A Bitter Truth (34 page)

Making our way silently around the rough wooden sides, we found a door. It was merely a blacker rectangle, standing half open, as if it had been left that way so long ago that the door had petrified in that position. A torch gave too much light. I reached into my pocket for matches, and pressed several into Simon’s palm.

It was then I heard the whimpering, like a puppy left alone in the dark.

I would have dashed inside without thinking but for Simon’s hand clamping down on my shoulder. I winced and stood still.

We waited, straining to hear the smallest sounds from inside. But there was nothing, not even the scurrying of a rat.

Simon struck a match and held it just inside.

Shadows danced about the walls, but we could see very little. Part of the upper floor had come down, half filling the ground floor.

“All right,” he said. “I’ll go first.” And lighting a second match, he stepped inside as quickly as if he were entering the tent of a suspected tribesman. I tried to see around him, but he was blocking my view. A third match, and then he said, “All clear. Watch out. There are timbers everywhere, and Willy’s body is just beyond the door.”

“And Sophie?”

“She’s on the stone. I think she’s well enough. I could see eyes peering at me.”

He flicked on his torch, the light blinding both of us, and we had to stand still until our eyes adjusted to it. As soon as I could pick out her shape, I walked over to Sophie. She opened her arms to me, and I picked her up.

“I don’t like it,” she said to me in French. “Dark.”

“Yes, darling, we’ll have you out of here quickly. Simon, she’s all right. How is Willy?”

He was bending over the man. “There’s blood on the back of his head. But he’s still breathing.”

“There’s the scarf in the motorcar. I meant it for him. We can bind his head with that. But how do we get him there?”

Simon was rummaging around now and discovered some sacks in a corner, but they were filthy and rotting.

“Lydia can take Sophie, and then I’ll be free to help you.” I stepped outside and called to her.

She refused to come at first, then stepped down from the motorcar and whimpering almost in imitation of Sophie, she made her way through the dark. When she finally reached me, she gripped my arm with anxious fingers. “Why would anyone do this to a child? I find it hard to believe.” Taking Sophie from me, she shivered as she looked down at Willy. “How did anyone manage to bring him here?”

“The station carriage horses, at a guess,” Simon answered her. “Or the motorcar.”

She started back the way she’d come, picking her footing carefully.

I watched until she reached the motorcar, and then went back to Simon. I found that he’d brought Willy around. The man was sitting up, holding his head, moaning.

“Can you walk, if we help you?” Simon asked him.

“Dizzy,” Willy said. “Sick.”

Shining Simon’s torch on the back of Willy’s head, I could see bone shining through the bloody tear in his scalp, pinkish white in the light.

“Gently. His skull may be fractured,” I warned Simon, and then bent to take Willy’s arm. “Will you try?” I asked him.

He smelled. And I wondered if there might be lice in the folds of his clothing as we supported him between us.

It took us nearly ten minutes to persuade him that he could walk. Even so, he gagged twice as we got him to his feet.

“Close your eyes,” I told him. “Let us guide you.”

And so we got him moving, slowly taking him through the gorse, stumbling and begging us to stop, once falling to his knees and refusing to stand again.

When we reached the motorcar, he put out a hand to touch it, as if uncertain that it was really there. Then he half stepped, half relapsed into the rear seat.

Five minutes later, we were on our way back to Hartfield.

I was questioning Willy, but he couldn’t remember being attacked or who had taken him to the mill. Groaning, he held his head in his hands, motion sick from the blow.

In the seat next to Simon, Lydia was asking Sophie what had happened to her, but all she would say was that the man had told her he had a cat.

I said to Simon, “How are we to prove any of this?”

“I’ll call London straightaway and get someone down here. Meanwhile, the doctor is dead. Someone ought to take Willy to the one you mentioned from Groombridge.”

I could see that Willy’s wound was bleeding profusely, already soaking through the wool scarf I’d used to bandage it.

When we came to the turning, Simon suggested taking Lydia and the child to Vixen Hill, where Margaret and Henry were waiting for news. “She’ll be safe there.”

We did that, making certain that Henry and his wife knew what to expect, and then Willy, Simon, and I headed toward Hartfield.

We stopped at the Rectory, and Mr. Smyth agreed to convey Willy to Groombridge, and his sister went with him. Mrs. Ellis had fallen into a restless sleep, and I agreed to sit with her. We managed to move Willy to the Smyth motorcar, and then Simon and I were alone, standing there in the windy High Street.

“I must put in a call to London,” he said. “They’ll send someone.”

And he was gone. I stood there in the darkness, feeling the weight of exhaustion overwhelming me. Where was Constable Bates?

Ten minutes later, Simon came back out to where I was waiting. “Bates was Halloran’s mother’s name. Her nephew, one Thomas Bates, was a constable in Cornwall before the war. Apparently he was among the missing on the Somme. Halloran must have assumed his identity, claiming a medical discharge. I expect no one here in Sussex doubted his credentials. If he conducted himself properly, there would be no reason to question them.”

“And who would look for a deserter in a village constable? The police are so shorthanded, thanks to the war. I remember Inspector Herbert complaining about that in London.”

“At any rate, the Army is sending men posthaste to help us find him and take him in charge.”

I
went back to the Rectory and found Mrs. Ellis awake and in the parlor, looking for the rector or his sister.

“What’s happened?” she asked, her face white with fear. “Don’t keep it from me!”

I took her into the kitchen and set about making tea, all the while giving her a brief account of what we had discovered.

“Oh, thank God,” she said when I’d finished. “I thought the rector might have gone because—because someone was dead.” After a moment, she went on. “You don’t know—I thought—I thought God was punishing me. Taking her from me a second time. I didn’t want her to pay for my sins.” Then, without warning, she began to cry.

“She’s safe, Mrs. Ellis,” I said. “And no harm came to her. She was a little frightened in the dark, but that was all. There’s nothing to fear.”

“I killed them, you know.” She raised her head to look at me. Tears were streaming down her face. “And when I saw Sophie, I thought God had forgiven me. But he hadn’t. I don’t deserve Sophie.”

I felt cold. “Killed whom?”

“Juliana. And then Alan. They were suffering so, and there was nothing to be done. I couldn’t watch it any longer. The doctor had told me it would be a matter of hours. He gave me laudanum to help me through the end. But I gave a little to Juliana, and she simply went to sleep. It was so quiet, so peaceful. I was so grateful. And I asked for laudanum again when Alan was dying. And I helped him through the end. You’re a nurse, have you never wished for something, anything, to end the pain of those in your charge?”

Swallowing my shock, I said, “It was wrong. You know that.”

“God forgive me, I do. That’s why I was willing to take the blame for the other deaths, I thought I could make amends.”

What to do? Did I call the police and hand this woman over to them? She had lost her husband and buried two children as well. Could it be proved that the amount of laudanum she gave her dying daughter and her dying son had speeded up their deaths? Or changed the manner of their deaths? I wasn’t a doctor, I didn’t know. Perhaps it only eased her to think so.

“Mrs. Ellis.”

“I know. I’ve told you. A nursing sister. I want a little peace, you see. I want to be punished, so that the rest of my family will be safe. Please. Help me.”

“Your family needs you. I can’t give you absolution for what you did. Nor can I hold you accountable, because I wasn’t there. I have only your word, not that of a doctor. You must make your peace in another way. Perhaps Mr. Smyth can help you.”

She broke down again, too tired to stop the tears. And I did what I could to comfort her. When she was quieter, I told her I must find Simon, to see if he or Roger had had any success explaining the situation to Inspector Rother.

“Yes, go see to it,” she said, taking my hand for a moment. “Thank you, Bess.”

I knelt by her chair. “You won’t do anything foolish?”

“No. Sadly, I don’t have the courage. But I think it helped to confess. I’ve held it in so long.”

I left her there to finish her tea, the pot beside her, and walked back to the hotel.

The first person I saw as I came through the door into Reception was Constable Bates. He was walking down the main stairs, as if he were coming from one of the rooms on the floor above. It was an ideal place to stay out of sight, with windows overlooking the street.

My first thought was,
Where is Simon?
He’d been here when I left only half an hour ago.

Chapter Nineteen

B
ates read my face even before I could speak.

Moving quickly down the remaining stairs, he was coming across Reception directly toward me. And I was all that was between him and the door. And escape.

I stayed where I was, wishing that I still had that small pistol that Simon had once given me.

The hotel clerk stepped out of the inner office, saying, “Miss Crawford?” and for an instant distracted my attention. And in that same moment, Constable Bates walked straight into me and spun me toward the desk. My ribs took the brunt of the blow, and I caught my breath with the pain. And then, with both hands gripping the edge of the desk, ignoring my ribs, I pushed myself away and turned as quickly as I could to go after him, well aware that he had nothing to lose.

Behind me the desk clerk cried, “Miss? Constable?”

I ignored him. Bates was moving briskly toward the motorcar standing in the corner of the inn yard. I thought it was Mrs. Ellis’s vehicle.

He bent to turn the crank, his eyes on me, gauging my approach. The motor caught, and he was behind the wheel in a flash. Without warning he spun it and turned toward me, gunning the motor, heading straight for me at speed.

I stood there for an instant, uncertain which way to move. And then at the last second, ignoring my ribs again, I flung myself toward the inn’s door.

He veered just in time to avoid hanging up the front wheels on the inn’s steps and kept going out the Groombridge road, toward the north.

I ran for Simon’s motorcar, just beyond where Mrs. Ellis’s vehicle had been left, and turned the crank like a madwoman. It was late enough that the road was empty, and I gave the big motorcar its head, the headlamps sweeping the road.

Someone darted out in front of me, waving, and I spun the wheel to miss hitting him, seeing Simon’s face at the last minute.

I pulled on the brake with all my strength, and the vehicle slithered to a sputtering stop, spraying stones and earth in almost a bow wave.

Simon swung himself into the vehicle, and I was able to keep the motor from stalling. Straightening us up, I went after Constable Bates as fast as I dared.

“Where were you?” I asked, not turning my head.

Simon, out of breath, said, “Arguing with Rother. I saw what happened. You shouldn’t have taken on Bates alone. He’s dangerous. He’s killed four men, counting that officer in France, and he did his best to kill Willy. He won’t stop at you.”

“He’s already tried,” I told him, and heard the low growl in his throat.

“We’ll see about friend Bates,” he said and leaned forward to watch the road. In a straightaway I could just pick out the round red rear lamp ahead of us. But I was closing the gap quickly.

“Why did Bates have to kill Dr. Tilton?” I asked. “He wasn’t at the court-martial.”

“Dr. Tilton conducted Merrit’s postmortem. He tied the two deaths together. That’s why Inspector Rother abandoned the idea of suicide, even though at first it appeared to be one. The question is, what else did Tilton find? Or what was Constable Bates afraid he’d found?”

“Inspector Rother wouldn’t tell us anything. Simon—what if he didn’t
know
? What if Dr. Tilton had told Constable Bates what he’d discovered, but Bates never passed it on because it would change the whole investigation? Yes, of course. That’s why Inspector Rother was going around in circles. If he was getting impatient—if he was on the point of speaking to the doctor himself—” The wheel jerked in my hands as we hit a deeper rut this time.

“Keep your attention on the road!”

I set my teeth, concentrating on driving. The rear lamp was brighter, sharper now.

“Should I try to stop him? Or just keep up with him for now?”

“For God’s sake, don’t use my motorcar as a battering ram. Try to run him off the road if you can.”

“Yes, all right.”

I caught up with Constable Bates finally and began to torment him. I’d seen my male friends play this game with each other—making an effort to pass, rushing up and then pulling back a little, flashing the headlamps. It was a dangerous business, but it was the only weapon I had.

And then I realized that I was making Constable Bates jittery. He could drive, but he wasn’t an experienced driver. The constant threat of us passing him on this narrow road was requiring all his coping skills, and when he veered the wrong way, trying to second-guess me, I took advantage of the small space he’d given me and sped up.

Beside me, Simon swore in Urdu, but I ignored him.

The verge of the road was only a little rougher than the unmade center with its winter ruts and holes. I bounced over low-growing gorse, gave the motor more power to deal with it, and forged ahead.

For a second I thought that Constable Bates was going to sideswipe us in his fright. But trying to watch me and manage the motorcar at the same time was too much. Suddenly he lost complete control, and the vehicle thundered wildly across a field lumpy with last summer’s crops toward a copse of trees that marked a bend in the road.

Simon yelled, “Watch yourself,” but I had the motorcar under control and began to slow for the bend, even as Constable Bates came to a grinding halt. And I thought,
That’s how George Hughes must have felt when he nearly collided with that length of tree trunk.

Simon was out the door almost before I had slowed enough to make it safe for him to find his footing. Then he was sprinting across the rough field, and I watched, holding my breath, for fear he would twist an ankle as he leapt over obstacles and dealt with the deeper rows between the remnants of the crop.

Constable Bates, stunned by his abrupt contact with the steering wheel and the windscreen, was not as quick. But he was running before Simon could reach him, heading for the deep shadows of the trees. They were just disappearing from my sight in the darkness when I saw Simon hurl himself after Bates, and then they both went down.

I swung the motorcar so that the great headlamps pointed in their direction, and it was like watching a shadow show, one minute seeing only silhouettes and the next, a shoulder or an arm raised high, a head flung back.

I scrabbled in the floor of the motorcar, looking for a torch or any other weapon that I could use.

Just under the other seat, my fingers closed over a sheet of crumpled paper. I brought it up and tried to read it in the glow of the headlamps.

Get out of Forest, or child dies.

It was intended for Simon, the Army man. And in the dark we hadn’t seen it where the wind must have tossed it off the seat.

Furious, I pulled on the brake, leaving the motor running, and was out of my door, running through the long bright beams of the headlamps, my shadow looming ahead of me like some black, disembodied thing with a will of its own. I nearly tripped over a length of fallen branch, and reaching down to retrieve it, I kept going.

I could hear them clearly, the grunts and blows of two men who were well matched, and I knew fear of capture must be driving the constable. There was nothing left to him but the rope. Simon nearly had him subdued when Bates’s hand came up and raked the long wound that ran down Simon’s face. As Simon arched back, out of reach, Bates ducked and plowed his head straight toward Simon’s chest.

Simon had seen the move coming, and as nimble as a bullfighter, he sidestepped before bringing both fists down in a single blow to the unprotected back of the other man’s head.

Constable Bates went down as if he had been poleaxed, and Simon, stepping clear of the man’s body, turned to me, breathing hard.

“And what the hell did you think you were going to do with that tree limb?” He pointed to the length of wood I was holding like a cricket bat. “That’s rotten. Didn’t you see?”

I looked down at my unlikely weapon. The part in my hand felt solid enough.

“I was coming to your rescue,” I said. “I wasn’t going to let him get away.”

“Did he
look
as if he was going to get away?”

We glared at each other. And then we both began to laugh. He reached down and took the offending branch from my hand, tossed it aside, and put his arms around me. “My dearest girl,” he said gently, “your father is right, you are afraid of nothing. And that can be very dangerous, has anyone told you that?”

His embrace was comforting. It had been a long day, and I had carried enough burdens.

And then without a word, I handed him the slip of paper I’d found in his motorcar, telling him what was written on it.

“Bastard,” he said under his breath, and then to me he added, “Where was it? I never saw it.”

“It had fallen under a seat.”

“All right, as Hamlet said, shall we lug the guts into another room? At least as far as my motorcar. Then we’ll try to get the Ellis vehicle back on the road. Or not, as the case may be. Can you manage his feet?”

We put the still unconscious Constable Bates/Sergeant Halloran into Simon’s motorcar, then managed after several attempts to get the Ellis motorcar out of the field. Soon we were driving sedately back to Hartfield, in tandem.

Alone in the motorcar, following Simon, I could hear Mrs. Ellis’s voice in the darkness around me. I didn’t know what to do about it. I didn’t know what to do about Sophie, except to hand her over to Simon and my father to return her to the nuns in Rouen.

It was a long night. Simon stayed with me as we made our explanations to a very angry Inspector Rother.

He refused to believe me at first, just as he’d refused to believe Simon and Roger Ellis, accusing us of trying to distract him from the Ellis family. Constable Bates had served the Forest well for nearly two years, responsible and capable. He couldn’t be a deserter under the sentence of death. He’d been invaluable to the inquiry. And so on.

Close to dawn, when Army officials arrived from London, Inspector Rother was finally satisfied that Sergeant Halloran and Constable Bates were one and the same.

And when Constable Austin was sent to search the small cottage where Constable Bates had lived, he found a broken walking stick, the length of an officer’s swagger stick, with the blunt end still sticky with Willy’s hair and blood. I was so grateful that it hadn’t been the marble kitten after all.

I went to see how Willy was faring. Mr. Smyth had taken him in. The doctor from Groombridge told me that with care, Willy would survive with no ill effects. The scarf was a loss, but I laid the new gloves on his pillow. He didn’t seem to remember what had become of his own.

Gran, her face gray with fatigue, was finally allowed to take Mrs. Ellis home. Roger was coming to drive them, after a few final words with the rector.

She and I had only a few seconds together as I held her door and Simon bent to turn the crank. Gran was speaking to Inspector Rother, giving him her views of overly keen policemen harassing peaceful citizens.

I said to Mrs. Ellis, “I told you earlier that I can’t give you absolution for what you did. But for your family’s sake, you must find the courage to put it behind you. It will hurt them terribly if they knew. Your penance must be their happiness.”

She put up a hand and touched my face. “You are a dear girl, Bess. I was haunted ever after by what I’d done. I thought my husband’s suicide was my punishment. But when George was killed and I saw his lifeless body there in the water, I realized that I was no better than a murderer myself. And that there is no punishment that befits taking another’s life. Under any circumstances.” She swallowed her tears. “I loved them so dearly.”

“I know. Sometimes love tries to do too much.”

And then they were driving away.

Simon came to me and said, “What about the child?”

“I’m too weary to think. I’m overdue in France. But Inspector Rother can deal with that. I must get word to Sister Marie Joseph—but I don’t know where to find them after the fire!” The realization was like a blow. “It’s all to do over again, searching for them. And what shall I do with Sophie, meanwhile? I can’t take her to Somerset. I can’t change her world a third time.”

He pulled me into his arms and held me until I was calmer.

“You need sleep, Bess. Tomorrow we’ll deal with Sophie and the nuns.”

“I should go back to France tonight. And what about that poor Major’s motorcar?”

“The war will keep. So will the motorcar.”

I laughed, and he let me go.

“The war might wait,” I said ruefully, “but Matron is likely to kill me.”

H
e drove me to Dover the next afternoon, after I’d given the police my statement, and I’d said good-bye to Roger Ellis, who had come into town to speak to me.

He too was on his way back to France, his orders sending him through Portsmouth.

He stood before me, trying to find the words he wanted to say.

I shook my head. “I don’t like leaving Sophie in Vixen Hill any more than you do. But I have no choice until I find Sister Marie Joseph.”

“I don’t know what to do about her,” he told me truthfully. “She’s probably mine, isn’t she?”