Lost Among the Living (14 page)

“I
hope you haven't wasted your time,” Colonel Mabry said. “I did warn you that this might be a futile exercise.”

We were in the small sitting room at the inn in Anningley, where a serving girl was laying out a tray of tea. It was early in the afternoon, a week after my encounter with Robert, and the taproom of the inn was deserted. Still, the colonel had taken a private room for us, which was furnished with a table, a few overstuffed chairs, and a mismatched cherry sideboard. Colonel Mabry was dressed in a three-piece suit of formal gray, his white shirt crisp, his tie knotted to perfection, and his distinguished hair brushed back from his temples. It was the immaculate appearance of a career military man.

I glanced at Martin, who had accompanied me. “I'm sure it won't be a waste,” I said politely. “I appreciate everything you've done.”

Colonel Mabry grunted and gestured for me to sit. “I've received a copy of your husband's file from the War Office,” he said. “It's very slender, as I suspected it would be. I had them send it to me for you to look at, but I doubt there will be much in it of use.”

I sat on one of the chairs, fighting to keep my legs properly crossed as I sank into the cushions, and pulled off my gloves. “May I see it?”

Martin broke in as he claimed the chair beside mine. “Mrs. Manders is rather impatient, as you can imagine, sir,” he said. “I'm sure you've dealt with widows before.”

The colonel looked at Martin, taking in every detail in a glance. He did not see me bite back a retort to Martin's condescending remark. “You served, Mr. Forsyth.” It was not a question.

“Yes, sir.” Martin wore a suit today, a jacket of checked wool over a stylish waistcoat, but his painful thinness altered the effect of the clothes. He had slicked down his hair and combed it back from his forehead, which made him look disconcertingly adult, like a man instead of a boy just out of his sickroom. Yet his chair nearly swallowed him, and his knobby hands gripped the arms.

“Air, ground, or sea?” the colonel asked.

“Ground, sir,” Martin replied. “Artillery. I spent most of my time on the Marne.”

“Difficult fighting there,” the colonel commented. He picked up a leather briefcase and opened it, taking his time, my female presence completely forgotten in this male exchange. “I traveled through there in May 1916, and again just before the end of the war. It's still abandoned, or so I hear.” He glanced up briefly. “Did you take an injury?”

“Shrapnel, sir.”

“I see. To the stomach?”

Martin looked surprised. “Yes, sir.”

The colonel shook his head. With what seemed excruciating slowness, he found a particular envelope in his briefcase and began to extract it. “I don't have second sight, Mr. Forsyth. I've just seen the effects of shrapnel wounds to the stomach a number of times. You're lucky you survived. Most of the men I saw with such an injury lived barely a week, and it was a mercy by the end.”

“Yes, sir.”

I resisted the urge to fidget in my seat. Martin was only doing his part; I had known that military small talk would make the meeting go more smoothly. But still I wished they would get on with it. I looked at the envelope in the colonel's hand—Alex's file—as if I could read through the thick, creamy paper.

“How much do you know of Mr. Manders's death?” the colonel asked Martin.

“Not much, sir,” Martin replied quietly. “Though I believe he is officially missing in action, as Mrs. Manders has no official death notice.”

Colonel Mabry appeared to think this over, then nodded. He turned to me. “I suppose it's quite frustrating for you, as his wife,” he said. “But disappearances like your husband's were unfortunately common. We have some several thousand men still missing in England alone, Mrs. Manders. The recent burial of the Unknown Warrior illustrates this exact point.”

I nodded. The Unknown Warrior—the exhumed body of an unidentified soldier from a French battlefield—had been buried with great ceremony at Westminster Abbey the previous year, attended by royalty and thousands of mourners. I had sat in my flat alone that day, trying, like countless others, I was certain, not to imagine that it was my missing husband in that box, its solemn photograph in all the papers.

“You will not understand everything you see in the file,” Colonel Mabry said to me, as if I were a child or a recent student of English. “But wherever I can give clarification, I will do so.”

I took it from him and set it in my lap. Then I opened the slender file.

The first thing I saw was Alex's face. The photograph was clipped to the inside cover of the file—a small, square shot of him. He was dressed in uniform, his collar just visible in the close-cropped shot, though he was hatless. There were the familiar planes and angles of his
features, the eyes that I knew were extraordinary dark blue ringed with black, the familiar, well-bred set of his chin. His lips were closed and set in a serious line and his gaze was carefully blank as he stared into the camera.

“This is the photo from my husband's passport,” I said.

“Yes,” Colonel Mabry agreed. “It is standard procedure.”

My eyes traveled the particulars of my husband on the page: height, six feet three inches; weight, fifteen stone; hair, dark blond; eyes, blue; age, twenty-three years. The file dated from 1915, when Alex enlisted, leaving him frozen in time, permanently twenty-three years old.

I tore my gaze from Alex's face and turned the page. Here was what I had been looking for: his war history. He had enlisted in February of 1915 and had been sent almost immediately into pilot training at the Military Aeronautics School in Reading. After eight months he'd gone to France for advanced training in Reims that seemed to consist of both classroom work and flight practice, both of which he excelled at. A note was written in pencil beneath the Reims record: “Skills very promising. Naturally suited for this kind of work.” The signature beneath the note had been blacked over with ink.

After training, Alex was moved to the Western Front, where he spent most of the rest of the war. The record listed relocation to Soissons and Neuve Chapelle in 1916; and an extended period up and down the Somme in 1917, moving every four to five weeks. In every place he was assigned as a pilot, “for purposes of reconnaissance and battle, if engaged.” He seemed to have gone wherever the authorities in charge needed photographs or other kinds of intelligence information, his piloting skills reserved for close observation of the enemy rather than head-on battle.

I studied his leave record. He had been given ten days' leave in 1916—I remembered it well; it had been spring, several of the days unseasonably warm, and Alex had seemed intensely happy to be home
in a way that had almost confused me. The war was still new to both of us, and we'd bumped through the first days of his leave like strangers until we remembered how to be married. His second leave, in early 1917, was when the camera arrived, and he had seemed more distant by then, more quietly weighed down by the things he'd seen.

There was no leave listed for August of 1917, the month Franny had died. There was, however, a notation in the file.

“What does this mean?” I asked, breaking the silence in the room and looking up at Colonel Mabry. “In August of 1917. There is a note that says ‘authorized travel.'”

I turned the file toward the colonel for him to read, but even from several feet away he barely glanced at the writing on the page. “I'm uncertain of the details, Mrs. Manders, but the implication is that your husband's superiors sent him somewhere for official reasons.”

“But it wasn't leave,” I said.

“If the file doesn't state that it was leave, then no,” the colonel replied. “Your husband was sent somewhere for a purpose, which in this case does not seem to have been recorded.”

“Would ‘authorized travel' have sent him to England?”

“I would be very surprised if it did. Travel to England was strictly monitored during the height of the war, as you can imagine.”

Martin was looking at the file over my shoulder. “That's the month my sister died,” he said. “Alex was here then. At Wych Elm House.”

“Was he?” Colonel Mabry said.

I studied the colonel's face, the even features, the salt-and-pepper eyebrows above impassive eyes. “How could he have been at Wych Elm House when he was not on leave?” I asked.

“There's one way, I suppose,” Martin answered before the colonel could speak. “That is, if Alex was sent somewhere on official business—and then came here on his way back. A sort of side trip.”

“But it wasn't authorized,” I said. “That would mean Alex took unauthorized leave. He would be court-martialed for desertion.”

Martin seemed surprised I even knew such a thing. “That may be
true, Cousin Jo, but not if he were granted a favor. Off the record, you see.”

“Off the record?” I asked.

“It might not be so,” Colonel Mabry interjected sternly. “But Mr. Forsyth is correct. It's a possibility that could explain what's in the file.”

“It makes sense,” Martin said. “By then Alex was an officer with a very high flying record. He could have simply called in a favor.” His voice gentled. “So you see, Jo, it wasn't the case that he took leave without telling you.”

I stared at the file in my lap, appalled. No, Alex had not been granted leave without telling me. Instead, he had called in a special favor asking to make an off-the-books trip—to Wych Elm House, instead of home to me.

Hans Faber,
I thought.
Who is Hans Faber?

I could feel both men's gazes on me—the colonel's sharp and unwavering, Martin's soft and concerned. I did not want either of them to see the pain on my face, so I kept my gaze in my lap and ran my finger along the page. Alex's final leave had been in early February of 1918, and it had been three weeks long—the longest leave he'd ever been given. Even at the time I had known that it was a longer leave than most men were granted, but I had guessed it was a sop for a man who had been fighting so well for so long. Except for a strained shoulder and an infected hand, Alex had never even been sick enough to be out of the fighting.

The rest of his war history was pitifully short. After his three weeks' leave he had been sent back to Reims, where he had originally trained when first in France, for some kind of retraining. After leaving, he'd been sent to the airfield at Verdun, from which he had left on a mission and never come home. There was a notation in the file regarding his recovered plane, but it contained no details that hadn't already been given to Martin in his inquiries. Alex had been alone. No
one had witnessed the plane go down. His parachute was missing. He had not left any identification or indication of where he'd gone. He'd simply vanished as if he'd never been. His status was listed as “Missing in Action.”

I closed the file—I did not turn the page to look at Alex's face again—and handed it back to Colonel Mabry. “Thank you, sir,” I said, keeping my voice steady. “I appreciate your assistance.”

For the first time, the colonel seemed a little unsure. “I realize it must be unsatisfactory,” he said. “But I hope it has answered some of your questions.”

I nodded. “Yes, thank you.” I turned to Martin. “Perhaps it's time to go.”

As we took our leave, Martin making more small talk with the colonel and me pulling on my gloves, I could feel the colonel's gaze turn to me. He was no fool, Colonel Mabry. He knew I was holding back. “Would you like me to inquire with the War Office about your widow's status?” he asked as Martin and I walked to the sitting room door.

“Please don't,” I said. “It isn't necessary.”

He did not argue, only gave me another penetrating look, as if he did not believe my impression of a quiet, cowed widow. But I revealed nothing more as we descended to the street and into the Forsyths' motorcar.

Martin seemed relieved as we pulled away. “I find the higher-ups
rather intimidating,” he said. “He makes me glad I spent most of my wartime in the mud and not in an office, playing politics. I'm afraid I'd be no good at it. I'm sorry if I bored you horribly, Cousin Jo, but I felt I had to.”

“You did just fine,” I said absently, watching the town of Anningley disappear from beneath the rim of my cloche hat.

“It's a bit of a disappointment for you, as he said. But I still think it was worth it, don't you?”

I could no longer speak, even to make polite talk. I kept my face angled away from him, my gaze out the window. Perhaps he thought I was grieved; in fact, I was angry. My eyes were burning and dry, and I was angrier than I could remember being.

Alex had lied to me, and not just about his trip in 1917.

The file from the War Office had told me more than I had let on. It said he'd gone to Reims in 1915; he'd told me he'd stayed in Reading that entire time. He'd never mentioned any advanced training in France. He had never told me of authorized travel for official business, or of asking a favor of his superiors to come to Wych Elm House. And after his three weeks' leave in 1918, he had told me he was going back to the fighting, not into retraining at Reims. What had he been training for, and why?

Why had he gone to great lengths to be at Wych Elm House? He hadn't seen Dottie or the rest of the family for years by then, and Martin wasn't even home. What had made him ask a special favor to come? How could it possibly be a coincidence that Alex had been at the house on the day that his cousin was flung from the roof?

She has died, poor thing.

What motivation could Alex possibly have had to murder his own cousin? Was it even possible the man I loved could have done such a thing?

Could you? Did you? Was it you?

And what about the other man who had died that day? Had Alex somehow been involved in that, too?