The Shattered Tree

by Charles Todd

  Gripping my hand, she said, “You must tell them I can go there. You must. I need to look for myself.”

  I didn’t think she’d understood a word I’d said to her.

  “But I have gone for you. You gave me the key,” I said gently. “Remember?” I put it in her hand. It was cold from the night air.

  “Please, make them understand. I owe it to Jerome, it’s all my fault. Please, for the love of God, tell them.”

  I took the envelope out of my pocket and with difficulty extricated my own hand from her viselike grip and put the envelope in its place.

  She felt it, lifted it, looked at it. Then she let it slide through her fingers.

  “The box. I want the box. It’s Japanese, you can’t miss it,” she begged, reaching out for me again.

  I caught her hands to stop them.

  “It’s very late. In the morning, Marie-Luc, I promise you, in the morning.”

  That seemed to reach her.

  “Yes, in the morning. I’ll be stronger then.” And then the worrying note returned to her voice. “You won’t forget? Tell me you won’t forget!”

  “I won’t. Sister Claire is here, my witness to that promise. But only if you sleep. You must be rested before we will be allowed to go.”

  “I understand. I’m very grateful.” She lay back against the pillows, exhausted by the effort she’d made. Her next words were slurred as she drifted into sleep. “I need to rest. It’s true.”

  I waited another quarter of an hour, knowing that Captain Barkley would be pacing the floor and wondering what was happening. And then I retrieved the envelope from the sheets, put it back in my pocket, and left the room.

  Sister Claire escorted us to the door. “You do know that she won’t be traveling tomorrow,” she said, concern in her voice.

  “It was the only way to convince her to rest,” I said. “I hope she’ll be more coherent tomorrow, and can see reason.”

  “What is in that box?” she asked me at the outer door. “What is it she wants so desperately?”

  “I wish I knew,” I said, remembering the sharp-eyed policeman. “I’m just trying to keep her from fretting herself to death.”

  “And the envelope?”

  “I have no idea. But it feels like photographs. See for yourself.” I gave it to her, and she held it in her hand, weighing it as she looked at it.

  “Yes. The church teaches us that when we enter the convent, we leave all earthly things behind, and give our devotion to God. But when one is ill . . .” She left the sentence unfinished.

  “Sister Marie-Luc has served her country,” I said. “And to do that she had to leave the convent behind. It wasn’t her choice, it was forced on her.”

  “That’s true. Thank you, Sister Crawford. I hope that I’ll have better news for you tomorrow.”

  We drove in silence back to my clinic. Then, as the Captain helped me to bundle up my pillows and cushions, he said, “Why did you lie to Sister Claire?”

  “Because I’m sure the police have already questioned her about Jerome Karadeg, because they’ve talked to Marie-Luc, and they will question me if they believe that I know whatever it is that Marie-Luc knows. Thank you. I am so sorry to involve you in her plight, but there’s nowhere else to turn.”

  He held the door for me, then bent to kiss my cheek before I crossed the threshold.

  Upstairs in my room, I changed my bandage, then lay down on the bed for a few minutes to rest, intending to go through the envelope and the letters again.

  Instead I fell fast asleep and woke up only as the fire sank to embers and I felt the night’s cold drifting in.

  The nursing staff wasn’t best pleased that I was spending so much time out of the Hôtel de Belle-Île, and I shamelessly told Matron about Marie-Luc’s condition. “I’ve sat with her,” I said, “trying to give her the will to fight. I don’t tend to her, but I do try to keep her spirits up.”

  That placated Matron for a while, but I knew that I ought to be more careful.

  Later that morning, as the sun came out from behind the clouds, Major Anderson asked if I’d care for a leisurely walk. “We won’t go far, it’s just to stretch our legs a bit.”

  I accepted, found my coat, and we set out to stroll down the street. He gave me his arm, and we talked of the weather, several of the improving patients, and the prospect for peace.

  “I heard the guns last evening,” I said. “They didn’t sound like an end to the war.”

  “No.” We turned a corner. “You were out with Captain Barkley last evening. I believe he borrowed Broussard’s motorcar again.”

  “We drove out into the country, a little.”

  “Only a little?”

  I dropped his arm. “What is it you wish to know, Major?”

  “I expect I’m a little jealous,” he said ruefully.

  I didn’t believe a word of it. “A little curious perhaps. All right, I’ll tell you. A friend is very ill in hospital. We did what we could to make her more comfortable.”

  “Her?”

  “She’s a French nurse.”

  “Ah.” He offered me his arm again, and we walked on. After a while, he said, “Bess, whatever is worrying you, I’ll help in any way I can.”

  “All right. Tell me about a murder here in France, some years ago. Before the war. It was never solved.” I had managed to decipher the cutting, enough to be sure of my ground. “Five people found dead in a house out near the Bois. Four women, one man. Why did the police never catch the killer?”

  “Good God, Bess, that isn’t something I’d know very much about. How did you come to hear of it?”

  “My friend’s old governess kept the cutting about it.”

  “Did she, indeed? And somehow it’s just come to your attention?”

  “She’s delirious, rambling. People remember odd things when in the throes of a fever.”

  “True.”

  “Then tell me about your court martial.”

  “It wasn’t mine.”

  “You mentioned it to me, you must know something. Who was the man who escaped custody before he could be tried? Do you know his crime?” I smiled. “With my background, I must say I’m curious.”

  We were sparring with each other.

  “Just that it was a capital case. I told you.”

  Check. And mate.

  We walked in silence again for a time, turning back at the next cross street. By then I’d made up my mind.

  I said, “Major. The patient I have been visiting has a connection with Petite-Beauvais. I think it might be important that I find out about this court martial. Something is worrying her. And the reason she’s in hospital is that someone tried to kill her. The police believe they know who it is, but she’s adamant that it was someone else. I want to help her, but I don’t know where to begin.”

  “Did she see the person who attacked her?”

  “I don’t know. Possibly. At least she has some reason to believe she knows who it is. But she won’t tell the police. I don’t know why. She keeps saying she must wait until she can prove it wasn’t the man the police suspect.”

  “Interesting. Still, I don’t see how this is connected to the court martial?”

  “I don’t know that it is. I wouldn’t even question it, if it hadn’t been for the fact that the village is too small to have so many monsters living there. Her word, not mine.”

  “Hmmm. Which is why you wished to know about the murders that took place before the war. I hardly think the Army would deal with him, if this man is in fact guilty of them. He’d be turned over to the police. It was a civilian crime before his service in the Army. That’s to say, if he isn’t a career soldier. I’ll see what I can discover. My brother-in-law might recall it.”

  “That would be very kind of you.”

  He looked down at me. “Why are you so involved in this matter? Just because it’s a friend who is in trouble, and you want to help?”

  “I don’t think whoever stabbed her expected
her to live. And once she’s healed, and he finds her again, he may try again. It’s possible he watches the hospital every day to see if she’s been released. Or perhaps he’s bribed someone inside to alert him. I have no way of knowing.” I took a deep breath. “I really have no reason to interfere in her affairs, but she did ask for my help.”

  “Yes, well, it’s hard to walk away in that case,” he said sympathetically. “I’ll write to Claude and see what I can learn. It will take time. He’s at the Front.”

  “Captain Barkley has told me he was sent to Paris to search for deserters. I would have thought the Army would send someone in the Military Foot Police, instead of a line officer. Are there that many deserters in Paris? I find it hard to believe.” I tried to sound innocent in the hope of learning more about what the Captain was actually doing here. “He seems to have an inordinate amount of free time. Of course that might be because he’s often up half the night attending salons, leaving his days free.”

  The Major’s eyebrows went up. “But I thought—of course, I’m convalescent, I’m not current with what’s been happening.”

  He had covered up his surprise very nicely, but I’d seen through the swift redirection. I let it go for the moment, having found out enough to know that I’d been told a very convenient lie by my American friend.

  We reached the clinic at the end of our walk, and as I turned to go through the gates, I thought I saw someone across the street duck behind a passing taxi, but when the taxi had gone on its way, there was no one. Where could he have gone? There was another house very like the Hôtel de Belle-Île, with gates that were a little more ornate, the tips of the spears forming the pattern painted a gold that had dulled over time and was in dire need of repair. The only place he could have gone was the courtyard, but I could hardly walk over to look.

  “What is it?” Major Anderson asked as I lingered by our own gates for a moment too long.

  “I’d have sworn I saw someone across the way—I thought I’d recognized him,” I said, still watching the street. But the Major was already striding toward the main door, and I had no choice but to follow him, knowing I could stand there for an hour, and if someone had indeed been watching the clinic, he could outwait me. But as soon as we were inside, I pleaded fatigue and went up to the first floor, in search of a window that overlooked our courtyard. The rooms there had been turned over to the patients, and I had no excuse for going inside any of them. By the time I reached the Nursery, there was no one in sight.

  Fifteen minutes later I slipped outside and took a taxi to the hospital.

  It was a wasted journey. Sister Marie-Luc’s fever had broken, and she lay in an exhausted sleep.

  I sought out Sister Claire and asked, “Can you tell me? Did Sister Marie-Luc ask again about going to that village?”

  “Truthfully? I don’t think she remembered it when her fever came down. But it’s odd. That policeman—the one who interviewed her after the attack on her—was here again this morning, and when I told him that the patient was resting after suffering from a fever, he asked me what she had said in her delirium. I gave him an account, and he asked if she had told us why this box was so urgent. I explained as best I could.”

  “And what did he say to that?”

  “He just listened to me, and nodded when I’d finished. I couldn’t really be sure what he thought about it.”

  “If the person who attacked Sister Marie-Luc killed himself in remorse, I don’t quite see why the police should still have an interest in her case.”

  She shook her head. “I can’t answer that. Perhaps he was concerned for her.”

  Or perhaps whatever had seemed odd about the body fished from the Seine was still worrying him.

  But I said nothing of that to Sister Claire. Just then someone down the passage called to her, and after making her excuses, she walked sedately away, the wide white wings of her coif giving her the air of a bird about to take flight. Concerned about encountering the police, I hurried outside and two streets over found a taxi.

  When I reached the clinic, I went up to my room and lay on my narrow bed, an arm behind my head and my eyes fixed on the ceiling, thinking.

  Surely the police hadn’t set someone to watch me, I told myself. And whoever was across the way this morning as I came home from my walk might have had nothing at all to do with me. There could be any number of reasons why that policeman had come back to the hospital. He might even have been there for another reason altogether, and politely inquired about Marie-Luc. After all, she hadn’t made a formal identification of her attacker, but it was always possible that in her fevered state she might have remembered some important detail that would help him close the inquiry.

  But a nagging suspicion moved me to get up from the bed and take the envelope, the letters, and the photograph from the table where I’d set them last night, and hide them.

  More easily decided than carried out. Where in a nursery does one hide anything? The first place anyone would look would be the small chest where I’d put my belongings, or the armoire where I’d hung my coat and my uniforms.

  But digging around in the nursery, I found a box of toy soldiers, in French and British uniforms of the period of Waterloo. There was a Wellington, a Napoleon, and even a General Blücher, and a company of Black Brunswickers. It was a battle I knew well. My several-times-great-grandmother had waited not far away for news of her husband that fateful June day in 1815.

  I upended the box on the bed, scattering infantry, horse, and cannon every which way, and put my cache from Petite-Beauvais in the very bottom before replacing the figures. Then I returned it to where I’d found it.

  Satisfied, I came back to my bed and nearly lay down on an Old Guard, which had to be marched back to the toy box before I could resume my contemplation of the ceiling.

  Where was Philippe Moreau, and why had Paul Moreau’s return from being taken prisoner so upset Father Robert?

  I found no answer to those questions and turned instead to what Captain Barkley was doing in Paris.

  I had first thought he might be supporting me in my search for Philippe Moreau to keep me out of trouble, but he was beginning to show signs of a more personal interest in the village of Petite-Beauvais now, giving himself away.

  Had he known about it before I arrived in Paris, or had he discovered it while helping me?

  I had hardly rested, my mind was too busy. But my side had appreciated the quiet half hour.

  Making a decision, I got up and smoothed my uniform.

  Going in search of Madame Ezay, I found her folding sheets in the laundry drying room. There was no one else about, so I smiled and said, “Let me help you.”

  “You shouldn’t be doing any such thing, not with your injury.”

  “I can sit over there and find two ends of every sheet, then hold them while you do the rest. I’d like your help.”

  “But of course, Sister Crawford. What is it you need?”

  I wasn’t entirely sure.

  “The Mayor’s office, la mairie, registers all births and deaths in a village, does it not?”

  “Bien sûr. It must be done.”

  “But if a village is too small for a mairie?”

  She smiled. “The smallest village has a mayor. Someone always steps up.”

  “Are there church records as well? As there are in England?”

  “Yes. If the marriage or birth is reported to the priest.”

  “Why wouldn’t it be?”

  “If it is not a legitimate birth, one has only to move to another village, and it would be assumed that the birth had been registered properly where the child was born.”

  “Is this a large problem?” I asked, surprised.

  She shrugged. The pile of folded sheets in the basket at her feet was growing quickly, with my help.

  “Who knows? It is possible, certainly. But why do you ask?”

  “There’s someone I can’t seem to find. I wondered if his birth had been registered anywhere.
The French Army appears not to have any such person on its rolls. I thought perhaps he didn’t use his first given name. Possibly he didn’t care for it.”

  “Ah. I had a cousin who was given the name of his grandfather, whom he detested. As soon as his grandfather died, he used his next given name, Aristide, instead. It was not his legal name, but he refused to go back to Hieronymus.”

  I smiled. “I can’t say that I blame him.”

  “Yes, his grandfather was Flemish. And very unpleasant, from all reports.” She reached for the next sheet. “Mind,” she said, “you must know where a person was born. Or you don’t know where to begin.”

  Alsace? Ruled by the Germans since the 1870s? A needle in a haystack. And even if Petite-Beauvais had such an office as a mairie, no one would be willing to let me search it. Nor would Father Robert be persuaded to let me see the church records. That was certain.

  “If a village is too small, would I look in the next larger town?” I asked.

  “Possibly. But it would have to be very small indeed.”

  Like the hamlet in the Forest of Fontainebleau?

  “Is there someone in particular you want to know about?” She looked up, as if afraid she might be prying. “Perhaps if I knew why you wish to know all these things? Or who it is you want to find?”

  “I don’t really know myself,” I said wearily.

  “But you have asked. You must know a little?”

  “A French officer, one who was wounded and brought into our aid station. I thought he might be from Alsace. He spoke fluent German, I’m sure.”

  “That’s likely. If he went to school there, they would not have taught him French.”

  Perhaps this whole quest was mad.

  “Yes, I’d thought of that.”

  The pile of dry sheets had been replaced by a stack of freshly folded ones. There were only pillowcases left, and Madame Ezay could deal with those herself.

  I thanked her and went back to my room.

  Sister Marie-Luc had called Philippe Moreau a monster.

  It was time to find out why.