An Impartial Witness

by Charles Todd

  “Yes, that’s what Inspector Hemmings—no, that’s not right—” She closed her eyes. “I didn’t imagine him—” She was still drifting in and out of consciousness.

  “Inspector Herbert,” I said. “From Scotland Yard.”

  “Was he here? Did you see him?”

  “I’ve spoken to him before, about Marjorie Evanson.”

  “That’s right. You were anxious to find out who killed her.”

  “Did he—did Inspector Herbert ask you about Lieutenant Michael Hart?”

  “I can’t think why he wished to know if I’d seen him last night—no, it wasn’t last night, was it? I’m so confused.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” I answered her, though I felt myself go cold.

  “He told me I’d been calling Michael’s name when I was found and brought to hospital. But that makes no sense. I’d have asked for my husband, wouldn’t I? Not for Michael.”

  “Perhaps you were thinking about him.”

  “Not at dinner—afterward—”

  I told myself that I must stop now, before I heard more than I wanted to hear. If she brought back some fleeting memory that would damn Michael, it would all be my doing. But truth is something I’d been taught to value. I couldn’t walk away from it, whatever the consequences.

  “Afterward?” I asked, before my courage ran out.

  But she had drifted into sleep, and I recalled my promise to speak to one of the sisters and tell them she was in pain.

  Still, I sat there for another several minutes, in case she awoke again. Then, after a brief conversation with the ward sister, I left, feeling very depressed for Helen Calder’s sake and my own.

  I was just walking down the steps of the hospital, taking a deep breath of the cooling evening air after the familiar smells of the wards, and nearly passed Inspector Herbert without noticing him, so distracted that I just registered a man coming toward me.

  “Miss Crawford,” he said, stopping me. He frowned. “Not questioning my witness, I hope?”

  “I’m a nurse,” I replied shortly, “and the patient is someone I know.”

  He nodded. “How is she? She wasn’t making much sense earlier.”

  “The ward sister tells me she’s doing as well as can be expected. The fear, as always, is infection. From the knife, from bits of cloth driven into her wounds, from the surgery itself. She’s healthy and that’s in her favor. They’re still sedating her for her pain.” It was a cowardly comment, but I told myself that it was also true.

  “I was just on my way home and decided to stop and ask if she was awake again.”

  “She’s asleep at the moment. Or she was when I left the ward.”

  “Did you speak to her?”

  “Briefly. She told me you had called earlier, and that she couldn’t remember what had happened. She added that she was afraid to remember. I tried to assure her that she was safe now and it would be all right. Which of course isn’t really the truth—if she does remember, she’ll relive that night for years. If not while she’s awake, then in her dreams. Is there any possibility that you could send for her husband? It would be a comfort to her.”

  “I hadn’t thought of that. I’ll see what I can do.”

  “Will you let me see Lieutenant Hart?” I asked. “I’m going back to France in a few days. I’d like to hear what he has to say about his arrest.”

  “I don’t think that’s useful,” Inspector Herbert told me. “He’s allowed no visitors. Only his lawyers.”

  “May I write to him and expect an answer?”

  “I wouldn’t advise writing him.”

  I took a deep breath. “What if all this evidence is just circumstantial? Will you hang the lieutenant and let the real murderer go free?”

  “Hardly circumstantial, I should think,” he answered, a little annoyed with me. “You’ve been a great help with this inquiry, Miss Crawford. But as I’ve said to you before, you must now leave the rest to us.”

  He started to walk through the hospital doors, but I stopped him.

  “Have you found Captain Melton?”

  “There’s no hurry there. He’s at the Front, and we’ve time before the trial to interview him. I think even you will agree that he’s not our murderer.”

  “He can speak to Marjorie Evanson’s state of mind—” I wanted to add that men died at the Front. Waiting was a calculated risk.

  “And you have already done that. Quite admirably.” He touched his hat, and went through the main doors, holding them open for a pair of sisters just coming off duty.

  There was nothing I could do.

  Simon was waiting for me, but I said, “I need a little time…”

  He nodded, and I began to walk to clear my head, but I’d not gone twenty paces when I heard Inspector Herbert call to me.

  I stopped and he caught me up.

  “I wanted to ask—it’s not my business to ask, but are you in love with Lieutenant Hart?”

  I must have looked as exasperated as I felt. “If anyone else asks me that question, I will gladly box his ears. Or barring that, kick him in the shins.”

  He smiled. “I’m sorry. As a policeman I must know how to judge your evidence. It has been impartial to a certain point. It’s necessary to understand if that has in any way changed.”

  “If I’m asked to testify in court, you may be sure I shall tell the truth, as I will have sworn to do,” I answered stiffly.

  “It won’t come to that. Your statement will be sufficient. Good night, Miss Crawford. I wish you a safe journey back to France. And hope that you will return to England safely when your tour of duty is finished.”

  He touched his hat again and went back the way he’d come. I stood there looking after him as he passed through the hospital doors without looking back, thinking to myself that he was a fair man, but like many fair men, once he’d made up his mind, he wasn’t likely to find any reason to change it.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  I MUST HAVE walked another hundred yards or more. And then someone spoke just behind me, and I nearly jumped out of my skin.

  It was Simon Brandon. He’d been following me at a distance.

  “It’s late, Bess, and that direction isn’t wise.”

  I realized that I’d left the hospital well behind me, and ahead was a short, cluttered street with rather rundown shops and a pub or two, their doors shuttered. The street itself was dark, empty, dustbins casting long shadows. At the far end, two men stood in the shelter of a doorway, the lighted tips of their cigarettes glowing red. They seemed to be intent on their conversation—I could just hear the murmur of voices—but I turned and together Simon and I started back toward the motorcar.

  “How is she?” he asked. “I saw Inspector Herbert come out again to speak to you.”

  The clanging of an ambulance speeding toward the hospital drowned out my voice. After it passed, I told Simon what Helen Calder had said.

  “It’s very likely she’ll never remember, Bess. And that leaves Lieutenant Hart in a limbo of sorts. She could have cleared his name—or she could have condemned him. It might work in his favor that she doesn’t recall the attack. On the other hand, there may be assumptions that aren’t true entered into evidence.”

  We had reached his motorcar, and he held my door before continuing. “There are witnesses who heard her call out to Michael Hart. And the police will act on that evidence instead.” He turned the crank and then got in next to me. “Why did she call his name, do you think? She was in great pain, bleeding heavily. Why not call for her husband. Or a sister. Someone connected with her family.”

  “I don’t know,” I told him truthfully. “And when I asked her, she told me Michael wasn’t at the dinner party. Then she added, ‘Afterward.’ Did she mean that she’d seen him after the dinner party? Or was she going to tell me something else?”

  “There’s no way to know. You must prepare yourself, Bess. This case is going to trial, and there’s nothing to be done about it.”

  I t
urned to him. “Simon, attend the trial for me, if I’m in France. I want to know everything, what witnesses are called on either side, what they testify. What the rebuttal is. And the verdict—you must be there to tell me what the verdict is. I don’t think they’ll give me leave. Inspector Herbert told me that my statement was sufficient. Please? I need to know all of it.”

  “Shall I sketch their faces as well?”

  “That’s not amusing, Simon.”

  He nodded, threading his way through light traffic. “Sorry. I was trying to lighten your mood.”

  I hadn’t realized that I had been so intense. “Please?”

  He turned to me, his face in shadows cast by the canvas roof. “I promise, Bess. If it will give you any comfort. But there’s nothing more you can do. Don’t let it haunt you. Your patients will suffer if you do.”

  “He wouldn’t let me see Michael. Or write to him. Inspector Herbert, I mean. He doesn’t want me to contact him in any way. Will you try to see him? I want to know how he’s planning to fight these charges.”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  I settled back into my seat as we left the busy city streets behind us and found the road leading to Somerset. “Thank you, Simon. And, Simon—don’t tell Mother or the Colonel Sahib that you’re doing this for me. It will only worry them.”

  I saw Simon’s mouth tighten into a straight line. “And I’m not to worry?”

  I didn’t know how to answer. And so I said nothing.

  My mother closed my valise, sighed, and said, “When your father went off on a dangerous mission, I was so grateful to have a daughter. She would never walk in harm’s way, I told myself. I won’t lose a night’s sleep over her out in hostile territory. My only worry will be whether or not she chooses wisely when it comes to marriage. And look at what this war has brought me.”

  It was the closest she’d ever come to admitting to worrying. And I thought perhaps it had been the sinking of Britannic last year while I was aboard that had brought her fears out into the open. With a broken arm, I couldn’t have fended for myself in the water, if we hadn’t had time to launch the boats, and I could well have drowned.

  I smiled, glad I hadn’t told her about the German aircraft strafing us at La Fleurette. “I shan’t be in any danger. It’s my patients you must say a prayer for, every day.”

  My father came just then, to carry the valise down to the motorcar. After he’d gone, my mother said, “He would prefer that I didn’t tell you, Bess, but I think you ought to know this. Your father has been in touch with Lieutenant Hart’s aunt and uncle, suggesting a good barrister if they haven’t already found one to their liking. They were in such a state of shock and were grateful for his advice.”

  I felt a mixture of shame that I hadn’t thought of calling on them again and a surge of hope that my father believed Michael was innocent.

  I said, “Then the Colonel Sahib agrees with me.”

  But she dashed my hopes almost at once. “I think it’s more a case of the Army looking after its own, whatever one’s regiment. The lieutenant’s own commanding officer hadn’t called on them yet. He’s still in France.”

  “Thank you for telling me.”

  “I’d like to know why you’re so sure he’s innocent?”

  “I drove him to Somerset and then to London, and back to Little Sefton. I’d have known if he were a murderer. And I didn’t feel it.”

  “Hardly evidence that would sway a jury,” she said.

  I embraced my mother, and she returned it fiercely. “Be safe,” she whispered into my ear, then let me go.

  As I walked out the door to where my father and Simon were waiting with the motorcar, I found myself remembering a lesson in ancient Greek history: how the women of Sparta sent their loved ones into battle with the brave words, Come back with your shield—or on it.

  How many women over the millennia had fought back tears to smile and wish their men safe?

  The door shut behind me, and I didn’t look back. My father held my door for me while Simon turned the crank. And then we were on our way.

  My father walked me to the gangway of my ship, took me in his arms for a brief moment, then stepped back, smiling.

  As Simon bent to kiss my cheek, I murmured, “Don’t forget!”

  And then I was at the rail, waving, and we were pulling out, our escort already under way.

  I wondered afterward what premonitions my family had felt before my departure. I’d had the strongest impression of an undercurrent of concern. It hadn’t been like Simon to kiss me, nor my father to put his arms around me. Whatever foreboding there was, I began this next posting far from the front lines and well out of range of danger. I’d been there several weeks when I heard from Simon.

  He had gone over Inspector Herbert’s head and found a way to speak to Michael. It must not have been a very successful visit, for Simon reported that the shoulder was healing well although it appeared that Lieutenant Hart wasn’t recovering the use of that arm. VAD therapy wasn’t available in prison, and so there was no hope for a successful convalescence. With gallows humor, Michael Hart had told Simon that it wouldn’t matter, he wouldn’t live long enough to worry about it. But Simon rather thought he was worried.

  My father reported that Michael’s family had retained the barrister recommended to them, and they felt he might well save their nephew.

  It occurred to me that my father had written those lines to encourage me, as much as to report on the legal issues.

  We were sent shortly after that to a new hospital, one with severely wounded patients from all over the Front. This was well behind the lines too, and I was beginning to think my father had had a word with someone about his only daughter.

  I was becoming a favorite surgical nurse among the staff, and this kept me too busy to think or worry about anyone, myself included.

  And then I was sent to another forward hospital, a receiving station for wounded brought in by stretcher bearers rather than ambulances. We could hear the guns, see their flashes all night long, and sometimes their screams as they raced overhead deafened us.

  We had just cleared out a contingent of our own wounded when the Front moved forward three hundred yards in that salient, and suddenly the men I was working with wore the field gray of German uniforms.

  I’d heard several nurses state flatly that they wouldn’t touch German wounded, Edith Cavill fresh in their minds. She had been shot by firing squad for staying with her duties to her own wounded when the Germans had overrun that part of Belgium. They had called her a spy, and rid themselves of her.

  But as I looked at these men, some of them so young and frightened, others stoic in their pain, I could hardly turn them away.

  I spent endless hours working over them, sorting the more serious cases from those we couldn’t move until they were stabilized, listening to the ragged breath of the dying, holding the hands of those facing surgery, trying to discover the names of those who couldn’t speak.

  I soon forgot that this was the enemy. But for their uniforms and their language, they could have been any soldier from our own armies. I gave them all the care at my command, and cried when one of them died in my arms.

  Their officer, his foot badly lacerated by shell fragments, hobbled around the tent speaking to each one of his men, comforting and reassuring them, taking down their names in a little leather book along with a description of their wounds, so that there would be a record of where they were and why.

  Twice I asked Hauptmann Ritter to sit down and let me examine his foot, but he shook his head, continuing his rounds. Finally I stood in front of him, forcing him to stop and face me.

  “You are risking infection that will cost you your foot and possibly your leg as well. It might even kill you. Is that what you want? If so, it’s a poor example for these men who are letting us care for them.”

  I wasn’t certain he understood me until I saw a flash of anger in his blue eyes, and he said in passable English, “I am responsibl
e.”

  The Colonel Sahib would have liked him in other circumstances. They saw eye to eye on the duties of command.

  “Yes, well, you can be just as responsible once I’ve cleaned and disinfected that wound, then bandaged it.”

  He gave me a look that was withering, and then as he turned he saw that the men on cots around him were listening with open interest to hear what he would say.

  It must have taken enormous effort to quell his pride and let me lead him to one side where his foot could be examined properly. He refused to let his men out of his sight, but I found a bench where he could sit and rest his foot on a wooden crate.

  And it was a nasty wound. I summoned one of the doctors and he came to have a look as well.

  “You could lose this, you know,” he told Herr Hauptmann. “And with it your career in the Army.” He fetched what he needed and began to clean the foot and remove any fragments still buried there.

  I watched as the muscles in our patient’s jaw tightened, and I knew what sort of pain he was enduring, refusing to show weakness.

  I realized that not only the German soldiers but Dr. Newcomb himself was watching Captain Ritter with interest.

  Dr. Newcomb did what he could with the wound, then said, “This will require surgery. We must get him and those five men over there back to where they can be taken care of.”

  Ritter wanted no part of being separated from his men, the walking wounded already being lined up to be taken under guard to a processing center for prisoners, the others to remain here until they were fit to move.

  It took some argument and persuasion before Captain Ritter accepted the fact that he had no choice in the matter. He finished the entries in his small notebook, then reluctantly allowed us to put him in the ambulance waiting outside.

  I was the transport nurse, and after making certain the other critical cases were as stable and comfortable as possible, I climbed into the seat next to the driver. Captain Ritter called from the back, “Claus is bleeding again.”