT THE AFTERNOON in Mrs. Hennessey’s apartments ironing the uniforms I’d soon be packing to take back to France. It was cooler there, and getting the collars and cuffs stiff enough was always hard work. I had had to do one set over again.

Mrs. Hennessey was having tea with one of her friends. I was grateful for the use of her iron, and having to concentrate on what I was doing kept my mind from dwelling on Marjorie Evanson and Captain Fordham.

Simon had gone to his club, refusing to leave London without me.

“If I do, you’ll just get up to mischief of some sort,” he’d told me.

“You aren’t showing up in the Marlborough Hotel, to sit across the room and scowl at poor Captain Truscott, are you?” I’d demanded before shutting the door behind me. “The poor man’s hands shake badly enough as it is.”

“Captain Truscott appears to be a decent enough sort. No, I’ll wait here on the street to make certain he brings you home at a reasonable hour. Mrs. Hennessey may even ask me in for tea.”

I slammed the door in his face, and heard him laughing all the way back to the motorcar.

Ironing cuffs and aprons isn’t a soothing activity. By the time I was dressed and waiting for Captain Truscott to call, I was not in the mood for dinner and was beginning to wonder why on earth I’d been so eager to see him again.

He arrived on the dot, and Mrs. Hennessey, bless her, climbed the stairs to our flat and told me he was waiting.

He smiled as I came down, saying, “It was good to see you again. I’m looking forward to dinner.”

Frederick Truscott turned out to be a very nice dinner partner. It made up for the Marlborough’s very indifferent menu. We had a number of friends in common, and that kept conversation rolling comfortably all the way to the hotel. “I’ve borrowed Terrence Hornsby’s motor,” he told me. “And so, like Cinderella, I must have you at home before the stroke of twelve. He’s driving to Wales tonight to visit his family.”

“I haven’t seen him in ages! How is he?”

“Bullet clipped his ear. Still looks rather raw there, but he’s glad it wasn’t his head. He says he needed it, although some of his friends are in serious debate over that.”

Which sounded just like Terrence. I laughed.

While we were on the subject of absent friends, I said quite casually, “I only discovered today that Jack Melton’s brother is a serving officer. A captain in the Wiltshire Fusiliers. I don’t think Jack mentioned him when we were at Melton Hall.”

“Someone told me they were estranged, though not why. I’ve never met him.”

“He’s married, I think?”

“I couldn’t say.”

We swapped other names, and then, against my better judgment I asked, “Did you know Captain Fordham?”

His face lost its humor. “Sadly I did. A loss there. He was a good officer.”

“Was he by any chance acquainted with Marjorie Evanson?”

“Strange you should mention that. The police asked his family about a connection when they came to inquire into his death. Apparently he did know her.”

“How well?”

“I’ve no idea, really. Marjorie was good company. I was fond of her myself.” Changing the subject, he asked, “When do you go back to France?”

“In another five days.”

“Bad luck. I leave the day after tomorrow. Said my good-byes at home and came up to London to put that parting behind me. Easier that way. Where is your family?”

“Somerset. I haven’t spent as much time with them as I’d promised.”

“Was that your elder brother in the motorcar with you?”

“Good heavens, no. That’s Simon Brandon. He was my father’s sergeant-major at the end of his career.”

A light dawned behind his eyes. “You’re not Colonel Richard Crawford’s daughter, are you?” When I nodded, guessing what was coming, Captain Truscott said, “My God. He was a fine officer. We’ve a man in the Fusiliers who served under him. He knows more about planning battles than half the general staff.”

I could agree with that. There had been complaints that the generals were fighting the wars of the past. My father and Simon often refought the battle of the Somme over cigars, and it always put them in a rotten mood.

We discussed my father for a bit, and then suddenly, we’d finished our pudding, drunk our tea in the comfortable lounge, and it was time to go.

I said, as we walked through Reception and out of the hotel, “Can you think of any good reason for Captain Fordham to kill himself?”

“I don’t know that we need a reason,” Freddy Truscott answered somberly. “What keeps you going is your men. You don’t let them down. Fordham lost most of his men in a charge ordered against a section of line that reconnaissance had indicated was poorly defended and certain to fold. But the Germans had put in a concealed machine-gun nest during the night, and they held their fire until Fordham and his men were within easy range. They were wiped out—he was one of only a handful of wounded who somehow made it back to their own lines. The rest were dead before they knew what they were up against. He blamed himself for trusting HQ. He felt he’d betrayed the dead, and refused all treatment when they got him back to the nearest aid station. One of the nursing sisters put a needle into his arm and that was that. He was more sensible when he came out of surgery.”

I recalled the incident—although I hadn’t known it was Captain Fordham who’d fought the nursing staff. Diana had been there, had witnessed the struggle to treat the wounded man, and she had told us about it. Even she hadn’t learned why the officer had gone mad, only that in spite of his severe injuries he’d fought like a tiger.

But this went far to explain Fordham’s suicide. Still, if he’d been intent on taking his own life, why wait until he was nearly mended?

Trying for a lighter note on which to end the evening, I asked Freddy if I could write to him in France.

He said, “I was trying to get up the courage to ask just that.”

And then it was time to say good-bye. As we stood outside the door of Mrs. Hennessey’s house, I wished him safe in France and he held my hand longer than was needful. “Thank you, Bess, for a happy evening. I’ve enjoyed it more than I can say.”

With that he was gone, walking to the borrowed motorcar with swift strides, not looking back even as he drove away. I watched him go, watched his taillights vanish around the far corner of our street, and with a sigh, said a silent prayer that he would come home whole. Then I turned and went inside. Where had Simon got to?

I hadn’t learned a great deal about Raymond Melton, and only a little about Lieutenant Fordham.

But as I climbed the stairs to my flat, calling good night to Mrs. Hennessey who had come out to ask me if I’d enjoyed my evening, I wondered why Jack Melton and his brother were estranged. Because he knew what sort of person Raymond Melton was?

What had been the fascination there for Marjorie? Attention when she needed comforting, her fears for Meriwether smoothed away? Sometimes very cold men could be utterly charming when it served their purpose. I preferred someone like Michael Hart, who made no bones about flirting, enjoying it and expecting no harm to come of it.

Like the woman at the garden party, I remembered as I drifted into sleep. Henry’s wife, who had been amused by Michael’s flattery, gave it back in full measure, and made both of them laugh.

Someone was knocking at the flat door. I heard it in my dreams before I realized that the sound was real. Surfacing from sleep, I tried to think what time it was, and if I’d overslept. I fumbled for my slippers and my dressing gown and made my way through the dark flat. But the windows told me it wasn’t the middle of the night, as I’d first thought, or late morning. Dawn had broken and the first rays of the sun were touching the rooftops opposite.

I opened the door to Mrs. Hennessey, her gray hair in a long plait that fell down over the collar of her dressing gown.

“What is it? What’s the matter?” I asked, thinking she must be ill.

“My dear, it’s Sergeant-Major Brandon. He says it’s most urgent that he speak to you. I do hope it isn’t your parents—”

My mind was racing ahead of me as I brushed past her and went headlong down the stairs, nearly flinging myself into Simon’s arms as I tripped on the last three steps.

“What is it?” I said again, tensed for the blow to come.

“I told Mrs. Hennessey not to frighten you,” he said, angry. “It’s a police matter, but important enough to make sure you were safely here.”

Mrs. Hennessey had seen me come in. She could have told Simon—and then I realized that he had been frowning with worry until he saw me on the stairs.

“Do you know a Mrs. Calder?” he continued, and I tried to concentrate on what he was saying.

“Calder? Yes—she’s a friend of Marjorie’s. Marjorie Evanson.”

“She was attacked last night and nearly killed.”

“She—” I began and had to stop to catch my breath. “Nearly killed?”

Mrs. Hennessey had made her way down the stairs and said to Simon, “If you wish to use my sitting room—”

He thanked her and we went into her flat, where a lamp was burning in the small room where she sat in the evening. She asked if we’d like a cup of tea, but Simon shook his head. With that she left us alone, but knowing Mrs. Hennessey, she wouldn’t be far, even though she knew that Simon was a family friend. Her staunch Victorian upbringing wouldn’t allow her to eavesdrop, but she would be able to hear if I screamed or had to fight for my virtue, since I was not properly dressed to receive a gentleman.

Simon must have read my mind because he smiled grimly and said, “You had better sit over there. God forbid that we should not observe the proprieties.”

I sat down on one side of the hearth and he took the chair on the other.

“Mrs. Calder?” I reminded him.

“She had gone to dine with friends. Mr. and Mrs. Murray put her into a cab at the end, and she went directly to her house. That’s been established. But she didn’t go in. The maid waiting up for her was drowsing in her chair, but she would have heard any disturbance on the doorstep.”

“Then it was someone Mrs. Calder knew,” I said. “She wouldn’t have gone anywhere with a stranger, not after what happened to Marjorie Evanson.” I tried to think. “Have the police found the cabbie?”

“They have, and he doesn’t recall anyone walking along the street or standing in the shadows of a tree. But he’s an old man, he might not have noticed. At any rate, she got down at Hamilton Place, paid the cabbie, and the last he saw of her, she was walking toward her door. An hour later, a constable walking through Hamilton Place heard something in the square, and alert man that he is, went to investigate. He discovered Mrs. Calder lying in a stand of shrubbery, stabbed and bleeding heavily. She’s in hospital now and undergoing surgery. No one has been able to question her. But she wasn’t robbed or interfered with in any way. Because of the unsolved attack on Mrs. Evanson, someone, probably the Metropolitan police, thought to bring in Inspector Herbert.”

“Oh, dear.” I put my hands up to my face, pressing them against the flesh, trying to absorb everything Simon was telling me. And then I realized that it was Simon telling me. Letting my hands fall I said, “How is it that you know all this?”

“Inspector Herbert put in a call to Somerset—he must have thought you were going directly home, but he was taking no chances. You father called me at my club. I came directly here.” He paused. “Bess. How much did this Mrs. Calder know about Marjorie Evanson’s love affair? Did she know the name of the man?”

“She told me she didn’t—” But Serena Melton believed Mrs. Calder knew more than she wished to tell even the police. That she found her cousin Marjorie’s behavior distasteful and was trying to distance herself from it. “Serena Melton believes she does. And if that’s true, someone else could as well.” Michael Hart had not suggested we talk to Helen Calder. The thought rose like a black shadow in my mind. Had he believed that if Helen knew the name of the man Marjorie had been seeing, it was possible that she also knew Marjorie intended to meet him that evening?

I pushed the thought away. There could be a little jealousy there, because Helen really was a cousin, and Michael was not. But the thought lingered.

Simon was saying, “The police can’t be certain that her attack is related to Mrs. Evanson’s death, but they’re treating it as likely.”

“She must know who it was. She isn’t the kind of woman who would take risks. Is she—will she survive?” With critical stabbing wounds, infection was often the deciding factor in living or dying.

Simon shook his head. “It’s touch and go, I should think. My first responsibility was to look in on you. To see if you’d also been lured out into the night. Mrs. Hennessey couldn’t stop a determined killer.”

He was right. If someone knew just what to say—that my mother had suddenly taken ill or something had happened to Simon or my father—I’d go with them. Especially if I thought Mrs. Hennessey had allowed them in this emergency to come directly to my door. It would never occur to me that she was already dead. What, then, had someone said to Mrs. Calder that made her turn away from her door and follow him—or her?

“I’m wide awake,” I said. “It’s no use going back to bed. Do you think, if we went to the hospital, Matron might tell me about the surgery and what the prognosis is for Helen Calder?”

“It’s worth trying.”

I left him there in the sitting room and went up to dress. I decided to wear my uniform, though I sighed when I put on the nicely starched cuffs and apron that I’d ironed only hours ago.

Simon drove me to St. Martin’s Hospital, where we made our way to the surgical wards. But Mrs. Calder was still in surgery, I was told, and not expected to be brought into the ward until she was stable.

I asked where she had been stabbed, but the sister I spoke with shook her head. “I haven’t seen her file. Only that I’m to expect a female patient with repairs of severe knife wounds.”

Frustrated, I went to where Simon was sitting in the room in which families awaited news, and said, “She isn’t out of surgery yet. It could be some time.”

“It was worth a try,” he said. “I’ll take you home and we’ll come again in a few hours.”

I was agreeable to that, but we met Inspector Herbert as we walked down the passage. He’d been in the small staff canteen helping himself to a cup of tea. He looked tired.

Surprised to see us there, he said to me, “You’re in uniform.”

“Indeed.”

“I hope you weren’t thinking of interviewing Mrs. Calder before the police spoke to her.” He smiled, but it was also a warning.

“I was worried. I met her for the first time only a few days ago.”

“Did you indeed?” He gave me his undivided attention. “And what did she have to say to you?”

“She couldn’t give me the name of the man Mrs. Evanson had been seeing, but she’d been concerned for some time about what she believed to be a developing affair. And she was under the impression that Mrs. Evanson had broken it off several months before her death. Well before she could have known she was pregnant. But I didn’t say that to Mrs. Calder.”

I went on to tell him what little I knew.

Inspector Herbert nodded. “This time her purse wasn’t taken, and so we had her identity at once. Then when the police went to inform her family, her mother said, ‘Dear God, first Marjorie and now Helen.’ That was when we made a connection between the two women, and I put in a call to Somerset.” He looked down at the hat he was turning in his hands. “I must say, I never expected a second murder.” He looked up again, and after a brief hesitation, he added, “The constable who found her said that she was barely conscious when he bent over her, but she spoke someone’s name. Her voice lifted at the end, as if she were posing a question. ‘Michael?’ she said.”

“Michael—” I repeated before I could stop myself. “Er—what is her husband’s name?”

“Alan.”

“Oh.”

“Oh, indeed.”

I said, “If you’re thinking that Michael Hart did this, you’re mistaken. He couldn’t, given his injuries. Ask his doctor.” I tried to remember. “A Dr. Higgins.” He’d given Michael permission to accompany me to London; he must know the case well enough to make such a judgment.

“I’ll be speaking to his physician,” he assured me. “But for all we know, he could be malingering.”

I thought about the pain I’d read in Michael’s eyes, the struggle with the sedatives. The whispers that he was addicted to them. But I didn’t bring these matters up. My testimony would be considered biased.

“It will be hours before Mrs. Calder is awake,” I told him. “If she’s still in surgery now. We might as well all go back to bed.”

But he shook his head. “That isn’t what the Yard pays me to do. I’ll be there the instant she opens her eyes.”

Just then Matron came down the passage, calling to Inspector Herbert. “Mrs. Calder is being taken to a private room. She isn’t awake and won’t be for some time,” she said, echoing what I’d just been telling him myself. “But you may go in and see her, if you wish.”

He turned to accompany her. I gave Simon a swift glance and followed in Inspector Herbert’s wake.

Matron was saying, “The damage is considerable, but we’ll know more tomorrow. Whoever her attacker was, he stabbed her twice. She was wearing a corset, and luckily the staves deflected his knife. There is a laceration along her ribs, the bone scraped, cartilage torn, but the blade didn’t reach her lung. Then he stabbed her in the stomach, and nearly succeeded in killing her.”

We went into the small private ward, and looked down at the patient’s wan face. I didn’t think she’d be speaking to anybody for some time. She had lost quite a bit of blood, and the surgery had been stressful as well.

I studied her face. She was no longer the vigorous woman I’d seen only a day or so ago. Even with the bandages, she seemed to have shrunk into herself, thinner and somehow vulnerable. I felt a surge of pity. If she had been thrown into the river, as Marjorie Evanson had been, she wouldn’t have survived at all.

Matron was saying, “You’ll observe that she was also struck on the head from behind. We saw that injury as we were pulling her hair back.” She gently turned Mrs. Calder’s head and parted her heavy hair to show us the wound. “I would say that she was knocked unconscious and then cold-bloodedly stabbed while she was unable to defend herself.”

“Then there’s a chance she didn’t see her attacker.” Inspector Herbert bent down for a closer look.

“True.” Matron eased the patient’s head back onto the pillow and arranged her hair.

Inspector Herbert then turned to me. “Any thoughts?”

“You were at her house? The servants’ entrance is just below her door—down the stairs behind the railing and into a kitchen passage, I should think.” It was a common enough arrangement. “If someone waited there, the cabbie wouldn’t have seen him. But he’d have had to be quiet.”

“As the cabbie left, it might have covered the sound of his footsteps coming up,” Inspector Herbert agreed. “I’ll speak to one of my men; we’ll see if another cab dropped off a passenger earlier. The question is, how did he know she was out? Or when she would return?”

“He may have been there earlier, and seen her leaving. And waited.”

He nodded. “Whoever it was took a great risk. One cry and someone might have come to a window. Unless he persuaded her to walk into the square, then struck her from behind. That may be why she said the name Michael the way she did. As he came up the tradesmen’s stairs, she must have been surprised and called out to him.”

Matron gestured to us, and we walked out of the ward together, closing the door behind us. Inspector Herbert asked that an extra chair be brought to him, and he sat down before the closed door. He pointedly bade me good night.

I left, having pushed my luck as far as I thought it ought to go.

I accompanied Matron back to the hall where Simon was waiting, my mind busy with the problem of why a dying woman had spoken Michael’s name. I went over what she’d said to me when I called on her. I hadn’t brought up Michael’s name—and neither had she.

Simon took me to the Marlborough Hotel and commandeered a breakfast for the two of us. I sat there toying with my food, thinking about Mrs. Calder.

“It makes no sense,” I finally said aloud.

“It isn’t supposed to. You aren’t Inspector Herbert.”

I smiled. “I don’t think he’s exactly happy with this turn of events either.”

“Eat your breakfast.”

I did as I was told. I wanted something from Simon and the easiest way to persuade him was to cooperate. At least the breakfast was better than the dinner the night before and I was hungry.

“How was your evening?” Simon asked, echoing my own thought.

“Captain Truscott is a very nice man. You needn’t use that tone of voice.”

“What tone of voice?”

“The one that sounds disapproving and nosy.”

Simon laughed. “Actually, I think you’re probably right about Truscott.”

“He told me something about Captain Fordham that made a lot of sense.”

He groaned. “I thought you’d been warned off that topic.”

“I was. I can’t help it if Freddy knew the man.”

“I see. You’d better tell me.”

I did. Simon nodded as I was finishing the account.

“He’s right,” Simon told me. “There’s delayed shock, you know. As long as Captain Fordham was recovering from his wounds, he could put France out of his mind. But as soon as he knew he was nearly ready to return to the Front, the truth had to be faced.”

“Then why didn’t he use his service revolver?”

“I expect he didn’t wish to. I expect he didn’t feel he had a right to use it.”

That was a very interesting observation.

I sighed. “Poor man.”

“He wouldn’t be the first. And he won’t be the last. Don’t you remember Color Sergeant Blaine? It was much the same story.”

I did remember. It was in Lahore, and Color Sergeant Blaine was in hospital recovering from wounds. He slashed his wrists one night, without a word to anyone. And my father said Sergeant Blaine blamed himself for losing his men in an ambush on the Frontier. He felt, experienced man that he was, that he should have foreseen it. No one could have, my father told my mother. But Sergeant Blaine had never lost a troop before.

“You’re very wise, Simon. But what became of the handgun that Captain Fordham used? Solve that mystery too.”

“It’s buried deep in the mud under the bridge where he was standing. It fell from his height and through the height of the bridge. Enough force to bury it in the soft soil at the bottom of the lake.”

But the police had searched, and still hadn’t found it.

I finished my tea, and sat back in my chair. “Will you drive me to Little Sefton? I’d like to speak to Lieutenant Hart before Inspector Herbert sees him.”

“Do you think that’s wise?” Simon asked.

“I don’t know what’s wise anymore. But Inspector Herbert has a second victim now. He’s probably already under a good deal of pressure to take someone into custody. Michael Hart would solve all his problems. As soon as the inspector speaks to Helen Calder, he’ll order Michael’s arrest. See if he doesn’t!”

“That could be later this afternoon or evening. Are you convinced that Michael’s shoulder wound is as serious as he claimed?”

“You know as well as I do that severely wounded men can go on to do heroic things before they collapse. He’s a soldier, he could stab her if he had to—wanted to. What would be impossible for him to do is carry or drag her into the square afterward.” I bit my lip, then added, because I knew Inspector Herbert was already considering it, “It could explain why she was found in the square and not taken to the river, as Marjorie was.”

“Yes, I’d considered that myself.” He signaled to the waiter. “I’ll take you to Little Sefton, only because I feel safer with you under my eye. And then you’ll go back to Somerset and stay there.”

“I promise.”

But I crossed my fingers behind my back, just in case.

Simon took me to Little Sefton, then did as I asked, driving away after leaving me on Alicia’s doorstep. He was to return in precisely two hours. He wasn’t happy with that arrangement, but I promised to stay with Alicia.

I had the excuse of returning the borrowed photograph, but I needn’t have worried about my welcome.

She was delighted to see me. From the twinkle in her eye, I knew what she was thinking, that I couldn’t stay away long because my heart was given to Michael Hart.

She said nothing about that as she led me into her sitting room, and asked if the photograph had helped.

“Indeed it has,” I told her. “The only problem is, that officer is in France just now.”

Looking at the photograph I’d given her, she said, “He looks like a nice sort. And if he’s someone Gareth photographed, he must be all right.”

I changed the subject, asking if the village had been reasonably quiet since my last visit.

“That’s right, you haven’t heard, have you?”

I knew what must be coming. “What’s happened?”

“Michael Hart was walking in his aunt’s garden. Pacing it, more likely. Mrs. King was passing by, and she said he had the face of a bear, so she didn’t stop to speak. And not a quarter of an hour later, he went raging in to see Constable Tilmer, claiming someone shot at him. But Constable Tilmer couldn’t find anyone who’d heard one shot, much less two. And with all the windows open because of the warm evening, you’d have thought someone must have heard it.”

“What happened then?”

“Constable Tilmer searched the gardens and the back lanes, and told the Harts that all was well, the excitement was over. But Michael wouldn’t hear of it. He demanded that the constable ring up Scotland Yard and report the incident directly. And then we all went home to bed and that was the end of it.”

“Who could possibly want to shoot Lieutenant Hart?”

“That’s what everyone is asking. Jason Markham claims it was a jealous husband.” She laughed at that. “If so, he had very poor aim.”

The village was taking the incident very lightly, finding amusement in it.

“But why should Michael make up such a story?”

“Too many drugs, everyone says. Hearing things.” She shrugged.

“Is that true?”

“I don’t know how the rumors got started. But they did. I imagine it was when Michael first came here to rest after they had worked on his shoulder. He wasn’t himself at all—barely able to speak, and even when he did he didn’t always make sense. Slept much of the day and paced his room at night—I could see for myself once or twice that his lights were on until the small hours. And his shadow passing between the lamp and the window, back and forth, back and forth. Even when he finally came outside where people could see him, he was pale and often sweating and his eyes looked right through you.”

“Such wounds can be terribly painful. And the shoulder is awkward—difficult to sit down, difficult to lie down, difficult to stand. So you don’t rest. Even when you’re so sleepy you can hardly stay awake.”

“I hadn’t thought of it that way,” Alicia admitted. “It sounds pretty grim, doesn’t it?”

“It is grim,” I said. “And something to help with the pain is necessary.”

“He told the rector when he first came here that the next surgery would be drastic. And he didn’t want to survive it.”

I could understand. Michael was used to being noticed. He was handsome and charming and amusing. People enjoyed his company. But a man with only one arm was usually pitied, not admired. And amputation at the shoulder would be ugly.

Alicia suggested a walk, and I agreed, thinking that if Michael saw me with her, he might come out and speak to us, saving me from having to find a proper excuse for calling on him.

“It helps the day go by faster,” she admitted as we leisurely strolled by the Hart house. “Walking, knitting, taking care of the gardens—anything is better than worrying about Gareth.”

And I was right, not five minutes later, as Alicia and I were retracing our steps, Michael Hart came out his door and moved purposefully in our direction. We were just by the churchyard when he caught us up.

Alicia hastily recalled that she must have a word with the rector about flowers for the coming Sunday services, and left me alone.

“You came back,” Michael said as soon as he was near enough.

I could see that he had taken his pain medication last night, for his eyes looked dull, and his hands shook a little.

“Alicia was just telling me about your narrow escape.”

“Hardly that,” he said, an edge to his voice. “Since I imagined the entire incident. I’m surprised Scotland Yard didn’t call to inform you of my delusions.”

It was too close to the truth for comfort.

“Yes, they do seek my advice regularly. They dare not make a move without me.”

He had the grace to apologize. “I’m sorry. I wrenched my shoulder ducking the first shot. Afterward I had a long couple of nights.”

Men who had been at the Front often ducked when a motorcar backfired or there was some other loud noise. It was a reflex action, learned to save their lives and not as easily unlearned in a peaceful setting like one’s uncle’s garden.

“And you never saw anyone. Or heard anything except for the shots?”

“You sound just like Constable Tilmer,” he told me sourly. “If I’d seen who it was, I could have named him to the police. Or lacking that, described him.”

“What makes you so certain it was a man?” I asked.

That gave him pause.

“I just assumed it was,” he said after a moment.

“And why would someone shoot at you?”

“I don’t know. Unless someone believes I learned something in London that made me a threat.”

“Such as?”

He surprised me with his answer. “If someone learned that I went to Scotland Yard. He—she—could believe I went there to pass on information.”

“Then why kill you now? If the Yard already knows what you’ve learned.”

“I haven’t worked that out yet.”

“Are you sure you heard shots? I mean, as opposed to something that sounded very much like shots.”

“I’ve spent two years in France. Do you think I’d confuse a farmer scaring crows with a shotgun for a pistol shot?”

“No.”

I walked a little way toward the church, then turned again and walked back to where he was standing. “How did two shots miss you? Both of them?”

“Think what you like,” he snapped and strode away.

I shook my head at his attitude, then hurried after him.

“Michael. Be sensible! Listen to me.”

He stopped and turned a stony face toward me, already rejecting what I had to say.

“If whoever it was missed you both times, then it tells me the person aiming at you wasn’t used to firearms and was either out of range or couldn’t hold the weapon steady.”

“I wouldn’t put it past Victoria,” he answered bitterly.

But I thought it was more likely to be Serena. She’d talked to Inspector Herbert. And so had Michael. For all I knew, she had seen him leaving the Yard.

If it was Serena, this could be the second time she’d fired at a human being. And the first time she had hit her mark, which would have frightened her if she hadn’t intended murder.

“I remember the first time I fired a revolver. I missed the target and nearly hit a troop of monkeys in a tree. It was six weeks before they ventured that near again.”

He was smiling at the story about the monkeys, but his mind wasn’t on what I was saying.

“Did the police at least search for the spent bullets?”

“A cursory search. I went back later to look on my own. But it’s a garden, for God’s sake, and finding anything would be a miracle.”

“Let’s have a look together.”

He was about to refuse me, but I stood there waiting, and finally he said disagreeably, “All right, then.”

I wanted very much to tell him that handsome is as handsome does. But that would be sinking to the same childish level.

Still, I was tempted.

And what would Alicia think when she came back to find I’d gone off with Michael Hart? That her stratagem had worked?

We walked in silence to the house where he was staying with his aunt and uncle. The grassy path branched about three-quarters of the way to the door, and stepping-stones led to a gate in a well-trimmed hedge. Through that I found myself in a very pretty formal garden. Small boxwoods lined the paths in a geometric pattern, dividing the beds. Along the far side of the garden, matching the hedge at the front gate, was a bank of lilacs, which must have been beautiful in the spring, their fragrance wafting to the chairs set out on a narrow stone terrace, rising above two shallow steps.

“What’s behind the lilacs?”

“The carriage drive to the stables. Beyond that a small orchard.”

“So someone could have come as far as the lilacs without being seen.”

“Yes. That was what the police suggested as well.”

“And where were you standing?”

“I was in the center, by the little sundial, my back to the lilacs. The house had felt stuffy, and I’d come out here. But I couldn’t sit still, so I walked as far as the sundial, stood there for several minutes, and was just turning back to the terrace when I heard the shots.”

He was right. Finding the spent bullet amongst the beds of roses, peonies, larkspur, and other flowers in full bloom, much less the loamy earth they were set in, would be a miracle.

But I looked anyway. If only to satisfy my own ambivalence about whether or not there were any shots at all. I asked him to stand where he had been at the time, and then I cast about, looking under leaves, in the earth, even in the blossoms themselves. After ten minutes, he said impatiently, “I can’t stand here much longer. You aren’t going to find anything anyway. Let’s sit on the terrace before I fall down.” He did look rather gray in the face.

I am stubborn. Just ask the Colonel Sahib.

“Go ahead and sit. I’ll look a little longer.”

And five minutes later, my fingers, scything gently through the soil around a rosebush in the next bed over, came up with something hard. I picked it up, brushed it off, and looked at it.

It was a readily identifiable .45 bullet.

Triumphant, I carried it to Michael and dropped it into the palm of his hand.

“Persistence,” I said simply.

He grinned at me. “And your fingers are filthy.”

I regarded them wryly. “So they are.”

“Now perhaps someone will believe me!”

But there still remained a shadow of a doubt. Michael Hart possessed his service revolver, and he could just as easily have fired that shot into the rosebushes himself, in the hope that the police would believe his story.

I sighed. “I must go back to Somerset. I’m here on sufferance anyway. My family is convinced that you’re a blackguard and I’m in danger of being shot in your company.”

The grin deepened. “It’s a lie. Your mother adored me. Stay, and I’ll take you to dinner somewhere.”

I shook my head. “Thank you, but I must go.” I rose to leave, and then said, “Michael. What if we never discover who killed Marjorie? If the police can’t do it, it’s not likely that anyone else will succeed where they failed. And they keep jumping about, first this and then that likelihood. They won’t keep searching forever.”

“I’ll keep looking if it takes me the rest of my life,” he told me grimly. “I won’t desert her as everyone else has.”

I said good-bye and left. Alicia was watching for me, and smiled. “I saw you walking with Michael Hart to his aunt’s garden. Beautiful, isn’t it?”

I agreed and then told her I must return to Somerset.

She said, “You two didn’t quarrel, did you?”

Several times, I answered silently, then told her, “He’s not at his best today.”

“Don’t let that discourage you. I think he rather likes you.”

I smiled and said, with heavy irony, “Thank you, Alicia. You send me away happier than when I arrived.”

“Did he tell you,” she went on, “that Victoria, Marjorie Evanson’s sister, had a very public quarrel with him, just this morning. I don’t know what precipitated it. He was walking toward the church when she stopped him and suddenly there were loud voices and everyone turned to see what was happening.”

“What were they saying?”

“Marjorie was buried here in the churchyard. Did you know that? Not with her husband but with her family. When her body was released, Meriwether’s sister refused to let her be laid to rest in their family plot. I don’t know if Meriwether was told what her decision was. I think he’d have been very angry. But she told Victoria in no uncertain terms that Marjorie was no longer considered a part of their family.”

I hadn’t known that or I would have visited her grave when I was here for the garden party. But I should have guessed that Serena would carry her anger that far. She hadn’t come to the service.

Alicia was saying, “At any rate, Victoria accused Michael Hart of spending too much time there. I know he’s been there a few times, not what I would call an inordinate number, but she seemed to feel that having caused her sister so much grief in her life, it was keeping the scandal alive for him to be seen there so often.”

“She believes that Michael Hart was the other man?”

“I think she’s always been very jealous of the attachment between Marjorie and Michael. And so she thinks it was an unhealthy one.”

“What does the rest of the village have to say?”

“They’re of two minds, at a guess. Those who liked Marjorie believed the best of her. If she fell from grace, they say, it was out of loneliness. Those who are closer to Victoria and her father seem to think that Marjorie betrayed her family as well as her husband.”

“Never mind what the truth might be?”

“Never mind,” she agreed, nodding. With a sigh, she said, “I know how easy it is to fall from grace. I miss Gareth so terribly sometimes that I cry myself to sleep. I’m always afraid to answer the door, for fear Mr. Mason is on my doorstep this time, to deliver bad news. Sometimes after his leave is over and he’s been gone for months, I can’t quite remember the sound of my husband’s voice, or see his face as sharply as I did before. And one day someone comes along who is kind, thoughtful, his touch is real, and he’s there, and one is so hungry for companionship, for someone who admires one’s hair or makes one laugh, or just brushes one’s hand as he helps one into a motorcar, that one is susceptible. Suddenly one is alive again, and you tell yourself that you might well be a widow already and not even know it—”

She broke off, flushing with embarrassment. A little silence fell. Then she said, “I’ve never succumbed. I’ve been faithful in thought and deed. But I’d be lying if I said that I could throw the first stone at Marjorie.” Wryly she added, “That’s why I so enjoy your feelings for Michael. It lets me feel something vicariously.”

Misreading my expression of annoyance, she said, “I’ve made you self-conscious, haven’t I? I’m sorry. Let’s change the subject.”

“All right, then. Why would Victoria make such a public display of her feelings? Why not speak to Michael quietly, privately, and ask him to be more discreet?”

“I rather think she wants the world to see him as an adulterer. She wants him to be an object of contempt.”

“Or she’s jealous.” I leaned back in my chair and regarded the ceiling. “Do you think Victoria might decide to shoot at him?”

“At Michael? But why should she?”

“I don’t know,” I told her truthfully. “Perhaps to frighten him. To make him leave Little Sefton and return to that clinic. To make him a laughingstock. Or to return to the idea of jealousy, to rid herself of him so that she wouldn’t be reminded day in and day out that he still cares for Marjorie, but cares nothing for her?”

“I hadn’t thought of it in that light,” Alicia said, considering my words. “But she’s always had an uncertain temper. Spoiled children often do. She might very well decide to shoot at him—knowing that she would miss him, I mean—just to be vindictive.”

“Would you walk with me to the churchyard, and show me Marjorie’s grave?”

“Yes, of course. Let me get my shawl.” She was back in only a moment. I took one last look at the photograph I’d returned and then together we walked down the street to the churchyard.

There were any number of new graves, the earth still brown, and others where the grass was just a tender green. I tried not to think that for every man who died of wounds here in England, hundreds of others were buried in makeshift cemeteries in France.

The Garrisons were buried in a cluster of graves on the right side of the church. Besides Marjorie’s mother and father, there was a brother who had died at the age of six, and her grandparents, two uncles and their wives and a number of older-generation Garrison relatives. Marjorie’s grave was on the far side of her brother’s, as if Victoria had elected to keep for herself the space that was next to her father. After all, Marjorie, the first to die, was in no position to argue.

There were colorful fresh flowers on the raw earth. I recognized some of them as varieties I’d seen in the garden belonging to Michael Hart’s aunt and uncle. I could in a way understand Victoria’s complaint, for these tokens were there for all to see and speculate about. They also pointed up the fact that Victoria hadn’t planted any flowers by the headstone herself. There were pansies and forget-me-nots and other low-growing blossoms rampant on the other graves. Michael was making it plain that Marjorie didn’t deserve to be ostracized by her family as well as her neighbors.

We were standing there together when the rector came around the corner of the church and spoke to us. He remembered me from the fete, and told me he was happy to see me again.

“Alicia has been rambling about in that empty house long enough,” he went on. “It’s nice that friends can come and stay. We hope we’ll see more of you.”

I smiled and thanked him.

Looking down at the grave, he said, “Did you know Mrs. Evanson?”

I told him the truth, that I had nursed her husband and brought him home to England to recover from his burns, and I left it at that.

“He was a very fine man,” the rector told me. “The sort you’re happy to see marrying one of the young women in your parish. A tragedy that he should die of his wounds after coming so far.”

“Yes.” I gestured toward the grave at my feet. “Tell me about his wife.”

“A thoroughly nice young woman. I shouldn’t wish to speak ill of the dead, but she was not really happy here. She didn’t see eye to eye with her sister or her father. I never understood what lay behind that. I was glad when she made a life for herself in London.”

“Did Victoria visit her there?”

“She went to London a few times,” he said, frowning, “but I don’t know that she visited Marjorie. I remember asking for news, once, when Victoria had been up to see a play. She told me she’d been too busy to call on her sister.” He smiled sadly. “A shame, really, they had only each other.”

He left us then, and Alicia said, “You know, you really ought to speak to Mrs. Eubanks. She’s the rector’s cook now, but she was the Garrisons’ cook until she had words with Victoria’s father and walked out. That was ages ago, before the war. I’d all but forgotten.”

I glanced at the watch pinned to my apron. A cook would be starting preparations for dinner very shortly, but it wouldn’t take long to ask my questions. “I’m so glad you remembered. And there’s just time.” I started for the rectory.

“I’ll go with you!” Alicia said eagerly.

“No, that’s probably not a good idea. If she’s kept any secrets all these years, she might well not wish to make them public now. And you live in the village.”

“But that’s not fair—it was I who told you about her—”

“Alicia, think about it for a moment—”

She was angry. “I’ve helped you thus far. It’s really unkind of you to shut me out now. And I was the one who introduced you to Michael.”

“Alicia—”

“No. You’ve just used me, that’s all. I should have guessed. Victoria said you would, you know. The day of the fair. I told her she was trying to make trouble, but I see now she was right.” She turned and walked away, hurt and disappointed.

I felt my own anger rising. I liked Alicia, I wouldn’t have upset her for the world. But thanks to Victoria’s meddling, she had taken what I’d said in the worst possible light.

I called to her, told her I was sorry, but the damage had been done. She kept walking, and disappeared through her door without looking back. I started after her, and after a few steps, stopped. It was useless. Even if I could persuade her that I’d been wrong about Mrs. Eubanks, Alicia would think I was apologizing because I still needed her help, not because I meant it. Otherwise she would have come back when I called to her. I couldn’t help but wonder what else Victoria could have said, then recalled Alicia’s parting words about Michael Hart. She had enjoyed matchmaking, but Victoria had poisoned that as well.

With a heavy heart I crossed the churchyard to the rectory gardens, and made my way to the kitchen yard and up the path to the outer door. It led into a passage littered with boots and coats and umbrellas that had seen better days, and thence into the kitchen.

I opened the door, and the woman up to her elbows in flour and dough looked up, ready to say something, then stopped short.

“Oh—you aren’t Rector. If you’re looking for him, he should be in the vestry just now. At the church.”

“Are you Mrs. Eubanks?” I asked. But of course she must be. Short and compact, she was graying, although her face was unlined. I put her age at perhaps fifty-five.

“I am. And who might you be, Miss?”

“My name is Elizabeth Crawford. I’m a nursing sister, and one of my patients was Lieutenant Meriwether Evanson,” I began. “I was with the convoy that brought him to England for treatment of his burns.”

I explained that I was visiting with Mrs. Dalton, and she nodded. “I think I saw you with her at the garden fete.”

“Yes, I was here then as well.”

“The poor man. We heard that he barely survived a fortnight after his wife’s death. I met him a time or two, you know. He came here to speak to Rector in regard to marrying Miss Marjorie.”

“I’ve been learning a little about her as well. Alicia Dalton said that you could tell me more about her than anyone else in Little Sefton. Would you mind?”

We talked for a while about the Evansons, and it was clear that Mrs. Eubanks would have been glad to go to London with them as their cook, but she had already, as she said, “gotten used to Rector’s little ways, and he to mine.”

“I understand there was no love lost between Marjorie and her sister.”

Mrs. Eubanks’s lips thinned into a hard line. After a moment she said, “I know Rector preaches that it’s wrong to hate anyone, but I come as close to that as never mind when it comes to Miss Victoria. She’s a piece of work.” She had been making dough as I came in, and now she turned it out onto a floured board, and began to knead it vigorously. I hoped it wouldn’t be tough as nails as a result.

“Was she always so rude?”

Mrs. Eubanks turned her head to listen, decided that no one could overhear us, and said, “Rudeness isn’t the half of it. My sister Nancy, God rest her soul, worked with Dr. Hale, and when Miss Marjorie’s dear mother went into labor prematurely, he took Nancy with him to help. She was very good with women in labor and newborns. She had that way about her.”

“Did she? That’s a gift.”

“To be sure it is. Well, Mr. and Mrs. Garrison had only been married the seven months when Miss Marjorie was born, and she had that breathing trouble that so often carries off those little ones born before their time. But my sister and Dr. Hale kept her alive, and though she was sickly for months, she survived and began to thrive. It was a miracle, and Mr. Garrison paid my sister handsomely for her services, so grateful he sang her praises to everyone who would listen.”

I couldn’t quite see where this was going, but I looked encouraging and hoped she would continue. But she set aside the dough and put the kettle on, as if the subject were finished.

“I could do with some tea,” she said, getting out cups and the milk pitcher, and a bowl of precious honey to sweeten it. Then she went to a cupboard and brought out a plate of biscuits.

That done, she and I sat down at the table, and she picked up the thread of her story. “All was well, then. The next child, a little boy, was born in winter with a weak chest as well, and he didn’t live very long. After that came Victoria, and she was a lusty, healthy little one, kicking and crying with such strength, you wouldn’t believe it possible. There was only four years difference in their ages, and Miss Marjorie adored her sister. But when Victoria was about twelve, their mother died.”

The kettle was on the boil, and Mrs. Eubanks stopped to make the tea. When she had poured our cups, she sat down again.

“Miss Marjorie and her mother were always close, I expect because she nearly died. And Miss Victoria was closer to her father, they were always out and about together. She followed him everywhere, as soon as she could walk. Slowly, with malice, that girl set out to turn her father against her sister. Little things at first, the spilled milk, the broken vase, any small mishap, and it was blamed on Miss Marjorie. Even when the old dog died. Victoria swore Miss Marjorie had poisoned it. When she was old enough to understand such things, she told her father she didn’t believe that Miss Marjorie was his true daughter, that her mother must have been pregnant when she married. And she would point out little things—the fact that Miss Marjorie looked more like her mother, and not at all like her father—I don’t know what all. The housekeeper was a friend of mine, and she’d tell me tales that made me want to cry. But in the end, Victoria Garrison got her way, and Mr. Garrison came to hate his own daughter, hated the sight of her, and nothing her mother could say changed his mind. Miss Victoria had her father’s love, but now she wanted all of her mother’s, and when she saw she wasn’t going to get it, she made the poor woman’s life a misery. And her father stood by, letting her do it. It was as if he didn’t have the courage to come right out and attack his wife himself. But he enjoyed seeing her unhappy.”

In spite of the tea, I felt cold. “How vicious!” I said. “Are you sure—”

“Oh, I’m sure. Once I found Miss Marjorie sitting in a corner of the rectory porch, crying her eyes out and wet to the skin. Her sister had flung a pan of hot water at Miss Marjorie, then told her father that Miss Marjorie had spilled it on purpose to get Miss Victoria into trouble. I took her home and dried her off in my kitchen and fed her her dinner there too, before sending her up the back stairs of her own house to her bed. The next morning her father wouldn’t let her eat her breakfast until she’d apologized for lying.”

“But did you tell the rector—anyone—what was going on?”

“I thought about it, but I could do more for the child than Rector could, because I was there. And if I’d told, I’d have been sacked. Mr. Garrison had been a wonderful man, stern but fair, but he’d changed, he was cruel and cold. Then after his wife died, he turned bitter. You might say a child couldn’t do such things, but she did.”

“Then what happened?”

“When the will was read, Mrs. Garrison’s, I mean, she’d left money to Miss Marjorie, and as soon as she was of age she walked out the door of that house, went to London, and never set foot in it again. Even when her father died and she came for his service, she stayed here in the rectory.”

“You’ve given me food for thought,” I told Mrs. Eubanks. “And I’ll keep what you’ve told me in strictest confidence.”

“Oh, you can tell whoever you like. I don’t mind. Mr. Garrison is dead himself now. And there’s nothing Miss Victoria can do to me. Rector wouldn’t let me go for a dozen Miss Victorias. He’d not know where to find anything and would starve to death if he had to cook for himself or do the wash.” She was secure in her own worth. But I wondered if she’d have spoken quite so freely in Alicia Dalton’s presence. It was one thing to assert that the rector would keep her on, but the parish priest served at the discretion of his vestry.

“Tell me about your sister.”

“Nancy died young. Her and Dr. Hale were killed one icy morning coming back from a difficult lying in. Mare slipped first, then overturned the carriage, and horse, carriage, and my sister went into the river. Dr. Hale was thrown out and his back was broken. He lived a few hours, long enough to tell everyone what had happened. Otherwise I’d not have been surprised to find Miss Victoria had had something to do with the accident—young as she was.”

The venom in her voice was palpable. I think she had talked to me not because I’d known Marjorie’s husband but because this had been bottled up inside for so long it was like a boil in need of lancing, the pressure was so great and so painful.

“How old was she at that time?” I couldn’t help it, I had to know. The story had left me shocked as it was.

“Fourteen.”

We finished our tea. I saw Mrs. Eubanks eyeing the chicken, ready to garnish and put into the oven, and I knew that now she’d told her story, she was ready to get back to work on the rector’s dinner.

I thanked her and rose to leave. She said, “I don’t lie, Miss Crawford. I never did. What I told you is the truth. Not that it matters now with Miss Marjorie gone, and all. But it’s been on my mind of late, hearing of how she died.”

I left her to her cooking and walked around the rectory toward the road. I had hardly got to the end of the rectory’s drive when I saw policemen just coming out of the Harts’ house, and between two constables walked Michael Hart, his face black as a thunder-cloud. In front of them strode Inspector Herbert, mouth grim, eyes looking neither right nor left.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

I STOOD THERE rooted to the spot, not sure what to say or do for all of several seconds.

And then I was striding across the street and brushing past Victoria Garrison, who was standing in the middle of it, a gloating expression on her face.

She said, as I passed her, in a voice pitched for my ears only, “He’s going to the hangman, and there’s nothing you can do to prevent it.”

I ignored her. She wasn’t the only person watching as Lieutenant Hart was being taken into custody. Alicia was there, looking stricken, and others I recognized from the church fete.

I caught up with Inspector Herbert as he came through the Harts’ gate. He started with surprise when he saw me, then glowered.

“What are you doing in Little Sefton, Miss Crawford?”

“Visiting friends,” I snapped, “and it’s just as well I’m here to tell you you’re making a mistake.”

“Mrs. Calder isn’t completely out of danger and they are keeping her sedated. But the doctors and the nursing sisters have told me that as she rouses a little, she repeats the name Michael over and over again. When she does, she’s restless, and they believe she’s afraid in whatever limbo she’s in. A deeply rooted residual fear from her attack that she can’t face.”

It made sense, of course, but I wasn’t ready to give up so easily.

“Nonsense,” I said briskly. “That’s merely one interpretation. I’ve sat beside men who were hardly more than boys, as they recover from surgery. They call for their mothers—or if they’re married, sometimes for their wives. Am I to believe that these soldiers feel their mothers are responsible for their wounds?”

“It’s not the same,” he began.

“How can you be so certain? I’ve never once heard them cry out the name of a German soldier or the Kaiser.”

“You’re being ridiculous.” But I could see he was weakening.

By this time Michael and his escort had caught up with us. He said sharply, “Elizabeth. Stay out of this.”

“Oh, do hush,” I retorted, barely glancing at him. Turning again to Inspector Herbert, I asked, “What other evidence do you have that Lieutenant Hart is guilty of murder?”

“He was in London the night that Marjorie Evanson died. And again last night.”

I turned to Michael, surprise in my face. “But that’s impossible!”

He had the grace to look ashamed. “I’m sorry—”

“We found the marks. He dragged her. He’s strong enough to do that one-handed. He gripped the collars of her clothing and dragged her into those shrubs. We found the bits of grass and earth on the heels of her shoes.”

I swallowed hard. “And no one saw him? It was a summer’s evening, and no one was looking out a window on Hamilton Place, to see a man loitering or to see him with Mrs. Calder, or in the square?”

“No one. I had men canvassing the street at eight o’clock this morning.”

“How did he get to London? He required permission from his doctors before I could take him there.”

“If you’ll step out of the way, Miss Crawford, we’ll finish our business here and take Lieutenant Hart to London.”

Behind them I could see Michael’s aunt in the door, her face white, her hand to her mouth. Next to her stood her husband, his face pale with shock.

I turned to Michael. “Who took you to London? Whose motorcar did you use?”

“My own,” he said harshly. “Victoria agreed to drive me.”

I stepped back, then. “Where was she when you were supposed to be killing Mrs. Calder?”

“Ask her. I left her at the theater. She wanted to see The Man Who Vanished.”

I whirled on Inspector Herbert. “Have you verified that?”

“I spoke to Miss Garrison earlier. She paid for her ticket, handed it in, and took her seat. That much is certain. She was waiting outside the theater when Lieutenant Hart was to return for her. I have three witnesses to that.”

A voice behind me said, “Let it go, Bess.”

It was Simon. I didn’t know he had already come back for me. I said, “But—”

And he repeated, “Let it go.”

I took a deep breath and moved out of Inspector Herbert’s path. He went directly to the motorcar he had waiting, and Michael passed me without a glance, taking his place in the vehicle as ordered. One of the constables was driving, and he slowly moved through the spectators cluttering the street; I felt like bursting into tears.

Not from frustration but from anger. Helpless, furious anger. At Inspector Herbert, at Victoria Garrison, and at Michael Hart as well.

I let Simon guide me to where he’d left his motorcar and got in without a word.

“I’m sorry, Bess,” he said as he stepped in beside me. “Truly.”

“He’s not guilty. Inspector Herbert will come to his senses and realize that for himself.”

“Very likely.” Looking over my shoulder, I could see Alicia. Her expression was pity vying with doubt.

“You don’t mean that. You’re just trying to make me feel better,” I added, as the village disappeared behind us.

“I’m not, my dear girl. I’m agreeing with you.”

I glanced at him, and saw that he was telling me the truth.

“I thought you didn’t care for the handsome lieutenant,” he said after a time. “You certainly put up a brave defense on his behalf.”

“I respect the fact that a Scotland Yard inspector has a great deal more experience in these matters than I have, but he’s been floundering from the start, Simon. There could be any number of reasons why Mrs. Calder is saying Michael’s name over and over again. Inspector Herbert should have waited until she could speak before taking any action. What’s more, it could be that Victoria is lying.”

But I knew she wasn’t. The police had already looked into that too.

Then where had Michael gone, when he left her at the theater?

Simon glanced at me. “If he’s innocent, Bess, Inspector Herbert will have to let him go. You needn’t worry.”

I closed my eyes, trying to read Michael’s face as the policemen had brought him out. I could see it still, and what I read there was anger, not innocence. He hadn’t protested, I had. And I could feel my cheeks burn with the memory.

Not because I was ashamed of my defense of him. But because I knew that Inspector Herbert would see it very differently. Like everyone else who had been a witness to that scene, to him it would point to my feelings for Michael, rather than any objectivity on my part.

And then I knew what I had to do. There might not be another chance. “Please—Simon—I must go back. It’s important,” I told him urgently.

He slowed, but said, “It’s not wise, Bess.”

It took several minutes to convince him, but in the end he reluctantly turned back toward Little Sefton. I touched his arm in silent gratitude.

The crowd had dispersed, although a few people stood about in knots, whispering. I ignored their stares as we passed.

I left Simon in the motorcar and went up the walk to the Harts’ door. Someone had already begun to draw the drapes, as if trying to shut out the stares of neighbors.

Feeling every eye in Little Sefton pinned to my back, I knocked at the door, and after a time, an elderly maid opened it and told me that the family was not receiving today.

“I understand,” I began.

And then Mr. Hart was in the passage behind her, saying, “It’s all right, Sarah. Let her come in.”

He led me into the drawing room, the walls painted a pleasing yellow with white trim and a soft green in the drapes. They had been pulled, making the room seem dark and rather claustrophobic. As if he sensed my reaction, Mr. Hart went to a table and lit the lamp sitting there.

He appeared to have aged, his face still pale, lines etched more deeply than I remembered.

I said, “Forgive me. I’m so sorry to intrude.”

“You defended him out there.”

“I don’t believe he’s guilty. Could you tell me what the police said, and what happened when they told Michael what they wanted to do?”

“I feel it’s my fault,” he said, taking the chair across from mine. “He’d asked me again if I would take him up to London. But I wasn’t very keen on driving that far, and besides, this is our busiest time at the farm. I asked him why it was so important to go just then. He told me he needed to speak to Helen Calder. I don’t know if you’re aware of it, but she’s related to Marjorie on her mother’s side. He didn’t say why, only that he wanted to see her in person, rather than telephone her. It was an arduous trip for him—the last time, after he’d gone there with you, he was exhausted for two days.”

In my mind’s eye, I could still see Helen Calder lying there on her cot, pale and unresponsive after her surgery.

“I don’t understand; if it was so important, why didn’t he call on her when I drove him to London?”

Mr. Hart shook his head. “Michael has always been impetuous. It might not have mattered then, you know. And with this wound, he seems to be unable to settle to anything. I know he’s in great discomfort at times. I hear him pacing at night. The doctors think he’s developing a tolerance to the sedatives he’s been given, and it requires higher and higher doses to help now.”

I wondered what relief he’d be given in a prison infirmary or cell.

“Did he tell Inspector Herbert about wanting to see Mrs. Calder?”

“I’m afraid—in my ignorance, you see—that I told him. Michael was sleeping when they came, and his aunt went to rouse him. Sometimes that’s difficult. Meanwhile, the police asked if he’d just returned from London, and I told the inspector that he had. I was asked why he’d gone to London, and I told them. I saw no reason not to, and I had no way of knowing why they were here.”

And that had been damning.

“Were you present when they questioned your nephew?”

“Oh, yes, I insisted on being present. We’ve always had him in our care, you see, and I could tell from Michael’s face that something must be wrong.”

“Did he tell them he’d spoken to Mrs. Calder?”

“He told them he’d gone to her house, and apparently they already knew that. But she wasn’t at home. He told the maid at the door that he would wait for a time. But after a while his shoulder was hurting badly, and he left.” Mr. Hart took a deep breath. “Inspector Herbert told me Mrs. Calder is very seriously injured and hasn’t regained consciousness after her surgery.”

“It’s true. We can only hope that when she does, she’ll remember who attacked her and why.”

But even as I said the words, I knew it was very unlikely that Mrs. Calder would remember anything after leaving her friend’s house. Not after such loss of blood and the ensuing surgery. The mind has a way of blotting out what it doesn’t wish to think about.

“I must apologize for asking this,” I said, “but it’s important. Had Michael been violent as a child? Angry, moody, sometimes acting rashly? Or has he acted this way only on his leaves from France?” If there was anything like that in his Army records, it would be used against him.

“No, no,” Mr. Hart said, alarmed. “There’s been nothing of the sort. He came to us while his parents were abroad. And as a boy, he was very much the way you see him now. Nor has the war changed him, although I’ve seen a darker side of him of late. This wound has tried his patience. He was never one to sit idle.”

Whatever Mr. Hart preferred to believe, war did change men. I’d seen it in India and in the wards of the wounded. It was just that some were better at hiding it than others. And the darker side he spoke of might be a sign that Michael could explode into violence in the right conditions.

If only Helen Calder had come to her senses before Inspector Herbert came down to Little Sefton.

I thanked Mr. Hart, and told him I’d let him know as soon as I heard anything about Helen Calder.

“Poor woman. I didn’t know her well,” he said as he walked with me to the door. “She and her mother didn’t come to Little Sefton very often. And she was a little older than Marjorie.” With his hand on the latch, he turned to face me, and I could see the effort he was making to hold himself together. “I can’t quite come to grips with any of this. My wife is making herself ill with worry. If Michael isn’t released soon, I hesitate to think what will become of us.”

I wished I could offer some comfort. I smiled and said, “Early days, Mr. Hart. We’ll face that bridge when we must cross it.”

He nodded, but the heart had gone out of him.

As I stepped out the door, I cast a glance toward the street, but the curious onlookers had gone about their business. There was only Simon, waiting for me in his motorcar. Mr. Hart quietly closed the door behind me, hoping not to disturb his wife.

Simon opened my door and as I settled myself in my seat, he reached out, and without speaking, held my hand until we had left Little Sefton far behind us.

When we arrived in Somerset, my mother was full of plans for a dinner party she was giving the next night, a chance for me to see and greet old friends. Her enthusiasm was jarring, in the mood I was in, and the Colonel Sahib gave me a quizzical look, one that said he sympathized but that I owed my mother the courtesy of entering into the event in the spirit she’d have wanted.

Simon, the coward, had vanished the instant the words dinner party were spoken, and there was no one left to spare me Mother’s good intentions.

And so I was swept off to see what the kitchen could manage that was halfway edible, and there was no time to sit down and think through events. That, clearly, was everyone’s intention.

I barely had time to wonder how Michael, for his sins, was faring, languishing in gaol. I hoped he was absolutely wretched.

My mother did ask, in passing, if I would wish to invite that handsome young lieutenant as well. I realized that she hadn’t heard the latest turn of events. I didn’t have the energy to explain them to her, and so I told her that I didn’t think he would be available.

The Colonel Sahib, having spoken privately to Simon, wondered, as I walked into his study, if he should anticipate a passionate plea for his intervention if matters looked grim for my lieutenant.

“He’s not my lieutenant. If he was anybody’s lieutenant, he was Marjorie Evanson’s. Besides, I’m sure Simon also told you it wasn’t likely that Michael would be in custody for very long.”

“He did seem to think that Lieutenant Hart had acted rather foolishly, going in to London.”

“The worst part of it is,” I said, wandering from the window to take a chair across from his, “the woman he was desperate enough to ask to drive him to London is no friend of Marjorie Evanson’s. I think she was pleased to see Michael taken up.”

“Are you certain about that?”

I told him what Mrs. Eubanks, the cook, had had to say.

“Of course servant gossip can’t always be relied on for truthfulness,” he pointed out. “But when there’s heavy smoke, there’s often fire.”

“I think she told the truth as she sees it,” I agreed. “She didn’t like Victoria, and so she was ready to lay all the blame at her door. But everyone—Alicia, the rector, Michael himself—had also told me that there was no love lost between the sisters. Marjorie left home as soon as she could after her mother died, and her father did nothing to stop her from going. The wonder is, he didn’t think of disinheriting her, once Mrs. Garrison was dead.”

“And that may well be Victoria Garrison’s problem. In spite of all she’d done to make him believe the first daughter wasn’t his, in the end he had doubts.”

I looked at him. “You are clever,” I said. “It would explain so much.”

After a moment, I went on. “Granted, I haven’t known these people for very long. But I was drawn into their lives because I was a witness to what happened. If the police had found Mrs. Evanson’s killer straightaway, that would have been the end of it.”

“Not every murder inquiry leads to someone being taken into custody, much less tried and convicted. God forbid that Mrs. Calder should die, but if she does, and there is no explanation of why she had called the lieutenant’s name in extremis, a shadow will hang over him for the rest of his life. It might be better to have a trial and clear him of any culpability.”

“What if he’s convicted?”

“There’s that risk as well.” My father paused. “Who would you suggest as the murderer the police are looking for?”

I shook my head, feeling tired suddenly. “I don’t know.”

“Then you can understand Inspector Herbert’s dilemma.”

I smiled against my will. “I would very much like it to be Victoria.”

My father laughed. “From what Simon tells me, this Inspector Herbert is no fool.”

“He tells you that because Inspector Herbert advised me to stay out of the Yard’s affairs.”

“Good advice.”

For what was left of the afternoon, I helped my mother plan her dinner, shaking out the best table linens, stored away in lavender, and helping with the polishing of the silver and then I washed glasses and dried them carefully. She and I worked side by side in contented silence or chatted about whatever I needed for my return France.

And all the while my mind was busy with what the Colonel Sahib had asked me: Who had killed Marjorie Evanson?

I was no closer to an answer by the end of the day.

The menu, given all the shortages of food, presented a problem. Sighing, my mother said, “Do you suppose we could ask our guests to bring their own chickens?”

I laughed.

Then, changing the subject as she so easily could when one least expected it, she added, “You may as well tell me what is going on. It will save me from having to cajole your father.”

I was saved—quite literally—by Nell appearing in the doorway.

“Miss Elizabeth,” she said, “there’s a message for you. The boot boy, Sammy, from The Four Doves, just brought it round.”

I took the folded sheet she held out to me, and opened it.

A hasty scrawl read:

I’ve just been told. Is it true? Please, will you come and talk to me? It was signed Serena Melton.

I refolded it and turned to my mother. “We might not need those chickens after all.”

As I left the room she answered, “I hadn’t had my heart set on them, you know.”

I drove to The Four Doves, wondering all the way there if Serena Melton had somehow discovered Scotland Yard’s interest in her brother-in-law, Raymond. I didn’t see how she could have found that out—or my role in identifying him. Her husband, Jack, was important in the cryptology section, but that gave him no influence with the police or even the Home Office. But then news sometimes had a way of leaking out. Someone else could have heard and then called him. I’d already confessed to him that I’d seen the man.

The doors to the inn were standing wide, allowing late sunlight to pour through into the small reception area, gilding the polished wood of the floors. The woman behind the desk greeted me warmly as I came in. Gray-haired and gray-eyed, she could pose for one of the original doves. But she had taken her son’s place running the little inn when he went off to war, and had managed to keep it up despite the lack of nearly everything from paint to food.

“Good afternoon, Mrs. Cox,” I said. “I’ve just received a message from a visitor. Is she still here?”

“Yes, I put her in the small parlor. She was reluctant to come to the house. Heaven knows why.”

I knew why. The last time we’d met, Serena had called me a liar.

I thanked Mrs. Cox and started for the parlor. “Shall I bring you tea? We don’t have any biscuits today, I’m afraid.”

I knew she needed the business, and agreed that that would be nice. But I doubted Serena Melton would stay long enough to drink it.

She was standing when I walked into the little parlor, as if she had been pacing the floor while waiting to see if I would come to her or not.

“Miss Crawford,” she said as soon as she saw me. “Bess.”

“Hello, Serena.” We hesitated, decided not to shake hands, and I sat down.

It took her a moment to rally herself, and then she said, “I hope you’ve forgiven me for the things I said when we parted at the railway station. I was under considerable strain, and it seemed then that everyone was set against me. I felt an obligation to find out who the man was in Marjorie’s life—I owe that to my brother—but it has been a very difficult task I’ve set myself, and I have no experience to guide me.”

It was a long preamble. I was beginning to feel a little ill at ease.

“I can appreciate your determination, Serena. But I think the police are better at getting to the truth.”

“But they haven’t. In all this time. Until now. I’m told you were there. And I need to know if I can believe—if it’s true, is it the same man who seduced her?”

“I—really don’t know, Serena. I’m as much in the dark as you.”

“But you were there,” she pressed. “You must know something. I don’t fault you for not telling me, not after the way I behaved earlier. Still, for Meriwether’s sake, if not mine, perhaps you’ll tell me what you know.”

Thinking she might be more willing to reveal her sources now, when she wanted something from me, than after I’d answered her questions, I said, “First, I’d like to ask you how you knew that I was present.”

The door opened and Mrs. Cox came in with the tea tray. Smiling, she set it down on the table next to me, and then quietly withdrew.

Busying myself with the pot and the cups, I asked Serena how she preferred her tea, all the while wondering how much I could safely tell her about that night in the rain when I’d seen Marjorie Evanson.

I nearly dropped the cup I was about to hand her when she said, “Victoria Garrison telephoned me. She felt I ought to know. I can’t think why—she and I had words over where her sister was to be interred. To be honest, under the circumstances, I didn’t want Marjorie lying next to Meriwether and Victoria didn’t want Marjorie to be returned to Little Sefton. Even when Merry was alive, I didn’t see Victoria very often, and I could tell she and Marjorie never got on. I wasn’t sure whether she was gloating or intended to be kind when she telephoned me.”

Oh dear, I thought, rapidly reassessing what it was she must be wanting me to tell her. I’d come all too close to revealing more than I should, because it was on my mind and not hers.

“Do you mean when Michael was taken into custody?”

“Yes, yes. The police had come to arrest him for the attack on Mrs. Calder, as well as Marjorie’s murder. Is it true? Did he do those things? I’d suspected he and Marjorie were close, even before she married my brother. But if he killed her, was he also her lover? I must know. Michael always struck me as someone who used his charm for his own advantage. I never could tell when he was serious or not. But he’s been in France, or so I’d thought, and it never occurred to me to look in his direction until now.”

“I think the police have probably made a mistake,” I said. “I don’t know Michael all that well, you see. I was there, yes, but I couldn’t quite understand why the police feel he killed Marjorie. He admits he was in London at the time—”

“So I have heard,” she interrupted eagerly. “He was there, he had the opportunity. I’d persuaded Jack to find out who was in England around that time, but I never even thought about Michael.”

“But he was here to have his eye treated—and he’s recovering from other wounds now. It’s hard to believe he could have managed either attack. Physically, I mean.”

“You don’t know what men are capable of when they put their minds to it,” she informed me darkly. “You aren’t married, you don’t know how determined they can be.”

“No, you don’t understand, he ran a terrible risk, medically. If his eye had hemorrhaged, he could have lost his sight. And now he was likely to do serious damage to his shoulder. After all the surgeries and the pain he’s had to endure, I don’t see him taking that chance. It could mean losing his arm. And he realizes that. It would be foolish.”

“It might seem foolish to you,” she told me, “but we can’t know what was in his mind.”

“If he was her lover—and I’m not convinced of that—why should he then wish to kill her?” And I asked myself, why was she weeping copiously on Raymond Melton’s shoulder, if it was Michael who had got her pregnant? Unless Michael, not knowing he would be in London, had asked a friend to act for him.

“She might have told him it was over, that Meriwether was coming home and she wanted to go back to him. Jealousy is a powerful emotion. Sometimes people who are as handsome as Michael can’t accept rejection. They’re used to being adored.”

She had worked it all out in her mind. Just as Inspector Herbert had done.

“Yes, of course that’s possible,” I argued. “But then why should he want to harm Mrs. Calder?”

“Perhaps she just found out he was in London then, and Marjorie had already told her about a man she was seeing. Helen Calder realized what that must mean, and she could have told Michael what she intended to do, giving him the opportunity to do the right thing and turn himself in. I don’t know Helen Calder well, but she is very conventional, isn’t she? Or maybe she herself really didn’t want to get involved with the police.”

Mrs. Calder was rather conventional. It would explain why Michael urgently wanted to go up to London. Could Serena be right? But why had he told his uncle he was intending to see Mrs. Calder? Why not claim he needed to visit a doctor? Why did he take a knife with him?

When I hesitated, Serena said, “He couldn’t be sure, could he? That she wouldn’t go to the police herself? It’s possible he only wanted to persuade her she was wrong.”

“Serena, you’ve made a very strong case. But it’s mostly conjecture. There’s no way of knowing how true it really is.”

Her face hardened. “Victoria told me you’d argued with the police inspector. And you’re standing up for Michael now.” She set her teacup aside. “She told me too that you were in love with Michael Hart. All I wanted to know is, was Victoria right? Can I believe her, that the police actually took him into custody, that he’s not just helping them with their inquiries? Marjorie didn’t trust her sister. Can I?”

I let out my breath in a sign of frustration. “In the first place, I’m not in love with Lieutenant Hart. I’ve told you, I hardly know him. In the second, it’s true he was taken into custody, and that I was present. And yes, I did argue with the inspector. I thought his case a very poor one. Medically I didn’t see how Michael Hart could have attacked those two women. But Inspector Herbert is convinced that it was possible. And finally, Victoria Garrison is a troublemaker. The only reason I can think of for her to telephone you and tell you about Michael is to stir up your grief all over again. She settled her score with you. Don’t you see?”

Standing, she said, “I shouldn’t have come. I just want to see the end of this business, so that my brother can finally rest in peace.”

I felt like telling her that her brother might have found that peace if she herself hadn’t told him the whole truth about his wife. It had been unnecessarily hurtful. The only reason I could think of for her not to shield him was her own jealousy. That she was both shocked and gloating that Marjorie had fallen so far from grace. And now it was Serena who needed to find some peace.

I said, “Serena. I can understand that you want to see Marjorie’s murderer caught—”

“He got around you just as he got around Marjorie, didn’t he? You can’t see beyond that, but I can. I can see him clearly.”

She marched to the door, self-righteous indignation in every stride.

I waited until she had reached it, then asked, “Serena. Someone shot at Lieutenant Hart earlier this week. Whoever it was missed him both times. Was it you?” That stopped her cold.

I added, “There was a weapon missing from your husband’s gun cabinet. A revolver, at a guess.”

“You are grasping at straws, aren’t you? Jack carries a weapon when he’s in London. For self-protection, because of the work he does. I’d hardly call that ‘missing.’”

And she was gone.

I could hear the outer door of The Four Doves shutting with what might be called some force.

Setting the cups back on the tea tray, I went to thank Mrs. Cox and settle the account for our tea.

She said, “Your visitor was crying when she left. Is everything all right?”

Surprised, I answered, “She hoped for good news.”

Mrs. Cox nodded. “We could all use a little of that.”

I just wished Helen Calder would regain consciousness and tell us what she remembered. Good news—or bad—but better than this limbo.

The dinner party went exceedingly well, our cook outdoing herself with the chickens and even with a lovely French tart for the sweet. I couldn’t help but wonder where she had found the sugar for the glaze.

Most of all I enjoyed the guests, many of them friends of my parents, a few of them friends of mine. Diana was in London and arrived in high spirits, flirting with Simon, although Mary had told me it was likely she would be engaged by the autumn. Another of my flatmates, Elayne, was a surprise. I hadn’t seen her in weeks and we had much to catch up on. She too was expecting a proposal, she said, and I was happy for her.

Even Melinda Crawford had traveled all the way from Kent. She and my father were distantly related, and both her husband and her father had served in India in their time. As she leaned on Simon’s arm as we went in to dinner, she said, “When this wicked war is finished, I want to go back to India. I’ve unfinished business there. Will you take me?” Overhearing that, I made a promise to myself that I would go with them.

Throughout that dinner, I enjoyed watching my mother’s face. She loved entertaining, did it well, and was a clever hostess. I smiled at her down the table, and won a smile in return.

My leave was nearly up. I felt a twinge of regret, knowing how much this time meant to my parents.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

I HAD WANTED to see Alicia Dalton before I left for France, to apologize again for hurting her feelings. But there was much to do the morning after the party, and I couldn’t leave all of that to my mother and Nell. And I was waiting for news of Helen Calder. Diana had promised to find out what she could.

Simon had driven Melinda Crawford to the train and my mother had taken the last of the chicken, made up as a fricassee, to two elderly women in the village. My father had been summoned to Sandhurst for a ceremony of some sort, and I was rather at loose ends.

Remembering that Victoria had telephoned Serena, I decided I would return the favor.

As the call was being put through, I realized too late that I should have left well enough alone. This was borne in upon me by the coldness in Victoria Garrison’s voice when I told her who I was.

“I should have thought I would be the last person you wished to speak with,” she said. “After what happened the other day.”

Refusing to be drawn, I asked, “Miss Garrison, did Lieutenant Hart tell you why he wanted to go to London?”

“Why don’t you ask Inspector Herbert? I’ve told him what I know.”

“It was you who took Michael there. And so I’m asking you.”

“Someone had told him I had tickets for that play. I didn’t twist his arm, he came to me. He said he would very much like to see it. I was surprised, but I was glad of the company, driving back after the performance. And then later, when we reached London, he hurt his shoulder getting out of the motorcar, and he was in pain. He couldn’t sit still, and even before the curtain went up, he walked out, saying that he needed air. I offered to go with him, but he told me to stay there, he wouldn’t be gone very long. When he hadn’t returned by intermission, I went to look for him. I missed a part of the play searching. The doorman told me he thought he’d seen the lieutenant leave the theater. I couldn’t think where he might have gone. I went back to my seat, and toward the end of the last act, he was there, looking as white as I’d ever seen him, his hands shaking. I drove him home, and he had very little to say for himself. I was very angry with him; I thought him selfish, to ask to come and then to ruin my evening.”

“Did he tell you where he’d been?”

“He said he’d walked until he was too exhausted to walk any longer. He found a cab and was driven back to the theater.”

“Did you believe him?”

“I didn’t know whether to believe him or not. I wondered if he’d had no interest in the play after all, and had only used me to bring him to town.”

“Could the people who had the seats nearest you swear that you were alone until the end of the play?”

She was angry then. “Are you suggesting that I wasn’t there either?”

I hadn’t been, I’d just wondered if she’d been lying, but she was furious and said, “You won’t get him off, you know. However much you try. I tell you, I was lucky that he didn’t decide to kill me on the way home. I didn’t know then that he was a murderer.”

“But I don’t understand why you should think he would harm Marjorie. Or had any reason at all to attack Helen Calder. If he couldn’t bear to sit still, he might well have tried to walk instead.”

There was silence for a moment, and then she said, “There was a dark smear on his sleeve. I pointed it out to him, and he said he’d stopped for a glass of wine and spilled some of it, then tried to wash it out with cold water. The sleeve was still damp; it must have been true.”

I couldn’t decide if she was telling the truth about that. Her voice seemed a little different, somehow. Or had I imagined it? “That still doesn’t explain—”

“The next day, a friend telephoned to tell me about Helen Calder. She knew that Helen was a connection on my mother’s side. She lives across the square, she’d watched the police come and go from the garden, and she’d sent her husband to find out what had happened. He told her that Helen Calder had been the victim of a knifing, and he thought she must be dead. But his wife had seen an ambulance come and then leave. I expect she hoped that I might know more about the attack. She said Helen Calder’s assailant hadn’t been found.”

“I still don’t see the connection with Michael Hart,” I pressed.

“My friend—Mrs. Daly—told me she herself had seen a young officer with his arm in a sling come to Helen Calder’s door, earlier in the evening. He spoke to the maid, then left to sit in the garden for a time before walking away.”

My heart sank. Whether that maid knew Michael by name didn’t matter, her description of the caller would be enough. That, coupled with Victoria’s statement about the stained sleeve, would be telling evidence.

“Do you really believe he killed Marjorie?” I asked, as soon as I could collect my thoughts.

“Oh, yes. Once the police asked me if I was aware that he was in London on that same day, I knew it must be so. Someone got her pregnant, did you know that? The police told me she was pregnant when she died. If Michael had found that out, I think he would have killed her out of sheer jealousy. I was convinced from the start that she must have written to him in France and confided in him that she’d had an affair. She always had confided in him, why shouldn’t she turn to him now? I kept after him to tell me if he knew the name of the man she’d been seeing, and he swore he didn’t. I was starting to believe him. Did you know he hadn’t even told his aunt and uncle that he was in London that night? But he must have told Marjorie. He’d found a way to get leave and confront her.”

Her voice changed again, and I wished I could see her face. “He never got over her marriage, did you know that? He always thought she’d marry him. I remember him at the wedding, looking as if he’d like to snatch the bride up and ride off with her across his saddle bow.”

That made a dreadful sense. After the man at the station, Raymond Melton, walked away from her, Marjorie would very likely have turned to Michael.

“But why should he kill Helen Calder?”

“How should I know? Perhaps he’s still trying to find out Marjorie’s lover’s name. For all I know, Michael intended to kill him next.”

But Helen hadn’t known who the man was. At least she told me she didn’t.

“Someone shot at Michael. Perhaps it was the same person who killed Marjorie and tried to kill Mrs. Calder.”

“You are pathetic,” she said. “Don’t you know what that was about? I knew, the minute I heard about it. Michael was trying to kill himself. And he failed. He couldn’t quite bring himself to do it. So he invented someone shooting from the bushes, to spare his aunt and uncle the truth. Someone was bound to have heard the shots.”

I felt ill, unable to think of anything to say. I hadn’t considered suicide.

Victoria interpreted the silence and laughed. “It’s rather shocking, isn’t it, to realize he’s in love with a dead woman. He hasn’t let her go. But you’re like all the rest, that’s why you came to his defense when the police wanted to take him away. Even dead, Marjorie still has him in thrall.”

There was a sudden break in her voice, and I realized that she was talking about her own sense of loss, not mine.

And then before I could answer, she added harshly, her voice hardly recognizable, “They won’t hang him, you know, until that shoulder is fully healed. But hang him they will. Mark my words. And it will be my testimony that will put the noose around his neck.”

There was a click at the other end of the line. Victoria had hung up before she gave herself away.

I stood there for a moment, the receiver still in my hand, then put it up.

Victoria was angry, vindictive. But Michael had sealed his own fate when he lifted the knocker on Helen Calder’s door. If the maid knew him by sight or could identify him, the police had all the evidence they wanted.

For a fleeting moment I wondered if Victoria had tricked Michael, and while he was walking off the pain in his shoulder, she had taken advantage of his absence to kill Mrs. Calder herself. From the start I’d been surprised to hear that Michael and Victoria had gone anywhere together, much less London. Why had he asked? Why had she agreed?

Could Victoria stab two women?

I could have asked Michael—but he was beyond reach.

Feeling closed in, I went out into the gardens, thinking to refresh the vases we’d arranged for the dinner party.

Now that he had Michael in custody, would Inspector Herbert still summon Raymond Melton to England to make a statement? Or would that be left to the KC who was preparing the prosecution? I wanted to hear just what had been said at that meeting in the railway station. If Captain Melton had made promises, he had given them grudgingly, and they had provided no comfort. Marjorie deserved better.

I was ready to go back to France, but I wanted very badly to be here when Helen Calder regained her senses. And time was running out.

My father met me as I came through the garden doors into the passage.

“Hallo.” He took one look at me. “I’ve seen Pathan warriors with happier faces. Care to talk about it?”

I smiled. “I just had a conversation with Victoria Garrison. She could probably hold the Khyber Pass single-handedly with a fork.” As he laughed, I went on, “I’ve been trying to decide if Lieutenant Hart is the sort of man to want to kill himself.”

“Do you mean before his trial?”

“No, earlier. According to Victoria, no one fired at him as he walked in the garden. The only reason I can think of for a suicide attempt is guilt. And why two shots?”

“It’s hard to miss with a revolver if you’re serious about using it.” He led me to his sanctuary, the study full of trophies from his years in the Army, and offered me the chair across from his. “Especially twice. Unless one intends to miss. In which case, it’s a cry for help.”

“If it was a cry for help, he covered it up very well indeed.” I stared into the golden glass eyes of a Bengal man hunter, a tiger that had killed fourteen villagers before my father brought it down. “More important, I’d like to know if he lied to me. And if he did, what else had he lied about? Conversely, if it was Victoria’s lie, it could have other implications. There’s a big difference between being shot at and shooting one’s self.” I turned to look at my father. “I also have to wonder why Victoria agreed to drive him into London—and I’d give much to know what they talked about on the way. I do know he didn’t tell her who he expected to see while there.”

“It would be wiser, don’t you think, to leave the entire matter in the capable hands of Inspector Herbert?”

“I have done. It doesn’t stop me from wondering, or from weighing up what I know or suspect.”

“And you’d be content to see Victoria Garrison as a murderess.”

“It’s entirely possible that she could have killed her sister, and tried to make it appear that it was a random act of violence on the part of someone nameless and faceless in London.”

“That’s a damning comment.”

“Yes, but Victoria is so filled with something—hate, envy, jealousy—a wanting—that she might have seen her chance and taken it before she’d even considered what she was doing.”

“Women don’t usually carry a large knife in their purses.”

Which was an excellent point. I smiled. “You’ve just shot down my best argument for Victoria as a murderess.”

“I’m not saying it couldn’t be done, only that she would have had to plan carefully.” He considered me. “I’ll be just as happy to see you back in France, if you want to know the truth. Out of reach. You ask too many questions—if the police are wrong about Michael, then you will need to be cautious.”

“Being shot at by Germans is preferable to being stabbed by Englishmen?”

“Absolutely. Just don’t tell your mother I said that.” He paused. “If you must go back to London before you leave, do take Simon with you.”

I promised, and felt the eyes of the Bengal tiger follow me from the room.

My distant grandmother, who had followed her officer husband to Brussels in June 1815, and helped nurse the wounded brought in from Waterloo, was not certain until well into the next evening whether her husband was among the living or the dead. Reports had come in placing him in the heat of the battle, and various accounts had listed him as dead, severely wounded, or missing. But she had held to her faith in his ability to survive, and her words to him as he finally walked into the house they had taken in Brussels had been, “My dear, I’m so sorry, there seems to be nothing for your dinner.”

My mother, dealing with the ravages of this war’s shortages, still managed to put a decent meal on the table, and I was reminded of Mary’s remark that a country house fared better in trying times.

It was Simon’s night to join us, and we were finishing our soup when he said, “You’ll never guess who I ran into as I was coming out of my meeting today.”

I thought he was talking to my father, then looked up to realize that he was speaking to me.

I named several retired officers we’d known in other campaigns, and he shook his head each time.

“I give up. Tell me.”

“Jack Melton.”

I stared at him. “You didn’t mention his brother, did you?” I wouldn’t have put it past Simon to have engineered the meeting for the sole purpose of finding out what I would like to know about Raymond Melton.

“I did ask how his brother was. It was the decent thing to do,” he said, smug as a cat with a mouthful of canary feathers.

“Well, then?”

“He’s presently near Ypres. You might keep that in mind when you go back to France next week.”

“Little good that will do me. I’ve no idea where I’ll be sent next. What else did you learn?” I asked.

“That Melton wasn’t particularly at ease talking about his brother. His answers were short, as if it wasn’t a subject he was comfortable with.” Simon Brandon had dealt with men all his adult life—soldiers, prisoners, angry villagers. Men in trouble, afraid, lying, angry, vindictive. He could read them without effort because it had become second nature. I knew he could read me as well, and oddly enough, it was one of the things that made me trust him.

I set aside my soup spoon. “When I learned that the man was his brother, I found myself wondering if what I’d said to Jack Melton outside the Marlborough Hotel in London might not have put him on to Raymond as the man I’d mentioned. I didn’t describe him of course. But Jack was rather short with me as well. Almost rude, in fact. Still, he must not have said anything to his wife—she’d have brought it up when she came to Somerset to see me.”

“Very likely not,” my father put in. “On the other hand, by the very nature of his work in cryptology, Melton isn’t likely to be talkative. He can’t afford to be, given what he reads every day in dispatches and intercepts. After a while, secretiveness must become a way of life.”

“It’s more likely that he prefers to steer Serena away from suspecting his brother was the man with Marjorie. She’s angry enough to cause trouble. And that wouldn’t go down well with his superiors either.” I’d had a taste of how angry she could be, and how hurtful. “But it’s rather two-faced of him, isn’t it? Protecting the man who seduced his brother-in-law’s wife.”

“I expect,” my mother said, surprising us all, “Mr. Melton feels that since Marjorie Evanson is dead, and her child with her, there’s no point in ruining his brother’s marriage, career, or life. It’s finished. And so he can simply put it behind him.”

It was a very perceptive remark.

“And now,” she went on, “perhaps we can dispense with murder as a subject for dinner conversation.”

Not five minutes later, I was summoned to the telephone. I almost failed to recognize the voice at the other end.

“This is Matron speaking—”

I thought she meant Matron at Laurel House, and was about to greet her warmly when the voice continued, “—at St. Martin’s Hospital in London.”

“Yes, Matron. This is Sister Crawford.”

“I thought perhaps you’d want to know that Mrs. Calder is out of danger and has been removed from the surgical ward to the women’s ward. We have kept her heavily sedated, to keep her quiet. But that’s been reduced, and I expect her to regain consciousness in a few hours.”

“I should like very much to be there,” I said. “Will I be permitted to see her?”

“I see no reason why not. Unless Scotland Yard objects.”

“I’ll be there,” I promised. “And if she awakens before I arrive, will you tell her that I’m on my way?”

“I’ll be happy to,” she said, and rang off.

I hurried back to the dining room. “I must go to London tonight—as soon as may be.”

Simon was already pushing his chair back. “I’ll drive.”

My mother said to me, “I suggest you finish your meal first, my dear. Ten minutes shouldn’t matter, not with Simon at the wheel.”

And so we finished our dinner in almost indecent haste, and then I was rushing upstairs to change and fetch my coat.

I was tense on the drive to London. The hours crept by, and Simon said little, his concentration on the road intense.

It was late when we walked through the doors of the hospital and asked for Matron.

She greeted me, and with a warning not to tire her patient, she turned me over to a young nursing sister. Simon was asked to remain outside. He touched my arm and said quietly, “I’ll wait in the motorcar.”

I nodded, grateful, and then I was shown to a bed near the middle of the ward. A small lamp burned above the bed, leaving the rest of the room in darkness. I could hear the quiet breathing of other patients, and one moaned softly.

Helen Calder’s eyes were closed, and she appeared to be sleeping as well as I took the chair by her bedside. She must have heard the slight rustle of my skirts, for she stirred a little and bit her lip as if in pain.

I said in a low voice that I hoped would carry only to her ears, “Helen? Do you remember me? It’s Bess Crawford.”

She opened her eyes, focusing them with some difficulty at first. And then she said faintly, “Oh yes. Of course. How kind of you to come and see me. My family has just left—”

“Then you’ll be tired. I just wished to be sure that you were recovering. Is there anything I can do to make you more comfortable? Is there anything you need?”

The young woman in the bed behind me coughed a little, and then slept again.

“The sisters have been so good,” she said. “But I hurt—”

“I’ll ask them to look in on you,” I promised. “I was so shocked by the news,” I went on. “Do you have any memory of what happened?”

“I remember dressing and leaving the house, looking forward to dining with friends. And then I woke up here and didn’t know where I was.” She frowned. “I’m told I was attacked—knifed. As I came home alone. Is it true?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“But who would do such a thing?” A tear ran from the corner of her eye down her pale cheek. “I’ve never harmed anyone. Not ever…” Her voice trailed off.

“You’re safe, now.” I touched her hand. “Let the police deal with it.” Her fingers closed tightly over mine.

“Bess—it’s frightening that I can’t remember. They tell me it happens. The shock, they said.” She moved restlessly. “I’m told it will all come back. Only I’m not sure I want it to.”

“If it starts to return, ask a nurse to send for the police,” I said, trying to soothe her. “They’ll want to know. It will help them apprehend whoever did this.”

“Yes, that’s what Inspector Hemmings—no, that’s not right—” She closed her eyes. “I didn’t imagine him—” She was still drifting in and out of consciousness.

“Inspector Herbert,” I said. “From Scotland Yard.”

“Was he here? Did you see him?”

“I’ve spoken to him before, about Marjorie Evanson.”

“That’s right. You were anxious to find out who killed her.”

“Did he—did Inspector Herbert ask you about Lieutenant Michael Hart?”

“I can’t think why he wished to know if I’d seen him last night—no, it wasn’t last night, was it? I’m so confused.”

“It doesn’t matter,” I answered her, though I felt myself go cold.

“He told me I’d been calling Michael’s name when I was found and brought to hospital. But that makes no sense. I’d have asked for my husband, wouldn’t I? Not for Michael.”

“Perhaps you were thinking about him.”

“Not at dinner—afterward—”

I told myself that I must stop now, before I heard more than I wanted to hear. If she brought back some fleeting memory that would damn Michael, it would all be my doing. But truth is something I’d been taught to value. I couldn’t walk away from it, whatever the consequences.

“Afterward?” I asked, before my courage ran out.

But she had drifted into sleep, and I recalled my promise to speak to one of the sisters and tell them she was in pain.

Still, I sat there for another several minutes, in case she awoke again. Then, after a brief conversation with the ward sister, I left, feeling very depressed for Helen Calder’s sake and my own.

I was just walking down the steps of the hospital, taking a deep breath of the cooling evening air after the familiar smells of the wards, and nearly passed Inspector Herbert without noticing him, so distracted that I just registered a man coming toward me.

“Miss Crawford,” he said, stopping me. He frowned. “Not questioning my witness, I hope?”

“I’m a nurse,” I replied shortly, “and the patient is someone I know.”

He nodded. “How is she? She wasn’t making much sense earlier.”

“The ward sister tells me she’s doing as well as can be expected. The fear, as always, is infection. From the knife, from bits of cloth driven into her wounds, from the surgery itself. She’s healthy and that’s in her favor. They’re still sedating her for her pain.” It was a cowardly comment, but I told myself that it was also true.

“I was just on my way home and decided to stop and ask if she was awake again.”

“She’s asleep at the moment. Or she was when I left the ward.”

“Did you speak to her?”

“Briefly. She told me you had called earlier, and that she couldn’t remember what had happened. She added that she was afraid to remember. I tried to assure her that she was safe now and it would be all right. Which of course isn’t really the truth—if she does remember, she’ll relive that night for years. If not while she’s awake, then in her dreams. Is there any possibility that you could send for her husband? It would be a comfort to her.”

“I hadn’t thought of that. I’ll see what I can do.”

“Will you let me see Lieutenant Hart?” I asked. “I’m going back to France in a few days. I’d like to hear what he has to say about his arrest.”

“I don’t think that’s useful,” Inspector Herbert told me. “He’s allowed no visitors. Only his lawyers.”

“May I write to him and expect an answer?”

“I wouldn’t advise writing him.”

I took a deep breath. “What if all this evidence is just circumstantial? Will you hang the lieutenant and let the real murderer go free?”

“Hardly circumstantial, I should think,” he answered, a little annoyed with me. “You’ve been a great help with this inquiry, Miss Crawford. But as I’ve said to you before, you must now leave the rest to us.”

He started to walk through the hospital doors, but I stopped him.

“Have you found Captain Melton?”

“There’s no hurry there. He’s at the Front, and we’ve time before the trial to interview him. I think even you will agree that he’s not our murderer.”

“He can speak to Marjorie Evanson’s state of mind—” I wanted to add that men died at the Front. Waiting was a calculated risk.

“And you have already done that. Quite admirably.” He touched his hat, and went through the main doors, holding them open for a pair of sisters just coming off duty.

There was nothing I could do.

Simon was waiting for me, but I said, “I need a little time…”

He nodded, and I began to walk to clear my head, but I’d not gone twenty paces when I heard Inspector Herbert call to me.

I stopped and he caught me up.

“I wanted to ask—it’s not my business to ask, but are you in love with Lieutenant Hart?”

I must have looked as exasperated as I felt. “If anyone else asks me that question, I will gladly box his ears. Or barring that, kick him in the shins.”

He smiled. “I’m sorry. As a policeman I must know how to judge your evidence. It has been impartial to a certain point. It’s necessary to understand if that has in any way changed.”

“If I’m asked to testify in court, you may be sure I shall tell the truth, as I will have sworn to do,” I answered stiffly.

“It won’t come to that. Your statement will be sufficient. Good night, Miss Crawford. I wish you a safe journey back to France. And hope that you will return to England safely when your tour of duty is finished.”

He touched his hat again and went back the way he’d come. I stood there looking after him as he passed through the hospital doors without looking back, thinking to myself that he was a fair man, but like many fair men, once he’d made up his mind, he wasn’t likely to find any reason to change it.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

I MUST HAVE walked another hundred yards or more. And then someone spoke just behind me, and I nearly jumped out of my skin.

It was Simon Brandon. He’d been following me at a distance.

“It’s late, Bess, and that direction isn’t wise.”

I realized that I’d left the hospital well behind me, and ahead was a short, cluttered street with rather rundown shops and a pub or two, their doors shuttered. The street itself was dark, empty, dustbins casting long shadows. At the far end, two men stood in the shelter of a doorway, the lighted tips of their cigarettes glowing red. They seemed to be intent on their conversation—I could just hear the murmur of voices—but I turned and together Simon and I started back toward the motorcar.

“How is she?” he asked. “I saw Inspector Herbert come out again to speak to you.”

The clanging of an ambulance speeding toward the hospital drowned out my voice. After it passed, I told Simon what Helen Calder had said.

“It’s very likely she’ll never remember, Bess. And that leaves Lieutenant Hart in a limbo of sorts. She could have cleared his name—or she could have condemned him. It might work in his favor that she doesn’t recall the attack. On the other hand, there may be assumptions that aren’t true entered into evidence.”

We had reached his motorcar, and he held my door before continuing. “There are witnesses who heard her call out to Michael Hart. And the police will act on that evidence instead.” He turned the crank and then got in next to me. “Why did she call his name, do you think? She was in great pain, bleeding heavily. Why not call for her husband. Or a sister. Someone connected with her family.”

“I don’t know,” I told him truthfully. “And when I asked her, she told me Michael wasn’t at the dinner party. Then she added, ‘Afterward.’ Did she mean that she’d seen him after the dinner party? Or was she going to tell me something else?”

“There’s no way to know. You must prepare yourself, Bess. This case is going to trial, and there’s nothing to be done about it.”

I turned to him. “Simon, attend the trial for me, if I’m in France. I want to know everything, what witnesses are called on either side, what they testify. What the rebuttal is. And the verdict—you must be there to tell me what the verdict is. I don’t think they’ll give me leave. Inspector Herbert told me that my statement was sufficient. Please? I need to know all of it.”

“Shall I sketch their faces as well?”

“That’s not amusing, Simon.”

He nodded, threading his way through light traffic. “Sorry. I was trying to lighten your mood.”

I hadn’t realized that I had been so intense. “Please?”

He turned to me, his face in shadows cast by the canvas roof. “I promise, Bess. If it will give you any comfort. But there’s nothing more you can do. Don’t let it haunt you. Your patients will suffer if you do.”

“He wouldn’t let me see Michael. Or write to him. Inspector Herbert, I mean. He doesn’t want me to contact him in any way. Will you try to see him? I want to know how he’s planning to fight these charges.”

“I’ll do my best.”

I settled back into my seat as we left the busy city streets behind us and found the road leading to Somerset. “Thank you, Simon. And, Simon—don’t tell Mother or the Colonel Sahib that you’re doing this for me. It will only worry them.”

I saw Simon’s mouth tighten into a straight line. “And I’m not to worry?”

I didn’t know how to answer. And so I said nothing.

My mother closed my valise, sighed, and said, “When your father went off on a dangerous mission, I was so grateful to have a daughter. She would never walk in harm’s way, I told myself. I won’t lose a night’s sleep over her out in hostile territory. My only worry will be whether or not she chooses wisely when it comes to marriage. And look at what this war has brought me.”

It was the closest she’d ever come to admitting to worrying. And I thought perhaps it had been the sinking of Britannic last year while I was aboard that had brought her fears out into the open. With a broken arm, I couldn’t have fended for myself in the water, if we hadn’t had time to launch the boats, and I could well have drowned.

I smiled, glad I hadn’t told her about the German aircraft strafing us at La Fleurette. “I shan’t be in any danger. It’s my patients you must say a prayer for, every day.”

My father came just then, to carry the valise down to the motorcar. After he’d gone, my mother said, “He would prefer that I didn’t tell you, Bess, but I think you ought to know this. Your father has been in touch with Lieutenant Hart’s aunt and uncle, suggesting a good barrister if they haven’t already found one to their liking. They were in such a state of shock and were grateful for his advice.”

I felt a mixture of shame that I hadn’t thought of calling on them again and a surge of hope that my father believed Michael was innocent.

I said, “Then the Colonel Sahib agrees with me.”

But she dashed my hopes almost at once. “I think it’s more a case of the Army looking after its own, whatever one’s regiment. The lieutenant’s own commanding officer hadn’t called on them yet. He’s still in France.”

“Thank you for telling me.”

“I’d like to know why you’re so sure he’s innocent?”

“I drove him to Somerset and then to London, and back to Little Sefton. I’d have known if he were a murderer. And I didn’t feel it.”

“Hardly evidence that would sway a jury,” she said.

I embraced my mother, and she returned it fiercely. “Be safe,” she whispered into my ear, then let me go.

As I walked out the door to where my father and Simon were waiting with the motorcar, I found myself remembering a lesson in ancient Greek history: how the women of Sparta sent their loved ones into battle with the brave words, Come back with your shield—or on it.

How many women over the millennia had fought back tears to smile and wish their men safe?

The door shut behind me, and I didn’t look back. My father held my door for me while Simon turned the crank. And then we were on our way.

My father walked me to the gangway of my ship, took me in his arms for a brief moment, then stepped back, smiling.

As Simon bent to kiss my cheek, I murmured, “Don’t forget!”

And then I was at the rail, waving, and we were pulling out, our escort already under way.

I wondered afterward what premonitions my family had felt before my departure. I’d had the strongest impression of an undercurrent of concern. It hadn’t been like Simon to kiss me, nor my father to put his arms around me. Whatever foreboding there was, I began this next posting far from the front lines and well out of range of danger. I’d been there several weeks when I heard from Simon.

He had gone over Inspector Herbert’s head and found a way to speak to Michael. It must not have been a very successful visit, for Simon reported that the shoulder was healing well although it appeared that Lieutenant Hart wasn’t recovering the use of that arm. VAD therapy wasn’t available in prison, and so there was no hope for a successful convalescence. With gallows humor, Michael Hart had told Simon that it wouldn’t matter, he wouldn’t live long enough to worry about it. But Simon rather thought he was worried.

My father reported that Michael’s family had retained the barrister recommended to them, and they felt he might well save their nephew.

It occurred to me that my father had written those lines to encourage me, as much as to report on the legal issues.

We were sent shortly after that to a new hospital, one with severely wounded patients from all over the Front. This was well behind the lines too, and I was beginning to think my father had had a word with someone about his only daughter.