An Unwilling Accomplice

by Charles Todd

  “I remember when Sergeant Wilkins requested a Sister Crawford to attend him during the ceremony,” Matron began slowly. “I asked him if there was anything personal between you. He replied that you’d tended his wounds at the forward aid station and saved his leg. He felt it was fitting for you to be there when he received his medal.”

  “I was told the same thing. But when I met Sergeant Wilkins, I couldn’t place his name, his wounds, or his face. I put that down to someone guessing who was on duty at the forward aid station that day. And he took the guess as fact.”

  “Or he believed that whether you remembered him or not, you would have no knowledge of his present condition. Whereas a Sister from Lovering Hall would know such details and take a different view of his abilities.”

  “Thompson was the MO who brought him to London.”

  “Yes, a good man. He’d just received his orders to go to France. We asked him to accompany the sergeant because we’d have been shorthanded if we’d had to send someone else. But now that I think about it . . .” She paused. Looking into the past, she said, “Thompson was assigned to the shoulder cases. Not the limbs. He knew Wilkins by sight of course, but he didn’t work with him daily on exercises and the like. He didn’t change his bandages, for instance.”

  “I believe he did a cursory job on the morning before the audience with the King.”

  “Yes, we had decided that the outer layer should be changed, but the dressings closest to the wound shouldn’t be removed. They were clean when the sergeant was driven to the station, and we felt that by not touching them they would be a barrier against new infection in an hotel room or on a train.”

  It was good thinking on her part, especially if the wound was draining. But it shouldn’t be, surely, if he was allowed to leave Lovering Hall in the first place?

  “Who was his nurse?”

  “Sister Hammond. She’s young, but she came here from another hospital and was well recommended.”

  I’d never encountered her. “Is Sister Murray still here?”

  “She left five weeks ago. And Sister Hammond took over the sergeant’s care.”

  I’d done the right thing after all, speaking first to Matron.

  She was rising, on her way to the door. “I’ll summon Sister Hammond.”

  “Don’t you think—” I began, and she stopped, her face set.

  “If you call her in here, she’ll know something is wrong, that something has happened, perhaps even concerning the sergeant. Would it be better if I talked to her quietly to see what we could learn?”

  “How do I know I can trust you?”

  Stung, I said, “You don’t. And if you don’t, then perhaps you should summon her.”

  Debating with herself, she said finally, “For your sake as well as my own, I think it best.”

  She opened the door and asked someone passing by to find Sister Hammond and send her to Matron’s office.

  We waited in a stiff silence for that someone to locate her.

  After a time, there was a light tap on the door. Matron went back to her desk, sat down, then said, “Come.”

  Sister Hammond stepped into the room. “You wished to see me, Matron?”

  I could tell at once that she had never served in France. I never really understood what it was that set Sisters who had served in aid stations near the front lines apart from those who had not. But I could read that difference in Sister Hammond’s face. The wounds she had seen had already been treated, or were surgical cases that were addressing infection or stubborn problems with incisions and healing. She had never plunged her hands into a torn leg looking for the artery that was bleeding, or probed a chest wound for a shell fragment that was perilously near the heart, or cleaned a head where part of the skull was missing.

  I wondered what she could read in mine.

  “Sit down, Sister. This is Sister Crawford. She’s come from London to ask you about Sergeant Wilkins’s wounds.”

  Sister Hammond blinked. “His wounds?”

  “Yes,” I said pleasantly. “I was concerned about the head wound, for instance.”

  Her face cleared. “That was his little joke,” she said, smiling. “He never talked about what he’d done. In France, I mean. He said it could have been any one of half a dozen men named in that dispatch. That he was no braver than they were, and he really felt it would be difficult for him to stand there—or in his case, to sit—and listen to his name being called and hear the Palace praise him.”

  He’d said something along those lines to me.

  “And so you wrapped his head, even though he had no head wound?” Matron asked, striving to keep her reaction out of her voice.

  “He said it wouldn’t matter, that it would just make it easier for him to seem like one of many wounded men. Anonymous. ‘The King won’t be affronted, and I won’t have to face the photographers and the other guests.’ I didn’t think it was wrong to help him.”

  After a moment, Matron said, “He also told me that the award should have gone to braver men than he. I thought perhaps he’d refuse to accept it. But later, when he was told he was invited to come to London, he seemed quite pleased.”

  “Yes, that’s right,” Sister Hammond replied, happy that Matron was agreeing with her.

  “And you told MO Thompson that he should completely remove only the sergeant’s outer bandages?” Matron went on.

  “For fear he might see there was no head wound. It would do no harm to leave them—the leg wound is healing well, although the scar is still quite tender and the muscles aren’t very strong yet. That’s why we decided that splints and bandaging would help support the leg and protect the scar from being rubbed by his uniform. We were trying to be practical, you see.”

  And Thompson had followed instructions. It must have seemed quite logical to him not to take risks.

  But I knew—and so must Matron—that judging how tender a scar might be or how strong the leg muscles had grown was dependent on the patient’s responses.

  “And his arm,” I said. “How badly was that draining?”

  She blushed. “Well, actually, it wasn’t draining at all. In fact, he didn’t need bandaging or a sling. Still, it wasn’t strong enough to allow him to use crutches. That morning—when he was about to leave for London—he told me his arm was aching again. He thought the exercises might have been too much and he was worried about it. And so I wrapped it and gave him a sling. I saw no problem with that. If it made him feel uncomfortable, it could come off again. He was planning to remove the sling anyway, for the ceremony, so that he could salute the King.”

  But he hadn’t removed the sling. Nor had he saluted the King. He had given everyone to believe that he was an invalid.

  I was stunned at how easily Sister Hammond had been manipulated. And yet that was hindsight. At the time she must have believed she was trying to do her best for her patient. Goodness knows, I was in no position to cast the first stone.

  “What worries me,” she went on earnestly, “is that he can’t be taking care of himself now. He could do serious damage to his leg if he doesn’t rest it often. He’s not used to long walks or standing about. And if he should reopen the incision from his surgery, anything could happen. The same could be said of his arm. He mustn’t overuse it. Please, Matron, this is the truth.”

  Matron, listening to her without interrupting, glanced at me before saying, “Yes, I must agree with you, Sister. He will need to be very careful. He ought to be using a cane. But I must ask if you had any inkling of what he was planning to do? If you think he might have been farther along in his treatment than we thought?”

  “No, Matron. I was as shocked as anyone else. And I don’t see how he could have concealed his progress from us.” She was upset now, close to tears as it began to sink in that she may have been led down the garden path.

  I said, “Sister. What sort of man is Sergeant Wilkins? I must admit I saw him very briefly, when all was said and done. We couldn’t converse during the audi
ence with the King, and he was very tired when we returned to the hotel several hours later.”

  She glanced quickly at Matron, as if afraid to say too much.

  “He wasn’t what you might call charming,” she said after a moment. “We have patients could sing a bird out of a tree. They’re very difficult to deal with because they’re always pushing the rules.” She turned to me, as if for support in this. “They think because they’re charming, they can be forgiven for staying up half an hour longer or sitting on a bench in the garden just a little longer, or spending a bit more time with their families when they’re visiting, even though they’ve overtired themselves. You must know how it is.”

  I did. Many of the handsome ones, the charming ones, generally didn’t feel that rules could possibly apply to them. But it wasn’t what I wanted to know. I raised my eyebrows, as if waiting for her to go on.

  “He was never any trouble. He didn’t ask for favors. He just got on with what he had to do. Even when he was in pain, he tried not to make a fuss. But I enjoyed talking to him, he was always interesting.”

  “What did you talk about?” Matron asked.

  “I—nothing in particular. Just . . . conversation.”

  I gave up. “Did no one notice his extra bandages? Mr. Thompson, for one, the orderly who traveled up to London with him?”

  “Everyone knew it was going to be a difficult few days. That we didn’t want anything untoward to happen. If Mr. Thompson wondered about anything, he didn’t speak to me about it.”

  His mind was on his return to France. Or perhaps the sergeant had already had a word with him.

  It was becoming clear even to Matron that Sergeant Wilkins had planned his escape with great care, alarming no one, sending up no flares. I felt vindicated, but it didn’t make me any happier. I could see the worry in Sister Hammond’s face, and the growing hurt as she realized how she had been used, just for being kind.

  I could see that Matron was about to arrive at the same conclusion. She was looking at me, and then she turned to Sister Hammond.

  “And he said nothing to you, Sister, about not coming back?”

  Sister Hammond came close to tears. “Only that he would ask permission for us to go into Shrewsbury for my birthday next week. For taking such good care of him.”

  Interpreted in hindsight as gratitude for making a patient look far more vulnerable and in need of help than he really was. But then he had also maneuvered me into allowing him an entire evening in which to manage his escape.

  Sister Hammond said urgently, “Matron. I didn’t think I was doing anything wrong. No one stopped Sergeant Wilkins at the door. No one spoke to me.”

  Nor would they have, with a nursing Sister and a medical orderly supervising his departure. Whatever anyone might have thought, it would all have appeared to be under control. After all, the patient, an acknowledged hero, was on his way to Buckingham Palace.

  How had so many people been drawn into this man’s plot?

  Matron answered that, saying thoughtfully, “We thought we knew this man.”

  A hero. A man of honor. The last person anyone could imagine deserting. What no one had said, what must have been in Matron’s mind—or the Army’s—or even my own Nursing Service’s—was the fact that this man was not an officer. He’d been expected to set an example for the ranks.

  Whatever had made Sergeant Wilkins decide to desert, it must surely have been personal. Or it wouldn’t have ended in murder.

  Matron was saying, “I shall have to draw up regulations to make certain that this sort of thing never happens again. In my hospital or any other.”

  She dismissed Sister Hammond, then turned to me. “I have misjudged you, Sister Crawford. It appears that the problem began in my own hospital. I would have said that that was impossible, before you walked through my door.”

  “None of us was prepared.”

  “Orderly Grimsley had already told me that you’d been misjudged. I refused to believe it. An apology is in order. And I shall be writing to the Nursing Service on your behalf.”

  “Thank you, Matron. That means a great deal to me under the circumstances.”

  Her eyes strayed to the file she’d set aside when I was announced. “Is there anything else you need, Sister Crawford?”

  “I should like to speak to Grimsley before I leave. I’m still trying to make sense of any of this. I wondered if he might have learned something more about the sergeant and his plans, after he returned here to Shrewsbury.”

  “If he had, I’m sure he’d have said something to me. But I see no reason why you shouldn’t see Grimsley.”

  Ten minutes later, Grimsley and I were walking under the trees in the park. He hadn’t wanted to talk to me indoors.

  I told him what I knew—including the visit from Inspector Stephens, which I had mentioned to Matron only in passing.

  Grimsley looked up at me, whistling under his breath.

  “Murder.”

  “So I’ve been told. The police are searching for the sergeant. I don’t know anything about the man he is said to have killed. The name Henry Lessup doesn’t mean anything to me. Does it to you?”

  He walked at my side without speaking for several minutes. Then he said, “Ironbridge? I don’t recall that he ever received any letters from Ironbridge. For that matter, I don’t think anyone else has. It was one of my duties, delivering the post.”

  “What about his belongings here?”

  “The Army came for them. But you’ve been in a convalescent hospital. There’s not much a man brings with him, when he comes in from France. Whatever is in his kit. Whatever they have time to collect or send on, from where he was posted.”

  “Did he have any family?”

  “At a guess, his parents are dead. They’ve never come to see him, and the only letters he got—they were few enough—came from his men in France. The company he’d left behind when he was wounded.”

  I sighed. The sergeant had told me he had no family. And no one was in attendance at the ceremony. But that could mean anything, that they were dead, that he was the black sheep long since cut off from them, that they were not well enough to travel or to write.

  “How did he come to have my name, Grimsley? I still can’t remember ever treating him.”

  “We’ve had a few you did attend, Sister. I will say that Sister Hammond was that disappointed when she wasn’t asked to accompany him to London. I expect she thought he might choose her.”

  “She knew him too well,” I said pensively. “I was more easily tricked.”

  “Look at it this way, Sister. Any name would have done. Yours was just one he’d heard and could use. But what are we to do about this business? It leaves a bad taste, not seeing it finished.”

  “Scotland Yard will attend to that. I’d thought about going on to Ironbridge, while I’m in the north. Inspector Stephens didn’t give me very much information about the man the sergeant is alleged to have killed. Perhaps if I learn something there, it might help explain the man. He was terribly clever, Grimsley. He let everyone believe he was a deserter, and all the while, he must have been planning on going directly to Ironbridge. To find that man. The question is, where is he now? A few days ago, he was fewer than twenty miles from here!”

  “Licking his wounds, wherever he is. Or already out of the country. He could be in Ireland as we speak. I don’t see much hope of going to France. He’d run straight into the Germans. They’d know who he was. It would be quite a coup to capture him.”

  The Army had kept the story out of the newspapers, when Sergeant Wilkins went missing. There had been nothing about it. Nor anything about his being suspected of murder since then.

  “You aren’t going to Ironbridge alone,” Grimsley asked me as we turned back through the gardens toward the house. “I don’t like that very much.”

  Neither would my parents or Simon, I thought wryly. But I couldn’t see that it would do much harm at this stage. Sergeant Wilkins wasn’t there, surely.<
br />
  “I’m not due leave, I can’t offer to go with you,” Grimsley went on. “Take my advice and go back to London. I’ll find someone to carry you back to the railway station in Shrewsbury.”

  Before I could answer him, I saw Sister Hammond come out the main door and stand there, looking around. I realized she must have just come off duty.

  “I think she’s searching for me,” I said.

  “Talk to her, Sister. I’ll wager she didn’t tell Matron everything. She’d be too ashamed. I’ll find someone traveling back to Shrewsbury. You won’t mind riding in the butcher’s van?” he ended anxiously.

  “I don’t mind.”

  I stood where I was as he hurried back toward the house. Sister Hammond spotted me then and walked out to meet me.

  “I was getting ready to leave,” I said, smiling. “Did you think of something more that we ought to know?”

  She looked as if she were ill, pale and very tentative.

  “I feel wretched,” she said at once. “You don’t know—it’s not as if he’d said anything to me. It was just—when I first came here, he couldn’t sleep for the pain. I’d read to him sometimes. And there wasn’t much more we could do to ease him. He’d sit there, staring into whatever darkness was in his mind, and then after a bit, he’d slowly relax. The arm healed, but the leg was stubborn. It must have been very trying for him. Several times the Army doctors debated whether he was able to return to light duties. I tried to protect him, because I knew it was too soon. You’d have done the same. You have probably done the same. When the time came to travel to London, I really was afraid the Army would seize on the improvement. When he asked if I’d help him with the head bandage and then the sling, I thought it was for the best. I thought, they won’t know how weak that leg is still. They’d see him smartly turned out, and they’d order him up before the board while he’s in London. You’d been in France. Light duties—that’s what they offer, but you know and I know he’d have been back in the line within a fortnight.”