A Pattern of Lies (21 page)

Someone had embroidered the face of the cushion. Although most of the threads were loose or missing altogether, I could just recognize the pattern.

The white cliffs at Dover and beneath them the word
INVICTA
.

Unconquered. Undefeated.

The ancient motto of Kent.

 

C
HAPTER
T
EN

I
TOLD MYSELF
that this did not necessarily mean that the cushion belonged to someone from Kent. It could have been found or taken away by anyone in need of a better seat. From a transport ship, from the wreckage of a lorry, from someone's kit. It could have been wandering around the battlefields of France since the BEF landed and marched north to Mons, passed from one hand to another.

And yet . . . Someone had made an effort twice to replace the worn covering over the pillow. First with canvas and then with burlap. Someone hadn't intended for the pillow to be used until the stuffing had fallen out, then tossed aside. It meant enough that it was kept in use.

When the furor died down, would the owner of the cushion come looking for it? I really should have considered that possibility last night.

I picked up first the canvas covering and then the burlap, sewing them back in place, trying to match the awkward, untutored stitches that had held them together this long.

Could someone tell what I'd done? Would he—­or even she—­look at the stitching to see if the cushion's secret had been discovered?

I thought not. Most ­people wouldn't have tried to take that cushion apart looking for evidence. Although my mother, who had taught me to make tiny, almost invisible stitches, would raise her eyebrows at my poor workmanship.

I got up from the camp stool by my bed and tossed the cushion in a heap just outside my door, as if I'd taken it from Sister Morris's room but had not wanted to keep it.

I undressed and went to bed but hardly slept, one eye on my door, in case whoever it was came in—­with that pillow. But close to morning I fell into a deep sleep and nearly missed breakfast.

I got up and hastily prepared for my day with a clean uniform and apron, laced up my boots, and put up my hair after brushing it.

It was only then that I realized that the cushion was no longer lying there just outside the passage door.

The cases of trench foot were moved to a base hospital to allow their damaged toes to heal. They had been gone for two days when one of the ward Sisters said, as I helped her make up a fresh bed for a shoulder surgery case, “I was glad to see the back of them. A cheeky lot. Not ill enough to lie there and simply moan. Not well enough to help out with feeding some of the other patients. But I did catch one of them sleepwalking, when he'd been told to stay off his feet.”

“Sleepwalking?” It did happen, but it was rare. Most of the men we cared for were recovering from serious wounds that kept them in their beds.

“Oh yes. It was around two in the morning. He came limping back to his bed. I startled him when I asked him what he thought he was doing. ‘Sister, you'll give a man heart failure if you frighten him like that.' ” She mimicked his voice, grinning up at me.

I'd worked with the trench foot cases. “Are you sure he was sleepwalking?”

She shrugged. “What else could it be? I ask you. Limping down the rows with his arms outstretched, and his eyes closed?”

But that wasn't sleepwalking. I'd seen a patient do just that when I was in training. He'd got up from his bed, his eyes open, and walked down the passage toward the hospital door. I'd followed him, uncertain what to make of him. But he couldn't manage the bolt, and he stood there, trying to pull the door open for several minutes. And then he'd turned and walked back to his bed, lying down as if nothing had happened.

“Which of the trench foot cases was he?”

“His name was Private Britton. Charley Britton.”

“Do you know where he was from?”

She shook her head. “A Kent regiment. I saw the badge.”

But at this stage in the war, a man could be assigned to any regiment needing to make up numbers. He might be from Kent or Lancashire or Hertfordshire.

I changed the subject as we finished the bed, asking about another patient that Dr. Lytton had been concerned about.

“The incision is draining well,” she said. “If his fever breaks, I think he'll be all right.”

“Good news,” I told her, and went back to the surgical unit to help transfer the shoulder case to the ward.

But I made a mental note of the sleepwalker's name, and that night I wrote a letter to Mrs. Ashton, asking her if she recognized it.

And as I set the letter out to be collected for the morning post, I wondered if it was Private Britton who had come for his cushion before being transferred.

I'd asked around the wards, but no one remembered seeing it. Still, if it had been in his kit, it was possible no one had.

Three days later I was sent to a forward aid station, replacing a Sister who was due to have leave.

It was Mary, one of my flatmates.

She saw me step out of the ambulance and ran over to embrace me. “Bess! I can't believe it. I'd just written to Mrs. Hennessey to ask for word of you. How are you?”

“I'm fine,” I told her. “And you?”

“Tired, but aren't we all?” She made a wry face. “You'd think, wouldn't you, that with all these rumors of an end to the war, the fighting would have slowed down a bit, but they seem to be just as eager to kill each other now as they were in 1914.”

“We've been busy back at the hospital,” I agreed, and shivered as a cold wind swept across No Man's Land and made its way behind the lines to swirl around the tents behind Mary. We spent another five minutes catching up on each other's news, and then the ambulance driver called to her, and she had to go.

I waved her out of sight, and looked up at a sound overhead. It was the black aircraft I'd seen before, swooping down toward the convoy heading south. I shook my fist at it and hoped that Mary would be all right.

I was busy for twenty-­four hours, and then there was a lull in the fighting. I sat on a low stool by the surgical tent, finishing a sandwich.

In the distance I heard a familiar sound, and looked up to see Sergeant Lassiter coming toward me.

“They told me you'd returned,” he said complacently.

“They? Who?”

He grinned. “The lads who keep an eye on you. You'd be surprised how fast news travels.”

“I would indeed. Sergeant, do you know a Private Britton? He's from a Kent regiment, I'm told. Out with a case of trench foot. Have you heard anything about him?”

“I don't know the name, lass. But I'll keep an ear to the ground. Any particular reason you want to know about him?”

“I want to know where he's from. I think he may have tried to kill one of the Sisters back at the hospital, thinking she was me.”

His fair brows twitched together in a frown. “That makes a difference,” he said. “Is she all right?”

“A good fright. One of the sentries got there in time, but he couldn't hold the man.”

“Why should he want to kill you?”

“The truth is, I don't know. There was trouble in Kent on my last leave, but I can't see how he might be connected with that. It might even be that Sister Morris was his target after all. She's quite pretty. He might have gone into her room to speak to her and when she started to scream, he tried to smother her.” But why had he taken that cushion with him? I shook my head. “It's strange, Sergeant. He had a cushion with him. Small, but large enough to do what he set out to do. It was covered in burlap.”

“I don't like the sound of this.” He rose. “I hear the Sergeant-­Major was back in France. On a peaceful errand this time.”

My eyebrows flew up. “Indeed?” How on earth had Sergeant Lassiter learned that?

“One of the lads saw him. Something to do with that black bas—­black craft flying behind the lines. There's a reward out for bringing it down. Did you know? Three of my mates had a go at him the other day. But he knows what he's doing. He comes over the lines too high for us to touch him.”

“What's the reward?” I asked, curious.

“A weekend's leave in Paris. So they say. All expenses, and all you can drink.”

I laughed. That would appeal to more soldiers than coin, which would smack a little of blood money.

Sergeant Lassiter got to his feet. “Well, lass, I've seen your fair face and assured myself that you were still alive and well. And still unmarried.”

He was irrepressible.

“No thanks to the Australian Army. I've had ten proposals a day when an Aussie is in hospital.”

“Only ten? I'll have a word with my mates. They're slackers.”

He reached out and touched my cheek, and then he was gone.

I finished my tea, washed my cup, and put it back on the tray. With a sigh I went back to work.

Two days later a soldier with a splinter of shrapnel in his shoulder asked my name, and when I told him, he turned his palm a little to show me a scrap of paper. I pocketed it when no one was looking. He was in great pain, but he smiled lopsidedly at me and said, “I'll pass the word.”

At my first break I went into my tent on a pretext, and sat down on my cot to read the message.

It was brief.

B is from Devon. Served an officer as batman for the first two years of the war. Then transferred to K R and sent to France.

I stared at the message. A Devon man? Transferred to a Kent regiment. I couldn't imagine how he could possibly have had anything to do with Cranbourne or the explosion or even with me.

I'd hoped to learn just the opposite. That there was some connection—­that possibly he'd even been the person who attacked Sergeant Rollins.

More disappointed than I cared to admit, even to myself, I struck a match and burned the fragment of paper, then ground the ashes underfoot.

Assault on a Sister with the intent to rape was not unheard of, though mercifully rare.

It appeared that Private Britton's connection with the cushion was slim indeed.

The letter that arrived from Mrs. Ashton only confirmed what Sergeant Lassiter had found out for me.

I don't recall anyone by the name of Britton. Nor is that name on the list of the dead. If he's related to someone on that list, I'd have no way of knowing. I did ask Mark, and he said he thought it was familiar, but he wasn't sure why. Perhaps someone he knew in France? Alas, there have been so many.

She was right, an officer would have had hundreds under his command, many of them killed in their first week at the Front. Many officers had told me that they could remember every face, each name. Others swore they could not.

The rest of the letter was a recounting of efforts to visit her husband and to find evidence that would free him. Sadly, in neither case had she or Mark been successful.

I set the letter aside with a heavy heart. Sleepwalker or not, it appeared that Britton had no connection to Cranbourne. And we still had no idea why Sister Morris had been attacked.

Much to my surprise, I encountered Sergeant Rollins again when I took a convoy of wounded back to the field hospital. He'd been brought in with a badly blistered arm and face where he'd pulled men out of a burning tank. They too were being cared for, their red, peeling faces oozing fluids and their eyes dazed from the pain.

Rollins was in a hurry to rejoin his men, but the doctor insisted on keeping him for a few days. I'd heard much the same argument before from other patients, but as I passed by the burn ward, I'd recognized his voice.

The doctor beckoned to me to come in and help him put salve on the wound, and I saw recognition in Rollins's eyes as I came forward.

This wasn't my ward, but when a doctor summons a nursing Sister, she answers that call without question.

I didn't speak to the patient, keeping my attention on the arm I was working with. The burns weren't as deep as those of the others, but infection always lurks close by when the skin is open.

I finished lightly bandaging the arm, just enough to protect it, and a Sister appeared with something for his pain. But Rollins refused it, glaring at both of us as if we were personally responsible for his situation.

Dr. Fields said, “Nonsense, take the powder, Sergeant. You'll be out of here all the sooner if you don't fight us.”

After a moment Rollins took the cup of water into which the other Sister had stirred the powder and swallowed it down, grimacing a little at the end.

“All right, Sister,” Dr. Fields said to me. “Get him into bed. He can have a normal diet as long as he isn't running a fever. But I want to know if he does.”

“Yes, sir,” I said, and pulled back the sheet on the cot, for Rollins to swing his feet underneath. I thought at first he intended to sit up, but he thought better of it, and gingerly stretched out on the bed, edging the arm onto a soft pillow.

The other Sister turned away, following the doctor to the next bed. I too prepared to go back to my own patients, well aware that the ambulances were waiting to return to the forward station as soon as I'd logged them in.

Rollins reached out with his good hand and caught my wrist. His grip was so strong it hurt, and I turned at once to face him, prepared to call the doctor back if I had to.

“You spoke to my sister,” he said in a fierce whisper that wouldn't carry.

“Of course I did. I'd seen you, you were safe and well. I thought it would give her a little peace.”

“You told her I'd refused to help the Ashtons.”

“Yes, I did. I had the feeling she was quite pleased about that.”

“You shouldn't have drawn her into that business.”

I shook my head. “She was already drawn into it. She's quite vocal about her feelings, is your sister. And she encouraged another witness to step forward. One who has no qualms about telling what she saw.”

It was clear he hadn't heard that bit of news.

“There
was
no other witness.”

“Miss Rollins claims there was.”

“Damn it. I was there. I ought to know.”

“That may well be, but the police seem to be delighted with the news.” I felt a surge of excitement, thinking this information might make him change his mind about his own testimony. But I should have known better.