An Unwilling Accomplice (40 page)

“Try that again,” Simon told him, “and I’ll finish what I began there by the mill.”

He shoved his hand under the man’s pillow and pulled out a revolver. Spinning the chamber, he could see that there were several shots left. He dropped it in his pocket and stood back.

“Are you all right?” he asked me.

“Yes, startled, that’s all. How did you know the revolver was there? That he’d brought it upstairs with him?”

“Because he wouldn’t have left it behind. Not after what happened at the mill,” Simon answered, anger still there in his voice. “He’d have been prepared to defend himself.”

The man lay there. He had light brown hair, sun streaked, with hazel eyes, and they were blazing up at us.

“Who are you?” Simon asked harshly.

But he shut his eyes and said nothing more.

More careful now, I began to bathe the groove, and wished I had a little of the powder that Maddie used to stem the bleeding. Despite my best efforts, it wouldn’t stop. I pressed the cloth against the side of the man’s head to see if that would help.

Simon was leaning against the wall, within reach, his arms folded across his chest.

The room was silent, except for the sound of our breathing.

“Someone will have to sort this out. We can’t,” Simon told me in Urdu. “As soon as you have him stabilized, we’ll find the Biddington constable and have him take both men into custody until Inspector Stephens arrives.”

My patient’s eyes flew open. He hadn’t understood Simon, but he’d recognized the words
Biddington
and
constable
.

“Lie still,” I said. “Or you’ll pass out from blood loss.”

He believed me, shutting his eyes again.

A few minutes later, Mary came back with another maid, both of them carrying pitchers of water and a basketful of clean cloths.

“Leave us now,” I said briskly. “Keep watch for Miss Percy and Maddie.” They had just reached the door, when I said, “Can you tell me the patient’s name?”

But they looked at me, too frightened to answer, and hurriedly pulled the door closed behind them.

I turned to see my patient’s gaze on the doorway.

“I expect they’ve been told to keep quiet,” I said to Simon in English. “He doesn’t look like a hardened criminal, does he? And yet he was prepared to shoot you and choke me to death.”

“I’m not a criminal.” The words came from the bed in a tired voice. “Just frightened. Someone has been trying to kill me. How did I know it wasn’t you?”

“You could have gone to the police,” I said.

“Oh, yes? Try finding a policeman here.” He lapsed into silence again.

The blood was clotting now, although the wound was still wet. I left the bedside to sit in one of the chairs by the cold hearth. I wondered why the fire hadn’t been lit—it was laid, ready for a match. The room was distinctly chilly.

Half an hour passed. I put my coat on again. Simon stayed where he was, keeping watch. I went to look at my patient from time to time, but I couldn’t tell whether he was sleeping or simply lying there, waiting for us to leave.

Mrs. Chatham looked in on us, and then left just as quickly as she’d appeared at the door.

At length I heard the sound of horses outside.

Simon gestured to me, and I went quietly to the door, slipping down the stairs as noiselessly as I could.

But Mary had heard the horses as well. Carrying a lamp, she was at the door before I could cross to it.

Flinging it open, she called into the darkness, “Miss Percy? Oh thank heavens.”

“Why is that motorcar here? Oh, God, Mary, did you let them
in
?” She came flying into the house, lifting her skirts a little to be sure she didn’t trip. I heard Maddie’s voice just behind her.

She caught sight of me, rushing at me, beating me with her fists and shouting, “I hate you, I hate you!”

Mary was calling to her. “Miss, he’s all right, Mrs. Chatham says he’s sleeping.”

But she didn’t heed anyone or anything. Breaking away from me, she ran up the stairs, disappearing down the passage as Maddie stepped into the foyer. He looked tired, old, as if the night had been more than he could face.

“Sister Crawford?” he said, surprised to see me. “The motorcar . . .” He didn’t finish what he was about to say, turning slightly, as if to ask Mary to see to the horses.

To my astonishment, Sergeant Wilkins walked unsteadily through the door.

He was haggard, and I guessed his head must be splitting. Very like that of the man lying in the bedroom under Simon’s eye.

“Why is
he
here?” I asked Maddie, although I couldn’t imagine what else he could have done with the sergeant, given what must have been Miss Percy’s frantic pleas for him to attend what she believed, given all the blood, was a man on the verge of dying.

“He couldn’t ride, even though we could have taken Mr. Tulley’s other horse. Mr. Warren has allowed us to borrow his cart.” Maddie smiled slightly. “He was grateful for the effort to protect his mill.”

It was Maddie who had rung the fire bell.

“Why didn’t you simply tie him to the table, as I’d done?”

“He was persuasive,” Maddie said. “And nauseated.”

Not unexpected with concussion.

From the passage above, I could hear Phyllis screaming at Simon. Turning, I ran up the stairs. Behind me, Mary shut the door as Maddie started to climb after me. I glanced down to see Sergeant Wilkins standing there, staring after us, as if he was uncertain what he should do. Was he really so dazed still? Or was it an act? Like the nausea, perhaps?

He was a clever man. And the unattended miller’s cart was still just outside the door. So was Simon’s motorcar.

I stopped, leaning against the balustrade.

“You wanted to come here. You wanted to see if Simon Brandon had killed him for you. Isn’t that what brought you here, when you can barely stand on your own two feet?”

It was severe and, in the view of the others who overheard me, uncalled for. I could feel their gaze swinging toward me, Maddie just below me on the stairs and the maid, still standing by the door. But I knew I had to do something to keep the sergeant from leaving while our backs were turned. It worked.

Sergeant Wilkins looked as if I’d slapped him.

Reluctantly he walked toward the stairs, casting a glance over his shoulder toward Mary. Then he started up the steps, stumbling again, as if he couldn’t focus his eyes. Maddie waited for him, and together they followed me.

Drawing a breath of relief, I hurried on toward the room where I’d left Simon. Phyllis Percy was now sitting in the chair I’d used, head in her hands, crying. The man on the bed was trying to sit up. Simon, his face like a thundercloud, stood by the window.

I paused in the doorway. “Miss Percy?” I said, just as Mrs. Chatham came running down the passage from a room at the far end to see what the commotion was about.

“Phyllis? My dear, what’s happened? He can’t be dead. Surely not!”

She pushed past me into the room. Maddie had reached the top of the stairs now, his arm half supporting Sergeant Wilkins, who looked as if he were about to be sick. As Mrs. Chatham demanded answers, I saw Wilkins break away from Maddie’s grip, and stand, swaying, in the middle of the passage.

“No,” he said savagely. “I won’t go in there. I refuse. Whatever you wish to say.”

The man on the bed, hearing his voice, swung his feet to the floor and sat up. Too quickly, for he too looked ill now.

“Keep him out of here,” he demanded, turning to Simon. “Keep him away. He’ll kill me.”

“Why should I?” Simon asked coldly. “You’ve been wanting to kill each other. You blocked the door of that hut and tried to burn him alive, then shot at him. It’s his turn.”

Both Mrs. Chatham and her sister cried out in alarm, taking him at his word. It was Miss Percy who bent over the bed, fiercely protective.

“You’re lying,” she exclaimed. “This is my fiancé. He’s been lost for years. Hunted, hounded, and he’s done nothing to deserve it.”

“You’re engaged?” I asked Miss Percy. She must have been very young when she accepted this man’s proposal. Perhaps too young to see clearly. Perhaps trying for a little happiness while it seemed to be in their grasp.

Maddie moved past me into the room, carrying his worn leather satchel. He gently set Miss Percy aside and leaned over the patient. Straightening up, he turned to me. “The bleeding has stopped,” he said, approvingly. “He’ll have a nasty headache, nothing more. Who was firing the revolver? Did the Major do this? Did he also set the fire?”

“It was this man,” I said. “The Major couldn’t have walked that far. It was also this man who struck the sergeant with a stone.”

“Gentle God. Then I shouldn’t have brought the sergeant with me.”

“It’s too late now.” Sergeant Wilkins spoke from just behind me. I moved aside, and he stepped into room.

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY-TWO

T
HE MAN ON
the bed stiffened.

“Hello, Jeremy,” the sergeant said, his voice strained and weary. Then to Simon and me, he gestured. “My dead brother.”

“Brother?” both Simon and I said nearly at the same time. We looked from one man to the other. I thought at first there was no resemblance between them. Sergeant Wilkins’s hair was much lighter, his eyes a clear blue. And yet when I looked more closely, it was there in the structure of the face. In a photograph, where there was no certainty about the color of the hair or eyes, the similarities would have been striking. Forehead, nose, chin, even the shape of the cheekbones.

“Four men died during a training exercise out on the Hoo Peninsula,” Sergeant Wilkins was saying. “Another five or six were wounded. It was rather nasty, bodies everywhere. The sergeant in charge, the man responsible for the accident, was rattled, and he mixed up the names of the dead and the wounded. Jeremy was sent to hospital under another man’s name. When he was well enough, he simply walked away. I didn’t discover he was still alive until two months ago.”

“But why did he want to kill you?” I asked. “And why were you stalking
him
? I don’t understand.”

Jeremy Wilkins pointed a shaking finger toward his brother. He seemed to be in great distress. “He’s a killer. I knew if he found me I was a dead man. I want to live, I want to marry Phyllis. I’ve found her again, I don’t want to lose her.”

“Your brother is being sought by the police. Why not send for them?” Simon asked, moving from the window.

“I don’t exist,” he answered sharply. “I can’t go to the police or anyone else. I had to do this myself. The war is finished. I can start a new life.”

“I still don’t know why he should wish to kill you,” I retorted.

“If I’m dead, he can blame that killing in Ironbridge on me. Don’t you see? He can claim he succeeded in catching me where everyone else has failed. He’ll be a hero. Again.”

“I should think you had a better reason for killing Henry Lessup than your brother did.” I was very aware of Sergeant Wilkins standing close to me—within reach. If he wanted to escape, he could use me as a shield. Simon wouldn’t shoot if I were in the way. I moved slightly, out of his reach.

“He was my older brother, he always tried to protect me. But now he’s got to choose between me and himself.”

“Ask him why,” the sergeant said, his voice suddenly stronger, making me more wary still, “if I’m a killer, he struck the first blow. Then came after me to burn me alive.”

Jeremy Wilkins reached out, pleading. “He’s got it
wrong
. He was shooting at
me
.” He touched the long groove in his scalp. “The war has changed him. I don’t know who he is anymore.” He looked around the room for support, trying to explain to Miss Percy and her sister. “Sergeant Lessup was the man responsible for what happened in that training exercise. Hoo is isolated, marshy, nearly surrounded by water. Ideal place to test trenches and trench warfare, trying to find the best way to end the stalemate in France. The Army took more than half the peninsula for it. Only, Lessup was eager to make training as real as possible. He told us it was for our own good. That we wouldn’t be as nervous when we faced the real test, in France. He was ambitious, was Lessup. He wanted to be seen as the authority on trenches. There were good men there on Hoo. He wasn’t one of them. He used live ammunition without warning us. It was a shambles, a bloody, stupid shambles.”

“You’re both deserters,” Simon put in. He moved again, this time to the hearth, standing with his back to it. From there he had a field of fire taking in the entire room—and the doorway. I stepped farther away from the sergeant. “If the Army had its way, the two of you would be shot.”

“Yes, well, I’d done my bit for King and Country, hadn’t I?” Jeremy retorted bitterly. “I nearly lost my life. My foot is twisted, ugly. I walk with a limp, I always will. There are scars on my hip and my back as well. That’s what machine-gun fire can do. I moved, just as the chaplain was giving me last rites. He called me Paul something, I didn’t quite grasp it. I didn’t have the strength to care. And that’s when Jeremy Wilkins ceased to exist. It was the Army’s mistake, not mine. When I was discharged from hospital, I had my orders for France. As Paul Addison. It was then I tried to find Phyllis. The house in London was closed—I didn’t think to look here. And then one day when I was desperate, I came here, half afraid Mrs. Chatham wouldn’t let me in. A ghost with no name. Besides, I don’t think her late husband approved of me.” He smiled at Mrs. Chatham. “I was wrong. When I fainted almost on your doorstep, you welcomed me. Phyllis couldn’t believe I was alive. She laughed and cried for two days.”

It was a well-told story. Phyllis Percy and Mrs. Chatham accepted it. They were hanging on every word. I found myself disliking Jeremy Wilkins.

Almost as if he’d read my thoughts, Sergeant Wilkins spoke from near the doorway.

“You were always one to know which way the wind blew, Jeremy. The only reason I might have killed Lessup was in revenge for what happened to you. Why should I want to do such a thing, once I learned you were very much alive and looking for him yourself?”