An Unwilling Accomplice

by Charles Todd

  She’d been used just like the rest of us. But in a way I could see her point. The boards did push men back into the trenches too soon. I’d seen it happen, and in the end the man was too slow, he couldn’t quite make it back to the trench in time, and he’d wind up caught in the wire, a target for the snipers. I couldn’t fault her. But I also thought that, forbidden or not to have personal feelings about a patient in our care, Sister Hammond very likely had begun to fall in love with Sergeant Wilkins. And I had a feeling that he had callously used that. Possibly even encouraged it.

  “But surely someone noticed the differences in his bandages. I can’t believe they didn’t.”

  “Didn’t you know? He and Thompson left here before first light. They had to be driven into Shrewsbury, then meet the early train. Who was there to notice, except Thompson, the orderly? And if he said anything, it wasn’t in my hearing. If he asked questions later, then Sergeant Wilkins was able to divert any suspicion. To tell you the truth, I think there was a send-off for Thompson. He was heading back to France, you see, and even the night porter appeared to be a little the worse for wear.” She smiled wryly. “They’re not supposed to get drunk, but who can blame them? I went back to my own bed and said nothing.”

  I wondered if Sergeant Wilkins had contributed a little something to the farewell party. Enough to ensure that the porter and Thompson were not at their best in the early hours.

  The more I learned, the more I could appreciate how thoroughly the sergeant had laid his plans.

  “Did he ever mention Ironbridge to you? Or anyone he knew there?”

  “I don’t think Ironbridge ever came up. I mean to say, it’s an iron bridge, isn’t it? And the village on both banks of the river? And not too far from here. I don’t think anyone else spoke of it while I was with the sergeant.”

  “Where are the letters he received from his company in France?”

  “They must have been with his things. In the cupboard. When the Army came.”

  Or perhaps they hadn’t been, if there was anything in them the sergeant didn’t want the Army to find.

  I shook my head. “No one could have foreseen what he was planning.”

  “But I should have. I was his nurse, I should have been aware of any change in him, any suspicious change. Like wanting those extra bandages. Looking back at it now, I see how very foolish I was. At the time—I thought how brave he’d been and how wonderful it was that the King himself would decorate him. In my wildest dreams, I couldn’t have imagined anything like this.”

  She looked back toward the hospital. “I shouldn’t have come out to speak to you. They’ll wonder what I had to say, if there was anything I hadn’t told Matron.”

  “Was there?” I asked after a moment.

  “No. Not really. Only that sometimes he cried out in the night. The sergeant. I’d hear him, when I was on duty. Something was tormenting him. And I never knew what it was, because in the morning, he couldn’t remember anything about it. Or so he said.”

  I had dealt with men who cried out in the night. Some of them lay awake into the small hours, afraid to shut their eyes and dream.

  What had haunted the sergeant?

  I realized Sister Hammond was studying me. I said, “What is it?”

  “You’ve served in France. Fresh wounds, men dying. Nothing tidy and at one’s fingertips, the way it is in a surgical theater. How do you bear it? I don’t think I could. It took me weeks to learn to look at the stump of a limb or an arm, without being sick.”

  She had volunteered, knowing she would be looking at terrible things. But here in the hospital, they had become ordinary. What had happened to these men, her patients, in France she hadn’t wanted to learn.

  Small wonder Sergeant Wilkins had found it easy to play on her openness and sympathy for the wounded in her care.

  “I try not to think about it,” I answered her. “Someone must be there for the men, and I’ve come to understand how important early care can be.”

  “You must be very brave,” she said, then rousing herself, she added, “I must go. But truly, Sister Crawford, I never dreamed what he was up to. The last man who disappeared was trying to return to France and his company. Perhaps Sergeant Wilkins has done the same by now. I’d like to think so.”

  With that she turned and hurried back toward the house, slipping inside as quietly as she could.

  I stood there, watching her go, then went to find the butcher. He was waiting for me near the kitchens, and his face lighted as I came round the corner of the house.

  “I was about to come looking for you. It’s time we’re off.”

  I nodded and followed him to his van. It had seen better days, but when the motor turned over, it ran smoothly. Settling myself into the seat beside him, I asked, “I should like to go to Ironbridge. While I’m in the north. Can you tell me how to get there?”

  “It won’t be easy, Sister. But I’ll ask around and see if I can find someone needing to make a delivery in that direction. You never know.”

  It brought home to me how much I missed having my own motorcar. With a sigh, I let Mr. Barker do most of the talking all the way back to Shrewsbury.

  I took a room in an hotel not far from the castle, and Mr. Barker agreed to leave a message for me at the desk if he was successful in finding transportation for me. There was, I learned at the hotel, a train that would take me as far as Coalport, but I decided to trust Mr. Barker.

  The bed was comfortable, but I spent a restless night, trying to put everything I knew about Sergeant Wilkins into some sort of order.

  The next morning, very early, a lorry driver was at Reception, asking for me, and I found myself accompanying a vast number of cabbages to market in Wolverhampton—by way of Ironbridge.

  My companion was a middle-aged man by the name of Frank. He had a wife in Shrewsbury and a daughter in Wolverhampton, and by the time we’d covered the fourteen or so miles to Ironbridge, I’d heard all about his new granddaughter. The apple of his eye, he told me unabashedly.

  Frank set me down by the bridge itself, the first bridge ever built of iron, and that only because a Coalport man had in 1779 learned how to smelt iron with coke, making it far cheaper than it had ever been before, and far more useful to the budding Industrial Revolution that was coming. Frank’s many times great-grandfather had worked on it.

  I walked to the water’s edge and looked up the Gorge, this narrowing of the riverbed that made the bridge across the Severn possible. It was quite spectacular, and as I looked up at the bridge itself, I tried not to think about the man dangling from a noose thrown over the tall iron railing. All the while, the water ran wildly, noisily between its banks.

  I went back to the road and considered crossing the bridge.

  A voice behind me said, “Visitor, are you?”

  I turned to find a man standing there, hat in hand. The words had sounded friendly enough, but his eyes were cold.

  “I’ve never seen the bridge before,” I said brightly.

  “How did you arrive in Ironbridge?”

  In a lorry filled with cabbages? I could imagine what my inquisitor would make of that. I said, “A lorry driver gave me a lift.” I turned toward the bridge, intending to cross it, but the man stayed with me, and I was beginning to feel a little frisson of concern.

  “What brings you here?”

  “I’m on leave,” I informed him. “And this is a pleasant change from the rigors of my duties in France.” I began to walk on.

  “You wouldn’t by any chance be one Sister Elizabeth Crawford, would you?”

  Stopping short, I said, “I’m sorry. I don’t know who you are, or why you’re questioning me.”

  “My name is Jester. Inspector Jester. Local police.”

  Uncertain and determined to take no chances, I said, “I should like to see your identification, if you please.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  I REALLY DIDN’T think the Inspector was going to show it to me. He stood there glaring
at me, his eyes even colder, if that was possible.

  And then finally, his mouth a tight line of disapproval, he reached into his pocket and brought out his identification, holding it out for me to see.

  It appeared to be real enough. But I studied it longer than was needful while I swiftly prepared myself for the interrogation that was sure to follow.

  “I don’t think you wish to cross the bridge,” he said, snapping the folder closed. “There’s still a toll required to go from this side to the other. The booth is just there, on the far side.”

  “Indeed,” I said, and deliberately walked out to the middle of the bridge, looking up the Gorge. It was quite beautiful, and I could hear the sound of the water clearly. The Inspector followed me.

  “Look. The Yard told me about you. That you were with Wilkins when he was in London. He’s killed a man on my patch, and I’d like very much to find out more about him than the file included.”

  “I don’t know much more than you do,” I said.

  “I haven’t had my breakfast. There’s a small shop just there, along the road. I’ll buy you a cup of tea, if you like.”

  I hadn’t had my breakfast either. Frank and his lorry had appeared before the hotel dining room had opened.

  “Very well.”

  He turned, and I followed him back across the bridge and toward a shop right along the road. A sign above the door read ROSE’S, and I could smell food almost before he’d opened the door and ushered me inside.

  We found a table near the back, set apart, and I couldn’t help but wonder if this was where Inspector Jester conducted his interviews.

  A woman of perhaps thirty, with pink cheeks and dark hair, came to take our order. She looked me up and down, then turned to the Inspector.

  “What will you have, luv?”

  “Breakfast for me, Rosie. The usual. Sister?”

  “I shall have the same,” I said.

  Without apparently heeding me, she said, “We’ve only the brown eggs this morning.”

  “Brown eggs it is, then,” Jester answered with a sigh. She went away, and he set his hat in the third chair, then observed me for a moment. “You aren’t what I expected.”

  “In what way?” I asked, warily.

  “The Army gave me to understand that you might have been in collusion with Wilkins, aiding and abetting his escape.”

  “Indeed? I’m afraid he tricked me just the way he’d tricked everyone else. I believed he was what he was supposed to be, a wounded soldier summoned to London to receive a medal. Recovered enough to be included in that week’s ceremony. After all, it’s what I was told. We did go to the Palace, he was given it by the King himself. Which only makes matters worse, of course.”

  Inspector Jester considered me, as if weighing me up.

  I was going to stop there, but during the night, I’d tried to put myself in Sergeant Wilkins’s shoes. And here was an opportunity to discover if the police knew more now than I’d been told in London. “The question is, was this man intending to kill someone, was that why he deserted? Which I find very strange, since he was in hospital in Shrewsbury, not so very far from here. Easier to explain wandering off for a day, surely, than to desert. Or did his victim recognize him and threaten to turn him in? It would have been clever to come north, while everyone else searched in other directions.”

  “If this is true, if you weren’t a party to any of this, what are you doing in Ironbridge?”

  “If I don’t clear my good name, who will?” I replied bluntly. “What’s more, I was punished by my superiors for what this man has done, and I’ve still received no orders to return to France. If he isn’t found, if I can’t prove he deceived me, I’ll be discharged from my duties. And so I traveled first to Lovering Hall, where the sergeant was being treated, and afterward I came to Ironbridge to see if there was anything more I could learn.”

  “And where are you intending to meet Sergeant Wilkins when you leave here? Or has he deserted you as well? Perhaps that’s why you’ve come here, to find him.”

  It was my turn to stare at him. “You must be joking,” I said roundly.

  “It was my first thought, when I realized who you must be. We don’t have a military hospital here in Ironbridge. Three of our young women have trained as nurses, but I know them by sight.”

  Rose brought a tray with our tea and cups, setting the pot in the middle of the table.

  I waited until she was out of hearing and said, “If he’d planned everything else so meticulously, don’t you think he’d have arranged to meet me somewhere far less conspicuous than the bridge where he committed his crime? There are dozens of towns and villages between here and London.”

  “Unless, of course, he intended to be rid of you, and thought that coming here might see you arrested as an accomplice.”

  Exasperated, I said, “Really, Inspector Jester, do you seriously believe what you’ve just suggested?”

  He didn’t answer. Instead he changed course. “What did you learn at the Hall?”

  “That the sergeant hadn’t just taken an opportunity when it came his way. He planned for London, as soon as he knew he’d eventually be sent there for the audience. And it succeeded because no one expected him to do such a thing.”

  “Why should I believe you?”

  “For starters,” I said as Rose brought a second tray, this one laden with our breakfast, “you might contact Inspector Stephens at Scotland Yard. He’s already interviewed me, and I think he believed me.”

  “Because your father is an important man in Army circles?”

  I should have stood up and walked out, but I was hungry and Rose’s breakfast was tantalizing. I said, “You must indeed be very short of clues if you’re reduced to insulting me.”

  He blinked at that.

  “Wouldn’t it be more useful,” I suggested, helping myself to my share of the eggs and toast, “if you told me what had happened here? I know only that Sergeant Wilkins is accused of murder, that no one knows why he chose this particular man to kill, or what connection he may have had with Ironbridge before this.”

  Inspector Jester took his share of the meal and then busied himself buttering his toast. I couldn’t help but think that the longer he took to answer me, the more of the food I’d have eaten before I was forced to decide what to do.

  Finally he looked across the table at me and said, “All right. A truce. When I saw you walking down by the bridge, I was angry. Wilkins killed a man we all knew well. And I thought you’d been sent here to see what we’d discovered. Or not.”

  “Why should it matter what you had learned—or not? He got away, no one knows where he is or what he’s doing now.”

  “Yes, I see that.”

  “I also don’t understand how you knew that it was Sergeant Wilkins who had committed this murder?”

  “There was one witness to the confrontation. She didn’t see the murder, but she was crossing the bridge on her way home when Wilkins passed her and stopped the man walking along some paces behind her. They went together to the middle of the bridge, just as you did this morning. Where they couldn’t be overheard. Traffic on the bridge was light at that time, for it was coming on to dusk. No one knows where the two men went from there. It was well after midnight when someone noticed the body dangling from the bridge. Apparently much earlier Mrs. Heatherton had seen a photograph in her father-in-law’s newspapers—she reads them to him regularly. It was of some of those who would be honored at a ceremony the next week. Wilkins’s photograph was there. That troubled her, and she came to me of her own accord to tell me. She thought it might be useful in helping us find the man and question him.”

  “But—” I hesitated. “Are you sure of that identification? I didn’t see the photograph in the newspapers, I can’t judge how much it looks like him. Whether it was an earlier one when he joined the Army, or one taken after he was wounded. It can matter; suffering changes people. Particularly since Mrs. Heatherton must have had only a glimpse of Serg
eant Wilkins’s face.” I had no reason to doubt her evidence, but if the murderer wasn’t the sergeant, then everyone was looking for him in the wrong place.

  “He was limping, using a cane, and one arm was bandaged, in a sling.”

  I didn’t know where he’d found a cane—they were everywhere, he could have stolen one. As for the bandage and the sling, I tried to remember if the sling had been among the bandaging left in the bed at The Monarch Hotel.

  “There’s a problem. I’ve been to the bridge. I don’t see how he managed to hang a man over the railing, if one arm was damaged and he needed a cane.”

  “And you’re defending him, aren’t you?”

  “No. I’ve been a nurse for four years. I know something about wounds. Unless his victim was much smaller than he was, how did Sergeant Wilkins manage it?”

  “We don’t really have an answer to that,” he said tersely.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to disparage your witness or the events on the bridge. I’m just trying to be practical.”

  “Yes, well, I could do without that, thank you very much!”

  “Had he hit his victim over the head? Perhaps that’s how he managed to subdue him?”

  “It’s possible. The doctor couldn’t say with any certainty whether the blow on the back of the head came as he was lowered on the rope, or if it occurred before the rope was put around the victim’s neck.”

  “If both men were in the Army, the connection between them could lie anywhere. France, a transport, a troop train. It means looking deeper into the victim’s background.”

  “The victim was in the Army, but he’d never served in France.”

  “I see. Does the victim have a name?” I didn’t want him to know that the Inspector in London had told me.

  “Lessup,” the Inspector told me grudgingly. “Sergeant Henry Lessup.”

  “If he was in the Army, why was he in Ironbridge? Was he on leave?”

  “Yes, that’s right. He told his sister he’d been ordered to shut down the site where he had been posted, and as soon as that had been done, he would be on indefinite leave.”

  Indefinite leave? I had heard all the rumors about the war ending soon, but it was unusual to be given indefinite leave while hostilities continued. This man could have been sent to France to join a depleted regiment, transferred to a recruit training site, or seconded to an officer in transport or general stores, any number of postings where he could free another man to fight.