A Pattern of Lies (10 page)

I wondered again if she had mentioned a name to her husband—­and he'd refused to believe it, making her doubt her own conclusions.

At dinner Mark told me that he'd drive me into Canterbury in the morning, in time for my train. “I have a meeting with Groves tomorrow, and I expect Lucius Worley will be there as well. They'll have spoken to my father.”

I saw the longing on Mrs. Ashton's face. She would have given much to be allowed to see her husband. Not even Mark had been allowed to speak to him. I thought it was cruel of Inspector Brothers, even if Philip Ashton was charged with multiple counts of murder.

Thanking Mark, I added, “I'm so sorry to have come at such a sad time, but I can't regret staying. Please, if there's anything more I can do, you have only to let me know.”

When we went up to bed shortly before ten o'clock, Mark stopped me on the stairs. I looked up at him as he said, “I told you you'd be good for my mother. And you have been, more than you perhaps realize.”

I hoped he was right. Mrs. Ashton had spoken to me as she would have talked to Ellie, and in such a distressing time as this, it had been a way to cope with the weight of worry she carried.

For some reason I couldn't sleep. Part of that was concern for the Ashtons, and part of it was missing my own family. I had never got to London to see or even speak to them.

I sat by the window for an hour or so, looking out into the night. For a time I watched bats dipping and swooping over the drive, for it was still warm enough for them to be out and about. They were fast and graceful, with that little flutter of the wings as they adjusted their flight patterns.

I was still watching when I realized that someone was coming up the drive. A man, walking quietly on the grassy verge, taking his time. I thought at first it was Mark, unable to sleep too, but this man didn't walk like Mark. Mark had a slight limp, and this one was more pronounced.

Whoever he was, he stopped some twenty feet from the front door, as if trying to make up his mind about something. The chair had been removed to the tip; it couldn't have been what he was looking for. Instead I thought he was studying the front door of the house, perhaps even trying to see if a light shone from any of the windows.

I tensed, wondering if this might be the person who had thrown the stone through the sitting room window. If he took another step toward the house or raised an arm, I would find Mark's room and wake him up at once.

But he didn't. He simply stood there in the dark. And then as his gaze swept the house again, he paused, suddenly alert, and I wondered if he could see me by the window, looking down at him. My room was dark, and I was wearing my dark dressing gown. I didn't think it was possible.

And yet it felt as if our eyes had locked, and I realized with a shock that this must be the man I'd seen by the river, working on his boat.

What had brought him to Abbey Hall? In the middle of the night?

Almost in the same moment he made an abrupt, involuntary movement, then lowered his head before turning and walking briskly back the way he'd come.

Had he been set on some mischief here? Or had he simply come out of curiosity, or for some other reason I couldn't understand?

I waited another half an hour, but he didn't come back.

I was wary of mentioning what I'd seen to Mark. And so I was very glad to find Mrs. Ashton downstairs before anyone else. She was sitting at the table, a cup of tea in front of her, but she was staring into space, her mind anywhere but here. With her husband in his cell? I thought it likely.

She stirred as I came in, picking up her cup as if she hadn't been gathering wool.

“Good morning, my dear. I expect you'll have good sailing weather back to France. The barometer in the study is pointing steadily at Fair.”

“Good news,” I agreed lightly, pouring my own cup of tea, adding honey and—­such a luxury—­fresh milk. Taking my place at the table, I added, “Who is the man who works on boats down by the Cran?”

Surprised, she frowned for a moment. “How did you come to meet Alex Craig?”

“He happened to be there when I saw the warehouses.”

She nodded. “And Mark didn't think it necessary to introduce you.” Before I could tell her he hadn't been with me, she took a deep breath. “Alex was in love with Eloise, you know. Quite madly. But she chose Mark, and there was an end to it. He came here when she was so very ill, half out of his mind with grief. And I let him see her. I couldn't turn him away. But I never told Mark that. I didn't think it was—­he wasn't in time, you know. Mark. And it seemed cruel to say anything.”

“I didn't know she was here when she died.”

“It was rather terrible, how it happened. We'd had a lovely weekend. Her parents came over from Chilham with Eloise, and we had dinner here on Friday evening. And then on Saturday we went into Canterbury—­there was a memorial ser­vice for the son of a family we all knew very well. Afterward we decided to walk a bit, down toward houses where the weavers once lived. It was such a beautiful spring day, and the ser­vice had been rather sad. I think we all felt better for that walk. We came back to the Hall to dine, rather than trust to what a restaurant might have on offer, and then we sat on the terrace for a time, to watch the sun set. The next morning, as Eloise and her parents were preparing to leave, she fainted as she came down the stairs. She'd seemed very much herself at breakfast, although she'd mentioned a slight headache. We sent at once for Dr. Mason in Canterbury, and he told us she must have caught a spring chill. Forty-­eight hours later, she was fighting for her life. Her parents stayed with her to the very end.”

“In France I saw the influenza kill just as quickly. There was nothing anyone could do.”

“And yet I felt as if I'd failed my son. I'd sent for Mark, he managed to get leave almost at once, but of course it was too late. If I'd lost my own daughter, I don't think I could have grieved any more deeply.”

“Was she an only child?”

“Yes. Her parents went to London not very long after the funeral. They couldn't bear to rattle around in that big empty house in Chilham. It was too painful. We correspond, Eloise's mother and I. But I think we both find it very hard. What is there to say but what might have been?”

“And Alex Craig?”

“He wasn't her only suitor—­”

She broke off, hearing someone at the door. Clara came in, wishing us both a good morning, and then Mark followed a minute or so later.

There wasn't a chance to explain why I'd asked Mrs. Ashton about Alex Craig.

If he'd loved Eloise so deeply, and had been allowed to say good-­bye to her, I couldn't imagine that he wished the Ashtons ill. He was probably drawn to the house where Eloise had died, rather than to a stone in a churchyard. He hadn't seemed too fond of Mark, his rival, but that was more or less expected. And so I told myself I could put him out of my mind.

Two hours later, carrying my kit, Mark walked with me through the crowded waiting room at the railway station and inquired about my train. This time to Dover. It was expected to arrive within the hour, we were told.

“I shan't be able to wait,” Mark warned me. “But if this train is delayed as well, and you're stranded again, you must come for me at Groves's chambers.” He told me how to find the address, and indeed, it wasn't far to walk. “Promise me?”

It was kind of him, but of course I couldn't expect him to drive me to Dover. Still, I smiled and said, “I promise.”

Satisfied, he said, “It was good to see you again, Bess.” He bent to kiss me lightly on the cheek. “That's in gratitude for being such a brick.”

And then he was gone.

After a few minutes I inquired of the stationmaster where I might find a telephone. It wasn't far, but I hurried, fearing I might have to wait my turn using the one in the hotel.

My parents were there, and it was wonderful to hear their voices.

“Simon is in Scotland,” Mother told me, “but I'll be sure to let him know you're all right. And I'll send word to Mrs. Hennessey, shall I?”

“Yes, please. I do wish there had been a chance to come home, but the trains were impossible.”

My father said, when his turn came, “I'll leave your motorcar in Dover, shall I? It might be for the best.”

I laughed, knowing he was teasing me.

It was after we'd chatted for a while that I told him about the Ashtons.

I had to be circumspect. While my father was listening to me, I had to wonder who else might be on this line, hearing every word. But there would be no time to write before my train departed for Dover. And once in Dover, there would be the usual madness. It was now or never.

Falling back on Hindi, one of the languages I'd learned as a child when my father and the regiment were serving in India, I told him as much as I could, trying to keep to the essential facts, not my own feelings about what I myself had witnessed.

As usual he had a number of questions when I'd finished, and then he told me, “I knew about the explosion. We were quite concerned about the loss of the powder, and what it would mean in France. The Army had to move quickly to find new sources and begin to enlarge them. I was more involved with that than the official report. But I did read the preliminary findings. It wasn't sabotage, thank God, although the officer in charge of the inquiry was convinced it must be. That had been a risk from the start, using the Ashton mill, because it was so close to the sea—­so easily reached by a determined band of men bent on destruction. But the facilities were excellent, and the Ashtons' record was impeccable. Gunpowder is a dangerous and difficult business at the best of times, but in wartime, when you need more and more of it, you can't simply double up on production. It doesn't work that way.”

He paused. “Let me look into what's happening, Bess. There may be something I can do.”

Happy to leave the matter in capable hands, I thanked him and hurried back to the railway station.

The train, long and crowded with men, was just pulling in, and it took me several minutes to find my carriage.

I made my connection to the transport in Dover with only two hours to wait, and then I was at sea. We convoyed with other ships out of Folkestone, and made an easy crossing, for once without alarms of German submarines hunting in the Channel.

Calais was its usual crowded, chaotic self. As I disembarked, I wondered where the stones from Cranbourne Abbey had been used, but it was impossible to tell anything in the murky light. I walked some distance before I found my next transport, which turned out to be a battered ambulance that had just delivered wounded to a ship returning to England.

The driver and I were old acquaintances, and I asked him how it was at the Front. He was a burly, graying man from Cheshire who had volunteered, found he wasn't wanted, and then volunteered once again, this time as a medical orderly. Because of his mechanical knowledge, he'd been given ambulance duty instead.

“Men are dying still, or being blown apart,” he told me with a shrug. “Nothing has changed. It's as if no one up there at the Front believes the rumors. Least of all the Germans.”

And he was right. I could hear the guns clearly, pounding away at the opposite trenches as if they might go on firing for another four long years.

The mist in Calais had been the remnant of a heavy rain in this part of France, and the roads were the usual morass of ruts and mud and filth of unimaginable origins. As we bumped and slipped and rumbled our way north, I prepared myself for returning to duty. Just as well, for the forward aid station where I was assigned had just fallen back as a ferocious German counterattack threatened to break through the British line.

Most of our cases at the moment were shell fragments, and I thought of the former pilot I'd encountered by the River Cran, with a bit of shrapnel near his heart. Alex Craig.

Shrapnel knew no boundaries. Arms, legs, body, head, eyes—­stretchers lined up, snaking back down the communications trenches. Men lay there white-­faced, trying not to moan, lips clenched over clenched teeth, putting up a good front. We cleaned and probed and cleaned again, then bandaged, sending the worst cases back, returning the walking wounded to the line wherever possible. And then the machine-gun cases followed as the British counterattacked. Mostly arms and knees, sometimes bodies or shoulders as men crouched as they ran to make themselves smaller targets, and only succeeded in giving the gunners better ones within their range of fire.

There was no time to rest. I reported for duty and two minutes later was working, and went on working through what remained of the night. We had only enough time to gulp down a little porridge for breakfast before the shelling began again, this time British guns pounding the German line.

I thought, listening to the fighting, that it had been the same since the stalemate in the winter of 1915, when both sides in this conflict realized that they couldn't go forward and wouldn't move back, digging in to fight for inches or—­sometimes, if they were lucky—­a few feet of ground.

The Front had shifted back and forth once more, with pathetically little gain. I talked to the men as I worked, getting a sense of what was going on up ahead of us. Then, miraculously, we made nearly a hundred yards, only to lose it again in a fierce counter­attack. Sometimes I needed only to look at the wounds in front of me to know what was happening along the entire line.

There was the briefest of lulls, and someone shoved a cup of soup into my hands. I drank it down, never noticing that there had been no salt to flavor it. We were running low on bandages and other necessities as well.

It occurred to me, standing there talking to a young private, his face green with shock and exhaustion, that I'd seen cavalry give way to trenches, aircraft learning to pursue the enemy or strafe the lines or, when the chance arose, fighting each other high above the battlefield. I'd watched tanks grow from clumsy beasts that killed more men than they preserved to useful battlefield weapons. And always, behind it all, the artillery, able to put a hundred shells in the same sector over and over and over again, until the sky sometimes seemed to rain metal and disemboweled earth. But the infantry still climbed up their ladders at the sound of an officer's whistle, raced headlong across the bloody ground between lines, and died in shell holes, on the lips of the enemy's trenches, in the barbed wire or even the muddy, pitted ground.