An Unwilling Accomplice

by Charles Todd

  Tea was just the thing, and I slept well. When I went down in the morning, through the open door I could see the most wonderful view out toward what must be peaks of the Dales beyond. The small dining room was nearly empty when I came in, and Simon joined me shortly thereafter.

  He’d already spoken to the morning desk clerk. The Cartwrights lived on the estate of Chatsworth House.

  “I didn’t expect it to be that easy,” I replied, selecting a slice of toast and trying not to think how nice it would be with butter.

  “It wasn’t, actually. The clerk was reluctant to tell me. Miss Cartwright, the cousin, moved away from Bakewell after the Captain came to live with her. She took an older, smaller house on the Chatsworth estate, one that apparently had belonged to her father. It was empty, and she felt it was safer.”

  “Safer?” I asked warily.

  “It appears that Captain Cartwright wasn’t as well as Sister Hammond led us to believe. Or else he regressed in his cousin’s care. Whatever the reason, he had a tendency to wander, and it made others in town uneasy. Miss Cartwright closed up the house and took her cousin with her. Apparently someone on the estate took pity on them and let them live there for her father’s sake.”

  “Oh, dear.”

  “Precisely.”

  We finished our breakfast and went out to the motorcar. It was a pleasant drive toward the Chatsworth estate, and we took one of the farm gates into the property. I’d never realized how vast a holding it was. We covered what seemed like several miles, looping over the rolling, hilly landscape, glimpsing the great house in the far distance, half hidden by trees, and finally discovering a stone cottage set in a fold of the land, a small barn and other outbuildings behind it.

  A weathered sign just in front read CARTWRIGHT.

  We drew up and walked to the door. At Simon’s suggestion, I was the one to use the knocker.

  No one came at first, but I had the feeling the house wasn’t empty. And so I persisted, knocking again and then a third time.

  Finally a woman who looked to be about thirty came to the door. She had dark red hair and a very pretty face, but there were circles under her eyes and a thinness about her that came from worry.

  “I’ve told you before,” she said, speaking to my uniform rather than to me, “I have had no news. I don’t know where he could be.”

  “Miss Cartwright? I’m so sorry. My name is Crawford, Bess Crawford. I’m not here officially. We were in Bakewell, staying at the Rutland Arms. Sister Hammond, who was the nurse in charge of your cousin in the Dorset hospital, asked us to stop and say hello. She still remembers him.”

  She was looking over my shoulder, staring at the motorcar and then at Simon. “We? Who is he?”

  “Sergeant-Major Brandon. A friend. He’s—er—taking me back to London.”

  I thought she would not ask us in. But after a moment she opened the door wider. “Come inside then. I’ve got to talk to someone. And Sister Hammond was very kind to my cousin.”

  Simon and I followed Miss Cartwright into the front room of the cottage. It was comfortable, the furniture chosen well for its dimensions, neither large nor heavy. She gestured to chairs by the cold hearth. The room seemed equally cold, and I had a feeling that Miss Cartwright was now wishing she’d turned us away.

  I said gently, “Would you prefer that we leave? We had no intention of intruding.”

  “Harry isn’t here,” she said bluntly. “He hasn’t been for five or six weeks. I went up to the house one day to thank them for the fruit the family had sent down, and when I came back, Harry wasn’t here.” She cleared her throat. “I sounded the alarm, of course, and we sent out search parties. The estate is a large one, as you may have gathered coming in. I didn’t think Harry could have got very far. Not in that short length of time. But somehow he had. The search went beyond the bounds of the estate, and still no word of him. No one had seen him. I could only think that he’d hidden somewhere until nightfall, or perhaps found someone passing down the main road to give him a lift. It’s farfetched, but there you are. What else were we to think?”

  That he might have died somewhere and hadn’t yet been found? I couldn’t say so to this grieving woman. It would be too cruel.

  “I’m so sorry,” I said, meaning it in many senses of the word.

  “Harry can’t cope in a town he doesn’t know. Where no one knows him. He can’t always remember where he was going or why. People believe he’s the worse for drink and send for the police. But he doesn’t drink, you see. I keep hoping someone will see he’s ill and take him to a doctor instead. I have no idea what identification he might have had in his pocket that day, or how much money. We didn’t need either of them out here. He could be begging on the street.” She reached for a handkerchief and blew her nose to hide her tears. “I’m catching a chill, I think,” she said, angry with herself for her own weakness. “It’s just—I think of him out there alone, lost, cold, hungry, nowhere to go, no one to turn to. And I feel so guilty.”

  “I don’t see that it could be your fault,” Simon told her.

  “But it is. When everyone complained in Bakewell, I decided to take him away. That’s why we came here. Where no one would be disturbed. I did try to keep him from wandering. I’d be sure he was asleep before I myself went to bed. And I’d be sure to be up before he woke. When I went to market I came home again as quickly as I could. And still he would slip away. Then someone would come to the door or would approach me while I was out searching for him, and tell me he’d frightened their custom away, coming into the shops, or that he’d frightened the children on their way to school, or he’d make their dog bark in the middle of the night, trying to come through their gate. It was never ending, the complaints. But I had to sleep sometime or have a bath or buy food—there was no one else to watch him. They told me he was so much better at the hospital there in Dorset, that he was ready to take up his old life. But he wasn’t. He was still quite fragile, and I didn’t have the training to help him or even help me care for him.”

  “I doubt if training would have mattered,” I told her. “A hospital specializing in head injuries locks its doors, for that very reason.”

  Captain Cartwright sounded very much like the Major, who wandered away and shot at people and took goats out to the high road.

  “And I locked mine,” she was saying. “But he would find the key or break a window or wander off from the garden when I went in to fetch his tea or his lunch or a glass of water. I asked him what it was he wanted, where he wished to be, if not with me. But he couldn’t tell me. He’d simply beg my pardon for worrying me and promise it wouldn’t happen again. If I’d stayed in Bakewell, at least someone would have found him sooner or later, and brought him home or sent for me. Out here, there’s nothing. No one but the estate people, and they’re too busy to keep an eye out day and night. I’m a guest here, on sufferance. And so I tried to cope. For all I know they grew tired of bringing him back, and decided to let him go his way. I can’t blame them.”

  “What is the Captain’s background?” I asked. “Did he live somewhere else, is he trying to reach a home he remembers?”

  “He grew up in Sheffield. But it wasn’t a happy life there. His father was a cold-natured man, no warmth at all, and I think that’s why Harry was eager to join the Army as soon as he could. He trained as an officer, and then the war came along. I can’t think there’s anything to draw him back to Sheffield, now his mother is dead. I’m his only relative.”

  “Could he walk far? Forty miles or more?”

  “I doubt it. Not in a straight line, at any rate. He’d have a blackout, you see, and forget where it was he was going. Or where it was he’d come from.”

  “Most of the wounded are eager to return to France. To their comrades, their friends, the men who serve under them. It’s something war does, it brings soldiers closer than brothers. Did your cousin talk about that?” Simon asked her.

  “I don’t know that Harry quite remembered the
war. He never speaks of it. Never mentioned anyone he’d served with. It was as if the war no longer existed in his memory. Oddly enough, he did remember Sister Hammond. A time or two after I’d first brought him home, he called me by her name.”

  I took the letter to Sister Hammond from my apron pocket, and passed it to Miss Cartwright.

  “Does this handwriting look familiar to you? Could it be your cousin’s?”

  She read it through, her face suddenly drawn, inward-looking. And I was prepared to hear her tell me she knew who had written it.

  Yet she shook her head as she passed the letter back to me. “It isn’t Harry’s fist at all. Poor man, whoever he may be. I hope you find him and can help him.”

  I wondered then if Maddie had found Harry Cartwright in the ruined barn, trying to survive on a handful of fruit. If so, where was he now? Not in Maddie’s cottage, for I’d been inside. Had he taken the Captain to the Nevilles? Not knowing his rank, had Maddie decided he was an officer and christened him a Major? And had Barbara Neville decided he’d be easier to manage than a fiancé who cared more for her dowry than for her? Mrs. Neville had told us the Major wasn’t interested in her fortune. Perhaps he wasn’t aware she was a heiress.

  We would have to speak to someone in Dorset. They would know whether Captain Cartwright and the Major were one and the same.

  Miss Cartwright was saying, “I wrote to the hospital. To Sister Hammond. Asking her if she could think where Harry might have gone. Sadly she didn’t answer. I’d thought she liked him, that she would try to help me.”

  “She’s been reassigned to a hospital in Shrewsbury,” I said. “It’s likely that she never got your letter. She told us that you’d taken Captain Cartwright, and she hoped he was happy, even possibly getting a little better.”

  “I should have refused to accept him. But I’m fond of Harry, I always have been. How could I turn him away, my own flesh and blood?”

  Through the window just beyond where I was sitting, I could see the rolling, empty land, where the estate workers’ cottages huddled together like a hamlet, and the nearest neighbor must be sheep. I could see them in the distance, heads down, grazing quietly.

  “Do you have a photograph of your cousin?” I asked.

  She looked vaguely around. “Somewhere. No, it must still be in the boxes I haven’t unpacked. I never seemed to have the time, you see.”

  “Could you describe him?” Simon asked.

  “Describe? Oh—yes. Fair, blue eyes. I take after my mother’s side of the family. He’s like his father’s, straight, attractive features. Nice ears. Not as tall as the Sergeant-Major, but of good height.”

  “How would anyone know they’d found Cousin Harry?” I asked. “Is there anything that would distinguish him from other fair men?”

  “His wounds, of course,” she said, as if I were daft. “You can hardly see the scar on his head, the way his hair has grown out. You wouldn’t know until you spoke to him that the damage was inside. But he was wounded in the leg as well. Machine gun, they told me. It won’t ever be strong again. And as he went down, he took that bullet to the head. Of course there’s a rather terrible scar on his left shoulder.” She raised her hand, touching her own. “He got that on the Somme. The scar is raised, ugly, the skin twisted and pulled. I don’t think it will ever fade.”

  Again, how many men would that description fit?

  We left soon after that. There was nothing we could do or say to make the loss any easier for Miss Cartwright. I couldn’t send her to Windward to see if the man there was her missing cousin. It would be unkind to her and unfair to the Neville family.

  She stood at the door and watched us drive away, and I felt I’d failed her somehow. By coming I’d reopened wounds that were perhaps beginning to heal, and I’d given her no fresh hope.

  We drove through the ornate gates of the estate and back to the road to Bakewell.

  “What now?” Simon asked, wanting to know which direction to take as much as I myself did.

  “I don’t know. I’ve run out of choices.”

  “There’s one we might try. Feel like bearding the lioness in her den? If you can call that Tudor manor house a den.”

  But what excuse could we possibly give?

  “Perhaps we should have taken Miss Cartwright with us, to identify her cousin. Or not, as the case might be.”

  Simon pulled to the side of the road. “Do you think she would come?”

  “Yes. But it could end badly for her. If this man is the sergeant and not her cousin. For that matter, if he’s anyone’s cousin but hers.”

  “Let her make that decision.”

  We turned back, passing through the gates of Chatsworth House once more and making our way to the Cartwright cottage.

  Miss Cartwright was astonished to see us again. “Did you leave something behind?” she asked, frowning. “I didn’t notice . . .” Her voice trailed away. “It’s not gloves or a handkerchief, is it?” She lifted her hand, inviting us inside.

  Simon smiled. “There’s a matter we had to consider before broaching the subject to you.”

  I kept the story straightforward. That we’d been searching for someone from London who had gone missing, and failing to find him, we’d stumbled on this unknown man in Upper Dysoe. “For all we know, he could still be the man we’re after—we’ve never seen him close to. He could be your cousin. Or someone else entirely. There’s no way of telling. You’ve seen the letter. That’s where it came from. There’s the matter of rank as well. This man is a Major. At least we’ve been led to believe he is.”

  She’d leaned forward, afraid to miss a word. As I finished, she said, “If you think there’s any possibility, of course I’ll come with you. It’s the first news I’ve had in such a very long time.”

  “But it isn’t news,” I gently admonished. “Please, you must be prepared for disappointment. As I have had to be, in my own search.”

  That gave her pause. “If I go with you—and it isn’t Harry, if it’s someone else—then I wouldn’t be here if he found his way back. How would he manage, if I were gone for several days? Warwickshire is so far away. He might give up and leave.” She began to shake her head. “The handwriting isn’t Harry’s. I would swear to that. If you believe this Major could have written it, then perhaps he did.”

  I couldn’t press her, it was too slim a hope, and she had pinned all hers on Harry coming back to her here and finding her waiting.

  We left a second time, and I felt thoroughly depressed. Guilty for dragging her into this muddle we were trying to resolve.

  We spent the night in the town next but one to Biddington in cramped rooms above the pub. It was market day, and the little town was crowded.

  The next morning, we drove through Upper Dysoe toward the burned-out ruin of the barn. I peered up into the overgrown thicket to look for the tethered goat, but there was no sign of it today.

  Over breakfast Simon and I had decided that there would be nothing lost if we simply knocked at Windward’s door and asked to speak to the Major. We could be refused, but I hardly expected them to set the dogs on us. Still, I could feel butterflies in my stomach as we drew nearer.

  Just ahead were the gates to the house. As Simon turned in, the full glory of the facade greeted us, the morning sun bringing out the rich color of the brick.

  Simon went down the drive and pulled up in front of the door.

  We both glanced toward the bench under the tree. There was no one sitting there now.

  He said, “Still game?” as I hesitated.

  With a sigh, I waited until Simon held open my door for me, then alighted.

  I pulled the chain for the bell and heard it echo dimly somewhere inside, then stood there, wondering what to say. And then the door swung wide.

  “Maddie, he’s taken a turn—” Mrs. Neville stopped short. “I’m sorry, we were expecting someone else. Ah. That infernal goat. You were the Sister who was here before, when we brought it home. Well, you’ll have to
do. Come with me.”

  “Sergeant-Major Brandon—” I began, gesturing to Simon just behind me.

  “He can wait in the morning room. Come along. There’s no time to dally.” She nodded to a hovering maid, and Simon was taken off in a different direction.

  I followed her through a wonderfully maintained Great Hall that soared over my head to the tall oriel window above. The stained-glass medallions were repeated on the floor at my feet where the sun had caught them. A staircase, ornately carved dark wood, possibly oak, loomed out of the shadows, and Mrs. Neville was already climbing it. I followed.

  We went down a passage on the first floor, came to a room toward the end, and as I caught up with her, she thrust open the door.

  A man lay in a large bed that was canopied and curtained, something, I thought to myself, Henry VIII might have slept in, when he was old and too heavy for an ordinary one.

  He wore a white, old-fashioned nightshirt, which emphasized his paleness. Fair hair, overly long as if no one had cut it recently, spread out across the pillows under his head, and the fair mustache was in need of trimming. His eyes were shut, but I would have wagered that they were blue.

  “How long has he been this ill?” I asked, moving a lamp closer to the bed so that I could see his face more clearly.

  “For some days. My stepdaughter isn’t here, she’s gone away to Warwick. And I know nothing about treating the wounded.”

  Was it Sergeant Wilkins? I was nearly convinced that it was not, and then as the man feverishly turned his face this way and that, as if the lamplight troubled him, I found myself uncertain again.

  If I could hear him speak, I thought . . .

  But he was too feverish to answer when I spoke to him.

  “What’s his name?” I asked as I put my hand on his forehead. There was a basin of cool water by the bed, and I reached for the cloth beside it, dipping it into the basin and then wringing it nearly dry before placing it on the man’s forehead.

  “Major Findley,” she said impatiently, as if that was of no importance. “It’s the knee. It looks rather nasty. That’s why I sent for Maddie. I didn’t like to summon the doctor all the way from Warwick, if it would heal on its own. But this morning, it was so discolored, I was frightened for him.”