An Impartial Witness (11 page)

“I need a drink,” he retorted. “Not this damned tea.”

“No, you don’t. Are you going to fail Marjorie as well? Did she disappoint your expectations, and so you’re going to walk away angry and hurt because she wasn’t as strong as you’d have liked her to be?”

“Damn you, you see things too clearly,” he said, almost turning on me. But then he settled back in his chair. “You have a point. I’m no better than anyone else, am I? It’s not Marjorie that I’m crying over right now, it’s my own hurt.”

“A very real hurt. But it won’t help us to find out who killed her.”

“No. But when we do find out, I’m not going to the police. They can have him when I’ve finished with him!”

I left Michael sitting there and walked out of the hotel. Coming down the steps, I looked up in time to see two men in quiet conversation on the pavement not ten feet from me. They shook hands, and the older man, the one facing me, touched his hat politely as he was about to enter the Marlborough. The other moved on. I had seen only his back, but I had a feeling I knew him.

I had already taken a half dozen steps in the opposite direction when I realized that the other man must be Jack Melton.

I turned and went after him, calling to him. A very forward thing to do—my mother would have been appalled—but I wanted very badly to speak to him.

He swung around, frowned at me, and then said, “Miss Crawford,” in a very cool tone of voice as he removed his hat and stood waiting impatiently for me to explain myself.

“I’m so sorry,” I said, lying through my teeth—I was no such thing. “Do you have a moment?”

“I’m late for a meeting—but yes, I have a moment.”

It would have been better to return to the hotel, but Michael Hart might well still be in the lounge just off Reception.

I said rather too quickly, “I made no mention of it when I was a guest in your home. I thought it out of place to bring it up so publicly. But I think you should know that I saw your sister-in-law, Marjorie Evanson, the evening she was killed. Perhaps this will help you narrow the search before your wife—” I broke off.

His face lost all expression, smoothing into flat planes of light and shadow without any emotion. “Indeed. The police never said anything to me about this. You were with her…?” He left it there, waiting.

“No, I saw her. I’d just come in on the train from Hampshire. She was standing directly in my path.” I hesitated. “She was crying. Terribly upset. I couldn’t help but notice. And there was a man with her. He boarded the train, and she walked away alone. I lost her in the rain and the crowds. I never saw her again.”

“How could you possibly have recognized Mrs. Evanson?” His voice was cold, now, and very hard. “What is it you want, young woman? Is this an attempt at blackmail?”

I was so angry I stared at him, speechless. Then I found my voice. “Commander Melton,” I said in the tones of a ward sister dealing with an unruly patient, “I didn’t wish to distress Mrs. Melton while I was at Melton Hall, but I nursed Lieutenant Evanson in France and had just accompanied him and other patients to Laurel House the day Mrs. Evanson was killed. Your sister-in-law’s photograph was with him day and night. I’d also seen it not half an hour before taking the train to London. I couldn’t possibly have mistaken his wife’s face, even in such distress.”

He had the grace to look ashamed. “I’m—sorry. This has been a terrible business, and my wife is still grieving for her brother. We have both been under considerable strain—” He broke off, aware he
was running on. Then he asked, tightly, “Did you also recognize the man with her? Please tell me who he was.”

“I’m afraid not. He was an officer in the Wiltshire Fusiliers, and I have a good memory for faces. I believe I’d know him if I saw him again.”

He digested that. “And have you spoken to the police?”

“Of course. And I told them what I’d believed at the time, that she was distraught enough to have done herself a harm. Instead she was murdered. I can’t help but wonder why she was in such great distress.”

“Surely that was obvious. She was saying good-bye to her lover. Who else could it have been?” There was contempt in his voice.

“I don’t know,” I told him. “We’ve all assumed…” I realized then that there could be another reason for the officer’s coldness. “Perhaps he was sent to offer her promises, or, more likely, considering her distress, to tell her she couldn’t rely on the other man. Rather cowardly of him, if that’s true, to send an emissary. And what sort of man would be willing to take on such an onerous duty, even for a friend?”

“I liked Marjorie,” he admitted after a moment. “If she had turned to me, I’d have quietly found a way to help her, even though I disapproved of what she’d done. But she didn’t. I’ve had to watch my wife suffer through the shock of her death and then Meriwether’s death. Just now I find it hard to feel any sympathy for Marjorie’s despair.”

“Whatever happened on that railway platform, that person bears some responsibility for Marjorie’s death. If it hadn’t been for him, she’d have been at home, out of danger.” My voice trailed off as I looked up at the entrance to the Marlborough at that moment. Michael Hart was standing there glaring at me. He couldn’t have overheard what I’d been saying. Not at the distance between us. Could he?

Jack Melton followed my gaze in time to see Michael Hart turning away, walking stiffly back into the hotel.

Serena’s husband looked from his departing back to my face, then he said sharply, “If you want to know who Marjorie could have turned to, there’s your man.” And he started to walk away.

“He was in France,” I said, stopping Mr. Melton with an outstretched hand. “Out of reach. Who else—?”

“Was he? Out of reach?” Melton asked. “I would have sworn he was in England.”

And he was gone, leaving me there in the middle of the pavement, in the path of those passing by.

By the time I’d collected myself and gone back up the hotel steps and into the lounge, there was no sign of Michael Hart. I asked Reception to page him for me, and then to send someone to his room.

But he was nowhere to be found.

At the flat, Mary was washing up the last of the dishes. I went to my room, murmuring something about letters to finish, and instead sat by the window thinking about what Jack Melton had just said about Lieutenant Hart.

Truth? Or lies?

But why should he lie?

I’d seen the fleeting expression in his eyes when he recognized Michael Hart at the top of the hotel’s steps. Antipathy, certainly. Anger as well. But was the anger directed at Michael or what Jack and I’d been discussing?

Impossible to know the answer. Still, I’d made a mistake talking to him about Marjorie. But I’d heard his attempts to rein in Serena’s vehement emotions, and I’d believed we might discuss Marjorie Evanson’s last hours and look for something, anything, that could lead us to the truth.

I remember my mother telling me as a child, “Bess, my dear, you can’t always expect others to see things as clearly as you do.” I didn’t always remember that lesson.

I’d failed to take into account that the man was also a husband.

But I’d learned something in the encounter with Jack Melton. Marjorie must have met that train with high hopes that she could share the burden she was carrying. And she walked out of the railway station knowing that there was no help in that direction, whether the officer she’d met was her lover or someone she thought she could trust.

What’s more, her husband had just returned to England, and she must have felt the pressure of time catching up with her. She might not have known the exact date, but she would have known from Meriwether’s letters that it would be soon.

And if she was three months’ pregnant, it would be increasingly difficult to hide the fact. Something had to be done. Was she considering ridding herself of the child? Finding a place for it with another family? But that would mean leaving her husband for six months while she hid herself away somewhere. And it would very likely destroy her marriage. Did she expect the father of her child to marry her if she were divorced by her own husband? Did she love him at all?

Impossible to know. But that rejection as the train pulled out most certainly sharpened her need to find help somewhere.

But if she had known that Michael was in London…

I caught up my hat and purse and with barely a word of explanation to Mary, went down to my motorcar.

Marjorie’s housekeeper wasn’t happy to see me again. It struck me that she thought I was meddling, behind Michael’s back. “We’ve told Lieutenant Hart all we could,” she began.

“Yes, of course you did,” I answered quickly, before she could shut the door in my face. “He forgot to ask if you could give him the
names of one or two of her closest friends? I’ve come alone because he needed to rest.”

“Is he in terrible pain?” she asked sympathetically. “There were new lines in his face. I don’t remember them being there before. He was never one to take life seriously, always a smile.” She stood aside and I stepped into the entrance.

“He tries not to be dependent on drugs.” It was what his aunt had told me.

“That’s good to hear. There was a footman once when I was a girl. He was addicted to opium. Mr. Benson—he was the owner of the house where I was maid—locked the poor man in his room for a week, to cure him. I never heard such screams and cries, begging to die one minute and cursing us all in the next breath. We thought surely he’d die.”

“It must have been terrifying.”

She took a deep breath, as if shoving the footman back into the past where he belonged. I wondered if she’d had a fondness for him once.

“Names, you said. At a guess, her two closest friends were Mrs. Calder and Mrs. Brighton. Mrs. Brighton lives one street over, at Number 7. I’ve returned a book Mrs. Evanson borrowed, that’s how I know. Perhaps she can tell you how to find Mrs. Calder.”

Calder. I knew that name. A distant cousin. Was this the same woman?

“And the ladies who attended the group meetings for wives and widows? Were they close to Mrs. Evanson?”

“They came and went, you see, there was no time to make real friendships.”

I could understand that. “Thank you,” I told her. “This is a beginning.”

I left my motorcar where it was and walked the distance.

But there was black crepe on the door of Number 7, encircling the knocker. The folds were still crisp and new.

I hesitated and then lifted the knocker anyway, and a red-eyed maid came to the door. She said immediately, “Mrs. Brighton isn’t receiving. If you care to leave your card?”

“I’m so very sorry to intrude,” I said, and prepared to turn away. Then I asked, “I’ve just come to London from Somerset. I was to meet Mrs. Calder here—I didn’t know—” I gestured to the black crepe. “She must have tried to reach me and I missed her message. Do you know how I could find her? I’m afraid I left my diary in the hotel.”

A shot in the dark. But it found its mark.

“She called only this morning,” the maid said, and gave me what I wanted before she quietly shut the door again.

I drove to Hamilton Place, and found the house I was looking for at the corner of its tiny square.

As I got out, I stood to one side as a nurse wheeled a wounded man along the pavement. He was in a chair, his eyes bandaged, one arm in a sling, a leg missing. I smiled at the sister, and then went up to knock at the door.

Mrs. Calder was in. I was shown into a small sitting room, and she rose to meet me, a query in her glance.

She was a tall woman, rail thin, with fair hair and blue eyes. I introduced myself as a friend of the Evanson family, and she frowned.

“Indeed? I don’t recall meeting you at Marjorie’s,” she said, suspicion in her tone.

“I’m not surprised,” I said easily. “I’ve been out of the country.” Her eyes dropped to my uniform. “I was one of Lieutenant Evanson’s nurses.”

“You know he’s dead.”

“Sadly, yes. Matron told me on my last visit to Laurel House.”

“What brings you to see me?”

“I was in Little Sefton only a few days ago. I understood from Alicia Dalton that you’re related to Marjorie Evanson.”

She was still wary. I searched for a way to convince her I meant no harm.

“It seems to me that very little progress has been made in finding out who killed Mrs. Evanson. And it matters to me, because her husband died when he shouldn’t have. Not medically. He’d passed the crisis. He was counting on seeing his wife as soon as possible. Someone took that away from him. I don’t want her murderer to escape justice.”

“But why come to me? You should be speaking to Victoria Garrison, Marjorie’s sister.”

If it was a test, I was ready for it.

“With respect, I don’t believe I should. We had words in Little Sefton. She thought Serena Melton had sent me there to spy.”

“And were you?”

“No.”

Helen Calder sighed. “There’s no love lost between them. A pity, but there you are. Even tragedy failed to bring them together.”

“There’s more. I have reason to believe that Marjorie had met someone, perhaps six months ago. It’s possible I’ve seen this man. I don’t know his name, but she met him at Waterloo Station the night she died. I happened to be coming up from Laurel House, and it was sheer coincidence that our paths crossed.”

“Marjorie had a good many friends. It could have been any one of them.”

“She was so distressed. Crying, in fact. I don’t think that was like her. Do you?”

After a moment she said, “No, she wouldn’t have made a scene. Not Marjorie. But I’m afraid I can’t help you. It would be—prying. And she’s dead.”

“This polite conspiracy of silence is all very well and good,” I pointed out, a little angry with her. “But I think Marjorie would approve of a little ‘prying’ if it meant her killer was found out.”

Helen Calder studied my face for a moment, and then nodded.
“You’re absolutely right, you know. We’ve all taken such pride in closing ranks to protect her memory. I never considered the fact that we were protecting her murderer as well. But you see, people do ask about her death, and I’ve gotten quite good at fending off gossipmongers. Heaven knows there have been enough of them. But even if I answer your questions, what possible good will it do?”