An Impartial Witness (23 page)

They were well behind the lines, men stretched out on cots, even on the ground, or smoking and pacing, writing letters, shaving, reading—anything to put the war behind them for a few precious hours. The rows of tents gleamed in the morning sun, and I felt at home as I walked down between them. The guns were loud here, our own and the Germans’, and the sharp chatter of a Vickers could be heard faintly in the distance. But tired men ignored everything but the pursuit of peace for as long as possible.

I smiled and asked for Captain Melton. The young officer who had risen to greet me looked around him and then said, “I expect he’s still in hospital, Sister.”

Alarmed, I asked, “Is it serious?”

“Um, I’d rather not say.”

Which usually meant dysentery. I thanked him, returned to the ambulance, and found my way to the rear hospital where more serious casualties were taken.

The first sister I met as I walked through the door was young and flushed with excitement.

“Rumor says the Prince of Wales is coming here to speak to the wounded,” she exclaimed. “Everything is at sixes and sevens.”

I gave her a list of the supplies I needed, then asked if there was a Captain Melton in the officers’ ward.

She pointed the way, then rushed off to finish my errand before the Prince arrived.

She was right that the hospital was at sixes and sevens. Another sister told me that the Prince was coming to pin a medal on someone. Victoria Cross, she thought. Someone else said that the Prince
was coming to see one of his former equerries who was just out of surgery for life-threatening wounds.

Threading my way to the busy ward, I went down the row of cots and looked at each patient, hoping to find Captain Melton without drawing more attention than necessary to my visit. A few patients were heavily bandaged, and I asked quietly, “Captain Melton?” only to receive a shake of the head in return.

I nearly missed him. He was at the far end, a weak and exhausted man who had lost several stone of his original weight. His skin was gray, and his eyes sunken. But a second glance confirmed that this was indeed the man I recalled from the railway station.

I went to sit beside him, and after a moment I spoke his name softly, to see if he slept or was awake.

He turned his face toward me, and his eyes when he opened them were those of a dead man, no life at all in their depths, as if he had given up all hope.

Severe dysentery could kill. But I thought, he’s weak, not dying.

When I said nothing, he spoke in a thread of a voice. “Whatever you gave me seems to be working. Thank you, Sister.”

He was so far from the cold, heartless man who wouldn’t comfort the distressed woman clinging to his arm that I felt a wave of compassion and was torn about bringing up the past. But this might be my only chance. When—if—he recovered, he might be sent anywhere, and the next big push might be his last.

Steeling myself against softer feelings, I said, “My name doesn’t matter, Captain Melton. But I happened to be at Waterloo Station when you were saying good-bye to Marjorie Evanson, just before you sailed for France.” I gave him the date and the time, told him that it was raining hard, a summer rain that made it impossible for me to find Marjorie again as she was leaving.

He listened, his face changing to a coldness that made him seem more familiar to me than the wasted man lying on the cot as I’d approached.

“What of it?” he demanded.

“The police asked me questions about her and about you. I didn’t know your name then, I found it much later when I saw some photographs taken by the husband of a friend.” I hoped I could still consider Alicia a friend. “I had met your brother Jack only a few weeks before I saw that photograph. And so I know who you are.”

“You’ve got the wrong man,” he said, turning away from me. “Please leave.”

“It isn’t a mistake. I knew Marjorie by sight and I have a good memory for faces. I also recognized your cap badge. You don’t look like your brother, I would never have guessed who you were. But cameras don’t lie. You were with Marjorie that night.”

He said nothing, keeping his face resolutely turned toward the far wall.

“She was three months’ pregnant. Did she tell you that?”

No response, though I saw a muscle twitch in his jaw. It struck me that he was angry, not ashamed.

“She was murdered that same evening. Were you lovers? If you were, perhaps you can tell me who Marjorie Evanson would turn to in her distress, after you got on that train and left her to cope alone.” I was guessing at some of what I was saying. “Please, if you know anyone she might have seen after your train left, it would help the police enormously and might even lead to finding her killer.”

“He’s been found.” The three words were clipped, and I was right about the anger.

I was on the point of asking him who had told him, and then of course I remembered that he was Jack Melton’s brother. Jack would have passed on the news. But had he realized when he did so that the man he was telling was Marjorie’s lover? I wondered too who had initiated that telling of events. Had Raymond Melton asked? Or had Jack Melton volunteered? Perhaps a little of both. It was, after all, expected to be a sensational trial and indirectly the Meltons were involved through Serena and her own brother.

“The question is, have the police got the right man? I’m not very sure of that.” I kept my voice steady, interested but impersonal. “I have to be impartial, and while I don’t believe you could have killed her—after all, I saw you board that train—I can’t help but think your evidence would be helpful. As mine was, for it told the police that she was alive at five forty-five that day.”

He showed no interest in what I was saying. And so I pressed a little harder.

“Haven’t the police asked you to provide proof that you didn’t leave the train at the next stop, and then find someone to drive you to Portsmouth so that you reached your transport just before it sailed?”

His head turned, and his eyes met mine. There was fire in their depths, shocking in so weak a man.

“Get out of here.”

“I should like your word that you never left the train. And then I will walk away, even though you’ve done nothing to help the woman you seduced and then left to deal with the aftermath on her own. I would have believed in her suicide that night. It’s amazing that you never gave that possibility even a thought.”

“I never left the train. My word.”

We’d kept our voices low, in order not to disturb other patients or draw the attention of the ward sisters.

I sat there, looking into his eyes, trying to plumb their depths for truth.

“My word,” he repeated, and I had to believe him.

As I rose to walk away, I watched his face. Something stirred there, and I wondered what it was. Satisfaction?

Satisfaction that he’d managed to drive me away with only a portion of the truth?

I wondered how hard Michael Hart’s counsel had tried to find this man and establish his alibi, even if the Crown had not. But then,
I reminded myself, they might have done, and when it was shown he hadn’t left his train, they had not felt it worthwhile to bring him back to England. There was no getting around the fact that Raymond Melton had been in France when Mrs. Calder was stabbed.

I thanked him and turned away as I’d promised, feeling deflated and uncertain. But then I went back to his bedside and said, “Has anyone told you that Helen Calder was also attacked in the same fashion as Marjorie Evanson, and presumably by the same man? Or woman? The two stabbings so close together are most likely linked, because Mrs. Calder was a Garrison before her marriage, and a cousin of Marjorie Evanson’s.”

He stared at me. “I know Helen Calder,” he said, eyes wide now with disbelief. “I was at Mons with her husband. Is she dead as well?”

“She ought to be. But she was found in time, in spite of loss of blood and emergency surgery to repair the damage done. There will be weeks of recovery ahead of her, but she’s alive.”

He went on staring at me, trying to absorb what I’d said. Then he asked, “Surely she was able to identify her attacker?”

“She has no memory of what happened. What little she recalls of the hours before she was stabbed point to the man the police took into custody. He’s been tried, and will be hanged.”

I fought to keep my voice steady as I said the words.

Captain Melton closed his eyes and lay there, spent. Then he said, “Poor devil, he must be out of his mind with worry.”

I understood that to mean Mrs. Calder’s husband. I couldn’t help but think that this man had shown more pity for a fellow officer than he had for the woman he’d used, if not loved.

I left then, walking swiftly down the center of the ward, and in the distance I could hear shouting, loud huzzahs, and assumed that the Prince had finally arrived. A piper began to play, the pipes wheezing and then settling into the melody. I’d always liked the
pipes, and listened for a moment to what the man was playing. It was, I realized, “God Save the King,” in honor of the Prince’s father.

I slipped out a side door, in low spirits and not in the mood for a spectacle. For that’s what it would be, and rightly so. Men needed to know that the royal family remembered their sacrifice. Reaching the ambulance, I discovered that the sister I’d given my list to had set several boxes in the rear, where the stretchers usually went. Grateful to her, I drove back to my own unit, and turned the boxes over to the nurse in charge of stores.

And then I went to my own quarters and sat there as darkness fell and the rains came again, turning mud to a treacherous slickness and breeding a miasma of odors that seemed to cling to the walls and my sheets and the very air I was breathing.

I could understand now why Inspector Herbert, far more experienced in such matters than I could possibly hope to be, had discounted finding Captain Melton. He had indeed taken the train to Portsmouth and boarded his ship as scheduled and landed in France at the required time. While it had been important to identify the man with Marjorie Evanson and the likely father of her child, the instant he’d stepped into his compartment on the train, his alibi was secure.

Then where was there any small, overlooked fact that would save Michael Hart?

Or was the right man going to hang at the time set for him to climb the stairs to the gallows?

Why was it that I couldn’t be satisfied with what was looking more and more like the truth?

T
HE NEXT TWO
and a half weeks were busy. I was coming to realize that this war was producing nothing but dead and wounded men. No glorious victories, no great advances into German-held territory.

There was talk that the Americans would be coming to France, but even so, it would be months before they could take the field and make a difference. By that time, it appeared that England and France would be bled dry.

I was too tired to do the arithmetic, but it seemed to me that for every yard of ground won or lost, the toll was enormous. If I, a nurse in the field, could see this happening, why did the men in staff positions, the men who made both the daily and the long-term decisions about fighting the enemy, not look at the casualty lists and find another way to win?

I was reminded of my great-grandmother at Waterloo. There the English squares held despite charge after charge by Napoleon’s best troops. And at the end of the day, in spite of the slaughter, the squares still held, and Napoleon was forced to retreat. Not a very decisive victory, attrition at its worst. And without the backing of Blücher’s men, arriving in the nick of time, the tide might have turned the other way. But at least the battle lasted only that
one day. And by the next evening, my great-grandmother knew whether or not her husband still lived.

I was coming off duty when I encountered Dr. Hall just coming on. We smiled wearily at each other, and he asked, “Do you sleep?”

“Not very well,” I answered truthfully.

He nodded. “Nor I. Well. We do our best.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I’ve had word we’re to be relieved in the next fortnight.”

This was news I hadn’t heard. It revived me a little and I said, “Another convoy home?”

“Very likely. Would you like to be listed as the transport nurse?”

“I would indeed.”

He nodded a second time. “I’d heard that you had approached Matron about leave some time ago. Was it important? Or perhaps I should ask, is it still important?”

I told him the truth. “An officer I know has been convicted of murder. I’d have liked to have been at his trial. Since then, I’ve not received any news of the date he’s to die. Either that or no one wishes to tell me when it will be. I keep hoping for some fresh evidence to prove that he’s not guilty. I’d like to see him a last time and hear what he has to say.”

Dr. Hall regarded me with interest. “He’s more than a friend?”

“No, sir. Just—a friend. But I feel rather responsible for his situation. I was a witness in the case, though not called on to give evidence in court. I was in the right place at the wrong time. And what I saw proved to be important. An attempt on my part to help the police uncover the identity of one man in the case led them to another man, but it seems to me that there were problems with evidence. And circumstance conspired to put the worst possible interpretation on that evidence. Given my friend’s wounds in two
instances, I can’t see how he could have committed the crimes he was charged with. But the police surgeon must have seen the matter differently. And so my friend will hang.”

“Interesting,” Dr. Hall said. “What sort of wounds?”

I told him about the particle in Lieutenant Hart’s eye, and then about the damaged shoulder.

Dr. Hall looked at his watch. “I don’t have time to pursue this now. But if you’ll meet me when I come off duty, I’d like to hear more.”

I thanked him, thinking he was trying to be polite and would have lost interest by morning.

But I was wrong. I was sitting in the canteen finishing my tea when Dr. Hall came looking for me.

He took the chair across from me, and said, “I’m so tired I could sleep on my feet. But talk to me, and if I can stay awake, I’ll give you my opinion. It won’t make any difference to the Crown, or to the case in hand. Still, I might be able to set your mind at ease on the medical issues.”

I tried to marshal my thoughts, and then told him as concisely as I knew how the way the murders had occurred and what Michael’s physical condition was at this time, after his shoulder had healed. At least to the best of my knowledge, which was superficial at the very least.

Dr. Hall stirred his coffee—he had picked up the French habit of drinking coffee, as so many others had done during this war—and considered the medical implications.

“He could have done these things, in spite of his injuries—that is to say, if he didn’t care about the physical damage and was prepared to take the risk.”

I wondered if his barrister had ordered a physician to examine Michael’s eye. He hadn’t complained—but then he wouldn’t have, would he? If he’d disobeyed the doctor’s instructions?

He must have read my face.

“My dear, you must understand that people who kill are not marked by the brand of Cain. They appear no different from you or me. It’s hard to believe sometimes that someone we know well—or think we know well—could do horrible things. But they can.”

He was right, of course he was.

I smiled, trying to make it appear bright and accepting.

“Thank you. I needed impartiality.”

He cocked his head to one side. “The position as transport nurse is still yours. Sometimes it’s better to learn the truth firsthand.”

He was a small man, graying early, lines forming around his eyes that would not go away even when he slept for a week. But his hands were gentle in the operating theater, and they worked miracles with torn flesh and sinew and bone.

I sighed. “You’re very kind.”

“No,” he said, finishing his coffee and getting to his feet. “I’m just very tired.”

We brought the wounded to England and I discovered I’d been given ten days’ leave.

I went home and surprised my parents. As I stood in the doorway, they stared at me as if I were a ghost, then they rushed to greet me, talking at the same time, laughing with excitement, sweeping me into the family circle with such warmth it was as if I’d never been away.

I said nothing about Michael Hart. Not then, nor at dinner. But after my parents had gone to bed, I pulled on a sweater against the night’s chill and walked the mile to the cottage where Simon Brandon lived.

He hadn’t come to dinner. He hadn’t come to welcome me home. My parents hadn’t mentioned that he was away. So where was he?

I could hear a night bird calling as I went up the lane and came to the path to the cottage door.

The house was in darkness except for a single lamp in the front room.

I stood for a moment on the step, then lifted my hand to the knocker. It was shaped like an elephant’s head. Simon had had it made in Agra at a little shop where a man sat cross-legged and spent his days carving useful objects. A rectangular length of brass had been fitted to the back of the head, and the plate was also brass. It had a musical ring as I let it fall.

I didn’t think he was going to come to the door. But after what seemed like a very long time, the door opened, and Simon stood there in shirt and dark trousers.

“I was waiting,” he said, and stepped aside to allow me to enter.

I had always liked the cottage. It was strictly a man’s home, of course, filled with a lifetime’s treasures and memories, but as tidy as a sergeant-major’s quarters in camp.

I moved into the parlor as Simon closed the door behind me and I took the chair that had always been mine, by the window overlooking the garden.

“The news isn’t good,” he said, coming in to join me, but not sitting down. “He’s stubborn, your Michael Hart. He asked that his sentence be expedited. Mrs. Calder isn’t doing well. Preparing herself for the trial has taxed her strength. And of course there was no trial. As such.”

“He’s not my Michael Hart.”

Simon nodded, then said, “The execution is set for a fortnight tomorrow.”

I couldn’t stop myself from reacting. I had thought, before Christmas.
Months
away.

More than enough time, surely. But there was almost none.

“You didn’t write,” I accused him.

“No. He refuses to see you. He asked me to wait to tell you until it was—over.”

“He did it for her, you know. To prevent what she’d done being opened up for the public to gawk at and whisper about.”

“I think he did it for himself as well. That arm will probably be useless for the rest of his life. He can’t live with that. So why not die for a good reason?”

“It’s stupid! There was a chance—you said so as well—that the trial could have ended in an acquittal.”

“At what price to Mrs. Evanson’s reputation?”

“Well, he hasn’t considered one thing. And I intend to bring it to his attention. Can you or the Colonel arrange for me to see him?”

“I told you. He refuses to see you.”

“He may refuse. But you might tell him that I am bringing a photograph of Marjorie to take with him to the gallows.”

Simon’s face had been in shadow, but suddenly I saw the gleam of his teeth as he smiled. “My dear girl. I bow to your brilliance. But where will you find a photograph of Mrs. Evanson in ten days’ time?”

“I’ve had it since I went to Hampshire and learned that Meriwether Evanson had killed himself. Serena refused to put it in his coffin. Matron couldn’t bear to throw it away, and so I took it. I had thought—if I’d considered the matter at all—that I might somehow put it by Lieutenant Evanson’s grave.”

“You had told me the photograph went with Evanson from France to the clinic. But not that it was now in your possession.”

“It was—personal. Whatever she did, whatever reason she might have had for doing it, he loved her more than living.”

Simon went to the sideboard in the dining room. I could hear him collecting two glasses and a decanter. It was whiskey he brought back with him, and a small carafe of water as well.

He poured a small measure of the whiskey in a glass, added water to it, and passed the glass to me, then poured himself a larger measure without the water. Holding his glass out to me, he said, “Welcome home, Bess.”

I drank the whiskey. They say Queen Victoria drank a small tot each night before retiring. If she approved of it for herself, it would do me no harm. But I wasn’t sure I really cared for the taste of it, a smokiness that caught at the back of my throat and belied the smoothness of the first swallow.

Simon smiled and took my glass from me before I’d finished it, setting it on the table. “It’s late. I’ll see you home.”

“I can find my own way.”

“I’m sure you can. But I shouldn’t care to face the Colonel tomorrow if I allowed you to walk that mile alone.” He drained his own glass and set it down.

“Who killed her, Simon, if Michael didn’t?”

“I don’t know. Who had the most to lose?”

I stepped through the door he was holding for me and out into the night. “Raymond Melton? He had a career in the Army, a wife. He could have lost both if the affair had come to light. As it surely must have done.”

“But he was on that transport ship.”

We walked down the path side by side and turned into the lane.

“Victoria? She was jealous of her sister from childhood.”

“Why then? Why wait until that moment?”

“Because with the child of her affair, she would have had to come home to Little Sefton and back into Victoria’s life?”

“Possible, of course. On the other hand, Victoria might well have relished her sister’s fall from grace.”

“There’s that. Serena, then, for what Marjorie was about to do to Meriwether.”

“That’s far more likely. Except that Serena told her brother the truth about Marjorie, after she was dead.”

“I think that was her own pain speaking. She hated Marjorie and wanted her brother to hate his wife too.” I sighed. “A tangle, isn’t it?”

“Which brings us full circle, back to Michael.”

We walked on in silence, shoulder to shoulder. As Simon lifted
the latch on the door to my parents’ house, he said, “I’ll go to London tomorrow.”

“And I’m going to Little Sefton. I want to speak to Michael’s aunt and uncle. After that, I must go to London and look in on Helen Calder. She must be feeling rather awful after her testimony sent Michael to trial.”

Simon said good night, and waited outside as I shut and locked the house door. I stood in the darkness at the bottom of the stairs and watched him out of sight. Then I turned toward the stairs, intending to go straight to my room.

My heart leapt into my throat. There was someone on the stairs, standing there in silence, watching me.

All at once I recognized the shape of my father.

He must have known somehow that I had gone to see Simon.

He said only, “Is everything all right?”

“Yes. Simon is going to London tomorrow. I’m going to Little Sefton myself. And then to London. There isn’t much time…”

“For what it’s worth, my dear, I don’t believe he killed Marjorie Evanson.”

My father knew men. He’d fought with them, led them, listened to them, disciplined them. Little escaped his notice, and he was a good judge of character.

I went up the stairs to him and hugged him.

“Thank you for telling me that,” I said.

“You smell of whiskey. Brush your teeth before your mother comes to kiss you good night.”

I promised, and we went up the remaining stairs to bed.

Between my own fatigue and the whiskey, I slept soundly.

I wondered if that was what Simon had intended.

The next morning I said good-bye to my parents and set out for Little Sefton.

It was well into September now. I’d first taken this road in early June, with high hopes that I could in some fashion bring to light a name that would lead the police to Marjorie’s killer. Now I drove with a sense of desperation goading me.

A fortnight today. That’s all the time I had. And even if I found new evidence, the courts would have to be persuaded to hear it and act upon it.

The urgent order of business, however, was mending my fences with Alicia.

The first person I saw was the rector, who greeted me warmly and asked if I’d been in France again.

I told him I had, and then said, “Still, I heard about the trial. It must have been terribly trying for Michael’s aunt and uncle.”

He shook his head. “I’ve offered them what comfort I could. And I’ve written to Michael, to ask if I could serve him in the days to come.”