An Impartial Witness bcm-2

by Charles Todd

Looking at the photograph I'd given her, she said, "He looks like a nice sort. And if he's someone Gareth photographed, he must be all right."

  I changed the subject, asking if the village had been reasonably quiet since my last visit.

  "That's right, you haven't heard, have you?"

  I knew what must be coming. "What's happened?"

  "Michael Hart was walking in his aunt's garden. Pacing it, more likely. Mrs. King was passing by, and she said he had the face of a bear, so she didn't stop to speak. And not a quarter of an hour later, he went raging in to see Constable Tilmer, claiming someone shot at him. But Constable Tilmer couldn't find anyone who'd heard one shot, much less two. And with all the windows open because of the warm evening, you'd have thought someone must have heard it."

  "What happened then?"

  "Constable Tilmer searched the gardens and the back lanes, and told the Harts that all was well, the excitement was over. But Michael wouldn't hear of it. He demanded that the constable ring up Scotland Yard and report the incident directly. And then we all went home to bed and that was the end of it."

  "Who could possibly want to shoot Lieutenant Hart?"

  "That's what everyone is asking. Jason Markham claims it was a jealous husband." She laughed at that. "If so, he had very poor aim."

  The village was taking the incident very lightly, finding amusement in it.

  "But why should Michael make up such a story?"

  "Too many drugs, everyone says. Hearing things." She shrugged.

  "Is that true?"

  "I don't know how the rumors got started. But they did. I imagine it was when Michael first came here to rest after they had worked on his shoulder. He wasn't himself at all-barely able to speak, and even when he did he didn't always make sense. Slept much of the day and paced his room at night-I could see for myself once or twice that his lights were on until the small hours. And his shadow passing between the lamp and the window, back and forth, back and forth. Even when he finally came outside where people could see him, he was pale and often sweating and his eyes looked right through you."

  "Such wounds can be terribly painful. And the shoulder is awkward-difficult to sit down, difficult to lie down, difficult to stand. So you don't rest. Even when you're so sleepy you can hardly stay awake."

  "I hadn't thought of it that way," Alicia admitted. "It sounds pretty grim, doesn't it?"

  "It is grim," I said. "And something to help with the pain is necessary."

  "He told the rector when he first came here that the next surgery would be drastic. And he didn't want to survive it."

  I could understand. Michael was used to being noticed. He was handsome and charming and amusing. People enjoyed his company. But a man with only one arm was usually pitied, not admired. And amputation at the shoulder would be ugly.

  Alicia suggested a walk, and I agreed, thinking that if Michael saw me with her, he might come out and speak to us, saving me from having to find a proper excuse for calling on him.

  "It helps the day go by faster," she admitted as we leisurely strolled by the Hart house. "Walking, knitting, taking care of the gardens-anything is better than worrying about Gareth."

  And I was right, not five minutes later, as Alicia and I were retracing our steps, Michael Hart came out his door and moved purposefully in our direction. We were just by the churchyard when he caught us up.

  Alicia hastily recalled that she must have a word with the rector about flowers for the coming Sunday services, and left me alone.

  "You came back," Michael said as soon as he was near enough.

  I could see that he had taken his pain medication last night, for his eyes looked dull, and his hands shook a little.

  "Alicia was just telling me about your narrow escape."

  "Hardly that," he said, an edge to his voice. "Since I imagined the entire incident. I'm surprised Scotland Yard didn't call to inform you of my delusions."

  It was too close to the truth for comfort.

  "Yes, they do seek my advice regularly. They dare not make a move without me."

  He had the grace to apologize. "I'm sorry. I wrenched my shoulder ducking the first shot. Afterward I had a long couple of nights."

  Men who had been at the Front often ducked when a motorcar backfired or there was some other loud noise. It was a reflex action, learned to save their lives and not as easily unlearned in a peaceful setting like one's uncle's garden.

  "And you never saw anyone. Or heard anything except for the shots?"

  "You sound just like Constable Tilmer," he told me sourly. "If I'd seen who it was, I could have named him to the police. Or lacking that, described him."

  "What makes you so certain it was a man?" I asked.

  That gave him pause.

  "I just assumed it was," he said after a moment.

  "And why would someone shoot at you?"

  "I don't know. Unless someone believes I learned something in London that made me a threat."

  "Such as?"

  He surprised me with his answer. "If someone learned that I went to Scotland Yard. He-she-could believe I went there to pass on information."

  "Then why kill you now? If the Yard already knows what you've learned."

  "I haven't worked that out yet."

  "Are you sure you heard shots? I mean, as opposed to something that sounded very much like shots."

  "I've spent two years in France. Do you think I'd confuse a farmer scaring crows with a shotgun for a pistol shot?"

  "No."

  I walked a little way toward the church, then turned again and walked back to where he was standing. "How did two shots miss you? Both of them?"

  "Think what you like," he snapped and strode away.

  I shook my head at his attitude, then hurried after him.

  "Michael. Be sensible! Listen to me."

  He stopped and turned a stony face toward me, already rejecting what I had to say.

  "If whoever it was missed you both times, then it tells me the person aiming at you wasn't used to firearms and was either out of range or couldn't hold the weapon steady."

  "I wouldn't put it past Victoria," he answered bitterly.

  But I thought it was more likely to be Serena. She'd talked to Inspector Herbert. And so had Michael. For all I knew, she had seen him leaving the Yard.

  If it was Serena, this could be the second time she'd fired at a human being. And the first time she had hit her mark, which would have frightened her if she hadn't intended murder.

  "I remember the first time I fired a revolver. I missed the target and nearly hit a troop of monkeys in a tree. It was six weeks before they ventured that near again."

  He was smiling at the story about the monkeys, but his mind wasn't on what I was saying.

  "Did the police at least search for the spent bullets?"

  "A cursory search. I went back later to look on my own. But it's a garden, for God's sake, and finding anything would be a miracle."

  "Let's have a look together."

  He was about to refuse me, but I stood there waiting, and finally he said disagreeably, "All right, then."

  I wanted very much to tell him that handsome is as handsome does. But that would be sinking to the same childish level.

  Still, I was tempted.

  And what would Alicia think when she came back to find I'd gone off with Michael Hart? That her stratagem had worked?

  We walked in silence to the house where he was staying with his aunt and uncle. The grassy path branched about three-quarters of the way to the door, and stepping-stones led to a gate in a well-trimmed hedge. Through that I found myself in a very pretty formal garden. Small boxwoods lined the paths in a geometric pattern, dividing the beds. Along the far side of the garden, matching the hedge at the front gate, was a bank of lilacs, which must have been beautiful in the spring, their fragrance wafting to the chairs set out on a narrow stone terrace, rising above two shallow steps.

  "What's behind the lilacs?"

  "The c
arriage drive to the stables. Beyond that a small orchard."

  "So someone could have come as far as the lilacs without being seen."

  "Yes. That was what the police suggested as well."

  "And where were you standing?"

  "I was in the center, by the little sundial, my back to the lilacs. The house had felt stuffy, and I'd come out here. But I couldn't sit still, so I walked as far as the sundial, stood there for several minutes, and was just turning back to the terrace when I heard the shots."

  He was right. Finding the spent bullet amongst the beds of roses, peonies, larkspur, and other flowers in full bloom, much less the loamy earth they were set in, would be a miracle.

  But I looked anyway. If only to satisfy my own ambivalence about whether or not there were any shots at all. I asked him to stand where he had been at the time, and then I cast about, looking under leaves, in the earth, even in the blossoms themselves. After ten minutes, he said impatiently, "I can't stand here much longer. You aren't going to find anything anyway. Let's sit on the terrace before I fall down." He did look rather gray in the face.

  I am stubborn. Just ask the Colonel Sahib.

  "Go ahead and sit. I'll look a little longer."

  And five minutes later, my fingers, scything gently through the soil around a rosebush in the next bed over, came up with something hard. I picked it up, brushed it off, and looked at it.

  It was a readily identifiable.45 bullet.

  Triumphant, I carried it to Michael and dropped it into the palm of his hand.

  "Persistence," I said simply.

  He grinned at me. "And your fingers are filthy."

  I regarded them wryly. "So they are."

  "Now perhaps someone will believe me!"

  But there still remained a shadow of a doubt. Michael Hart possessed his service revolver, and he could just as easily have fired that shot into the rosebushes himself, in the hope that the police would believe his story.

  I sighed. "I must go back to Somerset. I'm here on sufferance anyway. My family is convinced that you're a blackguard and I'm in danger of being shot in your company."

  The grin deepened. "It's a lie. Your mother adored me. Stay, and I'll take you to dinner somewhere."

  I shook my head. "Thank you, but I must go." I rose to leave, and then said, "Michael. What if we never discover who killed Marjorie? If the police can't do it, it's not likely that anyone else will succeed where they failed. And they keep jumping about, first this and then that likelihood. They won't keep searching forever."

  "I'll keep looking if it takes me the rest of my life," he told me grimly. "I won't desert her as everyone else has."

  I said good-bye and left. Alicia was watching for me, and smiled. "I saw you walking with Michael Hart to his aunt's garden. Beautiful, isn't it?"

  I agreed and then told her I must return to Somerset.

  She said, "You two didn't quarrel, did you?"

  Several times, I answered silently, then told her, "He's not at his best today."

  "Don't let that discourage you. I think he rather likes you."

  I smiled and said, with heavy irony, "Thank you, Alicia. You send me away happier than when I arrived."

  "Did he tell you," she went on, "that Victoria, Marjorie Evanson's sister, had a very public quarrel with him, just this morning. I don't know what precipitated it. He was walking toward the church when she stopped him and suddenly there were loud voices and everyone turned to see what was happening."

  "What were they saying?"

  "Marjorie was buried here in the churchyard. Did you know that? Not with her husband but with her family. When her body was released, Meriwether's sister refused to let her be laid to rest in their family plot. I don't know if Meriwether was told what her decision was. I think he'd have been very angry. But she told Victoria in no uncertain terms that Marjorie was no longer considered a part of their family."

  I hadn't known that or I would have visited her grave when I was here for the garden party. But I should have guessed that Serena would carry her anger that far. She hadn't come to the service.

  Alicia was saying, "At any rate, Victoria accused Michael Hart of spending too much time there. I know he's been there a few times, not what I would call an inordinate number, but she seemed to feel that having caused her sister so much grief in her life, it was keeping the scandal alive for him to be seen there so often."

  "She believes that Michael Hart was the other man?"

  "I think she's always been very jealous of the attachment between Marjorie and Michael. And so she thinks it was an unhealthy one."

  "What does the rest of the village have to say?"

  "They're of two minds, at a guess. Those who liked Marjorie believed the best of her. If she fell from grace, they say, it was out of loneliness. Those who are closer to Victoria and her father seem to think that Marjorie betrayed her family as well as her husband."

  "Never mind what the truth might be?"

  "Never mind," she agreed, nodding. With a sigh, she said, "I know how easy it is to fall from grace. I miss Gareth so terribly sometimes that I cry myself to sleep. I'm always afraid to answer the door, for fear Mr. Mason is on my doorstep this time, to deliver bad news. Sometimes after his leave is over and he's been gone for months, I can't quite remember the sound of my husband's voice, or see his face as sharply as I did before. And one day someone comes along who is kind, thoughtful, his touch is real, and he's there, and one is so hungry for companionship, for someone who admires one's hair or makes one laugh, or just brushes one's hand as he helps one into a motorcar, that one is susceptible. Suddenly one is alive again, and you tell yourself that you might well be a widow already and not even know it-"

  She broke off, flushing with embarrassment. A little silence fell. Then she said, "I've never succumbed. I've been faithful in thought and deed. But I'd be lying if I said that I could throw the first stone at Marjorie." Wryly she added, "That's why I so enjoy your feelings for Michael. It lets me feel something vicariously."

  Misreading my expression of annoyance, she said, "I've made you self-conscious, haven't I? I'm sorry. Let's change the subject."

  "All right, then. Why would Victoria make such a public display of her feelings? Why not speak to Michael quietly, privately, and ask him to be more discreet?"

  "I rather think she wants the world to see him as an adulterer. She wants him to be an object of contempt."

  "Or she's jealous." I leaned back in my chair and regarded the ceiling. "Do you think Victoria might decide to shoot at him?"

  "At Michael? But why should she?"

  "I don't know," I told her truthfully. "Perhaps to frighten him. To make him leave Little Sefton and return to that clinic. To make him a laughingstock. Or to return to the idea of jealousy, to rid herself of him so that she wouldn't be reminded day in and day out that he still cares for Marjorie, but cares nothing for her?"

  "I hadn't thought of it in that light," Alicia said, considering my words. "But she's always had an uncertain temper. Spoiled children often do. She might very well decide to shoot at him-knowing that she would miss him, I mean-just to be vindictive."

  "Would you walk with me to the churchyard, and show me Marjorie's grave?"

  "Yes, of course. Let me get my shawl." She was back in only a moment. I took one last look at the photograph I'd returned and then together we walked down the street to the churchyard.

  There were any number of new graves, the earth still brown, and others where the grass was just a tender green. I tried not to think that for every man who died of wounds here in England, hundreds of others were buried in makeshift cemeteries in France.

  The Garrisons were buried in a cluster of graves on the right side of the church. Besides Marjorie's mother and father, there was a brother who had died at the age of six, and her grandparents, two uncles and their wives and a number of older-generation Garrison relatives. Marjorie's grave was on the far side of her brother's, as if Victoria had elected to keep fo
r herself the space that was next to her father. After all, Marjorie, the first to die, was in no position to argue.

  There were colorful fresh flowers on the raw earth. I recognized some of them as varieties I'd seen in the garden belonging to Michael Hart's aunt and uncle. I could in a way understand Victoria's complaint, for these tokens were there for all to see and speculate about. They also pointed up the fact that Victoria hadn't planted any flowers by the headstone herself. There were pansies and forget-me-nots and other low-growing blossoms rampant on the other graves. Michael was making it plain that Marjorie didn't deserve to be ostracized by her family as well as her neighbors.

  We were standing there together when the rector came around the corner of the church and spoke to us. He remembered me from the fete, and told me he was happy to see me again.

  "Alicia has been rambling about in that empty house long enough," he went on. "It's nice that friends can come and stay. We hope we'll see more of you."

  I smiled and thanked him.

  Looking down at the grave, he said, "Did you know Mrs. Evanson?"

  I told him the truth, that I had nursed her husband and brought him home to England to recover from his burns, and I left it at that.

  "He was a very fine man," the rector told me. "The sort you're happy to see marrying one of the young women in your parish. A tragedy that he should die of his wounds after coming so far."

  "Yes." I gestured toward the grave at my feet. "Tell me about his wife."

  "A thoroughly nice young woman. I shouldn't wish to speak ill of the dead, but she was not really happy here. She didn't see eye to eye with her sister or her father. I never understood what lay behind that. I was glad when she made a life for herself in London."

  "Did Victoria visit her there?"

  "She went to London a few times," he said, frowning, "but I don't know that she visited Marjorie. I remember asking for news, once, when Victoria had been up to see a play. She told me she'd been too busy to call on her sister." He smiled sadly. "A shame, really, they had only each other."

  He left us then, and Alicia said, "You know, you really ought to speak to Mrs. Eubanks. She's the rector's cook now, but she was the Garrisons' cook until she had words with Victoria's father and walked out. That was ages ago, before the war. I'd all but forgotten."