I considered what she’d said, and how I’d just encouraged Freddy to keep trying with Rachel. How Sidney and I had made a commitment to do so. Did Grace not deserve the same effort?
There was a rap on the door preceding the entry of the maid, and I leaned in to press a kiss to Tante Ilse’s papery cheek before pushing to my feet. “Sleep well.”
She nodded to me in encouragement, perhaps already knowing what I was about to do.
Then before I could reconsider, I crossed the hall to Grace’s door and knocked.
A moment later, I heard her footsteps stomping across the room before the door was flung open. I didn’t think she could have expected it to be me, but her expression was sour anyway. “What do you want?”
“May I talk to you?”
Her green eyes searched mine mistrustfully before finally relenting. She backed into the room, allowing me a glimpse of the tidy space in which she lived. At least, it was far tidier than I had ever kept my bedchamber. Painted in a soft shade of primrose, with pale oak furnishings and white bedding and curtains, it was bright and airy, and well-lit even at this hour by the two lamps placed on opposite sides of the room. Porcelain bird statues lined several shelves hanging above her bureau, something I hadn’t known she collected. That realization caused a pang in my heart.
Given the overall orderliness, I couldn’t help but note the letter peeking out from beneath a pillow on her bed. Recognizing I had seen this, Grace hurried over to shove it farther underneath and plopped down on the bed in front of it. I supposed she had been rereading Cyril’s correspondence to her, just as I had done when Sidney was away from Brock House the summer of our courtship.
“Well, you’re here,” she burst forth as I sank down on the edge of the bed several feet from her. “So, talk.”
“Grace,” I began tentatively. “I don’t blame you for being mad. If I were in your shoes, I would be, too.”
She turned her head to the side, as if unable to look at me.
“All I can do is say I’m sorry. And I am.” I hesitated, uncertain how to go on. Uncertain whether making excuses would help or make it worse.
“Is that all?” she snapped when I didn’t say more. When I continued to vacillate, her gaze swung back to me, narrowing. “Why did you stay away?”
My gaze dipped toward where my hand rested against the downy counterpane. “Well, it was partly the war. I had my bit to do. No matter how much others might belittle it,” I added, hearing her draw breath to repeat one of Mother’s disparaging remarks, thinking I’d been a shipping clerk. I lifted my chin. “I had agreed to my duty, and I was as determined as anyone to do it to the fullest.” I swallowed. “And it was partly apprehension of missing Sidney when he was home on one of his leaves or, God forbid, missing a telegram informing me he’d been injured. He often had little notice when his leaves would be, and obviously, no notice of the latter.” I pressed a hand to my quavering abdomen, forcing myself to go on haltingly. “And partly the fact that I couldn’t face Rob’s death. Being here . . . knowing . . .” I shook my head. “I couldn’t do it, coward though I might have been.”
Grace didn’t reply immediately, but when she did, her voice was not so brittle. “And after the war ended?”
“I was still reeling from Sidney’s reported death. And then his return.”
She nodded, perhaps not having considered this before.
So I pressed on before she spoke. “War isn’t easy on anyone. We all make mistakes. And in times like that, all anyone can ever ask is that we each do the best we can with the hand we’ve been dealt.”
Grace reached out to pass her finger over a bit of stitching along the counterpane. “Cyril said something similar to me once,” she murmured, and I could only wonder at the context.
“When did the two of you meet?”
“The summer before last, at a garden-party fundraiser thrown by Mrs. Wild.” She shook her head. “Otherwise Mother would never have let me go.” She smiled at the memory. “He looked so dashing. He was one of the lone young gentlemen there, and all the girls were vying for his attention.”
If Cyril was like most of the other veterans I’d met, I imagined he hadn’t been precisely comfortable being at the center of all that attention, especially not knowing how many of his fellow soldiers had been buried over in France and would never have the chance to receive such adulation.
“Of course, I was too young at the time for him to take more than a passing notice of me, but when I was home for winter break just before I turned sixteen, well, it was a different story.”
“You’re in love with him, aren’t you?” I asked, merely intending to clarify matters, but her guard instantly went up.
“Yes,” she replied, crossing her arms over her chest. “And he loves me. He’s told me so.”
“Calm yourself, Grace. I’m not questioning your affection. Has he asked you to marry him?”
Her brow lowered. “No. But I’m certain it’s just a matter of time.”
But her body language said she was less certain than she claimed.
As if recognizing this, her scowl returned. “You didn’t have to badger him at dinner.”
I frowned. “I was hardly badgering him. I was conversing with him on the most mundane of topics, trying to set him at ease.”
Her expression turned skeptical.
“It’s true.” I lifted my hands in defense. “I don’t know why he was so discomfited.”
She opened her mouth as if to protest this description and then allowed it to fall shut.
Deciding any further discussion of Cyril’s odd behavior would rile her further, I switched subjects. “Does Mother approve of the match?”
She retreated a bit. “I don’t know. She keeps insisting I’m too young.”
Which she was, though not by much. After all, I had been just a little over a year older when I wed Sidney.
Her eyes suddenly flashed and her mouth tightened. “But otherwise Cyril’s prospects seem to wax and wane according to her opinion of you. One moment she’s talking about taking me to York or London to introduce me to some more people my age, and the next she’s perfectly happy to see Cyril court me.”
That she blamed me for this, as well, was obvious, but I wasn’t about to apologize for Mother’s behavior. Particularly when my staying away had seemed to serve Grace’s purposes just fine.
“Well, as the youngest you were always her favorite,” I replied. “I’m sure you can convince her to come around to your way of thinking.”
She shook her head. “Not anymore.”
“What do you mean?”
She unclasped a bracelet from her wrist and dropped it onto the bed beside her. “That honor now belongs to Tim. Haven’t you noticed?”
“I did notice he seems to be rather restless and forgetful,” I admitted.
“It’s more than that. Father is forever exasperated with him for not following through on the few small tasks assigned to him. He just wanders about, meandering aimlessly through his days, expending the bare minimum of effort.”
That she was repeating some of what she’d overheard from others was obvious, but I was still curious to hear her impressions.
“Father thinks he needs some sort of occupation, but Mother coddles him and tells Father to leave him alone. That is, until Tim fails to do something Mother asks of him. But then he makes certain to let slip something one of the rest of us has done wrong, so her ire will turn on us.”
“Yes, I noticed that,” I admitted, recalling how he’d revealed the fact that Freddy and I had shared a bottle of whisky in the barn.
“Tim has turned into a little sneak,” she brooded, crossing her arms over her chest.
With Tim being the closest to her in age, the two of them had always had a contentious relationship, squabbling one minute and best mates the next. I was more interested in learning what insights she held about others in the household. “What about Freddy? What have you observed there?”
Her g
aze snapped to mine and she sneered. “Do you really care?”
I arched my eyebrows at this display of contempt. “Careful, sis. I’m the one who’s a rotter, remember?” I mocked. “Don’t say something now to change that.”
Her brow remained furrowed, but I could tell by the wavering of her features that she was fighting to hold on to her indignation.
“Of course, I care,” I retorted, growing annoyed with her determination to dislike me. “Now, tell me.”
She lowered her arms. “He’s different, too. Sharper. More serious.” Her fingers toyed with the links of her bracelet. “He hardly ever cracks jokes anymore. And sometimes he wanders at night.”
I nodded, for none of this was surprising to me. I’d witnessed much of the same in Sidney, as well as in other men returning from the war. But her next comment came as somewhat of a shock.
She peered through her eyelashes at me. “Mother thinks he might be having an affair.”
I stiffened, for the very idea of her suspecting such a thing angered me. I knew men who were philanderers and I knew men who were haunted by the war, and I had witnessed the differences in their demeanor. Freddy was definitely the latter.
“But I don’t think that’s it,” Grace said, perhaps sensing my anger and misinterpreting it.
“It’s the war,” I stated with certainty. “The number of men he watched die under his knife and in his care disturbs him.”
She seemed shocked speechless by this, and her face paled at the thought. Perhaps I should have been less blunt, but she was nearly seventeen and she wished to marry a veteran. She needed to understand at least some of what these men had experienced, some of the demons they’d brought home with them.
“I take it Cyril hasn’t spoken to you about any of this.”
She shook her head. “But I know what Freddy and Tim and some of the others say about him.” Her voice hardened. “And it’s not true.”
“You’ve asked him about it?”
“No, but I know what kind of man he is. He would never do something so dishonorable.”
“You would be surprised what otherwise honorable men might be convinced to do when faced with the hell they fought in,” I cautioned. Sticking their hand above the parapet to be shot by a sniper or firing a bullet into their own foot was sometimes preferable to enduring the trenches for a single day more.
“He didn’t do it,” she practically growled.
Given her stalwart defense, it seemed fruitless to continue pressing her on the matter, but that didn’t mean I was satisfied. Grace might be blinded by infatuation, but I was not. His intentions toward my sister were reason enough to look into the matter, and his fretful behavior and reaction to Bauer only cemented it. It was time for Sidney to call in a favor of his own.
CHAPTER 22
The coroner’s inquest progressed much as expected the following morning when it adjourned in the parlor of the Crown, with a few exceptions. For one, the inspector from Richmond had been needed elsewhere, and so he had left the matter in Sergeant Bibby’s dubious hands. Given the fact that the death was obviously manslaughter, and that no immediate suspect had been uncovered to bring forth on charges, the inspector’s presence wasn’t truly required anyway. Once the expected verdict of willful murder by a person or persons unknown had been pronounced, the police would be asked to conduct a more thorough investigation into the matter.
It was hoped that this would lead to the inspector’s greater involvement, but given the lack of evidence, the victim’s foreignness, and the little hope there was of retrieving fingerprints from the pitchfork handle—save those belonging to the Kiddses’ farmhands who had used it to bale hay—I didn’t hold much hope of that happening. Not when the inspector was in charge of such a large area. He might call in Scotland Yard, but I also thought that to be doubtful. No, the inquiry would be left in Sergeant Bibby’s hands, with predictable results.
Or so I believed. Though I hadn’t counted on Mr. Metcalfe, the coroner, stepping forward to voice an accusation of his own.
“Aye, well, I can’t say that the chit wasn’t asking for trouble walking where she shouldn’t have been,” he pronounced with the same utter lack of compassion he’d shown through the entire proceedings. He glanced toward where Bauer’s body lay covered by a sheet on a table to his right in the slanting rays of the sun shining through the pub windows. Earlier the jurors had gathered around her as Freddy had explained her cause of death. His testimony as a surgeon and former RAMC officer had been deemed enough, and so no official police surgeon had been called in to examine the body. “But I believe I’ve seen the culprit.”
This caused a minor stir among the people seated at the scarred trestle tables scattered about the room, most of whom were men puffing on cigarettes or pipes.
It was evident from the keen expression on his craggy face that he’d expected this reaction. He’d always possessed the grandiosity of a born showman. “My foreman caught a German sleeping in one of my field barns some nights past.”
Sidney and I shared a look of astonishment. The second deserter?
“The Kraut ran off before he could summon assistance, but he’d been there all right. I saw with my own eyes the nest in the hay he’d created for himself.” He sat back, clasping his hands over his abdomen and watching in satisfaction as the jurors and audience murmured among themselves. “Perhaps he was conspiring with the maid and they had a tiff, or maybe he was working alone. But it’s clear he’s up to no good.”
“How did your foreman know he was a German?” my father asked from his seat on my other side, speaking in his usual measured voice but somehow still being heard above the din.
“I trust my foreman to know the difference,” was Metcalfe’s oblique response. He glowered at my father. “Perhaps you don’t appreciate the connection being pointed out, but I think it strains credulity that three Germans should appear in our small community at the same time and not somehow be connected.”
“Aye,” Father conceded, the only evidence of his agitation being the furrow between his eyes. “But it seems unnecessary to make spurious accusations about the girl when we’ve no proof that she did anything more sinister than enter the field barn of one of our neighbors without permission.”
I felt a surge of affection toward him for defending Tante Ilse’s maid. In truth, I’d given little thought to how Tante Ilse’s arrival and Bauer’s murder had affected him. He’d always been fond of his aunt, but accepting her into his household so soon after the war was not without its difficulties, and yet he’d done so, without hesitation. And here he sat, defending her maid, despite all the questions and unknowns of her brief time with us and her unfortunate death, simply because it was the right thing to do.
Metcalfe dipped his head in acknowledgment of this. The old man might be pompous and controlling, but he also recognized how well-respected my father was. When he spoke, people listened. It was a trait he and Sidney shared. One among many.
“Did your foreman give a description of the man?” Isaac Hardcastle suddenly stood up to ask from the audience. “For I think I may have seen him myself.” He glanced about the room, as if to gauge the effect of his words on others. “I saw the maid in question speaking with a straw-haired fellow outside the chemist some days past, and they were speaking German.”
I stiffened, unable to suppress my reaction to this bit of news, and Sidney and Father both turned to look at me, but I shook my head minutely. I would not discuss it here. Not while the rest of the audience speculated aloud about straw-haired strangers.
Sergeant Bibby pushed to his feet, asking for quiet from the audience before he addressed the jury. “Well, it seems clear to me we have a likely suspect.”
“Aye,” Metcalfe agreed. “But as we don’t yet know his name, I ask the jury to return a verdict of willful murder by a person or persons unknown.”
As this was all but a formality at this point, Sidney, Father, and I left the pub to stand under the eaves of the rough-hew
n stone building overlooking Market Place. The structure blocked much of the wind, but its chill still cut to the bone, and the weak sunlight filtering through the clouds did nothing to counter it. Winter was upon us.
“Why did you react when Hardcastle mentioned he’d seen Fräulein Bauer speaking with a man?” Sidney mumbled around his cigarette as he cupped his hands around the tip to light it.
“Because Violet Capshaw said she’d also seen Bauer speaking with a strange man near the chemist’s shop, though she couldn’t describe him because they were in shadow.”
I elected not to mention the fact that I’d also seen a straw-haired man, this time in the churchyard. Just as I withheld the fact that Tante Ilse may have glimpsed the same man and accused him of being the second deserter. I could read in Sidney’s eyes that he was thinking of these things as well, but he obeyed my unspoken wishes and didn’t speak of them in front of my father.
“Of course, that still doesn’t mean the fellow was German, or that he killed Bauer,” I added. But based on the sheer number of reported sightings, it seemed obvious there was some sort of stranger hereabouts, and that he was somehow familiar to Tante Ilse and Bauer.
Sidney exhaled a stream of smoke into the breeze. “But that won’t stop people from believing he did.”
Father’s grim gaze remained fastened on something across the street. “Sidney’s right. And if the fellow does happen to be German, I’m afraid that may see him convicted without any further evidence.”
Sidney seemed to hear something behind his words that I hadn’t, for he stilled with the fag pressed to his lips, but didn’t inhale. “Would your neighbors take justice into their own hands?”
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