An Impartial Witness

by Charles Todd

  FINALLY I WROTE to Simon Brandon.

  He had been my father’s batman, his friend even though he was less than half my father’s age, and eventually his RMS, his regimental sergeant-major, a position of some responsibility as well as prestige. If anyone could find the answer to my question without involving the police or causing a stir, it was Simon. His contacts were myriad, and they had long memories of service together.

  I knew my father well enough to be sure he’d find the answer to my question, and then want to know why I had asked it. The Colonel Sahib, as we called him behind his back, was accustomed to commanding troops in battle. Raising a daughter would—he’d thought—be as simple as taking a seasoned company on maneuvers. He could do it blindfolded. Hands behind his back.

  By the time I was walking, he was in full retreat from that position. “She’ll be running the British Army before she’s ten!” he’d warned my mother. It wasn’t long before all the servants and half the men in his command were enlisted in a conspiracy to keep me safe. Not to mention our Indian staff and all their relatives.

  The Army has a code of its own. I had been well taught not to air its dirty linens in public, and in India my father would have made short work of finding out who had been involved with Lieutenant Evanson’s wife, and seeing to it that he was disciplined. Or learning how Captain Fordham had shot himself. It would have gone no further, been dealt with quietly and appropriately. We weren’t in India now, but the same circumspection was still there, inbred in us.

  A letter came back faster than I’d expected. It occurred to me that Simon had somehow arranged to have it sent with dispatches. The post where I was presently stationed was notoriously slow. And sent with dispatches, the letter wouldn’t pass through the hands of the military censors.

  I opened it quickly, eager to see what he had discovered.

  Bess. It’s been hushed up. I can’t discover why. What’s this about? Do you know this man?

  Before I could answer Simon, we were moved again, this time to the tiny village of La Fleurette, so destroyed by war and armies that I could find nothing to show me what it might have looked like, once upon a time.

  There was a pitted street, half buried in piles of rubble, only the west wall of the little church still forlornly standing, and miraculously, a stone barn that had somehow escaped damage. It was whole, even its roof intact.

  “Praise God,” Sister Benning said, looking up at it. “Now to see if we can do anything about the inside.”

  The lane into the barn’s forecourt was no more than a muddy and rutted track. The barnyard was already jammed with lorries and ambulances jostling for room, and we had orderlies clearing up the interior as fast as they could, so that we had a space in which to work.

  The walking wounded were already sitting on benches, shoulders drooping, bloody bandaging around heads, torsos, or limbs. Sometimes all three. Stretchers with the worst cases were being set across frames made from mangers, and a surgeon was already at work, calling for us to hurry and bring him what he needed. The first of the dead had been taken away, out of sight in what had been the milking shed.

  It was chaos, and we were accustomed to it, having packed in such a fashion that we could find anything we wanted immediately.

  Ambulances were coming in now in twos and threes, and I was meeting them, trying to sort the wounded into those who could wait, those who needed immediate attention, and sometimes, offering up a brief prayer as I came across a soldier who had died on the way to us.

  We worked almost thirty-six hours without respite on one broken body after another. Someone had managed to brew tea, and we drank gallons of it without milk or sugar, to stay awake. I took my turn at the tables where Dr. Buckley was operating, my eyes on his hands and the wound. Ellen Benning, on the other side, was constantly mopping his brow, and as I looked up, I realized he was flushed, perspiration rolling down his face, and I wondered if he were ill. At a break while the patients were being shifted, I led him outside and asked, “Sir, what’s wrong?”

  He looked at me, his eyes so tired that they seemed sunk in his head, lined and puffy with lack of sleep.

  “I’m well,” he told me irritably. “Don’t hover.”

  I said nothing more, letting him go back to work without protest.

  And then as suddenly as the flood had begun, it started to taper off.

  I saw Dr. Buckley huddled with one of the ambulance drivers, their faces grim.

  We had reached a point where we could actually catch our collective breath when Dr. Buckley began to load the wounded, ambulatory and stretcher cases, into whatever vehicles we had, sending them back down the line. The empty vehicles were returning for their next load when I quietly asked what was happening.

  “The Germans are about to break through along the Front. We’re moving out as quickly as possible. The Army is trying to hold them, but I don’t think there’s much of a chance now. Best to be prepared.”

  It was the story of this war—a few yards gained at horrendous cost, then lost again with even more casualties from trying to hold on against all odds. A retreat today, an advance tomorrow, and then retreat again before the next advance, like a bloody tug of war.

  I nodded, and went about helping him, smiling and offering comfort where I could, assuring the soldiers we’d just patched up that this was too exposed a location and they’d be better off in one of the trench hospitals down the line.

  One of the Scots officers agreed. “This wasn’t supposed to happen. We’d won the ground, HQ told us we could hold on to it. But their intelligence was wrong.”

  We were down to the last half dozen walking wounded, who were being handed into ambulances, and the staff was packing one with what was left of our stock of supplies. A lorry was filled with the dead.

  I looked around in the pale morning light, feeling rather exposed here in this shattered place. I’d been too busy to notice before this. Still, I was tired enough to sink to the ground and sleep where I was.

  Dr. Buckley had come out of the barn to supervise the last of the stretcher cases, those he had waited as long as possible before moving. I was just about to go and help when I heard a faint new sound in the distance.

  Almost in the same instant, I recognized what I was hearing above the rumble of the German guns down the line. It was an aircraft, and it was coming closer.

  Searching the sky for it, I felt my heart rate rise. I don’t know why, but something, some instinct born of working so near war at its worst, warned me. Why was an aircraft heading this way? The British aerodromes were west of here. Was it in trouble? And then I saw it, coming low and fast. The shape was distinctive—the two wings and the different body of an Albatross. I had only a second to wonder how a German pilot could have flown this far behind our lines, and then remembered that our lines were collapsing. I was already running, pointing, shouting to everyone to take cover, one eye still to the sky.

  The orderlies, patients, and nurses clustered around the great doors of the barn probably couldn’t see what I did, but my alarm was all too apparent. They glanced up, then heard the aircraft’s motor, and dashed for the security of the barn.

  The German flier, perhaps on a simple reconnaissance mission to see how the wavering front was holding, had seen us as well, and he veered in our direction, one of the Spandau machine guns already stuttering angrily, ripping up the earth and tracing a line across the bonnet of one of the ambulances. It burst into flames as the orderly who had taken cover behind it flung himself to one side. I could see the bullets coming my way and dove behind one of the horse troughs, and then he was gone, only to swoop past and swing around to bear down on the barn itself.

  I saw one of the wounded with a rifle in his hand, and he stood there, in full view, carefully taking his aim, firing and then waiting for death to come. But the pilot hadn’t seen him and fired at the barn instead. I could see Dr. Buckley standing there, his mouth opened wide in a wordless shout, his fists raised above his head, cursing t
he pilot.

  I realized he was trying to distract the German at the stick, and just as the pilot veered, a tiny plume of white smoke showed beneath the aircraft, turning black quickly and growing larger by the second, until it was a column trailing the aircraft like the shadow of death. I knew what was coming—I’d seen Lieutenant Evanson’s burns and those of other fliers.

  Dr. Buckley and the barn were forgotten as the pilot pulled up sharply and turned away in a frantic dash for his own lines.

  By some marvel of aim, that soldier must have hit the German.

  I was already at the barn, climbing into one of the other ambulances, ramming the burning one to one side, where it could do no harm to the barn’s wooden doors. Just at that moment, the German Albatross exploded into flames, spiraling toward the earth. A cheer went up, and then Sister Benning was pointing, saying something to me that I couldn’t hear over the explosive sound of the crash.

  I closed my eyes for a second against the sound, then turned in the direction she’d indicated, and there was Dr. Buckley on the ground in a heap. All I could think of was that he’d been hit.

  I ran to him as Sister Davis asked, “Isn’t anyone going to see if that pilot survived?” No one stopped to tell her that he’d burned alive in that conflagration.

  Bending over Dr. Buckley, I searched for blood, a wound, then felt for his pulse. It was slow, labored. An orderly was there, and I told him to put Dr. Buckley into one of the ambulances. “We ought to be going,” I added. “If that Albatross got through our lines, the rest of the German army may be on its heels.”

  Sister Williams caught my own alarm and called, “Hurry!”

  We got Dr. Buckley into the nearest ambulance. There was no room, with one ambulance destroyed, for six of us, and Sister Benning said, “Well, it’s shank’s mare, then.”

  The lorry with the dead was already pulling out, and the ambulances followed. We began to march in its wake, and I thought that all we needed now was for one of us to twist an ankle in the ruts and pits of the road. I was concerned as well for the wounded, bounced and shaken in spite of the care their drivers took to spare them the worst of the ride.

  Sister Davis was saying, “They’re getting ahead of us. What if the Germans are closer than we know?”

  “Keep walking,” Sister Williams answered her sternly. “And pay attention to where you’re putting your feet. There’s no one to carry you if you stumble or fall.”

  I looked over my shoulder. The black plume that marked where the German flier had gone down was dwindling, as the fire had consumed the wooden body of the Albatross and there was less and less fuel to feed on. I tried to put it out of my mind and did as Sister Williams had asked—silently concentrating on each step.

  My main worry was that another pilot from the same squadron, seeing the telltale black smoke, might come to investigate. We could still be spotted.

  We’d marched nearly three miles through desolation and the French summer sun, thirsty and wishing for nothing more than an hour’s rest. Sister Benning had already asked if we needed to find some shade for five minutes of respite from the heat, but we all knew it would be the height of foolishness.

  And then a lorry came barreling toward us, crashing about like an erratic monster, and it slowed in a shower of dust and loose stones.

  “Get in,” the sergeant at the wheel shouted to us, standing on no ceremony. “We lost this round, and the Hun will be at La Fleurette in twenty minutes.”

  We didn’t need a second invitation. We scrambled into the back of the lorry and held on tight as the driver swung it in a wide circle to make his turn. Then we were heading back the way he’d come, gripping whatever we could find to keep ourselves from being thrown about. I could feel the bruises accumulating. But we were safe, and that was all that mattered.

  The driver slowed after what seemed to be hours of torture, and he called back to us, “We should be in the clear. Sorry about the rough ride.”

  I asked if there was news of Dr. Buckley, but the driver shook his head. “No idea, Sister. But not to worry. We’ll be back in La Fleurette soon enough. Word is the Huns can’t hold what they’ve gained today.”

  And then he turned back to the wheel, and Sister Benning said, “Well. I know what it feels like to be on the rack, now,” as we gathered speed again.

  But I wasn’t fated to return to La Fleurette, although later I was told that we’d regained the lost ground, just as the sergeant had predicted, and a dozen yards beyond it. But at the cost of how many lives, how many wounded who would never be whole again?

  Dr. Buckley was being sent back to England. He resisted going at first, and then relented finally, asking if I could escort him—“She doesn’t fuss,” he had told the worried doctors who had examined him. At the same time I was informed that I was to be given leave, although I knew very well that in the rotation, I had weeks to go.

  I never knew—although I had my suspicions—if my leave had to do with Dr. Buckley, or if Inspector Herbert had had some say in it. That was rather far-fetched, but stranger things, I’d learned in dealing with the Army, could happen. It was entirely possible that Simon Brandon had pulled some strings. Between them, he and my father knew everyone from General Haig to the lowliest subaltern down the line of command.

  It was Simon who met my train as it came into London, and I’d sent no telegram.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  SIMON GREETED ME, took my satchel away from me, and walked with me to the motorcar that was waiting outside the station.

  My father’s motorcar, in fact.

  Simon smiled. “It’s home for you, Miss Crawford. Orders from the Colonel-in-Chief.”

  That was my mother. None of us disobeyed her when she issued a command.

  I had delivered Dr. Buckley to a doctor waiting for him in the hospital in Portsmouth. Once he’d been settled and the papers I’d been carrying about his condition were handed over to Matron, who took charge of them and Dr. Buckley with quiet efficiency, I had been free to leave.

  I was just as glad to be going home again. Standing at the rail of the ship bringing us into Portsmouth, I’d watched the smooth waters of The Solent and the irregular shape of the Isle of Wight rise out of the darkness like some fantastical place in dreams—quiet and peaceful. At the back of my mind, unbidden, were the sounds of that Spandau machine gun firing round after round. And then an officer of the Wiltshire Fusiliers came to stand beside me, looking out toward the busy harbor.

  “I miss the lights,” he said without turning. “I could pick out the villages by their lights as we came into port.”

  They had been turned off to make the enemy blind. Portsmouth, across The Solent, was a major port and a tempting target for submarines.

  I looked up at him, but it wasn’t the face I’d hoped to see.

  And that encounter had brought Marjorie Evanson back to mind. I still had her photograph.

  Turning to Simon as we drove toward Somerset, I said, “What did you learn about Lieutenant Fordham’s death?”

  “It’s still under wraps. A police matter. How did you come to hear about his death? Your letter was brief.”

  “I was worried about the censors. Scotland Yard wanted to know if he was the man I’d seen with Marjorie Evanson at the railway station, the day she died.”

  “And was he?”

  “No. I can’t even be sure he knew Mrs. Evanson. He was just in the same regiment as the officer the Yard is looking for. To help with their inquiries, as they say. Scotland Yard might even have asked me just on the off chance it would connect the two cases. Apparently they haven’t made much progress in finding her murderer.”

  “That explains the fact that so little has come to light about Fordham’s death. The Yard kept it out of the newspapers. Did you know that? But then Fordham was from a prominent family. I suspect they’d rather believe he was murdered than that he killed himself. He was a serving officer, recovering from wounds. Suicide smacks of not being able to face going back
into the line.”

  “Was there an inquest?”

  “It was adjourned at the request of the police.”

  “I did ask Inspector Herbert for the particulars, when I answered his letter. But he never replied. Where does the Fordham family live, do you know?”

  “In Wiltshire. Leave it to the police, Bess.”

  “I know. They have more resources, and all that.” I gave the matter some thought, then asked, “Was Lieutenant Fordham married?”

  “I don’t know. Bess—”

  He turned to look at me, taking his eyes off the road for a moment. And that was when I realized that he was not telling me everything. I know Simon Brandon as well as he knows me.

  “There’s something else. What is it, Simon?” He was concentrating on passing a small dogcart driven by a heavyset man asleep on the seat, the pony trotting purposefully toward its destination as if it had done this a thousand times before. I waited until we were safely past pony and cart. “You might as well tell me.”

  “There’s nothing to tell.”

  I smiled. “Must I spend my entire leave making your life miserable, wheedling and pleading and issuing ultimatums?” His profile was like stone. “I’ll even cry.”

  He laughed then. “I haven’t seen you cry in years.”

  I let it go. We drove in silence for some time.

  Finally, Simon said, “All right. A fortnight before he died, Lieutenant Fordham was invited to a weekend party at Melton Hall.”

  I stared at him. “Melton Hall? But—” I stopped, then asked, “And did he accept?”

  “He refused the invitation.”

  There could have been any number of reasons for refusing. But what had Serena Melton made of that?

  “How on earth did you discover that?”

  “Quite by chance. I was asking someone about Fordham, but she hadn’t seen him for weeks. And then she added that, in fact, she’d just missed him. Apparently she’d attended a party where she’d been looking forward to seeing him—she had heard he was to be a fellow guest. But he never came. When she asked her hostess if he was all right, she was told that Fordham had pleaded another engagement. When she learned afterward that he’d died, she had wondered if his wounds were worse than she knew.”