An Unmarked Grave

CHAPTER THREE

WHEN WE ARRIVED at the Grand Hotel, Simon passed the picnic basket to one of the staff, handed me down from the motorcar, and said as I prepared to go inside, “I’ll see what I can discover about Private Wilson. It may take several days.”

And then with a nod he was gone.

I watched him out of sight, knowing that he had left not for an hour or so but for days. There had been someone with me ever since I had reached England-my mother, my father, Simon. I felt suddenly alone, separated from those I loved. Separated by more than distance.

Turning, I went up to my room and sat down at the little white desk between the windows, intending to write my first letter requesting reinstatement at the Front.

And I found the words wouldn’t come.

Setting the sheets of hotel stationery to one side, I walked out to the balcony and for a while watched the sea, green and blue and, in the distance, almost black. There was a slight haze in the direction of the Seven Sisters, but toward Hastings and France the sky was clear. We were too far away to hear the guns. But I could imagine them. And imagine too the damage they were doing to flesh and bone.

It was difficult to go against my parents’ wishes. We had always been of the same mind about important things. I could understand their feelings. I doubted that they could understand mine. Or was I being selfish and willful, where wiser heads knew better? I told myself that it was the wounded and dying who should be weighed in the balance, not my own wishes.

In the end I put the letter-or what was to be the letter but was now only a blank sheet-in the desk drawer and went down to take my tea in the enclosed veranda. Some hours later I dined alone. I couldn’t have said afterward what I had chosen from the menu or how it had tasted.

There was a woman at the next table. She sat there, staring into space as if her mind were a thousand miles away, picking at her food as if it had no more flavor than mine had had. Fair and rather pretty in an elegant way, she appeared to be older than I was, and I put her age at thirty.

I hadn’t noticed her here before this, whether because she had sat somewhere else or because she’d just arrived.

The headwaiter came over as she pushed her plate aside and asked, “Is everything to your liking, Mrs. Campbell?”

“Yes, it was lovely, I’ve no appetite, I’m afraid.”

“Not bad news, I hope,” he ventured, frowning. “You weren’t yourself last evening either.”

Bad news was more common than good these days. Yet he’d asked as if he knew her from another visit and felt free to inquire.

She laughed, but not convincingly. “No, nothing to worry about. Perhaps the sea air will improve my spirits and my appetite.”

He cajoled her into trying the pudding, although it was clear to me that she wasn’t hungry enough to care. And she ate a little of it stoically, then signaled the waiter again, rose, and left the dining room.

The Grand Hotel had an excellent reputation. It catered to people like my parents, and they had had no qualms about leaving me here to dine alone. I was well looked after, and so it wasn’t surprising to see another woman alone.

I walked through great doors leading out to the veranda and stopped by one of the vases of fern for a few minutes to watch the waves roll in. I could sympathize in a way with Mrs. Campbell. I too needed to make a decision.

I was just on the point of turning to go up to my room when I overheard someone mention her name. There were two women sitting together just by the balustrade. They couldn’t see me for that fern, but I could just glimpse Mrs. Campbell, a shawl over her shoulders, walking down to the drive and moving on to one of the benches set out beneath specimen trees. It was the one where Simon and I’d sat that morning.

“There she is,” one of the women said in a low voice. “I told you I thought it was she.”

“Yes, you’re right. Shocking that she should show her face in such a place as this. Not after all the publicity surrounding the petition for divorce.”

“Unfaithful, he said.”

“Yes. But it couldn’t be proved, could it?”

“Sordid, all of it. I mean to say, he’s at war. You’d think she could put aside her personal feelings and remember that.”

I turned and went indoors. I remembered too vividly Lieutenant Banner at Forward Aid Station No. 3, dying of his wounds and saying in a whisper that held a world of despair because time had run out, “She won’t have to go through the divorce now, will she? She’ll be a widow instead. I’ve made it easy for him, whoever he is. He’ll step into my shoes without a qualm. But if he mistreats her, by God, I’ll come back and haunt him!”

I shivered as I remembered his vehemence, but it had cost him his last breath, and he was gone. I wondered sometimes if Mrs. Banner’s new husband had ever looked over his shoulder and listened for a footstep.

The thought followed me into sleep.

The next morning I took my pride and my courage in my hands and wrote the letter to London.

I put the direction on the envelope, took it to the front desk for stamps, and when they offered to put it in the post bag for me, I thanked them and said no.

For in spite of everything, I felt that I was betraying Simon.

I paced the veranda before lunch and after tea, and happened to see Mrs. Campbell leave the hotel, the manager himself seeing her into her hired car. Had the whispers been too much for her?

Two days later I scolded myself for my reluctance to post that envelope. My parents would be returning to Eastbourne shortly, and I would surely lose my nerve altogether once they were there to persuade me in person. I was on my way down to Reception to see to it personally when I met Simon himself just coming through the hotel door.

It had been raining somewhere along the road, for the shoulders of his coat were wet. His face was grim, and I suddenly had a premonition of bad news.

Nodding to me, he took my arm and said, “Shall we walk along the seafront? It won’t rain for another hour or more. You won’t need a coat.”

“Yes, I- Simon, what’s wrong?”

“Not here.”

And so it was we walked down to the water and stopped halfway to the pier, standing for a moment to watch dark clouds building far out to sea. Lightning was playing in them, bright flickers against a gunmetal sky. The air was oppressively warm, even though the wind was just picking up.

We were out of hearing of anyone. Simon, leaning his shoulders on the parapet of the seawall, seemed lost in thought.

My mind was running through a mental list of our acquaintance. Who was dead? Why couldn’t he find the courage to tell me?

“Please,” I said baldly. “Don’t-I’d rather you didn’t try to find the right words to break the news.”

He straightened and looked down at me, as if he hadn’t realized that I was there. “No, it isn’t bad news, Bess… it’s… I don’t quite know what to make of it.” He turned and led me to a bench. After we’d sat down, he said, busy with his driving gloves, “I inquired of London where Private Wilson could be reached. I thought perhaps you could write to him, even if you couldn’t return to France. My contact was reluctant to tell me anything at first, and I had to use your father’s authority to pry the information out of him. Which was odd in itself. But then I understood why. The Army isn’t eager to give out such information. It seems- I was told that Private Gerald Wilson, who was an orderly in the hospital where you were working when you fell ill-a man close to forty-one years of age, just as you’d described him to me-was found hanged in the shed where bodies were left to await burial. The doctor who declared him dead felt that his work had turned the man’s mind. Fearful of falling victim to influenza himself, he’d decided to die by his own hand.”

I sat there aghast.

After a moment I said, “Are you sure you were given the correct information? There must be a dozen men by that name and of the same rank.” But looking at Simon’s face, I could already read the answer.

“I knew him, Simon,” I said earnestly. “I worked with him every day. He wasn’t the sort to kill himself. He recognized the sadness of his work, but he understood too that a man of his age was more useful as an orderly than at the Front. He handled the dead-wounded and influenza victims. He knew the risks.”

I realized that I had fallen into the past tense, as if I had already accepted the truth. But I refused to believe it.

“It’s in the official record, Bess.”

“Yes, but it’s wrong, I tell you. It must be wrong.”

We sat in silence while I dealt with the turmoil in my mind. Finally I said, “It isn’t true. Yes, it may well be that Private Wilson was found hanging, that part I can’t question because I wasn’t there. And, of course, someone had to cut him down, which means the record is correct-as far as it went. But it wasn’t suicide. He must have been killed because he’d seen that body in the shed. When I fell ill so suddenly, he must have had to speak to someone else. And so he had to die.”

“Bess, you’re assuming what you dreamed was real. The official report on Carson’s death was shrapnel wounds. I looked into that as well. They wouldn’t have got that wrong either.”

“Very well. I won’t go on claiming it was Major Carson I saw. But part of my dream must have been real. I must have seen a body. I must have done. And there were no other wounds. Only a broken neck. Which means whoever he was, he was murdered. Why else would Private Wilson be killed? Simon, I was thought to be dying, and so I was no danger to anyone. But he was. Someone made certain that what he’d seen was never reported. The killer was still there, waiting to be sure the body was buried.”

It occurred to me just then that if I hadn’t fallen ill, I might also have been killed because I’d been in that shed. What’s more, the burial detail would have come and gone, and the fifty-seventh body would be well out of reach if by chance I did survive and remembered some wild and feverish tale.

Instead of relieving my mind, Private Wilson’s suicide seemed to confirm that what I thought I’d dreamed was true.

I thought about that kindly man who saw to the dead with such infinite gentleness. Could he have seen too many bodies, could he have been driven to killing himself to stop having nightmares about the rows and rows of dead that he dealt with day after day?

It was possible. Of course it was. But the two deaths in tandem?

All the more reason to hurry back to France and find out.

As if he’d followed my reasoning, Simon said quietly, “Even if you go back, you can’t be certain you’ll be sent to the same hospital.”

And that was true. Assignments were based on need, not personal preferences. Still, I’d be in France. I could eventually find out what I wanted to know about Private Wilson.

Again Simon followed my logic.

“It isn’t Wilson’s death that matters, is it?” he asked. “That’s to say, he wasn’t the primary target, was he? Carson appears to have been. If this is true, why should anyone kill him? He was a respected officer, and careful of his men.”

“I have no answer to that,” I said slowly.

“Who are his enemies?” Simon pressed. “Who stands to gain the most from his death?”

I sighed. “Since he died in France, it could be that someone at the Front wanted him dead. It’s happened before that scores have been settled there. If it wasn’t in France, then the reason will lie in Somerset, where Major Carson lived.” I remembered Mrs. Campbell and Lieutenant Banner. “Do you know if the Carson marriage was a happy one? He wouldn’t be the first soldier to fall in love with another man’s wife. She wouldn’t be the first woman to fall out of love, after a hasty wartime marriage.”

“I can’t believe that of either Julia or Vincent.”

I couldn’t help but think that neither of the Carsons would have told Simon if there was marital trouble. Or my parents, for that matter.

“I understand, but-”

“Stay out of it, Bess. The last thing you want to do is cause Julia Carson any more grief. And I’ve told you, there’s no proof that there was anything or anyone in that shed. Or that Private Wilson killed himself. Too much time has passed.”

“I would never hurt her. But what about Private Wilson’s family? How do they feel about his death?” I took a deep breath. “If I don’t pursue this, who will?” In my pocket was the letter I’d written. I handed it to him. “What shall I do, Simon?”

“All right. Go to Somerset and learn what you can about Carson. Julia likes you, she’ll talk freely to you. And if you discover anything, come to me. Let me handle it.”

“That’s fair. If it’s possible to clear Private Wilson’s name of the charge of suicide, I’ll find it. In his own way, he’d been a very brave man.” A thought struck me. “What was the date of his death? Do you know?”

With reluctance, Simon told me. It was the night after I fell ill.

“Where did Private Wilson come from? Before the war?” I was ashamed that I didn’t know, had never thought to ask.

“From Cheddar Gorge. Or just outside it, to be more accurate.”

And Cheddar Gorge was also in Somerset. It explained, perhaps, why he had chosen to confide in me rather than go directly to Matron. I’d have sworn he didn’t know, hadn’t recognized the dead man. But how fallible was my memory? I hadn’t been watching Private Wilson’s face. What’s more, he’d seen that of the corpse before I had.

The trouble was, there was so little to go on. Only my belief that Private Wilson wouldn’t have killed himself and the timing of his death.

Simon waited as I digested that.

Another thought crossed my mind, and immediately I was ashamed of it. But I had to know.

I searched his face. Was this a conspiracy to force me to choose Somerset for myself? But Simon had never lied to me. He wouldn’t have lied about Private Wilson’s death or where he lived. Even to convince me that I had every reason to go to Somerset.

I got up and walked a little way on my own. Simon stayed where he was, on the bench by the parapet. His gaze was on the confection that was the pier, for all the world an exotic place, filled with wonders, but in fact it was only a way for those visiting the seaside to amuse themselves.

I wanted desperately to go back to France. But setting that aside, could I spend a week or two at the clinic, as everyone seemed to want me to do? It would permit me to learn something about Major Carson and Private Wilson. Going back to France sooner might put me closer to where events had taken place, but I’d be walking blindly into something I knew little about, uncertain where to put my trust. And if murder had been done, I’d be vulnerable.

It shouldn’t take too long, should it, to learn what I needed to know and then ask to be sent back to France?

Simon had put my letter into his pocket. I didn’t feel I could ask him to return it. On the other hand, if I’d written it once, I could write it again when the time came. And I wouldn’t be putting Simon squarely in the middle.

I paced as far as the pier, then turned and walked back again. Simon was standing by the parapet now, his gaze on the hotel. He didn’t want to read in my face what decision I had made. And I realized in that moment how worried he was, how much my return to France concerned him.

There were very few things that frightened Simon Brandon. It was a measure of how much he cared for me that he couldn’t face me now.

I said when I’d reached him, “It appears that my decision has been taken out of my hands. The clinic in Somerset it is.”

His relief was well concealed, but still I saw it.

“This doesn’t mean that I won’t go back to France, Simon. You do understand that.”

“Yes” was all he said.

As he offered me his arm for the walk back to the hotel, I thought perhaps things had turned out for the best.

It was difficult to be at odds with those I loved.

But the time would surely come when I’d have to face making the decision again.