An Unwilling Accomplice (21 page)

She took that to heart, and shyly thanked me for my understanding.

We watched her until she had gone back indoors and disappeared down the long hall.

I said to Simon with a sigh, “We got nowhere. On the other hand, if we kept Sister Hammond from making a grave mistake, it was worth the time and trouble.”

“She means well. But the road to hell is paved with good intentions,” he responded.

It was too late to drive on, and so after a brief stop for petrol, we found an hotel in Shrewsbury, one with a view of the abbey ruins.

I sat up late, pulling a chair to the window, watching the moon reach its zenith, then start to sink toward the west. I wished I could put my finger on the problem that was vexing us. But Maddie was holding his tongue, and Sister Hammond couldn’t be relied on to handle whatever it was sensibly.

Someone was walking down the dark street below the hotel. I realized all at once that it was Simon.

For some reason he’d been unable to sleep as well.

C
HAPTER
T
HIRTEEN

I
HAD NO
real excuse to go in search of Captain Cartwright.

He most certainly couldn’t be Sergeant Wilkins, and I couldn’t see that he’d have anything useful to tell us about the man, even if the sergeant had served under him. But I
could
strike off the letter to Sister Hammond, if I learned that he’d sent it. But how had he come to know Maddie, if he lived in Derbyshire?

Still, short of knocking at the door of that lovely house tucked into the fold of a hill and demanding to speak to the Major, to make certain he wasn’t Sergeant Wilkins after all, we’d run into a blank wall.

Was it a hoax? Sister Hammond’s letter from Upper Dysoe? If so it was a cruel one. But again, who had known where to find her?

The next morning over breakfast, to my astonishment it was Simon who suggested we drive to Bakewell.

“You won’t be satisfied until you see Cartwright for yourself. We must keep an eye to your leave. There’s that to consider. I’m all right, just now.”

“I could go to Inspector Stephens, at the Yard. It would be easy for him to get to the bottom of it. But Sister Hammond will be questioned again. And they’ll come to speak to Maddie. The Cartwrights as well. I know what it’s like, being under suspicion.” I hesitated. “What if Sergeant Wilkins wrote that letter. Begging for her help. Why would Maddie protect him?”

“He just might. Depending on what tale Wilkins spun him.” He asked the woman serving us to remove his empty plate. “There’s another problem. If Sister Hammond receives a second letter, and it appears to be more desperate than the first, she might well find a way to reach Upper Dysoe. Or at the very least try. God knows what she’ll find herself caught up in.”

“Well, then, Bakewell, it is,” I agreed. “Simon, I didn’t expect Maddie to lie. I was quite angry with him at the time. A word from him and all of this could have been over.”

“It’s odd that everything we’d discovered—the bay horse’s whereabouts, the long-distance hauling lorry, and now the letter to Sister Hammond—all lead us to Upper Dysoe in one way or another. It’s possible that Wilkins is somewhere nearby. And if his wound is troubling him, he’d seek out someone like Maddie, not a doctor who might report him.”

We set out for Bakewell. It was interesting to see that by the time we’d reached the little town of Biddington we’d lost those unique thimblelike hills, finding ourselves in more rolling countryside. Simon drove in silence for some time. Then he said, “That cluster of hills where the Dysoes are has had an uninteresting history. I looked it up, you know. That’s to say, the Dysoes and Windward escaped most of the horrors of war from the time of the Conqueror onward. Isolated, difficult terrain, perfect setting for an ambush. No great abbeys, no castles, nothing to loot or burn, just a handful of small hamlets connected by a single winding road. Much like Cheddar Gorge in a way. Only one way in or out.”

“Which makes it an ideal place for a wanted man to hide,” I pointed out. “There aren’t any newspapers to carry stories about Sergeant Wilkins’s flight, if ever the story makes it into print. And even if someone heard about his desertion on market day in Biddington, they’d hardly think of looking in the Dysoes. A stranger would stand out.”

“Unless he doesn’t appear to be a stranger. Like the Major.”

“Which reminds me,” I said, “are you certain Diana told you the Lieutenant’s name was Everard? Not Evering?”

“The connection was clear. Even so, I asked her to spell it.”

But perhaps Diana only thought she’d remembered the Lieutenant’s name.

It was a long drive. We’d had an early start, but it was well after dark when we pulled up in front of the Rutland Arms Hotel.

There was no one behind the desk in Reception, but there was a small silver bell, which Simon rang.

Shortly afterward, a middle-aged man came out from the back and asked if we were looking for directions or accommodations.

Simon arranged for two rooms and went to see to the motorcar while the man at Reception carried my kit up the long elegant staircase to a very pretty room. He drew the curtains for me and asked if I’d care for tea, late as it was. I accepted gratefully. When he came back with the tray, Simon was going down the passage to his own room. He suggested meeting at eight the next morning for breakfast, and I agreed.

Tea was just the thing, and I slept well. When I went down in the morning, through the open door I could see the most wonderful view out toward what must be peaks of the Dales beyond. The small dining room was nearly empty when I came in, and Simon joined me shortly thereafter.

He’d already spoken to the morning desk clerk. The Cartwrights lived on the estate of Chatsworth House.

“I didn’t expect it to be that easy,” I replied, selecting a slice of toast and trying not to think how nice it would be with butter.

“It wasn’t, actually. The clerk was reluctant to tell me. Miss Cartwright, the cousin, moved away from Bakewell after the Captain came to live with her. She took an older, smaller house on the Chatsworth estate, one that apparently had belonged to her father. It was empty, and she felt it was safer.”

“Safer?” I asked warily.

“It appears that Captain Cartwright wasn’t as well as Sister Hammond led us to believe. Or else he regressed in his cousin’s care. Whatever the reason, he had a tendency to wander, and it made others in town uneasy. Miss Cartwright closed up the house and took her cousin with her. Apparently someone on the estate took pity on them and let them live there for her father’s sake.”

“Oh, dear.”

“Precisely.”

We finished our breakfast and went out to the motorcar. It was a pleasant drive toward the Chatsworth estate, and we took one of the farm gates into the property. I’d never realized how vast a holding it was. We covered what seemed like several miles, looping over the rolling, hilly landscape, glimpsing the great house in the far distance, half hidden by trees, and finally discovering a stone cottage set in a fold of the land, a small barn and other outbuildings behind it.

A weathered sign just in front read
CARTWRIGHT
.

We drew up and walked to the door. At Simon’s suggestion, I was the one to use the knocker.

No one came at first, but I had the feeling the house wasn’t empty. And so I persisted, knocking again and then a third time.

Finally a woman who looked to be about thirty came to the door. She had dark red hair and a very pretty face, but there were circles under her eyes and a thinness about her that came from worry.

“I’ve told you before,” she said, speaking to my uniform rather than to me, “I have had no news. I don’t know where he could be.”

“Miss Cartwright? I’m so sorry. My name is Crawford, Bess Crawford. I’m not here officially. We were in Bakewell, staying at the Rutland Arms. Sister Hammond, who was the nurse in charge of your cousin in the Dorset hospital, asked us to stop and say hello. She still remembers him.”

She was looking over my shoulder, staring at the motorcar and then at Simon. “We? Who is
he
?”

“Sergeant-Major Brandon. A friend. He’s—er—taking me back to London.”

I thought she would not ask us in. But after a moment she opened the door wider. “Come inside then. I’ve got to talk to someone. And Sister Hammond was very kind to my cousin.”

Simon and I followed Miss Cartwright into the front room of the cottage. It was comfortable, the furniture chosen well for its dimensions, neither large nor heavy. She gestured to chairs by the cold hearth. The room seemed equally cold, and I had a feeling that Miss Cartwright was now wishing she’d turned us away.

I said gently, “Would you prefer that we leave? We had no intention of intruding.”

“Harry isn’t here,” she said bluntly. “He hasn’t been for five or six weeks. I went up to the house one day to thank them for the fruit the family had sent down, and when I came back, Harry wasn’t here.” She cleared her throat. “I sounded the alarm, of course, and we sent out search parties. The estate is a large one, as you may have gathered coming in. I didn’t think Harry could have got very far. Not in that short length of time. But somehow he had. The search went beyond the bounds of the estate, and still no word of him. No one had seen him. I could only think that he’d hidden somewhere until nightfall, or perhaps found someone passing down the main road to give him a lift. It’s farfetched, but there you are. What else were we to think?”

That he might have died somewhere and hadn’t yet been found? I couldn’t say so to this grieving woman. It would be too cruel.

“I’m so sorry,” I said, meaning it in many senses of the word.

“Harry can’t cope in a town he doesn’t know. Where no one knows him. He can’t always remember where he was going or why. People believe he’s the worse for drink and send for the police. But he doesn’t drink, you see. I keep hoping someone will see he’s ill and take him to a doctor instead. I have no idea what identification he might have had in his pocket that day, or how much money. We didn’t need either of them out here. He could be begging on the
street
.” She reached for a handkerchief and blew her nose to hide her tears. “I’m catching a chill, I think,” she said, angry with herself for her own weakness. “It’s just—I think of him out there alone, lost, cold, hungry, nowhere to go, no one to turn to. And I feel so
guilty
.”

“I don’t see that it could be your fault,” Simon told her.

“But it
is
. When everyone complained in Bakewell, I decided to take him away. That’s why we came here. Where no one would be disturbed. I did try to keep him from wandering. I’d be sure he was asleep before I myself went to bed. And I’d be sure to be up before he woke. When I went to market I came home again as quickly as I could. And still he would slip away. Then someone would come to the door or would approach me while I was out searching for him, and tell me he’d frightened their custom away, coming into the shops, or that he’d frightened the children on their way to school, or he’d make their dog bark in the middle of the night, trying to come through their gate. It was never ending, the complaints. But I had to sleep sometime or have a bath or buy food—there was no one else to watch him. They told me he was so much better at the hospital there in Dorset, that he was ready to take up his old life. But he
wasn’t
. He was still quite fragile, and I didn’t have the
training
to help him or even help me care for him.”

“I doubt if training would have mattered,” I told her. “A hospital specializing in head injuries locks its doors, for that very reason.”

Captain Cartwright sounded very much like the Major, who wandered away and shot at people and took goats out to the high road.

“And I locked mine,” she was saying. “But he would find the key or break a window or wander off from the garden when I went in to fetch his tea or his lunch or a glass of water. I asked him what it was he wanted, where he wished to be, if not with me. But he couldn’t tell me. He’d simply beg my pardon for worrying me and promise it wouldn’t happen again. If I’d stayed in Bakewell, at least someone would have found him sooner or later, and brought him home or sent for me. Out here, there’s nothing. No one but the estate people, and they’re too busy to keep an eye out day and night. I’m a guest here, on sufferance. And so I tried to cope. For all I know they grew tired of bringing him back, and decided to let him go his way. I can’t blame them.”

“What is the Captain’s background?” I asked. “Did he live somewhere else, is he trying to reach a home he remembers?”

“He grew up in Sheffield. But it wasn’t a happy life there. His father was a cold-natured man, no warmth at all, and I think that’s why Harry was eager to join the Army as soon as he could. He trained as an officer, and then the war came along. I can’t think there’s anything to draw him back to Sheffield, now his mother is dead. I’m his only relative.”

“Could he walk far? Forty miles or more?”

“I doubt it. Not in a straight line, at any rate. He’d have a blackout, you see, and forget where it was he was going. Or where it was he’d come from.”

“Most of the wounded are eager to return to France. To their comrades, their friends, the men who serve under them. It’s something war does, it brings soldiers closer than brothers. Did your cousin talk about that?” Simon asked her.

“I don’t know that Harry quite remembered the war. He never speaks of it. Never mentioned anyone he’d served with. It was as if the war no longer existed in his memory. Oddly enough, he did remember Sister Hammond. A time or two after I’d first brought him home, he called me by her name.”

I took the letter to Sister Hammond from my apron pocket, and passed it to Miss Cartwright.

“Does this handwriting look familiar to you? Could it be your cousin’s?”

She read it through, her face suddenly drawn, inward-looking. And I was prepared to hear her tell me she knew who had written it.

Yet she shook her head as she passed the letter back to me. “It isn’t Harry’s fist at all. Poor man, whoever he may be. I hope you find him and can help him.”