An Impartial Witness

by Charles Todd

“I understand that.”

  “No, you can’t. You aren’t married. The man you love isn’t likely to be killed in the next push, or at risk of dying in an aid station before you even hear that he’s been wounded.”

  I realized then that she hadn’t heard from him for a while. And looking more closely, I could see that she had passed sleepless nights as well.

  “I’m sometimes the last caring face they see,” I told her gently. “I often write letters for the dying. I know that their last thoughts are for those they love.”

  She burst into tears then, unable to hold them back, burying her face in her hands. “You don’t know. No one can know.”

  I took her arm and led her into the house, then sat with her as she cried. After a while I went to the kitchen and found the kettle, put it on, and made a pot of tea. She was quieter when I came back to the sitting room, and drank her tea obediently, sniffling at first, and finally dully sitting there, worn and worried.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said in a muffled voice. “I’ve been out of sorts, worrying. There’s been no news for weeks and weeks.”

  “If there is bad news, you will know. It won’t take weeks and weeks.”

  Taking a deep breath, she set her teacup aside. “Thank you, Bess,” she said simply. “And I’m so sorry about Michael. I feel responsible, I introduced you to him. I didn’t dream—”

  “No, that’s all right.” I rose to take my leave. “Will you be all right now?”

  “Yes, sometimes it just overwhelms me, the worry about Gareth.”

  Following me to the door, she added, “I am sorry about Michael. I know you were beginning to care for him. But you’ll forget in time. There will be someone else.”

  I didn’t contradict her. I thanked her for the tea and asked her to write to me if she felt like it.

  I had reached the walk, heading for my motorcar, when she stopped me.

  “Bess?”

  I turned.

  “I think Victoria was seeing someone in London in the winter. But it must not have come to anything. It was over by the spring.”

  “Did you know who it was?”

  She shook her head. “I only heard the gossip. Someone told me he was an officer. And Mrs. Leighton swore that he was married. She saw them coming out of a mean little restaurant near Hampstead Heath. Those were her words, ‘a mean little restaurant,’ and she interpreted this as proof he was married, because he hadn’t taken Victoria somewhere nice in London.”

  I thanked her, glad we were parting as friends, and walked back to the church, where I’d left my motorcar. I’d just turned the crank and stepped back when someone came up behind me.

  I turned, expecting it to be Alicia again, but it was Victoria Garrison.

  “I thought that was your vehicle, hidden in the shrubbery where no one would notice it.”

  “Hardly the shrubbery. If I’m not mistaken, those are a stand of lilac. What is it you want, Miss Garrison? To gloat?”

  “Well, you won’t be marrying Michael Hart. I’ve seen to that.”

  I stood there stock-still, feeling my jaw drop. I snapped it shut and tried to think of something to say that wouldn’t tell her how angry I was.

  “Do you mean you were so willing to drive Michael to London because you thought he might be falling in love with me?”

  “He wanted to go. I accommodated him. I didn’t stab poor Helen, and he did.”

  “You don’t believe that.”

  Something flickered in her eyes. “How do you know what I feel?” she demanded in a different tone of voice. “How dare you even suggest you know me?”

  “You just suggested that you knew me well enough to believe I was in love with Michael Hart and he with me. Well, let me disabuse you of that notion. What drew the two of us together was your sister’s murder. Nothing more, nothing less. I liked Michael, I still like him. But if he were freed tomorrow, I wouldn’t marry him. I’m not in love with him and never will be.”

  “Alicia said—” She stopped.

  Ah, the power of gossip! And the damage it can do.

  “Alicia has been matchmaking. She’s a happily married woman, and she wants everyone to be just as happy, because it’s all she can cling to with Gareth at the Front. I’m sorry if I’ve disappointed you.”

  I got behind the wheel, and she came to stand by my door, pinning me there. “I don’t believe you.”

  “Perhaps that’s because you were in love yourself not long ago. And like Alicia, expect that everyone else is looking for someone to care about.”

  For an instant I thought she was going to step closer and slap me. I could see her hands clenching at her side. A mixture of emotions passed across her face, anger and something else that was barely controlled. I’d wondered if she could kill. And now I knew she could. I drew back a little, but she leaned toward me. After looking around to be sure no one was near, she said through clenched teeth, “Have you ever seen someone die on a gallows? That handsome face will be black and swollen, hardly recognizable, and I hope that’s what you see in your dreams for the rest of your life!”

  I caught my breath.

  Meriwether Evanson had called Victoria evil. And now I knew he was right.

  What she had done to her mother and father, to her sister, what she had hoped to do to Michael, and what she had just said to me, spoke of a deep-seated streak of cruelty.

  Driving away before she could change her mind and do something rash, I was glad to see the last of Little Sefton.

  I was halfway to London before I was calm enough to go over again what I’d said to Victoria Garrison. I’d been angry, and yes, a little frightened by her, so the words were lost at first. In the end, they came back to me. What I’d said hadn’t angered her—it was the fact that I knew something she wanted to hide.

  If Victoria had had a romantic fling in the winter, it hadn’t survived. I couldn’t help but wonder if he, whoever he was, had thrown her over for someone else. Married or not.

  I turned the bonnet of my motorcar toward London, and when I got there, I went directly to the flat. It seemed a haven, just now. It was late afternoon, and Mrs. Hennessey was out.

  I climbed the stairs with a heavy heart, and reached for the latch of our door, but it opened under my hand. Someone was here.

  I walked into the flat, and Mary glanced up from the letter she was writing. After one look at me she frowned.

  “Have you lost your last friend, or your last penny?” she demanded, and capped her pen before setting it aside and moving into what we euphemistically called our kitchen, to make a pot of tea.

  “I’m in low spirits,” I admitted. “I’ve just been very rude to someone who was rude to me first. And I’m trying to save a good friend from hanging, and I am in the early stages of panic, because he goes to the gallows next week.”

  She looked up from measuring the tea and said, “Who’s going to the gallows next week? Anyone I know?”

  “Michael Hart. He was convicted of the murder of Serena Melton’s brother’s wife. Marjorie Evanson. And of attacking a distant cousin of Marjorie’s, with the intent to kill.”

  “You do have an unusual range of friends, Bess,” she retorted. “I hope you’re saying he’s innocent?”

  “God knows. The evidence against him was strong, but the feeling was, he could very well be acquitted. He had a very good barrister—Mr. Forbes for the defense—who was certainly sanguine about his chances. And then to everyone’s amazement and shock, he changed his plea to guilty in the first minutes of the trial.”

  “Ah. I remember now. He’s extraordinarily handsome. I saw his photograph in some broadsheet or other.”

  “No doubt. They thought it was going to be a notorious, scandalous trial, and instead he disappointed everyone.”

  Mary brought the tea to the table, and set out the cups. “Drink this, and then tell me everything from the beginning.”

  “You know a part of it—”

  “Doesn’t matter. Start at the start.
I won’t be able to see any solution if I don’t know it all.”

  I didn’t like telling Mary all about the Garrisons and the Harts and the Meltons. She knew Serena, after all. But Mary is the soul of discretion, and what I said to her would be treated like the confidence it was.

  The afternoon had faded into early dusk by the time I’d finished, and the teapot was empty, the biscuits she’d found in the cupboard, hard and stale as they were, had been finished as well. There’s something about eating a sweet that raises the spirits.

  I sat back, tired by the tale and tired from the emotions of the day and the long drive. “Well. There you have it.”

  She picked up the cups and the teapot to do the washing up, and it was while she was working that she said, “I hesitate to tell you this, Bess, but you’re right. The evidence is very strong against your Lieutenant Hart.”

  “He isn’t mine,” I said testily, “although everyone is busy insisting that he is.”

  “All the same.”

  “Yes, I know. But there’s just enough doubt…” My voice trailed away. Then I said, “But why do I have this sense of failure? I’m a fairly good judge of character, Mary. How could I be so wrong about the man?”

  “I expect the reason is that you don’t believe strongly in his motive. That he killed Marjorie Evanson because she was seeing someone else. But he knew her husband, and it seems to me that a decent man wouldn’t kill a married woman because she’d been dithering with someone else instead of him. He was more likely to lecture her on her behavior and make certain that the man was out of her life altogether. Simon would have done that, wouldn’t he? If you stood in Marjorie’s shoes? Well, you aren’t married of course, but you know what I mean.”

  It was typically convoluted—Mary was good at convoluting—but she was also very sensible and practical. It was what made her an excellent nurse.

  “I do see.” I was already feeling better. “And even if he went to Helen Calder’s house, I can’t understand why he would have a reason to kill her. But that’s the problem, she can remember that he was coming, but not why, or if he was the one who stabbed her.”

  “Who knew he was going to her house?”

  “His aunt and uncle. Unless of course Victoria was suspicious and followed him.”

  “Who would Victoria tell?” Mary asked. “If she saw him at the Calder house and was angry enough to do a mischief?”

  “I—I’m not sure,” I said slowly. “Why would she tell anyone?”

  “You said there was speculation that she’d been seeing someone in London. A man. What if he was the same man who killed Marjorie?”

  “That makes no sense.”

  “It would do, if she has made a practice of spoiling Marjorie’s chances.”

  “But he wasn’t the one who got Marjorie pregnant.”

  “You can’t be sure of that.”

  “But I can. I told you, I spoke to Raymond Melton while I was in France. He was the man I saw with her at the railway station that evening. She was dead only a few hours later. And he was on his way to Portsmouth. He couldn’t possibly have killed her. We’re back where we began.”

  “Didn’t you say he denied leaving that train?”

  “Yes.”

  “What if he’s telling the truth? What if he wasn’t her lover?”

  “I saw the way Marjorie was clinging to him. In distress—despair.” I gave it some thought. “You’re saying that he was there at the station with her, and she’d told him the truth about her circumstances—but he wasn’t her lover.”

  I’d dismissed that idea earlier.

  I went on slowly, “But if she did indeed confide in him, and he wasn’t the man responsible for getting her pregnant, then he must have known who that man was. That’s why he was there.” I remembered the small flicker of satisfaction in Raymond Melton’s eyes when I confronted him in the ward. He had told me the literal truth—but not the whole truth. “And she contacted him because the other man refused to speak to her after the affair was over.”

  “That happens,” Mary said. “All too often, in fact. Remember Nan Wilson, who was in love with that Frenchman who was here with the diplomatic corps? He was some sort of military attaché. And when he went back to France, and she found herself in trouble, he sent her letters back unopened, marked address unknown.”

  I did remember.

  It would explain so much. I’d wondered why Marjorie Evanson had let herself be seduced by Raymond Melton. After all, her own father had been the same sort of cold and uncaring man. I understood why he’d offered no comfort, kissed her cheek so perfunctorily. I remembered how he’d walked away without looking back—even if the love affair was over—to make certain she was all right. He had done his duty, he had listened to her pleas for help, told her he could do nothing about her situation, and calmly boarded his train.

  It was such a calculated and callous act that I was stunned.

  Who would Raymond Melton do such a service for?

  The answer was simple.

  His brother Jack.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  “JACK MELTON.” I whispered the name aloud, as if by hearing it spoken, I confirmed it. And then I thought, Poor Serena.

  How frantic she had been to put a name to the man who was responsible for Marjorie’s plight, and I’d heard her husband pretend to advise her as if it were his dearest wish as well that those weekend parties be successful. And all the time, the man she was after was within arm’s reach. He’d let her anger and her determination make her life a misery, and he’d even expressed his concern about her to me. Had she also secretly prayed that the man she was looking for wasn’t her own husband? It would explain so much about her, her shrillness, her rudeness, her frustration.

  What had made her suspect him of having an affair?

  Did she suspect him of murder as well as adultery? Surely not.

  I remembered the day I’d encountered Jack Melton outside the Marlborough Hotel.

  He had known that Michael Hart was in England the night that Marjorie Evanson was killed. But how could he have known? Unless she had told him herself.

  How easy it would have been for Raymond Melton to find a telephone in Portsmouth on his way to the docks, and put in a call to his brother to say that the meeting with Marjorie hadn’t gone as well as expected. Or that she’d made threats. As a last resort, she could even have brought up Michael’s name.

  He’s in London tonight. I’ll speak to him, and we’ll see how Jack feels then about not talking to me himself…

  It wasn’t out of the realm of possibility. Still, conjecture wouldn’t stop Michael from hanging.

  I said to Mary, “I’m so sorry—these are your friends!”

  She answered me with a sigh, then said, “Serena is my friend. And she will need me when the truth comes out. As it must, Bess. Don’t you see, she’s a victim too. She’s already lost her brother. We can’t leave her to the mercy of a man like that. What if she discovers he’s a killer?”

  I found a telephone and called my parents, first to tell them that I was in London now, and second to ask my father if there was any news from Simon.

  My father said gently, “Bess. My dear. I don’t think Michael will wish to see you. You mustn’t let yourself hope.”

  “But how can we do anything for him if he won’t answer questions? His aunt and uncle are grieving. He ought to think of the living as well as the dead.”

  “Will it do if Simon or I go to see him?”

  My heart plummeted. I wanted to see Michael, I wanted to see for myself how he was bearing up, and whether pleading guilty had weighed heavily on his conscience—or freed it. I wanted to see whether he had any use of his shoulder and arm, or if the case there was as hopeless as he’d been told. But how to explain this to my father—or for that matter, to Simon—without arousing their protective instincts, thinking to spare me added grief? If Michael was guilty, I could accept it. If he wasn’t, it was a terrible waste of a man’s life and re
putation to die in the misplaced belief that he was sparing Marjorie.

  I couldn’t stand in judgment of her—but her affair had touched other lives, led to her murder, the death of her husband, the attack on Helen Calder. I saw no good reason to add another death to that list. Especially since it could mean that the real murderer went free.

  I wasn’t sure we would ever know what drove Marjorie Evanson into a love affair. The truth may have died with her. That was how it should be.

  My father’s voice came down the line.

  “Bess? Are you still there?”

  “Please, if he can be persuaded to see me, I still want to go. If he absolutely refuses, then Simon should go in my place. Michael knows him. I’ll make a list of what I need to learn. It’s important. Otherwise I wouldn’t insist.”

  “It would help if I knew—have you any information that could overturn the verdict? I’ll speak to Inspector Herbert if you have.”

  “I’m not sure. I’m leaving now—I’m going back to Little Sefton. There’s something I must do there.”

  “Not tonight, Bess. That’s not wise. Wait until morning.”

  “There aren’t enough mornings left.” I tried not to let what I was feeling seep into my voice. Wailing would do no good. “Please, will you speak to Simon?”

  “I promise.”

  That was enough for me.

  “If you promise not to drive anywhere tonight.”

  I was caught on the horns of a dilemma.

  Finally I said, “Yes, all right, I agree. I’ll leave a list of the questions with Mrs. Hennessey tomorrow morning. Will that be all right?”

  “As long as it isn’t a letter. And if you have a personal message, let Simon give it orally. Prison officials are strict, Bess, and you don’t want him to be turned away.”

  “Yes, thank you. Good advice!”

  I hung up and left the hotel, deciding to walk back to the apartment, to clear my head.

  The exercise was good, the air cool and fresh, the streets for some reason nearly empty. Then I recalled that it was the dinner hour, and most people were at home, where they belonged.

  As Mrs. Hennessey’s house with its wartime flats came into view down the street, I thought how helpful Mary had been in putting what I’d learned into perspective. Despite her friendship with Serena. I’d been fortunate with my flatmates. Diana and Mary and the others had been good friends and the sort of women who made sharing a flat bearable. Mrs. Hennessey was dependable, caring, and willing to look in on us if we were ill. I felt safe here.