An Impartial Witness (20 page)

I just wished Helen Calder would regain consciousness and tell us what she remembered. Good news—or bad—but better than this limbo.

The dinner party went exceedingly well, our cook outdoing herself with the chickens and even with a lovely French tart for the sweet. I couldn’t help but wonder where she had found the sugar for the glaze.

Most of all I enjoyed the guests, many of them friends of my parents, a few of them friends of mine. Diana was in London and arrived in high spirits, flirting with Simon, although Mary had told me it was likely she would be engaged by the autumn. Another of my flatmates, Elayne, was a surprise. I hadn’t seen her in weeks and
we had much to catch up on. She too was expecting a proposal, she said, and I was happy for her.

Even Melinda Crawford had traveled all the way from Kent. She and my father were distantly related, and both her husband and her father had served in India in their time. As she leaned on Simon’s arm as we went in to dinner, she said, “When this wicked war is finished, I want to go back to India. I’ve unfinished business there. Will you take me?” Overhearing that, I made a promise to myself that I would go with them.

Throughout that dinner, I enjoyed watching my mother’s face. She loved entertaining, did it well, and was a clever hostess. I smiled at her down the table, and won a smile in return.

My leave was nearly up. I felt a twinge of regret, knowing how much this time meant to my parents.

I
HAD WANTED
to see Alicia Dalton before I left for France, to apologize again for hurting her feelings. But there was much to do the morning after the party, and I couldn’t leave all of that to my mother and Nell. And I was waiting for news of Helen Calder. Diana had promised to find out what she could.

Simon had driven Melinda Crawford to the train and my mother had taken the last of the chicken, made up as a fricassee, to two elderly women in the village. My father had been summoned to Sandhurst for a ceremony of some sort, and I was rather at loose ends.

Remembering that Victoria had telephoned Serena, I decided I would return the favor.

As the call was being put through, I realized too late that I should have left well enough alone. This was borne in upon me by the coldness in Victoria Garrison’s voice when I told her who I was.

“I should have thought I would be the last person you wished to speak with,” she said. “After what happened the other day.”

Refusing to be drawn, I asked, “Miss Garrison, did Lieutenant Hart tell you why he wanted to go to London?”

“Why don’t you ask Inspector Herbert? I’ve told him what I know.”

“It was you who took Michael there. And so I’m asking you.”

“Someone had told him I had tickets for that play. I didn’t twist
his arm, he came to me. He said he would very much like to see it. I was surprised, but I was glad of the company, driving back after the performance. And then later, when we reached London, he hurt his shoulder getting out of the motorcar, and he was in pain. He couldn’t sit still, and even before the curtain went up, he walked out, saying that he needed air. I offered to go with him, but he told me to stay there, he wouldn’t be gone very long. When he hadn’t returned by intermission, I went to look for him. I missed a part of the play searching. The doorman told me he thought he’d seen the lieutenant leave the theater. I couldn’t think where he might have gone. I went back to my seat, and toward the end of the last act, he was there, looking as white as I’d ever seen him, his hands shaking. I drove him home, and he had very little to say for himself. I was very angry with him; I thought him selfish, to ask to come and then to ruin my evening.”

“Did he tell you where he’d been?”

“He said he’d walked until he was too exhausted to walk any longer. He found a cab and was driven back to the theater.”

“Did you believe him?”

“I didn’t know whether to believe him or not. I wondered if he’d had no interest in the play after all, and had only used me to bring him to town.”

“Could the people who had the seats nearest you swear that you were alone until the end of the play?”

She was angry then. “Are you suggesting that I wasn’t there either?”

I hadn’t been, I’d just wondered if she’d been lying, but she was furious and said, “You won’t get him off, you know. However much you try. I tell you, I was lucky that he didn’t decide to kill me on the way home. I didn’t know then that he was a murderer.”

“But I don’t understand why you should think he would harm Marjorie. Or had any reason at all to attack Helen Calder. If he couldn’t bear to sit still, he might well have tried to walk instead.”

There was silence for a moment, and then she said, “There was a dark smear on his sleeve. I pointed it out to him, and he said he’d stopped for a glass of wine and spilled some of it, then tried to wash it out with cold water. The sleeve was still damp; it must have been true.”

I couldn’t decide if she was telling the truth about that. Her voice seemed a little different, somehow. Or had I imagined it? “That still doesn’t explain—”

“The next day, a friend telephoned to tell me about Helen Calder. She knew that Helen was a connection on my mother’s side. She lives across the square, she’d watched the police come and go from the garden, and she’d sent her husband to find out what had happened. He told her that Helen Calder had been the victim of a knifing, and he thought she must be dead. But his wife had seen an ambulance come and then leave. I expect she hoped that I might know more about the attack. She said Helen Calder’s assailant hadn’t been found.”

“I still don’t see the connection with Michael Hart,” I pressed.

“My friend—Mrs. Daly—told me she herself had seen a young officer with his arm in a sling come to Helen Calder’s door, earlier in the evening. He spoke to the maid, then left to sit in the garden for a time before walking away.”

My heart sank. Whether that maid knew Michael by name didn’t matter, her description of the caller would be enough. That, coupled with Victoria’s statement about the stained sleeve, would be telling evidence.

“Do you really believe he killed Marjorie?” I asked, as soon as I could collect my thoughts.

“Oh, yes. Once the police asked me if I was aware that he was in London on that same day, I knew it must be so. Someone got her pregnant, did you know that? The police told me she was pregnant when she died. If Michael had found that out, I think he would have killed her out of sheer jealousy. I was convinced from the
start that she must have written to him in France and confided in him that she’d had an affair. She always had confided in him, why shouldn’t she turn to him now? I kept after him to tell me if he knew the name of the man she’d been seeing, and he swore he didn’t. I was starting to believe him. Did you know he hadn’t even told his aunt and uncle that he was in London that night? But he must have told Marjorie. He’d found a way to get leave and confront her.”

Her voice changed again, and I wished I could see her face. “He never got over her marriage, did you know that? He always thought she’d marry
him
. I remember him at the wedding, looking as if he’d like to snatch the bride up and ride off with her across his saddle bow.”

That made a dreadful sense. After the man at the station, Raymond Melton, walked away from her, Marjorie would very likely have turned to Michael.

“But why should he kill Helen Calder?”

“How should I know? Perhaps he’s still trying to find out Marjorie’s lover’s name. For all I know, Michael intended to kill him next.”

But Helen hadn’t known who the man was. At least she told me she didn’t.

“Someone shot at Michael. Perhaps it was the same person who killed Marjorie and tried to kill Mrs. Calder.”

“You are pathetic,” she said. “Don’t you know what that was about? I knew, the minute I heard about it. Michael was trying to kill himself. And he failed. He couldn’t quite bring himself to do it. So he invented someone shooting from the bushes, to spare his aunt and uncle the truth. Someone was bound to have heard the shots.”

I felt ill, unable to think of anything to say. I hadn’t considered suicide.

Victoria interpreted the silence and laughed. “It’s rather shocking, isn’t it, to realize he’s in love with a dead woman. He hasn’t let her go. But you’re like all the rest, that’s why you came to his defense
when the police wanted to take him away. Even dead, Marjorie still has him in thrall.”

There was a sudden break in her voice, and I realized that she was talking about her own sense of loss, not mine.

And then before I could answer, she added harshly, her voice hardly recognizable, “They won’t hang him, you know, until that shoulder is fully healed. But hang him they will. Mark my words. And it will be my testimony that will put the noose around his neck.”

There was a click at the other end of the line. Victoria had hung up before she gave herself away.

I stood there for a moment, the receiver still in my hand, then put it up.

Victoria was angry, vindictive. But Michael had sealed his own fate when he lifted the knocker on Helen Calder’s door. If the maid knew him by sight or could identify him, the police had all the evidence they wanted.

For a fleeting moment I wondered if Victoria had tricked Michael, and while he was walking off the pain in his shoulder, she had taken advantage of his absence to kill Mrs. Calder herself. From the start I’d been surprised to hear that Michael and Victoria had gone anywhere together, much less London. Why had he asked? Why had she agreed?

Could Victoria stab two women?

I could have asked Michael—but he was beyond reach.

Feeling closed in, I went out into the gardens, thinking to refresh the vases we’d arranged for the dinner party.

Now that he had Michael in custody, would Inspector Herbert still summon Raymond Melton to England to make a statement? Or would that be left to the KC who was preparing the prosecution? I wanted to hear just what had been said at that meeting in the railway station. If Captain Melton had made promises, he had given them grudgingly, and they had provided no comfort. Marjorie deserved better.

I was ready to go back to France, but I wanted very badly to be here when Helen Calder regained her senses. And time was running out.

My father met me as I came through the garden doors into the passage.

“Hallo.” He took one look at me. “I’ve seen Pathan warriors with happier faces. Care to talk about it?”

I smiled. “I just had a conversation with Victoria Garrison. She could probably hold the Khyber Pass single-handedly with a fork.” As he laughed, I went on, “I’ve been trying to decide if Lieutenant Hart is the sort of man to want to kill himself.”

“Do you mean before his trial?”

“No, earlier. According to Victoria, no one fired at him as he walked in the garden. The only reason I can think of for a suicide attempt is guilt. And why two shots?”

“It’s hard to miss with a revolver if you’re serious about using it.” He led me to his sanctuary, the study full of trophies from his years in the Army, and offered me the chair across from his. “Especially twice. Unless one intends to miss. In which case, it’s a cry for help.”

“If it was a cry for help, he covered it up very well indeed.” I stared into the golden glass eyes of a Bengal man hunter, a tiger that had killed fourteen villagers before my father brought it down. “More important, I’d like to know if he lied to me. And if he did, what else had he lied about? Conversely, if it was Victoria’s lie, it could have other implications. There’s a big difference between being shot at and shooting one’s self.” I turned to look at my father. “I also have to wonder why Victoria agreed to drive him into London—and I’d give much to know what they talked about on the way. I do know he didn’t tell her who he expected to see while there.”

“It would be wiser, don’t you think, to leave the entire matter in the capable hands of Inspector Herbert?”

“I have done. It doesn’t stop me from wondering, or from weighing up what I know or suspect.”

“And you’d be content to see Victoria Garrison as a murderess.”

“It’s entirely possible that she could have killed her sister, and tried to make it appear that it was a random act of violence on the part of someone nameless and faceless in London.”

“That’s a damning comment.”

“Yes, but Victoria is so filled with something—hate, envy, jealousy—a wanting—that she might have seen her chance and taken it before she’d even considered what she was doing.”

“Women don’t usually carry a large knife in their purses.”

Which was an excellent point. I smiled. “You’ve just shot down my best argument for Victoria as a murderess.”

“I’m not saying it couldn’t be done, only that she would have had to plan carefully.” He considered me. “I’ll be just as happy to see you back in France, if you want to know the truth. Out of reach. You ask too many questions—if the police are wrong about Michael, then you will need to be cautious.”

“Being shot at by Germans is preferable to being stabbed by Englishmen?”

“Absolutely. Just don’t tell your mother I said that.” He paused. “If you must go back to London before you leave, do take Simon with you.”

I promised, and felt the eyes of the Bengal tiger follow me from the room.

My distant grandmother, who had followed her officer husband to Brussels in June 1815, and helped nurse the wounded brought in from Waterloo, was not certain until well into the next evening whether her husband was among the living or the dead. Reports had come in placing him in the heat of the battle, and various accounts had listed him as dead, severely wounded, or missing. But she had
held to her faith in his ability to survive, and her words to him as he finally walked into the house they had taken in Brussels had been, “My dear, I’m so sorry, there seems to be nothing for your dinner.”

My mother, dealing with the ravages of this war’s shortages, still managed to put a decent meal on the table, and I was reminded of Mary’s remark that a country house fared better in trying times.

It was Simon’s night to join us, and we were finishing our soup when he said, “You’ll never guess who I ran into as I was coming out of my meeting today.”

I thought he was talking to my father, then looked up to realize that he was speaking to me.

I named several retired officers we’d known in other campaigns, and he shook his head each time.

“I give up. Tell me.”

“Jack Melton.”

I stared at him. “You didn’t mention his brother, did you?” I wouldn’t have put it past Simon to have engineered the meeting for the sole purpose of finding out what I would like to know about Raymond Melton.

“I did ask how his brother was. It was the decent thing to do,” he said, smug as a cat with a mouthful of canary feathers.

“Well, then?”

“He’s presently near Ypres. You might keep that in mind when you go back to France next week.”

“Little good that will do me. I’ve no idea where I’ll be sent next. What else did you learn?” I asked.

“That Melton wasn’t particularly at ease talking about his brother. His answers were short, as if it wasn’t a subject he was comfortable with.” Simon Brandon had dealt with men all his adult life—soldiers, prisoners, angry villagers. Men in trouble, afraid, lying, angry, vindictive. He could read them without effort because it had become second nature. I knew he could read me as well, and oddly enough, it was one of the things that made me trust him.

I set aside my soup spoon. “When I learned that the man was his brother, I found myself wondering if what I’d said to Jack Melton outside the Marlborough Hotel in London might not have put him on to Raymond as the man I’d mentioned. I didn’t describe him of course. But Jack was rather short with me as well. Almost rude, in fact. Still, he must not have said anything to his wife—she’d have brought it up when she came to Somerset to see me.”