An Unwilling Accomplice

by Charles Todd

We went back to the inn where we’d stayed the night, and while I waited in the motorcar, Simon went inside to ask those at breakfast if any of them had given a lift to a soldier heading for London.

  I could hear the voices inside but not the words. After a few minutes, Simon came out again and joined me in the motorcar.

  “No one has seen anyone answering Sergeant Wilkins’s description. Do you suppose he’s changed clothes?”

  “Short of stealing them, where would he find them?”

  “He’s been clever enough so far.”

  We were reversing to continue on our way when I touched Simon’s arm. “Look, the police station. It’s only a stone’s throw from this inn.”

  “He’d be a fool to draw attention to himself here. It’s one of the reasons Scotland Yard hasn’t found him. He’s canny enough to realize that if the local constable is contacted, he’ll report what he knows or has been told.”

  And so began a very different sort of search. We bypassed any village with a police station, but stopped in those too small to have a constable. Of course there would be a constable in a nearby village or town who oversaw any problems that might arise, but who would think to mention a soldier looking for help?

  Ten miles farther on, we had a bit of success when we stopped for petrol at a place simply called BURT’S.

  The talkative man in the converted smithy, who proudly introduced himself as Burt, asked where we were heading, and Simon gave him the name of a village farther down the road, thinking it safe enough.

  “Aye, my brother lives there. Do you know him?” He told us the name of his brother and the location of his cottage—“second lane past the church, Buttercup it’s called, although why that’s so nobody quite knows.” He wiped his hands on an oily rag. I thought he must be close to forty, his hair heavy with gray, his face lined.

  Simon answered, “Actually the Sister and I are searching for my brother. He went missing on leave from a clinic in Ludlow, and it’s feared his wound may have reopened. He can’t have had much money with him. He wasn’t going far.”

  “Can you describe him?” Burt asked, suddenly interested. “I was in the Wiltshire’s until I lost a kidney outside Ypres.”

  Simon did the best he could, this time without embellishments, although we knew precious little about what our quarry really looked like now. What’s more, we were far enough from Ironbridge that we needn’t worry as much about word getting back to Inspector Jester.

  “Limping, you say? And in the Duke’s Own? Here, now, I saw him not a week past. He was set down by a farmer on his way home from looking to buy a bull. And late that afternoon, a lorry coming through took him on. The lorry was heading for Oxford, though the lad said he was from Kenilworth.”

  Kenilworth? What associations did Sergeant Wilkins have with Warwickshire?

  But we couldn’t ignore it, for Burt described his limp very well.

  “Felt sorry for him. He looked tired, as if he’d been living rough. I asked about that, and he said he was set on and robbed. They knocked him down, and he said his leg was hurting something fierce. I asked why he didn’t go back to the clinic, and he said it was his only chance to see his mother. She wasn’t well, she couldn’t travel. I had a little beer in the back and I shared it with him.”

  “And the driver was on his way to Oxford?” Simon queried.

  “Aye, so he said.”

  “Do you remember the firm that owned the lorry?” I asked.

  “I do. As it happens, I see Danny from time to time, passing through. He’ll stop for a pint, if he can spare a few minutes. General Hauling is the firm.”

  And how many lorries by that name plied the roads of England? It was a more or less common name for long-distance firms. But it was a start.

  “Have you seen Danny since he offered the Sergeant-Major’s brother a lift?” I asked.

  “He hasn’t come back this way since then. Is your brother in trouble with the Army for disappearing?” The man turned to Simon, and it was too close to the mark for comfort.

  “Sadly, I don’t think he’ll be going back to France anytime in the near future. We offered to help the clinic search for him. They believed we might have better luck than they’d had. But then they don’t have the people or the time to go far afield.”

  “Well, Danny will see him right. You’ll find him at your mother’s, waiting.”

  I didn’t think we’d have a ghost of a chance finding the sergeant in Kenilworth—he could disappear in a town that size or from there go in any direction he chose.

  “He was looking to reach Kenilworth? Are you sure?” I asked

  “Well, just outside it. He said that was close enough, he could find his way to his village from there.” Burt glanced from one to the other of us. He was beginning to wonder, since Simon must know where his own mother lived, why we were still asking directions.

  “Yes, yes, of course,” I said hastily. “I couldn’t think why he wouldn’t go directly home. Of course there was a girl in Kenilworth . . .”

  Burt nodded. “I doubt he had the strength left to go courting.”

  I smiled. We were becoming very good at making up stories about Sergeant Wilkins, Simon and I. If the Yard ever traced us, they would begin to wonder about our own role in this search. It was something to consider.

  “Did the soldier tell you his name, while you were sharing a beer?” It was Simon’s question. “My brother has had some trouble with his memory. There was a head wound, I’m told.”

  That elicited another nugget of information.

  “If you ask me, it must have reopened when he was set upon. He went out back and cleaned it up a bit. Fearsome great knot, it was. I thought it must be hurting like the very devil. He called himself Wheeler. Jack Wheeler.”

  “Then he’s all right,” I said, giving every appearance of relief. “If he still knows who he is, he can most certainly find his way home.”

  All the while, I was thinking that the name he’d given was remarkably close to Jason Wilkins. And yet that was hardly proof of his identity. No doubt the Army records could produce several dozen soldiers by the name of Wheeler and Wilkins. We could actually be chasing a will-o’-the-wisp.

  Simon, concluding the questions before Burt began to wonder why we were asking about a man Simon at least should know well, thanked him for his help and paid him for the petrol.

  Driving away, I said, “Do you think the sergeant was heading for Kenilworth?”

  “Who knows? He was wise enough not to travel as far as Oxford. Warwickshire is a large enough county. By the time Scotland Yard or the Army MFP could search it, Wilkins could be anywhere. Oxford however is too close to London. If that’s where he’s heading, he wouldn’t want to show his hand quite so obviously.”

  “He must be going somewhere,” I said with a sigh. “But where?”

  “Assuming Wheeler and Wilkins are the same man.”

  “Yes, I’d already considered that possibility.”

  “Wilkins has no real roots. I looked at his record, remember? He has no family. He isn’t married—” Simon broke off, frowning. “Hold on. Let me think.”

  We drove another mile or two before Simon spoke again. “By God, I believe I’m right. Jason Richard Albright Wilkins. As the elder son he was named for his two grandfathers and given his mother’s maiden name. His brother was Jeremy Arthur Wheeler Wilkins. Wheeler was his father’s mother’s maiden name.”

  “You not only looked in the Army records, you went to Somerset House,” I said, surprised. “Where is this brother? Did you look him up as well?”

  Simon shrugged off the comment. “I had time on my hands,” he replied. “As for the brother, he was killed earlier in the war. What matters is that Wheeler is a family name.”

  I wasn’t sure I believed him about time on his hands. “Then you know where his family came from.”

  “Lincoln,” he told me.

  “Warwick is hardly the shortest way to Lincoln. What should we do now?”
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br />   “We can’t catch the lorry up. It could be anywhere in England by this time. The best we can do is to make our way to Warwickshire and see what we can learn. Assuming he stays with the lorry that far. We’ll cut across Worcestershire, I think.”

  It was a large assumption.

  “And we must hurry. He could have found another lorry or farmer or the like to take him the next leg. I don’t see why he didn’t head for Scotland. Or Ireland for that matter.”

  “That’s assuming he wanted to leave England.”

  “Wouldn’t you, in his place?”

  “It would depend, wouldn’t it, on whether or not he’d finished what he set out to do. He’s killed one man. It’s possible he had it in mind to kill another.”

  I’d suggested just that earlier, but it was something I didn’t want to think about, that if we were too late, another person might die. “All the more reason to find him. I wish Scotland Yard had been more successful. I could have stayed in Somerset all this while, with my parents. But he’s been so clever—Wilkins. He never panicked, he kept his head and stayed out of sight. He probably couldn’t help the horse getting away from him. Even then he was lucky—it went straight home, and no one could begin to guess how far it had been ridden. And we’ve learned something else, that he’s been hurt. Do you think that could have happened when the horse got away?”

  “Scotland Yard is shorthanded. They haven’t got the men to scour Shropshire and now Warwickshire, as we’ve been doing. They’re depending on a constable spotting Wilkins somewhere and reporting the fact to London.”

  We drove in silence for the next twenty miles. I said, as we passed through another village, “What if Wilkins told the man in the smithy one thing—and asked the lorry driver to drop him in Worcestershire?”

  “That’s a possibility. The question is, how do we find out?”

  “We act on what we know. Warwickshire.”

  A heavy rain caught us an hour later, turning the dry roads into a morass of ruts and puddles. Simon suggested stopping, but I shook my head.

  “The sooner we’re out of this weather, the better time we can make. I’ll spell you if you like.”

  “I’m all right.”

  But it was another two hours before we ran out of the rain, and soon afterward we were in country neither Simon nor I knew. We kept going, our sense of direction guiding us, and after a while, as early autumn darkness fell, we began to consider where to stop for the night. We found ourselves rejecting most of the possibilities. Several of the pubs had no rooms, while the small roadside inns had none to spare, or occasionally only one. We were well off the main roads now, and there was little call for accommodations for travelers. It was after nine, and then after ten, and finally going on for midnight.

  Simon turned to me, his face set in the reflected light from the headlamps. “I’m tired. I think we ought to call it a night.”

  The question was, where could we stop?

  We were in rather hilly country just then, and we hadn’t passed a sizable town or village in some time. While there was bound to be one ahead, it could be another hour—two—before we found what we were after.

  “If you can find a suitable place to stop, I’m for it,” I agreed. I’d just caught myself dozing in my seat, and if I was tired, then Simon most certainly must be.

  We drove on, the hills higher and closer together, the road a thread winding around the base of one and then following on around the base of the next.

  “A string of lighted windows,” I said, a few minutes later, pointing ahead. “It must be a village.”

  But it was no more than a widening in the road, the land flat enough to allow for a hamlet to grow up.

  It wasn’t large enough to boast an inn, nor even a pub of any size.

  The next hamlet was a bit larger but still crowded into a long, narrow pocket of land. I saw the name, MIDDLE DYSOE, on a signpost at the curve in the road. But it offered little more than the first hamlet had done. There were a dozen or so cottages strung out along the road, one lane that disappeared behind several small shops, and a smithy at the far end.

  “Would you like me to drive?” I asked once more.

  “I’m all right. For now—” He broke off as the next turning revealed a half dozen or so sheep blocking the road. Swearing under his breath, Simon pulled up the brake, as we gave ourselves and the poor ewes quite a fright. After casting terrified glances over their shoulders at the monster that had so suddenly come upon them, they darted into a farm lane, their white backs milling and pushing to be the first out of danger. And then they were gone, out of range of our headlamps and quickly disappearing from sight behind a straggling clump of lilacs.

  Simon sat there for a moment, then he said, “I don’t relish having to pay a distraught farmer for his ewes.”

  I laughed, but he was right, we might have injured one of them.

  In the distance, over the ticking of the motor, I could hear a dog bark once or twice, and then right across our headlamps an owl swooped low, landing in the grassy verge, before taking off again. I thought we must have spoiled his aim, for he appeared to have missed his prey.

  Simon released the brake and moved on, this time even slower than the narrow and winding road demanded.

  I had no idea where we were. Somewhere well out of Worcestershire, surely, and heading a little east, I thought, for this winding road had taken us slightly off course.

  Ahead was another small sign at the outskirts of the next village, and as we approached, I could make out UPPER DYSOE.

  It too had nothing to offer us.

  I remembered seeing a barn just where the sheep had disappeared from view. Before I’d read the village’s name on the little sign. The roof half fallen in but the stone walls still in fair condition.

  Hardly satisfactory lodging for the night. But certainly safe enough to rest for a little while. The next time we might not see the flock of sheep in time.

  Simon had noticed the barn as well, but at first he refused to consider it.

  “You can rest for a bit before we move on again. Long enough to take the edge off our fatigue.”

  “Bess.”

  “There has to be a town nearby. Before we find it, we could round another hill and find ourselves in a ditch.”

  “All right. We’ll take a look.” He turned back, and when we reached the barn, he pulled off the road, judged the rutted lane that led up to the gaping space that had once held broad doors, and then moved forward into the shelter of the walls.

  As our headlamps picked out the spacious interior, I realized that this barn must have been derelict for some time, not just through the war years. Twenty years? Thirty?

  It appeared that anything that was still useful had been removed long ago. There was only the debris from the roof and fallen stone left. A good bit of that stone had also been carted away for building byres or walls in a field.

  Simon helped me into the rear seat, handed me the rug he carried in the boot, and then settled himself into the seat I had vacated, stretching his long legs out toward the driver’s side.

  “Twenty minutes?” Simon asked.

  “Yes, that seems about right. Half an hour at the most.”

  I fell asleep to the rustling of something in what was left of the roof.

  CHAPTER NINE

  I DON’T KNOW how long we slept there. A faint glow of dawn was just etching its way across the eastern horizon when I opened my eyes again, and I could see through a gap in the roof that there were pink, fluffy clouds drifting across the sky. My neck was stiff, as if I’d slept with it in an awkward position, and as I moved to ease it a little, I woke Simon.

  “It’s almost light,” he said. “Are you still asleep, Bess?”

  “Not really. It’s a very good thing it didn’t rain!”

  He chuckled. “There was nothing to fear short of a deluge.”

  “It reminds me of nights I’ve spent in ruined villages in France.”

  “Yes, it does t
hat.” He got out and stretched his shoulders. “I’m afraid there’s nothing to offer you for breakfast. I don’t think our accommodations run to morning tea or anything else.”

  But I was looking in the other direction, and I could see that on a makeshift shelf under the lee of the fallen roof, someone had collected a small mound of fruit from somewhere—pears and apples and berries. Beside them was a rusty, dented cup, and what appeared to be an old tin next to it.

  “Simon. I don’t think we’re the only ones who’ve sought shelter here,” I said in a low voice.

  “A shepherd, most likely,” he replied after walking over to look at the small hoard. “These are drying up—the berries turning gray with mold. Whoever it is, he hasn’t been back in a while.”

  I wasn’t so sure it was a shepherd. The barn was too close to the road.

  Our very safe, comfortable camp was taking on a very different aspect. I looked around us, peering into shadows and crannies where the roof had fallen in.

  Simon went outside, and I could hear him as he circled the barn, looking for any sign of recent occupation.

  I had the uneasy feeling that we might be under observation. Simon must have felt it as well, for he said, “Stay where you are for now. I’ll drive on.”

  He bent to turn the crank, just as a bit of the roof slipped down some ten feet ahead of us, landing with a thud on the dusty floor of the barn, and a pair of doves took off, startling me as they flapped through the opening and soared out of sight.

  Simon got in, carefully reversed the motorcar, and drove out of the gaping hole where once doors had hung. We made it through the high grass and ruts in the lane back to the road without incident. I could see the doves sitting on the ruins of the roof now, settling back as we no longer threatened them.

  I felt better at once. What if whoever was using the barn had come there and found us asleep?

  Just then I saw a goat grazing on the far side of the road, nearly hidden by the summer’s growth of briars. Sunlight caught her yellow eyes, and at the same moment, I realized that she was tethered. That bore out Simon’s suggestion that a shepherd used the barn from time to time.