An Unwilling Accomplice (38 page)

Maddie shook his head. “He hasn’t sought my help.” He was working with the sergeant’s leg now, poking and probing. The man’s eyes were closed, and I couldn’t judge how much of our conversation he’d heard. “I don’t know how he’s been able to walk. Look at this.”

I did. The leg had healed, but improperly, newly knitted muscles forced to work too soon. The scar itself was inflamed, a ragged line of puffed red flesh. He would need weeks in hospital before he could stand trial. How on earth had he been able to walk miles in such unbearable pain? It must have taken every bit of his will and determination just to overcome the weariness of struggling day in and day out.

“Do you by any chance know the man who is staying with Mrs. Chatham and her sister?” I went on. “It was he who struck down the sergeant, here.”

Sergeant Wilkins moved abruptly, distracting Maddie, who was trying to clean around the leg scar and urged him to be still.

So much for questions.

Washing my hands, I went to stand by Simon. He gestured, and I stepped outside where we couldn’t be overheard.

“We should start for London tonight, if he can travel. Meanwhile, I’m going to the hut. His uniform may be there, and anything else he will need.” He handed me the pistol. “If you need to use it, wound him. I want to talk to him.”

So did I.

I put the pistol in my pocket as Simon set out for the hut, leaving the motorcar in the yard.

Maddie had finished putting the dressing on the sergeant’s chin and done what he could about the leg. He came outside, leaving his patient for a moment, and crossed to where I was standing.

“You brought this man to me in ropes. Will you tie him up again when he leaves? If he is nauseated with this concussion, you must be sure he isn’t left to choke on his own vomit.”

“We will have to restrain him. He’s a soldier who walked away from a London hotel and has been missing for quite a while. There’s every reason to believe he’s already killed one man. I think tonight he intended to kill another. Scotland Yard has been hunting him. We were just lucky enough to find him.” I hesitated. Then I added, “I’m on leave now. But he’s the reason I couldn’t return to France for a time. It was thought I was his accomplice. My reputation has suffered. Unfairly so.”

“You thought the Major was the man you sought,” he pointed out. “Perhaps you are wrong again.”

“I don’t think so. Once I spoke to the Major, once I could see him for myself, I knew my error. This time I’m right. The Major has been unhappy at Windward, and Miss Neville refuses to listen, and so he was begging Sister Hammond to help him escape what he views as his prison, however handsome it may be. That complicated my search for Sergeant Wilkins.”

And then Maddie surprised me. “I have known Miss Neville and her father for a very long time. They were too much alike, always at loggerheads. Strong-minded, stubborn, unwilling to listen to reason if it didn’t march with what they wished to do. It brings pain and suffering in its wake, this insistence on going one’s own way.”

I glanced over my shoulder to be sure Sergeant Wilkins was resting quietly. He appeared to be asleep, one arm flung across his eyes, as if to shut out the light. Or the present. Then I said, “Are you telling me that the Major doesn’t belong at Windward?”

“Possibly. She wants a pliable husband. He wants a wife, not a prison warder. No one has spoken of love. Do you intend to report his recent wounds to the Army? Miss Neville will be seen as negligent.”

Was he asking me to do what he himself could not? Or simply speaking to me as doctor to Sister?

“I don’t know. Regardless of what you may think, I didn’t come here to meddle.” Changing the subject, I said, “When we caught up with Sergeant Wilkins tonight we were on our way to Chatham Hall. We believed the sergeant intended to kill the man staying there. We won’t be able to go there now. Would you please tell them that there is no danger? That we’ve caught this man?”

Maddie frowned. “It’s a long way for me to travel on foot. I’ll find a way to see that this message is delivered.”

The miller’s son? I stood there, looking in the direction of the mill and the hut beyond, thinking how much Sergeant Wilkins had disrupted the lives of people in three villages. And neither Simon nor I had intended to do any harm, but we had, because we came here with the intention of searching. I went back to watching the sergeant.

Maddie said, “Captain Chatham was not an extraordinary man. Kind and good and caring. That’s all, nothing more. His widow has turned him into a saint. She sits in his room below his portrait and insists he was the bravest of the brave, nothing short of Sir Galahad. It’s not healthy. For herself or Miss Percy—”

Maddie broke off, staring fixedly at something over my shoulder.

I turned to see what had distracted him.

The sky in that direction seemed oddly paler. I too stared, thinking that it was far too early for the sunrise this time of year, and besides, I wasn’t facing east.

Abruptly the first flame shot high into the dark sky, then another leapt after it, and another.

Fire—

Maddie said, “My God. The mill is burning. I must find the Warrens straightaway. If you will stay with my patient?”

He was already heading for the road.

“No, wait,” I called after him. “I don’t believe it’s the mill.” But he was already on his way.

It was the hut, surely—and where was Simon? He wouldn’t have fired it, there was no reason.

I spun around, heading for the cottage door. I dared not leave Wilkins alone. If he escaped us now, how would we ever find him again?

A shot rang out.
Revolver,
I thought madly—the Major shooting at shadows? Yet I knew it couldn’t be him.

I came rushing through the door. Wilkins was on one elbow, staring at me, alarm in his eyes, even as he shook his head to clear it. “Who’s firing? I’ve got to—” He frowned, losing his train of thought. “I need—
help
me,”
he managed to say.

“It’s nothing,” I said, catching up the rope that Simon had left coiled beneath the table.

Before he could guess what I was doing, I wrapped it around his hands, then around his body twice, binding him to the table and tying off the ends around one of the wooden legs, well out of his reach. Makeshift, but I didn’t think in his present condition that he could free himself. And the table was too heavy to drag with him.

I could hear the frantic ringing of the fire bell at the pub as I raced for the door and cut across the yard, heading for the flour mill. The fastest way there from Maddie’s cottage was through the shops and cottages across the road. My sense of direction was good enough to take me over low walls, past windows, through gardens—several dogs, roused from their sleep by the bell, barked at me, and one tried to follow me a short way—until I found the bridge over the stream that was overflow from the pond and the mill. From that point, I made my way around the mill, through deepest shadow. The night sky was red and gold, flames reflecting against the night haze, while the mill and the large adjacent shed seemed to be no more than black silhouettes.

Another shot. And it was much nearer.

I reached the corner of the shed, already debating whether to break out across the mill yard, leaving the shadows, and make a dash toward the rough grass that led on to the hut. But would I become a perfect target? I might even put Simon at greater risk trying to protect me.

I collided with a solid immovable wall, my breath coming out in a long hiss.

I hadn’t seen anyone there, it was too dark. I hadn’t expected anyone there.

Before I could recover, Simon whispered, “What the hell are you doing here?”

I didn’t answer, just shoved the pistol into his hand. In his turn he passed a bulky, dusty sack to me, almost making me sneeze as I caught it in my arms.

Behind us in the village we could hear men shouting and running in this direction.

“They’ll be here any minute. Go back, toward the bridge. Tell them the fire isn’t here. He’ll shoot the first person he sees.
Quickly
.”

I set down the sack and hurried back toward the bridge. Another shot, and I could swear it was by the shed. Where I’d just come from . . .

It was followed almost at once by the sound of the little pistol. I knew that sound, I knew too how short a range it had.

And someone cried out in pain.

Simon—or his attacker?

There was no time to find out. I reached the bridge and stopped the oncoming rush of men, buckets and axes in hand, bent on saving the mill.

Behind me the flames seemed to be dying down. With only the shepherd’s hut to feed on, they had nowhere to go.

“It’s the shepherd’s hut,” I called. “Down the lane past the old barn. But someone is shooting—you must be careful.”

In the end, I think the only reason they heeded me was that they could see the silhouette of the mill and its outbuildings, with no sign of fire. But flour dust was quite volatile, and there was a brief argument, and questions about the revolver shots.

I heard men curse the Major, others saying he’d burned down the barn, hadn’t he?

Someone shoved his way forward, demanding to know if the sheep were in any danger. But they weren’t in the dell, I assured him, all the while wishing they would heed me and turn back, freeing me to find Simon.

The tail of the crocodile was already turning, heading for the road and the barn, and as the rest, still grumbling, threatening me with mayhem if anything happened to the mill, reluctantly followed, I didn’t wait to hear any more. I got back to the shed where I’d last seen Simon, but he wasn’t there.

It seemed to be darker now, the flames still crackling but no longer soaring high overhead, lighting the scene with that macabre glow.

In the distance I could hear a horse’s hoofbeats, trotting at first and then going into full gallop.

With great care I rounded the shed, then ran across the miller’s yard to the low wall and the stile.

Simon was coming back across it, and I asked, “Are you all right?”

“Yes. But I think I winged him.”

“But who was it? And where is he now?”

“I don’t know. He’d brought a horse. You must have heard him getting away.”

I had.

And I could think of only two places—the pub and the Neville house—where horses could be found. There must be others of course, but those I knew of. What’s more, Mrs. Chatham had none . . .

“What have you done with Wilkins?” Simon was asking. “Was it you who rang the fire bell?”

“That was Maddie,” I answered.

“My God, he’ll be gone.”

“I don’t think so. I tied Wilkins to the table.”

Simon laughed helplessly. We hurried toward the mill. Behind us we could hear the first of the village men reaching the hut, shouting to each other in the distance.

“Duty first,” I said, more than a little put out by his laughter. But that was the aftermath of worry.

We retrieved the sack I’d left by the shed, found the little bridge—it was quite dark by now—and made our way to the road.

We arrived to find Maddie untying the rope around Sergeant Wilkins, and the sergeant, paler than before, demanding to know what the shooting was all about.

“An arsonist,” Simon told him shortly, and set the sack to one side. “Your uniform and other belongings,” he added in explanation.

As he turned back, I saw blood on his sleeve, and I said, “You were hit.”

“As a matter of fact, he missed his aim because I hurled the sack at him just before he fired. It isn’t very deep.” He turned to Maddie. “We must go. Will you keep him here?” He held out the little pistol. “It’s urgent, or I wouldn’t ask.”

Maddie took the pistol without demur. I’d expected him to refuse to take it. What’s more, he handled it easily.

I had the fleetingly thought that he must have been a military surgeon at some point. It all fit together too easily—his knowledge, his steadiness, and now that telltale familiarity with a weapon that wasn’t the usual country shotgun.

Simon was already turning the crank, and we drove out of Maddie’s yard with speed, avoiding questions from clusters of women asking what was happening.

“Why was the hut burned down?”

Simon kept his eyes on the road. “He must have seen me moving around inside and took me for Wilkins. He blocked the door and set the hut afire. The wood was old, weathered, it began to burn quickly. I kicked through the rear wall and got away. He saw me in the light from the flames and it was touch and go. I made it to the mill shed when—”

We had reached the old barn.

Men were already streaming back from the fire. There wasn’t much that could be done to save the hut, and as long as the grasses hadn’t caught, spreading the blaze, there was no need for this army of firefighters.

But they weren’t heading to Upper Dysoe, as I’d expected them to. They were marching toward the gates to the Neville house. And they were angry.

The gates weren’t locked. And so they shoved them wide and poured down the drive in a stream, buzzing like a swarm of bees as they encouraged one another.

Simon swore. “They’re going after the Major.” He turned in through the gates, and using his horn, he drove through the crowd heading for the door.

Someone was already there, pounding on the wood. Someone else found the door knocker and banged it against the plate.

It was several minutes before the door opened and a frightened housekeeper, a lamp in her trembling hand, demanded to know what this was about. Her hair had been hastily pinned up and she had missed a button on her dress and another on one sleeve.

Behind her, Miss Neville was just coming down the staircase, imperiously demanding what these men thought they were about.

The wait hadn’t cooled their temper.

I had stepped out of the motorcar and pushed my way to the front, past the men in the opening.

“You!” she said, her anger rising as she spotted me in her doorway backed by an angry throng. “Are you behind this? Because if you are—”

I cut across her words. “Miss Neville, there was no way to stop them. There’s been a fire in the village, and someone was firing wildly—a revolver. They think—they believe it must have been the Major’s doing.”