We Shall Not Sleep (9 page)

"We don't know," he replied. "One of the German prisoners, I expect."

"I suppose it has to be," she agreed. "Why aren't they keeping them guarded properly?" But even as she said it, she remembered odd moments of rage breaking through what looked like banter taken a little too far, ugly comments that stayed in the mind, petty cruelties that betrayed an underlying contempt. Please heaven it was a German, but she was not certain. "What are they doing about it?" she went on.

"Sending for the police, I suppose," he said with a slight shrug. "No one really knows. It must have happened sometime during the night. I hope no one gets it in the neck for not having guarded the prisoners. I reckon there are just too many of them for anyone to watch. And they came through the lines themselves, most of them. Poor devils are glad the war's over, at least for them." He gave a rueful gesture. "They might have thought we have more food than they do."

She, too, found it impossible to think of them as enemies any longer, although she was disturbed by her sense of pity. They looked so desperately like their own men. More than once her mind had turned to the Peacemaker, and she had wondered what he was like. She had even thought that if she had known him as a man rather than a power behind the murder of too many people she had loved, she might have liked him. At the very least she would have understood his dreams. Was that a disloyalty to her dead parents, and to Owen Cullingford, whom she had also loved? Every one of the dead was precious to someone. It was contemptible to imagine that those dear to you, woven into your life so that the loss of them tore it apart, were really more valuable than all the uncountable others. It was an arrogance amounting to blasphemy.

What had happened to Sarah Price? It could as easily have happened to Judith herself, or any of the other women here. Now a hot drink was trivial, almost forgotten. Her wet skirt flapping about her legs, cold and heavy, was no more than a discomfort. She gave Cavan a smile of thanks, then walked over toward the Admissions tent and the extended tents put up to shelter the wounded Germans, as well as their own.

She was barely inside when she saw Joseph. He turned at the sound of her footsteps on the boards. She felt a sudden pinch of anxiety at how tired he looked. He would have to deal with the grief of this new loss, and the fear and blame that followed.

"Judith!" He excused himself from the orderly he was talking to and came over to her quickly, almost pushing her into a corner away from earshot, so that she was pressed against a pile of boxes and stretchers stacked upright. "Sarah Price has been killed—" he began.

"I know," she said, cutting him off. "Cavan told me. Murdered with a bayonet." She swallowed hard, her throat tight. "It's horrible, but I suppose we shouldn't be surprised. Victory and defeat are too close to each other here, and both of them have their bitterness. War is probably the most hideous thing we do to each other, but we've become used to it. I don't know about you, but I'm scared sick of going home." She looked at him, searching his eyes and seeing understanding leap to them, and pain. They knew each other now in a way they could not have in a lifetime at home.

"That's not all, Judith," he said in little more than a whisper. "Matthew's here. I didn't have the chance to tell you before. The Peacemaker's German ally has come through the lines to give him up, before he can affect the terms of the armistice so the war starts up again within a few years."

"You know who he is?" She was amazed, excitement surging up inside her now, her heart suddenly pounding.

"Not yet." His hand tightened on her arm. "He's here, but he doesn't trust us enough to give us the name. He'll travel to London to tell Lloyd George. We've got to keep him safe until we can leave. He's got a badly wounded foot and was feverish the first night when I met him, but the orderly says he's better now."

"Are we going?" Without giving it even a thought she included herself. "He'll need an ambulance. Can we explain it to Colonel Hook?"

He hesitated only a moment. Before the war he would have evaded an answer, protecting her; now he knew her strength. "No. I think Schenckendorff's genuine, but we can't be sure," he said. "And even if he is, it's possible the Peacemaker knows he's crossed through, and there could only be one reason. He wouldn't take the risk."

"Murder him, too? His own ..." She stopped, realizing what she was about to say, and bit her lip. "Schenckendorff?"

"Yes. Looks like someone already put a bayonet through his foot, more than once."

She drew in her breath to swear, then remembered his sensibilities and checked herself. "You said Matthew's here?"

"Two days ago Schenckendorff sent a message to him in London, asking where he should come through and if Matthew could be here."

A chill touched her more than the wet skirts around her legs. Now she understood why Joseph was afraid it was a trap, a last attempt at revenge on the Reavleys, who had thwarted him from the start.

He must have seen the fear in her. "We'll get him out," he assured her. "It'll be over soon. It's wretched about Sarah Price's death, but it may be solved pretty quickly. We can't wait for it anyway. I'll explain it to Colonel Hook if I have to. Matthew's rank should make it pretty simple. At the moment he's pretending to be a major to avoid attention. He'll just have to take the chance and explain who he is."

She nodded. "I've got to see if I can fix my engine before I need it again. I'll be lucky if it lasts the war out. I really need some new parts."

"Good luck!" he said drily.

"Luck won't do it!" she retorted. "I need a light-fingered friend willing to liberate a few spark plugs and one or two other necessities of life."

He had stopped bothering to warn her to be careful. He gave a very slight smile and walked away.

Judith spent the next hour taking apart various pieces of her engine, cleaning them, and attempting to make them work again. Finally she resigned herself to the fact that without new spark plugs it was pointless. She abandoned it and went to find a mug of hot tea and something to eat, even if it was only a heel of bread and some tinned Maconachie stew.

The clearing station was unusually tense. She passed medical orderlies moving briskly over the duckboard paths from the tent for the walking wounded to that for the lying wounded, their heads averted as if they dare not look at her. They were embarrassed because she was an ambulance driver, not so very different from a nurse. It was as if she were somehow related to the victim. She opened her mouth to speak to one she knew well, but he had passed her without meeting her eyes, and it was too late.

She found nurses Allie Robinson and Moira Jessop in a supply tent. They were busy boiling a pot of water on a portable stove. The place was full of boxes stacked up and a half-open bale of sheets.

"Just came in?" Moira asked Judith. She was a Scottish girl with red-brown hair and wide eyes.

Judith shook her head. "Spark plugs are burned out," she said resignedly. "Got enough for tea?" She looked at the pot.

"Of course. I suppose you've heard about poor Sarah?" Moira asked.

Allie Robinson gave a little grunt. "What I want to know is what she was doing there at all! Everyone's been warned, as if we needed it. Did she think German prisoners were going to respect her and treat her like a lady?" She looked defensively at Judith, seeing her surprise. "Of course I'm sorry for her!" she snapped, the color rising in her fair skin. "Everyone is. But she flirted like mad with the Germans, led them on like a—" She stopped short of using the word that was obviously in her mind. "You have to take some sort of responsibility," she finished. "Now everybody's scared stiff, and all the men are going to be suspected until we can prove who it was."

"Why men?" Judith asked.

Allie and Moira glanced at each other, then away again.

"Because of how it was done," Moira answered. "Like rape, but with a bayonet."

Judith imagined it, and felt sick.

"Sorry," Moira apologized. "But she was pretty ... loose. The last time anybody saw her she was with somebody, we just don't know who."

"Are you sure?" Judith was trying to deny it to herself, refusing to believe.

"Of course we're sure!" Allie snapped. "Stop being so naive!"

Judith saw the fear and anger in her face, and knew with chilling familiarity that it was Allies own fear speaking. She despised her facile criticism, as if any of it altered the tragedy, but she also understood it. If it were somehow Sarah's fault—if Sarah could have avoided it by behaving differently—the rest of them could find a way to be safe.

"No matter how silly she was, she didn't deserve that! She was used and thrown away like so much rubbish, Allie!" Moira said with disgust.

Allie looked away from her. "We're all used and thrown away," she said bitterly. "Just this time it's against the law, that's all. They're getting police in. Not that they'll find anything, but I suppose they have to try. Where do they even begin? Men are coming and going all the time, our own wounded, German prisoners, VA.D. volunteers, doctors, people bringing supplies, even burial parties. Could have been anybody at all. Like Piccadilly Circus here."

"Well, obviously it was one of the German prisoners," Moira said impatiently. "It's just a matter of finding out which one. She flirted with all of them, stupid creature!" The pot boiled and she made three tin mugs of tea, passing one to Judith. "Sorry there's no sort of milk, but it's tea, more or less."

"Thank you." Judith took it and sipped tentatively. She had forgotten what real tea tasted like, and this was at least hot. "I don't suppose you know anyone who has decent spark plugs?"

"Good luck!" Moira said ruefully.

"You could try Toby Simmons," Allie suggested. "He has some imaginative ways of getting hold of things. At least that's one way you could phrase it." Her face pinched with distaste. "Gwen Williams says she thinks he's behind this. He was always making vulgar remarks, and Sarah wasn't above flirting with him. Too openly, if you ask me."

"Nobody did ask you," Moira told her.

"You didn't, because you like him!" Allie retorted. "You never thought there was anything wrong with what he did, even when he was caught in the empty theater with Erica Barton-Jones."

"Really?" Judith was surprised. Toby was handsome, and sometimes amusing, but Erica Barton-Jones was from a very good family and fully expected to marry into a title of some sort, or at the very least into money.

"That's rubbish," Moira said quickly, her face flushed. "That was just spread around by Sarah as a piece of spite."

"Why would she do that?" Allie asked.

"How do I know? Boredom, fear, loneliness, sheer stupidity," Moira snapped. "Why do we do any of the things we do? She was lonely, and she had nothing much to go home to. Not that many of us have."

Allie was silent, her face filled with a sudden, overwhelming grief.

Moira looked at Judith. "It's as if something has sort of... broken," she said quietly. "Yesterday we were all stiff upper lip, and today nobody knows what to say or do. I don't know how many of us actually liked Sarah, but she was one of us, and nobody at all should be used that way, and left... exposed like that." She put her arms around herself, holding them folded tight, protectively. "I feel... naked too, as if every man's looking at her but seeing me as well. I know that's idiotic, but I can't help it."

"It'll be better once they find out who did it," Judith said, trying to reassure her, although she feared it was a lie. Suspicions might be proved wrong, but did you ever forget that they had been there? Trust broken is not easy to mend; sometimes it is not even possible. "Thanks for the tea. I've got to see if I can find some spark plugs." She put the mug down and with a small wave of her hand went outside into the cold midmorning light.

In the empty Resuscitation tent Joseph reported to Captain Cavan to ask what he could do to help. He knew Cavan well and had an immense respect for him. After Major Northrup had been killed, it had been Joseph who had saved Cavan's life at the court-martial, although he could not save the Victoria Cross for which he had been recommended for his extraordinary courage under fire. Naturally they did not speak of it now; a gentleman did not mention such an obligation. "Glad you came," Cavan said sincerely. He was sitting on an upturned box emptying stew out of a Dixie can, and there was a mug of tea on the makeshift table. His blood-splashed white coat was slung over the back of a hard chair. "Need all the help we can get to keep control of this." He was in his middle thirties, an angular man with fair hair and tired, heavy-lidded eyes over broad cheekbones. With long rest and regular food he would have been handsome.

There was no need for explanations; he knew Joseph understood. "Police are here already. Damn nuisance, because nobody can leave until they get this sorted out. Means we're piled up with German prisoners, and this fellow Jacobson won't even let our regular ambulance crews in and out, except the women, in case it's one of them." He looked exhausted and thoroughly fed up. He shook his head. "God, what a bloody stupid mess. Sorry, Reavley. See what you can do to help. Jacobson's in the first tent at the end."

"Yes, sir." Joseph was outside on the wooden pathway before he fully realized what Cavan had said—no one could leave. He, Matthew, and Schenckendorff were imprisoned here until this crime was solved. It would probably only be a couple of days, but it was already October 17. What if it took longer?

The air was cold, with a raw wind coming in from the east. He walked quickly, his boots pounding on the slats, but at least the planks were firm under his weight, not like the constantly rocking duckboards in the trenches, the best of them covered with chicken wire to help men avoid slipping when they were wet.

He reached the tent and knocked on the door frame. He heard the command to enter, and pushed it open. Inside, it had been cleared of most of its medical supplies, no doubt because they were needed as much as for the convenience of the police. The man sitting behind the bare, wooden table was plain-faced with dark hair brushed straight back and a short bristly mustache. He appeared to be of average height. Only the hands holding a pencil above a clean sheet of paper were in any way remarkable. They were slender, fine-boned, with particularly long fingers. His insignia said that he was a captain.