by Charles Todd
I hadn't learned a great deal about Raymond Melton, and only a little about Lieutenant Fordham.
But as I climbed the stairs to my flat, calling good night to Mrs. Hennessey who had come out to ask me if I'd enjoyed my evening, I wondered why Jack Melton and his brother were estranged. Because he knew what sort of person Raymond Melton was?
What had been the fascination there for Marjorie? Attention when she needed comforting, her fears for Meriwether smoothed away? Sometimes very cold men could be utterly charming when it served their purpose. I preferred someone like Michael Hart, who made no bones about flirting, enjoying it and expecting no harm to come of it.
Like the woman at the garden party, I remembered as I drifted into sleep. Henry's wife, who had been amused by Michael's flattery, gave it back in full measure, and made both of them laugh.
Someone was knocking at the flat door. I heard it in my dreams before I realized that the sound was real. Surfacing from sleep, I tried to think what time it was, and if I'd overslept. I fumbled for my slippers and my dressing gown and made my way through the dark flat. But the windows told me it wasn't the middle of the night, as I'd first thought, or late morning. Dawn had broken and the first rays of the sun were touching the rooftops opposite.
I opened the door to Mrs. Hennessey, her gray hair in a long plait that fell down over the collar of her dressing gown.
"What is it? What's the matter?" I asked, thinking she must be ill.
"My dear, it's Sergeant-Major Brandon. He says it's most urgent that he speak to you. I do hope it isn't your parents-"
My mind was racing ahead of me as I brushed past her and went headlong down the stairs, nearly flinging myself into Simon's arms as I tripped on the last three steps.
"What is it?" I said again, tensed for the blow to come.
"I told Mrs. Hennessey not to frighten you," he said, angry. "It's a police matter, but important enough to make sure you were safely here."
Mrs. Hennessey had seen me come in. She could have told Simon-and then I realized that he had been frowning with worry until he saw me on the stairs.
"Do you know a Mrs. Calder?" he continued, and I tried to concentrate on what he was saying.
"Calder? Yes-she's a friend of Marjorie's. Marjorie Evanson."
"She was attacked last night and nearly killed."
"She-" I began and had to stop to catch my breath. "Nearly killed?"
Mrs. Hennessey had made her way down the stairs and said to Simon, "If you wish to use my sitting room-"
He thanked her and we went into her flat, where a lamp was burning in the small room where she sat in the evening. She asked if we'd like a cup of tea, but Simon shook his head. With that she left us alone, but knowing Mrs. Hennessey, she wouldn't be far, even though she knew that Simon was a family friend. Her staunch Victorian upbringing wouldn't allow her to eavesdrop, but she would be able to hear if I screamed or had to fight for my virtue, since I was not properly dressed to receive a gentleman.
Simon must have read my mind because he smiled grimly and said, "You had better sit over there. God forbid that we should not observe the proprieties."
I sat down on one side of the hearth and he took the chair on the other.
"Mrs. Calder?" I reminded him.
"She had gone to dine with friends. Mr. and Mrs. Murray put her into a cab at the end, and she went directly to her house. That's been established. But she didn't go in. The maid waiting up for her was drowsing in her chair, but she would have heard any disturbance on the doorstep."
"Then it was someone Mrs. Calder knew," I said. "She wouldn't have gone anywhere with a stranger, not after what happened to Marjorie Evanson." I tried to think. "Have the police found the cabbie?"
"They have, and he doesn't recall anyone walking along the street or standing in the shadows of a tree. But he's an old man, he might not have noticed. At any rate, she got down at Hamilton Place, paid the cabbie, and the last he saw of her, she was walking toward her door. An hour later, a constable walking through Hamilton Place heard something in the square, and alert man that he is, went to investigate. He discovered Mrs. Calder lying in a stand of shrubbery, stabbed and bleeding heavily. She's in hospital now and undergoing surgery. No one has been able to question her. But she wasn't robbed or interfered with in any way. Because of the unsolved attack on Mrs. Evanson, someone, probably the Metropolitan police, thought to bring in Inspector Herbert."
"Oh, dear." I put my hands up to my face, pressing them against the flesh, trying to absorb everything Simon was telling me. And then I realized that it was Simon telling me. Letting my hands fall I said, "How is it that you know all this?"
"Inspector Herbert put in a call to Somerset-he must have thought you were going directly home, but he was taking no chances. You father called me at my club. I came directly here." He paused. "Bess. How much did this Mrs. Calder know about Marjorie Evanson's love affair? Did she know the name of the man?"
"She told me she didn't-" But Serena Melton believed Mrs. Calder knew more than she wished to tell even the police. That she found her cousin Marjorie's behavior distasteful and was trying to distance herself from it. "Serena Melton believes she does. And if that's true, someone else could as well." Michael Hart had not suggested we talk to Helen Calder. The thought rose like a black shadow in my mind. Had he believed that if Helen knew the name of the man Marjorie had been seeing, it was possible that she also knew Marjorie intended to meet him that evening?
I pushed the thought away. There could be a little jealousy there, because Helen really was a cousin, and Michael was not. But the thought lingered.
Simon was saying, "The police can't be certain that her attack is related to Mrs. Evanson's death, but they're treating it as likely."
"She must know who it was. She isn't the kind of woman who would take risks. Is she-will she survive?" With critical stabbing wounds, infection was often the deciding factor in living or dying.
Simon shook his head. "It's touch and go, I should think. My first responsibility was to look in on you. To see if you'd also been lured out into the night. Mrs. Hennessey couldn't stop a determined killer."
He was right. If someone knew just what to say-that my mother had suddenly taken ill or something had happened to Simon or my father-I'd go with them. Especially if I thought Mrs. Hennessey had allowed them in this emergency to come directly to my door. It would never occur to me that she was already dead. What, then, had someone said to Mrs. Calder that made her turn away from her door and follow him-or her?
"I'm wide awake," I said. "It's no use going back to bed. Do you think, if we went to the hospital, Matron might tell me about the surgery and what the prognosis is for Helen Calder?"
"It's worth trying."
I left him there in the sitting room and went up to dress. I decided to wear my uniform, though I sighed when I put on the nicely starched cuffs and apron that I'd ironed only hours ago.
Simon drove me to St. Martin's Hospital, where we made our way to the surgical wards. But Mrs. Calder was still in surgery, I was told, and not expected to be brought into the ward until she was stable.
I asked where she had been stabbed, but the sister I spoke with shook her head. "I haven't seen her file. Only that I'm to expect a female patient with repairs of severe knife wounds."
Frustrated, I went to where Simon was sitting in the room in which families awaited news, and said, "She isn't out of surgery yet. It could be some time."
"It was worth a try," he said. "I'll take you home and we'll come again in a few hours."
I was agreeable to that, but we met Inspector Herbert as we walked down the passage. He'd been in the small staff canteen helping himself to a cup of tea. He looked tired.
Surprised to see us there, he said to me, "You're in uniform."
"Indeed."
"I hope you weren't thinking of interviewing Mrs. Calder before the police spoke to her." He smiled, but it was also a warning.
"I was worried. I met her f
or the first time only a few days ago."
"Did you indeed?" He gave me his undivided attention. "And what did she have to say to you?"
"She couldn't give me the name of the man Mrs. Evanson had been seeing, but she'd been concerned for some time about what she believed to be a developing affair. And she was under the impression that Mrs. Evanson had broken it off several months before her death. Well before she could have known she was pregnant. But I didn't say that to Mrs. Calder."
I went on to tell him what little I knew.
Inspector Herbert nodded. "This time her purse wasn't taken, and so we had her identity at once. Then when the police went to inform her family, her mother said, 'Dear God, first Marjorie and now Helen.' That was when we made a connection between the two women, and I put in a call to Somerset." He looked down at the hat he was turning in his hands. "I must say, I never expected a second murder." He looked up again, and after a brief hesitation, he added, "The constable who found her said that she was barely conscious when he bent over her, but she spoke someone's name. Her voice lifted at the end, as if she were posing a question. 'Michael?' she said."
"Michael-" I repeated before I could stop myself. "Er-what is her husband's name?"
"Alan."
"Oh."
"Oh, indeed."
I said, "If you're thinking that Michael Hart did this, you're mistaken. He couldn't, given his injuries. Ask his doctor." I tried to remember. "A Dr. Higgins." He'd given Michael permission to accompany me to London; he must know the case well enough to make such a judgment.
"I'll be speaking to his physician," he assured me. "But for all we know, he could be malingering."
I thought about the pain I'd read in Michael's eyes, the struggle with the sedatives. The whispers that he was addicted to them. But I didn't bring these matters up. My testimony would be considered biased.
"It will be hours before Mrs. Calder is awake," I told him. "If she's still in surgery now. We might as well all go back to bed."
But he shook his head. "That isn't what the Yard pays me to do. I'll be there the instant she opens her eyes."
Just then Matron came down the passage, calling to Inspector Herbert. "Mrs. Calder is being taken to a private room. She isn't awake and won't be for some time," she said, echoing what I'd just been telling him myself. "But you may go in and see her, if you wish."
He turned to accompany her. I gave Simon a swift glance and followed in Inspector Herbert's wake.
Matron was saying, "The damage is considerable, but we'll know more tomorrow. Whoever her attacker was, he stabbed her twice. She was wearing a corset, and luckily the staves deflected his knife. There is a laceration along her ribs, the bone scraped, cartilage torn, but the blade didn't reach her lung. Then he stabbed her in the stomach, and nearly succeeded in killing her."
We went into the small private ward, and looked down at the patient's wan face. I didn't think she'd be speaking to anybody for some time. She had lost quite a bit of blood, and the surgery had been stressful as well.
I studied her face. She was no longer the vigorous woman I'd seen only a day or so ago. Even with the bandages, she seemed to have shrunk into herself, thinner and somehow vulnerable. I felt a surge of pity. If she had been thrown into the river, as Marjorie Evanson had been, she wouldn't have survived at all.
Matron was saying, "You'll observe that she was also struck on the head from behind. We saw that injury as we were pulling her hair back." She gently turned Mrs. Calder's head and parted her heavy hair to show us the wound. "I would say that she was knocked unconscious and then cold-bloodedly stabbed while she was unable to defend herself."
"Then there's a chance she didn't see her attacker." Inspector Herbert bent down for a closer look.
"True." Matron eased the patient's head back onto the pillow and arranged her hair.
Inspector Herbert then turned to me. "Any thoughts?"
"You were at her house? The servants' entrance is just below her door-down the stairs behind the railing and into a kitchen passage, I should think." It was a common enough arrangement. "If someone waited there, the cabbie wouldn't have seen him. But he'd have had to be quiet."
"As the cabbie left, it might have covered the sound of his footsteps coming up," Inspector Herbert agreed. "I'll speak to one of my men; we'll see if another cab dropped off a passenger earlier. The question is, how did he know she was out? Or when she would return?"
"He may have been there earlier, and seen her leaving. And waited."
He nodded. "Whoever it was took a great risk. One cry and someone might have come to a window. Unless he persuaded her to walk into the square, then struck her from behind. That may be why she said the name Michael the way she did. As he came up the tradesmen's stairs, she must have been surprised and called out to him."
Matron gestured to us, and we walked out of the ward together, closing the door behind us. Inspector Herbert asked that an extra chair be brought to him, and he sat down before the closed door. He pointedly bade me good night.
I left, having pushed my luck as far as I thought it ought to go.
I accompanied Matron back to the hall where Simon was waiting, my mind busy with the problem of why a dying woman had spoken Michael's name. I went over what she'd said to me when I called on her. I hadn't brought up Michael's name-and neither had she.
Simon took me to the Marlborough Hotel and commandeered a breakfast for the two of us. I sat there toying with my food, thinking about Mrs. Calder.
"It makes no sense," I finally said aloud.
"It isn't supposed to. You aren't Inspector Herbert."
I smiled. "I don't think he's exactly happy with this turn of events either."
"Eat your breakfast."
I did as I was told. I wanted something from Simon and the easiest way to persuade him was to cooperate. At least the breakfast was better than the dinner the night before and I was hungry.
"How was your evening?" Simon asked, echoing my own thought.
"Captain Truscott is a very nice man. You needn't use that tone of voice."
"What tone of voice?"
"The one that sounds disapproving and nosy."
Simon laughed. "Actually, I think you're probably right about Truscott."
"He told me something about Captain Fordham that made a lot of sense."
He groaned. "I thought you'd been warned off that topic."
"I was. I can't help it if Freddy knew the man."
"I see. You'd better tell me."
I did. Simon nodded as I was finishing the account.
"He's right," Simon told me. "There's delayed shock, you know. As long as Captain Fordham was recovering from his wounds, he could put France out of his mind. But as soon as he knew he was nearly ready to return to the Front, the truth had to be faced."
"Then why didn't he use his service revolver?"
"I expect he didn't wish to. I expect he didn't feel he had a right to use it."
That was a very interesting observation.
I sighed. "Poor man."
"He wouldn't be the first. And he won't be the last. Don't you remember Color Sergeant Blaine? It was much the same story."
I did remember. It was in Lahore, and Color Sergeant Blaine was in hospital recovering from wounds. He slashed his wrists one night, without a word to anyone. And my father said Sergeant Blaine blamed himself for losing his men in an ambush on the Frontier. He felt, experienced man that he was, that he should have foreseen it. No one could have, my father told my mother. But Sergeant Blaine had never lost a troop before.
"You're very wise, Simon. But what became of the handgun that Captain Fordham used? Solve that mystery too."
"It's buried deep in the mud under the bridge where he was standing. It fell from his height and through the height of the bridge. Enough force to bury it in the soft soil at the bottom of the lake."
But the police had searched, and still hadn't found it.
I finished my tea, and sat back in my chair
. "Will you drive me to Little Sefton? I'd like to speak to Lieutenant Hart before Inspector Herbert sees him."
"Do you think that's wise?" Simon asked.
"I don't know what's wise anymore. But Inspector Herbert has a second victim now. He's probably already under a good deal of pressure to take someone into custody. Michael Hart would solve all his problems. As soon as the inspector speaks to Helen Calder, he'll order Michael's arrest. See if he doesn't!"
"That could be later this afternoon or evening. Are you convinced that Michael's shoulder wound is as serious as he claimed?"
"You know as well as I do that severely wounded men can go on to do heroic things before they collapse. He's a soldier, he could stab her if he had to-wanted to. What would be impossible for him to do is carry or drag her into the square afterward." I bit my lip, then added, because I knew Inspector Herbert was already considering it, "It could explain why she was found in the square and not taken to the river, as Marjorie was."
"Yes, I'd considered that myself." He signaled to the waiter. "I'll take you to Little Sefton, only because I feel safer with you under my eye. And then you'll go back to Somerset and stay there."
"I promise."
But I crossed my fingers behind my back, just in case.
Simon took me to Little Sefton, then did as I asked, driving away after leaving me on Alicia's doorstep. He was to return in precisely two hours. He wasn't happy with that arrangement, but I promised to stay with Alicia.
I had the excuse of returning the borrowed photograph, but I needn't have worried about my welcome.
She was delighted to see me. From the twinkle in her eye, I knew what she was thinking, that I couldn't stay away long because my heart was given to Michael Hart.
She said nothing about that as she led me into her sitting room, and asked if the photograph had helped.
"Indeed it has," I told her. "The only problem is, that officer is in France just now."
