An Unmarked Grave: A Bess Crawford Mystery (Bess Crawford Mysteries)

by Charles Todd

  I didn’t know what to say. Stammering, I finally replied, “No. I hadn’t been told.” Remembering my hasty improvisation, I added, “Nor had the young Lieutenant. I’m so very sorry.”

  “She was a fine nurse,” Matron agreed. “She kept you alive, I think, until the crisis came. It was devotion to duty more than hope, but here you stand, living proof of her skill.”

  “Did—did nursing me contribute to her own illness?”

  “I doubt it. Like you when the influenza struck, she had been on her feet for nearly thirty-six hours working with a new convoy of the infected, although the doctor had told her to take a few hours for sleep. They had turned the corner, most of them, when she fainted outside my door. That too is to her credit.”

  “I shall write to her family,” I said. “Thank you, Matron.”

  I had turned to the door when her next words stopped me in my tracks. “You’re the second person this week who has asked for her.”

  I forced myself to turn again slowly. “Who was he?” I asked.

  “How did you know it was a man?” Matron demanded, the frown returning.

  “I assumed it must be a patient. Or a former patient.”

  “Yes, I see. It was rather odd. His name was Prescott, he said. Colonel Prescott. He told me Sister Burrows had nursed his son, and that he’d come to thank her. It’s always possible, of course, that he has a son in the Army. But Colonels seldom arrive without an entourage.” She regarded me. “Not related to your young Lieutenant, by any chance, is he? I’d feel more comfortable if he were.”

  The last thing I wanted was to claim a connection with him. “I think not. My young Lieutenant was named Hennessey, and he came from her village.” I could feel myself flushing as I lied so boldly.

  “I expect Sister Burrows is the only one who could have told us what this was about.”

  “Do you recall what he looked like? The Colonel?”

  “Prescott? Mustache. Dark hair. Very cold gray or perhaps blue eyes. I noticed them in particular. Possibly an inch or so short of six feet. A bulky man.”

  I tried to remember what I’d seen of the man with the bandaged shoulder. Surely he’d been fair?

  I shook my head. “I don’t think I remember a Prescott in our ward. Perhaps the son was one of those she nursed after I’d gone to England. Did you look at the lists?” We kept records of our patients. I was praying she would tell me he was there.

  “No, the Colonel explained that his son was carried to the aid station where Sister Burrows had served before coming here. He’d had difficulty tracking her down, that’s why it had taken so long to speak to her, he said.”

  “That could be true,” I replied, thinking aloud. “Still, I’d have thought he was too busy to come in person.”

  “I wondered myself. But it’s possible he’s a better officer than he gave me the impression of being.”

  I could hear the ambulance horn sounding now. I’d been here longer than I’d expected.

  “I wonder if his son could have confused Sister Burrows with someone else,” I suggested, for Matron’s sake. I didn’t want her to be too curious about this Colonel Prescott and find herself his next victim. “Wounded men are so often in and out of consciousness—”

  “I should have thought of that myself. It makes sense. Take care, Sister Crawford,” she said. “Don’t work yourself into a relapse.”

  “I promise.”

  And I was racing back to the ambulance, slipping quickly into my seat almost as the driver let in the clutch, and we were off.

  This was the second appearance of “Colonel Prescott.” I needed to pass the information along to Simon or my father. But it wasn’t the sort of thing I could trust to the censors. He and my father had access to the military pouch on occasion, but I didn’t.

  I couldn’t ask for leave. With the warming weather the influenza epidemic seemed to be waning, for we were beginning to see more wounded than feverish patients. Still, we were working around the clock, and nurses couldn’t be spared.

  But what to make of this visit from Colonel Prescott, whoever he was?

  When I reached the forward aid station I was told I wasn’t on call for six hours. And I was grateful—I could feel every mile in that ambulance in the stiffness of my body from clinging to my seat. But instead of sleeping, I found myself lying there, mulling over what to do. Simon had assured me that there was no Colonel Prescott presently on the rolls. He was seldom wrong about such things. The fact that there were rumors that Major Carson had deserted explained why his own commanding officer hadn’t written to Julia. Why had a Colonel Prescott? And why had this same Colonel Prescott come looking for Sister Burrows? Had she seen him later that night when I’d been taken ill? Spoken to him?

  I was finally drifting off into sleep when I remembered the orderly carrying a mop and pail.

  Hadn’t Sister Burrows promised to speak to him when he came by again, to ask him to bring a basket of clean linens to our ward? And if I’d come asking questions, she might have remembered that, especially if he’d never brought them. She could have described the man, surely.

  But why had he risked coming openly to speak to Matron?

  Because she would have no way of connecting him to that night.

  The next thing I knew, someone was shaking my arm, trying to wake me out of a deep sleep.

  I said, “Is it six o’clock already?” For it was still very dark outside as far as I could tell.

  “Dr. Hicks wants you at once,” Sister Hanby told me. “Hurry, it’s an emergency.”

  I dragged myself out of bed and into my clothes before I was fully awake, running across to the tent where emergencies were dealt with. Dr. Hicks was standing in the doorway, waiting for me.

  “There’s a patient here who claims he knows you. You’d better come quickly, he’s in a bad way.”

  My first thought was the Australian sergeant, wounded again. But when I saw the face of the man on the stretcher, his uniform cut off and dark blood pulsing from the wound on his shoulder in spite of what the nursing sister could do, I felt the world spin around me and thought for a moment I was going to faint.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  STEADYING MYSELF BY an effort of will, I crossed to the stretcher and looked down into the dark, pain-filled eyes of Simon Brandon.

  I could see him relax as he recognized me.

  “Be glad the Hun is a damned poor shot,” he said quickly, and then lost consciousness.

  I took over the pressure bandage as Dr. Hicks prepared to operate, saying as he worked, “The bullet is still in there. That’s the trouble. Keep the pressure just there while Sister Evans prepares him.” He hadn’t even asked me how I knew the man lying in front of him or why he had demanded to see me.

  We worked for an hour or more, but Dr. Hicks was good at what he did—he’d had long years of practice—and he managed to remove the bullet and find the tiny bit of uniform that had gone into the wound with it, probing carefully without adding to the damage already there. For the shot had clipped a corner of Simon’s lung, and we were fearful that it had clipped an artery as well. But the bleeding stopped as we began to close the wound, and his color was better.

  Next would come the fight against deadly infection, although we had cleaned the wound as thoroughly as we could.

  What was he doing here, wounded by a German bullet?

  I was just putting the final touches to the bandage that covered his chest and shoulder when Simon opened his eyes. They were dazed and confused at first, and then as the ether continued to wear off, he quickly regained his senses.

  “Hello,” he said hoarsely, recognizing me again. “I thought I’d dreamed you.”

  “Not likely. How did you come to be shot? I thought when I saw you last that you were on your way to Dover.”

  “A convenient lie,” he murmured.

  I knew better than to press for more, but thinking through where our aid station was located—how close to the firing it was—and where in
this particular sector we were, it suddenly occurred to me that Simon had gone behind enemy lines. It was the only explanation for his getting shot. I felt cold. If the Germans had captured him, he would have faced a firing squad. Simon would consider that a lesser problem than being caught by some of the tribes of the Northwest Frontier in India, but he would have been just as dead, although not as quickly.

  The Gurkhas, the fiercely trained and ferocious little men of the King of Nepal’s Army, were often sent behind the lines, because they could move in the night like the wind, barely heard and always unseen.

  If they had brought him here, they had not waited to see how he fared. And that was not unexpected either.

  Simon knew the Gurkha officers—always English, not Nepalese—and there could well have been a mission that required someone of Simon’s experience and skill to accompany the native soldiers—or to guide them—wherever it was they had had to go. There were whispers about their prowess. I’d heard a few myself. That they brought back German officers for interrogation. That they took out snipers or machine-gun nests that couldn’t be reached any other way, even that they crawled to the lip of the German trenches and listened to the conversation of the unsuspecting occupants. If only half the stories were true, they were remarkable.

  Almost as if he’d followed my thinking, Simon added, “Get me to England, fast as you can.”

  “You’ve just had very serious surgery. You can’t be moved.”

  “Doesn’t matter.”

  I knew that he would find a way somehow, whether I helped him or not. That’s when I gave him something without his knowledge that made him sleep for five hours. My conscience was clear. Whatever it was Simon knew or had learned, it could wait. His life was more precious to me than his service to England. And for a Colonel’s daughter, brought up to put the regiment first, above all else, even one’s own feelings, this was tantamount to treason.

  My ancestress at Waterloo would have been appalled. My mother would have understood completely.

  It was several days before we could move Simon, and his fever fluctuated enough that we were afraid to do so even then. In addition to my own duties, I kept the bandages clean, kept the wound itself as antiseptic as I could, and saw to it that he slept as much as possible. It wasn’t until the third day that he realized I’d been giving him something to keep him asleep.

  He was absolutely furious with me, insisting that his information was critical, but I let his anger wash over me without answering him, and when he had exhausted himself I told him that I had sent word straightaway to the Colonel Sahib, telling him—obliquely—what had transpired.

  It did little to pacify him, for as he told me—rightly enough—my father might not receive my news for a week or more.

  Therefore I was both relieved and glad when my father came striding into the aid station just after dusk followed by four tall Highlanders.

  He greeted me with a nod, and turned to Simon.

  “You look like the very devil, Sergeant-Major.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “I’ve brought people with me. If the good doctor here gives his consent, we’re to carry you by easy stages to Rouen, thence to England.”

  It was the way I’d been taken out of France.

  My father was gone in an instant, and I turned on Simon Brandon. “And you were saying, Sergeant-Major, about my decision to write the Colonel Sahib?”

  He gave me a sheepish grin, weak but with something of his old spirit showing. “You did well, Bess. Bless you. But this truly is important.”

  “You frightened me, Simon,” I told him, unable to stop myself.

  “Then we’re even.” And I realized how worried he’d been on that slow, uncertain progress to the ship as I lay so ill.

  I looked around and saw that we were alone. Still, I leaned close to his ear and told him what I had learned from Matron.

  “He’s tidying up,” Simon warned, fighting to stay awake and coherent. “It must mean he knows you’re back in France. Watch yourself, don’t ask too many questions. Damn it, Bess, did you give me something again?”

  “This time it’s your body trying to heal. You mustn’t think you can go haring off to London as soon as you reach England. My father can deal with any matters for you.”

  “Yes. All right.”

  “Simon. Promise?” I demanded.

  “I promise,” he said faintly.

  And then they were bundling him up in bedding and carrying him out to the waiting ambulance that my father had somehow commandeered. It would be a rough journey. Simon would be wishing for release by the time he reached Rouen.

  My father came to me, rested his hand on my shoulder, and gripped it strongly. “Thank you, my dear. And this is from your mother.” He bent his head and kissed my cheek.

  “Keep me informed. Please? Don’t let me worry.”

  “We’ll do our best,” he told me, and then they were gone.

  As the ambulance drove slowly past me, avoiding the lines of wounded, Dr. Hicks said from just behind me, “I gave him a little morphine. He’ll not remember the journey. What’s more, he will not reopen that shoulder fighting to avoid the jostling. Stubborn man, Sergeant-Major Brandon. What was he doing here in France in the first place?”

  I said, as offhand as I could, “He’s responsible for training recruits. I expect he comes sometimes to see firsthand how to do it better.”

  Satisfied, Dr. Hicks nodded. Then he said, “Don’t stand there staring after them, Sister Crawford. There’s work to be done.”

  And there was.

  A letter came from my mother quite soon after my father had reached England, sent in one of the HQ pouches that were secure. I collected it while on a run to replenish supplies.

  Still, she was circumspect, saying only that “our dear neighbor” was slowly recovering after a small relapse, and I was not to worry. She went on to talk about ordinary household matters—how Cook had not smoked the bees sufficiently before stealing a little of their hoard of honey for our table, how the new calf was faring, how the roses had bloomed beautifully this spring, reminding her of the summer of 1914, and how she hoped that I was not overextending my strength, cautioning me that a relapse on my part was still possible.

  And then she added a few lines that I knew must have come straight from my father.

  Thank you, my dear, for your latest news. Your letters are always so precious. And that reminds me, we’ve just learned that your cousin is being sent back to France. We thought you’d want to know. That nasty broken leg has mended sufficiently for him to return to light duties. If you run into him, he brings our best love. I know you’ll be happy to see him again, although we shall miss him sorely. He’s always such a joy to have around, isn’t he?

  The dear neighbor was, of course, Simon, whose cottage was just across the back garden and down the lane from us. I wasn’t surprised to hear he’d had a small relapse, for the journey had been hazardous from the start.

  My latest news meant that Simon had managed to remember what I had told him about Colonel Prescott and Sister Burrows.

  But who was “our cousin”?

  I had no cousins, not now. One had died in India many years ago of cholera, and the other had been killed at Mons early in 1915.

  Clearly, whoever he was, he was coming back to France in spite of still recovering from a broken leg. I was confused by the reference to light duties. There were no light duties in the trenches. I ran through our acquaintance, came up empty-handed, and read the last paragraph again.

  And then I realized that my father was alerting me to the fact that my news was worrying enough that he was sending someone to keep an eye on me and make communication easier until Simon was well again.

  Not a real cousin, then, but someone I knew and, what’s more, knew that I could trust. Someone who wouldn’t stand out or draw attention to himself or, more important, draw attention to the fact that he was guarding me.

  In spite of Simon’s warning,
I was aghast. This had all begun as an attempt to find out who had murdered Major Carson and perhaps even Private Wilson. But now it was possible that I was in danger, not only because I’d seen the Major’s body but also because I could have seen the man who killed him. Whether I actually could identify him or not, all that mattered was that the killer believed I could. He had come in search of Sister Burrows, if the man who presented himself to Matron was one and the same Colonel Prescott who had written that spurious letter of sympathy to Julia Carson.

  I couldn’t imagine what Major Carson’s death was all about, which made it easier for me to make a mistake or put my trust in the wrong person.

  What’s more, when I looked over my shoulder in the dark, I had no way of knowing if the person I saw in the shadows of a tent or lurking behind an ambulance was friend or foe. And that was truly disturbing to me.

  While I was looking for Colonel Prescott, whoever he was, the man in the stained bandage might be standing just behind me. Or the orderly carrying the mop and pail might be the man handing me fresh bandages. Because I couldn’t be sure I’d know either of them.

  As I drank the last of my tea and finished the thin sandwich that was my dinner, I asked myself what in the name of God Major Carson had done that had set all this in motion.

  Vincent Carson was one of ours. My father would move heaven and earth if he had to, to find the captain’s murderer. It would become a personal obligation, a matter of honor.

  But where to begin? How were we ever going to know what it was that had put the Major in danger in the first place? And what about the rumor that he’d deserted? Was it true, what Simon had said, that this meant whoever was behind the Major’s death was indeed tidying up?

  I watched the shell flashes as the ambulance crawled over the rutted road toward the forward aid station, listening to the bombardment that presaged an attack.

  What part—if any—had Sabrina’s husband, William Morton, played in any of this? Where was he? If he and his brother-in-law had never seen eye to eye, had this escalated to the point that it had led to murder?