An Unwilling Accomplice (8 page)

She glanced quickly at Matron, as if afraid to say too much.

“He wasn’t what you might call
charming
,” she said after a moment. “We have patients could sing a bird out of a tree. They’re very difficult to deal with because they’re always pushing the rules.” She turned to me, as if for support in this. “They think because they’re charming, they can be forgiven for staying up half an hour longer or sitting on a bench in the garden just a little longer, or spending a bit more time with their families when they’re visiting, even though they’ve overtired themselves. You must know how it is.”

I did. Many of the handsome ones, the charming ones, generally didn’t feel that rules could possibly apply to them. But it wasn’t what I wanted to know. I raised my eyebrows, as if waiting for her to go on.

“He was never any trouble. He didn’t ask for favors. He just got on with what he had to do. Even when he was in pain, he tried not to make a fuss. But I enjoyed talking to him, he was always interesting.”

“What did you talk about?” Matron asked.

“I—nothing in particular. Just . . . conversation.”

I gave up. “Did no one notice his extra bandages? Mr. Thompson, for one, the orderly who traveled up to London with him?”

“Everyone knew it was going to be a difficult few days. That we didn’t want anything untoward to happen. If Mr. Thompson wondered about anything, he didn’t speak to me about it.”

His mind was on his return to France. Or perhaps the sergeant had already had a word with him.

It was becoming clear even to Matron that Sergeant Wilkins had planned his escape with great care, alarming no one, sending up no flares. I felt vindicated, but it didn’t make me any happier. I could see the worry in Sister Hammond’s face, and the growing hurt as she realized how she had been used, just for being kind.

I could see that Matron was about to arrive at the same conclusion. She was looking at me, and then she turned to Sister Hammond.

“And he said nothing to you, Sister, about not coming back?”

Sister Hammond came close to tears. “Only that he would ask permission for us to go into Shrewsbury for my birthday next week. For taking such good care of him.”

Interpreted in hindsight as gratitude for making a patient look far more vulnerable and in need of help than he really was. But then he had also maneuvered me into allowing him an entire evening in which to manage his escape.

Sister Hammond said urgently, “Matron. I didn’t think I was doing anything wrong. No one stopped Sergeant Wilkins at the door. No one spoke to me.”

Nor would they have, with a nursing Sister and a medical orderly supervising his departure. Whatever anyone might have thought, it would all have appeared to be under control. After all, the patient, an acknowledged hero, was on his way to Buckingham Palace.

How had so many people been drawn into this man’s plot?

Matron answered that, saying thoughtfully, “We thought we knew this man.”

A hero. A man of honor. The last person anyone could imagine deserting. What no one had said, what must have been in Matron’s mind—or the Army’s—or even my own Nursing Service’s—was the fact that this man was not an officer. He’d been expected to set an example for the ranks.

Whatever had made Sergeant Wilkins decide to desert, it must surely have been personal. Or it wouldn’t have ended in murder.

Matron was saying, “I shall have to draw up regulations to make certain that this sort of thing never happens again. In my hospital or any other.”

She dismissed Sister Hammond, then turned to me. “I have misjudged you, Sister Crawford. It appears that the problem began in my own hospital. I would have said that that was impossible, before you walked through my door.”

“None of us was prepared.”

“Orderly Grimsley had already told me that you’d been misjudged. I refused to believe it. An apology is in order. And I shall be writing to the Nursing Service on your behalf.”

“Thank you, Matron. That means a great deal to me under the circumstances.”

Her eyes strayed to the file she’d set aside when I was announced. “Is there anything else you need, Sister Crawford?”

“I should like to speak to Grimsley before I leave. I’m still trying to make sense of any of this. I wondered if he might have learned something more about the sergeant and his plans, after he returned here to Shrewsbury.”

“If he had, I’m sure he’d have said something to me. But I see no reason why you shouldn’t see Grimsley.”

Ten minutes later, Grimsley and I were walking under the trees in the park. He hadn’t wanted to talk to me indoors.

I told him what I knew—including the visit from Inspector Stephens, which I had mentioned to Matron only in passing.

Grimsley looked up at me, whistling under his breath.

“Murder.”

“So I’ve been told. The police are searching for the sergeant. I don’t know anything about the man he is said to have killed. The name Henry Lessup doesn’t mean anything to me. Does it to you?”

He walked at my side without speaking for several minutes. Then he said, “Ironbridge? I don’t recall that he ever received any letters from Ironbridge. For that matter, I don’t think anyone else has. It was one of my duties, delivering the post.”

“What about his belongings here?”

“The Army came for them. But you’ve been in a convalescent hospital. There’s not much a man brings with him, when he comes in from France. Whatever is in his kit. Whatever they have time to collect or send on, from where he was posted.”

“Did he have any family?”

“At a guess, his parents are dead. They’ve never come to see him, and the only letters he got—they were few enough—came from his men in France. The company he’d left behind when he was wounded.”

I sighed. The sergeant had told me he had no family. And no one was in attendance at the ceremony. But that could mean anything, that they were dead, that he was the black sheep long since cut off from them, that they were not well enough to travel or to write.

“How did he come to have my name, Grimsley? I still can’t remember ever treating him.”

“We’ve had a few you did attend, Sister. I will say that Sister Hammond was that disappointed when she wasn’t asked to accompany him to London. I expect she thought he might choose her.”

“She knew him too well,” I said pensively. “I was more easily tricked.”

“Look at it this way, Sister. Any name would have done. Yours was just one he’d heard and could use. But what are we to do about this business? It leaves a bad taste, not seeing it finished.”

“Scotland Yard will attend to that. I’d thought about going on to Ironbridge, while I’m in the north. Inspector Stephens didn’t give me very much information about the man the sergeant is alleged to have killed. Perhaps if I learn something there, it might help explain the man. He was terribly clever, Grimsley. He let everyone believe he was a deserter, and all the while, he must have been planning on going directly to Ironbridge. To find that man. The question is, where is he now? A few days ago, he was fewer than twenty miles from here!”

“Licking his wounds, wherever he is. Or already out of the country. He could be in Ireland as we speak. I don’t see much hope of going to France. He’d run straight into the Germans. They’d know who he was. It would be quite a coup to capture him.”

The Army had kept the story out of the newspapers, when Sergeant Wilkins went missing. There had been nothing about it. Nor anything about his being suspected of murder since then.

“You aren’t going to Ironbridge alone,” Grimsley asked me as we turned back through the gardens toward the house. “I don’t like that very much.”

Neither would my parents or Simon
, I thought wryly. But I couldn’t see that it would do much harm at this stage. Sergeant Wilkins wasn’t there, surely.

“I’m not due leave, I can’t offer to go with you,” Grimsley went on. “Take my advice and go back to London. I’ll find someone to carry you back to the railway station in Shrewsbury.”

Before I could answer him, I saw Sister Hammond come out the main door and stand there, looking around. I realized she must have just come off duty.

“I think she’s searching for me,” I said.

“Talk to her, Sister. I’ll wager she didn’t tell Matron everything. She’d be too ashamed. I’ll find someone traveling back to Shrewsbury. You won’t mind riding in the butcher’s van?” he ended anxiously.

“I don’t mind.”

I stood where I was as he hurried back toward the house. Sister Hammond spotted me then and walked out to meet me.

“I was getting ready to leave,” I said, smiling. “Did you think of something more that we ought to know?”

She looked as if she were ill, pale and very tentative.

“I feel wretched,” she said at once. “You don’t know—it’s not as if he’d
said
anything to me. It was just—when I first came here, he couldn’t sleep for the pain. I’d read to him sometimes. And there wasn’t much more we could do to ease him. He’d sit there, staring into whatever darkness was in his mind, and then after a bit, he’d slowly relax. The arm healed, but the leg was stubborn. It must have been very trying for him. Several times the Army doctors debated whether he was able to return to light duties. I tried to protect him, because I knew it was too soon. You’d have done the same. You
have
probably done the same. When the time came to travel to London, I really was afraid the Army would seize on the improvement. When he asked if I’d help him with the head bandage and then the sling, I thought it was for the best. I thought, they won’t know how weak that leg is still. They’d see him smartly turned out, and they’d order him up before the board while he’s in London. You’d been in France. Light duties—that’s what they offer, but you know and I know he’d have been back in the line within a fortnight.”

She’d been used just like the rest of us. But in a way I could see her point. The boards did push men back into the trenches too soon. I’d seen it happen, and in the end the man was too slow, he couldn’t quite make it back to the trench in time, and he’d wind up caught in the wire, a target for the snipers. I couldn’t fault her. But I also thought that, forbidden or not to have personal feelings about a patient in our care, Sister Hammond very likely had begun to fall in love with Sergeant Wilkins. And I had a feeling that he had callously used that. Possibly even encouraged it.

“But surely someone noticed the differences in his bandages. I can’t believe they didn’t.”

“Didn’t you know? He and Thompson left here before first light. They had to be driven into Shrewsbury, then meet the early train. Who was there to notice, except Thompson, the orderly? And if he said anything, it wasn’t in my hearing. If he asked questions later, then Sergeant Wilkins was able to divert any suspicion. To tell you the truth, I think there was a send-off for Thompson. He was heading back to France, you see, and even the night porter appeared to be a little the worse for wear.” She smiled wryly. “They’re not supposed to get drunk, but who can blame them? I went back to my own bed and said nothing.”

I wondered if Sergeant Wilkins had contributed a little something to the farewell party. Enough to ensure that the porter and Thompson were not at their best in the early hours.

The more I learned, the more I could appreciate how thoroughly the sergeant had laid his plans.

“Did he ever mention Ironbridge to you? Or anyone he knew there?”

“I don’t think Ironbridge ever came up. I mean to say, it’s an iron bridge, isn’t it? And the village on both banks of the river? And not too far from here. I don’t think anyone else spoke of it while I was with the sergeant.”

“Where are the letters he received from his company in France?”

“They must have been with his things. In the cupboard. When the Army came.”

Or perhaps they hadn’t been, if there was anything in them the sergeant didn’t want the Army to find.

I shook my head. “No one could have foreseen what he was planning.”

“But I
should
have. I was his nurse, I should have been aware of any change in him, any suspicious change. Like wanting those extra bandages. Looking back at it now, I see how very foolish I was. At the time—I thought how brave he’d been and how wonderful it was that the King himself would decorate him. In my wildest dreams, I couldn’t have imagined anything like this.”

She looked back toward the hospital. “I shouldn’t have come out to speak to you. They’ll wonder what I had to say, if there was anything I hadn’t told Matron.”

“Was there?” I asked after a moment.

“No. Not really. Only that sometimes he cried out in the night. The sergeant. I’d hear him, when I was on duty. Something was tormenting him. And I never knew what it was, because in the morning, he couldn’t remember anything about it. Or so he said.”

I had dealt with men who cried out in the night. Some of them lay awake into the small hours, afraid to shut their eyes and dream.

What had haunted the sergeant?

I realized Sister Hammond was studying me. I said, “What is it?”

“You’ve served in France. Fresh wounds, men dying. Nothing tidy and at one’s fingertips, the way it is in a surgical theater. How do you bear it? I don’t think I could. It took me weeks to learn to look at the stump of a limb or an arm, without being sick.”

She had volunteered, knowing she would be looking at terrible things. But here in the hospital, they had become ordinary. What had happened to these men, her patients, in France she hadn’t wanted to learn.

Small wonder Sergeant Wilkins had found it easy to play on her openness and sympathy for the wounded in her care.

“I try not to think about it,” I answered her. “Someone must be there for the men, and I’ve come to understand how important early care can be.”

“You must be very brave,” she said, then rousing herself, she added, “I must go. But truly, Sister Crawford, I never dreamed what he was up to. The last man who disappeared was trying to return to France and his company. Perhaps Sergeant Wilkins has done the same by now. I’d like to think so.”

With that she turned and hurried back toward the house, slipping inside as quietly as she could.