A Forgotten Place

by Charles Todd

  “I didn’t expect you,” I was saying. “Not this soon.”

  “Captain Williams was at the top of the hill. He told me what was happening.”

  Men were running down the incline toward us, alarmed by the sound of gunfire.

  I said quickly, “Simon, can you drive Mrs. Stephenson back up to Rachel’s house? I hope she’s come to her senses, but I don’t trust her. She shouldn’t be left alone.”

  “I’m not leaving without you.”

  “But there’s Ellen—” I began.

  “She won’t be leaving. Go on, fetch Mrs. Stephenson.”

  Simon was reversing the motorcar, careful to stay out of shotgun range, as I tried to persuade Mrs. Stephenson to come with me.

  She was alternately shouting at Ellen over her shoulder and ordering me to give her the revolver. Then she saw the villagers hurrying toward us, and that renewed her energy, as if she thought they would stand with her.

  I said, “No. You’ll get one of them killed. Is that what you want? Ellen is armed. And you aren’t.”

  She stood there, staring toward the villagers. Then she nodded reluctantly.

  “This isn’t finished,” she said, and went toward the motorcar on her own. But once she was inside, I noticed that tears were running down her cheeks as she huddled in a far corner of the rear seat. “Now give me back the revolver,” she shouted, but I ignored her.

  “Shall I drive?” I asked Simon, opening his door.

  “I haven’t bled to death yet,” he retorted and started up the hill as I closed my own door.

  As we reached the straggle of villagers, Simon called, “Go home. It was all a mistake.”

  They had no idea who he was. He hadn’t been wearing his uniform when he was moving around in the dark, but he had it on today.

  I saw one man silently mouth the word Army and stop in his tracks, staring at us.

  “Oliver?” I asked quietly, when we were near the top of the incline.

  “He’s very ill—but he’s going to live. His name is Oliver Martin, and he’d just been released from the Army when he and Ellen came out here. He’d been in hospital before that, a wound that had tried to go septic. That might explain why he couldn’t defend himself properly.”

  “Could he tell you anything about the cave?”

  “That was Ellen’s doing. I’ll explain later.” He glanced toward the woman in the rear seat.

  “I need to know. Who gave him such a vicious beating?”

  “He didn’t know. A man. It could have been anyone in the village, he said. It was dark, he never saw the face clearly. He did say he was stunned by the first blow.”

  “Simon. Do you recall what Mr. Morgan told you? About being attacked in the night? There was someone in Mr. Griffith’s house today. A man. I think Mr. Griffith must be protecting the killer.”

  I didn’t think Mrs. Stephenson was listening, lost as she was in her own wretchedness. But she spoke now from the rear seat. “There’s no one else in his house.”

  “But I saw him. Just a little while ago. I’m sure of it.”

  She leaned forward. “His wife is dead. His son died in the war.”

  “Then someone from the village.”

  Simon turned to me. “It’s possible. Escaped prisoners. Men on the run. It could be anyone with the money to pay Griffith for sanctuary. If people have accepted that he’s the only one living in the cottage, who would know?”

  “Then how did he find Mr. Griffith? He smokes,” I added, still putting all the pieces together. “Whoever he is.”

  “I’ve never seen Mr. Griffith with a cigarette,” Mrs. Stephenson objected.

  We’d reached Rachel’s house. Hugh was standing by the path.

  “What’s happened?” Hugh asked at once. “We heard gunfire.”

  “It’s all right,” I said, hurrying to get out of the motorcar before Mrs. Stephenson.

  “Then why is the Sergeant-Major bleeding?” Hugh asked dryly.

  Once out of the motorcar, Mrs. Stephenson had stopped and was staring thoughtfully at the Griffith cottage. “Are you sure someone else was in there?” She shook my hand off her arm and started across the road, toward the cottage. “I intend to find out.”

  I caught her arm again. “You’ve shot one person, and nearly got yourself killed. That’s enough.”

  But she broke free. “As soon as our back’s turned, he’ll be away. Whoever he is.”

  Simon was there, blocking her. “What will you do if he comes to the door? Sister Crawford still has your revolver.”

  That stopped her. She stood there, uncertain.

  Simon’s arm was bleeding too freely. The patch of red was spreading.

  “I must do something about this man’s wound,” I told her, this time not mincing my words. “It’s your fault, and I don’t want to hear any more nonsense from you. Do you understand?”

  “He’s Ellen’s friend. I don’t much care,” Mrs. Stephenson said stubbornly.

  “No, he’s mine,” I said, angry with her. “My parents sent him to find me. And they’ll soon have the police here, taking you up for shooting him.”

  Mention of the police nearly started her off again. “I don’t want the police. I’ll do what has to be done.”

  “You’ll get precious little revenge from a cell in Swansea,” Hugh told her.

  Alarmed now, she stared at him, then turned around.

  Once inside, Hugh stayed with her in the front room while I led Simon into the kitchen to dress his arm. Rachel was there, her eyes anxious.

  “We heard shots fired,” she began, then broke off as she saw Simon and the blood on his arm.

  I introduced her to Simon, then said, “He arrived when Mrs. Stephenson was a little confused.” As I spoke, Simon was unbuttoning his tunic. “It’s best to hide that,” I went on, leaning forward to set the revolver on the table. “Fortunately her aim wasn’t very good. I’ve brought her here. I don’t think she should be left alone. Hugh is keeping an eye on her.”

  Rachel nodded, though I could see she wanted to ask more questions. Then she picked up the revolver very carefully and put it in a drawer of the dresser before taking Simon’s tunic from him.

  “I’ll just try to sponge away some of this blood. I’m glad you’re here, Sergeant-Major. I’m sure Bess is as well.” But her voice was strained, and her gaze flicked to me.

  Simon was rolling up his bloody shirtsleeve, and I began to work on the wound. He winced as I cleaned it. “It will do,” I said quietly. “I can’t see any serious damage. But Mrs. Stephenson doesn’t need to know that. Still, there’s always the possibility of infection. Be careful.”

  Rachel set aside the tunic long enough to find clean cloths for bandaging, then asked as she picked up the tunic again, “Any news of that poor man left in the cave—”

  She broke off as Mrs. Stephenson came hurrying into the kitchen. She looked at the bloody water in the basin and the bandages. “Dear God. I didn’t bargain for this.”

  Turning, Simon asked, “Why were you so certain that woman had killed your husband?”

  “Because Mr. Griffith saw her as plain as day when she attacked Sister Crawford.”

  Before I could answer, Simon demanded sharply, “What’s this?”

  “I’m all right,” I assured him, although my back and shoulder were protesting.

  But Mrs. Stephenson hadn’t finished. “It’s that and the men,” she said earnestly. “I thought you were another of them.”

  “What men?” Hugh had come to stand in the kitchen doorway.

  “Nobody knew. We never told. It was when my daughter was ill after she had her little girl. Edward went to see her in that Bristol hospital, to be sure she was all right. He was looking for a tea shop and there was Ellen Marshall just coming out of a church on the arm of a Welsh Corporal.” Mrs. Stephenson nodded to us. “Now you see why I knew she’d killed Edward. Once I heard that Mr. Griffith had seen her attacking Sister Crawford.”

  “I don’t quite
understand—” I said.

  “She was marrying him. With a white veil and a bouquet. And her poor husband not a fortnight in his grave. She kept her late husband’s name all the while. Only it was that man, the one in Bristol, who washed up here in the bay. My husband recognized him, you see. But he never said a word to anyone about it.”

  “Washed up—?” I repeated. “Are you saying—he was one of the two men who are buried there in the churchyard? The one in the boat?”

  “That’s right. We didn’t know his name, but my husband didn’t doubt it was the Bristol man. And he said he wouldn’t be at all surprised if the first one who washed up was another of her men. When the war was finished, and they started to come home, what else was she to do? She couldn’t have all those men who thought they’d married her finding out about each other.”

  “Ellen killed them? And then put their bodies into the sea?” I asked her. Was that why Ellen was so worried about Oliver? If he’d died in her cottage, she could hardly drag his body down to the strand . . .

  “What else was she to do with all those husbands of hers? All she had to do is drive down the other side of the Gower in that big motorcar of hers, take the body out to The Worm, and put it into the water,” Mrs. Stephenson said. “Who was to know?”

  “Oliver Martin—” I began, but it was Simon who broke in.

  “He had just been demobbed. He was to help her find her grandfather’s hoard. They were married in 1917.”

  “Then she did attack him,” Rachel said.

  “No, that wasn’t Ellen. But she got rid of him all the same. Or she believes she has,” Simon replied. “Oliver was still breathing, and so she left him in the cave, probably intending to come back when he was dead.”

  “She used a rotted boat for the second body,” Hugh commented.

  “But why did she come out here tonight? Wasn’t that rather foolish of her?” I asked.

  “Another soldier turned up at her lodging house this morning. Looking for her. I met him when I went there myself. Before I went to the police.”

  “The police?” Rachel asked. “Surely you haven’t—are they on their way?”

  “I’m afraid so. They want to talk to her about Martin. Neither he nor I knew about the others.”

  “Look what you’ve done!” Rachel exclaimed, turning to me.

  “Was he another husband?” I wanted to know. “The ex-soldier who turned up at her lodging house today? Simon, how many does that make?”

  “God knows. But he didn’t say anything about looking for his wife. And I didn’t know then to ask. He was sitting on the steps to the door, waiting for her to come home. A neighbor told us Ellen had got his telegram yesterday and early this morning she’d gone out to do her marketing. Only she hadn’t returned. I suspected she had gone to earth out here. I came looking for her. And just as well I got here when I did.”

  Hugh said, “She must have been collecting their Army pay. That’s the only explanation.”

  “But her husband—late husband—was rich. Everyone knew that,” Rachel objected.

  “He was. But there was only a pittance for her in his will. Everything went to the children of his first marriage.” Simon looked at me. “So that same neighbor claimed. Ellen opened the house by the port and took in lodgers, to embarrass the children—they’re grown, they have a social position to protect.”

  “And her grandfather’s share of the silver is gone too,” I said. “That’s why she was tearing the cottage apart.”

  Mrs. Stephenson, as alarmed as Rachel had been about the imminent arrival of the Swansea police, broke in. “We don’t want the police here. They never came when we needed them. They’ve never protected us,” she said now. “I won’t have it. And I haven’t finished with Ellen Marshall. If Edward saw her outside that Bristol church, she must have seen him. I’d have got my answers, but for you,” she added accusingly to me. “You and that nonsense about Mr. Griffith. It would have been finished by now.”

  There was no reasoning with her. “Not with that shotgun,” I reminded Mrs. Stephenson. “You couldn’t get close enough to use your revolver.”

  “She can’t stay awake all night. I can be patient.” She started for the door, but Hugh blocked her.

  “We’ve got enough trouble already. Go home. Let the police come and take her into custody. They’ll leave then. She’s the only one they’re after. Unless you and the rest of the village give them cause to stay.”

  “He’s right,” Rachel told her, setting Simon’s tunic over a chair and coming forward. “Let her go. You’ll put all of us at risk if you don’t stop this mad insistence on settling up with Ellen.”

  “She won’t hang for what she did to that man Oliver,” the woman said stubbornly. “And it’s only Edward’s word about the man in the boat. Edward’s dead.”

  Rachel shook her head. “She’ll go to prison for a very long time. Please, let that be enough.”

  But it was too late. There was a thundering knock at the door, and I knew even before Hugh swung around to answer the summons that the police had come. I saw Simon reach for his tunic, putting it on before the police could see his bloody sleeve.

  And Mrs. Stephenson sat down at the kitchen table and began to cry.

  The Sergeant on the doorstep had been told he’d find Ellen Marshall Hobson at the last house on the left.

  He’d mistaken Rachel’s house for the cottage, for that was nearly invisible from where he’d stopped.

  It took us a few very anxious minutes to convince him that he’d come to the wrong house. What’s more, he wasn’t one of the policemen who had interviewed Oliver Martin as soon as he regained consciousness, and so he hadn’t met Simon. In the end, I’m certain it was my uniform as a nursing Sister that persuaded Sergeant Barnes that we were telling the truth, because he kept referring to me for confirmation as Rachel and Hugh tried to explain the matter.

  Simon had remained just behind us, offering what support he could, but the rather noticeable stain on his sleeve so far hadn’t caught the eye of Sergeant Barnes, who would soon be seeing evidence of gunfire at the cottage.

  Mrs. Stephenson was sitting in a corner of the kitchen, taking no part in the conversation with the Sergeant.

  Finally satisfied that we were telling him the truth, Sergeant Barnes went back to the motorcar driven by a young Constable, and set off down the road toward the Marshall cottage.

  I looked up just in time to see Mr. Griffith standing in his doorway, watching the proceedings with interest. He disappeared inside when he saw me staring.

  By this time I’d become more or less persuaded that either I’d been wrong when I thought I’d seen someone else in the Griffith cottage—or someone from the village had come up to call. Jenny’s father, very likely. Mr. Burton, worrying about what Mrs. Stephenson was about? He was ill-tempered enough to have beaten anyone, and it was a coward’s way to use a stone to knock a man down, then batter him while he was half-conscious. In many ways he and Mr. Griffith deserved each other.

  By common consent, we hadn’t shut Rachel’s door, and it wasn’t long before we heard the shotgun fired again.

  Sergeant Barnes and the Constable didn’t come back up the road, indicating that no one had been hurt, and so we finally shut the door and went back to the kitchen.

  Mrs. Stephenson rose as we came in. “I’ll just be going off home,” she said. Her face was tired, drawn.

  “Shall I go with you?” I asked, concerned for her. “Or perhaps you’d prefer Mr. Wilson. It won’t take me more than a few minutes to bring him here. He can walk with you.”

  She shook her head. “No. Thank you, Sister.” She reached for her coat. “She’s getting away with murder. You know that as well as I do. Good night.”

  To be certain she was going home, I walked as far as the hedge with Mrs. Stephenson, and stood there watching her until she disappeared inside her own cottage. Poor woman, I thought, turning away.

  As I started back to Rachel’s house, I saw
Simon standing in the doorway, watching, to be certain I was all right. I made a face. He wasn’t wearing the sling I’d fashioned for him. He shrugged.

  I realized as I crossed the empty street that no one in this village had come out to see what had brought the police here. All the doors I could see from here were firmly shut. There were no children playing in back gardens, no one working with the grazing cattle. It was almost eerily silent in Caudle. I could hear the waves coming in, above the wind.

  Looking down toward the cottage, I could just see the rear of the motorcar that the police had arrived in.

  In some fashion I could feel sorry for Ellen Marshall. Her grandfather had tried to give her the best of everything, and she had married rather well. But her life hadn’t quite turned out as the fairy tale it was meant to be. Her husband hadn’t loved her enough to provide for her after his death, and she must have been too proud to beg his children to give her an allowance that suited her station as his widow. What had happened then was on her own head. The girl that young Rachel had admired and even envied had become a stranger.

  Hadn’t someone said that her grandfather had been suspected of murder?

  And that reminded me about the two bodies I knew about in the churchyard.

  No one in the village was going to bring police attention to them. And if Mrs. Stephenson was right, that Ellen might have killed at least one of them, she most certainly wouldn’t mention them.

  Should I? They deserved justice too . . .

  I walked into the house and Rachel called, “I’ve just made tea. I think we need it.”

  I joined the three of them in the kitchen, glancing at Simon for any signs of feverishness from his wound, for I hadn’t had an antiseptic to clean it. But he gazed blandly back at me, and I said nothing. He’d made friends with the dogs, who had a head on each knee.

  I didn’t remember having any breakfast, and Rachel must have read my mind, because she went into the pantry for eggs and bread. Returning, she said, “I expect you’ll want to leave today?”

  Simon spoke for me. “Tomorrow early. Once the police have finished here.”

  She looked at him warily. “Surely they’ll take Ellen back to Swansea today. There’s nothing else to keep them here. It will all be over.”