A Question of Honor: A Bess Crawford Mystery

by Charles Todd

  Simon took out his watch. “We have a quarter of an hour left. Do you want to walk as far as the mill? Or would you prefer to turn back toward the house?”

  “The mill,” I decided, and by the time we’d reached it Simon was himself again, chatting with the miller and inspecting the machinery.

  Chapter Two

  Back in France after my brief leave, I was sorting the wounded just coming into our forward aid station when one of the orderlies pulled at my sleeve.

  “Beg pardon, Sister. We’ve got one over here we can’t understand.”

  I turned to look in the direction he was pointing and said, “That’s a Subedar. An Indian Sergeant. He should be able to speak English. But what’s he doing in this sector? I didn’t think there were any Indian troops in the line here.”

  “That’s just it. There’s no one about who can help us. Can you talk to him, Sister? I think he’s dying. And he’s trying very hard to tell us something.”

  I asked Sister MacLean to take my place and quickly crossed to where the Indian soldier was lying on a stretcher.

  One look confirmed what the orderly had said. He was dying. The bloody froth on his lips told its own story, and his breathing was ragged.

  I’d learned to speak several local languages in India almost as soon as I’d learned to speak English. My ayah, my nurse, had been a Hindu, the porter at our gate Muslim, and our majordomo, nearly as tall as my father, was a gray-bearded Sikh. I’d absorbed their culture along with their dialect without even trying, much to the horror of my proper English governess.

  Kneeling beside the stretcher, I spoke to the man in Hindi, and his eyes flew open, gazing up at me with such relief, I was glad I’d come to him.

  Clutching my hand as if it were a shield against the approaching darkness, he began to speak, rapidly and carefully, as though reporting to his English officers. I listened in dismay, then made a promise I hoped I could keep.

  “I will find a way.”

  He thanked me with an almost imperceptible nod, no longer able to form words. And then he was gone. I closed those dark, pain-filled eyes as they went blank. Rising, I found that men were standing just behind me, watching.

  “What was it troubling him?” the orderly asked. “He was that upset.”

  “His family at home,” I said, lying, but knowing it was the safest thing to do. “He wanted them to know he died bravely. Who brought him in? I’d like to speak to the stretcher bearers.”

  “There weren’t any,” the orderly told me. “He must have crawled here. One minute he wasn’t there, and the next he was lying where you see him, holding out his hand as if to beg for help. I went to him, got him settled properly on that stretcher, but I couldn’t make out what he was saying.”

  I shook my head. “Poor man.”

  I went back to my duties. Wounded were still arriving by foot and by stretcher. As I worked, I wondered how that Subedar had reached us. Had he crawled from wherever he’d been shot? And who had shot him? A nervous sentry? Was it a stray bullet from the last German attack? If he wasn’t in the line—and he shouldn’t have been—how had he got that near to the Front?

  And then the ambulances were coming in, first one and then the others in an irregular line. The worst cases were quickly loaded, and we went on treating the steady stream of wounded.

  At seven o’clock I was relieved by another Sister coming on duty. I ate my dinner as usual, trying not to hurry.

  And then in the privacy of my quarters, where there were no prying eyes, I sat down on my cot and began a letter to Simon. I stopped halfway through my first sentence. What was I to tell him?

  These were matters I couldn’t put into a letter.

  Finally, I wrote to my father instead.

  It’s my sad duty to inform you that Subedar Shanti Gupta of Agra has died of his wounds. He was a good man, and he worried at the end how his family would manage without him. I am writing to ask that you look into his affairs and see if there is some relief for his wife and children.

  Satisfied, I signed it and addressed the envelope to my father. When the next runner came through, I sent the message to HQ with him, to be forwarded in the military pouch.

  Two days later, Simon was there as the last of the light faded and faces were hard to distinguish in the dusk. But I knew him instantly: his height, the way he carried his shoulders, his stride. After all, he’d been there, underfoot in our household since I was a child and he a very young raw recruit just out from England. Too well spoken to be a guttersnipe given the choice of gaol or the Army, he never mentioned his past. There had been whispers about him, and the chip on his shoulder was the size of a boulder. My father, already a Captain with a promising future, had taken Simon under his wing before he got himself shot for insubordination. First as a batman, to replace an older private whose enlistment was up, and then as the man he turned to for dangerous missions, because Simon had picked up the local languages so quickly. The Colonel Sahib’s trust had proved to be justified. Rising to Regimental Sergeant-Major, Simon had left the regiment when my father resigned his commission.

  “Your father passed your letter on to me. Can we talk somewhere?”

  But there was scarcely any privacy here. I led him to the perimeter, and he stood looking back at the line of wounded still coming in. The shelling, for a mercy, had stopped, but we could hear the rattle of rifles and machine guns in the distance.

  “Start at the beginning. Who was this Indian Sergeant?”

  “He told me he was from Agra, and he gave me his name. At least he claimed it was his name. Beyond that, I have no idea who he could be,” I said, keeping my voice low. “Let me tell you how this began.” I gave Simon a brief account and ended, “He was dying, and he knew he was. He didn’t have time to tell me what he was doing in this sector or how it was he’d been shot. His message was more important to him than either of those. And what I heard I was afraid to put down on paper.”

  “And quite right. The censors must read everything. Exactly what did this man say?”

  We had fallen into speaking in Urdu, almost without noticing it.

  “He claimed he had seen Lieutenant Sahib Wade. Simon, I believed him. Even though Thomas Wade is supposed to be dead.”

  “Your father was never comfortable with that report. Nor was I. But the sighting of his body was too close to the Khyber Pass to send men out to verify the information. Far too dangerous. Still, Wade hasn’t been seen since then.”

  “If he had managed to get out of India, he could have thought himself safe. Until the war came along.”

  The conflagration had brought together people from around the globe. There were Chinese laborers, freeing the English to fight. There were Spahis from North Africa, New Zealanders, Indian troops, Australians, South Africans, Kenyans, Nepalese Gurkhas, Canadians—from every corner of the Empire and most of France’s holdings as well. A man you never expected to see again because he lived in a far corner of the earth could be marching to the Front as you were retreating in rotation; he could be lying next to you on a hospital cot or bringing up boxes of ammunition to your sector. Or even carrying the stretcher you were lying on.

  A matter of chance. A simple trick played by Fate.

  I added, “Have you looked into the Subedar’s background?”

  “I didn’t know what I was looking for. And there must have been half a hundred Guptas serving in France. It’s not an uncommon name. Still, there was only one man in the lists from Agra, and as I remember, he was of an age to have been in the city when Wade came back from England. He might very well have remembered what happened then.”

  It had been in all the English language newspapers as well, the murder of Thomas Wade’s parents.

  We at the cantonment knew nothing about this until the MFP arrived on our doorstep seeking to question Wade. I was never given the full account of what he’d bee
n accused of, but what I knew was shocking enough.

  And what he’d done to the reputation of my father’s regiment—I’d known that very well. I don’t think anyone had spoken his name since the official inquiry had concluded. We had only wanted to forget.

  “Do you think Wade shot the Subedar—that somehow they had recognized each other?”

  “It’s too bad the Subedar died. We might have asked him. Gupta was well away from his lines. That’s another mystery. Had he followed Wade? Or escaped from him?” He looked around at the aid station. “You were very wise not to make what the Subedar told you public. It probably would have done no harm, but people gossip. The last thing you need is for Wade to come looking for you.”

  I shivered at the thought. I’d already had one brush with a stalker. I wasn’t eager to find myself in the sights of another.

  “Would you recognize Wade, if you saw him again?” Simon asked, curious.

  “I’m not sure. I was fourteen at the time. But it’s possible. Of course now that I know he’s in France, I just might—because I’m expecting to see him. The question is, would he recognize me?”

  “It’s my recollection that he was twenty-four, nearly twenty-five, in 1908. He’d be in his early thirties now. Keep that in mind and watch your step.” Simon started to leave and then stopped. “You do know that he’d already killed three people in England before he returned to India?”

  “No, I didn’t,” I answered, surprised. “Only that something had happened before he left England that had worried Lieutenant Standish. Of course my parents tried to keep such things from me. But everyone was talking about the murders in Agra, and then there was the hue and cry in the garrison when Wade disappeared. If this is true, why didn’t the police stop him in England?”

  “There was very little to go on at first. In fact, the assumption was a robbery that had gone wrong. By the time Scotland Yard had turned its attention to Wade, he was well on his way to India. The Yard handed the matter over to the Army. By the time the full report reached the Colonel, we had every reason to believe Wade was dead. The Colonel notified the Yard, and nothing more came of it.”

  I could understand that. And it explained why nothing had been said to me about England.

  “There was never any sign—looking back, I mean—that he was troubled?”

  “He was rather aloof. Kept to himself. I suspected in the beginning that he was shy. Later I wondered if something was troubling him. I asked, but he shook his head and told me that he was quite happy. As men go, he was a good officer. Nothing on his record to indicate he was likely to become a killer. In the field he was steady, looked after those under him, and never lost his head when in a tight corner.”

  I couldn’t help but think that those same traits had given Wade the courage to return to his duties after the murders, as if nothing had happened.

  “Which brings us back to the problem of what set him off.”

  “I don’t suppose anyone will ever know. All right, I’ll find out what I can about this man Gupta. What sector he was in, what he was doing the day he died. Whether his word is to be trusted.”

  “There’s something else. Surely Wade couldn’t have enlisted in 1914 under his own name. But whatever name he chose, I should think someone would have realized he’d had previous military training. He couldn’t hide that from an experienced Sergeant or career officer.”

  “The Army was desperate for men. He could have slipped through, if he was very careful.”

  I hesitated. “What if the Subedar was wrong? What if the man he saw wasn’t Wade? Just someone who resembled him?”

  “It’s quite possible,” Simon agreed. “We won’t know the answer to that until we find out who shot the Subedar.”

  “Will you let me know what you discover?”

  “If I can. And Bess—until we’re sure, it’s best not to involve your father. Let him take your message at face value, your concern for a soldier’s family.”

  “I understand.” The Colonel Sahib had taken Wade’s betrayal of the regiment personally. He had done everything he could to bring the man back to stand trial, continuing the search long after the Military Foot Police had given up. A question of honor.

  “There’s one other matter to consider. If Wade was somewhere out there in the darkness, making sure the Subedar died, and he heard you speaking to the man in Hindi, he’d have known what you were being told. Just . . . be careful.”

  And then he was gone, vanishing into the night with the ease that had marked him since he was a young soldier on the Frontier.

  I took his warning to heart.

  We were shifted to another sector, where a fresh attack meant long lines of casualties and long hours attending them. We slept when we could, and I ran out of clean uniforms, with no time to launder the soiled ones. We fell into bed only when we were starting to lose our concentration. No more than a brief respite, but desperately needed.

  Since the institution of helmets for the men earlier in the war, and then for the officers as well, we were seeing fewer head wounds. But machine guns and shrapnel could rend the body or take an arm or leg, leaving only the jagged stump. Gas burned the lungs and eyes, proximity to exploding shells burst eardrums, and even the occasional enemy aircraft strafing the lines or flying deep into Allied territory to fire on relief columns added to our burden. As the stretchers came in, or men carried their comrades to us, we did what we could, and then sent the worst cases back to base hospitals. But the number of men dying hadn’t changed, and we had no time to weep for them.

  Baron von Richthofen had been shot down in late April near the Somme—by an Aussie machine gunner, it was said—and more than a few German pilots, eager to fill his boots, had taken to wild stunts to make their own names. Indeed, one flew over our position on our third day here. With so many wounded, it was impossible to take cover, and we held our breath until he had gone past us, looking for other targets.

  By the end of the week, the push that had cost so many casualties had ended, and the deluge slowed to a trickle. We took it by turns sleeping nearly around the clock.

  Word came soon after that two of us were being sent back to a base hospital. It was a long jolting ride in an ambulance, but the first thing I did when I got there was to launder all my uniforms and, when I could, press them to meet the standards of the Service.

  I’d been there only a week when something happened that gave me much to think about.

  There was a mix-up in the roster of wounded. There were two patients with the same name but quite different wounds. As it turned out, they were both Welsh, both Taffy Jones, but not related as far as either of them knew.

  It was when I was ticking off names on the roster, helping to sort out the confusion, that I saw we had a Captain Wade in one of the wards. The chart said gunshot wound.

  It would do no harm, I told myself, to have a look at him. I was fairly certain by this time that the Wade we were seeking hadn’t followed the Subedar as far as the aid station where the man had died. What’s more, no one had shown an interest in us or our wounded, no one had come round asking questions. The explanation might be, he was here, wounded by the Subedar.

  And so I carried in a pitcher of fresh water for the Sister in charge. She had had a busy afternoon and was grateful for my help.

  But the Captain Wade in the last cot but one, suffering from a shattered elbow, brought back no memories for me. He had fair hair and blue eyes, freckles across the bridge of his nose, and looked to be no older than I was.

  Certainly not the man I’d known in India.

  But of course there must be a dozen men named Wade in the British Army.

  The Subedar had recognized him. I’d believed him when he said as much. Still, he was dying when I got to him. It was entirely possible that the man had imagined the encounter. I’d sat with too many who were breathing their last, and someti
mes they saw themselves safe at home in the arms of someone they loved. It was comforting and eased their passage. But more than a few had also relived the horrors of their wounding or the death of a friend.

  I tried to put the matter out of my mind.

  Which only kept it alive.

  I was on duty when a new contingent of Sisters arrived, two of them experienced and one just finishing her training only two months before. But she was as capable as the other pair. I knew Sister Burke. We’d served together before, but Sister Hadley and Sister Morgan were new to me.

  The second night after their arrival, Sister Burke had come to sit with me before going to bed, catching me up on her news. She was worried about her brother, and while she made light of it, passing it off as an elder sister’s concern, I could tell how hard it was to keep her voice light.

  “He’s spoiled, of course,” she said deprecatingly. “He’s the only son in a houseful of daughters. We were delighted when he married Janet. That was the week before war was declared. And it settled him down so much I hardly recognized him. The responsibility, you see. He’d never had to look after anyone else before. Then Papa died—you remember that, don’t you? We were outside of Ypres just then. I was sent home on compassionate leave—and Rob took Mama home to Janet, rather than leave her in her own home. She was so lost, it was heartbreaking to watch.”

  “Yes, I remember that. How is your mother now?”

  “She’d been writing letters to Rob, telling him that his wife was seeing other men. That she walked out with them nearly every night, leaving Mama at home alone.”

  “Oh, dear,” I said, knowing what must be coming. But I was wrong.

  Taking a deep breath, Sister Burke said, “And then Mama died suddenly. Or at least it seemed sudden to us. Rob came home to the funeral, and the doctor was telling him that Mama appeared to be well one day and ill the next. He had something to say as well about Janet’s care of Mama, and Rob knocked him down. The doctor. It was dreadful. A terrible scene on the steps of the church.”