An Unmarked Grave

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

WE HADN’T GONE two miles when a shout went up, followed by the appearance seemingly out of nowhere of a patrol. I heard Hugh Morton groan, and Trelawney spoke swiftly, hardly moving his lips, “What do we do? Sister?”

“Stop the motorcar. Have your papers ready. Private Morris, I hope your disks save you now. There’s nothing more I can do.”

We waited, listening to the shelling, to the sound of a motorcycle runner heading forward to the Front, to barked commands by officers steadying their men in the line.

The company quick marched toward us, and by the time they reached the motorcar, I had taken out my papers from the Queen Alexandra’s Imperial Military Nursing Service and had them ready. Trelawney had produced his own, and Hugh Morton, his face pale but set, held his false identity disks in one hand.

The Sergeant in charge of the patrol went over our papers carefully, then looked at the disks that Hugh Morton presented.

Turning to me, he asked, “He’s wounded?”

“Yes. As you can see. I was taking him back to be looked at. An ambulance couldn’t be spared for one patient.”

He insisted on seeing the bandaged wound, then frowned, as if something about Hugh Morton registered in his memory. I prayed his hadn’t been the patrol that had fired on the Welshman when he was foraging. Deserters and looters got short shrift from the Army.

After what seemed like an interminable wait, the Sergeant nodded and told us where to find our next destination.

Trelawney thanked him and moved off under the Sergeant’s eye. And he continued to watch us out of sight, as if worried about our presence here in the midst of troop movements. Our own guns were replying to the German artillery, the noise deafening.

We reached the aid station and I presented my credentials to the young, harassed sister in charge.

Supplies were being stowed, and the few patients with trench foot, gassed lungs, and minor wounds were being sent back by ambulance to clear the station for the major wounds to come.

I could see Hugh Morton-Private Morris-being sent to join the queue, and I asked Trelawney to keep an eye on him until I’d thought of a way to prevent it.

But I needn’t have worried. Sister Wharton was anxious about the pending attack and how prepared she was to deal with it. In the end I decided to leave her to handle the influx of wounded on her own, with her staff to help her, rather than become the Senior Nursing Sister in her place. I’d learned my own strengths in her shoes, and I knew from the brief conversation I had with her that she would cope very well and be the stronger for it, knowing she had.

We were all so young, I thought as we drove away, the men who came to us and the sisters who treated them. I had seen and done things that my grandmother would have wondered at, but I had also discovered that courage was the ability to face what had to be faced, when it was impossible to run away.

At a rear hospital, I asked one of the doctors to have a look at Private Morris’s wound.

He examined it, nodded, and said, “Well done, Sister. I’ve given him something for the pain. Let him rest for an hour or two, and we’ll send him on to Rouen.”

I thanked him, dealt with my patient, asked Trelawney to sit with him-receiving a thunderous frown for my trouble-then started toward the wards. At that moment a courier came through, on his way to HQ. Stopping by the sister in charge of sorting patients, he showed her his wrist. She examined it briefly and pointed to a bench where others were waiting for attention. He argued with her, but she shook her head and moved on to the next man in her line.

The courier looked around, spotted me, and walked toward me. Where his goggles had been were two pale circles around hazel eyes. The rest of his face appeared to have black measles, it was so splotched from hunching over his machine as he sped cross-country.

“Sister? I spun out in the mud and I think I’ve sprained my wrist. Will you have a look at it? I’m overdue as it is-I can’t wait with that lot.”

I glanced across at Sister Henry. She was busy with the line. “Come this way,” I said, and took him a little apart, where I examined his wrist-it was painful but not broken-and taped it so that he could be gone. “But you must promise to see to it as soon as you can,” I admonished him.

“I promise, Sister. Thank you.”

He was about to turn away when I seized the opportunity. “Could I add a message to your pouch?”

“Hurry! I can’t wait.”

There was paper and pen in my valise. I wrote my father’s name and rank on the outside of the envelope, and inside simply scribbled a single word: Nothing.

It would reassure and disappoint him at the same time.

The messenger gingerly drew his gauntlets on over the tape, adjusted his goggles, and walked away to where he’d left his machine.

On the spur of the moment, I went after him, calling, “You said HQ. Have you encountered a Colonel Prescott there?”

“No. Should I have?”

I shook my head. “I was just curious. I appear to have missed him at every turn.”

He nodded, started his machine with a roar, then cut back on the throttle. “Prescott, you say?”

“Yes, that’s right. A big man with startlingly pale eyes.”

“That sounds more like Major Carson.”

I tried to keep the excitement out of my voice. “Then perhaps my information was wrong. Where did you see him?”

He resettled his goggles. “Rouen. He’s returning to England. He stopped me to ask if I’d been given his orders.”

There was no time to rewrite the message for my father.

“Do you usually carry such orders?”

“These were especially cut. From Colonel Crawford, he said.”

I felt cold.

“Did you-were you asked if there were orders in your satchel for other officers?”

“Yes, as a matter of fact he did ask if there were any others. He was worried that his had been mislaid. But there weren’t. Not that time.” He gunned the motor, eager to be off now.

“I can’t explain,” I began, “but don’t look for Major Carson the next time you’re in Rouen. He’s-” I couldn’t think of a good reason to disparage the Major, except of course for the fact that he was dead and someone had assumed his identity. “He’s not in good odor at HQ. That could be the reason why his orders are not yet cut. Colonel Crawford could well wish him to cool his heels for a time.”

“How do you know this?” he asked, suddenly suspicious.

“I’m Colonel Crawford’s daughter. If you look in your pouch, you’ll see his direction on the letter I gave you.” I offered him my best smile. “Just-be careful, will you?”

He regarded me for a long moment, nodded, and then was gone in a roar.

I went to find Trelawney as quickly as I could.

“The man I’m looking for. He’s in Rouen. We must leave as soon as we can.”

But there were already wounded coming in, strafing injuries from a low-flying aircraft as well as shrapnel from exploding shells. The guns were busy, and it was baptism by fire for the raw recruits facing death for the first time. I held one boy of seventeen while the doctor dug shrapnel out of his legs, and I pretended not to see when he wept with the pain.

I worked late into the night, and I rose early in the morning, before sunrise, as the long lines of ambulances and an overburdened lorry brought us more and more wounded. A hardened veteran, watching the long lines being sorted by one of the sisters, said, “There’ll be no one left in England over the age of sixteen.”

I worked long into the night again, and when I came off duty, Trelawney said, “Morton is gone. He slipped into one of the ambulances heading for Rouen.”

“Hardly unexpected.” I sighed, remembering my own predicament over proper passes. “If they don’t pick him up at the port, he’ll be very lucky.”

“Aye, that’s so.”

On the third day as the flood of wounded slowed to a trickle, I found time to tell the sister in charge that I would be leaving for Rouen, to complete my report. She thanked me for my assistance, and then said, “I’ve met one of your flatmates. Mary. She was with us for a few weeks, earlier on, then was sent home after falling ill with the influenza. They tell me it will return with a vengeance in the autumn. I pray every night that it can’t be true.”

I’d heard the same, but I said bracingly, “We’ve seen the worst of it, I’m sure. I can’t think of anyone who hasn’t had it.”

But even as I said the words, I remembered Mrs. Hennessey, Simon, and my parents.

We set out for Rouen an hour after lunch, working our way back through the quagmires that were roads, and then encountering a rainstorm that turned the mud into a morass. We took shelter for a time beneath a lone chimney standing by the road, at least breaking a little of the wind if not the rain.

Rouen was busy as we drove in late that night, and I had the credentials now to ask for a bed at the Base Hospital, one for me and one for my driver.

I sent Trelawney to search the port for the man calling himself Major Carson, and he was away for three hours before returning to report.

“If he’s here, I can’t find him. But that messenger, the one who told you about him-he was killed and his motorcycle taken. Just last night. The French police are conducting a house-by-house search for it. But I’ll lay you odds it’s already in Paris or points south.”

I didn’t think so. The killer’s destination wasn’t Paris; it was London. The motorcycle was most likely in the river, where it wouldn’t be found straightaway, allowing the hunt to go on. I felt a surge of anger mixed with sadness. I’d warned the courier. Either he hadn’t taken it seriously, or he’d come upon this man sooner than he’d expected.

Someone’s orders had been in his pouch. I could guess at that. Orders worth killing for.

But in whose name?

It wasn’t until much later that I realized that my letter might still be in the courier’s pouch, depending on his route. With my father’s direction scrawled hastily across the envelope.

If nothing else, it would surely tell the killer that I was once more in France.

I went down to the port, looking for any ship whose officers I recognized. There was no way of knowing if Major Carson, or whoever he claimed to be now, had already left for England sometime last night. Or if he had had to wait, as I did, for the next available transport.

Finally, in late afternoon, I spotted Captain Grayson. He saw me as well, throwing up a hand in silent greeting as he finished his business with the port master, and then coming forward to meet me.

“Hallo, Sister Crawford. I didn’t know you were back in France. On leave, are you?”

“Yes, I am,” I replied, smiling. “Any chance of space aboard the Merlin?”

“I should think that’s possible.”

“I have my driver with me. And a motorcar. Do you think there could be room for that as well?”

“I’ll tow it behind us if I must. Do you have time for a cup of tea? I’m dry as the desert. It was a stormy crossing, couldn’t search properly for periscopes or torpedo tracks because of the high seas. I never left the bridge.”

I went with him to a small café near the cathedral, and he drank his tea with gusto. We talked about France and the war, and then he told me that his brother had been killed in the North Atlantic. I remembered Joseph Grayson as a man with a kind smile and a quick wit, and said as much.

“Thank you,” the Captain replied, his voice husky. “I’m not accustomed to the fact that he’s gone. We were close.”

To change the subject, I asked if there were other passengers on board this crossing.

He shrugged. “God knows. They give me the count after we’ve been searched. There are quite a few wounded coming back with us. At least that’s the rumor. Not surprising. I could hear the guns as we came upriver.”

He paid for our tea and escorted me back to the Base Hospital before rejoining his ship. It would sail just after dark, and I promised to be on board before that time.

I had just walked through the gates of the hospital when someone called my name, and I turned quickly, unable to identify the voice.

It was Hugh Morton, drenched by the earlier rain, despair in his eyes.

“I don’t have the proper papers,” he told me. “Beside which, they’re determined to keep me here as well, not send me home. Wound’s not serious enough, they claim. I don’t know what to do. Rouen is bigger than I knew. I’d come over through Calais, not here. And I can’t speak the language.”

“What about your head injury performance?”

He smiled wryly. “I tried. They couldn’t find any wound on my head. That’s when they concluded I was feverish and would be admitted here.”

I said, “I’m leaving Rouen tonight. There’s nothing I can do.”

“You got me this far,” he reminded me.

“No. You left with the ambulances. As a hip wound.”

“I thought it best. How was I to know?”

I looked him over. “When did you eat last?”

“Two days ago.”

“Come along then.”

I walked back out the gates and took him to a restaurant where the food was not the best but was of enough provenance to trust it.

He ate cabbages and potatoes and what appeared to be minced chicken cooked in a sauce. There was a pudding, and he ate that as well. I refused to let him have wine, and he drank tea almost as thirstily as the Captain had done.

When he was finished, I took pity on him. He was a man who only wanted to go back to his father’s farm.

I said, “Look, even if I could get you to England, what then? As soon as you reach Wales-that’s to say, if you manage it without getting caught-the entire village will see that you’ve returned home. The next thing you know the Army will be there to take you up. They don’t turn the other way, Hugh Morton. They’ll search for you and in the end come for you. I don’t think you’ve considered that.”

“I have thought about it. I look enough like Llewellyn to pass as him. I could pretend to be one of the others, but Will and Llewellyn and I were alike as peas in a pod. Someone was always blaming the wrong one of us. And if anyone comes, I’ll just do my little mad bit, and they’ll turn away. They always do.”

“But he’s in hospital. And it isn’t much of a life for you.”

“Who has traveled across England to see him? Nobody. Which of my father’s neighbors will call me a liar?”

It was madness. The madness of desperation.

“Go back to your company, Private Morton. I’ll tell the Base Hospital how I found you wandering and confused. There won’t be charges to face.”

“Sister, I left my company to avenge my brother. It’s all I wanted-revenge for how Will was treated. But Will’s dead, the Major is dead. I’ve no more stomach for fighting. And I can do more good at home, helping my Da in the fields, than I ever could here.”

“I won’t be responsible if you’re caught. Do you understand that?”

“I do, Sister. I won’t even tell my father how I got home. What’s more, he won’t ask.”

“He may think you a coward for leaving France. None of your other brothers ran.”

“I doubt they would have stayed, given the choice. I doubt Will preferred to die in France, never seeing his son. Or Ross, drowning in the cold sea. Or David, when he looked down to find his leg gone.”

“All right. Go sit in the cathedral until dark. Meet me at the port gates. They’re taking wounded on board, and whatever I say to you at that time, you’ll do your part.”

“On my honor, Sister.”

But did a deserter have any honor to swear on?

I took him as far as the church, saw him safely ensconced by the organ loft stairs, and then walked away.

I wondered what my ancestress whose husband fought at Waterloo would have to say about what I was going to do.

I turned around and went back to the cathedral and found Hugh Morton where I’d left him.

“You will make me a promise,” I said.

“Anything, Sister.”

“If you survive this war, you will go to Cornwall and speak to your brother’s wife and see his son. Do you swear?”

“On my honor,” he said again. And this time I nodded.

I had left the cathedral and was making my way back to the Base Hospital when I happened to glance in a café window. Music was spilling out of the doorway, someone playing a plaintive tune on the piano, something about lost love and heartbreak.

And my own heart seemed to leap into my throat as the man sitting at a small table in the shadows of the doorway looked up at the very same moment.

He was wearing a British officer’s uniform, wearing it as if it were his, although it was a little tight across the shoulders, but his eyes were as cold as the winter sea. By comparison, Hugh Morton’s were as blue as a spring sky. And I’d last seen them shadowed by a muffler in the driver’s seat of a motorcar trying to kill me.

I couldn’t help my own response. This encounter had been too sudden, too unexpected, and we both knew, he and I, that I’d recognized him in the same instant he’d recognized me.

He had killed four people that I knew of. How many more I couldn’t say.

But those four were enough.

I walked on, half expecting him to stand up, walk out of the café, and follow me. But at the corner of the next street, when I looked back, there was no one behind me except for two elderly women in black, struggling to carry a tub of washed clothes between them.

Either I was no longer a danger to him or he was too close to whatever objective drove him to take the risk of killing me now. But why sail for England if the Prince of Wales was scheduled to come to France?

At the Base Hospital, I looked for Trelawney, but I was told he’d taken the motorcar down to the quay. The Chief Engineering Officer had sent word that it could be stowed aboard now.

I hurried after him, but he was nowhere to be seen. One of Merlin’s officers was coming through the gate, and I went to speak to him, asking if he’d seen my driver and my motorcar.

“The Chief is haggling with him now,” he told me, grinning. “He wants the tires for his own motor, at home in Chichester.”

I had to laugh. Good luck to him, getting the best of a Cornishman.

Thanking the officer, I moved off a little to wait for Trelawney to disembark, but he and the Chief Engineer must have moved past haggling and were swapping stories now.

Looking at the collection of people hanging about the port, I saw no sign of the Major from the café. It was possible he wasn’t on Merlin, but if he was here in Rouen, he would have to land in Portsmouth sometime. I had only to get there first and wait.

I was tired of standing, waiting, but I dared not leave until I’d found Trelawney. Finally, after I’d nearly given up twice, he came off the ship and saw me as he passed through the gates.

“She’s as snug as can be,” he told me, pleased with himself. “I saw her tied down myself. There was just room for her aft.”

“I’m glad. Trelawney, I found the man we’ve been looking for. He was in a café halfway between the cathedral and the Base Hospital. I doubt he’s there now. He saw me as clearly as I saw him, but he didn’t follow me. And that reminds me, Hugh Morton is in the cathedral. I’m going to try to get him aboard.”

“A deserter?” he demanded, aghast. “Sister-you can’t mean it!”

I said, “I won’t be the one to hand him over to be shot.”

“I have no such qualms,” he told me.

“But you will do as I tell you. It’s more important to find this Major than it is to see Morton in irons.”

“Bloody coward,” he muttered, then realizing that I’d heard, he begged pardon.

“Nevertheless,” I said. “This you will do for me. My reasons are sound.”

He said nothing for a moment, then changed the subject. “What do we do, if he’s on this ship? This man you’re after?”

“The Captain is a friend. I’ll ask that he be held until my father can come to meet the ship.”

“He’ll do that?”

“Yes,” I said with far more assurance than I felt.

Trelawney nodded. “And if he’s not on board?”

“I think he’ll come to Portsmouth within a day or two. He has the orders he needed. It’s only a matter of time. What’s more, we’ll have a chance to prepare. He won’t get away in England. He mustn’t.”

“I was told he might be looking to kill the Prince of Wales.”

“I don’t know,” I said, uncertainty loud in my voice. “There’s something he intends to do. Or else he would stay in France.”

“Makes sense, doesn’t it?” Trelawney agreed. “He doesn’t know me. Why don’t you go aboard alone, and I’ll watch until the last minute?”

“Yes, all right. But be very careful. He’s killed four people that I know of. He won’t be taken by surprise. If he even suspects you’ve recognized him, he has a choice. Kill again or wait for another ship. And waiting would be far more dangerous.”

He said, “I’ll leave you then. What about Morton?”

“If he reaches the ship, I’ll put him with the wounded on board. Ah-here comes the first of the ambulances.”

And indeed it was making its slow approach to the port.

Trelawney disappeared, there one minute and invisible the next. I scanned the dozen or so onlookers, and I saw no one I recognized.

I had to collect my valise, and I hurried back to the Base Hospital for it. I was just leaving with it, thanking the duty nurse for the hospitality shown me, when I saw ahead of me a man in the uniform of a British officer, his back to me, but there was something familiar about his shoulders and the way he walked.

And then I realized where I’d seen him before.

He wasn’t the man with the bandaged shoulder who’d gone into the makeshift canteen just a few yards from the shed where the dead were taken. He had been the orderly carrying a mop and pail. The orderly Sister Burrows must have stopped and asked to bring fresh sheets to the ward. I’d been trained to observe-and so had she. I didn’t think I was mistaken.

I followed at a distance, making certain that I wasn’t where he might glimpse me in a shop window. Soldiers saluted him as they passed, and I tried to judge whether he was actually an officer-or a private soldier masquerading as one. I came to the conclusion he was a sergeant, for his back was ramrod straight, and his officer’s cap didn’t have that jaunty angle I saw so often. Rather, it sat squarely.

As if he felt my scrutiny, he turned and looked back the way he’d come, but a party of sappers had just cut across my path, and I was shielded by them. When they had passed, he was walking on again.

I tried to judge if he was British or German, but it was impossible to be sure. And someone sent to spy or act as an assassin would have been carefully chosen for his ability to fit in. Even his voice would be suitable, his English more than acceptable.

He’d reached the ship. I stopped to gaze at a window of cheeses, my back to him, and let him board. Apparently his papers passed inspection, and when I looked again, he was nowhere in sight.

Someone took my arm, and I nearly leapt out of my skin.

I turned quickly, prepared to scream if need be.

It was Hugh Morton.

“Would you have waited for me?” he asked. “Or left me in the organ loft?”

“I had other worries. But yes, I would have come. Trelawney is aboard with the motorcar, and there’s someone I didn’t want to encounter just ahead of me. He’ll be on the same vessel.”

“The officer you were following?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll keep an eye out for him. He won’t know me.”

“That would be helpful,” I said. “But he’s not a fool. You must be very careful.”

He gave me that one-sided grin, his eyes all but crossed, his mouth drooping. “I told you. People don’t see the afflicted,” he said. “They’re too uncomfortable to look at.” It was a perceptive remark.

Just then more ambulances turned in toward the port, and I took Hugh Morton with me to add to the queue, explaining to the sister in charge, God forgive me, that he had been left off the list.

He was ordered on board with the others, and at the end of the long line, I myself handed over my own papers. I didn’t see the man I’d been following, but I thought perhaps he was taking care not to be in plain sight, just in case someone could identify him-or inform the port authorities that he wasn’t who he claimed to be. The only other possibility was that he wasn’t on Merlin at all, that he was scheduled to depart on the ship just tying up behind her, and he’d come early to keep out of sight.

In due course, Merlin was given leave to sail, the lines were hauled in, dripping wet, and coiled neatly on the fore and aft decks. I stayed by the rail, looking out over the city, watching the flashes of the guns in the distance. My father remembered France from well before the war, and I wondered if it would ever look again as it had then.

The ship eased into the current, then turned to steam slowly down toward the sea. The night was dark, the running lights masked, and as I looked up to the bridge, I could see Captain Grayson’s profile, tense and focused on what lay ahead.

He had given me his cabin for the voyage, as he wouldn’t be using it as long as Merlin went in harm’s way.

Indeed, as soon as we reached the sea, word was passed that we were being shadowed by a submarine, and the watch was doubled. The rating who came to my door was young but steady, assuring me that we were safe. But of course I knew otherwise, having sailed on Britannic. It was a long journey, seemingly longer than the usual, nerves stretched almost to the breaking point as we waited for the shout of “Torpedo!” My life vest was too warm but I kept it on, in case.

We reached the shelter of the Isle of Wight without being attacked, and Portsmouth Harbor lay ahead. I slipped out on deck to watch us come in, standing in the shadows, where I wouldn’t be in the way or noticed.

But someone had seen me.

Out of nowhere, someone put hands on me, thrust a canvas bag over my head before I could scream or struggle, and then I was being dragged toward the railing.

It had happened so fast-a matter of seconds-and then I was being lifted over the railing, my muffled cries covered by the racket of the heavy anchor cable paying out as we came into the roads to await a berth.

I could feel myself dangling now, no foothold or handhold, and unable to see, I couldn’t tell where to reach out and save myself.

And just as suddenly I was being pulled up so roughly that I struck my head on the teak railing, seeing stars in the blackness of the bag. I landed on deck with such force I was winded, and then as I reached shakily for the bag, someone stepped on my skirts. I realized that just above me, two men were locked in a fierce struggle. Only their feet were visible, and I quickly rolled out of the way.

As the heavy bag fell away, I could see their shapes. One in an officer’s uniform, the other in the distinctive blue worn by Base Hospital patients. They were surprisingly well matched in size and reach. But Morton’s hip wound put him at a disadvantage, unable to keep his balance on the moving deck. He was quickly losing the battle, pushed until his own back was hard against the rail, and as I watched, the other man rammed his knee into Morton’s groin and hip.

The crew, busy with docking, had no time for us, but two orderlies had just come on deck from below. If they saw him fighting with an officer, he would be taken up for the offense. I could do nothing then.

He had saved me.

I still had my little pistol in my pocket. Scrambling to my feet, dizzy at first, and then quite determined, I brought it out, aimed, and fired.

The shot seemed so loud in our ears that we froze where we were. Morton turned his head to look at me, stunned, and in his grip I could see his attacker’s eyes incandescent. I wondered how anyone could have described them as cold.

A trickle of blood began to run down the side of the man’s face where my bullet had grazed his skull. With an oath he let go of Morton, turned, and stumbled away, disappearing down the nearest companionway as three ratings converged on Morton and me, alerted by the shot.

They caught his arms, pinning him, and I realized that they thought he’d been attacking me. I shoved the pistol into my pocket, and pointed over the railing.

“There!” I shouted. “Someone just tried to climb aboard. Look!”

They held on to Morton but ran for the railing, staring down into the dark, swirling waters. I joined them, pointing down the side of the ship now. “Over there. Stop him!”

Leaving Morton where he was, they raced along the railing, still searching for the intruder, shouting to the watch to ask if anyone could be seen.

I took Morton’s arm. “Quickly. Get back to the wards. What were you thinking, coming on deck like this?” Trelawney had warned me Morton might try to escape.

“I told you I’d keep an eye out for him. He was searching the ship, and I watched him. I didn’t see you there in the shadows, and then he had you pinned and was tossing you over the side.” He leaned against the companion doorway wearily, hurting. “I don’t want to be sent to hospital. I want to go home.”

It was blackmail.

Hugh Morton had saved my life.

“I’ll see to it. Go find Trelawney and tell him what happened. He’ll be readying the motorcar. Don’t leave him.”

“But the Major’s somewhere still. He’ll find you again and I won’t be there.”

“Not now. There are too many men on deck. Go, before they come back to question you.”

Reluctantly he did as he was told.

I went back to Captain Grayson’s cabin, and a moment later, the Second Officer knocked, asking around the door, “You saw someone trying to come aboard? Is it true?”

“He was wearing an officer’s uniform. He fired at me.”

“Gentle God,” he said, and disappeared again.

A false rumor, but there was nothing else to be done. Otherwise I’d have had to explain why I’d shot a British Major with a pistol I was not supposed to possess. I’d be detained while the Major disappeared.

I poured water from the Captain’s carafe onto my handkerchief and held it to my aching head, where it had come in contact with the railing. I didn’t think I was concussed, but it had been a hard blow all the same and I could feel the swelling under my hair.

I could hear racing feet and shouting for a while longer, and then the same officer returned to tell me that they’d found no one, and whoever it was had presumably either drowned or swum back to the port. The authorities there had been alerted to watch for him.

I was asked if I could identify the intruder, but I shook my head. “It all happened so quickly-by the time I’d realized what he was doing, he’d disappeared over the side again.”

It was tempting to catch the Major in this net of lies. But his uniform was dry, they would never believe he’d come out from shore.

“You’re a brave woman, Sister Crawford. Who was the patient who came to your aid?”

“I didn’t stay to ask, I came directly back to my cabin.”

He nodded. “Very wise.”

As the door shut behind him, I found myself wondering what on earth my father would say, when he learned I’d thwarted a would-be boarder who didn’t exist, rescued an unreported deserter who did, and shot a purported British officer in the head.

Soon afterward the anchor came up again, we tied up to the dock, and Trelawney was at my door, reporting that the motorcar had been offloaded.

“What have you done with Private Morton?”

“He’s in the motorcar. The sister in charge was glad to be rid of him. It seems he’d wandered the ship all night, alarming the other patients and mumbling unintelligible drivel.”

After I’d thanked Captain Grayson and accepted his apology for the fright I’d had, I prepared to leave Merlin.

I’d asked earlier if he would signal Portsmouth as soon as possible to ask if my father could be summoned. He told me now that my father was in London and couldn’t be reached.

I was on my own, then.

Trelawney escorted me off the ship and to the waiting motorcar, and with my papers in hand, we left the harbor behind. Just outside gates, in the street where once my father and I had considered what to do about the charges against me, Trelawney and I conferred.

“I saw him leave Merlin just ahead of us,” Trelawney told me. “I marked where he was heading. Did you give him that bloody crease? Every time he wears his cap, that’s going to hurt.” There was no pity in his tone.

“We’ve got to find him,” I said, knowing how impossible that would be. “We can’t let him disappear into the countryside.”

“There’s the train,” Trelawney said doubtfully. “Crowded and slow. In his shoes I’d look for a motorcar.”

And where better to find one unattended than the ship officers’ billet.

Leaves were short, and a motorcar could make the difference between reaching London or one’s family in time to spend a few hours with them or wasting it in Portsmouth.

Trelawney, at my direction, quickly found the nearest billets.

As we got there, several motorcars were heading out of the nearby mews, and Trelawney counted rapidly, “Naval uniform. Naval uniform. Naval again. Army. That one. And I saw his bloody eyes.”

There was no way to conceal Hugh Morton’s bulk, but I had made myself as small as I could, taking off my cap so that I couldn’t be seen as easily. And so I trusted Trelawney’s assessment, and as our motorcar turned at the end of the mews to follow, I said, “I wish I’d had the chance to telephone someone.”

“Too late now, Sister,” Trelawney answered. “All right, you can sit up again. He can’t see you, he’s too far ahead.”

We kept a discreet distance, which was fairly easy as the sun rose and we wove in and out of convoys heading down to the port. The green hilly landscape of Hampshire rose beyond the town, and the road to London was just ahead.

But our quarry didn’t take it.

Instead he turned west, toward Dorset.

Here it was more difficult to stay within sight of the other vehicle. The roads now followed the curve of the land rather than a Roman rule, and there were villages stretched out along it like tiny jewels on a necklace. The problem was, we couldn’t always be sure our quarry hadn’t stopped at one of them or turned off. It wasn’t until we were on the far side of each that we could pick out the glint of the sun on his boot in the distance or actually glimpse his motorcar rounding a bend far ahead.

My head was thundering and we were all three tired and thirsty and on edge for fear of losing the Major.

And then, as we were coming down a long sloping hill, we saw in the distance that he’d turned into a lane lined with hawthorn trees, leafy now, their white blooms long since faded.

At the far end of the lane we could just pick out the chimneys of a house.

It made no sense. Was this where the Major was intending to go? Or had he spotted us and tried to throw us off?