An Unmarked Grave (16 page)

And then I realized that the envelope on top was postmarked from France, and I opened it, telling myself that it was not snooping. But it was.

It was the letter from William Morton’s commanding officer, telling Morton’s widow how her husband had died—gallantly and without pain at the end, his mind on his wife and child, not his fate. That he had fought well for King and Country and inspired his fellow soldiers with his courage.

A standard letter, meant to make the grieving family feel that their sacrifice was not in vain, that their son or husband or brother had died as a man should, with courage and dignity.

No mention of the reality of dying in a filthy trench or alone somewhere in No Man’s Land, the rotting corpse brought in during the next collection of the dead and wounded. No mention of his fellow soldiers stoically watching as he took his last breaths or the orderlies racing to find and stanch the bleeding, the nursing sister shaking her head, accepting that he had died on the way to the aid station. None of the panic, the screams, the blood, the despair. Only comfort.

I looked at the signature, expecting to see Colonel Prescott’s name there. But a Colonel wouldn’t write a letter for a dying soldier. His Captain would, and this was duly signed by a Captain Forester, who may have been kinder because he knew Morton by sight and could even speak with some familiarity about how he had served.

I set the letter back in its envelope and put it in among the papers, then realized that the other sheets I held in my hands were copies of correspondence to a dozen or more charitable organizations for widows and orphans, begging for assistance. Sitting here at Reception, Sabrina had filled the empty hours writing these, swallowing her pride for her son’s sake. I could understand now how deep her feelings went against her brother for denying her what she felt was hers by right.

Her family had failed her, and it appeared that these organizations, overwhelmed by similar requests, were finding it hard to spread their funds thin enough to help everyone.

Sabrina had come a long way from the happy child racing through the orchard with her sister at her heels, the first week after we’d come home from India. Long curls flying out of their ribbons, no inkling of the future in store.

I put the papers back together as carefully as I could so that Sabrina wouldn’t have the added shame of realizing that we had seen them. Better by far to accept my mother’s gift for the child as it was meant, rather than wonder if it had been given out of pity rather than love.

The light still danced in the current as the river made its way to the sea, but the color had changed to gold as the sun cast long rays across the estuary. Upriver the shadows were already deep where the trees crowded down to the banks and shut off our view of the port. We stood there for a moment, looking down at the fortifications at the river’s mouth. They too were gold flecked, and I thought how lovely this setting was. And how much sorrow it encompassed.

My mother said, as we started back the way we’d come, “Well.”

I sighed. “It wasn’t Will Morton, was it? That letter from Captain Forester looked all too official, and there was the telegram as well.”

“No. It couldn’t have been,” she agreed.

“How awfully sad. Julia never mentioned that Sabrina’s husband had been killed. Nor did Valerie.”

“I expect she hasn’t told them.”

“We shouldn’t have come. We’ve only upset her.”

My mother said, “Yes, but we’re talking about murder, aren’t we? Better us than the police. Or the Army. They wouldn’t have been as kind.”

And that was cold comfort as we walked back to the gray stone church and then found our way in the gathering dusk up the twisting path back to the hotel. A small dog came out to a garden gate, barking ferociously, then jumping up to be greeted, his tail wagging madly. As I petted the furry head, scratching behind his ears, I thought about the child growing up on the river. Would he ever have a dog?

I couldn’t understand how the young officer I’d known in India could have denied his widowed sister some financial help. But then he himself had died only a short time after his brother-in-law. There had been no chance to do anything. Still, he must surely have known about the child and guessed what Sabrina’s circumstances must be. He could have written to Julia to make his wishes known. She would have carried them out, if he had. She would have done anything he’d asked. Even a small allowance would have made a huge difference in Oxfordshire and she could have kept the cottage.

For that matter, Valerie—with her inheritance from her mother as well as her father—who had visited Sabrina and must have seen the straits she was in with a new baby, could have done something to help.

I commented on this to my mother as we walked on.

“I expect everyone felt it was the Morton family who ought to step in, since Sabrina’s family had cut her off. And they did offer Sabrina a home, didn’t they? Perhaps Julia will have a change of heart, once the solicitors have finished and Vincent’s estate is settled. I’ll drop a word in her ear, without mentioning Cornwall. She has no child of her own, and she may be willing to consider the boy’s needs.”

But the boy was a Morton. Not a Carson. Would that make any difference?

As we reached the last few steps of the path up to our hotel, my mother took a deep breath and said, “Who killed Vincent? I’d have answered, Someone in his company who knew Morton and thought he and his family had been badly treated—if it weren’t for the fact that Vincent wasn’t shot and that his body was discovered some distance from the Front. Simple revenge isn’t that personal or clever.”

I had no answer for her.

“I’m very glad you’re home and safe,” she went on, putting an arm around my shoulders and drawing me to her in a brief embrace as we reached the tall white doors of the hotel.

Later I stood by the window of my room, watching the lights of boats plying the river. They couldn’t go beyond the fortifications, for the sea was probably mined, or a submarine might be lurking in the black depths farther out.

As they bobbed about far below on their mysterious errands, fishing or simply longing for another time, I asked myself the questions I’d put off until I’d said good night to my mother.

If it hadn’t been Will Morton who killed Vincent Carson and Private Wilson or had twice tried to kill me, then who was it?

If it wasn’t revenge for his treatment of his sister that had brought about Major Carson’s murder and all that had followed, what was driving this man?

There had to be a reason. But would any of us be able to find it?

C
HAPTER
T
WELVE

W
HEN
I
ARRIVED
at the clinic, there were courtesies to observe before I could go and look for Simon Brandon.

First, the official visit with Matron to present my orders. She remembered me, and we talked about France for a few minutes, and then she passed me to Dr. Gaines. He welcomed me just as warmly and sent for tea.

“I’ve just made rounds. I could use a cup,” he said, offering me the only other chair in his narrow office. “Tell me about France.”

I tried to remember interesting surgeries or treatments I’d observed, because I knew that was what he wanted to hear, not how the war was progressing. The wounded in his care told their own tale of what was happening in the trenches.

And then Sister Masters was there to show me to my quarters and outline my duties. Once more with my experience I’d be serving in the surgical theater when needed.

It was after eleven o’clock by that time, and she suggested that I meet the rest of the staff at lunch. Some of them had been here when I first came to the clinic, and others were new. As before, the staff was handpicked by Dr. Gaines, and we enjoyed a lively discussion about the patients and what I’d been doing in France. Half my mind was elsewhere, but I managed to hold my own from long practice. We were just finishing our meal when mercifully Sister Masters suggested that I take the next half hour to settle in. I rose from the table, took my leave of the others as I thanked her, and went up the main stairs.

I’d done this so often that it took no more than five minutes to unpack and stow my belongings where I could reach them quickly when needed. My mother had seen to it that my uniforms were starched and ready to wear, and I was grateful.

And then I sat on the bed and stared at nothing for another several minutes. Finally I got to my feet and walked out of my room. Now that the time had come I was almost afraid of what I was going to find when I left this sanctuary and walked down to the wards.

But it had to be done. I went down the steps, counting them as I’d done so many times during my routine duties, the count always helping me put one patient out of my mind and prepare me to address the next.

As I passed the doorway to the room where convalescents sat to read, play cards, or talk, I glimpsed Captain Barclay at a table writing what appeared to be a letter. Fortunately he didn’t look up. I had only a very little time in which to find Simon, and I didn’t want to call attention to what I was about to do.

Simon, I’d been told, was in the surgical ward in the back of the house where the library used to be. Most of the books had been removed for safekeeping, although a few volumes were left amidst the medical kit filling the shelves now. As I entered, I could feel the warmth of the sun on my face from the long windows that overlooked one of the gardens. A slight breeze lifted the thin curtains and blew lightly against my cap.

The sister on duty smiled and nodded to me. She believed I was there to familiarize myself with all the patients, and I let her take a moment to describe the conditions of her charges. But at this present moment, I was concerned most about just one.

I tried to quell my impatience as we began to pace slowly down the row of cots, stopping to look at both sides. There were men in various stages of recovery, some of them asleep, others moaning in a drug-induced unconsciousness. One or two were barely awake, watching us as we stopped, their faces pain ridden and thin.

I was two beds from the end of the room when I heard a rapid-fire outburst of familiar words.

Sister Randolph was in the middle of a description about the man in front of us, and I lost track for a moment. She had to repeat her comment, and I nodded. Finally we had come to Simon’s cot. He was still speaking rapidly, urgently, as if something mattered intensely in his drug-clouded mind.

“We can’t understand him half the time,” Sister Randolph was saying. “It’s some foreign tongue, I’m told. One of our convalescents was in India for a number of years with his regiment. He didn’t know enough of the language to translate, but he said he thought it was Hindu.”

“Hindi,” I said automatically. “Hindi is the language. Hinduism the religion. A Hindu is the man or the woman.” But it wasn’t Hindi that Simon was speaking just now, it was Urdu, the Muslim equivalent.

I went to his bedside. Someone had shaved him this morning, but his face was flushed with fever, his hair long and soaked with perspiration. But mercifully I could see both arms under the bedclothes. There had been no amputation.

“I was in India,” I said. “Let me sit with him a bit, and see if I can decipher what he’s saying.”

“Please do!” Sister Randolph said gratefully. “It’s very worrying not to know what’s on his mind. I can tell that something is, and it may be hindering his recovery.” She referred to her chart. “His name is Brandon. We don’t know much else about him. Regiment, that sort of thing. Dr. Gaines admitted him as an emergency patient.”

“What’s his status?”

“If the fever breaks, Dr. Gaines expects he’ll keep his arm. If it doesn’t, well, there will have to be steps taken.” She lifted the sheet, and I could see how swollen and inflamed Simon’s shoulder and arm were. “We’ve kept the wound clean, we’ve fed him to keep up his strength, but it’s a matter of time. I’ve grown rather fond of him, and I would hate to see him back in surgery. But I’m afraid . . .” She let her voice dwindle, as if not wishing to speak the words. “Such a strong, handsome man. A pity, isn’t it? War and all this pain and suffering.”

“Yes.”

I brought a chair over and sat down. Simon was restless, and he still spoke in staccato sentences. I listened for a while, accustoming my ears to the sound of his voice and words I hadn’t spoken except to my family for some years. But it came back to me surprisingly quickly.

Simon was on patrol. That much I gathered from the names he mentioned. They had been ambushed in the hills above the Khyber Pass, and he was trying to keep his men alive until a rescue column arrived. He’d sent a heliograph message to a watcher some distance away on the Indian side of the border and it was a matter of time before help got to them.

I heard Simon say, “Keep your head down, man!” And then he swore. “They’ve got a sniper up there somewhere. I saw the muzzle flash. He’s damned good with that rifle. It must be British, not native, to be that accurate.” And then someone must have said something to him, for he replied, “I told the Colonel Sahib that I suspected one of those damned traveling musicians might be a spy, but we couldn’t prove it.”

The switch to English was so unexpected that at first I couldn’t follow it.

And then he was incoherent once more, encouraging his men, keeping them alive, and finally going out himself to hunt down the unknown rifleman. I remembered that engagement, long past, but when my father and a detachment of lancers went in search of the men who were pinned down, my mother had sat on the veranda all evening, waiting for news.

She had said nothing when the bloody remnants of the column came back, but I heard my father issue the order for the man who played the tambourine to be found and brought to him. I was never told what had happened to the spy. It had been regimental business only, and not for my ears or even my mother’s.

Glancing at my watch after sitting beside Simon for several minutes, I saw that I had to report for duty, and I slipped away, brushing his face with my fingertips as I did, feeling the dry heat of high fever on his skin.

I told Sister Randolph as I left that the patient was reliving old engagements, a result of his fever, I thought, and nothing that would hamper his recovery. She smiled and thanked me again.

“It’s such a relief to hear that. Perhaps since you understand what he’s saying, you could visit him from time to time, in case anything changes.”

I promised I would, grateful to her for giving me a reason to sit with him.

For the next two days I spent as much time with Simon as I could, but there seemed to be no change in his condition, and I found myself waking up in the night with a start, thinking that he had died. But he hadn’t, he held on, as he so often did against impossible odds.

And on the third morning, when I hurriedly downed my breakfast and ran up the back steps to spend a moment with him, I found him awake.

Dark eyes under dark brows stared back at me, but I didn’t think he knew me because he hadn’t fully returned to awareness. I reached down and touch his face again. This time the skin was oily with the sweat of breaking fever, but cool. Blessedly cool. I was on the point of going to find Sister Randolph and asking her to bathe him—in fact, I had turned away to do just that—when his hand locked on my wrist and spun me around.

“Bess?” His voice was hoarse from fever and the constant barrage of words that had come bubbling up from the depths of illness. “Is that you, Bess?”

I looked down. He was staring at me, frowning, as if he couldn’t quite believe the evidence of his eyes. Then he blinked and said, “Am I still in France?”

“No—I mean, it’s been a while. You’ve been very ill. Your shoulder—you nearly lost your arm.”

Frowning, he said, “Did I tell—did anyone tell the Colonel what happened there in France?”

“That you were wounded?” I sat on the edge of his cot. “Yes, of course. You even left the hospital, but then the fever overtook you and the Colonel Sahib brought you here.”

“Dear God—”

He released my wrist and wiped a hand across his eyes. “Bess. Get word to your father. I’ve got to see him.”

“Simon, it can wait.”

His mouth was tight as he said, “Don’t argue.” His eyes closed and he grimaced. “Do it.”

I’d been trained all my life to respond to that tone of voice. One obeyed instantly, doing as one was told, without question. In India, safe as we’d believed we were, danger was everywhere, and the memory of the bloody 1857 Mutiny, when the Indian Army turned on its English officers and their families, and massacred all they could lay hands on—soldiers, women, children—was always present. Hesitation or delay could mean the difference between living and dying.

Only this time I was ordered to reach my father at once—and only then could I see to it that Dr. Gaines was alerted about the change in his patient’s condition.

I did as I was told, urgently begging use of the clinic’s telephone, putting through a call to my mother and seeing to it that word was passed to my father. Then I went in search of the doctor. I found him watching Captain Barclay walk up and down the passage.

Captain Barclay smiled as he made his turn at the end of the passage and started back toward us.

“Look for yourselves. That knee is as good as ever it was.” He saw me and his smile broadened. “Sister Crawford? What do you think?”

But Dr. Gaines was still watching the way he moved. “You’ve most certainly improved,” he began.

“Then send me back to France. For God’s sake, I’m needed there.”

It was a familiar cry. But Dr. Gaines paid no heed. He was still staring at the knee. Aware of my presence, he said, “Sister?”

“The patient in the surgical ward is awake, sir. Brandon.”

“Ah, yes. Tell Sister Randolph I’ll be right there. All right, Captain, I’d like you to take the butcher’s paper out from around that limb and then walk up and down again.”

I turned away, but out of the corner of my eye I saw Captain Barclay’s fair skin flame with embarrassment. It was an old trick, the butcher’s stiff paper giving a little stability to a weak knee for a short distance. Only, if you listened closely, you could hear the layers rustle.

I went back to the library, where Sister Randolph was bathing Simon’s face and making him more comfortable before an orderly arrived to shave him again.

“I’ve spoken to my mother,” I said quickly in Hindi, and he nodded. I hurried back to my own duties.

I didn’t know where my father was or how soon he could be reached. I had done as I was asked, and a little later I saw Dr. Gaines coming from the library ward, his face thoughtful.

As it happened my father arrived much sooner than he could possibly have in answer to my summons. I thought perhaps Dr. Gaines had sent for him as well. There were no doubt standing orders in regard to the patient Brandon that I knew nothing about.

It was not an hour before the evening meal when the Colonel Sahib came striding into the clinic, tall, handsome, that air of command swirling in his wake.

I saw orderlies salute him and nurses smile at him. I was at the top of the stairs and heard him ask for Matron.

Five minutes later I was summoned to her office.

To my surprise, she wasn’t there, but I thought perhaps my father was trying to downplay any military reason for his presence in a clinic. I said, “You’ve come to see Simon. I’ll take you to him. He’s been impossible to deal with, waiting for you to come.”

His eyebrows rose. “Simon? I’ve been very worried about him. The reports from Dr. Gaines have not been good. Is he awake? I’ll speak to him shortly. The fact is, I’ve come to see you.”

That surprised me even more. “Indeed?”

“That nurse at the Base Hospital in Rouen. The one we were to distract with words of praise for doing her duty, after she’d given you so much trouble.”

“Nurse Bailey? Was she difficult to appease?” My heart sank as I had visions of having to explain France to my superiors in the nursing service.

“I sent one of my men there to speak to her, and he reported that she had left the hospital to attend a funeral. That of Nurse Saunders. Didn’t you tell me she’d seen and spoken to your erstwhile driver? She was found dead the morning after your departure.”