An Unwilling Accomplice (36 page)

“Where will we find a telephone at this hour of the night? Stratford?”

“It’s very late, Bess. Go to bed, and we’ll deal with this in the morning.”

“You won’t decide to go back and search for Wilkins?”

“I promise.” I handed him the rug and left him there. But once in my room I went to the window and looked out.

Simon was just crossing the yard to the inn door. I drew my curtains and undressed in the dark, wondering if I could even shut my eyes, much less sleep.

A watery sun greeted me the next morning. The water in my pitcher was cold, but I bathed anyway before dressing. I’d just wound my hair into a knot at the back of my neck, so that it would fit nicely under my cap, when there was a knock at my door and Simon called my name.

He stood there with a jug of hot water in one hand, and with the other he balanced a tray with my breakfast on it under a napkin.

“You’re dressed,” he said, surprised. “But that’s good, we can leave in an hour.”

I was ready well before the hour, and Simon escorted me down to the motorcar, setting my kit in the back before settling the bill.

“Where are we going?”

“I asked the man at the desk. There’s a telephone in Warwick. It’s at an hotel there. From what he tells me, it’s more accessible than the one I used in Stratford. Shall we give it a try? I brought our luggage in the event we have to stay the night. I have no idea where your father might be.”

The Warwick Arms was such a contrast to Biddington that I had to smile when we stepped through the door into Reception. Well-dressed guests were just leaving the dining room, and I thought perhaps there had been a wedding party.

There was indeed a telephone, we were told by the rather haughty man behind the reception desk. But it was for the use of guests.

We had to tell the clerk that it was urgent military business that had brought us here before he pointed us toward a passage behind the stairs. The spacious telephone closet had velvet seats on either side of the small table that held the instrument. In the cubby beneath the telephone were hotel stationery and a fountain pen.

“Will you call or shall I?” I asked.

“Your mother would be happy to hear your voice. And if your father isn’t there, she won’t be worried.”

I put through the call and waited for it to ring in Somerset. After a moment or two Iris primly answered.

“Hallo, Iris. Bess here. Is my mother at home, by any chance?”

“No, Miss, she’s traveled to Gloucester only this morning. She’ll be that sorry to miss you. But your father is here, and about to leave for London. Shall I fetch him?”

“Yes, please.”

I waited, and finally my father’s deep voice came over the line. “Bess? Are you in London? I’m on my way in less than half an hour. Shall I meet you at the flat?”

“I’m in Warwick, I’m afraid. But all is well. Simon is with me, and there’s a puzzle we can’t solve on our own. We thought perhaps you could help.”

“What took you to Warwick?”

“There isn’t time to explain, and we aren’t very private here. I’m perfectly fine and hope to be in London shortly. Speak to Simon.”

Just at that moment a group of people, chatting together down the passage, staring curiously at us as they walked by.

Simon said, “Hallo, sir.” He glanced at me with a wry smile as he answered something my father was saying. “She’s safe and very much herself, sir.” And then he went on in Hindi, outlining what we needed to know about Sergeant Jason Wilkins. “Anything in his background that might explain why he killed one man and could very well be stalking the next. And why he might have it in for Henry Lessup, his first victim. There’s bound to be a connection. It might help me understand what’s happening.”

There was a pause as my father asked a question. And then a longer exchange began. I listened to Simon’s side of the conversation, trying to piece together what was being said on both sides.

At last Simon put up the receiver. “It will take some time. I expect we’ll be here for the better part of the day.”

We left the motorcar where it was and five minutes later found a tea shop where we could sit in a quiet corner. The drizzling rain that we’d met on the outskirts of town moved on, and we walked for some time, admiring the castle and taking shelter in St. Mary’s from a heavier shower. That was followed by a cold wind. I thought about France and the mud and cold rain, and men blowing on their fingers in the dark, waiting for the first sign of dawn and the next push. We stopped in another tea shop for tea to warm us. The windows were steamed over in the cold air and it was quite cozy inside, the tables spread with white cloths embroidered with strawberry blossoms. All the while Simon kept an eye on the time. A little after four o’clock we returned to the hotel. Someone else was in the telephone closet, and we waited with what patience we could muster for the man to finish his conversation.

“A penny for your thoughts.” Simon dropped a penny in my hand.

I smiled. “They aren’t worth a farthing. I was thinking about the witness in Ironbridge. The young pregnant woman. She was walking home across the bridge and passed a murderer. I wondered if he’d taken pity on her. Or if it was just the fact that he didn’t know where to find her afterward. After he’d killed Henry Lessup.”

“We’ll be in time, Bess. I shouldn’t worry.”

But I did.

And then the telephone closet was ours.

I waited tensely while Simon put through the call.

We had to try twice more, because the telephone at the other end was engaged. I was inordinately relieved when my father answered. I watched Simon’s face and realized that the Colonel Sahib hadn’t found anything useful.

He turned to me. “Do you have any other suggestions? It seems that until now, Wilkins has had an exemplary career. Good man, no marks on his record, nothing that would indicate an unresolved problem.”

I tried to think. We knew so much—and so little—about this man.

“His family. A sweetheart, a broken engagement?”

Simon relayed the answer. “His pay went to his mother as long as she was alive and then was sent to his bank.”

“Yes, I’d forgot, his brother died earlier in the war. All right, what about Lessup?”

Simon turned back to the telephone. After a moment, he said to me, “His brother was killed. But not in France, oddly enough. In the Hoo Peninsula.”

I stared at him. The Hoo Peninsula.

I could hear the young woman’s voice, recounting what she’d seen on the bridge the evening of the murder. And what the killer had said to Henry Lessup when they’d met in the center of the bridge.

Well, well, there you are. I’ve come about Who.

Not
Who
. Hoo. I’ve come about
Hoo
.

It was a flat marshy finger of land that jutted out into the sea between the estuary of the River Medway in Kent and the lower Thames. There were a handful of small villages there, mostly on what was considered higher ground. Best known for its bird colonies and for the hulks of wrecks strewn about the shoreline, it had had a long history, back to Roman times and even before.

I reached out and caught Simon’s arm.

“What was he doing there?” I asked urgently, and Simon questioned my father. Then he passed on the Colonel Sahib’s reply.

“Training exercises. They were secret. I haven’t been involved with those. But the Colonel knew about them. Apparently they have been shut down this close to the end.”

It made no sense.

Simon turned back to the telephone. I could hear my father explaining something at length.

Simon thanked him, and asked if he wished to speak to me again. I sent my love to him and to my mother, and put up the telephone.

“Wait until we’re outside,” he said, and we walked out of the hotel in silence, to where we’d left the motorcar. It was well past teatime, the streets all but empty as the wind gusted through them. I could feel it swirling about my shoulders as Simon quietly explained my father’s response to the questions about Hoo.

“Your father has given us what we need. I don’t know how much Scotland Yard has been told. Bare bones, most likely. But here’s the truth. Lessup had spent the war working with recruits out on the Hoo Peninsula. A great deal to do with trenches, ours as well as the German ones. And all quite secret. There was an accident one morning and a number of men were wounded, several men killed. Among them, Wilkins’s brother. There was an investigation into the deaths, even some talk of a court-martial for Lessup, but this would have made too much information public.”

“Dear God. Do you think Wilkins believes these two men are responsible for his brother’s death?”

“If he does, the question is, how did he find out? The Army wouldn’t have told him the details. Or given him Lessup’s name. But coupled with the photograph Jester’s witness brought in, and the name of the victim, Scotland Yard must have begun to ask questions. Your father couldn’t find who the other man is. He’s afraid it might be the officer who decided not to pursue a court-martial. Effectively clearing Lessup of charges. Or the corporal who took the official blame and was reduced in rank for carelessness. He’ll continue looking.”

Lessup. An officer. A private.

Did Sergeant Wilkins intend to kill all
three
?

“I wish we knew more about him. The one living with Mrs. Chatham and her sister. I wish we could have linked him to the Hoo. But it doesn’t matter, does it, as long as Sergeant Wilkins believes
he
knows? Even if he’s wrong.”

“At least when we speak to Mrs. Chatham, we’ll have more than supposition to go on. She deserves to be warned. We can’t wait for Scotland Yard to act.”

We sat in silence for a long moment. It was the break we’d been searching for. And we’d found it because we’d discovered there were two men.

“Bess, shall we have dinner at a decent restaurant before driving back to Lower Dysoe?”

“I’m not hungry, Simon. I have the strongest feeling that there isn’t much time left.”

After a brief stop for petrol, a packet of sandwiches to take with us, and a thermos of tea, we set out for Biddington. The wind had dropped with sunset, but the air whistling around the motorcar was distinctly cold. I longed for the rug in the boot, for the tiny heater was struggling to warm my feet much less my shoulders. But I didn’t want to stop for that or any other reason.

I said, “Sergeant Wilkins didn’t waste much time finding his first victim and dispatching him in Ironbridge. Why has he taken so long with this man?”

“He may not be sure he’s the right one. And the man in Chatham Hall hasn’t been as accessible as Lessup. He’s cautious.”

“The man who came out of the Hall’s kitchen door and the man you saw standing in the doorway of the empty cottage. Were they the same?”

“I thought at the time they must be. Now—now I’m not so sure.”

“And which man were you following from the shepherd’s hut? Which one was waiting by the gates to Windward?” I asked.

“At a guess? I’d say it was Wilkins in the hut. The man at the gate must have come from Chatham Hall. But how did he know he was being stalked? Had he seen Wilkins somewhere? Or had Phyllis Percy put him on his guard after you began to ask questions? It’s even possible Lessup’s sister wrote to him, warning him to be careful.”

The sister Inspector Jester refused to let me speak to. We had been left in the dark from the beginning. The wonder was that Scotland Yard hadn’t found Sergeant Wilkins and taken him into custody long since. Why hadn’t the Yard come to Lower Dysoe before now?

Simon kept his eyes on the road, making what time he could. The rain had left puddles in the ruts, and we splashed through them. Once a badger ambled out from the grass along the verge and stared blindly at our powerful headlamps. We managed to avoid him somehow.

Thinking about it, I said, “A man with something to hide could easily start to worry. The thing is, training accidents do happen. I know that as well as you do. Why was this one so appalling that it calls for revenge?”

“I think because so many men were involved, and the inquiry into it reached a stage that court-martial was considered. Whatever went wrong, the Army tried to cover it up, because what was being done on Hoo was already secret. To a grieving brother, the official account must have appeared to be a tissue of lies. And it probably was. But for very different reasons. If Wilkins was having nightmares about his brother’s death and brooding over it while in hospital, he could have convinced himself that revenge was expected of him.”

After a while Simon and I shared the sandwiches and I passed him a cup of tea from the thermos. Mine was warming my fingers nicely as I held it in both hands, and I sipped it slowly.

Finally the lights of Biddington loomed out of the darkness. First a cottage or two, and then the village seemed to rush at us, shops and pubs and houses and the square-towered church near the High Street.

Our rooms were still available at the inn, and after Simon had seen to that, we decided, late as it was, we should still speak with Mrs. Chatham and her sister. I felt a wash of relief that Simon agreed with me. That niggling feeling of being too late hadn’t gone away.

We set out again, following the road to Upper Dysoe, and we were just passing the turning to the miller’s yard when I stopped Simon. “This is the time of night when the man in the hut is on the prowl. Be careful.”

He switched off the lights and slowed to a crawl. Now we could just see the road ahead. To our right was the old barn, to our left the distant gates of Windward.

“There!” Simon whispered, pulling up the brake.

At first I couldn’t see anything. Peering through the windscreen, I finally caught the barest hint of movement where Windward’s wall cast its long shadow. Just then a figure appeared at the bend in the road where there was no concealment, hurrying to leave the open as quickly as possible.

“We might have bumped right into him,” I said, still whispering, although no one but Simon could hear me.

We gave him five minutes and then went in pursuit. Simon kept well back, and I was beginning to fear we might lose him. The cold wind forgotten, I bit my lip anxiously, my gaze on the road, watching for any sign that we’d overtaken him even while I wanted to urge Simon to close the gap.