An Unwilling Accomplice

by Charles Todd

  “I don’t know the answer to that.”

  “There’s the officer’s mustache.”

  “A man can grow a mustache rather quickly, if he has a strong beard. A matter of days.”

  “Yes, that’s true. But he didn’t recognize us, did he?”

  “That’s the odd thing. Either he didn’t know us or he’s a damned fine actor.”

  I got out to open the gates for us. I looked back at the house, and the Major was standing there beneath the tree, staring after us.

  I’d never seen Sergeant Wilkins on his feet. Nor had I seen his coloring, except for the fair eyebrows and blue eyes. Not to mention the shape of his ears, the definition of his chin.

  Removing bandaging he’d insisted upon having before he came down to London had made it possible to leave the hotel without being recognized as the man who’d been given a medal. That too Sergeant Wilkins had foreseen.

  And I hadn’t been close enough to the Major to look directly into his eyes. But I had a feeling his eyebrows were also fair.

  Getting into the motorcar once more, I said again, “Do you think it’s Wilkins? If you do, we ought to tell someone.”

  “I saw less of Wilkins than you did. There’s a resemblance. Height, weight. But I should think Miss Neville will have something to say about our sending Scotland Yard here on such slim evidence.”

  “It’s just possible that he rode the horse as far as he could, fell off or was thrown, I don’t suppose we’ll ever know—and reached the Dysoes on foot. But how on earth could he have persuaded Miss Neville that he’s someone else?”

  “A very good question. I’d give much to know the Major’s name. I could look him up, back in London.”

  “We could ask Maddie. It wouldn’t be all that strange for me to look in on Mr. Warren before we go on.”

  Mr. Warren was still in a drugged sleep, snoring slightly when we got to the cottage after retrieving Simon’s valise. I was pleased to find that his skin was cool, no sign of fever developing. Maddie had taken as natural my comment about wanting to see the patient a last time. But I had the feeling he wished we hadn’t come back.

  “We encountered Mrs. Neville on the road,” I said, covering Mr. Warren’s shoulder again with the clean sheet Maddie had spread over him. “She was telling us her views on Agriculture when we spotted one of the Windward goats tethered by the road. She insisted we take it back to the house.”

  “The goats have got loose a time or two,” he agreed. “Clever beasts.”

  Clever or not, they hadn’t learned to tether themselves.

  “The Major was there. He seemed ill. Was he badly wounded?”

  “He was. Miss Neville has insisted on nursing him. I’m told she knew him in London. Before the war, I believe.”

  “London? Perhaps I know him—he reminds me so much of Diana’s brother, Major Havers. There were several cousins as well, if I remember. But I didn’t like to ask if he were related because he seemed to be in such pain.”

  Diana’s brother was at the Admiralty and his name wasn’t Havers.

  Maddie shook his head. “She hasn’t favored me with his name,” he said dryly. “He’s just ‘the Major.’ ”

  I believed him. Miss Neville wouldn’t bother to introduce her fiancé to the likes of Maddie. But I’d thought the Major himself might have, as a courtesy to the man trying to heal him.

  And yet there was something in the way he answered me that was interesting. As if the oversight had been deliberate.

  He stood there, quietly waiting for us to take our leave.

  I couldn’t think of another way of getting at what we wanted. And so we thanked him and went out to the motorcar.

  Simon saw to the crank, then stood there for a moment, looking back down the road at the village of Upper Dysoe.

  When he got into the motorcar, he said, “Kenilworth?”

  “Do you suppose Tulley at the pub knows the Major’s name?”

  We drove back to the pub, but there were more than a dozen patrons being served their lunch, and Tulley was morose, unwilling to talk.

  We walked away and set out for Kenilworth.

  But when we tracked down the lorry we were seeking, it had long since moved on to Oxford, and the shop owner who taken delivery of a pair of horsehair chairs told us that the lorry driver had been alone.

  “In fact,” he told us sourly, “I had to help take out the chairs myself, which did no favors to my sciatica.”

  Where had he lost his elusive passenger?

  We had nearly run out of time. We couldn’t search every village, every hamlet. For that matter, the other man in the lorry could have stepped down in Kenilworth before the delivery of those chairs.

  Reluctantly, I agreed that we’d done all we could. It went against the grain to give up, because we’d had some successes. Or thought we had. But they were so small that we couldn’t take them to Scotland Yard. We’d be accused of meddling. Inspector Stephens hadn’t interviewed me with the object of setting me off on my own inquiry.

  “Cheer up,” Simon told me. “If he’s out there, he’ll be found. If not by you, then by the Army or the Yard. Or even your Inspector Jester.”

  Which was true. Only I wouldn’t be allowed to see the sergeant, much less question him about what he’d done. To set my own mind at ease if nothing else.

  The problem was, Sergeant Wilkins still traveled with us, for he was in both our thoughts as we headed south.

  I smiled wryly as we reached the outskirts of Oxford. “We wouldn’t have got as far as we did if it hadn’t been for the bay horse, which had the good sense to come home on his own.”

  But for all I knew, Sergeant Wilkins was Miss Neville’s Major, who seemed to have no qualms about shooting at people. Perhaps a side of our quarry I’d never seen. From the medical point of view, I wondered if either the sergeant or the Major was actually physically capable of hanging a man off Iron Bridge.

  It would require a great deal of strength. Or a great deal of hatred.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  WHEN I REACHED Mrs. Hennessey’s, tired and dispirited, I found orders waiting for me. Apparently in my absence it had been decided that I bore no responsibility for Sergeant Wilkins’s disappearance or his subsequent actions in Ironbridge. That was such good news.

  I wondered if my parents were behind this return to duty. But I was grateful for it, however it had come about. All the same, that early suspicion was now a part of my record, and through no fault of my own.

  I had less than twenty-four hours to meet my transport back to France.

  I was ten minutes from leaving to take my train to Dover when Mrs. Hennessey came up the stairs to tell me I had a caller.

  “It’s that same man from Scotland Yard,” she told me, her face set with a mixture of exasperation at the interruption and gloom at my departure.

  I went down to meet Inspector Stephens, and he rose as I came into Mrs. Hennessey’s sitting room.

  “I understand you’re on your way back to France,” he said. “I’m glad.”

  Surprised, I said, “I’m glad as well. Is that why you came to see me?”

  “There was a question I needed to put to you. Do you think Sergeant Wilkins was physically capable of hanging that man on the iron bridge?”

  It was the question I’d pondered as well, but I said nothing about that. “I don’t know,” I told him truthfully. “You would have to ask his doctor at Lovering Hall. Or perhaps find out why he had done such a thing.”

  “We have spoken to his doctor. And he can’t give us a straight answer. He said that it is possible, in the heat of the moment, to do something one isn’t able to do ordinarily. I myself have heard of instances in France where a caisson fell on a man, and the rest of his company lifted it off him without thinking about their strength or their own wounds. They just got on with it. But the doctor also felt that the journey from London to Ironbridge could have taken a toll on healing wounds, depending on how the sergeant got there.”
>
  “I never examined him,” I said. “You must remember that.”

  “You are an experienced nursing Sister. I’d like your opinion.”

  “Are you rethinking his guilt in the Ironbridge death?” I asked, intrigued.

  “No,” he said, with a heavy sigh. “Just attempting to shed any light we can on the matter.”

  They must be desperate, I thought to myself, if they are here asking me questions.

  Should I mention the Major and Miss Neville? I thought about that and decided against it. There was nothing I knew that could actually connect the Major with anything that had to do with the murder or Sergeant Wilkins.

  “If I do think of something that will help,” I told Inspector Stephens carefully, “I’ll be in touch. That’s all I can promise.”

  He was clearly disappointed. But he said, “Thank you, Sister. I appreciate your willingness to help.”

  But had I been willing?

  “Do you know why Sergeant Wilkins committed murder?” I asked.

  “So far we’re still pursuing our inquiries.”

  Which meant he didn’t know—or wasn’t free to tell me.

  As we walked to the door, he added, “I understand the sergeant had a brother. He never spoke of him, but the Sister in Shrewsbury told me he dreamed about him sometimes. Nightmares might be a better word. Army records indicate that his brother died earlier in the war.”

  “I asked him, at the audience with the King, if he had any family members present, but he gave me to understand that he didn’t. I found that rather sad. Most everyone had someone there. A wife or parents or sisters, all of them watching proudly.”

  Inspector Stephens grimaced at mention of the ceremony. But he said, “Yes, very sad. They might have been able to give us something useful to be going on with. We’ve been to the town where the sergeant grew up, but they can add very little to what we know at present.”

  It wasn’t quite what I’d meant, but from Scotland Yard’s perspective, information was more important than any sentiment.

  He was just stepping out into the street when he turned and said, “The Sister at the Shrewsbury hospital tells me you came north to ask questions about the sergeant. Is that true?”

  “Of course it is,” I told him frankly. “This man has dragged me into his troubles, and I wanted to know just how wrong I’d been, trusting him. But I think, if you want my opinion, that he used the Sister at Lovering Hall, just as he used me. Only in her case, he preyed on her feelings for him. In mine, he depended on my following instructions. But you see, that’s what I’ve been trained to do. I was told not to disturb his dressings, and I accepted that. As far as I could judge, the leg wound was not weeping or in any way indicating that something was amiss after his travels.”

  “Thank you for your honesty.”

  He nodded to me, settled his hat firmly on his head, and walked on.

  Mrs. Hennessey had brought my kit down, and she said, watching him go, “How inconsiderate of that man. Coming at the last minute to trouble you, when you’ve hardly had time to collect fresh uniforms. And the Sergeant-Major will be here any moment.”

  Simon arrived just then, my mother in the motorcar with him. I said nothing about the visit from Inspector Stephens. I didn’t want to bring up the past few days just as I was leaving for France.

  The Front had advanced a little, I saw that at once when I reached the forward aid station to which I’d been assigned.

  The Americans were making a difference, just as Simon and my father had claimed they would, if they could be persuaded to enter the war.

  Not everyone was happy about that. More than one soldier I was treating told me that the British and the French had faced the worst of the fighting, and here the Americans were, taking all the glory. Not that they weren’t grateful—

  I didn’t care about glory as long as the killing stopped.

  And the maiming. I worked with one torn body after another, and each time prayed that my patient would live to see war’s end.

  An American Marine was brought in late one afternoon. I didn’t know how we’d come to have him—it was a long way from his sector—but as I tended his arm, he kept up a conversation that I thought must be his way of dealing with the painful probing for the rest of the shrapnel embedded in the muscle.

  He was from Virginia, a soft-spoken man who would still have been considered a boy under different circumstances. Now he was a seasoned soldier, a corporal, and the line of his jaw was hard, his eyes harder.

  He had been at Belleau Wood, he told me. And that was enough.

  When the Russians had surrendered, German forces had been pulled from the Eastern Front and sent to France. The French and British had tried to hold the line, but these troops were very good, and the tired Allies were getting the worst of it. I’d heard Simon and the Colonel-Sahib discuss what happened next.

  In the face of the new German advance, the French had moved back to protect Paris, but an American Army with Marine brigades attached took over the French positions and refused—quite colorfully, according to Simon—to retreat.

  In and around Belleau Wood, the Marines fought for nearly the entire bloody month of June, giving and losing ground until in the end they held the wood. It was the stuff of legends, and this man had been with the 5th Marines, in the thick of it.

  As I stitched up the wound, I asked, “Is it true the Germans called you Devil Dogs for your tenacity?”

  He smiled tightly. “Ma’am, I don’t speak any German. And probably just as well.”

  And then he was gone with the dusk, after only a few hours of rest.

  I wrote to the Colonel-Sahib, telling him about the encounter, and it was my mother who replied.

  Darling,

  Your father is away again. I’ve put your letter on his desk where he will see it first thing. I know he will be interested in the young Marine. Which reminds me, there was a small paragraph on the last page of the latest Times. It seems that a soldier is missing, and Scotland Yard has appealed to the public to help find him. There was of course no mention of what he might have done. The plea was worded to leave the impression that he might have fallen ill or come to grief in his weakened state. Simon, meanwhile, has looked up the Major you’d inquired about. He asked me to tell you that he had had no luck there. He also looked for information on Mr. Lessup, and it appears the man’s career has been quite ordinary, something to do with trench design.

  Which brought me back to my original question to Inspector Jester: was the murder of Lessup personal or related to the war? It appeared now to be personal.

  The letter went on to give me all the news of home, and I slept well that night, comforted to know that Somerset, at least, was still my rock. My place of safety through all the chaos and uncertainty of war.

  It was several days later when another letter came, this one written well before my mother’s but taking longer to reach me.

  It was from Simon, and quite brief.

  I met a friend at Sandhurst who mentioned he’d met the Nevilles in the early days of the war. Miss Neville’s father had opened his London house to officers, after his son had joined the Army. This continued until August 1916, when his son was killed on the Somme. He himself died shortly afterward. The London house has been closed ever since. There’s still black crepe on the door knocker. It has never been taken down. I went to see for myself if it was still there. Neither Miss Neville nor her stepmother has come down to London since that time. I have that on good authority. However, Miss Neville sometimes visits friends from her school days. My friend couldn’t be sure, but he rather thought she’d attended Aldersgate. I went in search of Diana, but Mrs. Hennessey tells me she’s in France.

  And Diana had also been sent to Aldersgate, a distinguished school for young ladies near St. Albans. She and Miss Neville must be close enough in age to remember each other.

  But where was Diana?

  I couldn’t very well ask around. But I did have one possible resour
ce. I let it be known to the next Australian patient I encountered that I had a message for Sergeant Lassiter.

  He was the cocky Australian I’d treated on occasion—the last being a badly infected shrapnel wound in his palm—and over time he’d become a friend. He seemed to know half the soldiers serving in France, and he had helped me more than once to find someone whose whereabouts I badly needed to discover. In fact, once he’d nearly been taken up for desertion on my behalf. A very fine soldier by all reports and popular with everyone who knew him.

  It was a New Zealander who brought me word that Sergeant Lassiter had received my message, and a Scot who slipped me a scrap of paper early one evening as I was on my way to find a cup of much needed tea. We’d been busy since before dawn and it was now after seven.

  “Begging your pardon, Sister,” the Scot asked, “do you ken the cocoaburro bird?”

  In his Scots accent I almost didn’t recognize the kookaburra, a bird of Sergeant Lassiter’s native land. He always used its odd, laughing call to alert me to his presence. In this case, it was intended to discover, without asking names, the right recipient of the note.

  “Yes—yes, I do, Corporal,” I said at once. He passed me the scrap of paper and with a nod, went on his way, his kilt swinging with that ground-covering stride common to men of the Highlands.

  I put the message in my pocket, for we were not to correspond with the men we treated, and I wasn’t sure what Sergeant Lassiter might have written. Explaining about Diana and Aldersgate School and Miss Neville would be difficult.

  Sister Baker, just coming from the dwindling line of patients and on her way to where we kept our supplies, called to me. “Who is your handsome beau?”

  She meant it as a jest. But I was careful, hoping she hadn’t noticed what he’d given me.

  “Alas, he was looking for one of his officers. He didn’t stay to chat.”

  A buxom girl from Rutland with fair hair and freckles, she laughed. “Alas, indeed. I sometimes think the only way to get their attention is to dig a bit of metal out of them.”

  Sister Baker hurried on, intent on her errand, and I quickly drank my cup of tea before going back on duty. We finished the last of the line of wounded just after nightfall, and I sat down on an overturned pail to catch my breath. And then the shelling began, the first ranging shots falling perilously close to us. There were no ambulances now to take away the last of the wounded, but we moved them back as quickly as we could. Men from one of the reserve trenches came to help us, and that speeded up the operation. By that time, the German shells were finding their mark, and a new line of wounded soon demanded our attention.