A Question of Honor: A Bess Crawford Mystery

by Charles Todd

  I held his shoulders and pounded on his back, helping him clear out the blockage, and he lay back exhausted when it was done.

  “Now you can sleep again,” I said, picking up my candle. He nodded, eyes closed. I waited for a few minutes to be sure he was asleep, and then I left. I didn’t think he had known which Sister had come to his aid. He was far from out of the woods. But he had made up his mind to trust me, and he wanted to live.

  As I made my quiet way up the rows, I thought his guilt had never troubled him before, there was no reason to believe he was repentant now. I could only trust to fate that somehow he would be found out, without my help.

  When next I came to look in on him, I found him sitting up in his cot, drinking a cup of hot soup. He looked thin—most of the men in our care were terribly thin, thanks to the infection and the loss of appetite, the struggle to swallow and keep anything down.

  I said as he finished it, “Would you like another? I’ll bring you one.”

  “Feeding the fatted calf?” he asked, wary.

  “Not precisely,” I said briskly. “It’s more a question of needing the beds. The more food you eat, the sooner you’ll be well. And the sooner someone else can lie here.”

  He passed his free hand over his face. “I don’t think I’ve ever felt so weak. Not even when I got this.”

  He meant the scar.

  “How did you come by that?”

  “I made it to Kabul before they found me out. Mostly moving at night, eating whatever I could find. They caught me and sentenced me to death. An infidel in their midst. I made a break for it, they shot me, and I survived. They decided that if God had wanted me dead, the bullet would have flown true. And so they threw me in prison instead. To tell you the truth, I think they forgot I was there. I escaped one night and got away. By that time I spoke the language with some fluency, and I was taken in by a family who thought I’d been set on by bandits and robbed. And so it went. I must have had an enormous store of luck, because I used up most of it. I was a shepherd, a beggar, a wandering holy man, a camel driver, whatever came to hand. I told myself it was an adventure, something I could tell my grandchildren about in my old age. I could write a book about my escape and be forgiven. Ridiculous, of course.”

  “You did what few Englishmen ever have.”

  “Yes, well, they didn’t have my enthusiasm for the task,” he answered wryly.

  “Why did you enlist, when war came?”

  “It was what I do best. Fight. Only this time I saw war from the point of view of the men in the ranks. There’s another book, if you like.”

  I went to fetch more soup, and Lieutenant Wade drank half of that before setting it aside for later. I left him to rest. And then as the next convoy arrived, I had no time to think about him. For two days we worked with the ill and the dying, and more often than not it was the dying. As I looked at the rows of cots, I thought in despair that half the Army must be here or in similar hospitals. Who was left in the trenches? Would this bloody, all-consuming war end not in Armistice but in empty lines facing each other across No Man’s Land? We had seen raw recruits who had never been to the Front die before they could fire a shot. The Germans must be suffering as badly as we were.

  I had had two brief messages from home saying that my parents and Simon and the staff were well. But there had been no news from London of Mrs. Hennessey or my flatmates.

  I discovered quite by chance that there were several men from the same sector as “Corporal Caswell,” and I told them he was a patient, but recovering.

  They were pleased to hear that bit of news. Ill as they were, all three of them had a good word for their Corporal.

  “He’d have made Sergeant in a flash,” one went on. “God knows we are short a few. But he didn’t want to leave his unit. He said he’d see us through or know the reason why.”

  “I thought he was a sapper,” I asked another.

  “Aye, he was, and a good one. Never left a man behind. But he was transferred out into the line. He and his men. A tunnel went south on them, and he got the last two out, against all odds. He told the Captain he’d had enough of digging in the dark.”

  “Does he have a temper?” I asked.

  Private Burton grinned. “If you aren’t quick enough with an order. But he’s not killed one of us yet.” He broke off in a paroxysm of coughing, and I held him until it was over. After that he was too ill to talk.

  Mary, one of my flatmates, had also survived the earlier round of illness, and she arrived one evening just before dusk, bringing in another thirty patients.

  I saw her as she was handing her charges over to the Sister who was sorting the cases, and I called her name.

  She turned, acknowledged me with an excited wave, and went back to her lists. As soon as those were done, she ran across the muddy ground to where I was waiting.

  “Bess! How good it is to see you. Mrs. Hennessey sends her best love. She’s missed you. And so have we.”

  “You’re all well? Unbelievable.”

  “I have to go back with the convoy. But I’d love a cup of tea. Do you have five minutes?”

  “Yes, of course.” We went to the tiny canteen where the staff could find tea and something to eat at any hour of the day or night, and for a mercy, two chairs were available. Mary went over to them while I found the freshest pot of tea and poured two cups.

  “No sugar, I’m afraid.”

  Mary smiled. “When last I was in London, Mrs. Hennessey had a jar of honey. Simon Brandon brought it to her, compliments of your mother. It was such a luxury.”

  I was telling her about Diana when the alarm went up. A patient had gone missing.

  It was not unusual for someone in the throes of delirium to wander away from his bed, certain he was back in the trenches or somewhere at home. Such patients seldom got far, usually collapsing before a Sister could reach them. Someone stuck her head around the door, glanced about the room—there was nowhere even a mouse could hide—and said, “Not here, then.” To us she added, “You’d better come. Bring a torch.”

  We gulped the last of our tea and hurried to join the search. Mary was saying as we came around to where the convoy was waiting, “It’s one of ours. He’s been out of his head most of the way here, shouting about the first wave of an attack. Poor man, we had to strap him down.”

  Someone handed us a torch, and we went to the far end of the convoy. Mary searched the rear of the ambulance while I looked in the driver’s door.

  Nothing. Before moving on, we each took a side of the ambulance and bent down to sweep the ground beneath the chassis. No one there.

  We went to the next vehicle, and this time I searched the back while she opened the driver’s door.

  I could hear someone shouting from the wards, but then word was passed: false alarm. They hadn’t found the missing man after all. We went on searching.

  We had finished the interior of the fourth ambulance. I bent down to look beneath it just as my torch beam passed over a rumpled length of canvas. By now I was nearly convinced that our lost patient was out there in the dark somewhere. But the ambulances had to be cleared before they could leave. I swept the light over the canvas again. It seemed impossible that it could conceal a man.

  “No one here,” I called to Mary as I flicked off my torch. “Let’s move on.”

  She reached out to open the back of the fifth ambulance, and the door shrieked, metal on metal. Here, where the guns were only a distant rumble, it jarred the nerves.

  I heard the sudden movement almost at my feet, and stepping back, I flicked on the torch again. The beam caught a man’s face, and for an instant we stared at each other, Lieutenant Wade and I. And then he was flinging away the canvas, rolling quickly to the far side.

  I hadn’t known who the patient was until that moment. And it wasn’t delirium that had brought the Lieutenant here. He
had been counting on escaping when the convoy left, climbing into the back of one of the empty ambulances and leaving it when he felt he was safe to do so. But his empty bed had been discovered too soon.

  After all, this was the clever man who had crossed Afghanistan into Persia, and lived to tell about it.

  I felt a surge of anger.

  “Mary—your side.” My tone of voice was enough, and she turned to shout for an orderly.

  Lieutenant Wade made it out from under the vehicle, got to his feet, and began to run. But he wasn’t strong enough. Mary’s torch pinned him as he stumbled, but he regained his balance for another few yards before going down again. With a cry of despair, he struggled to rise, but his body wouldn’t obey his will. By the time the first of the orderlies had reached him, he was pounding the hard-packed earth with his fist.

  Another orderly was there on the heels of the first one, but in the end we had to send for a stretcher to carry Lieutenant Wade back to his bed. I followed it, and even in the dark I could feel his eyes on me. Accusing. Angry. I think it rankled more that I had been the one to stop him than being unable to escape.

  As we settled him in the cot, I said, “You could have had a relapse, you know. A serious one. You can rejoin your men when you are well enough. You won’t be much use to them now.”

  Mary, pouring him a cup of fresh water and holding it for him to sip, added, “You’re still contagious. Did you think about that? Do you want to make your comrades ill too?”

  He was racked by a coughing fit, then fell back on his pillows, exhausted, eyes closed, shutting us out.

  When I came back an hour later, a cup of hot soup in my hands, he said curtly, “I’m sorry. For the trouble I caused.”

  “Drink this or your fever will come back. You’re still too weak to survive it.”

  And I left him holding the cup.

  I managed to send a letter to Simon, but I could say very little. I told him I’d seen Mary and that one of my patients was an old friend from our India days. He replied quickly: For God’s sake, watch yourself!

  I didn’t need a reminder that Lieutenant Wade had already killed five people.

  I was told by Sister Eliot that Corporal Caswell had been as meek as a lamb since the night he’d tried to rejoin his men. “Very silly of him, but very brave as well.”

  He had convinced everyone of his intentions. Except me.

  I said nothing, just smiled, and kept an unobtrusive eye on the convalescent ward.

  One night when the ward Sister was busy with one of the other patients, whose wounded leg was showing signs of infection—a worrisome state of affairs because the man had just recovered from the influenza and was very weak—I walked down the rows of cots and saw that Lieutenant Wade was awake, lying quietly with his eyes open.

  “How are you feeling?” I asked, stopping at the foot of the bed.

  “Well enough to be hanged,” he said bitterly. “Rather useless for anything short of that.”

  I came round and pulled up a chair.

  “I haven’t decided what to do about you. I’ve spoken to several men in your company who are also patients here, and they tell me you’re a good soldier. Smart. Steady. Dependable. My father believed you had the same qualities.”

  He looked away, not answering.

  “You’re accused of killing so many people. Including your own parents—”

  He rose up so quickly on one elbow that I flinched before I could stop myself.

  “What are you trying to do?” he demanded in a harsh whisper, his eyes blazing, galvanized by his anger. If he’d lashed out, he would have struck me. “Tell me that I broke my parents’ hearts, because they believed I was a killer? I won’t listen to this. Go away or I shall summon Matron.”

  Standing my ground, I said, “Your parents were murdered the night before you left Agra for the cantonment. They were found later that morning. Don’t you remember?”

  It could explain why he had seemed so normal when he returned from his leave. He had shut out what he’d done, walled it away somehow so that he could face the world.

  “They were alive when I said good night to them. I was leaving at four in the morning, I’d told them they needn’t get up to see me off.”

  “But they weren’t,” I said as gently as I could. “They’d been shot, a pillow over their faces to deaden the sound. That’s how the servants found them. That’s why the police came to the regiment to find you. Word hadn’t come from England then. It caught up with the MFP when they were delayed in Lahore.”

  He stared blankly at me. I remembered what Simon had told me—that the Subedar’s brother had been angry with the Wades over his dismissal. But that didn’t make him a murderer, did it? It made just as much sense that Lieutenant Wade had killed his parents before they could learn their son was a murderer.

  “I thought—” He stopped just short of convicting himself out of his own mouth. I thought the MFP had come after me because of England. . . .

  But that wasn’t what he was about to say. Slumping down onto the cot once more, he stared at the ceiling, such as it was. “I thought it would be best for them.”

  “To kill them?” I persisted, trying to keep the shock out of my voice at the admission.

  “What good would it do if I swore I hadn’t killed anyone,” he replied wearily, “except in the war? You’re Colonel Crawford’s daughter. You won’t believe me.”

  Stung, I retorted, “The Colonel has always been a fair man. You know that as well as I do. You could have stayed and faced the charges. If you were innocent, he’d have fought for you.”

  “Perhaps he would have done. But the evidence was against me from the start. It still is.”

  “Have you tried to contact your parents, to let them know you were still alive?”

  “How could I, without giving myself away? Or putting them in an unconscionable position.” He lay there, his face turned away again. “I didn’t know they were dead,” he whispered. “All these years, and I didn’t know.”

  Did I believe him? Or was he cleverly using everything I’d said to him, twisting to it to suit his own ends.

  I could hear Matron coming toward us on her nightly rounds.

  “If you are innocent, tell me one thing that will let me believe it could be true.”

  He smiled grimly. “Ask the Caswells. Failing that—”

  And Matron was there behind us. Had he timed his remarks so that she would appear to cut him off before he could answer my challenge?

  “There you are, Sister Crawford,” Matron said after nodding to Lieutenant Wade. “I’ve been looking for you. Someone told me you’d gone off duty and were in your quarters.”

  It wasn’t an accusation, although I felt that it was.

  “I’m sorry, Matron. I thought I ought to look in on Corporal Caswell. But it appears that his—er—wandering away hasn’t caused a relapse. He’s very fortunate.”

  “Yes. Stubborn men often are, I’ve noticed,” she said with a smile for the patient. “Good night, Corporal. I’ll walk out with you, Sister.”

  We made our way out of the ward as the night medicines trolley was being brought around. When we were outside, Matron said, “Would you mind stepping into my office for a moment?”

  “Yes, of course, Matron.” I followed her to her cramped office and took the chair she offered. I had the sinking feeling I was about to be reminded that I should not take such a personal interest in a patient not my own.

  “We’ve been really pleased with your work here, Sister Crawford.”

  She was searching on her cluttered desk for a sheet of paper, surely the complaint that had been filed against me. Ironic, I thought, that I should be suspected of an unprofessional relationship with Lieutenant Wade of all the men in France. Finding what she was after, she looked up at me again. “You’re a very good nurse. And
I must say I am very reluctant to lose you. There is a convoy leaving for England, and the Sister in charge has just fallen ill of this influenza. Because we are closer to Dover, I have been asked to spare someone who has extensive experience with wounds.”

  Stunned, I sat there, not knowing what to say. All I could think about was what I must do about Lieutenant Wade before I left. I could ask the MFP to come at once and arrest him. I should do just that. Promise or no promise. I opened my mouth to begin explaining my problem. And then I remembered the Gesslers. And the fire that killed them. If Lieutenant Wade hadn’t killed them—who had? What did those deaths have to do with the Caswells?

  We knew what name “Corporal Caswell” was using now. If he didn’t go back to his company when he was discharged from the hospital, he would be hunted down and shot for desertion. He had to go back to his company. And if he did, my father and Simon could find him.

  I could feel the long day dulling my ability to come to a decision. Before I could make up my mind, Matron nodded. “Yes, it’s a shock, I’m sure. But we’ll request your return to us, and I hope the request will be honored.” She put the sheet aside. “My dear, there’s nothing I can do. You must be ready to leave at five in the morning tomorrow. You’d better get some sleep. I’ll see that someone wakes you in time. Are your ward reports in order?”

  “Yes, Matron. But there’s something else—”

  “I’m sorry, Sister. There’s nothing I can do. Sadly.” Rising, she came around her desk. “Go to London. You’re needed on that convoy.”

  I rose and accompanied her to the door. “There’s Corporal Caswell.”

  “He’s recovering, and I think he’s aware that what he did was very foolish. You needn’t worry. I believe you said before that he was in your father’s former regiment?”

  Avoiding answering, I said, “It’s just that—he isn’t what he appears to be.”

  Matron nodded. “I’ve suspected as much myself. He must be from a good family, well educated. Why he’s not an officer is his business. I expect there’s something in his background. The ranks needed men, and the Army was not particular about how it got them. I don’t feel it’s my place to inquire. If he’s a good soldier, we can ask nothing more of him. Now go to bed.”