A Question of Honor (7 page)

He cast a glance around, spotted us, and came at once to our table. I could see that he was red in the face from suppressed anger.

“Just who are you?” he demanded. “First the house, then the graves. Are you down from London looking to bring up the whole sorry business again? Isn’t the killing in France enough for you?”

Simon stayed seated, eyeing the chaplain mildly. But it was deceptive, that mildness. Simon was nearly as angry himself at being attacked this way in a public place.

“My name is Brandon,” he said. “I have nothing to do with newspapers or London. And I’ve had enough of your rudeness.”

“Have you indeed,” the chaplain said. He hooked a chair with his foot and brought it around so that it stood at the table between Simon and me. Sitting down, the chaplain said, “I’m trying to sell that barn of a place. And bad publicity just now will put paid to any chance I have. Whatever you’re up to, I won’t let you do this. I’ll have the constable in here and see what he has to say.”

“Is the house yours?” I asked before Simon could speak, trying to prevent an unpleasant encounter between the two men. “Do you have the right to tell people what they ought and ought not to do, like this?”

He was taken aback. “Of course the house is mine. Ask anyone, it was left to me by my uncle.”

“Have you ever lived there?”

He blinked, staring at me. “Of course not. Until the war I was rector of a church outside of Bury St. Edmunds. What business is it of yours?”

“Then you can’t possibly tell me how well the plumbing works or if there’s worm or dry rot in the attic. Or if the chimneys draw without smoking so badly it chases everyone out of a room. And there are the drains. Do they smell, in the servants’ hall? Not to mention the state of the roof, which I can see for myself. How do you expect to sell a house you yourself consider to be a barn of a place?”

The poor man didn’t know what to say. Out of the corner of my eye I caught Simon trying to smother a grin.

“I never met the Caswells,” I went on. “I didn’t even know their names until just before the sexton bore down on us and nearly drove us from the churchyard. Did he tell you we were staring at the graves? I happened to notice that here was a family who died on the same day. You don’t often see that unless there’s plague or cholera or typhoid. I couldn’t have told you the name of the previous owners of that house of yours. But now I know it. Because everyone is behaving as if Simon and I have come here to make trouble. Well, we haven’t. So go away and let us drink our tea in peace.”

I’d succeeded in reducing the tension between the two men. I wasn’t sure that a chaplain would have resorted to his fists, but I wasn’t going to chance it. Tall as he was, he was several inches shorter than Simon, and his reach was shorter as well. Simon could have floored the man without turning a hair.

The chaplain stared at me, mouth open, uncertain what to say.

“Since you’ve insisted on joining us,” I said while he was still at a loss for words, “you might as well have a cup of tea.”

I nodded to the man who had just served us, asking for a third cup. When it arrived, accompanied by a wooden expression on the server’s face, I poured three cups of tea and passed the honey as well as the small jug of milk.

By this time the chaplain didn’t know where to look. He had come here with artillery and cavalry in his eyes, and now he was discovering that he and they were in full retreat.

“Tell me about these people, the Caswells,” I said. “Are they related to you?”

“I—no—that’s to say, not directly. The house went to my uncle when they—er—when the Caswells died. I’m his late wife’s nephew.”

“But you’ve been trying to sell the house, without any luck.”

“I can’t afford to live there. I hope to return to my church in Bury, when the war’s over. Or to one like it. What I earn wouldn’t keep that house for a month, much less a year. I tried to have it turned into a clinic, but even the Medical Board refused to accept my offer. That was at the start of the war. My uncle died in August 1914, just after the Germans marched into Belgium. My aunt had died the year before. She had never liked the place, not after what had happened there. And when I came to stay for a school holiday or the like, she always insisted that I lock my bedroom door. She’d come, after she thought I was asleep, to test it.” He drank a little of his tea and grimaced. It was still too hot. “Why am I telling you all this?”

“Because you haven’t been able to tell anyone else,” I suggested. “Not if you wanted to sell the property. How did they die, the Caswells? Was it illness, as I’d expected?”

“They were murdered. All three of them. In cold blood, in what my aunt always referred to as the drawing room. It was shut off. I wasn’t allowed to go in there. I doubt
she
ever used it. But then she was elderly when she came to Petersfield, and she probably had no taste for curiosity seekers. They came in droves the first few years, she said. And then the story was half forgotten. Until July, before the war started. One of the London papers brought up sensational murders. Jack the Ripper, that sort of thing. And they included the mysterious deaths at The Willows. There’s a brook across the back of the property with willows along the banks. Very pretty in the spring. Long pale green fronds dipping down to the water. There were horses then, and they spent much of their time in the meadow across the brook.”

“Were the deaths so mysterious?” Simon asked.

“The man who killed them got away. Scot-free. He was never found.”

“And there was no motive?”

“The Caswells were upstanding members of the community. You could ask anyone and they would tell you the same.”

“Was it a random killing? Or did the murderer know the family?” I asked.

The chaplain absently took one of the sandwiches when I passed the plate to him. He was a lonely man, tormented by a responsibility beyond his powers to cope, and there was a permanent frown between his eyes. I wondered if the house really disturbed him so much or if it was a means to put aside what he’d seen in France. But that was a question I couldn’t ask.

“God knows,” he replied. “I don’t think anyone else did, even at the time. I asked my uncle once if he knew anything about what had happened, but he didn’t. They were shot, point-blank range. They didn’t have time to duck or run out of the room. My uncle said that even after he’d moved in, you could still see the stains in the carpet. He got rid of it. Burned it in the back garden.”

“Yes, the only thing to be done,” I agreed. “I’m surprised he was willing to live in the house.”

“He had just retired. And he wanted to leave London. I don’t think he asked my aunt what her thoughts were in the matter. But then he was a doctor, he’d seen death firsthand. As have I. My aunt hadn’t. I think she must have been afraid every day she lived there.”

I thought of the housekeeper, his cousin, who was there now. “Does someone live in the house full-time? If you’re selling up, surely you’d need to have someone to answer the door and show prospective buyers around.”

“My cousin is here for a month. I gave the estate agent a month to sell it. Then I have to go back to France. My leave will be up.”

“Were you wounded?” I asked, gesturing to the sling.

But he shook his head. “Not—wounded.”

I guessed then that he’d been given leave before he broke under the strain of his duties. Chaplains saw men at their worst—frightened, in pain, panicked, facing death or amputation. They comforted and they supported, and they must have struggled to hold on to their own faith while they were about it.

I had finished my tea, and Simon rose to order a fresh pot. But our uninvited guest seemed to come to himself as Simon moved.

“I’m so sorry,” he said, stumbling to his feet as well. “I shouldn’t have come here. I shouldn’t have told you all that I have. It was wrong of me. I don’t even know you.”

Simon had given his name when we encountered this man by the house gates. Now I said, “My name is Crawford, Elizabeth Crawford. And you are—?”

But he was staring at me again, this time as if I’d suddenly grown two heads. “Crawford?”

“Yes—”

“That was the name of the officer who wrote to my uncle. From India. He told my uncle that the man Scotland Yard was searching for had died in some pass or other out there. That there was nothing more to be done. I found the letter in my uncle’s desk, after his death. He always believed that the Army had lied about what happened to the murderer. I’ve seen it for myself, they protect their own. If you’re any relation of that officer, then you ought to be ashamed of what he did. That killer should have been brought back, tried, and hanged. That would have finished the matter in everyone’s eyes. It would have gone a long way toward lifting the cloud from that house. And from my family.”

He knocked his chair over as he turned to go, and it clattered loudly in the quiet room, shocking the people sitting at the other tables. They stared, I could see their gaze turn from him to me and then to Simon.

Simon, infuriated by the man’s outburst, started after him as he marched self-righteously toward the door.

I caught Simon’s arm. “Let him go,” I said quietly. “It doesn’t matter.”

But I knew it did. The man had assailed the Colonel Sahib’s honor, and by extension, the honor of the regiment, and insulted me as well.

The door to the inn slammed shut. I could just hear footsteps walking unevenly away, as if the chaplain were drunk.

I could feel the muscles in Simon’s arm where my fingers held him back. They were taut, hard as iron. I didn’t know what Simon might do to the man, cleric or not. And so I held on.

And then he was sitting down, after lifting the fallen chair from the floor and setting it back where it belonged at the other table.

By that time Simon had himself under control again. “Your great-great-grandmother couldn’t have sorted him out any better,” he said, smiling. But it hadn’t reached his eyes, that smile.

My great-great-grandmother had danced the night away in Belgium, keeping up a pretense that all was well, while her husband and his regiment marched to stop Napoleon at a place called Waterloo. Keeping the townspeople and any spies from guessing where the English had gone.

We didn’t linger. After a moment Simon got up and paid for our tea, his face grim. There was a brief exchange of words with our waiter, and then Simon was back, collecting me.

And we walked out of the inn, back to the motorcar.

Simon didn’t speak until we’d been on the road north for nearly an hour.

“Gates,” he said then. “His name is Gates.”

And that was all he said until we had reached Somerset and he had seen me safely inside the house. I heard him drive my motorcar around to the shed, and then could follow him in my mind’s eye, through the back garden, along the path that crossed the wood, and down the lane to his own cottage.

But I couldn’t help but wonder if that’s what he did. As angry as he was, he might have walked until he was calm enough to sleep.

It had been at my request that we’d gone to Petersfield. I hadn’t left well enough alone.

My sensible self reminded me that I could hardly have anticipated running into Reverend Gates.

Still, I went to bed carrying a large case of guilt with me.

Chapter Seven

T
he next morning, before I was quite awake, Simon was at the door, asking Iris to tell me that he was waiting for me.

I threw on clothes and went down, expecting to find him in the same dark mood of last night.

But he wasn’t; he was standing in the dining room, lifting the covers on the sideboard, then helping himself to eggs, toast, and a rasher of bacon.

“Good morning,” he said with more cheer than I felt.

“Good morning,” I answered, pouring myself a cup of tea.

“I’m here to apologize. I was hardly a pleasant companion yesterday.”

“It was hardly a pleasant journey,” I retorted. “I spent most of the night wishing I’d never set foot in Petersfield.”

“Yes. I understand. But it’s done, Bess. We must close the door and go on.”

Perversely, given the opportunity to do just that, I found myself resisting. I said, “I don’t know what more we can do.”

“Precisely my point.”

And so we spent my last day taking a picnic to Glastonbury Tor.

We had finished our sandwiches and were putting things back into the basket when Simon said, out of the blue, “Bess, do you remember when you were a little girl and Cinnamon went missing?”

I was instantly transported back to that moment of discovery—when I came down the stairs to find my little spaniel not in his bed, not in the house, not even in the garden. Nowhere, in fact, that I looked. Frantic, I went to Simon, for my father was away, and we searched everywhere. I was convinced that one of the grooms had taken him, out of spite for a dressing-down he’d incurred on my account. In the end, we found the dog in the stables, cowering in a dark corner, terrified of the mare looming above him. She was an even-tempered mare, not at all likely to hurt him, but he didn’t know that. He knew only that he’d wandered where he didn’t belong and was now about to get his comeuppance. When Simon brought him to me, the spaniel lavished kisses on my face until my chin was red, and never strayed out an open door again. Afterward that groom came to me and swore he had not touched the spaniel, and even when I told him I believed him, he didn’t believe me. Six months later he left our employ and went to work for a neighbor.

“I do, very well.” I shielded my eyes from the sun and looked up at Simon. “What on earth brought Cinnamon to mind?”

“Petersfield,” he said slowly. “Those murders were ten years ago, Bess. They should be ancient history as far as the people involved are concerned. But the sexton went to find Reverend Gates to tell him that we were poking around in the churchyard. And Gates was almost beside himself because he was afraid our raking up of the past would surely put paid to any hope of selling the house.”

“Yes, I remember.”

“Scotland Yard came to Petersfield and scoured the town and the outlying houses and farms looking for the Caswell family’s killer. With no luck. Then someone reported seeing Wade in the vicinity, and the Yard went after him. But Wade had already left for India, and the inquiry was passed on to the Army. The Yard could do no more, Wade was beyond their reach.”

“That’s true.” I nodded, quick to see where Simon was going.

“And so as far as the village is concerned, there was no conclusion to the case. The inquest most likely ended with an open verdict, person or persons unknown. Wade was in India, fled from the MFP, and was never brought to trial. Whether he was guilty or not was never determined. The case was simply closed. And that village was left to wonder if the Yard had got it right—or if there was still a murderer lurking in their midst.”

“Scars that haven’t healed,” I agreed.

“Yes. Exactly that. I found myself wondering if Gates even suspected his uncle might have had a hand in it. A man looking to leave London for the country, and here’s the perfect house, suddenly handed to him in a will. It would be interesting to know just why the uncle was eager to retire. I expect Gates must be aware of something in his uncle’s past that he doesn’t want to examine too carefully.”

“I remember when Cinnamon went missing, I was ready to blame the neighbors’ mastiff, to accuse that groom, to be angry with the maid who left the door to the gardens standing wide, even to blame the bustards down in the wood on the other side of the village. Anyone. Anything. Because imagining what had happened to my pet was more horrible than finding out the truth.”

Cinnamon had lived to a ripe old age, of course, none the worse for his adventure. But I could understand the fears and suspicion that must have swirled around Petersfield in the aftermath of such a terrible crime.

Simon carried the picnic basket to the motorcar while I shook and folded the picnic rug.

“And then when a newspaper brought it all up again four years ago, it just served to make everyone anxious again,” I added as I handed him the rug.

“All the more reason not to go wandering about there on your own. Promise me.”

“Yes, that makes sense,” I said. “Since it will probably have spread through the town that I’m a Crawford, and my father was responsible for losing Lieutenant Wade. At least in their eyes, not knowing the whole story.”

“Absolutely.”

I sighed as I settled myself into my seat, glancing back over my shoulder at the long shadow the Tor cast over the hillside. “I’m glad my father doesn’t know. He did all he could.”

“I was there,” Simon said harshly as he turned the crank. “I know it for a fact.”

I
left for London the next morning, with Simon driving me to the station. In my kit I had freshly laundered and pressed uniforms, thanks to Iris, and a small jug of honey for my tea, which Cook had tucked in the basket along with sandwiches to speed me on my way.

“I’ve missed seeing my parents,” I said as we waited for my train to come in.

“They’ll be sad they missed you.”

And then my train roared into the station with vast clouds of steam hanging in the damp air. Simon put me aboard and I was soon on my way back to France.

It was happenstance. My sharing a cabin with a Sister from Haslemere on the crossing. I’d met her before—in fact we’d worked together in 1917 for about two months off and on. Her name was Molly Fullerton, the daughter of a doctor. She was a very fine nursing Sister, and I’d shared a tent with her for a fortnight.

We caught up on news, asked each other about patients we’d attended, and talked about our recent leave. Hers had been longer than mine, and she had seen her younger sister married to a solicitor who had just been invalided out of the Army. The bride had contrived a sling for his arm that matched her wedding gown, and he had come down the aisle to applause.

“They’ll be very happy,” Molly told me, smiling and nodding. “I couldn’t be happier for her myself. I’ve never seen two people so in love.”

It wasn’t until we were about to disembark, our kits already collected, that I thought to ask.

“Haslemere isn’t far from Petersfield, is it?”

“No, not far at all. We sometimes went there on market day. My mother likes one of the farm loaves the baker there makes.”

“I was in Petersfield two days ago. A friend was interested in a property for sale just outside the town, only he was told there was a mystery about a triple murder in that very house some ten years earlier. You were too young to remember anything about it, I’m sure. But your father might, and I could set my friend’s mind at ease. The present owner was evasive about it—he hadn’t lived there at the time, of course, that might explain his unwillingness to discuss the past. He probably knew as little as anyone did.”

“That’s intriguing,” Molly exclaimed. “I knew nothing about it. What was the family’s name?”

“Caswell, I believe. The house is The Willows.”

“Next time I write I’ll ask Papa about the murders. Three people, you say?”

“So we were told.”

“I shouldn’t care to live in a house where murder had been done.” She shivered. “I can understand your friend’s reluctance to proceed.”

I had lied to her, although a part of what I’d told her was true. Enough to support the lie. As we disembarked, I found myself hoping she’d forget my request before she wrote next to her father.

After that I was too busy to dwell on Molly or the Caswell family or anything else. People were beginning to think that an end to the war was possible. After so many years of fighting, of wounded and dying and dead, no one seemed to trust the rumors. And certainly the fighting as far as I could tell was still as heavy, and we were seeing as many wounded as ever. I couldn’t help but think that if there was to be peace anytime soon, how cruel it was for men to go on suffering and dying unnecessarily. It was depressing, and I couldn’t shake that sense of waste as I tended my patients.

I wasn’t prepared to encounter the Reverend Gates again. Late one evening as dusk was falling I saw him at a distance, speaking to the wounded still lying on stretchers at our forward aid station, and I wondered why he had been sent back to France, given his troubled state of mind. Had he felt he had to be here, drawn by the need to serve, to prove himself, or had the Army deemed him fit, looking only at the outward man? His sling at least was gone.

When I saw him again half an hour later, I noticed his face was haggard, his eyes tormented. But his voice was steady as he offered comfort to the men, as if it belonged to someone else, not the exhausted man going from patient to patient.

And then I lost track of him, distracted by the severity of the wounds I was seeing—shrapnel—and then by a familiar voice coming out of the darkness.

It was Sergeant Larimore nursing a sliver of shrapnel in his hand. It had festered, and it was hurting. He must have seen me working with several of the walking wounded, for the first inkling I had of his presence was the soft but distinctive cry of a kookaburra bird. I turned toward the sound, and with a grin he came to take his place in the line before me, to wait his turn.

I was always happy to see this cheeky Australian. He had helped me once when I needed help desperately, and I was fond of him. Dangerous to care about anyone in wartime, but still . . .

When I’d finished with the patient before him and turned his way, Sergeant Larimore smiled. “No one told me you were at this aid station. I’d have come along two days ago.”

“You should have come anyway. Look at that hand. It must be twice its normal size. And swelling like that is dangerous. Here, let me see.” As I took his large hand in mine, I could just pick out the black speck that was the shard of a shell, and all around it the flesh was puffy and red. It was a very good thing, I thought, that he was a big man, or this wound could have passed through the palm and the back of the hand as well. He could even have lost the use of it, if nerves were damaged, muscles torn.

I found tweezers and brought out the bit of shell, showing it to him. He hadn’t made a sound as I worked, but now he whistled. “All because of that tiny mite? I shall have to give up all hope of a VC.”

“A Victoria Cross is only given for gallantry above and beyond the call of duty. Not for a wound, however swollen,” I told him as I cleaned out the infection and shook septic powder over it.

“I was mentioned in dispatches a fortnight ago,” he said buoyantly, that irrepressible glint in his eyes.

“Oh, yes? As the biggest troublemaker this side of Adelaide?” I asked, bandaging his hand.

He laughed. “You’re a lass after my own heart, Sister.”

I was sorely tempted to ask him to help me find Lieutenant Wade—if he even existed. Sergeant Larimore had come to my aid before when I needed to find information quickly. The battlefield had its own way of passing news, as people’s paths crossed behind the lines. That could have been how the Subedar had been found out and killed. I didn’t want Sergeant Larimore to meet the same fate on my account.

He looked down at me. “What’s the matter, lass? Is there anything I can do? Shoot a few dozen Hun for you? Win the war single-handed so you can have a good night’s sleep?”

I had to smile. “Yes, win the war. It’s lasted far too long.”

I left him there while I went to empty the basin full of bloody water, and that’s when I came face-to-face with Reverend Gates.

He saw me first, and before I could even greet him, he said, his voice shrill and carrying, causing heads to turn, “Are you pursuing me?”

I’d already taken note of how worn down he was, and I realized now that he was living on nerves alone.

“I’ve been at this station for some time,” I answered him. “How are you, Chaplain Gates?”

“Well enough, no thanks to you. The people who wished to look at The Willows backed out. Did you talk to them? Did you tell them anything?” As he finished, his gaze traveled beyond me, and I was aware that someone had come to stand just behind me. But I didn’t turn.

“No, why should I? I didn’t even know their names. How could I?”

“But you did,” he said vehemently. “Mr. and Mrs. Davies.”

I remembered then. He’d mistaken us for someone else when he saw Simon and me coming down the drive from the house. It had completely flown my mind.

“I have no reason to prevent you or anyone else from selling your own property. I only came to Petersfield because I was never told precisely what happened there.”

“No, you wouldn’t have been. It was hushed up, wasn’t it, to shield the regiment? I tell you, I don’t believe that Lieutenant died in the Khyber Pass. I think he’s still in the Army, protected by your father.”

I stood very still. That was far too close to the truth, that Lieutenant Wade was still with the Army. Only not with our regiment.

“I can’t imagine why you should think so,” I answered finally, testing the waters. “Surely the killer was someone closer to Petersfield.”

“His body was never brought in, was it? For all the world to see.”

“You don’t simply ride into that part of the Frontier and retrieve a body,” I said sharply. “You’d take your life in your hands, and very likely end as dead as he was. One man isn’t worth the lives of an entire company.”

“If it was so bloody dangerous,” Gates replied, “then why did
he
go there? He would have been committing suicide, wouldn’t he? And he wasn’t stupid enough to do that. No, it was covered up, the whole business. An excuse you thought everyone back in England would find easy to believe.”